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In the summer of 2009, John Anari, a young political activist from the Indonesian region of West Papua, created a Facebook page. He did it using an old desktop computer with a dial-up Internet connection, in a one-room apartment in Manokwari, the provincial capital situated on West Papua’s northeastern coast. The page wasn’t a personal profile. Anari, who prides himself on being tech savvy, had created one of those the year before. The page was the first of what would become several online outposts for the West Papua Liberation Organization (WPLO), a group that Anari had founded to agitate for his homeland’s independence.

 

“Most freedom groups in Papua cannot access the Internet or don’t know how to use it,” Anari, now 35, said recently. “I wanted to show the world Indonesia’s crimes.”

 

On the WPLO page, Anari posted unclassified diplomatic cables related to West Papua’s colonial past, updates from exiled independence activists, and videos of defiant rebel leaders training for armed struggle in remote highland camps. He also shared gruesome photos of West Papuans who reportedly had been beaten, shot, or tortured by the Indonesian security forces that have controlled the western half of New Guinea, the world’s largest tropical island, since 1962. Because foreign journalists and NGOs are rarely granted entry to West Papua and are closely monitored when they are, the page opened a rare, real-time window into one of the bloodiest and best-kept secrets of the South Pacific.

 

As social media does, this window also functioned as a global drive-thru. Anari, who had never traveled outside Indonesia, began cultivating friendships with a motley mix of international sympathizers. To educate them about West Papua, he posted comments about international treaties and resolutions that he described as evidence of the region’s right to independence. Most people who reached out to him pledged moral support or promised to write letters to world leaders on West Papua’s behalf. But a minority of Anari’s new contacts—quixotic adventure seekers, soldiers of fortune, and crackpots claiming to represent foreign armies and intelligence agencies—volunteered a deeper commitment to the WPLO’s mission. To them, Anari emphasized his ambition to build an army from West Papua’s fractious rebel cells. Although he had no formal military training (by day he worked as an IT contractor), Anari presented himself as a man capable of leading a full-blown insurrection.

 

One of Anari’s first online friends credulous of his revolutionary potential was Tom Bleming, a longtime mercenary living in Wyoming. Unlike Anari, Bleming had been everywhere: After serving in Vietnam, the American became a free agent, aiding independence movements and coup plots around the globe. In 1979, he landed in a Panamanian military jail for attempting to blow up Manuel Noriega’s entourage with dynamite and diesel. When Anari contacted him for the first time, via a Facebook message in 2009, Bleming had just returned from a pro bono stint advising and supplying nonmilitary aid to the Karen National Liberation Army, a rebel group in eastern Myanmar. Then 63 and living on veteran disability payments, Bleming was considering retiring. But the West Papuan cause fired the boiler of his moral and military imagination; he later described it to me as his “last hurrah.” Over several years’ worth of messages and phone calls, Bleming offered to help Anari however he could, from making introductions to arms dealers to providing room and board in the United States.

 

By 2014, a room was exactly what Anari needed: He was planning a trip to New York to meet with contacts at the United Nations and with NGOs lobbying the international body. He wanted a base of operations anywhere in the United States, and Bleming offered one with benefits. “The rebel groups in West Papua do not understand modern unconventional warfare,” Anari later told me. “Tom and his friends offered to educate me.”

 

Thanks to Bleming’s financial help, Anari landed in Casper, Wyoming, on an unseasonably warm afternoon in October 2014. Bleming was waiting near the airport, leaning against his beater Oldsmobile that’s plastered with bumper stickers; one bears the silhouette of an AK-47, while another sports Che Guevara’s face. He greeted his guest with military formality: “General Anari, welcome.”

 

Bleming lives in Lusk, an old ranching town about 100 miles southeast of Casper, best known these days for its stagecoach museum, a women’s prison, and an annual pioneer-days re-enactment called the “Legend of Rawhide.” On the drive to Bleming’s house, the pair stopped for lunch at the Ghost Town Fuel Stop & Restaurant. Over bowls of chili, they agreed that the old mercenary would serve as Anari’s unofficial military advisor, as well as his “chief protocol officer,” handling the West Papuan’s security, travel, and scheduling. Bleming invited Anari to stay in Lusk as long as he liked.

 

When I visited Wyoming this January, Anari was in the middle of what became a four-month stay. Our first meeting took place around a flaming oil drum on the rolling prairie; every Sunday, on 80 acres that the former gunrunner owns just beyond Lusk’s town limits, Anari and Bleming burned the trash they’d generated the previous week. Wearing his leather jacket, sunglasses, and military beret, Anari, who also carried a compact pistol, evoked a paunchy Black Panther leader circa 1965, mysteriously transported to the emptiest county in America’s emptiest state. Only the shiny emblem on his beret betrayed his even more unlikely origin. It featured the mascot of the West Papuan rebels, the cassowary: a flightless bird that can grow to 6 feet tall and that has been known to fatally attack humans with its knife-like middle claw.

 

The men’s fireside talk of war and independence was by then familiar to many of Lusk’s townsfolk. Since Anari’s arrival, the pair had discussed martial and diplomatic strategy in the town’s bars, in meet-and-greets with Bleming’s friends—mostly fellow ex-military and mercenary types—and with local journalists. “We’re lining up people to handle everything from refineries to civil aviation, grid, radar,” Bleming proclaimed as the trash blackened.

 

For Bleming, West Papua is more than an injustice. It is a screen for projecting long-held fantasies of winning a good fight on behalf of an oppressed underdog. Outraged by what he sees as the plundering violence of Indonesian rule, Bleming spoke in Patton-esque bursts of bravado. “We’re going to win in Papua. Win faster than anyone thinks,” he insisted.

 

Anari more than tolerated his friend’s theatrical self-assurance; he gently encouraged it. And why not? In Lusk, nothing could stop Anari from role-playing a general on the cusp of certain victory. It was a tempting indulgence, given murky and tragic truths in West Papua. Indonesia’s military is more powerful by magnitudes than the likes of Anari’s planned army could ever become. The country’s strongest allies include the United States, which sees Indonesia as a key economic and military partner in Asia. And far from the commander he aspires to be, Anari is just one self-styled player among many in the disarray of activists and organizations pushing for West Papua’s freedom.

 

“Anari represents a long tradition of the fragmentation and organizational weakness of the independence movement,” said Richard Chauvel, a historian of West Papuan nationalism at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. “These activists that pop up hither and thither—and they’re ‘presidents,’ ‘ministers,’ or ‘generals’—know that West Papua hasn’t had the capacity to threaten Indonesian control at any time since 1963. The more modestly titled activists often have a stronger basis of support in West Papua.”

 

Whatever his true influence, it’s possible that Anari’s winter journey to the United States could place him in danger back home. According to Ed McWilliams, a former political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesian intelligence regularly monitors critics of the state’s iron grip on West Papua. “[Anari’s] seeming support for armed struggle would make him especially vulnerable to legal or extra-legal retaliation,” McWilliams wrote in an email.

 

But in Wyoming, Anari and Bleming told a very different story, one of an impending, triumphant return. “We can’t tell you the details because they’re classified, but the general has a devastating strategy he’s going to unleash on the Indonesian forces,” Bleming said as the fire died down that January evening. “It’ll be a historic rout. Right, John?”

 

The question caught Anari entranced with a dome of starry sky. He straightened himself and assumed a stern look. “If the world abandons us again, then, yes, we will fight,” he said. “We will kick the Indos out.”

 

“That’s right,” Bleming said. “They won’t know what hit ’em.”

 

The modern history of West Papua is one of uninterrupted foreign domination. In 1824, the British and Dutch East India companies split the island of New Guinea down the middle. Its rich soils and cloud forests provided industrializing Europe with coffee, rubber, spices, and cocoa; its natives offered the enduring tropical “savage” tropes of grass skirts, phallic gourd-sheaths, headhunting, and cannibalism found in Western ethnographies and newspapers of the day.

 

After World War II, the island’s colonial masters began preparing to transfer control to New Guinea’s native Melanesian population, who share physical features and origins with Australia’s Aborigines. On the island’s eastern half, this culminated in the establishment of Papua New Guinea, a free country, in 1975. Meanwhile, on the western half, Indonesia brought the process to a halt when it invaded in 1962. (Jakarta knew that the fledgling state was weak and that it was rich with natural resources.) The Soviet Union made a play for Indonesian allegiance by backing the country’s claim on West Papua. In true Cold War fashion, U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s administration decided to compete for President Sukarno’s loyalty, and America brokered a deal that put West Papua under de facto Indonesian control. In 1965, a military coup placed General Suharto in power. In addition to deepening military ties with Washington, Suharto signed lucrative, long-term development deals with American mining and oil companies. Some of the largest of these projects were in West Papua.

 

In anticipation of statehood, West Papua had begun building a national army. Following the Indonesian invasion, many troops went underground. They established bases under the banner of the Free Papua Movement, or OPM (the acronym for the group’s Indonesian name), including training camps and parade grounds in the mountains. They drilled with spears and arrows, colonial Dutch bolt-actions, and M16s stripped from dead Indonesian soldiers (and some purchased from living ones). Organized into “cassowary battalions,” OPM fighters carried out wildcat strikes on Indonesian troops. Suharto responded by brutally suppressing all independence activity, using assassination campaigns and village-wide revenge sweeps. In 1969, the Indonesian government organized an independence referendum, and the army forced about 1,000 hand-selected West Papuans to cast ballots at gunpoint. The locals voted unanimously against freedom.

 

By the 1970s, many independence leaders were in exile, and thousands of West Papuans had fled to neighboring Papua New Guinea. During the more than three decades that Suharto ruled Indonesia, the OPM maintained a ragtag resistance amid a permanent crackdown. But the violence was largely invisible to the world due to tight travel and media restrictions in West Papua. “Because of the long effort to draw a curtain around Papua, not much is known about the blood bath that has been underway since the early 1960s,” said McWilliams, formerly of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

 

Anari was born behind this curtain in 1979 and raised in Manokwari. Despite family ties to the OPM—he says his father and maternal uncle are both veterans—he was shielded as a child from the dangerous world of rebel activity. “They stopped talking politics when I walked into the room,” he recalled. “I heard only pieces. But I put the pieces together. My uncle could not hide the bullet scar on his stomach.”

 

Anari’s activism began as a teenager, when Internet cafes popped up in local cities. His research into his homeland’s past allowed him to understand the violence around which he’d grown up. “The OPM fighters in the mountains did not know the global politics of why New Guinea got decolonization, and we got recolonization,” he said. “The schools teach only official Indonesian history.”

 

When the Asian financial crisis walloped Indonesia, triggering a wave of violent unrest that forced Suharto from power in May 1998, Anari was a 19-year-old student activist studying computers at a university in Central Java province. He joined the tumult by linking up with other young West Papuans who saw opportunity in the chaos. Anari says he organized protests at the Dutch and U.S. embassies in Jakarta. “The army always attacked us,” he told me. In 1999, he helped found a Papuan student group, the Independent Network for Kejora Action. Its name was a reference to West Papua’s red, white, and blue national flag, known as Bintang Kejora (Morning Star).

 

Simultaneously, the wider independence movement stirred with new life in what became known as the Papuan Spring. On Dec. 1, 1999, two generations of West Papuan activists and fighters, many fresh back from exile, gathered in Jayapura, a provincial capital, to raise the Morning Star in an event that had all the trappings of a state ceremony. OPM soldiers in tribal headdresses and ragged fatigues stood in formation next to black-uniformed members of a new 5,000-member, student-based militia called Satgas Papua (Papuan Task Force). By 2001, pro-independence groups had unified under the leadership of the new Papuan Presidium Council.

 

But even without Suharto in power, the army kept tight control of West Papua, and raisings of the Morning Star often resulted in bloodshed. (In July 1998, in response to a protest involving the flag, Indonesian troops killed scores of West Papuans and dumped their bodies into the sea.) In 2001, Jakarta unleashed units from Kopassus, the country’s special forces command, in a campaign of targeted assassinations and arrests. The clampdown was in full swing by November of that year, when Papuan Presidium Council Chairman Theys Eluay attended a dinner at Kopassus headquarters. Days later, his decapitated corpse was found with its heart carved out. The chief of the Indonesian army publicly hailed the soldiers who committed the murder as “heroes.”

 

“Eluay’s assassination effectively ended the Papuan Spring,” said Chauvel, the historian at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. “The detention of his colleagues further dispersed the reasonably cohesive independence movement.”

 

In the vacuum that emerged, rebels continued to carry out occasional, small-scale attacks on Indonesian forces, while activists fractured into dozens of pro-
independence organizations and coalitions. In July 2002, according to Anari, he founded a new group, more radical and militant than his first one, that sought to unite student activists: the Association of West Papua Indigenous Students and Youth. Six years later, he expanded it to include representatives from armed groups and renamed it the WPLO. Anari had big ambitions for his organization. Abroad, he would use it to build awareness of and international solidarity with West Papua. At home, he would unify rebel factions into a national liberation army. Today, according to its organizers, the WPLO has about 500 members in leadership roles and many thousands in its broader membership. (Its Facebook group had just over 1,600 members as of press time.)

 

But it is no easy task to understand the network of West Papua’s pro-independence groups. The region, which Indonesia split into two legal provinces in 2003 in an effort to dampen rebellious sentiment, contains numerous tribes and dialects. There are also constantly shifting alliances among liberation forces. “The key problem with movement mapping is that membership is fluid,” Nick Chesterfield of West Papua Media, an online news source, noted in an email. “We have been trying to map them accurately for years, but every time we are almost there, it changes.”

 

All this complicates attempts to differentiate influential leaders from poseurs. Anari is no exception to this rule.

 

Anari and Bleming had a regular routine at the old mercenary’s modest, single-story home, which smells of stale cigarettes and whose closets are stuffed with AK-47s, Uzis, and M16s. (A storage room abutting the kitchen is lined with metal ammo boxes stacked four high, the way a retired baker might keep sugar stock.) Anari woke daily around 4 p.m., as Wyoming’s winter light faded and dawn broke over West Papua. He ambled from his sparse guest room to a dining table crowded with maps, printouts, and back issues of magazines such as Working Ranch, Cowboys & Indians, and Guns & Ammo. A Morning Star blocked a nearby window.

 

Bleming served coffee, toast, peanut butter, and bananas. After breakfast, Anari booted up his old Toshiba laptop and spent hours writing and Skyping with activists in the diaspora, as well as comrades in West Papua. His most frequent contact was Ben Kaisiepo, the leader of Kobe Oser (“United”), a Netherlands-based exile group. Anari calls Kaisiepo “Father.”

 

“The general talks to Kaisiepo for hours,” Bleming said one day. “It’s a job just keeping him stocked with Skype gift cards. Man, does he go through those things like butter.” (I reached out to Kaisiepo for this article, but he declined to comment unless I transferred a minimum of 1,000 euros to Kobe Oser’s Dutch bank account. In an email, he wrote that the money would be used for “our important U.N.-lobby work.”)

 

When Anari ventured out to meet with reporters or Bleming’s friends, some of whom opened their checkbooks in support, he wore his fatigues and beret and presented himself as a military chief. “I feel that we will have to resort to armed struggle to win our freedom,” he told the Lusk Herald. Most locals seemed bemused, if not charmed. A woman at the desk of Lusk’s visitors office said, “He seems like a very sweet man, and it’s just awful what’s happening to his people over there.” Others took Anari’s presence less kindly. A red-faced retiree at the Silver Dollar Bar told me the West Papuan had no business in Lusk. “The whole thing is some kind of—frankly, it’s just communist horseshit,” he sputtered.

 

At Bleming’s house one evening, Anari elaborated on his military efforts. The army he is building will eventually have 10,000 rebels, managed through a complex hierarchy down to the village level. Its tactics will combine ancient West Papuan fighting techniques, such as bamboo-arrow archery assaults, with modern guerrilla warfare. “I am preparing them to attack,” he told me bluntly.

 

Ten thousand men, however, is a far cry from any credible estimate of current rebel strength. Leaked Indonesian intelligence reports from the 2000s put the number of active fighters at around 1,000, most still armed with stone-tipped spears, bamboo arrows, and antiquated rifles. “Papua’s rebel forces are tiny,” Chauvel said, “maybe a couple thousand.”

 

Benny Wenda, a prominent, Oxford-based West Papuan exile, similarly downplayed Anari’s talk of a military solution. Wenda’s Free West Papua Campaign advocates an independence referendum to end the crisis in his homeland. He is also the spokesman of the recently formed United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), a coordinating body for several of the larger pro-independence groups. Anari’s organization is not one of them. “The WPLO is just an affiliation group, a small group,” Wenda told me. He noted, “All leaders [of independence factions] have a full mandate to advance the freedom cause. We are very weak at the moment, and it is important that we speak in one voice to demand the right of self-determination, the same as any nation.” In a separate conversation, though, Wenda seemed to reserve the final voice of authority for himself. “If Anari tells you anything,” he said, “call me and I will clarify.”

 

“The situation of ‘who speaks for whom’ has been highly fraught for years,” wrote Chesterfield of West Papua Media. “[M]any people have claimed leadership of the movement, and many groups claim supremacy, such as Anari’s. We call it the ‘I’m the President of the World!’ complex.”

 

In Lusk, there was little talk of competition among West Papua’s pro-independence forces. Rather, Bleming and Anari welcomed company who shared the conviction that a WPLO-led revolution in West Papua is a foregone conclusion. One evening, a wiry man with a bushy gray beard and camo cap pulled low came to the house. His name was R.D. Saathoff. A former Special Forces training officer, he was visiting from his underground bunker in Wyoming’s Red Desert, where he lives six miles from the nearest neighbor. “My specialty is tactical assault,” he said, his words slurred by the absence of several front teeth lost during what he called a “rough weekend” long ago in the jungles of southern Colombia.

 

Bleming served coffee as his friend lectured Anari. “Guerrilla groups often forget key steps and concepts, ya’ see,” Saathoff said. “You have to spend time on target analysis; you don’t want to destroy the house you’re going to have to live in. You don’t blow up the oil tanker—you take out the driver, ya’ see. You don’t take out the bridge—you blow a hole in front of it, so the local people can still use it and you don’t have to rebuild it.”

 

Later, Bleming and Saathoff debated the timetable for Anari’s victory. “I’ll be there for the official surrender this summer,” Bleming said. Anari, in turn, reasserted his commitment to struggle. “Our tactics will surprise the Indonesians,” he said. “We are fierce people.”

 

Neither ferocity nor dining-table strategy sessions, however, can diminish the long odds faced by advocates for West Papua’s freedom. Unlike East Timor and Aceh, two provinces that struggled, to some success, against Indonesian control—the former gained independence, the latter partial autonomy—West Papua has enormous economic value. It is larger than Japan and holds a third of Indonesia’s forest area, including some of Asia’s deepest remaining tracts of virgin rain forest. In the south, a mine owned by the U.S. company Freeport-McMoRan controls some of the Earth’s largest deposits of gold and copper. The region’s waters contain gigantic offshore stores of natural gas. According to McWilliams, “Papua is an important source of income for the military, providing a large portion of its budget…. They’d be very reluctant to let it slip away.”

 

Geopolitics are no more favorable to West Papua’s independence prospects. In 2010, the United States and Indonesia signed a “comprehensive partnership” agreement that ended restrictions on weapons sales and included the transfer of F-16s and Maverick missiles. The deal reflected an alignment of strategic interests over Indonesian power projection in the Pacific. “Relations with Indonesia are increasingly regarded as an important component of the U.S. ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’ to Asia,” said Lynn Kyuk, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution. “Indonesia has a strong tradition of nonalignment, but it shares growing concerns about China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea.”

 

In 2013, a coalition of nearly 100 international NGOs urged Washington to block Indonesia’s pending purchase of eight Apache helicopters. The signees had history on their side when they warned, “Providing these helicopters would pose a direct threat to Papuan civilians.” Nonetheless, the deal went through without a hitch.

 

Against this bleak picture, some activists are focused on raising West Papua’s profile as a human rights emergency in hopes of at least mitigating bloodshed. The past several years have seen ongoing political arrests and state violence against indigenous people, intensifying a half-century pattern estimated to have caused 500,000 deaths. Papuans Behind Bars, a civil society monitoring collective in London, estimates that Indonesian police made 369 political arrests in West Papua in 2014, most at peaceful demonstrations. The group recorded 212 cases of reported torture and ill treatment; nearly a third involved members of the West Papua National Committee, a pro-independence group. (Martinus Yohame, a leader of one of the organization’s branches, was abducted and murdered in 2014.)

 

Wenda, of the ULMWP, is on the international front lines of the human rights approach. He has persuaded almost 100 politicians in a dozen countries to join an international parliamentary campaign for West Papuan independence. His personal story is an asset: As a child, Wenda survived numerous Indonesian air raids and witnessed state soldiers kill his aunts and infant cousins. He was arrested during the crackdown on the Papuan Spring, escaped prison, and in 2002 found asylum in Britain. Today, he shares a lawyer with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In early February, Wenda organized the ULMWP’s application for West Papua to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), an organization based in Vanuatu that promotes the shared interests of small, ethnically bound nations in the South Pacific. Wenda hopes MSG membership would give West Papua an institutional foothold that might allow it to join larger cooperative groups. “We must convince the world we’re united to end Indonesian colonization,” Wenda told me. “For decades, Indonesia has treated us as subhumans.”

 

It may not sound like much, but from solidarity saplings, trees do grow. Jakarta remembers well the explosion of global support for East Timor in the 1990s, which hastened independence. In February, around the same time the MSG application was filed, Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it is establishing a task force to shape global opinion of the situation in West Papua. “We have to engage … all instruments involved in the spread of information, including politicians, media, and groups affiliated with separatist organizations,” an Indonesian official told the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

 

Despite his talk of military assaults, Anari is also enamored with diplomacy, and he shifts his tone based on his audience. In 2010, he began communicating with U.N. offices focused on indigenous issues and self-rule. He sent them human rights reports written in broken English, typed on WPLO letterhead featuring elaborate fonts, including one that dripped like the title on a 1950s horror movie poster. The reports began and ended with a request to include West Papua on the agenda of a U.N. General Assembly meeting.

 

A series of events encouraged his efforts. In 2011, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a reporter that he supported the idea of West Papua being discussed by the U.N. Special Committee on Decolonization, which was created in 1961 to oversee and assist the post-World War II wave of independence movements. In 2012, a U.N. team studying Pacific decolonization also recommended that West Papua be included on the committee’s agenda. (No official decision on the recommendation has been made.)

 

Anari was eager to get to New York. Spurring him on was a new coalition of indigenous movements called the Decolonization Alliance, which in the spring of 2014 opened a small office on the eighth floor of a building at the U.N. Plaza, with support from the World Council of Churches. Ringing the walls are the desks of five members, situated under the flags of each: the Hawaiian Kingdom, the Republic of the South Moluccas, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Alaskan Eskimos, and West Papua.

 

Anari had to see with his own eyes this glorious site—a Morning Star hanging a long stone’s throw from the famous First Avenue display of the world’s sovereign flags. (Although the alliance has no formal standing at the United Nations, Anari calls it “the representative office of the Transitional Government of West Papua.”) So in late October 2014, he shed the pseudo-military pomp and circumstance he’d adopted in Lusk and flew to New York. During a three-week trip, he donned civilian clothes, including a white polo shirt with a U.N. logo that he wore with pride. He stayed at a no-frills midtown hotel with funds Bleming had raised.

 

When Anari arrived and sat at West Papua’s desk, he wept. “I felt something must happen now,” he said. “To be at the U.N. was a 52-year struggle for us.”

 

During his visit, Anari was able to speak to Alfred de Zayas, the U.N. independent expert on the right of self-determination. In an email, de Zayas’s spokesperson described the details of the conversation as “not information the Independent Expert would be in a position to share with you.” (In an interview with the online journal Current Concerns, published in December 2014, de Zayas described West Papua as an example of why putting “the right to self-determination into practice” is important; the “fundamental norm of international law constitutes a preventive strategy to avoid armed conflicts.”)

 

In arguably the perfect encapsulation of fact and fiction, of his earnest but limited activism and his superficially militant aesthetic, Anari produced a short documentary about his New York trip in order to share its triumphs with people back home. The film begins with a staged, slow-motion explosion behind a Morning Star, setting the tone of a revolutionary recruitment video. Then it segues lovingly into shots of the West Papuan coast and banal details of the Decolonization Alliance’s office, from a shared kitchen to a bathroom down the hall. Anari is seen on screen happily chatting with de Zayas, and at one point he pans the camera across the General Assembly building and the East River behind it, sparkling in the sun.

 

After layering in a soundtrack, including West Papuan tribal music, Anari posted the video on Facebook and YouTube. As of this writing, it had more than 1,000 YouTube views.

 

Following his New York excursion, Anari returned to his high-plains idyll in Wyoming. Bleming resumed cooking his meals, more guests cycled through to talk shop about insurgencies, and Anari spent time on his Toshiba designing special forces logos for his future liberation army.

 

On my last night in Lusk, I stopped by Bleming’s around midnight to say goodbye. He was sitting in the dark with a cigar, watching a videotape of Fidel, a B-grade Showtime biopic about young Castro. “I watch this movie a lot for inspiration,” Bleming said. “I started off years ago on the far right, but I’ve seen enough poverty around the world to believe people run over by greed should be given their just place in the sun. Fidel was a patriot, just like John over there.” (According to the U.N. Development Programme, the poverty rate in Anari’s homeland is more than double Indonesia’s national average of roughly 11 percent.)

 

Anari, who had been on yet another Skype call with Kaisiepo of Kobe Oser, eventually joined us in front of the television. “I was talking with Father,” he said. “Father will be interim president until we hold elections.”

 

Bleming interjected, “I’m signed on to handle palace security. But you guys better get to work; I’m not going to live to a thousand. I’m not Methuselah.”

 

As I prepared to leave, Bleming handed me copies of his self-published memoirs, Panama: Echoes From a Revolution and War in Karen Country. On the title page of the latter he had written, “I certainly enjoyed meeting with you in Wyoming. One day you and I shall meet again, in a free and independent West Papua.”

 

Anari too had prepared a parting gift: a stack of OPM combat-seal stickers, on which two crossed machetes frame a cassowary above the Latin slogan “Persevero.” He also offered me a job in the transitional government, a proposition he sweetened by throwing in a private beach. “You can help us explain West Papua’s positions to the world and live in a house on the water,” he said. “The Raja Ampat islands”—located off the region’s northern coast—“are very beautiful.”

 

To illustrate the point, Anari grabbed his laptop and opened a folder of photos. In stark contrast to the bloody pictures on the WPLO’s Facebook page, these looked like touched-up images from a travel brochure: palm-lined cays outlined by white sand and surrounded by emerald sea.

 

A month later, I received a Facebook message from Anari saying that he had not yet returned to West Papua. The promised revolution, it seemed, would have to wait. After leaving Wyoming in March, Anari had traveled to Los Angeles to visit distant relatives who emigrated from West Papua to escape persecution in the 1970s. He told me he was making plans to return to New York and address an April session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “I am going to push [the U.N.] about their responsibility for not overseeing independence for West Papua,” he told me over the phone. “I will tell them, ‘If you do not take seriously your responsibility, then the responsibility will be left on our shoulders, to foment action and to fight.’”

 

“One way or the other,” he concluded, “we will get the world’s attention.”

A héten elfogadott migrációs stratégia végrehajtásának első akkordjaként a tagállamok külügyminiszterei hétfőn döntést hoznak az EU földközi-tengeri katonai missziójának létrehozásáról. Az EUNAVFOR MED felállításával az Unió nem várja meg, hogy az ENSZ Biztonsági Tanácsától mandátumot kapjon az embercsempészek elleni katonai fellépésre, bár ennek végleges hiányában csak meglehetősen fapados műveletről lehetne szó.

The SMM monitored the implementation of the “Package of measures for the Implementation of the Minsk agreements”. Its monitoring was restricted by third parties and security considerations.* Fighting continued around Donetsk airport. In Shyrokyne, the SMM observed a decrease in the intensity of the fighting. The SMM visited a Right Sector camp in the Dnepropetrovsk region.

In the area around Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol), the SMM observed a decrease in the intensity of the fighting compared to the previous day; around Donetsk airport (“Donetsk People’s Republic” (“DPR”)-controlled, 11km north-west of Donetsk) the SMM noted that the situation remained tense, with fighting continuing throughout the day, despite attempts made by the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC) officers to negotiate a localized ceasefire.[1]

In “DPR”-controlled Debaltseve (45km north-east of Donetsk) the SMM observed movement of military-type transport trucks, in particular Ural and Kamaz. At the railway station, a worker told the SMM that the railway tracks had been repaired between Yasynuvata (“DPR”-controlled, 14km north-east of Donetsk) and Luhansk. The railway track had been damaged during the most intense phase of the conflict around Debaltseve between January and February. He also said that three days a week passenger trains depart to Luhansk, and three days a week trains arrive from there.

At a “DPR” distribution centre for humanitarian aid in Makiivka (“DPR”-controlled, 8km north-east of Donetsk) the SMM met with the “DPR” co-ordinator for humanitarian assistance. He told the SMM that more than 100 trucks with about 1,200 tons of Russian Federation humanitarian aid had crossed the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on 14 May.

In an area close to the border crossing point at Uspenka (“DPR”-controlled, 96km south-east of Donetsk), the SMM observed white-painted trucks bearing inscriptions “Humanitarian Aid from the Russian Federation” heading to the Russian Federation, towards the Uspenka/Matveev Kurgan border crossing point, totalling forty-nine trucks plus one recovery truck.

The SMM visited Sakhanka (“DPR”-controlled, 24km north-east of Mariupol) amid significant presence of press and media representatives from the Russian Federation – approximately 30 individuals – and a group of 20 to 30 local residents, mainly middle aged and elderly women, who said that shelling had occurred on 12 and 13 May. The Russian Federation Armed Forces Colonel-General to the JCCC was also present in Sakhanka. The SMM analysed five craters, four located in fields adjacent to the village and one in the garden of a damaged house. In the SMM’s assessment, in four cases the craters resulted from 120mm mortars, and in one case from an 82mm mortar, all fired from a westerly direction. The SMM also travelled to Shyrokyne and spoke with a number of local residents who reported shelling on 13 May in the late afternoon. In the village, the SMM observed increased destruction of civilian infrastructure and private houses.

On 13 May, the Cossack ataman in “Lugansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”)-controlled Sverdlovsk (61km south-east of Luhansk) informed the SMM that all border crossing points between Ukraine and the Russian Federation had been handed over to the “LPR” “border guards”. The SMM discussed with the ataman issues concerning access to the border zone According to the interlocutor, the SMM would be able to travel into the inner border zone (15km from the border) but would not be allowed into the 1-2km area near the “LPR”-controlled segment of the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. 

On 14 May, the SMM visited two apartment blocks close to the “LPR” checkpoint in Molodizhne (62km west of Luhansk) and spoke with a middle aged woman who told the SMM that approximately 25 people – including herself – have lived for over nine months in basements, protecting themselves from heavy shelling, especially in the period between 10 January and 20 February. The interlocutor also informed the SMM that currently 40 to 50 people live in the town. The SMM visited some private houses and talked with the mother of a boy – less than 10 years old – who has epileptic syndrome and is blind. The interlocutor stated that administratively Molodizhne belongs to nearby government-controlled Popasna (69km west of Luhansk), but because of difficulties, including in  getting  permits as required by temporary Order 144 to cross the contact line to go to Popasna, they cannot receive social payments there.

On 14 May, from 09:30 to 09:50hrs, the SMM observed a convoy of 39 trucks, with Russian Federation license plates, and with the inscription “Humanitarian aid from the Russian Federation”. The trucks entered Luhansk city proceeding from the direction of the Russian Federation. Of the 39 trucks, three were sent to the “LPR ministry of emergency and reconstruction”, the remainder drove to three different warehouses in Luhansk city. The SMM saw trucks entering these sites and some of them being unloaded. The SMM was unable to verify the contents of the shipment.  Regarding the three trucks that arrived at the “ministry of emergency” an interlocutor, responsible for the warehouse, said that they contained vehicle’s spare parts. An “LPR” interlocutor at one of the warehouses told SMM that the humanitarian aid shipment contained flour, wheat, sunflower oil, and cereals.

Despite claims that heavy weapons have been withdrawn, the SMM observed three main battle tanks (MBTs) in government-controlled areas; it also observed one MBT in “DPR”-controlled territory and one MBT in “LPR”-controlled territory. 

The SMM Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), operating in a limited area north of Shyrokyne west of the line of contact (above government-controlled area) due to weather conditions, observed one tank north of the government-controlled village of Berdyanske (18km east of Mariupol), two tanks east of the village of Ordzhonikidze (government-controlled, 10km east of Mariupol), one south-west of Hranitne (government-controlled, 50km north-east of Mariupol, and three tanks near Andriivka (government-controlled, 50km north of Mariupol). Three previously-observed artillery pieces (likely towed 152mm cannon) near the government-controlled village of Pionerske (13km east of Mariupol) (http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/157061) were no longer there. Numerous armoured vehicles were observed across the flight areas, and the UAV also observed two burning houses in Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol).

On 14 May the SMM was, for the first time, despite earlier attempts, granted access to the camp of the 5th battalion of the Right Sector/Ukrainian Volunteers’ Corps (DUK) near Velikomykhailivka (190km east of Dnepropetrovsk). The commander at the site told the SMM that the camp was established a year ago by the Right Sector as a training/support camp for 3 DUK battalions.

The SMM spoke to a representative of Odessa regional police, who confirmed an explosion had occurred on 14 May at 17 Oleksiivska square in Odessa, where the police found that a non-fragmentation home-made explosive device with approximately 0.4kg of TNT equivalent was put into a UkrTelecom communication well, containing telecom cable connections, which was destroyed by the blast. No casualties were reported. He said that the police are investigating the incident under Art.194 (2) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Intentional destruction or damage of property”. The SMM visited the scene of the incident, and observed some damage in the infrastructure.

On 14 May the SMM met the military commissar in Chernivtsi, who informed the SMM about an ongoing gathering in Toporivtsi village (15km north-east of Chernivtsi), where local people had established a road block, in the middle of the village, on road T2603, protesting against mobilization, corruption and abuse of power. When the SMM arrived at the location, the crowd was already dispersing and the roadblock had been removed. The SMM was informed by a local police officer that the gathering passed without incident after local authorities met with the protestors. The SMM saw the crowd leaving the place and assessed that there were approximately 100 participants, mainly adult women. The SMM spoke to some of the protesters -10 women, 2 men, all older than 40 years - who complained about the procedure regarding mobilization, for instance the procedure followed for handing over draft notices.

The SMM continued to monitor the situation in Kharkiv, Kherson, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Kyiv.

* Restrictions on SMM access and freedom of movement:

The SMM is restrained in fulfilling its monitoring functions by restrictions imposed by third parties and security considerations including the lack of information on whereabouts of landmines. The security situation in Donbas is fluid and unpredictable and the cease-fire does not hold everywhere.

- While en route to Novoazovsk (“DPR”-controlled, 40km east of Mariupol), the SMM was stopped at a “DPR”-controlled checkpoint located west of the entrance to Novoazovsk. The “DPR” members stated that the SMM could only continue with an escort. Considering time constraints, the SMM took the decision not to wait for the escort to be arranged and returned to base. 

 

[1] 1 For a complete breakdown of the ceasefire violations, please see the annexed table.

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On May 11, nine ships from the Russian Navy and China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) kicked off 10 days of combined exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, for their first joint naval war games in European waters. What does this nautical confab, dubbed “Joint Sea 2015,” entail? “Maritime defense, maritime replenishment, escort actions, joint operations to safeguard navigation security as well as real weapon firing drill,” according to Sr. Col. Geng Yansheng, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry. The aim of the exercises is to “further deepen friendly and practical interaction between the two countries,” maintained the Russian Defense Ministry. Moscow added that the drills “are not aimed against any third country.”

Despite the soothing words, some Western commentators opined that Europe’s middle sea constitutes an “unlikely and provocative venue” for this venture. Yes, Moscow and Beijing chose the venue precisely to be provocative — the exercise is a throwback to Soviet maneuvers in the Mediterranean 40 years ago. It was predictable that an allied fleet would eventually put in an appearance off NATO’s southern, nautical flank.

Does a Sino-Russian naval presence off NATO seaboards sound frightening to you? It shouldn’t — there’s nothing new nor especially worrisome here. It represents normalcy in a world of geostrategic competition — the kind of world that’s making a comeback following a quarter-century of seaborne U.S. hegemony. The United States wants to preserve its primacy, along with the liberal maritime order over which it has presided since the end of World War II. Challengers such as China and Russia want to amend that system while carving out their own places in the sun of great naval power. Irreconcilable differences over purposes and power beget open-ended strategic competition.

Hence deployments like Joint Sea 2015. Yes, exercises have functional uses like those outlined by Geng. But navies can also shape global and national opinion by constructing impressive warships, aircraft, and armaments. Showmanship plays a part when commanders display gee-whiz hardware to important audiences. Mariners impress by showing up in far-flung regions in sizable numbers, and by handling their ships and planes with skill and panache. And a seafaring state creates an even bigger sensation if its fleet deploys in concert with allies, backing their common cause with steel. Competitors, like China and the United States, can one-up one another through peacetime maneuvers — bucking up morale among allies and friends, helping court would-be partners, and disheartening rival alliances.

That’s the essence of great-power naval diplomacy, and it can pay off handsomely. The three-ship PLAN contingent — guided-missile frigates Linyi and Weifang, accompanied by fleet oiler Weishanhu — are taking a break from counterpiracy duty in the Gulf of Aden for Joint Sea 2015. The PLAN flotilla wended its way from the western Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, through the Eastern Mediterranean, and into the Black Sea. It tarried at the Russian seaport of Novorossiysk for Victory Day commemorations before exiting back into the Mediterranean in company with Russian Black Sea Fleet ships.

The interoperability challenge

Why go to the time, expense, and bother of assembling a fleet in European waters — so far from East Asia, the natural theater for Sino-Russian escapades? Let’s start with the obvious motive, and the official one. Russia and China are doubtless sincere about harvesting the dividends that come from steaming around together and practicing routine operations. Both navies need to learn, and they can learn from each other. China is constructing its first world-class navy since the 15th century. Russia is recovering from the dreary post-Cold War years when ships rusted at their moorings and sailors went unpaid. Both countries’ sea services are now trying to put things right following protracted intervals of decay — a lapse of centuries in China’s case, decades in Russia’s. So where does this newfound strength come from? Materiel — reliable, technologically sophisticated hardware and weaponry — and the proficiency of its users. Maneuvers like Joint Sea 2015 help the navies improve along both the material and human axes.

In material terms, the Russian and Chinese navies need to bolster their equipment “interoperability” — their capacity to back up the Sino-Russian partnership’s policies efficiently and effectively. Call it a form of multinational gunboat diplomacy. Armed services order their kit from defense manufacturers. Such firms may — or, more likely, may not — build their products to a common standard. Their wares are far from interchangeable. Dissimilar hardware makes it hard to work together, even for armed forces flying the same national flag. To take a workaday example: think about trying to use tools designed for English and metric measurements together.

Such widgets just don’t fit — or at least not without workarounds. It’s just not easy to fight together when two air forces use different airframes, communicate or exchange data on different frequencies, or sport different weaponry with unlike characteristics. Procuring hardware from multiple suppliers in multiple countries exacerbates the interoperability challenge.

Take India, for example. Asia’s other rising military power imports ships, aircraft, and weapons from firms in Russia, France, and the United States while also manufacturing its own naval armaments. At present, the Indian Navy operates British- and Soviet-built aircraft carriers, while in the future it will operate a Soviet-built aircraft carrier alongside indigenously built flattops. Diesel submarines of French, German, Russian, and Indian design; a nuclear-powered attack sub leased from Russia; an Indian-built nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine; and a Russian-built nuclear-powered cruise-missile sub will constitute the undersea fleet. U.S.-built maritime patrol aircraft will fly for the same naval air force as MiG fighters imported from Russia. You get the point: this is a virtual Tower of Babel of armed forces. Getting such disparate platforms to work together has proved troublesome for India, to say the least.

Interoperability, then, is the process of devising procedures or material fixes to make incompatible machinery compatible. Yes, the PLAN and Russian Navy have a fair amount of equipment in common: China imported Soviet-built weaponry to help kick start its naval renaissance in the 1990s. But at the same time, Chinese industry started building ships, planes, and armaments with zest — even as Russia fields newfangled hardware of its own. Consequently, the navies are drifting apart in compatibility terms. Interoperability is on the decline. Exercises help restore it. (Moscow is reportedly mulling a purchase of Chinese frigates like the Linyi and Weifang; reciprocal arms sales help narrow the gap as well.)

Eating soup together

Then there’s the human factor. Ameliorating equipment interoperability challenges is well and good, but the finest implement is no better than its user. Napoleon once quipped that soldiers have to eat soup together for a long time before they can fight as a unit. Same goes for seamen. Armed forces are teams: Their members have to learn common tactics, techniques, and procedures. And they have to practice tactics and routine operations, over and over again. Repetition is the soul of combat effectiveness.

Crewmen also need get to know one another, acquainting themselves with their shipmates’ strengths, weaknesses, and foibles. Strangers seldom collaborate smoothly in the hothouse environment of combat. That’s doubly true in alliances, where linguistic barriers, disparate histories and cultures, and countless other impediments work against military efficiency. Seafarers learn by doing: if you want to work well together, then work together early and often. Eat soup together — and refine seamanship, tactical acumen, and élan in the bargain.

That’s the tactical and strategic logic behind Joint Sea 2015 — if we take Moscow’s and Beijing’s words at face value. But are there ulterior motives impelling this Mediterranean adventure?

Of course. For one, it’s a reply to the U.S. pivot to Asia. As Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu explained in November when announcing a slate of Sino-Russian undertakings, including Joint Sea 2015, the two partners are worried about “attempts to strengthen [U.S.] military and political clout” in the Asia-Pacific.

That’s a worrisome trend from their standpoint. The U.S. Navy has mounted a standing presence in China’s and Russia’s near seas since World War II, manifest in the Japan-based Seventh Fleet. It’s augmenting that presence as it rebalances to the Far East. By staging a show of force in the Mediterranean, to NATO’s immediate south, Moscow and Beijing proclaim, sotto voce, that what’s good for the U.S. Navy is good for the Russian Navy and PLAN.

Learning from the best

But there’s more to the Mediterranean expedition than jabbing NATO in the eye. Contesting control of Eurasian waters is sound strategy backed up by history. During World War II, Yale professor Nicholas Spykman ascribed the age of British maritime supremacy to the Royal Navy’s control of the “girdle of marginal seas” ringing Eurasia’s coastlines. He called the South China Sea — the site of territorial disputes among China and several other nations — the “Asiatic Mediterranean.” Seagoing forces could flit around the periphery quickly and economically relative to land transport — radiating power and influence into the Eurasian rimlands from the sea. Mobility and seaborne firepower let Britannia rule. By cruising the Mediterranean Sea, the Russian and Chinese fleets project power into European waters – much as the Royal Navy projected power into Asian waters via the South China Sea and other littoral expanses. The logic works both ways.

To Chinese and Russian eyes, surrendering control of offshore waters to the U.S. Navy looks like surrendering control to the Royal Navy and fellow imperial powers a century ago. Historical memory is especially acute for China, which lost control of its seaboard and internal waterways to waterborne conquerors. But Russia endured traumas of its own: It watched the Imperial Japanese Navy demolish the Russian Navy during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. China and Russia hope to banish such memories while turning Spykman’s logic of nautical supremacy to their advantage. If successful, they’ll stiff-arm the United States in Asia while projecting power into NATO waters.

Vying for control of these seas puts important Eurasian audiences — prospective allies, prospective foes, fence-sitters — on notice that China and Russia are sea powers to be reckoned with. And on a global level, Joint Sea 2015 could be a forerunner to bigger things. In 1970, for example, the Soviet Navy executed a deployment titled Okean (ocean), which stunned Western navies through its geographical scale and the sheer number of assets deployed. Indeed, some 200 Soviet warships and hundreds of aircraft took to the Baltic Sea, Norwegian Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean, and Western Pacific.

It was an armada, mounting a presence across an enormous swathe of the world’s oceans and seas. Soviet ships weren’t just plentiful in numbers but youthful, generally under 20-years-old. Okean made it plain that the Soviet Navy was outbuilding its Western rivals at a time when the United States was in a funk over the Vietnam War and the U.S. Navy was under strain. The exercise made the statement that the Soviet Navy was a serious contender for mastery of the seas. It could defend Warsaw Pact shores while competing against the U.S. Navy on the vasty main.

However gratifying for Moscow, though, such capers set the law of unintended consequences in motion. By the 1980s, the Soviet naval rise jolted the United States into a naval buildup of its own — a buildup that empowered the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to reassert their supremacy in Eurasian waters while setting the stage for the United States’ post-Cold War preeminence. In short, Moscow’s propaganda coup backfired badly: it goaded Washington into action, prompting the Carter and Reagan administrations to fashion a new, offensive-minded maritime strategy prosecuted by a nearly 600-ship navy. That’s what strategists call self-defeating behavior. So be careful what you wish for, Russia and China.

Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Thursday we brought you the story of actor Johnny Depp’s two Yorkshire terriers, which Australian authorities believed he had brought into the country illegally and threatened to euthanize if they were not sent back to the United States. The affair has now reached a happy ending, and the dogs, Pistol and Boo, are on their way back to the United States.

Australian Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has been vocal in his efforts to enforce his country’s biosecurity laws against the superstar and celebrated the victory on Twitter:

Dogs gone.

— Barnaby Joyce (@Barnaby_Joyce) May 15, 2015

“Two dogs that were brought into Australia without meeting our import requirements have now been exported back to their country of origin. A Department of Agriculture officer has escorted the two dogs from the property in Queensland, where they had been held under quarantine order, to the airport for their flight home,” Joyce said in a statement. “All costs associated with returning the dogs were met by the owners.”

Australia has strict requirement on the importation of animals in order to prevent the spread of disease and invasive species. While the threats to euthanize Pistol and Boo might seem extreme, Australia has in recent years seen several invasive species arrive on its shores. The Department of Agriculture’s hardline response, in light of such incidents, doesn’t seem so extreme.

The international reaction to the incident however has included anything but a serious contemplation of the bio-risks inherent to an interconnected world and has boiled down to the hashtag #WarOnTerriers:

As you were, Australia. The #WarOnTerriers is over. Depp's dogs have finally left Australia http://t.co/dYjA3JVkko pic.twitter.com/fqiV97USTE

— Greg Barila (@GregBarila) May 15, 2015

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The review of limitations on fundamental rights, such as freedoms of association and expression, as well as the rights of individuals to vote and run as candidates are among the main recommendations in the final report by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on the 1 March 2015 parliamentary elections in Tajikistan.

The report, published on 15 May 2015, indicates that recent amendments to the electoral law addressed some long-standing ODIHR recommendations but, overall, did not significantly improve the process. It underscores a need to comprehensively review electoral legislation.

While the report notes that elections were conducted according to legal deadlines and the sessions of the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda were generally open to observers and media, it recommends the election administration be made fully independent from the government and sufficiently pluralistic and inclusive to encourage broad confidence. It further recommends that all essential election-related data should be made publicly available in a timely manner.

The report also recommends measures to enhance the integrity of the voting process and calls for urgent measures to address serious deficiencies observed during the polling and counting processes, in particular pertaining to the secrecy and equality of the vote, integrity of ballot boxes, and protection against undue influence on electoral choices.

In noting concerns that some candidates used the advantage of their office for electoral purposes, the report calls on the authorities to develop and implement mechanisms to ensure a clear separation between State and party.

Additional recommendations relate to amending the legal framework to allow for citizen election observers, provide full access for observers to all stages of the elections, and entitle observers to receive certified copies of results protocols.

For election day observation, ODIHR joined efforts with the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the European Parliament.

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Marco Rubio, the Republican presidential hopeful from Florida, opened his remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) earlier this week by quoting from the last speech President John F. Kennedy gave before his assassination. Kennedy had insisted that by making America stronger he had advanced the cause of world peace. By contrast, Rubio observed, President Barack Obama had entered office believing that “America was too hard on our adversaries,” and that the world would benefit if “America took a step back.”

It was a deft bit of oratory. Kennedy, after all, was, like the 43-year-old Rubio, young, brash, optimistic — and a member of the U.S. Senate. Citing a Democrat allowed Rubio to imply to CFR, a nonpartisan body whose centrist internationalism constitutes a heresy for Republican ideologues, that he represents an older, bipartisan tradition. Republican presidential candidates don’t go to CFR to win votes, after all, but to acquire a sheen of elite legitimacy. The boyish Rubio knows he needs that.

If that was the goal, Rubio succeeded. Though the crowd listened to his prepared remarks in dead silence, the consensus afterwards was that he had addressed a wide range of subjects with a high degree of fluency, and had said nothing he would later need to retract. Rubio has made himself CFR’s favorite Republican candidate — though I doubt he’ll note that on the stump in South Carolina.

I am not convinced, however, that John F. Kennedy — the Kennedy who famously promised in his inaugural address to “pay any price, bear any burden … to assure the survival and the success of liberty” — is the right metaphor for our time.

Kennedy was wrong even for his own time. In his blithe self-confidence, Kennedy utterly miscalculated the effect that his military build-up and zest for geopolitical competition would produce on the Soviet Union, and thus brought us to the verge of World War III. Only thanks to the wisdom and restraint of a generation “tempered by war,” as he also put it, did Kennedy see his way past his own triumphal pieties to a less cocky and combative stance. Those historians who argue that Kennedy would not, in fact, have enmeshed the United States in a land war in Vietnam, assume that by the time of his death JFK had assimilated hard lessons about the limits of U.S. power.

I am tempted to quote Lloyd Bentsen: “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Our presidential candidates are no longer tempered by war; if only for this reason, we should wish them to err on the side of peace. Both in his speech and in the subsequent Q&A with Charlie Rose, Rubio argued for a more interventionist stance everywhere. He favors embedding Special Forces in Yemen to help with the Saudi-directed air war there, providing weaponry to the government in Ukraine, stepping up aid to the rebels in Syria, and expanding airstrikes over Iraq. He would re-impose sanctions on Cuba, and end discussions of a two-state solution in Israel. Rubio hasn’t yet discovered a “missile gap” with Russia, but he does argue that the United States is unilaterally disarming in the face of growing threat.

Strictly as a matter of political calculus, I don’t see how “rollback,” to use the old Cold War phrase, holds wide appeal. It’s Republican audiences, not Democratic ones, who are taxing Jeb Bush with his brother’s ill-fated decision to intervene in Iraq. Rubio has a perfectly sound answer to this critique — I wouldn’t have gone into Iraq knowing what we know now, and President Bush has said that wouldn’t have either — but the persistence of the issue reflects ongoing skepticism about military adventures abroad. Where is the groundswell, outside the Weekly Standard, for deeper American military engagement in the Middle East?

I very much doubt that the growing anxiety over America’s loss of influence in the world, and the rise of competitors like China and Iran, constitutes the sort of crisis that makes foreign affairs a first-order electoral issue. But even if it does, I suspect that the sweet spot will lie elsewhere. An effective anti-Obama agenda, even if it’s substantively wrong, would stress traditional statecraft, managerial competence, sober oratory — Bush I rather than Bush II. be a good moment for Colin Powell, but he’s not running. It’s not such a bad moment for Hillary Clinton, who is.

Whatever its political merits, Rubio’s chesty worldview would make the world less safe rather than more. He would have the United States throw in its lot with Saudi Arabia in its growing proxy war with Iran by putting boots on the ground in Yemen. President Obama is trying to use the current Camp David summit to assure Gulf States that the U.S. fully recognizes the threat of Iranian adventurism while at the same time restraining the headlong rush to confrontation. That requires a degree of balance and prudence to which our budding Kennedy seems immune. Rubio would encourage Ukraine to join NATO, though he argued that the American failure to bolster Ukrainian military capability over the last few years has left it currently unsuitable for membership. That kind of brinksmanship would only provoke reciprocal aggression from President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The actual, as opposed to cartoon-version, John F. Kennedy, made just that mistake.

Rubio is quite prepared to say perfectly inane things for perceived political advantage — most notably, his proposal to require Iranian recognition of Israel as a condition for Senate approval of a nuclear deal. (He did not repeat that formulation before the CFR.) Nevertheless, it’s obvious that he thinks seriously about policy issues, foreign as well as domestic. He asserted that early intervention on behalf of the Syrian rebels might have stemmed the rise of the Islamic State there, which is at the very least an arguable proposition. Intriguingly, he mocked Obama’s preference for “nation-building at home,” implying that he sees at least some merit to nation-building abroad — a neoconservative shibboleth that few of Rubio’s rivals would endorse. He advocated “transparent and effective” foreign assistance, whatever that means.

Rubio has positioned himself to be the champion of the “pay any price, bear any burden” wing of the GOP. It will be highly entertaining to watch him spar with Rand Paul, the isolationist standard-bearer, or with halfwits like Rick Perry. And nothing will beat watching him torture Jeb Bush, his former mentor, over the failures of brother George. Should Jeb falter, Rubio would have a good shot at the Republican nomination. Given his youth and his “story” — child of impoverished Cuban immigrants — he might match up quite well against Clinton.

Rubio is adroit enough that he could tone down his bellicosity in order to mount an effective attack against Obama’s foreign policy, as embodied in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. That, too, would be fun to watch. Nevertheless, the world of 2016, with its emerging powers and disintegrating international order, its sub-state actors and transnational problems, does not need John Kennedy circa 1960. That would not be fun to watch.

 Joe Raedle/Getty Images

May 1975: Chinese Vice-Premier Li Xiannian and ECC Commissioner for external affaires Christopher Soames.

These days, the People’s Republic of China and the European Union celebrate the 40th anniversary of their diplomatic relationship. At the age of 40 one might assume that this relationship has indeed ‘grown up’ by now.

But has it, really?

Here are three indicators supporting this view and three against it:

FOR: China established diplomatic relations in 1975 with the – back then – European Economic Community at a time that is commonly dubbed “Eurosclerosis”, with European integration stalling and a Community that was far from establishing a common foreign policy. The move thus underlines the strategic importance for global politics that China has seen in the European integration project from the very beginning, and even during an era that was clearly dominated by only two Cold War superpowers.

AGAINST: Times have changed, notably the old bipolar
world has come to an end. But even if we believe theories
of a multipolar configuration, there are still doubts
whether the now much more mature European Union,
which even has a face to show to the world, can be considered
one of these “poles” or even an actor in global politics, with
institutional crisis having become a permanent feature
and 28 members attached to their individual prerogatives.

FOR: The trade relationship between China and the EU
is still the largest in the world. For several years now,
China is Europe’s No. 2 partner and Europe is China’s
No. 1 partner. Goods and services of over 1 bn EUR
per day are exchanged between the two economic giants.
Initiatives such as the new investment treaty and
possibly a free trade agreement are likely to foster
EU-China trade further.

AGAINST: If TTIP comes, the US-EU trade relationship may
outperform the Sino-European one. The fact that Europe and
China could not even find common ground in terms of China’s
WTO-status (market economy or not) indicates the level of
difficulty to turn negotiations into concrete outcomes.
What is more, EU-China relations are still based on an agreement
of 1985 as the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement failed.

FOR: Even if international relations are increasingly
dominated by business, investment and economics,
one cannot exclude politics. We’ve come a long way
over the last 40 years in terms of approaching each
other politically. Since 1998 China and the EU have
held annual summits. Politicians at all levels from
China and all member states and at EU-level constantly
meet each other. Chinese has become a popular
language to study and cities such as Beijing and Shanghai,
which host some of the finest universities worldwide,
have become attractive destinations for European
exchange students and vice versa.

AGAINST: Notwithstanding the exponential increase of
people-to-people exchange, a recent survey by the
EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management
and Oklahoma University has confirmed the negative
perceptions of Europeans towards China, notably the Chinese
government. It is noteworthy that strong trade relations do not
seem to help mitigate the situation: the Germans are among the
most skeptical Europeans vis-à-vis the Chinese.

This blogpost was published simultaneously on the website of the EU-Asia Institute and on Blogactiv.eu.

The post 40 years – the age of maturity? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A múzeumok délelőtt 10 órától éjjeli kettőig tartanak nyitva. A rendezvény délelőtt 10 órától kézművesvásárral indul, ennek helyszíne a Színház tér. A hétvége utolsó lehetőség arra, hogy megtekintsék a Románia ókori arany- és ezüstkincsei kiállítást a Kultúrpalota Tükörtermében, a kiállítás a Múzeumok éjszakája karkötővel és 3 lejes külön belépővel látogatható. Délelőtt 10 és 12 óra, majd délután 1 és 4 óra között a Maros Megyei Múzeum gyermekfoglalkozásokat ajánl, amelyeket a Kultúrpalota kistermében tartanak. A múzeumpedagógiai műhelyekben arcfestésre, modellezésre és üvegfestésre kínálnak lehetőséget. A rendezvény keretében látogatható lesz a városháza tornya is. A Néprajzi és Népművészeti Múzeumban a Maros megyei városok és falvak világa-, az Erdélyi csipkék- valamint a Kivonatok a bábszínház történetéből kiállításokkal várják a látogatókat. A Természettudományi Múzeumban a Romániában élő vad orchideák kiállítást lehet megtekinteni, ugyanitt délután 1 és 4 között gyerekfoglalkozások lesznek, kertészkedni hívják a gyerekeket, és állatokat készíteni. A Várban Az avar harcosok Erdélyben kiállítást ajánlják a szervezők. A kiállítások és a gyermekprogramok Múzeumok éjszakája karkötővel látogathatók, a szabadtéri programok ingyenesek. Karkötőket a Kultúrpalotában és a Maros Megyei Múzeum részlegeinek székhelyén, valamint a társszervezőknél lehet beszerezni.

BISHKEK, 16 May 2015 – The fifth meeting of the Council of Heads of Financial Intelligence Units of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) focused on combating money laundering and terrorism financing took place on 16 May in Bishkek, supported by the OSCE Centre in Bishkek.

The participants discussed the establishment of an information exchange between the Financial Intelligence units of the CIS countries. They also discussed the draft Protocol on Amendments and Additions to the Agreement on counteraction of laundering of criminal incomes and financing of terrorism and the Protocol on Co-operation between the Council of the Heads of Financial Intelligence Units of the CIS Member States.

“The establishment of an effective system for combating money laundering and terrorist financing is key for the economic and social stability of every country and the integrity of its financial system,” said Head of the OSCE Centre in Bishkek, Ambassador Sergey Kapinos. “It represents an essential tool towards improving the investment climate and attracting foreign investments. No country can counteract these threats alone. It requires joint efforts by all stakeholders.”

As a result of the Centre’s assistance Kyrgyzstan was removed from the FATF’s ‘grey list’ in July 2014 and is no longer subject to the FATF’s monitoring process under its ongoing global process of compliance with requirements on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism. In a related, more recent achievement, the Eurasian Group on combatting money laundering and financing of terrorism (EAG) removed Kyrgyzstan from its monitoring list.

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Wesley Clark, once a four star officer, next a failed presidential candidate, and then involved in some kind of reality TV show, has become “a penny stock general,” says Bloomberg News. In an impressive story, Zachary Mider and Zeke Faux write that:

“Since he ran for president in 2004, Clark has joined the boards of at least 18 public companies, 10 of them penny-stock outfits, whose shares trade in the ‘over the counter’ markets, a corner of Wall Street where fraud and manipulation are common.”

All but one of the 10 lost value during Clark’s tenure. Three went bankrupt shortly after he left their boards, and the chief executive officer of one pleaded guilty to fraud.”

In the department of picking Army generals: I have never met the new Army chief of staff, Mark Milley, that I can recall. But I am hearing some very bad vibes about him, real unhappiness with this selection. People wonder how it happened that of all the available candidates, it was Milley, kind of a non-entity, was tapped.

In other officer news, the commander of the Air Force “boneyard” in Arizona got fired.

John Foster/DefenseLink Multimedia/Flickr

The appearance of Russia's state-of-the-art Armata tank at Victory Parade on May 9 in Moscow produced a bombshell effect. Indeed, the T-14 Armata has no analogue in the world. Moreover, Armata is the only tank to date that corresponds to the military principle of six zones. Why did the new tank get so much attention?

Depuis quelques années, la vie politique française a beaucoup tourné autour de la question du front républicain. Il renaît à chaque succès électoral du FN. Fort confus, il renvoie à une mythologie plutôt qu'à un débat rationnel et factuel. / France, Démocratie, Élections, État, Extrême droite, Histoire, (...) / France, Démocratie, Élections, État, Extrême droite, Histoire, Idées, Idéologie, Parti politique, Politique, Stratégie - 2015/03

157556 Thomas Rymer, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Public Affairs Unit, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights

The skills and tools required to successfully prosecute hate crimes were at the centre of the first training-of-trainers event organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) as part of its Prosecutors and Hate Crime Training (PAHCT) programme. The training was provided in Warsaw from 13 to 15 May 2015.

"ODIHR is committed to helping participating States end bias-motivated violence, and prosecutors are a central part of our strategy. This training event is essential to help us prepare prosecutors for PAHCT's implementation," said Ales Hanek, Hate Crime Officer with ODIHR's Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department and a trainer at the event. "By bringing together officials with extensive experience in prosecuting hate crimes with other prosecutors who want to strengthen their knowledge of this critical issue, we are able to help them guide their colleagues in the most effective way."

"This event is a natural evolution from the creation of PAHCT and its accompanying guide. Bringing together prosecutors with different backgrounds helps raise awareness of the magnitude of the problem and the ways in which we can challenge it effectively," said Elizabeth Howe, General Counsel to the International Association of Prosecutors. "Recognizing the damaging impacts of hate crimes on both individuals and to the fabric of society is essential if we want to actively counter this scourge."

The accompanying guide – Prosecuting Hate Crimes: A Practical Guide – was written in co-operation with the International Association of Prosecutors to improve the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes across the OSCE region. The guide, which complements ODIHR’s Prosecutors and Hate Crime Training (PAHCT), was released last year and is relevant to different legal systems and legislative frameworks. It aims to explain the impact of hate crimes by highlighting their specific features compared with other crimes.

The training is the latest part of ODIHR efforts to reinforce prosecutor's abilities to prosecute hate crimes effectively. PAHCT aims to expand and hone prosecutors’ abilities to identify hate crimes and bring hate crime cases to trial, to gain convictions and to ensure appropriate sentencing.

 

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Megjelent az egységes kérelem benyújtási határidejének meghosszabbításával összefüggésben egyes agrártámogatási tárgyú miniszteri rendeletek módosításáról szóló 22/2015 FM rendelet, melynek alapján az ügyfelek egy héttel tovább, május 22-ig nyújthatják be egységes kérelmeiket szankciómentesen a Mezőgazdasági és Vidékfejlesztési Hivatalhoz.