By Terri Moon

Military trainers from the United States, Canada, Poland and Lithuania are training Ukraine service members at a training base in western Ukraine, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.

Just ahead of his afternoon meeting with Ukraine’s defense minister, Stepan Poltorak, the secretary said, “What we want is the same thing the United States has stood for, for a long time in our history. That is an independent sovereign Ukraine, [in which the government is] making their own decisions about their own future,” he added.

“We’re working with them on reform of their military,” Mattis said. “That will be a lot of what we discuss today. The minister is leading the reform effort, so we’re working with him. And it is … an ongoing effort to make sure that they stay independent and sovereign.”

ISIS ‘On The Ropes’

Turning to the campaign in Iraq and Syria to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Mattis said the enemy “is on the ropes,” adding, “I think now it’s pretty much undeniable that they’re in trouble.”

Yet, the secretary told reporters, the fight against ISIS is not over yet.

“We need to keep the pressure on,” he said.

The U.S.-led coalition wants to get back to finishing off ISIS and destroying all of its geographic holdings, so that they’re on the run, Mattis said.

He added the fight against the enemy needs to “Get it driven down to a point that in Syria, we’re freer to go into the Geneva process, and you now see that that is on track again for all the people who’ve questioned we’d ever get there.”

On the Iraq side, Iraqi forces and the coalition are going after the “small sleeper cells, the small concentrations out in the desert,” Mattis said. “So we want to stay focused on this. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

By Dusica Tomovic

Montenegro plans to deploy two military officers in the NATO-led mission in Kosovo, its first new international operation since it joined the Western military alliance last year.

Montenegro’s National Security Council on Friday decided to send two military personnel to join KFOR, the NATO-led operation that has maintained peace in Kosovo since the 1999 war in the former Serbian province ended.

The council, composed of the Prime Minister, President and speaker of the parliament, said a formal proposal would be sent to parliament, which by law in Montenegro has the final word on troop deployments abroad.

“One officer will be deployed in [KFOR] command in Pristina and the other in the mission’s regional headquarters in Skopje, Macedonia,” the press statement after the meeting said.

Montenegro has been mulling plans to join KFOR since 2015 but only finalised the decision after fully joining NATO in June 2017.

Although Montenegro’s army has participated in several international missions, including NATO-led operations in Afghanistan, it has never deployed military units in Kosovo because of the complicated political situation.

A large proportion of Montenegrins, about a third of the population, declare themselves as ethnic Serbs and still strongly oppose Kosovo’s independence, which Montenegro recognised in 2008.

Serbia has vowed never to recognise the independence of its former province although it has agreed to join EU-led talks on “normalising” relations.

Ethnic Serbs in Montenegro and their politicians also maintain that Kosovo is still a province of Serbia.

Although Kosovo and Montenegro have established diplomatic relations, Podgorica still has only a chargé d’affaires in Pristina, not an ambassador.

NATO has been leading peace-keeping operations in Kosovo since June 1999 in support of wider international efforts to build peace and stability in the area.

The force was established following NATO’s 78-day air campaign against former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s regime, aimed at putting an end to the violence in Kosovo.

Its original objectives were to deter renewed hostilities, establish a secure environment and ensure public safety and order, demilitarize the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, support the international humanitarian effort and coordinate with the international civil society presence.

So far, Croatia is the only ex-Yugoslav republic to have contributed soldiers to KFOR. Zagreb deployed its first unit in 2009.

By Dr. Nafees Ahmad*

Unmanned Military Weapons (UMW) system based on Autonomous Weapons Technologies (AWT) mesmerizes doppelgängers of Terminator-style robots; deadly machines backed by convoluted artificial intelligence which is qualified of exterminating human beings devoid of being impeded by human sentiments and traditional constrictions. This image is akin to science fiction and raises challenges about the development of UMW that vanguard the international legal discourse in the contemporary circumstances.UMW is innovation,and its adherence to the core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) must be ensured. It is now obligatory upon the international community to address the lego-political, moral and ethical ramifications of the development of robotic technologies that might have lethal consequences.On October 24, 2010, in a report to the UN General Assembly Human Rights Committee, Christof Heyns—a Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions—opined that UMW systems flagged “serious concerns that have been almost entirely unexamined by human rights defenders or humanitarian actors” at the anvil of IHL. Therefore, UN must constitute a panel to evaluate the legal, moral and ethical aspects of UMW that are being mushroomed in the US and deployed fortarget killings in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

In June 2010, another UN official Philip Alston requested for terminationto CIA-guided drone airstrikeson Al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives and suspects in Afghanistan and Pakistan.Alston articulated that killings ordered far from the battleground could lead to a “PlayStation”mindset. The CIA contested his findings by statingbut without confirming that it conductedthe airstrikes and military operations “within a framework of law and close government oversight.” Heyns—a South African Professor of Law—was of the view that there was a need to discuss responsibility for civilian casualties and how to ensure that the use of robots complied with IHL, and human rights standards for developing the AWT. Thus, Heyns asked the UN to take up the issue head-on by exhorting the then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to organizea group of national representatives, philosophers, IHL experts,human rights defenders,developers and scientists to promote a debate on the legal, political, ethical, and moral implications of UMW systems. There is a fundamental question that must immediately be addressed,i.e., should lethal force ever be permitted to be fully automated and unmanned? Is it legally and morally correct to allow UMW to kill humans on the battlefields? Is it in compliance with IHL to transfer the decision from human being to machines to kill humans?

International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) released a document on November 19, 2012,called Losing Humanity: The Case against KillerRobots, wherein a ban on the production and use of UMW was advocated. Subsequently, US Department of Defence (DoD) circulated a Directive 3000.09 wherein DoD adumbrated its policies on the development and use of UMW. On April 9, 2013, Heyns askedfor a moratorium on the development of UMW until an acceptable legal framework is developed. However, the UN, IHRC,andDoD differed on the solution,andthey together commenced from the hypothesis that UMW would broach challenges of compliance to IHL. Therefore, the core principles of IHL such as principles of distinction and proportionality are insufficient to address the troubles raised by the UMW which require a more planned,controlledand coordinated legal regime to be emplaced to ensure the legality and morality of the use of UMW.There are also questions about the existing principles of command responsibility which are not adequate to provide the adherence of UMW with the IHL principles.

Unmanned Military Weapons?

Aroboticist Noel Sharkeydefines an unmanned machine as one that “carries out a preprogrammed sequence of operations or moves in a well-defined environment.” In contrast, anautonomous machine operates in an amorphous environment. It is de rigueurto distinguish between weapons that are developed and designed as automated and unmanned weapons and weapons that are trulyautonomous. The term “autonomy” can be challenging to define as it alludes to highly intelligent robotsthat are capable of individual decision-making. The reality looks a lot less like science fiction,and more like everyday robotics.Inquintessence, what makes a machine autonomous is its environment of operation rather than its internal procedures. The DoD espouses a comprehensive definition of UMW whereunder “a weapon system once that is activated, can select and engage targets devoid of further intervention by a human hand. It includes human-controlled UMW systems that are designed to allow human operators to supersede theoperation of the weapon structure but can chooseand securetargets without further participationafter activation. The DoD definition’s essential requirement is that once activated; it can “select and engage targets” without further human input. Human Rights Watch (HRW) adopts an identical definition “any robot that can select and engage targets without human input, even if there is a human oversight, will qualify as a fully autonomous robot.” Thus, these definitions encapsulate the distinguishing nature of UMW that humans are not indispensable for the targeting decision-making process. In essence, there is a difference of predictability between UMW automatic weaponry. An automatic weapon system is wholly predictable except a breakdown. However, the UMW can only be anticipated as a sequence of similar results. It is crucial to have the determination of distinction to appreciate the capability of UMW of having compliance with IHL norms.

The emergence of UMW can develop in two different directions: as the expansionofhuman soldiers or as the replacement of humans in the battleground by unmanned proxies.In other words, the distinction is between UMW that expand or replace our soldiers and those automatic war machines that could be potential soldiers. Currently, the dominant perception is that robots will be deployed only to supplement andbroaden our soldier’s engagement in thehostilities. In this context, UMW system isappreciatedas weapons that keep humans away from combat. Primarily, the UMW is the latesttechnological advancement that originated from the traditional archery. In the same way, the diagnostic responses to the potential introduction of UMW are notunusual. However, any introduction of new weapons is challenged by some as unethical or illegal.However, the idea that UMW will replace our soldiers is gaining currency in the years ahead. The UMW system is more than an extension of humans when they have the potential to decideto kill without human engagement in the hostilities. However, the deployment of drones could be castigated for a multitude of reasons, but their competence of compliance with the principles of IHL is indisputablebecause humans are involved in the targeting process.Whereas the UMW would take human operators out of the decision-making architecturethat has been contemplated under the IHL regime. It is an acceptable war doctrine that human beings have been maintaining distance from war through technology and weapons development since antiquity. But visualizing battle without humans has not yet been imagined and removing human soldiers from the war process would be a paradigmatic shift in the event of UMW system development.

The Future of UMW

Currently, the UMW is not in action entirely,but it has been growing gradually at a pace that has not been seen before. Several weapons systems are attaining full autonomous abilities. International experts like Werner JA Dahm in his piece “Killer Drones Are Science Fiction” published in The Wall Street Journal on February 15, 2012, stated that the deployment of UMW is predestined and impending in the future. He further contends that the technology required for “fully autonomous military strikes” is already present. The development of UMW would augment vertically and horizontally with aspects of operations such as take-off and navigation, and lead to full autonomy over time.With the technological advancements, more and more sophisticated sensing and computational systems will becarried out.The increased tempo of warfare and pressures to minimize casualties will also create demand forUMW. Several weapons systems include semi-autonomous capabilities already, and the level of automation in weapons systems is progressively increasing.

Recently, the South Korean military has posted an immobile sentinel robot in the Korean Demilitarized (KDZ) which can detect and select the military objects. Such a robot can respond with lethal or non-lethal force by the attending situation on the ground. However, the final decision about targeting must be of human beings and not of robots as robots would decide without human intervention. Nevertheless, the robot is competent to select and engage targets without human application, but its location in the KDZ makes it uncalled for the robot to differentiate between civilian and military objects. However, arobot treats any person as a hostile combatant who crosses the pre-demarcated line. The Aegis-class cruisers of the US Navy currently has the Phalanx Close-In Weapons Systems (PC-inWS) which are autonomously capable of performing its searches, detection, evaluation, tracking and killing assessment functions. The PC-inWS has been designed in four types: (1) semi-automatic, where humans command the firing decision; (2) automatic special, where humans decide targets, but the software determines how to execute them; (3) automatic, where humans supervise the system, but it operates without their input; and (4) casualty, where the systems does whatever is necessary to save the ship.

Thus, the UK has been testing a new semi-autonomous aircraft called Taranis and BAE Systems—the Designer—hailed it as an “autonomous and unmanned stealthaircraft” capable of autonomous aviation. However, humans have been retained for the time being,but they are likely to be replaced gradually. The X-47B—a semi-autonomous drone—the US has been developing that will take off and land without human deployment. The developer assertsthat it is a mechanism that “takes off, lands and aviates a preprogrammed mission, and then returns to base with a mouse click administered by its mission operator. The mission operator supervisesthe machine’s operation but does not actively involve in flying it via remote control as is the situation for other unmanned weapons systems currently in operation.The current development of X-47B does not envision autonomous target selection but would be capable of semi-autonomous flight. The development of UMW has been integratedinto all roadmaps of the US forces since 2004.The US Air Force’s Flight Plan proposesthat by the year 2025 completelyautonomous and unmanned flight systems will be a reality. Sharkey claims to have read certain robotics development projects from more than 50 countries including Canada which ispresently engaged in developing UMW systems.The US Air Force Major Michael A. Guetlin states that “[it] is not a matter of ‘will’ we employ [autonomous weapons]; it is a matter of ‘when’ we employ them.”

UMW System Advantages

Some tactical and operational factors promote the development of lethal UMW systems. The UMW systems are cheaper to operate than human-operated weapons and are capable of performing continuously, without the need for rest.Gordon Johnson, a member of the now-defunct Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command, highlighted the benefits of UMW: “They don’t get hungry. They are not afraid. They do not forget commands and directives. They do not worry if the guy next to them has just been hit or targeted. Will UMW do a better job than humans? Of course, Yes.Human operators are susceptible to fatigue and exhaustion.Though it can be possible to broaden mission times for humans of up to 72 hours with performance enhancers, eventually a human needs rest. The UMW is capable of performing for as long as their batteries sustain them. As battery and recharging technologyadvances, the possible mission and target time for UMW will continue to increase. A smaller number of humans are required for the operation of UMW systems. It may soon be possible for a single operator to manage a swarm of semi-autonomous drones, or for a single human commander to assign mission parameters to UMW, and monitor them from a secure distance. Therefore, it will allow for a distancing of the human warfighter and the battle space and expands the battle space. Consequently, the combatwill be able to be conducted over a much larger area than before. UMW has the capability of processing battleground information in a faster and efficient manner than human operators. UMW could be installed with a multitude of sensory technologies like infrared and thermal vision, high definition cameras and state-of-the-art acoustic sensors that would enhance UMW’s superiority over sensory capabilities of humans.

There are vulnerabilities with the modern remotely guided vehicles due to the possibility that would interfere with enemy satellites, radar systems or radio frequencies. However, the UMW systems assuage these anxieties as they would be capable of performing without perennial contact with base camp.At present, remotely piloted systems have a delay time of about1.5 Seconds, restrictingtheirefficacyin a greatertempo battlespace. Thus, the impugned delay would make it impracticalfor a remotely piloted system to combatin aerialwarfare, which UMW aeronautical capabilities would make achievable. The proponents of UMW advocatethat UMW may, in fact,bemore adept at adhering to the principles of IHL than the soldiers logic and emotions. The UMW systems might be capable of performingmore conservatively because they would not lunge forpreservation instinct. Therefore, robotic sensors would be better well-equipped to make battleground observations and surveillancethan human combatants. The UMW would be designed without emotions that are bound to cloud sense of judgment of human soldiers, but UMW would be free from all the psychological infirmities and frailties of scenario fulfillment; the experiencesand occurrencesof human beings which they use as new information to fit their pre-existing belief patterns and combat orientation.

No Wrap-Up

It is, indeed, a reality now that UMW systems are here to stay as inalienable war machinery of the modern world and it is destined to be vertically and horizontally gradational in their advancement. The deployment of UMW systems posesa multitude of challenges including adhering to the IHL principles of distinction and proportionality. In IHL, principles, and standards have been defined for human soldiers and technology might never be able to substitute human beings in entirety. Making a distinction between civilian and combatants needs computational processing capability that has not been accomplished as of now. With the requisite technology development, the definition of civilian may not be adequately specific for UMW software. Therefore, the idiosyncratic and circumstantial nature of proportionality entails an assessment of dynamics that might not be workable for the machines. Further, there are ethical and moral challenges emanate from the UMW systems such as should the decision to kill a human being be assigned to a drone or robot? Having vigorously assessed the potentialchallenges of adherence to the IHL principles, we must not attribute UMW systems a higher standard than human management of warfare. However, there are umpteen instances of war crimes, indiscriminate attacks, crimes against humanity, and disproportionate use of force by the human soldiers in the human history. The introduction of UMW system is flgrantly bound to lead to the moral detachment and unethical expansion of battle space. But UMW has to peregrinate a long way before matching the human mind and human sense of justice. The UMW system is not necessary for making the distinction and calculating proportionality if measured against the human input.Nevertheless, human soldiers would be there in the loop as a goofproof when UMW system is first deployed in the battlefields; their engagement would fade away with the time. With the diminishing of human engagement, the complications confronted by the UMW in adhering to the principles of IHL would be unprecedentedly prominent necessitating the comprehensive lego-institutional analysis to re-conceiving the human terrain of International Humanitarian Law.

About the author:
*Dr. Nafees Ahmad, Ph. D., LL.M, Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University (SAARC)-New Delhi, Nafees Ahmad is an Indian national who holds a Doctorate (Ph.D.) in International Refugee Law and Human Rights. Author teaches and writes on International Forced Migrations, Climate Change Refugees & Human Displacement Refugee, Policy, Asylum, Durable Solutions and Extradition Issus. He conducted research on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Jammu & Kashmir and North-East Region in India and has worked with several research scholars from US, UK and India and consulted with several research institutions and NGO’s in the area of human displacement and forced migration. He has introduced a new Program called Comparative Constitutional Law of SAARC Nations for LLM along with International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law and International Refugee Law & Forced Migration Studies. He has been serving since 2010 as Senior Visiting Faculty to World Learning (WL)-India under the India-Health and Human Rights Program organized by the World Learning, 1 Kipling Road, Brattleboro VT-05302, USA for Fall & Spring Semesters Batches of US Students by its School for International Training (SIT Study Abroad) in New Delhi-INDIA nafeestarana[at]gmail.com,drnafeesahmad[at]sau.ac.in

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

5th Generation Warfare is not new, revolutionary or a novel invention. It is part of the human experience. In the xGW framework, it is defined as “the secret deliberative manipulation of actors, networks, institutions, states or any earlier generational warfare forces to achieve a goal or set of goals across a combination of socioeconomic and political domains while attempting to avoid or minimize the retaliatory offensive or defensive actions/reactions including powered actors, networks, institutions, and/or states.

Under this definition, 5th GW might include a form of warfare that manipulates: This warfare is a perception-based warfare focused on the context of conflict. It is fought through manipulating perceptions and altering the context by which the world is perceived. Since 5th GW is the manipulation of observational context in order to make the enemy do our will, an act of force is not required to manipulate observational context, and therefore force is not required to wage 5th generation warfare. 5th GW can succeed by manipulating the identity perception of the enemy and their indigenous population in relation to each other as well as to friendly forces. It involves presenting potential adversaries with new observations that falsify hostile orientations and socialize those actors into developing more cooperative orientations.

The strategic goal of 5th GW is to fight the war with the adversary “not knowing who it is fighting”. BLA, BLF, such actors have been funded by India to create anarchy in Baluchistan, Kulbhushan Jadav involvement in an Indian spy network and saying he was planning subversive activities against the recently launched multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. He had allegedly been living in Chabahar, an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman, west of Pakistan, before illegally entering Baluchistan to creating insurgencies fifth generation warfare also explains that opponent states exploitations economic vulnerabilities as Indian spy is good example to mobilize indigenous peoples.

This is how 5th GW attacks the intellectual strength of insurgent adversaries, by literally denying them an enemy against which to fight. 5th GW strategies seek to problematize enemy’s knowledge of who it fights against and why the adversary must be resisted. In other words, “the enemy must not feel that he is not on your side.

According to (Clausewitz 1989), war is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will. While quite comprehensive, it misses other, more subtle forms of war. It has two major components, ie ‘act of force’ and ‘compelling our enemy to do our will’. A more expansive definition of war may be the one emphasizing the second part of Clausewitz’s formulation, “compelling the enemy to do our will” (the goal of war) more than the first part, the “act of force” (the means of war). In essence, the goal of war is essential in defining the nature of war. The means of war are not. In the same context, making the enemy do our will is essential to war. An act of force is not.

In 5th GW, new attacks are conducted by an individual or, at most, a very small group. Super-empowered individuals or small groups would be in keeping with several emerging global trends—the rise of biotechnology, the increased power of knowledge workers, and the changing nature of loyalties, e.g the anthrax and ricin attacks on Capitol Hill may be early examples of fifth-generation warfare.

Features of 5TH GW

Some of the salient features are as follows:

• In 5th GW, violence is so dispersed that the losing side may never realize that it has been conquered
• The very secrecy of 5th GW makes it the hardest generation of war to study. Most successful 5th GWs are those that are never identified.
• 5th GW attacks occur below the threshold of observation.
• 5th GW focuses on open-source warfare, systems disruption, and virtual states as a new form of political organization
• In 5th GW, actors are single individuals who perform their roles in a grand strategy without realizing their roles.

So fourth and fifth-generation warfare are ‘pre-Westphalia in the sense that they mark the end of the nation-state. The armed groups or networks neither fight in the name of the state nor are under its control. This argument cuts both ways. It challenges those who argue that jihadi groups still function as a ‘veritable arm’ of Pakistani state agencies (that nurtured and created them in the first place).

And it undermines the logic of conspiracy-mongering patriots who argue that these groups are free agents being financed and used by foreign forces to sow mischief within Pakistan. The understanding of fifth-generation warfare still doesn’t take away from the fact that state policies will remain the most crucial factor in defeating these new combatants. We now know that these terrorist groups are structurally horizontal and not hierarchical, which adds to their resilience.

The nation-state isn’t their unit of analysis and territorial boundaries don’t obstruct their objects and goals. They are willing to co-opt other networks or be co-opted whenever there is synergy: TTP and LeJ share anti-Shia agenda; and LeT share anti-India agenda; and Al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and share anti-US agenda. Given that these networks are not structured organizations but loose constellations, they are free agents and are probably co-opted by foreign agencies against Pakistan and its security forces for select operations.

But what we frequently miss in our analysis is that common amongst all these non-state networks of violence – and probably at the top of their list– is their anti-Pakistan agenda. They don’t accept the constitution of Pakistan and the rights and responsibilities it imposes on citizens; they don’t accept the writ of the state and the government and the legitimacy of the policies crafted by the state; and they don’t accept the rights and responsibilities of Pakistan as a nation state under international law.

These networks will agree to be co-opted by the Pakistani state so long as state agenda overlaps with theirs. So if our formal policy is to send jihadis into Kashmir and Afghanistan, TTP, LeT and Daesh are willing partners. But if our national security and foreign policy changes and exporting jihadis isn’t seen as promoting Pakistan’s national security interests, the same groups turn on the state. The biggest failing of our national security establishment has been the two-pronged delusion that (i) violent jihadi networks can be controlled and employed to singularly further state objectives, and (ii) the religion-based ideology of hate that drives them can be turned off will. What we have witnessed instead is reverse indoctrination.

It is the state agents that have come to be indoctrinated with the religion-inspired ideology of hate that then leads them to sympathize with the jihadi outfits, as evident from reportedly insider-facilitated attacks on security establishments. And this makes logical sense. Nationalism and the nation-state are contrived concepts. Religion isn’t (except for atheists, of course). While our soldier is motivated both in the name of country and religion, it would be hard to assert that his state identity trumps his religious identity in the event that there is a perceived conflict between the two.

What the history of conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan has taught us is that even when powerful states fought a fourth-generation war with a third-generation strategy they lost, Fifth-generation warfare has further blurred a lot of boundaries: What is a battlefield and what isn’t? What is a combatant and what isn’t? What is a weapon and what isn’t? If you take the war to North Waziristan, they will bring it to the urban centers. If you attack throat-slitting brutes, they will attack 14-year-old school girls. While you ponder over the legality and reasonability of the use of airpower and heavy artillery, they will brainwash 14-year-olds to blow themselves up amongst unsuspecting civilians.

This is a new form of warfare. The combatants or terrorists are no misguided fools. These are shrewd and ruthless tacticians fighting a no-holds-barred conflict. They understand the moral, psychological, social, economic and political dimensions of this war. They see a growing national consensus against their agenda and their tactics led by the media after the attack on Malala, and they threaten to attack the media. But deterrence isn’t enough. So they justify the attack in religious terms, while relying on examples from the lives of our prophets. And that helps sow enough confusion to stem the rising tide against them.

An Era of Asymmetric warfare.

Cyber warfare attacks are also part of 5th GW warfare which can disable official websites and networks, disrupt or disable essential services, steal or alter classified data, and cripple financial systems — among many other possibilities states use to go war through insurgents and technology basis that their image wouldn’t show front the other states we have good examples on it about Indian naval officer.

In this regard, the USA surpasses other countries of the world. According to Snowden USA has an access to all major markets of the world. Even USA has traced calls of vice Chancellor of Germany Angela Markel. The USA annually spends 360 billion dollars on research and development. They have orchestrated couple of innovative technologies which can fetch a great deal of destruction for other countries of the world.

China is going to be confronted with cyber warfare from USA. As 500 million Chinese use the internet on a daily basis. China is quite concerned about cyber warfare of USA. In 2014 internet contributed approximately 14 percent to GDP of China. If China does not take drastic steps in future there would be a monolithic destruction for china as for as her economy is concerned. It is very fascinating in international arena that warfare is being changed with every passing year. Hence, the upcoming era would be an era of proxy war and sub conventional warfare. In the Cold War both super powers, the USA and USSR, had conventional weapons, but they did not use them. If they had used conventional warfare the entire world would have been destroyed. Therefore they used proxy war in different part of the world. Under current circumstances many states of the world espouse the trajectory of USA and USSR. The USA also uses fifth generation warfare to counter hegemony of China. There is a strong perception about USA that they created ISIS to counter the hegemony of China and Russia. It was predicted in National Security Council in Bush administration in 2004 that there would be a group which would implement the principles of Islam. A Group of Islam would follow the path of Khilfa Rashideen they would start expansion from Mediterranean Sea to South East Asia. One can see that USA through asymmetric warfare countering both Russia and china. In this regard ex-president Hamid Karzai said that ISIS was created by the USA and they would deliberately trigger instability in Central Asia for the purpose of countering hegemony of China in Central Asia and South Asia.

Conclusion

The recent era is thoroughly engulfed by fifth generation warfare. Every state is fully vigilant of other states nuclear state capability. They are cognizant of devastation of nuclear weapons. Hence, they instead of conventional warfare would use fifth warfare to secure their political interest. Most impotently, conventional warfare by all means will destroy or affect the entire world. But fifth generation will save the world from complete destruction. It is quite obvious that Afghanistan is used by both regional and global powers as a battle ground by them to secure their geopolitical interest. In the same way, the apprehension of Indian spy in Baluchistan is another lucid example that fifth warfare is in full swing. India cannot use nukes against Pakistan as Pakistan itself is a nuclear state. Indian cannot use conventional warfare they TTP as fifth generation to destabilize Pakistan.

On the other hand, the USA uses innovative technologies as a cyber-warfare to accumulate worthwhile data of the world. In this current era every state is concerned about fifth generation Warfare. But one thing is crystal clear, the more a state is advanced in research Technology the better they will steal a march on other vulnerable states of the world.

The USA is still considered a superpower as they are still having superiority and ascendancy in science and technology. China in this regard raised issue of cyber security in world form but United Nation which is a cat’s paw of US is not taking stringent steps against USA.

*Imran Shahani has a Masters in International Relations from National Defence University Islamabad.

There seems to be peace wind blowing in Northeastern part of Asia. This does not mean to suggest that all past suspicions and hatreds that the three Notheastern Asian states – Japan, China and Koreas – carry towards each other are instantly buried. But some of the latest moves by each of these countries plus North Korea are pointer for a peaceful Asia. Let me identify some of these.

First, inter-Korean talks took place for first time in two years, in early January following North Korea’s Kim Jong-un’s expression of willingness to engage in dialogue with the South in his New Year address. South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in lost no time to respond quickly inviting North Korea to participate in the Winter Olympics Games that South was hosting in PyeongChang from February 9 to 25. Moon also successfully persuaded President Donald Trump to postpone the joint annual military drill until the Gams are over. Kim Jong-un sees the annual military drill as preparation of invasion of North Korea and therefore postponement of the drill had huge symbolic value. Moon’s new move also warmed South Korea’s relations with China, North Korea’s main benefactor. If Moon’s sports diplomacy could molly-coddle and lead to freezing of Kim’s nuclear ambitions remains unclear at the moment. A lot would depend upon Trump’s policy and if he eschews his option of launching a preventive military strike on North Korea. The situation could dramatically reverse if the joint military drills are resumed after the Olympic Games as Pyongyang has already warned that it would continue to perceive the resumption of the drill as a hostile act and take appropriate steps.

Secondly, despite the chill in relations between Japan and South Korea over the Comfort Women issue, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo agreed to travel to South Korea to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games and talk with Moon directly.

Thirdly and the most important in these peace moves is Japan’s engagement with China, seen as a bully in the region because of its aggressive and assertive stances in regional issues with utter disrespect to the sensitivity of other neighbouring countries which suspects China’s real intentions. This article shall deal in some detail the third point only and what that means for peace in Asia.

Japan’s foreign minister Taro Kono travelled to China in the last week of January, the first such visit in two years, signaling a thaw in ties between Tokyo and Beijing. Bilateral ties have suffered considerably owing to rows over territorial and historical issues. Though this move opens a window for improving ties between the two, experts remain skeptical that relations will improve soon enough, given the differences in regional strategies. Here, Abe’s move to send Kono to Beijing could be comparable to Moon’s engagement strategy with the North’s Kim. Though in either case no immediate dividend may be expected, at least the first such move in both cases in two years could lay the ground and create the right atmosphere to further talks.

Kono’s Beijing sojourn is significant on another count as both the countries mark 40 years of their signing of a bilateral peace and friendship treaty and after both Xi Jinping of China and Abe of Japan have bolstered their domestic power bases. The strong leadership bases provide an ideal opportunity for both to move ahead with negotiations on various matters. Though Beijing continues to remain North Korea’s principal ally, Beijing is equally perturbed with Kim’s nuclear and missile programs and therefore wants to work in cooperation with Japan so that equilibrium is maintained in East Asia. Kono and his counterpart Wang Yi agreed in principle to make further efforts so that reciprocal visits by their leaders are resumed. In his talks with his counterpart, Kono underscored that as the world’s second and third largest economies, Japan and China “have a major responsibility in safeguarding the stability and prosperity of Asia and the world at large”.

In particular, both seem to be on the same page on how to deal with North Korea. Japan felt rattled when North Korea fired a ballistic missile over its island of Hokkaido in August 2017 and therefore seeks a united front against Pyongyang. Kono also discussed possible arrangements for a trilateral summit coming spring between leaders from China, Japan and South Korea. Kono’s efforts was a step further on this as officials from Japan, South Korea and China met in the Philippines in November 2017 to discuss the possibility of again holding a trilateral summit between them. The last one was held in 2015. Both sides experienced a major break in relations in 2012, after China responded furiously to Japan’s nationalization of uninhabited East China Sea islands that Japan controls but which China claims.

Though Abe’s visit to Beijing in 2014 moved a step towards normalization, mutual distrust continues over the islands, which Japan calls as the Senkakus and China as the Diaoyus. Taiwan also claims the islands, referring to them as Diaoyutai. When a Chinese nuclear powered attack submarine was found operating just outside Japan’s territorial waters in early January, Japan expressed concern. The submarine later surfaced in the high seas flying the Chinese flag. Japan’s Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera had reacted that such Chinese act “unilaterally raise tensions” and vowed to “respond swiftly if a similar incident happens”. Undeterred, three Chinese coast guard vessels passed through Japan’s territorial waters surrounding the East China Sea islands. This was the third such intrusion in January itself. China was probably trying to study Japan’s ability to patrol the area and detect intrusions. From its own side, Japan is also on guard. With a view to educate its people, the Japanese government recently opened a museum in Tokyo to present evidence intended to support its position and garner popular support.

Like the comfort women issue between Japan and South Korea, China cannot easily forget Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of large parts of China before and during the World War II. Despite Japan’s defeat, China feels that Japan has never shown adequate contrition for its past acts and thus cannot forget its painful history. The Communist Party in China has been also fueling anti-Japanese sentiment by using heavy-handed nationalist propaganda in schools and state-controlled media. The governments of post-War Japan finds it difficult how to correct the historical wrongs committed by the predecessor rulers.

Relationships between the three Northeastern states are complicated, despite efforts to seek peace by the three. Though Moon government in South Korea seeks to mend ties with China and reaches out to North Korea by his sports diplomacy, China cannot overlook the fact that South Korea remains a close ally of the US. Though Seoul under the government of Park Guen-hye reached an agreement with the US for the deployment of the sophisticated anti-missile system known as THAAD intended to counter the threat from Pyongyang, Moon government has not taken any decision for its removal despite Beijing’s demand. Beijing feels that the THAAD batteries peer into China’s security. Moon has only agreed not to expand the system, which pleases Beijing but partly.

Though Kono’s visit opens a window for Abe’s visit to China later in 2018, suspicions and mistrusts are unlikely to go away so soon. The world’s second and third largest economies have been plagued by a long-running territorial dispute over a cluster of East China Sea islets. China also suspects Abe’s intentions and efforts to amend Article 9 of the Peace Constitution. And yet, dialogue as a means to resolve differences have not been abandoned. Abe ad Xi met in November 2017 on the side-lines of a regional summit in Vietnam.

Addressing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs remains tricky. China may be perturbed by Pyongyang’s defiant attitude but has constraints to go beyond a point when it could exert real pressure. It has its own strategic compulsions. Trump and Abe want Beijing to put more pressure on the North as its nuclear and missile programs are seen as threat to the entire globe. It is expected that Kono’s visit to Beijing may pave the way for a trilateral summit between leaders from China, South Korea and Japan, followed by a visit by Abe to China and a visit by Xi to Japan soon. Moon’s sports diplomacy and Abe/Kono’s forward looking foreign policy strategies are welcome moves for peace and stability in the Northeastern part of Asia.

*Dr. Rajaram Panda is ICCR India Chair Visiting Professor at Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Reitaku University, JAPAN. Views expressed are personal and do not reflect either that of the ICCR or the Government of India. E-mail: rajaram.panda@gmail.com

Agroforestry could play an important role in mitigating climate change because it sequesters more atmospheric carbon in plant parts and soil than conventional farming, according to Penn State researchers.

An agricultural system that combines trees with crops and livestock on the same plot of land, agroforestry is especially popular in developing countries because it allows small shareholder farmers — who have little land available to them — to maximize their resources. They can plant vegetable and grain crops around trees that produce fruit, nuts and wood for cooking fires, and the trees provide shade for animals that provide milk and meat.

The researchers analyzed data from 53 published studies around the world that tracked changes in soil organic carbon after land conversion from forest to crop cultivation and pasture-grassland to agroforestry. While forests sequester about 25 percent more carbon than any other land use, agroforestry, on average, stores markedly more carbon than agriculture.

The transition from agriculture to agroforestry significantly increased soil organic carbon an average of 34 percent, according to Michael Jacobson, professor of forest resources, whose research group in the College of Agricultural Studies conducted the study. The conversion from pasture/grassland to agroforestry produced soil organic carbon increases of about 10 percent, on average.

“We showed that agroforestry systems play an effective role in global carbon sequestration, involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” he said. “The process is critical to mitigating or deferring global warming.”

However, carbon was not stored equally in different soil levels, noted lead researcher Andrea De Stefano, a graduate student at Penn State when the study was done, now at Louisiana State University. He pointed out that the study, which was published in December in Agroforestry Systems, provides an empirical foundation to support expanding agroforestry systems as a strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and mitigate climate change.

“The conversion from forest to agroforestry led to losses in soil organic carbon stocks in the top layers, while no significant differences were detected when deeper layers were included,” De Stefano said.

“On the other hand, the conversion from agriculture to agroforestry increased soil organic carbon stocks at all levels, in most cases. Significant increases were also observed in the transition from pasture/grassland to agroforestry in the top layers, especially with the inclusion of perennial plants in the systems, such as in silvopasture and agrosilvopastoral systems.”

There is evidence that forests are great storages of carbon compared to agricultural systems, Jacobson conceded, and it was suspected that agroforestry lies somewhere in between, in terms of carbon sequestration, but this research is the first to document the differences.

Government programs in some countries in the tropics — such as Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya — are paying farmers to grow trees on their land to mitigate climate change, Jacobson pointed out. And that strategy is widely embraced because farming systems are much more integrated in the tropics where farmers are poorer and the economic benefits are often desperately needed.

“In the United States, you can see agroforestry much more from an environmental point of view and the economic benefits — while important — are secondary,” Jacobson said. “But in the tropics, you must have the economic benefits to make it work or farmers won’t do it. Most only have an acre or two of land and they need all these products for their families to survive, so the trees are vital. That is an important distinction, I think.”

Agroforestry is closely connected to the sustainable agriculture movement in the U.S., with its organic, local foods and permaculture initiatives.

Americans recognize the need for on-farm diversification that includes crop rotations, cover crops, polycultures, and of course, agroforestry.

Agroforestry and sustainable agriculture share many goals. A high proportion of the watersheds and landscapes in the country are an interwoven mosaic of both uses. Together they comprise the majority of the land use in the U.S., Jacobson said.

“Unfortunately, there is a tendency to treat agriculture and forestry separately when addressing natural-resource concerns, but agroforestry offers a set of conservation and production technologies that can help to integrate forestry and agriculture efforts beyond carbon cycles, such as water quality and biological diversity.”

As the world powers are busy carving up Syria’s new boundaries in Geneva and Sochi, a countless number of new lives and their future is not taken on priority.

By Anchal Vohra*

Seven months old Sam is biting into a toy. Ahmad, his father, is hanging a decoration piece on the door with alphabets strung on a thread and reads: ‘My first tooth’. Signs of celebration are strewn across the tiny two room flat in Beirut and sitting amidst colourful balloons, the babbling infant is reaching out for his mother. In wonderland, the baby is completely oblivious to his statelessness. Sam belongs to no country. Legally, he doesn’t exist.

He was born to Syrian parents Ahmad and Eva in July last year in Lebanon but so far, his birth has not been registered.

Feeding Sam baby food, Eva says, “One of the parents has to be legal to register the baby in Lebanon and neither of us is, so we couldn’t register him.”

Ahmad fled Syria to dodge compulsory draft and avoid fighting in Assad’s army. “The Syrian army is asking soldiers to kill normal people who ask for freedom,” he says. Ahmad didn’t want to join the Syrian army because that would mean killing fellow Syrians. He didn’t want to fight for any of the myriad rebel groups either. Ahmad thought it better to run away and hide in Lebanon than die in a war he doesn’t associate with.

To apply for a legal status in Lebanon entailed returning to Syria to seek an exemption. Ahmad says for him that is not an option. “They will kill me because they think I am selling weapons to anti-regime forces,” Ahmad says, his voice trembling. He fears that if he returns, the regime will be suspicious of him for not fighting for the army and might punish him by death or incarceration.

According to Syrian law, every man must undergo compulsory draft and serve the Syrian armed forces. There are some exemptions like paying a sum of $8,000 or if the man is the only son in the family or if he is chronically ill. Ahmad has no money and no excuse. He would be treated as a traitor.

Eva has no such concerns and approached the Lebanese authorities on several occasions to obtain a legal status. Every time, she says, she was denied.

“I went to Syria so many times and returned with everything the security authorities in Lebanon asked me for. Still they said no,” she emphasises. “They refused every time saying, we don’t want Syrians here, go back.” Voice wobbling and eyes teary, she added: “They said, you will take jobs the Lebanese are entitled to.”

Lebanon’s economy has been relatively stable in the last decade or so but it stands on the fragile pillar of pegging the Lebanese lira to US dollars. It ensures, the Lebanese diaspora of good returns and they are encouraged to invest back home. Lebanon though is not a manufacturing economy and jobs are limited. There are running jokes in the country about how long it takes for salaries to be paid and in a lack of employment opportunities, most Lebanese are forced to take up two jobs.

The Lebanese authorities are concerned that the educated Syrians will compete with their Lebanese counterparts and may be preferred by employers because they are more inclined to offer cheap labour.

The bigger fear for the Lebanese stakeholders is of a demographic tilt. Power in Lebanon is divided amongst the Christians, the Sunnis and the Shias based on their numbers.

If it is made easier for the Syrians to stay back and their babies are registered in Lebanon, young families like Ahmad and Eva’s have nothing forcing them to move back to Syria. This would eventually lead to the rise of the Sunni over the Christians and the Shias because almost all the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are Sunnis.

Mike Bruce, Advocacy and Information Advisor of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says that  the process for the Syrians is deliberately made Kafkaesque so the poor families find it difficult to legalise their presence in Lebanon and register their infants.

“Tens, even hundreds, of thousands of children born in Lebanon have not had their births registered,” says Mike via email. He adds, “When a person’s birth goes unregistered, it makes it more difficult to seek international protection, to access basic services, and puts them at heightened risk of statelessness.”

The full birth registration process for foreigners on Lebanese territory includes five main steps. However, most protection and legal actors providing advice on birth registration (including NRC) mainly recommend that refugees complete the first three time-sensitive steps. These include: 1. Receiving a Birth Notification from the birth attendant; 2. Visiting the relevant Mukhtar, who should provide a Birth Certificate; and then 3. Taking the documentation for registration at the Personal Status Department that includes (a) the Nofous; and (b) only if the parents have legal stay documentation, the Foreigner’s Register.

According to NRC, a recent change in the law suggests that even if both parents are residing illegally in Lebanon, they can register the children. But, most parents are apprehensive of being imprisoned or deported for breaking the law and shy away from encountering authority.

Eva and Sam were not aware of the change in the law because of a lack of information provided officially. The couple suspects a systematic denial of legality to them and their child by Lebanon.

“May be, it happened for a reason. Now Sam will be a Belgian citizen,” says Eva with a wide smile.

Disappointed by Lebanon, the couple applied for political asylum in Belgium through a Swedish friend. Eva works as a conversation partner for Westerners practicing Arabic online and through her work got connected to people in the NGO world. Within a matter of days, the family received all the necessary permits. Belgium had pledged to support a 1,000 Syrians and Eva and Ahmad were applicants in the low risk category.

Stuffing Sam’s toys and other personal belongings of the family in three suitcases — months after I first met them — Ahmad is jubilantly packing up. The family leaves for Belgium in the first week of February.

“He [Sam] will get education, health rights, a home. Everything [will] be his right” says Ahmad. “What’s there in Syria? What did it give me?” Ahmad’s rhetorical question reflects his agony and fatigue with a war that many Syrians think represented a regional war for control more than the cause of democracy and economic rights.

As Ahmad, Eva too is excited about the move.

“Any place is better than Lebanon. We face daily racism here,” she narrates an unforgettable experience. “I heard a Lebanese family talking to each other in a restaurant and they were saying, why are these Syrians in Lebanon? During the civil war in Lebanon, we didn’t go to Syria.” Eva adds, “But they don’t understand how different it is in Syria. Much of the country is bombed. There is no electricity. Life is a major struggle.”

Eva has heard tales of discrimination against the people of Syria in Europe, but she thinks it is not as wide-spread and intense as in neighbouring Lebanon. She is determined to change the impression of Syrians in Brussels and culturally fit in.

“I used to wear a hijab in Syria and people thought I supported ISIS, but now I wear a turban, it looks like a cap. This should work in Belgium too,” Eva shares.

Sam’s family is preparing for the big change and is lucky to have found a wayout. But such cases are rare. According to surveys conducted by UN agencies and the NRC, 50,000 Syrian children in Lebanon are stateless.

At a camp in Tripoli in North of Lebanon, Sabah Hamid Ubaid is singing a lullaby to calm her two-year old son Mahmoud. Her five-year old Ilaaf is busy watching a cartoon show on television, a surprising yet necessary luxury for a household with five kids.

Sabah illegally crossed into Lebanon after undertaking a tedious journey from the Syrian mountains to the Lebanese border. She took refuge in a camp in Tripoli with her husband and three kids. In a tent in the camp, she gave birth to Illaf and Mahmoud. While three of her kids are Syrians, the other two, born in Tripoli, have no country to call their own. Sabah’s illegal status, she says, has hindered her from registering them. That despite Sabah being a volunteer for the UNHCR. The situation is grim if the volunteers who are expected to spread awareness about new laws, changes in the old ones and schemes relevant to the refugees, are not aware of the processes. Sabah has no idea that there has been a change in the law which allows illegal parents to register their babies.

In another tent, barely ten minutes walk from Sabah’s, Maruwan is swaying her two-month-old baby Alee. Two of her other children, aged 4 and 2, are loitering around. When she left Syria along with her husband Sheikha, they took all their identity papers, marriage certificate and family booklet. Even then, Maruwan has been unable to register the baby. Speaking softly, she says she has no clue about where to go to get her registered.

“I have no proof the girl is mine,” says Maruwan in desperation. “I don’t know which government office to go to?”

A reluctance by the state to facilitate the registration of infants and legalising the stay of their parents is a big hurdle for young families. A fear of punitive action like imprisonment or banishment instills doubts amongst the parents to approach authority. An astonishing lack of information — despite the presence of a range of civil society members, including volunteers offering services — is another barrier. This isn’t the story of just Lebanon but also of Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Experts fear Syrian children facing statelessness is likely to be much higher than 50,000 estimated in just Lebanon.

Without a country, hundreds and thousands of these children risk missing out on basic rights such as healthcare, education and an identity.

An entire generation of Syrians is living in a grey zone, heading towards a dark future. They could be trafficked and exploited, could be pushed towards criminality.

As the world powers are busy carving up Syria’s new boundaries in Geneva and Sochi, a countless number of new lives and their future is not taken on priority.

India has played a constructive role in conflict-ridden Afghanistan through its NGOs on the ground, systematic assistance in the development sector and offering educational opportunities to thousands of Afghan students. By doing so, India has built its reputation as a development partner and a soft power. India intends on playing a role in rebuilding Syria and is eyeing projects in reconstruction, power and more. But it must also enter the social services space and offer its expertise in the field of child rights. Hundreds of Indian NGOs work in the area and have much to share when it comes to protection of children.

To begin with, they must consider presence on the ground in or near the camps and contribute by spreading information and educating the families about the impact of statelessness on the future of the children. Indian activists and government bodies can contribute immensely in gearing up the local administrations and the parents to the threat of trafficking, other forms of exploitation and the inadvertent but imminent outcome of delinquency.

As Syria moves into the post war phase, Indian government and other humanitarian agencies must come with a plan to help the Syrian people and its lost generation.

By Kalinga Seneviratne

While Sri Lanka “celebrates” 70 years of independence from British colonial rule this month, its sovereignty is being threatened as never before since gaining independence in 1948 – tempting one to remark that Sri Lanka is celebrating ‘independence in chains’.

The strategically placed Indian ocean island is an important lynchpin in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which western powers – especially the United States and Britain – are keen to sabotage as its success would end their hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.

Sri Lanka’s predicament started in early 2009 when the country’s armed forces were about to crush one of the most ruthless terror groups in the world – Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In April 2009, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner made a beeline to Colombo and met the then President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother Gotabaya Rajapakse to call for a ceasefire under the pretext of saving civilians which LTTE had taken as human shields. The Rajapakses told them in no uncertain terms that ‘it is not on and Sri Lanka will crush terrorism once and for all’.

Sri Lankan forces had already opened a “safe route” for civilians to escape and it was the LTTE that was not allowing them to do so. On May 19, 2009 Sri Lankan forces finally crushed the LTTE killing their entire military leadership on the battlefield.

It was no doubt a bitter bloody end to the conflict, but many civilians were able to escape to the safety of the military, thousands more were killed in the final battle, including an estimated 4,000 Sri Lankan soldiers. The formidable LTTE propaganda machine of Tamil diaspora in western capitals such as Toronto, London, Oslo and Washington was left unscratched.

War chest

With a war chest of an estimated USD 300 million they immediately went into action claiming war crimes involving 40,000 civilian deaths, which many western media reported uncritically – “fake news” as President Trump would describe it.

Miliband and Kouchner who went back like humiliated bullies, were quick to pounce on this propaganda with some of their own, to mobilize the “international community” that included many of the western media and also international human rights organizations as well as the United Nations – including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) head Navi Pillay (ethnic Tamil from South Africa).

They deployed arguments of accountability conveniently ignoring the fact that none of them had raised the question of accountability in respect of war crimes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. They embarked on a campaign to destablise the Rajapakse regime, which was enjoying tremendous support within the country for ending a 30 year-old civil war.

Geo-political issues related to Sri Lanka’s strategic location in the middle of important shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean also weighed in. When the West refused to sell arms to Sri Lanka, threatened to cut aid and bring the issue to the UN Security Council (that would have forced a ceasefire and saved the LTTE) it was China that came to Sri Lanka’s aid.

However, if Sri Lanka were allowed to get away with it, this would have encouraged many other developing countries to take the same path ignoring western pressure. With tactical support from neighbouring India – which was worried about China’s incursions into the island such as building a port and an airport – the West mobilized its media, human rights organizations and the UN – with Ban Ki-Moon and Navi Pillay happy to join on the bandwagon.

The western media ignored the frantic rebuilding efforts of the Rajapakse regime where soldiers – without their guns – were working with Tamil civilians to rebuild their homes, roads and bridges destroyed during the war. This effort was mainly aided by Asian countries such as China and India.

Accountability

The western media kept on harping about accountability for alleged war crimes. Britain’s Channel 4, for example, regularly broadcast unauthenticated video clips shot on mobile phones provided presumably by the LTTE diaspora claiming evidence of war crimes by Sri Lankan forces.

Referring to these media campaigns, then presidential media advisor Lucien Rajakarunanayake described the modus operandi of what he calls an “ugly pattern of distortion” in the way Channel 4 used unidentified video clips claiming human rights violations.

“You get one side of the pro-LTTE operators abroad, especially in the West, to produce the fake and highly sinister material,” he noted. “You then get a western media outlet that is known for lack of attention to veracity and an open agenda against Sri Lanka and pro-LTTE to air it, you get a so-called independent news organization such as the BBC to spread the story wider, and then comes HRW (Human Rights Watch) or any such others, pontificating how the unverified news item in question, underscores the need for an international commission of inquiry into possible war crimes.”

Having accused Sri Lankan armed forces of indiscriminate killings, Ban Ki-Moon appointed a Panel of Experts (POE) in 2011 led by former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darussman to submit him a report. Sri Lankan government refused to cooperate.

Thus, based in New York, they collected information by calling for submissions on their UN-based website. Failing to attract much interest, they subcontracted a Toronto based so-called independent, non-partisan, human rights organization Centre for War Victims and Human Rights (CWVHR) which provided sample letters and canvassed the Tamil diaspora to submit these to the POE.

When it produced the report claiming to endorse the figure of 40,000 civilian deaths, the Sri Lankan government seriously questioned its credibility, but, UNHRC used it to mount an accountability campaign against Sri Lanka leading to a UNHRC resolution in March 2012.

This campaign put enormous pressure on the Rajapakse government with threats of western economic sanctions held against the country. At the same time, the West funded many NGOs within the country to mount a pro-democracy and anti-corruption campaign against the regime, especially the Rajapakse family. This succeeded in unseating the Rajapakse regime in January 2015, when the president unwisely called early elections. Many young voters were swayed by the NGO propaganda.

An Asian version of the ‘Arab Spring’

This was an Asian version of the ‘Arab Spring’, which the West was able to successfully stage – much to the disbelief of many Sri Lankans.

President Maitripala Sirisena, who defected from the Rajapakse government, was elected on a yahapalanaya (good governance) platform to rid the nation of endemic political corruption. But, what has followed is a cunning manipulation of the political system to serve the needs of western powers.

The divisive issue of framing and adopting a new constitution has taken over from rebuilding the nation. There are attempts to “retrain” the military to serve U.S. needs in the Indian Ocean.

To top it all, the government has been entangled in the worst financial scandal in the country’s history perpetuated by the Governor of the Central Bank who was personally appointed by Sirisena’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The latter is currently doing his best to cover up the scandal.

This scandal, which has been widely reported and debated in Sri Lanka has been hardly taken note of by the western media. This multi-billion rupee bond scam has drained the treasury leading to the government doing a deal with China to pay off debts by giving a 99-year old lease of the China-built and financed Hambantota harbour last year. The government is believed to be negotiating a similar deal with India for the adjoining China-Built airport.

While we cannot expect the western media to question the credibility of a government that is subservient to the West, the tragedy is that the Asian media has not picked up on this story. If the West succeeds in “recolonising” Sri Lanka, next in line will be countries such as Myanmar, Malaysia and Cambodia that are also strategically important for China’s BRI.

For the Asian media, what is happening in Sri Lanka should be intriguing because it reflects a western mentality that has not changed since the 19th century.

One of the first foreign policy decisions of the Sirisena government was to co-sponsor a resolution in Geneva at the UNHRC in September 2015, to submit to accountability for war crimes even going to the extent of agreeing to have “hybrid” courts consisting of foreign judges to try Sri Lankan soldiers for alleged war crimes.

This has horrified most Sri Lankans and President Sirisena has been trying to backtrack on it recently.

Destabilization

In addition, the government has agreed to introduce constitutional changes that would make the country a federal state with police, land and education powers given to the provinces, that would give the LTTE supporters the separate state they could not get through terrorism. But, the biggest threat is not the decentralization of powers but its ability to politically destabilize the country as a nation state and making it easier for foreign powers to manipulate it.

Social critic Shenali Waduge has compared these moves by the Sirisena government to the 1815 betrayal by Sinhalese chieftains, when they handed over the Sinhala nation to the British. “Within no  time these chieftains became sidelined and the white‐masters began rule over the servants using sepoys and lascoreens who were ready to betray their own for  titles and perks” she noted, comparing the current government to such “faithful‐sepoys” who are happy to deliver a new constitution that would “remove the history and heritage of the Sinhala Buddhists who built this nation over 2600 years”.

The U.S. government is insidiously involved in this constitutional remaking project with a three-year multi-million dollar project that started in 2016, and is called the Strengthening Democratic Governance and Accountability Project (SDGAP). It has been subcontracted to a private U.S. Company DAI (Development Alternatives Inc) which Sri Lankan investigative journalist Lasanda Kurukulasuriya claims is a CIA front that was kicked out of Venezuela.

The U.S., which has been howling about Russian interference in the U.S. democratic system, is no stranger to such involvement in other countries. Kurukulasuriya writing in the Daily Mirror has listed a number of USAID projects in recent years that interfere in the domestic political system and have been outsourced to private U.S. companies.

“It may be seen that US government funded ‘projects’ over the past several years run the whole gamut of Sri Lanka’s institutions, including Local Government, the Bar Association, the Judiciary, Parliament and the Constitution,” Kurukulasuriya noted.

“While many would agree that there is need for improvement in the country’s democratic institutions, shouldn’t the political leadership be concerned that this task is being ‘outsourced,’ outright, to foreign agencies – and that programmes are being contracted to private US companies, selected by the US government and not accountable to the people of Sri Lanka?” she asks.

State Department statement and information that had been obtained under the freedom of information act by U.S.-based Sri Lankan journalist Hassina Leelaratne has exposed how U.S. government through its embassy in Colombo is targeting rural based NGOs with project funding grants.

Sinhalese rural communities are the strongest supporters of former President Rajapakse. It will be interesting to see whether this would have any impact on the island-wide local government elections on February 10, which Rajapakse supporters have called a referendum on the current national government.

US-Sri Lanka naval exercises

The U.S. is also seeking to deepen ties with the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN). Since the election of the Sirisena government, there have been frequent U.S. warship visits and training exercises with the SLN. The ‘first ever U.S.-Sri Lanka Naval exercise’ took place in October 2017 in the strategically located natural deep-water port of Trincomalee, under the tutelage of the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

Earlier in 2017 the Americans set up and trained an elite Marines Battalion within the SLN, described as “a master of amphibious operations,” and “fully fledged in undertaking any form of threat coming from the seas…”

Since Sri Lanka has no enemies who are likely to invade the island, this could mean that the SLN is being trained to support the U.S. in any perceived threat in this region. Which is China, on account of its maritime expansion.

“The question arises as to why the government of Sri Lanka is committing its highly professional and respected armed forces to someone else’s anticipated battle, most likely against a longstanding friend of Sri Lanka, and to what end?” asks Kurukulasuriya.

The western media has made a big issue out of China getting the Hambantota harbor – they helped to build in southern Sri Lanka – and some 1500 hectares of land surrounding it, on a 99-year lease in exchange for the debts Sri Lanka incurred in getting the Chinese to build it. This is seen as a sovereignty issue akin to British taking over Hong Kong from the Chinese in the 19th century.

But, it’s worthwhile to recall that when Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited Beijing in 2017, China pledged over USD 300 million in development assistance to Sri Lanka for the years 2018-2020.

While it is true that Sri Lanka has gotten into a debt trap over Chinese infrastructure projects based on loans, it is also true that China does not make its money conditional on internal political and system change within the country.

“It could be argued that if Sri Lanka failed to negotiate skillfully in securing the Chinese loans (which it had the right to do as a sovereign state) and its bureaucrats and politicians were involved in corrupt deals, it has only itself to blame for those lapses,” says Kulakurusuriya.

Lord Naseby questions 40,000 civilian deaths

Meanwhile, the Sirisena government is coming under heavy domestic pressure to exploit a statement made in the House of Lords in October 2017 by Lord Naseby who has questioned the figure of 40,000 civilian deaths in the war crimes allegations.

Using UK foreign ministry documents, he has questioned this figure and claimed that the truth is about 10 percent of this. He has called upon the UN to drop these war crimes allegations against Sri Lanka. He has disputed the claims in Ban Ki-Moon’s POE report that was later used by the UNHRC. The UN – which often calls for transparency from governments – has put a 20-year ban on disclosing the names of those who have given evidence to the POE.

While Naseby’s disclosures have been welcomed by most people in Sri Lanka, the government has been muted in its response. Island newspaper’s editor Shamindra Ferdinando revealed in December 2017 that a Cabinet spokesperson had told him that the matter was not even discussed in Cabinet.

“Having plunged feet first into co-sponsoring the UNHRC resolution, based on POEs unsubstantiated claims, the government does not want to make use of Naseby’s compelling arguments because such action will be tantamount to admitting that it blundered by subscribing to the US-drafted resolution,” writes Ferdinando in an editorial.

He adds: “National reconciliation will never be possible unless tangible measures were taken to disprove lies propagated against Sri Lanka. The Tamil community will never pardon the Sinhala leadership as long as it believed that a slaughter had taken place on the Vanni east front (at the conclusion of the war)”.

Chile and Honduras have kicked off an intense electoral period in Latin America that will last until 2019. These upcoming elections should confirm whether or not there is a new regional political trend (‘a turn to the centre-right’). Also present in the upcoming elections will be the trend towards re-election, the appearance of new forces and emerging leaders, along with violence and corruption as central campaign themes.

By Carlos Malamud and Rogelio Núñez*

The election victories of Sebastián Piñera in Chile and Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras marked the beginning of an intense electoral period in Latin America that will define the regional political map well into the next decade. The Honduran and Chilean elections have confirmed the new predominance of the political right and centre-right, while the return of Piñera to La Moneda and the forced continuity of Hernández in Honduras have reinforced the trend across the region towards presidential re-election. Chile and Honduras are also new examples of the ongoing erosion of traditional party systems, the appearance of new political forces and emerging leaders, and the corruption and violence that permeate, directly or indirectly, the electoral processes of the region. Whether or not a new political cycle can be confirmed to have begun, the region emerging from this process is much more diverse and plural than the Latin America of the past. The unanimity and hegemonies of Bolivarian ‘Chavismo’ have come to an end; the region’s actors will need to adapt to the new times, an imperative that some are still resisting.

Analysis

After the presidential election in Ecuador in April 2017, no further Presidents were elected in Latin America until the last two months of the year, with the elections in Chile (first round, 19 November; second round, 17 December) and Honduras (26 November). The Chilean election was marked by the fragmentation of the vote during the first round and a strong drop in support for the historic coalitions: Fuerza de Mayoría (‘Majority Force’) and Chile Vamos (‘Let’s Go Chile’) in its current version. Although in the first round of the 2013 elections these traditional coalitions gained 71% of the vote, in 2017 their support fell to 59%. The decline of such coalitions occurred as the extremes of the political spectrum attracted votes that historically had gone to centre-right and centre-left coalitions. Meanwhile, on the left there emerged the Frente Amplio (‘Broad Front’), which captured 20.2% of the vote, and on the right, the ‘independent’ José Antonio Kast appeared, taking 7.9%.

In the voting Piñera (of the centre-right Chile Vamos) beat the official candidate, Alejandro Guillier (of the centre-left Fuerza de Mayoría) by far more than expected (more than nine percentage points). Guillier was penalised for his weak campaign and suffered only lukewarm support from the Frente Amplio, which remained reticent to back the old Concertacion formation.

In Honduras, where elections have only one round, it took nearly a month for the official result of the presidential election of 26 November to be known. During those four weeks, the ballot counting brought back memories of other times: accusations of fraud, information blackouts, street disturbances (with 17 deaths), curfews and loss of institutional prestige. The Electoral Supreme Court (ESC) finally proclaimed Hernández –the incumbent President and the candidate of the Partido Nacional (National Party) for re-election– as the winner of the election by a narrow margin of only 1.5 percentage points (42.9% to 41.4%) over Salvador Nasralla, leader of the Alianza Opositora (‘Opposition Alliance’).

The election revealed the poor functioning of Honduran judicial and electoral institutions, and their co-optation by private interests. The slowness of the vote count and the scant transparency of the ESC generated suspicions of fraud. Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the OAS pointed out that ‘it is not possible to be certain of the electoral result’, while the OAS delegation of electoral observers concluded that there were ‘irregularities before, during and after the elections’.

Both electoral processes displayed characteristics linked to their country’s own internal dynamics but, at the same time, they foreshadowed certain traits that will be clearly and increasingly present during the 2018 and 2019 elections (in which 14 of the region’s 18 countries will vote).

Consolidation of a new political juncture

These two elections resulted in victories for the centre-right (Piñera) and the right (Hernández). The victories support the idea of a new regional political juncture. Some even speak of a ‘turn to the right’ (or to the centre-right), although this new trend can only be definitely confirmed by the results of the key elections of Mexico and Brazil. The change in trend began in 2015 with the victories of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Jimmy Morales in Guatemala and Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD, ‘Table of Democratic Unity’) in the Venezuelan legislative elections. It was reinforced by the election of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru in 2016, and continued to deepen in 2017 with the return of Piñera to La Moneda and the triumph of Hernández in Honduras.

Nevertheless, the ‘turn to the centre-right’ needs to be nuanced. First, for the moment at least, it remains more a temporary change of juncture than a definitive change in the political cycle. Although the victories of Macri, Kuczynski and Piñera are significant, it is still too early to raise them to the category of a regional phenomenon. Bolivarian populism has lost only in Argentina (with the defeat of Kirchnerism in 2015) and the left in Chile (the heirs in 2017 of the Concertación). Aside from these two cases, national populism retains power in Venezuela, and has been ratified in Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega) and Ecuador (Lenín Moreno).

In order to speak of a new political cycle, one must wait for the election results of 2018 and 2019. The centre-left and the left have real possibilities of winning, and in key countries like Mexico (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), Brazil (Lula da Silva) and Colombia (Sergio Fajardo) they are leading in the polls. However, if the right were to win in these countries, the result would consolidate the change in trend, giving way to a new political cycle at the regional level. Furthermore, this succession of centre-right victories has been heterogenous. Macri, Kuczynski and Piñera do not represent the same things as Hernández and Morales. The inclination towards republican form, content and style among the former group contrasts sharply with the Honduran’s lack of constitutional scruples.

The reasons for the ‘turn to the right’ are rooted in three factors bound up with the new political juncture: (1) the end of the primary product super-cycle in 2013 and the subsequent economic slowdown) that affected each Latin American country in varying degrees, but especially those of South America; (2) the significant deterioration of the image of some governments in the realm of public opinion, common among leaders and parties in power for long periods of time; and (3) the demands of the new middle classes that weigh heavily on the different administrations and which are characterised by their inclusion of demands befitting their status, such as more political participation, access to education and other public services (ie, security, health and transport), heightened transparency and more efficiency in the fight against corruption and violence.

The re-election ‘revival’

Chile and Honduras have shown two kinds of ‘re-electionism’ and two divergent ways of applying it: in the Chilean case, respect for the constitution and national institutions, while in Honduras the limits of both have been stretched.

In Chile, continuous re-election is not allowed; however, a former President can aspire to be a candidate again, but only after a full presidential term has passed. This has been occurring for more than a decade. In 2017 Piñera’s victory created the unprecedented case of two different Presidents (each from different parties) holding power for 16 consecutive years, as each one succeeded the other every four years.

Honduras has also just experienced a re-election, something without precedent during the democratic period, which goes back to 1982. The precedents for presidential continuity go back many years to Tiburcio Carías Andino, who was re-elected without interruption from 1933 to 1949. However, no Honduran leader has sought re-election since the return of democracy (with the exception of the unsuccessful constitutional reform of Manuel Zelaya in 2009, along with the strategy, also unsuccessful, of Roberto Suazo Córdova in 1985 to remain in power). During the democratic period, the Constitution of 1982 (article 239) expressly prohibited the re-election of anyone who had held presidential power.

In 2015 the Partido Nacional of President Hernández successfully promoted the re-election project. At the beginning of 2016, the Supreme Court –controlled by members close to the government– declared that the articles of the Constitution that prohibited presidential re-election did not apply, opening up the possibility that the president might aspire to a consecutive re-election.

This re-election trend –although very different in Chile than in Honduras, in both form and content– continues to be a regional fixture. At times there is a marked lack of renovation while in some countries (Nicaragua, Bolivia and Honduras) there has been a violation of the letter and spirit of the constitution in favour of the incumbent wielding power. This succession of constitutional changes demonstrates that trend to allowing re-election is not the exclusive property of a single ideology or concrete political tendency: it has been pushed by leaders on the right (Hernández in 2017 and Álvaro Uribe during his time) and by Bolivarian populists (Morales in Bolivia, Ortega in Nicaragua and Chaves in Venezuela).

The re-election trend has now become the norm in Latin America. During the 1980s and up to the first half of the 1990s, most of the region’s countries limited presidential re-election. There were no cases in which indefinite or continuous re-election was allowed, and where re-election possibilities did exist they were limited by the required passing of one or two presidential terms before a President could present himself for re-election. But the constitutional reforms that allowed the re-election of Alberto Fujimori in Peru, of Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil, and of Carlos Menem in Argentina generalised the phenomenon across the region, and it was replicated by the Bolivarian leaders (Chávez, Morales, Correa and Ortega) and by those leaders labelled strongmen or ‘caudillos’: Álvaro Uribe in Colombia, Danilo Medina in the Dominican Republic and Hernández in Honduras.

In contrast to the regional situation at the beginning of the democratic transitions, currently 14 of the 18 Latin American countries allow some type of re-election: ‘alternating’ (Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Peru, Costa Rica and El Salvador), ‘consecutive’ (Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic) and ‘unlimited’ (Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Ecuador). It remains forbidden in Mexico, Guatemala, Paraguay and Colombia. Colombia is the only recent case in which re-election has been accepted and then reversed (Uribe introduced it, only for Juan Manuel Santos to prohibit it again). In Brazil, halfway into his second term, Lula was pressured by his followers to pursue a third term, but he rejected this possibility, placing the emphasis on ‘alternation’ as a key characteristic of modern democracies.

In 2017 Piñera returned to La Moneda, while Hernández was re-elected in Honduras. In 2016 Ortega had been re-elected in Nicaragua and Medina in the Dominican Republic. In 2018 and 2019 it is highly possible that there will be new attempts at continuity via ‘consecutive’ (Maduro, Morales and Macri) or ‘alternating’ (Lula) re-election.

A scenario favouring outsiders

In both the Chilean and Honduran elections there appeared outsiders –emerging political leaders who come from the margins of the traditional political parties and view the political class and traditional party system as the enemy and principal antagonist to be defeated–. This happened with Nasralla, a sports journalist and TV presenter who in 2013 created the Partido Anticorrupción (‘Anti-Corruption Party’) and in 2017 led an alliance formed by the Partido Libertad y Refundacion (LIBRE, ‘Party of Liberty and Refoundation’, created in 2009 and linked to former President Manuel Zelaya), and the PINU-SD. In Chile, the electorate closest to former President Pinochet (that typically voted for the centre-right Alianza) was captured by Kast, who approached 8% of the vote. The left not linked to the Concertacion tradition supported the Frente Amplio, which received 20% of the vote in the presidential election.

The regional political juncture –characterised by intense dissatisfaction with traditional parties and politicians and a rapid loss of legitimacy of certain governments– along with the economic and social situation –marked by slow growth and frustrated expectations among the empowered middle classes– and the fiscal position –with less state resources for social policies and client networks– creates a political climate that is very favourable to the appearance of surprise candidates (ie, outsiders) but much more difficult for traditional candidates.

In this way ‘Trump-like candidates’ have emerged. They are not linked to the traditional parties (being outsiders), like Nasralla or the Guatemalan Morales, figures that lead movements with high levels of personalism (the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro) that come from the sphere of the media (Morales, Trump and Nasralla) and carry a polarising and demagogic message which is very critical of the politics and system of the traditional parties (the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Costa Rican Juan Diego Castro) and whose principal (and sometimes only) ‘ideological’ argument is the fight against corruption, violence and the political class. They are opportunistic leaders, without solid parties, political teams or structured political programmes. With their charisma and a very simple message they fan social resentment and the frustrated expectations of the middle classes, creating scapegoats (politicians) and channelling disaffection toward the traditional parties and politicians, and bad feeling towards the State and the public administrations that are incapable of implementing policies and providing public services.

The idea that ‘populism’ is on the decline in Latin America should be questioned and nuanced. Rather than the end of populisms, we are witnessing the appearance of new populist phenomena that are not linked to the Bolivarian ‘socialism of the XXI century’ but rather to movements on the right, as in the cases of Morales, Nasralla, Bolsonaro and even Keiko Fujimori.

Heterogenous and ‘unnatural’ coalitions versus hegemonic parties and leaders

The crisis of the party system and the deterioration of traditional political forces now favours the appearance of new players who form electoral coalitions (heterogenous and ‘unnatural’) in order to defeat hegemonic candidates. In 2017 two alliances, Frente Amplio in Chile and Alianza Opositora in Honduras, transformed the political maps of their respective countries. Some of these changes can take on a structural character to become more than merely conjunctural phenomena, although for the phenomenon to be identified it must already be consolidated.

The Chilean example reveals how the decline in support for the two coalitions which have alternated in power since 1990 –and their difficulties in channelling the demands of new generations and social sectors– generates a political environment favourable to the emergence of new options. This was the case of the Frente Amplio, a broad and heterogenous leftist coalition that gained 20% of the vote in the presidential elections with the journalist Beatriz Sánchez as candidate. It formed its own group in Congress with 20 deputies and it also entered the Senate. The Frente Amplio is a decisive force in Congress (like the Christian Democrats), but it remains to be seen whether they will allow the Congress to govern or simply limit themselves to becoming the opposition, as in the case of Spain’s Podemos, their main international point of reference.

Neither Chile Vamos nor Fuerza Mayoria control the Parliament. Under such circumstances, the votes of the Frente Amplio have more possibilities of becoming consolidated than other options (such as the one Marco Enríquez Ominami led in 2009, when he garnered 20% of the presidential vote, a percentage which then continued to decline to the current 5%).

The main challenge facing the Frente Amplio is to bring order to its ranks and to overcome its heterogeneity so that it might become a credible alternative. However, it has captured the vote of the youth without links to Concertación. Some analysts indicate that 78% of the votes for Beatriz Sánchez came from ‘newly registered voters’ (included in the electoral roll through automatic registration since 2012). Nevertheless, a relatively large number of the voters for Frente Amplio chose Piñera in the second round, presenting a serious challenge to the loyalty of the Frente Amplio’s followers.

In the case of Honduras, the predominance of the PN (in power since 2010) and, especially, of the figure of Hernández and his re-election project, deepened the polarisation. During the elections of 2017 the debate developed between two opposite choices: the defenders of the President’s continuity and the detractors of a lengthened mandate. This led to the formation of a heterogenous and unnatural alliance between two emerging minority forces (the liberal dissidents of LIBRE and the leftists of PINU-SD) and the followers of Nasralla (a demagogue and populist leader). They were united only by their rejection of Hernández and of the re-election project. Hence their name: Alianza Opositora contra la Dictadura (‘Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship’).

The results of the Honduran election confirmed the change in the party system. The country’s democratic history since 1980 can be divided into two different epochs by the coup of 2009 and its direct consequences for the party system and political model. From 1982 to 2010 the Partido Liberal occupied the central place in the party system, operating as its most preeminent force. It was the party that won the most elections and maintained power for the longest period of time. The victory of Porfirio Lobo in 2009 –after the profound institutional crisis of that year– opened a new period marked by the dominance of the Partido Nacional (PN). Honduras suffered a weakening of the traditional bi-party system due to the internal problems of the Partido Liberal and the loss of votes for both the PL and the PN, the bi-party system that maintained political hegemony since 2010.

From 1982 to 2009 the two most voted formations were the PL and the PN. Together they made up the majority of votes, and the alternative was always one of them. In 2013 Juan Orlando Hernández, of the PN, won 36.8% of the vote (the lowest figure since 1981). In 2013 the second most voted formation was not a traditional party, but rather the emerging LIBRE. The classic bi-party system broke down that year: Hernández won with an electoral margin of eight points over Xiomara Castro (Zelaya’s wife) of LIBRE who received 28.9%. Mauricio Villeda of the PL came in third with 20.28%, and Nasralla of the Partido Anticorrupción (PAC) came in fourth with 13.52%.

The electoral and party system changes that appeared in 2013 were not just temporary; they have been consolidated in 2017. The bi-party system has been rearticulated: this time between a traditional party (PN) and a newly emerging coalition. Until 2013 the winner always captured 50% of the vote, and together the Partido Liberal and Partido Nacional accounted for more than 94%. In the latest election, the traditional parties barely amassed 60% between them, and the winner got only 40%.

Electoral alliances will also be formed in 2018 in other countries. The Están Por México al Frente (‘For Mexico to the Front’) brings together the PRD, the PAN and the MC. There is also the Paraguayan coalition, the PLRA-Frente Guasú. Both of these coalitions seek to challenge the hegemonic parties in their respective countries (the PRI and the Colorados). In Colombia, three large coalitions will likely compete for the presidency: one, on the right, consists of conservatives and Uribe supporters; another, in the centre, with Sergio Fajardo (Coalición Colombia) backed by Claudia López (the Green Alliance) and Jorge Enrique Robledo (Polo); and the third, of the centre-left, comes together around Humberto de la Calle (Partido Liberal), Gustavo Petro (Colombia Humana), Clara López (ASI) and Carlos Caicedo.

These alliances –unnatural in some cases and heterogenous in others– are the only way for minority forces to challenge the large, incumbent hegemonies. In Paraguay, the former President Fernando Lugo, of the Frente Guasú, is now backing the PLRA’s presidential candidate –his liberal ally in 2008, who was nevertheless responsible for his downfall in 2012– in order to bring the dominance of the Colorados to an end.

Recurring campaign themes

Three recurring themes dominated the Chilean and Honduran election campaigns. These same issues have also been central to other elections in the region: corruption, the need for structural reforms to stimulate economic growth and citizen insecurity. These three problems have also been identified for years now by Latin Barometer as those that most concern the region’s citizens.

The big issue in Latin America has been corruption, especially since the outbreak of the Lava Jato scandal. In Chile and Honduras, corruption scandals undermined the ‘official’ candidates and strengthened the arguments of the opposition: the consequences of the Caval case in Chile (which damaged Michelle Bachelet) and the Seguro Social scandal in Honduras. What has occurred with Nasralla is significant in this regard. In 2013 he founded the Partido Anti Corrupción (‘Anti-Corruption Party’) and in 2017 he made the fight against authoritarianism and corruption the main issues of the Alianza Opositora (‘Opposition Alliance’).

In 2018 corruption will be the central issue of the discourse of López Obrador –with his critique of the ‘mafia of power’ in which he groups together all of his rivals (the PRI, PAN and PRD)– and of Juan Diego Castro in Costa Rica. The Lava Jato scandal will impregnate the elections in Brazil, where the courts must decide if Lula da Silva will be a presidential candidate or not. In Costa Rica the traditional officialism (Partido Acción Ciudadana, PAC, ‘Citizen Action Party’) has been negatively affected by the cementazo case. In addition to voter fatigue and the low public opinion rating of the government of Luis Guillermo Solís, the cement scandal explains why only 5% of the electorate intends to vote for the PAC.

In the election campaigns of Chile and Honduras the need for reforms to stimulate growth has also been a principal theme. There is a general consensus among the parties regarding the need for reforms, but not with respect to the required direction for change. In Chile both Guillier and Piñera pushed for transformation, but in different directions: more state-driven in the case of Guillier; more liberal in the case of Piñera.

Personal security has been a recurring theme in Latin American elections since the 1990s. Nor is it absent from current debates, both in countries with low crime rates (Chile and Costa Rica) and in countries with high crime rates (Honduras).

The protest vote against the traditional ruling parties

Ever since the change in the economic cycle that came in 2013, there has been a steady rise in the protest vote against the region’s traditional ruling parties. In Chile the official government coalition was clearly defeated at the ballot box. Its candidate had the worst result (only 22%) of a ruling party since 1989 during the first round. In Honduras more than 57% of the vote was against the re-election of Hernández.

The time of election votes in favour of the traditional ruling parties is now history. In 2011 Cristina Kirchner won with 54% of the vote and led her closest rival by 37 percentage points. In 2013 Rafael Correa gained 57% of the vote to Guillermo Lasso’s 35%. But now the protest vote is dominant. The opposition victories have become more frequent in recent years, especially since 2015, and affect, fundamentally but not exclusively, leaders and Presidents within the sphere of Bolivarian populism, as with Kirchnerism in Argentina.

In Costa Rica the ruling PAC of Solís has very little chance of making it to the second round. The polls show its candidate, Carlos Alvarado, with a low percentage of the intended vote –between 5% and 6%–. In Mexico the PRI is now only the third national political force in terms of intended vote; in Colombia the candidate closest to President Juan Manuel Santos (Humberto de la Calle) is very low in the polls, while in Brazil the PMDB (now the MDB) is no longer among the favoured parties.

The voter fatigue that comes with prolonged governments (eight years of the Partido Nacional in Honduras; Concertación dominance in Chile since the 1990s; eight years of Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia) –together with an economic context of low growth which does not allow the financing of social policies or even for the maintenance of clientelist networks– explains why a voting citizenry with rising expectations is either voting against the ruling parties, escaping into abstention or supporting innovative alternatives. In Chile abstentions were more than 50% in both the first round (with 46.7% participation) and the second round (49.2%), and in Honduras they were 51%. Despite the diversification of alternatives (Frente Amplio and Kast in Chile and the Alianza Opositora in Honduras), abstention rates continued to be very high.

Close results and minority governments

Honduras and Chile have provided another demonstration of the dominant characteristics of the political moment in Latin America: close results (Honduras) and elections which produce minority governments (Chile). From late 2015 most of the elections in Latin America have been decided not only in the second round but also with only a narrow difference between the two candidates. There are some exceptions. In Nicaragua Daniel Ortega was re-elected in 2016 with 72% of the vote against his rival from the PLC who received only 15%. In the Dominican Republic Danilo Medina won by 25 percentage points over Luis Abinader. And in Chile Piñera beat Guillier by nine points. In the rest of the elections the pre-election uncertainty was extended by the result: Macri defeated Scioli only by three points; Kuczynski beat Keiko Fujimori by less than one percentage point; Lenin Moreno won by less than three points over Guillermo Lasso; and in Honduras Hernández had only a 1.5 percentage point advantage over Nasralla.

These close results, and the fragmentation of the vote, had meant that most of the current Presidents lack a parliamentary majority, making it more complicated to govern. ‘Divided governments’ are emerging in Latin America; increasingly the President lacks sufficient backing and ends up in confrontation with Parliament. In Brazil Dilma Rousseff was removed from office. In Peru Kuczynski managed to save himself only by a handful of votes. In other countries the legislative weaknesses of the President give rise to administrative paralysis (as in Guatemala and Costa Rica) or serious difficulties in undertaking reforms (Argentina and El Salvador).

Conclusions

Chile and Honduras have kicked off a new Latin American electoral season, setting certain political trends that might (or might not) be consolidated and confirmed by the electoral results of 2018 and 2019. The victories of Piñera and Hernández strengthen the trend towards an increasing predominance of the centre-right and right, and of those pushing for more economic liberalisation.

The latest triumphs of ruling party and traditional coalition candidates (Chile Vamos and the Partido Nacional) has been accompanied by a significant loss of historic support, while at the same time, new alternatives, led by outsiders and leaders from beyond the margins of the traditional parties have begun to emerge. This is another sign of the crisis of the political system.

The change in the economic and social context has shaped the results in Chile and Honduras and will continue to affect the upcoming elections. The economic slowdown and the demands of the middle classes have eroded support for governments and favour new alternatives that are reinforced by the corruption or incapacity of some administrations to produce improvements in health, education, transport and personal citizen security.

*About the authors:
Carlos Malamud, Senior Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @CarlosMalamud

Rogelio Núñez, Lecturer, IELAT, University of Alcalá de Henares

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute. Original version in Spanish: Las elecciones de Chile y Honduras y las tendencias políticas regionales en 2018

India has grown closer to Israel during Narendra Modi’s period of office as India’s prime minister. However, he has also sought to maintain close ties with Israel’s foes – the Arab States and Iran – at the same time. This paper examines, as this policy unfolds, successfully so far, the pitfalls might it confront and whether there is an opportunity in it for a peace- making initiative that could gain international kudos for Modi.

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury*

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi likes to hug his foreign peers. This he does almost as a matter of relentless routine. His greeting to his high profile recent guest, his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, in January 2018, included such an act. It was not just signalling the warmth of the welcome accorded the visitor. This time round, the hug turned out to be much more than just routine. It became an embrace, both literally and figuratively, that left little daylight between them across a spectrum of issues.

Earlier, Modi had approached his Israeli connections with a modicum of caution. He had sought to confine it to the areas of defence. Now, like the proverbial camel making its way into the Arab’s tent, he is seeking out much wider space. This visit made significant inroads into economic spheres, rendering a relationship into a much more composite or comprehensive one.

From Modi’s side, the growing ties were carefully choreographed. Beginning with small steps – he had despatched his Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj to Israel earlier – before undertaking a trip there himself in July 2017. Now, by welcoming Mr Netanyahu in his own terrain, he has completed the diplomatic circle of reciprocations and is obviously keen to see this relationship develop to his and India’s maximum advantage.

In all fairness to him, Modi did not make a clean break with India’s time-worn policy on Israel and Palestine. In the past, India had stood staunchly behind Palestine in this equation. In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement against the British, had unequivocally declared that Palestine belonged to the Arabs.

Following independence, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had India vote at the United Nations (UN) against the partition of Palestine and the creation of the Jewish state of Israel, influenced perhaps by the horrors accompanying the division by the same British colonial power of India itself in 1947. Through the 1950s and 1960s, a non-aligned India, under the Congress governance, ranged itself against the West and its allies, including Israel. India remained on the Arab side. Apart from a demonstrated strain of idealism that coloured that policy, as it did many others in post-independence India, one positive upshot of it for India was that it prevented the Arab world, including the inimitable Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, from rallying automatically, as was oftentimes expected, to Pakistan’s support, even on issues like Kashmir.

Be that as it may, when Modi was swept into office as India’s prime minister at the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party in May 2014, he thought he did so because his electorate preferred a change to continuity. His Israel policy fell within the purview of his intended changes. He saw in Israel a source of powerful weaponry and state of art technology, in short, a useful tool for India’s rapid advancement. On the other side were the Muslim majority Arab states of West Asia, mired in intramural crises and conflicts among themselves and with Iran. However, aware that two-thirds of India’s oil imports were from that region, which also hosted seven million Indian expatriate workers, he had to be careful not to up the ante too much so as not to induce negative reaction from that part of the world. As such, he proceeded to develop connections with Israel incrementally, with an eye on possible negative reactions from the region. Seeing none, he began pushing them beyond what once would have been considered limits.

First and foremost, among the reasons to seek this proximity to Israel were weapons. Already between 2012 and 2016, 41 per cent of Israeli arms exports went to India. In April 2017, a deal worth US$2 billon (S$2.64 billion) was signed, which would render India as Israel’s largest defence market. Israel’s aerospace industry has three joint ventures in India. This included one for the Barak 8 air system, a key component of India’s defence deployment. Along with the aerospace industries, under the US$2 billion (S$2.64 billion) deal, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd, an Israeli company, was contracted to sell to India advanced surface to air missiles.

The second positive aspect was growing economic cooperation. Netanyahu’s entourage comprised 130 business representatives. Israel had long chafed at being seen only as a source for military procurements. As such, this time round, there was an agreement on a five-year joint cooperation across a variety of fields. This included agriculture, as well as research in innovation and development in areas such as big data, health care, cyber security and film production. The Indian State of Uttar Pradesh inked agreements to clean up the pollution of part of the Ganges, considered holy in much of India, which could also be viewed as the Jewish State’s support to a cherished aim of India’s Hindu ethos.

However, in all these efforts, Modi has been careful to be seen to de-hyphenate India’s relationship with Palestine and the Arabs. At least at a stated level, India continued to back the notion of a Palestinian state. Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas is referred to by New Delhi as the ‘President of Palestine’ rather than of ‘the Palestinian Authority’. When the UN General Assembly met in a session in December 2017, critical of the decision of United Sates (US) President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, India voted against the US’ position. Modi travelled to all major Islamic capitals that identify with the Palestinian cause such as Riyadh and Tehran, even though the latter themselves are locked in mutual acrimony. All this requires continuous juggling in a Bismarckian fashion and, to date, Modi has not seriously ruffled any feathers.

However, as is to be anticipated, such a policy path that entails running with the hare and hunting with the hound is bound to have pitfalls. One is the possibility of a sudden volte face by the young and demonstrably not so dexterous and rather unpredictable younger leadership in the key Arab states. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates come to mind. They may suddenly decide to respond to any burgeoning negative sentiment on the Arab street, which would be detrimental to the interests of the vast expatriate Indian workers and businesses.

Second, the massive procurements in arms from Israel could militate against the basic fundamentals of the ‘Make in India’ policy, a very important cornerstone of Modi’s government. India’s state-owned military company, the Defence Research and Development Organization would prefer to manufacture the imports at home. This is perhaps why, in January this year, India reportedly sought to scrap the purchase of US$500 million (S$656 million) worth of ‘Spike’ anti-tank missiles, but changed its mind eventually, coinciding with the Netanyahu visit.

Third, there could be possible domestic resistance to the idea of such a close alliance with Israel. This is more than the unaccommodating posture of the new Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, who refused to meet the visitor (even though he had earlier interacted with another visiting Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, some years ago) or the criticism of Prakash Karat of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (even though Left leaders like Jyoti Basu and Somnath Chatterjee had previously visited Israel). To Modi, their reactions would be not fish, flesh, fowl or good red herring. However, there has been some noticeable simmering in the minority Muslim community reflected in the refusal of the ‘three Khans of Bollywood’ – Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan – to take a ‘selfie’ photograph with Netanyahu which was organised by their professional senior, Amitabh Bachchan. They have considerable traction not only with the Muslims in India, but also in the Arab street in the Gulf as evidenced in the publicity given it by the media there.

The pitfalls apart, the two-tone policy in West Asia could also provide a scope to Modi to come out smelling like a rose. At this time, the decision of Trump to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate the US embassy there has pretty much put paid to any American peace initiative between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Modi enjoys good rapport with both sides of the ‘Great Divide’ – Israel and Palestine, as well as with the other key interlocutors, the Arab states as well as Iran, even though they are at loggerheads among themselves. He is positively viewed in both the US and Europe.

Even China does not satisfy such criteria. Could Mr Modi act as a conduit between Israel and Palestine with stable regional peace as a goal? The intellectual capacity of Indian diplomacy should be capable of taking on this challenge. Or would he prefer to act in consonance with the principle that those who rush in where angels fear to tread risk being seen as fools? Modi’s instinctive predilections are to seek plaudits in the area of foreign policy which he largely has (though not, alas, in his own region, but that is largely to protect India’s perceived self- interest, despite the fact that some serious critics would differ). Not for Mr Modi the conclusion that Lord Palmerston of Great Britain in the 19th century had reached, exhausted by incessant diplomatic engagements, that “God made a mistake when He made foreigners”!

About the author:
*Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh. He can be contacted at isasiac@nus.edu.sg. The author bears full responsibility for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Briefs Number 549 (PDF)

By Adam G. Lenfestey, Nathan Rowan, James E. Fagan, and Corey H. Ruckdeschel*

Sun Tzu could not have prophesied the future any better when he stated, “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”1 How can today’s military planner execute a successful operational deception when the eyes of the world are always watching?

The notion of military offset strategies has been widely discussed in recent years. The first Department of Defense (DOD) offset strategy was envisioned to mitigate the Soviet Union’s numerical advantage in conventional forces through a credible nuclear deterrent. When the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent China, became nuclear powers, a new offset strategy was required. The second offset strategy consisted most prominently of antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities, such as precision navigation and timing (PNT), precision-guided munitions, and advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).2 The second offset could be said to have culminated in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, which was the first major U.S. combat operation since Vietnam.

To signal our warfighting superiority to the Iraqi regime and bolster American public confidence leading into this campaign, several capabilities key to the second offset strategy were declassified: high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery, precision strike, and stealth technology. The 1991 U.S.-led coalition against Iraq quickly achieved air superiority and began an extended campaign of precision strikes, enabled by air and space reconnaissance, against Iraqi critical warfighting infrastructure and forward-deployed forces in Kuwait, such as Republican Guard units. Under the blanket of air supremacy, the United States massed ground forces in Saudi Arabia while deceiving the Iraqi regime to believe it intended an amphibious landing in Kuwait. The ground war began when the now-famous “left hook” (the attack from the western desert rather than the anticipated amphibious assault from the southern shores of Kuwait) caught Iraqi forces completely by surprise. The combination of PNT, advanced ISR, and precision strike, coupled with a massed ground attack enabled by operational secrecy and surprise, resulted in a resounding victory over what was the world’s fourth-largest military.

As the implications of second offset technologies became known and battlefield-proven over the ensuing decades, the world took notice. Governments around the globe sought for themselves the sort of results the United States realized against Iraq—in some cases to reproduce these U.S. advantages and in other instances to counter them.

Entrepreneurs, likewise, realized the potential market value of rapid global ISR capabilities and began to develop them for commercial sale. By 2015, commercial remote sensing (CRS) satellites, also known as Earth observation services, had become a $1.8 billion-per-year industry comprising 14 percent of operational satellites worldwide, while military surveillance satellites composed an additional 8 percent.3 The global aerial imaging industry, meanwhile, “including helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, multi-rotor unmanned aerial systems [UAS],” and so forth, was valued at $1.1 billion in 2014 and is forecast to grow to $3.3 billion annually within 10 years.4

A strong U.S. CRS industry presents undeniable benefits to U.S. and coalition warfighters, policymakers, and interagency partners through innovation, cost-sharing, and its inherently unclassified nature. Yet once a U.S.-based CRS provider is licensed to operate, DOD has little ability to affect its activities or prevent its products from falling into hostile hands. Also, while U.S. industry remains preeminent in most areas of space-based CRS such as resolution, large constellations for rapid revisit, and advanced sensor phenomenologies, foreign government and CRS systems are advancing rapidly. Along with the exponential proliferation of small UAS and handheld smart devices, these trends pose a serious challenge to the traditional military principles of secrecy and surprise.

DOD has begun to invest in a third offset strategy, designed to “offset shrinking U.S. military force structure and declining technological superiority in an era of great power competition.”5 Third offset investments are necessary because potential adversaries, and in some cases the private sector, are approaching parity with the U.S. national security community in key areas of second offset capability. Yet while the proposed third offset strategy will develop new asymmetric U.S. military capabilities, it will not remove our responsibility to consider fundamental warfighting principles. As foreign and commercial ISR capabilities proliferate, our ability to leverage secrecy and surprise for battlefield advantage is in danger of being severely degraded or lost altogether. We must take prudent near-term steps to address this concern.

Improving Counter-ISR

To leverage secrecy and surprise in today’s operating environment, DOD needs to improve its counter-ISR posture in five specific ways:

• identify friendly force signatures that require obfuscation
• develop passive and active denial and deception capabilities
• update DOD policy regarding aerial and space-based collection on militarily sensitive sites
• work with U.S. industry, the interagency communuty, and Congress to manage proliferation of militarily relevant CRS collection against friendly forces
• engage on a military-to-military basis with partner nations to develop bilateral and multilateral agreements and norms for operational and transactional controls on CRS collection.

Identify Signatures. First and foremost, planners need to understand the true nature of friendly force exposure to modern ISR collection during military operations. DOD should baseline the current temporal, spatial, and spectral signatures of conventional military forces as they will operate in land, maritime, and air domains in major deliberate planning scenarios. This study should evaluate current operation and contingency plans, focusing on deployment from garrison, transport, joint reception, staging, onward-movement, and integration in theater, and the associated logistics footprint. It should assume a robust, nonfriendly ISR presence both prior to and during combat operations. Combatant commands should evaluate the results of the signature study to identify and prioritize the operational signatures we must hide to preserve secrecy and/or manipulate to facilitate surprise. The commands may also find it necessary to revise portions of some deliberate plans against robust A2/AD scenarios.

Develop Countermeasures. DOD should baseline the current state of its denial and deception capabilities, identifying all such existing investments across all conventional military components and assessing their potential for employment in standing operation and contingency plans. This baseline should include all appropriate special handling caveats required to achieve a comprehensive picture of the existing pockets of excellence across the enterprise. Ultimately, unless these capabilities are scalable in sufficient numbers to meet combatant commander needs and available for regular training and exercise, they will be suboptimally employed when needed most.

The military Services should reinvigorate tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to manage operational signatures, train forces to employ those TTPs, and exercise them regularly. The Services will also likely need to develop new camouflage, concealment, and deception or other counter-ISR capabilities. It may even be necessary to adjust the DOD steady-state force posture to achieve a robust presence in A2/AD areas by combining secrecy and surprise with dispersal and displacement of forces, hardening of key infrastructure, and rapid reconstitution capabilities. 6

Combatant commanders should also seek ways to mitigate the predictable operational signatures of deploying forces. Ubiquitous ISR makes surprise in mass extremely challenging, which is why the United States invested in the second offset decades ago. Now that U.S. adversaries are nearing ISR parity, to regain battlespace advantage senior commanders may need to distribute authority in new ways, such as disaggregating surface action groups at sea.7 As a historical example, in the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon was successful in creating self-sustaining battalions that allowed him to surprise and attack the enemy on multiple axes with a minimal logistics and command and control footprint. It is imperative that combatant commanders find innovative ways to emulate this technique in a modern environment.

In terms of defensive measures, the United States is being outpaced in operational denial and deception, such as the use of decoys and dummy weapons systems. Decoy (systems that look, emit, and act like the real system) and dummy (ones that look enough like the real system) platforms are extensively used by U.S. adversaries to complicate our targeting cycle. Previous operations in Kosovo and Serbia saw the United States targeting dummy surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites that were nothing more than plywood sheets constructed and painted to look like real weapons. Recently, companies in Russia, China, and India have begun to make life-size inflatable SAM and aircraft replicas that match real-world dimensions and paint schemes. These inflatables can be quickly erected, interspersed with real systems, and relocated to create confusion against adversary analysts.

DOD should consider investing in similar systems for our own use to take advantage of the very adversary ISR that currently presents such a challenge. The Allies used dummy systems in World War II to confuse German intelligence by providing false numbers and disposition of forces. Effective ISR work can negate the confusion caused by dummy and decoy systems, but this takes time that can be used to friendly advantage. While some investment within DOD has likely already occurred, effective implementation will require a coordinated effort to develop, field, operate, and maintain such systems on a strategically or operationally relevant scale.

Passive measures likely will not be able to counter 100 percent of adversary ISR capabilities, however. In addition to direct counter-ISR capabilities, DOD should develop unique information operation TTPs to create doubt in the intelligence collected by near-peer competitors, working to sow inconsistencies in the data generated from different sources of collection. We should create and leverage adversary uncertainty to ensure U.S. decision advantage, since it takes time to develop sufficient confidence in intelligence analysis to enable quality decisions. This requires us to hone our skills in currently underutilized mission areas. Currently, information operations are often improperly planned and executed in military operations, typically because they are difficult to simulate during planning and exercises, and thus their effects are hard to predict.8 However, such active measures will become essential tools to complicate adversary kill chains in a robust ISR environment.

Cyber operations, for example, can paralyze an adversary’s ability to defend and counterattack. The Russian war with Georgia in 2008 made heavy use of cyber attacks on Georgian command and control, finance, and governmental networks before and during combat. These attacks delayed a Georgian defensive reaction to Russian troops crossing the border into South Ossetia, since Georgian forces were dependent on electronic networks for command and control, targeting, fires, and logistics. However, cyber weapons can be costly to develop and maintain. A nation must first develop cyber tools to penetrate and surveil adversary networks. Upon identifying critical nodes, additional tools must be emplaced for activation at the desired time. These tools must be built to remain undetected yet accessible to the owner. Even then, the operator cannot be certain a given cyber effect will be executable when desired. The target may have an intelligence collection value that supersedes its neutralization, or the action against the target may bring about undesired secondary and tertiary consequences. Additionally, once a cyber weapon is used, it is exposed and is potentially open to the adversary to analyze, modify, and reuse against the originator.

Cyber operations may not need to include penetration of protected adversary networks, however. Instead, cyber operators could focus on third-party sources of information and intelligence such as social media, which has developed into a method of rapid information dissemination where it is often difficult to validate individual users or the accuracy of their information. Manipulation of social media will not fool dedicated, analytic government agencies indefinitely, but it could provide valuable maneuver space, as it takes time and resources to disprove misinformation and determine facts. Such operations can be compared to aerial chaff dispersed to confuse radar. Advanced radars may be able to work through the clutter and relocate the initial target, but by the time this occurs, the target has likely escaped and possibly placed itself in a position of relative advantage.

DOD may also require new force projection capabilities with smaller footprints. For example, the use of drones has already rapidly transformed the way we go to war. Drones can be employed in all warfighting domains and can be far less detectable than conventional forces. They provide extended surveillance capabilities with a minimal forward logistics footprint and provide real-time data that allow commanders to assess the battlespace and potentially apply combat power, dramatically expanding the capabilities of an otherwise small and isolated unit.9 Incorporation of drones into conventional operations can greatly improve economy of force while maintaining the element of surprise.

Update Policy. To this point, we have discussed ways to mitigate detection by hostile ISR. There are significant cases, however, where the nonfriendly ISR capability is, in fact, within our policy influence in various ways. For example, U.S. law grants the Secretary of Commerce authority to license CRS space systems,10 and the U.S. National Security Council CRS policy requires the Secretary of Commerce, prior to granting any such license, to consult with the Secretary of Defense for national security concerns and with the Secretary of State for foreign policy and international obligations.11 Each Secretary can direct the inclusion of license conditions, including operational controls such as limits on spatial and spectral resolution, special collection modes, geographic restrictions, or latency requirements. These can be enduring conditions or can be activated for a specified duration. The cumbersome interagency process by which this license adjudication occurs is currently under review by the National Security Council in light of a rapid increase in the number and complexity of CRS license requests in recent years.

The U.S. National Space Policy (NSP) states that “a robust and competitive commercial space sector is vital to continued progress in space.” One theme of the NSP is to encourage U.S. commercial industry growth, both to support government needs and compete favorably in the global market. The NSP has borne fruit: the U.S. CRS industry leads the world market in all but a single niche market (synthetic aperture radar), and it is growing rapidly in size, scope, and complexity. New commercial entrants are bringing high-resolution electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar, multispectral and hyperspectral imagery, and large constellations that provide extremely frequent coverage of the Earth.

DOD evaluates each new license based on sensor capabilities and planned operating modes, but it lacks formal implementing guidance or operational context to assess the likely national security impact of new concepts. In concert with the study of operational signatures described above, the department should develop a set of theoretical minimum time, space, and spectrum sensor system parameters that enable an operator to detect militarily sensitive signatures. DOD should then leverage these parameters, along with the operational effect determined by the combatant commands, as it adjudicates future CRS license requests. In addition, the department should evaluate the operational effectiveness of limited-duration operational controls such as geographic restrictions or temporary resolution limits.

Our potential adversaries, as well as commercial providers, have also recognized the potential applications of drones for ISR. However, unlike space assets, drones are tactically countered by a variety of means. Combatant commands and military Services should identify sensitive locations that should be off limits to drone overflight and should use established air traffic management means to restrict access by friendly collectors. DOD should develop policy regarding the use of tactical countermeasures to prevent collection by hostile or third-party drone operators, including readily available kinetic and nonkinetic options.

Manage Proliferation. While DOD can place some operational controls on U.S.-based systems through the licensing process, the U.S. Government currently lacks clear statutory authority for transactional controls, such as the ability to restrict sale of remote-sensing data and products to specific actors of concern. Federal law prohibits some entities, such as those on the State Department’s Denied Party or Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control lists, from directly tasking collection from domestic CRS imagery providers. However, even assuming effective enforcement of this prohibition, CRS images are rarely proprietary to an individual customer. Once a CRS provider loads an image to an archive for commercial sale, it is nearly impossible to prevent its sale to actors of concern. This is largely due to the prevailing interpretation of the Berman Amendment, which “stipulates that transactions involving ‘information and informational materials’ are generally exempt from the purview of the presidential regulation.”12 The amendment was intended to facilitate U.S. sale of entertainment programming, participation in academic conferences, and other such pursuits overseas during the Cold War. However, archived satellite imagery currently is regarded to fall into the broad category of information and informational materials despite any latent national security implications it may entail. This prevailing interpretation of the Berman Amendment causes DOD to be more conservative in licensing CRS operations than it might be if it had recourse to curtail dissemination of sensitive satellite data to actors of concern after collection.

DOD should work within the interagency community and with Congress to develop regulatory and legislative change proposals for transactional controls that could better prevent proliferation of militarily relevant CRS collection against friendly forces, while still enabling a flourishing CRS market. One potential solution would require CRS operators whose systems reach a threshold capable of detecting critical operational signatures, as identified in the aforementioned studies, to enroll in the National Industrial Security Program (NISP) as a condition of their license. NISP is a partnership between government and industry to safeguard classified and controlled but unclassified national security information in the possession of private industry and academia.13 As such, the NISP could facilitate handling and release procedures for CRS imagery if governed by transactional controls. It is commonly argued that implementing transactional controls would place the U.S. domestic CRS industry at a disadvantage to foreign competition. This argument is weak, however, because most significant foreign CRS competitors already operate under transactional controls within their host nations.

Engage Allies. World governments generally fall into one of three categories of overhead ISR consumption. In a few cases, they rely primarily on indigenous national technical means, perhaps augmented by CRS. In other cases, they form consortia or public-private partnerships to produce dual-use indigenous systems that meet their national needs and sell excess capacity in the CRS market to offset their cost of ownership. In the remaining cases, they simply form imagery-sharing agreements with allies or buy CRS products from any provider that meets their needs.

The United States is on friendly terms with most, if not all, significant CRS provider nations and has established bilateral/multilateral defense agreements with many of them. Foreign CRS providers approaching peer capability with U.S. systems are nearly universally subject to operational and transactional controls by their host governments. In the current global environment, it is fair to say there are no significant foreign CRS systems that operate under less regulation than their U.S. counterparts. To ensure the competitiveness of U.S. industry while better protecting national security, DOD should work within the interagency community, as well as through bilateral and multilateral military-to-military engagements, to establish a set of international norms for operational and transactional controls among CRS provider nations. These controls should be designed to prevent the exploitation of CRS by hostile entities to target friendly military operations and critical infrastructure.

A Chinese proverb states, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” This problem cannot be solved quickly, and no doubt DOD would have been well served to consider and implement counter-ISR measures over the last 20 years had we known how rapidly the field would develop. That said, DOD should begin to take action to ensure we do not lose the military principles of secrecy and surprise as our adversaries approach parity in second offset capabilities. We should begin by identifying the spatial, spectral, and temporal signatures that most expose friendly forces’ intent and plans. Armed with these new insights, DOD should prioritize, develop, and employ denial and deception capabilities to deny adversary collection and create strategic ambiguity. In parallel, we should update DOD policy to mitigate our exposure to, and work across, government and industry to develop new techniques to manage proliferation of sensitive collection by non-hostile actors. Lastly, we should engage with our allies in military-to-military channels to develop bilateral/multilateral agreements and norms for operational and transactional controls among CRS provider nations.

None of these recommendations is a panacea. Independently, their effects likely will not generate the desired effects against near-peer adversaries. However, in concert, these recommendations have the potential to re-enable operational secrecy and surprise in a ubiquitous, nonfriendly ISR environment.

*About the authors:
Lieutenant Colonel Adam G. Lenfestey, USAF, is Deputy Director of Space Programs and Operations at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Commander Nathan Rowan, USN, is Commanding Officer of the USS Billings (Blue) LCS 15. Lieutenant Colonel James E. Fagan, USAF, is Chief of Strategic Engagement in the Political-Military Affairs Bureau at the Department of State. Major Corey H. Ruckdeschel, USA, is Chief U.S. Pacific Command Deliberate Planner for Joint Force Space Component Command at U.S. Strategic Command.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 88, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:
1 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

2 Robert Tomes, “Why the Cold War Offset Strategy Was All About Deterrence and Stealth,” War on the Rocks, January 14, 2015, available at <http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/why-the-cold-war-offset-strategy-was-all-about-deterrence-and-stealth/>.

3 Satellite Industry Association, “State of the Satellite Industry Report,” September 2016, available at <www.sia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/SSIR16-2016-09-23-Update.compressed.pdf>.

4 Transparency Market Research, “Aerial Imaging Market—Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015–2023,” available at <www.transparencymarketresearch.com/aerial-imagery-market.html>.

5 Terri Moon Cronk, “Work Calls for Third Offset Strategy to Bolster Future of Warfighting,” Department of Defense, September 10, 2015, available at <www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/616806/work-calls-for-third-offset-strategy-to-bolster-future-of-warfighting>; and MacKenzie Eaglen, “What Is the Third Offset Strategy,” Real Clear Defense, February 16, 2016, available at <www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/02/16/what_is_the_third_offset_ strategy_109034.html>.

6 Elbridge Colby and Jonathan F. Solomon, “Avoiding Becoming a Paper Tiger: Presence in a Warfighting Defense Strategy,” Joint Force Quarterly 82 (3rd Quarter 2016); and Timothy A. Walton, “Securing the Third Offset Strategy: Priorities for the Next Secretary of Defense,” Joint Force Quarterly 82 (3rd Quarter 2016).

7 Kit De Angelis and Jason Garfield, “Give Commanders the Authority,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 142, no. 10 (October 2016), 364, available at <www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2016-10/give-commanders-authority>.

8 James R. McGrath, “Twenty-First Century Information Warfare and the Third Offset Strategy,” Joint Force Quarterly 82 (3rd Quarter 2016).

9 Michael Hastings, “The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret,” Rolling Stone, April 16, 2012, available at <www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-rise-of-the-killer-drones-how-america-goes-to-war-in-secret-20120416>.

10 Title 51, U.S.C. §601, Pub. L. 111-314, “Land Remote Sensing Policy,” December 18, 2010, available at <www.congress.gov/111/plaws/publ314/PLAW-111publ314.pdf>.

11 Title 15, CFR, Part 960, “Licensing of Private Remote Sensing Systems,” available at <www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=3e52af0c3e0563ad8891ca35e3ba0758&mc= true&node=pt15.3.960&rgn=div5>.

12 Bruce Craig, “Sleeping with the Enemy? OFAC Rules and First Amendment Freedoms,” Perspectives on History, May 2004, available at <www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-2004/sleeping-with-the-enemy-ofac-rules-and-first-amendment-freedoms>.

13 Defense Security Service, “Industrial Security,” available at <www.dss.mil/isp/>.

By Ken Bredemeier

U.S. President Donald Trump is contending that a controversial memo alleging that the FBI abused its power in probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “totally vindicates” him, but that view was challenged Sunday by one of the memo’s own authors.

Trump complained in a Saturday Twitter comment that the “Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”

But Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, one of the key authors of the Republican memo released by the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the document does not undermine the months-long investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into the Russian campaign meddling or whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to curb the probe.

The four-page “Nunes memo,” named after the House Intelligence panel chairman, Congressman Devin Nunes of California, concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied excessively on opposition research funded by Democrats in a dossier compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, as its sought approval from a U.S. surveillance court in October 2016 to monitor Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, and his links to Russia.

But the memo notes that the FBI investigation that eventually led to Mueller’s probe started months earlier, in July 2016, when agents began looking into contacts between another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, and Russian operatives. Papadopoulos, as part of Mueller’s probe, has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his Russian contacts and, pending his sentencing, is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Gowdy said in the television interview that “there is a Russia investigation without a [Steele] dossier” because of other Trump campaign links to Russia, including a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York set up by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on the premise that a Russian lawyer would hand over incriminating evidence on Trump’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Gowdy said the Steele dossier “also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice.”

Another Republican on the Intelligence panel, Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah, told Fox News, “I think it would be a mistake for anyone to suggest the special counsel should not continue his work. This memo, frankly, has nothing to do at all with the special counsel.”

Democratic lawmakers opposed to Friday’s release of the memo say that as soon as Monday they will seek the Intelligence committee’s approval to release their counter interpretation of the classified information underlying the Nunes document. The Democrats contend that the Republican-approved statement “cherry-picks” information and overstates the importance of the Steele dossier in the FBI’s effort to win approval from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court for the monitoring of Page’s activities.

Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York said the memo released by the Republicans “is a disgrace. House Republicans should be ashamed.”

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, in a letter Sunday, pushed Trump to approve release of the Democratic response to the Nunes memo, saying Americans should “be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgments.”

Ahead of Trump’s approval of release of the Republican-backed House Intelligence panel’s memo, the FBI said it had “grave concerns” about its accuracy because of omissions concerning its request to the surveillance court to monitor Page. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Mueller investigation, also opposed its release.

Rosenstein was one of several Justice Department officials who signed off on the request to the surveillance court to monitor Page, leaving some Trump critics to voice fears that Trump would soon fire Rosenstein.

When asked Friday whether he still had confidence in Rosenstein or was likely to fire him, Trump said, “You figure that one out.”

Later, however, White House spokesman Raj Shah, said on Fox News, “Rod Rosenstein’s job is not on the line. We expect him to continue his job as deputy attorney general.”

FBI, DOJ response

​After the memo’s release, the FBI on Friday re-issued its statement saying the agency “takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals.”

The FBI noted it was given “limited opportunity” to review the document before lawmakers voted to release it. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the agency said.

Nunes issued a statement Friday expressing hope that the actions of Intelligence Committee Republicans would “shine a light” on what he called “this alarming series of events.”

“The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes said. “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions weighed in on the memo’s release Friday, saying, he has “great confidence in the men and women of this Department [of Justice]. But no department is perfect.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump, told agency employees Friday that he stood with them. “I stand by our shared determination to do our work independently and by the book,” Wray said in a statement to 35,000 FBI staff.

Few details have emerged since the aerospace company Boeing revealed plans for a new hypersonic aircraft with surveillance and strike capabilities. It aims to build it in the next 10-20 years but already faces some competition.

Aviation Week reported that the design for the aircraft, thought to be named “Valkyrie II,” was first unveiled at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech forum in Orlando, Florida back in January. Although the project is yet to be officially green-lighted, a statement by the company claims the aircraft can fly across the world “in one to three hours” and carry out airstrikes and reconnaissance missions.

“This is one of several concepts and technologies we’re studying for a hypersonic aircraft,” said Kevin Bowcutt, Senior Technical Fellow of hypersonics at Boeing Research & Technology. “This particular concept is for a military application that would be targeted for an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, and strike capabilities.”

Concept art posted to Boeing’s official website and Facebook shows a twin-tail, highly swept delta-wing jet in a so-called “waverider” design, which enables it to use its own shockwaves to increase its lift and reduce drag. But as Aviation Week notes, Boeing are constantly improving their designs so this picture may not look like the final model.

In a live video on Facebook Friday, Kevin Bowcutt said using waverider technology, the hypersonic craft would be able to cut through the air faster than a bullet fired from a gun.

“It’s two-and-a-half times the speed of a speeding bullet,” Bowcutt told viewers. “It’s more than twice as fast as the Concorde. So basically you can get anywhere in the world in one hour across the Atlantic, two hours across the Pacific – pretty much anywhere between two points in one-to-three hours.”

If Boeing follows through on the concept, it would put them in competition with Lockheed Martin’s SR-72 aircraft, a planned successor to its SR-71 Blackbird announced back in 2013. Both the SR-72 and Valkyrie II will use a combined-cycle engine and a dual ramjet/scramjet to accelerate over Mach 3 and jump to hypersonic speeds. Boeing will likely first make a smaller test plane, the size of an F-16 fighter jet, before moving on to a full-scale model.

By Andrea Gagliarducci

Since Bl. Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae was published 50 years ago, it has sparked wide-ranging debates, and frequent calls to change its teaching from some theologians.

At the 50th anniversary of the encyclical, some theologians have again begun calling for a reinterpretation of the document, or suggesting that adhering to it may be morally impossible for some Catholics.

The Vatican, however, gave a clear response to those calls in an article published by L’Osservatore Romano Feb. 16, 1989.

The Vatican newspaper issued the article – now published on the Vatican website – with no byline, often the sign of an official Church response.

The article responded to the declarations of an unnamed moral theologian who had called into question Humanae Vitae’s teaching. The article was preceded by an editorial note, and mentioned the declarations of a “well known moral theologian” that was “widely echoed by the press.”

L’Osservatore Romano said that the discussion raised doubts by an “intransigent” interpretation of Humanae Vitae and that mass media “relaunched, often with simplification and wrong interpretations, the doubts and fears of some theologians,”

The points raised in the discussion were similar to those being raised by some contemporary theologians: theologians argued that there are no Biblical references directly prohibiting contraception; that the use of contraception might sometimes be a “lesser evil”; and that an in individual moral conscience could be opposed to magisterium.

L’Osservatore Romano’s note recognized that objections to Humanae Vitae are sometimes caused by pastoral concern for “those couples who find difficulty in observing the moral norm regarding responsible procreation,” but said that “pastoral concerns” usually contained “more doctrinal issues.”

L’Osservatore Romano also state that objections to Humanae Vitae “are sometimes formulated without the scientific rigour which should distinguish serious theological reflection.”

“Occasionally,” the article said, objections to the document “take the form of personal attacks of a rancorous and disconcerting kind.”

Such observations may be especially poignant today.

The Vatican newspaper then proposed four observations:

First, that spouses in difficult situations “deserve respect and love,” especially when “various circumstances of life… make it difficult to fulfill moral duty.”

The Church, the article said, is called to be like Jesus, by approaching every situation with understanding, patience and mercy, and at the same time clearly proclaiming the truth, since living in the truth is “necessary condition for a fully and truly human life and for a path to sanctity, to which we are all called for.”

L’Osservatore Romano noted that “love and pastoral concern toward the spouses who are living difficult” can “never be separated from truth,” nor can pastors ever “eliminate or attenuate the duty to distinguish good and evil,” if they are to give real help.

“It is an outstanding manifestation of charity toward souls to omit nothing from the saving doctrine of Christ.,” the article said, quoting from Humanae Vitea itself.

The second observation is that the Humanae Vitae’s prohibition of contraception “can not admit exception,” because contraception of the conjugal act is always an “intrinsically disordered act.”

In Humanae Vitae, Blessed Pope Paul VI stressed that “though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it.”

L’Osservatore Romano noted that Paul VI’s words are not a “theological opinion which is open to free discussion.”

The third observation addressed the nature of Catholic moral teaching.

L’Osservatore Romano stressed that Christian moral tradition has always taught that norms “which prohibit intrinsically disordered acts do not admit exceptions,” since such acts “are opposed to the person in his or her specific dignity as a person,” and so there is no subjective intention or circumstance that would turn these act into ordered acts.

Contraception, the article went on, is among the acts that are always intrinsically evil, because it contradicts the reciprocal self-donation innate to the marital act.

L’Osservatore Romano also noted that Christian moral tradition has “always maintained the distinction – not the separation and still less an opposition – between objective disorder and subjective guilt, ” that is, that all the circumstances at the basis of any behaviour must be taken into consideration to understand the responsibility the person who committed an act.

This approach, however, can impact the “grade of responsibility” of the person, but cannot turn a disorder into an order. This is the “law of graduality” that cannot be confused with the “graduality of law,” that is a law can be gradually understood.

The article referred to Pope St. John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, which taught that couples “cannot look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future: they must consider it as a command of Christ the Lord to overcome difficulties with constancy. ‘And so what is known as ‘the law of gradualness’ or step-by-step advance cannot be identified with ‘gradualness of the law,’ as if there were different degrees or forms of precept in God’s law for different individuals and situations. In God’s plan, all husbands and wives are called in marriage to holiness, and this lofty vocation is fulfilled to the extent that the human person is able to respond to God’s command with serene confidence in God’s grace and in his or her own will.’ On the same lines, it is part of the Church’s pedagogy that husbands and wives should first of all recognize clearly the teaching of Humanae Vitae as indicating the norm for the exercise of their sexuality, and that they should endeavor to establish the conditions necessary for observing that norm.”

L’Osservatore Romano stressed that everyone, especially priests, are called to “help and accompany with patient and courageous love the couple of spouse to form their conscience,” so that their conscience will judge according to truth.

Priests are also called to help the spouses to “cultivate an ever more intense spiritual life, needed to understand and live the law of God within a non favorable social and cultural framework,” the article said.

The fourth observation was about the “credibility” of the Church’s Magisterium.

“Why not recognize,” L’Osservatore Romano wrote “that one of the causes (and not the least) which threaten [magisterial] credibility with ruin is precisely the organized and systematic way in which some theologians have repeatedly opposed the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, and later the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio?”

L’Osservatore Romano noted that the faithful are subject to “grave confusions” when the “some theologians speak of pronouncements of the Magisterium while concealing or deforming its specific nature and its original function.”

“The Church’s magisterium,” the Pope’s newspaper said, “cannot be correctly interpreted if one uses the same criteria as are applied m the human sciences, such as the bare socio-cultural criterion of measuring a greater or lesser degree of acceptance of the Magisterium. On the contrary, the Magisterium, as a gift of the Spirit of Jesus Christ to his Church for the authentic service, in the name of the authority of Christ, ‘of the faith to be believed and put into practice’ (Lumen Gentium, n. 25), can find proper understanding and full acceptance only in faith.”

As discussion about Humanae Vitae intensifies during its anniversary year, the letter is worth revisiting.

The Peruvian government should revoke the humanitarian pardon granted to former autocratic President Alberto Fujimori, Human Rights Watch said as it submitted an amicus brief to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). The IACtHR, the main human rights court in the Americas, will examine Fujimori’s release during a hearing set for February 2, 2018.

On December 24, 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski granted Fujimori a humanitarian pardon. Fujimori was serving a 25-year sentence for his role in extrajudicial killings, abductions, and enforced disappearances. There are strong reasons to believe that the release was the result of a negotiation in response to growing pressure from Fujimori supporters in Congress, including a recent attempt to impeach President Kuczynski. Fujimori was also granted a “derecho de gracia,” which would shield him from prosecution for any other past crimes.

“The release of Fujimori was a shameful betrayal of the victims of atrocities in Peru and a blow for the rule of law in the country,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “We hope that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will not allow President Kuczynski to trade away victims’ rights as part of a political bargain.”

Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for human rights violations, including his role in the extrajudicial execution of 15 people in the Barrios Altos district of Lima, the enforced disappearance and murder of nine students and a teacher from La Cantuta University, and two abductions. When the “derecho de gracia” was granted, Fujimori was facing an additional criminal prosecution for the 1992 killing of six men in the Lima district of Pativilca by members of the “Colina” death squad, which was active under the Fujimori administration. Courts have yet to determine whether they will uphold the “derecho de gracia” and close the prosecution against Fujimori.

The Peruvian Constitution grants the president the power to issue pardons. However, it also states that the rights recognized in the constitution should be interpreted in accordance with international treaties ratified by Peru.

Fujimori’s early release appears to be the result of a politically motivated decision that lacked guarantees of fairness and transparency, Human Rights Watch said in its amicus brief. In this context, the release undermines Peru’s duty to investigate, prosecute, and punish human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch has said that granting a humanitarian pardon to Fujimori would be consistent with international human rights law, so long as he was not granted special treatment and his release was the result of an independent, thorough, and conclusive medical determination establishing the gravity of his health condition.

The pardon Fujimori received does not meet these criteria, Human Rights Watch said. The medical rationale was articulated only in very general and unpersuasive terms, and it is not clear that there has been any kind of thorough and independent medical examination. The pardon states that Fujimori’s illness limits his capacity to “talk fluently” and “pronounce correctly.” Yet no signs of such alleged limitations appear in a video he posted on Twitter two days after his release. This and other aspects of the pardon outlined in the amicus brief further reinforce the impression that the move was in fact part of a political bargain.

On December 31, 2017, Mercedes Araoz, Peru’s vice-president, suggested that the government would not comply with a potential IACtHR ruling ordering the government to revoke the pardon. The Constitution “says clearly that the president has the power to issue pardons,” Araoz told the Peruvian newspaper Correo, adding that the government will make “the Constitution prevail” against a IACtHR ruling that seeks to abrogate the pardon.

“The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is the highest regional authority on rights and their rulings are legally binding on Peru,” Vivanco said. “A decision to ignore the court’s ruling on Fujimori’s release would be an inexcusable setback for the Peruvian government’s commitment to human rights.”

Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said the Iranian people would respond to the country’s enemies by their massive participation in the upcoming marches on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Speaking to reporters in Tehran on Sunday, Major General Jafari highlighted the importance of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution due to be held next week and said given the animosity of the adversaries and the recent riots in the country, the Iranian people would participate in the upcoming rallies more massively compared to previous years.

Through their high turnout in the rallies, the people will respond to the internal and foreign enemies of the Islamic Revolution, the commander stressed.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Major General Jafari emphasized that according to Iran’s Constitution, the IRGC is duty bound to protect the Islamic Revolution and its achievements.

The Iranian nation toppled the US-backed Pahlavi regime 39 years ago, on February 11, 1979, ending the 2,500 years of monarchic rule in the country.

The Revolution, led by the late Imam Khomeini, established a new political system based on Islamic values and democracy.

Every year Iranians mark the anniversary of their Islamic Revolution from February 1 to 11, known as the Ten-Day Fajr (dawn) ceremonies.

February 1, 1979, was the date when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris to Tehran.

Millions of unapproved antibiotics are being sold in India, according to a new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and Newcastle University.

The research, published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, found that multinational companies continued to manufacture many unapproved formulations, despite pledging to tackle rising antimicrobial resistance.

These findings highlight serious hurdles for controlling antimicrobial resistance in India, which has among the highest antibiotic consumption rates and sales in the world, and has had parliamentary investigations into failures of the country’s drug regulatory system.

The researchers examined figures for fixed dose combination (FDC) antibiotics (formulations composed of two or more drugs in a single pill) and single drug formulation (SDF) antibiotics (composed of a single drug) on the market in India.

Of 118 different formulations of FDCs being sold in India between 2007 and 2012, the team found that 64 per cent (75) were not approved by the national drugs regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), even though the sale of unapproved new medicines is illegal in India. Only five of the formulations were approved in the UK or US.

The 118 FDC formulations gave rise to over 3300 brand-named products made by almost 500 pharmaceutical manufacturers, including multinational companies. By 2011-12, FDCs made up a third of total antibiotic sales in India, yet 34.5 per cent of these sales (comprising 300 million Units) were unapproved formulations. Many of the FDCs combined two antimicrobials, often poorly chosen and likely to exacerbate resistance problems.

The study also found that multinational companies manufactured nearly 20 per cent of the FDCs and SDFs sold. Twenty FDC formulations manufactured by multinational companies had no record of CDSCO approval, and only four of the fifty three FDC formulations made in India by multinational companies had UK or US regulatory approval.

In contrast, 94 per cent of multinational companies’ single drug formulations were CDSCO-approved, and over 70 per cent had UK or US regulatory approval.

Lead author Dr Patricia McGettigan from Queen Mary said: “Selling unapproved, unscrutinised antibiotics undermines measures in India to control antimicrobial resistance. Multinational companies should explain the sale of products in India that did not have the approval of their own national regulators and, in many cases, did not even have the approval of the Indian regulator.”

The researchers argue that changes needed to achieve the World Health Organization’s (WHO) vision of good use of antibiotics include banning the sale of unapproved FDC antibiotics and enforcing existing regulations to prevent unapproved and illegal drugs reaching the market.

Improved access to health care to reduce non-prescription sales is also needed, alongside research to understand why doctors complicate problems by prescribing unapproved antibiotics.

Professor Allyson Pollock, Director of the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University, said: “Limiting antimicrobial resistance is a strategic goal of the WHO and countries worldwide – governments and regulators must take all necessary steps to prevent the production and sale of illegal and unapproved medicines and scrutinise the actions of multinational companies.”

An international team of astronomers has determined that Centaurus A, a massive elliptical galaxy 13 million light-years from Earth, is accompanied by a number of dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting the main body in a narrow disk. In a paper published today in Science, the researchers note that this is the first time such a galactic arrangement has been observed outside the Local Group, home to the Milky Way.

“The significance of this finding is that it calls into question the validity of certain cosmological models and simulations as explanations for the distribution of host and satellite galaxies in the universe,” said co-author Marcel Pawlowski, a Hubble Fellow in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

He said that under the lambda cold dark matter model, smaller systems of stars should be more or less randomly scattered around their anchoring galaxies and should move in all directions. Yet Centaurus A is the third documented example, behind the Milky Way and Andromeda, of a “vast polar structure” in which satellite dwarves co-rotate around a central galactic mass in what Pawlowski calls “preferentially oriented alignment.”

The difficulty of studying the movements of dwarf satellites around their hosts varies according to the target galaxy group. It’s relatively easy for the Milky Way. “You get proper motions,” Pawlowski said. “You take a picture now, wait three years or more, and then take another picture to see how the stars have moved; that gives you the tangential velocity.”

Using this technique, scientists have measurements for 11 Milky Way satellite galaxies, eight of which are orbiting in a tight disk perpendicular to the spiral galaxy’s plane. There are probably other satellites in the system that can’t be seen from Earth because they’re blocked by the Milky Way’s dusty disk.

Andromeda provides observers on Earth a view of the full distribution of satellites around the galaxy’s sprawling spiral. An earlier study found 27 dwarf galaxies, 15 arranged in a narrow plane. And Andromeda offers another advantage, according to Pawlowski: “Because you see the galaxy almost edge-on, you can look at the line-of-sight velocities of its satellites to see the ones that are approaching and those that are receding, so it very clearly presents as a rotating disk.”

Centaurus A is much farther away, and its satellite companions are faint, making it more difficult to accurately measure distances and velocities to determine movements and distributions. But “sleeping in the archives,” Pawlowski said, were data on 16 of Centaurus A’s satellites.

“We could do the same game as with Andromeda, where we look at the line-of-sight velocities,” he said. “And again we see that half of them are red-shifted, meaning they are receding from us, and the other half are blue-shifted, which tells us they are approaching.”

The researchers were able to demonstrate that 14 of the 16 Centaurus A satellite galaxies follow a common motion pattern and rotate along the plane around the main galaxy – contradicting frequently used cosmological models and simulations suggesting that only about 0.5 percent of satellite galaxy systems in the nearby universe should exhibit this pattern.

“So this means that we are missing something,” Pawlowski said. “Either the simulations lack some important ingredient, or the underlying model is wrong. This research may be seen as support for looking into alternative models.”

Mars developed in as little as two to four million years after the birth of the solar system, far more quickly than Earth, according to results of a new study published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

The red planet’s rapid formation helps explain why it is so small, say the study’s co-authors, Nicolas Dauphas at the University of Chicago and Ali Pourmand at the University of Miami.

Their research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Mars probably is not a terrestrial planet like Earth, which grew to its full size over 50 to 100 million years via collisions with other small bodies in the solar system, said Dauphas, a geophysicist.

“Earth was made of embryos like Mars, but Mars is a stranded planetary embryo that never collided with other embryos to form an Earthlike planet,” Dauphas said.

The new work provides evidence for this idea, which was first proposed 20 years ago on the basis of planetary growth simulations.

It likely will change the way planetary scientists view Mars, said Pourmand, a marine geologist and geophysicist. “We thought that there were no embryos in the solar system to study, but when we study Mars, we are studying embryos that eventually made planets like Earth.”

There had been large uncertainties in the formation history of Mars because of the unknown composition of its mantle, the rock layer that underlies the crust.

“Now we can shrink those uncertainties to the point where we can do interesting science,” Dauphas said.

Dauphas and Pourmand were able to refine the age of Mars by using the radioactive decay of hafnium to tungsten in meteorites.

Hafnium 182 decays into tungsten 182 in a half-life of nine million years. This relatively rapid decay means that almost all hafnium 182 will disappear in 50 million years, providing a way to assemble a fine-scale chronology of early events in the solar system.

“To apply that system you need two gradients,” Pourmand explained. “You need the hafnium-tungsten ratio of the mantle of Mars and you need the tungsten isotopic composition of the mantle of Mars.”

The latter was well known from analyses of martian meteorites, but not the former.

Previous estimates of the formation of Mars ranged as high as 15 million years because the chemical composition of the martian mantle was largely unknown.

Scientists still wrestle with large uncertainties in the composition of Earth’s mantle because of processes such as melting.

“We have the same problem for Mars,” Dauphas said.

Analyses of martian meteorites provide clues about the mantle composition of Mars, but their compositions also have changed.

Solving some lingering unknowns about the composition of chondrites, a common type of meteorites, provided the data needed.

As essentially unaltered debris left over from the birth of the solar system, chondrites serve as a Rosetta stone for deducing planetary chemical composition.

Cosmochemists have intensively studied chondrites, but still poorly understand the abundances of two categories of elements they contain, including uranium, thorium, lutetium and hafnium.

Dauphas and Pourmand analyzed the abundances of these elements in more than 30 chondrites, and compared those to the compositions of another 20 martian meteorites.

“Once you solve the composition of chondrites you can address many other questions,” Dauphas said.

Hafnium and thorium both are refractory or non-volatile elements, meaning that their compositions remain relatively constant in meteorites.

They also are lithophile elements, those that would have stayed in the mantle when the core of Mars formed. If scientists could measure the hafnium-thorium ratio in the martian mantle, they would have the ratio for the whole planet, which they need to reconstruct its formation history.

The relationships between hafnium, thorium and tungsten dictated that the hafnium-thorium ratio in the mantle of Mars must be similar to the same ratio in chondrites.

To derive the martian mantle’s hafnium-tungsten ratio, they divided the thorium-tungsten ratio of the martian meteorites by the thorium-hafnium ratio of the chondrites.

“Why do you do that? Because thorium and tungsten have very similar chemical behavior,” Dauphas said.

Once Dauphas and Pourmand had determined this ratio, they were able to calculate how long it took Mars to develop into a planet.

A computer simulation based on these data showed that Mars must have reached half its present size only two million years after the formation of the solar system.

“New application of radiogenic isotopes to both chondrite and martial meteorites provides data on the age and mode of formation of Mars,” said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences. “That is consistent with models that explain Mars’ small mass in comparison to that of Earth.”

A quickly-forming Mars would help explain the puzzling similarities in the xenon content of its atmosphere and that of Earth’s.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but maybe the solution is that part of the atmosphere of Earth was inherited from an earlier generation of embryos that had their own atmospheres, maybe a Marslike atmosphere,” Dauphas said.

The short formation history of Mars further raises the possibility that aluminum 26, which is known from meteorites, turned the red planet into a magma ocean early in its history.

Aluminum 26 has a half-life of 700,000 years, so it would have disappeared too quickly to contribute to the internal heat of Earth.

If Mars formed in two million years, however, significant quantities of aluminum 26 would remain. “When aluminum 26 decays it releases heat and can completely melt the planet,” Pourmand said.

The research was also funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Packard Foundation.

If Robert Mueller finds that Trump colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election, or even if Trump fires Mueller before he makes such a finding, Trump’s supporters will protect Trump from any political fallout.

Trump’s base will stand by him not because they believe Trump is on their side, but because they define themselves as being on his side.

Trump has intentionally cleaved America into two warring camps: pro-Trump and anti-Trump. And he has convinced the pro-Trumps that his enemy is their enemy.

Most Americans are not passionate conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats. But they have become impassioned Trump supporters or Trump haters.

Polls say 37 percent of Americans approve of him, and most disapprove. These numbers are the tips of two vast icebergs of intensity.

Trump has forced all of us to take sides, and to despise those on the other. There’s no middle ground.

The Republican Party used to stand for fiscal responsibility, state’s rights, free trade, and a hard line against Russian aggression. Now it just stands for Trump.

Pro-Trump Republicans remain the majority in the GOP. As long as Trump can keep them riled up, and as long as Republicans remain in control of at least one chamber of Congress, he’s safe.

“Try to impeach him, just try it,” Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser, warned last summer. “You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.”

That’s probably an exaggeration, but Trump (with the assistance of his enablers in Congress) has convinced his followers that the Russian investigation is part of a giant conspiracy to unseat him, and that his enemies want to replace him with someone who will allow dangerous forces to overrun America.

Sure, this paranoia is based on the same racism and xenophobia that has smoldered in America since its inception. Trump’s strategy is to stoke it daily.

Sure, American politics had polarized before Trump. Trump’s strategy is to exploit and enlarge these divisions.

A few months ago I traveled to Kentucky and talked with a number of Trump supporters.

They looked and sounded nothing like traditional conservative Republicans. Most were working class. Several were members of labor unions. All were passionate about Trump.

Why do you support him? I asked. “He’s shaking Washington up,” was the typical response.

I mentioned his lies. “He’s telling it like it is,” several told me. “He speaks his mind.”

I talked about his attacks on democracy. “Every other politician is on the take,” they said. “He isn’t. He doesn’t need their money.”

I asked about his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. They told me they didn’t believe a word of it. “It’s a plot to get rid of him.”

By making himself the center of an intensifying conflict, Trump grabs all the attention and fuels even greater passions on both sides.

It’s what he did in the 2016 election, but on a far larger scale. Then, he sucked all the oxygen out of the race by making himself its biggest story. Now, he’s sucking all the oxygen out of America by making himself our national obsession.

Trump received more coverage in the 2016 election than any presidential candidate in American history. Hillary Clinton got far less, and what she got was almost all about her emails.

Schooled in reality television and New York tabloids, Trump knows how to keep both sides stirred up: Vilify, disparage, denounce, defame, and accuse the other side of conspiring against America. Do it continuously. Dominate every news cycle.

Fox News is his propaganda arm, magnifying his tweets, rallies, and lies. The rest of the media also plays into Trump’s strategy by making him the defining controversy of America. Every particular dispute – DACA, the “wall,” North Korea, Mueller’s investigation, and so on – becomes another aspect of the larger national war over Trump.

It’s the divide-and-conquer strategy of a tyrant.

Democracies require sufficient social trust that citizens regard the views of those they disagree with as worthy of equal consideration to their own. That way, they’ll accept political outcomes they dislike.

Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is to destroy that trust.

So if Mueller finds Trump colluded with Russia, or Trump fires Mueller before Mueller makes such a finding, the pro-Trumps will block any consequential challenge to his authority.

Nothing could be more dangerous to our democracy and society.