In an article for the Social Change in Switzerland series, Eric Crettaz describes the four mechanisms which lead to such a high number of working poor in Switzerland. Both income poverty and material deprivation are analysed with new data to demonstrate which social categories suffer the most. Distribution of benefits by the social welfare system halves the number of working poor.

Working poverty is a reality in Switzerland. Approximately 8% of households where at least one person works earn less than 60% of the average income. Without the range of existing social benefits, the rate of working poor in Switzerland would be 15%.

Eric Crettaz used the data from the 2015 SILC (Survey on Income and Living Conditions) to measure both income poverty and material deprivation. The rate of material deprivation is defined by households forgoing at least three commodities, such as taking holidays, being able to cover an unexpected expense, adequately heating the home, or owning a range of appliances.

The rate of material deprivation indicates an enduring difficult financial situation. In Switzerland, this is the case for 3% of households with members in gainful activity. This includes mainly people under 40, people with few qualifications, immigrants from outside Europe, and single-parent households. Couples with more than three children and independent workers represent a significant part of the population of working poor, but suffer less from material deprivation.

According to Eric Crettaz, this difference is explained by the four mechanisms which lead to working poverty: less work than the average household, low pay, a higher than average number of children per adult, and insufficient or no social benefits, particularly for ineligible households. As a result, single-parent families and migrants are more likely to suffer both income poverty and material deprivation because their vulnerability is due to an accumulation of factors.

Young people are now able to volunteer or work in EU-wide solidarity schemes, after a final vote on the European Solidarity Corps on Tuesday.

The initiative, announced by President Juncker during the State of the Union speech in September 2016 and officially launched in December 2016, now has a legal framework. Young people can participate in a wide range of solidarity-related activities such as education, health, protecting the environment, disaster prevention, provision of food and non-food items, reception and integration of migrants and asylum seekers.

The rapporteur Helga Trüpel (Greens/EFA, DE) said, “The European Solidarity Corps is a more extensive voluntary program for young people in Europe. The program strengthens solidarity in Europe, opens up new development perspectives to young people, and offers support to communities within and outside the EU. I am glad that we are taking this step to strengthen not only young people, but also solidarity between people and regions.”

€375.6 million to support solidarity and volunteering in Europe

An overall 2018-2020 budget of €375.6 million was approved, 90% of which is allocated to volunteering and 10% of which goes to the occupational strand of the program.

The European Commission proposed €1.26 billion overall for the next 2021‑2027 budgetary period.

Young people and organisations need to register

The program is open to individuals, who can enrol in activities run by registered organisations. Individuals and organisations can register via a multilingual and interactive web portal that can be used to advertise or search for volunteering, traineeships or job placements.

Since the initiative was launched in 2016, more than 70 000 people have registered and almost 7 000 people are already participating in activities related to social inclusion, integration of migrants, support for local communities, cultural heritage or education. (EC Statistics, June 2018)

MEPs voted that the program should be made more accessible for young people with fewer opportunities, such as persons with disabilities, or those from isolated or marginalised communities, and for young people with learning or health difficulties. The European Commission and member states have to put in place special measures and a tailor-made guide and placements for them.

Young people can register from the age of 17, but they should be over 18 (and not more than 30) at the beginning of their volunteering or work activities.

Avoid exploitation of young people

Members voted for a clear distinction between volunteering activities and job placements, to ensure that no participating organisation uses young people as unpaid volunteers when potential quality jobs are available. The volunteering period will be limited to 12 months and the traineeships will be from 2 to 6 months. Parliament also imposed a minimum job contract of three months.

All participating organisations need a “Quality label” certifying that they are able to offer solidarity activities of a high quality. This label is checked regularly and can be revoked; organisations should not be automatically funded simply because they carry this label.

The vote European Solidarity Corps was adopted by 519 for,132 against and 32 abstentions.

A new study in Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation indicates that consuming more caffeine may help reduce the risk of death for people with chronic kidney disease.

An inverse relationship between coffee consumption and mortality has been reported in the general population. However, the association between caffeine consumption and mortality for people with chronic kidney disease remains uncertain. The researchers hypothesized that caffeine consumption might be associated with lower mortality among participants with chronic kidney disease.

The possible protective effect of caffeine might be related with effects at vascular level as caffeine is known to promote the release of substances, such as nitric oxide, that improve the function of the vessel.

About 89 percent of the adult USA population consumes caffeine daily. Approximately 14 percent of adults in the United States have chronic kidney disease. Chronic kidney disease is associated with increased health care costs and a higher risk of death. The prevalence of the disease is expected to continue to increase worldwide.

The study involved data from 4,863 American people observed from 1999 to 2010. Compared with people who consumed a smaller amount of caffeine-containing beverages, caffeine consumers were more likely to be male, non-Hispanic white, have a higher education level and higher annual income, be current or former smokers, have higher alcohol consumption, and have fewer previous strokes.

The results of the analysis suggest an inverse association between caffeine consumption and all-cause mortality among participants with chronic kidney disease. Comparing with people that consumed less caffeine, patients that consumed higher levels of caffeine presented a nearly 25% reduction in the risk of death over a median follow-up of 60 months.

According to Miguel Bigotte Vieira, one of the study’s lead authors, “Our study showed a protective effect of caffeine consumption among patients with chronic kidney disease. The reduction in mortality was present even after considering other important factors such as age, gender, race, smoking, other diseases, and diet. These results suggest that advising patients with kidney disease to drink more caffeine may reduce their mortality. This would represent a simple, clinically beneficial, and inexpensive option, though this benefit should ideally be confirmed in a randomized clinical trial.”

The author emphasized that this observational study cannot prove that caffeine reduces the risk of death in patients with chronic kidney disease, but only suggests the possibility of such a protective effect.

Is it wise for people without stable work to commit a significant portion of their earnings on a mortgage to buy a home? Do investors have any moral responsibility for the activities of the company in which they place their money? Is it lawful to sell a complex financial asset to a client who lacks sufficient financial education or experience?

These are some of the questions that were on the table 10 years ago, when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and are still on the table today, despite all the regulatory and technological changes that have taken place in recent years.

And, according to IESE’s Antonio Argandoña, these are the types of questions asked by good financial professionals, who must act “for the benefit of their clients.” They also demonstrate the need to always consider two dimensions of finance. On the one hand, there’s the economic dimension, which is measured in terms of income and expenses, risks and returns, among other variables. And on the other hand, there’s the moral dimension, which is concerned with what is fair, prudent and responsible.

In fact, for Argandoña: “Ethics is not one restriction imposed from outside, but an essential component of profitable and responsible decisions.” And this is what he expounds in “Money and Finance: Ethical Considerations,” a chapter in The Routledge Companion to Business Ethics, a volume collecting articles from various experts.

Ethical Finance?

In his chapter, Argandoña outlines the ethical problems posed by modern finance. It is a critical analysis that reviews the legal and institutional framework in which financial institutions operate today and considers the various types of financial intermediaries (such as banks and investment vehicles) in terms of their roles, especially as they relate to risk. The author also addressed the practices of financial markets, particularly speculation and high-frequency trading. Finally, he looks to the emergence of some alternative models of finance — including socially responsible investing, ethical banking and crowdfunding — which may offer a correction to curb the excesses of unchecked capitalism.

And while each financial asset and endeavor has its very own characteristics, and may depend upon various institutions and markets for context, Argandoña insists on the need to recognize that they all involve human relationships.

Without Ethics, There Is No Trust

Although the moral dimension of finance has become much more complex in recent decades — as products are increasingly sophisticated, relationships are multiplying at great speed and responsibilities tend to be diluted — that is no excuse for compromising it in search of a profit or reducing it down to a technical decision of risk and return.

Why? Because finance needs ethics not only to reassure the consciences of investors. Ethical practices also improve the sector, help develop sound legal and regulatory frameworks, maintain an appropriate institutional and cultural foundations, and, ultimately, “create the atmosphere of trust without which finance cannot succeed,” as Argandoña writes.

Without ethics, there is no confidence. And trust is the foundation of every financial system. It was before and still is now.

Indonesian millennials will determine the direction of the Indonesian presidential election next year due to their significant population size (34%-50%). The presidential candidates who are able to think, absorb and accommodate their aspirations would probably be well placed to win.

By Syafiq Hasyim*

Indonesia has taken the first step towards the 2019 presidential election by announcing the nominees for presidential and vice presidential candidates on 10 August 2018. The 2019 election is a re-run of the 2014 presidential election between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto. President Joko, also known as Jokowi, has appointed as his running mate Ma’ruf Amin, a conservative cleric from the Council of Indonesian Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI) with a Nahdaltul Ulama background. On his part, Prabowo has chosen Sandiaga Uno, an entrepreneur and former vice governor of the capital city of Jakarta.

Although the presidential election will be held in April 2019, the supporters of the two candidates have since nomination day aggressively started to canvas for votes especially in social media. The millennial voters are potential targets due their significant numbers and their prolific use of the social media.

Internet-based Politics

The millennial population in Indonesia forms about 34.5% – 50% (ages 15-35). This is a very significant size and therefore a clear target group to win over. However, are both contenders aware and familiar with the aspirations of the millennial generation?

A strong characteristic of the millennials is their high literacy and engagement in the Internet. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and University of Berkeley in their 2011 research American Millennials: Deciphering the Enigma Generation identify the strong face of American millennials as digital natives. Some 57% of American millennials are among the first group who try new technology. Their online activity in uploading and making contents whether photos, blog, micro-blog, and others is high: 60%, compared to the non-millennials at 29%.

Research done in 2016 by Indonesia’s Alvara Research Centre indicates that Indonesian millennials have almost similar characteristics to their American counterparts. Indonesian millennials utilise digital sources to know and understand politics with a reliance on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and LINE-channels (instead of WhatsApp) shaping their perceptions on politics. Competing presidential candidates who practise textbook politics now need to get to grips with this new political phenomenon to achieve success

Pragmatic Concern

A perspective that Indonesian millennials embrace is whether or not politics are useful for their immediate needs, their innovative imagination and creativity. Idealism in politics, meaning a full commitment to political ideology whether it is leftist, Islamist or liberal, is not a common perspective among the politics of millennials. Millennials consider politics in terms of the concrete and direct impact for them.

The Indonesian media often portrays the country’s millennial generation as pragmatic people, and less interested in political idealism, by presenting the image of young successful professionals with breakthrough and smart business innovation such as the founders of Gojek and Tokopedia. Young politicians are hardly covered in the media as the representatives of the millennial generation. However, despite their pragmatism, Indonesian millennials are not apolitical.

In fact, the Indonesian Muslim millennials are very critical of the current ruling administration as evident in their prominence in the #2019GantiPresiden (#2019ChangePresident) movement. They do join in the movement, although sometimes they join without thinking about what is the next precise agenda. Presidential candidates should recognise this trend and find ways to transform their political strategies.

Importance of Religion

The Pew Research Centre survey discovered that African-American millennials are more religious than their peers. This survey is interesting because it mirrors the general inclination of Indonesian millennials. Indonesian millennial Muslims preserve and have a deep commitment to their Islamic doctrines.

However, in studying religion, they draw materials from online sources rather than from authoritative institutions and experts knowledgeable in the study of religion. There is a tendency for them to be attracted to conservative groups of the Islamic congregation. Many newly established-Islamic congregations have a membership base dominated by the millennial generation.

This tendency is quite alarming for the future of moderation in Indonesian Islam, therefore, both Jokowi and Prabowo should approach these groups, not only to win their hearts and minds but also to steer Indonesian Islam on the path of moderation.

Expecting More Positive Role

There is an assumption that the millennials will not use their rights to vote in the 2019 presidential election due their apolitical attitudes. This assumption could not be used as a reason to ignore their significance. It will be a big loss for Indonesia if both Jokowi and Prabowo disregard the influence of the millennials in the 2019 presidential election. How can democracy be preserved in a situation in which the significant number of Indonesian citizens are politically indifferent?

How will the two presidential candidates shape their campaign strategies to reach out to the millennials for the legislative and presidential elections? The participation of the millennials in the coming elections – both in the legislative and presidential contests — is needed to sustain democracy.

*Syafiq Hasyim is a Visiting Fellow at the Indonesia Programme of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. This is part of an RSIS series on the 2019 Indonesian presidential election.

Cyberspace is a new domain for coercive operations in support of foreign policy and security with advantages for offensive actions and hindrances to its success.

By Miguel Alberto Gomez*

Over the past decade, cyber operations are increasingly employed as coercive instruments of foreign policy. From the Bronze Soldier incident between Russia and Estonia in 2007 to the long-standing dispute on the Korean peninsula, cyber operations are exercised in hopes of altering an adversary’s behavior. Yet despite such optimism, less than 5% of these have achieved their intended objectives.¹ Paradoxically, states continue to engage in coercive behavior in cyberspace despite its seeming inefficacy. This raises two important questions. First, how are cyber operations instruments of coercion? Second, what accounts for their limited outcomes?

Coercive cyber operations are not exempt from principles that enable coercive interstate behavior. Commonly understood as “the threat of damage, or of more damage to come that can make someone yield or comply” (Schelling, 1966). Unfortunately, the concept is muddled by a lack of a clear operational definition. Typically, characterizations proposed by either Schelling or George (1991) are often adopted.² And while most agree that deterrence refers to the use of threats to coerce an adversary from engaging in an undesired action, the debate centers on whether the threat or limited use of force to alter an adversary’s behavior ought to be referred to as compellance or coercive diplomacy.

Schelling treats compellence as “a threat intended to make an adversary do something” and does not distinguish between a reactive or proactive use of force in order to influence an adversary’s behavior. He assumes the presence of a unitary rational actor behaving in a manner that maximizes gains while minimizing losses. George, in contrast, frames coercive diplomacy as a narrower and reactive response to an adversary’s actions. Whereas Schelling offers a parsimonious account grounded in rational choice, George offers a more nuanced and context-dependent explanation of the phenomenon. In recent years, a growing number of studies have started to use the term (military) coercion in place of either compellence or coercive diplomacy.³

With respect to coercive cyber operations, the umbrella term of coercion suits this phenomenon for three reasons. First, the proactive or reactive nature of compellence fits the image of cyber tools being preemptively deployed on an adversary’s system. Fears of such may convince an adversary to reconsider its actions. Second, coercive cyber operations often take place during on-going regional disputes.⁴ Its employment as one in a handful of instruments (i.e. military threats, economic sanctions, etc.) highlights the primacy of strategy in its use and, consequently; the importance of context as suggested by George. Finally, the restraint with which cyber capabilities are exercised reflects a degree of rationality on the part of coercers.

Yet despite its conceptual simplicity, coercive success is difficult to achieve. The outcome of coercion is contingent on the clear communication of a threat, suitable cost-benefit calculations, the credibility of the coercer, and reassurances from the coercer upon compliance. Although George identifies a host of other factors that contribute to the outcome of coercion, these may be consolidated into the above.

Unambiguous communication is the cornerstone of successful coercion. Adversaries must know what behavior needs to be modified, the time in which these needs to occur, and the costs/threats associated with compliance or resistance. Yet reality poses difficulties in clearly communicating threats. Systemically, the anarchic nature of the international system can result in misperception between states. Fearon (1995) posits that fragmentary information encourages misrepresentation and an excess in confidence during periods of conflict that increases the possibility of war and, consequently, coercive failure.⁵ Complementing this, cognitive biases may also encourage a breakdown in communication. Research demonstrates the use of pre-existing schemas in the formation of decisions regarding the behavior of other states.⁶ And while this tool serves to mitigate cognitive limitations, it increases the possibility of bias that results in misperception sub-optimal judgements.

Successful coercion assumes the presence of a rational actor capable of evaluating the costs and benefits associated with resisting or conceding to a coercer. Although the importance of costs and benefits in determining the outcome of coercion is straightforward, a number of factors can influence a breakdown of this process. Systemically, two (2) complementary factors that result in such a failure are conspicuous compliance and the possibility that this invites further demands.⁷

Initially forwarded by Schelling, conspicuous compliance is rooted in the argument that “the very act of compliance – of doing what is demanded – is more conspicuously compliant, more recognizable as submission under duress, than when an act is merely withheld in the face of a deterrent threat. Compliance is likely to be less casual, less capable of being rationalized as something that one was going to do anyhow.” Phrased simply, the act of conceding signals the weakness of an actor. Within an anarchic system in which each state is poised to ensure its own survival, such a situation is not beyond reason and leads to the second point – complying with a previous demand can invite additional demands in the future.

As Schelling argues, “compellent threats tend to communicate only the general direction of compliance, and are less likely to be self-limiting, less likely to communicate in the very design of the threat just what, or how much, is demanded…. The assurances that accompany a compellent action— move back a mile and I won’t shoot (otherwise I shall) and I won’t then try again for a second mile—are harder to demonstrate in advance [than with deterrence], unless it be through a long past record of abiding by one’s own verbal assurances.” Although this statement highlights key differences between compellence and deterrence, its core argument continues to cite the possibility that compliance with earlier threats does not guarantee the absence of future threats. Other actors may perceive previous concessions as an opportunity to improve their current standing with the international.

Apart from systemic factors that impinge on cost-benefit considerations, individual cognitive processes similarly affect the outcome of coercive threats. Prospect Theory which posits that losses are valued more than gains cause decision-makers to resists rather than comply even if the cost of doing the former is much higher than the latter.⁸ Additionally, coercion may also fail when the coercing actor incorrectly recognizes an adversary’s values and thus fails to impose a credible threat that results in the require cost-benefit calculations.

Besides clear communication and the imposition of costs, the outcome of coercion is further determined by the capability and resolve of the coercer to follow through. Talk is cheap and coercers must be able to demonstrate their ability to carry out threats should their demands not be met. While both capability and resolve are difficult to assess, the latter is particularly challenging. A coercer may fail to follow through with a threat for a number of reasons. These include, but are not limited to, grandstanding, lack of domestic support, or past failures to carry out threats. To demonstrate resolve, coercers resort to costly signaling that binds them to follow through with their intended actions.

Costly signals can be done in one of two ways. First, states may choose to tie their hands and force themselves into a specific course of action should their demands not be met. Second, states can incur sunk costs. Examples of which include the forward deployment of armed forces to the border or severing diplomatic relations with their adversaries. Either method, however, is not without risk. Costly signaling increases the possibility of armed conflict by forcing states into an inflexible course of action.⁹ The idea being that the adversary realizes this possible outcome and would, in a timely manner, concede. This is predicated, however, on how well these signals are interpreted and the outcome of the cost-benefit analysis.

Lastly, the coercer must be able to reassure an adversary that compliance results in the threat being rescinded. Relatedly, coercers must be able to provide an adversary a means with which to comply that minimizes damage to its reputation. Great powers, however, find this last requirement challenging given their inherent capabilities as these, paradoxically, reduce their credibility in the eyes of weaker adversaries. Power imbalances in favor of the coercer may be interpreted as a justification for further demands despite previous concessions. Thusly, an adversary may find that resistance is a better course of action in the face of coercive threats.

Cyber Coercion: An Overview

If coercion is the exertion of pressure on an adversary by threatening something of value, then cyberspace is an ideal medium given its growing strategic value.¹⁰ Over the past decade, (broadband) connectivity has nearly tripled globally. Similarly, Information Communication Technology (ICT) usage has grown rapidly over the past decade (ITU, 2016). Although greater awareness, education, and improvements in developmental processes have mitigated certain vulnerabilities, these continue to persist within critical systems. Fortunately, contextual factors such as the unique implementation of cyber infrastructure across states and the resources required to inflict persistent damage tempers such concerns. Yet regardless of such reassurances, the fundamental structure of cyberspace assists, if not enables, coercive behavior.

Cyberspace is treated as consisting of three key layers: physical, syntactic, and the semantic layer.¹¹ The physical layer consists of hardware components that store, process, and transmit electrical, optical or radio signals. Within this layer, vulnerabilities are subject to physical and environmental constraints such as the susceptibility to theft or the susceptibility to noise within the electromagnetic spectrum. A step above this is the syntactic layer through which the representation, processing, storage, and transmission of data is governed by pre-defined rules or protocols. These serve to provide the desired functionality and to ensure interoperability between manufacturers. Vulnerabilities exist through flaws in the implementation of these protocols that may lead to unplanned and undesired outcomes. Finally, the semantic layer presents the data in a form that is interpretable and useful to users. At this layer, the conceptualization of cyberspace varies greatly.

From what has been termed as the “western consensus”, cyberspace ceases when the information serves defined strategic goals such as economic growth. On the other hand, other actors extend cyberspace to include the mental processes of individuals such that both perception and behavior are influenced by available information, thus introducing another source of vulnerability.¹² Yet regardless of this variation, it is important to note that each layer is dependent on the other for cyberspace to function. Consequently, this interdependence enables the exploitation of cyberspace to meet strategic objective.

For advocates of coercive cyber operations, arguments are often grounded on the offensive advantage offered by the domain. An offensive advantage is defined as an instance in which new technologies skew the balance of the difficulty between conducting offense or defense in favor of the former. Specifically, new technologies are thought to increase the mobility and damage potential of offensive weapons vis-à-vis defensive ones. For instance, the creation of the machine gun or the development of combat aircraft are thought to provide aggressors with the above advantage. The interconnectivity between the components of cyberspace conceptually grants these advantages. The linkage between the physical, syntactic, and semantic layer results in the disruption of a lower layer to adversely affect those above it. Cutting an undersea cable, for instance, prevents the transmission, processing, and receipt of information at the higher levels. Similarly, the corruption of data at the syntactic layer prevents the proper use of it at the semantic level.

In parallel to this cascading effect, the consequences are also magnified from layer to layer. The loss of communication from a cut cable would immediately result in the disruption of communication, at the first two layers. But at the semantic layer, the loss of information may adversely affect specific strategic objectives, the severity of which increases over time. Consequently, the coercive potential of cyber operations is contingent upon its ability to (1) cascade damage across layers, (2) the magnification of consequences, and (3) the persistence of the threat. And while offensive tools are accessible, those meeting these criteria requires organizational maturity and significant economic resources.

While a standardized taxonomy of cyber operations remains elusive, actions in cyberspace may be categorized based on intent: disruptive, espionage, and degradative. As implied by its name, disruptive cyber operations aim to disturb the routine functions of its target. Examples of these include website defacement and (Distributed) Denial-of-Service. These operations do not require a significant amount of expertise or resources to execute as the tools required are readily available. Consequently, its ease of use comes at the cost of its reduced severity and lack of persistence as these threats are easily identified and contained. In contrast, espionage operations are meant to be persistent so as to allow the exfiltration of privileged information. As with its real world namesake, these provide aggressors with an informational asymmetry over adversaries that may result in a strategic advantage in times of conflict. The use of this information to threaten an adversary, however, has a relatively long time horizon that limits its coercive value. Finally, degradative cyber operations are those intended to damage or destroy an adversary’s cyber infrastructure for the purpose of inhibiting their strategic interests. These operations rely on the growing importance of cyberspace in sectors such as the military, the economy, and other public services. Actions within this category are designed to cause cascading effects with both technical and strategic consequences. Consequently, degradative cyber operations are ideal for coercion. The case of Stuxnet proves this point.

The features of Stuxnet allowed it to meet the 3 criteria previously established. While it operated within the syntactic layer of the systems controlling Iranian nuclear centrifuges, it managed to affect both the physical and semantic layers as well. By manipulating the rate with which these devices spun, it was able to inflict physical damage on the hardware. Similarly, by manipulating the protocols within the system it was able to send false information (semantic) to operators suggesting that all was well; thus allowing it to persist. Strategically, the physical damage inflicted on the nuclear centrifuges limited the amount of weapons grade fissile material that was produced that, in turn, affected the nuclear weapon’s program of the Iranian regime. These make Stuxnet, and its related operations, viable coercive tools – at least in theory.

In reality, however, Stuxnet and other similar operations have resulted in coercive failure despite meeting the aforementioned criteria. Despite growing technical sophistication alongside a vulnerable cyberspace, coercive cyber operations are far less successful than expected. Yet its dismal performance may have less to do with technological constraints and more with the organizational and strategic considerations associated with its execution.

Coercive Failure and Cyberspace and Its Future

To better understand the root causes of coercive failure of cyber operations, the attributes for successful coercion need to be revisited. In summary these are: clear communication of a threat, suitable cost-benefit calculations, the credibility of the coercer, and reassurances from the coercer upon compliance. While technological advancements allow aggressors to meet the contingent technological requirements for success, the above requirements are either infeasible or poorly understood in the context of cyberspace.

In order for coercion to be successful, an aggressor need to be able to clearly communicate this threat. In cyberspace, this is easier said than done. Unlike conventional means, cyber operations do not come with a return address. The attribution problem associated with cyberspace limits the ability of targets to assess the source of the operation. While cyber operations are more frequently observed in the context of the on-going dispute, uncertainty as to the identity of the aggressor muddies the message. What action should be stopped on the part of the target? Are we even certain that X is the source of the operation? Questions such as these hinder the communicative exchange between the coercer and the target that, in turn, limit the efficacy of coercion as a whole. And while experience now allows targets to move beyond the question of “who was behind it?” to “what do we do about it?” the consequences of conceding or resisting remains a pressing issue. That is to say, the identity of the coercer does not alleviate other considerations with respect to coercion.

The decision to comply or resist depends on the costs and benefits associated with either course of action. In the context of cyberspace, this decision is predicated on (1) how a target perceives the domain (2) and the larger strategic picture. As previously mentioned, there is no unified definition as to what cyberspace is. Available research suggests that the value of cyberspace is based on existing worldviews.¹³ Liberal regimes treat cyberspace as an enabler of economic growth and democratic values. In contrast, illiberal regimes perceive it as threat to their legitimacy. Consequently, the outcome of coercive cyber operations are contingent on the recognition and exploitation of these variations. At one end of the spectrum, cyber operations that threaten the banking sector of a target interested primarily in controlling online content will not generate sufficient cost that results in compliance. On the other end, threatening physical/bodily harm in order to limit freedom of speech in a society that values such would incur significant resistance. Over the past decade, the majority of coercive cyber operations appear to have fallen into either one of these extremes; thus resulting in failure.

Assuming that threats are clearly communicated and aligned correctly, coercers are still required to demonstrate their resolve. In the physical domain this is easily done via clearly worded threats or demonstrations of force. Within cyberspace, demonstrating these capabilities affords targets the opportunity to develop the necessary countermeasures. Although Smeets and Lin (2018) argue that signaling resolve in this manner is unnecessary and that past actions should serve as demonstrations of capability, this is not sufficient for coercers that have just begun to use the domain for this purpose.¹⁴ Apart from burning cyber capabilities through demonstrations, other resources may be imperiled as well. Stuxnet, for instance, required not only advanced engineering skills but also demanded an existing espionage network capable of delivering the malware over an air-gaped network. Its discovery and analysis would have certainly tipped the Iranian regime of the presence of this network.

Finally, the success of coercion hinges on the ability of the coercer to provide guarantees that compliance results in the cessation of threats. While a coercer may indeed decide to stop coercive operations in exchange for compliance, this does not necessarily mean that other non-coercive operations will cease. In light of the growing importance of cyberspace, cyber espionage appears to have become a routine occurrence between states. While the activity is routinely accepted as normal interstate behavior, the tools and techniques required for both espionage and coercion (degradative cyber operations) are quite similar to one another. Consequently, discovery can result in a belief that the target is part of a new coercive campaign despite previous concessions. The inability to discern intent from the mere presence of these tools along with previous coercive behavior fosters the belief of malicious intent on the part of the target and reduces that chances of coercive success in the future.

Conclusion

Despite advances in capabilities and its growing frequency, the success of coercive cyber operations is not a forgone conclusion. Although states are increasingly dependent on the domain in order to achieve its strategic objectives, the exercise of coercion remains subject to previous strategic considerations. While certain scholars and pundits continue to espouse its revolutionary potential, cyber operations are fast becoming perceived as an adjunctive foreign policy instrument. Rather than its independent exercise, the coming years will see cyberspace as one of many means with which states are able to achieve their stated strategic objective via coercive means.

About the author:
*Miguel Alberto Gomez, Senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich | @mgomez85

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute.

Notes:
¹ Iasiello, E. (2013). Cyber attack: A dull tool to shape foreign policy. In K. Podins, J. Stinissen & M. Maybaum (Eds.), 2013 5th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (Cycon), 451-470.

IEEE. Jensen, B., Maness, R. C., & Valeriano, B. (2016). Cyber Victory: The Efficacy of Cyber Coercion Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. Valeriano, B., & Maness, R. C. (2014). The dynamics of cyber conflict between rival antagonists, 2001-11. Journal of Peace Research 51(3), 347-360.

More than 50 years of internal conflict in Colombia have left behind roughly 8 million victims, including 220,000 dead. Now the country is in the midst of a tenuous ceasefire, thanks to a November 2016 peace treaty between the Colombian government and the largest group of rebels, formerly known as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The second largest group of guerrillas, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), is also interested in putting an end to the fighting. As a result, Colombia’s 2018 elections were its most peaceful in decades.

If the peace holds, the end of the decades-long conflict would promise many political and socio-economic benefits for the South American nation. Unfortunately, the conflict’s end may also create new threats to the natural environment according to a paper, led by Alejandro Salazar from Purdue University, published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (FiEE).

“The peace agreement is of course good for the country,” said co-author Daniel Ruiz Carrascal, an adjunct researcher at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society and associate professor at EIA University in Colombia. “But in the aftermath of this conflict, we expect to see an increase in the degradation of pristine environments.”

Governments tend to focus on social and economic growth after a war ends, while environmental protections fall by the wayside. In their paper, Ruiz-Carrascal and his colleagues from many institutions outline the threats to Colombia’s ecosystems, and suggest ways to avoid the worst of the damage.

“The decisions made at this crucial moment in time will likely reverberate through the lives of present and future Colombian generations,” they write, “and have ecological, climatic and biogeochemical consequences with global implications.”

Triple Threats to Colombia’s Biodiversity

Colombia is the world’s second most biodiverse country. Its terrain–which varies from Amazonian rainforests to cloud forests, open savannas, and mountainous terrain in the Andes–supports about 10 percent of all the planet’s species, including hundreds of animals that are found nowhere else on Earth.

In some areas, the conflict unintentionally preserved habitats for the 51,000 different types of plants and animals in Colombia. Because FARC tended to inhabit rural and forested areas, it drove a mass migration to the cities. As a result, large forested areas remained unharmed during the armed conflict. The forests thrived, and even reconquered abandoned farmlands.

Now, somewhat paradoxically, the more stable socio-political conditions that could come along with peace are putting those untouched environments at risk. The threats could come in three forms:

1. Deforestation

Deforestation isn’t a new problem for Colombia. The country loses more than 2,300 square kilometers (888 square miles) of forest per year to rangeland, farmland, mining operations, and more. Forest loss may even be getting worse since the signing of the peace agreement.

“Sadly, we’ve seen a significant increase in the deforestation rates of pristine, remote areas that used to be controlled by the FARC rebels,” said Ruiz-Carrascal. Colombia’s forest loss rates are even starting to surpass those of Brazil, previously the record-holder in South America, he says. “It’s starting to affect places that have the highest biodiversity levels in Colombia.”

2. Climate Change

While no area of the planet will be left untouched by climate change, mountain ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to rising global temperatures.

High up in the Andes, Colombia’s glaciers are shrinking. This could put drinking water supplies in jeopardy for communities in the mountains and the foothills. Rising temperatures also spell trouble for isolated mountain ecosystems, forcing Andean species to move higher and higher up the mountains in pursuit of cold conditions. Eventually, they’ll have nowhere left to go.

“Colombia has many endemic species that cannot be found elsewhere in the world,” said Ruiz-Carrascal. “If they disappear, they could become extinct.”

Colombia is already witnessing a significant increase in temperatures, and its future looks hotter and drier. By the 2050s, the average temperatures could increase by 3 to 4 degrees Celsius. At the same time, climate models predict precipitation will decline in some areas. This could impair crop productivity and the ecosystem’s capacity to store carbon, as well as injure Colombia’s natural ecosystems.

3. Mining

Mining–for minerals such as gold and emeralds–is an important driver of the Colombian economy, and it’s expected to continue growing in the future.

With mining can come a slew of environmental problems. Forests may be clear cut to make way for mining equipment and roads, and mountains leveled. Illegal mining activities convert drinking water into sulfuric acid and cyanide-contaminated runoff. They leave behind massive piles of waste rock, and tailings that can leak mercury and other toxic metals into the environment.

“On top of deforestation rates that are surpassing what has been taking place in Latin America, you have global warming, and you have these titles that allow the mining companies to explore and exploit our natural resources,” said Ruiz-Carrascal. “It’s going to be a very critical issue in the decades to come.”

Protecting Colombia’s Natural Areas

Colombia’s biodiversity provides food, timber, and medicine for the local people. It draws in tourists, and helps to moderate the water supply and absorb carbon. Through a number of international policies, Colombia has committed to protecting this biodiversity and slashing carbon emissions. By 2020, the country hopes to achieve a net deforestation rate of zero, with new seedlings replacing trees that get chopped down. By 2030, Colombia aims to cut its carbon emissions to 20 percent below the business-as-usual projections. Whether it meets these goals will depend on how rural areas are developed, managed, and conserved, the authors write.

To help protect biodiversity, Ruiz-Carrascal and his colleagues suggest the government could prioritize development in non-forested regions. These areas already cover half of the country.

The group also calls for more extensive and continuous monitoring of the climate, water levels, species distribution, and more. Several institutions and organizations are already collecting this type of data independently. Ruiz-Carrascal and his colleagues are launching a network called PEACE, the Plataforma de Estudios y Análisis sobre Colombia y sus Ecosistemas (Platform for Studies and Analysis of Colombia and its Ecosystems), to share monitoring information across institutions. They will combine satellite information with on-the-ground data, and use remote sensing technologies in difficult-to-reach places to track how ecosystems are responding to climate and land-use changes. So far, a few local branches of the Colombian government–including the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute–have signed on, as have researchers in other nations, including the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany.

At the same time, the FiEE paper also calls on scientists to engage more with policymakers, victims of the conflict, and even former FARC rebels. “We need to sit with these people and show them what we know. We need to show them the basic science behind climate change, the basic science behind deforestation,” said Ruiz-Carrascal. With more information, he reasons, people and policymakers will be better equipped to make decisions that help to avoid negative environmental impacts.

Colombia faces many challenges going forward. But these challenges also present an opportunity to shift to a more green economy. Sustainable development that preserves biodiversity would also help to protect Colombians against drought and flood, and to secure food and energy into the future.

With improved monitoring, science-based decision-making, climate policy implementation, and natural resource protection, “this peace transition could not only improve the quality of life for millions of people,” the authors write, “but serve as a historic example of how a society can end a war without endangering its own environment and ecosystems.”

Intermittently flooded rice farms can emit 45 times more nitrous oxide as compared to the maximum from continuously flooded farms that predominantly emit methane, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This raises the prospect that rice farming across the world could be responsible for up to twice the level of climate impact relative to what was previously estimated.

According to an accompanying global analysis released by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), methane and nitrous oxide emissions from rice farms could have the same long-term warming impact as about 600 coal plants (1,900 MMT per year CO₂e100). In the short-term, this warming impact could be as much as 1,200 average-sized coal power plants (3,600 MMT per year CO₂e100) because nitrous oxide lasts many more decades in the atmosphere than methane.

The short-term vs long-term climate tradeoff

The authors also found an inverse correlation between methane and nitrous oxide emissions from rice farming: water and organic matter management techniques that reduce methane emissions can increase nitrous oxide emissions. This is crucial because nitrous oxide is a long-lived greenhouse gas that traps several times more heat in the atmosphere than methane over both 20 and 100-year time frames.

“The full climate impact of rice farming has been significantly underestimated because up to this point, nitrous dioxide emissions from intermittently flooded farms have not been included,” said Kritee, Ph.D., senior scientist at EDF and the lead author of the paper. “Increasing pressure on limited water resources under a changing climate could make additional rice farming regions look to intermittent flooding to address water limitations and concerns about methane emissions. Water management on rice farms needs to be calibrated to balance water use concerns with the climate impacts of both methane and nitrous oxide emissions.”

To monitor and mitigate rice farming’s nitrous oxide impact, the authors call on 1) scientists to map flooding regimes and measure nitrous oxide emissions at a diversity of rice farms across the world; 2) countries to report these emissions; and 3) rice producers to optimize water, nitrogen and organic matter use to reduce emissions of these two important greenhouse gases.

“It is essential for scientists to measure both nitrous oxide and methane emissions from rice fields in order to develop policies effective at meeting food demand while mitigating rice farming’s climate impacts,” said Kritee.

Rice is a critical source of nutrition for the world’s rapidly growing population, providing more calories to humans than any other food. But growing rice is also resource-intensive: rice cultivation covers 11% of the earth’s arable land, consumes one-third of irrigation water.

Focus on methane leaves nitrous oxide underestimated

Most studies on the climate impacts of rice have measured methane emissions from continuously flooded rice farms. In addition, current climate mitigation strategies for rice production focus on reducing methane emissions by alternate wetting and drying, or intermittent flooding. Most rice producing countries – including the Unites States and the world’s biggest producers of rice (China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh) – do not report nitrous oxide emissions associated with rice production as part of their national greenhouse gas inventories submitted to the United Nations.

The findings of today’s study suggest that under intermittent flooding nitrous oxide emissions from rice farms across the world might be 30 to 45 times the maximum of current estimates, equivalent to annual climate pollution from 200 coal power plants to our atmosphere without accounting for methane emissions.

With the help of local partners, the authors investigated greenhouse gas emissions from rice farms across southern India and found that nitrous oxide emissions from rice can contribute up to 99% of the total climate impact of rice cultivation at a variety of intermittently flooded farms. These emissions contributed substantially to global warming pollution – far more than the estimate of 10% previously suggested by multiple global rice research organizations.

Solutions to reduce methane and nitrous oxide

The authors found that carefully chosen farming techniques at individual farms reduced net greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation by as much as 90 percent by integrating shallow (mild-intermittent) flooding with co-management of nitrogen and organic matter. If all irrigated rice farmers only used the proposed shallow flooding instead of continuous or intense forms of intermittent flooding, estimates in the accompanying analysis shows that the rice farms with irrigation have the potential to reduce their global climate impact by 60 percent (450-550 MMT CO₂e100 years)

“We now know nitrous oxide emissions from rice farming can be large and impactful,” said Richie Ahuja, a co-author of this study. “We now also know how to manage the problem. Major rice producing nations in Asia are investing to improve the agriculture sector and could benefit from the suggested dual mitigation strategies that lead to water savings, better yields, and less climate pollution.”

More than 50 years ago, riots tore through many U.S. cities, prompting national scrutiny of the root causes. Yet a half-century later, says new research, a key contributor to the social upheaval of the 1960s remains under-explored: racial wealth inequality.

Meanwhile, the racial wealth gap that helped fuel the urban violence of the 1960s has only grown, says new research from Duke University, UCLA and the New School.

“Los Angeles may be headed into a new round of problems given growing economic inequality and declining housing affordability,” the authors write.

The 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles were among many urban uprisings of the late 1960s that led President Lyndon B. Johnson to create the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, or Kerner Commission. The unrest also spurred California’s McCone Commission report.

Both reports recommended addressing racial inequality through improved transportation, education, better policing and more affordable rental housing. Both cited poor housing conditions as the most severe root cause of rioting.

But they missed the importance of barriers to wealth creation and home ownership by black and Latino residents as a contributing cause, the study says. Neither study commission recommended policies that would have supported wealth-building for households from those communities, such as ending discriminatory mortgage lending practices, curbing residential segregation, and, generally, increasing access to assets.

“Inquiries like the Kerner Commission’s and the McCone Commission’s, as well as those undertaken by academic researchers, consistently have looked exclusively at income and earnings – and have ignored wealth,” said co-author William Darity Jr. “But wealth deprivation seems to have played an important role in producing urban uprisings in black and Latino communities. Los Angeles provides a powerful illustration.”

Darity is a professor of public policy, African American studies and economics and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.

Persistent socioeconomic problems and frustrations among residents of South-Central Los Angeles also set the stage for another period of unrest, riots that occurred in 1992 following the Rodney King verdict, the authors write.

Over the last 50 years, lack of wealth among black and Latino households and low rates of home ownership in South-Central L.A. have worsened, the report says. Home ownership rates in South Los Angeles dropped from 40.5 percent in 1960 to 31.8 percent in 2015.

The foreclosure crisis that began in 2006 also exacerbated wealth inequality along racial lines. Black and Latino households were more exposed to foreclosures, job loss and declines in home equity than non-Hispanic whites. Asian Americans experienced even larger losses in wealth than blacks and whites. Because they entered the Great Recession with a higher level of wealth, though, Asian-Americans remained relatively wealthy even after the downturn.

During the recovery of the past 12 years, speculative real estate investments and gentrification have expanded in South Los Angeles, making housing increasingly unaffordable for low income and minority residents.

Changes in the immigrant population of the area over the last 50 years have created a more complex landscape of racial inequality, but black and Latino households remain at the bottom of the wealth scale.

“Fifty years later, for every dollar of wealth held by the average white household, black and Mexican households have 1 cent, Koreans 7 cents, other Latinos 12 cents and Vietnamese 17 cents,” the authors write.

The article was published September 4 by the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.

In sales and customer service positions, employees with criminal records may stay in their jobs longer and be less likely to leave, according to a study published in the IZA Journal of Labor Policy.

Researchers at Northwestern University investigated the possible relationship between having a criminal record and job performance by evaluating data from employees in sales or customer service jobs in call centres in the US. They found employees with a criminal record stayed in their roles on average 19 days longer than those who did not have a criminal record.

Deborah Weiss, the corresponding author of the study said: “In sales and customer service positions, turnover is a major labor cost. Our study found that employees with criminal records had a longer tenure and were less likely to quit their jobs voluntarily than other workers. This finding suggests that individuals with a criminal record represent an untapped productivity pool.”

The authors suggest that employees with a criminal record may stay in their jobs longer because they have fewer job prospects outside of their current role.

Deborah Weiss said: “Job applicants with criminal records are much less likely than others to receive an offer of employment. Six months after release from prison, 50 to 80 percent of the formerly incarcerated remain unemployed. Some of those who are offered employment may stay longer because they have no other options and others may feel a sense of loyalty or gratitude to an employer who has given them a second chance.”

The researchers also found a 34% increased chance of misconduct in sales jobs for employees with a criminal record but not in customer service jobs, which may suggest that performance and tenure for employees with a criminal record may be better in customer service roles than sales roles. The authors suggest that despite this higher misconduct rate, sales employees with a criminal record may be a good investment for employers. The authors estimated that hiring a worker with a criminal record for a sales job increased expected theft-related costs by about $43, while saving the same employer about $746 in turnover costs on that worker.

Deborah Weiss said: “Finding gainful employment for individuals with a criminal background is an important public priority: without such employment, reoffending is almost inevitable. While our study may not entirely dispel employers’ fears that hiring applicants with a criminal record may carry risks, our findings suggest that there are unexploited opportunities to hiring applicants with a record in a way that makes sense both on efficiency and on moral grounds.”

The researchers used data on 58,977 applicants hired for sales or customer service jobs in call centres in the US, collected by a hiring consultancy from May 2008 to January 2014. The authors evaluated possible associations between having a criminal record or not having a criminal record and job performance, misconduct and time spent in the job.

The authors caution that the study only evaluated data from those working in the sales and customer service jobs, which may limit the generalizability of the results outside of these positions. The observational nature of this study does not allow for conclusions about cause and effect.

Researchers studying human remains of high-ranked warriors recovered from an Early Medieval Germanic cemetery have finally gleaned insight into these individuals’ sex and kinship relationships.

These findings offer a unique understanding of the Alemanni, a group of Germanic tribes that occupied a region spanning parts of present-day Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria. After the Alemanni were defeated by the Franks in 497 AD, the tribes’ burial practices changed, with households (familia) buried in richly furnished graves known as Adelsgrablege.

An example of Alemannic Adelsgrablege can be seen in the 7th century AD Alemannic burial site at Niederstotzingen in southern Germany, where, decades ago, the skeletal remains of 13 individuals, as well as collections of goods, were uncovered from 12 graves.

Despite analysis on the site since its discovery in 1962, some questions remain: namely, the individuals’ genetic sex, kinship and genetic origin.

Using ancient genome-wide analyses techniques – including 1240K – Niall O’Sullivan and colleagues sought to reconstruct familial relationships of the Niederstotzingen individuals, as well as to estimate their genetic sex.

At least 11 of the individuals were likely male, they say, suggesting that burial rites were sex-biased.

What’s more, in terms of origin, the site is divided into two groups. The authors said that Niederstotzingen North, comprised of six individuals genetically most like modern northern and eastern European populations, and Niederstotzingen South, two individuals most similar to modern-day Mediterraneans, but genetically unrelated.

Of the Niederstotzingen North, five were second degree relatives. Finally, the strontium and oxygen isotope content of the individuals’ dental enamel in the northern burials indicated that they were born locally, while the southern burials were born in other regions.

These findings suggest that other social processes, such as personal fealty to powerful families, might have also influenced the composition of these cemeteries.

In an article for New Times independent Russian military analyst Aleksandr Golts says that the ongoing military maneuvers that Moscow is called Vostok 2018 are neither as large or significant as the Russian government claims but that there is a real danger that Vladimir Putin actually believes the falsehoods his generals are giving him.

For Russian rulers, it has long been “good tone” to frighten the rest of the world with their country’s “military might,” Golts says. Putin is no exception, but the size and even intentions of the military maneuvers taking place now under his watch do not stand up to close scrutiny (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/169616).

The Russian defense ministry says that the current maneuvers to be held in the Asiatic part of Russia will involve “approximately 300,000 soldiers and more than 36,000 pieces of all kinds of military equipment” and as such will be the largest Moscow has organized since Brezhnev’s Zapad-1981 37 years ago, notions that have indeed intimidated some.

But it is clear that both the size of the current maneuvers and their purposes should not be compared with the Brezhnev-era exercise, Golts says. In 1981, Moscow had a five-million-man strong army and deployed only 100 to 120,000 men in these maneuvers, two to three percent of the total. Now Moscow “promises to use a third of the entire complement of the army and navy.”

Thirty-seven years ago, military planners talked about using mass armies and nuclear weapons. “Today, however, “when the probability of using millions of soldiers in combat is close to zero, no one conducts maneuvers of this size” – including the Americans, the British and the Chinese, the Moscow analyst says.

In 1981, Moscow used the maneuvers to send a political message to Poland where Solidarity and the communist rulers were locked in conflict. And consequently, the exercise was held in the European portion of the USSR. Now, “no sudden crises in the east are on the horizon, and Russian-American conflict is growing in an entirely different part of the planet.”

Moscow does in fact continue to use maneuvers to send political messages. Just last month, it staged a fleet maneuver in the eastern Mediterranean to let Washington know that there would be consequences of the US attacked Bashar Asad. Moscow put 26 ships into this maneuver, almost all the ships it had that could make it to that theater.

But the Vostok-2018 exercises are on the other side of the world and could only be used to send a message to China. But 3,000 Chinese soldiers are participating in the maneuvers so they can hardly be the focus of any military messaging from Moscow, Golts continues. And that is more likely because the exercise is to have 16 sub-exercises rather than one overriding task.

“The biggest mystery of the maneuvers,” the analyst suggests, is “why such large maneuvers are being conducted in the eastern part of the country.” That mystery can be dissolved “very simply.” In Asiatic Russia, Moscow can lie to the world about what it is doing without anyone likely to find out, while in European Russia, its actions would be subject to scrutiny.

It is certain, Golts argues, that the number of military personnel taking part will not be 300,000 but perhaps fewer than half as many, and the amount and kinds of military hardware will be less as well. And despite talk that reservists will be involved, there have been no callups announced in the Russian media.

Besides serving to intimidate others, the only obvious purpose of holding such maneuvers in the East is to improve Moscow’s ability to move forces from one place to another, Golts says. That has been something the defense ministry has been working on for some time. But almost everything else about Vostok-2018 seems either false or inflated.

The real danger from that is not to others, at least not directly, but rather to President Putin who may actually “seriously believe” that the Russian military can perform in the ways that his subordinates tell him, the independent analyst says. That could easily become a new source for mistaken calculations and decisions.

(RFE/RL) — News reports say that President Donald Trump is planning a new executive order aimed at deterring foreign entities or individuals found to have interfered in U.S. elections.

Reuters and The Wall Street Journal said the order could come as early as September 12.

An unnamed U.S. official told Reuters that the sanctions would target individual people or entire companies accused of interfering in U.S. elections by hacking or other means.

The expected move is the latest from the Trump administration and follows conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies documenting a cyber and propaganda campaign waged by Russia to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Military and law enforcement agencies have warned that the upcoming November 6 congressional elections could be at risk from foreign meddling, too.

It’s unclear whether Russia would be singled out in the new sanctions.

The New York Times said the order is broadly aimed at foreign interference but is intended to give U.S. authorities another tool to punish Russian entities who, U.S. agencies believe, may be trying to influence the upcoming elections, which will determine control of Congress.

The continued focus on Russia stands in further contrast to Trump’s past remarks downplaying the intelligence findings about Russian meddling, as well as congressional moves to impose stricter penalties against Russia and others.

New legislation currently making its way through Congress would impose even harsher punishment against Russia, including things like cutting Moscow off from sovereign debt markets.

Trump has also derided Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling.

By Shebonti Ray Dadwal*

By Kai Weiss*

“Populism” seemed to have suffered a premature death a year ago. Emmanuel Macron had beaten Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections, Dutch right-winger Geert Wilders had underperformed massively, and the EU had found — or at least thought to have found — new popularity all around Europe. After a turbulent 2016, in which the UK voted to exit the EU, and which saw Donald Trump become US president, everything seemed well again.

Ever since, however, the tide has turned again, and Europe’s drift to the right, coupled with the ongoing demise of center-left parties, has continued. Highlights of the past year included a strong performance by the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany (they are polling second behind Angela Merkel’s CDU right now), a right-wing coalition government in Austria, and the Italian election in March, which saw two “populist” movements come to power together (and since then causing havoc on the European level).

The next blow was just a matter of time, though. It arrived yesterday in the Swedish elections for its Riksdag, i.e., its parliament, the right-wing Swedish Democrats made big gains, ending up in third place with 17.6 percent of the vote, closely following the Moderate Party at 19.8 percent. The strongest party, the Social Democrats, despite remaining first, still lost ground, standing at 28.4 percent (which is its worst result since 1908).

While the results need to be taken with caution — the votes of Swedish expats living abroad are not included yet and will only be released sometime this week — it seems clear already: the right-wing “populists” once again performed well. However finding a coalition government will be tough for everyone involved.

The Sweden Democrats (SD) have always been the subject of controversy since their founding. Indeed, this very founding is most problematic: the party was established by fascists and at the beginning deeply aligned with the neo-Nazi movement. But in the nineties, it started to move away from this connection. In the last years, as it has become more popular, the SD has adopted a zero-tolerance policy on racism, which led to several members being expelled.

Today, the Sweden Democrats try to disrupt the status quo and destroy the party duopoly between the Moderates and the Social Democrats. This feeling can easily be seen in what Tobias Andersson, the head of the party’s youth wing, said: “Voters want to see more action. They want to feel something is actually happening, that it is not the same old boring politics.”

At the same time, the SD is a one-issue movement, almost exclusively focusing on immigration — and demanding a much stricter approach to it. Other than that, little is known about the views of the party. On economic policy for instance, the program is a mishmash of rather vague promises: lip service for entrepreneurs and against labor market regulations, taxes should be cut here and there. But at the same time, working conditions in the public sector have to be improved, and unemployment insurance needs to be made compulsory. “Health care must be available all over our country, no matter the size of our wallets,” and “the elderly get a pension they can live off, for real.”

Whenever they don’t have a real policy, they will simply bring in immigration again, such as with the housing crisis (which is supposedly only the fault of refugees). The party itself sees all of this as a positive: “This means that we do not carry either classic right or left policy.” Another interpretation would be that they will advocate for anything which is popular at the ballot box.

As for the next government in Sweden, there is a long negotiating period a head. And in the most extreme case, new elections, might be in store. No party, as we have seen, holds a majority — and no realistic combination of parties can form a viable coalition (not even the two biggest). Due to the unique political system in Sweden, chances are good that someone gets into power nonetheless.

The reason for this is that in Sweden, minority governments aren’t all that unusual. A minority government wouldn’t need the support of a majority in parliament. Rather, it would only need to prove that not a majority is opposed to it. For instance, a party with 25 percent of the vote could become a minority government as long as another 25 percent don’t actively object to it. Thus, some have argued, there is even a (very small) chance that Annie Lööf from the fourth-place Center Party, despite only having gotten 8.6 percent of the vote, could become the next Prime Minister — this is only due to the fact that she would be the least objectionable candidate for the other parties.

Much more likely, however, is a government which still includes either the Social Democrats or the Moderates. Both have built alliances with other smaller parties and while neither of these alliances have a majority (both stand at 40 percent), it might be — depending on how much those not part of the relative alliance object to it — enough for one of them.

In addition, a minority government of the Moderates with the backing of the SD could be possible. Such a government is already in place in Denmark, where the center-right Venstre is in power with the backing of the further right Danish People’s Party. In exchange for the support, the People’s Party has significant influence on the government’s immigration policy.

In Sweden, this could be similar, the Moderates’ Ulf Kristersson would become Prime Minister. The Moderates would be relatively free in how they would govern, from their low-tax, less-regulation economic policy to their tough stance on law and order. In the meantime, the SD would gain much leverage on the immigration policy of the country. The Moderates excluded such a coalition before the election. But, as we know, in politics these things can quickly change if needed.

Regardless of what happens in the end, one thing remains: the drift to the right, which is happening all around Europe, is continuing. Sweden was thought of as one of the countries where it is most unlikely that “populists” could flourish — it is, after all, the European country which has welcomed most migrants per capita and which has been seen as one of the most inclusive countries in the world by the international community. Still, here we are: the Sweden Democrats are destined to stay a major force in Sweden, while right-wing “populists” continue to gain steam ahead of next year’s European elections.

About the author:
*Kai Weiss is an International Relations student and works for the Austrian Economics Center and the Hayek Institute. He is a Mises University alumnus.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute.

By Gordana Knezevic

(RFE/RL) — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic might well have offered up a gift last weekend to critics who believe the aphorism about history not repeating itself but often rhyming.

His speech to a crowd of mostly ethnic Serbs in the divided city of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, on September 9 sparked comparisons with a nationalist outpouring by former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in that same location almost 30 years ago, at least among those old enough to remember it.

The resulting storm suggests that even decades later, Kosovo can still make or break a Serbian politician.

Vucic had been expected in Mitrovica for weeks. The town was festooned with his photograph and Serbian flags in eager anticipation of his visit. September 9 was hotly anticipated as the day when Vucic would finally announce his plan to resolve major outstanding issues with Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians and to turn the corner in relations with the former Serbian province, which declared independence in 2008.

It didn’t happen. Instead, Vucic appeared to take almost everyone by surprise with one brief passage of his remarks, in particular: “Milosevic was a great Serbian leader who undoubtedly had the best intentions, but the outcome [of his actions] was very poor. Not because he wanted it that way, but because our wishes were unrealistic, while we neglected and underestimated the interests and aspirations of other nations. Because of that, we paid a greater price [than others in the region]. We haven’t expanded.”

His praise in defense of Milosevic set off alarm bells across the region, as some interpreted it as a nod to the notion of “Greater Serbia.” Like many nationalists in Serbia, some observers complained, Vucic blames Milosevic for having lost the wars in the 1990s as opposed to having played a role in starting them.

Kosovo’s deputy prime minister, Enver Hoxhaj, expressed outrage at the speech in a tweet, drawing explicit parallels between Vucic’s words in Gazivoda and Milosevic’s performance in Gazimestan three decades ago. The two were “the same,” he fumed.

But the apparent defense of Milosevic raised eyebrows — and attracted arguably harsher comparisons — farther afield in the Balkans, too.

“I have to admit that I was very surprised,” Croatian historian Tvrtko Jakovina told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service. “I feel that Vucic could have chosen his words much better. To say that ‘Milosevic had good intentions’ after the series of wars that destroyed Yugoslavia and that also cost Serbia dearly, which he referred to, is like saying that Hitler had great ideas for all Germans but, well, because they [the Germans] forgot to take into account that others also exist and may have had their own ideas, it didn’t turn out so well.”

Asked whether such a collation was fair, Jakovina said he “genuinely can’t think of a better comparison.”

“Because the man [Milosevic] was in charge of Serbia for years, and during that time was quite literally responsible for 1,001 terrible things that were done and a sequence of destructive wars,” he added. “Finally, not content with that, Milosevic was responsible for taking Serbia into war with NATO.”

Amid criticism from abroad, in particular, Vucic appeared to walk back some of his language from Mitrovica.

“Everyone who heard my speech in Kosovska Mitrovica could have no doubt that my invocation of Slobodan Milosevic was not glorification but, on the contrary, a serious and responsible critique of [Serbian] policies of that time,” Vucic said, adding that some media failed to report his speech in full.

“I said that Milosevic had the biggest support, that he was a great leader, but that the outcome of his policies had been very, very poor.”

Serbian essayist and writer Filip David, who founded what was arguably the first Serbian antiwar group at the outset of the Balkan wars, condemned Vucic’s Kosovo speech and suggested it risked overshadowing more positive developments in Belgrade’s relations with Pristina.

“Frankly, I only remember one sentence of that long-advertised ‘historic speech’ — the one about Slobodan Milosevic being a ‘great leader.’ To say something like that in Kosovo, after everything that happened, totally unmasks this government and casts serious doubt on its commitment to do something important with regard to relations with Kosovo. A lot of demagoguery and very little genuine desire [to achieve progress],” David told the magazine Danas.

The former Yugoslav then Serbian president, Milosevic was accused of numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity but died in a Hague prison cell in 2006, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) could reach a verdict in his case.

Milosevic’s template, well understood in hindsight, was to act in parallel yet seemingly contradictory ways: signing peace agreements while waging war, remaining acceptable to the generals of the Yugoslav Army and the unruly paramilitary units at the same time, and bringing together communists and anticommunists in his nationalist front.

Now, by employing potentially inflammatory language seemingly crafted to stir Serbian nationalists and using subsequent clarifications to reassure critics, Vucic seems to be trying to walk a similarly fine line.

Of course, Milosevic was able to call on the support of an army that advertised itself as the fourth-largest in Europe.

And in other ways the circumstances are vastly different, including the fact that Vucic is no Milosevic.

But U.S. Congressman Eliot Engel warned the Serbian president this week to “stop speaking out of both sides of his mouth” by invoking “peace and reconciliation” while “praising Slobodan Milosevic who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands.”

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.

The US tech giant risks attracting new controversy by recruiting Andrew Moore, three months after the company was embroiled in a scandal over its work for Pentagon’s Project Maven.

Moore, who was last dean of the School of Computer Science at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, will become the chief of cloud computing AI at the California company, where he previously worked between 2006 and 2014, at the end of the year.

”I am bursting with excitement about this,” said Moore in a statement published by Google. “I have always deeply believed in the power of technology to improve the state of the world, so for me it’s a big opportunity to help Google bring useful AI to all the other industry verticals.”

But what those “industry verticals” are likely to be, will engender some concern.

The UK-born, naturalized American’s professional credentials are impeccable, but Moore’s other recent high-profile appointment, in March, was to the co-chairmanship of the Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and National Security and Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

CNAS is one of the most powerful military-affiliated think tanks in Washington, relentlessly hawkish over Russia, and the task force aims to develop uses of AI to fend off foreign threats to the United States.

There is nothing illegal about Moore combining both jobs, but it is notable that the company received pushback from its employees and bad media publicity after it was revealed in March that it partnered up with the Pentagon to work on Project Maven. Its role was to deploy AI technologies to study footage obtained by US drones to improve their targeting technologies in the future. Leaked emails revealed that this was an area Google expected to grow more than tenfold in the coming years.

After the fallout, Google said that it would not renew its contract for Project Maven participation for next year. Its CEO Sundar Pichai personally authored new guidelines for the corporation, promising that Google would not involved itself in “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm” or “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.”

Incidentally, Moore’s co-chair at the CNAS task force? Former deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work, the man who gave the order to start Project Maven.

Now, Moore’s hiring doesn’t automatically imply that Google is back in with Pentagon, and even if it is, the company is entitled to be. But if Google does plan to stick to its “no deadly weapons” policy, and Moore intends to stay in both posts, he should probably clarify that there is no cross-pollination or conflict of interest between his quasi-military and civilian jobs.

Deepening ASEAN unity and economic integration will be key to bolstering the 10-member regional bloc amid escalating trade tensions between the United States and China, participants in a panel on the geopolitics of trade highlighted at the World Forum on ASEAN.

To navigate the adversarial climate caused by fractures between the world’s two largest economies, participants called for countries in the region to strengthen collaborative resilience.

Ignatius Darell Leiking, Minister of International Trade and Industry of Malaysia, said the trade troubles provide a good moment for economic introspection and recalibration. “We need to start taking the opportunity of what was already built several years ago and that is ASEAN,” said the minister. “Work as a single ASEAN, to trade between ourselves and make it seamless between ourselves. That could reduce the impact that is forthcoming because of this tariff war.”

Speaking to the worryingly bilateral direction of global trade, Alan Bollard, Executive Director of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Secretariat, Singapore, said it is unclear how far relations might deteriorate. “If there is $60 billion worth of trade into the US with a 25% tariff and vice versa, and the threat of $200 billion worth of trade under a tariff of that sort, I don’t know at what point trade friction becomes trade war,” he commented, “But it doesn’t look good at all.”

“What’s happening now between the US and China is a kind of déjà vu for me,” noted Yasuo Tanabe, Senior Vice-President and Senior Corporate Officer at Hitachi, Japan. “But there are solutions. Back in the 70s and 80s we were often pressured by the US and we negotiated on many issues in almost all sectors.” Tanabe said the solutions included both voluntary export restraint and import expansion, which 30 years ago helped calm trade stresses.

Beyond boosting intra-ASEAN trade to help protect the bloc from global disruption, APEC’s Bollard pointed out that current circumstances have seen other countries step up to take the lead in major trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and may encourage others to follow suit.

“We are going through a period where we are seeing a bipolar world move into a multipolar one. Who would have thought that Japan would have taken leadership of the TPP? I never thought that would have happened and it has. Is it possible that India could do the same thing on RCEP?” he asked, referring to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Acknowledging the uncertainty about whether existing pressures will be short, medium or long term, Victor L. L. Chu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of First Eastern Investment Group, Hong Kong SAR, China, said there is also an upside. “If you look at the silver lining, it is an opportunity for us to look at our competitive advantages,” said Chu, “Hong Kong and ASEAN signed a free trade agreement last November and that is very interesting. Hong Kong wants to be more than a China bridge; we want to be at the centre of Asia looking at a closer relationship with Japan, with ASEAN, while at the same time contributing to China’s road and bridge initiative.”

With much speculation about what is on the economic horizon, Minister Leiking warned that there is no time to waste – ASEAN leaders must embrace the reality that a solution is needed now, and from within, despite the differences in the region’s economic development. “ASEAN negotiators should have in their mind that the intention is to see their neighbours prosper. If all our neighbours prosper together whereby we help each other, provide input into how to develop our countries, in an equal way,” he said, “Then we’ll be alright.”

At the World Economic Forum on ASEAN, the heads of state of the five member countries of the Mekong region – Viet Nam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Myanmar – affirmed their commitment to shared prosperity and peace.

Addressing participants, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Prime Minister of Viet Nam, said that with a shared history and culture, the Mekong countries envision a joint, interconnected future, and one agile enough to adapt to global shifts.

“We can no longer depend just on natural resources,” said the prime minister, “But on innovation, reform, creativity and those new forms of connectivity that will help the Mekong countries connect in a more dynamic way and create a economic driver for our countries.”

Highlighting the place of the Mekong countries within the ASEAN regional bloc, the prime minister said ASEAN’s principles of “unity in diversity” are also clearly reflected in the Mekong framework: “We have differences in our starting points and history, but our common vision is peace, stability and integration. Now, especially with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, connectivity and sustainability are also very important.”

“In Thailand, we believe water is the essence of life, so the Mekong is the main bloodline for our five nations,” said Prajin Juntong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice of Thailand, “It will bring a beautiful environment and rich resources, create a good livelihood and contribute to better sustainability.”

Combined, the Mekong countries have a GDP of $800 million. If it were one country, the Mekong region would be the sixth-biggest country in the world and a member of the G20. Yet despite its significant potential, inter-Mekong trade remains low at just 8% and there are concerns that similar exports, such as rice, could create fierce competition among the five countries.

However, Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Myanmar, stressed that Mekong countries are focused more on complementarity than competition. “I think we could work together and not just make this a commercially, economically vibrant region, but a region that could be a lesson in how we make our complementarities and common challenges strong, to keep things together, and even to make our competition a healthy kind, which will help us to progress,” expressed Suu Kyi.

Discussing physical connectivity in the energy space, Thongloun Sisoulith, Prime Minister of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic echoed the shared Mekong framework, saying the economic “bloodline” should be both utilized and protected.

“We should protect the river and think about sustainability, where all member countries protect the environment and we develop it together,” he said, “We should not think that one country is trying to use the river for its own interests only.” The recent dam collapse, he admitted, means that any future construction will require careful planning and design, and assistance from both regional and international stakeholders.

Beyond physical connectivity in terms of water, energy, transport and people, Samdech Techo Hun Sen, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, stressed the need for innovative solutions to shared future challenges.

“We have to catch up, I see that for our Mekong countries, the important thing is the connectivity in order to guarantee that all our countries get together in a convenient way, physically and digitally,” he said. In the event of a natural disaster such as a regional flood, he noted, countries such as Cambodia, Viet Nam and Thailand should have agreements in place to deal with cross-border management, encompassing telecommunications and emergency evacuation plans.

Towards that goal, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said transformational changes are underway: Viet Nam, Lao PDR and Cambodia, for example, all share a flat roaming rate for telecommunications.

The challenge, noted Suu Kyi, is ensuring that increased connectivity is empowering.

“Is the Fourth Industrial Revolution going to bring us closer together, or to drive us further apart?” she asked, “I am confident the Mekong countries will take the path to bring us closer together, because we have shared cultural values and historical experiences and that has helped us to generate empathy, and understand each other.”

The government headed up by Pedro Sánchez took on “the challenge of governing change” 100 days ago in which time he has fulfilled what he announced: a feminist, ecological, pro-European and social government. According to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, these have been “100 intense and passionate days” in which his government has made change possible.

In this regard, Sánchez recalled that Spain is the country with a female majority of cabinet members and that, in just 100 days, many of the measures contained in the State Pact to Combat Gender-Based Violence have been set in motion. Before the year is out, the government will not only present a Strategic Plan on Ecological Transition, but also a Law to Fight Climate Change.

As regards a pro-European government, Pedro Sánchez considers that “we are not only adopting a European approach that is also respectful of human rights in migratory policy, but Spain is also heading up economic growth in the Eurozone”. He also highlighted the social focus of his government, “because it is not only important to grow, but also that this growth filters down to every social strata of our country, the social majority of our country”.

The Government of Spain wishes to continue consolidating economic growth by making a commitment to re-industrialisation, science and innovation, as well as to re-distribute growth.

“If we grow but do not share out this growth, that is not beneficial for the majority of our citizens” claimed Sánchez. That is why, he said, the government wishes to rebuild the Welfare State, make a decisive commitment to education, vocational training, universities and continue extending rights and liberties in Spain and also approve a Euthanasia Act.