By Mary Raum and Kathleen J. McDonald

Militaries and soft power have been interlinked since Alexander the Great began assisting the populations his armies conquered by rebuilding infrastructures and distributing food and first aid. Humane gestures by armies were considered important to winning loyalties. During the Napoleonic wars, military altruism had become customary enough to be included in soldiers’ military science studies. Napoleon viewed humanitarian assistance as a form of philanthropy that helped change civil social order among those populations his troops defeated on the European continent. Over time, measures of humanitarian aid have shifted as the sizes, types, and durations of conflicts have changed. Military roles now involve functioning as relief agents, participating as surplus disposal entities for old or outdated materials and machines, acting as international peacekeeping forces or as liberators, and delivering organized and rapid natural disaster relief. The latest addition to these scenarios is the performance of long-term humanitarian roles in peaceful settings with nations that may have a future potential value as allies.1

Frederick Cuny, a world-class humanitarian specialist who led many projects in the largest conflicts of the late 20th century until his forced disappearance in the Chechen war of 1995, believed the military had been drawn into five common humanitarian scenarios:

• undertaking rapid logistical-based relief deployment for natural disasters
• operating as martial law constituents at the conclusion of a conflict
• overseeing Phase Four reconstruction and peacekeeping efforts
• overseeing point relief for civilian populations between two warring parties
• acting as interventionists for civilian victims in conflict zones.

Each scenario requires a military to perform a diverse set of noncombat roles under fundamentally different mission models. Militaries are expected to be good at detached deployment, augmenting civil manpower, substituting for civilian workers, acting as police forces, and secondment (what the military calls individual augmentation of troop personnel). Nations go to militaries because they have at their disposal high-end communication equipment, a massive self-supporting manpower base, established organization due to a chain of command structure, and sophisticated command and control systems. According to Cuny, thinking of a military as both combatant and altruistic helper has evolved because of militaries’ talents to perform as “cornucopias of assistance.” Added to the five common roles within the cornucopia is a growing belief that the military should conduct aid operations permanently and on a long-term basis.

One of the least operationally antagonistic and organizationally disruptive ways for the U.S. military to serve as soft power agents on a long-term basis is through the Services’ medical corps. Medical professionals act in dual roles as supporters and defenders of the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies and as servants of the covenants of the Hippocratic oath. The oath obligates the taker to share scientific gains, look to disease prevention rather than cures, benefit the sick without reservation, respect the privacies of those being treated, tread lightly on matters of life and death, and remember that treating illnesses is the treatment of human beings and that the economic status of the ill should not drive choice of treatment. Each of these is to be remembered in light of the idea that medical professionals hold special obligations to society and as such should strive continually to seek the “true joy of healing others.”2 Current ideology in support of using medical soft power within military theaters of operation is that healthy populations are more secure populations, which in turn are more stable populations. Soft power medical programs expand access and influence and strengthen military and diplomatic relationships.

Globalization and Disease

Public health is more important than ever due to the global integration that is occurring as a result of rapid globalization, interrelated financial systems, and the ability of populations to afford travel. For all the positives of a borderless globe, a damaging consequence of this dynamic has been the ease with which diseases spread. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2003 is a clear example. Beginning in China, the syndrome was brought into Canada by a passenger on a commercial airliner and then spread to other countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia before being contained. In 2009, an H1N1 influenza pandemic commonly known as Swine Flu, which had not appeared in society in equal magnitude since 1918, spread from the state of Veracruz, Mexico, to several continents, hitting North America when a 10-year-old patient in California was diagnosed with the disease. Eighteen thousand people were killed by the virus within 1 year. These events and others like them make public health programs a key consideration as a primary choice of military soft power projects.

Even graver in proportion than H1N1 and SARS is dengue fever, followed by Lyme disease, HIV/AIDS, human papilloma virus, and diabetes.3 Of great concern is that in the last 25 years, unusual manifestations of dengue are appearing and showing cerebral symptoms, which are associated with the functioning of the central nervous system, and hepatic symptoms, which affect the liver.4 There is no specific treatment for dengue, and there is no vaccine.

The U.S. military has had a long-term relationship with the ailment. During the Spanish-American War, the virus caused major illness among Servicemembers, and throughout history, high incidence of the disease occurred during operations in Somalia, Haiti, and the Philippines. In Asia and the South Pacific during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, attack rates on troops were as high as 80 percent:5

It is probably soldiers who caused the original spread of dengue fever around Southeast Asia during World War II. . . . A Japanese scientist first isolated the virus during the war, and a United States Army physician, Albert Sabin, made the discovery that there were distinct virus types. . . . you had a movement of soldiers from England, the U.S., Australia and Japan. . . . soldiers flew from city to city. . . . In the 1900s, during the Philippine tour of duty, approximately 40% of newly arrived troops contracted dengue within one year.6

For over 100 years, the Army has documented and conducted research pertaining to numerous facets of the disease. Since the 1990s, the Services have been developing and testing possible vaccines in its medical research facilities in the United States and Thailand. This long-term study by military personnel from 1900 onward has resulted in extensive knowledge regarding how and why the disease spreads. Presently, at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences Bangkok, two experimental variations of vaccines are being studied in conjunction with the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKlein and regional community health institutions.

What Is Dengue?

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines dengue as a mosquito-borne viral infection that causes a flu-like illness and frequently develops into the potentially lethal complication of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). Infected mosquitoes bite their victims primarily in the daytime, rarely travel more than 100 yards from their birthplace, and cannot survive freezing weather.7 Occurring in four different forms, dengue is considered one of the most complicated viruses known today. Symptoms include high fevers; severe headaches; eye, muscle, and joint pain; rashes; and extreme nausea. In its severest forms, it causes internal bleeding and organ shutdown or impairment.8 International deaths from dengue fever have at times ranked equally with those caused by yellow fever and have exceeded deaths from all other viral hemorrhagic fevers combined, including ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Korean, and Crimean-Congo.9

A 2014 WHO Global Alert and Response notification, which relays the severity of dengue, states that since 1964, the disease has increased 30-fold, that 2.5 billion people live in over 100 endemic countries where the virus can be transmitted, and that up to 50 million cases occur annually with its more extreme form, DHF, occurring in over half a million individuals, with death rates among children reaching 22,000 annually. Ninety percent of childhood deaths are patients under the age of 1 year. Current statistics, while staggering, constitute only estimates because accurate and timely reporting remains problematic. In addition, dengue fever (DF) and DHF are leading causes of hospitalization globally, accounting for 1,000,866 cases reported from 1991 to 2004, with the highest numbers in the Western Pacific.10 A January 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that global urbanization and increasing air travel are expected to make dengue fever a growing international health concern for the foreseeable future. The transmission profile of the disease is multifactorial due to the weakening of control measures in affected areas, rapid urbanization, unreliable water supplies, high population densities, and global warming. Due to international trading in plastic wastes and used tires, two important mosquito breeding grounds have emerged. These used materials serve as quality incubating habitats for larvae due to their structural qualities, which are highly conducive for housing water breeding pools for extended periods of time.

Asia-Pacific Region

In 1947, U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) was established to manage and direct forces that fought in the Pacific theater of World War II. Today, it covers approximately half the Earth’s surface, from the U.S. West coast to western India and from the North Pole to Antarctica. As the largest of the six U.S. military geographic commands, it collectively represents one-fifth of America’s total military strength. Six nations in the region—Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand—are allied with the United States through mutual defense treaties, and key strategic relationships exist with Singapore, India, Taiwan, and Indonesia.11 American Active-duty troops number 300,000 as part of 5 aircraft carrier strike groups; 2,000 aircraft; 2 Marine Expeditionary Forces; and 5 Stryker brigades.

The Asia-Pacific region, which is in the USPACOM area of responsibility (AOR), is being particularly hard hit by dengue. DF and DHF are upward trending in Southeast Asia overall with an attack rate in the range of 300–400 cases per 100,000 members of the population. Dengue attacks are the leading cause of hospitalization of children in Southeast Asia in general and within Vietnam in particular.12 In Vietnam, cases are observed from the northeast to the Mekong River Delta all year round, with a slight peak in autumn. In a 2013 global health action report for Hanoi, the situation in Vietnam was called a “major threat,” with the numbers of recent outbreaks generating significant international health authority concern.

Other upward trends are being experienced in Singapore and Thailand. Singapore had an outbreak in 2005, and in 2012–2013, reported cases rose from 4,632 to 10,257 in 12 months. Thailand experienced epidemics in 1987 and 1988, and 43,609 cases were reported resulting in 60 deaths in a 6-month timeframe in 2013. The Philippines reported one of the highest numbers of incidents in the region, and in the first 6 months of 2013, Malaysia reported over 10,000 cases. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) news source, The Diplomat, reported that “because of changing climate patterns and the inevitable rise of mega cities, the dengue virus will continue to terrorize many tropical nations . . . . If left unchecked, it could lead to bigger outbreaks that governments may not be able to adequately handle.”13

Vietnam in Context

In this vast and socially complex part of the globe, where 50 percent of the world’s population resides, sits the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It is an ancient country dating to the 2nd century BCE, having achieved its independence from China in 938 CE. Only 25 miles wide at its narrowest point, and with a coastline of 2,140 miles, it is bordered on the north by China, to the west by Laos and Cambodia, and to the east by the South China Sea. Since the 20th century, the nation has been impacted by French occupation, an overthrow by Japan, internal revolutions, an invasion by China resulting in a separation of peoples into northern and southern partitions, coups, and internal struggles with communist political movements such as the Pathet Lao.14

Contemporary American military connections began with the country in 1950 during the French Colonial Administration. Combat action began in 1960 when 100 U.S. Special Forces troops were sent in after 2 Americans were killed in a guerrilla strike east of Ho Chi Minh City. From 1963 until the U.S. withdrawal in 1973, over half a million ground, sea, and air force personnel were deployed for a variety of military actions. Twenty years after the Vietnam War, President Bill Clinton announced the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Several U.S. and Vietnam cross-nation agreements have occurred since the mid 1990s: an annual bilateral human rights dialogue, bilateral trade agreement, counternarcotics letter of agreement, civil aviation agreement, and approval of permanent normal trade relations. A Pew Research Center poll notes that 71 percent of Vietnamese people view Americans in a favorable light.15

American military medical aid is not uncommon within USPACOM. A recurring joint/combined humanitarian assistance mission, Operation Pacific Angel, has been ongoing since 2007. Other operations have involved setting up medical, dental, optometry, and women’s health programs, performing children’s surgical operations, repairing hospital equipment, and conducting civic action programs in the form of reconstruction of hospital facilities.16 The United States Embassy in Hanoi describes Department of Defense (DOD) support for a variety of Overseas Humanitarian Disaster and Civic Aid funded projects. Sixteen thousand U.S. military personnel assisted during the 2004 natural disaster that affected 11 South Asian and Southeast Asian countries when nearly a half million people were displaced. Joint task forces for humanitarian assistance have helped Burma and the populations along its coast. Since the 1990s, the United States has aided victims of typhoons and floods and has conducted aid operations by participating in both ad hoc and multilateral assistance programs after several earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones. These assistance programs have been short-term interventions that are geared toward easing immediate suffering.

Though smaller in geographic size and military strength than other countries in Asia, Vietnam is growing in terms of military strategic importance. In part, this is due to the U.S. National Security Strategy’s pivot to the east. A military buildup and modernization are taking place in the region, and East Asian countries in particular are upping their naval arms race, which is increasing the risk of military confrontations. The area’s strategic economic importance and some of the rapidly expanding economies in the theater have the potential to inflate stress as these nations vie for scarce resources.17 Regional development of seapower is of distinct interest with the introduction of China’s first aircraft carrier in 2012 and Japan’s helicopter carrier. In Vietnam, the government has introduced the first of six planned Russian Kilo-class submarines, adding it to the ranks of several South East Asian nations including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore that have submarine capabilities.

Current Initiatives

With a population of 90 million people of 54 ethic nationalities, Vietnam is the second largest country in Southeast Asia and the 13th most populous country in the world. In the densely forested highlands and tropical lowlands, dengue has spread to six of its eight regional provinces. In February 2013, Hanoi announced that there were 62,039 cases reported in the southern region alone, indicating an increase of 11.2 percent as compared to 2011.18

Diseases such as dengue become key factors in the ability to retain community stability because of major healthcare costs to populations in a nation with an average per capita income of approximately $4,000 per year. The economic burden is alarming, with the average cost for a patient in 2007 costing $167. More importantly, in terms of impact on family economics, 47.2 percent of families had to borrow money for treatment, and after 6 months, 71.7 percent had not begun or had only managed partial repayment. Approximately 72.9 percent of the infected population indicated that the cost of supporting a dengue fever patient had affected the family’s ability to function normally, with an average monetary loss being 36 percent of the annual income in the lowest economic quartile.19 In Pacific Asia, the disease goes uncared for because of financial distress.

In the past decade, several short-term military assistance programs based on logistics, training, and reconstruction efforts have taken place in Vietnam. Since 2006, eight U.S.-supported medical clinics have been built in Thua Thien-Hue Province in the center of the country. A DOD-backed medical clinic was constructed in 2006 in the Quang Ninh District of Quang Binh Province along the north central coast. Other programs included building a disabled children’s center in Dong Hoi Town of the Quang Binh Province and a primary school and a secondary school in Gio Viet Commune on the north central coast. DOD has also made at least three donations of excess medical property valued at over $2 million. Recipients of the supplies were hospitals located in the former imperial capital city of Hue and the General Hospital at Can Tho, the fourth largest city in the nation, which is located in the extreme south central portion of the country. U.S. Navy medical personnel have joined with Vietnamese army doctors and nurses to conduct clinics and give medical education and training programs in patient care and surgical management. The U.S. Naval Research Medical Unit hosted a 2004 conference on developing an Early Warning Disease Outbreak Recognition System at Vietnam’s Pasteur Institute. The institute, which has been in existence since 1891, conducts research in dengue fever, diarrheal disease, HIV, leprosy, and polio.20

Medicine and Soft Power

The Vietnamese DF situation is a formidable candidate as a trial case for creating a proactive military-backed public health improvement program. Reasons why this choice makes sense are numerous. Dengue is common in nations in the USPACOM AOR, and the command should be an imperative player in the current national security strategy of pivoting to Asia. The health and well-being of American troops in the region are a cause for concern, as is their potential candidacy, as global travelers, for spreading the disease. There are numerous U.S. military medical resources already in the region, and there is a history of medical exchange with the country. The geographic closeness of the country to China and Korea may result in a higher likelihood of having Chinese and Korean medical professionals available for a multinational pilot program. Vietnam is small enough geographically to be able to develop a dengue trial program for both rural and high population areas without expending exorbitant levels of resources. Allies such as Australia already have established dengue programs in Vietnam, making it possible to work with existing programmatic efforts, international networks, and facilities. The U.S. Army is nearby in Singapore working on a dengue vaccine. A formal Vietnamese national dengue control program exists, although it operates in a reactionary fashion to dengue outbreaks.

On a larger scale, developing a soft power program based on dengue makes sense because the disease is a health concern that exists across all U.S. combatant commands. Lessons learned from an official USPACOM incubator program would be transferrable to many other health engagement opportunities around the globe. Prevalence of the disease’s existence globally, its effects on the health of the world, and the likelihood of dengue remaining a health threat for several more years make the incubator program of long-term interest and one that allows soft power relationships to be built with numerous countries at the same time. Developing a dengue program also supports one of the top six key Sphere Project standards, which assist in the mitigation of endemic disease and endemic disease rates.21

A Way Ahead

To determine how an incubator program could be built, it is useful to look at how the military currently approaches humanitarian aid. The most common approach used to promote medical soft power is the medical civic action program (MEDCAP). Such programs are routinely undertaken to enhance nation-building to indirectly influence or enhance theater security by promoting a caring face to nonmilitary populations. Most U.S. MEDCAPs are formed around the three themes of dental, medical, or veterinarian assistance. The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute of the U.S. Army has noted some negative aspects of MEDCAPs: they can be “counterproductive and hamper long term capacity development, leading often to dependency on part of the host nation.”²²

Problems with current practices and procedures in implementing soft power medical programs are numerous. In a series of articles in the online repository of PubMed.gov, individuals who have been involved in humanitarian assistance programs for decades relate some of the issues they have faced. The largest concern is the lack of measures of effectiveness related to the reduction of disease burdens. Without metrics, programs are less likely to be of true use to the host nation because no one will know how the soft power program benefited it. Other apprehensions are that, first, DOD does not have any formal evaluation system for its humanitarian aid projects. Second, due to the multiple roles military personnel are required to perform, solid coordination with private and volunteer organizations and host nation officials is less than effective. Third, there is no central repository of information for analysis of lessons learned. Since feedback is rare, projects of similar scope are reinvented each time they are undertaken. Fourth, DOD does not implement health sector humanitarian assistance impact assessments such as those existing within the humanitarian aid community.

Traditionally, the U.S. military uses a clinically based input-output management measurement model that does not emphasize outcomes or the why and how of program effectiveness. This results in a lack of understanding of which soft power medical programs have been effective. The input-output model system does not often document useful lessons learned among the host nation, the receiving nation, and partners from the international aid community. There is some consensus with humanitarian aid experts that the military focus should shift from instigating a short-term operational clinic environment toward thinking of medical aid as a larger category of public health improvement.

Relying on the normal clinical approach as the medical resolution model for disease assistance programs may not always be the most effective tool for international military healthcare agendas. This should not suggest that the clinical approach is not valuable, for it has numerous strengths such as its ability to focus on the physical and biological aspects of disease and conditions and its efficiencies in identifying, in person, defects and dysfunctions of disease using patient histories, physical examinations, and diagnostic testing. The clinical systems thinking model is based on the 19^th- and 20^th-century approach to rapid, centralized, short-term medical guidance that is inherent to field medicine mission sets, which should be primary to all military services because of their frontline associations with combat and the necessity for saving life under horrific circumstances. Training for war should continue to be a primary goal of military medicine. However, the increased use of militaries for humanitarian aid and pre- and post-reconstruction activities gives military medicine another set of problems to deal with. In these new circumstances, the tried and true clinical attitude so effective in war and conflict is too reactive for uncustomary mission sets categorized as health improvement programs.

Thinking of a health-improvement entity rather than a clinical-systems entity requires some modifications in medical delivery philosophy. To make the shift, one proposed dengue engagement model might be created using four key action areas developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over decades of experience in resolving national and international medical and health issues. To deliver a health improvement dengue program, four perspectives of importance should serve as a base for action: epidemiology and surveillance, understanding the environment, health systems intervention, and community-clinical linkages.

Epidemiology, the study of frequency and distribution of disease and surveillance, refers to knowing the location and content of existing global data and information banks as well as providing the right expertise for management and delivery. At a meeting in Manila in September 2013, WHO urged nations with endemic proportions of dengue fever to invest in chemical vector eradication on a year-round basis. Vector control methods to limit disease pathogens follow one of several strategies: controlling mosquito habitats, reducing human contact with mosquitoes, or chemical and biological controls using bacterial toxins or botanical compounds. WHO further stipulated that outbreak response and regulation begin with education of the population to recognize symptoms to seek treatment as early as possible in the disease cycle.²³

Understanding the environment would mean comprehending and appreciating existing cultural behaviors toward disease as well as determining several issues: What are the available health access structures (such as clinics)? What are the level and content of available medical supplies? What geographic components such as water and sewer systems exist? What are the number and type of available in-country healthcare professionals? A variety of approaches currently exist in Asia to build communication channels from. An ASEAN Dengue Day was sponsored on June 15, 2013, to promote disease awareness. Singapore sponsored a 4-week campaign to eradicate mosquitoes in which more than one million jars of insecticide were delivered to households. In Thailand, the government proposed that its 77 provinces open dengue “war rooms” to keep families apprised of outbreaks. A Filipino campaign called the “4 o’clock habit” encouraged families to stop daily to look for dengue-related problem areas in their immediate surroundings. Malaysians established a Web portal showing updates as to where dengue outbreak case clusters are occurring.²⁴

Health systems intervention relates to gathering information about and understanding the number, type, and location of prevention, detection, risk mitigation, and health management programs that exist not only within the country of operation but also elsewhere in other geographic commands. Joint international programs are also evolving. From 1995 to 2000, the Australian Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific, in collaboration with the Australian Government Overseas Aid Program, National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, and Ministry of Health in Vietnam, undertook a 5-year project to reduce the incidence of dengue in target areas. The multilateral approach is fostering institutional capacity-building and sustainability through low-cost community-based educational programs.²⁵

No matter the final form a dengue program might take, five common dilemmas inherent to soft power medical programs will need ongoing and thoughtful consideration. Military personnel will have to deal with conflicting social values of the host nation as well as conflicting perceptions of disease control methods and procedures. Military professionals will constantly need to regulate themselves to fit the nuances of a military’s involvement in a noncombat role. They will also need to keep in mind that the mantle of neutrality in all instances is important to program success. This means keeping a broad understanding of multiple sides, keeping true to the concept of not helping for political gain, and not collaborating with political bodies. In the end, an incubator program such as the one that could be developed with Vietnam may result in developing a body of in-house expertise on programmatic components of effectual civilian disaster relief to be shared with all Service branches and all combatant commands. The Vietnam example is worth pursuing. A tiny mosquito could be the foundation for instigating a new soft power philosophy based on public health improvement rather than a MEDCAP mentality.

Authors:
Mary Raum and Kathleen J. McDonald

Source:
This article was originally published in the Joint Force Quarterly 76, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes

1. Frederick C. Cuny, “The Lost American: Use of the Military in Humanitarian Relief,” Frontline, available at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cuny/laptop/humanrelief.html>.
2. Johns Hopkins University Library Guide to Bioethics, “Hippocratic Oath, Modern Version,” available at <http://guides.library.jhu.edu/content_mobile.php?pid=23699>.
3. “Five Fastest Growing Diseases in the World,” Sierra Express Media, December 23, 2011, available at <www.sierraexpressmedia.com/archives/33424>.
4. C. Pancharoen et al., “Dengue Infection a Global Concern,” Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand 85 (June 2002), suppl. 1, S25–33.
5. Robert V. Gibbons et al., “Dengue and U.S. Military Operations from the Spanish American War Through Today,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 18, no. 4 (2012), 623–630.
6. “Spotlight on Dengue: Spread and Impact of Dengue on the U.S. Military and Civilians Before, During, and After WWII,” Denguematters.info, Issue 11, November 3, 2008, available at <www.denguematters.info/content/issue-11-spotlight-dengue>.
7. Thomas Fuller, “The War on Dengue Fever,” The New York Times, November 3, 2008, available at <www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/health/04denguefever.html?_r=0>.
8. Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences School of Medicine, “Guiding Principles for Global Health Engagements,” available at <www.cdham.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/guiding-principles-of-ghe.pdf >.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Bruce Vaughn, Report for Congress: U.S. Strategic and Defense Relationships in the Asia Pacific Region, RL33821 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, January 22, 2007).
12. World Health Organization, “Dengue/Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever,” available at <www.who.int/csr/disease/dengue/en/>.
13. Mong Palatino, “Dengue Scare Sweeps Southeast Asia: Southeast Asia Is Suffering a Dengue Outbreak, Calling for a Regional Response,” The Diplomat, June 19, 2013, available at <http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/dengue-scare-sweeps-southeast-asia/>.
14. Encyclopedia of the Nations, “Country Overview: Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” available at <www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Vietnam.html> .
15. Pew Research Center, “Pew Research Global Attitudes Project: Global Indicators Database,” available at <www.pewglobal.org/database/>; Richard Graham, “Timeline of U.S. Involvement in Vietnam Conflict,” Mahargpress.com, available at <http://mahargpress.com/wounded/additional-material/timeline-of-vietnamconflict/>; “Vietnam War Statistics,” Statisticsbrain.com, available at <www.statisticsbrain.com/vietnam-war-statistics/>.
16. U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), “Headquarters, USPACOM,” available at <www.pacom.mil/AboutUSPACOM.aspx>; Rodion Ebbighausen, “Southeast, Asia Build Up Naval Capabilities,” Deutsch Welle online, January 13, 2014, available at <www.dw.de/southeast-east-asia-build-up-naval-capabilities/a-17358069>.
17. Ebbighausen.
18. USPACOM.
19. Ibid.
20. Craig H. Llewellyn, “Military Medicine to Win Hearts and Minds: Aid to Civilians in the Vietnam War,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80, no. 4 (Winter 2006), 795–797.
21. “The Sphere Project is a voluntary initiative that brings a wide range of humanitarian agencies together around a common aim—to improve the quality of humanitarian assistance and the accountability of humanitarian actors to their constituents, donors and affected populations.” See the Sphere Project, “About Sphere,” available at <www.sphereproject.org/about/>.
22. Mark Bradbury and Michael Kleinman, “Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship between Aid and Security in Kenya,” Case Study, Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, April 2010, available at <http://fic.tufts.edu/assets/WinningHearts-in-Kenya.pdf>.
23. World Health Organization, “WHO Resources for Prevention, Control Outbreak and Response, Dengue, Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever,” available at <www.who.int/csr/disease/dengue/DengueResources.pdf>.
24. “ASEAN Day against Dengue Fever Marked in Hanoi,” VietnamBreakingNews.com, June 15, 2013, available at <www.vietnambreakingnews.com/2013/06/asean-day-against-dengue-fever-marked-in-hanoi/>.
25. J. Drifmeyer and C. Llewellyn, “Overview of Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster and Civic Programs,” Military Medicine 168, no. 12 (December 2003), 975–980.

The post Mosquitos: A Viable 21st-Century Soft Power Tool – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Sel Graham*

Will Rogers said, “Everyone is ignorant; just on different subjects.” What others don’t know can and does hurt you.

Everyone seems ignorant (1) that “The oil price” seen and heard in the media is, in fact, the guess of Wall Street speculators (gamblers) on the New York Mercantile Exchange on the commodity price of a small amount of oil six months in the future; (2) that there is a foreign oil price and a U.S. oil price that is never found in the media but on obscure websites of the Energy Information Administration; (3) that in 2008, the Presidential election year, the foreign oil price decreased a total of $87.34 per barrel during the last half of the year, then increased in 2009; and (4) that foreign oil prices decreased in 2014 from June through October, before the election. For those wanting to confirm the above facts, go to “Where To Find Data” on my website, SelGraham.com.

Because of this quadruple ignorance, in June some unidentified Wall Street gamblers made the worst guess of 2014, that the price of oil in December would be $106 per barrel. In attempting to correct this blunder, the gamblers became like lemmings in guessing lower and lower.

Wall Street gamblers’ guesses are hurting the stock market and hurting the stock I own. They are probably decreasing your net worth. Foreign oil prices have affected Wall Street guesses without the gamblers knowing it. Wall Street gamblers should stop guessing, at least until they know what foreign oil prices will be in 2015. Americans should demand that Congress regulate this gambling by requiring the media, if it reports the Mercantile Exchange price, to emphasize that it is the guess of the price in the future and to report the most recent price of foreign oil and U.S. oil along with this guess of the price in the future.

Falling oil prices (gamblers’ guesses) were in the news on the last day of 2014. Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold’s December 31 article on page A5 was entitled “Oil Prices Crater Amid U.S. Oil Glut.” A glut? Is the U.S. oil market being flooded so that the U.S. oil supply exceeds the U.S. oil demand? No, it is not. In October 2014, the most recent data available, U.S. oil production was 280 million barrels, only 56% of the total U.S. oil demand of 501 million barrels, leaving 221 million barrels, 44%, to be filled by foreign oil imports. As long as the U.S. is continuing to import large quantities of foreign oil, we don’t have a U.S. oil glut flooding the global market. We have incorrect guesses by Wall Street gamblers.

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote a book, Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High, a short 54-page history of how Jimmy Carter made the U.S. dependent on expensive foreign oil. The basic points I made in this book are as valid today as when written in 2005. U.S. oil producers are paid a “Posted Price” for U.S. oil production and are not paid the oil price in the media, which is the New York Mercantile Exchange commodity futures price. Foreign oil imports are more expensive than U.S. oil. As soon as I received copies of the book from the publisher, I invited Russell Gold, a resident of Austin, to the Westwood Country Club for lunch where I gave him a copy of my book.

Several weeks later, I phoned Mr. Gold and asked him what he thought of my book. He told me that he had not read my book and did not intend to read it. I had not expected such a response. I asked him to leave the book on his front porch for me to pick up and give to another person. He did, and I did.

Obviously, Mr. Gold was not interested in finding out why gasoline prices were high. Thank you for being interested in finding out why gasoline prices are low.

Here is another fact which few Americans know. Since Obama became President in 2009, the annual price of U.S. oil has been less than the annual price of foreign oil. This pattern is expected to continue until Americans demand that cheaper U.S. oil completely replace the more expensive foreign oil.

Now, go forth and educate fellow Americans.

*Graham is a World War II veteran, West Point graduate, and Legion of Honor Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

The post The ‘Oil Price’ Is Not The Price Of Oil – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Food items are covered with plastic films to make them last longer and protect them from microbes. The environment, however, is seriously affected by the use of this material. The plastic bottles and films present everywhere in our civilization take between 100 and 400 years to degrade. So the quest for alternative materials to plastics produced from petroleum is an environmental priority.

Various products and substances are used to manufacture these materials: cellulose, potatoes, etc.; and in this case, chitosan.

“Chitosan is made out of the shells of prawns, king prawns and other crustaceans. The environment benefits from the use of this waste material and, what is more, the resulting product, chitosan, is biodegradable,” said Leceta. “Chitosan also has antimicrobial properties, so it is highly suited to the food industry, as it reduces the microbial load -in this case- of carrots. That is why their properties have been preserved better”, added the researcher.

Which is better: the devil or the deep blue sea?

Although the results of laboratory tests have been satisfactory, the massive industrial use of chitosan for packaging food is a distant goal.

“We have to go on conducting research. Just as with renewable energies, it is better to have various options -to produce a mix- rather than just to have only one. You have to work with different polymers, to reduce the use of petroleum-based materials as much as possible,” said Leceta. In any case, she rates the work done positively: “If we take into consideration the whole life cycle, in many environmental categories our material is better than that which is manufactured using petroleum by-products. The key is the environment, and that has been the cornerstone of my thesis. If we don’t manage to manufacture a material that is better from the environmental perspective, there will be no point in our work”.

But not all that glitters is gold, and this is what Leceta too believes.

“Chitosan film is better than plastic film in terms of the environmental impact, in a range of categories, but that does not mean it does not pollute. The manufacturing of chitosan, unlike the production of conventional plastics, has yet to be optimized. Once it has been optimized, the environmental impact of chitosan will be reduced even further”.

In short, every option has its downside, so the one that causes the least damage has to be chosen.

“There is a saying about what is ‘better’, the devil or the deep blue sea. Well, we, too, often have to opt for the lesser evil,” said the researcher.

The post Chitosan A Sustainable Alternative For Food Packaging appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jan Agha Iqbal*

The recent terrorist attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris on January 7, 2015 which claimed many lives once again underscored the need to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Terrorists do not follow any religion. In fact, Islam and Muslims have been the prime victims of terrorism. In many ways, this attack also targeted Muslims living in Europe.

It is unfortunate to note that these incidents are followed by a surge in the already rising Islamophobia and acts of persecution and discrimination against Muslims. The protagonists of Islamophobia have taken advantage of the violent acts of some minority extremists and terrorist groups as a pretext to defame Islam as a whole of being a religion that supports intolerance, extremism, terrorism and that it is hostile to other religions. Associating terrorism with Islam and Mulims is like associating mass killings committed by Hitler or by Christians in Central African Republic and Serbia with Christianity. Killing innocent people is not only un-Islamic ,but goes contrary to the basic principles of Islam.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right of every human being. One may not agree with the content of the expression, but one has to respect the right of others to express themselves even if it goes against one’s beliefs and values. However, the right to freedom of expression should not be misused to ridicule and insult sacred symbols of others and incite hatred against Muslims. According to article 19 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights freedom of expression comes with duties and responsibilities and is subject to certain restrictions while article 20 of the same covenant states, “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”

This notion goes along with so many UN resolutions and international instruments including the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief Proclaimed by UN General Assembly resolution 36/55 of 25 November 1981 and the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities adopted by General Assembly resolution 47/135 of 18 December 1992.

In our present day world, a looming concern for the international community that has probably overtaken many others is the challenge to bring an end to stereotyping peoples and communities on the basis of religious beliefs and cultural practices.

Islamophobia, which refers to a strong and irrational fear developed against Islam and its believers leading to acts of hatred and discrimination, in its essence is a religion-based resentment. Therefore, even indigenous European Muslims, mostly with secular lifestyle and values, have been subject to long-term persecution based on their faith.

The advocates of Islamophia aim at creating misgivings, misunderstanding and prejudice among non-Muslims particularly those in Western countries by defamation and distortion of Islam and its principles. Therefore, Muslims have been victims of hatred such as ethnic cleansing, religious profiling, discrimination, and deprivation of opportunities available to other minorities.

In the Muslim world, the displeasure emanates from the fact that a religion that preaches peace, tolerance and moderation is being distorted to mislead the people of other faiths into believing that Islam is supportive of violence and intolerance. It is of paramount importance to realize that such wrong perceptions are fraught with dangerous implications since it would only serve to alienate a faith that has millions of followers and would provide an opportunity to the handful minority of hate mongers to threaten global peace and security.

Muslims form an integral part of the West. A report published by the RAND Corporation based in the United States on Building Moderate Muslim Network points out: “Europe is home to the world’s largest Muslim diaspora community. As a conservative estimate, there are at least 15 million Muslims in Western Europe, with some sources estimating higher numbers still. The largest Muslim concentrations are in France, with between four and six million Muslims, mostly of North African origin; Germany, with over three million, the majority of Turkish ancestry; the United Kingdom, with one and a half million Muslims, predominantly of Southeast Asian origin; Spain, with possibly as many as one million, largely from North Africa; and the Netherlands, with an estimated 920,000, mostly of Turkish and Moroccan origin. There are also notable Muslim concentrations in Italy, Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland. Muslims, of course, have been present in the Balkans since Ottoman times, constituting majorities in Bosnia, Albania, and Kosovo and significant minorities in Bulgaria, Croatia, and Greece.”

The issue of intolerance among faiths is largely due to insufficient and improper understanding of the religions and the values and principles they stand for. An awareness must be created that none of the great religions advocate confrontation. Rather, these are all based on a common cause to enlighten people for a better code of life based on peaceful co-existence.

Islam seeks for peaceful co-existence and mutual tolerance. On freedom of belief, as a key to pluralism, the Qur’an clearly states that there is no compulsion in religion (2:256) and declares that all children of Adam are honorable (17:70). Under the Islamic rule, Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus lived very peacefully and all these communities flourished throughout the Muslim world. Lives, honor, beliefs and rituals of non-Mulisms were safeguarded by the State and their institutions and places of worship repaired and maintained, their personal laws protected, and the expenses were often paid from the public or State’s treasuries.

Karen Armstrong a writer on Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism truly elaborates: “In the Islamic empire, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians enjoyed religious freedom. This reflected the teachings of the Quran, which is a pluralistic scripture, affirmative of other traditions. Muslims are commanded by God to respect the People of the Book, and reminded that they share the same belief and the same God.”

While there is no surgical solution to cure the malaise, it cannot be allowed to proliferate further as it has already assumed dangerous proportions. The solution lies in taking a deep look into the root causes of the anti-Muslim hatred and discrimination. The following are necessary to address Islamophobia:

1. Media personalities and think tanks of the Western and the Muslim world have to encourage advancing the principles of understanding and peaceful coexistence.

2. Overconfidence and aggressive attitude towards Muslims would not help the West to forge partnership and gain the minds and hearts of Muslims. Muslims have their own code and system of democracy responsive to universal values and compatible with their own cultural, social and geographical ground realities and needs.

3. Beside enacting laws that address hate crimes, giving legal recognition to Islam in some Western countries can also contribute to have better understanding of Islam. According to reports most of the countries in the West lack a clear legal framework on religion and formal recognition of religion does not exist.

4. Muslim societies on their part should undergo serious reform in various fields including social, cultural and political, and should adopt a self critique approach in reviewing Islamic texts particularly those misused by extremists. Similarly Muslims should be more open to criticism.

5. It is equally important for Muslims to abide by the Islamic values and principles that totally reject all kinds of Christianophobic and anti-Semetic sentiments and protect non-Muslims against any instance of discrimination based on their beliefs or race.

6. Monitor and condemn violent hate crimes and prosecute offenders. Human rights reports show insufficient official responses to those incidents and crimes against Muslims in the West.

7. Building on diversity and peaceful co-existence, governments, civil society institutions and regional and international organizations have to step up their efforts to confront extremists on both sides. It is high time that we seriously begin to talk and listen and understand each other and learn to live and let live.

* Jan Agha Iqbal is a Diplomat and Analyst.

References:
1- The Holy Quran.
2- Karen Armstrong. ‘The Curse of the Infidel’. The Guardian. 20 June 2002.
3- The Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA’s) Report on “Strengthening America: The Civic and Political Integration of Muslim Americans”.
4- Various Reports of Intolerance Against Islam.
5- Report of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.
6- Building Moderate Muslim Networks prepared by; Angel Rabasa,Cheryl Benard, Lowell H. Schwartz and Peter Sickle. It was published by RAND Corporation.

The post Let’s Stop Playing Into Hands Of Islamophobes And Extremists – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena announced Friday that he will crusade for an economic, social and political transformation as pledged in his election manifesto.

The new president, while stressing that he does not have any intention to run for a second term of office, added that he is committed to building a society where freedom, democracy, people’s sovereignty and law and order reign.

On Thursday, Sirisena won Sri Lanka’s presidential vote with 51.3 percent of votes against 47.6 percent of exiting president Mahinda Rajapakse. Sirisena was sworn in as president on Friday.

Sirisena added that he faced unprecedented problems as a common candidate during the election campaign.

“No other opposition candidate vying for this type of election faced so many obstacles as I did,” he said.

According to Sirisena, the state media disregarded all norms and practices of freedom of media during the election campaign.

“I am very much worried about a series of violations that included torching of election stages during the election campaign,” Sirisena said, adding that Sri Lanka should have a political culture free from violence.

Sirisena added that he will make the country’s foreign policy more meaningful by attracting all nations and organizations of the world.

The post Sri Lanka: Sirisena Pledges Crusade For Socio-Economic And Political Transformation appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The centre of Asian growth –ASEAN and East Asia– has strong commercial links with the EU, the US and Japan. But Philippines and Spain have shared four centuries of colonial experiences and this should have translated into a robust post-colonial relation. Paradoxically, the mutual ignorance of the business communities of the two countries has aggravated Spain’s retreat from the Philippines, culminating in an irrelevant economic relationship.

By Ricardo G. Barcelona and Bernardo M. Villegas*

When confronted with Spain’s commercial irrelevance in Asia, pundits cite the following as impediments to an expanded Spanish presence: geographical distance, bureaucratic barriers, cultural differences and an abundance of opportunities in Europe. These beliefs continue to guide Spanish managers’ strategic actions, in spite of evidence to the contrary. Consequently, a commercial paradox has resulted whereby post-colonial economic relations have been marked by Spain’s irrelevance.

In this paper we attribute this commercial paradox to the mutual ignorance of Spanish and Filipino managers of their potential to work together. Consequently, managers pursue strategies that are incongruent to market realities and that imperil a venture’s viability. To reverse this sorry state we recommend three lines of action: (1) to focus on complementing strengths that create effective partnerships; (2) to create policy mechanisms that dismantle legal and administrative barriers to trade and investments; and (3) to deepen mutual understanding and capabilities through ASEAN-focused executive education and public-private sector forums.

Analysis:

Asia’s stellar economic growth has attracted investments from global companies. While European firms tend to focus on China, global investors are fully aware of opportunities in ASEAN.[1] Dubbed the ‘sick man of Asia’, it is now the Philippines’ turn to surprise everyone. Buoyed by credit-rating upgrades, while Europe suffers downgrades, the Philippines have delivered 6% to 7.2% economic growth since 2008. Such a performance has come about from enhanced transparency and higher foreign currency and tourism inflows. By 2013, business process outsourcing (BPO) generated US$16 billion in revenues, while remittances from Filipinos abroad topped US$25 billion.

Spain’s four centuries of colonial experiences in the Philippines should place Spanish companies at a commercial advantage. However, after a century of post-colonial retreat that only intensified during the 20th century, Spanish economic influence is conspicuous for its irrelevance. Pundits on Philippine-Spanish economic relations attribute this absence to geographical distance, cultural differences and bureaucratic barriers.[2] Abundant domestic opportunities kept Spanish companies home. When the Great Recession hit Spain hard in 2008, many of these Euro-centric companies went bust.

Indeed, Spain’s commercial irrelevance contrast with the heights reached during its galleon-trade monopoly (1565-1815). Benito Legarda, in his book After the galleons: foreign trade, economic change, and entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century Philippines, noted that the Philippines were the Asian centre of the Seville-Acapulco-Manila trade route. Commodities such as spices, porcelain, ivory, lacquer and silk from China were exchanged for Mexican silver (as the currency of trade). Some estimate that a third of Mexico’s silver production, which was substantial, ended in Philippine coffers as payment for Spanish imports.

The galleon trade that Spain monopolised connected the Philippines to the imperial economy. Spain’s commercial dominance diminished with Mexico’s independence in 1815. To keep the lucrative trade afloat, private ships were allowed to ply the trade route. The agricultural potential of the Philippines was increasingly becoming recognised, with the cultivation of export crops transforming Manila from an Asian trading gateway into a source of agricultural supplies. British and American merchants saw this transition as an opportunity that led them to fund agricultural expansion. Ultimately, the Philippines became a major exporter of sugar, abaca, tobacco and coconut oil, whereby control of the economy shifted to Anglo-American interests. At this point, Spain’s grip on Philippine commerce was irreversibly lost.

Shared colonial experiences usually imply close economic and trade links between the former colonies and their coloniser. Pankaj Ghemwat put forward this hypothesis in the DHL-IESE Business School’s study on global connectedness. As an example, the Commonwealth of Nations provides the UK with a platform to assert influence while retaining commercial links to its former colonies. The projection of US power left a strong imprint on the socio-economic landscape of host countries, the Philippines being a classic example. Fifty years of tutelage implanted US political, legal, economic and social structures with a Filipino twist. While little is left of Spanish commercial influence, Christianity remains deeply embedded in Filipino customs and culture.

This brief historical context raises intriguing questions, whose answers have commercial relevance for business. Specifically:

1. What caused Spain’s loss of influence and its eventual decline into commercial irrelevance in the Philippines and Asia?
2. In contrast, why do specific Spanish brands prosper and are ubiquitous among Philippine and ASEAN consumers?
3. Can Spain regain its commercial relevance, and how can it do it?

Spain’s diminished stature is greeted with a mixture of regrets or déjà vu. Moves to strengthen Spain’s ties to the Philippines and Asia are tentative. Often, initial enthusiasm is tempered by a sudden realisation that the terrain has become unfamiliar. However, deep-seated ‘managerial wisdom’ that is incongruent with market realities persists in guiding strategic actions. Specifically, note the following contradictions:

1. Geographical distance is an insurmountable barrier. However, Spanish managers salivate at cracking China’s market of 1.3 billion people. Within three hours flight from Shanghai, the expatriates’ preferred city in China, Manila and the ASEAN capitals are considered distant unknowns.
2. Bureaucratic barriers pose serious constraints to doing business in ASEAN economies. In contrast, Spanish managerial enthusiasm for Latin America is undiminished by sequestrations, expropriations and sovereign defaults.
3. Cultural differences are pronounced and are compounded by differences in language and history. Ironically, common colonial experiences with the Philippines are a blur to Spanish managers.

These assertions became embedded as core beliefs for Spanish managers. Consequently, strategic actions became Ibero-centric. Selective international expansions tends to focus on the ‘familiar’ Latin American and ‘safe’ southern European markets.

Given these assumptions, how do these core beliefs impact on the strategic positioning of Spanish companies?

Latin American opportunities became available when waves of privatisation allowed Spanish businesses to acquire and control local companies. However, as the populist agenda regained acceptability, the ‘liberal’ economic approach pursued by Latin American governments converted into ‘protectionist’ populism. Brazil was the latest to re-affirm this policy shift.[3] In short order, foreign investments, previously seen as Latin America’s economic saviour, felt less welcome.

The European common market reinforced Spain’s Euro-centric commercial strategy. Clearly, the common market’s framework eased the entry of capital, goods, services and people. In turn, this facilitated the expansion of Spanish business into a ‘new European’ domestic market. With few exceptions, the projection of Spanish commercial interests in Europe was strongest in the ‘southern belt’ comprising Portugal, southern France and Italy. Notwithstanding this narrow regional bias, specific industries emerged as truly European and global in scope: construction (Ferrovial, Acciona), power (Iberdrola), communications (Telefonica) and financial services (Banco Santander and BBVA).

Most Spanish companies, however, remained homebound. Without a diversified market portfolio, they floundered when the 2008 Great Recession hit Europe hard. Euro-centric companies’ revenues declined sharply, resulting in mounting losses. Caught unprepared, Spanish managers belatedly scrambled to grasp Asia’s growth opportunities. After seven years of trying, Spanish managers have little to show for their efforts.

Spain’s commercial irrelevance is self-inflicted, largely arising from strategic miscalculations. We posit that these firm-specific factors are contributory:

1. Opportunism replaced depth of strategic understanding to inform strategy.
2. Presumptions passed for ‘unassailable truths’, hence reinforcing erroneous premises that guided strategic actions.
3. ‘Sell-purchase’ transactions diminished the importance of relationships and commitments in sustaining partnerships.

To Spain’s credit, its accession to the EU transformed a middling income economy into an industrial nation. Spain’s economic progress was made manifest in its modern infrastructures and technological leadership in certain sectors. For instances, Spanish companies lead in renewable energy (Iberdrola and Acciona), waste technology (Masias), and environmental services (Ros Roca). In terms of scale, Spanish companies are in leading positions in a number of industries, such as banking, telecommunications, power, construction and infrastructures, consumer goods and tourism.

However, to a Filipino manager, Spanish companies are generally known for their vices and failures. This negative view is reinforced by news coverage, in which the Spanish economic crisis and corruption are staple offerings. Perhaps for this reason, Filipino managers are pleasantly surprised when they come across credible Spanish companies. This initial surprise turns to excitement at the prospect of profiting from commercial opportunities. This is reinforced when Filipino managers find specific Spanish goods, services or technologies that they can actually use. However, when the initial excitement dies down, Filipino managers struggle to reconcile Spain’s image with what Spanish companies can credibly offer.

Cautiously, Filipino managers seek tangible demonstrations of commitment and capabilities from Spanish companies. Unfortunately, Spanish managers find this disconcerting. Convinced of Spain’s ‘commercial advantage’, some Spanish managers presume that this is a known and accepted ‘fact’. At this point, the managers’ mutual ignorance becomes fatal. Much as some Spanish managers claim ‘commercial superiority’, they often remain unknown entities to Filipino and Asian managers. Worse, a number fail to live up to their hype, dashing the Filipino managers’ initial enthusiasm.

In this paper we offer a steady level perspective that differs from the pundits’ view of Spanish-Philippine (or Asian) commercial relations. We start by examining what Spanish companies are missing by strategically ignoring the Philippines and ASEAN. We identify feasible entry points to ASEAN opportunities, and how the Philippines can provide an ASEAN gateway for Spanish business. Throughout our analysis, we use our People–Opportunities–Place (POP) and Strategy-Opportunities Frameworks to develop a coherent and practical roadmap. We conclude by highlighting specific actions for the government and for companies. In embarking on this journey, managers can rediscover a 21st century galleon route that reconnects Spain to Asia (and vice versa) through the Philippines.

What Spain’s missing out from in ASEAN

A reversal of fortunes is occurring. Spain’s economic boom turned to bust, with recovery a painfully slow process since 2008. But the ‘sickly’ Philippines delivered its historic best in economic performance, outpacing its ASEAN peers. By ignoring the Philippines and ASEAN, Spanish managers failed to: (a) participate in the opportunities of high-growth markets that could be greater than Spain’s; (b) rebalance their portfolio of opportunities by shifting away from low-growth and high-political-risk markets; and (c) leverage on an internationally mobile talent pool to support their global expansion.

ASEAN’s population of 617.2 million earned a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$2,398 billion in current value as shown in Table 1. The major ASEAN countries had 2013 per capita incomes that were significantly higher than India’s US$4,000. Malaysia and Thailand exceeded China’s US$9,800, with fast-growth Indonesia and Philippines closing the gap with China. Trade and investments were important pillars in sustaining growth and ensuring continued prosperity. Inflation rates were well within prudent ranges, implying a better capacity to improve purchasing power and preserve wealth. ASEAN’s shifting consumer needs and industrial structures, could offer ample opportunities for incorporating new technological inputs and services.

Figure 1. ASEAN economic and trade profile

The Philippines led in economic growth, while lagging in attracting foreign direct investments. Spain contributed an insignificant share, which investors attributed to the following structural constraints:

1. Foreign ownership is legally limited to a maximum stake of 40%.
2. Regulatory uncertainty is high given unpredictable changes in rules.
3. Bureaucratic inefficiencies compound the country’s low ratings in terms of ‘ease of doing business’.

These factors are examined more closely under our People-Opportunities-Place (POP) framework. Suffice to say that the Philippines’ restrictive business and regulatory environments contrast with the ‘ease’ with which Spanish companies gained control of Latin American industries. However, this Spanish ‘managerial wisdom’ deserves to be questioned. The realities are: Bolivia[4] (Red Eléctrica and Iberdrola) expropriated, Argentina[5] (Repsol) sequestered and Venezuela[6] (Banco Santander) repurchased Spanish assets. Argentina is into its eighth sovereign default[7] over the past century.

The pundits cite low Philippine foreign direct investment inflows as evidence that support their ‘managerial wisdom’. Seen from a myopic legal perspective, a number of Spanish lawyers see foreign ownership limits as unsurmountable risks. As a result, lawyers turned economic principles on their head: they advised their clients to ‘invest as little as you can get away with, take as much of the profits as you can and bear no financial risks’.

This legalistic stance contrasts with what entrepreneurs do. They see the poor foreign direct investment performance as symptomatic of deeper inefficiencies. Reframed as arising from business constraints, two sets of opportunities can be identified:

1. Companies could shape future opportunities by offering solutions to resolve the constraints.
2. Companies could take early positions, hence giving them options to benefit from the financial returns of future opportunities.

Specifically, we observe that the Philippines’ weak industrial fabric, high power costs and poor infrastructures limited the investments that could provide attractive returns. However, instead of wringing their hands, successful investors capitalised on the strengths of the Philippines while seeking to resolve the constraints that impeded investments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the pundits and their lawyers focus on finding reasons why they should not invest in the Philippines. Unfortunately for them, entrepreneurs saw a more immediate opportunity in the service sector and took action.

Plagued by these physical constraints, Filipino managers have worked with their foreign partners to transform the service sector by building up BPO capabilities. This approach leveraged on the more advanced communications infrastructures that benefited from prior market liberalisation. Combined with the Filipinos’ high language and professional proficiencies, BPO overcomes the Philippines’ weakness given the industry’s lower dependence on cheap power and superb infrastructures.

ASEAN’s economic dynamism, underpinned by entrepreneurial initiatives, contrasts with the lower growth potential of Europe and Latin America. Seen as portfolios of opportunities, Spanish companies are generally overweight in Europe and Latin America while short in high-growth ASEAN countries. This positioning portends a slow corporate recovery and rising political risks. A higher ASEAN weighting could rebalance the portfolios’ risks-payoffs.

Turning to Asia, Spanish managers are dazzled by China’s enormous size. Simplistic, but erroneous, calculations are employed to prioritise their presence in China. This is how the thought process goes: if only a fraction of China’s population consumes Spanish products it would be possible to exploit a demand larger even than Europe’s. But turning from fantasy to reality, the question is: why is this Chinese ‘consumer boom’ unrealised by Spanish business?

Let us consider a typical experience, in which a European wind-turbine manufacturer realised its miscalculation, much to its regret. As a pioneer in China, it supplied 85% of an emerging wind-turbine market under a ‘sell-purchase’ transaction. This involved the export to China of the existing turbine models that were being sold in Europe, with minimal after-sales services and financing and some form of local assembly.

Within five years, sales slumped to insignificant levels while the Chinese turbine market expanded. Three things occurred: (1) Chinese contractors learned fast and produced cheaper substitutes, thus becoming competitors; (2) competing technologies became better; and (3) late global entrants gained market share by offering integrated services, development capabilities and financing.

In the Philippines the company blamed its mixed fortunes on the lack of subsidies. This is curious since Philippine power prices were high and rising, making subsidies less important. In addition, the approved feed-in tariffs for Philippine wind farms were higher than most European subsidies. While the company’s managers were busy justifying their predicament, Denmark’s Vesta bagged their contract with the Philippine Energy Development Corporation (EDC). By the end of 2014, Asia’s largest wind-power project, a 150 MW wind farm, will be ready to operate commercially in the Philippines.

Where did our European wind-turbine manufacturer fail?

The company chose to use Singapore as its regional base with a small sales team for the Asia-Pacific region. With Singapore’s small land area and population, wind farms are least likely to flourish in such a market. Meanwhile, their sales team was too far away, in relation to competitors, from the major demand centres in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia in ASEAN, and from Australia and New Zealand. This locational decision resulted in insufficient customer coverage. Consequently, the company utterly failed to grasp the obsolescence of its technological offering and its outdated ‘sell-purchase’ approach.

By contrast, Inditex offers a success story. Through Zara and its affiliated brands, its Philippine franchisees are doing brisk business. Conversely, its Spanish competitors exporting similar goods floundered. The difference? Inditex established a physical presence through its franchisees’ shops, supported by marketing and logistics, thereby making their presence ubiquitous. Meanwhile, its competitors followed a variant of the ‘sell-purchase’ approach. In a market defined by fashion image, the combination of brand, logistics and marketing was essential to differentiating an offer. Hence, lower prices diminished as a fleeting (non-) advantage.

Financial services highlighted the success of Mapfre (the Spanish insurer), contrasting with a major Spanish bank’s exit during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Awarded one of 10 full banking licences, the Spanish bank acquired local firms to expand its ASEAN stock-brokerage business. When losses mounted, the Spanish bank sold its Philippine operations to Banco de Oro, then a medium-sized Philippine bank. Fast-forwarding to the 21st century, Banco de Oro’s acquisitions and growth made it the largest Philippine universal bank.

Mapfre took an incremental approach. Recognising its limited market knowledge, it used its re-insurance business to gain expertise in the various insurance business segments. Over the years, Mapfre acquired Philippine insurance companies to gain market presence. Eventually, it merged its Philippine operations with Insular Life, a century-old market leader. As Mapfre evolved, it introduced new services such as its road and travel assistance through Ibero Asistencia and specialty insurance products.

By 2014 Mapfre had achieved market leadership in reinsurance as the only foreign firm with a local presence. It led as a major motor-vehicle insurer and ranked fifth in general insurance. Through its Philippine presence, Mapfre now services its ASEAN insurance and re-insurance business.

Entry points and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA): demographic dividends and regional integration

Companies broadly reap ASEAN’s demographic dividends in two ways: (1) by offering goods and services that are appropriate to transitioning economies; and (2) by providing technological inputs that expand the local companies’ market offerings. The ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) could propel convergence of standards and greater freedom in the flow of capital, goods, services and labour.

Figure 2. Intra-ASEAN Trade and Connectedness

Under this emerging economic liberalisation, aspiring gateways to ASEAN need to possess a minimum of these factors:

1. The size of the domestic market. A credible presence is important in at least one of the major markets, identified as ‘Industrial’ or ‘Emergent VIP’ in Table 1.
2. The existence of a talent pool. Local talent is a source of competent managers and potential consumers.
3. Market transparency and linkages. Market connectedness facilitates access to AFTA markets that allow tariff-exempt commerce from 2015.

Excepting financial services, which Singapore dominates, the ASEAN five meet these criteria. They are the emergent VIPs (Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines) and two industrial economies (Thailand and Malaysia), as shown in Table 2. Myanmar is working on its political transition, presenting its own distinct opportunities and challenges.

Regardless of the politicians’ preoccupation with protecting their local industries, ASEAN integration is further along than generally recognised. Industrial complementation in automotive, electronics and information technology is a reality, with Philippine and Thai factories relying on parts suppliers from Malaysia (or vice versa). This explains the high intra-regional trade shown in Graph 1. Increasingly, ASEAN supply and production chains are linked to the global logistics of multinational firms.

Figure 3. ASEAN Global Trade Flows
Source: ASEAN trade statistics.

Industrial complementation was brought to a transcontinental context. Alliance Global Group, a Philippine company, owns Emperador, the second most important global brand for brandy according to The Spirits Business. The company imports Spanish brandy distillates, which were Spain’s top export to the Philippines in 2013, for blending and local bottling into their best-selling Emperador Light. To secure their distillates supply, the company acquired a 1,000 hectare vineyard and distillery in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. With this acquisition, Alliance Global Group became the largest Philippine investor in Spain.

Single-handedly the company re-acquainted Spain and the Philippines on how strategic complementation could create a strong international presence. While still half the size of top ranked Jinro, Global Alliance Group offered an example as to how Philippine companies could project their commercial interests. By 2013, the company sold 31.9 million cases of nine litres case, against Jinro’s 65.6 million cases.

Replicating their Spanish brandy success, Global Alliance Group acquired Whyte & MacKay from the UK’s United Distilleries of Scotland. While these are still early days, the whiskey venture has the makings to achieve a similar outcome as the brandy business.

Figure 4. Tourism Arrivals to ASEAN
Source: ASEAN statistics.

Tourism follows similar patterns as those exhibited by trade, as shown in Figure 4. As a bloc, Europe tops tourist arrivals to ASEAN when intra-ASEAN flows are excluded. The degree of regional connectedness comes as no surprise, partly explained by administrative and economic factors.

Specific to the Philippines, Filipino tourists require at least a month to obtain Schengen visas to travel to Europe. With few exceptions, ASEAN nationals face similar constraints. Within ASEAN, visa-free travel for nationals contributed to the growth in intra-regional tourism. In recent months, Japan lifted visa restrictions for Filipinos, a move that propelled sharp growth in Filipino tourist arrivals to Japan.

The costs of travel represented an economic barrier for tourists from Europe to ASEAN destinations. However, administrative and non-economic barriers may account for the Philippines’ small share of the Spanish tourist market. A cursory review of Spanish travel agents’ advertising of Asian tours provides a clue. While Thailand is well advertised, the Philippine islands as a tourist destination hardly appear. Without this institutionalised link to the Spanish tourist trade, Spanish tourists often accidentally ‘discover’ the Philippines through friends, families or Filipino domestic staff.

While the constraints are real, mutual ignorance between Spanish and Filipino managers deters the expansion of their commercial interests. Consider the following:

1. The Intra-ASEAN trade shown in Figure 1 mimics the colonial trading links that connected the Philippines as the Spanish gateway to China, Japan and their neighbours as important trading partners.
2. Replacing Spain in Figure 5, Europe’s dominance today mimics the positions of the colonial East India companies created by Dutch and British merchants, with the defunct Tabacalera (or Tabacos de Filipinas) as the closest Spanish equivalent.

Germany, the Netherlands and the UK have benefited from their companies’ long-established presence. In the Philippines, private companies such as Siemens, Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, Philips and Lufthansa Teknik, to name a few, have replaced the East India companies. Notwithstanding the Philippines’ lower affinity for French products, French brands are ubiquitous in fashion (Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel), food (Danone), perfumery (Christian Dior) and luxury brands (Louis Vuitton), among others. Energy (Total) is a more recent entrant, once the energy market was liberalised.

Figure 5. EU trade with ASEAN
Source: ASEAN statistics.

The Netherlands’ dual taxation treaty with the Philippines reduced the fiscal burden that enhanced profits retention by investors and companies. Together with the UK, administrative efficiency eases financial settlements at lower costs. In contrast, Spanish and Philippine banks charged among the highest fees for international transactions. Unfortunately, they were also the least sophisticated in meeting international investors’ needs for financial services.

For investing or exporting, companies in Spain and the Philippines faced two choices when responding to these barriers: (1) abort the investment or trade; or (2) fund the transaction by employing banks operating from more administratively efficient jurisdictions. In the latter case, the already limited presence of Spanish companies in Asia was further undermined.

Philippines as ASEAN gateway: how viable?

Market entry strategies and the choice of entry points are examined here by using our People-Opportunities-Place (POP) framework. Through their dynamic interactions, business ideas can produce returns that investors can uniquely appropriate. Specifically:

1. People provide the pool of consumers and talent that feed into a virtuous (or vicious) cycle. A young and growing population fuels economic opportunities.
2. Opportunities are expanded when competition sharpens a firm’s response to technological, economic and market disruptions. Under such dynamic interactions, shifting market niches open up entry points for new product or service offerings.
3. Place defines the market structures that influence their attractiveness. Secure legislation, regulation and transparency allow appropriating returns as just rewards for risk-taking.

We will now examine the Philippine case along these three strategic dimensions in relation to its ASEAN peers. We will focus on how Spain and the Philippines might rediscover a 21st century ‘Galleon route’ to mutual prosperity.

People: tapping into a talent pool and growing market

Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are ubiquitous in Europe, the Middle East and the US. They contribute to the wellbeing of their host families by providing care to the elderly and domestic services to households. In addition, the professional ranks in the service, marine and technical sectors are growing. For example, Filipino sailors account for a third of the maritime industry’s global manpower. Philippine entertainers are visible in Asian capitals, on New York’s Broadway, in London’s West End and on cruise liners.

Collectively, Filipinos abroad remitted in excess of US$25 billion in 2013 to their families, a sum that compensated the paltry US$4 billion in foreign direct investments. Remittances impact economic growth in a similar way to investments. Filipino households prioritise spending on education, shelter and consumption, with residual savings invested in entrepreneurial pursuits. As a result, remittances fuel expansion in real estate and construction, which in turn sustain growth in the consumption of durables as new households are formed. Fashion, food and entertainment follow global trends, given the mobility of Filipinos and their openness to experiment. Rising income leads to growing consumption that increases the demand for consumer goods and commercial floor space.

The Filipino households’ emphasis on education has created a cadre of talents that is globally mobile. Mobility has given rise to a managerial rank that is ubiquitous in Asian capitals, multilateral agencies and international bureaucracies such as the United Nations and its agencies. Closer to home, the Filipinos’ proficiency in English, information technology, engineering, accountancy and medical sciences, among others, provide a talent pool that support the rapid expansion of BPOs.

Complementing remittances, revenues from BPOs grew in excess of 20% annually over the past decade. As a result, the Philippines overtook India as the top provider of BPO services, earning US$16 billion in 2013 and employing 917,000 Filipinos. Philippine BPOs succeed largely because private initiatives are dominant, with the government merely playing a supportive role.

Given these success stories in deploying Filipino talent, why do managers see a skill shortage as a constraint to international expansion?

By default, Spanish and Filipino managers hire their own nationals for leadership roles. This approach heightens the limitations they face when expanding, such as: (a) linguistic deficiencies; and (b) inadequate expertise to operate in ASEAN or Europe.

Understandably, managers cite a shortage of talent as a constraint to explain their predicament. However, this diagnosis can be erroneous: Spanish university graduates, half of whom cannot find employment at home, migrate to seek jobs abroad. In addition, top business schools such as IESE and ESADE have Filipino and Asian graduates every year who are recruited for senior leadership roles in global companies. Thus, while multinational enterprises routinely recruit top talents globally, Spanish and Filipino companies struggled to fill their executive vacancies with market-ready talent.

The difference? A meritocracy prevails in these global companies, which provide professionals with mobility, economic rewards and recognition for their achievements.

Given this context, some of the constraints are actually self-inflicted. With few exceptions, neither Spanish nor Filipino companies are fully equipped to hire, much less to delegate, managerial authority to non-nationals. Consequently, by failing to integrate local or internationally tested talents, market entry is constrained by a skills shortage. Worse, the ventures fail because of inadequate resourcing.

Opportunities: how can Spanish and Philippine firms mutually profit?

While BPOs and the consumer markets are flourishing, the industrial and agribusiness sectors are transitioning to achieve greater competitiveness under the AFTA. This implies a need to adapt production, supply chains, technologies and business strategies to ASEAN’s competitive realities.

In meeting these challenges, the needs of the Philippine companies have substantially changed. With copious corporate cash flows and a banking sector awash with liquidity, the need for equity investments has taken a lower priority. Instead, Philippine firms are in search of viable partnerships in the areas of technology, processing systems, automation, and access to global markets.

These market realities question the viability of the ‘sell-purchase’ model that managers are accustomed to. That is, Spanish exporters produce and sell while Philippine importers purchase and distribute in the Philippine market. This ‘sell-purchase’ transaction requires limited resource commitment while any marketing efforts are adjunct to home market initiatives. Increasingly, higher costs render this strategy untenable in the face of competition from well-placed global brands, or Asian and Philippine competitors.

At this point, geographical distance and costs discourage Spanish companies from pursuing Asian or Philippine opportunities. However, is this self-exclusion warranted?

Figure 6. A strategy-opportunities framework

Our strategy-opportunities framework (Table 3) offers an alternative to the ‘sell-purchase” approach. Premised on complementing capabilities and resources, Philippine companies benefit from technological inputs that improve design, efficiency and logistics. In return, Spanish firms potentially benefit from ready access to high-growth markets, while gaining a platform for ASEAN expansion. For partnerships of this nature to work, in-depth understanding of how the contracting companies could work together is essential.

Philippine opportunities are clustered into sector opportunities (the ‘five Fs’) that are undergoing structural transitions: food, furnishings, ‘fabrication’, fun and fashion. Specifically:

1. Food processing and the agribusiness require advanced processing technologies to enhance yields. With high spoilage, returns could be enhanced through improved logistics and handling and a reconfiguration of supply chains.
2. Furnishings benefit from rapid growth in residential and commercial construction. To meet higher demand, industrial scale production is needed to produce affordable, high-quality furniture and furnishings.
3. ‘Fabrication’ requires technologies and know-how that improve efficiency, scale and scope. While Philippine firms are advanced in civil works, they rely on foreign technologies for structural and process engineering for infrastructures. Similar technology transfers are feasible in specialised vehicles (eg, ambulances and military applications), environmental services (eg, waste-to-cash) and specialised information technologies (eg, smart-metering and smart cities).
4. Fun includes tourism, entertainment and sports, which benefit from rising incomes and closer integration within AFTA. The Philippines’ tourism potential, however, remains under-served given its limited integration in the global tourist markets. This contrasts with Spain’s highly successful tourism and sports programmes that continue to grow despite the economic crisis.
5. Fashion demand shifts with rising incomes. The Philippines is a metropolitan market (especially Manila and Cebu) with income levels that are around three times the national average. Thanks to the spread of BPOs to regional markets, rising provincial incomes have broadened the fashion market.

Harbest AgriBusiness Corporation, a major agribusiness group, integrates foreign technologies and inputs into its agricultural modernisation approach. Starting out as specialists in seed marketing, Harbest and Taiwan’s Known You Seeds expanded their joint venture to include seed research and cultivation in the Philippines. Operating within an archipelago, poor logistics and infrastructure constrained agricultural growth. To address this problem, Harbest reconfigured the supply chain by encouraging farmers to grow food for their local markets. As a result, the need was reduced for inter-island shipping and cold storage. Subsequently, drip irrigation from Jain of India and Israel, hand tractors from Taiwan and agricultural inputs from Prathista of India were added to provide an integrated service to farmers. Ongoing farmers’ training was conducted with SM Foundation, while the farmers’ local produce was sold through SM Supermarkets. SM Group’s supermarkets possess the most extensive national shops network.

Learning from Harbest’s experiences, Spanish companies can employ our strategic framework (the ‘four Cs’), as shown in Table 3, to guide their strategic actions. Specifically:

1. Capabilities assessment starts with ‘knowing what you have’ that could complement a partner’s offerings. This requires a process of experimentation and validation.
2. Complementation leverages on the strengths of Spanish companies in technology and process engineering, with market access provided by Philippine partners.
3. Cooperation defines the structure and governance of the venture.
4. Commitment is the litmus test on how commonly agreed strategic actions are supported with time, money and people.

To better understand how Spain’s commercial irrelevance came about, let us examine the scene:

• A Spanish agricultural company boasted of its ‘world-class’ products. In repeated field trials it came last, behind the other four competitors: one Indian, one Taiwanese and two Philippine suppliers. This was how it responded to its failures: (a) it considered the field trials flawed; (b) it required its prospective partner to purchase the inputs with limited marketing support; and (c) it refused to provide technical support because the market was too far. Unfortunately, these responses were common among companies pursuing a ‘sell-purchase’ approach to gaining markets.
• In contrast, competitors fully supported their product introductions with technical training, the education of farmers and extensive field trials. Thus, while Spanish managers were busy justifying their misfortunes, their competitors were reaping commercial success. The competition succeeded by helping to turn their Philippine partners into a market leader.

Food processing and football clinics provide contrary examples. Consider the following:

• Leche Pascual, a dairy-based food processor, tested a number of its solid yogurts in the Philippines. Its first attempts transplanted its Spanish offerings (flavours) and failed. The company analysed why its ‘superior’ yogurt failed, while competitors such as Yakult and Danone were succeeding. It discovered that Filipino palates were less familiar with yogurt and did not like the sour taste. To adapt to the Filipino’s sweet tooth, the recipe was sweetened by introducing Philippine mango-flavoured yogurt. Rich in calcium and other vital ingredients, yogurt was then positioned as a product that could enhance the healthy Filipino lifestyle. This switch in marketing strategy resulted in consumer acceptance. Within 18 months of re-introduction, Leche Pascual achieved a 30% market share.
• Football Club Barcelona (FCB, Barça) conducted football clinics in the Philippines and Singapore. While football was less popular than basketball, younger athletes were embracing the game. This growing popularity coincided with the acceptance of 11-year-old Sandro Reyes to the FCB Escola in Barcelona, Spain. FCB Escola is a highly selective football school that prepares young players for the Masía, the team’s training programme that produces football greats. Among the Escola’s alumni are Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué, Carles Puyol and Cesc Fábregas, among others. This reconnection with the Philippines took 87 years to be achieved. Paulino Alcántara Riestá, a Spanish-Filipino set the record in 1927 as Barça’s highest goal scorer. His record stood until Lionel Messi surpassed Alcantara’s goal count in 2013. Meanwhile, Real Madrid and Sevilla partnered with Philippine companies to conduct football clinics. Real Club Deportivo Espanyol and other Spanish first division clubs are exploring similar football partnerships.

The Spanish success in food processing and football clinics is instructive: Leche Pascual and Barça learned to match their capabilities with what the Philippine market needed. Inditex and Mapfre’s successes highlight the validity of strategic complementation as an alternative to the ‘sell-purchase’ transactional model. They worked with Philippine partners where Spanish products, services and brands expanded the Philippine partners’ business offerings and scope. By complementing each other’s strengths, the time to monetise the business idea was substantially shortened. With appropriate resources committed, the ventures flourished.

Business education contributes to reversing the mutual ignorance that persists among managers. The Economist’s 2014 What MBA? ranked Spanish business schools highly, including IESE (5th globally) and ESADE (24th globally). Bloomberg Businessweek ranked IESE 8th, Instituto de Empresa 2nd and ESADE 19th among international business schools, while the Financial Times consistently placed IESE among the top three global providers of business education programmes. As a result, they are seen as viable European alternatives to an American business education. Each year, a growing number of Filipino managers graduate from their programmes. Such immersion is instrumental to building capabilities and mutual understanding. While Spanish business schools offer courses on Asian business in their curriculum, this area remains an under-served market with a significant growth potential. This is particularly the case with ASEAN-focused programmes catering for Spanish and European managers.

Place: rediscovering a 21st century galleon route

The third strategic pillar is the market place where opportunities and risks interact with legislation to determine a market’s attractiveness to investors. In this context, economic indicators provide the trends and size of markets. Institutional factors such as legal guarantees and property rights influence the investors’ capacity to appropriate returns as their just reward for risk-taking.

Heritage Foundation publishes an annual survey on economic freedom. This globally comprehensive index scores a country’s institutional performance. Markets that scored highly tend to achieve higher economic growth and attract greater capital flows. A smaller ASEAN sample replicated this relationship in Figure 7.

Figure 7. GDP growth and change in index score
Source: Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index, 2014.

While a single swallow does not usher in the spring, GDP performance in 2013 followed past relationships. ASEAN’s most improved countries in their economic freedom scores –The Philippines (1.1%) and Cambodia (0.9%)– also achieved the highest economic growth rates (7.2% and 7.0%, respectively). In contrast, Malaysia (-0.3), Thailand (-0.8) and Vietnam (-0.3) saw a deterioration in their scores. Their GDP growth rates were at the lower end of the ASEAN range: 4.7%, 2.9% and 5.4%, respectively.

Figure 8. Index scores relative to World index
Source: Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index, 2014.

Since 1995 ASEAN’s economic freedom performance has been converging towards consistently improving World scores, as shown in Figure 8. By dividing country indices by the World Index, a ratio approaching 1 implies that a country’s performance approximates the World Index, with better country performances shown as above 1 (or vice versa).

Malaysia and Thailand continue to outperform the World index, with the Philippines doing slightly better. In contrast, China and India, which were among the preferred investment destinations of European companies, fell below the World and their Asian peers’ scores. This implies that prevailing institutional transparency was weaker.

Momentum or rates of change in scores in Figure 9 indicate a market’s improvement (or vice versa). China’s performance at economic and institutional reforms has been slow and tentative, a phenomenon that was already impacting on slower GDP growth. In contrast, India and Vietnam, while starting from a low base, have outpaced their peers in terms of achieving improved economic and institutional transparency.

Figure 9. Index scores rate of change
Source: Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index, 2014.

Indonesia and the Philippines are two countries that warrant a closer examination. From 1995 to 1997 decisive policies aimed at reforming their economies significantly improved their institutional transparency and economic liberalisation. The Asian crisis in 1997 cut short this rising trend, with the Philippines’ domestic-oriented economy largely insulated from the adverse effects of the crisis.

While most analysts focus on present government policies, the Philippines’ economic dynamism resulted from cumulative effects of past reforms. As Figure 10 illustrates, growing technocratic influence in policy formulation contributed to creating a better business environment.

Former President Fidel V. Ramos liberalised strategic sectors of the Philippine economy. While his achievements were well recognised, some critics pointed out that the momentum of his reforms was short-lived. These critics cited that subsequent presidents failed to follow through on Ramos’s success. On closer examination, his critics may be proved wrong. In reality, each president’s legacies has provided a more coherent platform for growth than is generally perceived.

This observation pointing to greater policy coherence is counter-intuitive. Popular perceptions view a shambolic political process bereft of any continuity as more fitting to describe Philippine politics. We propose an alternative perspective in the discussion that follows.

Figure 10. Philippine presidents and their legacies

In a nutshell: the 1987 Philippine Constitution, despite its outdated economic provisions, restored and strengthened democratic institutions that 14 years of martial law had laid to waste. The Philippines was among the few countries operating under a market economy that restricted foreign ownership. In spite of expanding the list of exempt industries, where full foreign ownership is allowed, the perception of a restrictive business environment remained.

Figure 11. Philippine development areas and challenges
Source: Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index, 2014.

In succession, Fidel V. Ramos restored the power supply, political stability and capital flows. Despite having been impeached and convicted for plunder, Joseph E. Estrada made two significant contributions: He broke away from the failed policies on import substitutions and he re-oriented polices to agriculture and regional development. Recognising that regional growth is enhanced with strong linkages, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo inter-connected the island markets through nautical highways and promoted BPOs. In the process, she strengthened the country’s fiscal base and the BPOs that achieved global leadership. These legacies resulted in subsequent sovereign credit rating upgrades. The current president Benigno S.C. Aquino’s single-minded pursuit in jailing erring politicians may deter corrupt practices in future governments.

Generally perceived as a laggard, negative news such as corruption, the worst international airport and an incompetent bureaucracy dominated the headlines about Philippine business. However, the Philippines’ institutional performance, as shown in Figures 12 and 13, offer more promising prospects. While these factors contributed to four policy challenges identified in Figure 12, Business Freedom and Property Rights were improving, although they were still some way from achieving their 1995-1998 peaks.

Figure 12. Philippine areas of outperformance
Source: Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index, 2014.

Lost in the negative headlines were the progressive improvements in six areas of economic freedom, as highlighted in Figure 12. The Philippines outpaced their Asian peers in improving their scores on Government Spending, Investment and Financial Freedoms. Examined in these contexts, the Philippines’ economic and institutional performance followed a more sustained improvement than is generally perceived. For this reason, the strong economic performance observed since 2008 was actually building on the political stability restored by Fidel V. Ramos and sustained by the legacies of succeeding presidents.

Notwithstanding these achievements, the Philippines ranks low on ‘ease of doing business’ (or business freedom) criteria. Restrictive business and uncertain regulatory environments in the Philippines were cited as institutional weaknesses. To address these constraints, the government and global investors demonstrated pragmatism in confronting the challenges.

A number of Spanish lawyers, often unfamiliar with Philippine or US jurisprudence (which serves as the foundation for Philippine judicial practice), argued that their clients faced insurmountable risks. Investing as minority shareholders they would always be out-voted by their Philippine partners. From a strictly legalistic standpoint, this was arguably ‘sound’ legal advice if we neglect the protection that Philippine laws provide to minority interests. To extend this advice, some Spanish lawyers would insist on adopting a Spanish legal form to protect their investors’ interests. While the lawyers’ efforts were laudable, Spanish legal forms seldom fully comply with Philippine laws (or vice versa). As a result, when a myopic legal stance supersedes the venture’s economic and strategic logic, negotiations became arduous if not onerous for both parties. In short order, distrust sets in that unravels any carefully crafted agreements with a commercial rationale in mind.

Legal issues need to be addressed to facilitate, rather than impede, the entrepreneurial aspirations of the partners. For this reason, Philippine government pragmatism recognises ‘ownership constraints’. In order to confront this challenge, Philippine legislation allows segregating activities with foreign ownership limits from those that are unrestricted where full foreign ownership is permitted. Specifically:

1. Restricted activities included utilities, concessions, natural resources and strategic industries. They are subject to a 40% foreign ownership limitation. These activities can be unbundled under a separate legal entity that can own the licence, certain assets and mineral reserves.
2. Unrestricted activities, where no foreign ownership restrictions applied, such as services, operations and management are contracted with affiliates or third-party providers.

Such a legal compromise allows investors to reconcile their economic aspirations with foreign ownership restrictions. As a result, ventures are structured so that they are consistent with the just rewards criteria. That is, returns are appropriated as compensation for risk-taking. In this context, voting rights issues are evaluated on their economic effects on investors’ returns and risks.

To illustrate how these pragmatic approaches are applied, let us consider these examples:

• At the height of the power supply crisis in 1992, President Fidel V. Ramos adapted the build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme to permit full foreign ownership of power generation. Through unbundling, power generation and supplies were classified as non-utilities businesses, hence allowing full foreign ownership. Transmission and distribution remained as utilities that were subject to a 40% foreign ownership limit. Through competitive tenders, investors from the US, Japan and Korea emerged as the dominant players. In parallel to this liberalisation, Philippine power groups such as Aboitiz Power, San Miguel Power and DMCI Power evolved as major power generators.
• Following a wave of market liberalisation, the Philippine Central Bank granted 10 licences to major foreign banks. This paved the way for foreign banks to fully own their Philippine banking businesses. A major Spanish bank was the first to successfully enter, but was equally quick to exit at the first sign of trouble. Hence, when the 1997 Asian crisis took hold, mounting losses led to the Spanish bank’s presence being unsustainable.
• The initial experiment with the 1992 banking liberalisation was followed by gradual dismantling of ownership restrictions. By 2014 full foreign ownership of Philippine banks was legislated. Subject to approving the rules and regulations for its implementation, the law is expected to take full effect by 2015.
• Water distribution was privatised under the Ramos presidency. To resolve the foreign ownership constraint, the government split the Manila Water and Sewerage Services (MWSS) into an asset owning and franchise holding entity and two service providers. The assets remained with state-owned MWSS, while an asset lease, service and operating contract were awarded to two newly created entities: Manila Water and Maynilad Water. The service companies were then privatised with the French water companies General des Eaux and Lyonnaise des Eaux leading the winning consortiums.
• Hydro power generation comprised two activities: (a) water extraction, that fell under the rules governing the exploitation of natural resources and thus reserved for Filipino nationals; and (b) power generation, that was unrestricted. Aboitiz Power and its Norwegian partner structured their Magat Hydro Power venture by forming SNAP to meet their commercial objectives. SNAP separated the water extraction licence and business, which are subject to a 40% foreign ownership limitation, from the power generation business. This approach allowed the allocation of economic interests and obligations according to the partners’ contributions. Similarly, K-Water followed SNAP’s approach for its Angat Hydro Power venture.

The BOT concept remained predominant, evolving into the public private partnership (PPP) espoused by President Benigno S.C. Aquino. To reinforce the government’s commitment to economic openness, Philippine Senate President Franklin Drilon committed to revisit all laws that restricted foreign ownership for possible amendments or revisions.

Regulatory certainty had become tantamount to investors expecting a ‘sovereign-like’ guarantee to secure their investment returns. In effect, the government was expected to cushion any adverse returns by providing fixed subsidies. Hence, by virtually taking very limited risks, investors reaped all the returns, which were often generous.

Such expectations were unrealistic given that returns were uniquely appropriated as a just reward for risk-taking. However, this flawed expectation persisted in certain circles, particularly among Spanish lawyers. Held up against these ‘regulatory certainty’ criteria, no regulatory regime would pass such a test nor should such ‘sovereign-like’ guarantees be used as the arbiter for regulatory soundness. Specifically, let us examine these realities:

1. Subsidies, particularly for renewable energy, were seen as a sine qua non to committing capital. However, ‘secure’ European regulatory structures –Spain and Germany are examples– slashed subsidies when budgetary constraints made continuance politically impracticable. This policy shift resulted in extensive bankruptcies of subsidies-dependent renewable energy ventures. Now the question is: did regulatory uncertainty kill the green investors’ business or was the premise for investing a strategic miscalculation? Phrased differently, when subsidies became determinant to earning returns, were investors inadvertently engaged in subsidies collection rather than in generating green energy? If the former, the government’s shifting policy stance should be explicitly considered part of the investor’s risk management approach.
2. Corruption and bureaucratic indecision go hand in hand in frustrating investors. While the Philippines suffered negative press over its Fraport dispute, repeated rulings by Philippine and Singapore courts and international arbitration bodies upheld the Philippine government’s case. Ironically, the Philippines’ reputation suffered when it sought to assert its rights against an erring German multinational that broke the law.
3. Latin America’s pursuit of liberal economic policy is proving a fleeting phase in Argentina, Bolivia[8] and Venezuela.[9] Expropriation, sequestrations[10] and sovereign defaults[11] are again rearing their ugly heads to haunt Spanish businesses.

On a general note, managerial tolerance for political risks is a function of familiarity with the market and its dispute resolution mechanisms. On paper, Philippine legislation is supportive of a functioning market economy. Bureaucratic inefficiencies, however, challenge an investors’ ability to navigate the labyrinth of rules and regulations. Varying degrees of competencies make some Philippine government agencies more (or less) effective in supporting investments.

The Philippines has demonstrated its ability to adhere to the rule of international law. To a large extent, the Philippines was justifiably criticised for its over-emphasis on legal compliance that verged on technicalities rather than on applying the substance of the law. Hence, some foreign lawyers who were inexperienced in Philippine jurisprudence found it easy to blame the bureaucracy for their own inadequacies. Hence, the perception persisted that the Philippines remained a high-risk country among Spanish managers. In contrast, repeated experiences at the receiving end of Latin American expropriation, sequestration and defaults failed to diminish Spanish managers’ enthusiasm for the more ‘familiar’ Latin America.

The premises for Philippine corporate partnerships have changed over the years. Previously, capital, know-how and technology represented the contributions from foreign partners. This left little for Philippine partners to justify their 60% ownership of the ventures. As a result, uneven allocation of risks and returns planted ab initio the seeds for future discord.

The emergence of financially strong Philippine companies was coupled with strengthened technological capabilities. This changed the premises for foreign partnerships, where foreign capital diminished in importance. Increasingly, Philippine companies sought to complement their strengths with the technological inputs of foreign partners. Consequently, partnerships are now formed under an explicit understanding of what each party can contribute. This mutual understanding tends to sustain long-term commercial relationships.

The ability to navigate the Philippine bureaucratic labyrinth represents a local capability that is often under-estimated. Ironically, bureaucratic bottlenecks are resolved when investors spent time to understand how companies can comply with the rules. In many instances, the bureaucracy welcomes suggestions from businesses given that it recognises its own limitations. Approached on a collaborative basis, issues can be resolved more quickly while complying with Philippine and international laws.

With actual in-country experiences, foreign investors over time have learnt to value their Filipino partners’ worth. At this point, voting rights concerns are seen within the realities of each party’s contributions. As a result, Filipino-controlled partnerships are not uncommon, even in sectors where foreign ownership restrictions do not apply.

Conclusions

The way forward

Spain’s commercial irrelevance in the Philippines and Asia is a product of the mutual ignorance of Spanish and Filipino managers. Unaware of each other’s potential, capabilities and needs, strategic actions have been premised on erroneous perceptions that are incongruous with market realities. We posit that (a) geographical distance, (b) bureaucratic barriers and (c) cultural differences mask the underlying strategic miscalculations that managers make.

Using our POP and Strategy-Opportunities Frameworks, managers can leverage on their specific strengths. By combining technological capabilities with market access, the time to market in commercialising business opportunities is likely to be shortened. To achieve this, managers need to work together, committing time, resources and capital to build a viable market presence. Consequently, the ‘sell-purchase’ model that managers prefer is unlikely to succeed, much less be sustained.

Strategic responses to opportunities in ASEAN, therefore, can focus on three lines of action:

(1) Private initiatives

Commercial interactions are most effective when conducted through private initiatives. This recognises the specific nature of capabilities and resources that make complementation feasible. In this context, pursuing ASEAN opportunities would require a strategic approach where commitments to build long-term relations are equally important to success as deploying the appropriate resources. Hence, the opportunism that characterises a number of ‘marketing efforts’ may prove wasteful of corporate resources.

By adopting a complementation strategy, Spanish and Filipino managers would need to work together more closely. In building to complement their strengths, entry into ASEAN through the Philippines is viable through effective partnerships. Often, this becomes feasible when specific projects or opportunities are pursued.

Weak Philippine infrastructures offer opportunities for Spanish industrial companies. Philippine construction companies are experienced and skilled in civil works. However, they continue to rely on foreign expertise for structural engineering, design and advanced construction technologies. By complementing the Philippine companies’ capabilities, Spanish technology and know-how could allow to jointly pursue Philippine and ASEAN opportunities.

(2) A supportive economic diplomacy

State-sponsored actions are best focused at creating mechanisms that dismantle barriers to trade and investment. Specific areas for action are (a) easing visa restrictions, (b) lifting import quotas and (c) streamlining product standards and procedures for access to markets.

The Philippine Senate President’s commitment to revise laws that limit foreign ownership presents a specific opportunity for inter-parliamentary cooperation. This may take the form of: (a) exchanges of legislative experiences; (b) legislative support from multi-disciplinary experts; or (c) consultations with business leaders. Expertise from Spain and the Philippines could be drawn to support these legislative initiatives.

Public-private sector forums can complement the work of both governments. Formed as working groups, appropriate policy areas can be identified for action in order to facilitate commercial opportunities.

Weak Philippine bureaucracy offers opportunities for Spain and the Philippines to learn from each other. Spain’s success in transforming its economy within the EU provides valuable lessons for the Philippines. This exchange of experiences is achieved through two channels: (a) initiatives that enhance the Philippines’ policy framework through bilateral exchanges of experts, technocrats and policy-makers; and (b) actions that support private enterprises by easing taxation, pensions and social security frameworks and procedures, and aligning accreditation criteria and processes for technologies and standards.

(3) Developing leaders

Business education can reverse the mutual ignorance between Spanish and Filipino managers. Executive education programmes are instrumental in upgrading managerial capabilities and in transmitting skills and know-how to empower managers to seize ASEAN opportunities.

The executive programmes offered by leading business schools are effective channels for future ASEAN leaders to better appreciate the Spanish and European business culture. Spain is fortunate to host some of the top global business schools, such as IESE the Instituto de Empresa and ESADE.

A managerial reflection

In the final analysis, Spanish and Filipino managers hold the key to reversing the sorry state of Spanish-Philippine commercial relations. Expanding into Asia (or Europe) is fraught with ‘risks’ to an unfamiliar mind. Managers’ comfort with the ‘familiar’ limits their capacity to thrive, while making them inadvertently fail to grasp the threats of technological or business obsolescence. Hence, when inaction turns to inertia because deep-seated erroneous beliefs go unchallenged, business is destined to commercial irrelevance.

Hence, the next time around, when managers blame their commercial misfortunes on geography, bureaucrats and culture, they should think again. Perhaps, legitimate as the reasons may appear, the real causes are probably staring at them in the face!

*About the authors:
Ricardo G. Barcelona
Managing Director, Barcino Advisers Limited, and PhD in Management, King’s College, London

Bernardo M. Villegas
Chair, Barcino Advisers Limited, and PhD in Economics, Harvard, Boston

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute and may be accessed here.

Notes:
[1] The Association of South East Asian Nations comprises Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

[2] These factors are variously identified in Manuel Varela Bellido (2008), ‘El Plan Asia-Pacífico: un balance económico’, p. 53-63, and in ‘Relaciones económicas y comerciales entre España y Asia en la última década’, p. 17-40, in Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, España, España, Asia y el Banco Asiático de Desarrollo. Boletín Económico, 2937, 1-15/V/2008.

[3] See for example Rose Marie Boudeguer Yerkovic (2014), ‘Brasil: El desafío económico de Dilma Rousseff’, Expansión, 28/X/2014, and Nyshka Chandran (2014), ‘Watch out! Brazil markets slide after elections’, CNBC, 27/X/2014.

[4] Associated Press (2012). ‘Bolivia expropriates Spanish energy subsidiaries’, USA Today, 29/XII/2012.

[5] Wire Staff (2012), ‘Argentina, Spain at odds over oil company expropriation’, CNN, 17/IV/2012.

[6] Miles Johnson (2012), ‘Risks: seizures highlight pitfalls of Latin America’, Financial Times, 29/XI/2012.

[7] The Economist (2014), ‘Argentina defaults: eighth time unlucky’, The Economist, 2/VIII/2014.

[8] The Economist (2012), ‘Just when you thought it was safe: Evo Morales nationalizes a Spanish electric company’, The Economist, 5/V/2012.

[9] El Universal (2011), ‘Venezuela government has seized 988 companies’, El Universal, 29/VIII/2011.

[10] See for instance Agustino Fontevecchia (2012), ‘US condemns YPF expropriation as Spain-Argentina trade war nears’, Forbes, 18/IV/2012; and Lauren Frayer (2012), ‘Spain concerned by expropriation in Latin America’, NPR, 3/V/2012.

[11] Hans Humes (2014), ‘Who to blame for Argentina’s disastrous defaults? It’s lawyers, of course’, The Guardian, 20/VIII/2014.

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China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will make its first loan this year. Nothing would have a greater impact than funding a Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline.

By Stewart Taggart*

A Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline could connect a series of Joint Development Areas in the South China Sea. These in turn would develop the region’s offshore oil, gas and methane hydrate resources. This is being held up by territorial uncertainties created by China’s Nine-Dotted Line.

Funding a Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline serving Joint Development Areas represents the most powerful signal China could send of its commitment to regional multilateralism. Markets would do the rest. The timing couldn’t be better.

Graphic by GRENATAC.

China and the US recently agreed to binding targets for reducing carbon emissions. In December, the globally-pivotal Paris COP21 climate change negotiations must agree binding global carbon cuts.

South China Sea oil and gas exploration and drilling has been largely limited to near shore areas due to uncertainty over China’s maritime claims. Large potential oil and gas deposits remain unexplored as a result. This is economically inefficient.

A Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline linking Joint Development Areas solves this problem. It would mark a first step toward creating an integrated regional energy market.

Coupled with carbon prices, it would be the most powerful tool possible for reorienting the Asian economy to low emission energy using markets, energy fungibility and universal access.

Asia is now the world’s largest economic bloc. Reducing future destructive climate change largely hinges on Asia and the energy choices it makes. A gas pipeline increases economic growth through expanded trade — a massive double win.

Both the International Energy Agency and the Asian Development Bank both repeatedly stress the importance to the global economy of deeper Asia energy market integration. With China in the lead, now’s the chance. Everyone wins.

A Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline connecting Joint Development Areas distributed through auctions, prices and markets binds China constructively into a universally-beneficial multilateral order. Funded through China’s AIIB with its neighbors as partners, it would represent an economic Marshall Plan that would eliminate the major territorial irritant China’s expansive territorial claims present in relations with her neighbors.

In coming years, Asia needs trillions of dollars of new infrastructure investment. Half of this need will be for energy.

A number of Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline proposals already exist. These include the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline and others. All have had the aim of brining South China Sea natural gas to Chinese markets.

Given that ASEAN members comprise half the AIIB’s membership, funding its first project in the ASEAN region is a logical outcome of the bank’s creation.

It would not stand alone. It would represent merely the first step toward creating a larger energy network topology in Asia to deliver a broader array of future fuels.

That’s because a properly-constructed gas pipeline can carry natural gas initially, andmethane hydrates, bio-energy, hydrogen over the long term. Liquid Natural Gas infrastructure can’t do this. This has created huge, undiscounted obsolescence risk to LNG investments in Asia, most demonstrably in Australia’s Queensland.

Pathways laid down by natural gas pipelines enable other infrastructure (such as fiber optic cables and High-Voltage Direct Current power lines) to be added later. Power lines, for instance, will enable offshore wind, wave energy and ocean thermal energy to be developed and delivered. Rigid, single-purpose LNG can’t do this.

The potential for such multi-purpose South China Sea energy infrastructure is readily apparent in ASEAN’s proposed Trans ASEAN Electricity Grid — a companion project to theTrans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline. Laying the foundations for a regional HVDC infrastructure to a regional gas infrastructure could be the AIIB’s second investment.

Offshore energy infrastructure in the South China Sea could become an important source of food for a rising income region. Offshore infrastructure becomes fish aggregation devices. Aquaculture can take root there, providing protein to a hungry region.

With all countries working together toward a common goal, the role of military forces can change from preparing for conflict to ensuring infrastructure security and engaging inhumanitarian activities, like providing emergency relief from typhoons, tropical storms and earthquake induced tsunamis. Cooperative militaries also could provide security for the infrastructure.

A Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure of gas pipelines and power lines would create a regional energy market marked by fuel substitutability. Relative prices could be weighted by carbon content, creating a better pricing mechanism. The infrastructure, being flexible (through a network) instead of single purpose (like LNG) could last a century or more.

If spearheaded by the AIIB, this new kind of infrastructure thinking would mark a big step away from the economic orthodoxy of 25-year depreciation periods and unpriced negative externalities (ie carbon pollution) that have created the destructive, destabilizing climate change problem in the first place.

In the future, investing in flexible, adaptable, long-term infrastructure enabling multiple energy sources to be delivered to multiple markets governed by carbon pricing and open access, common-carrier markets enables economic orthodoxy to work its magic in solving climate change.

Bankrolling a Pan-Asian Gas Pipeline connecting South China Sea Joint Development Areas funded by China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank represents a ‘Berlin Wall moment for Asia and the world.

It would replace this old thinking with a new paradigm of multilateral, forward-looking, positive sum thinking in which efficient markets determine national policies. The result would be a ‘Warm War,’ not a ‘Cold War.’

As at only a few times in history before now — the timing is perfect for this kind of big ‘step change.’ China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is coming on line, the US and China now see eye to eye on reducing bilateral carbon emissions and COP21 meets in Paris later this year.

* Stewart Taggart, a former energy journalist, is principal of Sydney-based Grenatec (www.grenatec.com), a research organization studying the viabillity of a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure of integrated gas pipelines, high-capacity power lines and fiber optics. He can be reached at grenatec@grenatec.com

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By Elise Harris

Falling just five years after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Pope Francis’ visit to the country is seen as a sign of reconciliation, a message expected to be shown through his gestures more than his words.

“We are going to have (Pope Francis) in an atmosphere in which we have finished a war – a civil war for 30 long years – and we are in need of a real process of reconciliation; spiritually, materially, politically,” Fr. Prasad Harshan, a priest of the Archdiocese of Colombo, told CNA Jan. 8.

“More than his words, we are waiting to see his gestures and postures, his spontaneity, how he will go out of his way to do certain things. Those things will speak a thousand times louder than his words.”

Fr. Harshan currently lives in Rome and is in his final year of studies at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce. He also helps to look after the spiritual needs of Rome’s Sri Lankan community.

He noted how the Pope’s Jan. 12-14 visit to Sri Lanka, which will reflect on the theme “Remain in Love,” lands just five years after the country concluded a nearly 30 year civil war between Sinhala nationalists and Tamil separatists which claimed at least 60,000 lives.

Over 70 percent of the 20.4 million people in Sri Lanka are Buddhists, and Christians make up an estimated eight percent of the population.

Pope Francis has always been a person who represents peace and reconciliation, so to have him come to Sri Lanka at this time is a “privilege,” Fr. Harshan observed, adding, “we are immensely blessed to have this visit.”

The priest then pointed out how despite the brevity of the Roman Pontiff’s trip, he will not only stay in the capital city of Colombo, but will also go to the areas of the country that were most heavily impacted by the war.

“Nobody loved the war, everybody felt very sorry for this. So even the majority group, they are not against the Pope visiting that area,” the priest said.

“There is no negative ideas about his visit to the war zone areas. (Sri Lankans) not only love it, but appreciate it and encourage it.”

This, Fr. Harshan noted, will be a symbolic and welcome move for all of Sri Lanka, since “non-violence is the basic principle” in a country where some 70 percent of the people are Buddhist, and the Christian minority is around eight percent.

He also noted how the Pope’s trip will fall just one week after the country’s presidential elections, which took place Jan. 8

Out of three papal visits to the country, Pope Francis’ trip will be the second time a Pope will be welcomed by one government after being invited by another. The first to have this happen was St. John Paul II during a visit in 1995.

The Pope was invited to Sri Lanka by Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had been president of the nation since 2005. Rajapaksa was defeated in the election by Maithripala Sirisena, who was sworn into office Jan. 9.

Although the election results are “crucial” for Sri Lanka’s continued process of recovery and reconciliation after the war, they are “not against the Pope,” Fr. Harshan stressed, and assured that they will pose no direct problems to the Pope’s visit.

Amid all of the organizational preparations for the papal visit, including the composition of a song “that everyone knows by now” based on the trip’s theme, the priest noted that the country’s spiritual preparation has emerged as even more important.

This visit, in which the first Sri Lankan saint, Blessed Joseph Vaz, will be canonized, is not just any other visit, he said, noting how dioceses have increased access to Confession in order to “make this visit a spiritual journey, not so much a materialistic (one.)”

Pope Francis’ visit “is one of hope … the Vicar of Christ is visiting us, so that should make some changes in our lives,” the priest observed.

“So the spiritual preparation is done because he’s not just coming to see the country and go. He’s coming to canonize the first saint in Sri Lanka, and that’s very, very, very important for us.”

As a religious minority in Sri Lanka, Catholics have a strong devotion to Bl. Joseph Vaz, who traveled there from India as a young priest in order help maintain the faith during the Dutch persecutions, Fr. Harshan noted.

“He came to the island, learned the two languages, walked all over the country irrespective of religious or ethnic groups (and) had a very good rapport with all other religious groups, with politicians, the king, etc. So to give him back to us in the context of this nature is a wonderful sign for us.”

Fr. Harshan also noted the high number of vocations in Sri Lanka, who currently have around 1,000 priests on the small island, more than 400 of whom serve the 1 million Catholics present in the Archdiocese of Colombo.

With 12 dioceses in the country, 16 bishops, 13 minor seminaries for secular priests and more than 10 additional ones for religious congregations, there are “a lot of vocations,” he noted, adding that each year there are some 50-60 priestly ordinations.

“So although the Church in Sri Lanka is small in numbers, it’s a vibrant Church, a very effective Church, and a growing Church … I’m sure these two days are going to be unforgettable not only for Catholics, but for all Sri Lankans.”

The post Sri Lanka: Pope Francis Visit Solidifies Peace After Brutal Civil War appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Ships carrying Patriot air defense systems belonging to Spanish military approached the port in Turkish Aegean province of Hatay’s İskenderun district Jan.9, RIA Novosti news agency reported with reference to the Anadolu agency.

Spanish Patriots, which will be positioned at Incirlik military base in southern Adana province within NATO task in place of Netherland’s missile batteries that have accomplished 2 years task against threats from Syria, arrived in Turkey via seaway.

The parts of air defense batteries started to be unloaded from the ship just after it docked at the port. Reportedly more than 150 Spanish soldiers will take part in deployment and installation period.

In November 2012, Ankara has asked NATO to provide it with Patriot air defense systems for protection against possible air attack from Syria.

As part of a NATO decision to boost Turkey’s air defenses, six Patriot batteries, sent to Turkey by the US, the Netherlands and Germany, as the most effective bulwark against a Syrian missile attack. The batteries have been deployed in the southern provinces of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras and Adana since January 26, 2013.

Air defense systems of the United States and Germany will continue their work.

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The futuristic movies of the past painted 2015 and beyond as a time of flying cars, hovercrafts and alien contact. While we may not be zooming down sky highways just yet, discovering life beyond Earth may not be outside our reach in the coming years. In fact, 2015 had barely begun when scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that they had discovered what they believe to be the most Earth-like planet ever found outside the solar system.

The Guardian reports that the planet, Kepler 438b, which orbits a distant star in the constellation of Lyra, may be slightly larger than the Earth. It circles an orange dwarf star that bathes it in 40 % more heat than we receive from our sun. The small size of Kepler 438b makes it likely to be a rocky world, while its proximity to its star puts it in the so-called ‘Goldilocks’ or habitable zone where the temperature is just right for liquid water to flow, according to the Guardian.

The newly-discovered world, which is 470 light years away, completes an orbit around its star every 35 days, making a year pass 10 times as fast as on Earth. And Kepler 438b is not alone. It is one among eight new potentially habitable planets, including some close to Earth in size and situation, which were announced at the recent meeting of meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Speaking of the announcement, Douglas Caldwell of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California noted to Science magazine, ‘We’ve significantly increased the list of verified small planets in the habitable zone’.

One of the other planets on the new list also looks promising. Kepler 442b lies in the same constellation 1 100 light years away. The Guardian reports that it is about a third larger than Earth, receives about two thirds as much starlight, and has a 60 % chance of being rocky. According to Scientific American, both Kepler 438b and Kepler 442b may be somewhat warmer than Kepler’s two previous premier rocky worlds, Kepler 186 f and Kepler 62 f, each of which gets significantly less starlight—similar to that received by Mars.

The research team used a statistical technique known as Blender to confirm that the planets originally spotted by NASA’s ‘planet hunting’ Kepler space telescope were real. Science magazine elaborates, ‘[Blender] calculates what various false-positive objects would look like and then compares them with the brightness curves of the Kepler candidates, also incorporating any follow up data from other observations. Starting with 12 Kepler candidates believed to be small rocky worlds, the Blender analysis whittled them down to eight new exoplanets with radiuses smaller than 2.7 times Earth’s, all believed to be in the habitable zone.’

Although the newly-discovered planets show positive indicators for habitability, study co-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, sounded a word of caution in Scientific Amercian: ‘We can’t say for sure whether these planets are truly habitable—only that they are promising candidates for habitability.’ He also noted to the Guardian that Kepler 438b and 442b were ‘as close to Earth analogues as we’re going to find in the Kepler data’.

So what’s next in the quest to find life beyond our world? The Guardian believes that planet hunters’ hopes are now likely pinned on the next generation of telescopes, including Hubble’s replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the European Extremely Large Telescope. Scientific American meanwhile looks stateside to NASA’s upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, expected to launch in 2017. TESS would perform an all-sky survey focused on finding transiting rocky planets around nearby stars.

Source: CORDIS

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Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars than ever before in 2014, delivering 1,650,010 vehicles to customers (+12.9%) and achieved the fourth record year in a row.

Record sales were posted in every month of the year 2014 – including in December with 163,171 units sold (+17.2%), the company said. The past year ended for the Stuttgart based company with the strongest sales month and the best quarter (454,854 units) in the company’s history.

According to Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, “Mercedes-Benz is on a course of success. The best sales in our company’s history show that our product offensive is bearing fruit. Our new models are extremely popular among our customers. The success is due in particular to our compact cars, the new C-Class and the S-Class. We have managed to grow unit sales in all core markets. In 2015, we will continue our product offensive in the SUV segment. We expect additional sales momentum by the SUVs, the full availability of the new C-Class, the compact cars and the two smart models.”

“Our product offensive is still running at high speed. Until 2020, we will bring at least eleven new models without a predecessor to the market”, says Ola Källenius, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG, responsible for Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing & Sales. “Our new products will ensure further growth through 2020 as will the consistent alignment of all marketing channels to the changing customer wishes and needs”, adds Källenius.

High sales growth in European markets

In the overall European market, unit sales increased by 9.4% in 2014 and are thus significantly above the general market growth. In December, 66,777 vehicles were handed over to customers in Europe (+21.5%).

In the toughly competitive German market, Mercedes-Benz continued to defend its market leadership among the premium manufacturers in 2014. Sales in Germany jumped by 13.6% in December.

In the United Kingdom, the second largest European market of the company, 2014 was another record year for unit sales, with a total of 123,480 vehicle deliveries to customers (+14.6%). The company also posted record high sales in Portugal (+45.7%), Switzerland (+15.8%) and Belgium (+8.0%).

Unit sales in Spain grew by more than 30%.

Sales records in the two largest markets: USA and China

In the year 2014, unit sales in the NAFTA Region totaled 373,291 vehicles (+5.8%), of which 330,391 were in the USA alone (+5.7%). Thus, the USA has maintained its position as the largest sales market of Mercedes-Benz. New records were posted in the USA, Canada and Mexico in the past year. In Canada, Mercedes-Benz holds the market leadership among the premium manufacturers.

For the first time, China outpaced Germany as the second largest market in 2014. With 281,588 vehicles sold, sales in China have never been so high (+29.1%). The C-Class long-wheelbase version is available there since August. New sales records were posted in 2014 in Japan and Australia, where Mercedes-Benz is market leader among the premium manufacturers. Total sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew by 25.7% to 491,321 units.

The post Mercedes-Benz Posts Historic Sales appeared first on Eurasia Review.

It is still not about Islam, even if the media and militants attacking western targets say so. Actually, it never was. But it was important for many to conflate politics with religion; partly because it is convenient and self-validating.

First, let’s be clear on some points. Islam has set in motion a system to abolish slavery over 1,200 years before the slave trade reached its peak in the western world.

Freeing the slaves, who were owned by pagan Arab tribes, was a recurring theme in the Koran, always linked to the most basic signs of piety and virtue:

“The charities are to go to the poor, and the needy, and those who work to collect them, and those whose hearts have been united, and to free the slaves, and those in debt, and in the cause of God, and the traveller. A duty from God, and God is Knowledgeable, Wise.” [Al-Koran. 9:60]

It is unfortunate that such reminders would have to be regularly restated, thanks to constant anti-Islam propaganda in many western countries. The outlandish and often barbaric behaviour of the so-called Islamic State (IS) has given greater impetus to existing prejudices and propaganda.

Second, gender equality in Islam has been enshrined in the language of the Koran and the legacy of the Prophet Mohammed.

“For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for truthful men and women, for patient men and women, for humble men and women, for charitable men and women, for fasting men and women, for chaste men and women, and for men and women who remember God often – for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward.” [33:35]

Third, the sanctity of life is paramount in Islam to the extent that “…if any one slew a person (..) it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.” [5:32]

Still, this is not about Islam. This is about why Islam is the subject of this discussion in the first place, when we should be addressing the real roots of violence.

When Islam was introduced to Arabia many centuries ago, it was, and in fact remains, a revolutionary religion. It was and remains radical, certainly the kind of radicalism that, if viewed objectively, would be considered a real challenge to classism in society, to inequality in all of its forms, and more importantly, to capitalism and its embedded insatiability, greed and callousness.

To avoid a rational discussion about real issues, many make non-issues the crux of the debate. So Islam is discussed alongside IS, Nigerian tribal and sectarian conflicts, Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, immigration issues in Europe and much more.

While much violence happens across the world in the name of Christianity, Judaism, even Buddhism in Burma and Sri Lanka, rarely do entire collectives get stigmatised by the media. Yet, all Muslims are held directly or otherwise accountable by many, even if a criminal who happened to be a Muslim went out on a violent rampage. Yes, he may still be designated as a “lone wolf”, but one can be almost certain that Muslims and Islam somehow become relevant to the media debate afterwards.

In their desperate attempt to fend off accusations, many Muslims, often led by credible intellectuals and journalists have, for nearly two decades staged a counter effort to distance Islam from violence and to fight the persisting stereotype. With time, these efforts culminated into a constant stream of collective apologies on behalf of Islam.

When a Muslim in Brazil or Libya reacts to a hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia, condemning violence on behalf of Islam, and frantically attempting to defend Islam and disown militancy, and so on, the question is, why? Why does the media make Muslims feel accountable for anything carried out in the name of Islam, even by some deranged person? Why are members of other religions not held to the same standards? Why aren’t Swedish Christians asked to explain and apologise for the behaviour of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or Argentinean Jews to explain the daily, systematic violence and terror carried out by Jewish extremists in Jerusalem and the West Bank?

Since Francis Fukuyama declared the “End of History” in 1992 – revelling that free markets and “liberal democracies” will reign supreme forever – followed by Samuel Huntington’s supposed contrasting, but still equally conceited, view of the “Clash of Civilizations and the need to “remake the world order”, a whole new intellectual industry has embroiled many in Washington, London and elsewhere. Once the Cold War had triumphantly ended with an inflated sense of political validation, the Middle East became the new playground for ideas about dominion and military hardware.

Since then, it has been an all-out war, either instigated by or involving various western powers. It was a protracted, multi-dimensional war: a destructive war on the ground, an economic war (blockades on the one hand and globalisation and free market exploitation on the other), cultural invasion (that made westernisation of society equivalent to modernity); topped with a massive propaganda war targeting the Middle East’s leading religion: Islam.

The war on Islam was particularly vital, as it seemed to unify a large range of western intellectuals, conservative, liberal, religious and secular alike. All done for good reasons:

– Islam is not just a religion, but a way of life. By demonising Islam, you demonise everything associated with it, including, of course, Muslims.

– The vilification of Islam which morphed into massive western-led Islamophobia helped validate the actions of western governments, however violent and abusive. The dehumanisation of Muslims became an essential weapon in war.

– It was also strategic: hating Islam and all Muslims is a very flexible tool that would make military intervention and economic sanctions possible anywhere where the West has political and economic interests. Hating Islam became a unifying rally-cry from advocates of sanctions on Sudan to anti-immigrant neo-Nazi groups in Germany, and everywhere else. The issue is no longer the violent means used to achieve political domination and control of natural resources, but, magically, it all was reduced to one single word: Islam; or, at best, Islam and something else: freedom of expression, women rights, and so forth.

Thus, it was no surprise to see the likes of Ian Black commenting in the Guardian, hours after gunmen carried out a lethal attack in Paris against a French Magazine on Wednesday, 7 January with the starting line: “Satire and Islam do not sit well together…”

Not a word on the French military and other forms of intervention in the Middle East; its destructive role in Syria; its leadership role in the war in Libya; its war in Mali, and so on. Not even a word on François Holland’s recent statement about being “ready” to bomb Libyan rebels, although it was made only few days earlier.

Sure, the pornographic satire of Charlie Hebdo and its targeting of Prophet Mohammed was mentioned, but little was said, by Black, or the many others who were quick to link the subject to “7^th century Islam”, to the hideous wars and their horrible, pornographic manifestations of torture, rape and other unspeakable acts; acts that victimised millions of people; Muslim people. Instead, it about western art and Muslim intolerance. The subtle line was: yes, indeed, it is a “clash of civilisations”.

Did any of these “intellectuals” pause to think that maybe, just maybe, the violent responses to demeaning Islamic symbols reflect a real political sentiment, say for example, a collective feeling of humiliation, hurt, pain and racism that extend to every corner of the globe?

And that it is natural that war which is constantly exported from the West to the rest of the world, could ultimately be exported back to western cities?

Is it not possible that Muslims are angered by something much more subtle and profound than Charlie Hebdo’s tasteless art?

Avoiding the answer is likely to delay a serious attempt at finding a solution, which must start with the end of western interventionism in the Middle East.

The post War Begets War: It’s Not About Islam; It Never Was – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has blasted the House Republican Leadership for passing legislation that bypasses federal agencies to allow construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. DeFazio helped lead Democratic opposition to the legislation, which has been considered by the House ten times.

“Under this legislation, TransCanada gets the profits; they pay nothing into the spill recovery Trust Fund; the American people get the bill if there’s a spill; and the rights of individual Americans to access the legal system are limited – all to benefit a foreign company. Welcome, to the new Republican Congress, America,” said DeFazio.

According to DeFazio, like the last Keystone bill Congress considered, this legislation fails to require TransCanada, a foreign company, to pay an excise tax that all other oil and pipeline companies are required to pay to help finance an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that helps cover the costs of cleaning up oil spills. Democrats tried to amend the bill to force TransCanada to contribute to the spill fund like every U.S. oil and pipeline company, but Republicans rejected the measure.

DeFazio claims the legislation would pave the way for the Canadian corporation to use eminent domain, to begin seizing private property if the landowner is unwilling to sell to TransCanada. DeFazio highlighted a letter in which TransCanada threatens that they will “commence the legal process of eminent domain to obtain [the land],” from landowners unwilling to sell.

“I do find it particularly ironic that today, on the same day that the House read the Constitution, Republicans passed a bill that would give a foreign corporation the right to take private property from American citizens. I’m not aware of any other time, that Congress has voted to give a foreign entity the right to take the private property of a U.S. citizen,” said DeFazio.

Additionally, according to DeFazio, the bill ignores the major environmental risks associated with tar sands oil and the pipeline—including increased carbon pollution, depredation of natural resources, and the potential for catastrophic spills. In Canada, irreplaceable, boreal forests and water resources are being destroyed in order to extract the oil. Tar sands oil emits 81 percent more greenhouse gas than average crude, reversing carbon pollution reductions and environmental and safety improvements achieved in the United States, according to DeFazio.

The post DeFazio Blasts Republican Passage Of Keystone XL Bill appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A study of the effects of worming medications on infectious disease in wildlife herds showed an unexpected and alarming result – although it helped reduce individual deaths from a bovine tuberculosis infection, it hugely increased the potential for spread of the disease to other animals.

The findings, from one of the first field studies ever done on this issue, will be published Friday in the journal Science.

They were contrary to expectations based on laboratory studies, and suggest the possibility that broad use of medical treatments such as this can backfire. They may actually increase the problem with diseases they were meant to reduce.

Both in animals and possibly human disease, treatments that aid an individual could come at the expense of a wider spread of disease in the larger community, the research suggested.

“This study indicates that we need to better understand how some medical treatments affect other health issues, in particular infectious disease,” said Anna Jolles, an epidemiologist at Oregon State University and co-author of the study, along with Vanessa Ezenwa at the University of Georgia.

The research, supported by the National Science Foundation, was done with more than 200 animals in two herds of free-ranging African buffalo in Kruger National Park in South Africa. Half were given deworming medication and the others not.

It was known that infection with parasitic helminth worms can decrease the effective immune response against some infectious diseases, in this case bovine tuberculosis, which is common among these animals. Scientists expected the worming medications to save lives while reducing the risk of infection and disease progression.

They found that deworming treatments did improve the survival of animals infected with bovine tuberculosis – in fact, dewormed animals with tuberculosis survived just as well as TB-free animals. However, deworming did not reduce the risk of new infections, and there was a dramatic eight-fold increase in the number of buffalos that an infected animal could potentially infect – a reference to the “R-nought,” or reproductive multiplier that epidemiologists use to predict the potential for spread of infection in a community.

A buffalo with bovine tuberculosis but no worm treatments has, on average, the potential to infect about one other buffalo. This study found that after worm treatment, a buffalo with this disease had the theoretical potential to infect nine other buffalos. This difference was based on the finding that dewormed buffalo with TB can survive for years, whereas the life expectancy of untreated TB-infected buffalo was much shorter.

These issues are of significant concern not just for animal, but also human health, researchers say.

Helminth worm infections are among the most ubiquitous parasites on Earth, infecting 1 billion people and causing significant losses among both livestock and wildlife. Other studies have linked co-infection with these worms to increased risk of death from both tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in human patients, largely due to their ability to reduce and otherwise skew the natural immune response to both viral and bacterial infection.

This is a larger problem in the developing world, and some major deworming programs in human populations are already in place due to the range of health concerns posed by the parasites. It’s believed that mass deworming programs may reduce overall deaths from some of the major killers in such areas, such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV infection.

“These results are pretty alarming,” said Jolles, who is a researcher in both the OSU College of Science and College of Veterinary Medicine.

“We expected deworming effects to be all positive, both for individual buffalo, and in terms of reducing disease spread,” Jolles said. “But what we found is positive effects for individual animals, but potentially much faster disease spread at the population level.”

From these results in buffalo, Jolles said, one should not to jump to conclusions about changing deworming treatments in people. But they do raise questions about large, broad-based public deworming programs.

“We must pay attention to health problems that may increase as a result of the program, as well as problems that we are solving,” she said.

The findings also raise questions about aspects of animal agriculture, Jolles said, especially in developing countries. It may be important to match deworming programs with vaccines for infectious disease and other treatments to ensure that the overall health of the herd is protected.

The potential to actually increase spread of a disease following a health treatment such as deworming may vary widely, Jolles said, with different animal species and different infectious diseases.

More studies are urgently needed to address the primary question raised by this research, the scientists said. On a community level, will large-scale deworming treatments alleviate, or will they exacerbate the health impacts of other, sometimes deadly infections?

The post Deworming Programs In Animal, Human Populations May Have Unwanted Impacts appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Khalil Bendib

As a political cartoonist who happens to be both American and Muslim, I often find myself at the intersection of media curiosity: Muslim, with all the stereotypical notions attached to that, but also a freedom-loving artist and a humorist.

I’m not just the butt of jokes, but a purveyor of them — a non-violent wielder of the pen, which I maintain is funnier than the sword.I’m no stranger to controversy and censorship, and I’ve received my fair share of death threats over the years. So I’ve had ample opportunity to mull the thorny question of freedom of expression versus responsibility.

Was Charlie Hebdo, the satirical publication whose staffers were murdered by Islamic extremists in Paris, always the fairest and most responsible newspaper in the world? Of course not. I confess to have often cringed at its apparent double-standard when it comes to skewering Muslims and Jews.

But does anyone — ever — deserve to be harassed, hounded, or murdered for expressing an opinion, however egregious it may be perceived by some?

Voltaire’s biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall eloquently and definitively answered that question long ago: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.“

Personally, I will always remember January 7 as a day of infamy, a catastrophe delivering layer upon layer of misery.

As a human being, I feel disgust over the murder of 12 innocent people.

As an artist, I feel a profound sense of grief over the loss of four fellow cartoonists — including the great Cabu (also known as Jean Cabut), who inspired me as a young man to become a cartoonist.

And as a member of the worldwide Muslim community, I’m plagued with a nagging sense of shame and fear of the inevitable backlash that will follow in an already Islamophobic Europe, where most of my family still resides.

I worry that the unspeakable acts of a few will drown out the sincere protestations of the many that this kind of horror doesn’t speak in our name.

Former French justice minister Robert Badinter — no particular friend of the Muslim community — has warned his fellow citizens not to fall into the extremist trap of letting barbaric violence divide French society, of which nearly 10 percent is Muslim. But tensions are running high.

Yet beyond the social polarization — manifested by both senseless Islamist violence and the cheap Islamophobia of opportunistic politicians and media — lies a more interesting and nuanced reality: signs of hope and progress.

Long before this attack, French people were showing what it means to coexist in a multi-ethnic and pluralistic society.

Among the many good works he will be remembered for, cartoonist Georges Wolinski — who was among the cartoonists assassinated in cold blood in the name of wounded religious pride — once came to the rescue of Menouar Merabtene, the Algerian cartoonist best known as Slim, a close friend of mine who was fleeing from persecution in his native country.

Throughout the 1990s, a bloody civil war raged between Islamist militants and the autocratic Algerian government. Many artists and intellectuals opposed to the Islamist agenda were systematically assassinated in that conflict.

Out of simple human solidarity, Wolinski — a Jewish cartoonist from France — spontaneously intervened to secure a job for the beleaguered Muslim-Algerian Slim at the Paris newspaper L’Humanité.

Similarly, thousands of French people are mourning and praising slain Muslim police officer Ahmed Merabet. He died pursuing men suspected of perpetrating the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Like the stories of North African Muslims standing in solidarity with their Jewish brethren against the Vichy government’s hunt for North African Jews during World War II, these simple stories tend to get lost in the din of terrorist mayhem.

But in the end, bullets and bombs can never silence the voices of laughter and friendship.

Khalil Bendib is OtherWords’ editorial cartoonist, an artist, and the author or co-author of several books, including the widely translated graphic novel Zahra’s Paradise. He was born in Paris as a refugee of Algeria’s war of independence and grew up in Morocco and Algeria. He lives in Berkeley, California.

The post A Muslim Cartoonist Draws Lessons From Charlie Hebdo Massacre – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Madrid wants to see changes made to the treaty governing the visa-free Schengen area, which would allow Spain to introduce border controls to stem the tide of Islamic militants returning from the Middle East, the country’s interior minister has said.

“We are going to back border controls and it is possible that as a consequence it will be necessary to modify the Schengen treaty,” Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told the daily El Pais in an interview on Saturday.

“The existing mobility in the European Union is facilitating the movements (of jihadists) to any country and also to our country,” he continued.

The minister and his European counterparts are set to discuss the future of Schengen during a meeting in Paris on Sunday.

Diaz is not the first European politician to consider revamping or altogether suspending the Schengen zone in response to the deadly attacks in and around Paris this week, which left 20 dead, including three attackers.

On Friday, The leader of France’s rightwing Front National (FN), Marine Le Pen, told French President Francois Hollande that the country should “immediately suspend Schengen to be able to control our borders” in what she called an “essential element in the fight against terrorism.”

The Schengen Area consists of 26 European countries that have abolished passport and any other type of border controls. The agreement allows for both freedom of movement for both European citizens, Schengen visa holders and those who can travel in the area visa-free. Freedom of movement is considered “a fundamental right” guaranteed by the EU to its citizens.

Diaz further called for the establishment of a Europe-wide passenger name record data base, which would aid in sharing passenger information between member states.

“We are convinced of the need for such a tool, to follow those who travel to terrorist operating theaters or who return from there,” he said.

He further said that the hate speech, particularly anti-Semitic messages and attempts to recruit young people to militant organizations, needed to be tackled online in a way that did not stop the internet from being a venue of free expression.

“We need to work more closely with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and if possible removal of all content that amounts to an apology for terrorism or calls for violence and hatred,” he said.

Fears of another terror attack in Europe are running high following the recent shootings in France. On Sunday, a report in the Germany daily Bild, citing intelligence from the US National Security Agency, warned that the events in France may be the first in a wave of attacks to strike Europe.

The intelligence, reportedly citing conversations between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) leaders, said a series of European cities could be attacked, including Rome.

The article, however, didn’t furnish details of a concrete terror plot.

EU and US security ministers also met at France’s interior ministry on Sunday to discuss a joint response to terrorism in the wake of the Paris assault. The meeting was held just hours before a massive parade through Paris, where hundreds of thousands of people, along with dozens of world leaders, came in a show of solidarity and remembrance for those who lost their lives.

Following the meeting, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said European interior ministers had agreed to ratchet up cooperation in an effort to halt future terrorist attacks.

The White House further announced it had incited its allied to Washington for a February 18 security summit in Washington to try and stem the tide of violent extremism

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Within 24 hours of the killing, £195,000 had been earmarked to support Charlie Hebdo by the Digital Press Fund, paid for by Google. French media groups including Le Monde, France Télévisions and Radio France, are also understood to be working on a plan to contribute a similar amount, urging other media outlets to join in offering humanitarian and financial support.

They’re coming out with a million copies of the satirical weekly and even those who didn’t know of it will see it, feel a belligerent few echoing the impromptu sentiments of those hurt and rightly so by the violent response of terrorists to the cartoons. The tone and tenor so rabidly ride within the media mostly Western. The Washington Post, in particular, which reprinted the controversial cartoon was, simply speaking, publically lauding the French publication’s Liberty and one of the media to express an opinion. After all, Liberty has always been ballyhooed as a French concept even forming an integral part of its national motto Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

The world’s leaders, powerful and peaceful, called upon the French to express solidarity. Here was an act of violence that simply couldn’t be justified by any stretch of imagination. So, the French government also reportedly pledged nearly $1.2 million to Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine.

For the record, Charlie Hebdo began publishing in 1969 and often stirred a hornet’s nest with the cartoons that appear on its covers. Known for its caricatures of Prophet Muhammad and critical depictions of Catholics, Jews and French politicians, the magazine drags itself in the eye of a storm as a rule.

Back in 2006, the magazine portrayed a sobbing Muhammad, under the headline ‘Mahomet débordé par les intégristes’ – Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists. Inside, it published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, bringing unprecedented condemnation from the Muslim world. The French Council for the Muslim Faith eventually sued the weekly for the cartoon.

In 2011, a cartoon was headlined “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter” and the issue invited Muhammad to be a ‘guest editor’ for the weekly. The Charlie Hebdo offices were firebombed following its publication. The publication’s website was hacked following a 2011 cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad as gay. And then, later again, it received backlash in 2012 after publishing a cartoon criticizing religious Muslims and Jews. More recently, the magazine published a cartoon depicting a member of the Islamic State group beheading Muhammad. All in the name of Freedom of Speech and Liberty.

The rationale being offered freely here by most is that over the years, Charlie Hebdo has been far harsher with Christianity than it has with Islam. Catholic organizations have sued the magazine 13 times, and only once by Muslim groups. That the magazine was both firebombed in 2011 and its staff attacked and killed now 2015 by Islam’s adherents suggests it’s not the religion that’s the problem — though there’s that too — but its most extreme adherents. Quite illogically, being sued often by Christian groups is propped as a defense by the magazine as being more anti-Catholic and concurrently, the inability to initiate, lesser still win a legal process by a smaller Islamic community, to indicate the magazine’s sympathetic stand towards Islam.

Somewhere, I feel, we’ve lost the plot. The media, the world over, is synonymous with objectivity. It is this objectivity that fetches it the respect and trust from across masses all over the world. Well, at least, most of it. And, there is a distinct tendency to dole out subjectivity in the guise of objectivity.

If you were to examine the right to express oneself against the right to dissent, you’d realise that there is a distinct and almost inherent inequity. While the right to express, free opinion, speech and that sort, is upheld by law, guaranteed and supported holistically across the globe, the right to dissent has been stifled almost into extinction by the seemingly ‘free thinking’ media, democratic community and world leaders.

Now, we all know that music for one could be noise for another and, concurrently, humour for one could be lack of taste for another. Permitting free and unbridled demonstration of the freedom of speech and expression is almost always associated with the risk of hurting someone’s sentiments.

In stark denial of the violation of the right to dissent in the fervent attempt to seem ‘liberal’ and uphold values of democracy, it’s the minority who loses, almost always. The modern world and its leaders have, in their attempt to pander to populist masses, failed to detail the extent and draw limits to free speech which urgently needs to be moderated and controlled lest it trample upon another’s rights.

Abusing Prophet Mohammed or, for that matter, a lesser known God or Avatar IS infringing upon another’s rights and hurting public sentiments. That has to stop. We must learn to be non-violent, both in action and in thought. An act of terror is wrong by any stretch of imagination. That doesn’t take away from the fact that we need to sit up and curb acts of insensitivity, bullying or insulting particularly so in the guise of freedom of speech and expression. In our loud proclamations of free will, we trample upon another group’s with aplomb and then, gang up on them to silence dissent. Isn’t that having your cake and eating it too?

What we’ve actually done is perhaps managed to spark dissent within a group who will be simmering with anger and within their own lot. A dissent that could go on to blow up straight into our own faces, bring a security system on its knees and crash into our towers of democracy – once again. We need to introspect. Now!

The post Understand, Everyone Doesn’t Get The Joke – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Press freedom has been under attack with the deaths in Paris of nine Charlie Hebdo employees, including editor Stephane Charbonnier, and the continued incarceration in Cairo of three Al Jazeera journalists. The circumstances of the victimization of the journalists are starkly different.

Charlie Hebdo has made defamation of the Prophet Muhammad its calling card in recent years. The magazine was unsuccessfully sued in 2006 by Islamic organizations for publishing the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. The cover of a 2011 issue, dubbed “Charia Hebdo” (a pun on Sharia law), depicted a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The newspaper’s office was fire-bombed and its website hacked. Editor Charbonnier stated at the time, “We have to carry on until Islam has been rendered as banal as Catholicism.” In 2012, the newspaper published a series of satirical cartoons of Muhammad, including nude caricatures.

The journalists probably were just hoping to create another sensation, ‘go viral’, and boost sales. Anything goes in the ‘free press’ of the West, so no fears about prosecution.

But they lost their gamble, paying with their lives (and the lives of two policemen) in what is being called France’s worst act of terrorism since 1961, when 28 people died in the train bombing carried out by the OAS (a rightwing paramilitary organization opposed to the independence of Algeria). They did manage to unleash a firestorm of islamophobia—which also was their intent, so their efforts were not entirely in vain. Charlie Hebdo has announced that next week’s edition will be released as usual, but with a much larger than usual print run of one million.

The Al Jazeera journalists were trying to report honestly from the heart of a cruel dictatorship. There is no possibility that they were intending to provoke the ruthless military dictatorship into arresting them, to boost sales or achieve international notoriety. They were doing an important service to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, exposing the flagrant injustices of the regime.

But Egypt’s brief experience with a truly free press following the 2011 Arab Spring is no longer. The reckless anger emanating from official Cairo is almost palpable. The transition from grudging acceptance by the old elite of democratic Islamist rule ended abruptly in the July 2013 coup, and the military dictatorship has lurched from one crisis to another ever since. Egyptians are pining for the relatively benign repression of the Mubarak years.

The imprisonment of the three Al Jazeera journalists—Peter Greste (Australian) and Mohammd Fahmy (Canadian Egyptian), Baher Mohammed (Egyptian)—only caught international media attention because of the foreign passports involved. The Australian and Canadian are serving seven year sentences (the Egyptian 10 years) after farcical trials, including doctored videos, inaudible audio recordings, pictures from a family vacation, a music video, and a video of sheep. Because foreigners are being victimized in such a blatantly trumped-up way, and because of strong international pressure, a judge finally ordered a retrial earlier this month.

The hapless journalists are the tip of a gruesome journalistic nightmare in Egypt. In November 2014, the Committee to Protect Journalists released the documentary film “Under Threat”, which documents the unprecedented number of anti-press abuses, including six journalists killed and dozens detained since the military took over in July 2013. At least 11 journalists are behind bars on bogus charges.

The Al Jazeera bureaus were priority targets for the Armed Forces. The studios and offices were ransacked and the journalists and their teams expelled. Al Jazeera English still managed to report clandestinely, rotating staff discretely in and out of the country. This finally ended with the arrests in December 2013.

This is the tip of an even worse nightmare of abuse. President Abdel-Fatah el-Sisi boasts that he had 10,000 Islamists imprisoned last year. Over 2,000 unarmed demonstrators have been killed. Several judges accused of being Muslim Brotherhood sympathizes were forced out of their jobs.

There is a simple way to avoid tragedies like that in laicite-loving France: issue a press code that makes religious defamation illegal.

In the case of Egypt, a boycott of Egyptian-US military relations and a financial squeeze by the US-controlled IMF would do the trick. Threats by Sisi to jump on a Russian bandwagon are so much hot air. Russia is in no position to pick up any pieces in chaotic, unpredictable Egypt.

The two crises are being resolved in the expected ways. France raised its terror alert to its highest level and deployed soldiers in Paris to the public transport system, media offices, places of worship, and the Eiffel Tower. The main suspects, the Kouachi brothers, escaped to Port de Pantin, where they took hostages, but were finally killed and their hostage rescued. Already, bombings of mosques have been reported. There is of course no chance of a law to control a press that delights in pointless scandal.

In Egypt, the West and Qatar find themselves as unlikely allies, pressuring Sisi diplomatically to release the journalists and bury the embarrassing affair, now that Sisi realizes he just can’t do without US and Qatari funds and must pretend they are all friends again. That means a possible happy ending at least for the foreigners, but leaves tens of thousands of political prisoners in jail, and no reckoning for the dictator.

The post Hebdo Vs Al Jazeera: A Tale Of Two Journalisms – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Opposition candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic won Croatia’s runoff election with 50.54 percent of the vote, becoming the country’s first female president, the state electoral commission said.

The incumbent centre-left Ivo Josipovic admitted defeat and congratulated Grabar-Kitarovic on the victory, after getting 49.46 percent of the vote on Sunday.

So far, 97.8 percent of votes have been counted, which means that Grabar-Kitarovic won by just about 21,000 votes. Both candidates have promised to fix the country’s troubled economy, which has been stuck in a long-lasting recession.

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(RFE/RL) — More than 1 million people and 40 world leaders participated in a march to honor the victims of deadly terrorist attacks in Paris — a manifestation that French President Francois Hollande said turned the city into “the capital of the world.”​

The unity march in downtown Paris was being led by French and foreign leaders accompanied by relatives of the 17 victims of the attacks by radical Islamists against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, a French police woman, and a Jewish supermarket.

One of the organizers estimated that between 1.3 million and 1.5 million people attended the march between Place de la Republique and Place de la Nation.

The Associated Press news agency quoted the French Interior Ministry as saying the rally was the largest in French history.

French President Francois Hollande linked arms with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders, among them British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose countries are engaged in a violent struggle in Ukraine, also took part.​

The United States is represented by U .S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

At the start of the march, the participants observed a minute of silence. Various groups of people also sang the French anthem, La Marseillaise.

Later in the day, President Hollande, accompanied by Israel’s Netanyahu attended a ceremony at the Grand Synagogue in Paris.

Some 5,500 police and troops have been deployed in Paris to ensure the security of the march.

The security forces include police snipers on rooftops and plainclothes detectives who will mingle in the crowd to protect marchers from would-be attackers.​

The ancient sewer tunnels of Paris also were searched ahead of the vigil and underground train stations around the march route were to be closed.

National Front Not Attending

More than 600,000 people reportedly joined rallies in various French towns on January 11, including Lyon, Bordeaux, and Marseille.

France’s far-right National Front (FN) held a demonstration of its own against terrorism, after being excluded from the unity rally in Paris.

Party leader Marine Le Pen led a rally in the FN-controlled southern town of Beaucaire after denouncing what she called the “exclusion” of her party from Paris march.​

Across Europe, tens of thousands of people also attended rallies.

Some 20,000 people marched through the Belgian capital Brussels, holding banners saying “United against hate” and “Freedom of speech.”

In Berlin, some 18,000 joined the march while in Madrid’s Plaza de Sol, hundreds descended on the streets with red, white, and blue French flags, and singing La Marseillaise.

Many of the demonstrators joined a separate rally held by hundreds of Muslims at Madrid’s Atocha station, the scene of the worst terror attack in Spanish history in 2004, to condemn violence committed in the name of Islam.

Elsewhere in Europe, about 3,000 people turned out in Stockholm, many holding pens in the air, and more than 1,000 people gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square, also raising pencils to the sky. Several London landmarks were lit in the colors of the French national flag.

About 25,000 people marched in the Canadian city of Montreal in solidarity with France. Hundreds of people staged support rallies in Jerusalem, Beirut, and in the West Bank city of Ramallah.​

Three days of terrorist violence in and around the French capital ended with a raid on January 9 that resulted in the deaths to the northeast of Paris of Al-Qaeda-linked brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, the suspects in the January 7 massacre of 12 people at the office of Charlie Hebdo.

An almost simultaneous raid by security forces on January 9 at a Jewish market in eastern Paris also killed Amedy Coulibaly, who is said to have shot dead a French policewoman on January 8 and four hostages at the market on January 9.

French security forces are still searching for Hayat Boumeddiene, a woman initially described as an accomplice who was with Coulibaly when he killed the policewoman in southern Paris.

French authorities have described her as “armed and dangerous.”

Turkish and French security sources said on January 10 that Boumeddiene is now thought to have entered Turkey on January 2, several days before the violence began, and may have crossed into Syria.

Meanwhile, posthumous video emerged January 11 of Coulibaly, in which he is pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group.

In the video, apparently filmed over several days, Coulibaly can be seen with a gun, exercising and giving speeches in front of an IS emblem. He defends the attacks carried out on Charlie Hebdo, police and the Jewish store.

At one point, he says Charlie Hebdo will be attacked “tomorrow” and that he and the brothers who carried out the attack were coordinating.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said January 11 there was no “credible information” as yet that Al-Qaeda was behind the attacks in France that have killed 17 people.

Holder, speaking from Paris, said, “At this point, we don’t have any credible information that would allow us to make a determination as to which organization was responsible.”

But Holder voiced concern about so-called lone wolf attacks in the United States by Islamist militants inspired by Al-Qaeda affiliates.

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