Foreign Policy Blogs

Starting this week we will be running a foreign affairs weekly quiz each Monday!

Here is the first one! Enjoy!

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In the mid-1960s, during the height of the American auto industry’s success in Detroit and surrounding border states, the US and Canada developed the Auto Pact. The Auto Pact brought Canada into the thriving industrial base in the northern region of the United States and over the years integrated Canadian and American auto production under the labels of the major US auto manufacturers. They developed what was called the Just In Time (JIT) system, where parts produced in Canada or the United States would cross the border to complete the production of a vehicle at a different plant nearby, but over the international boundary. While the immediate border region of Ontario still has much of its production and employment rooted in the manufacturing and auto industry, many of their American counterparts have disappeared, left for more tax friendly states in the US South or left the United States altogether. The traditional relationship did not degrade from lack of will, American and Canadian auto sector workers often shared connected Unions in addition to working for the same company, but with a sharp decline in production in Detroit and northern US states, American workers lost entire communities, and their cousins in Canada lost much of their stable employment as well.

With the Auto Pact being the basis of Free Trade between the two countries, in the late 80s the precursor to NAFTA, the Canada United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) was signed in 1988. This bilateral agreement sought to expand the auto industry’s relationship between the two countries and add additional sectors to the growing free trade basket. NAFTA was signed in 1994 with the addition of Mexico to the mix. Recently, NAFTA negotiators came to an agreement between the US and Mexico. Canada and the United States are currently discussing issues privately, with elections in both countries determining strategy over good neighbourly common sense.

The Canadian position seems to be one that follows a strategy of including social development goals in their new trade agreements. While The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) included many common social goals, a similar approach in China and India was seen as inappropriate, likely due to a long history of cultural interference during the colonial era by Western powers. A similar strategy with the United States fell on deaf ears. With the recent election of the US President challenging many of the same issues brought up by the Canadians in their negotiations, it would be inappropriate to change American society via trade negotiations so soon after the electorate recently made their decisions on how they wished to develop their own communities, done by vote.

Much of the support gained by the President came from former workers and passive Union support in the border states with Canada. With the post-NAFTA economy routing jobs out of the entire region, support from disaffected former Union workers gave a massive boost to the campaign of President Trump. While there is still substantial employment in the auto sector in Ontario, Canada, the Just In Time system of the past has been substantially degraded, and the logistical reality of having auto plants in Southern Ontario is challenging jobs daily in the region. With the core of Canada-US trade starting from the Auto Pact, to CUSFTA to NAFTA being autos, and the economic reality in states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, it would be short term pain, albeit a lot of pain, for long term gain if trade relations soured between Canada and the US. Auto tariffs would make it more economical for US companies as well as foreign manufacturers in Canada to relocate to the United States. With the recent decline in corporate tax rates for companies operating in the US along with the low but now matched Canadian rate, free(albeit heavily taxpayer funded) healthcare and newly proposed Canadian carbon and energy consumption taxes now put Canada at an economic disadvantage.

Mexico was able to cope and negotiate with the current US policy of raking in US companies back home by proposing to lower corporate tax on companies operating in the border states to a small amount, as well as ensure a higher minimum wage for employees working in the auto sector in Mexico. With so much venom coming from the US on Mexican trade and other issues, the US and Mexico were able to ink a deal that even soothed a hardened President. Canadian leaders who are now in the drivers seat but seek a vehicle for election strategy should be weary of campaigning against perceived political rivals across the border. Alienating the American electorate and giving extra incentives to workers, unions and an Administration that wants you to challenge them will simply hurt Canadians, and while it might return the current government to their jobs in Ottawa, it will rapidly have an effect on an already debt burdened and mismanaged Canadian economy.

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The political transformation in the Horn of Africa is arguably the most counterintuitive development in the 21st century so far. Ethiopia has steered away from implosion and, for the first time in its history, appointed an Oromo Prime Minister with an Islamic name and heritage, ending the 20-year-long conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nonetheless, Abiy Ahmed, the charismatic new Prime Minster from the intelligence sector, is yet to find a firm footing and harmony within the deeply rooted and ethnically-dominated domestic political apparatus. The sporadic ethnic-targeting violence raging in the Oromo and the oil-rich Somali region is an ominous preview.

This enormous strategic achievement and the peace and economic development potential that it inspires cannot be underestimated. Neither can the value of the psychological and emotional liberation resulting from the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace agreement that reconnected families and old friends. Having said this, from the strategic or policy perspective, it is too naïve not to question the real impetus driving this, the subsequent dramatic changes and the possible implications for each country and the region.

So far, all we have got is a bellyful of sound-bites seasoned with euphoric cheers. There has been little clarification as to the actual context; who and what is the driving force, and why with such unprecedented haste? If one must drive on the fast-lane, it is critical to keep hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

Naturally, in politics there is no such thing as random acts of transformation; especially between two sworn enemies and most certainly in geopolitics. The strategic rivalries between the United States of America and China on the one hand and Saudi/United Arab Emirates and Turkey/Qatar on the other hand have been raising tensions if not fuelling various conflicts.

So prudence dictates that a leap of faith under these circumstances might not be the best option.

Tripartite Grand Strategy

The US is being squeezed out of Djibouti by its geopolitical rival China and the Trump administration is yet to unveil a coherent policy towards the Horn. Meanwhile, China is building its first overseas base to project its ever-growing military power. China is already well established on a trade and development front across Africa. The infrastructure and political support system for its new Silk Road are already established or in progress.  Despite owning nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, the Chinese expansion in the region, and indeed Africa, is giving the US what I would call a strategic vertigo.

AFRICOM still remains the floating State Department in charge of guarding US interests in the region with the same old guards – Ethiopia handling the political bidding and Erik Prince (Blackwater) and companies via the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) DP World handling all matters intended to evade scrutiny and accountability. This may offer some perspective as to how a tiny Gulf nation became the key element through which the geopolitical landscape of the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa is redesigned.

Despite the successful international business narrative it projects, clouds of suspicion still hover over dubious multifaceted maritime enterprise. The significant ‘intelligence and security risks’ associated with the company and its Erik Prince and private military partners was one of the main reasons why in 2006 the US congress rejected a DP World deal to manage six US ports, its support of neoconservative heavyweights and Vice President Dick Cheney notwithstanding.

In addition to the $700 billion trade between Europe and Asia that passes each year through Bab al-Mandab, the European Union is determined to constrict the out of Africa migration trend by promoting and investing in what it calls regional integration to improve trade, security and good governance. Ethiopia is to be the anchoring state and IGAD is to remain the institutional shepherd with international backing. The Horn model could then be extended to the entire continent. There is only one little caveat: no Turkey, no Qatar, and certainly, no China.

Ever since the eruption of the Gulf Cooperation Council feud that led to a Qatar blockade more than a year ago, neither politics nor security has been the same in the Horn of Africa. This is especially the case in Somalia, where the competing geopolitical interests of the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Qatar and Turkey on the other intersect. Though there are other zero-sum competitions at play in Somalia, none have brought in more cash for the disjointed politics locally known as siyaasadda kala fur-furka than the Gulf monarchs.

General Anwar Eshki is the Chairman of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies and a close advisor to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. He is the architect of the Saudi strategic duplicity that led to the bloody Yemen war, the normalisation of its relationship with Israel despite the systematic genocide of Palestinians, and the policy to facilitate Ethiopia’s annexation of Somalia.

In a speech he delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations, the General recently argued, “Unifying the Horn of Africa under the leadership of Ethiopia” and connecting the Horn to the Arab peninsula by Al-Nour Bridge “connecting the al-Nour town of Djibouti and al-Nour town of Yemen.” The General made it clear to his audience that he spoke English but was advised, contrary to his preference, to deliver his speech in Arabic and to read it to his audience. Was the general reading the first draft of Saudi Arabia’s strategic policy toward the region or flashing reassurances to other partners?

Transformation Made Easy

When, in mid-June Shaikh Mohammed Bin Zayed visited Ethiopia, the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development deposited $3.7 billion in the National Bank of Ethiopia– an amount equal to Turkey’s investment in Ethiopia. The day after, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister flew into Mogadishu. In a matter of about three hours, and without leaving the airport compound, the PM signed an agreement with the Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo securing Ethiopia and her behind the scene client a historic consignment- four of Somalia’s most strategic Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports. And where cash is the king, it was not too difficult for the UAE to acquire a number of ports in Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan.

In the following month, the new Prime Minister visited Asmara to meet with President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea. On that very same day, the two sworn enemies signed a peace agreement that immediately restored diplomatic relations, and promised the imminent resumption of flight services and the use of Eritrea’s port facilities for Ethiopia.

Within weeks, the Somali President lands in Asmara to meet with President Isaias and restore diplomatic relations with Eritrea. All of a sudden, ‘Africa’s North Korea’ became the hottest destination. The rest of the IGAD member states are in line to pay their homage, despite the fact that Eritrea is officially under sanctions. Interestingly, in what seemed haphazard and an orchestrated political cover for Ethiopia—the country that spearheaded the sanctions on Eritrea with tons of disinformation—President Farmajo called upon the UN Security Council to lift the sanctions. This not only “deeply shocked” Djibouti, it also triggered a domestic backlash against a president with slipping popularity and a government considered a political apparatus to advance various international projects.

Is De-Turkification of Somalia Possible?

Ever since the Arab Spring, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have aggressively pursued a strategic objective aimed to stifle any and all Muslim Brotherhood influence due to the latter’s social and political capital on the streets that emanate from grassroots social services. Gulf monarchs consider that group and Turkey’s political ascendancy and influence on the Islamic and Middle Eastern affairs as the most serious threat to their life-long rule.

So as soon as Turkey launched a massive humanitarian and development campaign in 2011 and began to form a strategic partnership with Somalia, the UAE came on the scene for what many consider an effort to torpedo Turkey’s newly-found stature in Somalia. The UAE established the second largest embassy after Turkey in Mogadishu. It opened the Sheikh Zayed Hospital to compete with the Erdogan Hospital. By the time Turkey started to provide scholarships to train military officials, the UAE was already bankrolling various mercenary groups engaged in various clandestine operations, and trained a controversial Somali military contingent which it recently disbanded and left the weapons cache looted.

Turkey, while in alliance with Qatar, is on an entirely different scale. In a controversial campaign to settle a domestic political matter, Turkey exploited its close relationship with the Somali government to eradicate any and all institutions and individuals affiliated with the Gulen movement. Despite this, Turkey still embodies the gold standard of bi-lateral nation-building and development. With its tangible achievements and non-interference policy on Somalia’s domestic politics, the Turkish model has exposed the international aid system as corrupt and politically toxic. Though initially Qatar had a controversial start that mimicked the UAE’s, it finally settled to emulate the Turkish model and fund building roads and other essential infrastructures.

Trust but Verify

Despite all these changes, Ethiopia still has “too many conflicting interests that may compromise vital US interests” in favour of China, with which Ethiopia is economically intertwined. Could Abiy Ahmed be the person to bypass China and Turkey, which also have billions of dollars invested in Ethiopia? Any indication that he is there to ‘undo what is working for what could work’ might turn the old establishment against him and set a domino effect of regression in the region. If that is not enough to cause concern, Somalia, Djibouti and to a certain degree Eritrea each has its conflict of interest.

To level the playing field and guard against parasitical geopolitics, Somalia should demand the total withdrawal of the Ethiopian and Kenyan troops that are part of AMISOM as well as those who are illegally based in various regions in the Somali territory. And that UNSOM, the camouflaged guardian of Soma Oil and Gas interests, to close shop.

Eritrea for its part should demand an alternative to IGAD – a freshly-negotiated regional institution that grants an equal voice to each member and headquartered outside Ethiopia.

The Horn of Africa is an emerging market with great economic potential. But to turn that potential into economic success and sustainable stability, the region’s political, business, intellectual and social leadership’s aspirations must be in harmony: no foreign power or coalition of interests could secure that.

Therefore, the people of the Horn should not remain hostage to their historical enmities or to the myopic visions and corrupt ambitions of their political leaders. It is time to think big, but not recklessly. Each country must first address its domestic challenges and reconcile with itself.

Each country must come into the so-called regional integration deal sovereign and sober.

• LSE Centre for Africa

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Palestinian youths look at a building and mosque that were damaged by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Israel’s military said it had launched air strikes targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip on July 14 as rockets and mortars were lobbed into southern Israel from the blockaded Palestinian enclave. / AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS

In recent days, various Israeli media outlets have reported that a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas is imminent. According to a foreign source, such a truce was discussed between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US National Security Advisor John Bolton. The question remains, what incidents have prompted the negotiation of this truce, what obstacles remain in the way, and what are the pros and cons of such a truce?

Recent months have witnessed intense violence between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza that included weekly riots, attacks on Israeli soldiers and attempts to infiltrate Israel. Incendiary kites launched from the coastal strip have set hundreds of fires in southern Israel, burning over 7,000 acres of land. Since the March of Return began, more than 610 rockets and mortar shells had been fired at Israel by August 9. During the same period of time, around 170 Palestinians have been killed and 18,000 Palestinians wounded.

According to Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid, “The Israeli side has a huge interest for a long term truce because that will give Israel more of an opportunity to focus on the northern border with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.” Dr. Reuven Ehrlich, the head of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, believes the truce will be based on the understandings that were reached following Operation Protective Edge: “This is the basis of everything. I think that first of all, all of the sides concerned must agree on a cease-fire. It seems like all of the relevant sides will agree on something minimalistic.”

Some Israelis support such a cease-fire. Former Israel Consul General Yitzchak Ben Gad declared: “I believe Hamas will not change its ideology. They do not believe Israel has a right to exist. Therefore, there is no chance for peace because people do not change their radical ideology overnight. The only way forward is to achieve a cease-fire, which is quiet for a while, one year, two years, whatever.”

However, not everyone in Israel is happy with the idea of Israel negotiating a truce with Hamas. As Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi notes, experience has shown that an arrangement with a terror organization that does not attempt to reach stability or security over the long-term “only prepares the terrorists for another round of terror for the residents of Israel.”

Prominent Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar added: “In my view, any agreement without returning the Israeli dead soldiers and the citizens that are in Gaza is a major failure of the Israeli negotiator. Secondly, I would like to know what will happen if and when Israel finds a new tunnel dug into Israel. Is Israel allowed to blow it up within this agreement or not? In another related question, if Israel finds out one day that Hamas has built a factory to produce missiles which can precisely hit all of the cities from Metula to Eilat, does Israel have permission to get rid of this factory or not? This is very important point because if Israel does not close this issue now, it might be a problem in the future.”

Kedar and Safadi are not the only ones opposed to this cease-fire. According to Eid, “It looks like one of the biggest obstacles to such a truce between Hamas and Israel is the PA. The PA in their recent central committee announced that any truce has to be made by the PLO, which is considered as the only representative of the Palestinian people. It looks like Abbas right now is very upset with the Egyptian government. How can the Egyptian government coordinate such a truce between Hamas and Israel by excluding the PLO, the PA and Abbas? It is not going to be easy, for Abbas also announced that if the truce takes place between Hamas and Israel, he will cut any support or funding for the Gazan strip. That would be hell for the Gazan people.”

While it remains to be seen whether Israel and Hamas in Gaza will successfully negotiate a long-term cease-fire and whether the parties to the conflict remain committed to it, one thing is certain: Civilians on both sides will continue to suffer so long as quiet and tranquility are not restored both to the Gaza Strip and the communities of southern Israel.

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Photo Credit: links.org.au

Since spring 2014, Ukraine suffers from a full-scale war in the Donets Basin (Donbas). For the solution of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation, Western and Ukrainian political analysts, opinion- and policy-makers, civic activists as well as diplomats need to jointly implement an agenda of re-imagination, prioritization, pacification and re-integration. The Donbas conflict should be understood anew, approached differently, engaged with directly, and solved sustainably. It should start with clearer communication of the stakes of the Ukraine Crisis for the EU. Resulting tighter economic and individual sanctions should be accompanied with positive offers to a post-imperial Russia. For a transition period, the Donbas should be put under the control of an international administration and UN peacekeeping forces. Finally, Ukraine and the West need to find a way to secure sufficient central control over a reintegrated Donbas while formally implementing the Minsk Agreements’ political parts.

Phase One: Re-Imagination  

A communication campaign should address a widespread misperception that today’s Donbas confrontation is comparable to older territorial disputes in such “failed states” as Georgia, Azerbaijan or Moldova. The ongoing war’s repercussions beyond Eastern Ukraine demand public clarification. The Donbas war needs to become perceived as a hot conflict putting under question Europe’s security system as long as one of the largest European states remains on the brink of collapse.

The prime reasons for this risk are neither the current domestic political tensions nor grave economic difficulties of Ukraine. During the break-up of the USSR in 1989-1991, “Ukraine without Kuchma” protests of 2000-2001, Orange Revolution in 2004, or Euromaidan uprising in 2013-2014, Ukraine was shattered by tremendous upheavals. Yet, none of these conflicts seriously endangered the Ukrainian republic’s integrity. Ukraine’s economic situation throughout the 1990s or during the Great Recession of 2008-2010 was as difficult as – or more so than – today. Yet, neither of these two deep economic Ukrainian dives threatened European security.

While being laudable by itself, the West’s large-scale financial help and developmental support for Ukraine is sometimes misconceived as a (if not the) major instrument to solve the Ukraine Crisis. Yet, even graver earlier political and economic domestic dislocations in Ukraine’s recent past did not threaten the stability of its state. Western help for Ukraine should continue but not any longer be misunderstood as a substitute for actually solving the Donbas conflict.

Moscow’s shrewd combination of crude military and seditious non-military methods (“hybrid war”) is meant to subvert Ukraine as a socio-political community. The Kremlin’s premier instrument for achieving this aim is to keep the Donbas as an open bleeding wound that will eventually cause Ukraine’s state to implode. A seemingly domestic Ukrainian collapse can then be used by the Kremlin to demonstrate to Russia’s population the impotence of European integration and foolishness of post-Soviet democratization.

While this is a rational strategy in terms of short-term Russian regime stability, it is hazardous enterprise. Western public opinion shapers need to communicate better why and how Ukraine’s possible future collapse entails transnational risks. For instance, possible millions of Ukrainian refugees would be flowing into the EU. In a worst-case scenario, a malfunctioning of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, less than 300 miles away from the current war zone, would have repercussions worse than those of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A public narrative emphasizing European states’ national interest in Ukrainian stability needs to replace currently widespread externalization of the Donbas war as a sad, but far away conflict with few direct implications for the EU.

Phase Two: Prioritization

A novel understanding of the all-European relevance of the Donbas war should lead the EU to put its solution higher on its foreign policy agenda, and closer in the immediate future. The current sanctions regime is not trivial, yet malapportioned. According to research results of Moscow’s Skolkovo School of Management, EU sanctions “are capable of jeopardizing Russia’s production of gas and, particularly, oil in the future.” The underlying assumption of Brussels’s approach is that strategic patriotism guides Moscow’s decision making. The West hopes that future income losses for the Russian state will lead the Kremlin to modify already today its policies towards Ukraine. Yet, the logic of Moscow’s approach to secure domestic regime stability may be different. A soon collapse of the Ukrainian state resulting from successful hybrid war – above all, in the Donbas – can be sufficient to compensate for negative political repercussions of declining future energy exports.

In other words, the West needs to more explicitly address the figurative race between domestic effects on Russia of, on the one side, Western sanctions, and, on the other side, Ukrainian destruction. If Ukraine’s negative example demonstrates in time to Russia’s population that democratization leads to suffering and chaos, the Putin System can absorb a later decline of Russian living standards that results from the EU’s current sanctions. While a poorer future Russian state may be bad, it may still be seen as better than a democratizing Russia that risks ending up in a Ukraine-like collapse. Putin’s regime will, according to this supposition, prevail in spite of notable future EU sanctions effects.

In order to counter-act this scenario, the West should develop a tougher combination of carrots and sticks. First, sanctions need to be modified so as to generate earlier effects. Among others, Russian access to Western financial markets should be further reduced, and the building of the Nord Stream II pipeline be frozen. Second, the Putin system’s integrity should be shattered via additional measures against government officials and so-called “oligarchs.” The freedom the regime’s major stake-holders (as well as their immediate family members) should be further restricted to generate more intra-systemic dissatisfaction.

Third, a forward-looking vision for improved post-conflict Russian-Western relations should be communicated throughout Russia. Western positive offers to a future less aggressive Moscow could include joint energy projects or a free-trade zone between the Eurasian and European unions. Western awards to Russia for even more comprehensive solutions to all disputed territorial conflicts from Transnistria over Crimea to South Ossetia could include an Association Agreement (including a DCFTA) with the EU, visa-free regime with the Schengen Zone, and Membership Action Plan with NATO. Think-tanks and NGOs should communicate such ideas within the Western public. After they become widely known, national governments and international organizations (EU, NATO) could be encouraged, by interested parliamentarians, intellectuals et al., to voice such proposals for a hypothetical Euro-Atlantic integration of Russia in meetings with Russian governmental and non-governmental actors. The offers should be made officially, explicitly and repeatedly to feed societal pressure for a change in Russia’s foreign political course.

Phase Three: Pacification

Once Moscow takes a more compromising position, practical solution of the Donbas conflict can start. Western experts, diplomats and politicians should thus explore the future financing, mandate and shape of an international peacebuilding operation across the entire Eastern Donbas. A temporary third-party intervention would provide a transitional stage between Moscow’s current crypto-occupation and the seized territories’ subsequent return under Kyiv control. A UN mission with up to 30,000 peacekeepers, as the core element of such an operation, could serve the Kremlin as a face-saving mechanism. Moscow would, in the UNSC, have to be approve employment of a multinational force in the Donets Basin, and could present this to the Russian public as Putin’s peace initiative.

In combination with OSCE observer and EU civil missions as well as in cooperation with the Ukrainian state, the UN troop’s primary task would be to provide for demilitarization, disarmament, demining, re-reset of local self-governance, media freedom, return of IDPs, creation of a new police force, observance of civil and political rights, as well as preparation of local elections. Armed UN detachments would have to come from non-NATO and non-CSTO countries to preempt accusations of instrumentalization. Andrej Novak (2014), Oleksiy Melnyk with Andreas Umland (2016), the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan and Andrey Kortunov (2017), or, more recently, Alexander Vershbow, Vitalii Kulyk with Maria Kucherenko and Liana Fix with Dominik Jankowski (2018) have, among others, discussed various additional challenges of such a scheme. International developmental organizations (World Bank, UNDP, EBRD, USAID, GIZ, DFID, SIDA etc.) should become active in the occupied territories as soon as an improved security situation permits.

Phase Four: Reintegration

The principal issue for the restoration of the currently occupied territories as parts of the Ukrainian state, after transitional international administration, are the political provisions of the Minsk Agreements.

They include demands for a constitutional reform, a special “law on interim local self-government,” the creation of “people’s police units” as well as other prescriptions intended by the Kremlin to infringe upon Ukraine’s political sovereignty. In February 2015, the signed text of the so-called Minsk II Agreement had been largely pre-formulated by the Kremlin. Nevertheless, most of Moscow’s formulations were accepted by Ukraine, Germany and France under the impression of a Russia-led and victim rich military offensive by the separatists conducted concurrently with the Minsk negotiations.

Ukraine’s major stakeholders (MPs, parties, opinion-leaders etc.) reject today the 2015 agreements’ political parts. Western and Ukrainian politicians, diplomats and experts thus need to discuss, already today, a future way out of this deadlock. A possible trick to do so would be a joint Ukrainian-Western re-interpretation of the Minsk Agreements’ emphasis on exceptional standing of the Donbas. A new reading of the Minsk II’s call for a “special status” of the Donbas could mean future stronger rather than weaker control over the currently occupied territories, by Kyiv.

To be sure, the Kremlin’s goal, with Minsk II, was to increase the Donbas’s official independence, and Russia’s unofficial influence there. Yet, Ukrainian and Western diplomats could agree upon turning this purpose of the Agreement text on its head while still formally fulfilling its prescriptions. A future Ukrainian law on the Donbas could indeed proclaim a “special status” for the currently occupied territories. Yet it could, for instance, increase the power of the Luhansk and Donetsk prefects. The new political offices are envisaged by the constitutional reform in connection with Ukraine’s ongoing decentralization which, in turn, is explicitly mentioned in the Minsk Agreements. While these prefects had been originally designed to fulfill supervisory functions in a decentralized Ukraine, their prerogatives could, for the Donbas, be extended to that of temporary presidential governors within the framework of a regional interim regime. The National Guard – not mentioned at all in the Minsk Agreements – could, in a future Donbas law, be granted additional rights and obligations on the currently occupied territories. Similar further provisions could be included in a future Donbas law in order to make a constitutional reform acceptable or even desirable to the Verkhovna Rada.

Concluding Remark

This four-stage plan will hardly be to the liking of the Kremlin. If implemented consistently, it could still force Moscow to go along with it. Tightening Western sanctions will eventually lead Putin’s entourage to assent to an international administration of the Donbas, as the least embarrassing way out. Once UN troops have arrived, Kyiv could start gradually implementing a reintegration plan that does not violate the Minsk Agreements’ text, yet still re-establishes proper Ukrainian control over the Donets Basin. Only this end result will constitute a sustainable solution to the conflict.

The post Re-Imagining and Solving the Donbas Conflict: A Four-Stage Plan for Western and Ukrainian Actors appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On the global scale of human suffering, Yemen outweighs all other countries. In its fourth year, the Yemen war – fueled by regional and other hegemonic powers – is nowhere near its end. Neither the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which has been accused of war crimes, nor the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, accused of recruiting child soldiers, are close to winning this conflict.

Yemen is a humanitarian catastrophe in progress. And on the political front, the way things are evolving, the Somali model might be a fait accompli. It is hard to imagine a different fate for Yemen than that of Somalia – numerous balkanized political entities cursed with perpetual distrust and hostility.

Two-Sides of the Same

As someone whose ancestral background is deeply rooted in both Somalia and Yemen and with a keen interest in post-colonial political evolution in both societies, I can attest to the profound cultural similarities between these two countries and their peoples.

Both countries have never been left on their own in modern history. Both societies are dominated by a primitive tribal system that preserves history through oral traditions that commonly cling on to toxic narratives against other tribes. Both tend to zealously defend tribal honor or vanity even if that means sacrificing their countries’ interests. Both have religious extremist groups. Both are considered rich in natural resources though they remain two of the poorest nations in the world. In both countries, a culture of corruption is as rampant as their addiction to khat (qat), a plant with amphetamine-like stimulant potency. And the rule of law is by and large superseded by the tribal or clan social and political orders.

Furthermore, both are located in coveted strategic geographical areas. Both have separatist or secessionist movements whose claim to self-determination is based on the artificial demarcations of the British colonial power. Both nations have foreign elements that are hell-bent on advancing their own exclusive interests. And foreign interests in both countries are so camouflaged with domestic political affairs that it is almost impossible to identify which is which.

Despite these daunting similarities, I believe transformation is still possible, though it will require herculean sacrifices.

Geopolitics Rules

Geopolitical conflicts have certain distinctive characters that set them apart from conventional ones. Actors who are set to reap the strategic benefits are seldom visible in the fields. Covert actions frame or shape the overt ones. And those who ultimately show up as most equipped firefighters or the most enthusiastic life-savers are often the real arsonists.

These arsonists, who are routinely armored by credulous or greedy local citizens, are on a mission to establish favorable realities on the ground. They re-engineer the neighborhood and create an environment conducive to perpetual (but manageable) insecurity that makes the local populations in desperate dependency.

Criteria for Junglification

The Saudi-led coalition has taken a page out of the playbook used in the catastrophically failed Iraq war. The strategy was simple: invade under the altruistic pretext of coming to save Yemen. Inflict awe-striking destruction. Destroy historical sites, records, and rituals that could reinvigorate collective memory and collective identity – a sense of nationhood.

Pick a side on a sectarian divide knowing full well that in tribal societies there is nothing wholly monolithic. Support various zero-sum tactics in the hope that they will play right into the Saudi hegemonic interest in the region. Don’t worry about an exit strategy. Count on installed puppets and count on the support of the exploitable sectarian masses and their raging appetite for ethnic-cleansing.

Battle of Hodeidah

The battle to control Hodeidah is still underway, and the longer this continues, the worse the humanitarian crisis will get. After Houthis refused to adhere to the demands to disarm and hand over the Hodeidah port and evacuate the city, the Saudi-led coalition forces have launched a ferocious invasion that shook the foundation on the Houthi control of strategic geographical areas in Yemen.

Soon after, an Emirati navy vessel was destroyed, and missiles were fired at Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh for the first time. This forced a swift change in rhetoric and preconditions and lent the U.N. proposal a fresh appeal for both sides. 

The Hodeidah battle is broadly considered as the most significant since the fall of Sana in September 2014. For the Houthis, it is a “do or die” struggle. Though the coalition claims that the Houthis receive their weapons through Hodeidah, it has been the most important port where 70 percent of Yemen’s food and other essential supplies come through.

If this battle drags on for long, it will exacerbate an already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Yemen.

Likely Outcomes

At the deadly poker table, many continue to make their emotionless moves. There are those who are interested in sectarian supremacy, those interested in regional hegemony, those interested in lucrative mercenary projects, those interested in proxy political legitimacy, and those with the grand strategy to secure geopolitical dominance.

The likely outcome for Yemen is the Somali model – tribal fiefdoms exposed for perpetual exploitation. On July 17, a two-day pow-wow ended in Brussels. The so-called Somalia Partnership Forum brought together six Somali presidents to discuss the affairs of their single nation through a third party or representatives of 58 nations that are all presumably willing to pour more money into Somalia project than they are willing to fight poverty and homelessness in their respective countries.

So, is there an alternative?

The only means to change this imminent trajectory is to accomplish what Somalia has been stuttering and stumbling with – and at times faking it – for decades: a genuine reconciliation followed by a rigorous campaign to sacrifice claims of exclusive tribal rights for inclusive equal rights for all Yemeni citizens. This requires empowering the educated younger generation who by and large transcend the self-destructive clannish worldview of the traditionalist elders.

• first appeared on The Globe Post

The post Yemen’s Fateful Twinship With Somalia appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Animated image of the future Tempest fighter plane.

The United Kingdom recently announced that they were working on producing their own stealth fighter project. Named the Tempest, it would become the front line of the Royal Air Force and would commit billions into the UK’s aviation industry. While the F-35 project had multiple innovational links to the British Aerospace industry and would have produced a fair number of skilled jobs in the UK itself, the international fighter project for the F-35 may be on shaky ground. Competition that would remove signatory nations from the F-35 project would make the fighter more expensive to produce, despite there being production and employment guarantees for most contributory members to the project. While the Tempest was announced to be flying with the RAF by 2035, it still might be the case that F-35 “NATO” fighter will still become part of the British air arm alongside the Tempest.

The initial vision of the F-35 was seen as a stealth support and strike aircraft that would do the heavy lifting and be able to evade enemy radar and anti-air systems. It was envisioned that the more expensive and elite F-22 fighters would enter enemy airspace in order to destroy their air defenses and the F-35s would come in as a second strike support aircraft to eliminate further threats. Older 4th generation fighters would then follow through with prolonged strikes once the air defenses are non-operational. The Tempest may serve alongside the F-35s as the F-22s would if the UK keeps its links to the F-35 program, but the relationship and whether or not the UK will stay with the F-35s remains to be seen. Some countries like Canada who may exit the F-35 program have chosen to purchase 1990s era F-18A and F-18B types from Australia. Committing to old aircraft, especially those that a country already possesses and needs to be replaced can be dangerous to the aircrew. With material fatigue as well as no effective protection against modern anti-air system, committing to older types sends the message that there will be a lack of participation in future NATO missions, difficult at a time when spending on NATO commitments are due to rise in the next few years. The Tempest does the opposite, showing a commitment to lead missions that require increased radar protection in order to complete its missions.

New 6th generation fighters have one main goal in mind, and that is to defeat ever developing radar and missile systems that are likely to produce hard to defeat defense shields in the future. Modern systems like the S-400 and ever developing BUK-M3 will be widely distributed to any country that wishes to purchase them over the next few years. With more advanced systems already in production in Russia and China, it will be interesting to see how a fighter design set to make its expensive debut in 2035 stands up to modern missile systems by then. With Anti-air systems now being able to target missiles themselves, targeting a larger plane or drones may not be a definitive challenge by 2035, or even by 2020. Whether it be F-35s, Tempests or more F-22s, the focus on pilot safely and security should be paramount in the minds of policy makers and those choosing to place their pilots in active danger zones.

The post The Tempest that May Unravel the F-35 Cooperative appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a geopolitical gray zone emerged between Western organizations on the one side, and the Russia-dominated space on the other. This model was always fragile, did not help to solve the Transnistria problem in eastern Moldova or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in south-western Azerbaijan, and was shaken by the Russian-Georgian war of 2008. It finally broke down with Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Against the background of these shocks, a partial solution to the security challenges of the current gray zone for all of the countries of Eastern Europe — whether in- or outside NATO and the EU — could be to revive the old concept of the Intermarium (land between seas). By cooperating and allying with each other, the states between the Baltic and Black Seas could bolster their security and in particular improve the balance of power against Russia, without immediate further Eastern enlargement of NATO and the EU.

Why would that be necessary? NATO’s 2008 Bucharest declaration promised Ukraine and Georgia a future inclusion into the Alliance, yet did not provide them with a Membership Action Plan. In 2013 and 2014, the European Union signed a “new generation” of especially comprehensive association agreements with Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, yet without an accession perspective attached. The European Union’s Eastern Partnership — established with six post-Soviet East European and South Caucasian states in 2009 — touches a wide array of political, economic, and cultural themes, yet fails to provide military security. Only Azerbaijan, among the Eastern Partnership countries, partly resolved its security issue by concluding a separate mutual aid treaty with Turkey in 2010, obtaining the promise of military help from a NATO member and relatively powerful country.

Remaining outside comprehensive military-help schemes, it is no wonder that Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine (as well as Azerbaijan before it had concluded its treaty with Turkey) became partially failed states that do not fully control their territories. Russia and its allies took advantage of the lacking international embeddedness of these four countries. Moscow supports separatism directly in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the Donets Basin (and indirectly, in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh). Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula was simply annexed to the Russian Federation in March 2014.

Neither the EU nor NATO will any time soon be able to fill the conspicuous security vacuum they have left with their hesitant and inconsistent enlargement policies in post-Soviet Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus. Both organization have, in the past, amply demonstrated their inadequacy as strategically thinking and geopolitically resolute actors. Against this background, an increasing amount of post-Soviet politicians, diplomats, and intellectuals are starting to discuss alternative options to at least partially increase their countries’ security. The most prominent among these concepts is the Intermarium.

The Historical Roots of a Union of the Lands Between the Seas

The idea of an association or coalition that would encompass the lands of Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, from Baltic to the Yugoslav nations, appeared first in the 19th century. Such an alliance would have been directed against the threats of Tsarist Russia in the east, as well as of, initially, Prussia and, later, the German Reich in the west. After World War I, the idea gained momentum in Poland, which strived to survive and strengthen itself within the ongoing European turmoil. Its first inter-war leader Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935) re-introduced the 19th-century concept of a Slavic union called Międzymorze (Land between the Seas). The term became subsequently known under its Latinized form “Intermarium,” and referred to some sort of alliance of the Central-East and South-East European states located between the Baltic, Black, Adriatic, and/or Aegean seas.

Initially, Piłsudski sought to achieve such an East European union or even federation that would have included Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The 1920 Warsaw Treaty, a military-economic coalition with the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic, could have become a first step toward such a coalition. Yet, the alliance did not prevent Ukraine’s and Belarus’s capture by the victorious Bolsheviks during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. It became clear that those East European lands which had fallen under control of the Soviet Union, founded in 1922, were no longer available for an Intermarium. Subsequently, Piłsudski sought to forge a confederation between about a dozen European states, including the Scandinavian countries, Italy, and Greece, that would have strengthened its members against both Soviet and German threats. However, the broad geographical scale of this project and differences in the interests of the possible member states prevented its realization, and thus could not prevent the Nazi-Soviet assault of September 1939.

In and after the World War II, Eastern and Central Europe suffered the very fate that Piłsudski’s Intermarium had been supposed to prevent. The small nations between the great powers became mere objects of contemporary European history. The years under fascist, Soviet, pro-Soviet, or other communist rule (as in Yugoslavia) added shared experiences to the lands of the Intermarium that had been already before tied to each other by various historic, linguistic, religious, and personal links. Now, some or all of these countries also experienced a short occupation by the Third Reich and its allies, and long-lasting Moscow-backed and/or Soviet-like governments, economic collectivization, totalitarian rule, international isolation, political indoctrination, etc.

Yet another common experience for the countries of East-Central Europe in the 20th century was Western discriminatory discourse on them, which “sliced” the history of these nations away from Europe’s past and memory, an imagination of the European continent sharply criticized by, among others, Norman Davies and Tony Judt.[1] In this discourse, what was thought of as “real” Europe was its western or, at most, central part. For many Westerners, the nations controlled by the (pro-)Soviet regimes seemed to be too foreign and strange to be considered properly Western. This view remained prevalent throughout the 1990s, and, to some degree, even after most formerly communist states had become full members of NATO and the EU.

The Intermarium’s Relevance Today

The creation of a full-scale Central and Eastern European union or federation, as once envisaged by Piłsudski, is not any longer feasible or necessary today. That is because the majority of countries in this region have either already acceded to the EU, are expecting to do so soon, or have concluded far-reaching association agreements that will gradually make them parts of the Union’s economic and legal sphere. The Intermarium’s nations are thereby already closely connected and integrating with each other.

This is also why some initiatives within the EU — like the Visegrad group, Three Seas Initiative, and Via Carpatia transport corridor — are so far of only marginal relevance to Eastern Europe’s security. To be sure, these initiatives have also political dimensions and thus remind of the inter-war Intermarium idea. Yet they are mere additions to the regular integration process within the EU and its Eastern Partnership. They thus lack larger geopolitical clout and remain essentially intra-Union lobbying projects. The Adriatic Charter association, created by the United States, Albania, Croatia, and Republic of Macedonia in 2003, and joined by Montenegro as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2008, is a step towards solving the security dilemma in Europe’s post-Cold War south-east. Yet there is no such project for the “grey zone” states between the EU and Russia, which today are in a somewhat similar situation to interwar East-Central Europe.

In fact, immediately after the break-up of the Soviet bloc and Union, the Intermarium briefly reappeared in its original form in Poland, under the label “NATO-bis” which would have been a separate security organization of Europe’s post-communist countries. That project was driven by fears of Russian neo-imperialism, similar to those of Piłsudski 70 years before. The idea of such a regional security coalition was also championed by non-Polish political leaders in East-Central Europe ranging from Algirdas Brazauskas (1932-2010) in Lithuania to Zianon Pazniak (b. 1944) in Belarus, as well as regional political experts. Yet, most of the states of the presumed pos-Cold War Intermarium alliance soon received membership invitations from the EU and NATO. As a result, for Eastern Europe’s new EU and NATO candidate and later member states, the added value of creating a new regional security organization declined rapidly.

Still, in view of continuing threats and risks in Eastern Europe, the Intermarium concept has, since 1991, constantly remained in the air throughout the region. It has also become a vehicle for promoting the interests of Eastern EU members within the union. The term has thus experienced a double revival, as both an enhanced regional cooperation project and as a transregional security concept. When the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party won the 2015 elections, it announced a more active stance by Warsaw in Central-East European political affairs in both of these regards. Initially, PiS wanted not only closer cooperation within the Visegrad Group members, but also stronger attention toward Ukraine as well as the other Eastern Partnership countries.

Poland’s new focus on the V4, Intermarium, and, briefly, Ukraine had, however, an ambivalent intention. It went along with the new PiS government’s increasing criticism toward Germany and France, who, in the eyes of the Polish conservative party’s speakers, are allegedly using the EU to exploit weaker states and further the liberal anti-traditionalist agenda of their mainstream parties. Manipulating anti-Russian and anti-German sentiments among PiS supporters, the new Polish president Andzej Duda (b. 1972) has re-utilized the concept of Intermarium as an East European cooperation scheme not only directed against Russia, but also presenting it as an alternative to the dominant Western countries within the EU. Somewhat similar motives may have been behind the activities of the new Croatian president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic (b. 1968), to intensify regional political, economic, and security cooperation of the EU member states between the Baltic and the Adriatic Seas.

In contrast, for Ukrainians, the idea of Intermarium is primarily related to their national security concerns, as Ukraine struggles to survive in its ongoing hybrid war with Russia. In Kyiv, the Intermarium is seen as complementary, rather than antagonistic, to other integration schemes. Kyiv already has — within the logic of an Intermarium — developed special ties with other Central-East European states, albeit in the loose forms of the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (known under its acronym GUAM – Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) and the Community of Democratic Choice. Later on, Ukraine started certain military cooperation with Lithuania and Poland, and established a common military brigade with them. Lithuania and Poland have for many years been those countries that Ukrainians, according to polls, favor strongly. These and similar developments are an expression of the sense of common interests, perceptions, threats, and, partially, even identity among Moscow’s former colonies in East-Central Europe. Yet, none of the Intermarium-related projects have yet led to the creation of potent security alliance in Eastern Europe.

Worse, the Intermarium as a security concept is becoming increasingly corrupted by narrow interests of Warsaw’s new traditionalistic leadership. What Poland seemingly today wants is to create an alternative center of influence inside the EU to improve its bargaining position vis-à-vis Western states. Suspiciousness toward Germany’s ardent Europeanism, desire to regain some of their sovereignty and to protect “traditional values” are now leading to a counter-reaction by Central-East European nations. This has manifested itself in strong opposition against the EU’s refugee distribution quotas by the governments of the V4 countries and Slovenia. (In Kyiv, there has emerged an even more radically anti-Western interpretation of the Intermarium idea by a minor far right party National Corps that has recently grown out of the notorious Azov Regiment, a volunteer National Guard unit, founded in 2014 by a small group of Ukrainian racist ultra-nationalists.)

Yet another cooperation reminiscent of the Intermarium, the already mentioned Three Seas (Adriatic — Baltic — Black Sea) or Trimarium Initiative (TSI), has infrastructure development as its main focal point. It fosters energy cooperation to reduce East-Central Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. While not being a member of the TSI, non-EU countries such as Ukraine may, in the future, benefit from these plans too. US President Trump attended a TSI summit in July 2017.

So far, however, none of the various above projects revives the original Intermarium’s intentions to join forces of smaller Central-East European nations against a geopolitically and militarily more powerful enemy. Today, an Intermarium could stretch from Narva in the north to Batumi in the south. Significant parts of the populations and the majority of foreign affairs experts of the countries between the Baltic and Black seas view Putin’s Russia as their biggest threat. Inside NATO, the political mainstreams of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania regard Russia as a major security problem. The same can be said of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova outside NATO. These states could thus form the core of an East-Central European and South Caucasian defense coalition. Further European countries within, or close to, the “land between the seas” — from the Scandinavian to the Western Balkan nations — might be willing to support, join, or associate themselves with such an alliance.

With regard to its legal set-up, the mentioned 2010 Agreement on Strategic Partnership and Mutual Support between Turkey and Azerbaijan could function as a model treaty for a security arrangement between certain eastern NATO states on the one side, and some post-Soviet non-NATO countries on the other. As in Article 2 of the ratified Turkish-Azeri alliance, the exact modus of action, in case of an aggression, could be left open to each treaty party. The pact could simply state an obligation that, if confronted with an attack, the parties would “mutually assist each other”, while the exact contents of the support would be agreed upon once a military infringement has happened. It should thus not conflict with Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, but would still constitute a warning to the Kremlin that new Russian military adventures will be costlier than Moscow’s low-risk interventions in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. While such a coalition of non-nuclear-weapons states cannot be a comprehensive solution to the post-Soviet security dilemma, it would constitute an enormous improvement for Zwischeneuropa (in-between-Europe).

However, paralleling the course of events after 1918 in East-Central Europe, since 1991 the Intermarium idea so far remains within the realm of speculation. The resulting non-inclusion of the gray zone countries continues to leave the perceived costs of further Russian aggression in the region low. Even after 2014, coalition-building in Eastern Europe has not gotten off the ground. The three associated Eastern Partnership countries now receive more political, economic, and also military support from NATO and the EU. Yet, they are still left on their own, by the West and their Central-East European neighbors, in their military confrontations with the Kremlin. The obvious lesson from both the inter-war and early post-Soviet periods is that this is not a sustainable state of affairs for the international relations of Eastern Europe.

Risks and Gains of an Intermarium Today

Our first publication of this assessment in 2017[2] triggered a swift response from MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, Poland’s first Minister for European Integration.[3] He acknowledged that regional strategic cooperation is beneficial for all parties involved and for Europe as a whole – but he rejected the idea of a military alliance. Saryusz-Wolski argued that such an alliance would provoke Russia to test the Intermarium’s seriousness. If no “serious action” from members of both the Intermarium and NATO to a Russian challenged followed, the new alliance would be exposed “as a paper tiger.” Conversely, if the Intermarium’s NATO members were to engage actively in confronting Russia, this could undermine the protection provided by the Washington Treaty’s Article 5. Saryusz-Wolski concludes that a “military Intermarium” would erode “the deterrent effect of the [Atlantic] alliance.”

It is true that Russia likes to test reactions of its foes, as, for example, Moscow’s testing of Ukraine’s defenses in Mar’inka in summer 2015 showed. Yet, while Russia wants to portray itself as an unpredictable power capable of an all-out attack, in reality it has preferred hybrid methods and avoided open military confrontation. Even in the turmoil of early 2014, Russia used “little green men” without insignia to occupy Crimea – a scenario also considered by Estonia, but not tried by Moscow.

Russia still does not admit its military presence in Donbas and continues to claim that its soldiers spotted there are mere “volunteers.” The Kremlin behaves in this way as the West would likely view an open military attack as a “red line” making “business as usual” with Russia impossible. Against this background, the primary goal of an Intermarium would be, for the member countries, to deal jointly with hybrid threats. The limited nature of such threats would make it for NATO’s hypothetical Intermarium member states relatively easy to respond. Such engagement is unlikely to mean participation in a conventional war, and a subsequent erosion of the deterrent effect of NATO. In any way, a loosely formulated alliance treaty can leave it up to each party to decide which exact means – military or non-military – it chooses for fulfilling its alignment obligations. The formulation “military Intermarium” is Saryusz-Wolski’s, and not ours.

Saryusz-Wolski also claims that EU member states skeptical of the Eastern Neighborhood Policy will deny “association or membership benefits to Eastern European states, citing their Intermarium membership as sufficient enough.” We cannot follow such the reasoning behind such a speculation. Saryusz-Wolski’s estimates that “however suboptimal the current situation may be, it is still preferable to the institutionalization of parallel security structures.” He advises using “economic means to achieve the political goal of peace and stability.” Such conclusions let us suspect that he does not see or does not want to fully acknowledge the direct security challenges that will remain for the “gray zone” states in Eastern Europe and Southern Caucasus, as well as the indirect risks for their Western neighbors who made it into NATO and the EU.

Kostiantyn Fedorenko is a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, and frequent commentator on current Ukrainian affairs for various European media outlets.

Dr. Andreas Umland is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, and editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” published by ibidem Press at Stuttgart and distributed by Columbia University Press at New York.

NOTES

[1] E.g.: Tony Judt. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Books, 2006.

[2] Kostiantyn Fedorenko and Andreas Umland, “How to Solve Ukraine’s Security Dilemma? The Idea of an Intermarium Coalition in East-Central Europe,” War on the Rocks, August 30, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/how-to-solve-ukraines-security-dilemma-the-idea-of-an-intermarium-coalition-in-east-central-europe/.

[3] Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, “In Between Security Arrangements: The Trojan Horse of Military Intermarium,” War on the Rocks, October 13, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/10/in-between-security-arrangements-the-trojan-horse-of-military-intermarium/.

The post How to Solve Ukraine’s, Molodova’s and Georgia’s Security Dilemma? The Idea of a Post-Soviet Intermarium Coalition appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Trump team has been pushing false rhetoric regarding immigrants since the moment Trump announced his candidacy in 2015. Starting with his infamous “they’re rapists” comment at his candidacy announcement speech to his call for a “complete and total shutdown of all Muslims entering the United States,” Trump has made it abundantly clear that one of the core parts of his platform was going to be cracking down on illegal and legal immigration.

The latter issue he went after with the “travel” ban. The original ban most notably prohibited people from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia from entering the United States for 90 days while also placing new restrictions on the US’s ability to accept refugees. The ban’s stated purpose and title was “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” The lunacy of the Supreme Court decision to uphold a watered down version of the ban a year later (ignoring the ridiculous conflict of interest in the case as Neil Gorsuch, who voted for Trump, was appointed by the petitioner himself) and the flawed logic of the original ban is clear. Two studies done by the CATO Institute serve as great evidence to this end. First, they found that the vetting process of citizens from the Middle East trying to travel to the United States was already incredible thorough and “robust” including thorough background checks, several rounds of interviews, and fingerprinting. Second, they reported that “Foreigners from [the] seven nations [in the original ban] have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and the end of 2015.” In fact, between 1975-2015, terrorists originating from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon have accounted for far more deaths than any other country in the world. Terrorists from the fifth country on the list, Kuwait, have only accounted for six deaths in the time frame while the top four are all in the triple digits and above. None of those countries were on any iteration of Trump’s travel bans. Trump’s cries for national security fall well short.

As far as the Supreme Court goes, it’s more than obvious that the intention behind the travel ban was maligned. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in Trump v Hawaii, “Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus … The majority holds otherwise by ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.” Trump did exactly what he told the voters he would do: he stopped Muslims from entering the United States to the best of his abilities, through a thinly veiled attempt to cry national security.

Not only does the ban fail to actually protect the United States against potential terrorists, the ban actually has harmful, negative impacts. Specifically, it exacerbates the problem of radicalization, arms extremist groups with unlimited recruitment publicity, and jeopardizes our relationship with critical foreign governments. The same CATO report that explored the US’s “robust” vetting processes cited a Department of Homeland Security draft intelligence assessment which found that “most foreign-born, US-based violent extremists likely radicalized several years after their entry into the United States.” Critically, Trump’s ban makes the problem much worse. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former senior director for counterterrorism and deputy legal adviser at the National Security Council Joshua A. Geltzer, and former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew G. Olsen published an article for CNN explaining their scathing opposition to the ban in which they write: “The ban is so obviously, palpably, indeed explicitly anti-Muslim in nature that it has — understandably — offended Muslim-American communities around the world, including in the United States. Yet those are precisely the communities that can prove critical for identifying and responding to individuals becoming radicalized by groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.” Furthermore, Clapper et co explain that “effective counterterrorism relies heavily on robust intelligence-sharing relationships with foreign governments.” Restricting a country’s citizens from entering the United States is a “surefire way to offend that country’s government and impede intelligence-sharing, rather than enhancing the flow of information about terrorist threats as effective counterterrorism requires.” In fact, after Chad was included in an iteration of the travel ban, they pulled their troops out of Niger where they had been aiding in a counterterrorism fight against Boko Haram. Despite their removal from Trump’s next ban, “there’s been no indication of when, if ever, Chad’s troops will return to Niger. It’s usually not easy to soothe an offended partner.”

Conclusively, Trump’s travel ban does nothing to improve national security, while subjecting “countless families and individuals … pain and suffering” and arming extremists groups with recruitment materials. Nevermind the justification is essentially to punish citizens of foreign countries because the government believes a few individuals from their country pose a threat to national security. Trump’s Muslim ban is incredibly dangerous and blatantly unconstitutional.

The post Dismantling Trump’s Immigration Lies: The Travel Ban appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Members of the Me Too Movement who protest against harassment and sexual abuse are not “weak” and are not “looking for attention” but rather are heroines speaking out for justice.    

American actress Lindsey Lohan recently came under fire after she proclaimed that women who speak up about sexual harassment “look weak” and that some women go to the police “for the attention.”  Although she later on apologized for her remarks, it is still a major blow for all women worldwide to have a woman of her status come out and make such remarks.   The lack of compassion she demonstrated in her remarks highlight that she has lived a privileged life and is out of touch with many women across the world, who have fallen victim to harassment and sexual abuse in the hands of men and yet can only dream of having the privilege of reporting them to the police, who will then proceed to have an impartial investigation.

Take the story of Iranian journalist Neda Amin, who is living as a political refugee in Israel.  Twice, she was raped by the Iranian regime due to her activities against the ruling Islamist government.  According to her, she did not even have the privilege of reporting the rapes to the police for the Iranian regime was on the side of the rapists.  If she had proceeded to report the rapes, she could have found herself criminally prosecuted. In 2014, Iran hanged Reyhaneh Jabbari, a victim of an attempted rape who fought back against her rapist and killed him.   The Iranian regime accused her of committing an unwarranted murder.   According to NCRI Women’s Committee, when 41 women and girls were gang raped recently in Iranshahr in Balochistan Province by the Basij militia, it was the whistleblower and a Baloch man who staged a sit-in protesting against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that were prosecuted.   The gang rapists got off without punishment.

Iran is far from the only regime where the government is not on the side of the victims.  According to the UN, Syrian government forces and militias have raped and sexually abused women and girls in order to punish opposition communities in 20 governmental and intelligence branches, Reuters reported.  Of course, with Assad almost completely winning the Syrian Civil War, the victims of Assad are unlike to obtain justice in Syria.  Although a UN report recommended that Syria be tried for these grave war crimes at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, to date, this has not happened.  Syria is not a signatory of the Rome Statute and thus Assad can only be brought to The Hague if the UN Security Council mandates it.  Since Assad is allied with both China and Russia, this is unlikely to happen.  As a result, some victims of Assad’s regime are seeking justice in German courts but without the support of The Hague, comprehensive justice for the victims is unlikely.   Assad has literally gotten away with perhaps the worst democide of the 21st century so far.

Not having the freedom to publicly speak out against such sexual violence and to obtain justice for such horrific crimes can emotionally kill a woman or girl.  According to Shipan Kumer Basu, the President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, a Christian woman in Bangladesh who was the victim of sexual harassment recently committed suicide.  Basu claimed that a mob had entered into her home, demanding money.  According to the report, when the woman refused to give them the money, they tortured her and forced her to pose for a nude video.  They told her that they would give her three days to give them the money or else they would post the video online on social media.   Due to the despair that this incident caused her and the fact that she could not expect justice if she proceeded to prosecute the sexual harassers with the police, Basu stated that she committed suicide, emphasizing that this Christian woman was merely one of many such victims in Bangladesh.

Basu blames the ruling government in Bangladesh for such incidents, accusing them of systematic human rights violations against their own people: “They sell arms to the Rohingya rebels, steal votes, engage in bank robbery, coal theft, gold theft, diamond theft, wage a shameful attack on ordinary peaceful students and engage in rampant corruption across the country.  In addition, they rape minorities, gang rape minorities, force a father, son and uncle to gang rape a mother and daughter, torture, take possession of Hindu crematoriums, evict Hindus from their homes, rape female students while taking a video of it, give sponsorship to terror groups like ISIS, harass ordinary people and for such things, ordinary people cannot escape.”

Compared to female victims who live in countries like Iran, Syria and Bangladesh, every American female should consider herself privileged.   However, even in Western countries like the US and Israel, a woman who is a victim of harassment and sexual violence still is in a disadvantaged position.  I know this from personal experience.  When I was 7 years old, I was raped by my brother’s best friend, which robbed me of anything resembling a normal childhood.  When I finally grew up enough to report the rape to the police, the rapist managed to get off with community service and a fine payable to the US government.  I never saw any of the money.  If it was physical damage caused by a traffic accident, I would have received financial compensation but not for the emotional scars of getting raped at age 7.   What was their justification?  He was a minor when he committed the crime, as if it mattered to me as the victim what age the rapist was.   I was no exception.   According to a 2014 Psychology Today report, there is only a 16% chance that a rapist will ever spend a day in jail in America.

Of course, Israel is no better than the US.   In the 1990’s, 7 teenage boys gang raped a 14-year-old girl on Kibbutz Shomrat in Israel.   To make matters worse, instead of supporting the victim, the kibbutz did everything they could in order to cover up the rape.  According to an academic article that was published in the International Journal of Conflict and Violence, the Kibbutz media at the time blamed the victim for the incident instead of the rapist.  Furthermore, she was completely ostracized by her community for harming the name of the kibbutz.  Even worse, the legal system did not support her as the victim in the way that they should have.  The submission of the indictment was delayed by a number of years due to the mental health condition of the victim.   Originally, the 7 boys were acquitted in the District Court but the Israeli Supreme Court intervened in the case and sentenced them to two to three years in prison.  That’s it.  Two to three years for completely destroying the life of the victim.  To date, the victim is not able to function.  She never managed to get her life back together but the perpetrators only got two to three years behind bars.

Although these incidents happened many years ago, I fear that not much has changed since then.  As a Middle East based journalist, I routinely have been harassed online for over a year now.   Although the harassment is not sexual in nature, the manner in which people here in Israel try to shut me up whenever I wish to speak out about it is sort of similar to how the Kibbutz tried to shut up the poor 14-year-old gang rape victim on Kibbutz Shomrat, whom Israeli society attempted to silence since her story destroyed the visionary dream of the Kibbutz movement.  I am told to suffer silently and to give into the dictates of my male harasser and his friends merely due to his prominent position in society.  My life story during this past year apparently destroys the halo effect around this prominent individual.  Therefore, too many people are trying to silence me as the victim.   And this is precisely why the world needs a Me Too Movement in order to empower female victims to stand up for themselves and to demand justice now.  It is not easy for a victim to make such demands.  Any victim of sexual abuse or harassment will tell you that going public is one of the most difficult things to do in a society that always blames the victim.  Therefore, any woman who goes public exposing such abuse is a heroine, not someone who is weak or a drama queen.

In fact, standing up for justice for victims of harassment and sexual abuse is an important virtue.  As American poet Suzy Kassem proclaimed, “Stand up to hypocrisy. If you don’t, the hypocrites will teach. Stand up to ignorance, because if you don’t, the ignorant will run free to spread ignorance like a disease. Stand up for truth. If you don’t, then there is no truth to your existence. If you don’t stand up for all that is right, then understand that you are part of the reason why there is so much wrong in the world.”For this reason, American actress Lindsey Lohan personally insulted countless women across the world with her statement.

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According to research conducted by the Center for Near East Policy Research, Palestinian youngsters currently attending Hamas summer camps are learning methods of attacking and killing Jews. This is a blatant violation of children’s rights. Palestinian children living in Gaza should be given the opportunity to reach their full educational potential. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial and religious groups.”

Unfortunately, due to the activities of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority and their Iranian supporters who fund such terrorist activity, these basic human rights that should be granted to Palestinian children are denied to them. Under the auspices of Hamas, Palestinian children, instead of being educated to love and to reach their potential in life, are systematically being taught to kill and to fight rather than to seek self-improvement, to respect human rights and to support fundamental freedoms.

According to research conducted by Iranian investigative journalist Neda Amin on behalf of the Center for Near East Policy Research and Israel Resource News Agency, Iran is presently funding a new training camp for Palestinian youngsters in Gaza titled, “How do we kill an Israeli?” In this training camp, 180 young Palestinian children are taught to shoot with M-16 rifles at Israelis. Some of the children who are taught to use weapons are of elementary school age. And according to Amin, “Iran is fully aware of all of the indoctrinating activities that go on in the summer camps that they are funding. The Iranian regime supports it.” 

There is a strategic objective behind Iran funding Hamas summer camps. A couple of months ago, the Times of Israel reported that Hamas is seeking an alliance with Hezbollah and Iran in order to foil Trump’s peace plan. Now, Amin’s research implies that Hamas is increasingly warming up to the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to the report, a spokesman for the Resistance Committees of the People of Palestine (a coalition of armed Palestinian terror groups opposed to Fatah and the Palestinian Authority) acknowledged how Iran is funding summer camps for Palestinian children, stressing: “All the world knows that Iran has always been the protector and supporter of the Palestinian people and resistance.” A report by the Palestinian Information Center, an independent Palestinian organization, added that Abu Mujahid said on Facebook: “We should not ignore anyone’s good deeds and support and we are obliged to appreciate and thank the government of Iran for that.”

In an exclusive interview, Amin stressed that although America is viewed as the great Satan and Israel as the little Satan, the Iranian regime still considers Israel to be their most dangerous enemy since they never at any point have accepted any bribes from the Iranian regime, like the Europeans, Arab states and even the US under Obama did. For this reason, she claims that Iran believes that the only chance that they got to undermine Israel is to empower the Palestinians and this is what is motivating Iran to fund anti-Israel pro-terror summer camps in Gaza. This is also why Iran supplies the Palestinians with arms and weapons, intelligence and military training, an annual budget for their living expenses and pays the Palestinians to kill Israelis.

Naturally, there are many parallels between how Iran is funding Hamas’s abuse of Palestinian children in these summer camps and how Iran commits horrific human rights abuses against their own citizens. According to Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, “A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors.” Sadly, Amin indicated in an exclusive interview that she witnessed numerous injustices first hand that were committed by the Iranian regime. When she submitted her first book for publication at age 18, she faced the opposition of the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, an institution who decides for a writer, poet, a musician and whoever else wishes to create an art whether their work is in accordance with Islamic thought as understood in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Even though her work focused on social issues, animal rights and human rights, she noted that the Iranian regime decided to brutally repress her. They told Amin: “By questioning social issues, you are questioning the Islamic Republic and if you continue, this will be considered a political crime.”

The Iranian regime seeks to have both Palestinian children in Gaza and its own citizens serve as pawns in order to create the Shia Crescent from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. And just as Hamas murders Palestinians who are opposed to their tyrannical rule, the Iranian regime also does the same to its citizens. According to Amin, “My guilt was increasing by the day after every book I wrote. I was arrested, had to pay fines, was raped and beaten in prison and after I was sentenced to 2 to 3 years in prison, I had to flee the country. I sought refuge in Turkey but the Turkish government did the same thing that the Iranian government did plus a new charge of supporting Israel and writing for an Israeli news agency. After several interrogations and being threatened by Turkish intelligence agencies, I had to flee Turkey. They wanted to deport me to Iran, where they were already calling me a filthy Zionist Jew.” Fortunately for Amin, Israel accepted Amin as a refugee and her life was saved. Unfortunately, countless Palestinian children to date are still being utilized as Hamas’s cannon fodder under the patronage of Iran and most of them have not been fortunate enough to escape that fate

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When President Donald Trump announced on 8th May that the United States would not be a party to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran deal, anymore, it was easily predictable that new tensions between Tehran and Washington will emerge soon. It didn’t take long for the European Union to voice its regret over President Trump’s decision and say in an unequivocal manner that Trump’s unilateralism won’t mark the premature death of the Iran deal, signed and sealed only three years ago.  

Britain, France and Germany issued a statement in which they reiterated their continued commitment to the JCPOA as long as Iran abides by its nuclear commitments. They said Europe will honor the terms of the Iran deal and encourages trade and business with Iran. It was then when the advent of a gap in the US-EU relations was noticeable.  

In phone conversations with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the leaders of the three countries gave assurances that Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal would not be translated into the demise of the agreement, secured in July 2015.  

However, it isn’t difficult to conclude that the fulfillment of one of President Trump’s main campaign promises is a lethal blow to the foundation of a deal, which according to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, was so meticulously negotiated that there were lengthy discussions and debates between the interlocutors over each of its words. The document runs to 109 pages, including five annexes and is an intricate and detailed roadmap for collaboration between Iran, the United States, the European Union, China, Russia and finally the United Nations Security Council on the prospects of Iran’s nuclear program. The Iran nuclear deal is endorsed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, specifying the restrictions Iran voluntarily imposes on its nuclear program in return for the removal of all nuclear-related sanctions it was subjected to by the six countries involved in the negotiations and the Security Council itself. 

The departure of one of the main signatories of the agreement, followed by the enforcement of new sanctions against Iran, however, means a lot of things, including disappointment for those who believed Barack Obama’s commitment to diplomacy and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s overpowering of hardliners at home, translated into the signing of the nuclear deal, were the first steps in a long walk to a lasting Iran-US reconciliation which even Donald Trump couldn’t thwart.  

Even if the European countries, China, Russia and the traditional clients of Iran’s oil in Asia such as India, Japan and South Korea continue doing business with Iran under the shadow of harrowing US sanctions and even if the nuclear deal is salvaged through day and night efforts and diplomacy by the remaining parties, it’s undeniable that the psychological effect of the new sanctions imposed 6th August cannot and will not be alleviated and the international community’s relations with Iran will always be marred with fear of US penalties over business with a country which the Trump administration is apparently fully committed to bring to its knees. Unless anything changes in the White House or unless Iran is back to talks with the United States, Iranians shouldn’t await any good news as their country becomes a pariah state shunned by partners and rivals and isolated on the international scene.  

For a number of reasons, Trump’s decision in pulling out from the nuclear deal with Iran and imposing new sanctions will lead to serious complexities in the future of Iran-US relations and make any rapprochement and reconciliation implausible or at least hard to achieve. Iran has said no to new negotiations with the United States even as its economy is collapsing with the first bites of the sanctions.  

The demands put forward to Iran by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the US government’s preconditions for the improvement of relations with Iran, sound impossible to be granted by the standards of the Iranian government. The granting of these requests mean forgoing the quintessential and prototypical footing of the 1979 revolution: exporting the revolution. Maybe, situation in the future will be such that Iran forgets about its ideological ambition of exporting its revolution in the Middle East and to its neighbors, but for the moment, Trump’s antagonistic attitude hasn’t convinced the authorities in Tehran to come back to the negotiation table and it goes without saying that the geopolitical dynamics of the Iranian society are fundamentally different from North Korea, so it’s not possible to expect Iran to give in to pressure easily even when it’s conspicuously suffering. 

The new round of US sanctions which target the Iranian people and statesmen alike will be complemented by additional measures shortly when the second phase of sanctions will be triggered on November 5. The first round of sanctions renders three major contracts between Iran and aircraft manufacturers Airbus, Boeing and ATR for the delivery of 230 commercial airplanes to Iran null and void and even cancels deals for $852 million worth of pistachio export and $424 million in carpets export. 

Even if the sanctions imposed by President Trump, who warned the world countries boldly to stop doing business with Iran or they will have their US trade ties compromised, aren’t examples of human rights violation – they directly affect the livelihoods of millions of Iranians including patients in need of imported medicine, they have a clear message. The message imparted by the new US sanctions is that forty years after the Iranian revolution and the cutting off of diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States, the two countries aren’t on a promising path to rapprochement and détente. They continue making the proponents of diplomacy and peace even more disappointed, rendering the mending of their flawed relations more difficult for the future Iranian and American administrations.

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The Iranian regime poses a strategic threat to the entire world and thus, it is critical for the US to act against this threat.

Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov once proclaimed, “A country that does not respect the rights of its people won’t respect the rights of its neighbors.”  If one carefully examines Iran’s activities across the globe, one cannot help but conclude that the Trump administration has made an excellent decision when they decided to reimpose sanctions upon the Iranian regime.  From Assad’s regime to the Iraqi government, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen to hostile Iranian activity in Africa, Asia and even the US, Iran is increasingly spreading its tentacles across the globe and it poses a grave threat to the entire world.

Indeed, the Iranian threat extends far beyond the nuclear issue.  According to Iranian political theorist Reza Parchizadeh, “The Iranian regime was shaped under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood,” which is recognized as a terror organization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and many other countries.   According to the Gatestone Institute, there has been cooperation between the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran despite the Shia-Sunni division.  For example, in December 2012, Essam Al Haddad, then Foreign Affairs Advisor to then Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, met with the head of Iran’s Al Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani, where they set up an alternative security and intelligence apparatus in order to serve Iran’s interests in Egypt.

Such strategic alliances between Iran and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are not benign for it helps to spread radicalism across the globe by having radicals in the Sunni and Shia camps unite, which can potentially lead to an increase in terror attacks.  It should be noted that groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda originally sprang out of the Muslim Brotherhood and with the Muslim Brotherhood cooperating with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood can pose a greater strategic threat to the entire world.  In fact, there is no such thing as benign Iranian activity in any country.  Iranian diplomatic activity that appears merely to enhance relations has been used as a cover in order to implement terror attacks against the Jewish community in Argentina and against Kurdish dissidents in Germany.

In addition, Shipan Kumer Basu, the President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, noted that Iran is also making inroads within the South Asian country and this poses a threat to the Hindu community: “An advisor named Ali Akbor Belayeti to the Iranian government visited Bangladesh three months ago and had an important meeting with the government.   He also met with Kazi Azizul Hague International Secretary General of Islami Kelafat Movement and A.F. Salafi leader Ahale Hadis of Bangladesh.   He also has a good relationship with the Iranian government.  Bangladesh established an Islamic university in 1995, which Iran funded.  There are many Islamic groups in Bangladesh that collaborate with groups like Hefajate Islam, Olama League, an associate of the Bangladeshi Awami League, the Islamic Movement of Bangladesh, etc.” According to Basu, S.A. Salafi told him that high level figures in Iran will soon be coming to Bangladesh, where they will discuss many issues including giving scholarship money to Bangladeshi students.   Basu fears that such Iranian activity in Bangladesh helps to reinforce radical Islamism.

As a matter of fact, Iran is openly funding universities across the world including in the United States.  The Alavi Foundation, which is a front for the Iranian regime, funds over thirty colleges and universities in North America according to their website.  Among the universities that are supported by the Alavi Foundation are Harvard University, McGill University, the University of California, the University of Maryland, Princeton University and Columbia University.   According to an anonymous Iranian American source, the atmosphere at universities that have received Iranian funding is increasingly hostile towards Jewish students and Iranian students opposed to the regime.

Many Iranians are upset over the fact that their funds are being allocated towards arming Assad, Abadi, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and other pro-terror causes around the world instead of them.  According to Iranian journalist Mohsen Behzad Karimi, “Iranian air force pilots make barely 300 dollars per month.  Iranian doctors make 800 dollars per month while Hamas terrorists make 1,800 dollars per month.   They are taking our money and giving it to terror groups.  Why are the people in Iranian Balochistan suffering from a lack of nutrition and desalinated water?   1,800 dollars goes per month to one terrorist.  This is very infuriating.  This money can go to the healthcare of ordinary Iranians.  This kind of policy impoverishes Iranians while promoting terror and instability in the region.”

To add insult to injury, Iranians themselves suffer from massive human rights violations when they dare to stand up to such injustices.   According to Iranian human rights activist Shabnam Assadollahi, another Iranian protester was recently murdered by the regime: “Reza Otadi was deliberately shot to death by the Iranian regime in Karaj City.  Otadi gave his life for the freedom and democracy of Iran.”  For these reasons, the world must support US President Donald Trump’s initiative to reimpose sanctions against Iran for a regime that does not respect its own people will never be good to us.

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Mapping the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one can easily get lost in the amount of information available. Hundreds of projects and nearly a trillion dollars’ worth of investments currently exist in over 60 countries. A serious analysis of each project must take into account a variety of factors, including funding sources, implementing partners, budget estimates, progress reports, as well as local needs and concerns.  

However, the BRI is much more than an investment plan aimed at improving connectivity among countries. The most important effect of the BRI regards how China’ is stepping up its effort to shape a narrative about itself – telling the China story. In this regard, the Chinese leadership is deeply aware of the importance of public diplomacy and institution building to improve its soft power. While the idea of a China story has been around since 2004, President Xi picked it up in 2013 and has been referring to it in various speeches ever since, urging Chinese leaders to play their role. From international summits to cultural associations, examples abound of different entities contributing to the development of a China story. Through the BRI, China has stepped up its reputation-building effort in an unprecedented way that will have long-lasting consequences on the world stage. 

In comparison with another widely common slogan, the Chinese Dream, there remains a subtle, but clear distinction. The Chinese Dream attempts to guarantee high living condition to every Chinese citizen, based on a flourishing and harmonious society. The China story instead refers to the ability to of designing China’s own narrative about its values and history to be projected outward to the rest of the world. Even though the Chinese Dream and the China story are related to a certain extent, the BRI remains an international initiative whose effects regard the narrative presented to other countries. 

China’s Public Diplomacy 

At the 19th Congress, President Xi Jinping expressed the intent to “improve capacity for engaging in international communication so as to tell China’s stories well, [and] present a true, multi-dimensional, and panoramic view of China.” The BRI is one the most ambitious expressions of this objective, undertaken to influence the perception of China on a global scale. President Xi in fact argued that the BRI and affiliated institutions contribute to “a further rise in China’s international influence, ability to inspire, and power to shape.” As defined decades ago by J. Nye, soft power enables one to attract and shape other actors’ preferences through culture, values or policies, as opposed to hard power, which entails coercive impositions based on economic or military might. 

Furthermore, by facilitating economic agreements and partnerships, China is advancing “cultural soft power and the international influence of Chinese culture.” Indeed, despite the difficulty of quantifying its influence, the BRI has already succeeded in generating interest among academic, business, and political circles.  

The response has not been entirely positive. In some countries, the BRI has received negative reactions from the public or government officials. Twenty-seven EU ambassadors recently drafted a report raising concerns about the unilateral nature of the initiative. Nevertheless, constructing projects is perhaps not as important in the short-term, as is conveying a clear narrative about China’s leading status on the world stage.  

Thanks to its historical reference to the Silk Road, the BRI has become a brand name, particularly in the eyes of foreign nations. While other countries had promoted similar strategies to foster development and connectivity, none had managed to build a narrative around it. Even if the TTIP or the TPP are sometimes considered the economic equivalents of the BRI, their names (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and Trans-Pacific Partnership) certainly did not help building an attracting narrative around them. Likewise, previous outward-looking policies devised by China itself to promote investments abroad like the “Go Out Policy” always lacked a soft-power component.  

BRI’s Soft Power in Reality 

The scope of the BRI surpasses political and economic frameworks. Cultural initiatives that fall under the Silk Road umbrella keep increasing. In 2015, the Silk Road Research Institute of Beijing Foreign Studies University was founded to highlight “thematic studies to tell China stories, spread China voices and take Chinese culture to the world.” That same year, the University Alliance of the Silk Road, which consists of approximately 100 universities from 22 countries, was established to foster “institutional exchanges, talent training, joint research, and cultural communication.”  

In 2016, the Cultural Silk Road was launched first in China and then replicated the following year in Lyon, France.  During the same year, the Silk Road Music Industry Alliance that consists of 18 different countries was created to “develop and expand the music, film/movie, entertainment, digital media and culture industries in China.” This later initiated the Silk Road Music Festivals, which already counts two editions in China and the first international edition in fall 2018.  

In Thailand, the BRI even led to a Thai-Chinese Health Promotion Association, meant to assist Chinese tourists abroad. According to Lu Jian, Chinese Ambassador to Thailand, Confucius Institutes in Thailand are growing faster than in any other Asian country. Confucius Institutes have in fact already been indicated as a fundamental means in support of the BRI, holding dedicated lectures and events on the Silk Road. At the Joint Conference of Asian Confucius Institutes along the BRI, it was pointed out that 51 countries participating in the BRI had established 135 Confucius Institutes. 

BRI’s Snowballing Effect  

Born as a massive investment plan to improve connectivity around over 60 countries in the world, the BRI is clearly not only about building infrastructure and developing cities. The BRI has been a powerful leverage to boost China’s soft power through public diplomacy and institution building. Citizens and leaders around the world are eager to participate in events, conferences and associations to foster exchanges between different communities. 

The aforementioned cases show how the BRI is promoting initiatives that have a magnifying effect for China’s reputation and set the stage to tell the China story. By enhancing the soft power of this network, China has an opportunity to counter foreign narratives that securitize the role of Confucius Institutes and Chinese activities abroad. No other country has ever embarked on such a broad based plan with the same potential to shape its narrative – despite the common comparison with the Marshall Plan, their size remains significantly different. This will certainly remain the first chapter of the China story.

Cristian Tracci is an MIA candidate at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he specializes in International Security Policy and Conflict Resolution. He was previously a graduate consultant for the Eurasia Group and the UN Mission in Kosovo. While pursuing his undergraduate degree in International Affairs and Philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome, Cristian also studied abroad in Japan and Korea.

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As consumer debt in the UK reaches pre-2008 financial crisis levels within a new low interest rate austerity dynamic, we examine whether there is reasonable cause for concern and how the Government and Bank of England mitigate the risk.

Consumer debt is an individual form of debt which is composed primarily of credit card, household, and car leasing expenditure. Mortgages and student loans are not included as they are generally seen as investments. Consumer debt is not productive, it is simply for consumption. In moderation, consumer debt is encouraged as it increases spending into the economy and incites growth. When debt levels climb at a constant pace, growth can continue to flourish. However, as soon as the market is spooked and business falters or unemployment rises, widespread debt can easily escalate a small treatable market blip.

Before the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England’s data on consumer debt in the UK was recorded at £2.08 trillion. As the crisis spread and markets were in turmoil, the first 4 months saw £200 billion of credit vanish. With the continuous real wage rate decline and rise in unemployment, total consumer debt dropped to £1.5 trillion in 2012.

In January 2018, the UK’s consumer debt has reached pre-crisis levels and, as of April 2018, stands at £2.1 trillion. Although the figure matches pre-crisis levels, the reasons for the build-up are largely different.

To remediate the effects of the crisis and recession, the Bank of England, among other stimulus packages, lowered interest rates to encourage spending and investment – which in turn would fuel growth. Individual borrowers saw this as a great opportunity to get their hands on ‘cheap’ money. Independently, the Bank of England’s interest rate policy follows sound economic theory, however, the Government took a contrasting approach which has led to this unique situation.

Austerity vs Stimulus Dynamic

The Bank of England’s technocratic approach was semi-countered by Government’s ideologically-driven austerity plan. On the individual level, a problematic scenario emerges: Cheap debt and tight Government fiscal policy. In the UK, figures from February 2018 show that 44.8% of the population are either financially struggling (low income, benefit dependent, social housed, median savings of £50) or squeezed (low income, private renters, one shock away from problems, median savings of £580). These people, whose financial situations are worsened by tight fiscal policy, are given a lifeline from the artificially low interest rates – leaving some core issues unresolved and a mountain of debt rising. The higher consumer debt piles up the more damaging potential it has. As the boom and bust cycle of economics will indefinitely continue, solving fundamental consumer debt behaviour can lessen the impact

Mitigation Efforts

The Bank of England’s interest rate is managed in a fashion that allows markets to predict rate changes to reduce unnecessary market fluctuations. A rise of bank interest rates will have the effect of slowing a debt build-up, as borrowing money will become more expensive. This idea has already been floated by Monetary Policy Committee member Gertjan Vlieghe specifically in response to ever-rising consumer debt. The UK Government’s austerity plan will eventually end with a fiscal loosening that can be an effective tool countering any economic blips.

On a societal level, the topic of indebtedness has increased its salience. A recent cross-party effort led by MP George Freeman and MP Liam Byrne demonstrates the presence of political will to tackle this epidemic. The wider social cost of consumer debt is estimated to be £8.3 billion. Badly managed debt, as a social problem, must be tackled on a societal level. The MP’s campaign could help encourage a more responsible approach to debt.

Is it really that bad?

Research by staff at the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority recently suggest that the rise in total consumer debt is actually attributed to an increase in safe borrowers taking on more debt. Those with above average incomes are likely to have good credit ratings and opportunities to leverage higher.

The Brexit referendum result and the depreciation of the sterling currency did not lead to disaster for the UK economy. The organised timeline given in the negotiation stages of the Brexit process allows time for the markets to create solutions to whichever direction the negotiations go. It is unlikely there will be an outcome drastic enough to jolt markets and plunge the UK into a recession. In the unlikely event that no deal is made with the EU and UK prospects dwindle, the Government and the Bank of England will certainly use their vast resources and experience to maintain a level of stability.

To effectively control the rise of consumer debt, a lead at the societal level to promote reasonable behaviour and control towards consumer debt should be encouraged. The Government, as always, should have contingency plans for shocks to the market but it will do well in taming the epidemic levels of debt not just for the next shock, but indefinitely,  through the boom and bust cycles we will continue to experience.

This article was first published on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Fabian Bak. 

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On June 24th, Saudi Arabia lifted the ban against women driving, which was in place for over 25 years. This reform came just days after the one-year anniversary of 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s (MbS) rise to power. Since his ascension, the young prince has initiated widespread social and economic reformsthroughout the kingdom, many of which have addressed women’s rights. Despite the lift of the driving ban being a step in the right direction for women’s advancement in Saudi Arabia, the main reasoning behind it is purely economic based on MbS’ 2030 vision. Based on this vision, MbS wants to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil, and he promises to achieve this by taking steps to increase women’s participation into the Saudi workforce by 22 to 30%.

However, Saudi women still face a significant number of discriminatory policies that prevent them from achieving their full potential. Additionally, in the lead up to the reforms, the Saudi government arrested many women activistswho disagreed with the direction of such limited gender developments within the country. The United States should “name and shame” Saudi Arabia, one of its allies, into releasing the women activists and rescinding the allegations against them. As Saudi Arabia is unlikely to completely shift overnight in its overall treatment of women, MbS should take short-term actions to create more inclusivity for women, such as fewer regulations on women starting their own businesses. If MbS wants to achieve his 2030 visionfor the country, specifically the goal of transforming the economy with the incorporation of more women, he must begin to champion these courageous women and use them as allies.

A multitude of structural discriminatory policies infringe upon the basic rights of Saudi women, who constitute 42% of the country’s population, preventing them from obtaining full equality alongside their male counterparts. In fact, according to a recent poll, Thomas Reuters ranked Saudi Arabia as the fifth most dangerous country for women in the world, mainly because of its patriarchal societal norms. Some of these restrictive, archaic laws include a male guardianship systemand the inability of women to pass down their nationality to their children. As best described in an Al Jazeera opinion article, “a woman in Saudi Arabia is legally treated as a minor from cradle to grave; she needs consent of a male guardian to be able to study, travel, work, marry or obtain some official documents.” Even the lifting of the driving ban is not a complete equal opportunity for all Saudi women. The law so far has only allowed women with foreign permitsto be able to convert their current licenses from other countries. As of June 24th, an Interior Ministry spokesman estimated that only 120,000women applied for Saudi licenses out of an estimated 9 million eligible drivers. This further proves that the driving reform is not a genuine effort to incorporate more women into the workforce. Overall, women in Saudi Arabia experience life as second-class citizens, and the end of the driving ban is only a small step forward in terms of removing the discriminatory policies women face.

In spite of MbS’ attempt to portray himself as a modern leader committed to the human rights of his people, he has quietly detained activists and restricted the freedoms of citizens in the wake of these seemingly innovative reforms. Just weeks ahead of the lifting of the ban, the Kingdom arrested 11 leading Saudi women activistson counts of “communicating and cooperatingwith individuals and organizations hostile” to Saudi Arabia. Throughout the country and on social media, pictures of the arrested leaders went viral with text pasted across their photos reading “traitors” and “agents of embassies.”Some have suspected that MbS ordered the arrests to appealto the country’s ultraconservative demographic and religious leaders who have opposed these recent reforms. It is a great paradox that when women are finally getting into the driver’s seat, others are sitting in jailafter fighting for this right.

The United States and the United Nations should continue to demandthe release of the activists, as many of these women still remain behind bars. If MbS truly wants to transform the Saudi economy, he must use the untapped resources Saudi women present and expand the driving ban repeal to include all women. This will allow more women to enter the workforce, though many other reforms must occur in order for women to reach real equality. Women are a vital ally for MbS to make strides in achieving his goal of diversifying the Saudi economy.

When asked about Saudi women’s reforms compared to the West, MbS stated, “I just want to remind the world that American women had to wait long to get their right to vote. So we need time.” Even though we must praise driving ban repeal and other gender reforms, we must be concerned about the other restrictions on women’s freedom in Saudi Arabia, as well as the intense crackdown on women activists. This is the moment for MbS to form alliances with women activists in Saudi Arabia and continue to enact reforms for women so that he can be on the pathway of achieving his long-term goal of Vision 2030 for his country. It is 2018, and the time is now for Saudi women to experience full equality.

Renee Coulouris is a Master’s degree candidate at Johns Hopkins University, where she is studying Global Security Studies. She has previously worked at Women in International Security and in the Africa II Division of the Department of Political Affairs at the United Nations. Additionally, she has conducted research in an array of countries relating to international security, foreign policy, and women’s roles in extremist organizations.

The post Don’t Be Fooled by the Recent Reforms for Women in Saudi Arabia appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Not since the 1950s has the need for a unified European security framework been greater. Deteriorating relations between the United States and European nations, evidenced most recently by disagreements during the G7 Summit, reflect a divergence in foreign-policy interests between traditional cross-Atlantic partners —and the end of an era in which Europe can blindly count on the U.S. for security. As the United States continues to engage in diplomatic maneuvers that alienate even its closest allies, Europe must redirect its security efforts toward a self-reliant strategy aimed at improving coordination in key areas of counterterrorism, cyber, and logistics, while consolidating global peace operations. Reliance on the U.S. is no longer a guaranteed option. In the face of adversity, this is an opportunity for Europe to stand up on its own and respond to future challenges, like elections meddling, border tensions and nearby conflicts – each with the potential to escalate.

Drifting Apart

The United States has been drifting away from Europe in various domains, including diplomatic, economic and military issues, many of which though have security implications. In 2009, the Obama administration implemented policies intended to shift foreign-policy focus—and American resources—to the Asia-Pacific, where China’s rising power requires increasingly more attention. But never before has the retreat from Europe been so blunt, with several policy makers and analysts discussing whether the alliance is inevitably compromised.

In June, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union (EU), Canada and Mexico over national security concerns—an “insulting” maneuver, in the words of Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and one that undermines the mutual trust on which security alliances such as NATO rest.

Nor can the U.S. be viewed as a credible partner in negotiations concerning other issues. In May, it unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, disputing International Atomic Energy Agency reports that confirmed Iran’s compliance with the agreement, and effectively leaving Europe in a difficult position to uphold the deal. Such maneuvers impair American reliability in future negotiations and underscore the amount of caution with which Europe must enter multilateral agreements involving the U.S.

Established security institutions, too, are under fire. After denouncing NATO as “obsolete,” President Trump criticized members who had not reached 2 percent of GDP in defense spending, despite the 2014 Wales Summit Declaration calling only for members to “aim to move towards the two percent guideline within a decade.” Add this to the litany of issues with consequences on international security on which the U.S. and the EU disagree—including funding to UN peace operations, Palestine’s membership in UNESCO, and the U.S. embassy’s move from Israel to Jerusalem — and it becomes increasingly clear that the EU and U.S. are going their separate ways. The U.S. is moving towards a more isolationist direction, disregarding multilateral processes, in contrast with the common EU approach.

Europe’s Time to Stand Up on Its Own

After the failure of several European leaders’ attempts to find common ground with Washington, including President Emmanuel Macron’s and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visits to the White House in April, the EU can no longer count on its historic security partner expecting disagreements to be worked out respectfully. Nor can it count on the situation to sort itself out anytime soon, simply waiting for the next administration to change policies. If transatlantic relations do worsen, the EU must be able to stand up and provide for its own security.

Deteriorating relations with the U.S. provides a great opportunity for Europe to accelerate the Permanent Structure Cooperation (PESCO), launched in late 2017. PESCO is moving in the right direction with many of its projects that address key EU strategic areas. Still, improvement is long overdue in sectors including cyber, coordination between forces, logistical capabilities, and research and development. By focusing on targeted missions, it is possible to achieve more without increasing spending.

For example, two PESCO projects that focus on cyber issues – the “Cyber Threats and Incident Response Information Sharing Platform” and the “Rapid Response Force” – are both meant to put in place a system to cope with cyber incidents at the European level. “Military Mobility,” commonly known as “Military Schengen,” is the most well-received PESCO project, allowing units and equipment to travel throughout Europe more easily. The “Network of Logistic Hubs” facilitates the logistical coordination between forces from different countries, while the European Defense Industrial Development Programme set the groundwork for the “Europe Defense Fund,” which is aimed at supporting the necessary technological and industrial base.

At the same time, it is essential for the European External Action Service to establish a real foreign policy that goes hand-in-hand with security policy. Harmonizing foreign and security efforts among all EU members is the ultimate goal, but failure to do so cannot prevent Europe from taking necessary steps towards building a better security framework. If the United Nations and the African Union have managed to deploy thousands of soldiers in extremely complex peacekeeping operations throughout the past several decades, there are no valid reasons whereby Europe cannot do the same, other than political will.

Wake-Up Call

Developing a unified security framework would serve Europe’s long-term strategic interests. Moreover, it would send a strong and clear message across the Atlantic. Trust and mutually beneficial actions are fundamental for any multilateral alliance. Disregarding them in an attempt to pursue unilateral agendas risks damaging a meaningful relationship built on common history and values. The EU response will signal that the importance of allies and partners cannot be disregarded without facing some consequences. The improvement of the European security framework does not imply an ideologically confrontational stance towards the U.S. Europe will continue to uphold its principles and be open to collaboration with any reliable partner, but it will not allow the United States to take advantage of it. It istime for Europe to stand up on its own.

Cristian Tracci is an MIA candidate at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he specializes in International Security Policy and Conflict Resolution. Cristian currently serves as a board member of SIPA’s Progressive Security Working Group. He was previously a graduate consultant for the Eurasia Group and the UN Mission in Kosovo.

The post Security Woes: Why Europe Must Develop Its Own Security Framework appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Conceptual overview

What is water scarcity? At a conceptual level, water scarcity can be defined as “the lack of access to adequate quantities of water for human and environmental uses.” Attempts to measure or quantify scarcity have taken on a variety of forms from cubic meters per person of renewable water, to water availability compared to water infrastructure. While multiple conceptualizations of water scarcity allow for flexibility in assessing vulnerability, the absence of a universal definition encourages wide variations in interpretation. In turn, variability in measurement makes comparisons across contexts more difficult, thus impeding transparent discussions about this issue.

Is water scarcity a new phenomenon? Examples of water scarcity can be found throughout the history of humanity. As the earth’s climate has evolved, so too has its ecological composition and resource availability. Historically, in response to water stress, civilizations occupied greater geographic space, or dispersed and mobilized as smaller groups. In fact, as early as 5,000 BCE, water management practices were being used and adapted to serve local needs. While some of these methods eventually proved unsustainable, many technologies have been adapted for use in today’s water management activities.

Why has water scarcity become a top issue on the global agenda? 2005-2015 marked the UN Water for Life Decade. This initiative sought to place water on the global agenda by highlighting the integral role water plays in health, agriculture, economics, energy, and development. Framing this in the context of growing populations and consumption in developing countries, projections of water scarcity estimated the impacts would expand “beyond the capacity of already inadequate water supply…infrastructure and services.” Presently, water scarcity is estimated to impact 2.1 billion people.

Furthering the scarcity narrative post-2015, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designated clean water and sanitation as one of 17 goals in need of global action. As with the Water for Life Decade, the SDGs point to excess water stress as the precursor for future water scarcity and, therefore, a major barrier to sustainable development. For development practitioners, governments, and private sector entities alike, orienting work around the SDGs has become commonplace.

Utility of water scarcity

What are the historical implications of framing contexts as scarce? Often, scarcity signals an assertion that there is not “enough”— there is not enough water to meet demand; there is not enough human capacity to mitigate or adapt to this challenge without an intervention; there are not enough resources to overcome a lack of water. Narratives of scarcity follow what geographer, Diana K. Davis, argues is an environmental imaginary, or “ideas that groups of humans develop about a given landscape…that commonly includes assessments about that environment as well as how it came to be in its current state.”

In the MENA region, colonization brought a different set of environmental imaginaries which were then rationalized in a completely different environmental context. French colonialism in North Africa for example, highlights how the country evolved from an explicit form of water management in colonies (hydroimperialism) to a softer approach (hydrodiplomacy) in the post-colonial age. Hydroimperialism refers to the “ways water, hydraulic knowledge, and water management practices both revealed and reproduced unequal power relations predicated upon an expansionist mentalité.” In the case of the French, hydraulic knowledge exchange moved back and forth between the colony and Europe, eventually formalizing into technical expertise. In the postcolonial era, imperialism manifested into hydrodiplomacy, or technical aid.

The example above is not unique to colonial interventions in the MENA. From the 19th to 20th centuries, European powers framed the region as a “degraded landscape facing imminent disaster.” This ‘strange and defective’ region needed help to ‘improve,’ ‘restore,’ ‘normalize,’ or ‘repair’ the environment.” The effects of such narratives can be seen across the region today. Notably, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) initiative to “green” the emirates, primarily through aforestation. Additionally, this plan seeks to modernize the state and attract western business and tourism. While some link this goal to the Islamic ideal of paradise as a green garden, it also suggests a stronghold of European imaginaries, which historically have advocated for “normalizing” the desert environment with more vegetation and water.

How does this narrative impact interventions, particularly in the MENA region? In many ways, the MENA region remains the poster-child for water scarcity, as much in the field of international development as in environmental imaginaries. The power of such imaginaries to influence and legitimize the narrative of desertification and water scarcity as a function of mismanagement has tremendous implications for aid interventions. As numerous analyses demonstrate, the “dryness” of the region alone threatens livelihoods and productivity. While this is not to say that Middle East’s water supply does not pose any challenges for further development, or has never been mismanaged, these sweeping statements do not always do the region justice in terms of water management.

With the narrative of scarcity in mind, it is only natural that development practitioners gravitate towards the Middle East as the region where interventions will have the most impact. Much like the aspirations of the UAE, development practitioners have bought in to the idea of ‘rolling back the desert.’ In doing so, their actions parallel the colonial experience. For example, indigenous populations were often well aware of shifts in equilibrium based on rainfall and water availability, and were thus much more adaptive to uncertainty. However, in an era of a global agenda set around modernizing and developing in a very specific, predominantly western-oriented way, these water management traditions become stifled and potentially lost.

Moving forward

Often, scarcity signals that there is not “enough”— not enough water to meet demand; not enough human capacity to mitigate or adapt; and not enough resources to overcome a lack of water. It is this narrative that has fostered the aspirations of the UAE, and development practitioners alike, towards ‘rolling back the desert.’ Further perpetuating this imaginary is the global normalization of water scarcity as an undeniable fact; obscuring the climatic, cultural, and environmental histories of regions defined by scarcity. Ironically, this diverges from the values of sustainable development, inhibiting innovation and the ability to leverage context-specific knowledge so deeply desired for a sustainable solution to flourish.

With the decline of the old colonial powers such as Great Britain and France after World War II, the Soviet Union stepped into the stage of the Middle East as the major superpower. The process was hastened through the advent of various forms of movements and revolutions for independence in the Middle East during the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviets, who previously had hardly any chance for colonizing the region, found their propitious moment to present themselves as champions of the cause of “anti-colonialism” and “anti-imperialism”, and by that to embark upon their own full-fledged project of expansionism in the Middle East.

In the meantime, the emergence of the Jewish State in the former British colony of Palestine precipitated the Russian intervention in the Middle East. Contrary to what might be popularly believed, during the initial phases of the life of modern Israel, the Soviet Union assumed a favorable stance towards it. Though the Communists were suspicious of the Zionist movement lest it provoke the Jewish Russians and Ukrainians, the Soviet Union voted in favor of the UN partition plan for Palestine in 1947. In addition, when the first all-out war broke out between Jews and Arabs in 1948, the Soviet Union stepped in again to supply the Jews with much-needed arms.

Whatever the reason for this initial assistance to Israel, the Soviet Union eventually found its main allies in the Middle East not in the Jews but in the Arabs who, as it happened, were partly provoked to a high-pitched revolutionary nationalist mood as a consequence of the rise of a highly nationalist-conscious Jewish State in their neighborhood. Indeed it can be said that Stalin’s gambit with Israel paid off with pulling the Arabs towards the Soviet pole in the long run.

In that climate, the Tsarist “civilizing mission” that, as a principal part of the Communist ideology in the Soviet Union, had now become couched in the pompous claim of “historical responsibility” of “liberating the oppressed nations”, would appeal to many Arabs and would most significantly turn into a constant of the Arab revolutions and the states that emerged from them. By then, the Ba’ath ideology, which mingled a highly distilled Arab Nationalism with a somewhat diluted Soviet Communism, became the most apparent manifestation of Russophilia in the Middle East.

The roots of the Ba’ath go back to the early 1940s when two Syrian Communist intellectuals, namely Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in their desire to make an “Arab Renaissance” after the dismantling of the ancient colonial empires, started to draw the contours of an eclectic Arab revival. Ba’ath itself means “renaissance” in Arabic. Ba’athism promoted as its most basic principles anti-imperialism, anti-Israelism, Pan-Arabism, Arab unity, Arab Nationalism, and Arab Socialism. In a traditional culture where old family and tribal ties played the most significant part in power politics, as a result of which the majority of the population would have to stay out of politics and only watch their betters act, the Ba’ath ideology promised a new hope for social justice.

Syria and Egypt were the first Arab states to embrace modified forms of Arab Socialism/Ba’thism, and later Iraq, Yemen and Libya would follow suit. Riding the popular waves of revolutions and coups against obsolete and corrupt monarchies, the socialist military rose to power in those countries. That is why the backbone of Arab Socialism was – and still is – militarism. While the ancien régime would prop itself up on the support of the land-owners and propertied middle class, Arab Socialism would find its most vocal proponents among the ranks of the poor and the working class as well as the intellectuals.

However, despite its profession to socialism, in reality Arab Socialism would mostly depend on populism, charismatic rule, and militarism. Already nurturing the seeds of despotism, from the early 1960s all kinds of Arab Socialism, including Ba’athism, drifted towards ruthless dictatorships. The bloody 1958 coup in Iraq that brought to power General Abd al-Karim Qasim and then the 1966 coup in Syria that laid the foundations of the future Assad autocracy manifested such developments in the Ba’ath ideology towards a more authoritarian form of government, which in distinction to Ba’athism proper is usually called “Neo-Ba’athism.”

The civil war in Yemen that was sparked as a result of a Communist takeover was another major trend towards the rise of the more authoritarian form of Arab Socialism. When the Communist army officers deposed Imam Muhammad al-Badr, the king of Yemen, and established a revolutionary government in the Republic of North Yemen, Badr sought the assistance of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the two foremost Arab monarchies at that time, to make war on the revolutionaries. Naturally, Egypt would militarily intervene on behalf of the revolutionary government while the Soviet Union would provide strategic and technical assistance. The proxy war between the old-guard Arab Monarchists and the vanguard Arab Socialists continued up to the late 1960s when the Arabs’ confrontation with Israel would put a necessary stop to the conflict among themselves.

Egypt’s dramatic change of policy towards Israel and the Soviet Union, which effectively terminated the project of Russian expansionism in the Middle East, had dire consequences for Ba’thism. Thenceforward, with the gradual decline of the Ba’ath ideology and the fall of most of the Ba’athist despots and dictators like Saddam Hussein, the Soviet cultural hegemony would also recede from the region. As a result, the last bulwark of that trend of Russophilia in today’s Middle East proves to be the Assad regime in Syria, where Russians have a stake: their last Middle Eastern naval facility in the Syrian port of Tarsus. It’s no wonder why President Putin of Russia is intent upon keeping the genocidal Assad in power at any cost.

In 2014, the Islamic State’s massacre of the Northern Iraqi Sinjar District changed thousands of Yazidi – as well as Christian, Shia, and other non-Sunni – lives.  Though many were able to flee quickly, those left behind would unknowingly be subject to the Islamic State’s pre-planned objectives of mass genocide and abduction. While this massacre – now years old – has captured global attention, the situation for the majority of the Yazidis has not improved.  With this article, I want to call attention to the new, ongoing struggle the Yazidi – particularly Yazidi women – are facing, and what I hope will be done for the sake of these survivors.

Background: The 2014 Massacre 

The Yazidi are a Kurdish-speaking religious sect – though distinctly different from Kurds – who are indigenous to Northern Mesopotamia, part of contemporary Northern Iraq. While their faith combines several elements from monotheistic religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, the Yazidis have faced discrimination from fundamentalists like the Islamic State (Daesh), whose view of Yazidis as devil-worshipping infidels made the religious sect a prime target for genocide.

Two months before the 2014 summer massacre, the third division of the Iraqi army, which included many Yazidis, based around Sinjar fell to Daesh, making the entire district vulnerable. That August, Daesh launched an attack on the Sinjar district. An estimated 50,000 to 250,000 people were able to flee, but those who could not get out in time faced inexplicable horrors. The Yazidi were separated by age and gender and, as a report explains,

Women and children under the age of seven were transferred to holding sites. The women were sold as sexual slaves to Daesh fighters in Iraq and Syria, often with their young children. Males above the age of 12 who would not renounce their faith were summarily executed… [while] men who were forcibly converted to Islam were sent to various territories in Iraq and Syria to perform manual labor. Boys between the ages of 7 and 12 were sent to Daesh indoctrination and training camps to become fighters themselves. Girls above the age of 9 were separated from their mother and sold as slaves. (Canadian Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship).

In a matter of days, an estimated 10,000 Yazidis were killed or kidnapped during the massacre. While the true number of casualties may never be known, an estimated 3,000 were executed – thrown into pits, beheaded, burned alive – while others died of dehydration or other injuries; additionally, 6,000-7,000 women and children were taken as sex slaves and rewards for militants. This mass abduction of Yazidi women and girls, as well as the torturing and sexual abuse, by Daesh militants went initially unnoticed amid the chaos and destruction of the August massacre.

Once taken, Yazidi captives – unmarried women and girls over the age of nine – were relocated to prearranged locations in Iraq and first given to militants who attacked Sinjar, then sold on makeshift slave markets where they were raped by, married off to, and/or passed around between militants. To avoid this fate, some girls killed themselves, disfigured or smeared themselves with ash or blood to seem unattractive to potential buyers, pretended to be mute or deaf, or cut younger girls’ hair to make them look like boys.

Since then, what’s been going on?

Since the 2014 massacre, some progress has been made against Daesh: Iraqi forces drove the Islamic State out of Mosul and other parts of Northern Iraq in 2016, Kurdish and Iraqi forces liberated millions throughout 2017, and internationally unified coalitions have committed to and have made progress taking away Daesh territory.

Despite these noteworthy and merited advances against Daesh-occupied territory, international interest in the Yazidi has faded, while initiatives for stability and healing leave much to be desired for these survivors. Though 3,000 women and children still remain in captivity and the pace of rescues remains slow and sporadic, those who have managed to escape still struggle to survive. Left without income, identity papers, and most of their families, Yazidi women have to fight for their futures while facing the burden of deep psychological and physical trauma.

Living conditions for surviving Yazidis who remain in Iraq and Syria only complicate their daily struggles further. Most have been living in displaced persons camps and temporary shelters in northern Iraq for the past four years, though the UN had made a statement that temporary living for the Yazidi would only last a year. The temporary shelters many Yazidis find themselves in are, frankly, deplorable. Their makeshift homes – tents or abandoned construction sites – have no electricity or running water and have proven unsafe, with reports of fire and flooding destroying many of the tents. Further, lack of state institutions – as well as the recent economic crisis – in Iraq has left many of the Yazidi population without means to bring in income, rebuild their homes, seek help for trauma, and live free from fear of future violence.

What needs to be done in the future?

Responses that promote and aid in the Yazidi community’s recovery are necessary. Not only should past and present perpetrators of violence against the Yazidi be brought to justice, but the physical and emotional needs of the surviving populace must also be addressed.

For starters, the overburdened Iraqi courts have tried thousands of suspected Daesh members and collaborators, delivering verdicts for around 2,800 suspected members of the Islamic State in 2017 alone. While many more still await prosecution, most trials only last a few minutes and leave little-to-no room for victim participation or opportunity for perpetrators to confess and repent. Further, Daesh collaborators and militants are mostly convicted for membership in a terrorist organization rather than for genocide. This delivers hardly any justice to the Yazidi or other victims and survivors of genocide, especially as the investigations into crimes committed against them are slow-moving. Though the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the Commission for Investigation and Gathering Evidence (CIGE) in Iraq signed an agreement in February of this year to collaborate on missing persons investigations, these investigations will likely take years. Part of effective recovery for the Yazidi, particularly female victims or sexual slavery and violence, will be seeing perpetrators brought to justice, which makes the investigations into Daesh’s crimes all the more pressing.

Additionally, the physical and emotional state of many Yazidis – perhaps the most crucial to their recovery – is problematic and obviously needs to be attended to. Camp conditions discussed above are clearly inadequate and unsafe for Yazidi refugees, most of whom are likely to have limited access to formal education, health services, and psychological support. The lack of services is likely due to insufficient funding and attention to refugee camps and temporary shelters, which only prolongs the situation for the Yazidi. Some programs, like the trauma healing therapy program conducted by the Emma Organization and the photojournalism workshop conducted by UNICIEF, have shown to provide opportunities for healing and progress for the Yazidi community, but much more needs to be done. Besides providing funding and accessible, vital resources, Yazidism must be recognized in different religious communities as legitimate, as it would help in destigmatizing Yazidis and taking away excuses to attack their community.

The Yazidi are a community of survivors and, having faced indescribable and harrowing atrocities, they continue to persevere in the fight for a better quality of life. With continuing help from exceptional organizations and people who are working to support and advocate for the Yazidi, increased international attention to the Yazidi’s needs would expedite and facilitate their recovery.