Foreign Policy Blogs

Anti-China protester at Taipei airport, Aug. 22 (Storm Media Group, Taipei)

A visit to Taiwan by a top Chinese Communist Party official from Shanghai was met with angry protest on August 22-23. Sha Hailin (沙海林), head of the party’s United Front Work Department in Shanghai, was greeted at the Taipei airport August 22 by pro-independence demonstrators shouting, “Sha Hailin, go back to China” and “Expel propaganda communist, defend Taiwan’s sovereignty.” Protesters followed Sha and Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to a Shanghai-Taipei cross-strait cities forum on August 23.

Sha’s visit has come at a time of strained relations between Taiwan and the mainland since Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency of Taiwan in January. Beijing broke off official contact with Taipei in June following Tsai’s refusal to acknowledge the “one-China principle” on which Beijing insists as the basis of cross-strait relations. Sha is the first high-level mainland official to visit Taiwan since official contact was broken off.

The United Front Work Department is a propaganda agency under the direct authority of the Communist Party Central Committee charged with asserting party “leadership” over non-party groups in China and abroad. The “shadowy agency” has been noted for its role in Beijing’s efforts at gaining control of Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province of China. Mainland attitudes stand in stark contrast to those of Taiwan’s 23 million residents, the vast majority of whom are opposed to “reunification” with mainland China and consider themselves to be of “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese” nationality.

Beijing has shown little interest in the opinions or wishes of Taiwan’s people, insisting that “reunification” with the mainland is the only option for Taiwan’s future. The role of the United Front Work Department in Beijing’s efforts consists of attempting to manipulate public opinion and forging alliances with influential groups with the aim of neutralizing pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan. Given Beijing’s economic clout and close economic ties with Taiwan, much of this effort is directed at the island’s business and political elite, who have shown far greater willingness to bow to Beijing’s demands than ordinary Taiwanese.

Sha Hailin (Shanghai Municipal Communist Party Committee)

In typical form as a mainland official, Sha Hailin insisted on the “one-China principle” as the basis for cross-strait relations in a speech at the August 23 forum as protesters demonstrated outside. “I believe most Taiwanese support peaceful unification and closer exchanges and cooperation between the two cities,” said Sha in willful ignorance of Taiwanese public opinion, “Some Taiwanese who opposed the forum either lacked understanding of the actual situation or did it on purpose.”

For his part, Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je said prior to the forum that the United Front Work Department has been unfortunately “vilified” in Taiwan, citing this as an example of “cultural estrangement” between the democratic island and the authoritarian mainland. Said Ko at the forum with Sha: “When we understand and respect Beijing’s insistence on some aspects, we hope Beijing can understand and respect Taiwan’s insistence on democracy and freedom.”

Protesters don’t seem to have been convinced by Ko’s and Sha’s wishful thinking on cross-strait relations, calling the Taipei mayor a “sell out” and his mainland guest a “communist bandit.” Most of Taipei’s city councilors boycotted the forum, citing Sha’s “obvious ‘united front’ intention” among other complaints. Mainland Chinese media ignored the protests, trumpeting Sha’s visit and the Shanghai-Taipei forum as a “boost” for cross-strait ties.

Faced with the seemingly impossible task of “winning hearts and minds” in Taiwan, mainland leaders continue to live in a world of make-believe.

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Tuesday’s attack on Istanbul Ataturk airport will only exacerbate Turkey’s tourism and economic woes.

On Tuesday, June 28th Islamic State-linked militants assaulted Istanbul Ataturk international airport. The attack was a coordinated operation conducted by at least three foreign militants armed with assault rifles and explosive vests. The death toll has so far reached 44 dead and 239 others were wounded.

The attack came as a stern reminder of the elevated terrorist threat faced by Turkey. It also underscores the fact that the country is currently located at the cross-roads of ISIS international and regional terrorist strategies. The attacks at Istanbul airport will deal an additional blow against the Turkish economy. They will also raise further questions concerning the security of in-country and international large civilian infrastructure.

The wave of terrorist attacks that has been marring Turkey’s security environment since July 2015 has had a major impact on the national economy. The most direct hit has so far been felt by the national tourism sector.

Since the beginning of 2016, hotel occupancy rates have steadily been dropping every month in comparison to the same periods in the previous year. In March, the occupancy rates of hotels in Istanbul were down by approximately 30%. Two months later, these overall rates in Turkey reached 57%, marking a more than 40% drop.

These indicators are directly linked to a steady decline of foreign travellers reaching Turkey for touristic reasons. The two main groups of foreign tourists, Germans and Russians, experienced a 30% and 90% decrease respectively since the beginning of 2016. While the number of Russians coming to Turkey may increase following the lifting of Moscow’s travel ban, the volume of Russian tourists will likely remain substantially lower than usual during summer 2016.

It is probable that the bombing at Istanbul international airport will further increase foreigners’ concerns over the overall security environment in the country. The attack will have its biggest impact on planned travels to Istanbul and will also lead to an overall decrease of the demand for holidays in the western and south-western coastal regions of Izmir and Antalya. Indeed, post-attack security operations targeted suspected networks in Izmir raising concerns over the potential presence of ISIS networks in the area.

The bombing in Istanbul underscored the overall deterioration of the local security environment. Since the beginning of 2016, the city has experienced four major terrorist attacks conducted by two of the principal terrorist groups operating in Turkey. Istanbul is exposed to operations carried out by both Islamist militants as well as Kurdish separatists.

It is noteworthy that ISIS militants have been carrying out operations in Istanbul, as well as Ankara, as part of the groups’ international strategy aimed at hitting high-level targets such as airports and key civilian places. Istanbul had previously experienced suicide bombings in touristic and commercial districts in which the perpetrators specifically targeted foreign nationals.

The selected targets are clearly chosen to hurt Turkey’s international standing in a bid to generate economic woes by hampering the national tourist sector and increasingly portraying the country as an unsafe place.

The latest attack raised questions over the Turkish security forces ability to prevent further terrorist operations. It also led to additional interrogations regarding the overall response to secure global airports.

While it has been positive that June’s attack in Ataturk airport did not lead to major air travel and operation disruptions like March’s attacks in Belgium, ISIS’ assault in Istanbul shows that airports continue to be a relatively soft target.

Security measures such as preliminary checkpoints, luggage and vehicle checks as well as identity controls may diminish the risk of attacks within the terminals but increase the volume of travellers exposed to potential violence on the outskirts of the airport perimeter.

As such, security managers of global airports and governments are increasingly looking for innovative ways to respond to the terrorist threat to airports. Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion international airport is attracting international interest over its unique system of airport security based on technical and human controls.

In the near-future, Istanbul and other international airports are expected to review their security measures to try to step up capabilities to mitigate the risk of additional attacks.

For Turkey, the elevated terrorism risk is unlikely to abate in the coming months. Kurdish separatist groups, Islamist radicals and far-left militants will continue trying to carry out attacks against security forces and institutions, as well as touristic and commercial areas.

This will result in an ongoing campaign against terror mainly directed against PKK-linked militants and ISIS-associated networks. Anti-terrorist operations will continue to occur in major cities, as well as along the southern border with Syria and in Kurdish-majority south-eastern provinces. Such raids increase the risk of localized violence and generate an overall risk of retaliatory violence.

This article was originally published by Global Risk Insights and written by GRI analyst Riccardo Dugulin.

The post The Wider Implications of ISIS’ Istanbul Bombing appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has joined a growing number of world leaders taking their message to one of today’s fast-growing social media platforms: Snapchat (@israelipm). Indeed, Netanyahu is already on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

His first snap is a series of jokes—professionally edited to look unedited—spliced with the message that “Snapchat is a powerful medium and I look forward to using it to tell the truth about Israel.”

Some of Netanyahu’s jokes in his first snap:

• He starts by announcing that today he is joining “Stopchat.” When corrected, he deadpans: “Snoopchat?”
• “Since Snapchat disappears, I’ve decided to conduct all secret conversations and communications with Snapchat.”
• “You can only talk for 10 seconds. I wish we had that in the government.”
• He concludes with “now I can finally tell you all of Israel’s most closely held secrets, like…” He is abruptly interrupted by static and the SMPTE color bars.”

Netanyahu understands the power of unfiltered words, spoken directly to the camera. He was a masterful representative for Israel when he served as their Ambassador to the UN. He understands America, speaks English as a native, and is a powerful orator with a deep voice and a smile in his eyes.

Even before becoming Prime Minister, he has one of Israel’s most strident spokespeople, whether sitting down for a one-on-one interview with the American press or addressing the world through the UN.

His understanding of video seems to have evolved of late. He has recently released several videos (that have subsequently gone viral) which feature him sitting at a desk and speaking directly to the camera. He shared a touching response to the heinous Orlando attack; the Financial Times called his video a “masterclass in responding to tragedy.” It has been viewed over 22 million times and shared over 667,000 times online.

After Hallal Ariel was brutally murdered in her sleep, Netanyahu again chose to respond at his desk, speaking directly to the camera. His video response became a significant part of the conversation.

Netanyahu has long understood the media. It is now becoming clear he is also quite adept at social media. His interest in Snapchat serves as an easy extension of his online brand and it will be interesting to see how he approaches this new medium of communication.

I know that I for one will be following along. Join me in the conversation on Twitter at @jlemonsk.

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A store in Venezuela with a sign saying “no light.” Despite lifting mandatory electricity shutdowns, Venezuela continues to have food shortages and a flailing economy. (Getty Images)

On July 4, 2016 Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, removed the policy of electricity rationing that had been in place throughout the country for over 2 months. During this time Venezuelans had to subsist without power for 4 hours per day.

Venezuelans have been suffering from many hardships in recent months, including a plummeting economy and food shortages. The limits on using electricity is the latest visible example of the country’s crumbling infrastructure, as well as the growing discord between the government and citizens of Venezuela.

According to Maduro’s government, the El Nino weather system caused a water levels in the Guri hydroelectric dam to drop to record lows. The lack of a sufficient amount of water needed to generate electricity led to the rationing. The government also cut civil servant working hours to 2 days per week to conserve energy, and Maduro actually recommended that women stop using hair dryers as an example of using “wasteful” energy. When implementing the power restrictions in late April 2016, Maduro claimed that Venezuela was “six days away from a collapse, we were facing having to turn off almost the entire country.”

But outrage against the government and its policies is growing as shortages of multiple supplies continue. Critics argue that the government caused the country’s problems through economic and resource mismanagement. They blame the energy shortage on over-reliance of hydroelectric power—about 2/3 of the entire country’s electricity is produced by the Guri dam—and failure to invest in Venezuela’s electricity production system. Beyond power outages, PBS Newshour’s Hari Sreenivasan pointed out that “Venezuelans are struggling with shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, with increasing finger pointing at Maduro’s leadership.”

Several factors have contributed to the current dire situation. Drastic declines in oil prices certainly have had a devastating effect. The price per barrel of oil on the world market has nosedived, dropping by more than half in 2016 from 2014. Oil accounts for about 95% of Venezuela’s export revenue.

But it goes beyond than this. Maduro has continued the policy of price controls on basic goods, such as sugar, milk and flour. Venezuela’s long-time ruler Hugo Chavez (Maduro is Chavez’s hand-picked successor) started this practice in 2003, hoping to make these items continually affordable for the country’s poor. Yet this caused producers of these goods to operate at a loss, and increase reliance on imports. Importing goods drove up prices as well as inflation.

With the weak economy overall subsidized goods disappeared from stores almost immediately after they arrived, increasing prices of basic items even more. The government has accused merchants of charging exorbitant prices to make profits, and people from hoarding goods to resell them on the black market. While the extent to which this occurs is unclear, it has been documented that Venezuelans often wait on lines for hours to buy small amount of basic necessities, riots over food and vandalism of stores are rampant, and many are going hungry.

Caracas resident Kelly Vega commented to the Associated Press, “We are eating two meals a day. If we eat breakfast, there’s no lunch. If we have lunch, there’s no dinner.” A recent Caracas university study found that about 12% of capital residents are forced to a skip a meal, a sharp increase from a few years ago.

So what can be done restore order? Especially if a growing number of people feel the government has caused the current situation, do they have an recourse to force a change? Some groups are committed to removing Maduro from power, it is remains to be seen whether or not they will be successful. In December 2015 opposition parties became the majority in Venezuela’s legislative assembly. They proposed an amendment to the constitution reducing Maduro’s term in office to four years (from six). But this past April the country’s supreme court rejected the proposal.

In May 2016 opposition leaders officially submitted a petition calling for a national recall referendum, which could remove Maduro from power. The petition accumulated 1.85 million signatures. Yet the government agency that oversees elections has not taken any action in response to the petition.

Nicholas Casey of the New York Times said on July 3, 2016 that it is unlikely basic food needs will be met before the end of the summer. Casey continues that it is unclear whether Maduro would accept a recall referendum, though also not assured that new government would do any better at making the necessary amount of food available.

It seems doubtful to me the government would allow a recall to take place. Chavez held an iron grip on power for over a decade, it seems doubtful Maduro would act differently. In the midst of much uncertainty, what does seem apparent is that Venezuela will not be able to rescue itself without help. Whether with a new government or the current one, civil society organizations, NGOs, and food relief agencies could make a significant difference. Though Venezuela has been resistant to allowing outside help in the past, hopefully its leaders can be convinced that the current situation necessitates involvement of other actors.

Venezuela could use help, or else the lights may go out again.

The post Venezuela Shortages: Past, Present, and Uncertain Future appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Boris Johnson, Conservative Euroskeptic prominent leader of the Brexit campaign, was expected to replace David Cameron as prime minister after winning the referendum, but he was unceremoniously dumped by his colleagues. Like everyone else, he had no plan for what to do if he won. (The Guardian)

The roiling stock markets and the plunging value of sterling on the day after the United Kingdom’s vote to abandon the European Union are not necessarily the last word in assessing this historic event. These specific trends are short-term reactions, and first reactions rarely settle an issue. Yet it is hard to predict a positive outcome. If nothing else, the U.K. is likely to become less productive and relatively poorer over time because of the vote, with the working-class people who voted overwhelmingly to leave likely to suffer the worst from the consequences.

Beyond that, the contagion of exiting could spread to other countries with disgruntled populations, and Britain could feasibly face the double disruption of losing Scotland while leaving Europe. Conflict could be rekindled in Northern Ireland, where the 1998 peace agreement was premised in part on both parts of the island being in the EU. Meanwhile, both of the U.K.’s major parties have been split by the vote, both are undergoing leadership crises, and no one—not even the leading Brexit* campaigners—has a plan for what to do now that the referendum has actually passed.

The next question—or one of the many next questions that Europe and Britain now face—is how the EU will arrange the U.K.’s exit (if it in fact comes about). European leaders face at least two dilemmas. The first dilemma concerns timing. On the one hand, the Brexit vote cast many aspects of the continent’s economy into uncertainty, and with the European economy barely holding itself together eight years after the 2008 crisis (despite repeated announcements of breakthroughs), uncertainty is the last thing that the continent’s leaders want to see. Some European leaders thus hope to dissolve the relationship with Britain as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the ties holding Europe and Britain together at all levels have grown over the course of decades and are now numerous, complicated, and interwoven. It seems reasonable to assume that any effort to rush the unraveling of this relationship could also have dire consequences.

At the same time, European leaders must face their second dilemma, how severely to treat the U.K. A harsh, vindictive approach, even if satisfying to some, could be counterproductive if it undermines the fragile British and European economies. On the other hand, an accommodating approach might encourage other member states in the belief that they, too, could rewrite their rules of participation or even abandon the EU with a minimum of disruption, thus encouraging the EU’s further unraveling. In addition, the desire to nudge banks and corporations into relocating from London to Paris, Frankfurt, or elsewhere on the continent could also militate against accommodation.

It would be difficult for anyone to fashion an optimal approach among these cross-cutting pressures. All the more worrying is the fact (or, at least, my perception) that the EU has botched one decision after another over the past several years, which inspires little confidence in how it will handle this one. The EU has serious problems, which are rooted at two different levels: structure and policy.

At the structural level, many of the EU’s issues grow from the fact that the continent has integrated itself economically and socially but not politically. There is a disconnect between the unified continental economy and the disjointed system of national governments. Thus 19 of its members share a single currency, the euro, and a single monetary authority, but for years they engaged in separate and often contradictory fiscal policies. Those 19 all sell euro-denominated bonds, but the bonds carry different risks depending on the government issuing them. The continent has open borders internally but is forced to rely on bankrupt Greece to control the flow of refugees from the Middle East and allows Belgium—a country with a weak, underfunded central government and multiple police forces that barely cooperate—to become a haven for terrorists.

Decision making at the continental level lacks an efficient mechanism; it requires building a consensus among 28 (soon to be 27) member states. Major decisions must often be ratified by all 28 parliaments. Thus every member has a veto, and the member least interested in an outcome can set the terms of debate. The difficulty in making decisions may well explain the tendency of European institutions to focus on long-term integration projects of little interest to most people while devoting relatively little attention to day-to-day citizens’ concerns that require quicker solutions.

This situation could theoretically be resolved by establishing a single, continental democratically elected government, but that would require citizens who think of themselves as Europeans first, rather than as Britons, Germans, Poles, or Greeks, and the Brexit vote shows how far they are from that.** In the meantime, multiple “small” decisions are relegated to EU regulatory agencies, which seek to enforce uniform standards to facilitate free-flowing trade, fueling resentment in places like the U.K. that people’s lives are governed by faceless, unaccountable, foreign bureaucrats in Brussels.

At the policy level, European decision makers have made a mess of their response to the 2008 financial crisis. Their focus has been on enforcing austerity to bring budget deficits under control and prevent inflation. In this they have been guided above all by Germany, the continent’s largest and strongest economy and a country with paralyzing memories of its experience with inflation in the early 1920s. (One U.S. dollar, worth about 4 marks in 1914, was worth more than 4 trillion marks in November 1923.) Europe’s current economic problems, however, are the opposite of inflation.

The consequences of austerity have been real. The IMF has estimated that for every $1.00 that Europe saved through fiscal consolidation (spending cuts and tax increases) during the crisis, economic activity declined by a larger amount, a realization that has caused the IMF, but not the EU, to revise its policy approach. Because of austerity and tight money, Europe fell into a second recession in 2011–12, and its pace of recovery has actually been slower than it was in the 1930s.

It avoided a currency crisis in 2012 only because the European Central Bank unilaterally discarded its mandated inflation obsession and promised to buy the government bonds of countries that could not sell them elsewhere. (More recently, the ECB, an outlier in EU decision making since 2012, has established negative interest rates, paying private banks to borrow money if they will, in turn, lend the money out for productive investments, while charging a fee to let money sit idle in deposits.) The U.K., which quietly eased its austerity policy around 2013, has done better than many other European countries, but some analysts have highlighted the irony that Prime Minister Cameron, who led the political fight against Brexit, is largely responsible for the economic malaise that fueled much of the Brexit enthusiasm.

We shall be waiting anxiously to see how the EU responds to its newest crisis. Perhaps it will react by addressing some of its deeper problems. Indeed, past crises have served as catalysts for advances in integration. Jean Monnet, one of the founders of the European Project, once predicted that “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted in those crises.” We trust that the EU’s actions will be rational rather than emotional, but then many expected that of the British voters as well. In any event, let’s hope that its performance is an improvement on the past.

*The term Brexit, or British exit, was modeled on the earlier term Grexit, or Greek exit. Brexit, however, has always been seen as a voluntary phenomenon, whereas the notion of Grexit grew from the idea that the EU might expel Greece for its perceived failures to abide by the organization’s rules.

**This lack of legitimate institutions at the continental level is often described as the “democracy deficit.”

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gestures as he talks with journalists from a balcony of the Palais Coburg hotel where the Iran nuclear talks meetings are being held in Vienna, Austria July 10, 2015. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

When an Iranian opposition group released information showing secret activity, including the construction of a uranium enrichment plant and a heavy-water reactor which could theoretically both be used to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, it sparked a thirteen-year standoff between the West and the Islamic Republic. After the allegations about Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear activities became public, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) launched an investigation that concluded in 2003 that Iran had systematically failed to meet its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to report those activities to the organization.

However, while the IAEA said that Iran had violated the NPT’s safeguards agreement, it neither reported evidence of links to a nuclear weapons program nor did Tehran withdraw from the NPT like North Korea had done in an earlier confrontation over illicit nuclear programs. Instead, the Iranian leadership insisted that Iran had discovered and extracted uranium domestically in pursuit of its legitimate right under the treaty to obtain nuclear energy for peaceful aims. The United Nations Security Council did not find this a convincing explanation and sanctions were imposed on Iran, which were extended in 2010. These had a crippling effect on the Iranian economy though they did not end the standoff.

The sanctions did lead to further talks which, after a change in administrations in Iran, eventually led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful during the period the agreement would be in force. By signing the deal, Iran “reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.”

The IAEA has been put in charge of the monitoring and reporting of Iran’s implementation of the JCPOA. The deal, among other elements, demanded that Iran restricted its sensitive nuclear activities to two nuclear plants and to civilian energy production levels, defined at 3.67% (before the JCPOA, Iran’s enrichment was on average 20%). The JCPOA additionally stipulated that nuclear research and development would take place only at Natanz and be limited for eight years, and that no enrichment would be permitted at Fordo for 15 years. Since January 2016, Iran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges which can enrich fuel, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium to Russia.

The deal struck a year ago has since realigned actors inside and out of the Middle Eastern region; this article examines the trends amongst both NATO members’ partners and rivals which might destabilize further the regional balance in the future.

Renewed Saudi-Iranian Energy Rivalry

Despite the skepticism and hostility with which the JCPOA agreement was greeted in both Western countries and inside Iran, it has so far held firm. Since this agreement reduces the chances of war between the Western powers and Tehran, its arrival was certainly applauded by NATO. But the agreement has also had an immediate impact on Iran’s standing in the Middle East and the wider international community, in ways which have not been as positive for international peace and security. This has played out particularly in the field of energy politics.

In May, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which has strong links with the notorious Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), reported Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh claiming that, thanks to the lasting implementation of the nuclear deal, Iran’s capacity to produce and export crude and oil products has doubled in comparison with the pre-sanctions era. The agency also quoted a recent report by the International Energy Agency as saying Iran’s oil production had returned to the level of pre-sanctions era, reaching 3.56 million barrels a day in April, and added that Iran’s crude exports had increased to 2 million barrels a day, close to the pre-sanction level. The result has been a dramatic increase of Iranian oil available on the international market at a time when oil prices remain at rock bottom, which energy importers like Europe and China largely benefit from.

But the return of Iran to the oil market has also had negative consequences, sparking tensions with traditional Western allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. When ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela, together with other non-member oil producers such as Russia, met in Doha in April it had been expected that the first agreement to freeze production in fifteen years would soon drive up oil prices. But when Riyadh suddenly demanded that Tehran limit its oil production, Iran proved unwilling to squander the opportunity that returning to world markets afforded. As a result, the expected agreement stalled and any agreement was pushed back to June. Saudi Arabia’s continued rift with its rival in both OPEC and the Middle East in general has played a large role in torpedoing the old effectiveness of the producers’ cartel.

This is good economic news for Western energy importers, but it signals a renewed regional hostility between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran which should concern NATO. The two powers are on opposing sides in two hot Middle Eastern proxy wars – in Yemen and in Syria. The civil war in Yemen is between a Saudi-led coalition and Zaidi Shia rebels known as Houthis, who overthrew the Yemeni government in cooperation with forces loyal to Yemen’s former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis allege that the Houthis are Iranian pawns, saying that Tehran has supplied weapons, money and training to the Shia militia as part of a wider pattern of interference in the region via Shia proxies.

There are longstanding fears in Saudi and NATO that Iran has exploited turmoil between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and now Yemen to expand its regional influence. Now, with the expansion of Iranian capabilities following the ending of sanctions, there is some danger that a rattled Saudi Arabia will use its influence to nudge the United States and NATO towards intervention of one of these quarrels despite the relative improvement in relations between Tehran and the West.

Negative Implications for Syria

While Saudi Arabia is not a NATO member and US-Saudi relations have been cool under the administration of outgoing US president Barack Obama, there is one particular area of overlap between the concerns of the Alliance and those of the leading Sunni Gulf power. In Syria, Iran is backing an array of pro-regime militias and has encouraged its Lebanese ally Hezbollah to join in the fighting as well. A major objection to the JCPOA agreement from Riyadh (and Tel Aviv) was that the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of Iranian assets would act as a boost for Iranian funding of overseas armed groups, especially in Syria. The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, estimates the Islamic Republic spends $6 billion annually on backing Damascus.

NATO has become concerned about the situation in Syria due to the joint Iranian and Russian intervention. Late last year, Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial Special Forces arm of the IRGC, travelled to Moscow to solicit greater Russian involvement in the Syrian war. In September 2015, at a time of heightened Russian-NATO tensions in Europe and the Middle East, a Russian military intervention on behalf of the regime began to turn the tide in favor of Damascus. Iran and Moscow are now cooperating in Syria to restore the Assad regime’s control over the western parts of the country where most of the population lives.

NATO now faces a challenging situation whereby a resurgent Russia flexes its muscles in Eastern Europe and has drawn closer to Tehran over Syria, despite the friction this has caused with neighboring NATO member Turkey. This is not, however, a case of an Iranian-Russian bloc emerging to confront the West and its Arab allies. While Iran and Turkey have disagreed over their views on regional political developments in the last five years Turkish-Iranian relations are nowhere near as bitter as Saudi-Iranian ones. Since the January 16 “Implementation Day” of the JCPOA, Ankara has agreed to expand bilateral trade with Iran to $50 billion a year. It is maneuvering to become Iran’s first trading partner as a way to compensate for Russian sanctions.

Moscow-Tehran Relations and NATO

The signs are that Iran continues to see Moscow as a great power in the Middle East, and one which it can cooperate with on occasions to foil Western moves it deems anti-Iranian. Likewise, Moscow will work with Tehran on occasion. Despite participating in the sanctions regime, Moscow has continued to honor a nuclear deal struck with the Islamic Republic of Iran to construct a series of nuclear power plants at Bushehr in the south of the country. Moscow and Tehran both remain committed to rolling back Western influence in the Middle East and will work together on an ad hoc basis when it suits them both.

But despite their shared suspicions of the United States and NATO, Russia and Iran have had a long and contentious relationship. Just as the United States and European members of NATO have remained aloof  of Turkish and Saudi policy in Syria, Moscow has allowed the Western powers to enlist its help in curbing Iranian nuclear ambitions. Together with China, Russia was one of the nations which agreed to impose tough sanctions on Tehran to force it to the negotiating table. It has also helped ease the passage of the JCPOA by agreeing to recycle Iranian nuclear fuel in Russia, removing any justification for enrichment inside Iran. Moscow does not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons while fearing that a nuclear agreement will lead to improved ties between Iran and the United States.

The return of Iran to the oil market has also disrupted Russian hopes for a price floor to be coordinated with OPEC producers thanks to Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Iran is pushing to find new ways to extract and export its vast natural-gas reserves, and has entered into preliminary talks with NATO-member Greece to provide a gateway for the Islamic Republic to supply fuel to European markets. Since the dispute between Russia and Ukraine disrupted gas supplies and sped up the EU’s bringing an antitrust case against the Russian gas giant, Russian energy exports to Europe have lost ground of which Iran is hoping to be a beneficiary. Tehran is also competing with Saudi Arabia and Russia in its energy exports to China; Beijing is the largest importer of crude from both Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Therefore, although the pair are happy to cooperate over Syria, whose regime was a longstanding ally of Iran’s dating back to the Iraq-Iran war and whose port of Tartus was the site of the only Russian military facility outside of the former Soviet Union, this was a coincidence of overlapping interests rather than a sign that Moscow and Tehran will draw closer together as Iran emerges from under the shadow of over a decade of crushing economic isolation from the global economy. Moscow does not want to be seen as affiliated with Iran by the mainly Sunni Arab world amidst the escalating Sunni-Shia conflict. Iran is wary of Moscow’s strong ties with Israel and its continued efforts to court anti-Iranian Arab states and longstanding disputes over the Caspian Sea continue to impede Russian-Iranian economic cooperation.

Relations between Russia and Iran will continue to be seen through a lens of shifting interests and alliances, in which they are neither quite friends nor enemies, but rivals. Moscow fears friendlier relations between Iran and the West following the JCPOA could, one day, allow former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia to export their petroleum to and through Iran, lessening their economic dependence on Russia. The possibility of improving Western-Iranian ties is therefore an alarming one to Russia at a time of deteriorating relations between itself and the West. It is therefore anxiously watching the progress towards reform of Tehran’s more liberal factions as these actors favor greater openness towards the West.

China and Iran

China is now Iran’s number one trading partner as a direct result of the sanctions regime imposed over Iranian nuclear activities, and this closer relationship has continued following the implementation of the JCPOA. In January, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Iran and signed a long series of agreements on economic and technological cooperation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. Iran’s leaders have also announced they will cooperate with Beijing on its One Belt One Road initiative.

China and Iran do not share the history of mutual suspicion that divides Iran from Russia, which both have clashed with in the past. Moreover, the drawing together of Tehran and Beijing could ultimately threaten Russia’s economic interests in both China’s hydrocarbon market and Iran’s nuclear energy sector. China has agreed to construct two nuclear power plants in Iran and import Iranian oil on a long-term basis. Russia’s place in the Chinese oil market, which it turned to as an alternative following the Ukrainian crisis, could now be threatened while its monopoly position as the Islamic Republic’s nuclear supplier has been broken. Russian self-interest makes it very unlikely that a Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis will emerge as a united front against the NATO powers, though all three will continue to cooperate together on an ad hoc basis, as Russia and Iran have in Syria.

Iran also acts as an important transport hub between China and Europe, part of a trading relationship dating back to the Iran-Iraq war, when a combination of the Islamic Revolution and the Cold War led Iran to purchase weapons from China instead of Russia or the reviled US. But with the end of sanctions and the tentative return of European states to rebuild their interrupted political and economic relations with Tehran, Chinese firms may find themselves facing increasing competition from outsiders, disturbing a cosy status quo which has been built up during the past decade or more. The visit of China’s president and the inducements he offers may be in part a gambit to pre-empt this, and one which Iran’s leadership seem to have accepted as a continued hedge against overdependence on the West. For now, Beijing is looking to deepen rather than limit its involvement in Iran, whose political elite seem happy to accept the Chinese overtures.

Conclusion

So far the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has been a surprising success for Euro-Atlantic diplomacy against all odds. A year on, the tensions with Iran are lower and progress towards an Iranian nuclear weapon, however obliquely pursued, has been halted for now, while trade and transparency have given the two sides a chance to recalibrate their relationship.

However, the agreement should not be seen as a panacea for everything which ails Iranian-Western relations. Iran remains aligned with a threatening Russia in Syria, which has put sanctions on NATO member Turkey amidst a plunge in relations with other Alliance member states. Tehran has also stepped up its proxy conflicts and economic warfare with Saudi Arabia, a major US and NATO ally in the region. It is moving closer into the orbit of a more assertive China which has its own territorial disputes with key NATO member America and is looking to gather allies into its own competing institutions. One year after the nuclear deal was signed, it is clear that much remains to be done before relations between the Alliance and the Islamic Republic can truly be said to have been reset; what prevails now is more of an armistice.

This article originally appeared in Atlantic Voices and reappears here with kind permission.

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(Pete Souza / White House)

In June, Senator John McCain made a bold claim regarding the consequences of President Obama’s foreign policy decisions. He asserted that Obama’s policy on Iraq—specifically, his decision to remove U.S. troops at the end of 2011—was “directly responsible” for the carnage in Orlando, Florida.

McCain told reporters: “Barack Obama is directly responsible for it because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures—utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq, thinking that conflicts end just because you leave. So the responsibility for it lies with President Barack Obama and his failed policies.

He repeated the charge several times at the behest of surprised reporters, who evidently wanted to give him a chance to moderate the claim. Soon afterward, he issued a statement that appeared to be moderated (changing his terminology from ISIS to ISIL in the process).

The new statement read: “I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL.”

It went on, arguing that “I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.”

How this differs in any meaningful way from the original statement frankly escapes me, but apparently both McCain and the White House were uninterested in pursuing the issue further and let it drop. Perhaps I am less forgiving than either of them, but the statement has stuck with me. I would like to examine this claim further. For one thing, I suspect that a lot of people will agree with it without devoting a much thought to the matter, so I think it is a mistake to let that slip by.

First of all, whatever one thinks of the link between Obama’s withdrawal order and the creation of ISIS, it is important to notice that the Islamic State had no direct contact with the Orlando attacker. The only connection is that the shooter appears to have been inspired by ISIS. The group does not need to control any territory  for that to happen. The shooter could as easily have said that he was inspired by the 19th-century abolitionist John Brown, and the fact that Brown has been dead for 157 years would not have prevented it. The efforts needed to counter shooting incidents like that in Orlando (or the one in Aurora, Colorado, for that matter) are unrelated to conflicts in the Middle East.

Second, McCain’s brief sequence of events stands out. That is, “…he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda [in Iraq] went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today…” Is this the causal argument that McCain meant to present? Obama pulled the troops out of Iraq, so the enemy went to chaotic, war-torn Syria, where they became ISIS?

If we accept that going to Syria was a key element in the transformation of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) into ISIS, how was that caused by Obama pulling troops out of Iraq? Did the creation of a vacuum in Iraq somehow blow them in the opposite direction? If U.S. troops had stayed in Iraq, would AQI then have been unable to go to Syria? If U.S. troops were still fighting them in Iraq, would that not have given them an even greater incentive to go to Syria? The causal relationship here is a bit confusing.

Finally, it is also necessary to mention—as many commentators already have—that the decision for the withdrawal was made by the Bush administration in 2008, in agreement with the Iraqi government. Of course, Condoleezza Rice stated subsequently that the Bush administration did not really mean it, which at first glance seems a curious kind of boast.

What she had in mind, naturally, was that the administration had hoped to negotiate some sort of small-scale, long-term U.S. military presence—short of war fighting—that might have bolstered the Iraqi military and perhaps served as a sort of deterrent. (We shall leave aside for now the fact that the introduction of a large-scale war-fighting force in 2003 did not deter a fight, but rather started one.) The fact is that the Obama administration was aware of this intention and attempted to do just that, but they and the Iraqis could not come to agreement.

The official reason for the failure to come to an agreement had to do with a technical issue: Which country would have legal jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. personnel in Iraq? Traditionally, U.S. agreements with host countries permit the United States to prosecute such crimes, but Iraq said no.

Although I cannot prove it, my suspicion is that the two sides could have overcome this impasse if they had really wanted to do so. It is quite possible that Obama was not interested in pressing hard for the privilege of staying in Iraq, but I believe the real obstacle was on the other side. After eight years of war, the U.S. military presence had become so toxic that no Iraqi politician wanted to be seen as favoring its continuation.

There were, to be sure, some Iraqi leaders who quietly confessed that a continued U.S. military presence would be useful, or even necessary, but they could not be brought to say so in public, much less vote for it in Parliament. Some American commentators have criticized the Obama administration for insisting on a public vote instead of simply doing what was necessary behind the scenes. But what would have happened in that case? The Iraqi public was not going to overlook that fact that troops were still there. The first time that something went wrong—and it would not take long for that to happen—the people who were unable to endorse a U.S. presence in public would start making statements like, “I didn’t ask them to stay. They just wouldn’t go.” Eventually the situation would be much as it is today, with two significant exceptions:

1. We would be in the middle of it.

2. The Shi’a would be shooting at us, too, because we wouldn’t leave

It is worth noting that even now, despite all the problems Iraq has had with ISIS over the past two years, no Iraqi leader has asked us to come back in with a full military presence.

What McCain has done is not unusual. Whenever a government chooses between two paths and the outcome is negative, people are quick to assume that the opposite choice would have brought complete success. Nonetheless, there is no sure way to know whether the opposite choice would have created a situation that was better, basically the same in all but the details, or even substantially worse.

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The rolling up of a major ivory smuggling network in Tanzania by police last year, and the ongoing trial of alleged ringleader Yang Fenglan, also known as the “Ivory Queen” and her accomplices, demonstrates once again the continued profitability of the illegal wildlife trade that is destroying East African biodiversity, as well that of other ecosystems in southern and central Africa.

The illegal networks compete with conservation efforts that, while trying to breed sustainable populations for endangered animals, also allow for legal hunting of these same animals to help finance those projects. The poaching, being totally unregulated and driven by far-removed foreign demand, threatens such efforts. And the poachers themselves are well-equipped to defend their kills by force: at least 27 park rangers died guarding African wildlife preserves.

It is significant that Yang, a Chinese national who described herself as a networker for local and foreign businesses, made use of the wider Chinese economic community to bring the ivory out of the country. A similar network—but even larger than this one—was exposed in Kenya in 2013, smuggling ivory out of the country by land, sea, and air. According to Kenya’s The Standard, “the dealers conceal their identities through layers of non-existent companies using fake identity cards” and “there is always a collision between airline staff, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) officials, KWS [Kenya Wildlife Service] staff stationed at the airport, and police,” with low- to mid-range employees of airports and marine terminals taking bribes to let the ivory out of the country.

Far from being a world of doctored shipping manifests and container units full of tusks, though, the goods come out in dribs and drabs hidden among cheap foodstuffs and consumer goods. Yet these drops in the bucket add up—in 2011, for instance, a whopping 40 tons of ivory was interdicted as part of the enforcement of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty.

Though China maintains an anti-poaching force in Zimbabwe, is party to international accords, and has advanced legislation domestically to cut back on wildlife farming, the prevailing stereotype is one of ravenous Chinese consumers and lackluster enforcement by China hardly helps this image. Yet the United States and European Union are not all that far behind the PRC.

The Chinese market is mainly for luxury goods such as decorative furnishings, gourmet delicacies, or traditional medicine. These are major draws in Western nations as well, but also common is the acquisition of live endangered species for private collections. That such corruption for the movement of illegal wildlife products could be so institutionalized within the border control system has national security implications as well—the ease with which staff can be plied with money to look the other way on contraband is of immense value to criminal organizations, intelligence services, and armed non-state actors.

Poaching is a source of revenue for some of the latter, such as al-Shabaab in Somalia. Using the country’s charcoal exports (which themselves are of questionable legality) to the Gulf States as cover, elephant ivory and rhino horn poached in Central and East Africa makes its way through Somali brokers to points further east. The amount of money the group earns from its role as a middleman is not entirely clear—perhaps several hundred thousand dollars a month—but the profits probably go to the upkeep of its military forces.

This trade exacts a brutal toll across the continent: in Mozambique, for instance, the rhinoceros is as of 2013 extinct and elephant populations have been halved since 2010. Even South Africa, where conservation efforts are relatively well-funded, poaching of rhino horn has exploded since 2008 and park rangers are playing catch-up to stem the tide.

Somalia’s role in this supply chain stems from its “lawlessness”—though it would be more accurate to say its multiple legal systems, in the absence of a national government, that are critically lax when there is a profit to be made. This makes it an attractive clearinghouse for certain dealers, but also a very unpredictable one given the security situation.

Hence much of the multimillion dollar trade going out through more stable routes in countries where there are functioning national institutions and expatriate communities to co-opt—as even al-Shabaab makes use of the Somalia diaspora in Kenya to ensure a smooth flow of operations. The lack of common enforcement protocols also enables the trade, as some nations are much less punitive towards traffickers—though hard jail time or threat of death at the hands of wildlife sanctuary guards or militaries seems to have little effect on the smugglers’ morale.

Border controls in some of the less-settled areas are effectively nonexistent—and it would be hard to enforce them, not least because the people who do live there have livelihoods depending on free movement. Acquisition of live animals or hides, eggs, horn, and tusk, is not simply the province of well-armed mercenaries. Poaching is also a former of substance in some of the least-governed and most-ignored reaches of the Congo River Basin or on the borders of the Central African Republic, and, more recently, organized raids coming out of war-torn South Sudan.

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The flag of Rojava (Source: http://ariarzen.deviantart.com/)

Elegantly summarizing the spirit of decentralism, economist E. F. Schumacher declared in 1973, “small is beautiful.” British writer G. K. Chesterton noted in his novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill that a true patriot “never under any circumstances boasts of the largeness of his country, but always, and of necessity, boasts of the smallness of it.”

On the Kurdish question, scholarly work and media coverage have mainly focused on the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, sidelining the Kurdish issue in Syria. But understanding the rapidly changing developments in Syria has become a strategic necessity. Other than inflicting a series of defeats on ISIS, what has been noteworthy is the speed with which the Kurds have emerged from obscurity to become a major force in Syria.

Thomas Jefferson was regarded as the founding father of “American decentralism.” Sketching his ideal in a letter from Monticello in 1824, Jefferson favored the creation of smaller “wards.” In Jefferson’s description, each ward would thus be a small republic within itself, and every man in the state would thus become an acting member of the common government, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his competence.

It turned out that such “wards” have also been formulating through the locals of “Western Kurdistan,” this time under the name of “cantons.” By the summer of 2012, as Syria collapsed into fighting factions, the Syrian Democratic Forces (PYD) moved decisively to assert control over three pockets of territory with majority Kurdish populations in the north of Syria: Jazira, Kobane, and Afrin. By early 2014, the PYD had styled these as “cantons” of local administration under the collective name Rojava (‘West’) to represent Western Kurdistan, and had held elections to local assemblies.

Rojava’s model aims to be inclusive, and people from a range of different backgrounds are encouraged to be involved (including Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Syrian Turkmen, and Yazidis). A decision was even made to introduce affirmative action for ethnic minorities. There is also a quota for women’s participation in government, as well as for youth.

Many analysts look at Rojava’s decentralism model to be influenced by a type of “libertarian socialism,” under which states become less relevant and people govern through councils, in contrast to national sovereignty, which places the power in the hands of government. “Libertarian socialism” is a fairly recently coined term for a fairly old idea: socialists who embrace the view that individuals should be free. However, they differ from what we generally understand by the term ‘libertarian’ in denying the right to private property. Thus, “left libertarians” embrace the view that natural resources, land, trees, and so on should be held collectively. But libertarian socialism is unable to explain to us how such a system is more efficient in the creation and distribution of wealth.

Predictions about Rojava’s performance may remain speculative. Profoundly isolated from mainstream economics, left-wing anarchists rarely explained how their preferred society would function. Although economic development is an incremental process (investing in physical and human capital, and making marginal improvements in the rule of law), the doorstep conditions toward development mean that the process is not easy to engineer.

As it exists today, the autonomous region of Rojava is one of the few bright spots to emerge from the tragedy of the Syrian crisis. Despite the hostility of almost all of its neighbors, it has not only maintained its independence, but also followed a remarkable democratic experiment that has the most progressive women’s rights record and a multi-ethnic, multi-religious model for the region. Rojava has also armed forces that are effectively fighting ISIS.

By recognizing Rojava’s potential, the U.S. would gain a viable democratic partner in the fight against ISIS. It would be a strategic mistake to confine America’s foreign relations to nation-states alone, which are rapidly losing their exclusive claim in representing the peoples of the Middle East.

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A Chinese tour guide is leading a group of tourists in the central city of Da Nang. (VnExpress)

Ahead of an expected unfavorable ruling for China over its maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea, in an international court case filed by Manila at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, Beijing has been rallying both international and domestic support to their cause.  

Internationally, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry claimed the support of more than 40 nations last month in its boycott of the ruling, while Chinese state media declared almost 60 this past week.  Only 8 of these countries have expressed public support and 5 on the list of supporters have even denied backing the boycott.

On the domestic front, state-owned China Central Television (CCTV) ran a video on June 21 to highlight Beijing’s argument, hoping to propel domestic support. The video, sanctioned by the Chinese Central Propaganda Department, was shared by CCTV on Weibo, China’s widely popular microblogging site.

And in a more concealed ploy, a “friend of the court” brief was submitted by a legal organization called the “Asia-Pacific Institute of International Law” (APIIL) in Hong Kong.  APIIL was only registered in Hong Kong a mere two months ago, has no website or public contact information, and is run by its chairman, Daniel Fung.  Fung is a delegate to the Communist Party-led Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing.  Aligned with Beijing’s official position, the brief calls into question the PCA’s jurisdiction in the ruling over the disputed maritime territories, citing “factual and legal errors” in the case.

But the propaganda wars do not end there, as domestic Chinese tourists are now being indoctrinated to the South China Sea disputes. More than 10,000 tourists have taken a cruise ship to the Paracel island chain, which are in dispute with Vietnam. And this week, government authorities in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang are accusing some 60 Chinese tour guides of operating illegally in this popular tourist city and providing incorrect information about Vietnam’s history to tourists.  Many of the Chinese tour guides are employed by Chinese tour guides who hire a Vietnamese director to act as a front.  

Local Vietnamese guides, who find themselves competing for the tourists, have submitted photos and videos as proof to the Da Nang Tourism Department.  One Vietnamese tour guide has accused the illegal Chinese tour guides of even referring to the shores off Da Nang’s beach as part of China’s territory.

Beijing’s efforts to rally support ahead of the ruling in The Hague will not do much to change the eventual outcome, and could backfire internationally as well as domestically.  Internationally, the efforts are perceived as a failure – attempting to usurp international rule of law by uniting politically weak and economically challenged nations to its cause, with other nations calling out China for never having pledged support.

For its domestic audience, the stakes are higher.  Rallying patriotic support ahead of an expected unfavorable —and could easily backfire should Beijing lose and fail to respond in an adequate “face saving” fashion.   

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al-Sisi and Netanyahu (Photo: Motti Kimchi, Reuters)

Russia’s new status as a pivotal nation in the Middle East’s security environment, accompanied with the American withdrawal and the  rise of ISIS, is pushing Israel and Egypt to rekindle their relations. As Jerusalem wants to retain its status of an oasis of stability amidst surrounding volatility and Cairo is struggling to re-establish itself after the post-Arab Spring fiasco, Russia’s involvement in the region serves as an additional stimulus for these strange bedfellows.

The Kremlin’s military campaign in Syria has successfully preserved Bashar al-Assad’s regime and saved Syria from slipping into the Libyan chaotic scenario. Moreover it is evident that Russia’s military bases will further augment country’s influence in the Mediterranean Sea and entire Middle East, allowing Moscow to actively participate in the regional security setting. Interestingly, unlike during the Cold War, Moscow is now seeking to build strong relations with all major players of the region including Israel.

Putin shares warm relations with both the Israeli Prime Minister and the Egyptian President. In effect, Netanyahu has visited Moscow three times more than the White House for the past year, and al-Sisi’s regime is looking forward to have Russia’s state nuclear giant Rosatom construct the country’s first nuclear power plant in El-Dabaa. In addition to their friendly relations with the Kremlin, Israeli and Egyptian leaders also share great relations with each other.

Israel has earlier returned to Egypt two sarcophagus as a sign of good relations between the two nations. Israeli Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold told Reuters: “The return of the Egyptian (artefacts) is symbolic, more than anything, of the changing relations (between) Israel and Egypt.” Moreover, despite a direct violation of the peace treaty of 1979 terms, Israel did not object transfer of the Islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi on April 9.

As Israel remains the most stable nation within the region and the Egyptian economy heavily relies on Saudi help, both countries are interested in benefiting economically from enhanced cooperation. In particular, both Cairo and Jerusalem cooperated in removing obstacles to a multibillion-dollar natural gas deal, as Israel was close to settling a $1.73 billion fine that Egypt was ordered to pay, a move that could further encourage discussion of exporting Israeli offshore gas.

Cooperation between Israel and Egypt is also augmenting due to coinciding interests in terms of regional security and balance of power. Israel and Egypt were alarmed by the spread of transnational jihadi groups such as ISIS and initiated one of the strongest network of intelligence gathering, which was highlighted by the IDF’s deputy chief of staff. Security in the Sinai peninsula has also become a vital issue for both nations.

Egypt could also help to resolve Israeli-Palestinian issue and Gaza’s blockade. Israel and Egypt are discussing possible territorials transfers that would allow Egypt to establish a corridor to Gaza. Furthermore, Sisi is reportedly trying to bring Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Cairo for an Egypt-led peace summit.

In effect, by helping Israel to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians, Egypt is also hoping to receive support back. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper has recently reported Sisi’s request for Netanyahu’s help in resolving its dispute with Ethiopia over the Renaissance Dam. The issue reportedly took place ‘due to Ethiopia’s intransigence and refusal to respond to the Egyptian calls to coordinate efforts during the construction and storage stages.’

Cairo might also hold old Ottoman grudges against Turkey’s ambitions for the region and Sisi would not want to cooperate with Turkey since it supported the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, Cairo would rather seek cooperation with Israel within the current regional setting and try to alienate Ankara for as long as possible. Therefore, considering the current rapprochement between Israel and Turkey, Netanyahu will have to be more cautious while seeking to retain same level of relationships with Egypt.

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On June 22, North Korea launched two Musudan medium-range missiles, in defiance of the international warnings and sanctions from the UN. One of the two missiles successfully travelled 400 km and reached 1.000 km of altitude before vanishing in the Sea of Japan, close to the Honshu island, as reported by South Korea’s Joint Staff. Pyongyang’s unchallenged pursuit of its ballistic program reveals that international sanctions have not affected North Korea’s ability to develop nuclear strike capabilities.

This news was saluted by Pyongyang as an important step in the acquisition of advanced ballistic technology, vital to substantiate its threats toWashington and its regional allies. Japan and South Korea’s leaders have immediately denounced the missile test as an additional provocation, undermining international security and dialogue.

Japanese Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani declared the state of alert on Tuesday, ordering the SDF to intercept any incoming ballistic missiles entering the Japanese territory and waters. The Japanese Ministry of Defense also confirmed that DPRK’s midrange missiles could reach a potential range of 2.500 to 4.000 km, striking Japan but also a large part of the Asia-Pacific, including relevant American bases in the region.

Pyongyang’s Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM), based on Cold-war submarine missile technology, with a range of approximately 3.000 km, are still technically able to reach Japan, South Korea and even hit U.S. military bases in Guam. Kim Jong-un himself, has saluted the success of the test as a memorable achievement, stressing that the success of the recent test highlights North Korea’s capability to attack in an overall and practical way the Americans in the Pacific theatre as reported by the KCNA state news agency.

The implications of the new missile test

Albeit Washington has strongly opposed North Korea from developing intercontinental ballistic, the new missile test represents an evident shift in the regional balance of power. In the recent months, President Park has inaugurated a more assertive policy in response to North Korea’s brinkmanship, shutting down the Kaesong industrial complex and abandoning its traditional strategic patient approach, considered ultimately ineffective in pursuing the path of the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Given the rising level of the threat represented by Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, South Korea has strongly increased its military budget in the last year with a further expansion ($32.5 billion), up 4% this year, in response to the imminent  military threat represented by Pyongyang’s restlees nuclear ambitions.

In addition, developing longer-range surface-to-surface missiles and expanding the aircraft capabilities has become the most immediate strategic priorities for Seoul. As stressed by South Korea Minister of Defense, Han Minkoo in the recent Shangri-La Dialogue hosted in Singapore, on June 4th, South Korea will not tolerate any further provocations and threats that directly challenge the security and the peace of the Korean Peninsula.

Yet, Pyongyang’s unpredictable provocations, coupled with substantial progress in increasing its pre-emptive nuclear attack capability, could seriously undermine Washington’s role as a security provider in the region. North Korean provocations not only represent an evident threat to the regional security architecture but are also a frequent challenge to the credibility of the U.S. security commitment in the region.

Obama Administration’s engagement in strengthening the participation of its relevant allies such as Japan and South Korea in strategic initiatives, but also in expanding deterrence capabilities in the Korean Peninsula remains the most pressing issue in protecting the American core interest in the region. Yet, Washington’s desire to accelerate the deployments of advanced missile defence system such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) represents an additional source of concern for the fragile balance of the region, given the strong objections of China and Russia that consider the deployment of the American defence system a serious security threat.

In different occasions, Beijing has strongly opposed the deployment of THAAD in the peninsula claiming that its radar system could be used to monitor China’s military operations rather than being oriented to intercept any incoming missiles from the DPRK. While THAAD itself does not pose a direct threat to China, the Chinese leadership is increasingly concerned that the rising tensions could soon or later lead to a military intervention in Beijing’s backyard.

The Chinese leadership has spared no efforts in pursuing stability and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, increasing the level of the pressure on Pyongyang that remains adamant in asserting its vocation as a Nuclear Power State. In the early June, a North Korea delegation, led by the former Foreign Minister and an influent member of the Politburo Ri Su-yong arrived in Beijing for a bilateral meeting, after the relations have gradually eroded as a consequence of the North Korea restless military provocations and missile tests that are risking to inflame the region.

Beijing has grown wary of the increase of the American strategic presence in the region under the auspice of the Rebalance to Asia strategy, inaugurated by Obama Administration in 2011. Besides, the dangers represented by the unpredictable behavior of the DPRK, the Chinese leadership considers the deployment of the THAAD and strengthening of the trilateral strategic cooperation with Japan and South Korea, a formidable plan orchestrated by Washington to contain China and undermine its core interest in the region.

While the North Korea remains a pressing concern for either China or the Unite States, Obama Administration has managed to consolidate its role in the region, but also fostering a new level of strategic engagement between Japan and South Korea, a critical pillar of Rebalance to Asia strategy.

The new trilateral agreement signed on the sidelines of the recent Shangri-La Dialogue is expected to boost the participation of Japan, South Korea in opposing Pyongyang’s threat to regional peace and security. On the other hand, the pursuit of a more assertive stance from Washington and its close allies could collide with China’s regional strategy, heightening the level of political and military tensions in the region and alimenting the perception of a plan to contain the Beijing’s claims of peaceful development.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. Among the well-known figures who took part in this political upheaval, Kang Sheng is, in the author’s opinion, the most interesting. Kang is regarded as the first generation of international relations specialists in communist China and the designer of the “China–USSR Grand Debate”.

Kang had been an adviser to the Central Cultural Revolution Group. Before his death in late-1975, he had been a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and vice-president of the People’s Republic of China. He ranked fourth in terms of political power, and was only inferior to Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Wang Hongwen (at that time, Wang was regarded as the successor to Mao). Kang had been a party member since about 1925 and was an experienced party cadre. He had become a member of the Politburo after The Fifth Plenum of the 6th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1934. He was in charge of intelligence and famous for his interrogation techniques.

When he died towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was accused of being the spiritual leader of the Gang of Four. The new CCP leader criticized Kang, suggesting that the only reason he had held high political power was because he had been able to gain Mao’s trust. However, this argument is not valid. Kang’s success in acquiring political power can be attributed to structural reasons, reasons which are also applicable in the Communist Party today.

The discursive power of identifying “external threats”

Kang’s greatest capital asset was his overwhelming discursive power in the field of international relations. Currently, one of China’s major concerns is the interference of foreign forces. Whether this is of real concern or not, officials at every level have been busily formulating policy in accordance with such doctrine. Thus, those who dominate the discursive power by defining the potential threat of such foreign forces are able to legitimize their subsequent actions.

In Mao’s era, the major external threat was not posed by the US, but by a revisionist USSR. Among the CCP’s high-ranking officials, there were only a few who understood Russian, and the number of those who had worked in USSR but were still loyal to Chinese Communist Party was extremely limited. Kang was one of the few. He had been assigned to work in Moscow in 1933, and was the vice representative of China in the Communist International. He thus gained experience of the USSR and was a capable Russian speaker. Kang spent 5 years in the USSR, but despite this he remained loyal to the CCP. His name “Kang Sheng” is a Chinese translation of his Russian name. His profile, even in the eyes of USSR officials, was impressive.

In 1960, Kang had represented China in the Warsaw Pact conference. As Sino-USSR relations had become frozen, Kang prepared a sarcastic speech targeting Khrushchev. Khrushchev had then criticized Kang as not being qualified to challenge him in debate. In response, Kang calmly defended himself by pointing out that Khrushchev’s qualifications didn’t match his, since Kang was already in 1935 the alternate member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), whereas at that time Khrushchev had not even been a member of the Central Committee. A Soviet representative recalled later that Kang had used his advantage to selectively transmit information to China and played a major role in the worsening of Sino-USSR relations. 9 Points to Criticize USSR was one of Kang’s a major contributions.

A talented artist

Another talent on which Kang could capitalize was his classical education and artistic ability. Although there were many intellectuals among high-ranking officials in the CCP, the qualifications of these intellectuals were highly inflated. The average educational level of the CCP was in fact even lower than that of the Khmer Rouge, whose ranks included a number of professors.

However, Kang, in addition to holding enormous political power, was one of the few whose abilities had not been exaggerated. His artist talent may not have been useful in Mao’s eyes, but Kang’s ideological manipulability allowed him to merge artwork with politics. He was generally seen as a specialist, and his persuasiveness is not in doubt. Kang had been born into a literate family and was raised with an awareness of the Chinese classics. He was also a very fine calligrapher and could use both hands simultaneously. Yu Qiaqing, the backer of Chiang Kai-shek and a Shanghai billionaire, had been attracted by Kang’s calligraphy.

As a consequence, Kang managed to gain employment with Yu as his personal secretary, a position he used as a cover for spying. It was during that time that Kang began to appreciate cultural relics and became a specialist in the field, familiarizing himself with all kinds of skills and techniques regarding the arts. He went under the name “Lu Chishui” and believed that his talent was greater than that of Qi Baishi. It has been suggested that Kang created the term “Shilin” for the scenic stone forest of Yunnan (although the word was erased after the Cultural Revolution for the sake of political correctness). What is undoubtedly true is that Kang is responsible for almost the entire collection of calligraphy that has been handed down from that period. The collection is referred to as “Kang Style”.

Kang had also learned Kung Fu when he was young and the use of assorted weaponry, and when he was in the USSR, he took up wrestling. In addition to this, he was trained to use a gun; he was a sharpshooter, and would execute traitors himself. As he had grown up in Shandong, which retained a strong German influence, he could speak German as well as Russian. His learning attracted many supporters, including the wife of Mao, Jiang Qing. Kang was the only person whom Jiang Qing would identify as her teacher.

The father of spying in the CCP

Though it is impossible for us to find much information about the policy that Kang formulated as one of the fathers of espionage, several characteristics can be gleaned from officially disclosed information. Unlike ordinary secret service agents, Kang was capable of quantitative management. He provided a number of quantified indicators to assess the loyalty of each CCP Central Representative. This data would then be processed by Jiang Qing. The assessment method was applied to all units and officials of all ranks.

Although false judgments and unjust cases were a common result, the method allowed an efficient reshaping of the ideology of the state, at least from the perspective of its leaders. It is widely acknowledged that “On Contradiction” proposed by Mao has been the guiding principle of class struggle. Actually, the principle originally adopted by Kang had been more orthodox, since Kang had been directly influenced the by USSR’s socialist theory. Kang had been in Moscow during the Soviet era of the Great Terror led by Stalin. As Kang had lived through both the Kirov and Trotsky cases, he understood how to manage through the “terror of quantification”. Mao might have had a superficial knowledge of and ability to integrate Chinese traditional emperor-style governance and the scientific management style of the USSR, but it was Kang who executed both styles competently.

Readers may well ask what value there is in considering Kang now, since he passed away so long ago. The significance of Kang’s case is that his rise was not only the result of individual effort, but also created by sociopolitical structure. If the Communist Party demands a change regarding the mode of governance, it is necessary to fine-tune its management style of the elite class and reassert the adoption of Mass Line. To justify the transformation, Kang’s three instruments of “identification of external threats”, “artistic soft power” and “quantified management style” are the necessities for power acquisition.

War on paper may seem easy. However, the reality is a lot tougher. To acquire all the instruments describe above, the individual needs to have relevant expertise, life experience, organizational skills, a certain level of political sensitivity and loyalty. Individuals possessing all these characteristics are rare. However, once such an individual shows up and holds power, how far he will go should not be underestimated.

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While it may intellectually realize that the basis of China’s power is its economy, the U.S. is still fighting militarily. Therefore, any success against China will necessitate the ultimate U.S. realization that it must reform its own economy.

The U.S. has recently improved relations with Vietnam to the point of lifting its arms embargo against the country. Meanwhile, it is eagerly awaiting The Hague’s verdict in the Philippines’ case brought against China regarding conflicting South China Sea claims. These maneuvers, along with its “freedom of navigation” (FONOP) patrols in the region, clearly demonstrate the U.S.’ resolve to counter Chinese assertiveness.

However, these hard power moves are only tactical gambits. In order to truly succeed in its global game against China, the U.S. must recognize the importance of soft power.  Specifically, the U.S. must recognize the important role of economics in any nation’s foreign policy stance, including its own.  

Japan is the U.S.’ major ally in Asia and, as such, plays a key role in the American “pivot”, or “rebalance” to Asia.  This is seen in northeast Asia, where proposed and actual amendments to the Japanese constitution will allow Japan to play a greater role in supporting U.S. forces in the region. Japan is also forging its own diplomatic and economic path with respect to Russia, irrespective of U.S. hesitation.

This is the case in southeast Asia as well, where Japan has expressed an interest in upholding regional security in the midst of the various South China Sea disputes. Additionally, Japan (like the U.S.) has targeted Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, and India as potential partners to balance China in this regard. However, Japan, as of yet, has not participated in the U.S.’ FONOP patrols.

However, Japan is in a quandary similar to many other states in the region as its economy is highly interlinked with that of China. The fact that China is now the leading trading partner of many states in the region, including U.S. allies, poses a major dilemma for the U.S.. No matter how strongly the U.S. may have wanted a statement from its recent ASEAN Sunnylands summit condemning China, many of the forum’s participants had to calculate the potential impact of such a statement on economic ties with China.

To frame the global economic conflict between the U.S. and China as one between the “Washington Consensus” and the “Beijing Consensus” would be simplistic at best. In its most rudimentary form, the argument purportedly pits one model of economic development, dominated by the market, against the other, supported by government intervention. While this debate may be useful in an academic or think tank setting, its utility to a global audience is limited.

This is because many people around the world are still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession.  What form a government takes in its domestic economic policy is considerably less important than the ultimate results which accrue to that particular country’s citizens. As Deng Xiaoping famously said, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mice.”

The story of how China succeeded, within a generation, in transforming itself from a backward, isolated player on the regional scene to a global power with the world’s largest financial reserves has been told many times. Doubtless, the U.S. and Japan both played a part in this economic miracle, by providing for regional security and giving massive development assistance, respectively.  However, the cumulative effect of long-term, strategic planning by the Chinese government and its emphasis on economic development and educational investment in its citizenry can not be denied. The recent economic slowdown notwithstanding, this planning has enabled the country to lift more people out of poverty, not just in Chinese history, but human history.

Many people around the world still look to the U.S. as a model for possible upward mobility. However, this image has been tarnished as the aftereffects of the economic crisis still continue to linger onward nearly a decade later.  Even more importantly, significant numbers of Americans have parlayed this economic dissatisfaction into political action. While the Occupy Wall Street movement may have been dismissed by some at the time, there can be no dismissal of the current widespread economic discontent, which has led to the rise of anti-establishment presidential candidates of both major parties.

Just as previous generations of people around the world marveled at the U.S.’s post-World War II economic miracle, globalization has given the world’s current generation a window into the U.S.’s current economic troubles. Most damaging, huge numbers of millennials, the largest demographic group in America and literally the future of the country, purport to no longer believe in capitalism itself. If America’s future no longer believes in the nation’s economic viability, why should anyone else in the world? In comparison to China, millions of Americans have not been lifted out of poverty, but have actually been returned to poverty, itself a result of the continuing destruction of the middle-class.

Many authors have tackled this subject before, most notably Richard N. Haas in his seminal book, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order”. However, this book was first published three years ago and the case can be made that if there’s been any improvement in the economic life of the average American since then, it’s been marginal at best. What is clear, is that without a concerted effort by the U.S. to tackle problems such as the widening gap between rich and poor, crumbling infrastructure, and universal access to education without crippling lifelong debt, it will eventually lose the economic battle for global hearts and minds to China.

The post U.S. Must Fix Its Economy to Effectively Counter China appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Pro-Brexit advocate Boris Johnson poses for a selfie photo with voters on the final day of campaigning before Thursday’s EU referendum vote, in Selby, north England. (Andrew Parsons/AP, File)

Depending on which side you were supporting, 24 June, 2016 was either one of Britain’s “finest hours” or a 21st century “Dunkirk.”

That morning, Britain’s nationalistic impulse prevailed over a slow to form multi-national spirit that proved to be far weaker than most ever thought. By choosing to slap the hands of Brussels based bureaucrats off the helm off H.M.S. Great Britain the Brits have set a precedent that other populations across the EU may very well follow. Have Boris Johnson and the seventeen million people that followed his lead inflicted a massive hole into the wall that up until 24 June, 2016 held back surging nationalism?

Chancellor Angela Merkel characterized the exit vote as a “turning point for Europe” and “a turning point for the European unification process.” But might the outcome also be a harbinger of a coming and monumental pivoting away from the globalization process, especially, that dimension of the phenomena that requires the strengthening of the supranational at the expense of local institutions and authorities.

With this vote, the unthinkable becomes far more thinkable, and even doable for populations across Europe and the United States who feel they have come out on the losing side of the globalization proposition.

With this vote, Britain has now made it less indecent for states (and their anti-globalization, anti-immigration political factions) to advance and intensify conversations centered on putting the speed brakes on free trade, open arms immigration and other defining features of globalization.

With this vote, an entity originally devised and established as a war prevention mechanism is now spiritually at its weakest point since the march towards integration began over 60 years ago.

With this vote, President Vladimir Putin smiles knowing that his up-start, but potent, political and security peer competitor to the West has just had its confidence knocked out of it.

But most importantly, with this vote, the aspiration for a more open, prosperous, unified and homogeneous global society will be more vigorously tested by demagogues and right of center factions across the world that can now look to the UK for inspiration.

Further, European and American voters might come to the conclusion as the Brits have, that their national aches and pains, such as protracted fiscal crisis, immigrant and refugee inflows, and urban terror attacks can be better solved in their respective nations’ capitals than by uber-educated elites based in distant cities.

For sure, even if the causal links between the shortcoming of globalization and the economic pain of individual citizens are statistically frail, the isolationist political mood—to varying degrees a backlash to globalization—might prove hard to contain in the coming months and years.

Lastly, the presumptive American Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, celebrated the decision of British citizens to “take their country back” and linked the campaign to his own quest for the U.S. presidency. He remarked that the result goes to show how “angry” voters on both sides of the Atlantic are with the status quo. If the vote on 24 June proves to be the beginning of a trend, Mr. Trump just might get this wall.

The post Brexit Makes Trump’s Wall More Likely appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Sultan Qaboos, who after 43 years in charge is the Arab world’s longest-serving leader (AFP)

Written by Shehab Al Makaleh

Since 2011, the Arab uprisings have engulfed much of the Middle East and North Africa, consuming the attention of publics and policymakers around the world. Indeed, while we pay close attention to the tragedies and (rare) triumphs that befall the region, perhaps we should be doing the opposite: looking to those nations left unscarred by revolution and upheaval.

What is it about their leadership and institutions that allowed them to survive and thrive? And what could potentially destabilize and upend these outliers?

The Gulf state of Oman, for one, has largely remained untouched by instability and, sadly, largely unnoticed by observers. Its stability is mainly attributable to the legitimacy and vision of Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said, the longest serving Arab ruler still in power.

Since ascending to the throne in 1970, Sultan Qaboos has transformed Oman from an impoverished Bedouin land into a prosperous nation with first-class infrastructure, a booming tourism industry, and a military agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom.

However, this trend may quickly come crashing to a halt. Sultan Qaboos is advancing in age, has no children, and has not announced who the next heir to the throne will be. And the sultan will likely be blocked from selecting the next heir himself due to the complex nature of the Omani political system.

This potential vacuum of power may leave the small-but-significant country in a precarious position in an already-unstable region. Sitting on major trade routes from Asia to the Middle East, Oman is a veritable “marine silk road” of energy and goods—its disruption would send economic ripple effects across the continent. Its strategic positioning and domestic politics also make it a high-profile target for terrorist groups as they seek to expand influence.

In the 1990s, the Omanis discovered that their oil reserves were smaller than previously thought, which prompted officials in Muscat to accelerate plans for a transition to a post-oil economy. Oman’s proven reserves are 5.15 billion barrels of crude oil, far less than other Gulf Cooperation Council states such as Saudi Arabia’s 268 billion, Kuwait’s 104 billion, the United Arab Emirates’ 98 billion, or Qatar’s 25 billion.

By 1995, Oman decided to take on the challenges stemming from the nation’s more modest oil reserves and production rates when officials announced the Vision 2020. Oman was one of the first Gulf States to implement a robust long-term plan to diversify its economy.

Nevertheless, the 70% slide in oil prices since mid-2014 has truly underscored the risks of Muscat’s overreliance on the Omani petroleum sector. And on June 17, Oman raised $2.5 billion in a bond sale arranged by five international banks to help meet its budget deficit.

The next Sultan, regardless of who they may be, must continue driving national efforts to diversify Oman’s economy and create new job opportunities in both the state and private sectors. Though Oman’s population grows at less than 4% annually, which is amongst the lowest in the Arab region, a lack of job opportunities threatens to send Omani youth to the streets in protest or join extremist groups offering lucrative economic opportunities.

Extremist groups in Yemen, such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State (ISIS) as well as other radical groups, will likely threaten Oman’s security in the post-Qaboos era. The extremists of AQAP are less than 500 kilometers from Oman’s Salalah port. This strategically located port is home to one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and connects the Middle East to key markets in Asia and Europe.

As a partner in trading and counter-terrorism, Oman has a cautious yet optimistic future with the United States. The Sultanate became the first Gulf Arab state to enter a formal defense relationship with Washington, signing a “facilities access agreement” in April 1980, which granted U.S. military forces access to the Sultanate’s military bases. From time to time, the U.S still accesses the Masirah Island as deemed necessary to support Muscat. Oman has also helped the Obama administration empty out the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by accepting about half of the inmates released since January 2014.

U.S. officials, however, should recognize the extent to which their counterparts in Muscat take pains to decrease the visibility of Oman’s military partnership with Washington. In terms of Muscat’s alliance with Western powers, Omani authorities must consider the risk of extremists portraying the Sultanate as a Western ‘puppet.’ The next Sultan must continue to strike a balance between allying itself with strong powers, yet maintaining its own autonomy. However, Oman has a key comparative advantage here: its national fabric is based on tolerance, dialogue, and nonviolence within the Omani community.

While there is much speculation over the next heir to Sultan Qaboos, potential successors must be ready to face a number of strategic trials. These challenges, in the hands of the wrong leader, threaten to unravel decades of progress and stability. But with a strong and capable successor at its helm, the country holds promise to remain a steady bulwark of security and prosperity in a fractured region.

Shehab Al Makaleh is the President of the prominent Jordanian think tank Geostrategic and Political Studies of the Middle East Media.

The post Whose Foot Will Drop in Oman? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

For the Islamic State (ISIS), old habits die hard. Improvised explosive devices, suicide vests, and car bombs—techniques and tactics that were the mainstay of the group’s forefathers, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)—have once again become the order of the day.

The self-proclaimed caliphate, eager to shift the narrative away from territorial loses in Syria and Iraq, is beginning to fall back on a more traditional terrorism paradigm. The bombings being carried out across the region are a harbinger of things to come, and the machinations of ISIS’ global terrorist network are bearing fruit, as the group prepares for the day after Raqqa falls.

This shift in tactics, U.S. officials believe, signals ISIS may be abandoning the blitzkrieg-style territorial expansion that once garnered the group widespread notoriety; and, in its place, are focusing on building a terrorist network capable of orchestrating the sensational attacks that strike so much fear into the hearts and minds of Western governments.

On Monday, the latest example of ISIS’ tactical shift, erupted in a series of coordinated bombings in Syria and Yemen. The tactical and strategic sophistication of this operation, a combination of suicide and car bomb attacks, demonstrates a significant commitment of assets and resources, a high degree of command and control coordination, and a robust logistical infrastructure that stretches across multiple countries.

In Syria, ISIS orchestrated seven near simultaneous suicide and car bomb attacks targeting civilians in the coastal cities of Tartus and Jebleh. This region is considered an Assad regime stronghold—well-fortified and heavily guarded—with checkpoints and outposts along major roads and highways. The northwest coast also serves as a major staging ground for a large contingent of Russian military assets—Tartus is home to a Russian naval facility, and Jableh in Latakia province is near a Russian-operated air base.

ISIS’ ability to circumvent such robust security measures is a troubling sign for the Assad regime; especially when considering that up until these attacks, ISIS was not believed to be operating in the coastal provinces of Syria. The ability to build and sustain a terrorist network capable of orchestrating such a sophisticated operation, in the heart of Assad’s stronghold, is a feat that should not be easily dismissed.

The extraordinary nature of these attacks prompted some analysts to question whether ISIS was even responsible. The Assad regime, in a shameless attempt to gain political advantage, even tried blaming the leading rebel faction Ahrar al-Sham for the incident—ISIS publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

A similar story unfolded in Yemen, where in the port city of Aden, the group deployed twin suicide bombers, targeting a gathering of Army recruits assembling to enlist. The recruits ISIS targeted were located in the Khormaskar district of the port city, which serves as a temporary headquarters for the Saudi-backed Yemeni government that is preparing to recapture Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, from Houthi militants.

The Hadi government is grappling with a fragile security situation, and while negotiations are underway in Kuwait to end the 14-month long war with Houthi rebels linked to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have been competing for territory and influence, as each try to one up the other in an alternating series of terrorist attacks.

A written statement released on social media accounts linked to ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attacks. The account stated that the bombings targeted “the apostate Yemeni army,”: similar to Syria, ISIS appears to have chosen its targets to achieve maximum political impact. Yemen, like Syria, is also home to rival AQAP, who ISIS is competing with for access to gradually diminishing terrorist real estate.

The emergence of an ISIS terror network capable of executing these types of attacks should serve as further evidence that the group is committing time and energy into the development and pursuit of tactics more reminiscent of the Sunni insurgency during the height of the Iraq War, than the territorial expansion that solidified the Islamic State’s hold on large swaths of Syria and Iraq.

The scope and nature of these attacks indicate ISIS is attempting to capitalize on the political instability across the region, exacerbating sectarian tensions, in the hopes of igniting a broader conflict between Sunni and Shi’a. Nowhere is this insidious agenda more pronounced than in Iraq. Over the last several months, ISIS operatives have conducted massive bombings—with targets ranging from soccer games to open markets—that have killed hundreds of Iraqi Shi’a.

This shift toward a traditional terrorism paradigm benefits ISIS’s asymmetrical disadvantage. With the host of regional and international military power being brought to bear against it, ISIS’ attempt to retain control over territory that stretches across two countries will become more difficult to sustain over the long term. ISIS flourished, due in large part, to comparatively weak and disorganized local governments, as well as a haphazard international response that became mired in a geopolitical tug-of-war—too busy to recognize the security vacuum emerging from the chaos of the Syrian conflict.

It’s difficult to fathom now, but there was a time when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s cavalcade of miscreant extremist did not hold sway in Raqqa, Mosul, or Fallujah. The remnants of al-Qaeda (AQ) were scattered and it seemed, at least for a time, that the operational cadres of AQ’s terrorist network were broken beyond repair. Now, however, AQ affiliated groups are once again on the rise. Buoyed by victories and substantial gains in Yemen and Syria, groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and AQAP are enjoying a renaissance of popularity.

For the time being, ISIS and AQ appear be at each other’s throats, vying for dominance and influence over the global jihadist agenda. But the idea of an alliance or merger between these two groups should not be discounted. Terrorism expert and Georgetown professor, Bruce Hoffman, recently explored just such scenario.

In a Foreign Affairs article, Hoffman writes, “Although admittedly improbable in the near term, such a rapprochement would make a lot of sense for both groups and would no doubt result in a threat that, according to a particularly knowledgeable U.S. intelligence analyst whom I queried about such a possibility, would be an absolute and unprecedented disaster for [the] USG and our allies.” Given fluidity of enemies and allies within extremist circles, the possibility that a beleaguered ISIS may find refugee with a group ideologically similar to its own is not impossible.

ISIS recognizes the writing on the wall, and while senior leadership continue to espouse fiery rhetoric, predicting great victories and the destruction its enemies, the group is now on the defensive—looking over the ramparts it can see the enemy at the gate. In Syria, The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have begun its operation to retake ISIS’ capital, Raqqa, and preparations are well underway to retake Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq.

Of course, uprooting ISIS from its territorial stronghold will not, by any stretch of the imagination, signal the end of its ideological and operational contributions to the Salafi jihadist movement. They may soon find themselves without much territory to call its own, but the conflagration consuming the Middle East and the geopolitical ambitions of regional power brokers, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, guarantee a prolonged period of regional instability.

The Middle East is in the midst of the one of the worst periods of political strife in a century. If ISIS proves capable of adapting to the shifting sands of politics and power in the region, then its violent ambitions and apocalyptic vision will find fertile ground to take root and flourish among its adherents.

The post Amid Setbacks, ISIS Embraces Traditional Terrorism Paradigm appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Florence Fang interviewed by Chinese Communist Party media, 2015 (RedNet).

Prominent San Francisco businesswoman and former U.S. federal official Florence Fang’s activities on behalf of the Chinese government have been previously noted in this blog and elsewhere. Under her Chinese name, Fang Li Bangqin (方李邦琴), Florence Fang is the honorary president of the Northern California Association for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, also known as Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California.

Fang’s organization is just one of many overseas chapters of the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification in Beijing, an “external propaganda” agency focused on asserting mainland Chinese control over Taiwan.

In comments to Chinese government media Fang has plainly expressed that her “mission” in the United States is to “put our ideas about peaceful reunification into mainstream American society” and to “prevent the spread of ‘Taiwan independence’ ideology.” At appearances with Chinese Communist Party officials Fang has called Taiwan a “fake democracy,” and in statements to Communist Party media she has expressed her undying patriotism for China despite living in the United States since 1960 and serving as a U.S. federal official under the George H.W. Bush administration.

Florence Fang with former President and First Lady Bush, from Chinese news website also noting Fang’s service on behalf of China’s “peaceful reunification,” 2015 (Sohu).

Her numerous appearances at the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily and other Chinese government and state-run media websites include frequent meetings and photo-ops with high-level Communist Party officials, among whom she appears to be something of a celebrity. In these appearances her statements are virtually indistiguishable from those of the Chinese government. Her public profile at Chinese website Baike lists her not as a U.S. citizen, but as a citizen of China.

In addition to her “peaceful reunification” activities, Florence Fang’s efforts include educational exchange initiatives aimed at enhancing mainland Chinese influence in the United States. International educational exchange with countries including China is a worthy endeavor that should be encouraged, but Fang’s motives in doing so are highly suspect given the nature of her relationship with the Chinese government. In 2013, Fang launched the “100,000 Strong Foundation” to promote Mandarin language education in the United States and study in China for U.S. students.

Fang’s foundation was greeted enthusiastically by U.S. public figures including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As always, however, Fang’s statements on this initiative in Chinese media differ sharply from what has been presented to U.S. audiences (Should any of the sources cited in this article mysteriously disappear, archival web captures are available here).

In statements on her “100,000 Strong Foundation” to the Hubei Provincial Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese repeated in Chinese at her own Florence Fang Family Foundation website, Fang described “American ‘grassroots’ youth” as an impressionable “target group” of community members and voters whose ideas and opinions are not yet fully formed and would therefore potentially be open to ideological influence from their mainland Chinese peers while studying in China. Fang’s emphasis on American youth as a “target group” of voters clearly suggests a political motivation for her program.

Florence Fang meets with Chinese vice-premier Liu Yandong, 2014 (Xinhua).

Fang’s efforts on the “100,000 Strong” project have been in close consultation with Chinese vice-premier Liu Yandong, former Communist Youth League official and secretary of the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, with whom Fang has had extensive contact through the years. Liu is a noted member of what is known as the “Youth League Clique” associated with former president Hu Jintao. Liu’s role further suggests that these organizations would be involved in how U.S. students are channeled through the program and which Chinese students they would be grouped with (in all likelihood students handpicked for them from the Communist Youth League).

The United Front Work Department is a notorious propaganda agency under the direct authority of the Communist Party Central Committee, and is charged with asserting Communist Party “leadership” over non-Party groups at home and abroad. It is also an agency that is involved in almost everything that Florence Fang does on behalf of the Chinese government.

Florence Fang meets with Hunan Provincial United Front Work Department secretary Li Weiwei, 2014 (Hunan United Front Work Department, Central United Front Work Department).

The October 2013 inauguration of a language institute at Beijing University to host U.S. students funded by Fang included prominent appearances by officials from the United Front Work Department, the People’s Liberation Army, and the Confucius Institute in addition to Fang herself. The Confucius Institute is a noted part of Beijing’s “overseas propaganda” apparatus, and its presence on Western university campuses has been described as “academic malware” and as an educational “Trojan horse” due to its overtly propagandist character.

Also in attendance at Fang’s Beijing University event were officials from the State Council Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs, another agency of the Chinese government’s external propaganda system. Its main purpose is to co-opt and exploit ethnic Chinese communities abroad (which it views as “overseas Chinese” rather than as citizens of the countries in which they live) for use as instruments of mainland Chinese foreign policy. Like the United Front Front Work department, this is an agency that figures prominently in Florence Fang’s dealings with the Chinese government.

Florence Fang meets with State Council Overseas Chinese Affairs Office deputy director Tan Tianxing, 2013 (State Organs Work Committee of the Communist Party of China).

Comments by Fang to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office on her “100,000 Strong” project express a thinly-veiled political purpose in line with China’s “public diplomacy” goal of “bringing foreigners to understand and accept China’s core values,” which of course include its national obsession with gaining control of Taiwan regardless of the wishes of Taiwan’s own citizens (most of whom in every public opinion survey are clearly opposed to reunification with mainland China for obvious reasons).

The involvement of these agencies in Florence Fang’s “100,000 Strong Foundation” makes it as questionable as any of her other activities in relation to China. In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, there is no such thing as education or cultural exchange for its own sake: everything is political, everything is ideological, and everything must be made to serve the Party and the Chinese state. The “100,000 Strong Foundation” appears to be no exception.

The U.S. government might wish to choose its federal officials and educational “goodwill ambassadors” with greater care. U.S. students contemplating study in China might wish to choose a program that does not view them as a political “target group” for the Communist Youth League, the United Front Work Department, and the Confucius Institute.

The post Florence Fang’s “100,000 Strong Foundation”: Education or Indoctrination? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

By Matthew Barbari

With Ban Ki-Moon’s term as Secretary-General (SG) ending this year, many candidates have been put forward to replace him. Due to the tradition of rotating the region from which the SG is selected, this year the spotlight has been placed on Eastern Europe. There are also calls for a woman SG—the first since the organization’s creation in 1945.

As stated by UN General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft, this election will be the most transparent to date. In the past, the election process was conducted behind closed doors and under the watchful eyes of the UN Security Council. While this election has already had public nominations as well as informal discussions between the General Assembly and each of the candidates, it is still ultimately the responsibility of the Security Council to select the SG.

Irina Bokova of Bulgaria is a popular choice to replace Ban Ki-Moon as she fills three essential requirements: she is from the region whose “turn” it is to hold the position, she has experience working in the system—going into her sixth year as the Director-General of UNESCO—and is one of the leading women in the UN. She is also the most favored candidate by Russia, who holds sway due to its veto power in the Security Council.

The prime minister of Moldova, Natalia Gherman, is also a popular candidate as she is both a woman and from Eastern Europe. However, her inexperience within the UN makes her bid less likely, despite the support she receives from Western countries such as the UK and U.S.

While Vuk Jeremic would continue the trend of having a man at the organization’s highest office, he does have years of relevant experience working as the President of the UN General Assembly and as Serbia’s minister of foreign affairs.

Many General Assembly members have voiced their dissatisfaction toward the current crop of Eastern European nominees. As a result, this has led to growing support for two candidates from outside the region, claiming that geography should not play a role in the selection process—especially if it leads to a subpar candidate.

Helen Clark, the current Administrator for the United Nations Development Programme and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, is a name that has been floated around. She has strong connections to the U.S. and UK, as well as China. In addition, she has years of experience at the UN, with many seeing her as a more qualified leader than other candidates.

Another “outside candidate” is Antonio Guterres who served as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and is a former Prime Minister of Portugal. Guterres has an impressive resume, and is the most well equipped candidate to face the current refugee crises, which are a main concern for Europe and the Middle East.

The major roadblock to him or Clark is the UN tradition of selecting an SG from a certain region, as well as a possible veto from Russia, which wants to see an SG that is amenable to its interests. While Moscow has publically stated that it would not veto a candidate selection solely on the geographical criteria, this strategy was previously employed by Beijing, helping Ban Ki-Moon back in 2007, when China threatened to veto any candidate who was not from Asia. The Security Council is expected to select its nominee in July with the election in the General Assembly happening in September.

Recommended Readings

Somini Sengupta, “At U.N., Ambassadors Hold Auditions for Next Secretary General,” The New York Times (Apr. 15, 2016).

Reid Standish, “Will the Next U.N. Secretary-General Be From Eastern Europe?” Foreign Policy (Apr. 29, 2016).

“Selecting a new UN Secretary-General: a job interview in front of the whole world,” UN News Centre (Apr. 8, 2016).

The post The UN Post-2015: Great Decisions Spring Updates appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

President Obama holding a town-hall-style meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on Wednesday. (Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times)

The recent U.S. decision to fully lift its arms embargo against Vietnam is a victory for both countries as they seek to balance China in the region. However, the U.S. must also realize that the decision will be measured against already-strong Russian-Vietnamese strategic and defense ties. Therefore, the embargo decision is a maneuver to not only counter Chinese influence in the area, but Russian power as well.

Embargo Lift Strengthens Re-Balance

As the U.S. continues its “re-balancing” efforts to counter China in Asia, it has strengthened military ties with allies in the region, most notably Japan and the Philippines. However, the U.S. has also realized that in order to maximize its impact, it needs to reach beyond formal treaty allies. Even though some of these states may not have had the best relations with the U.S. in the past, they now realize that increased U.S. ties are in their own long-term self-interest if they desire to balance China as well.

India is currently being wooed by the U.S.—Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s recently visited the country to shore up defense ties. Vietnam also falls in the camp of non-allied states currently being courted by the U.S. Unlike with India, the legacy of the Vietnam War still runs deep in many quarters within Washington. However, despite past and current concerns with respect to Vietnam’s human rights policies, it would seem that realism based on mutual interests eventually prevailed and resulted in the decision to lift the embargo.

Even more crucially, the U.S. must realize that it is not the only one of several regional powers vying for Vietnam’s affections. Japan and India have both increased their own outreach efforts to Vietnam in order to balance Chinese influence.  They have done this both from a military perspective as well as an economic one, as Vietnam has several blocks of offshore oil in need of investment and development. The U.S., at this point, finds no fault in these efforts as they complement its own “re-balance”.

Russian Rivalry and Economic Factors

Russia, however, may prove to be a formidable obstacle to the U.S.’ charm offensive. Because of the Soviet Union’s support of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Russian-Vietnamese strategic ties are still quite abundant. Vietnam also plays a role in Russia’s “Asian pivot” as it seeks to both reduce its dependence on Western economic ties post-Ukraine and to simultaneously balance China itself, its erstwhile strategic partner, in Asia. Strong ties to Vietnam serve to actually put teeth behind Russian rhetoric of diversifying its Asian strategic portfolio beyond China.

Even though these strong ties have led to many past Vietnamese purchases of Russian armaments such as ships and aircraft, all parties must realize that Vietnam is not going to be exclusively in any one’s camp, save its own, for the foreseeable future. Vietnam, similar to India, realizes that the best way to maintain strategic autonomy is to pursue a truly multi-vectored foreign policy strategy.

If strengthened ties with the U.S. improves its own position based on its own interests, those ties will indeed be pursued. The same is true with respect to Russia, India, and Japan. Simply put, all of these powers must realize that they will always be only suitors and any feelings of actually consummating something more substantial will remain exactly that, a feeling.

The real front on which both the U.S. and Russia must compete for Vietnamese attention, however, is the economic one. This stems from the realization that it is China’s economic power, symbolized by its leading trading partner status with most southeast Asian states, which serves as the foundation for its growing military and diplomatic power. Chinese South China Sea maneuvers and the formation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) symbolize these, respectively. This realization was also behind the recent ASEAN leaders’ summit held in Sunnylands, California, the first ever hosted by the U.S.

Not to be outdone, Russia recently hosted its own ASEAN summit, held in Sochi. This summit, similar to Sunnylands, promoted increased economic and technological ties with southeast Asian states as the foundation for further strengthened political ties.  The case may be made that the Russian economic presence in ASEAN, apart from Vietnam, is scant. In the past, this has been due to the relatively low importance assigned to southeast Asia within Russian foreign policy objectives due to the region’s remoteness, as well as previous ASEAN skepticism with respect to Russia’s minimal economic footprint within the region.

On the economic front, the U.S. would appear to be in the lead in the race against Russia, given Vietnam’s accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, it can ill-afford to rest on its laurels as one of the Russian proposals highlighted at Sochi was to gradually integrate ASEAN economically with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Because of all these factors, the U.S. must always keep in mind that its Vietnamese courtship will inevitably go against Russian strategic machinations in Vietnam, as well as both Russian and Chinese economic endeavors in the region as a whole.

The post U.S. Must Still Compete with Russia for Vietnam’s Affections appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.