El Niño, the abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, is a well-studied tropical climate phenomenon that occurs every few years. It has major impacts on society and Earth’s climate – inducing intense droughts and floods in multiple regions of the globe. Further, scientists have observed that El Niño greatly influences the yearly variations of tropical cyclones (a general term which includes hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones) in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. However, there is a mismatch in both timing and location between this climate disturbance and the Northern Hemisphere hurricane season: El Niño peaks in winter and its surface ocean warming occurs mostly along the equator, i.e. a season and region without tropical cyclone (TC) activity.

This prompted scientists to investigate El Niño’s influence on hurricanes via its remote ability to alter atmospheric conditions such as stability and vertical wind shear rather than the local oceanic environment. Fei-Fei Jin and Julien Boucharel at the University of Hawai’i School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and I-I Lin at the National Taiwan University published a paper today in Nature that uncovers what’s behind this “remote control.”

Jin and colleagues uncovered an oceanic pathway that brings El Niño’s heat into the Northeastern Pacific basin two or three seasons after its winter peak – right in time to directly fuel intense hurricanes in that region.

El Niño develops as the equatorial Pacific Ocean builds up a huge amount of heat underneath the surface and it turns into La Niña when this heat is discharged out of the equatorial region.

“This recharge/discharge of heat makes El Niño/La Niña evolve somewhat like a swing,” said lead author of the study Jin.

Prior to Jin and colleagues’ recent work, researchers had largely ignored the huge accumulation of heat occurring underneath the ocean surface during every El Niño event as a potential culprit for fueling hurricane activity.

“We did not connect the discharged heat of El Niño to the fueling of hurricanes until recently, when we noticed another line of active research in the tropical cyclone community that clearly demonstrated that a strong hurricane is able to get its energy not only from the warm surface water, but also by causing warm, deep water – up to 100 meters deep – to upwell to the surface,” Jin continued.

Co-author Lin had been studying how heat beneath the ocean surface adds energy to intensify typhoons (tropical cyclones that occur in the western Pacific).

“The super Typhoon Hainan last year, for instance, reached strength way beyond normal category 5,” said Lin. “This led to a proposed consideration to extend the scale to category 6, to be able to grasp more properly its intensity. The heat stored underneath the ocean surface can provide additional energy to fuel such extraordinarily intense tropical cyclones.”

“The North-Eastern Pacific is a region normally without abundant subsurface heat,” said Boucharel, a post-doctoral researcher at UH SOEST. “El Niño’s heat discharged into this region provides conditions to generate abnormal amount of intense hurricanes that may threaten Mexico, the southwest of the US and the Hawaiian islands.”

Furthermore, caution the authors, most climate models predict a slow down of the tropical atmospheric circulation as the mean global climate warms up. This will result in extra heat stored underneath the North-eastern Pacific and thus greatly increase the probability for this region to experience more frequent intense hurricanes.

Viewed more optimistically, the authors point out that their findings may provide a skillful method to anticipate the activeness of the coming hurricane season by monitoring the El Niño conditions two to three seasons ahead of potentially powerful hurricane that may result.

The post El Niño’s ‘Remote Control’ On Hurricanes In Northeastern Pacific appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Graham Land

While most people are aware of the environmental impact of fossil fuels, far fewer make the connection between climate change and diet. A new report from London-based NGO Chatham House seeks to shed a light on how a global increase in meat consumption is creating a sharp rise in the production of greenhouse gases and how this is directly facilitated by a lack of public awareness about the connection between the two.

As I wrote earlier this year, the growth of Western-style industrial livestock farming in Asia — particularly China and India — poses significant risks in terms of human health, deforestation and climate change. According to the German publication Meat Atlas, 80% of the global growth in meat consumption over the next few years will take place in Asia.

The Chatham House report points out that the global livestock industry produces as much greenhouse gas emissions as all transport — airplanes, ships, automobiles and trains — put together, yet a survey showed that twice as many respondents believed transport to be more powerful climate driver than animal farming.

Via the Guardian:

Preventing catastrophic warming is dependent on tackling meat and dairy consumption, but the world is doing very little. A lot is being done on deforestation and transport, but there is a huge gap on the livestock sector. There is a deep reluctance to engage because of the received wisdom that it is not the place of governments or civil society to intrude into people’s lives and tell them what to eat.

—Rob Bailey, lead author of Chatham House’s “Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector: Global Public Opinion on Meat and Dairy Consumption”

So why is the public so unaware of the environmental impact of raising livestock? Apparently, consumers are perceived to be far more protective and sensitive about what they eat than how they travel or how things are sent from A to B. This is not surprising, since diet is more personal and linked to identity than transport, in all its variety of forms and purposes. Governments, Green groups and of course companies are aware of this sensitivity and fear a backlash if they were to use facts about the connection between meat and the climate to further any sort of Green agenda. In other words, if a political party were to recommend a reduction in meat consumption, they might receive fewer votes, not to mention financial support from the agricultural industry. Similarly, environmental groups, often the target of public ire for pointing out “inconvenient truths”, have largely chosen to focus on less personal lifestyle habits and political mechanisms than those related to diet.

Yet if the public doesn’t know that what they eat may be hurting the future of the planet, there is precious little chance they will do anything to affect change in terms of their diet or political activity.

From the report:

Consumers with a higher level of awareness were more likely to indicate willingness to reduce their meat and dairy consumption for climate objectives. Closing the awareness gap is therefore likely to be an important precondition for behaviour change.

While the Chatham House report focuses on how those responsible for informing public opinion are not living up to their responsibilities, which in turn results in a “remarkable lack” of public policies designed to cut down on the demand for meat consumption, it does not — as Meat Atlas does — name Asia as a meat production and consumption hot spot for growth. Of course, as is the case with carbon emissions from other industries, it is not simply about an increase in meat eating in developing nations. Rich, industrialized countries must also curb established societal, industrial and political behaviors and policies.

The post Climate Change: Is Asia’s Growing Meat Consumption Cause For Concern? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Martial law has brought calm but not peace to Thailand’s febrile politics, according to a recent report.

The Thailand military regime’s stifling of dissent precludes a frank dialogue on the kingdom’s future and could lead to greater turmoil than that which brought about the May 2014 coup, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group.

“The military’s apparent prescription, the deliberate weakening of elected leaders in favor of unelected institutions, is more likely to bring conflict than cohesion,” according to Matthew Wheeler, South East Asia Analyst. “It will deepen divisions while doing further damage to the institutions best suited to safeguard the rights of political minorities, root out corruption and resolve social conflict”.

“Thai society is both deeply divided and – now – accustomed to having a political voice”, said Jonathan Prentice, Chief Policy Officer and Acting Asia Program Director. “Stability will remain elusive unless Thailand forges a political path in which all Thais respect the majority vote and see their own concerns acknowledged”.

A nine-year cycle of popular protests followed by military and judicial interventions to oust elected governments has left the country deeply polarized, notes the International Crisis Group.

The May 22 military coup brought an end to sometimes violent street protests but not to political uncertainty: equipped with absolute power, the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) quashes dissent and remains vague about the timeline for a return to electoral democracy.

The International Crisis Group’s latest report, A Coup Ordained? Thailand’s Prospects for Stability, examines the conflict’s underlying causes and warns that, by curbing the power of elected representatives in favor of appointed officials, the coup makers risk yet another round of violent conflict.

According to the International Crisis Group report, the May 22 coup demonstrated the failure of the 2006 coup and subsequent governments to address the factors underpinning Thailand’s protracted conflict. More than ever, the society is riven across regional, ethnic and quasi-ideological lines, by deep income inequality and by a difficult relationship between Bangkok and its peripheries, notes the report.

Specifically, the report finds that at the heart of the turmoil is not only a political struggle, but disagreement over what constitutes legitimate authority, with some regarding the popular ballot as paramount and others regarding majoritarianism as another form of tyranny, requiring strong checks and balances by the establishment. In the background, a looming royal succession – prohibited by law from being discussed – adds to the uncertainty.

To achieve its stated goal of establishing a durable democracy, the NCPO must encourage the development of a national dialogue, provide for meaningful political participation of all and reach out particularly to those in the North and North East who believe they have been serially disenfranchised by the Bangkok establishment, argues the report.

Failure to do so risks an eventual clash between the army and protesters, such as those that resulted from the 1991 and 2006 coups, the International Crisis Group report said.

The post Thailand: Martial Law Brings Calm, But Not Peace appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Fear of police, language barriers, lack of knowledge of cardiac arrest symptoms and financial concerns prevent Latinos – particularly those of lower socioeconomic status – from seeking emergency medical help and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

These are the findings of a study published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine.

“Residents of low-income, minority neighborhoods have two strikes against them: the incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is much higher than average and rates of bystander CPR are below average,” said lead study author Comilla Sasson, MD, PhD, FACEP of the American Heart Association and the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colo. “We need to do a better job of overcoming the significant barriers to timely medical care for Latinos suffering cardiac arrest. Culturally sensitive public education about cardiac arrest and CPR is a key first step.”

Researchers conducted focus groups and interviews with residents of primarily lower-income Latino neighborhoods in Denver to determine why they underutilize 911 emergency services and how to increase knowledge and performance of CPR on people suffering cardiac arrest. General distrust of law enforcement, of which 911 services are bundled, was cited as a top reason for not calling 911 by most participants.

Many subjects also believed – incorrectly – that they would not be able to ride an ambulance to the hospital without first paying for it, as that is the practice in Mexico where many participants came from.

Subjects also expressed a lack of understanding about the symptoms of cardiac arrest and how CPR can save a life. Strong reticence about touching a stranger for fear that it might be misconstrued was a unique cultural barrier to performing CPR. Language barriers – either with 911 dispatchers or first responders – also inhibited subjects from getting involved with someone experiencing cardiac arrest.

In the interest of educating more people on how to perform CPR, participants widely supported policy changes that would make CPR either a high school graduation requirement or a pre-requisite for receiving a driver’s license.

“Future research will need to be conducted to better understand how targeted, culturally sensitive public education campaigns may improve the provision of bystander CPR and cardiac arrest survival rates in high-risk neighborhoods,” said Dr. Sasson.

The post US: Distrust Of Police Top Reason For Latinos Not Calling 911 For Cardiac Arrest appeared first on Eurasia Review.

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are holding talks to seek common ground  on the creation of jobs, fight poverty and end inequality.

President Zuma is in Beijing on a State visit, which will see the signing of four agreements in agriculture. The agreements are set to help South Africa unlock its potential to create jobs.

The two-day visit will also see the President – who is accompanied by eight Cabinet Ministers and several local business people – addressing the South Africa-China Business Forum and a public lecture in honor of late former President Nelson Mandela.

The aim of the State visit, according to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, is to review the status of bilateral relations and to ensure that the strategic relationship that exists is further strengthened, focusing on the priority issues of development in South Africa and Africa.

The visit will also see the adoption of the China-South Africa 5-10 Year Framework on Cooperation that will further entrench the implementation of agreements entered into since the conclusion of the Beijing Declaration in 2010 and expand on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

South Africa and China share a sound political and economic relationship and are working well as BRICS partners, according to the South African government website, which adds that “China, on the other hand, regards South Africa as a key partner in advancing its relations with the African continent.”

China’s total trade with South Africa increased from approximately R190 billion to R270 billion in 2013 and is rapidly approaching R300 billion.

The post South Africa, China Hold Talks appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Shebonti Ray Dadwal

India, unlike China, has tended to look at energy security through an economic prism rather than from a purely strategic perspective. China has been aggressively making energy deals – be it acquiring assets or negotiating decades-old procurement deals – without seemingly being worried about the cost to its exchequer, and has thereby succeeded in expanding its influence in several regions of the world by tying up its vast energy market with energy-exporting countries.

But is India now looking at energy through the strategic prism? Its recent signing of the TAPI deal is certainly indicative of that. Why else would New Delhi support a project that, despite the hype surrounding the recent activity regarding the deal, has as little chance of implementation as the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) project? Further, given that TAPI does not make much commercial sense, why is there so much optimism surrounding it?

The first, and perhaps the most crucial, aspect of the TAPI project is that it has the blessings of the US. Washington is keen to provide South Asian countries with alternatives to Iranian gas in order to starve Tehran of revenues from the IPI and nudge it towards a more pliant position on its nuclear programme, as well as to break Russia’s monopoly over Central Asia’s energy sector.

Secondly, it gives India the opportunity to gain a foothold in the Central Asian energy sector, which it has been seeking for a while. It is notable that during his recent visit to Ashkabad, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan talked about expanding energy cooperation beyond TAPI into other projects in the energy sector – upstream, mid-stream as well as downstream. More importantly, with China raising its profile in the region by tying up energy deals with the Central Asian states, India too wants to mark its presence, and TAPI could be the vehicle for its geostrategic goals in the region.

But the question remains: will TAPI actually translate into a viable project?

As of now, only an expression of intent has been established, with no actual breakthrough having taken place, although the setting up of the TAPI Pipeline Company Limited (TPCL) by the four participating countries, viz., Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, which will own, finance, construct and operate the 1,800 km pipeline, was hailed as an indication of the viability of the project.

Secondly, a leader for the project has yet to be chosen by the partners, although the process has to be completed before early February 2015. However, given the continuing instability along the route of the pipeline, it remains to be seen whether a company/consortium will take on the high-risk project. No details regarding pricing of the gas have been discussed, which could make or break the project. After all, one of the reasons for the IPI’s failure was the lack of consensus on gas pricing. Moreover, India was reluctant to tie itself to a project where it would be dependent on Pakistan for transporting the gas. Neither of these factors has changed.

Finally, finding an international company that will accept the risk of financing the project will not be easy. For example, Chevron and Total had initially shown interest in leading the consortium in the TAPI project but backed out after Turkmenistan refused to accept the condition of a stake in the gas field that will source the pipeline. Now there are reports that India may propose a Chinese company to lead the consortium on the grounds that the Chinese are already present in Turkmenistan as well as their growing influence in Afghanistan.

However, the fact that China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) has been given access to Turkmenistan’s on-shore gas fields, including Galkhynysh, which will supply TAPI, may become a source of a problem. Given that developing Turkmenistan’s fields is cost-intensive, it would entail the use of Chinese capital and may require Ashkabad to borrow money from China to meet its share of the development costs. This would not only place Ashkabad in the danger of becoming a debtor nation to China, but could also affect negotiations on the pricing of gas to China, thus placing China in a dominant position. In turn, this could have repercussions on the price of the gas to be fed into the TAPI project as well.

In fact, Turkmenistan is wary of becoming increasingly dependent on China. As a result, Ashkabad is looking at alternative markets. Apart from TAPI, two other projects are also being negotiated — the Trans-Caspian pipeline to deliver Turkmen gas to Europe and the Trans-Anatolia (TANAP) project for transporting gas from both Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan to Europe through Turkey. If these projects take off, the more attractive European market will become a priority for Ashkabad.

Nevertheless, from a geostrategic perspective, India should remain engaged with the project, and initiate discussions with Moscow on bringing gas through a pipeline transiting the restive Xinjiang province of China. However, at the same time, India should also actively pursue the Iran option — though not necessarily the IPI model — as a more viable option. While Iran is still not out of the sanctions woods, there are signs that over the next few months it may reach a rapprochement with the US. Once that happens, Iran will, in all probability, prefer to pursue the more profitable European market for its gas. While the IPI project may not be acceptable to India due to its relations with Pakistan, the deep sea pipeline project through Oman should be looked at more closely, despite American opposition. After all, if the Modi government can seriously pursue the pipeline option with Moscow despite sanctions being imposed on Russia, the sub-sea pipeline from Iran, either through Oman or Qatar, is far more feasible, both technically and commercially. The window of opportunity with Iran is open for now, but may soon close if kept pending for much longer.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/TimeforIndiatoLookAtEnergySecurity_srdadwal_051214.html

The post Time For India To Look At Energy Security From Geostrategic Perspective – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

President Barack Obama is nominating former deputy Pentagon chief Ashton Carter as the next secretary of defense.

President Obama announced the choice Friday at the White House.

Carter, a physicist and high-tech weapons expert, served as deputy defense secretary from 2011 to 2013. In that role, he was the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer.

Carter is said to hold bipartisan support in Washington. If confirmed by Congress, he will replace Chuck Hagel, who resigned under pressure last month after just two years on the job.

White House officials have publicly denied forcing Hagel to resign, but other officials have said off the record that was the case.

A U.S. defense official said Hagel looks forward to working with Carter, the Defense Department, the White House and Congress to ensure a speedy confirmation process and a successful transition at the Pentagon.‎

Carter was seen as the frontrunner for the Pentagon chief position after several others removed themselves from consideration, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Senator Jack Reed and ex-Pentagon official Michele Flournoy.

Hagel was the only Republican in President Obama’s Cabinet. He is the first Cabinet member to leave office since the Republicans won the Senate in November, giving the party full control of Congress in January.

The post Confirmed: Obama Names Carter As Defense Secretary appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Satanic Temple is claiming a religious freedom victory after winning the right to erect a fallen angel holiday display in Miami. Now it wants to put up a statue of pagan idol Baphomet in the Oklahoma state capitol next to one of the 10 Commandments.

The cardboard display in the Florida state capitol consists of a diorama of an angel falling from the sky into hell and an inscription, “Happy holidays from the Satanic Temple” atop of it. The stand is scheduled to be put up on Dec. 22, together with a “Happy Winter Solstice” banner from the Freedom From Religion Foundation and an entry from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All the displays have been approved by the state government.

“We hope that, this holiday season, everybody can put their religious differences aside and respect that the celebratory spirit of responsible hedonism is available to all,” Lucien Greaves, spokesman for the Satanic Temple, said in an email to CBS Miami.

Last year the Florida Department of Management Services rejected the proposed holiday display from the New York-based Satanic Temple (not to be confused with Anton Szandor LaVey’s Church of Satan) because, according to the agency, the proposal was “grossly offensive during the holiday season.”

In 2013, the capitol’s rotunda did allow the display of a privately funded Pastafarian Flying Spaghetti Monster and a six-foot “Festivus pole” made out of beer cans, as well as displays from some atheist groups.

The temple continued demanding equal representation, with legal backing from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State threatening to sue the state of Florida for violating the temple’s free speech rights. This year a Satanic display appeared in the capitol largely because “this time around we arrived with lawyers,” Greaves wrote in an email.

“In a nation that respects religious liberty, viewpoint discrimination is simply intolerable,” Greaves said in a statement. “For that reason, we feel our holiday display sends a very important, affirmative message that goes above and beyond that of superficial season’s greetings.”

The Satanic Temple has a broadly libertarian philosophy: it’s pro-choice, in favor of same-sex marriage and champions individual liberty.

The Satanic Temple also claims to be active in politics, “facilitating the communication and mobilization of politically aware Satanists.” The group made headlines earlier this year when it proposed to place a 2-meter-tall statue of Baphomet in front of the Oklahoma state capitol next to a statue of the 10 Commandments, citing their freedom of religion rights under the US Constitution.

“We embrace practical common sense and justice. As an organized religion, we feel it is our function to actively provide outreach, to lead by example, and to participate in public affairs wheresoever the issues might benefit from rational, Satanic insights,” the Temple says on its website.

The post Satanic Temple Wins Right To Erect ‘Fallen Angel’ Display In Florida appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nadia Al-Fawaz

There has been mixed reaction to the attempt by a Saudi woman to drive home across the border from the UAE, with some urging a less confrontational manner to highlight the issue.

Lojane Al-Hadhlul has a driver’s license issued in the UAE. Saudi border control officers stopped her from entering Saudi territory in her car on the Saudi-UAE border on Monday.

Al-Hadhlul had posted photographs and video clips of her driving on her Twitter account. In one of her tweets, she stated: “Now I’m 10 minutes drive from the Saudi border. While I have a Saudi passport, I carry a UAE driver’s license that is valid in all GCC countries.”

Chief of the Hadhlul clan, Abdul Rahman Al-Hadhlul, deputy chairman of the Riyadh Charity Society for the Memorization of the Holy Qur’an, said the women’s driving campaign is part of a Western anti-Saudi initiative.

“Any conservative society committed to its values will stand up against these Western attacks with the help of its wise sons especially when the campaigns violate the country’s rules,” he said.

He said he supports counseling for women driving activists so that they change their attitude.

Their current behavior undermines the unity of the country and incites sedition, he said.

Several women have taken to Twitter to express their views on the incident but appear divided on the manner in which Al-Hadhlul raised the issue. Many support the idea of women driving.

Hana Al-Amri said Al-Hadhlul was making a bold attempt to highlight the issue, but said it would not work in the Kingdom where only the government could change the status quo.

Alya Saeeda, a university student, said: “Society’s disapproval in the Kingdom is rooted in the fear of the undesirable consequences of having women driving freely.”

She said Saudi society must be prepared for such a change, and that the negative reaction was natural because this is how people react to change. She said women should drive because they have different roles to play compared to the past.

Salimah Ali said change cannot take place overnight and called on women not to adopt a confrontational approach. They should attempt to work with the authorities to bring about change.

The Interior Ministry has commented several times on the ban order issued in 1990, which clearly states that women are not permitted to drive in the Kingdom.

The post Saudi Arabia: Women Driving Activists Advised To Undergo Counseling appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The US economy added 321,000 jobs in November, the strongest gain since it added 360,000 in January of 2012. With upward revisions to the prior two months data, the average job gain over the last three months has been 275,000. The household survey showed unemployment unchanged at 5.8 percent, with the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) also unchanged at 59.2 percent.

The gains were widely spread across sectors. Manufacturing added 28,000 jobs, the largest gain since July of 2012 when a seasonal blip led to a gain of 40,000. (The sector lost 23,000 jobs in August.) Part of this growth is likely anomalous as the plastics and rubber products sector added 7,100 jobs (1.1 percent of total employment), the largest gain since the data showed a 12,000 gain in January of 2007, in the midst of a sharp slide in employment. Retail added 50,200 jobs; this was undoubtedly in part a seasonal story as stores continue to move forward their holiday shopping period.

Professional and technical services added 37,500 jobs, the largest gain since March of 2011. Insurance carriers added 10,100 jobs, an increase that is likely due to the enrollment period in the health care exchanges. Health care added 28,900 jobs, bringing its average over the last four months to 29,500. This is considerably more rapid than its average of 20,000 over the prior year. The bulk of this growth has been in ambulatory health care services. This sector, which is roughly 45 percent of employment in the health care, has accounted for almost 80 percent of the job growth in the industry over the last year. The motion picture industry lost another 5,000 jobs in November. It has continued to lose jobs throughout the recovery, with employment down by 17.4 percent from its level of five years ago.

Other news in the establishment survey was also positive. The average workweek increased by 0.1 hour to 34.6, the longest since May of 2008 and wages reportedly rose by 9 cents. The one-month jump was in large part an anomaly; over the last three months wages have risen at just a 1.8 percent annual rate compared with the prior three months. There is little evidence of any wage acceleration in any major sector.

While the overall employment and unemployment numbers changed little in November, there was some positive news in the household survey. The number of people involuntarily employed part time fell by 200,000. It is now almost 900,000 below the year-ago level. By contrast, the number of people voluntarily choosing to work part-time rose by 297,000. It is now more than 1 million higher than the year-ago level. This is almost certainly the result of the Affordable Care Act, which has allowed people to get insurance outside of employment so that many people no longer have to work full-time jobs to get insurance for themselves or their families.

In another positive sign, the percent of the unemployed who had voluntarily quit their job rose to 9.1 percent. This measure of confidence in the labor market is at its highest level in the recovery, albeit well below the 11-12 percent range in the pre-recession period. The median duration of unemployment spells and the share of long-term unemployed both fell to their lowest level in the recovery, although the average duration rose slightly. Black teen employment rate rose to 21.8 percent, the highest since January of 2008, while unemployment fell to 28.1 percent, the lowest since April of 2008.

Interestingly, the recovery seems to be disproportionately benefiting workers with less education. Over the last year, the unemployment rate for workers without a high school degree fell 2.1 percentage points and for workers with just a high school degree by 1.7 percentage points. By contrast, the unemployment rate for college grads has only dropped by 0.2 percentage points. The unemployment rate for college grads is still more than a percentage point above its pre-recession level.

Overall, this is a very positive report, but it still must be understood in the context of the hole created by the downturn. It would take two and half years at this growth rate to restore demographically adjusted pre-recession levels of the employment to population ratio.

The post US Economy Adds 321,000 Jobs, Strongest Gain in Almost Three Years – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Wanted to be a joker, became a clown …

The problem with Europe’s South-Slav areas — when talking about the observing and assessing of viewership, ratings, and primetime — is that it is not that different at all from the area of, for example, the developed North.

To demonstrate this, please, allow me to ask a question: How many of you, dear readers, knows the name of a young man or girl who was killed by A.B.  in Norway (he killed 77 people in 2011 from Norway, but I refrain from naming the killer to not give him another opportunity for advertising?).

Out of 100 of you readers, perhaps there are only two of you who can name one of the victims, and sadly that is probably solely due to family or professional ties to the above event. Despite this horrendous event, everyone it seems knows the full name of the killer.

That is why my disappointment is even greater when I see that a public broadcaster, i.e. the Federal Television of Bosnia and Herzegovina, gave space to another killer in the popular TV show “Honestly“ (amazing word: “Honestly”) on the first day of the month of December this Anno Domini 2014. They also gave space to another animal, V.Š., (whose name I also do not want to name to avoid again advertizing for something that was really the committing of evil) at the same time, and yet their aired program was not more professional, or different than other neighborhood media organizations (from other countries of the Former Yugoslavia).

That there are so many lamentations in and around V.Š. that we are free to call all of us on his return from The Hague court a reincarnation of insanity.

It is immaterial whether the world wanted to send a message to Serbia due to the non-introduction of sanctions against Russia — and Serbia will never do that (as I said on Nov. 28, 2014 in an interview in English on Radio Sputnik in the former Voice of Russia). This is because Slavs will never go against Slavs, unless we are talking about territories, or, pardon, assimilation.

It is immaterial whether the return of the War Duke of extreme orientations was with the aim of destabilization within the region.
Indeed, it is even immaterial whether we could travel back twenty years to the past and see again  open in front of us the Gates of Hell for what some simply call – The War.

However, it is very important that a public service, such as FTV, through an amateur, unprofessional and absurd way represents the animal V.Š. during prime-time broadcasting, while the country(s) of former Yugoslavia still have not obtained a level in GDP that was exhibited at the very end of the above mentioned former state.

In the same vein, it is very important that the public service, FTV,  while speaking about the ideology of one flawed, barbaric personality such as V.Š., forgets that just 10 months ago the building of the State Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina was burned. Because of the hunger of its citizens and the people of this country.

And when we talk about Serbia and Croatia and relations and the attitude towards V.Š., to talk about V.Š. within that context of the manifestation is negligible. For what reason? Because they were together: V.Š. and V.Š with the same initials, one from Zagreb and the other one from Belgrade. And they were the ideologues of Greater Serbia, but also of Great Croatia. And yet neither of them have been sentenced.

Will they?

It’s hard to say. Why? Remember Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak. Are their people feeling better today, since the introduction of democracy? The answer is erased by the storm, as the desert, as well the planetary kind. Of nonsense.

While V.Š. from Serbia, within the desire to be the Joker, became the Clown. What about us? Les Miserables, whom are laughing through the tears, laughing. Not at the clown, but at ourselves.

The post South-East Europe On Edge Of Civilization: Depending Whom You Ask – Essay appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Waheed Rahimi*

Afghanistan was a modest, developed state in the late 1960’s. During that time, people were enjoying a high standard of living, in an atmosphere of civic peace and stability. Unfortunately it was with great sadness that Islamic fundamentalist clusters sprang up and led the country in the most radical upheaval of its kind.

Islamic guerrillas were used as a war proxy to fight the communist bloc. From that time onwards, radicalism spread throughout the country and as a result, the world’s image of Afghanistan developed into one associated with radical fundamentalism. Nowadays however, the new generations in many fields — particularly in sports — have changed the image of this war-ravaged country and have presented a rebirth of Afghanistan. Any positive contribution in this generation would be a smart investment and further boost hopes for a brighter future.

Despite many political, economic and social challenges, the Afghan youth have made a great contribution to the development of Afghanistan. They have promoted the new image of Afghanistan to the world through sports and education. I was surprised and felt proud when I met non-Afghans during my trips this year who were talking about Afghan sports.

While I was traveling from Qatar to Japan, a young British student was sitting next to me. After greeting, he asked me “where are you from?” “Afghanistan,” I responded with dread. I was apprehensive at the possibility that his only knowledge of Afghanistan may have been associated with war and terror, and the stereotypical image of how radical Afghans are portrayed. Over the last few decades, we had nothing to represent to the world except violence and we got quite enough fame from that.

Conversely, he began talking about how glorious Afghan cricketers are. He named a few Afghan players who were playing in MCC in the UK. He was a great fan of Hamid Hassan and discussed how beautifully Hamid is bowling. I reacted with proud cheers and energy, “Yeah, we have so many talented cricketers who have surprised the Cricket World by their clinch rising to the Asia and World Cup”. Overall, it was all about cricket from Qatar to Tokyo and to my joy and surprise, nothing about war and terror.

Similarly, while visiting Kyrgyzstan, I met an artist from India who had participated in an art exhibition in Bishkek. We had lunch together in an old typical Russian restaurant, at the same time we were talking about the SAFF Championship. Afterwards, he discussed the performance of some of the Afghan soccer players who had been playing in the Indian Super leagues and also, the possibility of Afghan cricket players to play in the India Premier League (IPL). However, I expected that he might talk about the Taliban and Pakistan, but he didn’t broach that subject at any point. It was all about sports and Afghanistan’s achievements in sport.

When Afghanistan won the SAFF championship and were subsequently granted the FIFA fair play award, most of the people around the world were surprised and applauded the Afghan team. It was one of our lifetime’s proudest moments which brought tears of joys to our eyes. It was not just tears of joy, having won matches, but playing as a nation with pride and dignity, representing the new image of a country, bringing smiles to the faces of a suffering nation, and changing the minds of the people about Afghanistan. These achievements prove that sports are more than simply entertainment in Afghanistan. Sport has become an effective medium to promote peace, unity and tolerance among different ethnic groups.

The youth who did the nation proud, were playing on dusty streets with their own handmade balls, and the people were looking at them as stray boys. I remember that some of the Afghan national team players were weaving carpets; collecting and selling pieces of metals that were left over from exploded bombs and many other odd jobs to help their families. And still, they are facing many hardships on a daily basis. Despite all these, they made us proud and united us forever. They have brought about the rebirth of a state in the heart of Asia with a new vision and dignity.

In the last few years, nothing has made Afghanistan as proud as what our sporting heroes have done. No politicians could have represented the new image of Afghanistan as the youth have done through sports and education. From the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) title, to the FIFA fair play award, it is the first trophy of its kind in Afghanistan’s history. The qualification of Afghan Cricket Team for the World Cup 2015 and the rapid development in this field made a huge impression in the cricket world with the new records.

In just a few years, Afghanistan has climbed from zero to hero and brought numbers of championships to the sports nation. These achievements sparked the scenes of jubilation all over the country. The people were dancing, singing and crying with joy on the streets for every single trophy. It was all incredible scenes for this long suffering nation.

For the Afghan youth, the hopes of progress and development are not a faint dream but a reality that will come true, if given the chance. Afghanistan’s populations under the age of 35 make up about 75 percent and under the age of 25 reaches to 68 percent. It’s a very young country, where the young generation could be a catalyst for hope and change. This generation would not allow the rise of radicalism again and would never give up fighting for freedom.

The youth should have been given top priority and a larger role in national unity government. The government should focus on providing and modernizing the educational systems as well as increasing the opportunities for the youth to study abroad. Investing in youth, particularly, in sports and education pays off as the Afghan youth have proven through sports further helping to portray the emergence of a new Afghanistan to the rest of the world.

Afghan youth are the future of Afghanistan and have so much to contribute to the country. Consequently, the youth-focused policies and the right investment should be at the heart of Afghan policy and must be included in the national investment strategies. Lack of investment on the young generation and keeping them isolated from the political process would have negative results on the economic, social and political process. Failure to invest in youth would lead to the failure in government and increase the risk of losing generations.

*Waheed Rahimi is an Afghan analyst and writes for The Kabul Times. He holds a master in International Relation and Diplomacy from ADA University, Azerbaijan. He can be reached on twitter @wrafg

The post Rebirth Of A State In Heart Of Asia: The New Afghanistan – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Greece is currently implementing a fiscal adjustment programme aimed at tackling tax evasion. This column discusses the impact of recent tax administration reforms on tax compliance in Greece. The intensification of audits, enforcement of penalties, and efficient collection of past debts can induce tax compliance and raise the collected revenue. These findings could contribute to the successful conclusion of the fiscal consolidation programme.

By Athanasios O. Tagkalakis

Greece is currently implementing an ambitious, EU-IMF financed, fiscal adjustment programme, the so-called Economic Adjustment Programme (EAP). One of the goals of the EAP is to boost revenue performance by tackling tax evasion through improvements in tax administration. These involve greater autonomy for the tax authority, intensification of tax audits, and greater emphasis on risk-based auditing techniques targeting individuals and firms more liable to evade taxes. In order to monitor progress as regards the reform of tax administration, bi-annual structural benchmarks (or quantified targets) have been set up and have to be met by the Greek authorities (see European Commission 2013, IMF 2013).

These structural benchmarks involve meeting specific targets as regards the number of tax audits that have to be conducted in case of large enterprises (full scope or regular and temporary audits), high wealth individuals/self-employed, and VAT non-filers. In addition, these structural benchmarks involve the achievement of specific targets as regards the collection rates of audits as a percent of the assessed taxes and penalties. Finally, structural benchmarks have been set up regarding internal control assessment and human resource integrity (audits on assets of managers of local tax offices and on assets of auditors themselves). Emphasis has also been placed on the re-training of personnel and the modernisation of tax revenue administration structures.

The intensification of tax audits

The intensification of audits since the summer of 2012 has contributed to reducing the number of tax offenders. Using a novel dataset on summer 2012 VAT-related tax inspections in tourist and high economic activity areas in 13 Greek regions, I find statistically significant evidence that the intensification of tax audits can induce tax compliance (Tagkalakis 2013). In particular, in the period from July to September 2012, 5167 tax audits took place and charges were pressed in 2852 cases; the overall tax offenders-to-audits ratio was 55.2%. The highest tax offenders’ ratios were found in Crete (74.8%), Central Greece (66.3%), South Aegean (65.8%), and the Ionian islands (66.3%).

Controlling for time and fixed effects, I find that a 1% increase in the number of tax inspections per day of audit lowers the number of tax offenders per day of audits by about 0.3-0.4%.

Moreover, the sensitivity of the ratio of tax offenders to increases in tax inspections is greater in high unemployment and low educational level areas and in tourist destination areas, such as islands. Therefore, a better targeting of tax audits in the abovementioned areas will be conducive to reducing tax evasion (Galbiati and Zanella 2012). Moreover, raising the educational level will improve the respect of the rule of law and could increase tax compliance (McGee 2012). Finally, a better economic outlook as reflected in increased economic sentiment indicators encourages tax compliance.

These findings are highly significant at the current juncture for Greece as they show that an intensification of audits can be a useful enforcement strategy for tax legislation. They can contribute to deterring tax evasion, increasing tax collection efficiency and raising tax revenues.

The revenue impact of tax audits

As a next step the revenue impact of tax audits was investigated (Tagkalakis 2014b). To this end, newly released monthly data by the Hellenic Ministry of Finance was used covering completed risk based audits and their revenue yield in terms of collected taxes and fines over the period January 2012 to December 2013. The tax audits were targeted and involved the following three categories/groups: large enterprises, high wealth individuals/self-employed, and VAT non-filers.

According to Ministry of Finance data in the period from January 2012 to December 2013, 33404 tax audits were conducted with a total proceed of €533.7 million, or 0.30% of the 2013 GDP; while over the same period tax revenues (corporate and personal income taxes and VAT) amounted to €50.1 billion.

The econometric analysis indicates that on a yearly basis, a 10% increase in tax audits (about 1670 more audits) will increase tax revenue by about €251 million, or 0.13% of the 2013 GDP. This is the so-called indirect effect of tax audits and works through increased tax compliance (as in Dubin et al. 2007).

Therefore, in accord with earlier findings (e.g. Galbiati and Zanella 2012,  Ratto et al. 2013), a substantial increase in the number of tax audits (by mobilising more resources and better targeting groups more inclined to tax evade) could lead, ceteris paribus, to additional tax revenues from both the direct and indirect effect of tax audits. These revenue proceeds could exactly match or even outweigh the expenditure saving from various painful fiscal consolidation measures undertaken in recent years, such as the increase in the statutory retirement age from 65 to 67 (with expected yield of €264 million in 2014), cuts in supplementary pension allowance (with expected yield of €114 million in 2014), and the abolition of personal income tax deductions (with expected yield of €237 million in 2014, see MoF 2013).

Despite the recent improvements, tax arrears continue to be a problem

Recent data unveiled by the Hellenic Ministry of Finance revealed that tax arrears increased from €44.9 billion at the end of 2011 to €55.1 billion at the end of 2012, and have further increased to about €62.1 billion, or 34.0% of GDP at the end of 2013 and now stand at above €70.0 billion (or about 38.9% of the 2013 GDP) at the end of October 2014.

The rising trend in tax arrears continued despite the important steps that were initiated in 2013 towards improving the collection of tax and social security contributions debt (see European Commission 2013). These actions involved the launch of a ‘basic scheme’ with a 12-month duration designed to become the normal way of repaying tax or social security debt and a special last-chance scheme (‘fresh start’) that allowed debtors (affected by the difficult economic conditions, liquidity pressures, and increased tax obligations) to repay old (2012 and before) debt in instalments until 2017. The Greek government has recently revamped this system in order to improve the collection of tax and social security contributions debt. In addition, a new legislation was put in place allowing for the simplification of the procedure to classify debt as uncollectable, and suspend collection activities on uncollectable debt.

Mounting tax arrears have negative direct and indirect effects on tax revenues. The indirect one works through weak tax compliance. It is related to the fact that (in the past) Greek authorities have recurrently resorted to tax amnesties as a way of collecting overdue debt – generating moral hazard problems for law-abiding tax-payers.

Building on the above-mentioned evidence, we investigate the effects of various tax administration performance indicators (associated with tax arrears and uncollected fines and penalties) on VAT revenue collection (Tagkalakis 2014b). I use information unveiled by the Greek authorities on VAT revenue collection, VAT-related tax arrears (due to tax amnesties) and uncollected (VAT-related) fines over the period 2006-2011 at the regional level.

My findings show that an increase in the stock of uncollected (VAT-related) tax fines and in the stock of (VAT-related) tax arrears due to tax amnesties exert negative effects on tax compliance and reduce VAT revenue.

Furthermore, as in the previous study, I have found evidence that an improvement in tax enforcement mechanism and, in particular, in the collection rate of taxes and fines associated with auditing activity can improve tax compliance.

In more detail, I find that a 1% increase in VAT-related tax arrears reduces VAT revenue by about 0.02-0.03%; while a 1% increase in the stock of uncollected (VAT-related) fines reduces VAT revenue by about 0.01-0.02%. Despite the fact that the impact on VAT revenue is small in quantitative terms (e.g. compared to the impact of slump in economic activity), it remains a very important finding, as it shows that the building up to tax arrears can act as a disincentive for tax compliance eroding tax moral.

Conclusion

Overall, these findings indicate that improvements in tax administration that involve the efficient collection of past debts, the strict enforcement of penalties and fines, and the intensification of audits can induce tax compliance fight tax evasion and raise revenue collection. This will improve the chances for a successful conclusion of the fiscal consolidation effort. At the same time, it contributes to a fair burden sharing of the adjustment effort, thus, increasing the support of the public to the fiscal consolidation.

Author’s note: The views of the article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Greece.

References:
Dubin, J, Graetz M., and E Wilde (1990), “The effect of audits rates on the federal individual income tax 1977-1986”, National Tax Journal, 43, pp. 395-409.

European Commission (2013), “The 2nd Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece, Third Review –July”, Occasional Paper, No. 159.

Galbiati, R and G Zanella (2012), “The tax evasion social multiplier: Evidence from Italy”, Journal of Public Economics, 96, 485-494.

IMF (2013), “Greece: First and second reviews under the extended arrangement under the extended fund facility”, IMF Country report, No 20.

McGee, R W (2012), “Age and ethics of tax evasion”, Business and Economics, 6, 441-449.

Ministry of Finance (MoF) (2013), “Update of the Medium Terms Fiscal Strategy 2013-2016”

Ratto, M, R Thomas, D and Ulph (2013), “The indirect effects of auditing taxpayers”, Public Finance Review, 41(3), pp.317-333.

Tagkalakis Athanasios (2013), “Audits and tax offenders: recent evidence from Greece”, Economics Letters, 118(3), 519-522.

Tagkalakis Athanasios (2014a), “The direct and indirect effects of audits on the tax revenue in Greece”, Economics Bulletin, Vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 984-1001.

Tagkalakis Athanasios (2014b), “Tax arrears and VAT revenue performance: Recent evidence from Greece”, Economics Bulletin, Vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 1141-1155.

The post Tax Evasion And Reforms In Greece – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Agathe Maupin

Due to the increasing threat of climate change, the key role that energy plays in the interactions between societies and resources towards a sustainable development has gained broad attention. As renewable energy sources (RES) become more competitive in relation to other energy sources, they create another opportunity to attract additional investments in favour of a greener economy.

In 2008, South Africa experienced a game-changing energy crisis due to severe capacity constraints in its energy infrastructure, thus forcing the country to tackle its energy challenges and initiate a transition to a low carbon economy. It is therefore no surprise that the potential of RES has gained increasing traction in South Africa.

On the eve of a global energy shift, South Africa has developed the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REI4P) to increase the share of renewables in its energy mix. Stemming from private sector participation in the electricity industry, the 2003 South African White Paper on Renewable Energy had set ambitious targets to facilitate future power generation capacity. Against this background, REI4P launched in 2011 with an initial target of 3,725 MW, divided into three bidding windows. The first and second bidding windows took place in 2013 through the Department of Energy, and the third one concluded this year.

Besides an increasing share of RES in the South Africa energy mix, further benefits have been derived from the REI4P, such as job creation in the renewable energy sector and the reduction of renewable energy prices. For example, between the first and second bidding windows, wind energy prices have fallen by 22 per cent, and solar prices by 40 per cent. In September 2013, South Africa incorporated its first solar power plant into its national grid under the REI4P. In three years, the REI4P has contracted 64 projects, and unprecedentedly managed to attract private investors in the South Africa energy infrastructure sector.

However, the REI4P has faced several setbacks. Among other issues, connection to the national grid backbone has encountered difficulties, due to insufficient investments in infrastructure, as well as national grid extension, with people in remote areas remaining off-grid. In addition, while the two first bidding windows were dominated by a wide range of developers, the third one witnessed a decrease in local and small companies, which found it harder to compete in a context of decreased prices.

In the process of an increasing RES share in the national production of energy, two main lessons can be learned from the South Africa REI4P experience: the need for comprehensive distribution and transmission planning on the one side, and the establishment of stronger links between the national bulk electricity provider and the Independent Power Producers (IPP) on the other side.

Fresh on the heels of the REI4P success, South Africa has also gained a stronger position on the international energy scene. The REI4P has propelled the country as a top three investment destination worldwide for renewables, and South Africa has therefore rapidly grown into a key energy partner. In 2010, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, launched the US–South Africa Strategic Dialogue to advance co-operation on energy issues, among others. It includes the pursuit of common interests regarding RES, energy efficiency, peaceful nuclear co-operation, carbon capture, and shale gas exploration technologies. In 2013, both countries agreed to work more closely on solar, wind and biogas as clean energy sources, in particular for the REI4P’s extended fourth and fifth windows in 2015.

Dr Agathe Maupin is a SAIIA researcher working on energy and climate change. This article was written from the 20th annual Conference of Parties of the Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP20), in Lima, Peru, and first published in Outreach magazine on 2 December 2014.

Source: SAIIA

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(EurActiv) — European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has insisted the €32 billion South Stream natural gas pipeline can still go ahead, and accused Russia of holding EU-member Bulgaria for ransom when it said it had abandoned the project.

Speaking after talks with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov, whose country South Stream would traverse making it a major beneficiary, Juncker rebutted Russia’s statement that EU competition rules had killed it.

He told reporters issues relating to the pipeline were not insurmountable and he was working with Bulgaria to address them.

Russia said on Monday (1 December) it had abandoned the pipeline, which would have bypassed Ukraine, Gazprom’s traditional transit route for Russian gas, citing EU competition requirements for a pipeline’s ownership to be divorced from its cargo. It said it was working on an alternative route via Turkey.

Juncker accused Moscow of blackmailing Bulgaria, which retains strong political and economic ties with Moscow and is almost entirely dependent on Russia for its gas.

“I am not accepting the simple easy idea that Bulgaria can be blackmailed as far as these energy relations are concerned,” Juncker said.

“We’ll take … all the necessary steps to make sure that our relations with Russia will be improved, but it doesn’t depend only on the willingness of the EU, of the European Commission. To dance a tango … you need two dancers.”

Borissov also said South Stream could be built and agreed it had to comply with EU rules, including legislation known as the third energy package, which limits how much of a pipeline a company can own if it also controls its contents.

Further efforts to bring the project in line will be made on Tuesday, when EU energy ministers meet for regular talks.

“I hope that all these technical details will be solved at this meeting including the third energy package,” Borisov said. He added he had not received any official notice from Russia that South Stream was not going ahead.

EU sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia’s calculation could have been that its announcement of South Stream’s demise would place the Commission under pressure from some member states to soften its regulatory stance.

At the same time, Russia has a struggle to find the cash for South Stream, given a falling oil price and economic sanctions.

Hungary angry

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused Brussels on Friday of sabotaging the Russian-backed South Stream gas pipeline project, which was scrapped this week in a setback to his strategy of closer ties with the Kremlin.

Orban has tried to secure supplies of energy and trade for Hungary by doing deals with Moscow, but that drew criticism from Western governments which say he should not be cosying up to Russia when it has sent troops into Ukraine.

Moscow’s decision to cancel South Stream is a loss of face for Orban, his critics say, though not bad enough to threaten his grip on power.

“The EU has worked ceaselessly to undermine this programme,” Orban said in a radio interview.

Orban cast South Stream’s fate as part of a David-and-Goliath-style struggle between his country, a former Soviet satellite that joined the European Union in 2004, and the outside world. This resonates in Hungary, still aggrieved after it lost two-thirds of its territory following World War One.

Orban said Hungary was looking at other options for securing gas supplies, including possibly from Azerbaijan.

Russia’s announcement on Monday caught Orban’s government off guard. Officials contacted by Reuters a few hours afterwards said they had heard about it only from the media.

Bernadett Szel, a member of parliament from the small opposition LMP party, said the cancellation showed Orban was wrong to bet on ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Viktor Orban has done everything, sidelining all principles and rational considerations and shared interests with our allies, to form a good relationship with Putin,” Szel said. “But when his interests so dictated, Putin withdrew from this project in the blink of an eye.”

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ISRAELIS ARE fed up with Binyamin Netanyahu. They are fed up with the government. They are fed up with all political parties. They are fed up with themselves. They are fed up.

That is the reason for the disintegration of the government this week. It did not fall because of any particular issue. Certainly not because of irrelevant matters like peace and war, occupation, racism, democracy and nonsense like that.

Curiously enough, this has happened to Netanyahu once before. His first government disintegrated in 1999, and the whole country breathed an audible sigh of relief. Indeed, the general feeling was of liberation, as if a foreign invader had finally been expelled. Like Paris in 1944.

In 2000, In the evening after the election, when it was announced that Netanyahu had been defeated, there was an explosion of enthusiasm. Tens of thousands of delirious citizens streamed spontaneously to Tel Aviv’s central Rabin Square and cheered the savior, Ehud Barak, the leader of the Labor Party. He announced the Dawn of Another Day.

Unfortunately, Barak turned out to be a sociopath and an egomaniac, if not a megalomaniac. He missed the chance of peace at the Camp David conference and in the process almost completely destroyed the Israeli peace movement. The Right, this time under Ariel Sharon, came back. Then under Ehud Olmert. Then under Netanyahu again. And Again.

And now again?

God forbid!

SO WHY did the government break up this week?

No special reason. The ministers were just fed up with each other, and all were fed up with “Bibi”.

Ministers started to besmirch each other, and Netanyahu. The Prime Minister, in his turn, accused his ministers, one by one, of incompetence and sinister conspiracies against him. In his parting speech, Netanyahu accused his finance minister, Yair Lapid, of failure – as if he, the prime minister, had nothing to do with it.

The public looked on as an amused or bemused bystander. As if the whole mess did not concern it.

Now we have new elections.

At this moment it looks as if we are doomed to have a fourth Netanyahu government, even worse than the third, more racist, more anti-democratic, more anti-peace.

Unless.

THREE WEEKS ago, when nobody yet anticipated the imminent breakup, I wrote an article in Haaretz. The title was “A National Emergency Government”.

My argument is that the Netanyahu government is leading the country towards disaster. It is systematically destroying all chances for peace, enlarging settlements in the West Bank and especially East Jerusalem, stoking the fires of a religious war on the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, denouncing both Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas at the same time. All this after the superfluous Gaza War, which ended in a military draw and a human disaster that continues unabated to this day.

At the same time, the government is bombarding the Knesset with an endless stream of racist and anti-democratic bills, each worse than the last, culminating in the bill called “Israel: the Nation-State of the Jewish People”, which eliminates the term “Jewish and Democratic State” as well as the word “Equality”.

At the same time, Netanyahu is quarreling with the US administration, severely damaging a relationship that is the lifeline of Israel in all matters, while Europe is slowly but surely approaching sanctions against Israel.

At the same time, social inequality in Israel, already enormous keeps on widening; prices in Israel are higher than in Europe, housing almost unaffordable.

With this government we are galloping towards a racist apartheid state, both in Israel proper and the occupied territories, heading towards disaster.

IN THIS emergency, I wrote, we cannot afford the usual squabbling between little left-wing and centrist parties, each of which does not even come near to endangering the right-wing coalition in power. In a national emergency, we need emergency measures.

We need to create a united election bloc of all centrist and leftist parties, leaving nobody out, if possible including the Arab parties.

I KNOW that that this is a Herculean task. There are large ideological differences between these parties, not to mention party interests and the egos of leaders, which play a huge role in ordinary times. But these are not ordinary times.

I did not propose that the parties dissolve and merge into one big party. That, I am afraid, is impossible at this point in time. It is, at least, premature. What is proposed is a temporary alliance, based on a general platform of peace, democracy, equality and social justice.

If the Arab political forces can join this alignment, that would be wonderful. If the time is not yet ripe, the Arab citizens could create a parallel unified bloc, linked to the Jewish one.

The declared purpose of the bloc should be to put an end to the catastrophic drift of the country towards the abyss and to oust not just Netanyahu, but the whole bunch of settlers, nationalist and racist demagogues, war-mongers and religious zealots. It should appeal to all sectors of Israeli society, women and men, Jews and Arabs, Orientals and Ashkenazis, secular and religious, Russian and Ethiopian immigrants. All those who fear for the future of Israel and are resolved to save it.

The call should be addressed first of all to the existing parties – the Labor Party and Meretz, Yair Lapid’s “There is a Future” and Tzipi Livni’s “The Movement”, as well as the new party-in-the-making of Moshe Kahlon, the communist Hadash and the Arab parties. It should also ask for the support of all the peace and human rights organizations.

In the political annals of Israel there is an example. When Ariel Sharon left the army in 1973 (after concluding that his peers would never allow him to become Chief of Staff) he created the Likud by uniting Menachem Begin’s Freedom Party, the Liberals and two small splinter parties.

I asked him about the sense of this. The Freedom and Liberal parties were already united in a joint Knesset faction, the two tiny parties were doomed anyhow.

“You don’t understand,” he replied. “The important thing is to convince the voters that the entire right-wing is now united, with nobody left out.”

Begin was far from enthusiastic. But strong public pressure was exerted on him, and he became the leader. In 1977, after eight straight election defeats, he became prime minister.

DOES A center-left alignment now have a chance of success? I strongly believe that it does.

Very large numbers of Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, have despaired of the political process altogether. They despise all politicians and parties, seeing only corruption, cynicism and self-interest. Others believe that the victory of the right-wing is inevitable. The dominant sentiment is of fatalism, apathy, What Can We Do?

A big new alignment carries the message: Yes, We Can. All together, we can halt the carriage and turn it around, before it reaches the cliff. We can turn bystanders into activists. We can turn non-voters into voters. Masses of them.

REMAINS THE question: who will be No. 1 on the joint election list?

This is a huge problem. Politicians have large egos. None of them will easily give up his or her ambition. I know. I have been through this three times in my life, and I had to contend with my own ego.

Also, the personality of No. 1 has a disproportional impact on the voting public.

Let’s face it: at the moment there is no outstanding personality around who would be the natural choice.

A simple and democratic way is to establish the priority by public opinion polls. Let the most popular win.

Another method is to hold open, public primaries. Anyone who declares that they are going to vote for the list will cast a ballot. There are other ways, too.

It would be a tragedy of historic dimensions if petty ambitions were to to cost us victory.

IN THE last few days, identical and similar calls have been published. There is a growing demand for a united National Salvation Front.

In order for this vision to come true, public pressure is needed. We have to overcome the hesitation of the politicians. We need a steady stream of public demands, petitions by well-known and respected cultural, political, economic and military personalities, as well as by citizens from all walks of life. Hundreds. Thousands.

These coming elections must turn into a national plebiscite, a clear choice between two very different Israeli states:

A racist Israel of inequality, engaged in an endless war and increasingly subject to the rule of fundamentalist rabbis.

Or a democratic Israel that seeks peace with Palestine and the entire Arab and Muslim world and equality between all citizens, irrespective of sex, nation, religion, language and community.

In such a contest, I believe that we shall win.

The post The Plebiscite: Fed Up With Netanyahu – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By US President Barack Obama

Good morning, everybody. Please have a seat. It is wonderful to be able to announce not the creation, but at least the filling of one new job. (Laughter.) But before we do, I wanted to make a somewhat broader statement about the economy. And Ash is willing to indulge me.

Last month, America’s businesses created more than 300,000 jobs. This keeps a pace so far this year that we have not seen since the 1990s. So far this year, over the first 11 months of 2014, our economy has created 2.65 million jobs. That’s more than in any entire year since the 1990s. Our businesses have now created 10.9 million jobs over the past 57 months in a row. And that’s the longest streak of private sector job growth on record.

We also know that the pickup in the pace of job growth this year has been in industries with higher wages. And overall, wages are rising — a very welcome sign for millions of Americans. So we’ve got an opportunity to keep up this progress if Congress is willing to keep our government open, avoid self-inflicted wounds, and work together to invest in the things that support faster job growth in high-paying jobs. That means exports, infrastructure, streamlining our tax code, immigration reform, giving minimum wage workers a raise.

It’s been a long road to recovery from the worst economic crisis in generations, and we still have a lot more work to do to make sure that hardworking Americans’ wages are growing faster. But the United States continues to outpace most of the world. Over the last four years, we’ve put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all other industrialized advanced countries combined. And we’re going to keep at it until every single American who is willing and able to work can find not just any job, but a job that pays a decent wage and allows them to support their families.

But it’s worth us every once in a while reflecting on the fact that the American economy is making real progress. And if we can continue in this trajectory, if we can continue to grow robustly, and if we make sure that those companies who are seeing profits — they’re probably higher than any time in the last 60 years — that they’re also making sure that their workers are sharing in that growth, then we can get a virtuous cycle that’s really going to make a difference and be a critical component of strengthening our national security, because national security starts with a strong economy here at home.

Now, I know that some people think that I announce Cabinet positions on fake Twitter accounts. (Laughter.) This is not the case.

A year ago, when Ash Carter completed his tenure as Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary Hagel took to the podium in Ash’s farewell ceremony and looked out at the audience of our civilian and military leaders, and he said, “I’ve known Ash Carter for many years. All of us here today have benefited from Ash’s hard work, his friendship, from his inspiration, and from his leadership.” And Chuck then went on to express his gratitude to his partner for “what Ash has done for this country and will continue to do in many ways.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Today, I’m pleased to announce my nominee to be our next Secretary of Defense, Mr. Ash Carter.

Now, with a record of service that has spanned more than 30 years — as a public servant, as an advisor, as a scholar — Ash is rightly regarded as one of our nation’s foremost national security leaders. As a top member of our Pentagon team for the first five years of my presidency, including his two years as deputy secretary, he was at the table in the Situation Room; he was by my side navigating complex security challenges that we were confronting. I relied on his expertise, and I relied on his judgment. I think it’s fair to say that, Ash, in your one-year attempt at retirement from public service, you’ve failed miserably. (Laughter.) But I am deeply grateful that you’re willing to go back at it.

Ash, as some of you know, brings a unique blend of strategic perspective and technical know-how. As a student of history, he understands the United States — and I’m quoting him now — is “the single most [important] provider of security in the world,” and he played a key role in devising our defense strategy to advance that security. He’s also a physicist, which means that he’s one of the few people who actually understands how many of our defense systems work. (Laughter.) And that has also allowed him to serve with extraordinary breadth and also depth in a whole range of work that we’ve had to do.

In one way or another, Ash has served under 11 Secretaries of Defense. He’s an innovator who helped create the program that has dismantled weapons of mass destruction around the world and reduced the threat of nuclear terrorism. He’s a reformer who’s never been afraid to cancel old or inefficient weapons programs. He knows the Department of Defense inside and out — all of which means that on day one, he’s going to hit the ground running.

Ash is also known by our allies and our friends around the world. Having served both Republican and Democratic Secretaries, he’s respected and trusted on both sides of the aisle. He’s been a close partner with our military leaders. And he’s admired by civilian leaders across the department because he’s a mentor to so many of them.

There’s one other quality of Ash’s service that I think often gets overlooked, and that is his true regard, his love for the men and women in uniform and their families, his relentless dedication to their safety and well-being. When he cut outdated, unneeded systems, he did it because he was trying to free up money for our troops to make sure they had the weapons and the gear that they needed and the quality of life for themselves and their families that they deserve.

When our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were struggling to defend against roadside bombs, he moved heaven and earth to rush them new body armor and vehicles. It’s no exaggeration to say that there are countless Americans who are alive today in part because of Ash’s efforts. When our forces sat down for Thanksgiving dinner far from home, or as our wounded warriors recovered in the hospital, or when our fallen heroes returned to Dover, Ash was there, often on his own time, without any publicity or fanfare. And I know that Ash will be there for them now as Secretary of Defense.

We face no shortage of challenges to our national security. Our combat mission in Afghanistan ends this month, and we have to transition to a new mission of advising and assisting Afghan forces and going after remnants of al Qaeda’s core. We have to keep degrading, and ultimately destroying, ISIL in Iraq and Syria. We have to build counterterrorism partnerships and new platforms. We have to continue the fight against Ebola in West Africa. We have to continue to strengthen our alliances, including NATO, and continue rebalancing our defense posture in the Asia Pacific.

Going forward, our armed forces are, necessarily, going to need to be leaner, but as Commander-in-Chief, I’m going to make sure that we have a military that is second to none, that continues to be the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.

That means, though, we’re going to have to bolster some new capabilities, our cyber-defenses, how we deal with our satellites and how we’re adapting our military, and investing in new capabilities to meet long-term threats. We’re going to have to work with Congress on a more responsible approach to defense spending, including the reforms we need to make the department more efficient. That’s how we’re going to preserve readiness. That’s how we’re going to keep faith with our forces and our families. That’s how we’re going to deliver world-class care to our wounded warriors.

And Ash is going to be critical to all these efforts. When we talked about this job, we talked about how we’re going to have to make smart choices precisely because there are so many challenges out there. And we’re going to have to squeeze everything we have out of the resources that we have in order to be as effective as possible. And I can’t think of somebody who’s more qualified to do that.

In his career, Ash has been confirmed by the Senate three times. If it were entirely up to my dear friend, Carl Levin, who’s sitting here, I suspect it would happen really quickly because that’s the kind of guy Carl is, and Carl, I know, has had a chance to work with Ash in the past. My hope is, is that in the new Congress, we get similar speed and dispatch.

By the way, we will miss Carl Levin. I just wanted to mention that. (Applause.)

One last piece of critical information that may have tipped the scales in me wanting to promote Ash. Ash is a big Motown fan. (Laughter.) And one of his favorites is a classic by the Four Tops, “Reach out, I’ll be there.” So, Ash, I’m reaching out to you. (Laughter.) You have been there for us, our troops, our families, our nation.

I also know that he’s been there for his lovely wife, Stephanie, sometimes by Skype because he’s been traveling. But the sacrifices that Stephanie has been willing to make — this is a team effort, as it is true for our military families. And so we’re very grateful to Stephanie. She joined Ash on a lot of those Thanksgiving trips to see our troops and at the bedside of wounded warriors. She knows the sacrifices they’re going through.

Stephanie, we thank you for your service. We thank Will and Ava, who couldn’t be here, but we know that they couldn’t be prouder of their dad.

And with that, I want to let, hopefully, our soon-to-be-new Secretary of Defense say a few words. (Applause.)

MR. CARTER: Thank you, Mr. President. And, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, it’s an honor and a privilege for me to be nominated for the position of Secretary of Defense. General Scowcroft, my longtime mentor, thank you for being here. And thanks to another longtime mentor, Bill Perry, who can’t be here today. And thanks to you, Chairman, and many other friends and colleagues, past and future, for coming out today.

I accepted the President’s offer to be nominated for Secretary of Defense because of my regard for his leadership. I accepted it because of the seriousness of the strategic challenges we face, but also the bright opportunities that exist for America if we can come together to grab hold of them. And I accepted the offer because of the deep respect and abiding love that Stephanie and I have for our men and women in uniform.

As we talked together in the past weeks, Mr. President, we discussed the challenges and the opportunities, and the need both to keep America safe and to make a better future for our children. If confirmed in this job, I pledge to you my most candid strategic advice. And I pledge also that you will receive equally candid military advice.

And finally, to the greatest fighting force the world has ever known, to you, I pledge to keep faith with you and to serve our nation with the same unflinching dedication that you demonstrate every day. (Applause.)

The post President Obama Nominates Ashton Carter As Secretary Of Defense – Transcript appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Researchers at the University of Tübingen show rule-applying neurons work better under the influence of the happy hormone

The chemical messenger dopamine – otherwise known as the happiness hormone – is important not only for motivation and motor skills. It seems it can also help neurons with difficult cognitive tasks. Torben Ott, Simon Jacob and Professor Andreas Nieder of Tübingen’s Institute for Neurobiology have demonstrated for the first time how dopamine influences brain cells while processing rules. You can read the study in full in the early online edition of Neuron.

The effects of dopamine become very clear when the brain gets too little of it, as is the case with Parkinson’s disease. A dopamine imbalance leads to varied neurological disruptions – particularly movement – but also mental abilities. Our key cognitive center, the prefrontal cortex, which we use for abstract thought, rule-based decisions and logical conclusions, is intensively supplied with dopamine. Despite its major medical significance, we know little about dopamine’s effects on information processing by neurons in the healthy brain.

To test this, the researchers trained rhesus monkeys to solve “greater than” and “less than” math problems. From other recent studies, the researchers knew that certain neurons in the prefrontal cortex answer such questions – one half of these “rule cells” was only activated when the “greater than” rule applied, and the other half was only activated when the “less than” rule applied.

Meanwhile, physiologically small amounts of various substances were being discharged near the relevant cells. These substances can have the same effect as dopamine – or the opposite effect – and could be adsorbed by dopamine-sensitive neurons. The surprising result was that stimulation of the dopamine system allowed the “rule cells” to perform better and to more clearly distinguish between the “greater than” and “less than” rules. Dopamine had a positive effect on the “rule cells’” quality of work.

The study provides new insight into how dopamine influences abstract thought processes needed, for instance, to apply simple mathematical rules. “With these findings, we are just starting to understand how nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex produce complex, goal-directed behavior,” says Ott. Along with a better understanding of the foundations of information processing in this important part of the brain, the results could have medical significance. “These new insights help us to better interpret the effects of certain medicines which may be used for instance in cases of severe psychological disturbance,” says Professor Nieder, “because such medications influence the dopamine balance in the prefrontal cortex in ways we do not understand well to date.”

The post Dopamine Helps With Math Rules As Well As Mood appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Glenn Voelz

The term military science generally describes the body of theories, concepts, and methods for employing armed forces. However, as an academic discipline it is ill defined, drawing from a patchwork of curricula including history, foreign affairs, security studies, leadership, operations management, and systems engineering, as well as other elements of the physical and social sciences. Notably, the Department of Defense dictionary does not even provide a definition. This vague categorization is somewhat reflective of the term’s diminished status from its 19th-century usage when Military Science was frequently capitalized and placed alongside Physics, Philosophy, and other well-established academic disciplines.

An irony of the term’s decline is that it occurred over a period when military professionals increasingly conceptualized their discipline in the terminology and metaphors of science. This transformation was driven in part by the institutionalization of officer education programs emphasizing the formalized study of military theory. A second factor, rapid industrialization, firmly established science and technology as the central pillars of American military power and arguably the foundational elements in approaches to doctrine and planning. These trends reinforced the proposition that the practical application of military theory, as expressed through strategy, doctrine, and planning, was becoming more of a science and less of an art. This perspective has reached an apex in recent decades, epitomized by doctrinal methodologies seeking to reduce decisionmaking to formulaic processes—not unlike the methods used by chemists mixing compounds for desired effect. In particular, there has been a tendency toward instrumental applications of descriptive theory attempting to distill complex social dynamics into bounded problem statements that fit neatly into proscribed planning schemas and process solutions.1

Military science certainly shares some basic traits with the physical sciences in the use of observation, description, measurement, and structured analysis supporting causal inferences or explanatory hypotheses. However, military science remains distinct from the physical sciences in significant ways, most notably in the absence of controlled, replicable experimentation as means of validating theory. For this and others reasons, the conceptual foundations of the field reside more appropriately in the realm of the social sciences. While this conclusion may be intuitively obvious to most military professionals, its practical implications are increasingly overlooked and are reflective of a deep and persistent strain of “scientism” within the intellectual foundation of American approaches to military theory, doctrine, and planning.2

Origins of American Military Scientism

Observers have long suggested a distinct techno-scientific orientation as the defining characteristic of American approaches to strategy, doctrine, and planning. Early military theory in the United States was based largely on inherited European traditions profoundly influenced by Newtonian logic with emphasis on deterministic relationships and predictable linear interactions between forces.3 Discovery of laws describing the natural universe led to the search for similar constants governing interactions among armies in the field. Such early examples of “military scientism” reflected a growing belief that warfare, like other natural phenomena, could be analyzed to reveal basic patterns and predictable characteristics.

These precedents deeply influenced early American approaches to military theory requiring that authoritative scientific principles serve as the basis for doctrinal approaches, while technological innovation came to be viewed as the transformational element in the history of warfare. The founding of West Point in the early 19th century reflected these influences, particularly under the early leadership of superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, who firmly entrenched a technical and engineering-based curriculum as the preferred intellectual foundation for military leaders. This approach was reinforced under Professor Dennis Hart Mahan, who was instrumental in transferring European knowledge and practices to the Academy with particular emphasis on engineering, fortifications, ballistics, and topography as core elements of military education.

Within this context, military theorist Baron de Jomini emerged as perhaps the most influential theorist in 19th-century America. The Swiss-born officer held that all strategy was “controlled by invariable scientific principles” and attempted to reduce its conduct to prescriptive rules deeply rooted in empirical methods and analysis of historical example.4 Indeed, his “scientifically” derived concepts of mass, maneuver, and lines of operation remain central to American doctrine and military theory to this day.

Carl von Clausewitz was the other dominant influence on late 19th-century American military thinking. With his emphasis on complexity and ambiguity, Clausewitz is often viewed as the theorist more relevant to modern “nonlinear” warfare, yet his vocabulary also reflects the powerful influences of Renaissance-era science, particularly his use of Newtonian analogies—force, mass, center of gravity—to describe the nature of armed conflict.5 Indeed, central to Clausewitzian thought is the concept of “friction,” illustrating the role that chance and uncertainty play as determining factors in war. Like Jomini, Clausewitz shared the view that knowledge of science combined with practical experience and deep study of history was fundamental in preparation for command. However, he was less convinced of the utility of universal principles and sacrosanct theory as guides to the conduct of war. Rather, Clausewitz suggested that the purpose of theory was to educate the mind of a leader rather than “accompany him to the field of battle.”6 Furthermore, he cautioned against the tendency for theory to furnish commanders with positive doctrines and systems to be used “like mental appliances.”7

Within this intellectual milieu evolved the concurrent phenomena of military professionalization and industrialization, both serving to reinforce America’s emerging techno-scientific approach to warfare. Lessons of the Civil War awakened theorists to the criticality of mobility, logistics, and industrial production as central aspects of strategic calculation. Additionally, the decades prior to World War I marked a period of intense scientific, technological, and industrial innovation transforming the practice of warfare with the introduction of radio, submarines, airplanes, automobiles, machineguns, and high explosives.

Theorists and planners were not only embracing the promise of new technology but also examining how scientific methods and modern management practices could be transferred from the laboratory and factory floor to the battlefield. Development of the modern staff system and functional specialization reflected this impulse, necessitated in part by the increasingly complicated management tasks associated with mass mobilization and logistical demands of industrial age warfare. This evolution also demanded more formalized systems of military training and education with an emphasis on structured methodologies and codified doctrine. Just as scientific management practices rationalized the process of industrial production, military theorists attempted to bring “order, regularity, and predictability” to the practice of war.8

Among influential 20th-century military theorists, B.H. Liddell Hart was one of the more devout believers that the scientific study of warfare would reveal “a few truths of experience which seem so universal, and so fundamental, as to be termed axioms.”9 Though best known for his advocacy of the “indirect approach” and tenets of maneuver warfare, Hart’s thinking reflected an increasingly influential pedagogical perspective viewing history as the laboratory of military science. “If the study of war in the past has so often proved fallible as a guide to the course and conduct of the next war,” he noted, “it implies not that war is unsuited to scientific study but that the study has not been scientific enough in spirit and method.”10

J.F.C. Fuller, another dominant intellectual influence of the interwar period, took this notion to its logical conclusion and argued for direct application of scientific methodologies to the study of warfare, asserting nothing less than his desire “to do for war what Copernicus did for astronomy, Newton for physics, and Darwin for natural history.”11 Through exhaustive historical analysis of warfare from antiquity to the modern era, Fuller became convinced that such methods would “enable the student to study the history of war scientifically, and to work out a plan of war scientifically, and create, not only a scientific method of discovery, but also a scientific method of instruction.”12

The views of Hart and Fuller reflected a growing confidence in the promise of scientifically managed warfare based on technological innovation and empirically derived approaches. This phenomenon was not limited to land warfare. Strains of such thinking were clearly present in Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theories on seapower and the interplay of technology, geography, and tactical principles. Airpower theory was equally driven by techno-scientific approaches exemplified by influential thinkers such as Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, and Hugh Trenchard, who variously promoted strategies based on innovative technologies linked with theoretical yet largely unproven principles of employment and effect.

World War II came closer than any modern conflict to validating the notion that the coupling of technology and scientific management could deliver desired and predictable strategic ends. Paul Kennedy’s recent study of the conflict masterfully depicts a “scientists’ war” highlighting the remarkable achievements of mid-level engineers and managers who developed technical, organizational, and process innovations to overcome many of the war’s biggest challenges. Kennedy focuses particularly on issues such as convoy security, strategic bombing, and amphibious landings, where rapid fielding of technical solutions combined with doctrinal and tactical adaptability delivered significant and measurable advantages that proved decisive in winning the war.13

By this analysis, World War II may be read as vindication of the techno-scientific approaches advocated by Jomini, Hart, and Fuller. However, one must consider whether the war represented an exemplar or an isolated aberration. First, one is struck by the remarkable symmetry in means and method of the major combatants, particularly in terms of technological sophistication, industrialization, organizational structures, and, to some degree, doctrinal approach. Certainly when contrasted with other conflicts of the modern era, it is the similarities between combatants more than the differences that seem noteworthy. Moreover, Kennedy notes that many of the central military challenges of the conflict—issues of time, distance, and production—were problems particularly well suited to structured analysis and technical and managerial solutions. Multiple elements central to wartime strategy such as convoy security and strategic bombing provided relatively straightforward feedback loops enabling clear analysis, unambiguous experimentation, and rapid implementation of functional solutions.

In any case, lessons of victory profoundly influenced subsequent approaches of the Cold War era. From the tactical to the strategic level, the military turned to applied science, operations research, and systems analysis to address the most complex national security challenges of the postwar period. Characteristics of the principal Cold War adversaries—structured, homogenous, hierarchical, and doctrinally based—served to reinforce the conclusion that military planning and decision making might be mastered through algorithms and process models. The field of intelligence as much as any other became defined by such approaches. Technical collection capabilities managed by centralized bureaucracies proved remarkably effective at producing detailed information on highly structured conventional threats. In other respects, the rise of the Cold War–era techno-scientific regime was necessitated by the increasingly complicated demands of managing a massive and widely dispersed standing military. Theorist Martin van Creveld observed that the expanding scope of military operations, logistics networks, and occupational specialization increasingly demanded centralized control and the leveraging of science, mathematics, and advanced communications to enable effective coordination on such a massive scale.14 This trend naturally reinforced reliance on systems analysis, operational research, and statistical methodologies as basic tools for military decision making and planning.

These trends had a profound influence during the Vietnam conflict on approaches employed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, particularly efforts to translate tactical feedback into quantifiable metrics for analyzing and guiding strategic level decisionmaking. Antoine Bousquet describes the concept of “cybernetics” evolving out of World War II that engendered an “understanding of war which strove to frame the use of military force into an activity totally amenable to scientific analysis, to the detriment of other forms of thought.”15 However, these shortcomings did little to challenge the prevailing notion that warfare could be analyzed and managed with scientific precision. Bousquet cites as a high point of this trend the advent of theories formalized under the rubric of “revolution in military affairs” (RMA) in the decades following Vietnam.

The essence of RMA maintained that technological innovation and integrated advances in weapons, information processing, communications, organizational management, and doctrinal approaches would be the primary drivers of future military advantage. RMA emphasized operations research and systems analysis to frame strategy and planning decisions as engineering problems to be solved through data collection and analysis, presuming that measurable risk and outcome probabilities could be estimated with reasonable confidence through adherence to doctrinal methods. These process-oriented methods became increasingly formalized and to this day dominate the pedagogical approach to professional military education.

Even with the end of the Cold War, military theory and doctrinal development continued to reflect the persistent influence of the techno-scientific approaches, notably with concepts such as network-centric warfare and effects-based operations, ideas closely related to the cybernetic methods of the Vietnam era and later RMA efforts. These doctrinal theories were premised on analyzing the battlefield environment as a holistic system of interdependent nodes and causal linkages that could be identified and acted upon with measured and predictable effect. This process was enabled by conceptual models such as operational net assessment and system-of-systems analysis. These models apply computational tools, algorithms, and data-intensive analyses to disaggregate key dynamics of a given operational environment and then revisualize their environments as coherent and holistic systems.

After a decade of conflict defined by unconventional adversaries, complex environments, and ambiguous operational endstates, a new era of military scientism is already taking form. The contours of this next evolution might be described as “post-Newtonian, post-Jominian.” Army Design Theory has emerged as the conceptual basis of a new approach to planning in complex environments. Meanwhile, military theorists are looking to fields such as advanced mathematics, theoretical physics, and biology for insights into complex system behavior and modeling intervention strategies. Other efforts are exploring chaos theory and related fields for tools to analyze environmental propensities of conflict zones, emergent security instabilities, and mapping system dynamics of terrorist networks and insurgencies. Despite a new vocabulary, the essence of these approaches remains firmly grounded in the basic presumptions of the techno-scientific regime. By all evidence, military scientism remains as powerful an influence as ever in the American tradition.

Fatal Striving: Hayek, Scientism, and the Limits of Useful Knowledge

Friedrich Hayek identified a similar phenomenon in his own field of economics, notably articulated during his 1974 Nobel Prize lecture in which he cautioned colleagues against misapplication of scientific-like methods to tasks for which they were unsuited. Hayek expressed concern that “confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems.”16 His criticisms were directed at the intersection of the social sciences and public policy where he saw vague imitations of scientific methodologies applied inappropriately to management of complex social phenomena. He labeled such practices intellectual “charlatanism” intended primarily for the purpose of lending legitimacy and pretense of precision to policy proscriptions amounting to little more than blind tinkering in areas where fundamental uncertainty prevailed. Indeed, Hayek could well have been speaking of military science when he described the curious task of economics as demonstrating “to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”17

As a young soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army along the Italian front during World War I, Hayek certainly did not lack exposure to the complexity and arbitrariness of armed conflict. Later in his career, he described the inherent challenges of decisionmaking in environments characterized by fragmentary information. He was particularly interested in how such systems resisted submission to hierarchical, centralized planning—a notion directly challenging the fundamental premise of deliberate design.18 Though not a military theorist per se, Hayek’s insights into the use of knowledge, function of complex systems, and dangers of scientism all offer important lessons for the contemporary strategist, planner, and student of military theory.

A foundational element of Hayek’s worldview relates to his observations concerning the “unavoidable imperfection of man’s knowledge.”19 The phrase should not be misunderstood as resignation to intellectual nihilism. Rather, it reflects a profound insight about the nature of information, particularly pertaining to environments where data is dispersed, tacitly understood, or in forms resistant to detection, collection, and analysis, thus rendering it too subjective to be a basis for scientifically valid conclusions. In this sense, Hayek describes the essence behind Clausewitz’s famous dictum that intelligence reports in war are often “contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.”20 As a result, theory formation in the social sciences is often a function of information availability.21 This situation naturally promotes forms of selection bias when information critical to understanding system behavior is too disaggregated for systematic collection or simply ignored due to its uncertain significance. Bousquet as well as military theorist Martin van Creveld identified such “information pathologies” during the Vietnam conflict where pseudo-scientific approaches to strategy evolved based on the most easily quantifiable characteristics of the battlefield, thereby conflating counting with understanding.22

A widely circulated recent paper concerning intelligence in Afghanistan noted that even after a decade of war, the American military still finds “itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate.”23 The authors posit that a central problem has been the inability to aggregate useful information existing at the lowest levels for use by higher level decisionmakers, noting that the ground soldier or local development worker is generally best informed about their particular environment, while the path “up through the levels of hierarchy is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.” The paper identifies the central obstacle to gathering and acting upon relevant information as a matter of inadequate organizational structure. Conversely, Hayek would say that the basic issue is not a result of flaws in organizational structure, but rather something more fundamental about the nature of knowledge in complex systems. He points out that circumstances defining outcomes in complex environments are rarely, if ever, fully accessible to the social scientist, policymaker, or military planner, no matter how information is collected and acted upon.

To some degree, this situation reflects the inescapable reality of military science and the fundamental epistemological challenge of analyzing complex social phenomena. With historical example as its laboratory, military theory relies on ex post facto analysis of what are essentially natural experiments. This entails several limitations. As a mode of analysis, historical narrative is fundamentally linear and deterministic by nature. Its aim is to find causality, thereby minimizing the role of chance. It veils complexity and shies from ambiguity. Its vernaculars tend toward the anecdotal, interpersonal, and spectacular. History does not always know what it does not know. Ultimately, what it provides is reasoning by induction—drawing general rules from specific examples. It is non-empirical in that it relies on uncontrolled data. Perhaps most importantly, as a basis for applied theory, it lacks mechanisms of validation through experimental replication—the essence of scientific methodology.

In his recent book, Jim Manzi suggests the limited practical utility of the nonexperimental social sciences, noting these fields are generally “not capable of making useful, reliable, and non-obvious predictions for the effects of most proposed policy interventions.”24 However, in the case of military science, historical interpretations often become proxy for theory or, at the very least, the basis for instrumentalist approaches to operational decisionmaking. Unlike in the physical sciences where a hypothesis may be proposed, tested, and potentially disproved, military science generally does not offer falsifiable propositions. This characteristic, according to Karl Popper, is what distinguishes science from pseudo-science and separates technical prediction from mere “prophecy.”25 Clausewitz was sensitive to these limitations as well, noting that “no empirical science, consequently also no theory of the art of war, can always corroborate its truths by historical proof.”26 Notwithstanding General George Patton’s assertion that the successful soldier must know history, recent scholarship by Daniel Kahneman, Phillip Tetlock, Nassim Talib, and others suggests substantive limitations in applying historical pattern analysis as a basis for predictive decisionmaking, particularly in the case of unstructured problems and complex systems.

Much of Kahneman’s work on bias and systematic error in expert judgment focuses on the limitations of derived heuristics in fields dependent on analysis of historical case study.27 This mode of theorizing reinforces a powerful human tendency to think in terms of association, metaphor, and inferred causality, with cognitive strategies giving rise to rules of thumb based on crude pattern recognition. Kahneman suggests such techniques feed overconfidence based on the certainty of hindsight, leading planners to view the world as far more coherent and orderly than it is. Others have termed this tendency “folk science” whereby humans naturally create “illusions of explanatory depth” in their analysis of complex functions, often entirely unaware how this masks inaccuracies in understanding.28 All of these factors entail what Kahneman calls the “planning fallacy,” or tendency to underestimate the difficulty of implementing a plan while simultaneously overestimating one’s ability to shape future outcomes.

However superficially military planning methodologies may resemble scientifically derived processes, Hayek reminds us that the enormous predictive power of the physical sciences is based on laws derived from experiments with relatively few variables that may be isolated and carefully measured, whereas complex social phenomena inevitably involve indeterminable variables either unmeasurable or unknown to the observer. Even in the best of circumstances, use of scientific-like methods of analysis offer little more than crude pattern prediction or only a generalized understanding of system dynamics.

Clausewitz famously observed that “three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”29 Hayek certainly would agree. He reminds us that in fields where essential complexity exists, the planner must understand that “he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.”30 Even as the methodologies of the physical sciences are lavishly imitated, the nature of the problems facing military planners cannot produce equally structured outcomes. One significant reason is that intelligence can never resemble the process of data collection in a laboratory, no matter the level of technical sophistication.

Conclusion

Having rediscovered the primacy of Clausewitzian ambiguity, some theorists now propose Army Design Theory as a means to disentangle complex causality and deliver improved strategies of intervention. It is at this point where caution is warranted. An unfortunate symptom of military scientism has been the tendency for planners to conflate the precision of their tools (weapons and systems) with the methods of their application (theories and doctrine). While the technologies of modern warfare function primarily in a Newtonian universe, methods of their application still reside stubbornly in a Hayekian one. Confusion over this point gets to the heart of the dilemma with military scientism.

Arguably much of what passes for military planning is less analytically rigorous than what meets the eye. The fixtures of doctrinal orthodoxy have created an aura of pseudo-scientific infallibility in the military planning process, rendering its outputs impervious to rational critique. However, too often doctrine is little more than a fig leaf concealing a process driven by gut-feeling heuristics and unsubstantiated causal suppositions. Whereas doctrine should serve the useful function of providing a common language and frame of reference, it also has the undesirable effect of reinforcing the cult of expertise, thereby discouraging integration of diverse tools and nontraditional thinking. This is where it becomes dangerous. As Malcolm Gladwell has noted, whereas incompetence is the malady of the novice, overconfidence is the disease of the expert.31 And it is generally the expert who possesses the greatest potential for creating disasters.

Clausewitz was well aware of the potential dangers of scientism and warned that “much greater is the evil which lies in the pompous retinue of technical terms—scientific expressions and metaphors” that “lose their propriety, if they ever had any, as soon as they are distorted, and used as general axioms, or as small crystalline talismans.”32 In this respect, a healthy dose of Hayekian thinking provides a natural “dampening effect” against unrealistic aspirations. While Hayek’s insights dealt primarily with functions of economic markets, the same dynamics apply to military conflict or any other human activity defined by conditions of uncertainty, analytical ambiguity, and predictive indeterminacy. What a Hayekian worldview demands is that one trade certainty for humility, appreciate the limits of useful knowledge, and recognize that plans do not represent extension of the will. Skepticism must be the order of the day, placing the burden of proof on the doctrinarian.

As proscription for correcting the worse abuses of military scientism, leaders might benefit from considering methods from other fields that at first glance may not seem intuitively similar to military operations such as biology, epidemiology, or meteorology. These disciplines may offer helpful examples for how military planners can better appreciate the natural limitations of their craft, improve techniques of meta-cognition, and gain greater sensitivity to the uses and abuses of probability. Likewise, repositioning military science as an academic discipline of equal stature with established social sciences will invite both scrutiny over our methods as well as beneficial cross-pollination and improved awareness of our biases.

In the end, we must seek a defensible space between helpless indifference and the present hubris that drives the lofty ambitions of many military planners. One must appreciate that in some situations intuition, training, and experience are simply not enough to endow one with sufficient awareness to predict outcomes with a reasonable degree of certainty. Indeed, the ability to recognize these limits and approach them with humility and intellectual honesty is perhaps the truest mark of a professional.

Source:
This article was originally published in the Joint Force Quarterly 75, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes

1. Descriptive theory based on retrospective analysis where variables and environmental conditions cannot be fully known or controlled, versus predictive theory offering falsifiable propositions subject to experimental testing and validation.
2. Scientism as applied by Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, and others to describe inappropriate application of scientific-like methods to contexts where they do not clearly fit or with insufficient empirical evidence to support scientifically valid theories; also processes designed to appear science-like yet lacking rigorous procedural, methodological, or analytical standards.
3. Notably in Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
4. John Shy, “Jomini,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, 146 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
5. Among others, see Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity and the Unpredictability of War,” International Security 17, no. 3 (1992), 59–90, available at <www.clausewitz.com/readings/Beyerchen/CWZandNonlinearity.htm>.
6. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. James John Graham (London: Trübner, 1873), book 2, chap. 4.
7. Ibid.
8. Bousquet, 30.
9. B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy of the Indirect Approach (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), 234, available at <http://archive.org/stream/strategyofindire035126mbp#page/n15/mode/2up>.
10. B.H. Liddell Hart, Why Don’t We Learn from History (Ann Arbor: Hawthorn Books, 1972), 16, available at <http://pkpolitics.com/files/2008/05/liddell-hart-why-dont-we-learn-from-history.PDF>.
11. J.F.C. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War (London: Hutchinson, 1926), available at <www.cgsc.edu/Karl/download/csipubs/FoundationsofScienceofWar.pdf>.
12. Ibid., 35.
13. Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers who Turned the Tide in the Second World War (New York: Random House, 2013).
14. Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1985), 106.
15. Antoine Bousquet, “Cyberneticizing the American War Machine: Science and Computers in the Cold War,” Cold War History 8, no. 1 (2008), 77–102.
16. Friedrich Hayek, “The Pretense of Knowledge,” American Economic Review 79, no. 6 (1989).
17. Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 76.
18. Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, 4 (September 1945), 519–530, available at <www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>.
19. Ibid., 530.
20. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 117.
21. Hayek, “Pretense of Knowledge.”
22. Van Creveld, 240.
23. Michael T. Flynn, Matt Pottinger, and Paul D. Batchelor, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2010), available at <www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/AfghanIntel_Flynn_Jan2010_code507_voices.pdf>.
24. Jim Manzi, Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial and Error for Business, Politics, and Society (New York: Basic Books, 2012), xi.
25. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Routledge, 2002).
26. Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, book 2, chap. 6.
27. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011).
28. Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, “The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of Explanatory Depth,” Cognitive Science 26, no. 5 (2002), 521–562.
29. Clausewitz, On War (Princeton), 104.
30. Hayek, “Pretense of Knowledge,” 7.
31. Malcolm Gladwell, C-SPAN interview with Brian Lamb, November 30, 2009.
32. Clausewitz, On War, trans. Graham, book 2, chap. 6.

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By Dr. Parasaran Rangarajan

The focus of this paper is to highlight the need for economic independence combined with political support of India when seeking autonomy in the context of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

In the quiet of an international storm of human rights brewing at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which started an investigation into alleged violations of international law this past March where hearings have begun in Geneva¹ and Presidential Elections, Sri Lanka has been able to sustain its economic growth which is a testament to its strength.

Proponents of increased autonomy for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka must realise that it will be quite difficult without the support of the dominant power in this region- India. The government of India and most nations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) either abstained or voted against the U.N. investigation with the rationale that matters should be handled regionally or internally and so smaller nations are not to be targeted by superpowers at such forums.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) in Sri Lanka recently met the newly elected government of India including the External Affairs Minister of India Smt. Sushma Swaraj and Prime Minister Modi to request this support. De-militarisation, implementing the 13 Amendment of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, and implementation of the 1987 Indo-Lankan Accord were all topics discussed by the parties.

The 13^th Amendment is of special importance as it devolves power from the central government to the Provincial Councils but Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa is hesitant to implement it as it is the last card he has to offer for the Tamils of Sri Lanka in negotiations for autonomy. The opposition candidate for the Presidency, Maithripala Sirisena has declined to offer any sort of federalism for the Tamils as well². Furthermore; the Provincial Councils do not become fully autonomous such as other federal arrangements such as Quebec of Canada as a Military Governor appointed by the President of Sri Lanka still has to clear all bills before becoming law in the Provincial Councils so in this way; the autonomy is very limited.

However, the promise of abolishing the Executive Presidency to pave way for constitutional changes has been promised by the opposition candidate in Sri Lanka’s Presidential Elections and has also been advocated by the government of India to give Tamils equal rights.³

In this context, the TNA’  link with the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress (SLMC) which holds power in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) will be beneficial as the SLMC realises they are not going to be given the election perks such as the chair of the Chief Minister of the EPC which the President promised them.

The NPC currently enjoys a large amount of aid coming from India and the central government of Sri Lanka. However, the NPC is seeking international intervention as there is absolutely no trust between the central government and the Tamil community. In the UNHRC Resolution passed this past March, there was a clause giving Sri Lanka a one year deadline to implement the 13^th Amendment and it is very unlikely that Sri Lanka will meet this.

In addition to international pressure, there must be steps taken by the NPC to seek the autonomy which is guaranteed to them. First, there must be a policy of self-reliance in economy and this policy must be implemented at the earliest. The only other option to reduce and eliminate reliance is a Marxist style revolution in regards to the philosophy of poverty.

However, the key to Sri Lanka maintain its position in the world and perhaps what would prevent the findings of a UNHRC investigation from proceeding to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it is referred to the U.N. Security Council is the veto power of China. This is not because China and Sri Lanka are historical friends but because much of the world still has vested economic and strategic interests in Sri Lanka.

The economic centrality of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean is likely to be unchallenged as it is the only nation able to attract high amounts of foreign direct investments (FDI) while being investigated for genocide. It is also a reason why the government of India is unable to take a stronger stand on the issue of human rights of Tamils on that island. India is the number one exporter of goods to Sri Lanka standing at 20% and where the number one importer of goods from Sri Lanka is the United States (U.S.) accounting for 21% and United Kingdom (U.K) at 20% of all Sri Lankan exports⁴.

The amount of income India makes from exporting goods petroleum, cars, wheat, etc is approximately $3.6 Billion USD according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and most recently stated at $4 Billion USD according to the High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka.

The 14 year old India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISLFTA) has provided massive boosts for trade between the two nations and India is the most stable trading partner of Sri Lanka according to the Indian High Commissioner⁵. Since the launch of the ISLFTA, Sri Lankan exports have increased 10 fold to India as well⁶. Many European nations have expressed interest in investing in Sri Lanka such as France⁷ and Belarus⁸. This is not to mention the $6.4 Billion USD China has strategically invested in creating ports, military bases, and other installations in Sri Lanka which is expected to rise to $12 Billion in 3 years.

However, while there is a larger regional attempt to outdo the U.S. dollar with the Brasil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) Development Bank, Sri Lanka has implemented a program through its Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) titled the “Ceylon Dollar Bond Fund” for investors looking to invest in U.S. dollars. In fact, Sri Lanka’s Dulindra Fernando, Managing Director of Ceylon Asset Management stated that he looks to nations such as Singapore and Dubai of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who hold trillions in USD in their foreign reserves as a model for Sri Lanka. This serves western investors well who want to keep the dollar as the primary trading currency after the abolishment of the Bretton-Woods System but is in conflict with the BRICS and South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Development Bank.

While some European nations have proposed larger investments and nations such as Vietnam calling for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)⁹, sanctions on Sri Lanka which have been proposed by the United Kingdom (U.K.) to the European Union (E.U.) to cooperate with the U.N. probe. This may play into the hands of India who can do business with Sri Lanka via other nations as Chinese investments on the island are halted.¹⁰ On the other hand, it may be strategic for India to have Sri Lanka in this capacity to facilitate the dollar trade and make economic gains but it be worth to trade this for hegemony over China in the island.

In addition, the Sri Lanka has opened its doors to international investment for the re-development of the former war zone of the Northern Province as Sri Lanka has invested $3.2 Billion USD¹¹ which will be balanced by foreign trade with nations such as India who have also invested in the Northern Province to keep up with Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. Therefore, Sri Lanka is serving the economic interests of India precisely.

To reverse this trend for the interests of Tamil autonomy, there must be measures taken by the NPC in being able to attract investment on their own from other countries than India or China. There must be the will for the NPC to create its own export economy with western nations while serving the interests of India by attending to the BRICS Development Bank while Sri Lanka is against it.

The process of Tamil economic autonomy can be assisted by Tamil Nadu in India to facilitate trade backwards meaning instead of Tamil Nadu exporting goods, they must offer some of the goods to the Northern Province at a lower price to export it through bi-lateral negotiations. This is because exports from Tamil Nadu are more than $33 Billion USD¹² and the Northern Province only needs a marginal percentage of that amount to outdo the government of Sri Lanka.

It might be strategic for the Northern Province to hedge its economy on Tamil Nadu of India if it is willing to play a part rather than the Rajapaksa Administration which is being investigated for genocide by the U.N. In other words, the NPC must become the number one economic hotspot in Sri Lanka for those looking for international development investments.

The NPC economy is mainly made out of natural resources such as rubber, tea, textiles, minerals, fishing, and an investment climate for machinery must also be set up as it can be a mini-China towards this end. In essence, there is almost $6.8 Billion USD per year to be made up for with regards to investments if Tamils in the Northern Province are to achieve economic freedom and as mentioned, more than $3.6 Billion USD with India itself.

Dr. Seshadri Chari who is the National Convener of the Foreign Policy Cell of the ruling party in the government of India has also stated that the Tamil issue is an internal one of Sri Lanka despite the non-implementation of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord calling for the merger of the North and East Provinces as trade is more preferential¹³.

Therefore, if Tamils are to achieve greater autonomy from the government of Sri Lanka, it must begin with economic freedom. This was the strategy used by the founding father of India Mahatma Gandhi, in other words called the “self-reliance strategy” or better known now as the “import-subsidization-industrialization” (ISI) policy to achieve independence from the British Empire.

Without economic freedom from the central government of Sri Lanka, it will be difficult to for Tamils to achieve their goal of self-determination and autonomy of any other kind as the centrality of economics in the Indian Ocean will remain with Sri Lanka.

References

1.”UN Investigation On Sri Lanka Begins – Email Open To Make Submissions.” Colombo Gazette, 5 Aug. 2014. Web. <https%3A%2F%2Fwww.colombotelegraph.com%2Findex.php%2Fun-investigation-on-sri-lanka-beg….

2.”Sri Lankan Candidate Rejects Tamil Federalism Plan.” ABC News. ABC News Network, 2 Dec. 2014. Web. <http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sri-lankan-candidate-feder….

3.    “Give Tamils Equal Rights, Venkaiah Tells Sri Lanka.” The Hindu, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. <http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Vijayawada/give-tamils-equal-rights-….

4.. “The Observatory of Economic Complexity.” OEC: Sri Lanka (LKA) Profile of Exports, Imports and Trade Partners. Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, n.d. Web. <http://atlas.media.mit.edu/profile/country/lka/>.

5.”Sri Lanka : India’s New Government Stresses Enhanced Economic Engagement with Sri Lanka.” Colombo Page, 3 Aug. 2014. Web. <http://www.colombopage.com/archive_14B/Aug03_1407074637CH.php>.

6.”Sri Lanka’s Exports to India Grow 10-fold.” Hiru News, 4 Aug. 2014. Web. <http://www.hirunews.lk/business/88743/sri-lankas-exports-to-india-grow-1….

7.”French Businesses Keen on Investing in SL.” Lanka Business Today, 4 Aug. 2014. Web. <http://www.lbt.lk/news/business/7379-french-businesses-keen-on-investing….

8.”Historic Lanka-Belarus Trade Talks Begin in Colombo.” Asian Tribune, 10 July 2014. Web. <http://www.asiantribune.com/node/83745>.

9.”Vietnam Wants FTA with Sri Lanka.” Lanka Business Online, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. <http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/news/vietnam-wants-fta-with-sri-lanka….

10.”UK MPs Propose Sanctions on Lanka.” Colombo Gazette, 27 Nov. 2014. Web. <http://colombogazette.com/2014/11/27/uk-mps-propose-sanctions-on-lanka>.

11.”Reconstruction And Resettlement In The Northern Province – See More At: Http://www.businesstoday.lk/article.php?article=7454#sthash.JIa44whm.dpuf.” Business Today, n.d. Web. <http://www.businesstoday.lk/article.php?article=7454>.

12.”Exports from Tamil Nadu Cross $ 33.50 Billion.” The Hindu, 12 May 2012. Web. <http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/exports-from-tamil-nadu-cross-3….

13.”Tamils Issue an Internal Matter of Sri Lanka: Seshadri Chari.” The Economic Times, 30 July 2014. Web. <http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-07-30/news/52237951_1_….

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