Both those who agree with Andrey Illarionov that Vladimir Putin’s ultimate target in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia and those who think he is wrong have ignored an important fact on the ground: The Saudi kingdom has significant Shiite populations who just happen to be where the oil and oil pipelines are, according to Elizaveta Pokrovskaya.

And given Moscow’s identification of Saudi Arabia as “a sponsor of world terrorism” and its emerging alliance with Shiite Iran, she argues that there are three facts analysts should be taking into consideration (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=56532BF70FDE5):

The first of these is that there is an important Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia, one that constitutes ten to fifteen percent of the population of the kingdom as a whole but most of whom live in the Eastern Province, where they form 80 percent of the population.

The second fact Pokrovskaya points to is that “a large part of the oil fields of Saudi Arabia are located on the territory of the Eastern Province and thus in areas which are settled by compact groups of the Shiite minority.”

And the third fact is now Shiite Iran is an ally of Russia, a development that has implications for Shiite Iran, for the Shiites of the world who look to Iran, and for Russia which would like to see oil prices go up and has already cast its lot with the Shiite-Alawaite groups backing Bashar Asad in Syria.

Does it take much to imagine what could happen if clashes between the Shiite minority of Saudi Arabia and Riyadh now break out, at a time when Sunni-Shiite tensions have taken on geopolitical shape in the re-arranging of the political map of the Greater Middle East? Or further to imagine “what would happen if Russia” with its own agenda of defeating “the sponsor of global jihad” and Iran should support ‘the lawful demands of the Shiites of Saudi Arabia’ should work in tandem?

Pokrovskaya suggests that Russia’s identification of Saudi Arabia as a global sponsor of terrorism is undercut by the fact that Israel is now, “when Iran has received open support of the US,” working toward an alliance with two of America’s “’traditional allies’” in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Israel wouldn’t be doing that if it thought that the Saudis were sponsoring terrorism, the Moscow journalist suggests, and thus under the circumstances, such an alliance “doesn’t generate any questions.” Indeed, she says, there is only one unknown: when will Moscow and Tehran dispense with Asad, someone each has reasons to want to see gone?

By Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby*

It was little more than a year ago that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), took the pulpit in the recently-captured great mosque of Mosul in northern Iraq. There he proclaimed the establishment of the “Islamic State,” and the re-founding of the Islamic Caliphate, the most ancient office and title of Islamic rule abolished to the dismay of the devout in 1924. In so doing, Baghdadi declared himself Caliph not just of Iraq and the Levant, but of all Muslims. To unattuned Western ears, his claim seemed grandiose. But Baghdadi had launched a revolution in the Islamist world.

Baghdadi’s revolution draws on, and indeed is surpassing, the two major revolutions in modern Islamist thought that preceded it. To explain ISIL’S rise, the West weighs the weapons in its hands and condemns the political rot in the states opposing ISIL. The West should look as well to how Baghdadi captured the dreams that fueled his rise. In that lies the coming course of Islamic radicalism.

Baghdadi strode to that pulpit on the crest of ISIL’s rapid and extensive conquests in Syria and Iraq, especially the drive to Mosul in spring, 2014. For the West, the new state and its success appeared almost to come from nowhere, or, given its particularly gruesome methods, out of a sudden and unexpected nightmare. The speed of its onset led many to believe, or at least hope, that it would just as swiftly dissipate and return to the demented void from whence it appeared to have so suddenly sprung.

Indeed, but a few months before, in January of 2014, Pres. Obama had described ISIL – then mostly huddled in Syria — as a “junior varsity” version of Al Qaeda. According to the president, this junior varsity lacked “stars” analogous to Kobe Bryant, such as Osama bin Laden had been. So Al Qaeda remained the declared focus of US efforts to counter terrorist threats.

But today the Islamic State is, in Sunni jihadi terms, not only clearly of “varsity” quality, but the “all star team.” For the moment, it is eclipsing Al Qaeda, and may yet supplant it altogether. The only other “all stars” to rival it in terrorist clout come from the Shiite side of the Islamic sectarian divide and are fostered by Iran: Hezbollah, a whole host of other Shiite militias, and, above all, Iran’s Quds force.

After first mocking ISIL, the Obama Administration then estimated that it would take three years to defeat it. But most recently, the president declared that the struggle will be “generational.” Thus, for the West, the nightmare will rage a long while.

But for many Islamists, the Islamic State is not a nightmare, but a dream come true. More particularly, a dream finally come true — a glorious dream, which represents for them the fulfillment of the Islamist movement’s whole, tortuous history. Thus Baghdadi’s simple declaration of the Islamic State is a great source of its strength. The dream resonates. Invoking it, empowers.

Indeed, for many Islamists, Baghdadi advances not a new dream, but the ancient dream, of return to the original Arab Caliphate born in blood and faith, in the heroic days of the Salaf As-Salih, the Virtuous Ancestors, Muhammad’s companions and successors. Since Islam’s political and military decline relative to the West first became too pronounced to ignore owing to defeats suffered by the seventeenth century Ottoman Caliphate, Islamic scholars blamed defeat on falling away from the good old ways, whether Islamic or Ottoman. The proposed remedy, to return to such ways, resonates through the centuries. Today, many Islamist radicals propound it. But Baghdadi’s declared State embraces a more direct return to Islam’s origins than the approaches of his modern Islamist rivals. Centuries of Ottoman overlay are abandoned for the truer Arab origins. Islam will not build on the ruins of existing states; rather, a wave of Islamic conquest will become a state, as it did in the lifetime of Islam’s Arab founder, Mohammed – Islam’s model prophet, ruler, soldier, and conqueror – and his great successors.

Baghdadi would rule, then, in the most ancient tradition. He would carve his way to authority, ruling, as said by the ancient and revered Islamic Scholar Ibn Qutayba, in the ancient way: “Islam, the ruler, and the people are like the tent, the pole, the ropes and the pegs. The tent is Islam, the pole is the ruler, the ropes and pegs are the people. None can thrive without the others.” Baghdadi’s rise would be the pole upon which all depends.

Of dreams, Ibn Qutaybah, would write: “There is nothing in … the different sciences that is more obscure, delicate, exalted, noble, difficult and problematic than dreams, because they are a type of revelation and type of Prophethood.” Baghdadi’s Caliphate hopes to evoke the power of such dreams. The much discussed millennial and apocalyptic rhetoric of his movement enhances that.

To outside observers, nothing about the rise of the Islamic State – or its ascendancy over its rivals — was inevitable. ISIL might have been destroyed early on, in Iraq, where its origins in a branch of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) lie. In fact AQI nearly was destroyed in the American surge of 2006-2008. Its resurrection and ISIL’s success has been attributed to a variety of special circumstances. The outbreak of the Arab revolts of 2011, and in particular the Syrian civil war, first gave AQI an opening to reconstitute itself as a champion of Syria’s Sunnis against the murderous Iranian-aligned regime of Bashar al Assad. The sectarian and corrupt Iraqi administration of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki both alienated Iraq’s Sunnis and enhanced ISIL’s Sunni base with the professional expertise of former Saddamist officers. The degraded Iraqi army fled at the first blow in June 2014, leaving behind the lifeblood of further conquest – cash and weapons. Weak, vacillating, and mistaken American policy not only failed to anticipate, intervene and prevent the Syrian and Iraqi dynamics, but sped them, most notably by Obama’s underestimation of his enemy and his decision to embrace a precipitous 2011 withdrawal from a position of strength in Iraq.

All these and other circumstances have been important, and had they not obtained the Islamic State might never have enjoyed the success it now does.

Nevertheless, neither is its success simply the accidental product of Middle East dysfunction and chaos, accelerated by American error. Rather it represents, and self-consciously so, the latest evolution of the modern Islamist movement, now some 90 years old. For the foundation of the Islamic State and the re-founding of the Caliphate, draw upon the declared goals of the Islamist movement from the 1920’s on, when it first adopted an institutional mode in the form of the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In the intervening years, the Islamist movement had developed a diverse variety of strands. Yet similar goals — the restoration of an Arab Caliphate that directly confronts the West — have remained in force for all of them.

Baghdadi’s declaration of the “Islamic State” amounts to proclaiming that those goals are at hand. The long era of waiting and longing is now over. Whatever his other calculations, he knew this claim would electrify the Islamist movement and accelerate his success. And it has.

In making this claim, the Islamic State need not and does not simply dismiss the contributions of earlier phases of the Islamist movement and the diversity that displayed. That diversity did not arise from disagreements about the goals, but rather about the proper strategy and tactics in pursuing them. Roughly speaking the various groups divided into two camps: the Brotherhood on the one hand; the jihadis or Salafi Jihadis on the other.

While the Brotherhood did not reject jihad – it affirms it in the most famous slogan of its founder, Hassan al-Banna – it believed that the first tasks were to build — or more accurately rebuild — “Islamic Society” from the ground up. It would do so through a mass organization, complemented by a host of social and economic organizations providing a variety of services. This so-called “gradualist” approach had significant success. But by the 1970’s, several Islamists, usually veterans of the Brotherhood, declared that this approach was not working and that the main emphasis should be on jihad, “the forgotten duty.”

This new direction in Islamist thought was immensely encouraged by the advent in the 1980’s of the so-called Afghan jihad. Combatting the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan provided an immediate outlet for this duty by fighting one of the two global forces which Islamism defined as its enemies. Of course, the Afghan Jihad ultimately gave birth to Al Qaeda, the most successful of the jihadi groups, and a host of others which often operated in its orbit. For Al Qaeda, the first requirement was to continue to prosecute jihad against Islam’s other great enemy, America; the formation of a new society could come later.

The Islamic State implicitly claims to be the proper successor to both these strands, to be the fruit of the long experience of the Islamist movement, of both its successes and failures. It claims not so much to reject these strands as to synthesize and transcend them. Its character embodies that. On the one hand, and most clearly, it is committed to a most vigorous prosecution of jihad. On the other, it is proceeding to establish the legal, administrative, social and economic institutions which belong to a state and which are necessary to expand and consolidate its base. Its media present not only its brutal violence, but images of the Islamic utopia it claims to have established.

If this reflects its vision for the new Muslim order and follows from it, it also addresses its vulnerabilities. Of particular importance is its creation of a new system of education for children under its rule. Given a few years, this will produce a cadre of people formed in its image and loyal to its rule. Such inductees provide a hedge against the shock of future battlefield and geopolitical challenges and reversals.

In proceeding in this fashion, whether by design or de facto, the Islamic State lays claim to represent the proper evolution of the Islamist movement and its culmination. If grateful for the hard work that went before, it asserts that the time for alternative efforts is past; they are no longer necessary. It is time for other Islamists to recognize that, celebrate that, and join this new venture, the new and final norm of the Islamist movement. The Islamic State thus offers itself as “an advanced model” of the movement, as the well-known journalist Abdulrahman al Rasheed put it in Al-Arabiya. Many Islamist radicals have embraced it in that spirit.

Of course, not all of its Islamist rivals have accepted the Islamic State’s embrace; for example Al Qaeda. In a recent, lengthy, and remarkable interview in the British paper, The Guardian, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the most important spiritual and intellectual Islamist authority in the world, especially for its jihadi branch, reaffirmed his support of Al Qaeda and his rejection of the Islamic State. (For his own audience, he had already done so with a long tract published last June.) He was joined in the interview, and his views, by Abu Qatada, another important spiritual and intellectual authority. But their critique was tinged with fear that Al Qaeda was indeed in decline, even terminally so. Though still loyal to Aymen al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s current leader, they described him as “isolated” and far removed from the main theater of jihadi action. As Munif Samara, another party to the interview put it, young Islamists “are waiting for al-Qaida to do something and al- Qaida is doing nothing.” By contrast, the Islamic State presents a “delicious meal {that} looks delicious and tempting.”

These dedicated Islamists even wondered whether Al Qaeda’s original strategy had helped to bring it to this pass. Maqdisi now thinks Al Qaeda unwisely neglected building a societal base and the institutions and the geographic base that implies. He urged that Al Qaeda should now do so. “That kind of enabling jihad will establish our Islamic State.” (Emphasis added.) This line of thought leads in the direction of the Islamic State’s new norm.

Of course the Islamic State claims to already embody that. Maqdisi and Qatada vehemently jeer at such claims, calling Baghdadi’s Islamic State: a meal of “dirt and filth;” “a cancerous growth; ”a mafia group;” a ruin for the “whole Ummah.” But for those familiar with the experience of the Communist movement, the tone of their remarks might suggest a qualified analogy to the case of the Trotsykites and their ultimately futile critique of the “really existing socialism” of Stalin.

For its part, the Brotherhood side of the movement has also experienced a massive failure of its approach and influence. This is most obvious in the case of Egypt, the place of its founding and home of its most important branch. The revolt of 2011 against Mubarak’s rule finally brought the Brotherhood to power, partially through the support of a sympathetic society and the indulgence of Mubarak rivals within the Egyptian military. But the Brotherhood promptly squandered that support through its strategy of authoritarian governance, put in place late in 2012; and its regime was soon overthrown. The Brotherhood’s failure was not simply accidental. In an important speech in 2011, its Deputy Guide, Khairat al Shater, proclaimed that its long gradualist approach had finally reached its goal, and that its vision of the state was at hand. It could therefore afford to be, indeed was required to be, more aggressive. The subsequent demise of its rule has undercut the Brotherhood’s approach.

Another Brotherhood loser of the Arab revolts has been the Syrian branch. With the support of Turkey, it sought to dominate the Syrian revolt. As Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil has put it, then Prime Minister Erdogan thought that “the Sunni majority would set up in Damascus a Muslim Brotherhood type of regime that would be subservient to Ankara.” It would be an extension and partner of ‘the Muslim Brotherhood type regime’ that Erdogan was progressively building in Turkey itself. But the Syrian Brotherhood is now effectively marginal to the civil war, dominated by the Islamic State, by Al Qaeda’s affiliate, al Nusra, and by other factions, both Islamist and more secular. Erdogan has sometimes found it convenient to support some of these groups, including the Islamic State. Even Erdogan’s own program for Turkey is somewhat in doubt, as a result of the losses in this June’s Turkish elections. To reverse his course, Erdogan has called for new elections, to be held in November, using violence and repression, in Turkey and around it, as his core strategy to reclaim his ascension.

Might the Brotherhood, too, move in the direction of the Islamic State model? This would mean a more vigorous embrace of jihad to augment its previous “societal’ model. After its overthrow in Egypt in 2013, the senior leadership of the Brotherhood continued to affirm a non-jihadi approach. But its massive failure in Egypt has produced dissent in the younger ranks. Some now incline toward pursuing a violent strategy. Most recently and strikingly, a group of distinguished pro-Muslim Brotherhood clerics from around the world issued a statement calling for the overthrow of the Egyptian government by all necessary means. Amr Darrag, a minister in the Brotherhood government, reflecting on its fall, has said, “The main lesson I learned is that gradual change will not work.” If these new trends continue, the Brotherhood will come ever closer to the new Islamic State’s violent norm.

At all events, for the foreseeable future the Islamic State, the Islamic Caliphate, will be the colossus of the Sunni Islamist movement. It will generate a strong gravitational pull on other Islamists.

Of course, the Islamic State faces obstacles on the road to further success. It has many enemies. Some are in the skies above in the form of the allied air campaign against it. No doubt it would prefer not to have to face allied bombing, but it has adapted to it. In this and other respects, the Islamic State has thus far proven to be strategically and tactically adept. It continues to consolidate its position, for example, through its capture of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, this year.

On the ground, the enemies the Islamic State faces are diverse: other Islamist groups in Syria, the Kurds, and Shiite forces led by Iran. The enmity of the last would seem especially grievous, given their strength. Nevertheless, the Islamic State’s hostility to Shiism as a centuries-old, heretical betrayal of true Islam is well known and exceeds that of all other Islamist groups. After the capture of Mosul, the Islamic State spokesman announced its further ambition to capture and desecrate the Shiite holy cities of Kerbela and Najaf. It might appear imprudent to provoke such a powerful enemy. In fact, the leaders of Al Qaeda decried such imprudence, going back to its origins under the leadership of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In Iraq in 2014 it produced a large Shiite mobilization that enhanced the influence of Iran.

Still, this enmity cuts more than one way, and in some respects strengthens the Islamic State. The current aggressiveness of Iran and its Shiite empire has raised the sectarian conflict of Sunnis and Shiites to be the defining conflict within the Middle East. This leads to the hope among Sunnis that a champion of their own will arise to do battle with Iran. The Islamic State presents itself as that champion, and an especially pure one, precisely because it appears so uncompromising. In this respect, its celebration of violence and brutality is a “plus,” rather than the “minus” outsiders suppose. It is a declaration that ISIL really “means business” in a way that evokes more ancient and glorious days. ISIL’s narrative has been and continues to be especially preoccupied by the founding generation of Islam and its presumed glories, glories which are contested in principle by Shiites. This has and may further enhance its status among Sunni Islamists

But it has also attracted no small amount of sympathy among Sunnis generally who are hardly impressed by the strength of their traditional rulers in the struggle with Iran and its Shiite revolution. Indeed, although the rulers themselves know they are threatened by the Islamic State, in principle and practice, they may quietly welcome the Islamic State the longer the struggle with Iran goes on.

The net result, for the present, bodes well for the Islamic State. It does not bode well for the Middle East if the dominant forces prove to be its empire and that of the Shiites led by Iran.

President Obama has suggested that eventually an equilibrium will come to pass among the contending forces. Perhaps. But the road to it will be drenched in blood, and it cannot be ruled out that some of it may be our own. Indeed, harming Americans may be the new coin of the realm in the competition among Islamists for funds and broader support. For despite their rivalry, there is one thing on which Iran, the Islamic State, and its Sunni Islamist rivals can agree: enmity towards us and doing us harm. Iran and Al Qaeda already have; the Islamic State is beginning to enter that competition with the winds of its new leadership of the Islamist movement at its back.

*About the authors:
Hillel Fradkin, Director, Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World

Lewis Libby, Senior Vice President

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute.

I still remember that smug look on his face, followed by the matter-of-fact remarks that had western journalists laugh out loud.

“I’m now going to show you a picture of the luckiest man in Iraq,” General Norman Schwarzkopf, known as ‘Stormin’ Norman, said at a press conference sometime in 1991, as he showed a video of US bombs blasting an Iraqi bridge, seconds after the Iraqi driver managed to cross it.

But then, a far more unjust invasion and war followed in 2003, following a decade-long siege that cost Iraq a million of its children and its entire economy.

It marked the end of sanity and the dissipation of any past illusions that the United States was a friend of the Arabs. Not only did the Americans destroy the central piece of our civilizational and collective experience that spanned millennia, it took pleasure in degrading us in the process. Their soldiers raped our women with obvious delight. They tortured our men, and posed with the dead, mutilated bodies in photographs – mementos to prolong the humiliation for eternity; they butchered our people, explained in articulate terms as necessary and unavoidable collateral damage; they blew up our mosques and churches and refused to accept that what was done to Iraq over the course of twenty years might possibly constitute war crimes.

Then, they expanded their war taking it as far as US bombers could reach; they tortured and floated their prisoners aboard large ships, cunningly arguing that torture in international waters does not constitute a crime; they suspended their victims on crosses and photographed them for future entertainment.

Their entertainers, media experts, intellectuals and philosophers made careers from dissecting us, dehumanizing us, belittling everything we hold dear; they did not spare a symbol, a prophet, a tradition, values or set of morals. When we reacted and protested out of despair, they further censured us for being intolerant to view the humor in our demise; they used our angry shouts to further highlight their sense of superiority and our imposed lowliness.

They claimed that we initiated it all. But they lied. It was their unqualified, inflated sense of importance that made them assign September 11, 2001 as the inauguration of history. All that they did to us, all the colonial experiences and the open-ended butchery of the brown man, the black man, any man or woman who did not look like them or uphold their values, was inconsequential.

All the millions who died in Iraq were not considered a viable context to any historical understanding of terrorism; in fact, terrorism became us; the whole concept of terror, which is violence inflicted on innocent civilians for political ends, abruptly became an entirely Arab and Muslim trait. In retrospect, the US-Western-Israeli slaughter of the Vietnamese, Koreans, Cambodians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians, South Americans, Africans, was spared any censure. Yet, when Arabs attempted to resist, they were deemed the originators of violence, the harbingers of terror.

Furthermore, they carried out massive social and demographic experiments in Iraq which have been unleashed throughout the Middle East, since. They pitted their victims against one another: the Shia against the Sunni, the Sunni against the Sunni, the Arabs against the Kurds, and the Kurds against the Turks. They called it a strategy, and congratulated themselves on a job well done as they purportedly withdrew from Iraq. They disregarded the consequences of tampering with civilizations that have evolved over the course of millennia.

When their experiments went awry, they blamed their victims. Their entertainers, media experts, intellectuals and philosophers flooded every public platform to inform the world that the vital mistake of the Bush administration was the assumption that Arabs were ready for democracy and that, unlike the Japanese and the Germans, Arabs were made of different blood, flesh and tears. Meanwhile, the finest of Arab men were raped in their jails, kidnapped in broad daylight, tortured aboard large ships in international waters, where the Law did not apply.

When the Americans and their allies claimed that they had left the region, they left behind bleeding, impoverished nations, licking their wounds and searching for bodies under rubble in diverse and macabre landscapes. Yet, the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis, continue to stage their democratic elections around the debate of who will hit us the hardest, humiliate us the most, teach the most unforgettable lesson and, in their late night comedies, they mock our pain.

We, then, sprang up like wild grass in a desert, multiplied, and roamed the streets of Rabat, Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, calling for a revolution. We wanted democracy for our sake, not Bush’s democracy tinged with blood; we wanted equality, change and reforms and a world in which Gaza is not habitually destroyed by Israel and children of Derra could protest without being shot; where leaders do not pose as divinities and relish the endless arsenals of their western benefactors. We sought a life in which freedom is not a rickety dingy crossing the sea to some uncertain horizon where we are treated as human rubbish on the streets of western lands.

However, we were crushed; pulverized; imprisoned, burnt, beaten and raped and, once more, told that we are not yet ready for democracy; not ready to be free, to breathe, to exist with even a speck of dignity.

Many of us are still honorably fighting for our communities; others despaired: they carried arms and went to war, fighting whoever they perceive to be an enemy, who were many. Others went mad, lost every sense of humanity; exacted revenge, tragically believing that justice can be achieved by doing unto others what they have done unto you. They were joined by others who headed to the West, some of whom had escaped the miseries of their homelands, but found that their utopia was marred with alienation, racism and neglect, saturated with a smug sense of superiority afflicted upon them by their old masters.

It became a vicious cycle, and few seem interested now in revisiting General Schwarzkopf’s conquests in Iraq and Vietnam – with his smug attitude and the amusement of western journalists – to know what actually went wrong. They still refuse to acknowledge history, the bleeding Palestinian wound, the heartbroken Egyptian revolutionaries and the destroyed sense of Iraqi nationhood, the haemorrhaging streets of Libya and the horrifying outcomes of all the western terrorist wars, with blind, oil-hungry dominating foreign policies that have shattered the Cradle of Civilization, like never before.

However, this violence no longer affects Arabs alone, although Arabs and Muslims remain the larger recipients of its horror. When the militants, spawned by the US and their allies, felt cornered, they fanned out to every corner of the globe, killing innocent people and shouting the name of God in their final moment. Recently, they came for the French, a day after they blew up the Lebanese, and few days after the Russians; and, before that, the Turks and the Kurds, and, simultaneously, the Syrians and the Iraqis.

Who is next? No one really knows. We keep telling ourselves that ‘it’s just a transition’ and ‘all will be well once the dust has settled’. But the Russians, the Americans and everyone else continue bombing, each insisting that they are bombing the right people for the right reason while, on the ground, everyone is shooting at whoever they deem the enemy, the terrorist, a designation that is often redefined. Yet, few speak out to recognize our shared humanity and victimhood.

No – do not always expect the initials ISIS to offer an explanation for all that goes wrong. Those who orchestrated the war on Iraq and those feeding the war in Syria and arming Israel cannot be vindicated.

The crux of the matter: we either live in dignity together or continue to perish alone, warring tribes and grief-stricken nations. This is not just about indiscriminate bombing – our humanity, in fact, the future of the human race is at stake.

US President Barack Obama said that there “is no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland.” Obama made the comments Wednesday from the White House’s Roosevelt Room. Following is the complete transcript as released by the White House.

*****

Good morning, everybody. I just had a chance to meet with my national security team, including my Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson; my FBI Director, James Comey; and my Attorney General, Loretta Lynch for a regular update on our security posture post-Paris and going into the holiday season.

I think all of us recognize how horrific and heinous what took place in Paris was. And as I said yesterday, for many of us, the events there touched a deep chord, given the connection between the United States and France, the degree to which Americans see in Paris a way of life that’s so familiar to us here in American cities. And given the shocking images, I know that Americans have been asking each other whether it’s safe here — whether it’s safe to fly or gather. I know that families have discussed their fears about the threat of terrorism around the dinner table, many for the first time since September 11th. And it’s understandable that people worry something similar could happen here. Watching the events in Paris made the threat feel closer to home.

So as we go into Thanksgiving weekend, I want the American people to know — is that we are taking every possible step to keep our homeland safe.

First, we’re going after ISIL wherever it hides. That’s been our strategy for more than a year. I’ll speak about this in more detail in the coming weeks, but let me remind the American people of what our coalition of some 65 nations is doing to destroy these terrorists and defeat their ideology.

So far, our military and our partners have conducted more than 8,000 airstrikes on ISIL strongholds and equipment. Those airstrikes, along with the efforts of our partners on the ground, have taken out key leaders, have taken back territory from ISIL in both Iraq and Syria. We continue working to choke off their financing and their supply lines, and counter their recruitment and their messaging.

And even as America is already supporting French airstrikes in Syria, yesterday, President Hollande and I agreed that our countries are going to step up that coordination even further and do more of that work together. So we’re stepping up the pressure on ISIL where it lives, and we will not let up –- adjusting our tactics where necessary –- until they are beaten. That’s our first goal.

Second, we continue to do everything possible to prevent attacks at home and abroad, and to prevent foreign terrorist fighters from entering the United States or other nations. Since 9/11, we’ve taken extraordinary measures to strengthen our homeland security, in everything from aviation security to border security to information sharing. We’ve improved upon these actions over time. Any time there’s an event, we learn something from it, and we continue to refine them. We continue to improve upon our approaches as we speak.

Now right now, we know of no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland. And that is based on the latest information I just received in the Situation Room. It is similar to the information that I — the briefing that I received on Saturday before I left on my trip last week.

So as Americans travel this weekend to be with their loved ones, I want them to know that our counterterrorism, intelligence, homeland security and law enforcement professionals at every level are working overtime. They are continually monitoring threats at home and abroad, continually evaluating our security posture. They’re constantly working to protect all of us.

Their work has prevented attacks. Their efforts have saved lives. They serve every hour of every day for the sake of our security. They did so before Paris, and they do so now -– without fanfare or credit, and without a break for the holidays.

So the bottom line is this: I want the American people to know, entering the holidays, that the combined resources of our military, our intelligence, and our homeland security agencies are on the case. They’re vigilant, relentless and effective. In the event of a specific, credible threat, the public will be informed. We do think it’s useful for people, as they’re going about their business, to be vigilant. If you see something suspicious, say something. That’s always helpful. But otherwise, Americans should go about their usual Thanksgiving weekend activities — spending time with family and friends, and celebrating our blessings.

And while the threat of terrorism is a troubling reality of our age, we are both equipped to prevent attacks, and we are resilient in the face of those who would try to do us harm. And that’s something we can all be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Before his plane landed in Kenya on Wednesday, Pope Francis confirmed to reporters that he would indeed visit Mexico early next year.

Valentina Alazraki of Mexico’s Noticieros Televisa confirmed to CNA that Pope Francis told her his trip to Mexico would include four cities, not three.

He said his trip will include a visit to the town of Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican-U.S. border.

The Holy See Press Office has not officially announced the trip, but rumors, reports and announcements have been building.

The vice director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Ciro Benedettini, told CNA on Oct. 6 that the Pope was seriously considering a trip to Mexico next year. He said that if the trip takes place, an agenda is expected to be released in November.

On Nov. 1 Cardinal Norberto Rivera, Archbishop of Mexico City, announced that Pope Francis would visit Mexico the week of Feb. 12.

Back in March, Pope Francis told the Mexican media group Televisa 1 that he wished to make a weeklong trip to the country, with visits to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Ciudad Juarez.

Mexico will be Pope Francis’ fourth trip to the Americas. He visited Brazil for World Youth Day in August 2013. In July of 2014 he traveled to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay. He visited the United States and Cuba Sept. 19-27.

In March 2015 Pope Francis said that for his U.S. trip he had hoped to enter the country from the Mexican border. However, such an effort would have caused “a bit of havoc” and he did not want to visit Mexico without visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Pope Francis is visiting Africa from Nov. 25-30. He is scheduled to stop in Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic.

The removal of 164 Islamic State-related channels on Telegram highlights the savviness of the group in the usage of encrypted and secure messaging applications, and also draws to attention the difficulties of governments in balancing the right of privacy and the security capabilities of preventing attacks against countries.

By Dymples Leong*

Following recent attacks in Paris by Islamic State (IS), Telegram, an encrypted messaging application platform based in Berlin, blocked access to 164 IS-related channels in 12 languages made by the terrorist group and its supporters. The revelations added to concerns raised since December 2014 that the secure messaging app was used by IS as a preferred choice to disseminate its propaganda. But what makes Telegram so popular amongst supporters of IS?

Originally built by founders Pavel and Nikolai Durov as a means to restrict Russian security agencies’ access to their private communication, Telegram gained increased popularity as the fastest and most secure mass market messaging system, following the revelations by Edward Snowden of mass government surveillance by the United States.

Why the popularity?

Telegram has around 60 million users worldwide on its app. In the post-Snowden era, claims that Telegram cannot be monitored or disrupted by government surveillance or interference has caused users from mass market messaging platforms such as Whatsapp and Line to switch to Telegram. Touted as an ultra-secure and easy way to upload and share videos, text and voice messages; Telegram demonstrates the preference of IS supporters to the application with three features: Secret Chats, bots, and Channels.

Although somewhat similar to Snapchat, Telegram takes it a level higher with Secret Chats, employing end-to-end encryption of messages and enables the usage of self-destruct timers for messages, photos, videos and files sent within two parties, which will disappear from both devices. Encryption keys enhance the security of the secret chat, providing additional security in preventing potential man-in-the-middle attacks.

Bots are also used to propagate the ideology of IS. Bots can be created on in a chat or channel, enabling third party developers using simple Application Profile Interfaces (API) to create a bot, allowing it to connect with users. The bot then handles messages, with group members conversing with the bot as one would with a human. Research conducted by MEMRI’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor reveals that a handful of IS Telegram bots disseminate propaganda in different languages.

Telegram’s new feature ‘Channels’ enables the broadcast of individual messages to unlimited public audiences. These publicly available broadcasts enable IS to distribute propaganda, transfer very large file videos, advertisements calling for monetary donations, sharing of sermons, news of military victories, and more recently, broadcasting press releases with the intention to recruit and inspire followers – all in real time. It was revealed that the group used Telegram to disseminate its claims of responsibility for the Parisian attacks and the October bombing of the Russian Metrojet airplane.

Furthermore, interested parties could easily connect with the group’s members on these channels. The group has also directed its Twitter supporters to use Telegram channels, as Twitter accounts could be cross-checked and taken down. As of August 2015, Telegram’s volume of messages stood at an astounding 10 billion messages every day.

Implications of the usage of Telegram

Security analysts estimate that these Telegram channels attracted up to 16,000 followers. The savviness of the group presents an obstacle for security agencies in countering ideology, who have to deal with IS supporters who are digital natives and are up-to-date with the latest technology developments. Even as IS-related channels were shut down, supporters began creating channels immediately in new locations on Telegram. One new channel, Trendit, has garnered up to 500 followers following the removal of the channels.

Telegram takes down offensive public content by reviewing user reports. Public broadcast channels, similar to Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds, provide the potential for greater reach than private communications. Yet unreported channels are still online and remain operational. Though IS-related channels were removed, direct channels between IS supporters in individual chats (such as Secret Chats) remain, allowing followers to forward information about new channels, with different aliases. This back-and-forth of account removal and creation will only continue as encrypted messaging apps provide room for the group’s supporters to operate away from the eyes of surveillance.

In September 2015, Durov affirmed claims that terrorists were utilising Telegram to communicate, but stressed that privacy was more important than the fear of terrorism occurring. He highlighted that terrorists would use any available secure communication channel to communicate within themselves. The Parisian attacks may have pressured Telegram to take necessary action for the removal of IS-related channels. However, Telegram was swift to stress that its founding principle of the freedom of speech remains unchanged, with Durov stating that policies towards private chats will continue to remain as status quo.

The security conundrum

Some governments have used the Paris attacks as a clarion call for the weakening of technological capabilities such as encryption, stating that encryption hampers proficient intelligence and security gathering. Encrypted messaging applications such as Telegram have resisted government and third party interference till now. John Brenan, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recently highlighted the frustrations regarding national security agencies’ inability to access content from encrypted communication applications in the surveillance of terror groups such as IS.

Governments, especially in the West, are often restricted by civil liberty concerns such as the right to privacy, which is highly espoused by Telegram. Fears that a close adherence to the right of privacy could lead to a blind spot for security agencies has seen others calling for the creation of ‘back doors’ to apps such as Telegram’s. However, there is a danger of non-government actors hacking and exploiting the same back channel and accessing information. Legislation to weaken encryption efforts of technology providers will continue, with draft legislation being drawn in Britain giving security agencies access to communication records of suspected extremists.

Telegram has consistently mentioned that terrorist groups will find secure channels to communicate in. However the scrutiny and political pressure by critics and governments fearing that strong commercial encryption could hinder investigative mechanisms of security agencies will not abate. The question that governments, regulators and technology providers have to ask is to what extent should the line be drawn to find the delicate balance between the rights to privacy in communication and the right to disrupt any potential threats to national security.

*Dymples Leong is a Research Analyst at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

When a country is ripe for fascism, a fascist leader will emerge.

The mistake we commonly make is to focus all our attention on such a leader, while being less critical of those who follow him — because they are uneducated, misinformed, and gullible.

After all, it’s easier to express contempt for a man like Donald Trump than it is to criticize ones own neighbors.

As conservative politicians and commentators are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticisms of Trump — many are now openly calling him a fascist — the fact is, many of those critics have also long fanned the same bigotry around which Trump has built his presidential campaign, especially the Islamophobia that has been the backdrop of American politics for over a decade.

CNN reports: “Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it,” tweeted Max Boot, a conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is advising Marco Rubio.

Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it. https://t.co/KSfADd5Ycq

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) November 22, 2015

“Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is fascism. Period. Nothing else to call it,” Jeb Bush national security adviser John Noonan wrote on Twitter. Conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who has endorsed Ted Cruz, also used the “F” word last week: “If Obama proposed the same religion registry as Trump every conservative in the country would call it what it is — creeping fascism.”

Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is fasicm. Period. Nothing else to call it. https://t.co/XYee8dEgJr

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) November 20, 2015

Moreover, as Trump’s popularity is viewed in the context of contemporary American culture — the Tea Party, the polarizing effect of social media, fear of government, xenophobia, and isolationism — let’s not forget that as Hitler’s fascism rose in Germany, some of its most outspoken supporters could be found in the United States.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gU9op16rjQ

The world’s most powerful accelerator, the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operating at CERN in Geneva established collisions between lead nuclei, this morning, at the highest energies ever. The LHC has been colliding protons at record high energy since the summer, but now the time has now come to collide large nuclei (nuclei of lead, Pb, consist of 208 neutrons and protons). The experiments aim at understanding and studying the properties of strongly interacting systems at high densities and thus the state of matter of the Universe shortly after the Big Bang.

In the very beginning, just a few billionths of a second after the Big Bang, the Universe was made up of an extremely hot and dense ‘primordial soup’ consisting of the fundamental particles, especially quarks and gluons. This state is called the quark-gluon-plasma (QGP). Approximately one millionth of a second after the Big Bang, quarks and gluons became confined inside the protons and the neutrons, which are the present day constituents of the atomic nuclei.

The so-called strong force, mediated by the gluons, binds the quarks to each other and – under normal circumstances, trap them inside the nuclear particles. It is however, possible to recreate a state of matter consisting of quarks and gluons, and which behaves as a liquid, in close imitation of the state of matter prevailing in the very early universe. It is this state that has now been realised at the highest temperatures ever attained in collisions using lead ions from the LHC accelerator at CERN.

“The collision energy between two nuclei reaches 1000 TeV. This energy is that of a bumblebee hitting us on the cheek on a summer day. But the energy is concentrated in a volume that is approximately 10-27 (a billion-billion-billion) times smaller. The energy concentration (density) is therefore tremendous and has never been realised before under terrestrial conditions,” said Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje, professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and head of the Danish research group within the ALICE experiment at CERN.

The state of the universe

Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje explained that the purpose of the collisions is to transform most of the enormous kinetic energy of the colliding atomic nuclei into matter, in the form of a host of new particles (quarks) and their antiparticles (antiquarks) in compliance with Einstein’s famous equation E=Mc2. This creates – for a fleeting moment, a small volume of matter consisting of quarks, antiquarks and gluons that has a temperature of over 4000 billion degrees.

The first collisions were recorded by the LHC detectors, including the dedicated heavy-ion detector ALICE, which has significant Danish participation, immediately after the LHC’s two counter-circulating beams were aimed at each other this morning at 11:15 AM.

“While it is still too early for a full analysis to have been carried out, the first collisions already tell us that more than 30,000 particles can be created in every central collision between two lead ions. This corresponds to an unprecedented energy density of around 20 GeV/fm3. This is more than 40 times the energy density of a proton,” said Jens Jørgen Gaardhøje.

The extreme energy density will enable researchers to develop new and detailed models of the quark-gluon-plasma and of the strong interaction, which binds the quarks and nuclear matter together and thus understand the conditions prevailing in the early universe all the way back to a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.

By Charles Kennedy

Crude oil just capped off a third straight week of declines, as WTI nears the $40 per barrel threshold. Goldman Sachs is once again raising the possibility of oil dipping into the $20s per barrel.

That spells more pain for the energy sector. Many companies have already slashed spending and culled their payrolls, but the total number of job losses continues to climb.

According to Graves & Co., an industry consultant, oil and gas companies have laid off more than 250,000 workers around the world, a tally that will rise if oil prices remain in the dumps.

“I was surprised it’s gotten this far,” Graves & Co.’s John Graves told Bloomberg in an interview. In an eye-catching statistic that highlights who exactly is bearing the brunt of the downturn, Graves says that oilfield service companies account for 79 percent of the job losses.

Still, upstream E&P companies are also being substantially squeezed by another plunge in oil prices. According to an analysis by the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, a new round of layoffs could be underway in Texas, for example. The Texas Alliance predicted that the first drop in oil prices last year would lead to 40,000 to 50,000 layoffs in Texas. But the renewed drop since the end of the summer could force many more cuts. Right now, the group is putting a conservative estimate at 56,000 job cuts so far, but they say the real tally is probably higher.

Beyond oilfield services and E&Ps are not the only ones feeling the heat. Pipeline companies are also starting to lay off workers as well. Last week Enbridge confirmed that it was laying off 500 workers and leaving 100 positions unfilled, according to the Financial Post. The job losses account for about 5 percent of Enbridge’s North American workforce.

Fellow Canadian pipeline company TransCanada says that it will be issuing pink slips as well. While TransCanada confirmed that it would cut payroll, it declined to put an exact number on how many people would lose their jobs. TransCanada, reeling from the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, is struggling to get several major pipeline projects through the permitting phase, although it just won the go-ahead to build a large natural gas pipeline in Mexico.

Article Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Jobs-Lost-250000-And-Counting-Texas-Likely-To-See-Massive-Layoffs-Soon.html

By Erjone Popova

Kosovo authorities have urged citizens to stay away from crowded places after a meeting headed by the PM said risk of attacks was ‘real’.

Kosovo police have increased patrols in the streets and started intensive screening of individuals and vehicles at borders amid growing fears of terrorist attacks.

Prime Minister Isa Mustafa and security officials announced a state of alert and exceptional measures at a Kosovo Security Council meeting on Monday.

There were “real risks associated with terrorism”, according to the Prime Minister’s Press Office.

“Based on recent evaluations, security measures in the country have increased,” police spokesperson Baki Kelani told BIRN.

Police have urged citizens to “be vigilant and to avoid whenever they can crowded places such as concerts, sport events, nightclubs, bus stations or shopping centres.”

Naim Ramizi, owner of Jurnal Caffe in Pristina, told BIRN on Wednesday that the police had invited him and other bar owners to discuss security concerns.

“We were told that if we see anything suspicious in our venues or unusual behaviour by people, to call the police”, Ramizi said.

Edon Myftari, security policy adviser to the Prime Minister, said Kosovo has the capacity to address terrorism, but extra care was necessary.

“When addressing terrorism, there is no room for complacency,” he said, adding that efforts “must be continuous and [conducted] in full cooperation with other friendly countries”, Myftari told BIRN on Tuesday.

Security institutions attending the Security Council meeting announced extra operational readiness, including more police patrols in public areas, government institutions, diplomatic residences and in multiethnic and religious environments.

Operational plans “for the supervision of persons or certain groups”, were listed among the prevention measures mentioned by Prime Minister Mustafa’s press office.

Around 40 Islamist hardliners, including imams and alleged former fighters in the Middle East, are on trial in Kosovo following a crackdown that lasted from autumn 2014 to spring 2015.

More than 200 fighters from Kosovo have reportedly joined the ranks of ISIS and Al Nusra in Syria and Iraq.

There is no substantive evidence for a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in global warming and the use of those terms is therefore inaccurate, new research from the University of Bristol, UK has found.

The researchers, led by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of Bristol’s School of Experimental Psychology and the Cabot Institute, examined 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 2009 and 2014 that specifically addressed the presumed ‘hiatus’ and found no consistent or agreed definition of such a ‘hiatus’, when it began and how long it lasted.

The researchers then compared the distribution of decadal warming trends during the ‘hiatus’ – as defined by the same scientific articles – against other trends of equivalent length in the entire record of modern global warming. The analysis showed that all definitions of the ‘hiatus’ in the literature were found to be unexceptional in the context of other trends.

The researchers also found that, if sample size is small, the ‘hiatus’ will always appear to be present. For example, anyone making a claim for a ‘hiatus’ of 12 years or below (a claim made by a third of the articles studied) will find one, not because something new and different is happening, but because small sample sizes provide insufficient statistical power for the detection of trends.

Professor Lewandowsky said, “Our study raises the question: why has so much research been framed around the concept of a ‘hiatus’ when it does not exist? The notion of a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ demonstrably originated outside the scientific community, and it likely found entry into the scientific discourse because of the constant challenge by contrarian voices that are known to affect scientific communication and conduct.”

Discussing climate change using the terms ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ creates hazards for the public and the scientific community, the study concludes.

Professor Lewandowsky said, “Scientists may argue that when they use the terms ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ they know – and their colleagues understand – that they do not mean to imply global warming has stopped.

“But while scientists might tacitly understand that global warming continues notwithstanding the alleged ‘hiatus’, or they may intend the ‘pause’ to refer to differences between observed temperatures and expectations from theory or models, the public is not privy to that tacit understanding.

“Therefore, scientists should avoid the use of ‘pause’ or hiatus’ when referring to fluctuations of global mean surface temperature around the longer-term warming trend. There is no evidence for a pause in global warming.”

Citizens pay for the mistakes made by government, and it adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars a year.  Just 12 poor policy decisions by federal, state and local governments cost the average American household an extra $4,440 annually, according to a new study released today by The Heritage Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In “Costly Mistakes: How Bad Policies Raise the Cost of Living,” Dr. Salim Furth, a research fellow in Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, examines a dozen policies that impose readily quantifiable costs on the vast majority of American consumers, yet produce few broadly-shared benefits. The U.S. Sugar Program, for example, sets minimum prices on sugar and limits domestic production, while severely restricting sugar imports.

This arrangement, argues Furth, “benefits American agribusiness at the expense of American consumers and sugar growers in poor countries.” He estimates the program costs U.S. consumers $3.6 billion annually—about $29 per household.

Consumers pay far more dearly for federal fuel and transportation policies, Furth reports. The latest round of automotive fuel efficiency standards, for example, increased new vehicle price tags by about 10 percent, costing the average household about $450 per year—leading Furth to peg the standards as “one of the least efficient and most costly means of controlling pollution.”

The Renewable Fuel Standard requiring gasoline to include corn-based ethanol is “a double-whammy,” he says, hurting U.S. consumers at both the gas pump and the grocery store. “By requiring that corn be used inefficiently as fuel, the feds have succeeded in raising the prices of both fuel and food—to the tune of $255 per year for the average household,” the researcher concludes.

State and local governments are “partners in crime when it comes to saddling consumers with higher prices due to unwise policy decisions,” Furth observes. As one example, he cites state rules and regulations that bar car manufacturers from selling direct to consumers and otherwise effectively shield existing care dealerships from competition. This policy adds an extra $2,000 to the price of a car.

State-issued “Renewable Portfolio Standards” also make a dent in their citizens’ wallets, the study finds. These standards require power companies to produce or purchase a set percentage of the state’s electricity from renewable sources. Since most renewable energy sources are not cost-effective, Furth estimates that these requirements will soon cost the average household $110 annually.

Local governments, too, can make a huge difference in a family’s cost of living, primarily because they regulate housing—the single largest expense for most families. “In total,” Furth reports, “Americans pay about $209 billion a year for housing due to local government’s over-regulation of land use.”

That works out to an extra $1,700 annually per household, but Furth notes that these costs are not at all equally distributed.  “Rural families and those living in less-regulated cities are largely unharmed [by excessive land use regulation],” he writes, “but those in expensive metro areas are taken to the cleaners, frequently for over $5,000 per year.

“Clearly, bad policy choices made at all levels of government have artificially inflated prices on everything from food, to energy, from transportation to housing,” Furth says. “The good news is that policymakers can therefore easily lower Americans’ cost of living simply by discarding special interest policies, like the Sugar Program, and reforming or replacing woefully expensive policies with more cost-effective approaches.”

Thailand’s junta has proposed that the new constitution protect military personnel from prosecution for serious abuses, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday. The constitution drafters should reject the proposed de facto amnesty.

Coup leader Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha, in his capacity as the chair of the ruling National Council for Peace and Order, sent a letter regarding the draft constitution to the junta-appointed Constitution Drafting Committee on November 11, 2015. The junta recommended that the drafting committee include a clause that would exempt the military from civil, criminal, or administrative accountability for the use of force “in good faith” to protect national security from internal and external threats.

“A blanket immunity clause in Thailand’s new constitution would allow the military to commit abuses without fear of prosecution,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Given the Thai military’s long record of human rights abuses, this would effectively be giving soldiers a license to kill.”

Thailand’s military has operated with impunity for decades. Not a single soldier has been held legally accountable for deaths or injuries during crackdowns on protesters, dating from the 1970s through the latest political confrontations in April and May 2010. In 2010 at least 99 people lost their lives and more than 2,000 were injured, mostly from the excessive and unnecessary use of force by the military. Commanders who gave unlawful orders to fire have also not been held to account.

International human rights treaties ratified by Thailand make clear that status as a government official does not permit immunity for serious rights violations. In addition, Thailand has international legal obligations to ensure the right to an effective remedy for victims of serious violations, including unlawful killings. A victim’s right to an effective remedy requires that the government take the necessary investigative, judicial, and corrective steps to redress the violation and provide justice and reparations.

“The Constitution Drafting Committee should immediately reject the junta’s impunity proposal,” Adams said. “The new constitution should ensure the law applies to all people equally. No one should be able to escape prosecution and accountability for rights violations.”

By Wallace Turnbull III*

The U.S. nuclear deterrent is at a turning point. Seven decades have passed since a nuclear weapon was used, and many noted leaders have called for the abolition of nuclear weapons altogether—a “Global Zero.”1 At the same time, the legs of the U.S. nuclear deterrent triad are overdue for modernization at a projected cost of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.2 This modernized triad—consisting of a new long-range bomber and cruise missile, a replacement intercontinental ballistic missile, and a new ballistic missile submarine, as well as refurbished nuclear warheads—will be fielded in the 2030s and, based on historical recapitalization rates, will operate well into the 2060s.

This article considers the strategic environment of 2040 and beyond to assess whether the planned nuclear force structure is sufficient to provide deterrence in the uncertain world of the future. Keir Lieber and Daryl Press observed that the only way to do this “is to work through the grim logic of deterrence: to consider what actions will need to be deterred, what threats will need to be issued, and what capabilities will be needed to back up those threats.”3 This article assesses the U.S. nuclear deterrent using the framework recommended by Lieber and Press to show that the nuclear capabilities provided by the current and planned force are insufficient to provide credible deterrence in the 21st century. It argues for the addition of low-yield, high-accuracy nuclear weapons and electromagnetic pulse weapons to the air leg of the triad to bolster deterrence against limited nuclear war.

The reality that nuclear weapons did not disappear with the end of the Cold War has been acknowledged by a number of scholars, including Keith Payne, Paul Bracken, and Thérèse Delpech, as the so-called second nuclear age.4 Defined by Bracken as “the spread of the bomb for reasons that have nothing to do with the Cold War,” this second nuclear age is characterized by a multipolar world that contains a variety of nuclear actors who wield a range of nuclear weapons and whose interests have nothing to do with U.S.-Soviet dynamics.5 New nuclear actors such as Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Iran have all decided that these weapons are useful, and established nuclear powers such as Russia have rediscovered the value of such weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared, for example, that “only nuclear weapons allowed Russia to maintain its independence in the troubled 1990s” and that “developing and deploying an entirely new generation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems” will be a main point of Russia’s defense modernization activities.6 This should not be surprising because, as Bracken notes, the United States once “found the bomb a most useful weapon.”7 The stark reality of the second nuclear age is that many actors find nuclear weapons useful and are pursuing their development and acquisition. Some may even use them.

Emerging Strategic Environment

To understand which actions will need to be deterred by U.S. nuclear forces, we must first consider the strategic environment in which deterrence is expected to function. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates observed that divining the strategic environment of the future is fraught with uncertainty: “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam . . . we have never once gotten it right.”8 Rather than making firm predictions, we can only form some broad characterizations that appear likely given the current strategic environment.

According to Bracken, the most significant feature of the second nuclear age is that it is a multiplayer game.9 Unlike the bipolar Cold War world, the emerging strategic environment is characterized by the existence of many independent nuclear actors. Today, there are many states with nuclear weapons, and the tumultuous history of proliferation suggests this number may grow in the future.10 A consequence of the multiplayer game is that most nuclear actors now face security threats from more than one nuclear-armed opponent. India, for example, is concerned about deterring both China and Pakistan. This security trilemma, as it has been called by Linton Brooks and Mira Rapp-Hooper, means “actions taken by one state to defend against another state have the effect of making a third state feel insecure.”11 Overlapping security trilemmas suggest crisis stability dynamics are geometrically more complicated in the second nuclear age. Thérèse Delpech noted that one has only to look at the last three centuries of multipolar European history to conclude that the strategic environment of the future is “just as likely to be one of confrontation as of stability” and may indeed be less stable than the bipolar Cold War world.12

In the Nuclear Futures Project, Duncan Brown and Thomas Mahnken observed that another feature of the second nuclear age is the “imbalance in political stakes between the United States and potential adversaries.”13 Unlike the Cold War, where the Soviet Union represented an existential threat to U.S. security, the Nation today “has limited stakes in many potential conflicts,” while many potential adversaries are likely to view conflict with the United States as an existential threat.14 This imbalance poses the danger that adversaries may be motivated not only to pursue nuclear weapons but also to use those weapons to avoid defeat by superior conventional power.15 The key lesson for adversaries in the second nuclear age, as demonstrated by the swift defeat of the regimes of Muammar Qadhafi and Saddam Hussein, is that in a conventional fight with the United States, America’s enemies may be “fighting for their lives.”16 Deterring escalation during a conventional conflict when the adversary believes the regime, and even its existence, is at stake may make Cold War deterrence look relatively easy by comparison.17

A third feature of the emerging strategic environment is the potential for catalytic instability and escalation from terrorism or a nuclear accident. Terrorism, according to Bracken, provides a catalyst that “was not present in the first nuclear age.”18 For example, a terrorist attack could greatly increase the risk of nuclear escalation if it occurred in the midst of an ongoing Indian-Pakistani crisis. Likewise, catalytic escalation could be caused by terrorists who managed to acquire nuclear material in the form of fuel or radioactive waste from a nuclear powerplant and built a radiological dirty bomb.19 In addition to terrorism, a nuclear accident would be a powerful catalyst. Though fortunately none resulted in a nuclear explosion, there were at least 32 documented accidents involving U.S. nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1980.20 The U.S. nuclear stockpile is, on average, more than 20 years old, and many weapons lack modern safety features.21 The same concerns likely apply to Russia’s arsenal. More alarming, however, are newer members of the nuclear club such as Pakistan, which lacks decades of experiential nuclear learning and whose stockpiles of nuclear weapons lack sophisticated safety features.22 A nuclear accident in this environment is not unthinkable.

Limited Nuclear War in the Second Nuclear Age

Due to the potent combination of multiplayer dynamics with overlapping security trilemmas, imbalanced political interests, and an increasing risk of catalytic escalation, the second nuclear age is likely to be a dangerous one. Jeffrey Larsen argues that these factors and others result in an increasing risk of limited nuclear war, defined as “a conflict in which nuclear weapons are used in small numbers and in a constrained manner in pursuit of limited objectives . . . or in the face of conventional defeat.”23 During the Cold War, Herman Kahn suggested that there were “very large and very clear ‘firebreaks’ between nuclear and conventional war.”24 In Kahn’s firebreak model, there were strong incentives for the United States and Soviet Union to maintain the firebreak and avoid nuclear war. Barry Watts, however, observed that the strategic environment suggests the nuclear-conventional firebreak is shrinking and that “the taboo against nuclear use is being threatened” by the prospect of limited nuclear war.25 The current U.S. nuclear force was built to deter the Soviet Union from waging total nuclear war against the United States. In the uncertain world of the second nuclear age, the United States must also be prepared to deter a wide range of nuclear opponents across a variety of circumstances.

Thomas Mahnken evaluated a number of plausible limited nuclear conflict scenarios such as demonstration attacks or nuclear use to prevent conventional defeat.26 These scenarios are useful for considering what actions the United States might need to deter in the future. Mahnken’s key insight is that in each scenario, an adversary uses a relatively small amount of nuclear force in a limited manner to accomplish limited objectives. The plausibility of these scenarios lies in the perception of the adversary, who believes nuclear weapons are useful and that the United States lacks a credible deterrent against limited use due to the structure of the current arsenal, which emphasizes high-yield weapons delivered via ballistic missiles. Bruce Bennett, analyzing possible U.S. nuclear responses to limited-use scenarios, observed that the United States would seek to minimize civilian casualties and thus use only a few weapons, noting that the current nuclear force does not provide the limited options a U.S. President might want and “thereby may be inadequate to deter adversary nuclear weapon threats.”27

In recent years, numerous studies and reports have examined the optimal shape of the nuclear triad.28 By and large, these have focused on the structure of the triad—the specific mix of bomber aircraft, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—or on the quantity of weapons required for deterrence. The contribution of a triad of delivery systems to strategic stability is not being disputed.29 However, perhaps more important to deterrence in the second nuclear age than the means used to deliver a nuclear weapon is the type of weapon being delivered and the effects that weapon will produce.

The United States maintains nuclear weapons “to create the conditions in which they are never used.”30 To create such conditions, the United States must be able to brandish a credible threat such that an adversary concludes the cost of limited nuclear use outweighs any possible benefit. The prospect of limited nuclear war highlights the need to be able to threaten a flexible, limited counterforce nuclear response that minimizes civilian casualties and avoids third-party escalation, such as overflying Russia on the way to a target.31 This is not a new revelation. The 2009 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, for example, emphasized the need for a spectrum of flexible force employment options, as did the 2011 Nuclear Futures Project, which concluded that the United States needed the ability to rapidly deliver nuclear weapons with a range of yield options to “achieve military effects and political objectives without causing extensive collateral damage.”32 Likewise, Lieber and Press concluded in 2009 that the United States needed high-accuracy, low-yield nuclear weapons to give “leaders options they can stomach employing in these high-risk crises.”33

Required Capabilities

In view of the types of limited nuclear scenarios that seem likely in the second nuclear age, the most significant gap in the current U.S. nuclear force structure is a lack of nuclear capabilities useful for controlling escalation while minimizing collateral damage. A number of authors have concluded that low-yield nuclear weapons and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons are particularly useful in many potential limited nuclear scenarios.34 It is worth noting that these capabilities have, in the past, been included in the U.S. nuclear force.

In his 1957 work on limited nuclear war, Robert Osgood argued that deterrence credibility “requires that the means of deterrence be proportional to the objectives at stake.”35 Unfortunately, the bulk of the currently deployed U.S. nuclear deterrent consists of ballistic-missile weapons with yields in the hundreds of kilotons.36 In a limited nuclear war, these weapons lack proportionality and thus are not useful in most scenarios, calling into question U.S. deterrence credibility. In a limited nuclear war, the lack of U.S. means proportional to the limited objectives at stake means the President will be faced with only two options, both unacceptable: either acquiesce or escalate to general nuclear war, in effect committing mass murder by inducing significant collateral damage. The lack of credible escalatory options short of general nuclear war means nuclear opponents may calculate that the United States is unlikely to respond, thus increasing the adversary’s perceived value of nuclear escalation. In addition to continuing to modernize the existing triad of delivery systems, the United States must preserve credibility for the second nuclear age by investing in new low-yield and EMP nuclear capabilities and the means to accurately deliver these capabilities.

Conventional Weapons as Substitute?

Those in favor of eliminating the U.S. nuclear deterrent often argue that its conventional weapons are able to provide a sufficient deterrent against nuclear attack on the United States. The Global Zero Nuclear Policy Commission report, for example, stated that “strong conventional forces and missile defenses may offer a far superior option for deterring and defeating a regional aggressor” and “precision-guided conventional munitions hold at risk nearly the entire spectrum of potential targets, and they are useable.”37 When evaluated against the stark realities of the strategic environment, however, these arguments do not stand up. As illustrated earlier, a number of nuclear powers see utility in acquiring nuclear weapons precisely to counter the conventional superiority of countries such as the United States. In a limited regional nuclear scenario, it might be possible for a U.S. President to absorb a limited nuclear strike against the United States and respond only with conventional force. It is prudent to ask, though, what the impact of such a move on existing deterrence regimes would be.

The first effect of a U.S. failure to retaliate in kind would be for all other nuclear parties to question the long-term credibility of U.S. nuclear deterrence. Any nation, particularly a nuclear-armed one, seeking to attack the United States might entertain a theory of victory in which the United States did not respond. Such thinking could lead to crisis instability and risk further escalation. Thomas Schelling asserted that a country’s reputation for action, which he called “face,” “is one of the few things worth fighting over” because it “preserve[s] one’s commitments to action in other parts of the world and at later times” and hence maintains credibility.38

A second grave effect of failing to retaliate in kind to a nuclear attack would be a serious erosion of the concept of extended deterrence and, with it, the nonproliferation regime. Not only would future adversaries view U.S. deterrence as not credible, but so too might our allies, who rely upon the extended deterrence provided by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.39 After a 2013 North Korean nuclear test, polls showed 66 percent of the South Korean public favored developing a domestic nuclear weapons program.40 That number would likely be much higher if, as Schelling warned, the United States lost face in a limited nuclear scenario by not living up to its reputation for action.

While it remains desirable to eliminate U.S. dependence on nuclear weapons, the realities of the second nuclear age and the emerging strategic environment suggest this is not likely to happen soon. The knowledge to develop nuclear weapons cannot be unlearned. As Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman have observed, the proverbial train has left the station, and the “Nuclear Express now hurtles into a new century with a boxcar of nuclear technology.”41 Looking ahead to 2040, the United States can expect to still be competing in a multiplayer nuclear game in which there are more nuclear actors, possibly including both state and nonstate actors, and characterized by imbalanced political stakes and subject to the influence of dangerous catalytic escalations. It is prudent to invest now in the capabilities that may contribute to deterrence in the uncertain world ahead so that the United States is ready when the Nuclear Express once again pulls into the station.

Recommendations

High-Accuracy, Low-Yield Weapons. A number of limited nuclear use scenarios illustrate the utility of low-yield weapons to control escalation while limiting collateral damage.42 Nuclear opponents, for example, may use low-yield weapons in demonstration attacks or selective nuclear attacks or to prevent a conventional defeat, believing the use of relatively small weapons may avoid further escalation due to a perceived lack of credible U.S. response options. Other nations, most notably Russia, find low-yield weapons attractive and are pursuing the design of sub-kiloton-class warheads for battlefield use.43 To fill the low-yield credibility gap, the United States should pursue a two-pronged approach. First, the United States should evaluate options for leveraging existing stockpile weapons designs to field low-yield capabilities in the near term, and second, the United States should develop a new low-yield weapon coupled with a high-accuracy delivery mechanism suitable for minimizing collateral damage.

The B61-12 nuclear bomb, now under development, offers one near-term opportunity to field the recommended capability. The B61-12 program encompasses both a life-extension program to replace aging components and extend the life of the B61 bomb family, as well as a guided tail kit assembly to significantly improve the accuracy of the weapon.44 By improving accuracy with a guided tail kit, a first for a nuclear weapon, the B61-12 is able to hold at risk the same targets as a much larger weapon.45 The United States does not publicly disclose nuclear weapons yields. It is therefore not possible to know if the B61-12 will provide the required low-yield capability, though the technology developed for it significantly reduces the risk of fielding the needed capability. Paul Robinson, a former director of Sandia National Laboratories, has suggested using dummy secondary stages in existing weapons such as the B61 to produce yields in the low-kiloton range. By replacing the secondary stage with an inert dummy, the only yield produced would be from the fission-only primary stage.46 The United States should continue the B61-12 program, but should consider technical options to field an accurate variant with very low yield.

The next opportunity to field a low-yield weapon in the mid-term is to design such a feature into the warhead for the long-range standoff weapon (LRSO), which is a cruise missile being designed to replace the circa 1980s air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) and is scheduled for fielding in 2027.47 The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council recently selected the W80-1 warhead, currently deployed on the ALCM, as the warhead for the LRSO.48 Due to its age, the W80-1 warhead will need a life-extension program, designated W80-4, before it can be placed in service on the LRSO.49 This life-extension program, just now entering the design phase, provides an opportunity to modify the W80-4 design to include a low-yield variant for use on the LRSO missile.

The recommendation to field low-yield variants of existing weapons could be coupled with declaratory policy stating that the United States would employ low-yield weapons only in limited-use scenarios, providing a stepping-stone to credible nuclear deterrence for the second nuclear age. These actions are not, however, by themselves sufficient. As described earlier, developments in the second nuclear age show a worrying trend toward the fielding of “highly usable” nuclear weapons that may significantly alter the firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons. To avoid a situation where adversary decision calculus favors the early use of such weapons, the United States should pursue the design of new very-low-yield weapons coupled to highly accurate delivery systems. Similar weapons once existed in the U.S. arsenal, and, given sufficient political will, there are no technical challenges preventing their re-introduction.

EMP Weapons. In addition to low-yield nuclear weapons, a number of limited-use scenarios show weapons designed to produce electromagnetic pulse effects may be useful. An EMP is an extremely energetic radio wave that can be generated naturally by the interaction of a powerful solar flare with the Earth’s geomagnetic field or artificially through nuclear or nonnuclear means.50 The energy from an EMP interacts with electronic equipment, causing a range of effects from temporary upset to permanent damage, but causing no biological harm to humans or other organisms.51

Nearly all nuclear explosions produce an EMP, the characteristics of which vary according to the altitude of the explosion (also known as the height of burst).52 A high-altitude EMP occurs when a nuclear weapon is detonated at an altitude of 30 kilometers or more, and in such a burst the EMP will affect a large area.53 It is estimated that a multi-megaton nuclear EMP weapon detonated over the center of North America would cause severe disruption and damage from coast to coast and, according to Dr. Peter Pry, could possibly “blackout the national electric grid for months or years and collapse all the other critical infrastructures.”54

Conducting a catastrophic EMP attack, such as the one just described, against the United States would require significant capability—the attacker would need a multi-megaton weapon and space launch capability to deliver the weapon over the United States at high altitude.55 There is some evidence North Korea may have conducted a practice test of such a capability in April 2013 when North Korea’s KSM-3 satellite passed over the eastern seaboard of the United States at the optimal altitude for an EMP attack on the East Coast electrical grid.56

In many scenarios, an EMP attack, having the potential to be as catastrophic as a large-scale nuclear strike, will likely be subject to the nuclear-conventional firebreak—an adversary might be reluctant to cross the firebreak and escalate to nuclear war. However, for an adversary with limited nuclear capability, an EMP attack may be seen as a way to maximize the military utility of a small arsenal. Such an adversary may be more motivated to conduct an EMP attack, which might result in no direct casualties, if it believed the United States would not respond with a nuclear attack that could potentially kill thousands or even millions of people.57

It is also possible to create a smaller EMP by adjusting the detonation altitude and yield of the weapon.58 Such a weapon capable of generating effects over a few hundred square kilometers would have much more military utility in a limited-use scenario and, like low-yield nuclear weapons, would likely shrink the firebreak between conventional and nuclear use. There is evidence that China, for example, already views EMP weapons as a means to achieve information dominance in a regional “high-tech local war.” In their book The Science of Military Strategy, Chinese generals Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi write that “nuclear energy . . . will be employed to seek information dominance. For instance, the electromagnetic pulse weapon still in laboratory stage is a kind of nuclear weapon. It is possible for nuclear weapons to move from deterrence into warfighting.”59

In a nuclear escalation scenario, the United States might also consider the use of a limited EMP weapon as a sort of nuclear halfway house to control escalation by signaling resolve and demonstrating use of a nuclear weapon without direct loss of life. Another scenario in which an EMP capability might be useful is to control escalation horizontally in a scenario in which an adversary seeks to attack U.S. space capabilities.60 For example, if an adversary who was much less reliant on space than the United States threatened U.S. space systems, horizontal escalation by EMP attack might be more effective than a response-in-kind against the adversary’s space systems.

In the heavily interconnected digital world of the 21st century, nuclear EMP weapons have the potential to create catastrophic effects both on the battlefield and against civilian infrastructure. Furthermore, these weapons are not difficult to produce for a state possessing both nuclear weapons and ballistic missile or space launch capability and, in a crisis, may be destabilizing as a limited nuclear power seeks to maximize utility of its arsenal. Conversely, EMP weapons with regional effects might also be useful to restore deterrence and control escalation if they were used to answer a limited nuclear strike or the use of an EMP weapon. The United States should field a regional nuclear EMP capability to bolster its deterrent credibility in scenarios in which adversaries may consider an EMP or limited nuclear attack.

The United States can likely develop an EMP weapon by modifying an existing warhead, and it may even be able to use a current ballistic missile warhead, launched on an SLBM or ICBM, set to detonate at the correct altitude. Utilizing ICBMs to deliver an EMP weapon is problematic, though, as the missile would in almost all target scenarios overfly Russia, and in many cases China, posing a serious escalation risk as those nations might think they are under attack.61 SLBMs launched from ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are also problematic, though less so, because of overflight concerns as the SSBN patrol areas are optimized for attacks against Russia and China.62 One possible solution is to mate an existing warhead to a new delivery system that avoids overflight concerns. An air-launched missile, for example, would allow an EMP weapon to be forward deployed and launched toward the target while avoiding most overflight issues. The U.S. Air Force developed and tested an antisatellite missile, the ASM-135, in the 1980s that was capable of reaching the required altitude for EMP generation when launched from an F-15 aircraft.63 Another option is to modify a commercial space launch system such as Orbital’s Pegasus air-launched rocket.64 Given the political will to field an EMP weapon, there appear to be feasible technical delivery options.

Long-Range Penetrating Bomber. The triad of nuclear delivery methods—bomber aircraft, land-based ICBMs, and sea-based SLBMs—is likely to be useful to deterrence in the second nuclear age.65 The weapons capabilities recommended in this article can likely be adapted to be delivered via any leg of the nuclear triad, though this may not be desirable. As described, ICBMs and SLBMs are problematic for a number of limited nuclear scenarios. Employing the recommended nuclear capabilities on bomber aircraft, however, eliminates most of the concerns with ICBMs and SLBMs, as bombers can avoid most overflight issues.

Bomber aircraft possess a number of other useful attributes for limited nuclear war. A 2013 RAND study examined contributions of the triad legs to crisis stability by evaluating 48 crises, concluding that long-range penetrating bombers were key contributors to crisis stability.66 Bomber aircraft also offer flexibility; they can be recalled as well as retargeted in-flight and are also useful for signaling resolve to the adversary. For example, in response to North Korean provocations, the United States sent B-2 bombers to overfly South Korea in March 2013 in a demonstration of capability and resolve.67 Low-yield nuclear weapons are well suited for delivery by bombers, as weapons with similar capabilities, such as the B61 bomb, already exist. To employ an EMP weapon on bomber aircraft requires development of a new air-launched missile to reach the requisite detonation altitude, although the technology to build such a missile already exists.68

Bomber aircraft are likely to be particularly useful in the limited nuclear wars of the future, and the Air Force should continue developing a nuclear-capable penetrating bomber. The Air Force’s next-generation bomber program should be fully funded and remain a top priority.69 The Service should also begin studying solutions for an aircraft-delivered EMP weapon compatible with the new bomber and should seek to accelerate development of the LRSO cruise missile while ensuring it is compatible with future low-yield nuclear weapons. Critics will argue that the combination of a long-range bomber and a capable, accurate nuclear cruise missile coupled with a low-yield warhead is dangerous because it offers a nuclear capability that is actually usable in a nuclear conflict. It is precisely because such weapons are usable that they offer a potent deterrent to nuclear actors who might consider limited nuclear war.

Other Considerations. In addition to pursuing highly accurate nuclear weapons with low-yield and EMP effects and a new bomber and cruise missile to employ these effects, there are a number of other considerations important to maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent in the second nuclear age. First and foremost is a reinvigoration of strategic thought about nuclear weapons; there has been a dearth of thinking in the United States about how to actually use nuclear weapons should deterrence fail. The world is entering an age where the unthinkable may actually happen. U.S. policymakers and military leaders need to consider how to employ nuclear weapons to control escalation and restore deterrence in limited nuclear war. A reinvigoration of strategic thought about nuclear weapons must also be coupled with a robust nuclear exercise regime so these thoughts can be tested and practiced.70 Second, the United States will need to improve intelligence gathering on adversary nuclear programs as well as improve the ability to attribute a nuclear attack.71 In the intertwined security trilemmas of the second nuclear age, it may not be immediately obvious who initiated a limited nuclear strike, and thus attribution becomes more important than it was during the Cold War. Third, the United States should eliminate the dichotomy in the U.S. nuclear lexicon between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. This distinction will not make sense in the uncertain world of the future where some actors may wield a range of nuclear capabilities for both tactical and strategic effect.

The grim logic of deterrence did not disappear with the end of the Cold War. Colin Gray observed in 1979 that “one of the essential tasks of the American defense community is to help ensure that in moments of acute crisis the Soviet general staff cannot brief the Politburo with a plausible theory of military victory.”72 Though the adversary may be different, this task will be no less essential in the uncertain world of 2040, where there will still be many nuclear-armed actors, perhaps more than there are today, some of whom may desire to inflict harm upon the United States. To ensure no potential adversary ever contemplates a theory of victory for limited nuclear war, the United States must maintain an effective deterrent by investing in flexible nuclear capabilities such as low-yield and EMP weapons and a long-range penetrating bomber and cruise missile to accurately deliver these weapons. Choices made today will impact the nuclear force for decades to come. By making the choice to invest in the nuclear capabilities most useful for deterring limited nuclear war, the United States can improve the odds that another 70 years pass without a nuclear weapon being detonated in anger.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 79 which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:

1. George P. Shultz et al., “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007; James E. Cartwright, chair, Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure, and Posture, Global Zero U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission Report (Washington, DC: Global Zero, May 2012).
2. Jon B. Wolfsthal, Jeffrey Lewis, and Marc Quint, The Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad (Monterey, CA: James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, January 2014), 4.
3. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Nukes We Need,” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 6. (November–December 2009), 40.
4. Thérèse Delpech, Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012), 5.
5. Paul J. Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2012), 96.
6. Pavel Felgenhauer, “Putin Declares His Defense Agenda for the Next Decade,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 9, no. 38 (February 2012).
7. Bracken, 33.
8. Robert M. Gates, address at the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, February 25, 2011.
9. Bracken, 106.
10. Stephen M. Younger, The Bomb: A New History (New York: Ecco Press, 2009), 69–97.
11. Gregory D. Koblentz, Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age, Council Special Report No. 71 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2014), 20.
12. Delpech, 6.
13. Duncan Brown and Thomas G. Mahnken, Nuclear Futures Project (Laurel, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laborator, February 2011), 8.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Lieber and Press, 40.
17. Ibid.
18. Bracken, 118.
19. Worldwide, there are 435 nuclear reactors in operation, with another 72 under construction. Nuclear Energy Institute, “World Statistics,” available at <www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/World-Statistics>.
20. Emma Lacey-Bordeaux, “Declassified Report: Two Nuclear Bombs Nearly Detonated in North Carolina,” CNN.com, June 12, 2014, available at <www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/north-carolina-nuclear-bomb-drop/index.html>.
21. Nuclear Watch New Mexico, “Oldest U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Planned Stockpile Are Seven Decades Younger than Expected Lifetime,” NukeWatch.org, available at <www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/WeaponsAge.pdf>.
22. David Albright, “Securing Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Complex,” paper presented at 42nd Strategy for Peace Conference, Warrenton, VA, October 25–27, 2001, available at <www.isis-online.org/publications/terrorism/stanleypaper.html>.
23. Jeffrey A. Larsen, “Limited War and the Advent of Nuclear Weapons,” in On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century, ed. Jeffrey A. Larsen and Kerry M. Kartchner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 6.
24. Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 29.
25. Barry D. Watts, Nuclear-Conventional Firebreaks and the Nuclear Taboo (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2013), 72.
26. Thomas G. Mahnken, “Future Scenarios of Nuclear Conflict,” in On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century, 129–143.
27. Bruce W. Bennett, “On U.S. Preparedness for Limited Nuclear War,” in On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century, 211–212.
28. For example, see Dana J. Johnson, Christopher J. Bowie, and Robert P. Haffa, Triad, Dyad, Monad, Mitchell Paper 5 (Washington, DC: Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, 2009); Evan B. Montgomery, The Future of America’s Strategic Deterrent (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2013); Marc A. Peterson, “The New Triad,” Research Report (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 2011); Michael A. Samuel II, “Rebalancing the Nuclear Weapons Triad,” Research Report (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 2011); Michèle A. Flournoy and Clark A. Murdock, Revitalizing the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2002).
29. For a thorough analysis of the current triad’s suitability to deter in Mahnken’s possible future scenarios, see Bennett, 211–243.
30. William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger, America’s Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009), 20.
31. Bennett, 229–230.
32. Perry and Schlesinger, 23; Brown and Mahnken, 17.
33. Lieber and Press, 51.
34. Bennett, 211–241; Brown and Mahnken, 17–24; Lieber and Press, 39–51. Yield refers to the energy released during a nuclear explosion. It is generally measured in tons, kilotons, or megatons of TNT (trinitrotoluene) equivalent. Younger, 73–74.
35. Quoted in Larsen, “Limited War and the Advent of Nuclear Weapons,” 12.
36. See table 1 in Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2014,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70, no. 1 (January 6, 2014), 86.
37. Cartwright, 2.
38. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence: With a New Preface and Afterword (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 124.
39. George W. Quester, “The End of the Nuclear Taboo,” in On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century, 183; Robert Windrem, “Japan has Nuclear ‘Bomb in the Basement,’ and China Isn’t Happy,” NBC News, March 11, 2014, available at <www.nbcnews.com/storyline/fukushima-anniversary/japan-has-nuclear-bomb-basement-china-isnt-happy-n48976>.
40. Kim Jiyoon and Karl Friedhoff, The Fallout: South Korean Public Opinion Following North Korea’s Third Nuclear Test, Issue Brief No. 46 (Seoul: The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, February 24, 2013), available at <en.asaninst.org/contents/issue-brief-no-46-the-fallout-south-korean-public-opinion-following-north-koreas-third-nuclear-test/>.
41. Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009), 319.
42. Bennett, 211–241.
43. James L. Denton, “The Third Nuclear Age: How I Learned to Start Worrying About the Clean Bomb,” Research Report (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 2013), 7; Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Memorandum: Evidence of Russian Development of new Sub-Kiloton Warheads (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, August 30, 2000), 3. Document is now declassified.
44. Hans M. Kristensen, Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons, Special Report No. 3 (Washington, DC: Federation of American Scientists, May 2012), 23–24.
45. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “The B61 Family of Nuclear Bombs,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70, no. 3 (April 22, 2014), 83.
46. C. Paul Robinson, “A White Paper: Pursuing a New Nuclear Weapons Policy for the 21st Century,” Sandia National Laboratories, March 22, 2001, available at <www.sandia.gov/media/whitepaper/2001-04-Robinson.htm>. Most modern nuclear weapons are based on a two-stage design. The first stage—also called the primary—uses high explosives to implode a plutonium “pit” to produce a fission reaction. The resultant energy implodes the second stage—or secondary—that actually produces most of the weapon’s yield. See also Younger, 23–24, 69–74.
47. Hans M. Kristensen, “W80-1 Warhead Selected for New Nuclear Cruise Missile,” Federation of American Scientists, October 10, 2014, available at <http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/10/w80-1_lrso/>; Gabe Starosta, “Long-Range Standoff Missile Development Pushed Back by Three Years,” InsideDefense.com, March 5, 2014, available at <http://insidedefense.com/201403052463350/Inside-Defense-General/Public-Articles/long-range-standoff-missile-development-pushed-back-by-three-years/menu-id-926.html>.
48. Kristensen, “W80-1 Warhead.”
49. Ibid.
50. Peter V. Pry, “Electromagnetic Pulse: Threat to Critical Infrastructure,” Testimony before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, House Committee on Homeland Security, 113th Congress, May 8, 2014, 2–6. See also Clay Wilson, High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices: Threat Assessment, RL32544 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, July 21, 2008), 9; Guoqi Ni, Benqing Gao, and Junwei Lu, “Research on High Power Microwave Weapons,” paper presented at Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference, Suzhou, China, December 4–7, 2005.
51. John P. Geis, Directed Energy Weapons on the Battlefield: A New Vision for 2025, Occasional Paper No. 32 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Center for Strategy and Technology, 2003), 9–10; Pry, “Electromagnetic Pulse,” 3–6.
52. Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, eds., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Department of Defense and Energy Research and Development Administration, 1977), 514, 534.
53. Pry, “Electromagnetic Pulse,” 3; Glasstone and Dolan, 537.
54. Geis, 9; Pry, “Electromagnetic Pulse,” 1.
55. Glasstone and Dolan, 536–537.
56. Peter V. Pry, “EMP Threat from North Korea, 2013,” Family Security Matters, April 27, 2014, available at <www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/emp-threat-from-north-korea-2013>.
57. Wilson, 20.
58. Glasstone and Dolan, 537–538.
59. Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi, ed., The Science of Military Strategy (Beijing: Military Science Publishing House, 2005), 404.
60. For a discussion of horizontal and vertical escalation, see Kerry M. Kartchner and Michael S. Gerson, “Escalation to Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century,” in On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century, 152.
61. Bennett, 235.
62. Ibid., 229–230.
63. Peter Grier, “The Flying Tomato,” Air Force Magazine, February 2009, 66.
64. Orbital ATK, “Pegasus Fact Sheet,” available at <http://cms.orbitalatk.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Orbital%20Data%20Sheets/2B2_Pegasus.pdf>.
65. For a more complete assessment of the triad’s contribution to limited nuclear war, see Bennett, 211–241.
66. Forrest E. Morgan, Crisis Stability and Long Range Strike: A Comparative Analysis of Fighters, Bombers, and Missiles (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2013), xx.
67. Jethro Mullen, “U.S. says it sent B-2 stealth bombers over South Korea,” CNN.com, March 28, 2013, available at <www.cnn.com/2013/03/28/world/asia/korea-us-b2-flights/index.html>.
68. An aircraft employing an EMP missile would likely be exposed to the resultant electromagnetic pulse. Electromagnetic hardening therefore should be a design consideration and would likely drive additional requirements for the hardening of the aircraft systems.
69. Brian Everstine, “USAF Sends Next-Gen Bomber Requirements to Industry, Few Details Made Public,” Defense News, July 10, 2014, available at <www.defensenews.com/article/20140710/DEFREG02/140710001/USAF-Sends-Next-Gen-Bomber-Requirements-Industry-Few-Details-Made-Public>.
70. James Blackwell, “Deterrence at the Operational Level of War,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 5, no. 2 (Summer 2011), 49.
71. Bennett, 228–229.
72. Colin S. Gray, “Nuclear Strategy: The Case for a Theory of Victory,” International Security 4, no. 1 (Summer 1979), 56.

By Kester Kenn Klomegah*

For the past few years, Russian authorities have taken steady and strategic steps at the possibility of pushing huge investments in lucrative sectors as ways to strengthen bilateral relations and expand economic cooperation in a number of African countries.

That show of corporate investment and business interests has been sealed into various agreements, resulting from high-powered state delegations that frequently visited both regions, Russia and Africa, last year and during the first half of 2015.

Keir Giles, an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London explained to me in an email interview that “Russia’s approach to Africa is all about making up for lost time. The Soviet Union’s intense involvement in African nations came to an abrupt halt in the early 1990s, and for a long time Moscow simply didn’t have the diplomatic and economic resources to pay attention to Africa while Russia was consumed with internal problems.”

According to Giles “that changed in the last decade, thanks to two things: the arrival of President Vladimir Putin with a new foreign policy focus, and the massive influx of cash on the back of increased oil prices, which transformed Russian state finances. Russia is interested both in economic opportunities and in rebuilding political relationships that had in some ways been on hold for over a decade.”

In order to raise Russia’s economic influence and profile in Africa, in June 2009, the Coordinating Committee on Economic Cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa, popularly referred to as AfroCom, was created on the initiative of the Russian Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Vnesheconombank to help promote and facilitate Russian business in Africa. Since its creation, it has had full-fledged support from the Russian Government, the Federation Council and State Duma, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the African diplomatic community.

The vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, Georgi Petrov, noted at AfroCom’s annual executive meeting held in April 2015 that “in view of the current geopolitical situation in the world and the economic situation in Russia, Russian businesses have to look for new markets. In this regard, of particular interest is the African continent, which today is one of the fastest growing regions in the world with an annual GDP growth of 5%. In addition, opportunities for projects in Africa are opened with the accession of South Africa to the BRICS bloc.” Brazil, Russia, India and China are members of BRICS.

Reports also showed that Russia has started strengthening its economic cooperation by opening trade missions with the responsibility of providing sustainable business services and plans to facilitate import-export trade in a number of African countries.

But these Russian trade centers must necessarily embark on a “Doing Business in Africa” campaign to encourage Russian businesses to take advantage of growing trade and investment opportunities, to promote trade fairs and business-to-business matchmaking in key spheres in Africa.

Maxim Matusevich, an associate professor and director, Russian and East European Studies Program, at the Seton Hall University, told me in an interview that “in the past decade there was some revival of economic ties between Africa and Russia – mostly limited to arms trade and oil/gas exploration and extraction. Russia’s presence in Africa and within African markets continues to be marginal and I think that Russia has often failed to capitalize on the historical connection between Moscow and those African elites who had been educated in the Soviet Union.”

“It is possible that the ongoing crisis in the relations between Russia and the West will stimulate Russia’s leadership to look for new markets for new sources of agricultural produce. Many African nations possess abundant natural resources and have little interest in Russia’s gas and oil. As it was during the Soviet times, Russia can only offer few manufactured goods that would successfully compete with Western-made products. African nations will probably continue to acquire Russian-made arms, but otherwise, I see only few prospects for a diversification of cooperation in the near future,” added Maxim Matusevich.

As Buziness Africa gathered in May 2015, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has held talks during the first quarter of this year with a number of state delegations at various levels and that included foreign ministers from Burundi, Tanzania, Algeria, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Libya and Zambia.

And at the start of this year, the high-ranking Russian delegation headed by special presidential representative for the Middle East and Africa, Mikhail Bogdanov, participated in the 24th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of States and Government of the African Union and on the sidelines held a series of diplomatic discussions with representatives from some African countries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“On the sidelines of the forum, Mikhail Bogdanov had meetings and talks with President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of Mauritania, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, President of Madagascar Hery Rajaonarimampianina, President of Equatorial Guinea Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President of Gabon Ali Bongo, Vice President of Angola Manuel Vicente, Deputy Secretary General of the Arab League Ahmed Ben Helli.”

“The parties discussed current bilateral and regional agendas, further improvement of diverse cooperation between Russia and Africa, including cooperation with sub-regional organizations of the continent,” according to the transcript posted to the official website of the Foreign Ministry.

Further, Lavrov held a meeting on the sidelines of the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting was attended on the SADC side by representatives of Zimbabwe (the SADC presiding country), Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania, the Republic of South Africa, as well as the SADC Executive Secretary.

Without a doubt, Russia’s strategic return to Africa has sparked academic discussions at various levels where academic researchers openly admitted that political consultations are on track, arms export has significantly increased, but other export products are extremely low. Russia’s involvement in infrastructure development has also been low for the past decades on the continent.

In an interview, Themba Mhlongo, Head of Programmes at the Southern Africa Trust, thinks that Africa should not expect higher trade flows with Russia simply because Africa has not engaged Russia.

Mhlongo told Buziness Africa that “there is still low Africa-Russia Dialogue or mechanism for dialoguing with Russia, and on the other hand, Russia has not been as aggressive as China in pursuing opportunities in Africa because Russia has natural resources and markets in Eastern Europe, South West Asia. Russian exports to Africa might be dominated by machinery and military equipment which serves their interest well.”

He suggested that Africa must engage all BRICS members equally including Brazil and Russia in order to build alliances and open trade opportunities including finance and investment opportunities. Also African countries must not seem to show preferences in their foreign policy in favour of Western Europe if they want to benefit from trade relations with Russia. They must learn to be neutral!

Mhlongo suspects that Africa still holds an old view about Russia being a communist state and less technologically developed or unsophisticated compared to Western Europe. But Russia never colonized Africa and therefore there are no colonial ties between the two.

“If you look at African trade flows to Europe they reflect colonial ties most of the time. However, modern Russia is now one of the important emerging market countries and a member of BRICS. The Russian society is also closed and orientation is towards Western Europe in particular the United States (probably as a result of the period of bi-polar global power system that existed before). Russia exports to Africa but rarely sets up businesses. The language (or culture in general) could be one of the barriers to the development of trade relations with Russia,” he pointed out.

He further proposed that both Africa and Russia can initiate a dialogue in the form of Africa-Russian business summit to explore economic opportunities between them. However, there are other avenues to engage each other through the BRICS bloc or through bilateral diplomatic channels. Russia has embassies in Africa and African countries have diplomatic representations in Russia. Africa may have to pay special attention to cultural issues and try to understand Russia in this ever-changing environment and find an entry point to engage Russia.

On her part, Alexandra Arkhangelskaya, a senior researcher at the Institute of African Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences and a staff lecturer at the Moscow High School of Economics told Buziness Africa in an interview that Russia and Africa needed each other – “Russia is a vast market not only for African minerals, but for various other goods and products produced by African countries.”

The signs for Russian-African relations are impressive – declarations of intentions have been made, important bilateral agreements signed – now it remains to be seen how these intentions and agreements will be implemented in practice, she pointed out in the interview.

The revival of Russia-Africa relations should be enhanced in all fields: political, economic, trade, scientific, technological, and cultural. Obstacles to the broadening of Russian-Africa relations should be addressed. These include in particular the lack of knowledge in Russia about the situation in Africa, and vice versa, suggested Arkhangelskaya.

“As we witness rapid deterioration of relations between Russia and the West unfold, Russia’s decision to ban the import of some agricultural products from countries that have imposed sanctions against Moscow offers great opportunities for the expansion of trade of such products from Africa,” the professor observed in her discussion.

Experts who have researched Russia’s foreign policy in Africa at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for African Studies have reiterated that Russia’s exports to Africa can be possible only after the country’s industrial based experiences a more qualitative change and introduces tariff preferences for trade with African partners. As a reputable institute during the Soviet era, it has played a considerable part in the development of African studies in the Russian Federation.

“The situation in Russian-African foreign trade will change for the better if Russian industry undergoes technological modernization, the state provides Russian businessmen systematic and meaningful support, and small and medium businesses receive wider access to foreign economic cooperation with Africa,” according Professor Aleksei Vasiliev, the director of the RAS Institute for African Studies and full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Evgeny Korendyasov, an expert at the RAS Institute for African Studies.

Statistics on Africa’s trade with foreign countries vary largely. For example, the total U.S. two-way trade in Africa has actually fallen off in recent years to about $60 billion in 2013, far eclipsed by the European Union with over $200 billion and China, whose more than $200 billion is a huge increase from $10 billion in 2000, according to a recent “Africa in Focus ” website post by the Brookings Institution. According to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, Russia’s trade with Africa, south of the Sahara, is only $3.2 billion.

In one of his speeches posted to the official website, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted frankly in remarks: “it is evident that the significant potential of our economic cooperation is far from being exhausted and much remains to be done so that Russian and African partners know more about each other’s capacities and needs. The creation of a mechanism for the provision of public support to business interaction between Russian companies and the African continent is on the agenda.”

By Aaron Rock-Singer*

Religion was a pillar of pre-modern political identity in the Middle East, arising out of Muslims’ understanding of Islam’s foundational moment and state institutions that developed with the spread of Islamic Empire. Beginning at the turn of the 19th century, European colonial powers and indigenous reformers questioned the centrality of religious identity; instead, it was to be the nation that defined the political community. Since then, the nationalist project has permeated 20th century ideological conflicts in the region, equally shaping the claims of secularists and Islamists. Today, advocates of religious change refer back to early Islamic history as they seek to place religious over national identity, yet they, like their competitors, are unmistakably shaped by the secular nationalist project.

Looking out at the contemporary Middle East, one may observe a region riven by basic conflicts of political identity, and religion is frequently a focal point for these tensions. The conflict is not solely between those who seek to marginalize Islam’s role in politics and those who seek to place it front and center; the conflict is just as heated between Islamists and Salafi-Jihadis in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Tunisia as it is between secularists and nationally-oriented Islamists.

As such, this article will focus on four main questions: what was the role of Islam in the pre-modern political identity in the Middle East? How did Islam’s position shift as a result of both European colonialism and indigenous reformers? How did this shift, in turn, undergird key ideological conflicts of the 20^th century? And, finally, how did this history shape the post-Arab Spring Middle East?

Religion as a Pillar of Pre-modern Political Identity in the Middle East

The role of religion in pre-modern political identity is inseparable from the original tie between religious and political identity at the dawn of Islam. This is not because Islam’s founding moment was necessarily slated to shape the next 14 centuries; instead, it was because many later Muslims understood this founding moment as a golden age to be replicated. In exploring the original fusion of religious and political identity, this article will examine not merely a distinct historical moment, but also a future model of emulation.

Muhammad ibn Abd Allah, known later to Muslims as the Prophet Muhammad, was born in 570.  Around 610, Muhammad began meditating at night and, over the next 22 years, until his death in 632, he received revelations. What is most relevant when it comes to the question of political identity is that these revelations did not emerge in a political vacuum. Instead, whom you worshipped and whom you allied with politically were tied closely together in the ancient world.

Muhammad was no different. In 622, Muhammad and his followers emigrated to an agricultural community called Yathrib, later renamed Medina, which was 215 miles to the north of Mecca.  It was in Medina that Muhammad became not merely a religious leader, as he had been in Mecca, but a political leader as well.  In this setting, confessing belief in one God and in Muhammad as his Prophet implied a commitment to building a new political order. We read that the Prophet instructed his followers not only how to perform religious rituals (including prayer, fasting, and penance) but also how to tax and distribute booty. Taxation was no less a religious ritual than praying for these earliest Muslims. It was no surprise in this context that religion was central to political identity.

This is not to suggest, however, that religion was the only factor in identity. Muhammad’s emergence as a religio-political leader was deeply shaped by the tribal politics of 7^th century Arabia.  It happened to be the case in 7^th century Arabia that there was an agreement between the conquest goals of a polity headed by the Prophet Muhammad and the material interests of the tribes of the city formerly known as Yathrib, now Medina. Crucially, such a fit was contingent rather than necessary.

Religion remained central to political identity following the golden age of Islam, yet constantly bumped up against the pull of ethnic ties. The remainder of this section will discuss this dynamic with reference to three significant Islamic empires: the Umayyads (r. 661-750), the Abbasids (r. 750-1258) and the Ottomans (r. 1299-1922).

Following the Muslim civil war of 661, the Umayyad caliphate was established, with its center in Damascus, Syria. The first thing to realize about the relationship between religion and political identity was that the population was taxed along religious lines. Muslims had an obligations to serve in the military while non-Muslims pay a tax, known as the jizya, which absolves them from the responsibility to serve. The jizya continued to be used under both the ‘Abbasids, who succeeded the Umayyads and under the Ottomans.  The levying of this tax along religious lines reflected a broader division of society: under all three empires, religion was the primary marker of political identity. Indeed, under the Ottomans, this was formalized in a Millet system. This diverse empire, which encompassed, at different times, much of the Arab world and the Balkans, included many non-Muslims, whether Greek Orthodox (including ethnic Greeks, Arabs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians), Jews, Catholic Armenians and even some Protestants. In this context, it was the Greek Orthodox patriarch who represented ethnic Greeks, Arabs, Macedonians, and Bulgarians, not a specific representative for each ethnic community. The point here is that, in the pre-modern Middle East, religion was the central pillar of political identity as a legal matter.

One shouldn’t, however, overstate this point: Neighborhoods were often religiously mixed and, even with the prominence of religion to political identity, other ties remained. Just as the conquests of the early Islamic community in Arabia saw a neat fit between the expansion of the Islamic community and the material interests of the tribes that supported them, tribal concerns were central to the Umayyads, too. Yet, under this empire, the fit between tribal interests and the broader Islamic polity declined with the conversion of ever-larger numbers of non-Arabs, as well as the mixing of Arab and non-Arab Muslims.  It was thus no surprise that when revolt against the Umayyads came in 750, it was in Khurasan, a region in eastern Iran. The rebels of Khurasan who launched the Abbasid revolution were of mixed Arab and Persian ancestry and they revolted partly because the governance structures of the Muslim community had not caught up with the changing face of that community.

Yet, the move beyond the initial identification of Islam with Arab tribesmen did not efface previous identities. Rather, it merely broadened the range of identities that was included. Instead of appealing specifically to the Arab population, the Abbasids spoke the language of a new set of subjects centered in Mesopotamia and Iran.  They certainly asserted their legitimacy in distinctly Islamic terms, noting their descent from the Family of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet, they also spoke in terms of the Persian concept of the divine right of kings by which the ruler ruled based on divine imperative. Just as importantly, the Abbasids did not seek to vanquish Arab tribal ties; instead, when the Abbasids arose around 750, they coopted a significant number of Syrian troops so that they would take part in the new regime. Put simply, as the Islamic Empire spread, previous identities and allegiances, material interests and political divisions had to be managed under a banner of religious unity. This was true in the Ottoman Empire as well; despite the centrality of the banner of Islam, ethnicity didn’t vanish and was certainly a source of tension between an Ottoman center and a diverse empire of Arabs, Armenians, ethnic Greeks, and Turkic Central Asian Muslims.

Before moving onto modern identity and religion, it is worth recapping a few points. First, religion was a pillar of political identity in the pre-modern Middle East and a source of unity for increasingly diverse Islamic Empires, whether Umayyad, Abbasid or Ottoman. At the same time, though, it was not an all-encompassing identity; ethnic ties and tensions continually resurfaced –whether the dominance of Arabs over Persians under the Umayyads, the ascent of non-Arabs under the Abbasids, or the dominance of Turks over Arabs, ethnic Greeks and the Balkans under the Ottomans. If religious identity served as an umbrella, it was not the only game in town.  Crucially, though, ethnicity was not a sufficient basis of political community; that would have to wait for the rise of nationalism in the 19^th century Middle East.

The Arrival of European Colonialism and the Relationship between Religion and Politics

At the turn of the 19^th century, European colonial powers began to reshape the Middle East. This was not the beginning of contact between the West and the Middle East – ties of trade and politics well precede this contact – but the tables had turned considerably in the face of overwhelming European political, economic and military might. The French arrived in Egypt in 1798, the British set up outposts in the Arabian Peninsula in 1799, the French annexed Algeria in 1834 and then the British took control of Egypt from 1882 to 1922. In painting this picture of European colonial expansion, it’s also important to note Russian and British imperialism in Iran during the mid to late 19^th century. While European might was considerable, the changes that would ensure in the relationship between religion and politics was not merely a product of coercion. Rather, for Middle East elites, Western political power and intellectual thought were often assumed to be linked; to catch up with its European colonial masters, the Middle East had to modernize itself along intellectual, political, economic and military lines.

The question of modernization – and how far to take it – was central to 19^th century political elites within the Ottoman Empire. Faced with the erosion of the Empire’s political and economic independence, Ottoman statesmen sought to centralize the state, embracing new transportation technologies (including the railroad) and expanding both educational and bureaucratic institutions. Most crucially for this particular context, they embraced an idea of “Ottomanism” in the late 19^th and early 20^th century; Ottoman citizens of different religious communities took seriously the promise of a civic order based on allegiance to a broader Ottoman Empire, one in which citizenship, rather than religious community, defined one’s political place. Ottomanism, however, was not the only vision of communal belonging relevant at this time and local ethnic dynamics came to the fore as Ottoman subjects, Arab and non-Arabs, increasingly came to identify with ethnic communities rather than an Ottoman center. While one shouldn’t embrace an uncritical narrative of the spread of nationalism – that would only come later – what is apparent here is a “cultural” identity, based on ethnicity, which superseded both the traditional Islamic view by which religious affiliation was the ostensible pillar of political identity and Ottoman attempts to provide a civic identity that could unite the Empire’s subjects along more inclusive lines. Crucially, though, it is only after the First World War that nationalism would appear.

One can observe a somewhat different dynamic within states that experienced direct colonization. In this context, it was not just the question of economic and military might and the need for an inclusive imperial identity – Ottomanism – but of the spread of nationalism and the redefinition of the role of Islam within society. Egypt’s response to French colonialism is a case study of this shift. There were increased efforts to define Egypt primarily as a territorial nation-state and the secularization of law so that “Islamic law” was limited to issues of personal status, whether marriage, divorce, or inheritance. In the process, “religion” became a secondary component of political identity, subservient to the national. While Ottomanism certainly gestured in a similar direction, an imperial civic identity was far weaker than its national counterpart and its intervention in religious law far more limited.

This may therefore beg the question where this national identity came from? The short of the long is that nationalism represented an elevation of ethnic ties – ties that had long stood on the backburner within political identities in the Middle East – to the forefront and the conflation of ethnicity with a “national” community defined by political borders. In this regard, the Middle East was hardly exceptional: worldwide, the idea of the nation spread through the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, facilitated by the spread of literacy and newspapers that enabled people to imagine themselves as part of a nation.  The urgency of national imagining in the Middle East, in turn, took on increased importance with the shift away from colonial powers to self-rule. In the early 20^th century, British mandates in Palestine, Iraq and Transjordan and French Mandates in Syria and Lebanon promised eventual political independence. In other countries within the region, there was no promise of independence (most notably, Italian colonialism in Libya and French colonialism in North Africa), but national ties served as an effective means of uniting the indigenous population against colonizers.  While religious identity had certainly not vanished – often, it served as a useful second source of unity – it was the national tie that dominated.

During the 19^th century, Middle Eastern countries were exposed to unprecedented European penetration, which not only challenged these countries politically, military and economically, but also pushed them to articulate identities that could better unite their inhabitants. In this context, the idea of the nation – a supposedly primordial identity based on shared ethnic ties –took center stage. While the role of ethnic ties was not new – we have seen the continued ties and tensions that surround ethnicity within Islamic history – the script had been flipped as a national community based on ethnicity became the primary pillar of identity and religion took a secondary role.

Ideological Conflict in the 20^th Century Middle East and the Role of Islam

In the face of European colonialism and cultural challenge, the question as how to respond.  In the late 19^th century, two leading religious figures, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad ‘Abduh, came together to advance the cause of Pan-Islamism as an antidote to imperialism. Al-Afghani, a native of Iran, and ‘Abduh, a leading religious figure in Egypt, focused on securing the independence of Muslim lands, whether India, Iran or Egypt, from foreign control. These efforts, however, were of limited use: while al-Afghani likely played some role in initiating the tobacco protests in Iran in 1891, there was little else to show for his efforts in practical terms.

One explanation for al-Afghani’s failure is that nationalism had overtaken Pan-Islamism. While this is certainly possible, the central factor here is the power of states to determine political identities; religious identity would continue to play a role, but it would from within, rather than outside the boundaries of nation-states. As increasing numbers of Middle East states gained political independence as nation-states, political projects that worked within the framework of the territorially-defined nation increasingly gained strength.  In some cases, this involved resolutely secular nationalism that relegated all religious symbols and practices to the privacy of homes; most notably, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, founder of the Modern Turkish Republic, even insisted on the use of a Latin instead of Arabic alphabet to write in Turkish, so as to distance the secular republic of Turkey from its Islamic Ottoman past.

While Ataturk represented an extreme, he was not alone. Secular-nationalist regimes arose in Iran under the Pahlavi family beginning in 1925, in Egypt under the Free Officers movements of 1952, and in Iraq with the foundation of the Republic in 1958. While secular nationalist regimes claimed to maintain a clear divide between the secular nationalist project and Islam, facts on the ground contest this neat division. Most notably, many of these states took an active role not only in monitoring what went on in mosques, but also in providing appropriate preachers. Along similar lines, religious education was taught within the public educational system in ways that supported state policies, rather than excluding religion wholesale.  So, on the one hand, religion clearly played second fiddle when it came to political identity. On the other hand, it’s important to remember that, notwithstanding claims of secularism, state elites in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere were actively involved in using religion to define their national communities.

Alongside state-sponsored projects of secular nationalism, Islamic nationalism arose. In describing them as Islamic nationalists, the point is to highlight the continued prominence of the nation in their definitions of political identity. This trend is particularly notable in the region’s most prominent Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by a school teacher, Hasan al-Banna, the organization spread to Syria in the 1930s, Jordan in 1945, Kuwait in the 1950s, Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and Iraq in the 1960s. Throughout the region, different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood –which share ideological roots but are organizationally independent – work within the nation-state framework, seeing to transforming their respective countries. While they maintain an ideal of Pan-Islamic unity – like al-Afghani and ‘Abduh – their focus is local. It is in this context that leading thinkers have turned to the development of visions of a “civil” state – which privileges national identity – with an Islamic reference point.  Though they might valorize a Pan-Islamic caliphate, they are not oriented towards this goal as a practical matter. Just as importantly, though, it is important to note that the question of the relative balance between religious and national identity is a source of contention among Islamist organizations across the region and, often, the “civic” basis falls away in the face of more authoritarian calls to implement Islamic law. While Islamist organizations such as the Brotherhood largely accept the centrality of the nation, this acceptance can involve internal complications.

Nonetheless, the national focus of Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood – and their subordination of religious to national identity – is clear in the contrast and enmity between such groups and their Pan-Islamic Jihadi competitors, often known as Salafi-Jihadis. To understand the commonalities and differences between these two streams, a bit of history is necessary. As noted earlier, Egypt was ruled by secular nationalist leaders following the Free Officers’ revolution of 1952. Most notably, Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, who ruled between 1954 and 1970, repressed, jailed and executed leading Brothers as well as rank and file members of the organization. It was in this context that a faction within the Brotherhood, led by another school teacher and literary critic, Sayyid Qutb, came to a startling conclusion: though Nasser and his ilk claimed to be Muslims, they were not because they ruled by man-made rather than divine laws, accepting artificial national boundaries while rejecting the transnational Islamic community. Though Qutb went to the gallows in 1966, his most radical ideas lived on in the rise of groups in 1970s Egypt that practiced takfir – the act of decreeing another Muslim to be an infidel based on his or her perceived disobedience to God’s law. Without delving too much into a side discussion, in the Qutbian formulation, religious identity was the only relevant form of communal belonging. On this front, Qutb was not merely a purist but, as our discussion of Islamic history suggests, at odds with the dominant trends of Islamic history since the rise of the early Islamic community in 7^th century Arabia.

The crucial component of the story is that the Qutbian stream didn’t succeed in Egypt because it faced the overwhelming power of the state’s repressive institutions. In this context, its leading figures moved onto Afghanistan in the late 1970s. In the shadow of the 1979 Soviet invasion, they found common cause with ideological sympathizers from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Palestine and elsewhere as they partnered with local Afghani leaders to fight the Soviets. It was in this context that the Afghan Arabs sought to live a Pan-Islamic paradise that pivoted on the ability of religiously justified violence to create a political community that placed Islam first in Afghanistan.

Up to this point, this narrative has largely avoided discussion of Western influence. Although Islamists certainly decry Western impurity frequently and speak of the need to expunge foreign ideas and identities, their opponents are local. Put differently, when they speak of the West, one needs to ask whom they’re targeting and why it’s beneficial to them to speak in this idiom. Most frequently, it is the secular nationalist competitors whom Islamists tar with the accusation of association with the West.

This focus on the local allows for an understanding of the multiple visions of the relationship between religious and national identity more clearly. Here, one can look at secular nationalist and Islamist nationalism as not only political competitors but also ideological cousins. Though they differ in key respects – most notably over how the political community should define itself – is it primarily national or religious? – they share a similar view of the basic borders of the political community, which is the nation-state. They also have broadly similar views of how inhabitants of these countries should serve them: obedient to the authority of the government, industrious citizens are to work for the betterment of the political community.

This vantage point also helps to understand Pan-Islamic Jihadism more accurately. Far from a throwback to the pan-Islamism of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, this movement – most commonly identified with al-Qaeda – emerged out of the perceived failure of Islamist nationalism in Egypt between the 1950s and 1970s. Put simply, a project that placed the nation, and not Islam, as the central pillar of political identity, supported by state institutions, was too powerful for Jihadis. Accordingly, Jihadis moved abroad – moving away from fighting the “near enemy” in Egypt (the Egyptian regime) to the “far enemy” (the Soviet Union) in Afghanistan.  Though Muslim Brothers and pan-Islamic Jihadis share a certain common trait –the commitment to transnational political cooperation among Muslims – they also differ greatly. Most notably, varied Islamist nationalist organizations have made their piece working within the nation-state and with the prominence of the nation within political identity. Neither should this seem strange: if one thinks of Islamists not as a monolithic ideological mass but as individuals raised within particular countries, then it makes perfect sense that, for most, the borders of these countries – and the notion of a nation – retain appeal.

Political Identity and the Trials and Travails of the Arab Spring

How and why does this history matter as we seek to make sense of the political tremors, polarization and violence of the post-Arab Spring Middle East?  Notwithstanding what has appeared to be a tumultuous aftermath of the Arab Spring, the broad dynamics that emerged over the past two centuries have largely remained in force. The Arab Spring has seen three main scenarios. In the first, national and Islamic identity work in tandem thanks to the durability of a civil state. Tunisia, arguably the Arab Spring’s sole success story, is a case in point: the country successfully navigated a transition from Ennahda (the Islamist party victory in the 2011 elections) to Nidaa Tounes, which is composed of members of the former ruling party, secular leftists, members of the Tunisian General Labor Union, and the national employers’ union. Two dynamics in Tunisia are of particular note. First, the civil state serves as the basis for negotiation; there is no question that national identity is primary nor is there a question of whether Islam has a place within Tunisian society. Instead of seeking to dominate through the application of Islamic Law, Islamists focus on ensuring space for religious practice. Their secular opponents, on the other hand, participate in a debate over the role of Islam in Tunisia: Should the constitution specify a state religion? Is Islamic finance appropriate for Tunisia? In which domains should Islamic courts have purview over civil law?  Second, a significant portion of the population, beyond the ranks of those who vote for Ennahda, want religious influence in personal status issues, even as many of these same people would express support for a strong divide between religion and politics. The takeaway here is that the ranks of those who support a strong role for religion in political identity is far larger than that of Islamists; religion is central to political identity in ways that far exceed the Islamist project.

A second scenario, most obvious in Egypt, involves a situation in which the national community remains central, yet the realm of legitimate “religious” expression narrows substantially. To be clear, President ‘Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi is hardly a bulwark of secularism; instead, he seeks to actively use religion to advance his policy goals. Though al-Sisi seeks to paint a zero-sum game in which Egypt faces terrorism, this claim hides the fact that a majority of Islamists fight not to destroy Egypt but to participate within it. This is not to make excuses for the Brotherhood’s mistakes and overreaches: when it was in power, it often excluded other contestants to political power from access to government institutions, and processes of political negotiations. The Brotherhood did not, however, jail hundreds even thousands of liberals, or sentence them to death by the hundreds in show trials. The crackdown on the Brotherhood has coincided with a rise in Jihadi violence that seeks to undermine the authority of the Egyptian state and to challenge the validity of national identity. This is hardly a coincidence: by branding the Brotherhood a terrorist organization and treating it as such, al-Sisi created a self-fulfilling prophecy by which segments of the Brotherhood would turn to violence, alongside existing Jihadi groups, in the absence of any alternative. Yet, like in Tunisia, despite the polarization between al-Sisi and the Brotherhood, it is important to remember that many voters see no conflict between religiosity and opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Islam remains a key component of national identity even as Islamists languish in jail.

A third and final scenario takes the political polarization evident in Egypt to the level of state collapse and civil war. In this, I’m talking about Syria. By providing no space for legitimate political opposition, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made war on those who supported the primacy of Syrian identity. He also left the field open for Jihadis, whether Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS, who are far more comfortable using political violence against regime targets and civilians alike. While a democratic transition could have provided the space in which the exact relationship between Syrian nationalism and Islam could be negotiated, Assad’s attempts to hold onto power have thrust religious identity to the fore as a non-negotiable source of conflict. This conflict is all the more potent as a result of Assad’s religious ties: as an Alawite, which is an offshoot of Shi’ism, he represents a particularly egregious form of theologically illegitimate leadership for Jihadis. In the face of the failure of Assad to rally the rest of the Syrian opposition to his side – hardly unsurprising given his use of repression against them – Syria has seen both super and sub-national identities – pan-Islamic, sect, tribe, and so forth – come to the fore. In the process, ISIS has arisen, brandishing a vision that rejects national identity in favor of a particularly narrow and anachronistic vision of religious identity. Yet, in doing so, ISIS is a minority not only among its contemporary competitors but also within Islamic history.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I’d like to recount what we what we know about political identity in the Middle East. In the pre-modern period, religious identity was primary, even as ethnic allegiances existed alongside, and often in competition with, religious ties. In this context, the primacy of religious identity was supported not merely by popular sentiment, but by a legal system that divided the population by religious community. Yet, these states were ultimately made up of people who often expressed ethnic allegiances: whether the Arab tribesmen of the Umayyad state, the Persian influences of the Abbasid caliphate, or the dominance of a Turkic center over Arab and Balkan peripheries during the Ottoman Empire, ethnicity never really went away.

In the modern period, by contrast, we see a reversal of roles. Under the banner of nationalism, ethnicity took center stage in the political identity of Middle Eastern countries. While the fiercest secular nationalists sought to relegate religion entirely to the private sphere, most embraced religion as a complement to national identity. The primacy of nationalism was most evident in the claims of a majority of Islamists: even as they challenged the state to Islamize state and society, they rarely questioned the validity of the existence of a national identity. When Pan-Islamic Jihadis did so, theirs was a minority position.

The Arab Spring and its aftermath, despite the very real tremors to regional security and the attendant human suffering, fall squarely within this history. While Syria, and its neighbor, Iraq, offer a cautionary tale of the limits of state control, national allegiances retain sway elsewhere in the region and religion serves as a significant, yet secondary, form of identity.  The shift from religion to nation as the primary pillar of political identity, though it arose two hundred years ago, endures today.

About the author:
*Aaron Rock-Singer is a social and intellectual historian of contemporary Islam. Hi is currently a PhD candidate in Princeton’s Near Eastern Studies department. His dissertation explores the emergence of the Islamic Revival in Sadat’s Egypt (1970-1981) and draws on Islamic magazines, audiocassette sermons, and television programs to chart the key projects and players within this religious shift. His research more broadly concerns the relationship between state-sponsored and Islamist educational projects, Salafis and Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the diverse ways in which religious actors use mass media. www.aaronrocksinger.com

Source:
This article is based on Rock-Singer’s talk on the same subject at FPRI Butcher History Institute on “Understanding the Modern Middle East: History, Identity, and Politics,” held on October 17-18, 2015 in Philadelphia. This article was published by FPRI.

By Mehmet Yegin

The Russian Federation has a typical way of dealing with NATO member countries in security confrontations. Moscow does not directly and openly confront these countries but rather abuses the gray area in which certain encroachments are too insufficient as to require the invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Within this gray area, Russia commits a violation and then propagandizes to other NATO member countries not to regard the matter as a serious threat that would necessitate NATO involvement. Thus, using salami tactics, Russia expands its influence on the ground without directly confronting NATO all the while pushing ahead to attain its goals.

As it relates to Russia’s encounters with Turkey, Ankara had indeed enjoyed closer relations with Moscow, especially compared to its other NATO counterparts in Eastern Europe that are more familiar with Russia’s tactics. In fact, Turkey’s gradually developing relations with Russia, primarily on the basis of economic and energy cooperation, even became subject to criticism from Turkey’s Western allies. Turkey also chose to disregard its differences with Russia when it came to Syria and attempted to solve Russia’s minor violations with an appeasement policy.

Nonetheless, these cordial relations ended with Russia’s bold move to intervene in Syria in line with Iran, Assad, and Hezbollah. With this move, Russia showed its intention to choose strategic influence in the Middle East over its cordial relations with Turkey. This came to constitute a breaking point not only because the two countries’ differences in Syria peaked, but also because of Turkey’s eventual reception of Russia’s support for the PYD along with its violation of Turkish airspace as inimical. Considering such developments, Russian President Putin’s “stab in the back” rhetoric is indeed implausible.

Why did Turkey shoot down the Russian jet?

Following the downing of the jet, some experts evaluated the incident in terms of an overreaction on the part of Turkey. Certain contentions were voiced employing a line of argument that an airspace violation which only took seconds should not be reason for such a strong reaction. There was also news about NATO members suggesting that the Russian jet should have been escorted out of Turkish airspace as a softer alternative. Nonetheless, the issue is not about the duration of this single Russian violation; rather it is about the nature and prospects of Russian violations.

This is not the first and only time that Russia violated Turkish airspace. It had also done so last month. Turkey has already escorted Russian jets out of its airspace not only at the Syrian border but also above the Black Sea – in March this year. Russian missile systems have also harassed Turkish air forces in the past. In this way, it can be seen that Russian violations have come to exhibit an iterative and expanding quality that can be regarded as designed to test the limits. At some point Turkey had to stop this. Otherwise, Russia would continue to commit ever invasive violations.

What’s next?

After the crisis, further escalation would be between Russia and NATO rather than Russia and Turkey seeing that the latter took the matter to Brussels and provided solid evidence that the Russian aircraft indeed violated Turkey’s airspace. From this point on, NATO’s acquiescence of further Russian violations directed at Turkey would severely damage its deterrence capability. Thus, it is of low probability that Russia escalate tension to an all-out confrontation with NATO. In this sense, it is certain that diplomatic attempts to de-escalate the tension will take place. Such is rational and should be welcomed by all parties involved.

As Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul stated, Russia’s reaction will probably come in an asymmetric way. In terms of political reactions, Russia will focus on fighting ISIS in order to rally others against Turkey. Here, a growing international consensus that ISIS is the main target in Syria has become more apparent after the attacks in Beirut and Paris and the plane explosion in Sinai. Expectations for a united coalition against ISIS have even come to the fore. Thus, Russia will probably attempt to ride this wave in an attempt to drive Turkey into a corner. As Putin made certain accusations of Turkey’s relationship with ISIS after the event, it may be expected that this policy will deepen. Besides, Turkey may be accused of harming the possibility of Russian cooperation with West against ISIS. Russia will also probably push for Turkey’s isolation in the Syria talks, and increase its support for Assad and the PYD. Nonetheless, Russia has already more or less walked this line up until now.

Thanksgiving is a time for family, food and joy, but unfortunately it can also be a source of health-impacting stress and anxiety for many. Between the influx of visitors, football games on the television and the necessary shopping, cooking and cleaning up, there can be far too little time devoted to reflective conversation with friends and family. And once the feast is finished and the guests have left, there is precious little time for quiet contemplation when all forms of mass media are rabidly encouraging Americans to participate in the obscene corporate-driven “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” sales craze. Go go go! Buy buy buy!

Perhaps we should be taking a different approach to the holidays.

In my book, The Seventeen Traditions about the wisdom my parents passed along to my siblings and me, I wrote a chapter about “the tradition of solitude.”

Here’s a relevant excerpt for the season:

Some years ago, we invited a family with two small children over for Thanksgiving dinner. The four-year-old boy spent the whole day running wild, jumping off the table, knocking over glasses of water, screeching at the top of his lungs, and generally making every effort possible to ruin the conversation and the meal. Today, most parents might ask: Was he suffering from attention deficit disorder? No, the parents were suffering—from an unwillingness to control their son’s behavior and lay down some markers. It’s a symptom of today’s sprawled economy that many children spend less time with adults, including their parents, than any previous generation in history. When they do have a few precious moments with adults, they often act out as if they’re desperately trying to make up for prolonged inattention.

Does any of this sound familiar? I expect many millions of Americans will be dealing with similar household chaos on Thanksgiving Day.

My mother believed that children should be able to exercise their minds, to think independently and be self-reliant.  Critical to this development is acknowledging the importance of solitude. Devoting time to oneself and one’s thoughts isn’t just important for developing youngsters, however. Many grown adults could benefit from a little “quiet space” to get to know themselves and the world better.

The tradition of solitude isn’t about sitting in a room and contemplating one’s navel. It’s about allowing one’s mind to rejuvenate, imagine and explore―and hopefully relieve itself from the stress and anxiety that inevitably come with the burdens of everyday life.   It’s an engine of renewal. This is particularly true around the holidays when expectations and obligations can mount.

Another excerpt:

True solitude can involve an infinite variety of experience: being alone with one’s imagination, one’s thoughts, dreams, one’s puzzles and books, one’s knitting or hobbies, from carving wood blocks, to building little radios or model airplanes or collecting colorful stamps from all over the world. Being alone can mean following the flight of a butterfly or a hummingbird or an industrious pollinating bee. It can mean gazing at the nighttime sky, full of those familiar constellations, and trying to identify them.

I recently filmed a video in my hometown of Winsted, Connecticut where I discussed my relationship with nature and the comforting solitude it provides.  Watch it here.  The holiday season seems like an appropriate time to share this video in the hopes that it inspires others to reflect on the quiet, memorable moments and places that matter most.  Consider turning off the television, putting away the smartphone, avoiding the marketplace invitations to shop and spend on “Black Friday” and seeking comfort in solitude.

Perhaps the joys of solitude can become a tradition that eclipses the crazy call to spend the day after Thanksgiving shopping instead of thinking.

I welcome others to share the quiet places where they experience the joys of solitude. Maybe by telling others about how we retreat to find our better humanity, we can encourage those among us still searching for this intrinsic solace.

By Elise Harris

Pope Francis tossed his prepared remarks aside for a meeting with Kenyan priests, religious and seminarians, telling them that if anything disgusts God, it’s the attitude of indifference.

He also gave some practical advice, such as keeping the Lord at the center of their lives through prayer and the sacraments, and stressed that the Church is not a business, but rather a mystery intended to serve others.

“Remember Jesus Christ crucified. When a priest or religious forgets Christ crucified, poor person. He has fallen in an ugly sin, a sin which God detests, which makes the Lord vomit,” the Pope said Nov. 26.

“He has fallen into the sin of indifference, of luke-warmness. Dear priests and religious men and women, be careful not to fall into the sin of indifference.”

Francis met with Kenyan priests, religious men and women, and seminarians from every diocese in Kenya on the sports field of St. Mary’s School in Nairobi Nov. 26, his first full day in the country.

His Nov. 25-27 visit to Kenya is part of a larger African tour that will also take him to Uganda and the Central African Republic.

Before giving his speech, Pope Francis heard from Bishop Anthony Ireri Mukobo, I.M.C., Apostolic Vicar of Isiolo and Chairman for the Commission for Clergy and Religious of the Kenyan bishops conference, as well as Sr. Michael Marie Rottinghaus from the Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK).

Both Bishop Mukobo and Sr. Rottinghaus thanked Pope Francis for the Year for Consecrated Life, which opened Nov. 30, 2014, and closes Feb. 2, 2016.

After setting his prepared remarks aside, Francis spoke freely in Spanish, with his official translator Msgr. Mark Miles giving simultaneous translation into English.

The Pope began his reflections by noting how “the Lord has chosen all of you, he has chosen all of us,” and that he began his work “the day he saw us in baptism.”

He noted how in the Gospel there were some who wanted to follow Jesus, but Jesus said no. Following the Lord on the path of priesthood or consecrated life means “you have to go through the door, and the door is Christ,” he said, adding that Jesus is the one who calls and does the work.

When people try to go “through the window” like those in the Gospel, this “isn’t useful,” Francis continued, and asked that if anyone sees someone who’s trying to live a consecrated vocation but doesn’t have one, “embrace him and explain that it’s better for them to go.”

“It’s better for them to go because that work that didn’t begin with the Lord Jesus through the doorway will not end well.” Doing this, he said, helps us to understand what it means to be called and chosen by God.

Pope Francis then noted that there are some who don’t know why God calls them, but feel it in their heart. These people, he said, “should be at peace because the Lord will make them understand why.”

He cautioned against those who have a true call, but are influenced by the desire for power. He pointed to the mother of James and John as an example, when she asked for them to have positions at his right and left hand.

“There is the temptation to follow the Lord out of ambition, ambition of money, ambition for power,” he said, noting that each person can probably say this thought has crossed their minds.

For others, however, “it took seed in the heart as a weed,” he said, adding that in following Jesus, “there is no place for ambition or richness or to be a really important person in the world.”

“I tell you this seriously, because in the Church we know it’s not a business, it’s not an NGO. The Church is a mystery, the mystery of Christ’s gaze upon each one of us, who says follow,” he said.

The Pope then noted that Jesus calls, “he doesn’t canonize us,” but asks us to serve as the sinners we are.

Pointing to the apostles, Francis observed how the Gospel only tells us of one that cried: Peter, who realized he was a sinner who had betrayed the Lord.

“But then Jesus made him a pope. Who understands Jesus?! He’s a mystery. Never stop weeping,” he said, adding that when the tears of a priest or religious run dry “then something is wrong.”

Francis then turned to the importance of prayer in the life of a priest or religious, explaining that when a consecrated person stops praying, their “soul becomes shriveled and dry like those dried figs. They’re ugly. They’re not attractive.”

“The soul of a priest or religious who doesn’t pray is an ugly soul. I ask forgiveness but that’s how it is.”

He also stressed the importance of having an attitude of service, particularly toward the poor, children and the elderly, as well as “those who are not even aware of their own pride in themselves.”

Pope Francis said he’s impressed whenever he meets a priest or consecrated person who has spent their life working in a hospital or mission. These people, he said, “serve others and don’t allow themselves to be served by others.”

He closed by thanking those present “for following Jesus, for every time you feel sinners, for every caress of tenderness you show others who need it.”

“Thanks for all the times you helped a person to die in peace. Thank you for giving hope in life. Thanks for letting yourselves be forgiven, to be helped and corrected,” he said, and asked for their prayers.

By Nilanjan Ghosh*

From this month end (November 30 to December 11), the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21 is beginning in Paris. This will be the 21st annual session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties (CMP 11) to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The objective of the 2015 conference is to achieve, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, a binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world with an overarching goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. I have my clear doubts on whether a binding and universal agreement can emerge.

The reasons for my cynicism are not one. The first point of contention arises from the differential impacts of climate change on the developing and the developed nations. Recently, a number of authors have opened up a whole new area of research by using the natural variations in temperature among different years caused by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which produces extreme weather conditions in different parts of the world. For instance, research by Solomon Hsiang and colleagues shows that for rich countries, an additional degree of warming has a nominal effect, but for poor countries, the same change leads to very significant costs in the form of reduced economic growth and increased costs of military and other conflicts.

This is akin to what Thomas Homer-Dixon, cherished political scientist, talked of in the 1990s, when he hypothesized about the environmental scarcities leading to the violent conflicts, and the limited capacity of the poor nations to cope up with the problems, due to the “ingenuity gap”, the critical gap between our need for ideas to solve complex problems and our actual supply of those ideas.

The second point of contention is the concern of distributive justice. The concern begins with: who pays for damages? Most developing countries firmly believe that mitigation should start in the rich countries that bear the largest part of the responsibility for historical emissions. How can one deny the position that the developed world has grown by emitting, whereas the developing and poor world are still on the learning curve? Can one deny the position that only after historically emitting CO2 extensively they have started talking of the perils of the planet, and want the developing world to share parts of the responsibility for the follies committed by them? The very suggestion that all countries should reduce their emissions by similar percentages clearly favors the countries that have large emissions today. Therefore, the calls that the developed nations should compensate the developing nations for the losses caused by the former to the latter through pollution damages also impinging on the ecosystem services is proper, just, and equitable.

The third point of contention arises with the capacity of the scientific knowledge and skilled manpower of developing and poor nations to defend their interests in the international climate negotiations. The risks are different across the globe—some developing countries have much to lose from climate change, while others are more concerned over the costs of global agreements that will limit their markets for fossil fuel or hamper their perceived chances of development. As a result, building coalitions, even among the low-income countries, will be very difficult.

The fourth point of contention arises from the divergence in priorities. Interestingly, the divergence in goals between developed and developing nations can be witnessed in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by developed and developing nations. Whereas the INDCs of the developed world like US, EU, and Japan do not consist of the term “adaptation” but only consist of the “mitigation” commitments, the developing and emerging nations have a significant portion of INDC’s dedicated to “adaptation”. The need to adapt arises for the poor of the developing world because of livelihoods losses due to ecosystem service losses.

The bigger concern of climate change and global warming for the poorer nations is the changes in the land use patterns and forest cover, resulting in changes in ecosystem structures and functions, thereby impeding on the various ecosystem services. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) of 2005 enhanced human understanding of nature’s capacity to provide ecosystem services (benefits) to the human society in the form of provisioning services (e.g., food, raw materials, genetic resources, water, minerals, medicinal resources, energy, etc), regulating services (e.g., carbon sequestration, climate regulation, pest and disease control, etc), cultural services (tourism, religion, etc), and above all, supporting services that are necessary for production of all other ecosystem services (e.g. nutrient recycling, gene-pool protection, primary production, soil formation, etc).

For the poor people in the developing world, the ecosystem services adds up or complements their low incomes, and is often referred to as “GDP of the poor”. So, the concern of the poor nations is with the impacts of global warming and climate change on ecosystems-livelihoods linkages, and not really carbon-dioxide emission! How can the poor adapt to such vulnerabilities? Who will pay for this adaptation?

The fifth issue of contention arises again from the perspective of understanding the local priorities and bringing them in global platforms like COP 21. Developing nations including India has failed to do that so far! India will again fail to bring that, as I see it, simply because of complying with the carbon-centric approach of global negotiations, as decided by the prime movers of this negotiating process, which are primarily the developed nations. With India being one of the lowest per capita emitter of CO2, its bigger concern is the concern of the poor who are getting poorer because of the losses in the ecosystem services due to global warming and climate change.

Unfortunately, the Indian dialogue initiators in the global platform, most of whom will be retired bureaucrats, are likely to adopt the same techno-centric and carbon-centric approach, and argue on lines of mitigation. They will yet again fail to bring in the concern of ecosystems-livelihoods linkages, and the impacts of climate change on the vulnerable sections of the community, especially women and children. After all, that is not the priority of the developed world, who has proclaimed about their priorities of mitigation only in their INDCs.

*The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata

Courtesy: www.abplive.in