Foreign Policy Blogs

Almost every aspect of the security in Somalia is outsourced to deeply entrenched competing foreign interests of various shades. None of them are accountable to the Somali government. Not even the legally mandated African Union Mission to Somalia peacekeeping force—AMISOM.

Contrary to the noble services that it provided in its early years, AMISOM has become a serious liability to the stabilization and also the main obstacle to Somalia’s sovereignty. Like IGAD—the East Africa regional authority on development—AMISOM has morphed into a politico-security monster that does not honor its mandate. Currently, AMISOM is Ethiopia, and Ethiopia is AMISOM.

AMISOM played an aggressive role in legally ushering in the Ethiopian Trojan Horse. Along with Kenya, Ethiopia espouses a thinly disguised zero-sum objective. For the last decade, the Ethiopian military has been aggressively pursuing said objective. Today, Ethiopia is the de facto leader of the military campaign to fight al-Shabaab. And this is a serious problem.

Firsthand Experience

On November 2013, right before the Ethiopian troops were accepted into AMISOM, I received a formal invitation from AMISOM’s political office to attend an event intended to solicit the Somali diaspora’s support for the group. The event was to be held in a luxury venue in a third country, and it was to be attended by high level officials.

I thought to myself perhaps this would be a great opportunity to highlight why the inclusion of Ethiopian army into AMISOM would be disastrous and, in the process, persuade the African Union leadership to turn down Ethiopia’s offer.

So, I asked a simple question to the official: “If I joined you and in my presentation made a case against inclusion of Ethiopian forces into AMISOM would that be taken into consideration; also would it appear in your public literature?” Next day, I got his response: “Have you received details of the retreat?” I thought he forgot to answer my question, so I repeated it. Next day, I got his response: “Please send me a copy of your passport so we can process your travel arrangement”. I repeated my question for the third time. Next day I received his response: “I can’t beg you. If you are not interested, I am sure others will jump on this invitation”. So I responded: “I am sure you would match well.”

The message was clear: Welcoming Ethiopia into AMISOM was a fait accompli and the event itself was nothing more than a PR stunt to preempt any negative public sentiments.

Abyssinian Empire and Its Stooges

The “global war on terrorism” could not have been declared at a better time for Ethiopia. The late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. He could become a terror-preneur and position himself as the Horn of Africa’s Parvez Musharraf (former President of Pakistan) and generate for his nation its sorely needed resources and political backing to swallow Somalia, one piece at a time.

Meles was a Machiavellian visionary and a brilliant strategist. Though it was no secret that he came to power by the barrel of a gun and that he would only invoked the principles of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ to hypnotize the progressive elements within his Western partners, he was lionized by neoconservatives.

In 2002, Ethiopia released its Foreign Affairs and National Security Policy and Strategy which lays out its foreign policy toward Somalia. “Somalia has become a haven and conduit for terrorists and extremists. Anti-peace elements are using the country as a base and place of transit in order to threaten Ethiopia’s peace.” Needless to say, at that time, Somalia was ruled by ruthless warlords who were never accused of ever having any religious affiliation.

In the same document, one of the main motives that compel land-locked Ethiopia to keep Somalia divided and to use all of its means to install a cardboard president in each region is stated: “starting from the port of Zeila […] to Kismayo, there are no less than seven ports in Somalia that can be used by different parts of our country.”

Contrary to the phrase often used by the beneficiaries of Ethiopia’s micromanagement of Somali political affairs, “Itoobiya waa dowlad eynu walaalo nahay” or Ethiopia is a brotherly state; states, due to their shifting interests and alliances, are never “brothers”. This naïve perception of international relations secures Ethiopia the privilege to maintain its embassy virtually within the presidential compound.

Keeping Political Stooges Dependent

Almost a decade since AMISOM assumed the peacekeeping mission, Somali soldiers still remain poorly-equipped and unpaid, thanks to a corrupt leadership busy squandering money in luxury hotels abroad. Within that context, it is hardly surprising that the Somali leadership depends on AMISOM for security.

In Somalia, fear is a traded commodity. And these phenomena play major roles in perpetuation of fear: ghost assassinations of patriotic civil servants with institutional memories, government officials, and activists; and periodical suicide bombings that never get investigated. AMISOM bomb experts are notoriously absent from the scene—with photo opportunities being the only exception.

Furthermore, AMISOM routinely manufactures insecurity by abruptly evacuating towns and territories gained from al-Shabaab. This is a tactic that Ethiopia was known to use in order to manufacture insecurity for political expedience. The latest were the evacuation of Burhakabe, El Salindi, and Kunturwarey. Al-Shabaab reoccupied all three areas. In Burhakabe, among other atrocities, they beheaded two brothers for “spying.” Meanwhile, al-Shabaab, which was estimated around 3,000 gunmen when the Ethiopian tanks rolled into the heart of Mogadishu almost a decade ago, is now an international corporation of terror that wreaks havoc in Somalia and Kenya, but not Ethiopia—supposedly its worst enemy.

Conclusion

Somalia has been kept in a state of political uncertainty and security catastrophe in which no level of the state security apparatus is independent or wholly operated and governed by Somalis.

Ethiopia seems to have taken a page out of the playbook of the global war on terrorism. In order to get leaders to dutifully march to the beating drums of jingoism, they must be psychologically terrorized beyond common sense. Neoconservatives were very effective in tightly managing this perception of reality.

Former President George W. Bush’s shining moment came when he was most vulnerable, despite the fact that he was being flown across the country to keep him safe in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. “In the thick fog of war, Bush heard (manufactured apocalyptic) reports that Camp David and the State Department had been attacked, that there was a fire in the White House, and that his ranch in Texas may have been targeted.”

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s ‘shock doctrine’ moment or his total submission to Ethiopia and its zero-sum strategy came when al-Shabaab bypassed AMISOM barricades and attacked the presidential palace.

In conclusion, no peacekeeping operation can succeed without the support of the local population; and, under the Ethiopian de facto command, AMISOM’s credibility is beyond repair. As I stated in the conclusion of my article titled Somalia’s Sullied Security, I would like to reiterate my call for the Somali government to request UN Blue Berets to replace AMISOM. A similar call was recently made by the British think tank Chatham House.

Meanwhile, the fateful scenario of the stubborn python trying to swallow the wounded tiger continues to play itself out.

Photograph by AFP

Minority groups in the Middle East who have been at the front lines against the war on terror have benefited from airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against strategic targets. While air strikes are effective to a certain degree, in a strategic sense they are tantamount to precision artillery. Artillery is there to support troops on the ground as opposed to dominating a battlefield by their sole application in a battle. Without material help using ground forces, groups like the Kurds, Yazidis and Arab Christians fight hard to achieve a stalemate in many cases. Help in the form of heavy weapons or added troops have been supplied in scarce amounts from Western countries, even though a defeat for those communities means almost certain slavery or death.

For many groups in Syria and Iraq, assistance in their fight to survive has come too late on almost every occasion. The hopelessness of many currently migrating to Europe comes from the realization that help on the ground is inefficient in keeping some of the oldest cultures alive, and there has been little to no attention given in Western media to the reality that with ancient structures, ancient cultures made up of real people are also becoming extinct.

When assistance has been given, it is often turned into an internal political issue in Western countries. This was addressed by a Kurdish community leader in Toronto who praised the Canadian government for its help with Kurds in Kobani. He highlighted the issue of why more help is not given to Kurds in Syria and Iraq. In his statement, he took aim at opposition leaders in Canada who want to remove all military help for the Kurds, yet wish to gain a job in government by falsely claiming that Canada has done nothing to help. The false narratives and lack of attention on the ground results in Kurdish fighters having little to no heavy weapons, which may result in their ultimate defeat.

The gaps in addressing issues in a reasonable time frame coming from the West since 2009 has done little to help minority communities in the region fight for their political freedoms and existence. With small militias from the region getting limited support on the ground, and the Iraqi army and their Iranian advisers also fighting to a stalemate, the only force in the region that can work as an effective heavy combat force continues to be the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad. When a chemical attack pulled together Western powers to launch an assault on the Assad government, Russian diplomats negotiated the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria to keep the West at bay. Recently, Russia announced they would give ground support to the Syrian army, betting on the fact that the Syrian army will be the most capable fighting force to gain back ground in Syria.

Despite condemnation from the White House, Russia has decided to fill the gap that the West has left in combating threats in Syria. With limited support having a minimal effect in Syria and Iraq, Russian help and even Russian personnel may be the only option left for the West if they do not want to move beyond air strikes and equip minority groups fighting for their survival in Syria and Iraq. The obvious gap in assistance coming from the Obama administration has brought Russia closer to the Middle East. Western leaders would be hard-pressed to criticize Russia when their efforts have been so lackluster on almost every occasion.

With a defeat of the more dangerous groups by a Syria-Russia alliance, the West can decide whether or not to deal with Assad afterwards with whatever leverage is left. Until Sunni Arabs have a secure place in their traditional lands in Iraq and Syria, it is likely that the region will remain in a state of permanent revolution.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyaju of Israel complained of Iran’s uranium-enrichment program before the UN General Assembly in 2012. (Photo: UN Photo)

There has been considerable opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called Iran Deal. One of the most curious assertions being made, however, is that we cannot negotiate with the Iranians because they cannot be trusted. This simply defies logic. If we trusted them, we would not need to negotiate an agreement. The JCPOA is all about verification, through which we will know what they are doing with their nuclear program. The verification regime, in turn, is vilified as well. Opponents declare that its provisions fall short of the declared goal of “anytime, anywhere” inspections, not that the term has ever actually been defined. They also seek to create the impression that all inspections will be delayed by 24 days. This last distortion has been described as the “death panels” of the Iran Deal. In general, the discussion has focused not on the most essential aspects of the agreement, but rather on those that appear weak or can be made to appear weak.

Uranium Production and the Verification Regime

It is important to remember is that this agreement, or any agreement, will not prevent every objectionable activity Iran might engage in. Separate issues will have to be dealt with separately. This agreement focuses on the activity that has been at the core of key allegations against Iran, the production of nuclear fuel, which Iran says it wants for peaceful purposes and is entitled to under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). (The NPT grants countries a right to a nuclear industry, but not specifically to the indigenous production of fuel.) When processing uranium with centrifuges, the process is the same whether you want to produce reactor fuel to generate electricity or bomb-grade fuel for a nuclear weapon. The essential difference is in how long you do it, or rather, how many times you run uranium gas through a cascade of centrifuges. Natural uranium consists primarily of two isotopes: it is about 0.7 percent U-235 and 99.3 U-238. Most reactor fuel is enriched to the level of about 3.5 percent U-235; Iran’s Tehran Research Reactor takes a fuel that is just below 20 percent U-235; bomb-grade is in excess of 90 percent U-235. Unfortunately, the process gets easier the further it goes, so that when you have reached 20 percent (or even 3.5 percent), you have actually gone most of the way toward reaching 90 percent. The technical ease with which one might glide from civilian production to military production is at the center of the suspicions directed at Iran. Thus the monitoring of uranium production is at the heart of the Iran deal.

Iran, of course, does not trust the United States, either, and does not want the United States poking around its facilities, regardless of whether they concern nuclear or conventional military technologies. Thus verification is to be carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a neutral third party. For decades, the IAEA has inspected nuclear facilities around the world under the NPT for the purpose of “verifying that such material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” It has not always been successful, but it has learned from its failures and strengthened its capacities over time.

Under the JCPOA, Iran reaffirms its denunciation of nuclear weapons and acceptance of standard inspections under its NPT Safeguard Agreement; agrees to additional challenge inspections, granting access to nuclear facilities within 24 hours (2 hours if inspectors are already on site), under an NPT Additional Protocol; and is obliged to give prior notification of the construction or modification of nuclear facilities under what is known as modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements to the Safeguards Agreement (or simply, modified Code 3.1). Furthermore, Iran forswears any research-and-development activities applicable to the development of a nuclear weapon, including dual-purpose activities. These obligations do not expire, ever. In addition, Iran agrees to added measures and restrictions beyond those for a limited time period, with the duration varying from 10 to 25 years, depending on the specific measure. While nothing in life is guaranteed and the situations are not perfect parallels, it is worth noting that inspectors successfully disarmed Iraq in the 1990s without these additional measures.

When it comes to Iran’s uranium-conversion and uranium-enrichment facilities, monitoring by remote-controlled cameras and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology will be permanent and continuous, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, under Iran’s Safeguard Agreement. In addition, for 15 years Iran will permit direct access by IAEA inspectors on demand up to once a day. In an unprecedented arrangement, Iran’s uranium mines and mills will be under continuous monitoring for 25 years. In another unprecedented arrangement, Iran’s centrifuge production facilities will be under continuous monitoring for 20 years. The import of dual-use materials will be monitored for 10 years. The idea here is to keep track of Iran’s uranium-related resources. If inspectors can keep track of how much uranium Iran has and where it is—how much enters each facility, how much leaves, and where it goes—then they should be able to detect if uranium is diverted for unapproved purposes. Without the fuel, you cannot make a bomb.

Not Anytime, Anywhere?

As a precaution going beyond the continuous monitoring of declared nuclear sites, the JCPOA permits inspectors to investigate other sites, military or civilian, if they suspect that illicit activity related to nuclear weapons is being undertaken there. This alone is the subject of the “anytime, anywhere” controversy. The compromise reached allows Iran to challenge the accusation and to give reasons why the accusation is not true. The delay, however, is limited to a maximum of 24 days. It is important to understand that this is a limit on Iran’s ability to stall. Of the 121 countries in the world that adhere to an Additional Protocol, only Iran faces this restriction.

A current television ad attacking the JCPOA claims that the agreement gives Iran “24 days to remove evidence of nuclear activity.” Note the careful wording. The ad makes no explicit claim that it is possible to remove evidence of nuclear activity within 24 days, probably because its producers are fully aware that it is not. Inspectors can detect the presence of nuclear materials years after it has been removed, and efforts to scrub a site leave evidence both of its presence and of the attempt to hide it.

Is it possible, within 24 days, to remove evidence of nonnuclear activity related to the development of nuclear weapons? It is certainly conceivable. Relevant computer simulations could be undertaken without detection under virtually any inspection regime, but by themselves they are not going to give you a bomb. Generally speaking, the easier it is to hide, the less likely it is to produce a breakthrough. Since no inspection regime can guarantee that cheating will never happen, a high likelihood that any possible cheating would be caught or ultimately be irrelevant is an acceptable standard. More importantly, the agreement’s opponents offer no superior solution.

Potential Military Dimensions and Parchin

Finally, considerable attention has been devoted to the uncovering of Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s past research, including possible activities in a particular building at the Parchin military facility. Iran has been accused of doing research on nonnuclear aspects of weapons design, such as testing the reactions of certain materials to high stress and experimenting with conventional explosives that could be used to trigger a nuclear device. The CIA and other sources believe that this activity was halted in 2003, but many people want it investigated. Iran is loath to admit that it engaged in research dedicated to developing a nuclear weapon (the Ayatollah has said publicly that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic) and is reluctant to invite outsiders to inspect its military facilities, but an arrangement has been worked out. The IAEA will investigate the issue and keep the results to itself. Since this concerns past activity, this will involve a one-time investigation rather than ongoing monitoring. Most of the investigation will entail a review of documents, but there will also be some physical inspections of relevant sites. The IAEA will write up its conclusions before the main Iran deal goes into effect. The conclusions will not be shared with the P5+1 countries but will be available to the inspectors. Iran will not have to admit publicly to past misconduct, but the purpose of the JCPOA is to prevent nuclear proliferation, not to elicit public confessions. The IAEA reports that the Iranians have been cooperative so far.

There are reasons for wanting to examine PMD, but that is not the same as saying it is central to the overall agreement. Investigating the PMD allegations potentially serves two purposes. First, if IAEA inspectors can determine how far Iran has progressed toward developing the nonnuclear aspects of a nuclear weapon, then they might be better able to calculate how long it would take Iran to build a bomb if it did indeed break out of the verification regime. (Remember, the much-discussed “breakout time” is not how long it would take them to build a bomb, but rather how long it would take them to produce enough bomb-grade uranium to build a bomb. Building the actual bomb is a separate process.)

The second purpose could actually benefit Iran, depending on the circumstances. If inspectors at some point in the future find evidence of work on bomb components, then a thorough understanding of the work completed in the past will help them determine whether the new find is the product of recent clandestine work or simply a relic of previous efforts. Thus it would help prove that a discovery is evidence of a violation or that accusations of a violation are unfounded. This supports the overall mission. It would certainly be useful in settling disputes, and disputes are sure to arise. Still, it is not essential to the purpose of preventing the diversion of nuclear material for unauthorized purposes.

Parchin is one subset of the PMD investigation. The issue here concerns allegations that Iran may have used a building at the Parchin site for nonnuclear tests related to the development of a nuclear weapon. Since the allegation concerns activity that ended a dozen years ago, since the building may never have contained nuclear material, and since the building may have been used for other purposes since then, the prospects of finding conclusive evidence of anything are slim.

In fact, IAEA inspectors already visited Parchin twice in 2005 and found nothing suspicious. By agreement with Iran, the inspectors were free to pick any quadrant of the Parchin site and examine buildings of their choosing in that quadrant. They did not have to identify the buildings they had chosen prior to their arrival. As it happens, they did not choose to visit the building that they plan to visit now, although it was available to them.

An Effective Agreement

When a politician says “I’ll eat my hat” if X, Y, or Z doesn’t happen, no one really expects him to do it. Yet political discourse in the United States seems to have settled at the level of denouncing public officials for not eating their hats, without concern for what purpose would actually be served by doing so. In this case, “anytime, anywhere” inspections are an admirable goal and a fine starting point for negotiations (although, as far as I know, the term has never been operationally defined), but real-life negotiations do not end up squarely at one side’s starting point. Moreover, repeated accusations that the agreement did not produce “anytime, anywhere” inspections ignore (or purposefully draw attention away from) the fact that the agreement actually produced 24/7 monitoring of the essential aspects of the issue and that the arrangements for challenge inspections of undeclared sites (the aspect that allegedly falls short of “anytime, anywhere”) are perfectly adequate, indeed, an unprecedented achievement in themselves. There is no reason to believe the JCPOA will not be effective. The greatest threat to it are the hard-liners in the United States and Iran, but they would equally be threats to any agreement produced by negotiations.

Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Donald Trump hosted a rally to oppose the Iran Deal in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 10, 2015. (Photo: updatednews.ca)

A great deal has been written about the agreement negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China), officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). A lot of the commentary has been nonsense. A great deal of attention has been allocated not according to the relative importance of the various aspects of the deal, but rather according to how vulnerable to attack they appear to be. Also, much of the public discussion has been technically inept. Many assert, for example, that if Iran wants even more centrifuges, then that proves that its nuclear program is really intended for military purposes. In fact, generating fuel for a power plant requires far more fuel (albeit, enriched to a lower level) and many more centrifuges. Iran has had enough centrifuges to make a bomb since the Bush administration.

The JCPOA is complex, and it has been attacked from several directions. I will focus on the key issue of verification in an accompanying post. Here I would like to address three other popular lines of attack.

First, some commentators insist that the only realistic way to deal with the Iranian nuclear program is to bomb it. (The same people often insist that the Iranians will hide facilities in secret locations, so it is difficult to say exactly where they plan to bomb.) They frequently cite Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 as an example of how it can be done successfully. Evidently they are unaware that the Iraqis did not have a serious nuclear-weapon program before 1981. Far from stopping Iraq’s nuclear program, the bombing of Osirak exposed Iraq’s vulnerability to an Israeli attack and prompted Saddam Hussein to pour resources into the development of a nuclear weapon. Much of that nuclear program, as well as chemical and biological weapons, survived weeks of intensive bombing during the Gulf War of 1991. So, what happened to Iraq’s notorious weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? Who finally disarmed the country, leaving it without WMD at the start of the Iraq War in 2003, after bombing failed to do so? The answer is: UN weapons inspectors.

Second, other commentators simply assert that we should discard the agreement and negotiate a better one. A number of experts, administration officials, and foreign envoys have listed factors working against the success of that approach. In brief, Iran is not simply going to be talked into demilitarizing the way Japan did after we destroyed its navy and air force, bombed its cities (two of them with nuclear weapons), and occupied and disarmed it.

If we wanted a better deal, then the time to do it would have been a decade ago, when a previous moderate government was in power in Iran. In 2003 Iran offered to negotiate a comprehensive settlement touching on U.S. interests (WMD, terrorism, coordination on Iraq, and movement toward a Palestinian-Israeli settlement based on a two-state solution, including the possibility of Iranian pressure on Hezbollah) and Iranian interests (an end to U.S. efforts at regime change, an end to sanctions, Iranian access to technology, including nuclear technology; and action against Mojahedin-e Khalq, an anti-Iranian group based in Iraq). The nuclear part of the deal might well have been similar to today’s agreement, except that Iran’s nuclear program was far less advanced at that time, so its bargaining position would have been weaker. In addition, many other loose ends of the relationship might have been covered as well.

The Bush administration, however, was not interested in compromising, or even in negotiating, opting instead to rely on economic sanctions. Rather than respond to the offer, the administration complained that the Swiss ambassador had exceeded his authority by transmitting the message at all. (Since Iran and the United States have no diplomatic relations, Switzerland represents U.S. interest in Tehran.) Could a mutually acceptable arrangement have been worked out at that time? We will never know. What we do know is that in 2003, when the offer was sent, Iran had not yet enriched any uranium. By the time the recent negotiations started in 2013, Iran had a stockpile of 10,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and 19,900 operational centrifuges. Moreover, it no longer appeared interested in discussing the other regional and bilateral issues, or at least not until they saw how the nuclear deal went. That was the result of the Bush administration’s decision to hold out for a better deal.

Additionally, the similarity between the 2003 offer and the present deal suggests that the presence of a moderate Iranian government, rather than the force of sanctions, is what makes negotiation possible. The most important role of sanctions may have been in convincing Iranian voters to give moderates another chance. Rejecting the treaty (and some people are still trying to do so) would essentially teach the Iranian public that their hard-liners were right, that the moderates were fools for thinking they could negotiate an acceptable deal with the Americans.

Third, some cite North Korea’s abandonment of the 1994 Agreed Framework, apparently assuming that if one negotiated arrangement turned out badly, then they all must. This may actually be more relevant to the case at hand, but not necessarily in the way those making the argument have in mind. The Agreed Framework was negotiated by a Democratic administration, but a Republican Congress decried it as appeasement and refused to implement certain key provisions that were important to the North Korean government, including the lifting of sanctions and the normalization of relations. Other aspects were delayed for years (sometimes because of North Korean actions that were objectionable but not covered by the agreement). Then a new Republican administration denounced the agreement, threatened the North Korean regime, and unilaterally tried to change provisions of the agreement retroactively. When the Bush administration suspected that the North Koreans were cheating on the agreement, it made no effort to bring them back into compliance. Now North Korea has nuclear weapons. Would North Korea still have cheated if the United States had followed through on its commitments? Again, we will never know. Yet some people seem intent on repeating this singular example of diplomatic failure step for step.

Global and regional leaders met in Alaska at the 2015 GLACIER conference, trying to shape the future of the Arctic. That future will probably look like one of five existing models.

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy (Wikipedia)

The changes to the environment in the Arctic–the Arctic Ocean as water and ice, its air, its surrounding land, and its plant, fish, animal and human life–revolve primarily around changes to the extent of sea ice.  The findings are consistent: the extent of sea ice is declining, including multi-year ice. An additional concern is Arctic amplification– the concept that less sea ice is self-reinforcing, as more sunlight is absorbed by ocean water instead of being reflected by ice cover–may already be underway.

2015 Sea Ice Extent is far below the 1981-2010 median.

What’s At Stake?

The decrease in sea ice is already impacting Arctic animal life, indigenous peoples, and scientific, industrial and tourism traffic–from oil and gas exploration to the annual North Pole Marathon. In recent years, the polar states have increased their patrols on training, research, emergency response, and border protection missions. In the last ten years, scholarship on the politics of the Arctic has surged–not only on the environment but on the region’s history, people, politics, economics, and security questions.

Who Decides?

States and others interested in the Arctic region have built a number of governing agencies.  The UN’s Law of the Sea Treaty applies rest-of-the-world rules to the region’s natural resources. The UN’s International Maritime Organization deals with shipping and environmental concerns.

Arctic-specific structures start with the Arctic Council, founded in 1996 and now comprised of eight member states and a number of indigenous peoples organizations.  States, sub-state units, and indigenous populations have also formed more localized bodies such as the Barents Euro-Atlantic Council, Nordic Council of Ministers, Northern Front, and Northern Forum.  The 2008 Ilulissat Declaration emphasized the leading role of states.

The United States has issued two recent policy documents on the Arctic: at the end of the Bush administration in 2009, and from the Obama administration in 2013.  Earning considerable criticism in August, President Obama permitted Shell to drill in the Chukchi Sea.  Meanwhile, Russia has called the Arctic central to its security interests, and China is building ice-breaking ships.

What Models for the Arctic?

Combined, these geopolitical questions and governing structures make the Arctic region not “ungoverned” but “under-governed.”  At the GLACIER conference and in the future, the Arctic is likely to develop into one the following models:  development first, international agreement, unilateral universalism, continuing contest, and imminent danger.

Development First.  In ungoverned or under-governed regions, opportunities often take precedence over possible challenges, risks or negative impacts.  The prospect of economic benefits drives policy; indigenous cultures, environmental costs, and political risks are given less regard.   Development first is a common pattern with some familiar examples.  Productive examples include the development of agriculture in Australia and Argentina.  Extractive examples range from copper in Chile to gold in California and diamonds in Africa.  Cases that are more combative and destructive include the seizure of gold from the Aztecs and Inca, the near-extinction of the North American bison, and the African slave trade.  It can also result in unintended consequences, as with poverty reduction programs that contributed to the partial clearing of the Amazon rainforest.

Development first is a potential model for the Arctic in very traditional ways.  Its natural resources (oil and gas, minerals, fishing) and commercial sea routes are coveted by states and industry in a competitive global political economy.

International Agreement.  A second approach to under-governed spaces is international agreement–like in the Arctic’s polar opposite, the Antarctic.

Antarctica, without a native population and not part of potential commercial traffic, is governed primarily by the Antarctic Treaty (1959) and other agreements under the Antarctic Treaty System, committing signatories to peaceful activities only.  It authorizes freedom of scientific research, prohibits military activity, nuclear testing and radioactive waste, specifically does not recognize (nor dispute) states’ territorial claims and precludes additional claims, and establishes annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM).

The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty  emphasizes the importance of the protection of Antarctica’s environment, prohibits exploration or exploitation of energy or mineral resources, and promotes environmental assessment of activities, emergency response preparation, and international resolution of disputes.  Additionally, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) is an association of environmental non-governmental organizations, and an official observer to the Antarctica Treaty System.

Mikhail Gorbachev proposed in 1987 an Arctic “zone of peace;” others have called for demilitarization or a non-state “polar park.”  An international agreement model may be relevant to the Arctic if it can draw from existing resources, be adapted to its distinct geographic, biological, political and economic traits – and if signatories can remain motivated to comply.

Unilateral Universalism.  A third approach to existing and potential Arctic trading routes is based on transit free from economic, political, or military hindrances.  The sea routes over Russia and through Canada are each predominantly under the geographical shadow of one state but subject to the interest of many, like the Panama Canal today.

The Panama Canal opened in 1914, shaved some 8,000 miles off the 14,000-mile Cape Horn route from New York to the U.S. west coast, and greatly shortened European and Asian routes as well.  Under U.S. control, the Canal met its maritime goals for the United States and for global commerce, and U.S. military interests shortening the travel time between its Atlantic and Pacific seaboards.  It retains its importance today under Panama’s control.

By comparison, the world’s other most important shipping straits today do not paint an entirely rosy scenario for Arctic potential.  The historical difficulties with the Suez Canal, and the current challenges in the Strait of Malacca, illustrate political, economic, safety and environmental risks.  But perhaps none are as important or as precarious as the Strait of Hormuz.

Imminent Danger.  Critical oil shipping flows from Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz to Western Europe, Asia and the United States. Between Iran and the Arabian peninsula the Strait is vulnerable to small or large efforts at traffic disruption.  There is no easy substitute for the oil flow.  The global economy could face immediate, severe damage if a state or non-state actor were able to impede traffic or even briefly close the Strait.

If Arctic shipping and resource exploration are to expand, and if the environment and indigenous communities are to be protected, the most critical effort is the avoidance of military conflict in the region.  There is no evidence at this time that such a scenario is likely, but increased military presence, border disputes and potentially large economic stakes could lead to escalating conflict.  All parties must remain motivated and committed to avoiding such a path.

Continuing contest.  Short of direct military conflict or the imminent threat of it, another future scenario for the Arctic is ongoing competition. This condition has the chance of armed conflict but the predominance of political and diplomatic discord.  Throughout history, the Bosporus Strait, the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea and others have held this condition–like the Caspian Sea today.  In some sense, this combines elements of the preceding logics:  development, diplomacy, and security risks.
Increased human activities will continue to influence the Arctic.  Nation-states with competing interests have begun to prepare for the opportunities and potential conflicts.  Policy choices, environmental changes and technological advances will continue to influence each other.  The GLACIER conference is a step along, not a resolution to, states and others shaping the Arctic’s future.

 

Oh Mrs Wu, what will you do?  Photograph by AFP/Getty Images

Is the Chinese economic model doomed or is the Western business press making much ado about nothing?  Last month we witnessed how China’s falling stock markets, and the subsequent inadequate responses from Chinese regulatory authorities, were blamed for subsequent falls in worldwide stock markets. Many analysts scrambled for answers, insinuating that the precipitous decline in China’s stock markets must have had something to do with fundamentals—there must be something seriously wrong with the Chinese economy. An editorial in the Global Times argued that the Western investors’ panic is overdone. “The stock market’s sharp fall is like a fever, but foreign media describes it as a cancer. If so, the market plunge seven years ago would have ended the China model.”

While the jury is still out on whether or not the Chinese economy has cancer, the Global Times editorial does send a correct message: in China, the stock markets have very little to do with fundamentals. Typically, stock markets in China are driven by government announcements of loosening or tightening fiscal policy, and changes to monetary policy. Last year, public announcements by government officials on the health of the stock markets helped drive up share prices to exorbitant levels.  Other actions, such as announcing that banks will have to hold smaller reserves in order to free up more money for lending (whether or not companies are in a mood to borrow) has driven stock markets higher.

If stock markets were really driven by fundamentals in China, they would not have risen dramatically over the last twelve months while slower growth targets were simultaneously being announced by Chinese authorities and commodity prices were crashing.  Similarly, the fall of China’s stock exchanges (stocks in Shanghai have fallen more than 39 percent since mid-June) have little to do with the underlying economy and more with punters cashing in their gains before the Ponzi scheme collapses. The same panic in the U.S. markets (the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 6.6 percent in August—its worst performance in three years) has very little to do with fundamentals in China, for few U.S. companies have significant profits coming out of China.  

Analysts are now blaming a slowing manufacturing sector in China as Western markets continue to decline, and Beijing’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast of 7 percent is also being questioned. Other analysts are probing further into such growth indicators as electricity usage, commodity prices and cement production to arrive at growth rates close to half the target.  

Concern over China’s growth (data released this week showed manufacturing sector slowing at the fastest pace in three years) prompted the central bank to cut interest rates and loosen bank lending—measures which again triggered panic in stock markets worldwide.  And in an effort to support its manufacturing sector, the yuan has also been allowed to weaken in order to make Chinese exports cheaper to purchase by other countries.  

Economists have long argued China needs to move away from an economy driven largely by cheap manufacturing and toward one based on services and domestic consumption.  This shift is already happening, as consumption contributed 50 percent of GDP growth and manufacturing approximately 30 percent. Market watchers also argued that the Chinese stock markets are overvalued, yet many were willing to gamble.  Despite the recent froth having been taken off the stock markets, many of the 9 percent of Chinese who invest in the stock markets in China have made money, though their earnings will do little to boost domestic consumption spending.  The irrational exuberance of the Chinese stock market bubble is in the process of deflating.

But what of the argument that the U.S. markets will further deflate due to disappointing manufacturing data coming out of China?  If we hold the other components of GDP constant, even a halving of manufacturing growth will take little off growth, since it only accounts for one-third of GDP and declines could be offset by growth in other sectors, should the Chinese government chose to stimulate agriculture, infrastructure or consumption through a variety of means.

The above sectors are the ones which could come under attack in the next few days, as market analysts try to point to other weakening components of the Chinese GDP as the cause for the fall of worldwide stock markets. Yet, with all eyes on China, how well the Party leadership responds to these concerns with greater transparency and guidance may continue to drive stock market volatility worldwide in the coming weeks.

This past year has seeing the US dollar and the US economy growing steadily after years of anemic progress following the 2009 global recession. Economies like China and Brazil, once the stable economic engines surviving the recession with a few scratches, are now the likely source of a new global economic downturn. The reliability of Chinese economic data has not been stellar, and nervous investors have fled the Chinese market this past month due to fears of a greater crash in the Chinese economy. Emerging markets that depended on Chinese growth in order to profit from raw material exports have been struggling. Economic mismanagement and a dwindling source of revenue coming from exports to China has left Brazil in a perilous economic situation—a situation they assumed was in the past and would stay in the history books.

The shrinking demand in China has affected natural resource economies in different ways. Low oil prices have hit emerging markets hard, and have even dented some otherwise healthy and diverse economies. Canada, an example of a diversified economy based on manufacturing and energy, has been able to weather a low oil price by ramping up manufacturing. With the drop in oil prices and other natural resources due to the slowdown in China, the Canadian dollar has fallen, making Canadian manufactured good less expensive on the global market. While Canada’s manufacturing regions face additional challenges, the low Canadian dollar acts as a cushion to a drop in commodity prices by boosting demand for Canadian goods.

Germany has benefited the most from previous double digit growth in China. Demand in China for high-end German manufactured goods, especially in the automotive sector, has driven much of Germany’s impressive growth over the last few years. Engineering and high-end German products helped build much of China’s transport and infrastructure during its boom. With a slowdown in Chinese growth, Germany’s source of wealthy consumers may be greatly restricted. While Canada offsets its energy sector losses with an increase in manufacturing and exports thanks to a low currency value, the slowdown in China has created a situation where funds leaving China have gone into euros. With investors seeking a safe haven for their funds, the value of the euro was up greatly compared to other world currencies this month. A slowdown in demand for German products and a high euro is creating a barrier to purchasing European goods and services for those outside the region. Even with a high US dollar, the boost in the value of the euro will deter Germany’s other large export market, the United States, from buying its products.

The slowdown in China may not be as severe as many expect, but it is unlikely that demand for German high-end products and engineering services will rebound in China for the next few months. The value of the euro may respond to Germany’s economic slowdown, but if investors keep the euro high, it will be a difficult time to purchase European goods for the rest of us. Expect the European Central Bank to address this challenge if the Euro remains high and demand does not return to a healthy level. In the end, it will really depend on China and whether investors trust the economic data coming out from the government and cushion losses in China by returning to the yuan.

Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko speaking at the Atlantic Council (2014), via flickr atlanticcouncil

When asked about the UK government’s decision to double the number of Ukrainian troops it would be training, the Defense Secretary, Michael Fallon, supported the move by arguing that the conflict remains “red hot”. And boy, is he right. On August 11th, the Ukrainian government took one more step in the journey leading democracies astray from the straight and narrow: a book ban.

In what reads like a page from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, thirty-eight Russian books were banned from being imported into the country because the government deemed them “hateful” and “separatist” for challenging the prevalent narrative endorsed by Kiev. One can almost imagine Kiev’s new Western-clad and US trained police officers hunting down suspects guilty of smuggling in ‘propaganda’ books.

Even if the military side of the conflict has recently been injected with a new lease of life, the propaganda war never relented. All conflicts involve a war over territory, territory in the form of land; but also territory over hearts and minds. Indeed, the nature of the propaganda campaign waged by the parties in the conflict can tell us about  the parties themselves. Through the image of the Ukrainian crisis as it is generally framed by leaders and pundits, it is easy to sniff out which side of the conflict is supposed to correspond to which message. The western region of Ukraine is depicted as being drawn towards EU, the US, and NATO, and everything that they imply: liberal democracy, pluralism, and freedom of expression; while the east gravitates towards Russia, meaning authoritarianism, repression, and an intolerance to dissent.

But, as recent developments in the propaganda war illustrate, this division may not be as clear-cut as it appears on paper. The book ban accounts for just one aspect of Kiev’s multi-pronged assault on the freedom of thought, expression, and press in Ukraine. On August 9th, the government issued a blacklist of Russian actors and films that are banned from being screened on its territory, as they pose a threat to the country’s national security. The ban extends also to French films, more specifically the features that star Gérard Depardieu, who recently acquired Russian citizenship. The law just confirms an on-going state of mind among Ukraine’s officialdom – since the beginning of this year, 376 Russian films and TV series have been denied distribution certificates by the Ukraine State Cinema Agency. In the words of the Agency’s director Filipp Ilyenko, “we scrutinize films and TV series to see whether they violate the law banning popularization of the aggressor state and Soviet-era security agencies or not.”

The same critical attitude extends to media channels. Inter, a TV station owned by the leader of the Opposition Bloc Sergei Levochkin and gas mogul Dmitry Firtash, narrowly avoided having its license revoked after a New Year’s Eve broadcast featuring Russian singers performing a satirical song about the Western sanctions imposed on Russia. The performance was described as “a humiliation for the whole country” by the head of the Ukrainian Security Council, Alexander Turchinov, in language that echoes that of the law passed against communist propaganda, in which one clause states that “the public denial of…the just cause of the fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century insults the dignity of the Ukrainian people and is illegal.”

Among those so called national hero fighters, one can find ultra-nationalist groups like OUN and UPA, who worked alongside the Nazis and carried out acts of mass ethnic cleansing against the Poles and Jews in Ukraine. This effort to downplay the Nazi regime atrocities while magnifying those of Russia, and criminalizing any deviation from the official reading of history, is the exact mirror image of legislation passed by Russia itself in 2014 – only in their version, of course, it is the Nazis who shoulder all the blame while Russian crimes are glossed over.  

That Ukraine is passing legislation that echoes that of repressive regimes may be a cause for concern for its Western backers. Mounting accusations that politicians and journalists opposed to the Kiev government have been murdered for expressing their views should certainly set alarm bells ringing. Instead, the official reaction to the 10 opposition politicians and journalists who have suspiciously died this year has been muted and the case files have been classified as state secrets.

The signs coming out of Ukraine are ominous and the silence of its Western backers is deafening, but as the book ban sinks in, observers would do well to remember Ray Bradbury’s line from Fahrenheit 451, itself a work about the criminalization of thought and expression, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.”

Flickr via donkeyhotey

Last Thursday, Greece was momentarily shaken out of its crisis funk when Alexis Tsipras announced that he was resigning from the post of Prime Minister and calling for new elections to be held on September 20th. Tsipras had only been in office since January, but he declared that his mandate had “exhausted its limits”. Having lost a third of his party’s support, the now ex-Prime Minister prefers to wager on the chance that a favorable majority will form by September rather than risk struggling with negotiating coalitions for the rest of his term.

Tsipras splintered Syriza, a radical left party, when he agreed to the bailout terms presented by the troika—the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund—just weeks after 61.3 percent of Greeks had voted against them on July 5th. Despite his drastic U-turn, polls still indicate that Greeks favor Alexis Tsipras as a leader over most other candidates. This popularity, however, is not very useful to a Prime Minister who faces a hostile parliament. Observers say that Tsipras had no choice but to agree to the creditors’ terms for another bailout. But for some, agreeing to the memorandum after holding a national referendum was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The party fractured itself between pro- and anti-memorandum partisans; the latter working hard to form stronger coalitions in order to oppose creditor conditions and leave the Eurozone to return to the Greek drachma.

On Friday, the former Energy Minister under Tsipras, Panagiotis Lafazanis, became the head of Popular Unity, a new left-wing party looking to bring together Syriza’s disenfranchised electorate and politicians. If the 25 Syriza MPs that defected to Popular Unity were not enough to cause a tight race, pressure is also mounting on the right. While radical socialists hurry to organize on time for elections and a caretaker government takes Syriza’s place, far-right party Golden Dawn is addressing the overlooked immigration crisis that Greece faces in the Aegean sea, at the expense of Tsipras’ and Syriza’s MPs.

Despite such active opposition, it  seems unlikely that parties, especially newly-formed ones, will have time to campaign and win over many new supporters. Tsipras’ idea that next month’s elections will allow for a more cohesive government to form is not senseless. The former Prime Minister has gained right-wing voters at the expense of left-wing voters. Even if this was unintentional, the shift from  radical ideologist to being perceived as a social democrat might work in his favor.

It is difficult to predict whether Tsipras is simply breeding more uncertainty for Greece’s future or if his resignation is a ploy meant to ensure stronger bargaining power on the national stage. Many say that Greece should be actively implementing reforms to meet the expectations of creditors, rather than putting Greeks through a new round of political brinkmanship. On the one hand, it may seem like Tsipras is stalling the implementation of strict austerity measures, but, on the other hand, he also appears to be heading in a direction that favors dialogue with the troika.

Tsipras’s new style of politics, which cost him a third of his party, is one driven by survival instinct.  Steering away from the idealistic (and reactionary) goals first set by Syriza, a Greek utopia that wanted to avoid austerity while maintaining the Euro, Tsipras is now appealing to wider political base.

A 2013 Pew Research Center poll indicated that a majority of EU citizens considered Greeks to be the least hardworking country in Europe. This kind of stereotype demonstrates the finger-pointing tendency that the Jacques Delors Institute warned against: “It is of crucial importance that backward looking criticism will be replaced by forward looking constructive dialogue on how to strengthen the euro”. According to the Institute, that aims to advise European Union leaders, the EU needs to customize its approach to countries’ economies in the future and invest in Greek industries in a way that will trigger growth. Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s President, who knows a thing or two about sovereign debt, told Euronews in June, “All those measures are not meant to overcome the crisis, they are just to liquidate the debt”.

However, irrespective of the outcome of the vote, I would venture a guess that Tsipras, both lacks the political will and the common sense to see through the reforms demanded by the creditors. The Greek default, often compared with Latvia’s, Iceland’s, Ireland’s or Argentina’s, is nevertheless unique. Athens not only lacks a strong export sector or any significant comparative advantage over other EU members (the much-touted olive oil and cheese industry only account for $790 million worth of exports), but the shabby state of the Greek institutional framework and inefficient court system render the austerity-driven bailout vacuous.

Increasing the country’s competitiveness through austerity measures without bolstering its manufacturing sector, imposing tax hikes without strengthening its tax collection capacities, selling off state assets without stamping out corruption, and holding elections on the fickle platform “paying lip service to the creditors while bemoaning the European diktat” are the wrong ways to put Greece back on track. As much as some pundits have tried to spin the Greek crisis into a case of victim blaming whereby evil European creditors snuffed democracy in the name of finance and at the expense of the Greeks themselves, without deep, comprehensive structural reforms Athens will be dead in the water.

 

China watchers around the world are alarmed at the significant fall in Chinese stock markets and many are warning that the recent crash has alarming prospects for the underlying Chinese economy. Their worries reached new heights following the 8.5% drop in the Shanghai Composite Index on Monday – the biggest fall in eight years. Many attempts were made to stem the decline in the stock markets, including the banning of short-selling and new listings, the threat to arrest short sellers, the freezing of close to half the companies traded, and massive influx of state capital to buy shares. Perhaps in an attempt to prop up the financial position of its exporters, a supposed one-time yuan devaluation of 1.9% was announced last Tuesday by the People’s Bank of China. Since then, the yuan (or renminbi) has had its value cut an additional two consecutive days.

Some prominent China watchers are calling into question the Communist Party’s ability to control not only its stock markets, but also other policy-making areas. Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 and professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, calls the Chinese leadership “naked emperors” and says “they have no clue what they’re doing.” Despite Krugman’s admonition, the Party may have a few tricks up its sleeve.

Beijing has been expanding its reach in other markets, such as Africa, where ten out of the top twenty fastest-growing economies between 2013 and 2017 are located according to the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, it has done so for some time now, with China’s trade with Africa reaching an estimated $200 billion in 2012. Chinese companies are also winning massive infrastructure contracts to build railways, airports, highways and ports, typically supported by large, state-owned financial institutions such as the Export-Import Bank of China. Most of the financing of these large projects is tied to procurement of Chinese equipment, machinery and materials—a boost to its exporters. And many Chinese have flocked to Africa to set up small retail stores and sell cheap Chinese-made household items.

Yet, while providing new markets for Chinese state-owned enterprises and traders may help improve China’s gross domestic product (GDP), this strategy is not without risk. As Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent relates, it is “outcomes that count.” Chinese citizens and companies have been welcomed by many African leaders who believe they can quickly build much-needed infrastructure. And in many countries they have done just that. However, French reports in his many travels throughout Africa, that some of the Chinese-built infrastructure is substandard, with airports subject to flooding or newly-built highways crumbling. In another example, French points to the “outraged Ghanaians who seem to have awoken one recent day to the discovery that thousands of Chinese newcomers were scrambling illegally to take control of their country’s lucrative gold mining sector, digging up the countryside, despoiling the land, and bribing local chiefs and police officials in the process.”

If Chinese policy-makers want to sustain their stated GDP growth near 6-7 percent for the near future, increasing the number of countries their exporters have access to would certainly help. With Chinese-led initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS New Development Bank, and the Silk Road Fund, their exporters and state-owned enterprises could well gain access to new markets. But given the backlash many Chinese companies are now facing in Africa, new efforts will need to be undertaken to improve their behavior—lest better-governed countries turn to their competitors.

Nadiya Savchenko, third from left, is pictured before a deployment to Iraq in 2004. In Aug. 2015 she appeared in a Russian court to face murder charges, after allegedly being kidnapped from Ukraine. Many feel her trial is an example of Russia’s impropriety in seeking justice for casualties in the Ukraine crisis. Photo: Savchenko family via Washington Post

A covert agent disappears from his homeland, and next shows up days later in an enemy prison. The agent’s government claims he was kidnapped in a police operation and forcibly moved to enemy territory. The enemy claims the agent carried covert audio equipment and firearms, intending to execute a “covert operation.”

A Cold War-era spy thriller? On the contrary, this situation happened in 2014 and is very real. The agent in question—Estonian security officer Eston Kohver—was taken into Russian custody. He was convicted on charges of espionage, and sentenced to 15 years in prison last Wed., Aug. 19, 2015.

Just hours after Kohver’s sentencing, prosecutors in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don sought a prison term of 20 years for Oleh Sentsov. A Ukrainian filmmaker, Sentsov is accused of plotting to destroy a statue of Lenin in Crimea. He is charged with terrorism.

Two days later a Ukrainian military officer, Nadiya Savchenko, was indicted on murder charges in Russia after allegedly being kidnapped from Ukraine. She is accused of carrying out a mortar strike that killed 2 Russian journalists.

High profile court cases have become the latest battleground between familiar adversaries: Russia and the West. All of these arrests result from the involvement of the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency and main successor of the KGB, and evidence used in each of the trials has been deemed top secret and not been publicly released. Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, states that Moscow is on a “war footing” with the West, and the trials are another front.

Savchenko’s case has received particular attention around the world, as she was elected to Ukraine’s parliament while in prison. U.S. officials have identified Savchenko as a “hostage” and demanded her release. According to the Washington Post, Russia has offered to exchange Savchenko for two Russian soldiers being held in Ukraine. It is possible that the accused in the other trials could also end up as political bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges, but nothing is certain at this point. Some are accusing Russia of violating international laws by arresting Kohver, Sentsov, and Savchenko without sufficient evidence and holding biased trials.

These cases are certainly troubling, and represent yet another volatile area of contention with Russia. Relations with Russia are delicate, but it cannot be allowed to make unsubstantiated arrests and abduct suspects from other countries. This might be the beginning of a slippery slope no one wants to go down.

Role player under NSC or manager of foreign policy?

 

The recent Washington Post article by Karen DeYoung, outlining the burgeoning role of the National Security Council (NSC), raises issues that go beyond the foibles of any particular administration. Most salient is that “politics … have become so much more corrosive and challenging that it’s a natural instinct for the White House to say, ‘We’ve got to have an eye on this. On everything,’ ” as DeYoung quotes an ex-White House official.

Micromanagement is a common impulse of executives for complex or contentious matters. Foreign policy today is both.  As General Stanley McChrystal notes in his book Teams of Teams, the post-modern world’s complexity makes prediction of external threats almost impossible. It is inevitable, as Daniel Drezner comments, that events will “catch the White House off guard and cause the opposition party to howl in protest.”

Foreign policy is rife with potential points of political vulnerability.  The growth of the NSC’s role, and the proliferation of politically-appointed ambassadors and officials, reflects their location at the interface of politics with management of a large, multi-faceted institution. Executive branch discretion over foreign policy makes it a high-profile political arena.  Contests of presidents and opposition parties increasingly overshadow functional considerations.  As the political environment locks presidents more and more into a marketing function, control of the political enterprise takes priority over institutional management.

A major consequence is that the world now has to guess what makes America tick. Politics involves management of diverse interests high and low. Their assembly into coalitions means that diverse claims will always tug and push at foreign relations. But beyond this natural play of interests, as pundit Ian Bremmer notes, friends and foes alike really do not know what America wants. Adversaries easily find evidence that the U.S. seeks economic domination or debases moral codes, and their claims go unrefuted.

Micromanagement is inefficient, even politically. Managing foreign policy to a coherent message of its own would be simpler. During the Cold War, foreign policy clearly revolved around “Containment“ of the USSR. The Soviets’ full-spectrum opposition to U.S. interests made reaction to their efforts a clear priority. Today America must assert its own enduring priorities to formulate a consistent message. But choosing and sticking to priorities is difficult, even without a politics that precludes consensus. After the Arab Spring, Americans might conclude that making democracy a priority over stability (or vice versa) will look foolish (or craven) as events unfold. The New York Times notes Washington’s difficulty choosing Russia, ISIS, or North Korea as the top national security threat.

Most dangerously, inconsistent policy overshadows America’s conviction in unalienable rights. It portrays free people caring less about freedom than short-term gratification. The nation was conceived in a document justifying independence on the principle of rights; failure to validate that “self evident” truth undermines the premise of American legitimacy.

Validation, therefore, defines U.S. foreign policy’s fundamental purpose. It is a nuanced, complex concept; full understanding yields a non-political guideline for foreign policy management. If a free society can defend itself, serve its people’s needs, and honor its principles, not only will America survive, but U.S. influence and power will revive.

Political leaders must set the ongoing choices of foreign policy. Most popular concerns will fit with the validation of America’s creed. It requires defense and prosperity as well as fidelity to the ideals of human liberty. What politics lacks, however, is a function to keep policies aligned with America’s creed, and with each other. A NSC and any number of political appointees can push a president’s political enterprise. A permanent corps should carry the management rationale, framing issues in terms of America’s fundamental interest.

The U.S. diplomatic corps is naturally positioned for this function. Diplomats staff the foreign policy decision processes, represent policies abroad, and can report successes or shortfalls in projecting America’s purpose. A new genre of professional formation, steeping U.S. diplomats in the origins, questions, and debates around the creed of individual rights, will be necessary to equip them for this mission. Institutional practices and structures will also be needed; a corps invested in the mission will shape them best.

This training and these practices will require time and effort to implement. But embedding America’s founding rationale in foreign policy institutions will aid administrations in managing policy. Balancing political considerations with enduring priorities will show America’s basic nature, as a catalyst for human freedom.

Brazil is often seen by its own people as a fallen economic angel. Once the great success story of an emerging market titan and key member of the BRICS, Brazil is now returning to the poor economic conditions it was stuck in twenty-five years ago. Many Brazilians were proud to see their country break out from a history of credit devaluations and transform itself into one of the only countries that successfully weathered the 2007–08 economic crisis, better than most of their European and North American counterparts.

Today, protests against the government are fueled by the realization that the opportunity to change Brazil has been squandered. Corrupt practices by large industry leaders and the ruling political party were exposed after President Dilma Rousseff narrowly won her second term as president. This scandal came about after years of pouring money into national infrastructure projects that were designed to satisfy the needs of foreign companies and the International Olympic Committee over those benefiting the citizens of a democratic Brazil.

The August 2015 protest is the fourth mass protest that has taken place pushing for the Rousseff’s impeachment. While there is no legal mechanism to force her impeachment, her political party’s connection to a scandal linked to one of Brazil’s biggest oil companies has led to her having one of the lowest approval ratings of any elected official in the world. While the strength of Brazil’s economy has dwindled, peaceful protests and the actions by some in Brazil’s activist community to expose the scandal have shown Brazil to be a country that holds values like fairness and democracy close to its heart.

The catalyst for the first wave of protest movements was Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup. Many in Brazil resented the fact that the country’s love of the beautiful game would take away from the government’s ability to look after the country’s more basic needs. Funds went to various international agencies in order to put on sporting events and were given precedence over building up Brazil and its people. The government’s actions sparked anti-FIFA protests, some of which ended with the deaths of several protesters. The recent corruption scandal and the upcoming Olympic Games has done nothing more than fan the flames of almost universal outrage among all Brazil’s political factions, placing the PT party in jeopardy and getting even the once-loved former president, Lula Da Silva, into legal trouble.

With the 2016 Olympic Games coming up, mass protests could reach such an extreme so as to lead to the end of the PT party in Brazil and perhaps even the Olympics as beloved “brand.” That would be more than acceptable if it meant Brazil would become a more democratic country. The hit the games can have on the democratic system has scared, and perhaps will continue to scare, some away from bidding for the Olympic Games.

Nevertheless, a number of cities and countries still view hosting the games as an appropriate and responsible idea even when they are burdened by massive amounts of debt. Sure, Boston wisely backed out of the most recent bid process. But Toronto is currently considering a bid despite the fact that Ontario has the highest amount of sub-sovereign debt in the world. Los Angeles is also under consideration even though California has the second highest sub-sovereign debt in the world, second only to Ontario. Along with the economic conditions of candidate cities being ignored, investigations into allegations of corrupt practices are being currently conducted against IOC officials. It seems that some will just never learn.

Last week, the Chautauqua Institution dedicated its programming to “Redefining Europe.” Then, last Friday, amid all the Europe talk, both the Greek parliament and the Eurozone finance ministers approved a bailout to keep Greece in the Eurozone. European Commissioner Jean-Claude Junker acknowledged that EU leaders have “looked into the abyss” of a Eurozone breakup this year, suggesting that they are now back from the brink of it. Eurozone leaders, once again, showed their intent to preserve the Euro and have chosen to take politically difficult actions to defend the credibility of the European Union. But Junker’s abyss is still there, even if the Eurozone has backed away from it. Europe still must be “redefined.” Part of that “redefining,” as the past few months have shown, will involve concessions to keep Europe’s perennially weaker economies in step with its stronger ones. Beyond that, how does Europe need to be “redefined”?

It is far from an academic question, and the Chautauqua speakers had some ideas. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen defended the EU as the 20th century’s “dullest miracle” for preserving peace during its tenure despite continually wrestling with budgetary and immigration issues. The EU has achieved its fundamental aim: preserving Europe’s stability.

To buy into the argument that EU expansion in any way pushed Russia into its current aggression in Ukraine, Cohen suggested, was to accept a myth that serves Putin. Meanwhile France and Italy, he argued, are powers to be taken more seriously than America currently sees them. In response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings in early 2015, France has explored enhanced intelligence capabilities to address domestic terrorist threats. Italy, meanwhile, under the leadership of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and with Mario Draghi leading the European Central Bank, has assumed a greater role in EU affairs than it did under former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Finally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel finds Germany in the EU’s captain’s chair, a state of affairs the EU itself was designed to prevent. America has prodded Merkel to lead Europe, in a manner that she, her fellow Germans, and many of her fellow Europeans (Greeks, in particular) find discomforting. Reluctance towards German leadership stems from a firm historical base, and the best that can be hoped for, Cohen argued, is a Germany that does just enough to keep Europe stable. Proactive leadership, particularly in the realm of defense, is asking too much.

Constanze Stelzenmuller, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, painted a different picture. German leaders, she argued, hold both the lessons of their nation’s past and the need for its contemporary leadership concurrently in their minds. In her view, Germany is intent on playing all of the leadership roles — economic and strategic — that its economic weight begs of it.

Stelzenmuller spoke of her advisory role on a current German Defense Ministry initiative to reassess the role of the German military in light of the renewed Russia threat. Tellingly, this initiative includes town hall meetings with German citizens to calibrate what level of support to expect for a more assertive strategic stance. Germans have balked at such efforts in the past; attempts to re-establish a standing army in West Germany early in the Cold War met with ambivalence among politicians and protests among citizens. Stelzenmuller suggests that decades-long tide is turning. Still, Germany’s leaders preserve the anti-Nazi graffiti that was placed on Berlin’s Reichstag by that cities’  liberators for a good reason. Germany’s role in Europe’s defense will change only after careful and public consideration.

It was not a coincidence that the writings of the late Tony Judt were discussed repeatedly. Judt, a former New York University professor and author of the classic Cold War history of Europe Postwar, analyzed the fundamental differences between the development of democracy in Europe and the United States. Building off the pre-World War II example of the Fabians in Britain, the role of democratic government in Europe had less of a free market character than America. Even before the rise and fall of the Nazis underscored the connection between economic and strategic stability, a broader belief prevailed in Europe than in America that government should maintain backstops for basic human needs.

As a result, taxes that were high enough to provide universal health care and stronger unemployment and social insurance have a level of support in Europe they do not, and likely will not, have in America. But Judt’s point is broader: Apples-to-apples comparisons of American and European democracy, while tempting, are not possible. Having endured the horrors of war on their own soil, many European countries see government as a force that stabilizes society. More insular and self-sufficient than most of Europe, many Americans still see government as a financial drag and creative constraint on its citizens’ inherent dynamism. When another post-World War II generation comes of age, the gap between the two may close. For now, it remains.

The EU’s latest actions towards Greece demonstrate an enduring commitment to the European project. Without minimizing its challenges, “redefining,” or even “reforming” Europe is a simpler job than rebuilding it. That is a blessing, and a mark in the EU’s favor during a challenging time in its history.

The Italian coastguard rescues survivors from a crash at Lampedusa Island. Lampedusa, the closest Italian island to Africa, has become a destination for tens of thousands of refugees seeking to reach Western Europe. Credit: Guardia Costiera

By Katherine Tan

Conflict, persecution, and human rights violations have forcibly displaced an unprecedented 59.5 million people worldwide at the end of 2014, according to a recent UNHCR report. That figure, roughly equivalent to the population of the United Kingdom, was up from 51.2 million the previous year, already a level unseen since World War II. From 2011 to 2014 alone, the total number of forcibly displaced people increased by 40 percent. The international community must do more to support them. Inaction will not stem the tide of forced migration; it will simply exacerbate the toll on countries already struggling to bear the burden. Developed countries must come to terms with the scale of this escalating crisis and commit to resettling more of the most vulnerable and persecuted refugees.

The global forced migration crisis is perhaps the most under-reported and disturbing development facing the world today. Even more troubling than the staggering figures are the tragedy’s human dimensions and governments’ hesitance to address the plight of refugees stranded in horrific conditions along coastlines and borders worldwide. This year, an estimated 1,750 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea, over 30 times more than during the same period last year. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, over 100,000 Rohingya have fled persecution and apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar. Many have endured starvation and brutality aboard overcrowded boats as they are ping-ponged between nations refusing to accept them. Others have suffered imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of Thai traffickers with alleged government complicity.

The international community’s response to this humanitarian crisis has been anemic at best and morally negligent at worst. The United Kingdom recently announced that it would not accept any migrants as part of the European Union’s agreement to redistribute 40,000 Syrian migrants already in Italy and Greece. London has faced backlash for accepting just 140 Syrian refugees so far this year. Indonesia and Malaysia, two comparatively well-off Southeast Asian nations, previously announced that they would turn back any Rohingya boats found along their shores. They later agreed to accept 7,000 stranded migrants, but only on the condition that those migrants would be resettled elsewhere within a year.

Underlying this crisis is an international system ill-prepared to tackle the current scale of displacement head on. According to Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Research Director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, developed states are primarily concerned with keeping migrants outside their borders so they can avoid responsibility for admitting refugees while technically complying with international law. This simply “passes the buck” to poorer states without addressing the problem. According to the UNHCR, the world’s poorest countries bear the brunt of the refugee burden, with 86 percent of refugees hosted by developing countries and one in four hosted by the least developed countries. This imbalance threatens to destabilize states already under pressure at the periphery of conflict zones and may lead to even greater migration rates if unaddressed.

The plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya poignantly demonstrates the international system’s failure to protect the most vulnerable refugees and the broader consequences of inaction. Stripped of citizenship rights by Myanmar’s military government in 1982, the Rohingya face severe persecution and mob violence as a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist state. Today, they are confined to heavily policed ghettos where they are forbidden access to basic services and international aid.

The United States and human rights organizations have called upon Myanmar to recognize the Rohingya as citizens, but the ruling regime has shown little interest in stemming what observers call a “slow genocide.” Whether any appeal to Myanmar’s government will gain much traction in the foreseeable future is questionable. In the meantime, the international community has failed to resettle Rohingya refugees at rates necessary to ease regional pressures. Many Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh, a country even poorer than Myanmar and with its own migration problems, thereby exacerbating the crisis.

These circumstances make a compelling case for developed countries to offer long-term resettlement to the Rohingya. However, Australia, one of the Asian-Pacific region’s wealthiest countries, has categorically refused to resettle any Rohingya, despite urging from the UNHCR.

“Australia will do absolutely nothing that gives any encouragement to anyone to think that they can get on a boat, that they can work with people smugglers to start a new life,” said Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Abbott’s callous statement ignores the fact that most Rohingya aren’t voluntary migrants, but victims of ethnic cleansing fleeing a state that has branded them pariahs. India and China, regional giants that share borders with Myanmar, also remain on the sidelines, despite holding significant sway with Myanmar’s government.

The international community has resettled refugees en masse before, most notably after the Indochina Wars of the mid-1970s, when the United States, Australia, Canada, and others resettled more than 3 million refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

With such a precedent, one must ask why states are failing to act decisively now. Indeed, they may soon have little choice. Even if humanitarian motives aren’t enough to compel action, these crises’ destabilizing effects may well prove difficult to ignore.

Katherine Tan is a fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and a development professional, specializing in private sector development.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of their employer or Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.

Photo Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Evil But Stupid
The Editors
n+1

A couple of months ago, the London Review of Books published a 10,000 word piece questioning the White House’s narrative regarding the death of Osama bin Laden. The story, written by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, resulted in a sea of backlash, much of which was aimed at Hersh on a personal level. The media has charged Hersh with being too paranoid. But, as n+1 asks, why isn’t the media more paranoid?

My Grandfather’s Imposter
By James McGirk
Roads and Kingdoms

To join the Explorer Club in New York, you have to do something extraordinary, to make your own adventures — by land, by sea or by air. Or, as was the case with James McGirk’s grandfather, you could loan your stories out to a friend. In this piece, McGirk delves into his grandfather’s history and grapples with the question — are our experiences, our stories really ours to give away?

The Nation-State: Not Dead Yet
By Alasdair Roberts
The Wilson Quarterly

Pundits and academics have claimed many things have supposedly come to an “end” in the past two decades or so. From history to capitalism, most have had experienced a revival shortly thereafter. In this piece, Roberts looks into what caused the obsession with the “death” of the nation-state, and why those predictions were premature.

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape
By Rukmini Callimachi
The New York Times

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) introduction to systematic sexual slavery began in 2014. Ever since, the group has (ab)used the Quran to justify its horrific human rights abuses and enshrine a “theology of rape.” Callimachi investigates the group’s history with sexual slavery, its practices and the twisted logic behind it.

Hellbent, But Not Broken
By Eva Holland
SB Nation

Holland tells the story of her experience with the Yukon River Quest, which at 445 miles, is the world’s longest canoe and kayak race. It’s as much a battle against nature as it’s a battle of wills.

Blogs:

Kyrgyzstan’s Eastward Slide by Mark Varga
Somalia, No Political Legitimacy without Genuine Reconciliation by Abukar Arman
Kenya’s Catholic Leadership Takes on the WHO by Hannah Gais
A Challenging August for Dilma by Gary Sands
Obama’s Foreign Policy “Bully Pulpit” by Michael Crowley

As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Somalia seems ahead of the curve as the debate over how to ensure a legitimate outcome in the upcoming August 2016 election is already underway. Still, the fact that the whole debate on political legitimacy within the country is limited to the upcoming election in and of itself indicates that little has changed.

The Somali state did not disintegrate because of elections or lack thereof. It disintegrated because of institutional injustice and the chronic meddling of foreign powers. That is why the state imploded and over million people died. It’s also how clan-based balkanization or “federalism” has come to destroy an already ailing state by keeping it in a state of perpetual dependency and subjugation.

Make no mistake, the most serious existential threat facing the Somali nation is the status quo.

Any time that the peripheries resort to entering into international relationships that  first and foremost serve the interests of the elite, haphazardly signing agreements with foreign countries, and building clan militaries, they make the recovery of the state an increasingly impossible task.

What’s on First?

In broken nations, all political issues of contention must be renegotiated and reconciled before the nation can be pieced back together and the healing process can be set in motion. Through such process, trust is cultivated and sustainable peace is achieved. However, the process must be both genuine and indigenous.

Failing to recognize these fundamentals or haphazardly rushing into a power-sharing arrangement only exacerbates the problem. Somalia has a quarter-century-long experiment to prove that. Placing the Somali political dilemma within the fallacious framework that election is a panacea undermines the direly needed debate on justice, reconciliation, and breaking the shackles of foreign dependency.

What Might be a Viable Alternative?

Under the current system, where foreign political actors, particularly from Ethiopia and Kenya, dominate the process, genuine reconciliation is a pipedream. Total transformation of the current system that perpetuates status quo is an imperative. After all, it is not only the Somali state that failed; the international community and those who have squandered Somalia’s resources have allowed the state to fail.

The system at hand has sustained itself by periodically reinventing itself. On the domestic end, by partnering with “leaders” who possess relentless appetites to hoard executive power, the state has locked an entire branch of the government in “on-the-job-training” by annually changing prime ministers and their cabinets.

Regionally, the system has sustained itself by partnering with states — such as Ethiopia and Kenya, who are legally in Somalia as part of AMISOM — bent on implementing their own thinly disguised zero-sum schemes to co-opt Somali political actors in order to expand their spheres of influence. Internationally, the system has allowed the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) to replace the stained United Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS). This change did little to prevent Somalia from being trapped in a perpetual transition. Decisions are dictated; lucrative security projects are sustained; corruption and economic exploitation are facilitated; and shadowy characters are allowed to maintain backdoor entries to keep the cash flowing. The abuses and financial costs placed on the Somali state by the international community and its regional partners far outweigh their benefits.

As I have argued before, it is time to cut this umbilical cord of dependency. It is time to focus on bilateral strategic partnerships in which parties could hold each other accountable. The benefits are self-evident, as practically all foreign financed successful development projects in Somalia are the byproducts of nation-to-nation relationships.

Misplaced Focus, Erroneous Outcome

A few individuals have recently proposed a couple election-focused alternatives. The most prominent of said proposals argues, in essence, that political legitimacy requires sidelining the federal parliament, empowering regional actors and their clan exclusive parliaments, while arbitrarily keeping political parties with any Islamic identity at bay. This proposal, needless to say, considers reconciliation before power-sharing as irrelevant, the Somaliland issue as an independent problem, and constitutional reform as a priority over reconciliation.

While these may satisfy certain domestic and foreign actors and special interests groups who may see benefit in another four years of transition, they by no means ensure legitimacy.

By contrast, Gurmad Movement underscores the importance of reclaiming Somalia’s right to independently shape its political future and craft its own strategy to pull the nation out of its current subservient dilemma. Real legitimacy, according to Gurmad, could only be attained through a Somali-led process that is negotiated in the interest of the collective good, not by drive-thru legitimization process that may or may not be motivated to maintain the status quo.

All proposals agree that an election of some sort will be necessary in August 2016. According to Gurmad’s proposal at least, the current federal parliament should be given a conditional two-year extension, at which point the parliament would have to complete, among other things, the establishment of the Constitutional Court and National Reconciliation Commission, and elect an interim president for that duration.

The election process must be open to ensure fair participation of any and all candidates who possess fresh ideas to salvage this dying nation.

No More Scotch Tape Solutions

Despite the façade of sustainable recovery, beneath the veneer of Mogadishu’s rapid development is societal erosion rooted in an innate hopelessness perpetuated by lack of genuine reconciliation.

Against that backdrop, the need for indigenous discourse and a process to repair this broken nation and inspire its demoralized and beaten psyche is a dire priority. But you would not know that from the actions of the current political actors, domestic and foreign. That is why Somalia is caught in that stubborn Sisyphus effect, where we as a nation periodically roll the bolder of peace to the top of the hill, only to helplessly watch it roll back to the bottom.

One of the most prevalent fallacies that prolonged the status quo of distrust, division and sporadic hostilities in Somalia is the erroneous claim that the multifaceted Somali political conundrum could be solved by holding an election.

Herded Leadership

The many shepherds herding Somali leadership has been one of the corrosive phenomena that facilitated the systematic destruction of the Somali nation. The current government is just one example. There is the irrefutable failure of its political strategy, its failure to pay its soldiers for over six months, which has caused insecurity to exacerbate, and its reputation as the poster child of corruption. It certainly occupies a infamous and unique space in history.

Granted, the herded leadership — both in the center and the peripheries — as well as those within the civil society who are direct beneficiaries of the current arrangement, may attempt to torpedo any transformative effort that threatens the status quo. Neither of these entities have the necessary public support withstand any type of resistance.

At this do-or-die moment, Somalia needs more than random political belches from its so-called leaders. Granted, at all times, leaders ought to be judged, not by what they promise, but by what they deliver. It needs leaders who would govern ethically and justly, who would lead the nation in the best interest of Somalia and its people.

Difficult as it may seem, history attests to the fact that when the human will is driven by good intention and a willingness to compromise for peace, it can beat all odds and overcome all obstacles. Failure is not a permanent status unless those who experience it opt to make it so!

It goes without saying: The Somali people desperately need transformational leaders whose vision, strategy, courage and willingness to sacrifice for the common good will help prevent the nation from self-destructing.

A Necessary Foundation

Reconciliation is the foundation that is yet to be built for sustainable peace to materialize. Somalia is a broken nation that is handicapped by a generation long bloodshed and trauma.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom of Somalia’s political elite and power brokers, reconciliation is not made up of powwows, artificial communiques, and photo opportunities in banquet halls. Rather, it is a deliberate and a systematic process driven by a comprehensive strategic plan fully understood and implemented by the Somali people.

Reconciliation is necessary as it deflates the hateful narrative that sustains inter-clan distrust and enmity. It opens a new page for negotiating the terms of a social contract that will allow for co-existence. It enables the center and the peripheries to recognize their interdependence. It plays a significant role in teaching future generations that impunity and the habit of sweeping problems under rugs only makes matters worse. It sets in motion a genuine process of repairing our broken nation.

Finally, reconciliation is a critical post-conflict element necessary for healing and trust-building; it is a noble objective and a process that takes time. Neither its pace nor its broad impact could be rushed for political expedience.

Photo Credit: U.S. Army Africa

Skepticism over vaccines isn’t just an American problem anymore.

As Africa celebrates one year of being polio free, renewed controversy over the polio vaccination efforts in Kenya may threaten to push back that milestone.

Last week, the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops announced its intention to boycott the World Health Organization’s (WHO) polio vaccination campaign until authorities verify the vaccine will have no sterilization effects. Those skeptical of the vaccine’s effect on fertility claim it may be laced with sterilizing elements — namely beta human chorionic gonadotropin (beta-hCG), a chemical produced during pregnancy that is claimed to be used to sterilize women — and demanded the drug be tested independently.

The Catholic Church in Kenya’s skepticism of vaccines is nothing new. In 1995, the WHO proposed a similar campaign to vaccinate against tetanus. Kenya’s Catholic bishops protested, citing concerns over the presence of beta-hCG, and the WHO gave up on the campaign.

Nearly two decades later, the debate over the WHO and UNICEF’s joint vaccine program came to the fore yet again. The program sought to inoculate newborns against a severe form of tetanus by targeting women of reproductive age (15–49). In a statement released in November 2014, the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya and the Kenya Conference of Catholic bishops asserted they now have proof these vaccinations contained beta-hCG.

Public health officials have responded to these accusations by raising two points. Even if beta-hCG is there in trace amounts — which it shouldn’t be — the bishop’s own report has found it’s not at levels high enough to cause permanent damage a woman’s reproductive health. As James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, told the Washington Post in November 2014, its presence would be a result of “extremely rare contamination,” not some secret depopulation program.

Alternatively, these tests could have come up with a false positive. In a 1995 article detailing the tetanus vaccine controversy, the authors noted that the testing mechanisms being used by hospital laboratories were insufficient. Many used pregnancy tests, which do test for hCG in women but are inappropriate for testing a vaccine. The combination of certain chemicals in the tetanus vaccine make it highly likely these results were simply false positives.

The recent controversy over the polio vaccine, then, is just an extension of a much longer debate between large multi-national organizations and national authorities. The Kenyan bishops’ skepticism, at its core, isn’t an issue with Catholic writ large.

Today, what debate there is in the church at the institutional level is over whether it is or is not moral to vaccinate one’s self or one’s family with vaccines consisting of stem cells. Even here, church officials note, “the burden of this important battle cannot and must not fall on innocent children and on the health situation of the population — especially with regard to pregnant women.” In the case of Kenya, the burden the bishops are asking their parishioners to take falls squarely on that demographic.

Indeed, the Kenyan church’s position points more to concerns over the activities of these large, seemingly opaque multinational institutions, such as the WHO and UNICEF. The church’s boycott may be misguided and misinformed, but their actions seem to be rooted in a desire for more transparency and better protection of the country’s citizens. Given the country’s recent struggles with corruption and security, it’s easy to see where those broader concerns may be coming from. Still, whatever the deeper reasons for their objections, keeping a new generation of Kenyans polio-free is definitely in the church’s best interests.

Canada made an agreement recently to adopt the radar technology behind the Iron Dome anti-aircraft missile system. In an agreement between ELTA Systems, Rheinmetall and the Canadian Government, a version of the radar behind the Iron Dome will be produced in Canada in cooperation with companies from Israel and Germany. Delivery of the Iron Dome to Canadian forces is set to begin in 2017.

With Russia’s increased investment in defense in its Arctic region, Canada hopes to use their new Iron Dome-inspired system to manage any possible threats in the north. Despite minimal threats to Canada coming from aircraft and ballistic missiles, the Canadian defense system will replace an almost non-existent air defense capability that had eroded after the removal of Canada’s ADATS system a few years ago.

The logic behind Canada’s need for an Iron Dome-like system sheds light on what NATO anticipates will be international security concerns abroad in the near future. The system may serve as a starting point for a low-cost NATO-wide system that could deter Russian aircraft and missile systems in Eastern European countries concerned with rebel movements near Russia’s border. The Iron Dome also allows for an easing of tensions and reduction of causalities in many cases, so it’s as much of a political tool as it is a technological instrument. The system also allows for the targeting of other missiles and mortars, possibly giving it the ability to knock down missiles like those from the

There is a slight possibility that an Iron Dome-type system will find its way to countries in the Middle East that are at odds with Iran but would not purchase defense technology from Israel directly. Balancing the Russia’s S-300 in Iran with a system like the Iron Dome may contribute to reducing the use of ballistic missile technology from both sides, keeping the conflict limited to alternative military systems. Besides the S-300, the Iron Dome is likely one of the best systems for targeting medium-range threats.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff talks with Vice President Michel Temer during the launch ceremony of Brazil’s 2015/2016 agriculture program in June.  REUTERS/Bruno Domingos

A poll on Thursday revealed new lows for embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, with her approval rating hitting eight percent – the lowest of any Brazilian president in the last three decades. Datafolha, the polling institute, found that 71 percent of respondents described her administration as “bad” or “terrible,” up from 65 percent in a June poll. Only eight percent percent described it as “great” or “good,” compared to 10 percent in June. More importantly, Brazilians are fed up – two out of three said they would support her impeachment.

Support for Rousseff’s impeachment has grown in the last several months and has been largely fueled by growing unrest triggered by the country’s worst economic downturn in 25 years. Inflation hit a multiyear high of 9.25 percent in mid-July, and the long-running political kickback scandal at state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro (“Petrobras”) has captured headlines.

Although Brazil has a formal mechanism for impeachment and has impeached leaders in the past (former President Fernando Collor de Mello was impeached in September 1992), calls for Rousseff’s impeachment by legislators have so far been muted. Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and other senior leaders of the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) have so far not publicly backed impeachment. Even one of Rousseff’s main opponents, Eduardo Cunha (speaker of the lower house of Congress) wrote an opinion piece last Friday arguing an impeachment is too risky for Brazil’s fragile democracy.

But legislators’ patience is wearing thin. Last Wednesday, the governing coalition in Congress failed to pass a lower chamber bill intended to raise salaries for police officers, prosecutors and government attorneys. This latest failure comes just six months Dilma’s second term, and it reveals the waning confidence of her allies and a possible turn toward her opponents. Her main ally, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), reportedly sat down for dinner with senators of the opposition PSDB last week and discussed a potential pact to govern moving forward.

Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk consulting firm, believes the call for impeachment could be realized if Rousseff’s approval rating continues to drop. Three other conditions must be met: 1.) a direct link between Rousseff and the corruption; 2.) former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva failing to support the current administration; and 3.) the opposition gathering behind the call for impeachment.

The PSDB is hoping to establish a direct link between Rousseff and bribe money used to fund her re-election campaign. Yet they may not need it – Dilma is now being accused of manipulating government accounts. Should that link be established by a federal audit court ruling in late August, impeachment proceedings by Cunha could be initiated in the lower chamber.

And former president Lula’s support for Rousseff may falter, after news last Monday of another arrest tied to the Petrobras kickbacks – that of Jose Dirceu, the ex-president’s former chief of staff. Lula is also being investigated for helping influence the award of contracts to Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company, for contracts in Panama and Venezuela. Many of the allegations date back to Lula’s administration and may weaken his standing and ability to protect Rousseff.

The final condition, that of the opposition gathering behind impeachment, could gather steam should Rousseff’s popularity continue to fall and ability to govern become more impaired. Opposition leaders are increasingly facing pressure from protestors, many of whom gathered last Thursday night in major cities to bang pots and honk horns during the television broadcast of a political commercial featuring Rousseff, Lula and other Workers’ Party officials. The next test could come on August 16, when crowds are expected for a nationwide protest against Rousseff – the first protest the PSDB will openly support.