Foreign Policy

By James Sisco and Ajit Maan
Best Defense guest columnists

Clearly extremists are not afraid to fight or to die. They often welcome and embrace the idea of martyrdom. So, what are they afraid of? A common operating procedure among various extremist groups is to control and disempower girls and women. If one of their central operating procedures is any indication, they are afraid of girls. Smart girls.

The mechanisms extremists use to control women include rape, acid attacks, slave trading, and stoning. They occur in places like Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, and Myanmar to ensure that women do not participate in the political process and is a central tenant of extremism wherever it is found. The fact that forced control of women and girls is a priority for extremist groups ought to clue us into a potential weakness that can be exploited.

Women in conflict zones represent an immense untapped resource to create and ensure stability within communities and societies. The segment of the population that is disproportionally targeted for systematic suppression possesses the potential to alter the power structures of the environment. That is why they are targeted.

When we see menacing images of men dressed in black wielding swords we should recognize that educated women might be their un-doing. And they know it. That is why Boko Haram abducted over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls. That is why fourteen-year-old year old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the face on her way to school — not just anywhere but symbolically — on her way to school. That is why acid attacks target girls attending school rather than girls in brothels. It is the potential danger that educated girls represent that scares extremists most.

Educated women and girls have the potential to do what drones, bullets and boots on the ground cannot do; they can counter extremism from the inside. Therefore, the U.S. and its allies should adopt an approach that empowers women on the ground in conflict zones to preempt and counter violent extremism. Instead of viewing women in war zones only as victims, we should view them in an irregular warfare context as potentially powerful allies.

The “human terrain” has traditionally been limited to male terrain. And when women have been engaged, the engagement has been limited to intelligence gathering — a good move but one without strategic foresight. Limiting engagements to a Q&A session (Where are the bad guys?) over-looks valuable social information and potential collaboration opportunities.

While there have been admirable and well intentioned development initiatives to stabilize situations for women in hot spots, many of them, while deserving of support, have not moved beyond a humanitarian framework. The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review recognizes this. It makes the point that empowering women is not just a nice thing to do—it is imperative to the long-term security of the U.S. and counter-terrorism efforts. The concept is based on forming coalitions with women on the ground. But while the report’s vision is compelling its implementation remains somewhat vague.

A women-focused shared security approach delivers an instrument to bridge the gap between theory and application. Aligning U.S. security interests and the security interests of women in conflict zones, establishes a platform to develop strategies and programs to empower women and counter extremism. The initiative is much like the one implemented by a Special Forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

In Kandahar, Identity Conflict Theory was applied to a tribal society to determine its primary and secondary identity layers. Understanding identities and basic community needs enabled the construction of small-scale, high-impact development projects that not only addressed community needs but also established positive relationships between Special Forces and the local community. For example, contributing to local agricultural development led not only to a 350 percent increase in yields, but also a 10-fold reduction in roadside bombs in some of the most insecure districts of the Kandahar province. Within eight months of the implementation of this program, one of the most kinetic environments in Afghanistan became relatively benign.

A women focused shared security initiative would directly engage female populations with the understanding that security means different things for women than it does for men. The traditional assumption that women’s security concerns are addressed when men’s security concerns are addressed doesn’t follow. Not only are women’s concerns left largely unaddressed by all-male coalitions, but also over-looked is the tremendous potential for a different kind of civil engagement.

If we set aside both ethical considerations and heroic self-image, and consider the situation strictly from a pragmatic point of view, we will view girls and women in conflict zones as more than deserving recipients of generosity. They are invaluable assets in preventing and addressing extremism in their families and communities. Making coalitions with this over-looked majority of the population is important to our own national security interests. If we include the ethical component and national identity, we have a multi-faceted motivation to secure and ensure women’s participation in the security, policy, and economic infrastructures of their communities.

Women in conflict zones represent an immense untapped resource that has significant influence and the ability to alter power structures within communities and societies. We should harness the power and capitalize on the strategic benefits of forming coalitions with women in areas where we want to have influence. Empowering women and girls is ethically responsible, consistent with U.S. national policy and a strategically prudent security measure.

James Sisco is a former recon Marine and naval intelligence officer and currently the president of ENODO Global, a business intelligence firm that focuses on population-centric analysis to solve complex social problems in dynamic cultural environments. Ajit Maan, Ph.D. is ENODO Global’s vice president for research and analysis and author of Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies and Inter-narrative Identity: Placing the Self. She also edits the Strategic Narrative blog.

U.S. Army/Flickr

More than ever, I am persuaded that it was British spec ops who did arranged the assassination of French Admiral Darlan, the former chief of its Navy who became a Vichy leader. I was just rereading volume three of Churchill’s memoirs of World War II and noticed his description of the admiral as a “dangerous, bitter, ambitious man.”

In warfare, if you think a foe is dangerous, you do something about it.

National Archives

The local communities in South Sudan’s Greater Upper Nile region have borne the brunt of the politically driven violence that began in December 2013. Since then, nearly 2 million people have been forced from their homes. Farmers have been unable to plant their crops due to continuing insecurity, increasing the threat of famine, and outbreaks of disease like Cholera have struck refugee camps and conflict-affected areas alike. In the midst of this, communication has broken down. To reach the people they need to — internally displaced people and those who remain in danger zones — media and humanitarian organizations have had to find new ways of using decidedly low-tech solutions.

While mobile phones and online social networks are pervasive in South Sudan’s urban areas, in the country’s rural regions many people still rely on traditional means of communication – primarily radio. Nearly three-quarters of the population listen on a daily basis. For many people in Jonglei, Upper Nile, and Unity states, where the fighting has been the thickest community radio and shortwave are critical sources of information about the conflict. And the lack of communication options has forced peacebuilders to take creative and novel steps to do get across messages that both contain vital information — and could even help pave the way toward peace.

The Sawa Shabab radio drama, produced by Free Voice South Sudan and United States Institute of Peace (which founded the PeaceTech Lab, where I work), is one of the more innovative attempts to reach at-risk youth communities. Premised around hosting a continuing conversation with youths and changing attitudes about their roles in resolving conflict, the first season began airing last year in English and Arabic — five episodes were also piloted in Dinka and Nuer languages. At the end of each episode, the program asks its audience to call and text into the show and respond to scripted questions about the storylines and how they think the characters are responding to conflict. The show receives an average of 400 responses per episode — and some of the seem to point toward the show making real progress. One young man from Bor, the capital of Jonglei State, called in to say: “Thank you all in the new nation Sawa Shabab! My message is that we must understand our peoples and ourselves. Let us do things (to address) what happens in our country.” But even for those who can’t respond, it empowers the youth audience to think differently about how to build peace.

And Sawa Shabab is not the only effective radio program in dealing with the country’s conflict.

Internews, an international media development NGO, has developed a radio program called “Boda Boda Talk Talk” that airs in U.N. camps for internally displaced people in Juba and Malakal. Broadcast on speakers in tents or attached to speakers driven around the IDP camps on motorbikes (called boda bodas), it offers a news update with local information and NGO-sponsored info about services for displaced people. Greetings sent from camp inhabitants to others and two-minute soap operas on relevant issues acted out by locals comprise the rest of the program. Internews trains local citizen journalists on how to gather information in the camps and investigate what the displaced communities’ needs are. The goal of the program is to help humanitarian NGOs communicate more effectively with displaced people in need of services. “The big thing about our project is that we’ve enabled NGOs to give simple solutions to provide information,” Meena Bhandari, Director of Humanitarian Programs at Internews said. “We can do that with simple technology by making professional recordings on a USB stick and blasting it on a speaker.”

During the worst of the fighting over the last year and a half, a handful of community stations were destroyed. Some have been rebuilt, while others have broken new ground — Internews launched a station called Nile FM in March 2015 to cater to displaced communities. The U.N.’s Radio Miraya also reaches IDP camps, and Radio Tamazuj, an independent station, is widely listened to via shortwave throughout the region. All told, two to three local FMs stations service the state capitals in the Greater Upper Nile, as well as three Internews-supported community stations and additional Radio Miraya repeaters, which retransmit the network’s signal.

Despite the relative success of these radio programs, traditional obstacles such as the lack of local language media content and poor information infrastructure continue to limit how far media projects can reach. The war has brought additional challenges to informing these at-risk communities.

For example, the political space for open debate and press freedom has been diminished as a result of the on-going violence. Although local media were under scrutiny prior to the first outbreak of fighting in December 2013, control has gotten even tighter. Numerous journalists have been arrested and attacked in the past year and a half, including five journalists killed in January by unidentified gunmen. Local radio stations such as the Catholic Radio Network’s Radio Bakhita have been shut down. Even the U.N.’s Radio Miraya has been threatened with closure. The government does not tolerate interviews with or statements from rebel leaders. As a result, according to a report by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, “self-censorship by journalists and media houses continues to be widespread.”

Still, the boundaries of communication are still being pushed with new technologies.

USAID’s VISTAS program, administered by AECOM International, is initiating a pilot program that will distribute up to 250,000 digital audio players to areas in Jonglei and Unity states where FM radio is unavailable. The players would be loaded with peace-oriented programs from other organizations as well as their own material related to trauma healing. Cell phones are part of this, too. Mobile penetration rates, while still low at 28 percent nationally, according to the 2013 National Audience Survey conducted by Forcier Consulting, are substantially higher in urban areas. Natalie Forcier, CEO of Forcier Consulting in South Sudan, told me, “Access to a mobile network can be life or death for communities. It’s a building block that opens door for everything else in development.”

Yet despite the potential of mobile, it’s far from a panacea. John Tanza Mabusu, co-host of Voice of America’s “South Sudan in Focus” program, argued, “Mobile is effective but literacy is an issue (for text messaging). How many people can read your message? Interpretation of this message can differ. How do you interpret a message about the peace deal in Addis Ababa? The best way of passing information is by empowering existing radio stations with good reach.”

Similarly, good old-fashioned face-to-face interaction is still one of the most trusted means of communication in many rural communities. Some humanitarian organizations continue to utilize word-of-mouth and distribution of leaflets with cartoons to spread the news about cholera treatment and sources of clean drinking water. As with radio, however, local and international groups are also beginning to use inter-personal communications in innovative new ways to reach at-risk people with entertaining and educational information about peace and health services.

One promising byproduct of the on-going conflict in South Sudan is a subtle shift in the collective mindset regarding how information is consumed. For the humanitarian organizations doing their best to provide services to the at-risk communities, creative programs like “Boda Boda Talk Talk” can help them understand the people they serve better. For local people who are struggling to manage displacement and insecurity, they are increasingly seeking sources of information outside their personal networks. Nicola Franco, a producer at Free Voice South Sudan, explained, “The conflict has changed things because there is more demand for information from the capital. People want to know the news through radio – and whether the rebels are coming.”

 ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

Afghanistan

Kabul hotel attacked by Taliban

Fourteen people, including one American, were killed in an attack on a Kabul hotel on Wednesday (BBC, AP, CNN, NYT). Gunman stormed the Park Palace Guest House late Wednesday evening as a crowd, many of them foreigners, gathered for a concert at the hotel, which is in a wealthier part of the capital near several aid agencies and a hospital. Police stormed the hotel after the three gunmen were inside, but the attackers were able to hold the hotel for five hours. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

NATO to stay in Afghanistan after 2016

On Wednesday, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formally announced plans to retain a small troop presence in Afghanistan after 2016 (WSJ, Pajhwok). NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the future mission, called “Enduring Partnership,” would be led by civilians. NATO’s leadership will finalize plans for the new mission by the fall, but Stoltenberg said that the NATO force in the country would be smaller than the current one.

India

Prime Minister Modi meets President Xi

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China on Thursday, launching a three-day official visit (U.S. News & World Report, Times of India, BBC). In a sign of personal diplomacy, Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the city of Xian, Xi’s hometown in central Shaanxi province. This was intended to mirror Xi’s visit to India last September, when Modi hosted the Chinese president in his own hometown of Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat. The two leaders met for about an hour and a half and discussed a number of issues, including border disputes, terrorism, and bilateral trade and investment, which is Modi’s top priority on this trip. Modi hopes to decrease India’s $38 billion trade deficit with China and attract Chinese investment in Indian infrastructure projects (NYT). Modi also visited cultural sites including a Buddhist temple housing translations of Sanskrit texts and the famed Terra Cotta Warriors. Modi is scheduled to meet with the Chinese Prime Minister in Beijing on Friday and Chinese business leaders in Shanghai on Saturday (WSJ).

Indian Cabinet approves child labor ban with exceptions

The Indian Cabinet approved amendments to a bill on Wednesday that would ban the employment of children under the age of 14, except in certain industries (Hindustan Times, Firstpost). The Child Labour Prohibition Bill, introduced in 2012 by the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, originally called for an outright ban on employing children under 14. The current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s version of the bill carves out exceptions for “non-hazardous” family enterprises, the entertainment industry, and sports. Under the current law, child labor is allowed in all but 18 specified occupations. Children’s rights activists decried the inclusion of the exceptions in the bill, arguing that they were regressive and in contradiction to the Right to Education Act, which guarantees education for children under 14 years of age. “The provision, ‘home-based industries,’ will be used for exploitation of children and betrays the real intent of this government. We are legalizing a horrible reality instead of banning it,” said activist lawyer Vrinda Grover (Times of India). The proposed amendments also increase penalties for employers but decrease penalties for parents for breaching the law.

Indian Supreme Court demands action on India-Bangladesh border

The Supreme Court of India chastised both the central government and the government of the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday for “dragging their feet” on securing the border with Bangladesh (The Times of India). The court accused the central government of not paying enough attention to India’s eastern border, noting, “The western border with Pakistan, being 3,300 km long, is not only properly fenced but properly manned too and not porous at any point” (The Hindu). In a judgment made in December of last year, the court had ordered the central government to construct roads and install floodlights along the eastern border to prevent illegal immigration and cross-border trafficking. Led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the Supreme Court accused both the central government and Assam state government of not implementing its orders in a timely fashion. The court has appointed an independent commissioner to visit the border and report back to the court in three weeks. The court also expressed disapproval of the Assam High Court’s lack of urgency in filling positions for special foreigners tribunals, which are charged with identifying and deporting illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. India and Bangladesh recently reached a deal to resolve all outstanding border disputes between the two countries.

Pakistan

Mass funeral in Karachi

A mass funeral took place in Karachi on Thursday for the victims of a militant attack on a bus carrying minority Ismaili Shia Muslims (BBC, ET). Flags were flown at half-mast and markets, schools, and transit were closed during the day of mourning. At least 45 people were killed in the attack by gunmen on a crowded bus on the city’s outskirts. Officials found pamphlets purporting to be from ISIS at the site of the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility for the attack.

— Emily Schneider and Udit Banerjea

Edited by Peter Bergen

By Paul McLeary with Ariel Robinson

Well, that’s news. Washington has big plans for stationing advanced weaponry in Australia, senior Defense Department officials say, in what would be a military first for the two close allies.

During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the Defense Department’s Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs David Shear said that in addition to the movement of U.S. Marines and Army units around the region, “we will be placing additional Air Force assets in Australia as well, including B-1 bombers and surveillance aircraft.”

The plans come just as Washington considers sending ships and aircraft to South China Sea to assert the right of free passage and challenge Beijing’s recent island building spree there, including airstrips in a bid to expand its scope of influence.

Requests for comment to the U.S. Pacific Command and Pacific Air Forces have not been returned, but stationing bombers in Australia is not an entirely new idea. Back in 2013, then-commander of the Pacific Air Forces Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle (who is now Commander of Air Combat Command) floated the idea, but nothing came of it.

But now U.S. officials are adamant. “We claim the right of innocent passage in such areas, and we exercise that right regularly, both in the South China Sea and globally,” Shear said. Earlier in the day, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said that “international law does not recognize man-made islands as an extension of the mainland, and in this case, nor do we.”

“No matter how much sand you pile on a reef in the South China Sea, you can’t manufacture sovereignty,” Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told the Senate committee.

The new crew. We wouldn’t exactly call them “fresh faces,” but if the Senate signs off on their nominations, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will have three new members come this fall. We’ve already tracked the nomination of Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but now we have two more: Gen. Mark Milley as Army chief of staff and Adm. John Richardson as chief of Naval operations.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s fingerprints are all over the nominations. Richardson is the top nuclear officer in the Navy, and has been plucked three years into an eight-year assignment with the Energy Department to take over the sea service. Remember, Carter is a former nuclear weapons analyst who has promised to make modernizing the nation’s aging nuclear weapons infrastructure a key part of his tenure. And Carter praised his work with Milley when the latter was the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan in 2013, and Carter was second-in-command at the Pentagon.

Of note: Reporters were told Wednesday morning that Carter would make a few brief remarks introducing the nominees and neither he nor the nominees would take questions, which is becoming the norm in his Pentagon. Earlier this month, as an example, the secretary also bolted after making a few brief remarks in announcing the rollout of the Defense Department’s latest sexual assault report. But this time the AP’s Robert Burns – a gentlemanly institution at the Pentagon – called out, “Mr. Secretary!” to Carter as he was about to walk away from the podium. For a second the possibility hung out there that Carter might actually have an unscripted moment, but he was quickly swallowed in a crush of military brass and moved out. Carter has only held two press conferences since taking over in February.

All together now! The Obama administration is huddling with senior leaders from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations this week in Washington, and whenever a meeting like this occurs, it’s a sure bet that a series of expedited weapons shipments and foreign military sales announcements will follow.

So, why isn’t Israel protesting the possibility of more weapons being shipped to its neighbors?

One reason, FP’s John Hudson writes, is that is that the Obama administration is being careful about how it assists Gulf allies in facing the Iranian threat without overstepping Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, “a calculus the executive branch is required by law to take into account as it licenses the transfer of weapons to Middle East governments.” Another reason for Israel’s “relaxed temperament,” Hudson reports, is Israel’s “newfound kinship with Arab countries who share its concerns about Iran’s rise in the region.” As David Ottaway, a Gulf expert at the Wilson Center, noted, “The Israelis have cared less about the deals happening this week because there’s a feeling in Israel that they now have an undeclared ally in the GCC against Iran.”

Yoda’s back! Sort of. When the 93-year-old Andrew Marshall retired from his perch as the Defense Department’s top futurist at the Office of Net Assessment in January, a huge hole as left in the building’s, but also in conspiracy theorizing.

But the drought appears to be over. The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe on Wednesday reported that Ash Carter has picked a younger Yoda – if no less brainy — to fill Marshall’s shoes.

Jim Baker, a retired Air Force colonel who currently serves as a top adviser to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, is being tasked with doing things a little differently. “His selection reflects Carter’s desire to shift the focus of the office, which has concentrated on long-term threats to the United States that were often overlooked by a Pentagon consumed by more immediate concerns.” Jaffe writes.

Welcome to a very special edition of the Situation Report, where we celebrate the accomplishment of making it to Thursday! Pass along your notes, tips, and events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary.

Who’s Where When?

At 8:30 a.m. a group of think tankers from the Center for a New American Security, American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies speak at at the Senate Russell office building about defense reform. Also speaking are Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry, Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services, and Democrat Rep. Adam Smith, Ranking Member, House Committee on Armed Services. 10:00 a.m. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work speaks in the Pentagon courtyard at the first-ever DoD Lab Day showing off some of the leap-ahead tech the Defense Department is investing in. 12:00 p.m. Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Lukman Faily and Pakistan’s Defence and Army Attaché Brigadier Chaudhary Sarfraz Ali speak at The Potomac Institute about combating terrorism.

Middle East

A senior Israeli intelligence official says Egypt is buying the Russian S-300 ground-to-air defense system. Dan Williams reports for Reuters. Neither Egypt nor Russia has confirmed the sale.

The Lebanon Daily Star writes that Hezbollah and the Syrian army have gained control of the highest mountain in the Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border. Syrian state TV thanked the Syrian army and “the Lebanese resistance.”

Europe

Authorities in the Czech Republic blocked a shipment of “sensitive technology usable for nuclear enrichment” to Iran after “false documentation raised suspicions,” Louis Charbonneau and Robert Muller write for Reuters.

Estonian officials say that they have a pretty solid plan for dealing with any “little green men” – the moniker Western officials have given to Russian special forces operatives working undercover who sprung up in the early days of the Ukraine crisis last year — according to the country’s chief of defence. “They will be shot,” reports the Financial Times.

Afghanistan

At least one American and two Indians were killed in an attack on a guest house in Kabul Wednesday evening. The attack came after “gunmen opened fire at a meeting of Muslim clerics in the southern province of Helmand, killing at least seven people, police said,” writes Mirwais Harooni for Reuters.

Congress

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain on Wednesday rejected a request “for changes in federal law to let the two largest U.S. arms makers use more Russian rocket engines to compete for military satellite launches against privately held SpaceX,” Andrea Shalal reports for Reuters.

President Obama is convening delegations from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations at Camp David today to discuss pressing security issues across the Middle East. The summit is foremost an opportunity for the president to make assurances to the Gulf about their security if a nuclear agreement is reached with Iran, but will also include discussions about the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, the continuing Syrian civil war, and the fight against the Islamic State.

President Obama met with Saudi delegates yesterday, including Interior Minister Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Defense Minister Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa are skipping the summit in what has largely been perceived as a snub of the Obama Administration. President Obama is expected to offer the Gulf states a large package of defense systems to ensure the GCC’s security but has already quashed the idea of a NATO-like defense pact advocated by some Gulf diplomats.

Islamic State Deputy Reportedly Killed

The Iraqi Defence Ministry reported yesterday that Abu Alaa al-Afri, the Islamic State’s top deputy to the organization’s self-appointed caliph, has been killed in an airstrike in the city of Tal Afar. They also released video of a strike and photos of his body. The U.S. government has cast doubt on the Iraqi government’s report, saying it did not conduct a strike on the mosque in Tal Afar, where Afri was reportedly killed, and some have noted that the video released by the Iraqi government may be the same as one released by the United States depicting a May 4 strike in Mosul.

Headlines

• The Vatican announced it is preparing to sign its first treaty with the Palestinian leadership, days before a visit from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; the Vatican has recognized Palestine as a state since 2013.

• Iranian parliamentarians are backing away from a bill that would halt nuclear negotiations with the United States until Washington apologizes for perceived threats; some said that they were not aware of plans to fast-track the legislation, while others said they were duped into signing what they didn’t even realize was a bill.

• The Yemeni government warned Iran yesterday that it “bears complete responsibility for any incident that arises from their attempt to enter Yemeni waters” if it does not allow the search of a cargo ship purportedly carrying humanitarian aid; the United States has urged Iran to direct aid through the U.N. hub in Djibouti.

• Syrian opposition groups have declined to meet with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura for preliminary peace talks, citing his comments supporting a role for Assad in a potential political transition.

• The British government said it would opt-out of any quota system approved by the European Union for a burden-sharing redistribution of migrants fleeing to Europe from Libyan ports.

-J. Dana Stuster

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

In the absence of a major announcement on a security pact or missile defense shield, this week’s summit between the United States and six Persian Gulf countries is likely to fall back on a time-honored tradition: a series of expedited arms transfers from Washington to the oil-rich Arab states and a joint-statement highlighting America’s “renewed commitment” to the Gulf.

In the past, such weapons transfers have prompted major concern in Israel and Capitol Hill about Jerusalem losing its military edge over its Arab neighbors. But this time is different.

According to an official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S. — the group is not trying to lobby Congress to block arms deals with the Gulf. The Israeli government has also refrained from weighing in, according to Hill staffers who maintain routine contacts with the Israelis.

“Israelis have been silent,” said a congressional aide familiar with the issue. “AIPAC was asking a lot of questions, but I wouldn’t characterize our interactions on this as lobbying.”

One reason, according to State Department and congressional sources, is that the Obama administration is carefully assessing how it can help Gulf allies deter a threat from Iran without overstepping Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge (QME), a calculus the executive branch is required by law to take into account as it licenses the transfer of weapons to Middle East governments.

Another reason for Israel’s relaxed temperament is its newfound kinship with Arab countries who share its concerns about Iran’s rise in the region. “The Israelis have cared less about the deals happening this week because there’s a feeling in Israel that they now have an undeclared ally in the GCC against Iran,” said David Ottaway, a Gulf expert at the Wilson Center, using an acronym for the six countries that makeup the Gulf Cooperation Council.

But satisfying all sides equally is easier said than done — and at least some of the top weapons systems on the GCC wish list are not expected to be supplied due to QME considerations, including the F-35 Lightning II, a “fifth-generation” fighter jet designed to be virtually invisible to enemy radar, and BU-28 bunker buster bombs, which Washington has only provided to Israel. Instead, the Gulf countries are likely to walk away with promises to expedite the transfers of long-sought munitions and radar equipment.

“The Emiratis and to a certain extent the Saudis had wanted to build this session into a much more robust agreement on both security guarantees and specific arms transfers,” said a congressional staffer familiar with the issue. “The U.S. side had to manage those inflated expectations back down to something more realistic.”

The summit itself, a gathering of senior officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, isn’t likely to produce a statement that details a laundry list of weapons deals. However, leaders are expected to discuss ways the U.S. can expedite long-desired equipment that will help Gulf countries deter Iran and replenish arms used in the Saudi-led bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Those items are likely to include new avionics equipment for F-15 and F-16 aircraft, upgraded radar systems that reach greater distances and identify smaller objects, and an increased flow of ordnance to Gulf militaries, such as Joint Direct Attack Munitions or JDAMs, which are one of Saudi Arabia’s main weapons in that air war. Upgraded radar equipment, in particular, is seen as important for spotting incoming Iranian small boats or surveillance and armed drones.

Obama invited the GCC countries to Camp David in April with the goal of easing Arab concerns about the emerging nuclear deal with Iran and five world powers. Ahead of the summit, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had been pushing for the U.S. to agree to a mutual defense treaty, a proposal Washington now says is not in the cards.

In an interview with al Jazeera Wednesday, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said that a formal defense “treaty is not what we’re looking for.”

“It took decades to build NATO and the Asian allies but we can provide clear assurances that we will come to their defense,” he said.

Some have attributed the decision by Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman, not to attend this week’s summit to Washington’s refusal to commit to a defense treaty.

For its part, Washington wants to avoid making ironclad security guarantees in a region marred by perpetual instability.

As an alternative, Obama is expected to push for a regional defense shield aimed at guarding against the Iranian missile threat, but while Saudi Arabia is supportive of the project, other GCC countries, such as the UAE, have raised doubts about the feasibility of the effort. An easy fallback is additional arms sales.

Any new weapons deals would accelerate Riyadh’s ongoing push to grow and modernize its armed forces. Last year, Saudi Arabia passed India and became the world’s top importer of weapons, aircraft, and other military equipment, according to IHS’ annual Global Defense Trade Report. Riyadh’s imports jumped 54 percent between 2013 and 2014, and IHS projected a further 52 percent increase this year.

In the last 20 years, Saudi Arabia has invested nearly $500 billion into its military, according to Jean-Francois Seznec of Johns Hopkins University. With nearly three-quarters of that cash going to the United States, Riyadh is one of the most lucrative sources of income for U.S. defence companies.

Riyadh isn’t the only Gulf power opening its wallet wide: the IHS report noted that Saudi Arabia and the UAE spent $8.6 billion on defense imports in 2014, an amount bigger than that spent by all of Western Europe put together.

The UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are already in the process of upgrading existing Raytheon Co Patriot missile defense systems to utilize new PAC-3 missiles. The UAE is also buying another missile defense system from Lockheed Martin: a longer-range Terminal HIgh Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

By next year, Qatar could close a $6.5 billion deal for a THAAD system, which could be followed by a similar purchase by Saudi Arabia.

Over the years, the massive flow of arms to Gulf allies has caused a number of flare ups in the U.S.-Israel relationship. A particularly heated battle surrounded the Reagan administration’s $8.5 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia in 1981, the largest foreign arms sale in U.S. history at the time.

The sale, which included the transfer of AWACS reconnaissance planes to Riyadh, was loudly protested by Israel and its allies in Congress. Though President Ronald Reagan ultimately cleared the sale, he denounced the meddling of Israel in U.S. politics in ways unfathomable in the current political context. ”It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy,” Reagan said at a news conference that year.

Ottaway, the Gulf expert, said much has changed since that historic dispute. “Almost all these more sophisticated American arms going to the Gulf are pre-negotiated with Israel,” he said. “If AIPAC doesn’t like the deal, you can be sure that nobody’s seriously thinking about providing it.”

For its part, the State Department insists it has no problem managing the interests and concerns of all parties involved, despite the groundswell of mutual distrust that is synonymous with the Middle East. “Our close engagement with GCC member states is not incompatible with our unwavering commitment to Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, as evidenced by our substantial military cooperation with both Israel and the GCC,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told Foreign Policy.

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), positioning himself for a run at the GOP presidential nomination, appears to have flip-flopped on the Iraq war.

For years, Rubio maintained he would have still gone to war knowing what we know today: that Iraq didn’t actually possess the purported weapons of mass program that George W. Bush used to justify the invasion. In a question-and-answer session after a speech outlining his foreign policy vision at the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday, he reversed course.

“Not only would I not have been in favor of it, President [George W.] Bush wouldn’t have been in favor of it and he said so,” Rubio told journalist Charlie Rose, who was leading the session.

Rubio’s reversal adds him to the growing list of GOP contenders trying to come to terms with how to talk about the Iraq War, which sharp majorities of Americans from both parties regard as a mistake. In recent days, Jeb Bush said he would still go to war in Iraq. Under fire, he changed his answer and insisted he wouldn’t.

Rubio’s comments are at odds with at least two of his previous statements. In March, he said on Fox he would have gone to war and that the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein. This is a claim he repeated in 2010 during an interview with CNN.

He took a different stance Wednesday.

“Ultimately though, I do not believe that if the intelligence had said Iraq does not have a weapon of mass destruction capability, I don’t believe President Bush would have authorized to move forward,” Rubio said.

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The House just passed a White House-backed National Security Agency reform bill Wednesday, but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where lawmakers say the legislation would make America less safe, and an key electronic privacy group is pulling its long-time support for the proposal.

The issue for both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the Electronic Freedom Foundation is Section 215 of the Patriot Act, a provision that allows for the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA. A federal court ruled the program illegal last week, but left the door open for Congress to allow it with new legislation. The House bill removes Section 215, while the legislation being considered by the Senate contains it.

McConnell’s problem with the House version of the disingenuously-named USA Freedom Act is that it doesn’t give the government the authority to continue mass collection of American data. He maintains eliminating the program would make the United States less safe, despite little evidence that the data collected by the government has stopped terror attacks.

Wednesday’s House vote is the latest episode in a two-year struggle to pass intelligence reform in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA’s broad surveillance operations. Tech companies, Obama, civil liberty groups, and many lawmakers support reform efforts, but getting a bill Congress and the White House can agree on has so far proven elusive. The House vote approving the measure by an overwhelming 338 to 88 margin also comes as intelligence and defense officials debate the ground rules of cyberwar.

Still, the bill could die a quick death in the Senate, where a similar measure failed to garner enough support to even make it to the floor for a vote. McConnell, along with other Republican hawks like Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), are promising to fight the bill once it arrives in the upper chamber.

The EFF, a group that has been advocating for electronic privacy since 1990, supported the bill as recently as last week. Now, though, it’s singing a different tune, saying the court ruling finding the surveillance program illegal changed their position. In a blog post Monday, EFF’s civil liberty director, David Greene, and its legislative analyst, Mark Jaycox, argued the ruling should compel Congress to revert to a 2013 version that contained stronger provisions outlawing mass surveillance.

Other privacy advocates are also opposed to the bill. Daniel Schuman, policy director of the progressive group Demand Progress, said the legislation does not address the controversial Section 706 provision allowing the government to collect email and internet traffic information

“Taking a bite of a poisoned apple is not going to address the underlying issues,” he said. “You don’t ask for the bare minimum.”

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Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor was one of the few bright spots on the United States’ much-maligned rail system. Connecting Boston to Washington via major cities including New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, the route was both profitable and enjoying a steady rise in ridership numbers. The deadly Amtrak accident Tuesday night, which killed at least seven people and injured dozens more when it derailed in Philadelphia, will change that, at least in the short term. Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter called the accident “an absolute disastrous mess,” adding: “Never seen anything like this in my life.” And in an ironic case of timing, on Wednesday the House Appropriations voted to cut Amtrak’s public funding in 2016, from $1.4 billion to roughly $1.1 billion.

How do you solve a problem like Amtrak, which has bled money practically since it began operating in 1971? Tokyo thinks it has a solution, at least for the Northeast Corridor: a high speed rail, built with Japanese technology and funded, at least in part, by Japanese money. In September, an investor group told Maryland state regulators it had lined up more than $5 billion from Tokyo, “which hopes to showcase the technology behind superconducting magnetic levitation or ‘maglev’ trains to an American audience,” according to The Washington Post. And in October, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that if Tokyo built the train, “you could travel from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes, and to New York within less than an hour.”

It would also help solve Amtrak’s problem of reliability. That’s what people want from Amtrak and especially its high-speed Acela line, according to R. Richard Geddes, director of Cornell’s infrastructure policy program: for a train scheduled to arrive at 10:30 a.m., for example, to actually arrive at 10:30 a.m. Amtrak’s express Acela line, which takes just under 3 hours to travel from Washington to New York City, was on time 69 percent of the time over the past year, compared with near 100 percent for Japan’s high speed rail the Shinkansen, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Safety-wise, Tokyo’s train system certainly is not any worse than Amtrak — though it might not be much better, either. “Amtrak is certainly not a notoriously dangerous mode of transportation,” said Clifford Winston, a transportation expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank. “We’re not behind the curve here.” And Tokyo has had its share of rail accidents, most notoriously in April 2005, when a commuter train derailed and crashed into an apartment building, killing 107 people on the train and injuring hundreds more.

Tokyo’s proposal is not out of the blue. Besides potential developments in the Washington-to-New York City route, there’s also a company trying to develop a high speed rail between Dallas and Houston. And in January, the state of California broke ground on a high-speed rail connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco – though it’s not expected to be operating until 2028. While emphasizing that the cause of Tuesday’s accident is still unknown, Geddes said “there’s consensus that Amtrak needs to be upgraded and modernized.”

So is high-speed rail the way to go? Probably not – because of the cost. Even if Tokyo does pay for more than $5 billion of the D.C.-to-Baltimore route, the entire project would reportedly cost at least $10 billion. And citizens of Baltimore and Washington aren’t exactly clamoring for the ability to travel quicker between the two cities. The tens of billions of dollars needed to build a maglev line between Washington and New York, the only connection that would make sense for the system, is so huge that the project won’t get built, Andy Kunz, president and CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association, told The Washington Post late last year.

Why don’t we spend the tens of billions of dollars to upgrade our rail system? As New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pointed out in a recent interview, China spends 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, while the United States spends only 1.7 percent. In March, Beijing announced that it will be spending roughly $128 billion on domestic rail construction in 2015, whereas the United States typically only spends $50 billion annually on road and transit projects.

Winston said the U.S. doesn’t spend tens of billions of dollars on rail projects because it would be a huge waste of money. China and Japan, with their extensive network of high-speed rail, “are making huge sacrifices for the systems they have – the billions and trillions they’re spending on these systems are costing them elsewhere.” High-speed rail, he said, doesn’t make sense in a country with a population as spread out, and as dependent on planes, and automobiles, as is the United States.

Rather, instead of relying on foreign government money, bring in the private sector. Upgrading the Northeast Corridor, Geddes said, can be done with a public-private partnership. This allows for more innovation and accountability – two qualities Amtrak sorely lacks. “The best practices come from the private sector,” said Winston. Trying to find government best practices – including with Tokyo — “is a race of the bottom.” Amtrak’s history “is a long and sad one,” said Winston. Its future doesn’t have to be.

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Ten years ago, Uzbekistan’s security forces shot dead hundreds of unarmed people demonstrating for greater economic and political freedom in the eastern city of Andijan. Initial international condemnation came quickly, but as is too often the case, world interest has evaporated like drops of water in the Central Asian sun. Repression in Uzbekistan has only intensified since then.

The Andijan massacre of May 13, 2005, belongs to a shameful global list of missed opportunities for justice and accountability. World leaders by and large did little to censure the government of President Islam Karimov. Tashkent’s dictator stared them all down — and the world blinked.

The course of events not only reveals a great deal about Karimov, whose iron-fisted rule has lasted since the Kremlin installed him as Communist Party boss in 1989. It also shows the consequences of the world’s failure to insist that justice be done — or anyone be held accountable — for such a shocking abuse of power. And 10 years later, the human rights violations perpetrated by the regime remain a blot on the world’s conscience.

The massacre began on the night of May 12, 2005, following weeks of protests in connection with the trial of 23 local businessmen for “religious extremism” — a charge regularly used by authorities to neutralize dissent. Arrested in June of 2004 on these trumped up charges, their trial, which was punctuated by protests, had for many come to embody the key injustices of life in Karimov’s Uzbekistan: grinding poverty, corruption, widespread rights abuses, and a campaign of persecution against religious Muslims. When the verdict was finally read on May 11, the long-simmering tensions in Andijan that had permeated the trial boiled over into open violence. A group of 50 to 100 men, mainly supporters of the jailed businessmen, attacked several government buildings and broke into the city prison to release them, along with hundreds of other prisoners.

Following the prison break, in the early hours of May 13, thousands of residents began to gather in Andijan’s central Bobur Square to protest what they saw as an unfair trial and the wider economic and political injustices in the country. Many expected that Uzbek government officials, including even President Karimov himself, might come to address the throng.

But in the morning on May 13, Uzbek security forces fired machine guns into the crowd from armored personnel carriers (APCs) and sniper positions above the square without warning. Surrounded, protesters were unable to escape. Troops blocked off the square and opened fire, killing and wounding unarmed civilians en masse. Security forces later swept through the area and executed some of the wounded where they lay. The massacre lasted hours.

As U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time, I first called for an independent investigation into the Andijan events on May 18, five days after the killings took place. The report by my office in the immediate aftermath concluded that “consistent, credible eyewitness testimony strongly suggests that military and security forces committed grave human rights violations in Andijan,” even a “mass killing.” The report was based on interviews with eyewitnesses in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where some of the survivors had fled immediately after the violence.

The events in Andijan initially attracted widespread international condemnation. In addition to my office, other U.N. bodies — as well as the European Union, the United States, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the NATO Council — condemned the response by Uzbek security forces and called for an independent international investigation into the events, demanding unhindered access.

After the Uzbek government adamantly rejected these calls and refused to cooperate with the international community, the EU imposed sanctions on Uzbekistan, including an EU-wide visa ban for high-ranking officials “directly responsible for the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force in Andijan,” and an embargo on arms exports to the country. The United States didn’t go that far, but it did further tighten restrictions it had placed on military assistance.

But the pressure wasn’t enough — and Karimov didn’t budge.

In the years that followed, condemnation subsided and the outside world seemed as anxious to move on and forget the massacre as the regime did. Within a couple years — without giving the sanctions any chance to have serious impact — the EU eased and then dropped its economic restrictions. Germany was a key actor in the phasing out of sanctions, seeking to hold on to its military base in the town of Termez. The United States didn’t stand firm either. In 2012, keen to maintain good relations with Karimov in order to receive his assistance in transiting supplies in and out of neighboring Afghanistan, the Obama administration waived all restrictions on military assistance even as Uzbekistan’s rights record continued to worsen: Ever more political prisoners were hauled into jails and labor camps, where torture is systematic.

In short, the Uzbek government got away with mass murder because, as is often the case, interests prevailed over principles, and the world was willing to forget the victims in order to work with the killers. It’s the worst lesson possible for aspiring tyrants.

Still, it’s never too late to change that message and start sending the right signal to Karimov and other murderous autocrats. Those responsible for these kinds of atrocities should be forever afraid that the time for reckoning will come. Given the appalling human rights situation that remains in the country — no media freedom, political opposition is forbidden, thousands of political prisoners are imprisoned, the security services use systematic torture, and slave labor is used in the cotton fields — a coordinated international response remains urgent.

Members of the U.N. Human Rights Council should mark the 10th anniversary of the Andijan massacre by establishing a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Uzbekistan to hold the government accountable for ongoing, egregious abuses and to ensure sustained scrutiny. It’s role would be similar to the one for North Korea.

It may seem a small measure in the overall scheme of things, but for a country so averse to independent scrutiny, such a mechanism would place consistent and public pressure on Tashkent to account for its abuses. It would also be a modest corrective to the injustice done to the victims of Andijan and send a crucial message of support to the millions of other Uzbeks whose human rights have been denied these past 10 years.

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Since assuming power in 2011, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has presided over a brutal consolidation of power, executing his perceived enemies with incredible frequency and morbid creativity. At least 70 officials have been executed during this time, and the latest victim was his defense chief, Hyon Yong Chol, who was executed using an anti-aircraft gun, according to South Korean spies. His crime: insubordination and allegedly falling asleep during an event attended by Kim.

North Korea typically executes traitors, spies, and other disloyal subjects by firing squad, but Kim’s brief reign has been replete with reports of grisly execution methods. The use of anti-aircraft guns to carry out executions hints at the use of public brutality as a means of repression in North Korea. (Incredibly, one such execution — perhaps even Chol’s — may have been captured on publicly available satellite imagery.) High-caliber anti-aircraft guns of the variety used in the latest execution are enormously powerful machine guns capable of slinging what are the equivalent of U.S. 50-caliber rounds miles into the sky. When directed at the human body at close range, the destruction would be devastating and a human body likely pulverized.

Why use such a weapon? South Korean spies say that a large crowd had gathered for Chol’s execution. Presumably the spectacle of a human body being destroyed by high-caliber machine gun fire is one the crowd will not forget anytime soon.

And Hyon’s execution isn’t the first time that North Korea has used anti-aircraft guns as a method of execution. Before executing his powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013, Kim Jong Un had the man’s two top lieutenants killed with the weapons. Jang was later executed by firing squad, though some spurious reports described him being killed by a pack of hungry dogs.

This kind of brutality appears to be becoming more commonplace under Kim’s rule. In 2012, the North Korean leader executed a deputy defense minister using mortar rounds after the military official allegedly broke a prohibition on drinking alcohol during the mourning period for Kim’s father.

There’s reason to believe Kim learned from his father’s own creativity in executions. After North Korea’s 6th Army Corps rose up against him in 1995, Kim Jong Il reportedly tied up the officers responsible for the attempted coup in their headquarters, and then burned down the building, according to one account of uprising. Another description of the event claims the soldiers responsible were executed by machine-gun brandishing firing squads.

Today, the threats arrayed against Kim appear far less serious than the 6th Corps uprising. Rather, Kim’s reign of terror has appeared geared toward amassing power and eliminating perceived rivals to the throne. There have been no credible reports during his reign of a coup being attempted, though it’s certainly likely that North Korea would not publicize such a plot if one had been launched and subsequently crushed. This year alone, Kim executed a senior official who dared complain about his forestry policy. Another official charged with economic planning was killed after complaining about the design of a roof on a building being built in the North Korean capital. Separately, four members of the Unhasu Orchestra were killed on espionage charges.

For Kim, apparently, even orchestra pits become snake pits that must be tamed — sometimes with anti-aircraft guns.

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The Pentagon has plucked two brainy candidates out of relatively new assignments to lead the Army and Navy for the next four years, tapping Gen. Mark Milley as Army chief of staff and Adm. John Richardson as chief of Naval operations.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the nominations Wednesday, and neither Milley nor Richardson spoke during the Pentagon chief’s brief remarks to reporters. Richardson’s nomination was already widely reported, but Milley’s came as something of a surprise to many in the Army until just hours before the announcement.

Carter called Richardson “a bold thinker, a tremendous leader and the go-to officer for many of the Navy’s tough issues in recent years.” He also said he had to wrestle Richardson “away from the Secretary of Energy” — a nod to the admiral’s relatively short tenure at Naval Reactors, where for the past three years he was focused on nuclear issues in a joint Defense-Energy program.

That job specifically sought to keep Richardson from rotating into a new position for at least eight years. But his work on the Ohio-class nuclear submarine — which is a key component of the service’s modernization plan — likely won over Carter and other top managers searching for a new Navy leader. Carter has made upgrading the U.S. military’s nuclear arsenal a key priority.

Carter also knew Milley from time the two spent together in Afghanistan in 2013, when the Army general was the second-in-command of the war. Carter recounted flying with Milley to Afghanistan’s western Herat province the day after the U.S. Consulate there was targeted in a September 2013 truck bombing, where he “saw Mark take command of the scene, and stand with our people there.”

At the time, Milley was serving under Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, whom the White House recently tapped as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley currently heads the Army’s Forces Command at Ft. Bragg, N.C., which tasks and manages missions for soldiers based in the U.S. He has served there for less than a year, and took over for Gen. John Allyn, who is now the Army’s vice chief.

More recently, Milley oversaw the Army’s investigation of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and has since been charged with desertion.

He has been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and was the commanding general of Ft. Hood, Texas, in March 2014 when a soldier opened fire, killing four — including himself — and wounding 16 others.

As a lieutenant in the early 1980s, Milley spent two years in the 5th Special Forces Group, which now works on special operations in the Mideast, but no information about his time there is publicly available. Earlier versions of his official biography says he commanded special forces units.

The Association of the U.S. Army called for a quick confirmation for Milley, “knowing that the Army faces many challenges, and will benefit from what we know will be his proven skill as a leader,” the group’s president, retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan said in a statement.

With Ivy League degrees from Princeton and Columbia University, Milley was commissioned as an armor officer in 1980 and has served with infantry and Special Forces units, deploying to Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Richardson is rooted in science. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1982 with a degree in physics and earned Master’s degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He also commanded the nuclear submarine USS Honolulu.

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In 1980, Pakistan reached a demographic milestone; adults constituted 52 percent of the total population. Since then, a demographic transition has taken place. Now 110 million of Pakistan’s 180 million citizens are 29 years old or younger, and 50 million are between the ages of 15 and 29.  This “demographic dividend” is expected to last until 2045, after which the average age will increase rapidly. Before this demographic transition comes to pass, it is critical that Pakistani youth are mobilized in productive ways, gainfully employed, and politically enfranchised. Otherwise, the future of Pakistan may well be defined by political, economic, and social tumult.

Thankfully, the current demographic landscape could portend a brighter future for Pakistan. One recent study stated that a substantial majority of Pakistani youth believe that they will have a role in changing the country for the better. (They are also better educated than their parents; the same study cited statistics that showed the most educated person in 50 percent of all Pakistani households is now below the age of 30.)  In fact, the significant rate of youth participation — 63 percent — in the 2013 national elections demonstrates that young Pakistanis channel their concerns for Pakistan’s future in a democratic way and seek to participate in the country’s political discourse.

However, concerns for the future of Pakistani democracy persist. The country’s largest demographic is disillusioned and pessimistic — 94 percent of Pakistani youth thought the nation was on the wrong path — and only a small proportion of them have confidence in national or local governments, the courts, or the police. A survey of Pakistan’s 18-29 year olds conducted before the May 2013 elections revealed that only 29 percent saw democracy as a model system of governance; 32 percent favored military rule; and 38 percent believed the best option was a system of Islamic Sharia.

This disillusionment could be the result of various elements, such as the government’s inability to ensure universal civil liberties and provide basic services. Pakistan was rated 5 on the Freedom House Civil Liberties Index in 2015, on a scale of 1 to 7, where 7 is considered the worst. Basic services are also lacking; 40 percent of Pakistan’s population suffers from malnutrition, energy shortages prevail throughout the country and violence against minorities has witnessed an alarming increase. The lack of a seasoned democratic political process has added to this disillusionment, since until the 2013 elections, no civilian government had been able to transfer power to another civilian government successfully. However, it is the weakness of the country’s educational system that is the greatest threat to the survival of Pakistani democracy.

For the 71 percent of youth who have obtained some sort of formal education, there has been little reinforcement of democratic ideals. Arshed Bhatti, a noted development practitioner, put it succinctly: “Our educational system is actually anti-democratic and does not promote the democratic system.” In his view, instead of creating class harmony, the educational system reinforces class divisions and biases through Pakistan’s conflicting methods of education (i.e., private, public, and madrassa). Moreover, journalist Zubeida Mustafa believes that “the other very important role of education is to develop the capacity to think on a collective level, which unfortunately is lacking [in Pakistan].”

A 2010 study conducted by educator Muhammad Nazir, explored the potential for democratic changes in Pakistan’s educational practices by surveying public and private school teachers from urban and rural areas of Baluchistan and Sindh provinces. He found that educational practices in Pakistan are authoritarian and bureaucratic in action and that collaboration and reflection do not play a part in the teacher’s decision-making processes across schools. In fact, he noted that teachers across both public and private schools were not comfortable with the idea of educational change through participatory or democratic approaches.

These perspectives demonstrate the lack of forums in schools and universities for the promotion of democratic ideals, values, or frameworks, which are critical if the demographic distribution is to pay a dividend and not incur a deficit.

Many writers have written about what a school with democratic values should look like, and according to international education professor Lynn Davies, “basic political education for students is not enough; democratizing the actual forms and organization of schooling itself is required.” Davies rightly proposed that individual schools should also look within their own environments to ensure that cultural and local factors are incorporated while creating management systems based on democratic principles.

Coupling the current state of the education system with the youth’s pessimism regarding Pakistan’s trajectory, there is a clear need to provide a platform for students to organize and learn about the democratic process within their educational institutions. The establishment of Student Government Associations (SGA) within schools and universities is one way to achieve this.

By providing students with a form of representation and a pluralistic environment for leadership development, SGAs will encourage civic engagement and participation in democratic processes. To ensure that these associations accord with local and cultural factors, as Davies suggested, SGAs can be designed to emulate the structure of the National Central Government, consisting of executive, legislative and judicial branches. Just like the actual electoral process, the SGAs can also have election committees that facilitate fair and legitimate polls, remind students about their civic duties, such as voting, and provide information on student candidates.

The provision of a platform for students to become involved in an apolitical and mock democratic process will not only improve their educational experiences but will also give them an opportunity to learn first-hand about the importance of pluralistic and democratic organizational systems. The creation of SGAs can be the first step in achieving a grassroots solution that mitigates youth disillusionment and supports democratic processes. Over a longer horizon, SGAs will provide leadership development and organizational training, fostering a future generation of selfless leaders — a political class that Pakistan sorely needs, supported by an electorate that the world cannot afford to ignore.

In an historic first, Chinese authorities have designated September 3 a day of nationwide remembrance — and vacation. It will mark the 70th anniversary China’s own V-J day, or what authorities are calling “The 70th Anniversary of Victories in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Against Fascism.” Despite the breathless name, online reaction has evinced scant nationalism. Most are simply complaining the break isn’t longer.

On Weibo, China’s pre-eminent public-facing social media platform, the news came via state-run China Central Television, which posted cheerily, “The entire country will have vacation on September 3!” The time off, the announcement read, will “make it more convenient for citizens to participate in memorial activities.” The break period will span three days, from Thursday, Sept. 3 through Saturday, Sept. 5. It appears some of this will be a diao jia — not a vacation, but a re-adjustment of off days. This means it’s possible workers will be asked to work on the weekends before and after, legerdemain Chinese authorities frequently use to reduce the true number of effective idle days.

Chinese social media often serves as China’s proverbial id, where nationalists congregate to vent their spleen. But the response to the latest announcement is less celebratory than cantankerous. The CCTV announcement has already garnered over 103,000 shares and 16,500 comments; a related hashtag has 130,000 mentions. The most popular posts seemed less interested in excoriating Japan than in pushing for more days off, complaining about make-up days, and kvetching about how the holiday will be useless to students still on summer vacation. The most up-voted reads, perhaps humorously, “One day is not enough to commemorate — because we truly hate Fascism!” Other popular posts made a similar joke, one calling for eight days of vacation, one for each year of war against Japan. Some made more earnest patriotic appeals to “remember history keenly” or “never forget our national humiliation,” but they were, as of this writing, far between.

That does not mean the threat of violence is non-existent. One popular comment asked presciently whether Japanese businesses in China will be given the day off. Another wrote, “I’m guessing our hospitals won’t have a vacation.” Last year’s anniversary passed without major incident, but September 2012 saw widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations after Japanese authorities had nationalized ownership of what they call the Senkakus and Chinese call the Diaoyu, a collection of small, barren islands in the East China Sea. Chinese protesters, some bussed in with government assistance, threw debris at the Chinese embassy in Beijing, vandalized Japanese cars (regardless of the nationality of their owners), and attacked Japanese businesses and even Japanese nationals. Most Chinese did not support the violence, but that did not stop those determined to inflict it.

The upcoming commemoration will mark only the second time that China has treated the anniversary as a national holiday. Last year’s memorial activities included silent tribute by the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, China’s most powerful policy-making body, at a flower-laying ceremony in Beijing’s Museum of the War of the Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression as well as an address by Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Beijing symposium to mark the occasion. According to Hong Kong-based Phoenix media, the upcoming holiday will mark the first time since 1949, the actual victory day, that the entire country has been given that day off. (State media has also announced that the governments of Chinese territories Hong Kong and Macau have also announced a “one-time special holiday” for September 3.)

In the short term, the declaration is unlikely to make the already-frosty relationship between China and Japan any warmer. Chinese resentment over Japanese World War II-era atrocities still lingers; more recently, in November 2013, China thumbed its nose at Japan when it declared de facto control over air space in the East China Sea. Behind the scenes, the two governments lack robust communication, although Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Xi shared an awkward November 2014 handshake, then met bilaterally in April during the Asian African Summit in Jakarta. That last meeting was significant because it happened at all, but it was otherwise uneventful. Many around the world are surely hoping the first Thursday in September unfolds similarly.

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian contributed research. 

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I admit freely that I have an unusual way of winding down at night. Often I do so by watching either the first or last 10 minutes of the film Top Gun. As a firm advocate of trade with a keen understanding of how it underpins America’s global standing, Senate Democrats’ defeat of President Barack Obama’s effort to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) was an evening that required serious wind-down time.

Tuesday I chose the last ten minutes of the film. The pilot protagonist, “Maverick,” had experienced serious loss. His radar intercept officer “Goose” had perished in a training mission. As fellow pilot “Iceman” faces six Soviet MiGs and is in serious trouble as he tries to protect a wounded U.S. Navy ship, he calls Maverick in to help. As he sits above of the mad scramble of jets below, Maverick hesitates. The anxiety over the loss of Goose makes him pause. His new partner “Merlin” implores him to maneuver their plane into the fight. He still wavers, but in the end moves past his loss, engages, and does what needs to be done to protect America’s ship.

That is the perfect metaphor for what happened on Tuesday. Many in America are anxious over the economic losses we have experienced as technology has automated many tasks and increased global competition has lowered prices. Both of these trends have put pressure on wages, particularly for those jobs requiring less technical skills. We are indeed in a mad scramble with many other nations to determine who will fulfill the wants and desires of emerging markets’ growing middle classes.

Our economic ship of state is dead in the water in a supposed recovery that few feel, and President Obama called in the U.S. Congress to help.

He understands the potential that free trade has to restart the engine of America’s economic ship. The U.S. Senate hesitated. Many joined Merlin in imploring them to engage, rather than cower in fear-induced protectionism. Yet, rather than engage, the U.S. Senate abandoned the field, leaving Iceman and the struggling ship to perish.

There are many issues that crowd this debate. Most are chimeras camouflaging protectionist intents. From the 20,000 foot level this debate comes down to whether or not America will continue to lead or not.

America’s ultimate soft power is commerce, especially its post-World War II tradition of marshaling global support to reduce trade barriers. As the country with some of the lowest market hurdles, no one benefits more from tearing down barriers than American workers. Obstructing the effort to reduce impediments hurts America’s middle class.

Nothing reduces the likelihood that America will need to use its hard power than the advance of trade. As the French economist and politician Frederic Bastiat once said, “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” Former senior defense officials on the military and civilian side understand this. That is why they have implored Congress to act on TPA.

There is perhaps nothing more vital to the economic future of America’s children than whether trade in the region is governed by an Asian agreement led by China (that excludes America) or a Pacific agreement led by America.

As I bring a group of students to China to study in the weeks ahead, I dread all the chiding I will hear from the Chinese noting how President Obama’s snub from his own party is proof positive that democracy does not work and how their form of government is superior. I will of course rebut those jibes. What will be harder to refute is the corrosive impact of thinly veiled protectionist efforts on America’s global standing.

Luckily in politics one can push the pause button and prevent the MiGs from annihilating Iceman and the ship.

As we get to the next effort to revitalize America’s economic future and leadership status, I hope that the end of Top Gun will be foretelling. When Top Gun instructor “Charlie” asks Maverick how it is going, his reply was “On the first one, I crashed and burned,” but on the second try, “It’s looking good so far.” For the sake of American workers and those who view American leadership as a positive force of good, let us hope for a happy ending to this story.

Paramount Pictures/Archive Photos

With the Israeli-Palestinian peace process all but dead and buried, a growing chorus of countries and international bodies are moving toward recognizing Palestinian sovereignty in an attempt to push the Israeli government to make concessions toward their Palestinian rivals. On Wednesday, that effort received a powerful boost when Pope Francis announced that the Vatican has concluded a treaty recognizing the state of Palestine.

The move, a Vatican spokesman told the Associated Press, indicates a “recognition that the state exists.”

Following the collapse of U.S.-brokered talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestine has begun circumventing Washington by applying for membership at several U.N. bodies. It recently joined the International Criminal Court, where it’s lodged complaints over what it says are Israeli war crimes. The United Nations upgraded Palestine to a “non-member observer” in 2012, perturbing Israel, which faces increasing international isolation because of its continued occupation of Palestinian lands. Repeated fighting in the Gaza strip between Hamas militants and Israeli forces has further galvanized world opinion against Israel.

While many argue that the Vatican’s statement Wednesday has no legal significance, it does have important symbolic weight. The Vatican’s move can be seen as part of a growing movement to apply pressure on Israel to facilitate progress in the peace process. Following the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the United States signaled that it will re-evaluate the diplomatic protection it has offered Israel in the international fora where Palestine is now pursuing its claims to statehood. There is a growing movement at the United Nations Security to pass a resolution outlining a roadmap for future peace talks.

The Vatican statement is also the latest major diplomatic move by Francis, who since assuming the papacy in 2013, has emerged as an enormously popular champion of the global poor and other progressive causes. He has become a major diplomatic player, helping to broker the recent rapprochement between the United States and Cuba.

Wednesday’s announcement is not Francis’s first foray into Israeli-Palestinian politics. Francis expressed support for recent U.S.-backed talks and hosted then-Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican last year for a prayer meeting for peace in the Middle East. When he visited last year the Israeli-built wall that separates Israeli- and Palestinian-dominated territories, he lamented the “tragic consequences of the protracted conflict.”

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With a litany of unproved claims, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revived discussion about the circumstances in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.

Some of Hersh’s assertions in a 10,000-word London Review of Books article border on fantasy. He claims that bin Laden lived under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was given up for reward money by one of the agency’s officers, and was eventually eliminated in a U.S. raid covertly backed by Pakistan’s army commander and ISI chief.

According to Hersh, the Americans “blackmailed” Pakistan’s generals into helping them kill bin Laden but then stabbed them in the back for political reasons by denying them any credit for assisting in the raid by Navy SEALs. Instead of blaming ISI for sheltering bin Laden in Pakistan (which Hersh claims it did), he points the finger at the Obama administration for not acknowledging ISI’s role in the U.S. operation that killed the terrorist mastermind.

With the exception of the possibility of a Pakistani “walk in” selling information about bin Laden’s location, the other details of Hersh’s story simply do not add up. Hersh may have his unnamed sources, but he clearly does not know how Pakistan works. If the ISI had hidden bin Laden for five years, it would not have cooperated in the U.S. operation to kill him without demanding a serious quid pro quo.

Hersh explains the Obama administration’s eagerness to claim sole credit for finding and killing bin Laden in terms of domestic U.S. politics. But he offers no explanation as to why, after covertly helping the Americans, Pakistan’s generals would keep quiet about their role. The veteran reporter alludes to the idea that this might have been because of bin Laden’s popularity among the Pakistani public. But by 2011, bin Laden was no longer that popular — and in any case Pakistan’s military leaders have consistently ignored public opinion to ensure the flow of American aid. Hersh’s suggestion that Pakistan’s generals covertly helped Americans eliminate bin Laden simply to maintain the flow of U.S. dollars to the country — but kept it secret so as not to incur the wrath of the Pakistani street — does not hold water.

For several years before the bin Laden raid, Pakistan’s military and the ISI had been criticized in the U.S. media and Congress for double-dealing in the fight against terrorism. If the ISI had protected bin Laden (or held him prisoner) for five years before being found out by the Americans, the United States would have increased its leverage by going public with accusations of hiding bin Laden. But there’s no evidence that Washington held Islamabad’s feet to the fire.

If, however, a backroom deal had been negotiated to secure Pakistani cooperation in the raid on Abbottabad in return for U.S. silence, the ISI would have demanded some glory for its cooperation. Facilitating the raid, as narrated by Hersh, would have provided Pakistan’s military and ISI an opportunity to redeem themselves in American eyes. Hersh wants us to believe an entirely improbably scenario. According to him, Obama’s political requirements denied Pakistanis any credit and senior generals in Islamabad simply accepted that without pushing back.

Was the “walk-in” real?

To this day, there is no solid evidence of Pakistanis at the highest level of government knowing about bin Laden being in Pakistan — though there have been widespread suspicions. If, after being tipped off by a rogue Pakistani intelligence officer looking for personal reward, the United States planned a raid with covert help from Pakistani intelligence, why didn’t the cooperating Pakistani officials demand credit for assisting in targeting bin Laden in order to mitigate the bad press for previously protecting him? And what prevented the U.S. government from publicly acknowledging that they knew bin Laden had been officially protected? Was the need to keep the relationship with Islamabad on solid footing so important that the Obama administration would risk telling a lie this massive?

Hersh’s story is based on the fundamental premise that the U.S. government had bad intentions, including in their interactions with the Pakistan Army and the ISI. In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Hersh defends Pakistan’s generals. “Pakistan has a good army, not a bad army,” he declared, adding that the Obama administration’s cover story made the Pakistan army look incompetent because it didn’t know that bin Laden was residing in a garrison town just two miles from the country’s main military academy. But he still does not offer an explanation for why the Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, went along with the cover story.

The only point in Hersh’s story that seems plausible relates to the Pakistani officer who tipped off the Americans about bin Laden’s location. Further reporting by AFP and a story by NBC affirm the role of a Pakistani defector — though NBC later amended its story to clarify that while the defector provided information, it didn’t lead to finding bin Laden. The rumor that the CIA learned about bin Laden’s location through an ISI officer has been around since the Abbottabad raid. But I’ve also heard another version of the same story from Pakistani officials.

According to this version, the ISI officer only facilitated the CIA’s on-ground operation in Abbottabad after the U.S. spy agency started planning an operation based on intelligence obtained through other means. The CIA relocated the Pakistani officer — not because he was the man who tipped them off on bin Laden’s location — but because he acted without authority from his superiors in enabling the CIA to conduct an operation on Pakistani soil.

The NBC story also repeats the suspicion of U.S. officials — about Pakistani complicity in hiding bin Laden — though, obviously, there isn’t enough evidence for the U.S. government to formally and publicly make that charge. As a witness to Pakistan’s response after the bin Laden raid I find it difficult to believe Hersh’s conspiracy theory about so many people in both the U.S. and Pakistani governments and militaries telling a big coordinated lie.

In the middle of a diplomatic dance

I was serving as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States at the time of the SEAL raid in Abbottabad. I was on my way to Islamabad via London and Dubai when the operation took place; I first found out about it upon landing at Heathrow airport in the early morning of May 2, 2011. My superiors in Islamabad instructed me to turn around immediately. I was back in Washington by around 5 p.m. local time.

My instructions were clear: to ensure that the U.S. government, Congress, and the media did not blame Pakistan’s government, armed forces, or intelligence services for allowing Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country, as that would have been a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1373. My bosses, both civilian and military, were obviously concerned that Pakistan would be taken to task. But nothing in the conduct of Generals Kayani and Pasha (both of whom later forced me to resign as ambassador) hinted at their collusion with the U.S. in the Abbottabad raid.

The generals were embarrassed, both over bin Laden having being found in Pakistan and the U.S. taking place raid without knowledge or approval. They attributed their lack of response to the incursion by U.S. helicopters from Afghanistan to the absence of adequate radar coverage on the western border — a symptom of Pakistan’s view of India as the only threat to its national security. Kayani and Pasha also wanted to ensure that there would be no reprisals against Pakistan over allegations of official complicity in hiding bin Laden.

A bevy of damage diplomacy followed. A few days after the Abbottabad raid, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry visited Islamabad. Gen. Kayani was eager during that visit for a statement by the U.S. senator emphasizing Pakistan’s position as an American ally in the war against terrorism. Kerry agreed to the reassuring language proposed by Kayani. The Kerry visit was followed by a visit by Pasha to Washington during which he was keen to convince the CIA that the ISI had no knowledge of bin Laden being in Pakistan. In a meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta, Pasha listed the CIA’s own failures over the years to advance his argument that intelligence gathering is often imperfect and that the enemy can hide within plain sight.

Notwithstanding my own disagreements with Kayani and Pasha, I found no reason to believe that either general was feigning ignorance or outrage while being secretly in league with the Americans. The Foreign Office also asked me to protest the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by U.S. forces in conducting the operation and to point out how it violated the norms of international conduct between two sovereign countries that were, at least officially, allies. I didn’t make much headway.

The U.S. officials I interacted with were not only unwilling to apologize for violating Pakistani sovereignty but demanded that Islamabad cooperate in giving Americans access to data and persons found at the house in Abbottabad where the raid was conducted. They also demanded the return of the wreckage of the stealth helicopter that had been damaged and left behind during the operation. Pakistan handed over the wreckage a few days later, though not without prodding by the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen.

Security Council cover

Immediately after the raid, the U.S. government persuaded the president of the U.N. Security Council to issue a statement, “welcoming [the] end of Osama bin Laden’s ability to perpetrate terrorist acts.” Obama administration officials I spoke with pointed to UNSC resolutions and this statement by the Security Council president to justify their unilateral action in Abbottabad in disregard of Pakistani sovereignty.

Pakistan’s protests about violation of its sovereignty and against the U.N. Security Council president’s statement came within hours of the Abbottabad raid. Our side was stunned because it had not been kept in the loop. At the United Nations, the Security Council president was busy listing justifications under international law for the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. But none of these responses would have occurred if, as Hersh says, the cover story about the unilateral raid had been “manufactured” in the White House just two hours after the raid, in a cynical ploy to help Obama’s re-election bid.

On the evening of May 2, I was interviewed on CNN. There I made what remains a valid point: I said that it was obvious someone in Pakistan protected Osama bin Laden. The question was to determine whether bin Laden’s support system lay “within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan.” I had asked for “a full inquiry into finding out why our intelligence services were not able to track him earlier.”

I never got an answer to my question. Pakistan created a commission that conducted its hearings in a non-transparent manner and declined to publish its findings. The Obama administration went back to business-as-usual with Pakistan — without insisting or pushing Islamabad for answers on the tough questions about bin Laden’s stay in Pakistan from 2006 to 2011. I understand how the failure of both Washington and Islamabad to disclose a more complete understanding of what transpired in the years leading up to the raid feeds conspiracy theories and the presumption that something is fishy.

But it is this failure — explaining bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, not the elaborate conspiracies Hersh alleges on the say-so of a single retired U.S. counterterrorism official — which has been a major disservice to truth.

Both the people of Pakistan and the people of the United States would benefit from detailed answers to questions about bin Laden’s support network in Pakistan. But don’t hold your breath. It might not be in either Islamabad’s or Washington’s interest to wake sleeping dogs.

AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images

The Obama administration’s decision to let Shell back into Alaskan waters opens the door to eventual full-scale Arctic oil exploration. But it also opens up the White House to howls of anger from green groups concerned that Obama’s move poses serious potential risks to the environment despite the president’s repeated promises to mount a serious fight against climate change.

The decision Monday to authorize Shell to search for oil in the Chukchi Sea, off the northwestern tip of Alaska, marks a return to icy waters for a company whose last polar foray in 2012 ended in fiasco. If it can overcome a host of economic, technical, and logistical challenges, Shell could find huge rewards in the oil-rich Arctic — with potentially big implications for other companies and countries, such as Russia, who are banking on offshore Arctic production to offset declining output at onshore fields.

Though Arctic exploration makes little economic sense today, with oil prices languishing around $65 a barrel, it is the kind of frontier play that could be crucial to meeting future global energy needs. That helps explain why Shell, which is busy working to digest its $70 billion dollar acquisition of BG Group, a British energy firm, and which is trimming back capital expenditure, will open its wallet for another tricky season drilling exploratory wells in the shallow waters off Wainwright, Alaska.

“The Arctic is obviously a very long term play, so the oil price now or next year has relatively little impact on projects that are unlikely to start producing oil before the 2020s,” said Duncan Milligan, an Arctic expert at oil consultants Wood Mackenzie. “You’re looking at a long-term view of fundamentals, so the companies that can fund that kind of exploration are continuing to do so.”

For international oil companies like Shell, lining up future production prospects is their corporate lifeblood and lifeline: Market valuations are determined, in part, by how much potential oil reserves companies lock up for future use. But most of the world’s promising areas for exploration are off-limits to private firms like Shell, Exxon, and Chevron. That makes Alaska tempting despite all its obstacles.

“There aren’t that many huge conventional basins, and Chukchi is one of them. It’s really about the size of the prize; they think there’s something there that’s worth it,” Milligan said. The U.S. government estimates that the Chukchi Sea could hold 15 billion barrels of oil.

But the challenges are daunting. The Arctic, covered in sea ice much of the year, is a much tougher environment than places like the Gulf of Mexico, where most U.S. offshore production is concentrated. It requires specialized equipment, including drilling rigs that can withstand rough seas and winds. (That’s a lesson that Shell says it has learned after a series of mishaps in 2012.) Proof of how tough a nut the Arctic can be is found in the massive Shtokman gas field north of Russia. First discovered in 1988, it still hasn’t been developed.

And trickier logistics, with a much shorter summer drilling season with operations far away from local ports and airfields, make drilling more expensive. In general, Wood Mackenzie says, fields like those in the Chukchi Sea require oil at about $100 a barrel to be economical.

Finally, Arctic operations present a potentially much bigger environmental risk than other offshore oil and gas plays. That’s in part because of the harsh environment, and because the paucity of local infrastructure makes it harder to respond to accidents and spills. In 2010, when BP suffered a fatal explosion on a Gulf of Mexico rig, it took months to shut off the flow of oil, even though the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon was surrounded by nearby U.S. Coast Guard vessels and aircraft. For the Chukchi Sea, the nearest Coast Guard station is about 1,000 miles away.

That’s one reason environmental groups lambasted the Obama administration’s decision to greenlight Shell’s Arctic adventure: They worry about the risk of a bad accident in a pristine setting; memories linger of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil-tanker spill that fouled Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Greenpeace campaign to stop Shell, for instance, features a countdown until the summer drilling season starts superimposed on a group of polar bears.

Green groups are also upset that Obama, who has made fighting climate change a centerpoint of his second term, would authorize additional offshore oil production. Environmental campaigner Bill McKibben assailed what he called Obama’s “climate-change denial” for authorizing Shell’s Arctic operations even while talking up the need to tackle emissions. In contrast, for almost seven years, the Obama administration has withheld approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast, in large part because of worries the pipe will accelerate the production of dirty Canadian tar sands and cause more greenhouse-gas emissions.

However, the U.S. State Department concluded that the emissions impact from Keystone would be minimal. And energy experts cautioned against conflating legitimate environmental concerns over Arctic drilling with the vanishingly small contribution that such oil production would make to global emissions.

In any event, Monday’s authorization for Shell hardly represents a sudden about-face for the administration. Days before the BP accident, Obama had planned to open up parts of the Atlantic coast to drilling for the first time; this year, he did. In the same offshore drilling plan, the administration opened the door to a small number of lease sales off the coast of Alaska, seeking to balance energy needs and environmental considerations.

Ultimately, though, environmentalists won’t be the only ones keeping a close eye on Shell’s return to Alaska. Russia’s Rosneft and Exxon were working together to start Arctic offshore oil production in the Kara Sea this year, before Western sanctions kneecapped Exxon’s ability to work alongside the Russian firm. Boosting Arctic production is the Russian energy sector’s great hope to reverse long-term decline at old Soviet fields onshore. Lessons learned from Shell’s return to the Chukchi Sea could help smooth the way for Russia to finally tap its own ice-covered riches.

Photo credit: U.S. Dept. of Defense/Flickr

Not since the end of the Cold War have U.S-German relations loomed so large in international affairs. Ongoing Russian intervention in Ukraine has been met with U.S. and European economic sanctions against Moscow. But Germany’s geographic proximity and commercial ties to Russia give Berlin and Washington different stakes in the confrontation. With NATO warning of a new Russian buildup in Ukraine and the approaching European Union decision in July on whether to continue its sanctions, there is an ever-present specter of a split in NATO over the long-term trajectory of the alliance’s dealings with Russia.

The centrality of the U.S.-German relationship in dealing with Russia was underscored by the back-to-back meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 10 followed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on May 12.

So far, the Ukraine crisis has yet to drive a wedge between Washington and Berlin. Roughly seven-in-ten (72 percent) Americans see Germany as a reliable ally and about six-in-ten (62 percent) of Germans see the United States in a similar light, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in association with the Bertelsmann Foundation.

Despite some evidence in 2014 that Germans might have preferred to keep their distance from both Moscow and Washington, today a majority of Germans (57 percent) believe it is more important for their country to have strong ties with the United States than with Russia. Just 15 percent of Germans prefer strong ties with Russia and only 21 percent volunteer that it is best to have an equally close relationship with both.

But there’s some interesting internal geography at play. East and West Germans differ in their views: While 61 percent of Germans living in the West favor a strong affiliation with America, just 44 percent of people living in the East agree. And while 23 percent of people in the East voice support for strong ties with Russia, only 12 percent of those in the West agree. Old habits die hard.

On the issue of Ukraine, when asked if it is more important to be tough with Russia or maintain a strong economic relationship, half of Germans voice the view it is more important to be tough. In spite of Germany’s long-standing trade, investment, and energy ties with Russia, only about a third (35 percent) of Germans express the opinion that it is better to have a strong economic relationship with Moscow. Notably, younger Germans, ages 18 to 29, are much more supportive (53 percent) of standing up to Russia over Ukraine than are older Germans 65 years of age or older (36 percent).

But that doesn’t mean there is a willingness to ratchet up sanctions in the future. Americans and Germans disagree about the nature of the current U.S. and EU posture toward Russia over Ukraine.

Americans want to up the pressure on Moscow, while most Germans do not support a tougher stance. More than half of Americans (54 percent) believe that U.S. policy toward Russia is not tough enough. And 59 percent say the EU is not being strong enough.

At the same time, roughly six-in-ten Germans (62 percent) think the U.S. position with regard to Russia is too tough (27 percent) or about right (35 percent). Similarly, 62 percent of Germans believe that EU actions against Russia are too strong (18 percent) or about right (44 percent). At the same time, only 23 percent of Germans think Washington is not tough enough, the third option offered respondents. And 26 percent believe the European Union is not aggressive enough.

Such disagreements about what to do regarding Russia are rooted in deeper differences over the use of military force. Surveys have consistently shown that Germans are far less supportive than Americans regarding the use of military force to maintain order in the world: in 2011 75 percent of Americans voiced the view that force is sometimes necessary compared with only 50 percent of Germans. More than 80 percent of Germans supported Berlin’s decision to not use military force in Iraq, according to Pew Research surveys at the time. In Afghanistan, where Germany had troops, by 2010 and 2011, majorities of Germans wanted NATO and U.S. troops withdrawn. And Germany abstained in the United Nations vote on intervention in Libya. Indeed, the latest Pew Research survey finds a distinct German reticence about taking on more of the global security burden. Asked if Berlin should play a more active military role in helping to maintain peace and stability in the world, only 25 percent of Germans agree. Just over two-thirds (69 percent) believe that, given its history, Germany should limit its military role in world affairs.

Americans, however, have little of this historical baggage: a majority would welcome Germany taking on more strategic responsibilities. More than half (54 percent) think Berlin should play a more active military role, while only 37 percent say it should limit its security activities. The book-end meetings with Putin by Merkel and Kerry are clearly no accident. They are intended to send Putin a message that Germany and the United States are united in their opposition to his actions in Ukraine. But the new Pew survey indicates the two allies’ publics may be sending a different message.

The German-American disagreement about how tough to be with Russia, coupled with differences over the use of force in general and specifically Germany’s future military role in the region, suggest that the mutual trust in each other as allies and Germans’ preference for closer ties with the United States could be put to a test in any new confrontation with Russia. What may be at stake is not just the sanctions regime drawing a noose around the Kremlin, but rather the alliance between Berlin and Washington.

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