In what is a true milestone for the US, shifting demographics have led to a traditionally Polish-Catholic city in Michigan electing ‘the first-ever’ Muslim-majority council in America’s history.

The city of Hamtramck held a recent election, with a total of six candidates vying for three seats. The top three vote-winners were all Muslim. The result is now a six-member council, with four of the members Muslims. Two of the councilors were incumbent and one seat occupied by a Muslim was not up for re-election.

According to the Detroit Free Press, some believe the city is ‘the first in the US’ with a Muslim majority on its city council: three of the representatives are of Bangladeshi descent and a fourth if of Yemeni heritage.

“Hamtramck has made history,” community leader Bill Meyer said. “The election was far from close, with the three Muslim winners each gaining over 1,000 votes, while the other three candidates garnered less than 700 votes each.”

The Muslim candidates told the Free Press that they promise to represent every resident, regardless of race or creed.

“I represent every single citizen in Hamtramck,” said Councilman Musa, who came in second.

According to the US Census, Hamtramck has always been known for its Polish population, but is now largely Yemeni (19 percent out of a total of 24 percent Arabs in the city), 19 percent African-American, 15 percent Bangladeshi and only 12 percent Polish. Another 6 percent are former Yugoslavs, mostly Bosnians.

The city even has its own Bangla Town, an area dedicated to celebrating the relationship with Bangladesh and its culture. Governor Rick Snyder attended the opening on Friday. Hamtramck has a 41 percent immigrant population, the highest percentage in the Detroit metropolitan area.

Meyer, told the Free Press that Muslims have actually contributed to the city by bringing “stability, security and sobriety while lessening the amount of drugs and crime…”

Although Islam has been spreading steadily through the area, it wasn’t until roughly 10 years ago, in 2004, that the city allowed the broadcast of the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. And it’s been a rocky road. For instance, Sudan Dunn, who came in fourth in the council, has been raising the issue as part of her platform.

But Saad Almasmari, 28, who came first, had a good response to those who perceive the ritual as noisy or disruptive to their morning routines.

“We all want to live peacefully and respectfully,” he said in a video on his Facebook account in October. “Our special thing is … the diversity in this town.”

He further said the call to prayer is “not as loud as [Dunn] thinks”. He added that if a call to prayer were to be considered as noise, then, surely, “the loud music all night long while we are sleeping” could be considered that as well.

“We as Muslims respect our neighbors and we don’t like to bother anybody,” he added.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says his country will not hesitate to attack Syria in case of any threats.

He made the comments in a live interview broadcast by TRT on Tuesday, saying that Ankara would respond by air and land to any threats arising from neighboring Syria.

Davutoglu, however, did not mention potential sources for such threats.

The Turkish premier stressed that the country must play a more significant role in the US-led coalition that is purportedly targeting the positions of Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

Since late September 2014, the US, along with some of its allies, has reportedly been conducting airstrikes against Daesh inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

The airstrikes in Syria are an extension of the US-led aerial campaign against Daesh positions in Iraq, which started in August last year. Many have criticized the ineffectiveness of the raids.

Reforms in Turkey

Elsewhere in his remarks, Davutoglu said Turkey is planning to carry out major economic, social and judiciary reforms under a reform process in the next six months.

Pointing to the stalled peace talks between the Turkish government and Kurds, the prime minister said Turkey would not sacrifice its “struggle against terrorism” for the peace process.

Turkey has been engaged in one of its biggest military operations in the southern border region in the recent past. The Turkish military has been conducting offensives against Daesh positions in northern Syria as well as those of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 20 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, where over 30 people died. The Turkish government blamed Daesh for the bombing.

Ankara’s military campaign against the PKK voided a shaky ceasefire declared in 2013.

Editor’s note: This article has been edited from the source material Original article

By Dr Subhash Kapila*

China’s long line of unrestrained aggressive posturing and provocative acts short of war commencing with the positioning of Chinese oil-drilling rigs in Vietnamese waters of the South China Sea in May 2014 followed by construction of ‘artificial islands’ on ‘Low Tide Elevation’ reefs, has belatedly but finally pushed the United States in what can best be termed as the first tentative checkmating steps of Chinese military adventurism in the South China Sea.

Since perceptions count heavily in geopolitical tussles, especially with China, the import of more assertive postures now being adopted by the United States on South China Sea issues would not be lost on China, mainly on two counts. Firstly, China should now register that it had pushed the United States to step backwards more than necessary by Chinese misreading of American intentions. United States ‘Risk Aversion’ on China in terms of avoidance of conflict had been sorely tested by China to the detriment of the United States image in Asian capitals.

United States reluctance to take strong and assertive postures against Chinese military adventurism was creating Asian perceptions on the very credibility of United States as the net provider of security in Asia and inducing hedging strategies on China is some Asian countries. This was having a negative impact on United States global standing too.

President Obama was under severe Pentagon pressure for over a year that it be allowed to order ‘Freedom of Navigation Operations’ by the US Navy to challenge China’s claims that its artificially created islands in the Spratly Islands archipelago had each one of them their own 12 miles sea jurisdiction, as a prelude to the eventual declaration of the South China Sea as an Inland Sea of China with a follow-up declaration of a Chinese ADIZ over the South China Sea. President Obama held his authorisation back until the recent Chinese President’s visit to Washington.

During the meeting of the two Presidents in Washington, President Obama emphasised to the Chinese President that China must cease the illegal construction of artificial islands as not only these were avoidable provocations but muddied the security and stability of the Asia Pacific. Chinese President was reportedly dismissive in his responses on this count to American sane strategic advice. In response, even before the Chinese President left Washington, the US President is reported to have authorised the US Navy to conduct FONOP naval patrols in the South China Sea.

On October 26, 2015 the first US Navy FONOP cruise patrol was undertaken by US Navy guided missile destroyer USS LARSSEN (DDG 82) when it not only breached the 12 nautical mile limit but patrolled right upto six nautical miles of Subi Reef an LTE artificial island where China had established military facilities. The US Navy is reported to have done this without any ‘prior notification’ to China as LTE do not warrant territorial sea limits. The US Navy destroyer had air-cover of two maritime surveillance aircraft. It can be presumed that the United States would have catered for offensive air support as a stand-by, should China have responded forcibly.

The Chinese response was limited to tailing of USS Larssen by two Chinese Navy ships for nearly 72 hours, besides vociferous protests and warnings by the Chinese Foreign Office.

In an additional American assertion, the US Defence Secretary flew on to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the US Aircraft Carrier sailing in the South China Sea, to underscore American assertive postures. Notably, the US Defence Secretary was accompanied by his Malaysian counterpart.

The United States has asserted that despite Chinese warnings, the United States Navy would carry out more FONOPS patrols around Chines artificially constructed islands in the South China Sea. Within the United States tee were call being made that United States should adopt more assertive steps in the South China Sea than a single mere FONOP patrol.

The United Sates for more than a year has been in declaratory terms at various forums, including the annual Shangri La Dialogues, highlighting the dangers of Chinese brinkmanship on South China Sea and the imperatives of dialogues and conflict de-escalation. Evidently, this has had no impact on China smug in its belief that the United States would shy away from any assertive steps on South China Sea issues.

The United States drew support from the European Union in its new-found response and also from Japan and Australia. With such support accruing, there will be calls for an international effort by multinational naval effort for FONOP type patrols in the South China Sea to safeguard and secure the ‘freedom of navigation’ in international waters claimed by China as its exclusive own. What will be India’s response which recently has asserted adherence to the same principle?

In a related response, Vietnam whose sovereignty stands severely violated by China is likely to open the Cam Ranh Bay naval base to Japanese Navy ship visits soon. This may facilitate greater stay-on times for Japanese Navy ships traversing the South China Sea and Japanese Navy ships joining US Navy ships in South China Sea patrols.

The crucial question that arises from the above is as to how far Chinese brinkmanship will go in response to United States more assertive postures in the South China Sea? Will this time the United States now push the envelope more than what China was doing so far, with more US assertive postures in the South China Sea? Will China ignore the fundamentally changed Asia Pacific geopolitical environment presently opposed to China’s not so friendly military rise?

It appears that the United States would have worked out a well-calibrated and graduated strategy to confront China’s anticipated hard military responses to US stiffening of postures in the South China Sea.

Concluding, one does hope that the United States breaks out of its ‘Risk Aversion’ self-imposed shell when it comes to confronting China with hard choices checkmating its aggressive brinkmanship in the South China Sea and the Asia Pacific. On this firm assertion would hinge the credibility of United States reputation as a nett provider of security in the Asia Pacific.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

By Summaiya Khan*

The fruition of the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5 +1 seems rewarding to all involved. Iran, according to the Comprehensive Joint Plan Of Action (CJPOA), has agreed to conduct its nuclear programme in a restrictive manner. The plan requires Iran to freeze all uranium enrichment and to place its nuclear sites under IAEA safeguards. In return, Iran anticipates the termination of all economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed on it by the UN Security Council (UNSC), the European Union (EU) and the US.

The deal’s effect could impact India’s energy sector in particular. India is the second largest importer of crude oil from Iran next only to China. A stable and integrated Iran is in the national interest of India. It is because of this that India initially endorsed Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear programme. Even when Iran was slapped with sanctions, India along with China and Russia continued transactions with Iran as India is against the unilateral imposition of sanctions. However, in 2005, with the ongoing Indo-US nuclear deal negotiation, India had to vote against Iran’s nuclear programme at the IAEA. India also had to limit trade with Iran as under mounting pressure from US.

Now with the deal being struck, India could re-engage itself with Iran in terms of transaction of energy resources. India and Iran have an annual bilateral trade of about US$ 14 billion. India owes Iran about US$8.8 billion dollars for oil that it was unable to clear due to sanctions and the scrapping of the Asian Clearing Union (ACU) by the Reserve bank of India (RBI). Though India tried to clear its oil bills through Turkey and other alternate means, it was made difficult by the US as it asked states including India not to carry out any trade until an understanding was reached. In the now changed environment, India would not only be able to clear its bills, but also purchase oil at a cheaper rate. Iran also gains from the deal as it can now have access to Indian goods that include pharmaceutical products, Basmati rice etc. The deal could open up other collaborative avenues between India and Iran. India could have a stake in various Iranian enterprises as Iran would require India’s assistance in the construction of ports, railway lines and so on.

The sanctions also stalled the transfer of natural gas to India through a pipe-line connecting India, Pakistan and Iran (IPI). The construction of this pipe-line was shelved due to security concerns between India and Pakistan. There are possibilities that talks on this project could be resumed. President Pranab Mukherjee at a conference on ‘Cooperative Development, Peace and Security in South and Central Asia’, addressed the need to revive the IPI, develop the Chabahar Port, and use the port to forge close ties between the Persian Gulf states. Chabahar is of strategic significance for India as its development would provide a route for India to trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. The deal has geo-strategic implications for India as the lifting of sanctions could open up the possibility of establishing an international north south corridor that would allow quicker access to Eurasia. As Central Asian states have energy deposits in abundance, the route could be viable for India to access these resources.

The deal is also a spur to the Indian banking and insurance sector. Public sector banks that include the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Industrial Developmental Bank of India Ltd (IDBI) hope to revitalise financial transactions with Iran. While sanctions were imposed on Iran, trade with Iran was processed through a Kolkata-based public sector bank. With the sanctions now being lifted, these public sector banks could be empowered to support the expected trade with Iran and process the payment of India’s oil imports. India could anticipate an increase in foreign exchange through remittances by Indian expatriates in Iran.

Despite these prospects, however, India has its own concerns regarding the openings afforded by the deal.

India would have to bargain with Iran on a competitive basis as Iran might accord less preference to India with other stakeholders in Iran’s trade, which would include China, Russia, Turkey and the European states. India has begun to forge closer ties with Israel; it also has decades of linkages with the West Asian states – the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in particular – with thousands of Indian expatriates that help bring remittances to India. As Israel and several West Asian states are at loggerheads with Iran, India must tactfully use its diplomacy to balance its equations. With a deal of this nature that has multi-dimensional implications for India ranging from the economic to the geostrategic, India must capitalise on the opportunities that the deal offers.

* Summaiya Khan
Postgraduate scholar, St Joseph’s College, Bangalore

By Sandeep Bamzai*

Morgan Stanley estimates Indian households own, directly or indirectly, around $1.5 trillion in gold, about the same as in bank fixed deposits, and against just $400 billion in shares. The hunger driven by the fact that physical gold is considered the best inflation hedge, acts as a collateral and is completely fungible. As much as 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes of idle or unproductive assets lie with Indian households and temples. The real gold buying boom took place between 2002 and 2011 in India. Best way to describe this continuing magnetism is that gold is an emotional, sentimental and religious purchase in India. Gold as an investment option comes second best in India after real estate. In 1990, gold per 10 gems was Rs 3200, up to Rs 440 in 2000 and since then it has exploded exponentially due to increased household wealth, rapid urbanisation and even higher rural incomes. In 2005, it became Rs 7000 per 10 gems and then vroom Rs 18,500 in 2010. By 2012 it was at stratospheric heights of Rs 31,799. The sheen since the gold boom may be off, but gold prices hover between Rs 26000 to Rs 27,000 in 2015 confirming that as an asset class, India love for gold is not over. All attempts in the past have failed at monetising this dead asset. And my sense is that the new scheme will meet with the same rejection that the earlier schemes have seen primarily due to interest rates not being attractive, lack of proper infrastructure to support melting and certification and most vitally attempts at tax terror which will automatically come with the territory.

The NDA Government has launched a fresh gold monetisation scheme, but skeptics aren’t convinced that this will succeed where others in the past have failed abysmally. Banks are expected to collect gold for up to 15 years to auction them off or lend to jewellers from time to time. They will pay 2.25-2.50 per cent interest a year, higher than previous rates of around 1 percent. But critics argued that many prospective depositors will not bite the bait due to several reasons. For instance the income tax department may question the source of gold leading to harassment, while others may find conventional bank deposit rates of 8 per cent much more attractive. The other scheme is the Gold Sovereign Bond to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on behalf of the government with an interest rate of 2.75%. The bonds will be sold through banks and designated post offices. Again the interest rate is too low to evince interest from depositors.

There is no denying the impetus to mobilise part of the 25,000 tonnes of India’s above ground holding of gold becomes integral to the long-term management of the country’s appetite for gold. A gold deposit scheme launched in 1999 has achieved less than fifteen tonnes over a 15-year period. It was tailored for banks and large gold holdings, overlooking the gold held by India’s teeming millions. Further the only option for banks was to deliver their mobilised gold to the India Government Mint for being refined into gold and the huge time lag resulted in a non-transparent operating environment and inability to assure optimum realisation for their deposit holder. Banks’ core competence is currency and credit, not precious metals. It is appropriate that banks focus on what they are good at – mobilising deposits and handling the risks associated with transforming them into loans. Transparency in assurance, storage and tracking and management of metal deposits being important constituents, are best done by an organisation that has the competence to provide the precious metal part of the transaction on behalf of the banks.

In 1999, banks were permitted to float the gold deposit scheme after approval of RBI, but hardly any banks showed interest since it was cumbersome to run and banks did not feel it was adequately remunerative. SBI had launched the Gold Deposit scheme (GDS) earlier in November, 1999, which again was discontinued. The scheme was re-launched the same in 2009. The scheme was available at only 50 odd branches of the bank. Then in another desperate attempt after a bloating current account deficit rocked the economy, the RBI in February, 2013 relaxed the condition of prior approval of RBI for launching the scheme. But still there were no takers.

Typical of the government, there is the spectre of tax terrorism. Gold bond investors will have to disclose their PAN numbers registered with the income tax department, if the value of gold is worth more than Rs 50,000 rupees which is a bit of a joke given that 10 grams of gold is close to Rs 27,000. Will this allow the government to keep a watch on the gold source? of course it will and perhaps tracking the owners and source of gold may be the real agenda. Others reckon that the likely loss of nearly 20 to 30 per cent of the weight of the jewellery at certified centres at the cost of the depositor will be another deterrent. All in all, gold is a physical commodity that rests in the lockers of Indians and they remain content with the fact that there are no prying eyes yet to track the bulk of their hereditary wealth. Till the scheme is made much more lucrative and perhaps mandatory in some form, it is doubtful that this scheme will perform better than the earlier ones.

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

Tamils in Sri Lanka continue to face several issues connected to their struggle for greater regional autonomy even after the end of the war in 2009. One of them is the continuous imprisonment of what has been called the “Tamil prisoners.” The term “Tamil prisoners” in this issue is a misnomer because it does not mean the Tamil men and women who were convicted of various crimes. “Tamils prisoners” in this issue mean the people who were arrested by the armed forces or the police due to suspected links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the war. They were taken into custody for allegedly being members of the LTTE, helping or failing to provide information about activities of the rebels. They therefore could be called the suspected LTTE supporters or members.

Problem

The primary problem with the Tamil prisoners issue is that majority of them are in prisons without being charged in the court of law. Some of them have been in prison in this manner for over a decade. They have been staging periodic hunger strikes, sometimes on the rooftops of prison premises, for a long time. “Charge or release” was their demand. These campaigns failed to get the attention of the government and relevant authorities.
The Tamil leadership however should have taken the issue seriously as this has become sort of a humanitarian problem within the Tamil community. At least some of the prisoners were the sole bread winners of their families. The Tamil leadership should have responded to the calls of the prisoners and their families and should have undertaken an action program to get these people released, especially after the new government came to power. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) played a role in the election of this government and a segment of the TNA is extremely close to the present centers of power. That capacity was not used to resolve one of the problems of the community they represent.

Last Hunger Strike

However, the last hunger strike staged by the prisoners about two weeks ago has drawn the attention of the government and some of the leading personalities in the administration who have now made positive statements with regard to the release of the prisoners. According to news reports, president Sirisena has promised to take action to address the concerns of the fasting inmates. The change of attitude on the part of the government could be attributed to the prevailing political environment created with the change of administration in Colombo. Rajapaksa government would have simply ignored the issue or used heavy handed tactics to suppress the campaign. Sensing the positive response, Tamil leadership also got involved strongly probably for the first time. A recent statement by TNA leader Sambandan indicates that the prisoners will be released this week. One however, has to wait and see if they will really be freed in the near future by this government.

The point however, is that keeping these prisoners in the custody of the state even six years after of the end of the war defies logic. With the end of the war a large number of active LTTE members possibly including some hardcore members were taken into custody, rehabilitated and released. One of the best examples was Tamilini, leader of the Women’s wing. There is no reason to keep the people who failed to provide information and those who helped the LTTE in a nonmilitary manner when many of the hardcore members have already been released. The government needs to appreciate the fact that many of these people did not have the choice to defy orders of the LTTE, which would have been suicidal. Therefore, the prisoners who are suspected of helping the LTTE or failed to provide information should be released immediately.

Suspected Cadres

It is reasonable to deal with suspected members of the LTTE separately. However, one needs to understand that they have also been incarcerated for years. They have already been punished, if they were in fact actively involved in the violent campaign. One of the reasons why they were not charged in the court of law was that there was no concrete evidence against them. If necessary, they could be subjected to a rehabilitation program like the cadres who were captured or surrounded, with the end of the war. Also, they could be subjected to a monitoring program. They may be required to report to a nearby police station regularly for a while until doubts are cleared. Conditional release of the suspected LTTE cadres within the protesting prisoners cannot be unreasonable.

Keeping these prisoners imprisoned indefinitely without charging them amounts to injustice of serious nature. These injustices would perpetuate the conflict. Reportedly, Justice Minister Wijedasa Rajapaksa has stated that they may be released on bail, which means filing charges now. Filing chargers after so many years will not be reasonable. It would be an irony and in a way funny to get bail after spending for example ten years in prison.

The present government which came to power with the tacit support of the Tamil voters and the Tamil political leadership maintains that it is keen to promote ethnic reconciliation. Releasing the prisoners who have been languishing in the jail for too long could be a first step in this direction. Releasing the prisoners when the time is ripe could also mitigate pressure on the public purse. Therefore, there are several reasons that could justify discharging the inmates sooner, rather than later. The government policy at this juncture on this issue should be release and monitor.

In a startling revelation, former Pakistan President and General Pervez Musharraf Saeed has claimed that during his time in power Osama bin Laden and the Taliban were heroes for Pakistan. “The Kashmiri freedom fighters including Hafiz Saeed and Lakhvi were our heroes at that time. Later on the religious militancy turned into terrorism. Now they (referring to terrorism in Pakistan) are killing their own people here and this should be controlled and stopped,” he said.

Musharraf also said that Lashkar terrorists were given a heroic welcome, and Pakistan trained and supported them. He praised the militants to have fought well in Kashmir.

The former army chief was responding to a question about action against LeT’s Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi. He has reportedly admitted that it was Pakistan who trained the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, Haqqani Network and Hafiz Saeed. Musharraf made these claims reportedly during an interview with Pakistani news channel Dunya TV.

General Pervez Musharraf reportedly also added that whoever came from Jammu and Kashmir were treated as ‘heroes’. He further said that Pakistan trained Lashkar for attacks in Kashmir and Taliban was trained to counter Soviet Union.

A prominent Delhiite, Musharraf also said that Osama bin Laden, Haqqani and Ayman al-Zawahiri were their heroes. “We introduced ‘religious militancy’ to flush out Soviets. We brought Mujahideens from all all over the world. We trained Taliban, gave them weapon and sent them for war and they (militants) were our heroes. Osama bin Laden and Haqqani were our heroes,” quotes India Today as him saying.

Towards the end of the interview, Musharraf reportedly said that the same terrorists who were once supported by Pakistan, have now become a threat to Pakistan itself. “In 1990s the freedom struggle began in Kashmir…At that time Lashkar-e-Toiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported them and trained them as they were fighting in Kashmir at the cost of their lives,” Musharraf said.

It is not in the order of international diplomacy that the USA killed those in Pakistan, a close non-NATO ally that considered as its heroes.

However, Pakistan is not worried about the protocol aspect when it comes to attacking Muslims by their enemies even in Pakistan, which the American military set up occupies and has made Islamabad a safe sanctuary for state terror operations.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is often perceived as one of the “good ones” — the less hawkish of top American officials, who does not simply promote and defend his country’s military adventurism but reaches out to others, beyond polarizing rhetoric.

His unremitting efforts culminated partly in the Iran nuclear framework agreement in April, followed by a final deal, a few months later. Now, he is reportedly hard at work again to find some sort of consensus on a way out of the Syria war, a multi-party conflict that has killed over 300,000 people. His admirers see him as the diplomatic executor of a malleable and friendly US foreign policy agenda under President Obama.

In reality, this perception is misleading; not that Kerry is the warmonger as were George W. Bush’s top staff members, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The two were the very antithesis of any rational foreign policy such that even the elder George H. W. Bush described them with demeaning terminology, according to his biographer, quoted in the New York Times.

Yet, considering that the elder Bush was rarely a peacemaker himself, one is left to ponder if the US foreign policy ailment is centered on failure to elect proper representatives and to enlist anyone other than psychopaths?

If one is to fairly examine US foreign policies in the Middle East, for example, comparing the conduct of the last three administrations, that of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, one would find that striking similarities are abundant. In principle, all three administrations’ foreign policy agendas were predicated on strong militaries and military interventions, although they applied soft power differently.

In essence, Obama carried on with much of what Bush Jr. had started in the Middle East, although he supplanted his country’s less active role in Iraq with new interventions in Libya and Syria. In fact, his Iraq policies were guided by Bush’s final act in that shattered country, where he ordered a surge in troops to pacify the resistance, thus paving the way for an eventual withdrawal. Of course, none of that plotting worked in their favor, with the rise of Daesh among others, but that is for another discussion.

Obama has even gone a step further when he recently decided to keep thousands of US troops in Afghanistan well into 2017, thus breaking US commitment to withdraw next year. 2017 is Obama’s last year in office, and the decision is partly motivated by his administration’s concern that future turmoil in that country could cost his Democratic Party heavily in the upcoming presidential elections.

In other words, US foreign policy continues unabated, often guided by the preponderant norm that might is right, and by ill-advised personal ambitions and ideological illusions like those championed by neocons during Bush’s era.

Nevertheless, much has changed as well, simply because US ambitions to police the world, politics and the excess of $600 billion a year US defense budget are not the only variables that control events in the Middle East and everywhere else. There are other undercurrents that cannot be wished away and they too can dictate US foreign policy outlooks and behavior.

Indeed, an American decline has been noted for many years, and Middle Eastern nations have been more aware of this decline than others. One could even argue that the Bush administration’s rush for war in Iraq in 2003 in an attempt at controlling the region’s resources, was a belated effort at staving off that unmistakable decay — whether in US ability to regulate rising global contenders or in its overall share of global economy.

The folly of Bush, Cheney and company is that they assumed that the Pentagon’s over $1.5 billion-a-day budget was enough to acquire the US the needed leverage to control every aspect of global affairs, including a burgeoning share of world economy. That misconception carries on to this day, where military spending is already accounting for about 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, itself nearly a third of the country’s overall budget.

However, those who are blaming Obama for failing to leverage US military strength for political currency refuse to accept that Obama’s behavior hardly reflects a lack of appetite for war, but a pragmatic response to a situation that has largely spun out of US control.

The so-called Arab Spring, for example, was a major defining factor in the changes of US fortunes. And it all came at a particularly interesting time.

First, the Iraq war has destroyed whatever little credibility the US had in the region, a sentiment that also reverberated around the world.

Second, it was becoming clear that the US foreign policy in Central and South America — an obstinate continuation of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which laid the groundwork for US domination of that region — has also been challenged by more assertive leaders, armed with democratic initiatives, not military coups.

Third, China’s more forceful politics, at least around its immediate regional surroundings, signaled that the US traditional hegemony over most of East and South East Asia are also facing fierce competition. Not only many Asian and other countries have flocked to China, lured by its constantly growing and seemingly more solid economic performance, if compared to the US, but others are also flocking to Russia, which is filling a political and, as of late, military vacuum left open.

It will take years before a new power paradigm fully emerges, during which time US clients are likely to seek the protection of more dependable powers. In fact, the shopping for a new power is already underway, which also means that new alliances will be formed while others fold. For now, the Middle East will continue to pass through this incredibly difficult and violent transition, for which the US is partly responsible.

(RFE/RL) — President Vladimir Putin says Russia will counter NATO’s missile-defense program by deploying new offensive weapons that can penetrate the shield.

Putin told Russian defense officials on November 10 that the United States is trying to “neutralize” Moscow’s strategic nuclear deterrent by developing defenses against Russia’s ballistic missiles.

He said Washington is attempting to gain a “decisive military superiority” over Russia but that Moscow will developing “strike systems capable of piercing any missile defenses.”

Putin said companies in the “military-industrial complex” in the last three years “have created and successfully tested a number of prospective weapons systems that are capable of performing combat missions in a layered missile-defense system.”

The statement comes amid a major strain in relations between Washington and Moscow that have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War because of differences over the Ukraine crisis.

Russia has complained for several years about NATO’s U.S.-led missile shield, which Washington has said is a defense against an attack from a rogue state like Iran or North Korea.

But Putin said that “regrettably, our concerns and cooperation proposals haven’t been taken into account.”

53 Foreign or Deputy Foreign Ministers met in Luxemburg on 5-7 November for the biannual Asia-Europe meeting. The ministerial was partly to review the international scene and partly to discuss closer EU-Asia cooperation, including the future of ASEM itself. Next July government leaders will meet in Ulan Bator for the ASEM summit.

In Luxemburg ministers agreed on the need for an ambitious climate change outcome at COP 21 although there were no specific commitments.

The second big issue on the table was strengthening connectivity between Europe and Asia from physical infrastructures, transport, energy, digital connectivity to people-to-people linkages.

On the final morning there was a closed door retreat session for Ministers only where some of the sensitive issues were discussed including migration and refugees, counter-terrorism, Syria, Libya, the South China Sea and developments in the Korean Peninsula.

The concluding chairs statement was rather vague especially in sensitive areas and demonstrated the lack of an agreed line on subjects like the South China Sea.

Ministers accepted that ASEM had a useful role to play but there was no consensus on how to change it in advance of the 20th anniversary summit in Mongolia next year.

EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, took the opportunity to point out that Asia was not being neglected by the EU. She had made five visits to the region in her first year in office: Korea, China, Japan, Singapore for the Shangri-La dialogue and Malaysia for the ARF.

There is something fishy going on in the way the US is talking about civilian plane crashes that are in some way linked, or said to be linked to Russia.

In the case of the latest tragic mid-air break-up of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed all 224 people aboard on a flight from Egypt back to Russia a few days ago, CNN is reporting US that intelligence sources say US spy satellite showed a “heat signature” that could indicate an explosion aboard the plane.

Here’s the CNN report:

A U.S. military satellite detected a midair heat flash from the Russian airliner before the plane crashed Saturday, a U.S. official told CNN.

Intelligence analysis has ruled out that the Russian commercial airplane was struck by a missile, but the new information suggests that there was a catastrophic in-flight event — including possibly a bomb, though experts are considering other explanations, according to U.S. officials.

Analysts say heat flashes could be tied to a range of possibilities, including a bomb blast, a malfunctioning engine exploding or a structural problem causing a fire on the plane.

Now note that this information about a spy satellite image comes just days after the crash.

Meanwhile, it’s been over a year and a half since the 2014 crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine — an incident that also saw a civilian airliner destroyed in midair. In this case, the US insists the crash was caused by a Russian-built BUK anti-aircraft missile provided to, and launched by pro-Russian separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine.

The US has made this claim ad nauseum, but has never provided a shred of evidence to support its charge. Meanwhile, as a number of critics have pointed out, with Ukraine in a hot civil war in which one side — the post-coup Ukrainian government forces — were getting NATO backing, and the other, the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, were receiving Russian backing, it is a certainty that the US had moved not one but multiple spy satellites into position to monitor the region around the clock by the time of the Flight 17 shoot-down.

So where are the satellite images to support a claim that a BUK missile fired from rebel-held territory and by rebel forces downed that plane, killing all 298 people aboard?

As critics like award-winning journalist Robert Parry and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern have pointed out, if the US had satellite imagery showing a BUK missile contrail — and this large, fast-moving rocket leaves a dramatic contrail all the way from its launch site to its high-altitude target (see below), making assessing of blame quite easy — it would long since have been released or leaked to a US corporate media that have been quick to rub with anti-Russian assertions and propaganda put out by the US government.

This leaves us with two possibilities to ponder:

Either there simply are no satellite photos showing a BUK launched by ethnic Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine at Flight 17, or those photos that exist show something quite different, like a BUK being launched by Ukrainian government forces, or else, perhaps the current claim that satellite images show a heat signature around the Russian plane in Egypt are false (no image has been provided to back up the assertion of a heat signature).

Of course, there may eventually be evidence pointing to a bomb – the Russians are now looking for signs of explosive residue on the wreckage. But until such evidence is found, why, one might ask, would the US jump to make a false claim of a bomb being responsible for the Russian plane crash over the Sinai Desert, when it could as easily have been a fuel tank or engine explosion that wrecked the plane?

Well, consider that at the moment, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been trumping the US in a number of conflict regions, stymying US plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, blocking a US plan to establish a no-fly zone over Syria by openly sending fighter-bombers and cruise-missile-equipped ships to Syria to attack President Bashar al-Assad’s Islamic State and Al Nusra enemies at Assad’s invitation, and backing Iran in its support of both Assad and the embattled Iraqi government. All the while, Putin’s popularity at home has been soaring into the high 80-90percent range according to polls.

Perhaps the thinking at the White House is that by suggesting it was a bomb, and not a structural defect that brought down a Russian civilian aircraft, killing hundreds of Russian citizens, the Russian people might logically link that purported bombing to Putin’s actions in Syria and his antagonism of IS and Al Nusra, and might then turn against him.

On one NPR program last week, the reporter was fishing for exactly that idea in an interview with a Washington analyst, saying, “Isn’t it likely that if it turns out to have been a bomb by ISIS that took down the plane Russians would get upset about Putin’s backing of Assad in Syria?” A listener couldn’t miss the unseemly enthusiasm the interviewer had for this gruesome notion.

Whatever the investigation of Flight 9268’s flight recorders and wreckage concludes, one thing is clear: If the US has satellites monitoring the Sinai, where there is no war going on, it most certainly had satellites monitoring Ukraine at the time of the downing of Flight 17, and if it’s willing to announce that its satellite caught the moment of the explosion of Flight 9268 and is willing to talk about that, it should also be willing to show what its satellites saw when Flight 17 was downed.

The American people, and the people of the world, should demand this of the US government.

By Jacques deLisle*

When China’s President Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou met in Singapore on November 7, 2015, it was an event freighted with symbolic significance but with limited substantive impact on the often-fraught but, in recent years, steadily warming cross-Strait relationship.  The more-than-one-minute-long handshake between Xi and Ma began the first face-to-face encounter between the leader of the Chinese Communist regime and the leader of the government that it ousted from the Mainland since the 1945 Chongqing meeting between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek.  It was the first meeting ever between the heads of the People’s Republic of China government, established in 1949, and the Republic of China government, which retreated to Taiwan that same year.  And it was framed as a meeting between the two men as equals—something that was telling and complicated in light of Beijing’s long-standing resistance to moves that might seem to accord Taiwan an international status higher than any other “part” of China, much less a sovereign entity on par with the PRC.

Although understandably drawing much attention from the media, political classes, and general publics on both sides of the Strait and in the wider world, the hour-long summit in Singapore was a dramatic but incremental and still-limited extension of the trajectory that cross-Strait relations have been following since Ma took office in 2008 and—more broadly and with much greater volatility—for more than two decades.  During Ma’s soon-to-end second term, the two sides had become engaged in relatively extensive government-to-government contacts, in large part to work out the implementation of the many follow-on agreements to the 2010 cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).  In the run-up to the historic Xi-Ma meeting, the two governments appeared to be close to a deal to establish the equivalent of consulates in one another’s jurisdictions.  The heads of the PRC State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), Zhang Zhijun and Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Wang Yu-chi, had undertaken reciprocal—and, in Taiwan, controversial—visits in their capacities as government officials in 2014.

Senior ROC leaders, including Ma’s then-vice-president-elect Vincent Siew in 2008 and former vice presidents Lien Chan in 2005 and Siew in 2014, had met with incumbent top Chinese leaders Xi and, before him, Hu Jintao.  In the early 1990s, when a newly democratic Taiwan and a China embarking on a second major wave of economic reform and opening began to develop economic ties, the two governments had established formally unofficial but de facto government-representing bodies—the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS, on the Mainland side) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF, on the Taiwan side).  ARATS and SEF had been the vehicles for negotiating ECFA.  In a role it would reprise and expand in the 2015 Xi-Ma summit, Singapore played host to the first meeting between the two bodies’ heads (Wang Daohan and Koo Chen-fu), conducted on the basis of what has since become known as the “1992 Consensus” that the Mainland and Taiwan have taken as the essential basis for cross-Strait relations since Ma came to power.

Viewed against this backdrop, the Xi-Ma summit is still a singular event, especially in the realm of cross-Strait politics, where symbols of status loom uncommonly large.  But, notwithstanding inflated rhetoric from People’s Daily (among others), the meeting did not show—or even or portend—a transformative shift in the relationship.  Even its symbolic impact was softened by the unsurprising arrangement that Xi and Ma would address one another as “Mr.”—something the PRC required because “President Ma” would too strongly suggest sovereign equality for Taiwan, and something Ma was constrained to accept both by Beijing’s position and by the backlash in Taiwan that would greet labeling the meeting as one between leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT).  That model had been used for the meeting of formal equals between the CCP’s Hu and the KMT’s Lien in 2005.  But it would not work for the Xi-Ma meeting because it would unacceptably (in Taiwan) cast a sitting president as the representative of a political party (and a currently unpopular one)—rather than as an elected representative of the whole people—when engaging in exchanges potentially laden with implications for Taiwan’s security and sovereignty. The template of a party leaders’ meeting was made still more untenable by Ma’s having earlier yielded the position of KMT party chairman to Eric Chu—who has also become the KMT’s presidential nominee for 2016, having replaced the party’s floundering initial nominee, Hung Hsiu-chu.

Whatever one makes of its symbolic impact, the Xi-Ma Singapore summit was not supposed to produce substantive agreements.  Ma had stated publicly that there would be no agreements.  And the meeting lived down to these expectations. Given the controversy that inescapably attends any cross-Strait discussions that touch upon political aspects of the relationship, questions of sovereignty, or the premises on which relations are based, the two leaders unsurprisingly reiterated familiar positions on fundamental questions and confined talk of future plans to relatively anodyne calls for deepened exchanges, cooperation for mutual benefit, and avoidance of conflict.  Thus, Ma reaffirmed the 1992 Consensus, which is defined in Taiwan as a principle of “one China” but with “respective [and differing] interpretations.” Xi, too, embraced the 1992 Consensus—predictably, without the “respective interpretations” gloss.  He also spoke of people on the two sides of the Strait as being members of the same family (a step beyond Ma’s reference to their rootedness in a common Chinese ancestry) whose bonds could not be severed by a long period of separation—language that, however warm in tone, derived from Beijing’s unwavering principle that Taiwan is, and consistently has been, part of a single sovereign China.

Ma referred broadly to each side’s respecting the other’s distinctive ways—vague language that could be compatible with everything from the Hong Kong-style “one country, two systems” arrangement that is favored by Beijing but largely anathema in Taiwan, to an open-ended tolerance for the cross-Strait status quo of profoundly different and separate political systems and social orders.  Ma raised the issue of Taiwan’s enjoying secure opportunities for participation in the international system and Taiwan’s objection to Beijing’s deployment of missiles that Taiwan quite explicably regards as a threat to its security.  Xi predictably gave no ground.  He reaffirmed Beijing’s tolerance for Taiwan’s enjoyment of international stature so long as it remained consistent with a “one China” principle—a stance that specifically did not preclude Taiwanese NGOs’ participating international activities or Taiwan’s membership in the PRC-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.  And Xi insisted that the missiles did not target Taiwan. This was a questionable proposition that was largely beside the point, given, first, the ease with which the missiles could be removed and then reinstated, and, second and more fundamentally, Beijing’s long-stated position that it will not tolerate moves toward formal independence by Taiwan and reserves a claimed right to use force to prevent such developments (which would be, in Beijing’s view, secession). The meeting seemingly did nothing to advance talks on political aspects of cross-Strait relations (which Beijing has been seeking), to take up the question of a cross-Strait peace accord (which Ma had floated as a medium to long-term possibility during his 2012 reelection campaign, before retreating in the face of heated criticism in Taiwan), or to enhance the prospects for passage of pending cross-Strait economic agreements (which have stalled since the protests associated with the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan derailed the passage of the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) in 2014).

The most notable near-deliverable from the Xi-Ma meeting was an agreement to create a hotline between the TAO and the MAC.  To be sure, building better channels of communication between the two governments, especially in the event of a crisis, is a positive step.  But it was not part of a larger package and did not signal a change in the terms of the relationship. The in-principle commitment to a new crisis-avoidance or crisis-management mechanism was in the same vein as already-established government-to-government ties, addressed only a rather narrow and at most obliquely political set of issues, and—although such hotlines are commonly arrangements between states—did not imply anything beyond the degree of equality between the two sides signaled at the summit more generally and in other recent developments in cross-Strait relations.

The lack of movement on substantive issues in conjunction with Xi’s and Ma’s Singapore session is not surprising. The much-noted “historic” quality of the two leaders’ public handshake and brief dialogue was perhaps as much as could be extracted from such an unprecedented meeting.  The potential for tangible outcomes was weaker still because the meeting reportedly came soon after protracted negotiations finally secured Beijing’s agreement to a meeting that Ma had long sought, and because Ma’s capacity to strike deals was limited by the impending end of his tenure and the strong prospect of an opposition party victory in Taiwan’s January 2016 elections.

Other impediments to cross-Strait relations’ proceeding much farther along the path blazed during Ma’s presidency are more entrenched and unlikely to have been altered by the Xi-Ma meeting or its foundations or fall-out.  Daunting hurdles exist on both sides of the Strait.  On the Mainland side, Xi’s agreement to the meeting predictably prompted analyses of his likely motivation.  Xi did take some risks, or incur some costs, in agreeing to the meeting on the terms that the Mainland accepted, including that the two men would engage one another as equals (although not as equal officials) and that Taiwan would not have to satisfy preconditions (such as moving beyond the 1992 Consensus or agreeing to address cross-Strait political relations).  Plausible explanations saw Xi as having a dim—if not grim—assessment of the prospects for cross-Strait (or broader external) relations, which made it potentially worthwhile for Xi to acquiesce in previously unattractive conditions.

Several worries might well have been in the mix.  The Ma-era momentum toward ever-closer ties across the Strait had petered.  This pattern had been particularly disconcerting for China after the Sunflower Movement, and broader popular discontent in Taiwan with the pace and consequences—both political and economic-distributional—of cross-Strait economic integration stymied the Ma government’s efforts to steer TISA through Taiwan’s legislative process.  As those developments in part reflected and as much polling in Taiwan indicated, Mainland authorities have reason to worry—and reportedly are worried—that mainstream opinion in Taiwan is overwhelmingly against unification, and perhaps increasingly intractably so.  Years of Beijing’s offering economic “carrots” and exhibiting “patience” on political issues (in the form of tolerance of the status quo), did not seem to be winning hearts and minds in Taiwan, especially among younger people.  The PRC’s recently troubled relations with maritime neighbors and heightened tensions with the United States—with issues related to Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over disputed territory and related rights figuring prominently in both cases—could only make closer political ties with the Mainland seem even less appealing to the many skeptics and opponents in Taiwan.

The relatively high probability of a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) win in the upcoming Taiwan elections surely introduced a “now or never (or, at least, much later)” urgency to deliberations among the top CCP elite over whether Xi should meet Ma.  To some observers, Beijing’s agreement to the Xi-Ma summit looked like a long-shot effort to reduce the chances of that outcome or, at least, to ameliorate its consequences.  On this view, the meeting was a gift to Ma and the KMT, in hopes of bolstering the party’s claim to Taiwanese voters that the KMT was better than the DPP at handling the vital issue of cross-Strait relations.  If the DPP were to win, a Xi-Ma symbolic meeting might still serve Beijing’s agenda by helping to embed more firmly an interpretation of the cross-Strait status quo—which DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen has pledged broadly to preserve—that Ma could be counted upon to endorse at a summit and that was relatively appealing to Beijing.

In this setting, it seemed plausible for analysts to suggest that Xi and his circle of advisors thought it wise to chance a high-profile conciliatory gesture and a targeted charm offensive toward Taiwan.  If that was the case, the apprehensions behind the move were close to the surface—so much so that they risked muddling any positive message from the meeting:  Immediately following the two leaders’ Singapore meeting at a press conference that Xi eschewed, TAO chief Zhang cited Xi when declaring that Taiwan independence forces and their “splittist” activities were the biggest threat to the remarkable gains that had been achieved in the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations since 2008.  So too, Xi himself at the Singapore meeting reprised a familiar and prickly warning that the United States should keep out of Mainland-Taiwan issues, with Xi’s point only thinly veiled as a warm assessment of cross-Strait relations: as Xi put it, the people of the Mainland and Taiwan had shown, through the rapprochement and progress achieved since 2008, that they can handle their own issues.

As all of this suggests, Beijing could not expect Ma to deliver much at the late-arranged summit.  On the Taiwan side, the political constraints on attempting significant steps forward in cross-Strait ties are formidable indeed.  Like Xi, Ma might hope that the high-profile and “historic” meeting could entrench more deeply (and thus make more binding on his successor) his version of the status quo in cross-Strait relations (a goal Ma strongly suggested in pre-meeting statements).  Ma could hope to do this by articulating that view jointly with Xi or—more ambitiously and less promisingly—by relying on a summit to boost the KMT’s electoral prospects for 2016.   Such possible real-world impacts—along with the mere fact of the meeting with Xi—were likely key concerns for a soon-to-retire president concerned about his political legacy.  Whatever his hopes, Ma’s options for steering future developments in cross-Strait relations through commitments at the summit were severely limited.  He had only six months left in his presidency and only two months until the elections that would make him fully a lame duck.  His approval ratings were persistently dismal.  Partly because of a severe feud with Wang Jin-pyng, his party’s leader in parliament, the KMT’s large majority in the Legislative Yuan had not led to effective inter-branch cooperation or legislative backing for Ma-backed cross-Strait initiatives (most notably TISA) in the relatively recent past.

The secrecy with which the Singapore meeting was necessarily arranged had heightened suspicions among his critics in Taiwan and stiffened political opposition to his striking any deals with his Mainland counterpart.  In the immediate run-up to the summit, Ma responded to fierce criticism in Taiwan of the upcoming meeting by promising that no agreements would be made.  More broadly, Ma had earlier pledged not to move more rapidly on cross-Strait relations—especially on political issues—than was supported clearly by the people of Taiwan.  Also, Ma surely had not unlearned the bitter lesson he learned from floating the idea in 2012 of possible negotiations over a peace accord with the Mainland.  And he surely realized that any dramatic gesture to accelerate development of cross-Strait relations would have limited, or strongly counterproductive, impact on the KMT’s fortunes at the ballot box in January 2016.

These Taiwan-side impediments to a summit with more substantial outputs were partly based on some basic features of current Taiwanese politics.  As the Sunflower Movement and the DPP’s persistent lead in pre-election polls reflect, support for rapid development of cross-Strait ties has waned and many in Taiwan have become concerned that under Ma the pursuit of closer relations with the Mainland has been going—or at least threatens to go—too far too fast.  Distancing herself from the so-called “pro-independence” agenda of Taiwan’s only previous DPP president and venerable DPP positions, DPP 2016 standard-bearer Tsai appears to be winning over median voters with a platform of accepting the basic contours of the status quo in cross-Strait relations forged during Ma’s presidency, but pledging to redress some of deepened integration’s perceived adverse consequences and promising a slower pace, more careful scrutiny, and a more transparent and consensus-based approach for future steps.

Several factors likely have contributed to such a message’s appeal to many Taiwanese.  The inherent logic of Ma’s proclaimed cross-Strait strategy of “first economics, then politics” and “first easy, then difficult” pointed, almost ineluctably, toward this result: as discussions with Beijing moved toward political questions and addressed more difficult issues, proposed arrangements enjoyed less wide-spread support among Taiwan’s politically diverse and often-polarized citizenry.  The rapprochement and agreements with the Mainland achieved under Ma have disappointed many in Taiwan, who perceive the economy as still underperforming (at least relative to their high expectations), who see economic openness toward the Mainland as having mostly benefited a wealthy elite in Taiwan while threatening local jobs (for the college-educated as well as the relatively low-skilled), and who worry about Beijing’s ability and possible will to use its economic leverage to coerce Taiwan on political issues.

Viewed in this context, the Xi-Ma meeting leaves us with the open question of what it implies for Beijing’s approach to Taiwan’s 2016 elections and the prospect of victory by Tsai and the DPP.  As noted earlier, Xi’s willingness to hold the meeting with Ma and the terms on which it was convened likely reflect, at least in part, Beijing’s attempt to limit the adverse consequences of that electoral outcome and, more ambitiously, to reduce its likelihood.  The Mainland’s attempts to influence the outcome of democratic elections in Taiwan have a checkered history and teach ambiguous lessons.  When China engaged in missile tests near Taiwan and triggered a cross-Strait crisis and a crisis in U.S.-China relations, China’s overweening moves redounded to the benefit of Beijing’s “splittist” bête noire, incumbent Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui, in the 1996 election.  Four years later, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji’s finger-wagging warning to Taiwanese voters not to cast their ballots for the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian, and an official PRC White Paper’s threat that Beijing could resort to force if Taiwan sought independence or indefinitely delayed negotiations concerning reunification, failed to achieve their desired effect and, on most assessments, helped Chen win a plurality in a three-way race.  In 2004, Beijing further moderated its tactics, but its support for Lien Chan and a reunified KMT ticket appeared to be still too ardent, feeding worries among some voters that the KMT would be too eager to build ties with the Mainland. This Beijing-fueled perception quite possibly helped Chen to a narrow win in his bid for a second term in a closely contested and hotly disputed election.

In the elections that Ma won in 2008 and 2012, Beijing’s attempts to affect the results were even more restrained.  The Chinese regime made clear that it preferred the KMT and that the potential for improvement in cross-Strait relations—and attendant economic and other benefits for Taiwan—would be significantly greater if Ma were to win.  But such a moderate stance was relatively easy for Beijing to adopt, given the well-founded expectation that Ma would win easily.

For 2016, China’s choice is not so simple, with a KMT victory appearing unlikely.  In many respects, the Xi-Ma meeting pointed toward continued moderation and restraint in Beijing’s approach to Taiwan’s next election.  At the Singapore mini-summit, the Mainland side praised progress in the “peaceful development” of cross-Strait relations during the past eight years, relatively warmly embraced the status quo, and held out the prospect of greater mutually beneficial developments ahead (so long as Taiwan’s leaders behaved acceptably).  These statements came in the context of Beijing’s apparent efforts to hedge against the downside risks of a Tsai presidency (including by trying to lock-in the cross-Strait status quo—or a favored interpretation of it—by expounding on that status quo in the high-profile setting of the Singapore meeting), and against the background of quieter but more sustained efforts over many months to engage more extensively with representatives of the DPP.

On the other hand, reminders of the possibility of a return to a much harder-edged, pre-2004-style approach could be found in TAO head Zhang’s immediately post-summit, Xi-quoting cautions about the potentially serious threats posed by pro-independence elements in Taiwan, and in longer-running reports of a fairly wide range of views about Tsai held in the Mainland’s Taiwan policy circles—ranging from some who are resigned to a Tsai presidency and relatively accommodating, to many who see a temporary post-inauguration chill in relations as necessary to make clear that there are consequences for disregarding Beijing’s preferences, to some who paint Tsai as no better than Chen Shui-bian, and perhaps worse.

Tsai’s reaction to the Xi-Ma meeting would seem to provide grist for the mills on both sides in the presumed Mainland debate over whether to take a relatively moderate and accommodating, or a tougher and more demanding, approach to the election that the DPP and the KMT would soon contest and to the Tsai presidency and DPP-led government that might well follow.  Tsai expressed support for communications across the Strait that are more robust, help to preserve peace, and are conducted on the basis of principles of equal respect and without political preconditions—all standards that, on Ma’s account (if not in the view of many in the DPP), the Ma-Xi meeting satisfied.  At the same time, Tsai (along with other DPP sources) denounced the lack of transparency in arranging the meeting, characterized it as damaging to Taiwan’s democracy, criticized Ma for not referring at the meeting to Taiwan’s democracy and the existence of the ROC, and cautioned that only the opinions of the people in Taiwan—expressed through the ballot box—can decide the future of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations.  She also attached conditions of democratic procedures, transparency, and legislative monitoring (as well as equal respect and no political preconditions) to any meeting she might have with Xi.

How Beijing reacts to the views expressed in Tsai’s and the DPP’s reaction to the Xi-Ma meeting—and to Tsai’s campaign and seemingly likely electoral victory in the months ahead—will do much to shape the prospects and terms for a possible Xi-Tsai meeting.  If such a meeting does occur, it will lack the history-making quality and symbolic breakthrough that characterized Mr. Xi’s and Mr. Ma’s meeting in Singapore.  But a meeting between Mr. Xi and Ms. Tsai could be a good deal more significant—in what it shows and what it accomplishes—for the future of cross-Strait relations.

About the author:
*Jacques deLisle is director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Asia Program and the Stephen Cozen Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

The title of this column is borrowed from Dr. Mike Ghouse, an American of Indian origin who is passionate about the native land that fed him milk in his infancy. Like many Indians abroad, Mike has been incrementally worried about the changing face of his beloved land of birth.

Concerned about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s continuous reluctance to censure his BJP party members who are forging a road of dissent and division, Mike says, that if Modi “does not speak up on the issues that are tearing the nation apart, and if he fails to restore freedom to speak, eat, drink, wear and believe what India’s constitution guarantees, and if he fails to warn the extremists in his party from destroying the social fabric of India, he will cripple the nation, making it a Langda (lame) India as we call it in Hindi.”

“For India to succeed as a nation, it has to stand on its own two firm feet; prosperity and social cohesion. The two are dependent on each other; one will not happen without the other. Indeed, prosperity will be short-lived if the social structure crumbles.”

Mike adds: “Social cohesion is like the cohesion in the human body, where the heart, brain, kidneys, liver, lungs, digestive track and all parts of the body need to function cohesively to live a normal life. Failure of one organ can cause dysfunction in others. If you think the discharge part of the body is less important, wait till it stops, it will give headaches and will affect how we function. Likewise, all people in a society have to function cohesively, and it is in the interest of the body that it makes up for deficiencies in our part through a system of integration. As humans, and as Indians, we have to meet those deficiencies in fellow Indians for the common good, and our own security and wellbeing.”

He cautions that such division will sooner or later encompass everybody and not just the minorities. “I cannot be safe if people around me are not, and if I threaten others, I am equally frightened at my vulnerable moments. No one will be safe, including Hindus, who may not think much of the situation in India now, but eventually they will get hit too.

“Those of you who are blinded by the love for Mr. Modi, I appeal to you to look for greater love for the nation. People like Modi will come and go, but the Nation will continue. I am challenging your patriotism; none of us want India to go down, so let our loyalty be to India and not Modi, until he proves that he can keep these two functions in shape, I will hold my praise for him, will you?

“Those of you cheering for Modi now, will come to regret it, unless Modi gets his act together. All that prosperity will go down the tube if no one feels secure. When injustice waxes to the extreme, it will tear the nation apart; the rich will run out of the country for safety, and ugly communism may run in under the banner of redistribution of wealth and equalizing inequality.”

Mike exhorts his fellow Indians with a chilling reminder. “It is time to wake up! Remember: Modi had given terrorists three days to finish their slaughter during the Gujarat riots, and now he has probably given three years to similar goons to finish freedom in India. Possibly the process has begun.”

How can the process be reversed and what do Dr. Ghouse and like-minded Indians want? “We want Mr. Modi to speak up! That is it. He can address the nation in this way: ‘I am the Prime Minister of all Indians. I will get blamed for the bad things that happen in India, and I am not going to put up with that. From this moment, everyone who messes with their fellow Indians will be punished severely, and if they have staged acts like the one in Dadri, everyone involved will be punished severely. This is my last warning and action will follow. Furthermore, I declare that no one will compel or tell other Indians what to read, write, eat, drink, wear or believe.’ This is all we want.”

What Dr. Ghouse needs is what any citizen of a supposedly democratic country would come to expect and nothing more. And Mike is not alone in his fearful assessment of the rising tide of extremism in India. The New York Times recently reported that Moody’s Analytics, an arm of the international credit rating company, had cautioned that Mr. Modi “must keep his members in check or risk losing domestic and global credibility”. They based their assessment on “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s willingness to tolerate, even encourage, the Hindu hard-liners in his own party.”

As Dr. Ghouse reminds all freedom loving Indians: “I don’t want my India to be a Langda India, do you? If we all wake up and criticize Mr. Modi, guess what will happen? He will be compelled to do the right thing. Don’t you want that?”

This article was published at Saudi Gazette and republished with permission.

When I arrived at the Kabul International Airport on November 4, I was unaware that the same day the New York Times published an article, “Life Pulls Back in Afghan Capital, as Danger Rises and Troops Recede.” My friends Abdulhai and Ali, 17 years old, young men I have known since my first visit five years ago, greeted me with smiles and hugs and took my bags. Disregarded by soldiers and police armed with automatic weapons, we caught up on old times as we walked past concrete blast walls, sand bag fortifications, check points and razor wire to the public road and hailed a cab.

The sun was just burning through the clouds after an early morning rain and I had never seen Kabul look so bright and clean. Once past the airport, the high way into the city was bustling with rush hour traffic and commerce. I was unaware until I read the New York Times on line a few days later, that this time I was one of only a few US citizens likely to be on that road. “The American Embassy’s not allowed to move by road anymore,” a senior Western official told the Times, which reported further that “after 14 years of war, of training the Afghan Army and the police, it has become too dangerous to drive the mile and a half from the airport to the embassy.”

Helicopters now ferry employees working with the United States and the international military coalition to and from offices in Kabul we are told. The United States Embassy in Kabul is one of the largest in the world and already a largely self-contained community, its personnel are now even more isolated from Afghan people and institutions than before. “No one else,” other than US and coalition facilities, the Times reports, “has a compound with a landing pad.” While proclaiming its mission there “Operation Resolute Support” for Afghanistan, US officials no longer travel on Afghan streets.

We have no helicopters or landing pads, but the security situation in Kabul is also a concern for Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a grass roots peace and human rights organization that I work with and for our friends in the Kabul-based Afghan Peace Volunteers that I came to visit. I am fortunate with my grey beard and darker complexion to more easily pass for a local and so I can move about a bit more freely on the streets than some other internationals who visit here. Even then, my young friends have me wear a turban when we leave the house.

The security in Kabul does not look so grim to everyone, though. According to an October 29 Newsweek report, the German government will soon deport most of the Afghan asylum seekers who have entered that country. German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere insists that Afghans should “stay in their country” and that those refugees coming from Kabul especially have no claim for asylum, because Kabul is “considered to be a safe area.” The streets of Kabul that are too dangerous for US Embassy workers to travel in their convoys of Humvees and armored cars escorted by heavily armed private contractors are safe for Afghans to live, work and raise their families, in Herr de Maiziere’s estimation. “Afghans made up more than 20 percent of the 560,000-plus people who have arrived in Europe by sea in 2015, according to the UN Refugee Agency, something de Maziere described as ‘unacceptable.’”

Afghans, especially of the educated middle class, de Maiziere says, “should remain and help build the country up.” Quoted in the New York Times, Hasina Safi, the executive director of the Afghan Women’s Network, a group that works on human rights and gender issues, seems to agree: “It will be very difficult if all the educated people leave,” she said. “These are the people we need in this country; otherwise, who will help the ordinary people?” The same sentiment spoken with stunning courage and moral credibility by a human rights worker in Afghanistan, comes off as a disgraceful and craven obfuscation of responsibility when expressed from a government ministry in Berlin, especially when that government has for 14 years participated in the coalition responsible for much of Afghanistan’s plight.

Ali teaching at Street Kids’ School. Photo Credit: Voices for Creative Nonviolence

On the day after my arrival I was privileged to sit in at a meeting of teachers in the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Street Kids’ School when this subject was discussed. These young women and men, high school and university students themselves, teach the basics of a primary education to children who must work in the streets of Kabul to help support their families. The parents do not pay tuition, but with the support of Voices, are instead allotted a sack of rice and jug of cooking oil each month to compensate for the hours their children are studying.

While the New York Times proclaims that “Life Pulls Back in Afghan Capital,” these volunteer teachers are a sign that life goes on, sometimes with startling joy and abundance as I have experienced in recent days, even in this place ravaged by war and want. It was heart breaking, then, to hear these brilliant, resourceful and creative young people who clearly represent Afghanistan’s best hope for the future, discuss frankly whether they have a future there at all and whether they should join so many other Afghans seeking sanctuary elsewhere.

The reasons that any of these young people might leave are many and impelling. There is great fear of suicide bombings in Kabul, air raids in the provinces where anyone might be targeted as a combatant by a US drone, fear of getting caught between various combatant forces fighting battles that are not theirs. All have suffered greatly in the wars that began here before they were born. The institutions charged with the reconstruction of their country are riddled with corruption, from Washington, DC, to Afghan government ministries and NGOs, billions of dollars gone to graft with little to show on the ground. The prospects even for the brightest and most resourceful to pursue an education and then be able to find work in their chosen professions in Afghanistan are not good.

Most of the volunteers admitted that they had given thought to leaving, but even so they expressed a strong sense of responsibility to stay in their county. Some had come to a firm resolution not to leave, others seemed unsure if future developments would allow them to stay. Like young people everywhere, they would love to travel and see the world but in the end their deepest wish is to “remain and help build the country up” if only they are able.

The vast majority of Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans and others risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy crafts or by land through hostile territory in hopes to find asylum in Europe would stay home if they could. While these asylum seekers should be given the hospitality and shelter that they have a right to, clearly the answer is not the absorption of millions of refugees into Europe and North America. In the longer term, there is no solution except a restructuring of the global political and economic order to allow all people to live and flourish at home or to freely move if that is their choice. In the shorter term, nothing will stem the massive tide of immigrants short of stopping all military intervention in these countries by the United States and its allies and by Russia.

The November 4 New York Times story ends with a cautionary tale, a warning that “even efforts to avoid the dangers in Kabul come at a terrible cost.” Three weeks before, one of the many helicopters that now fill the skies moving embassy personnel around had a tragic accident. “Trying to land, the pilot clipped the tether anchoring the surveillance blimp that scans for infiltrators in central Kabul as it hovers over the Resolute Support base.” Five coalition members died in the crash, including two Americans. The blimp drifted off with more than a million dollars’ worth of surveillance equipment, ultimately crashing into, and presumably destroying, an Afghan house.

The efforts of the US, UK and Germany “to avoid the dangers in Kabul” and other places we have destroyed will inevitably “come at a terrible cost.” It cannot be otherwise. We cannot forever keep ourselves safe from the bloody mess we have made of the world by hopping over it from fortified helipad to fortified helipad in helicopter gunships. Millions of refugees flooding our borders might be the smallest price we will have to pay if we continue to try.

Brian Terrell lives in Maloy, Iowa, and is a co-coordinator with Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

The 2015 Bihar assembly elections were seen differently both by masses and the psephologists. To a majority of Indians it was not less than a national election and BJP and its allies were reduced to just 58 assembly seats out of the total 243 despite a massive and powerful campaign.

Why everyone was so eager about the results this time is not a mystery, there are certain important sections of Indian society today who have a trust deficit against the BJP. Analysts attribute BJP’s defeat to cow and beef politics, Dadri lynching incident, Amit Shah’s Pakistan statement, RSS’s reservation comment, V.K Singh’s dog remark, Dalit children burning incident, comment against Bihar’s DNA, etc,. The post poll analysis also reflects polarizing statements and series of misfires by BJP leaders that caste a negative impact and backfired at the NDA resulting in such a poor performance as compared to the 2010 elections when it scored 91 assembly seat.

In addition, the dismal performance of the BJP’s allies also reflects their lack of basic footing on the ground, which perhaps BJP was not aware of and proved detrimental for the party. However, most importantly the image of hattrick scoring Nitish Kumar as Vikas Purush (Development Man) and no anti-incumbency against him — despite running for the consecutive third term along with Lalu Yadav’s mega comeback out of his party’s deep grounding, political maturity and improving performance of the Congress — ultimately led to Mahagatbandhan’s (Grand Alliance’s) huge victory which won 178 seats. People say BJP’s growing arrogance and the culture of intolerance also played a role. To see if the NDA will be held accountable and will this defeat affect the stature of the President’s party and alter some party posts and the future campaigning strategy, we will have to wait and watch.

The setback to BJP in Bihar has definitely left a serious message for the party ruling at the Centre and in a sense warned it against playing the Bihar type divisive politics in future. Will they apply the same techniques in the forthcoming elections in Assam or Kerala or Bengal or U.P and change their methodology to improve results, remains to be seen? Will they still rely on the fading Modi wave or work for actual landslide victories with a pure development agenda and without any beef, cow or other religion related issues? Will they actually reach the grass roots or continue to sail on the Modi wave, also remains a curiosity?

I was wondering why the people were so excited about and eager to see the NDA’s defeat and even celebrating in Delhi or keenly watching results in Kashmir or Gujarat or Maharashtra, etc, despite having no personal connection with Bihar per se? Are people really so hurt with the NDA or more specifically with the BJP and its governing ideology today which BJP denies to realize? Why is it as if the BJP is versus everyone today, be it political parties or when it comes to people in general who many a times may not love the person whom they voted to power but would definitely vote against someone to keep him away from the power? Has BJP really lost despite highest vote share as an individual party or is it the unity of Lalu and Nitish that changed the arithmetic? Does NDA really talk development despite having the development manifesto or forgets while delivering speeches of hate and anger? Is the nation fed up with the cow, beef and polarization politics and therefore rejected NDA in a significant state like Bihar? Has the culture of intolerance really become a social fact in the country or the majority of the nation is intolerant against the BJP itself? Why are people in Bihar mostly voted against BJP and in favour of grand alliance as is clear from the seats others got which did not even crossed the double figures (06) and parties like LJP or for that matter Manjhi’s HAM proved dismal and Assad-ud-Din Owasi’s AIMIM even couldn’t open its account despite contesting on six seats very seriously? Is BJP’s Bihar base so weak and incompetent that it has not gained any significant ground so far? Has BJP still not reached the Bihar’s significant population of Muslims and other weaker sections of the society that ultimately empowered Nitish-Lalu? Has such a defeat of Amit Shah led BJP turned Nitish Kumar into a national leader and will he challenge the same opponents at the national front in future, only the time will tell?

Perhaps the public wants to hear something different than religion and caste rhetoric and is unhappy with the kind of speeches BJP leadership made during the elections and BJP even reaped the fruit of quota comments made by RSS and suffered due to less grounding and poor actual public touch and foot work as compared to JDU and RJD’s public connect at micro levels. As far as national implications of Mahagatbandhan victory are concerned, is BJP along with its allies going to lose 2019 the same way if the trend of BJP versus everyone continues? How is BJP going to counter this mighty growing trend of BJP versus everyone? The party definitely succeeded against the same destroying trend in Jammu and Kashmir despite the local players were ready to offer unconditional support to Mufti Sayeed led PDP to keep BJP at bay but it was not BJP but PDP who chose BJP simply because BJP was in power at the centre and they could get some good funds to caste their impact in the sensitive state, which exactly happened recently.

Last word

BJP clearly became a victim of Bihar’s strong regional political players and this defeat reflects that even an impressive vote share does not matter, but how can one translate even a small vote share into many seats. BJP’s lack of an actual connect at a grass roots level and a weak local base and an even weaker, amateur alliance partners led to its defeat. This defeat was increased by BJP’s underestimating of significant minorities like Muslims, and doing nothing about it. Further the fallout of the new wave of low level politics during campaigning and continuous use of the divisive language went anti-BJP. Also, BJP’s did nothing about the growing hatred of masses for the party and even downplayed the intolerance debate became a factor. BJP’s lack of control of its radical fringe, and in nutshell its lack of understanding of Bihar, resulted in their poor performance.

Nevertheless, had there been no MahaGatbandan (Grand Alliance), BJP’s impressive vote share (24.4%) and seats won was  a good score and worth competing for. Grand Alliance’s victory in Bihar indeed is a mega victory and can simply be called in Manjhi (Bollywood Movie) style as “Saandar, Jabrjast, Jindabaad”.

Embattled World Cup host Qatar is sending contradictory messages as it struggles with demands to improve migrant labour conditions and mounting questions about the integrity of its successful FIFA bid, confronts the fall-out of dropping energy prices, and seeks to project itself as both a key Western ally and a useful conduit to more militant Islamist forces.

In an uncharacteristic gesture of openness and transparency aimed at both influencing Qatari public opinion and projecting sincerity globally, the mother of Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, recently opened Bin Jelmood House, a museum that charts slavery throughout history.

The museum, against the backdrop of denunciations by international labour and human rights groups of Qatar’s kafala or labour sponsorship system that puts employees at the mercy of their employers, situates the Gulf state’s labour regime in the context of forced labour. “Many construction workers in rapidly industrializing parts of the world, especially the Gulf region, are considered to be contractually enslaved,” says one of the museum’s explanatory texts in a section dedicated to modern slavery.

The positioning of Qatari labour conditions as enslavement takes on added significance given that foreigners account for 88 percent of the Qatari population and 94 percent of its labour force. It also takes on widespread Qatari opposition to fundamental reform, if not abolishment, of the kafala system driven by a fear that any granting of rights to non-Qataris will ultimately lead to Qataris losing control of their society, culture and state.

Qatari attitudes towards the World Cup and resulting pressure for labour reform are largely coloured by fear, irritation with widespread hostility towards the Gulf state, and attitudes towards globalization that bring with it greater external influences and a need for societal and cultural openness.

If the creation of the museum was intended to spark domestic debate that ultimately could give Sheikh Tamim greater flexibility to reform or end the kafala system and send a message of intent to foreign critics, Qatar’s responses to international criticism have projected a very different image.

Qatar last month adopted a new law that was seen by human rights and labour activists as putting a friendly face on an onerous system rather than radically reforming a legal framework that they have dubbed modern slavery.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), in response to the law, is considering launching an inquiry into abuse of migrant workers in Qatar. Adding insult to injury, Qatar’s main rival in the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates, has adopted the very reforms of its kafala system that Qatar has promised since winning the World Cup bid five years ago.

All of this is not to say that Qatar is a lost case, but illustrative of the multiple pressures the Gulf state is balancing and has done so poorly. The awarding of the World Cup and the associated criticism of Qatar has however not been wholly without effect even if the Gulf state’s responses are often too little, too late.

Conditions for workers on World Cup-related projects rather than broader infrastructure projects that were planned independent of the tournament have improved dramatically as a result of workers’ standards adopted by several Qatari institutions, including the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy. The problem is that those standards have yet to be incorporated in legally binding national law.

The government moreover seems keen to improve material conditions of workers without tinkering fundamentally with onerous aspects of kafala involving restrictions on freedom of movement and travel and the right to change employment. In a bid to demonstrate sincerity, Qatar earlier this month opened the first phase of a city for 70,000 workers, the first of seven such facilities, that constitutes a significant improvement on current living and working conditions.

Qatari susceptibility to pressure was nonetheless recently highlighted by Qatar Airway’s cave-in to demands by the ILO and trade unions that it remove from its contracts bans on getting married and becoming pregnant. Bloomberg reported that the company has also endorsed discussions about the lifting of night-time curfews and restrictions on public conduct.

The timing of debate in Qatar about far-reaching labour reform could not be worse. It comes as the country’s social contract in which citizens are offered a cradle-to-grave welfare state buffeted by an absence of income and sales taxes and generous subsidies for energy, utilities and food in exchange for acceptance of absolute rule is being called into question. Driving the fraying of the social contract are lower global energy prices and the need to rationalize and diversify the country’s economy.

Sheikh Tamim warned early this month that the state could no longer “provide for everything.” He bemoaned the fact that subsidies and benefits had reduced the “motivation of individuals to take initiatives and be progressive.” Anticipating Qatar’s first budget deficit in 15 years, Sheikh Tamim stressed that the government’s new budget would aim to root out corruption, eliminate wasteful spending, and streamline the country’s bloated bureaucracy.

A senior development and planning official, Saleh bin Mohammed Al Nabit, said it was “urgent” for Qatar to gain new sources of revenue through taxation and rationalization of subsidies and government support programs.

Qatar’s inability to counter mounting international criticism and questions about the integrity of its World Cup bid also casts a shadow over Sheikh Tamim’s willingness or ability to radically reform labour laws. Already facing a Swiss legal inquiry into its bid and potential questioning by the US Department of Justice, Qatar, in the latest twist has been linked to alleged bribery in Germany’s successful bid for the 2006 World Cup.

Critics charge that rather than being transparent about its bid, Qatar is seeking to dominate, if not hijack the debate about integrity of sport through its largely state-funded International Center for Sport Security (ICSS). ICSS’s credibility has been called into question by its refusal to investigate or comment on the Qatari bid and the way some of its senior executives were hired.

Qatar furthermore did itself no favours by recently hosting and giving a platform to a Saudi imam, Aidh Abdullah al-Qarni, who glorified Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Critics have accused Qatar of maintaining ties to militants Islamists and jihadists even if those relationships have at times benefitted Western nations and offer a needed back channel.

Qatar’s public association with militant Islamists amounts to one more nail in a coffin at a time that the country’s credibility is in question on multiple fronts, economics is forcing it to rethink one of the pillars on which the Al Thani regime is built, and widespread international criticism puts many Qataris on the defensive.

Qatar bets on the fact that its natural resource wealth will secure its position in the world. That could prove to be a risky proposition without Qatar doing more than simply signalling intent through gestures like the slavery museum.

By Martin Khor*

China gave a big boost to South-South cooperation when its President, Xi Jinping, made two unprecedented mega pledges totalling US$5.1 billion to assist other developing countries, during his visit to the United States in September.

Firstly, he announced that China would set up a China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to provide RMB 20 billion or US$3.1 billion to help developing countries tackle climate change. This announcement was made at the White House at a media conference with U.S. President Barrack Obama.

Secondly, at the Development Summit at the United Nations, Xi said that China would set up another fund with initial spending of US$2 billion for South-South Cooperation and to aid developing countries to implement the post-2015 Development Agenda.

The sheer size of the pledges gives a big political weight to the Chinese contribution. President Xi’s initiatives have the feel of a “game changer” in international relations.

It is significant that Xi used the framework of South-South cooperation as the basis of the two funds.

In the international system, there have been two types of development cooperation: North-South and South-South cooperation.

North-South cooperation has been based on the obligation of developed countries to assist developing countries because the former have much more resources and have also benefitted from their former colonies as a result of colonialism.

Indeed, developed countries have committed to provide 0.7% of their GNP as development aid, a target that unfortunately is being met by only a handful of countries.

South-South cooperation on the other hand is based on solidarity and mutual benefit between developing countries as equals, and without obligations as there is no colonial history among them.

This is the position of the developing countries and their umbrella grouping, the G77 and China.

Xi himself, at a South-South roundtable he chaired at the UN, described South-South cooperation as “a great pioneering measure uniting the developing nations together for self-improvement, is featured by equality, mutual trust, mutual benefit, win-win result, solidarity and mutual assistance and can help developing nations pave a new path for development and prosperity”.

He said: “As the overall strength of developing nations improves, the South-South cooperation is set to play a bigger role in promoting the collective rise of developing countries.”

In recent years, as Western countries reduced their commitment towards aid, they tried to blur the distinction and have been pressing big developing countries like China and India to also commit to provide development aid just like them, within the framework of the OECD, the rich countries’ club.

However, the developing countries have stuck to their political position: The developed countries have the responsibility to give adequate aid to poor countries and should not shift this on to other developing countries. The developing countries however will also help one another, through the arm of South-South cooperation.

This has increasingly led some of the developed countries to vaguely threaten to reduce their aid commitment, unless some of the developing countries also pay their share. For them, South-South cooperation is just too vague and too small.

This perception has been changed by the two Chinese pledges, both interesting in themselves.

It is noted by many that the $3.1 billion Chinese climate aid exceeds the $3 billion that the United States has pledged (but not yet delivered) to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) under the UN Climate Convention.

Major developing countries have been pressed to contribute to the GCF but they have correctly argued that the GCF is a fund meant for developed countries to meet their historical responsibility to assist developing countries. Developing countries can choose to help one another through the avenue of South-South cooperation.

China has now taken that South-South route by announcing it will set up its own South-South climate fund, with the unexpectedly big size of $3.1 billion, an amount larger than any developed country has pledged at the GCF. Last year, when China initially announced a similar fund, the sum mentioned then was only $20 million.

With such a large amount, the Chinese climate fund has the potential to facilitate many significant programmes on climate mitigation, adaptation and institutional building.

As for the other fund announced by President Xi, the initial $2 billion is for South-South cooperation and for implementing the development agenda just adopted by the UN. The agenda’s centrepiece is the sustainable development goals. Xi mentioned poverty reduction, agriculture, health and education as some of the areas the fund may cover.

This new fund has the potential of helping developing countries learn from one another’s development experiences and practices and make leaps in policy and action.

Academy of South-South Cooperation and Development

Xi also said an Academy of South-South Cooperation and Development will be established to facilitate studies and exchanges by developing countries on theories and practices of development suited to their respective national conditions.

The next steps to implement these pledges would be to set up the institutional basis for the funds, and design their framework, aims and functions. It is a great opportunity to show whether South-South cooperation can contribute as positively as North-South aid.

After all, South-South cooperation is meant to complement and not to replace North-South cooperation.

Of course, aid is not the only dimension of South-South cooperation, which is especially prominent in the areas of trade, investment, finance and the social sectors.

The regional trade agreements in ASEAN, East Asia, and the sub-regions of Africa and Latin America, as well as the trade and investment links between the three South continents, have shown immense expansion in recent decades.

Recently, the world imagination was also captured by the creation of the BRICS Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Chinese One Belt One Road programme, which all contain elements of South-South cooperation.

South-South cooperation in aid, however, is symbolically and practically of great importance, as it tends to assist the more vulnerable – including poor people and countries, and fragile environments including biodiversity and the climate undergoing crisis.

Let’s hope that the two new funds being set up by China will give a much-needed boost to South-South cooperation and solidarity among the people.

*Martin Khor is the Executive Director of the South Centre and can be contacted at: director@southcentre.int. This article originally appeared in SOUTHVIEWS on 10 November 2015 with the headline China’s boost to South-South cooperation. It is being re-produced by arrangement with the South Centre. SOUTHVIEWS is a service of the South Centre to provide opinions and analysis of topical issues from a South perspective.

By Michael Lelyveld

As China enters a new era of lower economic growth targets, there are questions about why the government is setting growth targets at all.

Last week, members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee met to agree on a draft of the 13th Five-Year Plan for 2016 through 2020, including new goals for gross domestic product (GDP).

Expectations were high that the four-day meeting, known as the Fifth Plenum, would produce a statement on GDP targets after deliberation and debate, heeding the government’s call to accept slower growth as the “new normal” for sustainable development and economic reform.

Predictions of economists quoted by state media converged on a slower-growth target of 6.5 percent, following a steady decline from rates of 7.3 percent in 2014, 7 percent in the first half and 6.9 percent in the third quarter this year.

China’s growth target for 2015, at the end of the current five-year plan, was “about 7 percent.”

But in its communiqué, the committee left outsiders and markets guessing at the new number after the official English-language China Daily reported that the decision would not be announced until next March, when the National People’s Congress (NPC) is scheduled to ratify the five-year plan.

The communiqué said only that China will target “medium-high economic growth,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Despite the suspense, outsiders have voiced skepticism that any real decision or debate has taken place.

“But, in fact, the language of the communiqué is determined well before the meeting even starts,” The New York Times said in its Sinosphere blog.

“Plenums in the modern era have rarely been scenes of raucous intraparty debate. Instead, most policy disagreements are resolved among powerful officials ahead of the plenum,” it said.

Indeed, a Xinhua preview on Oct. 12 slipped seamlessly between the future and present tense in covering expectations for the plenum and the decisions that had already been made at an earlier Politburo meeting under General Secretary and President Xi Jinping.

“While economic development will be the central task, a people-centered approach will be employed in the 2016-2020 plan,” it said.

“The agreements coming out of the meeting include a regulation on clean governance and rules on sanctions of those who break party rules,” Xinhua wrote in the next paragraph.

One-child policy ends

The major policy news to come out of the plenum was a decision to end China’s one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children and potentially affecting economic growth over time.

But on current economic issues, there was little to surprise as China continues its transition to a partially market-based economy while preserving party and central government controls.

On the control side, Xi has prefaced the entire five-year exercise with new conduct rules for party members that “separate CPC discipline from the law,” so that officials and policies can be changed without warning or at will.

On the market side, the government plans to support growth by cutting red tape, nurturing innovation, encouraging consumption and the service sector, easing currency rules and boosting private investment in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) rather than big stimulus spending for smokestack industries.

Last week, a Xinhua “backgrounder” stressed that the official title of the last two five-year plans was changed to “‘five-year guideline’ to reflect a much more market-oriented economy.”

But the change raises questions about why China is still setting GDP targets, which are seen as a relic of central planning and a command economy.

“In a market economy, you don’t set GDP growth targets,” said Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Instead, regulators craft policies to promote growth, and the market economy responds as it will.

While target-setting in China is a reflection of economic policies, it also sends a political signal to provincial officials, said Scissors.

“The original part of this is telling provinces what to say their growth was,” he said.

In the past, higher targets of 8 percent sent an expansionist signal, and provinces regularly reported double- digit growth in confidence that the central government wanted more production year after year.

With slower growth and pollution pressures, the government is sending the opposite signal with lower targets.

“They’re trying to guide the target downward, and it’s not that their economy is growing at that rate. They’re telling everyone that growth is weakening, and it’s okay to say that growth is weakening,” Scissors said.

A ‘moderately prosperous’ society

On Sunday, Premier Li Keqiang said that growth of “at least 6.5 percent” was needed to create a “moderately prosperous” society by 2020, the South China Morning Post reported.

But it was unclear whether the figure represented a formal announcement of the government’s goal. Li was speaking in Seoul to a business audience following a meeting with South Korean and Japanese leaders.

Last week, Li told CPC members that minimum annual growth of 6.53 percent was needed to achieve a “moderately prosperous society,” according to unnamed sources cited Bloomberg News.

All such calculations stem from longstanding CPC promises related to jobs, per capita income and doubling China’s 2010 GDP by 2020.

“Although not specifying exact growth rate targets for the 2016-2020 period, annual growth must stay above 6.5 percent to realize the economic growth target,” Xinhua said on Saturday.

At a conference in Beijing on Sunday, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli said the government will try to maintain average annual growth of 6.5 to 7 percent without “aggressive stimulus or blind expansion of investment,” China Daily reported.

But if real growth has already slowed significantly, say, to less than 6 percent, as many economists suspect, the central government will need time to muster political support for its policies in party meetings and perhaps in the NPC.

The pressure for a return to major economic stimulus programs has been enormous, despite their legacy of shoddy construction, pollution and debt.

Some analysts believe growth has already dropped to around 4 percent or less, based on flat performance or declines in surrogate indicators like power consumption and rail freight.

Other China experts argue that official GDP figures are credible, citing expansion in the service sector. But if real GDP growth has fallen sharply, it could explain the delay in announcing a new target officially.

If the government decides to stop setting numerical targets altogether, it would need even more time to marshal political support, Scissors said.

So far, the government has not said what it will do if growth falls below target, turning the entire numerical exercise into a recipe for putting itself on the spot.

The combination of forces raises the possibility that if the government has settled on a new number, this may be last time that it sets a five-year growth goal.

“I think there’s a pretty good argument that they should just drop this target,” said Scissors. “The problem is that it’s a big step. This is the guidance they’ve been offering. Everyone is focused on it.”

A five-year numerical target also presents a problem if China’s growth rates continue to decline, since it could imply economic contraction in later years, putting increasing pressure on the government.

The benefits of official GDP targets are hard to define. Even if they are seen as a substitute for economic forecasting, they are likely to need revision over a period of five years.

Five-year plans may continue to have value for social goals like poverty reduction, pollution control, economic liberalization and regulatory reforms. But GDP targets may only serve as a reminder that China’s transition to a market economy will remain limited by elements of central planning.

Scissors rejects the idea that China should keep setting targets as long as its transition is incomplete.

“Even in a command economy, you can say GDP growth isn’t our goal anymore,” Scissors said, arguing that the government can measure its success in other terms such as quality of economic output, household income, employment or the environment.

By Jacques Trouvilliez*

One lesson that has been well and truly learned in nature conservation is that for policies to be really effective countries have to collaborate to address common problems.

Within the UN system it is also recognized that this applies to the different Programmes, Conventions and Agreements set up over the years. That each of these bodies has a distinct niche and a clear role does not justify a bunker mentality.  By synergizing, cooperating and collaborating they can find common cause with natural allies and seek compromises with those whose agendas do not necessarily match their own.

AEWA, the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, is a prime example of an organization that embodies this approach.

It is a daughter agreement of the Convention on Migratory Species and specializes in waterbirds that use similar habitats and face similar threats along the African-Eurasian flyway. It was negotiated by countries from different continents, rich and poor, developed and developing, with territories in the frozen north through the temperate zones and the Tropics and across the Equator.

The coalition backing the Agreement includes governments and some NGOs with diametrically opposed perspectives – conservationists from BirdLife International and hunters from the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC).  It is a constituency united around sustainable use, recognizing that the survival of species is paramount and that for those threatened by extinction, hunting has to be restricted or even banned.

AEWA contributes to broader environmental objectives such as the Aichi Targets adopted under the Convention on Biodiversity and to sustainable development.  One example is a community initiative in Uganda, which is helping to protect the shoebill from poachers – while the birds benefit from the conservation efforts, the local community benefits from the income generated by ecotourism.

AEWA can help through capacity-building, transferring financial resources, expertise and skills available in Europe to facilitate training and conservation work on the ground in Africa.

AEWA’s African Initiative aims to improve countries’ self-sufficiency, part of the flyway approach that recognizes that the chances of the species surviving are much greater when they and the habitats upon which they depend are protected the whole length of their migration routes.  These can stretch from the Arctic through Europe, across the Mediterranean and the Sahara to southern Africa.

Benefiting from the cooperation between Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, the Wadden Sea is inscribed in UNESCO’s World Heritage List.  But all the efforts to develop the area’s ecotourism and maintain the habitat of the 10 million and more waterbirds using it as a staging post on their annual migrations will be in vain, if other key sites along the flyway such as the Bijagos Archipelago are lost.

With migratory species, the disappearance or degradation of just one site or inadequate protection or law enforcement in one Range State can have devastating results if the integrity of the chain is comprised and the birds cannot complete their journeys.

But birds are also threatened by problems that affect the whole planet – climate change and overfishing for instance.  Some birds can adapt – warmer northern winters mean that some birds leave for Africa later and return sooner – but disruptions to the natural order lead to new competition between species and whether one species will win out at the expense of another or some new equilibrium will be established is unknown.

Climate change is likely to be the main driver for biodiversity loss and AEWA wants to see mitigation measures in place. Renewable energy is a potential solution as it should reduce the amount of both fossil fuel being burnt and greenhouse gases emitted.

But renewable energy is not without risks – an example being birds colliding with the rotor blades of wind turbines, and whether energy is generated by wind, solar, nuclear, coal, gas or oil is irrelevant if birds are being electrocuted on badly designed, poorly insulated and inappropriately located powerlines.

Simple and often inexpensive modifications to power infrastructure and enacting and enforcing environmental impact assessments that take account of the needs of wildlife can contribute to reducing if not eliminating the death toll of migratory birds and other animals.

Next month, the eyes of the world’s media will be on Paris as thousands gather to reach a deal on measures to combat climate change.  But right now hundreds of ornithologists and decision-makers from Eurasia and Africa are attending the 6th session of the Meeting of the Parties (MOP6) to AEWA, twenty years after the treaty was concluded.

It will be a time for reflection to assess the achievements of the last two decades, and Parties the length and breadth of the flyway will identify their priorities for regional cooperation to conserve migratory waterbirds.  It is also the first biodiversity forum to meet since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and will determine how AEWA will contribute to achieving them and the Aichi Targets.  Synergizing at its best – conservation and sustainable development hand in hand.

*Jacques Trouvilliez is the Executive Secretary of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA).

By Michael Lelyveld

China will be keeping a close eye on its energy interests in Central Asia as Russia reinforces the borders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) against external threats.

Speaking at a summit in Kazakhstan on Oct. 16, President Vladimir Putin pushed CIS leaders to beef up their former- Soviet borders by joining a Russia-led security force to guard against militants of the Islamic State, known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria and Iraq, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“Member countries … will be able to form groups comprising of officials of their border guards and other agencies to tackle possible crises on the border,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying, arguing that a joint force was authorized by a cooperation accord that CIS leaders had gathered to sign.

Implementation “will help to build a reliable shield on the external borders of the CIS,” Putin said at the meeting in the resort town of Burabai.

The countries agreed on a joint task force to guard the CIS external border with Afghanistan, shared by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

While Russia maintains a military presence in the weakest member nations of Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, others like Uzbekistan have been strongly resistant to pressures from Moscow.

But Putin made the case that external threats could become internal, estimating that ISIL has recruited 5,000 to 7,000 fighters from the CIS.

Russia has already announced increases in troop strength and air power under separate agreements with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, according to the BBC.

“Moscow justifies building up a military presence in the region by highlighting the threat Central Asia and Russia are facing from Afghanistan and beyond,” the BBC said.

Russian needs

Others see Russia’s motives as driven by regional security needs.

“However Russian moves and Afghanistan’s future play out, it is becoming increasingly clear that Moscow now faces the danger of a fourth front developing in Central Asia to add to its military activities in Ukraine, Syria and the North Caucasus,” the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor said.

Russia guarded Tajikistan’s 1,344-kilometer (835-mile) border with Afghanistan until 2005. It still maintains a force of 6,000 troops in the country under a 30-year agreement, providing military aid directly and through the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

At an earlier meeting with Putin, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon voiced alarm at “fighting taking place on over 60 percent of the border,” Interfax reported.

But there have also been rumblings of concern about the implications of Russian initiatives at a time when Putin has shown willingness to send forces abroad.

“Just as in Syria he has said he is fighting against ISIL, but in reality is fighting to preserve (President) Bashar Assad’s regime, in Central Asia they will suspect him of using the threat of Islamism as an excuse to create a zone that will eventually be recognized as a Russian sphere of Influence,” said Arkady Dubnov, a Moscow-based expert on Central Asia in an interview with Britain’s The Telegraph.

Doubts about Russia’s intentions also highlight the differences with China regarding their roles and interests in Central Asia.

China has relied increasingly on energy flows from the region, particularly gas from Turkmenistan that crosses multiple borders by pipeline. Russia has all but ended its gas imports through the Soviet-era Central Asia-Center pipeline system, despite major volumes promised a decade ago.

Beijing’s approach has been largely mercantilist, avoiding defense commitments despite the rhetorical security assurances of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Russia and nearly all the same Central Asian countries that are linked by the nine-member CIS.

Color revolutions

Russia has stressed hegemony, security, political stability and a united front against “color revolutions” in the region, which have already diminished the CIS with Georgia’s departure and the distancing of Ukraine.

Moscow’s border initiative and its military resurgence are likely to raise China’s concerns about the security of its cross-border energy flows from Central Asia, while Moscow presses its own costly pipeline projects for China from Siberia.

“You’ve got internal concerns, and Russia is sort of upping its game. That China would be watchful is fair to say, for sure,” said Edward Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The Russian interest in dominating Central Asia politically and in the security sphere runs up against China’s long-term economic interest,” said Chow.

“In the short and medium-term, maybe that’s something that can be resolved, but in the long run, it’s a contradiction that is bound to create tension,” he said.

The problems may be most sensitive for Turkmenistan, where China has invested heavily in gas exploration, production and export routes for its Central Asia-China Gas Pipeline system with three branches through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

As of August, Turkmenistan had supplied 125 billion cubic meters (4.4 trillion cubic feet) of gas since deliveries started in 2009, accounting for over 35 percent of China’s gas imports, Ashgabat’s Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources said.

A fourth branch of the China supply network known as “Line D” is said to be under construction through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, boosting system capacity to 85 billion cubic meters (3 trillion cubic feet) per year.

Neutral Turkmenistan

But the new route may depend on stability and border protection, a sore point for Turkmenistan, which has relied on its neutrality policy rather than its under-strength military, while barring Russian forces since the Soviet collapse.

There are also signs that the security situation has created tensions among the Central Asian states.

On Oct. 15, Turkmenistan’s Foreign Ministry registered a “strong protest” after Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev voiced concern over reports of deadly incidents on the Turkmen border with Afghanistan.

“In this connection, the Turkmen side expresses its deep concern and incomprehension of the remarks made by the Kazakh side, viewing them as far from reality,” the ministry said.

Despite at least two reported attacks from northern Afghanistan on the Turkmen border, Ashgabat has insisted it will launch a long-stalled gas pipeline project through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India, known as TAPI, in December.

Turkmenistan has pursued the TAPI plan since the 1990s in order to diversify its exports. Before it started supplying gas to China, the isolated country relied heavily on Russian demand and transit routes.

Now that exports to Russia and Iran have slowed to a trickle, Turkmenistan depends on its routes to China, making the security issue crucial for access to the country’s huge gas reserves.

Aside from direct risks posed by ISIS and the Taliban, China may have reason to be concerned about the implications of Russia’s rising involvement in the region on several counts.

Making things worse?

First, it is unclear whether Russian military activity in Syria and the buildup in Central Asia will make the security risks better or worse for Chinese interests, energy investment and transit from the region.

Even if existing gas flows continue without interruption, new projects like China’s “Line D” near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan could be put on hold.

In March, Uzbekistan said its preliminary plan was to start building its section of the line at the end of this year for completion in 2017, Interfax reported.

Beijing has stopped short of openly criticizing Moscow’s military activity, but has made clear it supports a political settlement in Syria.

“Force cannot resolve the problem. A political resolution still remains the basic way (out),” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Oct. 16, according to Reuters.

Second, Russia could be seen as having conflicting interests in Central Asia at a time when it is promoting its own projects for gas exports to China, including at least two pipelines to supply 68 billion cubic meters (2.4 trillion cubic feet) per year from Siberia.

The Russian routes, which are far from the regional conflicts, cross a single border and could offer greater security. China has recently reduced its estimates of import demand, raising questions about whether it will need as much Central Asian gas as it has previously planned.

Russia has also recently floated a plan that suggests it may be trying to draw Central Asian gas west across its own territory toward Europe and away from China.

Turkish stream

On Oct. 15, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said that Central Asian countries could join in Russia’s project to pipe gas along a southern route to Europe. The project known as “Turkish Stream” is one of several variations that Russia has planned for exports across the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine.

The route would compete with Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan that would skirt Russian territory on a route through Georgia and Turkey on a southern corridor to the European market.

The plan could serve a dual purpose of diverting gas from the region onto a Russian route and also away from China, leaving less to compete with Russian supplies in the East.

“Inviting the interested Central Asian countries to take part in our project with Ankara for energy supplies to southern Europe could be a step toward cooperation in the energy sphere,” said Alexander Sternik, director of the ministry’s Third Department for the CIS, making a pitch for coordinated Russian-Turkish cooperation with Central Asian producers.

“It could embrace more clearly the fight against terror and extremism, the fight against organized crime, drug trafficking, and not on a bilateral basis but in the framework of the SCO,” said Sternik, according to Interfax.

Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry visited the Central Asian nations, giving assurances that the United States would not neglect their interests as it winds down its military presence in Afghanistan.

At a meeting with President Islam Karimov in Samarkand, Kerry touched on the region’s energy security problems, citing “the enormous energy resources and the challenges that these five Central Asian countries have with respect to being landlocked and the need to move products to the global marketplace.”

On his four-day tour, Kerry advanced a new C5+1 format for U.S. ties to the region and promoted a “New Silk Road” initiative to strengthen links through energy, trade, transit, customs procedures and communications.

But during a speech in Kazakhstan, the secretary stressed that Washington seeks avoid a clash of Big Power interests.

“Economic integration is not and should not be a zero-sum game,” Kerry said in the capital Astana. “And the United States fully encourages Central Asian nations to develop the broadest range of partners that you can.”