Foreign Policy Blogs

Having survived through the Greek saga with the Euro still intact, the banks, for now, still standing, and a new capital markets union in the offing, it could be argued that Europe’s economic union has withstood the slings and arrows of misfortune that have come its way in the last few years. The same, however, cannot be said of its political union.

In his State of the Union address delivered to the European Parliament, Commission President, Jean Claude Juncker, went so far as to call it an “existential crisis”. The day before making this statement, two headlines came out that supported his diagnosis. The first concerned the revelation that the EU admitted Romania and Bulgaria despite warnings from The European Court of Auditors (ECA) that they were not yet ready. The second involved comments made by Juncker’s compatriot, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn who said that Hungary should be excluded “temporarily or if need be forever” from the EU on account of the government’s authoritarian lurch and rough handling of the refugee crisis.

Looking more deeply at these interconnected issues we cannot help but agree with Juncker’s gloomy assessment about Europe being in a state of crisis. Since 2008, the main criticism of the EU has been that as a monetary, but not fiscal, union it has been incapable of correcting the imbalances that resulted from the differing economic needs of core and periphery members. Much has been made of this policy mismatch and the deleterious effect it can have, especially on the periphery.

The attention given to this divergence in economic priorities is understandable given that it cuts to the core of the Euro crises; however, while all eyes have been trained on the economic situation, insufficient attention has been paid to a divergence of another, possibly more threatening, kind that has been opening up among member states on the political level.

While the founding members, having set a course for “ever closer union” went into autopilot, expecting to arrive at a state of near perfect union sometime in the medium term, they never imagined that the idea of a perfect union in Berlin might be very different from that in Sofia, Prague or Budapest. That status quo lasted until the onset of the refugee crisis, which revealed the extent of the ideological parting of ways between old and new Europe.

Bulgaria was hard hit by the waves of refugees making their way into Europe, a crisis that translated into violence against asylum seekers committed with impunity by border guards. The country erected a 230-kilometer fence on its border with Turkey and has deployed the army to patrol it, which was accompanied by a spike in the number of reports of excessive force. This happens in a country whose European values are under scrutiny for other reasons, such as its shaky commitment to the rule of law and the nefarious influence the Mafia has over the state.

Across the border, Romania shows the same signs of hostility to refugees despite barely having any asylum seekers crossing its borders. Nevertheless, Bucharest loudly rejected the European Union’s quotas mandatory quotas, arguing that taking in 6,000 would be too much to handle. And indeed, Romania seems to have troubles even keeping its current population within its borders. Millions of Romanians have already left the country over the past decade for economic reasons. The current caretaker government of Dacian Ciolos has been accused of standing idly by as the health care system (understaffed by at least 30,000 physicians) crumbled, and has proved incapable of handling massive strikes and walk-outs. To top it off, Ciolos is accused of leading a witch-hunt against political opponents as part of a wide anti-corruption drive with the help of the Romanian Intelligence Service.

Romania’s case is however typical of the political climate prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe. The  Visegrad group (composed of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) has emerged as a stalwart bastion countering western values of liberalism, tolerance and open borders with its own set of values: Christian, nativist, authoritarian.

The most headline grabbing of these countries’ leaders is perhaps Viktor Orbán whose opposition to the EU quota system for distributing refugees throughout the block has become a rallying cry with which to drown out the criticism of corruption and cronyism that plague his administration. Claiming that the admission of Muslim refugees into Europe would undermine its Christian identity, Orbán has successfully fanned the flames of xenophobia in Hungary to a level grossly disproportionate to the vanishingly small number who would actually be settled in the country under the proposed quota system. A forthcoming referendum on migration is expected to swing largely in favor of the government and be used by Orban as a stick against further pressure from Brussels.

Poland, equally concerned with the preservation of its Christian identity, if not its democratic institutions, has come under fire from Brussels for undermining the ability of the supreme court to review legislation, leading to accusations of a power grab on behalf of the government and a roll back towards soviet style centralization. A clash between protesters and the government over the introduction of highly restrictive abortion laws and the influence of the Catholic Church on policy speaks to the growing rift between the country’s urban youth and the staunchly conservative Law and Justice Party.

It is strange how the newest members of the European Union, who have benefited both financially and politically from being members of a powerful political bloc, have been the first to jump ship at the first sign of trouble. Since its creation the EU has been driven by a set of common principles that it was thought would always define the Union. The refugee crisis has woken “old” Europe up to the realization that in a union of 28 countries those principles may not be so common anymore.

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A B-2 in formation flight with eight U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets

Recently, the case has been made for “preserving” U.S. primacy using primarily military means. With respect to de Gaulle’s “The sword is the axis of the world” thinking, this stance fails to recognize that economic power is the foundation of a state’s influence in the 21st century.  Even more fundamentally, it fails to take into account both great and minor powers’ pursuit of self-interest, both historically and in today’s multi-polar world.

Militaristic Romanticism Will Continue to Bankrupt the U.S.

Conventional wisdom has it that the U.S. assumed primacy in the post-modern world after defeating the Former Soviet Union. Yes, the U.S. was able to weaken the Former Soviet Union militarily through supporting proxy fighters in Afghanistan, and economically through having it overspend on defense in a futile effort to overcome SDI (“Star Wars”). However, what is not in dispute is that there was no direct military conflict between the two powers. Had that happened, the odds are great that not only would I not be here typing this article, but you also wouldn’t be here reading it.

The conclusion reached during the Cold War that a direct military conflict between the superpowers would have been detrimental to all of humanity seems to have been forgotten by some when discussing current U.S-China hostilities. War with China is just as equally untenable nowadays as military conflict with the Former Soviet Union was during the Cold War. Actually, it’s even more untenable as China is not only a nuclear power, but is increasingly the epicenter of today’s interconnected global economy.  The economic fallout from any shooting war with China would not leave any nation on Earth, including, but especially the U.S., unscathed.

Because of all of this, it is critical for the U.S. to draw several conclusions. First, it’s going to need to effectively separate economics from politics in its dealing with states, especially China. While the phrase “Hot Economics, Cold Politics” may have once referred to Sino-Japanese relations, it can be broadened to refer to relations between all states in the 21st century, even if hot is a misnomer in the wake of the global economic crisis.

Pursuit of Self-interest is Man’s Natural State

Even more importantly, the U.S. needs to recognize that the world has returned to the era of great power politics, if it ever truly left it at all. To survive in this world, it will be increasingly critical to recognize, and not deny, the role of self-interest in all nations’ foreign policies, large and small. A first step in this process would be to go even further back in time before the Cold War and revisit certain WWII-era terminology, notably “ally”, “axis”, and “accommodation/appeasement”.

The word “ally” does not mean supplicant. Historically, allies have served one another’s foreign policy objectives because they understood how an alliance served their own self-interest and because they were ready to seal the agreement in blood if necessary, not because they necessarily liked one another. Only through combined U.S. and Soviet power was Nazi Germany eventually defeated. Even on the verge of imminent collapse, the Former Soviet Union contributed to the U.S.’ coalition in the Gulf War. Despite initial hiccups, is Russian cooperation in Syria today any less vital?

The term “axis” has been used rather carelessly recently as well. In the wake of Turkish overtures to Russia, a “Moscow-Ankara axis” has been mentioned. Following Russia’s warmer ties with Beijing and post-sanctions Iran, a “Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis” has been voiced. Lastly, in the wake of Russian power assertion in Syria and intelligence-sharing efforts with other powers in the region, a possible “Moscow-Tehran-Baghdad(-Damascus?) axis” has been written on. It’s quite moronic to continue to label other countries’ foreign policy goals with lexicon dating back almost three generations, as if a foreign policy that doesn’t clearly support the “rules-based order” is inherently evil.

Related to this are the term’s “accommodation” and “appeasement”. It is equally idiotic to use these terms when describing, for example, German and Japanese outreach efforts to Russia in the wake of U.S.-Russian hostilities. First, a state (ally or not) is always going to follow its own interests, especially where economics is concerned. Secondly,  the use of these terms to describe policies of former actual Axis powers reeks of historical amnesia.

Following this logic, is the U.K. an “ally”, part of an “axis”, or “appeasing” other powers? The U.K. recently withdrew from the EU and became a founding member of the AIIB, both despite U.S. protestations. The point is that if the U.S.’ strongest ally in its historically most-important geographic area of interest does this, it’s realistic to assume that this is a harbinger of a larger trend, and not just an outlier.

The issue is not whether it was actually in the U.K.’s interest to make these moves. Rather, the point is that the U.K. perceived that these actions were in its own self-interest and that it, along with all other states, will continue to make decisions based on this criteria, not dictation from other powers. This is also reflected in recent moves by both the Philippines and Vietnam to improve economic relations with China. These maneuvers, combined with global economic interdependency, are simultaneously a harbinger of the future and a reminder of the past and will continue to undermine any attempts to “preserve” U.S. primacy.

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In late August 2016, a Czech entomologist and anti-immigrant nationalist named Martin Konvicka planned and staged a fake ISIS assault in the middle Prague’s Old Town Square. The incident took place near some restaurants, close to the astrological clock and the statue of Catholic priest, reformer, and martyr Jan Hus. While Wenceslas Square is packed with tourists mostly  in its shopping district, it is Old Town Square near the Charles Bridge that is marked more by a carnival atmosphere with snake charmers, magicians, restaurants, Thai massage parlors, singers, and men making bubbles that children chase.

Konvicka was clever, taking advantage of that carnival like condition to apply to City Hall for a permit to indulge in a “protest” where his theatrics would blend into a city where theatrics of some sort are common place to note. What Konvicka did in Prague was what any competent terrorist would do when planning an attack—he used legal means and an exploited vulnerability to procure a venue and a method of operation where he and his crew would blend into the environment prior to his strike so well that he could literally walk a camel into his target – Old Town Square.

What was disturbing to me even after only a few weeks after this hoax was the lack of a robust physical police presence in Old Town Square when I visited only a few days later. In Wenceslas Square, there is noticeable police presence, especially as you walk up the hill towards the monument where two Czechoslovakian students, Jan Palach and Jan Zajik killed themselves in 1969 to protest the failed uprising of Secretary Alexander Dubcek and Soviet invasion in August 1968. However, in Old Town Square where all the uproar happened, there was only one small police van with the occasional police car driving by that I could see, with two or three lightly armed police officers helping tourists.

Even with the assumption that heavier weapons were inside that van, the time it would take to retrieve them in the midst of a real attack and for reinforcements to arrive would be critical and probably very costly. Our tour guide did explain that plainclothes police were stationed throughout the area but should an active barricade/hostage or other “sophisticated” terrorist situation unfold, as Kent Layne Oots might call this, police would be at a disadvantage in a reactive situation and possibly facing terrorists with superior firepower at least initially, and armed with grenades, plastic explosives, IEDs and a coherent well thought through plan of action.

Likewise, what appeared to be similar problems were evident in parts of Prague’s Jewish Quarter—all of which are prime targets for Islamic extremists. For example, when we passed the Maisel Synagogue, which is noted for the golden hat that is perched inside its Star of David at its entrance, I did not see any security in front, even though one or two others said they saw guards on the street at or near the synagogue. Security at the Old New Synagogue, located on a fairly large street next to some stairs was conspicuously absent. At the Old Jewish cemetery where tourists flock, our prepaid tickets were scanned but there were no handbag or electronic searches. In fact, the only place I saw where systematic detection was in place and operative was at Prague Castle where detectors and wands were used by police to scan visitors at turnstiles.

As disconcerting as all the foregoing was, it was not as disturbing from a security point of view as the visit my wife and I took to the concentration camp Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt. We visited on a separate tour two days before our tour in Prague began. Terezin is located in a part of the Sudentenland area and, like Prague’s Jewish Quarter and all concentration camp sites, it is a potential target of Islamic extremists because of its inherent Jewish nature and high symbolic value.

From the terrible Dresden barracks, now in disrepair, throughout the town, and up through the prison which is about a quarter of a mile or so away from the center of town, there was no sign of police or military presence. I asked our guide about this and she told us that the only security change she could think of was that buses could no longer pull up in front of the Yizkor (“Remembrance”) museum. Our guide remarked she had never seen Terezin so desolate; usually it was full of tourists and she could only surmise this had something to do with recent terrorist assaults in Western Europe.

That Terezin goes unprotected for those who want to learn more about the Holocaust and that the Jewish Quarter at the very least suffers from gaps in security is shameful given the recent terrorist assault hoax perpetrated that has illuminated security shortfalls and the set of terrorist attacks in the European Union. Czech officials need to embrace anticipatory foresight into their thinking about security and view their place in the EU as part of a dynamic environment that reverberates with change and ripple effects that spread. This ISIS hoax underscores some bureaucratic security problems to be corrected and there appear to be areas for security improvement against the backdrop of very vulnerable targets. Benchmarks for improvement and timetables for implementation are required now before yet another tragedy occurs.

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The North African state of Libya has experienced a tumultuous period of state collapse in the years since the fall of its erratic dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In 2011 Gaddafi was overthrown in a cross-country uprising which began in the eastern city of Benghazi and came to be backed by many Western and Arab states, in particular the U.S., UK and France.

Gaddafi and the other mid-level officers who took part in the 1969 coup against King Idris were modernizers who emulated the Western model of a centralized unitary state but this ideal remained a work in progress right down to Gaddafi’s fall. But the modern state of Libya was a colonial construct which was crafted from three provinces by the UN after World War II. These were ‘Tripolitania’ in the west, ‘Cyrenaica’ in the east, and the southern ‘Fezzan’ area, a desert mostly inhabited by Tuareg and Tubu tribes.

The fall of the dictator destroyed the fragile post-colonial state which his iron-fisted rule had held together and exposed the many gaps in expectations between Libya’s different political constituencies. After 42 years of highly personalized rule by the colonel, mechanisms for resolving disputes between them were weak to non-existent and the rebels soon began to fight amongst themselves.

Success in Libya’s fractious regionalized and tribal politics has always rested on good coalition building. During the Arab Spring the country experienced a successful negative coalition which mobilized against the colonel’s regime; for example Berber militias in western Libya were among the first forces to join the eastern Benghazi-based uprising.

But the winning coalition was unable to translate this success into a post-Gaddafi positive coalition, i.e. the victors could not agree on a common program of political action while state institutions became paralyzed by in-fighting and rival appointments to senior functions. Real power quickly devolved down to the commanders of private militias operating across the country, presently thought to number nearly 2,000.

A civil war began between those militias aligning themselves with an Islamist-dominated ‘National Salvation’ government based in the capital Tripoli and those who backed the internationally recognized parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk. The resulting chaos allowed Islamic State (IS) militants to gain a foothold in parts of the country, galvanizing the international community into making an effort to suppress the group and rebuilt a centralized authority in Libya.

In one sense therefore the Arab Spring experience seems to have taken Libya full circle since its creation as a post-colonial monarchy after World War II. Western countries and the UN are once again trying to unify its different regions, this time under a new ‘Government of National Accord’ (GNA).

But in another sense a drastic fragmentation of political power has taken place in one of the few Arab countries to successfully overthrow its long-time dictator. While recurrent attempts to build a positive coalition of parties to overcome this state of disintegration have failed so far the central reliance on oil for the economy to function provides an enduring fiscal incentive to Libyan leaders to continue trying.

Oil represents 98% of the revenue of the government and Libya needs to pump a minimum of 800,000 barrels of oil a day under its current economic model in order to be able to pay public sector salaries, invest in much-needed infrastructure and maintain its collapsing economy.

The heavy defeats recently inflicted on the Libyan branch of IS once again proved Libya’s various actors can come together in a negative coalition when it suits their interests. Now plans to return the country’s oil sector to operation and end a series of damaging blockades may spur the creation of new mechanisms to bridge the gaps between Libyan factions and finally kick-start the political process of building a lasting democratic central government.

Libya following the Arab Spring remains a work in progress; much will be determined by the success or failure of the UN-backed GNA. If this experiment collapses then the rise of another Gaddafi-style strongman or the permanent fragmentation of the country between its east and west are likely to be its longest lasting legacy.

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Thomas Jefferson once stated, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” (Flickr)

Does economic development lead to democracy? This scholarly and worldly inquiry has been one of the main debates among modernization theorists for over half a century, ever since Lipset’s (1960) seminal work supporting that causation was unmasked. Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) contributions updated the debate as they invalidated Lipset’s direct relationship proposition and instead presented correlative facts exemplifying their argument that economic development is exogenous, not endogenous, to democracy. In other words, established democracies never fail after their level of economic development surpasses a certain threshold ($6,055 per capita GDP), although economic development is correlated with something other than a particular regime type in developing countries with a GDP per capita below the threshold.

A recent Washington Post article, however, interestingly refutes the well-accepted argument through an analysis of the ongoing political developments in Turkey. Based on the observation that Erdoğan’s authoritarian drive toward stronger presidency trading democratic progress for economic growth alarms stabilization of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ in Turkey, the article claims that Turkey challenges the validity of Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) arguments. Turkey had a non-oil GDP per capita of $10,972 in 2013 and was recognized as an electoral democracy by Freedom House in 2015.

The phenomenon of authoritarian fervor in wealthy democracies like Turkey goes beyond the country’s borders. In Western democracies, the paragons of Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) failsafe democracies, the phenomenon is tactically abused by far-right demagogues in their lust to win office. The people lack of a rational understanding of what would indeed happen to their daily lives when the demagogues’ populist promises become reality hypnotically join the wave of authoritarian fervor instead of pursuing new democratic values.

This political enigma raises an interesting question. Why do wealthy democracies, especially those that are well above the so-called Przeworski threshold, often fail to innovate new democratic values to replace anachronistic authoritarian values despite the regularized endogenous Schumpeterian democratic competition in them? Perhaps reflecting the current state of the economy in terms of the supply and demand of democracy in wealthy democracies, the problem is destitution of innovations in the demand-side preferences rather than in the supply-side institutional arrangements. For some reason, the people cannot rationally innovate new democratic values.

Supply-side Logic of Democratic Competition

Joseph A. Schumpeter, an Austrian-born American economist and political scientist, inspiringly introduced the idea of ‘creative destruction’. The concept is that the engine of capitalism lies in the system’s organic, or dynamic, nature. Entities incapable of innovative production die off and become replaced by new, capable entrepreneurial entities. Schumpeter expected the cycle to repeat incessantly. He further applied the principle to politics and formulated his new theory of representative democracy. In Schumpeter’s utopia, politics is strictly the business of highly qualified elites who are fueled by their lust to win democratic competition over the production of innovative redistributive policies and the ‘rules of the game’. Voters, or consumers in the economy of democracy, therefore, assume limited sovereignty, as to the extent the sovereignty entrusts elites the authority to minimize voter preferences, simplifying the process of elites’ democratic competition.

Despite its innate elitist tendencies, such breakthrough logic has positively influenced minimalist democratic theorists and public choice theorists as they seek to find rational, or economically efficient, ways to deal with the undemocratic or bureaucratically inefficient features of democracy. Thanks to the scholars’ enormous contributions, grand theories explaining the mechanisms of utility-maximizing choices and equilibriums in supply-side democracy are now available. Such progress, however, has consciously or unconsciously neglected the importance of the demand-side mechanisms in democracy, unveiling its incompetency in diagnosing the recent authoritarian fervor.

Demand-side Explanations for the Recent Authoritarian Fervor

Human-value-oriented political scientists, Inglehart and Norris’s working paper (2016) compared two main causes of the recent authoritarian fervor phenomenon in Europe and the U.S. from the perspective of the demand-side of democracy. The authors first draw implications from Piketty’s economic insecurity thesis that the current prevalence of far-rightist populism is a product of increasing economic inequality and social deprivation under which the left-behind losers of globalization socioeconomically suffer from the structural changes within post-industrial economies, such as growing technological automation and outsourcing. Thus they embrace populist appeals.

They then examine the cultural backlash approach under the premise that the populist phenomenon cannot solely be accounted for from an economic perspective. According to the post-materialist interpretation, the psychological effects of the sociocultural evolution of human values, or intergenerational value shifts, on individuals plays a more important role. Less-educated, white, and older generations, especially in Europe, took on a retrospective revolutionary backlash against the rising political influence of younger cohorts and the increasing inflows of immigration largely because they have failed to keep pace with the intergenerational cultural shift from traditional nativist and authoritarian values to progressively liberal and cosmopolitan values.

Inglehart’s inspiring work on post-materialism are analytically useful in untangling the demand side functioning of democracy. For instance, the major reason behind the spreading illusion of an ‘autocratic miracle’ among the people in developing democracies like the Philippines could be that a majority of Filipinos feel insecure about their basics needs. They are therefore demotivated from pursuing psychological and self-fulfillment needs. (In the 2010 version of the Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world, South Asian countries pursue far more traditional values than secular-rational values and far more survival values than self-expression values). This Filipino case could be further examined by questioning whether Filipinos are structurally cut off from the relevant information, resources, and social networks that are crucial for the attainment of psychological and self-fulfillment needs and also whether Filipinos could voluntarily and rationally participate in politics for the attainment of the needs once obstacles are removed.

The founder of social capital theory, Robert D. Putnam, in his latest publication Our Kids; the American Dream in Crisis (2015), insightfully notes that what is intrinsically unpleasant about today’s growing socioeconomic inequality is the fact that the inherited political inequality takes away from younger generations the opportunities (the aforementioned information, resources, and social networks) to voluntarily participate in political or civic activities.

Is Demand-side Innovation Possible? Through Political ‘Prosumtion’?

Although the role of mass priorities, or democratic values, has been constantly deprecated in the studies of minimalist democratic theory, systematically forecasting the evolutionary development of the values is equally important as is finding the Pareto optimality of the supply-side actors’ democratic competition. Still, Schumpeterian scholars would be deeply concerned about the possible negative consequences of the tyranny of the irrational masses.

Nevertheless, as Thomas Jefferson once stated, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” This is why it is so important to provide the right tools for the people (the masses) to allow them to not only rationally assess, interpret, and present information as they participate and engage in politics, but also to create or increase their own individual political value. Education is, no doubt, the most powerful tool to empower and enable individuals to participate and engage in politics but education does not necessarily incentivize individuals to do so.

Perhaps help from new technologies might solve the problem. Today’s technological advancements in the knowledge economy have hatched a new conceptual form of economic activity that Schumpeter could never have imagined in his time: ‘prosumption’. The term was first coined by an American futurist, Alvin Toeffler. It is defined as production by consumer.

A great example of successful prosumption activity that lays reflective intuitions on the demand-side innovations in democracy is Yelp. Yelp has been very successful for providing local foodies a crowd-sourced online reviewing platform through which they share their restaurant experiences with other foodies and netizens. Such exchanges of information on tried-out restaurants essentially involves rating the values of the restaurants, ranging from atmosphere to menu prices, in a subjective manner, stimulating actively engaged foodies to not only consume a particular restaurant’s menus but also to create or increase the brand values of both the restaurant itself and its menus.

The Yelp prosumers’ mediating role is what today’s wealthy democracies must desire for promoting innovation in the demand side of democracy in an orderly way, since voluntary intermediaries in political interest aggregation  can minimize the risks resulting from the problem of informational asymmetry between elites and the masses. Conceptualizing the notion of political prosumers and applying it to politics will be a challenging task. Nevertheless, devising the institutional arrangement that encourages reputation-conscious political prosumers to rationally remain engaged and participatory will lessen some of the burdens.

In conclusion, recent authoritarian fervor in the wealthy democracies that questions the validity of Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) beliefs implies that even wealthy democracies with well-established institutional arrangements for supply-side democratic competition need innovation in the demand side of democracy. For this reason, it is worth paying attention to prescient political sociologists’ previous works on post-materialism and social capital theory for understanding the demand-side mechanisms and to devise institutional arrangements that incentivize people to innovate new democratic values.  In the Jeffersonian sense, new technologies can help by nurturing the new clout of prosumers who can take on their role as rational intermediaries bridging elites and the masses.

Providing the people with structural tools other than redistributive resources, such as access to information and social networks, can encourage the people to voluntarily and rationally crave new democratic values.

The post Can Democratic Values Survive? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Changes in the Dead Sea over time (NASA and BBC).

One of the most important lessons in economic theory is that we live in a world of scarcity. At a time when we are witnessing some of the largest refugee flows since World War II, highlighting the linkages between water resources and global affairs is crucial.

The current debate looks at linkages between water scarcity, refugee flows, and conflict. When there is only a finite size of a lake like the Dead Sea (the lowest spot on earth and one of the saltiest water bodies) whose level has dipped precariously in recent decades, several tricky aspects of ‘tragedy of the commons’ arise. The Dead Sea’s water level continues to drop at an alarming pace of 0.8 to 1.2 meters per year and its surface area is shrinking accordingly. If no action is taken to remedy the situation, the further decline is likely to cause more severe environmental, cultural, and economic damage, and it is estimated that, if left unattended, the Dead Sea will reach a new equilibrium at an elevation that is about 100m below the current level.

Numbers are also the nemesis adding to the lake’s environmental degradation: refugees from Syria have increased Jordan’s population by one-tenth, putting major pressure on budgets, public infrastructure, and labor markets. The massive and rapid influx of refugees has also strained already weak infrastructure, as more than 80 per cent of refugees live within local communities rather than in the refugee camps, and since the arrival of Syrian refugees, water consumption per capita dropped in Jordan from 88 to 66 liters.

On the other hand, evidence suggests that water can become an economic win-win agent and a ‘lubricant of peace,’ especially when basins transcend jurisdictional boundaries. Jordan and Israel are finally beginning to evolve solutions by implementing the Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project (the Red-Dead project) which will play a crucial role in saving the Dead Sea and meeting Jordan’s rising needs on water.

In its following phases, the Red-Dead project entails transferring up to 2 billion cubic meters of seawater from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

When Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement, the idea of laying a pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea began to gain momentum. Thereafter, in 2005, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority jointly asked the World Bank to lend its resources to the project’s feasibility study. They also requested an investigation into any potential environmental impact. The study found that it was viable and the three partners signed an agreement in December 2013.

The first phase of the Red-Dead project (with an estimated cost of US$900 million) will be 180 kilometers long and will pass through the Jordanian territory. Construction is planned for 2017 and will be completed in 4-5 years. About 300 million cubic meters (mcm) of water will be pumped each year under which a desalination plant will be built in north of Aqaba, Jordan’s only seaport, producing some 65mcm of fresh water per year. The remaining 235mcm (of mixed brine and seawater) will be pumped into the shrinking Dead Sea.

Another cooperation-inducing aspect is ‘water swapping and sharing’: Jordan is interested in selling desalinated water to Israel while buying water from the Sea of Galilee. Simply put, Israel wants water in the south, and Jordan needs water in the north where the majority of refugees are living. Hence, in principle, a Jordanian-Israeli water exchange (from the Sea of Galilee to Amman, and from Aqaba to Eilat) would make economic, environmental, and political sense.

Water exchange between Israel and Jordan (ynetnews.com).

In spite of some differences, the three beneficiary partners (Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority) have succeeded in isolating this ambitious, strategic project from the calculus of conflicts in the Middle East. Negative criticism of any sort largely emanates from environmentalists whose concerns have chiefly been related to the effects and impact from discharge of seawater and brine from desalination into the Dead Sea.

Ultimately, the greater need for water may outweigh potential environmental or political concern. Aside from saving the Dead Sea, the Red-Dead project could offer huge benefits to Jordan and neighboring countries: because the Dead Sea is more than 400m below sea level, channeling water down to it could provide the opportunity to generate electricity or desalinated seawater, or both. Moreover, the scope of the Red-Dead conveyance could be expanded, depending on project financing, with greater benefits accruing with larger scale.

The Dead Sea is a site of cardinal international cultural, environmental, and touristic importance. The development of such a strategic project cannot see realism without international support. While the refugee crisis necessitates a response, it is also an opportunity to re-examine and re-assert the benefits of the Red-Dead project.

We all know how severe the state of water resources in the Middle East is. And we know that the main rivers and lakes are shrinking at a fast pace. Yet, the nexus between water and peace is much less explored. The Red-Dead project is expected to make such a contribution. Thus, the whole world should start backing the completion of the Dead-Sea project without distraction.

The post Bringing Life to the Dead Sea appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The United Nations (UN) is a polarizing institution. To liberals, it is essential to peacekeeping and development. To conservatives, it is an ineffectual talk shop that infringes on American sovereignty while standing on American soil. One finds greater agreement, however, when pointing out the disparity that exists between the UN’s post-World War II structure and today’s international system. Most agree that for the UN to reflect today’s world accurately, reform of both of the Security Council permanent membership and of underlying national contributions to the UN Budget would be necessary.

Without the political capital of victory in war that governed the Atlantic Alliance in the UN’s initial creation, however, substantial reform is an intractable political problem. So substantive UN reform is a fantasy. For the moment, assume that is true. What harm did fantasizing ever do anyone? Thinking about what the UN would look like if it were created today to represent the current balance of global power may be instructive. So, let’s fantasize.

Permanent Security Council Membership is often the focus of UN reform discussion. The five permanent members—U.S., U.K., France, China and Russia—reflect the influence of the victorious Allied powers following World War II. Although other countries join the Security Council for rotating terms, its permanent membership is Euro-centric and ignores rising economic powers in Asia and Latin America. With India and Pakistan rival nuclear powers in Southeast Asia, it also no longer exclusively represents the world’s nuclear arsenals.

However, with the Soviet Union an enemy of the West at the UN’s inception—and Russia and China now rival powers to it—the Security Council has never functioned smoothly. To serve its function as “talk shop”, in the best sense, it does not need to; the current UN is a global diplomatic forum that catalyzes collective responses to global crises and helps frame the terms of debate and push incremental progress on global issues. As the recent Paris Agreement on Climate Change attests, that is a net positive.

Better indicators of what a “reformed” UN would look like lie in the UN Budget. Member countries are assessed contribution levels to the budget based on UN Resolutions (the 2016 country contribution levels were set in a December 2015 resolution). Below is a chart outlining the UN Budget contributions of select UN member countries, compared to defense spending by those countries as a percentage of their GDP, and their relative size in the global economy.

Country 2016 UN Budget Contribution (%) National Defense Spending (2015; %National GDP) Global Rank by GDP (World Bank, 2015) United States 22.0 3.3 1 Japan 10.8 1.0 3 Germany 7.1 1.2 4 France 5.6 2.1 6 United Kingdom 5.2 2.0 5 China 5.1 1.9 2 Canada 3.0 1.0 10 Brazil 2.9 1.4 9 Russia 2.4 5.4 13 Australia 2.1 1.9 12 South Korea 2.0 2.6 11 Poland 0.9 — 24 Saudi Arabia 0.9 13.7 20 India 0.7 2.3 7 Pakistan 0.09 — 40

Sources: UN Secretariat; Stockholm International Peace Institute; The World Bank

Contributions from Japan and Germany are at levels that reflect both their economic standing and their status as defeated powers that were de-militarized following World War II and that maintain restrictions on their ability to project military power. The combined UN Budget contribution of these two countries amounts to 81% of the annual U.S. contribution. Yet, if Germany’s internal struggle to take over the de-facto leadership of Europe in the wake of the Eurozone crisis is any indication, neither country is necessarily comfortable with advancing its strategic power to be commensurate with its economic power. In the case of case of India in particular, a desire for a greater voice within the UN has so far not been matched with any contribution on par with its economic standing.

The list also includes regional powers—Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and (to a lesser extent) South Korea, who spend substantially more on defense as a percentage of their GDP than they do on UN contributions. These disparities between defense spending as a percentage of GDP and levels of UN contributions, while imperfect (UN spending encompasses more than military operations), may be the best data point to illuminate where UN structures have grown out of step with current global realities. This is particularly true when one compares the size of India’s economy (the world’s seventh-largest) with the amount of the UN’s budget it pays (less than one percent.)

The matter of what nations step forward in UN leadership, however, is a sensitive one. In some cases, powerful countries are reluctant to take a bigger strategic place on the world stage (e.g., Germany); other countries have resources but autocratic characteristics that preclude them from leadership in the eyes of the international community (e.g., Saudi Arabia).

The biggest headwind the UN and Bretton Woods institutions face is the same one NATO currently faces. It is simpler, politically, to form new institutions than to reform outdated ones. Asia, led by China, is not looking to increase its standing within current international institutions; rather, it is building its own network of rival institutions. Old global institutions do not die, then, they just fade away. This is a common line of thinking but a divisive one. The UN and the Bretton Woods system were designed to unify and reduce the potential for strategic and economic strife between nations.

The world may have outgrown their structures, but is a dangerous time to allow them to atrophy or to let sets of rival regional institutions emerge in their place. There is a great deal of discussion about renewing America’s global leadership. That should start with the renovation of the post-World War II international system it built.

The post UN Reform by the Numbers appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Photo by orangesparrow. (FlickR)

The world of climate change wonks suffers no shortage of policy ideas. Virtually every day, a new visionary policy proposal joins the portfolio of clever climate change solutions both big and small. The latest and greatest of these belongs to the Club of Rome, of “Limits to Growth” fame. In sweeping fashion, the organization’s newest report suggests a number of measures to curb environmental degradation and set the world on a path towards sustainable development. The authors’ grab bag of policy ideas includes a universal basic income, carbon and wealth taxes, but also an increase in the retirement age. Most controversially, the report suggests paying women in industrial countries to have fewer children.

On the one hand, the report can be read as an important contribution towards how to think about climate change. There is a growing awareness that it is not exclusively an environmental phenomenon. As such, climate change is not exogenous to society. It is a direct corollary of what we produce in society, how we decide to produce it, where our priorities lie, and how we distribute gains. With that in mind, we should be more creative in conceiving effective social and economic policies at a much broader level. The days of climate change as a niche policy area are gone. By contrast, it is an outcome of a vast array of decisions we as members of society make every day. That should be reflected in public policy.

So far so good. Yet, the Club of Rome report, like most of its kind, lacks a fundamental quality. Whatever you think of paying women to have fewer babies, or the merits and downsides of a wealth tax, the paper has little to say about possible strategies to implement these suggestions politically. This is where most policy experts fail. We often tend to segregate policy generation from policy implementation. Sure, from a climate perspective a carbon tax sounds lovely. Both economists and environmental activists are for it. Mountains of detailed studies have been produced to determine the most efficient design of such a tax. Yet, it has proven exceedingly difficult to actually establish the political conditions under which carbon taxes can be implemented. National or supranational carbon taxation schemes remain practically non-existent. The few that do exist remain marginal.

What explains the repeated failure of policy implementation? Political scientist Robert MacNeil argues that policies associated with market environmentalism—such as carbon levies and emissions trading—tend to fail in liberal-market economies. At first, that seems paradoxical. MacNeil’s hypothesis is that, in countries like the United States, Canada, or Australia, workers enjoy less protection from market-based effects. In turn, putting a price on carbon is perceived as an additional tax on the most vulnerable. As Oscar Wilde knew, it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The politics around policy matters. The lesson is that we should pay as much attention on researching possible enabling conditions as we do on policy content. It should not just be left to politicians to figure it out.

Of course, climate change is not exceptional in this regard. There are plenty of public policy areas in which much is made about detailed plans without giving sufficient thought to a political implementation strategy. Clever education policies often end up on the scrap heap when the political coalitions to implement them fail to materialize. Most people agree that infrastructure spending in industrialized countries is woefully inadequate, but policy change continues to be elusive. With climate change increasingly becoming an issue associated with political identity, however, there is some exigency in paying more attention to politics instead of policy.

Now, it goes without saying that we need visionary policy ideas. There is a certain legitimacy to thinking about ideas in the abstract. Without the restrictions of actual political conditions on the ground, we can develop ideal scenarios and bench marks. This is not where research should stop, however. The analogy here is the way many economists tend to think about their discipline. As the joke goes, you need eight economists to change a light bulb—one to change the bulb, and seven to hold everything else constant. Reality is messier than that. And climate change policy needs to adapt to reflect a messy political reality. We should think hard about whether policy suggestions should generally be accompanied by an analysis of what would need to happen politically to make them feasible. Would we need a change in norms? Is there a particular set of policy entrepreneurs that would be required? Does policy change in field X presuppose a change in field Y?

Take the debate about fossil fuel subsidies. In many cases big fossil fuel companies continue to receive unnecessary handouts from governments. By all accounts, that should stop. Yet, the majority of subsidies actually go towards consumers. Governments, justifiably or not, use these subsidies as a substitute for social policy. As repeated examples have shown, it is then incredibly difficult to remove them. While research has indicated that fossil fuel subsidies are wasteful, kill the climate, and are not actually beneficial to the poor, the perception among people is a different one. Therefore, the emphasis has rightly shifted towards an analysis of the enabling conditions which would allow for meaningful reform.

If we return to the Club of Rome report, the same concern emerges. Take something like curbing population growth. This has been a popular idea for quite some time now. As early as the 1960s, Paul Ehrlich warned about the impending “population bomb”. Suppose for the sake of argument that you agree that managing population growth is key to curbing climate change. We have only seen two mechanisms by which population control has actually been achieved. One is, of course, China’s one-child policy. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective, the one-child policy appears to be particular to China’s political system and the point in time when it was implemented. With its erosion even in China itself, it has little to no chance of revival. The other option would be economic development broadly speaking, and education in particular. That is not a policy. So if the aim is effective population control, one has to both describe a set of policies and provide an analysis of how those policies will be put on the agenda.

The politics around policy matters. To be more effective at policy implementation, wonks should contextualize ideas within the given political environment. Climate change is politics. Policy ideas need to reflect that reality.

The post What We Get Wrong about Climate Change Solutions appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

North Korean soldiers march during a mass military parade at Kim Il-Sung square in Pyongyang on October 10, 2015. (Ed Jones/Getty)

Following North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on September 9, the Pentagon sent two of its B-1B bombers last week in a direct rebuke to Pyongyang’s show of force. China, the economic and diplomatic lifeline of North Korea, stressed that “dialogue and consultation is the fundamental way out for the issue of the Korean Peninsula which is complex.” The U.S., Japan and South Korea are also calling for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.  

Pyongyang is already heavily sanctioned, and its economy is also being crippled by the worst flooding since the end of the second World War. The massive floods have wiped out harvests in the impoverished northeast and left thousands of North Koreans in need of urgent assistance. The World Food Program revealed on September 14 they had sent emergency food supplies to 140,000 people in flood-affected areas.

With the latest nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang, threats of further economic sanctions, and historic flooding, North Korea watchers are once again asking—will North Korea fall?

One such watcher of North Korea, the geopolitical crowdsourced consultancy Wikistrat, recently conducted an 11-day simulation exploring the ways in which North Korea may collapse. Drawing from the opinions of more than 70 of its analysts, the simulation “gamed out” the various pathways to collapse and the response of major actors in the region.

Close to two-thirds (65%) of the simulation analysts predicted that the fall of the regime would occur five to ten years from now, evenly split between military, economic and political causes. The top three causes suggested by the analysts were: 1) Retaliatory Foreign Military Intervention; 2) Kim Dies of Poor Health; and 3) Internal Coup. While the death of Kim Jong-un ranked high among the causes of North Korea’s fall, most analysts (85%) expected Kim to preside over the country at the time of the fall.

In their simulation, Wikistrat analysts (who predicted the annexation of Crimea by Russia), predict Moscow may have the most to gain from North Korea’s collapse. Japan looks likely to rely on its treaty ally, the U.S., in order to exert any influence over the situation, while South Korea may be militarily prepared to take Pyongyang quickly before China can respond. However, while the simulation deemed unilateral South Korean action possible, the analysts warned such action would be tremendously destabilizing.

Which leaves the potential collapse of North Korea, and the securing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), best left in the hands of Beijing, according to Wikistrat analysts. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, recently echoed this sentiment, arguing that Beijing shares an “important responsibility” for North Korea’s nuclear provocations—and should “use” its influence to defuse the situation.

While Beijing has publicly supported United Nations-led economic sanctions in the past, these sanctions are loosely enforced by Beijing. Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, argued recently, “If China did cut all economic ties and United Nations assistance, will Kim Jong Un truly stop nuclear testing? Nobody in China believes that for a second.”

Indeed, Beijing often allows critical supplies of food and oil to cross the border in times of crisis. The last thing Beijing wants to deal with is a humanitarian crisis emanating from the collapse of its neighbor, which could see 25 million impoverished North Koreans fleeing into an ill-prepared Chinese mainland.

So it is no surprise that the Wikistrat analysts found among Beijing’s objectives the desire to keep the Korean peninsula divided, maintain stability in North Korea (to prevent the U.S. or South Korea intervening), and ensure the North Korean regime remains more or less under Chinese tutelage. Should North Korea fall, Wikistrat analysts argue the U.S. would have little incentive to contest Chinese primacy—provided efforts to secure WMD were done either in cooperation with the U.S. or carried out in such a way that Washington, Tokyo and Seoul are convinced the threat has been eliminated.

With Pyongyang’s fifth nuclear test in recent days, the delicate balance of power on the Korean peninsula has been upset once again. As the pivotal power in the region, Beijing holds the only remaining cards to influence the outcome. With North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, cooling relations between Pyongyang and Beijing, and inflammatory rhetoric between Washington and Beijing, further analysis, such as done by Wikistrat, should be undertaken, and all concerned powers need to plan for a potential negative outcome. 

The post The Fall of North Korea: A Wikistrat Crowdsourced Simulation appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

In this virtual roundtable of six podcasts hosted by Professor Sarwar Kashmeri, the Foreign Policy Association aims to shed some light and serve as a catalyst for developing awareness, understanding and informed opinions on the key issues that face American policymakers as they seek to peer over the horizon to manage the U.S.-China relations.

In the sixth and final installment of the virtual roundtable, Marc Chandler—Global Head of Currency Strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman—discusses China’s economic growth and its transition from a focus on the industrial sector to a services and consumption sector.

When asked about this transition, Chandler explained: “If you just think about the two sectors, the industrial sector has falling prices, and services have rising prices. So it could be that part of the transition that China seems to be on is being affected by deflation of the goods sector and inflation in the services sector.”

Questioned about China’s decisions to set up its own infrastructure bank, while also joining the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank Chandler argues that: “China is of two minds. One mind is that it is a status quo power, for example joining the WTO. But on the other hand, it is also a revisionist power but it is not happy with the international financial architecture in which one country—the U.S.—seems to dominate.”

http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/M-Chandler-MSTR-081716-V2.mp3

For more analysis on the U.S.-China relations, listen to the other podcasts of the virtual roundtable.

The post Marc Chandler on China’s Economic Growth Prospects appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

U.S. and Israeli representatives signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington on September 14. (Reuters)

This week, Israel and the US signed a $38 billion military aid package, the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

The two allies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will cover fiscal years 2019-2028, taking over when the current $30 billion MOU, signed in 2007, expires.

President Obama stated: “Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are confident that the new MOU will make a significant contribution to Israel’s security in what remains a dangerous neighborhood.”

Because it involves money and military aid going to Israel, it is controversial. But not for the normal reasons. Many in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and former head of IDF military intelligence Amos Yadlin, believe that Israel should have received additional funds from the U.S.

From adversaries to appreciative partners

Netanyahu and former Ambassador to the U.S. and current Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren have both told critics of the deal that they are being ungrateful.

Netanyahu said critics of the deal were “showing ingratitude… to our greatest and best friend, the United States.”

Oren went further:

“There are those who when they hear the discourse here are likely to recall well-known depictions and libels against the Jews. Put yourself in the place of the Americans and ask yourself how the debate here sounds in the USA. We received a very good and very respectable package. We should say, ‘Thank you very much,’ and keep our mouths shut. Instead, it sounds like the Israelis got nearly $40 billion but there are still all kinds of people who are claiming, ‘We could have got more out of the Americans and got more money.’ This public debate is damaging to us. We look like people who don’t recognize a favor.”

It is bizarre, on so many levels, that Netanyahu and Oren are outright defending President Obama for giving Israel massive amounts of aid. If nothing else, these two Israeli leaders haven’t always been so appreciative of President Obama’s attitude towards Israel and the Middle East.

A few recent highlights of their contentious relationship:

• Last year Netanyahu was invited by House Republicans to speak to congress in opposition to the President’s deal with Iran. He didn’t even give the White House the courtesy of advance notice.
• Netanyahu was perceived by the Obama administration as “campaigning on behalf of Mitt Romney” during the president’s reelection in 2012.
• Michael Oren released a book just last year that many deemed to be psychoanalyzing the President, determining from a great distance that Obama wanted to “bring Washington closer to the Arab and Muslim world,” due to his “childhood experiences having been abandoned by Muslim father figures.”

While these two men might be right about the deal that Israel accepted, they are also imperfect defenders of it. Senior Labor Party MK Shelly Yachimovich said as much when she sarcastically tweeted: “The funniest thing is that Netanyahu is sternly rebuking his critics on the failures of the aid agreement over their ‘ingratitude’ toward the Americans. Teach us more, prime minister.”

None of the above is particularly shocking. After all, all politics is local, everyone in power has a short memory and as with any political establishment, the parties approach each other with a zero-sum attitude.

Because we’re talking money, military and Israel, Senator Lindsey Graham weighs in

Here is the part that did shock me. While he did not necessarily agree with anyone in Israel, and he certainly does not agree with the President, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is furious at Netanyahu for accepting the deal.

He blasted Netanyahu for “pulling the rug” from under Israel’s friends in Congress.

The gist of Graham’s objection is this: no one can protect Israel except for the U.S. Congress. And now Netanyahu signed a massive deal with President Obama making it impossible for Congress to continue to defend Israel.

This anger stems from the fact that, under the MOU, Israel is no longer permitted to solicit or accept additional funding from Congress. Graham’s take: “I don’t think it’s appropriate to have an agreement which shuts the next president and the next Congress out. I don’t think that it’s appropriate to have an agreement which shuts out me out and my colleagues.” He continued, “at the end of the day, I would tell our friends in Israel: Congress is your friend. Don’t pull the rug from under us.”

Graham is basically furious that Israel is making decisions relating to its own security, which sounds like the very type of right that we would normally hear him passionately defending.

But strangely that is not the full extent of his argument. He went on a tweet storm, which is not something he often does.

[Quick note: The other primary component of the MOU angering Graham is that Israel will no longer be permitted to appropriate US aid money to its own defense industry and will have to funnel that money back into American-made weapons.]

He seems to be upset not just that Israel will lack the agency to do anything it wants with the funding, but rather that the U.S. is going to be missing out on “Israeli advancements” that help to protect “Americans wearing the uniform of our nation.”

Think about that. The U.S. can still work with Israel, fund their military programs, and procure new technology and innovations stemming from Israel. But Graham is upset that this agreement ends the prior arrangement allowing Israel to spend part of the aid purchasing directly from Israeli companies (which would directly benefit the U.S. due to the required information sharing stipulated by the previous agreement).

What does this say about Graham, who is rarely met a conflict he did not think could be solved with American boots on the ground, and his trust in the American military program? He seems to literally be saying the only way America can protect our troops is through Israeli innovation.

Israel has pioneered numerous military advancements that the U.S. is smart to utilize. But let’s not pretend that the U.S. has not done well in this category itself.

If this analysis sounds hyperbolic, I refer you back to his final tweet: “I do fear it will be Americans wearing the uniform of our nation who will pay the price for this short-sighted change in policy.”

Could the deal have been better for Israel?

Chemi Shalev does an excellent job in Haaretz of laying out how this deal could have better negotiated by an Israel ally who had not spent the last eight years undermining his American counterpart. It is worth a read.

Follow me on Twitter @jlemonsk.

The post Unexpected Responses to a Massive Aid Program appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Libyan militia watch over explosives and shells left behind by Islamic State soldiers in the battle over the city of Surt, Libya on Sept. 9, 2016. The Islamic State is believed to have been driven out of Surt, a strategically-placed coastal city. (REUTERS/Stringer)

Many inside and outside of Libya had hoped that the overthrow of dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 would herald a new era of stable and open government. Yet the five years since have been dominated by civil war and power struggles. Multiple governments claim authority, no one really knows who is in charge, and stability remains a long-off goal, not even close to a reality. Recent hostilities indicate how violence and uncertainty remain the norm.

The Islamic State has maintained a presence in Libya for some time. But in August 2016 some progress was made to reduce their influence. A Libyan militia, under the auspices of the UN-backed government in Tripoli (presumably- more on this in a moment) and with American air support, took control of the coastal city of Surt (written in some sources as Sitre).

But the victory may be short-lived. The militia who took the city came from the city of Misurata. According to Rod Nordland and Nour Youssef of the New York Times, they are only “nominally” affiliated with the Government of National Accord (GNA), a newly formed body created with the support of the UN and recently acquiring backing from the Arab League and African Union. It is, worryingly, unclear whether the Misurata militia will continue to take orders from the GNA. A Libyan military official, Ahmed ed-Mesmari, stated that “We don’t think anyone can control these forces. They are anarchists and extremists…They would be very hard to tame.”

Despite the involvement of international organizations, the GNA has several challengers who claim to be Libya’s legitimate government:

• The government of the city of Bayda, which has its own parliament; it previously had some international allies but now relies on Egypt and Persian Gulf nations for support; suspicious of the loyalty of Misurata militias, and upset that the UN chose to back the GNA.
• Military forces controlled by General Khalifa Hifter; based in Benghazi, Hifter is considered the most powerful military figure in Libya and commander of the Libyan National Army, however he claims political recognition separate from the GNA.
• An Islamist militia group in Tripoli also has its own parliament and also refuses to legitimize the GNA.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mesmari estimates there are up to 40 militias and gangs in Tripoli with constantly shifting allegiances. Further complicating matters, these groups are not just fighting for political power, but control of and access to Libya’s extensive oil reserves. Needless to say, the political and military situations in Libya are quite murky and ever-evolving.

The importance of oil in the power struggle became clear on September 11, 2016 when militia loyal Gen. Hifter attacked three major oil terminals. This July a three year embargo on oil exports from Libya, but this aggressive maneuver as well as political infighting and economic decline have put the country’s ability to capitalize on its oil in serious jeopardy.

However, some hope to restoring order and commerce emerged on September 18—one week after the seizure by Hifter’s forces—Eastern Libyan troops reclaimed two of the ports and expected normal operations to resume the next day. In fact an oil tanker was docked at one of the ports, the first ship to do so in Libya in the last two years. Libya’s national oil company expected its exports to reach 600,000 barrels per day one month from now, and 950,000 barrels per day by the end of the year.

Also on Sept. 18 the Misurata militia continued their campaign against Islamic State forces in Surt. The militia has been scouring the city neighborhood by neighborhood to root out enemy fighters. However, a spokesman for the militia acknowledges that some enemy soldiers may have escaped and are still at large.

While the support of international organizations to stabilize Libya could make worthy contributions, the driving force for consolidating power in a national body of government recognized by all Libyans must come from Libya. Despite the multitude of factions and tribes and political groups, continuing with a fragmented system is not sustainable. Leaders of these disparate groups must find a way to reach a workable agreement, perhaps a power-sharing arrangement that includes all major claimants to begin with.

Without commitment to reaching some acceptable compromise, stability in Libya will remain a long-off goal rather than a viable reality.

The post Stability in Libya Remains in Doubt appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The latest round of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan threatens to add the 19th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit, scheduled to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan, in November 2016, to the long list of failed attempts at cooperation in South Asia.

But there are enough signals suggesting that reasons apart from the historical animosity between the two nations are now pulling SAARC apart.

The Raging Fire

The Association, often accused as a stillborn by its various critics because of the lack of appreciable progress towards stitching together a South Asian Union (à la European Union) by means of trade, diplomacy, and infrastructure, has always been an unfortunate recipient of the tensions between its largest two member nations.

The current round of hostility between the two nuclear-armed neighbours began with the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) terrorist Burhan Wani by the Indian army in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

The 21-year-old militant was a ‘self-proclaimed commander’ of HM, designated as a terrorist organisation by India, the European Union, and the U.S. He was the poster boy for anti-India people and groups in the Kashmir valley of J&K, and openly defied and challenged the Indian state for war, via social media.

Wani’s killing led to widespread protests in the Indian Kashmir. Adding to the temperature was Pakistan’s open and steadfast support to the slain terrorist. Prime Minister of Pakistan Mr. Nawaz Sharif “expressed shock” at the killing of Wani, and called him ‘martyr’ and a ‘Kashmiri leader’. Pakistan even observed a ‘black day’ on July 19 in solidarity with the victims of violence in Kashmir.

India, predictably, responded quickly and sharply, asking Pakistan to stop “glorifying terrorists”, saying that it makes it abundantly clear where Pakistan’s sympathies lie.

But neither Pakistan’s official support nor the angry protests in India’s Kashmir valley saw any abating even after a month of Wani’s killing. For weeks, the belligerent crowd made up of angry local youth pelted stones at Indian security forces. In response, the men in uniform used pellet guns, causing over 50 deaths and countless injuries among the protestors.

At the same time more than 3,300 security personnel were injured, many seriously, in about 1000 incidents of violence. A few of them later succumbed to the injuries.

As a result, the entire Indian Kashmir valley region was put under curfew for over 50 days in the July-August period. After lifting it for a couple of days, curfew was re-imposed on many parts at the time of writing this report because of further violence.

India continuously accused Pakistan of fanning the trouble by sending financial, logistical, political, and armed support to the protesting crowds.

With Pakistan going all out to support the violent protestors, India, for the first time ever in its history, chose to officially respond in kind to Pakistan’s long-running commentary on the issue of self-right of Kashmiri people in India.

Addressing the nation on its Independence Day on August 15, India’s Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi mentioned the support and good wishes of people of Pakistan’s largest province Balochistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) areas of Kashmir. Balochistan, it may be noted, is home to many political and extremist groups that is demanding independence from Pakistan.

Pakistan was quick to call Mr. Modi’s speech as the vindication of its charges of an Indian hand in the violence in the restive province of Balochistan.

Both India and Pakistan have since upped the ante.

The Indian government approved a proposal to air programs in Balochi and Sindhi (the primary language of Pakistan’s second biggest province, Sindh, where, again, some groups demand an independent Sindhu Desh) via its official radio service.

Taking the clue, the Indian media is currently flush with news about and views from Balochi rebels sitting in the UK and elsewhere. Talks of political asylum to leaders fighting the ‘Balochistan Independence’ battle with Pakistan—in line with that to the Tibetan spiritual guru HH Dalai Lama—are heard with increased frequency in news outlets.

Beyond the talk, the Indian government also approved Rs. 2,000 Crore ($ 300 million) package for displaced people of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan and PoK regions living in the country. 36,348 such families have been identified for distribution of the package.

To counter India’s communication blitzkrieg, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on August 27 nominated 22 parliamentarians as special envoys who will ‘highlight the Indian brutalities and human rights abuses in the occupied Kashmir’ in key parts of the world.

And there stands currently the ‘peacetime scenario’ in South Asia.

Can it change in the next 60 days for a fruitful SAARC summit in Islamabad? Well, 69 years of history doesn’t suggest it.

Note: This piece was written prior to a deadly terror attack on an Indian military facility on September 18, which killed 17 Indian army personnel. All the four killed terrorists belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.

To be continued…

The post The Tattered Mirage of a South Asian Union is Dying Fast – Pt. 1 appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

credit: http://en.alalam.ir

The global growth of social media has been so fast, and the effect of ‘trending’ so widespread, that even this observation is outdated. (That was 137 characters, so I could also tweet it.) But while we are living in real-time—and wanting to know now—let us take a few minutes, if this article can hold your attention, and examine some ways social media is now on the front lines of many international conflicts.

In a recent PBS Newshour interview, Nick Rasmussen, of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) just outside Washington DC, explained how, in the context of searching for a terrorist threat, “increasingly what ‘connecting the dots’ means to me is dealing with the huge volume of publicly available information. The work we’re doing now often doesn’t involve really sensitive intelligence; it involves looking at Twitter, or some other social media platform, and trying to figure out who that individual is behind the screen name.”

Social media started out as a technological innovation but has become a social phenomenon. Since the early 2000s Facebook has become indispensable for families and friends to stay in touch, and people and organizations with large numbers of Twitter followers are able to carve out virtual mini-media empires. Clicks and ‘follows’ are the new version of voting with your feet. The more readers or followers one has, goes the logic, the more influence one wields.

To turn it around, people who actively use social media for every day, non-political reasons are also subject to being targeted.

One of the vulnerabilities (or advantages, to a combatant wishing to recruit people) is that social media accounts usually expose users to invasive scrutiny. Facebook and LinkedIn profiles can carry enough information that, shared with the wrong person, can be used to compromise that person or uncover confidential information about his/her job. Many countries’ military members are now routinely required to not specify their location or activities.

As the years passed of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, jihadi groups increasingly began to recruit through social media. Stories now abound of young adults of Middle Eastern heritage and origin, living in western Europe and the US, who have been contacted by Islamic State through social media and convinced to move to Raqqa, the Islamic State’s purported capital. Some 60 young women from the UK, aged 20 and below, are thought in the past several years to have traveled to Raqqa.

The huge growth in cell phone cameras and the ease of posting pictures to social media has also played a role in tracking and finding various targets. Of recent note, investigative organizations were able to track operatives and military equipment in eastern Ukraine primarily through personal pictures posted to social media and publically available imaging, including open source tracking of the apparent missile launcher used to destroy Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in 2014. This has also been a method to discover the location of various actors in the labyrinthine war in Syria.

Per the previously mentioned PBS Newshour article, many Islamic State fighters simply do not disable the geo-location feature on their phones, which allows those with the right technology to track them.

Intelligence agencies of major world powers now seem to appreciate the importance of social media and its role in ‘information operations,’ a military term that infers the ability of messaging to affect the viewpoints of a target population. Just looking through listings for ‘intelligence analyst’ on several Washington DC—based job boards, foreign language specialists are widely sought for social media and social networking positions.

Of course, it is not only parties to the worlds’ trouble regions that are looking to abuse social media to their advantage. For even a longer time, social engineers and hackers have tried to gather personal information by establishing links online.

If you are uncertain about that LinkedIn invitation you just got, try to verify the person through a known contact. If you are doubtful, ‘ignore’ or ‘delete’ works just fine. If he or she happens to be a colleague whom you meet at the next social, you can safely add them, and actually have a face-to-face conversation, something social media, unfortunately, seems to increasingly discourage.

The post Social Media Now on Conflicts’ Front Lines appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Europe faces a string of political and financial events that may lead to further instability in a region already battered by the effects of multiple crises.

A lack of European tools, scarcity of national resources and the illusory but satisfying ability to treat the symptoms of an obscure disease, have distracted European political elites from a fundamental diagnosis of the shared roots of the many crises that have befallen them in the last seven years. Frustration and disenchantment have fueled the spread of radical anti-establishment parties advocating potentially destabilising populist policies. If the present political class wants to remain relevant, they need to decide whether to leap forward towards further European integration or completely reverse the course set after WWII.  Several events across may occur in European countries in the next 9 months and these will probably result in more of the electorate slipping away from established elites.

Austria to repeat tense presidential vote

Austria was scheduled to re-run the second turn of its presidential election on October 2nd  (it has now been delayed to until at least December due to ballot irregularities). The election pits pro-Europe Green party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen in a close race against the Eurosceptic anti-immigration Free Party of Austria’s (FPO) Norbert Hofer. May’s result, which saw the establishment’s Van der Bellen narrowly defeat right-winger Hofer, was annulled on July 1st by the Austrian Constitutional Court on account of substantial electoral irregularities. Recent polls suggest that the intervening period did nothing to clarify voter preference and the race remains tight.

Should he win, Hofer has stated that he would veto the TTIP between the EU and the USA and that he may join the Austrian chancellor at EU Council meetings. The latter could be disruptive given the opposing political affiliations of these Austrian representatives.

Italian PM’s constitutional gamble

In November, Italy will hold a referendum on a proposed constitutional reform. Following the January 2016 referendum announcement, Prime-Minister Matteo Renzi leveraged his personal popularity by staking his political career and the survival of his government on the vote. However, the No-camp has been gaining ground since the beginning of the campaign in April, matching the gains of the anti-establishment 5-star movement at municipal elections in June.

Dutch election poised to give Wilders a plurality of votes

On 15 March 2017 the Netherlands will hold its next parliamentary election. For the first time since its foundation, the anti-Islam and Eurosceptic Party of Freedom (PVV) of the polemic Geert Wilders is leading in the polls. Estimates from voter surveys have given the PVV a plurality of the vote since September 2015 in response to the refugee crisis. Despite his confidence, the rise of Wilders to the premiership remains undermined by the unwillingness of other parties to join him in a coalition. Nevertheless, his victory may complicate political alliances and destabilise the political process, while giving Mr Wilders a bigger podium from which to advocate a radical agenda that includes a Dutch exit from the EU.

Terrorism in France casts shadow over presidential election

A month after the Dutch election, France will choose a new president in a two-round election on 23 April and 7 May 2017. Incumbent Socialist president Francois Hollande enjoys a record low 15% approval rating by the French electorate, making him very unlikely to gain the support in the first round necessary to be on the ballot in May.

Headlines have been captured by the rising popularity of Eurosceptic Front National leader Marine Le Pen whose support was not hurt by the sequence of attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan theater and thePromenade des Anglais in Nice. On the right, Les Republicains could run either ex-president Nicholas Sarkozy or Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux and one-time Prime Minister of Jacques Chirac between 1995 and 1997.  Both may be able to beat Le Pen on the second-round election. On the left, prime-minister Manuel Valls and Emmanuel Macron, the outgoing economy minister, are the only potential alternatives tothe unpopular president, but it is unclear if they could defeat Le Pen.

Spanish deadlock could trigger Christmas election

Since the election in December 2015 and notwithstanding the results of another election less than 3 months ago, Spain remains in a political deadlock caused by the rise of the left-wing Podemos and the centre-right Ciudadanos parties.

Last month’s failure by Mariano Rajoy, leader of the centre-right Popular Party (PP), to gain the support of parliament to form a government has alerted Parliamentarians to the fact a third failed attempt by the end of October could lead to an election on Christmas Day 2016. This could facilitate a decrease in voter turnout, which could favour the PP. However, if this fails, the backlash from other parties could be such as to further polarise parties and extend the political deadlock.

Greek bailout saga has no end in sight

Greece’s inability to shed the instability triggered by the 2010 debt crisis creates a rich minefield of liquidity deadlines. The last bailout (the third since 2010), worth €86 billion was agreed on 16 August 2015. Of this total, €28.9 billion have been disbursed in increasingly smaller tranches during the last year. The latest disbursement, worth €7.5 billion, was provided in June 2016. However, another promised €2.8 billion necessary to pay two €1.4 billion short term government bills scheduled to mature on 7 October and on 4 November will only be disbursed if further reform targets are reached. The viability of long term international support will be tested again before the end of the year, when the deadline for an agreementon the debt haircuts that IMF demands Euro-Zone creditors accept as a pre-condition for its participation in any future Greek bailout expires. Without such relief, the saga is likely to continue with the country facing another €10 billion in maturing debt during 2017.

Conclusion – sleep-walking towards some paradigm shift

None of the above events is likely to bring the European project tumbling down in the next nine months. Indeed, none of them is likely to result in a complete overhaul of the status quo. But in nine months’ time the political landscape will have become more hostile to mainstream parties, with mounting political deadlock probably matched by increased financial flight to safe haven.

This article was originally published by Global Risk Insights and written by GRI analyst Filipe Albuquerque.

The post Six Events that Will Shape Europe in the Next 9 Months appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Philippines is the latest U.S. treaty ally that has shown a proclivity for a more independent role for itself in the realm of international relations. This follows a trend in which Turkey has reconciled, to an extent, relations with Russia, as well as more independence shown by Japan in its own Russian affairs. The Philippines itself is not only showing its own independence with respect to Russian relations, but to Chinese relations as well.

Macro-balancing

On the macro level, ASEAN as a whole has seen its role as fulcrum to the region rise exponentially. Once derided as a “talk shop”, ASEAN itself is at the epicenter of various competing “pivots” to the region. For example, despite its own conflict with China in the East China Sea, Japan is gradually forging its own pivot to the South China Sea as well in order to better balance its historic rival.

Aside from Japan, Russia and India are also implementing their own respective “pivots” to Southeast Asia for their own respective agendas. India, still suspicious of being navally encircled by China a la “String of Pearls”, is looking to gradually increase its South China Sea forward presence. Although not technically allies, this no doubt pleases the U.S., which is really looking for other major powers to assist its own balance against China.

Russia’s game in Southeast Asia is bit more complicated. Russia’s “Asian Pivot” serves multiple purposes. First, it aims to offset decreased Western trade and investment flows due to post-Ukraine sanctions with increased economic ties to China. However, in order not to become too dependent on China, economically or politically, Russia is looking to bolster its “pivot” portfolio.

As a result, Russia is seeking to improve ties with a range of regional players, not only Japan, but Southeast Asian states Vietnam, and now the Philippines. Additionally, Russia is looking to counterbalance U.S. activities in its Eastern European and Central Asian spheres of influence with a payback of sorts with activities of its own in the U.S.’ Northeast and Southeast Asian spheres of influence.

Micro-balancing

Despite recent controversial statements by its new President, the Philippines still looks to the U.S. as a vital plank in its overall security calculus. However, it is not the only plank. Most notably, the Philippines is looking to gradually improve relations with China.

This overture towards China comes despite the recent unfavorable ruling against China by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration regarding conflicting South China Sea claims. Even though the Philippines originally initiated the case, it has chosen to take a rather mature path. This is because the Philippines is using the ruling as the start of negotiations with China, rather than as a final end.

Mirroring recent Chinese comments that South China Sea disputes form only one component of U.S.-China affairs and should not be allowed to poison the entire relationship, the Philippines has made the same argument with respect to Sino-Philippine relations. The Philippines also hopes this multi-vector foreign policy approach will give it more independence and increased leverage with both the U.S. and China in order to pursue its own interests.

In contrast to China, Russia has only relatively recently sought to improve economic relations in earnest with Southeast Asia as a whole. As the Philippines already is a member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and is eyeing possible TPP membership in the future, Russia’s more immediate value proposition to the Philippines lies in the political and security realms.

From the Filipino perspective, it is greatly appreciated that Russia has expressed neutrality in the Philippines’ South China Sea conflict with China. Even though Russia and China have recently warmed relations considerably, they still are not formal treaty allies. This fact not only keeps the Philippines from worrying about Russian support for Chinese claims in the region, but it also gives the Philippines enhanced leverage with both China and the U.S..

This second fact is not to be taken lightly. Even though the Philippines has a 2014 Visiting Forces Agreement with the U.S., the agreement is not without controversy and the new Filipino President has promised to review it. Even though the original idea behind the agreement was to allow the Philippines to better balance China with U.S. assistance, a Russian component is unavoidable.

While it may also secretly see increased regional U.S. forces as a deterrent to Chinese ambitions, Russia’s comfort level with this presence is definitely lower than the Philippines’. Just as the Philippines is using the agreement to keep China in check, it is simultaneously using its own unease (and Russia’s too) with the agreement to help keep the U.S. in check as well. In summary, increasing multi-polarity is allowing the Philippines more wiggle room in its dealing with all major powers, akin to non-U.S. allies India and Vietnam.

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Nadia Murad escaped ISIS and witnessed the Yazidi genocide. After escaping sex slavery by ISIS, the brave survivor turned activist became a voice for the thousands of Yazidi women who are still suffering under the Islamic State.

The primary use of an army has always been to give an opportunity to protect innocent people from the worst fate imaginable. Death was not even the worst option for many of these victims. Torture, rape, humiliation and targeting of children would be the catalyst for societies to decide to defend themselves from barbaric acts that would lead to their eventual extinction.

In 2016, these actions are occurring on a daily basis, and the media gives non-stop 24 hour coverage of the most mundane of first world problems. To focus on the absurd rather than give even a few seconds to the victims of what could be argued are the worst crimes to ever be committed against human beings is simply wrong, and goes against every fibre of any society. It is not unreasonable to think that all minorities will be wiped out of the Middle East very soon, simply because of our lack of interest.

America as a modern entity was forged out of the actions they took in the first half of the 20th century, helping what they saw as other moral democracies achieve goals that were for the betterment of humanity as a whole. They did not do this perfectly, sometimes taking on shadowy actions themselves against their enemies, claiming it was for the greater good. Often it was, but with the end of the Second World War and liberation of millions of enslaved peoples, America was not perfect, but it did show a moment of greatness in the epic of human civilization.

In 2016, genocide of the type never accepted before is being placated by our barons of information. The gross language of word play on the issue of genocide is nothing new for governments. I recall the regret of many world leaders in our modern era when discussing their actions during the genocide in the Balkans and especially Rwanda.

To speak away ones obligation as a powerful nation for political expediency requires a new label for a new type of crime. Anyone who studies law knows this will never occur, but the moral outrage should be there just the same. Earning political capital off the backs of those who perished for the sake of a few votes and a reduction of first world problems should be the number one reason a politician loses their employment and credibility. It is the first thing wrong in any society, and those individuals who make games of the embarrassments of humanity will never contribute anything positive to it.

In an article published last month “What Yazidi Refugees Fleeing ISIS Want Americans to Know”, the author documents what is occurring in what is likely the lowest point in our history of human civilization. The narrative begs American citizens, and to infer as well, their President, election candidates and the rest of the civilized world to not let them perish in the most horrible of ways, to stop their extinction and to remind us all that we are of the same human family. The end of those people will become a blight on the souls of all sensible individuals for the rest of human existence. While allowing their extinction to occur is not in violation of any law for those ignoring one of the worst genocides to have ever occurred, the eradication of one of the oldest societies is a tragedy.

This is the only issue that really matters, and if a candidate is willing to address it and end this holocaust then they deserve their mark on humanity. The statement: That occurred in the generation that occupied the era of 2016, is not yet written, but it is our contribution to our ancestors and our future children. That will be our legacy, and it has already begun.

The post At the Brink of Extinction, They are Asking for America’s Help appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Printing money: our only idea?

The recent G-20 summit occurred just a few weeks after a symposium of global central bankers, which put questions of the global economy in the spotlight. However, as only a few voices note, the discourse largely glosses over the extraordinarily distorted shape of global finance and the perils that raises.

In short, the global economy has been leaning on monetary policy—the printing of money by central banks —to avoid decline. The evidence is in an unprecedented incidence of negative interest rates, particularly for trillions of dollars worth of sovereign bonds.

As national authorities have limited their fiscal spending, out of political or budgetary constraints, central banks, which create money, have pumped it in to stimulate their economies. They have bought bonds for years, and in the process they have lowered the benchmark rates on financial instruments. As economies revive, they would normally be expected to raise rates, and sell the bonds back into the markets, but that hasn’t happened.

Thus, rates go to zero—and beyond, most notoriously in the EU but also in Japan. Even in the U.S., the Federal Reserve has signaled an intention to raise its rates for years, but has only announced one hike of the Fed Funds target rate, from zero to a quarter percent. The ECB has apparently bought bonds directly from corporate issuers, essentially making loans directly to those companies, for lack of bonds to buy elsewhere.

The knock-on effects distort economies further. Pension funds’ earnings on their assets do not cover payments they will owe future retirees. To find yield, they invest in increasingly risky bonds and stocks, apparently raising the market risks to pensioners’ savings to defray the risk of benefit-payment shortfalls. Meanwhile, firms are loading up on debt, which raises their risk profiles, a notable one being the now-defaulted Hanjin Shipping, which had a debt to equity ratio of about 6 to 1.

The image that emerges is one of stagnant economies burdened by debt, as the last tool for stimulus taps out. The prospects for growth remain bleak, while the dangers of debt increase every month that borrowers’ cash flows fail to grow. The picture is global: the EU is constrained by its economic crisis, plus Brexit, plus the questions around refugee flows; the U.S., despite its mild optimism, is still jittery; China is in a deep economic adjustment; the oil economies are subject to both the competitive effect of fracking and the weakness of global demand; and export-driven economies are left with no buyers.

Even were there a general disposition to acknowledge these risks, solutions would be difficult to craft. But both the central bankers and the G-20 leaders seem inclined to talk around this scenario, though it seems implicitly understood.

Fear that was known but unaddressed while old practices continued marked the geopolitics of 1914 and the financial markets in 2007-8. Anyone in finance during the latter period may remember risk assessments that concluded with “… if that scenario happens, this deal will be the least of our problems.” On top of the risks in place and the disinclination to fix them, we now also know that nightmares can come true.

There are those who say that one never knows where growth originates, and all we can do is muddle along. Certainly the known tools for stimulating growth seem to have been exhausted, and no one can see brilliant new policy or market methods. It would seem that there is a basic problem of somehow restoring what Keynes called the ‘animal spirits’ of at least a few of the major economies. But, in any economy one can name, the social, political, and/or psychological scene is mired in negativity. Perhaps muddling through will eventually lead to stabilization and a return of confidence. For that or for quicker answers, we might start praying.

The post See No Evil? Distorted Finance and Economic Risk appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc witness the two countries’ officials signing a military cooperation agreement at the Government office in Hanoi, September 3, 2016. (Reuters)

New evidence appears to show Beijing restarting large-scale land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea, despite an international court ruling rejecting most of China’s claims. It suggests China had ordered barges to Scarborough Shoal and begun construction, according to a statement by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte last Friday. In the face of Beijing’s continued actions to assert its territorial claims, other nations are partnering up to increase their military ties and defense cooperation, including Vietnam and India.

Last Saturday’s visit to Vietnam by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the first by any Indian prime minister in 15 years, resulted in Modi offering his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc a credit line of $500 million for defense cooperation.     

The two countries are already cooperating on numerous defensive fronts, with New Delhi having earlier supplied Hanoi with another credit line of $100 million to purchase offshore patrol boats. Through the purchase of the patrol boats, Vietnam hopes to stop attacks on its fishermen—some 200 Vietnamese fishermen were attacked by Chinese boats in 2015, according to local Vietnamese government officials. India is also training Vietnamese military personnel in the operation of the Russian Kilo-class submarine.  New Delhi also spent $23 million this year to set up a satellite monitoring station in Ho Chi Minh City, which will be activated soon and linked to an existing station in Indonesia.

More significantly, Hanoi has requested to purchase the supersonic Indo-Russian BrahMos missile from India, reputed to be the world’s fastest cruise missile at speeds up to three times the speed of sound. The unit cost of the BrahMos missile is $3 million, with a range of 290 kilometers (180 miles), and can be fired from land, sea and submarine. Negotiations on the purchase are expected to conclude by the end of the year. New Delhi is also considering a proposal to offer Hanoi a battleship armed with configurations of eight or 16 BrahMos missiles each. Vietnam sits at the top of the list of countries for Indian export of the missiles, followed by the Philippines. The other 9 nations expected to purchase the missiles from India include Malaysia, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.

So why is India, which sits far from the South China Sea, involving itself in this particular maritime dispute? New Delhi has no territorial claims in the area, and defense cooperation by New Delhi with those nations who are party to territorial disputes can only anger Beijing. Jeff M. Smith, Director of Asian Security Programs at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, argues, “Policymakers in Delhi were long constrained by the belief that advanced defense cooperation with Washington or Hanoi could provoke aggressive and undesirable responses from Beijing.”    

Perhaps India’s greater involvement comes as New Delhi is growing more concerned that Beijing’s increased assertiveness in the South China Sea may extend to territory close to India. India shares a border with China, to which India deployed 100 tanks in July following an “increase in force levels” from China. China has also been busy building key infrastructure such as power stations, highways and seaports for the small island nations surrounding India. While Beijing rails against a perceived “containment” by the U.S., New Delhi may be feeling the same, as Beijing funds arch-rival Pakistan’s military and docks its submarines in Sri Lanka. 

This latest offering of military assistance by New Delhi to Hanoi is a continuation of Modi’s foreign policy of reaching out to neighbors, in an effort to contain Beijing’s aspirations to geopolitical control and military presence in the region. Last March, Modi announced the provision of military and civilian assistance to the island nations of Maldives, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Sri Lanka, including the supply of patrol vessels, surveillance radars and ocean mapping services.

Most likely, Modi no longer considers New Delhi’s restraint as effective, having seen Beijing’s threats to freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, and the illegal construction of an artificial islands. When dealing in future with Beijing, Modi’s latest overtures toward Hanoi make it clear New Delhi has finally traded its carrot of non-interference for a stick of dynamite.  

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“I’ve been, in one capacity or another, in the intel business for fifty-two years and I don’t remember a time when we had been beset by more crises and challenges around the world, and a diversity of these crises and challenges than we have today.” –Remarks by James Clapper, March 2nd 2015.

“…unpredictable instability has become the “new normal,” and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.” -Remarks  by  James Clapper Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Feb 9th 2016

I’ve opened with the two above quotes, not because I’ve turned into the mythological Chicken Little running around wrongly screaming that the “sky is falling”, but because I genuinely believe we are at a major cross road in national security policy. I agree with DNI Clapper. I’ve seen a lot in my life but never have I seen a time with greater threats to our national security. I’ve blogged about it before, but I believe we are currently involved in two world wide wars: an undeclared Cyber War and a global war against terrorism. The mainstream media mostly focuses on terrorists attacks in Europe and here in the U.S. Speaking before the Senate this year, Clapper reported “Violent extremists are operationally active in about 40 countries”. The 2015 Global Terrorism Index declared Boko Haram, which operates primarily in Nigeria and has pledged its allegiance to ISIS, the most dangerous terrorist group in the world.

In addition to terrorism and cyber, Russia is playing Pacman in Eastern Europe, China is now claiming much of the East and South China Seas and building “artificial islands” to back up those claims, North Korea keeps conducting provocative missile tests to include successfully firing a missile from a submerged submarine, and the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan continues. During his aforementioned testimony before the Senate this year, DNI Clapper addressed some other potential problem areas with national security ramifications stating:

“Seven countries are experiencing a collapse of central government authority, and 14 others face regime-threatening, or violent, instability or both. Another 59 countries face a significant risk of instability through 2016. The record level of migrants, more than one million arriving in Europe, is likely to grow further this year. Migration and displacement will strain countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. There are now some 60 million people who are considered displaced globally. Extreme weather, climate change, environmental degradation, rising demand for food and water, poor policy decisions and inadequate infrastructure will magnify this instability.”

In November we as voters must decide who the next President and Commander-in-Chief of our military forces will be. Call me old fashioned or a Geek but I believe we are doing ourselves and our nation a disservice if we don’t make an effort to educate ourselves on the key issues. In this era of “if it bleeds it leads” and/or covering major issues with controversial “sound bites” journalism, it is up to the individual to research issues in order to be better informed. Thanks to the wonders of technology, there has never been a better and easier time to do this. In my opinion, events like the Aspen Security Forum provide an invaluable service. Not only do they bring together national security leaders and policy makers in one venue but if you can’t attend they live stream these events on the web. One of my favorite moments from this year’s event and one that got the biggest laugh of the week was when Cyril Sartor, a senior CIA official, remarked: “it feels a little weird as well for a CIA officer to be live streaming on YouTube”. If you don’t have time to watch the videos they also have transcripts of the sessions on the Aspen Security Forum web sites.

I’ve already written two blogs on this year’s forum. For this last one I thought I’d share more of what jumped out at me from speakers focusing on Russia and China.

Russia

Elissa Slotkin, Acting Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs made the following key points:

– Putin is disgruntled with how the Cold War ended and is looking for ways to be a global peer competitor of the U.S. He is pushing where he thinks there’s weakness; he’s pushing to see how far he can get.
– He is using cyber as a tool of statecraft.
– U.S./NATO approach is strong and balanced. The strong means the U.S. and NATO have to have the capabilities they need in the right places to deter Russia and we have to support partners, not our allies but our partners, in building their resilience in response to Russia Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, that’s the strong.
– On the balance side, it’s absolutely holding open the idea that there are things of mutual interests that we should negotiate with and work with Russia on Iran deal, Syria, if we could possibly do it, and holding the door open for them to rejoin the family of nations in international standing, good international standing. We don’t want to be adversarial with the Russians […] we can’t stand aside while they push and illegally annex places and sow dissent in places and destabilize places.
– Pentagon looks at capabilities and intentions. In capabilities, they’ve seen significant modernization of the Russian military and seen them create a doctrine of conducting unpredictable snap exercises where they suddenly build up divisions of troops on their borders and then sometimes, as in Crimea, use that as a cover for an invasion of another country.
– They use “hybrid” techniques like cyber, their use of space, their use of propaganda and other asymmetric tools that are deniable, hard to see, and hard to identify as indications and warning the way we have in the past seen as a buildup before an invasion.
– Intent […] With Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, it was clear…going in to back up Assad, […] without any forewarning, […] sets a certain tone and it opens up certain questions about their intent. Their activities in terms of engaging in an extremely close proximity with U.S. forces, almost taunting U.S. forces, it just leaves open these fundamental questions about intent. So when you put those two together, capabilities and intent, it leads you down a road to an assessment that Putin has decided to take on a decidedly more aggressive foreign policy. And that deeply concerns us.
– Hope we have learned from Cold War not to overestimate the competitor. We were at fault for thinking that the Soviet Union was this amazing, uncrackable empire and there were many places, particularly in the U.S. government that just fundamentally did not predict the fall of the Soviets.
– We should be taking those lessons […] and applying them to Putin’s Russia today. They’re not unbeatable. They are not operating from a position of strength.

Heather Conley, a Senior Vice President, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) made the following additional points:
– […] the piece that we are really missing […] Russia’s growing anti-access/area denial capabilities […] they are increasingly able to deny NATO and U.S. access to areas should we want to get in there. And we don’t have an answer for that right now.
– The other component that’s not quite there yet is the maritime component. We’re starting to get our hands around the increase in Russian submarine activity; anti-submarine warfare has to come back.

I disagree with Secretary Slotkin’s point about the Cold War. There seems to be this revisionist train of thought that the intelligence community over estimated the military capabilities of the Soviet Union and did not predict the fall of the Soviet Union. I spent most of my career in intelligence focused on not just the military capabilities of the Soviet Union but also trying to determine their intentions and when and under what circumstances they would flex their military muscles. I didn’t track the internal issues unless it had to do with their military spending. That did not mean that other members of the intelligence community weren’t watching what was happening in the internally in the Soviet Union.

I remember vividly the first person in the intelligence community to tell me the Soviet Union was going to fall because of their dire economic situation. This happened in the mid ‘80’s. I remember this not because of the analysis itself but because of the personality and character of the person who told me. He was the most dishonorable, back stabbing individual I ever ran into while working in the military but he was also one of the most brilliant. He had lived in the Soviet Union for a number of years so he had first hand knowledge of what he was talking about.

I don’t know if Ms. Slotkin was also implying that the intelligence community over estimated the Soviet Union’s military capabilities but I can say that intelligence estimates on capabilities were based on “close” observation of their military forces. In their book The Admiral’s Advantage , Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg remark:

“the Navy continually operated inside and among our opponent’s forces, maneuvering against real Soviet Units on a daily basis in an everyday life of war without the shooting on, above, and below the sea’s surface.”

Sometimes things got more personal. For example, in 1984, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk ran over a Soviet Submarine in the Sea of Japan.

I mentioned to Secretary Slotkin, that during the Cold War, President Reagan established a policy that before a proposed war plan became operational it had to be war gamed. During the games, intelligence analysts simulated command of the opposition forces. One of the main purposes of these games was to ensure the U.S. warfighters were familiar with how the Soviets would use their various war platforms in a conflict. I asked if they had conducted war games against simulated hybrid threats like those posed by Russia. She replied:

“We love our wargaming at the Department of Defense, rest assured you cannot imagine. You might even be concerned by the amount of wargaming we’ve done on these scenarios because, as the last questioner mentioned, it’s just so different for us. So we have done—this is what I’m talking about when I say contingency planning. Our contingency planning is based on a number of wargaming scenarios that showed us what we think the most likely invasion scenarios are and they’re not traditional. So, absolutely. If you’re interested in playing Team Red, we are happy to sign you up, but we have done significant wargaming on different scenarios.”

I agree with Heather Conley’s comments on the maritime component. In June of this year in an issue of U.S. Navy Proceedings magazine Vice Adm. James Foggo III outlined a new era in U.S. and Russian submarine warfare he dubs “The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic.” You can read the whole article here but one of the key points is:

“In the early 1990s, the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and commentary such as Francis Fukuyama’s landmark essay “The End of History?” led us to believe that our strategic rivalry with Russia and our need to stay one step ahead of Russian capabilities had faded. It has not. Once again, an effective, skilled, and technologically advanced Russian submarine force is challenging us. Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict. Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, Royal Navy, the head of NATO’s maritime forces, noted recently that his forces report “more activity from Russian submarines than we’ve seen since the days of the Cold War.” 2 Some analysts believe that even our underwater infrastructure—such as oil rigs and telecommunications cables—may be under threat by these new and advanced forces. Russian focus, investment, and activity in the undersea domain are now so unmistakable that even the head of the Russian Navy, Viktor Chirkov, has admitted that Russian submarine patrols have grown 50 percent since 2013.”

Next week I’ll conclude with some thoughts on China. As always my views are my own.

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