Quantcast
Channel: Eurasia Review
Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live

UEFA Bans Albania’s Skenderbeu For Match-Fixing

0
0

By Gjergj Erebara

UEFA has banned Albania’s most successful football team for ten years for organizing a large-scale betting scam, and fined it one million euros.

UEFA’s ethics and disciplinary body has banned Albania’s top soccer team Skenderbeu for ten years and fined it a million euros after finding it guilty of running a large-scale betting scam following a two-year investigation.

The March 21 ruling was supposed to be secret but was leaked to the Albanian media and was accepted by the president of the team, Ardjan Takaj, who is also accused of being the mastermind behind the match-fixing scam.

Speaking in Tirana, Takaj acknowledged the decision and said the team would appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sport. He expressed hopes that the decision will be reversed. “We are clean,” Takaj said.

Skenderbeu has won five championships since 2011 in Albania and qualified for the UEFA Champions League beyond the preliminary phase in 2015, becoming the first Albanian team to achieve such a feat.

However, Skenderbeu’s luck has not lasted since UEFA’s Betting Fraud Detection System in meantime flagged about 50 matches that it suspected were fixed.

Inspectors from the Ethics and Disciplinary Body filled a 93-page report in February exposing a scam that had lasted several years.

According to the report, players stopped playing in crucial game, deliberately allowing goals, enabling gamblers to scoop large rewards.

Following publication of the report, UEFA announced that its inspectors had received death threats.

“UEFA Disciplinary Inspectors working on this case have received anonymous death threats, presumably intended to intimidate them and stop them carrying out their work. These threats will not succeed and the police have also been informed,” it said.


Precarious Communications: Julian Assange, Internet Access And Ecuador – OpEd

0
0

Being a netizen, to use that popular term of sociological derivation, can be a difficult business. It presumes digital engagement, often of the sharper sort.  To become a fully-fledged member of such citizenry, however, presumes access, a degree of Internet speed and appropriate platforms. Absent those, then different forms of activism must be sought.

Governments and authorities the world over have come to appreciate that either the activity itself is controlled (limiting internet access, for one), or the content made available on the Internet (the Great Firewall of China).  The resonant cliché there is that the one who controls the narrative controls history, or can, at the very least, blind it.

Out of such tensions and tussles comes Julian Assange, a member of that unique breed of cyber insurrectionists, ducking and weaving through the information channels with varying degrees of success. To function as a publishing figure, he requires access to the Internet, a phenomenon that presumes an acephalous society.

For years, his enemy has been the concentration of information in the hands of the few, the greedy sort who horde information from the commonweal as they encourage ignorance.  Publishing classified material has become a form of enlightenment, and it remains a furious debate waged across the political spectrum.

Little wonder, then, that Assange has become a political activist par excellence. If only he were merely, as Britain’s junior minister Sir Alan Duncan would have it, a holed up “miserable little worm.”  Better a worm, retorted Assange to the minister’s remarks in the House of Commons, “a healthy creature that invigorates the soil, than a snake.”

He encourages others to revolt, and promises assistance to the restless.  In March last year, he delighted in queries about the problems posed by the leaked CIA cyberespionage toolkit.  The interest of Silicon Valley firms had been piqued.

“We have decided to work with them,” explained Assange at his online press conference, “to give them some exclusive access to some of the technical details we have, so that fixes can be pushed out.”  Such advice would assist the companies to patch their products and render the task of accessing data by intelligence services more onerous.

Such announcements, not to mention frenzied activity on such social media platforms as Twitter, can only take place by the good grace of his hosts of five years, those staff at the Ecuadorean embassy in London whose patience has, at times, been tested.

The pact between the Ecuadorean state and tenant Assange is hardly one of steel. It more resembles rubber, stretching or narrowing accordingly.  When it has suited Ecuadorean interests to protect a troublesome political celebrity whilst permitting him to niggle the likes of the United States, Assange has been permitted vast, anarchic leeway.

Nick Miroff in the The Washington Post went so far as to deem Ecuador’s initial treatment of Assange as that of one who had won a trophy.  Even as the Ecuador’s Rafael Correa took measures against the press in his country, he would still “poke Washington in the eye and look like a champion for press freedom”.

When still president, Correa dressed it all as a matter of obligation. “Ecuador fulfilled its duty, we gave him sovereign asylum, and finally the Swedish judicial system has closed the file and will not press charges against Assange.”

On Wednesday, the rubbery aspect of the relationship took another shape.  Assange’s access to the internet would be halted.  His digital mischief, it seemed, had gotten out of hand:

“The government of Ecuador warns that Assange’s behaviour, through his messages on social networks, put at risk the country’s good relations with the United Kingdom, the other states of the European Union, and other nations.”

Such interventions tend to be inconsistent and arbitrary. In 2016, when WikiLeaks had emerged as an information guerrilla force of prominence in the US presidential election, the embassy took similar measures to cool the ardour.  Assange had gotten overly zealous, when in fact, he was simply fulfilling his brief. “The government of Ecuador,” came the reasons in 2016 from the Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry, “respects the principles of non-intervention in the affairs of other nations, does not meddle in electoral campaigns nor support any candidate in particular.” Gradual, tentative realignments were taking place in Latin America, and the trophy tenant had lost some lustre.

On that occasion, WikiLeaks had released hacked Democratic National Committee emails and those of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor, John Podesta. The US intelligence viewpoint on this was simple and simplistic: Assange had become a proxy of Russian interests. Undue electoral interference had been featured.  Forget, they insisted, on the light darkly shining upon the Clinton stranglehold of the Democrats, and the sordid plotting against Bernie Sanders.

What prompted the latest clipping of Assange’s wings?  Tweets, perhaps, shot through on Monday challenging the British-led account that Russia was directly responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury.

He had hardly been scurrilously contrarian with his remarks, though the current atmosphere turns tentative questions into howls of dissent.  Odd, he claimed, that the expulsion of Russian diplomats had taken place “over an unresolved event in the UK and that the US expelled nearly three times as many diplomats as the UK”.  While Russia might well have been involved, current evidence in the absence of independent confirmation was unverified and skimpy.

As with any testy relationship marked by a degree of self-interest, partners will squabble.  Compromise will be sought, though this is hardly likely to quell Assange’s insatiable pursuit of activism.  As the latest move suggests, arbitrariness is hard to avoid, and Assange remains a guest.  What matters is whether the reins will continue to be pulled in. Courtesy and good graces tend to shrink in the face of brute politics.

Ralph Nader: Stopping War Pusher John Bolton, Trump’s Choice For National ‘Insecurity’ Advisor – OpEd

0
0

John Bolton’s career of pushing for bombing countries like Iran and North Korea, and his having played an active role in the Bush/Cheney regime’s criminal war of aggression that destroyed Iraq, makes him a clear and present danger to our country and world peace. He is about to become Donald Trump’s personal national security advisor with a staff of 400 right next to the White House. He must be stopped!

For Bolton, the Constitution, federal law, the Geneva Conventions, and other international laws are pieces of paper to be thrown away with unctuous contempt.  This outlaw – the shame of Yale Law School—should have been cast away as a pariah if not prosecuted and imprisoned. A bully to his subordinates in the government and known as “kiss-ass” to his superiors, Bolton is aggressive, relentless, and consistently wrong, when not prevaricatory.

Under Secretary of State Colin Powell, during the imperial Bush/Cheney presidency, Bolton told the media that Fidel Castro was developing chemical and biological weapons. False. Secretary Powell, who believes Bolton is impetuous and dangerous, overrode his in-house liar and corrected the record. While in Cuba with a group, I heard Fidel Castro say he feared Bolton’s words were a precursor to a U.S. attack until Bolton’s remarks were dismissed by his superiors.

There is a remarkable liberal/conservative dislike and fright about Bolton having Trump’s ear daily. Especially since Trump is susceptible to adopting the positions of the last person who reaches him. The added danger is that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has privately told people that he, like many who have experienced Bolton in government, cannot work with him. So does that mean that Trump will have to choose between the restraining hand of General Mattis and the recklessness of the draft-avoiding torture advocate John Bolton?

Will Republicans, who refused to confirm Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, assume some responsibility for opposing this sociopath? They could easily pass a joint resolution of Congress demanding withdrawal of the appointment by Trump.

There are many vigorous critics of Bolton’s career and subsequent belligerent stances ; Just last month Bolton wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal demanding the bombing of North Korea. His juvenile, lethal positions avoid considering the consequences, responses, backlash and danger to our country’s own safety. He likes to bet on the world—a Dr. Strangelove on steroids.

A lengthy New York Times editorial (March 23, 2018) declares, “Yes, John Bolton Really is that Dangerous.”  It begins: “there are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton to lead the country into war.” Especially since Trump – mired in domestic scandals, investigations, and personal lawsuits—may wish to wag the dog and start wider, distracting, armed hostilities abroad.

The American Conservative magazine is stirring that segment of the political spectrum with Gareth Porter’s article, “The Untold Story of John Bolton’s Campaign for War with Iran.”  Trump didn’t like General McMaster’s (Trump’s outgoing National Security Advisor) counsel that the U.S. remain in the Iran nuclear accord and not isolate itself from other major country signatories who say Iran is complying with its terms.

Then there is Bolton’s bigotry against Arabs and Muslims and his alliance with Pamela Geller—the notorious Islamophobe. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has elaborated on Bolton’s outrageous falsehoods against Arabs and Muslims (the “other anti-semitism” in the words of James Zogby in 1994 at a conference in Israel).

How does such a deep hatred in the White House connect to Trump’s repeated declaration that he allegedly seeks a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Republican constitutional law analyst, Bruce Fein, presents a strong case that the powerful position of national security advisor to the President must be confirmed by the Senate. In which case, Bolton would be gone.

Fein argues:

The Appointments Clause of the Constitution militates against the National Security Advisor aberration.  It makes Senate confirmation of “officers of the United States” the rule.  But Congress may by statute create exceptions for “inferior officers.”  But it has not done so for the Advisor—even assuming the office qualifies as “inferior.”

The other obstacles to Bolton’s assuming his position is that it will take the FBI many weeks to decide whether he can receive a top security clearance. At age 69, Bolton has a long trail of entanglements and intrigues in and out of government, not to mention his tantrums—some involving female public servants.

Fein recounts Bolton’s “unmasking the names of Americans whose conversation has been intercepted by the National Security Agency under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).” He still defends the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq (for more information see Madea Benjamin’s “10 Reasons to Fear John Bolton“).

How does such a madman like Bolton keep coming back? Two reasons stand out. First, the more aggressive parts of the military-industrial complex, bolstered by the neocons, see him as a useful tool—for bigger military budgets and empire. Second, he is a staunch collaborator with the Israel lobby’s support of Israel’s militaristic, increasingly autocratic regime that regularly works against a two-state solution (The majority of American Jews support a two-state solution).

If President Trump gives Bolton a waiver while he works without a security clearance, as he has done, under wide condemnation, for his family and a few others already, the political firestorm may be enough, with other factors, to cause Trump to have Bolton bolt the White House with only his Trump-irritating walrus mustache intact.

In the immediate meantime, members of congress and aroused citizens must use their influence to block or evict John Bolton from our White House.

Quebec City Murders: Why Quebec? Why Muslims? – OpEd

0
0

The murder of six worshippers in January 2017 reached a dramatic conclusion in March when Alexandre Bissonnette pleaded guilty, avoiding a lengthy trial. “I’d like to ask for your forgiveness for all the harm I caused you, even though I know what I did is unforgivable. In spite of everything that was said, I am not a terrorist, nor Islamophobic … [I am] more a person who was carried away by fear and a horrible form of despair.”

‘Semites’ and imperialism

Quebec has a long history of racial and religious problems, going back to the British conquest in 1763. The French were forced suddenly to accept ‘les maudits anglais‘ as their masters. The British were not gentle imperialists, and the Catholic French soon became second class citizens, with English the business language, and the economy controlled by these occupiers. They brought with them their ‘semites’, a handful of Jewish merchants and bankers, who faced discrimination, but more because it was politically acceptable to criticize Jews but not the British. In any event, Jews and Brits were considered the same — rich interlopers — and were resented.

This only got worse with the flood of poor east European Jewish immigrants in the 1890s. Canada wanted farmer immigrants, but the Jews were only interested in living in the large cities, especially Montreal, where they faced friction with their strange customs and tribal identity, centred on commerce, from the rag trade through to garment workers and retailers.

In the 1930s, overt anti-Jewish sentiment increased, with Canada’s most prominent Montreal fascist, Adrien Arcand (1899–1967), the chief rabble-rouser. He published and edited several anti-Jewish newspapers during this period, most notably Le Goglu, Le Miroir, Le Chameau, Le Patriote, Le Fasciste Canadien and Le Combat National. He was a brilliant journalist and charismatic speaker, but his bark was worse than his bite, and his star faded with the outbreak of WWII. He was interned during WWII as a fascist, but was never prosecuted for his anti-Jewish rants.

The negative legacy of Quebec-Jewish relations from the religious school controversy of the 1920–30s, when poor Jews unwillingly attend Protestant schools, and the Arcand period, no doubt accounts for the subsequent generosity of the Quebec government from the 1960s. They provided government support for Jewish schools, Canada’s only province where Jewish schools are flourishing.

Muslims – Imperial fallout

Now, it is the Jews’ current nemesis, Muslims, who through sheer numbers are eclipsing the Jewish minority in Canada, especially in Quebec.  In 2011, there were one million Muslims in Canada (3.2% of the population) making them the second largest religion after Christianity. In Greater Montreal, 6% of the population is Muslim, in the Greater Toronto Area, 7.7%.

This recapitulates the Jewish problem of a century ago, when the rapid ‘invasion’ of Jews with different dress codes and religious rituals raised the alarm of Canadians, especially Quebeckers, facing an uphill cultural battle in Anglo North America. Both ‘semites’, Jews and Muslims, came to Canada for economic reasons, the latter as fallout from the imperial occupation of Muslim lands, which disrupted traditional society, and forced Muslims to seek survival in the imperial centre, which includes Canada as a settler colony.

In the post-war period, just when Quebec had more or less come to terms with the ‘maudits anglais‘ and their Jewish banker/ merchants, new ‘semites’ started coming. There are 94,000 Jews in Quebec, but already 250,000 Muslims, an increase by five times since 1991.

There is no Arcand, but, like Hitler, he still has acolytes. La Meute (The Pack), a far-right anti-immigration and anti-Islam group founded in October 2015 by Canadian Forces veterans Eric “Corvus” Venne and Patrick Beaudry, has 4,000–5,000 members. In an eerie coincidence, La Meute has its headquarters 60 kilometers north of Quebec City.

Where cultural clashes and the spectre of Israel still feed the ‘antisemitic’ accusation, the real discrimination is against Muslims, rather than Jews. The Quebec City murder of 6 Muslims at their mosque in January 2017 by Bissonnette shows that Quebec still has a problem, but now a Muslim one, but just how serious is it?

Many Muslims come to Quebec from French-speaking African countries, especially Algeria, Morocco, Rwanda and Burundi. A sprinkling of Jews come from Morocco. Both the Muslims and Sephardi Jews embrace French Canadian culture, adding an Arab flavor. Interestingly, Arab Muslim and Mizrahi (Arab) Jewish immigrants in Quebec have more in common with each other than the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, the latter English-speaking and unintegrated into Quebec society.

Quebec Muslims and terrorism

Quebec’s most infamous Muslim terrorist is Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian al-Qaeda member who lived for a time in Montreal. He received training in Afghanistan, and was convicted in 2001 of planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999, as part of the foiled 2000 millennium attack plots.

In 2014, Quebec City born Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a convert to Islam, fatally shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier on ceremonial sentry duty at the Canadian National War Memorial in Ottawa, and then forced his way into Canada’s parliament building, where he had a shootout with parliament security personnel and was killed. Zehaf-Bibeau made a video prior to the attack in which he expressed his motives as being related “to Canada’s foreign policy and in respect of his religious beliefs.”

The rise of ISIS and the war in Syria have drawn a few Canadians, including seven Montrealers, five from Maisonneuve College, who just disappeared in January 2015, off to Syria via Istanbul to try to join the insurgents there.

Niqab controversy

Muslims in Quebec were/are the centre of controversy over the niqab, worn primarily by a small minority in line with the Saudi Wahhabi sect. In October 2017, the Quebec government passed a law prohibiting public workers, including doctors, teachers and daycare employees, and public transit users from covering their faces.  Three-quarters of Quebeckers (as do 68% of Canadians) back the law. It is less restrictive than a 2010 law in France  which banned the niqab in public.

Quebec Justice Minister Stephanie Vallée defended the controversial law, saying it is necessary for security and communication reasons. Quebec Superior Court Judge Babak Barin suspended the portion of the act banning face coverings until the government enacts guidelines for how the law will be applied and how exemptions might be granted.

Alia Hogben, the president of the Canadian Council For Muslim Women (CCMW), explained that CCMW’s position on the law is “nuanced”. “We don’t see the niqab as a religious obligation. We don’t see that it’s a demand in the Qur’an or in the hadith (Islamic traditions). But we also support a woman to make her own decision.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the law outright. Most others remain silent.

Meeting of minds

Following the Quebec City mass murder, Muslims in nearby Saint-Apollinaire applied for and were refused permission to establish a Muslim cemetery in a contentious neighbourhood referendum in 2017. Despite or because of the mass killing, residents did not want a Muslim cemetery.

Fortunately, other more sympathetic Quebeckers came to the rescue. A parcel of land near the Notre-Dame-de-Belmont Cemetery in Quebec City, was offered. The funeral company that runs the cemetery bought a larger parcel in the area a few years ago and in 2015 ceded back a small piece to the city in lieu of paying a 10% tax on the new acquisition. Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume offered the Muslim community leaders the area in the larger cemetery in August 2017. The leaders quickly accepted, but, ominously, the car of former mosque president Mohamed Labadi was torched the next night.

The xenophobic element in Quebec life, a legacy of three centuries of imperial invasion is still there. French Canadian culture, swamped by Anglo American culture, and now with a growing, vigorous Muslim culture, must struggle to keep its unique place in North American society. At the same time, the unending violence eminating from the Middle East makes Muslims the new poster enemy. This, despite the fact that they are the victims, with Israel the imperial outpost ensuring that they are weak, divided — and frustrated. That surely is what prompted the paranoid Bissonnette to do his unspeakable deed.

Quebeckers had little experience with or awareness of Muslims until the 1960s ‘Quiet Revolution’, which led to sympathy with Palestinians. FLQ militants even trained with Palestinian militants briefly in the 1970s. Those heady revolutionary 1970s are history, but the embers of liberation live on and provide inspiration for pro-Palestinian activism, bringing together both Muslim and non-Muslim Quebeckers, resulting in occasional hostile encounters with JDL and Hillel activists, even a mini-riot at Concordia in 2012, when Netanyahu was forced to cancel his speech.

Hopefully, the Quebec City murders and perpetrator Bissonnette are an aberration. Rezzam and Zehaf-Bibeau are. The niqab is a highly visible sore point, though it affects a few dozen women at most, and the Muslim community could deal with restrictions on it. The lure of ISIS and terrorist acts by disaffected youth is another issue which again affects a tiny minority of Muslims. The rise of La Meute since 2015 is worrisome. But on the whole, the prospects for Quebec Muslims are good. They adapt well, happy to speak French and assimilate. Their natural sympathy for the Palestinians fits well with Quebec traditions of solidarity for the oppressed.

Crescent International

Change Is Coming – OpEd

0
0

By Robert Koehler*

The cries of loss and anguish become public, at last. A million young people seize the truth:

“Half of my seventh grade class was affected by gun violence. My own brother was shot in the head. I am tired of being asked to calm down and be quiet.”

The stories went on and on, speaker after speaker. We marched for our lives this past Saturday. I was one of the thousands of people who endured a bitter cold morning in Chicago to be part of this emerging movement, this burst of anger, hope and healing. Violence in the United States of America is out of control. It has its claws around the lives of its own children. It’s a terrifying symptom . . . of a society built around fear, of a political structure devoted to war.

Something has to change.

The Chicago march was one of more than 800 marches throughout the U.S. and all across the world. In Washington, D.C., where possibly as many as 800,000 people joined the call for change, Emma Gonzalez — a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. — read out the names of the 17 people shot and killed at her school last month, then stood in courageous silence for six minutes and 20 seconds: the length of time the gunman’s killing spree lasted.

Moments such as this transcend rhetoric. People’s lives matter. Their murders cannot be reduced to statistics and merely laid to rest. The cry of anguish across this planet, for all the lives that have been needlessly cut short, will reverberate for as long as necessary: until this country’s politics catches up to the will and the awareness and the suffering of its people.

The focus of the moment is tougher gun-control regulations, such as banning the sale of assault weapons. And three days after the marches, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (not a young person) published an op-ed in the New York Times, calling, my God, for the repeal of the Second Amendment, which he called “a relic of the 18th century.”

The marches, he wrote, “reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.”

I would add that they also reveal much more than that: public support, public demand, for a society that values life. This is not a simplistic demand. It is furiously complex, and pushes public policy well beyond the current status quo thinking that’s perfectly OK with a near-trillion dollar military budget, endlessly expanding wars across the planet and, uh, nuclear weapons.

This emerging movement must address the whole spectrum of violence. As Rev. John Dear put it: “That means ending gun violence — but also racism and mass incarceration but also executions, drone attacks and trillions spent for war, and so also, the ongoing U.S. bombing raids and wars and the development and threat of nuclear weapons, and our mortally sinful corporate greed and of course, the destruction of the environment and all the creatures.”

The word that ties it all together is: dehumanization.

The ability to dehumanize certain people — because of their race, their nationality, their gender, their politics, their place of work or learning — has no end. When a mass murderer does it, it’s called mental illness. When a soldier or cop or the president does it, it’s called national security.

“How,” asked Stephanie Van Hook, executive director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, “could one forget the humanity of another and what does it tell us about who we really are?

“For insight into these questions, we might first explore the basic dynamic of conflict escalation. . . . Conflict escalates — that is, moves increasingly toward violence — according to the degree of dehumanization in the situation,” she writes, summarizing a point made by Michael Nagler in his book The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action. “Violence, in other words, doesn’t occur without dehumanization.”

I believe this insight is at the core of what March for Our Lives is about. Gun regulations, even repeal of the Second Amendment, are bandages over the wound. The uncontained force behind the national murder rate is dehumanization, and as this movement grows, it must — it will — look institutional dehumanization straight in the eye.

Let me return, for a moment, to the Chicago march this past weekend. As at other recent marches — other manifestations of the national stirring — the presence of creative signage has been impossible not to notice. These signs reflect not merely the mandated slogans du jour but, far more importantly, the participants’ deep-seated frustrations and fears, which are finding public resonance.

Some were heart-rippingly personal:

Am I next?

My outrage does not fit on this sign

Would you rather give up your guns or bury your children?

Others were unflinchingly political:

The only thing easier to buy than a gun is a GOP candidate

Grab ’em by the mid-terms

This one was my favorite:

I can vote in 10 years. Change is coming.

Egyptian Ultras: Down But Not Out – Analysis

0
0

Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi won a second term virtually unchallenged in what is widely seen as a flawed election. The run-up to the poll, including a soccer protest, suggests, however, that it will take more than a democratic whitewash to get a grip on simmering discontent.

The protest in early March signalled that militant soccer fans who played a key role in the 2011 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak may be down but not out.

To be sure, the differences between 2011 and 2018 could not be starker. Mr. Al-Sisi presides over the worst repression in recent Egyptian history that has targeted even the slightest form of dissent, making Mr. Mubarak’s rule look relatively benign.

Potential challengers in the recent election were either jailed or persuaded, sometimes in a heavy-handed manner, to withdraw their candidacy.

They included serving and former military officers as well as Mortada Mansour, a controversial member of parliament and head of starred Cairo club Al Zamalek SC. It was Mr. Mortada’s withdrawal that prompted a last-minute race to find a non-threatening challenger who could muster the endorsement by at least 26 members of parliament and 47,000 voters in time to meet the nomination deadline.

Mousa Mostafa Mousa, a largely unknown politician who had earlier declared his support for Mr. Al-Sisi, registered 15 minutes before the deadline, ensuring that the government could claim that the election would be competitive. Mr. Moussa secured three percent of the vote, while Mr. Al-Sisi won a 92 percent landslide.

Among Egypt’s estimated 60,000 political prisoners are scores of militant supporters of soccer clubs who were not only prominent in the 2011 uprising but also in subsequent anti-government demonstrations, including a wave of student protests in the wake of the 2013 coup that initially brought Mr. Al-Sisi, when he was still serving as Egypt’s top military commander, to power.

The student protests, that turned the country’s universities into security fortresses, were brutally squashed by law enforcement forces abetted by the adoption of a draconic anti-protest law, tight control of the media, and a crackdown on non-governmental organizations.

The seeming revival of the ultras comes at a time that soccer is re-emerging in Egypt as one of the few, if not the only valve for the release of pent-up frustration and escape from daily worries in an economic environment of austerity that has improved macro-economic indicators while fuelling inflation and making it harder for many Egyptians to make ends meet.

In the latest incident, seventeen supporters of storied Cairo club Al Ahli SCS, which traces its history back to the early 20th century when it was founded as an anti-monarchical club whose supporters played an important part in the 1919 anti-British revolution that paved the way for Egyptian independence three years later, were reprimanded in custody earlier this month.

The fans stand accused of participating in protests and clashes with security forces towards the end of a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League match in Cairo that pitted Al Ahli against Gabon’s CF Mounana. They reportedly chanted slogans against the police and in favour of freedom.

As an international competition, the match was one of the few games exempted from a ban on public attendance of soccer games that has been in place for much of the last seven years in a bid to prevent stadiums from re-emerging as potential venues of anti-government protest.

The incident threatens to delay plans to lift the ban that has been enforced uninterrupted since early 2012 when 72 Al Ahli supporters died in a politically loaded brawl after a match in the Suez Canal city of Port Said.

The potential charges against the fans include being part of a group that incites disregard of the constitution and the law, preventing state institutions and public authorities from carrying out their work and threatening the safety and security of society.

Public investigators said the detainees included members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood that won Egypt’s only free and fair election in 2012 but was toppled a year later by Mr. Al-Sisi.

Ultras Ahlawy, the club’s militant support group, denied involvement in the protest. It said those involved did not represent the group and that it did not want the incident to be construed “in a political way.”

Phd student Hesham Shafick, however, described the CAF match as a return to the days prior to the 2011 revolt in which militants fans or ultras dominated the stadium with their highly artistic, choreographed support for their club that was often laden with overt and covert political tones.

“Their famous flames lit up the stadium and their famous song ‘liberta’ resurrected the moribund spirit of the January 2011 revolution,” Mr. Shafick wrote.

Mr. Shafick’s description and pictures of the Cairo stadium during the match suggest that the ultras as a group staged the choreographed support for their club. The staging defied a 2015 court ban of all ultras groups even if individuals rather than the group itself may have been involved in the last-minute protest.

In a statement, Al Ahli president Mahmoud El-Khatib seemed to take the Ultras Ahlawy position into account by asserting that “a few people interfered with our great supporters and did these shameful acts. They wanted us to return back to the past years that witnessed the team playing behind closed doors.”

Mr. Al-Khatib was among a host of club presidents and athletes that attended a news conference hosted by the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) to endorse Mr. Al-Sisi’s candidacy in a seeming violation of a ban on mixing sports and politics, arbitrarily imposed by world soccer body FIFA.

The revival of soccer as a release valve was evident in a Cairo coffeehouse on the second-day of Egypt’s three-day election where men had gathered to watch a friendly match between Egypt and Greece.

“Our voice is heard when we cheer and make a difference to the players, who are also doing something for the sake of this country. But if we go and vote in the election, our voice does not count — it makes no difference,” 28-year-old Hassan Allam told an Arab News reporter.

“There was no real competition against Al-Sisi and many of the people I know were harassed by security forces for their political affiliations. The only safe route for us to support the country is by cheering on our national football team; we have nothing else to do,” Allam added.

It is that sentiment that Mr. Al-Sisi will want to turn to his advantage, much like Mr. Mubarak tried with at best mixed results when he sought to either polish his tarnished image by identifying himself with the success of the national team or at times manipulate soccer emotions into a nationalistic frenzy that involved rallying around the leader.

To succeed, Mr. Al-Sisi will have to do more than support the team, which this year qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years or adopt a nationalist approach by creating a fund that would incentivize players to play for Egyptian rather than foreign teams.

Mr. Al-Sisi will have to ensure that economic reform trickles down to the ordinary Egyptian, get the upper hand in an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai, and ultimately loosen his grip on power to create space for political groupings and individuals to voice alternative and dissenting opinions. So far, there is little indication that Mr. Al-Sisi is rethinking his approach along those lines.

Trump Ends Deportation Protection For Liberians In US

0
0

By Lisa Vives

Liberians living in the U.S. since a devastating civil war that took 250,000 lives from 1989 until 1997 are now in the crosshairs of the current Trump administration which has terminated their protected status with effect from March 31, 2019.

Some five thousand Liberians have been eligible for either Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) since March 1991, allowing them to remain in the United States. But the total number of Liberians in the U.S. is estimated at 100,000.

The program expires on March 31, 2018. But President Donald Trump has proclaimed an orderly transition (“wind-down”) period of one year before the termination of DED for all Liberian beneficiaries comes into force on March 31, 2019.

A Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security, issued on March 27, states that “a 12‑month wind‑down period is appropriate in order to provide Liberia’s government with time to reintegrate its returning citizens and to allow DED beneficiaries who are not eligible for other forms of immigration relief to make necessary arrangements and to depart the United States.”

The 12‑month wind-down period and 12‑month continued authorization for employment shall apply to any current Liberian DED beneficiary who has continuously resided in the United States since October 1, 2002, but shall not apply to Liberians who are ineligible for TPS for reasons set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Individuals whose removal the Secretary of Homeland Security determines to be in the interest of the United States will not benefit from the wind-down rule. Nor would Liberians “whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S.

Debarred from the new regulation are also Individuals who have voluntarily returned to Liberia or their country of last habitual residence outside the United States, individuals who were deported, excluded, or removed before the March 27 memorandum, or individuals who are subject to extradition.

Abdullah Kiatamba, a Liberian community leader and executive director of the non-profit African Immigrant Services, has pointed out that Minnesota – a midwestern U.S. state bordering Canada – is home to what may be the nation’s largest Liberian population, possibly 30,000 or more. Only about 4,000 of them are under DED, he said “but every Liberian in Minnesota is connected to one of those 4,000.”

The Minneapolis Star Tribune weighed in with an editorial on March 23, headlined ‘Liberians Have Earned the Right to Stay in the U.S.’

Protected status was renewed for 27 years because conditions didn’t improve, the editors wrote, adding: “Life happened in that time.”

“Those ‘temporary’ refugees have built careers, homes, families, all legal under their immigration status. They are business owners, teachers, nurses. Many work in nursing homes, where the labor shortage is acute. Some have grown old here, (and are) no longer able to start over,” the Start Tribune editorial pointed out.

“To abruptly return them to one of the poorest spots in the world, splitting up families and creating chaos in their communities, would be monstrous. This is not only regrettable, the editors argued, ‘it is cruel’,” the newspaper added.

Further, Liberia is unable to absorb all the Liberians living in the U.S., maintained Vamba S. Fofana, president of the Union of Liberian Associations in America. Unlike Africans who might return to England or France, for Liberians “the U.S. is the only place we can go,” she said, and pleaded for bearing in mind that Liberia has barely recovered from the Ebola epidemic, which left the health care systems in shambles.

However the Presidential Memorandum maintains: “The 2014 outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease caused a tragic loss of life and economic damage to the country, but Liberia has made tremendous progress in its ability to diagnose and contain future outbreaks of the disease.”

The Memorandum argues “that conditions in Liberia have improved,” and that the country is no longer experiencing armed conflict and has made significant progress in restoring stability and democratic governance. “Liberia has also concluded reconstruction from prior conflicts, which has contributed significantly to an environment that is able to handle adequately the return of its nationals.”

Nevertheless, the Minneapolis Star Tribune counters: “Who benefits when thriving businesses are shuttered, needed jobs left empty and American-born children possibly left without their parents? These refugees have earned a right to stay by virtue of living, working and contributing to this country for decades, all under the legal auspices of the U.S. government.”

Meanwhile, one day after the Presidential Memorandum was issued, Liberian President George Manneh Weah has expressed “heartfelt appreciation . . . for the opportunity granted Liberians” on the DED, to stay in the U.S. for another year.

Weah also commended the U.S. Embassy near Monrovia, headed by Ambassador Christine Elder, for the role played in making the process a success. The decision to allow Liberians on DED live in the U.S. until March 2019, has brought “a great deal of relief, not only to them as direct beneficiaries, but their families and friends back home; and it serves as a testament of the longstanding partnership between Liberia and the United States,” President Weah said.

He expressed hope that the concerned Liberians will utilize the extension of the DED “to contribute to the American society in the most positive way and continue to be law-abiding residents.”

The Liberian leader said the gesture clearly speaks for the U.S. government’s unwavering commitment to upholding the bond of friendship and cooperation between the two nations.

Sri Lanka: Bank Of China Opens First Branch

0
0

The Bank of China opened its first branch in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo on Wednesday evening.Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was the Chief Guest at the ceremony said the opening of the Colombo branch was an important step in strengthening the island’s economy and it opened a new chapter in the modern history of bilateral relations.

“The Bank of China is opening in Sri Lanka at a time when Colombo city is transforming into a megapolis. Bank of China has a crucial role to play in helping this island by strengthening our local businesses while also being able to attract more Chinese investments into the country,” Wickremesinghe said.

The prime minister added Bank of China’s success was also a testament to the rapid economic growth of China in the past three decades and while it was the fourth largest bank globally, it would not be too long before it emerged as the leading bank in the world.

Governor of the Sri Lankan Central Bank Indrajit Coomaraswamy, speaking at the ceremony, hailed the entry of the Bank of China into Colombo as a “major landmark” in the history of the Sri Lankan economy.

He said the bank, with its large network of branches in China and other parts of the world, will not only help expand trade in Sri Lanka but help small and medium enterprises grow and tie up with manufacturers overseas as part of international supply chains.

Chairman of the Bank of China Wang Xiquan said that the hundred-year-old institution now has 600 branches overseas and links with 1,600 financial institutions across the world.

He said, the opening of its Colombo branch will mark the beginning of a new era for the Chinese financial industry to serve Sri Lanka and its Colombo branch was an opportunity to closely focus on the overall strategic cooperation between China and Sri Lanka.

Chinese Ambassador Cheng Xueyuan described Sri Lanka as a “time tested friend” of China and thanked Prime Minister Wickremesinghe for the support he had given to set up a branch in Colombo.


Proposed Border Wall Will Harm Texas Plants And Animals

0
0

In the latest peer-reviewed publication on the potential impacts of a border wall on plants and animals, conservation biologists, led by a pair of scientists from The University of Texas at Austin, say that border walls threaten to harm endangered Texas plants and animals and cause trouble for the region’s growing ecotourism industry.

In a letter publishing Monday in Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment, Norma Fowler and Tim Keitt, both professors in the Department of Integrative Biology, examine what would happen if more of Texas’ roughly 1,200 miles of border with Mexico were to be walled off, contributing to habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and ecosystem damage. Other states have shorter borders than Texas has and more barriers already in place; in Texas, there are walls along only about 100 miles of the border with Mexico. Congress just exempted the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge from the new fencing project, but many miles of new barriers are set to be built on other federal lands, most of which are part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

“Up to now, the wall has either gone through cities or deserts. This is the Rio Grande we’re talking about here. It’s totally different,” Fowler said. “We have high biodiversity because of the river and because Texas extends so far south. I and other Texas biologists are very concerned about the impact this will have on our rich natural heritage.”

Based on a scientific literature review of 14 other publications, including some that looked at effects of existing walls and fences on the border, the authors outlined several concerns about the proposed wall, including habitat destruction and degradation caused by the construction of the wall and the roads on either side of the wall. Of particular concern is damage to Tamaulipan thornscrub, a once abundant and now increasingly rare ecosystem in South Texas. Many South Texas organisms depend on this ecosystem, but it’s slowly disappearing as cities, farms and ranches displace the thornscrub. The living things that depend on it would lose access to some of the last remaining patches in Texas if the wall were built, Fowler said.

A wall would also affect other species. The endangered wildflower Zapata bladderpod grows exactly where the barriers are proposed to be built, as does the threatened whiskerbush cactus. The ocelot, a small native wildcat listed as an endangered species, has already suffered from severe habitat loss; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department estimates there are no more than 120 left in Texas, and scientists worry that the wall would further deplete their numbers. With habitat fragmentation, the wall could cut off ocelot, as well as black bear, populations in Texas and Mexico from other members of their species, leaving some populations too small to persist. There would be further damage to plants if the pollinators and seed-dispersing animals that plants depend on could not cross the barrier.

Scientists also expressed concern about another aspect of the project. Because the wall will probably not be built in the flood plain of the Rio Grande, it will have to be set back from the river, sometimes by more than a mile. This has the potential to damage the valuable riparian forest ecosystem along the river, cutting off organisms that need to get to the river and preventing people from accessing several wildlife refuges along the river used for ecotourism.

“Even small segments of new wall on federal lands will devastate habitats and local recreation and ecotourism,” said Keitt, also a professor of integrative biology.

The Lower Rio Grande River Valley is currently a top destination for birdwatchers because rare tropical birds such as the green jay and the Altamira oriole are among those that frequent the area. A 2011 study from Texas A&M University estimated that ecotourism, mostly from birdwatchers, generated more than $344 million in economic activity in the Lower Rio Grande Valley alone.

“If ecotourism declines significantly because access to preserves has been impeded, there may be negative economic impacts on the region,” the letter states. “On the other hand, if the barriers are not far enough from the river, they may trap wildlife escaping from floods, and may even act as levees, which tend to increase downstream flooding.”

Scientists also expressed concern about the project being exempt from environmental review requirements.

“Negative impacts could be lessened by limiting the extent of physical barriers and associated roads, designing barriers to permit animal passage and substituting less biologically harmful methods, such as electronic sensors, for physical barriers,” the letter states.

Olivia Schmidt, also of UT Austin, Martin Terry of Sul Ross State University and Keeper Trout of the Cactus Conservation Institute are also authors of the letter.

UN Envoy Sees Progress In Macedonia Name-Dispute Talks

0
0

By Marija Tumanovska

(RFE/RL) — A United Nations negotiator leading talks to end a decades-old dispute over Macedonia’s name says progress is being made between Greek and Macedonian officials but difficult issues remain.

UN envoy Matthew Nimetz, who helped put together a deal in 1995 that enabled the Balkan state to join the UN under the temporary designation “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” said on March 30 that talks to end the disagreement will continue in the coming months.

“There are still difficult questions that need to be addressed, but in my opinion and long experience, there is a very positive feeling,” Nimetz said after a meeting in Vienna with the foreign ministers of both countries.

“Both ministers are focused on long-term relations, stability in the region, the importance of good relations between the two countries, and I hope that we will continue to work with this positive approach,” he added.

Greece objects to the former Yugoslav republic’s use of the name Macedonia, which Athens says could imply territorial claims over its own northern region of the same name.

Negotiations between the two neighbors have been inconclusive since 1991, when Macedonia gained independence from the former Yugoslavia.

The current round of talks kicked off in January with the aim of finding a solution by a NATO summit in July. An end to the dispute would pave Macedonia’s way toward NATO and EU membership, both of which have been blocked by Athens.

“I can say that we made conditional progress, because as we go forward, we come to the tough questions,” Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov said.

“We worked on the logic of what is most important for the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Greece and whether in the compromise we are moving to cover the two things. However, it is not surprising that the more openly and the more specifically we are working towards a solution, so the difficulties are getting more and more visible,” he added.

Last week, Greece’s foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, traveled to Macedonia for talks on settling the dispute. He made the trip on the first direct flight from Athens to Skopje in more than 10 years.

It was made possible after Macedonian authorities renamed Skopje’s airport from Alexander the Great — the famed ruler of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia, who is also celebrated in Greece — to Skopje International Airport in a goodwill gesture to Athens.

Kotzias told reporters after the discussions that the two sides had identified the main issues that still divide them and that he hoped “a big step” can be taken at the next meeting.

Both sides have said they would accommodate a compound name with a geographical qualifier such as “northern” or “upper” Macedonia, though details on how the change would occur still need to be ironed out.

Conflict In Yemen And EU’s Arms Export Controls: Highlighting Flaws In Current Regime – Analysis

0
0

By Mark Bromley and Giovanna Maletta*

Under the 1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Export, which was replaced in 2008 by the EU Common Position on Arms Exports, member states of the European Union have committed themselves to achieving ‘high common standards’ and ‘convergence’ in their arms export controls. The standards are outlined in eight criteria that require member states to abide by certain standards when assessing licences for arms exports. This includes denying licences when there is a ‘clear risk’ that the arms ‘might’ be used to commit violations of human rights or international humanitarian law (IHL) and ‘[taking] into account’ the risk that they will be diverted to an unauthorized end-user or end-use. Meanwhile, convergence in member states’ controls is promoted through systems of information sharing and—in cases where one state wishes to issue a licence for an arms export that another state has previously denied—a commitment to consult one another. However, decision-making in arms export licensing falls under states’ national competence and there is no formal mechanism at the EU level to sanction non-compliance with the Common Position. As such, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), parliamentarians and academics have often questioned whether EU member states are applying the criteria of the Common Position correctly and consistently.

Questions about the implementation of the Common Position have been particularly highlighted by the contrasting policies of EU member states on the export of arms to states in the Saudi-led military coalition engaged in the conflict in Yemen since 2015.[1] There have been multiple reports by United Nations agencies and NGOs alleging that the coalition has violated IHL standards, including through widespread and systematic attacks on civilian targets and a failure to appropriately distinguish between civilian and military objects.[2] These reports will be the subject of a ‘comprehensive examination’ conducted by a group of experts appointed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. They have also led some EU member states to restrict or halt arms exports that are likely to be used in Yemen to certain members of the coalition, and the European Parliament has called for the EU to impose an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. However, other member states have implemented no such constraints, and others have allowed exports to the coalition to increase.

Differences in exports and policies

On 14 February 2018, the 19th EU Annual Report on Arms Exports, which covers the arms export licences, licence denials and arms exports of member states during 2016, was released. On 12 March the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, which provides quantitative and qualitative data on all states’ arms imports and exports, was updated to cover 2017. When combined, the two data sets point to an increase in arms acquisitions by states in the Saudi-led coalition and the significant but contrasting role that EU member states are playing in this trade. According to SIPRI data, the leading members of the Saudi-led coalition—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—were the 2nd and 4th largest arms importers during 2013–17, respectively. Exports to Saudi Arabia rose by 225 per cent, and exports to the UAE rose by 51 per cent. In both cases, EU member states were among the largest suppliers. The United Kingdom and France were the second and third largest suppliers to Saudi Arabia in 2013–17, and France and Italy were the second and third largest suppliers to the UAE.

The EU Annual Report points to an increase in the number of denials of licence applications for arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the UAE between 2015 and 2016. The number of licence denials rose from 7 to 18 for Saudi Arabia and from 9 to 17 for the UAE. The majority of these denials were issued on the basis of concerns about human rights or IHL and the risk of diversion. However, the EU Annual Report also indicates a rise in the overall value of licences issued for these destinations. The value of export licences issued for arms transfers to Saudi Arabia fell by 29 per cent but significant increases for the UAE meant that, overall, the value of licences issued for both states rose from €32 billion to €43 billion. These figures should be treated with caution given differences in the way they are collected. The data on the number of licences issued (which shows a majority of exports coming from a small group of states) may potentially be more informative: during 2016 France, Germany and the UK accounted for 85 per cent of the export licences issued for transfers to Saudi Arabia and 76 per cent of those issued for the UAE.

The variation in exports to Saudi Arabia and the UAE are partly due to the differences in the size and capabilities of EU member states’ arms industries. However, it also reflects the significant difference in national policies. The conduct of the conflict in Yemen has triggered national debates throughout the EU about whether arms exports to states that are part of the Saudi-led coalition are in line with the criteria of the EU Common Position. However, these debates have resulted in different outcomes. The Netherlands and the Belgian region of Flanders have indicated that they are denying licences for the export of arms that might be used in air or ground operations in Yemen, and Sweden has adopted a restrictive approach. Since the start of 2018 Germany has also announced that it will no longer be issuing licences for arms that will be used in the conflict. In addition, the Belgian region of Wallonia has announced that it will not supply arms to a certain section of the Saudi military.

By contrast, other EU member states have resisted public, media and parliamentary pressure to restrict arms sales to states in the Saudi-led coalition. In Italy, the legitimacy of these transfers have been justified by the government, in the case of Saudi Arabia, on the basis that the country is not subject to any international arms trade restrictions. This position was recently confirmed when the Parliament rejected two motions requesting a halt on arms exports to members of the coalition. Similarly, France has argued that its arms exports to states in the Saudi-led coalition are closely monitored and in line with national laws and regulations. In the UK, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has launched a legal challenge arguing that British arms exports to Saudi Arabia breached the country’s own national guidelines. However, in July 2017 the British High Court declared that the exports were lawful arguing, among other things, that the coalition did not intentionally target civilians and that the risk of ‘serious violations’ of IHL was not so clear as to justify a suspension or a cancellation of arms sales. CAAT is seeking to appeal the ruling and will hear on 12 April if the case can proceed.

How can the EU Common Position be strengthened?

The variation in policies among EU member states regarding how the criteria of the EU Common Position should apply to transfers of arms that may be used in the conflict in Yemen is a concern for several reasons. First, it limits the ability of the EU to influence the direction and outcome of the conflict. To have influence, the EU will need to speak with a common voice about the conduct of the warring parties and a crucial step will be establishing a shared view of if, and when, arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition are acceptable. Second, the variation points to the failure of EU policy-making structures to achieve some level of harmonization in member states’ foreign and security policies. The EU’s continued expansion into areas that are viewed as traditional matters of sovereignty (e.g. fiscal policy, migration and security) while simultaneously failing to achieve real convergence in these fields has been highlighted as one of the long-term threats to the health of the Union.[3]

During 2018, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and member states are due to reassess ‘the implementation’ of the EU Common Position and ‘the fulfilment of its objectives’. This reassessment provides an opportunity to address some of the weaknesses that have been underscored by the conflict in Yemen. This process will build on a review of the Common Position that began in 2011 and concluded in 2015. Despite the length of the review, there were no changes to the text of the instrument itself. However, several sections of the user’s guide—which provides guidance on the implementation of the Common Position—were revised, and improvements to the mechanisms of information sharing agreed. The significant variance in practices regarding the assessment of arms exports to the Saudi-led coalition indicates that a more ambitious set of reforms will be needed this time.

One potential outcome of the reassessment could be a peer-review process to help clarify and iron out out some of some of the variation in how the EU Common Position is implemented at the national level. This would involve assessing and comparing how the EU Common Position is implemented in states’ laws and regulations, the methods used to assess licence applications, and the government agencies and ministries that are involved. A second could be turning the EU Annual Report into a more effective oversight tool by ensuring that all EU member states submit the data that is required in a standardized manner. This report could be further enhanced by improving its timeliness and level of detail. A third could be finding ways in which EU resources, such as its delegations abroad, could be used to assist member states with conducting risk assessments, end-user checks and post-shipment verification. Many smaller EU member states struggle with the complexities involved in accurately assessing the risks associated with arms exports. A fourth could be determining whether the criteria in the EU Common Position and the content and format of the user’s guide continue to be fit for purpose. This could lead to a strengthening of the language on diversion by requiring states to deny licences when there is risk that it might occur and turning the user’s guide into a more dynamic, regularly updated, online resource.

This list of options is far from comprehensive. A wide range of suggestions for how the EU Common Position could be strengthened have been made by think tanks, NGOs and parliamentarians throughout the lifetime of the instrument. As such, it is crucial that the reassessment process is conducted in a clear and transparent manner in which all relevant stakeholders are able to engage effectively. Given the challenges facing the EU and the array of initiatives it is undertaking, it may be hard to generate the attention necessary to effect real change in the EU Common Position. However, many of these challenges and initiatives—particularly Brexit and the increased interest in consolidating the European defence industry—may also serve to remove some of the obstacles that have previously blocked the adoption of more far-reaching proposals. Experience—and particularly the case of Yemen—show that a failure to think ambitiously during the 2018 reassessment will likely to lead to more doubts about the purpose of the EU Common Position and the extent to which it is fulfilling its intended objectives.

*About the authors:
Mark Bromley
is the Director of the SIPRI Dual-Use and Arms Trade Control programme.

Giovanna Maletta is a Research Assistant in the SIPRI Dual-use and Arms Trade Control Programme

Source:
This article was published by SIPR.

Notes:
[1] The Saudi Arabia-led coalition consists of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Senegal, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, until June 2017, Qatar.

[2] See Human Rights Watch, World Report 2018: Events of 2017, 2017; Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2017/18: The State of the World’s Human Rights; United Nations, Human Rights Council, ‘Situation of human rights in Yemen, including violations and abuses since September 2014—Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’, A/HRC/36/33, 13 Sep. 2017; and United Nations, Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 2140 (2014), Reports of the Panel of Experts on Yemen.

[3] See Genschel, P. and Jachtenfuchs, M., ‘More integration, less federation: The European integration of core state powers’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 23, no. 1 (2016), pp. 42–59.

Endgame In Syria: Trump Signals Withdrawal Of US Troops – OpEd

0
0

In a momentous announcement at an event in Ohio on Thursday, Donald Trump said, “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”

What lends credence to the statement that the Trump administration will soon be pulling 2,000 US troops out of Syria – mostly Special Forces assisting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces – is that President Trump had recently announced to sack the National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.

McMaster represented the institutional logic of the deep state in the Trump administration and was instrumental in advising Donald Trump to escalate the conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria. He had advised President Trump to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan from 8,400 to 15,000. And in Syria, he was in favor of the Pentagon’s policy of training and arming 30,000 Kurdish border guards to patrol Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

Both the decisions have spectacularly backfired on the Trump administration. The decision to train and arm 30,000 Kurdish border guards had annoyed the Erdogan administration to an extent that Turkey mounted Operation Olive Branch in the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin in Syria’s northwest on January 20.

After capturing Afrin on March 18, the Turkish armed forces and their Free Syria Army proxies have now cast their eyes further east on Manbij where the US Special Forces are closely cooperating with the Kurdish YPG militia, in line with the long-held Turkish military doctrine of denying the Kurds any Syrian territory west of River Euphrates.

More significantly, however, the US bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor on February 7 that reportedly killed and wounded dozens of Russian military contractors working for the private security firm, the Wagner group.

In order to understand the reason why the US brazenly attacked the Russian contractors, we need to keep the backdrop of seven-year-long Syrian conflict in mind. Washington has failed to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. After the Russian intervention in September 2015, the momentum of the battle has shifted in favor of the Syrian government and Washington’s proxies are on the receiving end in the conflict.

Washington’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian government has given birth to the Islamic State and myriads of jihadist groups that have carried out audacious terror attacks in Europe during the last three years. Out of necessity, Washington had to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria. But on January 20, its NATO-ally Turkey mounted Operation Olive Branch against the Kurds in the northwestern Syrian canton of Afrin.

In order to save its reputation as a global power, Washington could have confronted Turkey and pressured it to desist from invading Afrin. But it chose the easier path and vented its frustration on the Syrian government forces in Deir al-Zor which led to the casualties of scores of Russian military contractors hired by the Syrian government.

Another reason why Washington struck Russian contractors working in Syria was that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which are mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of Turkish armed forces and allied Free Syria Army (FSA) militias.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located east of Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor. The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a massacre in which scores of Russian citizens lost their lives.

It would be pertinent to note here that regarding the Syria policy, there is a schism between the White House and the American deep state led by the Pentagon. After Donald Trump’s inauguration as the US president, he has delegated operational-level decisions in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to the Pentagon.

The way the US officials are evading responsibility for the incident, it appears the decision to strike pro-government forces in Deir al-Zor that included Russian contractors was taken by the operational commander of the US forces in Syria and the White House was not informed until after the strike.

Notwithstanding, it bears mentioning that unlike dyed-in-the-wool globalists and “liberal interventionists,” like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who cannot look past beyond the tunnel vision of political establishments, it appears that the protectionist Donald Trump not only follows news from conservative mainstream outlets, like the Fox News, but he has also been familiar with alternative news perspectives, such as Breitbart’s, no matter how racist and xenophobic.

Thus, Donald Trump is fully aware that the conflict in Syria is a proxy war initiated by the Western political establishments and their regional Middle Eastern allies against the Syrian government. He is also mindful of the fact that militants have been funded, trained and armed in the training camps located in Turkey’s border regions to the north of Syria and in Jordan’s border regions to the south of Syria.

According to the last year’s March 31 article [1] for the New York Times by Michael Gordon, the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and the recently sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had stated on the record that defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq was the top priority of the Trump administration and the fate of Bashar al-Assad was of least concern to the new administration.

Under the previous Obama administration, the evident policy in Syria was regime change. The Trump administration, however, looks at the crisis in Syria from an entirely different perspective because Donald Trump regards Islamic jihadists as a much bigger threat to the security of the US.

In order to allay the concerns of Washington’s traditional allies in the Middle East, the Trump administration conducted a cruise missiles strike on al-Shayrat airfield in Homs governorate on April 6 last year after the chemical weapons strike in Khan Sheikhoun. But that isolated incident was nothing more than a show of force to bring home the point that the newly elected Donald Trump is an assertive and powerful president.

Finally, Karen De Young and Liz Sly made another startling revelation in the last year’s March 4 article [2] for the Washington Post: “Trump has said repeatedly that the US and Russia should cooperate against the Islamic State, and he has indicated that the future of Russia-backed Assad is of less concern to him.”

Thus, the interests of all the major players in Syria have evidently converged on defeating Islamic jihadists, and the Obama-era policy of regime change has been put on the back burner. And after the recent announcement of complete withdrawal of US troops from Syria by President Trump, it appears that we are approaching the endgame in Syria, an event as momentous as the Fall of Saigon in 1975, which will mark a stellar military victory for Vladimir Putin.

Sources and links:
1- White House Accepts ‘Political Reality’ of Assad’s Grip on Power in Syria:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/us/politics/trump-bashar-assad-syria.html?_r=0

2- Pentagon plan to seize Raqqa calls for significant increase in U.S. participation https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-plan-to-seize-raqqa-calls-for-significant-increase-in-us-participation/2017/03/04/d3205386-00f3-11e7-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html

Regional Collaboration Key To Unlocking Resilient And Sustainable Region

0
0

The fifth Asia-Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) closed at the UN Conference Centre in Bangkok with a call for greater regional collaboration to tackle the challenges of building a more resilient and sustainable region.

Organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) from 28 to 30 March, APFSD served as a platform for over 750 representatives from 53 Member States to share their achievements, challenges and the opportunities arising from the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development under the theme ‘Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies.’

In a video message to the forum, UN Deputy-Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed said, “One key challenge for the countries of Asia the Pacific is how to pursue a more integrated approach to development in which there is dignity for all, ‘leaving no one behind’ and the full realization of human rights, equality, social justice and protection of the natural environment.”

This year, APFSD reviewed progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 6 (clean water and sanitation), (SDG) 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production), SDG 15 (life on land) and SDG 17 (partnership for the Goals).

Delegates concluded that to build resilience against recurrent shocks in the region such as flooding, pollution, and commodity price volatility, societies need to focus on four types of resilience capacities—anticipatory, absorptive, adaptive, and transformative. Although countries in the region are setting up early warning systems, mainstreaming climate change and investing in social protection systems, much more needs to be done to implement policy responses that will help strengthen countries’ resilience.

“APFSD deliberations this year have laid the foundation for a concerted and effective regional response to ensure that our region becomes more resilient and sustainable,” said UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Dr. Shamshad Akhtar. “While the countries of Asia and the Pacific are forging ahead in this common endeavor, much more work remains to be done to successfully implement the 2030 Agenda. APFSD and ESCAP will continue to support crucial dialogue among Member States, to share challenges and best practices to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs.”

In his address as Outgoing Chair, H.E Dr. Ahsan Iqbal Chaudhary, Federal Minister for Interior, Planning, Planning, Development and Reforms of Pakistan said, “I sincerely hope that the APFSD will continue to play an important role by supporting crucial dialogue amongst Member States, sharing experiences and strengthening implementation in order to achieve sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific.”

H.E. Mr. Don Prawinai Minister of Foreign Affairs, Thailand added, “Thailand fully supports APFSD as a significant platform for countries in the Asia-Pacific region to exchange success stories, take stock of the challenges and discuss ways forward to realize sustainable development. This year’s APFSD topic on resilience is relevant to every country, as a resilient society is better prepared to take on all challenges, whether they be disasters, environmental degradation, climate change or rapid urbanization.”

During the three-day forum, country and civil society representatives, academics, business representatives and development agents from across the region advanced the dialogue on the readiness of the region to identify specific resilience capacities needed to effect the transformations envisioned in the 2030 Agenda, with civil society underscoring the need to redefine resilience by placing people’s priorities at its centre.

ESCAP also presented progress on the regional road map for implementing the 2030 Agenda, agreed at the Fourth APFSD. Outcomes from APFSD will provide input into the global discussions held at the High-Level Political Forum in New York in July this year.

ExxonMobil Wins Eight Deepwater Blocks In Latest Brazil Bid Round

0
0

ExxonMobil has increased its holdings in Brazil’s pre-salt basins after winning eight additional exploration blocks during Brazil’s 15th bid round. The blocks awarded add about 640,000 net acres to the ExxonMobil portfolio. Six of the eight newly awarded blocks will be operated by ExxonMobil.

The additional blocks expand the company’s total position in the country to more than two million net acres, making it one of the largest acreage holders among international companies in Brazil.

“These recent bid round results add highly prospective acreage to ExxonMobil’s deepwater portfolio that we will explore and develop with our partners,” said Steve Greenlee, president of ExxonMobil Exploration Company. “This acreage in Brazil’s pre-salt play will provide excellent opportunities to deploy our deepwater expertise. We will continue working with the government to develop these world-class resources for the benefit of Brazilians for many years to come.”

ExxonMobil and its partners jointly won a total of eight blocks, which include:

  • Two blocks in the Santos area which ExxonMobil will operate with partner Qatar Petroleum.
  • Four blocks in the Campos area: ExxonMobil will operate two blocks with partners Petrobras and Qatar Petroleum; Petrobras will operate two blocks with partners ExxonMobil and Statoil.
  • Two blocks in the Sergipe-Alagoas area which ExxonMobil will operate with partners Queiroz Galvão Exploração e Produção (QGEP) and Murphy Oil Corporation, and which will enhance the value of adjacent blocks already held.

ExxonMobil plans to obtain 3-D seismic coverage in 2018 on more than 4,000 square kilometers, including all of the ExxonMobil-operated exploration blocks announced in 2017, subject to permitting approvals.

The company now has interests in 24 blocks offshore Brazil. ExxonMobil has worked in Brazil for more than 100 years.

Bolton’s Tough Job: Controlling Pakistan’s Deep State – Analysis

0
0

Pakistani authorities will make cosmetic changes of incumbents handling crucial matters, rope in foreign ambassadors, diplomats, military attaches and foreign media based in Islamabad.

By Vikram Sood*

During the presidency of George W. Bush, a strong cabal of neo-con hawks guided his foreign policy and got the president into all sorts of failures. Prominent among them were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton and others. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were, however, the true leaders of a hard-line policy on Iraq in 2002-03.

A badly configured and unfinished war in Afghanistan, a foolish misadventure in Iraq, and an inability to control Pakistan in the so-called Global War on Terror, left the United States trying to fend off Iran, a regional power that was becoming strong enough to challenge American interests.

Later, as US Ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton would in October 2007, advocate a similar hardline policy against Iran.

Many now expect that President Trump’s next National Security Advisor, Bolton, would pursue similar hardline policies against Iran and North Korea with greater determination and tenacity.

The underlying fear of course being that this could take Washington closer to war than ever before. This naturally depends on two factors:

  • Bolton’s own life expectancy in the Trump uncertain order of things, and
  • Trump’s own attention span.

However, handling Afghanistan in Pakistan is an area where Bolton’s hardline policies could bear better results without that risk of war involving American troops.

Some analysts assess that Bolton is not the kind who will spoil for a war in Iran for fear of destabilising the energy-rich West Asia at a time when it is already unstable and Russia and China now having a high profile there.

Nuclear unpredictability of the kind spread by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would also be a dampener on Bolton’s firebrand policies. Other analysts feel that Bolton is one man who could pressure Pakistan where the United States has no such risks and burnish his reputation as the ultimate hardliner.

If the United States really wants to see peace in Afghanistan, it must stop pursuing mindless dreams like asking religious leaders to pressure the Taliban to talk to the Afghan leaders. Instead, it must pursue where the battle really originates — in Pakistan. Ultimately, Bolton or whoever else will decide what they perceive to be in US interests.

This will not be easy for an America that has usually threatened Pakistan only to deceive itself or promised India stern action only failed to deliver.

One can see differences, if not fissures in US policy. While the US President is all brimstone and fire, new nuclear sanctions have been imposed, the Pentagon is speaking in far more conciliatory terms. Establishments and advisers change in the US in eight, if not four, years. In the present dispensation, this has been much more frequent. The very permanent mindset of GHQ Pakistan will exploit this to their maximum advantage.

The civil administration, politicians and pliable journalists will be let loose on Afghanistan and the US speaking the language of conciliation, peace and brotherhood of Islam. Meanwhile, ISI proxies, the Haqqani Terrorist Network, which is more than just an adjunct of the Taliban, will continue to be marauders in Afghanistan. India-specific terror groups — Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed — will be kept well-heeled and deployed at will.

As long as the US soft pedals, Pakistan’s assistance and support to groups like the Haqqani Network will keep the latter’s life support system intact and the Pakistan Army sees no incentive or urgency to change this.

Pakistan’s rulers (i.e. the military) will make some cosmetic changes of incumbents handling crucial matters, rope in foreign ambassadors, diplomats, military attaches and foreign media based in Islamabad, to sell their sob stories of being victims of terror fighting America’s war.

This is a worn out decades-old script churned out year after year, for president after president and administration after administration. This tactic is effective because there is no new thought in Washington DC. Despite volumes of analytical reports and literature by experts that the solution to the problem lies in an appropriately hard stance in Pakistan rather than indulgence, the policy has not changed.

At the same time, the tactic would be to threaten the United States indirectly by hinting that the Russians are showing renewed interest in Afghanistan and wooing Pakistan.

The so-called Bajwa Doctrine, which his acolytes laud as new paths to Pakistan strategic thought, is essentially the same that Generals Ayub to Raheel Sharif have believed and practiced, except that Ayub and Musharraf were enlightened moderates and Zia was a useful Islamist.

Pakistan’s military opinion of their politicians varies from condescension to contempt. It would want to restrict their power to dissolve assemblies instead of the president — a power acquired through the 18th Amendment. They want this rolled back. They disapprove of regional autonomy and prefer a strong centralised system. It took Admiral Mullen (considered one of the most influential Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff in history), some time to realise that General Kayani was stringing him along. This is something the Pakistan establishment has done to the Americans for decades.

Those who hope that Bolton will read the riot act to Pakistan may want to pause to see how he understands Pakistan tactics and how his policy evolves. It remains to be seen how much and how soon American policy makers get beguiled into assuming that the Bajwa Doctrine portrayed as being transformational in seeking peace with Afghanistan and Iran while being patient with what has been described as a “stubborn” Modi.

The deep state has become audacious enough to try to mainstream Hafiz Saeed as a leader of an approved political party that can contest general elections scheduled for mid-year.

All is not well inside the Pashtun regions of Pakistan. Pakistan is seemingly vulnerable in its northwest with Pashtun awakening seeking an end to the decades-old Pakistani policies. The British had divided the Pashtun with the Durand Line, they further divided the Pashtun within what was at that time India, into FATA and NWFP, also within that into tribal and settled areas, and finally, merged southern Pashtun regions into British Balochistan.

Pakistan not only continued these imperial policies of inbuilt discrimination and hardship, but its policies since the Afghan jihad drove many Pashtun out of their traditional homes seeking shelter in alien, and at times, hostile Karachi or other parts of the Pakhtukhwa province. The Pashtun feel they have been exploited and used by the Pakistan establishment and are now seeking redemption.

So far, the Pashtuns have been orderly and peaceful in their protests, fended off the state’s usually strong-arm tactics of coercion and trying to discredit the movement as anti-national or politicise it through amenable politicians along with media silence.

Enforced disappearances of journalists or open intimidation of those who want to cover the forbidden area of FATA or their contacts are the most common tactics. This is what autocratic or military regimes do — they feel secure once they have blindfolded or gagged their population. Voluntary silence may mean consent but enforced silence can only be sullen and rebellious.

The United States may want to take notice of this development and India must not only remain engaged in Afghanistan but also sharpen its profile there.

This article originally appeared in Asian News International.


China’s Vital Geopolitical Stakes In Indian General Elections 2019 – Analysis

0
0

By Dr Subhash Kapila

China has vital geopolitical stakes in impeding the return to power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Indian General Elections 2019 as a strong Indian Government wedded to realism in foreign policy conduct endangers China’s blueprint in South Asia.

China though not fully-checkmated by India geopolitically and strategically does however stand to have visibly put China on notice that India can now be expected to “Stand-Upto” to Chinese transgressions and military misadventures as was evidenced in the Dokalam Military Standoff 2017 .

This new element in India’s China policy now extends farther afield than India’s disputed borders with China Occupied Tibet but extend to China’s doorstep in the South China Sea and forging maritime coalitions to limit China’s Indian Ocean designs.

For China, not used to any Asian nation looking into its eyes on its military adventurism, India’s changed stance on Dokalam should have jolted China into awakening to new realities on India’s political will and its changed politico-military responses to Chinese military adventurism and brinkmanship.

China’s logical policy deduction from the preceding discussion would be that it would be in China’s national interests to seek a displacement of the Modi Government from power in New Delhi.

Galling for China additionally would have been that India under PM Modi has refused to buckle under pressure to join China’s much vaunted flagship project of One Belt One Road Project whose critical component is the China Pakistan Economic Corridor traversing in its Northern reaches the Indian territory of Kashmir in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

Adding the robust Indian stands against Chinese military adventurism and opposing China’s flagship projects of strategically engirdling Asia under guise of economic connectivity places PM Modi and his BJP Government in China’s strategic crosshairs. Pm Modi and his Government must not be allowed to return to power in New Delhi n 2019

BJP Government 2 in New Delhi under PM Narendra Modi in the last four years has not followed the policies of appeasement of China and Pakistan unlike BJP Government 1 and the ten years of Congress-led UPA Government 2004-14.

India under PM Narendra Modi’s leadership in the period 2014-to date marked the advent of realism and realpolitik in the formulation and conduct of India’s foreign policies. It also marked the emergence of an India not weighed down by political timidity but able to confront China and not buckle under China’s military pressures as evidenced in the Dokalam Military Standoff in 2017.

Combined with a robust foreign policy and strong economic growth India today under dynamic leadership of PM Modi is on an ascendant power trajectory leading to its recognition of being an Emerged Power in the global strategic calculus.

In concrete geopolitical terms what the above means in global and Asian perceptions is that India today is being perceived as an existential counterweight to China.

The most critical ‘legacy issue’ inherited by PM Modi’s Government was a dismal level of India’s ‘war-preparedness’ foisted on the Indian Armed Forces by Congress PM Dr Manmohan Singh and his saintly Defence Minister Antony. It was a criminal neglect reminiscent of the pre-1962 Syndrome. The present Government and Defence Minister Sitharaman have visibly put this on a fast-track by goading the Ministry of Defence bureaucracy into action.

The above will take time but at least the process has begun for India to reduce its military differential with China’s military might. We should expect fast-track movements in this direction.

Having briefly laid out the pressing imperatives for China to prevent or impede the return of PM Modi and his BJP Government to power in 2019, the next step is to delineate broadly the strategies that China could possibly employ to achieve its aims. These are being discussed in brief outline covering geopolitical domains, military strategies, and economic means as in my later papers details Papers would be attempted.

Geopolitically, China has been successful in thwarting the unprecedented initiative of PM Modi during his investiture ceremony in 2014 to invite Heads of all South Asia nations for furthering relations. China has been able to wean away Nepal and the Maldives from the Indian orbit and attempting to repeat the same in Bhutan and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka has been partially affected.PM Modi’s foreign policy team has to direct focussed attention to damage control.

Chinese aim here is to generate the impressions that if India cannot control its own neighbourhood how can it emerge as the nett provider of regional security? This perception is likely to be exploited by China through Indian Opposition political parties exploiting this Chinese argument. Was not the Chinese Ambassador’s meeting with Congress then VP Rahul Gandhi an attempt to do so when Dokalam was on? More can be expected to follow.

In the political domains the vulnerabilities of certain sections of Indian media elites to Chinese persuasions/inducement was visible when prominent editors-in chiefs were sending ‘wire despatch’ arguing that China had a point on Dokalam without presenting the Indian case for objective analysis. Such sections of media elites are traditionally anti-BJP and anti-Hindu and cannot stomach any worthwhile achievements of PM Modi.

Such sections of the Indian media of what many term as those of Lutyen’s Delhi can be expected to discredit PM Modi on various counts in the run-up to General Elections2019.

China’s military strategies to discredit PM Modi and his Government’s robust policies against China cover the entire spectrum of increased border confrontations, massing of troops on India’s borders with China Occupied Tibet, contriving incidents in South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and increasing militant activity in Kashmir Valley courtesy Pakistan Amy. Internal unrest within India could be generated by China through Pak ISI in the run-up to General Elections 2019.

In the economic domain China is likely to go deeper into a trade war with the United States and would have little time against India. But China with certain anti-BJP elements within trade and industry could engineer stock exchange crashes to discredit PM Modi’s resurgent economic growth. A prominent Indian Columnist has hinted at such an eventuality taking place around October/November 2018. There are enough in the bureaucracy who could lend a hand to such possibilities.

Lastly, while India focusses heavily on Pakistan Army’s intelligence agency the IS the same focus is not seen in terms of Chinese intelligence agencies operating within India. It also needs to be remembered that in terms of wishing to see the back of PM Modi, strong convergences exist between China and Pakistan. The Home Ministry and its agencies need to be on high alert.

Concluding, it needs to be strongly reiterated that China can be expected to strongly exert itself to use all means possible to prevent the return of PM Modi and his BJP Government to power in Indian General Elections in 2019. China’s utmost aim is to down size India and it can do so now only by emergence of weak coalition government devoid of political cohesion and weighed down by compulsions of ‘Coalition Dharma”

Why The Center Left Keeps Losing Elections In Europe – Analysis

0
0

By Conn Hallinan*

More than a quarter of a century ago, much of the European center-left made a course change, edging away from its working class base, accommodating itself to the globalization of capital, and handing over the post-World War II social contract to private industry.

Whether it was the “New Labor” of Tony Blair in Britain or Gerhard Schroder’s “Agenda 2010” in Germany, social democracy came to terms with its traditional foe, capitalism.

Today, that compact is shattered. The once powerful center-left is a shadow of its former self, and the European Union — the largest trading bloc on the planet — is in profound trouble.

In election after election over the past year, Europe’s social democratic parties have gone down to defeat, although center-right parties also lost voters.

The Center Erodes

Last year’s election in the Netherlands saw the Labor Party decimated, though its conservative coalition partner also took a hit. In France, neither the Socialist Party nor the traditional conservative party even made the runoffs in the country’s presidential vote. September’s elections in Germany saw the Social Democrats take a pounding, along with their conservative alliance partners, the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union.

Most recently, Italy’s center-left Democratic Party was decisively voted out of power.

It would be easy to see this as a shift to the right. The neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party won 92 seats in the Bundestag. The Dutch anti-Muslim Party for Freedom picked up five seats. The extreme rightist National Front made the runoffs in France. The racist, anti-immigrant Northern League took 17.5 percent of the Italian vote and is in the running to form a government there.

But the fall of the center left has more to do with its 1990s course change than with any rightward shift by the continent.

As the center-left accommodated itself to capital, it eroded its trade union base. In the case of New Labor, Blair explicitly distanced the party from the unions that had been its backbone since it was founded in 1906.

In Germany, the Social Democrats began rolling back the safety net, cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and undermining labor codes that had guaranteed workers steady jobs at decent wages.

The European Union — originally touted as a way to end the years of conflict that had embroiled the continent in two world wars — became a vehicle for enforcing economic discipline on its 27 members. Rigid fiscal rules favored countries like Germany, Britain, Austria, and the Netherlands, while straitjacketing countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, particularly in times of economic crisis.

Center-left parties all over Europe bailed out banks and financial speculators, while inflicting ruinous austerity measures on their own populations to pay for it. It became difficult for most people to distinguish between the policies of the center-right and the center-left.

Both backed austerity as a strategy for the debt crisis. Both weakened trade unions through “reforms” that gave employers greater power. Short-term contracts — so-called “mini jobs” — with lower wages and benefits replaced long-term job security, a strategy that fell especially hard on young people.

The Tone-Deaf Left

The recent Italian elections are a case in point. While the center-left Democratic Party (DP) bailed out several regional banks, its labor minister recommended that young Italians emigrate to find jobs. It was the idiosyncratic Five Star Movement that called for a guaranteed income for poor Italians and sharply criticized the economics of austerity.

In contrast, the Democratic Party called for “fiscal responsibility” and support for the EU, hardly a program that addressed inequality, economic malaise, and youth unemployment. Euroskeptic parties took 55 percent of the vote, while the Democrats tumbled from 41 percent four years ago to 19 percent.

In the German elections, the Social Democrats did raise the issue of economic justice, but since the party had been part of the governing coalition under Merkel’s center-right party, voters plainly did not believe it. Party leader Martin Schulz called for a “united states of Europe,” not exactly a barnburner phrase when the EU is increasingly unpopular.

Breaking a pre-election promise to go into opposition, the Social Democrats have re-joined Merkel’s “Grand Coalition.” While the party landed some important cabinet posts, history suggests it will pay for that decision.

It also allows the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany to be the official opposition in the Bundestag, handing it a bully pulpit.

A Void on Immigration

The unwillingness of Europe’s social democrats to break from the policies of accommodation has opened an economic flank for the right to attack, and the center-left’s unwillingness to come to grips with immigration makes them vulnerable to racist and xenophobic rhetoric. Both the Italian and German center-left avoided the issue during their elections, ceding the issue to the right.

Europe does have an immigration problem of a kind. But it’s not the right’s specter of “job-stealing, Muslim rapists” overrunning the continent. In fact, Europe needs more immigrants.

EU members — most of all Italy — have shrinking and increasingly aged populations. If the continent doesn’t turn those demographics around — and rein in “mini jobs” that discourage young workers from having children — it is in serious long-term trouble. There simply will not be enough workers to support the current level of pensions and health care.

In any case, many of the “immigrants” at issue are EU members — Poles, Bulgarians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Romanians — looking for work in England and Germany because their own austerity-burdened economies can’t offer them a decent living.

The center-left didn’t buy into the right’s racism, but neither did it make the point that immigrants are in the long-term interests of Europe. Nor did it do much to challenge the foreign policy of the EU and NATO that actively aids or abets wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, wars that fuel millions of those immigrants.

One of the most telling critiques that Five Star aimed at the Democratic Party was that the Democrats supported the overthrow of the Libyan government and the consequent collapse of Libya as a functioning nation. Most the immigrants headed for Italy come from, or through, Libya. This was true, as far as it went.

It’s About Capitalism

Where center-left parties embraced unabashedly progressive policies, on the other hand, voters supported them.

In Portugal, two left parties formed a coalition with the Social Democrats to get the economy back on track, lower the jobless rate, and roll back many of the austerity measures enforced on the country by the EU. In recent local elections, voters gave them a ringing endorsement.

Jeremy Corbyn took the British Labor Party to the left with a program to re-nationalize railroads, water, energy, and the postal service, and Labor is now running neck and neck with the Conservatives. Polls also indicate that voters like Labor’s program of green energy, improving health care, and funding education and public works.

The examples of Portugal and Britain argue that voters are not turning away from left policies, but from the direction that the center left has taken over the past quarter century.

The formulas of the right — xenophobia and nationalism — will do little to alleviate the growing economic inequality in Europe, nor will they address some very real existential problems like climate change. The real threat to the Dutch doesn’t comes from Muslims, but the melting of the Greenland ice cap and the West Antarctic ice sheet, which, sometime in the next few decades, will send the North Sea over the Netherland’s dikes.

When Europe emerged from the last world war, the left played an essential role in establishing a social contract that guaranteed decent housing, health care, and employment for the continent’s people. There was still inequality, exploitation, and greed — it is, after all, capitalism — but there was also a compact that did its best to keep the playing field level. (In the words of Mette Frederiksen, a leading Danish social democrat, the mission of social democracy is “to save capitalism from itself.”)

The Thatcher government in Britain and the Reagan government in Washington broke that compact. Taxes were shifted from corporations and the wealthy to the working class and poor. Public services were privatized, education defunded, and the safety net shredded.

If the center-left is to make a comeback, it will have to re-discover its roots and lure voters away from xenophobia and narrow nationalism with a program that improves peoples’ lives and begins the difficult task of facing up to what capitalism has wrought on the planet.

*FPIF columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middlempireseries.wordpress.com

Comrade Kim Goes To China: What Does That Really Mean? – OpEd

0
0

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein*

(FPRI) — At a time when “ordinary” doesn’t seem to exist in Korean affairs, Kim Jong-un’s recent visit to China affirmed that for all the change, some fundamentals remain the same on the Korean peninsula. Not that the trip was clearly or easily foreseen. The visit was Kim’s first public one to a foreign country since he came to power in late 2011.

The first concrete signs that a high official was traveling from North Korea to China came in the shape of added security along the railway route from Pyongyang to Beijing, at Dandong station in China, across from the North Korean border town of Sinuiju. Both North Korean and Chinese authorities kept the visit secret, and it was only confirmed when the countries’ media outlets reported it after it happened.

On March 26, a source described to Daily NK how local police rehearsed rapid deployment of protective metal road barriers the day before. Kim Jong-il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-un, was known for taking his train rather than flying, over fears of safety. The mode of transportation was only one of several continuities in tradition.

With two summits planned with national leaders—one on April 27 with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, and a slightly more spectacular (and uncertain) one with U.S. President Donald Trump set for late May—it would have been a notable break of tradition had Kim Jong-un met with either of these two leaders before North Korea’s only nominal ally, China.

As leader, Kim Jong-il’s first two foreign visits went to China, where he met with then-President Jiang Zemin. For his third visit, Kim the elder went to Moscow where he met President Vladimir Putin. The relationship between North Korea and China may be more fraught than in the past several decades, with China enforcing international sanctions on North Korea with greater force than it has ever has before. But some traditions are heavier than others. Kim Jong-il, too, only ventured abroad after he had consolidated his power internally.

Reports from the meetings between the two leaders also carried few surprises. The mandatory and regular talk of their historical friendship, sealed in blood and forged through ideological union, has been as present as tradition commands in both Chinese and North Korean state media reports of the visit. Given the current tensions and uncertainties surrounding the Korean peninsula, emphasizing that continuity is an important message in its own right.

The diplomatic developments of late have taken place largely without much of a clear part for China, at least not what the outside world has been able to see. As the Chinese government news agency Xinhua emphasized, Kim’s visit was a way to loop in China and give the country its due recognition as a key player in the process:

At present, the Korean Peninsula situation is developing rapidly and many important changes have taken place, Kim said, adding that he felt he should come in time to inform Comrade General Secretary Xi Jinping in person the situation out of comradeship and moral responsibility.

Xinhua also reported that Kim mentioned denuclearization several times, but none of what he said gave evidence of a change of policy or even a new North Korean attitude to the nuclear issue. To grasp the full context of these citations, they are worth quoting in full (my own emphasis):

Kim said that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is starting to get better, as the DPRK has taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks.

It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il,” he said.

Kim said that the DPRK is determined to transform the inter-Korean ties into a relationship of reconciliation and cooperation and hold summit between the heads of the two sides.

The DPRK is willing to have dialogue with the United States and hold a summit of the two countries, he said.

The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if 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,” said Kim.

This is not the first time over the past few weeks that other outlets or channels than North Korean ones claim that Kim has made statements positive to denuclearization. When North Korea communicated to the United States that it wanted to meet, a South Korean envoy relayed the message that Kim wanted to talk denuclearization. North Korean media is yet to acknowledge or even mention this or even that Kim is scheduled to meet with Trump. The same is true for Kim’s comments in Beijing: North Korean reports of what was said there do not mention denuclearization.

Even if they had, “denuclearization” can mean a whole number of things to North Korea, and it almost certainly does not entail a one-sided capitulation of its nukes to the United States. Take the following piece from the excerpt above of Kim’s statements: “It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il.”

Note: consistent stand. In other words, nothing has really changed in North Korea’s line on the nukes. Despite what some media outlets have speculated, this was not a promise by Kim to give up his nuclear weapons in future negotiations. North Korea is still prepared to denuclearize—as long as the U.S., South Korea, and maybe the rest of the world takes steps that are still yet to be defined. We don’t actually know what North Korea demands in exchange for denuclearization, and North Korea’s definition of “denuclearization” may be so wide as to be meaningless because what it will demand in return are things that its negotiating partners cannot or will not give.

Despite their tense relationship, North Korea and China need each other for a variety of reasons, many of which have to do with strategic conditions in the region. These have not changed. The visit was a way for China and North Korea to close ranks before North Korea’s upcoming negotiations, and they’ve shown that for all the bad blood between them, they remain allies, albeit uncomfortable ones.

About the author:
*Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
is an Associate Scholar with FPRI, focusing primarily on the Korean Peninsula and East Asian region. He is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he researches the history of surveillance and social control in North Korea, and a co-editor of North Korean Economy Watch. He publishes regularly on Korean affairs in publications such as IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review and The Diplomat, and has previously worked as a journalist, and has been a special advisor to the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

The Vietnam War: A Lesson In Geopolitics Of Southeast Asia – Analysis

0
0

By Jeremy Black*

(FPRI) — As nuclear confrontation gave way to nuclear parity in the 1960s and early 1970s, limited war in Vietnam proved far less successful than in the Korean War less than 20 years before.. Why? The analysis of the Vietnam War continues to be highly controversial and interacts with ongoing debates in the United States and elsewhere about how best to conduct military operations, and especially the inherent viability of guerrilla warfare and, conversely, of counterinsurgency strategies.

The War in Focus

The American image of land warfare during the Cold War as a whole is dominated by the Vietnam War for a number of reasons. This was a lengthy conflict, one in which the United States, the world’s leading military power, was involved most intensively. As the sole major televised ground-conflict during the Cold War, the war was extensively reported from on the ground, with print journalism supported by impressive photography, and was followed with great attention around the world, much of it critical. As the war was also a failure for the United States, it was both analyzed there and attracted great attention elsewhere—being seen as an augury of a new age of warfare, that of revolutionary warfare, and more particularly as a victory for Maoist ideas of revolutionary violence and strategy, ideas contrasted with those of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, American failure appeared to demonstrate that air power had not redefined warfare to the extent that its protagonists argued. The Vietnam War led to much discussion of the merits and limitations of bombing to achieve strategic objectives. Although it could bring significant tactical and operational advantages, the Americans failed to use bombing to bring victory or, indeed, to direct the responses of the North Vietnamese, except for an investment in anti-aircraft capability. American failure also showed that nuclear capability reduced the significance of warfare, whether conventional or not. All of these points had, and still have, considerable value, but none justifies the extent to which the Vietnam War, or rather this Vietnam war, dominates discussion, and notably so at the popular level.

To understand the war better, it is important to place it in the broader geopolitical context of the late 1960s. Comparing Vietnam to contemporaneous conflicts in the Middle East, for example, can help both illuminate the details of Vietnam and also challenge claims about that conflict’s singularity.

The American-supported government in South Vietnam faced a Communist rebellion by the Viet Cong, which led to more overt American intervention. In turn, in a process that had begun before American intervention, and in a process encouraged by China, forces from North Vietnam moved south to help the Viet Cong. By 1963, there were 16,000 American military advisers in South Vietnam, but the Army of the Republic of [South] Vietnam, or the ARVN, was not in command of the situation. In part, this was because it was having to respond to its opponents and had a large area to defend, but there was also a command culture focused on caution and firepower that could not grasp the dynamic of events. Being on the defensive meant that its opponents were able to dictate the pace of campaigning.

America Increases its Commitment

By 1965, in the face of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong moving, as they thought, into the last phase of Mao Zedong’s theory of revolutionary war, and accordingly deploying large forces operating in concentrated units, the ARVN was on the verge of collapse. This situation led to a major increase in American commitment to preserve the credibility of American power and to force war on the Communists in an area where the Americans could intervene. Thus, to President Lyndon B. Johnson, the war was a necessary demonstration of resolve, a strategic goal that rather overwhelmed the specific problems of seeking success in South Vietnam. This was a sequel to the alleged failure to prevent Cuba going Communist, an assessment that exaggerated what the United States could have achieved once Fidel Castro was established.

The Americans faced tactical and operational difficulties in operating in South Vietnam but overcame them. Initially focused on defending coastal areas that were strongholds of South Vietnamese power and essential for American deployment, the Americans gradually built up an impressive logistical infrastructure, then moved into the interior. The Americans were able to advance into parts of South Vietnam which had been outside the control of Saigon and to inflict serious blows on the Viet Cong in the Mekong delta. In addition, direct mass Viet Cong attacks on American positions were generally repulsed with heavy casualties, for example at the siege of Plei Me in the Central Highlands in 1965.

The Americans sought to advance throughout South Vietnam, establishing “firebases” from which they could mount large-scale search-and-destroy operations, in order to defeat the large units being deployed by their opponents and erode their strength. Land warfare was becoming far more mobile as a result of the internal combustion engine. The helicopter played a major role in this extension of activity, especially with the use of the new 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). In addition, the environment, notably the forest cover and the lack of good roads, was generally not appropriate for armor. The use of the helicopter represented a successful operational and tactical engagement with the situation. Such success, however, was only possible because the North Vietnamese did not have human-portable, surface-to-air missiles until late in the war. Had they done so earlier, the usage of helicopters would have been extremely difficult, as was the case for Portugal in Africa, which would have forced the Americans to change their tactics to more conventional methods of advance, supply and retreat.

In the event, against the background of the very different experience of the Korean War, the American army gradually learned the necessary tactical skills to campaign successfully in South Vietnam, albeit, in turn, squandering this lesson by the practice of rotating units out of the combat zone too quickly. Nevertheless, the strategy underpinning American land warfare was problematic as, in parallel, was the very different strategy guiding American air warfare against North Vietnam. As with other counterinsurgency armies, American activity on the ground was somewhat apt to conceal the extent to which the initiative was, in practice, shared with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Moreover, although heavy casualties were inflicted, in what could be presented as attritional warfare linked to American “scientific” operational research and the related “kill statistics,” opposing numbers rose, as North Vietnam responded to the American build-up by sending troops south down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and thus avoiding the strong American presence in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam.

The Tet Offensive: Tactics and Ramifications

There was also the problem of forcing conflict on opponents, a problem underlined by the politically imposed necessity of using air but not ground forces in attacking the opponents’ base area of North Vietnam. Within South Vietnam itself, there was no concentration of opposing power that could be rapidly fixed and readily destroyed as, in very different circumstances, the Israelis were to do against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in 1967, and the Indians and Pakistanis to sought to do in successive conflicts in 1965 and 1971.

The North Vietnamese presented simply denying American success as victory, on the grounds that American willpower to sustain the struggle was less than theirs. Although easy to claim, however, it did not suffice, especially as the Americans claimed in 1967 that the war was going well. This situation helped ensure the launch of the Tet Offensive, a major offensive by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in 1968, designed to show the American public that their army was failing, and also to demonstrate to the South Vietnamese that this army could not protect them.

There were obvious fundamental contrasts between the Tet Offensive and that of the Israelis in 1967, not least in terrain and outcome, but there was a similarity in that the ability to take the offensive to disorientated opponents and provided a dramatic political message. Although the Soviet Union backed Egypt and Syria, the Israelis were not directly up against a superpower with superior technology or united command. Given the constraints within which they had to operate, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong did well, helped, as in the Israeli case, by strong morale.

The attacks mounted under cover of the Lunar New Year celebrations of Tet were launched in the mistaken belief that they would engender a popular uprising. In turn, over-optimistic American assumptions about enemy casualties in the border battles of late 1967 were matched by an inability to believe that a full-scale attack on the cities would be mounted. This was a serious failure of assessment. About 85,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops attacked beginning on January 30, 1968, being eventually defeated with heavy losses over the following month. There was a recurrence of the failure of attacks on French positions in 1951. Nevertheless, North Vietnamese military and political strategies did not depend on continual success.

Having defeated these attacks, American effectiveness in counter-insurgency increased from 1968, but, in part for tactical and operational reasons, it still proved difficult to “fix” opponents and to force them to fight on American terms. Nevertheless, in 1969, the Americans inflicted serious blows on the Viet Cong who had lost many of their more experienced troops in the Tet Offensive, and achieved little in 1969.

Although the Americans were able to repulse attacks, their counter-insurgency strategy was undermined by the unpopularity of the South Vietnamese government, by Viet Cong opposition and intimidation, and by increasingly vocal domestic American criticism of what appeared an increasingly intractable conflict. The last encouraged the Americans to shift more of the burden back on the ARVN, with problematic results. The ARVN had some good commanders and units, but was not up to American expectations. Thus, prefiguring the situation in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, although the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese did not win in the field in 1968-72, they benefited greatly from shifts in the military and political contexts. At the strategic level, these shifts included growing pressure on American interests elsewhere, and notably so as a result of Soviet support for Arab rearmament and intransigence after the Six Day War of 1967. The Soviet deployment of more warships in the Mediterranean increased the pressure on the United States. There was also concern about the situation in Korea.

The issues facing the United States in South Vietnam were matched by the experience of their allies, each of whom had their own particular approaches and combat styles. Analysis of the Australian pacification activity in Phuoc Tuy province, as of the Americans in Binh Dinh province, question the thesis that the policy had succeeded and was therefore wrecked by the eventual pull out. At the same time, it is clear that the Viet Cong, which had been able to compete openly with the government in 1966, was, by the close of 1972, forced to operate clandestinely. Yet, there has also been a focus on the “inherent weaknesses in the South Vietnamese state” that in part was a matter of the webs of patronage and corruption, but that, more generally, was a consequence of “the immaturity of the South Vietnamese state.” This situation greatly affected military preparedness and morale. Training was also poor, and the army depended on the Americans for firepower and logistics.

The Easter Offensive of 1972 and the Failure to Translate Operational Strategy

As in most conflicts, the balance of failure in Vietnam by both sides continued, and was demonstrated by North Vietnam in their 1972 Easter Offensive, which that stands comparison, as a military and political move, with the Egyptian and Syrian assault on Israel in 1973. The casualties inflicted on the Viet Cong in, and after the Tet offensive, as well as the inability of American air attacks to destroy North Vietnam’s war-supporting capability and logistical system, had ensured a greater reliance on North Vietnamese forces, rather than on the Viet Cong, while also creating the possibility for the use of conventional forces in a conventional Soviet-style operation. In March 1972, the North Vietnamese launched the Nguyen Hue campaign (or Easter Offensive) across the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam. The surprise nature of the attack, and the strong forces deployed, brought initial success. Quang Tri, a provincial capital, was captured and another, An Loc, besieged. In response, President Richard Nixon briefly considered using nuclear weapons.

A standard view, notably in the United States, emphasizes the role, in the eventual North Vietnamese failure, of the American Linebacker I air campaign which hit the invasion force’s supply system, particularly their fuel stocks. This account underplays the role of South Vietnamese defenders, who held off the invasion, and the problems the North Vietnamese confronted in mastering high-tempo maneuver warfare. Both were also to be issues for Egypt and Syria when attacking Israel in 1973, and for Iraq when attacking Iran in 1980, in all cases without success. The Soviet Union could provide impressive weaponry, particularly tanks, but it proved far more difficult to transfer the doctrine and techniques of effective operational warfare, and notably so if faced by determined opposition. As more generally in military history, capabilities—whether in attack or defense—were focused, accentuated, minimized, or offset, by the characteristics of the opponent. Moreover, Soviet operational art was devised for the circumstances of the North European Plain and was not easy to translate to very different environmental and military conditions.

In 1972, the North Vietnamese failed to make the best use of tanks, which reflected both an operational inability to gain mobility and achieve particular objectives, and a tactical failure to get and utilize infantry-armor coordination. Instead, as with the Iraqis in 1980, the tanks were used by the North Vietnamese as an assault force on South Vietnamese positions, indeed essentially as mobile artillery. This had the effect of squandering the initiative in operational terms, while providing targets for American air attack. On the eve of the American withdrawal in 1973, neither side had won the war on the ground, a repetition of the situation for the French there in 1954 and in Algeria in 1962, which was not a comparison the Americans would have welcomed. However, the Americans, like the French in 1954, were under serious fiscal pressure and suffering from rising domestic problems.

The End of the War Was Not the End of the Fighting

The failure of the Nguyen Hue campaign in South Vietnam in 1972 meant that the North Vietnamese would need to follow the route of negotiation in order to move forward in the Vietnam War. This course was encouraged by the 1972 American rapprochement with China, a step of great strategic significance that, like the earlier overthrow of the Left-wing nationalist government in Indonesia in 1965-66, made it less serious for the Americans to abandon South Vietnam. Indeed, as a result, there was a strategic “victory” of a sort for the United States in the Vietnam War. The Paris Peace Agreements of January 1973, during the negotiation of which in December the Americans threatened to use nuclear weapons, were followed by American withdrawal two months later.

The conflict continued, with the two Vietnams the combatants, and with heavy South Vietnamese casualties. In April 1975, conventional North Vietnamese divisions achieved what they had been unable to do in 1972, overrunning and conquering South Vietnam. They made good use of tanks and ably integrated them with infantry and artillery. Unlike the North Vietnamese, the ARVN was politicized without equivalent gains in motivation. The South Vietnamese also faced important doctrinal and operational problems, including a failure to seize the initiative and widespread reluctance to take combat to their opponents. Moreover, in March 1975, the South Vietnamese followed an unwise strategy, notably with an abandonment of the Central Highlands, where the North Vietnamese had launched their attack. Instead, South Vietnam focused on defending the south near Saigon, a strategy that gave their opponents a powerful impetus and gravely weakened their own morale and cohesion.

This account does not focus on the American failure to continue providing military support, notably airpower. The contrast between 1972 and 1975 might suggest that it was the key factor, but that analysis offers too limited a reading of the situation in each of those years, and puts too much focus on the United States. To change just one variable does not necessarily explain success.

The withdrawal of American forces and the total fall of South Vietnam did not end conflict in the region. In 1975, Communists also overthrew their opponents in Cambodia and Laos. There was, however, a major falling out among these states. In 1979, Vietnam, which looked to the Soviet Union, attacked Cambodia, which looked to China. In response, believing that Vietnam ought to be taught a lesson and fearing a fundamental Soviet threat to Chinese security, in February-March 1979, the Chinese attacked Vietnam with 500,000 troops, inflicting much devastation. Ironically, the Chinese quickly discovered that greater Vietnamese guerrilla warfare experience, combined, on the part of the Chinese, with poor logistics, inadequate equipment, and failures in command and control, led them to withdraw, without forcing the Vietnamese forces to leave Cambodia. Although far larger in scale and longer than its attack on India in 1962, this was a more limited war than the Chinese intervention in Korea in 1950-53, notably because it was not fighting a major power, but it was also the least successful of those three operations. Nevertheless, because of its limited goals, it proved far easier for China to restrict its commitment in Vietnam than in the case of the United States in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Low-level conflict continued in Cambodia with China backing rebels after its protégé, the Pol Pot government, was overthrown by the Vietnamese invasion. Moreover, border conflict continued between China and Vietnam until 1991, with much of it on a large-scale and very costly in lives.

Nevertheless, there was no new major conflict in East or Southeast Asia after the 1970s. Partly as a result, conflict potential within region was underplayed until the situation dramatically changed in the mid-2010s. China achieved its economic rise in the 1970s-2000s through integration with the American-dominated global system and without conflict. The situation did not alter until the 2010s, when tensions rapidly escalated.

Another approach to understanding the long-term significance of the Vietnam War would be to ask how best to define a major war. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978-79 involved 150,000 troops. This invasion was initially resisted by conventional means, leading to the loss of about half of the Cambodian army, until the Cambodians turned to waging guerrilla operations from bases in Thailand. Subsequently, the Vietnamese retained a large force in Cambodia—180,000 of their 1.26 million army in 1984, a year of major efforts against the guerrillas. In 1989, the Vietnamese withdrew, a change which was linked to a cut in the Vietnamese army by about a half. About 15,000 Vietnamese troops had been killed during the occupation. Peace came in 1999 when the Khmer Rouge, the key resistance element, no longer enjoying Chinese support, was completely dissolved.

A conflict on this scale would have been regarded as major elsewhere in the world. Yet, in Southeast Asia, because the United States was no longer involved, it barely registered on the international consciousness. An American war had been replaced by a situation in which regional powers, and notably the regional superpower, China, were the key players, while the American role was essentially offshore. The American war in Vietnam was terrible in many ways, but was just an episode in regional conflict. The potential for further such conflicts in that region has continued to the present. If we hope to understand those conflicts, we would do well to place the American War in Vietnam in its historical and geopolitical contexts.

About the author:
*Jeremy Black
, a Templeton Fellow at FPRI, is professor of history at Exeter University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Like Obama, Trump Loves To Make Laws With ‘A Pen And A Phone’– OpE

0
0

By Ryan McMaken*

When Donald Trump raised taxes on steel and aluminum in the form of a large tariff hike, virtually no one in Washington seemed much perturbed by the fact that the president raised taxes without so much as a debate in Congress.

In the grade-school version of American politics, of course, children are taught that Congress controls government taxation and spending. Tax increases must be subject to a vote in Congress in order to become law. Or so we’re told.

The principle of the legislature controlling government revenues goes back centuries, at least as far back as the times of conflict between English King Charles I and Parliament. Among backers of Parliament, it was believed that kings — including Charles, of course — were prone to waste tax money on wars. Thus kings were forced to go to Parliament to raise funds for the wars they wished to wage.

In modern America, however, we no longer waste time on such antiquated formalities. Nowadays, the president, who in the words of Barack Obama has “a pen and a phone” can simply raise taxes whenever he wants via executive order. He need only call the tax hike a new tariff, and claim it’s all for the sake of national security.

The Parliament-backers of old, of course, were too smart to fall for that “national security” trick. Even war expenditures had to win Parliament’s approval. America’s Congress, though, long ago abdicated its control over taxes, and created a huge tariff loophole in which any president can raise taxes if he says it’s a matter of military necessity.

If we read Trump’s executive orders, we find they pay lip service to the national security line. The texts of the executive orders raising tariffs on steel and aluminum both state that the lack of tariffs “threaten to impair the national security of the United States.”

No evidence that this is true is actually presented. And, indeed, the secretary of Defense has specifically stated that tariffs are not necessary for national security:

… the US military requirements for steel and aluminum each only represent about three percent of US production. Therefore, DoD does not believe that the finds in the reports impact the ability of DoD programs to acquire the steel or aluminum necessary to meet national defense requirements.

But, merely invoking the phrase acts like a magic talisman that removes the need for any debate or vote in Congress on a tax hike.

Given our apparently lackadaisical attitude over such matters, it’s hard to image what all that fuss was about during the English Civil War and the fight for Parliamentary independence in England. Those Englishmen of old apparently lacked the insight of modern Americans which is that the Executive ought to be allowed to raise taxes whenever he wants, provided he utters a few words about “national security.”

Trump’s Fondness for Executive Action

Tax hikes aren’t the only topic on which Donald Trump likes to rule by decree.

On matters of gun control, too, Trump seems enthusiastic about doing an end run around Congress.

“As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period,” Trump said on Twitter as the announcement was made. “We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”

Ignoring the fact that bump stocks most certainly do not turn legal weapons into “machine guns,” we can nevertheless see how this administration — and most others over the past century — have viewed the process of lawmaking in the United States.

Want to ban something? Just have a government department issue a “rule.” No need for legislation, debate, votes, or any of that other outdated “democracy” stuff! And if you violate one of these new “rules?” Well, you may be looking at a lengthy prison sentence.

Of course, there’s no indication that Trump plans at stopping with bump stocks. As he so enthusiastically has informed us, he’s not terribly fond of the due process involved in making law with public input. That’s all so tedious, which is why when it comes to guns, Trump wants to “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Not that Trump is unique in his presidential disdain for due process. He’s just willing to say so out loud.

Trump does appear to be especially fond of unilaterally issuing his own laws, as it seems that Trump is on pace to sign more executive orders than any other president in the past 50 years.

Admittedly, this metric alone isn’t a very good one for measuring just how bad a president is. A year into his presidency, George W. Bush was signing off on the liberty-eviscerating USA Patriot Act, and calling for large scale invasions of various foreign countries — countries that could not be shown to be any threat to the United States. He had Congress’s approval on that — unfortunately.

But coupled with Trump’s clearly stated disdain for due process and his willingness to cynically employ the “national security” ruse to raise taxes on Americans, it’s not a promising trend.

About the author:
*Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images