By Ghous Bux Khan Mahar*

“Let China sleep, when she wakes up, will shake the world”, once said Napoleon. If we take a look at contemporary China, the Napoleonic prediction has turned out to be a tangible reality as China has woken up from its long slumber and has emerged as an economic powerhouse of the world.

The awakening of dragon has triggered tectonic shift in global geo-political and economic order, marking the beginning of the era of a multipolar world order. The remarkable economic rise of China has transformed it into the second largest economy in the world. Its economy is poised to position itself as the largest economy by around 2030, dislodging the US from its current economic supremacy. What is important to note is that China has an illustrious past as well. It is the world’s oldest surviving civilization with many innovations and inventions to its credit. For instance, paper, the compass and gunpowder are among the greatest Chinese inventions and contributions to the human civilization.

Back in 1980, I happened to visit China. In sharp contrast to the China of today, I found my host country no markedly different from any typical third world country. Poverty and underdevelopment was palpably visible there. Even its capital Beijing was not that modern unlike any western capital. The city was devoid of world class infrastructure and basic features of any modern city. There were single or two-floor old buildings, no cobweb of modern roads or avenues and no skyscrapers at all. On the basis of my profound observation, I can say with confidence that Karachi and Islamabad were ahead of Beijing in terms of modern infrastructure and amenities at that time. The Great Wall of China, the most iconic tourist destination of the country, was also deprived of much facilities. It was still a poor country with a fragile economy and fractured international relations.

Recently, I visited China in 2013. To my amazement, it was not the same country I had visited in 1980. I was immensely amazed to find it transformed beyond any recognition as China had built itself anew. This time around, I was welcomed by a new China born out of dazzling economic development. I found myself in a rich and
modern China with booming economy growing at double digit figure. Beijing was diametrically different from what I saw back in 1980s. The capital of the nation, was lively with modern and sophisticated infrastructure comparable to any western capital. There were gleaming high-rises, state of art road and rail network and world-class luxury hotels to welcome millions of visitors every year. Shanghai, the commercial capital was even more dazzling and true reflection of the exceptional progress and prosperity made by China over last few decades. The city’s skyline was dotted with eye-catching skyscrapers and other marvellous landmarks like bridges, highways, amusement parks, shopping malls, high-speed train terminals and so on. It was pulsating with modern life. Moreover, the financial capital of China, stood as the monumental testimony and tribute to the Chines nation’s dynamism, energy, hard work, vision, commitment, determination and dedication to the socio-economic development of the country. Furthermore, the country was breaking new grounds from space exploration to development of stealth technology.

Undoubtedly, the rapid and remarkable rise of China can be characterised as an economic miracle which has baffled both her friends and foes alike. During my last visit, I was naturally awe-struck by the overall advancement of the country whose giant leap from being a third world country to the emergence as a great nation on the global horizon, gave birth to a logical question in my mind.

What is the secret behind the enviable economic success of China? As I moved around, explored and observed the different dimension of the country, the riddle of China’s unmatched economic achievement began to unravel itself answering the question resonating in my mind. Thus, I was led to the cogent conclusion that in addition to the mobilisation of man and material resources, it is the competent and sincere leadership, the national spirit of hard work, honesty of purpose, national cohesion and consensus, unflinching commitment, unwavering dedication and steel-strong determination that is the real moving spirit or driving force behind the economic revolution that has transformed China into an engine of global economy.

The 21st Century is being called as the Asian century symbolized by the breath-taking and meteoric rise of China as a global power. The centre of economic and political gravity has significantly shifted from The West to the East. The phenomenal economic advent of China has provided the nation with unprecedented confidence and capabilities to proactively secure and safeguard its geo-strategic and economic interests around the globe. The subsequent growth in her global clout, rapid build-up of offensive and defensive capabilities and increasingly assertive foreign policy posture in the Asia Pacific and beyond, has sowed immense and unprecedented fear in the American strategic community that view China as the main challenger and strongest threat to the American global supremacy.

In the strategic response to counter and contain China in its track, US has shifted its geo-strategic focus away from Europe and Middle East to Asia-Pacific region, what has come to be called as US Asia-pivot characterized by the relocation of US naval power to Asia-Pacific region, revitalization of the existing alliances and cultivating the new ones to put up a formidable security alliance against China. Like any rising power, China also aspires to carve what China calls the rightful place in the world matching its great power status and progress. These China’s aspirations and American apprehensions and the consequent geo-strategic, military and economic rivalry are going to be the very shapers of the 21st century.

As far Pakistan, the advent of China as a world power is a welcome development as the new global power is not only our next-door neighbour but also our all-weather friend and strategic security partner. We need to learn a result-oriented lesson from China’s inspiring and impressive economic success in order to put our country on the path to progress and prosperity.

Pakistan continues to languish under the siege of socio-economic and political problems. The country’s economy is in freefall, poverty is pervasive and illiteracy is rampant across the country. Pakistan is geo-strategically located at the confluence of central Asia, South Asia and Middle East. Thus the country has potential to emerge as the trade and energy corridor for China bordering Pakistan through its Xinjiang province that will stand to benefit from the Gwadar deep sea port. China has been building the Gwadar port as vital link of the maritime silk route. The fully functional silk route is likely to usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity for the underdeveloped regions of both countries, like Baluchistan, northern areas of Pakistan and Xinjiang region of China.

However, what remains to be seen is how skilfully and wisely the new power (China) and the established power (America) accommodate each other taking full advantage of opportunities of convergence by dexterously dodging the areas of divergence. Arguably, the benefits of economic cooperation, integration and interdependence are greater than those of geo-strategic and military rivalry or adventurism that pose an existential threat to the entire humanity in this age of nuclear weapons.

*The writer is a former Federal Minster and currently an MNA from Sindh, Pakistan

The post China: The Rise Of The Dragon And Lessons For Pakistan – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Buddy Bell

In 2002, at a time when insurance providers were unwilling to provide coverage for losses resulting from acts of terrorism, and when construction and utility companies were stalling in their development projects, Congress passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). They decided to socialize some of the financial risk, giving a federal government guarantee on insurance payouts exceeding 100 million dollars.

Over the next 12 years, Presidents Bush and Obama and six different Congresses made countless decisions to increase the risk of terrorism (and of a bailout under TRIA). Of course, the most brutally profound effects of those decisions were imposed on children, women, and men in other parts of the world. Likely the least affected people were the ones complaining in the business sections of major papers last month.

They are worried because TRIA expired. An unexpected fluke on the last day of the last congressional session is to blame. “Everybody expected this would get done,” fumed Manhattan developer Douglas Durst, to New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman.

He won’t be waiting all that long: House Speaker John Boehner promised the Baltimore Sun to “act very quickly” to renew TRIA on January 3rd, when Congress reconvenes. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, quoted by Weisman, estimated that the act is 95% likely to pass through his chamber.

If rhetorical announcements in the past week turn out to be accurate, the first order of business that day will not actually be TRIA, but a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. A few days ago, activists in United Against Nuclear Iran announced that after Keystone, the next vote will be on a bill to impose tougher sanctions on Iran, which would scuttle any peace deal. This will paradoxically make a “nuclear Iran” much more likely. Presumably, TRIA would be acted on “very quickly” sometime after all that.

Whether the lapse in coverage will last a total of 3 or 4 or more days is probably not an issue that concerns most constituents of U.S. Congress members. People in the U.S. are much more likely to be concerned with how to reduce the threat of terrorism in the first place. Unfortunately, a desire to avert danger to the greater public is not what guides U.S. foreign policy. Policy makers instead insist that people in the U.S. and in other countries subordinate themselves to what U.S. elites claim is the national interest.

In 12 years, the Afghanistan War did not end. The Iraq War was started, ended, and then started again. Torture became commonplace, with prisoners indefinitely held at Bagram, Guantánamo Bay, and a network of secret CIA prisons; some prisoners were rendered to third countries such as Egypt, Libya, and Syria to be tortured there. Israel, Egypt, and many other brutal regimes conducted wars of choice and campaigns of repression while making use of U.S. weaponry, vehicles, and diplomatic support. And then a systematic drone war attacked people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia; the ‘targets’ were chosen by Obama in consultation with the Pentagon or by secret algorithm.

The former commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, in a 2013 interview with Reuters, said that the use of drones is hated on a visceral level and exacerbates a perception of American arrogance. Former General James E. Cartwright, quoted in the New York Times on March 21 of that year, stated an obvious fact: “If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.”

The April 2013 issue of The Atlantic recounts the U.S. Senate testimony of a young man named Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemini. He attended English classes in Yemen before going to high school in Rosamond, California, then college in Beirut– all funded through U.S. State Department scholarships. One day a drone strike hit his remote home village of Wessab. Seven of his siblings died from injuries they sustained. During his testimony to the Senate, he said he has met dozens of civilians who were injured during drone strikes and other air attacks in Yemen. “The killing of innocent civilians by U.S. missiles in Yemen is helping to destabilize my country and create an environment from which AQAP benefits. [Drone strikes] are the face of America to many Yemenis.” (He was quoted using the acronym for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.)

The Rehman family was victim to another U.S. drone strike, this time in Pakistan. The strike appeared to be targeted at a 67-year-old midwife but also injured her two grandchildren. These children and their father came to testify to a Congressional hearing in late October 2013, yet only 5 members of Congress attended. Other Congress members did not attend despite knowing that law enforcement officers had recently investigated a botched car bombing in Times Square and identified U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan as a motive in the perpetrator’s attempt.

Now that TRIA has expired, the horrors inflicted by the United States on human beings abroad have more potential to cut into the bottom lines of insurance brokers and developers. This explains why the business press is paying attention to terrorism, yet the only genuine hedge fund against social decay for the rest of us is to transform the U.S. foreign policy, and quick.

Instead of reauthorizing TRIA, Congress should “act very quickly” to end the wars, ground the drones, stop using torture, and invest in the needs of children and adults through an internationally-administered reparations package. Justice is the only [i]nsurance of real security for everyone in the world.

Buddy Bell is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. He can be reached at buddy@vcnv.org.

Sources
New York Times, “Congressional Roadblock Upends Market for Terrorism Insurance” Dec 17, 2014. Link
Baltimore Sun, “Expiring Terrorism Insurance Program Alarms Md. Industries” Dec 27, 2014. Link
Reuters, “Retired general cautions against overuse of “hated” drones” Jan 7, 2013. Link
New York Times, “As New Drone Policy Is Weighed, Few Practical Effects Are Seen” Mar 21, 2013. Link
The Atlantic, “This Yemeni Man Loves America, Hates al-Qaeda, and Says Drone Strikes Make Them Stronger” Apr 24, 2013. Link
The Guardian, “Drone Strikes: Tears in Congress as Pakistani Family Tells of Mother’s Death” Oct 29, 2013. Link
NY Daily News, “Confessed Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad’s Hatred Stemmed from Personal Failure, War on Terror” May 5, 2010. Link

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By Amit R. Saksena*

According to many war historians and international relations scholars, the end of the Cold War was the epitome of a shift in the paradigm of a generally accepted or resolved to global politico environment. One of the most closely followed forums, in accordance with President Bush’s ‘collective security’ stance, was the change in the conducting of UN Peacekeeping operations, which were believed to turn for the better, with a new US-Russia partnership. However, such was not the case. This abstract looks at the political transformations which took place, post the Cold War, which shaped much of the intergovernmental dealings, as we know of them today.

Collective security and UN Peacekeeping

During the Cold war, the UN’s ability to engage in collective action was seen to have been impeded by East – West divisions which effectively limited the possibility of cooperation in the UN Security Council. The end of the Cold War was to have introduced an era of peace with an emphasis on the rights and privileges of human rights.

However, expectations of more effective peacekeeping post cold war proved misplaced. As early as 1994, UN peacekeeping has been described as ‘in crisis’. Tried and tested principles and practices had been modified or abandoned and the distinction between peacekeeping and various enforcement activities had become blurred. Certainly the late 1980’s witnessed a number of successful resolutions of conflicts in Central America, Africa and the Middle East, while by the 1990’s there was a significant increase in the number of authorization of new missions. However, UN efforts in Bosnia had exposed the organization to accusations of weakness and the initially successful operation in Angola had been followed by resumption of warfare.

The UN role in these states seemed to do little to address the underlying causes of conflict. These problems and failures had arisen at a time when there was a widespread feeling of optimism that the UN could have a more central role in international security and that peacekeeping could tackle a wide range of international problems. In essence, peacekeeping was a successful concept in the Cold War, but was now being used in contingencies for which it was not designed.

The very visual images of suffering in conflict situations certainly led to a call for ‘international action’, and it could be understood why there was felt a need to act. In Washington and the capitals of Europe, however, there was disenchantment and a growing reluctance to become involved in further peace supporting activities.

The apparent failure of the UN in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda, as well as the increasing risk of casualties, left US and many European states reluctant to participate in operations that might be prolonged and likely lead to loss of life. As an issue, this was less prevalent amongst developing states, which, for a mix of motives were still willing to commit forces to such operations, but often found themselves in situations for which they had not been adequately prepared and trained, as seems to have been the case in Sierra Leone. Nevertheless, the UN also had its limited success in the late 1990’s in East Timor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Afghanistan, suggesting that the UN’s approach might be a factor in helping to resolve the immediate conflict and assist the transition to a state of more permanent peace.

Notably, during the Cold War period the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and especially the two superpowers did not play a significant operational role in peacekeeping. Rather, it was the other military stable countries which contributed to the peacekeeping missions. The level of commitment, the overall training of military personnel, the availability of the equipment and preparedness of such contingents for peacekeeping varied considerably, with some countries developing both good and poor reputations for their contributions.

Much UN peacekeeping during the Cold War, rather than being deliberately planned and properly resourced operations, were little more than hastily organized responses to various crises, that often seemed to lack clear objectives, leadership and guidance. Most of these operations were aimed at monitoring ceasefires and were also normally used to maintain buffer zones and undertake border patrols. There was no ‘government’ pushing its agenda, no military high command controlling and reacting. Unlike conventional military operations, there were no templates to apply and therefore no matching of resources to tasks.

Once on the ground, the international forces were, to all intents and purposes, left to function as best they could. They were frequently denied freedom of movement and had little say in the matter of their deployment. For example, in Lebanon, it was not the UN but Israel, the state whose aggression had lead to the UN presence, which dictated exactly where the ‘front-line’ peacekeepers would deploy.

End of the Cold War and shape of the future

The end of the superpower rivalry and bipolarity raised the prospect of collective security replacing peacekeeping as one means of dealing with violent conflict within the international system. With improved relations between the US and Russia, there existed a possibility of agreement of these states to enforce the will of the Security Council on a state that had broken the peace.

The new world order envisioned by President Bush and Gorbachev would be founded on the rule of law and on the principles of collective security. New political thinking in the crumbling Soviet Union suggested that the East and West had some basic interests in common. The most obvious of these was human survival, which was threatened either directly or indirectly by modern weaponry, poverty or pollution. These problems could be best settled through East – West cooperation using organizations such as the UN. Evidence of the radical change in Gorbachev’s foreign policy was the reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Moscow condemned the invasion and despite some wavering before the UN attack on Saddam Hussein’s forces, Russia supported all the UN resolutions against its former ally.

The Paradigm Shift

When the Cold War ended, the era of struggle was, in the opinion of Western academics, supposed to have ended with it. Peace had broken out in Central America, South East Asia, Southern Africa and even the Middle East. Culturally, the world was coming together and other countries wanted to embrace the American ways. Francis Fukuyama argued that with the end of the East-West ideological battle, liberal democracy combined with open market economy would become the only model a state could follow and prevail anywhere. With no country now able to present a military challenge, the US could entrench its pre-eminence or possible dominance in global politics. In many ways the scenario being painted supported a liberal interpretation of international relations. The enhanced cooperation between US and Russia was likely to underpin the new world order. Implicit in these perceptions of the changing world was the notion that a new and better regulated international system was not only possible, but the international community was ready and anxious to embrace it.

But where was the proof that the present scenario was really what the people desired? Or was it reasonable to assume that in less dangerous times, the states would readily accept some vague new US dominated authority? Throughout the Cold War, the superpowers had limited the autonomy of their allies and puppets. Most of the times preventing them from engaging in wars with their neighbors and placing restrictions on other hostile acts. But no longer held in check by their former masters, such states might be free to pursue their own agendas they saw fit without appearing to threaten world peace. There was also the question of perceived new peace. Certainly the threat of the world war had receded, but for many people, the struggles on which they had embarked during the cold war looked likely to continue.

The reality of this era also ignored the national interests of US, Russia, China, as well as the larger European states and the regional powers in Asia and Africa. In conceiving of the international system from a liberal perspective, based on fundamentally western values, most scholars ignored the reality of the situation, namely that state interests might differ. US interests might not always be shared by the European Union and non- Western states might find the newly emergent system deleterious to their own interests. While there was an initial period of multilateralism, the reality was that the permanent members of the Security Council were committed to perusing their own goals. In 1994, the US adopted new guidelines that restricted its possible support and participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations.

It also ignored the changed international map. Most importantly, there was the issue of US’s role in this New World Order. The ending of the Cold War had produced a temptation in the west to recast the international environment in America’s image, but not every state wanted this. In Asia, even within democratic states, the emphasis was on national interests. There was no pretence of collective security or that cooperation should be based on shared domestic values. China remained opposed to military involvement by big powers and opposed the use of force in the name of UN. Russia insisted that political and diplomatic methods be employed as much as possible. The US might envision as normal, a global international order based on democracy, capitalism and international law, but since no such system had ever existed, its evocation would have appeared to other societies as utopian.

Also, the collapse of communism appeared to vindicate US ideals and to represent a triumph for liberalism and democracy but the theory that the emergence of democracy would necessarily bring peace remained unproved. Many third world countries, particularly African states, while democracies in theory had during the Cold War existed in a state of instability or turmoil.

In contrast, Yugoslavia, where multi-party democracy was banned, had, during the same period, experienced its best state of stability. Furthermore, with Vietnam a vivid memory, the US involuntarily continued to be sensitive about sustaining causalities in conflicts where no vital or national interests were at stake, and thus there was no reason why they should now risk lives merely to promote democracy and liberal ideas.

The immediate post Cold War period was marked by a stark increase in the number of UN Peacekeeping operations being authorized by the UNSC. This was a reflection of the willingness of the permanent members to work together, rather than a rise in the number of conflicts. Also, a number of these operations departed from the traditional peacekeeping, to a greater emphasis on peace-building. A further noticeable trend during this time was to increasingly sub-contract UN operations to regional organizations (such as NATO, the Economic Community of West African States, etc.), and ‘collations of the willing’, thereby avoiding directly managing large scale operations, which were likely to be costly and problematic. For example, NATO in Bosnia (IFOR and SFOR) and the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET) led by Australia. However, the growth of the UN intervention in internal conflicts, justified on humanitarian grounds, was not acceptable by some of the UN members, who argued that there was a risk that the UN would stray into the grey area between humanitarian intervention and interference in the domestic affairs of a state. Notably, the UN refused to sanction the NATO led actions in Kosovo (1999) and the US invasion of Iraq (2003); but the UN was also unable to stop these armed interventions.

Expectations and Reality

The high expectations following the end of the Cold War were rapidly being re-evaluated in light of the reality of the failures in Bosnia and Somalia. The limited ability of the UNSC to deploy operations in support of enforcements, as well as the limited resources of the UN and of its existing capacity to meet traditional peacekeeping operations had been widely noted.

Reacting to this poor performance, Gen. Sec. Kofi Annan in 1996 acknowledged that the UN faced challenges that did not fit into a neat peacekeeping package: the so called gray areas. According to the major reforms needed were, firstly, development of a serious capacity for the lawful gathering of intelligence, to be more comfortable with the situation at hand. And secondly, the UN operations would require appropriate capabilities upon deployment and the right force structure to be able to carry out the mandate and to be able to protect the operation. He also admitted to the fact that the UN did not have the institutional capacity to conduct military enforcement measures, and thus must depend on the coalitions of the willing to undertake such operations.

His words were significant as they identified the problems which had long plagued the UN operations. The UN had ventured into Congo without a clear understanding of what and how. It had stumbled into a conflict with an enemy that theoretically did not exist, and in the absence of a proper plan of action, the tenuous command and the control system broke down. ‘Peacekeepers’ died in a military skirmish, for which they were not prepared. Ignoring the lessons in that venture, the UN had intervened in Somalia and engaged in armed confrontation with a party whose resistance to UN designs and whose military capability had been totally underestimated.

Again, at a critical point, the mission command and support system crashed. The post Cold war UN had failed to make a proper estimate of the situation in Angola and through this neglect had, just as in Cyprus, allowed the parties to dictate developments. In both Congo and Somalia, the UN force was composed of contingents, most of which were inadequately equipped and hence operationally inefficient.

The failings and weaknesses of the UN peacekeeping are known to most observers, yet the UN has seemed unable to learn lessons from its past endeavors, both at the political level of the UNSC, and the operational level in the field.

*Amit R. Saksena is an independent researcher and member of the Wikistrat analytic community from New Delhi. He tweets @arsaksena.

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Latvia began its Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015.

The Coordinating Council of Latvia’s EU Presidency has declared involvement, growth and sustainability as the Presidency’s main principles.

Latvia will be presiding over the Council of the EU from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2015. The approximately 200 events Latvia is planning to organize and host during this period include informal meetings of EU ministers and experts, conferences, seminars and other events. The new building of the Latvian National Library, which opened in 2014, will be the main venue of these meetings.

The events planned during the Latvian presidency will be organized in four levels. The top level events will include the EU’s Eastern Partnership summit, which Latvia will host in May, 10 informal meetings of EU ministers, as well as meetings of EU and Asian education and science ministers.

The Eastern Partnership Summit gathering heads of state and government from all EU member states and Eastern Partnership countries, as well as representatives of EU institutions, is expected to become one of the pivotal events of Latvia’s EU presidency.

The events of the second level will include 55 meetings of member states’ top bureaucrats or state secretaries. These meetings will be organized in workgroups to prepare for the informal meetings of the ministers. The third level events will include 54 meetings at which experts from line ministries will be conferring in workgroups.

Latvia is also planning 37 events of the fourth level, including seminars, conferences, the Assembly’s seminars with representatives of nongovernmental organizations and various other events.

Apart from the events planned in Latvia, many events will be organized also in Brussels.

At least 700 foreign journalists are expected to come to Latvia to cover the events.

Next Monday, Jan. 5, the flags of the EU and all member states will be raised in a ceremony at the National Library building. On Thursday, Jan. 8, the official launch event of the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU is due to take place at the Latvian National Opera.

The trio of Italian-Latvian-Luxembourgish EU presidencies started on July 1, 2014 when Italy took over the rotating EU presidency. Latvia will be holding the EU presidency in the first half of 2015, and Luxembourg will take over from Latvia in the second half of 2015.

The presidency trio means that three member states that are due to hold the presidency one after another cooperate among themselves to ensure the success of their successive presidencies.

The Council of the EU is an institution where national ministers from each EU country meet to adopt laws and coordinate policies. The presidency of the Council rotates every six months among the governments of EU member states.

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By Barry A. Fisher*

Next year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of open hostilities in World War II. During most of that time, the East and West waged the Cold War, and the downfall of the USSR and the reintegration of much of Central Europe into the West engendered great hope. But detritus of the world war remains, including land grabs, such as Russia’s takeover of Królewiec on the Baltic Sea and huge Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, the latter where tens of thousands of Korean slave laborers were stranded; mass expulsions, such as Germans from central Europe, Poles from Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania, and Armenians, Turks, and Greeks from the Black Sea coast; divided countries, such as Korea; and populations forced into diasporas all over Europe and Asia.

Russian military ventures today, including in Georgia and Ukraine, both formerly components of the USSR, stir the pot of these leftover problems.

Map of Georgia highlighting Abkhazia (green) and South Ossetia (purple).

Georgia turned west with the 2003 Rose Revolution. Russia invaded in 2008 and sliced off the large provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, declaring them independent. On November 24, 2014, Abkhazia signed a “treaty” with Russia, giving it even more control over Abkhazia’s economy and military. In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and then annexed the southern Ukrainian province of Crimea, gateway to the Black Sea. Later in the year it pushed further into Ukraine, proclaiming the new states of the Donetsk and Lugansk “People’s Republics,” which themselves then merged to form “Novorossiya” (New Russia). Novorossiya, a name from Czarist times, is envisaged as an expansionist state, ultimately to include all of southeastern Ukraine, thereby linking Russia with both Crimea and another breakaway state, “Transnistria,” in Moldova.

Is it now time to liberate Królewiec?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western scholars sympathetic to him, like NYU’s Stephen F. Cohen, plaintively explain that these takeovers are simply reasonable reactions to Western “aggression.” Indeed, Russia now escalates and claims that the West, by protesting the Russian takeovers, is seeking “regime change” in Russia itself.

Russia and its supporters note that the European Union and NATO have expanded eastward following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia, they reason, is the neighbor entitled to countries on its borders that look east, not west . Through crocodile tears, Putin claims surprise at Russia’s lack of appreciation, and says any appearance of an iron fist is only to encourage the return of rational behavior. While denying that Russia is in fact invading anyone, at the same time he justifies actions as “protection” of Russian-speaking populations within the invaded countries–the same pretext Hitler used to invade Czech Sudetenland and Polish Silesia. In short Russia is, to some, more like the “Neighbors” of Jan Gross’s 2001 book about Poles who turned on the Jews next door than any greeter from Welcome Wagon.

One need only take the example of one of Russia’s neighbors, Poland, to understand that reason, not paranoia, makes for a wary response to Putin’s proffered protection. Russia controlled large parts of Poland from the late 18th century to the end of World War I. Almost as soon as Poland was reconstituted after the war, however, another war broke out with the newly formed Soviet Union, when the USSR saw Poland as the bridge between it and Germany, which it viewed as ripe for the next revolution. Against odds, Poland rallied and prevailed over the invading Red Army in 1920.

On the eve of World War II, Russia and Germany, under the secret protocols of their treaty, invaded Poland from opposite sides in September 1939. With Poland destroyed once again, Russia proceeded to deport hundreds of thousands and to massacre and imprison Poland’s military and academic intelligentsia, including the perpetration of the Katyn Forest massacre. In 1941, breaking the treaty, Germany invaded Russia. When Poles rose up against the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the Red Army stood idly by on the eastern side of the Vistula River, and waited until Warsaw was destroyed from the west by the Nazis before crossing and continuing their war effort against Germany.

After the war, Russia set up a satellite Polish state, and effectively ruled the country until Communism in Europe imploded in 1989. Russia has yet to apologize for these 200 years of hostile history or to move toward a friendly relationship. So, not surprisingly, Poland turned west with both EU and NATO membership. Lithuania, Latvia, and other former Soviet-controlled states have similar histories.
And Królewiec? At the Potsdam conference of July 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt agreed to cede to Russia a coveted warm-water port on the Baltic, a some 5,000-square-mile wedge of land between Poland and Lithuania. The region had previously been Polish (Królewiec) and German (Königsberg) in culture and population, and had no border with Russia.

Russia’s Mikhail Kalinin. Source: State museum of political history of Russia, Wikipedia Commons.

The Russians christened it Kaliningrad after Mikhail Kalinin, one of the last “Old Bolsheviks” to survive Stalin’s purges (Kalinin’s wife, though, was arrested, tortured, and sent to the Gulag). The remaining population of the region was expelled and the land repopulated, including with Ukrainians, whose homeland is itself now under Russian reconfiguration. While many Russian city names have lost their Revolutionary associations, such as St. Petersburg (Leningrad) and Volgograd (Stalingrad), Kaliningrad stands as an anachronism–and not just in name. The region is accessible on land only through Poland or Lithuania, both of which are now are EU and NATO members. Russia is accessible by road by special permits.

Russia has a Pacific ice-free port in Vladivostok, and it had long held rights to a naval base in Sevastopol in the Crimea before it grabbed the entire peninsula.  If a long-term trend of receding ice in the Arctic continues, by the end of the next two decades, parts of the Arctic could possibly be used more reliably for navigation, at least in the summer. So, at a time of Russian land grabs in Georgia and Ukraine, and with Russian threats to other countries of the former Soviet bloc and sphere of influence, perhaps it is time to begin a movement to liberate occupied Królewiec.

*Barry A. Fisher served on the multinational Holocaust claims negotiations team and was a signatory to the resulting treaty between Germany, Russia, Poland and others. He also serves as counsel to Chinese and Korean groups regarding unresolved Japan wartime claims. Of Ukrainian and Polish ancestry, he holds presidentially ordered citizenship in the latter.

The post Russian Expansion: Is It Now Time To Liberate Occupied Królewiec? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Saudi Arabia’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, who is suffering from pneumonia, is in a stable condition but needs assistance to breathe with a respirator, a Royal Court statement said on Friday.

The royal court said the king wanted the public to know his condition because this is in line with his commitment “to be transparent in all public matters.”

“After examinations by a medical team it became evident that the king is suffering from pneumonia and his condition requires the temporary help of a tube for breathing Friday evening. This move has been successful and stabilized his condition,” the royal court said in the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

Crown Prince Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, and Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin paid a visit to the king at the King Abdul Aziz Medical City (KAMC) on Friday evening. They prayed for his good health.

They were received at the KAMC by the king’s sons, including Prince Miteb, Prince Turki, Prince Meshaal, Prince Abdul Aziz.

A Bahraini delegation, led by Sheikh Khaled bin Hamad Al-Khalifah, and former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri also called on the king and inquired about his health.

The post Saudi King Abdullah Has Pneumonia, In Stable Condition appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Gwynne Dyer

In a live television speech last week, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said, “Did you know there’s an oil war? And the war has an objective: To destroy Russia.”

“It’s a strategically planned war … also aimed at Venezuela, to try and destroy our revolution and cause an economic collapse.” It’s the United States that has started the war, Maduro said, and its strategy was to flood the market with shale oil and collapse the price.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin agrees. “We all see the lowering of oil prices,” he said recently. “There’s lots of talk about what’s causing it.”

The evil Americans are at it again. They’re fiendishly clever, you know. We are hearing this kind of talk a lot these days, especially from countries that have been hit hard by the crash in the oil price. Last Thursday, Brent crude hit $55 per barrel, precisely half the price it was selling for last June. The Obama administration’s announcement last week that it is preparing to allow the export of some US oil to foreign markets may send it even lower. (US crude oil exports have been banned since 1973.)

When the oil price collapses, countries that depend very heavily on oil exports to make ends meet are obviously going to get hurt. Putin, who has let Russia get itself into a position where more than half its budget revenue comes from oil and gas sales (some estimates go as high as 80 percent) is in deep trouble: The value of the ruble has halved, and the economy has already slipped into recession.

Venezuela, where government spending is certainly more than 50 percent dependent on oil exports, is in even deeper trouble — and, like Putin in Russia, Maduro of Venezuela sees this as the result of an American plot. Various commentators in the West have taken up the chorus, and the conspiracy theory is taking root all over the developing world.

So let us consider whether there really is an “oil war.” The accusation is that the US is deliberately “flooding the market” with shale oil, that is, with oil that has only become available because of the fracking techniques that have become widespread, especially in the US, over the past decade. Moreover, Washington is doing this for political purposes, not just because it makes economic sense for the US to behave like this.

In order to believe this conspiracy theory, however, you really have to think that a rational US government, acting in its own best economic interests, would do the opposite: Suppress the fracking techniques and keep American oil production low, in order to keep its imports up and the oil price high. But why on earth would it want to do that?

By 2012, over a million fracking operations had been performed in US wells — but in 2012, last year’s events in Ukraine were unforeseen and the US and Russia were still on relatively good terms. Many oil-exporting countries were worried by the prospect that rising US oil and gas production would shrink American imports and thereby cut their own profits, but it was still seen as a supply-and-demand problem, not a strategic maneuver.

So did the US develop fracking to hurt its enemies? The dates just don’t work for Russia: Fracking was already making US production soar years before Washington started to see Moscow as an enemy. As for Venezuela, it continues to be the fourth-largest exporter of oil to the US, at a time when the glut of oil on the market would let Washington cut Venezuela out of the supply chain entirely.

And Barack Obama is not opening the floodgates for massive American oil exports that will make the oil price fall even lower. The US still imports a lot of oil, and will go on doing so for years. He has only authorized the export of a particular kind of ultra-light oil that is in over-supply on the domestic market: Only about one million barrels of it, with actual exports not starting until next August.
If this is a conspiracy, it’s a remarkably slow-moving one.

The post Truth Behind The ‘Oil War’ – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday requested an immediate investigation into the cause of a stampede that broke out during a New Year Eve celebration in downtown Shanghai.

New Year celebrations in the Bund area went astray Wednesday night, when a stampede killed at least 35 people and injured 42 others.

President Xi asked the Shanghai government to “go all out” to rescue and treat the injured and properly handle the aftermath.

A profound lesson should be learned from the incident, said President Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Many places will hold festival gatherings and recreational activities for the upcoming Spring Festival, or the Lunar New Year, and the following Lantern Festival, he said.

He added that local authorities should prioritise the safety of people’s lives and property and make careful arrangements to ensure safety measures are in place.

Premier Li Keqiang underscored the importance of safety in public places, particularly during holidays.

Premier Li told local authorities to “make every effort” to reduce injury-related deaths and console relatives, adding that strict precautions should be taken against major incidents, and public safety and social stability should be ensured.

The city has set up a working team for rescue operations and to deal with the aftermath.

The cause of the incident is under investigation.

A witness said that some coupons resembling US dollar bills were being thrown from a building’s third-floor window near the Bund, and people standing along the river bank started to scramble for them.

The post China: Probe Launched Into Cause Of New Year Shanghai Stampede appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Chris Rickleton

Turkmenistan rang in the New Year by dramatically devaluing its national currency, the manat, and introducing a steep levy on the price of petrol.

The scale of the devaluation – comparable to the 19 percent devaluation of the tenge in Kazakhstan earlier in the year – comes as all Central Asian economies are feeling the downturn in Russia, where the ruble lost 45% of its value against the dollar in 2014. But it is still somewhat surprising because Turkmenistan’s is the region’s economy least dependent on exports to its former colonial master.

Indeed, the manat was the only Central Asian currency to maintain its value in 2014.

AFP reported January 1 that the Turkmen central bank had published a rate of 3.50 manats to the dollar, down from the 2.85 that had held since 2009—a devaluation of 18.6 percent. The government has not commented.

Noting that a liter of popular 95-octane petrol had also jumped overnight – from 0.62 manats to 1 – The Chronicles of Turkmenistan, a news blog run by Turkmen exiles, feared significant inflation would follow.

While getting reliable economic news out of Ashgabat is difficult, one
potential explanation for the devaluation is the weak oil price. Crude and refined oil account for up to a tenth of Turkmen exports. Prices for natural gas, worth 80 percent of the country’s export total, are also depressed, but this should not affect Ashgabat’s long-term contracts with major buyer China.

Another possibility is that the government devalued the manat strategically to help the country diversify trade. In recent years, Turkmenistan’s economic model has become dependent on selling hydrocarbons to China, making the country look like a colony of Beijing. During a November visit to Ashgabat, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev offered Turkmenistan the chance to fill a hole in the Russian market caused by Moscow’s countersanctions against Western food products. With the ruble so low compared with the manat, Turkmenistan’s few exports to Russia were uncompetitive.

There could be a simpler reason yet: The graft-prone Turkmen government could be running out of cash to support the manat and felt reasonably confident it could devalue without even the modest unrest that greeted Kazakhstan’s tenge devaluation in February.

In recent times the cowed Turkmen population has hardly peeped as the government eroded expensive state subsidies that cushion against the stress and strain of living in a totalitarian regime. The government meanwhile has begun to emphasize sustainability over handouts.

Last April President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ended petrol rations for private car and motorcycle drivers. Over the last eight years, the government has allowed prices at the pump to rise ten times. At the beginning of last year, Ashgabat introduced prices for natural gas for the first time since 1993.

In August and November city officials did meet rare civic resistance when attempting to remove air conditioners from flats in Ashgabat, where summer temperatures can exceed 50 degrees Celsius. It is unclear if the city’s notoriously vain officials were simply offended by the sight of the air-conditioning units, or if they were trying to conserve electricity.

The post Turkmenistan: What’s Behind Sudden Manat Devaluation? appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Miriam Herrera Calvo*

“Shameless thieves!” Adís shouted at the Havana bus driver and his companion collecting money from passengers. “Not in your pockets. That isn’t allowed.”

Adís was angry because she suspected the cash was being siphoned off by the “conductor” to share with the driver. Fare collection was abolished in Cuba in 2007, and since then passengers have dropped the money into boxes located next to the bus doors.

When Adís warned Enrique, the collector, that she was going to report him to the provincial transport authority, he replied, “Move up there, you crazy old woman – lift your feet.”

Enrique told this reporter he was doing nothing wrong and was simply helping out. No one else was complaining, he added.

“All this fuss over 40 cents,” he said. “I’m doing it to help the driver. Headquarters doesn’t employ me, but I help out to make sure everyone pays. I put the money in the box afterwards, at the end of the route.”

Bus driver Armando said this was the first time Enrique had ever collected money, and added, “I hope this dispute doesn’t go any further. My assistant made a mistake.”

The fare scam is common practice on Cuban buses.

“Drivers know they’re banned from handling cash. They are just looking for… a few extra pesos,” said Carlos, who works as an inspector to ensure the bus service is run properly.

As for the argument that the informal fare collectors help prevent fare-dodgers, Carlos said, “It’s true that many people don’t pay for the bus, but there are more who’d pay double without an argument.”

The issue has been highlighted in state media like the newspaper Granma. But as Havana resident Orestes pointed out, “It’s reported on television, on the radio and in newspapers but no one is doing anything to solve the problem. It’s as if civil servants in the transport system were benefiting – money does work miracles.”

Public transport workers who commit misdemeanours can have their pay docked or face dismissal.

The average monthly wage for drivers is 480 pesos (around 20 US dollars). But their pay level depends on them making the prescribed number of trips and bringing in enough money from enough passengers. So they need to spend money to keep their vehicles on the road. To this end, they pay illegal “incentives” to mechanics, cleaners, electricians, tyre-fitters and other staff to get them to do their jobs. It is little wonder they try to make a bit of money on the side.

After her run-in with the bus crew, Adís remained unsympathetic. As she got off, who took out her mobile phone and photographed Armando and Enrique.

“I’ll be seeing you at the provincial transport authority,” she warned them.

*Miriam Herrera Calvo is an independent Cuban journalist living in Havana. This article was published by IWPR.

The post Cuban Bus Fares Go Astray – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Joel Kendrick*

It’s been nine years since the last high schooler was selected in the NBA draft.

That’s because back in 2005, the NBA raised the minimum age for eligibility to 19. With this rule in place, the days of high school students going straight to the pros are over.For now.

You might think this rule was created to give prospective players a better shot at a college education. It’s more likely that the motivation was to protect teams from wasting money on young players who don’t live up to their promise.

The current system’s critics cite numerous problems. None is more prominent than its negative impact on rising basketball stars.

Since top-rated high school basketball players now have to wait before going pro, they’re given two realistic options:

First, they can go play professionally overseas. And some do. But many 18-year-olds who have just taken their last high school final aren’t eager to hop on a plane to China just for the “pro” label.

Second, they can go to college. After all, anyone who’s viewed as a draft prospect coming out of high school won’t have a problem finding a top-notch basketball program willing to offer him a full-ride scholarship.

As a result, big college programs are now snatching up young players with little interest in earning a post-secondary degree. And no one’s doing it more successfully than University of Kentucky coach John Calipari.

Since taking the helm at Kentucky in 2009, Calipari has funneled the likes of Anthony Davis, John Wall, and DeMarcus Cousins through his patented “one-and-done” program.

That’s where players enroll for a year, play for his team, and then drop out to join the NBA.

Only five years into his tenure, Calipari has created a factory farm for young NBA talent. He’s earning a whopping $7 million a year for his efforts.

Some players, including Cousins — the current hot-headed big man for the Sacramento Kings — have changed their commitments to schools based on where Calipari was coaching.

So the NBA gets an extra year of player development, and the NCAA sees increased revenue from the extra attention commanded by star prospects.

What’s in it for the athletes?

Mark Emmert, the NCAA president, opposes the one-and-done system. He calls the NBA “irresponsible in not providing other legitimate opportunities for kids who really don’t want to go to college” before they turn 19.

He’s right that many of these kids don’t want to go to college. One of the major loopholes of the system is that these “student athletes” only have to pass their first semester of college. In fact, many don’t even attend classes the second semester.

And there are other unfortunate consequences of the rule, as with the case of Nerlens Noel, one of Calipari’s players at Kentucky.

Noel was a hot prospect coming out of high school and would have been the unanimous top pick in the 2012 NBA draft. But due to the eligibility restrictions, he took his talent to Kentucky.

That year, Noel tore his ACL, dropped from first pick to sixth, and was forced to sit out his entire rookie year.

It may surprise you to learn that Noel doesn’t boast any remarkable academic achievements from his time at Kentucky either.

Alternatives to the current model have surfaced, though there’s not one solution that pleases everyone.

The strongest argument for doing away with the one-and-done system is this: Most fresh-off-the-vine picks were quite successful in the NBA.

An overwhelming 84 percent of players who were drafted straight out of high school between 1995 and 2005 stayed in the league for at least eight years. And the median career length for that group was 10 years, more than double the league’s average.

Watch for changes as soon as 2017, when the NBA or its players union may reopen negotiations. It would be hard to defend another version of the system that prioritizes team profits instead of player development.

The NBA should turn its focus away from stuffing the owners’ wallets and toward helping young players achieve their dreams.

* Joel Kendrick is the OtherWords editorial assistant.

The post US: Basketball’s One-And-Done Dilemma – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Deepak Sinha*

Legend has it that the nursery rhyme, ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush…on a cold and frosty morning’, was first, sung by women incarcerated at the Wakefield Prison in England while they were doing their daily exercise around the mulberry tree in the prison compound. This jingle comes to one’s mind, when one reads about the firm action taken by the Assam Government and the Union Home Minister after the killing of 81 Adivasis by the Songjit faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland in Kokrajhar and Sonitpur districts. It all seems so familiar and repetitive.

In the wake of the killings, a section of the media has sought to blame the Army, as the General Officer Commanding 4 Corps is in operational control of the Unified Command that has been in existence since 1997. What has been conveniently ignored is that it is the Chief Minister who heads the Unified Command and is supported by a strategy group headed by the State’s Chief Secretary with members from the police and intelligence community.

The efficacy of this group and its importance to the Chief Minister can be gauged from two facts, that, reportedly, specific actionable intelligence provided was ignored and that the Chief Secretary who was on leave at the time of the incident, did not feel any useful purpose to be served by his return. Thus, it would be fair to deduce that the Unified Command functioning has been restricted to coordinating counter-insurgency operations between the Army, the Central Armed police and the State police, all of this, off course, of a tactical nature.

As we have seen earlier, whether it pertains to the United Liberation Front of Asom or the National Democratic Front of Bodoland or any of the other militant group that has been using violence to gain political control, the State and Central Government has used the Army to subdue militants and to reduce the level of violence and then gone on to politically divide militants and their supporters with either promises of political power or inducements of money. There has rarely been a concerted effort to resolve the issues that have led to the problem in the first place, but to derive political advantage, that would help the ruling party continue in Government. Towards this end, much of the earlier achievements have been nullified by the political leadership and their actions that have invariably permitted many of the militant leaders to walk-free despite the heinous crimes they may have been accused of.

While the Army chief may have no reason to doubt either the genuineness or motive of the Home Minister’s directive to the Central Armed Police and paramilitary forces to flush out those responsible for the present outrage, and provide professional expertise required in ensuring that ‘operation all-out’ is a complete success, he will be well advised to consider asking the political leadership for a written directive specifying the political aim of such an operation and the end state that the Government wants to see. Based on this, the Army can formulate an appropriate response that can ensure a just and equitable resolution of the conflict, rather than another quick fix that will only exacerbate the situation in the long run.

*The author, a retired Army officer, is a consultant with Observer Research Foundation

Courtesy: The Pioneer, December 30, 2014

The post India: Quick-Fix Solutions In Assam Won’t Work – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Mass protests saw the president of Burkina Faso resign in 2014, after nearly 30 years in power. As the country prepares for a general election in 2015, one initiative is being developed by the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) to ensure it passes off peacefully.

By Boris Somé

Elections constitute the free and sovereign expression of countries; the will of their people. However, in recent years, elections in West Africa have become a source of conflict. Electoral processes have been seriously flawed, and geared only towards keeping leaders at the end of their mandates in power at all costs. The struggle for power has sometimes degenerated into violent conflict before, during and after election periods.

But Burkina Faso has long been considered as an example of stability. Ougadougou, its capital, has been the site of many previous peace meetings for neighbouring states, and its former president, Blaise Compaoré, has been internationally renowned for peacemaking. However, during the last three years ago, Burkina has fallen into the ranks of countries in crisis. The most recent of these crises led to a popular uprising in October 2014, which forced Compaoré to resign.

Elections in the country have never led to conflict or war. But the presidential elections scheduled for 2015 are a potentially dangerous road, which must be taken with care. Both political actors and civil society will need to prepare carefully for them.

The West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), the organisation for which I work, is dedicated to preventing violence. In order to help guarantee a peaceful environment during the election period in 2015, it has developed a range of indicators which can be used to measure violence. In December, we organised a workshop in order to examine, amend and validate these indicators. Bringing together electoral and human security exports, representatives of political parties, journalists and civil society peacebuilders, we created an exchange platform to discuss the risks of violence for the 2015 elections, as well as propose an initial methodology for how to monitor the indicators.

During the workshop, the Secretary General of the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) presented its thanks to WANEP, as its partner in the search for peace in Burkina. He appealed to all parties to work hard to achieve this common goal: a peaceful election in 2015. There were also reminders that elections are very sensitive periods, for both candidates and voters. Both are capable of using insulting behaviour, and provoking hatred and violence. In order to respond to this potential, there must be an effective system to monitor and respond to such actions.

His Excellence the Canadian Ambassador to Burkina Faso also took part. He thanked and congratulated WANEP-Burkina for establishing the monitoring system. He also reiterated the interest of Burkina’s technical and financial partners in seeing smooth elections take place.

In order to better understand, deepen and make use of WANEP-Burkina’s proposed indicators, the workshop participants split into three main groups to discuss, reformulate and classify the indicators. They also worked on designing how best to coordinate their efforts.

Following the plenary session, the finalised list of 21 indicators were presented, in four different categories:

• Physical violence and the destruction of goods
• Verbal and emotional abuse
• Irregularities and bad conduct from political parties
• Behaviour and actions not conforming to the rules and republican principles of public actors

Firmly believing that democracy cannot exist without the understanding and participation of the population, WANEP will work to raise awareness of these indicators and raise local ownership and implementation of them. Drawing on the help of the community monitors of its National Early Warning System, as well as its organisational members, WANEP-Burkina will collect, analyse and disseminate qualitative and quantitative data. It will formulate responses for the different parties working on peace and security in Burkina Faso; WANEP wants to create an ‘electoral barometer’ for local, national and international actors.

A lack of funds and human resources will be key challenges to face, but we are confident of being able to implement this project. We intend to bring about peaceful change in Burkina Faso.

Boris Somé is Insight on Conflict’s Burkina Faso Correspondent.

This article was originally published by Insight on Conflict and is available by clicking here. 

The post Politics, Protest, Peace: Preparing For Elections In Burkina Faso – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Israeli authorities on Saturday froze the transfer of tax funds collected by Israel for the Palestinian Authority in response to President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to sign the Rome Statute, an official told AFP.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not elaborate.

The Israeli news site Ynet said Israel froze 500 million shekels ($127 million) of tax funds typically distributed each month.

Citing “Israeli sources,” Ynet said the decision was made Thursday during a discussion between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the freeze was a war crime.

“This decision is a new Israeli war crime, but we won’t back off in the face of those pressures,” he told AFP.

Abbas’ request to join the Hague-based International Criminal Court angered Israel and earned sharp criticism from the US. Netanyahu has urged the ICC to reject the request based on the fact that the PA is not a state.

Under interim peace deals, Israel collects taxes on behalf of the PA, money it needs to pay public sector salaries.

Each month, PA salaries cost around $200 million, $120 million of which is covered the taxes collected by Israel.

Israel has previously frozen payments to the PA during times of heightened security and diplomatic tensions, provoking strong international criticism, such as when the UN cultural body UNESCO granted the Palestinians full membership in 2011.

The post Israel Freezes PA Tax Funds In Response To ICC Move appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ghazanfar Ali Khan

A Saudi delegation is set to visit Iraq this week in order to prepare the ground for the reopening of the Saudi Embassy in Baghdad, 24 years after the Kingdom closed its diplomatic mission there.

Riyadh has also announced plans to set up a consulate in Erbil.

A technical committee from the Foreign Ministry will leave for Baghdad this week to coordinate with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on the necessary arrangements for selecting appropriate buildings for both missions, said a report, published by SPA.

Osama Nugali, spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, could not provide the exact date of the visit of the Saudi delegation.

Fayyad Al-Oraifi, a political analyst, commented: “The Saudi decision to open diplomatic missions comes after Iraq responded positively to the gestures of the Saudi leadership.”

Riyadh now needs to resolve “technical, administrative and security” issues before it can re-establish the mission and assign an ambassador, said Al-Oraifi.

Iraqi President Fouad Masoum visited Riyadh late last year, raising hopes of better relations between the two neighbors.

Saudi Arabia, which closed its embassy in Baghdad in 1990 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, will possibly name its first post-Gulf war ambassador soon.

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal announced plans to reopen the embassy in September last year.

Prince Saud’s announcement followed his wide-ranging talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari in Jeddah. Al-Jaafari described the decision as “important and necessary.”

The post Saudi Arabia Prepares To Open Embassy In Iraq appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In a recent publication of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, “Defense Spending Extends Beyond the Pentagon’s Budget,” Veronique de Rugy presents a valuable compilation of data for fiscal year 2013, showing how much of the government’s national security spending appears not in the base budget of the Department of Defense, but elsewhere in the government’s budget. This point is important because in debates about Pentagon funding, those who favor giving the Pentagon more money generally rest their arguments on references to the amount appropriated for the Pentagon’s base budget alone, ignoring the substantial amounts that appear under other rubrics in the government’s overall budget.

De Rugy shows that for fiscal year 2013, the Pentagon’s base budget alone amounted to only 68 percent of the grand total for all national security spending. In her accounting, the grand total also includes amounts spent primarily by the departments of Defense (for war, budgeted separately from the base budget), Energy (for nuclear weapons programs), State, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and the Treasury (for a portion of the military retirement budget). By excluding these huge amounts of funding ($358 billion), the drain on the nation’s financial resources is greatly understated and hence the debate badly distorted.

De Rugy notes in passing that her grand total “does not include the associated interest costs on the debt, which would add to the total amount.” Quite so. In similar accounting exercises that I carried out from time to time over the past decade or so, I found that adding an amount attributable to the current financing costs of past debt-financed national security spending increased the grand total of national security spending by 30 percent in fiscal year 2002, by 28 percent in fiscal year 2006, and by 14 percent in fiscal year 2009. The reduced percentage addition in 2009, compared to fiscal years 2002 and 2006, reflects not only the increase in the base of the ratio, but also the artificially reduced interest rates that prevailed in fiscal year 2009─and, we should note, in every year since then─owing to the Federal Reserve’s actions to keep interest rates, especially those on the government’s debt, far below free-market levels.

Nevertheless, if we were to add to de Rugy’s grand total of national security spending even the 14 percent addition that I previously computed as appropriate in fiscal year 2009, we would increase that grand total by $120.5 billion, which is hardly a negligible sum. A more defensible addition, which would be an estimate of the true free-market opportunity cost in fiscal year 2013 of the nation’s past debt-financed national security spending (debt still outstanding), would probably be in the neighborhood of twice as much, that is, roughly $241 billion.

Some analysts have argued against the inclusion of an amount for the current financing cost of past debt-financed national security spending, but such arguments do not hold water. If you borrow to buy a house, the annual interest expense on your mortgage loan is certainly part, usually the lion’s share, of the total costs of your occupancy of that house throughout the year and of your having acquired it in the first place. Likewise, if the government borrows to finance national security outlays, the subsequent interest costs associated with that debt certainly ought to be included in the total expense of the nation’s national security programs in any given year. To leave out such interest expense is to assume implicitly that any amount of spending for national security currently financed by borrowing (that has not been repaid since) entails neither current nor subsequent annual cost, which is an economically indefensible assumption.

The post Total National Security Spending Is Much Greater Than Pentagon’s Base Budget – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By N Sathiya Moorthy*

By letting, if not encouraging, a ruling coalition member to move an amendment to the 2008 Constitution, to fix an upper age-limit of 65 years for contesting presidential election, the ruling combine of President Abdulla Yameen may have contributed to trivialising the nation’s highest office without cause, reason or justification.

Worse still, the Jumhooree Party (JP), the one-time ally of President Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), too did not cover itself with glory when a parliamentarian mooted, though outside the House, that the lower age-limit for the presidency should be brought down to 18 years from the present 35 years.

The bill for fixing an upper age-limit was proposed by Mohammed Ismail (Hoarafushi), an MP belonging to the Maldivian Development Alliance (MDA) partner of the PPM. Lately, the MDA is often seen batting – or, battling (?) — for the PPM and the ruling coalition whenever controversy hits on the face. JP parliamentarian for the Kendhoo seat, Ali Hussein, came up with a constitutional googly on the 18-age lower-limit.

In mooting an upper age-limit, MP Ismail cited Census figures to point out that half the nation’s population was below 25 years, hence their interests needed to be represented adequately. However, with no past experience of the kind the member also argued, “We do not want a President who cannot function due to old age and has to be brought to important meetings in a wheelchair.” The counter on 18-year lower-limit obviously took off from where the other had left.

There was/is nothing from the recent past to show that a Maldivian President in future would be bound to a wheel-chair. The oldest of Presidents in the recent past was PPM founder Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. He was in his Seventies when he lost the 2008 presidential elections. To date, he has been active in politics – and is not wheelchair-bound. If the ‘wheelchair argument’ is untenable, it should not surprise anyone if a rights group takes up the cause of ‘people with special needs’, as other NGOs have criticised the PPM-led government whenever even half-a-chance came their way.

Targetting Gasim?

The JP’s anguish and anxiety in joining the ‘trivialisation chorus’ is understandable. The never-say-die JP-founder Gasim Ibrahim would have crossed 65 years of age when the next presidential elections became due in 2018. Having lost the first round in the presidential polls of 2008 and 2013, he however has increased his vote-tally from 15 percent to 24 percent in those five years.

Should he be ‘disqualified’, his decisive and ‘transferrable’ vote-share — personally, not necessarily politically — as proved in 2008 and 2013 presidential polls, could be up for the grabs. An alternative could be for those ‘semi-urban/non-urban’ voters, including youth, to look the other way and boycott the polls, or resort to ‘direct action’ – at times in dangerous directions. One could be worse than the other in terms of the nation’s socio-economic cohesion and priorities, possibilities and security.

Both in 2008 and 2013, Gasim’s ‘transferable’ first-round vote-share went a long way in ensuring victory for Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) candidate Mohammed Nasheed in 2008 and PPM’s Yameen in 2013, after he had pledged support to the two, respectively. In the PPM’s company, the JP obtained a respectable 15 seats in the 85-member Parliament in March 2014, as against a lone seat out of 78 in May 2009.

As has been the case with and for the JP since inception five years ago, the days after the parliamentary elections saw the emergence of a love-hate, or love-turned-hate relationship with the second-round senior partner from the presidential poll. Not only did the PPM poach on the JP to make up an absolute majority, post-poll, the Yameen presidency has also been encouraging ‘non-conformist’ JP Ministers to leave the government.

Recently, the JP parliamentary party was also divided over voting out Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Ahmed Faiz and another Judge Muthasim Adnan – providing the much-needed two-thirds majority for what otherwise should be have been dubbed ‘impeachment’ under the law and Constitution. The JP leadership found it politically prudent to let his party MPs take independent decisions on the vote.

MDP proposal/threat?

It is not unlikely that the PPM coalition’s apprehensions centring on Gasim in particular may owe to a recent resolution by the Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) central council for President Yameen to hand over office to the JP leader. If anything, the MDP might have started off the ‘trivialisation’ game. As mandated by the Constitution, it could happen only if the ruling coalition facilitated Gasim’s election as the Speaker of Parliament, or the People’s Majlis, followed by simultaneous resignations of President Yameen and his Vice-President Mohammed Jameel Ahmed. Gasim, then as Acting President, would then have 60 days to order and preside over fresh elections to the high office.

The PPM’s apprehensions are manifold in this case. Gasim had sought the Speaker’s post after the parliamentary polls, recalling his contributions as the Speaker of the ‘Special Majlis’ that had drafted the 2008 Constitution. Obviously, apprehending unspecified future trouble, the PPM would not yield. Now after the MDP’s hasty proposition, the PPM-MDA leadership(s) seem(s) to be alive to the possibility of the Opposition encouraging defection(s) from the ruling combine, and try and impeach both President Yameen and Vice-President Jameel simultaneously – all with Gasim as Speaker.

The attendant political calculus also seems be assume that Gasim would be satisfied with a short-stint as Head of State, and would work with the MDP to make party leader Mohammed Nasheed to return as president, after an abrupt end in February 2012. Even otherwise, given the high 48 percent vote-share that Nasheed recorded in the 2013 presidential polls, analytically he may have a better chance of winning another election at short-notice than any other candidate, Yameen and Gasim included.

Politico-electoral threat

Even if the apprehensions about the MDP’s grand strategy and the Gasim’s possible, though not probable acquiescence to the same were taken for granted, it would still be a hasty political threat with electoral possibilities. The question of fresh presidential polls and ‘regime-change’ would have no traction if President Yameen’s leadership is able to keep its flock together.

The temptation however now would be to weaken the elected Opposition weaker than already. That’s again part of a political game that all stake-holders are playing in the post-democratisation Maldives. With no anti-defection law in place, the cross-over game could go on even without any ulterior motives and ultimate strategies, and could include the MDP, too, more than already. It need not necessarily lead or contribute to a change of personalities in the high office, or fresh presidential polls.

It’s entirely another matter for the government parties to consider such theoretical apprehensions with the kind of respectability that they might not deserve in the first place. Worse still and more so for the nation and its post-democracy political culture, the temptation for the Majority to try and use Parliament and constitutional amendments to silence the Opposition could prove to be counter-productive, over the medium and long terms. The MDP underwent the lessons in its time, whether or not it learnt from it.

Prima facie, there was no need for the ruling combine to have thought of a constitutional amendment of the kind, particularly when the JP was the first to condemn the MDP resolution, asking President Yameen to hand over power to Gasim Ibrahim. The ruling combine has since condemned the MDP idea, and has also taken the party to the Election Commission.

It’s another matter that none of the three political parties/combines involved have clarified if the MDP resolution was passed with the prior knowledge – even if not clearance – of the JP and/or Gasim Ibrahim. Having proved its ‘majority-making’ capacity since the conclusion of the parliamentary elections and more so, the Majlis’ vote on the ‘impeachment’ of two Supreme Court judges, the ruling combine should have had confidence in itself.

Since the very evening of his election, President Yameen has been reiterating the need for national consensus on all major issues. He said as much even more recently, in the context of political threats of protests that could affect the nation’s economic staple-diet of tourism. That the MDP has a better international network than his party is one thing. The recent social-media threats of possible attacks that have discouraged the likes of Grammy Award-winning Jamaican dancehall artist Sean Paul from performing in Maldives for the New Year Day Eve, is another.

Constitutional and law amendments to check and/or check-mate the political Opposition is a third dimension. By not seeking a fast-track vote, as yet, on the ‘age-limit’ issue (unlike in the case of the CJ impeachment), it is possible that the ruling combine was only sending out a message to political adversaries that two can play the game. Yet, having been criticised that the ‘judicial impeachments’ aimed at removing the two Judges who had given a dissenting opinion in the politically inconvenient presidential poll case(s) in 2013, the Yameen-PPM leadership can do without more of such avoidable controversies. Post-democratisation Maldives that is troubled already can do without it, even more.

*The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter

The post Maldives: Trivialising The Presidency – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The holidays are a time when our consumer driven economy offers the fantasy of a happier tomorrow in a progressively greater unequal society. Reversing the trend is going to require an assault on the current tax code (particularly with regard to taxes paid by the wealthy) and a concern once again for the welfare, education and health care of the bottom eighty percent. It is clearly not on the horizon.

Instead we indulge in wars of choice promoted through a peculiar ideological prism where al-Qaeda is the bogeyman used to discomfit or destroy secular regimes clearly opposed to al-Qaeda. As a result, we have spawned al-Qaeda type offshoots all across the middle east and Africa, and, in addition, created millions of destitute refugees fleeing unbearable circumstances including the very real possibility of losing their lives. A sobering legacy for any President … which one can forget for a few days as we deluge ourselves in an orgy of food and knick knacks, the latter the courtesy of China which now holds over $3 trillion of our currency.

The Chinese thus have the wherewithal to assist ‘big brother’, namely Russia, should it become necessary. They do not forget the aid they received from him in developing their peasant economy and in the Korean War. It will be a long time, if ever, before Russia will be brought to its knees through sanctions or a calamitous oil price drop. And why?

Why this quest for supremacy on the global stage? There was a time in Europe when certain countries sought the same. It took the devastation of war to set them on a cooperative path. Will it now take a nuclear encounter to set us on a similar course?

We have abused the gift of peace the thaw in the cold war offered, flagrantly violating understandings against NATO expansion. Russia was weak and we took advantage. No more. So Mr. Putin is demonized.

But Mr. Putin’s poll ratings show over 80% support; the US president’s are about half that number leaving little doubt as to which leader best represents his constituents. The Russian people are not unaware of the dangers NATO at their doorstep poses, just as US citizens would if Russia had initiated a coup in Mexico and planned to set up a military outpost. It brings to mind the Cuban missile crisis.

Setting up another nuclear confrontation and a new cold war that is clearly warmer than the last one is an unexpected, unwelcome, unfortunate, ironic and even risible legacy for a Noble peace laureate. One can only pray for a miracle in the new year where additional threats loom from the wars initiated in 2014 and the financial exposure of the public to the tune of $3 trillion from the December budget bill sneaking in a provision permitting banks to bet on default swaps using FDIC insured deposits again.

The post A Happy New Year From Our Leaders? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Pentagon officials have confirmed that a high-ranking member of the al-Shabab militant group in Somalia was killed in a Dec. 29 airstrike.

The unmanned U.S. aircraft strike near Saakow, Somalia, killed Tahlil Abdishakur, chief of al-Shabab’s intelligence and security wing, officials said in a statement.

Working from actionable intelligence, U.S. forces struck a vehicle carrying Tahlil with several Hellfire missiles, officials added.

Tahlil was responsible for al-Shabaab’s external operations. “His death will significantly impact al-Shabaab’s ability to conduct attacks against the government of the Federal Republic of Somalia, the Somali people, and U.S. allies and interests in the region,” the Pentagon statement said.

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Friday marked the expiration of the six month grace period granted by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for the full and unconditional surrender and demobilization of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

A Team of International Envoys noted with concern that the FDLR has not met the deadline.

“Instead, the FDLR has used this six-month grace period to continue to commit human rights abuses against innocent people in Eastern DRC, recruit combatants, and champion its illegitimate political agenda,” the Team of International Envoys said in a statement. “Ending the threat of the FDLR is not just a DRC responsibility; it is a regional and international responsibility. We all have a deep commitment to ensuring accountability for those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”

The Team of International Envoys is comprised of UN Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Said Djinnit, UN Special Representative and Head of MONUSCO Martin Kobler, AU Special Representative for the Great Lakes Boubacar Diarra, EU Senior Coordinator for the Great Lakes Koen Vervaeke, US Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and the DRC Russell D. Feingold and Belgium Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Frank de Coninck,

According to the Team of International Envoys statement, “By failing to fully comply with the decisions of the ICGLR, SADC, and the United Nations Security Council, the FDLR has left the region and the international community with no other option than to pursue the military option against those within the armed group that are unwilling to voluntarily disarm.”

The Envoys recalled the Communique issued by the 1 December meeting of the Guarantors of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework (PSCF) for the DRC and the region in which they “stressed the binding and non-negotiable character of the 2 January 2015 deadline”.

“Indeed, there is no justification for further delaying the neutralization of a group that is responsible for a long history of heinous crimes,” continued the Team of International Envoys statement.

Given that the deadline has not been met, the Envoys have called upon the DRC Government and MONUSCO, including its Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), to take all necessary measures to disarm the FDLR, in line with Security Council resolutions 2098 (2013) and 2147 (2014).

At the same time, the Envoys commended the troop contributing countries (TCCs) of MONUSCO, particularly those of the FIB, “for their commitment to peace and security and for their many sacrifices in their efforts to protect civilians and neutralize other armed groups in eastern DRC.”

The Envoys noted that the international community’s expectations for the FIB are enshrined in MONUSCO’s mandate. MONUSCO and its FIB must now engage in counter-FDLR operations, as directed by its leadership and in support of the DRC government, in fulfillment of their mandate to neutralize all armed groups.

The Envoys emphasized again to FDLR combatants and their dependants that, at any point, they can choose a peaceful path by entering into the existing DDR/RR program, which continues to successfully repatriate former FDLR to Rwanda.

“Over the years, several thousand ex-FDLR combatants have safely and successfully returned to Rwanda. The Envoys remain fully supportive of the DDR/RR process for FDLR ex- combatants, while encouraging the countries in the region to work together to ensure that those FDLR leaders responsible for serious human rights abuses are held accountable,” the Team of International Envoys said.

The Envoys also encouraged the signatory countries of the PSCF to fulfill all their commitments, including respecting each other’s sovereignty as well as the commitment to “neither harbor nor provide protection of any kind to persons accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, acts of genocide, or crimes of aggression, or persons falling under the United Nations sanctions regime”.

The Envoys further stressed the importance for a comprehensive approach in addressing the root causes of conflict and instability, and encourage efforts of the regional leaders aimed at promoting confidence, understanding and cooperation between the countries of the region.

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