By Erik Khzmalyan

In academic and professional settings, India’s foreign policy has long been synonymous with the concept of “nonalignment” which has aspired to prevent India from joining any major power bloc or engaging in global geopolitical competition. Jawaharlal Nehru—the first prime minister of India and the ardent champion of nonalignment—set the foundations of India’s foreign policy based on country’s colonial past and his fear of an arms race that would empty New Delhi’s treasury. Additionally, his sympathy toward the Third World and hopes for a more multilateral international environment further contributed to the institutionalizing of the policy of nonalignment. But like most leaders before and after him, Nehru soon faced the cold-blooded realities of geopolitics, which exposed the inherent naivete of all the attempts to eliminate power politics from global affairs. The humiliating defeat in the hands of the Chinese in 1962 questioned Nehru’s idealist principles to the core. India lost the war, and then, to add insult to injury, the majority of nonaligned countries did not bother to condemn China.

Although Nehru’s conduct of foreign policy was passed to his successors, the nonalignment policy has since exhausted itself. After all, India developed nuclear weapons to counterbalance China, later placed itself under Moscow’s security umbrella during the premiership of Indira Gandhi, and then found itself tackling the dilemma of America’s engagement in the region after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The dissolution of the Communist Empire further propelled New Delhi to adopt a more realist foreign policy. For the first time—despite the risks of upsetting its Muslim population—it established relations with Israel to get America’s attention. New Delhi also toned down its Arab solidarity rhetoric due to the alignment of many Arab countries with Pakistan.

Ever since, India has pursued a more-or-less sober foreign policy free of emotional constraints and the Nehruvian legacy of colonial obsession. The recent years have witnessed the subtle alignment of Washington and New Delhi. In light of the Sino-Russian rapprochement and an increasingly belligerent Pakistan, India will seek closer relations with Washington to counterbalance China on one hand and restrain Pakistan’s terrorism on the other.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is recording impressive breakthroughs with its naval build-up. Having outposts in Africa, the Chinese navy is building the capacity to secure the key lanes of communications passing through the Indian Ocean. For India this will be a major obstacle as the growing Chinese submarine fleet will encircle the Indian subcontinent not only dominating the South Asian waters but creating a strategic vulnerability for New Delhi should the territorial disputes in the Sino-Indian border regions flare up again. India will remain hesitant to openly antagonize China, but will delicately align itself with the United States. This enhanced cooperation will most likely come to fruition in the maritime domain as India and United States will become more interdependent when countering China’s naval expansion into international waters. The U.S. Navy will be preoccupied with containing the growing ambitions of the PLA Navy in coming years, and India is poised to become a useful partner. This cooperation is highly unlikely to become a full-fledged alliance in the foreseeable future for various reasons, but New Delhi cannot afford to not accept Washington’s help given Beijing’s assertive military swaggering. Consider New Delhi’s recent refusal to intervene in the Maldives in February of 2018 when the political turmoil begged for India’s intervention. President Abdulla Yameen ordered the arrest of several judges as well as forced former president into exile. For the record, India intervened militarily in 1988 in the Maldives to assist the government in holding onto power. It is true, that in the first case (1988) the invitation came from the sitting president as a former Indian Army lieutenant colonel rightly argues.  Last year, the calls for Indian intervention came from an exiled Indian opposition figure. Diplomatically, India’s refusal to intervene was arguably prudent but it also demonstrated China’s deterrence capabilities. Since Yameen took power in 2013, the country has been accepting tremendous loans from Beijing and is being integrated into China’s geo-strategic project. Additionally, as India was contemplating intervention, China’s Global Times published an op-ed stating that “If India one-sidedly sends troops to the Maldives, China will take action to stop New Delhi. India should not underestimate China’s opposition to unilateral military intervention.” This message was clearly taken seriously in New Delhi.

US-India cooperation will increase in combating terrorism as well. Both nations have experienced tragedies at the hands of radical Islamists, creating a mutual sympathy. India continues to struggle with Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism. Among the groups that have close ties with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence is Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which came under the international spotlight in the aftermath of the devastating Mumbai attacks of 2008. Both Washington and New Delhi have expressed their deep concerns on Islamabad’s inaction regarding terrorist groups within Pakistan. As a result, the Trump Administration has suspended US defense aid to Islamabad for not taking satisfactory actions against terrorism. The issue of terrorism was brought up during the 2+2 Dialogue, where both India and United States explicitly urged Pakistan to prevent violent groups from turning the country into a terrorist sanctuary. This bilateral agreement marked the potential end of India’s lonely fight against terrorism in South Asia. The U.S. has also sanctioned the financial facilitators of LeT, as announced by the Department of Treasury. This terrorist organization has the capacity to lead Islamabad and New Delhi into a full-fledged war. It should come as no surprise that after the group’s attacks on Mumbai, India almost went to war against Pakistan. Policymakers in New Delhi tend to interpret such terrorist acts as Islamabad-backed aggression. The war between the two countries may lead to nuclear mobilization. For instance, during the Kargil War of 1999, the armed forces of Pakistan began assembling nuclear assets. Needless to mention, the civilian prime-minister was not informed about the decision. The United States understands the grave consequences of such scenarios and will remain engaged in the region to mitigate the inherent hostility between the two nations.

2019 will be eventful with new coalitions, geopolitical developments, and shifting balances in international environment. US-India relations will develop accordingly driven by aligned interests and common threats. Don’t expect India and the U.S. to become full allies, but this partnership is poised to expand in a rather pragmatic, natural, and organic fashion.

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.

(RFE/RL) –A U.S. naval warship has arrived at a Romanian port, a show of force by the United States in the Black Sea that Russia is closely watching.

The USS Fort McHenry is the first U.S. ship to enter the Black Sea since a naval standoff between Russian and Ukrainian forces near the annexed Crimea Peninsula in November.

Romanian and U.S. officials say the dock-landing ship arrived at the port of Constanta on January 7 and will remain there until January 10.

It will then hold joint sea maneuvers with a Romanian frigate in territorial and international waters.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many U.S. military personnel were involved.

A U.S. Navy spokesperson told TASS that the warship in the Black Sea in accordance with the international Montreux Convention, which governs naval access to the sea.

The trip comes about six weeks after Russia seized three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crews near the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

The November 25 confrontation occurred as Ukrainian ships were trying to cross under the Russian-built Kerch bridge to enter the Sea of Azov, where there is a major Ukrainian port.

By Michael Lelyveld

China’s plan to revive its economy with new stimulus measures may spell trouble for energy forecasts and global efforts to control climate change.

As the government tries to stop the slowdown in growth over the coming year, reports suggest that it will revert to familiar formulas, pumping up the economy with new infrastructure projects backed by credit and debt.

A statement following last month’s annual Central Economic Work Conference made clear that the government will “channel more energy into weak areas, including infrastructure.”

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top planning agency, has already sped up approvals of transportation sector projects, the official English-language China Daily reported on Dec. 18.

The value of 147 projects approved in the third quarter reached 697.7 billion yuan (U.S. $101.1 billion), rising nearly fivefold over the previous period, the paper said.

A provincial NDRC official was quoted as saying that local governments have prepared “a large number of projects that are able to play a role in stabilizing the economy.”

Bloomberg News reported that the work conference statement “signals that China is ratcheting up the limited, targeted stimulus approach used during 2018,” while stopping short of spending that would weaken the currency and the debt-control campaign.

Other reports raise concerns that the stimulus may not be so limited, renewing memories of the 4-trillion yuan (U.S. $579-billion) project binge in 2008-2009. The building boom buoyed the economy through the global recession but left it mired in pollution and debt.

The push for new projects has raised similar concerns about rapid and wasteful investment.

China is expected to build hundreds of new general aviation airports by 2020, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship paper People’s Daily reported last month.

And after a period of restraint in approving new subway projects, China’s “building binge is back on track,” the Financial Times said.

The subway splurge includes 95 billion yuan (U.S. $13.8 billion) for four new lines in Suzhou city of eastern Jiangsu province, despite doubtful ridership, the FT reported.

On Dec. 19, the NDRC also approved 298 billion yuan (U.S. $43.3 billion) worth of urban rail projects for nearby Shanghai, state media said.

On Dec. 26, Transport Minister Li Xiaopeng said that 1.8 trillion yuan (U.S. $261.7 billion) is expected to be invested in road and rail infrastructure projects in 2019, China Daily reported.

Effect on coal consumption

The headlong rush for new projects is bound to have consequences for coal consumption, which rose 0.4 percent in 2017, the highest rate since 2013, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Given last year’s stimulus activity, the 2018 consumption figure for coal, China’s main source of power, is likely to be higher. New infrastructure projects will boost demand for energy-intensive products including steel and cement.

Last month, an international group of climate scientists at the Global Carbon Project projected that China’s coal consumption in 2018 climbed 4.5 percent, driving carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions up 4.7 percent.

The group identified China’s increased coal use as the leading factor in last year’s worldwide rise in CO2 by 2.7 percent.

“The biggest change in CO2 emissions in 2018 compared with 2017 is a substantial increase in both energy consumption and CO2 emissions in China, … driven largely by growth in heavy manufacturing,” the group said.

In the first 11 months of 2018, raw coal production jumped 5.4 percent from a year earlier, the NBS said. China produces and consumes about half of the world’s coal.

The Global Carbon Project’s outlook contrasts sharply with forecasts of a gradual decline in China’s coal demand over the next several years.

In its medium-term coal forecast released last month, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that demand will edge down at a compound average annual rate of 0.5 percent over the period from 2016 through 2023.

According to forecast data from the IEA’s Coal 2018 report, China’s coal demand will drop slightly by about 0.2 percent in 2019 compared with estimates for 2017.

The figures are important for climate change projections because they may support arguments advanced over the last several years that China’s coal consumption has already peaked.

The IEA data seems to suggest that the turnaround in China’s coal growth is already underway.

But it is unclear whether the IEA’s projections reflect the extent of the stimulus policies that are now being pursued by the government.

“The government is very worried about the economy, which appears to be growing at a rate well below their planned ‘new normal,'” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at National University of Singapore.

Andrews-Speed cited the sudden wave of new airport and urban rail projects, which are likely to drive coal demand for power and building materials.

“Coal consumption is almost certain to grow at a rate well in excess of the IEA’s estimate,” said Andrews-Speed.

“The only way in which the growth could be kept close to the IEA’s estimate is if the government is very effective at suppressing coal-fired power generation in favor of hydro-electric, nuclear, wind, and solar power. But its track record in this respect is not great,” he said.

A rebound in coal use?

In response to RFA questions, IEA senior energy analyst Carlos Fernandez Alvarez said that China’s air quality policies have removed some coal consumption from the residential and small industrial sectors, thanks in part to increases in natural gas.

Efforts to reduce coal in those sectors have been partially offset by higher electricity demand, but the IEA estimates that more coal has been removed than added.

“This is the reason (for) our forecast,” Fernandez Alvarez said in an email.

But he also warned that new stimulus policies could lead to increased coal consumption.

“If you put on top of it a fiscal stimulus supporting power consumption and other heavy industries (steel, cement, etc.), we could see a rebound in coal use in China and, therefore, in the world,” he said.

Fernandez Alvarez sees a repeat of the 2008-2009 stimulus effects as unlikely.

“The current conditions in China are very different from 2008-2009,” he said.

“The energy sector is much more efficient, the power mix is more diversified and the economy is more mature.

Therefore, the strong growth of the first decade is very unlikely,” Fernandez Alvarez said.

But a new stimulus program would still have significant consequences.

“If you run the numbers, coal consumed in China represents 14 percent of global primary energy, and hence, it is the largest energy source in a country by far. Therefore, what happens in Chinese coal is pivotal for the energy and CO2 emissions trends in the world,” Fernandez Alvarez said.

According to the IEA forecast, worldwide coal demand will grow at an average annual rate of 0.2 percent through 2023 with the biggest percentage increases coming in India and Southeast Asia.

Congress is the Constitutionally delegated repository of the sovereign authority of the people (the Constitution which starts with “We the People,” not “We the Congress!”). Most of the changes, reforms, and improvements desired by a majority of people have to go through Congress. Incentives for change often start with Congressional elections or grass-roots organizing. But sooner or later, change has to go through the gates of our national legislature on Capitol Hill.

This point is so obvious that it is astonishing so many reformers fail to regularly hammer home that we must intensely focus on Congress.

Just 535 humans (Senators and Representatives) need your votes far more than they need fat cat campaign contributions.

Guess what the following twelve redirections or changes have in common with one another?

1. A living wage, much higher than the long-frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
2. Full Medicare for all or what is called a “single payer” system covering everybody, with free choice of doctor and hospital, is much cheaper and has better outcomes than the present complex, bureaucratic, price-gouging, claim denying, profits-first chaos in the U.S.
3. Moving swiftly to a renewable, solar-based, wind-powered, more efficient energy system, that diminishes climate disruption and toxic pollution.
4. Cleaner air, water, soil and food for a healthful environmental for today and for coming generations.
5. Clean elections reform and strong, enforceable laws against public corruption.
6. Criminal justice reform, especially regarding non-violent offenses and additional reforms of sentencing and prisons.
7. Stopping taxpayers from being required to pay for very costly corporate welfare, or what conservatives call “crony capitalism” in all its many forms.
8. Enforcing the criminal and civil laws against corporate rip-offs, thefts, hazardous products, and hearing the voices of workers, consumers and those from beleaguered communities (especially on the public’s airwaves unfairly controlled by the monetized gatekeepers called radio and television stations).
9. Protecting access to justice for wrongfully injured people to have their full day in court with trial by jury as demanded by the country’s founders and our Constitution.
10. Protection of the public lands – the national and state forests and the national parks and wilderness regions from corporate profit-driven encroachment and despoliation.
11. Re-evaluating the loss of lives from unconstitutional, boomeranging wars abroad that spread death and destruction abroad making more people our enemies. These wars have also taken trillions of taxpayer dollars from rebuilding our community infrastructure – schools, highways, bridges, public transit, libraries, health clinics, drinking water/sewage works, and environmental cleanups.
12. Make it easier for consumers, workers, and small taxpayers to band together for civic action and a powerful seat at the table with big businesses and their government toadies.

These twelve advances have the following in common:

(1) They have majority public opinion support – in some cases huge support– which means many liberal and conservative voters agree, which can produce an unstoppable political movement.

(2) Most of them cost nothing or little to implement, bringing more efficiencies and less damage to our society. Wisdom is less expensive than constant folly or deep greed!

(3) They are understandable. People relate to the experiences, agonies, and dreams for a better life and livelihood for themselves and for their families.

(4) They provide people with a sense of empowerment and accomplishment – traits necessary for a worthy democracy to work. Cynicism and withdrawal begin to be reversed in favor of engagement and new civic institutions needed by our posterity.

(5) They all have to go through our Congress – a good majority of only 535 people whose names we know become much more responsive to citizen action, people-driven town meetings, civic agendas, and democratizing procedures inside Congress.

Start by inviting the old and new members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to your town-meetings. Five hundred citizens clearly signing a petition will get a Senator to attend; considerably fewer names a U.S. Representative.

When you have them face-to-face with no flak, you’ll see what “we the people” can accomplish. It has happened before in American history; it must happen again. (For more advice, see ratsreformcongress.org).

How far have we come in achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals that we are committed to nationally and internationally? Yes, it can be difficult to make a global assessment of poverty and poor economic conditions, but with an eye in the sky, researchers are able to give us a very good hint of the living conditions of populations in the world’s poor countries.

If we are to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals – which 93 member countries have committed themselves to – it is particularly important to track the living conditions in poor nations around the world where the future population growth is highest.

Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, recently found that high resolution satellite data can be used to map economic living conditions down to a household level, findings that are published in the prestigious American journal PNAS today.

“Based on high resolution satellite images, we can very precisely assess the status of poverty at household level in rural areas in developing countries,” says professor Jens-Christian Svenning from the Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, who heads the the research group in Aarhus.

And this is good news if we are to comply with the ambitious development agenda that the world’s heads of state and government adopted at a UN Summit in New York in 2015. The goals came into force on 1 January 2016 and will until 2030 continue in setting a course for a more sustainable development to the benefit of both people and the planet that we live on.

Cheap monitoring of the conditions in poor countries

In an agricultural area in Kenya, the researchers have, based on satellite images, measured, among other things, the size of buildings and areas of uncultivated soil and the length of the growing season on a number of family run farms. The images also reveal how people use the landscape around their homes and how this changes over time.

In their study, the researchers show that a thorough analysis of satellite images can explain 62% of the variation in the economic conditions of the individual households.

As satellite images are relatively cheap and increasingly freely available, the study demonstrates that space-based monitoring is a cost-effective method to track the socio-economic development as a supplement to the classic and very expensive household surveys with interviews, etc.

In particular, the use of satellite data makes it possible to analyse the economic development at much greater geographical scale and with a high temporal frequency.

“The use of satellite images makes it much, much cheaper to keep track of how far we are in reaching the UN’s goals for sustainable development. If conventional assessments of the households’ economic conditions were used, the cost would be more than 250 billion dollars,” says Gary R. Watmough, who headed the recently published investigation and is now employed at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Space technology, and not least satellite-based data collection, appears to be a promising and necessary technology for effective monitoring of living standards in large, even global, areas. And the hope is that the developed methodology is able to ensure a better and targeted effort against poverty throughout the world.

“The method that we have developed is designed to analyse the satellite images in a way that takes into account that people have access to and use different resources in the landscape at different levels. Some use the area just around their house, while others use the common areas of a village. When we use space data with a socio-ecological insight, we capture the financial status and in this way also the development in an area much better than we have previously been able to,” says Jens-Christian Svenning.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of a close neighbour of the Milky Way — the Triangulum Galaxy, a spiral galaxy located at a distance of only three million light-years. This panoramic survey of the third-largest galaxy in our Local Group of galaxies provides a mesmerising view of the 40 billion stars that make up one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye.

This new image of the Triangulum Galaxy — also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598 — has a staggering 665 million pixels and showcases the central region of the galaxy and its inner spiral arms. To stitch together this gigantic mosaic, Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys needed to create 54 separate images.

Under excellent dark-sky conditions, the Triangulum Galaxy can be seen with the naked eye as a faint, blurry object in the constellation of Triangulum (the Triangle), where its ethereal glow is an exciting target for amateur astronomers.

At only three million light-years from Earth, the Triangulum Galaxy is a notable member of the Local Group — it is the group’s third-largest galaxy, but also the smallest spiral galaxy in the group [1]. It measures only about 60 000 light-years across, compared to the 200 000 light-years of the Andromeda Galaxy; the Milky Way lies between these extremes at about 100 000 light-years in diameter [2].

The Triangulum Galaxy is not only surpassed in size by the other two spirals, but by the multitude of stars they contain. The Triangulum Galaxy has at least an order of magnitude less stars than the Milky Way and two orders of magnitude less than Andromeda. These numbers are hard to grasp when already in this image 10 to 15 million individual stars are visible.

In contrast to the two larger spirals, the Triangulum Galaxy doesn’t have a bright bulge at its centre and it also lacks a bar connecting its spiral arms to the centre. It does, however, contain a huge amount of gas and dust, giving rise to rapid star formation. New stars form at a rate of approximately one solar mass every two years.

The abundance of gas clouds in the Triangulum Galaxy is precisely what drew astronomers to conduct this detailed survey. When stars are born, they use up material in these clouds of gas and dust, leaving less fuel for new stars to emerge. Hubble’s image shows two of the four brightest of these regions in the galaxy: NGC 595 and NGC 604. The latter is the second most luminous region of ionised hydrogen within the Local Group and it is also among the largest known star formation regions in the Local Group.

These detailed observations of the Triangulum Galaxy have tremendous legacy value — combined with those of the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and the irregular Magellanic Cloud galaxies, they will help astronomers to better understand star formation and stellar evolution.

Notes

[1] Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of the Local Group, an assembly of more than 50 galaxies bound together by gravity. Its largest member is the Andromeda Galaxy — also known as Messier 31 — followed by the Milky Way and the Triangulum Galaxy. The remaining members of the Local Group are dwarf galaxies, each orbiting one of the three larger ones.

[2] The much bigger Andromeda Galaxy was mapped by Hubble in 2015, creating the sharpest and largest image of this galaxy and the largest Hubble image ever (heic1502 – https://spacetelescope.org/news/heic1502/).

I’m starting to wonder whether President Trump has any power over US foreign policy at all. Many people believe that the US president is just a figurehead, with actual foreign policy firmly in the hands of the deep state. Trump’s latest dramatic U-turn on pulling troops from Syria certainly feeds such theories.

When President Trump announced just a couple of weeks ago that the US was removing its troops from Syria and possibly reducing troops from Afghanistan, the neocons, the media, the military-industrial complex, and the left-wing “never-Trump” people were livid. They were silent when President Obama made the horrible decision to overthrow Assad in Syria and sent weapons to jihadists to do so. They never said a word when billions of dollars were committed to this immoral and dangerous “regime change” policy. They weren’t interested in the rule of law when President Obama thumbed his nose at Congress and sent troops into Syria.

But when President Trump declared the obvious – that ISIS was effectively defeated and that we had no business being in Syria – these above groups in unison declared that actually bringing US troops home was a “gift to Russia.” They said bringing US troops home would create instability in the regions they left. Well, is there any proof that occupation by US troops actually brings stability?

No sooner did President Trump announce our departure than his neocon advisors began walking his words back. First he had to endure a lunch with Sen. Lindsey Graham reading him the riot act, where, according to the Senator, Trump agreed to no timetables for departure. Then his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, began to tell the world that President Trump’s statements on troop pullout were just empty words, not US policy.

While Syrian Christians newly liberated from the rule of US-backed extremists celebrated Christmas for the first time in years, John Bolton dusted off the old warning to Assad that the US would attack if he “again” gassed his people. With the Syrian president personally taking part in some of the Christmas celebrations, does anybody really believe he’d go back to his office and order a gas attack?

Bolton then claimed that the US would shift troops from Syria to Iraq to continue fighting ISIS and that the US fully backs Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory. Did President Trump even agree to any of this?

Even worse, Secretary of State Pompeo is embarking on a Middle East tour where he will essentially tell leaders in the region that the US president is a liar. According to one State Department official quoted in a report on Sunday, Pompeo’s message to the Middle East will be, “Despite reports to the contrary and false narratives surrounding the Syria decision, we are not going anywhere. The secretary will reinforce that commitment to the region and our partners.”

Calling the US president’s actual words on Syria “false narratives”? How is this not insubordination?

Will President Trump stand by and watch this coup taking place under his nose? Does he realize how his credibility suffers when he boldly announces a US withdrawal and the does a U-turn days later? Has he noticed recent polls showing that the majority of the American people agree with him? Why is he so intimidated by the neocons?

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the population of Northern Africa and the Middle East only found out about the events based on the news transmitted by the Western mainstream media. These media outlets set the tone for the information flow and the local magnates like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, which spread the talking points given by CNN and BBC.

However, as time as passed the Arab population has felt the need for an alternative point of view as the Western giants repeatedly have been caught for spreading fake news and disinformation. An obvious example is the chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta in 2013 that actually was a provocation orchestrated by the West and the Persian Gulf monarchies.

However, when Russia, a longtime Syrian ally, entered the conflict in 2015 the situation both in information and political field started to change. Since then, RT Arabic and Sputnik have become popular and reliable information resources. This fact is evidenced by the research of the Jordanian analyst Jassar Al-Tahat, conducted in 2015. At the request of the British project Integrity Initiative, Al-Tahat released a series of reports on RT media campaigns, where he studied the reasons for its success in the information space of the Middle East.

Notably, Integrity Initiative organized studies within the frameworks of targeted information counteraction against the Russian media. Most likely, the Al-Tahat, reports were required for the British side to study the methods of countering RT.

According to the Jordanian analyst, RT is currently seen as the most trusted source giving “the other side of the story” in the Arab world. The author of the report also claims that RT has a degree of confidence that the Western resources do not possess.

Al-Tahat notes that RT is a new voice that provides a new perspective on issues that concern people in the Middle East. There is a sense of fashion, a trend that gives RT a margin of acceptance and tolerance for its professional shortcomings.

The Jordanian analyst backs up his opinions with figures. The RT article on the Brussels 22/03/2016 terror attacks was posted only 10 minutes after the first explosion, and attained over 21,000 comments. Its closest competing article – by the BBC – posted more than 30 minutes later attained less than 2,000 comments – less than 1/10th of the RT article.

There is a tendency of declining trust among the population of Arab countries to the Western media whose purpose is to impose a unipolar world and Western-style democracy.. At the same time, the increased demand for credibility, and respect for an alternative point of view is the reason for RT’s success in the Middle East. Perhaps, the defeat in the information war was one of the reasons for Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria.

They set out early in the morning, men with axes, boys in tow and, for some, the odd girl champing at the bit. The woods are some way from Bujanovac, but these columns of individuals resembled statues who have moved off their plinths, heading to the woods that call them with mesmerising force. The groves seem to speak in this part of Europe, where the Serbs still commune with a spirit of past. Industrialisation has yet to kill off this element, yet to estrange the citizens from the south from their magical ends.

The woods have, historically, served as links between the finitely mortal and timeless supernatural, a manifestation with roots in the earth, deeply grown and burrowed, and leaves in the canopy, a link pointing to the heavens. The Norse peoples worshiped Yggdrasil, a great, worldly ash tree cosmically sustaining the mortal and immortal, whatever the form.

For the Slavs, the tree remains all central and bearing, the fecund creature that holds the seeds of all, the progenitor for the verdant world. To down such a tree, or, in the tradition of the badnjak, to remove a sampling of oak covered in brown gold leafing, would require ceremonial preliminaries. And so this cautionary note has survived, more in the context of communal gathering and pursuit, as it does on this day, the determined axemen of the village, fortified by wine and local brandy, making their way as if in a deep trance, towards the woods that call them with mesmerising calls. There is a slow motion carnival feel to this, and this is topped by a horse plumed in red baubles, heading with a look of obedience, to the show. To the woods, and there, you shall find yourself with a branch’s severance, a small tree’s beheading.

With the necessary badnjak samples gathered, religious authority is consulted. At the local church in the village of Rakovac in the Preševo Valley, an area awash with mineral goodness from its waters, the priest is buzzing and busy, a man deluged with attention. He is parachuted in to perform ceremonial duties after his previous counterpart committed adultery and fled for Austria with his new bride. There, he keeps up a long Yugoslav mission of feeding other economies with the Gastarbeiter.

Contributions are made as each oak tree is blessed with a dip and a splash, and the icon kissed, all taking place in the church yard and a Christmas freeze. The line of oak carrying devotees forms like a living forest, moving slowly through snow and frozen mud. The fire in the church yard burns as welcome and promise, and here, the Christian message is tagged to the pagan, a feat of neat historical reconstruction: the heat brought from burning the badnjak suggests the three shepherds warming the stable of Jesus’s birth.

The music commences, wind meeting brass, the clarinet engaging the trumpet. Vocal chords are exercised. The procession to the village square commences with a noisy enthusiasm that drowns out the doubts of despair and dark thoughts. Solemn celebration thatches with defiance.

At the village gathering, evident hierarchies seem to take shape. The in-crowd is to be found in proximity to the brandy, or rakija, cooking away in a capacious stove overseen by two men whose teeth have seen better days. The outers, hugging a local convenience shop like frozen sparrows, gaze on with a slightly menacing look, though this is merely temporary and marked more by curiosity than anything else. They bide their time and will, when the moment comes, commit to the ring dance that is bound to eventuate.

There are old men, craggily faced and withered with memories and young men with short hair, some even shaved, with suspicions of the new age. NATO, throbs the sentiment in this crowd, cannot be trusted over the mischief in Kosovo (the recent moves by that confused political entity to create its own army in defiance of the stationed troops from the alliance have released fears). History remains a set of betrayals, missteps and misunderstandings, a vice that seemingly clamps on this region. The next disaster is deemed as inevitable as the next tummy upset.

The bonfire gathers momentum in the village centre, the primeval lusty flame that lights hope and shreds fears. It is all fire in this region: fire in the woodstove that delivers the distinctly flavoured food of immense quantity while warming houses; fire in the church yard that acts like a beacon for the faithful; fire to dance around; fire as life. The inferno is sovereign, governs the soul, dictates the process of communing. It is elemental. To gaze at this promethean flame in the home stove or in the village square as it rises to consume is to be alive and feel the veins warmed, to embrace something atavistic and deep; to know that you can endure what is to come despite the calamities that might be faced and, truth be known, to deny.

Children release eardrum creasing crackers with irritating enthusiasm, some casting them into the mother flame; flare guns are released, usually by those yet to reach puberty. (Where the gun speaks, whatever form it takes, the conversation may prove violent.) Earlier in the day, live guns were fired, a stutter in the wintry air softened by the snow-capped earth and the vegetation creamy white from heavy falls. While celebratory, these have a sinister undertone, a promise from Serbs to counterparts – the Albanians, for the most part – that they are up for a fight in the demographic and political struggle for this region.

The rakija that heats in the stove overlooking the small centre in Rakovac – one can hardly call it a square, given the misshapen nature – is cooked for the masses, and the men who come to it are filled with its manna-giving properties. The warming liquid is distributed in plastic cups, and are filled to their dripping brims. The set of dances start to breakout, vigorous, energetic, even manic. The gyration and jangling around the fire signals pagan tribute and affirmed living, for it is here, in this dance around the flames, that reassurance comes in abundance. Then, a man of about forty raises a flaming sample of fireworks, an all glorious flare. The entire audience is illuminated, faces in rapture. The fire, alive from the oak, continues to feed.

By Frank G. Hoffman*

There are many candidates for examining the most salient changes in the emerging strategic environment. Many perceive the emerging era of great power competition as a mandate to prepare for large-scale, conventional wars. Others will examine smaller changes in context like urban warfare, the influence of social media or its weaponization, or potentially disruptive new technologies.

Some scholars are skeptical about our ability to think intelligently about the future. Sir Lawrence Freedman, in his latest book, is one of the skeptics, having seen too much optimism and too little humility in futurology. But I hope everyone here recognizes that it would be irresponsible to suppose that we can afford to stand pat with today’s legacy capabilities, outdated or stovepiped doctrines, and rigid mental paradigms. Sir Michael Howard noted that military organizations must conceive of themselves like ships moving forward into the fog of time with occasional glimpses at navigational aids––real world events and battles–– that permit them to adjust course in their doctrines and capabilities. To do otherwise, to stand still on the shore, would be standard practice for some armed forces, but it would also be strategically shortsighted.

As former Secretary of Defense James Mattis wrote in his 2018 National Defense Strategy,

We must anticipate the implications of new technologies on the battlefield, rigorously define the military problems anticipated in future conflict, and foster a culture of experimentation and calculated risk-taking. We must anticipate how competitors and adversaries will employ new operational concepts and technologies to attempt to defeat us.

Our path forward starts by looking backward to history. It is only with the study of the past that we can best anticipate how the evolving character of conflict of the 21^st century will impact us. Our best tools to illuminate what appears to be another consequential era are informed foresight and critical historical study. What follows in this talk is my own thought experiment into the unknowable future that I call the 7^th Military Revolution or the Age of Autonomy.

Over 25 years ago, Manuel De Landa wrote in War in the Age of Intelligent Machines that when we move past cruise missiles that merely hit their intended targets to the day when “autonomous weapons begin to select their own targets, the moment the responsibility of establishing whether a human is friend or foe is given to the machine, we will have crossed a threshold and a new era will have begun.”

We are now entering that new era. The major technological breakthroughs that are now occurring in Robotics, Informational and Cognitive Sciences, and material sciences are by themselves truly revolutionary. Their convergence magnifies their potential application. Rather than a Second Machine Age or a Fourth Industrial Revolution, I use the construct Wick Murray and Bernard Knox called a Military Revolution. These eras “recast society and the state as well as military organizations. They alter the capacity of states to create and project military power.” Knox and Murray identified five historical cases, and recognized the ongoing sixth revolution, the Information Age. These revolutions have been additive, never entirely displacing the past. The seventh, the Autonomous Revolution, looms ahead of us enshrouded in fog and mist. This era will merge the Industrial and Information Revolutions, combining machines and computers in ways we envision now through science fiction. Of particular salience in this new era are developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially Machine Learning, combined with unmanned systems and robotics.

Autonomy will recast society and the state, as well its armed forces. AI-enabled systems and autonomous weapons will, per Murray’s definition, “alter the capacity of states to create and project military power.”

Autonomous systems are not new. Today, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army field defensive missile systems like Aegis and the Patriot system with degrees of autonomy built into their controls. We should expect further developments as the technology matures. Every future trends report, that of the NIC, the UK, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, identified this area as a critical trend.

Yet, our appreciation of the implications of the 7^th Military Revolution are weak. To explore these implications, there is no better framework than Clausewitz’s Trinitarian concept to examine the impact of the convergence of robotics and artificial intelligence. This analytical tool is central to his study of war’s most fundamental relationships, and has enduring value.

Clausewitz defined the trinity around the interaction of three sets of forces: irrational forces (“primordial violence, hatred, and enmity”); non-rational forces (“the play of chance and probability” and the genius of the commander); and purely rational forces (war’s subordination to policy and reason). These interactive elements influence the violence that lies at the center of war. Clausewitz insisted that these elements were variable in their relationship to one another. Each element or tendency is impacted in the emerging revolution, and each is impacted by Artificial Intelligence.

Passion/Enmity often is associated with the Population. Domestic policy leaders may find AI conducive to targeted cyber and social media strategies that suppress or inflame populations. Of course, the adversary may try to do the same. This is not a new element in war, but its impact can now be felt faster and with greater frequency. Because of the public’s growing use of social media and internet as a principal source of information, these technologies become an ideal vector for automated information attacks and influence tactics. More automated methods supported by algorithms will increase the mass scale, frequency, and customized tailoring of messages.

Next, extensive use of robots and unmanned systems could reduce public interest much less support for its armed services. The population may feel less engaged or tied to national policy actions if robotic forces are employed against the Nation’s sons and daughters. At the same time, Cabinet wars that entail few core national interests may be more likely, since they may be perceived as politically low risk.

The populace may ultimately come to see the need to send humans into combat or human casualties itself as an indication of policy failure. Critical to the profession’s mission and domain, the infusion of machinery, the reduction of human decision-making, and the rise of remote stand-off warfare could erode the identity of the military as professionals with a unique social responsibility involving risk and danger. This erosion of risk and responsibility might undercut the ideal of the profession of arms, accelerating a “post-heroic” age where the State’s security forces are even further distant from the society they serve.

With regard to non-rational forces and human factors, the introduction of new information-based technologies and robotic systems will not reduce strategic friction or eliminate the potential for chance. At the strategic and operational levels, AI is expected to enhance the clarity of intelligence, assess small changes in big databases, and reduce human biases in plans and decisions. Some improvement in quality of decision-making can be expected. Yet, one potential effect is a higher chance for miscalculation by decision makers or headquarters whose databases are compromised.

New sources of friction will be introduced by mechanical failure, algorithmic degradation, learning, and adapting in a way inconsistent with “intent.” Both sides, even fully autonomous, will contain flaws and vulnerabilities, with avenues for opponents to inject uncertainty.

Another possible change may influence Clausewitz’s ideal for intuition and coup d’oeil, “the quick recognition of a truth that the mind would ordinarily miss or would perceive only after long study and reflection.” He observed, “This type of knowledge, cannot be forcibly produced by an apparatus of scientific formulas and mechanics.” Our Prussian sage may be proven wrong over time. Clausewitz argued that the talent of a military commander could be gained without experiential learning “through the medium of reflection, study and thought.” Will Deep Learning programs provide that rapid recognition, the discernment of “truth,” and augment or focus that deep study and reflection? Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work thinks so, when he pointed out “learning machines are going to give more and more commanders coup d’oeil.”

Perhaps, this does not go far enough. Instead, the developed coup d’oeil of the human could be augmented by a data-infused cyber d’oeil that supports human decision-making. Rather than a bifurcated conception of human decision-making, leveraging Kahneman’s “System 1” thinking, which are intuitive or gut decisions, and “System 2,” or deliberative cognitive processes, we may exploit man/machine teaming to maximize both with what I term “System 3.” We need to know a lot more about AI-enabled cognition and how to educate warriors to leverage AI without misusing it.

We can expect decision-making at this level to be perhaps more challenged by the blurring modes of warfare and the speed of events. Cyber and hypersonic missile attacks will compress decision-making timelines for both strategic and operational leaders. The necessity for preplanned delegation and engagement authorities is clear. Analysts have for several decades been aware that the role of human decision-making will be increasingly challenged by advanced technologies that speed up weapons or decision-making OODA loops (observe–orient–decide–act). Retired General John Allen, now leading the Brookings Institution, has talked recently about the advent of a concept he calls “hyperwar.” This concept accounts for the expected speed of decision-making required in high-intensity operations in cyber-space and in the employment of missiles and unmanned vehicles moving at velocities greater than the speed of light. This burgeoning need for speed raises important questions: does this radically sped-up decision-making take civilians and policy out of the conflict, and thus is political direction and operational leadership simply delegated to machines? Is a “man on the loop” a nice ethical artifact that is fatal in future contests?

To sum up, greater automation and autonomy will change the nature and character of war in several ways. First, it could weaken the role of political direction forcing delegation to lower levels to respond to faster forms of attack. It may divorce the professional advice of military leaders to civilian policymakers more inclined to the calculations of their preferred algorithm assistant. It can lessen the ability of governments to gain the support and legitimacy of their own populations, while making it easier for foreign governments to manipulate them.

While we remain at least a decade or two away from autonomy beyond narrow task-specific applications becoming a reality, we should recognize its significant impact. The most significant elements of war: violence, politics, and chance will certainly remain. So, too, will the great continuities of fog and friction. Despite brilliant machines, we can count on human contingency. Certainly, the relationship of these elements will be altered as Clausewitz foretold. War’s essence as politically directed violence will remain its most enduring aspect, even if more machines are involved at every level.

The involvement of humans is central to war’s nature as well. Some speculate about war without humans, at least tactically. I do not anticipate battles devoid of human contestants, with swarms of robots directed by their own superior intelligence. Nor should we expect our governments to delegate strategic issues, like the decision to go to war, or to accept battle, to an algorithm. As long as humans are responsible for directing war, for writing code, and for fielding and maintaining machines, warfare will remain an instrument of policy and the province of warriors. Those warriors may have machine augmentation, be advised by algorithms that synthesize and sort faster; they may delegate decisions to cyber assistants, and operate more remotely; but a human will be directing the fight at some level.

Yet, there is little doubt that the age of greater autonomy will dramatically impact the ever evolving character of war. It will impact each combat function to some degree whether it is computer defense or precision attack. Surely, there will still be human combatants and non-combatants mixed in the dense urban canyons where most battles will be fought. But that should not stop us from striving to imagine a potential disruptive change like autonomous weapons. Per Freedman’s wonderful retrospective history, The Future of War, A History, we must do so if only to understand the choices we may make and the choices that may be available to our competitors. These choices need to be vetted as Sir Lawrence recommends—skeptically but seriously.         

As we proceed forward into the misty fog of a dimly lit future, we must sail forward and think with both imagination and intellectual rigor. Hype and hesitancy should be displaced by curiosity and hypotheses for testing. We should understand what this revolution can and cannot deliver.

This article is based on Dr. Hoffman’s opening remarks at the Modern Warfare Institute’s annual conference, held at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, November 4, 2018.

*About the author: Frank G. Hoffman serves on FPRI’s Board of Advisors and currently is serving at the National Defense University as a Distinguished Research Fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies.

Source: This article was published by FPRI

Over the past century, increased greenhouse gas emissions have given rise to an excess of energy in the Earth system. More than 90% of this excess energy has been absorbed by the ocean, leading to increased ocean temperatures and associated sea level rise, while moderating surface warming.

The multi-disciplinary team of scientists have published estimates in PNAS, that global warming of the oceans of 436 x 1021 Joules has occurred from 1871 to present (roughly 1000 times annual worldwide human primary energy consumption) and that comparable warming happened over the periods 1920-1945 and 1990-2015.

The estimates support evidence that the oceans are absorbing most of the excess energy in the climate system arising from greenhouse gases emitted by human activities.

Prof Laure Zanna (Physics), who led the international team of researchers said: ‘Our reconstruction is in line with other direct estimates and provides evidence for ocean warming before the 1950s.’

The researchers’ technique to reconstruct ocean warming is based on a mathematical approach originally developed by Prof Samar Khatiwala (Earth Sciences) to reconstruct manmade CO2 uptake by the ocean.

Prof Khatiwala said: ‘Our approach is akin to “painting” different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colors and monitoring how they spread into the interior over time. We can then apply that information to anything else – for example manmade carbon or heat anomalies – that is transported by ocean circulation. If we know what the sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1870 in the North Atlantic Ocean we can figure out how much it contributes to the warming in, say, the deep Indian Ocean in 2018. The idea goes back nearly 200 years to the English mathematician George Green.’

The new estimate suggests that in the last 60 years up to half the observed warming and associated sea level rise in low- and mid- latitudes of the Atlantic Ocean is due to changes in ocean circulation. During this period, more heat has accumulated at lower latitudes than would have if circulation were not changing. While a change in ocean circulation is identified, the researchers cannot attribute it solely to human-induced changes.

Much work remains to be done to validate the method and provide a better uncertainty estimate, particularly in the earlier part of the reconstruction. However the consistency of the new estimate with direct temperature measurements gives the team confidence in their approach.

Prof Zanna said: ‘Strictly speaking, the technique is only applicable to tracers like manmade carbon that are passively transported by ocean circulation. However, heat does not behave in this manner as it affects circulation by changing the density of seawater. We were pleasantly surprised how well the approach works. It opens up an exciting new way to study ocean warming in addition to using direct measurements.’

This work offers an answer to an important gap in knowledge of ocean warming, but is only a first step. It is important to understand the cause of the ocean circulation changes to help predict future patterns of warming and sea level rise.

By Devendra Kamarajan

A new agreement signed in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, promises to fight global warming. Known as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, came into force on January 1, 2019.

According to UN Environment, it will reduce the projected production and consumption of powerful greenhouse gasses termed as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by more than 80 per cent over the next 30 years.

If fully supported by governments, the private sector and citizens, the Kigali Amendment will avoid up to 0.4°C of global warming this century while continuing to protect the ozone layer. The amendment will substantively contribute to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

65 countries have already ratified the amendment, with more expected in the weeks to come, UN Environment said.

HFCs are organic compounds frequently used as refrigerants in air conditioners and other devices as alternatives to ozone-depleting substances controlled under the Montreal Protocol.

While HFCs themselves do not deplete the ozone layer, they are extremely potent greenhouse gases with global warming potentials that can be many times higher than carbon dioxide.

The parties to the Kigali Amendment have put in place practical arrangements for its implementation, including agreements on technologies for the destruction of HFCs and new data reporting requirements and tools, UN Environment said in a press release.

The amendment comes with provisions for capacity-building for developing countries, institutional strengthening and the development of national strategies to reduce HFCs and replace them with alternatives. Phasing down HFCs under the Kigali Amendment may also open a window to redesign cooling equipment that is more energy efficient, further increasing the climate gains.

Implementation of new targets set out in the amendment will be done in three phases, with a group of developed countries starting HFCs phase-down from 2019. Developing countries will follow with a freeze of HFCs consumption levels in 2024 and with a few countries freezing consumption in 2028.

Ratified by 65 countries so far, the Kigali Amendment builds on the historic legacy of the Montreal Protocol agreed in 1987. The Protocol and its previous amendments, which require the phasing out of the production and consumption of substances that cause ozone depletion, have been universally ratified by 197 parties.

The broad support for and implementation of the Montreal Protocol has led to the phase-out of more than 99 per cent of nearly 100 ozone-depleting chemicals and significantly contributed to climate change mitigation.

Evidence presented in the latest Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion shows that the ozone layer in parts of the stratosphere has recovered at a rate of 1-3% per decade since 2000. At projected rates, Northern Hemisphere and mid-latitude ozone is scheduled to heal completely by the 2030s followed by the Southern Hemisphere in the 2050s and polar regions by 2060.

Donald Trump has made his tariffs against China and other countries a big part of his agenda as president. He even went so far as to dub himself “Tariff Man” on Twitter.

The media have been quick to assume that Tariff Man is accomplishing his goals, especially with regard to China. It is standard for news articles, like this one, to assert that China’s economy is suffering in large part because of Trump’s tariffs.

In fact, through the first ten months of 2018 China’s trade surplus with the United States on trade in goods has been $344.5 billion. This is up 11.5 percent from its surplus in the same months last year.

The tariffs surely are having some effect, and China’s surplus would almost certainly be larger if they were not in place. But it is difficult to believe that China’s $13.5 trillion dollar economy (measured at exchange rate values) could be hurt all that all that much by somewhat slower growth in its trade surplus with the United States. (For arithmetic fans, the surplus is equal to 2.5 percent of China’s GDP. We are talking about slower growth in this surplus.)

It is worth noting that we will not be getting new trade data until the government shutdown is over since the Census Bureau is one of the government agencies without funding for fiscal year 2019.

This article originally appeared on Dean Baker’s blog.

By Nathan Keeble*

When Attorney General Robert Kennedy was defending his Wire Act before the Senate, he scarcely would have imagined that this bill which he sold as a federal supplement to the enforcement of state laws would be used half a century later to trample upon them, but rumors emanating from the Department of Justice suggest that is their intention. One of the first victories in Kennedy’s crusade against organized crime, the Wire Act was intended to damn up the river of money which was flowing into the mob’s hands from sports gambling by prohibiting the transfer of information which made the practice possible. The bill did precisely that task, and only that task, for decades.

In 2002, despite legal precedent, the Bush administration began to use the Wire Act as a bludgeon against all forms of online gambling, not simply those related to sports. These actions wrought uncertainty for state governments who would compel the DOJ to clarify their interpretation of the law in 2011. In a 13-page memo, they refuted the new expansive interpretation and restored the law’s original, narrower meaning. This decision again freed the states to make their own decisions about online gambling. Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware ended their prohibitions against the online gambling industry in response.

However, rumors are circulating that the DOJ is considering reversing this federalist position. At the least, a reversal would create significant legal uncertainty. At worst, it is an ominous step toward a federal ban on online gambling. A return to the Bush administration’s misinterpretation of the Wire Act would be a legally untenable, unconstitutional assault on state sovereignty with damaging economic consequences.

Ironically, the DOJ has provided the most compelling textual justification for a narrow understanding of the Wire Act.

Through a convincing analysis of the circumstances surrounding the bill’s enactment, their 2011 memo concludes that “sporting games and events” modifies the “bets or wagers” of each clause and was omitted as a form of shorthand, similar to the federal and interstate language present in the first clause. In fact, if the Wire Act were meant to pertain to all forms of gambling, Congress would not have specified sporting events at all. This interpretation also gives the law consistency by having the entire subsection “serve the same end in the same scope.” Furthermore, the narrow interpretation reconciles the Wire Act with sections of the UIGEA which suggests other forms of online gambling are legal.

All federal laws must be in pursuance of the Constitution, but the 2002 interpretation is a blatant attack on the 10th Amendment. The federal government has only those powers which are expressly granted to it by the Constitution, with the states retaining all others. Any honest look through Article I, Section 8 will show that justification for a federal ban of online gambling is conspicuously absent. Since the General Welfare clause is not substantive, as Mike Maharrey explains, the only straw left for proponents of big government to grasp is the Commerce clause.

Yet the Commerce clause is also insufficient, as then-Congressman Mick Mulvaney explained in 2015. Before the Constitution, states had created significant trade barriers between each other which stifled economic growth, and this clause was intended to eliminate them by keeping commerce “regular.” Using the commerce clause to justify the precise anti-market policies which it was intended to vanquish would be a perverse Constitutional sin.

The Framers were wise to leave such power to the states, for few things are as economically malicious as a potential ban on an entire industry. The task of an entrepreneur is to satisfy consumers’ demands as efficiently as possible, improving the lives of themselves and their customers. Their job is made more strenuous by the fact that the risk of loss is always hanging overhead.

A reversal from the DOJ would only add to a gambling entrepreneur’s uncertainty by signaling a potential federal ban that would steal the fruits of their labor. This risk of government confiscation is named by economist Robert Higgs as “regime uncertainty.” Dr. Higgs’s exceptional research into regime uncertainty shows that it incentivizes risk averse entrepreneurs to preserve rather than invest their wealth. The results would be fewer jobs, millions in lost tax revenues as New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada can attest, and a shrunken GDP. Indeed, legalization breathed new life into a dying Atlantic City. Furthermore, a ban on online gambling helps monopolize established casinos, which is undoubtedly the motive behind billionaire political donor Sheldon Adelson’s support for it.

Reverting to the Bush administration’s flawed understanding of the Wire Act would violate the states’ right to craft their own online gambling policy by tossing aside the essential protections of the 10th Amendment. As a consequence, entrepreneurs and their potential consumers, the American public, lose out, so that the established casinos can rig the game in their favor. The cards are in William Barr’s hands. One can only hope that the enlightened Mulvaney is whispering in his ear.

*About the author: Nathan Keeble is a Mises University Graduate and helped found the Campaign to End Civil Asset Forfeiture in Tennessee.

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Jeff Seldin

U.S. counterterrorism officials are sticking by their assessment that terror groups like Islamic State and al-Qaida are not actively trying to sneak operatives into the country from Mexico, despite claims by the White House and Homeland Security officials that “the threat is real.”

“We do not see any evidence that ISIS or other Sunni terrorist groups are trying to infiltrate the southern U.S. border,” a senior counterterrorism official first told VOA in November, while acknowledging the existence of “vulnerabilities at both our northern and southern borders.”

Contacted again ahead of President Donald Trump’s prime-time television address Tuesday on what the White House has repeatedly described as a “crisis” at the southern border, officials said there was no new information to cause their assessment to be updated.

The assessment would appear to leave U.S. counterterror officials at odds with both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, which have repeatedly emphasized the danger from suspected terrorists in recent days as the administration has been trying to make the case for building a wall along the border with Mexico.

“The threat is real. The number of terror-watchlisted encountered at our Southern border has increased over the last two years,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote late Monday, the first in a series of tweets on the subject.

“The exact number is sensitive, and details about these cases are extremely sensitive,” she added.

Department of Homeland Security officials have repeatedly said that they stop, on average, about 10 people on the terror watchlist from entering the United State on any given day, and more than 3,700 for Fiscal Year 2017.

According to DHS, “Most of these individuals are trying to enter the U.S. by air, but we must also be focused on stopping those who try to get in by land.”

But data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and first reported by NBC News, indicates that the numbers appear to be low.

From Oct. 1, 2017, through March 31, 2018, CBP said it encountered 41 people at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border who were on the U.S. terror watchlist. All but six were either U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

In comparison, CBP encountered 91 people on the watchlist along the northern border with Canada, including 41 who were not American citizens or legal residents.

But Homeland Security officials insist the threat is larger, pointing to encounters along the southern border with more than 3,000 so-called “special interest aliens” — described as individuals “employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism.”

State Department officials Tuesday defended DHS’s assessment of the danger.

“Transnational terrorists in the Western Hemisphere pose an immediate threat to Americans,” State Department Deputy Spokesman Robert Palladino wrote on Twitter.

“ISIS, al-Qaida, and Lebanese Hizballah operate wherever they can find recruits, raise support, operate unchecked & pursue their terrorist agendas,” he added. “Our southern border remains vulnerable to potential terrorist transit.”

U.S. intelligence officials have long warned Hezbollah, a Shia terror group backed by Iran, has operatives in Central and South America connected to the trade of illegal drugs and weapons.

And while cautioning there is no evidence to support concerns Islamic State or al-Qaida were trying to get into the U.S. from Mexico, the U.S. counterterrorism assessment on the southern border does not rule out potential threats from Hezbollah or Iran.

But if the concern is about Hezbollah or other Shia terrorist groups, officials are not saying. DHS has not responded to questions about the nature of the threat posed by Iranian-linked groups. The State Department referred VOA back to DHS, but also pointed to its 2017 Country Reports on Terrorism.

“At year’s end there was no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels, or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States,” the report stated.

“The U.S. southern border remains vulnerable to potential terrorist transit, although terrorist groups likely seek other means of trying to enter the United States,” it added.​

​Meanwhile, some former officials though, argue that the White House and Department of Homeland Security are exaggerating the nature of the terror threat along the southern U.S. border for political gain.​

“No such crisis exists,” Nicholas Rasmussen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) wrote Tuesday for the online forum Just Security.

“There is no wave of terrorist operatives waiting to cross overland into the United States. It simply isn’t true,” wrote Rasmussen, who led NCTC from December 2014 until December 2017.

“Anyone in authority using this argument to bolster support for building the wall or any other physical barrier along the southern border is most likely guilty of fear mongering and willfully misleading the American people.”

Turkey will ask US officials in talks Tuesday to hand over its military bases in Syria to Ankara or destroy them, the Hurriyet newspaper said.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton was meeting with his Turkish counterpart Ibrahim Kalin Tuesday, days after Bolton added a condition to the US withdrawal, saying Turkey must agree to protect the United States’ Kurdish ally, the YPG militia, which Ankara views as a terrorist group.

President Donald Trump said last month he was bringing home the some US 2,000 troops in Syria, asserting they had succeeded in their mission to defeat Daesh (ISIL or ISIS).

“Give them or destroy them,” a Hurriyet newspaper headline said, referring to what it said were 22 US military bases in Syria, according to Reuters.

It cited unspecified sources as saying Turkey would not accept Washington handing them over to the YPG.

A senior Turkish security official said last week Washington needed to allow Turkey to use its bases in Syria.

With tensions simmering over Trump’s Syria strategy, it was unclear if Bolton would meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Also in Bolton’s delegation were US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and US special Syria envoy James Jeffrey.

Kalin is Erdogan’s spokesman and deputy head of Turkey’s security and foreign policies board.

The 163 Catholics in the new Congress are split on abortion: almost all Republicans are pro-life and almost all Democrats are abortion-rights advocates.

For incumbents, we checked their voting record as scored by NARAL and National Right to Life. Typically, those who received a 100% NARAL score garnered a 0% rating from National Right to Life (which would be most Democrats), and vice versa (which would be most Republicans).

For Freshmen, we checked their stated positions on abortion, and the endorsements they received from pro-life and abortion-rights groups.

There were a few notable exceptions. Among them are Rep. Daniel Lipinski, a Democrat from Illinois: he received a 51% rating from NARAL and a 75% score from National Right to Life.

More Republicans than Democrats differed with the majority in their own party.

For example, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska agreed with NARAL 42% of the time, and with National Right to Life 28% of the time. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine received a 45% score from NARAL and a 42% score from National Right to Life. Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina garnered a score of 51% from NARAL and a rating of 85% from National Right to Life.

It is obvious that religion is not a reliable predictor of the way a Catholic member of the Congress will vote on abortion. Party matters—not religion. To see the entire list, click here.

The EU on Tuesday froze the assets of an Iranian intelligence unit and two of its staff and designated them as terrorists over Tehran’s role in assassinations and other attacks in Europe.

It is the first time the EU has imposed sanctions on Iran since they were lifted three years ago after the 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Denmark’s Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said the decision at a meeting in Brussels was “a strong signal from the EU that we will not accept such behavior.”

France accused Iran of a plot to carry out a bomb attack last summer at a rally near Paris organized by an exiled Iranian opposition group. Denmark says it foiled an Iranian intelligence plan to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure on its soil. The Netherlands said Iran was behind the assassinations of two Dutch nationals of Iranian origin in 2015 and in 2017.

“Iran was informed that involvement in such matters is entirely unacceptable and must be stopped immediately … further sanctions cannot be ruled out,” the EU said.

Tehran’s conduct “shows a pattern of destructive and terrorist behavior,” the Iranian-American Harvard scholar Dr. Majid Rafizadeh told Arab News.

“These assassinations and attacks show that the Iranian regime is increasingly targeting political dissidents abroad, particularly in Europe, in spite of the fact that the EU is attempting to help Iran by sustaining the nuclear deal and the sanctions relief.

“Iran’s increasing attacks and assassinations on European soil highlight the fact that the regime continues to prioritize its revolutionary ideology and principles, which were set by its founding father Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

“The EU should take a firm stance against Iran, otherwise Tehran will be more emboldened and encouraged to increase its attacks on European soil.”

When Chinese President Xi Jinping said last week that Taiwan “must and will be” reunited with China, he meant it. In a speech marking 40 years since Beijing’s call to end the military confrontation across the Taiwan Strait, Xi warned that China reserved the right to use force to bring about a reunification. The next day, Xi met with the Central Military Commission to prepare for armed conflict. In the current geostrategic environment in East Asia, such comments and actions are only a further signal of what may be approaching by 2020 and 2021.

Taiwan’s anti-unification President Tsai Ing-wen countered by saying that Taiwan would never accept reunification with China under any terms offered by Beijing. She said: “I want to reiterate that Taiwan will never accept ‘one country, two systems.’ The vast majority of Taiwanese public opinion also resolutely opposes ‘one country, two systems,’ and this is also the ‘Taiwan consensus’.”

Importantly, for almost 70 years, Taiwan has maintained self-rule. Yet Taiwan’s de facto independence comes at the cost of denied recognition from and membership of the UN instigated by Chinese claims of sovereign rights over the island. By pulling multiple levers, Beijing has discouraged governments around the world from officially recognizing Taiwan or forming any official diplomatic relations with the administration in Taipei. As a result, Taiwan only enjoys full diplomatic relations with fewer than 20 UN member states.

Despite failing to receive recognition as an official state, Taiwan has become one of Asia’s biggest traders and holds a position in the top category of computer technology producers. Taiwan’s role as an important gateway to trade investment in East Asia and mainland China has helped it slowly develop deep economic relations around the world.

Xi’s speech means that Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula, which would make Taiwan like Hong Kong in terms of administration and economy and thus allow China to tap into its industrial advantages, is still a “go” regardless of Taipei’s outlook. Taipei will have nothing to do with Xi’s project for national rejuvenation, where Taiwan represents a lost province refusing to go along with a mainland philosophical requirement concerning “One China.” Tellingly, in the age of interconnectivity, the presidential confrontation is creating a vicious debate, not only on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, but also among the ethnic Chinese diaspora around the world.

With just two years to go until the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, combined with the Taiwanese presidential election in 2020, Beijing seeks to bring Taiwan back under the mainland’s umbrella through reunification. As we know, such a plan is vehemently opposed by Taiwan itself, but also by the US, which has a robust defense relationship with Taipei.

China’s toolkit is wide ranging, depending on the type of pressure Xi intends to bring upon Taiwan at the expense of relations with the US and other Pacific neighbors. China has the most active navy in Asia and has been thinking, practicing and building its armed forces around a scenario involving Taiwan.

The toolkit also sees China sending aircraft and naval vessels across Taiwanese territory and harassing Taiwanese assets and capabilities on a regular basis. Beijing also forces certain notable Taiwanese with business on the mainland to publicly admit they are Chinese and supporters of reunification. China has also encroached on Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic ties, and strong-armed foreign airlines to locate Taiwan as a province of China.

China uses various tactics through information operations to influence Taiwan’s political parties, while also psychologically preparing the Taiwanese populace for reunification. Beijing is arguing that the Han ethnic group in Taiwan is very unhappy about Taiwanese Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) politicians trying to erase their identity. It is a calculated and assertive program that is now being egged on further by Xi. Cultural identity within the Chinese populations across the Taiwan Strait is a powerful driver that sees the mainland able to push this agenda with ease against a democratic system that is subject to scandal and personal interests.

For the US, the China-Taiwan scenario is front and center because of the shifting nature of the US global defense posture to focus on East Asia. Importantly, we must recall that Donald Trump’s decision to be the first US president/president-elect to speak with a Taiwanese leader since the 1970s unleashed anger in mainland China. Now locked in a tariff war with Beijing and a heightening of rhetoric surrounding intense Chinese maritime activity, the Trump administration is increasingly getting ready for a potential China confrontation.

What the above all means is that geopolitical analysts cannot ignore the risks of the following potential scenario. It’s 2020 and the Trump administration’s pro-Taiwan foreign policy prompts officials in Taipei to declare independence on the heels of its presidential election, resulting in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forcefully reuniting Taiwan on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Within three days, the PLA captures the island and secures it under Beijing’s control, creating ripples throughout the entire Pacific region and beyond.

Significantly, there is a Middle East twist. Although this “China storms Taiwan” scenario would unfold far from the region’s shores, Middle East states must maintain awareness of the Trump administration’s policy toward the ongoing dispute and be cognizant of Chinese moves and motives on and against Taiwan, especially if and when there is political and economic fallout for the future of the Trump presidency.

Finally, a key question is whether or not the Arab states will see eye-to-eye on Trump’s use of Taiwan as a bargaining chip with China. With Trump, the Middle East faces a different geo-economic reality, with the US continuing its aggressive style with China and vice versa. Consequently, the stakes are very high indeed.

By Osama Al Sharif*

Two top US officials have been dispatched to the Middle East on a salvaging mission aimed at calming allies and clarifying policy following last month’s surprise decision by President Donald Trump to pull his troops from northern Syria within a few months. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday began a major tour of the region that will take him to Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. His agenda is full and will cover a wide range of topics. Meanwhile, National Security Adviser John Bolton has visited Israel and Turkey. 

Their visits followed Trump’s declaration on Sunday that he did not tie the US troop withdrawal from Syria to a timetable. He appeared to be walking back on his initial position, which was taken without consultation with senior officials or with allies. His unilateral decision last month forced his Defense Secretary James Mattis to resign in protest and was criticized by top lawmakers in Congress from both the Republican and Democratic parties. 

Trump’s tweets on the issue have rattled US allies, including Israel. Russia, Iran and the Syrian government welcomed Trump’s withdrawal decision and triggered a domino effect. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his troops would soon launch an operation east of the Euphrates aimed at quashing Kurdish militias who are backed by the US. Syrian Kurds, feeling abandoned and fearful of a Turkish onslaught, began negotiations with Damascus and asked for Moscow’s mediation to hand over key positions to the Syrian government in return for some form of self-rule.

Meanwhile, reports confirmed that Daesh remains active in Syria’s eastern desert and that Trump’s claim that he has defeated the terrorist organization was exaggerated. The US president was apparently assured by Erdogan that Turkey can take over from the Americans in fighting Daesh in Syria. But Ankara’s agenda in Syria has more to do with crushing the Kurds than anything else.

Now Bolton has warned Turkey not to attack the Syrian Democratic Forces and to coordinate with Washington before deploying its troops in Syrian Kurdish areas. The warning has put a damper on Erdogan’s ambitions, drawn his ire and reshuffled the cards once more.

No matter whether the damage control missions by Pompeo and Bolton succeed for now, Trump’s unpredictability and his maverick approach to complicated issues has left his allies, not to mention his foes, wondering what will come next. For Israel, the US disengagement from Syria constitutes a major blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has campaigned locally, regionally and internationally to warn of Iran’s menacing presence not far from his borders.

Pompeo is expected to realign US policy on a number of regional issues, from confronting Iranian threats to crushing Daesh and ending the war in Yemen. One senior State Department official was quoted as saying that Pompeo’s visit would demonstrate that the US was “not leaving the Middle East” and that there had been “false narratives surrounding the Syria decision.”

But, while both US officials will seek to explain Trump’s decision on Syria and reassure allies, the fact remains that American troops will be pulling out some time in the next few months — that is unless the president reverses his stand. One US official said last week that “we are formulating plans to withdraw in a deliberate and coordinated way,” adding that “we will be leaving in such a way that we do not leave a vacuum for terrorists to exploit.” This state of uncertainty will have geopolitical consequences for the Kurds, Turkey and the Syrian regime, as well as for Israel, Russia and Iran.

Trump’s view of the US presence in the Middle East, and the world, may reach a tipping point at any moment. His reaction toward Israel’s possible vulnerability as a result of the proposed pullout has shocked the Israeli establishment. He said that the US pays Tel Aviv billions of dollars each year and that it can take care of itself. His statement resonates with previous tweets on how the US spends billions of dollars in the region and gets nothing in return.

So, while at least some of America’s allies may be reassured by Bolton and Pompeo, for now, the reality is that, in Trump’s world, the status quo can change at any moment. The political fallout from his whimsical and rushed decisions on Syria and Afghanistan are already being felt.

• Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. Twitter: @plato010