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Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Loss Has Increased

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Mass losses of the Antarctic Ice Sheet have increased global sea level by 7.6 mm since 1992, with 40% of this rise (3.0 mm) coming in the last five years alone. In West Antarctica, mass losses today amount to about 160 billion tons per year.

The findings are from a major climate assessment known as the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), and are published in Nature. It is the most complete picture of Antarctic ice sheet change to date – 84 scientists from 44 institutions combined 24 satellite surveys to produce the assessment.

Martin Horwath, professor for Geodetic Earth System Research at TU Dresden, and two members of his working group, Ludwig Schröder and Andreas Groh, contributed significantly to this study.

Ludwig Schröder explained: “Altimeter satellites measure the surface elevation of the ice sheet. We analyzed data from five consecutive satellite missions in order to derive changes over the full 25-year period from 1992 to 2017.” Schröder was one of just two contributors to deliver such a comprehensive dataset.

Andreas Groh added: “Analyzing tiny changes of Earth’s gravitational attraction is another method to infer ice mass changes. We analyzed data from the GRACE satellite mission. GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The results, together with thorough uncertainty assessments, have been accessible through an open data portal for a while. They were now incorporated into the study.” The portal is available under data1.geo.tu-dresden.de.

One of the two lead authors of the study, Dr. Erik Ivins at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, currently being at a research stay at Prof. Horwath’s institute at TU Dresden, commented the study: “The added duration of the observing period, the larger pool of participants, various refinements in our observing capability and an improved ability to assess both inherent and interpretive uncertainties, each contribute to making this the most robust study of ice mass balance of Antarctica to date.”

West Antarctica experienced the largest change with ice losses rising from 53 billion tonnes per year in the 1990ies to 159 billion tonnes per year since 2012. Most of this came from the acceleration of the huge Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers. At the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula glacier acceleration following ice shelf collapse caused an increase in ice mass loss from seven billion tonnes per year in the 1990ies to 33 billion tonnes per year in the 2010s. For East Antarctica the results are subject to larger uncertainties but indicate a state close to balance over the last 25 years.

A mass of one billion tonnes corresponds to a cubic kilometer of water. If continental ice sheets lose 100 billion tonnes of mass mean sea level will rise by 0.28 mm.


Floppy Eyelids May Be Sign Of Sleep Apnea

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A Loyola Medicine study is providing further evidence that floppy eyelids may be a sign of sleep apnea.

In a study published in the journal The Ocular Surface, corresponding author Charles Bouchard, MD, and colleagues reported that 53 percent of sleep apnea patients had upper eyelids that were lax and rubbery. The most severe cases of sleep apnea were associated with the most pronounced cases of floppy eyelids, but this association was not strong enough to be considered statistically significant.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) occurs when the upper airway becomes blocked repeatedly, preventing restful sleep. Symptoms include loud snoring, excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue. OSA affects an estimated 34 percent of men and 17 percent of women, but up to 80 percent those affected have not been diagnosed. A 2010 Harvard Medical School report estimated that moderate-to-severe sleep apnea was associated with $115 billion in healthcare costs, behind only cancer, diabetes and coronary heart disease.

Lax, rubbery eyelids are found in people who have one of three related conditions: lax eyelid condition (rubbery lids); lax eyelid syndrome (lax eyelids plus conjunctivitis); and floppy eyelid syndrome (lax eyelid syndrome in obese young men), said Dr. Bouchard, chair of Loyola Medicine’s department of ophthalmology.

The Loyola study included 35 patients who were evaluated by Loyola sleep specialists for suspicion of sleep apnea. Overnight sleep studies confirmed that 32 of these patients had sleep apnea. Examinations by ophthalmologists found that 17 of the 32 sleep apnea patients (53 percent) also had lax eyelid condition.

Among the methods ophthalmologists employed to measure lax eyelids was a measuring instrument developed at Loyola called a laxometer. Researchers hypothesized that this objective measuring technique would provide a more accurate predictor of sleep apnea.

It’s unclear why sleep apnea is linked to floppy eyelids. One theory suggests the condition is associated with low-grade inflammation that causes degradation of elastin, a protein that allows skin and other tissues to resume their shape after stretching or contracting.

“Obstructive sleep apnea is a severely underdiagnosed disease, and without treatment leads to increased morbidity and mortality,” researchers concluded. “It is the duty of today’s ophthalmologist to be diligent in making the diagnosis of lax eyelid syndrome in the ophthalmology clinic. They are in the unique position to identify patients at risk for obstructive sleep apnea and address this critical public health problem.”

Chip Upgrade Helps Miniature Drones Navigate

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Researchers at MIT, who last year designed a tiny computer chip tailored to help honeybee-sized drones navigate, have now shrunk their chip design even further, in both size and power consumption.

The team, co-led by Vivienne Sze, associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and Sertac Karaman, the Class of 1948 Career Development Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, built a fully customized chip from the ground up, with a focus on reducing power consumption and size while also increasing processing speed.

The new computer chip, named “Navion,” which they are presenting this week at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, is just 20 square millimeters — about the size of a LEGO minifigure’s footprint — and consumes just 24 milliwatts of power, or about one-thousandth the energy required to power a lightbulb.

Using this tiny amount of power, the chip is able to process in real-time camera images at up to 171 frames per second, as well as inertial measurements, both of which it uses to determine where it is in space. The researchers say the chip can be integrated into “nanodrones” as small as a fingernail, to help the vehicles navigate, particularly in remote or inaccessible places where global positioning satellite data is unavailable.

The chip design can also be run on any small robot or device that needs to navigate over long stretches of time on a limited power supply.

“I can imagine applying this chip to low-energy robotics, like flapping-wing vehicles the size of your fingernail, or lighter-than-air vehicles like weather balloons, that have to go for months on one battery,” said Karaman, who is a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT. “Or imagine medical devices like a little pill you swallow, that can navigate in an intelligent way on very little battery so it doesn’t overheat in your body. The chips we are building can help with all of these.”

Sze and Karaman’s co-authors are EECS graduate student Amr Suleiman, who is the lead author; EECS graduate student Zhengdong Zhang; and Luca Carlone, who was a research scientist during the project and is now an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

A flexible chip

In the past few years, multiple research groups have engineered miniature drones small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Scientists envision that such tiny vehicles can fly around and snap pictures of your surroundings, like mosquito-sized photographers or surveyors, before landing back in your palm, where they can then be easily stored away.

But a palm-sized drone can only carry so much battery power, most of which is used to make its motors fly, leaving very little energy for other essential operations, such as navigation, and, in particular, state estimation, or a robot’s ability to determine where it is in space.

“In traditional robotics, we take existing off-the-shelf computers and implement [state estimation] algorithms on them, because we don’t usually have to worry about power consumption,” Karaman said. “But in every project that requires us to miniaturize low-power applications, we have to now think about the challenges of programming in a very different way.”

In their previous work, Sze and Karaman began to address such issues by combining algorithms and hardware in a single chip. Their initial design was implemented on a field-programmable gate array, or FPGA, a commercial hardware platform that can be configured to a given application. The chip was able to perform state estimation using 2 watts of power, compared to larger, standard drones that typically require 10 to 30 watts to perform the same tasks. Still, the chip’s power consumption was greater than the total amount of power that miniature drones can typically carry, which researchers estimate to be about 100 milliwatts.

To shrink the chip further, in both size and power consumption, the team decided to build a chip from the ground up rather than reconfigure an existing design. “This gave us a lot more flexibility in the design of the chip,” Sze said.

Running in the world

To reduce the chip’s power consumption, the group came up with a design to minimize the amount of data — in the form of camera images and inertial measurements — that is stored on the chip at any given time. The design also optimizes the way this data flows across the chip.

“Any of the images we would’ve temporarily stored on the chip, we actually compressed so it required less memory,” said Sze, who is a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. The team also cut down on extraneous operations, such as the computation of zeros, which results in a zero. The researchers found a way to skip those computational steps involving any zeros in the data. “This allowed us to avoid having to process and store all those zeros, so we can cut out a lot of unnecessary storage and compute cycles, which reduces the chip size and power, and increases the processing speed of the chip,” Sze says.

Through their design, the team was able to reduce the chip’s memory from its previous 2 megabytes, to about 0.8 megabytes. The team tested the chip on previously collected datasets generated by drones flying through multiple environments, such as office and warehouse-type spaces.

“While we customized the chip for low power and high speed processing, we also made it sufficiently flexible so that it can adapt to these different environments for additional energy savings,” Sze said. “The key is finding the balance between flexibility and efficiency.” The chip can also be reconfigured to support different cameras and inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors.

From these tests, the researchers found they were able to bring down the chip’s power consumption from 2 watts to 24 milliwatts, and that this was enough to power the chip to process images at 171 frames per second — a rate that was even faster than what the datasets projected.

The team plans to demonstrate its design by implementing its chip on a miniature race car. While a screen displays an onboard camera’s live video, the researchers also hope to show the chip determining where it is in space, in real-time, as well as the amount of power that it uses to perform this task. Eventually, the team plans to test the chip on an actual drone, and ultimately on a miniature drone.

Montana Burial Site Answers Questions About Early Humans

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Scientists have shown that at the Anzick site in Montana – the only known Clovis burial site – the skeletal remains of a young child and the antler and stone artifacts found there were buried at the same time, raising new questions about the early inhabitants of North America, says a Texas A&M University professor involved in the research.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans and colleagues from the University of Oxford and Stafford Research of Colorado have had their work published in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

The main focus of the team’s research centered on properly dating the Anzick site which is named after the family who own the land. The site was discovered in 1968 by construction workers, who found the human remains and stone tools which include Clovis spear points and antler tools. It is the only known Clovis burial site and is associated with Clovis stone and antler artifacts.

“One thing that has always been a problem has been the accurate dating of the human remains from the site,” explained Waters.

“The human remains yielded a younger age that was not in agreement with the ages from the antler artifacts which dated older than the human remains. If the human remains and Clovis artifacts were contemporaneous, they should be the same age.” To resolve the issue, the team used a process called Specific Amino Acid Radiocarbon Dating, which allows a specific amino acid, in this case hydroxyproline, to be isolated from the human bones.

“This amino acid could only have come from the human skeleton and could not be contaminated,” Waters added.

“The other previous ages suffered from some sort of contamination. With the new method, we got very accurate and secure ages for the human remains based on dating hydroxyproline. As a test, we also redated the antler artifacts using this technique.”

The results prove that both the human remains and antler Clovis artifacts are of the same date.

“The human remains and Clovis artifacts can now be confidently shown to be the same age and date between 12,725 to 12,900 years ago,” Waters noted. “This is right in the middle to the end of the Clovis time period which ranges from 13,000 to 12,700 years ago.

“This is important because we have resolved the dating issues at the site. Some researchers had argued that the human remains were not Clovis and were younger than the Clovis artifacts, based on the earlier radiocarbon dates. We have shown that they are the same age and confirmed that the Anzick site represents a Clovis burial.”

While not the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, Clovis is the first widespread prehistoric culture that first appeared 13,000 years ago. Clovis originated south of the large Ice Sheets that covered Canada at that time and are the direct descendants of the earliest people who arrived in the New World around 15,000 years ago. Clovis people fashioned their stone spear tips with grooved, or fluted, bases. They invented the “Clovis point,’ a spear-shaped weapon made of stone that is found in Texas and other portions of the United States and northern Mexico, and these weapons were used to hunt animals

The researchers said the findings will also help geneticists in their estimates of the timing of the peopling of the Americas because the Anzick genome is critical to understanding early settlements and the origin of modern Native peoples.

World Cup: Japan Upsets Colombia In Historic 1-2 Win

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In catching Colombia cold at the Mordovia Arena, Japan earned their first ever win over Los Cafeteros, avenging their 4-1 defeat to the same opponents at Brazil 2014, and picked up three precious points in their bid to advance from Group H.

The game began at a frenetic pace, with Japan forcing a penalty that led to a red card for Colombia defender Carlos Sanchez allowing Shinji Kagawa to put the Asian side ahead from the spot.

Cafetero coach Jose Pekerman shuffled his pack to give his side a chance of overcoming their numerical disadvantage and getting back into the game.

Battling for every ball, Colombia captain Radamel Falcao earned the free-kick from which Juan Quintero equalised before half-time, Fifa.com reporterd.

Japan dominated the second half, creating a series of chances before Yuya Osako headed in the winner from a set-piece.

This time there was to be no comeback, despite the arrival of James Rodriguez and Carlos Bacca on the pitch and a valiant late push by Los Cafeteros.

Climate Change To Overtake Land Use As Major Threat To Global Biodiversity

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Climate change will have a rapidly increasing effect on the structure of global ecological communities over the next few decades, with amphibians and reptiles being significantly more affected than birds and mammals, a new report by UCL finds.

The pace of change is set to outstrip loss to vertebrate communities caused by land use for agriculture and settlements, which is estimated to have already caused losses of over ten per cent of biodiversity from ecological communities.

Previous studies have suggested that ecosystem function is substantially impaired where more than 20 per cent of species are lost; this is estimated to have occurred across over a quarter of the world’s surface, rising to nearly two thirds when roads are taken into account.

The new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that the effects of climate change on ecological communities are predicted to match or exceed land use in its effects on vertebrate community diversity by 2070.

The findings suggest that efforts to minimise human impact on global biodiversity should now take both land use and climate change into account instead of just focusing on one over the other, as the combined effects are expected to have significant negative effects on the global ecosystem.

Study author, Dr Tim Newbold (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment), said: “This is the first piece of research looking at the combined effects of future climate and land use change on local vertebrate biodiversity across the whole of the land surface, which is essential when considering how to minimise human impact on the local environment at a global scale.

“The results show how big a role climate change is set to play in decreasing levels of biodiversity in the next few decades and how certain animal groups and regions will be most affected.”

Dr Newbold’s research has found that vertebrate communities are expected to lose between a tenth and over a quarter of their species locally as a result of climate change.

Furthermore, when combined with land use, vertebrate community diversity is predicted to have decreased substantially by 2070, with species potentially declining by between 20 and nearly 40 per cent.

The effect of climate change varies around the world. Tropical rainforests, which have seen lower rates of conversion to human use than other areas, are likely to experience large losses as a result of climate change. Temperate regions, which have been the most affected by land use, stand to see relatively small biodiversity changes from future climate change, while tropical grasslands and savannahs are expected to see strong losses as a result of both climate change and land use.

De Mistura Meets Officials In Geneva For Syrian Constitutional Committee

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Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, on Tuesday met with senior Turkish, Russian, and Iranian officials towards the establishment of a constitutional committee for the war-battered country.

The delegations entered the UN at Geneva on Tuesday morning for the closed-door meeting — expected to continue until noon — to facilitate the establishment of a constitutional committee for Syria.

The Syrian regime has conveyed a list of 50 names for the constitutional committee, and an opposition list is coming.

“We are focusing on moving forward on a constitutional committee and that’s our purpose, there are many other things that are important but this is the one we’re focusing on,” de Mistura told reporters last week.

Original source

World Cup: Russia Beats Egypt 3-1

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A sparkling second-half performance ensured that Russia are virtually guaranteed to qualify for the knock-out rounds for the first time in their modern history, in the wake of a 3-1 victory over a poor Egypt.

Flying winger Denis Cheryshev, who began the tournament on the bench, took a share of the Golden Boot race with his third World Cup goal, while Russia have eight goals after just two games, having failed to win any of their seven warm-up matches before the home tournament.

A team that have often buckled under expectations, this time have exceeded them, to the incredulity of a nation that merely hoped to avoid embarrassment.

Swapping out dynamic but underperforming striker Fedor Smolov from the starting line-up for towering Artem Dzyuba, from the start the home side looked to exploit Egypt’s vulnerability to crosses, evident in their opening-game defeat against Uruguay. The midfielders diligently looked for the target man from all over the pitch, but deliveries lacked quality, and Dzyuba, who also came on to score in Russia’s rout of Saudi Arabia, was tightly marked.

READ MORE: Russia opens World Cup with historic 5-0 win over Saudi Arabia

For Egypt, star man Mohamed Salah, playing his first game after a month out with injury, appeared tentative and unwilling to embark on his devastating runs towards goal, though the Liverpool attacker still looked like The Pharaohs’ most dangerous outlet, with a shot that whistled past the post.

Both teams appeared determined not to sit back waiting for errors, but lacked the quality to do damage. Yet it was a mistake that broke the deadlock at the start of the second half in what had been an evenly-matched tie, when Egypt central defender Ahmed Fathi tragicomically deflected a bouncing knee-high ball past his outstretched goalkeeper.

Pushed forward by a thumping 64,000-strong crowd at the St. Petersburg Stadium, the reds grew in stature, Cheryshev popped up with a vital effort, converting a Mario Fernandes ball beyond Mohamed El-Shenawy.

The match threatened to escalate into another thrashing when Dzyuba was rewarded for his toil with a well-taken goal on 61 minutes.

Salah got his name on the scoresheet after being fouled on the edge of the area, before VAR adjudged that the infringement had actually occured inside the box and the striker stepped up to power his penalty in the top corner.

But the result was never in doubt, as Russia held on for the final 20 minutes, enjoying several more chances to stretch their lead.

While both teams technically remain in the tournament, the only way Russia could fail to get to the knock-outs would be if Saudi Arabia were to score two big wins in their remaining games, and if Uruguay were to inflict a massive defeat upon the team in their remaining game.

More likely, the European and South American sides will play for the top spot in Group A during the final group game in Samara on Monday. Egypt will look to salvage pride when they seek their first-ever World Cup win against Saudi Arabia.

But Tuesday was all about Russia – a much doubted team apparently short on talent that have produced an historic performance, and in the process set off a thousand street parties from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.


Popular Streaming Playlists Can Boost A Song’s Revenue By Up To $163k

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Artists lucky enough to find their song on ‘Today’s Top Hits’, a Spotify playlist with over 20 million followers, could see a boost in popularity worth between $116k and $163k in additional streaming revenue.

Playlists also have a big influence on the success of new artists and new songs. Getting to the top of Spotify’s ‘New Music Friday’ playlist in the US boosts streams by around 14 million, worth between $84k and $117k in additional revenue.

‘New Music Friday’ playlists provide a weekly, country-specific selection of 50 tracks recommended by Spotify. All the songs are new and just over half come from independent labels.

The findings come from a study by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, on the impact of Spotify playlists on a song’s success.

Scientists analyzed: How many times a song is streamed before and after its inclusion on major global playlists and algorithm-based ‘Global top 50’ playlists; The effects of inclusion in the ‘New Music Friday’ playlists on song success; Whether ‘New Music Friday’ playlists can help in the discovery of new artists.

The study finds clear evidence that Spotify has a powerful role in influencing users’ listening choices by deciding what to include on some of the platform’s most popular playlists. The results also indicate that ‘New Music Friday’ playlists help in the discovery of new songs and artists.

The findings are interesting for music industry participants, listeners and observers of platforms more generally.

Discovering music in the digital era

The means through which we discover and access music have evolved over the past few decades, with improvements in mobile internet technology helping streaming to become an increasingly significant channel. Sweden-based Spotify has emerged as the most prominent platform, with a 37% share of the subscription streaming market.

Streaming has also given users access to a much higher volume of music than through traditional terrestrial radio and music retailing. Spotify users have access to 35 million tracks with any internet-enabled device.

In theory, the access to this volume of content gives music lovers the opportunity to discover music from a vast array of sources, including independent record labels and foreign producers.

Conversely, access to such a large catalogue creates a daunting problem of product discovery, with the risk that new music and emerging talent could become lost in a sea of content.

Fee-paying platforms like Spotify seek to add value by helping listeners to discover the music they like, whether through playlists or personalised suggestions.

Commission support to the European music sector

The study contributes to scientific evidence on how digitisation and online distribution have altered revenue streams and led to new consumption patterns, with implications for the music sector.

The European Commission seeks to ensure that artists receive fair remuneration for the online exploitation of their work.

Music Moves Europe is the overarching framework for the European Commission’s initiatives and actions in support of the European music sector.

It aims to help the sector flourish, to adapt to new challenges and to reap the benefits of digitisation. Through the initiative, the Commission wants to build on and further strengthen the sector’s strong assets: creativity, diversity and competitiveness.

Its specific objectives are to: Promote creativity and innovation; Safeguard and expand the diversity of European music; Help the sector adapt to and benefit from digitisation.

The Commission will also strengthen dialogue with the music industry to explore needs as they develop and identify possible fields of action where the EU can add value. These actions aim to ensure that all rights holders – artists, publishers and authors – are in a stronger and fairer negotiating position with new and influential players like digital platforms.

Macedonia: Parliament Starts Debating Name Deal

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(RFE/RL) — Macedonian lawmakers have started debating an agreement with Greece to change the former Yugoslav republic’s name, as hundreds of protesters gathered in the center of Skopje for a third day to vent anger over the deal.

The National Assembly on June 19 voted 69-40 for the adoption of a shortened ratification procedure for the accord, which changes the country’s formal name to the Republic of North Macedonia.

During a speech by Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov, the deputies of the opposition nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party shouted “traitor” and left the legislature to protest against the name change.

Two parliamentary committees were set to consider the draft law on ratifying the deal later in the day.

Parliament speaker Talat Xhaferi has said he expects the accord to be ratified by the end of June 22.

The draft legislation on ratifying the deal requires a simple majority from at least 61 deputies required for a quorum.

The deal, signed by the two countries’ foreign ministers on June 17, ends a 27-year dispute between Athens and Skopje and paves the way for Macedonia to begin membership talks with the European Union and NATO.

But it will take months to complete and faces several hurdles on the way, with President Gjorge Ivanov pledging to veto the deal if it is ratified by parliament.

That would force lawmakers to repeat the vote, and if the deal is ratified again — this time with an absolute majority — then Ivanov will be unable to block it.

Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has also pledged to hold a referendum on the deal later this year. If Macedonians vote in favor, the next step will be for lawmakers to approve a constitutional amendment formally changing the country’s name.

The Greek parliament would then vote on the deal, which has split the governing coalition and is rejected by most opposition parties.

The name dispute between Skopje and Athens dates back to 1991, when Macedonia peacefully broke away from Yugoslavia, declaring its independence under the name Republic of Macedonia.

Greece has objected to the name Macedonia, fearing territorial claims on its eponymous northern region.

Because of Greek objections, Macedonia was admitted to the UN under a provisional name, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Greece, an EU and NATO member, has also cited the dispute to veto Macedonia’s bid to join the two organizations.

Maintaining The Draft Will Harm Both Russian Army And Economy – OpEd

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The Russian government should dispense with the mass draft because keeping it is blocking the technological advance of the armed forces and keeping those drafted from acquiring the skills needed to advance the Russian economy when they finish service, sociologist Sergey Belanovsky says.

This double whammy, the director of research at the Moscow Center for Strategic Planning argues, can best be avoided by ending the draft, relying on volunteers, forcing the military to modernize, and providing more training to those entering the workforce (sbelan.ru/Research-Presentations/Efficiency-use-labor-resources-in-armed-forces-of-the-Russian-Federation.pdf).

In his 22-page study and in the summary in Novyye izvestiya today (newizv.ru/article/general/19-06-2018/sotsiolog-sohranyat-vseobschuyu-voinskuyu-obyazannost-srodni-bezumiyu), Belanovsky supports his positions with detailed sociological data about the military, the economy and the cohort of men aged 18 to 25.

Belanovsky’s argument has been made repeatedly by Western observers and some Russian economists who note that because the Russian army has traditionally relied on numbers rather than technology, officers have less incentive to shift to labor-saving technologies that could make the military a more effective force.

And both groups have pointed to the way in which military service, even when reduced to 12 months as now, has the effect of leaving new entrants two the workforce less prepared than they would otherwise be. In all too many cases, their military service does not prepare them for any job more technologically advanced than a janitor or guard.

In the past and despite the recognition of the political leadership of these two factors, there are at least two reasons why the Kremlin may be more prepared to accept this argument now than in the past. On the one hand, Putin has said he wants to end the draft and so advocates of that start with a real advantage.

And on the other, the declining size of the draft-age cohort means that if the military continues to take large numbers out of it, this will have a serious and negative impact on the Russian economy, at the very least making it far more difficult for Moscow to pursue the economic breakthrough the Kremlin insists it needs.

Trump’s Trade War: How Should Asia Respond? – Analysis

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President Trump’s policies are undermining the post-World War II rules-based multilateral trading system. Countries in the European Union and Asia should resist,and speak up. They should also strengthen the G20.

By Pradumna B. Rana(

On 1 June, President Trump launched the opening salvo of a trade war by unilaterally imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imported into the country from the European Union (EU), Canada and Mexico. Canada has announced that it will “move forward with retaliatory measures on July 1, applying equivalent tariffs to the ones that the Americans have unjustly applied to us.” The EU and Mexico have their guns loaded.

The US and China, the two largest economies of the world, are also at the brink of a trade war. On 15 June, Trump announced tariffs on US $50 billion of Chinese goods and warned that any retaliation by Beijing would trigger another round of tariffs on Chinese goods. But China struck back within hours slapping the same amount of tariff on American imports, from agriculture and seafood to cars and energy products. The results of negotiations previously reached by the two parties are also invalid.

Although hopefully the worst can still be avoided, the experience of the 1930s and the subsequent Great Depression suggests that trade wars can have serious economic and social consequences not only in the warring countries but the entire global economy. The IMF has warned that Trump’s controversial new import tariffs pose a stark threat to the global trading system and will ultimately damage the US economy.

In addition to starting trade wars, Trump’s trade policies are undermining the post-World War II rules-based multilateral trading system established ironically by the US, as the hegemon, with the cooperation of other like-minded countries mainly in Europe. Under the auspices of the GATT and its successor the WTO (since 1995), globally tariffs had fallen to record low levels, volume of international trade had expanded manifold, and unprecedented economic prosperity had been achieved all over the world.

Trump’s Threat to Withdraw from WTO

Seventy years on, the Doha Round has stalled and some of the WTO rules and exceptions to the rules need to be revisited. But instead of reforming the institution Trump has threatened to withdraw the US from the WTO if it continues to rule against the country. The latter could happen if, for example, the WTO rules unfavorably on the recent metal tariffs which the US imposed on national security grounds so that they are consistent with a little-used WTO rule.

Another way that the US is undermining the WTO is by refusing to appoint new judges to the WTO Appellate Body accusing it of bias against the US. When the next judge’s term expires in September the Appellate Body will not have the requisite three members to adjudicate disputes. The WTO has traditionally appointed judges based on consensus among its members. Perhaps it is time to change this method to save the rules-based system.

From G7 to G6+1

At the recent G7 summit, with a single tweet from Air Force One while flying to Singapore, Trump drove a deep wedge between the US and other G7 countries that traditionally consider themselves Washington’s closest allies. These countries had cooperated closely with the US and helped it to build the post-World War II rules-based trading system. The summit was a fiasco. The future of the G7, which is supposed to be an oversight body for global matters including trade, is therefore uncertain. Contrary to what Trump had said at the recent Davos meeting that “America First does not mean America Alone”, the G7 is now being described by many as G6+1 with the US being isolated.
How should the rest of the world including Asia respond?

Given that the rules-based multilateral trading system is under threat, countries in the European Union and in Asia (such as Japan, China, and India) should unite, resist, and speak up in favor of the WTO. They should also cooperate more closely in resolving issues, for example, on agriculture trade and in reforming the WTO. One reform proposal is that the WTO should address the 21st century trade issues which are “behind the border” issues such as rules for investment protection, intellectual property and regulations on product standards and their harmonization. Global value chain or parts and components trade now comprise about 70 percent of global trade. Currently the WTO focuses on 20th century trade issues such as tariffs, quotas, and subsidies. It is the mega-free trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and, to a lesser extent, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that are focusing on 21st century trade issues.

G7 to G20?

It is also time to start thinking of replacing the G7 with the G20. Of course, the G20 is not perfect and there is a need to enhance both its “input” legitimacy – its exclusive nature and lack of broader representation – and “output” legitimacy – its ability to strengthen international cooperation and come up with solutions. But it is the only forum where, in addition to the G7 countries, systemically important emerging markets have a representation and voice. The G7 members once ruled the world but now their share of world GDP is declining from about three-fourths in the 1990s to about one-half currently. The G7’s share of world population has also declined from about 20 percent to 15 percent during the same period, with aging populations in most countries. On the other hand, the G20 accounts for 85 percent of the world’s GDP and over 60 percent of its population and is more relevant. It could well save the global trading system from the depredation of the go-it-alone tendency of the US.

*Pradumna B. Rana is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the International Political Economy Programme in the Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Trump-Kim Summit 2018: Russia’s Cautious Response – Analysis

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Russia’s relatively cautious reaction to the Singapore Summit’s outcome suggests that it seeks a role in the denuclearisation efforts of the Korean Peninsula.

By Chris Cheang*

Russia has consistently opposed North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and advocated dialogue and negotiations as the only way to resolve the crisis. It had strongly criticised American pressure and what it considers United States threats to resolve the issue by force.

Moscow sees its stance as having been justified, judging by the comments of President Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. According to a RadioFreeEurope/Radio Liberty report dated the 13 June 2018, he told journalists that “just the fact that such a meeting took place and direct first-hand dialogue was started, can only be welcomed”. While the meeting had reduced tensions on the Korean Peninsula,he added it would have been wrong to expect all the disagreements over North Korea could be solved in an hour.

Lavrov’s Cautious Response

The TASS news agency reported on the same day Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s more reserved observations. While describing direct contact between the US and North Korea as “worth supporting,” and noting that President Trump’s statement “that there is no need for new American-South Korean drills at the specified stage,” Lavrov hinted that Russia had a role to play in the whole denuclearisation process.

He stressed that “regarding the importance of the solution of the problems between the United States and North Korea, including the peninsula denuclearisation stages and security guarantees, it is clear that it will hardly be possible to solve these problems in the bilateral format”. He added that that “all the participants of the six-party talks have always proceeded from the fact that this process has to result in the creation of a system of peace, security and security and stability across Northeast Asia”.

By emphasising the multilateral nature of the North Korean denuclearisation process and stressing the need for the region’s involvement in it, Lavrov set down a marker for Russia’s participation in the process as well. By extension, this would mean that Russia has influence in Northeast Asia and cannot be left out of the process.

Moscow’s Feelers to Pyongyang

Indeed, Lavrov visited North Korea on the 31 May 2018 and met Kim Jong Un and his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong Ho. The Moscow Times reported Lavrov as saying that Moscow hoped all sides would take a delicate approach to possible forthcoming talks on a nuclear settlement on the Peninsula and not try to rush the process. He added that “this will allow for the realisation not only of the denuclearisation of the whole Korean Peninsula but also provide sustainable peace and stability across northeast Asia”.

Other cautious voices on the Summit are worth noting. Senator Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Federation Council’s (the Upper House) Foreign Affairs Committee remarked that “…there’s no certainty that both sides will immediately rush to build on the Singapore success. Trump’s words that the process of denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula will begin ‘very very soon’ is more of a wish than fact”.

His deputy, Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, pointed out that “the denuclearisation issue is unlikely to be on the agenda yet, because Kim Jong-un remembers too well what happened with [Libya’s Muammar] Qaddafi, [Iraq’s Saddam] Hussein, other heads of state. That’s why nuclear weapons is his security guarantee”.

Motivations Behind Russia’s Effort

In the months preceding the Singapore Summit, Russia and China had been leading the effort to bring a resolution to the nuclear crisis between North Korea and the US. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov at the 8th Asian Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club (VDC, a Moscow-based think-tank) in Seoul in November 2017 had proposed a three-stage plan.

The first step, he said, should be the reduction of military tension. Its starting point is the “double freezing” — suspension of missile launches and nuclear tests by North Korea. The second stage involves direct negotiations among North Korea, the US and South Korea; the third and final stage would see the launching of a process with all the countries involved to discuss the entire complex of issues of collective security in Asia.

Obviously, Russia now does not want to be placed on the sidelines of the denuclearisation process, after its earlier extensive efforts.As a neighbour of North Korea, Russia cannot help being involved and concerned about the future of that country. Moscow would not look kindly upon a destabilised North Korea if the denuclearisation effort were to fail and tensions with the US were to resume.

Geographical proximity means that political instability could lead to mass refugee outflows into Russia. Russia also would not want to see the replacement of the Kim regime by another government which might seek close links with the South and the US.

Worst-Case Scenario?

The worst-case scenario for Russia would be Korean reunification based on the South’s leadership or domination, especially if that were to lead to a strengthened alliance with the US and American military forces being stationed near or on the Korean-Russia border. Russian prestige and international status also come into play ̶ this would increase if Moscow’s participation were to lead to denuclearisation of the Peninsula.

Finally, lurking behind the minds of Russian policymakers must be the fear that the US would replace Russia (and China) as Kim Jong Un’s foremost partners and interlocutors and by extension, lead to a weakening and worse, a loss of Russian influence in the country.

In any event, there are limitations to Russia’s ability to retain its influence in North Korea should Kim implement his side of the bargain with Trump. Russia might not be able to match the US in any economic agreements. Moreover, as a Russian expert on Korea, Konstantin Asmolov of the Russian Academy of Sciences pointed out in a 7 December 2017 VDC article, the following factors limit Russia’s ability to influence the situation in North Korea:

Russia has a limited number of levers of influence on Pyongyang despite a high level of political contacts and sound trust-based relations. There is only moderate economic cooperation between Russia and North Korea. Bilateral cultural ties are not as close as they were under the late Kim Jong-il; Kim Jong-un grew up in a different cultural environment.

In any event, whether Russia can and will play any significant role in the denuclearisation process depends largely on the willingness of North Korea and the US. Given the limited extent of Russia’s economic engagement with North Korea and the current tense state of US-Russia relations, the odds are that they would probably limit Russia’s role in the whole process.

*Chris Cheang is a Senior Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A former diplomat, he served three tours in the Singapore Embassy in Moscow

India’s Ill-Conceived Gambit In J&K – Analysis

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By Ajai Sahni*

Even as New Delhi was mulling the possibilities of extending its ‘unilateral ceasefire’ [‘non-initiation of combat operations’ by the Security Forces (SFs) during Ramzan] beyond Eid, the murder of Shujaat Bukhari, editor of Rising Kashmir, with two security guards, as well as the abduction and murder of a soldier of the Rashtriya Rifles, Aurangzeb, underscore the inherent dangers of a blind political gambit, launched in the hope that ‘something positive’ could emerge. After decades of counter-insurgency experience, and the demonstrable failure of past ‘unilateral ceasefires’, policy planners continue to ignore the fundamental dynamics of violence in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), squandering the operational gains SFs obtain over months and years, at a time of their increasing dominance, in what amounts to nothing more than a gamble and a hope. Unsurprisingly, after the Bukhari and Aurangzeb killings, the Centre abandoned all idea of a ‘ceasefire’ extension.

Before the Bukhari and Aurangzeb killings, both the Centre and the State Government had begun to package the ceasefire as a success, principally on the specious grounds that ‘stone pelting’ incidents had declined dramatically in the Valley. Partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) indicates that such incidents dropped from 19 between April 17 and May 16, resulting in 10 fatalities and 207 persons injured; to 14 incidents between May 17 (the date of the commencement of the ceasefire) to June 17 (the date on which the MHA announced the end of the ‘ceasefire’), resulting in three fatalities and 56 persons injured. Such incidents, in the preceding months, had essentially occurred in the wake of narrowly targeted intelligence based operations by SFs, against identified terrorists. The pelting was orchestrated to disrupt these operations and facilitate the escape of the cornered terrorists. The decline in pelting incidents was the natural and inevitable consequence of the moratorium against SF-initiated operations and was a manifestly false index of the ‘success’ of the ceasefire.

It is useful, in this context, to note that there was no decline in incidents of or fatalities due to terrorist violence in this phase, as compared to the month preceding. Thus, SATP data indicates, there were at least 24 terrorism-related incidents between April 17 and May 16, 2018, resulting in 36 fatalities. Between May 17 and June 17, there were 64 such incidents, with 36 fatalities. Both SF and terrorist fatalities rose, from five to nine in the first category, and from 14 to 23 in the latter. Further, the number of explosions over these periods rose from two (leaving five injured, no fatalities) to 20 (68 injured, no fatalities). However, fatalities in the civilian category declined significantly, from 17 in the April 17 – May 16 period, to four through May 17 – June 17. The Bukhari killing, however, demonstrates the transient and illusory nature of any sense of greater security in this category as well.

As the illusion of the ‘success’ of the ceasefire gained ground in J&K and in the echo chambers of Delhi’s media, however, the Centre sought aggressively to project this initiative as a planned strategic venture, something that had been set up over the preceding months through ‘back channels’, and based on a conscious calculus of success. Circumstances surrounding the declaration of the ceasefire, however, militate against such a narrative. First, and crucially, the ceasefire call came from Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti as an ‘appeal’ to the Centre, and left New Delhi dithering for nearly a week, before it was conceded – most likely because it had been cast into the form of a plea to ‘respect’ Muslim ‘sentiments’. Worse, not a single significant separatist formation, and certainly no terrorist faction, had been taken on board, and these were unanimous in their rejection of the initiative. Crucially, through the month of the Ramzan ceasefire, no worthwhile ‘political’ initiative crystallized to suggest that a broader scheme was in place. The ceasefire was an end in itself, based on nothing more than a wing and a prayer.

What is it that leads policy-makers into these traps again and again, despite the enormous and cumulative experience of history? In the present context, one of the most significant factors has been the continuous and hysterical evaluations of the ground situation in J&K, and particularly in the Valley, over the past nearly two years. Indeed, much commentary and policy has reflected the most alarmingly ignorant assessments since the escalation of street and terrorist violence in the wake of the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen ‘commander’ Burhan Wani in July 2016. Authoritative commentators, at least occasionally buttressed by statements from the political and security establishment, have spoken of the situation having ‘returned to the 1990s’ – an assertion that goes well beyond the absurd, deserving to be dismissed with contempt had it not resulted in grave consequences.

It is useful, consequently, to place current trajectories of violence in J&K within a rational context. First, it is necessary to dispel the ludicrous belief that we are in a situation that, in any manner, resembles the 1990s. From 1990 to 2006, J&K witnessed a ‘high intensity conflict’, with terrorism-linked fatalities exceeding a thousand in each year. In 11 of these years, from 1993 to 2004 (inclusive), fatalities exceeded two thousand per annum; for four years (2000 to 2003, inclusive), more than three thousand persons lost their lives in terrorism related-incidents each year; and, at peak in 2001, fatalities stood at 4,177 [MHA data].

After 2001, there was a continuous and dramatic decline in fatalities, bottoming out at 99 in 2012 [MHA data]. Thereafter, an increasingly myopic and polarizing politics by establishment parties – predominantly Islamist in the Valley and Hindutva in the Jammu region – has expanded spaces for extremist mobilisation. The terrorists and their Pakistani state sponsors have not spurned the opportunities gifted to them by our own political folly. There has been a relative resurgence of terrorist activities, with fatalities rising to 135 in 2013; 185 in 2014; dipping slightly to 164 in 2015; rising again to 247 in 2016; and to 333 in 2017 (MHA data). SATP data puts fatalities in 2018 at 173 (till June 17).

The fatalities in 2017, at well over three times the figure for 2012, are certainly a cause for grave concern. In comparison to the 1990s and early 2000s, however, they are a minuscule fraction, and are just 7.97 per cent of peak fatalities in 2001.

More significantly, where the entire J&K State, excluding the Ladakh region, was afflicted by terrorist violence and separatist disorders in the 1990s and early 2000s, current violence is sparse and localized, leaving wide areas, even of the Valley, unaffected or marginally affected. The idea even that the whole of the Kashmir Valley is aflame is the product of feverish imaginations and in no measure resembles reality. Maps plotting SATP fatalities data across the 82 tehsils (sub-districts) of J&K through 2016 and 2017 provide a clear visual index of both the localized nature of violence as well as the wide regions that are free of, or marginally affected by, terrorist activities across the State.

The data shows that, in 2016, just 29 of 82 tehsils recorded any fatalities. Crucially, the five worst affected tehsils accounted for at least 58.42 per cent of all killings. 2017 saw a greater dispersal of the violence, with 32 tehsils recording fatalities, of which just five accounted for 40.2 per cent.

In 2018, the spread of violence diminished again, with 29 tehsils recording terrorism-related fatalities, with just the worst five accounting for as much as 60.69 per cent of all killings (data till June 17). In the Valley, at least 17 tehsils of a total of 39 tehsils recorded no fatalities in 2016, 12 in 2017, and 14 in 2018. Just six of 39 tehsils in the Valley recorded 11 or more fatalities in 2016; 13 in 2017; and only four of 39 in the current year (till June 17).

Crucially, the stone pelting campaigns tend to mirror these trends. Thus, official data plotted across the 206 Police Station jurisdictions in J&K (of which 103 are in the Valley), shows that the worst ten Police Station jurisdictions in the Valley accounted for 42.1 per cent of 2,647 incidents in 2016; the worst 20, for 65.16 per cent of all incidents; and the worst 30 for 77.82 per cent.

On the other hand, the ten least affected Police Stations saw just 20 incidents (0.75 per cent) through 2016; the 20 least affected, 67 incidents (2.53 per cent); and the 30 least affected in the Valley, 155 incidents (5.85 per cent) through 2016.

Similarly, in 2017, the worst 10 Police Stations accounted for 741 (52.47 per cent) of a total of 1,412 incidents; the worst 20, 1,028 incidents (72.8 per cent); and the worst 30, 1,186 incidents (83.99 per cent) of all incidents.

Conversely, the least affected 10 Police Stations saw just two incidents (0.14 per cent of the total); the least affected 20, 13 incidents (0.92 per cent); and the least affected 30, registered 35 incidents (2.47 per cent) in the Valley, through the year.

PSs 2016 2017
Worst Five PSs 685 (25.87%) 484 (34.27%)
Worst 10 PSs 1,116 (42.1%) 741 (52.47%)
Worst 20 PSs 1,725 (65.16 %) 1,028 (72.8%)
Worst 30 PSs 2,060 (77.82%) 1,186 (83.99%)
Least affected  5 in Valley 6 (0.22%) 0 (0%)
Least affected  10 in Valley 20 (0.75%) 2 (0.14%)
Least affected  20 in Valley 67 (2.53%) 13 (0.92%)
Least affected  30 in Valley 155 (5.85%) 35 (2.47%)
Total PSs in J&K: 206

103 in Kashmir Valley

97 in Jammu

6 in Ladakh

2,647 incidents 1,412 incidents
Summary Data: Stone pelting 2016-17, official sources

Detailed official data for 2018 is unavailable, as is a map of Police Station jurisdictions in J&K. However, SATP’s partial data for pelting incidents across tehsils in J&K illustrates comparable patterns. Of 214 incidents recorded in 26 of 82 tehsils in J&K in 2018, the worst five tehsils accounted for 66.82 per cent of all incidents. A visual representation of SATP data shows wide areas that remain unaffected or marginally affected by the orchestrated pelting campaigns.

The Ramzan ceasefire has, of course, had some incidental benefits. The sharp decline in civilian fatalities, the absence of proactive operations by SFs and of the attendant, often coercive mobilisation for stone pelting, and a general atmosphere of relative peace – albeit deceptive – has brought psychological relief to the Valley.

Crucially, all terrorist operations in this period are squarely within the ambit of Pakistani mischief. Of the nine incidents of attributable terrorist violence during the ceasefire period, not even one has been credited to the Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM), the ‘local’ Kashmiri formation – headquartered, of course, at Muzzafarabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) – despite the fact that its ‘high command’ had immediately rejected the ceasefire at the time of its announcement. Four incidents have been attributed to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and another five to Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), both explicitly Pakistani formations.

An intensive effort to escalate the conflict during Ramzan was visible in the ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB). While SATP recorded a total of 10 incidents of violations of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) during the April 17 – May 16 period, resulting in three fatalities (all SF), the number rose sharply to 67 such violations during the Ramzan ceasefire, between May 17 and June 17, resulting in 19 fatalities (eight SF and 11 civilian).

Interestingly, on June 14, the day that Shujaat Bukhari was murdered, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) released a report on The Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir. It is not possible, or, indeed, relevant, to attempt any detailed assessment of this report here, but, since it has been injected into situation undergoing rapid transformation and an uneven progression towards stabilization, it is useful to point out that the report is riddled with contradictions and infirmities of approach that would make a cub reporter cringe.

The report begins with a confession that, “Without access to Kashmir on either side of the Line of Control, OHCHR has undertaken remote monitoring of the human rights situation.” As it relies on a handful of one-sided sources, and studiously ignores complexities that go beyond grievance harvesting, the report has rightly been rejected by the Government of India as a “selective compilation of largely unverified information.” Crucially, the report was noticeably welcomed by Pakistan and, perhaps more significantly, applauded by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the head of the LeT–Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) terrorist complex, giving a fair indication of the constituencies expecting to benefit the most from this exercise.

Nevertheless, widening areas free of terrorist and separatist violence in the Valley and the increasing role of Pakistani terrorist formations, to the exclusion of HM, are among the many markers of the growing chasm between the separatists and the average Kashmiri, and of a rising impulse against extremist violence (though this does not necessarily translate into a pro-India sentiment). This cannot be strengthened by initiatives that undermine the very basis of this impulse – the progressive erosion of the operational capacities of terrorist groups – and by the adventurism of ill-informed ‘peace processes’. The muddled and muddy rhetoric of a ‘political solution’, lacking any hint of detail, and of ‘dialogue’ without any possibility of drawing the parties in conflict to the table, deepen prevailing contradictions and encourage those whose principal negotiating tool is violence.

Mere political optics cannot be allowed to become the framework for strategic calculations and policy initiatives. The duty and objective of the state is not to create the illusion of security, but to harden its reality. The search for a magical ‘solution’ to the enduring conflict in Kashmir and the seduction of impulsive ‘peacemaking’, have long proven dangerous and counter-productive.

It is folly to believe, as the terrorists, the separatists and their handlers would like us to, that there is no politics in J&K as long as SF operations are ongoing; or that there is no conversation occurring in the State if the SFs are not ordered to stand down. SF successes have already created the environment, both for increasingly effective politics and for a vigorous – often noisy and disordered – dialogue with and among the people. Directionless and desperate gambits such as the Ramzan ceasefire not only undermine the pace of SF operations, they provide relief to separatist and terrorist elements at a time when they most need it; even as they create the opportunity for better planned and targeted operations by the terrorists.

There has been a constant clamour for a ‘solution’ to the ‘Kashmir issue’. What is obviously missed is the fact that the ‘solution’ is already in play. When a high intensity conflict, with thousands killed each year over the decades is brought to a stage where just 99 lose their lives in a single year, it is not unreasonable to insist that the problem is being ‘resolved’, albeit not abruptly, magically or in the form that some demand. When fatalities rise again, into the three hundreds, this is a cause for concern, even dismay, and it is necessary to make an effort to understand why this has happened – and the answers would be fairly obvious; it is equally necessary to acknowledge that, even at this level, and despite manifest political mischief and administrative incompetence, the levels of violence are a minuscule fraction of what prevailed through the 1990s and early 2000s. The Kashmir issue is being resolved gradually; it is being resolved on the ground, in a slow and continuous struggle between SFs and the terrorists. It is being resolved just as terrorist movements before it have been resolved elsewhere, without – and often despite – the theatrics of high profile political posturing.

*Ajai Sahni
Editor SAIR; Executive Director, ICM & SATP; Publisher & Editor, Faultlines

Who Follows Mahmoud Abbas? – Analysis

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Reaching the age of 83 is no big deal these days. Centenarians abound. But Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is 83 with a long history of health problems. Some twenty years ago he underwent an operation for prostate cancer. Subsequently, as a heavy smoker, he has struggled against a succession of health issues, many connected with his heart.

In an emergency heart procedure in 2016, he had stents implanted to counter arterial plaque. This year, on February 20, while addressing the UN Security Council, he appeared at times to struggle for breath. After a series of tests at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, a German-Palestinian cardiologist was engaged to be available in the presidential compound at Ramallah whenever Abbas was there. Abbas’s personal physician also visits the compound every day.

On May 16, Abbas was admitted to hospital for what was described as minor surgery on his ear. Some sort of infection followed, and over the next few days he was in and out of hospital several times. On May 20, he was readmitted with what was widely reported as severe pneumonia. The Arab newspaper al-Hayat, published in London, claimed that he had a very high temperature and was breathing on a respirator. Eight days later he was discharged, claiming to be thoroughly fit and ready to resume work immediately.

This latest episode has highlighted a major weakness at the core of the Palestinian body politic – the absence of a clearly nominated successor to the president. Fearful of the political consequences, Abbas for years steadfastly resisted either naming a deputy, or putting in place a mechanism for producing one in an emergency. In the last few months, however, he has taken two significant steps.

The first was in relation to Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. He passed a resolution specifying that if he were to become incapacitated, his vice-chairman, Mahmoud al-Aloul, would replace him for 60 days as chairman until an election could be organized. In addition he manipulated matters so that, if he left the scene, the election of a new PA chairman would fall to the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Committee, not as previously to the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC) which Hamas controls. Hamas has therefore been sidelined in the future struggle over the succession.

But neither of these moves addresses the vital issue of who is to succeed Abbas when the time comes. As a result a galaxy of hopefuls are in orbit, and Abbas’s departure will trigger a no-holds-barred rush to fill the vacancy.

The people surrounding Abbas are led by General Majid Faraj, head of the intelligence service, and Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the PLO’s steering committee. Erekat, the Palestinian’s chief negotiator, although 20 years younger than Abbas, is reliably reported to be suffering from pulmonary fibrosis and in need of a lung transplant. He is therefore scarcely in the running.

At least five other senior Fatah party members see themselves as potential successors to Abbas. There is Mahmoud al-Aloul (vice-chairman of Fatah), Jibril Rajoub, (secretary-general of Fatah), Dr. Mohammed a-Shattiyeh and Tawfik al-Tirawi (both members of the Fatah Central Committee). But top of the list is Marwan Barghouti, who is in an Israeli jail serving five life sentences for the murder of Israeli citizens. In the most recent poll of Palestinian public opinion Barghouti emerged as by far the most popular Palestinian leader.

But lurking in the backwoods of Palestinian politics is a man whom Abbas recognizes as his deadly rival.  Nearly thirty years younger than Abbas, he has been a thorn in the president’s flesh from the moment of his election, continually criticizing him for weak leadership and corruption, a charge he extends to Abbas’s two sons.  In response, Abbas has had him and his followers expelled from the Fatah party and exiled from the West Bank. This 57-year-old hate figure – hated and feared not only by Abbas, but by all within the Fatah movement with aspirations to succeed the ageing president – is Mohammed Yusuf Dahlan.

Born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza strip in 1961, Dahlan became politically active as a teenager.  His CV contains the necessary items for political acceptance in Palestinian circles – time spent in an Israeli jail for terrorist activities.  Between 1981 and 1986 he was arrested no less than 11 times.

In 2010, to a closed meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Abbas accused Dahlan, along with two others, of acting as spies for Israel.  He had knowledge, he claimed, of ties between Dahlan and Israeli leaders. He followed this up by asserting that Dahlan and his followers were involved in the assassination of Salah Shahadeh, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2002.  Then he topped the list of accusations by hinting that Dahlan and his associates – “the three spies” Abbas dubbed them – were involved in the death of Yasser Arafat.

Dahlan, declared Abbas, would never be allowed back in Fatah, nor, he suggested, was there room in the party for those still loyal to him. In response, Dahlan asserted on his Facebook page that Abbas’s speech was “full of lies and deception” which he proposed one day to disclose.

With the recent poll of Palestinian public opinion registering a dissatisfaction rating for Abbas at 63 percent and two-thirds of respondents favouring his resignation, reports are circulating that Egypt and the UAE are encouraging Dahlan to form a new Palestinian party in order to challenge Abbas now, and to run in the next presidential election. Egypt could support Dahlan politically, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia could cover him financially.

However the Arabic Nabd news agency reported that earlier in 2018 Dahlan had held a referendum in Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan, where many of his supporters reside, to gauge support for a new party, but that it did not produce a clear result. Fatah seems too deeply embedded in the Palestinian consciousness, and Dahlan appreciated that forming a new party could result in his being accused of trying to pull Fatah apart, while Abbas attempted to keep it together. Consequently he is resisting the call.

These, then, are the riders and runners in the grand political Palestinian Derby that is in the offing. The Arab world is busily engaged in placing its bets.


Protect Immigrant Rights: End The Crises That Drive Migration – OpEd

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The ugliness of US immigration policy is once again evident. There is national outrage that separating children, often infants, from their parents is wrong. There is also national consensus (nine out of ten people in the US) that people brought here by their parents, the Dreamers, should not be forced out of the country as adults.

The highly restrictive, dysfunctional immigration system in the United States serves the interests of  big business and US Empire. Investors can cross borders to find workers who will accept slave-labor wages and dangerous environments, but workers cannot cross borders to find better wages and safety.

US-pushed corporate trade agreements serve the interests of transnational corporations, allowing them to legally take advantage of cheap labor and to steal natural resources, but workers cannot cross borders  when their economy is destroyed or their communities are poisoned.

US militarism and regime change cross borders to replace governments that are working to improve the lives and autonomy of their people and install authoritarian governments, but people who are facing the terrorism of US-supported security states cannot cross the border to find refuge.

The violence of the drug trade that serves US consumers creates mafia and gang violence in other countries, but people who live with the violence of drug gangsterism cannot cross borders to escape.

Separating Children From Their Parents

President Donald Trump claims he hates to have to separate children from their families at the border and that he is merely enforcing a law passed by the Democrats.

This is a false description of why children are separated from their parents.

The reason for the separation is that the Trump administration has decided on zero tolerance criminal enforcement of immigration laws.  A 1997 court settlement in Flores barred children from being imprisoned with their parents. In 2014, President Obama put hundreds of families in immigration detention but federal courts stopped them from holding families for months without trial, resulting in the release of families to return for trial. Trump has taken the approach of arresting the parents and holding the children.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for taking care of “unaccompanied alien children,” the label put on these youth, already has 11,000 immigrants under the age of 18 in its custody who haven’t yet been placed with relatives or other sponsors. Under the new Trump policy, 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in just six weeks.  These youth are held in tent cities and warehouse jails, which could fairly be called prison camps.

This is resulting in heartbreaking stories. A man from Honduras, where the US supported a coup, Marco Antonio Muñoz, killed himself in a detention cell after his 3-year-old son was taken. CNN reports agents ripped a Honduran  woman’s infant daughter from her arms while she was breastfeeding. The New York Times reported on one child, referred to only as José, also from Honduras, who refused to take a shower or change his clothes after being separated from his parents as he didn’t want anything else taken away from him.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says separation will cause “irreparable harm” to children. While Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have used the bible to justify the policy, there is a revolt among Trump’s religious base.  The Chicago Tribune reports “The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, signed a letter calling the practice ‘horrible.’ Pastor Franklin Graham … a vocal supporter of the president’s who has brushed aside past Trump controversies, called it ‘terrible’ and ‘disgraceful.’”  Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, described “a groundswell of opposition from virtually every corner of the Christian community.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention issued statements critical of the practice. Even Evangelical Trump supporters are speaking out against it.

Separating children from their parents is justified as a deterrent to convince people not to attempt to cross the border, but it has not worked. The children are also a bargaining chip. Trump will not change the policy unless Congress agrees to his immigration demands, including the border wall, tightening the rules for border enforcement and curbing legal entry. In turn, the Democrats are using child separation as a tool for the 2018 election. Both parties are holding immigrant children hostage for their agendas.

Immigrant Youth Brought to the US by their Parents

Immigrant youth are also being used by Trump to force negotiation for tougher immigration policies and by Democrats for the 2018 election.

Trump’s repeal of policies protecting youth brought to the US by their parents has resulted in outrage and national consensus that these youth should not be punished. A CBS News poll found 87 percent believe the Dreamers should be allowed to remain in the US.

Dysfunction in Congress and an obstinate White House have left these youth in limbo-risk. Obama allowed certain immigrant youth brought to the U.S. without documents as children to live and work here without fear of deportation. Trump reversed that, announcing he would rescind the program, and gave Congress six months to find a legislative fix. His rescission has been blocked by a federal court.

President Trump sent mixed signals last week. First he said he would veto a bill that would protect Dreamers from deportation, then the White House reversed that statement saying Trump had misunderstood the question and would sign the legislation passed by Congress. People in both Chambers are trying to find a way forward, but sensible immigration laws have lots of barriers to overcome.

Rallies Call For Immigrant Rights Persist

Across the country there have been rallies for immigrant rights. Groups like Mijente and the Cosecha Movement are doing strong organizing for permanent protection for all immigrants. Last week, actions were focused on the issue of separating parents from their children.

These types of immigration policies have existed for multiple administrations. Trump has not come close to Obama’s record level of deportations. From 2009 to 2016, Obama oversaw the forcible removal of more than 3 million undocumented immigrants. ICE under Obama averaged 309,887 arrests per year from 2009-2012, while ICE under Trump averaged 139,553 in 2017. Obama set records between 2008 and 2014 for the number of people arrested and placed in deportation proceedings.

Remember that there were multiple mass protests against Obama on immigration throughout the country. Protesters blocked traffic around the White House highlighting how “Obama deports parents.” Obama did not use the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric of Trump, but he had strong enforcement policies against immigrants.

Immigration, as we noted at the outset, is tied into issues of corporate trade agreements, regime change, US Empire, the drug war and capitalism. These issues are forcing a race to the bottom for worker rights and wages and destruction of the environment. They are driving a growing security state, militarization of law enforcement and mass incarceration. Border patrols lock people into countries where they face poverty, pollution and violence with little chance of escape.

Immigrants are the scapegoats, but it is the systems that are driving migration. Most people would prefer to remain in their home countries where they have roots, family and communities. Extreme conditions drive people to abandon everything and endure harsh and dangerous travel in hope of finding safety and the means of survival.

This is typical divide and conquer – encouraging us to blame each other and fight while the wealth of the elites expands. We are all hurt by the systems and crises that drive mass migration. This includes climate change as well.

While we take immediate action to protect immigrant children and families, let’s also speak out about the connections between migration and the many crises we face. We need to educate those who are being misled into blaming immigrants for the conditions that force them to leave their homes.

We must work in solidarity to create democratized economic systems, demand trade agreements that strengthen worker rights and protection of the environment and transition to a clean energy economy and a foreign policy that respects the autonomy of peoples while we also end racist systems, militarism, imperialism and mass incarceration.

The Trump-Kim Summit: Geopolitical And Economic Implications For China – Analysis

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By Ayan Tewari*

The 12 June 2018 summit meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore has seemingly begun the process easing of relations between North Korea and the US, and by extension, the West. If the efforts are followed through, it could result in decisively shifting the focus of tensions from East Asia to the South China Sea (SCS).

This meeting has also seemingly triggered steps towards reduced sanctions on North Korea, as well as the US’ tacit approval of the regime (similar to authoritarian regimes in Central Asian or West Asia). If economic and political stability arrives in North Korea, it could reduce the odds of potential crises in North Korea spilling into China (such as in the 1990s when approximately 250,000 refugees seeking food led to significant disturbances in China’s north east). However, if North Korea’s exit from isolation follows the 1980s Chinese or Vietnamese model, Beijing will have a major competitor for production. Furthermore, a Sino-North Korean split is also a bleak, yet plausible long term consequence, resulting in the removal of China’s strategic buffer.

For China, there are tactical gains and strategic losses involved. China’s view of stability in the Korean Peninsula is a fine balancing act: i.e. Pyongyang should pose enough of a threat to keep Beijing’s regional competitors preoccupied without allowing the pot to boil over. North Korea’s sudden spurt of missile and nuclear tests combined with bellicose statements were, in China’s opinion, allowing the pot to boil over. To address this, China had developed a contingency plan called Kim Jong-nam—Kim Jong-Un’s exiled elder half-brother, intended to be used as leverage to ensure North Korean compliance. However, Kim Jong-Nam’s assassination nulled this leverage; and the lack of leverage, combined with the North Korea-US thaw, means a mixed bag for China.

China has for long expressed significant concern regarding US joint military exercises and equipment in close proximity to its own territory. If these drills come to an end, China will face less pressure from its east, even more so due to Trump’s promise of withdrawing all US troops from South Korea. Moreover, Washington has used the Pyongyang threat as an excuse to increase its security related presence in the region. If North Korea gradually ceases to be a threat, the US’ involvement in East Asia will almost certainly reduce. For example, the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence missile defence system in the Korean Peninsula, which blunted Chinese deterrence against the US but which the US claimed was solely aimed at North Korea, can no longer be justified. This would significantly ease Chinese tactical concerns in the region. This will also enable China to refocus its military efforts elsewhere. For Beijing, this is the net positive.

Nevertheless, reduction of the North Korea threat to the US means the latter and its allies would also refocus their attention on the SCS region. The US has already begun undertaking concrete steps in this regard. For instance, China was disinvited from the 2018 iteration of the 26-country Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise. Additionally, the US’ force levels in Japan, the primary strategic location to contest China vis-à-vis the SCS, remain static. In addition to China, US forces in Japan will keep an eye on North Korea from a safe distance.

Moreover, as and when North Korea’s isolation reduces (and eventually, ends), Western corporations will have the opportunity to shift production to North Korea. While this would be a slow transition, companies might take advantage of the low wages and state control over labour. Given how employment in sectors other than agriculture is currently highly limited, an opening up of the North Korean economy could result in significantly greater employment in sectors other than agriculture. Nonetheless, this might not automatically bring about improved labour conditions overnight. Increased incentivisation of North Korea combined with ‘lucrative’ labour conditions and a skilled workforce may lead to the shifting of some investment from China to North Korea.

It is also important to mention, however improbable, a potential North Korea-China split. The Sino-Soviet split too was borne of similar circumstances: a previously isolationist state rejecting hegemony and fostering relations with their primary economic and geopolitical rival, the US.

To conclude, although China’s strategic buffer might operate as planned in the short run, its ‘strategic distraction’ function may slowly erode, resulting in the US’ attention getting refocused to Beijing’s expansion in the SCS. Furthermore, if the West manages to open up North Korea’s markets to foreign direct investment, rising wages in Chinese factories may have to compete with a disciplined, cheaper workforce in North Korea. Through this, the North Korean regime could be enveloped in the Western sphere of influence.

It remains to be seen if China will accept the negatives as it clearly has significant incentives to scupper any meaningful peace in the Korean Peninsula.

*Ayan Tewari

Research Intern, Centre for Internal and Regional Security (IReS)

Illusion Of Security From Singapore – OpEd

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The world has a ninth nuclear state; Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump set no schedule for denuclearization or verification.

By Shim Jae Hoon*

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un returned home to a hero’s welcome from his historic summit talks in Singapore with President Donald Trump. He scored a major diplomatic victory by fending off US demands for his regime’s immediate denuclearization. Not only that, by holding the first face-to-face peace talks with the US president, Kim symbolically ended seven decades of hostility with the world’s most powerful nation.

The major upshot of this development is that North Korea is now a nuclear state, with its arsenal comprising 20 or more nuclear devices and the means of carrying them to targets as far as the continental United States, despite ongoing US attempts to deny such status. In Seoul and Washington, it’s becoming accepted wisdom that immediate denuclearization is wishful thinking. Accomplishing this objective, even with Kim’s unlikely agreement, would take more than a decade, according to US nuclear experts. That makes the Singapore summit much more relevant as a ballast for Kim’s dynastic rule. He has accomplished what neither his father nor his grandfather, the state founder, could achieve. His major challenge now is to use arms-control negotiations to bargain for economic aid, without sacrificing the integrity of his weapons capability. The United States and South Korea, targets of the North’s nuclear arsenal, can only hope that a vision of peace and prosperity would entice Kim to choose a rational way out of the crisis for survival.

As for rest of the world, it has added a ninth nuclear state, equipped with intercontinental ballistic capability and therefore much more dangerous than Pakistan. Pakistani nuclear black marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan helped Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions by providing bomb designs and centrifuge technology. The thermonuclear device North Korea exploded last September was 15 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and theoretically could be carried by the Hwasong-15 ICBM, tested in November, to targets within an estimated range of 10,000 kilometers. Trump may have awakened to the reality, apparent to analysts for decades, that defanging the Pyongyang regime risks starting a new war on the Korean Peninsula with casualties running into millions of people on both sides of the border.

For all that, Trump’s amateurish talks in Singapore have brought diplomatic fiasco. A four-point joint statement issued at the end of the summit was vacuous, containing no detailed roadmaps leading to complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, the so-called CVID formula pushed by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hours before the summit’s opening. The joint statement, while talking about building a lasting peace regime and establishing new relations, merely repeated Kim’s commitment to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a largely empty phrase devoid of details or binding clause. The bland expression was described as “reaffirmation” of Kim’s earlier declaration signed at Panmunjom at separate talks in April with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. No mention was made of the North’s aggressive missile program.

The statement amounted to an astonishing retreat for Trump who came to Singapore vowing he would “walk out” of the conference if Kim showed any sign of rejecting the CVID formula. With Kim’s negotiators adamantly refusing to accept the denuclearization timetable, Trump was pushed into the corner of either cancelling the talks and walking away, as he had threatened, or swallowing his pride. Surprisingly, Trump buckled, turning the talks into a show-business event, not a summit of war and peace.

Trump’s inept diplomacy exhibited his lack of preparation and haphazardness. When talks got tough, Trump folded. Inexplicably, he offered to suspend US–South Korean military exercises while negotiations were underway. He threw away a major bargaining chip without reciprocal concessions. The military exercises, held three times a year for the past two decades, have sent a powerful message to the North that they can expect a robust counterattack in case of invasion. Later in the middle of a rambling news conference summing up the talks, Trump justified suspension of war games in the name of economy; like North Korea, he called them “provocative” and “expensive” to boot. He delivered more shocks by suggesting he may eventually withdraw 28,500 US ground troops from South Korea, another demand pushed by the North since the 1953 signing of the armistice.

The unexpected statements dropped like thunder strikes on Seoul, where the government fights a conservative opposition campaign against Moon’s rapprochement policy with the North. The Korean currency’s value dropped to 1,097 won per US dollar, as much as 3 percent, after the summit. To calm market nerves in Seoul, Moon issued a statement that the matter of US forces in Korea is strictly bilateral between Seoul and Washington, thus separate from the North Korean nuclear issue.

Reactions in Tokyo bordered on panic as removal of US forces would make Japan the first line of defense in a potential war with the North or even China. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who has held three sets of talks with Trump so far, each time advising a tough stance on Kim, was so shaken that he hurriedly asked Seoul and others to help arrange a summit with Kim for himself. Cancellation of military exercises has direct bearing on Japan’s security interests as the Japanese Navy sometimes participates in these exercises, and Tokyo has vital intelligence-sharing deals with both Seoul and Washington. The Kim regime has already lobbed missiles over Japan’s skies during test launches that Tokyo citizens are getting used to hearing emergency sirens urging them to seek shelter during missile tests.

Reaction in Beijing, Kim’s main source of support, was quiet elation. China emerged as the biggest beneficiary from Trump’s new East Asian geopolitical vision that appeared destined to remove the United States as the security linchpin in the western Pacific. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the joint statement showed that China’s formula of “freeze for freeze” was correct, referring to his proposal calling for the US to reward Kim’s nuclear/missile moratorium with suspension of US-Korean military exercises, and responding to Pyongyang’s denuclearization with regime security and a peace accord.

In this maelstrom of terrible initiatives, Washington’s confusion over Kim’s nuclear challenge isn’t expected to end soon. Pompeo, visiting Seoul and Beijing on summit briefing tours, reportedly said he expected Kim to complete his denuclearization process – a huge undertaking requiring locating more than 100 secret sites related to bomb-making operations – in 30 months. The timeframe was presumably calculated to match the timetable for Trump’s reelection campaign. Leading nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who visited North Korean nuclear sites several times estimates that completing the disarmament process would require up to 15 years.

Days after the summit, the Kim regime insisted it was sticking to its own formula of “phased and synchronous” denuclearization – a process of the United States matching every step of the North’s denuclearization with political and economic rewards. Indeed, the North’s state media have begun spelling out what the goal of “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” means. According to Choson Sinbo, Pyongyang’s propaganda voice published in Tokyo, the formula includes as an essential condition the removal of American troops and termination of US strategic commitment providing “extended nuclear coverage” or a “nuclear umbrella” for South Korea and maybe Japan as well. Ultimately, this formula is unacceptable for the United States, South Korea or even Japan as it would mean curtailing the US superpower role responsible for keeping Asia’s peace – a tall order indeed even if it comes from Kim Jong-un.

*Shim Jae Hoon is a journalist based in Seoul.       

Although Trump Lost Summit To Kim Jong-un, Holding It Still Might Have Been For The Best – OpEd

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In his eagerness to show his political base that he is a great negotiator, even internationally, President Trump ended up being fleeced by North Korean leader at the recent summit in Singapore. Yet strangely, both the United States and the image of the president may be better off for it in the long term.

Politicians, especially internationally, routinely create problems and then portray themselves as saviors for riding to the rescue. In the case of North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles, that is exactly what Trump did.

Trump’s initial response to North Korea’s advancements in nuclear weapon and long-range missile tests was over the top. He threatened to destroy North Korea, unleash “fire and fury,” and even bragged that his nuclear button was bigger than North Korea’s. North Korea reciprocally responded with name calling and equally overheated rhetoric.

Trump’s threats to use nuclear weapons against the Stalinist state if it didn’t give up its nuclear weapons were dangerous and unacceptable, even if Trump was merely using them as a negotiating ploy. In addition, Trump had painted himself into a corner by with such macho bluster, which could have started a conflagration on the Korean peninsula that could have killed hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

Then Trump may have recognized that he had gotten in too deep and took advantage of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet him. This overture led to the “feel-good,” made-for-the-cameras summit just held. After the meeting, the returning American hero triumphantly tweeted, “Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”

The reason for being skeptical of Trump’s grandiose hyperbole is that the short, vague communique from the summit made concessions to North Korea and got almost nothing in return. Trump promised unspecified “security guarantees” and North Korea merely reiterated its longstanding commitment to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

This agreement does far less than the U.S. agreements with North Korea in 1994 and 2005, which failed to get rid of that nation’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

Also, traditionally, North Korea has a starkly different idea of “denuclearization” than the United States. The United States has always wanted the North Koreans to get rid of their nuclear weapons and missiles in exchange for trade and foreign aid. The North Koreans think denuclearization of the peninsula should be reciprocal, with the United States terminating its nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan and withdrawing U.S. forces from South Korea.

Beyond the gauzy summit communique, Trump declared that he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea for cost reasons and evidently agreed to suspend U.S.-South Korean war games, which even he deemed “provocative,” in an apparent trade for North Korea maintaining its testing moratorium on nuclear weapons and missiles. This arrangement seems suspiciously close to the earlier Chinese “freeze for freeze” proposal.

Finally, the North Koreans claimed that at the summit, Trump agreed to a phased North Korean denuclearization, with step-by-step relief from economic sanctions for the North. Administration officials subsequently have thrown cold water on this approach, declaring that no sanctions relief would be forthcoming until North Korean denuclearization was irreversible.

Of course, even if North Korea did promise to limit or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs—as it has done in previous failed agreements—getting it to do so is entirely another matter. When a reporter noted that verification—the insufficiency of which was one of the Trump administration’s reasons for welshing on the Iran nuclear deal—was not even mentioned in the summit agreement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, went ballistic.

The agreement also failed to address the most important issue—missiles, especially long-range ones that can get any nuclear weapons to the United States.

Finally, Kim Jong-un’s main objective for wanting the summit was to do what his father and grandfather couldn’t—bask in the prestige of meeting with the leader of the Free World, while being positively reinforced that it was his nuclear weapons and missiles that got him a seat at the table. Not a very good message to send to other aspiring nuclear powers though.

However, although Trump was clearly bested by Kim at the summit and the threat to the United States from North Korean nuclear weapons and long-range missiles has hardly evaporated, it has long been exaggerated anyway.

The main reason that the United States and East Asian countries hyperventilated about the North Korean nuclear threat was the fear that North Korea could not be deterred from attacking as had other potentially radical countries—Maoist China, the communist Soviet Union and Pakistan—when they got nuclear weapons.

Kim’s willingness to negotiate, and his skill at doing so, should placate fears that he is a madman who cannot be deterred, even if he is just stringing the United States along in an attempt to perfect his arsenal—as seems likely.

This article was published at and is reprinted with permission.

Syrian Army Convoy Heading South For Daraa Offensive

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The largest convoy for the Syrian Army has just been filmed en route to the country’s south for the long-awaited Daraa assault amid US warnings, Al-Masdar News reports.

The convoy, led by Brigadier General Suheil al-Hassan aka The Tiger, includes armored vehicles, T-72 and T-90 tanks, MLR launchers, artillery and machinegun-equipped vehicles.

On the field, the Syrian Army pounded, with heavy artillery, several villages and towns of Lajat area located to the north and northwest of the provincial capital.

Reinforcements pour into the battleground in spite of US warning the Syrian government of launching the attack.

The Syrian government has vowed to retake all rebel-held areas in the southern province while offering militants a chance to accept an evacuation deal.

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