Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani congratulated the new Iraqi prime minister and his cabinet on winning the vote of confidence, voicing the Iranian legislature’s readiness to contribute to closer ties between the two neighbors.

In a message on Friday, Larijani congratulated Iraq’s new Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and his ministers on winning the Iraqi Parliament’s vote of confidence.

The Iranian speaker also expressed confidence that the political, economic, cultural and parliamentary bonds between Tehran and Baghdad would grow during Abdul Mahdi’s term.

Larijani also voiced the Iranian Parliament’s readiness to facilitate and contribute to close and diversified interaction between Iran and Iraq.

Abdul Mahdi, 76, was sworn in on Wednesday, but could not announce the full cabinet after the Iraqi lawmakers failed to reach a consensus on key postings, including the ministers of interior and defense.

Iraq’s Parliament will reconvene on November 6 to vote on the remaining eight ministers.

A team of Hungarian astronomers and physicists may have confirmed two elusive clouds of dust, in semi-stable points just 400,000 kilometres from Earth. The clouds, first reported by and named for Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in 1961, are exceptionally faint, so their existence is controversial. The new work appears in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Earth-Moon system has five points of stability where gravitational forces maintain the relative position of objects located there. Two of these so-called Lagrange points, L4 and L5, form an equal-sided triangle with the Earth and Moon, and move around the Earth as the Moon moves along its orbit.

L4 and L5 are not completely stable, as they are disturbed by the gravitational pull of the Sun. Nonetheless they are thought to be locations where interplanetary dust might collect, at least temporarily. Kordylewski observed two nearby clusters of dust at L5 in 1961, with various reports since then, but their extreme faintness makes them difficult to detect and many scientists doubted their existence.

In a paper earlier this year the Hungarian team, led by Gábor Horváth of Eötvös Loránd University, modelled the Kordylewski clouds to assess how they form and how they might be detected. The researchers were interested in their appearance using polarising filters, which transmit light with a particular direction of oscillation, similar to those found on some types of sunglasses. Scattered or reflected light is always more or less polarised, depending on the angle of scattering or reflection.

They then set out to find the dust clouds. With a linearly polarising filter system attached to a camera lens and CCD detector at Judit Slíz-Balogh’s private observatory in Hungary (Badacsonytördemic), the scientists took exposures of the purported location of the Kordylewski cloud at the L5 point.

The images they obtained show polarised light reflected from dust, extending well outside the field of view of the camera lens. The observed pattern matches predictions made by the same group of researchers in an earlier paper and is consistent with the earliest observations of the Kordylewski clouds six decades ago. Horváth’s group were able to rule out optical artefacts and other effects, meaning that the presence of the dust cloud is confirmed.

Judit Slíz-Balogh comments on their discovery comments on their discovery: “The Kordylewski clouds are two of the toughest objects to find, and though they are as close to Earth as the Moon are largely overlooked by researchers in astronomy. It is intriguing to confirm that our planet has dusty pseudo-satellites in orbit alongside our lunar neighbour.”

Given their stability, the L4 and L5 points are seen as potential sites for orbiting space probes, and as transfer stations for missions exploring the wider Solar System. There are also proposals to store pollutants at the two points. Future research will look at L4 and L5, and the associated Kordylewski clouds, to understand how stable they really are, and whether their dust presents any kind of threat to equipment and future astronauts alike.

A Florida man with a decades-long criminal record was arrested and charged Friday with mailing at least 13 packages containing explosive devices to critics of President Donald Trump, authorities said.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Fla., was being charged with five federal crimes, including illegally mailing explosive devices and threatening government officials. He added that Sayoc faced up to 48 years in prison if found guilty.

​The crude pipe bombs were addressed in recent days to former President Barack Obama as well as other high-profile Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. attorney general, two Democratic members of Congress and former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the same news conference, said 13 IEDs were sent in the packages, and each mailing included 6 inches of PVC pipe, a small clock and potentially explosive material.

“These are not hoax devices,” Wray said, noting that none of the bombs exploded. Authorities told The Associated Press the devices were not rigged to explode when the packages were opened, but they said they were not sure whether that was because the devices were poorly made or were not intended to harm.

Wray added that authorities believed other bombs might still be found.

Wray said a fingerprint found on one of the packages led investigators to Sayoc. He said possible DNA evidence was found on another package.

Sayoc was previously known to law enforcement officials and has been arrested nearly a dozen times in Florida, including a 2002 arrest for making a bomb threat. His first arrest in the state was at age 29 for larceny. Other charges against him have included grand theft, fraud and illegal possession of steroids.

Sayoc’s arrest Friday in Plantation, Fla., about 30 miles north of Miami, ended a nearly weeklong stretch of terror in which at least one bomb was found each day.

Officers also hauled away Sayoc’s white van — its windows plastered with pro-Trump stickers, American flags, and images of Democratic figures with red cross hairs over their faces.

His arrest came just hours after the Federal Bureau of Investigation intercepted two more suspicious packages, one addressed to Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, the other to former National Intelligence Director James Clapper. And even as Sayoc was being detained, officials with Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California said investigators were looking at a package sent to her office.

Clapper said Friday on CNN that he was not surprised he had been targeted and that the incidents were “serious.”

President Donald Trump spoke at an event at the White House on Friday and vowed that those responsible for mailing suspicious packages would be prosecuted to the “fullest extent of the law.”

“These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country,” Trump told the Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House. “We must never allow political violence to take root in America.”

In a tweet earlier Friday, however, he referred to the investigation as “this ‘bomb’ stuff,” which he blamed for taking focus away from the upcoming midterm elections. He also complained that his critics were blaming him for heated political rhetoric.

The weeklong bomb scare began Monday, when the first bomb was found at the suburban New York compound of billionaire George Soros, a major contributor to Democratic candidates and causes. He has often criticized Trump.

In the following days, packages containing pipe bombs were intercepted for Clinton, Obama, and later were found addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters.

Federal investigators searched a massive mail sorting facility in Florida late Thursday, after determining that at least one of the pipe bombs had been processed there.

All of the “suspected explosive devices” were taken to the FBI’s laboratory at the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., said New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill.

Wall Street opened sharply lower on Friday, weighed down by a dramatic fall in stock prices of American technology companies. The US markets have now entered correction territory, down over 10 percent from September highs.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index plunged over 3 percent in early trading. Dow Jones was lower by 2 percent at over 500 points, while the S&P 500 sank more than 2.5 percent.

Shares in Amazon plunged 8 percent, while Alphabet fell 2.7 percent. Facebook, Netflix, and Apple were all losing more than 1.5 percent.

“When the stocks that are carrying the markets begin to crack, investors are going take cover. Investors are waiting for more visibility for things to see where the rotation takes them,” said Andre Bakhos, managing director at New Vines Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey, as quoted by Reuters.

Amazon’s revenue from international business, which accounts for 27.5 percent of total sales, was hit the hardest, with growth falling by half to 13.4 percent compared to the previous quarter.

“We don’t see any real structural issue with Amazon but nearly every line in the business is decelerating a tad, and we typically see another deceleration in retail in 4Q, hence are struggling to identify a catalyst,” Barclays analyst Ross Sandler said, as quoted by Reuters.

The US economy slowed down less than analysts had expected. It grew at a 3.5 percent annualized rate in the third quarter of the year. A trade war has caused a drop in soybean exports, but it was partly offset by the strongest consumer spending in nearly four years.

“This is seen as a slight positive. There’s less pressure on the Federal Reserve to do something [on interest rates],” Bakhos said.

Friday’s selloff comes after US indices rallied in the previous session, but are still down this week. The S&P 500 and Dow dipped 2.2 percent and 1.8 percent this week, respectively, entering Friday’s session. The October stock plunge has erased all gains seen in US markets this year.

By Ajmal Shams*

There was another historic day in Afghanistan’s nascent democracy on Saturday, Oct. 20. Afghans went to the polls in large numbers to vote for about 2,500 candidates for 249 seats in the lower house of Parliament, including 68 seats reserved for women. This was in spite of security threats and the probability of violence by the Taliban and Daesh, who had urged people not to vote.

The message was loud and clear, with a large turnout across the country. People chose to vote to show their commitment to democracy and freedom of expression, despite fears of being intimidated.

The successful election was a clear manifestation by Afghans that they want their destiny determined through ballot, not bullet.

However, Ghazni and Kandahar provinces were two exceptions. No votes were held in Ghazni due to serious security constraints, while the election in Kandahar was delayed by a week due to the assassination of provincial security chief Gen. Abdul Raziq — the powerful commander who had helped maintain relative security in the province and was known for his bravery and courage in the fight against the Taliban.

The electoral campaign saw the lives of 10 candidates taken throughout the country. Afghans will remember them as “martyrs of democracy.” The role of the Afghan forces that maintained security and law and order during the voting process is commendable. Except for a few incidents where polling stations were attacked in an attempt to cause disruption, the elections were relatively peaceful compared to those held in the past.

The parliamentary elections were held after three-and-a-half years of delays due to wrangling within the National Unity Government (NUG) over electoral reforms. The new reforms may not be adequate, but they show the NUG’s commitment to change. Both President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah cast their vote on the morning of the election. Ghani urged Afghans to turn out and emphasized that voting was both a right and a responsibility. He also took pride in the fact that the electoral process was fully handled by Afghans. Yet, let us not forget that, without outright financial and political support from our international partners, we would never have held a successful election. In particular, the government and people of Afghanistan owe gratitude to our major partner, the US, for its instrumental role in our journey toward democracy.

The Oct. 20 elections were by no means perfect. There were reports of delays in many polling stations around the country. This was caused by the late introduction of biometric machines to prevent multiple voting. A lack of technical capacity in the use of such machines and limited training affected the process. This was the first time that Afghanistan had experimented with a biometric election system. In an unprecedented move that some believe was against electoral law, the voting was extended to a second day to allow maximum participation and compensate for the delays on the first day due to technical reasons.

People’s trust in democracy and democratic institutions can only be ensured once the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) fully accomplishes its task. Holding an election is one thing, but finalizing the results in a free, fair and transparent manner is vital. Every effort must be made to ensure that the counting of votes happens properly, without interference or intimidation. Complaints and grievances need to be addressed. Speed also matters — the sooner the results are announced the better as it will increase public confidence in the electoral system.

As per the IEC, the preliminary results will be announced in a few weeks. However, initial counts conducted at polling stations and reported by election observers show that a significant number of new faces, mostly young and educated, will come on board. If true, this will be a good omen for the parliamentary politics of Afghanistan.

As I wrote in an earlier article for Arab News, the Afghan parliament has a limited role in governance, but the mere symbolism of the latest successful election is important for the promotion of democracy in war-ravaged Afghanistan. Although the election results will end in victory for a few hundred out of more than 2,000 candidates, the real victory is that of democracy and the entire Afghan nation.

• Ajmal Shams is president of the Afghanistan Social Democratic Party and based in Kabul. He was a deputy minister in the Afghan National Unity Government and served as policy adviser to Ashraf Ghani when he chaired the security transition commission before his presidential bid.

Last week Roger Lowenstein had a piece in the Post about GE’s hiring of a new CEO after the prior one served less than a year. According to Lowenstein, the new CEO’s contract will give him incentives worth $300 million over the next four years if he does well by the shareholders. He will walk away with $75 million if he does poorly. This follows the hiring of an inept CEO who was dumped in less than a year and long-term CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars during his tenure while giving shareholders returns averaging 1.0 percent annually, according to Lowenstein.

This raises the obvious question: What is GE’s board is doing? I haven’t looked at their forms, but I am quite certain these people get paid well over $100k a year and quite possibly over $200k for a job that requires perhaps 200 to 300 hours a year of work. That comes to an hourly pay rate in the $300 to $1,000 range. The primary responsibility of directors is picking top management and making sure that they don’t rip off the shareholders.

How could you possibly fail worse in this job than GE’s board? Yet, my guess is that there has been very little turnover in the board.

As a practical matter, it is difficult for shareholders, even large shareholders, to organize to remove board members. More than 99.0 percent of the incumbents who are nominated by the board for re-election win.

This is the classic problem of collective action. It is almost always much easier to simply exit as a shareholder and sell your stock than to organize and try to change the way the company operates. For this reason, CEOs are able to make out like bandits, getting pay in the tens of millions of dollars, even when they do poorly by shareholders.

It is common for progressives to condemn the outrageous pay of CEOs. However, they rarely move beyond condemnation to point out that the CEOs are ripping off their companies. This means first and foremost the shareholders.

If a CEO gets paid $20 or $30 million, but does not produce returns for shareholders that are at least this large, or perhaps more importantly, doesn’t add, say $15 or $25 million, to what a CEO getting $5 million would produce for shareholders, then the company is being ripped off by the CEO. This means that the shareholders would benefit if they could organize to reduce CEO pay.

There is considerable research showing that CEOs are not worth their pay, much of which is cited in Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried’s excellent book, Pay Without Performance. There are any number of studies showing, for example, that CEOs get richly rewarded for events they had nothing to do with, like higher profits at an oil company due to a jump in world oil prices.

It is possible to prevent such windfalls, for example by indexing compensation to relative performance. That would mean an oil company CEO gets paid based on how the company’s stock does relative to other oil companies, not just whether the company’s stock goes up. CEO pay is almost never structured this way.

It is also worth noting that incentives are always one way. CEOs get extra pay when the company does well, but they never have money deducted from their base pay when it does poorly. This can mean, for example, that a CEO may do very well in three years when the company’s stock price goes up, but they never have to give back their pay if the stock tanks in the next two years. Again, it is possible to write contracts that would require givebacks and penalties for poor performance, but it is almost never done.

Jessica Schieder and I did a short paper earlier this year that looked at whether the limit on the tax deductibility of CEO pay in the health insurance industry imposed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), had any impact on their pay. The ACA prevented insurers from deducting more than $500,000 of a CEO’s pay from their profits for tax purposes. This meant that instead of CEO pay costing the firm 65 cents on the dollar (the tax rate was 35 percent at the time), it cost them 100 cents on the dollar, effectively raising the cost of a marginal dollar of CEO pay by more than 50 percent.

If health insurers are setting the pay equal to the value the CEO adds to the shareholders, the increased cost of pay to the company from the loss of tax deductibility should have unambiguously had the effect of lowering CEO pay, after controlling for other factors. We ran a large number of regressions, controlling for increases in revenues, profits, share prices, and other factors that could plausibly affect pay.

In none of them did we find any evidence that CEO pay in the health insurance industry had been lowered by this provision in the ACA. This would seem to support the view that CEO pay does not bear any relationship to the returns CEOs produce for shareholders.

If CEOs are ripping off shareholders, then we should look to shareholders as allies in reducing CEO pay rather than as actively colluding in exorbitant pay. This isn’t a question of doing justice by shareholders. I am well aware of the enormous skewing of stock ownership, although there are many more non-rich people who would benefit from lower CEO pay than there are non-rich CEOs who benefit from higher pay. Most middle-income people do own some stock in their retirement plans. And, we still have tens of millions of people enrolled in traditional defined-benefit pension plans that hold stock.

More importantly, CEO pay helps to set pay structures throughout the economy. In a context where CEOs of large companies routinely earn $20 or $30 million a year, the heads of large non-profits, such as foundations, charities, and universities can typically command compensation of more than a $1 million a year. They can truthfully say that they would be earning far more if they were running a private company of the same size.

And, excessive CEO pay affects their immediate subordinates. If the CEO is getting paid $20 million, then the chief financial officer and other top executives might be getting in the neighborhood of $10 million. The third level of executives could still be crossing the $1 million threshold. As fans of arithmetic everywhere know, the more money that goes to those at the top, the less is available for everyone else.

Imagine that run of the mill CEOs got $2–$3 million and the really outstanding ones (in producing returns for shareholders) got $4–$5 million. In this scenario, the chief financial officer probably gets a bit more than $1 million, and the third tier of executives are looking at pay in the high six figures. This leaves a lot more money for everyone else.

In my better world, we would limit the top pay for anyone at non-profits to the president’s salary $400,000 a year. (They lose their non-profit status if they pay more.) This means that provosts, vice-presidents, deans and other administrators would get less. This would leave much more money for faculty and staff.

The key step in my view is to find ways to make it easier for shareholders to rein in CEO pay. There was a very small step in the Dodd–Frank financial reform bill. It required a “say on pay” vote by shareholders every three years in which they vote up or down on CEO pay. The vote is non-binding. As a result, there is generally little organizing around it and more than 97 percent of pay packages are approved.

I have argued for putting some teeth in the vote. Suppose directors sacrificed their own pay if a CEO pay package was voted down. This would give them some real incentive to think carefully about whether they could get away with paying their CEO less money or whether they could get another CEO who was as good for half the price.

The neat thing about this sort of measure is that it could be adopted at the state level, where states imposed it on companies incorporated within the state. Companies could, of course, change their state of incorporation, but this matters little to the state. They get little revenue as a result of companies being incorporated in the state. Also, it might be an embarrassment to the company to say that they have to change their state of incorporation because the directors are worried about losing a say on pay vote.

In fact, shareholders could push companies to adopt this rule voluntarily. After all, how many directors want to argue that they are worried about being in the bottom 3.0 percent of corporate boards?

I realize the power of inertia, so nothing in politics is ever as easy as it should be. But we do have good cause to worry about CEO pay, which is grossly out of line both with its past levels and with respect to pay in other countries. And rich shareholders are an ally in this story.

There also is another aspect to the story that has largely escaped notice. If we go back forty years, most of the shareholders’ return came from dividends. These were typically in the range of 3–4 percent annually. In the last four decades, there has been a near doubling of the price-to-earnings ratio. This run-up has allowed stocks to offer acceptable returns (although less than in the 1947 to 1973 Golden Age), even as the dividend yield has fallen sharply.

The problem in this story is that the run-up is unlikely to continue. We are not likely to see price-to-earnings ratios of 40 or 50 to one. If stock prices just rise in step with profit growth, which in turn is likely to be roughly the rate of economic growth, then stock returns will be much lower going forward than in the past.

This also means that CEO pay that depends on rising stock prices will be much lower. If CEOs are still going to pocket $20 to $30 million a year, then companies will increasingly be forced to pay them directly rather than through grants of stock options. This will make the cost to shareholders more apparent. That may still not be enough to reverse the massive run-up in CEO pay over the last four decades, but there is always hope.

This article originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The brutal murder of sometime Washington Post visiting columnist Jamal Khashoogi, apparently on orders from Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has many American journalists and columnists in high dudgeon. How, they ask, can the US be allied to a country run by such a blood-thirsty leader? How can the US ally itself to, and sell $100 billion worth of arms to, a country so medieval in its behavior?

Perhaps a classic example of this professed outrage is Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg, who wrote a column headlined “The Khashoggi case is far more complicated than the news media are making it out to be.”

Goldberg is no journalist. He is a neoconservative political analyst and columnist on the staff of the conservative magazine National Review, and rather than condemn Salman as many do, he makes the argument that bin Salman is just one in a line of autocratic leaders who while “reformers” of their countries are also brutal, and that in terms of US foreign policy, “when dealing with murderous regimes, the choice is often between the more tolerable of murderers.”

Okay, fair enough. That’s realpolitik he’s advocating, much like former Sec. of State Madeline Albright’s excusing the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children because of the US ban on chlorine exports to Iraq as “worth it.” But what’s not real is ignoring the reality of which regimes Americans are we labeling “murderous.”

There’s an incredible blindness and intellectual dishonesty in the US media when it comes to such matters.

In truth, for at least the last three US presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, our leaders have been arguably the number one murderers in the world, cooly ordering the offing of people from the comfort of the Oval Office on a weekly basis with the dismissive signing of a “kill” order, to be carried out by Pentagon or CIA drone pilots firing high-explosive Hellfire missiles which have a nasty habit of killing and maiming disturbingly large numbers of innocent bystanders, including children. These three presidents’ many extra-judicial executions have included a number of American citizens too, not just alleged foreign “enemies.”

It would be far more honest, and useful in informing and educating the American people — in other words it would be much better journalism — if our corporate media editors would insist that when criticizing the Cosa Nostra-like behavior of thug regimes like the ones in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, their reporters and columnists include at least a modicum of balance by noting the similarly murderous mob-like actions of our own government over the years.

The reality is that the only difference between the killings ordered by Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the killings ordered by a President Trump, Obama or Bush — or for that matter an Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — is that our media, if they report on the slayings at all, don’t criticize the latter.

Sadly it is not just autocratic and tyrannical regimes that murder journalists and political opponents. It is governments of the supposed democracies that commit these crimes too — especially powerful ones like the US that rarely have to answer for their actions.

In fact, arguably, what our presidents, with their ongoing drone assassination campaign, are doing is far worse than what autocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia’s or Egypt’s do. That’s because autocratic regimes are just doing what autocratic regimes do. They’re not undermining a system or a rule of law; they’re just keeping a bad thing going. What our presidents, with their “kill lists,” are doing is destroying what little democracy and moral standing we have left in this country.

The Kremlin has fallen into a trap that almost any government in power for a long time does. It has increasingly begun to accept its own propaganda as an accurate description of reality, thus losing touch with what is going on and offending both its own officials and the population at large, according to Sergey Shelin.

In support of that contention, the Rosbalt commentator points to the absurd situation in which Putin and his top officials are talking about rapidly rising wages at a time when they are falling and the response of Duma deputies to claims that they and their constituents know are completely imaginary and false (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/10/26/1742109.html).

What is especially harmful and even dangerous is that top officials are coming up with figures that have no connection with reality. If they overstated increases by a few percent, Russians might understand; but when they claim there has been a massive growth when Russians are experiencing massive declines that undermines trust and ultimately support for the powers that be.

Shelin provides an analysis which shows that the people are right and the powers that be aren’t, that real incomes are falling after a brief uptick earlier in the year and not rising at ten percent or more as Vladimir Putin and his ministers have insisted. It is not just the people who know this; it is the regime. But the people on top don’t care about facts but only effects.

Unfortunately for them, suggesting things are far better than they in fact are is having an impact very different from the one the Kremlin would like. It is undermining public confidence not only in these figures but in the adequacy of their rulers – and it is undermining as well the confidence of more junior officials that their bosses really know what is going on.

This doesn’t mean that the population is about to revolt or mid-level officials are about to conspire against the regime, but it does mean that the Kremlin has an ever smaller reserve of public and official confidence in what it is doing. That points to an outcome that may as the poet said be more of a whimper than a bang, but an end nonetheless.

The International Rice Congress (IRC) 2018 held in Singapore, 15-17 October 2018, provided new insights and refreshing ideas on how the rice value chain has been transforming. It also underscored the need for a Whole-of-Society approach to secure enough rice for all in 2050.

By Jose Ma. Luis P. Montesclaros and Paul Teng*

The quadrennial International Rice Congress (IRC) for 2018 took place in Singapore on 15-17 October, co-organised by the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA). It was hosted for the first time by Singapore, an exception to the IRC’s tradition of holding the event in a major rice-producing country, starting with Beijing in 1998.

The overarching theme of the Congress was ‘Transformative Science for Food and Nutrition Security’. ‘Transformative’ was a key word, given how practices in the rice industry have evolved rapidly over the past decade, and since the last Congress was held. For instance, an unlikely presenter was Amazon Web Services (AWS), a known website for selling books online. Its keynote address was on how it was venturing into machine learning for agriculture and even cloud computing.

An Emerging Digital Rice World

Machine learning refers to programming computers to identify the best use of statistical tools to draw information from large quantities of data (over 200 terrabytes worth!). This has opened up new ways to make sense of large quantities of data from satellites, other sensors and weather stations, to make better predictions on growing environments for agriculture. This in turn allows for tailored recommendations on how farmers should schedule their planting, and on the types and quantities of inputs to use (such as fertilisers, pesticides, etc.).

The Congress had special sessions on “disruptive technologies” based on mobile computing which enabled rice farmers to diagnose problems in their fields, to make decisions on farm practices like how much fertiliser to apply and what type of pest control to practice, and also for farmers to procure services like crop insurance.

A direct benefit to Singapore is the use of AWS by a Singapore-based company together with digital technologies such as environmental sensors (for temperature, humidity, etc.) to provide recommendations on ideal inputs within indoor farms. These recommendations are then automatically implemented by computers. Altogether, this phenomenon has become known as the ‘Internet of Things’ in agriculture.

Changes in Major Rice-Producing Countries: China and India

The forum also provided insights on new ways by which major rice-producing countries were seeing the agricultural sector. China, which is among the largest producers, consumers and importers of rice, no longer focuses on maximising rice production alone. Instead, and perhaps necessarily given global economic uncertainties, it is focusing on boosting revenues earned from rice production, as shared by Qifa Zhang of Huazhong Agricultural University. In fact, he laid out the ‘road for value increase of rice’, which included greening, safety, palatability (from using less fertilisers), and nutrition, altogether allowing for an increase in the value of rice to more than RMB 25 (USD 3.6) per kilo.

Looking towards the world’s largest rice exporter, India, Ashok Gulati, former Chairman of India’s Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) noted that the country would still need to manage its domestic resources to obviate its dependence on aid in times of crises.

That was why it is important to have buffer stocks for rice for those times when demand exceeded production. He also stressed the difference in attitude towards self-sufficiency rice targets by large countries in comparison to small countries which can import relatively small amounts from the world market. While the amount of rice traded globally has increased much in the past decade to almost 50 million tonnes, it is still insufficient to meet the needs of large countries. Hence large rice-consuming countries continue to stress self-sufficiency targets.

Rice Innovations – by Singapore?

AVA, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Enterprise Singapore, jointly organised ‘Rice for the Future: A Singapore Perspective’, at a side-event alongside the Congress. Singapore-based research entities showcased what they learned from the viewpoint of biotechnology.

Nanyang Technological University’s Professor Oliver Mueller-Cajar, for instance, presented how heat-resistance can be improved in rice, while National University of Singapore Professor Prakash Kumar showed results of multiple projects funded by a SGD 10 million grant that also looked at making rice more tolerant to insect pests and salt water intrusion (salinity), to boost growth performance under varying environmental conditions.

Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory’s senior scientist, Dr Naweed Naqvi, explained that there are tradeoffs between rice growth, and defence against environmental stressors, given that plants have limited metabolic resources (energy) which are used for both activities. He then showed how he used precision engineering in his laboratory, to surface the compounds needed for boosting stress resistance.

Related to this is the presentation by Dr Yin Zhongchao on ‘Temasek Rice’, a breed which the company sells to boost productivity in the region, such as in Indonesia. Whereas average yields in Indonesia are at 5.4 tonnes per hectare, the average yield of Temasek Rice was 6.3 tonnes per hectare, with one province even having more than 8 tonnes per hectare.

In a Plenary Keynote, Sunny Verghese showed how a Singapore-based company like OLAM, can play a role in rice production and rice trade, as well as influencing the global discourse on the role of agriculture in sustainable development, and to adapt to fast-changing growing environments for rice.

Way Forward

Even as rice yield gains from status quo technologies have already started to plateau, Singapore’s Minister of National Development, Mr Lawrence Wong, emphasised that innovations were needed to achieve needed rice yields of 25% from 2010 to 2030. If no action is taken to address environmental risks such as heat stress and droughts, rice prices could increase by as much as 30% come 2050, thus hurting consumers.

A novelty of the IRC 2018 was bringing together diverse actors such as multinational crop solution providers like Bayer and Corteva Agriscience; producing companies like Golden Sunland; agribusiness companies like Olam; universities from China; the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); irrigation provider, Jains Irrigation; and human-rights based NGO, Oxfam, among others.

Its success will be measured by how this ‘Whole-of-Society’ engagement can translate to active multi-stakeholder partnerships aimed towards leveraging innovative technologies and societal approaches in addressing food security concerns amid a rapidly changing environment.

*Jose Montesclaros is Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore where Professor Paul Teng is Adjunct Senior Fellow. Paul Teng formerly held leadership positions at The WorldFish Centre, The International Rice Research Institute and Monsanto Company.

By Seema Sirohi

The politics of South Asia have always cast a shadow over the economics of the region, making it a tariff-ridden jumble of impossibilities rather than a neighbourly place of opportunities.

Connectivity is abysmally low, information flows even lower and hidden duties are high, fragmenting a region already dotted with isolated and landlocked areas.

Nowhere else, perhaps, is proximity such a curse as in South Asia where countries actively discriminate against each other on trade. The South Asian Free Trade Agreement of 2006 is undermined by long “sensitive lists,” restricting almost 35% of intra-regional trade.

Numbers have a way of waking governments and entrepreneurs up – even if momentarily – to see the tremendous cost of not trading freely with each other.

If things were normal trade among South Asian countries would be $67 billion not a mere $23 billion. More trade could lead to more trust, which would lead to more understanding to create a virtuous cycle.

In 2015, intra-regional trade as a share of regional GDP was less than 1% — the lowest in the world. Compare that to nearly 10% for East Asia and the Pacific. Latin America and the Caribbean did better at 3%.

Similarly, intra-regional trade accounted for only 5% of South Asia’s total trade while it was 50% of the total trade in East Asia and the Pacific and more than 20% for Sub-Saharan Africa. Surely, something is wrong with this picture.

The figures are from a recently released book titled, A Glass Half Full: The Promise of Regional Trade written by a team led by Sanjay Kathuria, lead economist for South Asia in the World Bank. The book takes a comprehensive look at regional ground realities and should be a “must read” for trade officials in South Asia.

It’s exhaustive in its research and analysis, using focus groups, surveys, stakeholder interviews and new data to make the case for more integration in a region that still has 33% of the world’s poor and 40% of the world’s stunted children, as Kaushik Basu, professor of economics at Cornell and the former chief economist for the World Bank, reminds in the foreword.

Why should Sri Lankans pay $1.23 for a dozen eggs when the price in India is $0.91? The same goes for potatoes. Meanwhile, prices for eggs and potatoes in Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur are comparable because of better links and flow of goods.

Why should India discriminate against imports from South Asia when it puts fewer restrictions on imports from the rest of the world by comparison? Protectionist measures in Nepal against regional imports are the highest.

The two elephants in the room are of course, India and Pakistan, and their tortured history. The debilitating dynamic between the two largest countries in the region makes a breakthrough very difficult. Politics always intervene.

Some key statistics bear repeating. Trade between India and Pakistan is only $2 billion but it could be $37 billion if there were no artificial barriers, according to the book.

The writers keep their distance from politics but one could argue that even the Pakistan army stands to make more money from more trade since it has a finger in many sectors of the economy.

Pakistan’s civilian leaders in the past have tried to open doors to more trade only to be held back by domestic industry fears of being overwhelmed by competitive Indian products. Concerns raised by Pakistan’s pharmaceutical, auto and agriculture lobbies managed to dampen the enthusiasm of the Nawaz Sharif’s government, sending the idea back into the box.

Kathuria says there are ways to deal with the India-Pakistan concerns in serious trade negotiations – backload the opening of sensitive sectors and give time to domestic industry to catch up. Decide on what’s fair – 10 years or 15 years – but the two sides need to start talking because the cost of not normalizing trade is very significant.

“Trade doesn’t have to be dictated by politics,” Kathuria told me in a telephone conversation. Just look at China-Taiwan trade or even India-China trade. “Our analysis shows that trade can play a ver important role in building trust. South Asian countries have not allowed that to play out.”

He advises a slow, systematic, low-key approach and building incrementally. Indian and Pakistani technical teams, for example, can meet to discuss food safety standards and try to bring down real and perceived barriers. This is already happening, for example, between India and Bangladesh.”

“I don’t see anyone raising objections to that and it would have a significant impact. No one is talking of producing a NAFTA overnight,” Kathuria says, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was recently renegotiated as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

A bright spot in a disconnected region is the Sri Lanka-India air connectivity. Colombo was quick to see the potential of tourism from India and an air travel agreement has allowed 14 Indian cities to be connected to the Sri Lankan capital with 147 flights every week.

Pakistan has only 10 flights to Sri Lanka while Bangladesh has just six. The recommendation is not to wait for open skies agreement to begin liberalization in the air.

The idea is to start modestly – the book examines the weekly “border haats” on the India-Bangladesh border and the immense impact they have had on the lives of ordinary people, especially women, to say nothing of the good will generated.

The authors recommend scaling up the initiative and Kathuria suggests trying it out with Pakistan on the Wagah border.

India’s leadership is critical “to deepening trade and reducing the trust deficit ” because others worry about its size and economic might. , India has a trade surplus of $15 billion with the region despite all the problems.

India must increase its imports from the region from 0.6% of total imports and incentivize Indian companies to invest more in South Asia.

“One has to have oodles of optimism to work in this space in South Asia. You can’t give up from the development standpoint. Some day the decision makers will see that the costs have become unacceptable,” Kathuria says.

By Danijel Kovacevic

With internal cracks widened by a recent humiliating defeat at the polls, the Serb Democratic Party, SDS, has decided to hold new internal elections.

The main board of Bosnian Serb opposition party the Serb Democratic Party, SDS, met on Sunday but failed to resolve internal differences that have deepened since its election defeat earlier this month.

After a nine-hour session, the board finally agreed to hold internal party elections in December.

The main point of division was the question of whether SDS should join the main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD led by Milorad Dodik, to form a joint bloc of Serb parties in the state parliament.

Party leader Vukota Govedarica initially rejected the possibility, yet changed his rhetoric slightly after Sunday’s session, when he claimed that SDS was “ready to talk” with other parties but has so far received no official invitation.

In the run-up to the internal party elections, the SDS’s internal divisions are likely to continue and even escalate as the party is struggling to clarify its political and ideological positions or find new ones, experts said.

“It would be helpful if the SDS would finally decide what they want. If this [internal turmoil] continues, the party will split. It will not disappear, but what remains of it will not have enough political force for a serious political battle,” political analyst Vlade Simovic told BIRN.

The SDS is the oldest ethnic Serb party in Bosnia. Established by the Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, it dominated the political scene in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated areas during and immediately after the war with strong hand and hardline positions.

However it was eventually overshadowed by Dodik’s SNSD. Although initially a moderate and darling of the West, Dodik gradually hardened his positions eventually becoming the most radical Serb politician in the country.

Under Western sanctions, the SDS meanwhile was forced to moderate its positions. But this created internal divisions and tensions between SDS’s old, hardline cadre and some of the more moderate newcomers over the exact ideological position and political identity of the party.

An Ecuadorian judge has thrown out the lawsuit by Julian Assange, objecting to the revised terms of his asylum at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been trapped since 2012.

The judge made the decision following a lengthy hearing held by teleconference. Ecuador will maintain Assange’s asylum as long as he wants to keep it, but he must follow the rules laid out for him by the government, an unnamed government official told Reuters on Monday.

The new rules, which were leaked earlier this month by an opposition politician, involve a list of restrictions Assange has argued violate his “fundamental rights and freedoms” as well as Ecuadorian and international law. Among them are restrictions on discussing politics and receiving visitors, and demands of Assange to pay for his own food, medical care, laundry and related expenses of living at the embassy starting December 1.

Ecuador has also threatened to seize Assange’s pet cat if he did not care for it properly, according to the leaked regulations.

In the teleconference Monday, Assange accused Ecuador of using him as a “bargaining chip” in talks with the US and UK governments, and submitting to pressure from Washington and London. Ecuadorian Attorney General Inigo Salvador Crespo responded by calling those statements “malicious and perverse,” according to the newspaper El Comercio.

The new regulations and special protocols governing Assange’s visitations were put together for the purpose of making Assange’s continued stay at the embassy “harmonious,” Crespo argued.

“It is a public building that was not intended for housing, so there must be regulation,” he told the judge.

The WikiLeaks founder and longtime chief editor sought asylum in Ecuador in 2012, fearing that the UK would have him extradited to the US over the whistleblower website’s publication of classified US diplomatic cables and military documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ecuador does not have an extradition treaty with the US. However, the British authorities have prevented Assange from leaving the embassy ever since.

His position became precarious following the election of President Lenin Moreno in 2017. Though Moreno served as vice-president to Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum, he came under strong pressure from the US to revisit the journalist’s status.

Assange was granted Ecuadorian citizenship in December 2017, and there was even talk of him getting a diplomatic passport. Instead, in March the embassy cut off his phone and internet access and banned all visitation, citing Assange’s statements in support of separatists in the Spanish region of Catalonia.

“The Ecuadorian state has to protect Assange’s rights, he is not just an asylum [seeker]; he is a citizen,” Correa told RT in a recent interview, adding that he thought that the current government had “absolutely submitted” to Washington’s dictates.

“They try to humiliate Assange but only humiliate themselves,” Correa told RT. ”These rules really go against the human rights. They are trying to isolate Assange and to push him to abandon our embassy.”

Assange’s internet access and visitation rights have yet to be restored, despite promises from Quito to do so, according to his attorney Baltasar Garzon.

By Prapti Rahman

A Dhaka court Monday sentenced opposition head Khaleda Zia to seven years for misappropriating about 32 million taka (U.S. $381,000) from a charitable trust named after her, in the jailed leader’s second conviction this year.

Judge Md Akhtaruzzaman announced the sentence against Zia and three co-defendants from a temporary court inside Dhaka’s old central jail after spending 45 minutes reading the summary of the 600-page verdict. The anti-corruption commission (ACC) filed the case in 2011.

Akhtaruzzaman declared Zia, a former prime minister who chairs the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), guilty under the Prevention and Corruption Act of 1947. He ordered the maximum sentence along with a 1 million taka ($11,900) fine, while ordering the confiscation of land bought by the trust. Failure to pay the fine would extend her sentence another six months.

“Khaleda Zia abused her power as the head of state, collected funds for her personal trust and then spent it. This cannot be accepted,” Akhtaruzzaman ruled.

He said Zia, who was sentenced to five years in February as a result of another graft conviction, should be given the maximum punishment so others would not follow her lead. The new sentence is to run concurrently with the previous sentence, Reuters news service reported.

While Zia was being sentenced in Dhaka on Monday, photographer Shahidul Alam saw another attempt to be freed on bail be delayed by a High Court bench. Alam has been locked up since Aug. 5 after he expressed opinions on Facebook and in a television interview about a student uprising demanding road safety to protest two classmates who were killed by a speeding bus.

Others sentenced

Three of Zia’s co-defendants – former political affairs secretary Harris Chowdhury, former Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority acting director Ziaul Islam Munna and Monirul Islam Khan, the personal secretary of Dhaka City mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka – each received the same seven-year sentence and fine.

Two of the defendants were in court to hear the verdict but Chowdhury has absconded.

Zia, who is a patient at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital, and her lawyers were not in court.

ACC lawyer Mosharraf Hossain Kajal told BenarNews he was pleased with the judge’s ruling.

“We could prove Khaleda Zia’s guilt and the court also handed the maximum punishment to her,” Mosharraf said.

The BNP rejected the verdict and called for a nationwide protest on Tuesday.

“BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia is the victim of political vendetta. The sole reason for such a verdict is to keep her away from the next parliamentary election,” BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told reporters.

Sabina Islam, a sister of defendant Monirul Islam Khan, said she and her family did not accept the verdict.

“We haven’t gotten justice and we will go to the high court for remedy,” she told BenarNews.

In September, the ministry of law, justice and parliamentary affairs established a court inside the old central jail for Zia where has been serving time since her Feb. 8 conviction in another case tied to the Zia Orphanage Trust. Despite having a courtroom in the jail, she refused to return after her first appearance and has since been admitted to the hospital.

“You may pass any judgment. I can’t appear again and again every day. I am not well,” she told the court on Sept. 5.

The court accepted the government’s request for the trial to continue despite her absence.

Alamgir said the BNP was considering challenging the verdict before the high court.

“The lower court has closed the door of justice for us,” he said.

Bail hearing delayed

In other court-related news on Monday, a high court judge ordered Attorney General Mahbubey Alam to submit online content by Thursday showing evidence to support a defamation allegation against Shahidul Alam, the photo journalist whose detention has led to international protests.

The attorney general said he opposed bail because of false statements about the government.

“Shahidul said in his interview with Al-Jazeera TV that the Awami League government is non-elected. That’s why the government has no mandate to run the country,” Mahbubey Alam told the court.

Defense attorney Sara Hossain said the judges could go online and verify the authenticity of Shahidul Alam’s interview. The court accepted her request that her client’s case be placed at the top of Thursday’s docket.

“Shahidul’s health has deteriorated in the last 10 days. There is no proper facilities for his treatment in the prison. He will face the trial, he is a renowned person, why should he escape?” Hossain said in requesting bail.

Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report.

By Kamran Chaudhry

A teaser for a new TV drama series on conversion to Islam has sent Pakistan’s minority Christians into meltdown and brought calls for the government to cancel the show.

Geo TV recently released the first trailer of Maria Bint e Abdullah showing Maria, the daughter of a Christian mother and a Muslim father. It begins with images of Sacred Heart Cathedral of Lahore, the crucified Jesus and Maria crying with a rosary in her hand.

“To me she doesn’t seem a Muslim. She doesn’t even know how to say namaz [a ritualized Islamic prayer],” says a woman in a voiceover. “Can I ask something, are you Christian,” asks another as Maria reads a Bible.

Pakistani Christians on social media reacted with outrage to the teaser.

“My name is Yasir Javed Masih. I think this drama should never have been produced. I requested its makers to stop doing it. Please, please, please,” posted a Catholic youth member on Facebook.

Christians in Pakistan, a website highlighting persecution of the minority community, condemned the drama.

“It may be ignored as a drama or a story but it is not right to ignore this every time. It is not right to present any religion on TV in a wrong way or belittle a religious group. Such dramas only cause disruption and hurt others in a diverse culture,” it posted.

“The dialogue suggests it is not suitable for a person to be Christian, as if it is is disliked or shameless. But many Pakistanis think the same. This drama will be very much liked like other popular literature. The channel will get tremendous business. But it will also increase suffocation and hatred for religious minorities in the country. So-called religious unity will further weaken.”

See the trailer here for Maria Bint e Abdullah:

Rev. Amjad Niamat, convener of the Pakistan Christian Action Committee, issued a similar message on social media.

Punjab Minister for Human Rights and Minorities Affairs Aijaz Alam Augustine highlighted the concern in a government notice issued on Oct. 25.

“The upcoming project of a private channel … seems to carry content which is undermining religious beliefs of the Christian community and Christianity in general. No religion teaches hatred. A peaceful atmosphere and enhancing tolerance in society are a joint responsibility for all of us. No channel has a right to promote negative aspects of any community,” he stated.

The Christian minister also requested all media channels to immediately stop such programs that violate human rights and warned he may approach the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.

The Pakistan Minorities Teachers’ Association (PMTA) requested Prime Minister Imran Khan and the chief justice of the Supreme Court to take action against Geo TV in a letter sent on Oct. 25.

“After print media, the electronic media has also become biased against Christians. This drama serial will not only desecrate Christianity but also persuade Christian girls and women to leave their faith for Islam. Christian and Hindu girls are already unsafe. They are harassed, kidnapped, converted to Islam and forcibly married to pedophiles,” said PMTA chairman Anjum James Paul.

Forced conversion of young women belonging to low castes remains a significant concern among human rights groups. According to Sindh Human Rights Council, 47 Hindu girls have been kidnapped in the past four months.

Last year the PMTA protested a Baji Irshad TV comedy about a Christian Punjabi maid.

By Michael Lelyveld

Russia has picked a curious time to restart natural gas imports from Turkmenistan, a year before it plans to open a giant pipeline to China that would compete with Central Asian supplies.

On Oct. 9, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom announced that chairman Alexei Miller had visited Turkmenistan for a meeting with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. Miller was part of a delegation led by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Konstantin Chuichenko, who formerly headed Gazprom’s legal department, Interfax said.

The purpose was to negotiate a resumption of gas imports from Turkmenistan starting on Jan. 1 following a Russian cutoff that has lasted several years, the news service reported.

“It was mentioned that at present, substantive talks on this issue are being held between Gazprom and its Turkmen partners, and specific agreements will be reached in the very near future,” Turkmenistan’s official TDH news agency said.

In an interview with Turkmen TV channel Vatan, Miller said the two sides had also discussed cooperation in the processing and gas chemical sectors, although the near-immediate restart of imports was the main goal.

“But right now, the priority issues that we need to resolve literally in the coming months are issues concerning purchases of Turkmen gas starting Jan. 1, 2019,” Miller said.

Details of planned volumes and prices were not disclosed.

The urgency was unusual on several counts.

Most notably, the two sides have not resolved their long-running dispute over Russian demands for a retroactive revision of Turkmen gas prices dating back to 2010.

In 2015, Gazprom brought suit against state-owned Turkmengaz in a Stockholm arbitration court for 4 billion euros (U.S. $4.6 billion) after Ashgabat complained that Russia was making only partial payments for supplies.

Gazprom cut its annual imports from Turkmenistan sharply in 2015 to as little as 2.8 billion cubic meters (99 billion cubic feet) from 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) the year before. Russia then stopped purchases altogether in 2016.

Dependent on exports to China

It is unclear whether a deal to resume Turkmen supplies will depend on a settlement or whether the lawsuit and new deliveries can take place side by side.

In February, Russia showed no interest in resuming imports or negotiations, but Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky said that contacts might be possible toward the end of the year, according to an earlier Interfax report.

The timing suggests that Gazprom has its eye on the importance of Turkmen gas sales to China and its own interests as a supplier when its giant Power of Siberia pipeline opens for deliveries to the Chinese market starting in December 2019.

Since the Russian cutoff and a similar suspension of exports to Iran in January 2017, Turkmenistan has been wholly dependent on its exports to China.

The gas-rich but isolated Central Asian nation has become China’s leading supplier since a 2,000-kilometer (1,242-mile) pipeline through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan opened in late 2009.

Last year, Turkmenistan exported about 33 bcm to China, Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency reported. The volume represented nearly 35 percent of China’s total gas imports and about 14 percent of consumption in 2017, despite a series of equipment breakdowns that reduced deliveries last winter, aggravating China’s gas shortages.

Turkmenistan is scheduled to supply China with 38.7 bcm this year.

That volume would compete with the 38 bcm that Russia plans to pump through its 4,000-kilometer Power of Siberia line, with initial deliveries of 5 bcm per year in 2020 rising to full capacity perhaps in 2025.

Edward Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that Russia’s renewal of imports from Turkmenistan could give it competitive influence over supplies and prices for China.

Another explanation for Russia’s sudden interest is that it could be linked to improved prospects for a Trans-Caspian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan following the recent settlement of some maritime legal issues among the Caspian Sea’s five shoreline states.

Russian demands on supplies could be intended “either to block Turkmen gas flows west or to be in control of them if it ever were to happen,” Chow said.

Raising suspicions

Gazprom’s intentions have raised suspicions because it appears to have no need for Turkmen gas.

In a speech at the St. Petersburg International Gas Forum earlier this month, Miller boasted about Gazprom’s unrivaled ability to meet the demands of both its western and eastern markets with its 35 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas reserves.

“We can meet any demand, be it in the domestic market here in Russia or in the markets of Europe or Asia,” he said, noting that Gazprom’s exports to Europe were already running at record levels this year.

Miller also took a swipe at China’s troubles with getting sufficient supplies from Turkmenistan last winter, suggesting that it would have no such problems with Russian gas.

“We should understand that, unfortunately, the current suppliers of pipeline gas to China cannot ensure flexibility amid seasonal fluctuations,” he said.

“Let me emphasize that … ramping up supplies in excess of the contractual amounts via Power of Siberia is the quickest way of resolving the issue. This option is currently under discussion,” Miller said.

Additional supplies from the Power of Siberia line could reach 5-10 bcm per year over the 38-bcm contracted amount, Miller told reporters. Miller said that Gazprom “would cover any extra demand using its own resources,” according to Reuters.

Miller has yet to discuss Gazprom’s reasons for wanting to resume imports of Turkmen gas after a three-year lapse, but exports to Russia are unlikely to improve Turkmenistan’s ability to supply China at the same time.

Twists and turns

The record of Russia’s dealings with Turkmenistan in the post-Soviet period are full of twists and turns with starts and stops for imports of Turkmen gas.

In the 1990s, Russia effectively controlled Turkmen exports through the Soviet-era network of the Central Asia-Center (CAC) pipeline system, often steering deliveries toward late-paying markets like Georgia and Ukraine.

Despite demands from western nations for access to Turkmen resources, Russia remained the main obstacle to building a Trans-Caspian pipeline for over two decades.

In response to competitive threats and Russian shortfalls, Gazprom struck a blockbuster 25-year deal with Turkmenistan in 2003, calling for imports to reach as high as 80 bcm annually starting in 2009.

But those volumes never materialized as international prices slumped and Russia sought to renegotiate terms. A “Precaspian” pipeline, which Russia promised to carry more Turkmen gas along Kazakhstan’s coast, was never built.

In 2006, the roadblocks led to a breakthrough agreement by Turkmenistan’s late President Saparmurat Niyazov for exports to China, sealing a 30-year deal to supply 30 bcm annually, also starting in 2009.

China quickly followed with huge investments in Turkmen gas fields and agreements to build its Central Asian pipeline system through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Ashgabat’s relations with Moscow soured further in 2009, when a CAC pipeline explosion on Turkmen territory halted exports altogether after Gazprom abruptly reduced import volumes with little or no notice.

Gazprom declared another “pause” in its contract with Turkmenistan in 2016, citing “the changed situation on the international market,” accepting no imports for the past three years.

It is unclear now whether the condition of the underused CAC pipeline network will allow a restart of exports by January, even if the two sides agree.

But Gazprom’s maneuvers are unlikely to be lost on China as it negotiates with Russia for a second gas route from Western Siberia and additional volumes from the Russian Far East.

China is sure to have more leverage than Turkmenistan in dealing with Gazprom, but Russia’s strategies in advancing its interests and its record of disputes could also give Beijing reason for “pause” in negotiating for additional supplies.

Expectations of a renewed nuclear arms race if the US abandons the INF Treaty are misplaced. The new arms race is already under way.

By Rajesh Basrur*

President Trump’s assertion that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia has set off a flurry of speculation about the potential consequences. Most commentators agree that this will likely set off another round of arms racing reminiscent of the Cold War. But this is superfluous reasoning. A fast-paced arms race is already under way with all the nuclear players involved in varying degrees.

Amidst the euphoria of the Cold War’s end, it seemed universal nuclear disarmament was a reachable target in the long term. President Barrack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons”. But optimism soon faded. The Nobel Committee had hoped the prize would strengthen his hands, but as its Secretary, Geir Lundestad, admitted later, “the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for”. Indeed, current American nuclear modernisation plans were initiated by the Obama administration and are expected to cost some US$1.3 trillion over the next three decades.

Slowdown, For A While

To be sure, there was reason for hope: the end of the Cold War saw global warhead numbers (mostly US and Russian) reduced sharply from a peak of 64,449 in 1986 to 11,635 in 2009. But the decline slowed down thereafter. Formal stockpile numbers, moreover, did not include warheads in storage, which can be quickly dusted off for deployment.

The reductions achieved by the big two retained their multiple overkill capacity. Today, US and Russian warheads (including stored bombs) number 13,400. Meanwhile, nuclear ‘modernisation’ is gathering pace. The more advanced powers are developing high-tech weapons systems that threaten notions of deterrence stability drawn from the Cold War era.

The INF Treaty banned land-based intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres that were considered destabilising because they were fast and accurate. West Germany-based American Pershing-IIs could hit Moscow in six minutes, leaving little reaction time in the event of false alarms, which occurred frequently. The same problem applied to Soviet SS-20s.

INF Treaty Obsolete?

Today’s unregulated hypersonic vehicles can reach similar or higher speeds – current tests are reported at around Mach 5 and over (as compared to the Pershing II’s Mach 8), but NASA has already gone well beyond to 9.6 Mach with its X-43A hypersonic vehicle. The US, Russia, Japan and China are feverishly developing hypersonic weapons. India already possesses the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which is capable of reaching Mach 3, and has test facilities for hypersonic vehicles that could attain much higher speeds.

In short, the INF Treaty is already becoming obsolete and the risk of accidental war is rising even as tensions between the US and Russia and between the US and China are growing, while India-China and India-Pakistan frictions along disputed borders have been even more troubling.

In tandem with hypersonic vehicles, other developments are generating similar tensions. The US has on the anvil new weapons systems such as the strategic long-range cannon (with a range of over 1,600 km), the B-21 long-range strategic bomber, a new generation of ground-based ballistic missiles, and the Long-Range Standoff Cruise Missile (LRSO).

Russia is developing its own range of nuclear or dual-capable weapons: the ‘Satan-6’ autonomous underwater vehicle, the upgraded Tupolev Tu-22M3M supersonic intermediate-range bomber, and the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). China, similarly, is accelerating nuclear weapons development with the DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missile, the long-range DF-41 ICBM, the ‘Type-096’ nuclear submarine, and the Hong-20 long-range strategic bomber.

Arms Racing: Cascading Phenomenon

To complicate matters further, arms racing is a cascading phenomenon. When China competes with the US, it arouses insecurity and a competitive drive in India, which in turn does the same in Pakistan. Thus, to make up for the apparent imbalance in their forces, Beijing has responded to the US force ‘advantage’ by deploying multiple-warhead (MIRVed) missiles. India has reacted by doing the same; and Pakistan has in turn responded likewise.

The irony beneath these developments is that, notwithstanding this high-tech racing, the actual dynamics of nuclear confrontation are elementary: regardless of the nuclear “balance” at any given time, no one wants to fire the first shot because even a small possibility of a single nuclear bomb dropped on one’s own territory or forces is unacceptable and, moreover, could set in motion an unpredictable chain of events with unimaginable consequences.

That is why the US did not try to preempt China’s fledgling capabilities in the early 1960s; why the Soviet Union refrained from using nuclear weapons during months of border fighting with China in 1969; and why Kim Jong Un’s North Korea remains unscathed by US military power today.

So What’s The Point Of The Nuclear Race?

What then is the real function of nuclear arms racing if it does not generate true balancing? First, a ‘robust’ response creates a primarily symbolic feel-good self-image among political and military leaderships that have inherited millennia of balancing proclivities. Some of it appears to border on the absurd: my weapons are bigger and better than yours (recall President Trump’s tweet vis-à-vis North Korea to this effect last January). But it goes deeper.

To borrow a term from the scholar Benjamin Miller, a balancing response among nuclear competitors stems from a ‘thought style’ that is deeply embedded in the psyche of strategic elites, a way of thinking honed by a long history of pre-nuclear warfare. Second, political leaders who engage in nuclear competition are invariably addressing domestic audiences to ensure their continuing political support.

They want to show resolve by not backing down, by demonstrating their readiness to respond proactively to threats. Not unexpectedly, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, responded to Trump’s assertion that ‘you can’t play that game with me’ by asserting that Russia would act ‘to restore balance in this sphere,’ a typical rhetorical exchange representing the symbolic game that nuclear powers play.

The future is predictable. Fuelled by strategic tensions, the new arms race will continue unabated; somewhere down the road, a crisis will occur; negotiations will commence; and competing powers will try and attain a stable equilibrium.

*Rajesh Basrur is Professor of International Relations at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

By Lina Sonne*

In India, it is estimated that higher female labour participation can potentially add 60 percent to the national GDP.[1] Diverse leadership teams are linked to higher profits;[2] women make teams smarter,[3] and more women in the job market increases and diversifies the talent pool[4] which spurs new ideas. More women in the workforce also enables innovation and creativity. However, in India women remain far and few between in many places of work, and, worryingly, the overall labour force participation of women is declining.[5]

Getting women into work and retaining and promoting them is not only a workplace equality challenge but also a societal challenge. This article considers reasons for the low rate of participation of women in the workforce of India, and outlines some steps that could be taken to make the future of work gender equal.

Women’s workforce participation in India

Currently, only 27 percent of women in India work in paid employment.[6] This is a very low rate compared to other emerging economies. China, for example, has a female labour participation rate of 63 percent, while in the neighbourhood, 33 percent of women work in Bangladesh and 35 percent in Sri Lanka.[7]

The percentage of working women varies across geographies, sectors and job roles. The participation rate is higher in rural areas than in urban. In Delhi, for example, the labour force participation of women was even lower – just 11 percent during the 2011-12 census, a similar number to that reported on census data from 2016.[8]

The rate of female employment varies significantly by sector, with 56 percent of employed women in India working in agriculture.[9] Furthermore, out of total employees, 38 percent are female in the BPO and IT outsourcing sector, while nine percent are female in manufacturing; the corresponding number is 14 percent in engineering an automotive.[10]

Additionally, there is a gender wage gap for similar levels of jobs,[11] as well as a split in the kind of roles women have within companies, with women concentrated in lower-paying jobs, and female participation declining at senior and leadership levels in companies.[12]

Why do so few women work?

There are a number of reasons why there are so few women actively participating in work.

1.Workplaces are not women-friendly. Studies show that women systematically move out of undesirable, hard and menial jobs as the income of the family increases[13] suggesting that women at the lower end of the skills and income spectrum stop working when there is no necessity to do so.

At the higher end of skills and income spectrum, 50 percent of women in corporate employment leave their positions between junior and mid-level roles, considerably higher than the average for Asia which is 29 percent.[14] Furthermore, only 20 percent of India’s senior leadership (CXO) are women,[15] suggesting a lack of opportunities to be promoted to the top level as well as a lack of role models for women. Matters that make India’s workplaces female-unfriendly include unfair and biased treatment at work, limited opportunities for promotion compared to male colleagues, the expectation of long work days (rather than focussing on output), and sexism and harassment.[16]

Responsibility for household work is a considerable burden. Women face a significant burden in additional unpaid work in the home, as primary care givers and as responsible for household work. Women spend on average 5h and 52 minutes a day in unpaid work (household work and care giving) while the equivalent figure for men is 52 minutes a day.[17]

There is significant social stigma attached to women working outside of the home.[18] For example, in a 2016 survey on attitudes to women and work across urban and rural India by men and women, about 50 percent of respondents believed women should not work outside the home if the husband is able to provide for the family.[19]

Lastly, it should be noted that there is a great deal of variation and access to opportunity to work for women, based not only on education and urban vs. rural scenarios, but also with respect to class, caste, community, and regional location.

The Challenge: Getting Women into Work (and Staying)

A gender-equal future of work needs to ensure that women have access to jobs, and are recruited, retained and promoted as well as offered equal pay for equal work. What can be done to ensure that more women work?

To employ and retain women, companies need to be more open to creating an enabling environment for women so that they can manage work and home obligations. This, for example, means not only flexible working hours and work from home arrangements, but also a need to move the value system from one that emphasises ‘time spent in office’ to actual output and deliverables. Technology and processes that reduces bias should be explored – whether in hiring and selection, or in appraisals and promotion.

Women need role models higher up the ladder to look up to, but also women to mentor and to sponsor – ensuring that more junior women are heard and seen. There needs to be better leadership training for women and ways to ensure women take an equal part of work, and are not left handling more inferior tasks.

Recognise that there are significant social and cultural barriers to women working that goes beyond companies providing a good work-place or inviting families to visit. Umbrella organisations and associations as well as governments need to consider how to tackle the larger issue of social respectability and cultural stigma of working women, and for men to share the housework.

Likewise there is a need for better facilities for working mothers and care givers. Today, care-giving is primarily the responsibility of women. Therefore, to ease the burden on women working, there needs to be better systems for alternative care during work hours. Likewise, there need to be entry points for women who have taken time away from work for care-giving, to return to work.

Training programmes – whether covering basic skilling or leadership and management, need to be gender sensitised. It should be considered whether specific women-centric leadership or management courses would be useful. Likewise, there need to be courses that upgrade skills of women who have been out of work but look to return.[20]

[1]McKinsey Global Institute, “The Power of Parity: Advancing Women’s Equality in India”, 2015.

[2] Herring, C.. “Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity.” American Sociological Review, 2009, 74 (2): 208–24.

[3] https://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women

[4] World Bank, Gender at Work Companion to World Development Review, 2013.

[5] http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/comment-analysis/WCMS_204762/lang–en/index.htm

[6] Andres et al., 2017, quoting ILO data from 2015.

[7] World Bank Data for 2017: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sl.tlf.cact.fe.zs

[8] Government of NCR, “Report on Unincorporated Non-Agricultural Enterprises in Delhi”, 2017.

[9] World Bank, Database drawing on ILO Data, 2017.

[10] Wheebox, “India Skills Report 2018: Future Skills Future Jobs”, 2018.

[11] Varkkey , B. Korde, R. and Parik, D. “Indian Labour Market and Position of Women: Gender Pay Gap in the Indian Formal Sector,” 2017, Conference Paper for 5th Conference of the Regulating for Decent Work Network.

[12] Catalyst, Leadership Gender Gap in India Inc, 2010.

[13] Klasen, S., “Low, Stagnating Female Labourforce Participation in India”, Ideas for India, 2017.

[14] Wheebox, “India Skills Report 2018: Future Skills Future Jobs”, 2018.

[15] Grant Thornton, “Women in Business: Beyond Policy to Progress”, 2018.

[16] Jain, A. “Own It: Leadership Lessons from Women Who Do,” 2016.; IndiaSpend, “Despite Law, 70% Working Women Do Not Report Workplace Sexual Harassment; Employers Show Poor Compliance”, 2017.

[17] OECD Stats, “Time Spent in Paid and Unpaid Work by Sex”, Accessed 2018.

[18] Klasen, S., “Low, Stagnating Female Labourforce Participation in India”, Ideas for India, 2017.

[19] Coffey, D., Hathi P., Khurana, N., Thorat, A., “Explicit Prejudice: Evidence from a New Survey,” EPW, 2018, Vol LIII, No. 01

[20] OECD (2017), Skills Outlook 2017: Skills and the Global Value Chain

By Malik Ibrahim

Even as the firestorm surrounding Jamal Khashoggi’s murder monopolizes media attention across the Arab world, an event at Chatham House in London this week took a step back to focus on the foreign policy of Qatar – a country quite familiar with Mohammad bin Salman’s aggressive refusal to brook dissent. Of course, while referring to “foreign” policy, the Chatham House event was really interested in defining Qatar’s place in the post-2011 Arab World.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Lowlah al-Khater and Omani academic Abdullah Baabood kicked off the discussion by reminding the audience of a problem often forgotten in the tumult of the region’s wars and crises: the failure of most Arab governments to address root causes of the Arab Spring uprisings. As al-Khatar, pointed out: “denying the problems and the accumulative issues we’ve been having in our region, such as failure in development, poverty, the basic human right to dignity for the Arab peoples… denying that is not going to help us in any way.” Baabood echoed that point, pointing out that “if we continue the way that we are, and we keep failing in socioeconomic development and political participation… those earthquakes are going to come back to haunt us.”

Qatar’s role

It should come as no surprise to longtime Qatar watchers that a discussion of the country’s foreign policy would be seen in the context of the governance failures of its neighbors in the region. For decades, Qatar’s al-Jazeera media network – by far the country’s most recognizable export – has provided 25 million viewers in countries like Egypt, Bahrain, and Iraq a lifeline to critical journalism and alternative viewpoints.

Unfortunately for the Qataris, those efforts to break through the barriers of state censorship and propaganda of regional powers haven’t produced progress in representative government and the rule of law in the region. Instead, Qatar’s neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) decided to blockade the messenger and strangle the peninsula into quiet submission. When the Qataris showed they would instead resist, the Saudis decided they would literally cut Qatar off from the mainland and dump nuclear waste on the border.

Tellingly, one of Saudi Arabia’s key demands in negotiations to lift the blockade was for Qatar to disband al-Jazeera, sending a clear message that Riyadh and its allies still perceive the outlet’s critical voice and pressure for accountability as an existential threat. Other blockading countries, and especially Egypt, share this antipathy to the Qatari news network, which they accuse of being a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood. As part of his wider crackdown, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi has jailed al-Jazeera journalists and shut down its operations in Egypt.

Riyadh’s response

With Qatar successively maneuvering around the blockade with assistance from Turkey, Iran, and its Asian partners, the diplomatic conflict in the GCC has come to a standstill. While the Saudis have not managed to bring Doha to heel, they still consider their overall response to the Arab Spring – one that took the warnings voiced by the Chatham House panelists and used them as a blueprint – a success. Long before the autocratic Mohammad bin Salman came to power in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh wound up leading the “counterrevolution” that ensured Arab popular demands would be crushed instead of translating into long-overdue political development.

To that end, Saudi oil dollars were mobilized to pay for the brutal retrenchment of authoritarian governance. In Egypt, al-Sissi’s regime has received an estimated $25 billion in “grants, loans, and investments” from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since overthrowing President Mohamed Morsi in a 2013 coup. When Saudi money wasn’t enough to preserve the status quo in Bahrain, Riyadh sent in tanks.

At home, the Saudi regime took to the offensive by repressing dissenters instead of addressing political and socioeconomic issues. This aggressive approach was paired with a raft of new state largesse to calm the mood at home. If al-Jazeera sought to cover the upheaval, Saudi Arabia’s was to extinguish it before the Arab Spring began a new chapter in Riyadh.

Empty reforms

This is not to say the Saudis and their allies are ignorant of the deeper issues al-Khater and Baabood pointed to. Ironically enough, Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman designed his program of ostensible “reforms” to respond to the economic grievances that drove revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere – unemployment, a lack of opportunity, and socioeconomic inequality. Bin Salman’s bet was that he could pursue economic reforms without budging on the political question. His brief tenure at the top echelon of the Saudi power structure, in fact, had already been marked by draconian measures even before the assassination of Khashoggi.

In 2017, several hundred of the richest people in the country were arrested on his orders in what was known as the Ritz-Carlton purge, supposedly in an attempt to combat corruption at the top – while netting the government $100 billion in anti-corruption settlements. More recently, his security services also arrested the very women activists who spent decades risking their freedom to fight the driving ban he wanted credit for lifting.

No alternative

His failure, and the global backlash against his excesses, seems to prove this “alternative model’ will not work. By continuing to stifle liberties and violate human rights – often with the silent complicity of their Western allies – leaders such as bin Salman and al-Sissi are creating the exact kind of political climate in which dissent flourishes.

The generational and economic catalysts that sparked the 2011 uprisings have hardly gone away. As the Chatham House speakers made clear, the region is still facing the same challenges nearly eight years on from Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid. The experiences of Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Egypt may have put many Arabs citizens off their desire for radical change for now, but unless this most recent crop of autocrats give way to real reformers, the next round of uprisings will always be inevitable.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect the official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com or any other institution.

By Giancarlo Elia Valori

On October 20 last the US President, Donald J. Trump, stated that North America would withdraw from the INF Treaty on nuclear missile weapons, which means that Europe will be again the main base for the new intermediate and long-range weapon systems.

Obviously the European ruling class, both at national and EU levels, has not yet said a single word about this new configuration of the threats and defences on our territory.

President Trump referred specifically to the 1987 INF Treaty or, more precisely, to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 – a treaty that, in particular, banned the ground-launched nuclear missiles having a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.

The INF Treaty led to the complete elimination of almost 2,700 medium and short-range missiles, including 850 US ones and over 1,800 Soviet ones. As many may recall, it put an end to the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union just at the time when the latter deployed the new SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe and, as a response, the former deployed its Cruise and Pershing missiles in the European NATO, in a phase characterized by a whirlwind of “pacifist” demonstrations.

The “Euromissile battle”, as it was defined in the extraordinary book La Bataille des Euromissiles by Michel Tatu, was the real beginning of the end of Cold War.

Nevertheless, it was a leader of the Milanese Communist Party, who was like one of the family in the Soviet Union, who personally informed the German Social Democrat Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, that the Soviet SS-20 missiles had an eminently offensive function.

If there had been only the Soviet SS-20 missiles aimed at European targets, not necessarily only military ones, the remote conditioning of our defence and economic policy would have been almost complete.

Hence the “Euromissile battle” was the real and last battle for the freedom of Europe which, before the Soviet missiles, had undergone almost twenty years of ideological conditioning, which had begun in 1968 and had been turned into a real low-intensity civil war, in Italy in particular.

In that case the pro-Soviet propaganda or, in principle, the “pacifist” propaganda had the last glimpse of life and, above all, huge support by Soviet Union and its various parallel propaganda organizations.

Those were the last days in which the old techniques of political propaganda still operated – between “the partisans of peace” and the Catholics of “dissent” – invented by the German Communist, Willi Muenzenberg, the “Stalin’s propaganda agent” and the organizer of many Communist communication battles.

However, let us revert to President Trump and the INF Treaty.

In fact, the US President states that Russia has actually infringed the INF Treaty rules, as it has developed a new type of medium-range missile.

However, as we will see at a later stage, faults are equally divided between the two contenders.

He refers to the 9M729 missile, in particular, also known asSSC-X-8.

It is a missile having a medium-long range – 3,000 nautical miles – which is supposed to be the land version of the SS-N-30 missile.

The missile is equipped with a starting solid propellant, which fires after the launch. The control system and guidance of the cruise missile is inertial control system (autopilot) with Doppler sensors drift angle correction according to the Russian GLONASS and Western GPS satellite navigation systems.

If launched from the Siberian coast, this Russian missile could easily reach the Californian coast up to Los Angeles.

If launched from Moscow, however, it could cover the whole Western European area.

It is likely, however, that in a new treaty Russia wants to negotiate the elimination of the NATO ground-launched missiles in exchange for the abolition of its ones, thus excluding – from the negotiations for the reduction of strategic weapons – the newly developed long-range missiles and the hypersonic ones, of which we will speak later on.

The next race for new weapons will be focused there.

Over the last few days, however, both Trump and Putin have declared to be ready for dialogue, also with a future informal meeting in Paris, as had been recently decided during the visit paid by President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, to Moscow where he met President Putin.

On March 1, 2018, however, President Putin had stated Russia had already developed and making operational a new complete line of medium-long range strategic missiles, capable – above all – of quickly getting the North American and NATO missile defences out of play.

Putin mainly made reference to missiles, but also to underwater drones and other types of advanced weapons, all arms systems that the Russian Federation has developed since the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM)) signed with the USSR in 1972.

The American withdrawal, however, dates back to December 2001.

In his demonstration, Vladimir Putin showed two new weapon systems, the RS-28 Sarmat (NATO reporting code: SS-X-30 Satan 2), which has an average range of 11,000 kilometres, and another innovative missile about which we will talk later on.

It should be recalled that the Satan 2 missile was designed in response to the deployment of the US GMD anti-ballistic missile systems and the subsequent launch of the US Defence program called Prompt Global Strike in 2009.

At least for the time being, the GMD is deployed in military bases in the States of Alaska and California and comprises 44 kinetic interceptors(40 in Alaska and 4 on the Western coast in the Los Angeles area) for intercepting incoming warheads in space, during the midcourse phase of ballistic trajectory flight. It spans 15 time zones with sensors on land, at sea and in orbit.

The GMD positions are supposed to reach 100 by the end of 2020.

The concept of US missile defence, however, is based on the maximum possible redundancy of signals and counteractions, at different altitudes, so as to permit a significant response, even after a severe nuclear missile attack.

The second strike is the basic concept of every ABM defence, both in the USA and in the rest of the world.

The radars for the interceptor networks are mainly located in Pearl Harbor, in relation to the inevitable routes of the Chinese ICBMs, but with the radars for early signaling also deployed in Alaska, Great Britain, Greenland, Qatar, Japan and Taiwan – while the data collected by both fixed networks and aircraft is processed in the Schriever airbase located in El Paso County, Colorado.

It should be noted that the current US system is mainly designed to counter missile attacks by States such as North Korea and Iran, while it is not specifically calibrated to respond to “well-established” strategic forces, such as Russia or China.

In fact, there is no missile shield capable of successfully countering a stratified threat that is put in place by a real nuclear State.

Incidentally, the yearly cost of the Missile Defense Agency for 2018 amounts to 7.9 billion dollars.

Conversely the Prompt Global Strike program is a system that can deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike anywhere in the world within one hour since the President’s order or since the detection of the threat. It is expected to become operational this year.

It has been calculated that this project can make the United States spare at least 30% of its nuclear weapons.

An additional implementation of the strategic redundancy criterion.

Russia, however, responded to this US project with one of the missiles mentioned by Vladimir Putin together with the Satan-2 missile, namely the S-500 Prometey, also known as the 55R6M Triumfator M.

The S-500 is designed to destroy both new generation long-range missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles and has a minimum range of 600 kilometres up to 3,500.

Hence it falls within the scope of the old INF Treaty.

It has a speed of 5 kilometres per second and it is supposed to be operational by the end of 2020.

It is by no mere coincidence that Putin delivered his speech shortly after the release of the Pentagon’s New Missile Doctrine, namely the Nuclear Posture Review, in which an attempt is made to make the new generation anti-missile defence policy line more comprehensive and up-to-date vis-à-vis Russia, China and, as usual, North Korea and Iran.

The logic underlying this Pentagon’s official document is simple: if the USA increases its nuclear war potential, the Russian Federation will automatically be deterred from planning a missile attack against the US territory.

Moreover, Putin also stated that new laser weapons are under construction and that a new hypersonic missile is also ready, namely the Kh-47M2 Khinzal (“Dagger”), an air-launched ballistic missile specific for the MiG31BM interceptors.

Russia has also the brand new RS-26 Avangard, a hypersonic missile equipped with Multiple Independent Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs).

In short, the two countries that signed the IFN Treaty have resumed the nuclear and ABM arms race.

It was a bad surprise for the United States to discover a technologically advanced and a doctrinally evolved Russia both in the Crimea operation and, particularly, in the actions to support Bashar al-Assad’ Syrian Arab Army.

Hence the periphery is hit with remote control weapons to signal to the centre – be it Russia or the USA – the need to quickly give up that area, that technology, that specific economic, energy and technological presence.

This is the deep logic underlying conventional or nuclear missile systems.

Obviously this applies to both Russia and North America.

Furthermore, considering the Russian technological evolution, the USA plans to resume the arms race not only to weaken the growing Russian economy, but also to combine China’s and Russia’s ICBM threat with the other asymmetric and unpredictable missile threats of Iran and North Korea.

This means that the United States still wants the complete regionalization of the Russian Federation and its encirclement between the NATO-led Eastern Europe and the US-led Central Asia, to control both China’s and Russia’s borders.

The fewer conventional forces are, the greater the remote threats of advanced weapon systems must be – and this is also a common logic for both major players.

Sealing China into its own borders, which have always been insecure, means permanently stopping the Belt and Road Initiative and halting its economic, technological and financial development.

Hence nuclear missiles are the ideal power multiplier for a global attack and defence strategy.

What about China? What policy line does it have for its nuclear ABMs? Meanwhile, China always publicly reaffirms its three classic principles: no first use of the nuclear weapon; no use of the nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear country; maintenance of an arsenal only capable of minimum deterrence, just to ensure the possibility of a second effective nuclear response to an attack.

At statistical level, China is currently supposed to have approximately 280 nuclear warheads, to be used on 120-130 ground-launched ballistic missiles – 48 to be used on ships or submarines and the rest with air carriers.

Nevertheless, once again in response to the ABM and nuclear missile evolution of the United States in recent years, China has added many multiple warheads to its intercontinental ballistic missiles, especially the ground-based ones.

In this case, the “MIRVization” – i.e. the allocation of multiple weapons for each carrier – would also imply a new ability to penetrate the US missile lines, not only for defence purposes.

However, to what extent are missile defences really effective and to what extent is a conventional or nuclear ballistic attack system precise?

With specific reference to the United States, about half of the 18 tests carried out so far for intercepting an enemy missile have failed.

On the best possible assumption, the operational interception made by the ABM systems works only in 50% of cases.

The aforementioned GMD, which already costs 40 billion US dollars, has not yet been tested in sufficiently realistic conditions.

For example, if we consider an attack with five missiles and four interceptors for each target, considering that each interceptor works exactly in 50% of cases, the probability that a missile penetrates the defence network is 28%. Too much.

Every nuclear or conventional attack is such as to make the attacker win.

However, what would happen if there were – as it might be very likely – a concerted attack by various different missile systems, each with a different system of targets and defensive covers?

Hence the danger of a saturation of the US defence systems is extremely high.

They would be grappling with different types of attack, different technologies and different logics for selecting targets.

Every enemy’s successful nuclear attack can be the one determining the final victory. With this particular strategy, the attacker has almost always the victory in his bag.

However, reverting to the end of the INF Treaty, now decided by the United States, it should be noted that, according to the US State Department, as early as 2014 Russia has repeatedly infringed the Treaty.

In December 2017, the US intelligence services identified the Russian short-range 9M729 missile which, however, precisely follows the INF rules.

Nevertheless, the Unites States maintains it violates the Treaty anyway.

It is the United States, however, that has clearly infringed the INF Treaty with its Mark 41 Vertical Launch System and with the manufacturing of drones which are, in effect, cruise missiles in disguise.

Moreover, in recent years China, in particular, has developed many new-design missiles that operate precisely within the range explicitly prohibited by the INF Treaty, namely between 500 and 5,000 kilometres.

It should be recalled that China has never signed the INF Treaty.

Although being often urged to join the INF Treaty, China has always refused to sign it.

Hence, while Russia is modernizing its conventional and nuclear missiles, this implies a clear doctrinal, strategic and technological cooperation with China.

However, if there were a simultaneous attack from China and the Russian Federation, it would be unlikely that the North American ABM networks could protect the whole US territory.

Not to mention Europe, which currently deals only with currencies, without having clear in mind – even in this case -what the real issue at stake is.

About the author:
Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy
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Sri Lankas President Maithripala Sirisena became part of yet another political coup within five years. In the first coup, he parted ways with the Mahinda Rajapaksa government to become the common candidate of the opposition parties headed by the United National Party (UNP) in 2014. His shift, then, was considered as “traitorous” by Rajapaksa and his loyalists.

The present one unfolded when he appointed former president Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new prime minister on October 26, 2018. This move surprised almost everyone I know in Sri Lanka.

Maithripala Sirisena was elected president in January 2018 with the UNP, and minority votes as United People’s Freedom Party (UPFA) votes went to Mahinda Rajapaksa. Therefore, especially members and supporters of the UNP have reasons to believe that Sirisena betrayed them.

The move ignited a political crisis in Sri Lanka as there are two prime ministers, currently. Ranil Wickremesinghe maintains that he is the legitimate prime minister because he commands the confidence of parliament. In other words, Wickremesinghe argues that he has the support of at least 113 members in parliament. This issue has the potential to prolong the crisis and instability, something the country does not need at this point in time.

The Reason?

Explaining the reason for sacking Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointing Rajapaksa as prime minister, President Sirisena accused the UNP of corruption and for promoting anti-national agenda. He tried to drive a wedge between the UNP as a political party and its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. This aspect of his address seemed like a well-thought-out strategy to split the UNP. A split within the UNP would be extremely helpful to prove Rajapaksa’s majority in the national legislature. Nevertheless, his point was that he, as the president, could not work with Wickremesinghe. Hence, he needed to be fired.

Predictably, he did not go into the question of why Rajapaksa was appointed the new head of the cabinet. That would have been an awkward episode because Sirisena could not state with a straight face that Rajapaksa is a clean alternative and he can work with him easily. Sirisena contested the 2015 presidential election accusing Rajapaksa of authoritarianism, corruption, and nepotism.

For his part, Rajapaksa claimed that he was convinced to take over the administration, yet again, to save the country from decay. He cited the increasing cost of living, the collapsing economy and the rapidly depreciating rupee as the reasons for the removal of Wickremesinghe and dismissal of his government. Now we will save the country from this horrible situation was Rajapaksa’s message. Therefore, according to the President and the newly appointed prime minister, the coup or what some of the Sirisena-Rajapaksa axis backers call “revolution” was undertaken to save the country from Ranil Wickremesinghe’s bad government.

However, the question is what is in it for President Sirisena? Sirisena is no Sri Lankan Mandela. He is an ordinary politician trying to survive in a challenging and profoundly problematic polity. The reality is that with his battle with the UNP and Wickremesinghe, he lost the possibility of getting elected for the second time in 2020. It was clear that the UNP will not support him for president in the next election and he has no chance of securing the UPFA votes. The UPFA voters are still loyal to Mahinda Rajapaksa. In the recently concluded local government election, the Sirisena headed faction secured only the third place in terms of national votes.

Hence, it is pretty clear to me that the current move involves Sirisena’s calculations for the 2020 presidential election and beyond. The current Sirisena-Rajapaksa alliance could not have evolved without a givisuma (pact). Did Mahinda Rajapaksa promise something in return for his current appointment as prime minister? Would the Rajapaksa group support Sirisena for president in the next election? Alternatively, do they have other plan for Sirisena after 2020? Details of the possible agreement between Rajapaksa and Sirisena remain highly confidential. It is also imperative to note that Rajapaksa, the shrewd politician, knows that there is no guarantee that Sirisena will not come up with another coup if need be. Hence, the interaction or the nature of relations between Sirisena and Rajapaksa is something that needs to be carefully observed as well.

The Number Game

The Rajapaksa government was ousted in 2015 mainly due to its problematic style of governance. However, Rajapaksa played mostly by electoral rules. He conducted too many elections, and when defeated in 2015, he left the office without too much fuss. This history influenced me to be surprised when Rajapaksa readily accepted the prime minister position and is working to form a government, which in the eyes of a substantial segment of the Sri Lankan population seems illegitimate and problematic. This was a coup because he did not become prime minister through a legitimate election. Various tactics are being used for this hostile takeover.

It is suggested that the Rajapaksa administration will present a “vote on account” before presenting a budget. The vote on account is an interim measure aimed at securing funds for the expenditures before a full budget is presented and approved. One can expect too many “handouts” given to voters to alleviate their economic woes. The Rajapaksa group would expect the masses to respond positively to these popular measures. The other state resources could also be handy during the election.

To continue as the new government and to present a vote on account, the Rajapaksa group has to go to Parliament and prove its majority, which seems like a problem at this moment. If the Rajapaksa group has a provable majority in parliament, they would have happily gone to the national legislature and faced a vote. They did not do that because right now the group does not have the support of at least 113 members of parliament. Hence, they are adopting a plan which could be called “consolidate and then prove” strategy. As part of this strategy, parliament was prorogued by the President until November 16. The prorogation, although legal, seems undemocratic.

The time gained by proroguing parliament will be used to (1) consolidate the power and authority of the Rajapaksa group over state machinery, and (2) convince or “buy” opposition MPs. If one goes by the history of the country, the possible involvement of foreign funds to cement the Rajapaksa deal cannot be ruled out. One of the first countries to congratulate Rajapaksa on his new appointment was China. He can count on China for international support as well. The Rajapaksa group will also hope that the appearance that they have established a new government will be helpful to lure UNP members.

The UPFA has 95 MPs, and the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) can supply one vote. Hence, the Rajapaksa group has 96 reliable votes. Therefore, in order to prove his majority in parliament, Rajapaksa has to convince about 17 Members of Parliament from the UNP led coalition. Rajapaksa could target Muslim parties in the government, especially the All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC), which has five seats. If the ACMC could be convinced to cross over, Rajapaksa will need to get the support of about 12 UNP MPs. Given Ranil Wickremesinghe’s grip on the UNP parliamentary group, getting 12 MPs from the UNP will not be an easy target. Hence, Rajapaksa has to work hard to prove his majority if and when parliament is reconvened.

Meanwhile, the UNP has 87 MPs of its own, and if it manages to preserve the support of Muslim parties and the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA), it will still be short of about six seats. In my view, JHU is unlikely to shift loyalty. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has announced that it will remain neutral. It likely will stay neutral.

The only way the UNP could produce signatures of at least 113 members is to get the support of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Given the internal troubles within the TNA and general Tamil sentiments, the TNA will find it difficult to endorse the UNP openly. Voting in favor of the UNP in parliament is different, which the TNA has been doing despite officially occupying the office of the main opposition party. Hence, it will be easy for the UNP to prove its majority in parliament than producing 113 signatures. This should explain the UNP’s demand to reconvene parliament immediately.