The implications of NATO drawdown from Afghanistan continues to generate vigorous debate in South Asia. At a recently concluded international conference, “NATO drawdown from Afghanistan: Challenges and Opportunities” organized by the Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan), academics and policy makers debated on the potential benefits and challenges of this diminishing international footprints for the region. The conclusion was somber: International intervention of the last decade marked largely by uncoordinated military action and aid delivery has done little to build institutions essential for providing better services and governance to the Afghan people. Hasty announcements of exit and dwindling financial assistance have heightened anxieties inside Afghanistan. Peace and stability in the long term, as a consequence, remains an elusive goal. The major takeaway from the conference was that normalization of relationship between Pakistan, Afghanistan and India is a sine qua non for long term stability in the region.

Contrary to pessimistic projections, the drawdown indeed provides an opportune moment for Afghanistan to pursue the goal of achieving long-term economic stability through the mechanism of regional cooperation. The role and support of India and Pakistan, will be critical to achieve this objective. While Afghanistan has been largely perceived as an arena of zero-sum competition between India and Pakistan, given the tremendous dividends of increased trade and transit, the building of energy pipelines and regional connectivity, the uncertainties associated with the drawdown could, in fact, generate real and tangible opportunities for promoting cooperation between the two neighbours and transforming Afghanistan as a zone of opportunity. Increased South Asian contribution in the reconstruction and economic development of the Afghanistan has potential to set in a mutually beneficial process creating a web of interdependency. If the economic dividends of regional cooperation are accompanied by incremental steps in confidence building on security issues, these could contribute to long-term peace building in South Asia and the extended region.

In April, during his India visit, President Ashraf Ghani called for regional cooperation to fight terror. He said “We are determined to change the regional nature of cooperation. Against all forms of violence, what is essential is that the state system in the region rises to a new understanding.” Afghanistan’s long-term development and stability requires an inter-locking of interests and commitment on the part of all stakeholders. Afghanistan’s South Asian neighbours are natural and important partners in realizing this project. By restoring Afghanistan’s historic, cultural and economic linkages with South Asia the probability of stability is the highest. In the previous decade, Afghanistan has made regional cooperation as the lynchpin of its foreign and economic policy and also a tool of balancing competing powers and interests. In 2002, under the ‘Kabul Declaration on Good-Neighbourly Relations’ , China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan declared their commitment to constructive and supportive bilateral relationships. Since then, a number of international conferences and initiatives (the Regional Economic Cooperation Conferences on Afghanistan , the Istanbul-Heart of Asia Conference , New Silk Road initiative and so on) have made numerous pledges and commitments to Afghanistan. The teeth for their implementation, however, are lacking.

Afghanistan was added as the eighth member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 2007. Its trade agreements presently limited to Pakistan and India, Afghanistan stands to gain tremendously by economically integrating itself with rest of South Asia. Agriculture remains the predominant sector of the Afghan economy, accounting for nearly half of GDP . The sector, however, needs revitalisation, crucial for the Afghan Government’s objective of reducing poverty, eradicating poppy cultivation and providing alternate livelihoods. Afghanistan’s unexplored minerals and natural gas can find markets in South Asia and beyond, if conflict subsides. Collaborative mineral and resource extraction strategies could be a useful tool of conflict management. Being a landlocked country, Afghanistan requires low-cost transit routes and trade facilitation mechanisms to help exporters take advantage of trade agreements such as the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), and to be able to capitalize on its strategic position as a land bridge between Central and South Asia. In addition to building greater economic ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the extension of Afghanistan Pakistan Trade and Transit Agreement to India, could be a force multiplier for implementation of SAFTA.

While India has pledged more than US$2 billion to be used in various reconstruction, humanitarian, capacity building and infrastructure development projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan’s largest trading partner has built schools, hospitals and provided aid to universities in Afghanistan. Islamabad’s financial assistance, to the tune of US$330 million as of 2012 , remains an important contribution. Despite differences on the method of dealing with the Taliban insurgency, both countries have made some progress in joint management of common rivers. Construction of a 1,500MW hydropower project on Kunar River remains one of the major proposed projects, for which China has voiced its support, between the two.

While the prospect of India and Pakistan working together in Afghanistan may sound preposterous to many, as a counter to the not-so-improbable scenario of instability emanating from greater radicalization, terrorism, narcotics, refugee flows, a regime of enhanced joint counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and greater information sharing mechanism would benefit both. To begin with, joint projects in the education, health and service sector could be the initial steps of working together. As the economy spirals downward in Pakistan, benefits from regional trade and energy pipelines is propelling the Pakistani business community to push for a change in the government policies of opening up the border as a counter-narrative to the protectionism espoused by radical organisations. In my discussions with the academia, business groups, media and person on the street narratives in Pakistan, what was striking was the need for greater cooperation with India. In Peshawar and Mardan, the cradle of Gandhara civilization, symbols of the common historical and cultural heritage of the two countries are evident. Restoring these linkages and building on the economic narrative of opportunity and cooperation could be a game changer for the entire region.

This article appeared at The Huffington Post and is reprinted with permission.

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By Henry Hewitt

Miles Per Acre Per Year

During the late innings of the ICE-age (as in the Internal Combustion Engine age) it has become clear that feeding gasoline and diesel to the next billion new cars is not going to be easy, or cheap. In China alone, 500 million new vehicles can be expected to jam the roads between now and 2030.

That may sound far-fetched but considering annual sales have already made it to 25 million units per year (vs. around 17 million in the U.S. – China became the top market in 2009), it only requires a 4 percent growth rate to reach that target in fifteen years.

The cost to operate an EV, per mile, is already well below the cost to drive a standard ICE-age model, and the advantage is likely to widen. The average U.S. residential customer pays 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), which means the cost to drive one mile in an EV is somewhat less than 4 cents. By contrast, at 25 miles per $3 gallon of gasoline, those miles cost 12 cents each.

Coal still supplies more power in the U.S. than anything else, with natural gas next. However, building more coal and gas power plants to make miles for transport is counter-productive if the game plan is to reduce carbon output.

Fortunately, abundant renewable power, is getting cheaper, while gasoline from finite fossil fuels may get more expensive. (Even after the fall in U.S. crude, gasoline in California costs $4 on average. At that price, California miles are 16 cents each. If you drive an SUV in Southern California those miles cost over 30 cents each.)

Even though not all renewables are created equal, power purchase agreements (PPAs) for PV projects with utilities in the U.S. Southwest are now coming in under seven cents per kWh for a twenty year period. At that rate, the cost to operate an electric vehicle is 2 cents per mile. Hydropower in Seattle will push you around for the same price. The first ‘eye-opener’ for large scale solar was the Austin Energy PPA last year that was priced at 5 cents. What this country needed was a good 5-cent kWh, and now we have it.

It is generous to say that an acre of Iowa can provide 12,500 miles per year at a cost of 10 cents each. (Average fuel efficiency in the U.S. is 22 miles per gallon (mpg). New cars in 2015 get 25 mpg.) An acre of corn that provides 500 gallons of ethanol, at 22 mpg, gives you 11,000 miles, or would, if such gallons had the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline.

Unfortunately, they don’t. Ethanol packs about 70 percent of the punch of gasoline, so you actually need 1.4 gallons of ethanol to get you as far as a gallon of gas. (Instead of 11,000 miles per acre for the average 22 mpg model, the figure drops to 7,850 miles per acre per year.)

But suppose your new car is up to current Chinese standards (~35 mpg). In that case, Iowa’s acres provide 12,500 miles in a year (17,500/1.4). This is still roughly two orders of magnitude less output per acre than Warren Buffett’s Agua Caliente array in Arizona. No wonder Berkshire Hathaway has already bet a billion on PV arrays. One could say that Mr. Buffett has not only seen the light but invested heavily therein.

Sunrise in the Desert

Agua Caliente PV Plant: Yuma Arizona

An acre of desert in Arizona, Nevada and many other places on earth ‘sees’ on the order of 3,000 hours of direct sun per year. (This amounts to 34 percent of the total 8,765 hours available, half being dark.) PV arrays on a house are spaced closely together and it is reasonable to figure 250 kilowatts (kW) per acre of aggregated rooftops. However, it costs more to build an acre of rooftop PV. On the ground the figure is closer to 150 kW per acre.

The biggest difference between rooftop and most of the utility scale arrays yet to be built is that it makes sense, when possible, to track the sun. Since not everyone can afford to build houses that track the sun, let’s just assume that all residential rooftop arrays will be fixed. In the commercial sector, and in the case of community solar, there is more flexibility and tracking arrays may make sense, especially when mounted on the ground.

The arithmetic is pretty simple. You get about 20 percent more yield by tracking the sun. A rooftop array is pointed directly at the sun (known as direct normal irradiance) only for a short while each day, assuming the roof pitch is right, and most aren’t. If it costs 1o percent more to get that 20 percent extra yield, do it.

Critics will say that more structure and added tracking motors and mechanisms will add to the chance of system failure. This, however, is a fallacy. Consider the venerable oil drilling donkey, which cycles once every 7 or 8 seconds. At this rate (480 cycles per hour, and 11,520 cycles per day), these ancient and effective oil rigs cycle more in a day than a tracking PV array in its 30-year lifetime. (365.25 days x 30 years = 10,957 cycles.)

An acre of desert PV will easily yield 300,000 kWh (150 kW per acre x 2,000 hours of direct normal sun) and a million miles per year for an EV. Since 2,500 to 3,000 hours are available in many places, the figure jumps to between 375,000 and 450,000 kWh per year, yielding between 1.25 million and 1.5 million miles per acre per year.

In other words, the output from (more expensive) ethanol is little more than a rounding error compared to the output from PV. The choice is between a million miles per acre per year, costing 2 to 4 cents each from the sun, or 10,000 miles per year costing 12 to 20 cents from a cornfield that would be better served making food.

Even if the figures were more supportive of the ethanol case, biomass in general does not scale very well. Silicon based PV, on the other hand, is hugely scalable and relatively cheap. It really isn’t a fair fight.

(Click to enlarge)

The calculation for rooftop solar is not quite as straightforward as multiplying the number of kilowatts by the number of hours of sun in a year. NREL has done the math on how many kWh you get from a fixed (non-tracking) array per day from a square meter depending upon location. It is roughly the measure of how many hours per day the panels will produce peak power. The US average is around four hours which means that,

For an individual homeowner, a 3-kW PV system in a less than arid region will still yield 4,000 kWh (3 kW x 4 hours x 365 days) and enough EV miles to cover the average annual 12,000 – 15,000 miles of commuting. Even at 15 cents per solar kWh (and, as mentioned, many PPAs are coming in at half that figure or less), you will save about 10 cents per mile over the gasoline price. The 5-year fuel savings will pay for a 3-kW system.

EV Sales Worldwide (740,000 units)

Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell cannot stop this; they will begin to bleed trillions of miles per year. They had better think seriously about financing solar and wind arrays. The estimated one million EVs on world roads by the end of this year will cover roughly 10 billion miles per year, and over 100 million miles over their lifetime. What will ExxonMobil’s share price be when cumulative EV sales reach 100 million units?

By 2030, millions of people will have transport fuel that is ‘on the house.’ During the midday hours, many grids will experience negative pricing as solar PV floods the market to the extent that the power cannot be stored. As millions of EVs hit the road, four percent of the time, on average (the rest of the time they are in a garage or parked on the street), they will likely become the default destination for stored electricity.

When there are 100 million EVs, figuring 60 kWh batteries, the fleet will provide 6 terawatt-hours of storage, enough to run the U.S. (with 1,000 GW, or 1 Terawatt, of power capacity) at peak power for six hours, or the world (with 5 Terawatts of capacity ) for over an hour. If all the cars sold in the U.S. this year were electric, their battery capacity would be sufficient to power the country for an hour (17 million vehicles x 60 kWh). How many gigafactories will Mr. Musk have to build?

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Buffett-Bet-A-Billion-On-Solar.html

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The Muslim religious holiday of Eid al-Fitr, also known as the “Feast of the breaking of the Fast” marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and is the single day during on which Muslims are not permitted to fast. Muslims celebrate the end of fasting and thank Allah for divine help with their 29 or 30 days long act of self-control.

Depending on cloud covers, time zones, antipathy among competing religious sects, whether a respected religious leader uses binoculars, a telescope, satellite imagining, or his naked eyes ( Da’ish (ISIS), since 5/21/2015 in control of and now destroying parts of Palmyra, credits only naked eyes). Whether the chosen “moon watcher” will be peering skyward from Saudi Arabia or its religious and political nemesis Iran, or from somewhere else, the first sighting of the crescent moon this Ramadan month could fall shortly after sunset on Friday July 16, or 17. Or in North America, on July 18th. Its depends. Sunni and Shia do not always agree on hundreds of Koranic interpretations but sometimes they do agree on the dates for the beginning and end of Ramadan.

The year, the date is unusually important to many for other reasons. According to Da’ish (ISIS) members and even a spokesman, who seem increasingly willing to discuss their seemingly inextricably intertwined religious-political views with confessed heretics like this observer, Ramadan requires a month of accelerated attacks on Islam’s enemies. Hence the urgent need for thousands of new recruits willing to become “martyrs” and join a campaign employing various forms of purification and revenge to be visited upon perceived heretics and non-believers. This year’s Ramadan plan includes the destruction of pagan relics and burial sites and the blowing up of Shia and Sufi shrines (even if the relics are venerated by fellow Sunni Muslims). Sufi are despised by the Salafis who make up Da’ish (ISIS) , al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda and literally scores of similar groups.

On 6/23/2015, the Da’ish (ISIS) media company Al-Furqan released an audio recording by ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-‘Adnani. In it, Al-‘Adnani congratulates Muslims on the commencement of Ramadan, the “month of conquests”, he adds. He calls upon them to join the jihad and attain martyrdom. He focuses on the Shi’ite’s ill-treatment of Sunnis and the claimed Shi’ite’s danger to Sunnis in other Arab countries. Da’ish has been publishing in Palmyra and elsewhere lists the various alleged crimes committed by Shi’ites against Sunnis, while call on the latter to join ISIS in the face of the enumerated threats.

On 6/20/2015, Da’ish (ISIS), according to a reliable source in the 2000 years old cultural heritage site Palmyra, has sent its militiamen to launch its local cultural heritage cleansing campaign. Dr. Maamoun Abdulkarim, Director-General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria confirmed that it was that date when ISIS jihadists blew up the tombs of Mohammed bin Ali, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin, and scholar Nizar Bahaa Eddine adding that “IS has destroyed at least 50 mausoleums dating between 100-200 years old in the regions under its control in north and east Syria.”

Early 6/24/2015, this observer was able to confirm from a claimed eye-witness via Skype, a report of the destruction of the Bahaa Eddine shrine that was built during the early 14th Century to honor the scholarship of a Sufi religious scholar from Palmyra. Sufis consider themselves to be the original true proponents of this pure form of Islam and trace many of their original precepts from the Prophet Muhammad either through his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib, or through his companion and friend Abu Bakr.

Destruction of the tombs of Mohammed bin Ali, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin, and scholar Nizar Abu Bahaaeddine, at Palmyra. Photo: 6/23/2015 Al-Furqan.

There are unconfirmed reports arriving from Palmyra at least daily including that all tombs with marble designs are being destroyed because for Da’ish (ISIS) they should not be visible. The extremists have also repeatedly sworn to destroy Shia Islam and also Sufi orders, the latter being largely Sunni and follow one of the four schools of Sunni Islam. The unforgivable crime of the Sufi, according to an ISIS sympathetic sheik is that over the years various Sufi orders have become too close to various Shite movements including Ismailism which impacted the spread of Twelver Sh’ism throughout parts of the Middle East.

On 6/23/2015, a Da’ish representative advised that all Shia and Sufi shrines in Palmyra will be destroyed during Ramadan or soon after. Just as the extremists have blown up dozens of shrines in Iraq and Syria, many belonging to the Sufi sect.

Da’ish (ISIS) forces were observed by locals this past weekend planting mines in and around Palmyra. It was not clear whether they were preparing to destroy the site for claimed reasons of sacrilege or paganism or perhaps becuase they were seeking to deter government forces from advancing toward their new base. Since 6/22/2015 government forces have been regrouping and approaching Palmyra with orders to retake the UNESCO World Heritage site and surrounding area near key oil and gas fields. This strategic area provides Damascus with electricity.

A reliable source who this observer spent time with during my last visit to Palmyra reported via Skype on 6/23/2015 that Da’ish (ISIS) fighters are moving among Palmyra’s archeological sites over a roughly 10 sq. kilometer area and are conducting a survey of ‘pagan sites’ to be destroyed. A Da’ish official advised my source that a special “sharia court’ appointed by the local Emir will instruct the World Heritage site’s “ Purification Units” which, if any, sites are to be spared. There is currently no information available whether any of the Da’ish officials, or specialized sharia court staff or judges designated to oversee the cultural heritage cleansing project has any academic background in Archeology or even in Koranic studies.

During the coming nearly four weeks it’s anyone’s guess what will remain of Palmyra by the end of Ramadan and Eid al Fitr. Most of us who visit with the staff of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museum (DGAM) housed at Syria’s National Museum complex, and who follow this subject are not optimistic. Rather some of us tend toward the tentative conclusion that it is likely Da’ish (ISIS) and allies may well do in Palmyra what has been their pattern over the past year in Iraq– from the 3/6/2014 bulldozing in Mosul to the 4/11/2015 cultural heritage destruction at Nimrud.

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(Civil.Ge) — Domestic and politically motivated violence; increased societal intolerance against minority groups, including hate speech and interference with religious worship; shortcomings in the legal system and inappropriate use of pretrial detention have been identified as the most important human rights problems in Georgia last year, according to the U.S. Department of State’s annual report.

In other problems the annual human rights report, released on June 25 and covering developments of 2014, notes “abuse by law enforcement officials; substandard prison conditions; allegations of political influence in the administration of justice; allegations of improper electronic surveillance; pressure on opposition figures to withdraw from local elections; and substandard living conditions for internally displaced persons (IDPs).”

The report, which relies heavily on reports from the Georgian Public Defender and local NGOs, says that despite of progress since the 2012, complains about abuse by penitentiary officials continued.

It says that although the government took steps to foster accountability, “there were some reports that security force members committed abuses with impunity”

“NGOs and the public defender maintained the incidence of police abuse was higher than the number of cases investigated by the prosecutor general and that failure to conduct systematic investigations and pursue convictions of all alleged abusers contributed to a culture of impunity,” reads the report.

Unlike previous reports, which were noting problem of “external and internal influence on the judiciary”, the recent one says that “there were some indications of increased judicial independence.” It, however, also says that “challenges” still remained in this regard.

Citing NGO coalition for an Independent and Transparent Judiciary, the report says that the “key challenges to judicial independence included flawed judicial selection processes for Supreme Court justices and the chief justice and unclear procedures for disciplining judges.” It also notes criticism voiced by the civil society groups of a three-year probationary period for new judges before their appointment for life.

“Judges typically applied higher standards to requests from prosecutors to institute wiretaps, search residences, and detain defendants before trial in cases involving former government administration officials,” reads the report.

But on pretrial detention, the report, citing concerns of local court monitors, says that prosecution uses “legislative loopholes” to prolong nine-month limitation of pretrial detention.

“Each new set of charges restarts a nine-month clock, and prosecutors often waited to file new charges until the pretrial detention clock was about to expire on the original charges,” reads the report.

When original nine-month pretrial detention for former Tbilisi mayor and one of opposition UNM party leaders Gigi Ugulava was nearing its end, prosecutors re-qualified in March, 2015 one of the criminal charges against him in order to remand him in custody. Although this case was not included in the report, as it covers developments of last year, the U.S. embassy said in March that prosecution’s move appeared to be an “effort to subvert the nine-month limit on pretrial detention.”

Ugulava has appealed the Constitutional Court seeking repealing of legislative clauses, which he argues contradicts the constitution, which sets nine months as a maximums term for pretrial detention.

On Ugulava’s original pretrial detention last year, the report mentions assessments of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and Transparency International Georgia, which said that former Tbilisi mayor’s arrest lacked proper justification and contradicted requirements prescribed under the law. Ugulava at the time was UNM’s campaign manager for the June, 2014 local elections.

The report says that throughout the pre-election campaign ahead of municipal polls, “there were reports of aggression from individuals targeting members of the UNM opposition and insufficient protection of the freedom of association by security officials.”

It also says that the in first half of 2014 “opposition party activists were physically attacked in several cities throughout the country”; it mentions cases of attacks on UNM MP Nugzar Tsiklauri and one of UNM senior figures Zurab Tchiaberashvili. The report also mentions arrest of former head of the Khoni municipality and his former deputy. “NGOs noted the detention of active members of the opposition UNM party before the June local elections for crimes allegedly committed several years previously raised questions about the motives for the arrests,” reads the report.

In the section of “arbitrary arrest”, the report mentions detention of five former MoD and general staff officials in late October, which led to Free Democrats party quitting the GD ruling coalition. The report notes that seven NGOs at the time said it was “difficult to identify the signs of a crime at this stage” in the case. Five detainees were released from pretrial detention last week; trial into the case, which involves charges of alleged misspending, is still ongoing.

According to the report, the major human rights problems that caused tension between the government and NGOs last year were “insufficient oversight of surveillance, mistreatment of prisoners, and dismissals for alleged political motivations.”

On surveillance, the report notes legislative amendments, which were adopted by the Parliament last year.

Although the report notes that NGOs “criticized the law for not providing adequate protection of civil liberties,” it also describe those amendments as providing “additional checks on the Ministry of Internal Affairs by requiring both court approval and authorization of the personal data protection inspector for access to information obtained through surveillance.”

Opponents of the legislation, which has also been taken to the Constitutional Court, say that as long as the Interior Ministry maintains direct access to telecom operators’ networks, it can easily circumvent personal data protection inspector and launch unlawful surveillance.

The report says that “domestic and other violence against women remained a significant problem.”

“In most of the domestic violence cases addressed to the public defender, police limited their response to issuing verbal warnings and initiating preventive supervision, which did not provide actual protection from a recurrent abuse,” reads the report.

It also says, citing data from the Interior Ministry, that 636 investigations into domestic violence crimes were launched as of September, 2014, up from 399 in 2013. But NGOs believe cases of domestic violence were underreported.

According to the report in 2014 there were several instances of discrimination against minority communities. It mentions the case when a group of locals in Kobuleti nailed pig’s head to the front door of a planned Muslim school.

“NGOs criticized the government for failing to carry out effective investigations in previous cases motivated by religious hatred,” it says.

The report says that “societal prejudices against LGBT persons remained strong.”

“The Media Development Foundation noted numerous homophobic statements issued by high-level officials, politicians from various political parties, and media outlets, most frequently in the context of the antidiscrimination law”, which was passed by the Parliament last year, says the report.

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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a war-prone institution that poses the biggest threat to world peace. Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union, which turns out to be the greatest disaster for the stability of the international system, NATO expansionism and aggression is rampant. Although NATO was established to contain the Soviet Union, in reality, however, it has always been a complacent vehicle for U. S. hegemony.

After the Soviet break-up, NATO’s illegal expansion in Eastern Europe was relatively successful as long as Russia kept quiet. President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, more accurately a gathering of Western war-hawks, should have rung the warning bells in the West. Explicitly, Putin scorched the U. S. for its policy and warned of NATO’s expansionism eastward and the deployment of a missile defense shield that was directed at Russia.

Despite Putin’s admonition and the disaster NATO has created in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, parts of Africa and the Ukraine, this military alliance seems to have learned nothing from its mistakes in the past. The voracity for world domination by the U. S. Empire seems insatiable. It doesn’t make any difference who sits in the White House. U. S. Presidents differ only in nuances.

The creation of a “constructive chaos” was a special fad of the Bush-Warriors that heralded their vision of a “New Middle East”. To divide and dismember the states of the region along religious and ethnic lines was first outlined by Odeh Yinon in an article in the periodical “Kivunim”1 (Direction) in 1982. Such a destruction would be in the Israeli interest, writes the author. What the author proposed over 30 years ago, is now executed by the U. S. and Saudi Arabia across the Middle East. It’s only a matter of time until the latter will also be affected by this political “disease”.

So far, the intervention of the U. S. and its European cronies across the Middle East was a “resounding success”. After 13 years, the strongest military alliance had to leave Afghanistan defeated. There are still some tenth of thousands military advisers in Afghanistan that “train” the Afghan army, plus the well-paid mercenaries who keep the Western puppets going, but the moment they leave this “democratic” facade will collapse. The same holds true for Iraq or Libya.

U. S. Secretary of Defense, Ashton B. Carter, complained the Iraqi army lacks a “will to fight” the Islamic State, which the U. S. and its Arab friends have created in the first place. Although the U. S. military has equipped and trained the Iraqi army for the last four years, why aren’t they able to defeat a bunch of Islamic fanatics? The same holds true for the Afghan army. The Taliban just attacked the Afghan Parliament. It’s only a matter of time until the monstrous U. S. embassy in the highly protected “Green Zone” in Bagdad will be attacked. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as the German Chancellor stated with regard to the desolate situation in Greece and the European Union.

At the meeting in Brussels on 24 June, NATO decided on a huge military build-up on its Eastern flank. The Eastern front-line states will be armed to their teeth with military hardware and combat troops. The U. S. and the Brits came also up with a “new” plan to beef up the training of the Iraqi army,2 to instill into these Arab folks a “will to fight”, taking their U.S. American and Western cronies as an example. The Brits and the U. S. have already sent troops back into Iraq to start their training operation all over again. According to the saying, the more the better, success will come the more NATO troops participate in it. Afghanistan is considered a “shining example”.

Having accomplished the mission in Afghanistan successfully, there is plenty of manpower available to be transferred from Afghanistan to Iraq or the Ukraine. According to the motto, The soldiers must be kept busy. While the situation in Iraq is still out of control, the U. S. and its allies are eager to create the next war theater by “prepositioning” tanks and heavy artillery at the Russian border in order to make the allies feel safe.

Why are Europeans and above all Germans so eager to march with open eyes into a new Cold War with Russia? It seems that U.S. power and pressure are so irresistible that the politically ailing European Union has to go along with Ukrainian putschists, although the imposed sanctions against Russia hurt primarily Europeans. While the dogs of Western sanctions bark, the Eurasian caravan moves on, which could be seen at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) from 18 to 20 June.3

Remarkable was the meeting between Putin and the Saudi defense minister and deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman who is currently waging a war in Yemen. At the meeting with President Obama at Camp David, the Saudis snubbed Obama by sending only senior officials instead of King Salman. At the meeting with the other Arab leaders and officials Obama praised the “extraordinary friendship and relationship” between the U. S. and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the days of this special relationship are numbered.

The post Dissolve NATO Before It’s Too Late – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Revived controversy over the integrity of Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup and persistent criticism of the conditions of migrant labour in the Gulf state appear to have stiffened Qatar’s back as it responds to attacks on multiple fronts, including judicial inquiries in Switzerland and the United States, the media, and United Nations and human rights organizations as well as trade unions.

Qatar’s hardening stance threatens to roll back its successful effort since winning the right to host the World Cup four years to convince its critics that it was serious about reform of its notorious kafala or sponsorship system that puts employees at the mercy of their employers.

In the latest indication that Qatar refuses to be seen as caving in to external pressure, Qatar’s Shura or Consultative Assembly that nominally serves as the country’s legislature raised objections to the government’s draft law that would introduce changes to the kafala system. The council took issue with provisions that deal with the entry, exit and residency of migrant workers and said the law needed further study, according to The Peninsula, a Qatari newspaper.

Underlining Qatar’s refusal to be seen to be bullied, Al Sharq, a Qatari news portal, quoted council chairman Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khulaifi as saying that there was no need to rush the draft law.

Activists noted that the council recommendations backtracked on proposals put forward by law firm DLA Piper in a report commissioned by the government as well as suggestions made by the ILO.

The proposal also contradicted submissions made by Qatar to the ILO in January. Qatar told the ILO that “the draft law which relates to the annulment of the kafala system and its replacement by a contract system has been explicitly announced. In addition, the term employer’ replaced the former term used which was master of work…’ The draft law also provides for an amendment to the provisions relating to the ‘release permit’ (to be released from employment), which will allow a worker to request a ‘release permit’ from the competent government body without going back to the employer.

The council’s criticism and proposals do little to alter the dependent status of workers or modify, if not eradicate, the exit visa or release permit system that has caused numerous problems for foreign employees in violation of international standards.

It is likely to cast further doubt on Qatar’s sincerity, provoke harsh criticism from activists as well as the International Labour Organization (ILO), and perpetuate an emerging vicious cycle of increased criticism of the Gulf state and declining Qatari willingness to work with its critics.

The council demanded, according to The Peninsula, that:

• A migrant worker who deliberately creates problems for his employer and by failing to comply his labour contract forces his employer to terminate the contract be banned from changing jobs even if he runs away. As punishment, the council called for forcing the worker to remain employed by his employer for twice the time of the duration of the original contract;
• migrant workers be banned from obtaining a new work and residence visa for a period of two years after their departure from Qatar;
• new visas be granted to workers who completed their contract and left Qatar only with the approval of their former employer;
• allow migrant workers to change jobs at most twice;
• allow workers with open-ended contracts to change jobs only after having been employed for a period of ten years by their original employer and with approval by government authorities;
• domestic workers, the most vulnerable group among migrants, be excluded from the new law;
• the exit visa system be maintained.

“The tone of the Advisory Council continues to be employer-centric, giving little or no consideration to the plight of over 1.5 million migrant workers in the country, most of whom are of low-income,” said Migrant-Rights.org

The Doha-based and government-funded International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) was meanwhile expected to detail its efforts to boost transparency in bidding processes for major sporting events and combat financial malpractice in professional sport at a news conference in Washington.

The media effort was designed to position Qatar at the forefront of the battle to force FIFA and its regional confederations to become more transparent in the wake of the multiple corruption scandals.

“ICSS encourages and supports any proactive ‎action that targets corruption in sport governing bodies by law enforcement agencies and / or governments,” the group said in response to last month’s arrest by Swiss police at the behest of the US Department of Justice of a number of senior officials of FIFA and its regional federations in the Americas on corruption-related charges.

Like he promises for labour reform, the ICSS effort is likely to ring hollow as long as Qatar refuses to be publicly transparent about its bid and willing to confront in detail numerous allegations detailed among others in disclosures in The Sunday Times based on millions of documents allegedly obtained from a server of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), a bastion of non-transparency.

Foreign contractors report meanwhile delays and mothballing of some of the projects included in Qatar’s $200 billion investment in infrastructure. Not all of the planned investment is World Cup-related. Among projects delayed are according to Reuters a $12 billion bridge and underwater tunnel, a chemicals plant and the Doha Grand Park.

It was not clear if the downsizing was exclusively the result of reduced income as a result of lower oil prices as Qatar braces itself for its first budget deficit in 15 years or whether it was reflected uncertainty over the status of the soccer tournament in light of judicial investigations in the United States and Switzerland.

The investigations involve probing of the integrity of the Gulf state’s successful but controversial bid. The investigations stem from the worst corruption scandal in soccer history that prompted FIFA president Sepp Blatter to resign earlier this month.

Qatar nonetheless is signalling that it is determined by hook or by crook to successfully implement its sport strategy that is designed to turn the Gulf state into a global hub even if the soft power aspect of the strategy fails as a result of the multiple controversies.

Forbes quoted an unidentified sport manager as saying that Qatar Sports Investment, a subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund that owns top French soccer club Paris Saint Germain, was part of a joint venture negotiating to acquire effective control of Formula One at a cost of at least $7 billion. The bid follows a veto by Bahrain, an FI race host, against Qatar also hosting the world’s most-watched annual sports series.

Viewer numbers are important given Qatar’s concerted effort to occupy a central space in the hearts and minds of sports fans through BelN, the sports channel of the Gulf state’s Al Jazeera television network. News reports said Qatar was bidding up to $1.5 billion for Digiturk that has 3.3 million subscribers and owns the broadcast rights of the Turkish Football League.

Sports broadcasting is unlikely to be able to compensate for the uncountable number of hearts and minds Qatar has lost as a result of its handling of the corruption allegations and its failure to follow its labour-related words with deeds.

Qatar at this point may not care. A sense of having been dealt an unfair hand by the media and others and that criticism by some is levelled to score points has hardened Qatari attitudes against a backdrop of a minority citizenry fearful that reforms risk loss of control of its culture, society and state.

“Qatar may lose the public relations war but it will do what it takes to keep the World Cup hosting rights. It will cut whatever deals necessary and use beholden business and investment lobbies to keep the World Cup in Qatar. The emir cannot afford to lose it,” said a long-standing observer of Qatari society and politics.

The post Advisory Council Rejects Labour Reform As Qatar Stiffens Its Back – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Over the last two years, the Moroccan security services have broken up a considerable number of cells that recruited young Moroccans embracing with jihadist thought.
In an interview published by the international weekly “Jeune Afrique” the Moroccan Minister of Interior Mohammed Hassad stated that eight jihadist cells were dismantled between January and May this year and another 14 in the year 2014, noting that the terrorist threat is “real Morocco, as elsewhere.”

The Minister added that twenty-seven jihadist cells have been dismantled in Morocco since 2013, said Minister of the Interior, Mohamed Assad, stressing that the Kingdom adopts both an operational and preventive approach in the fight against the terrorist threat.

The minister also said that counter-terrorism operations, both internally and in the framework of cooperation with foreign partners including Spain, are “inconclusive,” stressing that “nothing is possible without preventive work “.

It has, in this regard, emphasized the importance of religious guidance, upgrading of criminal law, the fight against precariousness and exclusion through the INDH and enhanced security feature Hadar set up throughout the country, noting that “this multidimensional commitment was more than once hailed by the international community.”

“It is no coincidence that Morocco was elected in May as co-chair of the Global Forum of fight against terrorism,” he argued.

Mr. Hassad added that Morocco, which is aware of the risk of recruiting Moroccans including ex-prisoners by terrorist groups, radicalization has initiated measures through the Mohammed VI Foundation for the reintegration of prisoners and support programs for micro-projects and self-employment, adding that the religious field by promoting a moderate and tolerant Islam is not neglected in prison.

The minister said, that the number of Moroccan fighters in the ranks of Daesh Iraq and Syria is estimated at 1,350, including 220 ex-prisoners, adding that several of them in responsible positions terrorist organizations, which may explain “the appointment of Moroccans.”

These fighters recruited via the Internet and social networks, or through touts, often close relatives, has he indicated, adding that the funding is through internal transfers of funds to networks.

Mr. Hassad confirmed that among these fighters, 286 were killed in conflict zones, while 156 others returned to Morocco.

Since 2003, Morocco has been adopting a pre-emptive strike policy against the terrorist groups. Morocco doesn’t want to be involved in supplying any region with terrorist fighters because it is itself a victim of that. Morocco’s counter-terrorism policy, which involved legal, social and religious reforms, has worked, in general. Nevertheless, there have been reversals with each policy area with human rights shortcomings and corruptions working to undermine the pace and rate of reforms. These accumulated reversals eventually fed the 20 February 2011 social movement which forced a return to more active reforms. There are certain default patterns of thought present among some in the country that could create a political opening for the convicted terrorists and their sympathizers. To help, the outside world needs to proceed in a manner that includes the Moroccan public. The Moroccan government is aware broadly of the problem and has offered a package of reforms.

Morocco follows a complex anti-terrorism policy borne largely out of the state’s reactions to the events of 16 May 2003, when a group, later found to be associated with al-Qaeda, attacked a number of sites in the city of Casablanca with home-made suicide bombs, killing about three dozen people including most of their own. The terrorist attacks of that day continue to shape anti-terrorism policy, broadly speaking, although with some recent and significant modifications. The strategy adapted after 16 May 2003 included an anti-terrorism law, social assistance programmes and a reform of the religious sector. In each of these three sectors there have been both successes and failures.

In general, the anti-terrorism law 03.03 has worked well to prevent further attacks. Unfortunately, it has become the target of attacks by both human rights activists and Islamists who believe that it is being used unfairly. Among the arguments raised is that the law itself is not the issue, but rather excesses that are believed to have been committed in law enforcement. Concerning social reforms, these were well intentioned and appear to have made some dent in reducing certain forms of substandard housing.

Finally, the religious reforms included better education and female inclusion in the religious establishment. From a purely security perspective, the policy was effective because it reduced the number of attacks and prevented the transformation of Morocco into an open territory for al-Qaeda, like Algeria and Mauritania. However, Morocco is totally aware that the security approach on its own will not lead to positive results. Therefore, an ambitious social policy was launched to improve the well being of Moroccans. Health, decent housing and major economic investments to create jobs especially for the youth.

Besides, Morocco’s amended anti-terror law now stipulates a prison sentence of between 5 and 15 years for anyone found guilty of inciting terrorism. The aim of this is to protect the youth from becoming victims of sweeping propaganda.

Morocco has set up a model for other neighboring nations to fight terrorism and extremist ideologies. So far it has been successful but certainly a regional effective cooperation will put an end to this threat that does not menace only countries in north Africa and Sub Saharan Africa but Europe and even the United States.

The post Morocco: A Successful Pre-Emptive Strike Policy Against Terrorist Cells – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Following Nigeria’s watershed elections in March 2015, which saw Muhammadu Buhari defeat incumbent Goodluck Jonathan in the country’s first democratic transition of power since the establishment of civilian rule, Western media were quick to praise the result, dubbing Nigeria the “bellwether of African democracy”. While the peaceful handover of power on a continent characterized by “presidents for life” is certainly a development to be celebrated and “arguably the most consequential political event in Africa in the last decade” according to Philippe de Pontet, Africa Head for Eurasia Group, its revolutionary power over the continent should not be overestimated. Indeed, the process of transition is not always smooth in the numerous countries where the democratic seed has been planted but has yet to flourish.

After 52 years of authoritarian rule, Guinea held its first democratic vote in 2010, but despite high hopes for this West African nation the elections were plagued with civil unrest on the streets of its capital, Conakry. The close contest, which saw Alpha Condé defeat rival Cellou Dalein Diallo, was welcomed by Western observers but also raised concerns that tensions between the two main ethnic groups, Malinke and Fulani, would make future democratic votes a potential source of instability and democratic consolidation a long, and perhaps violent, process. Hit by one of the worst Ebola outbreaks in the region, many fear that domestic tensions have risen further due to extreme poverty and lack of food for the displaced. During this year’s elections, unresolved ethnic tensions might again see the vote overshadowed by violence, underling the internal rocky path some African country’s face as they move to a more Western-minded democratic system.

The Republic of Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville (so as not to be confused with the Democratic Republic of Congo), will also have its strength tested as it heads to the polls for the 2016 presidential elections. President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, 72, has been at the helm of the country for 35 years, first coming to power following a military takeover in 1979 and later losing his post in to Pascal Lissouba in 1992 after holding the country’s first multi-party democratic elections. However, in 1993 the country quickly fell into a state of bloody fighting, which saw ethnic groups pitted against each other, bringing Sassou-Nguesso back to power in 1997 where he has remained after winning elections in 2002 and again in 2009.

Today, the President who has yet to formally announce he will be running, is accused of trying to strengthen his grip by amending the constitution, which he himself drafted in 2002, to secure a third term in office. Despite having received the backing of 102 parties, organizations, associations and individuals, outrage by the opposition and media over any constitutional changes has painted a picture of a country moving away from the consolidation of democracy, without admitting that the circumstances under which the current constitution was drafted means change is long overdue.

“The historical role played by the [2002 Constitution] has ended”, chirped the Minister of Telecommunications, Thierry Moungalla, while Sassou-Nguesso underlined that his constitution was designed to ensure the stability and development of a country mired in war. Indeed, in 1997, the country broke out into a full ethnic civil war in part motivated by the warlords hunger for oil wealth, which Sassou Nguesso eventually crushed in 1999 with the help of Angolan troops and support from France, whose company Elf controlled 3/4 of Congo’s oil production. The subsequent 2002 constitution, which abolished the role of the Prime Minister and gave the President overarching powers over both state and government, was drafted to reinstate the state’s authority, which had been weakened by years of war and instability.

According to the World Bank, since the Constitution’s adoption in 2002, the Republic of Congo has remained relatively stable, giving the country an opportunity develop its oil, agriculture and manufacturing industries and invest in much needed infrastructure. Despite accusations of foul play and the manipulation of term limits, observers have largely missed that a change of the outdated constitution drafted in a time of crisis will increase democratic checks and balances, return the power of the prime minister and ensuring plurality within the government.

The point is that that the process of casting votes and adhering to term limits are not always signs of democracy. While Congo has a long way to go until it adheres to the standards of a flourishing democratic nation, recent steps to amend the constitution in light of a changing environment should be seen a long term investment into democratic institutions and a necessary step if the country is to experience consolidation in the future.

Although one can understand the West’s concern over Africa’s leaders increasingly trying to hold on to power, one must also take into account the intra-country difficulties nations face in their uphill battle to establish democracy. From Nigeria to Guinea to Congo-Brazzaville, democracy has never proven itself to be smooth process or a natural choice for countries with deep tribal roots and sectarian divisions, and the West would be wise to note that in most African nations still learning to live with independence from their colonial masters, democracy will not come overnight.

*Nicolas Remy is a freelance researcher and digital media analyst residing in Paris.

The post African Democracy Won’t Flourish Overnight – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In the age of the Internet, it isn’t enough for an authoritarian ruler to control what appears in newspapers and on television. If he really wants to isolate his opponents, he must try to intimidate journalists into not covering those the leader doesn’t like lest they post their reports online and give aid, comfort and especially exposure to his opponents.

That is a line Vladimir Putin has now crossed in the case of Grigory Pasko, an independent journalist who has been researching the case of Igor Bitkov, a Russian businessman now being detained in Guatemala at Moscow’s insistence because he apparently crossed Putin personally or one of Putin’s entourage.

(For background on Bitkov and his travails, see “Putin Rebuilding the Iron Curtain in His Typical ‘Hybrid’ Fashion,” 19 July 2015, at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/06/putin-rebuilding-iron-curtain-in-his.html.)

The Bitkov case is such an egregious example of the combination of corruption and official overreaching at the top of the Russian political system that not surprisingly it has attracted the attention of journalists and rights activists both in the Russian Federation and the West.

That attention, from people whose stories Putin can block from appearing in Russian-government controlled media but cannot be equally successful in preventing such reports from appearing online or in publications now beyond the reach of the Kremlin, has prompted the Kremlin to take steps to keep even independent journalists from covering stories like this one.

On Wednesday, Pasko writes on Ekho Moskvy today, he was attempting to visit a source on the Bitkov case in Neman, a city in Kaliningrad oblast near the border of the Russian Federation. He was stopped by about 150 armed men, clearly FSB officers and told he was in a border zone without the necessary authorization (echo.msk.ru/blog/bordo07/1573340-echo/).

But it quickly became obvious that they were acting not because he had violated any rule but rather because in the words of one, they had received “orders” to stop him from doing the interview and had come up with a charge that they likely couldn’t substantiate to try to achieve that end.

Pasko says he was held for three hours in what he described as a kind of “time machine” that returned him back to the Soviet era, when this kind of thing happened often enough to any journalist who tried to investigate that which the communists did not want investigated. Now, Putin is restoring this approach, using government assets to keep certain things under wraps.

However, this ploy isn’t working, at least as far as Pasko is concerned. He pledges to go ahead with his investigative journalism, a brave step given the resources the Kremlin can deploy against him. But Putin’s effort is backfiring in exactly the way one could have predicted: Other online journalists are picking up the story and thus attracting more attention to it and to the Bitkov case (newkaliningrad.ru/news/briefs/incidents/6299245-zhurnalista-sobiravshegosya-pisat-pro-semyu-bitkovykh-v-nemane-zaderzhalo-fsb.html

The post Putin Seeking To Intimidate Journalists Into Not Covering His Opponents – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A suicide bomber from an Islamic State affiliate unleashed the first terrorist attack in Kuwait in more than two decades, killing at least 25 people and wounding scores more in a bombing that targeted Shiite worshippers during Friday prayers.

The bombing struck the Imam Sadiq Mosque in the residential neighborhood of Al-Sawabir in Kuwait City. It is one of the oldest Shiite mosques in Kuwait.

It was the third attack in five weeks to be claimed by a group calling itself the Najd Province.

Daesh had claimed two prior bombing attacks on Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia that killed 26 people in late May.

The attack took place as worshippers were standing shoulder to shoulder in prayer, according to a witness at the mosque, Hassan Al-Haddad.

The explosion ripped through the back of the mosque, near the door, he said, adding that other worshippers behind him said they saw a man walk in, stand in the back with others and detonate his device.

The Ministry of Interior said 25 people were killed and 202 wounded. Police formed a cordon around the mosque’s complex immediately after the explosion.

A posting on a Twitter account known to belong to Daesh claimed the explosion was the work of a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt. It said the attack was carried out by the Najd Province, which had also claimed the Saudi bombings.

Immediately after the attack, Kuwait’s Emir, Shaikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, visited the site of the attack. The Cabinet convened an emergency session

OIC Secretary-General Iyad Madani said that this terror strike could not be carried out by a Muslim. He said the terror group that committed this evil act has nothing to do with humanity or religion. “The perpetrators only insulted and distorted Islam.”

The Council of Senior Scholars denounced the unspeakable crime and said it is a continuation of attempts to hit the national unity and stability of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

It stressed that those behind the ugly strike violated all human and religious values, and said its perpetrators have committed a great sin.

The post Bloody Friday Jolts Middle East appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Selcuk Çolakoğlu

Relations between China and India, the world’s number one and number two most populated countries respectively, have always attracted worldwide attention. Today, these two countries are ranked among the most important economies of not only Asia but the entire globe. China is currently the second largest economy in the world, while India is the seventh. The increasing economic capacities of the two countries continue to boost their weight in global politics as well. In that regard, it is not surprising to see that both have been invited to the G-20, which came into existence as the G-7’s scope was widened. China and India also embarked on a quest to establish a non-Western global economic order by founding the BRIC in 2001 together with Russia and Brazil. This entity, which evolved into what we now know as the BRICS, with the participation of South Africa, has additionally given way to the foundation of a development bank. Likewise, India became a founding member of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which was recently established by China as an alternative to the U.S. and Japanese-led Asian Development Bank.

Within this context, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his most recent visit to China in May 2015, with the perceived convergence between New Delhi and Beijing stimulating worldwide excitement as bilateral relations between the two capitals had already gained momentum by the early 2000s. Clearly the leaders of both countries are determined to maintain the dynamism that underlies improved relations.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited India in September 2014, he began his visit in Gujarat, the hometown of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Prime Minister Modi kindly reciprocated the gesture by beginning his return visit to China in Xian, the hometown of President Xi.

Increased economic cooperation

Topping Modi’s agenda during his official visit to China was economic cooperation, which had also been the priority of his predecessors. The two leaders aim to boost not only the bilateral trade volume between India and China but also the depth and scope of reciprocal investments. Even though the volume of bilateral trade between the two countries increased significantly over the last 15 years, its current level of $70 billion is still far from satisfactory considering its largely untapped potential. On the other hand, India is confronted with the very same dilemma that is unavoidably tussled with by other countries with strong commercial ties with China, namely that the structure of bilateral trade between China and these countries – including India – favors the former due to the immensely competitive nature of the Chinese economy vis-à-vis any of its partners. Imports of high value-added goods from China cost India a trade deficit that nearly amounts to $40 billion.

The second pillar of the two parties’ overall push for further economic cooperation is mutual investments. India is planning to attract Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) as well as funds from China that can be used to finance domestic investments. For that purpose, Modi and Xi have already signed 24 bilateral agreements in the sum of $22 billion. Industries such as iron and steel, telecommunications, and energy are set as the priority targets of increased cooperation. As part of the comprehensive deals reached at bilateral meetings, credits that are provided by Chinese lenders to the Indian telecommunications firm Bharti Airtel alone approach $2.5 billion. Indian telecommunications firms in particular are hoping to make the best use of China’s accumulated knowledge, technological know-how, and practical experience in the field. Another area in which India desires to benefit from Chinese experience is transportation infrastructure. India wishes to establish a high-speed railway network covering the entire country. To this end, Indian firms seem ready for joint production. Likewise, Chinese firms have given the green light to technology transfers to their Indian counterparts.

Border dispute

Despite coming a long way in a short period of time in terms of deepening economic cooperation, New Delhi and Beijing are still confronted with some fundamental problems that continue to impede further improvement of their bilateral relations. The essential obstacle here is the prolonged border dispute. The two nations are yet to reach a formal agreement on their 4000-km border along the Himalayas, with each party laying claim to territories controlled by the other. The boundary in question is the longest disputed border in the world. Relations between the two countries had been strained throughout the entirety of the Cold War period due to chronic border disputes which date back to the 1950s, and it was particularly the military conflict along the Himalayan border in 1962 that left the deepest wound in the memories of the two nations. Furthermore, negotiations that had been steadily carried out up until recently proved unable to yield any concrete results. Under such circumstances, the possibility of renewed conflict cannot be ruled out, even considering the fact that there hasn’t occurred even a single major skirmish along the border in question for the last three decades.

The border dispute was also among those topics that were brought to the agenda during Modi’s visit to China. However, no real progress could be made in the name of resolving the dispute. During his meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, Modi pointed to the immense potential that bringing a fair and permanent solution to the dispute could tap, an act that would revolutionize bilateral relations. He further stressed the urgency of establishing intensive confidence building measures (CBMs) for the sake of the resolution process.

Competition in foreign policy

China and India are still strategic rivals despite their increased economic cooperation. Alongside the U.S., Japan, and Australia, India is also seen as one of the major actors that has an interest in offsetting China’s dominance over Asia. That India and China came to be known as fellow members of the BRICS does not suffice by itself to reverse the two giants’ inherent tendency towards taking sides with rival groupings which are once again beginning to overwhelm Asia’s strategic environment. Moreover, New Delhi set its permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a primary national goal in the name of being recognized as a great power on a global scale. In contrast, China pioneers the opposition bloc which stands firmly against any attempts to reform the UNSC because such would mean including not only India but Japan and several other countries in the Council as well.

The two countries’ strategic interests in South Asia are also mutually exclusive. China maintains intimate ties with Pakistan, with high-level defense cooperation at the core thereof, a reality that deeply disturbs India as might be expected. On the other hand, Beijing feels extremely uncomfortable with India’s hosting of the Tibetan opposition. China even fears that India might still be supportive of Tibet’s independence.

Likewise, there is a heated rivalry between Beijing and New Delhi for influence over Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. New Delhi shapes its foreign policy in tandem with the West, backing Myanmar’s opening to the rest of the world as well as its related democratization project. However, Beijing believes one of the essential motivations behind such a policy is to detach Myanmar from China’s larger zone of influence. Moreover, we can also talk of an intensified competition between India and China to ‘pull the strings’ in Sri Lanka. Beijing managed to establish amicable relations with Mahinda Rajapaksa, the powerful former President of Sri Lanka who had been ruling over the country for ten years until he unexpectedly lost his seat in the presidential elections of January 2015. The incoming President Maithripala Sirisena is known to have close ties with India, which led to the impression that India actually gained a significant diplomatic victory over China as far as global public opinion is concerned.

From a broader perspective, it seems that while an urge for closer cooperation motivates enhanced economic affairs between New Delhi and Beijing, competition is still what marks their bilateral diplomatic relations. The diplomatic rivalry in question is not limited to strategic concerns, but is further fueled by a chronic border dispute. On the other hand, neither Beijing nor New Delhi can afford to turn a blind eye to the huge benefits that intense economic cooperation can potentially bring about. Therefore both countries are trying to capitalize on mutual economic benefits while working hard to contain political frictions within manageable limits. Here, a delicately-designed strategic balance as such may not be easily upended in the foreseeable future.

*This piece was first published in Analist monthly journal’s June issue in Turkish language.

The post China-India Relations: From Competition To Cooperation – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Neil Berry

The impending 10th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings finds British Muslims facing the prospect of being a demonized community forever on trial. It can be small consolation to them that Muslims in other Western societies are similarly beleaguered.

The other day Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a much-publicized speech on extremism. Alleging that some of them “quietly condone” the barbarities of Daesh, he exhorted British Muslims to redouble their efforts to identify extremists. It was not the first time that Cameron addressed the UK Muslim community in the manner of a stern headmaster. It was not the first time either that the Conservative Muslim peer, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, greeted his comments with barely concealed outrage, insisting that most Muslims are already doing their utmost to combat extremism and that the prime minister should be championing them, not making speeches likely only to demoralize them.

One might wonder why Cameron chose to speak not on British soil among his own people but at a conference on western security in Slovakia. The dispiriting truth is that a decade after the London bombings political discussion of radicalization remains narrowly fixated on the issue of security, with scant acknowledgement that it is a scourge whose roots are many and various.

At a recent meeting in London, the Norwegian diplomat and sociologist, Terje Rod-Larsen, pondered the parallels between the appeal of Daesh and the appeal once exercised by Soviet Communism. The parallel is not exact: The number of westerners who defected to the Soviet Union was a fraction of the number who are throwing in their lot with Daesh. Nor did those defectors have a conspicuous ethno-religious profile. Nevertheless there is a certain sense of history repeating itself. Now, as in the mid-20th century, western society is in turmoil, with many fearing for the future and seeking desperate remedies for problems of purpose and identity. And now as then, paranoia is rampant. Where in the past western hysteria raged about “Reds under the bed,” today it rages about Muslims suspected of scheming to overthrow democracy and establish an Islamic “tyranny.”

It may be that radicalization is part of a wider crisis, a malaise of modernity that includes killing sprees by disturbed young Americans. The trouble is that in a time of heightened tensions, with opinion furiously polarized, frank discussion of social pathology is seldom welcome. Increasingly, any suggestion that the West is implicated in the rise of Islamist militancy is liable to be excoriated as appeasement of evil. Before he came to power David Cameron described Britain as a “broken society.”

Now, responding to what many want to hear, he is more prone to speak of Britain as a great country. In the UK, as elsewhere, there is a closing of ranks and a closing of minds. Even inside the reputedly “progressive” Labour Party some believe that the party was defeated in the recent UK general election because it failed to appear sufficiently patriotic.

Samuel Johnson’s jibe that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” is much quoted. What is certain is that it does little to promote understanding and can all too easily shade into nationalism, an unthinking belief in “my country right or wrong.”

It is ironic perhaps that even as he admonishes Muslims to be good British citizens, David Cameron is demanding the release of the interminably delayed Chilcot report into the Iraq war which may underline that the UK political establishment is not without responsibility for the grim turn that events have taken. The expectation is that the report will have damning things to say about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior British figures who endorsed a military intervention based on manipulated intelligence and now seen as an act of catastrophic folly.

The Iraq war is not the sole cause of radicalization — but neither is it irrelevant to the issue. Publication of the Chilcot report could help to bring closure to a toxic episode that has done more than a little to spawn the anger and alienation out of which radicalization may spring.

The post UK: Ten years After 7/7 – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

If arms sales are increasingly a commodity business, governed mainly by price, it could increase regional militaries’ access to advanced military equipment and technologies. Still, other factors affect any true “commoditisation” of the regional arms market.

By Richard A. Bitzinger*

Is the global arms market, and in particular, arms sales to Southeast Asia, becoming increasingly “commoditised”? Commoditisation refers to an economic situation in which there exists an almost total lack of meaningful differentiation between competing products, and when they are instead sold almost entirely on the basis of price.

Commoditised products are characterised by standardised, common technology or attributes, rather than brand or capabilities uniqueness, resulting in basically a price-based competition. If arms sales to the region are increasingly a commodity business, therefore, it would result in the expanded access of Southeast Asian nations to advanced military equipment and technology.

The Southeast Asian arms market

The Southeast Asian arms market is unique in many ways. While it is relatively small – collectively worth only US$2 billion to US$3 billion annually, according to data put out by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) – it is a rapidly growing market and one of the more truly open and competitive markets when it comes to arms sales (compared to India, which traditionally have bought arms mainly from the Soviet Union/Russia, or to Japan or South Korea, are more or less captive markets of the U.S. defence industry).

These factors are especially important, given the “buyer’s market” in arms that has existed since the end of the Cold War. As their military procurement budgets have fallen, the traditional leading arms producers in North America and Europe have increasingly gone abroad in search of new markets to compensate for shrinking ones at home.

European defence firms such as BAE Systems, Saab, and Thales currently earn up to three-quarters of their revenues from overseas sales. The Russian arms industry is believed to rely on exports for up to 90 percent of its income. At the same time, other weapons-producing states are emerging as competitive arms exporters. The Israeli defence industry typically exports more than 75 percent of its output, while countries such as China, Ukraine, and South Korea have all become aggressive marketers of armaments.

Arms exports have not only become critical to the survival of most arms producers, the global arms market has become saturated with highly motivated sellers. Consequently, supplier restraint has been replaced by a readiness to sell just about every type of conventional weapon system available to Southeast Asia. No potential sale is too insignificant to be passed over, and sellers are ready to deal when it comes to price.

Patterns of arms transfers to Southeast Asia

As a result, some of the most advanced weapons systems have proliferated to the region, and from a broad variety of suppliers. Russia has sold Su-30 fighter jets to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam; additionally, Indonesia is acquiring 24 ex-USAF F-16 fighters from the United States. The Philippines has ordered 12 FA-50 fighters from South Korea, while Thailand has bought 12 Gripen fighter jets from Sweden.

Meanwhile, regional navies have acquired submarines from France, Germany, South Korea, Russia, and Sweden, as well as surface combatants from China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

Southeast Asian ground forces show even more eclecticism when it comes to arms acquisitions. The Malaysian army operates tanks from Poland; armoured vehicles from the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Turkey; multiple-rocket launchers (MRLs) from Brazil; howitzers from South Africa; antitank weapons from Pakistan, Russia, France, Spain, and the US; and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) from Russia, China, Pakistan, and the UK. Indonesia’s TNI is outfitted with tanks from Germany; armoured vehicles from France and South Korea; antitank weapons from Russia, Sweden, and the US; SAMs from China, France, and Sweden; and it has ordered MRLs from Brazil.

Consequently, no single arms supplier dominates the overall Southeast Asian arms market. In fact, no arms exporter holds more than 10 percent of the market for the past decade, according to SIPRI data; the only exception is Russia, with a whopping 44 percent – but that is due solely to huge sales to just one country – Vietnam.

Commoditisation: Caveats and Cautions

From these patterns of recent arms transfers, one might infer that the Southeast Asian arms market is becoming increasingly commoditised. The fact that most individual Southeast Asian militaries possess a diverse array of weapons systems acquired from a relatively wide range of supplier states would suggest that the capabilities of competing weapons systems are judged to be relatively equal, and that therefore price is the primary driver behind the arms acquisitions process.

In general, this might be true, or is increasingly so. Commoditisation may certainly have helped new suppliers, such as Brazil, Poland, and South Korea, break into the Southeast Asian arms market. It may also explain how Russia has been able to find expanded opportunities for arms exports to the region, particularly of its fighter jets.

Nevertheless, even given relatively equal capabilities, price alone does not always have the greatest impact on weapon acquisition. A host of other motivations can and do affect arms-purchase decision-making, including reliability, after-sales support (spare parts and upgrades), technology transfers and offsets (such as licensed-production arrangements), and even bribery.

The vexing issue

In addition, countries may acquire weapons from a particular supplier in order to achieve specific political¬/military goals, such as boosting alliances, promoting military interoperability, or forging closer bilateral relations; conversely, a country may choose to diversify its arms purchases in order to signal that it does not wish to be too reliant on one supplier. For political reasons, some nations will always refuse to buy weapons from certain suppliers, no matter how cheap or how capable (e.g., the Philippines and Vietnam will probably never acquire arms from China, nor Malaysia from Israel).

Consequently, the Southeast Asian arms market may be considered only partially commoditised: price, and not branding, may increasingly drive arms acquisition decision-making, but other factors still wield considerable influence.

Whether a commoditised market or not, the fact remains that regional militaries are rapidly acquiring the means by which to significantly upgrade and modernise their warfighting capabilities. At the end of the day, this is the issue that vexes future regional security and stability.

*Richard A. Bitzinger is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Military Transformation Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Formerly with the RAND Corp. and the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies, he has been writing on military and defence economic issues for more than 20 years.

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Chile “always” takes in war refugees and “continuously evaluates” new asylum seekers requests, said Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during a ceremony presenting letters of nationalization to 65 Palestinian refugees.

“We are currently offering refuge to 1,833 people from around the world and evaluating new cases and new requests”, added the Head of State.

Referring to the main reason for the ceremony, Bachelet said she was “very emotional”, since today marked “the end of a process and start of a new chapter”.

Chile is home to the largest Palestinian settlement in the world, excluding Israel, the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Syria. Palestinian migrants began arriving in Chile at the end of the XIX century, from Buenos Aires where they had less space, even on a cultural viewpoint, due to the massive presence of European immigrants. An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Palestinian descendants currently live in Chile, with a large presence also of Christians.

In this context, Senator Francisco Chahuán reminded that some bills are being reviewed in parliament on the creation of a Day of the Palestinian refugee and militant, for better understanding of their plight to return to the occupied Territories, and expressed concern over the civic condition of children of refugees from those areas, who not having Israeli citizenship should receive Chilean citizenship to avoid being considered stateless. The Senator in fact called publicly on the government to five priority to the bill toward a resolution to he problem.

The post Chile: Palestinian Refugees Become Citizens appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Joe Dyke

For the past few months, Kobani and the surrounding area have been something of a sanctuary in Syria. Since the withdrawal of self-declared Islamic State from the northern town in January, it had been peaceful.

The threat of violence seemed low enough for reconstruction efforts to begin. Foreign aid workers started shuffling in and out. It was seen as a place of relative calm, where the future, at least, looked positive. Not any more.

One attack has changed everything. Around 150 people were killed on Thursday when a large group of IS militants infiltrated the predominantly Kurdish city, carried out a series of bombings and fired indiscriminately on civilians.

Thousands of recently returned refugees have had to flee again, many of them now stranded on the Turkish border. Hundreds more civilians are being treated for their wounds in hospitals, either in Kobani or in Turkey.

The longer-term damage could be even more telling. It had taken months to build up confidence and to start getting international aid agencies heavily involved in the reconstruction effort. Their expertise is vital for clearing explosive ordnance out of the city so that basic amenities and systems can start functioning again.

The security situation now seems along way off allowing that to happen.

Small numbers of IS fighters remained in the city on Friday, but the majority had been killed, the Associated Press reported.

Hakmat Ahmad, external relations officer at the health authority in Kobani, said that the hospitals in the city were full of civilians and children, with more than 100 people being treated for serious wounds.

“There are still clashes going on,” he told IRIN by telephone from Kobani on Friday afternoon.

A Turkish humanitarian official, who preferred not to be named as he was not allowed to speak to the media, said 165 people from Kobani were being treated in hospitals inside Turkey, while five died of their wounds on Friday.

Border row

As thousands of Kobani residents rushed to the Syrian border, Ibrahim Ayhan, a Kurdish MP for the city of Urfa in southern Turkey, condemned the Turkish government’s decision to close one of the crossing points.

“Between 1,000 and 2,000 people have been waiting at the Mürsitpinar border gate since yesterday. However, they are being denied access to Turkey,” he told IRIN.

Ayhan said a second border gate at Yumurtalik remained open and that Kurdish aid organisations had been able to deliver some aid to those fleeing the fighting.

“This attack was a barbarity perpetrated entirely against civilians,” he added. “The majority of victims were women and children.”

The Turkish humanitarian official told IRIN that the Mürsitpinar border post would only open fully again when the security situation had improved.

“We are committed to helping the people in Kobani,” he said, denying that Turkey was turning back legitimate refugees. “I would say that it is important to maintain a balance between security and the needs [of Kobani’s residents].”

Ahmed, a refugee from Kobani in Turkey whose family live near the border, confirmed that there were a large number of residents stranded near the border. “Many people have had no food or water for two days,” he said.

Reconstruction on hold

Kobani was the site of one of the largest and fiercest battles against IS last year, with Kurdish forces – backed by US air strikes and Syrian rebel units – eventually prevailing after months of street by street fighting.

The victory came at a high price. In the process, the city was up to 70 percent destroyed, while both unexploded American bombs and IS booby traps pose major dangers for those returning.

Since IS’s withdrawal in January, plans have been developed for a major demining program with foreign backing.

A sense of growing security in recent months had been further strengthened by Kurdish gains over IS, with the militants driven out of the key city of Tal Abyad only 10 days ago.

This gain was significant as it meant those in Kobani could travel freely to another Kurdish city of Hassekeh by road, vastly reducing prices of fuel and food.

Several NGOs had been in the process of shoring up financial deals for major demining operations, while others had been developing new systems in health and other sectors.

IRIN spoke to three international aid groups working inside Kobani, none of whom were willing to be identified for security reasons. All agreed that the impact of the Thursday’s attack on their work was likely to be significant.

While they all said they wanted to continue working in the city, they said they would first need to review their security policies.

The policy of sending foreign experts to advise on demining efforts in the city, one aid worker said, would likely be halted for the foreseeable future. Another called it a major “wake-up call.”

However, Ayhan, the MP, said he was confident the large number of Kurdish aid groups working in the city would carry on with the reconstruction no matter what.

The post Islamic State Attack Puts Kobani Reconstruction At Risk – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Larissa Converti

The sizzling, mouth-watering asado, or barbecue, is one of Uruguay’s most popular and cherished dishes among locals as well as foreigners. To add a little extra flavor to the irresistible meat dish, the typical Uruguayan will reach across the table for some salt. But, they are not able to do that anymore—at least, not easily.

Salt as the Culprit

Having the largest percentage of obese children in the region, with 30 percent of its people suffering from hypertension, or abnormally high blood pressure, Uruguay has taken active measures to combat its obesity problem by making salt less accessible in restaurants and schools.[1] Cutting back salt consumption has been a priority in the eyes of Montevideo’s city government because the country’s national consumption of sodium is double what the World Health Organization recommends.[2]

“People are not allowed to put salt anymore on the table,” says Lucia Soria, the owner of Jacinto restaurant in Montevideo. “The city government made it illegal to have saltshakers out in restaurants,” she explains. “No mayonnaise either. Or ketchup. In fact, pretty much anything with a lot of sodium is banned. If you want it, you have to ask for it.”[3]

Excess salt is not only a problem in restaurants and at home, but also in the ready-made meals and prepared foods such as bread, breakfast cereals, processed meats, and snack foods that are popular in many countries of the Americas. People are often unaware of where most of the salt they consume comes from and how severely damaging it can be to their health.

Not only does high sodium intake have a strong connection with obesity and hypertension, but it also has a direct link to syndromes such as osteoporosis and left ventricular hypertrophy. It is also a strong risk factor for heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases.[4] Given the serious health risks of consuming too much salt, it becomes clear why Uruguay’s government has stepped in, though not all Uruguayan citizens are satisfied with the government’s actions.

Is the Policy Too Aggressive?

As a former doctor, Tabaré Vazquez, the new Uruguayan president, has highlighted the importance of improving health-related policies. The government has made substantial efforts not only in combating obesity, but also in implementing tough anti-smoking laws and highlighting the dangers of alcohol consumption. Many Uruguayans criticize these public health laws, especially the recent sodium law, as too aggressive and interventionist, but the government argues that educating people to not eat salt in large quantities has resulted in little change. Government officials learned this lesson two years ago when Mexico gently encouraged restaurant owners to take saltshakers off their tables, but few complied.[5] “Food makers would much rather take voluntary action than face regulation,” said Dr. Hospedales, Executive Director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency. “However, the possibility of regulatory changes is a strong motivator and should remain on the table.”[6]

The salt law stipulates that in addition to removing saltshakers from tables, restaurants must also provide warnings on the menu about salt consumption and must make low-sodium alternatives available for customers. Additionally, like Uruguay, Brazilian bakers have nationally agreed to lower the sodium content in their products by 10 percent since 2013.[7]

Obesity as a Growing Problem in Latin America

Typically people associate malnutrition with hunger and poverty. However, the other direction of malnutrition, that which is due to overeating of non-nutritious foods, continues to pose a huge threat to the health of inhabitants all throughout Latin America. According to a report by the Overseas Development Institute last year, more than 56 percent of Latin American adults are overweight or obese, compared to the global average of 34 percent.[8]

Experts attribute one of the biggest causes of obesity in Latin America to the power of multinational food and beverage firms, particularly those from the United States. With a lot of political influence and money for advertising, the food industry has shaped the general public’s ignorant and disinterested attitude towards sugar and salt moderation. Yet, this attitude is understandable when many children, for example, grow up immersed in a consumer culture that overpoweringly pushes unhealthy options to such a large extent.

Juan Rivera of Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health admits that some mothers in Mexico, when weaning their babies, substitute milk for soda as early as three months. As a result, it is unsurprising that 7.1 million Latin American children under the age of 5 years old suffer from chronic malnutrition, while 3.8 million are considered overweight.[9]

Like Uruguay, several countries in the region have recently tried to address the health risks of consuming foods with high salt and sugar content. Mexico, for example, has imposed a tax on the sale of sugary drinks, while Chile requires food producers to place warning labels on foods high in sugar, salt, and calories. Yet these government policies have drawn a significant backlash from large food and drink companies. The United States’ efforts have also failed repeatedly, including the banning of super-sized soft drinks in New York and the required labeling of genetically modified foods.[10] The food and restaurant industry feared economic hardship and also argued that the law would have encroached on individual freedoms to consume super-sized sodas and soft drinks. Comparatively, Uruguay’s government has generally been more persistent and successful in enforcing its policies.

“I’ve worked in the restaurant business for 11 years and at the beginning it was only 20 percent of people who didn’t salt their food and now it’s about 20 percent who do,” said Liber Bisciottano, who works in an exclusive asado restaurant in Montevideo.[11]

Some argue that Uruguay’s zero-tolerance approach is a reflection of the country’s social liberalism as it is one of Latin America’s most progressive countries.[12] Although the struggle against salt consumption continues in many Latin American countries, places like Argentina—another country whose salt intake doubles the recommended amount—has reason to be hopeful in its efforts. Several months ago during World Salt Awareness Week, Fundación Favaloro, an Argentine scientific institution, launched a hashtag campaign called #LaSalQueSeVe (#TheSaltYouCanSee). Salt is difficult to quantify, which is why people intake much more than they are aware of. To solve this problem, Favaloro teamed up with Grey Advertising Argentina and distributed bottled colored salt, which received positive attention from several major salt companies in the area that wanted to purchase these items. The campaign even received support from the famous Argentine soccer player, Lionel Messi.[13] Fortunately, Argentina is another country that has made clever efforts to encourage people to use the commodity in moderation.

Conclusion

Until recently, dietary salt has been largely overlooked as a mechanism to improve health despite copious amounts of evidence linking high sodium intake with hypertension. It is especially important that the salt intake of younger populations be controlled in order to prevent obesity and cardiovascular diseases that may occur in later stages of their lives.

The recent ban on salt and proactive food policies in Uruguay serve as experiments for the rest of Latin America and the world to examine and possibly steer consumers away from local restaurants and processed foods that contain high quantities of sodium. As people are easily swayed by advertising and conditioning, businesses must continue to portray healthier food alternatives in an appealing and accessible way. This also means that food labeling should be accurate and people must be more cognizant of how much salt they are consuming in their diet. Uruguay’s approach to combating obesity and heart-related problems may be strict, but at least the country is making a much-needed effort to warn its citizens about the dangers of salt overconsumption.

When people, not just children, have been accustomed to high salt consumption for a long period of time, they may not easily notice the high salt levels in their food. However, if they do not make the necessary changes to their diet, they will have to confront the awaiting health consequences.

*Larissa Converti, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Notes:
[1] Lourdes Garcia-Navarro. “Assault on Salt: Uruguay Bans Shakers In Restaurants and Schools.” NPR. May 17 2015. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/17/407056903/assault-on-salt-uruguay-bans-shakers-in-restaurants-and-schools

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Rebecca Howard. “Side Effects of Too Much Salt Intake.” SF Gate. http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/side-effects-much-salt-intake-6577.html

[5] Kevin Gray, “Uruguay declares war on ketchup.” Fusion. June 4 2015. http://fusion.net/story/143969/uruguay-declares-war-on-ketchup/

[6] “Countries of the Americas are Taking Action to Reduce Salt Consumption and Save Lives.” Pan American Health Organization. November 2 2011. http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6152%3Acountries-americas-taking-action-reduce-salt-consumption-save-lives&Itemid=1926&lang=en

[7] Ibid.

[8] Anastasia Moloney and Chris Arsenault. “Obesity weighs on Latin America after success in fight against hunger.” Reuters. February 13 2015. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/13/us-latam-obesity-idUSKBN0LH13520150213

[9] Kayla Strickland. “Malnutrition in Latin America.” Borgen Magazine. June 27 2014. http://www.borgenmagazine.com/malnutrition-latin-america/

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Kevin Gray. “Uruguay declares war on ketchup.”

[13] “La Fundación Favaloro lanza una sal visible” El Diario 24. March 17 2015. http://www.d24ar.com/nota/346805/la-fundacion-favaloro-lanza-una-sal-visible.html

The post The Salt Assault: Uruguay Tackles Obesity Issue – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A Swiss organisation called United Bible Groups in School, University and Vocations will no longer receive funding from the Swiss government, according to a decision released on Friday by the Federal Administrative Court in St Gallen.

United Bible Groups had received monetary support without interruption from 1992 until 2014, when a review was conducted of 26 faith-based applicants for funds. The group had applied for funding to support its activities for children and adolescents, but its application was rejected by the Federal Social Insurance Office in 2014.

United Bible Groups contested the decision, but lost.

As justification for its ruling, the federal court stated that United Bible Groups does not offer any independent extra-curricular support for the development of children and adolescents. Instead, it concentrates on its mission of spreading the Christian faith.

Providing extra-curricular support is a condition for receiving a grant under the Child and Youth Assistance Act, however.

The Act does not specifically rule out support of religious organisations. The decisive factor is whether the activities provided by the organisations contribute to the development of the adolescents, without focusing on proselytising.

The decision, which went into effect on June 17, 2015, cannot be appealed to the Swiss Federal Court.

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By John R. Haines*

Speaking to students in St. Petersburg last January, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the Ukrainian army “is not an army, but a foreign legion, in this case a foreign NATO legion.”[1] For going on three decades now, Russia and her apologists have used that term—NATO’s foreign legion—mostly to deride former Soviet-era allies who joined the western alliance.[2] The intended epithet aside, however, the notion of a NATO “foreign legion” has a less one-sided provenance than one might think: in October 1960, for example, President Eisenhower (shortly before a NATO Council meeting) floated the idea of a strategic force under exclusive alliance control, and subject to a code of discipline and conduct like that of the French Foreign Legion.[3]

Running counter to Eisenhower’s idea was Charles de Gaulle defense of his force de frappe.  In a November 1959 speech to the French Military Academy he asserted that no country could conceive of a national role without disposing independently of modern military power. During the Cold War, America’s NATO allies—as a function of the United States’ preponderance of strategic arms—tended more often than not to view critical strategic and political questions through the perspective of their reliance on those arms (which they did not control) and “not often enough through the perspective of shared responsibility.”[4] While strategic arms have arguably lessened in importance in Europe’s changed post-Cold War security dynamic, the “shared perspective” deficiencies persist. This is true generally in Western Europe if perhaps less so on a case-by-case basis among (some) European political leaders.

This essay sets out to address two questions. First, what of General De Gaulle’s point—that there is no national role without independent military power—which he elaborated as, “The defense of France must be French…A country like France, if it makes war, it must be its war”? The second (and related) question concerns the status of the “shared perspective,” institutionalized in NATO’s foundational collective defense principle. That question is a more provocative one: are American armed forces increasingly cast in the role of a foreign legion? It is asked not for the purpose of denigrating armed forces that serve alongside those of the United States. Rather, it is at its core a political question, as Stefan Soesanto of RAND Europe suggested earlier this year:

“[I]n the absence of permanently stationed forces across NATO’s Eastern flank, the Alliance’s collective self-defense posture…is being increasingly defined in political terms rather than sound deterrence strategy. True, NATO has put forward suggested increased military exercises, additional rotational forces, and the formation of a rapid response battalion. These temporarily circumvent the notion of inadequate territorial defense of NATO’s Eastern members, but do little to address the widening shortfalls of Alliance solidarity, defense commitments, and military cohesion within NATO itself.”[5]

The author makes three contentions. The first is that the direction of public opinion within the four core NATO member-states of western continental Europe—France, Germany, Italy and Spain (which we will refer to as “Euro-core NATO” for simplicity’s sake)—has moved aggressively away from both the principles articulated by General De Gaulle, and from NATO’s foundational principle of collective defense. The primary evidence for this contention is data published in a recent report by the Pew Research Center on which the author draws heavily, and which bears close reading in its entirety.[6]

The second contention is that this direction-of-change is giving rise to a new principle (of a sort)—neither Gaullist “the defense of France must be French” nor collective defense—of simply outsourcing Europe’s defense to the United States. Among its several effects, it construes American armed forces as a foreign legion of sorts, in the sense that when NATO makes war (or tries to deter it, as in Ukraine), it is largely not a NATO campaign waged collectively. Instead, it is a NATO campaign waged largely by American armed forces.[7] With their American enforcer in reserve, Germans in particular sees their alliance role as that of a political negotiator. This is no doubt reflected in Ukrainians’ positive view (56% approval) of Chancellor Merkel, common to both western (63%) and eastern (47%) Ukraine alike.[8]

The third contention is that Euro-core NATO inanition is not reciprocated by Russia, according to date published separately by the Pew Research Center and the Levada Center (the latter a highly respected independent public opinion research organization based in Moscow). A solid 55% majority of Russians believes their country should follow it own unique “historical pathway.”[9] That figure rises to three-quarters when one adds the option of “returning to the path the Soviet Union was on.”[10] Given all this, it should come as no surprise that the Pew Research Center found a plurality of Ukrainians (47%)—and fully two-thirds in the eastern Ukraine regions bordering the Donbass—want a negotiated settlement with Russia and its separatist proxies.[11]

In such an atmosphere the salience of NATO’s fundamental shared responsibility—embodied in its Article 5 duty of collective defense[12]—is increasingly incoherent. Rejecting Mr. Putin’s premise in context—properly derided as “nonsense” by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg—it is nevertheless arguable that for many Europeans who live comfortably west of the contentious eastern borderlands, United States armed forces are seen as a de facto (if with deference to American political sensibilities, unacknowledged) foreign legion. NATO member-states going back to the time of the alliance’s founding have expounded the virtue of collective defense “without answering unanswerable questions”[13] about precisely how and why NATO would go to war. Today’s answer to “how” is almost certainly with a preponderantly American force, especially given the increasing willingness of Euro-core NATO to set aside De Gaulle’s axiom.

It is not infrequent that a “foreign legion” of one sort or another is suggested as a means to reify the principle of collective security.[14] Witness in the mid 1940s Henry Cabot Lodge’s proposed “Volunteers Freedom Corps,”[15] an idea taken up with alacrity by President Eisenhower to further “burden sharing” around post-war European integration.[16] Why, though, an “American foreign legion”? A cynical response might lie in European experience with another one:

“More than any other of the advanced industrial states, France has been willing to engage in peace enforcement operations. Perhaps this is because, relying largely on its Foreign Legion, French political leaders have not had to be as sensitive as others to the risk of casualties.”[17]

The Pew Research Center surveyed public opinion in the eight most populous NATO member-states—Canada, France, Germany Italy, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States—on questions about Russia, Ukraine, and collective defense.[18]

Treaty commitments are one thing; the public’s willingness to see those commitments fulfilled is quite another. Pew found “at least half of Germans, French and Italians say their country should not use military force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia” [emphasis in original]. Evincing Euro-core NATO ambiguity over perhaps the fundamental tenet of the alliance, outright majorities in Germany (58%), France (53%), and Italy (51%) rejected the principle in the case of a hypothesized Russian attack on a fellow member-state. To the point about an American foreign legion, consider that “All NATO member publics are more likely to think the United States will come to an ally’s defense (median of 68%) than to be willing to do so themselves” [emphasis in original].[19]

This reliance is puzzling in light of the continuous drawdown of United States armed forces in Europe—from a high of 440,000 in 1957 to an all-time low of some 67,000 in 2015—which, as one commentator writes, is “negatively affecting Alliance cohesion and strategic decision-making to the point of mere status quo maintenance.”[20]

It is not as some suggest, an expression of cognitive dissonance, evidence that Euro-core NATO at one and the same time holds two conflicting propositions—acknowledging an Article 5 collective defense duty but disinclined to commit military force to do so. Instead, much of what the Pew Research Center calls “the NATO publics” effectively eschew Article 5, and by extension, acquiesce to a capricious bipolar balance with Russia and the United States poised uneasily at opposing ends. When Pew asked, “If Russia got into a serious conflict with one of its neighbors that is our NATO ally, do you think our country should or should not use military force to defend that country?” only two, the United States (56%) and Canada (53%), answered in the affirmative. One might well ask how long those majorities will endure given fading support among many Europeans for the proposition of participating in their own collective defense.

The preferred (non Euro-core Poland being a notable exception) alternative, of course, is for the United States to balance a belligerent Russia more or less on its own. It might be said that only the United States is in a position to do so, and that NATO’s European members should forever play at best a supporting role. This largely replicates a debate from the 1940s that has continued to resurface periodically ever since. Then, George Kennan and others feared that a stark bipolar confrontation would encourage ideological extremism, which would likely take the form of “an ambitious internationalism” on Russia’s part and “isolation on the part of Americans.” Kennan argued further, “the constraints of a world with more than two centers of power would be favorable because the presence of other ‘poles’ in the system would restrain both the Soviets and the Americans from taking too many foreign policy risks and from indulging in crusades to reshape the world in their own image.”[21]

Today such crusades are more common that Kennan might have hoped (but clearly feared). One is Russia’s assault on Ukrainian sovereignty. Here, too, Pew’s findings offer little comfort. Only a “median of 39% among NATO publics say Russia is the main culprit in the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. The pro-Russian separatists in Luhans’k and Donets’k (18%) are a distant second.” And less than a third of Germans and Italians believe Russia bears the largest share of the blame.  Their disinclination to point fingers is not reciprocated: half of Russians say NATO constitutes a major military threat to their country.[22]

Nor do most Russians share the NATO publics’ dyspeptic view of foreign affairs. President Putin enjoys overwhelming popular approval “for his relations with the U.S. (85% approve), Ukraine (83%), and the EU (82%), even as he faces sanctions from the U.S. and EU for his actions in eastern Ukraine.”[23] Russians “have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S. (81%) and NATO (80%),” and as noted, fully half see NATO as a major military threat.[24] This is especially troubling taken in combination with two other findings: 69% think the Soviet Union’s dissolution was bad for Russia, and 61% believe there are parts of neighboring countries that rightfully belong to it.[25] Many Europeans living well west of the borderlands that stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea seem to find little to fear in Russia’s territorial ambitions. However, the message is grim for NATO allies like Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Pew’s Russian survey results are both interesting in their own right, and for demonstrating how popular support among Russians for President Putin’s foreign policy has held up in the face of Western economic sanctions. Other data—these from the Levada Center—add useful, if troubling context. Over three-quarters of Russians (79%) agree with the proposition “Russia is returning its traditional role of a superpower and asserts its interests in the post-Soviet space.”[26]

A clear majority of Russians believes the United States poses a threat to Russia (59%), that threat taking various forms including “creating obstacles for Russia’s development” (48%) and “trying to control Russia’s economy” (40%). Russians are ambiguous about whether they would prevail in an armed conflict with the United States and NATO, with only a third responding that Russia would while slightly more than half (52%) agreed that “in such a war, there would be no winner.”[27] There is near unanimity that the United States and NATO would not prevail (only 5% thought they would). Russians believe their country is more feared (35%), more hated (26%) and more respected (16%) by foreigners today than six months ago.[28]

Russians clearly blame the United States and NATO (56%) and Ukraine’s political leaders (27%) for the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.[29] Not, however, that they are following events there: over half (52%) claim to pay little or no attention to events there.[30] More than three-quarters expect eastern Ukraine’s political future will be different, ranging from independence (41%) to joining Russia (15%) to remaining part of a federalized Ukraine (21%).[31] A solid majority believe Russia should follow it own unique “historical pathway,”[32] begging among other questions, how many Europeans still believe, De Gaulle-like, that their own country still has one?

If Russia poses a threat to one’s country—and half the NATO publics say it does—and if one looks to the United States as a defender, then a key finding of the Pew survey ought to be especially troubling:

“U.S. defense expenditures account for 73 percent of the defense spending of the alliance as a whole. And this is among the highest proportion of total alliance security spending since the early 1950s. But only 49% of Americans express a favorable opinion of the security organization. This is unchanged from 2013 but down from 54% in 2010 and 2011. Meanwhile, the proportion of Americans who say they have an unfavorable view of NATO has grown from 21% in 2010 to 31% in 2015.”[33]

Former American defense official Joseph Nye once noted, “The United States has to recognize a basic proposition of public goods theory: if the largest beneficiary of a public good (such as international order) does not provide disproportionate resources towards its maintenance, the smaller beneficiaries are unlikely to do so.”[34] It does not, however, perforce follow that they will, or that the American public will forever tolerate European free riders.

The Pew report clearly sounds an alarm for political leaders within the alliance’s member-states. Surely, western Europeans who believe Russia menaces the European Union’s eastern borderlands see no chance these states can defend themselves?[35] The coincidence of public opinion across Euro-core NATO—Germany, Italy, France and Spain—turning against a commitment to Article 5 collective defense while believing the United States will come to a NATO ally’s defense begs the question formulated by General De Gaulle: can a country conceive of a national role without disposing independently of modern military power? As observed in the aftermath of the Balkan conflict:

“[A]n important force for European unity in foreign policy—perhaps even a precondition—is American prodding…In European circles, the extent to which the US becomes a regulator of the EU’s almost natural tendency towards national hypocrisy in foreign policy remains underappreciated.”[36]

If the Pew findings are to be believed, the United States is perceived by growing shares of the NATO publics as less a regulator than an enabler of this national hypocrisy. In another observation coming out of the Balkan conflict, Douglas Hurd noted pithily, “out of Kosovo came the bitter saying that the Americans fight the wars while Europe does the dishes. That is not a sound basis for an alliance.”[37]

General de Gaulle’s point notwithstanding, much of Euro-core NATO today does conceive of a national role without disposing independently of modern military power. That role is best summarized in a third quote coming out of the Balkan conflict:

“Troops and weapons did not stop the violence. What did was the hope provided by the EU that it would intervene in starting political negotiations.”[38]

Perhaps, but where has that curtailed, rather than accommodated or appeased, Russian aggression? One should hasten to add, that “national role” is in fact a transnational one; it is European, not one of individual NATO member-states. And to add as well another Balkan conflict legacy, viz., “intense American irritation with the failure of EU countries to put up the money and forces needed…to make a meaningful contribution to security.”[39]

Amidst a self-questioning Europe and a self-assured Russia sits a hapless Ukraine. Large majorities in Germany (77%), Spain (66%), Italy (65%) and France (59%) oppose supplying it with arms, and majorities in Germany (54%) and France (53%) oppose its bid for European Union membership. On the other side, fully 83% of Russians support President Putin’s Ukraine policy and blame the Ukrainian government for the violence in eastern Ukraine. Only about half of Ukrainians (45%) blame Russia for the violence in eastern Ukraine, a comparable share (47%) seeing Russia as a major threat.

Lacking support in core-Euro NATO, it is no surprise that a plurality of Ukrainians (47%) beyond the Donbass and Crimea—and nearly two-thirds (65%) of Ukrainians in the regions bordering the eastern Ukraine conflict zone—say the best way to resolve the conflict in the east is to negotiate a settlement with the separatists and Russia.[40] However, one-half of Ukrainians seek the status quo ante bellum—the Donbass to remain part of Ukraine on the same terms as before the crisis—while only 11% of Russians do, with 59% favoring the Donbass’ independence or annexation to Russia.

In the past, as Malcolm Chambers observed, “The Alliance successfully deterred Soviet adventurism in western Europe in part by allaying the Kremlin’s concerns about an overly independent and powerful West German state.”[41] It is not unreasonable to infer that today the German and French publics in particular for similar reasons choose to frustrate Ukraine’s ambitions of EU and NATO membership. If so, Janusz Lewandowki’s recent comment that Europe is seen as a “continent of mistrust” is quite understandable.[42]

Core-Euro NATO willingly applies a Clausewitzean rule in the case of Ukraine that it seemingly does not comprehend may apply to it as well.  “One country may support another’s cause,” Clausewitz maintains, “but will never take it so seriously as it takes its own.”[43] Its seemingly perverse faith that the United States will backstop Article 5 collective defense is well captured by James Holmes’ acerbic reformulation of Clausewitz’s postulate:

“A country never attaches as much value to its own cause as its stronger ally does. It sends a moderately sized force to its own help; but if things go wrong the operation is pretty well written off, and the ally bears the brunt of its defense.”[44]

Where does this leave NATO? It is, as David Robinson wrote two-plus decades ago, a very odd alliance.

“Without some nuclear basis, no European force can protect against this long-term, vague, merely potential threat of a disruption of any European balance of power. This is the case for NATO. It is entirely negative. It relies on no positive quality of NATO but on the inherent weakness of all alternatives. NATO has only three virtues: (1) it already involves the United States and Canada; (2) it is already a nuclear alliance—indeed it is, though it hates to admit this, primarily a nuclear alliance; and (3) the military organizational structure of NATO has a special value for the stability of central Europe.”

“These arguments for NATO are not good arguments. They do nothing to overcome the obviously preferable desire for genuine and egalitarian collective security. They are simply real-world arguments that cannot be overcome.”[45]

The Euro-core publics’ unwillingness to do what is necessary to fulfill Robinson’s third virtue—stabilizing central Europe—is certainly not lost on President Putin, witness Russian actions in the Baltics, Ukraine, Transdniestria and elsewhere. Perhaps Western security interests would be best served if Americans and Russians alike never read the Pew and Levada reports, if those reports were safely locked away until the Euro-core publics sort out their apparent existential crisis.

About the author:
*John R. Haines is a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Executive Director of FPRI’s Princeton Committee. Much of his current research is focused on Russia and its near abroad, with a special interest in nationalist and separatist movements. As a private investor and entrepreneur, he is currently focused on the question of nuclear smuggling and terrorism, and the development of technologies to discover, detect, and characterize concealed fissile material. He is also a Trustee of FPRI.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI under the title: Between a Self-Questioning Europe, a Self-Assured Russia, and a Hapless Ukraine: How American Armed Forces Became NATO’s Foreign Legion

Notes:
[1] “Putin: Ukraine army is NATO legion aimed at restraining Russia.” RT [published online in English 26 January 2015]. http://rt.com/news/226319-putin-nato-russia-ukraine/. Last accessed 18 June 2015. His full statement read, “”In fact, this is not an army, but a foreign legion, in this case, a NATO foreign legion, which, of course, does not pursue to protect Ukraine’s national interests. They have different goals, and they are connected with objectives of geopolitical containment of Russia, which does not coincide with the national interests of the Ukrainian people.” See: “Putin: Ukrainian army is a NATO legion.” Pravda.ru [published online in English 26 January 2015]. http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/26-01-2015/129617-putin_ukraine_nat…. Last accessed 18 January 2015.

[2] For example, “For the military of the three new NATO members [the reference is to Hungary, Poland, and Czech Republic], the switch from serving the Russian empire for the US empire is seen by many as a chance for a new military career, a kind of US foreign legion.” James Petras (1999). “NATO: Saving Kosova [sic] by Destroying It.” Economic and Political Weekly. 34:23, 1417.

[3] Keith W. Baum (1983). “Treating the Allies Properly: The Eisenhower Administration, NATO, and the Multilateral Force.” Presidential Studies Quarterly. 13:1 [The Economy in Presidential Policy, Winter 1983), 87. President Eisenhower’s specific proposal was for an “integrated nuclear strike force” as a “kind of foreign legion under exclusive NATO control.” See: “Memorandum of Conference with the President: NATO Atomic Force, 4 October 1960.” Cited in Steve Weber (1992). “Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO.” International Organization. 46:3, 667. http://ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/weber%201992.pdf. Last accessed 18 June 2015.

[4] Ibid., 85.

[5] Stefan Soesanto (2015). “Europe needs less soldiers—but more European ones.” NATO Review [published online in English 13 February 2015]. http://www.nato.int/docu/Review/2015/Also-in-2015/europe-defense-budget-…. Last accessed 20 June 2015.

[6] Pew Research Center (2015). “NATO Publics Blame Russia for Ukrainian Crisis, but Reluctant to Provide Military Aid,” (June 2015). http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/06/Pew-Research-Center-Russia-Ukrain…. Last accessed 18 June 2015.

[7] The reason why is no mystery, as Stefan Soesanto points out: “The numbers speak for themselves.  25 per cent of NATO members do not have an air force, 30 per cent have no naval force or maintain a navy with less than 600 sailors, and 50 per cent are fielding an active army of less than 20,000 soldiers. NATO is an Alliance of unequals.” Soesanto (2015), op cit.

[8] Pew Research Center (2015), op cit., 40.

[9] Levada Center (2015). “The Historical Path.” Published online in English 20 May 2015. http://www.levada.ru/eng/historical-path. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[10] These data are from survey results published in May 2015 by the highly respected Levada Center (formally, the “Yuri Levada Analytical Center”). See: “The Historical Path.” Published online in English 20 May 2015. http://www.levada.ru/eng/historical-path. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[11] Pew Research Center (2015), op cit., 39.

[12] The principle of collective defense enshrined in Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty (aka the Washington Treaty) provides that an attack against one NATO member-state is considered an attack against all. Article 5 reads, “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

[13] The quoted text is from a 10 September 1960 telegram sent by General Lauris Norstad, USAF, to NATO Secretary-General Paul-Henri Spaak. Norstad at the time was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR).

[14] For example, “a modest standing UN military force composed entirely of volunteers from member states, a sort of ‘UN Foreign Legion’.” Carl Kaysen & George W. Rathjens (2010). “Send in the troops: A UN foreign legion.” The Washington Quarterly. 20:1. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01636609709550237. Last accessed 18 June 2015.

[15] Lodge’s proposal was based in part on his favorable reading of reports about Germany’s use of disaffected Russians against the Soviet Union commanded by the infamous General Andrei Vlasov. A Soviet Army general captured in Ukraine, Vlasov collaborated with the Nazis to form the Russian Liberation Army aka the ROA (from Russkaya Osvoboditel’naya Armiya).  While Lodge publicly avoided the ROA model and any mention of a “foreign legion, it is notable that the relevant file in his archived papers is titled “Notes on Shall America Organize a Foreign Legion.” See: James Jay Carafano (1999). “Mobilizing Europe’s Stateless: America’s Plan for a Cold War Army.” Journal of Cold War Studies. 1:2, fn (9) on p. 72.

[16] A 1953 United States National Security Council report on the proposed Volunteer Freedom Corps cautioned (with application today in eastern Ukraine and elsewhere), “The reaction of the peoples of a nation [to] . . . a force not integrally a part of a national army and composed of several nationalities may have some bearing on that nation’s position concerning the proposal.” See: USNSC (1953). “A report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on A Volunteer Freedom Corps, 20 May 1953,” p. 15. Quoted in Carafano (1999), op cit., fn(38).

[17] Carl Kaysen & George W. Rathjens (2010). “Send in the troops: A UN foreign legion.” The Washington Quarterly. 20:1, 216. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01636609709550237. Last accessed 18 June 2015.

[18] Pew Research Center (2015). “NATO Publics Blame Russia for Ukrainian Crisis, but Reluctant to Provide Military Aid,” (June 2015). http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2015/06/Pew-Research-Center-Russia-Ukrain…. Last accessed 18 June 2015.

[19] Pew Research Center (2015), 5.

[20] Soesanto (2015), op cit.

[21] Steve Weber (1992). “Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power: Multilateralism in NATO.” International Organization. 46:3, 641. http://ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/weber%201992.pdf. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[22] Pew Research Center (2015), 5.

[23] Ibid., 28.

[24] Ibid., 30-31.

[25] Ibid., 32.

[26] This question was part of a lengthy poll of Russian public opinion conducted in March and April 2014 by the Levada Center. The author accessed the poll results on the Levada Center’s Russian language website at: http://www.levada.ru/books/prezentatsiya-doklada-lva-gudkova-v-kakoi-str…

[27] Levada Center (2015). “Threats from the West.” Published online in English 10 June 2015. http://www.levada.ru/eng/threats-west. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[28] Levada Center (2015). “Russia’s role in the world.” Published online in English 25 March 2015. http://www.levada.ru/eng/russia’s-role-world. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[29] Ibid. The two propositions are, respectively: “The war in Eastern Ukraine is continuing because the leadership of the US and other Western countries needs this conflict to place blame on Russia and restrain Russia’s growth and influence in the world and elevate their own ideals”; and “The war in Eastern Ukraine is continuing because the current leadership of Ukraine needs the war atmosphere to distract its citizens from the real economic and social problems in the country and preserve its grip on power.”

[30] Levada Center (2015). “The Ukraine Crisis.” Published online in English 10 June 2015. http://www.levada.ru/eng/ukrainian-crisis. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Levada Center (2015). “The Historical Path,” op cit.

[33] Pew Research Center (2015), 19.

[34] Joseph Nye (1999). “Redefining the national interest.” Foreign Affairs. 78:4, 27-28. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1999-07-01/redefin…. Last accessed 19 June 2015.

[35] Pew found the percentage of Europeans who believe Russia is a major threat to its neighboring countries (aside from Ukraine) ranged from a low of 38% in Germany to a high of 70% in Poland, with the rest clustered in a 44%-53% range. The corresponding figure in the United States is 59%, and in Canada, 44%. See: Pew Research Center (2015), 17.

[36] John Peterson (2001). “US and EU in the Balkans: ‘America Fights the Wars, Europe Does the Dishes?’.” European University Institute Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSC No. 2001/49), 4.

[37] Douglas Hurd (2001). “Europe must respond to the arc of danger.” Financial Times [published 28 March 2001], 23.

[38] The 2001 statement by Arben Xhaferi, a leading ethnic Albanian Macedonian, is quoted in Peterson (2001), op cit., 1.

[39] Ibid., 21.

[40] Pew Research Center (2015), 12.

[41] Ibid., 14.

[42] Andriy Portnov (2015). “Europe, not just Ukraine, is at war.” New Eastern Europe [published online 15 June 2015]. http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/interviews/1624-europe-not-just-ukraine-i…. Last accessed 20 June 2015.

[43] Carl von Clausewitz (1832; 1989). On War, Michael Howard & Peter Paret, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 603. The full quote reads, “One country may support another’s cause but will never take it so seriously as it takes its own. A moderately-sized force will be sent to its help; but if things go wrong the operation is pretty well written off, and one tries to withdraw at the smallest cost.”

[44] James R. Holmes (2014). “A Clausewitzean View of NATO.” The Diplomat [published online 10 September 2014]. http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/a-clausewitzian-view-of-nato/. Last accessed 20 June 2015.

[45] David Robertson (1991). “NATO’s Future Role: A European View.” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science. 38:1 (The New Europe: Revolution in East-West Relations), 173.

The post How American Armed Forces Became NATO’s Foreign Legion – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Laith Shakir*

California is in the midst of one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, prompting Governor Jerry Brown to declare a water “state of emergency.”

Ordinary Californians are bearing the brunt of this disaster. While the governor has imposed restrictions to reduce residential water consumption, businesses in the fields of agriculture and hydraulic fracturing have been largely exempt. Brown’s unwillingness to take on these gargantuan corporate water-wasters lends a sharp political element to an otherwise natural disaster.

There’s another region in the world, however, where access to water isn’t just decided on the whims of politicians dealing with natural disasters. In fact, the very existence of water crises is official state policy for one country: Israel.

Dying of Thirst

Despite its location in a region thought to be perennially dry, the Holy Land actually has ample natural freshwater resources — namely in the form of underwater aquifers and the Jordan River. Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli settlers live in roughly equal proximity to these resources, which theoretically would allow for equal consumption.

Israeli water policy, however, has made this prospect virtually impossible. In fact, there’s a shocking disparity.

A report from the United Nations found that the average Israeli settler consumes 300 liters of water per day — a figure surpassing even the average Californian’s 290. But thanks to Israeli military action and legal restrictions on access, the average Palestinian in the occupied West Bank only gets about 70. And for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who live off the water grid altogether, daily consumption hovers at around 30. That’s just 10 percent of the Israeli figure.

Both figures are well below the minimum 100 liters per day recommended by the World Health Organization. While Israelis are watering their lawns and swimming in Olympic-sized pools, Palestinians a few kilometers away are literally dying of thirst.

Weaponizing Water

This inequality has deep roots — and it’s no accident.

Almost immediately after the creation of Israel in 1948, the fledgling country took comprehensive action to secure control of the region’s water. These policies were ramped up again following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel first assumed control of the Palestinian territories.

That year, the Israeli armed forces issued Military Order 92 — an initiative that put Palestinian water resources under Israel’s military jurisdiction. This was shortly followed by Military Order 158, which required Palestinians to obtain permits from the military in order to build new water infrastructure. If they built new wells, springs, or even rain-collecting containers without Israeli permission, soldiers would confiscate or destroy them, often without prior notification.

These orders, among others, remain on the books to this day. They form the basis for the administration of water access for nearly 4.4 million Palestinians. Although control of water resources is now officially the domain of Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, Israeli forces routinely perform operations with the explicit intent of destroying Palestinian water infrastructure.

A Veneer of Legality

Decades of peace negotiations have done little to grant Palestinians sovereign control over their resources.

Even after the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, which were supposed to grant the Palestinians some semblance of political agency in the territories, water access remains limited. In fact, the accords simply codified the unfair distribution of water in the region, imbuing these flagrantly harmful practices with a veneer of legality.

Even in Palestinian-administered portions of the West Bank, Israeli troops regularly demolish rain cisterns, pipelines, and agricultural water structures. The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq has meticulously documented a number of these instances, compiling them in a report examining the extent of the hardship these operations cause to West Bank residents.

One case study detailed the destruction of a farmer’s well in a village east of Jenin. His well, along with five others in the area, was destroyed by the military under the pretext that it had been built without proper authorization by Israel — despite the fact that an Israeli permit is supposedly not needed in the Palestinian-administered Area B of the West Bank, where these villages are located.

These operations showcase the coordination between civil and military channels to restrict Palestinian access to water, a system that’s been startlingly effective in its goal.

Even when Palestinians attempt to go through the “proper” Israeli channels, they’re met with innumerable obstacles. Two regulatory organizations — the Joint Water Commission (JWC) and the Israeli Civil Administration — have created a bureaucratic nightmare for West Bank residents attempting to acquire permits to either build new instillations or repair the region’s floundering infrastructure. Both organizations are capable of vetoing petitions without explanation, creating a system that prevents Palestinians from maintaining consistent and comprehensive water access.

Meanwhile, access is severely curtailed even where Palestinians have permission to pump water. The most striking inequality lies in the division of the Mountain Aquifer, the only underground aquifer that Palestinians in the West Bank are allowed to access. Despite being the sole source for the territory, Palestinian extraction is limited to 20 percent of the aquifer’s total capacity. Israel, on the other hand, has access to 80 percent of the aquifer’s water — a stunningly unequal distribution, considering it also has unfettered access to the region’s remaining aquifers and the Jordan River.

A Worsening Crisis

California’s drought has captivated U.S. audiences, sparking concern and calls to action to prevent ecological disaster in the face of natural causes. On the subject of Israel’s deliberate drought, however, media attention has been virtually nonexistent.

This crisis has become the norm for Palestinians for decades now, though its severity continues to increase as water becomes more scarce. The UN estimates that due to Israel’s siege, the Gaza Strip will be uninhabitable by the year 2020. Though the West Bank is relatively well-off in comparison, the water crisis there has resulted in severe economic hardship for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, a situation that’s not conducive to long-term stability in the region.

This water disparity is emblematic of the power disparity between Israel and Palestine — a gulf that seems wholly unrecognized during regional peace talks. In order to have a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question, both parties must enter negotiations on an equal playing field. This is only possible once Israel’s occupation in the West Bank is dismantled, and Palestinians are given access to the water resources they need in order to live their lives with dignity.

*Laith Shakir is a fellow of the Next Leaders program at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. 

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In this week’s address, US President Barack Obama called the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act a victory for hardworking Americans across the country, whose lives are more secure because of this law. The Affordable Care Act is working, and it is here to stay. So far more than 16 million uninsured Americans have gained coverage. Nearly one in three Americans who was uninsured a few years ago is insured today. The uninsured rate in America is the lowest since we began to keep such records. With this case behind us, the President reaffirmed his commitment to getting more people covered and making health care in America even better and more affordable.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
June 27, 2015

Five years ago, we finally declared that in America, health care is not a privilege for a few, but a right for all. And this week, after more than fifty votes in Congress to repeal or weaken this law; after a Presidential election based in part on preserving or repealing this law; after multiple challenges to this law before the Supreme Court, we can now say this for certain: the Affordable Care Act still stands, it is working, and it is here to stay.

On Thursday, when the Court upheld a critical part of the Affordable Care Act, it was a victory for hardworking Americans all across this country whose lives are more secure because of this law. This law means that if you’re a parent, you can keep your kids on your plan until they turn 26. If you’re a senior, or an American with a disability, this law gives you discounts on your prescriptions. You can’t be charged more just because you’re a woman. And you can’t be discriminated against just for having a pre-existing condition.

This law is working exactly as it’s supposed to – and in some ways, better than we expected it to. So far more than 16 million uninsured Americans have gained coverage. Nearly one in three Americans who was uninsured a few years ago is insured today. The uninsured rate in America is the lowest since we began to keep such records.

The law has helped hold the price of health care to its slowest growth in 50 years. If your family gets insurance through the workplace, not through the Affordable Care Act, you’re paying about $1,800 less per year on average than you would be if trends before this law had continued – which is good for workers and it’s good for the economy.

The point is, this is not some abstract political debate. For all the misinformation campaigns, and doomsday predictions; for all the talk of death panels and job destruction; for all the repeal attempts – this law is helping tens of millions of Americans. This isn’t just about Obamacare. This is health care in America.

With this case behind us, we’re going to keep working to make health care in America even better and more affordable, and to get more people covered. But it is time to stop refighting battles that have been settled again and again. It’s time to move on.

Because as Americans, we don’t go backwards, we move forwards. We take care of each other. We root for one another’s success. We strive to do better, to be better, than the generation before us, and we try to build something better for the generation coming behind us. With this behind us, let’s come together and keep building something better right now.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

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