Foreign Policy Blogs

Dalai Lama to speak at UC San Diego Commencement (UCSD).

China’s global censorship campaign has reared its ugly head again, this time at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD). There, a nationalistic overseas Chinese students’ organization with ties to the Chinese consulate-general in Los Angeles has attempted to censor a graduation speech by exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile in Britain, a similar Chinese students’ organization with ties to the Chinese embassy in London tried to censor a debate at Durham University featuring Chinese Canadian human rights activist Anastasia Lin.

These latest efforts at exporting Chinese censorship to Western universities appear to have failed. Similar efforts to impose Chinese censorship abroad have met with greater success, however, and such activities continue to pose a threat to free speech at Western universities. They also risk creating a hostile environment for other Chinese students who do not engage in such activities.

Events at UCSD began on February 2, when the university announced that the Dalai Lama would give the commencement address at its graduation ceremony in June. “We are honored to host His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at UC San Diego and thankful that he will share messages of global compassion with our graduates and their families, as well as with a broad public audience,” said UCSD chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla in the announcement, “A man of peace, the Dalai Lama promotes global responsibility and service to humanity. These are the ideals we aim to convey and instill in our students and graduates at UC San Diego.”

The next day, a UCSD chapter of the “Chinese Students and Scholars Association” (中国学生学者联合会, CSSA) – a Chinese government-sponsored “united front” organization with chapters at universities around the world – issued a statement condemning the Dalai Lama’s planned appearance and calling on the university to cancel it, citing his unacceptability in the eyes of the Chinese government. CSSA called the Dalai Lama a “separatist” who seeks to “split the motherland,” claimed that his planned appearance “hurt the feelings” of Chinese students at UCSD, and vowed “to take further measures to firmly resist the university’s unreasonable behavior” in coordination with the Chinese consulate (See Campus Reform, China Digital Times, FIRE, Inside Higher Ed, Quartz, Taiwan Sentinel, The Tibet Post, The Triton).

Crudely hijacking the language of diversity and inclusion, CSSA members adopted the hashtag #ChineseStudentsMatter, as though inviting the Dalai Lama to speak at UCSD was tantamount to some form of anti-Chinese racism. Conflating mainland Chinese government policy with Chinese culture, Chinese student Wang Ruixuan wrote in the UCSD Guardian that “The main reason why many Chinese students are upset is that our university shows little consideration about cultural respect, as [the Dalai Lama] is a politically sensitive person in China.” Despite CSSA opposition, the university has no plans to disinvite the Dalai Lama.

Anastasia Lin (The Tab, Durham).

Meanwhile, a CSSA at Durham University in Britain tried to censor a debate appearance by Chinese Canadian human rights activist Anastasia Lin on February 10. Lin, a Falun Gong practitioner, has been particularly outspoken on the subject of religious persecution in China. CSSA claimed that Lin’s planned appearance was “a violation of the belief and feelings of Chinese students,” compared her to an Islamic State terrorist, and lodged a complaint with the Chinese embassy in London. The embassy then warned the university against Lin’s appearance, saying that “Chinese students are not comfortable about Lin because she’s not friendly to the Chinese government.” The Durham Union debating society went ahead with the event as planned (See BuzzFeed, FIRE, Palatinate, The Tab, Taiwan Sentinel).

CSSA is an “unofficial” affiliate of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s United Front Work Department (中共中央统一战线工作部 or 统战部, UFWD), a “shadowy agency” of the one-party state whose mission is “to spread China’s influence by ultimately gaining control over a range of groups not affiliated with the party and that are often outside the mainland.” UFWD seeks to achieve its goals through the use of nominally “non-governmental” front organizations such as the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (中国和平统一促进会, CCPPNR), which currently boasts some 200 overseas chapters in 90 countries around the world, where it frequently cooperates with overseas CSSA university chapters in pro-Beijing activities. Current UFWD head Ms. Sun Chunlan (孙春兰) is also the executive vice-president of CCPPNR.

In addition to their UFWD and CCPPNR affiliation, overseas CSSA chapters maintain close contact with the Communist Youth League (中国共产主义青年团 or 中国共青团, CYL), the party’s organization for students in China. U.S. national CSSA president Mr. Huang Di (黄迪) has appeared at UFWD and CYL events in China and was featured at an annual CCPPNR meeting at Harvard University in 2015. Leaders of overseas CSSA chapters, like Huang Di, are often students with strong CYL credentials from China. China uses overseas CSSAs to monitor, manage, and “protect” Chinese students from Western political influence while it uses them to “condition the West” according to China’s preferences and China’s methods of control.

According to Chinese Communist Party directives the targets of “overseas patriotic united front work” are Chinese students, professionals, and others living abroad including those who have taken foreign citizenship. Among its main tasks are to struggle against all forms of “separatism” and to unite all Chinese people worldwide “to achieve the complete reunification of the motherland.” Chinese students and CSSA chapters at universities in the United States and elsewhere have been identified as a particular focus of the Communist Party’s overseas “united front work,” frequently orchestrated by Chinese embassies and consulates abroad (See ChinaChange, The China Story, Radio Free Asia, Sydney Morning Herald 2014 & 2016, The Wall Street Journal).

Overseas students a focus of China’s “united front work” (U.S.-China Press).

In January 2017, U.S.-based CSSA and CCPPNR organizations joined in protest against Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen’s visits to the United States and to demand adherence to the “one-China principle.” Previously, these same groups had joined in protest against a visit by Tsai as Democratic Progressive Party chairperson and co-organized an annual CCPPNR meeting at Harvard featuring national CSSA president Huang Di in 2015. In 2016, New Zealand-based CSSA and CCPPNR organizations joined to issue a “solemn statement” supporting China’s claims on islands in the South China Sea. In 2014, CSSA and CCPPNR organizations based in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe joined in protest against Japan’s “occupation” of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.

As the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong has noted, CSSAs under the direction of and funded by Chinese embassies and consulates abroad have long been involved in the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to silence its critics including Falun Gong practitioners like Anastasia Lin. In 2015, a CSSA at Columbia University with a history of anti-Falun Gong activities was shut down for violating university financial and organizational policies. CSSA anti-Falun Gong activities have also been observed at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, at universities in Canada, at Australian National University, and at Magdeburg University in Germany.

CSSAs have likewise previously opposed Tibet human rights activism including visits by the Dalai Lama at Western universities. In 2008, the University of Washington bowed to CSSA demands that an appearance by the Dalai Lama would include no discussion on the political status of Tibet. That same year, a CSSA at Duke University was implicated in death threats against a Chinese student accused of pro-Tibet sympathies; and members of a CSSA at Cornell University targeted a professor with abusive online messages for showing a film on human rights issues in Tibet.

On many campuses, CSSAs have a close working relationship with Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes. Confucius Institutes are a noted part of Beijing’s “overseas propaganda” apparatus, and their presence on Western university campuses has been described as “academic malware” and as an educational “Trojan horse” due to their censorship practices and overtly propagandist character. Universities including the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University have severed ties with Confucius Institutes and the American Association of University Professors has called them a threat to academic freedom due to their relationship with the Chinese government.

CSSA’s have frequently been suspected of spying activities, particularly spying on Chinese students by other Chinese students to ensure their continued loyalty to “the motherland” while abroad. Chinese government-funded CSSAs at European universities have additionally been implicated in cases of industrial espionage.

Most Chinese students who go abroad do so simply to study and to enjoy the experience of life in another country. These students should be welcomed with open arms. Some, however, have chosen to function as agents of Chinese government propaganda, censorship, and surveillance at universities abroad. Such activities are a threat to free speech and academic freedom, not only for Chinese students, but for university communities at large.

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The head of Europe’s delegation to the United Nations describes an ideological battle in the EU between globalism and nationalism.

The United Nations has an important role to play in countering the issues threatening to break up the European Union, according to the head of Europe’s mission to the world governing body.

Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida said in a speech at the Foreign Policy Association in New York that the EU and UN must serve as pillars of stability against a wave of movements challenging Western Europe’s liberal order.

After decades of attempted continental unity following World War II, Almeida said “politics is back, big time.”

‘Turn of a cycle’

“Elements of our model of organizing societies are being challenged,” he added. “We need to have a serious conversation about where the world is going, and I believe the best place to have this serious conversation is the United Nations.”

The world entered a “remarkable” period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Almeida said, when trade was globalized, technological revolutions created more open societies and developing countries began to lift themselves out of poverty.

However, these trends are also partly to blame for recent surges in nationalism, inequality and authoritarianism forces Almeida described as “fault lines” that could break apart the EU.

“This period is now over,” Almeida said. “We have to acknowledge we are at the turn of a cycle.”

Events from the past few years have accelerated these trends, he explained, pointing to the Great Recession, the ongoing war in Syria, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the UK’s shock vote to leave the EU.

“We’ve had a few surprises in the last year or so in terms of going to bed with one idea and waking up with another,” Almeida said. “If we lower our degree of awareness and vigilance and attention, we may wake up the following morning with some surprises,” he added.

At the center of all of this is an ideological battle between globalism and nationalism, according to Almeida. He said there are people on both sides of the political spectrum that believe solutions to today’s problems can only be found in “the narrow limits of a nation-state.”

Across Europe, there are populist candidates challenging the political establishment on what they see as an abandonment of traditional values, and one of the biggest flashpoints has been over immigration.

“You have a tension between multiculturalism and nativism,” Almeida said. “This is a major new phenomenon in some of our countries, because populists are getting too powerful.”

Crossroads

How deeply these fault lines are entrenched will be revealed this year when three of Europe’s strongest democracies—France, Germany and the Netherlands—hold their elections. In each, establishment politicians are facing competition from upstart populists.

The ambassador also pointed to indications of an isolationist US under President Donald Trump as a reason for Europe’s political unrest. He said, “the country that assured that uni-polarity (sic) is clearly not wishing to retain that moving forward.”

“Others are coming up,” he added.

Despite reassurance from White House aides in recent weeks, Trump questioned the value of NATO to US interests during the election, a doubt that stoked fears among European leaders that their strongest ally was pulling back support. Some believe Trump’s government budget will include slashes to foreign aid.

To counter the forces threatening the EU, Almeida said, “we should be more rational and less emotional” in decision-making, and said the United Nations is the best place to have these conversations.

“This is where this crossroads in which we are today, the beginning of 2017,” Almeida concluded. “This is where I believe the European Union and the United Nations come together.”

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FPA Live with Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida

由 Foreign Policy Association 貼上了 2017年2月28日

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Nigeria’s president, Muhamaddu Buhari, headed to the United Kingdom for his “annual leave” on January 19, and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo became acting president. Two weeks later, Buhari notified the National Assembly that he was extending his leave for medical reasons. It’s approaching seven weeks, and Buhari is still on leave. With the exception of calling into a live show on February 23, he has not yet been seen in public. According to a leading online news outlet, Buhari had a prostate flare up and is also undergoing treatment for Crohn’s Disease.

Several Nigerian politicians have made a pilgrimage to the UK—potentially at taxpayers’ expense—and released photos with a seemingly jovial Buhari. U.S. President Donald J. Trump called Buhari in mid-February to discuss shared security concerns and the provision of weapons to the Nigerian Army to combat terrorism. Buhari’s press aides have also routinely tweeted good wishes to the Nigerian people supposedly from the ailing president. However, they have yet to arrange for Buhari to make a physical appearance, leaving Nigerians to draw their own conclusions about Buhari’s health and if and when he will return.

The silence around Buhari’s disappearance furthers a narrative that Nigeria’s political elites refuse to provide critical information to the public because it’s against their own self-interest. While lawmakers have jumped on a plane to visit the ailing president, none have chosen to share his medical state or call on his government to disclose the gravity of his health condition with the nation. Also, no one has shared the cost that the nation is incurring while maintaining an ill president in the U.K. and an acting president in Nigeria.

Many Nigerians who initially decried the elected president’s absence have begun celebrating the acting president for doing many things they wish President Buhari had done. In his six weeks leading Nigeria, Osinbajo has visited the Niger Delta, injected U.S. dollars into the Nigerian forex market to ease exchange rate pressure, and requested that the Senate approve the acting chief justice. President Buhari refused to make these decisions, much to the chagrin of his citizens.

It’s easy to view Osinbajo’s short stint as a success given how it has injected renewed momentum into governing the country. It’s also true that Buhari naming Osinbajo as acting president was a win for Nigeria’s constitutional democracy—unlike in 2009 when in an eerily similar situation, as the then-president, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, lay dying in Saudi Arabia, the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) refused to acknowledge his inability to govern. The Senate had to use a parliamentary maneuver to name the VP as acting president. After three months overseas, Yar’Adua returned to the country and died shortly thereafter. And if Buhari is in fact significantly ill and unlikely to return, it will be the second time that the North has lost the presidency due to such circumstance.

In a country where politics and ethnic identity are so fraught, one might assume Buhari and the now ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), are intentionally refusing to show the president live or discuss the gravity of his condition. While much of the country is decrying the cost of keeping Buhari in the U.K. and wondering whether he’s still fit to govern, several prayer vigils are taking place in the North. As one would expect, Northerners are hoping to not lose their grip on power once again.

Beyond ethnicity, many of the elite likely are convinced Buhari’s departure would be to their detriment. In his two years in office, Nigerian civil society leaders have criticized Buhari’s reticence to address the allegations of corruption from those in his inner circle. Most notably in January, he refused to dismiss the Secretary General of the Federation whom the Senate recommended be removed and prosecuted. Buhari’s chief of staff has also been accused of diverting funds from the Nigerian High Commission in the UK to pay his own medical bill. Yet, at the very least, a rebalancing of power creates enough uncertainty for elites that maintaining the status quo may be their preferred option.

However, irrespective of Osinbajo’s great work as acting president, Buhari’s absence and the silence around it is a problem because of the many troubling issues that the elected head of state would ideally be healthy enough to manage. The country is suffering from drastic economic decline, slumping oil prices, ongoing Boko Haram attacks that have led to a humanitarian crisis, and internal strife between farmers and herdsmen in the nation’s middle belt—any one of which would ordinarily require the unhindered attention of a head of state. The acting president can try to address all of these problems in his temporary tenure, but Nigerian voters elected Buhari because they trusted him—not necessarily his deputized president—to play this role.

And with every passing day, the progress from a democratic transition is buried deeper. Buhari became president after a much celebrated concession from the incumbent—the first in the country’s history. It’s ironic then that a president who benefitted from his predecessor doing the right thing is now refusing to grant Nigerians the same display of putting country first.

For his part, Osinbajo might very well become the best acting president Nigeria has ever had. However, by enabling his boss and their party to keep withholding critical information from Nigerians, he’s now complicit in a regression of democratic ideals—ideals that appeared to be headed on the right trajectory when he and Buhari were duly elected in 2015.

Hopefully, President Buhari is alive and recovers. But for now, he should have the courage to share his prognosis with Nigerians. He should appear in public physically and demonstrate to Nigerians that in a short while he will be able to undertake the grueling task of governing again. For its part, the National Assembly should debate the severity of Buhari’s health and determine if it’s time for him to resign and let Osinbajo govern full-time. The nation’s psyche and fiscal health require nothing less.

Kehinde A. Togun is a senior director at The Arkin Group and a Truman National Security Fellow. He was previously the deputy director of PartnersGlobal’s Sub-Saharan Africa program. During Nigeria’s 2011 elections, he trained and advised civil society as they monitored the electoral process. Views expressed are his own. You can follow him on Twitter @kehindetogun.

The post Governing in Silence as Nigeria’s President Falls Sick appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

President Trump’s newly appointed U.S. National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, has been welcomed by many as a reasonable and educated choice to assist the new administration in upcoming policy decisions. McMaster, along with the new U.S. Defense Secretary General James Mattis, are highly enough regarded that the two generals have been likened as “proverbial canaries in the coal mine”, and are expected to signal early any dysfunction in the Trump administration, according to an opinion piece in the Washington Post.

Recently, McMaster’s reason and education led him to tell his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, in sharp contrast to other senior Trump advisers who promote a more black and white approach. At a meeting of the staff of the National Security Council, he opined that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic”.

But what does McMaster think concerning another major threat perhaps not on the minds of most Americans—that of Chinese expansionism in the East and South China Seas eventually leading to a Third World War? On China, McMaster seems to take the same reasonable and educated approach, if we take his comments at face value which he made during a military strategy forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in May 2016.

During that forum, McMaster drew parallels between Russia’s activities on its borders with similar Chinese activities in the South China Sea, declaring China was “challenging U.S. interests at the far reaches of American power” in an effort to “expand territory and expand their influence at the expense of U.S. interests and the security of our partners in the region”—comparing China’s assertiveness as “militarily analogous to what Russia’s done in Ukraine”.

McMaster characterized China’s land grab in the South China Sea as an effort to “project power outward from land into the maritime and aerospace domains, to restrict freedom of movement and action in those domains, and to—and to secure Chinese influence across those domains”. McMaster argues that China, in the same way Russia has established air supremacy over Ukraine from the ground, will use “cyberattacks, information warfare, [and] a sophisticated economic effort to undermine the post-World War II economic order in the region”.

The general concluded by stating that while the Chinese have “engaged in the largest theft of intellectual property in history”, implying that some of the thefts benefit the Chinese military, the U.S. military currently maintains a technological advantage, and will need to invest in “joint synergy” and “cohesive well-trained teams” to adapt technology to the U.S. military in the future to maintain its competitive advantage. No doubt the Chinese will continue to also pursue advanced technologies for their military in their own fashion, and McMaster is reasonable in focusing on technology as a primary concern in maintaining national security as well as projecting power overseas.

With seasoned and informed generals such as McMaster and Mattis on board, the Trump administration should have a fighting chance at keeping the U.S. military at the top of its game.

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The plane that is destined to replace the various types of aircraft flown by NATO forces and its allies might have some problems. The F-35 vertical take-off capable stealth fighter/bomber has been targeted by U.S. politicians for various reasons.

The F-35 will be distributed in various versions to different countries, and in return many of these participating countries will have a role in the global production of the F-35—similar to the multi-national production of the Tornado fighter/bomber or Airbus aircraft in Europe. With the suggestion of using the F-18E or an updated version by President Trump and being put into full effect by the Canadian government, the F-35 program will become a lot messier, and therefore more costly to all countries involved.

Trump suggested to Boeing that an upgraded version of the F-18E should be cost out comparable to the F-35. Many see this as a bargaining tactic, by pressuring Lockheed to lower the price on the future F-35. While a high-tech upgrade with stealth capabilities is possible for the F-18E and even the F-15, it would still lack the capabilities of the next generation F-35 that most likely would need to be invented even with a stealthy F-18E or F-15. While President Trump wishes to make it clear that the U.S. might walk away from the F-35 despite the chaos it would cause, it is most likely a bargaining tactic than an actual plan by the new Administration.

It is possible however to have the new F-18E or F-15, as stealthy prototypes have been produced. But in the end, the technologies that will prevent U.S. pilots from being shot down by S-400 and S-500 missiles is based in future developments of the F-35 platform, leading possibly to a revised F-22 with lower costs and higher production numbers. If lowering the costs of the F-35 works, and this cost reduction is transferred to lowering the costs of future projects like a revised F-35 or F-22, it would be worth the pressure on Lockheed for the U.S. government.

The Canadian proposal to replace the F-35 was a political talking point for years before the current government came into power. The Trudeau eventually decided—without much time or consultation, or even a competition—to buy several F-18Es to supplement its forces while it still pays into the F-35 program. Many in Canada believe that the supplemental planes may be a stepping stone to replace the F-35 altogether.

But with fees still being paid into the F-35 program and no consideration for other candidates like the Dassault Rafale or Saab Gripen, it seems as if there is no constructive arguments for keeping both planes in Canada’s inventory. Several retired generals have also voiced their concerns. This call has fallen on deaf ears despite the fact that F-18Es less advanced than the F-35 and that Canada is opting for newer planes instead of de-commissioned ones that could be updated to save costs. In the end, Boeing has won another round against Dassault and Saab, despite the loss of Canadian jobs and possible loss of future pilots.

All in all, pilots and the people they are protecting are paramount, not the reputation of politicians making political decisions without regard to technical information or the lives of the men and women in uniform.

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FARC rebels at a demilitarization “settlement” in La Paz, Colombia in Feb. 2017. After reaching a historic peace treaty with the government, FARC members have agreed to surrender their weapons and finally bring a 50-year war to its end. (Federico Rios Escobar/NY Times)

For over 50 years, the government of Colombia engaged in a brutal, seemingly endless conflict with leftist guerrilla rebels. Last year, President Juan Manuel Santos reached a peace agreement with the leading rebel group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Beginning in February 2017, scenes played out across the country that many thought they would never see: FARC members peacefully surrendering their weapons, and preparing to return to civilian life under the protection of the military that had been their mortal enemy for decades.

Of course what everyone in Colombia wants to know is, is this peace for real? Is this really the end of a seemingly endless struggle in which hundreds of thousands perished? Is Colombia moving into a new era of acceptance and reconciliation? While the outlook seems positive, the road will not be easy.

Rocky road to peace

The current resolution is not without controversy. The peace accord was driven by Santos, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the longstanding yet. Under the deal, FARC rebels would report to demobilization zones overseen by UN personnel. They would disarm and begin a transition/reintegration into Colombian society, monitored by the Colombian government. In return, rebels are to be granted full amnesty, though the government promises to launch a “transitional justice” system to address claims of crimes committed during the war.

Santos had compliance of FARC leaders and the best chance for peace in decades. Yet when Colombians voted on the peace accord in an October 2016 referendum, it was rejected. Many felt the deal was too lenient on the rebels, as the amnesty promise meant none of them would see jail time. As described by Helen Murphy of Reuters, “The accord has been heavily criticized by many.”

So what did Santos do? He circumvented the public’s decision, using the country’s Congress to force the agreement into law in November last year. In other words, the president decided “put the deal in front of voters—and then simply sidestep[ped] them when he did not like the outcome.” Not surprisingly, this angered many Colombians. The next presidential election in Colombia is in 2018, and if Santos is not re-elected the entire agreement may be in jeopardy.

FARC rebels complying

Nevertheless, the transition is moving forward. Around 7,000 FARC rebels have abandoned their remote jungle and mountain encampments and arrived at 26 demilitarization zones throughout the country within the last month. On February 20th, Santos announced that the rebels would begin to surrender their weapons, with UN-overseen disarmament expected to be completed by June.

As a symbol of remembering but moving on from the past, weapons will be melted down and shaped into war monuments. FARC also plans to transition into a leftist political party that could be included in the government it has so long opposed. Families separated for decades by the conflict are reuniting.

Second peace treaty in the works

Also in Feb. 2017, Santos began negotiations with a second prominent rebel group called the National Liberation Army (ELN). An agreement similar to the one reached with FARC is on the horizon, and ELN negotiators stated that the prospect of ending their decades-long conflict with the Colombian government “gives us hope.” However there is still work to be done—on February 20th Colombian authorities held ELN responsible for a bomb that exploded in Bogotá near a bullring, injuring dozens of police officers.

A better future

While the mechanics of the move toward peace have not been smooth, it seems that Colombia is moving closer to peace now than ever before. Whenever enemies become neighbors there will be hostility and uncertainty. But both sides seem to genuinely want the disarmament and reintegration to succeed. Generations of Colombians have only known war, and to see rebels turning in their weapons without opposition (mostly) is a truly incredible accomplishment. The Colombian government, FARC, and the UN now must make sure it sticks. There is too much at stake.

The transition may not be perfect, but there is no question it will lead to a better future for all Colombians. It really does seem that a new era has arrived.

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American Democracy at a Crossroads | Photo: Geoff Livingston

When John Yoo—a former Justice Department attorney known for writing legal memorandums on enhanced interrogation tactics—worries about executive overreach, you know things are truly getting serious. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Yoo argued that the Trump Administration was overstepping its bounds in pushing through several executive orders, among them the controversial immigration ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.

Yoo’s main claim to fame involves his authorship of the so-called torture memos during his tenure at the Justice Department. Unsurprisingly then, he has been a consistent advocate of the idea that the U.S. President has almost unlimited discretion over a vast array of policy issues. But even for Yoo, Donald Trump appears to be taking things too far.

Yet, when taking a step back, the Trump Administration’s conveyor belt of executive orders is but an extension of a general trend in American politics. Successive presidents have assumed greater and greater powers vis-à-vis Congress. In fact, that trend is one among many signs that the country’s governmental system is no longer adequate to actually govern effectively. The American presidential system no longer functions.

When it comes to political structure, the United States has always been something of an outlier. Most industrialized countries run parliamentary systems—think Westminster in the UK or the Bundestag in Germany. The crucial difference between parliamentary and presidential systems is the separation between the legislative and executive branches. In the former, these are interlocked to a certain degree, while in the latter, they constitute independent entities.

As political scientist Juan Linz laid out in his seminal 1990 paper, “The Perils of Presidentialism”, there are significant conceptual problems with presidential systems. Among these, the crucial aspect is political legitimacy. Linz explains that

“in a presidential system, the legislators, especially when they represent cohesive, disciplined parties that offer clear ideological and political alternatives, can also claim democratic legitimacy. This claim is thrown into high relief when a majority of the legislature represents a political option opposed to the one the president represents. Under such circumstances, who has the stronger claim to speak on behalf of the people: the president or the legislative majority that opposes his policies? Since both derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible and at times may erupt dramatically.”

For the longest time, the U.S. has been able to escape these structural issues precisely because legislators have not represented cohesive and disciplined parties with clear ideological outlines. In fact, to the European eye, the two major American political parties hardly represented parties at all, but rather appeared as loose coalitions designed to capture voters. Yet, since the 1960s, the traditional underpinnings of the American party landscape have progressively eroded.

The civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s brought with it a process of ideological separation between Democrats and Republicans. In the U.S. Senate today, there is not a single Republican to the left of the most conservative Democrat. Due to the effects of gerrymandering and practically non-existent campaign finance restrictions, the effect has arguably been even more pronounced in the House. In addition, primaries ensure that politicians are often threatened most by ideological challengers from the left and right (but mostly the right) during election season.

The result is what we are currently seeing in American politics. The system was built precisely on the notion of checks and balances. Yet, these balances are what is producing the kind of gridlock and attrition that ultimately leads to a drift towards executive power. In the best of times, the same party controls both the White House and Congress. As we saw in 2009 with the passing of Obamacare, a lot of things can get done when that happens. But with two-year election cycles, the American norm is for divided government to predominate. It is no wonder, then, that paralysis takes hold in Washington. The product is a do-nothing legislature that attracts the ire of the electorate.

In this situation, the president will have an incentive to make policy by executive fiat in order to advance his (and someday her) agenda. But that is not a role that the White House has traditionally played. In any case, executive orders can only go so far. The Trump Administration has already rolled back a series of Obama era orders. If legislative stability is one of the hallmarks of a functioning democracy, this system is close to its antithesis.

In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote in Foreign Affairs that American politics is in decay. He explained that “political decay […] occurs when institutions fail to adapt to changing external circumstances, either out of intellectual rigidities or because of the power of incumbent elites to protect their positions and block change.” As a shorthand for the problems pestering the American political system, he coined the term vetocracy. In essence, there are too many choke points that nip legislative action in the bud. In addition to the split between Congress and the White House, there is the filibuster in the Senate. The states remain powerful, with their own (mostly bicameral) legislatures and state supreme courts. The archaic electoral college has meant that two out of the last three presidents actually lost the popular vote, while giving a handful of swing states massive electoral power.

The situation is not exactly helped by the fact that the U.S. tries to run a modern country on the basis of a 1789 constitution (albeit with a number of amendments). Here, massive conflicts are all but guaranteed. These occur perennially when constitutional originalists such as Clarence Thomas or the late Antonin Scalia—and indeed current Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch—try to superimpose the original text of the constitution on contemporary political issues. It is hardly conceivable that the founders would have been able to foresee the nature of the current American political crisis. From their perspective, the fact that an overabundance of checks and balances would constitute the heart of the problem would have probably seemed outlandish.

But the United States is quickly finding out that its old revered institutions are coming apart at the seems precisely at a moment when long-held norms are also under threat. In fact, failing institutions and norm erosion might well be correlated.

Shortly before last year’s presidential election, Daron Acemoğlu wrote that American politics was in an iconoclastic phase, and that the “icons being targeted are the moral foundations of [American] democracy.” But another icon is the American system of government itself. If the U.S. constitution could be rewritten tomorrow, a set of 21st century founding fathers and mothers would be well advised to scrap the presidential system and put a parliamentary one in its stead. Of course, the structural problems dogging the United States would remain. Still, a more nimble and simple system would mean American government would no longer be part of the problem, but part of the solution.

The post The U.S. Should Get Rid of Its President(ial System) appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Secretary Tillerson, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun, and Japanese Foreign Minister Kishida, pose for a photo before their Trilateral Meeting in Bonn. (U.S. Department of State)

After vaunting his “bromance” with President Donald Trump through an extended 27-hole golf tour at Mar-a-Lago, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was reassured of the trump administration’s “100%” commitment to the U.S.-Japan alliance. The friendly remarks made in response to North Korea’s ballistic missile test (Feb. 12th) indicates that Mr. Abe’s quick-witted tributary diplomacy has paid off.

Despite the “very good” bilateral “chemistry” shown at the joint press conference, however, there was no mention of South Korea, even though the North Korean enigma ought to be resolved in the context of the trilateral alliance and multilateral negotiations (six-party talks).

The proactiveness of Mr. Abe’s Machiavellianism, which has quickly adapted to a new global order ahead of other U.S. allies in Asia, surely offers meaningful reflective lessons, especially for South Korea. While the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye paralyzed South Korea’s diplomatic control tower at the cost of strengthening democracy, Japan worked to strengthen Mr. Trump’s trust by successfully fulfilling a strategic transaction palatable to Mr. Trump’s realpolitik.

To keep up with this development, it is imperative that, in a concerted effort to defy the vacuum in political leadership, South Korean Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn and legislative leaders reach a consensus in transmitting clear bipartisan messages to the Trump administration during its initial phase of formulating Asia-Pacific policies.

The Trump-Abe honeymoon signaled to the U.S.’ Asian allies that the Trump administration’s engagement strategy in the Asia-Pacific region (at least as concerns security issues) will not diverge much from the conventional foreign policy framework. However, recent developments have left the impression that Mr. Trump’s possible “rebalance of the Bush era’s extreme bilateralism” could eschew the de jure equality of, in particular, the current trilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia, by establishing informal, de facto inequality between the bilateral alliances.

South Korean pundits have been apprehensive of such a worrisome prospect. The U.S. perception that Japan’s material capabilities are stronger than those of South Korea could bring about an informal hierarchy of alliances, under which the “U.S.-ROK” alliance is relegated to a subordinate position to the U.S.-Japan alliance.

For the U.S., containing China’s ascension to regional hegemony by supporting Japan’s increasingly hard-hedging tendencies against China could be conceived to be a cost-effective way of implementing the Ballistic Missile Defense System in Asia on behalf of its allies. This seems to be an inevitable choice, given that China is often held to deviate from its assumed responsibilities commensurable to its rising status.

Indeed, China’s ethno-centric vision for Asian integration, which aims to transform ASEAN into a polarized security community, is in many ways undesirable for its developing neighbors, for whom the U.S.’ maritime protection of trade routes (freedom of navigation) is crucial. In addition, China’s mimicry of U.S.’ “hub-and-spoke” strategy, which lacks a multilateral consensus, links trade too excessively to diplomatic disputes, and thereby stifles neighbors’ political autonomy.

Nevertheless, these circumstances do not necessarily entail that cooperation between the U.S. and China is infeasible. As the Secretary of State during the era of détente, Henry Kissinger, noted, “If the Trump administration, in the first year or so, can really engage with China strategically in a constructive and comprehensive way, President Trump and [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] will find that the incentives for cooperation are much greater than for confrontation.”

Considering the fact that an escalation of tensions between the two superpowers is avoidable, as long as the leaders do not fall into the trap of heuristic decision-making, it is unwise to unilaterally rely on Japan-led hard-edging as the only possible strategy against China’s rise. Instead of unilaterally central-planning the regional order in Asia according to U.S.-Japan relations, the U.S. should recognize the strategic importance of other allies, thereby maintaining a variety of strategic options.

South Korea’s strategic choices contribute—although the country still lacks the major-power capacity to exert influence at the regional level—to defining the future orientation of the Korean peninsula and, in the long-run, maintaining the balance of power between the U.S. and China, in case the power competition between the two superpowers intensifies.

A recently released CFR discussion paper authored by renowned experts on Korea Scott A. Snyder and his associates insightfully and succinctly assess South Korea’s national interests and the constraints the country faces in striving to achieve its interests, and the strategic options that the country can exercise under the constrained circumstances.

The paper points out that the country has interests in defending itself from North Korea, minimizing fallouts from the power competition between the U.S., China, and other major powers, securing maritime trade routes, and reunifying the Korean peninsula. However, South Korea’s strategic behaviors chosen to achieve these interests are constrained by the uncertainty surrounding North Korea’s nuclear development, the country’s geopolitical locus, being a theater of power competition among the super- and major powers, and the export-oriented economy’s trade dependency and vulnerability to the international market.

The paper expects that the gradual changes in regional geopolitical environment will lead South Korea to simultaneously pursue (soft) hedging, regionalizing, and networking. Unless game-changing regional upheavals occur in East Asia, South Korea will carry on with its current (soft) hedging strategy in response to China’s rise by acceding to some of China’s terms, while strengthening the U.S.-ROK alliance. Meanwhile, the country will continue to regionalize with its East Asian and ASEAN neighbors to create multilaterally institutionalized security mechanisms by promoting regional peace and cooperative initiatives. It will also network among super- and major powers to promote its role as a conflict mediator.

Nevertheless, the middle power is less likely to risk the U.S.-ROK alliance by accommodating China’s hegemonic interests. It will strike a balance between the U.S. and China unless tensions escalate but cannot perpetually remain neutral between the two polarities for geopolitical reasons.

Reflecting South Korea’s likely and unlikely strategic options, the paper ends by suggesting that “the United States should recognize that South Korea’s hedging posture contributes to stability in Northeast Asia by mitigating China’s fear that the U.S.-ROK alliance might be directed against China.”

The post South Korea’s Strategic Importance Forgotten Amidst the Trump-Abe Honeymoon appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

We live in a volatile world haunted by rising religious and secular extremism, proxy wars, geopolitical rivalries, predatory capitalism, and by the chronic deficiency of visionary leaders. This state of extreme uncertainty should compel us to reject any initiative aimed to drastically undermine the current system of multilateral cooperation and international order.

Though it still remains controversial, no one can deny that in the past seven decades, the UN has saved many lives through its humanitarian works, its peacekeeping operations as well as its vaccination and education campaigns to save children.

That said, in its current form and function, the United Nations is certainly on course to become irrelevant. Times have rapidly been changing and the current model has been static, at best.

Reformation or Transformation

Over the years, the UN has been described as being the “den of dictatorships” operated by a culture of “numbing bureaucracy” and “institutional cover-ups of corruption.” Worse, the most vital UN organ—the Security Council—has been broadly blamed of being driven by immoral and “undemocratic politics” that approves certain wars in order to stop tyranny or restore peace and for being a bystander through genocide. The Tutsis of Rwanda and the on-going genocide of the Rohingyas of Myanmar come to mind.

In the past three decades, reforming the UN has been a reoccurring theme. A number of recommendations and comprehensive reports were authored to suggest reforming one organ or another, but only one had offered an alternative means of funding it.  This is perhaps the most crucial of all reform proposals, though at this critical juncture, total transformation is the only way to salvage this great institution.

Dark Side of the UN

No other country epitomizes the dark side of the UN better than my own—Somalia. Since the early 90s, over $50 billion was spent on Somalia and there is virtually nothing to show for it. Most of these monies were spent in Nairobi, Kenya—the international NGO hub of squanderance—where projects are subcontracted to their bones before the local scavengers are let loose.

UNSOM is the UN project in Somalia. It is mandated by UNSCR 2102 to “use the UN’s ‘good offices’ functions to support the Federal Government’s peace and reconciliation process” and “to support the Federal Government by providing strategic policy advice including on the development of a federal system, the constitutional review process, and subsequent referendum on the constitution….”

Over three years later, not a single positive step toward peace and reconciliation was taken. The only thing that UNSOM facilitated was the unsustainable clan-based federalism that rendered Somalia into a half a dozen political fiefdoms in perpetual enmity. They have no shared national vision. And each has its own president who is free to make his own foreign, defense, and economic policies and sell out the nation’s future. The UN endorsed ‘federal constitution’ remains written on an Etch A Sketch. Meanwhile, Somalia remains a nation under de facto and indefinite trusteeship, while those who are mandated to facilitate good governance continue to advance their own zero-sum interests.

Though then SRSG (Sir) Nicholas Kay told Chatham House “as the constitution is pending, it is very risky to make any decisions with regards to natural resources,” his office is considered as one of the key facilitators of the most exploitative natural resource deal in the 21st century- the Soma Oil and Gas.

Ironically, in the coming months, this same special interest project is likely to be politically reinforced and its mandate expanded with new UN resolution(s).

The Legacy of Boutros-Ghali

1992—while the Bosnia genocide and Somalia civil-war were in full force —in an historic meeting that brought together the heads-of-state of its members, the Security Council assigned the then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to conduct a thorough analysis and offer policy recommendations to strengthen UN peacemaking and peace-keeping.

These council member heads-of-state shared the general consensus that “the absence of war and military conflicts amongst States does not in itself ensure international peace and security. The non-military sources of instability in the economic, social, humanitarian and ecological fields have become threats to peace and security.”

As an independent-minded Egyptian academician, veteran diplomat and international relations strategist, Boutros-Ghali has authored a report famously known as An Agenda for Peace. In that report he outlined practical ways that the UN could respond to post- Cold War conflicts.

Though in the diplomatic circles and academia, Boutros-Ghali’s introduction of the concept “post-conflict peacebuilding” is recognized as his most prominent contribution, his independent funding recommendation was what made the report so revolutionary and indeed controversial. His recommendation would’ve bypassed any funding manipulation to ensure subjective outcome by any of the major state funders. UN funding would’ve been generated through nominal taxation on international travels, arms trade, and foreign currency transactions. This would’ve leveled the playing field and rendered all member states as stakeholders and as tax-paying equals.

While some cheered his bold recommendation, it was met with antagonistic opposition from mainly the US Congress. “It will be a cold day in hell before we allow the United Nations to directly tax American citizens,” said Marc Thiessen who was the spokesman for the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the late rightwing Republican Senator Jesse Helms.

Many bi-partisan politicians were of the view that UN independent funding would undermine the US unipolar status to intervene or wage a war against any nation that is not abiding by the “new world order” or acting in accordance with the geopolitical objectives of Pax-Americana. So, in 1996 the US has blocked Boutros-Ghali’s nomination for a second five-year term, making him the only UN Secretary-General not elected to a second term.

A decade later, in the thick of the US global war on terrorism, the neocons who were then leading the US foreign policy placed John Bolton in the UN to employ his infamous mad-man diplomacy.

Another decade later, at her Senate confirmation hearing, Nikki Haley—US Ambassador to the UN—rebuked the UN on passing Security Council Resolution 2334 that declared Israel’s ever-expanding settlement in the occupied territories as “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution…”

She asserted her willingness to use the 22% of the UN annual budget that US contributes as political leverage. “Are we getting what we pay for?” she asked.

The Immanent Tsunami

2017 is here. BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are strategically and financially set to take their alternative international development institution to the next level to challenge the World Bank and the IMF, dominated by U.S. and Europe.

Already BRICS has established the New Development Bank with starting fund of $50 billion and projected lending of $2.5 billion in 2017. BRICS along with Turkey and Iran are committed to make trade with their own currencies. Whenever American companies and consumers want to purchase goods and services from China or India, for example, they would not be able to purchase in the U.S. dollar. Those transactions would have to be made in the Chinese or Indian currencies, and, in due course, BRICS’ new currency.

This currency war and subsequent financial tsunami will not only devastate the global economies, its ripple effects are likely to shake the foundation of the UN, especially its most crucial and powerful organ. After all, one of the UN’s global roles is to facilitate, and when necessary pave the ground, for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, though each is governed independent of the other.

With growing geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions, the five permanent members of the Security Council have not been talking about a mutually acceptable strategic vision to keep our exceedingly chaotic world stay within the rails or order

While conflicts and wars are dangerous for civilians, they are lucrative for the arms dealers and are open windows of exploitation for politicians. Ironically, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council happen to be some of the biggest international arms dealers.

Is Guterres the Man of the Moment?

António Guterres, assumes his post as the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations at a time of great uncertainties. He certainly comes with valuable experience, especially in dealing with challenges related to settling refugees. But he must also deal with epical catastrophes in the Middle East, active ethnic-cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar, Israel’s belligerent defiance, Trump world view, and the diminishing credibility of the UN among other issues.

Considering the enormity, geographical vastness, and complexities of the raging conflicts and humanitarian disasters in this century, Secretary-General Guterres must not leave any stone unturned in order to institute necessary changes to meet today’s challenges and prevent the coming ones.

For any real transformation to materialize, the new Secretary-General must propose changes in these four areas:

Institutional Identity: Today, the world is more interconnected and political consciousness is much more spread out than ever before. The international political soul is yearning for change that is appropriate for the dangerous challenges facing the world. Against that backdrop, the Union of Conscious Nations might be more appropriate than the name at hand.

Security Council: If the Security Council must remain symbolically inclusive and substantively exclusive, then the number of the permanent members of Security Council should be increase to 10 nations. Countries such as India, Germany, Brazil, Japan and Turkey should be added in order to reboot the system and rest the dynamics of global influence.

UN Funding: Adopt the late Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s aforementioned funding initiative. Also, the Security Council must create an Independent International Commission for Audit. This office should institute policies to improve the fiduciary ethics and responsibility of every organ of the UN. This office should send experts to various localities where UN projects are being implemented.

The Secretariat: This organ should be stripped of the authority to bypass the collective will of the permanent missions or the General Assembly.

In all political, social,and economic fronts, the world has been changing so rapidly thta it is becoming extremely difficult to keep up with. Across the globe, storms of uncertainty, fear, and hate are throwing societies off balance and turning people against one another.

Against that backdrop, US has elected Donald J. Trump as Commander-In-Chief of the mightiest military in the world. Make no mistake; his election comes with “far-reaching geopolitical implications for the future.” The status quo is both unsustainable and risky.

** This was first published by Diplomatist Magazine.

The post The Global Order in a Post-United Nations Era appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The rise of global multipolarity is set to increase as the rate of change in world politics continues to accelerate. Exacerbating this trend is the risk resulting from uncertainty surrounding the new U.S. administration’s foreign policy with respect to several states. This is clearly evident in the South China Sea as increased uncertainty in the region is not only affecting U.S.-China relations directly, but relations between minor powers and the major states as well.

The Triangle Has Returned

It is currently highly uncertain as to whether there is a coherent U.S. foreign policy strategy at all. Adding to this uncertainty is the incompleteness of the new U.S. administration’s foreign policy team. This uncertainty has the potential to severely negatively affect not only U.S.-Russia relations, but U.S.-China relations as well.

Three issues have arisen in the U.S.-China relationship which may have negative ramifications for the future. This is roughly one new issue every week that the new U.S. administration is now dealing with in its relations with China alone. Controversy has arisen not only over the U.S. phone call to the Taiwanese President (thereby questioning the “One China” policy), but also the possible U.S. imposition of 45% tariffs on imported Chinese goods, and the possible new U.S. naval maneuvers to deny China access to some of its claimed artificial islands as well.

Simply put, the U.S. has more than enough on its plate in terms of U.S.-Russia relations alone without possibly further damaging U.S.-China relations also. It’s no longer sufficient for the U.S. to consider these two key relationships as separate and distinct from one another.  Indeed, both China and Russia have requested a revision in status in terms of their respective relations to the U.S..

With China, the concordant phrase is “New Model of Great Power Relations”. While Russia may have no equivalent phrase (yet), its geopolitical desire for parity with the U.S. has been quite evident for at least the last ten years ever since Russian President Putin’s infamous Munich Security Conference address in 2007. For better or worse, the world has definitively returned to the area of great power politics and its corresponding regional spheres of influence.

While some may consider spheres of influence to be an outdated, 19th century concept, it is very much a harbinger of the future. Both China and Russia have accepted this, being the only true aspiring rivals to the U.S. in terms of global influence. Counterintuitively, however, it is the minor powers’ acceptance of this new reality which has the potential to either increase or decrease global geopolitical risk.

Minor States Punch Above Their Weight

As global uncertainty has increased, an increasing number of minor powers have pursued multi-vectored foreign policy strategies in order to leverage maximum maneuverability between the major powers.  This has been apparent for some time in selected theaters such as Central Asia, where the regional powers balance between Chinese, Russian, and U.S. ambitions alike.

However, Southeast Asia is considerably more complex as several major actors in addition to the U.S. and China are vying for power. These actors include India and Russia as well. In order to diversify not only their respective trade portfolios, but security portfolios as well, Southeast Asian states are pursuing this balancing strategy while maintaining positive relations with as many major players as possible.

Nowhere has this been more evident recently than in the case of The Philippines. The island nation had decidedly (and decisively) pursued a more balanced foreign policy strategy between China and the U.S. However, this includes outreach efforts to other major powers (Russia and India) and minor powers (Japan and Vietnam) too.

While this may decrease geopolitical risk for the individual minor state concerned, it also increases risk for those major powers that are unable or unwilling to adapt to this new reality. This is because certain states, like the U.S., may have grown comfortable with being able to count certain other states as being firmly in its camp.

While this may indeed be the public stance of various client states, it masks the harsh reality of 21st century geopolitics. Lastly, this risk also spells tremendous opportunity for those states which swiftly recognize the fluidity and non-exclusive nature of partnerships in the region and are able to more clearly elaborate their security and trade value propositions not only to the individual client state involved, but to the region as a whole as well.

The post How Do Multi-Vectored Foreign Policies Affect Global Geopolitical Risk? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

For someone who has dedicated 23 years to making the European Union more relevant to the lives of ordinary Europeans, the fact that only a small number of Germans have ever heard of Martin Schulz may be surprising.

However, as the race for the German chancellorship is heating up, Schulz’ relative obscurity has allowed him to position himself as a fresh-faced outsider free from the entanglements of the Berlin establishment. So far, the polls seem to agree: the Social Democrats have overtaken Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats for the first time in seven years. This has the Federal Republic’s left dreaming of a new arrangement in Berlin.

They have good reason to be hopeful, for fresh-faced is not an adjective that could be used to describe Angela Merkel. After 12 years in the Chancellor’s seat, the electorate seems to be looking for a change in the status quo as the SPD is surging to highs not seen since the days of Gerhard Schröder.

Under the leadership of Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD had fallen to lows of around 20%, a level that saw the upstart far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) breathing heavily down their necks. Gabriel’s decision to step aside to make way for Schulz, along with Frank-Walter Steinmeier becoming the next German President, could well be the sign of a new era in German politics, with a resurgent left and a declining conservative center.

Leadership changes have had similar effects on the SPD’s fortunes in the past: the nominations of Peer Steinbrück in 2012 and Steinmeier in 2008 also saw an increase in the party’s popularity of 4% and 3% respectively. In both cases, however, the upsurge was short lived. And while some 56% of Germans surveyed expect the current uptick in the party’s support to be temporary too, there are reasons for the SPD to be more optimistic this time around.

In 2012 and 2008, the party had to contend with an opponent in Angela Merkel who was riding high in the popularity stakes. Today’s Merkel has grown weary from carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. To drive home the point, the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel recently described Merkel as looking “as though she had been forced into the decision [to run for Chancellor again] at gunpoint”.

Another factor working in the SPD’s favor is the discord between the CDU and its Bavarian branch, the CSU, over Merkel’s unpopular open-door refugee policy. CSU leader Horst Seehofer has openly clashed with Merkel on the issue and called for limits to be imposed on the number of refugees to be admitted entry—a demand that Merkel has flatly refused.

The rebuff was a risky move, since protestant Merkel needs Seehofer to rally support for her in the conservative, Catholic state of Bavaria. Although Seehofer is now officially backing Merkel’s candidacy, he is likely to be a weak pillar in her campaign. Seehofer himself is facing regional elections and seeks to distance himself as far as possible from Merkel’s migrant policy to avoid political costs on his home turf. Hence, there is a real possibility of a split between the two parties that could dent further Merkel’s overall support.

One might assume that the votes lost by the CDU on account of Merkel’s pro-refugee policy would naturally flow to the AfD. Schulz’ candidacy, however, presents a viable alternative for many non-decided and non-voters, who might have opted for the AfD in protest against the status quo in Berlin. If he also manages to reinvigorate the SPD’s traditional working class base, the Social Democrats could sway erstwhile supporters who had switched to the CDU under Merkel’s grand coalition.

While Schulz might try to stay clear of this season’s most contentious subject, the ongoing immigration issue threatens to be as much of a vote loser for Schulz as it will be for Merkel. Indeed, as he is forced to lay out his policies for public scrutiny, it is not only his stance on refugees likely to cause him difficulties with significant swathes of the electorate.

His calls for more leniency towards Greece in dealing with its debt burden will doubtlessly leave him out of step with the German public who largely supports the hardline taken by Merkel in her dealings with Southern Europe. He is also likely to face questions about suspicious payments made to his staff in Brussels, a handy brush for the far-right to paint him as the embodiment of all of Brussels’ ills.

These and other issues are surely going to take some of the varnish off Schulz’s campaign, but barring some major upset, the SPD should be in a strong bargaining position when the post-election coalition negotiations begin. The most comfortable fit for an SPD led government would be a coalition with the Left party and the Greens, but a corollary of the SPD’s rise is that it has come at the expense of support for both of these parties.

The German electorate at large is also disinclined to support such a leftist coalition, so running on a red-red-green platform might disgruntle more centrist voters and drive them into the arms of the AfD. However, should the recent trend continue it could leave as the only option a re-installment of the current CDU/SPD grand coalition, but with the SPD in a strong enough position to demand the Chancellorship for Schulz.

After more than a decade during which the SPD  seemed at times to be in terminal decline, Schulz’s election would constitute a remarkable reversal of fortunes and an invigoration of the Left in Germany – so long as Schulz can succeed where his predecessors have failed and cross the finish line with the same momentum with which he has begun the race.

The post The Rise of Schulz: Merkel’s Götterdämmerung? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance (CSIF) recently hosted a series of discussions on “Securing American Interests: A New Era of Economic Power.” They addressed questions of economic and financial power, economic statecraft, and national security, including new offensive and defensive options for the United States. Wide-ranging discussions covered terrorist financing, financial crimes, sanctions as policy, foreign asset control, non-state actors, alternative currencies, and other Department of Treasury concerns.

Cybersecurity was approached from a singular, sober starting point. John Carlin, a former U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security, stated plainly:

“There’s no excuse not to know that the system is blinking red when it comes to the potential for a major national security-driven cyber incident to hit our critical infrastructure in a way that causes major economic issues.”

We pledge every year, Carlin continued, that this is the year we will strengthen our defenses, but each year we continue to leave ourselves vulnerable.

A number of big-picture questions were considered, at the geo-strategic level. What are the new international rules? How can the U.S. and its allies help develop these rules? How can new norms and values take shape, with bilateral and multilateral agreements? How can the U.S. and its allies develop agreements with other nations of concern? What will it mean to monitor—and enforce—such agreements? At what point does NATO’s Article 5 take effect, where “an armed attack against one… shall be considered an attack against them all,” provoking allied military response?

The panel outlined a variety of recent cyberattacks and cybersecurity concerns by U.S. adversaries. Among these: Russia‘s release of Democratic National Committee emails to influence the U.S. presidential election, the ongoing theft by China of U.S. industry’s intellectual property and interest in infrastructure controls, Iran‘s attacks on U.S. infrastructure and financial institutions, and North Korea‘s attacks on U.S. media and South Korean financial and military assets.

China garnered special attention. Carlin cited Gen. Keith Alexander, former head of the NSA and Cybercom, calling China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.” Peter Harrell of the Center for New American Security judged that this IP theft is “beginning to reach a macroeconomic level of risk.” CSIS fellow Zach Cooper noted that China’s cyber efforts are being complemented with strategic investments, “often in dollar amounts that don’t make sense, around U.S. military bases” in the western Pacific Ocean.

Two important insights identified that cybersecurity needs to be seen within larger contexts, instead of only as an isolated, distinct domain. First, we don’t think of security questions by air, land, sea, and space separate from each other. Similarly, we need to think of cyber as one option in a multi-pronged attack. Second, and perhaps more challenging, the panel continued, the United States should think of cyberattacks not as from one country or another, but as multilateral attacks against the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national security assets.

Harrell noted that the U.S. has never had “any systematic evaluation of vulnerabilities either of us or of our close allies and thinking through, in a more systematic way, how do we want to be positioned to play defense for the long term.”

Recommendations included the usual government-industry cooperation, and the need to innovate—this is still new policy-making, in many ways. Traditional statecraft remains important, such as private communications with China instead of public “red lines,” supported by “mundane transgovernmentalism“—technical cooperation among the bureaucratic agencies of allies. Can we use Cold War-era concepts of signaling and deterrence (Harrell) to combat China’s “ambiguity, asymmetry, and incrementalism” (Cooper)?

Cyber is a giant and growing area of military and economic vulnerability for the U.S. and its allies. The CSIF event showed that while some progress is being made in important areas, we need to examine and address the host of issues in a comprehensive way—and soon.

An earlier version of this appeared at Giga-net.org. Video and transcripts from the event are at http://www.defenddemocracy.org/events/securing-american-interests/. All quotes here are from the session on “Shoring Up Our Defenses Against Emerging Threats of Economic Warfare.

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What will global and regional leaders do about Syria?

The victory of the Assad regime in eastern Aleppo in December has been often considered a game changer in the Syrian war. This article lists some reasons why Assad cannot remain in power even after Aleppo. At the same time, it demonstrates why Syria is not fit for the solution claimed by the Geneva Communiqué of June 30th 2012 and the UN SC Resolution 2254 of December 18th 2015 based on principles of territorial integrity, a single inclusive transitional government, and multiparty elections.

1. Fear of a Sunni Arab revenge

No dictatorships in history has lasted forever. This also applies to the Baath regime in Syria. The trenches of sectarian hatred digged by the war are so deep that the Assad regime will not be able to build on other forces beyond a coalition of the Alawite, Christian, and Druze segments of Syrian society.

After the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, we learned that no inclusive transitional government can guarantee access to power for a previously ruling minority. This applies to the Sunni Arabs in Iraq as well as to the Alawite-led coalition in Syria.

Any time a minority regime falls or an inclusive transitional government ends its term, there is a threat of revanchism. Indeed, the majority Sunni Arab population may use this opportunity to exact revenge on the past Alawite-led minority coalition. Even minorities not participating on power such as the Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrians will be threatened by a possible Sunni Arab campaign for domination. Therefore, any post-war architecture must secure the Alawites and other minorities against such a scenario.

2. Arab Spring and Sunni political Islamism

The Arab Spring was an irreversible process of mass mobilization, radically changing primarily the Sunni Arab societies in multiple Arab states. It is true that the Muslim Brotherhood proved to be an nonviable solution for the region. Even its main financial sponsor Qatar eventually stopped supporting it.

However, it is important to mention that the main political sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey’s AKP and its leader Erdogan, significantly consolidated their power in Turkey after the coup attempt in summer 2016. Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood is still the most influential Muslim grouping within the European Muslim immigrant community. These two factors are still sufficient for a great comeback of the Muslim Brotherhood on the scene in some Arab states.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia, the main sponsor of the Salafist groupings worldwide, became one of the two great winners of the Arab counterrevolution since 2013. Salafism has probably became the most influential Islamist sect among the Egyptian and Syrian Sunni Muslims.

Any of the two options, the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafism, are bad news for anybody expecting social reconciliation with Shi’a Arabs in the following decades. Any political solution based on a united Syria will intensify the Sunni-Shi’a political competition. It will generate further inter-communal strife just because the Sunni Arab population is not ready for secular solutions anymore. Unless a Sunni Arab regime imposes it like it did in Algeria in the 90s or like the Sisi regime is trying to do it these days. In any case, the Alawite-led regime or an inclusive government are incapable of that.

3. Iran: a regional power

Iran is the other great winner of the Arab counterrevolution. Of course, controlling a continuous strip of land from its western borders, via pro-Iranian regimes in Iraq and Syria, down to the Hezbollah-Aounist coalition in Lebanon on the Mediterranean coast is almost an irresistible temptation for Iran.

On the other hand, Iran may wish to improve its relations with global powers including the U.S. and regional powers such as Turkey and Egypt. It needs to strengthen its influence in Shi’a regions of Yemen and Afghanistan or in Sunni Persian-speaking countries like Tajikistan and Pakistan as well as to join global institutions like the G20. In order to secure these goals, Iran must be ready to make concessions that may substantially change the current status quo in Syria and Iraq.

For Iran, Assad’s monopoly over Syria and a Shi’a  majority government in Iraq are definitely attractive but not the only possible solutions. Finally, Iran, with its outstanding standard of education (in comparison to other Arab states or Pakistan), is not fated to be a Russian puppet and has very good prospects to be an equal partner of the U.S., EU and Turkey.

4. Sunni Arab refugees must return

The burden borne by Turkey, Germany and other European countries as a consequence of the refugee wave caused by Assad’s targeted ethnic cleansing in Sunni Arab areas is so heavy that the current status quo is unacceptable for these powers. This is supported by the attempts to get the atrocities committed by the Assad-Putin coalition in Aleppo in late 2016 before international justice.

The inflow of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs in the EU has caused an unprecedented spike in xenophobia that has the potential to destroy the very foundations of European democracy. The inflow has also triggered Turkey’s hysterical behavior towards the EU. The imperative of return of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Turkey, Germany and other European countries is a strong factor for why Syria cannot be ruled solely by the Assad regime even if the latter eventually wins the war.

In other words, if European governments accept a united Syria under Assad’s rule without creating conditions for return of the vast majority of the Sunni Arab refugees, the EU may be destabilized by the rise to power of mainstream Islamophobic voters. The influence of the anti-European forces in France, Netherlands and Austria and the anti-EU sentiment in Italy are alarming.

5. Egypt: another beneficiary of Russian victory

al-Sisi’s Egypt is another close ally of Russia in the Middle East. Egypt has always had strong interests in Syria and was its closest partner in the modern history of Pan-Arabism: both states were parts of the Nasserist United Arab Republic (1958-61) as well as Sadat’s attempts for the Federation of Arab Republics (1972-77).

In other words, Iran is not the only regional protégé of Putin’s Russia (who is the real winner of the Battle of Aleppo). In turn, Assad is not the only possible option for Russia in Syria. Moscow can also promote the interests of its other regional allies such as Egypt.

The recent rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. is also a potential threat for Russia. Putin cannot bet on a single card and needs to secure Russian interests in the Middle East in case of a future Iranian-U.S. alliance. In addition, Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, is a threat to a close alliance between Putin and the Netanyahu-Lieberman tandem in Israel.

Therefore, Egypt is an ideal Middle Eastern partner for Russia to diversify risk. Being a partner of the U.S. and China (as well as Saudi Arabia and Israel), Egypt with its historical interests in Syria and a secularist military dictatorship is a good compromise solution for power-sharing in Syria.

Finally, Egypt rules most of the Libyan Cyrenaica and Fezzan via its Libyan proxy, general Haftar. This provides additional compensation potential for Russia on the global scene instead of a full domination of Syria.

6. Kurds as a non-Islamist model for Middle East

The Arab Spring and the following years radically changed the Sunni Arab societies, leaving a very limited space for non-Arabic or non-Sunni minorities including the Kurds.

Kurds were already deceived by the West several times: in the Treaty of Ankara splitting Kurdistan between Turkey and France in October 1921, in the Treaty of Lausanne officially annexing large portions of Kurdistan to Turkey in July 1923, in defeating and ending the Barzanji’s Kingdom of Kurdistan in July 1924, in League of Nations Council decision in December 1925 annexing the Vilayet of Mosul to Iraq, by the hostile attitude in spring 1946 resulting in the reincorporation of the Mahabad Republic to Iran and in the betrayal of the Kurdish revolution in March 1991.

Russians also deceived the Kurds several times: in the March 1921 Treaty of Moscow recognizing the Turkish claims on current Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan , in the liquidation of the Kurdistan okrug in August 1930, in the Kurdish deportation from Transcaucasia in 1937, in the termination of support for the Mahabad Republic in June 1946 and in termination of support for the Kurds in Turkey after the coup attempt in July 2016.

Concerns that Kurdish independence would destabilize Turkey and Iran are just a buck passing attitude not reflecting the reality. Iranian Kurdistan is not destabilized at all. The ceasefire between the Turkish government and the Kurds between March 2013 and July 2015 proved that the Kurdish question in Turkey can be solved under Turkish sovereignty.

The only issue is Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan due to the new Arab Sunni Islamism. The alliance between the Turkish and Kurdish leaders, Erdogan and Barzani, proved that Kurdistan outside the Turkish borders (i.e. in contemporary Iraq) is not a destabilizing factor for Turkey. If the so-called Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) gets under the rule of the Iraqi Kurdistan with friendly relationship to Turkey, there is no reason for Turkish security concerns.

Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are the only reliable allies in the war against the Islamic State. Kurds proved that they could organize a country based on national instead of Islamist ideas. Neither Westerners nor Russians should deceive Kurds anymore and should grant them their right to self-determination on the territories of Iraq and Syria without jeopardizing the security of Turkey or Iran.

Today, Kurds are the closest to achieving their century old goal of nationhood. If they fail to achieve it this time, they can lose their confidence in global powers and in their nationalist leaders and, as Palestinians did a decade ago, start supporting political Islamism and the global Caliphate. This is another reason why Syria cannot stay a unified country.

Conclusion: partitioned Syria and Iraq

All the aforementioned arguments rule out an option of a united Syria (and Iraq) after the war, even in case of a Russian, Iranian, and Assad victory. The fear of future Sunni Arab reprisals can only be prevented by establishing a separate country for the Syrian Alawites and their allies. Political Islamism of any color, either Salafism or Muslim Brotherhood, can only be moderated or countered in Syria with a foreign occupation by Sunni powers.

Iran, in order to be accepted as a regional power by the West, can grant some concessions in Syria and Iraq while getting others in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Ethnic cleansing by the Assad regime in Sunni Arab areas of Syria must be reverted and return of the refugees from the EU and Turkey must be granted.

Finally, an eventual Russian victory in Syria does not necessarily mean a political monopoly of the Assad regime after the war, but possibly the participation of other Russian allies such as Egypt or Turkey.

A lot of blood has been shed in the name of a chimeric political stability and immutability of the borders since the Sykes-Picot agreement a century ago. This blood has proved that boundaries need to be altered in Syria and Iraq in order to get real political stability. This can be achieved if five new nations emerge in Syria and Iraq: a Shi’a Arab state in Iraq, an Alawi Arab state in Syria, two Sunni Arab states in Syria and Iraq, respectively, and a single Kurdish state in Iraq and Syria while Druzes of Syria join Lebanon.

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By Alireza Jafarzadeh

Barely a week after President Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president, Iran commenced another round of ballistic missiles to test his tough campaign rhetoric. The most recent launch took place even after the administration officially put the regime “on notice.” In doing so, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) continues to lead the charge in defying international will.

Under United Nations Security Council resolution 2231, which coincided with the Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian regime is called upon to refrain from work on such weapons. Accordingly, Iran is barred from launching ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear material.

The missile launches were preceded by half a dozen others that also took place after the conclusion of nuclear negotiations. The regime faced little to no consequence for those provocative acts, but the latest launch was the first one to be carried out on President Trump’s watch.

As should have been expected from Trump’s statements on the campaign trail, the Iranian regime can expect a far less deferent response from the current administration. Some commentators also speculated that the IRGC carried out the test so early in the new presidency to gauge how the administration would respond to subsequent acts of defiance.

The answer was made abundantly clear when recently-resigned National Security Advisor Michael Flynn issued a statement condemning the missile test as being not only in defiance of UNSC resolution 2231, but also part of a long string of confrontational and destabilizing behaviors, including forced close encounters between US Navy ships and IRGC vessels, as well as the targeting of the U.S. and its allies by IRGC proxy groups elsewhere in the region, chiefly the Yemeni Houthi rebels. This statement was backed by Sean Spicer and Donald Trump, and continues to stand following his resignation late Monday.

The statement was equally straightforward in its criticism of the previous administration, noting that it had “failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions—including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms.” Similarly, on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Washington should stop “appeasing” Iran. The message is clear that this permissiveness is at an end. This clear statement from Washington was promptly followed by a new round of sanctions issued from the White House.

These responses—both in rhetoric and action—seems to answer significant questions about whether President Trump would stay true to the tough talk that had become a familiar feature of his campaign. But other questions certainly remain, particularly those having to do with exactly what steps the administration will now take to transform tough talk into firm policy.

The natural first step is to impose additional new and relevant sanctions, as well as tightening those that already exist. The push to include additional regime entities on the list of sanctions is a good start.

It has been noted that in opening up Iran to international investment, the Iran deal also opened the door to indirect financing of the IRGC, the organization that is the main driving force behind the missile tests, the provocations in the Persian Gulf, and a wide variety of Iran’s worst behaviors at home and abroad. The worsening of these activities helps to underscore the fact that it is long past time to restrain the influence and activities of the IRGC.

Currently, Western businesses are free to invest in Iranian firms in which the IRGC is only a minority stakeholder, or in which its interests are concealed behind front companies or proxies in the Iranian business world.  It is, therefore, essential for the administration to isolate the IRGC completely from Western funds and business dealings by designating it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

What the Trump administration cannot do is repeat the mistakes of its predecessor. These include not only the laxity that was referenced in former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s statement, but also a tendency to look toward certain factions of the Iranian government as a source of hope for internal moderation. The experience of the past several years has proven the folly of this approach. The IRGC has only grown more deeply integrated into the Iranian system, having gotten more financing and no serious challenge from so-called moderate President Hassan Rouhani. In fact, the armed forces budget has increased dramatically.

In addition to sanctions and the terrorist designation of the IRGC, the Trump administration also has an extraordinary opportunity to stop Western appeasement of the extremist regime and start engaging the freedom-loving people of Iran. The regime has already been isolated inside Iran and is only surviving through gross human rights violations and executions. It is time for America to support democratic Iranian opposition movements as the strongest strategic deterrent to the regime’s destabilizing behavior.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is credited with exposing Iranian nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002, triggering International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. He is the author of “The Iran Threat” (Palgrave MacMillan: 2008). His email is Jafarzadeh@ncrius.org.

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Recent tensions between Russia and Belarus seemed to display the Kremlin’s shattering dreams for integration across the countries of the former Soviet Union. The Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), developed as a rival to the European Union, seemed failing short of its goals, with friendly countries drifting away amidst Russia’s alleged weakness.

Fumes flared up after statements of Alexander Lukashenko Belarus’ strongman leader, who has been in charge of the nation for over 26 years witnessing major historical shifts in the Kremlin’s foreign policy, launched a fierce diatribe during a 7-hour long conference.

He blamed the Kremlin for violating a two decades old bilateral agreement after the FSB established a security zone on the shared border previously free of any regulations. The decision came as a response to Minsk announcing a five-day visa waivers for citizens from 79 countries—including the United States, a gesture deeply disliked by the Kremlin.

Lukashenko also accused Russia of blackmail by cutting oil exports to Belarus by half. He further asked to file a criminal case against the head of Rosselkhoznadzor, a Russian federal service for veterinary surveillance, for inflicting damage on Belarus by restring the export of goods. Over the past years, the country had grown into a major illegal supplier of sanctioned goods to Russia.

Despite unabashedly emotional and critical, Lukashenko made it clear that Minsk will remain within the EEU. His speech, however, raised rumors of the union with Russia entering a bumpy road.

Continuous disputes between the two EEU members might culminate with Minsk drifting away from Moscow’s orbit. Meanwhile, current hurdles seem troubling and unlikely to get resolved any time soon. Rather, they underscore the complex nature of the union that is sweepingly misinterpreted in the West.

As the leadership from countries in the EEU comes from the legacy of the Soviet communist party, treating Moscow as the central authority is not unusual. But, with the acquired sovereignty after the Soviet collapse, the elites of the independent nations have grown increasingly reluctant to share power.

Most of the EEU nations face acute problems with corruption, bloated bureaucracies and authoritarian leadership. Unlike the West, nations do not lecture each other on human rights and democracy promotion, treating the current situation as the norm.

A range of factors from economic dependence to shared cultures and borders make it further impossible for the former Soviet republics to break ties with the Kremlin without shooting themselves in the foot.

The Kremlin foresees this and does not want to repeat the radical backlashes against its influence as in the case of Ukraine. Hence, the only format in which the former Soviet space could coexist and benefit economically is one in which the maintenance of international relations is founded on equality.

Therefore, the Kremlin tries to stay above political incursions into domestic affairs as long as each country maintain its position within the Moscow-led union. In return, freedom of movement across borders and economic benefits remain among key tenets of the EEU along with a certain degree of political autonomy in foreign policy.

Meanwhile, Moscow would be happy to see more support of its actions internationally from the EEU members. In recent years, it has become evident that the economic interests overweight political solidarity—no political support will emerge if it goes against interests of an individual member country.

During the Ukrainian crisis, neither Minsk nor Astana expressed support to Russia’s actions and instead maintained neutrality. At some point, both even criticized its actions in Ukraine, concerned with their own sovereignty and security. Similarly, neither legally recognizes statuses of the so-called People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine or South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.

Kazakhstan is the only country that has a stable economy across the EEU. Ruled by the 76-year-old president Nursultan Nazarbayev, its political position balances between pro-Russian, pro-Chinese and even pro-American stances when needed. Regardless of whether Putin and Trump eventually get along, Astana is set to benefit from the new administration with Rex Tillerson as secretary of state possibly championing ties and investments into local oil fields.

Kyrgyzstan, another nation of the EEU, has recently launched a more active policy towards China amidst the Kremlin’s inability to fund a promised dam project of Kambarata-1 and the Upper Naryn cascade. The country’s President Atambayev was as harsh as Lukashenko in accusing Moscow over the racist treatment of Kyrgyz migrant workers during the May 9 requiem event for the 71st anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II.

While criticism might pinpoint to the crippling EEU, it rather displays a decentralized partnership encompassing and tolerating internal contradictions, and even democratic forms of interactions among its members. The later comes as a surprise given prevailing authoritarian forms of governance with little tolerance towards dissent domestically. However, it seems that the Kremlin has no choice how to uphold its grip but to maintain such equality in order to keep its Eurasian dream afloat.

The post Despite Hurdles, Russia’s Eurasian Dream Lives On appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

 

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On February 1, Rex Tillerson was sworn in as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state—a role which is shaping up to be one of the toughest jobs in the world. The former CEO of Exxon Mobil, who will help guide the new administration’s “America first” foreign policy, was confirmed by the Senate in a narrow 56 to 43 vote, in part due to concerns over his ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Tillerson will not only be dealing with “combined Russian-separatist forces” in the Ukraine, but also with a rebellion of dissenters at the U.S. State Department who oppose the temporary travel ban on seven majority Muslim nations. He will also need to reexamine Obama’s refugee deal with close ally Australia, economic ties with Mexico, and consider drawing a line in the sand with Iran. With all these issues on his plate, Tillerson and his State Department may soon be overwhelmed as more countries choose to test the new administration’s foreign policy, including China in the East and South China Seas.

Although much of his testimony during the confirmation process focused on Tillerson’s ties to Russia, the former oil executive also sent confrontational messages to leaders in Beijing, including the ominous: “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.”

Tillerson also reiterated Beijing’s building and placing military equipment on the contested South China Sea islands were “illegal actions” and “extremely worrisome,” arguing “They’re taking territory or control, or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China’s,” while adding the territorial grabs were “akin to Russia’s taking Crimea” from Ukraine.

Tillerson has also shown a strong tendency to distance himself from the previous administration’s foreign policy toward China, blaming the continued Chinese aggression on a soft Washington: “The failure of a response has allowed them just to keep pushing the envelope on this,” Tillerson said, adding, “The way we’ve got to deal with this is we’ve got to show back up in the region with our traditional allies in Southeast Asia.” To be fair, the Obama Administration, under its “pivot to Asia,” did deploy greater military assets in the region, but their actions were limited to bomber flyovers, breaches by fighter jets of Beijing’s self-declared “air defense identification zones” and naval patrols to assert the right of free navigation.

Tillerson also commented on Beijing’s relationship with North Korea, arguing for the U.S. not to rely on empty promises from China to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs – saying “It has not been a reliable partner in using its full influence to curb North Korea.” Tillerson also made the case for secondary sanctions to be imposed on Chinese entities found to be violating existing U.N. sanctions.

Some of Tillerson’s other prepared comments on China (59:10 on C-Span) include:

“We should also acknowledge the realities about China. China’s island-building in the South China Sea is an illegal taking of disputed areas without regard for international norms.”

“China’s economic and trade practices have not always followed its commitments to global agreements. It steals our intellectual property, and is aggressive and expansionist in the digital realm.”

“China has proven a willingness to act with abandon in the pursuit of its own goals, which at times has put it in conflict with America’s interests. We have to deal with what we see, not what we hope. But we need to see the positive dimensions in our relationship with China as well. The economic well-being of our two nations is deeply intertwined. China has been a valuable ally in curtailing certain elements of radical Islam. We should not let disagreements over other issues exclude areas for productive partnership.”

While Mr. Tillerson has seemingly stayed on message with President-elect Trump’s hawkish views on China, exactly how the Pentagon would preclude China from accessing the islands it has built and now controls was not made clear. What is clear is Beijing’s reaction to the statement. In an editorial by the state-owned China Daily, Tillerson’s remarks were “not worth taking seriously because they are a mish-mash of naivety, shortsightedness, worn-out prejudices, and unrealistic political fantasies. Should he act on them in the real world, it would be disastrous.” An editorial in the Global Times, another state-run nationalistic newspaper, warned of a “large-scale war” should the U.S. attempt to block China from the islands, arguing:

“China has enough determination and strength to make sure that his rabble-rousing will not succeed.” 

In the election runup and with the nomination of cabinet posts we have certainly heard some heated rhetoric thrown at China, and Tillerson is no exception. Yet until the new administration develops and agrees upon any plan of action, we still have no idea whether or how these “unrealistic political fantasies” will become reality (or lost in contentious debate) – or merely intended to appease an aggrieved nationalistic audience at home.

In a recent and lengthy letter (PDF) to Senator Ben Cardin, Tillerson seemed to back off from his threat of force to prevent China from accessing islands it occupies, saying:

“To expand on the discussion of U.S. policy options in the South China Sea, the United States seeks peaceful resolution of disputes and does not take a position on overlapping sovereignty claims, but the United States also does not recognize China’s excessive claims to the waters and airspace of the South China Sea. China cannot be allowed to use its artificial islands to coerce its neighbors or limit freedom of navigation or overflight in the South China Sea. The United States will uphold freedom of navigation and overflight by continuing to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows. If a contingency occurs, the United States and its allies and partners must be capable of limiting China’s access to and use of its artificial islands to pose a threat to the United States or its allies and partners.”

His latest statements largely reflect previous U.S. State Department and U.S. Navy policy under the Obama administration, but leave room for action following a “contingency.” How the new Trump administration defines and reacts to this future “contingency” we can only hope will be heavily debated among all the concerned parties.

The post Rex Tillerson On China appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Salman ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa’ud, King of Saudi Arabia since 2015.

Intelligence Squared U.S., or IQ2US, organizes a regular series of debates on issues of public concern and broadcasts them via livestreaming, NPR, YouTube, and podcasts. The organization’s purpose, proudly proclaimed, is “to restore civility, reasoned analysis, and constructive public discourse to today’s often biased media landscape.” (Since it sounds a lot like me, I tend to like it.) The most recent debate, which I had the honor to attend, posed the provocative proposition “The Special U.S.-Saudi Relationship Has Outlived Its Usefulness.”

The debaters arguing for the proposition were Madawi Al Rasheed,* a Visiting Professor at the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics and a research fellow at the Open Society Foundation, and Mark P. Lagon, Centennial Fellow and Distinguished Senior Scholar at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and former Ambassador-at-Large in charge of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Arguing against the proposition were F. Gregory Gause III, the John H. Lindsey ’44 Professor of International Affairs and head of the International Affairs Department at Texas A&M University, and James Jeffrey, a Visiting Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and formerly Deputy National Security Advisor and Ambassador to Albania, Turkey, and Iraq.

Life, of course, is not really as binary as a debate proposition, and in reality neither was the debate. No one said that the United States should abandon its relationship with Saudi Arabia altogether, and no one claimed that there were no problems. While that might strike debate professionals as a bit sloppy on the edges, it does mesh well with the world as we know it.

Those arguing for the proposition focused primarily on negative aspects of the Saudi regime and domestic Saudi policies. They argued that support for the regime undermines U.S. policy there and elsewhere in the Middle East. They believed that the support had been “unconditional” and that the U.S.-Saudi relationship was strong enough that the United States could insist on certain domestic reforms in exchange for that support. Thus they did not call for ending the U.S.-Saudi relationship but for modifying it in a way that would be beneficial to the Saudi population and to U.S. foreign policy interests.

Those arguing against the proposition basically agreed about the negative aspects of the Saudi regime and that, while the situation has improved somewhat over the years, the regimes efforts at reform tend to be rather superficial. They disagreed, however, on the question of whether it was appropriate for the United States to insist that another country modify its domestic political and social system to our liking and whether the United States had the capacity to achieve such changes in any event. The proper and presumably more successful approach, in their view, was to focus on the strategic situation, bolstering Saudi Arabia as a bastion of stability in a region steeped in turmoil.

Personally, I am of a realist bent and my natural tendency is against the proposition. When I hear the argument that our support should be conditioned on their reforming their political and social structures to suit our cultural norms, I find myself being grateful that the Saudis don’t say, “Sure, we’ll sell you oil, the day you stop making your women walk around in public like hussies with their hair showing.”

Yet I do not dismiss the other side out of hand. Their strongest case, I thought, concerns what happens to U.S. policy and U.S. strategic interests if Saudi Arabia’s domestic structures prove so intolerable that its own people overthrow it and then reject the United States for having supported the old regime. This argument was made by Professor Al Rasheed. While she described Saudi Arabia as a “pressure cooker,” the other three, including her debate partner, were more willing to accept the fundamental stability of the regime. One pointed out that Saudi Arabia has been described as a pressure cooker for decades and has yet to stumble. They may well be correct, yet, as Professor Al Rasheed pointed out, people said exactly the same thing about Iran right up to the moment that the Shah was chased out of the country. The complications are that you cannot work with the country at all if you do not cooperate with the regime in power, and the possibility that your own efforts to force reform might trigger the very revolution you seek to avoid.

Although leaning toward the realist perspective, I did not necessarily agree with every point made by that side. In particular, Ambassador Jeffrey made a statement that struck me as very curious. When asked by someone in the audience why the United States should care whether Saudi Arabia or Iran becomes predominant in the Middle East, the ambassador described Iran as a revisionist or revolutionary power not unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, he saw as a force for stability.

I am sure this is the common understanding in this country and probably the basis for policy, but think about it for a moment. Iran, while a revolutionary regime, is operating in Iraq and Syria because it was invited there by their respective governments. In Iraq at the moment, it is a de facto ally of the United States in the fight against ISIS. In Syria the situation is harder to describe: Iran backs the government against various insurgent groups. The United States—officially—is not fighting the government but is supporting one group of insurgents (who would rather be fighting the government) against another group of insurgents, who are the same enemy that the United States and Iran are fighting in Iraq. (Unofficially, of course, the United States is also backing insurgents against the government, but that’s a secret.)

Saudi Arabia, is the one that has established madrassas throughout the region that have inspired Salafi-jihadi insurgents, and Saudi Arabia has encouraged freelance Islamists to join the jihad against the Syrian regime. Individual Saudi donors have contributed to insurgents in both countries and elsewhere in the region as well. It is easy to say the Saudi Arabia and the United States are forces for stability, while Iran is the disruptor, but is it really true?**

Finally, one question that struck me was not raised, a question to those arguing against the proposition. If we are relying on Saudi Arabia for strategic reasons, is it important that Saudi Arabia may not view the world the same way we do? All four panelists agreed, for instance, that world politics is not a zero-sum game and that we can maintain relations with Saudi Arabia and try to improve relations with Iran at the same time if we want to.

I believe that as well, yet I ask myself: Does Saudi Arabia believe it?

The United States and five other countries negotiated an agreement with Iran designed to prevent that country from acquiring nuclear weapons (nuclear weapons that could have been used, for instance, against Saudi Arabia), and Saudi Arabia seemed to treat it as if it were an act of treason. If the United States and Saudi Arabia come to diverge in their understanding of what constitutes strategic interests, then that could be a problem even if we do not try to interfere in their domestic arrangements.

*The “Al” in the name Al Rasheed is not the Arabic article “al-” (which is, indeed, a common element in Arab names), but rather an Arabic word meaning family, clan, or dynasty. The House of Rasheed (Al Rasheed, or Al Rashid) was a rival to the House of Saud (Al Sa’ud) in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the two fought many battles for control of the Arabian Peninsula’s Najd region. Allied with the Ottomans, the Al Rasheed forces were defeated after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. When this past rivalry was pointed out at the beginning of the debate, Professor Al Rasheed quipped that she had not taken part in any of those battles.

**Note that we are talking about stability here, a separate question from whether Assad deserves to be overthrown. Remember, too, that outside intervention, regardless of whether it is Russia or the United States that is intervening, tends to lengthen civil wars and ultimately to increase the overall number of deaths.

The post Has the U.S.-Saudi Relationship Outlived Its Usefulness? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

NAFTA has been made out to be one of the villains of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. While some aspects of NAFTA surely have contributed to changing employment trends, other policy issues may cause as much tension as a renegotiation of NAFTA itself.

Relations between the U.S. and Mexico seem to be openly sour, but both NAFTA partners may suffer some severe consequences with a change in other non-NAFTA related policy developments.

Mexico seems to be in a more dire situation than Canada with regard to possible new trends in U.S. foreign policy. While American jobs are perceived by some to be lost to Mexico, the restrictions the new U.S. administration might place on Chinese manufacturing may raise the cost of Chinese goods coming into the United States and make Mexican goods more competitive.

The boom in Chinese exports to global markets came at a time when Mexico was reaching its peak in manufacturing processes and technology which made the country a good location to produce higher value goods. The rise in wages in Mexico since the beginning of NAFTA made low-wage labor in places like China more attractive to international companies. The growth in Chinese manufacturing affected Mexico greatly, and an attempt by the United States to hinder Chinese imports may have a residual positive effect on Mexican exports.

U.S. policy seems to concentrate on the trade deficit between nations, and with other factors contributing to funds leaving the U.S. and going to Mexico, the U.S. may take a long-term policy approach on the factors that create the greatest job losses over punishing Mexico over a small trade deficit.

Mexico’s greatest exports over the last 20 to 30 years have been their oil and gas industry, run mostly through state-run PEMEX, and Mexicans themselves. What is often not accounted for is that people sending funds back to their relatives from abroad is a massive economic engine for Mexico. While this trend has varied over time, the size of remittances of  Mexicans working abroad as a share of the national economy of Mexico is often so large that at times it brings in more money into the country than oil and gas exports.

With millions of individuals residing abroad, the Mexican state often does not have to provide local services for those individuals. In addition, many Mexicans send money back to their relatives to add another source of funding for locals who would otherwise rely on state social safety nets. Families and communities often grow with funds earned and sent from abroad, and while individual Mexicans and their funds are not linked directly to NAFTA, the effect on hindering these funds coming from abroad may create a larger loss for Mexico than any renegotiation of NAFTA itself.

A clear goal for the current Mexican administration will be to not let the U.S. hinder the remittances from abroad, but also to maintain a balanced approach to immigration so as not to push the U.S. add excessive taxes on funds coming into Mexico from citizens or dual citizens in other countries.

Canada has always been in a good position since the late 1960s when the Auto Pact was signed, giving Southern Ontario linked access to U.S. car manufacturing in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York State. Now that most of the manufacturing plants have disappeared across the border, the Canadian automobile sector has no logistical partner in the United States.

While the Canadian government has been nervously seeking assurances from the new U.S. administration on NAFTA and trade, the reality is that many American companies are in Canada because of the favorable exchange rate, better healthcare coverage and lower corporate tax rates.

A NAFTA renegotiation has been assured to not affect Canada, but with a competitive U.S. tax rate coming into effect, no auto partners over the border and the Canadian and Ontario government pushing debt financing and high taxes, zero tariffs will not make a difference if there is nothing being produced in Canada to sell.

Added to that, a carbon tax will add costs to producing in Canada at the precise time costs will shrink in the United States. While NAFTA may not change, severe debt and ever increasing taxes and energy costs will surely push the main source of jobs in Southern Ontario out of Canada completely.

To survive a nationalistic U.S. policy approach, Mexico needs to choose its fights wisely and Canada needs to make policy decisions for the benefit of its citizens, their future employment and for the sake of economic reality. Beyond the issue of NAFTA, Mexico and Canada could benefit greatly from a boom in the U.S. economy if it is accompanied by wise domestic policy decisions placing jobs and economic growth above political credit.

The post Beyond NAFTA: Issues in North American Free Trade appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Luwowo Coltan mine near Rubaya, North Kivu. (MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti)

The mining industry has recently descended on Cape Town for the Investing in African Mining Indaba conference, Africa’s biggest mining conference, which wrapped up last week. At the top of the agenda for many of the delegates was still the issue of cobalt, which companies such as Apple have moved to the category of conflict mineral in regards to sourcing it.

Despite moves by the Trump administration to relax laws on conflict minerals, a recent report by RCS Global’s Dr Nicholas Garrett, director at one of the world’s leading raw materials supply chain auditors, revealed the extent of the challenge to the market in finding ‘ethical’ supplies of the mineral, which is being mooted for inclusion in the controversial conflict minerals category.

Over 60% of the global cobalt supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where a legacy of civil war, the persistence of de-industrialized, basic forms of mining, and a weak state all come together to make ethical and transparent sourcing hugely challenging.

“[DRC] mining operations tend to be split between what is called artisanal and small scale mining […] where you have small, independent miners extracting cobalt but hand or with rudimentary tools. In the upstream you also have larger industrial miners extracting cobalt through modern mechanized mining techniques. In the DRC, some industrial mines purchase artisanal production to supplement their own industrial production. For the artisanal production cobalt ore is then sold through local traders who sell the mineral in bulk to international traders and buyers, including refiners,” Dr Garrett says.

In response to complaints of unsafe conditions or labour violations at these artisanal mines, some companies, including Apple, who rely on the mineral to help power their products, have already prescribed cobalt as a conflict mineral, overnight increasing the pressure on the wider electronics markets to do the same. But at the same time demand is set to rise in 2017 as the nascent electric vehicle market goes mainstream. The mineral’s provenance is rapidly becoming a bellwether issue for observers interested in how the wider minerals mining sector is evolving in terms of ethics and transparency.

“Increasingly regulators, NGOs and consumers are requiring brand companies to take a degree of responsibility for their activities in the supply chains […]. The worldwide response to conflict minerals has demonstrated that they do have the power to influence the entire supply chain.” Dr Garrett tells African Business.

The goal for downstream businesses from Tesla to Huwai is how to secure their cobalt supply in an increasingly squeezed market while also proving to their customers and regulators that their supply chain is transparent and ethical. In the last year, regulators in the U.S. and China have intimated that scrutiny will be further tightened while the EU formally announced it would implement a new framework and new regulation to force greater mineral supply chain transparency.

Rising supply chain standards

But the market is responding. According to Dr Garrett, RCS Global itself has researchers, advisors and auditors physically on the ground in mine sites in Africa and other producing regions plus staff in China, the U.S. and Europe who engage with the firms responsible for moving the mineral from mine to market Fine. His firm checks these actors’ facilities and activities as well as working with the industry bodies to develop the systems, processes and tools to support responsible sourcing of the mineral. Other auditors are also now offering similar services as demand for due diligence increases.

But downstream businesses are also directly addressing the issue of supply chain standards for themselves, setting up the Responsible Cobalt Initiative. The driving force behind the initiative is the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters, but companies ranging from HP to Sony are also involved.

Dr Garrett, this move is hardly surprising: “It is now both legally and ethically the responsibility of downstream companies—those that ultimately use the raw material in their products—to ensure actors in their supply chain are adhering to the highest standards.”

Meanwhile with the DRC set to remain the dominant player in the cobalt production, ensuring supply can be verified as ethical and transparent will be key for cobalt producers and downstream customers, he says. Over the last two years cobalt production there has remained stable at 63,000 metric tonnes with an increase in production possible in coming years, dwarfing its competitors.

He explains: “Sourcing can continue as long as [cobalt] shipments are tracked down to mine sites and the integrity of the chain of custody can be assured. There are systems out there, like the Better Sourcing Program, which operationalize hands on due diligence approach in the upstream and are designed to operate in conflict-affected and high-risk areas.”

If firms can secure ethical cobalt supplies he thinks, it will also go a long way to proving real progress in the wider African mineral sector. Only time will tell if this can be achieved but with the Trump administration now considering using an executive order to repeal U.S. legislation (part of the Frank-Dodd act) covering transparent supply chain sourcing in the name of reducing bureaucratic burdens on business, the issue is suddenly looking very topical.

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With the Trump administration having introduced “alternative facts” into the U.S. political lexicon, rational and objective analyses of the threats facing America are more important than ever. At the same time, the administration’s intolerance of alternative points of view decreases the likelihood that they will influence policy.

The National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) latest quadrennial report—Global Trends: Paradox of Progress—invites needed debate over where the world is headed over the next two decades. The report arrived in the wake of President Trump’s unexpected victory and is a chance to assess whether some of the most pressing foreign policy topics are being considered from all angles. On one such topic the report points to some fresh thinking: just how big a threat is Russia?

With discussions on Russia focused with the Trump-Putin relationship, the report offers useful comparative data points. Projecting to 2035, it expects Russia’s population to be slightly more than 1/3 the size of the U.S.’ (135.6 million and 365.2 million respectively). Additionally, after a period where Russian life expectancy plummeted immediately after the collapse of the communist regime, the country will experience only small gains in life expectancy by 2035 (67.1 years for men, 77.8 years for women) and will remain far behind America (80.4 years for men, 83.9 years for women). Russia’s population will also be slightly older than America’s in 2035 (Russia’s median age is projected to be 43.6 years, compared with 40.8 years for America).

By the numbers then, former President Barack Obama was on solid statistical ground when, during his final press conference last December, he described Russia as a “smaller” and “weaker” country. How, then, could it significantly weaken America?

The report cites further economic pressures that could inhibit Russia’s ability to project power. If global growth were to weaken over a lengthy period of time, energy prices would likely decrease, undercutting Russia’s chief source of economic strength and one of its main levers to exert political pressure on its near abroad. Meanwhile, the more nations seek to move away from fossil fuels to combat climate change, the more demand for Russia’s hydrocarbons reserves could weaken, further impacting its economy.

Despite the risks to its economic prospects, the NIC considers projections based on Russia’s recent actions that would see it continue to build its regional influence. In a section considering the near-term prospects for Eurasia, the report concludes that “Russia’s aggressive foreign policy will be a source of considerable volatility in the next five years.”

One of the report’s scenarios sees an international system devolving to individual nations seeking to be “islands in a sea of volatility.” This scenario predicts Russian actions that harken back to George Kennan’s Cold War-era description of Russia’s view of itself, defending its sphere of influence against what it sees as an ever-encroaching world. In this projection, Russia will continue to be active in the former USSR territories both to re-assert its great power status and, in its view, to protect itself. At stake is the independence of the former Soviet satellites and the degree to which America and its NATO allies will defend their security guarantee.

Importantly, the NIC explores the degree to which China’s rise in Asia will impact Russia. Two American antagonists, united in their opposition to U.S. influence in Asia, are likely to devote increasing attention to their own rivalry. “To counter Western attempts to weaken and isolate Russia,” the report reads in a section on spheres of influence, “Moscow will accommodate Beijing’s rise in the near term but ultimately will balk before becoming a junior partner to China—which would run counter to Russia’s great power self-image.”

One weakness of predictive reports is a tendency to assert predictions that are in fact retellings of the past and affirmations of the present. “Moscow will test NATO and European resolve,” the report predicts, “seeking to undermine Western credibility.” This is a timeless statement of Russian policy since the end of World War II, and therefore a safe one to make.

Overall, however, the NIC report delivers on a needed premise: to challenge the discussion on global threats to expand beyond clichés and into fresh thinking. Across its different scenarios, the NIC presents a picture of the world to come as more complex, divided, and volatile. It stops short of flatly predicting the world will be a more dangerous place in 2035, but that perspective permeates its findings. That is enough to give today’s foreign policy planners pause.

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