Diplomacy & Crisis News

(Own report) - In cooperation with NSA, a US military intelligence service, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has massively intercepted and stored emails from Austria, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic. This became evident through an internal email from an employee of the Deutsche Telekom AG, responsible for cooperation with the intelligence service and police. According to the email, published by the Austrian parliamentarian Peter Pilz, Telekom, already in early February 2005, had given a green light to the BND having access to a fiber optic cable for internet communication connecting Luxembourg to Austria and numerous other countries. At the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), as Head of the Federal Chancellery, bore the highest responsibility for the activities of the BND. According to reports, Austria's domestic intelligence was also being tapped. Whoever is cognizant of this communication, knows "almost everything about the Republic's political life," summarized Pilz. The governments concerned have raised no serious protests, in the Germany-dominated EU. The German government is continuing the BND's technological upgrading, aimed ultimately toward raising German espionage "to an equal footing" with the NSA - also in internet spying.

Delta Force operators killed a senior Islamic State leader inside Syria, but the intelligence they collected could be just as important -- and might open the door to new raids in the future.

The Camp David summit concluded on Thursday with a stack of assurances from President Barack Obama to representatives of the Arab Gulf states that America has their back. To prove his intentions, he promised to sell them more and better weapons, and to increase the frequency of combined training and exercise opportunities for their forces ...

The best stories from around the world.

The Defense Department has long praised a support program for troubled troops. That wasn't enough to save it from the budget axe.

Victoria Nuland, America’s top diplomat for Europe, has tapped an experienced Capitol Hill staffer as her new senior adviser, officials tell Foreign Policy.

Nearly every day, it seems, a new report arrives of hundreds of migrants being pulled out of the sea or drowning in anonymity. Both in the Mediterranean Sea and the waters of South East Asia, desperate migrants are being packed into rickety boats and transported across dangerous waterways toward the hope of a new life, ...

Some financial companies in the U.S. resort to carrying cash on airplanes to keep remittances flowing to needy Somalis.

A federal jury in Massachusetts sentenced Tsarnaev to death on six of 17 counts.

The country's bold strategy to fight maternal mortality flouts conventional wisdom and relies on a controversial drug -- and in the wake of the devastating earthquake, it could be more important than ever.

Islamic State fighters are pushing deeper into the key Iraqi city of Ramadi while launching new attacks against the sprawling Baiji oil refinery, but a top U.S. military official involved in the Pentagon’s training and advising mission there says that the group remains “on the defensive.” Speaking by phone from his headquarters in the Middle ...

Thousands of Nepali workers in Qatar struggle to find a way to go home -- and give back -- to a country in crisis.

Relief efforts continue in Nepal. Photo Credit: Rajan Shrestha via Wikimedia Commons

The Crusades: A Complete History
By Jonathan Phillips
History Today

The crusades may not be recent history, but the number of times they’ve been appropriated by politicians in the past few years you’d think they might be. Phillips provides a fairly comprehensive history of these wars and the logic behind them.

Nepal’s Aid System is Broken. So These Lifesavers Hacked It.
By Abe Streep
Wired

As governments and international NGOs struggled to provide aid in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Nepal, a number of ad hoc, unregistered and unlicensed efforts have sprung up to fill the void these larger organizations have left. Wired looks at one of them, which was borne out of an bed-and-breakfast called the Yellow House.

How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield
By Sebastian Junger
Vanity Fair

Junger, who has experience with PTSD on a personal level as well, explores the history of the disorder, its effects and why it’s so prevalent in Western societies. Ultimately, he notes, it boils down to making society feel more inclusive for soldiers who have left the perils of war to return home.

The Killing of Osama bin Laden
By Seymour M. Hersh
The London Review of Books

Love it or leave it, Hersh’s “alternative narrative” of the killing of Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad has sparked conversations the world over. Hersh’s account posits that bin Laden had been held by Pakistani officials for a number of years and tries to poke holes in the official narrative presented by the Obama administration. Agree with him or not, it’s worth a read to see what all the fuss is about.

Theorizing the Drone
By Grégoire Chamayou
Longreads

What does the rise of the drone mean for modern warfare? How does it, if it does at all, change the moral calculations in war? What even counts as a drone? These are just a few of the questions French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou tries to answer in these four chapters republished by Longreads from his book Theorizing the Drone.

Blogs:

Climate Change: A Generational Challenge by Elly Rostoum
Turkmenistan and Europe’s pipe dreams by Mark Varga
International Security: We’re Doing It Wrong by Oliver Barrett
Turkey Cracks Down on NGOs by Gary Sands
Countering the Sunni-Shia Divide by Ali G. Scotten

Over at FPA.org:

Great Decisions 2015 Spring Updates by Eugene Steinberg, Paul Mutter, Daniel R. Donovan, Hannah Gais, and Jordan Stutts

The 15-year-old diarist was a singular talent. Let’s stop pretending every young woman tweeting her life under fire is doing the same.

It took 17 years, but federal prosecutors have finally won a conviction for a militant linked to the devastating al Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead and 4,000 injured and marked the group’s emergence as America’s top terrorist adversary.

A federal judge Friday sentenced Khaled al-Fawwaz, a top former advisor to Osama bin Laden, to life in prison. He was convicted in February on four conspiracy counts in connection to the 1998 attack, which killed 12 Americans.

The twin truck bomb attacks in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi prompted then-President Bill Clinton to launch Operation Infinite Reach, which consisted of cruise missile strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan. The missiles fired into east Africa destroyed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Somalia, a facility that ended up having no connection to al Qaeda or bin Laden.

Strikes in Afghanistan destroyed four training camps and were an effort to kill bin Laden, who was believed to be at the Zhawar Kili al-Badr base. He left hours before the missiles struck.

After 9/11, Clinton came under fierce criticism for not having mounted a more muscular attempt to kill bin Laden.

The bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were the second attack by al Qaeda against American targets. In 1992, the group bombed a hotel in Yemen, where U.S. troops had been staying in route to Somalia. The service members were not at the hotel when a series of bombs went off, but two American tourists were killed.

Fawwaz was not convicted for planning the embassy bombing, but on four conspiracy counts. A the time of the attacks, he was in London disseminating bin Laden’s messages and sending supplies to terror cells in Africa. He was arrested in London in 1998, then extradited to the United States in 2012 after a long legal fight.

Lawyers for Fawwaz said he deserved less than life in prison because he was not as responsible for the attacks as other al Qaeda leaders. But prosecutors argued to Judge Lewis Kaplan that Fawwaz was the leader of a terrorist cell in Kenya in the 1990s who was once the ninth most powerful person in al Qaeda.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said he is the 10th person to be convicted or to plead guilty in connection to the bombings.

Photo Credit: Alexander Joe/Getty Images

After a brief but frightening setback for proponents, U.S. congressional leaders looked set on May 13 to pass legislation for an eventual up-or-down (“fast-track”) vote on what would be one of the world’s largest trade accords, the U.S-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The accord, a project behind which U.S. President Barack Obama has thrown his full support, would originally join together 12 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean. Significantly, China isn’t on that list; in fact, in the months leading up to fast-track voting, U.S. officials have been selling the pact internationally and domestically as a deal to counter Chinese influence. But whether TPP becomes reality or not, China has already moved on. And the anti-China rhetoric the United States has deployed has ultimately done more harm than good.

TPP is more than just a trade agreement, at least to hear the Obama administration tell it. In recent months, U.S. officials seeking to win domestic support among skeptical democrats have promoted it as a geostrategic cudgel to fend off a rising China. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on April 27, President Barack Obama asserted, “If we do not write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region,” meaning the Asia-Pacific. “We will be shut out.” When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met President Obama to discuss TPP, their explicit and implicit messages were “all about China,” according to Patrick L. Smith, a long-time correspondent in Tokyo.

By continuing and intensifying the anti-China rhetoric in TPP discourse, administration officials have only made it more likely that the trade regime, if it becomes reality, will alienate China.

None of this was inevitable. As recently as two years ago, China was nervous about being shut out of the TPP. Li Xiangyang, dean of the Global Strategy Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government-linked think tank, remarked in 2012 that “TPP represents the gravest challenge China faces” on its upward trajectory, given its popularity in Asia and its exclusion of China. Scholar Fan Libo also argued in an article published in December 2012 that “the benefits of joining TPP outweigh the costs for China.” In May 2013, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that China would “assiduously study” the pros and cons of TPP. Then in March 2014, at the conclusion of China’s National Party’s Congress and National People’s Congress, an annual event that directs major policy moves, Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng spoke to domestic and international reporters. “We think the TPP is an important negotiation, and also a high-quality trade regime,” Gao said. “China is always open and accommodating to regional cooperation.” He also made it clear that China was well-informed of TPP negotiations through Sino-U.S bilateral dialogue mechanisms.

When the United States spun the TPP as a high-standard trade regime, with its inclusion of rigorous labor and environmental clauses, it also resonated with those wishing to push China to reform. Long Yongtu, the former Chinese trade minister who negotiated the country’s entry into the WTO, argued in November 2014 that “TPP has to include China sooner or later.” Long and other reformists saw the TPP’s standards as potentially creating an external lever to, as Long wrote, “help China’s badly-needed reform in the state sector, labor, and environmental areas.” In November 2014, China announced a landmark climate accord with the United States. And the Xi administration has designated “deepening market reform” a top policy in the coming years – a fine fit for the TPP’s requirements.

In late 2014, moderate voices were supported by a set of serious investigations into how key terms in the TPP are likely to affect China. Researchers at Chinese universities and government think tanks concluded that China could manage the short-term costs that TPP would incur on their country, whether it joined or not. These include state-owned enterprises, supply chain manufacturing, intellectual property rights, textiles, exports, environment, and labor markets in China. The findings suggested that China could manage the costs via reforms in tax rates, expanding outbound investment, and reform in relevant legal and environmental regulations.

Of course, China was not going to wait for the United States to come around. Quietly, China began searching for new ways to bolster its influence in Asia. In late 2013 Xi publicly announced for the first time what he called the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21 Century Maritime Silk Road,” comprising what was later known as China’s New Silk Road in Eurasia. Things have been moving fast since. In Kazakhstan, China has signed economic projects in the areas of trade, industry, energy, technology, and finance, totaling $23.6 billion. In Belarus, in addition to a massive Sino-Belarus Industrial Park, modeled after the Suzhou Industrial Park near Shanghai, eight Chinese provinces and seven localities in Belarus have signed development projects with each other. In Russia, China has just finalized 30 economic projects, with a total worth of around $20 billion.

China’s confidence in regional politics has also been boosted by its progress assembling the charter member ranks for its Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB. China proposed the AIIB in October 2013; a year later, 21 nations, all Asian, gathered in Beijing and signed the memorandum establishing the bank. Six months later, the membership has expanded to 57, including traditional U.S allies in the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Korea. Embarrassingly, U.S efforts to stop close allies like the United Kingdom from joining have failed. 

With these recent successes in their proverbial back pockets, Chinese officials and scholars no longer care as much about TPP. Li Xiangyang, a dean at CASS who was deeply concerned about TPP two years ago, now spends most of his time promoting the Silk Road. The initiative is “diverse and open,” he said; in contrast, “TPP uses high-standards to exclude nations,” and is “not real openness.” Scholars also argue that TPP imposes United States-drafted terms on others. “It has too much politics,” they noted, “while AIIB was driven by market principles.” Of course, the future is critically uncertain. China has been generally silent as the TPP debate goes on in America.

There’s a lesson here for U.S. policymakers: there are profound merits to staking trade standards on solid policy grounds, as opposed to the very different terrain of realpolitik. When the U.S speaks for labor, environment, and small inventors, it attracts reform-minded Chinese who can do much of the internal sales job themselves. When it lards initiatives like TPP with geopolitical significance, it only pushes China to focus on the same.

After all the exhaustive back-and-forth on fast-track authority, the years of negotiation, and the recent, coordinated drum-beating about containing a rising China, the TPP may ultimately come to pass. But it’s too late to win hearts and minds in China. The world’s largest country has already moved on.

AFP/Getty Images

Driving through Sittwe, the dusty provincial capital of Rahkine state in northwest Burma, you notice a small poster affixed to nearly every shop and home. In English these signs read “white card,” and they alert anyone passing by that the building’s occupant sides with recent government efforts to prevent Burma’s most threatened ethnic and religious minority group, the Rohingya, from participating in the upcoming national elections. Most of Burma’s Rohingya are, in fact, stateless, and “white card” refers to the special identity documents issued to them by the government in lieu of the papers held by Burmese citizens. A few months ago officials decided that white card holders would not be allowed to participate in the national vote scheduled for this fall — effectively excluding the overwhelming majority of Rohingya.

As you drive on, the cacophony of bustling markets and careening tuk-tuks gradually gives way to the quiet of unpaved jungle roads and, eventually, a makeshift barbed wire roadblock that now separates nearly 150,000 Rohingya from the outside world. My Buddhist driver, from the state’s majority Rahkine ethnic group, refused to take me past the fence line into one of the world’s largest collections of internment camps — an implicit acknowledgement that he didn’t feel safe proceeding into a Rohingya community. Similarly, on the other side, my Rohingya guide refused to try to leave, too fearful of the consequences of being found outside the camps. “They just want us all to go away,” was the best explanation one camp dweller could give for his three years of internment.

The Rohingya we met inside the camp referred to it as an “open prison.” They have been interned here since a spate of inter-communal violence in 2012 killed scores of Rohingya and destroyed the homes and businesses of 140,000 more. Many people described how their Rakhine neighbors perpetrated the abuses, while others recounted that police officers or other local government actors were also involved. One woman remembered a fire brigade that approached when Rohingya houses were ablaze. Instead of extinguishing the fires, the firefighters poured gasoline and helped them spread.

Small wonder that many Rohingya are fleeing the country in desperation, taking to ramshackle boats which often become death traps. Their grim story stands in stark contrast to the official narrative emerging from Burma. After decades of military dictatorship and international sanctions, Burma has been haltingly shifting to civilian government and re-engaging with the international community since 2010. This slow liberalization has started to feel like a success — and from Washington, London, and Brussels it looks like one: scores of prominent opposition political figures have been released from imprisonment and are now preparing to participate this fall’s general election. Some sanctions have been lifted and foreign investment is flowing in. The space for civil society groups is expanding.

But one local activist cautioned against the “euphoria of change,” stressing that a real and lasting transition cannot occur unless it happens for everyone in society — regardless of ethnicity or religion.

The Rohingya — a community of just over one million Muslims at the bottom of Burma’s ethnic caste system — are not feeling the euphoria. In fact, they are now increasingly at risk of being eliminated entirely from the country’s political, social and economic life. While only about 10 percent of the Rohingya population are interned in camps and suffering from insufficient food and a lack of health care, the entire population is at risk of elimination.

The first step towards the Rohingya’s destruction is the increasingly aggressive application of a 1982 citizenship law requiring them to accept the label “Bengali” — a reference to neighboring Bangladesh and an assertion that they are not really Burmese — or else have their citizenship and basic rights and freedoms revoked. Under either scenario, the intention is clear: to deny Rohingya their legal place in Burmese society. “By denying us citizenship,” one Rohingya advocate told me, “they are denying our entire existence, our struggle, and our survival.” The move has made the Rohingya the world’s largest stateless people and now serves as the justification for every indignity and transgression inflicted upon the community — from denying them freedom of movement and ability to hold jobs to the basic right get an education, receive government services, or hold property.

This targeted nature of the attacks against the Rohingya have drawn increasingly worried references to the United Nation’s 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as the “attempt to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” and have prompted warnings that the Rohingya could become the latest victims of this crime of crimes.

Subject to hate speech sponsored by both state and religious figures, targeted attacks, forced internment, and arbitrary detention, the Rohingya have now become targets of national legislation reminiscent of the Nazi-era Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of citizenship rights based on their presumed “ethnic” origins. In similar fashion, the latest Burmese laws aspire to limit Rohingya birth rates and their ability to marry. One Rohingya leader described this de facto apartheid system as “an attempt to depopulate the Rohingya people” through their “soft elimination.” This is quite literally what the government’s recently proposed and ominously sounding “Population Control Bill” would do.

Perhaps even more alarming is seeing how official discrimination has given way to popular hatred of the Rohingya by the country’s Burman ethnic majority and other ethnic groups. Even Burma’s Western-backed, pro-democracy advocates like Aung San Suu Kyi have remained silent on the persecution of their compatriots, as coming to their defense now would run counter to the popular will.

Added together, this potent climate of racism, xenophobia, and hate has primed Burma for further rounds of deadly violence, as was last seen in 2012. Though the official death toll remains relatively low, in the hundreds, many human rights groups believe the true number to be substantially higher. As national elections approach later this year, the warning signs for massive atrocities grow ever more conspicuous. The Rohingya’s disenfranchisement could serve as the spark that sets the country ablaze.

To its credit, the Obama administration has taken notice of these disturbing developments and has signaled to the Burmese government that it should take steps to protect and strengthen minority rights as a precondition for a deepening of the relationship. Military assistance, something Burmese officials have made a top priority, has rightfully been put on hold.

Meanwhile, the president’s new Atrocities Prevention Board has helped ensure that the threats to Rohingya remain a central component of the deepening bilateral discussion with Burmese officials. The president raised their plight in meetings with his counterpart last November and has implemented initiatives to detect early warning signs of new violence against the Rohingya — something not done for the Tutsis of Rwanda two decades before. But will it suffice?

As Burma’s opening continues, growing numbers of European and U.S. investors are rushing to get a piece of the country’s investment bonanza. But with the opening of every new Mercedes dealership or luxury high-rise, Western leverage to achieve adequate protections for the most vulnerable of Burma’s citizens erodes.

In a 2012 conference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, then-Secretary of State Clinton warned that “the United States and our partners must act before the wood is stacked or the match is struck, because when the fire is at full blaze, our options for responding are considerably costlier and more difficult.” So much wood is already stacked in Burma. The crimes and injustices that have already been perpetrated against the Rohingya represent some of the core preconditions for genocide that analysts and advocates look for — but it is not yet too late to do something about it.

Conditioning future concessional lending, military assistance, and development packages on the creation of new legislative protections for the Rohingya is a meaningful step the international community could take to ensure the rush to declare Burma a democratic success does not exclude the Rohingya. So, too, would pressing the current and future governments to hold accountable local, national, and religious authorities who have helped to incite, direct, or condone past and any future violence against Rohingya.

When we asked what could be done to improve their situation, some Rohingya told us that the national and local authorities should allow more humanitarian assistance to reach them. Some called for greater international pressure on the government. Others called for efforts to change hateful mindsets within society against Rohingya and other Muslims. In the meantime, one woman I met in a Rohingya internment camp said simply, “We can just stay here, pray, and wait.” One thing is for certain: if violence does erupt and Burma’s leaders and people do decide to seek a “final solution” for the Rohingya, it will be impossible for anyone to revive the tired refrain of past generations of genocide apologists — “we didn’t know.”

In the photo, Rohingya refugees stand at an IDP camp on the outskirts of Sittwe, Myanmar.
Photo Credit: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Let’s imagine for a moment, that in some massively devastating economic disaster, the entire population of Canada, roughly 35 million people, loses its jobs. The country’s infrastructure implodes — no functioning trains or reliable electricity — and then these people also lose their homes, their schools, and their belongings. Poverty begins to take root, and lines for food stretch around blocks. There’s a shortage of resources and shelter. Ensuing conflict erupts in a war, complete with bombs exploding overhead, snipers firing rifles, and soldiers going from house to house making arrests.

Clearly, it’s not safe to stay in Canada.

So now take lots of these millions of Canadians and move them across the border into the United States. Oh, wait — that’s not going to work (the United States doesn’t want millions of immigrants seeking asylum, does it?). Instead, picture these people fleeing to relatively safer areas within the country, building makeshift shelters out of tarps and cardboard in parks or renting rundown apartments with the little money they were able to take with them. And now, you can begin to imagine what it’s like for internally displaced people stuck within their own borders.

According to a report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) in Geneva, the number of people forced to flee their homes but remain within their own borders because of war and general violence was, as of the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million. During the past year alone, 11 million people were displaced. That’s 30,000 people per day.

On top of that, the report found that in 2014, in about 90 percent of the 60 countries IDMC monitors, people were living in protracted displacement (and bearing children into displacement) for a period of at least 10 years. And in most cases, these internal refugees are not perfectly welcomed within the communities to which they flee. They face long-term hardships like lack of access to health care, ethnic discrimination, trauma from what they’ve seen and fled, and an inability to find jobs.

Unlike refugees, internally displaced people are dependent on their governments, which are often themselves in turmoil and are either unable or unwilling to help, and are usually responsible for the displacement in the first place. (Think Syria.)

Displaced people are the unseen byproducts of war: Living beyond the reach of aid organizations or even protection of the Geneva Conventions, unlike refugees. Finally, however, with the new numbers from IDMC, we can measure and name the problem, and distinguish these lost millions’ plight from that of those who manage to make it to surrounding countries.

But considering the main drivers of war, which then leads to dislocation — as well as poverty and overall inequality — it’s hard to imagine how to truly help the ever-increasing number of IDPs who are stuck in a kind of purgatory that lasts … no one knows how long. “The problem is really so huge that no one knows where to start,” says Alexandra Bilak, one of the authors of the report.

Unlike in the past though, intricate country breakdowns show five countries that account for 60 percent of new displacement worldwide: Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria, with Syria holding the largest number of IDPs in the world, at 7.6 million. We now know specifically where attention is needed. And we know the issue needs solving, the key to which, says the center, is to get people to sit up and finally see the problem — and then start coughing up funding.

“We are like the weathermen,” says Alfredo Zamudio, director of the IDMC. “We are telling people that it’s raining.”

Still, attention to the IDP crisis remains scant in international donor circles. People trapped within their own borders remain unseen by dominant donor countries, unlike the migrants who are drowning off the Italian coast or those queuing up at the Jordanian border.

Although if you were to ask “a Lebanese or a Syrian or an Ethiopian or a Sudanese they wouldn’t talk about a few thousand asylum seekers. They would talk about the millions of refugees and internally displaced people, and so should we,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that aids those affected by displacement and the umbrella group under which the IDMC operates. Then add on a term like “protracted displacement” and you have perhaps the most un-media-friendly story possible: people staying put. That doesn’t sell newspapers. Altogether, “IDPs have just become forgotten,” says Zamudio.

There is some good news, however, says Egeland, because mass displacement is a political problem (something Egeland calls “a cancer of international politics”), which means there are political solutions. While there are (unenforceable) guiding principles on internal displacement codified by the U.N. in 1998, it might be time for a new conversation on them.

“We need to get back to countries sitting down together and saying we have a common problem and we need to pull in the same direction,” he says. On the plus side, he points out that “there are many more nations and many more millionaires in many more countries that could invest in hope, and a fewer number of truly miserable places.”

Zamudio agrees, adding that, “there are good people in these governments trying to do the right thing.”

Egeland does, however, point his finger at countries that are not pulling their financial weight, and says they’re not just “the usual suspects.” He’s mainly critical of countries that have enough wealth to help, but choose not to: “How come three tiny Scandinavian countries can still be among the top 10 donors in the world? Where are all of the Asian tigers? Where are all of these incredibly oil-rich countries among donors?”

“All of those of us who are in the top 2 to 3 billion of the world population have more than enough to share. Much more.”

Beyond increasing funding, Egeland also says we need more “witnesses” — aid workers and journalists to take stock of the crisis working inside countries with large numbers of IDPs — inside Syria, inside Yemen, something that he recognizes as both costly and dangerous. He says much of the reason people are unable to go home during displacement is because of a “protection crisis.” That assistance may reach those in need, but does not provide protection. There needs to be “much more effective and coherent peacekeeping and diplomacy. Much more effective sanctions to award good behavior and punish bad behavior.” He specifies that he does not mean further military actions from the West. Instead, Egeland wants “more systematic possibilities for relocation of refugees in the areas of greatest tension,” he says. “It’s as easy and as difficult as that.”

For the 38 million people in this liminal state, life can be desperate, and the snail’s pace of action to help them devastating. Bilak describes an erosion of resilience when there is a long-term lack of support.

Consider just one example of someone living in dislocation. Pikas Kapi belongs to a family displaced by low-level conflict between Papua, New Guinea, and the Indonesian government that has been flaring since independence from the Dutch in 1962. He and his family have been in a care center for almost four years, “living in broken tents and with no one helping us,” he told the IDMC. “Life is very difficult, particularly for our children. Many are still traumatized by the fighting and don’t want to go back to school.” Many, Kapi says, become ill because they don’t get enough to eat and water quality is poor. “We have to hope for rain if we want to drink. … We feel abandoned.”

In some places, people are living for years away from their homes, forced to move over and over again as conflict comes nearer. A look at the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which has 2.8 million IDPs after 20 years of war, shows one of the most complex situations of displacement in the world, says Bilak, one in which people are exhausted from having to move so many times because of violence. They are forced to keep switching work to feed themselves; women who only know how to farm have to leave their fields because they are being raped, only to have to learn how to mine, where they are abused, only to have to accept that there is no easy place or life for them.

For Bilak, the answer to ending mass internal displacement, especially the protracted kind, is to shift thinking from classifying it as a short-term humanitarian crisis to an entrenched development issue. “We need to bridge the relief to development gap,” she says. But with an ironic laugh she adds, “I don’t think anyone really knows how to do that.”

Looking closely at stories like Kapi’s should be enough to move hearts to give money to assist with resettlement, peacekeeping, job training, etc. But since that hasn’t been enough to make change thus far, Egeland has other incentives to draw donors.

“It’s not just because of our ideals we should care,” he says. “It’s because it’s in our interests too. If we take millions and millions of teenagers in and around Syria and we say, ‘No, we will not give you an education nor a job nor a future,’ would we still expect them to be moderate and well-behaving and never flirt with extremism or join terrorist groups?”

“Of course they will be angry,” Egeland says. “And of course they can be recruited in all sorts of directions. So we have to invest in hope.”

It’s as easy and as difficult as that.

MOHAMMED SAWAF/AFP/Getty Images

If you’ve paid even tangential attention to the debate over the role of drones in the United States’ wars of the 21st century, director Andrew Niccol’s new movie “Good Kill” will have virtually nothing new to tell you. If you haven’t, read any of these informative articles to catch up and spare yourself 102 minutes of hackneyed dialogue and factual inaccuracy.

Set in 2010, the movie stars Ethan Hawke as Maj. Thomas Egan, a pilot forced to abandon his F-16 to fly drones. After experiencing warfare from his cockpit while flying above the battlefield, the abrupt shift to a metal box at an Air Force base outside Las Vegas threatens Egan’s sense of self. He becomes increasingly distanced from his wife and reliant on booze as a result.

Niccol and Hawke clearly wanted to make a movie that prompts a national conversation about a future of warfare by remote control. “The [U.S.] soldiers might eventually leave Afghanistan, but the drones aren’t going to,” Niccol told my Foreign Policy colleague Seyward Darby in an interview.

“The things that usually end a war are expense, body bags or conquering a country,” Hawke said in the same interview. “With a drone, it’s inexpensive, there aren’t body bags, and you can’t conquer the country because you aren’t even there. So it creates a real possibility for perpetual war.”

These are pertinent observations, but Niccol’s effort to bring them to life in the film is handicapped by his own screenplay, which is weighted down with so many cliches that it becomes hard to take seriously. Several of these involve Egan’s character, who misses the risks that came with spending his professional life in the air. “The most dangerous thing I do is drive home on the freeway,” he laments in one scene.

Buried in the movie are a few plot twists that are plucked from the headlines and, in different hands, might actually incite a genuine debate among the film’s audience: a drone strike that Egan and his team intentionally conduct on the funeral of the target of a previous drone attack, and repeated strikes conducted in which it’s clear to Egan’s team ahead of time that civilians will die.

But instead of making a movie that revolves around one such episode, Niccol has tried to cram every remotely controversial type of incident associated with drones into one film, the moral core of which is provided by Egan and a young enlisted female airman. The rest of the team consists of a pair of junior officers that are little more than two-dimensional characters whose purpose in the film is simply to provide hard line answers to the junior airman’s questions about the dubious morality of some of the drone strikes.

But at least their characters get to be two-dimensional. Some of the most disturbing strikes are undertaken on behalf of the CIA. But perhaps because Niccol wanted to keep the movie tightly focused on the handful of Air Force personnel in Nevada, the CIA is represented only by a disembodied voice coming out of a speaker. Rather than purely mission-focused conversations about the targets to be prosecuted, the discussions between the team and “Langley” veer into philosophical discussions on the nature of drone warfare that are completely unrealistic in the context of a time-sensitive lethal mission.

To a reporter who has spent more than 25 years covering the military, those scenes are far from the most egregious departures from realism that the movie makes. Egan’s commander, Lt. Col. Jack Johns (whose character exists largely to deliver stilted exposition on the background of the drone war), is played by Bruce Greenwood, who at 58 is (and looks) about 15 years too old to be playing a lieutenant colonel. A small infantry or special operations element asks the drone crew to provide overwatch while they take a nap in the middle of a long patrol, but none of the ground-pounders appears to be even carrying a rucksack. The most jarring error comes when Egan speaks wistfully of the challenges of landing his F-16 on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. F-16s are Air Force jets that don’t land on Navy carriers.

The critical role played by drones in the wars of the post-9/11 era demands to be examined by a worthwhile movie. “Good Kill” isn’t it.

Below is the full text of the interview conducted by Seyward Darby with Ethan Hawke and Andrew Niccol:

SD: It strikes me that so many of your movies are about the impact technology can have on our humanity — Gattaca, In Time, The Truman Show. I’m curious why this story of technology in particular drew you in, and what made you want to make this movie.

AN: Because of his character — because we’ve never had a soldier like this before. He’s the first generation of what will be many generations of soldiers who will go to war at home. It’s fascinating: What does that do to the psyche, what toll does it take when you’re going to war with a country but never go to the country? How do you possibly decompress when you’ve got a 40-minute drive down the freeway to your home in the Vegas suburbs?

SD: You met with some drone operators in preparation for this movie. What did you find were their methods of coping, of thinking about doing a job that is at once at home but also far away?

EH: It’s almost a schizophrenic level of detachment. They would never say that, they have their own things they say that they think are funny — the way they process their feelings or try to swallow their feelings, of whatever it is that they do. For me, as an actor, someone who’s often asked to compartmentalize feelings, asked to work with them on film one hour then later be normal at lunch of taking my kids of school, I understand that feeling of compartmentalization or schizophrenia. And I don’t know how they handled it. But I know it’s a dangerous thing to do, to become so detached from your feelings.

AN: Some of the younger drone pilots would fly by remote control for hours, then go back to their apartment and play video games. How do you not get desensitized to what you’re doing when you’re looking at screens?

SD: Did you find that they knew or had studied much about the cultures they were surveilling—that they knew a lot about, say, Yemen or Pakistan?

EH: In my experience, yeah.

AN: As you see in the film, they spend sometimes months watching a compound. And they really start to identify with the people they’re watching. They know their routine.

EH: They have likes and dislikes: “Oh, he’s cool,” or, “Oh, I hate him,” or “Oh, she’s attractive.”

AN: His character is watching a woman working, caring for a kid, and he almost falls in love with her. He spends more time with her than he does with his wife.

EH: And then the husband comes home and you have to blow them all up.

SD: In that respect, you could make the argument that this form of warfare has brought soldiers closer to the people they’re targeting. They’re not looking at them across tanks or battle lines.

AN: Perhaps that makes it worse. Because they’re not these anonymous people anymore.

EH: My grandfather dropped bombs on Germany, but he never had to circle back and count the dead. He never knew what happened to the bombs he let out of that B-52. Did he feel guilt about it? Really, no — you could say, maybe we blew up that bomb plant and saved the war.

AN: But to know exactly whom you’ve killed, and what you’ve done to them, how you blew them apart. We’ve never asked soldiers to watch what they do in hi-def. On the battlefield, I’m going to shoot you, but I’m not going to stick around because I’m worried about getting shot. That threat doesn’t exist [with drones]. It makes you feel cowardly, because you’re not a warrior anymore.

SD: That raises the question of whether the United States should be doing this at all. Having made this film, what do you think?

AN: It’s not up to me to answer that, it’s up to the audience who sees it. But it’s really a complicated question because you have to ask, doing what exactly? The soldiers might eventually leave Afghanistan, but the drones aren’t going to. Many would argue perhaps validly they should stay and police it, because do we want another 9/11? Is that the risk if we declare victory and go home?

EH: There’s a line in the film, that it might be the least worst option. If we stop killing them, will they stop killing us? The really dangerous thing about the drone program is where it’s leading us into the future. It’s obviously a very useful tool — but it’s how we use it. The things that usually ends a war are expense, body bags, or conquering a country. With a drone, it’s inexpensive, there aren’t body bags, and you can’t conquer the country because you aren’t even there. So it creates a real possibility for perpetual war. We used to think of that as a futuristic idea. Now here we are, 14 years into this, and it’s not so far-fetched.

SD: In speaking to the drone operators, where was their mentality with regard to the program? Did they articulate concerns about, say, when their job would end?

AN: One phrase that really stuck in my mind was this drone pilot who said, “When the commander says to fire, to press the button, once they say fire, they bought the bomb. So even if a kid runs into the impact zone, that’s not my responsibility. My job was to press the button.” So that is how they could compartmentalize that aspect of it.

EH: When you talk to the soldiers, they’re so consumed with the details. They would say, “I never really felt bad about what I did, but there was so much paperwork, endless paper work the military makes you do.”

AN: When you asked that guy about video games….

EH: He said, “It’s exactly like a video game if it was the most boring video game in the world.” When you only get to press the fire button about once a year.

AN: To them it’s long moments of boredom, punctuated by moments of horror.

SD: In the movie, the CIA is a detached voice on a telephone, talking to the pilots. In speaking to soldiers who presumably came up through the military, how did they feel about taking orders from the CIA?

EH: Thy wouldn’t say that word, those three letters.

AN: When I asked the drone operators, “You guys flew missions for the CIA?” They would say, “We can’t talk about that.” It’s well documented that the CIA contracts out the Air Force to fly for them, because they can’t fly. These guys would just call them OGA: “other goverment agency.”

SD: I read that you think some of your best sources for the movie were Wikileaks and the Chelsea Manning leaks. What interaction if any did you have with the government in producing the movie — or is coming to D.C. your first real contact?

AN: Yeah, I’m curious how the Q&A will go tonight [after the movie screening]. The script was submitted to the Department of Defense, but I didn’t get any official military cooperation.

SD: Having made this movie, when you read a news story like that of Warren Weinstein, a U.S. hostage recently killed by a drone strike, do you see it differently?

EH: You know, I’ve played police officers, Interpol agents, CIA agents, done enough research that the news doesn’t surprise me. The public is always way behind on what info they’re getting and how they’re getting it. Normal audience members think this movie is almost science fiction, but this is a period piece, set five years ago — this is no longer cutting edge.

SD: That leads me to ask about public opinion. Polling agencies only started asking questions about drones a few years ago.

EH: But they’re polling people who have such little information. If the average person is half as ignorant as I am on these subjects, I don’t think most people have enough information to even ask the right question, much less give an opinion that matters.

AN: The thing is that it’s a very easy sale to the public. As soon as you say, “The troops are out.”

EH: And, “We’re going to get those ISIS guys!” Why wouldn’t that sound great?

AN: But then you have no idea what’s happening to the targeted, or to the targeters.

EH: We also have no idea what precedent we’re setting. We [the United States] are some of the only people who have this weapon. How are you going to feel when every first-world country is covering the globe with drones? Your opinion on whether that’s OK or not is going to change. We [Americans] have a kind of leadership role to play here as well.

SD: Your movie is one of the first films about this program. It might reach a wide audience and give people more information. But do you think the government too should be pulling the program more out of shadows — telling the public more about it?

AN: Well I’m a filmmaker….

SD: But your opinion matters.

EH: The public in general, when faced with really looking at violence, even the toughest talkers, when they see pictures of dead children and women with arms blown off, immediately start asking, “Wasn’t there another way?” That’s what ended the Vietnam War.

AN: There’s talk about making the program more transparent. But there is a video record of every single drone strike, because that’s how it’s done — with video. I’m curious why the public doesn’t see more. Why do I only see this on Wikileaks? The war with ISIS is interesting. If there wasn’t video of the beheadings, I’m not sure we would be at war. Maybe that’s why we don’t see drone strikes, because the video is so powerful.

SD: When you were doing research, did you speak to victims’ groups, people who’ve lost loved ones to drones elsewhere in the world?

AN: No, but I was really touched when I was reading about drones, about kids who grow up hating blue skies. That’s why I include it [the idea] in the film. It’s a fundamental change to humanity, that a kid would wake up and say, “It’s a beautiful day, it’s a gray sky,” which is not ideal conditions for a drone. That’s where you run the risk that the war on terror is causing terror.

SD: Coming at the end of a day of interviews, have you been surprised about questions asked here in D.C., a government town, as opposed to elsewhere?

EH: People are so informed. It’s a much more interesting dialogue. We showed it at Toronto and Venice [film festivals]. While the criticism for the movie was good, I found that most people seemed terrified to talk about it. They seemed scared of coming off as anti-nationalistic or anti-military, of being critical. And you can’t have a dialogue if you aren’t critical. But people just don’t have enough information. They aren’t scared to talk about it — they’re scared of looking stupid, of being wrong about such serious subject matter.

AN: We just hope people don’t forget about this movie by the time they get to the parking lot.

 

A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force member guides a Cobra anti-tank helicopter onto a forward aircraft refueling point at Yakima Training Center, Wash., Sept. 4. The exercise was part of Operation Rising Thunder, a combined operation between the Army and Japan designed to increase interoperability between the two nations. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Cody Quinn, 28th Public Affairs Detachment)

On July 1, 2014, the Japanese government, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, outlined a reinterpretation of its pacifist constitution. Put in place in the aftermath of World War II, Article 9 of the Japanese constitution has been the centerpiece of its post-war pacifist identity since 1947, and details the unequivocal renunciation of war, except in the case of self-defense, as a means to settle disputes with other states. It reads:

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”

“In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

The ghosts of World War II still linger ominously over Japanese society. The dangers of imperial ambition and aggressive military expansion have been ingrained within each new generation. However, as Japan pushes into the 21st century, younger generations have lost the emotional connection to the memories of the war and the political philosophy that developed in its wake. They have become increasingly nationalistic, embracing the proud traditions of Japanese history and culture and in a way aspiring to reach that pinnacle once more. Prime Minister Abe has successfully tapped into this new wave of enthusiasm cascading over Japanese society, and it has become the driving force behind Japan’s march toward rediscovering its power and influence.

In the decades since the end of World War II, the U.S., recognizing the shifting interests within the geopolitical landscape of South East Asia, encouraged Japan to increase its defense posture – working over time to slowly move them toward military normalization.

Historically, Japan has resisted contributing to regional defense initiatives, choosing instead to rely more on the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, between the U.S. and itself (an agreement that guaranteed the U.S. would protect Japan from military aggression); however, this position began to shift in the 1990s following the rise in Chinese military power, and in the recent decade has caused Japan to alter course from its pacifist doctrine. Japan is not only witnessing the emergence of a more assertive China, which is looking to exert its dominance over the region, but also a belligerent and unpredictable North Korea that is experimenting with new and more advanced weapons systems (i.e., nuclear weapons, medium and long range ballistic missile).

Even though Japan’s pacifist constitution restricts its ability to maintain a standing military, its constitution allows for the creation of a self-defense force. While the acquisition of military hardware and the build up of troops began as a humble undertaking, it has since blossomed into a highly advanced and formidable military force.

Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force, arguably its most important “military” branch, consists of an amalgam of highly sophisticated naval weapon systems. The Soryu-class submarine is among the worlds most advanced non-nuclear attack submarines, it is able to displace 4,100 tons submerged, allowing it to achieve 20 knots under water and 13 knots on the surface. The Soryu-class is equipped with a full compliment of 20 type 89 high-speed homing torpedoes, as well as American-made anti-ship Harpoon missiles. The Soryu-class is also capable of utilizing advanced cruise missiles, which, should the need arise; will provide Japan a preemptive strike capability.

The Atago-class destroyer, as well as its predecessor the Kongo-class, offers the Japanese a versatile surface combat platform, capable of engaging multiple threat environments. The Atago-class destroyer is outfitted with the MK-45 lightweight artillery gun, two MK-141 missile launchers, that provide up to eight ship-to-ship missiles, and a MK-15 Phalanx Close-In-Weapon-System – capable of defending against anti-ship missiles, aircraft, and littoral warfare threats.

Japan’s naval capabilities have the potential to help stifle an increasingly aggressive Chinese military posture, as well as ensure the protection of its territorial sovereignty. The deployment of these naval weapon systems can profoundly complicate Chinese, or North Korean military calculations in the region, causing them to stop and consider the ramifications of pushing for the establishment of a hegemony in South East Asia, or even, in the case of North Korea, pursuing provocative military action against Japan.

Not to be out done, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force is at the cutting edge of aviation technology. The “tip of the spear” in Japan’s air combat arsenal is the Mitsubishi F-15J – a homemade redesigned version of the American F-15 Eagle, this veteran fighter jet comes equipped with numerous air-to-air missiles, and has been in a perpetual state of evolution during its 30+ years of deployment – enjoying numerous retrofits and upgrades to its radar and electronic guidance systems.

While the F-15J is an excellent fighter aircraft, combat aviation technology has advanced beyond F-15Js current capabilities – Japan is already beginning to plan for its replacement. The Japanese, at one point, expressed interest in purchasing the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, however, the U.S., for a variety of reasons, were not keen on selling it.

Japan is set to join the American Autonomic Logistics Global Sustainment Program (ALGS), which is an eight nation logistical partnership created to sustain the manufacturing and operation of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, commonly referred to as the Joint Strike Fighter. In joining the ALGS, Japan has said that it is interested in manufacturing components for the F-35, which would mean relaxing its long established ban on the export of military hardware.

The potential inclusion of Japan in the ALGS is a major shift in Japan’s military posture, and represents a watershed moment in the transfer of military technology from the U.S. to Japan. If this agreement goes through, any doubts about the direction of Japan’s military normalization will be laid to rest. Japan possesses the third largest economy in the world, coupled with advanced manufacturing capabilities, and a massive population – Japan has the potential to reemerge as a major player on the global stage. Japanese recognize the threat environment in which it exists, and as Prime Minister Abe moves Japan toward military normalization, he has sent a clear signal to Japan’s neighbors that it will not acquiesce to a Chinese predetermined status quo and it will not tolerate military posturing from North Korea.

Over the years, China has been working toward developing the military capability that would allow it to establish an anti-access/area denial (A2-AD) zone in the western pacific (A2-AD is a strategy that focuses on preventing an enemy from conducting military operations in, near, or within a specific region). In the event that a military confrontation was to occur, the Chinese, utilizing A2-AD stratagem, want to neutralize U.S. power projection in the western pacific. This would limit the ability for the U.S. to respond to, for example, a military annexation of Taiwan, or one of the many territorial disputes currently playing out in the South China Sea. From a U.S. perspective, the emergence of a robust and formidable Japanese military will be indispensible in acting as a countermeasure to the Chinese implementing an effective A2-AD strategy.

There are many factors to consider when discussing Japan’s military normalization, however, none are more important than ensuring Sino-Japanese relations remain on an even keel. Sino-Japanese relations have a long and checkered past, mostly due to the fact that China, as well as the Korean Peninsula suffered tremendous hardship and cruelty under the yoke of Japanese imperialism. Japan’s push toward military normalization has the potential to awaken the deep seeded mistrust that has always plagued Sino-Japanese relations.

Prime Minister Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party are firmly in control of Japanese Parliament, and are unlikely to face any meaningful political challenge for several years. Recognizing this opportunity, Prime Minister Abe has taken the necessary steps to fundamentally alter the geopolitical outlook of Japan – the U.S. will play a critical role in ensuring that this shift in Japan’s military posture does not occur at a pace that would unwittingly escalate Sino-Japanese tensions. There is a delicate balancing act playing out, on the one hand the U.S. wants to bolster Japanese military capabilities, in the hopes of deterring Chinese military ambitions, but at the same time, the U.S. must maintain positive relations with Beijing – needless to say, the coming decades will require some deft diplomatic maneuvering to maintain regional stability.

If the U.S. is able to keep Japan on its course toward military normalization, without exacerbating tensions with Beijing, then the U.S., in Japan, will discover a robust and formidable partnership that can help maintain U.S. influence in the Western Pacific and South East Asia for the foreseeable future.