Foreign Policy Blogs

MC3 Ian Carver/U.S. Navy

Is the U.S. accidentally preparing for World War I again? In this two-part series, leading thinkers from a prior era of globalization instruct us on maritime and cyber security today.

In our constant consumption of the latest news, we risk overlooking history and missing context. Competing insights from a century ago inform debates today on Russian and Chinese naval strategies (this post) and cybersecurity (the next).

Alfred T. Mahan and Norman Angell were prominent thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mahan was a U.S. naval officer who literally wrote the book that shaped American naval strategy for decades. Angell warned of the futility of war for so long that ended up he winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Mahan and Angell each saw enormous consequences of the trade and technology boom of their time, with steamships, transatlantic telegraphy, radio communications and the Panama Canal. Mahan focused on the many new threats posed by the emerging technologies, while Angell saw a range of potential benefits.

Mahan understood that a surge in technology and trade could lead to more luxuries, but at heart was a realist: “All around us now is strife…. Everywhere is nation against nation.” He warned, for example, about European access through the Panama Canal to the undefended West Coast of the United States, the dangerous rise of Asian states and wars driven by economic ambition. European and U.S. navies responded with massive shipbuilding campaigns and by securing ports throughout the Caribbean.

Angell, meanwhile, concluded that the rise of trade and economic integration – “interdependence” – made war an irrational choice. The direct and indirect costs of war were greater than any possible gains. Trade became a more efficient means to wealth than accumulating geography. Moreover, the role of government had evolved: raising a country’s standard of living became more important than conquering foreign territory.

Mahan’s views seemed to be borne out by World War I, punitive postwar policies, the failure of the League of Nations, and World War II. These (and the Cold War) demonstrated a world of zero-sum, state-vs.-state conflicts less focused on democracy, human rights, and trade. But beginning with the Atlantic Charter, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the new UN Declaration of Human Rights, Angell’s ideas began to rise. By the 1980s into the 1990s, democracy, global trade and investment, non-state actors and the World Wide Web were replacing simple realism.

Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001, though, provoked a complicated response of

new, new realism – high-tech network-centric warfare with global surveillance and targeting technologies, along with special forces on horseback, to fight state and non-state actors, in order to preserve the presumed benefits of the peaceful globalization status quo.

Today’s geopolitics blend and contrast Angell’s and Mahan’s visions. Seaborne international trade fuels much of the global economy, while increasingly assertive naval strategies are changing geostrategic analysis.

China’s naval ascendance focuses for now on the South China Sea. Its claims of sovereignty are contested by Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries in the region. China uses diplomatic and military pressure, and the construction of “new islands,” to strengthen its claims. Locally, the disputes impact fishing, mineral and drilling rights. Key commercial shipping lanes, and the passage rights of foreign navies, are concerns of India, the United States and others. At the same time, the U.S. military asserts that China’s naval upgrades aim toward an “anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) force — a force that can deter U.S. intervention.”

The Russian question is even more similar to Mahan’s concerns over “coaling stations” for a global navy. With a coastline extending across nearly half of the Arctic Circle, Russia is developing its Arctic infrastructure to support its naval and merchant fleets. Supported by scientific expeditions to extend it claims — an effort other countries also undertake — it is preparing for considerable increases in shipping Arctic melt is expected to allow. On its southern front, Russia has been developing Novorossiysk to house the Black Sea Fleet, and annexed Crimea, home of Russia’s naval facility in Sevastopol. Meanwhile, in 2014, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced negotiations for military bases and refueling sites for Russian strategic bombers in Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and other countries.

The question of American and allied policies also look back to Mahan and Angell’s time. In the decades before World War I, the United States and European powers engaged in a naval modernization arms race and secured bases across the Caribbean Sea. The U.S. then partially withdrew from European politics until World War II, after which it took a dual-track approach. Toward the Soviet Union, it waged a Mahan-informed foreign policy of strength, expansion and containment. With its allies, though, it helped build a new community of interdependence.

How is the U.S. moving today? In recent weeks, the U.S. has moved forward on two elements of its “pivot to Asia”: the Defense Department’s new Southeast Asia Maritime Security Initiative (like Mahan) and progress in Congress on the coming Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (like Angell, except that it excludes China). The deputy secretary of defense talked tough when he testified to Congress on Russia nuclear plans (and softer on China), while the Pentagon also announced it would move “approximately 250 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzers throughout six countries that are close to Russia” (both Mahan).

And while it is useful to understand that Mahan and Angell offer insight into current maritime security debates, it is remarkable that they also contribute significantly to understanding questions of cybersecurity – the subject of the next post.

This post and the next are drawn in part from Jim Quirk’s article in the Mediterranean Quarterly, June 2015.

Gathering at a religious festival in Ajmer, India. This northern city of 550,000 has been selected to become a smart city, with modern infrastructure systems operated by “smart” technology. PM Narendra Modi unveiled the $7.5b plan on June 25. But will it work? The jury is still out. Photo: The Hindu (newspaper)

On June 25, 2015, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a plan to modernize the infrastructure of 100 cities. The Indian government is devoting $7.5 billion to the initiative, with a goal of completing the upgrades by 2022. Yet there is criticism that the idea is destined to fail as it is putting the cart before the horse: attempting to bring Indian cities into the 21st century when many are barely in the 20th.

Modi’s vision is based on the cutting-edge design of so-called smart cities, which use technology based on computer networks to create “grids in which water, electricity, waste removal, traffic, hospitals and schools are seamlessly integrated with information technology to run them more efficiently.” Prototypes have been installed in South Korea, India and Abu Dhabi.

Adapting the smart city to India faces significant challenges. Notable among them is that Indian political, economic and cultural focus has traditionally been on its villages. Despite its burgeoning population, creating policies centered on villages has been practiced for decades. Only recently has attention shifted to cities, which politicians can no longer ignore. Now about 350 million Indians live in cities; staggeringly, this figure is projected to nearly double (to 600 million) by 2030. Yet the infrastructure of many of India’s cities cannot support their strain currently, let alone the additional burden of population growth expected soon.

For example, take Ajmer in northern India, with a population around 550,000. It is one of the cities selected for upgrade by Modi. In May 2015 representatives from IBM, Oracle and several other companies visited Ajmer to plan out (and promote) how smart city technology will fix the city’s debilitating water and waste management and traffic problems.

Yet, Ajmer only provides running water for two hour per day. A pitifully small number of homes are connected to a sewage system. Dirty water freely flows through open drains. And only 2 traffic lights function properly in the entire municipality. As Mukesh Aghi — president of the U.S.-India Business Council, which organized the meeting with U.S. companies in May — deftly observes, “While we are trying to bring 21st-century technology, we also need to sort out some 19th-century challenges in Ajmer.” Suresh Mathur, a retired schoolteacher in Ajmer, asks, “Can we first work toward becoming a functioning city before aspiring to be a smart city? We lack even the basic services that a city should typically provide.”

Technology has the potential to solve many problems but also tends to create just as many. The infrastructure problems in India are severe and also unique, meaning solutions that worked elsewhere would likely not work there. Of course the smart city model could succeed if adapted properly, but this process needs to be carefully planned and tested. Thus expecting fully functioning modern cities by 2022 seems completely unreasonable.

I saw a BBC program recently that talked about the many problems with installing highway overpasses and alternate routes aimed to combat traffic congestion in Mumbai. Dozens of these structures sit half-completed, with no progress being made and no realistic completion date in sight. With this in mind jumping directly from antiquated to modern doesn’t seem feasible.

Maybe Modi should focus on making the infrastructure of India’s cities average, before arriving at smart.

Old Fanous Ramadan, also known as Ramadan lantern is a famous Egyptian folklore associated with Ramadan. The holiday takes place from June 17 to June 17 this year. Photo Credit: Ibrahim.ID

The $80 Million Fake Bomb-Detector Scam—and the People Behind It
By Jeffrey E. Stern
Vanity Fair

Historically, advertisements that depict a product as “foolproof” are better off not being believed. But in the uncertain, dangerous and tumultuous climate of Iraq today, it’s a promise that, even if too good to be true, is easily embraced. In this article, Stern delves into the bizarre and depressing story of how Iraqi officials were tricked by a deceitful British salesman selling bomb detectors that, in the end, were nothing but a glorified golf-ball detector.

The Lonely End
by Matthew Bremner
Roads and Kingdoms

Bremner looks into the Japanese phenomenon of kodokushi, or “lonely death.” The word has become increasingly prominent in the country since 1995 — so common, in fact, that an industry tasked with the sole purpose of cleaning up homes after these deaths has begun to appear.

The Decline of International Studies
By Charles King
Foreign Affairs

“The rise of the United States as a global power was the product of more than merely economic and military advantages,” notes King. Indeed, one large, and comparatively inexpensive, factor has been education. Why, then, are federal and non-governmental international educational programs coming under attack?

Can Politico make Brussels sexy?
By Gideon Lewis-Kraus
The Guardian

In the eight years since its launch in 2007, Politico has become a media staple in the United States, turning inside-the-Beltway reporting into the “clubby and exhilarating” coverage we see today. Now, it’s expanded to Brussels. Lewis-Kraus looks into the media outlet’s new transatlantic operations.

A World Without Work
By Derek Thompson
The Atlantic

One day this list could be written by a machine — it’s certainly not inconceivable. Jokes aside, the eventual automation of numerous jobs could rattle the framework of our society. Work — how we define it and how we engage with it — is at the heart of our society, our politics. So, as Thompson asks, “What might happen if work goes away?”

Blogs:

The Case for Regional AUMFs by Michael Crowley
Much Ado about the South China Sea by Tim Wall
Pirates of the South China Seas by Gary Sands
The Systemic Deficiency in the U.S.’ Cybersecurity Mindset by Joseph Karam
In Ukraine, Peace Should First be Made with Words by James Nadeau

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration submitted to Congress a draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). President Obama, like President Bush before him, has claimed authorization for military activities to combat terrorism under a previous AUMF passed on Sept. 14, 2001 and dedicated to combating those responsible for the 9/11 attacks (the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were authorized under a separate AUMF). The emergence of IS and the simple passage of time prompted a re-examination of the terms of the prevailing AUMF. However, the White House and Congress each have reasons to pantomime action on an AUMF without committing to it. They reach beyond the standard legislative gridlock to matters of military strategy, preserving the president’s military authority, and simple partisan politics. Many observes see a new AUMF as unlikely politically or unnecessary constitutionally. Were it to happen, there is reason to consider framing it in a different way: on a regional basis, rather than against a specific military threat.

Start with the analysts who see a new AUMF as unnecessary. Max Boot, a conservative military historian, argues that U.S. military actions on executive authority have a long history, dating back to the early 19th Century Barbary Wars. Moreover, the Obama Administration explains that it seeks the new AUMF for reasons that are more propagandistic than constitutional; writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Micah Zenko quotes White House spokesman Josh Earnest’s argument: “It will send a clear signal to our enemies that if there is any doubt in their mind that the United States of America takes this threat very seriously, it will eliminate that doubt.”

Earnest’s quote telegraphs a larger issue: whether or not the AUMF is necessary constitutionally, the debate surrounding it highlights a political need to organize and constrain U.S. military activity. The AUMF debate may be more useful in clarifying policy as a forcing event than an actual AUMF would be in practice.

That debate has been forced, and it has pointed to the complexity of the problem. In January, Army Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey gave in interview outlining broad principles to which a new AUMF should adhere. Gen. Dempsey pointed to the need to avoid constraints on future action in a way that makes identifying and enforcing boundaries around such action difficult. While emphasizing that all military options should be preserved, Dempsey said that “In particular, it shouldn’t constrain activities geographically, because [ISIS] knows no boundaries [and] doesn’t recognize any boundaries – in fact it’s their intention to erase all boundaries to their benefit.”

What Dempsey requests is unrestricted authority to fight ISIS, a non-state actor. Congress’ war powers are designed to be administered against sovereign nations. They have changed as the nature of war has changed. Congress has declared war a total eleven times – all against sovereign nations – and six out of those 11 declarations pertained to enemy countries in World War II. There is no precedent for Congressional declarations of war against non-state actors.

A “regional AUMF” would codify the long-standing practice of executive “doctrines” governing U.S. policy towards particular regions. The Monroe Doctrine set U.S. policy in opposition to any foreign intervention into its sphere of influence in the Americas. President Jimmy Carter used his 1980 State of the Union Address to announce that the U.S. would defend its interests in the Persian Gulf by military force if necessary (the “Carter Doctrine.)” These executive statements amount to regional policies governing the use of force that were never codified by Congress, but which nonetheless influenced U.S. policy. Moreover, there is an active precedent for organizing U.S. military and diplomatic activities regionally in the way a regional AUMF would. The State Department has a Middle East and North Africa (MENA) section devoted to countries within that region. The Defense Department assigns the countries of the MENA region to its Central Command. An AUMF organized to address military threats within the MENA region – rather than against a specific actor within that region – would fall within the current logistical framework.

The idea of a regional AUMF presents a major drawback to presidents and generals alike. It infringes on the ability to “pick and choose” which conflicts in a given region merit U.S. action. However, the current debate acknowledges the need for AUMFs to be updated consistently. A three-year “sunset” clause is widely discussed as way to keep its terms from growing outdated. In that sense, each AUMF would be temporary. It would have to be: after all, ISIS did not exist three years ago. Debating new AUMF terms could (as now) lag well behind changing security needs. That may give further ammunition to those who see AUMFs as unnecessary. However, if they focus U.S. regional policy priorities and clarify objectives when America commits to using force, they are worthwhile. Given the lives in the balance on both sides of U.S. firing lines, the stakes merit more concerted attention to U.S. military strategy around the world.

Photo Credit: CH’7K via Flickr

Information regarding the size and scope of the cyberattack against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) continues to grow. As many as 18 million current, former and prospective federal employees — ranging from military personnel to the IRS — are now thought to be affected. This figure is a massive increase in the initial OPM estimate of 4.2 million and it’s likely to grow. Officials speaking about the breach, which is believed to have originated in China, have now acknowledged the incident goes back to June of last year.

The slow drip of information regarding the extent of the security breach has frustrated policymakers, many of whom expressed those feelings to besieged OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, during her testimony on Capital Hill to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

Archuleta defended her time as director saying, “In an average month, OPM, for example, thwarts 10 million confirmed intrusion attempts targeting our network. These attacks will not stop — if anything, they will increase,” she said and went on to promote her “aggressive effort” to reform and update the policies and procedures that govern OPM’s aging cybersecurity infrastructure.

The Obama administration continues to express its confidence in Archuleta’s ability to lead OPM. Such a statement is deeply concerning, considering that the Office of the Inspector General warned OPM that critical vulnerabilities in its security authorization system left it open to exploitation. A warning that Archuleta seemed content to ignore, or at best move at a snails pace to address.

The lackadaisical attitude surrounding the OPM breach is indicative of a wider cyber security mindset that is plaguing our national security infrastructure in cyberspace. The U.S. is simply not adapting fast enough.  Every year the U.S. fails to adequately meet the threshold for the development of a robust and comprehensive cybersecurity platform, and we fall farther behind our digital adversaries. There is a mindset in Washington that addressing these security threats are somehow beyond our capability, and that no matter what we do there will always be penetrations of critical systems. You’d be hard pressed to find a policymaker that would tolerate, much less express, such an idea when it comes to terrorist threats from al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Why such an attitude is allowed to exist when it comes to cybersecurity is deeply troubling.

In February 2013, President Obama issued Executive Order (EO) 13636: Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. The EO was intended to lay out the administrations priorities and commitment to improving critical infrastructure and thus mitigating the threat from cyberattacks. The plan was developed in conjunction with recommendations from the Internet Security Alliance, a multisector trade association that provides a unique combination of advocacy and policy development. The EO outlines a robust plan, full of big ideas but short on a strategy for how it can be implemented.

The perfect example of this is White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel. During an interview with Information Security Media Group, Obama’s point man on cybersecurity came under heavy fire when he down played his own lack of technical expertise and dismissed the importance of understanding the nitty-gritty of implementing cybersecurity policy. While Daniel’s pedigree is impressive, especially in terms the scope and skills he has brought to his numerous positions in government, the decision to appoint him to the position of White House Cybersecurity Coordinator is indicative of a pervasive belief cybersecurity leadership doesn’t require technical expertise in the field. Can you imagine the Director of the Center for Disease Control not being a doctor or the Attorney General not being a lawyer?

A report released from the software security firm Veracode highlights the staggering deficiencies in civilian federal agencies. Entitled State of Software Security, the report examined 208,670 applications over the course of 18 months, and the company audited source code from government and private sector clients.

This particular report focused on the government sector, comparing it to 34 industries across a variety of different sectors. Veracode found that the government agencies ranks last in how often and how fast they are addressing security vulnerabilities — only 27 percent of identified vulnerabilities were adequately fixed and three out of four government sector applications consistently failed the OWASP Top 10, the pinnacle standard assessment of web application security. One reason cited for this high degree of vulnerability cited was an outdated programming language used in many government systems.

So why aren’t these government agencies adequately addressing these problems? The short answer is the government simply lacks the regulatory demands that is so often present in the private sector.

Many in Washington are expressing their collective outrage over the OPM breach, but the alarm bells that have been ringing over the last two decades will continue to be ignored. Incidents of computer attacks have increased 1,100 percent since 2006, the cybersecurity threat facing the U.S. is very real, unfortunately, for many policymakers on Capital Hill these security challenges exist in the abstract. There is no body count to tally from a cyber attack. There is nothing present in the physical world to help policymaker — many of whom purposefully avoid diving into the technical nuances of cybersecurity — properly conceptualize the threat. Right now, unless the problem we are facing in cybersecurity involves a Middle East government on the verge of collapsing, the desire and wherewithal to take action will continue to fall short.

Nations spy on one another; it’s a fundamental reality of the international system. The idea that China is spying on us is not the problem per se but rather the symptom of a much broader disease. The Chinese government is not going to stop trying to breach our digital bulwarks, no matter how much we whine. The problem is, however, that the digital age provides the potential for critical national security information to be taken with far greater ease and at much greater volumes than at anytime in history. We are making it far too easy for foreign governments to exploit our soft cyber underbelly. Can we really blame them for capitalizing on that advantage?

The majority of the estimated 250,000 people displaced by the Houthi conflict scattered across the vast landscape of north Yemen, seeking shelter and food among the local rural populations.
Photo: Hugh Macleod / IRIN / 201003170737560353

U.S. policymakers face many difficult choices in pursuing rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is little chance that Iran and the Arab monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia, can countenance each another’s respective aspirations. The U.S. is trying to make a deal with Iran while still tying itself to the demands of its other security partners in the region.

Iran’s ambitions are not new or “revolutionary”: Before the overthrow of the last Shah, a number of modern Iranian leaders had hegemonic aspirations in the Gulf, expressed in terms of past imperial grandeurs. The revolution in 1979 unleashed a torrent of anti-Americanism, but it did not diminish Iranian leaders’ aspirations. Instead, it emboldened them, as they were now animated by true revolutionary zeal, and not the reactionary imaginations of some “pan-Iranists” who called for a “Greater Iran.”

Today, such naked ethnic supremacism holds little stock among even the most hardline Iranian policymakers. While Supreme Leader Khomeini expressed himself in religious terms, he and his colleagues still yearned for national greatness beyond Iran’s borders, to export their model of governance so that would be surrounded by far friendlier regimes. Now they must balance this desire with the realization that their rule cannot survive without better international relations and a lessening of economic sanctions.

Iranian leaders still fear that offensive action might topple them from power — they know full well Western powers could stoke discontent against the ruling class — but they also want be feared and treated as equals. Iranian influence is seen in much of the Arab world as Shia, Persian chauvinism – an unsurprising view given the way Tehran carries itself. But that chauvinism is only exceeded in pretensions by the chauvinism of the Gulf States arrayed against the so-called Shia Crescent.

These Arab powers have many of the same underlying fears of their own citizenry that Iranian leaders do, though there are several notable differences. For one, the Arab states are not under the same sanctions as Iran and need to fear the socioeconomic impact of decades-long censure. Yet the underlying economic and political contracts they have with their subjects are under strain, because of the simple fact that people cannot be bought off forever, especially those who seek to overthrow the state, remove all “undesirables,” and institute a new Islamist order. Yet even with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) at the House of Saud’s doorstep, the Gulf States collectively seem to fear dissidents who may look to the Islamic Republic even more – and do too little to quell the extremist messaging emanating from their own religious establishments that has empowered ISIS and AQAP.

This shortsightedness is why the outcome of the current Gulf-led intervention in Yemen will prove decisive. Saudi leadership has sought to build up a consensus on Yemen among other predominantly Sunni nations. In drawing in as many of these countries as possible, including apparent outliers such as Sudan, Malaysia and Senegal, they wish to obscure that any political solution Riyadh finds acceptable will be unacceptable to many Yemenis.

Iran, for its part, seems content to let the coalition bleed itself. The previous beneficiary of Saudi (and American) largesse, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was tossed aside in 2011 not because he suddenly discovered reform or sided with the Houthis (as he did after losing power), but because he had so badly bungled things that domestic unrest threatened to embolden al Qaeda – which, we now learn, may have deeply infiltrated his security services. Riyadh fails to realize that its actions could deepen the quagmire that Saleh dug himself into with U.S. military assistance.

For now, the U.S. is content to distance itself from the Saudi campaign over Yemen while pursuing a grand bargain with Tehran. The coming months will tell if this remains doable, or if Washington will have to truly set down the rationale for its courting of Tehran while still upholding sanctions and arming the Gulf Arab and Israeli militaries.

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This Ramadan comes at a time when the world is facing a catastrophic leadership deficiency, and nowhere is that catastrophe more evident than in the Middle East. This resource-rich, predominantly Muslim region has produced some of the worst tyrants that the world has ever known — Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Muammar Gaddafi and many more.

Ramadan is the Islamic holy season in which the faithful diligently tries to maximize his/her spiritual benefit by seeking purification of the soul, enhancement of one’s moral vision and boosting one’s conscience. It is a time in which the faithful works hard to restrain all of material and flesh temptations by turning inward and increasing his or her level of worship, altruism and reflection.

However, Ramadan is not only about the individual’s relationship with God, but also about his/her relationship with other creatures on earth, especially human beings, regardless of their beliefs.

Dysfunctionality of the World Order

Never before in recorded history has the world — specifically the Islamic world — simultaneously experienced so many national and transnational challenges of economic, social, ecological, political and spiritual nature.

The actual and the perceptual order of things have been turned upside down. In a number of countries, the role of the state is being redefined, and the state’s power has diminished drastically. The role of the younger generations and disenfranchised communities has been systematically increasing; thus, setting the stage for reform, but also a power-vacuum, insecurity and chaos.

While the elements that created such daunting conditions are many, chief among them is leadership deficiency.

Many Muslim nations are in a functionally broken or a deplorable state of existence. Some, like Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen are already junglified. According to UNICEF, over 20 million Yemenis need humanitarian aid. Others, such as Egypt, Lebanon, Nigeria and Mali are perfectly placed on the conveyor belt while periodically projecting artificial agency or state authority. Meanwhile, economic predators continue to enhance their exploitation strategies into fine arts.

The Perilous Protection

Some monarchies and emirates have entrusted all their own personal security and that of their respective nations into the hands of mercenaries. Countries such as United Arab Emirates have cultivated deeply-rooted business relationships with the likes of the ever-elusive and infamous Blackwater, which is now known as Academi.

Ironic as it may seem, the UAE became the center where private security companies gravitate towards or the global trade fair where international mercenaries showcase their lethal services.

Unfortunately, times have profoundly changed from the day when Marzabaan the Persian emissary arrived at Medina and could not find a royal palace in the city. When the emissary was lead to Umar — the Second Caliph — took a nap under a shady tree in the outskirt of the city. That was the day when the wise emissary was compelled to make this famous observation: “You assumed authority over them, you served them justly, you felt safe among them, and earned to sleep (exposed and without guards).”

Today, most of the so-called Muslim leaders are known as dictators, kleptocrats and absolute monarchs. Many of them lack the trustworthiness needed to earn public confidence. They lack the vision to lead and the fairness and empathy to care for the least represented of their fellow citizens. But, make no mistake — the real power still rests with the people. Rulers need justice more than their subjects.

Nature of the Deficiency

Throughout today’s world, leaders who are morally anchored, who have the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of those in whose affairs are entrusted upon them, are in short supply.

What’s needed are leaders who can be trusted by their people and are agents for positive change. Leaders need to possess a broader vision and refrain from letting their own interests define their country’s national interests. They need to be driven by causes that transcend themselves their clan or region interests. They also need to recognize that their authority is a time-constrained privilege, not a right. Leadership, after all, should protect the rights of others and ensure that no grievance is left unaddressed.

At all levels — social, economic and political — these dire times demand transformational leaders who can inspire visions that transcend time and space, who have the capacity to translate those visions into actions, and who could cultivate the right minds and institutions to sustain that vision.

The Metaphor of the Double-decked Ship

In this month of reflection, it is worth remembering the many examples of bad endings of all bad leaders. History is peppered with such examples.

Warning against the abuse of privilege, Prophet Muhammad used the two-decked ship parable in which the morally pompous people were housed in the upper deck and the laity in the lower deck. Whenever the  people on the lower deck needed water, they had to go to the upper deck, where they were given a hard time. This went on for a while until one day, out of frustration, one of the lower deck people decided to bust a hole in the ship in order to access the water beneath. It wasn’t long before they all perished.

Transformational leaders are trend watcher. They are always vigilant of any seemingly small problem with the potential to develop into a major crisis.

Counsel to the Leaders

There is no good leadership without good ethics — the two go hand in hand. Ethics is as a code of conduct or values that distinguish right from wrong, the moral from the immoral, virtuous from the vile in governing the lives of individuals, groups, and societies. In Islam it is known as khuluq. “Deal with people in the best and the most ethical way,” said Prophet Muhammad.

As you reflect and refine your leadership qualities, you should consider these five points.

First, know your advisers as well as they know you, especially those in charge of national security.

Second, always keep in mind that anyone who would kill others for money or greed would have no moral obligation to compromise you and your nation for the right price.

Third, never assess your political crisis based solely on current events. If you are not into history, at least, try to rewind your memory database to recall how events came to be in the first place.

Fourth, keep your passions in check. Never become enamored with the seat of power; it is the only way to spare yourself, your people and your country’s imminent destruction.

Fifth, the best protection that a leader can have is the authentic confidence of the people. Always listen to the people to know what might matter to them the most, and who among them might be disenfranchised, deprived or aggrieved.

The alternative is a roller coaster ride into a perpetual state of chaos, exploitation and suicidal extremism.

Photo Credit: Presidential Press and Information Office

The Chinese are notorious for copying Western products and adapting them to serve the Chinese market.  Look at Alibaba, often described as China’s answer to eBay, or Weibo, a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook. Plus, thanks to weak intellectual property protection laws in China, these companies often get away with it.

Yet there is nothing inherently immoral or illegal about governments copying geopolitical strategies from other governments, and China’s northern comrade, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, may be setting a dangerous precedent. The apparent success of Putin’s misadventures in Ukraine could serve as an attractive geopolitical militaristic strategy for other nations with territorial disputes, such as China. But if Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is so dangerous and widely condemned, why would Chinese President Xi Jinping bother copying Putin?

Some political analysts argue that when a nation’s leaders face economic difficulties, the public’s preoccupation with day-to-day problems can be alleviated by focusing on broader concerns like nationalism and the protection of the state’s interests. Economic growth in China is a serious concern, as overcapacity in real estate and heavy industry took gross domestic product (GDP) from the nine percent average from 1989 to 2015 to an expected seven percent first-quarter year-over-year growth rate this last quarter.

Russia is also facing an economic slowdown. Its GDP is expected to shrink by three percent in 2015 as $50 a barrel oil and capital outflows of $115 billion harm growth prospects. Despite an economic crisis in Russia, Putin’s popularity has soared, largely the result of increased nationalism. In May 2013, a little less than a year before Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Putin’s approval ratings stood at 64 percent. Following further intervention by Russia, which stands accused of providing arms and forces in the east of Ukraine, Putin’s latest approval rating rocketed to 86 percent. Some have questioned the legitimacy of the poll numbers, but many do concede a marked increase in Putin’s popularity among ordinary Russians.

Why would the approval ratings soar after military intervention in another country? One often-cited reason could be the public’s positive perception to any government willing to stand up and defy outside criticism. Other leaders have seen their approval ratings soar when nationalism is fired up — indeed, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks former President George W. Bush enjoyed the highest approval rating of any president (90 percent). His father, George H.W. Bush, received an 88 percent approval rating in 1991 in the midst of the first Gulf War.

Joseph Nye,  a professor at Harvard University and the Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Clinton administration from 1994–95, hints this same strategy may be happening in China under Xi Jinping.  In a recent interview with The Diplomat, he warns of growing nationalism under Xi:

Xi Jinping needs a legitimizing force for his power and for the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Economic growth has historically been the primary legitimizer of its authority, especially since communist ideology has declined greatly in importance. As China has an economic slowdown, nationalism will increase further, and I think we are undergoing a period of heightened attention to nationalism. I think nationalism has made it more difficult for China to resolve conflicts with its neighbors in the South China Sea. So far there is no clear indication that increased Chinese nationalism will result in military aggression. The high level meeting between Xi Jinping and Abe at the APEC summit was a positive step, as China had been resistant to these meetings in the past. But the potential for nationalism to boil over, it is something we need to watch closely.

I think the most probable scenario would be if Chinese planes and ships got involved in incidents with the Japanese in the Senkaku Islands, and lost. The Japanese might have superior capabilities in the event of conflict, and a defeat there would be a direct threat to Xi Jinping’s power.

Nye’s scenario is not so far-fetched. On Saturday, Japanese media reported on Chinese plans to build a large naval base in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province for its coast guard vessels. Wenzhou is not far from the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese), it and would allow the Chinese to closely monitor naval activities around the disputed eight uninhabited islands and rocks in the East China Sea controlled by Japan.

The potential for skirmishes in the airspace above the Senkaku is also real. In November 2013, China announced the creation of its air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea, which requires all aircraft to comply with Beijing’s rules.

China also claims up to 90 percent of the South China Sea, and draws a ten-dash U-shaped line (or “cow’s tongue”) around the sea on its maps, which overlaps territorial claims by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.  Originally an eleven-dash line formulated in 1936, two dashes were removed near the Gulf of Tonkin to appease its Communist brother Vietnam. Last year, one dash was added by Beijing emphasize its sovereignty over Taiwan. In recent months, Beijing has come under have international criticism for land reclamation on islands it occupies, and for attempting to impose its control over the fishing rights in, and airspace above, the South China Sea.

Should Xi copy Putin in building nationalistic fervor in order to distract the populace from domestic problems, the strategy could well backfire. Many of the student protests in Chinese history originally began as nationalistic protests against foreign countries and morphed into protests against government leadership. The strategy could also lead to strong reactions from both regional governments and the naval superpower in the region, the United States.

Such reactions have already affected Russia. In response to Putin’s latest misadventures in Ukraine, the U.S. announced plans this past weekend to store heavy military equipment in the Baltics and Eastern European nations. The U.S. may seek a similar strategy in the East and South China Sea, and position more and more of its naval military there to reassure its allies and other nations with territorial claims and deter any further aggression from Beijing. Vietnam and the Philippines are already requesting further support from Washington, and Japan is reconsidering its constitution to allow for greater military efforts.

Besides leading to a potential dangerous and costly war, what both Xi and Putin should not forget is that while military nationalism may provide a temporary boost to popularity, it may prove short-lived, inflict further damage on the economy, and result in a failure to achieve its military objectives.

Photo Credit: Annette Bernhardt via Flickr

The Hillary in Our Future
Michael Tomasky
The New York Review of Books

In this review of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, Tomasky looks at the controversy surrounding the donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation and the speaker fees paid to Bill and Hillary. The issue, notes Tomasky, is the media is currently “[n]ot primed to investigate, or primed to scrutinize, or even primed to rake over the coals.” Instead, it’s “[p]rimed to take down” to the Clintons.

The Poet Who Died for Your Phone
By Emily Rauhala
Time

Emily Rauhala tells the story of Xu Lizh, a 20-something factory employee and poet who committed suicide in September 2014. Xu’s poetry sheds light on the lives of those factory workers charged with an array of electronic devices, as well as on the wave of suicides that brought their plight to the world’s attention.

The Missing Forty-Three: The Government’s Case Collapses
By Francisco Goldman
The New Yorker

Since the disappearance of 43 students in the Mexican city of Iguala eight months ago, the country has faced countless street protests, and its government has struggled with “an unprecedented credibility crisis” both at home and abroad. Francisco Goldman, who has been reporting on the incident for months, outlines some of the newest developments in the case.

What is Code?
By Paul Ford
Bloomberg

At 38,000 words, Paul Ford’s essay on the nature of code, hardware and everything in between might take more than one sitting. You’ll even get a personalized certificate of completion if you make it through the whole piece, so don’t be surprised when your browser tries to access your webcam.

Passion Points
By Eli Epstein
Mashable

There’s more to recent technological developments than hooking up your refrigerator to the Internet of Things or being able to program your coffee maker with your phone. In this Mashable piece, Eli Epstein looks at three stories showing how some recent technological developments has empowered and inspired people around the world.

Blogs:

Beijing Asserts, Hanoi Beefs Up by Gary Sands
Jeb Bush’s Bush Problem by Hannah Gais
BURDEN OF PEACE: A Candid Discussion with Filmmaker Joey Boink by Paul Nash
U.S. Policy Toward China: New Maps to Navigate Islands and Banks? by George Paik
Regulating Against Corrupt Practices, FIFA Edition by Richard Basas

Jeb Bush speaking at CPAC 2015 in Washington, DC. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Years ago, a few friends and I were walking down the streets of Sorrento, Italy, during some off-time on a class trip abroad. Few paid any attention to the teenage tourists — at least until one man stopped, did a double take and asked, “Are you from the United States?”

“Yes,” one of us said. “Massachusetts.”

“One question. Did you vote for George W. Bush?”

“We can’t vote yet, but we don’t support him either.”

We were all around 13- or 14-years-old, so voting was out of the question. He was pleased. We walked on.

Twelve years later, Jeb Bush has found himself grappling with a similar question on a trip Europe. That is, will Jeb follow in the footsteps of his father or his brother?

That’s a question that resonates stateside as well, but in Europe the need to choose either the 41st or the 43rd president as a source of inspiration is a bit more pressing. Thanks to his support for German reunification, George H.W. Bush remains popular in Western Europe; meanwhile, his son, George W., is likely the least popular American president in Europe since the end of World War II. One poll from 2006 found that a staggering 77 percent of Europeans disapproved of George W.’s foreign policy during his first and second terms.

Jeb’s strategy for avoiding being bogged down by his brother’s own failures appears to be shifting the conversation from his family’s political history to that of an old-but-new common enemy: Russia.

Upon his arrival to Germany on Tuesday, Jeb spoke before the Christian Democratic Union’s economic council in Berlin. He emphasized the need for strong transatlantic ties, took potshots at the Obama administration’s Russia policy, and called for a more aggressive response from the West against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Giving the sense that we’re reacting in a tepid fashion only enables the bad behavior of Putin,” Jeb told an audience of a thousand or so.

“We should never [respond] in a way that pushes Russia away for a generation of time. Then ultimately, Russia needs to be a European nation and that everything we do ought to be to isolate its corrupt leadership from its people, for starters.”

That message of aggression may appeal to leaders in the next two stops on Jeb’s European adventure — Poland and Estonia — but it’s not necessarily wooing German leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has had to wrangle sanctions skeptics like Cyprus, Greece and Italy, would undoubtedly appreciate some recognition of her efforts. Were tougher sanctions against Russia to be implemented — which G7 leaders showed support for this week — she’d have to do more of the same.

Yet, as Leonid Bershidsky, a Bloomberg View columnist, noted, “[Jeb’s] compliment to Merkel for her toughness on sanctions against Russia sounded like faint praise, once he warned against ‘tepid’ reaction to President Vladimir Putin’s ‘bad behavior.'” She’s too entwined with the U.S.’ Russia policy for Jeb’s “tepid” line to work.

The question of arming the Ukraine is also a contentious one. Jeb, like most of the Republican hopefuls, supports the idea. The administration’s “tepid” response presumably alludes to Obama’s unwillingness to embrace the idea. That said, Obama hasn’t ruled the possibility out either. Merkel, meanwhile, has made her views quite clear: Sending arms to Ukraine would not solve the crisis.

If Jeb’s European charm offensive rests on winning over German leaders with an aggressive anti-Putin agenda, he’s out of luck. Not all hope may be lost, though — at least someone admitted he’s better than his brother.

This post also appeared at The Eastern Project.

Claudia Paz y Paz, former attorney general of Guatemala (Photo Credit: HRW Film Festival)

Among the 17 award-winning films in this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which is held in New York from June 11 to 21, is “Burden of Peace.” This brilliant documentary powerfully chronicles the day-to-day work of Claudia Paz y Paz, the first female attorney general of Guatemala, a country ravaged for years by a brutal civil war. That war, which took place between 1960 and 1996 but witnessed some of the worst violence in 1980–83, saw nearly 200,000 people, mostly indigenous Mayans, systematically massacred.

As attorney general from 2010 to 2014, Paz y Paz fought to bring justice to the victims of the genocide, as well as to prosecute members of deadly criminal gangs aligned with Mexican drug cartels.

However, her campaign to end impunity for corrupt police officers, prosecutors and politicians was cut short by seven months, ended by the county’s powerful business and political elite whose personal interests were threatened. Her landmark conviction of former dictator Efraín Rios Montt – the first ever conviction for genocide in a national court – was quickly overturned. Fearing violent reprisals, Paz y Paz was forced to leave the country.

Paul Nash of the Foreign Policy Association spoke with director Joey Boink about “Burden of Peace,” the challenges of he faced while filming in one of the world’s more dangerous countries, and human rights in Guatemala.

Q: Why did you feel it was important to make this film?

Joey Boink

Joey Boink: When I began working on “Burden of Peace,” Guatemala was in the midst of a security crisis. I had lived in Guatemala before and noticed how the culture of violence affected every Guatemalan. Ninety-seven percent of the murder cases went unsolved, while the country’s homicide rate was among the three highest in the world. People did not expect the state to address corruption and other crimes.

That changed after Claudia Paz y Paz was appointed to lead the prosecutor’s office. She was very outspoken on the need to change the justice system. Not only was she the first female to lead the office but also the first person with a background in human rights advocacy. Her mission to promote justice in Guatemala inspired me, together with my colleague Sander Wirken, to start working on this film.

Q: From day one, Paz y Paz gave you and your crew access to her work as attorney general. How did that collaboration come about?

Joey Boink: When Sander and I got to meet with Paz y Paz, we talked about our plans for the film and our own experiences in the country. We had both lived and worked in Guatemala since 2006, Sander as co-founder of an NGO dedicated to education and I as a filmmaker. During that time we learned how the violence and corruption affected the whole society. For example, bus drivers and people with small businesses were routinely extorted by local gangs and forced to pay them for “protection.” Those who didn’t pay were killed. Their families didn’t lay charges – they were simply too afraid and had no trust in the prosecution process.

We told Paz y Paz that with this film we wanted to discover how on earth it is possible to fight corruption and impunity in a country like this – one of the most dangerous places in the world. She agreed to allow us to follow her with a camera and gave us access to all levels of the prosecutor’s office.

Q: In the film Paz y Paz refers to you jokingly as “Big Brother.” Did she give you access to demonstrate her commitment to transparency?

Joey Boink: In her inauguration speech, Paz y Paz told journalists that the prosecutor’s office would have nothing to hide under her leadership and that her doors would always be open. I think she saw the camera as a means of bringing extra transparency. We were given exclusive access to her day-to-day activities as attorney general. The only condition she imposed was that we would stop the camera if she was meeting with people who didn’t want to be filmed.

After some time, we were able to get closer to her private life and film her with her family at home. I think we had an advantage in gaining this level of access because we are foreigners and were working there on a long-term basis. As foreigners, there was less risk we could be extorted by gangs to hand over copies of our footage. And as documentary filmmakers, we had a deeper human interest in this story, which required us to film behind the scenes rather than only the press conferences for journalists.

Q: Do you think films like this can help to stop the cycle of violence and curb human rights abuses, especially in a small developing country like Guatemala, which experiences more than 20 murders a day?

Joey Boink: A film itself cannot bring an end to such a cycle of violence, but it is my hope that Claudia’s story will inspire a few young people in countries like Guatemala to understand that the cycle can be changed and that you do not need to negotiate justice to achieve justice.

Our screenings in Europe and the United States have helped to generate awareness of conditions in Guatemala. Many people previously had no idea of the human rights crisis in the country, let alone the work of Claudia Paz y Paz.

The Dutch foreign minister was present at the film’s world premiere at the Movies That Matter Festival in The Hague. He recently visited Guatemala and warned against corruption, and he met with Paz y Paz in Mexico. I’m proud that the film has helped a little to put Guatemala on the political agenda and that people around the world are learning about Paz y Paz. If something were to happen to her, she will not be alone.

Q: One gets the sense from watching the film that many Guatemalans have become numbed to violence. Was that generally your experience?

Joey Boink: It is very normal for people to walk the streets in Guatemala with a gun in their pocket. Cars are searched for fruit trafficking, but not for weapons trafficking. When we went out to follow the homicide team of the Guatemala City Prosecutor’s Office, we didn’t have to wait more than fifteen minutes before a case came up. At the end of the 24-hour shift, the team had worked seven homicide scenes – and they called that “a quiet day.”

We used to play soccer with Guatemalan friends every week. One day, one of the boys didn’t show up. He had been run over by a bus and died. After this tragedy, the bus driver just drove on. Our friends said it was useless to go to the police because they wouldn’t do anything.

These are just some examples of how crime and violence has become a regular part of daily life in Guatemala.

Q: One reason for the violence is impunity – the impunity enjoyed both by those who committed crimes during the civil war and those in drug gangs today. What do you think it will take to finally end impunity?

Joey Boink: Violence and impunity are regional problems across Central America. Drug gangs that move cocaine from Colombia to the United States operate across borders and continue to grow in power. They have more powerful weapons than the police have and they have the money to bribe politicians, police officers, and people in the judiciary. As long as there is no regional answer to these problems, impunity will reign and Central America will continue to be the world’s homicide capital.

The impunity enjoyed by those who committed crimes during the civil war shows you that the power structures established by the military regimes at the time still hold sway today. But if you look at the current protests against the government in Guatemala – the largest in decades – you see that something is changing. People are done with these structures of impunity and are demanding change. I hope that social efforts and better regional cooperation at institutional and diplomatic levels will bring an end to impunity.

Q: To some, “Burden of Peace” might seem like a record of futility because there is no real closure for the victims. What would you say to such people who interpret it that way?

Joey Boink: I see the result of the genocide trial so far as representing two steps forward and one step backwards. To many survivors who gave testimony in court, it meant a lot to be able to tell their stories in front of a national judge. The trial allowed many Guatemalans to hear what happened to the Maya people in the Ixil area for the first time in their lives. Efraín Rios Montt was sentenced to 80 years for committing genocide and crimes against humanity, but the constitutional court ruled that the prosecutor had made procedural errors and annulled the sentence. To many, that meant steps have been taken towards justice but that there is still a lot to fight for.

It would be too cynical to call the story a record of futility knowing that survivors feel proud to have been able to share their long-hidden experiences, that Rios Montt was sentenced for his crimes in a national court, and that lawyers and prosecutors continue to make efforts after each victory and each loss. There is no real closure for the victims of the armed conflict, but the people of Guatemala have not given up their struggle for justice.

Q: Why is the film titled the “burden” of peace?

Joey Boink: When the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Bert Koenders, spoke at the film’s world premiere, he explained our title better than I could have done myself. He said: “The impact of civil conflict persists long after peace agreements have been signed. When violence has been the norm for so long, and there has been no law and order, the burden of peace is the long road to justice that begins where conflict ends.” I think the film illustrates this long road to justice.

A second interpretation centers on Claudia’s personal struggle and sacrifice. Claudia’s surname, Paz y Paz, means “Peace and Peace.” It’s as though she was born with the heavy responsibility to fight for peace.

Q: Were you threatened at all during the making of this film, or ever feel your life was in danger?

Joey Boink: I never felt threatened. We got used to a life in which we could not tell everyone exactly what we were doing. Things that were normal in Guatemala seemed strange after we got back to the Netherlands. In Guatemala we couldn’t just hail any cab; we always had to travel with the same driver. We couldn’t talk about delicate topics on the phone because there was a risk it had been tapped. We couldn’t walk the streets at night. We learned when and with whom we could speak and trust in order to avoid possible dangers.

Q: Paz y Paz is very soft-spoken and compassionate, and yet she displays a steely, unflinching adherence to justice and the rule of law. What do you think people can learn from her?

Joey Boink: Over the course of three years we got to spend about a year with Claudia. We spent a lot of that time around her office and traveling with her through the beautiful country. Claudia is a person with an extreme dedication to justice. That strong commitment makes her outspoken and a person who dares to take on challenges and accept the potential risks. However, she is also a very humble person who doesn’t care about social status or social background. The elite attacked her for being dressed as a “hippie” in the prosecutor’s office, but many other people admired her for her transparency and genuine interest in listening to the families of victims. Sometimes it was hard to see the level of pressure under which Claudia had to operate.

If there is one thing I think people can learn from her, it is this: one can be humble and friendly but at the same time strict and clear. She may be soft-spoken and compassionate, but her policy was always clear: justice is not negotiable. If there is a case, there is a case, no matter if the perpetrator is a druglord, a politician, or a businessman.

Q: How does this film differ from other documentaries you’ve made on subjects like education in Guatemala, child labor in India, or the Millennium Development Goals in Latin America?

Joey Boink: This is the first feature-length documentary I’ve directed, and it is also the first feature film of the producer Framewerk. In terms of the time that the team invested in the film, it isn’t comparable to any other project I’ve worked on. It’s also the first festival film I’ve made, which has allowed me to discover a lot about those aspects of the documentary world.

Q: You financed the film partly through crowdfunding. How did that work?

Joey Boink: The producers of Framewerk organized a crowdfunding campaign while Sander and I were still in Gautemala. We needed funding for post-production, from editing to distribution. The campaign was focused on a Dutch audience and conducted through the Dutch platform cinecrowd.nl.

I was afraid that the target of €30,000 was too ambitious, but we managed to raise a bit more than that: €33,455. It turned out to be the most successful crowdfunding campaign for a Dutch documentary, and 436 people in total became sponsors. We managed to attract a wide range of people through media attention in Dutch magazines, newspapers, and radio stations. We offered various perks to investors, from online access to the film to tickets to the world premiere or having Framewerk produce a video for a sponsor’s organization. Some people thought it would be an easy source of funding. But it was a lot of work for the whole team to manage the campaign. I would recommend that anyone who wants to launch a similar campaign should not plan on doing anything apart from that campaign before and during the process.

Q: Paz y Paz says the film has not ended because the story is about the country as much as it is about her. Do you have any plans to do more work on the subject? Can you even work safely in that country again?

Joey Boink: I am very motivated to continue making films about human rights issues and human rights defenders. My next film will not be in Guatemala, though. That has nothing to do with safety issues. I want to learn from people in other cultures. I’ll always feel connected with Guatemala, though. I have very close friends there, so I hope to go back from time to time – but I don’t want to visit Guatemala’s homicide scenes ever again.

Q: What do you think American business executives and foreign-policy makers should take away from this film?

Joey Boink: I would encourage American executives to do business in Guatemala, but to be aware of who they are doing business with and who in Guatemala benefits from their business. Guatemala is a beautiful country that is rich in natural resources. However, the country’s wealth is very unequally divided. There is no other country in Latin America with such a large gap between the rich and the poor. The Maya population is often not considered when a mining or hydroelectric project is initiated on their land. They do not profit from the gold or the energy that is extracted in their regions. In fact, they are forced to leave. If they stay, the company’s operations destroy their source of drinking water. Local mayors, governors, and the state make agreements with foreign parties without consulting the people. A huge amount ends in the pockets of those individual stakeholders.

There are cooperativas, local organized farmers who export their goods, which do benefit the communities. I would encourage American executives to do business with such groups.

Our film gives a good sense of Guatemala’s difficult political and judicial landscape. I think foreign-policy makers should take this away from the film: that Guatemala is not a failed state, but rather a state in which many people are fighting for justice.

However, there is a small minority of people in power with such enormous influence that characters like Ríos Montt are able to run for congress years after committing the most heinous crimes imaginable, and that someone like former president Alfonso Portillo, who was in jail just a few months ago in the United States for money laundering, is able to run for president again. Meanwhile, someone like Claudia Paz y Paz, who has made clear progress against impunity in her country (a 12-fold increase in the number of the homicides solved under her leadership), can be framed in the Guatemalan media as a Marxist who is betraying her country and has to pay for her crimes.

If you have the right connections in Guatemala, you can get away with anything. But if you try to fight for equality and justice, you’ll wind up in trouble. On television and in newspapers you’ll be portrayed as someone trying to “destabilize” the community. The words “Human Rights” are framed in a negative context, as a curse. People like Claudia Paz y Paz who fight against corruption and impunity are the underdog. They have the choice not to speak out or to live in fear for their lives. You have to be aware that in Guatemalan politics the unthinkable is possible.

CORRECTION: This article originally stated the Guatemalan civil war took place between 1980 and 1983. It has been amended to reflect that the war took place between 1960 and 1996, although some of the worst violence took place between 1980 and 1983.

Photograph from the International Space Station of the South China Sea which includes the Eldad Reef and Itu Aba Island features. Photo Credit: Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center

The advent of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) appears to be a sign of U.S. geopolitical decline, or at least of China’s geopolitical ambitions. France, the U.K., Australia and South Korea are among our allies who have signed up; the U.S. and Japan have been holding back. At the same time, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, which does not include China and appears to be an attempt to check Chinese power, seems to be on track.

Should the U.S. allow geopolitical rivalry to subsume economic matters? Economically, our interdependence with China is deep and mutually beneficial; disrupting it will damage both sides, and both governments know this. While U.S. influence remains dominant, China’s is growing. Using economic policy to reinforce our position puts the economic benefits at risk and exacerbates tensions. As China grows in international economic clout, extending the rivalry could even drag our economy into the relative decline of our overall power. If we let geopolitics alienate us from a global source of economic strength, we also cast ourselves as more interested in our power than others’ economic growth.

To be sure, we must follow up on commitments made to date and implement TPP and its Atlantic counterpart, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Principles pact (TTIP). Both liberalize trade, a good in itself, even if they are tied to geopolitical allegiances. Shoring up the latter is necessary right now, and dropping the ball on either pact would undermine U.S. credibility, both to our partners and to our commitment to liberalization.

The time has come to contemplate diplomatic foundations for a new global posture. The purpose of our geopolitics is to defend freedom, as we know it in our liberal democracy, and as understood by our closest allies. Our nationhood makes freedom our deepest strategic interest. Whether of containing Russia or China or Iran; of cementing economic power in trade or finance; or of enforcing human rights; policies must fit each other, and current realities, in a long-term orientation to that fundamental end.

Geopolitics and military security can be re-oriented, away from “containing X” (fill in Russia, China, Iran, ISIS, North Korea, or anyone else we dislike but prefer not to attack) toward “defending free society.” Established democracies, with a liberal ethos, largely comprise the memberships of our primary alliances, NATO, U.S.-Japan, and ANZUS. Knitting these into an integrated community, dedicated to protect precisely this vision of freedom, we can keep attacks of violence, malicious disruption, or external coercion, off the table as they are now. Our focus would be non-directional, responsive to any threat, and would hold not only our territories but our communications channels sacrosanct.

This group of nations has the technical capacity to deter any threat. The U.S. military is already orienting itself in that direction, toward a focus on the global commons. Diplomatic re-orientation of our alliances will align our military and geo-political strength with moral principle. Freedom will have a clear diplomatic base, on which we can orient further diplomacy to our best ends.

We should treat economic development as an influence for freedom. Those places where well-ordered democracy has taken root, or where rights are spreading, have seen freedom progress after economic growth. We should not condition our support of growth on such progress, but if a nation secures liberal values in its institutional practices, we should consider inviting it into our security alliance. Such a stance creates a mutual interest in developing nations’ intertwined growth and freedom.

Here, U.S. policy would assess other nations less as “friend or foe,” than as more or less compatible with our ends of freedom. The U.S. and China may well be inevitable rivals, as Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis assert in a recent Council of Foreign Relations report.  But China might become a “three (or four or two) out of ten” rather than a “frenemy.” With a single criterion to guide us, we will be better able to avoid schizophrenia such as dissident Chen Guangcheng felt when his refuge in the U.S. Embassy collided with Hillary Clinton’s economics-oriented visit. In this stance, questions over China’s islands in the South China Sea can be viewed in terms of how they “move the needle” of compatibility rather than who wins or loses a zero sum confrontation. A security policy emphasis “for freedom” more than “against China” also maintains an overriding defense commitment to Japan while allowing us to treat an AIIB on purely economic grounds.

Above all, steering policy toward the protection of freedom and commitment to economic growth, and away from “anti-X” habits, will better orient our policy to our nature.

An visitor rejoices after catching a large fish during his trip to Truong Sa Islands. Photo: Mai Thanh Hai

Here in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the local government last week ordered its travel and tourism departments to draw up a feasibility study for tours to the Truong Sa (Spratly) islands, which Vietnam currently occupies.

The first tour is scheduled for June 22 with over 200 Vietnamese reportedly signed up for the 7-10 day tour of two islands and two reefs which Vietnam controls. According to the promotion offer, “Traveling to Truong Sa…means the big trip of your life, reviving national pride and citizens’ awareness of the sacred maritime sovereignty of the country.”

Other islands in the Spratly island chain are either occupied or claimed by several nations, including Brunei, China, Malaysia and the Philippines. China, using a nine-dash line, lays claim to around 90 percent of the South China Sea.

The tour announcement in Vietnam follows last month’s confrontation between the U.S. and China in airspace over the South China Sea, which has sparked concern and triggered increased militarization among the claimant countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The confrontation occurred on May 22 as a U.S. surveillance aircraft, with a CNN crew aboard, flew over Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef — two artificial islands which China is constructing on submerged coral reefs it occupied in the mid-1990s and late 1980s, respectively. The aircraft was warned eight times to leave the airspace, over which Beijing has claimed the right to establish an air defense identification zone (ADIZ). Recently released satellite images reveal an airstrip, port facilities, cement factories and military barracks, and the U.S. has also received information China recently placed two mobile artillery vehicles on one of the islands.

China’s attempt to grasp the airspace follows last month’s grasp of the waters, as China’s municipality of Haikou, on Hainan island, issued its annual ban on all fishing vessels in the northern part of the South China Sea. The ban was first introduced in 1999 and typically lasts three months, ostensibly to protect marine resources. Haikou’s ban includes the waters of the Paracel island chain (known as Xisha in Chinese and Hoàng Sa in Vietnamese), which China grabbed from Vietnam in 1974, and the Scarborough Shoal in the Spratly island chain, taken from the Philippines in 2012. Last week, Vietnamese local media reported a Vietnamese search-and-rescue vessel from Da Nang was reportedly threatened and obstructed by a Chinese vessel while passing through the Paracel Islands en route to rescue a fisherman. (The fisherman was eventually rescued.)

These disputes over freedom of navigation in the air and waters are the latest in a series of spats China is having with the U.S., Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea, which is leading to an increase in defense spending, defense coordination among Asian nations, and an increased military presence in the region.

The largest presence in the region will continue to be from the U.S., whose combat ship, the USS Fort Worth, just completed its patrol in May. Four more warships are expected to be deployed to the region.

The Philippines is also keen to beef up its military alliances to defend its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Last Friday, Philippine President Benigno Aquino announced his government is ready to start talks with the Japanese government on allowing Japanese military aircraft and naval vessels access to Philippines’ bases on a rotational basis for refueling purposes. With refueling capability, the Japanese military would be able to significantly extend their range of operation into the South China Sea.

On Saturday, Taiwan commissioned two 3,000-ton navy patrol vessels capable of docking at a new port being constructed on Taiping Island, the largest of the Spratly islands.

Back in Vietnam, Hanoi is also responding to a heightened activity by China in the waters it calls the East Sea, reportedly courting the foreign defense contractor divisions of such companies as Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Saab, and the European consortium Eurofighter to buy fighter jets, patrol boats and surveillance drones. Vietnam is believed to be interested in Saab’s Gripen E fourth-generation fighter jet and the Saab 340 or 2000 twin-engine patrol turboprops, and the latest P-8 Poseidon surveillance technology from Boeing placed on a business jet. Hanoi is also interested in Airbus helicopters, the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet, the Lockheed/Korea Aerospace F/A-50 light fighter jet, and the Lockheed Sea Hercules, a maritime patrol aircraft similar to its C-130.

Though a state secret, Vietnam’s military budget was believed to be around $3.4 billion in 2013, having doubled in size from a decade ago, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Vietnam’s military personnel are estimated at 480,000.

From Russia, Hanoi has already taken possession of three Russian Kilo-class attack submarines and has three more on order.  Hanoi currently owns more than 100 old Russian MiG-21 fighters, and has on order a dozen Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets.

From the U.S., following U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s visit last week, comes $18 million toward the purchase of U.S. patrol boats. The U.S. began easing its long-term embargo on sales of lethal weapons to Vietnam back in October.

Hanoi may have chosen to talk to defense contractors of many nations, so as not to anger Beijing by focusing on U.S. technology while also diversifying their equipment purchases. Nonetheless, Beijing cannot help but take notice of the rapid buildup in defense capabilities of not only Vietnam, but the Philippines, and the joint military exercises and promises of support among South China Sea claimants. Each Chinese action to assert its sovereignty over the South China Sea has a counter action, and while some of the counter actions have been relatively mild so far (Vietnam’s promotion of tourism on disputed islands), the potential for a more severe military confrontation is growing should these small actions grow in number and significance.

The world was made officially aware of corruption at FIFA when the U.S. Department of Justice set charges against several FIFA officials in an investigation going back several years. While there were ongoing suspicions of corrupt practices going on at FIFA linked to the World Cup in South Africa and Qatar, no actions had been taken until recently. What likely sparked off the push against FIFA was the national corruption debate in Brazil and its links to the last World Cup. Popular protests against the game that many in Brazil would have called a blessing were tarnished by corruption in the Brazilian government, not to mention FIFA itself. Two Brazilian nationals were charged this past week as well, which comes as no surprise to Brazilians, who are mired in a scandal that may even end in the removal of the president.

Since the global economic crisis of 2007–08, many governments have created new agencies to better regulate many private industries. In those cases where industry leaders have been seen committing severe acts of negligence, official and legally binding regulations have been applied and enforced.

In Brazil, the recent discovery of corrupt practices in their energy and construction industry and links to the ruling party has given the judicial community a great deal of power to enforce and enact new laws. In countries with a strong judiciary, strict guidelines and agencies work to streamline government regulations and their application. In those cases where the industry has been seen as a cooperative member in the policy making process, often voluntary regulations are expected by those companies in self-regulating their own actions and policies.

Legislation, policies and self-regulation will be applied differently in different situations. What has yet to be addressed are policies that are present but not followed by directors, officials or agents of those companies. Although FIFA always had well-scripted policies for self-regulation, when there is a culture of corruption in an already-regulated company or industry, there must also be a means of applying and enforcing the policy.

In many legal cases by individuals against large corporations there is often a trend of company officials bending their own policies in order to treat the victims harshly. The response to breaking their own rules often results in drafting more rules. However, without enforcement the policies are as good as the level of negligence being committed by the offending company officers. For companies to maintain self-regulation, they must actually create policies that are to be used.

Outgoing FIFA President Sepp Blatter (Photo: sbo9 via Flickr).

The Agency
The New York Times
By Adrien Chen

In this long read, an army of internet trolls based in St. Petersburg, Russia are blamed for overwhelming internet activity that wreaks havoc all around the world, with the results appearing in reality.

The inside story of how the Clintons built a $2 billion global empire
The Washington Post
By David A. Fahrenthold, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman

The Washington Post goes in-depth on the quick rise of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s philanthropic organization, The Clinton Foundation, and the shady foreign donors that have supported it.

Exclusive: Detainee alleges CIA sexual abuse, torture beyond Senate findings
Reuters
By David Rohde

The account Majid Khan, an al-Qaeda operative held at a CIA “black site” from 2003 to 2006, claims a wider array of sexual abuse, torture and other forms of “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used on him during his captivity.

Rand Paul’s Struggling Presidential Campaign
The Atlantic
By Molly Ball

Of the GOP presidential candidates, Rand Paul made it clear the earliest of his intentions for office. As the field is shaping out now, though, his campaign appears to be faltering as he fails to widen his support.

How a curmudgeonly old reporter expose the FIFA scandal that toppled Sepp Blatter
The Washington Post
By Michael E. Miller

Andrew Jennings wrote about FIFA’s corruption way before the May 27 raid in Zurich, Switzerland that arrested several of the organization’s top officials.

Blogs:
How to Make a Difference Abroad: A Review of Kate Otto’s “Everyday Ambassador” by Oren Litwin
100,000 Strong: The State Department’s Public-Private Partnerships by Jeremy Taylor
Taking on Troll Farms by Hannah Gais
No Shangri-La in South China Sea by Gary Sands
Geopolitical Showdown in the Horn by Abuka Arman

The School of International Service Building at American University, Washington, D.C. Photo Credit: Jeff Watts

By Jeremy Taylor

In 2009, President Obama outlined a vision of sending 100,000 Americans to China for study abroad programs by 2014. This vision would require a robust public-private exchange between the United States and Chinese governments, in concert with nongovernmental organizations. Six years later, the 100,000 Strong Education Initiative has evolved into a fully operational and independent non-profit known as the 100,000 Strong Foundation. The organization has surpassed its goal of sending 100,000 students and continues to experience five percent year-over-year growth in the number of students being sent to and from China.

Behind this success story of international education exchange is the Department of State’s Office of Global Partnership (S/GP). The S/GP exists simply to further diplomacy and development through public-private partnerships (PPPs). It claims to be the “entry point for collaboration between the U.S. Department of State, the public and private sectors, and civil society.” The purpose of having just one single entrance point is to provide sufficient resources and political support while maintaining a narrow scope for each project.

Such collaboration and reliance on the non-government sectors is critical according to Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of the New America Foundation and former State Department official. She suggests,

Governments will be in the business of negotiating agreements, resolving crises and solving problems with one another for a long time to come, but top-down efforts cannot stimulate the widespread behavioral change that is required to address social and economic challenges.

From a social science perspective, there tend to be three broad categories for PPP that are determined by the amount and type of engagement between stakeholders. First, philanthropic partnerships (e.g., charitable trusts), exemplify the least amount of engagement and typically occur when an entity donates something out of charity. Second, transactional partnerships are those that build mutually beneficial business relationships such as international shipping services. Third, transformational partnerships are those relationships which tend to be the most complex and resource intensive, and usually result in the closest relationships. Under the transformational model, the level of engagement, strategic value, and scope of activities all tend to be much higher than philanthropic and transactional models.

The 100,000 Strong Education Initiative represents a transformational partnership since both the U.S. and China remain committed to the project’s goal of sending and receiving students for language, cultural, and academic exchanges. The transformational aspects of the initiative are most apparently visible in the role of American University (a private university) as host of the 100,000 Strong Foundation on its campus. In serving as a hub of engagement between the United States and China, the university’s School of International Service receives and sends some of the most talented and ambitious students in hopes of expanding U.S.-China educational exchanges.

The relationship is mutually beneficial. In exchange for providing a well-established platform and furthering the White House initiative of sending U.S. students to China, American University is bolstered by the government’s backing. As an associate dean at the university’s School of International Service says, “The partnership with SIS is a natural fit. The school was founded on a commitment to wage peace around the world and collaborations like the one with 100,000 Strong Foundation honor that. It’s with that knowledge that we’re involved in these types of public-private partnerships.”

The initiative’s transformational outcomes, however, may not be witnessed until participating students enter the workforce with the unique skills acquired abroad. From this perspective, 100,000 Strong views itself as a broker of goodwill, personal diplomacy, and a professional developer for the U.S. government and U.S. companies.

Operating as a nonprofit organization under the assumption that that the U.S.-China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world, the 100,000 Strong Initiative also relies on the private sector for donations to expand America’s collective understanding through study abroad, language, and cultural programs. However, financial independence from the government can certainly present its own set of challenges. Having moved out from under the umbrella of the State Department, the initiative must be savvy in drawing donations and participation in a highly competitive environment.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reasons that PPPs such as the 100,000 Strong Initiative can be “game-changing mechanisms” for solving development problems by introducing market-based solutions. However, these PPPs must be established in ways that allow for fluidity in the decision making process. The fact that this office has reports directly to the Secretary of State is a positive sign of future accountability. But for partnerships to be game-changers, true collaboration must take place utilizing the expertise of those on the ground, like the partnered U.S. and Chinese universities.

For the 100,000 Strong Initiative, it is not entirely clear how the State Department’s Office of Global Partnerships retains influence over the program that it envisioned, funded and implemented. While the office may be the entry point for academic exchanges such as the 100,000 Strong Initiative, it will be necessary for it to define transitional and exit points along the way to success in further diplomacy and development.

PPPs like the 100,000 Strong Education Initiative undoubtedly play, and will continue to play, an indispensable role in U.S. foreign policy. The challenge for building on this success will be continuing this focus in the next administration. As Secretary Kerry recently said, “While government has a clear role to play in confronting them, the best way to promote development and economic growth and security is with an approach that puts partnerships at the absolute center.”

Jeremy Taylor is a fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. He serves as a public sector strategist for the federal government and is a Pacific Forum Young Leader with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

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

Not that kind of troll. Photo credit:
Kai Schreiber via Flickr

If you’ve spent any substantial time on a social networking site, you’ve likely encountered an anonymous troll. They may mock something you’ve said, or a photo of yourself or others that you’ve shared. Then again, maybe they’ll say nothing of substance at all, churning out a slew of profanities or insults. Sometimes they hit below the belt; other times they’re easy to swat away and ignore. Either way, a troll’s purpose is inherently ethereal — its raison d’etre can be shattered by the click of a “block” button.

Much ado has been made about the psychology of trolling — and for good reason. We store a lot of our lives online — photos, private correspondence, biometric data, tax returns. We spend the rest of our time in spaces that we have collectively designated as a digital commons. These virtual public spaces are governed by rules, explicit or otherwise, of their own. Like any crowded physical space, these regions can be noisy, confusing, and easily subjected to disruption. It’s the ideal space for getting your message out so long as you don’t particularly care about being heard. Think of it as like screaming at a rock concert: It’s annoying for those people nearby, but completely ineffective if you want to convince the crowd to do anything .

Those endeavors may be largely fruitless, but they have gained a great deal of ground in one country: Russia. Here, the troll as an agent of information warfare on behalf of the state has garnered a great deal of attention since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. If recent revelations are any indication, the well-oiled, Kremlin-sponsored troll machine has no intentions of closing up shop anytime soon.

State-sponsored or state-sanctioned Internet trolls are nothing new on the Russian Internet — or RuNet, as it is often called. In 2012, a series of emails published by a Russian hacktivist group showed a youth group with ties to the Kremlin was paying bloggers and journalists to post pro-Putin content online. Activists were also paid to down-vote YouTube videos posted by the opposition and to even leave hundreds of comments on news articles with an anti-Putin spin. The leak was huge, but the practice was nothing new. Indeed, a Freedom House report in 2013 noted that “Russia [has] been at the forefront of this practice for several years.”

But the practice became even more critical to the Kremlin’s informational warfare strategy during the invasion of Ukraine in 2014. One firm, called the Internet Research Agency, garnered a great deal of mainstream media attention last year after a major document leak exposed the agency’s operations.

In June 2014, Buzzfeed reported that the Kremlin had poured millions into the agency so as to fund a veritable army of trolls to post pro-Putin commentary on English-language media sites. Commenters were also expected to balance several Twitter and Facebook accounts while posting over 50 comments on various news articles throughout the day. A more recent account described a heavier workload: Over the period of two 12-hour shifts, one employee was expected to draft fifteen posts and leave 150-200 comments.

“We don’t talk too much, because everyone is busy. You have to just sit there and type and type, endlessly,” one former Russian troll told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty a couple of months ago.

“We don’t talk, because we can see for ourselves what the others are writing, but in fact you don’t even have to really read it, because it’s all nonsense. The news gets written, someone else comments on it, but I think real people don’t bother reading any of it at all.”

If they were only trolling comment threads, that’s likely true. Many readers (and writers, sorry) skip the comments. Head over to your favorite mainstream media news site and read the comments on any given article. On occasion you’ll find some gems among the weeds of trolls and spam bots, but they can be few and far between. A paid Russian troll would be just one voice among many.

The new age of information warfare may have started out on comment threads, but its biggest battles won’t be fought there. If recent events are any indication that shift has already begun.

According to a recent account by reporter Adrian Chen in The New York Times, the Internet Research Agency may be behind several larger hoaxes throughout the United States. The first engineered a fake chemical spill in St. Mary Parish, La., through a coordinated social media campaign and text message alerts. This “airborne toxic event” of sorts had media coverage and eyewitness testimony. None of it, investigators soon realized, was real.

Months later, many of the same accounts used to spread the news of the fictional chemical spill reported an Ebola outbreak in Atlanta. Others told of a shooting of an unarmed black woman, again in Atlanta. At first glance, none of these three events appeared to be related, although two videos — the first one documented the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) apparent involvement in the chemical spill and the other the shooting of the unarmed woman — appeared to have the same narrator.

Chen’s account should be read in full, not summarized. Nevertheless, it does raise a few important questions. For one, are these hoaxes the new face of the 21st century information war? It would appear so, if only in for the short term. Will technological developments in image manipulation make conning easier? What about an increase in the number of social media users? Probably. In the latter case, though, it could swing either way.

In the end, the most important question is one that we need to continuously ask ourselves: What am I, as a responsible Internet user and media consumer, doing to protect the integrity of the web? Ignoring the troll(s) screaming in the crowd is a start.

This post also appeared at The Eastern Project.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter arrives at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-la Dialogue, or IISS, for the 14th Asia Security Summit, Friday, May 29, 2015, in Singapore. TPhoto: Wong Maye-E, AP

On Saturday in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter addressed the attendants at the 14th Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level security forum, asserting China’s recent land reclamation in the South China Sea was “out of step” with international norms, and adding his opposition to “any further militarization” in the region. As a high-level Chinese military delegation looked on uncomfortably, Carter asked for “a peaceful resolution of all disputes” and called for  “an immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation by all claimants.”

But before the Chinese delegation got too uncomfortable in their seats, he acknowledged the actions of the other claimants who have been busy constructing their own outposts in the South China Sea. (Vietnam currently has 48, the Philippines eight, Malaysia five and Taiwan one.) Despite their activity, Carter pointed out the Chinese have far exceeded the others in pace and scale, having reclaimed over 2,000 acres on five outposts within the last 18 months — more than all of the other claimants combined have done in their history.

The Chinese reaction to Carter’s speech was quick and pointed, with one Chinese military official saying his comments were “groundless and not constructive.” Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo of the Chinese Academy of Military Science added further, “Freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is not at all an issue because the freedom has never been affected.”

Colonel Zhao’s remarks are disingenuous, given freedom of navigation should include the right of foreign militaries to fly their aircraft over the South China Sea. Last week, the Chinese military ordered a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft to “go now”— an obvious attempt by Beijing to impede freedom of navigation in the skies over the South China Sea.

Freedom of navigation should also include the right of Vietnamese fishermen to fish in traditional fishing grounds. Last month’s declaration of the municipal administration of Haikou in Hainan, China’s southernmost province, of an annual fishing ban would appear to hinder the freedom of navigation for Vietnamese fishermen. The affected area encompasses the Gulf of Tonkin, the Paracels island chain which China took from Vietnam in 1974, and the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef in the Spratly Islands China seized from the Philippines in 2012.

Colonel Zhao went even further, adding, “It is wrong to criticize China for affecting peace and stability through construction activities.”

Yet, his comments followed reports confirmed by the Pentagon that China had placed mobile artillery on one of its reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, causing John McCain, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee to call the action “disturbing and escalatory.” While the deployment of artillery is largely symbolic, given the Chinese navy’s more formidable presence in the waters (and all regional claimants except Brunei have military fortifications in the Spratly island chain), the move has focused international attention on Beijing’s motives in the region and precipitated the call for a halt to all militarization of the islands of the South China Sea.

Beijing’s escalation of land reclamation efforts on islands it controls, and the denial of actions taken to limit freedom of navigation have only motivated Southeast Asian nations with claims in the South China Sea to undertake joint military preparations while building up their own militaries and drawing military assistance from actors outside the region, such as the U.S. and Russia.

On Sunday, Carter visited the Vietnamese navy and coast guard and pledged $18 million toward the purchase of U.S. patrol boats. McCain had earlier proposed an amendment to the 2016 U.S. Defense Authorization Act entitled the East Sea Initiative. Under the amendment, the U.S. would provide assistance in training and equipping the armed forces of Southeast Asian countries in order to deal with territorial challenges.

What many of the delegates of the Shangri-La forum called for was immediate action by China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations to agree on and adopt a “code of conduct” governing the disputed waters. Yet as Chinese dredgers are hard at work reclaiming land and increasing China’s de facto control, there is little incentive for Beijing to sign such a document.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is unlikely to remove its “pivot to Asia” anytime soon, and any further restriction on the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea by Beijing will likely be met with a challenge from Washington, as Defense Secretary Carter foreshadowed in his comments to the Shangri-La delegates, “Turning an underwater rock into an airfield simply does not afford the rights of sovereignty or permit restrictions on international air or maritime transit….There should be no mistake: the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as US forces do all around the world.”

Expect more turbulence in these waters in the coming months.

Recently, two major developments in Somalia and Djibouti have attracted international media attention. John Kerry became the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Mogadishu, while China has negotiated the construction of a military base in the strategic port of Djibouti.

These two “symbolic” and substantive developments represent both an opportunity and a challenge for the U.S. geopolitical interests in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

The contemporary U.S. foreign policy which is hardwired on counterterrorism posturing has been on a losing streak — Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, to name a few. In the Horn of Africa, it is facing some serious challenges: China’s checkbook diplomacy, Ethiopia’s hegemonic adventures, and the indirect effect of the so-called Arab Spring.

Touchdown in Mogadishu

Kerry’s trip to Mogadishu came at an election year when the Democratic frontrunner is being accused of foreign policy recklessness, and at a time when the State Department is too cautious to even say when the American embassy might open there. As such, it is more than a symbolic gesture; it was a strategic one — the poor timing notwithstanding.

Contrary to some Somali and U.S. media headlines that were quick to claim that Kerry’s historic trip to Somalia was an expression of U.S. confidence and a “show of support” to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)/Ethiopia-led federalization process, the impetus driving the trip was geopolitical in nature. At the airport compound, days after concluding the latest of the Balkanization conferences in Garowe, Puntland, Kerry met with four Somali presidents and one prime minster, though not his Somali counterpart.

So, what was on the agenda? Were all those actors on the same page? Ironically, it did not matter. The trip was about a place holder — an affirmation that the U.S. is still interested in Somalia and is anxiously waiting for competent partners who know what they want and what they have as leverage.

In a five minute pre-recorded video that was intended to bypass the seemingly ragtag leaders that he was scheduled to meet, Kerry spoke to the people. He told the Somali people that he “focused on…steps that must be taken on Vision 2016 (election) to advance Somalia’s development as a unified, federal state.”

“We all have a stake in what happens here in Somalia,” he added.

While Kerry is right on the latter, supporting a “unified” Somalia governed through a clan-based federal system of ever-descending allegiance is nothing more than a pipe dream. The nation formerly known as Somalia is more divided today than ever before as a result of such dichotomous combination.

As erratic as its foreign policy toward Somalia may have been, the U.S. seems to have realized that it has made an error in its ways. U.S. lawmakers also seem to have realized that the current Somali politicians have indicated that they neither think nor function as leaders of a single nation.

Directly or indirectly, each one of them is committed to keeping politics at the clan level, or more bluntly, at the gutter level, where geostrategic negation that could benefit both nations is virtually impossible.

China’s Checkbook Diplomacy

China now has over $200 billion invested in Africa; a significant financial interest that may explain why China not only has economic, but “political, and military deals with a number of African states.” Djibouti is one of those states, and China has invested $9 billion in it.

On the one hand, the latest venture might underscore a consistent survival-oriented strategic pattern in which Djibouti — a tiny strategic country located in perhaps Africa’s toughest neighborhood — partners with any willing power that could empower her economically and security-wise. On the other hand, the latest could prove a counterintuitive enterprise that profoundly impacts the balance of power in one of the most important strategic waterways and thus ensure geopolitical advantage to China over the rest.

Against that backdrop, the shocking part is not that Djibouti is willing to become the first nation to host two competing superpower “frenemies,” but that China is confident enough to setup a military base right next to the U.S., France and Japan in the tiny Horn of Africa nation.

The Hegemon of the Horn

Meanwhile, as AMISOM is set to face the security threats emanating from al Shabaab’s party-balloon-effect, it certainly risks a mission creep. Such outcome, needless to say, would automatically boost the strategic position of Ethiopia — the only country with the military might, devout cronies, and political will to engross Somalia or feast on it a few bites at a time.

In the past two decades, Ethiopia has proven its ability to project itself as a problem-solving nation. Whether one gets its diplomatic façade that I refer to as “injera diplomacy” or its predatory side depends on Ethiopia’s immediate hegemonic interest.

Injera is a spongy Ethiopian flatbread served with a variety of meat and vegetable stews. With it one can easily scoop much of the stew one bite after another without dirtying one’s hand.

Make no mistake — Ethiopia is a stakeholder in the Djibouti and China deal. As a landlocked nation with growing economy, Ethiopia is counting on China’s scheduled project to expand Djibouti’s sea port. The former has recently purchased three merchant ships that are hosted in Djibouti. Ethiopia has been making its chess moves as it is mindful, that, sooner or later, its policy toward Somalia would collide with U.S.’ strategic interest in that country.

Ethiopia not only offers economic incentive to Djibouti and political clout within IGAD, it also grants her reassurances in dealing with future threats that may emanate from the ethnically-Ethiopian Djiboutian Afar community, which is a significant number of the population.

Geopolitics and geostrategy

It has been rumored for some time that U.S. and Yemeni officials plan to build a military prison — a “new Guantánamo” — on the remote island of Socotra. The island has a rare combination of strategic geographical location, minimal population, and remoteness from media attention and scrutiny.

Now, with a hybrid political/sectarian wildfire raging in the Gulf of Aden, the Houthis gaining the upper hand and subsequent Iranian direct influence in Yemen is looming, the U.S. is standing on thin ice in terms of its strategic maritime position and influence.

Unified and sovereign Somalia could be a significant factor in tipping the strategic balance of power both in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

The next leadership team would have to be mindful of the importance of cultivating a strategic partnership with the U.S.; it is the only way to protect Somalia from neighborhood political predators. But, such a partnership could only happen with a new U.S. policy toward Somalia.

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Gabriel Zisk scrubs the walls of a local school during a Community Assistance Volunteer project in which servicemembers and civilians assigned to Camp Lemonnier began preparing the school for painting. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Austin M. May)

By Oren Litwin

In March 2006, President George W. Bush gave a speech in Cleveland, Ohio, about his foreign policy. During the question and answer section he was asked, “[F]rom the grassroots level, how can we… promote the cause of freedom and liberty for all peoples throughout the world?” That is, how can ordinary citizens work to make the world a better place? Bush answered, “[T]he best way you can help is to support our troops,” thus totally missing the point of the question. There is a growing sense that true change in the world needs to come from the drive and energy of ordinary people, working in ways large and small to solve the problems around them. The question is, what is the right way to do so?

In her new book Everyday Ambassador (Atria Paperback), Kate Otto lays out a program for young people seeking to make a difference. Otto wrote the book after a decade of volunteer work in places like Indonesia, Ghana and Tanzania, building off of her own experience and her observations of other young Americans engaged in volunteer work or study abroad.

She herself, and the legions of college volunteers whom she observed later, ventured out into the world filled with visions of all the good they could do for the disadvantaged, but did not start by listening to the people they ostensibly wanted to help. As a result, Otto writes, “foreign volunteers often create more problems than we solve.… [They are] supremely socially conscious citizens who have everything it takes to change the world—except a strong capacity for relationship development, which is the foundation that all social change is enacted upon.”

Why do young people find it so hard to do real good? For Otto, part of the answer is in what she calls a “disconnectivity paradox.” Our increasing use of powerful technology and social media is causing our social skills to atrophy. This is not an anti-tech jeremiad; much of Everyday Ambassador is spent discussing how social media can be used for social change.

However, Otto argues that our use of tech is teaching us four specific bad habits that breed social isolation. First, the urge to multitask harms our ability to focus on a single problem or conversation. Second, social media and adaptive web-search ends up creating an informational echo chamber that leads to polarized opinions, in politics and culture. Third, the convenience of technology and social media especially lead to self-centeredness. Fourth, our powerful tools inadvertently teach us impatience with the delays and complications of real life.

In response, Otto identifies four social skills that together can make someone an “everyday ambassador” — someone who can “transform good intentions into positive actions through strong relationships.” These skills are focus, empathy, humility, and patience. If you can master these skills, you can bring about powerful changes by communicating with other people, being receptive to what they actually need and to what you are capable of providing them.

“Rather than crossing borders of nation-states, everyday ambassadors cross borders of comfort zones, amending the communication lapses that are so prevalent in our environments, both online and offline,” she writes. Importantly, Otto emphasizes that one can be an ambassador not merely between different countries, but also between different social groups in your own community or even individuals. The skills of communication and listening are powerful in a multitude of settings, and most of us can do the most good in the places that we live.

Each of the four skills is given its own chapter, discussing the powerful trends in our society working against its development and then providing a gentle program for its cultivation. For example, Chapter 3, on focus, begins by describing the “Fear of Missing Out” that leads to distraction. Otto then lists strategies such as shutting off your internet during periods of sustained work, or at least “keep[ing] the number of tabs you have open to a smaller number than usual.” Then she discusses the idea of “presence” in interactions with real people, and the importance of focusing on specific concrete tasks rather than vast objectives such as “equal education for girls.” Each chapter ends off with a series of “inner reflections,” “outer reflections” and “action steps” meant to help train the skill in question.

Throughout the book, Otto provides case studies of social activists who have done exceptional work by building deep relationships with the people they seek to help. (In many cases, the reader is directed to the companion website everydayambassador.org, which has a staff of writers and is clearly trying to become a community for activists.) The case studies show the power of listening and building relationships, rather than charging onto the scene with assumptions of what the right answer is. The last forty pages of the book are made up of profiles of allied activist organizations written by the activists themselves, which range from the self-congratulatory to the genuinely moving.

Reading the book, I was struck by the contrast between the inspiring achievements of the highlighted activists, and how seemingly basic some of Otto’s prescriptions were. For example, her advice includes such things as minimizing the number of active screens on one’s smartphone, reading over an email carefully before sending it, and reading “at least one full news article per week” rather than skimming. Are things so bad at colleges today that even bright people who want to change the world have to be told these things? If so, Otto is providing a desperately-needed service; still, I wonder if her expectations aren’t set too low, perhaps to broaden her potential audience.

Because Otto’s program of personal development is geared to such a basic level, the advice she gives is elementary. I was hoping for a reading list for readers who wanted to learn more about topics discussed in the book like mindfulness, meditation, or conflict resolution; unfortunately, Everyday Ambassador does not provide such a reading list, nor does the accompanying website. Having a list of resources would be a great help for the well-intentioned young people Otto seeks to reach. In particular, I think that Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson et al., is invaluable for anyone seeking to develop the negotiation and conflict-resolution skills discussed in Chapter 5.

It is worth noting that of the activist programs featured in the book, all those with political implications tend to the left; politicians such as Cory Booker and volunteers for the Obama campaign are highlighted. Similarly, in the few places where Otto speaks of conservatives in passing, they are portrayed as bigots at worst (as when “socially conservative parents embracing their child’s interracial marriage” apparently merits special praise), and at best as essentially passive actors subject to the vagaries of their information sources. For example, in Chapter 1 Otto parallels “a Democratic leader following Republican constituents on Twitter for the purpose of staying in tune with a wide variety of perspectives” with “a conservative voter not defriending liberal friends on Facebook to incorporate a constant infusion of different perspectives.”

The one exception is a passage in Chapter 7, where Otto describes encountering cogent gun-rights arguments from social activists who were unexpectedly pro-gun. Her unconscious stereotypes of gun owners were challenged, and she was left with greater understanding of the subject even if her convictions remained the same. Yet the brief narrative only serves to highlight the lack of such political dialogue in the rest of the presentation. In a book about understanding different points of view, this unconscious slant is ironic and will turn off some readers. Since Otto repeatedly states and clearly believes that our growing political polarization and resulting habit of “othering” is harmful, perhaps she can encourage more acts of everyday ambassadorship across political divides as well as material ones.

In spite of these caveats, Everyday Ambassador delivers an important message and provides a beginner’s roadmap for those who want to train themselves in the skills needed to cross the world’s divisions. College students driven to change the world but with no clue where to start would benefit from reading this book. I hope that for Kate Otto, Everyday Ambassador and its accompanying web community represent only the beginning of a richer project.

Oren Litwin is a Political Risk Fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. He is an expert in non-state actors and just war theory, and he has extensive professional experience in financial advising, investing and alternative finance such as crowdfunding.