Foreign Policy Blogs

Mapping the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one can easily get lost in the amount of information available. Hundreds of projects and nearly a trillion dollars’ worth of investments currently exist in over 60 countries. A serious analysis of each project must take into account a variety of factors, including funding sources, implementing partners, budget estimates, progress reports, as well as local needs and concerns.  

However, the BRI is much more than an investment plan aimed at improving connectivity among countries. The most important effect of the BRI regards how China’ is stepping up its effort to shape a narrative about itself – telling the China story. In this regard, the Chinese leadership is deeply aware of the importance of public diplomacy and institution building to improve its soft power. While the idea of a China story has been around since 2004, President Xi picked it up in 2013 and has been referring to it in various speeches ever since, urging Chinese leaders to play their role. From international summits to cultural associations, examples abound of different entities contributing to the development of a China story. Through the BRI, China has stepped up its reputation-building effort in an unprecedented way that will have long-lasting consequences on the world stage. 

In comparison with another widely common slogan, the Chinese Dream, there remains a subtle, but clear distinction. The Chinese Dream attempts to guarantee high living condition to every Chinese citizen, based on a flourishing and harmonious society. The China story instead refers to the ability to of designing China’s own narrative about its values and history to be projected outward to the rest of the world. Even though the Chinese Dream and the China story are related to a certain extent, the BRI remains an international initiative whose effects regard the narrative presented to other countries. 

China’s Public Diplomacy 

At the 19th Congress, President Xi Jinping expressed the intent to “improve capacity for engaging in international communication so as to tell China’s stories well, [and] present a true, multi-dimensional, and panoramic view of China.” The BRI is one the most ambitious expressions of this objective, undertaken to influence the perception of China on a global scale. President Xi in fact argued that the BRI and affiliated institutions contribute to “a further rise in China’s international influence, ability to inspire, and power to shape.” As defined decades ago by J. Nye, soft power enables one to attract and shape other actors’ preferences through culture, values or policies, as opposed to hard power, which entails coercive impositions based on economic or military might. 

Furthermore, by facilitating economic agreements and partnerships, China is advancing “cultural soft power and the international influence of Chinese culture.” Indeed, despite the difficulty of quantifying its influence, the BRI has already succeeded in generating interest among academic, business, and political circles.  

The response has not been entirely positive. In some countries, the BRI has received negative reactions from the public or government officials. Twenty-seven EU ambassadors recently drafted a report raising concerns about the unilateral nature of the initiative. Nevertheless, constructing projects is perhaps not as important in the short-term, as is conveying a clear narrative about China’s leading status on the world stage.  

Thanks to its historical reference to the Silk Road, the BRI has become a brand name, particularly in the eyes of foreign nations. While other countries had promoted similar strategies to foster development and connectivity, none had managed to build a narrative around it. Even if the TTIP or the TPP are sometimes considered the economic equivalents of the BRI, their names (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trans-Pacific Partnership) certainly did not help building an attracting narrative around them. Likewise, previous outward-looking policies devised by China itself to promote investments abroad like the “Go Out Policy” always lacked a soft-power component.  

BRI’s Soft Power in Reality 

The scope of the BRI surpasses political and economic frameworks. Cultural initiatives that fall under the Silk Road umbrella keep increasing. In 2015, the Silk Road Research Institute of Beijing Foreign Studies University was founded to highlight “thematic studies to tell China stories, spread China voices and take Chinese culture to the world.” That same year, the University Alliance of the Silk Road, which consists of approximately 100 universities from 22 countries, was established to foster “institutional exchanges, talent training, joint research, and cultural communication.”  

In 2016, the Cultural Silk Road was launched first in China and then replicated the following year in Lyon, France.  During the same year, the Silk Road Music Industry Alliance that consists of 18 different countries was created to “develop and expand the music, film/movie, entertainment, digital media and culture industries in China.” This later initiated the Silk Road Music Festivals, which already counts two editions in China and the first international edition in fall 2018.  

In Thailand, the BRI even led to a Thai-Chinese Health Promotion Association, meant to assist Chinese tourists abroad. According to Lu Jian, Chinese Ambassador to Thailand, Confucius Institutes in Thailand are growing faster than in any other Asian country. Confucius Institutes have in fact already been indicated as a fundamental means in support of the BRI, holding dedicated lectures and events on the Silk Road. At the Joint Conference of Asian Confucius Institutes along the BRI, it was pointed out that 51 countries participating in the BRI had established 135 Confucius Institutes. 

BRI’s Snowballing Effect  

Born as a massive investment plan to improve connectivity around over 60 countries in the world, the BRI is clearly not only about building infrastructure and developing cities. The BRI has been a powerful leverage to boost China’s soft power through public diplomacy and institution building. Citizens and leaders around the world are eager to participate in events, conferences and associations to foster exchanges between different communities. 

The aforementioned cases show how the BRI is promoting initiatives that have a magnifying effect for China’s reputation and set the stage to tell the China story. By enhancing the soft power of this network, China has an opportunity to counter foreign narratives that securitize the role of Confucius Institutes and Chinese activities abroad. No other country has ever embarked on such a broad based plan with the same potential to shape its narrative – despite the common comparison with the Marshall Plan, their size remains significantly different. This will certainly remain the first chapter of the China story.

Cristian Tracci is an MIA candidate at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he specializes in International Security Policy and Conflict Resolution. He was previously a graduate consultant for the Eurasia Group and the UN Mission in Kosovo. While pursuing his undergraduate degree in International Affairs and Philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome, Cristian also studied abroad in Japan and Korea.

The post The Belt and Road Initiative: Shaping the Narrative of a China Story appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

As consumer debt in the UK reaches pre-2008 financial crisis levels within a new low interest rate austerity dynamic, we examine whether there is reasonable cause for concern and how the Government and Bank of England mitigate the risk.

Consumer debt is an individual form of debt which is composed primarily of credit card, household, and car leasing expenditure. Mortgages and student loans are not included as they are generally seen as investments. Consumer debt is not productive, it is simply for consumption. In moderation, consumer debt is encouraged as it increases spending into the economy and incites growth. When debt levels climb at a constant pace, growth can continue to flourish. However, as soon as the market is spooked and business falters or unemployment rises, widespread debt can easily escalate a small treatable market blip.

Before the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England’s data on consumer debt in the UK was recorded at £2.08 trillion. As the crisis spread and markets were in turmoil, the first 4 months saw £200 billion of credit vanish. With the continuous real wage rate decline and rise in unemployment, total consumer debt dropped to £1.5 trillion in 2012.

In January 2018, the UK’s consumer debt has reached pre-crisis levels and, as of April 2018, stands at £2.1 trillion. Although the figure matches pre-crisis levels, the reasons for the build-up are largely different.

To remediate the effects of the crisis and recession, the Bank of England, among other stimulus packages, lowered interest rates to encourage spending and investment – which in turn would fuel growth. Individual borrowers saw this as a great opportunity to get their hands on ‘cheap’ money. Independently, the Bank of England’s interest rate policy follows sound economic theory, however, the Government took a contrasting approach which has led to this unique situation.

Austerity vs Stimulus Dynamic

The Bank of England’s technocratic approach was semi-countered by Government’s ideologically-driven austerity plan. On the individual level, a problematic scenario emerges: Cheap debt and tight Government fiscal policy. In the UK, figures from February 2018 show that 44.8% of the population are either financially struggling (low income, benefit dependent, social housed, median savings of £50) or squeezed (low income, private renters, one shock away from problems, median savings of £580). These people, whose financial situations are worsened by tight fiscal policy, are given a lifeline from the artificially low interest rates – leaving some core issues unresolved and a mountain of debt rising. The higher consumer debt piles up the more damaging potential it has. As the boom and bust cycle of economics will indefinitely continue, solving fundamental consumer debt behaviour can lessen the impact

Mitigation Efforts

The Bank of England’s interest rate is managed in a fashion that allows markets to predict rate changes to reduce unnecessary market fluctuations. A rise of bank interest rates will have the effect of slowing a debt build-up, as borrowing money will become more expensive. This idea has already been floated by Monetary Policy Committee member Gertjan Vlieghe specifically in response to ever-rising consumer debt. The UK Government’s austerity plan will eventually end with a fiscal loosening that can be an effective tool countering any economic blips.

On a societal level, the topic of indebtedness has increased its salience. A recent cross-party effort led by MP George Freeman and MP Liam Byrne demonstrates the presence of political will to tackle this epidemic. The wider social cost of consumer debt is estimated to be £8.3 billion. Badly managed debt, as a social problem, must be tackled on a societal level. The MP’s campaign could help encourage a more responsible approach to debt.

Is it really that bad?

Research by staff at the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority recently suggest that the rise in total consumer debt is actually attributed to an increase in safe borrowers taking on more debt. Those with above average incomes are likely to have good credit ratings and opportunities to leverage higher.

The Brexit referendum result and the depreciation of the sterling currency did not lead to disaster for the UK economy. The organised timeline given in the negotiation stages of the Brexit process allows time for the markets to create solutions to whichever direction the negotiations go. It is unlikely there will be an outcome drastic enough to jolt markets and plunge the UK into a recession. In the unlikely event that no deal is made with the EU and UK prospects dwindle, the Government and the Bank of England will certainly use their vast resources and experience to maintain a level of stability.

To effectively control the rise of consumer debt, a lead at the societal level to promote reasonable behaviour and control towards consumer debt should be encouraged. The Government, as always, should have contingency plans for shocks to the market but it will do well in taming the epidemic levels of debt not just for the next shock, but indefinitely,  through the boom and bust cycles we will continue to experience.

This article was first published on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Fabian Bak. 

The post UK Consumer Debt: A cause for alarm? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On June 24th, Saudi Arabia lifted the ban against women driving, which was in place for over 25 years. This reform came just days after the one-year anniversary of 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s (MbS) rise to power. Since his ascension, the young prince has initiated widespread social and economic reformsthroughout the kingdom, many of which have addressed women’s rights. Despite the lift of the driving ban being a step in the right direction for women’s advancement in Saudi Arabia, the main reasoning behind it is purely economic based on MbS’ 2030 vision. Based on this vision, MbS wants to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil, and he promises to achieve this by taking steps to increase women’s participation into the Saudi workforce by 22 to 30%.

However, Saudi women still face a significant number of discriminatory policies that prevent them from achieving their full potential. Additionally, in the lead up to the reforms, the Saudi government arrested many women activistswho disagreed with the direction of such limited gender developments within the country. The United States should “name and shame” Saudi Arabia, one of its allies, into releasing the women activists and rescinding the allegations against them. As Saudi Arabia is unlikely to completely shift overnight in its overall treatment of women, MbS should take short-term actions to create more inclusivity for women, such as fewer regulations on women starting their own businesses. If MbS wants to achieve his 2030 visionfor the country, specifically the goal of transforming the economy with the incorporation of more women, he must begin to champion these courageous women and use them as allies.

A multitude of structural discriminatory policies infringe upon the basic rights of Saudi women, who constitute 42% of the country’s population, preventing them from obtaining full equality alongside their male counterparts. In fact, according to a recent poll, Thomas Reuters ranked Saudi Arabia as the fifth most dangerous country for women in the world, mainly because of its patriarchal societal norms. Some of these restrictive, archaic laws include a male guardianship systemand the inability of women to pass down their nationality to their children. As best described in an Al Jazeera opinion article, “a woman in Saudi Arabia is legally treated as a minor from cradle to grave; she needs consent of a male guardian to be able to study, travel, work, marry or obtain some official documents.” Even the lifting of the driving ban is not a complete equal opportunity for all Saudi women. The law so far has only allowed women with foreign permitsto be able to convert their current licenses from other countries. As of June 24th, an Interior Ministry spokesman estimated that only 120,000women applied for Saudi licenses out of an estimated 9 million eligible drivers. This further proves that the driving reform is not a genuine effort to incorporate more women into the workforce. Overall, women in Saudi Arabia experience life as second-class citizens, and the end of the driving ban is only a small step forward in terms of removing the discriminatory policies women face.

In spite of MbS’ attempt to portray himself as a modern leader committed to the human rights of his people, he has quietly detained activists and restricted the freedoms of citizens in the wake of these seemingly innovative reforms. Just weeks ahead of the lifting of the ban, the Kingdom arrested 11 leading Saudi women activistson counts of “communicating and cooperatingwith individuals and organizations hostile” to Saudi Arabia. Throughout the country and on social media, pictures of the arrested leaders went viral with text pasted across their photos reading “traitors” and “agents of embassies.”Some have suspected that MbS ordered the arrests to appealto the country’s ultraconservative demographic and religious leaders who have opposed these recent reforms. It is a great paradox that when women are finally getting into the driver’s seat, others are sitting in jailafter fighting for this right.

The United States and the United Nations should continue to demandthe release of the activists, as many of these women still remain behind bars. If MbS truly wants to transform the Saudi economy, he must use the untapped resources Saudi women present and expand the driving ban repeal to include all women. This will allow more women to enter the workforce, though many other reforms must occur in order for women to reach real equality. Women are a vital ally for MbS to make strides in achieving his goal of diversifying the Saudi economy.

When asked about Saudi women’s reforms compared to the West, MbS stated, “I just want to remind the world that American women had to wait long to get their right to vote. So we need time.” Even though we must praise driving ban repeal and other gender reforms, we must be concerned about the other restrictions on women’s freedom in Saudi Arabia, as well as the intense crackdown on women activists. This is the moment for MbS to form alliances with women activists in Saudi Arabia and continue to enact reforms for women so that he can be on the pathway of achieving his long-term goal of Vision 2030 for his country. It is 2018, and the time is now for Saudi women to experience full equality.

Renee Coulouris is a Master’s degree candidate at Johns Hopkins University, where she is studying Global Security Studies. She has previously worked at Women in International Security and in the Africa II Division of the Department of Political Affairs at the United Nations. Additionally, she has conducted research in an array of countries relating to international security, foreign policy, and women’s roles in extremist organizations.

The post Don’t Be Fooled by the Recent Reforms for Women in Saudi Arabia appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Not since the 1950s has the need for a unified European security framework been greater. Deteriorating relations between the United States and European nations, evidenced most recently by disagreements during the G7 Summit, reflect a divergence in foreign-policy interests between traditional cross-Atlantic partners —and the end of an era in which Europe can blindly count on the U.S. for security. As the United States continues to engage in diplomatic maneuvers that alienate even its closest allies, Europe must redirect its security efforts toward a self-reliant strategy aimed at improving coordination in key areas of counterterrorism, cyber, and logistics, while consolidating global peace operations. Reliance on the U.S. is no longer a guaranteed option. In the face of adversity, this is an opportunity for Europe to stand up on its own and respond to future challenges, like elections meddling, border tensions and nearby conflicts – each with the potential to escalate.

Drifting Apart

The United States has been drifting away from Europe in various domains, including diplomatic, economic and military issues, many of which though have security implications. In 2009, the Obama administration implemented policies intended to shift foreign-policy focus—and American resources—to the Asia-Pacific, where China’s rising power requires increasingly more attention. But never before has the retreat from Europe been so blunt, with several policy makers and analysts discussing whether the alliance is inevitably compromised.

In June, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union (EU), Canada and Mexico over national security concerns—an “insulting” maneuver, in the words of Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and one that undermines the mutual trust on which security alliances such as NATO rest.

Nor can the U.S. be viewed as a credible partner in negotiations concerning other issues. In May, it unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, disputing International Atomic Energy Agency reports that confirmed Iran’s compliance with the agreement, and effectively leaving Europe in a difficult position to uphold the deal. Such maneuvers impair American reliability in future negotiations and underscore the amount of caution with which Europe must enter multilateral agreements involving the U.S.

Established security institutions, too, are under fire. After denouncing NATO as “obsolete,” President Trump criticized members who had not reached 2 percent of GDP in defense spending, despite the 2014 Wales Summit Declaration calling only for members to “aim to move towards the two percent guideline within a decade.” Add this to the litany of issues with consequences on international security on which the U.S. and the EU disagree—including funding to UN peace operations, Palestine’s membership in UNESCO, and the U.S. embassy’s move from Israel to Jerusalem — and it becomes increasingly clear that the EU and U.S. are going their separate ways. The U.S. is moving towards a more isolationist direction, disregarding multilateral processes, in contrast with the common EU approach.

Europe’s Time to Stand Up on Its Own

After the failure of several European leaders’ attempts to find common ground with Washington, including President Emmanuel Macron’s and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visits to the White House in April, the EU can no longer count on its historic security partner expecting disagreements to be worked out respectfully. Nor can it count on the situation to sort itself out anytime soon, simply waiting for the next administration to change policies. If transatlantic relations do worsen, the EU must be able to stand up and provide for its own security.

Deteriorating relations with the U.S. provides a great opportunity for Europe to accelerate the Permanent Structure Cooperation (PESCO), launched in late 2017. PESCO is moving in the right direction with many of its projects that address key EU strategic areas. Still, improvement is long overdue in sectors including cyber, coordination between forces, logistical capabilities, and research and development. By focusing on targeted missions, it is possible to achieve more without increasing spending.

For example, two PESCO projects that focus on cyber issues – the “Cyber Threats and Incident Response Information Sharing Platform” and the “Rapid Response Force” – are both meant to put in place a system to cope with cyber incidents at the European level. “Military Mobility,” commonly known as “Military Schengen,” is the most well-received PESCO project, allowing units and equipment to travel throughout Europe more easily. The “Network of Logistic Hubs” facilitates the logistical coordination between forces from different countries, while the European Defense Industrial Development Programme set the groundwork for the “Europe Defense Fund,” which is aimed at supporting the necessary technological and industrial base.

At the same time, it is essential for the European External Action Service to establish a real foreign policy that goes hand-in-hand with security policy. Harmonizing foreign and security efforts among all EU members is the ultimate goal, but failure to do so cannot prevent Europe from taking necessary steps towards building a better security framework. If the United Nations and the African Union have managed to deploy thousands of soldiers in extremely complex peacekeeping operations throughout the past several decades, there are no valid reasons whereby Europe cannot do the same, other than political will.

Wake-Up Call

Developing a unified security framework would serve Europe’s long-term strategic interests. Moreover, it would send a strong and clear message across the Atlantic. Trust and mutually beneficial actions are fundamental for any multilateral alliance. Disregarding them in an attempt to pursue unilateral agendas risks damaging a meaningful relationship built on common history and values. The EU response will signal that the importance of allies and partners cannot be disregarded without facing some consequences. The improvement of the European security framework does not imply an ideologically confrontational stance towards the U.S. Europe will continue to uphold its principles and be open to collaboration with any reliable partner, but it will not allow the United States to take advantage of it. It istime for Europe to stand up on its own.

Cristian Tracci is an MIA candidate at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he specializes in International Security Policy and Conflict Resolution. Cristian currently serves as a board member of SIPA’s Progressive Security Working Group. He was previously a graduate consultant for the Eurasia Group and the UN Mission in Kosovo.

The post Security Woes: Why Europe Must Develop Its Own Security Framework appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Conceptual overview

What is water scarcity? At a conceptual level, water scarcity can be defined as “the lack of access to adequate quantities of water for human and environmental uses.” Attempts to measure or quantify scarcity have taken on a variety of forms from cubic meters per person of renewable water, to water availability compared to water infrastructure. While multiple conceptualizations of water scarcity allow for flexibility in assessing vulnerability, the absence of a universal definition encourages wide variations in interpretation. In turn, variability in measurement makes comparisons across contexts more difficult, thus impeding transparent discussions about this issue.

Is water scarcity a new phenomenon? Examples of water scarcity can be found throughout the history of humanity. As the earth’s climate has evolved, so too has its ecological composition and resource availability. Historically, in response to water stress, civilizations occupied greater geographic space, or dispersed and mobilized as smaller groups. In fact, as early as 5,000 BCE, water management practices were being used and adapted to serve local needs. While some of these methods eventually proved unsustainable, many technologies have been adapted for use in today’s water management activities.

Why has water scarcity become a top issue on the global agenda? 2005-2015 marked the UN Water for Life Decade. This initiative sought to place water on the global agenda by highlighting the integral role water plays in health, agriculture, economics, energy, and development. Framing this in the context of growing populations and consumption in developing countries, projections of water scarcity estimated the impacts would expand “beyond the capacity of already inadequate water supply…infrastructure and services.” Presently, water scarcity is estimated to impact 2.1 billion people.

Furthering the scarcity narrative post-2015, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designated clean water and sanitation as one of 17 goals in need of global action. As with the Water for Life Decade, the SDGs point to excess water stress as the precursor for future water scarcity and, therefore, a major barrier to sustainable development. For development practitioners, governments, and private sector entities alike, orienting work around the SDGs has become commonplace.

Utility of water scarcity

What are the historical implications of framing contexts as scarce? Often, scarcity signals an assertion that there is not “enough”— there is not enough water to meet demand; there is not enough human capacity to mitigate or adapt to this challenge without an intervention; there are not enough resources to overcome a lack of water. Narratives of scarcity follow what geographer, Diana K. Davis, argues is an environmental imaginary, or “ideas that groups of humans develop about a given landscape…that commonly includes assessments about that environment as well as how it came to be in its current state.”

In the MENA region, colonization brought a different set of environmental imaginaries which were then rationalized in a completely different environmental context. French colonialism in North Africa for example, highlights how the country evolved from an explicit form of water management in colonies (hydroimperialism) to a softer approach (hydrodiplomacy) in the post-colonial age. Hydroimperialism refers to the “ways water, hydraulic knowledge, and water management practices both revealed and reproduced unequal power relations predicated upon an expansionist mentalité.” In the case of the French, hydraulic knowledge exchange moved back and forth between the colony and Europe, eventually formalizing into technical expertise. In the postcolonial era, imperialism manifested into hydrodiplomacy, or technical aid.

The example above is not unique to colonial interventions in the MENA. From the 19th to 20th centuries, European powers framed the region as a “degraded landscape facing imminent disaster.” This ‘strange and defective’ region needed help to ‘improve,’ ‘restore,’ ‘normalize,’ or ‘repair’ the environment.” The effects of such narratives can be seen across the region today. Notably, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) initiative to “green” the emirates, primarily through aforestation. Additionally, this plan seeks to modernize the state and attract western business and tourism. While some link this goal to the Islamic ideal of paradise as a green garden, it also suggests a stronghold of European imaginaries, which historically have advocated for “normalizing” the desert environment with more vegetation and water.

How does this narrative impact interventions, particularly in the MENA region? In many ways, the MENA region remains the poster-child for water scarcity, as much in the field of international development as in environmental imaginaries. The power of such imaginaries to influence and legitimize the narrative of desertification and water scarcity as a function of mismanagement has tremendous implications for aid interventions. As numerous analyses demonstrate, the “dryness” of the region alone threatens livelihoods and productivity. While this is not to say that Middle East’s water supply does not pose any challenges for further development, or has never been mismanaged, these sweeping statements do not always do the region justice in terms of water management.

With the narrative of scarcity in mind, it is only natural that development practitioners gravitate towards the Middle East as the region where interventions will have the most impact. Much like the aspirations of the UAE, development practitioners have bought in to the idea of ‘rolling back the desert.’ In doing so, their actions parallel the colonial experience. For example, indigenous populations were often well aware of shifts in equilibrium based on rainfall and water availability, and were thus much more adaptive to uncertainty. However, in an era of a global agenda set around modernizing and developing in a very specific, predominantly western-oriented way, these water management traditions become stifled and potentially lost.

Moving forward

Often, scarcity signals that there is not “enough”— not enough water to meet demand; not enough human capacity to mitigate or adapt; and not enough resources to overcome a lack of water. It is this narrative that has fostered the aspirations of the UAE, and development practitioners alike, towards ‘rolling back the desert.’ Further perpetuating this imaginary is the global normalization of water scarcity as an undeniable fact; obscuring the climatic, cultural, and environmental histories of regions defined by scarcity. Ironically, this diverges from the values of sustainable development, inhibiting innovation and the ability to leverage context-specific knowledge so deeply desired for a sustainable solution to flourish.

With the decline of the old colonial powers such as Great Britain and France after World War II, the Soviet Union stepped into the stage of the Middle East as the major superpower. The process was hastened through the advent of various forms of movements and revolutions for independence in the Middle East during the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviets, who previously had hardly any chance for colonizing the region, found their propitious moment to present themselves as champions of the cause of “anti-colonialism” and “anti-imperialism”, and by that to embark upon their own full-fledged project of expansionism in the Middle East.

In the meantime, the emergence of the Jewish State in the former British colony of Palestine precipitated the Russian intervention in the Middle East. Contrary to what might be popularly believed, during the initial phases of the life of modern Israel, the Soviet Union assumed a favorable stance towards it. Though the Communists were suspicious of the Zionist movement lest it provoke the Jewish Russians and Ukrainians, the Soviet Union voted in favor of the UN partition plan for Palestine in 1947. In addition, when the first all-out war broke out between Jews and Arabs in 1948, the Soviet Union stepped in again to supply the Jews with much-needed arms.

Whatever the reason for this initial assistance to Israel, the Soviet Union eventually found its main allies in the Middle East not in the Jews but in the Arabs who, as it happened, were partly provoked to a high-pitched revolutionary nationalist mood as a consequence of the rise of a highly nationalist-conscious Jewish State in their neighborhood. Indeed it can be said that Stalin’s gambit with Israel paid off with pulling the Arabs towards the Soviet pole in the long run.

In that climate, the Tsarist “civilizing mission” that, as a principal part of the Communist ideology in the Soviet Union, had now become couched in the pompous claim of “historical responsibility” of “liberating the oppressed nations”, would appeal to many Arabs and would most significantly turn into a constant of the Arab revolutions and the states that emerged from them. By then, the Ba’ath ideology, which mingled a highly distilled Arab Nationalism with a somewhat diluted Soviet Communism, became the most apparent manifestation of Russophilia in the Middle East.

The roots of the Ba’ath go back to the early 1940s when two Syrian Communist intellectuals, namely Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in their desire to make an “Arab Renaissance” after the dismantling of the ancient colonial empires, started to draw the contours of an eclectic Arab revival. Ba’ath itself means “renaissance” in Arabic. Ba’athism promoted as its most basic principles anti-imperialism, anti-Israelism, Pan-Arabism, Arab unity, Arab Nationalism, and Arab Socialism. In a traditional culture where old family and tribal ties played the most significant part in power politics, as a result of which the majority of the population would have to stay out of politics and only watch their betters act, the Ba’ath ideology promised a new hope for social justice.

Syria and Egypt were the first Arab states to embrace modified forms of Arab Socialism/Ba’thism, and later Iraq, Yemen and Libya would follow suit. Riding the popular waves of revolutions and coups against obsolete and corrupt monarchies, the socialist military rose to power in those countries. That is why the backbone of Arab Socialism was – and still is – militarism. While the ancien régime would prop itself up on the support of the land-owners and propertied middle class, Arab Socialism would find its most vocal proponents among the ranks of the poor and the working class as well as the intellectuals.

However, despite its profession to socialism, in reality Arab Socialism would mostly depend on populism, charismatic rule, and militarism. Already nurturing the seeds of despotism, from the early 1960s all kinds of Arab Socialism, including Ba’athism, drifted towards ruthless dictatorships. The bloody 1958 coup in Iraq that brought to power General Abd al-Karim Qasim and then the 1966 coup in Syria that laid the foundations of the future Assad autocracy manifested such developments in the Ba’ath ideology towards a more authoritarian form of government, which in distinction to Ba’athism proper is usually called “Neo-Ba’athism.”

The civil war in Yemen that was sparked as a result of a Communist takeover was another major trend towards the rise of the more authoritarian form of Arab Socialism. When the Communist army officers deposed Imam Muhammad al-Badr, the king of Yemen, and established a revolutionary government in the Republic of North Yemen, Badr sought the assistance of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the two foremost Arab monarchies at that time, to make war on the revolutionaries. Naturally, Egypt would militarily intervene on behalf of the revolutionary government while the Soviet Union would provide strategic and technical assistance. The proxy war between the old-guard Arab Monarchists and the vanguard Arab Socialists continued up to the late 1960s when the Arabs’ confrontation with Israel would put a necessary stop to the conflict among themselves.

Egypt’s dramatic change of policy towards Israel and the Soviet Union, which effectively terminated the project of Russian expansionism in the Middle East, had dire consequences for Ba’thism. Thenceforward, with the gradual decline of the Ba’ath ideology and the fall of most of the Ba’athist despots and dictators like Saddam Hussein, the Soviet cultural hegemony would also recede from the region. As a result, the last bulwark of that trend of Russophilia in today’s Middle East proves to be the Assad regime in Syria, where Russians have a stake: their last Middle Eastern naval facility in the Syrian port of Tarsus. It’s no wonder why President Putin of Russia is intent upon keeping the genocidal Assad in power at any cost.

In 2014, the Islamic State’s massacre of the Northern Iraqi Sinjar District changed thousands of Yazidi – as well as Christian, Shia, and other non-Sunni – lives.  Though many were able to flee quickly, those left behind would unknowingly be subject to the Islamic State’s pre-planned objectives of mass genocide and abduction. While this massacre – now years old – has captured global attention, the situation for the majority of the Yazidis has not improved.  With this article, I want to call attention to the new, ongoing struggle the Yazidi – particularly Yazidi women – are facing, and what I hope will be done for the sake of these survivors.

Background: The 2014 Massacre 

The Yazidi are a Kurdish-speaking religious sect – though distinctly different from Kurds – who are indigenous to Northern Mesopotamia, part of contemporary Northern Iraq. While their faith combines several elements from monotheistic religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, the Yazidis have faced discrimination from fundamentalists like the Islamic State (Daesh), whose view of Yazidis as devil-worshipping infidels made the religious sect a prime target for genocide.

Two months before the 2014 summer massacre, the third division of the Iraqi army, which included many Yazidis, based around Sinjar fell to Daesh, making the entire district vulnerable. That August, Daesh launched an attack on the Sinjar district. An estimated 50,000 to 250,000 people were able to flee, but those who could not get out in time faced inexplicable horrors. The Yazidi were separated by age and gender and, as a report explains,

Women and children under the age of seven were transferred to holding sites. The women were sold as sexual slaves to Daesh fighters in Iraq and Syria, often with their young children. Males above the age of 12 who would not renounce their faith were summarily executed… [while] men who were forcibly converted to Islam were sent to various territories in Iraq and Syria to perform manual labor. Boys between the ages of 7 and 12 were sent to Daesh indoctrination and training camps to become fighters themselves. Girls above the age of 9 were separated from their mother and sold as slaves. (Canadian Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship).

In a matter of days, an estimated 10,000 Yazidis were killed or kidnapped during the massacre. While the true number of casualties may never be known, an estimated 3,000 were executed – thrown into pits, beheaded, burned alive – while others died of dehydration or other injuries; additionally, 6,000-7,000 women and children were taken as sex slaves and rewards for militants. This mass abduction of Yazidi women and girls, as well as the torturing and sexual abuse, by Daesh militants went initially unnoticed amid the chaos and destruction of the August massacre.

Once taken, Yazidi captives – unmarried women and girls over the age of nine – were relocated to prearranged locations in Iraq and first given to militants who attacked Sinjar, then sold on makeshift slave markets where they were raped by, married off to, and/or passed around between militants. To avoid this fate, some girls killed themselves, disfigured or smeared themselves with ash or blood to seem unattractive to potential buyers, pretended to be mute or deaf, or cut younger girls’ hair to make them look like boys.

Since then, what’s been going on?

Since the 2014 massacre, some progress has been made against Daesh: Iraqi forces drove the Islamic State out of Mosul and other parts of Northern Iraq in 2016, Kurdish and Iraqi forces liberated millions throughout 2017, and internationally unified coalitions have committed to and have made progress taking away Daesh territory.

Despite these noteworthy and merited advances against Daesh-occupied territory, international interest in the Yazidi has faded, while initiatives for stability and healing leave much to be desired for these survivors. Though 3,000 women and children still remain in captivity and the pace of rescues remains slow and sporadic, those who have managed to escape still struggle to survive. Left without income, identity papers, and most of their families, Yazidi women have to fight for their futures while facing the burden of deep psychological and physical trauma.

Living conditions for surviving Yazidis who remain in Iraq and Syria only complicate their daily struggles further. Most have been living in displaced persons camps and temporary shelters in northern Iraq for the past four years, though the UN had made a statement that temporary living for the Yazidi would only last a year. The temporary shelters many Yazidis find themselves in are, frankly, deplorable. Their makeshift homes – tents or abandoned construction sites – have no electricity or running water and have proven unsafe, with reports of fire and flooding destroying many of the tents. Further, lack of state institutions – as well as the recent economic crisis – in Iraq has left many of the Yazidi population without means to bring in income, rebuild their homes, seek help for trauma, and live free from fear of future violence.

What needs to be done in the future?

Responses that promote and aid in the Yazidi community’s recovery are necessary. Not only should past and present perpetrators of violence against the Yazidi be brought to justice, but the physical and emotional needs of the surviving populace must also be addressed.

For starters, the overburdened Iraqi courts have tried thousands of suspected Daesh members and collaborators, delivering verdicts for around 2,800 suspected members of the Islamic State in 2017 alone. While many more still await prosecution, most trials only last a few minutes and leave little-to-no room for victim participation or opportunity for perpetrators to confess and repent. Further, Daesh collaborators and militants are mostly convicted for membership in a terrorist organization rather than for genocide. This delivers hardly any justice to the Yazidi or other victims and survivors of genocide, especially as the investigations into crimes committed against them are slow-moving. Though the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the Commission for Investigation and Gathering Evidence (CIGE) in Iraq signed an agreement in February of this year to collaborate on missing persons investigations, these investigations will likely take years. Part of effective recovery for the Yazidi, particularly female victims or sexual slavery and violence, will be seeing perpetrators brought to justice, which makes the investigations into Daesh’s crimes all the more pressing.

Additionally, the physical and emotional state of many Yazidis – perhaps the most crucial to their recovery – is problematic and obviously needs to be attended to. Camp conditions discussed above are clearly inadequate and unsafe for Yazidi refugees, most of whom are likely to have limited access to formal education, health services, and psychological support. The lack of services is likely due to insufficient funding and attention to refugee camps and temporary shelters, which only prolongs the situation for the Yazidi. Some programs, like the trauma healing therapy program conducted by the Emma Organization and the photojournalism workshop conducted by UNICIEF, have shown to provide opportunities for healing and progress for the Yazidi community, but much more needs to be done. Besides providing funding and accessible, vital resources, Yazidism must be recognized in different religious communities as legitimate, as it would help in destigmatizing Yazidis and taking away excuses to attack their community.

The Yazidi are a community of survivors and, having faced indescribable and harrowing atrocities, they continue to persevere in the fight for a better quality of life. With continuing help from exceptional organizations and people who are working to support and advocate for the Yazidi, increased international attention to the Yazidi’s needs would expedite and facilitate their recovery.

Four years after Russia annexed Crimea and Russia-backed separatists revolted against the Ukrainian government in 2014, new clashes in the prolonged conflict have caused a spike in casualties. While Ukraine continues to counter the military challenge in the east of its territory, Kyiv has simultaneously undertaken unprecedented and ever-new attempts at reform. As Ukraine nears its 2019 presidential election, hot topics include a possible future UN peacekeeping mission in the Donbas, massive reforms to the country’s public healthcare system, resetting Ukraine’s electoral system, and countering oligarchic power by ending parliamentarian immunity or creating a specialized anti-corruption court. Among the lesser discussed, yet equally important issues for the future of Ukraine, in terms of both governance and its struggle with Russia, is establishing and codifying the proper balance between central and sub-national governance. This means both the decentralization of certain powers from the national government and the amalgamation of small communities into more-easily administered, geographically larger units. Ukraine’s steps towards “right-sizing” the state and codifying the balance of local, regional, and national governance powers through constitutional reform would also contribute to resolving its most pressing security challenges.

Ukraine’s Success with Decentralization

Despite the war in the Donets Basin (Donbas) and the severe economic downturn that accompanied it, Ukraine’s central government has not recentralized the country’s public finances. Subnational governments continue to receive about 40 percent of public revenue. This underappreciated fact has been the case since the 1990s and makes Ukraine – at least on paper – one of the most decentralized countries in Europe. Countries at war and in economic distress typically centralize public finances. The opposite has happened in Ukraine: the share of total public revenue going to subnational governmental levels has increased from about 38 percent in 2014 to about 41 percent in 2017, even though total public revenues have declined because of the deep recession triggered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas. In short, the national government has remained impressively committed to decentralization, despite considerable pressure to recentralize public finances.

This is commendable because Ukraine’s success in comprehensive local governance reform is essential for creating accountable and transparent public administration. It also plays a key role in bolstering Ukrainian national security. Russia exploited Ukraine’s regional diversity and considerable subnational dissatisfaction with its new government in Kyiv in 2014 when provoking, supplying, supporting, and leading armed separatism on Crimea and in the Donbas. Russia’s success in these regions underscored the importance of better organized national-subnational relations in Ukraine going forward.

Accordingly, many Ukrainian politicians see decentralization as a bulwark against Russia’s hybrid warfare in Ukraine. As, for instance, the Speaker of the national parliament, Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council), Andriy Parubiy, argued during the 2nd All-Ukrainian Forum of United Territorial Communities in Kyiv in December 2017, “The path of decentralization was an asymmetrical response to the aggressor [i.e. Russia]. In fact, the process of capable communities formation was a kind of sewing of the Ukrainian space.” The country’s fate depends greatly on whether it can consolidate the national state while restructuring the composition, roles, responsibilities, and finances of regional and local governments.

Stitching Communities Together

Ukraine’s key governance-balancing reforms at the local level over the last three years has centered on uniting smaller local communities (singular: hromada, plural: hromady) into larger “united territorial communities,” or UTCs (Ukrainian: ob’’ednani terytorial’ni hromady). The logic behind Ukraine’s efforts in consolidating small hromady into larger self-governing entities is that many of the old communities – with an average population of about 1,500 – were (or still are) too small to organize, finance, and/or deliver public services to their residents efficiently.

Beginning in 2015, the process of government-encouraged amalgamation of small communities into larger organizational entities started. Kyiv has facilitated this voluntary process by giving UTCs a significant share of national tax revenue, as well as delegating new governance and administrative functions to them, including greater control of local land use planning and permitting, local fees, and administering local schools. The national government has also stimulated the UTCs by providing them with significant new investment grants and giving them access to the State Regional Development Fund (SRDF).

By May 10th, 2018, this policy had resulted in 3,399 smaller communities or 31.1% of all of the old basic units consolidating into 731 larger UTCs. Today, approximately 6.4 million people or approximately 18 percent of Ukraine’s population live in these new UTCs. For the first time, local communities have the legal authority and, increasingly, the human capital to design, build, run, and own larger infrastructural projects. The SRDF provides grants to help finance them.

UTCs have also started undertaking initiatives for cross-community cooperation also made possible through recent governance reforms. These cooperation agreements delegate particular tasks and respective resources from one community to another, combine resources to implement common projects, jointly finance common infrastructure, and create common executive bodies for realizing common tasks. By May 2018, 753 communities had concluded 180 cooperation agreements between each other in areas such as communal services, fire protection or infrastructure development, to name a few.

But as promising as the formation of UTCs has been, the voluntary nature of the unification process also has its problems. The slow pace of small community unification has delayed the process of redistributing administrative and executive control over basic public services to entities large enough to provide such services. As a result, in areas where small hromady have not yet amalgamated, they remain under the administrative and financial supervision of rayons (sub-regional administrative districts) and oblasts (regions), whose executive bodies are not democratically elected.

Moreover, the voluntary and unregulated process of amalgamation has frequently led to the creation of new communities with uncertain futures. In some cases, extremely rural hromady, worried about political domination if they merged with a nearby small local town, only agreed to combine with other rural units. In others, small towns with strong employment levels have discouraged rural hromady from merging with them, because those small towns do not want to divert their share of national taxes on their poorer neighbors. Reform experts in Kyiv and in the regions hotly debate the effects and effectiveness of amalgamation for the wide range of different communities.

As local hromady continue to form UTCs, these new jurisdictions still lack proper legal foundation. The national parliament has yet to pass additional legislation fully defining conditions for amalgamation. The central authorities have not yet clearly determined the exact role of the new communities in the country’s overall system of governance. Existing legislation concerning local government does not always refer to UTCs. Without a new comprehensive legal regime that extensively codifies how UTCs will eventually constitute the basic administrative division of the Ukrainian state, it is impossible to determine what function the old rayons (sub-regional governmental districts) will have once the majority of their functions are fully transferred to UTCs. This lack of clarity about the future structure of Ukraine’s territorial administration has only also slowed efforts to reform the education system and to restructure the country’s healthcare system.

Consequences for Public Services

Determining the exact responsibilities of democratically elected local governments at the municipal level (so-called “Cities of Regional Significance”) and community level (UTCs) in the fields of secondary education and healthcare represent two of the most important domains of Ukraine’s governance reforms. By May 2018, first tier, local governments were managing 37.3 percent (5,679) of all Ukrainian schools. The vast majority of the remaining, mostly rural schools are run by Kyiv-subordinate rayon administrations. As of March 2018, 519 schools have been upgraded to so-called “foundation” or “hub schools” (oporni shkoly). The new hub-schools in regional urban centers possess special equipment, prerogatives, expertise, and funds. The hub-schools are tasked with guiding and supervising 976 branch schools in nearby smaller communities.

Moving forward, the core challenge remains improving the quality of education – particularly in rural areas, where a shortage of human capital coincides with an over-abundance of tiny schools with very small classes, often with less than 10 pupils per classroom. Consolidating schools, like amalgamating rural localities, would pool resources, teaching talent, and students into more effective and efficient educational institutions. Control of around 63 percent of schools has yet to be transferred to UTCs from rayon-level (i.e. central governmental) administration. Less than half of newly amalgamated communities have taken full responsibility for their respective school systems. To date, the overall process and success of “right-sizing” educational services has been limited and fragmentary. Consolidating and widening these reforms’ impact requires inter alia the involvement of more amalgamated communities, a strengthening of the respective institutional capacity of the UTCs, as well as the equitable and adequate transfer of funds and resources for secondary education to the local level.

Ukraine’s healthcare system likewise stands to benefit from local administrative and governance reforms. Following the Verkhovna Rada’s (Supreme Council – Ukraine’s national parliament) October 20, 2017 approval of fundamental reforms to Ukraine’s healthcare system, the national government has begun taking steps to decentralize control over the provision of medical services to independent public and private healthcare facilities. These reforms, somewhat counterintuitively, simultaneously require the recentralization of monies currently given to large cities, oblasts, and rayons to run hospitals.

Moreover, the reforms will require consolidating existing hospital networks and reformulating local governments’ role within the healthcare system. The creation of new hospital districts are expected to result in a more rational division of primary and secondary healthcare services across facilities, leading to higher-quality healthcare. The new hospital districts are seen as the result and instrument of cooperation among different communities, as a framework for the long-term development of local hospitals, as well as capacity building in public health. The adopted reforms enable communities to choose different paths for ensuring provision of adequate healthcare services to citizens, ranging from the creation of their own communal hospitals to the conclusion of agreements with private healthcare providers to providing support for individual health practitioners. As it stands, the new plans for the healthcare sector mean that, while local governments may retain or acquire new hospitals and healthcare facilities, funding for the operational costs of those institutions will come directly from the national health care agency, not from local government budgets.

There are three additional challenges to establishing an accountable and transparent system of public service in Ukraine that respects the principles of participation and equality. First, is for Ukraine to determine whether oblasts and rayons are to be democratically-elected local governments or territorial arms of the national government. At the moment they are neither, because while they have democratically-elected councils, their executive authorities are still appointed by the higher levels of the national government.

Second, the current plans for decentralization controversially envision the creation of presidentially controlled regional prefects, whose primary function will be to ensure that local governments act in line with the constitution and national law. The constitutional amendment authorizing these prefects, however, has yet to pass. Oversight of the legality of local government decisions therefore remains in the hands of state-appointed executive authorities at the oblast level – a substandard system that duplicates regional and national functions at a single level of subnational government. Ukraine still needs an oversight mechanism for local government behavior that is functional, but does not concentrate unnecessary powers in its presidency.

The third, more systemic problem is that the success of administrative reform – especially the democratization of public services – greatly depends on the availability of capable human capital, which is in particularly short supply in rural areas. Practitioners of decentralization such as former Rava Ruska mayor, Iryna Vereshchuk, or coordinator of the Kherson Reform Support Office, Oksana Silukova, have recently reiterated that the lack of qualified staff members remains a – if not the – key challenge to the success of reforms. It will be impossible to realize the comprehensive societal transformations envisioned in these reforms without substantial external support for capacity building. Currently this support come in large part from several foreign development agencies.

Changes to Ukraine’s Fiscal Decentralization

As mentioned previously, Ukraine has opted not to recentralize public finances, despite the conflict in the Donbas. Such unusual behavior, during wartime, is an indicator of the depth of the social roots of, and political demand for, decentralization in Ukraine. The Ukrainian central government’s commitment to fiscal decentralization does not mean, however, that the various subnational layers of government have continued to receive their previous shares of the overall budgetary pie. Instead, oblasts (regions) and rayons (districts) have been receiving relatively less money, while big cities and UTCs now receive substantially more. The revenue shift from oblasts, rayons, and non-amalgamated hromady towards so-called “cities of regional significance” and UTCs has been the most important aspect of financial decentralization thus far. It signals Kyiv’s intention to create an administrative order in which cities and UTCs are the most important actors in the country’s system of sub-national government.  Nonetheless, Ukraine’s efforts at “municipalizing” its subnational system of local governance are still far from complete. Kyiv has yet to formally reapportion many of the administrative responsibilities of the country’s oblasts and rayon to “cities of regional significance” and UTCs. As a result, it remains unclear what exact roles oblasts and rayons will play in the new system, and, by extension, which functions and funds should be regularly assigned to “cities of regional significance” and UTCs.

Constitutional Reform and the Minsk Agreements

Despite several challenges, Ukraine continues moving forward relatively quickly with its governance reform efforts. Unlike other reform efforts since the Euromaidan Revolution, subnational governance restructuring has already produced real changes in how Ukraine is governed and has led to substantial changes in people’s daily lives – especially for Ukrainians living and working in the new UTCs. That said, Ukraine’s reforms still have fundamental problems. Most importantly, there is no clear vision of Ukraine’s overall system of public administration – including the exact division of powers across all levels and sectors of government – that is reflected in the text of Ukraine’s constitution and national legislation. Parliament has failed to adopt a variety of constitutional amendments related to governance “right-sizing” because the government has been unable to muster the super majority necessary for their passage. On some occasions, the government has lacked even the simple majority needed to pass ordinary laws related to local self-government.

The major reason that efforts to amend the constitution have failed is because the summer 2015 local governance-related reforms were, in accordance with the Minsk Agreements between Russia and Ukraine earlier that year, bundled together with a new constitutional clause about the special status of the eastern Donbas areas currently not under Kyiv’s control. The sentence in question contained little more than scant reference to certain peculiarities in governance in the temporarily occupied territories—the clause did not go so far as to establish a special status for those areas, as Russia demanded. Nevertheless, even this cautious formulation sparked violent protests in front of Ukraine’s parliament in August 2015, resulting in the deaths of four Ukrainian National Guardsmen. Ukraine must find a way to deal with both of these politically important, but controversial, issues.

The fact that Ukraine’s constitution does not yet reflect the reality of governance throughout the country is troubling. The amalgamation of communities, their cooperation agreements, as well as other decentralization-related novelties in Ukrainian political and social life, have brought real, positive changes to millions of Ukrainian’s lives. Yet, the nation’s fundamental legal document, so far, fails to recognize and regulate that progress. This omission introduces an unstable balance between the different layers of government and contributes to institutional instability. A simple future majority of 226 votes in the Verkhovna Rada could undo the considerable successes already achieved by these reforms to date. The Euromaidan Revolution promised Ukrainians a new era of responsible and responsive government, and the right-sizing is now starting to deliver on those promises. By failing, so far, to properly lock in the successful reforms on the legislative level, Ukraine risks failing the promises of Euromaidan.

This article was first published as a “Kennan Cable” by The Wilson Center in Washington, DC and written in collaboration between Maryna Rabinovych, Anthony Levitas, and Andreas Umland. 

Maryna Rabinovych is a PhD candidate at the National I.I. Mechnikov University of Odesa and the Global Community Manager of the Ukraine Democracy Initiative.

Anthony Levitas is Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and an advisor to the SIDA-funded Support to Decentralization Project in Ukraine.

The official investigation of the rather obvious case of the MH17 disaster by the Joint Investigation Team has been excruciatingly slow. Already, on 17 July 2014, the day of the shooting, it was clear that this missile could have had only come from a regular Russian army unit. Who else would have had the opportunity to shoot from the separatist-controlled Donbas territory an airliner flying approximately 10 km high? Yet, it was the famous Bellingcat group, with its limited resources, rather than the Netherlands-led joint international governmental investigation team which provided the first in-depth and most critical research to fully proof Moscow’s responsibility for the shooting of the airliner.

Instead of quickly pushing ahead with identifying and prosecuting the perpetrators, the Dutch nation has since conducted a referendum on Ukraine’s association with the EU. This vote against the Ukrainian strive towards Europe was de facto an act of public support by the Netherlands for Putin’s mingling in East-Central Europe – a loud Dutch “Thank you!” to Moscow for murdering dozens of Dutch citizens. The Dutch referendum on the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU was widely celebrated in state-controlled Russian mass media as a victory for Moscow’s policies towards Europe. Now it seems that the legal procedures to finally prosecute the MH17 perpetrators are on track.

However, there is still a big gap in Western reporting and researching of the MH17 incident, in that the motives for the Kremlin’s strange behavior are not discussed deeply enough. Why exactly did Moscow send a missile as sophisticated and high-flying as the Buk to Ukraine when such a weapon was not necessary to shoot down lower flying Ukrainian military planes? What is so far missing in Western debates of the incident is proper consideration of the predominant interpretation proposed by various more or less competent Russian and Ukrainian researchers of the incident.

Many East European investigators of the circumstances of the shooting – among them the Russian military expert Mark Solonin, Russian political scientist Andrei Piontkovsky, or former head of the Ukrainian Security Service Valenty Nalyvaichenko – believe that the only full explanation for the arrival of the Russian Buk in the Donbas in July 2014 was that Moscow indeed wanted to shoot down a high-flying passenger plane. Yet, the Kremlin wanted to bring down not a Malaysian airliner, but a Russian one. The responsibility for the shooting of a Russian passenger plane over Eastern Ukraine would have been ascribed to the Ukrainian armed forces, with reference to Ukraine’s accidental shooting of a Russian passenger plane, Siberian Airlines 1812, in October 2001. The horrible incident and blaming of Kyiv in July 2014 would have provided Moscow with a casus belli to implement its “Novorossiia” (New Russia) project – i.e. the annexation of Russophone Eastern and Southern mainland Ukraine via an invasion of regular Russian military forces.

This operation would have followed the pattern of the 1999 bombings of Russian residential buildings which probably was a Russian secret service operation. The terrorist acts of September 1999 provided the Kremlin with a casus belli for starting the Second Chechen War. They also offered then Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin with an opportunity to gain public profile as defender of the Russian fatherland as well as gatherer of Russian lands, ahead of the 2000 Russian presidential elections. There are now already two in-depth Western investigations of the 1999 Moscow bombings by John B. Dunlop (The Moscow Bombings of September 1999. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2012) and David Satter (The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). Yet, there is no comparable Western investigation of the July 2014 MH17 incident so far – although most of the victims were EU citizens.

The post What Is the Real Story Behind the MH17 Disaster? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Anti-immigration activists protested in Seoul on June 30th against a group of asylum-seekers from Yemen. (Photo Credit: Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

A sense of xenophobia is spreading across South Korea: a massive number of the G20 country’s inhabitants have begun to increasingly manifest their Choson-dynasty, tribal-mindset hostility against the 561 Yemeni refugees waiting to get their refugee status approved on the visa-free Jeju Island. Since an online petition supporting deportation of the refugees was filed on the Blue House webpage on June 13th, the number of signatures exceeded 200,000 in just two days and reached approximately 700,000 in a month. The deep, xenophobic sentiment behind this number was further unmasked when a flock of right-wing extremists, representing the hundreds of thousands of Koreans with anti-refugee beliefs, began to cathartically scapegoat the few vulnerable refugees who have fled from the genocide in Yemen, itself reminiscent of the Korean war. “Fake refugees; go home!”, “Citizens come first, we want safety”, the hate-mongers chanted aloud during street rallies held on June 30th and July 13th, urging the government to repeal the existing Refugee Act and the visa-free access regulation. In response to sentiments that are now increasingly transmuting into Islamophobia, the liberal Moon Administration announced their decision to tighten the existing Refugee Act. Such a move, however, stands in hypocritical contrast to the ethos of the Administration’s ‘People come First’ ideals, which the Blue House has tried so hard to engrave in its constitution revision proposal by replacing the word “citizens” with “people” in the preamble. If this hypocrisy causes President Moon Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer, to fail to fulfill South Korea’s international commitment to protect refugees, the administration will not only sustain criticism from the international society but also taint its liberal reputation.

The Pride and Prejudice of the South Korean People’s Ecstatic Populism

Considering the fact that South Korea has never before dealt with a large influx of refugees, it is still not easy to ascertain whether this recent xenophobic movement is a mere storm in a teacup or whether it will convoke the long-departed ghost of nation-dooming, Choson-era protectionism. However, a recent poll conducted by Realmeter implies a gloomy future regarding the growing xenophobia in the country. More than half (53.4%) of the respondents expressed hostility towards the refugees, while only 37.4% demonstrated a willingness to accept them. Across the country, this tendency towards a ‘tyranny of the majority’ is evident, particularly in the Seoul Metropolitan area and the Kyungki and Kyungsang provinces. South Korean women appear to be more narrow-minded and illiberal than their male counterparts, as 60% of female respondents were opposed to the refugees compared to the 27% who were supportive; by contrast, 48% of men were opposed to the refugees while 46.6% of men were supportive. Surprisingly, the poll suggests that women in their 20s show the most opposition to refugees. This particular observation is noteworthy, since some loathsome activities conducted by an extremist, misandrist feminist group have been increasingly reported by Korean news outlets in recent weeks.

The transmutation of the tyranny of the majority into bizarre occultism in South Korea calls the nature of the country’s peculiarly maternalistic leadership into question. Nowadays, the leadership takes so much pride in the moral absoluteness of the popular will that wiped away the legacies of the Park family’s tribal authoritarian values that it has ironically come to resemble the maternalistic leadership style of impeached president Park-Geun-Hye herself, which was characterized by its insular and unilateral communication tactics. As South Korea’s maternalistic leadership continues to build a thick wall against the refugees and other vulnerable minorities so as to protect their tribal oikos (a Greek word for ‘household’ that Arendt used to describe the public sphere), it seems almost impossible to find a liberal way to emancipate the refugees that accords with the liberal ideals that once emancipated the South Korean people from authoritarian rule.

The rise of ecstatic populism in South Korea has gradually come to foster not only xenophobia, but also a fanatical antipathy against internationalism in one of the biggest exporter countries in the world. I have personally experienced (reflexivity) such antipathy at a local Korean ethnic church in Ottawa, Canada, from an anti-Park-administration pastor (Park, Man Young) fueled by rabid anti-internationalism. I had my first lunch with the pastor about a month after I began attending the church. At first, we chatted amiably about my experience living in New York, as well as my previous internship experience with the UN. Unexpectedly, during that week’s Sunday sermon, the pastor abruptly brandished a picture of what he described as a ‘heretic cult group’s activity,’ complete with an irrelevant United Nations logo attached, and told the audience: “I’ve recently heard the news that a member of this heretic group has recently arrived from New York to break the church apart.” After the sermon, I privately urged the pastor to publicly apologize for this obvious slander, since he was clearly lying about the association between the UN and this heretic group, and suggested that South Korea should thank UN for its help during the Korean War. The pastor, however, refused, saying the sermon had been planned with the church committee, and went on to assure me that while the heretic cult group presents itself as a just organization, its intrinsic intentions were undeniably evil. Near-schizophrenic antipathy and anti-internationalist extremism of this kind offers a regrettably representative example that testifies to the ugly ‘truth’ of how some South Korean civil leaders use ecstatic populism to mislead their local people into a distorted understanding of internationalism. This type of antipathy and extremism, disguised in the form of the so-called ‘community/national culture’, is a social pathogen that will ultimately infect all of South Korean society with an irrationally rigid culture of corruption and a one-dimensional, hierarchical establishment.

Internationalism is Critical to South Korea’s Interests; No Global Citizenship, No Global Consumers

For both geopolitical and populist reasons, the recent rise of xenophobia in South Korea is reminiscent of the 19th century Korean traditionalists’ fanatical support for the Choson dynasty’s degenerative, Confucian closed-border doctrine. South Korea’s recent thaws with North Korea have reshuffled the ranking of the country’s national priorities: strategies for ‘prosperity through peace’ and international trade now dominate over those for North Korea’s denuclearization. Still, the pursuit of these dovish strategies seems to be a risky gamble. On the one hand, it is risky because South Korea is decreasing its defense capabilities and activities to accommodate peace with North Korea at the same time as all neighboring powers are preparing to recalibrate their military capability (fuelled, undoubtedly, by their own version of nationalism) to contend with North Korea’s asymmetric nuclear capability following the suspension of the U.S.-ROK military exercise. On the other hand, it is also risky because this xenophobic movement, boosted as it is by ecstatic populism, in turn induces the people to wrongly perceive internationalism as a conglomerate-focused concept that is unaffordable, luxurious, and stands against the interests of the people. Despite these distortions, the undeniable reality is that internationalism is indeed the economic engine that has facilitated South Korea’s becoming one of the world’s most prosperous liberal middle powers. The real problem is that neither Seoul nor the South Korean people have successfully figured out an alternative breadwinning system, even though the country’s economy is still highly dependent on a few state-sponsored conglomerate entities known as jaebols.

The complete disarray of the Conservative camp in South Korea under the circumstances dangerously minimizes the people’s, or the so-called ‘democratic principals(according to the principal-agent framework)’’, responsibilities to maintain the country’s economic competence. Granted, it is common sense to blame the breadwinning agents for their incompetency and moral hazards (or lack of noblesse oblige) in accordance with the principles of public values, as well as economic natural selection; regardless, such rhetoric (which is often abused under the justification of economic democratization) does not excuse the people, or the ‘democratic principals’, from concealing their own incompetence and moral hazards in the name of national/local pride. In this sense, the South Korean ‘democratic principals’ should proactively ask what they themselves can do to foster the preconditions for creating a strong economy rather than passively relying on the state to do so. Promoting the value of the globally shared responsibility for the Kantian hospitality to foreigners is one of these preconditions, especially for a resource-poor economy like South Korea, since it is vitally important that the country attract global consumers to buy the intermediary and final goods produced in the country. In other words, the value promotion of Kantian global citizenship is more of an essential survival strategy that will enhance South Korea’s economic competency in the long run. Time after time, the positive externalities of internationalism in Northeast Asia, such as the preclusion of the Asian Paradox and nationalism-led economic protectionism, will outweigh those of negative externalities such as terror attacks (which have not yet occurred on the South Korean soil); however, this will only come to pass if the citizens hold their faith in the law-based (i.e. responsibilities-based) order and the value of global citizenship.

The post Refugee Crisis on Jeju Island Reveals the Pride and Prejudice of South Korea’s Ecstatic Populism appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Choosing the way that one dresses is a pivotal human right.

For any woman, choosing the way that one dresses is a pivotal human right. In both the US and Israel, we pride ourselves in the fact that a woman can dress however she pleases, regardless of whether it is Western, traditional Jewish, traditional Muslim or traditional Hindu clothing. Unfortunately, other parts of the world do not enjoy such basic freedoms. According to Iran Human Rights Monitor, the Iranian regime infamously banned traditional Kurdish dress in public. On the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities, many Iranian women are now fighting for the right to have their hair exposed, so that they can have the joyous feeling of having their hair blow in the air, a basic human right that many take for granted in the West. And for this reason, reports that a Hindu woman was compelled to wear a Muslim hijab at an international airport in Bangladesh are quite disturbing, especially after there was a Bangladeshi High Court ruling declaring that no woman can be compelled to veil in Bangladesh.

According to Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, a photo has emerged of a Hindu woman dressed in hijab at Dhaka International Airport. The source related, “The lady is working at Dhaka International Airport. She has a black hijab on her head, a yellow T-sheet and two hand bracelets as well as a red tip on the forehand and some ID card around her neck. From the picture, it is clear that she is a Hindu woman. Hijab is not her dress. She was forced to wear the hijab in order to protect her job.”

“I cannot find the words to express my extreme anger,” Basu added. “However, I doubt whether complaining to the airport authorities will be a remedy. Nevertheless, I am outraged that at a national airport of a country, where thousands of domestic and foreign passengers travel every day, a minority worker is subjected to this. No one should force any Hindu to wear the hijab. Just this one picture is enough to understand the condition of the Hindus in Bangladesh.”

The Bangladesh Minority Council noted that the abduction of young girls from minority communities, the indiscriminate rape of Hindu women and girls, and the forceful conversion of Hindu women is very rampant in Bangladesh. Recently, local sources reported that during the attempted rape of a minority woman in Pirgachha in Rangpur, the assailants cut off the hair of the victim. In addition, the minority woman and her daughter were left out on the road in Birnarayan village, where they were physically tortured, being left with their hands and feet tied up. In another incident, local sources noted that a helpless Hindu widow and her infant daughter were raped by Awami League leaders in Kishorgoni district in Bangladesh. And in still another instance in Mandasaur, local sources noted that a 7-year-old Hindu girl was taken away from school and brutally raped. The rapist also slit the girls’ throat with a wine bottle after raping her.

How many more Hindu women and girls need to be victimized under the present ruling Awami League government before there is a regime change? While the Bangladeshi government tries to pretend that they are moderates, they are actually a huge part of the problem for Basu noted that the authorities hunt down the minority woman or girl if she dares at all to stand up to her oppressors. According to the World Hindu Struggle Committee, in 2013, in another instance, when there was an attempt to rape a minority woman, the woman cut off the penis of the assailant with a sharp blade. In this case, the police launched an investigation against the minority woman and not the attempted rapist.

However, the mass rape of Hindu women and girls in Bangladesh is not the only indignity that they suffer. According to the World Hindu Struggle Committee, Hindu women in Bangladesh are also deprived of the right to make critical choices about how they want to present themselves at work if they want to stay employed. In an atmosphere of massive minority repression, naturally a Hindu woman has no right to say no if her boss wants her to wear hijab to work and this is a major part of the indignities suffered by Hindu women in Bangladesh. While the Bangladeshi government despises Israel, in the Jewish state, Muslim women are granted the right to wear their traditional dress including the niqab and hijab. We are not among the Western countries banning the burqa. This was best demonstrated in a recent video produced by Israeli Arab activist Sara Zoabi, who documented how numerous Israelis responded to her walking down the street wearing a niqab and how everyone treated her respectively. Nevertheless, Bangladesh and many other Muslim countries governments still have a negative perception of Israel in spite of this.

However, many Muslims also criticize various countries in Europe for banning the burka and hijab. Erdogan is a perfect example of this. According to the Independent, he referred to an EU ruling on whether employers can bar the hijab as a clash between Islam and Christianity. His foreign minister went further, warning that a holy war can begin soon. However, Mr. Erdogan and his government, who are known to be critical of Israel who respects the rights of Muslim women to wear hijab, are very much silent when a Bangladeshi Hindu woman is forced to wear the hijab, which demonstrates how little they care about the right of women to make their own choices regarding how they wish to dress and live their lives. It also demonstrates the increasingly good ties between Erdogan’s and Sheikh Hasina’s government. But nevertheless, Erdogan’s silence as Hindu women are raped and tortured merely for being Hindus highlights how much minority rights means to him. While Erdogan’s government often condemns the West for engaging in Islamophobia, his government does not say anything as the Islamic world continues to persecute countless minority religious groups Hindus among them. It is time for this charade to come to an end and for Hindu women to receive the dignity that they deserve as women.

The post Bangladesh, Please Don’t Compel Hindu Women to Wear The Hijab appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On June 11, major Chinese and Indian oil companies started a formal meeting in Beijing, discussing the establishment of an “oil buyers’ club” to negotiate better prices with OPEC countries. The chairman of China’s biggest energy company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Wang Yilin, and the chairman of refiner Indian Oil Corporation both attended the meeting. According to the India Times, the two largest energy consumers together accounted for almost 17% of world oil consumption last year. Should this “oil buyers’ club” become a reality, New Delhi and Beijing will have greater leverage to negotiate with OPEC about oil prices and will also have a significant say in matters such as importing more crude oil from the US.

OPEC and other oil producing countries, including Russia, have helped oil prices rebound from the last collapse in recent years. This has put pressure on economies of oil importing countries like India and China, which are both experiencing surging energy demand for their domestic economic growth as well as their global development initiatives. However, the cartel members, along their allies, have curtailed their oil supply by 1.8 million barrels per day since the beginning of 2017. They had further agreed to extend these cuts until the end of 2018 with an aim to boost their shrinking economies. In addition, the recent sanctions on Iran by the US government and the financial crisis in Venezuela further exacerbated the decline in the overall OPEC oil output. Thus, in order to compensate for the loss in oil supply from these two countries, Saudi Arabia, a key driver of the production cuts, and Russia, the largest Non-OPEC oil producer, are discussing easing off the production cuts at the next OPEC meeting. This also appears as a response to protect OPEC’s diminishing share in the global oil market due to the rapidly rising US oil supply.

OPEC has dominated Asian oil market for decades. The cartel sends over 15 million barrels per day into Asia, over sixty percent of its exports, to the leading destinations of China, India, South Korea and Japan. Therefore, Asia will likely feel the biggest impact to any production cut of OPEC countries. As procuring oil at the lowest price becomes increasingly vital for energy-hungry Asian consumers, major oil importing countries in Asia are working on combining their efforts to reduce OPEC’s influence on the oil market. According to an official, possibilities of joint sourcing of oil as well as combined bargaining to reduce the Asian premium price were discussed in the meeting on June 11. “The similar collaboration will be proposed to Japan and Korea as well. With CNPC or its affiliates selling in the overseas market a large portion of oil produced from fields it owns in third countries, India expressed interest in buying the Chinese firm’s equity oil directly,” the official said.

India and China’s move arrives in the backdrop of shifting the center of global oil market back to Asia. Potential cooperation among major Asian economies in establishing an “oil buyers’ club” will bring significant challenge to OPEC, giving rise to its competition with North America in exporting oil into the Asian market. India and China are likely to boost imports of US crude from Mexico Bay and Texas shale oil fields, a move aimed at putting pressure on OPEC members to keep oil prices under control.

China and India, the largest and second-largest importers of Iranian crude, will also have greater control over the Iran nuclear deal if they succeed in forming an “oil buyers’ club”. Regarding the recent tensions between Beijing and Washington D.C. on trade issues, China is not likely to support US action against Iran if it has the leverage to negotiate a lower oil price with the country. With its huge infrastructure development projects in Iran, such as the $3-4 billion development plan for the Farzad B gas field, India is also unlikely to abide by US sanctions against Iran in order to avoid friction and obtain a better oil deal.

This article was first published on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Yueyi Chen.

The post China and India Establish “Oil Buyers’ Club” to Counter OPEC appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Trump administration’s ongoing trade spat with China went another few rounds in recent days, spooking investors as headlines once again framed the issue with big numbers. Some previously threatened tariffs are now scheduled to take effect on July 6, and if the administration makes good on its latest threat, more may be in the offing. Yet our view is unchanged: Even with the latest developments, the scope and impact of all tariffs implemented or threatened thus far remains too small to derail the US, Chinese or global economies—or wallop the bull market.

The latest tit-for-tat started last week, when the US government released the list of Chinese goods (primarily industrial products benefiting from the “Made in China 2025” policy) that will be subject to 25% tariffs. Lost in most media coverage, however, was that tariffs on only $34 billion in goods are expected to take effect by July 6. The remaining tariffs on $16 billion worth of goods (largely related to semiconductors) likely face another round of hearings before implementation. In response, China’s government immediately provided further detail about its retaliatory tariffs on $50 billion of US goods. Mirroring the US’s approach, tariffs on only $34 billion in goods (mostly agricultural goods and autos) are scheduled for implementation on July 6, with the adoption of tariffs on the remaining $16 billion (largely energy products, chemicals and medical equipment) to be determined.

This week, in retaliation against China’s retaliation, President Trump replaced his prior April threat of a 25% tariff on an additional $100 billion in Chinese goods with an order to draw up plans for 10% tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. If these take effect, a total of $250 billion in goods would be subject to tariffs. Since the US exports only about $130 billion in goods to China, the Chinese government can’t respond with an equivalent threat. Consequently, Beijing said it will respond with both quantitative and qualitative measures, which presumably means a combination of import tariffs and regulatory actions against US companies operating in China.

While not completely comprehensive, Exhibit 1 chronicles the major tariff-related events of the Trump administration along with Chinese retaliation. Last year and early this year, the administration implemented a variety of small tariffs on solar panels (30% rate applying to about $4.5 billion in imports), washing machines (20 – 50% rate applying to about $1 billion in imports) and Canadian lumber (21% rate on $5.6 billion in imports). These tariffs are in effect, but a US International Trade Commission (ITC) panel struck down a 300% tariff on Canadian jetliners. On the steel and aluminum front, these metal tariffs launched in March on a small scale due to major exemptions. However, after the temporary waivers expired, the tariffs hit the EU, Canada and Mexico on June 1. Overall, these tariffs currently apply to roughly $40 billion in imports. As mentioned above, tariffs on China aren’t in effect yet, but the initial tariffs on $34 billion are scheduled to take effect July 6. A few weeks later, public hearings about potential auto tariffs will occur. Apart from President Trump’s tweet threatening 20% tariffs on EU auto imports, the details about potential auto tariffs are vague, but the US imported $192 billion worth of vehicles in 2017 that could potentially be subject to tariffs.

All told, presuming the July 6 implementation goes ahead as scheduled, the Trump administration will have applied new tariffs to approximately $85 billion worth of goods, representing 2.9% of imports and 0.4% of US GDP—tiny.[i] The future threats don’t change the calculus dramatically for the worse. If the tariffs on the remaining $16 billion of those initial $50 billion in Chinese imports, the additional $200 billion in imports and a theoretical $192 billion of auto imports were to take effect, the total goods subject to tariffs would be roughly $493 billion—16.9% of US imports and 2.5% of US GDP. Yet even these scaled figures probably overstate the impact. Applying tariffs to 2.5% of GDP doesn’t automatically delete that economic activity. Rather, it adds taxes that consumers or businesses must pay. The amount of those tariff payments, as Exhibit 2 shows, is much smaller than the big numbers being thrown around—amounting to less than half a percent of GDP, which is nowhere near large enough to spark a recession in the US or global economy or knock the bull market off course. A true wallop requires shocking, huge measures capable of wiping trillions of dollars off the global economy. Tariffs, though a small negative, don’t come close.

Exhibit 1: A Brief History of Tariffs

Source: US Trade Representative and China Ministry of Commerce, as of 6/19/2018.

Exhibit 2: Scaling the Tariffs

Source: US Trade Representative, China Ministry of Commerce, the American Action Forum and US BEA, as of 6/20/2018. Based on nominal GDP in 2017.

This post was originally written by Luke Puetz for FisherInvestments.com. Puetz is a research analyst with Fisher and has been at the company since 2005.

The post Your Obligatory Tariff Update appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Contrary to the common perception, US President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to transfer the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could have an unintended consequence that could profoundly alter the current, one-sided dynamic. So far, this decision has revealed to the world that U.S. is not an honest broker and that the so-called Israel-Palestine peace process is the mother of all scams. However, whether or not this would undermine the U.S. national interest in the Middle East and beyond is a debate for another day.

Distorted narratives energize toxic polemics from all sides. Historical or faith-based contexts are deliberately manipulated to keep any joint claim fluid or frustrated. The unholy competition for the holy land is in full force.

And though Palestinians have been compromised, if not betrayed, by their conventional supporters, their case has never been stronger or more legitimate. Ironic as it may sound, a solution has never been closer ever since the nuclear option of nonviolence was set in motion.

Second Coming Bullet Train

Right-wing evangelicals are inspired by misinterpretation of Biblical verses (Genesis 12:1, 2, 3) in which God promised Abraham to make him a nation and bless him. They disregard the fact that orthodox teachings of all Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are in agreement on that, and they omit that God granted Abraham such privilege because of his faithful devotion to the will of God.

‘God’s foreign policy’ is pretty clear, they argue.  ‘If you bless Israel, you will be blessed. If you curse Israel, you will be cursed’. Therefore, calling Israel an Apartheid state or Zionism an oppressive racist system is simply blasphemous. To these evangelicals, the number 70 is the prophecy of Prophet Daniel in the Bible, therefore, declaring Jerusalem the capital city of Israel is not mere symbolism but a necessary action “To bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy.”  That, according to Pastor Jeffries, Jews will finally come back to their senses and embrace Jesus as their messiah.

Zionism Hara-kiri

This is a ‘let’s not talk falsely’ moment in history, for the hour is getting late. Zionism is a genocidal enterprise conceived to rid the indigenous Palestinian people out of their homeland to establish an exclusively Jewish state. Neither its leadership nor its supporters attempt to hide that objective.

Regardless of the prevailing narrative in the U.S that Israel is the only secular democracy that upholds Western values in the Middle East, in actuality, Israel is neither secularist nor democratic.

Western secularism as expressed in the American and the French revolutions was intended to separate powers of the church and the state. They wanted to prevent the church from extending its authority to undermine the state power and to prevent the clergy from imposing their doctrines on others.

Today, politics in Israel is overwhelmingly dominated by religious zealots with an apocalyptic worldview. The two faces of that body politic are expressed in the land piggishness of the settlers that systematically uproots the indigenous Palestinian population with mob violence, targeted destruction of their agricultural livelihoods and their homes, and also by the political hubris of the state that has a surrogate veto power at the UN Security Council which allows her to break more international laws and commit more human rights violations than all the countries of the world combined. Its 70-year record that created human catastrophe known as Nakba speaks for itself.

Carrying state condoned war crimes, Israeli snipers have been executing what is according to Amnesty International a shoot-to-kill-or-maim policy. There are a number of videos showing these snipers celebrating their assassinations that are circulating on social media. More than 100 Palestinian civilians, including journalists and babies, have been killed since March 30 and more than 10,000 injured; many by live ammunition.

Behind the jubilant façade, some of the Zionist intelligentsia strategists are nervous about the global consequence of the current brutality and how it may be perceived in the court of social media.

Israeli Knesset and the Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, are pushing a repressive undemocratic bill that criminalizes the documentation of human rights violations against Palestinian citizens by Israeli soldiers. Shooting a video or taking a picture of a soldier committing war crimes could get a journalist a minimum of a 5-year prison term. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and other civil society organizations have issued a statement of condemnation.

The Millennial Might

Today, the most serious ‘existential threat’ facing Israel is not some Arab coalition armies that might invade it and ‘throw the Jews into the sea’; it is not Iran or Turkey; it is the unarmed Palestinian men, women, and children of all ages who put their lives on the line protesting against the ruthless oppression of Zionism in a broad daylight. Their resilient spirit is more of a threat than any missile.

Now that the boycott of Israel campaign spearheaded by conscientious millennials has found traction, the endgame for the last Apartheid system in the world may be near. How long before these socially conscious and politically enlightened students become America’s policy-makers and opinion-shapers? Ask the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, about her excruciating embarrassment on stage at the University of Houston.

“Nikki Haley! The blood is on your hands! You continue to sign off on the genocide of a native people!” roared the auditorium as she started her talk. Ambassador Haley was the person who made the case for the US to block the independent UN human rights commission to investigate whether or not Israel committed war crimes at Gaza buffer zone. Since then, on the very day Israeli snipers cold-bloodedly shot dead a 21-year-old Palestinian nurse in uniform, the US has vetoed a resolution calling for the “protection of Palestinian civilians”, making it the only UN Security Council member state to vote ‘No’.

Imagine when these millennials who transcend faith, ethnicities, and nationalities organize a persistent campaign of civil disobedience or sit-ins at Israeli embassies around the world that trigger mass arrests.

Diminishing Support

Israel is not sustainable mainly because it is a case founded on a moral argument emanating from Biblical history and Nazi victimhood that is protected by repressive realism and an Apartheid model.

A growing number of the American political elite are coming to terms with the fact that U.S. geopolitical interest and that of Israel are not one of the same. And with one of the highest GDP per capita in the world and the largest, most equipped and most technologically advanced armies in the world, Israel neither needs overprotection nor financial welfare from the U.S.

Likewise, a growing number of celebrities—including Jewish ones—are protesting Israel’s genocidal policy toward Palestinians with boycotts or conscientious disinvites.

The last Apartheid regime in the world must either accept one-state-solution with equal citizenship rights or succumb to a looming endgame.

The most widely used counterargument against the one-state-solution is one of sociopolitical eugenics that goes like this: ‘considering the birthrate of the Palestinians, it is a sure way to wipe out our Jewish identity.’ In order to maintain the superior race, the reproduction of the undesired or the inferior race must be controlled.

It is time to break the ethnocentric and faith-based shackles. The holy land cannot be a sacred space exclusive to a single faith. It belongs to all Abrahamic faiths — Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Nowhere is that fact more established than in the Qur’an where the connection of David, Jesus, and Muhammad to the holy land is prominently enshrined.

The post Palestinian Millennial Activists and Israel’s Diminishing Support appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

A young John McCain after being captured by the NVA after he was shot down in 1967. He spent 5 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

PBS in the United States is airing an intriguing broadcast this summer: a documentary series called The Vietnam War. The viewer can take many perspectives from this documentary when comparing it to modern times in the United States and abroad. A memorable moment was when one of the ex-Marines, who you become familiar with throughout the series, tells you the story of how he was conscious with a massive hole in his chest and discounted for dead, despite his brother at arms doing everything they could to get him to safe treatment – even putting their own lives at risk to do so. Because of the courtesy and kindness of one surgeon, who placed humanity above the situation where a morass of patients made for an impossible situation, the soldier survived to tell his story.

Armed conflict should always be avoided until it is necessary or essential to respond in order to stop acts of human rights atrocities. During the Cold War there was a starting point in discussions where a return to pre-1945 Europe was seen as a situation that was to be avoided by both sides in the conflict. When the Americans went into Vietnam and the Soviets into Afghanistan, a reminder of the terrors of open conflict were amplified, and it changed the countries that fought in those wars forever. Arms treaties followed and, while a return to passive warfare did not take much of a pause after the end of the Soviet Union, fear of open conflict and respect for an earned peace was paramount. It was understood that great powers would always challenge each other, but that a strong and intelligent defense would keep your country safe and secure as a whole. Any perception of a lack of defense or an inability to stop the interests of a foreign power may alter the perception and give way to further conflict.

The last few years have given rise to a view of opponents that do not meet the criteria of the Cold War era nor the immediate post-Cold War era. A lack of understanding of the Middle East for example has led to not only a genocide tantamount to the worst atrocities of the Second World War, but also has allies and former opponents who formally cut through political barriers to fight the Wehrmacht working against their own interests. For the Kurdish fighters that were the tip of the spear in fighting against ISIS, little support was received and there was almost no attention given to their fight in helping to prevent further genocide against minority groups in their region. The end result was that Western allies allowed a NATO ally to bomb their positions in Syria and Iraq. While there are no ties linking Western support in the region going to ISIS, the lack of support for the men, and sisters in arms that were the Kurdish women’s brigades fighting against ISIS should have wholly prevented any NATO member from attacking the small community that have fought for every free citizen of the world. While there are strong political differences between Turkey and the Kurdish communities, the end result is that Western allies were not supported, and in an even more horrific turn of events, genocide victims who have made it to safe countries are now finding their torturers living with them as neighbours, with local aid telling them to forget who they saw on their bus. We were always taught to never forget.

It would be hard to justify another Vietnam, and certainly the ex-Marine and those women who fought to free themselves from sure torture, rape, and horrific execution by taking up arms against ISIS share a bond in that they have seen the worst of humanity and have been ignored by those who think opening up a further conflict will resolve their political disputes. In the end, any advance by one country’s interests should be checked through defense, whether it be a missile or a computer or a simple series of discussions. To push for a greater conflict when we cannot even prevent a genocide or protect those who protect us all should be a sobering realization. Accelerating a conflict will just lead to another Vietnam. We would be hard pressed to find any average citizens in Europe or the United States that wishes to donate more of their family member to a battle in the fields of Ukraine. Enough have died there needlessly already.

The post We Don’t Need Another Vietnam appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with the 10th President of Israel Reuven Rivlin and Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Gadi Eizenkot.

The Hindus of Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan are being forced to flee to India but are not receiving Indian citizenship. The time has come for this to change.

Many Pakistani, Afghani and Bangladeshi Hindus living in India face a dire situation. Even though they share the same faith and culture as Hindus in India, they are not being granted Indian citizenship. Instead, they are being treated like stateless refugees. Furthermore, the Times of India recently reported that within the last three years, over 2,000 Pakistani Hindus who fled to India have been forced to return to Pakistan because they have been denied citizenship. According to the report, many of the returning Hindus have been forced to convert to Islam.

Pakistani dissident Natharam Bheel added in the Times of India: “Pakistani Hindus who are coming to India that are leaving everything in Pakistan are not getting anything here as well. They are coming here with the hope of leading a good life but eventually, they are losing all hope. Waiting period is getting longer. They are coming here on a religious visa and due to a lack of papers and documents, they are forced to go back.”

This is a great tragedy not only for the Pakistani Hindu community but also for the entire Hindu world and global civilization at large. Anyone who cares about minority rights in the greater Muslim world should be outraged. The time has come for this charade to come to an end! The Indian government should immediately adopt Israel’s right of return policy, so that oppressed Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and other parts of the world will have a refuge to flee to.

The Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are in a horrible bind and are in desperate need of such a refuge. According to Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, many Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh claim that India is the country of the Hindus and that all Hindus should go there: “From a religious perspective, India is our holy land but if we go to India, we are not treated as equals. There we do not receive citizenship nor jobs so why should we leave our ancestral lands, property and relatives behind to live in India?” However, countless Hindus from Muslim countries have nevertheless gone to India because they were compelled to leave their homelands due to atrocities implemented by various Islamist individuals and groups, who are backed by the local government.

The BBC claims that Hindus in Pakistan are treated like second class citizens. According to the report, their children are forced to read the Quran in Pakistani schools and are often mocked due to their religious beliefs. In addition, the Tribune reported that a study analyzing Pakistani textbooks from grades 1-10 concluded that “Hindus are repeatedly described as extremists and eternal enemies of Islam whose culture and society is based on injustice and cruelty, while Islam delivers a message of peace and brotherhood, concepts portrayed as alien to the Hindu.” According to the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, around 1,000 Hindu and Christians girls in Pakistan are kidnapped, forcefully converted and married to Muslim men against their will every year.

Due to facing such indignities, the Hindu population in Pakistan has rapidly declined. According to the Diplomat, at the time of the partition of British India, Hindu’s constituted 15% of Pakistan’s population but today, less than 2% of the Pakistani population is Hindu. Furthermore, the report noted that every year about 5,000 Hindus leave Pakistan in order to avoid persecution. Basu reported that a similar trend is occurring among the Hindus of Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who also are systematically being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes.

The Hindus of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Many policy makers in the West do not care about their plight because they are not white, lack the possession of numerous natural resources and do not have the backing of rich oil producing states. Furthermore, their enemies aren’t Jewish so there is no predetermined bigotry against their enemies, which can lead to an international call for them to obtain the justice that they deserved. Meanwhile, with the rise of radical Islam in the Indian subcontinent, their status in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan is getting more perilous by the day. And so long as India does not offer them refuge just as Israel does for Jews from Muslim majority countries, the Hindus from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh won’t benefit from having a national homeland for all Hindus, where they can be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Therefore, the time has come for India to stand up for its historic responsibility and to transform India into a national homeland for all Hindus.

The post India should adopt Israel’s right of return policy appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Donald Trump’s message and views on Iran have been remarkably consistent throughout his time in the public sphere. Even immediately following the deal’s successful negotiation, Trump came out against it, hurling a line many would become very familiar with: “Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction as incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran.” After being persuaded to comply with the terms of the deal in the short term, “hawkish” advisors Mike Pompeo (Secretary of State) and John R. Bolton (National Security Adviser) began wielding more influence in the White House. With less internal resistance stopping him, Trump was finally able to fulfill an old campaign promise and he withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in Early May.

The completion of the deal involved a long and arduous negotiation process. In the end, President Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry were able to strike a deal with the Iranian government, led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and five other countries (Russia, China, France, Germany, United Kingdom) to “ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful” in exchange for economic relief. Specifically, the deal, in its own words, would “produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy.” Iran, on the other hand, agreed to a bevy of restrictions on their ability to enrich Uranium and obtain weapons grade Plutonium as well as gave international inspectors access to their nuclear sites. All reports indicated that Iran had been complying with the terms of the deal. In fact, the deal had other positive effects as well. Iran’s (slow) reintegration back into the Western world was certainly a factor in their more moderate foreign policy decisions. For example, Iran refrained from intervening in both Libya and Iraq following the signing of the deal. In fact, the Huffington Post reported that the government was actually encouraging diplomatic solutions to end the Libyan conflict.

Critics of the deal argued the United States was conceding too much economically for such a poor return from the Iranians. While those attacks are unfounded, as the deal without question significantly delayed Iran’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon, they are also irrelevant. Trump’s withdrawal from the deal has created more detrimental impacts than even critics of the deal argued existed in the first place.

Part of the reason critics disapproved of the Iran deal was due to its front loaded nature. Essentially, Iran received many of the economic benefits it was promised before it completely fulfilled its end of the bargain. However, this very fact is one of the reasons why pulling out of the deal was especially miscalculated. Eric Lorber of the ForeignPolicy dot com reported in November of 2016 that “Iran [had] already received approximately $100 billion” in economic relief. The deal was lopsided when Trump pulled out because the United States had negotiated for long term benefits in stopping Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. Trump never gave us the ability to see the benefits materialize. Abandoning the deal when Trump did provided Iran with significant economic concessions while only setting their nuclear program back two years.

Most notably, Trump made this decision on the heels of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It is downright absurd that the Trump administration thought it would be a good idea to back out of one nuclear agreement right before it went and tried to negotiate another. In fact, I’d argue the only reason the North Koreans did not back out of the summit immediately is because they believed it would be an opportunity to extract concessions from the Americans like they have in the past. In fact, North Korea has violated eight agreements since 1994 while gaining “concessions [like] being removed from the U.S. list of regimes that sponsor terrorism, shipments of food and fuel, the promise of light water plutonium reactors and the removal of crippling economic sanctions.” Indeed, the 2018 negotiations ended with Trump agreeing to stop US military exercises with South Korea for almost nothing in return, a decision that seemingly surprised South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The long term implications of this decision are incredibly severe. Iran now has two realistic options. First, it can pivot harder to Russia and China, solidifying their alliance with those two global powers and rely on them for economic aid, as they had before the deal. In the meantime, they would continue to develop their nuclear weapon capabilities. In fact, Iran’s relationship with China has tightened since Trump’s withdrawal. China has been eager to work with Iran, some hypothesize, because of the access the country would give to Middle Eastern markets. East Asia Forum reported in June that “an ability to rapidly traverse the Iranian plateau lies at the heart of Beijing’s geostrategic and economic ambitions in the 21st century.”

Iran’s second option is cracking under the economic pressure. A letter from the Trump administration admitted that they will aim to put “unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime.” There is a scenario in which Iran returns to the table and agrees to a more favorable deal with the Trump administration to escape economic ruin. This outcome is certainly possible, with economic impacts in the country already being seen. But as was the case in North Korea and Iran, historically, economic sanctions hit the citizens the hardest while leaving high ranking government officials unaffected. The only real consequences will be to President Hassan Rouhani, whose pivot towards the West unquestionably backfired due to Trump’s election and who will inevitably be blamed for the country’s economic hardship. Furthermore, Trump’s antagonization of Iran makes it unlikely any member of the government wants to come to the table while Trump holds the oval office. Even more importantly, Trump’s hardline diplomacy tactics have already been undercut by European officials who promised to stay in the deal to their best of their abilities and tried to convince Trump not to enforce secondary sanctions (the administration declined to agree to that framework). Critically, Iran knows support of the JCPoA still exists.

The Trump administration has taken an incredible risk, hoping Iran’s hardliners will crack under the economic pressure. The far more likely outcome, however, is nuclear proliferation to strengthen Iran’s negotiating hand and a stronger alliance with Russia and China.

Nader Granmayeh is a senior at Horace Mann High School where he is the co-Student Body President. He is currently an intern with Foreign Policy Association blogs division and is working on Zephyr Teachout’s attorney general campaign.

The post On Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From The Iran Deal appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

President Trump’s pronouncements always generate froth, by his words and in the reporting and recrimination that follows.  But in Brussels, before his Helsinki meeting with Putin, he did, again, call NATO obsolete. Once any President raises it, the question takes on a life of its own.  And if NATO’s value is in doubt, who should be our allies?  That in turn raises the question: just what do we need for security?  While the President’s view about NATO is unsettling, raising the question should lead policy makers to examine their assumptions, and answer based on something beyond historical inertia.  The public deserves a considered discussion about NATO, alliances, and security, starting from the ground up.

Security is hard to define: so many developments in the world might pose threats.  The cyber realm can by itself transmit destruction; it also carries information and disinformation that can amount to attacks.  Aside from that infinity of hazard, who might take to terrorism against us, and what collapsed states might house them?  Which rising powers might overtake us, and will they employ military, economic, cyber, cultural, or some as-yet unimagined effort?  What about my job, and what about climate change?

Amid all the fears people seek security against, public discourse says little about what we need security for.  Absent an answer to that question, anything at all could pose a security hazard, and countering everything requires infinite resources.

Possible answers, after excluding everyone’s laundry lists of motherhood and apple pie, will range widely.  Americans might need only physical safety and equal market access throughout the world.  Some would hope to protect man’s capacity to find nirvana.

Presumably, most definitions would give democracy and other liberal principles high priority. Hopefully, most Americans would list living by our founding creed, the “self evident” truths over which the signers of the Declaration of Independence divorced their ethnic motherland — unalienable rights equally imbued in all, and government created to secure those rights.

A nation defined by a principle depends for its existence on validation of that principle.  Validation of our creed includes the traditional security that allows a free society to stay free, but also requires that measures to protect society comport with its principles.

What defense and diplomatic policies would serve this type of security need?  A range of configurations might work.  Anna Simons of the Naval Post Graduate School advocates a minimalist foreign policy, butting out of other nations’ sovereignty while punishing any transgression of ours.  John Ikenberry would revive the current Liberal World Order, as the best expression of America’s values.  Barry Posen of the Naval War College would revamp force structures to limit our commitments to certain key needs.  Zalmay Khalilzad sees room to make NATO more viable for the 21st Century.

A concern that has not been addressed is that today’s communications technology makes it possible actually to attack a country’s national narrative.  Narrative is not only the words expressing your values.  It includes actions and arrangements that fit your claims, and your ability to keep to them.  Security for America, and the shape of alliances, must reinforce America’s national narrative.

NATO membership includes many of the world’s firmly democratic nations, but a few that are moving toward authoritarian government.  It also excludes a number of deeply liberal democracies, most of them friendly to the U.S. and some formally allied but outside of NATO.  The premises of all those alliances are diverse, but none names the common commitment to liberal democracy.  Yet this is the basis for alliances that would fit our national narrative.  NATO itself may not — but, combing out the most egregious backsliders from liberal values, and asking the other liberal democracies to join, it could form the heart of a fitting alliance structure.

The grouping would likely comprise NATO members minus Turkey and Hungary, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and perhaps Chile.  It could only be assembled in a strategically defensive orientation, protecting the needs of members’ liberal lifestyles and limiting its geopolitical power projection.  The group should encourage other nations to develop toward deeper liberalism, and tighten relations with any that do.  Countries that become deeply compatible, as, say, Indonesia, Ghana, or Brazil might in coming decades, should be offered membership.

Any arrangement of this sort is hypothetical and speculative.  But reflections of this nature are needed now, to look through fresh eyes at basic questions we already face.  Those questions will not abate, and enduring answers will require that we take them up with open minds.  But those answers should, in this new and disorienting age, start from our founding principles.

The post What If NATO Really IS Obsolete? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Presented by Intelligence Squared U.S. in partnership with Georgetown University live at the first Georgetown University Women’s Forum

The post Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates – The proposition “Globalization Has Undermined America’s Working Class” appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Disruptors are becoming ever more prevalent as bold solutions are offered for global problems. In health, transport, and agriculture big ideas are at the centre of fierce debates about reform and innovation; nowhere is this more evident than in education.

In developing countries, quality education for the poor is rare:  263 million children are out of school and 330 million children are in school but not learning. 69 million more teachers are needed. With many calling for more funding to meet demand, it is only now that the global community is unifying around ‘outcomes’ rather than ‘access’ as a benchmark for success and calling for innovationto help solve the learning crisis.

Sadly, at the moment nearly 600 million children are being failed; enabling those 600 million to go to a school where they actually learn is a mammoth global task and underpins Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). Re-building weak public school systems; putting in place capacity building programs; re-invigorating teacher training programs and enabling governments to generate enough financing to fund all this will take many years, if not decades.

Providing high quality schooling for all children clearly requires innovation, partnership and collaboration from all sectors that have the expertise and commitment to contribute. Yet many anti-reformists vehemently argue that SDG4 should not be pursued in partnership with the private sector. Their justification for this is often ostensibly rooted in Article 26 of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The 1948 UDHR ‘strives to promote these rights and freedoms and secure universal and effective recognition’; but 70 years on; 600 million children are proof that the approach taken to fulfilling Article 26’s goals so far, has failed. Section one of the Article has five clear components a) Everyone has the right to education b) Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages and c) Elementary education shall be compulsory d) Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and e) higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

Many educators, including Bridge, believe that a strong free public school system delivering real learning for each and every child is the ideal. However, we must be pragmatic as well as idealistic if we accept the fundamental urgency of the learning crisis.If we believe that a) education is a right then we must strive to help fulfill that right urgently. If c) education must be compulsory, then we must urgently build and develop enough schools, classrooms and teachers for 600 million children to be served. If these rights, outlined in Article 26, cannot be urgently met by existing public systems then they must be met using other models. Otherwise, parents must wait until all governments build the will, the resources, and the capacity to provide the poor the education their children deserve. This is an unacceptable position and offers families no hope. Therefore, the ability to compromise on clause b, in the short term, is essential; a failure to do so will perpetuate the cycle of educational death for another generation of children. Clause b is often arbitrarily proclaimed by status quo defenders as most essential: education must be free. They argue, compulsory education for all (clauses a and c) must be delivered by existing public sector frameworks without any social impact investment; returns based financing or public private partnership models. According to them, governments must deliver the holy grail of strong, regenerated and reinvigorated public schools from within a failing system. Despite good intentions, this has been unachievable for the last 70 years.  This argument locates them firmly in the realm of the ideologues who place theory above the immediate needs of children.

It is only through embracing new, innovative, scalable and sustainable models that clause b will ever be achievable. The clear alternative to private sector assistance is that hundreds of millions of children remain uneducated for the years or decades it may take for all governments to reform and develop a strong primary education system. It is the verhement resistance to this logic which leads education reformers to talk about an ideological divide.

This ideological divide is increasingly visible through coordinated public attacks on the private sector and its innovations. Often driven by those that have no constituency in the communities or the countries benefiting from private sector interventions; by those that have neither experienced first hand the innovations they critique nor reviewed the materials they condemn. Perhaps, more importantly by those that do not offer any practical solutions to ensure that the 600 million can urgently learn.

Against this backdrop there are millions of parents who are choosing schools like Bridge. In Kenya alone, there are two million children alone attending ‘informal schools’. These parents are from communities living in extreme poverty, often in slums. These parents are choosing not to send their child to the nearby public school, for which they often pay, because their public school is failing; only 51% of Kenyan parents rated the quality of free to attend schools in Kenya as good.Children are not learning; teachers are struggling and parents are frustrated that their children are being failed. A parent with school aged children cannot wait for the rebuilding of public school systems; capacity building programs; re-invigorated teacher training programs. They have to send their child to school today. They choose schools where they can be intimately involved:  chairing regional and national PTAs; sitting on school boards; attending workshops. They are invested in their child’s education in every sense, as are their communities, and their children thrive. They are the living embodiment of Article 26’s section three: ‘Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.’

At the heart of parental choice is a parents’ desire for good teachers and  an environment that supports their child’s learning. However, teachers in developing countries face considerable challenges; they themselves struggle with literacy and numeracy; they often do not have materials with which to teach let alone good materials; they have overcrowded classrooms; often they are not paid on time, if at all; in remote communities with poor infrastructure there is no support or guidance and teacher absenteeism levels are extraordinarily high. This is the plight of many teachers and because of this, it is unfathomable that activists who claim to support teachers would seek to protect the status quo. They seek to protect labor and agitate against a focus on teacher performance. Whereas , teachers themselves are actively seeking environments where they have access to professional development opportunities and can practice their chosen profession with pride.

Nearly all primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa are failing their pupils. Solutions that utilize a wide range of partners is essential and using Article 26 to undermine these partnerships is nonsensical.

Joanna Hindley is the Vice President of Bridge International Academics. 

The post Education Is A Right That Must Be Fulfilled Urgently appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.