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Bosnia: Theory Of Dediscoursification And Dayton As Continuation Of State Of War

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The theory of dediscoursification explains in detail what exactly happens when language fails; that is, when some political actors gradually come to a realization that, to their shared problems or political conflict, they are unlikely to find a joint solution in the medium of language.

By Dražen Pehar

Over the last few years I have developed a theory of dediscoursification as one of the major causes of armed conflict.[1] The Key premise of the theory may be put in the words of a hero from Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s novel, “war is what happens when language fails.” The theory of dediscoursification explains in detail what exactly happens when language fails; that is, when some political actors gradually come to a realization that, to their shared problems or political conflict, they are unlikely to find a joint solution in the medium of language, or that their ens loquens is likely to be replaced with ens belli.  The theory aims to elucidate the ways in which something tragically harmful is happening with language in the condition when some individuals use it in an insufficiently rational and considerate, and most importantly in an insufficiently moral, way.

Hence, when you have at least two actors who hold prima facie irreconcilable views of some key issues they consider of critical importance to themselves and their relationship, the two may try to bridge the difference through negotiations, i.e. through the use of language in accordance with some shared, commonly-accepted standards. However, if the two do not use language in accordance with such standards, the phenomenon of dediscoursification will take place, which means that they will cease to believe in the possibility of coming to an agreement within the medium of language, by negotiating. A special kind of silence will descend over such actors, one that indicates not only that the two have no further word to say to one another, but also that one actor started viewing another as a fundamentally immoral user of language: as one who uses it in such a way that the use demonstrates his or her non-sociability and general impenetrability to the negotiating effort. Typically, one actor starts characterizing another as a liar, or as a speaker generally disinclined to offer sound and initially plausible argument, or as incoherent, or often also as a promise-breaker. Whenever such a characterization is given, we know nearly for certain that the users of language will be, at worst, inclined to jump at each other’s throats, or at best, take a significant and enduring distance from each other. In other words, even in the best case scenario, after dediscoursificiation takes its toll in a social relationship, the relationship ceases to be, that is, the actors are no longer capable of forming a coherent whole, an association.

One of the key theses of the theory of dediscoursification reads as follows: such arriving at a conclusion concerning a discourse of one’s at least potential partner can be, and often is, fully based on rational grounds. In other words, one who characterizes another actor as a dediscoursifier, as a party who uses language in the way that ‘annihilates’ language itself, which opens the door to the use of non-discursive means as a tool of political conflict resolution, can be fully right in two senses: the dediscoursifier violates some intersubjectively valid standards of the use of discourse, and, secondly, his or her violation reaches the point at which one who qualifies him or her as a dediscoursifier cannot escape his own conclusion despite his best intentions. I deem this to be an acceptable idea simply due to the fact that the description of a speaker as a liar, or as a promise-breaker, can be both rational and well-founded, and can also be inter-subjetively valid in the sense that all rational users of language are likely to agree with such a description. However, we should also bear in mind that dediscoursification is in some societies generated as a cultural pattern; it is promoted through some stereotypes ‘triggered’ in some critical moments: for instance, in some societies one who aims to resolve political problems or conflicts by negotiating is valued less than those who respond to the fact of conflict by some violent response: as, for example, those who dare to fight physically for ‘the right’ that they claim.[2] I will here put such kind of propagation of dediscoursification aside – I think it is much less interesting than the case in which dediscoursification takes place through a series of experiences with an actual partner to an actual communicative process.

Hence, for a start, we should memorize that dediscoursification is a process triggered by some violations of some discursive values that, within a society, have the status of both discursive and moral values: for instance, truth, rational and coherent argumentation, and fulfilment of promise, without which language obviously would not make sense nor serve as a key means of the securing of cooperation within a group.[3] Implementation of such values reminds us of the fact that language is indeed a foundational, or Ur-, institution to any community, and that all other institutions depend on this basic one. There is no way for a functional institution to be staffed by liars or by those who often utter contradictions or by promise-breakers. The institutions that are so staffed disintegrate rapidly. The violation of discursive values as also moral ones lead unavoidably to the conclusion on principled non-sociability of some actors, which then leads to the conclusion that one is unable to arrive in partnership with such actors at an agreement concerning some issues that are of vital importance to a political conflict; this is, as the theory points out, a truly grave and dangerous situation: the other is taken as somebody over which we cannot exert a verbal influence, and as somebody who does not want to exert such influence over us. To this the process of dehumanization will soon follow as well simply because a human being defines him- or herself primarily as a being endowed with logos, a capacity of reasoned use of discourse; to which a tension, insecurity, distrust, uncertainty then follow automatically – in such a condition a noise of bumble bee is all one need to trigger the avalanche of violence, metaphorically speaking.

Obviously, the theory of dediscoursification is set on premises of discourse-ethics. There are many advocates of such ethical perspective, which is in contemporary setting normally related to the work of Karl Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas.[4] However, it is important to have in mind that the tradition of discourse-ethics is much older than Apel or Habermas. I personally find some advocates of discourse-ethics who are more practice-oriented, and who standard philosophical or historical presentations do not include, much more inspiring and informative than either Apel or Habermas: for instance, a classical Greek rhetorician and theorist of language, Isocrates, or his follower from the era of Second Sophistic, Publius Aelius Aristides, and certainly George Orwell and Hannah Arendt among modern analysts.[5] Looking from the angle of political theory, the theory of dediscoursification leans primarily on two theoretical approaches: first, generally, in the sense of its conceptualization of the state of war, the theory draws on Hobbes and Clausewitz who both insist that “war is a continuation of politics by other means.” Secondly, and more specifically, the theory draws on republican political theory that theorizes the notion of liberty in light of the master-slave relationship as a relationship of primarily discursive character, and also as a relationship that involves continuation of the state of war through the period of an apparent peace (typically, a master treats his slave as ‘the spoils of war’).[6] Finally, from an epistemological-methodological point of view, the theory of dediscoursification adheres to the principles of methodological individualism – whenever we address the issue of dediscoursifying, we have to address some specific individuals as concrete users of language within a specific social-political context.[7] It is undeniable that a whole bunch of people suffers from an armed conflict, but we should not forget that, to a large extent, war is an effect of a flawed way in which some individuals use, and relate to, their own language primarily.

From the angle of empirical relevance of the theory of dediscoursification, I deem it well-grounded and supported by many examples from political history. The frequency with which some political actors assume a meta-lingual perspective concerning some other actors’ language, in the periods preceding the outbreak of war, is high; in other words, in the periods preceding the start of armed violence, some actors explicitly describe the other actors’ language as fundamentally flawed and irreparable: Egyptian president Nasser in 1968 emphasized that the force of arms is “the only language Israel understands;” similarly to Nasser, prior to the outbreak of war with Sparta in 5th century BC, Athenian statesman Pericles concluded that “they [Spartans] prefer war to negotiation as a means of settling the issue of complaints [about the Athenian way of interpreting of a clause of Thirty Year Peace]”, while the British Prime minister Chamberlain’s declaration of war against Germany in 1939 contains the following words: “The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted, and no people or country could feel itself safe had become intolerable.” [8] The theory of dediscoursification is capable of providing a detailed and persuasive explanation of the ways through which the said political actors drew the conclusions embodied in the above propositions, and also through which some other political actors drew similar conclusions in similar situations (for instance, Milošević at the time of the collapse of Rambouillet negotiations, or Frederick Douglass in the aftermath of notorious ‘Dred Scott’ ruling by the US Supreme Court, which was one of the major causes of American Civil War).

To the readers from Balkans, or to those who are keenly interested in political relations within the region, the most interesting question may be put as follows: how is it with the process of dediscoursifying in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), especially prior to the outbreak of 1992-1995 armed violence, and perhaps even today?

Dražen Pehar has a PhD in politics and international relations from Keele University (SPIRE 2006), holds an assistant professorship (BiH) in the philosophy of law and in politics with sociology. Dražen is a DiploFoundation Associate, and previously served as Chief of Staff to the BiH Federation President (1996) and as a media analyst to the OHR (1999/2000). Dražen is also part of the Institute for Social and Political Research (IDPI), a member of theGlobal Coalition for Conflict Transformation

Footnotes

1) See Pehar (2011, 81-89), (2012), (2013); for some early response, see Matteucci (2012) and Chamberlain (2013); in my previous work I used the word ‘dediscoursation;’ following a sensible suggestion by Philip Pettit, the term is now changed to ‘dediscoursification.’

2) Also we need to remember that some nations are inclined to characterize themselves as nations ‘that in the times of peace lose the gains made in the times of war;’ we find such a cultural stereotype in diverse nations, for which see (2013, 14).

3) More precisely, in Pehar (2013) I advocate the view that such discursive values can be reduced to four foundamental ones: ‘meaning’, ‘truth’, ‘reason’, and ‘promising.’

4) Apel (1973), Habermas (1983); also Kettner (2006)

5) Orwell (1961), Arendt (1972)

6) For the principles of republican political theory, see, for example, Pettit (1999) and Bobbio, Viroli (2003)

7) Those who are interested in the perspective of methodological individualism should consult primarily the work by Jon Elster.

8) For the sources, see Pehar (2013, 3).

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Albania PM Makes Historic Visit To Serbia

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Edi Rama became the first Albanian premier to visit Belgrade in almost 70 years, but a disagreement with the Serbian prime minister over Kosovo highlighted obstacles to improving relations.

Rama on Monday became the first Albanian leader to visit Serbia since Communist dictator Enver Hoxha made the trip in 1946, when Josip Broz Tito was in power, but the occasion was marred by an angry exchange between the two country’s prime ministers over Kosovo.

Rama’s Serbian counterpart, Aleksander Vucic, told a joint press conference that he welcomed the fact that the leaders of the two states were meeting for the first time in 68 years, and said it could open up a new chapter in Serbian-Albanian ties.

“I hope this visit is a new beginning for pragmatic relations, relations focused on advancing our political and economic relations,” Vucic said.

He said that he wanted to look “to the future, not the past”.

“I know that in Serbia and Albania it is easy to stir up ethnic tensions because that wins political points. But I have not been chosen [as prime minister] to make easy decisions, but to take care of the future of Serbia,” he added.

However in a sign that political differences still run deep, Vucic expressed anger when Rama referred to Kosovo’s independence as a reality.

“Kosovo is independent, recognised by 108 countries across the world and supported by a decision by the International Court of Justice, which is undeniable,” Rama said.

The Albanian premier argued that Kosovo’s independence had made the Balkans safer, and praised the EU-mediated dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina to normalise relations.

“We value and promote the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia as the embodiment of the new period of peace and European consciousness in our region,” he said.

The Serbian premier said this was a provocation, and insisted that Kosovo remains part of Serbia.

“I did not expect a provocation from Rama and did not expect him to talk about Kosovo… It is my job not to allow anyone to humiliate Serbia,” he said.

Asked a question about Kosovo by an Albanian journalist, Vucic then retorted: “I have shown you true Serbian hospitality, and you come in and talk about Kosovo?”

Meanwhile Serbian public broadcaster RTS transmitted the press conference live but did not provide any translation of anything said by Rama, who was speaking in Albanian.

Relations between Serbia and Albania have long been poor, and worsened sharply during the conflict in the late 1990s in Kosovo, then a province of Serbia with a mainly Albanian population.

But both countries are now striving to join the European Union and the visit has been touted as a way for Belgrade and Tirana to put past differences behind them.

However the visit was postponed from October 22 after tensions spiked following unrest at the Euro 2016 football tournament qualifier between Serbia and Albania in Belgrade on October 14.

The football match was abandoned when brawls erupted after a drone bearing a map of “Greater Albania” was flown over the stadium.

As fighting started on the pitch, some Albanian players were assaulted by Serbian fans who had invaded the field.

Serbian officials then accused Rama’s own brother, Olsi Rama, of holding the remote control for the drone, which he strongly denied.

Following the game, the Albanian and Serbian prime ministers had a sharp exchange of views on Twitter.

On the second day of his visit, Rama is due to visit the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia, which is home to many ethnic Albanians.

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Central African Republic: Urge End To Killings, Says HRW

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The International Contact Group for the Central African Republic, due to meet on November 11, 2014, should publicly call for an end to the sectarian violence, Human Rights Watch said today. The group, meeting for the first time in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, should remind all armed actors that those responsible for grave human rights abuses will be held to account.

“Ending the violence against civilians in the Central African Republic should be the top priority at the contact group’s first meeting in Bangui,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This is a critical moment for international policy makers to say loudly and clearly that those who kill, torture, and rape will one day face a court of law. The time of impunity is over.”

The contact group includes representatives of the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the Economic Community of Central African States, the United States, France and the Republic of Congo. It last met in in July in Addis Ababa.

The Central African Republic has been in acute crisis since early 2013, when the mostly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in a campaign characterized by widespread killing of civilians, burning and looting of homes, and other serious crimes. In mid-2013, groups calling themselves the anti-balaka organized to fight against the Seleka. The anti-balaka began committing large-scale reprisal attacks against Muslim civilians and others.

The deadly cycle of sectarian violence has been escalating in central and eastern parts of the country in recent months, particularly in Ouaka and Nana-Gribizi prefectures, despite the signing of a ceasefire agreement in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, on July 23.

In September, Human Rights Watch documented the killing of at least 146 people since June in and around the towns of Bambari, Bakala, Mbres, and Dekoa, all in central and eastern regions. This figure represents only a fraction of the total since many killings were in remote areas that are difficult to reach. In October there was renewed violence in Bangui that left at least a dozen people dead.

Human Rights Watch urged the contact group to issue a public declaration after their meeting reminding all armed actors that the violence against civilians should cease and that that they could one day face justice, either in national courts or before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Following a request by the transitional government, the prosecutor of the ICC announced in September that her office was opening a second investigation in the Central African Republic for grave crimes allegedly committed since August 2012.

Important efforts are also underway to strengthen the capacity of the national judicial system to handle grave international crimes. In April, Interim President Catherine Samba Panza created by decree a Special Investigative Cell and discussions are ongoing about the establishment of a Special Criminal Court.

Contact group participants should urge the interim government to fully cooperate with the ICC and to move quickly to create an effective, impartial, and fair mechanism within the CAR penal system for the investigation and prosecution of grave crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

The group should also insist that all humanitarian actors have access to those in need and note that deliberately blocking such access is a violation of international law.

“The people of the Central African Republic need to know that international policy makers stand with them in their desire for an end to the violence and for justice,” Bekele said. “While in Bangui, the contact group should seize the opportunity to tell the armed actors directly that they must respect international humanitarian law.”

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Syria: Local Ceasefires Offer Respite For Civilians And Glimpse Of Peace

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Local ceasefires could hold the key to easing humanitarian suffering in Syria and build momentum towards ending the bloody conflict, if backed by the international community in the context of a wider peace plan, according to a new report by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Madani organisation to be released at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut tomorrow (Tuesday 11 November).

The report, ‘Hungry for Peace’, documents local negotiations and agreements in Syria since early 2012 which have helped to bring respite, aid, services and hope to thousands of civilians caught up in the brutal war. But the report also finds that with trust between parties at rock bottom, deals are often manipulated and there is a lack of neutral go-betweens. The report argues that these truces have the potential to protect and provide for Syria’s war-devastated people but only if international support is expanded. The international community needs to provide dedicated mediation and monitoring services and relate local truces to efforts at finding an overall political solution.

“After three and a half painful years, Syrians are yearning for peace,” said Dr Rim Turkmani an LSE research fellow, Syrian activist and lead author of the report. “While global efforts to pursue a political solution are rapidly being de-prioritised, Syrians are pushing for periods of calm by brokering local deals. In some case these have stopped the fighting and opened up the flow of aid, other deals succeeded in restoring water and electricity services to a large area. Even when negotiations fail, they reflect strong local potential and desire for stability that remains untapped. There must be a combined bottom-up and top-down effort to achieve peace in Syria, neither alone will do.”

Although there are many formidable drivers of the Syria conflict – from the interests of regional and global powers, to a burgeoning war economy – the report reveals civilian pressure and involvement can be key to the possibility and durability of ceasefires, and have been proven to reduce death tolls and open up humanitarian access. For example, a truce brokered locally in Barzeh in Northeast Damascus in early January enabled the UN World Food Programme to provide people with food assistance for the first time in over a year, and allowed thousands of people to return.

The report concludes that deals are struck for a variety of different reasons, including pressure from civilians, the provision of services, access to strategic resources and the military stalemate. In some cases deals are sought as a military tactic to free up resources to fight elsewhere. This was the case in Madaya where a truce was used by the Syrian army to secure road access for an attack on a neighbouring rebel-held area, which is why the report emphasises the need for a wider peace-plan supported by relevant world leaders.

The international community, the report argues, can help local deals stick and create larger areas of stability. It cites the example of a nationwide ceasefire brokered in April 2012 that was monitored by the UN for several weeks, during which time the number of people killed fell by 25 per cent. However international support has been woefully lacking since the withdrawal of UN monitoring mission in June 2012, but a new action plan by the UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura to support “freezes” in fighting offers some hope.

“Everything else has failed to make a tangible difference to the lives of Syrians,” said Professor Mary Kaldor, co-author or the report, “but deals in Ras al-Ein and Barzeh do show the potential to bring warring parties to the negotiating table and reach agreements that help alleviate the humanitarian suffering. However local truces will only be sustainable and a step towards a political solution if they are properly monitored and mediated by the international community and include the vital force for peace that is Syrian civil society.”

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Al-Qaeda’s Syrian Judiciary: Is It Really What Al-Jolani Makes It Out To Be? – Analysis

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By Maxwell Martin* for Syria Comment

On November 4th, 2014, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the leader of al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, released a recording in which he spoke about what the militant group has been up to lately. While many observers’ attention was focused on what al-Jolani had to say about the Nusra Front’s recent altercation with the Western-backed Syrian Revolutionaries Front in Idlib, the recording was also noteworthy for al-Jolani’s lengthy discussion of Dar al-Qadaa, meaning “the judiciary,” a new network of courts that the group spearheaded in July 2014. It provided the clearest view yet of the thinking behind the establishment of Dar al-Qadaa, including the Nusra Front’s interpretation of the practical and doctrinal problems that the group sought to eschew when it withdrew from other court networks it previously backed with the Islamic Front. But is Dar al-Qadaa all that al-Jolani makes it out to be?

Whither the sharia commissions?

According to al-Jolani, the Nusra Front withdrew from the sharia commissions it jointly backed with Islamic Front factions Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid, and Suqur al-Sham because of the crippling influence of factional infighting. “Some looked at the commissions as a way to implement the sharia, which was right,” noted al-Jolani in a not-so-veiled reference to his own group, “while others looked at the commissions as a political front from which they wished to gain. Still others saw some kind of weakness in the commissions and wanted to drag them into cooperation with the [Syrian Opposition] Coalition,” a puppet of the West, according to the group. Previously, the Nusra Front lamented the fact that other factions simply ignored the sharia commissions when it suited them, establishing in-house judicial bodies instead. As a result, the commissions “lost the essential purpose for which they were established.”

Unsatisfied with the sharia commissions’ performance and commitment to implementing an acceptable interpretation of Islamic law, the Nusra Front undertook “to establish an alternative to the sharia commissions with stricter rules.” To rectify the internal friction that hindered the sharia commissions’ work, al-Jolani turned to other jihadi factions to help prop the new court network up and to ensure a kind of cross-factional legitimacy. Other hardline factions were invited to join the project, but al-Jolani insisted that “those who participate in Dar al-Qadaa must agree with [the Nusra Front] on the goals and the means to achieve those goals.”

Despite the Nusra Front’s controlling influence over the new project, the court network was to be separate from armed factions, and al-Jolani promised that Nusra Front fighters would be the first to submit to the new court’s authority. Dar al-Qadaa claims to be entirely independent, and jihadi fundraiser and hype-man ‘Abdullah al-Muheisini’s reported involvement in shopping the project around would seem to underscore the court’s nominal autonomy. In the past, al-Muheisini has insisted that initiatives in which he has been involved not have any affiliation with any particular faction. As such, Dar al-Qadaa’s denunciation of “the repugnant system of factional quotas” that prevailed in the sharia commissions highlights that at least on its face, Dar al-Qadaa is not intended to be a multilateral factional enterprise, but an unaffiliated, salafi-jihadi project.

The Nusra Front’s—and other jihadi groups’—renewed focus on governance and on the law was also spurred by other developments in the opposition judiciary. Al-Jolani noted that other groups, including lawyers unions, were striving to fill the justice vacuum by implementing man-made laws instead of the sharia, a grave offense in the Nusra Front’s worldview. Even the Aleppo Sharia Commission, the most prominent of the commissions in which the Nusra Front had participated, was considering taking up the Unified Arab Code, a codified version of Islamic law that is unacceptable to salafi-jihadis of al-Qaeda’s persuasion.

The challenge of multi-factional justice

Dar al-Qadaa, however, has its detractors. Last week, a former jurist in the court’s Latakia branch blasted the new judicial body, saying that it was already corrupt and beset by factionalism. The jurist, Salman al-‘Arjani, was originally of Sham al-Islam, a mostly Moroccan foreign fighter jihadi outfit, but has since defected to the Islamic State. His litany of complaints against Dar al-Qadaa included the story of how a Nusra Front emir got away with a vicious assault on a married couple because the group’s judge let him out of jail, fearing retribution if he did not, before absconding to a nearby Nusra Front stronghold in Idlib. Al-‘Arjani also complained that the Nusra Front judge unlawfully set a Free Syrian Army commander free, infuriating the independent judges in the Latakia branch of Dar al-Qadaa and leading them to suspend their work.

But al-‘Arjani went further, accusing the same emir of apostasy for replacing a cross that jihadis had torn down inside a church during a recent offensive against the mostly-Christian town of Kassab. Al-‘Arjani and other hardliners were so incensed, he said, that “some of the mujahidin were determined to kill” the emir. The result of these acts, insisted al-‘Arjani, was that the Nusra Front had “made a mockery of God’s law.”

Whether or not we take al-‘Arjani at his word, his critique implies that Dar al-Qadaa may be suffering from some of the same problems that drove the Nusra Front to establish it in the first place. The Nusra Front’s admitted oversized role in the court may tempt it—or at least individual influential members—to skirt the rules when doing so is in their interest. At the very least, it reveals the difficulty groups face when jointly attempting to govern, even among an ostensibly like-minded group of salafi-jihadis; Unlike the Islamic State—which enjoys nearly unchallenged “sovereignty” where it governs—the Nusra Front must balance between a diverse set of highly opinionated jihadis—including, apparently, ones that are more extreme than the Nusra Front itself. The process can result in a fragile consensus, challenging the overall coherence of the Nusra Front’s approach to governance and resulting in the same kind of discord that frustrated the sharia commissions’ aspirations to judicial supremacy.

Striving for Society’s Embrace

As the Nusra Front expands its footprint in northern Syria and replaces other, more nationalist-oriented armed groups—the rule of which was marred by accusations of thuggery and banditry—the performance of its judicial arm in Dar al-Qadaa will be critical. Whether the Nusra Front is seen as fair in its administration of opposition-held territories will have implications for its ability to generate popular support, or al-hadina al-sha’biyya—society’s embrace—that the group has at times deemed necessary for its success, both on the battlefield and in Islamizing Syrian society in al-Qaeda’s image. However, the group will have to balance what they deem popular and religiously acceptable governance with other, harder-line views within the coalition of non-Islamic State-aligned jihadi groups of how to best implement Islamic law, a process that could see the Nusra Front dragged further out of synch with the populations it hopes to court.

*Maxwell Martin is a researcher at ARK, a stabilization consultancy based in Turkey that has implemented justice related programming in northern Syria.

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Renewed Relevance And Visibility: Switzerland’s Chairmanship Of OSCE – Analysis

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While acting as the OSCE’s 2014 Chairman, has Switzerland been effective in handling the Ukraine crisis? Yes, says Stephanie Liechtenstein, and for three reasons – the resources Bern has dedicated to the task; its ability to act as an honest and neutral broker; and its capacity to lead under difficult circumstances.

By Stephanie Liechtenstein

When Switzerland took over the chairmanship of the OSCE on 1st January, it expected to take the helm of a split organization that was widely regarded as blocked, increasingly irrelevant and as being in the process of scaling down – but things turned out very differently. A major crisis broke out in Ukraine that called into question all normative foundations of European security and international law, and necessitated a large and rapid operational response. The OSCE – together with Switzerland as its Chair – suddenly went from obscurity into the spotlight.

A Difficult Start

Under the tagline ‘creating a security community for the benefit of everyone’, Bern initially prepared a well-balanced set of priorities for its chairmanship. For the first time in the organization’s history, Switzerland also formed a consecutive chairmanship with Serbia and presented a joint work-plan with the joint goals of improving reconciliation and cooperation in the Western Balkans and making as much headway as possible with the so-called Helsinki+40 Process. The latter sets out to achieve as many concrete deliverables as possible by the end of 2015 (the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act) on issues such as the future role of the OSCE and the creation of a united and indivisible security community. However, mounting tensions in Ukraine forced Switzerland to reorganize and refocus its chairmanship and assume the role of an active crisis manager for the most dangerous East-West confrontation on European soil since the end of the Cold War.

In this respect, the early part of Switzerland’s stewardship of the OSCE undoubtedly adds credibility to Walter Kemp’s argument that OSCE chairmanships are ultimately defined by their ability to deal with stormy weather. One of Bern’s first challenges was the intensifying stand-off between Russia and Ukraine over the Crimean peninsula. Germany and the United States initially hoped that the OSCE could serve as an “off-ramp” for Russia out of the crisis and suggested that Russian troops could return to their barracks while the OSCE sought to ensure minority rights for ethnic Russians living in Crimea. Yet, Russia decided against this and officially annexed Crimea on 18 March, handing the entire international community with a fait accompli. However, that’s not to say that Bern sat idly by as the Crimean crisis unfurled. On 24th February, Ambassador Tim Guldimann was appointed Personal Representative on Ukraine by the Swiss OSCE Chairperson-in-Office (CIO) and current Swiss President Didier Burkhalter. In this capacity, Guldimann at least succeeded in visiting Crimea at the beginning of March and made great efforts to facilitate dialogue and to help defuse tensions. However, Switzerland and the rest of the OSCE could only watch as Russia made inroads into Ukraine.

On top of the Crimea crisis, Switzerland was also confronted with criticism by the United States. Washington viewed a number of comments made by Switzerland’s personal representative on Ukraine as being too friendly and accommodating towards Russia [1]. “One of the unique features of the OSCE is that it is grounded in a set of principles and is based on a comprehensive approach to security,” says Ambassador Daniel Baer, Permanent Representative of the US to the OSCE. “As OSCE Chair you have to lead the Organization and that leadership should be defined by strictly holding on to those principles and holding those responsible who are violating them.”

Crisis Management Begins

Criticism aside, Switzerland was nevertheless instrumental in initiating negotiations on a Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine. However, these efforts were initially complicated by Russia’s refusal to attend talks in Vienna. Indeed, Moscow’s attendance was only guaranteed after Didier Burkhalter helped to convince Vladimir Putin that such a mission could help to protect Russian speaking minorities in eastern Ukraine. That said, negotiations stalled several times over the following weeks and were only unblocked after being taken to the level of foreign ministers or heads of state. The main stumbling block related to the geographic scope of the mission’s deployment. While the West and Ukraine wanted the deployment to include Crimea, the Russian Federation was vehemently opposed to this proposal.

Ultimately, the deadlock could only be overcome with the deliberate use of ambiguous language in the final text of the mandate. Ambassador Thomas Greminger, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the OSCE and Chairperson of the OSCE Permanent Council, describes the successful outcome of the negotiation process as a team effort between the Swiss Chairmanship and the German government. Indeed, the role played by Germany in this and subsequent efforts was crucial, given that Berlin , “views the approach underlying the OSCE as consistent with the basic tenets of its foreign policy,” claims Ambassador Rüdiger Lüdeking, Permanent Representative of Germany to the OSCE.

Winter into Summer

With consensus finally reached on the 21st March, the OSCE began to prepare for its first large-scale mission in over a decade. The first monitors were deployed to Ukraine within 24 hours of the mandate’s approval by the Permanent Council in Vienna. According to Ambassador Christian Strohal, the Permanent Representative of Austria to the OSCE, Switzerland not only demonstrated leadership during the negotiations, it also helped the OSCE to gain considerable visibility and relevance. In addition, the fact that all 57 participating-states supported the decision provided the mission with a great deal of legitimacy and credibility. Over the next few months, the SMM was instrumental in providing impartial facts in an increasingly polarized conflict environment. SMM monitors were among the first on the scene of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 disaster, and used contacts on both sides of the conflict to facilitate expert investigations of the crash site.

Switzerland’s next attempt to deescalate the Ukraine crisis came at the beginning of May with a proposed “roadmap for concrete steps forward”. The roadmap was aimed at implementing the Geneva Joint Statement of 17th April signed by the US, EU, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Widely regarded at the time as a diplomatic breakthrough, the Joint Statement called for a cessation of violence, the disarming of illegally armed groups, and vacation of illegally occupied buildings. The OSCE SMM was tasked with supporting these measures and working towards the establishment of a broad national dialogue. To support this, Switzerland proposed the initiation of a series of Ukrainian-owned National Dialogue Roundtables. However, the situation on the ground in Ukraine was not conducive to continuing the dialogue process beyond the 25 May elections. Fighting continued and two OSCE SMM teams were abducted and taken as hostages by rebels.

At this point, calls for the formation of a contact group (as suggested by CiO Burkhalter as early as 24 February during his briefing to the UN Security Council) gathered momentum. On 8 June, Burkhalter appointed the experienced Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini to accompany the talks of the Trilateral Contact Group, consisting of representatives of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and the OSCE. The Trilateral Contact Group, under the auspices of the OSCE, had the advantage of being able to hold regular video conferences with rebels and also face-to-face meetings with them in Minsk without offending either Kiev or Moscow. The group was also instrumental in negotiating access to the MH17 crash site alongside helping to negotiate the release of the OSCE monitors and eventually bringing about a ceasefire on 5 September.

Business as usual in Basel?

Currently, the Swiss chairmanship is preparing to host the OSCE Ministerial Council (MC) meeting in Basel on 4-5 December. It’s a meeting that will be dominated by the Ukraine crisis and its impact on the principles of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the 2010 Astana Commemorative Declaration. “The OSCE MC in Basel cannot be business as usual,” stresses Walter Kemp of the International Peace Institute. It will also go a long way to determining the overall success of Switzerland’s Chairmanship of the OSCE. So what should be expected from the Basel MC meeting? “The Swiss OSCE Chairmanship wants to start a process that deals with core and basic questions of European security in the medium and long term,” explains Ambassador Greminger.” One idea involves setting up and officially launching a Panel of Eminent Persons that could propose recommendations on how European security can be strengthened in light of the new challenges posed by the Ukraine crisis. In addition, the Swiss Chair wants to reinvigorate the Helsinki+40 Process by feeding the lessons learned from the Ukraine crisis in to this process.

Switzerland will also table a number of draft decisions in each of the OSCE’s three security dimensions. Possible topics for MC decisions could be the issue of foreign fighters and kidnapping for ransom, disaster risk reduction, prevention of torture, strengthening mediation efforts in the OSCE area, combating transnational threats and a youth action plan. Furthermore, the MC will have to take a decision on who will hold the OSCE chairmanship in 2016 and 2017, with Germany and Austria very strong candidates.

A Successful Chairmanship?

Few (if any) OSCE chairmanships have had to deal with the chain of events that have befallen Switzerland in 2014. If anything, the challenges posed by the Ukraine crisis can only be compared to those faced by the 1999 Norwegian OSCE chairmanship as a result of the Kosovo crisis. Yet, Switzerland has succeeded in assuming leadership of the OSCE and acting as a broker between participating states. Indeed, it became increasingly clear over the course of the Swiss chairmanship that the OSCE had stepped in and filled a void in the high-level management of the Ukraine conflict. Other international organizations such as the EU or the UN were increasingly ruled out as they were either seen as ‘part of the problem’ by some or as not having the appropriate mandate by others.

Consequently, a number of factors help to explain Bern’s efficient handling of the Ukraine crisis. First, Switzerland was able to provide sufficient financial resources for its Chairmanship and could draw on a pool of experienced diplomats to support its activities. In addition, Swiss neutrality provided Bern with opportunities to act as an ‘honest broker’ between East and West. This is of particular relevance as the OSCE takes decisions by consensus and the core task of the OSCE chairmanship is to help build this among the 57 participating states. Finally, Didier Burkhalter’s role should not be downplayed. His status as OSCE Chairperson in Office (CiO), Swiss Foreign Minister and President of Switzerland has provided him gravitas and access to assume leadership under difficult circumstances.

In this context, Switzerland has significantly enhanced the international profile and relevance of the OSCE by focusing on the organization’s operational effectiveness and its role as a forum for high-level political dialogue. As Ambassador Strohal rightly says, “the OSCE and its core commitments are more relevant than ever. If the OSCE did not exist today, one would have to invent it.” The question is whether that would still be possible today.

[1] The Russian delegation to the OSCE was not available for interview.

Stephanie Liechtenstein works as website editor for the quarterly journal ‘Security and Human Rights’. She has held several positions in the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna (among them senior political assistant to the OSCE Secretary General) between 2003 and 2008. She has also worked as part-time researcher for the International Peace Institute and the University of Vienna. Ms. Liechtenstein holds a Master Degree in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics (LSE) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Political Science at the University of Vienna.

The post Renewed Relevance And Visibility: Switzerland’s Chairmanship Of OSCE – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Russia’s Vulnerability To EU – US Sanctions And Military Encroachments – OpEd

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The US-EU sponsored coup in the Ukraine and its conversion from a stable Russian trading partner, to a devastated EU economic client and NATO launch pad, as well as the subsequent economic sanctions against Russia for supporting the Russian ethnic majority in the Donbas region and Crimea, illustrate the dangerous vulnerability of the Russian economy and state.

The current effort to increase Russia’s national security and economic viability in the face of these challenges requires a critical analysis of the policies and structures emerging in the post-Soviet era.

Pillage as Privatization

Over the past quarter century, several trillion dollars worth of public property in every sector of the Russian economy was illegally transferred or violently seized by gangster-oligarchs acting through armed gangs, especially during its ‘transition to capitalism’.

From 1990 to 1999, over 6 million Russian citizens died prematurely as a result of the catastrophic collapse of the economy; life expectancy for males declined from 67 years during the Soviet era to 55 year during the Yeltsin period. Russia’s GNP declined sixty percent – a historic first for a country not at war. Following Yeltsin’s violent seizure of power and his bombing of the Russian parliament, the regime proceeded to ‘prioritize’ the privatization of the economy, selling off the energy, natural resources, banking, transport and communication sectors at one-tenth or less of their real value to well-connected cronies and foreign entities. Armed thugs, organized by emerging oligarchs “completed” the program of privatization by assaulting, murdering and threatening rivals. Hundreds of thousands of elderly pensioners were tossed out of their homes and apartments in a vicious land-grab by violent property speculators. US and European academic financial consultants “advised” rival oligarchs and government ministers on the most “efficient” market techniques for pillaging the economy, while skimming off lucrative fees and commissions –fortunes were made for the well-connected. Meanwhile, living standards collapsed, impoverishing two thirds of Russian households, suicides quadrupled and deaths from alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV and venereal diseases became rampant. Syphilis and tuberculosis reached epidemic proportions – diseases fully controlled during the Soviet era remerged with the closure of clinics and hospitals.

Of course, the respectable western media celebrated the pillage of Russia as the transition to “free elections and a free market economy”. They wrote glowing articles describing the political power and dominance of gangster oligarchs as the reflection of a rising “liberal democracy”. The Russian state was thus converted from a global superpower into an abject client regime penetrated by western intelligence agencies and unable to govern and enforce its treaties and agreements with Western powers. The US and EU rapidly displaced Russian influence in Eastern Europe and quickly snapped up former state-owned industries, the mass media and financial institutions. Communist and leftist and even nationalist officials were ousted and replaced by pliant and subservient ‘free market’ pro-NATO politicians. The US and EU violated every single agreement signed by Gorbachev and the West: Eastern European regimes became NATO members; West Germany annexed the East and military bases were expanded right up to Russia’s borders. Pro-NATO “think tanks” were established and supplied intelligence and anti-Russian propaganda. Hundreds of NGOs, funded by the US, operated within Russia as propaganda and organizing instruments for “subservient” neo-liberal politicians. In the former Soviet Caucuses and Far East, the West fomented separatist sectarian movements and armed uprisings, especially in Chechnya; the US sponsored dictators in the Caucuses and corrupt neo-liberal puppets in Georgia. The Russian state was colonized and its putative ruler, Boris Yeltsin, often in a drunken stupor, was propped up and manipulated to scratch out executive fiats . . . further disintegrating the state and society.

The Yeltsin decade is observed and remembered by the Russian people as a disaster and by the US-EU, the Russian oligarchs and their followers as a ‘Golden Age’… of pillage. For the immense majority of Russians it was the Dark Ages when Russian science and culture were ravaged; world-class scientists, artists and engineers were starved of incomes and driven to despair, flight and poverty. For the US, the EU and the oligarchs it was the era of ‘easy pickings’: economic, cultural and intellectual pillage, billion dollar fortunes, political impunity, unbridled criminality and subservience to Western dictates. Agreements with the Russian state were violated even before the ink was dry. It was the era of the unipolar US-centered world, the ‘New World Order’ where Washington could influence and invade nationalist adversaries and Russian allies with impunity.

The Golden Era of unchallenged world domination became the Western ‘standard’ for judging Russia after Yeltsin. Every domestic and foreign policy, adopted during the Putin years 2000 – 2014, has been judged by Washington according to whether it conformed or deviated from the Yeltsin decade of unchallenged pillage and manipulation.

The Putin Era: State and Economic Reconstruction and EU-US Belligerence

President Putin’s first and foremost task was to end Russia’s collapse into nothingness. Over time, the state and economy recovered some semblance of order and legality. The economy began to recover and grow; employment, wages and living standards, and mortality rates improved. Trade, investment and financial transactions with the West were normalized – unadulterated pillage was prosecuted. Russia’s recovery was viewed by the West with ambiguity: Many legitimate business people and MNCs welcomed the re-establishment of law and order and the end of gangsterism; in contrast, policymakers in Washington and Brussels as well as the vulture capitalists of Wall Street and the City of London quickly condemned what they termed Putin’s ‘rising authoritarianism’ and ‘statism’, as Russian authorities began to investigate the oligarchs for tax evasion, large-scale money laundering, the corruption of public officials and even murder.

Putin’s rise to power coincided with the world-wide commodity boom. The spectacular rise in the price of Russian oil and gas and metals (2003-2013) allowed the Russian economy to grow at a rapid rate while the Russian state increased its regulation of the economy and began to restore its military. Putin’s success in ending the most egregious forms of pillage of the Russian economy and re-establishing Russian sovereignty made him popular with the electorate: he was repeatedly re-elected by a robust majority. As Russia distanced itself from the quasi-satellite policies, personnel and practices of the Yeltsin years, the US and EU launched a multi-prong hostile political strategy designed to undermine President Putin and restore pliant Yeltsin-like neo-liberal clones to power. Russian NGOs funded by US foundations and acting as CIA fronts, organized mass protests targeting the elected officials. Western-backed ultra-liberal political parties competed unsuccessfully for national and local offices. The US-funded Carnegie Center, a notorious propaganda mill, churned out virulent tracts purporting to describe Putin’s demonic ‘authoritarian’ policies, his ‘persecution’ of dissident oligarchs and his ‘return’ to a ‘Soviet style command economy’.

While the West sought to restore the ‘Golden Age of Pillage’ via internal political surrogates, it pursued an aggressive foreign policy designed to eliminate Russian allies and trading partners, especially in the Middle East. The US invaded Iraq, murdered Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party leadership, and established a sectarian puppet regime, eliminating Moscow’s key secular-nationalist ally in the region. The US decreed sanctions on Iran, a major lucrative trading partner with Russia. The US and the EU backed a large-scale armed insurgency to overthrow President Bashaar Assad in Syria, another Russian ally, and to deprive the Russian Navy of a friendly port on the Mediterranean. The US and the EU bombed Libya, a major oil and trade partner of Russia (and China) hoping to install a pro-Western client regime.

Goading Russia in the Caucasus and on the Black Sea, the US backed-Georgian regime invaded a Russian protectorate, South Ossetia, in 2008, killing scores of Russian peace keepers and hundreds of civilians, but was repelled by a furious Russian counter-attack.

In 2014, the Western offensive to isolate, encircle and eventually undermine any possibility of an independent Russian state went into high gear. The US financed a civil-military coup ousting the elected regime of President Viktor Yanukovytch, who had opposed EU annexation and NATO affiliation. Washington imposed a puppet regime deeply hostile to Russia and ethnic Russian-Ukrainian citizens in the southeast and Crimea. Russian opposition to the coup and support for pro-democracy federalists in the south-east and Crimea served as a pretext for Western sanctions in an effort to undermine Russia’s oil, banking and manufacturing sectors and to cripple its economy.

Imperial strategists in Washington and Brussels broke all previous agreements with the Putin Administration and tried to turn Putin’s oligarch allies against the Russian president by threatening their holdings in the West (especially laundered bank accounts and properties). Russian state oil companies, engaged in joint ventures with Chevron, Exxon, and Total, were suddenly cut off from Western capital markets.

The cumulative impact of this decade-long Western offensive culminating in the current wave of severe sanctions was to provoke a recession in Russia, to undermine the currency (the ruble declined 23% in 2014), drive up the cost of imports and hurt local consumers. Russian industries, dependent on foreign equipment and parts, as well as oil companies dependent on imported technology for exploiting the Arctic reserves were made to feel the pain of ‘Putin’s intransigence’.

Despite the short-term successes of the US-EU war against the Russian economy, the Putin Administration has remained extremely popular among the Russian electorate, with approval ratings exceeding 80%. This has relegated Putin’s pro-Western opposition to the dust bin of history. Nevertheless the Western sanctions policy and the aggressive political – NATO military encirclement of Russia, has exposed the vulnerabilities of Moscow.

Russian Vulnerabilities: The Limits of Putin’s Restoration of Russian Sovereignty

In the aftermath of the Western and Russian oligarch’s pillage of the Russian economy and the savage degradation of Russian society, President Putin pursued a complex strategy.

First, he sought to differentiate between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ oligarchs: the latter included oligarchs willing to co-operate with the government in rebuilding the economy and willing to confine their activity to the generous guidelines set forth by President Putin. They retained enormous economic power and profits, but not political power.
In exchange, Putin allowed the ‘economic’ oligarchs to maintain their dubiously-acquired business empires. In contrast, those oligarchs who sought political power and financed Yeltsin-era politicians were targeted – some were stripped of their fortunes and others were prosecuted for crimes, ranging from money laundering, tax evasion, swindles and illegal transfer of funds overseas up to financing the murder of their rivals.

The second focus of President Putin’s early political strategy was to deepen Russian cooperation with Western states and economies but on the basis of reciprocal market exchanges rather than one-sided, Western appropriation of Russian resources prevalent under Yeltsin. Putin sought to secure greater political-military integration with the US and EU to ensure Russian borders and spheres of influence. To that end, President Putin opened Russian military bases and supply lines for the US-EU military forces engaged in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and he did not oppose the EU-US sanctions against Iran. Putin acquiesced to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, despite Russia’s long standing economic ties with Baghdad. He joined the five powers ‘overseeing” the Palestine – Israeli ‘peace’ talks and went along with Washington’s one-sided support of Israel. He even gave the ‘green light’ to the NATO bombing of Libya, naively assuming it would be a limited affair – a ‘humanitarian’ intervention.

As a result of Putin’s political and diplomatic collusion with the Washington-NATO military expansion, Russian trade, investment and finance with the West prospered. Russian firms raised loans in Western capital markets; foreign investors flocked to the Russian stock market and multi-nationals formed joint ventures. Major oil and gas ventures flourished. The Russian economy recovered the living standards of the Soviet era; consumer spending boomed; unemployment fell from double to single digit; salaries and back wages were paid and research centers, universities, schools and cultural institutions began to recover.

The third component of Putin’s strategy was the state recovery (re-nationalization) of the strategic oil and gas sector. By outright purchase and buy-outs, through financial audits and the confiscation of the assets of gangster oligarchs, the Russian state takeover of oil and gas was successful. These re-nationalized sectors formed joint ventures with Western oil giants and led Russian exports during a period of peak energy demand. With the rise in oil prices over the Putin decade, Russia experienced a consumer-driven import boom – from agricultural commodities to luxury jewelry and autos… Putin consolidated his electoral support and deepened Russia’s ‘integration’ in Western markets.

Putin’s expansion and growth strategy looked exclusively westward to the EU and US, and not east to Asia/China or south to Latin America.

With this focus on the West, Putin’s initial tactical success began to expose Russia’s strategic vulnerabilities. The first signs were evident in the Western support for the corrupt oligarchs’ anti-Putin campaign and the media’s demonization of the Russian judicial system which prosecuted and convicted gangster oligarchs, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky . The second sign was the West’s financial and political support of the Yeltsin-era neo-liberals competing against Putin’s United Russia Party and candidates…It became clear that Putin’s effort to restore Russian sovereignty conflicted with the West’s plans to maintain Russia as a vassal state. The West favorably counterpoised the Golden Years of unrestrained pillage and domination of the Yeltsin period to the Putin era of an independent and dynamic Russia – by constantly tying the Russian president to the defunct Soviet Union and the KGB.

In 2010, the US encouraged its client, President Saakashvili of Georgia to invade Russia’s protectorate in South Ossetia. This was the first major indication that Putin’s accommodation with the West was counter-productive. Russian territorial borders, its allies and spheres of influence became Western targets. The US and EU condemned Russia’s defensive response even as Moscow withdrew its troops from Georgia after applying a sound beating.

Georgia was a militarist dress rehearsal; one of several western planned and financed coups – some dubbed ‘color revolutions’ other’s NATO ‘humanitarian interventions’. Yugoslavia in the Balkans was fragmented by NATO bombing and Ukraine had several ‘color’ uprisings up to the present bloody ‘civil war’. Washington and Brussels interpreted Putin’s series of conciliatory measures as weakness and felt free to encroach further on Russia’s frontier and to knock off regimes friendly to Russia.

By the middle of the second decade of the new century, the US and EU made a major strategic decision to weaken Russia’s security and its economy sovereignty: to seize control over Ukraine, expel Russia from its Black Sea military base in Crimea, convert the Ukraine into an advanced NATO outpost and cut Eastern Ukraine’s economic ties with Russia – especially the Russian market for the strategic Ukrainian military weaponry. The coup was financed by the West, while far-right and neo-Nazi Ukraine gangs provided the shock troops .The Kiev junta organized a war of conquest directed at purging the anti-coup, pro-democracy forces in the southeast Donbas region with its Russian ethnic majority and heavy industrial ties to Russia.

When Putin finally recognized the clear danger to Russia’s national security, his government responded by annexing Crimea after a popular referendum and started to provide sanctuary and supply lines for the embattled anti-Kiev federalists in eastern Ukraine. The West exploited the vulnerabilities in the Russian economy, which had resulted from Putin’s development model, and imposed wide-reaching economic sanctions designed to cripple Russia’s economy.

Western Sanctions, Russian Weakness: Rethinking Putin’s Strategic Approach

Western aggressive militarism and the sanctions against Russia exposed several critical vulnerabilities of Putin’s economic and political strategy. These include (1) his dependence on Western-oriented ‘economic oligarchs’ to promote his strategy for Russian economic growth; (2) his acceptance of most of the privatizations of the Yeltsin era; (3) his decision to focus on trade with the West, ignoring the China market, (4) his embrace of a gas and oil export strategy instead of developing a diversified economy; (5) his dependence on his allied robber-baron oligarchs – with no real experience in developing industry, no true financial skills, scant technological expertise and no concept of marketing – to restore and run the peak manufacturing sector. In contrast to the Chinese, the Russian oligarchs have been totally dependent on Western markets, finance and technology and have done little to develop domestic markets, implement self-financing by re-investing their profits or upgrade productivity via Russian technology and research.

In the face of Western sanctions Putin’s leading oligarch-allies are his weakest link in formulating an effective response. They press Putin to give in to Washington as they plead with Western banks to have their properties and accounts exempt from the sanctions. They are desperate to protect their assets in London and New York. In a word, they are desperate for President Putin to abandon the freedom fighters in southeast Ukraine and cut a deal with the Kiev junta.

This highlights the contradiction within Putin’s strategy of working with the ‘economic’ oligarchs, who have agreed not to oppose Putin within Russia, while transferring their massive wealth to Western banks, investing in luxury real estate in London, Paris and Manhattan and forming loyalties outside of Russia. In effect, they are closely tied to Russia’s current political enemies. Putin’s tactical success in harnessing oligarchs to his project of growth via stability has turned into a strategic weakness in defending the country from crippling economic reprisals.

Putin’s acceptance of the Yeltsin-era privatizations provided a certain stability in the short-run but it led to the massive flight of private capital overseas rather than remaining to be invested in projects to insure greater self-sufficiency. Today the capacity of the Russian government to mobilize and convert its economy into an engine of growth and to withstand imperial pressure is much weaker than the economy would have been if it was under greater state control. Putin will have a difficult time convincing private owners of major Russian industries to make sacrifices – they are too accustomed to receiving favors, subsidies and government contracts. Moreover, as their financial counterparts in the West press for payments on debts and deny new credits, the private elites are threatening to declare bankruptcy or to cut back production and discharge workers.

The rising tide of Western military encroachments on Russia’s borders, the string of broken promises regarding the incorporation of Eastern Europe into NATO and the bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, should have shown Putin that no amount of unilateral concessions was likely to win Western acceptance as a bona fide “partner”. Washington and Brussels were unwavering in their strategy to encircle and maintain Russia as a client.

Instead of turning west and offering support for US-NATO wars, Russia would have been in a far better position to resist sanctions and current military threats if it had diversified and oriented its economy and markets toward Asia, in particular China, with its dynamic economic growth and expanding domestic market, investment capacity and growing technical expertise. Clearly, China’s foreign policy has not been accompanied by wars and invasion of Russian allies and encroachment on Russia’s borders. While Russia has now turned to increase economic ties with Asia in the face of growing NATO threats, a great deal of time and space has been lost over the past 15 years. It will take another decade to reorient the Russian economy, with its major industries still controlled by the mediocre oligarchs and kleptocrats, holdovers from the Yeltsin period.

With the closure of Western markets, Putin has had to ‘pivot’ to China, other Asian nations and Latin America to find new markets and economic partners. But his growth strategy still depends on oil and gas exports and most of Russia’s private ‘business leaders’ are not real entrepreneurs capable of developing new competitive products, substituting Russian technology and inputs and identifying profitable markets. This generation of Russian ‘business leaders’ did not build their economic empires or conglomerates from the ‘bottom up’ – they seized and pillaged their assets from the public sector and they grew their wealth through state contracts and protection. Moscow now asks them to find alternative overseas markets, to innovate, compete and replace their dependence on German machinery.

The bulk of what passes for the Russian industrial capitalist class are not entrepreneurs, they are more like rent collectors and cronies – oriented to the West. Their origins are more often as gangsters and warlords who early on strong- armed their rivals out of the public giveaways of the 1990’s. While these oligarchs have sought to gain respectability after consolidating their economic empires and hired public relations agencies to polish their images and economic consultants to advise them on investments, they have never demonstrated any capacity to grow their firms into competitive enterprises. Instead they remained wholly dependent on capital, technology and intermediary imports from the West and subsidies from the Putin Administration.

The so-called Russian “capitalist” rentiers stand in sharp contrast to the dynamic Chinese public and private entrepreneurs – who borrowed overseas technology from the US, Japan, Taiwan and Germany, adapted and improved on the technology and are producing advanced highly competitive products. When the US-EU sanctions came into force, Russian industry found itself unprepared to substitute local production and President Putin had to arrange trade and import agreements with China and other sources for inputs.

The biggest strategic flaw in Putin’s economic strategy was his decision to concentrate on gas and oil exports to the West as his ‘engine of growth’. This resulted in Russia’s dependency on high prices for commodity exports and Western markets. With this in mind the US and EU exploited Russia’s vulnerability to any drop in the world price for energy and its dependence on Western oil extraction technology, equipment and joint ventures.

Putin’s policy has relied on a vision of economic integration with the West alongside greater co-operation and political connections with the NATO powers. These assumptions have been proven wrong by the march of events: US and EU cooperation was tactical and contingent on asymmetrical, indeed unilateral, concessions from Russia – especially its continued willingness to sacrifice its traditional allies in the Balkans, Middle East, North Africa and especially the Caucuses. Once Russia began to assert its own interests, the West turned hostile and confrontational. Ever since Russia opposed the coup regime in Kiev, the West’s goal has been the overthrow of Putin’s Russia. The ongoing Western offensive against Russia is not a passing phase: it is the beginning of a prolonged, intensified economic and political confrontation.

Though Russia is vulnerable, it is not without resources and capacity to resist, defend its national security and advance its economy.

Conclusion: What is to be Done?

First and foremost Russia must diversify its economy; it must industrialize its raw materials and invest heavily in substituting local production for Western imports. While shifting its trade to China is a positive step, it must not replicate the previous commodities (oil and gas) for manufactured goods trading pattern of the past.

Secondly, Russia must re-nationalize its banking, foreign trade and strategic industries, ending the dubious political and economic loyalties and rentier behavior of the current dysfunctional private ‘capitalist’ class. The Putin Administration must shift from oligarchs to technocrats, from rentiers to entrepreneurs, from speculators who earn in Russia and invest in the West to workers co-participation– in a word it must deepen the national, public, and productive character of the economy. It is not enough to claim that oligarchs who remain in Russia and declare loyalty to the Putin Administration are legitimate economic agents. They have generally disinvested from Russia, transferred their wealth abroad and have questioned legitimate state authority under pressure from Western sanctions.

Russia needs a new economic and political revolution – in which the government recognizes the West as an imperial threat and in which it counts on the organized Russian working class and not on dubious oligarchs. The Putin Administration has pulled Russia from the abyss and has instilled dignity and self-respect among Russians at home and abroad by standing up to Western aggression in the Ukraine. >From this point on, President Putin needs to move forward and dismantle the entire Yeltsin klepto-state and economy and re-industrialize, diversify and develop its own high technology for a diversified economy. And above all Russia needs to create new democratic, popular forms of democracy to sustain the transition to a secure, anti-imperialist and sovereign state. President Putin has the backing of the vast majority of Russian people; he has the scientific and professional cadre; he has allies in China and among the BRICs; and he has the will and the power to “do the right thing”. The question remains whether Putin will succeed in this historical mission or whether, out of fear and indecision, he will capitulate before the threats of a dangerous and decaying West.

The post Russia’s Vulnerability To EU – US Sanctions And Military Encroachments – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Brazil: Rousseff Faces Obstacles In New Term – Analysis

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By José Pedro Martins

With 51.6 percent of valid ballots, President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers´ Party (PT) was reelected in a run-off election on Oct. 26. And in the week after, the leader already got an idea of how difficult governance will be in the coming four years, considering that the next National Congress will have a much more conservative composition.

Rousseff garnered 54.5 million votes against 51 million (48.3 percent) cast for Aécio Neves, a senator with the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). It was the most contested presidential election in Brazilian history, in a campaign marked by many changes in voter preferences.

In the first public opinion polls President Rousseff appeared comfortably in the lead, but the margin began to decrease in early 2014, with the advance of candidates Neves and Eduardo Campos, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB).

Campos, former governor of the state of Pernambuco, died August 13 in a plane crash in the middle of the campaign. His running mate, former senator for the state of Acre, Marina Silva, assumed the candidacy and took the lead in polls, beating Rousseff and Neves, who was almost out of the running.

Then there was a backlash from the Rousseff and Neves campaigns to “deconstruct” Silva candicacy, who had shown great inconsistencies in some debates. The result was that in the first round on Oct. 5, Rousseff and Neves took first and second place, respectively, sending them into a runoff.

Strength of social programs

In early polls after the first round, Neves was ahead of Rousseff. Again, a strong reaction followed. The President exhibited and reiterated the importance of the social programs established during her administration and that of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2002-2010), both of the PT.

Those are programs that, according to many international groups, have lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty. According to the National Household Sample Survey, the number of people considered to be in extreme poverty (with incomes less than US$1.25 a day and unable to meet basic living standards such as food, access to clean water and sanitation, housing and health-service needs) decreased by 65 percent, dropping from 15.2 percent in 2003 to 5.3 percent in 2012.

With the economy’s average annual growth rate of 3.5 percent between 2003 and 2013, social inclusion and membership in the so-called new middle class have also increased. An estimated 40 million Brazilians have migrated from the D and E classes to the C class. Meanwhile, Neves highlighted the achievement of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002), of the PSDB, as a sharp drop in inflation.

Gradually, Rousseff recovered the lead and in polls close to the election was in front of Neves. Close results were expected, and President Rousseff was reelected by a very small margin. One explanation for her electoral victory was the great performance she had in the Northeast, the poorest region of Brazil and the one that most benefits from the PT’s social programs. Another explanation was the defeat of Neves in his home state of Minas Gerais, where he was governor for two terms between 2003 and 2010.

In her victory speech, Rousseff referred to her greatest supporter during the campaign, former President Lula, who now becomes a strong candidate to succeed her in 2018. The President announced that one of her first acts would be a commitment to political reform. This could occur through a plebiscite or referendum.

That political reform includes a proposal for public funding of parties and campaigns, the revision of the electoral system, the formation of partisan coalitions, the alternates to lawmakers, and the secret ballot in the legislature’s decisions.

Congress, which theoretically would be most affected by the political reform, reacted within a week. On Oct. 28, the House of Representatives reversed a decree signed in May by President Rousseff that established the National Policy for Social Participation that regulates participatory mechanisms and public hearings.

Chamber of Deputies shows strength

For analysts, it was a clear message from Congress that it would not lose control and would not accept profound political reform. Political analyst Antonio Augusto de Queiroz, head of documentation for the Inter-Union Department for Parliamentary Consultation (DIAP), said that new political organizations with representation in Congress, including the Social Democracy, Solidarity, Republican Party of the Social Order, Christian Social Democratic, National Ecologic, and National Labour parties, would not be interested in a comprehensive political reform, including an exclusive Constituent assembly to discuss the political reform.

“To new parties, a reform that would change the current rules of the game would not be of interest,” the DIAP analyst said. In his view, an exclusive Constituent Assembly for political reform could only be implemented under three conditions: with the “commitment of the government,” which could be difficult, because the president-elect will have great difficulty negotiating with Congress; “a strong popular pressure on lawmakers”; and if the new rules are “generous,” and not applied in the subsequent election. And changes to the Constitution, noted De Queiroz, depend on 308 votes in the Chamber of Deputies, “which is never an easy task.”

For philosopher Roberto Romano, professor at the State University of Campinas, political reform will have many more obstacles to implementation. “In our political history, when we want nothing to be changed, we discuss it all the time. And now political reform is being talked about a lot,” he said. Real reform, according to Romano, should begin “with a complete change in the current party structure, and Brazilian [political] parties are anything but democratic.”

In addition to the presidential vote, 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies and 54 of 81 senators were elected, as were governors of the country’s 27 states.

The coalition that backed President Rousseff’s reelection, called “With the strength of the people” (including the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the Social Democracy Party, the Progressive Party, the Party of the Republic, the Democratic Labour Party, the Brazilian Republican Party, the Republican Party of the Social Order, and the Communist Party of Brazil) won 300 deputy seats. The president’s party, PT, won 70 deputy races, and is still the leading party in the Chamber — however, 18 less than the last term, a slight shift. But there are always disagreements and realignments, according to the issue. Often, interest blocks trump party allegiances.

There will be, in short, a great deal of negotiation over the next four years, with great difficulties in governance. Unless the PT’s social projects are expanded and strengthened even more, and the economy resumes the growth it saw during the Lula administration and Rousseff’s first years, only then would the federal government have consolidated support in Congress.

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Ponta Says Romania Has No Shale Gas, Chevron Begs To Differ

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(EurActiv) — Romania has fought hard to discover shale gas that apparently does not exist, Prime Minister Victor Ponta said late yesterday (9 November). But US energy giant Chevron was quick to respond that it had yet to finalise an assessment of the country’s shale gas potential.

“It looks like we don’t have shale gas, we fought very hard for something that we do not have,” Ponta told television channel Antena 3.

“I cannot tell you more than this but I don’t think we fought for something that existed,” he said, in the middle of a campaign ahead of a 16 November runoff in which he is running for President.

Today Chevron retorted that it has yet to complete an assessment of Romania’s natural gas potential from shale.

“Chevron is analysing the data gathered during its drilling and seismic operations to further understand the resource potential of natural gas from shale,” Chevron told Reuters.

“When the analysis has been completed, the results will be provided to the National Agency of Mineral Resources (NAMR) and will remain in the [Romanian] state’s custody.”

Romania is the third most energy-independent EU member. Like its emerging European Union peer Poland, the country has opened the door to firms seeking to discover shale gas, hoping to mirror a boom in cheap energy seen in the United States.

Earlier this year, Chevron said it finalised exploration works at a well in the eastern Romanian village of Pungesti, after repeatedly postponing operations because of protests from local residents.

Chevron also has rights for three licence blocks in Romania near the Black Sea, supporting a drive to find alternative gas resources which has become more urgent since the conflict broke out in Ukraine, through which Russia sends half of its gas exports to the EU.

The US Energy Information Administration has estimated Romania could potentially hold 51 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, which would cover domestic demand for more than a century.

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Top Vatican Jobs: The ‘Francis Effect’ On Roman Curia – Analysis

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By Andrea Gagliarducci

The latest round of major appointments to top positions in the Vatican hierarchy shows that change is afoot as Pope Francis puts his stamp on the Roman Curia.

But the transitions are clearly designed to bring about a change of mentality more than a simple restructuring of Vatican departments.

On Nov. 8, Pope Francis carried out a series of appointments that look to be a prelude to the complete reshaping of the curia.

The Pope has named British Archbishop Paul Gallagher at the Vatican’s secretary for Relations with States, replacing French Moroccan Archbishop Dominique Mamberti.

Archbishop Mamberti, in turn, moves to the Church’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura, where American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke is outgoing to the Order of Malta.

Each move reveals more about Pope Francis’ vision for the Church.

A change in diplomacy

Archbishop Gallagher’s appointment as “Secretary for Relations with States” signals that a new diplomatic course is underway with Pope Francis.

Gallagher is a long-standing diplomat, who has served in the nunciature of the Council of Europe and as the papal ambassador, or nuncio, to Burundi and Guatemala. Most recently he was serving as nuncio to Australia. He is considered an astute, open-minded and humble worker.

He has also been chosen because of his ability to fulfill the new diplomatic criteria: Church diplomats under Pope Francis are being urged to reduce the distance between themselves and mainstream society, engaging the secular world more in conversation.

A member of the Pope’s diplomatic corps told CNA Nov. 9 that they have been asked “to seek to understand situations and try to adapt to them in order to bring the light of the Gospel to them.”

Sources say Archbishop Gallagher was the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin’s first choice for the position as his second-in-command.

His appointment comes at a crucial moment in the Vatican, as the new Cardinal George Pell-led Secretariat for the Economy and the Secretariat of State are defining their reciprocal competencies.

By the end of this month, a meeting of the heads of Vatican departments with Pope Francis will likely give a final shape to the Curia reform that, among other things, led to the creation of the Secretariat for the Economy.

Sources maintain that the agenda of the meeting does not include an open discussion. They expect the unveiling of the plan for streamlining the Roman Curia, which would go into effect after the next meeting of the Council of Cardinals, scheduled for Dec. 9-11.

A change in court

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti was moved from his post as the Secretary for the Relations with States to the Apostolic Signatura, often called the Church’s “supreme court.”

Archbishop Mamberti was appointed as “foreign minister” post in 2006. He was one of the first picks of the Secretariat led by former Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

The archbishop was widely expected to be transferred to a new post under Cardinal Parolin’s leadership. The Apostolic Signatura is a soft exit.

Mamberti arrives to the position as the Vatican reexamines the steps that lead to decisions on marriage annulments. In August of this year, Pope Francis established a commission to propose procedural simplifications, while also safeguarding the principle of the indissolubility of matrimony.

In a Nov. 5 meeting with canon lawyers, Pope Francis said some procedures are currently so long and financially burdensome that people “give up.”

In his new position, Archbishop Mamberti will be in charge – among other competencies – of final appeals for cases of marriage annulments as well as cases of conflict of competencies among Vatican dicasteries.

Sources say that appeals for nullity have increased in recent years and that Pope Francis wanted a prefect of his own appointment to decide them.

The position at the head of the highest of the Vatican’s courts traditionally merits the “berretta rossa,” the red hat of the cardinal. Archbishop Mamberti will be expected to made cardinal in the next consistory.

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, 66, has been made the patron of the Order of Malta, an honorific charge which is usually assigned to cardinals who are at the end of their ecclesiastical career.

Over the course of the first year-and-a-half of this pontificate, Cardinal Burke has voiced his concern with some of the choices being made in Church governance. Nevertheless, as an active cardinal living in Rome, his capacity to opine will remain the same if not greater – since no significant office will be attached to him.

Right after the conclusion of October’s Synod of Bishops, he granted an interview to the Spanish Catholic weekly “Vida Nueva,” saying that during the synod “many have expressed their concerns to me. At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the Church is like a ship without a rudder.”

Cardinal Burke responded that Vida Nueva, a left-of-center media outlet, had “gravely distorted” his statements.

His appointment to the Order of Malta is not a surprise. The cardinal himself publicly stated he had been informed of it. His appointment to the Order of Malta is the latest in a gradual distancing from the life of the curia.

Pope Francis is looking for a softer approach to applying Church law from the Apostolic Signatura, and he thinks he’s found that in Archbishop Mamberti.

Another round of appointments are expected soon in the Vatican, all intended to reshape the Church’s ‘top management’ to fit with Pope Francis’ vision for a mission to the world with more emphasis on attraction to the Gospel.

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Spain Increases Resources To Combat Ebola By 21 Million Euros

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The Spanish government announced it has increased funding to combat Ebola. The new funds will allow both international cooperation and the human and material resources needed to combat the disease in Spain to be increased. The Council of Ministers also approved 15 million euros for the plans aimed at renewing commercial vehicles and the lorry and bus pool.

The Council of Ministers approved a Royal Decree-Law authorising extraordinary credits and top-up loans to finance actions by different ministerial departments, for a total amount of close on 260 million euros.

The Vice-President of the Government explained that these funds include some 21 million euros earmarked to help combat Ebola, “both within Spain and overseas”.

Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría underlined the increase in international cooperation to help combat this disease on the ground. “From the first stage of the outbreak, it was identified as a crisis with signs of developing with complications, and steps were taken together with humanitarian organisations with the ability to act on the ground”, she stated.

The Spanish contribution to the response to Ebola in the countries affected and on their borders, which amounted to 3,147,000 euros, will be increased to a total of 10 million euros thanks to an extraordinary credit that will allow treatment beds to be financed for Liberia, Guinea-Conakry and Sierra Leone through NGOs with experience on the ground, along with other measures.

Within Spain, the government has increased the provision to the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality by five million euros, to help support the Healthcare Emergency Alert Centre and to acquire certain materials, such as personal protection equipment.

The Vice-President of the Government specified that a further 870,000 euros will be allocated to the National Microbiology Centre, the leading centre for the treatment of infectious diseases in Spain, and seven million euros for the Ministry of Defence, principally for the refurbishing works on the Central Defence Hospital ‘Gómez Ulla’, “as a “high-level hospital isolation unit”.

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South Korea: Ferry Captain Gets 36 Years In Jail

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A South Korean court has given a jail sentence of 36 years to the captain of a ferry that capsized in April, killing more than 300 people.

The Gwangju District Court on Tuesday found Captain Lee Jun-Seok guilty of negligence for abandoning the Sewol ferry that sank April 16. Judges cleared him of a homicide charge that could have resulted in the death penalty, which prosecutors had sought.

The ferry’s chief engineer was found guilty of homicide for not aiding two injured crew members. He received a sentence of 30 years in prison. The remaining 13 crew members were found guilty of various crimes and received jail sentences ranging from five to 20 years.

South Koreans were outraged after video emerged showing the crew leaving the sinking ship with hundreds of passengers, mostly schoolchildren, still on board. Several survivors also testified that when the ship’s troubles began, the crew instructed them to stay where they were rather than try to evacuate.

Captain Lee and others have apologized, saying they did not know their actions would help lead to what became the country’s deadliest disaster in decades.

Public anger has also been directed at the government of President Park Geun-hye, which is seen as having botched the rescue effort and overseeing lax safety standards.

Nearly seven months after the sinking, 295 bodies have been found. Nine remain missing and are presumed dead. Officials on Tuesday announced they are officially ending the search, saying it is unlikely any more remains will be found.

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After Stalling, Globalization Is Deepening Again – Analysis

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The good news: The depth of global connectedness started growing again in 2013 after stalling in 2012.

The bad news: Overall, the level of global connectedness remains quite limited — lower than many people think. Trade depth remains stagnant and capital flows have yet to recover to pre-crisis 2007 levels.

This is according to the 2014 DHL Global Connectedness Index. Analyzing more than one million data points going back to 2005, the Global Connectedness Index measures the depth and breadth of connectedness and tracks trends. For the 2014 report, 140 countries and territories encompassing 99 percent of the world’s GDP and 95 percent of its population are measured.

Concluding that the world is not as interconnected as it could or should be, Prof. Pankaj Ghemawat and co-author Steven A. Altman of IESE point out that deepening global connectedness “could be a powerful lever for boosting global growth — adding trillions of dollars to world GDP.”

Tracking Trade, Capital, Information and People Flows

The index tracks 12 types of cross-border interactions grouped into four pillars:

1. Trade: covers flows of goods and services.

2. Capital: focuses on the flows and stocks of foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio equity. (Note that debt capital is excluded because of the dangers associated with high levels of international indebtedness.)

3. Information: incorporates data on international Internet bandwidth, international telephone calls and trade in printed material.

4. People: measures people movements for the long-term (migration), medium-term (university students pursuing degrees abroad) and short-term (tourism).

Tracking these flows, the index measures the depth, breath and directionality of globalization.

Depth is defined as a country’s international flows relative to the size of its domestic economy. After registering a big post-crisis drop-off — and some stalling during the subsequent recovery — the good news is that global connectedness is deepening once again, albeit at a modest rate.

The 2014 leaders on the depth dimension of the index tend to be wealthy and relatively small. Hong Kong SAR (China), Singapore and Luxembourg are the three economies where globalization runs deepest, according to the index.

Breadth tracks how closely a country’s distribution of international flows across its partner countries matches the global distribution of the same type of flows. The leaders in terms of breadth tend to be wealthy, larger nations. The United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands are ranked top for globalization breadth.

Directionality is the third dimension tracked, distinguishing between inbound and outbound flows in order to help policymakers account for their different implications.dhl32014

Top of the Charts and a Regional View

Combining depth and breadth, the Netherlands is the top-ranked for connectedness, followed by Ireland and Singapore. Stepping back to see regional trends, Europe remains the world’s most globally connected region, with nine of the 10 most connected countries.

Southeast Asia stands out for how much higher economies there score on the depth of their connectedness relative to what would be expected given characteristics such as their sizes and levels of economic development. The top five “outperformers” are Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong SAR (China) and Singapore.

Keeping Up With the Big Shift

The big shift from advanced to emerging economies continues to be an important global story. “Emerging economies are reshaping global connectedness and are now involved in the majority of international interactions,” Ghemawat and Altman report.

Advanced economies have not kept up with the big shift, as reflected in the observation that advanced economies’ breadth is declining while that of emerging economies is increasing (albeit from lower levels).

Other Notable Trends

A decades-long trend toward trade regionalization has gone into reverse. Every type of trade, capital, information and people flow measured on the DHL Global Connectedness Index stretched out over greater distances in 2013 than in 2005.

The largest average increases in global connectedness from 2011 to 2013 were observed in South and Central America and the Caribbean. Eight of the 10 countries with the largest increases were located there or in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, the Middle East and North Africa region was the only one to suffer a large drop in its connectedness over this period.

Looking ahead, the world economy is projected to grow faster from 2014 to 2019 than over any of the past three decades. After analyzing this data, the co-authors conclude that the biggest threats to globalization may come from protectionist policies and not macroeconomic fundamentals per se. “While adversity often leads to calls to fortify borders and hunker down behind them, it is precisely when growth slows that vocal reminders of the power of global connectedness to accelerate recovery are most needed,” they write.

Overall Results for Index, Ranked 1 to 25 dhl22014In parentheses, rank changes over the last two years. Source: DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014, p 27.

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Online Extremism: Challenges And Counter-Measures – Analysis

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The propaganda function of the Internet is arguably more significant than its function as a virtual terrorist training camp. The long-term answer to online extremism requires preventive measures that are concerted online and offline.

By Navhat Nuraniyah

The transnational militant organisation Islamic State (IS) which has seized control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria in the past year, recently published its online magazine, Dabiq. Its articles in Arabic and several other languages including French, German, Russian, and Indonesian, focus on ideological and strategic narratives, unlike Al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine that contained bomb-making recipes and other terrorist instructions. Inspire and Dabiq represent two major challenges of online extremism, namely Internet as a terrorist learning laboratory and the spread of extremist narratives to promote online radicalisation.

The spread of terrorist tradecraft online and the appearance of e-learning courses on explosives on certain extremist forums have heightened concerns about the use of the Internet as terrorist learning sources. Although the utility of online manuals is somewhat limited as they only provide abstract knowledge, real world training and combat experience in conflict areas such as Syria and Iraq remain the chief avenues for acquiring terrorist skills.

Internet as propaganda tool

The value of online media as a virtual terrorist class might not be as significant as initially thought due to the limitations of terrorist online manuals. The Internet, however, has been particularly useful as a propaganda tool as it allows extremists to spread their messages to a global audience on an unprecedented scale. While preventive measures need to be implemented both online and offline, an effective counter-narrative calls for a coherent strategy comprising three key elements: the message, the messaging and the messenger.

That said, the emergence of simple, easy-to-follow manuals such as Inspire magazine’s “Make a Bomb in Your Mom’s Kitchen” is particularly useful to lone-actor and small-cell terrorists such as the Boston Marathon bombers. Such materials were also instrumental in the radicalisation of the bombers of Indonesia’s Cirebon police mosque and a church in Solo, Central Java. Their radicalisation into violent behaviour was also largely driven by online terrorist tradecraft that are framed and justified within jihadist narratives. Knowing the limitation of online tradecraft, groups such as Al-Qaeda aim to use them not as replacement for real-world training, but to inspire lone-wolf terrorists and the culture of “solo terrorism”.

Extremist narratives and online radicalisation

The Internet is a convenient propaganda tool for extremists for the following reasons. First, online media ranging from video web to interactive forums and social media could cater to different kinds of personality and cultural background. IS propaganda, for instance, consists of varying mixtures of humanitarian and violent elements, depending on the targeted audience. Messages that stress the humanitarian element of the Syrian conflict appeared to be more successful when targeting Western audience as opposed to the Arab one that could relate more to the violence dimension.

Second, extremists have managed to establish resilient, multi-lingual online networks by combining various online and social media platforms. A certain Indonesian Twitter user who translates and retweets IS’ Arabic and English tweets in Bahasa Indonesia has over 11,000 followers. These networks enable uninterrupted campaigns and constant reproduction of materials to a wider audience. Consequently removing online extremist materials would be a pointless exercise.

While many studies have been done on extremist narratives and how they are being propagated, the influence of such propaganda on the audience is often less understood. For example some people who consumed extremist materials online became radicalised but not others. The mechanism and tipping point for violent extremism could vary among different individuals.

In fact, individuals actively try to understand the information they receive, and the way they interpret extremist narratives is largely influenced by their context. For instance, the extremist master narrative that emphasises injustices on Muslims and the need for revenge might resonate more with someone who has personally experienced discrimination or had difficulties integrating within Western society. Therefore, it is instructive to understand the contextual factors and social milieu that could allow extremist narratives to find resonance.

Counter-measures

While the Internet posed new challenges to counter-terrorism, it could also provide some of the solutions. Available analytics tools such as big data and profiling techniques could help gather a large amount of data from social media and extremist online forums that are essential to support any theory on online radicalisation. Long-term solution to online extremism, however, requires more preventive measures through a concerted online and offline efforts. To this end, the role of civil society is indispensable given the significant influence of social context on individual radicalisation. Grassroots initiatives such as youth engagement programmes through sport and arts might be more effective to reach out to young people.

Ultimately, education is vital in preventing the spread of extremist ideology. The education system in many countries does not prioritise critical thinking skills. The role of educators, family and civil society organisations in promoting critical thinking is needed to encourage youth to question and challenge assumptions, especially in the current information age.

Finally, counter-narrative remains key in confronting online extremism. This could be improved through three elements: the message, messaging and messenger. The message promoted in counter-narratives should be positive and not just reactive, such as by promoting the ideology of peace. Counter-strategists could learn from extremist online campaigns to come up with creative messaging methods that appeal more to the audience.

A positive message and appealing campaign strategy would not work well without a credible messenger. Local religious and community leaders have a considerable role in this regard. To move forward, there is a need to bring out more terrorism victims’ voices in order to show the harm inflicted by terrorists to the lives of common people.

Navhat Nuraniyah is an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.

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São Tomé E Príncipe: A Lost Opportunity Towards Changing Political System – Analysis

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By Paulo Gorjão

Legislative elections were held in São Tomé and Príncipe on October 12, with the electoral results being subsequently validated by the Constitutional Court, thus confirming the absolute majority achieved by Patrice Trovoada’s Independent Democratic Action (ADI).1 As established by Article 110 of the Constitution, and at a time when the new Parliament has not yet taken office, the country’s President, Miguel Pinto da Costa, initiated the process of auditing the political parties, a standard procedure that precedes the new Prime-Minister’s nomination. Naturally, ADI’s absolute majority leaves no room for doubt over the future Prime-Minister’s identity.

Having said this, São Tomé’s turbulent political past indicates that Patrice Trovoada’s landslide victory does not automatically guarantee the completion of the legislative term. In fact, the poor relationship between the ADI’s leader and the President further reinforces perceptions that São Tomé is not heading towards tranquil political times.

Ever since the transition to democracy in 1990/1991, São Tomé has had a long list of prime ministers in charge of an equally long array of governments. Not a single executive has completed a full term, even when enjoying a parliamentarian majority. Some governments had extremely short life expectancies. On average, from 1991 until today, not a single government has lasted two years. Moreover, political instability has often been accompanied by military instability. As Gerhard Seibert has noted, “since 1991 there were sixteen governments—not including reshuffles—of which two were presidential initiatives, namely in 1994 and 2001. Twice, in August 1995 and July 2003, the democratic regime was shaken by a military coup”.2 In general, political stability has not been São Tomé’s trademark.

Nevertheless, more than anything the country has to put an end to this historical tendency. It is worth noting that political stability is not a goal in itself, or a source of good governance, however it is crucial for the attainment and maintenance of good governance. In short, while political stability is a necessary condition, it is not alone sufficient. Therefore, the question that needs to be asked is: how can São Tomé overcome institutional problems and constant government changes? In other words, how can the conundrum resulting from political instability be resolved?

Gerhard Seibert considers that until 2006 the main cause of political instability was the power struggle between the Prime Minister and the President, something that was exacerbated by the semi-presidential system, and which was even worse when both belonged to different political parties. To a certain degree this problem was alleviated with the constitutional revision that came into force in 2006. Furthermore, and still according to Seibert, the main reason behind political instability is the dominance of minority governments and weak coalitions, as well as the difficulty inherent in attaining absolute majorities.3 Precisely to solve the problems identified by Seibert, I argued in 2010 that to change the data of the equation it would be a positive development to make changes in the electoral system. In the transition to democracy São Tomé gave priority to the primacy of democratic representation to the detriment of political stability. As a result, absolute majorities have been the exception and not the rule for the past 25 years. It is therefore necessary to rethink priorities so as to facilitate the attainment of a majority in Parliament. The current absolute majority is not the rule and indeed it is unlikely that there will be another one in the years to come if the electoral system is not changed.4

The second change concerns the semi-presidential system itself. The fact that the Parliament and the President are elected via universal suffrage, and direct and secret vote, provides them with unquestionable political legitimacy. Nevertheless, instead of being a beacon of stability, this dual power structure works otherwise. The last 25 years demonstrate that the semi-presidential system has not been very useful for São Tomé, even in the aftermath of the 2006 constitutional revision.

The question whether São Tomé should move towards the adoption of either a presidential or parliamentarian system is open to debate. At some point in time I favored the second option,5 but as of today I see greater advantages in the first. What clearly matters is that São Tomé attains, in the near future, a single power center legitimized by universal suffrage.

While the exercise of a referendum on changes to the constitution is not possible under Article 71, any constitutional revision is contingent, under Article 151, on a favorable vote from three quarters of the members of Parliament. In other words, and considering the new parliamentarian composition, in the event the ADI intends to proceed with a constitutional revision it will necessarily require an understanding with the Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Príncipe (MLSTP).

However, it is also worth noting that to date, Patrice Trovoada has not given any sign of being interested in waging this political battle. His decision to reject a coalition scenario shows his little strategic interest in widening the support base for his future government.6

On the other hand, being out of power, it is unlikely that the MLSTP will validate a structural revision of the political system, even if sooner or later it may produce benefits for itself. Independently from all of this, the window of opportunity will soon begin to close. In the way as it has always happened in São Tomé, even with an absolute majority, it will be a matter of time until the return of political friction and instability.

Published also in Portuguese: Paulo Gorjão, “São Tomé e Príncipe: ainda não é desta vez que se altera o sistema político” (IPRIS Comentário, No. 7, Outubro de 2014).

About the author:
Paulo Gorjão

Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security (IPRIS)

Source:
This article was published by IPRIS as IPRIS Viewpoints 162, November 2014.

Notes:
1. ADI obtained 38.01% of the votes and 33 mandates; the MLSTP got 17.8% and 16 mandates; the PCD 7.91% and 5 mandates; and the UDD 1.35% and one mandate.
2. Gerhard Seibert, “Instabilidade política e revisão constitucional: semipresi- dencialismo em São Tomé e Príncipe”, in Marina Costa Lobo e Octávio Amorim Neto (eds.), O Semipresidencialismo nos Países da Língua Portuguesa (Lis- boa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2009), p. 205.
3. See Gerhard Seibert, “São Tomé and Príncipe: Political Instability Continues” (IPRIS Viewpoints, No. 111, January 2013), p. 5.
4. Paulo Gorjão, “São Tomé and Príncipe: Heading into political instability as usual?”(IPRIS Viewpoints, No. 16, August 2010), p. 2.
5. Ibid.
6. “PM eleito afasta formação de Governo de coligação” (ANGOP, 24 Outubro de
2014). Also noteworthy is the fact that it is not clear whether MLSTP would be willing to contribute to an alteration of the political system.

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Yasukuni Shrine And Museum: Japan’s WWII Responsibility – Analysis

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While the Yasukuni shrine memorialises Japan’s war dead its accompanying museum gives a revisionist view of Japan’s responsibility for the Second World War that is troubling.

By Barry Desker

At the start of the four-day autumn festival on 17 October 2014, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni shrine, without making a personal visit. Perhaps Abe was hoping that this gesture would appease Chinese leaders who will host him during the forthcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Meeting in Beijing on 10-11 November. This is unlikely to happen.

I had visited the Yasukuni shrine a week earlier during a tripto Tokyo to understand the reasons for the persistence of Japanese politicians in making annual visits on ritual holidays as well as the strong opposition of the Chinese government to such visits. While the shrine honours 2.5 million Japanese war dead since the Meiji Restoration, it is seen by many as a reminder of Japanese militarism during the second world war. Criticism is strongest in China, South Korea and Taiwan. I felt that like many other nations, Japan would want to honour those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice serving their country.

Commemorating war dead or revising history?

My visit to the Yasukuni shrine and its museum changed my view. I did not have great problems with the shrine itself which had an air of tranquillity and was marked by respectful attitudes by middle aged and elderly Japanese paying homage to their ancestors and relatives and worshipping them as “guardian deities”. Although Japan lost the war, commemorating its war dead could help to reinforce the belief in the futility of such wars.

Most criticism has centred on the enshrining of 14 Class A war criminals at Yasukuni shrine in 1978. The enshrining was done by the temple’s Shinto priests without any public consultation. As a consequence, Japan’s emperors have not visited the shrine since then. This enshrining and the criticisms by Japan’s neighbours of visits by Japan’s leaders and parliamentarians have reinforced the controversial image of Yasukuni shrine. My view is that the inclusion of the Class A war criminals has symbolic significance and will be an opportunity for China, in particular, to criticise the Japanese government.

However, it is the revisionist view of the second world war presented in the museum which really highlights the perspective taken by the Shinto leadership responsible for the shrine and is most troublesome for Japan’s friends. As the museum has excellent descriptions in Japanese, with English translations, the revisionist message is relayed even to foreigners visiting the museum.

Honouring suicide pilots

As someone from Southeast Asia, I was taken aback by the honoured place at the museum’s entrance of the original locomotive which had been used during the opening of the Siam/Burma railway. The ‘death railway’ was built during the war and resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Southeast Asian forced labourers and 13,000 allied prisoners-of-war. There was no indication of the cost of the project in terms of the lives lost and the privations undergone by the conscripted work force. The display of the beautifully reconstructed Zero fighter aircraft and heavy artillery next to the locomotive paled in comparison.

In the well-tended garden near the entrance to the museum is a statue honouring kamikaze suicide pilots, after one’s views had been positively influenced by walking past statues honouring horses, carrier pigeons and dogs serving the Japanese military which were killed during the war. As I visited the galleries, despite the wide variety of displays, most visitors were drawn to the section on kamikaze suicide attacks, with photographs of successful kamikaze air attacks on naval vessels, photographs of those who had undertaken these attacks and poems and letters written before they embarked on these acts as well as a display of a kamikaze mini-submarine torpedo and a piloted kamikaze glider with three rocket engines that fired for nine seconds each which would be released from an aircraft. As someone familiar with the eulogies to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State suicide terrorists, the reminder was chilling.

The garden also contained a statue honouring Dr Radha Binod Pal who was the Indian judge on the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (the International Military Tribunal for the Far East). Pal was the only judge who supported not guilty verdicts on all charges for those on trial on the grounds that the impartiality of the tribunal was doubtful and that it was carrying out ‘victor’s justice’. Pal has legendary status in Japan. During his visit to India in 2007, Prime Minister Abe said that Pal was ‘highly respected’ for his ‘courage’ in his address to the Indian parliament.

He also met Pal’s octogenarian son in Calcutta and was given photographs of Pal with Abe’s grandfather, former Japanese prime minister Nobusuke Kishi. The museum visit thus provided me with an insight into the background for Abe’s positive attitudes towards India today and the development of closer ties with the Narendra Modi administration.

Japan as victim of the war

The museum visitor is left with an image of Japan as the victim of the war, reinforced by the scenes of the fire-bombing of Japanese cities and the effects of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The stark revisionist message is conveyed in a 50-minute film which stresses that Japan was forced to go to war by the American oil embargo in support of American demands that Japan must withdraw from China, denies the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and criticises the wrongful convictions in the Tokyo Tribunal. The dioramas and displays highlight Asian support for Japan’s war effort and Japan’s role in the national liberation of Asian peoples.

While international attention has been focused on visits to Yasukuni shrine by Japanese leaders, the museum is really more worrying. It draws attention to the lack of recognition in Japan of the Japanese role in the second world war. With the passing of time, stridently nationalist views of history in China and Japan will make peace-making between the two Asian giants more difficult and spark periodic tensions in the bilateral relationship.

Barry Desker is a Distinguished Fellow and former Dean, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. This article first appeared in The Straits Times on 5 November 2014.

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Nigeria: President Jonathan Announces Re-Election Bid

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By Chris Stein

Goodluck Jonathan’s plan to run for a second term as president of Nigeria has been among the country’s biggest open secrets for months. So why did he wait until almost three months before the election to announce his candidacy?

Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Center for Democracy & Development in Abuja, says Jonathan had planned to declare his candidacy earlier in the year after touring the country, but the fight against the Boko Haram insurgency and the group’s kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok in April sidetracked his plans.

“There’s been a large outcry against that, so that’s why he suspended the zonal tour at the end of which he was to make the announcement,” Ibrahim explained. ” Right now he had to make his declaration because the timetable has come for party primaries and it’s necessary for him to openly admit what he had wanted to do all along, which is to contest for a second term.”

Jonathan’s main opponent will likely come from the All Progressives Congress, a new coalition of opposition parties formed last year. Former military ruler Mohammadu Buhari is expected to be the party’s presidential candidate.

The APC is seen as the biggest threat to Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party, which has held power since the restoration of democracy in 1999.

But the APC has done little to distinguish itself from its opponent, according to Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the Abuja-based nonprofit Policy and Legal Advocacy Center.

“The opposition party has not been able to concretize a message for the election, a message that appeals to people, it hasn’t come up with alternative programs that people can see and make a difference, in terms of the difference between themselves and the president who is in office. So I really worry that in terms of substance the opposition party has not been able to articulate a strong enough message that would resonate with people,” Nwankwo said.

With a population of over 173 million people of different ethnicities spread across 36 states and divided nearly evenly between Muslims and Christians, Nwankwo says people are likely to choose their candidates based on where they’re from or where they pray, rather than whether they’re the best-qualified to run the country.

“Unfortunately, I worry that the politics of the country has been clouded so much by ethnicity, by religion, and what is called zonal politics where people have been fed with messages that suggest that unless someone from their particular ethnic group or religion is in office that they would have no advantage, which would really be unfortunate, because there are several issues that should be of concern to Nigerians,” Nwankwo said.

Nigeria’s presidential elections are scheduled for February 15 of next year.

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Russia, Iran Sign Nuclear Construction Deal For 8 Units

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Russia is to build eight nuclear power units in Iran, as a new partnership agreement, guaranteed by the IAEA, was signed in Moscow on Tuesday.

The head of the Rosatom, Sergey Kirienko, and the chief of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, signed a series of documents, promoting the links in the field of peaceful application of atomic energy between the countries, RIA Novosti reports.

According to the agreement, Russia is to construct eight units with pressurized water reactors “turn-key ready” in Iran. Four of them will be built at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, also completed by Russia a year ago.

Besides, nuclear fuel for the future reactors will be provided by Russia during the whole life cycle of the new reactors. Spent fuel will be returned for processing and storage.

“It is the turning point in the relations between our countries,” Salehi said. “These friendly actions, taken by Russia will be well-remembered.” He added that now Russia and Iran “have become even closer to each other.”

The partners didn’t touch upon the subject of possible shipment of enriched uranium to Iran.

“We didn’t discuss this question today,” Kirienko told journalists after the signing of the protocol.

The new document has been a protocol to the intergovernmental partnership agreement, signed on August 25, 1992. It marked the decision to continue building a nuclear power plant 18km from Bushehr, on the coast of the Persian Gulf in Iran.

The project will be guaranteed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as the first unit of the Bushehr has been. It also will fully comply with the non-proliferation regime.

As reported earlier, the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant – with construction started in 1974 by a German company – was completed by Russia in 2013.

Back then it was decided that Moscow would guarantee its operation for two years, and Russian experts would stay on hand to advise personnel and provide technical support.

Iran is currently facing a November 24 deadline to reach an agreement on its nuclear program, within the frame of year-long diplomatic talks. On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to overcome the problems, and, according to the US State Department, the talks had proven “tough, direct and serious,” yet “there is still time” for progress, AFP reported.

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Kurds Reportedly Make Advances In Kobani

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Kurdish forces fighting ISIL militants in the Syrian town of Kobani are reportedly making advances Tuesday, AFP reports. Reports state that the Kurds are advancing “street by street” and believe ISIL may be completely eradicated from the town soon.

“The Kurdish People’s Protection Units recaptured streets and buildings in the south of Kobani after a fierce battle against ISIL that began yesterday evening,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

U.S.-led air strikes bombed ISIL positions late Monday, while Kurdish forces shelled ISIL on Tuesday.

The battle for Kobani began in September and has killed over 1,000 people, most of them Islamic State extremists.

The post Kurds Reportedly Make Advances In Kobani appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Has President Obama Turned Lame Duck? – Analysis

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By Chintamani Mahapatra

The US’ mid-term Congressional election result was, in the perception of the Republican Party – that came to control the US Congress for the first time in last eight years – a referendum on incumbent President Barack Obama’s presidency.
If the American voters’ verdict was overwhelmingly against the Democratic Party, some analysts argue, Obama is a lame duck president. Given how Obama could not effectively promote his political agenda when the Democratic Party held majority in the powerful Upper House of the Congress, how can he expect to do so now, when both Houses of the US Congress have come under Republican majority?

It is understandable that Obama will have to cope with tremendous challenges to his domestic political agenda in the next two years of his presidency. The gridlock in Washington, the temporary government shutdown and the sequestration that affected even the Pentagon occurred when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives stonewalled Obama’s political agenda. If history repeats again, Obama will certainly be called a lame duck president.

But history is very unlikely to repeat itself in Washington’s beltway. First of all, encouraged by the recent electoral victory, the Republican Party will try to project itself as a responsible political party that cares for its constituents and the country’s political stability and economic growth. Its image has taken quite a beating due to its behavior in the recent past and the Party, keeping its eyes on 2016 presidential election, cannot afford to retain a negative image among the voters.

Second, there are some issues, such as corporate tax reforms, where Obama and the Republican Party bosses appear to be on the same page. In fact, the Democratic Party, failed to capitalise on Obama’s oratory skills and back his policies during the election campaign and thus had to face consequences. Obama’s desire to leave a noteworthy legacy will induce him to make compromises even if his own party leaders take contrary views on certain legislations.

Third, all said and done, the Republican Party has not got a veto-proof majority in the Congress or a filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate. President Obama will retain his right to veto legislations he opposes and some of his party men can be persuaded to filibuster a Republican legislative measure, if it is perceived to be against the principal party line.

All these do not signify that there is going to be trouble free Obama administration until 2016. Key issues related to energy, environment, immigration, healthcare and public debt will encounter sharp political debates and divisions, and may even create an image of a drastically divided nation over the coming months. But the Republican leadership will be mindful of the 2016 election and Obama will strive to put in place a respectable legacy and hence political processes in the country’s capital may actually witness more restrained dynamics and controlled temper than in the recent past.

Mid-term elections in the US are generally local affairs and do not draw much attention abroad. But the 2014 election is conspicuously different. The world watched it with intense curiosity in view of the ongoing disorder in the world. Russia and China have been flexing muscles in their respective regions and the Obama administration’s response is regarded by the US allies as either weak or lackluster. The Syrian civil war, the spread of the Islamic State’s (IS) influence in West Asia, and the difficulties of finding a workable solution to Iran’s nuclear questions demand a kind of engagement and leadership that the Obama administration has not been able to provide.

The international community does not want to witness the unfolding of a cold war-type equation between the US and Russia and/or between Washington and Beijing. International concerns over the inability of the US-led air strikes to contain the IS are also palpable.

Will Obama act like a lame duck president on foreign affairs? Frankly, under the US constitutional provisions of separation of powers and checks and balances, the president enjoys enormous privilege and leeway to conduct the country’s foreign relations and safeguard national security. The Congress has the power over the purse and it can create hurdles for the White House in matters of implementation.

But significantly, the Republican Party desires a more robust use of force in the conduct of foreign policy and has criticised Obama for lack of leadership, growing anti-Americanism in the world and less than weighty means to confront Russia on the Ukraine issue and the IS and Syria in West Asia.

One has to watch how far the Republican Congress can persuade, encourage, back and induce the Obama White House to restore the US’ primacy in global affairs. In other words, the Republican Congress will desire President Obama to be more proactive and not a lame duck in conducting world affairs and addressing national security threats.

Chintamani Mahapatra
Professor, School of International Studies, JNU

The post Has President Obama Turned Lame Duck? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

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