Under licenses approved earlier this month by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), an office within the Department of Commerce that administers export controls on crude oil, volumes of crude oil produced in the United States and Mexico up to the approved volume cap will be exchanged. These swaps will likely involve U.S light sweet crude, such as the growing output from shale formations in the United States, and Mexican heavy sour crude.

The approved swaps are expected to be both economically and environmentally beneficial due to differences in U.S. and Mexican refineries. With significant coking and desulfurization capacity, U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are well-suited to process heavy sour crude. Conversely, part of the Mexican refinery fleet is configured to run light sweet crude. Therefore, the exchange should result in better optimization of refineries within both Mexico and the United States, and allow for increased supply of lower-sulfur gasoline from Mexican refineries.

Crude swaps are provided for in longstanding regulations governing crude oil export controls. However, no licenses for swaps had been granted until BIS’s August 14 announcement of swaps with Mexico. According to trade press, pending applications for other crude swaps involving countries in Europe and Asia were not approved.

Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), Mexico’s state-owned oil company, operates six refineries in Mexico with a combined crude distillation capacity of 1.54 million barrels per day (b/d) (Figure 1 above). Three of the refineries–Cadereyta, Madero, and Minatitlán, representing 42% of total crude distillation capacity–have coking capacity and can also produce lower-sulfur gasoline. The other refineries–Salamanca, Salina Cruz, and Tula–lack these and other upgrading units and consequently produce only limited amounts of lower-sulfur products and are not well-configured to process heavy crude oil. In 2014, the six refineries processed 1.2 million b/d of crude oil, which included 658,000 b/d of Isthmus crude, which is a medium sour crude, and 497,000 b/d of Maya, a heavy sour crude blend.

Over the past 10 years, Maya crude production has become increasingly heavier, requiring more of the lighter crudes to be blended into it to maintain Maya’s contractual specifications. EIA estimates that Maya crude now contains approximately 20% light crudes in the blend. Therefore, while Mexico’s refineries are running more light crudes, either straight or as a blend with Maya, there are still limits on their ability to produce lower-sulfur gasoline without additional capital investments.

While the full effects of crude substitution in refineries can be complex, EIA analyzed the relative product yields and the sulfur levels of the resulting products for three Mexican crude oils (Maya, Isthmus, and Olmeca) along with the same information for two grades of U.S. Eagle Ford crude oils. The Isthmus, Olmeca, and Eagle Ford (40.1 API) crudes have similar product yields, but the sulfur levels of their distillation products (in parts per million, or ppm) are dramatically different (Figure 2).

The difference in sulfur content is particularly important for naphtha, a light cut from crude oil that is blended or further refined to make motor gasoline and other products. Mexican crude naphtha cuts have a sulfur content range of 150 to 1,390 ppm, and Eagle Ford naphtha cuts range from 6 to 70 ppm (Figure 2). The substitution of Eagle Ford crude for Mexican crudes (either run straight or as part of the Maya blend) would free up sulfur removal capacity in the Mexican refining system, thereby allowing that capacity to be directed toward converting some of current higher-sulfur gasoline production into lower-sulfur gasoline. Any increased supply of lower-sulfur gasoline to Mexico’s motor gasoline market, which consumed 761,000 b/d in 2013, would result in reduced sulfur emissions and other environmental benefits.

U.S. gasoline and diesel fuel prices decrease

The U.S. average retail price for regular gasoline decreased eight cents from the previous week to $2.64 per gallon on August 24, 2015, down 82 cents from the same time last year. The Midwest price fell 12 cents to $2.67 per gallon. The West Coast price decreased eight cents to $3.28 per gallon, followed by the East Coast price, which fell six cents to $2.43 per gallon. The Gulf Coast price decreased five cents to $2.29 per gallon, and the Rocky Mountain price fell two cents to $2.82 per gallon.

The U.S. average price of diesel fuel decreased five cents from last week to $2.56 per gallon, down $1.26 per gallon from the same time a year ago. The West Coast and Gulf Coast prices were both down six cents, to $2.77 per gallon and $2.41 per gallon, respectively. The East Coast and Midwest prices both decreased five cents, to $2.65 per gallon and $2.49 per gallon, respectively. The Rocky Mountain price fell four cents to $2.59 per gallon.

Propane inventories gain

U.S. propane stocks increased by 1.9 million barrels last week to 95.7 million barrels as of August 21, 2015, 21.0 million barrels (28.1%) higher than a year ago. Gulf Coast inventories increased by 1.0 million barrels and Midwest inventories increased by 0.6 million barrels. Rocky Mountain/West Coast inventories increased by 0.3 million barrels while East Coast inventories remained unchanged. Propylene non-fuel-use inventories represented 4.7% of total propane inventories.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attending the Western Balkan summit in Vienna, on Thursday said she was “shaken” by the news that the bodies of at least 20 dead migrants – and possibly as many as 40 or 50 – had been found in an abandoned lorry in eastern Austria.

The remains were discovered on Thursday morning on a motorway between Neusiedl and Parndorf.

The truck had been abandoned on the road near Parndorf and had apparently been there since Wednesday.

Merkel said that “the awful news… reminds us that we in Europe need to tackle the problem quickly and find solutions in the spirit of solidarity”.

The owner of the lorry has yet to be traced but the driver is believed to be from Romania.

The discovery came as leaders from the EU and western Balkans gathered at the Vienna conference to discuss how to deal with Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War 2.

“Just another terrible incident, illustrating the urgent need for quick and determined common action” the EU Enlargement Commissioner, Johannes Hahn, tweeted from the summit.

Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann, whose country is hosting the summit, said that nations need to work more closely together on a solution to the crisis.

“Today refugees lost the lives they had tried to save by escaping, but lost them at the hands of traffickers,” he said.

The tragedy overshadowed a summit that was already expecting to be dominated by the migrant crisis.

Several of the six Balkan nations attending the summit say they have been overwhelmed by the number of people arriving on their borders and seeking free passage to Western Europe.

Serbia and Macedonia in particular have been especially inundated in recent weeks.

The erection of a border fence between Hungary and Serbia may make matters worse by forcing the migrants to find other routes westwards. Most are heading for Germany, which says it expects to receive as many as 800,000 asylum requests this year.

(EurActiv) — Net migration to Britain has hit record levels, official figures showed Thursday, with the difference between migrants leaving and arriving in Britain rising to around 329,000 in the year to March.

“The net migration figure was a statistically significant increase from 236,000 in year ending March 2014 and is the highest net migration on record,” the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Immigration Minister James Brokenshire called the figures “deeply disappointing”. Prime Minister David Cameron had vowed to reduce the numbers to less than 100,000 by May of this year. Some 636,000 people immigrated to Britain over the 12-month period, a rise of 84,000, while 307,000 people emigrated, down 9,000.

The net figure is 9,000 more than the previous record, which was set in the year ending June 2005. The report found that 269,000 EU citizens had moved to Britain permanently, a “statistically significant” increase of 56,000. An estimated 53,000 were Romanian and Bulgarian citizens, almost double the 28,000 in the previous 12 months.

Cameron has vowed to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union by 2017, and is hoping to wrest powers from Brussels, particularly over immigration, before the vote.

‘Not sustainable’

Brokenshire called the figures a “wake-up call”.

“While these figures underline the challenges we need to meet to reduce net migration, they should also act as a further wake-up call for the EU. Current flows of people across Europe are on a scale we haven’t seen since the end of the Second World War,” he said. “This is not sustainable and risks the future economic development of other EU member states. It reinforces the need for further reform at an EU level as well as within the UK.”

Keith Vaz, a senior lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, said the figures were “shocking”.

“Broken promises on migration do not build confidence with the public. We need a radically different approach,” he said.

Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party, said the figures “reflect borderless Britain and total impotence of the British government.

“If open borders are not part of the Cameron renegotiation then what’s the point of it?,” he said.

But business leaders said Cameron’s attempts to cut inward migration were “punishing businesses”.

“Scrabbling around to find measures to hit a bizarre and unachievable migration target is no way to give British businesses the stable environment they need,” said Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors.

“Combined with ministers’ increasingly strong rhetoric on immigration, the UK’s reputation as an open, competitive economy is under threat.”

The figures also revealed that Britain’s foreign-born population has now surpassed eight million for the first time, meaning one in eight residents were born abroad, up from one in 11 in 2014.

There were 25,771 asylum applications in the 12-month period, an increase of 10%, with the largest number of applications coming from nationals of Eritrea (3,568), Pakistan (2,302) and Syria (2,204).

Despite the refugee crisis in the Middle East and North Africa, the figure remains low relative to the peak number of applications – 84,132 – in 2002.

Immigration has been a hot topic in Britain over the summer, with the front-pages dominated by news of migrants massed at the French port of Calais trying to enter the country through the Channel Tunnel.

The Turkish Football Federation (TFF), in a demonstration of the inseparable ties between sports and politics, has effectively declared its support for renewed Turkish-Kurdish hostilities designed to enhance the prospects of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party in forthcoming snap elections.

With armed Kurdish youth effectively taking control of at least one predominantly Kurdish city in south-eastern Turkey, Turkish war planes pounding Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) positions in the region as well as in northern Iraq as well the People’s Defence Forces (HPG), the PKK affiliate in Syria; Turkish authorities arresting some 1,000 alleged PKK supporters; and PKK attacks on Turkish security forces, the TFF is preparing to penalize a third league club for releasing white peace doves at the beginning of a competition match.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) failed in June to win the majority it needed to again form a one party government and push through parliament constitutional changes that would turn Mr. Erdogan’s largely ceremonial presidency into an executive one. Mr. Erdogan has called snap parliamentary elections for November 1 after the AKP failed to form a coalition government.

Critics and Kurdish activists charge that Mr. Erdogan hopes that the breakdown in peace negotiations between the government and the PKK and the renewed hostilities will allow him to recuperate nationalist votes and weaken the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP), the first predominantly Kurdish party to win seats in parliament at the expense of the AKP.

The TFF’s decision to refer Batman Petrolspor to the federation’s disciplinary committee highlights the contradictions in efforts by national, regional and global soccer administrators to maintain the fiction that sports and politics are not intertwined like Siamese twins at the hip.

The TFF may have a legal foot to stand on with its assertion that Batman had violated federation rules, yet the move flies in the face of repeated statements by administrators, including world soccer body FIFA president Sepp Blatter that soccer is a tool “in our quest for development and peace.”

By acting on the letter rather than the spirit of laws governing soccer, the TFF has taken an inherently political decision that works in Mr. Erdogan’s favour.

It sharpens fault lines that crisscross Turkish soccer between fans and a government that in recent years has sought to secure political control of the game in its effort to undermine supporters’ power in stadia and on the streets as demonstrated in the 2013 mass anti-government protests and between clubs in predominantly Kurdish south-eastern Turkey that increasingly position themselves as Turkish Kurdish rather than purely Turkish.

“I don’t know if such a penalty exists anywhere in the world. At first we thought they were joking. We only realized it was real once we got hold of the documentation. We aren’t going to file a defence, because we don’t recognize our action as a crime. We are willing to accept any form of penalty. We’d prefer peace in the country and in the region to any championship,” said Batman vice president Ilhan Erken.

The TFF earlier this year penalized another third tier soccer club in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir for adopting a Kurdish name. The federation charged that the club long known by its Turkish name, Diyarbakır Büyükşehir Belediyespor (Diyarbakir Metropolitan Sport), had changed its name to the Kurdish Amedspor and had adopted the yellow, red and green Kurdish colours in its emblem without the soccer body’s approval.

Amed is the long banned Kurdish name for Diyarbakir, the unofficial Turkish Kurdish capital. The federation said the club had also failed to register its new name.

Earlier, Ilhan Cavcav, the chairman of Ankara club Genclerbirligi SK, known for its left-wing fan base, sparked outrage among nationalists by suggesting that the Turkish national anthem should no longer be played at the beginning of domestic matches and only in international encounters. Turkey began playing the anthem at domestic matches in response to the 30-year old PKK insurgency that has cost more than 40,000 lives.

A match in December 2014 between Amedspor, and Galatasaray SK, a storied Istanbul club popular among Kurds because imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan identified himself some two decades ago as a Galatasary fan, witnessed despite pro-Kurdish expressions by supporters of both clubs the stoning of the Galatasaray team bus.

“We love you, we love the one who loves you even more,” said a banner hoisted by Galatasaray fans in an apparent reference to Mr. Ocalan. Fans whistled as the Turkish national anthem played.

Amedspor president Ihsan Avci noted after his club won the match that it was not “Diyarbakır’s team but Kurdistan’s team, the people’s team.”

More recently Kurdish disaffection has exploded in unrest in Cizre, a south-eastern Turkish town where armed youth roam the streets. Non-Kurdish soccer teams visiting Cizre have seen their buses and players repeatedly attacked with stones. As a result, Mr. Cavcav’s Genclerbirligi was transported in armoured vehicles when it came to play in Cizre in December. Media reports said the same vehicles had last year brought Iraqi Kurdish fighters with Turkish government approval to the Turkish Syria border from where they headed to then Islamic State-besieged city of Kobani.

Writing in Turkish daily Vatan, a reporter in Cizre noted that “nobody knows the reasons (for the unrest) in Cizre. Opinion leaders can’t explain their meaning. Public officials cannot explain the depth of the incidents, but step by step things are getting out of control.”

Until recently, Bushism referred only to George W Bush’s infamous malaproprisms, such as “they misunderestimated me”, “make the pie higher”. As Americans gear up for the 2016 presidential elections, it is coming to mean something completely different. Two dynasties are competing for the presidency. Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush will most likely face off, the former the spouse of the popular Bill Clinton (1992—1980), the latter, the younger brother of the now reviled George Bush junior (2001—2008), herein Bush II—both sons of George HW Bush senior (vice president 1980-1987, president 1988—1991).

Elites, dynasties, families, and even tribes have always been governing society. Conspiracy theorists refer to such elements as “the deep state,” a coalition of (some believe) occult forces exercising real power regardless of who is nominally in charge. Does the US have its own “deep state” too? Yes, but only a few families can be called both deep staters and political leaders. Logically, Bushism would mean a family dynasty from the deep state, in harmony with the elites, able to convince the voters that they are providing the best political leadership, given the economic system in place.

This clan rule has been the norm in pre-capitalism, and continues to some extent in the third world; for example, in Syria under the rule of the Assads and it seems to be shaping up for the Karimovs in Uzbekistan. But it has not been the rule in the West. America had a father-son president in the 19^th century (John and John Quincy Adam) and a grandfather-grandson (William and Benjamin Harrison). The Roosevelts, too, produced two presidents, uncle and nephew Theodore and Franklin. The Kennedys had their own dynastic ambitions but were stopped after just one president, John F., because both he and his most likely successor Robert were assassinated. But there was no sense of a dynasty in any of these instances. None of them were deep staters.

The Bush clan is by far the most important such dynasty. In addition to two presidents and a likely third, they also include congressmen, senators and governors. Just how coherent their politics are is moot. But the Bush family has been intimately connected with power for a century now, and thus are supported by the deep state to be president, who is (or should be for the powers that be) mostly a figurehead, following the policies necessary to maintain the US as world hegemon.

New World Order

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, President Bush professed the goal to be “a new world order—a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations … an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.” This was his vision of US world hegemony, using the UN as a cover, and based on a consensus within the hegemon. The basis for Bushism (whether or not  a dynastic version) was in place.

The older Bush was the most nonpartisan president of the 20^th century. “For him, understanding ‘the other side’, going for fifty-fifty deals and almost always preferring a good compromise to a confrontation were quintessential American values,” writes Asharq Al-Awsat columnist Amir Taheri. He was respected, even a friend of Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton,  the man who denied him a second term as president. In fact, Bill Clinton is now regarded as a “Bush brother from another mother,” as Bush II noted in 2014, adding that his own father “serves as a father figure” to Clinton.

This NWO ambitious plan did not pan out so well, ironically to a large extent because of the policies of Bush II. The consensus feeling of the Bush senior period gave way to the vitriolic politics of the Clinton, Bush II and Obama eras, despite the fact that their policies are not much different: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush II proved disastrous, but once in place, had to be brought to some kind of conclusion with the US saving face, under an avowed anti-war Obama. (Imagine the upheaval if he’d abandoned Afghanistan and Iraq like the Soviet Union. It could have led to a similar collapse of the hegemon. He would surely have been impeached, assassinated, at the very least, drummed out of office after one term.)

Whether this disastrous Bush II legacy is enough to undermine brother Jeb’s chances of election is the most interesting aspect of the upcoming election. And whether Hillary Clinton can snatch the prize as the first woman president, and relatively nonpartisan politician, in the tradition of Bush senior, is what will keep the election interest high.

The emergent Bush dynasty

Elites, not elections, put Bush in power. Says Kevin Phillips, ex-Republican author of American Dynasty, “I’m not talking about ordinary lack of business ethics or financial corruption Four generations of building toward dynasty have infused the Bush family’s hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism — with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the US government. Deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks.”

Bush senior was not popular in Republican circles, who resented his privilege and connections. Richard Nixon was one; Ronald Reagan was another. Donald Rumsfeld didn’t like him, either — he and a lot of others in the Ford administration thought Bush was a lightweight. In one of Rumsfeld’s greatest miscalculations, he put Bush in charge of the CIA, thinking that would put him out of the race. Instead, Bush fought back and used his deep state connections. He became near-family and a business associate of Saudi princes, whose oil interests need no comment. He funneled arms to Saddam Hussein and then, as president, fought the first Gulf War to oust Saddam from Kuwait, though he wisely held back from a full invasion, unlike Bush II. He was implicated in scandals involving the Iran hostages and BCCI, the rogue bank that financed clandestine arms deals, but despite his many misdeeds (all in the name of fighting communism and promoting democracy) he is now seen as a compromiser, and in comparison to Bush junior, intelligent.

Bush II

But Bush junior jumped on the hawks’ bandwagon, flush with the sense that US world hegemony was within reach (after a few more wars). He was very different from his father. The black sheep of the family, who became an alcoholic. His tribute to his father was the invasion of Iraq to killing Saddam Hussein, though Bush senior was against this, despite their bad blood. Compared to Bush junior, Bush senior was indeed a compromiser, or rather had some political sense.

Bush junior’s zealous fundamentalism, given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, spelled bad news for the world. Never have we felt closer to Armageddon (Bush sincerely believes it’s a-coming). After 9/11, that allowed him to think of himself as somebody who has a God-ordained role. He saw himself as an anointed leader, and his speeches evoke religious code words: evil, crusade, the ways of Providence, wonder-working power. In his speech to the nation on October 7 2001, announcing the US attack, there were a half-dozen veiled borrowings from the Book of Revelation, Isaiah, Matthew and Jeremiah. For all his evangelical bluster, Reagan did not believe in preemptive war and looks mild in comparison.

He survived impeachment calls from Congress over the Iraq war, and more or less disappeared after that, as his shallowness left him no post-presidency career, unlike Carter and Clinton. His legacy is more as a gaff-ridden, erratic leader, following the neocon deep state through his vice president Richard Cheney. While his father tried to craft a legacy of America as a benign hegemon, the rebel son tore up the scenario and undermined this version of Bushism.

Bush III.

Jeb Bush (b 1953) studied Latin American affairs and served as the 43rd Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is clearly the most intelligent of Bush senior’s five children. Unlike Bush II, Jeb was the model son, volunteering for his father’s campaigns in 1980 and 1988. During the 1980 campaign, Bush said that his father is “the greatest man I’ve ever met or will meet.” Jeb is more like his father and George is more like his mother,” said Steven Schier, author of High Risk and Big Ambition: The Presidency of George W. Bush, the former diplomatic, introverted and cerebral, the latter caustic, extroverted and emotional.

In 1998, Jeb became governor of Florida at the same moment brother George was re-elected governor of Texas, making the Bush brothers the first siblings to govern two states at the same time since Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller governed New York and Arkansas from 1967 to 1971.

If elected president, he faces a dysfunctional system. Government corruption looms as the central issue of the 2016 campaign. It should be a policy of the Democrats. Obama came to power in 2008 based on his elegant denunciation of corruption: “The lobbyists… the special interests who turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills… they think they own this government, but we’re here today to take it back. ” His reform agenda included ending the revolving door policy between government and business, and a ban on lobbyists in high government positions.

In office Obama forgot all about ethics reforms. His rhetoric was either a blatant campaign lie or his Wall Street lobbyist and corporate advisers pressured him into dropping his most important promise. His only ‘success’ was to put some minor limits on campaign financing. But even that has been flouted by Hillary this year. Clinton has dispensed with Obama’s sole self-imposed rule aimed at lifting the ethics standards of political fundraising, his 2008 and 2012 bans on bundling by lobbyists. In just her first three months Clinton took in more than $2 million in bundled high-dollar donations.

Now Republican contenders for the presidency, including Bush, are making corruption reform a plank in their campaigns. Rick Santorum, the evangelical teen idol of 2012, cited corruption 10 times and abortion just twice. Bush and Trump have both put it in their speeches. The disappointment with Obama and Hillary’s unconcern with corruption could well give the advantage to the Republicans.

In a 2006 poll, the country agrees with Democrats on nearly every issue now under debate — and by margins often exceeding 60/40. The list includes not just progressive economic policies like a minimum wage and paid family leave, but climate change, gun safety, gay marriage, the lifting of the Cuban embargo, all of the president’s immigration reforms, every tax proposal and nearly every budget priority. But even more bipartisan is the public concern about corruption. Fox News poll, 91% said they were concerned about Washington corruption, up from 81% the year before.

Republicans are a minority taste on the major issued, but win elections on a claim to a frugal, efficient and, above all, honest government. And, oh yes, keeping America strong and safe. Bush III, by adding fighting words about corruption, is poised to attract the dissatisfied electorate. Some of Bush’s proposals come straight from Obama’s old playbook, including a revolving door bill and a requirement that public officials disclose meetings with lobbyists. For Bush even to speak of such things is odd. He spent his life out of office trying to monetize family connections, though unlike his father and brother, he has no Saudi oil on his hands. However, his own relatively uncorrupt record combined with an honest campaign vow to tackle corruption alone could win him election.

Bush III policies

Bush’s term as governor of Florida are hints of what lies in store if he is elected president. During his eight years as governor of a traditionally Democratic state, he honed typical moderate Republican credentials.

• His claim to niceness is his promotion of preservation of the Everglades. But at the same time, he scuttled the popular push for a monorail system in 1999, despite a voter-inspired constitutional amendment in 2000 passing a law to defy him. He managed to ignore it till it died. And Bush supports offshore drilling outside of Florida. He supports the Keystone XL oil pipeline as well as fracking.
• On immigrants, he talks well (in Spanish and his wife has Mexican heritage) but does little. In 1989, Bush was the campaign manager of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American to serve in Congress. In his first, unsuccessful bid for the Florida Governor’s office, he garnered 61% of the Hispanic vote. In April 2014, Bush said of illegal immigration: “It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime. There should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”

But his is a tough love. In 2015, Bush took the position that people in the United States illegally should have a path to legal status, but not a path to citizenship. Legal status and avoiding deportation should require immigrants to pay fines, get work permits, pay taxes, not receive government assistance, learn English, and not commit crimes, putting them on the level of slave labor. He compared President Obama’s executive orders creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) programs to the decrees of “a Latin American dictator”, stating that he favors changes through legislation and not by executive order and vowing to revoke those executive orders.

• He is anti-abortion and initially opposed even civil rights legislation for gays, though he changed his tune when the writing on the political wall became clear. In 2012, Bush softened his opposition to gay adoption saying, “I don’t think people need to be discriminated against because they don’t share my belief on this, and if people love their children with all their heart and soul and that’s what they do and that’s how they organize their life that should be held up as examples for others to follow because we need it.” More recently he has stated that people should accept court rulings that legalize same-sex marriage and “show respect” for gays in committed relationships, while reiterating his long-held belief that “marriage is a sacrament”.  Bush chooses his battles to win, publicly criticizing the national Republican party for its adherence to “an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement” in 2012. He told Bloomberg View that Reagan and George H W Bush would “have had a hard time” finding support in the contemporary GOP.
• He is pro-gun, pro-capital punishment (21 executions under him), pro-tax cuts and anti-workers’ rights.
• He has vowed to cancel Obamacare, with his own version of private practice support. He moved Medicaid recipients to private systems, and supported caps for medical malpractice litigation.
• In education, he issued vouchers and promoted parental choice of schools. In 2006, he cut $5.8 million in grants to public libraries, pilot projects for library homework help and web-based high-school texts, and funding for a joint-use library in Tampa.
• Bush has questioned the scientific opinion on climate change, stating, “It is not unanimous among scientists that it is disproportionately manmade. What I get a little tired of on the left is this idea that somehow science has decided all this so you can’t have a view.” Bush has also taken issue with the second encyclical of Pope Francis, in which the pope asks for climate change action. Bush, who is Roman Catholic, commented: “I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope.”

International relations and security

But overshadowing all these details is the intimate relations with the Saudis. In House of Bush, House of Saud: The Hidden Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, Craig Unger estimates that $1.476b has made its way over time from the Saudis to the House of Bush, and its allied companies and institutions. He writes: “It could safely be said that never before in history had a presidential candidate—much less a presidential candidate and his father, a former president—been so closely tied financially and personally to the ruling family of another foreign power. Never before had a president’s fortunes and public policies been so deeply entwined with another nation.”

There is little evidence that Jeb is close to the Saudis; his business career was not in oil. It was Bush I and Bush II whose presidencies were strongly influenced by the oil link. In this sense, the House of Bush is not a clone of the House of Saud. It is the rule that princes often veer sharply from their royal ancestors. Jeb has little personal baggage in this regard, though family loyalty is surely going to prevent any real move to change this perverse and illegal influence on US foreign affairs.

Jeb Bush has played his cards well. The favorite son, but not arrogant, nor alcoholic, nor born-again—something to satisfy most Americans, at least those on the conservative end. Given the disappointment that has been Obama, trying to show his WASP warrior credentials and accommodating the ruling elites, things could hardly be worse under Jeb. In fact, Hillary is not a big difference, except on feminist-tinged issues. Like Obama, she has liberal baggage which she will have to shed to rule. The significance of Hillary taking over as a dynastic move is not important, as there are no further Clintons in line. Perhaps her only advantage is her lack of  Saudi baggage. Conceivably, she could distance herself from this connection.

From Obama to Bushism

Obama will probably be best remembered for carrying out Bush’s middle east tragedy but without any end in sight in either Afghanistan or Iraq/ Syria. Obama’s failure to seriously change the dynamics of international relations (as well as his inability to put a dent in corruption) is a great disappointment, hinted at within months of his inauguration, when his vow to close Guantanamo was broken. This was confounded by his hesitancy to wind down the occupation of Afghanistan, and on the contrary, his turning of Bush’s infatuation with drone bombings into standard policy. This frustrated US allies (except Saudi Arabia) and left the field open for the likes of ISIS, which has a clear policy diametrically opposed to the US (and their Saudi allies). Bushism in its belligerent Bush II period defeated Obama.

Are Americans averse to a dynasty, tired of the Bush name? Even if Jeb prevails and inaugurates the House of Bush, recreating Bush I’s benign deep state hegemon, it is unlikely that anything will change under either Bush III or Hillary, given the lock the military industrial complex, the old fashioned term for the deep state, has on both politics and the economy, and the paralysis in fighting political corruption.

What about relations with Russia and Iran? Again, not much change, but at least no wars. Russia and Iran have time to continue to consolidate their alliance building with BRICS and SCO and let’s not forget the UN. There is no sign of the UN being squeezed into Bush I’s plan for a NWO. As a discredited US extricates itself from the middle east, the UN may find itself called on to keep stability.

Source: http://politconservatism.ru/forecasts/bushizm-est-li-takaya-ideologiya/

By Manoj Joshi*

The disastrous manner in which the Ufa process collapsed on August 22 is proof that agreements between parties who lack a sense of common purpose are worth only the weight of the paper they are written on. Put another way, all agreements have a letter and spirit behind them. Clearly, the letter of the Ufa agreement spelt out the imperative of dealing with the issue of terrorism. But surely its spirit ought to have accepted the need to discuss the issue of Kashmir-in whose name countless acts of violence and terrorism have been undertaken.

If India had played it low key and actually held talks on the issue of terrorism, it would have been a significant victory. Instead, by hyping the decision to have talks and then scuppering them on a flimsy pretext, the Modi government has probably made India’s task more difficult.

The government acted the way it did out of a desire to do things in a hurry and kill several birds with one stone. It wanted to deal with the issue of terrorism, as stated, encourage a breach between the civilian government and the military establishment in Pakistan, and bludgeon the Hurriyat. In trying to overreach, however, it lost focus and accomplished none of these goals. The terror issue remains where it was; Nawaz Sharif has now been forced into an even tighter embrace with the military, while the Hurriyat is likely to profit from the ‘greatness’ thrust upon it.

The narrative that ‘Pakistan backed off from the talks because its role as a sponsor of terrorism would be exposed’ is laughable. For one, that role does not need any additional exposure. From the time Khalistani terrorists began their depredations, through the Bombay blasts of 1992 and the Mumbai attack of 2008, there has never been any shortage of evidence of Pakistan’s complicity in terrorist acts targeting India.

Second, if there is anything new and dramatic, the government is now free to share it with the nation, if not the world. Since this evidence was put together in the form of a dossier for the Pakistanis, no secrecy will be breached by presenting it to us. Given the selective leaks that have already taken place, it is clear that the evidence India has relates to Dawood Ibrahim. If so, it is a secondary distraction. Dawood is indeed a criminal who needs to be arrested and tried by our courts. But he cannot be allowed to hijack a larger dialogue whose goals are nothing less than the transformation of Pakistan.

Given the Dawood hype, it is difficult to escape the impression that perhaps the goal of the entire exercise was aimed at a domestic audience which is being manipulated into believing terrorism is an existential threat to the country-this despite the sharp decline in terrorist incidents over the past six years. So just as the deep state in Pakistan justifies its actions in the name of the Indian threat, the Indian state is now hyping up the Islamist terrorist threat to justify its own hard line inclinations.

As far as diplomacy goes, it is true that the old composite dialogue format had run out of steam. But to assume that Pakistan is no longer interested in discussing Kashmir-that it could accept the sort of red line External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj laid down-was short-sighted, if not downright foolish.

The bottom line of any policy has to be a strategic goal. So what is the goal of the Modi government with regard to Pakistan? Since it has not been spelt out, let us work through the options.

Could it be to “defeat” Pakistan and obtain its surrender? Given today’s politico-military circumstances that is not even a remote possibility.

Is it to use the overwhelming superiority of military force to compel a change in Pakistani behaviour ? Again, that’s not possible because we do not have that superiority and we have actually been down that route and failed – as Operation Parakaram demonstrated in 2001-2002.

Third, is it the breakup of Pakistan, its defeat through other means? We could pursue this course, though as of now we do not have the instrumentalities required to achieve that end. However, we would have to ask ourselves whether it is prudent to trigger a magnitude-10 earthquake in a nuclear armed nation.

The fourth goal-to seek the transformation of Pakistan into a “normal” state-is precisely what most Indian leaders from Rajiv Gandhi onwards seem to have pursued. Pursuing this course means finding ways to strengthen the hands of the elected government in Pakistan and weaken those of the military. This option requires patience and stamina but is not as difficult to achieve as it appears.

It was through patient diplomacy which ignored the provocations of Kargil and terrorist attacks that Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government persuaded Pakistan to order a ceasefire along the Line of Control, resulting in a sharp drop in infiltration, violence and casualties. Again, it was through diplomacy that Vajpayee and his successor Manmohan Singh brought Pakistan’s military dictator within hailing distance of a comprehensive settlement on the Kashmir issue by 2007.

The true measure of a country’s capabilities does not lie in its military or clandestine services’ clout, but its ability to effect a favourable transformation in the behaviour of its adversaries through a mix of strategies. While military strength is an important ingredient, it is not the key one. Soft power plays as much of a role here, as does hard power, but most of all it requires skilled operators to use the two together.

Sadly, skill is the one quality that seems to be in short supply these days.

*The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

Courtesy: http://thewire.in

The Council of the Heads of States of SCO members has approved the full membership for Pakistan and India in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization after fulfilling certain statutory and legal requirements and hopefully by the year 2016 both Pakistan and India would become permanent members of the Organization.

Previously, along with Iran and Magnolia both, India and Pakistan already had status of observer states in the SCO but the recent approval of becoming permanent members has raised many hopes about the future of cooperation and tenacity of many persisting disputes and the critical issues which have been a bone of contention in the South Asian region.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, initially, the Shanghai Five was created by China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan in 1996 with the aim to resolve the border disputes among its member states. Later on, Uzbekistan was also granted full membership in 2001 and the Organization was named as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The Organization promotes and beholds the objectives for creating an environment of mutual respect, trust and friendly ties with neighbouring and member states based on enhanced support for the progressive cooperation in the political, economic, cultural, education, scientific technology, power, communication, energy and environmental protection issues. Right from its very inception, the Organization has also remained unpredictable due to its nature as it often conducts military drills of its member state troops and has a collective response force and a Regional Anti-terrorism Structure (RATS) with a remarkably dedicated number of personnel.

For its part, if the Organization effectively resolves the historical hostility amongst states in the troubled region, then it would not be less than a watermark in the history of diplomacy and multilateral alliance- an alliance that would possess significant influence in the coming future than any other state, alliance or multilateral organization in the world. Especially after Pakistan and India’s joining, if the SCO successfully managed to play its significant role in bridging relations of both rival neighbours then it would definitely be a sign of turning point to jot down a new history which will of course, encourage and attract many other states to come under the SCO umbrella. The region already attracts attention of many states as due to the rapid industrial and economic growth that has dramatically managed to shift the power dynamics in the Asian region. The power being multi-dimensional in its nature has many countenances that are not bound to the explanations of military might only, but the economic, political and the military power are some examples which are also in gradual growth in the region.

The member states of the SCO like China, which is a dominant global economic hub while Russia has also a huge industrial strength along with immense energy resources. Likewise, the Central Asian member states of the SCO like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan and Kazakhstan possess approximately 40% of oil and natural gas resources of the world. In addition, the membership of India and Pakistan in the SCO would prove it an ever strengthened organization by significant economic, political, industrial, military and many other opportunities.

Many analysts also believe that the SCO is a counterweighted to the NATO and also have termed it as NATO of the East that would someday transform into a military alliance. Such speculations are mainly because of the way of conduct and the framework of the Organization by which it involves the member states in military drills and created a Regional Anti-terrorist Structure.

Apart from SCO’s role in the region’s economic development and member states’ security issues, a particularly significant emphasize for the fruitful efforts is essential to the settlement of potential state-state issues, otherwise both India and Pakistan are already members of the SAARC but it has hardly played any effective role in overcoming the existing hostility and the resolution of disputes.

Besides the business opportunities for the member states, a real-time framework is also need of hour to further extend SCO as an influential player in the regional and international affairs, otherwise even after granting permanent membership to Pakistan and India, the outcome would be no more than a further divide in the Organization particularly by crafting the conception of organization within the organization where two sides would be supported by their respective favouring member states of the Organization.

Although the Iran nuclear talks and the landmark deal that they have yielded have been nuclear-focused, there is little doubt about the broader ramifications of the historic agreement, particularly in the realm of Iran-West relations. The re-opening of the British embassy in Tehran after a four year hiatus is perhaps the clearest manifestation of this new development that is fully in line with the campaign pledges of President Hassan Rouhani to improve Iran’s relations with the world community. A big question is, of course, if the Iran-British rapprochement can prove as a prelude for the reconstruction of Iran’s relations with the West, including the United States? Lest we forget, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, has stated in the past that once the nuclear issue is resolved, Iran is willing to consider dialogue on other regional issues.

The stage is therefore set for new US-Iran dialogue on a range of issues of mutual concern including terrorism, narco-traffic, and the future of Afghanistan. Should the Iran nuclear agreement survive the US Congressional opposition and then enter its implementation phase, in the absence of any evidence of US backtracking on its obligations and showing bad-faith, hypothetically speaking the climate for such a dialogue between Iran and US will be gradually readied. Much depends on faithful implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the lifting of Iran sanctions as stipulated in the agreement, in order to gain Iran’s confidence that an actual ‘paradigm shift’ with respect to Iran has transpired in Washington.

But, there are cognitive and practical dimensions to any ‘paradigm shifts’ and, indeed, this entails a process of shifting attitudes and adjusting perceptions that will require the passage of time. In a process-oriented approach toward US-Iran rapprochement, there are several stages and multiple prerequisites that cannot be bypassed for the sake of a quick resolution. Rather, a careful and objective assessment of the present obstacles, difficulties, and the challenges at the policy level is necessary in order to avoid naive and subjective conclusions that may express undue or premature optimism unwarranted by the objective conditions. A number of Iranian policy experts have referred to a structural conflict between US and Iran, which needs to be carefully examined and determined if indeed there is an endemic ‘structural’ dimension to US-Iran hostility that will inevitably survive a nuclear breakthrough, or is this a policy-based problem that can be potentially resolved as a result of policy changes? While at the moment such big yet delicate questions await a conclusive analytic response, the practical issues of mutual concern for policy-makers in Tehran and Washington cannot be postponed indefinitely on the account of epistemic ambiguities. The clear and present danger of ISIS (Daesh) terrorists, spilling into Afghanistan in addition to Syria and Iraq, is one such issue that raises the prospect of future US-Iran dialogue on the future of Afghanistan, in light of the US’s planned departure in 2016. Afghanistan’s political leadership has been quick to welcome the JCPOA precisely because of their security concerns and their desire to witness a warming of US-Iran relations that would benefit Afghanistan’s internal stability.

Fortunately, Iran’s foreign policy machinery, headed nowadays by Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, who played an instrumental role in the post-Taliban architecture over a decade ago, is uniquely prepared to address the policy demands with respect to the on-going strife in Afghanistan, which has the potential for a qualitative worsening in the near future, thus adversely affecting the regional calculus. It is in the national interests of both Iran and the US to engage in new trilateral (with Kabul) dialogue on Afghanistan security, given US’s expensive investments on Afghan stability since 2001 and, on the other hand, Iran’s concerns about new wave of refugees, spill-over conflict, etc.

Needless to say, an important prerequisite for such a dialogue is (a) a re-mapping of US’s hostile attitude toward Iran that has continued unabated to some extent, in light of the negative comments about Iran by various US officials including Ashton Carter, the US Defense Secretary, and (b) US’s explicit appreciation of Iran’s constructive role in regional affairs, in light of the recent comment by the British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond that “Iran is, and will remain, an important country in a strategically important but volatile region.” So far, there is a conspicuous lack of any US official echoing Mr. Hammond’s sentiment and, instead, we witness the incessant demonization of Iran by so many US officials and former officials, whose Manichean image of Iran is in dire need of deconstruction. But, if US’s policy on Iran is now sailed by the winds of a “new realism,” then there is no doubt that expanding the purview of talks with Iran beyond the nuclear issue and narrow-focusing on the existing and potential future crises in the region is a logical next move that as stated above serves the national interests of both Iran and the US. From Iraq to Syria to Yemen, to the deadlocked Middle East peace process, to Afghanistan, and so on, there are numerous issues on the US-Iran boilerplate that need urgent attention, and much like the past bilateral US-Iran dialogue on Iraq’s security, a similar dialogue on Afghanistan is necessary, one that takes into consideration the lessons drawn from the past history, e.g., avoiding the Bush administration’s “axis of evil” wrong turn. A right turn in US policy might in fact begin by a candid admission of such dreadful policy errors that today simply serve as ‘roads better not taken’.

In the month of August, the presidents of Mozambique and Seychelles visited India. The President of Mozambique was in India between 4th to 8th August whereas President of Seychelles came in the last week (25th to 27th) of August. Both these visits were significant for India’s engagement with the Indian Ocean region but went largely unnoticed in Indian media.

Earlier this year, Indian Prime Minister Modi visited Seychelles as part of his tour of Indian Ocean states which included Sri Lanka, Mauritius and Seychelles. Visit of Modi was reciprocated by Seychelles’ President. In case of Mozambique, Modi has not visited it (or any other African nation) so far but India and Mozambique enjoy cordial ties. This time India was Mozambique President’s first destination in Asia, a significant fact in the context of increasing Chinese presence in Africa. He had visited India before when he was Defense minister in 2011.

Although India’s economic and developmental profile is rising in the region, larger political and strategic reasons take precedence in relations with these states. Mozambique and Seychelles are strategically located in the South-West Indian Ocean near the Cape of Good Hope. Mozambique is immensely resource rich and location of Seychelles makes it India’s maritime neighbor along with Maldives, Thailand and Indonesia among others. Mozambique and Seychelles share similar developmental challenges as does India. They are also concerned about issues of maritime piracy, coastal security and adverse effects of climate change.

India enjoys historical ties with these states going back to centuries. Mozambique and India (Goa) are connected by common colonial past of Portuguese rule whereas Seychelles and India were parts of British Empire. Non Aligned Movement, of which India was an important member, had supported decolonization of Portuguese Africa and Mozambique’s independence in early 1970’s. Mozambique achieved its independence in 1975 and Seychelles in 1976. This year marks 40th anniversary of Mozambique’s independence and also establishment of Indo-Mozambique ties. Since their independence, India has remained engaged with both these states.

In mid-1980’s, India had (secretly) helped existing regimes in Mozambique and in Seychelles to thwart coups and maintain stability by deploying its naval and air assets, in and around them. Active role played by India in this part of the world then reinforced India’s role as a net security provider in the region. This image of India as a net security provider in Indian Ocean Region has assumed greater significance over the years with increased capabilities of Indian navy. India’s engagement with these states in matters of defense and security has continued with gifting of naval and air assets for surveillance and reconnaissance, training their defense personnel and conducting anti-piracy operations. Several vessels from Indian navy have paid regular visits to these states. The Indian Navy had carried out hydrographic surveys and deployed its ships to secure Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on the request of Seychelles government as well. Even in this recently concluded Presidential visit, India agreed to provide one more Dornier maritime aircraft (for surveillance) to Seychelles. (It had gifted two in March.)

Both these states are members of the United Nations (UN) and support India’s bid for permanent membership of UN Security Council. They are also integral members of Indian Ocean Rim Association, the only regional organization in Indian Ocean region. Geographically, Mozambique and Seychelles are parts of African continent and hence are invited along with 52 other African states for India-Africa summit, third edition of which will take place in October, 2015 in India. In fact, out of total Indian investments in the African continent, 25% of it was invested in Mozambique. Most of the Indian investments are in the fields of coal and hydrocarbons. Mozambique, being resource rich state, occupies important position in India’s quest for energy security.

In the recently concluded visits, agreements were signed to co-operate in fields of agriculture, connectivity, solar energy, development and defense. These agreements are expected to take the relationships further ahead. One more interesting facet of these countries is the significant number of Indians living there. About 10% of Seychelles’ population is of Indian origin whereas in Mozambique, Persons of Indian Origin number about 20,000. India’s current Prime Minister Modi has stressed on engaging Indian diaspora abroad. In this endeavor, Mozambique and Seychelles could also be factored in as vital states.

In the last few years, Indian Ocean has occupied increasing importance and space in world politics. But in the emerging literature on Indian Ocean region more focus is given to South-East, West and South Asia. Indian Ocean Maritime Africa (IOMA) is neglected in these debates. For a regional and maritime power like India (which is intimately engaged in the politics of the region), IOMA states assume greater significance in the face of rising challenges like maritime piracy and growing Chinese footprint in the region. Only geostrategic advantages of location will not be sufficient for India to maintain its preeminence in the region. And for that purpose, these recently concluded visits are significant for India’s emerging policy towards Indian Ocean.

*Sankalp Gurjar is a PhD candidate at South Asian University (A University established by SAARC nations), New Delhi. His research areas include India’s Foreign and Defense policies, Great Power politics and Indian Ocean Region.

At least six police officers have reportedly lost their lives and ten others sustained injuries when a bomb explosion ripped through the parking lot of a police station in the capital, Baghdad.

The blast took place in the eastern sector of Baghdad on Friday, and the victims were three bomb disposal experts and three policemen. Security forces had towed the suspicious car to the police station the previous day.

Also on Thursday, a Daesh bomber drove his explosives-laden vehicle into a convoy of army troopers advancing toward Anbar’s provincial capital city of Ramadi, killing two generals and three soldiers. Ten other soldiers were also wounded in the process.

The Iraqi military, in a statement broadcast on the state-run al-Iraqiya television network, identified the two victims as Major General Abdul-Rahman Abu-Regheef, deputy chief of operations in Anbar, and Brigadier General Sefeen Abdul-Maguid, commander of the 10th Army Division.

Elsewhere in Iraq, more than a dozen civilians have been injured after members of the Daesh extremist group launched a mortar attack against a residential neighborhood in the embattled western province of Anbar.

Head of the Amiriyah Fallujah city’s local council, Shaker al-Issawi, told Arabic-language al-Baghdadia satellite television network that different parts of the city, situated roughly 40 kilometers (24 miles) west of Baghdad, were struck on Friday, leaving 13 civilians, mostly women and children, injured.

The projectiles also caused damage to a number of houses as well as personal properties in the residential area.

Gruesome violence has plagued the northern and western parts of Iraq ever since Daesh launched an offensive in June 2014, and took control of swathes of Iraqi territory.

The militants have been committing heinous crimes against all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and Yazidi Kurds.

Units of army soldiers and volunteer fighters are seeking to win back militant-held regions in joint operations.

Original article

Jeb Bush has called illegal migration “an act of love.” And all over the West we see nations being loved to death, with endless human waves from Third World countries washing ashore. The results were predictable and are now plain: balkanization, riots, ethnic and racial strife and no-go areas in European lands. Yet we’re told that accepting what are “refugees” is a humanitarian imperative. Yet no one, it seems, points out an obvious fact, something that really is the crux of the matter.

If a stranger in need happens by your area and you’re a charitable sort, you may take him in for a time, feed him and provide other basic necessities.

You don’t generally make him an official part of your family and empower him to help decide on finances, what products to buy, how your kids will be educated and what values will prevail within your home.

The point? At issue in the current “refugee crisis” is not charity and the humane treatment of refugees. This isn’t only because most of the migrants in question may not even be refugees.

It’s because the issue is granting uninvited guests citizenship.

People talk about the financial burden of accommodating Third World migrants, largely because money (as opposed to national integrity) is all a demoralized and denationalized people think to discuss and because finances are a politically correct subject. But a national family can recover from devastated finances. It can’t recover from a destroyed national family.

I have pointed out again and again and again that the groups represented by virtually all illegal migrants and refugees — and 85 percent of legal immigrants since 1965 — vote for socialistic candidates between 70 to 90 percent of the time upon being naturalized. Related to this but also generally overlooked is that the people make the culture and government. Replace a Western people with Muslims or Mexicans and you no longer have Western civilization. You have Mexico Norte or Iran West.

Unfortunately, the granting of aid and the granting of citizenship have been so melded into one amorphous, superficially homogenous blob of bad policy that most people don’t even recognize they should be two distinct and separate issues — as they had been for most of history.

Of course, this serves the Left’s ends. The Refugee Crisis™ debate is framed as a battle between compassionate liberals responding to desperate pleas and coin-counting, callous, conservative reactionaries. But charitable motives animate the Left little, if at all. Liberals are notoriously tightfisted with (their own) charitable dollars; even more to the point, when a shipload of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution wanted safe haven in the US, leftist icon FDR turned it away. It’s one of those curious coincidences in history that the Left’s attitude toward refugees changed precisely when leftists discovered they could import voters who would empower them.

And does attaching something as a rider — citizenship — to charity aid the cause of charity? Are people more or less likely to offer charity to a person if the act begins and ends with charity, or if they must grant the individual some decision-making power in their home as well? That’s a package deal only a masochist could love.

So there’s an easy way to uncover liberals’ true motivations and whether they’re serious about charity for refugees. Make a simple offer: you’ll give bona fide refugees safe haven, and you’ll do your best to ensure they’re treated well. But there’s no citizenship. Ever. And they’ll be expected to eventually return to their homelands. See if the leftists bite…anything but your extended hand.

But liberals have already tipped their hand. Andrew Neather, a former adviser to ex-British prime minister Tony Blair, admitted in 2009 that one of the goals of the mass immigration authored by his Labour Party was “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.” Barack Obama said in February he was “pretty optimistic” that because immigration was making the US “more of a hodgepodge of folks,” conservatism would be drowned out. Even more incredibly, there was this report, which tells us that “Obama’s amnesty plan is to use illegal aliens as ‘seedlings’…[who will] ‘navigate, not assimilate,’ as they ‘take over the host,’ create a ‘country within a country’ and start ‘pushing the citizens into the shadows,’” as I wrote in March. And a refugee scam is part of this: in order to get around immigration law and maximize Third World migration into the US, the Obama administration is categorizing as many people as possible as “refugees.”

This brings us to a contradiction here. On the one hand, liberals sometimes point out that despite doom-and-gloom prognostication, we live in the most “peaceful era in human history.” And they cite statistics backing up the assertion. On the other, they claim we must suddenly accommodate endless troves of “refugees” fleeing persecution. Question: if the world is unprecedentedly peaceful, why now do we have a supposedly worse refugee crisis than in more warlike times?

There’s another contradiction. We’re told that prosperous countries have a moral responsibility to the world’s poorer nations. So why then are wealthy Asian Tigers never asked to absorb any “refugees”? Japan, in fact, has virtually no immigration whatsoever despite having an extremely low birthrate and shrinking population. Moreover, since many refugees are Muslim, why aren’t Saudi Arabia, Qatar, The United Arab Emirates and the other oil-rich Arab nations taking them in? Wouldn’t it seem a natural fit? (Then they could stop importing the Filipinos and others they use for domestic help.) Maybe they know something we don’t.

In a sense, most of the world could be said to comprise would-be economic refugees. After all, how many people in Asia, Africa and Latin America wouldn’t want to emigrate to the West and enjoy the welfare state? And how many should, and can, the West absorb? One billion? Two billion? Three billion?

There undoubtedly are people in this world facing serious persecution. As to this, the West in general and the Obama administration in particular have done nothing to aid, for instance, the Christians being slaughtered in Muslim lands. But the bottom line is that the “refugees” are coming to the West simply because the West is nicer than where they come from. And they will keep coming until they’ve turned the West into where they’ve come from — unless we change course.

There’s much talk today about anchor babies, but that’s only part of our obsession with granting citizenship to foreigners. Workers should be expected to work and go home. Guests should be expected to visit and go home. For whether or not you believe charity begins at home, for certain is that conflating it with family status is robbing us of our home.

By Vidisha Mishra*

On June 26, 2015, in a historic 5-4 Judgement in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the US Supreme Court effectively settled one of the major civil rights issues in the country. Same-sex couples now have the constitutional right to marry. Although the issue may be have been settled legally, it remains politically divisive. Since the ruling, reactions of the 2016 Presidential candidates (and assumed candidates) have been deeply polarised, indicating the potential of same-sex marriage to become a determining factor in the run up to 2016.

While the reactions from Democratic candidates indicated univocal support for the judgement, the Republican response showed variation, with some expressing stronger objections than others. Leading the Democrats, President Barack Obama, whose personal views on same sex marriage have shifted over the years, and has gone through a self-admitted “struggle”, stated that the Supreme Court ruling was a victory that would strengthen all communities in the American Union. The President’s official position on the issue has witnessed well- documented shifts from being pro same-sex marriages in 1996 to being against it in 2008.

Similarly, leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s personal views on same-sex marriage have evolved over the years. Clinton tweeted in strong support of LGBT Americans and advocates of equal rights. In 2008, Clinton had only supported civil unions for same-sex couples. Clinton’s closest competition in the Primaries, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has long been a vocal proponent of gay rights, also hailed the Supreme Court decision as “equal justice under law”. Other Presidential hopefuls like Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee also reacted positively.

On the other hand, even though all the GOP candidates showed disappointment over the ruling, some like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal — issued strongly worded statements, urging conservatives to fight against the legislation that they found to be at odds with religious liberty. However, others, such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, issued more moderate statements.

Republican candidates, who were quick to register their disapproval of the court’s 5-4 ruling, now find themselves in the tough situation of assuaging their conservative voter base while at the same time acknowledging that the next President will be ineffectual in reversing the judgement in any manner. This may explain why some prominent GOP candidates like Bush and Rubio chose to adopt relatively muted reactions in comparison. While they both established that the court had overstepped its boundaries and the final decision on same-sex marriage should have been left to respective states, they upheld the law of the land and spoke against discrimination.

Moreover, the ruling follows an unparalleled shift in the American public opinion. According to the Pew Research Centre, in 2001, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a 57% to 35% margin. But, data published days before the judgement in June 2015 demonstrated that support for same-sex marriage has increased dramatically in the last few years. Today, 39% of Americans oppose same-sex marriage while a majority of them (57%) support it. Most significantly, the data highlights that almost 3 in 4 people aged 18-35 support same-sex marriage, regardless of party affiliations.

Given the changing public and political atmosphere in favour of same-sex marriage, Republican candidates are likely to find themselves grappling with their approach to the Supreme Court ruling as well as to the issue of equal rights at large. The challenge in the Primaries and more explicitly in the 2016 Presidential face-off would be to balance the expectations of their core conservative base without estranging the general voters, many of them young millennials, who largely support equal rights.

However, the Supreme Court ruling could also help the GOP. The judgement has left the older, conservative audiences feeling defensive. Therefore, the ruling could serve as the key consolidating issue that candidates can rally around. The subsequent perception of threat to religious liberty and family values may even help bolster fund-raising campaigns for GOP candidates who are vocally critical of the ruling.

Additionally, the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling was accompanied by the judgement upholding Obamacare. This has resulted in strengthening calls amongst the Republicans against ‘judicial activism’. It is likely that as a result of these judgements, the Supreme Court itself will be in focus during the 2016 elections. After the Obamacare ruling, Sen. Ted Cruz, angrily noted that, “a handful of unelected judges had re-written the text to impose failed laws on Americans”. Republican GOP hopeful Carly Fiorina, said of the same-sex marriage ruling that it is, “only the latest example of an activist Court”. The Republican discontentment with the bench could be a recurring theme. Growing frustration with the court may encourage conservatives to support presidential candidates who commit to place strong conservatives on the bench.

Since Hillary Clinton’s nomination and her subsequent campaigns, it has been clear that gender issues will be playing a more significant role in the 2016 Presidential run than ever before. The SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage has only exacerbated that possibility, with LGBT rights thrust to the centre of the debate. The ruling has not only divided candidates along partisan lines, but has also generated different reactions within parties. It may not be a determining issue for Democratic candidates in the Presidential Primaries in 2014. But it remains to be seen how the Democrats leverage the ruling in 2016. Further, it remains to be seen how the Republican candidates balance their core conservative vote bank as well as a rapidly changing political landscape.

*Vidisha Mishra is Research Assistant at ORF

South Korean President Park Geun-hye is attending Beijing’s 3 September 70th anniversary celebration of Japan’ defeat in World War II (WW2). Although this will lend international support to China at a time when it is becoming ever more assertive, she judges that a collaborative strategy through skillful diplomacy is best for peace and security in Northeast Asia.

By Sukjoon Yoon PhD*

Predident Park Geun-Hye’s decision to attend China’s 70th anniversary celebration of the Japanese defeat in WW2 comes at a time of growing Chinese assertiveness in the region. This notwithstanding, the South Korean leader seems to be of the view that peace and security in Northeast Asia is best secured through diplomacy and collaborative ties.

There are several other reasons behind Park’s decision. First, it is a real test of the strategic cooperative partnership between China and South Korea. This event will consolidate Xi’s position, allowing him to continue to root out corruption; it will be their sixth meeting, and signals a continuing commitment to cooperation based on mutual trust and on shared values and aspirations.

China’s show of pride in rise

Second, history has a key public role in this event. China is announcing to its own people and to its neighbours that it is no longer a weak and sickly nation, but a world power pursuing the ‘Chinese Dream’. There is a clear message to Japan, in particular the war crimes which the Japanese inflicted on East and Southeast Asia during the 20th century have not been forgotten, nor can they be expunged by a few formal apologies, still less by the kind shown by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his recent reference to the ‘deep remorse’ and ‘heartfelt apology’ of previous statements without actually offering a direct apology himself.

President Park’s presence at this event, which commemorates the defeat of Japan but also the appalling suffering of the ordinary Chinese people, will demonstrate the sympathies of the South Korean people, who are also very disappointed with Abe’s remarks, and concerned about the Japanese impulse toward historical revisionism.

Third, this event would have offered an opportunity for an ice-breaking meeting between President Park and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had he decided to come. Now that Kim is staying away, the question of an ice-breaker in relations is very much up in the air. Nonetheless, it would be a tad too much to expect a breakthrough in inter-Korean reconciliation, especially after the recent artillery exchange in the demilitarised zone, but the context is very helpful: commemorating an end to Japanese colonial rule of the whole Korea Peninsula.

China, as North Korea’s key ideological and economic partner, can hopefully act as a mediator in persuading Pyongyang of the benefits available from honest diplomacy: in the long term North Korea could become a normal country with access to significant economic support, but in the short term Kim must demonstrate his sincerity by easing tensions between the two Koreas.

Broader bridge-building

Fourth, Presidents Xi and Park are both hoping to encourage broader bridge-building. China’s recent assertiveness has upset many of its neighbours, and the grand strategy of ‘One Belt, One Road’, which aims to forge new interconnections across the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, has generated considerable disquiet. Park’s participation in this event offers evidence to the US that relations with China can be skillfully managed, and in fact there are many issues which require more intelligent and nuanced diplomacy, including climate change, trade imbalances between China and its neighbours, and US investment in China.

Fifth, the most important reason for President Park to go to Beijing in September is the fundamental economic interdependence between South Korea and China. China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, and South Korea is China’s third largest. Ironically, the robust economic growth South Korea has enjoyed is also responsible for causing some coolness in the relations with China since it allows South Korea to provide more support for US military costs incurred in protecting against the unpredictable neighbour to the north.

By accepting China’s rising military – as well as economic – influence in the region, without disturbing the security alliance with the US, South Korea is paving the way for the US to also come to a peaceful accommodation with China. President Park’s visit to Beijing reflects majority opinion in South Korea that China will have the greatest impact on Korea over the next 30 years.

Geopolitical shifts

For both China and the US, President Park’s upcoming meeting with President Xi provides some useful context on regional issues, including North Korean military provocations, their apparent testing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, and the simmering tensions in the South China Sea. Xi is visiting Washington in mid-September, and then Park goes in mid-October, so doubtless Park will confer with US President Barack Obama throughout this period, and Xi will also use Park as a sounding-board.

South Korea has deftly positioned itself as a middle power standing between these two major powers. Indeed the geostrategic ramifications of this new triumvirate may well replace some functions of the existing trilateral alliance of Japan, South Korea and the US.

For the Chinese and South Korean victims of WW2, history continues to cast a dark shadow, and Prime Minister Abe’s quasi-apology further isolates Japan from the rest of the region. But times are changing: the great power competition between the US and China, according to one perspective, is gradually fading into the background, and a new strategic centre is emerging which acknowledges the profound interdependence of the regional economies. Peace and prosperity will ultimately depend much more on China’s huge investment commitments to its ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative than on the supposed US pivot to Asia, which has suffered from lack of resources.

By participating in this military ceremony in Beijing, President Park is demonstrating her strategic leverage: taking advantage of South Korea’s cooperative strategic partnership with China without undermining the security alliance with the US. Ironically, this deepening of relations between South Korea and China promises to be rather helpful for US diplomacy, and ultimately should even benefit its ally Japan.

*Sukjoon Yoon PhD is a retired Captain of the Republic of Korea Navy. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy (KIMS). He contributed this specially to RSIS Commentary.

Last September brought with it major changes to the hotly contested Caspian Sea region. These changes were revealed at the IV Caspian Summit held in Astrakhan, Russia.

Of the greatest significance was the unanimous vote by the “Caspian 5” (Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan) to no longer allow foreign military presence in the Caspian region and that all issues that were to arise would be solved between the littoral states only. The political declaration, according to an announcement by Vladimir Putin and signed by all five presidents “sets out a fundamental principle for guaranteeing stability and security, namely, that only the Caspian littoral states have the right to have their armed forces present on the Caspian.” [1]

Iran’s President Hassan Rohani echoed this sentiment stating “there is consensus among all the Caspian Sea littoral states that they are capable of maintaining the security of the Caspian Sea and military forces of no foreign country must enter the sea.” [2]The five further agreed to expand cooperation on the Caspian Sea in terms of meteorology, natural disasters, and environmental protection. [3] The declaration also revealed clear formulations on the delimitation of the seabed with each country having exclusive sovereign rights to a 15 mile area. [4] This puts to rest an issue that had been contested since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new independent states. [5]Apart from being a unique body of water in terms of its bio and ecological resources, the Caspian Sea comes with a massive amount of oil and gas reserves, an estimated 18 billion tons with proved reserves of four billion tons. These numbers put the Caspian Sea directly behind the Persian Gulf in terms of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves. [6]

This corresponds with what PCasrof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic described as the lowest common denominator of 5 littoral states in both theatres – the Caspian and Arctic. “The Five will be: (i) Dismissive: Erode the efforts of international community/external interested parties for creation of the Antarctica-like treaty (by keeping the UNCLOS referential); (ii) Assertive: Maximize the shares of the spoils of partition – extend the EEZ and continental shelf as to divide most if not the entire body of water only among the Five; and (iii) Reconciliatory: Prevent any direct confrontation among the riparian states over the spoils – resolve the claims without arbitration of the III parties. (preferably CLCS). [7]

Therefore, no wonder that this declaration also outlined many corresponding projects in the works for this region – a major one being the joint construction of a railroad that would encircle the Caspian Sea, connecting key Caspian ports and cutting transportation time in half. The five states also signed an emergency prevention and response agreement which called for joint efforts in responding to emergencies in the region. Additionally, plans were revealed for a joint emergency response exercise to take place in 2016 that will test the capabilities and partnerships between the nations and develop procedures of notifying and coordinating rescue units. [8]

Disguised underneath these projects, exercises, cooperation, and initiatives is a very real threat to the United States and NATO. Russia and Iran have long felt threatened by the possibility of a foreign military presence in the Caspian Sea and Moscow was determined to find a way to ensure it would not lose any more influence in the global energy sector (this in light of Europe slowly but surely diversifying away from Russian gas after the Ukrainian crisis began). The best way to do this was to bring these nations into the fold of Kremlin interests, while making them feel their own interests were also being served. By strengthening relations in their own backyard Russia has been able to increase influence and gain back power in the region. Shutting NATO out of the region also significantly increases Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan’s dependence on Moscow in many different aspects. [9] Another added bonus is that a clear alliance made up of Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan, Ukraine (absent any ‘outsider presence’) would be comparatively easy to control. [10]

The effects of this agreement have already resulted in major changes to relations between Caspian nations and the United States. For years Azerbaijan has welcomed American-Azeri relations by stepping up logistical support for NATO operations in Afghanistan and even serving in Afghanistan as part of the ISAF, but relations have clearly cooled between the two nations. There were also serious talks between Kazakhstan and the United States for building a base on the border in Aktau that would cater to the needs of the United States and NATO troops, but since the signing of this declaration the project has been halted. Finally, the geopolitical shift in the region has resulted in the closing of the North route for NATO military equipment being sent to Afghanistan. [11]

Prior to this Caspian Summit agreement the United States had played an active role in helping Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan bolster their military defenses and develop their own navies. [12] The maintaining of close relations in this region was of great political and strategic importance to the United States, not only due to its vast oil and gas riches (originally outside of Russia’s control) but its strategic location that connects it with many regions of Western interest.

Other ways that Russia has benefited from this deal include: the creation of a rapid response force unfurling along the Caspian Sea coast as a means to extend influence over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and its troops in the Armenian Gyumri base; jumpstarting cooperation with Giorgi Margvelashvili, the new Georgian Prime Minister; maintaining the ability to block Georgian and Azerbaijan pipelines; improving relations with Turkmenistan; beginning plans for building a pipeline with Turkey (named the Turkish Stream) out to Europe, which will compete with the Trans-Anatolia Gas Pipeline project (sponsored not coincidentally by the US, EU, and Azerbaijan). [13]

The United States has another reason to worry about being blocked from the region – Chechnya. In Azerbaijan, jihadists from the Jamaat (Community) Group are already operating and maintaining connections with Chechen Islamists, the Caucasus Emirate, and Syria’s Islamic State: the attack on Eurovision in 2012 and the murder of several Shiite clerics all carry their hallmarks. This insurgency is threatening to turn the region into one of the most ungovernable locations in the world where neither aggressive use of military/intelligence force (counterterrorism operations courtesy of Russia) nor engaged economic assistance has helped the situation. With the United States not being able to join together with forces in the region this threat will not just remain present but will likely only continue to grow. [14]

Arguably, the signing of this agreement to ban foreign militaries has been the biggest game-changer to take place in the Caspian over the last 20 years. The West not being able to be involved in the region not only decreases energy development and security in the oil and gas-rich Caspian sea basin, but also wounds in several other respects: it reduces the ability to deter adversaries in the region against attacks; it weakens what were growing U.S. alliances; it allows Moscow to project its power over the other Caspian nations with little interference; it cuts off access to ports for deployments to the Middle East; it does not allow for responses to humanitarian crises in the region; and it does not allow for the U.S. to project its own power and reach as easily as it once did. All of these make the United States and NATO much weaker than before the Summit began. Round One in this heavyweight prize fight has clearly gone to the Russian bear.

First published by: www.moderndiplomacy.eu Original title: “For Members Only: The Consequences of the Caspian Summit’s Foreign Military Ban”

About the author:
*Megan Munoz of Bellevue University, Nebraska. She works as an intelligence analyst for the state of New Jersey, previously served as an intelligence analyst in the United States Air Force for 10 years, and remains a reservist.

[1]Dettoni, J. (2014). “Russia and Iran Lock NATO Out of Caspian Sea.” The Diplomat. Retrieved from http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/russia-and-iran-lock-nato-out-of-caspian-sea/
[2]Ibid.
[3]PressTV. (2014). “No foreign military force must enter Caspian region: Rouhani.” PressTV.ir. Retrieved from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/29/380453/no-foreign-force-in-caspian-region/
[4]Belinksi, S. (2014). “Caspian Sea Could Be Key To Russian Control Of Eurasian Energy Markets.” Oilprice.com. Retrieved from http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Caspian-Sea-Could-Be-Key-To-Russian-Control-Of-Eurasian-Energy-Markets.html
[5]PressTV. (2014). “No foreign military force must enter Caspian region: Rouhani.” PressTV.ir. Retrieved from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/09/29/380453/no-foreign-force-in-caspian-region/
[6]TASS, (2014) “Real breakthrough reached at 4th Caspian Summit – Putin.” TASS Russian News Agency. Retrieved from http://tass.ru/en/russia/751856
[7] Bajrektarevic, A. (2014), The Caspian Five and the Arctic Five—Critical Similarities, Geopolitics of Energy, CERI Canada 34(4)2014.
[8]Sputniknews. (2014). “Countries bordering the Caspian Sea will hold joint emergency exercises in 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday.”   Sputniknews.com Retrieved from http://sputniknews.com/military/20140929/193422433.html
[9]Belinksi, S. (2014). “Caspian Sea Could Be Key To Russian Control Of Eurasian Energy Markets.” Oilprice.com. Retrieved from http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Caspian-Sea-Could-Be-Key-To-Russian-Control-Of-Eurasian-Energy-Markets.html
[10]Ibid.
[11]Armanian, N. (2015). “Turning point in Eurasia: Azerbaijan distances itself from the USA and the EU.” TheFifthColumnews.com. Retrieved from http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/06/turning-point-in-eurasia-azerbaijan-distances-itself-from-the-usa-and-the-eu/
[12]Ibid.
[13]Ibid.
[14]Cohen, A. (2012). “Anti-Terrorism Operation in North Caucuses Exposes Russia’s Vulnerabilities.” TheDailySignal.com. Retrieved from http://dailysignal.com/2012/10/23/anti-terrorism-operation-in-north-caucasus-exposes-russias-vulnerabilities/

Judaism was born and grew up in a world dominated by religions that taught that there were many, usually contending, divinities (polytheism) who manifested themselves in various natural phenomena such as sun, moon, storms, mountains, animals or even individual holy people (paganism) and who could inhabit or be represented by human made images such as statues or paintings (idolatry).

The Jewish Bible rejects all these beliefs, as does the Koran, and asserts that the One God who created the universe is not to be equated in any way with one of God’s creations. Thus there is a dual unbridgeable reality: the one uncreated God and God’s creation.

This chasm holds true even for spiritual entities like souls, angels, and Holy Scriptures that are closer to God than material things but are still not identical with the only One. Thus the Divine can never become incarnate in a person, place or text and worship directed to any person or object is idolatry.

The Hebrew Bible recognizes that other nations have other Gods and the requirement to worship the One imageless God applies only to the people of Israel, and anyone else who joins them. Thus the prophet Micah asserts that even in the Messianic Age “All peoples will walk, each in the name of its God.” (Micah 4:1-5)

Thus religious unity will not be the result of conformity to one universal religion, but will result from the harmony of many different religions, each following its own God, respecting other religions while disagreeing with them.

As the Koran says [5.48] “For every one of you did We appoint a law and a way. If Allah had wanted He could have made you one people, but (He didn’t) that He might test you in what He gave you. Therefore compete with one another to hasten to do virtuous deeds; for all return to Allah (for judgement), so He will let you know that in which you differed.”

Thus Judaism and Islam are pluralistic religions unlike Christianity and Buddhism where their own basic teaching is held to be universally necessary to achieve every individual’s salvation or personal enlightenment.

The Hebrew prophets teach that what is required of every human is to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8). This humility means that we do not claim that our religious truth is a universal one that everybody else has to accept. There is a great deal of overlap in the moral and ethical teachings of the world’s religions even though they disagree on specific issues like abortion, eating meat or capital punishment.

Thus there are fundamental differences in theology and philosophy in the world’s religions even though they often have some similar customs, rituals or wisdom sayings. In a future life/world God will let us know the ultimate Divine reality; but in this life/world we can only know how just, loving, merciful and pluralistic we are.

By Özdem Sanberk

The Ukraine crisis has caused the biggest rift between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. The crisis has produced thousands of deaths and billions of dollars of destruction. As well as downing a Malaysian airplane passenger jet over the Ukrainian airspace in July 2014, which killed 298 people on board, the conflict reverberated regional and global levels in the forms of increasing risk of military conflict, intensifying geopolitical and geo-economic divisions, and undermining much needed international cooperation against common threats such as ISIS in the Middle East. As the Ukraine crisis remained unresolved, military built-up by NATO and Russia carries an immediate danger of military conflict that would spark from a mistake any side may not be intended to cause.

Despite all geopolitical and economic repercussions of the crisis, continuation of facing a possible military spark cannot be sustainable, and thus such a danger must be kept minimal level if not totally avoided. Many in both sides would agree on these words, but how it would be best achieved in the current circumstances?

Where we are now in the Ukraine Crisis

To provide some answers to this question, first and foremost we need to look at where we are now in the Ukraine crisis. The cease-fire agreement, produced with the efforts of Germany and France, on 18 February 2015, is largely holding between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels. Despite the fact that this agreement is more comprehensive than the first cease-fire agreement signed in September 2014, but never implemented, it is not difficult to find many views in Russia, West and Ukraine that the current cease-fire is shaky and renewal of heavy fighting between the parties is quite possible.

The latest cease-fire agreement contains a number of measures to de-escalate the crisis and provides basis and trust for a political solution in the future. However, there is not a single provision in the agreement that Ukrainian and pro-Russian rebels fully agree on. Neither side appears to have not left their position to a chance. Russia continues to express that it is not a part to the conflict in Ukraine and so there is no need to be bound for Moscow by any provisions of the ceasefire agreement. The key position that Russia wants to keep under its control is the long border with Ukraine in order to continue pressurising Kiev government on political matters and to support pro-Russian rebel groups in Eastern Ukraine. Most agree that renewal of heavy fighting is not going to bring any success to Ukrainian military forces of 250 thousand before a pro-Russian army of 100 thousand rebels supported by Moscow.

It is because of ongoing risk of the renewal of the conflict and inability to implement the cease-fire agreement fully that western countries extended sanctions against Russia until January 2016. Fragile cease-fire in Ukraine and ongoing disagreements between the western countries and Russia on the Ukraine crisis have not only maintained the risk of renewal of the military clashes in Ukraine but also continuously increased the risk of military collision between NATO and Russian military forces in the Baltic region, Black Sea and some other regions. Consequences of a military accident between NATO and Russian military forces will surely be much more serious and dangerous for all sides and any other states when one thinks of the reality of a confrontation occurring between an alliance and state both having thousands of nuclear weapons.

Rising risk of military incident

It is reported that, especially since March 2014 when pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine started demonstrations against Kiev government and Russia annexed Crimea, there is an increasing pattern of military activities on the sides of Russia and NATO against one another. Indeed, the risk of a military encounter between Russia and NATO during that period is well documented by the Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe with its Position Paper III released on 26 August.

As pointed out in the Position Paper III, the European Leadership Network, a London based think-tank and one of the partners of the Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe alongside International Strategic Research Organisation (USAK), has given 66 military incidents between NATO and Russian forces, and the forces between Russian military and those of Sweden and Finland. Of these military encounters, three were classified as carrying high risk incidents. The Position Paper III informs that, in fact, there are much more military incidents between NATO and Russian forces. According to the Position Paper III, NATO carried on more than 400 intercepts of Russian fighter jets in 2014, a number four times higher than that of in 2013. On the other side, as reported by basing on Russian statement, NATO conducted 3000 tactical aircraft flights near the Russian border in 2014 an amount that were in half in 2013. It is also reported that Sweden and Finland intercepted a number of Russian warplanes near to their airspace, had to conduct search for mysterious “underwater objects” in their territorial waters in the last 12 months.

There are also increased number and size of the military exercises of NATO and Russia. NATO is reported to have conducted 162 military exercises in 2014 under NATO’s Military Training and Exercise Programme, which were twice more military exercises than those of initially planned. As for Russia, it increased military exercises including no-prior notification snap exercises, and some of them were conducted in the Russian Western military district that is close to NATO territory. Russia has also deployed additional air and see defensive and offensive military equipment in Crimea, and increased military activities, for instance, by using surveillance aircraft and long-range strategic aviation.

Although NATO and Russian military forces as well as national militaries closer to Russian territories have so far shown restraints in these military encounters and exercises, this condition of constant military activities carries a high risk – a picture reminiscent of the Cold War confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union. There is no need to repeat the economic costs that have already been inflicted by the conflict on Ukrainian economy, sanctions and threat of further sanctions between the western counties and Russia. All in all, it can be seen that western countries inside and outside NATO will acquire a positive approach towards Russia, if Moscow demonstrates a more constructive position in the Ukraine crisis. Top of all these today, however, is the need to keep the mutual military activities by Russia and NATO under control in order not to let things go out of control.

Way out of military danger

Under the current tense situation caused primarily by the Ukraine crisis, it would be simplistic to see a quick normalization in the relations between the West and Russia. Therefore, as many would also agree, priority should be given to prevent military activities from getting out of control. This means that there need to have an effective risk management in military activities of NATO and Russia. For sure, there exist communication links between NATO and the Russian General Staff, and high level meetings of military and political representatives during the time of heightened tensions. But, these will be too late if an accident happens during military engagements along the line of contact between NATO and Russian forces.

Last year in July in its Position Paper II, the Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe urged all sides of NATO, the EU and Russia to strictly follow three measures to reduce the military risk. It recommended them first to “exercise full military and political restraint”, second to “embrace increased military to military communication, information exchange and transparency measures”, and third to “engage in direct dialogue with each other”. These recommendations have still been very important measures in the de-escalation of the Ukraine crisis and military encounters between NATO and Russian forces. Open communication channels that exist between NATO and Russian General Staff are surely of great value, but are still not enough to eliminate military risk.

Indeed, as its Position Paper II, the Task Force on Cooperation in Greater Europe proposed urgent convention of the NATO-Russia Council in the Position Paper III. This paper suggests the meeting of NATO-Russia Council not just for consultation or re-opening the communication channels between the two sides, but for producing a document that would better prevent NATO and Russian military forces from making a mistake on the theatre.

Specifically speaking, the Position Paper III urges the convention of the NATO-Russia Council to “discuss a possible Memorandum of Understanding between NATO and the Russian Federation on the Rules of Behaviour for the Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters between the two sides.” In this context, as well as similar agreements between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War period, an agreement that was signed between the United States and China in late 2014 are given as valid and useful examples for the sides to look at.

Although the Ukraine crisis and its wider repercussions do not seem to be abating in a short period, there are still options not to allow them to worsen. Existing communication links especially military to military are very important to reduce the risk of unwanted military incidents between NATO and Russia, and any other document in the form of agreement would further strengthen this objective and help build much needed trust between the sides.

Vladimir Putin’s rehabilitation of the repressed peoples of Crimea and his statement that his goal is to create a situation in which “every people and every citizen [in Russia] can feel at home” has prompted a long-time leader of the Russian Germans to call on Putin to complete the rehabilitation of that people and restore a German Autonomous Republic.

In an appeal released on the 74th anniversary of Stalin’s abolition of the German ASSR and the deportation of ethnic Germans from the Middle Volga, Hugo Wormsbecher argues that the time has come to resolve this longstanding issue once and for all (nazaccent.ru/content/17375-pod-lichnyj-kontrol-prezidenta.html).

The “’rehabilitation’” issue has been on the table since the moment Moscow deported the Russian Germans, Wormsbecher suggests. He points out that Stalin took this action because he had been told, without any evidence, that the ethnic Germans inside the USSR included “tens of thousands” of spies and agents.

The working age population among them were put in “a labor army,” and then after the war, they and all the other ethnic Germans became exiled special settlers. “In 1957, when the other repressed peoples restored their republics, the Germans were not allowed to,” at least in part because the regions and republics to which they had been sent did not want to lose such good workers.

Those restrictions, Wormsbecher says, were lifted in 1965 when Soviet officials acknowledged that Stalin’s charges were baseless. Then, in 1972, the prohibition against returning home was also annulled – with one exception, the Germans were not allowed to go back to the places from which they had been exiled.

Seven years later, without consulting the Kazakhs, Moscow decided to create a German autonomy in Kazakhstan, but that only provoked “harsh anti-German actions.” Even worse was to come in 1989 during perestroika when Moscow decided to restore a German ASSR in the Middle Volga. People there responded with slogans like “Better AIDS than a German autonomy.” That killed the project for the Soviet period.

After 1991, Boris Yeltsin proposed that the Germans settle on a military base after picking up the mines. Perhaps, he said, “Germany will help” do that. In 1992, Moscow and Berlin signed a cooperation protocol which anticipated the formation of a commission to examine the restoration of the German autonomy. But now, 23 years on, nothing has happened on that front.

“However,” the German activist says, “Russia has all the same awoken from its coma, freed itself a little from external and internal ‘consultants,’ restored its ability to life and its authority in the world,” and that, he suggests, means that the hopes of the Russian Germans for justice may now be closer to realization.

Wormsbecher points in particular to Putin’s decision to create a Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs and his promise to end all the consequences of deportation for the formerly repressed peoples of Crimea, yet another way that Moscow’s intervention there is having a blowback effect within the Russian Federation.

Russian Germans hope that this time, Moscow will go beyond adopting a law on rehabilitation and then declaring that “no republic ‘will ever be,’” that it will not keep saying “the population is against” the idea, and will not say there are too few Germans either in the region or in the country to form an autonomy after doing what it could to drive them out.

Is it really the case that there are too few Germans remaining to have an autonomy? Wormsbecher asks rhetorically. There are at least 400,000 – and that is more than the German autonomy had before being suppressed. Adding to that figure the number of Germans in other CIS countries and the understatement of their number in censuses, there are “at a minimum” 1.5 million Russian Germans.

Moreover, some Russian Germans who went to Germany may want to return, he says.

“Is it not time for President Putin to take under his personal supervision the issue of the rehabilitation of Russian Germans? And to get involved in that process not those ‘Germans’ who for years have made a business by opposing rehabilitation but rather those who really are for it in the interests of the country?”

If that happens, Wormsbecher says, “then Russian Germans will be able at last to again return to their role as the trusted third ally of Russia, comparable in importance to its army and fleet, in the construction of the unity of its people. A unity, without which, as history shows, even the army and the fleet are not able to save the country from catastrophe.”

By Raphaela Kormoll*

The now cancelled talks between the National Security Advisors (NSA) of India and Pakistan, originally scheduled for 23-24 August 2015, would have been the first meeting between the two wherein the public was duly apprised in advance.

Back-channel meetings between the NSAs had been established by the end of October 2004 as part of a composite dialogue process (CDP), as Sumona Dasgupta points out in a recent working paper.

The idea and the format of a CDP between India and Pakistan was first articulated in 1997 by the then Indian Prime Minister I. K. Gujral and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. However, it was not until 2004 that the process took off, due to a number of crises that put a strain on Indo-Pak relations.

Discussing terrorism has been on the CDP agenda since the beginning, but it was not until 2006 that progress was made on this issue. In 2006, the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf decided to create a joint counter-terrorism framework. Subsequently, the Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism (JATM) was launched in 2007 with several meetings taking place in 2007 and 2008. Yet, the JATM did not result in any visible outcomes. The action points highlighted in the joint statement issued by the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers, Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif, following their meeting on the side-lines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Ufa, Russia, therefore appeared like a promising step toward closer cooperation on terrorism. First, because it engaged the National Security Advisors (NSA). Second, for its exclusive focus on terrorism.

Engaging the NSAs

According to a September 1998 joint statement by the then foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan, the Home/Interior Secretaries are responsible for discussing terrorism. By moving the talks on terrorism to the NSA-level, New Delhi and Islamabad hint at a change in their understanding of the issue – from a national to an international security concern. Simultaneously, it may indicate a preference of Indian NSA Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz over the Home/Interior Secretaries to discuss security-related issues. As a former member of the Indian Police Service (IPS) and former Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Doval has the knowhow, the expertise, the resources and power to take the talks on terrorism to the next level and therefore appears to be better suited to the job. Aziz on the other hand has served as Pakistan’s foreign and finance minister and has thus been involved in external affairs. Yet, he appears to lack connections to the Pakistani intelligence service and the military, whose support for Indo-Pak talks is necessary for their realisation and the implementation of joint agreements. This is particularly true for counter-terrorism measures.

Terrorism without Kashmir

Until now, counter-terrorism measures have been discussed alongside the territorial dispute over Kashmir, as neither side has been willing to talk about one without the other. By separating the two issues in the Ufa joint statement, India and Pakistan appeared to hint at mutual understanding that terrorism is a security concern, while Kashmir falls within the category of foreign affairs. This marked a departure from the contentious securitisation of the Kashmir issue and suggests a positive trend for Indo-Pak relations.

Yet, by agreeing to focus on terrorism alone, Islamabad was sure of criticism at home – on governmental, civilian, and military levels. This became evident in the developments following the statement – increase in cross-border shelling, terrorist attacks, and the invitation of separatist Hurriyat leaders – that foreshadowed that the talks might get cancelled. This raises questions concerning the real intent behind agreeing to NSA-level talks. Was it to show the world that India and Pakistan are on good terms? Or did Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seek to test Delhi’s commitment to the continuation of the CDP?

Islamabad had been pushing for the resumption of talks since 2013. In August 2014, the Indian government cancelled the scheduled bilateral Foreign Secretary-level meeting due to Pakistan’s engagement with militant Kashmiris. This time, New Delhi indicated to proceed with the talks, despite Pakistan’s notification of a meeting with Hurriyat leaders – a move which showed Islamabad’s reluctance to go ahead with the talks.

What implications does this have for the CDP?

The cancellation of the NSA-level talks does not necessarily show a lack of commitment to the dialogue process, given that the trajectory of official Indo-Pak talks has been highly unsteady to date – with a series of false starts and closures, resumptions and back-offs, and major incidents such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, exacerbating the situation. Instead it is an indication that the nature of the engagement has not been thought through entirely.

Therefore, it seems necessary to continue back-channel meetings to set the scene for official NSA-level talks. This is particularly true because the media became the forum for communication between New Delhi and Islamabad – to the detriment of effective diplomacy. Restoring diplomacy is necessary to continue the official dialogue. Whether future talks will yield substantial results in the form of efficient joint mechanisms to fight terrorism is, however, doubtful. Regardless, it would be pragmatic for Indian and Pakistani leaders to move beyond talking the talk to walking the walk.

* Raphaela Kormoll
Research Intern, IPCS, and Doctoral Candidate, Durham University
E-mail: r.t.kormoll@durham.ac.uk

More than 300,000 refugees and migrants have used the dangerous sea route across the Mediterranean so far this year with almost 200,000 of them landing in Greece and a further 110,000 in Italy, according to a new UNHCR report released Friday.

The UN refugee agency said this represents a large increase from the 219,000 people who crossed the Mediterranean during the whole of 2014.

“At the same time, some 2,500 refugees and migrants are estimated to have died or gone missing this year, trying to reach Europe. This death toll does not include yesterday’s tragedy off Libya where numbers of deaths are still unconfirmed,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a press briefing in Geneva, adding that in the last few days even more people had lost their lives in three separate incidents.

Last year some 3,500 people died or were reported missing in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Libyan Coast Guard carried two rescue operations on Thursday morning, seven miles off the port town of Zwara. Two boats carrying an approximate total of 500 refugees and migrants were intercepted and survivors taken to shore in Libya.

“An estimated 200 people are still missing and feared dead. A still undetermined number of bodies were recovered and taken to shore. The Libyan Red Crescent has been helping with the collection of the bodies,” Fleming said.

On Wednesday, rescuers coming to the aid of another boat off the Libyan coast found 51 people dead from suffocation in the hold.

“According to survivors, smugglers were charging people money for allowing them to come out of the hold in order to breathe,” Fleming said.

Additionally, Fleming said that last week the bodies of 49 persons were found in the hold of another boat in a similar, but separate incident. They are thought to have died after inhaling poisonous fumes.

Many of the people arriving by sea in southern Europe, particularly in Greece, come from countries affected by violence and conflict, such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the UNHCR, they are in need of international protection and they are often physically exhausted and psychologically traumatized.

Two supermassive black holes in Markarian 231, the nearest quasar to Earth, were found using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by a University of Oklahoma astrophysicist and his Chinese collaborator.

The discovery of two supermassive black holes–one larger one and a second, smaller one–are evidence of a binary black hole and suggests that supermassive black holes assemble their masses through violent mergers.

Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences, collaborated on this project with Youjun Lu of the National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dai and Lu looked at ultraviolet radiation emitted from the center of the Mrk 231 from Hubble observations, then applied a model developed by Lu to the spectrum of the galaxy. As a result, they were able to predict the existence of the binary black holes in Mrk 231.

“We are extremely excited about this finding because it not only shows the existence of a close binary black hole in Mrk 231, but also paves a new way to systematically search binary black holes via the nature of their ultraviolet light emission,” said Lu, National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“The structure of our universe, such as those giant galaxies and clusters of galaxies, grows by merging smaller systems into larger ones, and binary black holes are natural consequences of these mergers of galaxies,” said Dai.

Over time, the two black holes discovered by Dai and Lu in Mrk 231 will collide and merge to form a quasar with a supermassive black hole. A quasar is an active galaxy with an illuminated center, which is short lived compared to the age of the universe.