With Pakistan now choosing to act in a manner that might give the Chinese submarines access to its shores, and with India appearing to abandon its old non-alignment policy, there is a risk of the current US-China confrontation affecting South Asia.

By Shahid Javed Burki*

It does not suit South Asia to have the growing US-China military rivalry projected into the region. While it may help both Beijing and Washington to have that happen, it will result in setting the region back economically. As already argued in an earlier paper by me,2 it is essential that South Asian leaders recognise what is at stake.

The most likely theatre of conflict between China and the United States will be the seas along the Chinese coastline and the coastlines of the countries that choose to get aligned with it. South Asia has a long coastline, some of it in very sensitive areas, to which the protagonists in the developing Sino-US conflict will be attracted. South Asia should protect this asset, keeping in view regional interests rather than those of the individual countries.

Some analysts fear that the growing tension between the United States and China could conceivably lead to a military confrontation. “Uncertainty about what could lead either Beijing or Washington to risk war makes a crisis far more likely, since neither side knows when, where, or just how hard it can push without the other side pushing back”, wrote Avery Goldstein of the University of Pennsylvania in a 2013 Foreign Affairs article. “Should Beijing and Washington find themselves in a conflict, the US advantage in conventional forces would increase the temptation for Washington to threaten to or actually use force.

Recognizing the temptation facing Washington, Beijing might in turn feel pressure to use its conventional forces before they are destroyed. Although China could not reverse the military imbalance, it might believe that quickly imposing high costs on the United States would be the best way to get it to back off”. This is a game- theory approach to the making of policy in a contested area. “Getting Beijing and Washington to tackle the difficult task of containing a future crisis will not be easy. In the end it might take the experience of living through a terrifying showdown of the kind that defined early Cold War. But it should not have come to that”.3

There are a number of areas where such conflict could be the result. The first, of course, is the question of sovereignty. Washington is of the view that international law affords it freedom of navigation in international waters and airspace, defined in international law as lying beyond a country’s 12-mile territorial limit. China, on the other hand, wants to exclude foreign military vessels and aircraft from its 200-mile wide “exclusive economic zone”. Those crossing into this area will need Beijing’s authorisation, say the Chinese.

Washington, Tokyo and other capitals are not prepared to accept this claim. If they do, they would be kept out of much of South China Sea.

One of the most important lessons to be drawn from the old US-Soviet Cold War experience is the need for reliable communication between the senior leaders of the countries that may get engaged in a destructive confrontation because of faulty information. This was done by the creation of a hotline between Moscow and Washington. In 1998, China and the United States also set up a hotline, but the White House was not able to use it in a timely fashion in two cases – the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade or the 2001 spy-plane incident. This may have happened because of the time needed by the political masters in Beijing to consult the military leadership. China has, as yet, to develop fully institutions such as the United States National Security Council that can coordinate its approach to crises.

Instead of direct communication between the top leadership in the two countries, Beijing may prefer to use some other forms of signalling. For example, the analysts Andrew Erikson and David Yang have referred to Chinese military writings that propose using the country’s anti-ship ballistic missile system, designed for targeting US aircraft carriers, to convey Beijing’s resolve during a crisis.

Some Chinese military thinkers have suggested that China could send a signal by firing warning shots intended to land near a moving US aircraft carrier or even by carefully aiming strikes at the command tower of a US carrier while sparing the rest of the vessel. But that would be a dangerous way to communicate, akin to playing with fire.

“The Chinese are interested in achieving an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) capability because it offers them the prospect of limiting the ability of other nations, particularly the United States, to exert military influence on China’s maritime periphery, which contains several disputed zones of core strategic importance to Beijing”, wrote Erikson and Yang. “ASBMs are regarded as means by which technologically limited developing countries can overcome by asymmetric means their qualitative inferiority in conventional combat platforms, because the gap between offense and defense is the greatest here”. 4

The development of ASBMS would be a paradigm shift since no other country possesses it. The United States relinquished a distantly related capability in 1988. According to a 2006 unclassified assessment by the United States Office of Naval Intelligence, China is equipping theatre ballistic missiles [TBMs] with manoeuvring re-entry vehicles [MaRVs] with radar-seekers to provide the accuracy necessary to attack a ship at sea. If such a capability is developed, it will be “extraordinarily difficult to defend against, whatever the ballistic missile the United States might deploy”.5

These developments should be put in the proper context. Geography is the major difference between the Cold War and a possible conflict between China and the United States in the 2010s. The former was focused on land; the latter is shaping up to be at sea. China is investing heavily in the development of a submarine fleet made up of two kinds of vessels. It has now a small number of nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines (SSBNS) and a larger collection of conventionally-armed attack submarines. Both are more secure when they remain close to the coast in the shallow waters where poor acoustics compromise the effectiveness of US undersea antisubmarine operations. Any attempt by these vessels to move into the deeper waters and away from the coastline would be interpreted by the United States as a hostile act and might react – or should react as the policy makers in Washington are being advised by several experts.

Even the normally calm magazine Foreign Affairs, the highly respected voice of the foreign policy establishment in the United States, has begun to carry articles that ask for a more robust response to China’s rise by the United States. In its issue of March/April 2015 the journal carried an article by Andrew Krepinevich suggesting how Washington could pre-empt what China is likely to do in Asia. “If Washington wants to change Beijing’s calculus, it must deny China the ability to control the air and sea around the first island chain (Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines), since the People’s Liberation Army would have to dominate both arenas to isolate the archipelago…Then there is the task of denying the PLA the sea control it would need to mount offensive operations against the islands”.6

Viewed from the South Asian perspective, there is one other difference between the large-power confrontation in the Cold War and one that is brewing in the early-21st century. India and Pakistan (the latter then included Bangladesh) did not opt for opposite sides; India, with a much larger presence in the sub-continent, decided not to choose at all. It remained neutral, inventing “non-alignment” as an ideology that several other countries in developing world found attractive. They followed India and became part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Pakistan, bothered then with a sense of insecurity as it is now too, chose to side with the power that could meet its pressing financial needs.

Those needs have not gone, but they can be met by a different source. In the Cold War Pakistan came to be closely aligned with the United States. The latter helped to build its military as well as its economy. This time, it has chosen to be with China, agreeing to a programme of development that may bring Beijing’s submarines to its shores. In the US$ 46-billion programme which it agreed to in April 2015 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad, the two sides included the further development of the deep- water port of Gwadar which can house submarines. At the same time Pakistan announced the purchase of eight boats for itself from the Chinese to expand its own fleet. India no longer appears to be interested in the NAM approach. It seems inclined, instead, to side with the United States, Japan and Australia in the developing Sino-American contest.

However, South Asia would do well to craft a regional approach towards this brewing conflict rather than have each country of the region follow its own narrow interests.

About the author:
* 1 Mr Shahid Javed Burki is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. He can be contacted at sjburki@gmail.com. The author, not the ISAS, is responsible for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper. During a professional career spanning over half a century, Mr Burki has held a number of senior positions in Pakistan and at the World Bank. He was the Director of China Operations at the World Bank from 1987 to 1994, and the Vice President of Latin America and the Caribbean Region at the World Bank from 1994 to 1999. On leave of absence from the Bank, he was Pakistan’s Finance Minister, 1996-1997.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Brief Number 386 (PDF)

Notes:
2. Shahid Javed Burki, China and South Asia – I: “How the collapse of ‘Chimerica’ will affect South Asia”, Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore.
3. Avery Goldstein, “China’s Real and Present Danger: Now is the time for Washington to Worry”, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2013, p. 139.
4. Andrew S. Erikson and David D. Yang, “Using the Land to Control the Sea”, National War College Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, p. 53.
5. U.S. Navy Department, Seapower Questions on the Chinese Submarine Force, Washington DC.
6. Andrew Krepinevich, “How to deter China: The Case for Archipelagic Defense”, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2015, pp. 80-81.

By Samuel Helfont*

Defining – and distinguishing between – the terms Islam and Islamism has broad consequences for America, both domestically and internationally. However, teaching about the relationship between these two concepts involves negotiating numerous sensitivities and it can cause considerable consternation for educators. At the most basic level, Islam is a major world religion practiced by well over a billion people, and Islamism is a political ideology to which a subset of the broader Islamic community adheres. The importance of this distinction seems fairly clear. The United States, and the American body politic more generally, views itself as committed to secular governance and religious freedom. While Islam is not completely immune from criticism, Americans have traditionally objected to state interference in religious matters and, theoretically, they should expect the same standards to apply to Islam. Therefore, Islam as a religion would seem to have a clear place in the diverse fabric of American society. Islamism, as a political ideology, opens itself to harsher critiques and even questions about its appropriateness in, or compatibility with, the American political system. Unsurprisingly, American public discourse suggests that Americans generally feel much more comfortable with Islam than they do with Islamism.

Nevertheless, a number of problems arise when one attempts to define either term, or demarcate their boundaries. What exactly is Islam? Does Islam have a political tradition, and if so, how is it different from Islamism? Who has the authority to define either term? It should be noted that similar problems exist in other religious traditions and one could ask comparable questions about the relationship between Judaism and religious Zionism, or Christianity and Christian fundamentalism. Islam is not exceptional in that regard; yet world events have conspired to bring questions about Islam and Islamism to the fore of American political discourse. Thus, this essay will attempt to unravel the two terms as well as their relationship by discussing Islam as well as its political tradition and then contextualizing the rise of Islamism in the 20th and 21st centuries within this broader Islamic tradition.

Islam

Defining Islam is the first and most important problem that one encounters when comparing Islam and Islamism. There are several ways to think about Islam. First, it is a religion practiced by those who identify as Muslims. Thus, one way to define Islam is to look at what Muslims believe and practice. In its ideal state, this type of analysis would deem each belief to be equally legitimate. However, this is not the only method for defining Islam. Islam is also a text-based religion. It has a holy book, the Quran, and a plethora of other texts which provide context for the Quran and guidance for Muslims. Some Muslim scholars attempt to use these texts to arrive at a definition of Islam. In its ideal state, such an approach makes claims about what Islam is. Unlike an analysis of the ways Muslims practice their religion, this second type of analysis leaves open the possibility that what a Muslim believes may be wrong, or at least that it is not in accordance with the Islamic tradition.

If one wishes to use the first type of analysis and thus define Islam by the beliefs and practices of Muslims, it is pretty safe to begin with the assertion that Islam is a religion in the Abrahamic tradition that was revealed through the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century CE. Muslims are in general agreement on that point. However, things begin to get messy when one moves beyond it. Sunnis and Shi‘is disagree on many matters of theology and, importantly for this essay, politics.[1] Beyond Sunnism and Shi‘ism, a third major sect, Ibadism, also exists. From there it breaks down even further. Four distinct legal schools exist within Sunni Islam. Shi‘ism contains a myriad of subsects and breakaway movements. Furthermore, in most sects, Sufi mystics compete with textual literalists over the essence of their faith.

Many of the various sects and subsects disagree even on the most basic tenets of Islam. On one hand, Sunnis have five Pillars of Islam and six Pillars of Faith, which they consider fundamental. On the other hand, most Shi‘is have a different set of fundamental principles they refer to as the five Principles of the Religion and then an additional ten Ancillaries of the Faith. In extreme cases, some Muslims disagree with ideas that other Muslims consider to be the defining essence of their faith. For example, most Muslims would insist that Muhammad was not just a prophet, but the last conduit of a divine message for humanity.

However, not everyone who identifies as a Muslim accepts this claim. Members of the Alawi sect, who identify as Muslims, consider the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law and successor,[2] Ali, to have been a semi-divine leader. Further complicating attempts to define Islam by the practice of Muslims is the fact that, historically, many casual Muslims or members of the non-literate masses probably could not name the Pillars of Islam or of Faith for the sect to which they claimed to belong. They mixed Islam with various folk traditions and even other religions. It is not uncommon to read about Muslims attending church on Christian holidays and vice versus. Thus, there is no agreement in practice between those who identify as Muslims about what Islam is.

The other way to define Islam is through textual analysis. The Quran is the central document of the Islamic faith. For almost all Muslims, the sayings (hadith) and traditions (sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad also provide divinely sanctioned guidance. After all, if God chose Muhammad to be his messenger, Muhammad must have been doing something right. For most classically trained Islamic scholars, the truth about Islam can be found in these texts. Until the 1970s, the Orientalist tradition of scholarship in the West also relied on these texts to define Islam. However, both Muslims and non-Muslim scholars have had immense difficulties locating the essence of Islam in its canonical texts.

The Quran is not a story. It is a series of non-chronologically arranged commands, statements, and snippets of stories. Often commands in one part of the Quran are contradicted in another part. Thus, in one verse drinking wine is prohibited (Quran 5:93) and in another it is permitted (Quran 2:219). In some places the Quran calls for peace (Quran 2:190) and in other places it demands war (Quran 9:5). Various debates have taken place throughout Islamic history over which verses to obey. But even if everyone agrees to obey a particular verse, its meaning and implications are not always clear. For example, Quran 2:256 states “there is no compulsion is religion.” In the classical period Muslim scholars debated whether this was an injunction against imposing religion by force, or simply a statement of fact – that religious belief is a matter of the heart and, therefore, it is impossible to impose it by force. Further complicating matters, some Islamic scholars claimed that the verse was an injunction against imposing religion by force, but they asserted that it was revealed to address a particular historical circumstance. Thus, it was not a general injunction and does not apply to later generations of Muslims.[3]

The texts outlining the Prophet’s sayings and traditions about his life are equally imprecise. These texts contain a vast documentation about the Prophet’s life; yet they too often contain contradictory information. Furthermore, they are based on an oral tradition that was not written down until at least a century after Muhammad’s death. Islamic scholars in the medieval period began to question the authenticity of many of the sayings that were attributed to the Prophet. They developed an intricate science to classify the sayings as sound, good, weak, or fabricated. Yet, as one might expect, not everyone agrees on which saying fits into which category. Since the late 19th century, Western scholarship on Islam has debated the historicity of these sayings and traditions.[4] Thus, attempting to find clear definitions of Islamic beliefs in Islamic texts is quite difficult.

Islam and Politics

The difficulty in pinning down Islamic beliefs or finding definitive textual sources carries over into investigations of the Islamic political tradition. In addition to being a prophet, Muhammad was the leader of a political community. As such, the guidance that he provided through the Quran and his sayings has a good deal to say about politics. However, disagreements over those sources have led to endless disputes. While the Prophet was alive, the politics of the Islamic community were fairly straightforward. Muhammad had a direct line to God. Therefore, his declarations and decisions were beyond reproach. Following his death, that certainty evaporated. Muslims who would later be known as Sunnis argued that Muhammad had not named a successor, and that, therefore, the community was free to choose the most suitable ruler. The Shi‘is believed that Muhammad had named his son-in-law, Ali, as successor and that succession should remain within the Prophet’s familial line through Ali and the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima.

This dispute about leadership of the community had ramifications far beyond which man was in charge. If the Sunnis were correct, and rule was nonhereditary, then the leader was essentially the best among equals. If the Shi‘is were correct, and leadership of the community was hereditary, then the leader (Imam) was chosen by God. Similar to the divine right of kings in Medieval Europe, the reasoning in the latter case suggests that God would not choose someone who would lead them astray. Therefore, the Shi‘is often attribute an “infallibility” to their Imams. Accordingly, Sunnis and Shi‘is disagreed not only about the rightful leader of the Islamic community, but also about the nature of that leadership.

As the generations passed, the Shi‘is divided even further over which way the line of the Ali’s descendants broke. When an Imam died without producing an obvious heir, some Shi‘is claimed that he had not died, but rather had gone into hiding. They asserted that he entered a state of “occultation” and that he would eventually return as a messianic figure. For centuries, Shi‘is have argued among themselves over whether an Imam had gone into hiding, and if so, which one. For Shi‘is who believed that the Imam went into hiding, there was no agreement about who had political authority in his absence.

The Sunnis have an equally complicated political history. They are by far the largest sect. Thus, they have ruled in most places and at most times in Islamic history. However, their aversion to heredity rule broke down, at least in practice, a generation after Muhammad’s death. Beginning in the late 7th century CE, political leadership of the Sunni community became dynastic. Further complicating matters for Sunnis was that the leader’s status as a first among equals did not provide him with any special connection to God. Thus, the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad remained the sole sources of religious legitimacy. Early in Islamic history, a class of religious scholars developed who could interpret Islam’s canonical texts more authoritatively than the political leadership. Thus, in practice, a separation between religious and political authority emerged. In theory, no such separation should have existed in Sunni Islam, and Sunni sources were reluctant to acknowledge its presence.[5]

Many of the debates about politics within the Islamic tradition can be linked with corollary debates about Islamic texts. One of the most politically consequential verses of the Quran is 4:59. It states: “Obey God, obey the Messenger, and those who possess authority among you.” The first part of this verse is quite clear and uncontroversial. Believers should obey God and the Prophet Muhammad. However, the last part of the verse, the injunction to obey “those who possess authority,” has, for obvious reasons, been at the heart of Islamic politics since the very beginning of Islam. Who are those who possess authority?

The earliest Sunni interpretations of the Quran gave several possibilities. First, some Sunnis thought the verse referred to a temporal or military leader. Often, these leaders were referred to as “princes,” “commanders”[6] or “sultans.” Next, some early Sunni Muslims argued that “those who possess authority” referred to Islamic scholars. A number of traditions clearly stated that the verse referred to “the possessors of knowledge,” “the people of knowledge and jurisprudence,” “the possessors of religion and reason,” or simply “the scholars.” Finally, more nuanced interpretations of the verse assigned authority to princes and sultans, but qualified their authority in that there was a level of piety required of them.[7] As we will see below, this later interpretation was singled out by Islamists in the 20th century, but in the early years of Islam, there was little agreement on the essential question of who possessed authority.

As dynastic rule set in, Sunni Muslims increasingly attributed the authority referenced in the Quran to kings, sultans, emirs, and other political leaders. The major Sunni scholars of the Middle Ages, such as al-Mawardi (d. 1058) and al-Ghazali (d. 1111), wrote political treatises which became the most authoritative works on politics in Sunni Islam until the modern period.[8] They argued that it was not permissible to rebel against a Muslim ruler. They cited the Arab proverb sometimes attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, that “a thousand days of tyranny are better than one day of anarchy” and they defined “those who possess authority” as the political rulers. These factors led to quietism among Sunni scholars which, despite a few notable exceptions like Ibn Taymiyah in the 14th century or Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century, remained an important predisposition toward politics in pre-modern Sunni Islam. In some cases, such quietism manifested in radical ways. For example, in Central Asia, some Islamic scholars from the Muslim communities within the Russian Empire argued that it was sufficient for the ruler to permit Muslims to practice their religion. Thus the ruler himself did not need to be Muslim, and Christian Russia could be considered an Islamic state.[9] This would be an important precedent in the modern period, as more Muslims migrated into non-Muslim lands. It should be noted, however, that theories of Islam and politics were discussed among scholars and elites. It is unclear to what extent the masses were party to or understood any of these discussions. Like other pre-modern communities, 90 percent of people in the Islamic world were illiterate. There is good evidence to suggest that they did not understand or even know about the high Islam that was debated in seminaries and royal courts.

Islamism

The modern period in the Middle East really starts in the 19th century and it is during this period that transformations in the relationship between Islam and politics begin to occur. Modernity brought a politics of the masses to the Middle East. Regimes that had ruled in the name of a dynastic family came under pressure to rule in the name of the people. The question was, who were the people? And, what made a people a people? In Egypt, where modern Islamism had its beginning, the early 20th century saw intense debates over political identity. Proponents of Egyptian nationalism competed with pan-Arab nationalists and with socialists whose political consciousness was rooted in their class. The Islamists argued that they were Muslims before anything else, and that their Islamic identity should form the foundation of the political order. With this focus on Islam came inclinations toward piety and religious fundamentalism. In 1928, Hassan al-Banna relied on these ideas to form the first Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt. Banna and his Islamist followers spoke of a golden age of Islam, which they sought to restore. They felt under assault by Western colonialism and the rising liberal secularism, which they saw as colonialism’s byproduct. Islamists such as Banna insisted that because the Prophet Muhammad was a political leader, who had established a state on the basis of Islam, their religion was inherently political. Thus, they insisted that while separating politics from religion was permissible in Christianity, it was forbidden in Islam. Therefore, those Muslims who promoted such ideas were, in fact, adopting the Christian secularism of their colonial masters and that this was at odds with the essence of Islam. Accordingly, Banna and his followers felt that restoring Islam to its proper place in society would require combating not only colonialism but also liberalism and secularism. In doing so, they made claims about the illiberal nature of Islamic politics.

Not all Muslims agreed with Islamist claims about the nature of their religion. Some Muslim scholars made explicit arguments about the compatibility and, in rare cases, even the necessity of secular liberalism in the practice of Islam.[10] Therefore, they opposed the Islamists on theological grounds. Most Muslims seem to have paid little attention to such debates. Like people all over the world, they were concerned with making a living, providing for their families, and, when possible, they occupied themselves with various leisure activities. They did not read Banna’s writings. They continued to believe in and practice their own understanding of Islam, but they felt free to adopt wide-ranging political identities.

As the 20th century progressed, Islamist intellectuals expanded upon Banna’s ideas. Most famously, Sayyid Qutb argued that non-Islamist political systems, such as monarchy, democracy, and dictatorship, were inherently un-Islamic. His arguments were rooted in classical Islamic debates, but they were often selective in their reading of texts. For example, Qutb saw “those who possess authority” in the Quran as referring to the temporal rulers, just as other scholars had done in the pre-modern period, but he made this status contingent on the righteousness of the ruler. As we have seen, this interpretation had a precedent in early Islam, but only as one of a plethora of possibilities. Esteemed Sunni Islamic scholars in the medieval period often rejected that interpretation in favor of seeing the rulers as possessors of authority. Thus, Qutb contradicted authoritative medieval arguments in favor of an interpretation of the verse that undermined the trend toward political quietism in Sunni Islam.[11] Qutb’s ideas spread widely in the Islamic World. Some groups took them in radical directions, claiming that Muslims who did not rebel against, or separate themselves from, un-Islamic political systems were not really Muslims – they were apostates and their blood was licit. Thus, Muslim civilians became legitimate targets in the minds of some Islamist terrorists. Eventually, Sunni Islamists fractured into groups with political ideologies ranging from the democratically elected Islamist party which currently rules the NATO member state of Turkey, to the extremists in the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Shi‘i Islamists were heavily influenced by their Sunni counterparts. As mentioned above, Shi‘is traditionally viewed legitimate political power as residing with their Imams. Thus, in traditional Shi‘i understandings of politics, the Imam was the possessor of authority mentioned in Quran 4:59. In his absence, Shi‘i religious leaders generally eschewed politics. However, in the 20th century, Shi‘i Islamists would challenge that trend. The most significant thinker in that regard was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1979 led the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Khomeini defined “those who possess authority” not as the Hidden Imam, but as the executive of a legitimate Islamic state. Like other Shi‘i scholars, Khomeini claimed that the Prophet and then the Shi‘i Imams were “those who possess authority” in their time. But in a break with the majority Shi‘i tradition, he argued that authority had been handed down to the religious jurists while the last Imam remained in hiding. Thus, Khomeini claimed “those who possess authority” referred to himself and to the other Islamic scholars.[12] And if the scholars possessed authority, it made sense that they should also rule the state. In fact, for the first time in the history of Shi‘ism, Khomeini went as far as to deem all other forms of government as unacceptable. Consequently, Khomeini, like his Sunni counterparts, linked Islamic belief with opposition to secularism and liberalism that he felt were byproducts of Western imperialism. Shi‘i Islamists, like their Sunni counterparts, argued that one could not be fully Muslim if one did not adhere to certain political positions. The Prophet Muhammad was a political leader and thus, as Khomeini put it, “Islam is political or it is nothing.”

Khomeini’s ideas found a wide following, and in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution, they were enforced by the Iranian state. Nevertheless, many Shi‘is outside Iran continued to maintain the traditional, politically quietist interpretations of their faith. Some Shi‘i scholars have continued to insist that the Hidden Imam is the only legitimate political authority and that Shi‘is who wish to live in an Islamic state will have to wait for his return.

Islam and Islamism

Disputes over Islam and Islamism continue to rage in the Islamic Word and in Muslim communities in the West. Islamists often refer to themselves simply as Muslims and they claim that those who oppose their ideas also necessarily oppose Islam. They root their ideas in a particular reading of history. If Muhammad combined political and religious authority, then how could Muslims disavow the role of politics in Islam? This is a powerful argument. Yet, the Islamist reading of the past has been selective. No consensus has ever existed on what Islam is, let alone on its relationship to politics. As we have seen, Islamism had its genesis in modern debates about political identity. And despite the fact that Islamists have used classical Islamic texts to make arguments, their ideas sometimes had no precedent in Islamic history. This does not imply that Islamists are wrong or that their logic is invalid. If it is difficult to know what Islam is, it is also hard to determine what it is not. Thus, Islamist claims about Islam are just as legitimate as any other. Nevertheless, it should be recognized that, despite Islamist assertions, no consensus among those who identify as Muslims exists with regard to the relationship between Islam and politics. Nor is it possible to read the classical Islamic texts and come away with an unambiguous understanding of Islamic politics.

As such, Islamists remain a subset of the larger Islamic community. How large a subset is not easy to determine. Partly, this is due to the difficulty in demarcating the lines between Islam and Islamism. Islamists claim that they are simply Muslims who recognize the essential role of politics in their religion. Yet, there are other Muslims who also recognize a role for politics in their religion and sometimes even reject the separation between the two, but they do not consider themselves to be Islamists. For example, in the Arab world, the term “secularism” carries the connotation of unbelief. Thus, very few Arab Muslims claim to be secular. In that sense one might assume that Islamism would be supported by the overwhelming majority of Arab Muslims. Yet, Islamists appear to be either a minority, or a slight majority in most Arab countries. Partly, this dilemma can be solved by recognizing that, historically, Islamists not only deny the separation of religion and politics, but have also insisted that Islam requires the adoption of a certain set of illiberal politics. However, other Muslims who reject the separation of religion and politics sometimes also reject the Islamists’ illiberalism. Indeed, some see Islam as a liberal religion which requires tolerance, democracy, and human rights. Some Muslims have gone as far as to claim that the American Constitution is the embodiment of Islamic values. The picture is further muddled by the fact that most Muslims probably have not given such issues much thought. Like the majority of people around the world, they are more concerned with the mundane aspects of their daily lives. Consequently, while Islam and Islamism can and should be distinguished, it is often quite difficult to ascertain where Islam as a religion ends, and Islamism as a political ideology begins. This problem will continue to confound Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States as Islam becomes an increasingly prominent aspect of American society. One can only hope that a fuller understanding of these terms will be helpful for everyone.

About the author:
*Samuel Helfont is a Fox Fellow in FPRI’s Program on the Middle East, and holds a post-doctoral lectureship in the University of Pennsylvania’s interdisciplinary International Relations Program. In May 2015, he completed a PhD in Princeton University’s Near Eastern Studies Department, where he wrote his dissertation on Saddam Hussein’s use of religion to entrench his authoritarian regime, based on captured Ba’th Party and Iraqi state records. Helfont is the author of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi: Islam and Modernity  (The Moshe Dayan Center/Tel Aviv University Press, 2009) and the FPRI monograph, The Sunni Divide: Understanding Politics and Terrorism in the Arab Middle East. He has written widely in publications such as The Middle East Journal, Orbis, The New Republic, The American Interest, and The Jewish Review of Book, among others and is proficient at various levels in Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] See my “The Geopolitics of the Sunni-Shi‘i Divide in the Middle East,” Footnotes, December 2013.

[2] According to the Sunnis, he was the fourth successor of Muhammad, following three other “caliphs.” According to the Shi‘is, he was Muhammad’s direct successor and the three other caliphs were usurpers.

[3] Patricia Crone, “No Pressure, then: Religious Freedom in Islam.” Open Democracy, November 7, 2009. https://www.opendemocracy.net/patricia-crone/no-compulsion-in-religion

[4] Ignác Goldziher (1950-1921), who is sometimes considered the father of Islamic Studies in the West, claimed that the sayings of the Prophet reflect debates that occurred a century after his death and probably originated in that period.

[5] See Ira M. Lapidus. “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6, no. 4 (Oct., 1975): 363-85.

[6] The word Amir means both “prince” and “commander.” Linguistically, this interpretation seems logical considering that the root a. m. r. is used to form both amr (authority) and amir (prince/commander). In this sense, a prince/commander could literally be understood as one who has authority.

[7] The most thorough and authoritative early exegesis is by Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (839–923 CE). For his discussion of the verse, see Tafsir al-Ṭabari: Jamiʻ al-Bayan ʻan Taʾwil al-Qurʾan, Vol. 8 (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arifa, 1950-1960), 490-507. (in Arabic)

[8] See Al-Ghazali, Ghazali’s Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasihat al-Muluk), Trans. F.R.C Bagley (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); and Al-Mawardi, The Ordinances of Government, Trans. Wafaa H. Wahba (Reading, UK: Garnet Pub., 1996).

[9] Robert Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Harvard University Press, 2006).

[10] For an example of a scholar to make the case for secularism, see Ali, Souad T. A Religion, Not a State: Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s Islamic Justification of Political Secularism. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009).

[11] See for example the way Qutb employed ulu al-amr in his book “Social Justice and Islam,” a discussion of which can be found in William Shepard, “The Development of the Thought of Sayyid Qutb as Reflected in Earlier and Later Editions of ‘Social Justice in Islam,’” Die Welt des Islams, 32, no. 2 (1992), 228-9.

[12] Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 24-5.

Economists continue to debate whether – and to what extent – Greek debts should be relieved. This column takes through the details of Greek debt, what relief options are open to Greece, and what the likely consequences of relief might be for all parties. Yet again, there are no easy choices – but that doesn’t mean economists and policymakers shouldn’t try.

By William R. Cline*

In the first half of 2015 the populist and confrontational policies of the new Syriza government destabilised the Greek economy, climaxing in the closure of the banks and a referendum rejecting the terms of a financial rescue package offered by the Eurozone partners. But facing the alternative of Grexit, Tsipras, in July, tentatively agreed to a new support programme with conditions at least as demanding as those rejected in the referendum. The new agreement did raise the possibility of debt relief through longer maturities, but explicitly ruled out a haircut on debt principal (Euro Summit 2015). On August 14, 2015, Eurozone finance ministers agreed with Greece on the new support program for €86 billion. The IMF indicated it would only participate if the Eurozone grants Greece debt relief.¹

In evaluating the new situation, it is important to recognise that the headline debt figure overstates the true burden of Greek debt. Because most of the debt is owed to official sector partners at concessional interest rates, the interest burden is much lower than would usually be associated with the same gross debt. Under the Fund’s own criterion for sustainability in these circumstances (ratio of gross financing needs to GDP), Greek debt should remain within an acceptable range at least through 2030.² It is questionable to base debt relief policy on problems that might or might not materialise beyond such a distant horizon. Moreover, most of the projected sharp increase in debt could be avoided by carrying out bank recapitalisation directly from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to the banks, rather than through the Greek government as an intermediary.

There is still an important potential role for using interest rate relief, for two purposes. First, if fiscal balances fall below target because of lower than expected growth (rather than policy slippage), a portion of interest otherwise accruing could be forgiven to avoid the need for additional fiscal tightening and its recession-aggravating consequences. Second, because Greek unemployment is at depression levels (26%), special employment programmes would seem appropriate, and forgiving a portion of the interest due could provide a significant source of funding for this purpose.

Framing issues

Some have suggested that it is only fair that Eurozone partners forgive some of the debt, because the official loans mainly went to finance the dash to safety by Eurozone banks previously exposed in Greece.³ However, Eurozone banks only retrieved about €70 billion, about one-third of the official sector support.⁴

Critics also argue that the Troika (the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF) contributed to Greece’s depression by calling for too much austerity (see Stiglitz 2015). The fiscal adjustment was indeed large. The cyclically adjusted primary (non-interest) fiscal balance swung from -13.2% of GDP in 2009 to +5.3% in 2014, twice or more times the tightening in Portugal (9.5%), Spain (8.2%), and Ireland (7.2%). But Greece had no fiscal space to adjust more slowly, because it was cut off from financial markets, and official sector support was already stretched to the limits. Some might say that Eurozone support has been too stingy because it forced Greece to adjust too much too fast. Yet support from partner countries amounted to about 110% of Greek GDP, three to four times as much as provided to Ireland (27%) or Portugal (32%). In comparison, US support committed to Mexico in its 1994-95 peso crisis was much smaller (5% of Mexican GDP) and shorter-term.

The adjustment needed to be large because public spending had gotten so far out of hand. Real primary spending per capita had surged by 54% from 2000 to 2009, far more than in Portugal (22%) or Italy (16%); and primary spending relative to GDP had risen from 40% of GDP in 2003-06 to 49.3% in 2009. Nor would less adjustment have paid for itself through more revenue induced by higher growth. Even at the upper bound of the IMF’s upward-revised multipliers (1.7), smaller spending cuts would not have boosted GDP and revenue by enough to pay for themselves. Much of the adjustment occurred in 2010-11, moreover, when sovereign risk spreads were soaring and would have risen even more in the absence of fiscal adjustment efforts.

A final broad policy issue is why it would make any sense to pile an additional €86 billion (about 40% of GDP) in new official claims on top of debt that the IMF already considers unsustainably high. The answer is that most of the new support package will go to amortise existing debt, recapitalise banks and thereby acquire assets, or pay arrears and build up deposits, so the rise in net debt will be only about €10-15 billion (Cline 2015: 5).

Debt projections

The European Debt Simulation Model that I developed (Cline 2014) provides a basis for projecting Greek debt under the new support programme. Table 1 shows the baseline assumptions for growth, primary fiscal balance, privatisation receipts, and three debt-burden ratios to GDP – gross debt, interest payments, and gross financing needs.⁵ Growth is far weaker in 2015-16 than expected one year ago (an average of -0.4% instead of 3.3%), as is the decade average for the primary surplus (1.5% instead of 2.8%, see Table 1 and IMF 2014). The baseline assumes €25 billion in bank recapitalisation added to public debt.

Even though debt reaches a peak of 201% of GDP, the interest burden is an average of only 4.2% of GDP in 2015-20 and 4.4% in 2021-24. The reason is that debt owed to the European Financial Stability Facility and European Stability Mechanism pays a low interest rate averaging 1.6% in 2015-20 and 2.6% in 2021-24 (see IMF 2015a: 2).

In comparison, the average interest burden for Portugal in 2015-20 is projected at 4.3% (IMF 2015c). Yet Portugal’s debt is on a much lower path, easing from 126% of GDP in 2015 to 121% by 2020, rather than the much higher path of 200% easing to 150% in Greece. So the debt to GDP ratio substantially overstates the debt burden for Greece.

Similarly, except for the first year when there is a bulge because of the bank recapitalisation, the gross financing needs ratio lies comfortably in or (mostly) below the 15-20% acceptable range identified by the IMF. So again these projections confirm the diagnosis that for the coming decade at least, there is not a critical problem of over-indebtedness.

Figures 1 through 3 show these same three ratios for the baseline (‘EDSMpak’ for package) alongside alternative projections and scenarios. All three figures show the June 2015 IMF baseline for comparison. Figures 1 and 3 also show a scenario in which bank recapitalisation is handled outside of sovereign debt (‘EDSMpak2’). Figure 2 shows a scenario in which all interest on debt owed to the Eurozone partners (but not ECB) is forgiven for this decade, as a gauge of debt relief potential (‘EDSMpak3’).

Figures 1 and 3 strongly suggest that the optics of the Greek debt burden would be much improved if the €25 billion in bank recapitalisation were handled directly by the ESM and the banks rather than passing through the sovereign.⁶ For its part, Figure 2 strongly suggests considerable scope for debt relief through forgiving interest on the Eurozone partner claims. If there were a complete interest holiday for the full decade, the ratio of interest payments to GDP would be down to only 1% of GDP by 2024.

Debt relief?

Rather than focusing on amortisation and risk of replacement of low-interest official debt by high-interest private debt after 2030, the concern of the IMF (2015b), it could be more useful to focus debt relief on contingent compensation already in the present decade in the event that fiscal balances deteriorate from the planned path because of lower than expected GDP growth. For example, if growth turned out to be 2% in 2017 instead of 3%, revenue would be lower by 0.4% of GDP (Cline 2015: 10). This amount could be compensated by forgiving about one-fifth of interest due on Eurozone claims (excluding ECB).

A parallel line of interest relief could forgive part of the interest as a means of financing employment-intensive public works programmes. If such programmes paid a wage of 90% of the minimum wage, allocating one-fourth of the interest due to Eurozone partners (or about €1 billion annually) would suffice to hire 135,000 workers, about 11% of the total number currently unemployed (Cline 2015: 11).

As for the capacity to meet gross financing needs by 2030 and after, in principle the ESM partners could commit to evaluation of the need for further stretch-outs of maturities (and reductions in interest rates) for that period closer to the event.

IMF participation?

Support from the IMF bears a penalty interest rate of 300 basis points above the basic IMF lending rate (SDR rate, now only 5 basis points, plus 100 basis points), because loans to Greece greatly exceed the country’s IMF quota and are at long maturities. It would therefore be desirable for the Eurozone to provide almost all of the new lending rather than relying on substantial additional support from the IMF.⁷ However, IMF monitoring would help ensure proper policy design and performance, supplementing monitoring by the European Commission. For this purpose it would make sense for the Fund to limit further Extended Fund Facility support to a modest amount such as €1 billion, thereby shifting onto the Eurozone most of the additional gross disbursements that otherwise might have been expected from the IMF.⁸

About the author:
* William R. Cline, Senior fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

References:

Cline, W R (2014), “Managing the Eurozone Debt Crisis”, Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Cline, W R (2015), “From Populist Destabilization to Reform and Possible Debt Relief in Greece”, Policy Brief PB15-12, Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics, August.

Consensus Economics (2015), Consensus Forecasts, London, 13 July.

Euro Summit (2015), “Euro Summit Statement”, Brussels, 12 July, Brussels.

European Commission (2015), “Greece—Request for Stability Support in the Form of an ESM Loan”, 10 July, Directorate General, Economic and Financial Affairs, Brussels.

IMF (2013), “Staff Guidance Note for Public Debt Sustainability Analysis in Market-Access Countries” 9 May, Washington.

IMF (2014), “Greece: Fifth Review Under the Extended Fund Facility”, Country Report 14/151, June, Washington.

IMF (2015a), “Greece: Preliminary Draft Debt Sustainability Analysis”, Country Report 15/165, 26 June, Washington.

IMF (2015b), “Greece: An Update of IMF Staff’s Preliminary Public Debt Sustainability Analysis”, Country Report 15/186, 14 July, Washington.

IMF (2015c), “World Economic Outlook Database April 2015”, Washington.

Stiglitz, J E (2015) “Greece, the Sacrificial Lamb,” The New York Times, 25 July.

Summers, L (2015), “Greece is Europe’s failed state in waiting”, Financial Times, 20 June.

Wagstyl, S (2015) “Merkel goes on offensive to quell revolt over €86 billion Greek bailout”, Financial Times, 17 August.

Footnotes:

1 The Fund’s participation may not be decided until October (Wagstyl 2015).

2 Earlier IMF work had identified 15% of GDP as sustainable for emerging market economies, and 20% as sustainable for advanced economies (IMF 2013).

3 Larry Summers has suggested that “the vast majority” of support went for this purpose (Summers 2015).

4 This estimate and others in this article are set forth in Cline (2015).

5 Growth, primary surplus, and privatisation projections are based on IMF (2015a), European Commission (2015), and Consensus Economics (2015). The August 14 agreement placed the primary surplus moderately higher in 2015-18 (at 1, 2, 3, and 3.5% of GDP, respectively), but noted the targets “will be discussed… in light of recent economic developments”. See “Greece:  Prior Actions”, available at http://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/GreekProposals070915.pdf.

6 This ‘debt’ is largely an optical illusion, because it would involve acquiring a corresponding asset in the major banks. The government already owns 40% of their weighted market capitalisation, and with the additional recapitalisation this ownership would rise to 90%. But the simple headline debt ratio does not deduct the value of this additional acquired asset.

7 The effective interest rate on IMF support is 3.7%; as noted, through 2020 the average rate is only 1.6% for ESM support.

8 Amounting to about €20 billion (Cline 2015: 15).

As Labor Day looms, more Americans than ever don’t know how much they’ll be earning next week or even tomorrow.

This varied group includes independent contractors, temporary workers, the self-employed, part-timers, freelancers, and free agents. Most file 1099s rather than W2s, for tax purposes.

On demand and on call – in the “share” economy, the “gig” economy, or, more prosaically, the “irregular” economy – the result is the same: no predictable earnings or hours.

It’s the biggest change in the American workforce in over a century, and it’s happening at lightening speed. It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of the American labor force will have uncertain work; in a decade, most of us.

Increasingly, businesses need only a relatively small pool of “talent” anchored in the enterprise –  innovators and strategists responsible for the firm’s unique competitive strength.

Everyone else is becoming fungible, sought only for their reliability and low cost.

Complex algorithms can now determine who’s needed to do what and when, and then measure the quality of what’s produced. Reliability can be measured in experience ratings. Software can seamlessly handle all transactions – contracts, billing, payments, taxes.

All this allows businesses to be highly nimble – immediately responsive to changes in consumer preferences, overall demand, and technologies.

While shifting all the risks of such changes to workers.

Whether we’re software programmers, journalists, Uber drivers, stenographers, child care workers, TaskRabbits, beauticians, plumbers, Airbnb’rs, adjunct professors, or contract nurses – increasingly, we’re on our own.

And what we’re paid, here and now, depends on what we’re worth here and now – in a spot-auction market that’s rapidly substituting for the old labor market where people held jobs that paid regular salaries and wages.

Even giant corporations are devolving into spot-auction networks. Amazon’s algorithms evaluate and pay workers for exactly what they contribute.

Apple directly employs fewer than 10 percent of the 1 million workers who design, make and sell iMacs and iPhones.

This giant risk-shift doesn’t necessarily mean lower pay. Contract workers typically make around $18 an hour, comparable to what they earned as “employees.”

Uber and other ride-share drivers earn around $25 per hour, more than double what the typical taxi driver takes home.

The problem is workers don’t know when they’ll earn it. A downturn in demand, or sudden change in consumer needs, or a personal injury or sickness, can make it impossible to pay the bills.

So they have to take whatever they can get, now: ride-shares in mornings and evenings, temp jobs on weekdays, freelance projects on weekends, Mechanical Turk or TaskRabbit tasks in between.

Which partly explains why Americans are putting in such long work hours – longer than in any other advanced economy.

And why we’re so stressed. According to polls, almost a quarter of American workers worry they won’t be earning enough in the future. That’s up from 15 percent a decade ago.

Irregular hours can also take a mental toll. Studies show people who do irregular work for a decade suffer an average cognitive decline of 6.5 years relative people with regular hours.

Such uncertainty can be hard on families, too. Children of parents working unpredictable schedules or outside standard daytime working hours are likely to have lower cognitive skills and more behavioral problems, according to new research.

For all these reasons, the upsurge in uncertain work makes the old economic measures – unemployment and income – look far better than Americans actually feel.

It also renders irrelevant many labor protections such as the minimum wage, worker safety, family and medical leave, and overtime – because there’s no clear “employer.”

And for the same reason eliminates employer-financed insurance – Social Security, workers compensation, unemployment benefits, and employer-provided health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

What to do?  Courts are overflowing with lawsuits over whether companies have misclassified “employees” as “independent contractors,” resulting in a profusion of criteria and definitions.

We should aim instead for simplicity: Whatever party – contractor, client, customer, agent, or intermediary – pays more than half of someone’s income, or provides more than half their working hours, should be responsible for all the labor protections and insurance an employee is entitled to.

Presumably that party will share those costs and risks with its own clients, customers, owners, and investors. Which is the real point – to take these risks off the backs of individuals and spread them as widely as possible.

In addition, to restore some certainty to peoples’ lives, we’ll need to move away from unemployment insurance and toward income insurance.

Say, for example, your monthly income dips more than 50 percent below the average monthly income you’ve received from all the jobs you’ve taken over the preceding five years. Under one form of income insurance, you’d automatically receive half the difference for up to a year.

But that’s not all. Ultimately, we’ll need a guaranteed minimum basic income. But I’ll save this for another column.

A recent headline at The Intercept seems to have been crafted to deceive its readers:

“Wave of TV Ads Opposing Iran Deal Organized By Saudi Arabian Lobbyist”

Parse those words very carefully, avoid the grammatical trap of assuming that a Saudi Arabian lobbyist would be Saudi Arabian, and you might grasp that the ads, though organized by the said lobbyist, may or may not have any connection to Saudi Arabia.

But most people don’t dissect headlines with such lawyerly exactness and thus wouldn’t hesitate in jumping to this conclusion:

“Saudis Financing TV Ads Opposing Nuke Deal with Iran”

That headline appears above a report appearing at the Macedonian International News Agency which is simply The Intercept report re-published without attribution.

So what’s the deception?

The ads in question are being run by a group called the American Security Initiative whose president is former Republican Senator Norm Coleman.

Coleman now works for the major lobbying law firm Hogan Lovells, where he provides legal services for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia and legal services for other existing firm clients.

On that basis — and not much else — The Intercept’s Lee Fang has constructed a report that will lead many readers to believe the Saudis are behind the ad campaign, even though that conclusion is never spelled out. The report doesn’t make its conclusion explicit — even though it’s strongly inferred in the headline — presumably because it’s a claim for which there is no direct evidence.

But maybe it’s true. Maybe the Saudis are sinking millions of dollars into this ad campaign. It’s possible.

Yet there already is a much more plausible source for the funding for the American Security Initiative: the casino boss who bankrolls Benjamin Netanyahu, Sheldon Adelson.

The reason for believing it’s Adelson’s money rather than the Saudis’ isn’t simply because the tycoon’s opposition to the Iran deal is well-known. It’s because his financial links to the American Security Initiative have already been reported.

In Washington this March, Adelson co-chaired a fundraising event where Coleman made a pitch for the American Security Initiative.

Coleman is a close ally of Adelson — both are board members of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The primary goal of the Coalition right now is to kill the Iran deal.

Following the March fundraiser and Coleman’s pitch for the American Security Initiative, the Daily Beast reported: “A GOP source said Adelson is expected to help fund the new security group, but Coleman declined to comment.”

So why is The Intercept now pointing at the Saudis when Adelson’s already been fingered?

Russian officials said this morning that they had removed from the list of prohibited sites articles on Wikipedia about drugs after the editors of that site changed them following a Russian threat to block access to the entire Russian-language Wikipedia if the latter did not change them.

As a result, Moscow officials said, Russians now again have free access to the Russian-language of Wikipedia even though several hours earlier there were widespread reports that providers in some Russian regions were blocking the entire portal (echo.msk.ru/news/1609792-echo.html and grani.ru/Internet/m.243789.html).

If coverage of this event follows past practice, two things are almost certain. On the one hand, because Moscow has “backed down” after getting what it wanted most, many in both Russia and the West will dismiss as alarmist those who portray this as a dangerous extension of Russian government censorship.

Indeed, there are already those who are arguing that “the mass protest” of Internet users against what the Russian government sought to do was successful in getting the Kremlin to back down, thus setting the stage for all this to be proclaimed a triumph of democracy in Russia (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=55DBFC3C7E5CF).

And on the other, the way in which this case has played out will simultaneously make some reluctant to stand up to new Kremlin moves in this area, having deluded themselves into thinking that they are for domestic consumption and will always be reversed, and thus opening the way for even worse in the coming weeks and months.

Besides the obvious desire to censor the Internet which lies behind what Moscow has done, there are three especially disturbing aspects of this case: First, the court decision Moscow used was taken far from the center and from the kind of scrutiny that such cases normally get if they are within the ring road (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=55DC052AEBE4D).

Second, the case itself appears to have arisen because of demands for censorship by the Russian Orthodox Church, yet another indication of the Patriarchate’s growing influence on and interconnection with the Russian state and a development which by itself points to further efforts to promote its obscurantist agenda (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=55DC052AEBE4D).

And third, while Wikipedia did not simply cave into Moscow’s demands, it did take steps on its own to change the articles, thus opening the way for more such demands and more such changes in the future, especially if its editors or the editors of other such sites believe Moscow is really prepared to block access (versia.ru/vikipediya-sdelala-vse-chto-mogla-no-roskomnadzor-ne-privyk-k-soprotivleniyu).

The most likely reason Moscow backed down is not so much protests in Russia or abroad but rather the recognition of at least some in the Russian capital that blocking such portals is a fool’s errand. There are many ways to get around them, and Russians who use the Internet are familiar with them (echo.msk.ru/blog/nossik/1609780-echo/).

What everyone should remember is that the Wikipedia case was a kind of trial balloon, one that the Kremlin assumes will be a one-day wonder, and that in fact sets the stage both for a variety of new moves against the Internet outlined in Russia’s “digital sovereignty” law set to go into force on September 1 (profile.ru/rossiya/item/99212-osobennosti-tsifrovogo-suvereniteta).

Some of Moscow’s moves against freedom in this area are already taking off. Kseniya Kirillova of Novy Region-2 reports, for example, that Russian officials are now opening criminal cases against those who repost or even “like” anti-Kremlin articles on social media (nr2.com.ua/News/crime_and_accidents/V-Rossii-nachalas-ohota-na-layki–104552.html).

In a commentary on “Yezhednevny zhurnal” today, Igor Yakovenko puts what is happening in context. He begins by noting that tsarist censor Aleksandr Krasovsky in 1836 banned a book on the harmfulness of mushrooms because mushrooms are a favorite food of Orthodox Russians (ej.ru/?a=note&id=28458).

Now, in 2015, prosecutors in the village of Cherny Yar in Astrakhan oblast have done much the same thing with Wikipedia, and the “state-thinking” officials among the village’s 8,000 residents have gotten Moscow to go along with them and to play out the ban and then the lifting of the ban on Wikipedia, all in the name of protecting the Orthodox.

It is “unclear only why” such people would limit themselves to Wikipedia. Perhaps, the Moscow commentator says, they will move on to “ban the entire Internet as a whole, the Internet with its multitude of resources in which students and pupils can find materials for writing their works.”

“Following this logic,” Yakovenko says, “it is necessary to return even not to pre-internet times but directly to pre-literate ones when the transmission of knowledge took place by means of oral communication which undoubtedly improved their quality and the integrity of those studying.”

And he concludes: “for these people, it is not important that Russia’s prestige declines; it is important not to fall short in the eyes of the only source of power” they recognize. “The war with Ukraine has ever more thrown the Russian authorities back to a time when war was an end in itself.”

By Thomas K. Hensley, Lloyd P. Caviness, Stephanie Vaughn, and Christopher Morton

It is true today as it was ten years ago that this effort holds the promise of changing the course of human history, by freeing the world from the ominous threat of ballistic missile attack. Given the choice, shouldn’t we seek to save lives rather than avenge them? — President Ronald Reagan on the 10th Anniversary of the Announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative

The critical mission of defending the U.S. homeland—homeland defense—requires a fully integrated capability to identify, categorize, and fuse strategic and tactical indications and warnings (I&W) by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM).

Today’s fiscally constrained environment may encourage decisionmakers to eliminate perceived I&W “redundancies” and create an I&W stovepipe for weapons release authorities (WRAs). In a mission area where time is of the essence and failure would result in grave damage to national security, such an arrangement would create an unacceptable risk to homeland defense.

Overview

According to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, “countries invest in ballistic missiles because they are a means to project power in regional and strategic contexts” and provide “a capability to launch an attack from a distance.”1 This has led to an increase in ballistic missiles over the past 5 years. The total number of these systems outside the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia, and China has risen to over 5,900.2 Hundreds of launchers and missiles are currently located within range of deployed U.S. forces.3

According to the U.S. Intelligence Community, current trends indicate that ballistic missile systems using advanced liquid- or solid-propellant propulsion technologies are becoming increasingly mobile, reliable, survivable, and accurate, and have the ability to strike targets over longer distances. Moreover, the “proliferation of ballistic missiles is increasing the number of anti-access weapons available to potential regional adversaries. These weapons could be used to reduce military options for combatant commanders and decrease the survivability of regional military assets.”4

These threats from state actors will likely become more dangerous due to increases in the numbers, capabilities, and lethality of delivery systems and payloads in development. North America currently has a modest BMD system specifically developed to counter intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threats from rogue nations. BMD is a system of systems employing a layered defense architecture.5 It architecture integrates BMD capabilities and intelligence systems for I&W to defeat ballistic missile threats.6 Despite the vast array of terrestrial and space-based collection assets designed to provide I&W, however, the Intelligence Community faces challenges with providing strategic I&W. In particular, prioritization of geographic combatant commanders’ priority intelligence requirements (PIRs) could potentially create gaps in coverage, affecting timely intelligence that supports WRAs for effective BMD employment. This is important because of the limited engagement timeframe for incoming ballistic missiles from launch to impact. The decision by a WRA to engage must occur within minutes of a launch to enable defeat of the incoming weapon.

Rogue State ICBM Threats to North America

Originally intended to counter the Soviet nuclear threat during the Cold War, BMD technology in the 21st century has shifted focus to defending the U.S. homeland against regional actors such as Iran and North Korea.7 North Korea’s advancements in its existing ICBM inventory and nuclear capabilities are a concern. While Iran does not currently possess an ICBM, Tehran is making tremendous strides in pursuit of ICBM technologies, also creating concerns for the United States.

North Korea continues to advance its existing ICBM arsenal. In December 2012, the North Koreans demonstrated their technological advancements in potentially launching an ICBM by successfully placing a satellite in orbit using an Unha-3 rocket. A variation of the Taepo Dong-2 ICBM, the Unha-3 is a three-stage rocket.8 North Korea currently possesses two potential ICBM vehicles: the Taepo Dong-2 and KN-08.9 In March 2013, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Admiral James Winnefeld commented, “We believe the KN-08 probably does have the range to reach the United States.”10 In addition, North Korea has taken steps to develop road-mobile KN-08 launchers, complicating timely I&W prior to launch and thereby creating exceptionally tight timelines for ICBM discrimination and ground-based interceptor (GBI) targeting post-launch.11

Currently, the North Koreans do not possess the means to place a nuclear warhead on either of these platforms. However, coupling their ICBM progress with the detonation of a third nuclear device in February 2013, North Korea is either intentionally or unintentionally signaling a desire to develop a capability to threaten North America.12 As a result, in March 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that “the United States would be bolstering its missile defenses.”13

For the past 60 years, North Korea, with its isolated, authoritarian regime led by a succession of unstable leaders, has been a seemingly intractable and exceptionally dangerous security and stability problem. There are numerous specific examples where Pyongyang’s erratic and irrational behavior nearly reignited conflict on the Korean Peninsula. A nuclear-armed North Korea significantly changes the security calculus and the ability of the United States to negotiate with or influence Pyongyang. In April 2012, North Korea changed its constitution, describing the country as a “nuclear-armed nation.”14 In February 2013, Pyongyang threatened South Korea and the United States with a preemptive nuclear strike, further complicating the situation.15 Whether North Korea would actually use nuclear weapons is hotly debated. However, an irrational North Korea equipped with nuclear-armed ICBMs perceiving a threat to its regime could result in a serious and dangerous miscalculation that would threaten North America.

Iran does not currently possess an ICBM capability; however, Tehran continues to prioritize and advance its ballistic missile programs. Since the 1980s, Iran has relied on its North Korean and Syrian partners to export and then assist in the development of short- and medium-range ballistic missile systems. Despite its original reliance on third parties, Iran’s missile program has evolved over time, demonstrating the engineering and technical expertise necessary to develop missile technologies on its own.16 In particular, Iran has continued to work on its satellite launch vehicles (SLVs). In February 2009, Iran successfully launched a satellite into orbit using its Safir-2 SLV platform. Since then, it has been working on upgrades for delivering heavier payloads into higher orbits.17 According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Iran continues to expand the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces—many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload.”18

The Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that Iran’s development of large space launch vehicles demonstrates an intent to develop ICBM technologies. In January 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta noted that “Iran might be able to develop a nuclear-armed missile about a year or two after developing a nuclear explosive device.”19 The rapid progress of Iranian missile technology and development is changing the minds of many senior leaders who had been skeptical about the future of Iranian ICBM capabilities and ability to threaten North America.20

Similar to North Korea, concerns exist regarding an ICBM-equipped Iran armed with nuclear devices. Iran possesses an extensive inventory of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. Tehran incorporates these missiles in its overall strategy to “deter—and if need be retaliate—against forces in the region, including U.S. forces.”21 An Iran equipped with nuclear-tipped ICBMs would likely extend that strategy to include North America, thereby seriously affecting the U.S. position and leverage against Iran in regional security issues by holding major U.S population areas hostage. Again, any perceived threat to the Iranian regime could result in a serious miscalculation.

I&W Capabilities for BMD

To effectively use ground-based interceptors to counter threats, WRAs must have substantial intelligence resources to detect and monitor perceived indicators via analysts and tools that may offer adequate warning. Whether a single source of information or a fusion of multiple sources, I&W intelligence provides time-sensitive information to military commanders or other senior leaders who may authorize a response to an adversarial action or intention. BMD warning is enabled by a layered multisensor architecture that consists of fixed and mobile land-, sea-, and space-based assets located around the world. Future I&W capabilities for BMD will most likely include greater numbers of systems as described, in addition to more technologically robust systems in development. Nevertheless, the U.S. Government has signaled it will also incorporate joint and multinational efforts beyond those that already exist.22

Land-based components of the BMD warning system include fixed sites and mobile phased-array radar sensors. Upgraded early warning radars located in Alaska, California, Greenland, and the United Kingdom provide all-weather, long-range tactical warning of ballistic missile launches, including estimated launch and impact points, to the command authority.23 The Cobra Dane Upgrade is a midcourse radar in Alaska that detects missiles out to 2,000 miles and operates in the L-band radio frequency.24 The Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance and Control (AN/TPY-2) consists in part of a high-resolution X-band radar primarily deployed in support of U.S. allies in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; however, it can also provide acquisition and tracking data for the integrated BMD system.25

Sea-based components of the BMD warning system include the ship-based Aegis and semi-submersible platform-based radars, which can each detect and provide acquisition and tracking information for the BMD system. The mobile nature of naval platforms allows them to be repositioned around the globe with efficiency to improve BMD detection coverage during heightened tensions within a given region. There are currently 31 cruisers and destroyers based in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets that are fitted with the Aegis BMD system, with an additional two undergoing installation. Aegis Ashore Installations will be located in Romania and Poland as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, with an Aegis Ashore test facility in Hawaii.26 The Aegis system works in conjunction with the Army Navy/Shipboard Phased-Array Radar (AN/SPY-1) S-Band radar and can detect, cross-cue, and track ballistic missiles to provide warning to other regional and national assets.27 Aside from U.S.-operated systems, Japan purchased Aegis for its four Kongo-class guided missile destroyers,28 and smaller, less capable Aegis versions are carried by Australia, Norway, South Korea, and Spain.29 Furthermore, the Sea-Based X-Band (SBX) radar is mounted on a twin-hulled, self-propelled drilling platform that is jointly operated by the Missile Defense Agency and Military Sealift Command.30 Primarily used for BMD testing purposes in the Pacific, the SBX radar can also be deployed in support of homeland defense. The land-, sea-, and space-based sensor systems can provide target track information to the command, control, battle management, and communications (C2BMC) system, which then provides tracking information to other radar systems and track and discrimination information to the shooter systems for organic or remote engagement.

Space-based systems have provided the United States a strategic and tactical I&W capability for more than five decades. The once-classified, second-generation satellite constellation known as the Defense Support Program (DSP) was first launched into orbit in 1970.31 DSP satellites use short- and mid-wave infrared sensors in a geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), allowing constant or near-constant vigilance in support of the overhead persistent infrared mission.32 The third-generation satellite constellation known as Space-Based Infrared Systems uses a mix of GEO and highly elliptical orbit satellites, which allows for scanning and staring33 of selectively targeted areas with increased sensitivity as compared to the older DSP satellites.34

Future sensors are in development to improve and enhance current BMD warning capabilities. In addition, multinational efforts in the Asian, European, and Middle Eastern regions will become more robust and include nontraditional partners such as China and Russia,35 suggesting that the United States and its allies perceive North Korea and Iran as the primary antagonists of the ballistic missile threat. These future platforms will enable earlier I&W, which will increase the engagement windows for the BMD systems and provide additional decision timeframes for the WRAs.

Combatant Commander Responsibilities for I&W

Although USSTRATCOM provides subject matter expertise on global I&W for ICBM threats as well as planning and operational issues related to BMD, each geographic combatant commander is responsible for protecting the homeland in the command’s respective area of responsibility (AOR). USNORTHCOM and USPACOM have specific roles and tasks within this construct.36 The USNORTHCOM commander has the overarching responsibility of protecting North America as the supported command, with assistance from USPACOM and NORAD as supporting commands.37

The USSTRATCOM commander is responsible for synchronizing global BMD plans and operations, in addition to providing missile warning to NORAD and other combatant commanders if the appropriate combatant command is unable to do so.38 To this end, the USSTRATCOM commander established the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense (JFCC-IMD) as the synchronizing body for the BMD system.39 The Missile Defense Agency and JFCC for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance support JFCC-IMD in providing “shared situational awareness, integrated battle management C2 [command and control], adaptive planning, and accurate and responsive battle damage assessment.”40

BMD System

The ballistic missile defense system is a complex, distributed system of five elements (four shooter elements and one C2 element), five sensor systems (four radar systems and one space-based system), and supporting efforts. The integration of these many elements and efforts enable a robust, layered defense against a hostile missile in all phases of flight.41 The shooter elements include the Aegis BMD, Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, Patriot missile defense system, and Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. The sensor systems include the Aegis BMD AN/SPY-1 radar, Cobra Dane radar, upgraded early warning radars, AN/TPY-2 (forward-based mode) radar, and Space-Based Infrared Systems/DSP. In addition, the Sea-Based X-Band radar (primarily a test asset that can be operationally deployed as needed) will be used within the BMD system when available. The command and control element is the C2BMC, a vital operational system that enables the President, Secretary of Defense, and combatant commanders at strategic, regional, and operational levels to systematically plan BMD operations, collectively see the threat develop, and dynamically manage designated networked sensors and weapons systems to achieve global and regional mission objectives.42 This group of automated systems enables each sensor and shooter to integrate by sharing targeting information and engagement control for a WRA.

The U.S. GMD missile system currently is the only demonstrated capability for defense against ICBM threats to the United States.43 Planners bin ballistic missiles into one of five categories based on their maximum range capabilities: close range (62–186 miles), short range (under 620 miles), medium range (between 620 and 1,800 miles), intermediate range (between 1,800 and 3,400 miles), and intercontinental (greater than 3,400 miles).44 For ICBM threats to the United States, the BMD system relies on GBIs launched from U.S. bases to intercept and kill the missile or warhead during the midcourse phase of its flight. (GBIs are the only system available to attack an ICBM during this phase.) The United States currently has GBI silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.45

Ground-based interceptors are three-stage, solid-fueled boosters with an exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV). Upon ICBM launch detection and recognition as a threat to the United States, a WRA can launch GBIs in self-defense. The decision to launch must be made with enough time available for the GBI to reach the ICBM during the midcourse phase. During the GBI flight, the EKV separates from its booster and uses onboard sensors for target detection, guidance, and discrimination, resulting in a collision with the targeted reentry vehicle while it is still in its midcourse phase.46

ICBMs have three stages of flight: boost, midcourse, and terminal. The boost phase begins with the launch of the missile/warhead and lasts until the rocket engine burns out, approximately 3 to 5 minutes.47 The midcourse phase, which is the longest phase of flight, starts after rocket engine burnout and continues with the missile/warhead exiting Earth’s atmosphere, reaching its apogee, and beginning its descent, and can last up to 20 minutes.48 During the terminal phase of flight, the detached warhead reenters Earth’s atmosphere and continues until detonation or impact. This generally lasts less than a minute.49 In total, the three stages of ICBM flight last less than 30 minutes. During this time, a WRA must identify the ICBM launch, determine if the launch is a threat to the United States, decide to engage the ICBM with GBIs, and achieve a successful kill while the missile is still in its midcourse phase of flight. Currently, the BMD system relies on intelligence and sensors to indicate the construction or deployment of rogue nation systems to provide warning of an impending attack. This additional time allows for deployment of additional radar sensors toward the anticipated launch site in order to detect and track any incoming missile.

Integrated Threat Analysis: Current Situation

A number of factors degrade effective strategic I&W, creating a particularly dangerous situation with respect to the North Korean ICBM threat and timely WRA response for BMD employment. First, North Korea is an isolated, closed state that denies robust, comprehensive intelligence collection operations. As a result, the Intelligence Community relies on nonpersistent, space-based imagery collection for North Korea.⁵⁰

Second, these nonpersistent, space-based assets are in high demand, especially by coalition commanders focused on the Korean Peninsula. The capabilities needed for BMD I&W are shared with other PIRs, such as North Korean long-range artillery; short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles; and ground, air, and air defense forces.

Third, even when these space-based assets are used to collect information on North Korean ICBMs, the road-mobile threats, combined with North Korean camouflage, concealment, and deception efforts, make them extremely difficult to find and track. Thus, it is conceivable that the first indication of a North Korean ICBM launch against North America would come from tactical I&W from overhead persistent infrared assets, starting the clock for a WRA to make a GBI engagement decision.

According to Joint Publication 3-27, Homeland Defense, and the Unified Command Plan, it is incumbent upon USPACOM, USNORTHCOM, and USSTRATCOM to use the I&W resources in their toolkits to warn against ballistic missile threats.⁵¹ Regional assets, such as Aegis cruisers and destroyers, fixed early warning radar sites, and mobile radar systems, provide information to the combatant commanders for I&W. The President has delegated weapons release authority to USNORTHCOM, precluding USSTRATCOM from WRA for engaging targets.⁵² These combatant commander responsibilities reinforce the necessity of I&W and BMD system capabilities within the combatant command to ensure timely response and engagement of all BMD threats to the United States.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Ballistic missile defense is a no-fail mission that requires an interdependent and complementary effort to generate and track strategic and tactical indications and warning intelligence. It is imperative that leaders understand the importance of the BMD system and component systems to ensure continued funding for these systems and I&W platforms. This will reduce the chances of creating stovepipe systems that cannot (or are slow to) communicate with other systems. In a mission area where time is of the essence and failure would result in grave damage to national security, failure to support the BMD system would create an unacceptable risk to homeland defense. It is also imperative that we continue to improve and grow I&W capabilities for BMD throughout the combatant commands.

Although USSTRATCOM is responsible for synchronizing global I&W for ballistic missile threats, USNORTHCOM, along with USPACOM, requires its own organic I&W capability for BMD for four primary reasons. First, a USNORTHCOM ballistic missile defense I&W element, specifically focused on ICBM threats to the homeland, can collaborate with USPACOM, USSTRATCOM, and the Intelligence Community to leverage the imagery collection resources for strategic I&W of the Pacific region, primarily North Korea. Without this focused attention and emphasis, other commands may weight collection efforts more toward peninsula-focused PIRs, especially during times of increased tensions, and thereby create gaps in collection coverage.

Second, a USNORTHCOM BMD I&W element, in close collaboration with USSTRATCOM and USPACOM and focused on tracking strategic I&W developed by monitoring ICBM activity on the Korean Peninsula, would exponentially increase overall situational awareness of North Korean preparations and intentions for launching an ICBM. Strategic I&W is critical in order to position other mobile platforms as well as to prepare the BMD system, should indications show a North Korean desire and readiness to launch.

Third, should North Korea launch an ICBM against North America, a USNORTHCOM BMD I&W element could ensure that the intelligence-to-shooter is properly communicated in a timely manner to the USNORTHCOM commander. Upon notification of a launch, the commander has only a few minutes from launch identification to determine if it is a threat to North America and to successfully engage the threat.

Finally, due to limited time and resources, actions and reactions to a missile launch must be flawless, especially among geographic combatant command areas of responsibility. The entire system must work as one unit despite its geographically distributed parts. To aid in the effective handoff of BMD responsibilities between AORs, shared, pristine situational awareness is paramount. North Korean intent is evident. Ballistic missile defense of the homeland is a no-fail mission that starts with collaborative and timely strategic and tactical I&W provided by USNORTHCOM, USPACOM, and USSTRATCOM.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 78 which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:

1. “The Threat,” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, December 2014, available at <www.mda.mil/system/threat.html>.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Bernard Ulfers and George LeFurjah, “AN/SPY-1B/D RADAR Design Changes Supporting Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense,” Leading Edge 7, no. 2 (2013), 101.
6. Ibid.
7. Jonathon Masters and Greg Bruno, “U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, May 2006, available at <www.cfr.org/defensehomeland-security/us-ballistic-missile-defense/p30607>; Joint Publication (JP) 3-27, Homeland Defense (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, 2009), III-18.
8. Frank Harvey, North Korea, Ballistic Missile Defence, and Canada-US Defence Cooperation, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) Policy Paper (Calgary, AB: CDFAI, 2013), 1, 5, available at <www.cdfai.org/PDF/North Korea Ballistic Missile Defence.pdf>.
9. Greg Thielmann, Sorting Out the Nuclear and Missile Threats from North Korea (Washington, DC: Arms Control Association, 2013), 6, available at ><www.armscontrol.org/files/TAB_Sorting_Out_North_Korea_2013.pdf>.
10. Ibid., 7.
11. Ibid., 3, 6.
12. Ibid., 1.
13. Richard Weitz, “US Missile Defense: Closing the Gap,” World Affairs Journal (July–August 2013), 80, available at <www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/us-missile-defense-closing-gap>.
14. Emma Chanlett-Avery and Ian Rinehart, North Korea: U.S. Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation, R41259 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2013), 6, available at <www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41259.pdf>.
15. Ibid., 1.
16. Chris Smith and Matthew Wallin, “Iranian Ballistic Missiles,” AmericanSecurityProject.org, August 2013, 1, available at <http://americansecurityproject.org/featured-items/2013/fact-sheet-iranian-ballistic-missiles/>.
17. Ibid., 5.
18. Masters and Bruno, 6.
19. Kenneth Katzman, Iran: U.S. Concerns and Policy Responses (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2012), 36, available at <www.cfr.org/iran/crs-iran-us-concerns-policy-responses/p282737>.
20. Smith and Wallin, 6.
21. Katzman, 36.
22. Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report (BMDR) (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, February 2010), v–vii.
23. “Upgraded Early Warning Radar,” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, April 2013, available at <www.mda.mil/global/documents/pdf/uewr1.pdf>.
24. “Cobra Dane,” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, February 2013, available at <www.mda.mil/global/documents/pdf/cobradane.pdf>.
25. “Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance (AN/TPY 2),” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, February 2013, available at <www.mda.mil/global/documents/pdf/an_tpy2.pdf>.
26. “Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense,” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, August 2013, available at <www.mda.mil/system/aegis_bmd.html>.
27. Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program: Background and Issues for Congress, RL33745 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2011), 2–3, available at <https://opencrs.com/document/RL33745/>.
28. “Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense.”
29. O’Rourke, 3.
30. “Sensors,” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, November 2012, available at <www.mda.mil/global/documents/pdf/sbx.pdf>.
31. “Defense Support Program: Satellites,” U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet, February 2, 2011, available at <www.losangeles.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5323>.
32. Ibid., 1.
33. “The two basic types of focal plane arrays are scanning and staring. The simplest scanning device consists of a linear array. An image is generated by scanning the scene across the strip. . . . A staring array is the two-dimensional extension of a scanning array. It is self-scanned electronically, can provide enhanced sensitivity, and is suitable for lightweight cameras [emphasis added].” See Lester J. Kozlowski and Walter F. Kosonocky, “Infrared Detector Arrays,” 33.6–33.7, available at <www.mhprofessional.com/handbookofoptics/pdf/Handbook_of_Optics_vol2_ch33.pdf>.
34. “Infrared Space Systems Directorate,” U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet, November 23, 2011, available at <www.losangeles.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5330>.
35. BMDR, 31–35.
36. JP 3-27, Homeland Defense, II-18.
37. Ibid., III-17–III-19.
38. Ibid., III-19.
39. Ibid., III-18–III-19.
40. Ibid.
41. “A System of Elements,” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, July 18, 2013, available at <www.mda.mil/system/elements.html>.
42. “Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC),” Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet, November 2012, available at <www.mda.mil/system/c2bmc.html>.
43. Baker Spring, “Protecting U.S. Territory Against Long-Range Missiles: Second Approach Needed,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #3987, July 15, 2013, available at <www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/protecting-us-territory-against-long-range-missiles-2nd-approach-needed>.
44. Masters and Bruno, 1–2.
45. Ibid., 4.
46. Weitz, 83.
47. Robert G. Gard and Kingston Reif, “Fact Sheet: U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense,” Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, 2013, available at <http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/missiledefense/articles/fact_sheet_us_ballistic_missile_defense/>.
48. Ibid., 1.
49. Ibid.
50. JP 3-14, Space Operations (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, January 6, 2009), V-5‒V-6.
51. JP 3-27, Homeland Defense, II-9, II-12, III-13.
52. Ibid., III-19.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that he will stand by Sri Lanka to correct the misconceptions about the country within the international community.

Blair made these observations when he met with President Maithripala Sirisena at the Presidential Secretariat Monday. The former British Prime Minister arrived in Sri Lanka recently on a private visit.

Blair commended the President for conducting recently concluded Parliamentary Elections in a free and fair manner.

He also appreciated the steps taken by the President Sirisena to build reconciliation and to restore democracy throughout the country, while giving proper leadership to the country.

The former British Prime Minister furthermore explained to the President regarding the possibilities of implementing international programs of Tony Blair Foundation in collaboration with Sri Lanka.

He commended the progress made by the Sri Lanka’s tourism industry, and said that he will extend every possible support to develop the tourism industry.

According to FRONTUR – the Inbound Tourism Survey, drafted by the General Sub-directorate of Tourism Information and Studies of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, Spain surpassed the record posted between January and July 2014 with the arrival of 37,975,920 inbound tourists in the period, an increase of 1.7 million tourists and year-on-year growth of 4.7%.

The United Kingdom was the top emitting market in the period with 8,739,392 tourists (up 3.5%); followed by France with 6,075,378 tourists (up 7.8%) and Germany with 5,897,152 tourists (up 1.3%).

Catalonia was the top destination autonomous region, with 9,779,510 inbound tourists (up 5.5%). This was followed by the Canary Islands with 6,594,864 tourists (up 0.9%) and the Balearic Islands with 6,526,218 tourists (up 3.9%). The largest increase in the first seven months of the year was posted by the Region of Madrid, at 10.7%.

A total of 8,782,719 inbound tourists visited Spain in July, an increase of 6.3% and another all-time record for July in the FRONTUR statistics. The United Kingdom was the top emitting market with 2,031,330 tourists (up 6.4%), followed by France with 1,521,437 tourists (up 8.5%). The United States posted growth of 40.5% in the month.

A gunman who killed two journalists during a live broadcast in Virginia has shot himself and is in critical condition. The killer boasted of the shooting on Twitter, posting his own videos of the incident.

Vester Lee Flanagan II, who went as ‘Bryce Williams’ on air, shot himself on I-66 in Faquier County, WDBJ reported, citing state police.

He shot himself near mile marker 17 around 11:25 a.m. local time. The location is about a three hour drive from where the shooting took place.

Previous reports stated that Williams had killed himself, but the latest information is that he is still alive and in critical condition.

A news conference has been scheduled for 1 p.m. local time.

The two journalists killed on Wednesday worked for WDBJ, and the station has confirmed that Williams was a former employee. The general manager of the station, Jeff Marks, said Williams was fired from the channel two years ago and did not take the dismissal well.

Williams posted videos of the shooting on Twitter and Facebook.

“I filmed the shooting, see Facebook,” he wrote on Twitter before his account was suspended.

According to his LinkedIn profile, the 41-year-old worked for WDBJ from March 2012 to February 2013 as a multimedia journalist.

The video, posted on a Twitter account that was quickly suspended after the messages emerged, showed Williams approaching reporter Alison Parker while she interviewed a person live on air. Photographer Adam Ward could also be seen in the footage.

The gun is then raised, but Parker is seemingly unaware, as she continues to ask the interviewee a question.

In the second video, Williams starts shooting, and Parker is seen running for shelter. Eight shots can be heard before the screen goes black. An additional eight shots are then heard; this is presumably when Ward was shot.

Williams posted a link to his Twitter account on Facebook on Monday, and did two “video tests” on August 19. His Facebook account has also been suspended.

US President Barack Obama spoke by phone on August 25 with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, discussing various subjects, but also to allay concerns over reports that the NSA had been involved in spying in Japan.

According to the White House, during the conversation Obama told Abe that US intelligence collection is focused on national security interests and is as narrowly tailored as possible.

Obama’s statement follows reports published by WikiLeaks late July that the US intelligence agency NSA had in the past multiple targets in Japan, “including the Japanese cabinet and Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi, together with intercepts relating to US-Japan relations, trade negotiations and sensitive climate change strategy.”

Also during the telephone conversation, according to the White House, Obama commended the Japanese Prime Minister for his August 14 expression of deep remorse for the suffering caused by Japan during the World War II era, and encouraged him to continue his efforts to promote reconciliation.

President Obama and Prime Minister Abe reaffirmed their commitment to work together to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement as soon as possible, and to continue their cooperation in combating the impact of climate change.

According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. economy is recovering significantly faster than other advanced economies and the dollar is strengthening. In contrast, China’s economy is facing a slowdown with growth decelerating and the yuan depreciating.

The realities are more complicated. In early June, Dow Jones (DJIA) still exceeded
18,200 and the Shanghai Index was close to 5,200. But last week was the worst in Wall Street in four years as the DJIA plunged 531 points. In China, markets have
been anxious ever since June.

So as U.S. markets sank, those in China followed until Beijing cut interest rates for the fifth time in nine months, along with reserve ratios. Consequently, U.S. and global markets rallied, but unease remains in the Mainland.

China’s exchange-rate adjustment

On August 11, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) made a change to its central parity of the yuan against the U.S. dollar to better reflect market conditions. While the net effect was a de facto devaluation of 1.87% relative to the US dollar, the adjustment was characterized as “dramatic” in the West. China’s slowdown and market fall was seen to contribute or even to fuel U.S. uncertainty.

Some saw the PBoC’s decision as still another signal that China’s growth deceleration is far worse than anticipated. Yet, China’s rebalancing seems to be proceeding as anticipated in the medium-term, which translates to significant volatility in the near-term (that includes economic deceleration and market volatility).

Others argued that the PBoC’s decision was an opening shot in a “currency war” that would spread internationally. However, this concern seems to be grossly
disproportionate and reflects more international concerns about the strengthening of U.S. dollar, the plunge of euro, energy producers’ severe challenges in dollar-denominated commodity markets, and so forth.

Still others thought Beijing planned to use its cheaper currency to jumpstart exports and growth. Yet, that goal does not seem to make sense in view of China’s ongoing rebalancing away from net exports and investment. Moreover, any attempt to escalate export-led growth with 2% devaluation would be inadequate.

Lastly, some observers saw the PBoC’s decision as an effort to comply with IMF conditions to include the yuan in the special drawing rights (SDR) currency basket. After all, the move toward a more market-determined rate is what both the IMF and the U.S. Treasury have been asking for and well-aligned with Beijing’s effort to make the yuan a major reserve currency.

If China’s growth deceleration and devaluation did not trigger recent turmoil in U.S. markets, what did?

US: 2% growth, no medium-term rebalancing

In the U.S. markets, fundamentals and even technicalities have been ignored for a long while. The same goes for a series of international signals that have been shrugged off, including the plunge of energy prices, stagnation in Europe and Japan, growth slowdown in emerging economies, violent turmoil in the Middle East, and sanctions against Russia.

That equilibrium was inherently unstable. So as the correction finally gained momentum last week, the fear was reflected in the Volatility Index (VIX), which soared to 41 on Monday – that’s close to fall 2011 when U.S. and European debt crises escalated.

In fact, Wall Street has anticipated correction for some time because U.S. markets have been very expensive. As measured by the so (cyclically-adjusted price-earnings ratio), the historical average in the U.S. market has been about 15. In the past few years, it has climbed back to over 26, close to its peak before the global recession in 2007.

Such valuations may not be viable after half a decade of zero-bound rates, rounds of quantitative easing amounting to $4.5 trillion, and the soaring of U.S. sovereign debt to $18.4 trillion today. As Congress has failed to pass a budget for the coming fiscal year, it has also elevated the risk for another government shutdown in October.

Until recent market turmoil – after months of conflicting data and several reversals – the expectation was that the Fed would begin the hikes in September, but could defer the lift-off until December. This view was motivated by economic indicators, which suggested that the U.S. economy was strengthening. After challenging early quarters, growth is expected to exceed 3.5% in the second half.

Solid job growth has kept unemployment rate at a seven-year low of 5.3%, although long-term unemployment remains as high as in the 1940s and the labor force participation rate is at the level last seen in the late 1970s. Real, inflation-adjusted wages have hardly grown. Inflation remains far from the 2 percent target, even in a benign scenario, around 0.1%-1% by year-end.

China: about 7% growth, amid medium-term rebalancing

In China, economic growth is expected to be within the annualized target rate of “about 7%.” In the first quarter of 2015, 3.2 million additional new jobs were created, which reflects a healthy pace.

As consumption is slowly increasing at the expense of investment, the more labor- intensive service sector is expanding with wage growth outpacing economic growth.

While current rebalancing is closing opportunities in the export sector, it is opening new ones in services – as long as reforms prevail.

These gains have also been substantiated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which reports stability in the Chinese labor market, solid job creation, and rising household incomes.

What could go wrong with these growth prospects? Until now, the concern has focused on decreasing private investment and consumption, which Beijing has
sought to support by easing credit and speeding up public investments. Another concern involves a challenging balancing act between targeted stimulus policies and the acceleration of fiscal and financial reforms.

Until June, the market boom supported economic growth. After the market plunged, the government was able to boost a cushion to prevent further decline. However, the volatility of the U.S. markets has contributed to renewed loss of confidence in the Chinese markets.

If economic prospects deteriorate, Beijing could further depreciate its yuan or go even further by absorbing losses on financial institutions’ balance sheets. If the policy authorities would choose to launch a 2008-like stimulus, growth would benefit but at the cost of further leverage.

The strategic importance of cooperation

After the global crisis, China drove global growth prospects. That is no longer viable amid its massive rebalancing. However, its economic long-term potential remains.

Excessive U.S. leverage had a key role in the 2008 global crisis. More recently, U.S.
markets have been booming, but Washington still has no credible, bipartisan medium-term plan for deleveraging. That continues to fuel unsustainable debt that is eroding America’s long-term potential.

To overcome challenges, the U.S. needs an effective debt plan, while China must
deepen its economic reforms. What global growth prospects and markets need today is the kind of G-20 cooperation that lifted the world economy from the global crisis and could sustain it through the current challenges – but with cooperation, not conflict.

A slightly shorter version published at China-US Focus

By K.V. Kesavan*

Opinion is sharply divided on the nature and outcome of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. While many informed critics have taken exception to some of the expressions Abe has used in the statement, others have welcomed it as a well thought-out message seeking a sincere reconciliation with Japan’s neighbouring countries.

A survey conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun indicates that 48% of the respondents gave a favourable opinion to Abe’s statement. It is also important to note that both China and South Korea who were expected to be the most vociferous critics of Abe have reacted in a subdued way. It is reported that Abe is likely to visit China in the first week of September when Beijing will commemorate its Second World War victory over Japan. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, a vehement critic of Japan, has also reacted to Abe’s statement rather calmly and even given a call for both Japan and South Korea to look forward to closer bilateral understanding. Similarly, one should note the positive responses from the US, Australia and many ASEAN countries.

There is no doubt that the statement is one of the most closely scrutinised of Abe’s public pronouncements so far. There is also little doubt that Abe had carefully crafted each and every line of his statement because of the impact it could produce particularly in China and South Korea. It is also clear that he drew many of his ideas from the report submitted earlier by his advisory committee consisting of well-known experts business leaders and scholars.

Considering the timing of the statement as well as Japan’s present relations with some of the neighbouring countries, Abe could not afford to make any statement other than a well-calibrated, thoughtful and conciliatory one that would appear to make a sincere admission of Japan’s mistakes without at the same time making a major dilution of his deeply held positions or alienating his domestic power base. For instance, Abe as a young law-maker is reported to have had serious reservations on Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama’s statement of 1995. It is also reported that in 2005 when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made his 60th year war anniversary statement, Abe, even as the Party’s Secretary General, had his scepticism.

As political heat started gaining momentum after his advent as prime minister in 2012 for the second time, he had to address this issue squarely. In 2013, he took serious exception to the use of the word ‘aggression’ to describe Japan’s pre-war policies in Asia. He argued that the definition of what constituted aggression “has yet to be established in academia or in the international community.” Both China and South Korea strongly objected to Abe’s statement and they were further enraged in December 2013 by Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni shrine. Given these basic differences in their respective perceptions of history, there was a great deal of concern in the air on how Abe would use his 70th anniversary address to bring about reconciliation with these countries.

Pressures on Abe

But beginning from 2015 onwards, Abe came under severe political and economic pressures that forced him to seek a rather cautious and conciliatory course on the question of his World War speech. First, ever since July 2014 when Abe decided to reinterpret the Constitution on the issue of exercising collective self-defence, he has been engaged in steering a series of security related bills in the Diet to a successful conclusion. He has got an exceptional extension of the Diet session for that purpose too, so that the bills could be passed latest before the end of September. But what has caused him considerable worry is that in various opinion polls, his approval ratings have sharply fallen even below 40%. It is definitely a matter of concern for a leader who started with above 75% approval ratings two years ago. Second, Abe is also set to face party presidential election in September. Though he is confident of getting re-elected for one more term, any slip in a touchy subject like the World War II statement could cause unexpected and avoidable public controversy. Third, any decision taken by Abe on his statement should also give adequate consideration to the position of his major political ally Komeito which has urged Abe to properly reflect on the views of both Murayama and Koizumi by including such expressions like aggression, colonial rule, apology and remorse. The coalition partner also desired that the new statement should be made in the name of the cabinet.

It is clear from the above account that Abe’s new statement has to address multiple audiences seeking to balance their interests. The final statement traces Japan’s rise as a modern military power under compelling circumstances that ultimately led to its downfall. In that process it tries to place Japanese imperialism along with western imperialism in Asia. It talks about Japan’s pledge not to resort again to aggression, war, and colonial rule. It refers to such expressions like remorse, repentance and heartfelt apology rendered by successive Japanese governments, and assures that these pledges of the previous governments “will remain unshakable into the future.” Though these are strong assurances, many in East Asia would still have liked Abe himself to express those sentiments more categorically rather than referring to the previous cabinets. Abe’s mention of the “dignity and honour of women” is well-taken, but many feel that a more pointed reference to the issue of comfort women would have gone a long way in assuaging the victims of this cruelty.

Finally, another key point Abe has raised is about the time limit for the Japanese people to keep on offering apology. With 80% of the population belonging to post-war generations, Abe argues, “we must not let our children, grand children and even further generations to come….be pre-destined to apologise.” In other words, Abe believes that having been a responsible democracy with deep commitments to respect for freedom, rule of law and human rights, the time has come for the Japanese people to break with the practice of apologising for ever. Many would like to support his contention. But this can happen only if Japan fully embraces history and develops a deep understanding with both China and South Korea on their mutual historical perceptions

*Prof. K.V. Kesavan is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

It reads like the idealisation of tourism. Enthusiastic, intrepid traveller goes to an impoverished state marred by natural disaster to encourage currency, consumption and travel. In this sense, it is a global phenomenon, involving a good deal of hustling, and a good deal of moralising, about preventing a supposedly bad deal from going worse. The locals are treated as desperate for the money; the tourist, for the daredevil sightseeing.

Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki is one such figure, setting out to be the first to make the summit of Everest since the disastrous April earthquake that cut, and here, the emphasis is important, the climbing season short. “Nepal’s tourism minister, Kripasur Sherpa, gave Kuriki his climbing permit at a ceremony in Kathmandu on Sunday.”

That such an event needed a ceremony suggests sacralisation on the one hand, edification on the other. But much of it is plainly material, rooted in Mammon’s temptation and tourism’s allure – each Everest climbing permit costs $11,000, in addition to a range of other government levies. These go into the coffers of the tourist ministry, and various private hands.

Kuriki is also keen to remind his audience that his climb is not self-centred bravado, a narcissistic binge that will involve sherpas and a Japanese film crew. He really is, so goes the suggestion, risking his neck for the betterment of Nepal. “The main purpose of my climb is to spread the message that Nepal was safe for climbers and trekkers even after the earthquake.”

Very good of him to do so, especially given the media rosiness of his courage in the face of nature’s ravaging elements – he, we are told, lost nine fingers to frostbite in an effort in 2012. This is meaty, dangerous stuff.

Coverage of disasters varies on nationality and purchase value. Anonymous, dead locals do not make good copy, tending to vanish in the statistical margins as boring matter. Suitably cashed-up saints, generally from developed states with an intention to salve their conscience, do. They inject “capital” into the impoverished economy and remind others that they do.

The networks, with appropriately tuned antennae, get busy when the fatalities come in, more interested in capturing the photogenic mountaineer, somewhat foolhardy but supposedly courageous, into circulation. Stories, with heavy pockets, are personalised. The sentimental narrative of humankind against mother nature is also mobilised. The locals take not so much second place as last in the pecking order of discussions.

The April earthquake made no such distinction, killing some 8,600 people. There were slivers of discussion noting the trite point that most who suffered were the same who tend to suffer in natural disasters: the indigent and the vulnerable. A Guardian piece on April 27 suggested that “what the thousands of victims share is that they are poor.”

A few personal snippets are documented – that of Garima Saha, to take one example, a twelve-year old who spent 36 hours in darkness. She only regained consciousness after nine hours, having suffered multiple fractures to her shoulder.

Victims of natural disasters occasionally become, in the overly active media cycle, demons of anger and dissatisfaction. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, much emphasis was placed on the elements of medieval styled brigandage and looting. Suddenly, those who were suffering were no longer human. Ditto the case of Haiti, victimhood became the alibi for socialised theft and stern counter-measures by the state.

Even after the Nepalese earthquake, the disgruntlement was noted in The Hindu. The Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, on visiting relief camps, met rage in the form of people “seizing food and water supplies, four days after a devastating earthquake”. A certain Rajana, a survivor, was quoted in anger: “We’ve been left starving in the cold and the best this government can give us is this queue. Why are they so slow?”

The coverage, however, has granted a different forum to the climbing fraternity, slanted, eager to highlight when the tourism industry would revive. National Geographic highlighted the question many on the climbing side were asking: “Will Everest’s Climbing Slow Down After Disasters?”

The climbing takes precedence like a romantic thrill. Would there be more climbers this year? Would there be any in autumn, a period regarded as particularly difficult by the climbing fraternity? Well, things did certainly cease till Kuriki’s project.

“This Japanese daredevil,” goes the headline in Quartz, “will be the first to risk climbing Mount Everest after the Nepal earthquake.” The author also concedes that he was at Everest Base Camp on April 25 and “sustained minor injuries from the avalanche.” In the struggle with nature, he prevailed while others did not.

Al-Jazeera’s headline pays tribute to the Japanese climber and the avalanche victims – those 19 tourists killed. The vast numbers of the locals are otherwise buried, both literally and symbolically – as they will continue to be done. In the lottery of life, such climatic catastrophes tend to do their worst to the worse off.

By Cinzia Bianco*

On June 26, a suicide attack during Friday prayers in the historic Shi’ite Imam Sadiq mosque in Kuwait City killed 27 people and wounded 227. Hours after the suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest, Daesh (“Islamic State”) took to social media and claimed responsibility. A Saudi Arabian national by the nom de guerre Abu Sulaiman al Muwahhidby—of Najd Province (a Saudi Arabia-based Daesh division)— was identified as the perpetrator. 1

The gruesome act caught many analysts by surprise, given that sectarian relations in Kuwait have been relatively positive compared to other Arab states. How- ever, developments that unfolded in Kuwait prior to the June 26 attack highlight how sectarian issues in the region have negatively impacted Sunni-Shi’ite relations within the emirate.

On April 2, Khaled al-Shatti, a prominent Kuwaiti Shi’ite lawyer and former parliamentarian, was arrested after posting tweets critical of the Saudi-led Arab coalition’s fight against the Houthis in Yemen.2 Shatti had suggested that Iran’s power was going to prevail in Yemen. He was charged with challenging the emir, demoralizing Kuwaiti soldiers, offending the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and threatening Kuwait City’s relations with Riyadh. Shatti was released four days later. Other Shi’ite parliamentarians (7 out of 10 in a body of 50) also criticized Kuwait’s participation in the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen on the grounds that it violates Kuwait’s constitutional prohibition of offensive war.

Kuwait’s sectarian orientation makes the emirate a palatable target for Daesh and other extremist groups that thrive on spreading sectarian strife. Indeed, the chaos in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen has offered Daesh fertile playgrounds, as such conflicts have triggered extreme polarization along sectarian lines throughout the greater Middle East.

Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two leaders of the Sunni and Shia blocks, exacerbate this polarization by backing opposite parties in each of the conflicts currently enflaming the region. Yemen is a case in point. The fact that Arab Sunni states have formed a historically unprecedented military coalition to fight the Houthis—a Shi’ite non-state actor in Yemen, allegedly backed by Iran—underscores the region’s growing Sunni-Shi’ite divide, a conflict that is clearly raising sectarian temperatures in Kuwait’s political sphere.

The Unique Role of Kuwait’s Shi’ite Minority

Such an outspoken protest is, to say the least, unusual in the Gulf. Indeed, Kuwait’s Shi’ite MPs are the only such group in the region allowed to take a stand against their government’s foreign policy on an official and institutional level.3

However, these political arrests are a real danger to Kuwait’s long-standing equilibrium. They threaten the Gulf state’s consolidated political system, one that was moving slowly toward a peculiar form of public involvement in the res publica.

As a matter of fact, the highly mobilized Kuwaiti public can vote in free and fair parliamentary elections. The Kuwaiti parliament is the only one in the Gulf that can vote out individual ministers and even override the emir’s veto via majority vote, as happens in a semi-constitutional monarchy. At the same time, the cabinet, appointed by the emir, does not answer to the Parliament. Therefore, the ruling elite has been traditionally pushed to reason more in terms of averting political opposition than in terms of playing on sectarian dynamics.4 In turn, the opposition activity of Shi’ite MPs is carefully framed in constitutional terms, demonstrating their willingness to respect the norms of Kuwait’s political system rather than call for regime change. In the economic realm, Kuwaiti Shi’ites have equal access to sensitive positions in high-level de- fence and interior departments, and to the welfare benefits offered by its rentier structure, including free health care, education, and state subsidized fuel and housing.5 Some of the most powerful merchant families of the Gulf Arab nation are Shi’ite.

This is mostly because Shi’ites in Kuwait, who represent 25 to 30 percent of the population, hold a unique place in Kuwait’s history. Since the inception of the State of Kuwait, the emirate’s Shi’ites have known their place in the landscape of Kuwaiti politics. From 1936 to 1979, the ruling Al Sabah family relied on them as a counterweight to the political challenges coming first from Sunni Arab notables and later from Arab nationalists. 6

This “unwritten contract” ended with the Iranian revolution, when a small group of Kuwaiti Shi’ites began to push for political reforms. Sometimes Kuwait’s authorities violently repressed these Shi’ite activists. However, these episodes were mostly isolated and, generally speaking, Kuwaiti Shi’ites have most often been nationalistic and loyal to the ruling monarchy. In many cases, the Al Sabah ruling family has even de- fended them against tribalism and sectarianism in the parliament and throughout society.

When in 2011 Saudi Arabia and the UAE deployed troops to Bahrain to suppress its Shi’ite-led Arab Spring, the Kuwaiti government declined to send ground forces. Being highly sensitive to how Kuwait’s participation might impact sectarian divisions within the government, the emir ended up deploying a largely symbolic naval force. 7 Immediately after the June 26 attack, Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah visited the site. Footage on state-run Kuwait Television showed him visibly moved by the scenes of carnage. The leader also stressed the necessity for national unity in order to avoid falling into the polarizing trap of Daesh, as well as the need to confront head-on the threat of terrorism. 8

Hunting Down Whose Enemy?

Kuwait’s authorities face grave risks in terms of reconciling rhetoric about national unity with counter-terrorism efforts. Such activities should not become a re-branding of the authoritarianism utilized to counter the uprisings that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in early 2011.

Since “Arab Spring” protests were held in Kuwait back in 2011, the ruling family has been confronted by the cross-class Islamist-tribal-youth coalition, which has intensified its demands for political reform. In 2014, authorities responded to ongoing calls for change by stripping over 30 Kuwaitis of their citizenship and expelling them from the emirate for their alleged determination to undermine the Gulf state’s security.9 In March, authorities arrested human rights defender Nawaf al-Hendal and dozens of others at an anti-government protest.10

Kuwaitis who have criticized fellow GCC regimes have also been targeted. The Shi’ite MP Abdulhameed Dashti is on trial for condemning Bahrain’s Sunni rulers; the Shiite writer and academic Salah al-Fadhli was arrested for criticizing the war in Yemen; and former Sunni MP Mubarak al-Duweileh was questioned for criticizing officials in Abu Dhabi. 11 These cases underscore not only that there is a red line Kuwaitis must not cross when criticizing the emir, but also how speaking against Kuwait’s regional allies has become taboo.

Although the arrest of Shi’ites who are particularly outspoken appears sectarian from the outside, the trend fits into the context of all GCC states tightening the screws on political dissent under the pretext of securing stability in the Council. When considered in this light, regime-Shi’ite relations have more to do with how organised the political opposition is becoming in the Gulf. Emboldened domestic constituencies are increasingly vocal in GCC states, including Kuwait, where calls for democratic reform of the last decade have not translated into meaningful reform.12 Indeed, by further criminalizing dissent, Kuwait is on track with its regional allies. The Gulf state is facilitated by the GCC’s Security Pact, which allows all six members to join forces in silencing opposition forces all over the Gulf by creating transnational controls and eliminating safe havens for dissidents of one country in another.13 As sectarian strife continues to intensify in the Gulf and greater Middle East, it remains to be seen how such tensions will play out in Kuwait’s parliament and in society at large. On one hand, Kuwait’s contribution to Saudi Arabia’s military coalition in Yemen certainly heightens the risk of a growing number of Shi’ites distancing themselves from their longstanding ally in the ruling Al Sabah family. On the other hand, the June 26 attack—in addition to the Kuwaiti tribal-Islamist opposition—may prompt more Shi’ites to move closer to the regime for protection, despite disagreement with the emirate’s foreign policy. Finally, the singing of a comprehensive nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 on July 14 has the potential to provoke a powerful shock to the Middle East’s sectarian balance. The nuclear deal may lead to further engagement among different sects, or it may worsen tensions between Sunni Arab regimes and Shi’ite groups, including in Kuwait.

Ultimately, the prospects for stability and cordial sectarian relations in Kuwait will largely depend on the ruling family’s ability to navigate the aforementioned regional and domestic challenges, particularly with respect to the most sensitive issue of all: Iran’s reintegration in the region and global economy.

About the author:
*Cinzia Bianco holds a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London. She worked as a Junior Researcher at the South Asia and the Middle East Forum in London and was a Research Fellow in Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates for the European Commission project, “Sharaka,” focusing on EU-GCC relations. Bianco represented Italy at the G8 Youth Summit in the Foreign Affairs Commission (Paris, 2011) and at the G20 as an expert in the Commission on International Trade (Mexico City, 2012).

Source:
This article was originally published by Gulf State Analytics.

Notes:
1.  Cafiero, Giorgio. “The ‘Islamic State’ Attacks Kuwait.” The World Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 1 July 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/giorgio-cafiero/the-islamic-state-at- tacks_b_7690374.html>.
2. Toumi, Habib. “Kuwaitis held over Yemen war tweets.” Gulf News. GN Media, 2 Apr. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/kuwait/kuwaitis-held-over-yemen-war-tweets-1.1484281>.
3.  Wehrey, Frederic M. Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings. N.p.: Columbia University Press, 2014. Google Books. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <https://books.google.com/ books?id=N71kAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Sectarian+politics+in+the+Gulf:+from+the+Iraq+w ar+to+the+Arab+uprisings&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI1IfSqMz0xgIVR5SICh2UZgzg#v=o- nepage&q=Sectarian%20politics%20in%20the%20Gulf%3A%20from%20the%20Iraq%20war%20to%20 the%20Arab%20uprisings&f=false>.
4.  Ibid.
5.  Al-Marashi, Ibrahim. “Shattering the myths about Kuwaiti Shia.” Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, 30 June 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/06/shattering-myths-ku- waiti-shia-150629081723864.html>.
6.  Crystal, Jill. Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar. N.p.: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1995. Google Books. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <https://books.google.com/books?id=D8di8GN_ hKsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Coalitions+in+oil+monarchies:+Kuwait+and+Qatar&hl=en&sa=X- &ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIh8PFwMz0xgIVSTiICh02qQK2#v=onepage&q=Coalitions%20in%20oil%20 monarchies%3A%20Kuwait%20and%20Qatar&f=false>.
7.  Matthiesen, Toby. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t. N.p.: Stanford University Press, 2013. Google Books. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <https://books.google.com/ books?id=cv9-wwT0tHcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Sectarian+gulf:+Bahrain,+Saudi+Arabia,+and+the+A rab+Spring+that+wasn%27t&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIrKO7zcz0xgIVjTSICh2kdgbB#v=o- nepage&q=Sectarian%20gulf%3A%20Bahrain%2C%20Saudi%20Arabia%2C%20and%20the%20Arab%20 Spring%20that%20wasn’t&f=false>.
8.  “Kuwait mourns after deadly Shia mosque attack.” BBC. BBC, 27 June 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http:// www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33297462>.
9.  Fahim, Kareem. “Kuwait, Fighting Dissent From Within, Revokes Citizenship.” The New York Times. New York Times Company, 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/world/ middleeast/kuwait-fighting-dissent-from-within-uses-citizenship-as-a-weapon-.html?_r=0>.
10.  Alsaafin, Linah. “Kuwaiti security forces violently disperse anti-government protest.” Middle East Eye. Middle East Eye, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kuwaiti-securi- ty-forces-violently-disperse-anti-government-protest-1878869579>.
11.  Donaghy, Rori. “Kuwait cracks down on online dissent.” Middle East Eye. Middle East Eye, 29 Jan. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kuwait-cracks-down-online-dis- sent-1723924785>.
12.  D., E. A. “A reawakening.” The Economist. Economist Newspaper, 17 Apr. 2014. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/04/kuwaits-opposition>.
13.  Al-Rasheed, Madawi. “Kuwaiti activists targeted under GCC security pact.” Al Monitor. Al-Monitor, 20 Mar. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2015. <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/saudi-gcc-securi- ty-dissident-activism-detention-opposition.html>.

Eight months will have passed since the election of Syriza on January 25 up to the snap elections in September. During that time Syriza’s leaders play-acted their ‘opposition to austerity’ and then knelt down in submission to the ‘Troika’.

The contrast between January and now is dramatic: Syriza’s leader, Prime Minister Alexi Tsipras, aroused joy and great hope among the Greek voters with his promises to end Greece’s subjugation to the European oligarchs (the “Troika”) but now convokes snap elections exploiting the pervasive fear and misery among the population. Greeks confront a future of even greater impoverishment and despair with an entire generation bound up and delivered to forty years of debt slavery and colonial subjugation by their elected Syriza leaders.

In January, Syriza swept into office on its promise of ‘change’ without specifics. ‘Change’ turned out to be an empty slogan. Changes did take place: Changes for the worse! Since his election, Tsipras emptied the Greek Treasury to pay the EU bankers; stripped pension and municipal funds to meet IMF obligations and, worse yet, he allowed the flight of over 40 billion Euros to be transferred from Greek banks to overseas accounts – essentially de-capitalizing the financial system.

The linguistic perversion of “change” was not the worst of Syriza’s contribution to the corruption and discredit of the European left. Its slavish pillage of the economy shocked and confused the impoverished Greek majority. The voters had expected Syriza and its radical phrasemongers to do the opposite – to save the national economy and lead the country!

For a while Tsipras’s submission and betrayal was disguised by his theatrical poses of the ‘tough negotiator’ with the German bankers. His perpetual boyish grin, frozen on his face, as if to reassure his followers: “You can trust me. I will make sure Madame Merkel and company do not shove another bristly cucumber up your backsides!” Tsipras feigned resistance before the bankers, setting a stylistic template for other Syriza legislators, who likewise ‘protested and submitted’. They too came to believe that ‘their efforts’ (and not their results) deserved public approval!

Between February and April, Tsipras endured stern lectures from his overlords in the EU, returning to Greece with his silly grin and empty pockets.

Tsipras did everything possible to distract, to entertain, to bluster and deceive Syriza’s befuddled supporters.

Tsipras resorted to radical rhetoric, empty gestures and verbal defiance.

His emotional outburst were just ‘hollow farts’ (kfes pourdes in demotic Greek) in the poetic language of an insightful, indignant grandmother whose pension had been cut by 40%!

Syriza bent and broke before the predictable intransigence of their German overlords and their 28 rubber-stamping, vassal states. Syriza got nothing and worse. The more they talked, the less they achieved…

Tsipras broke the Greek financial system and then declared defeat, but not before mounting one more grand electoral fraud. Syriza announced a popular ‘referendum’ on the EU dictates and 61% of the Greek voters said ‘no’ to the EU demands. But Tsipras immediately said yes!

Tsipras accepted the complete sell-off –-‘privatization’– of all the strategic, lucrative, major and minor public enterprises, properties and sources of Greek national wealth.

There were no popular uprisings in the street on Tsipras’ capitulation: just a little ‘tempest in the teapot’ in the Greek Parliament when the “Left Platform” voted no, showed their backsides to their now ex-leader, defected and formed a new party – Popular Unity. With no mass organization and not supporting mass action, the ‘Left Platform’ just rose up on their hind legs . . . to bray out a manifesto calling for ‘popular unity’….within the confines of the Parliamentary cesspool of knaves and scoundrels. Meanwhile, Syntagma (Constitution) Square was full of pigeons and homeless vagabonds… Is this another hollow fart?

These armchair rebels, who sat in the Cabinet and slavishly followed Tsipras for seven months, engaging in sterile internal party debates and giving interviews to the dwindling bands of leftist academic tourists, while ignoring the street fighting youth, will face a new election in one month. They have the insurmountable task of convincing a cowed, confused and fearful electorate that they should unite, organize and reject Tsipras, Syriza and infinite regression.

Tsipras, for his part, will take the EU ‘bailout funds’, pay the banks and finance his own campaign. He will get free publicity from the domestic and foreign press (the Financial Times editorializes in praise of ‘his courage and good sense’) and employ an army of campaign workers with bail-out funds to obliterate the ‘Left Platform’. He will thus gain support from the Greek oligarchs and having adopted the platform of the right opposition, he has little to fear electorally from the boring old kleptocrats of Pasok and New Democracy, who cannot match his giveaways, theatrics and demagogy at the ballot box.

Disillusion and direct action—strikes, marches and fiery barricades– will set in after the September elections when Tsipras has further slashed pensions and shredded labor rights, when privatizations lead to massive layoffs at the docks, airports, power companies and oil refineries. Tsipras’ call for rapid elections was designed to secure votes from a shocked electorate before the pain of his massive sell-out is fully felt.

With time, there will be tempestuous protests, but the EU will have pillaged Greece of its present and future wealth. Tsipras’ electoral support will dwindle and tear gas will once again perfume the streets of Athens. Then, the old political whores and kleptocrats from the Right will trot out to center stage once more. And who knows, Tsipras may even form a new ‘inclusive’ coalition regime with the sluts of the right. Bankers, oligarchs and kleptocrats are not fussy about their bed-partners, even played-out traitors with boyish grins are worth a ‘romp in the sack’ if it gets them back in power…

Conclusion

The financial press and the mass media concocted an image of Syriza as “far left” or “hard left”. In fact, Syriza did everything possible to destroy the hopes of the majority of downwardly mobile Greeks desperate for a reversal of the shock austerity policies imposed by the EU.

From the very first day in office, Syriza leaders embraced the oligarchical structure of the EU, retaining the Euro currency and recognizing the illicit foreign debt.

Caged from the outset, Syriza just made a big racket, rattling the bars and pleading for a long leash and more time.

The trained eyes of the EU autocrats recognized Syriza leaders as captives, given to inconsequential political ejaculations and ‘outraged protestations’. They made no concessions: Indeed bankers decided to really punish the Greek voters for electing the clowns…

The Germans immediately sized Tsipras up as a marshmallow leftist – organically incapable of breaking out of the EU cage, of renouncing the Euro and the debt. With their long historical experience, Euro-imperialists know how to treat ‘socialist’ and ‘nationalist’ subjects, who negotiate on bended knee: “The more you kick them, the less they ask”

Tsipras begged for money to pay the European and US banks! He agreed to sell twenty-nine Greek airports to German capitalists in order to pay the German bankers.

In other words, Syriza and Tsipras have impoverished millions of Greeks and sold off all of Greece’s lucrative enterprises so that German, French and English holders of Greek bonds will not miss a single interest payment!

Was Tsipras just posing as a Prime Minister while serving as a pimp for gang rape?

According to the latest polls, the Greek people will re-elect him! The victims have gone mad!…God bless Greece –the cradle of democracy has become a roiling nest of vipers!

Most Indonesian people have never heard of Dr. Suhartati M. Natsir, but in Europe, especially in The Netherlands and France, this 57-year-old woman from Bima in West Nusa Tenggara is well-known as a consistent researcher in the field of Micropaleontology, especially Foraminifera.

In her own country, Suhartati is the principal researcher in the field of Bioremediation, and Environmental Pollution at the Indonesian Science Institution. Bioremediation itself is a development of the environmental biotechnology field by utilizing the biological process controlling the pollution and this gives the positive impact to be one of the clean, natural, and the most inexpensive environmental technologies and one of which taking the benefit of water plants to neutralize certain components in the waters. In other words, bioremediation is very important for the survival of humans because it aims is to break down the contaminants into less toxic or non-toxic materials from the environment.

Suhartati is familiarly called “mother” by her juniors, and she welcomed this author from Eurasia Review with the hospitality and tenderness typical of a mother, rather than as one of the most important researchers in the Indonesian Science Institution, especially in marine knowledge. Being a researcher was not her initial dream. A doting mother to her children, Suhartati had originally aspired to become a lawyer as she thought this profession would give her a good living. One can hope, but destiny is sometimes much different from what we had hoped for.

In this respect, after graduating from Senior High School, Suhartati realized that she could not become a lawyer, and so she set her heart on becoming a researcher. She became serious doing her routine days as student in the faculty of biology, at the University of Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Young Suhartati became more diligent when she wrote papers relating to marine and environment subjects, which eventually allowed her to become a reliable researcher in those fields.

In the mind of this woman, who loves her country and Malay songs, it is very important to learn about the marine sector because Indonesia is an archipelago, or which 70% of its territory is linked to the sea and represents a tremendous potential for the life of the nation. This reason has given her strong motivation to be one of the best in the field of marine knowledge, coupled with her huge sense of curiosity for the things that are still poorly known in the region.

Suhartati is a “living library” for her colleagues and juniors, this youthful looking mother has been very active in various organizations along with other researchers from around the world: for example, she is the member of the Cushman Foundation since 2010, as well as a member of the International Association of Meiobenthologists since 2008, in addition to being also active as a member of the Indonesian Association of Oceanology where she has been the secretary general since 2008. Suhartati has published 104 scientific journals, articles and other writings, attended 24 seminars from 2009 to 2014, and joined 15 training events of marine, biology to journalism from Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangkok, Tokyo, Xiamen China, Amsterdam to Bordeaux in France.

Suhartati has been participating in various marine expeditions ranging from the archipelago, researched in Bandar Sribegawan, Great Barrier Reefs in Australia, the islands of the Caribbean, Red Sea, up in Canada and expedition Snell II from 1984 to 2014. Although already busy with various tasks and researches, she still finds her time to be the editor at a State University since 2009.

It seems that Suhartati has already done almost everything in the field of marine science, and one can wonder what else can she dream for?

When Eurasia Review asked her this question, Suhartati who loves to eat grilled fish with Indonesian special vegetable dishes and chili paste, looked straight at this reporter and and expressed the deepest desires of her heart.

“Most of the coastal communities live as fishermen, but my heart feels very sad because there are many of them who live below the poverty level,” Suhartati said, yet countered this with, “We all know that we love this country that has many beautiful beaches with white sand and an underwater scene with a collection of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world, as well as the potential results and outcomes abundant marine fossil deposits millions of years ago that have become the oil fields that are ready to be explored for the good of nation. ”

Unfortunately, according to Suhartati, human resources in the coastal areas are not yet ready to manage and develop this territory independently. Suhartati said part of this problem relates to the education level of the population that is broadly speaking still very low, coupled with a lack of awareness to develop the potential of the surrounding areas, as well as lack of attention from the government both at the regional and state levels.

Suhartati said there while there are efforts currently being undertaken in the areas of education and training, “the results are still far from what we expect.”

In this respect, Suhartati said there must regulations and support from the government for counseling and training programs that can be implemented properly from Sabang to Merauke, from the Western to the Eastern part of Indonesia, so as to create the equal growth.

As an oceanographer and the environment specialist, Suhartati is concerned about the pollution from offshore drilling, results that threaten the survival of the surrounding biota and consequently will affect humans.

When this author questioned Suhartati whether the ideals of Kartini, the founder of Indonesian women emancipation, is still relevant in the lives of Indonesian people, especially women, she replied with an emphatic ‘yes’, adding that those things that had been done by Kartini relating to the emancipation of women in Indonesia is still very relevant.

Suhartati continued that while Indonesian women should be developed further, following country’s development, this should be done while at the same time adhering to the norms and the dignity as Indonesian women who are aware of their noble duties as a wife and mother to their children.

With the development of increasingly sophisticated technology, all obstacles can be anticipated and resolved more easily than during the time when Kartini started her role as a driving force of Indonesian women emancipation about 112 years ago, Suhartati said.

This down-to-earth scientist who loves white bone, brown and pink colors is eager to see many Indonesian women succeed in the international arena, as well as winning a Nobel Peace Prize in any field as long as it is useful for all mankind in general and for the nation and state of Indonesia in particular.

Every human being wants to be the best of the best, and being the best, we would be an example for others and many people can be saved, Suhartati said.

Despite holding a Master’s degree in the field of Micropaleontology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Biodiversity from University of Brawijaya Malang and Doctor in the field of Fisheries and Marine from the same University in Malang, Suhartati said she often feels ashamed of herself when she meets with someone who she knows, and she cannot remember their name.

Despite this shortcoming, Suhartati has a heart as big as the ocean. Indeed, she says she feels happy when someone succeeds in something. This is the same emotion, Suhartati says as when she was still young and saw her mother distributing the rice harvest, or fish from their ponds, or produce from their family gardens to people who were needy. Additionally, Suhartati said she felt happy when she was young even when observing religious matters several times a day, or when she and her siblings would use new kerosene lamps — which were always provided by their mother — so that they could read every letter in the Holy Book clearly.

As Suhartati speaks, she flashes back to the old days when she and her eight siblings lived together with other relatives in their big home so that her parents could help other relatives who were in need. Is it no wonder that today she copies her parents who were charitable?

Suhartati is a portrait of modern Kartini, who has knowledge and manners that are exemplary for Indonesian women. No matter how much knowledge and treasure is bestowed by God to us, it is merely entrusted. Life will be more meaningful when we can feel the happiness of others after successfully doing a good job. In the same vein, life would be more beautiful if we share with others, because as human we will always coexist, and each time we mutual help and find happiness together, we are reminded that this is the meaning real life. Unfortunately, this is something that almost doen’t exist anymore.

By Selcuk Çolakoğlu*

Turkish-Chinese relations are some of the most dynamically developing sets of bilateral relations in the international arena, a reality which owes in no small part to China and Turkey’s positions as emerging economies. Nonetheless, dynamism is not only a defining characteristic of the economic structures of Turkey and China, but also their social and even political ones. As can also be deduced, the dynamic nature of these two countries can also bring rise to certain risks as their bilateral fields of cooperation undergo rapid expansion. Considering this, Turkish and Chinese leaders should come together every five or ten years to formulate and rework their common vision, identify and capitalize on windows of opportunity, and pinpoint and mitigate the potential risks that rising interaction may pose for the two countries’ bilateral relations.

A snapshot of bumpy relations

Relations between Turkey and China started out on a bumpy path as can be witnessed in the former’s refusal to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after its establishment in 1949. Instead, during the period between 1949 and 1971, Ankara opted to recognize the Republic of China in Taiwan as the sole inheritor of the Chinese state. During this time Ankara stood in solidarity with Taiwan against communism, and had little to no diplomatic or even economic contact with the PRC.

However, tides took a turn during the period between 1971 and 1980 as Turkey and the PRC set out to normalize their political relations, formally establishing diplomatic ties and reciprocally opening their respective embassies in Beijing and Ankara. After 1980 this positive trend in bilateral political relations experienced a further burst of vitality as Turkey and China began evaluating each other in terms of untapped opportunities. During this time in Turkey, such optimistic sentiments could be exemplified in ponderous contemplations such as: “if we were to sell one kilo of hazelnuts to every Chinese individual…” Moreover, an increasing number of mutual visits began to take place at the presidential, prime ministerial, and ministerial levels. Additionally, in order to achieve closer relations with Turkey, China even sought to utilize its native Uyghur population (of Turkic origin) as a communicative bridge. Nonetheless, despite these political strides that were made throughout the 1980s, serious economic cooperation was unable to be formed.

Crisis years: the 1990s

The 1990s came to represent some of the most difficult years in Turkish-Chinese relations since their establishment as the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of the independent Turkic Republics resulted in an ethos in Turkey shaped by misapprehensions and unfulfilled expectations. During this period, a perception was formed among the Turkish public that like other Central Asian republics, East Turkestan (a swath of territory making up the Chinese administrative division officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) would also gain independence soon. The tension between the two countries was only heightened by the fact that the leader of the East Turkestan opposition Isa Yusuf Alptekin took part in high-level talks with various Turkish politicians and dignitaries from various political parties during his self-imposed exile in Turkey. Such conduct on the part of Turkey deeply disturbed China, and unlike in the 1980s, not even a single high-level visit between the two countries took place during the 1990s.

New basis for relations

By the end of the 1990s Ankara had begun to revise its policy towards China based on common areas of convergence. As a result of this policy shift, Chinese President Jiang Zemin paid a visit to Turkey in 2000, an act that symbolized a turning point in bilateral relations. Here, Ankara made the commitment that it would henceforth evaluate the East Turkestan issue with an eye to the maintenance of China’s territorial integrity, and that it would deal with the Taiwanese claims of sovereignty in accordance with China’s ‘One China Policy’. At this point, Ankara had hoped that problems surrounding the Uyghur identity and the community’s integration into the larger Chinese society would be resolved in time by the Chinese government.

In the years that came to follow, between 2000 and 2009, the two countries gave priority to the enhancement of commercial and economic cooperation, while also striving to cooperate on international issues. In this regard, the former Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag, which China bought from Ukraine, was allowed to pass through the Turkish straits despite objections from the United States and Japan. This occasion coincides with the beginning of this period of new priorities in Turkish-Chinese relations. By the same token, China openly provided support for Turkey’s 2009-2010 membership on the UN Security Council. This period has also been characterized by a significant leap in the economic relations between the two countries. Since 2008, China has become the third largest trading partner of Turkey, just behind Germany and Russia. However, this economic interaction also eventually resulted in a trade deficit for Turkey, thus adding to the already existing political issue of the Uyghurs. Nevertheless, this reprioritized policy continued smoothly until 2009.

On July 5 2009 riots erupted in Xinjiang’s capitol city of Urumqi, and they were subsequently met with a hard handed intervention by the Chinese security forces therewith eliciting outrage among the Turkish public, the Turkish ruling party, and opposition parties. As a result, the policy that was formulated in 2000 was confronted with the need to be revised, an end to which both Beijing and Ankara took constructive steps. While Ankara once again emphasized its respect for the territorial integrity of China and denounced separatism, Beijing committed to solving the political and economic problems faced by Uyghurs. Through this concerted effort on the parts of both countries, within a year of the riots Turkish-Chinese relations quickly escaped the crisis and moved in the direction of strategic cooperation. This trend can be evidenced in the fact that Chinese warplanes participated in the Anatolian Eagle exercise held in Konya in September 2010, thus marking the first time that China took part in joint exercises with a NATO army. This bilateral strategic cooperation has also been supplemented by the signing of many economic cooperation agreements during and after 2010.

Since then, Chinese Companies have won many important tenders in Turkey, thus allowing them to take part in or lead projects related to high-speed railways, mining, and the IT industry throughout Turkey, while also enabling their direct investment in the country. Up until the last moment, China seemed to be one of the preferred partners with regard to the Sinop nuclear power plant tender until it was ultimately won by a Japanese-French consortium. Nonetheless, China has continued to engage in significant calls for tender put forth by Turkey’s defense industry. In September 2013, the Turkish Undersecretariat for Defence Industries announced that the Chinese contender had secured the most advantageous position on the shortlist of potential partners in the construction of a Turkish missile defense system. However, in the process, due to the negative response of its NATO allies, Turkey gave negotiating priority to the French-Italian consortium after which the process was suspended.

The need to reevaluate bilateral relations

When it comes to the year of 2015, the need to reevaluate Turkish-Chinese bilateral relations based on a new roadmap has become increasingly important. In this sense, two major areas of risk need to be addressed.

For Turkey, the persisting foreign trade deficit has continued to cause discomfort in certain sectors. Of the overall 28 billion dollar trade volume between Turkey and China in 2014, 22 billion dollars was derived from Turkish imports from China. Additionally, since 2010, China’s delays in keeping with its investment commitments throughout Turkey, including in the high-speed rail, mining, energy, and banking and finance sectors, ensure that the imbalanced nature of bilateral trade will continue to place highly on the agenda. This situation has led to concerns on the Turkish side that “China might be making more economic promises than it can deliver”.

On the other hand, the Chinese side has similar concerns. Here, the Sinop nuclear power plant tender was given to China’s rivals, the Japan-led consortium, at the last moment, and in September 2013, its missile defense bid, which was initially prioritized, is now in abeyance. In this regard, Beijing has some similar anxieties that “although Turkey makes commitments with us about entering into cooperation in all kinds of fields, in the final moments of all strategic projects, it could negate our joint decisions based on its NATO allies’ preferences”.

The Uyghur issue

Another noticeable difference of opinion between China and Turkey can be exemplified in the Uygur issue. Regardless of the fact that Ankara has repeatedly reiterated that it will respect China’s territorial integrity, the two sides’ approaches to the issue at hand vary significantly. When it comes to problems revolving around the Uyghur issue, Beijing wants only its own formal opinions to form the basis of the discussion, and in this way it doesn’t look kindly at Ankara or even the Turkish public developing any deviations therefrom. In this respect, Beijing is quite uncomfortable with the anti-China activities of the Uyghur diaspora and nationalist circles within Turkey. Here, Beijing considers Ankara’s issuance of passports to Uyghur asylum seekers who escaped from China to Thailand, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian countries as a direct affront. Alternately, Ankara maintains that the provision of this right to these refugees at hand should not be evaluated as a stance against China, but it should instead be evaluated within the framework of Turkey’s humanitarian responsibilities. Turkey is currently hosting more than two million refugees on its soil, the majority of which are Syrians; and in this regard, it is not a problem for the Turkish authorities to accept several thousand additional refugees from Southeast Asia. Yet ultimately, a proper resolution of the Uyghur issue is of primary importance to China itself before all others. While China’s ‘Beijing Consensus’ was presented as a model of successful economic development and governance for the entire globe, if the country continues to put forth an image of itself that is characterized by difficulties with its ethnic minority groups, then the model may come to lose its attractiveness and credibility in the eyes of the international community.

In the end, it is necessary for Ankara and Beijing to come together to thoroughly evaluate the developments occurring over the last five years (after 2010) that have had a positive or negative effect upon their relations, and thereafter to formulate strategies that will bring cooperation to new levels. Just as Turkey’s trade deficit with China needs to be addressed, the overall framework of bilateral economic relations needs to be redefined. In the past, China and Turkey had frequently pointed to the mutual benefits that would be reaped by cooperatively engaging in joint investments in third countries, yet so far little has been done advance this goal. Here, the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ regional development project that has recently been put forward by China could offer an opportunity in this regard. Besides, since the early 1990s Turkey has already worked to make a positive contribution to the integration of the Asian geography that the Silk Road projects aim to further.

Alternately, it seems easier said than done for Ankara and Beijing to develop a common approach to the Uyghur issue, and in this sense, it will be important that the two keep their diplomatic channels open at all times. In this field, the role of Turkish business people who are, or would like to, invest in and trade with the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region should not be understated, and neither should the role of the Turkish citizens who see the region as a tourist destination. Increased contact between Turkey and the region at the social level could in turn work to avert mutual misunderstandings between China and Turkey while also functioning to accelerate the integration of the Uyghurs into Chinese society.

*This article was first published in Analist Monthly Journal’s August issue in Turkish language.

By James A. Baer*

On August 20, during the pope’s Wednesday General Audience, an Argentine handed him a sign that said in Spanish, “It is time for a dialog between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas [Falkland Islands].” The pope briefly held the sign and posed for a photo that has placed the Vatican in a seemingly delicate position of presenting a distinctly pro-Argentine position on this thorny issue. It has been thirty-three years since the short, but bloody war between Argentina and Great Britain over control of the South Atlantic archipelago took place. After a nearly three-month conflict British forces dislodged the invading Argentines and reestablished control over the islands. Most of the islands’ population is of British derivation and London strengthened that bond after the conflict by maintaining a symbolic military force on the islands. Moreover, they allowed Falkland Islanders greater rights than before the Thatcher government. As a result, an increased number of professionals and skilled tradespeople were encouraged to reside on the islands. In 2013 a plebiscite on the Falkland Islands resulted in an overwhelming majority of residents affirming their belief in British sovereignty.

The position of several Argentine governments has been that the islands are under Argentine jurisdiction, originally seized by the British in the 1830s when they expelled the Argentine population through the use of force. Britain disputes that description of history by responding that it has legitimately maintained control ever since. For its part, Argentina has taken the issue to the United Nations, which sponsored several resolutions that have called for negotiations to end the conflict. In 2014, the UN 24-member Decolonization Committee favored Argentina’s position that the Falkland Islands are a form of British colony, and that the two governments should resolve the issue of sovereignty. However, Britain has facilitated the creation of a local Falkland Island government and claims that the territory is a self-governing entity whose sovereignty cannot be bargained away by London under any circumstances.

The pope’s sympathy is clearly with his native land. But as pope he must represent much more than a parochial view. Nevertheless, it does not seem that support for a UN position should be too controversial and that the best outcome might be the establishment of a bi-national committee that includes representatives of the British and Argentine governments that would begin a long-term process for resolving the issue. The biggest impediment to the resolution of the conflict is the British government’s refusal to negotiate.

The conflict over the islands is nearly 200 hundred years old, and will not simply go away. Negotiations will be difficult and it may take years just to determine the extent to which the island government would be involved or not. Other points that contain many thorny issues and would need to be clarified are those dealing with oil exploration in adjacent waters, and disputed control over South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. Every aspect of the conflict can be resolved with good will and time. The Vatican’s role could be important here, although the British may be reluctant to give this Argentine pope a large role in the peace process. Nevertheless, if the pope’s actions can spur the two nations to take up the UN call for negotiations at a faster tempo, he might be able to contribute to the achievement of world piece.

*James A. Baer, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

The fascinating art of weaving carpets in the Republic of Azerbaijan has been shaped and transformed due to many encouraging factors over the past centuries: a picturesque landscape in the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan and other regions of Azerbaijan, natural resources, living conditions, a high level of socio-economic development, a well established cultural identity and unique peculiarities and tendencies in harnessing fine art and national artistic values.

The people in the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan have further expanded the centuries old tradition of carpet artistry, weaving techniques and very attractive combination of colors and historic symbols that embody the National History of Azerbaijan.

According to the constant discoveries in a number of archaeological sites it is certain that the local population of Azerbaijan has adopted the tradition of carpet weaving since the Bronze Age, in the III and II Millennium B.C., during this time a number of characteristic carpets were handmade, a significant proof that shows a deeply rooted artistic heritage shaped in the cultural conscience of Azerbaijani nation.

Such an ancient tradition in Azerbaijan and predominantly in Nakhchivan was mentioned in the writings of Xenophon, a famous Greek writer in the V Century B.C., additionally, according to European sources, the Persians have also gained knowledge on carpet weaving from the Azeri population, since the early times.
Herodotus, the father of history, in his early writing notes that Caucasian people in the region of Nakhchivan have dominated the secrets of weaving and producing carpets that encompassed natural colors, historic background and national heritage of Azerbaijan.

During the archaeological excavations, carried out in 1949 in Altai and Pazyryks-Kurgan, were encountered several fragments of carpet products, they originated from the ancestral times of Mederzeit.  Due to their intensive use, ancient carpets were, unfortunately, short lived because they were made of extremely fragile natural materials; as a result it is very hard to obtain an old carpet from that period.

A number of scholarly articles confirm that Azerbaijan has always been one of the most famous and cherished locations of weaving carpets in the Orient. The carpets manufactured in Azerbaijan were mentioned in the notes of Juan Zse, a Chinese explorer of this region in the VII century. According to Movses Kagankatvatsi, an Arab historian of the VII century, emphasizes that silk carpets were mainly weaved in the Northern parts of Azerbaijan, later on other regions of Azerbaijan have been specialized in the manufacture of various rug and carpet products.

High quality carpets were produced in the northeast of Azerbaijan. In the writing of an unknown author of the X Century, “Hudud al Alam” in this region Nakhchivan was known for the production of special rugs, belts and particular carpet motives.  According to Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn al-Muqaddasī, a medieval Arab historian and geographer: the carpets were unique in the markets of Barda region of Azerbaijan.  The vast practice of carpet weaving and their artistic motifs are also mentioned in the medieval poets of Azerbaijan such as Gatran Tabrizi (XI century) Nizami (XII century) and Hagani Schirwani (XII century).

European merchants of the XIV century were the main providers of Azerbaijani carpets in the most famous markets of Western Europe in the period of renaissance and moving forward.

Marco Polo, a Croatian born explorer of the XIII century wrote in his memoirs that numerous fabrics, carpets and weaving techniques unseen anywhere else in the world, are made and sold in the traditional markets of Azerbaijan.

During the XIV century, Azerbaijani carpets are some of the favorite items to be exposed in many canvasses of the most famous painters of Europe.

The background of a number of paintings by Jan van Eyck, an artist from the Netherlands, convey a unique tapestry from Quba region in the background.
According the President of Azerbaijan, this prosperous country does not offer only colorful high quality carpets; it enriches the International Art and Cultural environment with much more: “…Azerbaijan is situated on the crossroads of civilizations, cultures and religions. We are situated just between Europe and Asia. Of course, this geographical location played its role in cultural diversity of Azerbaijan. For centuries, representatives of all the cultures, religions, ethnicities have lived in Azerbaijan in peace, in dignity as one family. And we are very proud that during the years of independence these positive tendencies became even stronger. It is enough to look at our historical monuments to see the cultural diversity of Azerbaijan.  We are proud of our cultural and historical heritage. One of the oldest mosques in the world, which was built in 743, is situated in Azerbaijan in the ancient city of Shamakhi. One of the oldest churches in the world, the church of Caucasian Albania, is situated near another ancient city of Sheki. Orthodox and Catholic churches, synagogues, [and] Zoroastrian temples – all that is part of our cultural heritage, and we are proud of that.” [1]

On March 6, 2007, the President of Azerbaijan; signed a presidential decree that declares carpet weaving a cultural asset and a great national interest for Azerbaijan.  Additionally the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan and other regions of Azerbaijan such as the Museum or private collections of Carpets and Kilims of Quba region which have the patters of Chi-Chi and Konaghend, are very coveted by international art collectors.  The ornaments of these carpets are made of abstractions, historic signs and symbols. Touching the emotional perception of elements, while often being repeated within a framework of symmetry and presenting a palette of rhythmic sequence of warm and cold colors of the same shade and equal saturation.

For centuries motives and symbols of carpet weaving have remained unchanged. The flourishing of Azerbaijani carpets is attractive because they were produced in this country before gaining ground in Asia Minor; as a result Azerbaijan is considered the homeland of oriental rugs. Indeed, rugs tradition and carpet weaving in Azerbaijan is a genuine opportunity to strengthen intercultural communication world-wide and a great asset in Azerbaijan’s Cultural Diplomacy strategy. Carpets comprise a large majority of Azerbaijani cultural asset and are a substantial treasury in strengthening the cultural values of the Caucasian region. As a result it is undisputed that Azerbaijan is the homeland of handmade oriental carpets and premier rug traditions.

Source:

[1] http://en.president.az/articles/15252
http://www.visions.az/