Foreign Policy Blogs

This is the concluding part of a three-part series. Read the first two parts here and here.

The Stealth Disruptor

With most South Asian nations sharing a history that is marred by ethnic, religious and geographic disputes, forming a seamless Union of cooperating members was not going to be easy even in the best of circumstances. Increasingly dwarfing, however, all intra-SAARC issues is the escalating India-China rivalry in the region.

For the purpose of brevity, let’s restrict ourselves to the rivalry between the two giants with regards the three South Asian nations mentioned in the previous section.

Landing a blow to the recently growing bilateral relations between the two countries, Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 6 cancelled his scheduled visit to Nepal in October.

What was not lost upon the region’s analysts was the timing of the decision—coming as it did around the three-day India visit of the new Nepalese Prime Minister Mr Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda.

While the ostensible reasons for the move appear to be the Chinese disappointment with Nepal’s apparent lack of preparedness and commitment to joining ‘One Belt, One Road’—a project connecting China with the rest of Eurasia – and the Nepalese administration ‘not implementing the agreements and understandings’ agreed upon between the two countries during former Nepal prime minister Mr. K P Oli’s visit to Beijing in March, it is understood that the Beijing is upset about the recent turn of events in Nepal that lead to the ouster of Oli, considered to be pro-China.

This, Beijing feels, after China quickly transported about 1,000 metric tonnes of petroleum to Nepal to allow it to tide over the severe shortage of fuel and other essential commodities during the Madhesi blockade of entry points with India. The Chinese government had also gone out of its way to pledge support to Nepal’s ‘geographical integrity and sovereignty’ during the crisis.

The Beijing-friendly Oli, shortly after resigning just before a trust vote that he was expected to lose, said that the opposition parties “hatched a conspiracy for narrow interests, and I am stunned by that”. The ‘conspiracy’, China believed, was the handiwork of India.

His ouster and Prachanda deciding to choose India for his official visit, even though a norm in the Indo-Nepalese context, is seen as a victory of sort by the Indian establishment, which expects Nepal to move closer to India again.

Meanwhile, the impoverished nation of 28 million awaits reconstruction and rehabilitation after the deadly 2015 earthquake.

A similar contest between the dragon and the elephant is active in Bangladesh too.

China has a deep interest in and is heavily invested in Bangladesh. It is, in fact, Bangladesh’s largest trading partner. It has bagged a $705 million contract for a two-lane tunnel under the Karnaphuli River and the $4.47 billion Padma Bridge rail link project. The Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) recently granted a $66 million loan for two power distribution projects and the improvement of transmission lines in Bangladesh.

China is also Bangladesh’s main supplier of military hardware, supplying five maritime patrol vessels, surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles, 16 fighter jets, 45 tanks and two corvettes in the last five years. The new Ming-class Chinese submarines are likely to be added to the Bangladesh naval fleet later this year.

However, China has recently suffered two stunning setbacks in the country.

India’s state-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) bagged a $1.6 billion power station construction contract in Bangladesh after undercutting its Chinese rival, the Harbin Electric International Company. The 1,320MW thermal power station will be the largest foreign project by an Indian power company. The Indian government’s external lending arm, the Exim Bank, would provide more than two-thirds of the funding at the low soft interest for the project.

The deal is seen as the ‘second big win’ by India over China in Bangladesh, after the cancellation of the long-deliberated China-Bangladesh deal to build the huge Sonadia deep-sea port near Chittagong, the country’s major port.

The Sonadia port was seen in India as a part of China’s ‘string of pearls’, a network of Chinese military and commercial facilities in the Indian Ocean region. New Delhi views these ‘pearls’ as a Chinese strategy to encircle India. The port would have been dangerously close to India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a strategically important archipelago of 572 islands that houses a military base and surveillance and monitoring stations.

The Indian government has now expressed interest in building a $15.5 billion deep-sea Payra Port project, to the west of Bangladesh’s choked Chittagong port, and very close to the Indian coastline.

The Indian response to the Chinese presence in Bangladesh extends to other areas of cooperation too. Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, during his visit to Dhaka in June 2015, signed 22 agreements with the Sheikh Hasina government – including deals on ending a four-decade border dispute between the two countries, maritime security and the establishment of special economic zones in Bangladesh.

India and Bangladesh have also agreed to India building a transit route to its northeast region via Bangladesh by rail, road, and waterways.

At the Bangladesh Investment and Policy Summit in Dhaka on 24 and 25 January 2016, an Indian team of businessmen and investors promised over $11 billion for infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, including an LNG power plant and a gas pipeline from India to Bangladesh.

The last is yet to be written in the India-China geopolitical rivalry in Bangladesh.

But the biggest and the most volatile geopolitical theatre for the bitter contest between the two giants is the proposed $46 billion (41 billion Euros) China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).  The corridor is devised to link Pakistan’s southern Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea to China’s western Xinjiang region.

But it passes through what India claims is its territory illegally occupied by Pakistan (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, or PoK).

The area also serves as the home to two of the many Pakistan-based groups that the US and the European Union have designated as terrorist outfits – Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). Beijing’s refusal to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar at the UN Security Council in April 2016 had greatly irked India.

In a one-to-one meeting on September 5 with Chinese President Mr Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hangzhou city, Indian Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi is said to have conveyed that New Delhi and Beijing “would have to be sensitive to each other’s strategic interests“.

Prior to the G20 Summit in China, Indian prime minister’s public mention of Balochistan during his Independence Day speech to the nation on August 15 had triggered a wave of alarm both in Pakistan and China.

A rather innocuous statement thanking the people of Balochistan (and not Pakistan, its parent nation) for good wishes to him was noted because CPEC, on the Pakistani side, ends in that restive province.

During a seminar in the Paroon area of Panjgur district on September 2, activists of one such group, the Balochistan Republican Party (BRP), said Islamabad wants to build the CPEC in the region “on the dead bodies of Baloch people with Beijing’s help“.

Pakistan has long accused India of creating trouble in the region via funding and arming insurgent groups that are fighting for independence for the region.

Talking to India’s leading news daily The Times of India recently, South Asia expert Hu Shisheng said:

“My personal view is that if India is adamant and if Indian factor is found by China or Pakistan in disrupting the process of CPEC, if that becomes a reality, it will really become a disturbance to China-India relations, India-Pakistan relations“.

In other words, one of the most serious global military escalations could just be a corridor away.

There is a heated game of one-upmanship going on between India and China in Sri Lanka and Maldives too. But about that at a later time.

Clearly, after being grounded by India-Pakistan tensions for the most part of its two-decade history, the Association has now been completely turned into a sideshow of the India-China geopolitical one-upmanship.

The contest, I’m afraid, is between two very ancient civilisations and current global powers. Everything suggests that it would outlast the India-Pakistan rivalry by a civilizational distance. And that can have far-reaching consequences for the utopian idea called the South Asian Union.

Note: This piece was written prior to a deadly terror attack on an Indian military facility on September 18, which killed 17 Indian army personnel. All the four killed terrorists belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group. This led to India and five other nations pulling out of the 19th SAARC Summit, leading to the cancellation of the same.

The post The Tattered Mirage of a South Asian Union is Dying Fast – Pt. 3 appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Source: BBC

On 18th June, former Chinese Ambassador to France Wu Jianmin, a senior diplomat, lost his life in a car accident. This shocked the Chinese diplomat community. Wu is a famous representative of the dovish faction in the contemporary diplomatic community of China. Many foreign observant analysts believe that he is the most rational diplomat in contemporary China. Different parties have mourned his death after the accident, including his hawkish counterparts who used to debate with him. Putting aside all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding Wu’s death, it is worth examing the ‘Wu Jianmin phenomenon’ itself.

Wu Jianmin used to be the French translator for Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai  and became a member of the first batch of diplomats representing the People’s Republic of China at the United Nations in 1971. After that, he served as the Chinese ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands, France and other European countries. Thus Wu is widely perceived as “the expert of Europe” in China. He did not theorize his ideas like Henry Kissinger or other diplomat-turned scholars. His speeches were mainly based on his personal experiences. However, we can still summarize four fulcrums in ‘Wu’s Diplomatic Thought’:

First, Wu believed that ‘peace and development’ remains the core theme of contemporary international political agenda. Given any circumstance, war is not a wise option to choose. This is true even when the country gets involved in a sovereignty-related dispute. Directed by this thought, Wu upheld the belief of ‘win-win cooperation’ when discussing the topic of ‘power-transition moment in China-U.S. relationship’ and the South China Sea dispute. He implemented Deng Xiaoping’s principle of ‘joint development’ and believed that war could not solve problems. That is why he is often characterized as a dove.

Second, regarding the strategy of China’s development, Wu has always emphasized the importance of having an open-door policy. He believed that the closed-door policy in the earlier period of modern China has resulted in a lack of understanding of the outside world, which caused the country to lag behind the others without realizing it. Wu believed this was at the root of various man-made disasters during the Mao era and  was glad to see improvements under Deng.

Deng’s ‘Reform and Opening’ policy allowed China to be integrated with the world. The rise of China in recent years is indeed benefiting from an open policy rather than the reverse. Thus, when there were political problems in China or another country, Wu advocated maintaining close contacts with the international community at all levels. Because of this. he was criticized by the Leftist as endorsing the U.S.-led globalization.

Third, Wu insisted that the strategy of ‘keeping a low profile’ proposed by Deng Xiaoping after the Tiananmen incident is still significant today, although Chinese leaders are no longer talking about the concept anymore. Generally speaking, Wu disagreed with the aggressive doctrine in Chinese diplomatic policies. He stressed that ‘China has no intention to compete for hegemony with the U.S.’ and quoted former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s saying, ‘Keeping a low profile must be China’s policy for at least another hundred years’.

Such attitude was considered by hawks as ‘weak’, and some radicals even condemned Wu as a traitor. Wu simply did not think China had the power to seek hegemony in the foreseeable future. He did not deny that there would be a day when China could compete for it, thus he is not a liberal. Yet, to the nationalists in China, Wu’s stand was already empowering the ambition of others while downplaying China’s glory.

Fourth, Wu was on his guard towards nationalism. He was aware that there is a rise of national sentiment and populism in China and the world, and frequently spoke up and pointed out that “populism will lead to politicians that are puppeteered by nationalism” and eventually leading to the disappearance of rationality. Wu believed that “the nature of populism is to oppose reform; the nature of nationalism is to oppose opening up.” In fact, this observation was the topic of his last public speech. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the Chinese Communist Party needs nationalism as a totem to maintain its legitimacy, particularly in today’s China where the lack of faith in society is accompanied by slower economic growth. The sentiment of nationalism will only intensify, while Wu’s view and position within the system were increasingly marginalized.

The notable difference between Wu and other Chinese diplomats is that, not only that he insisted the four ideas above when he was in office, but became more active in preaching them after his retirement. He continuously preaches these ideas through ‘Track II Diplomacy’. In 2003, he served as the Dean of the Diplomatic Academy after leaving office, taught courses like ‘communication studies class’ in the hope that the ideas listed above could be theorized into a discipline. He was the Vice President of the Tenth Foreign Affairs Committee of the CPPCC National Committee and former President of the International Exhibitions Bureau, which is a multinational organization headquartered in France that coordinates World Expo. Wu became this institution’s first president from China, which has a unique symbolic meaning.

To the significant section of internet users in China, Wu was famous for his involvement in the public debate after his retirement and is perceived as a leading public intellectual in Chinese diplomatic community. Wu was not only diligent in writing and giving speeches on different occasions, he is also active in debating with the hawkish scholars and commentators in public media. This has become one of the most discussed issues by Chinese internet users. In 2014, Wu and the PLA Major General Luo Yuan, who is a famous representative of the hawk faction, had a fierce debate on the topic of ‘Chinese Diplomatic and Strategic Situation’ on Phoenix Television, pushing the ‘hawk-dove debate’ to a climax.

In April, Wu criticized the Global Times, a leading semi-official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, for inciting nationalist sentiment, misjudgment of world situations, which Wu believed were not conducive to China’s diplomacy. Later on, the chief editor of Global Times Hu Xijin, who is a self-claimed member of the Hawk faction, refuted Wu’s views on the Internet. Wu’s hectic schedule of constant traveling to deliver speeches after speeches and long working hours may even be a contributing factor in his fatal accident.

In fact, Wu Jianmin and Luo Yuan are both far away from Chinese diplomatic decision-making level and do not possess a direct policy impact. Whereas, their official contacts allow the Chinese government to take advantage of them to test the air from two sides, to convey messages so as to make policy evaluation. Hence, the hawk and dove faction in the Chinese diplomatic community are actually complementary to each other. They are responsible for balancing different situations in needs.

Whether Luo Yuan, Hu Xijin or other hawkish representatives who used to refute Wu’s view in public all express regret on the loss of a ‘critical friend’, saying that ‘a gentleman gets along with others but not necessarily agree with them’. They also dismissed the sensational news material hyped up by the opportunistic media outlets. From these observations, we could try to imagine Wu’s elegance and grace when he was alive. This also tells us that these two factions are not defending their own interests but competing for readers.

Professor Wang Jiangyu from the National University of Singapore once pointed out that Wu’s significance in contemporary Chinese diplomacy is as a ‘check and balance to nationalism and populism’. It is not easy to find another influential diplomat who is willing to take this path. Some members in Chinese diplomat community suggest that Fu Ying, who used to be the Deputy Foreign Minister and gained a reputation of elegance and visionary, could be the candidate to succeed Wu’s role after her retirement. Fu has shown a preference in attending different forums with a ‘dovish’ image, which makes her quite different from typical retired ambassadors. However, what makes Wu special is that he knew the rule of the internet age. He knew how to arouse attention. This is difficult for those who has long been in official roles.

Without Wu’s balance, it is expected that in the short term, the voice of the hawk faction will become more dominant. If Wu was alive, the responsibility of advising citizens not to overreact to the South China Sea dispute would have fallen on his shoulders. Unfortunately, we cannot hear a credible sound that is capable of assuming this role now. If one day, due to the fear of nationalism and populism, all Chinese commentators from dovish faction are sidelined, China’s future will become a real source of concern.

The post Wu Jianmin’s Rational Diplomacy appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

President Rodrigo Duterte shakes hands with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang at the State Palace in Hanoi on September 29. (KING RODRIGUEZ/ Presidential Photo)

Known for his off-the-cuff inflammatory remarks, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte latest rants have caused international concern, resulting in capital flight and drops in the stockmarket and currency. Dubbed “Duterte Harry” for his crackdown on drug pushers, he has managed in a mere three months on the job to insult a number of world leaders, including the Pope, who he blamed for traffic jams: “I wanted to call him: ‘Pope, son of a whore, go home. Do not visit us again’.” Immediately prior to a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Laos he reacted to a suggestion that Barack Obama might question him over human rights issues, calling the U.S. president a “son of a whore,” which he later explained was not meant to be a personal attack. And when the European Union government warned Duterte to end mass killings of suspected drug dealers and users, he reacted sharply. “I have read the condemnation of the European Union. I’m telling them, ‘F**k you,'” which Duterte was filmed saying during a speech to local businessmen in his hometown of Davao City on September 20.

In recent weeks, Duterte’s bombastic remarks have spooked both domestic and foreign investors, with the Philippine peso sinking to a seven-year low and global funds selling Philippine stocks for 23 straight days.

Duterte has also threatened to pull out of the United Nations, and told U.S. special forces, which are helping Philippine counterinsurgency troops fight an Islamic insurgency, to leave the country, saying “These US special forces, they have to go in Mindanao.” He has also vowed to end cooperation with the U.S. military in patrolling the disputed South China Sea, confirmed by a statement from Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr., arguing “To engage the Philippines with another state, say the United States, in so far as a joint patrol in the area where we have made our claims, or the exclusive economic zone, can be considered as a provocative action by other claimants, particular China, which will impede the peaceful settlement of our disputes.”

While pivoting away from the U.S., Duterte is looking to boost economic ties with Russia and China, and told his defense secretary on September 13th to buy weapons from Russia and China rather than America. Duterte also plans to hold bilateral talks with Beijing to discuss conflicting claims on the South China Sea.

And so it was in this context that Duterte paid his first official visit to Vietnam (his fourth country to visit) last week to meet his counterpart, Tran Dai Quang.  The two-day visit to Hanoi, marked the 40th anniversary of bilateral relations between the two countries.  Fortunately, he did not produce any more publicized zingers—these took place after he returned to Davao and likened himself to Hitler with promises to kill 3 million Filipino drug addicts.  

What the visit did accomplish, though, was to build on their strategic partnership agreement signed last year.  Both countries are claimants to vast areas of the South China Sea, with Manila leading the way on dispute resolution through its filing of a case in 2014 before an international tribunal in The Hague. In July, the tribunal finally issued a ruling in favor of the Philippines and against China’s nine-dash-line claim, which was determined to have no legal basis.

After arriving back in the Philippines, Duterte told reporters, “We reaffirm commitment to maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation and over flight as well as unimpeded commerce in the region, particularly in the South China Sea”. The two countries also agreed to enhance maritime cooperation while protecting the livelihoods of both Filipino and Vietnamese fishermen.  

Philippine Foreign Secretary Yasay echoed Duterte’s doctrine of peaceful cooperation—while also acknowledging Vietnam’s claims, “we are very happy that Vietnam has made the same commitment in ASEAN to the rule-based system and peaceful settlement of their claims in the East Vietnam Sea. While we are not taking sides in so far as our respective claims, we respect Vietnam’s claims as much as Vietnam respects our claims.”

So while the previous administration in Hanoi had previously angered Beijing by seeking legal advice from Manila in order to potentially file their own claim at The Hague, the new leadership under Quang appears to be backing off confrontation with Beijing, along with Manila. Any jointly-coordinated legal or military effort between Hanoi and Manila appears now to be out of the question for fear of provoking the dragon next door, while we await the outcome of hopefully peaceful bilateral negotiations. From what has been reported, the unpredictable Duterte’s visit to Hanoi went smoothly, and talk of peaceful settlement of the dispute with Hanoi has seemingly calmed the waters (for now) of the South China Sea.

The post Duterte’s Friendly Visit to Vietnam appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Did Clinton Send Classified Documents on Her System?

Not really. The FBI report stated that in the 30,000 e-mails that the agency reviewed, agents found three that included internal markings of (C), two of which had been subsequently changed to unclassified. In response to questions before the House Oversight Committee on July 7, 2016, however, Comey conceded that the documents were not properly marked and that a reader could reasonably assume that they were not classified.

“[Rep. Matt] Cartwright: So, if Secretary Clinton really were an expert at what’s classified and what’s not classified and we’re following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediately that those three documents were not classified. Am I correct in that?

“Comey: That would be a reasonable inference.”

What are we talking about here? Properly marked documents list at the beginning the full range of classification markings that apply to that document. (See the Able Archer report.) The complete list of markings is then repeated at the top and bottom of every subsequent page. In addition, every head, every subhead, and every paragraph is marked at the beginning according to the degree of classification of the information in that particular head, subhead, or paragraph. Many of these internal markings may be at a lower level of classification than the overall document, but none will be higher or the whole document would have been reclassified at a higher level. The three e-mails that Comey was talking about had one or more paragraphs that began with a (C) but were otherwise unmarked. This is simply not an option. Something or other had to be wrong with the marking of those e-mails.

John Kirby, the State Department spokesperson, stated on July 6 that the department had found two of those e-mails and that they were “call sheets.” (Comey said on July 7 that he was not aware of Kirby’s remarks.) Call sheets are talking points developed for the use of the secretary for phone calls made to foreign leaders. In this case, the foreign dignitaries were former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who was stepping down as the special envoy for Syria at the time, and Joyce Banda, who as vice president of Malawi had just succeeded to the presidency following the death of the incumbent.

When they are developed, call sheets are classified at the Confidential level simply to prevent any word of them from getting out and thus to avoid any embarrassment to the foreign dignitary if the secretary should decide for any reason not to make the call. Once the final decision to call is made, unless the topic requires otherwise, the call sheets are recategorized as Unclassified or SBU. In these cases Kirby blamed human error. Apparently, someone was slipshod in changing all the internal markings. Politico has provided an example of one of the “classified” lines from the call sheets: “(C) Purpose of Call: To offer condolences on the passing of President Mutharika and congratulate President Banda on her recent swearing in.”

The FBI report referred to a third e-mail that had not been reclassified by the State Department. Since the State Department has claimed to be aware of only two, it is still possible that the third should have been unclassified as well. Again, internal markings without overall markings is not an option.

Why Would Clinton Discuss Classified Matters on an Unclassified System? (Or, Security vs. Diplomacy)

If Clinton was not sending or receiving classified documents, what is the issue? The problem concerns the discussion of classified subjects via unclassified e-mail systems.

Some observers have described this case as a conflict between State Department professionals and Clinton amateurs. I think it is more accurate to understand the underlying dynamic as a conflict between State Department security professionals and State Department diplomacy professionals. Clinton and her immediate team sided with the diplomacy professionals either consciously (assuming they were aware of the conflict) or as a consequence of diplomacy, not security, being the essence of what the State Department does.

The charges made by Comey were not strictly limited to Clinton (although she was the target of investigation) but addressed a State Department “culture.” Comey is often quoted as saying that Clinton was “extremely careless” in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. Actually, the quote, referring to “Clinton and her colleagues,” was that “they” were extremely careless. Later in his statement Comey expanded this charge beyond Clinton’s immediate circle: “While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with regard to use of unclassified email systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.”

The FBI report added some details: “The FBI interviewed multiple officials who authored and/or contributed to e-mails, the content of which has since been determined to contain classified information. USG [i.e., United States Government] employees responsible for initiating classified e-mails in question included State Civil Service employees, Foreign Service employees, Senior Executive Service employees, Presidential appointees, and non-State elected officials.” In fact, Comey is not the first to have remarked on the State Department’s approach to information security.

It is easy to ascribe laxness to an organizational culture, but that begs the question of what is driving this culture. Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official—writing a year before the release of the FBI report—has attributed at least part of the blame to the nature of the State Department’s communications technology and, specifically, to the mismatch between that technology and the evolving nature of diplomacy in the modern era. Diplomacy today is mobile, continuous, and at times time-urgent. The technology, on the other hand, is stationary and only intermittently available.

In its paper form, highly classified intelligence is kept locked up and can be viewed only in specially designated areas, such as a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF). (The secretary of state’s office is a designated SCIF.) In its electronic form, such intelligence can be viewed or communicated at your desk via a special, secure computer network or via a special, secure telephone line. Most significantly, there is no approved way to communicate on classified topics if either the sender or the recipient is not at his desk, or if it is not during business hours.

So, then, what do diplomats do in such circumstances if a message has to be delivered or a decision has to be made immediately? According to Nossel, one response is that more information is now categorized as “sensitive but unclassified” (a counter to the general trend of overclassification) and, ipso facto, can be transmitted over unclassified systems. When time is of the essence and Top Secret topics cannot be avoided, however, State Department officials communicate on unclassified systems but try do so circuitously, that is, in ways that will be unintelligible to anyone who hacks into the system from outside and is unaware of the context of the conversation.

References to this very problem appeared in the FBI report. For example, “[Name deleted] stated the right method of communication was whichever method allowed for the fastest possible dissemination of the message. He also stated that information he received from other USG agencies was ‘technically probably classified’ but that ‘you can’t do business that way.’ When interviewed by the FBI, authors of the e-mails stated that they used their best judgment in drafting the messages and that it was common practice at State to carefully word e-mails on UNCLASSIFIED networks so as to avoid sensitive details or ‘talk around’ [deleted] classified information.”

Clinton, herself, described this situation to the FBI in much the same way. “Upon reviewing an e-mail classified [after the fact] SECRET//NOFORN dated December 27, 2011, Clinton stated no policy or practice existed related to communicating around holidays, and that it was often necessary to communicate in code or do the best you could to convey the information considering the e-mail system you were using.”

Evidently, Clinton engaged in this sort of discussion of Top Secret topics eight times in the course of her four years at State. Until the e-mails are declassified, which could be decades from now, we will not know how well or poorly she and other State Department officials concealed the true subjects of their messages. Should diplomats be discussing Top Secret topics in this manner? No, probably not. Will this sort of thing continue? Yes, without a doubt, until the technology (and State’s technology budget) advances to the point where it meshes with the needs of modern diplomacy.

Have People Been Punished for Doing Far Less Than Clinton?

Finally, many have asserted that people other than Clinton, such as General David Petraeus, have been punished “for doing far less,” that she is receiving special treatment because of who she is. In fact, this was never likely to end in prosecution. The first point to highlight is that—as noted above from the FBI report—every category of official in the State Department has done exactly the same thing at some time or other, and some quite regularly. Those officials are not being purged from the system, nor do they concede that they have done anything wrong. Indeed, they believe that they are the ones who make the system work despite itself. If Clinton has received special treatment, it is in the form of extraordinary scrutiny and public denunciation that others in similar circumstances have been spared. As Comey told the Senate Homeland Security Committee, “I think if we recommended prosecution it would have been a two-tiered system of justice.”

Generally speaking, officials are punished for knowingly giving classified information to those who have not been authorized to receive it or for mishandling massive amounts of classified information. According to court records, Petraeus gave Paula Broadwell, his biographer—whose job, after all, was to make details of his life public—notebooks that contained “classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.” According to a recording made by Broadwell, he openly said of the notebooks, “Umm, well, they’re really—I mean they are highly classified, some of them. They don’t have it [marked] on it, but I mean there’s code word stuff in there.” In Petraeus’s case, the attorney general opted to charge him with a misdemeanor, but the FBI had recommended a felony charge.

In the Clinton case, Comey, in his public statement, said: “In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.” Comey reaffirmed this conclusion in his later memo to FBI employees. “At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn’t a prosecutable case.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch stated that she met with Comey, career prosecutors, and the agents who conducted the investigation. It was “their unanimous recommendation,” not Comey’s alone, that the investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individual within the scope of the investigation.

Read Part I

The post Clinton and Why the State Department Doesn’t Follow Its Own Rules (Pt II) appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali was hanged on September 3 for ‘war against humanity’ during the 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.

This is the second part of a three-part series. Read the first part here.

“Cooperation within the framework of the Association shall be based on respect for the principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, political independence, non-interference in the internal affairs of other States and mutual benefit.” -Point (1) of the ‘Principles’ subset of Article II of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) charter.

‘Respect for territorial integrity’ and ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of other states’, really?

The Indian subcontinent is chequered with a history of border and territory disputes. If there is no shared border, there are prickly issues related to shared ethnic and religious groups in each other’s territories.

Two very topical, and yet, off the cuff, examples here illustrate the intertwining and conflicting interests of the South Asian nations, whether or not with a shared border, and the consequent impact of the same on the functioning of SAARC.

Bangladesh expressed its strong protest against Pakistan’s reaction to the execution of Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) leader Mir Quasem Ali on September 3.

Ali, a prominent member of the pro-Pakistani militia during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, was found guilty of torture and mass murders. Bangladeshi accounts say that the Pakistani army and its supporters in JeI had killed about three million people, though the number varies in other accounts.

Pakistan termed the trial as a ‘flawed judicial process’.

“The act of suppressing the Opposition through flawed trials is completely against the spirit of democracy,” Nafees Zakaria, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman told the international media.

Quick to retort, Bangladesh called Pakistan’s acting high commissioner in Dhaka, Samina Mehtab,  and handed over a strongly-worded note verbale.

“By repeatedly taking the side of those Bangladesh nationals who are convicted of crimes against humanity and genocide, Pakistan has once again acknowledged its direct involvement and complicity with the mass atrocity crimes committed during Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971,” read the communiqué.

The trial of Islamist leaders who took a violently pro-Pakistani stance in the 1971 war is going on for a while now—and the two countries have sparred all along.

In a different setting, the historical friction between the two nations had taken the turn of a very contemporary fight after the terror attack in Dhaka in July this year.

During the Muslim holy month of Ramzan, gunmen had entered a chic restaurant in the city’s diplomatic enclave on July 2 and killed 21 hostages and two police officers—before the Bangladesh security forces raided the restaurant and ended the standoff. Four terrorists were killed and one was captured alive.

Those killed were from around the globe, including one Indian, nine Italians, seven Japanese, one American and two local Bangladeshis.

Amid talks of the ISIS connection, while Bangladesh blamed the home-grown Islamist terrorists belonging to JeI group for the worst-ever terror attack in the country’s history, it also talked about the radical group’s connection with Pakistan’s spy agency ISI.

“They (Pakistani establishment) are openly supporting war criminals. So, politically they are with Jamaat-e-Islami, politically they are with the militants. So, that is a sad thing in the regional politics,” said Bangladesh Information Minister Hasan-Ul-Haq Inu a day after the attack.

“And recently few diplomats, who were working undercover at the Pakistan Embassy, were thrown out of the country because they were involved in armed networks,” he added.

The issue in his later statement relates to the two Islamic countries expelling each other’s diplomats in a tit for tat fashion in late 2015.

Following the Dhaka attack and the continuing strained relations, the home minister of Bangladesh ‘skipped’ the SAARC Home Ministers Conference held on August 3 and 4 in Islamabad.

This was followed by the finance minister of the country too opting to ‘skip’ SAARC finance ministers meeting in Islamabad on August 25, citing ‘domestic compulsion’.

On the other hand, and even before these latest snubs by Bangladesh, countless experts on Pakistani news channels have dubbed the former, a part of Pakistan for the first 24 years of the latter’s existence, as a colony of India. The view reflects the growing relationship between India and Bangladesh ever since the Sheikh Hasina government has come back in 2010.

That described the current relationship between two SAARC members who were once the same country. Today, leave aside a common goal, they don’t even share a border!

An equally telling example of churning with SAARC relates to two nations that do share borders—India and Nepal.

India’s Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi had the Nepalese lawmakers, and the people of Nepal, eat out of his hands during his rockstar-like visit in August 2014 to the Himalayan nation, and his address to Parliament.

“We have not come here to interfere with your internal matters, but we want to help you develop,” Modi said to his hosts.

His popularity hit the stratosphere when he said that India was open to accepting a revised version of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed by the two countries in 1950: “Kathmandu had only to bring forth the amendments and New Delhi would sign on the dotted line since it implicitly trusted Nepal“.

At that time, Nepal was busy framing a new Constitution, which was to take into consideration  the concerns of all communities of the nation.

The coming together of all parties for Modi’s speech and the surplus warmth towards the visiting leader suggested an era of good times for the two nations.

The bond of warmth got a shot in the arm after India reacted faster than all to provide expertise and relief material within a matter of hours after a massive earthquake hit Nepal in April-May 2015.

At that time the only sour note seemed to be local Nepalese’s anger towards a section of the Indian media for being patronizing and meddlesome during the rescue operations.

Problems started taking a serious nature after the adoption of a new Constitution by the parliament, followed by a 16-point agreement between the Government and the opposition, which spelled out the roadmap for the new Constitution.

There was an instant and violent rejection of the new Constitution by the various Madhesi (an ethnic group living in the Nepalese south) parties and Janjatis (essentially tribals) because of, what they called, non-representation of their aspirations.

At the same time, India felt that the outcome was contrary to Mr. Modi’s advice for a consensus-driven rather than a numbers-determined approach towards finalisation of the Constitution.

Nepal, on the other hand, viewed India’s reaction to the promulgation of its new Constitution, and a hurried visit by India’s foreign secretary, as a brazen attempt by India to meddle in Nepal’s internal matters.

The new Constitution was formally adopted in September 2015.

The Madheshi groups responded by blockading the border points between India and Nepal. Kathmandu saw it as Indian handiwork and accused its southern neighbour of deliberately worsening the embargo by not allowing vehicles to pass through even those check-points where no protests were held—a charge that was quickly, and predictably, denied by the Indian government.

A four-month border blockade by the Madhesis ended only after amendments to the constitution that sought to address their concerns about ‘rightful’ representation in Nepalese political framework were made.

India welcomed the amendments. It remains to be seen what kind of welcome Modi gets on his next Nepal visit, whenever that happens.

Is there any greater ‘interference in internal affairs’, whether real or perceived, than interference in matters related to judiciary or constitution of one nation by another—as highlighted by the squabbling SAARC members in the two examples?

In an atmosphere of such mistrust and misgivings, it is barely surprising that 95% of  trade of SAARC nations is with non-SAARC nations. The corresponding figure, for example, for the Southeast Asian nations within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region is about 25%.

Note: This piece was written prior to a deadly terror attack on an Indian military facility on September 18, which killed 17 Indian army personnel. All the four killed terrorists belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.

To be continued…

The post The Tattered Mirage of a South Asian Union is Dying Fast – Pt. 2 appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Kevin Lamarque (Associated Press)

There has been a lot of discussion of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and her handling of classified material—a lot. Press coverage of Clinton has focused on the e-mail issue so much that it is the first thing people mention when pollsters ask about her. The topic is certainly worthy of discussion, but much of it has been misinformed, involving some combination of willful distortion and innocent misunderstanding about some fairly esoteric topics. I would like to take some time to examine some points about Clinton’s e-mails, the government classification system, and the reason why the State Department often does not follow its own rules when it comes to information security. This is not an exercise in excuse making but an effort to understand what has been happening at the State Department and why.

First, some people view FBI director James Comey’s public statement of July 5, 2016, explaining the FBI’s investigation and recommendation regarding Clinton’s handling of classified information, as an attack on Clinton. It is, I believe, more accurately understood as a preemptive defense of the FBI as an institution. So many exaggerated claims and assertions had been made about Clinton’s e-mails in terms of criminal liability that he would have opened his agency to attack if he had simply recommended against prosecution and left it at that.

Thus he went into an unusual degree of detail about the investigation and its thoroughness to prevent charges of bias. Comey said as much toward the end of his statement: “I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.” In a later memo to FBI employees, he stated: “The hard part was whether to offer unprecedented transparency about our thinking. . . . I struggled with that part, but decided the best way to protect the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the American people’s sense of justice was to announce it the way we did—with extraordinary transparency and without any kind of coordination.”

Despite what some people have suggested, Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail account, in and of itself, was not a violation of the law, nor was it necessarily unusual. Examining the period between 2001 and 2008, before Clinton came to the department, the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) “identified more than 90 Department employees who periodically used personal email accounts to conduct official business.” The OIG report—which addressed department-wide practices, not just Secretary Clinton—went on to quote a former department official as saying, “State’s technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively.”

According to the OIG report, it was a violation of department policy to use an unauthorized system without seeking official guidance or approval from the department’s Bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM) and Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS), which Clinton did not seek. (The report’s wording implies that the burden was on the secretary to initiate these actions, yet the IRM director was clearly aware of the situation.) Even there, however, the FBI report suggested some ambiguity: “While State policy during Clinton’s tenure required that ‘day-to-day operations [at State] be conducted on [an authorized information system]’ according to the Bureau of Information Security Management there was no restriction on the use of personal email accounts for official business. However, State employees were cautioned about security and records retention concerns regarding the use of personal e-mail. In 2011, a notice to all State employees was sent on Clinton’s behalf, which recommended employees avoid conducting State business from personal e-mail accounts due to information security concerns.” [Emphasis added; insertions and deletions made by FBI.] Was it required or recommended, or were there no restrictions? Apparently it is still hard to say.

The mishandling of classified material is a different matter. That can involve serious violations of the law, and that was the main focus of the FBI investigation. We shall return to that shortly, after reviewing a few intermediary points.

Why Would Clinton Use Her Own Server?

The State Department has two e-mail systems, a classified system for classified documents and an unclassified system (@state.gov) for other documents and messages. It is not permitted to transfer documents from the classified system to the unclassified system, and in any event they cannot be transferred without the direct assistance of system administrators.

Clinton regularly used the classified system for classified documents (or, more precisely, she assigned people to do it for her). The controversy arises from her use of a personal server in place of @state.gov and, more particularly, from the occasional use of that server—or any unclassified system—to communicate on classified topics. We will return to that topic below. First, why did she use a personal server?

My own initial assumption was that she wanted to control access to her communications. Clinton has been the target of political attacks for a quarter century, and some of those who attack her are not shy about taking information out of context or distorting it in the process. Thus one might expect her to want to limit access to her communications. Yet this does not seem to have been the case. Rather, just as she has said all along, she said to the FBI that she used the private server as a matter of convenience, and the FBI appears to have accepted this explanation.* The decision seems to be rooted in Clinton’s quite profound lack of expertise in, or curiosity about, information technology. She did not fully comprehend the possible consequences, and—probably because she was the secretary—no one forced her to confront them.

The decision to use a personal server, of course, raised two issues: possible exposure of her communications to hacking by hostile powers (or others) and complications concerning the proper archiving of what the State Department now calls “record emails.” Record e-mails are those that are to be marked for archiving. Not all e-mails are preserved. Department employees are instructed to delete personal e-mails and most “working emails,” which concern day-to-day administrative matters. Employees determine on their own which messages to delete and which to archive.

While Clinton was aware of these issues, they did not cause her concern. With regard to archiving, she simply believed that her e-mails could be found in the archives of the officials with whom she communicated (which undermines my initial theory that she used the private server to prevent access to her communications). This is really not a satisfactory means of record keeping, but then many people underestimate the difficulty of maintaining records, and even if frustrating, it is not designed to prevent record keeping. After all, the FBI did find many of Clinton’s deleted e-mails by looking in the archives of people with whom she corresponded, just as she said they would. (Many of the deleted e-mails that were deemed to be business-related have turned out to be earlier versions of e-mail chains that had already been turned over.) Incidentally, this was the exact opposite of Colin Powell’s practice. According to an e-mail he sent to Clinton in January 2009, he used a personal e-mail account precisely in order to prevent his messages from becoming “an official record and subject to the law” and for that reason advised Clinton to avoid “systems that captured the data.”

As for security, Clinton did not consider it a problem. According to her FBI interview, “CLINTON understood the email system used by her husband’s personal staff had an excellent track record with respect to security and had never been breached.” Although the FBI could not find evidence of any breach of her account, Comey stated that the nature of the technology might have allowed talented hackers to enter without leaving traces (although the FBI did find evidence that another e-mail account on the server had been hacked). On the other hand, David Sanger reported in the New York Times (after 10 paragraphs of how vulnerable Clinton’s private server was) that the Russians had access to the @state.gov e-mail system that she was supposed to be using for more than seven years, from at least 2007 through the end of 2014, so they probably have her e-mails and everyone else’s anyhow.

For the record, Clinton has stated that it was a mistake to have used her own server. Given the hullabaloo over the decision, it is safe to assume that she is not likely to do this again.

Not All Classified Documents Are Created Equal

The process of classifying and declassifying government documents is complex and highly arbitrary. The rules are vague enough to be open to interpretation, and the incentives generally favor “overclassification.” In other words, permitting the release of information that should have been classified has repercussions; classifying a document that did not require it does not. Thus there is a lot of material that is needlessly classified. Some analysts speak of a disconnect between the classification system and the actual needs of national security.

The arbitrariness of the system has been taken into account by people who deal with it regularly. For example, George Washington University’s National Security Archive, which frequently requests the declassification of old documents for historical purposes, routinely submits multiple requests for the same document in the hope that different officials will declassify different portions. On one occasion, the archive received the beginning and the end of a document from which the entire middle had been redacted. The very next day, in response to a separate request, it received a version of the same document with the middle intact but with the beginning and end removed. Thus within 24 hours the archive had received the entire document. The markings on the two copies indicated that both versions had been reviewed, redacted, and released by the same official.

The current Clinton case presents another example. The notes from Clinton’s FBI interview contain the sentence: “CLINTON believed information should be classified in the case of covert military action, the use of sensitive sources and where sensitive deliberations took place.” The FBI report, which was based in part on the interview and was released as part of the same package, contains virtually the same sentence except that the words “covert military action” have been redacted. Among the redactions from the interview notes, on the other hand, is Clinton’s date of birth.

That said, of course, not everything is overclassified, and the subject is not to be dismissed out of hand. Officially there are three levels of classification as defined by the National Security Act of 1947: Confidential (C), Secret (S), and Top Secret (TS). Bureaucrats often treat Confidential and Secret information in a fairly cavalier manner. This is the sort of thing that you read in the newspaper every day, attributed to a government official who will not give his name because he’s violating the law by giving classified information to a reporter. (Although, to be sure, some unauthorized leaks to the press are actually authorized releases masquerading as unauthorized leaks. Bureaucracy works in strange ways.)

Top Secret information is treated much more seriously. Fred Kaplan has related that when he began a job on Capitol Hill years ago, he was granted access to Confidential and Secret information from the first day, while he was restricted from seeing Top Secret material until his security clearance actually came through. Perhaps because there is only one category that everyone treats so seriously, a number of “unofficial” gradations have been invented within it, degrees of Top Secret, if you will. These include: Special Access Programs (SAP), Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI), and the anatomically challenging EYES ONLY. Incidentally there are two grades of unclassified information as well, both of which may be sent on (authorized) unclassified systems: Unclassified (U) and Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU).**

Various categories of secretiveness can pile up. To take a random example, a 1991 assessment of the 1983 Able Archer war scare*** was marked: TOP SECRET UMBRA GAMMA WNINTEL NOFORN NOCONTRACT ORCON, which roughly translates as: Release Would Cause Exceptionally Grave Damage to National Security; Highly Sensitive Communications Intelligence; Contains Intercepts of Soviet Communications; Warning Notice—Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved; Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals; Not Releasable to Contractors or Consultants; Dissemination and Extraction of Information Controlled by Originator. As of last year, the document is freely available, albeit in redacted form.

*The argument that Clinton must have lied about it being convenient because she was really using multiple devices is false. She used multiple devices over the course of four years, one at a time.

**SBU is a State Department designation. Other agencies, including the FBI, use For Official Use Only (FOUO).

***Yes, there was a war scare in 1983, when the Soviets began to suspect that President Reagan was preparing to launch a nuclear missile strike and went on alert. Don’t feel bad, U.S. intelligence was not aware of it at the time either.

The post Clinton and Why the State Department Doesn’t Follow Its Own Rules (Pt I) appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

By Dominik P. Jankowski and Maksymilian Czuperski

The transatlantic community faces threats on multiple fronts, rendering NATO as essential as it has ever been. Because of these changing regional security dynamics, the Alliance should consider some additional reforms to its internal structure and capacities, so that it can achieve necessary readiness. There is still much to ponder. On the road from the 2016 Warsaw Summit to the 2017 Brussels Summit, the Alliance should embrace six core approaches—a new strategic “six-pack”—in order to strengthen the process of NATO’s long-term strategic adaptation.

First, NATO should become a key platform for a new transatlantic grand bargain. The ongoing presidential race in the United States has once again revealed growing criticisms of NATO in some American political circles, especially among supporters of Donald Trump. A new transatlantic bargain should lead to more fair and balanced burden sharing, both in terms of devoting necessary financial resources as well as investing in the right capabilities. Following the decisions of the Warsaw Summit, the Alliance will, in fact, need additional heavier high-end capabilities. A NATO Defense Planning Pledge—which would not replace the NATO Defense Investment Pledge, but concentrate more on a desired military output—could become a starting point for a renewed transatlantic bond.

Second, NATO needs a clear political-military strategy to counter the Russian “Anti-Access/Area Denial” (A2/AD) systems. Even if A2/AD is by no means a new concept, it poses a formidable challenge to the political and military credibility of NATO, as it restricts the freedom to maneuver. Therefore, it should be considered an aggressive posture. In fact, Russia has harnessed an array of stand-off weapons—including air defense, coastal defense, cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missile platforms, and naval and submarine forces, as well as electronic and cyber warfare—which can turn areas falling within their range into strategically and operationally isolated “bubbles”.

Third, in an A2/AD and hybrid environment the Alliance needs a renewed and more ambitious exercises policy. NATO drills should not only provide assurance to Allies, but also serve as an element of a deterrence policy. An updated approach to exercises should not only include visibility, high-end capabilities and large-scale formations, but also be employed in a non-permissive environment on the eastern, northern and southern flanks. In short, what NATO needs are regular drills of the Follow on Forces in A2/AD “bubbles”.

Fourth, NATO needs additional robust intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, which are a fundamental requirement for effective situational awareness, strategic foresight, and early warning. In response to the current threats and challenges, NATO should consider employing a Regional Intelligence Analysis Centre (RIAC) on its eastern flank, which would supplement the work done by the NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre (NIFC). An additional ISR presence in the region, e.g. an AGS forward-operating location in Poland, would also support the planning and execution of current and future activities on the eastern flank.

Fifth, the Alliance needs a reviewed NATO Command Structure (NCS) that should be better suited to deliver on the collective defense tasks. Current regional security dynamics have challenged some assumptions on which the NCS was based, showing that its connectivity with the NATO Force Structure is not sufficient. Moreover, the Warsaw Summit decisions on strengthened deterrence and defense posture added new requirements for the existing NCS.

Sixth, NATO’s actions require a fully integrated approach to strategic communications (StratCom). The Russian pressure to redefine our values has now reached the stage of undermining the coherence of Euro-Atlantic communication. In the fog of misinformation NATO might be well prepared for classical cyber challenges, but the Russian-Ukrainian conflict shows that it also needs to be prepared for information war when the events are seamlessly melded with cyber, kinetic and electronic warfare operations. In fact, NATO’s activities should be enhanced by a creation of special StratCom departments throughout the Alliance member states to rapidly gather evidence, analyze and respond to disinformation campaigns.

As Europe confronts the prospect of future Russian aggression, terror, and domestic upheaval, NATO must remain a primary security guarantor on the continent. In fact, there is no viable alternative to NATO. But new security challenges cannot be borne by the Alliance of decades past. Indeed, NATO’s military adaption should be continued The Alliance must emphasize what is required of it, like intelligence, strategic communications and effective coordination and command, to confront these threats to transatlantic security. By developing a strategic “six-pack” NATO will stay on the right path and draw credible red lines that can keep Russian adventurism in check.

Dominik P. Jankowski is Head of OSCE and Eastern Security Unit at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Maksymilian Czuperski is Strategic Communications Advisor Europe and Special Assistant to the President of the Atlantic Council.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the institutions they represent.

This article was originally published by The National Interest.

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Having survived through the Greek saga with the Euro still intact, the banks, for now, still standing, and a new capital markets union in the offing, it could be argued that Europe’s economic union has withstood the slings and arrows of misfortune that have come its way in the last few years. The same, however, cannot be said of its political union.

In his State of the Union address delivered to the European Parliament, Commission President, Jean Claude Juncker, went so far as to call it an “existential crisis”. The day before making this statement, two headlines came out that supported his diagnosis. The first concerned the revelation that the EU admitted Romania and Bulgaria despite warnings from The European Court of Auditors (ECA) that they were not yet ready. The second involved comments made by Juncker’s compatriot, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn who said that Hungary should be excluded “temporarily or if need be forever” from the EU on account of the government’s authoritarian lurch and rough handling of the refugee crisis.

Looking more deeply at these interconnected issues we cannot help but agree with Juncker’s gloomy assessment about Europe being in a state of crisis. Since 2008, the main criticism of the EU has been that as a monetary, but not fiscal, union it has been incapable of correcting the imbalances that resulted from the differing economic needs of core and periphery members. Much has been made of this policy mismatch and the deleterious effect it can have, especially on the periphery.

The attention given to this divergence in economic priorities is understandable given that it cuts to the core of the Euro crises; however, while all eyes have been trained on the economic situation, insufficient attention has been paid to a divergence of another, possibly more threatening, kind that has been opening up among member states on the political level.

While the founding members, having set a course for “ever closer union” went into autopilot, expecting to arrive at a state of near perfect union sometime in the medium term, they never imagined that the idea of a perfect union in Berlin might be very different from that in Sofia, Prague or Budapest. That status quo lasted until the onset of the refugee crisis, which revealed the extent of the ideological parting of ways between old and new Europe.

Bulgaria was hard hit by the waves of refugees making their way into Europe, a crisis that translated into violence against asylum seekers committed with impunity by border guards. The country erected a 230-kilometer fence on its border with Turkey and has deployed the army to patrol it, which was accompanied by a spike in the number of reports of excessive force. This happens in a country whose European values are under scrutiny for other reasons, such as its shaky commitment to the rule of law and the nefarious influence the Mafia has over the state.

Across the border, Romania shows the same signs of hostility to refugees despite barely having any asylum seekers crossing its borders. Nevertheless, Bucharest loudly rejected the European Union’s quotas mandatory quotas, arguing that taking in 6,000 would be too much to handle. And indeed, Romania seems to have troubles even keeping its current population within its borders. Millions of Romanians have already left the country over the past decade for economic reasons. The current caretaker government of Dacian Ciolos has been accused of standing idly by as the health care system (understaffed by at least 30,000 physicians) crumbled, and has proved incapable of handling massive strikes and walk-outs. To top it off, Ciolos is accused of leading a witch-hunt against political opponents as part of a wide anti-corruption drive with the help of the Romanian Intelligence Service.

Romania’s case is however typical of the political climate prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe. The  Visegrad group (composed of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) has emerged as a stalwart bastion countering western values of liberalism, tolerance and open borders with its own set of values: Christian, nativist, authoritarian.

The most headline grabbing of these countries’ leaders is perhaps Viktor Orbán whose opposition to the EU quota system for distributing refugees throughout the block has become a rallying cry with which to drown out the criticism of corruption and cronyism that plague his administration. Claiming that the admission of Muslim refugees into Europe would undermine its Christian identity, Orbán has successfully fanned the flames of xenophobia in Hungary to a level grossly disproportionate to the vanishingly small number who would actually be settled in the country under the proposed quota system. A forthcoming referendum on migration is expected to swing largely in favor of the government and be used by Orban as a stick against further pressure from Brussels.

Poland, equally concerned with the preservation of its Christian identity, if not its democratic institutions, has come under fire from Brussels for undermining the ability of the supreme court to review legislation, leading to accusations of a power grab on behalf of the government and a roll back towards soviet style centralization. A clash between protesters and the government over the introduction of highly restrictive abortion laws and the influence of the Catholic Church on policy speaks to the growing rift between the country’s urban youth and the staunchly conservative Law and Justice Party.

It is strange how the newest members of the European Union, who have benefited both financially and politically from being members of a powerful political bloc, have been the first to jump ship at the first sign of trouble. Since its creation the EU has been driven by a set of common principles that it was thought would always define the Union. The refugee crisis has woken “old” Europe up to the realization that in a union of 28 countries those principles may not be so common anymore.

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A B-2 in formation flight with eight U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets

Recently, the case has been made for “preserving” U.S. primacy using primarily military means. With respect to de Gaulle’s “The sword is the axis of the world” thinking, this stance fails to recognize that economic power is the foundation of a state’s influence in the 21st century.  Even more fundamentally, it fails to take into account both great and minor powers’ pursuit of self-interest, both historically and in today’s multi-polar world.

Militaristic Romanticism Will Continue to Bankrupt the U.S.

Conventional wisdom has it that the U.S. assumed primacy in the post-modern world after defeating the Former Soviet Union. Yes, the U.S. was able to weaken the Former Soviet Union militarily through supporting proxy fighters in Afghanistan, and economically through having it overspend on defense in a futile effort to overcome SDI (“Star Wars”). However, what is not in dispute is that there was no direct military conflict between the two powers. Had that happened, the odds are great that not only would I not be here typing this article, but you also wouldn’t be here reading it.

The conclusion reached during the Cold War that a direct military conflict between the superpowers would have been detrimental to all of humanity seems to have been forgotten by some when discussing current U.S-China hostilities. War with China is just as equally untenable nowadays as military conflict with the Former Soviet Union was during the Cold War. Actually, it’s even more untenable as China is not only a nuclear power, but is increasingly the epicenter of today’s interconnected global economy.  The economic fallout from any shooting war with China would not leave any nation on Earth, including, but especially the U.S., unscathed.

Because of all of this, it is critical for the U.S. to draw several conclusions. First, it’s going to need to effectively separate economics from politics in its dealing with states, especially China. While the phrase “Hot Economics, Cold Politics” may have once referred to Sino-Japanese relations, it can be broadened to refer to relations between all states in the 21st century, even if hot is a misnomer in the wake of the global economic crisis.

Pursuit of Self-interest is Man’s Natural State

Even more importantly, the U.S. needs to recognize that the world has returned to the era of great power politics, if it ever truly left it at all. To survive in this world, it will be increasingly critical to recognize, and not deny, the role of self-interest in all nations’ foreign policies, large and small. A first step in this process would be to go even further back in time before the Cold War and revisit certain WWII-era terminology, notably “ally”, “axis”, and “accommodation/appeasement”.

The word “ally” does not mean supplicant. Historically, allies have served one another’s foreign policy objectives because they understood how an alliance served their own self-interest and because they were ready to seal the agreement in blood if necessary, not because they necessarily liked one another. Only through combined U.S. and Soviet power was Nazi Germany eventually defeated. Even on the verge of imminent collapse, the Former Soviet Union contributed to the U.S.’ coalition in the Gulf War. Despite initial hiccups, is Russian cooperation in Syria today any less vital?

The term “axis” has been used rather carelessly recently as well. In the wake of Turkish overtures to Russia, a “Moscow-Ankara axis” has been mentioned. Following Russia’s warmer ties with Beijing and post-sanctions Iran, a “Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis” has been voiced. Lastly, in the wake of Russian power assertion in Syria and intelligence-sharing efforts with other powers in the region, a possible “Moscow-Tehran-Baghdad(-Damascus?) axis” has been written on. It’s quite moronic to continue to label other countries’ foreign policy goals with lexicon dating back almost three generations, as if a foreign policy that doesn’t clearly support the “rules-based order” is inherently evil.

Related to this are the term’s “accommodation” and “appeasement”. It is equally idiotic to use these terms when describing, for example, German and Japanese outreach efforts to Russia in the wake of U.S.-Russian hostilities. First, a state (ally or not) is always going to follow its own interests, especially where economics is concerned. Secondly,  the use of these terms to describe policies of former actual Axis powers reeks of historical amnesia.

Following this logic, is the U.K. an “ally”, part of an “axis”, or “appeasing” other powers? The U.K. recently withdrew from the EU and became a founding member of the AIIB, both despite U.S. protestations. The point is that if the U.S.’ strongest ally in its historically most-important geographic area of interest does this, it’s realistic to assume that this is a harbinger of a larger trend, and not just an outlier.

The issue is not whether it was actually in the U.K.’s interest to make these moves. Rather, the point is that the U.K. perceived that these actions were in its own self-interest and that it, along with all other states, will continue to make decisions based on this criteria, not dictation from other powers. This is also reflected in recent moves by both the Philippines and Vietnam to improve economic relations with China. These maneuvers, combined with global economic interdependency, are simultaneously a harbinger of the future and a reminder of the past and will continue to undermine any attempts to “preserve” U.S. primacy.

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In late August 2016, a Czech entomologist and anti-immigrant nationalist named Martin Konvicka planned and staged a fake ISIS assault in the middle Prague’s Old Town Square. The incident took place near some restaurants, close to the astrological clock and the statue of Catholic priest, reformer, and martyr Jan Hus. While Wenceslas Square is packed with tourists mostly  in its shopping district, it is Old Town Square near the Charles Bridge that is marked more by a carnival atmosphere with snake charmers, magicians, restaurants, Thai massage parlors, singers, and men making bubbles that children chase.

Konvicka was clever, taking advantage of that carnival like condition to apply to City Hall for a permit to indulge in a “protest” where his theatrics would blend into a city where theatrics of some sort are common place to note. What Konvicka did in Prague was what any competent terrorist would do when planning an attack—he used legal means and an exploited vulnerability to procure a venue and a method of operation where he and his crew would blend into the environment prior to his strike so well that he could literally walk a camel into his target – Old Town Square.

What was disturbing to me even after only a few weeks after this hoax was the lack of a robust physical police presence in Old Town Square when I visited only a few days later. In Wenceslas Square, there is noticeable police presence, especially as you walk up the hill towards the monument where two Czechoslovakian students, Jan Palach and Jan Zajik killed themselves in 1969 to protest the failed uprising of Secretary Alexander Dubcek and Soviet invasion in August 1968. However, in Old Town Square where all the uproar happened, there was only one small police van with the occasional police car driving by that I could see, with two or three lightly armed police officers helping tourists.

Even with the assumption that heavier weapons were inside that van, the time it would take to retrieve them in the midst of a real attack and for reinforcements to arrive would be critical and probably very costly. Our tour guide did explain that plainclothes police were stationed throughout the area but should an active barricade/hostage or other “sophisticated” terrorist situation unfold, as Kent Layne Oots might call this, police would be at a disadvantage in a reactive situation and possibly facing terrorists with superior firepower at least initially, and armed with grenades, plastic explosives, IEDs and a coherent well thought through plan of action.

Likewise, what appeared to be similar problems were evident in parts of Prague’s Jewish Quarter—all of which are prime targets for Islamic extremists. For example, when we passed the Maisel Synagogue, which is noted for the golden hat that is perched inside its Star of David at its entrance, I did not see any security in front, even though one or two others said they saw guards on the street at or near the synagogue. Security at the Old New Synagogue, located on a fairly large street next to some stairs was conspicuously absent. At the Old Jewish cemetery where tourists flock, our prepaid tickets were scanned but there were no handbag or electronic searches. In fact, the only place I saw where systematic detection was in place and operative was at Prague Castle where detectors and wands were used by police to scan visitors at turnstiles.

As disconcerting as all the foregoing was, it was not as disturbing from a security point of view as the visit my wife and I took to the concentration camp Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt. We visited on a separate tour two days before our tour in Prague began. Terezin is located in a part of the Sudentenland area and, like Prague’s Jewish Quarter and all concentration camp sites, it is a potential target of Islamic extremists because of its inherent Jewish nature and high symbolic value.

From the terrible Dresden barracks, now in disrepair, throughout the town, and up through the prison which is about a quarter of a mile or so away from the center of town, there was no sign of police or military presence. I asked our guide about this and she told us that the only security change she could think of was that buses could no longer pull up in front of the Yizkor (“Remembrance”) museum. Our guide remarked she had never seen Terezin so desolate; usually it was full of tourists and she could only surmise this had something to do with recent terrorist assaults in Western Europe.

That Terezin goes unprotected for those who want to learn more about the Holocaust and that the Jewish Quarter at the very least suffers from gaps in security is shameful given the recent terrorist assault hoax perpetrated that has illuminated security shortfalls and the set of terrorist attacks in the European Union. Czech officials need to embrace anticipatory foresight into their thinking about security and view their place in the EU as part of a dynamic environment that reverberates with change and ripple effects that spread. This ISIS hoax underscores some bureaucratic security problems to be corrected and there appear to be areas for security improvement against the backdrop of very vulnerable targets. Benchmarks for improvement and timetables for implementation are required now before yet another tragedy occurs.

The post Prague’s Terrorist Perils appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The North African state of Libya has experienced a tumultuous period of state collapse in the years since the fall of its erratic dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In 2011 Gaddafi was overthrown in a cross-country uprising which began in the eastern city of Benghazi and came to be backed by many Western and Arab states, in particular the U.S., UK and France.

Gaddafi and the other mid-level officers who took part in the 1969 coup against King Idris were modernizers who emulated the Western model of a centralized unitary state but this ideal remained a work in progress right down to Gaddafi’s fall. But the modern state of Libya was a colonial construct which was crafted from three provinces by the UN after World War II. These were ‘Tripolitania’ in the west, ‘Cyrenaica’ in the east, and the southern ‘Fezzan’ area, a desert mostly inhabited by Tuareg and Tubu tribes.

The fall of the dictator destroyed the fragile post-colonial state which his iron-fisted rule had held together and exposed the many gaps in expectations between Libya’s different political constituencies. After 42 years of highly personalized rule by the colonel, mechanisms for resolving disputes between them were weak to non-existent and the rebels soon began to fight amongst themselves.

Success in Libya’s fractious regionalized and tribal politics has always rested on good coalition building. During the Arab Spring the country experienced a successful negative coalition which mobilized against the colonel’s regime; for example Berber militias in western Libya were among the first forces to join the eastern Benghazi-based uprising.

But the winning coalition was unable to translate this success into a post-Gaddafi positive coalition, i.e. the victors could not agree on a common program of political action while state institutions became paralyzed by in-fighting and rival appointments to senior functions. Real power quickly devolved down to the commanders of private militias operating across the country, presently thought to number nearly 2,000.

A civil war began between those militias aligning themselves with an Islamist-dominated ‘National Salvation’ government based in the capital Tripoli and those who backed the internationally recognized parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk. The resulting chaos allowed Islamic State (IS) militants to gain a foothold in parts of the country, galvanizing the international community into making an effort to suppress the group and rebuilt a centralized authority in Libya.

In one sense therefore the Arab Spring experience seems to have taken Libya full circle since its creation as a post-colonial monarchy after World War II. Western countries and the UN are once again trying to unify its different regions, this time under a new ‘Government of National Accord’ (GNA).

But in another sense a drastic fragmentation of political power has taken place in one of the few Arab countries to successfully overthrow its long-time dictator. While recurrent attempts to build a positive coalition of parties to overcome this state of disintegration have failed so far the central reliance on oil for the economy to function provides an enduring fiscal incentive to Libyan leaders to continue trying.

Oil represents 98% of the revenue of the government and Libya needs to pump a minimum of 800,000 barrels of oil a day under its current economic model in order to be able to pay public sector salaries, invest in much-needed infrastructure and maintain its collapsing economy.

The heavy defeats recently inflicted on the Libyan branch of IS once again proved Libya’s various actors can come together in a negative coalition when it suits their interests. Now plans to return the country’s oil sector to operation and end a series of damaging blockades may spur the creation of new mechanisms to bridge the gaps between Libyan factions and finally kick-start the political process of building a lasting democratic central government.

Libya following the Arab Spring remains a work in progress; much will be determined by the success or failure of the UN-backed GNA. If this experiment collapses then the rise of another Gaddafi-style strongman or the permanent fragmentation of the country between its east and west are likely to be its longest lasting legacy.

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Thomas Jefferson once stated, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” (Flickr)

Does economic development lead to democracy? This scholarly and worldly inquiry has been one of the main debates among modernization theorists for over half a century, ever since Lipset’s (1960) seminal work supporting that causation was unmasked. Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) contributions updated the debate as they invalidated Lipset’s direct relationship proposition and instead presented correlative facts exemplifying their argument that economic development is exogenous, not endogenous, to democracy. In other words, established democracies never fail after their level of economic development surpasses a certain threshold ($6,055 per capita GDP), although economic development is correlated with something other than a particular regime type in developing countries with a GDP per capita below the threshold.

A recent Washington Post article, however, interestingly refutes the well-accepted argument through an analysis of the ongoing political developments in Turkey. Based on the observation that Erdoğan’s authoritarian drive toward stronger presidency trading democratic progress for economic growth alarms stabilization of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ in Turkey, the article claims that Turkey challenges the validity of Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) arguments. Turkey had a non-oil GDP per capita of $10,972 in 2013 and was recognized as an electoral democracy by Freedom House in 2015.

The phenomenon of authoritarian fervor in wealthy democracies like Turkey goes beyond the country’s borders. In Western democracies, the paragons of Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) failsafe democracies, the phenomenon is tactically abused by far-right demagogues in their lust to win office. The people lack of a rational understanding of what would indeed happen to their daily lives when the demagogues’ populist promises become reality hypnotically join the wave of authoritarian fervor instead of pursuing new democratic values.

This political enigma raises an interesting question. Why do wealthy democracies, especially those that are well above the so-called Przeworski threshold, often fail to innovate new democratic values to replace anachronistic authoritarian values despite the regularized endogenous Schumpeterian democratic competition in them? Perhaps reflecting the current state of the economy in terms of the supply and demand of democracy in wealthy democracies, the problem is destitution of innovations in the demand-side preferences rather than in the supply-side institutional arrangements. For some reason, the people cannot rationally innovate new democratic values.

Supply-side Logic of Democratic Competition

Joseph A. Schumpeter, an Austrian-born American economist and political scientist, inspiringly introduced the idea of ‘creative destruction’. The concept is that the engine of capitalism lies in the system’s organic, or dynamic, nature. Entities incapable of innovative production die off and become replaced by new, capable entrepreneurial entities. Schumpeter expected the cycle to repeat incessantly. He further applied the principle to politics and formulated his new theory of representative democracy. In Schumpeter’s utopia, politics is strictly the business of highly qualified elites who are fueled by their lust to win democratic competition over the production of innovative redistributive policies and the ‘rules of the game’. Voters, or consumers in the economy of democracy, therefore, assume limited sovereignty, as to the extent the sovereignty entrusts elites the authority to minimize voter preferences, simplifying the process of elites’ democratic competition.

Despite its innate elitist tendencies, such breakthrough logic has positively influenced minimalist democratic theorists and public choice theorists as they seek to find rational, or economically efficient, ways to deal with the undemocratic or bureaucratically inefficient features of democracy. Thanks to the scholars’ enormous contributions, grand theories explaining the mechanisms of utility-maximizing choices and equilibriums in supply-side democracy are now available. Such progress, however, has consciously or unconsciously neglected the importance of the demand-side mechanisms in democracy, unveiling its incompetency in diagnosing the recent authoritarian fervor.

Demand-side Explanations for the Recent Authoritarian Fervor

Human-value-oriented political scientists, Inglehart and Norris’s working paper (2016) compared two main causes of the recent authoritarian fervor phenomenon in Europe and the U.S. from the perspective of the demand-side of democracy. The authors first draw implications from Piketty’s economic insecurity thesis that the current prevalence of far-rightist populism is a product of increasing economic inequality and social deprivation under which the left-behind losers of globalization socioeconomically suffer from the structural changes within post-industrial economies, such as growing technological automation and outsourcing. Thus they embrace populist appeals.

They then examine the cultural backlash approach under the premise that the populist phenomenon cannot solely be accounted for from an economic perspective. According to the post-materialist interpretation, the psychological effects of the sociocultural evolution of human values, or intergenerational value shifts, on individuals plays a more important role. Less-educated, white, and older generations, especially in Europe, took on a retrospective revolutionary backlash against the rising political influence of younger cohorts and the increasing inflows of immigration largely because they have failed to keep pace with the intergenerational cultural shift from traditional nativist and authoritarian values to progressively liberal and cosmopolitan values.

Inglehart’s inspiring work on post-materialism are analytically useful in untangling the demand side functioning of democracy. For instance, the major reason behind the spreading illusion of an ‘autocratic miracle’ among the people in developing democracies like the Philippines could be that a majority of Filipinos feel insecure about their basics needs. They are therefore demotivated from pursuing psychological and self-fulfillment needs. (In the 2010 version of the Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world, South Asian countries pursue far more traditional values than secular-rational values and far more survival values than self-expression values). This Filipino case could be further examined by questioning whether Filipinos are structurally cut off from the relevant information, resources, and social networks that are crucial for the attainment of psychological and self-fulfillment needs and also whether Filipinos could voluntarily and rationally participate in politics for the attainment of the needs once obstacles are removed.

The founder of social capital theory, Robert D. Putnam, in his latest publication Our Kids; the American Dream in Crisis (2015), insightfully notes that what is intrinsically unpleasant about today’s growing socioeconomic inequality is the fact that the inherited political inequality takes away from younger generations the opportunities (the aforementioned information, resources, and social networks) to voluntarily participate in political or civic activities.

Is Demand-side Innovation Possible? Through Political ‘Prosumtion’?

Although the role of mass priorities, or democratic values, has been constantly deprecated in the studies of minimalist democratic theory, systematically forecasting the evolutionary development of the values is equally important as is finding the Pareto optimality of the supply-side actors’ democratic competition. Still, Schumpeterian scholars would be deeply concerned about the possible negative consequences of the tyranny of the irrational masses.

Nevertheless, as Thomas Jefferson once stated, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” This is why it is so important to provide the right tools for the people (the masses) to allow them to not only rationally assess, interpret, and present information as they participate and engage in politics, but also to create or increase their own individual political value. Education is, no doubt, the most powerful tool to empower and enable individuals to participate and engage in politics but education does not necessarily incentivize individuals to do so.

Perhaps help from new technologies might solve the problem. Today’s technological advancements in the knowledge economy have hatched a new conceptual form of economic activity that Schumpeter could never have imagined in his time: ‘prosumption’. The term was first coined by an American futurist, Alvin Toeffler. It is defined as production by consumer.

A great example of successful prosumption activity that lays reflective intuitions on the demand-side innovations in democracy is Yelp. Yelp has been very successful for providing local foodies a crowd-sourced online reviewing platform through which they share their restaurant experiences with other foodies and netizens. Such exchanges of information on tried-out restaurants essentially involves rating the values of the restaurants, ranging from atmosphere to menu prices, in a subjective manner, stimulating actively engaged foodies to not only consume a particular restaurant’s menus but also to create or increase the brand values of both the restaurant itself and its menus.

The Yelp prosumers’ mediating role is what today’s wealthy democracies must desire for promoting innovation in the demand side of democracy in an orderly way, since voluntary intermediaries in political interest aggregation  can minimize the risks resulting from the problem of informational asymmetry between elites and the masses. Conceptualizing the notion of political prosumers and applying it to politics will be a challenging task. Nevertheless, devising the institutional arrangement that encourages reputation-conscious political prosumers to rationally remain engaged and participatory will lessen some of the burdens.

In conclusion, recent authoritarian fervor in the wealthy democracies that questions the validity of Przeworski and Limongi’s (1996) beliefs implies that even wealthy democracies with well-established institutional arrangements for supply-side democratic competition need innovation in the demand side of democracy. For this reason, it is worth paying attention to prescient political sociologists’ previous works on post-materialism and social capital theory for understanding the demand-side mechanisms and to devise institutional arrangements that incentivize people to innovate new democratic values.  In the Jeffersonian sense, new technologies can help by nurturing the new clout of prosumers who can take on their role as rational intermediaries bridging elites and the masses.

Providing the people with structural tools other than redistributive resources, such as access to information and social networks, can encourage the people to voluntarily and rationally crave new democratic values.

The post Can Democratic Values Survive? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Changes in the Dead Sea over time (NASA and BBC).

One of the most important lessons in economic theory is that we live in a world of scarcity. At a time when we are witnessing some of the largest refugee flows since World War II, highlighting the linkages between water resources and global affairs is crucial.

The current debate looks at linkages between water scarcity, refugee flows, and conflict. When there is only a finite size of a lake like the Dead Sea (the lowest spot on earth and one of the saltiest water bodies) whose level has dipped precariously in recent decades, several tricky aspects of ‘tragedy of the commons’ arise. The Dead Sea’s water level continues to drop at an alarming pace of 0.8 to 1.2 meters per year and its surface area is shrinking accordingly. If no action is taken to remedy the situation, the further decline is likely to cause more severe environmental, cultural, and economic damage, and it is estimated that, if left unattended, the Dead Sea will reach a new equilibrium at an elevation that is about 100m below the current level.

Numbers are also the nemesis adding to the lake’s environmental degradation: refugees from Syria have increased Jordan’s population by one-tenth, putting major pressure on budgets, public infrastructure, and labor markets. The massive and rapid influx of refugees has also strained already weak infrastructure, as more than 80 per cent of refugees live within local communities rather than in the refugee camps, and since the arrival of Syrian refugees, water consumption per capita dropped in Jordan from 88 to 66 liters.

On the other hand, evidence suggests that water can become an economic win-win agent and a ‘lubricant of peace,’ especially when basins transcend jurisdictional boundaries. Jordan and Israel are finally beginning to evolve solutions by implementing the Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project (the Red-Dead project) which will play a crucial role in saving the Dead Sea and meeting Jordan’s rising needs on water.

In its following phases, the Red-Dead project entails transferring up to 2 billion cubic meters of seawater from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

When Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement, the idea of laying a pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea began to gain momentum. Thereafter, in 2005, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority jointly asked the World Bank to lend its resources to the project’s feasibility study. They also requested an investigation into any potential environmental impact. The study found that it was viable and the three partners signed an agreement in December 2013.

The first phase of the Red-Dead project (with an estimated cost of US$900 million) will be 180 kilometers long and will pass through the Jordanian territory. Construction is planned for 2017 and will be completed in 4-5 years. About 300 million cubic meters (mcm) of water will be pumped each year under which a desalination plant will be built in north of Aqaba, Jordan’s only seaport, producing some 65mcm of fresh water per year. The remaining 235mcm (of mixed brine and seawater) will be pumped into the shrinking Dead Sea.

Another cooperation-inducing aspect is ‘water swapping and sharing’: Jordan is interested in selling desalinated water to Israel while buying water from the Sea of Galilee. Simply put, Israel wants water in the south, and Jordan needs water in the north where the majority of refugees are living. Hence, in principle, a Jordanian-Israeli water exchange (from the Sea of Galilee to Amman, and from Aqaba to Eilat) would make economic, environmental, and political sense.

Water exchange between Israel and Jordan (ynetnews.com).

In spite of some differences, the three beneficiary partners (Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority) have succeeded in isolating this ambitious, strategic project from the calculus of conflicts in the Middle East. Negative criticism of any sort largely emanates from environmentalists whose concerns have chiefly been related to the effects and impact from discharge of seawater and brine from desalination into the Dead Sea.

Ultimately, the greater need for water may outweigh potential environmental or political concern. Aside from saving the Dead Sea, the Red-Dead project could offer huge benefits to Jordan and neighboring countries: because the Dead Sea is more than 400m below sea level, channeling water down to it could provide the opportunity to generate electricity or desalinated seawater, or both. Moreover, the scope of the Red-Dead conveyance could be expanded, depending on project financing, with greater benefits accruing with larger scale.

The Dead Sea is a site of cardinal international cultural, environmental, and touristic importance. The development of such a strategic project cannot see realism without international support. While the refugee crisis necessitates a response, it is also an opportunity to re-examine and re-assert the benefits of the Red-Dead project.

We all know how severe the state of water resources in the Middle East is. And we know that the main rivers and lakes are shrinking at a fast pace. Yet, the nexus between water and peace is much less explored. The Red-Dead project is expected to make such a contribution. Thus, the whole world should start backing the completion of the Dead-Sea project without distraction.

The post Bringing Life to the Dead Sea appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The United Nations (UN) is a polarizing institution. To liberals, it is essential to peacekeeping and development. To conservatives, it is an ineffectual talk shop that infringes on American sovereignty while standing on American soil. One finds greater agreement, however, when pointing out the disparity that exists between the UN’s post-World War II structure and today’s international system. Most agree that for the UN to reflect today’s world accurately, reform of both of the Security Council permanent membership and of underlying national contributions to the UN Budget would be necessary.

Without the political capital of victory in war that governed the Atlantic Alliance in the UN’s initial creation, however, substantial reform is an intractable political problem. So substantive UN reform is a fantasy. For the moment, assume that is true. What harm did fantasizing ever do anyone? Thinking about what the UN would look like if it were created today to represent the current balance of global power may be instructive. So, let’s fantasize.

Permanent Security Council Membership is often the focus of UN reform discussion. The five permanent members—U.S., U.K., France, China and Russia—reflect the influence of the victorious Allied powers following World War II. Although other countries join the Security Council for rotating terms, its permanent membership is Euro-centric and ignores rising economic powers in Asia and Latin America. With India and Pakistan rival nuclear powers in Southeast Asia, it also no longer exclusively represents the world’s nuclear arsenals.

However, with the Soviet Union an enemy of the West at the UN’s inception—and Russia and China now rival powers to it—the Security Council has never functioned smoothly. To serve its function as “talk shop”, in the best sense, it does not need to; the current UN is a global diplomatic forum that catalyzes collective responses to global crises and helps frame the terms of debate and push incremental progress on global issues. As the recent Paris Agreement on Climate Change attests, that is a net positive.

Better indicators of what a “reformed” UN would look like lie in the UN Budget. Member countries are assessed contribution levels to the budget based on UN Resolutions (the 2016 country contribution levels were set in a December 2015 resolution). Below is a chart outlining the UN Budget contributions of select UN member countries, compared to defense spending by those countries as a percentage of their GDP, and their relative size in the global economy.

Country 2016 UN Budget Contribution (%) National Defense Spending (2015; %National GDP) Global Rank by GDP (World Bank, 2015) United States 22.0 3.3 1 Japan 10.8 1.0 3 Germany 7.1 1.2 4 France 5.6 2.1 6 United Kingdom 5.2 2.0 5 China 5.1 1.9 2 Canada 3.0 1.0 10 Brazil 2.9 1.4 9 Russia 2.4 5.4 13 Australia 2.1 1.9 12 South Korea 2.0 2.6 11 Poland 0.9 — 24 Saudi Arabia 0.9 13.7 20 India 0.7 2.3 7 Pakistan 0.09 — 40

Sources: UN Secretariat; Stockholm International Peace Institute; The World Bank

Contributions from Japan and Germany are at levels that reflect both their economic standing and their status as defeated powers that were de-militarized following World War II and that maintain restrictions on their ability to project military power. The combined UN Budget contribution of these two countries amounts to 81% of the annual U.S. contribution. Yet, if Germany’s internal struggle to take over the de-facto leadership of Europe in the wake of the Eurozone crisis is any indication, neither country is necessarily comfortable with advancing its strategic power to be commensurate with its economic power. In the case of case of India in particular, a desire for a greater voice within the UN has so far not been matched with any contribution on par with its economic standing.

The list also includes regional powers—Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and (to a lesser extent) South Korea, who spend substantially more on defense as a percentage of their GDP than they do on UN contributions. These disparities between defense spending as a percentage of GDP and levels of UN contributions, while imperfect (UN spending encompasses more than military operations), may be the best data point to illuminate where UN structures have grown out of step with current global realities. This is particularly true when one compares the size of India’s economy (the world’s seventh-largest) with the amount of the UN’s budget it pays (less than one percent.)

The matter of what nations step forward in UN leadership, however, is a sensitive one. In some cases, powerful countries are reluctant to take a bigger strategic place on the world stage (e.g., Germany); other countries have resources but autocratic characteristics that preclude them from leadership in the eyes of the international community (e.g., Saudi Arabia).

The biggest headwind the UN and Bretton Woods institutions face is the same one NATO currently faces. It is simpler, politically, to form new institutions than to reform outdated ones. Asia, led by China, is not looking to increase its standing within current international institutions; rather, it is building its own network of rival institutions. Old global institutions do not die, then, they just fade away. This is a common line of thinking but a divisive one. The UN and the Bretton Woods system were designed to unify and reduce the potential for strategic and economic strife between nations.

The world may have outgrown their structures, but is a dangerous time to allow them to atrophy or to let sets of rival regional institutions emerge in their place. There is a great deal of discussion about renewing America’s global leadership. That should start with the renovation of the post-World War II international system it built.

The post UN Reform by the Numbers appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Photo by orangesparrow. (FlickR)

The world of climate change wonks suffers no shortage of policy ideas. Virtually every day, a new visionary policy proposal joins the portfolio of clever climate change solutions both big and small. The latest and greatest of these belongs to the Club of Rome, of “Limits to Growth” fame. In sweeping fashion, the organization’s newest report suggests a number of measures to curb environmental degradation and set the world on a path towards sustainable development. The authors’ grab bag of policy ideas includes a universal basic income, carbon and wealth taxes, but also an increase in the retirement age. Most controversially, the report suggests paying women in industrial countries to have fewer children.

On the one hand, the report can be read as an important contribution towards how to think about climate change. There is a growing awareness that it is not exclusively an environmental phenomenon. As such, climate change is not exogenous to society. It is a direct corollary of what we produce in society, how we decide to produce it, where our priorities lie, and how we distribute gains. With that in mind, we should be more creative in conceiving effective social and economic policies at a much broader level. The days of climate change as a niche policy area are gone. By contrast, it is an outcome of a vast array of decisions we as members of society make every day. That should be reflected in public policy.

So far so good. Yet, the Club of Rome report, like most of its kind, lacks a fundamental quality. Whatever you think of paying women to have fewer babies, or the merits and downsides of a wealth tax, the paper has little to say about possible strategies to implement these suggestions politically. This is where most policy experts fail. We often tend to segregate policy generation from policy implementation. Sure, from a climate perspective a carbon tax sounds lovely. Both economists and environmental activists are for it. Mountains of detailed studies have been produced to determine the most efficient design of such a tax. Yet, it has proven exceedingly difficult to actually establish the political conditions under which carbon taxes can be implemented. National or supranational carbon taxation schemes remain practically non-existent. The few that do exist remain marginal.

What explains the repeated failure of policy implementation? Political scientist Robert MacNeil argues that policies associated with market environmentalism—such as carbon levies and emissions trading—tend to fail in liberal-market economies. At first, that seems paradoxical. MacNeil’s hypothesis is that, in countries like the United States, Canada, or Australia, workers enjoy less protection from market-based effects. In turn, putting a price on carbon is perceived as an additional tax on the most vulnerable. As Oscar Wilde knew, it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The politics around policy matters. The lesson is that we should pay as much attention on researching possible enabling conditions as we do on policy content. It should not just be left to politicians to figure it out.

Of course, climate change is not exceptional in this regard. There are plenty of public policy areas in which much is made about detailed plans without giving sufficient thought to a political implementation strategy. Clever education policies often end up on the scrap heap when the political coalitions to implement them fail to materialize. Most people agree that infrastructure spending in industrialized countries is woefully inadequate, but policy change continues to be elusive. With climate change increasingly becoming an issue associated with political identity, however, there is some exigency in paying more attention to politics instead of policy.

Now, it goes without saying that we need visionary policy ideas. There is a certain legitimacy to thinking about ideas in the abstract. Without the restrictions of actual political conditions on the ground, we can develop ideal scenarios and bench marks. This is not where research should stop, however. The analogy here is the way many economists tend to think about their discipline. As the joke goes, you need eight economists to change a light bulb—one to change the bulb, and seven to hold everything else constant. Reality is messier than that. And climate change policy needs to adapt to reflect a messy political reality. We should think hard about whether policy suggestions should generally be accompanied by an analysis of what would need to happen politically to make them feasible. Would we need a change in norms? Is there a particular set of policy entrepreneurs that would be required? Does policy change in field X presuppose a change in field Y?

Take the debate about fossil fuel subsidies. In many cases big fossil fuel companies continue to receive unnecessary handouts from governments. By all accounts, that should stop. Yet, the majority of subsidies actually go towards consumers. Governments, justifiably or not, use these subsidies as a substitute for social policy. As repeated examples have shown, it is then incredibly difficult to remove them. While research has indicated that fossil fuel subsidies are wasteful, kill the climate, and are not actually beneficial to the poor, the perception among people is a different one. Therefore, the emphasis has rightly shifted towards an analysis of the enabling conditions which would allow for meaningful reform.

If we return to the Club of Rome report, the same concern emerges. Take something like curbing population growth. This has been a popular idea for quite some time now. As early as the 1960s, Paul Ehrlich warned about the impending “population bomb”. Suppose for the sake of argument that you agree that managing population growth is key to curbing climate change. We have only seen two mechanisms by which population control has actually been achieved. One is, of course, China’s one-child policy. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective, the one-child policy appears to be particular to China’s political system and the point in time when it was implemented. With its erosion even in China itself, it has little to no chance of revival. The other option would be economic development broadly speaking, and education in particular. That is not a policy. So if the aim is effective population control, one has to both describe a set of policies and provide an analysis of how those policies will be put on the agenda.

The politics around policy matters. To be more effective at policy implementation, wonks should contextualize ideas within the given political environment. Climate change is politics. Policy ideas need to reflect that reality.

The post What We Get Wrong about Climate Change Solutions appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

North Korean soldiers march during a mass military parade at Kim Il-Sung square in Pyongyang on October 10, 2015. (Ed Jones/Getty)

Following North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on September 9, the Pentagon sent two of its B-1B bombers last week in a direct rebuke to Pyongyang’s show of force. China, the economic and diplomatic lifeline of North Korea, stressed that “dialogue and consultation is the fundamental way out for the issue of the Korean Peninsula which is complex.” The U.S., Japan and South Korea are also calling for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.  

Pyongyang is already heavily sanctioned, and its economy is also being crippled by the worst flooding since the end of the second World War. The massive floods have wiped out harvests in the impoverished northeast and left thousands of North Koreans in need of urgent assistance. The World Food Program revealed on September 14 they had sent emergency food supplies to 140,000 people in flood-affected areas.

With the latest nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang, threats of further economic sanctions, and historic flooding, North Korea watchers are once again asking—will North Korea fall?

One such watcher of North Korea, the geopolitical crowdsourced consultancy Wikistrat, recently conducted an 11-day simulation exploring the ways in which North Korea may collapse. Drawing from the opinions of more than 70 of its analysts, the simulation “gamed out” the various pathways to collapse and the response of major actors in the region.

Close to two-thirds (65%) of the simulation analysts predicted that the fall of the regime would occur five to ten years from now, evenly split between military, economic and political causes. The top three causes suggested by the analysts were: 1) Retaliatory Foreign Military Intervention; 2) Kim Dies of Poor Health; and 3) Internal Coup. While the death of Kim Jong-un ranked high among the causes of North Korea’s fall, most analysts (85%) expected Kim to preside over the country at the time of the fall.

In their simulation, Wikistrat analysts (who predicted the annexation of Crimea by Russia), predict Moscow may have the most to gain from North Korea’s collapse. Japan looks likely to rely on its treaty ally, the U.S., in order to exert any influence over the situation, while South Korea may be militarily prepared to take Pyongyang quickly before China can respond. However, while the simulation deemed unilateral South Korean action possible, the analysts warned such action would be tremendously destabilizing.

Which leaves the potential collapse of North Korea, and the securing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), best left in the hands of Beijing, according to Wikistrat analysts. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, recently echoed this sentiment, arguing that Beijing shares an “important responsibility” for North Korea’s nuclear provocations—and should “use” its influence to defuse the situation.

While Beijing has publicly supported United Nations-led economic sanctions in the past, these sanctions are loosely enforced by Beijing. Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, argued recently, “If China did cut all economic ties and United Nations assistance, will Kim Jong Un truly stop nuclear testing? Nobody in China believes that for a second.”

Indeed, Beijing often allows critical supplies of food and oil to cross the border in times of crisis. The last thing Beijing wants to deal with is a humanitarian crisis emanating from the collapse of its neighbor, which could see 25 million impoverished North Koreans fleeing into an ill-prepared Chinese mainland.

So it is no surprise that the Wikistrat analysts found among Beijing’s objectives the desire to keep the Korean peninsula divided, maintain stability in North Korea (to prevent the U.S. or South Korea intervening), and ensure the North Korean regime remains more or less under Chinese tutelage. Should North Korea fall, Wikistrat analysts argue the U.S. would have little incentive to contest Chinese primacy—provided efforts to secure WMD were done either in cooperation with the U.S. or carried out in such a way that Washington, Tokyo and Seoul are convinced the threat has been eliminated.

With Pyongyang’s fifth nuclear test in recent days, the delicate balance of power on the Korean peninsula has been upset once again. As the pivotal power in the region, Beijing holds the only remaining cards to influence the outcome. With North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, cooling relations between Pyongyang and Beijing, and inflammatory rhetoric between Washington and Beijing, further analysis, such as done by Wikistrat, should be undertaken, and all concerned powers need to plan for a potential negative outcome. 

The post The Fall of North Korea: A Wikistrat Crowdsourced Simulation appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

In this virtual roundtable of six podcasts hosted by Professor Sarwar Kashmeri, the Foreign Policy Association aims to shed some light and serve as a catalyst for developing awareness, understanding and informed opinions on the key issues that face American policymakers as they seek to peer over the horizon to manage the U.S.-China relations.

In the sixth and final installment of the virtual roundtable, Marc Chandler—Global Head of Currency Strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman—discusses China’s economic growth and its transition from a focus on the industrial sector to a services and consumption sector.

When asked about this transition, Chandler explained: “If you just think about the two sectors, the industrial sector has falling prices, and services have rising prices. So it could be that part of the transition that China seems to be on is being affected by deflation of the goods sector and inflation in the services sector.”

Questioned about China’s decisions to set up its own infrastructure bank, while also joining the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank Chandler argues that: “China is of two minds. One mind is that it is a status quo power, for example joining the WTO. But on the other hand, it is also a revisionist power but it is not happy with the international financial architecture in which one country—the U.S.—seems to dominate.”

http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/M-Chandler-MSTR-081716-V2.mp3

For more analysis on the U.S.-China relations, listen to the other podcasts of the virtual roundtable.

The post Marc Chandler on China’s Economic Growth Prospects appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

U.S. and Israeli representatives signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington on September 14. (Reuters)

This week, Israel and the US signed a $38 billion military aid package, the largest of its kind in U.S. history.

The two allies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will cover fiscal years 2019-2028, taking over when the current $30 billion MOU, signed in 2007, expires.

President Obama stated: “Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are confident that the new MOU will make a significant contribution to Israel’s security in what remains a dangerous neighborhood.”

Because it involves money and military aid going to Israel, it is controversial. But not for the normal reasons. Many in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and former head of IDF military intelligence Amos Yadlin, believe that Israel should have received additional funds from the U.S.

From adversaries to appreciative partners

Netanyahu and former Ambassador to the U.S. and current Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren have both told critics of the deal that they are being ungrateful.

Netanyahu said critics of the deal were “showing ingratitude… to our greatest and best friend, the United States.”

Oren went further:

“There are those who when they hear the discourse here are likely to recall well-known depictions and libels against the Jews. Put yourself in the place of the Americans and ask yourself how the debate here sounds in the USA. We received a very good and very respectable package. We should say, ‘Thank you very much,’ and keep our mouths shut. Instead, it sounds like the Israelis got nearly $40 billion but there are still all kinds of people who are claiming, ‘We could have got more out of the Americans and got more money.’ This public debate is damaging to us. We look like people who don’t recognize a favor.”

It is bizarre, on so many levels, that Netanyahu and Oren are outright defending President Obama for giving Israel massive amounts of aid. If nothing else, these two Israeli leaders haven’t always been so appreciative of President Obama’s attitude towards Israel and the Middle East.

A few recent highlights of their contentious relationship:

• Last year Netanyahu was invited by House Republicans to speak to congress in opposition to the President’s deal with Iran. He didn’t even give the White House the courtesy of advance notice.
• Netanyahu was perceived by the Obama administration as “campaigning on behalf of Mitt Romney” during the president’s reelection in 2012.
• Michael Oren released a book just last year that many deemed to be psychoanalyzing the President, determining from a great distance that Obama wanted to “bring Washington closer to the Arab and Muslim world,” due to his “childhood experiences having been abandoned by Muslim father figures.”

While these two men might be right about the deal that Israel accepted, they are also imperfect defenders of it. Senior Labor Party MK Shelly Yachimovich said as much when she sarcastically tweeted: “The funniest thing is that Netanyahu is sternly rebuking his critics on the failures of the aid agreement over their ‘ingratitude’ toward the Americans. Teach us more, prime minister.”

None of the above is particularly shocking. After all, all politics is local, everyone in power has a short memory and as with any political establishment, the parties approach each other with a zero-sum attitude.

Because we’re talking money, military and Israel, Senator Lindsey Graham weighs in

Here is the part that did shock me. While he did not necessarily agree with anyone in Israel, and he certainly does not agree with the President, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is furious at Netanyahu for accepting the deal.

He blasted Netanyahu for “pulling the rug” from under Israel’s friends in Congress.

The gist of Graham’s objection is this: no one can protect Israel except for the U.S. Congress. And now Netanyahu signed a massive deal with President Obama making it impossible for Congress to continue to defend Israel.

This anger stems from the fact that, under the MOU, Israel is no longer permitted to solicit or accept additional funding from Congress. Graham’s take: “I don’t think it’s appropriate to have an agreement which shuts the next president and the next Congress out. I don’t think that it’s appropriate to have an agreement which shuts out me out and my colleagues.” He continued, “at the end of the day, I would tell our friends in Israel: Congress is your friend. Don’t pull the rug from under us.”

Graham is basically furious that Israel is making decisions relating to its own security, which sounds like the very type of right that we would normally hear him passionately defending.

But strangely that is not the full extent of his argument. He went on a tweet storm, which is not something he often does.

[Quick note: The other primary component of the MOU angering Graham is that Israel will no longer be permitted to appropriate US aid money to its own defense industry and will have to funnel that money back into American-made weapons.]

He seems to be upset not just that Israel will lack the agency to do anything it wants with the funding, but rather that the U.S. is going to be missing out on “Israeli advancements” that help to protect “Americans wearing the uniform of our nation.”

Think about that. The U.S. can still work with Israel, fund their military programs, and procure new technology and innovations stemming from Israel. But Graham is upset that this agreement ends the prior arrangement allowing Israel to spend part of the aid purchasing directly from Israeli companies (which would directly benefit the U.S. due to the required information sharing stipulated by the previous agreement).

What does this say about Graham, who is rarely met a conflict he did not think could be solved with American boots on the ground, and his trust in the American military program? He seems to literally be saying the only way America can protect our troops is through Israeli innovation.

Israel has pioneered numerous military advancements that the U.S. is smart to utilize. But let’s not pretend that the U.S. has not done well in this category itself.

If this analysis sounds hyperbolic, I refer you back to his final tweet: “I do fear it will be Americans wearing the uniform of our nation who will pay the price for this short-sighted change in policy.”

Could the deal have been better for Israel?

Chemi Shalev does an excellent job in Haaretz of laying out how this deal could have better negotiated by an Israel ally who had not spent the last eight years undermining his American counterpart. It is worth a read.

Follow me on Twitter @jlemonsk.

The post Unexpected Responses to a Massive Aid Program appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Libyan militia watch over explosives and shells left behind by Islamic State soldiers in the battle over the city of Surt, Libya on Sept. 9, 2016. The Islamic State is believed to have been driven out of Surt, a strategically-placed coastal city. (REUTERS/Stringer)

Many inside and outside of Libya had hoped that the overthrow of dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 would herald a new era of stable and open government. Yet the five years since have been dominated by civil war and power struggles. Multiple governments claim authority, no one really knows who is in charge, and stability remains a long-off goal, not even close to a reality. Recent hostilities indicate how violence and uncertainty remain the norm.

The Islamic State has maintained a presence in Libya for some time. But in August 2016 some progress was made to reduce their influence. A Libyan militia, under the auspices of the UN-backed government in Tripoli (presumably- more on this in a moment) and with American air support, took control of the coastal city of Surt (written in some sources as Sitre).

But the victory may be short-lived. The militia who took the city came from the city of Misurata. According to Rod Nordland and Nour Youssef of the New York Times, they are only “nominally” affiliated with the Government of National Accord (GNA), a newly formed body created with the support of the UN and recently acquiring backing from the Arab League and African Union. It is, worryingly, unclear whether the Misurata militia will continue to take orders from the GNA. A Libyan military official, Ahmed ed-Mesmari, stated that “We don’t think anyone can control these forces. They are anarchists and extremists…They would be very hard to tame.”

Despite the involvement of international organizations, the GNA has several challengers who claim to be Libya’s legitimate government:

• The government of the city of Bayda, which has its own parliament; it previously had some international allies but now relies on Egypt and Persian Gulf nations for support; suspicious of the loyalty of Misurata militias, and upset that the UN chose to back the GNA.
• Military forces controlled by General Khalifa Hifter; based in Benghazi, Hifter is considered the most powerful military figure in Libya and commander of the Libyan National Army, however he claims political recognition separate from the GNA.
• An Islamist militia group in Tripoli also has its own parliament and also refuses to legitimize the GNA.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mesmari estimates there are up to 40 militias and gangs in Tripoli with constantly shifting allegiances. Further complicating matters, these groups are not just fighting for political power, but control of and access to Libya’s extensive oil reserves. Needless to say, the political and military situations in Libya are quite murky and ever-evolving.

The importance of oil in the power struggle became clear on September 11, 2016 when militia loyal Gen. Hifter attacked three major oil terminals. This July a three year embargo on oil exports from Libya, but this aggressive maneuver as well as political infighting and economic decline have put the country’s ability to capitalize on its oil in serious jeopardy.

However, some hope to restoring order and commerce emerged on September 18—one week after the seizure by Hifter’s forces—Eastern Libyan troops reclaimed two of the ports and expected normal operations to resume the next day. In fact an oil tanker was docked at one of the ports, the first ship to do so in Libya in the last two years. Libya’s national oil company expected its exports to reach 600,000 barrels per day one month from now, and 950,000 barrels per day by the end of the year.

Also on Sept. 18 the Misurata militia continued their campaign against Islamic State forces in Surt. The militia has been scouring the city neighborhood by neighborhood to root out enemy fighters. However, a spokesman for the militia acknowledges that some enemy soldiers may have escaped and are still at large.

While the support of international organizations to stabilize Libya could make worthy contributions, the driving force for consolidating power in a national body of government recognized by all Libyans must come from Libya. Despite the multitude of factions and tribes and political groups, continuing with a fragmented system is not sustainable. Leaders of these disparate groups must find a way to reach a workable agreement, perhaps a power-sharing arrangement that includes all major claimants to begin with.

Without commitment to reaching some acceptable compromise, stability in Libya will remain a long-off goal rather than a viable reality.

The post Stability in Libya Remains in Doubt appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The latest round of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan threatens to add the 19th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit, scheduled to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan, in November 2016, to the long list of failed attempts at cooperation in South Asia.

But there are enough signals suggesting that reasons apart from the historical animosity between the two nations are now pulling SAARC apart.

The Raging Fire

The Association, often accused as a stillborn by its various critics because of the lack of appreciable progress towards stitching together a South Asian Union (à la European Union) by means of trade, diplomacy, and infrastructure, has always been an unfortunate recipient of the tensions between its largest two member nations.

The current round of hostility between the two nuclear-armed neighbours began with the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) terrorist Burhan Wani by the Indian army in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

The 21-year-old militant was a ‘self-proclaimed commander’ of HM, designated as a terrorist organisation by India, the European Union, and the U.S. He was the poster boy for anti-India people and groups in the Kashmir valley of J&K, and openly defied and challenged the Indian state for war, via social media.

Wani’s killing led to widespread protests in the Indian Kashmir. Adding to the temperature was Pakistan’s open and steadfast support to the slain terrorist. Prime Minister of Pakistan Mr. Nawaz Sharif “expressed shock” at the killing of Wani, and called him ‘martyr’ and a ‘Kashmiri leader’. Pakistan even observed a ‘black day’ on July 19 in solidarity with the victims of violence in Kashmir.

India, predictably, responded quickly and sharply, asking Pakistan to stop “glorifying terrorists”, saying that it makes it abundantly clear where Pakistan’s sympathies lie.

But neither Pakistan’s official support nor the angry protests in India’s Kashmir valley saw any abating even after a month of Wani’s killing. For weeks, the belligerent crowd made up of angry local youth pelted stones at Indian security forces. In response, the men in uniform used pellet guns, causing over 50 deaths and countless injuries among the protestors.

At the same time more than 3,300 security personnel were injured, many seriously, in about 1000 incidents of violence. A few of them later succumbed to the injuries.

As a result, the entire Indian Kashmir valley region was put under curfew for over 50 days in the July-August period. After lifting it for a couple of days, curfew was re-imposed on many parts at the time of writing this report because of further violence.

India continuously accused Pakistan of fanning the trouble by sending financial, logistical, political, and armed support to the protesting crowds.

With Pakistan going all out to support the violent protestors, India, for the first time ever in its history, chose to officially respond in kind to Pakistan’s long-running commentary on the issue of self-right of Kashmiri people in India.

Addressing the nation on its Independence Day on August 15, India’s Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi mentioned the support and good wishes of people of Pakistan’s largest province Balochistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) areas of Kashmir. Balochistan, it may be noted, is home to many political and extremist groups that is demanding independence from Pakistan.

Pakistan was quick to call Mr. Modi’s speech as the vindication of its charges of an Indian hand in the violence in the restive province of Balochistan.

Both India and Pakistan have since upped the ante.

The Indian government approved a proposal to air programs in Balochi and Sindhi (the primary language of Pakistan’s second biggest province, Sindh, where, again, some groups demand an independent Sindhu Desh) via its official radio service.

Taking the clue, the Indian media is currently flush with news about and views from Balochi rebels sitting in the UK and elsewhere. Talks of political asylum to leaders fighting the ‘Balochistan Independence’ battle with Pakistan—in line with that to the Tibetan spiritual guru HH Dalai Lama—are heard with increased frequency in news outlets.

Beyond the talk, the Indian government also approved Rs. 2,000 Crore ($ 300 million) package for displaced people of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan and PoK regions living in the country. 36,348 such families have been identified for distribution of the package.

To counter India’s communication blitzkrieg, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on August 27 nominated 22 parliamentarians as special envoys who will ‘highlight the Indian brutalities and human rights abuses in the occupied Kashmir’ in key parts of the world.

And there stands currently the ‘peacetime scenario’ in South Asia.

Can it change in the next 60 days for a fruitful SAARC summit in Islamabad? Well, 69 years of history doesn’t suggest it.

Note: This piece was written prior to a deadly terror attack on an Indian military facility on September 18, which killed 17 Indian army personnel. All the four killed terrorists belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.

To be continued…

The post The Tattered Mirage of a South Asian Union is Dying Fast – Pt. 1 appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.