Diplomacy & Crisis News

Ouvrier relieur à Paris, Eugène Varlin (1839-1871) fait ses armes de militant dès 1857, dans l'organisation corporative de sa profession. À partir de 1864, les ouvriers pouvant désormais s'organiser au grand jour, il joue un rôle de premier plan dans les grèves des relieurs de 1864-1865, dans la création de leur Société de solidarité, puis dans celle de la Fédération parisienne des sociétés ouvrières. Parallèlement, il adhère à l'Association internationale des travailleurs (AIT), dont il sera l'un des principaux animateurs français. Exilé pour échapper à la répression, il revient après la chute de l'Empire et devient membre du comité central de la Garde nationale. Lors de la Commune de Paris, il est nommé à la commission des finances. Il appartient à la minorité pour laquelle la Commune représente la « négation absolue de la dictature » et non une « dictature au nom du peuple ». Il est fusillé par les Versaillais le 28 mai. Cette biographie souligne l'importance de ce symbole de « l'indéniable continuité entre le collectivisme révolutionnaire [de l'AIT], la fondation du Parti ouvrier et, au-delà, le syndicalisme révolutionnaire ».

Spartacus, Paris, 2016, 236 pages, 13 euros.

L'année 2017 marquera le centième anniversaire de la révolution d'Octobre en Russie. Le mérite de l'historien américain Alexander Rabinowitch est de rendre à cette insurrection, dont Petrograd (Saint-Pétersbourg) fut l'épicentre, sa dimension concrète, humaine et politique, loin des poncifs. Il raconte les événements et les mobilisations qui amenèrent les bolcheviks à renverser le gouvernement d'Alexandre Kerenski par un travail systématique et efficace dans la classe ouvrière et dans l'armée. Si l'on ne peut sous-estimer le rôle personnel de Lénine, l'ouvrage montre que le parti bolchevique, loin d'être monolithique, était traversé à tous les niveaux par des contradictions et des débats. Ses différentes instances disposaient d'une autonomie d'action grâce à laquelle elles pouvaient mesurer au plus près le degré de mobilisation politique dans la ville et éviter l'aventurisme. Cette souplesse et cette diversité leur permirent de traduire les aspirations populaires — la terre aux paysans, la fin de la guerre —, ce qui rendit possible leur victoire.

La Fabrique, Paris, 2016, 530 pages, 28 euros.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation.

International media has been focusing on the near-term directions of US foreign policy with regard to the Iran nuclear accord, sanctions against North Korea, relations with China and Russia, mutual defense with Japan and South Korea, free trade agreements, immigration, terrorism, and the wider Middle East. But no closer look has been paid to the possible dynamics of foreign aid under a Trump presidency.

Having a look at the Middle East and North Africa, for example, shows that some form of foreign aid is given for strategic and geopolitical reasons. New policy challenges have also arisen in the face of violence and civil wars across the region which made the Obama administration use new sources of funding beyond traditional bilateral or State Department/USAID-controlled accounts.

However, questions will arise over the type (i.e. other than military aid) and amount of resources the US should devote to tackling the region’s challenges. The Congress and the Trump administration will most likely debate whether US aid would be vital for the promotion of stability and democracy across the region. Globally speaking, President-elect Trump’s agenda will likely be how to do less with foreign aid (especially where policy and institutional settings have not been conducive for effective aid), yet not ignoring low-income countries.

The orthodoxy in foreign aid viewed the lack of capital as a major cause of poverty; the most basic of which was the idea of a “vicious circle of poverty.” Foreign aid was used to fill that gap to provide a “big push” to poor nations and, in the view of Walt Rostow, lead to an “economic takeoff.”

Skepticism of such plans is widespread nowadays among academics and development practitioners. Peter Bauer (1915–2002) was actually the most articulate of the dissenters, who once explained that the notions of a vicious circle of poverty and of foreign aid as essential to development were absurd: rich countries that were once poor developed without outside aid, whereas those that have received substantial external aid have failed to escape poverty.

According to William Easterly, “foreign aid cannot achieve the grandiose goal of transforming other societies to escape poverty.” When foreign aid becomes a significant part of a nation’s income, the result is likely to be inflation, waste, corruption, rent-seeking, and indefinite postponement of needed economic and political reforms (the major theme of Easterly’s book The Elusive Quest for Growth).

Whatever the ideological divide, there might be a clear case which a Trump administration can give more attention to, and possibly, boost US aid’s relative success compared to other global aid agencies: the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which was established in 2004 as a US foreign aid agency that works in partnership with competitively selected countries which demonstrate a commitment to good governance, economic freedom and investment in their citizens.

Since its inception, MCC’s mandate has included demonstrating results with rigorous criteria to evaluate countries’ aptitude to utilize grant funding. Perhaps of equal significance, raising indicator scores has become a prominent objective of some developing countries: the MCC effect. This means that countries seeking eligibility are said to be moving on their own to enact reforms and take measures to improve performance scores that would enable them to meet MCC criteria.

While there is little doubt that availability of MCC funding has influenced some decision makers in developing countries to undertake policy reforms, it is uncertain how large or widespread the MCC effect is. A limited number of quantitative analyses have attempted to test this incentive effect. The earliest of these was conducted by Harvard researchers in 2006 (Doug Johnson and Tristan Zajonc, “Can Foreign Aid Create an Incentive for Good Governance? Evidence from the Millennium Challenge Corporation,” April 2006). But because the analysis was conducted soon after MCC’s creation and with a limited amount of data, the researchers determined that the results were not conclusive.

The best evidence for an MCC effect thus remains qualitative and country-specific. Setting aside specific methodological aspects, we need to think of the MCC effect (and the effectiveness of foreign aid at large) as a process, rather than a policy outcome. This is not surprising as economic progress depends on the complex interaction of policies, institutions, and values, not all of which are easy to measure.

Coming from a private sector background where incentives matter, President-elect Trump can radically improve US foreign aid by looking at its effectiveness in the past, focusing on the intended beneficiaries of aid (the poor) rather than leaving it to politicians and corrupt governments. The MCC has a track record: it is one of the few aid agencies in the world that have been already held accountable for specific tasks and not the visions that follow from aid bureaucracies.

The post Foreign Aid under a Trump Presidency appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Arizona-Mexico border fence is seen near Naco, Arizona. (Samantha Sais/Reuters)

No one really knows the exact number, but with an estimate of between ten and twenty million non-status immigrants in the United States, resolving America’s immigration quagmire is nearly impossible. For a legal system based on individual rights and consequences to apply justice in its intended manner, the millions of non-status immigrants that are in the United States must be acknowledged and processed as identifiable individuals.

Without a new and innovative path to legal status and a method for removing those who could be potentially harmful to communities in the United States, there will be no resolution without a massive political fallout and a human rights tragedy upon the application of traditional immigration policies.

The current language on immigration reform is not as inventive as many on both sides of the political spectrum may perceive it to be. During the last months and transition from the Bush to Obama Presidency, there was bipartisan support for a significant barrier on the southern border of the United States. While the barrier had some support from both parties, the cost of building such a barrier was not justifiable at the time. The 2008-2009 economic downturn that came about in the same time period affected immigration to such a great degree, that non-legal immigration to the United States from Latin America fell considerably.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, illegal immigration to the United States never recovered in any substantial way to its pre-2008 levels and the idea of building a wall on the southern border was shelved until the 2015-2016 election campaign. Even with the idea of the barrier being proposed by the Trump Administration, the application of a new immigration policy is still hampered with traditional limits to resolving the larger issue.

Some agreeable perspectives from both sides of the issue should be acknowledged if any resolution will become reality. It should be acceptable that the United States should have control over its own border, and be able to apply this control when required as a nation state with a contiguous southern border. It should also be acknowledged that a policy to remove illegal immigrants from the United States without strict guidelines based on human rights and the rule of law would most likely lead to an abuse of administrative powers by authorities who may ignore individual rights of citizens and non-citizens alike.

A path to citizenship must exist for non-status immigrants that satisfy the rule of law and the needs of the United States, but also be developed in a manner that creates confidence and trust in the process against abuse and against a lack of fairness in its application. A new approach is needed for a resolution to take place, one that develops and promotes confidence on both sides of the issue.

For a new immigration process to work, it must be based in reality. It will be almost impossible to remove ten to twenty million individuals from the United States in a simple manner, and this large number of people, often with American born children and relatives, are an integral part of the culture and economy of the United States. To begin, an initial smaller group of people should be self-identified and have their contribution to the US economy, community, employer and family reviewed by officials of the United States to determine their contribution to American society, and if deemed a productive part of their community and society, be given a path to full citizenship within a four to six year time frame.

Self identifying by non-status immigrants without the threat of deportation allows for individual identification of productive members of American society and brings those who already are in American communities into the larger fold. This will allow millions of the best contributors of the formerly unknown group to fully integrate into the communities they have been building for years. With an initial group being integrated with respect to individual rights and the needs of the American public as a whole, the confidence in the process would allow for it to be rolled out to the larger non-status community and produce a path to citizenship for those who wish to become permanent parts of the larger community.

For those who are not seen as contributors to their American communities, they can return to their country of origin and apply under a work permit or as an immigrant through the normal process. For those who are linked to crime or are deemed a threat to the United States, they can be deported without permission to return.

While there will always be a great debate on how to handle the issue of illegal immigration, the acceptance of a path to citizenship that is a benefit to the United States would be a toughly sought win-win for the best contributors to American society. Without a realistic solution based on the current immigration policy approaches, all policies will be protested against by those who will not be able to achieve the policy approach that most benefits their perspective on the immigration issue.

Millions of non-status immigrants will remain in the United States no matter what policy approach is applied, and that reality must be accepted and worked upon to come up with a resolution. The only option is either maintain the status quo, or accept the impossibility at resolving the current issue using current policy tools and attempt a new and innovative approach.

The post Resolving America’s Immigration Issues One Policy At A Time appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The UN Biodiversity Conference today opened in Cancun, Mexico, with a call to governments and businesses to integrate biodiversity into their practices if countries are to halt further environmental degradation and ensure the well-being and prosperity of future generations.

Briefing the Security Council on the situation in Liberia, the United Nations peacekeeping chief today underlined that the country remained stable and that since the security transition in June this year, there had been no incident serious enough to warrant an armed response from the UN mission in the country, known as UNMIL.

As the security situation has stabilized in villages near war-torn Mosul, where Iraqi military operations are under way to wrest the city from terrorists, the United Nations refugee agency and its partners are racing against time to distributing winter kits to those who remained or returned home and those newly-displaced as plunging temperatures hit the area.

Of the world’s 7.4 billion people, some 15 per cent – or one billion – are said to have some form of disability.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today highlighted the challenges people with disabilities face despite progress made since the adoption of a global treaty to promote their rights a decade ago.

Faced with record displacement due to conflict, the United Nations has moved to reinforce the global refugee protection regime by issuing new guidelines on dealing with people fleeing their country because of war, who are not recognized as refugees by some States.

Last month, Iraq suffered thousands of deaths and injuries – including by a significant number of civilians – in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict, according to recently released figures by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

With the scale of human suffering in north-eastern Nigeria becoming clearer as the Government has pushed Boko Haram insurgents from more and more areas, the United Nations today launched a $1 billion funding appeal to address the needs of those in crisis, and announced that nearly 75 partner agencies are on standby to respond where areas are accessible.

Noting that the number of children engaged in the worst forms of child labour has decreased and frameworks to tackle contemporary slavery and trafficking have expanded, senior United Nations officials, including the Secretary-General and the head of the UN labour agency, today called for concerted action to save those who remain trapped in extreme exploitation, abuse and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence.

The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, appealed today for an urgent scale-up in humanitarian assistance, with relief agencies already overstretched as the country faces severe drought conditions, including food and water shortages.

While reiterating its extreme concern about the civilian population in Syria’s war-battered Aleppo, the United Nations refugee agency today said it is also focusing on the rapidly growing shelter needs for thousands of people fleeing the city’s eastern neighbourhoods.

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The MEK advocates for a non-nuclear Iran with free, democratic, and secular values, much in line with our own. Having been based in Iraq since 1986, they are now resettled in European countries, an effort in which the U.S. government played a major role. However, with the President-elect a vocal opponent of the nuclear deal with Tehran, charges against the dissident group and its many defenders—the stock and trade of the mullahs in Tehran—are conveniently resurfacing across the U.S. media.

As an academic and author of three empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles that examine the MEK—in addition to writing the foreword for an independent 2013 study undertaken by Ambassador Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr. that addressed the misinformation campaign directed at Western government policies toward the Iranian opposition group—I feel that it is critical to set the record straight.

The US Department of State did not add the MEK to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) until 1997. The purported basis was the killings of six American military personnel and defense contractors in Iran in the early 1970s. The State Department would later allege that the MEK played a key role in the February 1979 occupation of the US embassy in Tehran and that after fleeing to Paris, and then Iraq in the early 1980s, it conducted terrorist attacks inside Iran. Such claims, never verified with credible terrorism incident data, were formally debunked by French judicial review.

Two years later, in 1999, the United States went a step further by alleging that the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a political organization made up of several Iranian opposition groups that reject clerical rule, was a front for the MEK and designated it too as a terrorist group. Martin Indyk, then Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, indicated that the State Department added the National Council of Resistance (NCR) as an alias for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) because “The Iranian government had brought this to our attention. We looked into it and saw that there were good reasons for designating the NCR as an alias for the MEK.” The United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) followed suit, pinning the MEK (though not the NCRI) to their terror lists.

The evidence, however, demonstrates that the US military officers and contractor killings that formed the basis of the original designation were carried out by a secular hard-left splinter group, with no ties to MEK leadership; that there was no proof that the MEK played a role in the 1979 embassy takeover; and that the armed resistance carried out by the MEK from Iraq was an insurgency directed at official regime targets, not innocent civilians, at a time that their relatives and sympathizers were being jailed, tortured and executed en masse.

There is also overwhelming evidence that Iran lobbied hard to get the United States and other Western governments to designate the MEK as terrorists, even though the allegations were baseless. Only a day after the US added the MEK to its FTO list in October 1997, one senior Clinton administration official said inclusion of the MEK was intended as a ‘goodwill gesture’ to Tehran and its newly elected moderate president Mohammad Khatami. Five years later, the same official told Newsweek: “[There] was White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government. At the time, President Khatami had recently been elected and was seen as a moderate. Top administration officials saw cracking down on the [MEK]—which the Iranians had made clear they saw as a menace, as one way to do so.”

Across the Atlantic, similar political considerations operated. In 2006, then British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw admitted that the UK designation of the MEK in 2001 was specifically issued in response to demands made by the Iranian regime. That same year, classified documents, later unclassified by a UK court, revealed that senior foreign service officials were concerned about possible adverse foreign policy consequences if the terrorist designation was lifted since the Iranian regime prioritized “tough legal and political measures” against the organization. The EU too is now known to have bowed to pressure in designating the MEK in 2002.

Supporters of removing the terrorist designation took their case to courts. These efforts met with strong resistance, not only from spokespersons for Iran but also from representatives of a new Iran-tilting government in Iraq. By 2006, seven European courts had ruled that the group did not meet lawful criteria for terrorism. They also ruled that the terrorist designation should have been moot after 2001, when the group’s leadership ceased armed resistance to focus on a political and social campaign to bring about democratic change in Iran.

In the United States, where the courts similarly ruled repeatedly in favor of the MEK, and as many as 200 members of Congress signed statements endorsing its cause, the process was stalled until America’s second highest court granted the writ of mandamus filed by the MEK, and ordered the Secretary of State to take action or it would delist the group. Secretary Hillary Clinton, having been provided no credible basis for re-listing by the intelligence community, revoked the designation in September 2012.

Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the MEK is a natural ally of the United States, one to which we have pledged our support. Unfortunately, if people are to believe the misleading media storm, it could have a dire influence on the selection of our next Secretary of State and the future of US-Iran policy.

Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan, Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs, is director of the graduate program in Global Affairs and Human Security at the University of Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter @ProfSheehan.

The post Media Storm Resurrects Discredited Claims about Iranian Resistance Group appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today commended the people of Gambia for the peaceful and orderly manner in which yesterday&#39s presidential election was held and congratulated President-elect Adama Barrow.

Concerned by the increasing polarization in the Maldives, which has made dialogue among the Government and political parties increasingly difficult, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has encouraged all concerned to work toward an inclusive dialogue.

Welcoming the Colombian parliament&#39s ratification of the new Final Peace Agreement between the Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People&#39s Army, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council have expressed hope for its swift implementation for the benefit of all Colombians.