By Elise Harris

The Holy See and the Republic of Benin have signed an agreement formally recognizing the legal status of the Catholic Church in the country, guaranteeing the Church’s ability to carry out her mission in service of the common good.

Representatives from both the Holy See and the Republic of Benin gathered at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in Cotonou, the African country’s largest city, Friday, Oct. 21, to seal the deal.

Called the “Framework Agreement between the Holy See and the Republic of Benin relating to the Legal Status of the Catholic Church in Benin,” the accord was signed by Archbishop Brian Udaigwe, nuncio to Benin, on the part of the Holy See, and on behalf of the Republic of Benin, Mr. Aurélien Agbenonci, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

According to an Oct. 22 Vatican communique, the agreement consists of a preamble and 19 articles, and “guarantees the Church the ability to carry out its mission in Benin.”

“In particular, the legal status of the Church and its institutions is recognized,” it said, explaining that the two parties, “while safeguarding the independence and autonomy proper to them,” are committed “to work together for the moral, spiritual and material well-being of the human person and for the promotion of the common good.”

Several representatives from each side were present for the signing of the agreement.

Attendees from the Holy See included: Bishop Eugène Houndékon of Abomey, Vice President of the Benin Bishop’s Conference; Bishop François Gnonhossou of Dassa-Zoumé; Bishop Aristide Gonsallo of Porto-Novo; Fr. Paschal Guezodje, Secretary General for the Bishop’s Conference of Benin; Fr. Axel Chékété, Assistant Secretary General and Fr. Emmanuel Michodjehoun, a local collaborator with the apostolic nunciature.

Among the representatives from Benin were: Mr. Eric Franck Saïzonou, Director of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation; Mr. William Comlan, Director of the Cabinet; Mr. Saturnin Tonoukouin, Director of State Protocol; Mr. Bienvenu Houngbédji, Adjunct-Director of Legal Affairs; Ms. Nelly Awouilihoua, Technical Advisor and Mr. Ghislain Agbozo, Special Assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

St. John Paul II visited Benin in 1982. The most recent Pope to travel to the African nation was Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, when he made an official Nov. 18-20 visit to Cotonou.

Benedict made the trip in large part to deliver his Apostolic Exhortation about the future of Christianity on the continent, “Africae Munus” (The Commitment of Africa), which was written in response to the conclusions of the 2009 Synod of African Bishops in Rome.

Another motivation for the voyage was to visit the tomb of his late friend, Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, a prominent Beninese cardinal who served as Archbishop of Cotonou for several years before coming to the Vatican as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The cardinal also served as head of the Congregation for Bishops and later as Dean of the College of Cardinals before his death in 2008. In addition to Benedict XVI, Cardinal Gantin was a close friend of Popes St. John XXIII, Bl. Paul VI and St. John Paul II.

Benedict’s 2011 visit to Benin also marked the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first Catholic missionaries in the country.

In his Nov. 23 general audience after the visit, Benedict said that “in Africa I saw a freshness in the ‘yes’ to life, a freshness of religious meaning and hope, a holistic vision of reality where God is not confined to that positivist perspective which, in the final analysis, extinguishes all hope.”

“This tells us that the continent is a reservoir of life and vitality for the future upon which we can rely, upon which the Church can rely.”

The Russian defence ministry on Saturday, October 22 accused the U.S.-led coalition fighting jihadists in Iraq of committing war crimes, a day after an air raid killed 15 women at a shrine near the city of Kirkuk, AFP reports.

“We have observed several times that these deadly strikes… which have all the hallmarks of war crimes, have practically become a daily routine by the international coalition’s warplanes,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

By Derek Verbakel*

On 19 September, the Russia-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared dead the flawed-but-hyped peace deal enacted a week earlier by the US and Russia. The agreement aimed to cease hostilities between warring groups; provide humanitarian aid to Syrians; reinvigorate political talks; and facilitate US-Russia cooperation in targeting Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS, the recently rebranded al Qaeda affiliate in Syria) and the Islamic State (IS). None of this came to fruition. Instead, the unraveled peace agreement has allowed for the acceleration of processes already underway: it has empowered Assad and his backers, weakened the US and the more moderate opposition, and strengthened the jihadis. In this context, diplomatic talks such as those resumed on 15 October are likely not to resolve the conflict and to advantage the Assad regime and Russia.

It was only after Russia’s intervention just over a year ago that Assad’s mounting territorial losses were reversed. Sidelining Iran’s patronage, Russia gained leverage over Assad, whose rule secures Moscow’s perceived existential strategic imperatives in the region; and by extension, globally.

Assad, now determined to regain control of the country by all means necessary, has capitalised on the political process attending the September agreement. The collapsed ceasefire is widely associated with the targeting by Russian airstrikes of a UN aid convoy destined for the rebel held eastern Aleppo city on 19 September. Yet, just two days prior, US bombs ostensibly meant for the IS killed 62 Syrian government soldiers in Deir al-Zour. This gave the regime – which never stopped blocking aid shipments and striking rebel held areas – a pretext to cite the US as well as rebel violations as justification to renounce the ceasefire. Since then, joined by Russian planes and Iranian-backed Shia fighters from several countries, Assad has stepped up vicious assaults on Aleppo neighbourhoods under the control of the JFS and aligned groups.

For the US – which has been unsuccessful in past diplomatic efforts to reach a political solution with Russian cooperation – another failure has further weakened its ability to somehow unseat Assad or reach a favourable future international agreement. The US will not risk escalation by attempting to destroy the Syrian Air Force while Russian personnel are stationed at Syrian air bases; and the establishment of a no-fly zone is impracticable without Russian cooperation.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has claimed his leverage in peace talks was sapped by the Obama administration’s history of lacking credible threats of force in response to repeated regime transgression of ‘red lines’. Banking on a change in Russian goals or sudden goodwill in negotiating to solve the Syria crisis seems to have been imprudent. Russia has boldly asserted the right to do as it pleases in Syria: to abet the regime as it breaks ceasefires in pursuit of military gains.

A lack of faith in the US stemming from the abortive September 2016 ceasefire has also fuelled shifts in the behaviour and balance of power between more extreme and so called “moderate” armed opposition groups. In a steadily crystallising view among “moderates,” the US’ motives in Syria, while always suspect, have become even more so due to Washington’s ongoing failure to effectively pressure Assad to release or even relax his grip on power. The growing perception is that like Russia, with whom the US is increasingly seen as inadvertently collaborating, American intervention too is ultimately enabling Assad. The regime has ramped up its brutality in past weeks, and ever more apparent seems the record of the US’ failure to extend meaningful support to its “moderate” allies. This has validated the narratives of more extreme groups, chiefly the JFS, who have presented themselves as leading the wider “revolutionary” opposition dedicated to ridding Syria of the Assad regime.

This perception has been strengthened by the JFS through incorporating smaller Islamist rebel factions under a hardliner-dominated coalition banner that operates alongside more moderate opposition fighters. This ‘marbling’ of jihadis with other rebels keen for support affords the former a greater shelter from the US-led coalition airstrikes loath to harm “moderate” forces. Yet the relative power of the JFS within the opposition is growing, while that of “moderate” rebels wanes. The IS, which has battled government forces and other rebels, also gains from the US’ reluctance to boost arms shipments to “moderate” factions for fear of weapons falling into the wrong hands. Moscow and Damascus eagerly characterise the opposition monolithically as “terrorists” requiring eradication while freely targeting more “moderate” groups in an attempt to homogenise the opposition. This dwindles elements influenced by American, Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari opponents of Assad while framing his continued campaign as indispensible to the global ‘war on terror’.

In this context, Russia will continue to manipulate diplomatic talks to relieve pressure and provide cover while Assad makes gains on the ground, which they will avoid conceding due to perceived existential imperatives. The 20 October unilateral ceasefire announced by Russia constitutes Russia calling the shots, and any ceasefire met with opposition compliance tilts in favour of Assad, who is able to resupply and fortify his forces. When and in what condition is uncertain, but it appears to be only a matter of time before Assad recaptures Aleppo. The opposition will become increasingly deterritorialised and the conflict will transform and rage on.

As always, sadly, ordinary Syrians bear the burden of political failure.

* Derek Verbakel
Researcher, IReS, IPCS

By Vijay Shankar*

We note, with some anxiety, an unmistakable parallel to the current situation in the Western Pacific with what obtained in the run-up to the 20th century. An impending face-off between a rising and revisionist China against a loose entente of status-quo powers led by a deflected US that has set itself the task to pivot into the region and rebalance the strategic situation. All this at a time of convulsions in West Asia and global uncertainty. For the pivot to flounder is to legitimise Chinese illegal actions.

Lessons of History

The world of empires of the 18th and 19th centuries were remarkably well connected, willing to strike compromises that did not upend the status-quo and in turn enjoyed slanted stability. Imperialism of the 19th century thrust political, financial, economic, scientific and religious institutions that we see as underpinning the world system to this day. But beneath this global order run widespread fault lines that can invariably be linked to the nature of the expansionist impulse.

In 1894, China and Japan went to war. The conflict was significant for it marked the first time that a host of imperial powers would become directly involved in a struggle between two sovereign nations far from their own shores. Regardless of how these powers felt about each other, they had strong mercantile interests based solely on open access to China. Victorious Japan sought exclusive hold over China’s Liaotung peninsula as part of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. Russia, Germany and France all felt that conditions imposed by the Treaty placed in jeopardy their own commercial interests and consequently threatened war unless Japan backed down. In the event Japan surrendered its claim to Liaotung in return for a free hand in Korea and increased war reparations from China. Within two years, Great Britain, Germany and France sensing the weakness of The Qing Empire capitalised on the political and economic opportunities and took control of vast local regions. China thereafter rapidly began to fall apart; it suffered two more imperial wars: suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and war between Russia and Japan in 1904-05 over ambitions in Korea and Manchuria. Battles were fought on Chinese soil and in the waters of the East and South China Sea. Imperial competition and ‘cosy arrangements’ in the region, as James Joll has pointed out, provided one more enticement for the coming First World War.

The Tearing Tectonic

In coming to grips with that tumultuous period in East Asia a convergence of three geopolitical fault lines may be discerned beneath the larger rift that had been caused by the decay and degeneration of the Qing Empire. The end of empire generated in China political stresses which pulled apart the state almost in terms of a geological ‘Tearing Tectonic’. There were three fault lines: an emerging imperial power in the form of Japan, intervention of existing rival colonial powers sensing large commercial and magistracy interests and the decline of an existing centre of power in Russia simultaneously fractured to release energies that catalysed the speedy collapse of the ‘middle kingdom’.

A French political cartoon from 1898 published in Le Petit Journal – “En Chine Le gâteau des Rois et… des Empereurs” – is most illustrative of the situation. A pastry ‘Chine’ is being divided between Queen Victoria, the German Kaiser, Nicholas II of Russia, the French Marianne cosying-up to the Czar and a Samurai Japan. A powerless Qing official throws up his hands.

The Unmistakable Parallel

As we examine contemporary geopolitics of the East Asian region we note with some anxiety an unmistakable parallel to the situation that obtained in the run-up to the twentieth century with a switch in the main protagonists. The fault lines against a backdrop of a global rift of uncertainty are all discernible. A rising and revisionist China sensing opportunity for hegemony in the region confronted by a potential entente of status-quo powers, more than likely to include Japan, Australia and India; led by a deflected and hesitant US, all to the exclusion of a declining and sulking Russia. This at a time of great convulsions in West Asia when the strategic paradigm of the day (if there is one) is the tensions of the multipolar; the tyranny of a techno-economic combine in conflict with politics of the state; the anarchy of expectations; and polarization of peoples along religio-cultural lines all compacted in the cauldron of globalisation. An uncertain geo-political brew, as the world had never seen before, has come to pass under the shadow of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The Strategic Pivot

The ‘strategic pivot’ or rebalancing, launched in 2009 by the Obama government, is premised on the recognition that a disproportionate share of political tensions and economic history of the 21st century will be written in the Asia-Pacific region. The key tenet of this strategic reorientation is the need to cultivate a stable and predictable political, economic, and security environment across a region spanning the Indian Ocean to the West Pacific. Unsaid is the central dynamic to build an entente to contain and balance the rise of China. The military component of the pivot cannot be overemphasised and remains the abiding driver of policy in the region. The strategic importance of the pivot derives from the increased collective concern about China’s military modernisation and its larger revisionist objectives.

Theoretically the Asia-Pacific pivot makes strategic sense. However, there is sloth in implementation influenced to some extent, by the situation in West Asia and the unfinished business of Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet allowing these distractions to dilute the strategic priority of the Asia-Pacific could well run the hazard of accelerating a return to an ‘atavistic actuation’ that threatens global stability. As events have unfolded, sloth has granted China a fortuitous time-window to prepare for the impending encounter. It also explains China’s impious haste in the development of military infrastructure and artificial islands in the South and East China Seas, operationalising ‘Access Denial’ strategies, declaring proprietary sea lanes of communication and Air Defence Identification Zones and a cavalier attitude towards The Hague’s verdict on claims in these seas.

Conclusion

The absence of a direct challenge to China’s provocative moves on the East and South China Seas, despite the fact that fundamental principles of international order have been defied, is to allow the idea of the strategic pivot to flounder. This will provide space to China to progress with its own unhinged scheme of a ‘New Model on Great Power Relations’ that creates a de-facto G2 and works to the marginalising of other major stakeholders in regional security. Besides such a scheme legitimises China’s claims in the South and East China Seas and in a manners anoints it as the recognised regional hegemon and a ‘system shaper’; suggesting a return to a situation analogous to the pre-20th century context.

* Vijay Shankar
Former Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Forces Command of India

Russian State Duma approved a draft bill suspending the plutonium disposal agreement with the United States (PMDA) from 2000 on Wednesday, October 19. President Vladimir Putin’s decree garnered 445 votes and one abstention in the lower house of the Russian parliament.

Under the bilateral agreement and its 2010 protocol appendix, both parties agreed to irreversibly convert weapons-grade plutonium into the form unsuitable for nuclear weapons by irradiation in nuclear reactors. Moscow and Washington pledged to dispose of at least 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium and planned to start the process by 2018.

Russia has already created infrastructure to fulfil its obligations under the PMDA and brought to full power the BN-800 fast neutron reactor to irradiate disposition weapon-grade plutonium as fuel. At the same time, the United States has not finished the construction of Savannah River facility for the fabrication of mixed uranium oxide-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel started back in 2007. The facility was supposed to come into operation in 2016; however the construction is only two-thirds finished.

Without official negotiations and Russia’s approval, the US abandoned its MOX facility, opting instead for a process of diluting and storing the plutonium at their geological repository for radioactive waste. According to Vladimir Putin, with this method the nuclear fuel retains its breakout potential, so it can be extracted, processed and weaponized again.

Mikhail Ulyanov, Director of the Foreign Ministry Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control and Representative of the Russian Federation, stressed that this disposition was discussed during the drafting of the PMDA and was discarded as not irreversible.

“Therefore, the PMDA as amended by the 2010 Protocol does not stipulate the possibility of the underground burial of disposition plutonium. Under the PMDA, the parties are to consult each other in advance of any change in their disposal methods. The United States has not officially notified Russia of its intention to use an alternative disposition method. […]Considering that Russia has financed the bulk of its planned investment in the creation of facilities to dispose of plutonium in keeping with a method that was coordinated with its US partners, we are perplexed, to put it mildly, by US officials’ statements on Washington’s intention to save money by choosing an alternative disposal method,” the diplomat said at the 71st Session of the UNGA, New York.

However, Moscow may resume the PMDA if Washington adjusts its policy and fully eliminates the obstructions that emerged through its fault to bring about negative changes in the political, military and economic balance in the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

“The decision we have made is a signal to Washington: attempts at talking to Russia from the position of strength, in a language of sanctions and ultimatums while continuing selective cooperation with our country there where this cooperation benefits the United States will not succeed,” he said stressing that Russia does not quit its commitments in the sphere of nuclear disarmament.

According to the draft bill approved by Russian State Duma, the PMDA can be resumed after the US abandons its hostile policy towards Moscow, implying, in particular, the abolition of the Magnitsky Act and other sanctions, and reduction of US military presence on the territory of NATO member states.

Commenting on the situation, Edwin Lyman, Senior Scientist in the UCS Global Security Program, regretted the suspension of the PMDA and said that moving forward with the agreement is in the interest of both countries.

“The PMDA allows either party to change its approach provided that both sides agree in writing. My understanding is that the US and Russia had begun discussions on the proposed new US method but formal negotiations had not taken place. Meanwhile, work on the US MOX fuel fabrication plant is continuing,” he told PenzaNews.

According to him, the dilute-and-dispose method would render US plutonium sufficiently inaccessible to meet the intent of the PMDA.

“Plutonium will be diluted to a low concentration with materials that would make it difficult – although not imposible – to chemically extract the plutonium. This mixture would be placed in small quantities, less than 300 grams of plutonium, in 208-liter waste drums. The drums will be emplaced 660 meters underground in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the US geologic repository for nuclear waste. Over time, the salt caves where the waste will be buried will collapse over the waste, rendering it practically irretrievable. The PMDA allows for the possibility of international monitoring of the plutonium waste. Any attempt by the US to recover the plutonium would take a significant amount of time and be easily observable by inspectors,” Edwin Lyman said.

“Russia has raised the concern that unlike reactor irradiation, the dilute-and-dispose method does not change the isotopic composition of plutonium from weapons-grade to reactor-grade. This is not a significant issue because the US and presumably Russia can use reactor-grade plutonium to make nuclear weapons. However, in order to alleviate Russian concerns, the US could obtain reactor-grade plutonium from another country, like Japan, and blend it with US weapons-grade plutonium before disposing of the mixture in WIPP,” the expert added.

In his opinion, Russia’s decision on the PMDA will have less of an impact than the other disputes that are causing friction between the US and Russia.

“The half-life of plutonium-239 is over 24,000 years, which should allow sufficient time for relations between the US and Russia to improve. […] The US, as a good-will gesture, should invite both Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency to observe its plutonium disposition activities. I believe that the US can provide sufficient information to convince Russian experts that dilute-and-dispose is an acceptable approach,” Edwin Lyman said.

In turn, Alan Kuperman, Associate Professor at LBJ School of Public Affairs, Coordinator of Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, University of Texas at Austin, stressed that the Russian action could actually facilitate US plutonium disposal.

“Now the US can dispose of plutonium by dilution, which would not be strictly consistent with the PMDA, but would prevent the plutonium from being used in nuclear weapons. This method would be consistent with the spirit of PMDA, although not its letter,” the expert said.

According to him, Russian decision will not affect relations with the US at all.

“It is a symptom, not a cause, of the condition of US-Russia relations. When withdrawing from PMDA, Russia pledged that its designated plutonium under the agreement would never be used in nuclear weapons. If so, I would hope that Russia would still proceed to dispose of that plutonium in a manner consistent with the spirit of the PMDA, as US is doing. The bilateral disposal of the plutonium in a secure and safe manner is more important than the agreement,” Alan Kuperman added.

According to Pavel Podvig, Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, regular contributor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Chicago, it is not quite correct to say that the US is unable to fulfil its commitments.

“No final decision to abandon the MOX route has not been made yet. It is wrong to say that the United States violated PMDA. The agreement includes an option for changing the disposition method by mutual consent and the United States has always stated that it is its intent to seek Russia’s consent,” the analyst said.

In turn, Richard Weitz, Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Hudson Institute, reminded that both the Russian Federation and the United States have secured changes in the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement throughout its history but adhered to its elimination goal.

“The immediate consequences of the Russian decision to cease joint elimination will be minimal since both countries intend to continue to eliminate their unneeded military plutonium or transform it into civilian nuclear fuel. The main practical consequence could be reduced IAEA supervision of the process in both states, which is useful but not critical,” the expert said.

Since this was not a major agreement like START; it could mostly affect future projects to eliminate fissile materials in a mutually verifiable and acceptable way, he said.

“However, the long-term consequences could be more severe if the Russian government applies the conditions that the President sent to the Duma for resuming the PDMA to other possible future bilateral arms control agreements. Many US and NATO government officials would not accept these conditions,” Richard Weitz added.

Miles Pomper, Senior Fellow at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, shared the opinion that Russian decision won’t have a great deal of effect on Russian-US relations.

“It is more an effect of the poor relations at this time than the cause of further deterioration. The agreement has long been in trouble and no one expected it to enter into force soon-if ever,” the expert said.

However, he expressed hope that both countries will take steps to ensure that this material in any case is not used for nuclear weapons.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with the US administration’s proposal to dilute and dispose of the plutonium – it would have as much disarmament or nuclear security value as the Russian plan. Unfortunately, the proposal could not gain the support of some members of the US Senate because those senators wanted jobs for their state that were associated with the MOX approach, which was simply unaffordable,” Miles Pomper said.

In turn, Tom Clements, Director of Savannah River Site Watch working for the public interest by monitoring activities at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and other nuclear projects in the US, stressed that the current situation with the plutonium disposition programs in the US and Russia is no surprise.

“For many years it has been obvious that the US MOX project was failing and would likely eventually have to be officially terminated. […] However, Russia’s total withdrawal from the agreement was not expected. Article IX of the PMDA states that ‘the activities of each Party under this Agreement shall be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.’ Given that the US Congress has not been appropriating sufficient funds to carry out the MOX project, it has appeared to me that the US side was essentially letting the PMDA lapse by passively exercising the Article IX that was operative on the US side. Additionally, there are extensive design and construction problems with the MOX plant and the contractor building the facility has not been able to solve them,” Savannah River Site Watch Director said.

He also added that rumors about misspending and construction problems at the MOX project come to him on a weekly basis.

“Rumors are persistent that contractors may be guilty of waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. Full-scale investigations into DOE and contractor personnel are essential to determine why the MOX project failed and who is responsible for that. So far not a single entity has been held accountable for the debacle that the MOX project has become and those responsible must not be allowed to get away without punishment,” Tom Clements stated.

On top of the technical and financial problems, no companies owning nuclear power reactors have expressed interest in MOX use, meaning that a costly plant was being built to produce a product with no customers, he said.

“It will take many years for a clearer path for plutonium disposition to emerge in the US but one thing which is clear is that MOX has been shown to be both unworkable and not wanted by the nuclear power industry. [..] Some workers have known the facility building can’t be finished and call it a ‘fake project’ and a ‘dog and pony show’ being continued simply to enrich the contractors – CB&I AREVA MOX Services and subcontractors,” the expert said.

According to Amercian expert on nuclear issues Victor Gilinsky, who served on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the PMDA was not a good agreement in the first place.

“It pretended to be an arms control agreement, for which well-meaning but naive officials and academics provided support, but really served the interests of the nuclear energy departments in both countries to support a plutonium fuel industry. A practical problem with that goal is that plutonium-fuelled power reactors make no economic sense and would require heavy subsidies. Nuclear agencies have never been cost-conscious. The construction of the American plutonium fuel fabrication plant could not continue because the cost was mounting astronomically,” the analyst said.

Although the PMDA would ideally turn 34 tons of each country’s plutonium especially suitable for bombs into less suitable material, the product would not be entirely unsuitable as almost any kind of plutonium can be used in bombs, he said.

Moreover, according to Victor Gilinsky, the proposed reductions in the US and Russian stocks are anyhow not particularly significant in security terms. This is mainly why the defense departments in the two governments were willing to go along, he added.

“While the reductions would be of some marginal value, the real effect of carrying out the agreement is to encourage and validate plutonium activities in many other countries. With more countries having easy access to plutonium, there would be more countries within easy arm’s reach of nuclear weapons,” the expert said.

In turn, American physicist Frank von Hippel, Co-Director of Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, who served the Assistant Director for National Security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stressed that the US is still debating internally what would be the best approach for their plutonium disposal program.

“The most important loss due to President Putin’s termination of the agreement will be international verification. I think both countries should unilaterally declare that they will each negotiate verification arrangements with the IAEA,” the scientist said.

Moreover, he suggested that George W. Bush’s decision to take the US out of the ABM Treaty in 2002 was far more damaging.

“I think that our constructive relations in the nuclear area can survive if more central elements of our joint nuclear arms control agreements aren’t cancelled or allowed to expire,” the analyst concluded.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/63003-2016

There is no doubt that China is rapidly emerging as a super power with its economy now being second largest in the world. With its size, land area and huge natural wealth and aided by rapid economic, industrial growth and military strength, the ten trillion dollar economy of China is forging ahead.

Despite some problems in rebalancing the growth and reducing the nation’s fiscal deficit, China’s third quarter GDP growth during the current year is around 6.7 % which only indicates that Chinese economy promises to improve with several policy initiatives of Chinese government. Obviously, Chinese government is growing in confidence.

Suspicious relationship between China and several neighbors

In normal circumstances, the growing economy of China should create lot of opportunities for the neighboring countries and smaller nations in Asia by promoting trade openings and collaboration opportunities. However, confidence would develop in them, only if the Chinese government would reassure the neighbors that it has no territorial ambitions and it would respect the sovereignty and rights of the neighboring countries. Unfortunately, this has not happened.

On the other hand, China has territorial problems with several Asian neighbours, which has created tension in the region. China has created suspicions and sense of unease about it’s intentions amongst number of Asian countries such as India, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan ,causing apprehensions as to whether strong China would be a source of threat for them .

Territorial greed of China not in doubt

There is serious conflict between China and Philippines with regard to South China Sea. In July 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled against China’s maritime claims. However, China refused to acknowledge the tribunal and abide by it’s ruling

There is Senkaku Islands dispute between Japan and China. China, unmindful of the protest from Japan, has unilaterally set up the “East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone”, which includes the Senkaku Islands. China announced that it would require all aircraft entering the zone to file a flight plan and submit radio frequency and other information.

There is dispute between China and Vietnam due to China’s build-up on its seven reclaimed islands in the Spratlys archipelago.Vietnam’s military strategists fear that the building of runways, radars and other military installations on those holdings have left Vietnam’s southern and island defences increasingly vulnerable.

China has serious border disputes with India. China is not only occupying Indian territory, but it is also claiming Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian province as part of China.

China’s move to construct a massive dam in Brahmaputra river, that would create water problem for north east India and Bangladesh, is a serious issue waiting to develop.

In all the above cases of disputes involving China and its Asian neighbors, the root cause is China’s territorial ambitions and it’s greed to bring more territory under China’s control.

China’s aggression in Tibet

China’s forced occupation of Tibet has disturbed the conscience of the world but China remains unrepentant. The act of forcibly entering Tibet by China is nothing but aggression of the worst kind and many people think that it represents the expansionist mindset of Chinese government. China’s occupation of Tibet is a case of triumph of evil over good.

In spite of the world wide criticism and disapproval of it’s occupation of Tibet, China is defying the world opinion with all the force at it’s command to suppress any demand from Tibetans and friends of Tibet around the world to gain freedom for Tibet.

Aware of the fact that the world has not reconciled itself to China’s occupation of Tibet, China vigorously opposes any move anywhere to recognize the struggle of the Tibetans for freedom and it applies enormous pressure on other countries to prevent them from even expressing support to the Tibetan cause. The fact that Sri Lanka, a Buddhist country, denied visa to the Dalai Lama and President Obama chose to receive the Dalai Lama through the back door, fearing protest from China, only show the extent of determination of China to defend it’s aggression in Tibet.

Will Pakistan be a victim of China’s greed for territory?

To placate China, Pakistan gifted away a portion of disputed Kashmir Territory (what India calls as Pakistan occupied Kashmir) to China.

Many people seem to think that China’s dominating relationship with Pakistan will create more problems for Pakistan in the long run , as China appears to be bent upon brow beating the Asian neighbours.

46 billion dollar Chinese investment in Pakistan’s economic corridor really represents Chinese strategic and economic interest, solely focused on what would benefit China. Most of the money is expected to be spent on the economic corridor itself which includes roads, railway lines and other infrastructure including the road that will link Kashgar to Gwadar that will provide easy link for China to Pakistan.

Chinese are too savvy to invest in such massive project, without counting the geopolitical and geostrategic returns that China would get.

With China actively involved in building up massive economic corridor with Pakistan and with Pakistan economy remaining so weak and with considerable political unrest prevailing in Pakistan, it is bound to find sooner or later that it is almost entirely dependent on China in variety of ways.

So far, there is no indication that Pakistan is aware of such an eventuality, as it is pledging itself for the economic corridor with Chinese support, without duly reviewing China’s tactics in dealing with it’s neighbors, which is solely oriented to expand the territories of China. Pakistan appears to be taking a calculated risk.

China needs to be contained

With territorial ambition of China becoming increasingly clear and China’s developing confidence that it would be a super power in the world, the Asian neighbors have a lot to fear from China in the coming years. They need to exercise caution in working out their relationship with China.

By Justus Wanzala

As Africa grapples with climate change induced extreme weather patterns mechanisms to transform agriculture and ensure food security through adoption of innovative ways are gaining prominence.

In Kenya, like most African countries, small-scale farmers who are the majority are opting for sustainable solutions. One such farmer is Albert Waweru, a retired police officer with 1.75-acre farm in Kasarani on the outskirts of Nairobi. He has 50 dairy cows that produce 290 litres of milk daily. He also rears poultry, dairy goats and has several green houses where vegetables are grown.

But he is no ordinary smallholder farmer. He has taken to what experts call climate smart agriculture. To counter the challenge of water, for example, he embarked on harvesting rainwater from rooftops in his compound and storm water flowing into his compound.

“I harvest any drop that comes my way,” he says. The water is preserved in a network of several underground concrete tanks some of them 12 metres deep. This has ensured that he has enough water at any moment on his mixed farm.

“I have been invited to various forums where I have interacted with policy makers, I didn’t know that my solution to water scarcity would be showcased as a good practice to fellow farmers,” he says. He adds that farmers from Kenya and neighbouring countries visit his farm for bench marking.

Knowledge and best practices sharing among countries and individual famers is in fact vital. Participants in the Second Africa Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Alliance conference from October 11-13, 2016 in Nairobi shared this view. They said it would enhance adoption of best practices suitable to the needs of each country. The Alliance is a continetal platform formed to help smallholder farmers reduce climate risks.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency convened the meeting in collaboration with the Government of Kenya.

The Africa CSA Alliance is spearheading implementation of the African Union’s Vision to reach 25 million farm households practicing CSA by 2025. This is in line with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme‘s (CAADP) 2015-25 Results Framework, which was endorsed at the Africa Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in June 2014.

The Conference focused on “Implementing African INDCs for Growth and Resilience in Agriculture”. It emerged during the forum that majority of African countries included agriculture in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) adopted during COP21 in Paris in December 2015.

Stakeholders in the agriculture sector asked African governments to fast track policy guidelines geared towards adoption of smart agricultural practices. Estherine Fotabong, NEPAD Director of Programmes Implementation and Communication, regretted that in general there has been low adoption of CSA practices.

She attributed the situation to land ownership patterns that deny women land ownership though they constitute the bulk of small-scale farmers on the continent. Resort to CSA practices is also hampered by poor access of smallholders to affordable credit facilities.

Estherine said that poor access to technologies particularly among women is also hampering adoption of CSA practices on the continent. “It is high time African governments commit more resources to support CSA practices uptake such as conservation agriculture,” she said.

She called for integration of indigeneous knowledge practices backed by scientific research as part CSA practices in Africa’s quest to build resilient communities in the face of climate change.

African farmers, she said, have knowledge that can be used to cope with climate change. “We need to engage with farmers. They have rich information and knowledge that can help experts to make informed decisions as well. It is high time indigenous knowledge is documented,” she emphasized.

Estherine said that through NEPAD’s Gender Climate Change Agriculture Support Programme they intend to support more women farmers. “Through our Climate Fund programme, we hope to continue financing grassroots initiatives for the 2025 target. It is our belief that governments will put in place investments that will support farmers to adopt CSA pratices,” she said.

Indeed govermments apreciate that they have a crucial role to play in promotion of CSA. Kenya’s Fisheries Principal Secretary Japhet Ntiba said the government of Kenya has introduced a climate change policy in all state departments to address the effects of harsh climatic changes. He said the move would enhance the country’s efforts in boosting food security through promoting smart agricultural practices in light of climate change.

INDCs are the primary means for governments to communicate internationally the steps they will take to address climate change in their own countries. According to Zipora Otieno, FAO Kenya’s National Coordinator, INDCs reflect each country’s ambition for reducing emissions and enhancing resilience, taking into account its domestic circumstances and capabilities,

She told IDN that the word ‘intended’ is being used because countries are currently communicating proposed climate actions. She noted that ‘intended’ will be dropped and INDC converted into Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

Most African countries, she observed, have not converted their INDCs to NDCs. Zipora however explained that INDCs are effective in enhancing resilience in the agriculture sector in Africa.

First, they would help catalyse climate finance flows to developing countries for implementation of proposed actions. “For sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately 80 percent of the population derive their livelihood from agriculture, the funds will mainly be used to enhance resilience in the agricultural sector.”

Secondly, INDCs of most developing countries have helped guide country-level climate adaptation planning efforts. Many African countries, she observed, have put in place concrete strategies to enhance the resilience of the agricultural sector, an engine of their economic growth.

Zipora said the Green Climate Fund and other providers of climate finance should scale up their support to developing countries to adapt to climate change. Focus, she said, should shift to building the capacity of vulnerable countries so that they access the funds.

Heightend focus on CSA comes at a time when the huge potential of agriculture in fighting negative impact of climate change is being underscored. Hanne Knaepen, Policy Officer, Food Security Programme, European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), said agriculture had initially been neglected at the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.

Knaepen told IDN that COP21 in Paris was the first conference of parties ever that dedicated a full day to ‘agriculture’. Reasons for the increased attention, she said, are due to climate change, lobby work from CSA alliances and NGOs such as Oxfam. Attention to agriculture can also be attributed to emerging criticism that climate finance has been dedicated largely to mitigation and less to adaptation activities.

ECDPM is an independent foundation that monitors and supports development cooperation between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

She said the fact that agriculture has been prominent in the INDCs is very promising. Thus it can be assumed that the INDCs are promoting the agriculture an issue that African countries have long been advocating for. However, noted Knaepen, African countries will face challenges in implementing their INDCs in terms of cushioning agriculture against climate change.

She said one of the bottnekcs is financing the implementation of the (I)NDCs. The process is rather costly. The World Development Report estimates the incremental costs of adaptation in developing countries would amount to between USD 30 and 100 billion per year until 2050.

Besides, incremental costs of climate change mitigation in developing countries are estimated to USD 265-565 billion per year until 2030.

Note: This report is part of a joint project of the Secretariat of the ACP Group of States and IDN, a flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate.

Donald Trump’s warning that he might not accept the results of the presidential election exemplifies his approach to everything: Do whatever it takes to win, even if that means undermining the integrity of the entire system.

Trump isn’t alone. The same approach underlies Senator John McCain’s recent warning that Senate Republicans will unite against any Supreme Court nominee Hillary Clinton might put up, if she becomes president.

The Republican Party as a whole has embraced this philosophy for more than two decades. After Newt Gingrich took over as Speaker of the House in 1995, compromise was replaced by brinksmanship, and normal legislative maneuvering was supplanted by threats to close down the government – which occurred at the end of that year.

Like Trump, Gingrich did whatever it took to win, regardless of the consequences. In 1996, during the debates over welfare reform, he racially stereotyped African-Americans. In 2010 he fueled the birther movement by saying President Obama exhibited “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.” Two years later, in his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he called President Obama the “food stamp president.“

As political observers Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of Brookings have noted, “the forces Mr. Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines.” Gingrich’s Republican Party became “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

In truth, it’s not just Republicans and not just relationships between the two major parties that have suffered from the prevailing ethos. During this year’s Democratic primaries, former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her staff showed disdain for the integrity of the political process by discussing ways to derail Bernie Sanders’s campaign, according to hacked emails.

The same ethos is taking over the private sector. When they pushed employees to open new accounts, Wells Fargo CEO John Strumpf and his management team chose to win regardless of the long-term consequences of their strategy. The scheme seemed to work, at least in the short term. Strumpf and his colleagues made a bundle.

Mylan Pharmaceuticals CEO Heather Bresch didn’t worry about the larger consequences of jacking up the cost of life-saving EpiPens from $100 for a two-pack to $608, because it made her and her team lots of money.

Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turin Pharmaceuticals, didn’t worry about the consequences of price-gouging customers. Called before Congress to explain, he invoked the Fifth Amendment, then tweeted that the lawmakers who questioned his tactics were “imbeciles.”

A decade ago, Wall Street’s leading bankers didn’t worry about the consequences of their actions for the integrity of the American financial system. They encouraged predatory mortgage lending by bundling risky mortgages with other securities and then selling them to unwary investors because it made them a boatload of money, and knew they were too big to fail.

Even when some of these trust-destroyers get nailed with fines or penalties, or public rebuke, they don’t bear the larger costs of undermining public trust. So they continue racing to the bottom.

Some bankers who presided over the Wall Street debacle, such as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, remain at the helm – and are trying to water down regulations designed to stop them from putting the economy at risk again.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, Newt Gingrich is positioning himself to be the politician best able to mobilize Trump supporters going forward.

“I don’t defend him [Trump] when he wanders off,” Gingrich recently told ABC News. But “there’s a big Trump and there’s a little Trump,” he said, explaining that the “big Trump” is the one who has created issues that make “the establishment” very uncomfortable. “The big Trump,” he said, “is a historic figure.”

By stretching the boundaries of what’s acceptable, all the people I’ve mentioned – and too many others just like them – have undermined prevailing norms and weakened the tacit rules of the game.

The net result has been a vicious cycle of public distrust. Our economic and political systems appear to be rigged, because, to an increasing extent, they are. Which makes the public ever more cynical – and, ironically, more willing to believe half-baked conspiracy theories such as Trump’s bizarre claim that the upcoming election is rigged.

Leadership of our nation’s major institutions is not just about winning. It’s also about making these institutions stronger and more trustworthy.

In recent years we have witnessed a massive failure of such leadership. Donald Trump is only the latest and most extreme example.

The cumulative damage of today’s ethos of doing whatever it takes to win, even at the cost of undermining the integrity of our system, is incalculable.

Most countries suffering from an economic situation as dire as that of the Russian Federation would see public support turn massively away from the incumbent administration and major political as well as economic protests as well. But in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, neither has happened.

While there has been a small decline in public backing for the Kremlin leader and there have been some narrowly cast economic protests, there hasn’t been the decline in the one and the rise in the other to a political level that most analysts would normally expect. What is behind this “Russian paradox”?

Following the release of a new study by the Presidential Academy of Economics and State Service which shows that the situation is quite dire (ranepa.ru/images/docs/monitoring/ek-monitoring/monitoring-sept-okt-2016.pdf), Andrey Polunin of the Svobodnaya pressa portal queried three experts as to why things are as they are (svpressa.ru/society/article/159039/).

Vladimir Rimsky, a sociologist at the INDEM Foundation, says that most Russians consider that “they have adapted to the crisis and that things are not so bad.” And they believe that the government has “a very large number of levers” which it will use to improve things – or at least “in the depths of their souls, they simply hope for better.”

At the same time, many are pessimistic about the future because they don’t see any obvious solutions to the lack of growth, difficulties university graduates face in finding jobs, and the problems of pensioners. Even those who appear to be well situated fear that as the situation gets worse, they could lose their position and be forced to take a lower-paying one.

But because of their fears of losing their jobs or worse, such people are afraid “to express their opinion and to show initiative …. That is especially obvious in science, education and in part in marketing.” Consequently, there is no one to serve as the leader of a movement around which those who are suffering can coalesce.

And thus, Rimsky says, there will not be any serious protests because there needs to be a social and political basis for that; and in Russia, this is lacking. Russians know that they need to work through parties, but the parties for various reasons won’t promote their views and wait for orders from above.

What this means, the sociologist continues, is that “the probability of acts of dissatisfaction is increasing in Russia. But these will be actions” of specific groups, seeking specific benefits for themselves, rather than promoting broader political goals. And these actions will be premised on getting the attention of the authorities rather than challenging them.

At most, these could grow into street protests like those in 2011-2012; but right now, there is little prospect of that, Rimsky concludes.

Sergey Markov, the director of the Moscow Institute of Political Research, says that “the Russian economy has reached ‘bottom’ and is frozen in that position.” The usual logic is that “the social sphere falls later than the economy, but its fall continues even after the economy stabilizes.” And thus it is quite likely that the standard of living of Russians will fall more.

In most countries most of the time, that would have political consequences. But not in Russia. The Russian population, Markov argues, “has become accustomed to unpredictability in economic life.” It remembers the fall of the 1990s and the remarkable rise of the early years of this century. And it knows that declines now have only reduced some of the gains.

“The classical model of a crisis develops this way,” he says. “First arrives a financial crisis, then it grows into an economic one, then into a social one and finally into a political one.” But “the logic of the current Russian crisis is completely different.” People see the causes as being “absolutely from abroad.” And so they don’t blame the leadership; they support it.

“The majority of the population of Russia considers the collective West rather than the president and government responsible for their declining standard of living. Precisely this explains the paradox in which a fall in the level of living and a growth of social tension leads to the growth of support for the Kremlin,” Markov continues.

And Yekaterinburg political scientist Fyodor Krasheninnikov says that “there is no direction connection between the dissatisfaction of society and political activity. For people to display political activity, they must have the opportunity to do so … [But] today in Russia there is no such space.”

“Yes,” he says, “in the case of a radical deterioration of live spontaneous risings may occur on the Russian borderlands and in small cities. But the country is still very far from that. One must beside this clearly understand that the majority of the population of Russia is accustomed to live badly and remembers still worse times in the past.”

The current crisis has hid the middle class hardest because they had gotten used to being able to take vacations in Paris and now do not have that chance, Krasheninnikov says. “But for those who earlier could purchase expensive catchup but today must buy a cheaper brand, the crisis is no problem.”

By Rahul Krishna

Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave to the west of the Baltics, bordering Lithuania and Poland, both NATO allies. The reasons Kaliningrad is of immense strategic importance to Russia are many. It is the only port in Europe of Russia’s that remains ice free throughout the year, it houses the headquarters of the pivotal Russian Baltic Navy fleet, it houses two air bases of the Air Force, it houses a large number of Russian ballistic missiles, and its location is particularly advantageous. It is no surprise then that Russia is preparing to exploit the region’s location to gain a strategic military advantage by formulating directed military policy for the region.

The Soviet Union understood the strategic importance of Kaliningrad early on and realised the need to militarise it.  It soon became the headquarters of famed Soviet Baltic Navy fleet. Kaliningrad was used as the first line of defence of the inner Soviet Union and played an important role in protecting North-Western Russia from any attack in the Baltic Sea. While initially, Soviet commanders had planned Kaliningrad as a defensive outpost, they slowly began to realise its importance as a support base for an offensive strike as well. Kaliningrad was used by the Soviet Union as an important support base and kept armaments in Kaliningrad that might be used by incoming Soviet soldiers to launch a large scale offensive towards the West.

Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Kaliningrad came under Russian administration despite being geographically cut off and surrounded by Lithuania and Poland which soon became NATO allies.

Building military power in Kaliningrad

However, analysis of all of the news flowing in of Russian military exercises suggests that Russia does not intend to follow the plans the Soviet Union had set out for Kaliningrad. Both strategy that has been planned in Moscow as well as on ground exercises have emphasised on the locational importance of Kaliningrad and how a shift in focus needs to occur to exploit this advantage.

Soon after the Crimea annexation, Russia unilaterally suspended an agreement between itself and Lithuania that required Russia to report armaments in the Kaliningrad region.

In the new doctrine for military modernisation, the Russian military claimed that there will be emphasis laid to reinforcing military power in the regions of Crimea, the Arctic and Kaliningrad. Both an increase in construction of military infrastructure and personnel is planned to occur by 2020.

Russia has deployed the short range Iskander ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Kaliningrad. Russia undertook anti-submarine training exercises in the Baltic Sea using specialised anti-submarine Ka-27 helicopters. Russia has also positioned coastal radars used to cue K-300P Anti-Ship missiles in Kaliningrad for use in the Baltic sea. The surface to air S-400 missiles, the most modern that Russia has, have been deployed in large number in Kaliningrad. Russia has flown several sorties out of two major air bases, Chernyakhovsk and Donskoye, very close to and at times even over the air space of Lithuania. However, it does seem as if these operations are more like interceptor missions rather than offensive operations.

What does this mean for the West?

All of these concerted actions make it evident that Russia is now focusing on building Kaliningrad to be an effective A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) base. A2/AD is a strategy by which a military denies its adversary access to certain strategic areas by an employment of various land, air and sea based weaponry. An integration of other commands such as the newly formed Aerospace Command and the Electronic Warfare Command is also expected in Kaliningrad along with conventional military to support this tactical A2/AD strategy.

This strategy being implemented by the Russian military does not bode well for the NATO. Any area denial in the Baltic regions could be catastrophic in the event of a skirmish with Russia. With tensions building, NATO cannot afford the occurrence of such a scenario. The NATO also possesses a largely blue water naval presence in Europe, while the Russians are more acclimatised to green water conditions such as the ones in the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas. This makes the NATO even more vulnerable to this sort of strategy, something they haven’t particularly addressed so far.

NATO response forces in the region, therefore, will have to be quick in retaliating against such a strategy, however there is skepticism regarding their capabilities in the region at the moment. Logically speaking, implementation of an Anti-Access/ Area Denial strategy might well be accompanied by some form of offensive on the Baltics which will be disastrous for the NATO. NATO generals have expressed concerns over deployment of its quickest response force, the VHRJTF, in Eastern Europe, fearing it will be overrun by Russian troops in the event of a Russian offensive. Reinforcements through the Baltic Sea once again remain key to any form of defense or retaliation.

The US armed forces had acknowledged the threat posed by the Russian strategy and have been actively developing technology specifically to counter A2/AD implementation by Russia in Europe and by China in the South China Sea. Figuratively speaking, for any ground to be won back, the US needs to ensure that this technology is fast-tracked into deployment with NATO forces in Eastern Europe to deter the Russians from enforcing the area denial and ensure these capabilities become operational at the earliest.

To conclude, Russia has finally understood the locational advantage Kaliningrad gives them in any skirmish in the region. They have shaped their military strategy in a way that when they intend to, they have the resources to press this advantage. The NATO now needs to be proactive in plugging holes and developing contingencies for any Russian aggression in this region in the future.

*Rahul Krishna is doing his undergraduate course in Electronics Engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering in India. He interned at Observer Research Foundation in summer 2016. He specializes on strategic studies in Europe and North America as well as policy issues relating to technology

The views expressed above belong to the author(s).

By Angshuman Choudhury*

On 9 October 2016, around 300 assailants, armed with swords, spears, and homemade weapons, launched a coordinated attack on several police outposts in Myanmar’s Rakhine State close to the Bangladesh border, killing nine police officers and wounding four others.

The Government of Myanmar has blamed elements from the locally-dominant Rohingya Muslim community for the attacks, naming a dormant Rohingya outfit – the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO). As an immediate follow-up to the attacks, additional troops from the Tatmadaw were deployed in the affected region to conduct extensive area sweeps and house-to-house searches. According to the home ministry, 30 ‘attackers’ have been killed by Security Forces (SF) in subsequent counterinsurgency raids.

If the Rohingya linkage is credible, then this would be the first serious occurrence of insurgent violence from within the long-persecuted, stateless Muslim minority community in Rakhine State. However, since the community has not exhibited outright radical proclivities or signs of organised extremism in the past, a closer scrutiny of the functional context to understand whether the attacks really emanated from within the mainstream Rohingya population or from exogenous sources is imperative.

Contours of Rohingya Extremism: The Old and the New
According to claims made by the government, the attacks were linked to a hitherto unknown Islamist terror outfit called Aqa Mul Mujahidin (AMM), which in turn is allegedly connected to the RSO. The only signs of the RSO’s resurgence have thus far been a single announcement on Facebook on a fringe account. The government has named a certain ‘Mr Havistoohar’ from a small village in the Maungdaw area as the ‘leader’ of AMM, claiming that he was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan.

According to Myanmarese intelligence, ‘Havistoohar’ returned to Rakhine to recruit and arm around 400 Rohingya men for attacks around Maungdaw. He is also said to have frequently crossed over into Bangladesh to receive funding from “Middle Eastern organisations,” and was assisted by a certain Pakistani national called ‘Kali’ who travelled to Maungdaw to train the recruits.

This preliminary assessment falls in line with the more categorical evaluation made by Indian intelligence officials who have identified ‘Mr Havistoohar’ as Hafiz Tohar, a 45-year old Rohingya man from Kyauk Pyin Seik village in Maungdaw. They categorise AMM as an offshoot of the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami-Arakaan (HUJI-A), an Islamist terror group led by a Pakistani national of Rohingya origin called Abdul Qadoos Burmi (perhaps aliased as ‘Kalis’).

HUJI-A’s links to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) are well known. Qadoos has been seen on stage with LeT chief Hafiz Sayeed in Karachi, at a conference organised to show solidarity with Rohingya Muslims. He fled to Pakistan in the early 1980s, and subsequently formed HUJI-A in 1988.Qadoos is understood to have trained Rohingya recruits in Pakistan and thereafter sent them to Bangladesh for further localised training in the hilly border with Myanmar.

Notably, LeT operatives from Pakistan were directly involved in training Rohingya recruits in this area. Indian and western intelligence, over the past one year, have posited that LeT commands a strong presence in Rohingya camps in Rakhine state through two key overground organisations, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Fala-I-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF). Through these, LeT has picked up recruits for further training in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Curiously, one analysis points to the involvement of another new organisation – ‘Harakah al-Yaqin’ (HAY) – constituted of “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh” who crossed over to northern Rakhine in the areas where the attacks happened. These militants, armed with AK-47 rifles, have posted videos on YouTube after the recent attacks, calling for solidarity to the Rohingya cause and jihad against Myanmar SFs.

A Preliminary Assessment
In light of the above, responsibility for the attacks cannot be pinned down with any certainty. However, the growing involvement of a transnational jihadist ecosystem is evident in the region. Of these, the LeT/HUJI-A supra-network is the most important with AMM and HAY being new operators. Given LeT/HUJI-A’s infrastructural build-up in south eastern Bangladesh, the possibility of an increasingly violent and sustained campaign has always remained feasible. The question then is, why has this longstanding infrastructure not been operationalised across the border in Rakhine?

One explanation could be the severe degradation of the LeT/HUJI-A ecosystem owing to the Bangladesh government’s crackdown on extremist groups. Furthermore, the weapons used in the attacks were crude and not military-grade, indicating localised mobilisation and training, as opposed to well-funded and armed jihadist networks of mobilisation, like the LeT/HUJI-A duo.

Worryingly, 51 firearms and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition were looted from the police during the attack, pointing to the gathering of materials for a larger assault. This therefore seems to be a localised group facilitated by the LeT/HUJI-A complex acting to ease the resource crunch it is facing. It remains to be seen if this resupply of arms will be used in the future on Myanmar or Bangladeshi soil.

* Angshuman Choudhury
Researcher, Southeast Asia Research Programme (SEARP), IPCS

By Hannah Brockhaus

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released an instruction Tuesday regarding burial and cremation, reiterating the Church’s teaching that cremation, while strongly discouraged, can be permissible under certain restrictions – and that scattering the ashes is forbidden.

Ad resurgendum cum Christo, or “To rise with Christ”, published Oct. 25, states that while cremation “is not prohibited” the Church “continues to prefer the practice of burying the bodies of the deceased, because this shows a greater esteem towards the deceased.”

The document explains that after “legitimate motives” for cremation have been ascertained, the “ashes of the faithful must be laid to rest in a sacred place,” such as in a cemetery or church. It goes on to state that is not permitted to keep the ashes in a home or to scatter them “in the air, on land, at sea or in some other way, nor may they be preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry or other objects.”

“The burial, the last liturgy for us, is an expression of our hope for the resurrection,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the congregation wrote, “and therefore the Church continues to teach that the normal burial of the body is the normal form.”

As the document explains, “by burying the bodies of the faithful, the Church confirms her faith in the resurrection of the body, and intends to show the great dignity of the human body as an integral part of the human person whose body forms part of their identity.”

“She cannot, therefore, condone attitudes or permit rites that involve erroneous ideas about death, such as considering death as the definitive annihilation of the person, or the moment of fusion with Mother Nature or the universe.”

Rather, burial in a cemetery or another sacred place “adequately corresponds to the piety and respect owed to the bodies of the faithful departed who through Baptism have become temples of the Holy Spirit and in which ‘as instruments and vessels the Spirit has carried out so many good works.’”

The Vatican originally answered the question of whether or not cremation was allowed in 1963, but with the increase in both its popularity and in practices such as scattering the ashes or keeping them in the home, it found it necessary to provide a new set of norms as guidance for bishops.

The instruction emphasized that “following the most ancient Christian tradition, the Church insistently recommends that the bodies of the deceased be buried.”

A proper respect for the dignity of the body, according to Fr. Thomas Bonino, an official at the CDF, promotes the hylomorphic understanding of the human person as being composed of both body and soul.

“One must perhaps start from the idea of ecology,” Fr. Bonino told CNA, “meaning respect for nature. But the body is part of our nature, so a true ecology is also an ecology which takes into account the corporality of man.”

Fr. Bonino explained that because “the body forms part of our identity” together with the soul, this teaching “must be reaffirmed” in preaching and in catechesis.

Practices such as scattering the ashes in nature can be a form of “pantheistic confessions, as if nature were a god,” Fr. Bonino said. Or it can express the false ideology “that after death nothing of the person remains, that the body just returns to the earth and there is nothing more.”

The new norms address these issues, he said, while also reacting against the idea that death is only about the individual or the immediate family. “Death also deals with the community to which the deceased belonged,” he pointed out.

The Vatican document highlighted several other reasons for the importance of the burial of the dead, including that the Church considers burying the dead to be one of the corporal works of mercy.

“From the earliest times, Christians have desired that the faithful departed become the objects of the Christian community’s prayers and remembrance. Their tombs have become places of prayer, remembrance and reflection,” it stated.

By reserving the ashes of the deceased in a sacred place, we can be assured that they are not excluded from the prayers of their family and the Christian community, it continued, as well as provide a more permanent marker for posterity, especially after the immediately subsequent generation has passed away.

“We are Catholics … and we must try to understand all elements of our life in the sense of the Christian faith,” Cardinal Müller said.

“We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord and also we have the hope for our resurrection of our body… And therefore the big tradition as Christians has always been burial.”

Mary Shovlain contributed to this piece.

A new analysis of the topography of the central Andes shows the uplifting of the Earth’s second highest continental plateau was driven in part by a huge zone of melted rock in the crust, known as a magma body.

The Altiplano-Puna plateau is a high, dry region in the central Andes that includes parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, with vast plains punctuated by spectacular volcanoes. In a study published October 25 in Nature Communications, researchers used remote sensing data and topographic modeling techniques to reveal an enormous dome in the plateau.

About 1 kilometer (3,300 feet) high and hundreds of miles across, the dome sits right above the largest active magma body on Earth. The uplifting of the dome is the result of the thickening of the crust due to the injection of magma from below, according to Noah Finnegan, associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and senior author of the paper.

“The dome is the Earth’s response to having this huge low-density magma chamber pumped into the crust,” Finnegan said.

The uplifting of the dome accounts for about one-fifth of the height of the central Andes, said first author Jonathan Perkins, who led the study as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz and is now at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

“It’s a large part of the evolution of the Andes that hadn’t been quantified before,” Perkins said.

The other forces uplifting the Andes are tectonic, resulting from the South American continental plate overriding the Nazca oceanic plate. The subduction zone where the Nazca plate dives beneath the western edge of South America is the source of the magma entering the crust and feeding volcanic activity in the region. Water released from the subducting slab of oceanic crust changes the melting temperature of the overlying wedge of mantle rock, causing it to melt and rise into the overriding plate.

Perkins and Finnegan worked with researchers at the University of Arizona who had used seismic imaging to reveal the remarkable size and extent of the Altiplano-Puna magma body in a paper published in 2014. That study detected a huge zone of melted material about 11 kilometers thick and 200 kilometers in diameter, much larger than previous estimates.

“People had known about the magma body, but it had not been quantified that well,” Perkins said. “In the new study, we were able to show a tight spatial coupling between that magma body and this big, kilometer-high dome.”

Based on their topographic analysis and modeling studies, the researchers calculated the amount of melted material in the magma body, yielding an estimate close to the previous calculation based seismic imaging. “This provides a direct and independent verification of the size and extent of the magma body,” Finnegan said. “It shows that you can use topography to learn about deep crustal processes that are hard to quantify, such as the rate of melt production and how much magma was pumped into the crust from below.”

The Altiplano-Puna Volcanic Complex was one of the most volcanically active places on Earth starting about 10 million years ago, with several super-volcanoes producing massive eruptions and creating a large complex of collapsed calderas in the region. Although no major eruptions have occurred in several thousand years, there are still active volcanoes and geothermal activity in the region. In addition, satellite surveys of surface deformation since the 1990s have shown that uplifting of the surface is continuing to occur at a relatively rapid rate in a few places. At Uturuncu volcano located right in the center of the dome, the uplift is about 1 centimeter (less than half an inch) per year.

“We think the ongoing uplift is from the magma body,” Perkins said. “The jury is still out on exactly what’s causing it, but we don’t think it’s related to a supervolcano.”

The growth of the crust beneath the Altiplano-Puna plateau, driven by the intrusion of magma from below, is a fundamental process in the building of continents. “This is giving us a glimpse into the factory where continents get made,” Perkins said. “These big magmatic systems form during periods called magmatic flare-ups when lots of melt gets injected into Earth’s crust. It’s analogous to the process that created the Sierra Nevada 90 million years ago, but we’re seeing it now in real time.”

In addition to Perkins and Finnegan, the coauthors of the paper include Kevin Ward, George Zandt, and Susan Beck at the University of Arizona and Shanaka de Silva at Oregon State University. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Images and references to alcohol and tobacco in popular video games may be influencing UK teens who play the games and the age restriction system is not working, according to a new study.

Experts from the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at The University of Nottingham have carried out the first ever analysis of best-selling video games to find out the extent to which the games include this content and to assess the link between playing the games and drinking and smoking behaviour.

They found that teenagers who play video games featuring alcohol and tobacco references appeared to be directly influenced because they were twice as likely to have tried smoking or drinking themselves.

The research examined the content of 32 UK best-selling video games of 2012/2013 and carried out a large online survey of adolescents playing games with alcohol and tobacco content. An analysis of ‘cut scenes’ uploaded by gamers to YouTube from the five most popular games was also carried out. All the games studied were from the genres of stealth, action adventure, open world, shooter and survival/horror because they involve avatars that look and act like real people.

The study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, found alcohol and tobacco content in 44% of the most popular video games. They also found this content was not reported by the official regulator, the Pan-European Games Information (PEGI) system which informs the Video Standards Council age ratings that help parents decide whether game content is suitable for their children.

The researchers used YouGov survey tools to ask 1,094 UK adolescents aged 11-17 whether they had played any of the most popular video games identified as containing either tobacco or alcohol imagery. They were also asked whether and to what extent they smoked or drank alcohol. The study found that adolescents who had played at least one game with tobacco or alcohol content were twice as likely to have tried smoking or consumed alcohol themselves.

Out of the top five most popular games, Grand Theft Auto V & VI contained the highest level of alcohol and smoking content using fictitious brands only. The other top games containing these references were Call of Duty:Black Ops II, Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 3 and Assassin’s Creed III. There was no electronic cigarette content.

Psychologist Dr Joanne Cranwell from the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, said, “Although around 54% of UK adolescents play video games online, parental concern over exposure to inappropriate content while playing video games seems to be lower than for other media, like movies for example. While 80% of children aged 10-15 play packaged or online video games with an age rating higher than their age, more than half of British parents are unaware of the harmful content this exposes them to.

“Video games are clearly attractive to adolescents regardless of age classification. It appears that official PEGI content descriptors are failing to restrict youth access to age inappropriate content. We think that the PEGI system needs to include both alcohol and tobacco in their content descriptors. Also, game developers could be offered incentives to reduce the amount of smoking and drinking in their games or to at least reference smoking and drinking on their packaging and websites.

“As a child protection method it is naïve for both the games industry and the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, who regulate the PEGI system, to rely on age ratings alone. Future research should focus on identifying the levels of exposure in terms of dose that youth gamers are exposed to during actual gameplay and the effects of this on long- term alcohol and smoking behaviour.”

In cities where homeless persons are viewed as an “environmental contaminant”–a form of pollution, efforts to purge the homeless from the area tend to push them to the fringes of the community and diminish their access to the urban environment and the resources it provides, according to an article published in Environmental Justice, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers.

In the article, “Treating People Like Pollution: Homelessness and Environmental Injustice,” Eric Bonds, PhD and Leslie Martin, PhD, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, focus on the homeless population of Fredericksburg, Virginia, a small city and distant suburb of Washington, DC.

The authors provide compelling information and arguments to demonstrate how both official and unofficial movements and exclusionary policies from within communities reduce the visible existence of homeless populations. This important, and too often under-recognized environmental injustice, marginalizes homeless persons, making them feel less safe and unable to access community resources that may provide shelter, meals, and other social services.

“This article is important in elucidating the human costs of environmental indifference to those who we perceive as “others” in our society,” said Environmental Justice Editor-in-Chief Sylvia Hood Washington, PhD, MSE, MPH, and a LEED AP, and Sustainability Director, Environmental Health Research Associates, LLC. “The authors make a significant contribution to the field of environmental injustice by including the homeless in our understanding of who suffers from environmental disenfranchisement.”

I would not rank Vladimir Putin high on a list of leaders. If I lived in Russia I’d be working for major reforms in my government, just as I’m doing where I do live, in the United States. I regularly go on Russian media and criticize the Russian government. Russia is illegally and immorally bombing people in Syria, just as the United States is doing in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

But there are Putin Halloween masks for sale in U.S. stores. Time magazine has Putin on the cover accusing him of trying to damage U.S. elections. A Google search for “Hitler Putin” brings back 11 million results. This demonization of a foreign leader should frighten us more than that leader himself.

Wars do not only kill, if they kill at all, a foreign leader. But they do kill large numbers of children, grandparents, mothers, and fathers. They enrage people, endanger us, damage the natural environment, justify the removal of our rights, and divert unfathomable resources from areas where they could have done a world of good.

The actual Adolph Hitler had no plans or ability to invade the United States and was defeated primarily by Russians who lost at least 27 million lives in the process. For over 70 years, since the end of World War II, the United States has bombed dozens of nations, and in every case that I am aware of U.S. officials have labeled a targeted individual “Hitler.”

In May the Politico newspaper reported on Pentagon testimony in Congress to the effect that Russia had a superior and threatening military, but followed that with this: “‘This is the “Chicken-Little, sky-is-falling” set in the Army,’ the senior Pentagon officer said. ‘These guys want us to believe the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. What a crock.”

Politico then cited a less-than-credible “study” of Russian military superiority and aggression and added: “While the reporting about the Army study made headlines in the major media, a large number in the military’s influential retired community, including former senior Army officers, rolled their eyes.”

The United States has overseen the expansion of NATO to Russia’s border. The buffer zone of the last Cold War is gone. U.S./NATO missile bases are now in Romania and being built in Poland. The U.S. has organized in Eastern Europe the largest military exercises seen there since World War II. The U.S. role in supporting a violent coup that created an anti-Russian government in Ukraine was exposed before the coup. When the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, the U.S. media characterized Russian actions that resulted in total casualties of zero as “an invasion of Ukraine.”

Without presenting us with any evidence, the U.S. government has accused Russia of shooting down an airplane, of exposing the corruption within the Democratic National Committee (shouldn’t we be grateful?), and of somehow sabotaging the upcoming U.S. election. Every atrocity committed by Russia or Syria in Syria is big news. Every U.S. atrocity there is a yawn.

The stakes are high every time the United States overthrows a government. The disasters of Iraq and Libya have fueled the current catastrophes in those countries and Syria and around the region. But the stakes are higher when the United States and Russia confront each other. These are nuclear nations. Russia has announced that it is considering re-opening a base in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in case anyone has forgotten, was one of the many times since the creation of nuclear weapons that humanity has come close to intentionally or accidentally destroying itself.

The nukes are of far greater strength now. And our understanding has grown of how a limited nuclear war anywhere on earth would create a crop-destroying nuclear winter followed by mass starvation. We don’t need to take this sort of risk. To avoid it we need to turn away from war. And that means we need to stop using human rights abuses by targeted governments as excuses to bomb people.

We should protect human rights through leadership by example and consistent application of the rule of law. Doing so would then open the United States up to the possibility of opposing human rights abuses by some of the nasty governments that it props up and sells or gives weapons to, beginning perhaps with Saudi Arabia, a monarchy that makes Vladimir Putin look like Mohandas Gandhi.

This piece was first published by the Fairbanks Alaska Daily Miner.

More than 15 million children are living in high-mortality hotspots across 28 sub-Saharan African countries, where death rates remain stubbornly high despite progress elsewhere within those countries, according to Stanford University researchers.

The study, which will be published online Oct. 25 in The Lancet Global Health, is the first to record and analyze local-level mortality variations across a large swath of sub-Saharan Africa.

These hotspots may remain hidden even as many countries are on track to achieve one of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals: reducing the mortality rate of children under the age of 5 to 25 per 1,000 by 2030. National averages are typically used for tracking child mortality trends, allowing left-behind regions within countries to remain out of sight — until now.

The senior author of the study is Eran Bendavid, MD, MS, an assistant professor of medicine and a core faculty member at Stanford Health Policy. The lead author is Marshall Burke, PhD, an assistant professor of Earth system science and a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

Decline in under-5 mortality rate

The authors note that the ongoing decline in under-5 mortality worldwide ranks among the most significant public and population health successes of the past 30 years. Deaths of children in that age group have fallen from nearly 13 million a year in 1990 to fewer than 6 million a year in 2015, even as the world’s under-5 population grew by nearly 100 million children, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“However, the amount of variability underlying this broad global progress is substantial,” the authors wrote.

“Mortality numbers are typically tracked at the national level, with the assumption that national differences between countries, such as government spending on health, are what determine progress against mortality,” Bendavid said. “The goal of our work was to understand whether national-level mortality statistics were hiding important variation at the more local level, and then to use this information to shed light on broader mortality trends.”

The authors used data from 82 U.S. Agency for International Development surveys in 28 sub-Saharan African countries, including information on the location and timing of 3.24 million births and 393,685 deaths of children under age 5, to develop high-resolution spatial maps of under-5 mortality from the 1980s through the 2000s.

Using this database, the authors found that local-level factors, such as climate and malaria exposure, were predictive of overall patterns, while national-level factors were relatively poor predictors of child mortality.

Temperature, malaria exposure, civil conflict

“We didn’t see jumps in mortality at country borders, which is what you’d expect if national differences really determined mortality,” said co-author Sam Heft-Neal, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science. “But we saw a strong relationship between local-level factors and mortality.”

For example, he said, one standard deviation increase in temperature above the local average was related to a 16 percent higher child mortality rate. Local malaria exposure and recent civil conflict were also predictive of mortality.

The authors found that 23 percent of the children in their study countries live in mortality hotspots — places where mortality rates are not declining fast enough to meet the targets of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. The majority of these live in just two countries: Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In only three countries do fewer than 5 percent of children live in hotspots: Benin, Namibia and Tanzania.

As part of the research, the authors have established a high-resolution mortality database with local-level mortality data spanning the last three decades to provide “new opportunities for a deeper understanding of the role that environmental, economic or political conditions play in shaping mortality outcomes.”

“Our hope is that the creation of a high-resolution mortality database will provide other researchers new opportunities for deeper understanding of the role that environmental, economic or political conditions play in shaping mortality outcomes,” said Bendavid. “These data could also improve the targeting of aid to areas where it is most needed.”

By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Japan in mid-November for a bilateral annual summit, he will carry a baggage of expectations about a long-pending India-Japan nuclear deal and possible agreements on defence cooperation, particularly the US-2 amphibious aircraft.

The nuclear deal has been straddling the fences, certainly, not for lack of political will but a variety of domestic factors at play, particularly in Japan.

In December 2015, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Indian counterpart announced an in-principle decision to cooperate on civil nuclear matters which would facilitate export of Japanese civil nuclear technology to India.

The joint statement stated that the two Prime Ministers welcomed the agreement “for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and confirmed that this agreement will be signed after the technical details are finalised, including those related to the necessary internal procedures.”

But why haven’t both the countries yet put pen to paper?

Japan and India have been strengthening their partnership against the backdrop of the Asian geopolitical churning. China’s growing might and aggressive posturing are a problem not unique to India and Japan. Many Asian countries in the neighbourhood and beyond have responded in different ways — from engaging in beefing up their defence and military capabilities to major diplomatic manoeuvring.

The India-Japan strategic partnership is a case in point. Emerging strategic ties between India and Australia as well as between Japan and Australia, and India’s outreach to Vietnam are all indicative of the shifting realignments taking place in Asia.

But are the strategic imperatives sufficient for Japan to conclude a nuclear agreement with India?

It is important to see what is driving Japan to consider nuclear commerce with India, a country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). If it does, it will be a first for Japan. If the nuclear agreement is signed, it would amount to Tokyo accepting the de facto status of India as a nuclear weapon power.

However, Tokyo wants to go that extra mile to ensure that the civil nuclear technology transferred to India is not diverted to expand New Delhi’s nuclear weapons programme.

Japan, the only country that has had to suffer nuclear attacks, feels a moral responsibility to ensure that it is a water tight agreement and there are no loopholes that might allow India to expand its nuclear weapons capability as a result of cooperation with Japan.

Though there are strong worries in Japan about nuclear power and civil nuclear cooperation with India, the Abe government itself has been keen to pursue this.

Clearly, there are political and strategic imperatives that are helping Japan to push the envelope to engage in such ventures.

The rise of China and the unpredictability and strategic consequences of its power have rankled the Japanese leadership. The same sentiments are shared by India as well. It is this confluence of strategic interests that is at the core of the India-Japan strategic partnership today.

Driven by a realistic appraisal of the ensuing security scenario, Japan has come to near open acknowledgment of India as a nuclear power.

Even so, Japan’s history will make it difficult for it to accept this and develop a full-fledged nuclear cooperation agreement. This will especially be the case due to Japan’s domestic context where there is a large public antipathy to nuclear weapons.

Japan’s general anti-nuclear sentiment will continue to be a stumbling block in realising the full potential of the relationship in this regard. The fact that the bilateral negotiations on nuclear cooperation have gone on for several years is indicative of how lukewarm Japanese sentiment is to this type of cooperation.

While the general anti-nuclear sentiment is one issue, there are specific issues that have added to the complexities of the negotiations.

For instance, Japan wants to explicitly mention that it would terminate nuclear cooperation with India if New Delhi tested a nuclear weapon. While New Delhi understands that that might be the case, India is against noting it in the bilateral agreement.

Japan’s efforts to sell the deal to the public at large have also delayed the process. The Japanese government is trying hard to convince the public that they will ensure that the civil nuclear cooperation is for peaceful uses alone.

So, Japan wants to institute a verification mechanism to ensure that India does not divert any nuclear fuel to its weapons programme.

A second related concern Japan has is that the more fuel India gets for meeting its energy requirements, more is freed up for India’s nuclear weapons programme.

They fear that nuclear cooperation with India, even if meant for civil purposes, can lead to India’s nuclear arsenal expanding and thus potentially a nuclear arms race in South Asia is a problem.

Some in Japan have demanded additional steps regarding nuclear disarmament and testing, such as India signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) before concluding this agreement. But India already has committed to a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests but going further might be politically unviable.

Lastly, there are also questions about the timing.

There are reports about possible general elections in the coming months, and this would mean that it is unlikely that the nuclear agreement with India will be introduced in Parliament, again delaying the process.

A civil nuclear cooperation agreement requires legislative approval from the Diet, as part of its internal procedures.

Given these Japanese apprehensions, it is not certain whether India and Japan will sign the nuclear deal during Modi’s forthcoming visit to Tokyo.

On the other hand, the deal is important for more than one reason. Signing of the India-Japan nuclear agreement will pave way for the operationalisation of India’s agreement with Westinghouse, a US unit of Toshiba Corporation.

But the negotiations have gone on for so long that New Delhi may be beginning to lose interest.

This commentary originally appeared in Outlook

The Cambodian government should immediately rescind its order banning the return to Cambodia of opposition leader Sam Rainsy, Human Rights Watch said today. On October 12, 2016, the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen directed all airlines flying to Cambodia not to allow Rainsy into the country.

“The official exile of opposition leader Sam Rainsy is just the latest effort by Cambodia’s ruling party to win the next national elections – by ensuring they have no real competition,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Cambodia’s donors and ASEAN members should urgently and publicly call on Prime Minister Hun Sen to end his political persecution of the opposition.”

The order, which has been made public by the government’s Supreme Directorate of Immigration, states that:

• No airline carrier should allow Sam Rainsy to board for Cambodia;
• If Sam Rainsy is on a flight to Cambodia, the plane will be ordered to return to the point of origin;
• If Sam Rainsy is on a flight to Cambodia and arrives in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap, the plane will be returned to the point of origin; and
• If Sam Rainsy succeeds in boarding a flight, arrives in Phnom Penh or Siem Reap, and leaves the plane, the immigration police are to take all necessary measures to arrest him.

The government also ordered officials to “be aware and check at the … terminals or other border checkpoints to report if Sam Rainsy comes through. Then, take actions according to the legal procedures to prevent him entering Cambodia. The actions should be highly effective.”

The order violates Cambodia’s obligations under international human rights law and contravenes the Cambodian constitution. Cambodia is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which ensures the right to freedom of movement. Article 12(4) states, “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Article 33 of the Cambodian constitution states that “Khmer citizens shall not be deprived of their nationality, exiled or arrested and deported to any foreign country unless there is a mutual agreement on extradition.”

“The actions against Sam Rainsy again expose Hun Sen’s intention to return Cambodia to a de facto one-party state, with little room for critical or opposition voices,” Adams said.

The order follows a series of politically motivated criminal cases against Rainsy, the longtime leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), that led him to stay out of the country to avoid imprisonment. The government has also carried out many arbitrary arrests and detentions of opposition members of the National Assembly and Senate, opposition party activists, and members of civil society groups, including staff of the internationally respected Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC).

During the past 12 months, reacting to ongoing public statements by the CNRP that it will win national elections scheduled for 2018, Hun Sen and other leaders of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), including those in the armed forces and police, have made a series of increasingly dire public threats against the opposition. These threats followed a public campaign to remove Kem Sokha, deputy CNRP leader and vice president of the National Assembly, from his post. In October 2015, CPP-organized mobs carried out a brutal assault on two opposition parliamentarians. The CPP then voted to strip Sokha of his leadership post in the National Assembly. He is now facing imprisonment on politically motivated charges for which he was convicted on September 9, 2016.

“Exiling the opposition leader around the 25th anniversary of the Paris Peace Agreements, which were supposed to end one-party rule, is particularly galling,” Adams said. “Many Cambodians hoped the Paris Agreements would usher in pluralistic democracy, but Hun Sen seems intent on reversing all the gains of the last 25 years.”

Due to its horrendous human rights record, China should not be reelected to the U.N. Human Rights Council, says a leading Chinese activist.

“Candidates for the U.N. Human Rights Council, according to General Assembly Resolution 60/251, are supposed to be countries that ‘uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights,'” wrote Yang Jianli president of Initiatives for China and former Tiananmen Square activist for the Washington Post.

“By any stretch of the imagination, no reasonable person could really believe that China’s inclusion in the Human Rights Council would cause it to ‘behave’ — that is, to meet its obligations to respect and protect human rights — not only under the several international treaties it has signed, but also under its own constitution,” Yang stated in his op-ed which highlighted China’s human rights record over the past three years while it has been a member of the council.

“During the past three years, China has continued its repressive policies against Christians, Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongolians, Falun Gong practitioners and Hong Kong democrats,” he wrote.

“By any sensible standard, voting to put China on the council again would be like picking the fox to guard the henhouse — while he was still wiping the feathers off his mouth from his last meal.”

The U.N. General Assembly will vote to choose new members for its Human Rights Council on Oct. 28. Other countries with dubious human rights records such as Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia currently sit on the council and are also up for reelection.