The big question is whether Trump’s inert caution would stay intact in the face of well-argued interventionist options from Bolton and Pompeo, who often favour military solutions as the quickest and the best.

By Seema Sirohi*

President Donald Trump’s decision to name John Bolton, a hawk the liberal establishment loves to hate, as his new National Security Advisor and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State could be a major turning point in his administration.

Both men have a long history of supporting military interventions and low tolerance for long-drawn out diplomacy. Bolton’s tenure in the administration of George W. Bush was marked by an overt enthusiasm for the Iraq War and bureaucratic gamesmanship to crush opponents.

Bolton will replace H.R. McMaster, who was unable to develop a rapport with Trump and was increasingly isolated on policy issues. Pompeo, currently the CIA Director and an aggressive critic of Iran, will take over from Rex Tillerson, whose public disagreements with Trump on foreign policy issues had rendered him largely ineffective as America’s top diplomat.

Trump and Pompeo have a close relationship — Pompeo often personally delivers the daily intelligence briefing to the president. When foreign diplomats interact with Pompeo, they will know he is speaking for the US President.

While announcing the changes, Trump said, “We’re getting very close to having the cabinet and other things I want.” The sentiment was a reflection of the widely reported differences between the president and his national security team over the past year.

The new additions will tilt the balance in the circle of top foreign policy advisors towards more hawkish positions, leaving Defence Secretary Jim Mattis as the lone voice arguing for diplomatic rather than military solutions. With Gary Cohn, the Chief Economic Advisor, already gone, defenders of the liberal international order in the White House are few and far between.

Once in place, Bolton and Pompeo are expected to replace mid and lower-level officers who may not be read from their songbook. Expect a more effective execution of policies because Bolton can and will play Washington’s vast bureaucracy to his advantage — McMaster and Tillerson were novices in the field.

The fulcrum would be Trump who is said to have few fixed views on foreign policy. But his instincts are against waging new wars, despite his bellicosity about incinerating enemies with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” or bragging about the size of his “nuclear button.” In the end, he has, by and large, exercised caution in sending troops on new military adventures.

Before committing extra troops in Afghanistan, Trump repeatedly exhorted his national security team to explain in concrete terms how sending more US soldiers would break the stalemate in the long-running war. He was frustrated with a lack of clear-cut answers, delaying the release of the new South Asia strategy. The strategy — praised in New Delhi for its clarity on Pakistan — might come under review by the new appointees.

The big question is whether Trump’s inert caution would stay intact in the face of well-argued interventionist options from Bolton and Pompeo, who often favour military solutions as the quickest and the best. Will they put the United States on a path to confrontation with Iran and North Korea as some liberals fear?

As a candidate, Trump had called the Iraq War “a big, fat mistake” and accused the Bush Administration of lying about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. But now he has invited Bolton, one of the most ardent supporters of that war into the White House.

Bolton was such an unabashed enthusiast that at one time he advocated expanding the war to Iran. He has continued to justify his positions even as the war’s disastrous repercussions, including the birth of ISIS, are felt from the Middle East to Europe.

Bolton and Pompeo both view the Iran nuclear deal as dangerous and “disastrous.” They want to scuttle the deal, a view that aligns them perfectly with Trump but not with European allies, the International Atomic Energy Agency and much of the rest of the world.

Bolton, in fact, got back into Trump’s inner circle by suggesting ways to get out of the Iran deal after his access to the White House was restricted by Chief of Staff John Kelly.

It was reportedly at Bolton’s suggestion that Trump gave an ultimatum last year at the United Nations that he would pull out of the Iran deal unless the US Congress and European allies renegotiated the agreement. This is precisely what is happening.

A top US official is doing the rounds of European capitals to see if new elements can be included in a renegotiated deal by 12 May, the deadline set by Trump. These include putting restraints on Iran’s ballistic missile capability, imposing stricter inspections of nuclear sites and indefinitely extending the time limit on Iran’s enrichment capacity.

Bolton may go a few steps further. In 2015, he wrote in The New York Times: “The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear programme. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure.”

“The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”

Pompeo’s views on the Iran deal are just as hawkish. Being the CIA Director with access to intelligence has only sharpened them. He told the Aspen Security Forum last July that Iran’s compliance was “grudging, minimalist, temporary.”

He went further in October, calling Iran a “thuggish police state,” a “despotic theocracy” and compared it to ISIS, a Sunni terrorist group that Iran has actually been fighting. The level of rhetoric is a throwback to the Dick Cheney-Donald Rumsfeld era and the steady build-up to the Iraq War.

As a Congressman, Pompeo stridently opposed negotiating any deal with Iran. He called for breaking off talks in 2014 and suggested airstrikes to take out Iran’s nuclear installations. When the Obama Administration concluded the deal, he called it “surrender.”

Similarly on North Korea, Pompeo and Bolton want capitulation from Pyongyang, not compromise. Bolton has suggested in the past that the United States could attack North Korea without the agreement of South Korea, a treaty ally.

As recently as last week after his appointment as the new NSA had been announced, Bolton told Radio Free Asia, that the subject of Trump’s upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un should be about “eliminating, dismantling its nuclear programme.” Anything else would be “a waste of time.” While admitting that military action against North Korea was “very dangerous,” he stressed, “It’s more dangerous if North Korea has a nuclear capability.”

Pompeo also said something similar last July. “It would be a great thing to denuclearise the peninsula, to get those weapons off of that. I am hopeful we will find a way to separate that regime from this system.”

These are fighting words. The problem is that Bolton and Pompeo have the capability — both intellectual and bureaucratic — to convert them into a real confrontation.

By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

The Macedonian prosecution charged 30 people with terrorism, including the former interior minister and various MPs, over last April’s violence in parliament which injured some 100 people.

The Public Prosecution filed terrorism charges against 30 people, including former interior minister and chief of the uniformed police force Mitko Cavkov, opposition right-wing VMRO DPMNE MPs, police employees and activists over the rampage in parliament on April 27 last year.

Prosecution spokesperson Elizabeta Nedanovska told a press conference in Skopje that charges of “terrorist endangerment of the constitutional order and security” have been filed against 28 people, and against two others for assisting the criminal activity.

“The accused, intending to endanger the constitutional order and safety of Macedonia and to prevent the election of the parliamentary chairman and speaker, caused an act of violence, thus putting in danger the lives of MPs, journalists, officials and employees in parliament and creating a feeling of insecurity, danger and fear among citizens,” Nedanovska said.

The attack on parliament in April last year happened amid high political tensions in the country as the former ruling VMRO DPMNE attempted to stop the Social Democrats from forming a government.

It began when VMRO DPMNE party supporters stormed the building only minutes after the new majority in parliament had elected Talat Xaferi as its speaker, paving the way for the election of the new Social Democrat-led government, which eventually took office in May.

The violent mob injured some 100 people including ten MPs from the new majority. The Social Democrats’ leader, current Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, was among those injured.

Some VMRO DPMNE MPs, including Krsto Mukoski, who is among those charged, were seen on parliament video footage opening the legislature’s main door and apparently giving instructions to the mob where to go.

The prosecution on Tuesday said that high-ranking police officials including Mitko Cavkov did not issue commands to dispatch more police units to parliament despite receiving constantly-updated information about the violence and the threat to people’s lives.

One of those charged received a telephone call at 2.30pm local time, before the violence started, to mobilise accomplices and start the process of storming the parliament building, the prosecution said.

Ten people in total were tasked with organising a larger group of masked people who were seen on many pieces of video footage from that day, it added.

The prosecution also charged four organisers of the protests by VMRO DPMNE supporters that were being staged each day in front of the parliament building at the time.

The four are accused of leading and inciting a group of people who stormed the parliament building together with the people in masks, the prosecution said.

The prosecution did not specify however whether or not it is investigating anyone for giving orders to stage the violence.

Police in November arrested more than 30 people in connection with the rampage, most of whom are now being charged.

The prosecution said however that it has suspended procedures for one previously detained VMRO DPMNE MP, Zaklina Stefkovska, due to a lack of evidence.

It also said it is temporarily stopping an investigation into the possible involvement of four additional suspects who are still at large. They will be investigated once police determine their whereabouts, it added.

Those accused of the terrorism charges face a minimum jail sentence of 10 years if convicted.

As Singapore and the rest of the world adjust to a rising China, Southeast Asia’s unique place in the evolving world order calls for the island state’s return to its historical role in global trade and commerce yet anchored in the Malay-speaking world.

By Linda Lim*

The dominate narrative in global affairs these days is that “the West” is “retreating” from globalisation while China is “rising”, with the intimation that this poses a threat to global prosperity and security, including to Singapore.

Western retreat has been implied from a series of significant developments: the 2016 Brexit vote and Trump election; rise of populist-nativist political parties in Europe; increasing trade protectionism and restrictions on foreign investment and immigration; more stringent regulation of tax-and-subsidy arbitrage and competition policy; hints of a revival of national industrial policies; and some high-profile examples of “reshoring” of global business to the United States.

Globalisation Still Alive and Kicking

But while populists have gained some electoral ground in Europe, they have mostly not formed governments, and Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 victory in France suggests that an unabashed “globalist” can still get elected. The European Union has reiterated its support of free trade and successfully negotiated free trade agreements with Canada, Japan and other countries.

In the US, despite the protectionist stance of the Trump administration on trade and investment, numerous public opinion surveys show that large and growing majorities of the American public are pro-trade, pro-immigration and pro-globalisation, while multinationals are continuing with their globalised strategies, including international investments.

The Trump administration aside, most countries support the WTO’s multilateral rules-based international order. The recent conclusion of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) agreement (without the US), and Brexit supporters’ claim of enthusiasm for post-EU bilateral free trade agreements, show that interest in trade liberalisation continues to be strong.

The rise of China as a “leader of globalisation” is inferred from Xi Jinping’s recent speeches and actions, such as his 2017 Davos speech defending globalisation, his 19th Communist Party Congress speech saying that China will “move closer to (world) centre stage” in a “New Era”, and his promotion of his Belt-and-Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and other new institutions for international investment.

China is already the world’s second largest investor, and the government’s declared focus on consumption-led growth will make its home market an even bigger draw for other countries. Recent appointments to top economic positions of officials known to be pro-market reforms, and the continued pursuit of financial liberalisation and reductions in debt burdens and excess capacity, also portend more inward and outward globalisation.

China as Leader of Globalisation?

Against this, Xi has made little mention of market reforms or private enterprise, but has said that state-owned enterprises are to be made “bigger, stronger and more efficient”. The national industrial policy “Make-in-China 2025” is very much a priority, and the government still controls capital flows and the exchange rate.

The US and EU have refused to grant China WTO “market economy” status, and foreign companies’ complaints of restrictive local content, local ownership, intellectual property sharing and technology transfer requirements, motivated the Trump administration’s latest sanctions on China for “unfair trade practices”.

These do not indicate that China is a “leader of globalisation”, and Pew Research Centre’s Global Attitudes Survey 2017 found that more publics viewed the US than China as the world’s leading economic power, though the gap in favourability ratings of the two countries has narrowed and ratings are declining for both.

Overall, globalisation is slowing for many reasons. The (mostly Western) rich world faces slow GDP and productivity growth, rising inequality, ageing populations, limited capacity for fiscal and monetary stimulus, and social and environmental pressures to buy/ hire/invest local and minimize carbon footprints. Tradable manufactures’ share of GDP falls as non-tradable services’ share increases with rising incomes, while technology encourages production in final markets, shrinking far-flung global supply-chains.

Southeast Asia’s Growing Strength

Multilateral trade liberalisation has stalled, giving way to regional and plurilateral initiatives, and rising protectionism, while national or regional tax reform, anti-subsidy and anti-monopoly policies increasingly restrict free capital flows.

Still, over the next 30-odd years, Asia will continue to be the fastest-growing regional economy, with over half of world GDP by 2050. Southeast Asia will outpace all other world regions in GDP growth, except South Asia, with Indonesia becoming the world’s fourth largest economy, and ASEAN the size of the EU.

Growth will come from technological change, productivity growth and the “demographic dividend” for some countries, with strong consumption demand from emerging Asian middle classes driving global growth as the share of global middle-class demand now dominated by advanced countries declines.

Implications for Singapore

First, our colonial and postcolonial role as a comprador for multinationals will decline as they retrench globally to consolidate in large final markets, are enabled by technology to reach end-clients directly through distributed networks rather than hub-and-spoke arrangements, and as technological convergence reduces less-developed countries’ need for more-developed intermediaries.

The rise of China does not substitute for any retreat of the West because China is much more likely to directly engage with Southeast Asia due to its geographical proximity, size and presence, income-level similarity, cultural and political assets, highly entrepreneurial and technologically advanced businesses, and rapid learning.

China does not need us as a bridge (they like to do things themselves) and it is not clear we possess the deep cultural and market knowledge of our neighbours needed to be an effective bridge. As noted by Aimone Ripa di Meana, a co-founder of Lazada: “I don’t think knowing how to do (business in) Singapore is in any way relevant to how you build your business in the Philippines or Indonesia.”

So to be a bridge for China into Southeast Asia, Singaporeans need to be deeply knowledgeable about our region. We should also aspire to be more than a bridge — rather, part of the destination, by embedding ourselves in the Southeast Asian middle-class consumer market.

Singapore, China and the Malay World

Singapore’s per capita GDP is many times higher than that of its larger neighbours, but indigenous GDP is only 55 percent of the total, and unequally distributed. Southeast Asian primate cities typically have incomes two to three times the national average, also unequally distributed. So, mid-to lower-income Singaporeans may be expected to consume at price points similar to millions of big-city dwellers in Southeast Asia. Products and services developed for them can find a market in neighbouring countries, and vice versa.

Geography is destiny ̶ where we are matters to how and with whom we make our living. It also matters who we are, and it is history which forges our identity. Here, cultural hybridity is a unique potential strength Singapore can build on, harking back to our pre-independence days when different races genuinely mingled in schools, marketplaces, workplaces and homes, with Malay and English as the lingua franca uniting where multiple Chinese dialects divided (but connected us with similar populations in our regional neighbourhood).

Since then it is arguable that our turn to the English-only world of (Western, Japanese) multinational business and the mainly-Mandarin world of interactions with China, together with the fossilisation of CMIO (Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other) racial categories, has rendered Singapore’s multiculturalism superficial, with little deep understanding of each other’s different ethnic and religious traditions and cultures.

As Minister Chan Chun Sing noted: “Businesses from other parts of the world see Singapore as a staging place to the rest of region. However, we will be of very little value if we do not understand the language and culture in our own backyard. Only by learning the Malay language will we continue to remain relevant to the region and the world at large.”

Back to the Future?

Cultural understanding is of primary importance to the young Chinese state-owned enterprise executives I teach on going global. When asked, “What does ‘thinking internationally’ mean to you?” they highlight the need for cultural learning and understanding different perspectives, or as one said, “Think of foreign problems in Chinese way. Think of Chinese problems in foreign way. Think of foreign problems in foreign way.”

In international business, one must see the world through the eyes of the other, and everyone is a minority. As Southeast Asia’s multicultural local Chinese businesses have shown, there are advantages to being an outsider or minority — chiefly the ability to add value by seeing things differently from homogeneous majority populations.

Singapore can benefit from cultivating this unique differentiating advantage, which will help us to compete with — not just service ̶ businesses from the West, China and other regions as they gravitate toward Southeast Asia’s dynamic markets and diverse populations in forthcoming decades.

This will return us to our history of intense involvement in regional and global trade with multiethnic, multicultural partners, even as the world economy transitions from a Western-led international order to one with more distributed sources of political and economic power, increasingly centered on Asia. Back to the future.

*Linda Lim is NTUC Professor of International Economic Relations 2018 at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Relations (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is also Professor Emerita of Corporate Strategy and International Business at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. This is based on her RSIS Distinguished Public Lecture on 21 March 2018 on Back to the Future: Singapore, China and Southeast Asia.

By Angshuman Choudhury*

March 23, 2018 marks two months since the first wave of repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh was to begin through a bilateral agreement with Myanmar signed in November 2017.

Since then, not a single refugee – of the 6,88,000 new arrivals – has been returned to Northern Rakhine, from where they fled after Myanmar security forces began a violent ‘counter-insurgency’ campaign in August 2017. As of March 2018, the Myanmar government has verified only 374 refugees for repatriation, out of the 8,032 names that Dhaka had sent across for the first phase.

There are several restraining factors that make full repatriation not just difficult under prevailing circumstances, but impossible.

Northern Rakhine’s Changing Landscape

In a March report, Amnesty International – using detailed satellite imagery – revealed the rapid construction of new infrastructure by Myanmar’s security forces on top of Rohingya villages that were razed to the ground after August 2017 and later bulldozed. The new structures include at least three military bases in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships, helipads, fencing, roads, extensions of non-Rohingya (also known as ‘NaTaLa’) villages, and even a refugee processing centre.

The international community, in response to these new construction activities, has accused Naypyitaw of obliterating material evidence of mass killings that the Myanmar military stands accused of. The logic, however, seems to be the permanent alteration of the Northern Rakhine landscape to facilitate deeper military presence and prevent any reversal to the pre-August 2017 status quo. The new security infrastructure will also serve as a deterrent to current and future Rohingya insurgencies.

Notably, the new landscaping makes it highly difficult for the displaced to return to, as the bilateral repatriation agreement stipulates, their “own households and original places of residence.” The new installations also preclude reconstruction of burnt Rohingya villages, thus making long-term rehabilitation unviable.

A large part of the new construction is being done under Myanmar’s centralised plan to redevelop Rakhine State to strengthen the state’s economy. Hence, the landscaping falls within a quasi-legitimate, sovereign context of economic development, which was also prescribed in the Kofi Annan Commission’s report on Rakhine.

Myanmar-Bangladesh Bilateral Tensions

The safe, dignified, and voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees cannot take place without total cooperation and understanding between Myanmar and Bangladesh. However, both parties seem to be nearing a zero-sum game.

Earlier in March, Myanmar began deploying heavily-armed troops along a section of its border with Bangladesh that lies next to a “no man’s land” where close to 1,500 Rohingya have been trapped since August 2017. This led to Dhaka’s fears of military aggression by Myanmar despite the latter’s assurance that the deployment was purely along counter-insurgency lines.

Thereafter, both sides have exchanged hostile rhetoric several times: Bangladesh’s finance minister has called the Myanmar government “evil” and “rogue,” and Myanmar has accused Bangladesh of flouting the bilateral agreement during verification of potential returnees. While Bangladesh doubts Myanmar’s willingness to take back the Rohingya, the latter insists that Dhaka is not serious about the process.

Myanmar’s steady militarisation of the border, including laying of landmines and advance surveillance equipment, is a clear indication of Naypyitaw’s intent to keep a bulk of the displaced Rohingya out of its territory. To this end, ‘counter-insurgency’ and ‘preservation of territorial sovereignty’ are convenient smokescreens towards the achievement of a militarised buffer zone between Myanmar and Bangladesh. The strengthened border security also complements the upgraded military infrastructure in the hinterlands to create an overwhelming military dominance in Northern Rakhine.

A Prognosis

Will the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh ever return to Myanmar? There is no clear answer, but given the strong international pressure on Myanmar, and the bilateral agreement, a part of the displaced population may be taken back in the near future.

However, the repatriation process is going to be heavily controlled. Since the decision of whom to take back is with the Myanmarese authorities, the narrow citizenship verification norms (from the 1982 Citizenship Law) that reject the ‘Rohingya’ identity and instead impose temporary citizenship status are expected to govern the return process.

Furthermore, it remains impossible to know for how long the returnees will be housed in the ‘temporary’ resettlement camps; the aftermath of the 2012 violence shows that they could remain there for years. All of this render the repatriation process unsustainable, and the returnees vulnerable to future re-displacements.

The limited repatriation expected could also fail tests of safety and voluntarism. Given the instability in Rakhine and anti-Rohingya polarisation, there is no guarantee of safety for the returnees. According to the UN, more than 77 per cent of refugees feel they do not have enough information to make good decisions – which means absence of voluntary consent for repatriation.

Dhaka clearly understands the reality of a prolonged repatriation process and has thus been redeveloping a remote island off its southern coast to relocate someof the refugees from the existing camps in Cox’s Bazar. This could ease pressure on mainland resources and ensure that the refugees are cut-off from the mainland populations to negate security threats that may arise. This, however, may be not a sustainable plan given the drastic impact of seasonal cyclonic storms and floods on these remote islands.

The situation, as of now, is bleak. Full repatriation may take at least 2-3 years, and that too as a best case scenario.

About the author:
*Angshuman Choudhury, Researcher, and Coordinator Southeast Asia Research Programme(SEARP)

Source:
This article was published by IPCS.

Disinformation, Fake News and Deliberate Online Falsehoods are nothing new. They are all forms of Propaganda. Singapore should be concerned when a Sending State’s Strategic Propaganda mechanisms and its Agents of Influence within our shores seek to achieve Information Dominance.

By Kumar Ramakrishna*

As the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods continues its public hearings on the issue, it seems apt to take a step back and consider the whole matter of “Disinformation” and “Fake News” from a wider historical and conceptual perspective.

In reality, these terms have deeper conceptual, historical roots in the much older term “Propaganda”. Some scholars suggest that the word “Propaganda” evolved as a result of Pope Gregory XV creating the Committee for the Propagation of the Catholic Faith in Rome in 1622. Hence the origins of the term “Propaganda” were honourable and related to the dissemination of religious ideals.

Changed Concept of Propaganda

Only in the 20th Century, particularly following the excesses of Nazi Propaganda during World War Two, did the current opprobrium associated with the word emerged. The Nazis conceived of Propaganda as the “Big Lie”. That is, Hitler’s Propaganda czar Josef Goebbels apparently believed that by feeding ordinary people falsehoods – “Disinformation” – enough times, eventually they would come to believe it.

However, in a strict technical sense, Propaganda is any form of mass communication that is able to influence the thinking and behaviour of a target audience. The Allies during World War Two, for example, conceived of Strategic Propaganda as directed at entire audiences within Target States.

Previously, radio and newspapers – and later television – were seen as Strategic Propaganda mechanisms par excellence. Today, thanks to technological advances, social media platforms on non-private settings, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, could also be said to have potentially strategic impact.

White, Black and Grey Propaganda

While the above examples describe the mechanisms of Strategic Propaganda, one must also pay attention to the doctrine that govern their use. In World War Two, Allied doctrine identified three categories of Propaganda: The first was White – which involved basically telling the audience the truth via straight reporting by a clearly identified source.

For example, one reason why the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) earned such a global following was its reputation for telling the truth, even bad news, in wartime.

Another approach – favoured by the Nazis – was Black Propaganda or Disinformation. Finally, there was also Grey Propaganda. This was when the information coming out contained facts and deliberate inaccuracies – and the source of it was unclear.

A famous wartime exponent of Black/Grey Propaganda was the British operative Sefton Delmer, who mesmerized Nazi audiences for his deliberately scandalous German-language radio broadcasts, whilst masquerading as a disgruntled senior Nazi officer.

R.H.S. Crossman, the top Allied Propagandist in World War Two and future minister in Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour Government of the 1960s, observed that the British found that while Black and Grey Propaganda were “fun”, these merely succeeded in sowing confusion in a target audience. In contrast, White Propaganda was better because once one had established credibility with the target audience one could influence them to act in desired ways.

New Technologies, Same Principles

The principles of Strategic Propaganda remain relevant today, despite technological advances in the mechanisms of its dissemination. States still need to employ Strategic Propaganda to influence other States to behave in desired ways.

Strategic Propaganda mechanisms seeking Information Influence in the postwar era have included such Cold War radio platforms as the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, directed at the subjugated peoples of the Soviet bloc.

In more recent times we have encountered the Russia Today television news channel and Sputnik Radio, while recent reports indicate that Beijing is thinking of setting up a huge Voice of China global broadcasting operation, apart from its Global Times newspaper.

In fact, Strategic Propaganda by Sending States also includes so-called Agents of Influence (AOI) within Target States throughout the world. These AOI include foreign diplomatic, cultural and educational officials and institutions such as for instance, the British Council, the old US Information Agency, the Saudi-backed World Muslim League and the Chinese–supported Confucius Institutes in universities across the globe.

These Strategic Propaganda mechanisms are actually not unusual and have been part of global diplomatic and cultural intercourse for decades.

The Real Threat: Sending States and Information Dominance

The real problem arises when the goal of the Sending State shifts from mere Information Influence to the more aggressive stance of Information Dominance within the Target State. This happens when the Strategic Propaganda mechanisms mentioned earlier shift from disseminating merely White Propaganda, to employing Black and Grey modes as well.

This comes in the form of spreading Disinformation and Fake News online or in the real world through AOI, with a view to sowing confusion and discord within the Target State.

The Sending State may do this with a view to psychologically weakening the Target State so as to better steer the latter’s behaviour in desired ways. Examples of Strategic Propaganda being employed in the Information Dominance mode include reported interference by Russian Strategic Propaganda mechanisms and AOI in the 2016 US presidential elections and in the UK’s BREXIT campaign earlier that same year.

Implications

Disinformation and Fake News are thus nothing new. They are Old Wine in New Bottles and should be seen in perspective. Particularly noteworthy are the following:

First, States seeking to influence other States’ behaviour through Strategic Propaganda as described are nothing new. Hence we must avoid political overreactions that may damage our international standing.

Second, it is when the Sending State seeks to move from Information Influence to Information Dominance that Countermeasures would be needed. In this regard, two possible Countermeasures appear pertinent.

First, expand the scope of the current SG Secure initiative to include raising awareness of Disinformation and Fake News, either online or via AOI. The Select Committee has recently heard several ideas for building societal resilience against such Black and Grey Propaganda.

These range from measures promoting critical thinking to creating independent fact-checking councils. In an age of increasingly assertive foreign AOI, however, simple counter-intelligence skills may additionally need to be more widely distributed in the population.

Finally, those loose local coalitions of anti-government Internet trolls, academics, activists and groups who regularly pontificate online and elsewhere about supposed historical government excesses, should exercise vigilance. They may unwittingly be co-opted by AOI of hostile Sending States to undermine Singapore’s social cohesion from within. This would be right out of the old Cold War playbook.

As the old saying goes, those who cannot remember the past will be condemned to repeat it.

*Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Professor, Head of Policy Studies and Coordinator of the National Security Studies Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

The fast changing geopolitical realities in global politics underpinned by resurgence of China and Russia and the waning hegemony of the US have paved the way for a new form of alliance structure in the region. Russia and Pakistan, once cold war era rivals, seem to have realized the need to benefit from this opportunity, especially when both the states see eye to eye on various regional issues like protracted Afghanistan conflict, threat of Islamic State (IS), and economic integration, to name some major converging points.

The thaw in Pakistan-Russia relations comes on the heels of deterioration in Pakistan-US ties, concerning the issue of Afghanistan and growing estrangement between Russia and India. India’s turning back on Russia in the wake of its much touted strategic partnership with the US and prioritizing US, Israel and western countries in procuring high-tech defence products leaves Russia with a sense of betrayal at a time when it direly needs Asian markets, in the wake of western sanctions and low oil prices.

Defence and military cooperation forms an important domain where Pakistan and Russia have achieved great strides after the later lifted the self imposed arms embargo on Pakistan in 2014, paving the way for military cooperation agreement which included “exchanging information on politico-military issues, strengthening collaboration in the defense and counter-terrorism sectors, sharing similar views on developments in Afghanistan and doing business with each other”. The joint anti-terrorism military exercise named DRUZBHA (Friendship) 2017 was yet another step in growing military-to-military cooperation, indicating a steady growth in bilateral relationship between the two countries.

It goes without saying that the bilateral relationship is not predominantly driven by short term and parochial interests as some may tend to think. The fact of the matter is that broader and shared vision for peace, stability and economic prosperity on the basis of inclusive and multilateral approach is providing the impetus for strengthening ties.

Pakistan’s recalibration of foreign and security policy: giving economic development a weight equal to geopolitics and Russian pivot to Asia policy are testament to this.

There are even talks of Russia’s keen interests to participate in building energy and transportation corridors from Central Asia to Pakistan through Afghanistan’s Wakhan corridor thereby linking it with the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Reported negotiations on energy deals worth $10 billion speak volumes of overlapping economic interests. Reportedly, first proposed by Russian diplomat Igor Morgulov, Moscow and Beijing have agreed to “pair” their One Belt, One Road project and the Eurasian Economic Union. For Pakistan, such an eventuality would open new avenues of economic opportunities and help diversify its partnerships in the region; needless to say when India painstakingly pursues policy of isolation against Pakistan.

However, both the states, including China, believe that realization of these objectives depend to a large extent on regional peace and stability, particularly in Afghanistan and CARs and that in turn depends on the US role. There is no denying the fact that both have grown weary of perceived US inaction against IS or tacit role in providing it a sanctuary in Afghanistan. Thus, both consider a long term US military presence in Afghanistan detrimental for peace and their strategic interests.

Of particular concern to Russia is the growing footprint of Islamic State under the nose of US in northern Afghanistan. This assessment drives Russia so far as to mull over providing Afghan Taliban with military assistance to counter Islamic State which has of late mounted its deadliest attacks in the country. Ultimately, both Pakistan and Russia want a politically negotiated settlement to Afghan conflict with a broad-based, sustainable government including Afghan Taliban.

In conclusion, the current trend of frequent high level engagement between Pakistan and Russia is promising. However, the two countries need to expedite efforts for translating the shared sentiments and vision into pragmatic policy objectives. In this regard, the decision to establish Anti-Terror Military Cooperation Commission is a step in the right direction. Most importantly, for the burgeoning relation to sustain any geopolitical shocks emanating from the actions and policies of Indo-US nexus, the two countries should expand the sphere of engagements in all spheres including defence, economy, energy, education and people to people contact. In nutshell, it’s for Pakistan and Russia to seize this golden opportunity and cement their ties lest it fades in the fog of geopolitical shifts.

*Nisar Ahmed Khan, Research Affiliate at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI)

It has recently transpired [1] during the trial of the widow of Orlando nightclub shooter, Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016 that his father, Seddique Mateen, was an FBI informant for eleven years.

In an email, the prosecution revealed to the defense attorney of Noor Salman, the widow of Omar Mateen, that Seddique Mateen was an FBI informant from January 2005 to June 2016 and that he had been sending money to Afghanistan and Turkey, possibly to fund violent insurrection against the government of Pakistan.

Although the allegation that Washington provides money and arms to its arch-foe in Afghanistan, the Taliban, to mount an insurrection against the government of Pakistan might sound far-fetched, we need to keep the background of the Taliban insurgency in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in mind.

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uighur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.

Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.

Therefore, the allegation that Washington has provided material support to the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) as a tit-for-tat response to Pakistan’s security agencies double game of providing support to the Afghan Taliban to mount attacks against the Afghan security forces and their American backers cannot be ruled out.

Notwithstanding, as well-informed readers must be aware that military operations have been going on in the tribal areas of Pakistan since 2009, but a military operation – unlike law enforcement or Rangers operation, as in the metropolitan city of Karachi – is a different kind of operation; it’s an all-out war.

The army surrounds the insurgency-wracked area from all sides and orders the villagers to vacate their homes. Then the army calls in air force and heavy artillery to carpet bomb the whole area; after which ground troops move in to look for the dead and injured in the rubble of towns and villages.

Air force bombardment and heavy artillery shelling has been going on in the tribal areas of Pakistan for several years; Pashtun tribesmen have been taking fire; their homes, property and livelihoods have been destroyed; they have lost their families and children in this brutal war, which has displaced millions of tribesmen who have been rotting in the refugee camps in Peshawar, Mardan and Bannu districts since the Swat and South Waziristan military operations in 2009 and then the ongoing North Waziristan operation which began in June 2014.

Therefore, the public opinion in Pakistan is vehemently against military operations in the Pashtun tribal areas. In fact, the general elections of 2013 were contested on a single issue: Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror, which has displaced millions of Pashtun tribesmen.

The Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) and the neoliberal Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were routed, because in keeping with their “liberal interventionist” ideology, they stood for military operations against Islamist Pashtun militants in tribal areas; and the people of Pashtun-majority Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province gave a sweeping mandate to the newcomer in the Pakistani political landscape: Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), because the latter promised to deal with tribal militants through negotiations and political settlements.

Although both Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif had failed to keep their election pledge of using peaceful means for dealing with the menace of religious extremism and militancy, the public sentiment has been firmly against military operations in tribal areas. The 2013 parliamentary elections were, in a way, a referendum against Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and the Pashtun electorate gave a sweeping mandate to pro-peace political forces against the pro-war political parties.

Regarding Washington’s conflicted relationship with Islamic jihadists, it is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors militants but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance, Washington nurtured the Afghan jihadists during the Cold War against the former Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988, but after the signing of the Geneva Accords and consequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support from the Afghan jihadists.

Similarly, the United States lent its support to militants during the Libyan and Syrian proxy wars, but after achieving the policy objectives of toppling the Arab nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the anti-Israel Syrian government, the United States relinquished its blanket support from the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of militants battling the Syrian government, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014 from where the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

The United States regional allies in the Middle East, however, are not as subtle and experienced in Machiavellian geopolitics. Under the misconception that alliances and enmities in international politics are permanent, the Middle Eastern autocrats keep on pursuing the same belligerent policy indefinitely as laid down by the hawks in Washington for a brief period of time in order to achieve certain strategic objectives.

Keeping up appearances in order to maintain the façade of justice and morality is indispensable in international politics and Washington strictly abides by this code of conduct. Its medieval client states in the Middle East, however, often keep on pursuing the same militarist and belligerent policies of nurturing militants against their regional rivals, which are untenable in the long run in a world where pacifism has generally been accepted as one of the fundamental axioms of the modern worldview.

Sources and Links:

[1] Pulse Nightclub Gunman’s Father Was Allegedly an FBI Informant for More Than a Decade:

http://time.com/5215665/seddique-mateen-fbi-informant-pulse-nightclub/

The so-called Skripal affair involving the alleged nerve gas attack on a Russian former spy and his daughter in Salisbury, England, has spiraled into a full-blown West versus Russia crisis, resulting in several significant anti-Russian measures by the Western nations including the expulsion of Russian diplomats, asset freeze, and the like, engulfing the United Nations as well, in light of US’s decision to expel some 60 Russian diplomats including 12 at the UN.

The US’s decision is, legally speaking, questionable and represents a violation of international norms and principles governing the US-UN relations. US can invoke its own laws to expel Russian officials involved in UN-unrelated activities, but it cannot do so with respect to the Russian diplomats at the UN, who enjoy “functional immunity” under the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (Article IV). The so-called New York Convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly Resolution 179, was reinforced by the 1947 US-UN Headquarters Agreement, which keeps the US hands off the UN ‘district’ as “inviolable.”

Yet, instead of questioning the US’s unlawful move against Russia, the UN Secretary General has tacitly consented to it and thus made a mockery of UN. This is reflected in the pathetic reaction of the spokesperson for the Secretary General who is quoted at the UN News Center stating that “this action may require those members to leave the country,” citing the UN-US Headquarters Agreement, which governs the relations between the Organization and the Host country.

On the contrary, this Agreement protects the Russian diplomats, as well as other foreign delegates to the UN, by stipulating that every country is allowed to select its own representatives to the international organization; an outright dereliction of his duty, UN Secretary General’s failure to rush to the protection of Russian diplomats, who are expelled without the US bothering to provide any explanation whatsoever, is lamentable and represents a blot on his record. Russia should now raise the matter at the UN Security Council and to appeal to the special General Assembly Committee that oversees such matters.

Had there been a UN Security Council condemnation of Russian involvement in the spy poisoning case, perhaps US would have a stronger hand in rationalizing its decision. But the Security Council did not take any position after the British complaint, and both UK and Russia agreed that the poisoning case ought to be investigated by the chemical weapons experts of the chemical weapons prohibition organization.

According to the British media, the investigation is on-going and may take months, and the Salisbury health officials in the London Times have categorically denied that they have treated any patient suffering from nerve gas attack, thus contradicting the British government’s (false) claim that dozens of other people have been treated for the attack.

From a critical legal standpoint, there are significant holes in the official British explanation that suggest a manufactured crisis to frame, target, smear, and weaken Russia in the international community, tantamount to a new cold war offensive by the West, which has now infected the UN by the illegal moves against the Russian diplomats and forcing a regrettable paralysis by the Secretary General. Clearly, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Skripal case has been instigated by the new cold war enemies of Russia, who now seem to be moving in the direction of boycotting the upcoming World Cup in Russia.

The sole purpose of the Skripal affair is to score against the Putin government and to rollback some of Putin’s recent foreign policy successes, such as drawing the NATO Turkey closer to itself and gaining the upper hands in Syria and making geopolitical inroads in the Middle East, while at the same time upgrading its nuclear arsenal and matching the US’s nuclear deterrence. The net result of this new West versus Russia offensive is, sadly, a weakening of international norms and, with it, the UN, reaffirming once again that today’s world order is in increasing disarray.

The recently-concluded treaty between Timor-Leste and Australia on maritime boundaries is a victory for Timor-Leste which will get a larger share of the revenue from the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea. However, it will take many years before the field is developed, and the location of the pipeline remains to be resolved.

By Viji Menon*

Timor-Leste and Australia signed a historic treaty in New York on 6 March 2018, witnessed by the UN Secretary-General, establishing permanent maritime boundaries between them. The Treaty was the culmination of several rounds of negotiations since January 2017 between the two countries, and was facilitated by the Conciliation Commission established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In a joint press release with Australia, Timor-Leste’s main negotiator in the talks, former Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, declared that the treaty “establishes for the first time, a fair border between our two countries, based on international law”. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop described the signing of the treaty as a “milestone” and stated that “It reinforces our respect for, and the importance of, the international rules-based order in resolving disputes”.

Transitioning to Fairness

The boundary issue has long been linked by Timor-Leste to the issue of sovereignty and therefore is hugely symbolic for it. Australia had sought a boundary that was aligned with its continental shelf, but Timor-Leste’s position was that that the border should be the median line between it and Australia. In January 2017, Timor-Leste terminated the 2006 Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) with Australia as it was not happy with this treaty.

It provided that revenues from the Greater Sunrise field would be shared 50:50 between the two countries. The CMATS also put on hold any claim to sovereign rights and did not establish any local seabed boundary, the final definition of which was postponed until the treaty’s expiration in 50 years.

Under the new treaty, oil and gas fields currently shared between Australia and Timor-Leste in the Joint Petroleum Development Area will transition to Timor-Leste’s exclusive jurisdiction. While they have agreed to maintain the existing fiscal and regulatory arrangements for the Bayu Undan and Kitan fields, Timor-Leste will derive 100 percent of future upstream revenue from these fields. However, as oil resources in these fields are drying up, this may not amount to much revenue for Timor-Leste.

On the Greater Sunrise field, the Treaty recognises Australia’s and Timor-Leste’s shared sovereign rights over the resources there. The Treaty establishes the Greater Sunrise Special Regime to jointly manage and develop this resource and to share revenue. Australia and Timor-Leste will establish a Designated Authority and a Governance Board to oversee Greater Sunrise.

Rushing Against Time

The two countries have agreed to share upstream revenue:

– In the ratio of 30 per cent to Australia and 70 per cent to Timor-Leste in the event that the Greater Sunrise fields are developed by means of a pipeline to an LNG processing plant in Timor-Leste.

– In the ratio of 20 per cent to Australia and 80 per cent to Timor-Leste in the event that the Greater Sunrise fields are developed by means of a pipeline to an LNG processing plant in Australia.

This formula, regardless of what is agreed upon finally, represents an improvement for Timor-Leste on the 50:50 split outlined in the previous CMATS Treaty. The reaction to the Treaty in Timor-Leste has been overwhelmingly positive, while expressing the expectation that the pipeline will bring the gas to Timor-Leste.

It is uncertain, however, as to how long it will take before oil and gas resources in the Greater Sunrise field are exploited and provide revenues for Timor-Leste, regardless of the location of the pipeline. Some experts estimate that it could take as long as 10-15 years. Time is of the essence for Timor-Leste as the existing fields are drying up, as revenues in the Petroleum Fund are diminishing, and as there are few other sources of non-oil income.

Too Costly, Too Risky?

As the critical issue of the location of the pipeline to transport the gas from Greater Sunrise remains to be resolved, discussions are continuing between the joint venture (the oil companies) and Timor-Leste. Woodside, the main partner in the joint venture, has expressed its preference for a pipeline to Darwin in Australia, as opposed to the option preferred by Timor-Leste, which is a pipeline from Greater Sunrise to an onshore processing facility in Timor-Leste (Tase Mane project).

Then Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao explained in a speech in 2013 that the plan was to develop the south coast as a sub-regional centre for the petroleum industry, providing direct economic dividends for the country.

The Tase Mane project includes three operational clusters along the country’s south coast facing the Timor Sea: a supply base in Suai, where logistics and service works will be undertaken and sourced for the petroleum industry; a refinery and a petrochemical industry to be established to the east; and further to the east the government has designated a sizeable area for the development of LNG projects. This will be the location at which the natural gas pipeline reaches Timor-Leste.

The joint venture has claimed that the Timorese proposal is too costly, too risky and not commercially viable. It is uncertain as to what will happen to the Tase Mane project if there is no agreement on bringing the gas to Timor-Leste, or if this will be a deal-breaker. Timor-Leste will still get 80% of the revenues if the pipeline goes to Australia.

Complicated Negotiations with Indonesia?

Another complication for Timor-Leste is that the lateral lines of the new agreement join with the existing 1972 continental shelf boundary between Australia and Indonesia. This means that Australia’s and Timor-Leste’s new boundary arrangements do not affect Indonesia’s rights or change Australia’s existing boundaries with Indonesia.

Timor-Leste has also yet to reach an agreement on its maritime boundaries with Indonesia, and although bilateral boundary negotiations were initiated in late 2015, agreements have yet to be concluded.

Following the signing of the Treaty, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri was quoted in the Timor media as stating: “If we do not have agreement with Indonesia… it has not yet been completed, therefore it is necessary for us to negotiate with Indonesia.” Hernani Coelho, Timor-Leste’s Petroleum Minister, said recently that the negotiations with Indonesia on the maritime boundaries could be “complicated.”

*Viji Menon is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. The former Singapore Foreign Service Officer previously served with the United Nations in Timor-Leste for several years.

Debilitating hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran is about lots of things, not least who will have the upper hand in a swath of land stretching from Central Asia to the Atlantic coast of Africa. While attention is focused on ensuring that continued containment of Iran ensures that Saudi Arabia has a leg up, geopolitics is but one side of the equation. Natural gas is the other.

With signatories to the Paris climate accord moving towards bans on petrol and diesel-driven vehicles within a matter of decades and renewable energy technology advancing in strides, natural gas takes on added significance.

These global energy trends are hastening in an era in which oil will significantly diminish in importance and natural gas, according to energy scholar Sergei Paltsev, will fill gaps in the provision of renewable energy that await technological advances.

Saudia Arabia’s problem is that Iran and Qatar have the gas reserves it does not. That is one reason why renewables figure prominently in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform program, not only to prepare Saudi Arabia economically for a post-oil future but also to secure its continued geopolitical significance.

Prince Mohammed, like his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, hopes that the kingdom will have an advantage in the generation of solar energy given that the sun hovers higher over his country than over Europe and other parts of the world and that it has less interference from clouds.

As a result, natural gas is a factor in mounting tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and say some analysts, a driver of the Saudi-UAE-led, ten-month-old diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar.

In what could constitute a serious escalation of hostilities, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen threatened this week to retaliate against Iran in response to missile attacks on the kingdom by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

“Perhaps, the Saudi elite knows all too well that the basis of its power is hollowing out rapidly as a result of the global climate response and anticipated dwindling of conventional oil. The stakes could never have been higher,” said international relations scholar David Crieckmans in a recently published volume on the geopolitics of renewables.

Contributing to the same volume, Thijs van de Graaf, another international relations scholar, suggested that of all the Middle Eastern oil producers, Saudi Arabia may have the most to lose.

Ironically, crippling sanctions that severely hampered Iran’s oil production and only began to be lifted following the 2015 international agreement that curbed the country’s nuclear program coupled with US threats to withdraw from the accord and potentially reimpose sanctions may work in Iran’s favour in the transition to a post-oil world.

“Iran…has a lot of advantages. It has a much broader economic base, a longer tradition of trading, and lower fertility rates… The country’s oil production is much under its potential due to years of sanctions. This might in the long run turn out to be an advantage as these economies prepare themselves for a post-oil age,” Mr. Van der Graaf said.

Add to that the fact that it is likely to be be gas supplies from Iran and Turkmenistan, two Caspian Sea states, rather than Saudi oil that will determine which way the future Eurasian energy architecture tilts: China, the world’s third largest LNG importer, or Europe.

“Iran, within five years, will likely have 24.6 billion cubic metres of natural gas available for annual piped gas exports beyond its current supply commitments. Not enough to supply all major markets, Tehran will face a crucial geopolitical choice for the destination of its piped exports. Iran will be able to export piped gas to two of the following three markets: European Union (EU)/ Turkey via the Southern Gas Corridor centring on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), India via an Iran-Oman-India pipeline, or China via either Turkmenistan or Pakistan. The degree to which the system of energy relationships in Eurasia will be more oriented toward the European Union or China will depend on the extent to which each secures Caspian piped gas exports through pipeline infrastructure directed to its respective markets,” energy scholar Micha’el Tanchum argued.

In other words, the existential threat Iran poses to Saudi Arabia goes far beyond the fact that the Islamic republic challenges Saudi monarchical rule by offering an alternative, albeit flawed, form of Islamic governance that incorporates a degree of popular sovereignty. It involves competition in which Iran can leverage assets Saudi Arabia does not have, leaving the kingdom dependent on containment that at best postpones issues rather than accommodates solutions. It also means that the antagonists’ regional proxy wars in Yemen and elsewhere are unlikely to remove the fundamental issues that drive the Saudi-Iranian rivalry and translate into destabilizing short-term policies.

Hardliners, including US President Donald J. Trump’s newly appointed national security advisor, John Bolton, and nominee for the post of secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, may be proponents of regime change in Iran, yet, the question remains whether that would truly alleviate Saudi fears that are shared by Israel. If successful, it would eliminate the Islamic governance challenge, but do nothing to alter the reality of a changing energy landscape.

Barbara Slavin, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, cautions that a possible US withdrawal next month from the nuclear agreement with Iran does not necessarily mean either the demise of the accord or a re-imposition of a crippling sanctions regime.

“Twenty years ago, Congress passed similar secondary sanctions—the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act—threatening penalties against foreign companies investing in Iran’s oil and gas sector. Europe cried foul and the sanctions were never implemented. That could well be the outcome in May” when Mr. Trump has to decide whether the United States remains a party to the accord, Ms. Slavin noted.

By Peggy Chang

U.S. President Donald Trump says there is “a good chance” North Korea leader Kim Jong Un will do “what is right for his people and for humanity” by moving to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

In a Twitter post early Wednesday, Trump said he looks forward to his planned meeting with Kim but emphasized the need to keep up “maximum sanctions and pressure” in the meantime.

China said during Kim’s secretive visit to Beijing, he confirmed his commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and engage in talks with the United States and South Korea.

According to China’s official Xinhua news agency, Kim made the unofficial visit from Sunday through Wednesday and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump said Xi sent him a message saying his meeting with Kim went well and that the North Korea leader looked forward to meeting with Trump.

Kim-Xi Meeting

In the wake of the Kim-Xi meeting, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday the White House is cautiously optimistic, and feels “things are moving in the right direction,” adding the meeting between Kim and Xi is a “good indication the maximum pressure campaign has been working.”

Sanders noted it was Kim’s first trip abroad since becoming the leader of North Korea, and the White House consider that to be another “positive sign that the maximum pressure campaign is continuing to work.”

Regarding whether the meeting is on track to take place in May, Sanders told reporters the White House wants to make sure “it is done as soon as we can,” but “we also want to make sure it’s done properly, and we’re working towards that goal.”

Kim’s visit to China was shrouded in secrecy and confirmed by Chinese state media Xinhua News Agency only after Kim had left the country.

According Xinhua’s report, the two leaders reiterated the importance of maintaining the close China-North Korea alliance.

Denuclearization

On the issue of denuclearization, Xi told Kim that China “sticks to the goal of denuclearization of the peninsula,” according to Xinhua.

The agency said Kim replied that he is prepared to resolve “the issue of the denuclearization” as long as South Korea and the United States “respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability, while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace.”

“We have to understand very clearly what Kim’s phrase means,” Richard C. Bush, Director of Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution told VOA. “Based on how North Korea has elaborated on its conditions in the past, it probably means, at some point, the end of U.S.-R.O.K. alliance, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

“None of these things are something American or South Korean government would contemplate,” Bush said.

“It is not a bad thing North Korea is again talking about denuclearization, on the other hand, based on how we understand how they define that objective, the U.S. should be very careful,” he added.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday reported on Kim’s visit to China, but did not mention a promise to denuclearize or the upcoming summits with the U.S. and South Korea.

China ‘can’t be left out’

Dennis Wilder, professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and former special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, spoke with VOA following the announcement earlier this month of the possibility of a landmark meeting between Trump and Kim.

He said the Chinese may be “worried about being left out, that somehow the U.S. and North Korea might come to an agreement without consulting with them.”

Through the Kim-Xi meeting, China is “making a big statement, that they are part of this process. They can’t be left out of this process, and that the Americans and the South Koreans need to remember that,” he added.

Earlier this month, Trump agreed to sit down with Kim, whom he once called “little rocket man,” to discuss ending North Korea’s nuclear program.

Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said a “dramatic” and surprising change of posture by the North Korean leader led Trump to agree to the meeting. Trump said while he consulted with others, he made this decision to meet with Kim by himself.

In the past two years, North Korea has launched numerous medium and long-range ballistic missiles and conducted two nuclear tests, in large part to develop an capability to target U.S. mainland cities with a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile.

In response, the Trump administration employed what it called a “maximum pressure strategy,” and led international efforts to pressure Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program by imposing tough sanctions that ban billions of dollars worth of North Korean coal, iron ore, clothing products and seafood exports. The Trump administration has also said that, if necessary, it is prepared to use military force to eliminate the nuclear threat.

In the last few months, Kim made a dramatic shift from his nonnegotiable position that North Korea is now a nuclear weapons state. Instead, he suspended nuclear and missile tests, participated in the Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea, and offered to engage in nuclear talks. He is expected to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month and with Trump by May.

VOA Korean Service contributed.

Russian commentaries yesterday and today have been focused almost entirely on the Kemerovo fire, the way in which Vladimir Putin and his regime have responded, and the likely consequences of the fire and the response on the future of Putin and the Russian Federation.

Many of these commentaries deserve more extended treatment than Window on Eurasia can provide, but in order that some of the most important arguments and conclusions aren’t missed, below are ten observations that appear especially insightful or indicative about the crisis Russia finds itself in. They are:

1. “The state exists in Russia only for itself” and does not fulfil the most important function for the population, that of guaranteeing physical security, according to Novaya Gazeta commentator Kirill Martynov. Moreover, he says, contacts between the government and the people have completely broken down (ru/articles/2018/03/27/75953-vlast-v-sebe).

2. This distance has been underlined by the fact that those in power, including Putin, no longer talk about Russians as human beings and victims but only as markers of the regime’s need for demographic growth and the defense of territory, Ivan Belyayev of Radio Svoboda says (livejournal.com/3442168.html).

3. Putin’s failure to meet with the people and his closeting himself only with officials offers “a good characteristic of the existing political system.” In it, Moscow blogger Alekssey Melnikov says, “the people are nobodies and the bosses are everything” (ru/material.php?id=5ABA9BC740938).

4. Putin bears responsibility for what happened not because he caused the fire but because he created a power vertical that opened the way to such disasters, Rosbalt commentator Sergey Shelin says (ru/blogs/2018/03/27/1691962.html).

5. Putin’s power vertical can’t work in time of tragedies and the Kremlin leader compounds this by politicizing grief and thus appears to trivialize it in the minds of many, according to Moscow political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin (ru/selected/entry/135708).

6. The tragedy of Kemerovo is that it shows that Putin’s system does not allow local people to speak to the population and requires that they wait until the Kremlin leader appears, something that happens far too late as crises multiply, according to two Vedomosti journalists (ru/politics/articles/2018/03/27/755093-tragediya-kemerove-pokazala-nesposobnost-mestnoi).

7. People died because the Russian regime cared more about fighting terrorism and thus required doors to be locked than about protecting and ultimately saving the lives of Russian people, according to independent security expert Dmitry Borishchuk (ru/articles/2018/03/27/75956-zapasnye-vyhody-zakryvayut-iz-za-profilaktiki-terrorizma).

8. While the regime hasn’t yet identified the causes of the fire in Kemerovo, its security services have already arrested a Ukrainian prankster for exaggerating the number of losses (ru/news/2018/03/28/140547-sk-vozbudil-delo-protiv-ukrainskogo-prankera-on-zayavil-o-300-pogibshih-v-kemerovo), and the Duma has taken up a new law to impose tighter restrictions on journalists covering disasters (apn.ru/index.php?newsid=37181).

9. All too many Russians have fallen back into old patterns and blamed the fire on “persons of Caucasian nationality” (ru/news/incident/27-03-2018/direktor-kemerovskoy-zimney-vishni-obvinila-v-podzhoge-podrostkov and onkavkaz.com/news/2183-chudovischnaja-provokacija-direktor-zimnei-vishni-popytalas-vozlozhit-vinu-za-pozhar-na-kavkazc.html  http://fedpress.ru/news/42/society/2002962), foreigners in general (kommersant.ru/doc/3586564), or Western intelligence services in particular (politobzor.net/162755-wada-ne-ugomonitsya-agentstvo-poyasnilo-plany-suditsya-so-sportsmenami-rf.html).

10. And some are even hoping to exploit this disaster to go after their most hatred, including in the case of Rex commentator Modest Kolerov Russian liberals for their negative comments about the Russian government’s response in Kemerovo (ru/articles/56864.html).

An international team of researchers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories have, for the first time, uncovered a galaxy that is missing most — if not all — of its dark matter. This discovery of the galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 challenges currently-accepted theories of and galaxy formation and provides new insights into the nature of dark matter. The results are published in Nature.

Astronomers using Hubble and several ground-based observatories have found a unique astronomical object: a galaxy that appears to contain almost no dark matter [1]. Hubble helped to accurately confirm the distance of NGC 1052-DF2 to be 65 million light-years and determined its size and brightness. Based on these data the team discovered that NGC 1052-DF2 larger than the Milky Way, but contains about 250 times fewer stars, leading it to be classified as an ultra diffuse galaxy.

“I spent an hour just staring at this image,” lead researcher Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University says as he recalls first seeing the Hubble image of NGC 1052-DF2. “This thing is astonishing: a gigantic blob so sparse that you see the galaxies behind it. It is literally a see-through galaxy.”

Further measurements of the dynamical properties of ten globular clusters orbiting the galaxy allowed the team to infer an independent value of the galaxies mass. This mass is comparable to the mass of the stars in the galaxy, leading to the conclusion that NGC 1052-DF2 contains at least 400 times less dark matter than astronomers predict for a galaxy of its mass, and possibly none at all [2]. This discovery is unpredicted by current theories on the distribution of dark matter and its influence on galaxy formation.

“Dark matter is conventionally believed to be an integral part of all galaxies — the glue that holds them together and the underlying scaffolding upon which they are built,” explains co-author Allison Merritt from Yale University and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany. And van Dokkum adds: “This invisible, mysterious substance is by far the most dominant aspect of any galaxy. Finding a galaxy without any is completely unexpected; it challenges standard ideas of how galaxies work.”

Merritt remarks: “There is no theory that predicts these types of galaxies — how you actually go about forming one of these things is completely unknown.”

Although counterintuitive, the existence of a galaxy without dark matter negates theories that try to explain the Universe without dark matter being a part of it [3]: The discovery of NGC 1052-DF2 demonstrates that dark matter is somehow separable from galaxies. This is only expected if dark matter is bound to ordinary matter through nothing but gravity.

Meanwhile, the researchers already have some ideas about how to explain the missing dark matter in NGC 1052-DF2. Did a cataclysmic event such as the birth of a multitude of massive stars sweep out all the gas and dark matter? Or did the growth of the nearby massive elliptical galaxy NGC 1052 billions of years ago play a role in NGC 1052-DF2’s dark matter deficiency?

These ideas, however, still do not explain how this galaxy formed. To find an explanation, the team is already hunting for more dark-matter deficient galaxies as they analyse Hubble images of 23 ultra-diffuse galaxies — three of which appear to be similar to NGC 1052-DF2.

Human footprints found off Canada’s Pacific coast may be 13,000 years old, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Duncan McLaren and colleagues from the Hakai Institute and University of Victoria, Canada.

Previous research suggests that, during the last ice age (which ended around 11,700 years ago), humans moved into the Americas from Asia across what was then a land bridge to North America, eventually reaching what is now the west coast of British Columbia, Canada as well as coastal regions to the south.

Along the pacific coast of Canada, much of this shoreline is today covered by dense forest and only accessible by boat, making it difficult to look for the archaeological evidence which might support this hypothesis. In this study, the research team excavated intertidal beach sediments on the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia, where the sea level was two to three meters lower than it is today at the end of the last ice age.

The researchers uncovered 29 human footprints of at least three different sizes in these sediments, which radiocarbon dating estimated to be around 13,000 years old. Measurements and digital photographic analyses revealed that the footprints probably belonged to two adults and a child, all barefoot. The findings suggest that humans were present on the west coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago, as it emerged from the most recent ice age.

This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age. The authors suggest that further excavations with more advanced methods are likely to uncover more human footprints in the area and would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America.

“This article details the discovery of footprints on the west coast of Canada with associated radiocarbon dates of 13,000 years before present,” says Duncan McLaren, lead author of the study. “This finding provides evidence of the seafaring people who inhabited this area during the tail end of the last major ice age.”

According to researchers at Aalto University, Finland, large-scale weather cycles, such as the one related to the El Niño phenomenon, affect two-thirds of the world’s cropland. In these so called climate oscillations, air pressure, sea level temperature or other similar factors fluctuate regularly in areas far apart in a way that causes rain and temperature patterns to shift significantly.

‘During recent years, researchers’ ability to predict these oscillations has improved significantly. With this research, we highlight the potential of utilizing this improved forecasting skill in agricultural planning. This could improve the resilience of agriculture to climate related shocks, which can improve food security in many areas across the globe’, says Matias Heino, a doctoral candidate at Aalto University.

The study, published in Nature Communications, is the first global study which examines the impacts of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation as well as the similar North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Indian Ocean Dipole, on global food crop production.

These climate oscillations can be divided into different episodes depending on their phase. It is already known that El Niño and its opposite phase, La Niña, have a clear effect on corn, soy, rice, and wheat yields in many areas across South Asia, Latin America and southern Africa.

‘Our study showed that the North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO, significantly affects crop production in many parts of Europe, but also in North Africa and the Middle East’, says assistant professor Matti Kummu from Aalto University.

The North Atlantic Oscillation describes the relationship between the Icelandic low pressure and the Azores high pressure areas. When the air pressure in Iceland is significantly lower than in the Azores, stronger winds increase the transport of warm, moist air from the Atlantic to Europe. During the other phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation, when the air pressure difference is smaller, less than average amounts of mild air flow to Europe. It makes the winters colder and less rainy.

When the Atlantic air pressure difference has been high, the productivity of crops in Europe have reduced by 2 per cent compared to the average. The effect has been particularly strong in places like Spain and the Balkans, where the decrease in productivity has been as much as 10 per cent. Crop productivity reductions, by up to 6 per cent, were also observed in North Africa and the Middle East. During the other phase of NAO, when the air pressure difference is weaker, the same areas have shown positive changes, in crop productivity.

In the Indian Ocean Dipole, the surface water temperature of the Indian ocean fluctuates regularly in the ocean’s eastern and western parts: When the surface water is warmer in the Western Indian Ocean, the temperatures in the Eastern Indian Ocean tend to be lower, and vice versa. The IOD phenomenon affects food crop production particularly in Australia, where the crop productivity may, depending IOD’s phase, be up to 8 per cent smaller or 6 per cent larger compared to the average.

By Gagliano Giuseppe*

(RFE/RL) — Poland has signed a $4.75 billion deal with the United States to buy Patriot air-defense missile systems as it seeks to beef up its forces amid increasingly aggressive moves by Russia in the region.

President Andrzej Duda said the deal for the state-of-the-art antiaircraft and antimissile systems was a “historic” move for Poland and its armed forces.

“It’s a lot of money, but we also know from our historical experience that security has no price,” Duda said.

The system is compatible with technology used by NATO and U.S. troops based in Poland, Duda said. It includes 16 launchers, four radars, and the latest fire-control system.

Parts of the system will be made in Poland, a boost for the country’s arms industry.

Romania also signed a $3.9 billion contract last year to buy Patriot air-defense systems. The first such system is scheduled for delivery next year.

On NATO’s eastern flank, Poland and Romania are upgrading their defense systems and modernizing their militaries after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with several US religious leaders at his residence in New York on Wednesday.

He was joined by Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Saudi ambassador to the US, Secretary General of the Muslim World League Dr. Mohammed Al-Issa and Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir.

During the meeting, the crown prince stressed the importance of respect between followers of religions and the need to promote the positive values of coexistence and tolerance.

New U of T Engineering research shows that adoption of self-driving cars — also known as autonomous vehicles (AVs) — could significantly reduce the amount of valuable urban space dedicated to parking.

“In a parking lot full of AVs, you don’t need to open the doors, so they can park with very little space in between,” said Professor Matthew Roorda, senior author of a new study in Transportation Research Part B. “You also don’t need to leave space for each car to drive out, because you can signal the surrounding AVs to move out of the way.”

While traditional parking lots are configured for “islands” of cars that can each pull in or out of a spot, an AV parking lot could resemble a solid grid, with outer cars moving aside as needed to let the inner cars enter and exit. The researchers’ challenge was to determine the optimal size of the grid to maximize storage while minimizing the number of moves required to extract any given car.

“There’s a trade-off,” said Mehdi Nourinejad, a recent PhD graduate from the Department of Civil Engineering and the study’s lead author. “If you have a very large grid, it leads to a lot of relocations, which means that it takes longer on average to retrieve your vehicle. On the other hand, if you have a number of smaller grids, it wastes a lot of space.”

Nourinejad, Roorda and their co-author Sina Bahrami created a computer model in which they could simulate the effects of various layouts for AV parking lots. They then used an algorithm to optimize the design for various factors, including minimizing the number of relocations and maximizing the proportion of the lot that was used for parking versus lanes for relocation, entering or exiting.

Their analysis showed that, for a given number of cars, a well-designed AV parking lot could accommodate 62 per cent more cars than a conventional one. Depending on parking lot dimensions, in some cases they were able to increase the capacity even further — square-shaped AV parking lots could accommodate up to 87 per cent more cars. This improved use of space could translate into much smaller parking lot footprints, provided the total number of cars that need to park in them remains constant.

Another advantage of AV parking lots is that the design is not fixed. “If demand changes — for example, if you need to pack more cars into the lot — you don’t need to paint new parking spaces,” said Bahrami. “Instead, the operator can just signal the cars to rearrange themselves. It will take longer to retrieve your vehicle, but you will fit more cars in.”

Roorda hopes that municipal parking authorities will be able to use their design approach to enhance urban spaces. “Right now, our downtown cores have giant municipal parking lots next to major attractions,” he said. “AVs could allow us to both shrink and relocate these parking lots, opening up valuable space in cities.”

The concept of an AV driving and dropping off a passenger, navigating to an ultra-efficient AV parking lot and later returning to pick up the passanger sounds attractive. But this new paradigm could also introduce negative consequences, such as a potential increase in traffic congestion.

“Right now, we have a lot of cars on the road with just one passenger,” said Roorda. “If we locate AV parking lots too far away from major attractions, we could end up with streets crowded with vehicles that have zero passengers, which would be worse.”

Another drawback is that team’s designs only work for parking lots reserved exclusively for AVs, rather than a mix of AVs and conventional vehicles, though Roorda says that a single lot could have both AV and non-AV areas.

Roorda and his team also can’t predict when the number of AVs on the road will reach the critical mass required to make use of their designs.

“We’re talking about large numbers of vehicles that can fully drive themselves, with no requirement for a driver to take over if something goes wrong,” said Roorda. “There’s a lot that has to happen before we get to that stage.”

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia last week shattered many of the negative stereotypes about the Arab world that persist in America, and have defined the contentious relationship between the two.

Before embarking on a tour of six American cities and meeting White House and Congressional officials, Crown Prince Mohammed appeared on the CBS TV program “60 Minutes,” which is notorious as the toughest news show in America. The four difficult questions Arab leaders always face but fail to answer properly, thereby undermining the Arab world’s credibility, were thrown at him by reporter Norah O’Donnell. But instead of ducking and dodging, he hit each one “out of the park,” like grand slam home runs in an American baseball championship.

What Crown Prince Mohammed is doing is not a game, obviously. He’s about bettering the future of the Arab world and building a relationship with the West based on facts, not the usual ugly fiction. He showed that someone in the Arab world finally understands how to speak effectively to Americans to reinforce the best interests of the Arab world using strategic communications, not confrontation or disagreement.

The first question Arabs face involves the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks and the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists were Saudis. Rather than being indignant at the question, as others often are, Crown Prince Mohammed took it head-on, explaining that the 15 hijackers were as much a threat to Saudi Arabia as to America and the West. He said Osama Bin Laden had a “clear objective… to create a schism between the Middle East and the West, between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America… to create an environment conducive to recruitment and spreading his radical message that the West is plotting to destroy you. Indeed, he succeeded in creating this schism in the West.”

The second question Arab leaders face regards the perception that Arab women are more oppressed in the Arab world than they are in the West. Americans conveniently forget that American women are oppressed, too. It took the US 64 years for all 50 states to grant women the right to vote under the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution, which was adopted in 1920. The last of the 50 states, Mississippi, ratified it only in 1984.

Native American women did not receive rights as Americans until 1924, and those rights were not fully implemented until 1948. African Americans lived in a state of limbo in the US from America’s founding right through to the late 1960s, when laws were passed to finally recognize them as equals. Despite those civil rights laws, many black Americans are still not treated equally.

But Crown Prince Mohammed didn’t throw those truths into American faces. Instead, he explained what he is doing to reverse years of restrictions imposed in 1979 after the Iranian-inspired Muslim Brotherhood assault on the Grand Mosque in Makkah, which killed 255 Muslims and injured 560 more. He said that, in response to the 1979 attack, Saudi Arabia cracked down on many rights to confront violent extremism, including closing movie theaters, banning music and dance, and restricting the rights of Saudi women — not just banning them from driving but also excluding them from business and preventing them from obtaining an education.

“The laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of Sharia: That women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men,” Crown Prince Mohammed said. “This, however, does not particularly specify a black abaya or a black head cover. The decision is entirely left for a woman to decide what type of decent and respectful attire she chooses to wear.”

The Saudi Arabia of the past 40 years is not the Saudi Arabia of today, he said, and he ordered changes to allow all Saudis to live a “normal life,” including allowing women to drive, re-opening movie theaters, and encouraging the arts, music and entertainment.

O’Donnell forcefully re-asked the question: “Are women equal to men?” And Crown Prince Mohammed answered directly and without hesitation: “Absolutely. We are all human beings and there is no difference.”

The third question is always about “oppression” and human rights, this time with reference to the recent measures to address “corruption.” The West has a questionable record on human rights, and civil rights as well, yet Saudi Arabia and the Arab world are always held to a higher standard.

Crown Prince Mohammed explained: “Saudi Arabia believes in many of the principles of human rights. In fact, we believe in the notion of human rights, but ultimately Saudi standards are not the same as American standards. I don’t want to say that we don’t have shortcomings. We certainly do. But naturally we are working to mend these shortcomings.”

The fourth question involves the wealth of the Arab world, a question that ignores the greater wealth of the West. “Arab wealth” is always exaggerated as obscene, while “Western wealth” is associated with success and power. It’s an amazing hypocrisy considering that, on numerous lists of the world’s 50 wealthiest people, there are no Arabs. The lists are dominated by Americans, Asians and Europeans.

Instead of engaging in an argument, Crown Prince Mohammed answered with good sense. He explained that he spent 51 percent of his wealth on others, and said: “My personal life is something I’d like to keep to myself and I don’t try to draw attention to it. If some newspapers want to point something out about it, that’s up to them. As far as my private expenses, I’m a rich person and not a poor person. I’m not Gandhi or Mandela. I’m a member of the ruling family that existed for hundreds of years before the founding of Saudi Arabia.”

Years of Western misconceptions about the Arab world won’t be immediately erased, and his appearance doesn’t minimize the serious threats the Arab world faces from Iran, or the need Saudi Arabia has for nuclear technology to replace depleting oil resources. But Crown Prince Mohammed showed he understands the one thing many Arab leaders and nations fail to understand — that strategic communications, or how you present yourself, are important to the West. “Perception is reality,” and how you say something is often more significant than what you say.

This first formal introduction of Crown Prince Mohammad to the American people was a World Series championship.