Foreign Policy Blogs

Four years after Russia annexed Crimea and Russia-backed separatists revolted against the Ukrainian government in 2014, new clashes in the prolonged conflict have caused a spike in casualties. While Ukraine continues to counter the military challenge in the east of its territory, Kyiv has simultaneously undertaken unprecedented and ever-new attempts at reform. As Ukraine nears its 2019 presidential election, hot topics include a possible future UN peacekeeping mission in the Donbas, massive reforms to the country’s public healthcare system, resetting Ukraine’s electoral system, and countering oligarchic power by ending parliamentarian immunity or creating a specialized anti-corruption court. Among the lesser discussed, yet equally important issues for the future of Ukraine, in terms of both governance and its struggle with Russia, is establishing and codifying the proper balance between central and sub-national governance. This means both the decentralization of certain powers from the national government and the amalgamation of small communities into more-easily administered, geographically larger units. Ukraine’s steps towards “right-sizing” the state and codifying the balance of local, regional, and national governance powers through constitutional reform would also contribute to resolving its most pressing security challenges.

Ukraine’s Success with Decentralization

Despite the war in the Donets Basin (Donbas) and the severe economic downturn that accompanied it, Ukraine’s central government has not recentralized the country’s public finances. Subnational governments continue to receive about 40 percent of public revenue. This underappreciated fact has been the case since the 1990s and makes Ukraine – at least on paper – one of the most decentralized countries in Europe. Countries at war and in economic distress typically centralize public finances. The opposite has happened in Ukraine: the share of total public revenue going to subnational governmental levels has increased from about 38 percent in 2014 to about 41 percent in 2017, even though total public revenues have declined because of the deep recession triggered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas. In short, the national government has remained impressively committed to decentralization, despite considerable pressure to recentralize public finances.

This is commendable because Ukraine’s success in comprehensive local governance reform is essential for creating accountable and transparent public administration. It also plays a key role in bolstering Ukrainian national security. Russia exploited Ukraine’s regional diversity and considerable subnational dissatisfaction with its new government in Kyiv in 2014 when provoking, supplying, supporting, and leading armed separatism on Crimea and in the Donbas. Russia’s success in these regions underscored the importance of better organized national-subnational relations in Ukraine going forward.

Accordingly, many Ukrainian politicians see decentralization as a bulwark against Russia’s hybrid warfare in Ukraine. As, for instance, the Speaker of the national parliament, Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council), Andriy Parubiy, argued during the 2nd All-Ukrainian Forum of United Territorial Communities in Kyiv in December 2017, “The path of decentralization was an asymmetrical response to the aggressor [i.e. Russia]. In fact, the process of capable communities formation was a kind of sewing of the Ukrainian space.” The country’s fate depends greatly on whether it can consolidate the national state while restructuring the composition, roles, responsibilities, and finances of regional and local governments.

Stitching Communities Together

Ukraine’s key governance-balancing reforms at the local level over the last three years has centered on uniting smaller local communities (singular: hromada, plural: hromady) into larger “united territorial communities,” or UTCs (Ukrainian: ob’’ednani terytorial’ni hromady). The logic behind Ukraine’s efforts in consolidating small hromady into larger self-governing entities is that many of the old communities – with an average population of about 1,500 – were (or still are) too small to organize, finance, and/or deliver public services to their residents efficiently.

Beginning in 2015, the process of government-encouraged amalgamation of small communities into larger organizational entities started. Kyiv has facilitated this voluntary process by giving UTCs a significant share of national tax revenue, as well as delegating new governance and administrative functions to them, including greater control of local land use planning and permitting, local fees, and administering local schools. The national government has also stimulated the UTCs by providing them with significant new investment grants and giving them access to the State Regional Development Fund (SRDF).

By May 10th, 2018, this policy had resulted in 3,399 smaller communities or 31.1% of all of the old basic units consolidating into 731 larger UTCs. Today, approximately 6.4 million people or approximately 18 percent of Ukraine’s population live in these new UTCs. For the first time, local communities have the legal authority and, increasingly, the human capital to design, build, run, and own larger infrastructural projects. The SRDF provides grants to help finance them.

UTCs have also started undertaking initiatives for cross-community cooperation also made possible through recent governance reforms. These cooperation agreements delegate particular tasks and respective resources from one community to another, combine resources to implement common projects, jointly finance common infrastructure, and create common executive bodies for realizing common tasks. By May 2018, 753 communities had concluded 180 cooperation agreements between each other in areas such as communal services, fire protection or infrastructure development, to name a few.

But as promising as the formation of UTCs has been, the voluntary nature of the unification process also has its problems. The slow pace of small community unification has delayed the process of redistributing administrative and executive control over basic public services to entities large enough to provide such services. As a result, in areas where small hromady have not yet amalgamated, they remain under the administrative and financial supervision of rayons (sub-regional administrative districts) and oblasts (regions), whose executive bodies are not democratically elected.

Moreover, the voluntary and unregulated process of amalgamation has frequently led to the creation of new communities with uncertain futures. In some cases, extremely rural hromady, worried about political domination if they merged with a nearby small local town, only agreed to combine with other rural units. In others, small towns with strong employment levels have discouraged rural hromady from merging with them, because those small towns do not want to divert their share of national taxes on their poorer neighbors. Reform experts in Kyiv and in the regions hotly debate the effects and effectiveness of amalgamation for the wide range of different communities.

As local hromady continue to form UTCs, these new jurisdictions still lack proper legal foundation. The national parliament has yet to pass additional legislation fully defining conditions for amalgamation. The central authorities have not yet clearly determined the exact role of the new communities in the country’s overall system of governance. Existing legislation concerning local government does not always refer to UTCs. Without a new comprehensive legal regime that extensively codifies how UTCs will eventually constitute the basic administrative division of the Ukrainian state, it is impossible to determine what function the old rayons (sub-regional governmental districts) will have once the majority of their functions are fully transferred to UTCs. This lack of clarity about the future structure of Ukraine’s territorial administration has only also slowed efforts to reform the education system and to restructure the country’s healthcare system.

Consequences for Public Services

Determining the exact responsibilities of democratically elected local governments at the municipal level (so-called “Cities of Regional Significance”) and community level (UTCs) in the fields of secondary education and healthcare represent two of the most important domains of Ukraine’s governance reforms. By May 2018, first tier, local governments were managing 37.3 percent (5,679) of all Ukrainian schools. The vast majority of the remaining, mostly rural schools are run by Kyiv-subordinate rayon administrations. As of March 2018, 519 schools have been upgraded to so-called “foundation” or “hub schools” (oporni shkoly). The new hub-schools in regional urban centers possess special equipment, prerogatives, expertise, and funds. The hub-schools are tasked with guiding and supervising 976 branch schools in nearby smaller communities.

Moving forward, the core challenge remains improving the quality of education – particularly in rural areas, where a shortage of human capital coincides with an over-abundance of tiny schools with very small classes, often with less than 10 pupils per classroom. Consolidating schools, like amalgamating rural localities, would pool resources, teaching talent, and students into more effective and efficient educational institutions. Control of around 63 percent of schools has yet to be transferred to UTCs from rayon-level (i.e. central governmental) administration. Less than half of newly amalgamated communities have taken full responsibility for their respective school systems. To date, the overall process and success of “right-sizing” educational services has been limited and fragmentary. Consolidating and widening these reforms’ impact requires inter alia the involvement of more amalgamated communities, a strengthening of the respective institutional capacity of the UTCs, as well as the equitable and adequate transfer of funds and resources for secondary education to the local level.

Ukraine’s healthcare system likewise stands to benefit from local administrative and governance reforms. Following the Verkhovna Rada’s (Supreme Council – Ukraine’s national parliament) October 20, 2017 approval of fundamental reforms to Ukraine’s healthcare system, the national government has begun taking steps to decentralize control over the provision of medical services to independent public and private healthcare facilities. These reforms, somewhat counterintuitively, simultaneously require the recentralization of monies currently given to large cities, oblasts, and rayons to run hospitals.

Moreover, the reforms will require consolidating existing hospital networks and reformulating local governments’ role within the healthcare system. The creation of new hospital districts are expected to result in a more rational division of primary and secondary healthcare services across facilities, leading to higher-quality healthcare. The new hospital districts are seen as the result and instrument of cooperation among different communities, as a framework for the long-term development of local hospitals, as well as capacity building in public health. The adopted reforms enable communities to choose different paths for ensuring provision of adequate healthcare services to citizens, ranging from the creation of their own communal hospitals to the conclusion of agreements with private healthcare providers to providing support for individual health practitioners. As it stands, the new plans for the healthcare sector mean that, while local governments may retain or acquire new hospitals and healthcare facilities, funding for the operational costs of those institutions will come directly from the national health care agency, not from local government budgets.

There are three additional challenges to establishing an accountable and transparent system of public service in Ukraine that respects the principles of participation and equality. First, is for Ukraine to determine whether oblasts and rayons are to be democratically-elected local governments or territorial arms of the national government. At the moment they are neither, because while they have democratically-elected councils, their executive authorities are still appointed by the higher levels of the national government.

Second, the current plans for decentralization controversially envision the creation of presidentially controlled regional prefects, whose primary function will be to ensure that local governments act in line with the constitution and national law. The constitutional amendment authorizing these prefects, however, has yet to pass. Oversight of the legality of local government decisions therefore remains in the hands of state-appointed executive authorities at the oblast level – a substandard system that duplicates regional and national functions at a single level of subnational government. Ukraine still needs an oversight mechanism for local government behavior that is functional, but does not concentrate unnecessary powers in its presidency.

The third, more systemic problem is that the success of administrative reform – especially the democratization of public services – greatly depends on the availability of capable human capital, which is in particularly short supply in rural areas. Practitioners of decentralization such as former Rava Ruska mayor, Iryna Vereshchuk, or coordinator of the Kherson Reform Support Office, Oksana Silukova, have recently reiterated that the lack of qualified staff members remains a – if not the – key challenge to the success of reforms. It will be impossible to realize the comprehensive societal transformations envisioned in these reforms without substantial external support for capacity building. Currently this support come in large part from several foreign development agencies.

Changes to Ukraine’s Fiscal Decentralization

As mentioned previously, Ukraine has opted not to recentralize public finances, despite the conflict in the Donbas. Such unusual behavior, during wartime, is an indicator of the depth of the social roots of, and political demand for, decentralization in Ukraine. The Ukrainian central government’s commitment to fiscal decentralization does not mean, however, that the various subnational layers of government have continued to receive their previous shares of the overall budgetary pie. Instead, oblasts (regions) and rayons (districts) have been receiving relatively less money, while big cities and UTCs now receive substantially more. The revenue shift from oblasts, rayons, and non-amalgamated hromady towards so-called “cities of regional significance” and UTCs has been the most important aspect of financial decentralization thus far. It signals Kyiv’s intention to create an administrative order in which cities and UTCs are the most important actors in the country’s system of sub-national government.  Nonetheless, Ukraine’s efforts at “municipalizing” its subnational system of local governance are still far from complete. Kyiv has yet to formally reapportion many of the administrative responsibilities of the country’s oblasts and rayon to “cities of regional significance” and UTCs. As a result, it remains unclear what exact roles oblasts and rayons will play in the new system, and, by extension, which functions and funds should be regularly assigned to “cities of regional significance” and UTCs.

Constitutional Reform and the Minsk Agreements

Despite several challenges, Ukraine continues moving forward relatively quickly with its governance reform efforts. Unlike other reform efforts since the Euromaidan Revolution, subnational governance restructuring has already produced real changes in how Ukraine is governed and has led to substantial changes in people’s daily lives – especially for Ukrainians living and working in the new UTCs. That said, Ukraine’s reforms still have fundamental problems. Most importantly, there is no clear vision of Ukraine’s overall system of public administration – including the exact division of powers across all levels and sectors of government – that is reflected in the text of Ukraine’s constitution and national legislation. Parliament has failed to adopt a variety of constitutional amendments related to governance “right-sizing” because the government has been unable to muster the super majority necessary for their passage. On some occasions, the government has lacked even the simple majority needed to pass ordinary laws related to local self-government.

The major reason that efforts to amend the constitution have failed is because the summer 2015 local governance-related reforms were, in accordance with the Minsk Agreements between Russia and Ukraine earlier that year, bundled together with a new constitutional clause about the special status of the eastern Donbas areas currently not under Kyiv’s control. The sentence in question contained little more than scant reference to certain peculiarities in governance in the temporarily occupied territories—the clause did not go so far as to establish a special status for those areas, as Russia demanded. Nevertheless, even this cautious formulation sparked violent protests in front of Ukraine’s parliament in August 2015, resulting in the deaths of four Ukrainian National Guardsmen. Ukraine must find a way to deal with both of these politically important, but controversial, issues.

The fact that Ukraine’s constitution does not yet reflect the reality of governance throughout the country is troubling. The amalgamation of communities, their cooperation agreements, as well as other decentralization-related novelties in Ukrainian political and social life, have brought real, positive changes to millions of Ukrainian’s lives. Yet, the nation’s fundamental legal document, so far, fails to recognize and regulate that progress. This omission introduces an unstable balance between the different layers of government and contributes to institutional instability. A simple future majority of 226 votes in the Verkhovna Rada could undo the considerable successes already achieved by these reforms to date. The Euromaidan Revolution promised Ukrainians a new era of responsible and responsive government, and the right-sizing is now starting to deliver on those promises. By failing, so far, to properly lock in the successful reforms on the legislative level, Ukraine risks failing the promises of Euromaidan.

This article was first published as a “Kennan Cable” by The Wilson Center in Washington, DC and written in collaboration between Maryna Rabinovych, Anthony Levitas, and Andreas Umland. 

Maryna Rabinovych is a PhD candidate at the National I.I. Mechnikov University of Odesa and the Global Community Manager of the Ukraine Democracy Initiative.

Anthony Levitas is Senior Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and an advisor to the SIDA-funded Support to Decentralization Project in Ukraine.

The official investigation of the rather obvious case of the MH17 disaster by the Joint Investigation Team has been excruciatingly slow. Already, on 17 July 2014, the day of the shooting, it was clear that this missile could have had only come from a regular Russian army unit. Who else would have had the opportunity to shoot from the separatist-controlled Donbas territory an airliner flying approximately 10 km high? Yet, it was the famous Bellingcat group, with its limited resources, rather than the Netherlands-led joint international governmental investigation team which provided the first in-depth and most critical research to fully proof Moscow’s responsibility for the shooting of the airliner.

Instead of quickly pushing ahead with identifying and prosecuting the perpetrators, the Dutch nation has since conducted a referendum on Ukraine’s association with the EU. This vote against the Ukrainian strive towards Europe was de facto an act of public support by the Netherlands for Putin’s mingling in East-Central Europe – a loud Dutch “Thank you!” to Moscow for murdering dozens of Dutch citizens. The Dutch referendum on the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU was widely celebrated in state-controlled Russian mass media as a victory for Moscow’s policies towards Europe. Now it seems that the legal procedures to finally prosecute the MH17 perpetrators are on track.

However, there is still a big gap in Western reporting and researching of the MH17 incident, in that the motives for the Kremlin’s strange behavior are not discussed deeply enough. Why exactly did Moscow send a missile as sophisticated and high-flying as the Buk to Ukraine when such a weapon was not necessary to shoot down lower flying Ukrainian military planes? What is so far missing in Western debates of the incident is proper consideration of the predominant interpretation proposed by various more or less competent Russian and Ukrainian researchers of the incident.

Many East European investigators of the circumstances of the shooting – among them the Russian military expert Mark Solonin, Russian political scientist Andrei Piontkovsky, or former head of the Ukrainian Security Service Valenty Nalyvaichenko – believe that the only full explanation for the arrival of the Russian Buk in the Donbas in July 2014 was that Moscow indeed wanted to shoot down a high-flying passenger plane. Yet, the Kremlin wanted to bring down not a Malaysian airliner, but a Russian one. The responsibility for the shooting of a Russian passenger plane over Eastern Ukraine would have been ascribed to the Ukrainian armed forces, with reference to Ukraine’s accidental shooting of a Russian passenger plane, Siberian Airlines 1812, in October 2001. The horrible incident and blaming of Kyiv in July 2014 would have provided Moscow with a casus belli to implement its “Novorossiia” (New Russia) project – i.e. the annexation of Russophone Eastern and Southern mainland Ukraine via an invasion of regular Russian military forces.

This operation would have followed the pattern of the 1999 bombings of Russian residential buildings which probably was a Russian secret service operation. The terrorist acts of September 1999 provided the Kremlin with a casus belli for starting the Second Chechen War. They also offered then Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin with an opportunity to gain public profile as defender of the Russian fatherland as well as gatherer of Russian lands, ahead of the 2000 Russian presidential elections. There are now already two in-depth Western investigations of the 1999 Moscow bombings by John B. Dunlop (The Moscow Bombings of September 1999. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2012) and David Satter (The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). Yet, there is no comparable Western investigation of the July 2014 MH17 incident so far – although most of the victims were EU citizens.

The post What Is the Real Story Behind the MH17 Disaster? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Anti-immigration activists protested in Seoul on June 30th against a group of asylum-seekers from Yemen. (Photo Credit: Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

A sense of xenophobia is spreading across South Korea: a massive number of the G20 country’s inhabitants have begun to increasingly manifest their Choson-dynasty, tribal-mindset hostility against the 561 Yemeni refugees waiting to get their refugee status approved on the visa-free Jeju Island. Since an online petition supporting deportation of the refugees was filed on the Blue House webpage on June 13th, the number of signatures exceeded 200,000 in just two days and reached approximately 700,000 in a month. The deep, xenophobic sentiment behind this number was further unmasked when a flock of right-wing extremists, representing the hundreds of thousands of Koreans with anti-refugee beliefs, began to cathartically scapegoat the few vulnerable refugees who have fled from the genocide in Yemen, itself reminiscent of the Korean war. “Fake refugees; go home!”, “Citizens come first, we want safety”, the hate-mongers chanted aloud during street rallies held on June 30th and July 13th, urging the government to repeal the existing Refugee Act and the visa-free access regulation. In response to sentiments that are now increasingly transmuting into Islamophobia, the liberal Moon Administration announced their decision to tighten the existing Refugee Act. Such a move, however, stands in hypocritical contrast to the ethos of the Administration’s ‘People come First’ ideals, which the Blue House has tried so hard to engrave in its constitution revision proposal by replacing the word “citizens” with “people” in the preamble. If this hypocrisy causes President Moon Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer, to fail to fulfill South Korea’s international commitment to protect refugees, the administration will not only sustain criticism from the international society but also taint its liberal reputation.

The Pride and Prejudice of the South Korean People’s Ecstatic Populism

Considering the fact that South Korea has never before dealt with a large influx of refugees, it is still not easy to ascertain whether this recent xenophobic movement is a mere storm in a teacup or whether it will convoke the long-departed ghost of nation-dooming, Choson-era protectionism. However, a recent poll conducted by Realmeter implies a gloomy future regarding the growing xenophobia in the country. More than half (53.4%) of the respondents expressed hostility towards the refugees, while only 37.4% demonstrated a willingness to accept them. Across the country, this tendency towards a ‘tyranny of the majority’ is evident, particularly in the Seoul Metropolitan area and the Kyungki and Kyungsang provinces. South Korean women appear to be more narrow-minded and illiberal than their male counterparts, as 60% of female respondents were opposed to the refugees compared to the 27% who were supportive; by contrast, 48% of men were opposed to the refugees while 46.6% of men were supportive. Surprisingly, the poll suggests that women in their 20s show the most opposition to refugees. This particular observation is noteworthy, since some loathsome activities conducted by an extremist, misandrist feminist group have been increasingly reported by Korean news outlets in recent weeks.

The transmutation of the tyranny of the majority into bizarre occultism in South Korea calls the nature of the country’s peculiarly maternalistic leadership into question. Nowadays, the leadership takes so much pride in the moral absoluteness of the popular will that wiped away the legacies of the Park family’s tribal authoritarian values that it has ironically come to resemble the maternalistic leadership style of impeached president Park-Geun-Hye herself, which was characterized by its insular and unilateral communication tactics. As South Korea’s maternalistic leadership continues to build a thick wall against the refugees and other vulnerable minorities so as to protect their tribal oikos (a Greek word for ‘household’ that Arendt used to describe the public sphere), it seems almost impossible to find a liberal way to emancipate the refugees that accords with the liberal ideals that once emancipated the South Korean people from authoritarian rule.

The rise of ecstatic populism in South Korea has gradually come to foster not only xenophobia, but also a fanatical antipathy against internationalism in one of the biggest exporter countries in the world. I have personally experienced (reflexivity) such antipathy at a local Korean ethnic church in Ottawa, Canada, from an anti-Park-administration pastor (Park, Man Young) fueled by rabid anti-internationalism. I had my first lunch with the pastor about a month after I began attending the church. At first, we chatted amiably about my experience living in New York, as well as my previous internship experience with the UN. Unexpectedly, during that week’s Sunday sermon, the pastor abruptly brandished a picture of what he described as a ‘heretic cult group’s activity,’ complete with an irrelevant United Nations logo attached, and told the audience: “I’ve recently heard the news that a member of this heretic group has recently arrived from New York to break the church apart.” After the sermon, I privately urged the pastor to publicly apologize for this obvious slander, since he was clearly lying about the association between the UN and this heretic group, and suggested that South Korea should thank UN for its help during the Korean War. The pastor, however, refused, saying the sermon had been planned with the church committee, and went on to assure me that while the heretic cult group presents itself as a just organization, its intrinsic intentions were undeniably evil. Near-schizophrenic antipathy and anti-internationalist extremism of this kind offers a regrettably representative example that testifies to the ugly ‘truth’ of how some South Korean civil leaders use ecstatic populism to mislead their local people into a distorted understanding of internationalism. This type of antipathy and extremism, disguised in the form of the so-called ‘community/national culture’, is a social pathogen that will ultimately infect all of South Korean society with an irrationally rigid culture of corruption and a one-dimensional, hierarchical establishment.

Internationalism is Critical to South Korea’s Interests; No Global Citizenship, No Global Consumers

For both geopolitical and populist reasons, the recent rise of xenophobia in South Korea is reminiscent of the 19th century Korean traditionalists’ fanatical support for the Choson dynasty’s degenerative, Confucian closed-border doctrine. South Korea’s recent thaws with North Korea have reshuffled the ranking of the country’s national priorities: strategies for ‘prosperity through peace’ and international trade now dominate over those for North Korea’s denuclearization. Still, the pursuit of these dovish strategies seems to be a risky gamble. On the one hand, it is risky because South Korea is decreasing its defense capabilities and activities to accommodate peace with North Korea at the same time as all neighboring powers are preparing to recalibrate their military capability (fuelled, undoubtedly, by their own version of nationalism) to contend with North Korea’s asymmetric nuclear capability following the suspension of the U.S.-ROK military exercise. On the other hand, it is also risky because this xenophobic movement, boosted as it is by ecstatic populism, in turn induces the people to wrongly perceive internationalism as a conglomerate-focused concept that is unaffordable, luxurious, and stands against the interests of the people. Despite these distortions, the undeniable reality is that internationalism is indeed the economic engine that has facilitated South Korea’s becoming one of the world’s most prosperous liberal middle powers. The real problem is that neither Seoul nor the South Korean people have successfully figured out an alternative breadwinning system, even though the country’s economy is still highly dependent on a few state-sponsored conglomerate entities known as jaebols.

The complete disarray of the Conservative camp in South Korea under the circumstances dangerously minimizes the people’s, or the so-called ‘democratic principals(according to the principal-agent framework)’’, responsibilities to maintain the country’s economic competence. Granted, it is common sense to blame the breadwinning agents for their incompetency and moral hazards (or lack of noblesse oblige) in accordance with the principles of public values, as well as economic natural selection; regardless, such rhetoric (which is often abused under the justification of economic democratization) does not excuse the people, or the ‘democratic principals’, from concealing their own incompetence and moral hazards in the name of national/local pride. In this sense, the South Korean ‘democratic principals’ should proactively ask what they themselves can do to foster the preconditions for creating a strong economy rather than passively relying on the state to do so. Promoting the value of the globally shared responsibility for the Kantian hospitality to foreigners is one of these preconditions, especially for a resource-poor economy like South Korea, since it is vitally important that the country attract global consumers to buy the intermediary and final goods produced in the country. In other words, the value promotion of Kantian global citizenship is more of an essential survival strategy that will enhance South Korea’s economic competency in the long run. Time after time, the positive externalities of internationalism in Northeast Asia, such as the preclusion of the Asian Paradox and nationalism-led economic protectionism, will outweigh those of negative externalities such as terror attacks (which have not yet occurred on the South Korean soil); however, this will only come to pass if the citizens hold their faith in the law-based (i.e. responsibilities-based) order and the value of global citizenship.

The post Refugee Crisis on Jeju Island Reveals the Pride and Prejudice of South Korea’s Ecstatic Populism appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Choosing the way that one dresses is a pivotal human right.

For any woman, choosing the way that one dresses is a pivotal human right. In both the US and Israel, we pride ourselves in the fact that a woman can dress however she pleases, regardless of whether it is Western, traditional Jewish, traditional Muslim or traditional Hindu clothing. Unfortunately, other parts of the world do not enjoy such basic freedoms. According to Iran Human Rights Monitor, the Iranian regime infamously banned traditional Kurdish dress in public. On the streets of Tehran and other major Iranian cities, many Iranian women are now fighting for the right to have their hair exposed, so that they can have the joyous feeling of having their hair blow in the air, a basic human right that many take for granted in the West. And for this reason, reports that a Hindu woman was compelled to wear a Muslim hijab at an international airport in Bangladesh are quite disturbing, especially after there was a Bangladeshi High Court ruling declaring that no woman can be compelled to veil in Bangladesh.

According to Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, a photo has emerged of a Hindu woman dressed in hijab at Dhaka International Airport. The source related, “The lady is working at Dhaka International Airport. She has a black hijab on her head, a yellow T-sheet and two hand bracelets as well as a red tip on the forehand and some ID card around her neck. From the picture, it is clear that she is a Hindu woman. Hijab is not her dress. She was forced to wear the hijab in order to protect her job.”

“I cannot find the words to express my extreme anger,” Basu added. “However, I doubt whether complaining to the airport authorities will be a remedy. Nevertheless, I am outraged that at a national airport of a country, where thousands of domestic and foreign passengers travel every day, a minority worker is subjected to this. No one should force any Hindu to wear the hijab. Just this one picture is enough to understand the condition of the Hindus in Bangladesh.”

The Bangladesh Minority Council noted that the abduction of young girls from minority communities, the indiscriminate rape of Hindu women and girls, and the forceful conversion of Hindu women is very rampant in Bangladesh. Recently, local sources reported that during the attempted rape of a minority woman in Pirgachha in Rangpur, the assailants cut off the hair of the victim. In addition, the minority woman and her daughter were left out on the road in Birnarayan village, where they were physically tortured, being left with their hands and feet tied up. In another incident, local sources noted that a helpless Hindu widow and her infant daughter were raped by Awami League leaders in Kishorgoni district in Bangladesh. And in still another instance in Mandasaur, local sources noted that a 7-year-old Hindu girl was taken away from school and brutally raped. The rapist also slit the girls’ throat with a wine bottle after raping her.

How many more Hindu women and girls need to be victimized under the present ruling Awami League government before there is a regime change? While the Bangladeshi government tries to pretend that they are moderates, they are actually a huge part of the problem for Basu noted that the authorities hunt down the minority woman or girl if she dares at all to stand up to her oppressors. According to the World Hindu Struggle Committee, in 2013, in another instance, when there was an attempt to rape a minority woman, the woman cut off the penis of the assailant with a sharp blade. In this case, the police launched an investigation against the minority woman and not the attempted rapist.

However, the mass rape of Hindu women and girls in Bangladesh is not the only indignity that they suffer. According to the World Hindu Struggle Committee, Hindu women in Bangladesh are also deprived of the right to make critical choices about how they want to present themselves at work if they want to stay employed. In an atmosphere of massive minority repression, naturally a Hindu woman has no right to say no if her boss wants her to wear hijab to work and this is a major part of the indignities suffered by Hindu women in Bangladesh. While the Bangladeshi government despises Israel, in the Jewish state, Muslim women are granted the right to wear their traditional dress including the niqab and hijab. We are not among the Western countries banning the burqa. This was best demonstrated in a recent video produced by Israeli Arab activist Sara Zoabi, who documented how numerous Israelis responded to her walking down the street wearing a niqab and how everyone treated her respectively. Nevertheless, Bangladesh and many other Muslim countries governments still have a negative perception of Israel in spite of this.

However, many Muslims also criticize various countries in Europe for banning the burka and hijab. Erdogan is a perfect example of this. According to the Independent, he referred to an EU ruling on whether employers can bar the hijab as a clash between Islam and Christianity. His foreign minister went further, warning that a holy war can begin soon. However, Mr. Erdogan and his government, who are known to be critical of Israel who respects the rights of Muslim women to wear hijab, are very much silent when a Bangladeshi Hindu woman is forced to wear the hijab, which demonstrates how little they care about the right of women to make their own choices regarding how they wish to dress and live their lives. It also demonstrates the increasingly good ties between Erdogan’s and Sheikh Hasina’s government. But nevertheless, Erdogan’s silence as Hindu women are raped and tortured merely for being Hindus highlights how much minority rights means to him. While Erdogan’s government often condemns the West for engaging in Islamophobia, his government does not say anything as the Islamic world continues to persecute countless minority religious groups Hindus among them. It is time for this charade to come to an end and for Hindu women to receive the dignity that they deserve as women.

The post Bangladesh, Please Don’t Compel Hindu Women to Wear The Hijab appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On June 11, major Chinese and Indian oil companies started a formal meeting in Beijing, discussing the establishment of an “oil buyers’ club” to negotiate better prices with OPEC countries. The chairman of China’s biggest energy company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Wang Yilin, and the chairman of refiner Indian Oil Corporation both attended the meeting. According to the India Times, the two largest energy consumers together accounted for almost 17% of world oil consumption last year. Should this “oil buyers’ club” become a reality, New Delhi and Beijing will have greater leverage to negotiate with OPEC about oil prices and will also have a significant say in matters such as importing more crude oil from the US.

OPEC and other oil producing countries, including Russia, have helped oil prices rebound from the last collapse in recent years. This has put pressure on economies of oil importing countries like India and China, which are both experiencing surging energy demand for their domestic economic growth as well as their global development initiatives. However, the cartel members, along their allies, have curtailed their oil supply by 1.8 million barrels per day since the beginning of 2017. They had further agreed to extend these cuts until the end of 2018 with an aim to boost their shrinking economies. In addition, the recent sanctions on Iran by the US government and the financial crisis in Venezuela further exacerbated the decline in the overall OPEC oil output. Thus, in order to compensate for the loss in oil supply from these two countries, Saudi Arabia, a key driver of the production cuts, and Russia, the largest Non-OPEC oil producer, are discussing easing off the production cuts at the next OPEC meeting. This also appears as a response to protect OPEC’s diminishing share in the global oil market due to the rapidly rising US oil supply.

OPEC has dominated Asian oil market for decades. The cartel sends over 15 million barrels per day into Asia, over sixty percent of its exports, to the leading destinations of China, India, South Korea and Japan. Therefore, Asia will likely feel the biggest impact to any production cut of OPEC countries. As procuring oil at the lowest price becomes increasingly vital for energy-hungry Asian consumers, major oil importing countries in Asia are working on combining their efforts to reduce OPEC’s influence on the oil market. According to an official, possibilities of joint sourcing of oil as well as combined bargaining to reduce the Asian premium price were discussed in the meeting on June 11. “The similar collaboration will be proposed to Japan and Korea as well. With CNPC or its affiliates selling in the overseas market a large portion of oil produced from fields it owns in third countries, India expressed interest in buying the Chinese firm’s equity oil directly,” the official said.

India and China’s move arrives in the backdrop of shifting the center of global oil market back to Asia. Potential cooperation among major Asian economies in establishing an “oil buyers’ club” will bring significant challenge to OPEC, giving rise to its competition with North America in exporting oil into the Asian market. India and China are likely to boost imports of US crude from Mexico Bay and Texas shale oil fields, a move aimed at putting pressure on OPEC members to keep oil prices under control.

China and India, the largest and second-largest importers of Iranian crude, will also have greater control over the Iran nuclear deal if they succeed in forming an “oil buyers’ club”. Regarding the recent tensions between Beijing and Washington D.C. on trade issues, China is not likely to support US action against Iran if it has the leverage to negotiate a lower oil price with the country. With its huge infrastructure development projects in Iran, such as the $3-4 billion development plan for the Farzad B gas field, India is also unlikely to abide by US sanctions against Iran in order to avoid friction and obtain a better oil deal.

This article was first published on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Yueyi Chen.

The post China and India Establish “Oil Buyers’ Club” to Counter OPEC appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Trump administration’s ongoing trade spat with China went another few rounds in recent days, spooking investors as headlines once again framed the issue with big numbers. Some previously threatened tariffs are now scheduled to take effect on July 6, and if the administration makes good on its latest threat, more may be in the offing. Yet our view is unchanged: Even with the latest developments, the scope and impact of all tariffs implemented or threatened thus far remains too small to derail the US, Chinese or global economies—or wallop the bull market.

The latest tit-for-tat started last week, when the US government released the list of Chinese goods (primarily industrial products benefiting from the “Made in China 2025” policy) that will be subject to 25% tariffs. Lost in most media coverage, however, was that tariffs on only $34 billion in goods are expected to take effect by July 6. The remaining tariffs on $16 billion worth of goods (largely related to semiconductors) likely face another round of hearings before implementation. In response, China’s government immediately provided further detail about its retaliatory tariffs on $50 billion of US goods. Mirroring the US’s approach, tariffs on only $34 billion in goods (mostly agricultural goods and autos) are scheduled for implementation on July 6, with the adoption of tariffs on the remaining $16 billion (largely energy products, chemicals and medical equipment) to be determined.

This week, in retaliation against China’s retaliation, President Trump replaced his prior April threat of a 25% tariff on an additional $100 billion in Chinese goods with an order to draw up plans for 10% tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. If these take effect, a total of $250 billion in goods would be subject to tariffs. Since the US exports only about $130 billion in goods to China, the Chinese government can’t respond with an equivalent threat. Consequently, Beijing said it will respond with both quantitative and qualitative measures, which presumably means a combination of import tariffs and regulatory actions against US companies operating in China.

While not completely comprehensive, Exhibit 1 chronicles the major tariff-related events of the Trump administration along with Chinese retaliation. Last year and early this year, the administration implemented a variety of small tariffs on solar panels (30% rate applying to about $4.5 billion in imports), washing machines (20 – 50% rate applying to about $1 billion in imports) and Canadian lumber (21% rate on $5.6 billion in imports). These tariffs are in effect, but a US International Trade Commission (ITC) panel struck down a 300% tariff on Canadian jetliners. On the steel and aluminum front, these metal tariffs launched in March on a small scale due to major exemptions. However, after the temporary waivers expired, the tariffs hit the EU, Canada and Mexico on June 1. Overall, these tariffs currently apply to roughly $40 billion in imports. As mentioned above, tariffs on China aren’t in effect yet, but the initial tariffs on $34 billion are scheduled to take effect July 6. A few weeks later, public hearings about potential auto tariffs will occur. Apart from President Trump’s tweet threatening 20% tariffs on EU auto imports, the details about potential auto tariffs are vague, but the US imported $192 billion worth of vehicles in 2017 that could potentially be subject to tariffs.

All told, presuming the July 6 implementation goes ahead as scheduled, the Trump administration will have applied new tariffs to approximately $85 billion worth of goods, representing 2.9% of imports and 0.4% of US GDP—tiny.[i] The future threats don’t change the calculus dramatically for the worse. If the tariffs on the remaining $16 billion of those initial $50 billion in Chinese imports, the additional $200 billion in imports and a theoretical $192 billion of auto imports were to take effect, the total goods subject to tariffs would be roughly $493 billion—16.9% of US imports and 2.5% of US GDP. Yet even these scaled figures probably overstate the impact. Applying tariffs to 2.5% of GDP doesn’t automatically delete that economic activity. Rather, it adds taxes that consumers or businesses must pay. The amount of those tariff payments, as Exhibit 2 shows, is much smaller than the big numbers being thrown around—amounting to less than half a percent of GDP, which is nowhere near large enough to spark a recession in the US or global economy or knock the bull market off course. A true wallop requires shocking, huge measures capable of wiping trillions of dollars off the global economy. Tariffs, though a small negative, don’t come close.

Exhibit 1: A Brief History of Tariffs

Source: US Trade Representative and China Ministry of Commerce, as of 6/19/2018.

Exhibit 2: Scaling the Tariffs

Source: US Trade Representative, China Ministry of Commerce, the American Action Forum and US BEA, as of 6/20/2018. Based on nominal GDP in 2017.

This post was originally written by Luke Puetz for FisherInvestments.com. Puetz is a research analyst with Fisher and has been at the company since 2005.

The post Your Obligatory Tariff Update appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Contrary to the common perception, US President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to transfer the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could have an unintended consequence that could profoundly alter the current, one-sided dynamic. So far, this decision has revealed to the world that U.S. is not an honest broker and that the so-called Israel-Palestine peace process is the mother of all scams. However, whether or not this would undermine the U.S. national interest in the Middle East and beyond is a debate for another day.

Distorted narratives energize toxic polemics from all sides. Historical or faith-based contexts are deliberately manipulated to keep any joint claim fluid or frustrated. The unholy competition for the holy land is in full force.

And though Palestinians have been compromised, if not betrayed, by their conventional supporters, their case has never been stronger or more legitimate. Ironic as it may sound, a solution has never been closer ever since the nuclear option of nonviolence was set in motion.

Second Coming Bullet Train

Right-wing evangelicals are inspired by misinterpretation of Biblical verses (Genesis 12:1, 2, 3) in which God promised Abraham to make him a nation and bless him. They disregard the fact that orthodox teachings of all Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are in agreement on that, and they omit that God granted Abraham such privilege because of his faithful devotion to the will of God.

‘God’s foreign policy’ is pretty clear, they argue.  ‘If you bless Israel, you will be blessed. If you curse Israel, you will be cursed’. Therefore, calling Israel an Apartheid state or Zionism an oppressive racist system is simply blasphemous. To these evangelicals, the number 70 is the prophecy of Prophet Daniel in the Bible, therefore, declaring Jerusalem the capital city of Israel is not mere symbolism but a necessary action “To bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy.”  That, according to Pastor Jeffries, Jews will finally come back to their senses and embrace Jesus as their messiah.

Zionism Hara-kiri

This is a ‘let’s not talk falsely’ moment in history, for the hour is getting late. Zionism is a genocidal enterprise conceived to rid the indigenous Palestinian people out of their homeland to establish an exclusively Jewish state. Neither its leadership nor its supporters attempt to hide that objective.

Regardless of the prevailing narrative in the U.S that Israel is the only secular democracy that upholds Western values in the Middle East, in actuality, Israel is neither secularist nor democratic.

Western secularism as expressed in the American and the French revolutions was intended to separate powers of the church and the state. They wanted to prevent the church from extending its authority to undermine the state power and to prevent the clergy from imposing their doctrines on others.

Today, politics in Israel is overwhelmingly dominated by religious zealots with an apocalyptic worldview. The two faces of that body politic are expressed in the land piggishness of the settlers that systematically uproots the indigenous Palestinian population with mob violence, targeted destruction of their agricultural livelihoods and their homes, and also by the political hubris of the state that has a surrogate veto power at the UN Security Council which allows her to break more international laws and commit more human rights violations than all the countries of the world combined. Its 70-year record that created human catastrophe known as Nakba speaks for itself.

Carrying state condoned war crimes, Israeli snipers have been executing what is according to Amnesty International a shoot-to-kill-or-maim policy. There are a number of videos showing these snipers celebrating their assassinations that are circulating on social media. More than 100 Palestinian civilians, including journalists and babies, have been killed since March 30 and more than 10,000 injured; many by live ammunition.

Behind the jubilant façade, some of the Zionist intelligentsia strategists are nervous about the global consequence of the current brutality and how it may be perceived in the court of social media.

Israeli Knesset and the Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, are pushing a repressive undemocratic bill that criminalizes the documentation of human rights violations against Palestinian citizens by Israeli soldiers. Shooting a video or taking a picture of a soldier committing war crimes could get a journalist a minimum of a 5-year prison term. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and other civil society organizations have issued a statement of condemnation.

The Millennial Might

Today, the most serious ‘existential threat’ facing Israel is not some Arab coalition armies that might invade it and ‘throw the Jews into the sea’; it is not Iran or Turkey; it is the unarmed Palestinian men, women, and children of all ages who put their lives on the line protesting against the ruthless oppression of Zionism in a broad daylight. Their resilient spirit is more of a threat than any missile.

Now that the boycott of Israel campaign spearheaded by conscientious millennials has found traction, the endgame for the last Apartheid system in the world may be near. How long before these socially conscious and politically enlightened students become America’s policy-makers and opinion-shapers? Ask the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, about her excruciating embarrassment on stage at the University of Houston.

“Nikki Haley! The blood is on your hands! You continue to sign off on the genocide of a native people!” roared the auditorium as she started her talk. Ambassador Haley was the person who made the case for the US to block the independent UN human rights commission to investigate whether or not Israel committed war crimes at Gaza buffer zone. Since then, on the very day Israeli snipers cold-bloodedly shot dead a 21-year-old Palestinian nurse in uniform, the US has vetoed a resolution calling for the “protection of Palestinian civilians”, making it the only UN Security Council member state to vote ‘No’.

Imagine when these millennials who transcend faith, ethnicities, and nationalities organize a persistent campaign of civil disobedience or sit-ins at Israeli embassies around the world that trigger mass arrests.

Diminishing Support

Israel is not sustainable mainly because it is a case founded on a moral argument emanating from Biblical history and Nazi victimhood that is protected by repressive realism and an Apartheid model.

A growing number of the American political elite are coming to terms with the fact that U.S. geopolitical interest and that of Israel are not one of the same. And with one of the highest GDP per capita in the world and the largest, most equipped and most technologically advanced armies in the world, Israel neither needs overprotection nor financial welfare from the U.S.

Likewise, a growing number of celebrities—including Jewish ones—are protesting Israel’s genocidal policy toward Palestinians with boycotts or conscientious disinvites.

The last Apartheid regime in the world must either accept one-state-solution with equal citizenship rights or succumb to a looming endgame.

The most widely used counterargument against the one-state-solution is one of sociopolitical eugenics that goes like this: ‘considering the birthrate of the Palestinians, it is a sure way to wipe out our Jewish identity.’ In order to maintain the superior race, the reproduction of the undesired or the inferior race must be controlled.

It is time to break the ethnocentric and faith-based shackles. The holy land cannot be a sacred space exclusive to a single faith. It belongs to all Abrahamic faiths — Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Nowhere is that fact more established than in the Qur’an where the connection of David, Jesus, and Muhammad to the holy land is prominently enshrined.

The post Palestinian Millennial Activists and Israel’s Diminishing Support appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

A young John McCain after being captured by the NVA after he was shot down in 1967. He spent 5 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

PBS in the United States is airing an intriguing broadcast this summer: a documentary series called The Vietnam War. The viewer can take many perspectives from this documentary when comparing it to modern times in the United States and abroad. A memorable moment was when one of the ex-Marines, who you become familiar with throughout the series, tells you the story of how he was conscious with a massive hole in his chest and discounted for dead, despite his brother at arms doing everything they could to get him to safe treatment – even putting their own lives at risk to do so. Because of the courtesy and kindness of one surgeon, who placed humanity above the situation where a morass of patients made for an impossible situation, the soldier survived to tell his story.

Armed conflict should always be avoided until it is necessary or essential to respond in order to stop acts of human rights atrocities. During the Cold War there was a starting point in discussions where a return to pre-1945 Europe was seen as a situation that was to be avoided by both sides in the conflict. When the Americans went into Vietnam and the Soviets into Afghanistan, a reminder of the terrors of open conflict were amplified, and it changed the countries that fought in those wars forever. Arms treaties followed and, while a return to passive warfare did not take much of a pause after the end of the Soviet Union, fear of open conflict and respect for an earned peace was paramount. It was understood that great powers would always challenge each other, but that a strong and intelligent defense would keep your country safe and secure as a whole. Any perception of a lack of defense or an inability to stop the interests of a foreign power may alter the perception and give way to further conflict.

The last few years have given rise to a view of opponents that do not meet the criteria of the Cold War era nor the immediate post-Cold War era. A lack of understanding of the Middle East for example has led to not only a genocide tantamount to the worst atrocities of the Second World War, but also has allies and former opponents who formally cut through political barriers to fight the Wehrmacht working against their own interests. For the Kurdish fighters that were the tip of the spear in fighting against ISIS, little support was received and there was almost no attention given to their fight in helping to prevent further genocide against minority groups in their region. The end result was that Western allies allowed a NATO ally to bomb their positions in Syria and Iraq. While there are no ties linking Western support in the region going to ISIS, the lack of support for the men, and sisters in arms that were the Kurdish women’s brigades fighting against ISIS should have wholly prevented any NATO member from attacking the small community that have fought for every free citizen of the world. While there are strong political differences between Turkey and the Kurdish communities, the end result is that Western allies were not supported, and in an even more horrific turn of events, genocide victims who have made it to safe countries are now finding their torturers living with them as neighbours, with local aid telling them to forget who they saw on their bus. We were always taught to never forget.

It would be hard to justify another Vietnam, and certainly the ex-Marine and those women who fought to free themselves from sure torture, rape, and horrific execution by taking up arms against ISIS share a bond in that they have seen the worst of humanity and have been ignored by those who think opening up a further conflict will resolve their political disputes. In the end, any advance by one country’s interests should be checked through defense, whether it be a missile or a computer or a simple series of discussions. To push for a greater conflict when we cannot even prevent a genocide or protect those who protect us all should be a sobering realization. Accelerating a conflict will just lead to another Vietnam. We would be hard pressed to find any average citizens in Europe or the United States that wishes to donate more of their family member to a battle in the fields of Ukraine. Enough have died there needlessly already.

The post We Don’t Need Another Vietnam appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with the 10th President of Israel Reuven Rivlin and Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Gadi Eizenkot.

The Hindus of Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan are being forced to flee to India but are not receiving Indian citizenship. The time has come for this to change.

Many Pakistani, Afghani and Bangladeshi Hindus living in India face a dire situation. Even though they share the same faith and culture as Hindus in India, they are not being granted Indian citizenship. Instead, they are being treated like stateless refugees. Furthermore, the Times of India recently reported that within the last three years, over 2,000 Pakistani Hindus who fled to India have been forced to return to Pakistan because they have been denied citizenship. According to the report, many of the returning Hindus have been forced to convert to Islam.

Pakistani dissident Natharam Bheel added in the Times of India: “Pakistani Hindus who are coming to India that are leaving everything in Pakistan are not getting anything here as well. They are coming here with the hope of leading a good life but eventually, they are losing all hope. Waiting period is getting longer. They are coming here on a religious visa and due to a lack of papers and documents, they are forced to go back.”

This is a great tragedy not only for the Pakistani Hindu community but also for the entire Hindu world and global civilization at large. Anyone who cares about minority rights in the greater Muslim world should be outraged. The time has come for this charade to come to an end! The Indian government should immediately adopt Israel’s right of return policy, so that oppressed Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and other parts of the world will have a refuge to flee to.

The Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are in a horrible bind and are in desperate need of such a refuge. According to Shipan Kumer Basu, President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, many Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh claim that India is the country of the Hindus and that all Hindus should go there: “From a religious perspective, India is our holy land but if we go to India, we are not treated as equals. There we do not receive citizenship nor jobs so why should we leave our ancestral lands, property and relatives behind to live in India?” However, countless Hindus from Muslim countries have nevertheless gone to India because they were compelled to leave their homelands due to atrocities implemented by various Islamist individuals and groups, who are backed by the local government.

The BBC claims that Hindus in Pakistan are treated like second class citizens. According to the report, their children are forced to read the Quran in Pakistani schools and are often mocked due to their religious beliefs. In addition, the Tribune reported that a study analyzing Pakistani textbooks from grades 1-10 concluded that “Hindus are repeatedly described as extremists and eternal enemies of Islam whose culture and society is based on injustice and cruelty, while Islam delivers a message of peace and brotherhood, concepts portrayed as alien to the Hindu.” According to the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, around 1,000 Hindu and Christians girls in Pakistan are kidnapped, forcefully converted and married to Muslim men against their will every year.

Due to facing such indignities, the Hindu population in Pakistan has rapidly declined. According to the Diplomat, at the time of the partition of British India, Hindu’s constituted 15% of Pakistan’s population but today, less than 2% of the Pakistani population is Hindu. Furthermore, the report noted that every year about 5,000 Hindus leave Pakistan in order to avoid persecution. Basu reported that a similar trend is occurring among the Hindus of Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who also are systematically being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes.

The Hindus of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Many policy makers in the West do not care about their plight because they are not white, lack the possession of numerous natural resources and do not have the backing of rich oil producing states. Furthermore, their enemies aren’t Jewish so there is no predetermined bigotry against their enemies, which can lead to an international call for them to obtain the justice that they deserved. Meanwhile, with the rise of radical Islam in the Indian subcontinent, their status in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan is getting more perilous by the day. And so long as India does not offer them refuge just as Israel does for Jews from Muslim majority countries, the Hindus from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh won’t benefit from having a national homeland for all Hindus, where they can be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Therefore, the time has come for India to stand up for its historic responsibility and to transform India into a national homeland for all Hindus.

The post India should adopt Israel’s right of return policy appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Donald Trump’s message and views on Iran have been remarkably consistent throughout his time in the public sphere. Even immediately following the deal’s successful negotiation, Trump came out against it, hurling a line many would become very familiar with: “Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction as incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran.” After being persuaded to comply with the terms of the deal in the short term, “hawkish” advisors Mike Pompeo (Secretary of State) and John R. Bolton (National Security Adviser) began wielding more influence in the White House. With less internal resistance stopping him, Trump was finally able to fulfill an old campaign promise and he withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in Early May.

The completion of the deal involved a long and arduous negotiation process. In the end, President Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry were able to strike a deal with the Iranian government, led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and five other countries (Russia, China, France, Germany, United Kingdom) to “ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful” in exchange for economic relief. Specifically, the deal, in its own words, would “produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy.” Iran, on the other hand, agreed to a bevy of restrictions on their ability to enrich Uranium and obtain weapons grade Plutonium as well as gave international inspectors access to their nuclear sites. All reports indicated that Iran had been complying with the terms of the deal. In fact, the deal had other positive effects as well. Iran’s (slow) reintegration back into the Western world was certainly a factor in their more moderate foreign policy decisions. For example, Iran refrained from intervening in both Libya and Iraq following the signing of the deal. In fact, the Huffington Post reported that the government was actually encouraging diplomatic solutions to end the Libyan conflict.

Critics of the deal argued the United States was conceding too much economically for such a poor return from the Iranians. While those attacks are unfounded, as the deal without question significantly delayed Iran’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon, they are also irrelevant. Trump’s withdrawal from the deal has created more detrimental impacts than even critics of the deal argued existed in the first place.

Part of the reason critics disapproved of the Iran deal was due to its front loaded nature. Essentially, Iran received many of the economic benefits it was promised before it completely fulfilled its end of the bargain. However, this very fact is one of the reasons why pulling out of the deal was especially miscalculated. Eric Lorber of the ForeignPolicy dot com reported in November of 2016 that “Iran [had] already received approximately $100 billion” in economic relief. The deal was lopsided when Trump pulled out because the United States had negotiated for long term benefits in stopping Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. Trump never gave us the ability to see the benefits materialize. Abandoning the deal when Trump did provided Iran with significant economic concessions while only setting their nuclear program back two years.

Most notably, Trump made this decision on the heels of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It is downright absurd that the Trump administration thought it would be a good idea to back out of one nuclear agreement right before it went and tried to negotiate another. In fact, I’d argue the only reason the North Koreans did not back out of the summit immediately is because they believed it would be an opportunity to extract concessions from the Americans like they have in the past. In fact, North Korea has violated eight agreements since 1994 while gaining “concessions [like] being removed from the U.S. list of regimes that sponsor terrorism, shipments of food and fuel, the promise of light water plutonium reactors and the removal of crippling economic sanctions.” Indeed, the 2018 negotiations ended with Trump agreeing to stop US military exercises with South Korea for almost nothing in return, a decision that seemingly surprised South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

The long term implications of this decision are incredibly severe. Iran now has two realistic options. First, it can pivot harder to Russia and China, solidifying their alliance with those two global powers and rely on them for economic aid, as they had before the deal. In the meantime, they would continue to develop their nuclear weapon capabilities. In fact, Iran’s relationship with China has tightened since Trump’s withdrawal. China has been eager to work with Iran, some hypothesize, because of the access the country would give to Middle Eastern markets. East Asia Forum reported in June that “an ability to rapidly traverse the Iranian plateau lies at the heart of Beijing’s geostrategic and economic ambitions in the 21st century.”

Iran’s second option is cracking under the economic pressure. A letter from the Trump administration admitted that they will aim to put “unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime.” There is a scenario in which Iran returns to the table and agrees to a more favorable deal with the Trump administration to escape economic ruin. This outcome is certainly possible, with economic impacts in the country already being seen. But as was the case in North Korea and Iran, historically, economic sanctions hit the citizens the hardest while leaving high ranking government officials unaffected. The only real consequences will be to President Hassan Rouhani, whose pivot towards the West unquestionably backfired due to Trump’s election and who will inevitably be blamed for the country’s economic hardship. Furthermore, Trump’s antagonization of Iran makes it unlikely any member of the government wants to come to the table while Trump holds the oval office. Even more importantly, Trump’s hardline diplomacy tactics have already been undercut by European officials who promised to stay in the deal to their best of their abilities and tried to convince Trump not to enforce secondary sanctions (the administration declined to agree to that framework). Critically, Iran knows support of the JCPoA still exists.

The Trump administration has taken an incredible risk, hoping Iran’s hardliners will crack under the economic pressure. The far more likely outcome, however, is nuclear proliferation to strengthen Iran’s negotiating hand and a stronger alliance with Russia and China.

Nader Granmayeh is a senior at Horace Mann High School where he is the co-Student Body President. He is currently an intern with Foreign Policy Association blogs division and is working on Zephyr Teachout’s attorney general campaign.

The post On Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From The Iran Deal appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

President Trump’s pronouncements always generate froth, by his words and in the reporting and recrimination that follows.  But in Brussels, before his Helsinki meeting with Putin, he did, again, call NATO obsolete. Once any President raises it, the question takes on a life of its own.  And if NATO’s value is in doubt, who should be our allies?  That in turn raises the question: just what do we need for security?  While the President’s view about NATO is unsettling, raising the question should lead policy makers to examine their assumptions, and answer based on something beyond historical inertia.  The public deserves a considered discussion about NATO, alliances, and security, starting from the ground up.

Security is hard to define: so many developments in the world might pose threats.  The cyber realm can by itself transmit destruction; it also carries information and disinformation that can amount to attacks.  Aside from that infinity of hazard, who might take to terrorism against us, and what collapsed states might house them?  Which rising powers might overtake us, and will they employ military, economic, cyber, cultural, or some as-yet unimagined effort?  What about my job, and what about climate change?

Amid all the fears people seek security against, public discourse says little about what we need security for.  Absent an answer to that question, anything at all could pose a security hazard, and countering everything requires infinite resources.

Possible answers, after excluding everyone’s laundry lists of motherhood and apple pie, will range widely.  Americans might need only physical safety and equal market access throughout the world.  Some would hope to protect man’s capacity to find nirvana.

Presumably, most definitions would give democracy and other liberal principles high priority. Hopefully, most Americans would list living by our founding creed, the “self evident” truths over which the signers of the Declaration of Independence divorced their ethnic motherland — unalienable rights equally imbued in all, and government created to secure those rights.

A nation defined by a principle depends for its existence on validation of that principle.  Validation of our creed includes the traditional security that allows a free society to stay free, but also requires that measures to protect society comport with its principles.

What defense and diplomatic policies would serve this type of security need?  A range of configurations might work.  Anna Simons of the Naval Post Graduate School advocates a minimalist foreign policy, butting out of other nations’ sovereignty while punishing any transgression of ours.  John Ikenberry would revive the current Liberal World Order, as the best expression of America’s values.  Barry Posen of the Naval War College would revamp force structures to limit our commitments to certain key needs.  Zalmay Khalilzad sees room to make NATO more viable for the 21st Century.

A concern that has not been addressed is that today’s communications technology makes it possible actually to attack a country’s national narrative.  Narrative is not only the words expressing your values.  It includes actions and arrangements that fit your claims, and your ability to keep to them.  Security for America, and the shape of alliances, must reinforce America’s national narrative.

NATO membership includes many of the world’s firmly democratic nations, but a few that are moving toward authoritarian government.  It also excludes a number of deeply liberal democracies, most of them friendly to the U.S. and some formally allied but outside of NATO.  The premises of all those alliances are diverse, but none names the common commitment to liberal democracy.  Yet this is the basis for alliances that would fit our national narrative.  NATO itself may not — but, combing out the most egregious backsliders from liberal values, and asking the other liberal democracies to join, it could form the heart of a fitting alliance structure.

The grouping would likely comprise NATO members minus Turkey and Hungary, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and perhaps Chile.  It could only be assembled in a strategically defensive orientation, protecting the needs of members’ liberal lifestyles and limiting its geopolitical power projection.  The group should encourage other nations to develop toward deeper liberalism, and tighten relations with any that do.  Countries that become deeply compatible, as, say, Indonesia, Ghana, or Brazil might in coming decades, should be offered membership.

Any arrangement of this sort is hypothetical and speculative.  But reflections of this nature are needed now, to look through fresh eyes at basic questions we already face.  Those questions will not abate, and enduring answers will require that we take them up with open minds.  But those answers should, in this new and disorienting age, start from our founding principles.

The post What If NATO Really IS Obsolete? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Presented by Intelligence Squared U.S. in partnership with Georgetown University live at the first Georgetown University Women’s Forum

The post Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates – The proposition “Globalization Has Undermined America’s Working Class” appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Disruptors are becoming ever more prevalent as bold solutions are offered for global problems. In health, transport, and agriculture big ideas are at the centre of fierce debates about reform and innovation; nowhere is this more evident than in education.

In developing countries, quality education for the poor is rare:  263 million children are out of school and 330 million children are in school but not learning. 69 million more teachers are needed. With many calling for more funding to meet demand, it is only now that the global community is unifying around ‘outcomes’ rather than ‘access’ as a benchmark for success and calling for innovationto help solve the learning crisis.

Sadly, at the moment nearly 600 million children are being failed; enabling those 600 million to go to a school where they actually learn is a mammoth global task and underpins Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). Re-building weak public school systems; putting in place capacity building programs; re-invigorating teacher training programs and enabling governments to generate enough financing to fund all this will take many years, if not decades.

Providing high quality schooling for all children clearly requires innovation, partnership and collaboration from all sectors that have the expertise and commitment to contribute. Yet many anti-reformists vehemently argue that SDG4 should not be pursued in partnership with the private sector. Their justification for this is often ostensibly rooted in Article 26 of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The 1948 UDHR ‘strives to promote these rights and freedoms and secure universal and effective recognition’; but 70 years on; 600 million children are proof that the approach taken to fulfilling Article 26’s goals so far, has failed. Section one of the Article has five clear components a) Everyone has the right to education b) Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages and c) Elementary education shall be compulsory d) Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and e) higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

Many educators, including Bridge, believe that a strong free public school system delivering real learning for each and every child is the ideal. However, we must be pragmatic as well as idealistic if we accept the fundamental urgency of the learning crisis.If we believe that a) education is a right then we must strive to help fulfill that right urgently. If c) education must be compulsory, then we must urgently build and develop enough schools, classrooms and teachers for 600 million children to be served. If these rights, outlined in Article 26, cannot be urgently met by existing public systems then they must be met using other models. Otherwise, parents must wait until all governments build the will, the resources, and the capacity to provide the poor the education their children deserve. This is an unacceptable position and offers families no hope. Therefore, the ability to compromise on clause b, in the short term, is essential; a failure to do so will perpetuate the cycle of educational death for another generation of children. Clause b is often arbitrarily proclaimed by status quo defenders as most essential: education must be free. They argue, compulsory education for all (clauses a and c) must be delivered by existing public sector frameworks without any social impact investment; returns based financing or public private partnership models. According to them, governments must deliver the holy grail of strong, regenerated and reinvigorated public schools from within a failing system. Despite good intentions, this has been unachievable for the last 70 years.  This argument locates them firmly in the realm of the ideologues who place theory above the immediate needs of children.

It is only through embracing new, innovative, scalable and sustainable models that clause b will ever be achievable. The clear alternative to private sector assistance is that hundreds of millions of children remain uneducated for the years or decades it may take for all governments to reform and develop a strong primary education system. It is the verhement resistance to this logic which leads education reformers to talk about an ideological divide.

This ideological divide is increasingly visible through coordinated public attacks on the private sector and its innovations. Often driven by those that have no constituency in the communities or the countries benefiting from private sector interventions; by those that have neither experienced first hand the innovations they critique nor reviewed the materials they condemn. Perhaps, more importantly by those that do not offer any practical solutions to ensure that the 600 million can urgently learn.

Against this backdrop there are millions of parents who are choosing schools like Bridge. In Kenya alone, there are two million children alone attending ‘informal schools’. These parents are from communities living in extreme poverty, often in slums. These parents are choosing not to send their child to the nearby public school, for which they often pay, because their public school is failing; only 51% of Kenyan parents rated the quality of free to attend schools in Kenya as good.Children are not learning; teachers are struggling and parents are frustrated that their children are being failed. A parent with school aged children cannot wait for the rebuilding of public school systems; capacity building programs; re-invigorated teacher training programs. They have to send their child to school today. They choose schools where they can be intimately involved:  chairing regional and national PTAs; sitting on school boards; attending workshops. They are invested in their child’s education in every sense, as are their communities, and their children thrive. They are the living embodiment of Article 26’s section three: ‘Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.’

At the heart of parental choice is a parents’ desire for good teachers and  an environment that supports their child’s learning. However, teachers in developing countries face considerable challenges; they themselves struggle with literacy and numeracy; they often do not have materials with which to teach let alone good materials; they have overcrowded classrooms; often they are not paid on time, if at all; in remote communities with poor infrastructure there is no support or guidance and teacher absenteeism levels are extraordinarily high. This is the plight of many teachers and because of this, it is unfathomable that activists who claim to support teachers would seek to protect the status quo. They seek to protect labor and agitate against a focus on teacher performance. Whereas , teachers themselves are actively seeking environments where they have access to professional development opportunities and can practice their chosen profession with pride.

Nearly all primary schools in sub-Saharan Africa are failing their pupils. Solutions that utilize a wide range of partners is essential and using Article 26 to undermine these partnerships is nonsensical.

Joanna Hindley is the Vice President of Bridge International Academics. 

The post Education Is A Right That Must Be Fulfilled Urgently appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

At any given time, India contains an estimated 18.4 million victims of modern slavery. Of that number, 26 percent, or 5.5 million, are children.

India is no exception to the trend that trafficking and subsequent slavery are shown to be most prevalent in countries producing consumer goods through low-cost labor, as the rural elite have used slavery to augment their industrial financial gains for generations. Forced labor – debt bondage, indentured servitude, caste-based slavery, trafficking, enticement, abduction – is distinctly used by the rural elite to increase production in agricultural or textile industries. Often, at the mercy of the rural elite, the victims of slavery belong to poor families, a low social strata of the society, or from low caste poor families and mainly work in rural areas. Unfortunately, this is no surprise. Approximately 70 percent of trafficking victims in India belong to Scheduled Castes or Tribes – also called ‘Dalit’ classes – and are among the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups in India.

Though most in the Dalit classes are prone to economic and social vulnerability, they are the most susceptible to trafficking and other forms of slavery because of opinions of the rural elite. The rural elite may see control of lower classes as their divinely ordained, seigniorial right over people they view as serfs. To make matters worse, those in lower classes face the pressure of making wealth to survive, the need to repay debts, illiteracy and the lack of education, all of which may serve as driving forces in their vulnerability to elites who view them as lesser beings.

There is also an increasing trend of children being trafficked for domestic labor for the rural elite, who also have been shown to subject entire villages to debt bondage. Further, children forced into slavery, either from their villages or captured individually, by the rural elite may have previously been kicked out of shelters, forced beggars, gang members, or trafficked by illegal placement agencies.  

The market of sex slavery in India best illustrates the exploitation faced by victims of human trafficking. Close to 80 percent of the human trafficking is done for sexual exploitation and India is considered as the hub of this crime in Asia, with young girls also being smuggled from neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh. More than half of total commercial sex workers in India are from Nepal and Bangladesh, which can be attributed to prevailing abject poverty and ignorance in both these countries compared with India. Thus, India is not only a destination for human sex trafficking, but also a transit country for trading these victims internationally.

The prevalence of sex trafficking has additional implications for the status of women in India. Female victims with a lower social status, little to no possessions, or financially desperate have been historically easy targets for traffickers. Additionally, social pressures compel women to remain within the confines of the domestic sphere and the restricted movement, lack of education, and prevention from social and economic activities deprives the women from accessing justice, equality, and subjects them to abuses of human rights. As a result, traffickers are able to coax women into giving in to commercial sexual exploitation in order to support themselves or their dependents, as well as better their financial situation despite their circumstances. These empty promises often result in kidnapping, forced marriages, selling or bartering women for opium, wealth, or labor, and recurrent rape. Women who are sold – specifically to brothels, placement agencies, or as child brides – are bought through dealers on the black market. Once sold as sex slaves, particularly to brothels, victims seldom come back to normal life, as the impact of the suffering is so intense they often lose their mental balance and accept life as prostitutes. Those who try to escape are either killed or punished so brutally they become permanently mentally or physically scarred. These horrifying realities faced by millions of women and girls is a product of one of the fastest growing organized crimes and most lucrative criminal activity in the world that is increasing annually.

Actions taken by the Indian government and intergovernmental organizations, individually and in collaboration, to combat human trafficking have yielded mixed results. The 2008 Vienna Forum, a United Nations conference bringing together Member States, other international organizations, the business community, academia, and civil society, was planned to address different dimensions of human trafficking. The Forum examined existing definitions of and practices related to the prevention of trafficking and, by focusing on decreasing vulnerability, planned to broaden the strategic impact of existing prevention efforts.

While the global community addressing the issues of human trafficking is a stride towards preventing the crime, especially as it included the business world, limited actions were taken following this conference. In India specifically, identifying those vulnerable is not an easy task, as poverty alone cannot be the sole criteria to identify the poor. In addition to the lack of material resources, one needs to include indicators such as lack of power and choice. Reduction of vulnerability for the poor, therefore, is difficult for the government alone to accomplish.

Instead, the Indian government has looked towards crime prevention as an approach to combating human trafficking. This includes toughened criminal penalties for child prostitution and forced marriage, as well as improvements to protect victims, as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2016 demonetization scheme. This plan, announced in November of that year, was aimed, among other things, to hit out at black money, parallel economy and criminal activities to specifically impact industries run by the rural elite, as they thrive on illegally obtained income.

While this demonetization scheme will likely deal a severe blow to human trafficking activities, the India government will likely need to do more to aid victims and crack down on officials who are involved in human trafficking. In the meantime, the rural elite still profit from human labor and human rights violations continue to go undisturbed. The cycle of human bondage in India must be broken, and only time will tell if the efforts, past and present, of the Indian government and other outside organizations will pay off.

The post Human Trafficking in India: Abuse from the Rural Elite and the Wider Implications appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

A New Study Documents Meticulously a Wide Range of German Expert Opinion on Ukrainian Affairs and on Their Current Perception in Germany

Germany is Western Europe’s demographically and economically most significant country, while Ukraine has, in the post-Soviet period, become a geopolitical pivot state of Eastern Europe as well as the territorially largest exclusively European country (Russia and Turkey have parts of their territories in Europe, but most of them in Asia).

There are deep historical links between Ukrainians and Germans. One of many such connections was facilitated by the adoption of the famous Magdeburg Town Law by several Ukrainian cities – including Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, which holds a monument to the Magdeburg Law – during the 15th-19th centuries. During the pre-Soviet period, a multitude of close Ukrainian-German cooperation schemes in such fields as business, development, science, education and culture were and continue being implemented. For these and many other reasons, it is surprising how little attention the nature of the relationship, links, and feelings between the two large European nations have been received so far, in the study of European history and international relations.

While Ukrainian interest in Germany has always been very high, German interest in and information on Ukraine has only recently started to grow. In 2006, the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen started to publish its regular German-language electronic bulletin (with the?) Ukraine-Analysen– publishing 201 issues so far. Two further specialized German-language websites, Ukraine-Nachrichten (News on Ukraine), founded in 2007, and Ukraine verstehen (Understanding Ukraine), founded in 2017, are improving German understanding of Ukraine today.

Systematic reflection on German-Ukrainian relations has also been improving, though more slowly. In 2010, Hamburg historian Frank Golczewski published a large volume on German-Ukrainian relations in the inter-war period (Deutsche und Ukrainer 1914-1939. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1058 pp.). A number essays and papers have since explored Ukraine’s presentation and misrepresentation in German media, as well as Germany’s involvement in Ukraine’s ongoing transformation.

With its new study Ukraine in Germany’s Eyes: Pictures and Perceptions of a Land in Transition, the Ukrainian program of the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) provides an extremely informative and partly revealing documentation of German views on today’s Ukraine. The investigation follows the methodology of an earlier GIZ project on the perception of Germany across the world, which asked international experts on Germany and how the German nation is perceived in their home countries. The GIZ’s 2017 Ukraine study is not a broad statistical survey of German attitudes towards Ukraine, but a deep qualitative survey of German images, interpretations, opinions, evaluations, stereotypes, knowledge, and expectations related to Ukraine. These features are drawn from 1014 statements made by 44 Germans who are, to one degree or another, especially familiar with, or interested in, Ukraine. They comprise – partly, prominent – of scholars, entrepreneurs, civic activists, journalists, artists and politicians, among the latter, for instance, the Green Member of European Parliament Rebecca Harms and the former Minister-President of Saxony and current G7 envoy to Ukraine Professor Georg Milbradt.

As the project’s initiator and supervisor Andreas von Schumann makes clear in his introduction, the purposes of this investigation was not to “search for [objective] truth” about Ukraine; rather, “[w]e wanted to distil the commonalities that can be established in various perceptions [about Ukraine] among different persons [in Germany], which contours these pictures of Ukraine have, [and] what kind of profile as well as distortions are recognizable.” Von Schumann extracts two fundamental features in the evaluations of the 44 German specialized interview partners. The consulted German experts, first, perceive the German “view on Ukraine as being too narrow, the knowledge [in Germany about Ukraine] as too sketchy, and [Germans’] attention to [Ukrainian developments] as too volatile as well as their evaluations [of Ukrainian matters] as too slimly grounded.” The surveyed German specialists, second, express, according to von Schumann,

A deep desire that Germany and the Germans would engage, with Ukraine, more frequently and intensely. This hope is grounded on several motifs: historic responsibility of the Germans, the cultural diversity of Ukraine, the economic potential of the country, the necessity to provide for stability in Europe’s East and the possible impulses [of this engagement] for the further development of the EU. Yet the most obvious motif, among our conversation partners, was their excitement about their own rapprochement with Ukraine. Independently of the concrete occasion that let them make Ukraine their central interest, most of [the interviewees] emphasized the ‘clean sheet’ at the beginning which was to quickly transform into a ‘colourful canvas.’ p. 7.

Since 2014, the German view on Ukraine and the study documents has become dominated by three negatives “K’s” – Krieg, Krise, Krim (war, crisis, Crimea). This image is only marginally improved by two older positive “K’s” for the once celebrated football team “Dynamo Kyiv” and for Klitschko, the surname of the two famous boxing world champions Viktor and Volodymyr, who used to live and are still popular in Germany. Apart from reporting common German stereotypes such as these about Ukraine, the GIZ study offers a multitude of insights into the scale of different German perceptions: topics such as Ukraine’s regime changes, reforms, corruption, nationalism, foreign affairs, European aspirations, cultural divisions, relations with Russia, and relevance to Germany.

Thus the study finds that, for instance, in German assessments of today’s Ukrainian changes, “hardly any other sector is mentioned as many times as an example for lacking reform efforts as the justice system. This is because a reform of the electoral law and the creation of an anti-corruption court – both major demands of the reformers – will decide the future division of power in the country. It is crucial that the rule of law is implemented in all public affairs” (pp. 58-59).

With regard to foreign affairs, the answers of the various experts are more diverse and partly contradictory. One interviewee cited in the study asserts: “To join NATO is not a good idea for Ukraine because this means the formation of new blocks. Ukraine has to behave neutrally and try to find a common language with Russia.” A respondent assesses that “NATO cannot fulfill the role of guarantee power for Ukraine.” Yet, the conclusion from this is that “the EU has to get ‘teeth’ and become a security actor, on the European continent. The EU and Germany, to be sure, have through negotiation of the Minsk Agreements already taken upon themselves considerable responsibility, and the German government supports ‘resolutely’ the [Ukrainian] reform process. ‘But’ – asks a respondent rhetorically – ‘does this solve the conflict – especially if Russia plays upon time?’” (p. 76).

The study is not only valuable in that it well illustrates various German interpretations of these themes, but also – by documenting the views of many of Germany’s leading experts on Ukraine and how they talk about their country of interest – the booklet provides insights on how the German public will be informed about future developments in and around Ukraine. In view of Germany’s importance to the course of EU foreign affairs, in general, and policies towards Kyiv, in particular, this dense investigation of German interpretations of Ukrainian matters will become essential reading for everybody interested in Ukraine’s current and future international relations and gradual European integration.

Andreas Umland is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, and editor of the ibidem Press book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society.”

The post How Germany sees Ukraine appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Everything is ready for US President Donald Trump to land on Tuesday in Brussels where he will later participate in the NATO summit. A meeting where the tensions instigated by the White House among the rest of the 28 countries will serve as a reference for the face-to-face meeting scheduled for next Monday in Helsinki between the president and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

While the administration of the Republican sought last week to relax the growing nervousness among the members of the transatlantic alliance, Trump himself did not hesitate to instigate anew discord by remembering that the United States pays “between 70 and 90 percent to protect Europe and that’s fine. Of course, they kill us on trade.” In this way, there will be two main themes – the trade deficit of 151,000 million dollars with the European Union and the fact that countries like Germany only pay 1 percent of their GDP to the budget of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Before the meeting at NATO headquarters on July 11–12, the US president reminded European allies of the need to strictly implement the agreement and increase military spending. Last year, the United States accounted for 51.1 percent of the combined GDP of NATO members and 71.7 percent of its defense spending. The largest economy in the world contributed more funds to the Alliance than Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Canada combined. Leaving aside the United States, only five countries have met spending standards, including Greece, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Poland and Romania.

Even so, the US ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, said during a press conference that although some countries still have to do more in this regard, more than half of the members are on track to achieve the goal of spend 2 percent of its GDP on defense by 2024. Hutchison used the occasion to make clear that there were no plans to make changes among the 32,000 American troops located in Germany, as part of the Alliance and other missions, as had been rumored. “We will talk about the biggest increase in defense spending by our allies since the Cold War,” said the ambassador, who insisted that all members “are increasing defense spending.”

Indeed, during the weekend, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that the NATO countries were aimed to maintain reasonable relations with Russia. “Of course, we want to have a responsible relationship with Russia,” Merkel said in the statement, adding “that’s the reason why we will continue to have talks in the NATO-Russia Council.” At the same time though, the alliance “has to show determination to protect us,” she said.

The relations between Moscow and the West reached a critical turning point in Ukraine and the accession of Crimea to Russia after the 2014 referendum, in which more than 96 percent of the voters supported this decision. That year, the EU, the USA and several countries responded by imposing sanctions against Russia for its supposed role in the crisis, something that Moscow denied, hence it chose to activate an agri-food embargo to those who imposed restrictive measures against it.

That said, even when Washington has imposed severe reprisals on Russia and has expelled Russian diplomats, Trump at all times refuses to criticize Putin directly, something that some implicitly consider undermining NATO’s confidence. “The alliance faces a new set of challenges. Some analysts warn of a Cold War redux, pointing to Russia’s military incursions into Georgia and Ukraine as well as its efforts to sow political discord in NATO countries,” highlights Jonathan Masters, analyst of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Trump’s lukewarm support of NATO has led some European allies to question the US commitment. Before the Wednesday and Thursday summit, many members of the Alliance suggested that any sign of disunity will only fuel Moscow’s aggressiveness. “The alliance has responded by reinforcing defenses in Europe, but political rifts between members, some opened by the United States, have thrown NATO unity into question,” explains Masters.

Jeremy McCoy is a freelance journalist published in such media outlets as History Today, Activist Post, Veterans Today, Global Research, OffGuardian and Ground Report.

The post Trump Raises Doubts in NATO Allies appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On 2 April 2018, Ethiopia’s restless new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was sworn into power. Since then the Federal Republic of Ethiopia has found itself in a whirlwind of reform. Ethiopia is undergoing its most significant changes since the 1991 birth of the EPRDF ruling coalition under its controversial leader, Meles Zenawi. The last two months have witnessed the realigning of Ethiopia’s economy and bilateral relations with previous foes such as Eritrea and Egypt.

Prime Minister Ahmed has hit the ground running in terms of political reforms with the overdue lifting of the State of Emergency that has existed since the abrupt resignation of his predecessor in February 2018. In a landmark move, Ethiopia’s government has released thousands of dissidents in an olive branch to the opposition. This is part of the Prime Minister’s new policy of opening the political space which has included the release of leaders of the opposition. These policies have proved widely popular amongst Ethiopia’s population, especially in the Oromia region where the Prime Minister hails from.

Of all the reform policies by Prime Minister Ahmed the one that has captured the imagination is his policy of rapprochement towards Eritrea. In 2000, Ethiopia under its late Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi signed an agreement with Eritrea to end the bloody border war between the neighbouring states. The agreement came to be subsequently known as the Algiers agreement and it demarcated the boundary between Ethiopia and Eritrea. On 5th June 2019, Ethiopia’s new, reformist Prime Minister Dr Abiy Ahmed agreed to “fully implement” the Algiers agreement and cede land back to Eritrea.

This is a monumental shift in Ethiopia’s political consensus forged under the transformative Meles Zenawi. The risks in the long term are that such a deal may empower other ethnic groups within the Federal regions to agitate for changes in boundary demarcation now that the new government is seen as responsive. However, it is worth noting that Prime Minister Abiy is universally popular in all regions of Ethiopia and especially his home region of Oromia, which was at the epicentre of anti-government protests from 2014 onwards.

In another landmark move, Prime Minister Ahmed recently met with his Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi where both discussed the ongoing tensions over the Nile. Egypt has long been opposed to Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam, a $4 billion hydroelectric project that harvests the Blue Nile to power Ethiopia’s economy.  For years, negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt have been deadlocked with the latter believing the Grand Renaissance Dam would harm Egypt’s access to the Nile which is critical for its industrial and agricultural sector.

For the first time, in a landmark statement, an Ethiopian leader has promised that Egypt’s share of the Nile will be preserved by Ethiopia. As part of the ongoing agreement, both sides (along with Sudan) will also set up an infrastructure fund for investing in the three countries. In the medium term such a policy of deescalating tensions with Egypt allows Ethiopia’s government to devote political capital on more pressing domestic concerns such as the liberalisation of what is considered Africa’s fastest growing economy.

On 6 June 2018, Ethiopia’s new government announced that the state will end its decades old monopoly in key sectors such as telecoms, energy and aviation. Reformist Prime Minister Ahmed is keen to modernize Ethiopia’s economy by privatizing key state-owned enterprises and limiting the state’s tight control on all aspects of the economy.

Ethiopia’s government hopes such increased inward investment will allow the state to create jobs for its increasing numbers of unemployed young people. In a country of 105 million people, absorbing more disaffected youth into its labour markets will prove crucial to Ethiopia’s future stability. Of interest to foreign investors is Ethiopia’s telecoms monopoly, Ethio Telecom which will be part privatised. Already major foreign operators such as MTN Africa have already signalled their interestin Ethiopia’s thriving telecoms sector.

Another lucrative asset to be privatised is Ethiopian Airlines which is considered Africa’s most successful airlines in terms of operations and profits. That the Ethiopian government is willing to privatise its previously untouchable cash cows shows how serious Prime Minister Ahmed’s administration is towards structural economic reform.

If done correctly, the liberalisation of Ethiopia’s economy offers substantial opportunities for the state and investors in the long term. According to the IMF, in 2017, Ethiopia’s economy was among the fastest growing in the world and it is set to expand 8.5% this year. The risks of privatisation to Ethiopia’s economy are minimal as analysts have long argued that Ethiopia’s economy requires an injection of competition to fulfill its enormous potential.

Going forward, Ethiopia’s target to attain lower-middle income status by 2025 will only be reached when it is able to limit the outsized role played by its large, state-owned enterprises. Finally, Ethiopia’s opening up of key sectors was in response to the visit of the IMF Managing Director in December 2017, where Ethiopia was advised to abandon its strategy of debt financed growth to maintain its impressive annual growth rates. Although such a strategy enabled Ethiopia to record impressive growth rates for the last several years, it is not sustainable in the long run as state-owned enterprises have not been able to create enough jobs for Ethiopia’s population of 105 million.

This article was first published on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Bashir Ali. 

The post Ethiopia Between Risk and Reform appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Anti-Access/Area-Denial capabilities (A2/AD)—the ability to prevent an adversary from entering an area of land, sea, or air—have become a major component of military force postures for powers around the globe, but Russia is the most committed to advancing their development. Russian A2/AD capabilities are shaping NATO’s neighborhood and the Alliance needs a comprehensive strategy to counter them effectively in times of peace, crisis, and conflict.

Russian A2/AD capabilities include traditional air power, unmanned aerial vehicles, maritime capabilities (including submarines and offensive mining), offensive and defensive missile systems (such as the Iskander, Bastion, Kalibr, and S-400), offensive electronic warfare, special operations forces, and cyber capabilities.

During last year’s major military exercise, Zapad-2017, Russia practiced creating three A2/AD bubbles—in the High North, the Kaliningrad Oblast, and Crimea—to limit NATO’s freedom of maneuver and hinder the deployment of large US military formations.

The whole territory of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, as well as parts of Norway, Romania, and Turkey, are within range of different elements of this Russian A2/AD architecture, which will make it much harder for NATO to defend these areas. A scenario where allied forces must break through Russia’s A2/AD system is highly probable.

Russia’s A2/AD systems are important for two other reasons.

First, a leaner chain of command and streamlined decision-making system mean Russia can act much faster than NATO allowing it to achieve escalation control.

Second, nuclear weapons remain a crucial element of Russia’s escalation dominance strategy. In a situation when allied forces would consider breaking through Russia’s A2/AD system, Russia could threaten to use its nuclear capabilities as a deterrent. Russia’s careful calculations of thresholds and escalation triggers have been more a matter of preference than necessity in a larger military strategy. Through this approach, Russia can control the level of conflict escalation, dominating the mechanism and circumstance of escalations where nuclear elements play a fundamental role.

The NATO summit in Brussels on July 11 and 12 will be the third consecutive one to address the Russian A2/AD threat. Since 2014, NATO has adopted several steps to mitigate some of the challenges linked to A2/AD. NATO’s counter-A2/AD strategy should be based on a strategic six-pack.

First, NATO needs improved advanced defense planning to reflect the constantly changing nature and integration of Russia’s A2/AD capabilities. The Alliance must plan now for entry operations into a non-permissive environment in the future.

Second, NATO’s decision-making processes, including both political and military elements, also must be streamlined. If there is anything the Russian A2/AD systems are vulnerable to, it is the speed of NATO’s actions in the early phases of a crisis. Increasing the speed of recognition, decision, and assembly of forces could considerably diminish the effectiveness of Russia’s A2/AD capabilities.

Third, NATO should increase the number of forces and equipment on allied territory covered by the Russian A2/AD bubbles. There is no better way to deter the A2/AD threat than by stationing additional forces in the theater. This process should be preceded by strengthening the concept of pre-positioning of additional military equipment.

Fourth, readiness, deployability, and sustainability of large military formations, especially ground forces, should be enhanced. NATO’s reinforcement strategy should envisage plans for such formations to break through and operate in an A2/AD environment.

Fifth, the NATO Defense Planning Process should prioritize capabilities, including heavy ones, to counter A2/AD systems on land, in the air, and at sea. These should include electronic warfare, anti-submarine warfare, air defense, Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, as well as precision-guided artillery. These capabilities should be embraced by the cross-domain fires concept.

And, sixth, allied formations must regularly train in a non-permissive environment to practice for potential deployments. Moving troops into a zone covered by A2/AD specifically should be an important element of NATO’s training and exercises.

NATO’s deterrence and defense posture is based on credibility. The Alliance must be able to counter Russia’s A2/AD capabilities if it is to remain a reliable defense alliance and security actor.

This article was originally published by the Atlantic Council.

Dominik P. Jankowski is the newly appointed political adviser and head of the political section at the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Poland to NATO.

The post Six Ways NATO Can Address the Russian Challenge appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Mexico’s President Elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as his best animated self.

After decades of one party rule under the PRI, two standard six year Presidential terms under the PAN and a brisk return to the PRI to remind voters why they ejected them in the first place, Mexicans came out en masse to vote for the ex-mayor of Mexico City, Manuel Lopez Obrador. As the ex-mayor of Mexico City, Mexico’s new President led from the left of the political spectrum as is often the case in many large cities, but won as an independent, apart from Mexico’s main established parties. He challenged the regional and national governments to become a well known quantity running one of the largest cities in the world, and is said to have done a pretty decent job with Mexico City’s transit system during his time as mayor. He is Mexico’s new populist President, and as predicted at the end of populist driven elections, the comparisons to their northern neighbours have begun.

While comparisons to populist leaders lead many to conclude that all populist electoral victories may reflect a US experience, the popularity of Obrador comes with the experience of him as a well-established political voice in Mexican politics. He is well known as a left leaning political voice, but also may likely have to tack back to the centre on several policy files unlike his Canadian counterpart, but remain in the realm of socially oriented policies, unlike his French counterpart. Lopez Obrador’s policies seem to reflect a regional and social division of how they are applied and who they need to serve. He is well aware that raising the cost of business along the border regions and on international firms operating in Mexico will damage their competitiveness as US tax rates have significantly declined. This is not the case in Canada where taxes seem to give birth to more taxes despite the competitive reality of a lower taxes across the border. While this type of policy may seem right of centre, it addresses economic challenges to Mexico is a realistic fashion.

The victory of President elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, often referred to as AMLO, seemed to soak up the political will of those that were tired of years of problems that never seemed to be successfully challenged by established political parties. Like Macron in France, AMLO ran apart from the establishment, also running apart from any record that may be tied to them. Challenging corruption and security issues was paramount, as it always is in Mexico since the PAN turned up the heat on security issues during their time in office and the metaphorical kitchen caught fire, mind you it was a PRI built kitchen. While Macron swiftly moved to the centre in his policy approaches post-election, Lopez Obrador may have to have a creative response to the current NAFTA negotiations if he wishes to maintain his socially oriented policies. Negotiating with an aggressive American side and a Canadian side that are blind to most issues facing Mexico will be a challenge as local politics in the US and Canada are pushing NAFTA and Mexico into dangerous territory. While the North American economy is strong, working out the best deal for Mexico while maintaining a socially balanced agreement that serves the Mexican economy and the unique state of Mexico’s population compared to their NAFTA partners will be an enormous challenge.

Corruption is often why many well established parties lose the electorate, but once elected, the problems that plagued or were even created by the last governments lay on the shoulders of the current government. The characteristic one term, six year Presidential term for Mexican Presidents give a lot of time and opportunity to challenge the status quo, but it is a great challenge that anyone who sees themselves as valuing their country can support if the end of corruption is made into a possibility. The problem with corruption however is that once it is entrenched, it is almost impossible to eliminate. This will be the greatest challenge to AMLO and has been to all government in modern Mexican history.

The post Mexico’s New Six Year Presidential Experiment appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The Summit

Not too long ago, President Trump was promising “fire and fury”, while Kim Jong-Un was assuring a “super-mighty pre-emptive strike”. On June 12, 2018 as cameras flashed and hands shook, both leaders significantly changed their tune with flattery and promises. The Singapore Summit was indeed a historic moment, with North Korea’s promises of denuclearization. However, this seemingly good cheer and cooperative attitude prompts the skeptic to consider what North Korea actually wants and what concessions they will actually make.

This is hardly the first time that North Korea has promised to disarm. In 1985, North Korea signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but by 2003, the nation had withdrawn from their agreement. Since then, North Korea has flip flopped between agreeing to dismantle nuclear weapons, all the while continuing to test and develop nuclear weapons. Even with the recent treaty, it is necessary to look at why Kim Jong-Un signed the agreement in the first place.

Kim Jong-Un’s motive in light of recent negotiations is vital to explore. Typically, with two nations at odds with each other, when something appears too good to be true, it is. Kim Jong-Un’s propaganda over the years has shown missile launches and extreme nationalism. Threats leveraged at the U.S., even up until a few months ago do not indicate the actions of a man who will actually give up the leverage he has. It is natural to conclude that there is a reason for Kim Jong-Un’s seeming cooperation with denuclearization and it becomes important for the interests of national security understand why and how.

It’s Economics, Baby

China’s influence over North Korea has been striking and should not be overlooked. Indeed, it is almost a surprise that China came on board with the rest of the international community in imposing said sanctions. China has had relations with North Korea and maintained their support of stability within the Korean Peninsula. China has even gone as far as to promise to return any escapees who make it across the border back to North Korea. Additionally, there have been reports indicating that over 90% of North Korea’s food and energy supply come from China. China has been working both sides and it is interesting to say the least that they would begin applying pressure to North Korea now.

China’s recent display of economic hegemony and restricting trade of fuel and food vital to North Korea’s survival seems to have largely influenced North Korea’s recent compliance. Combined with condemnation from the international community, threats from the United States, and Kim Jong-Un’s own personal ego have also contributed to the talks with the U.S. and South Korea. Whether or not Kim Jong-Un will follow through on his end of the bargain, although doubtful, is yet to be determined. The agreement both parties signed only provided an outline of goals without a strategy of implementation.

Each player in this game has a clear stake. South Korea wants a united Korea and stability in the region. China wants power and probably nuclear weapons of their own. The United States wants North Korea to denuclearize. Lastly, North Korea wants a lift to the economic sanctions applied to the, and the power that comes with being a world player.

It is this last point that is striking. For a country that has been closed off to most of the world to now emerge and aim for peace is quite interesting. The timing is indicative of the result of economic pressure coming largely from China. Until recently, China seemed to turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crimes of North Korea. This past year, however, China has condemned the testing of nuclear weapons and applied sanctions. China’s massive influence should not be ignored.

Although the Kims have previously indicated that their regime’s survival is based on the development of nuclear weapons, Kim Jong-Un has wisely decided to take a separate approach through diplomatic measures. Yet even with the seemingly positive outcomes of the summit, sanctions will not be lifted until weapons are denuclearized.

The Humanitarian Factor

Under the best of circumstances, Kin Jong-Un will put into action his promise to denuclearize. Economic sanctions will be lifted and North Korea will continue importing gas and exporting coal. Jobs will increase in North Korea and the country may begin to prosper. Perhaps the hotel President Trump believes could be developed will come to fruition and the world will see an increase in tourism in the once restricted nation.

It would be so easy for the world to turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon Kim Jong-Un’s own people. President Trump has stated that economic sanctions will not be lifted until Chairman Kim denuclearizes. Should there also not be some written emphasis on the requirement for North Korea to end their humanitarian crimes? Gulags, reeducation camps, travel restrictions and intolerance of religious groups are just a few examples of oppression that the world knows takes place in North Korea. Just as striking is the mass brainwashing that has taken place. North Korea is a country without choice and without opportunities. Kim Jong-Un may not have established the system, but he has maintained it.

Kim Jong-Un became Supreme Leader of the “Democratic” People’s Republic of Korea in 2011 upon the death of his father Kim Jong-Il. As such, he cannot plead ignorance to the crimes under his regime. With the county’s total control, nothing is done without Kim Jong-Un knowing about it. Surveillance, testimony from survivors and escapees, and credible intelligence all bear testament to these crimes.

It may not be in the immediate best interests of world leaders for Kim Jong Un to be held accountable for the crimes against his people. Despite promises and a signed document, Kim Jong-Un does not have any organization or person to enforce his part of the bargain. If it is the goal of the international community to see North Korea disarm, they will not begin to criticize how he rules his people. This does not mean that light should not be shed on the fact that the international community may be failing the interests of the people of North Korea. A way to start looking out for the interests of the people is to consider what the international community cando.

There is no easy method to address the human rights abuses in North Korea within the immediate future. If admittance is the first step to recovery, North Korea has a long way to go as the Kim Jong-Un dictatorship does not even recognize the human rights abuses taking place. China, again, may have the leverage to play a significant role in the humanitarian cause. Escapees from North Korea into China are known to be returned. China should consider these people as refugees rather than prisoners and find a way to provide asylum. International and human rights organizations could work with bordering countries like China and South Korea in order to provide the aid and resources necessary enable survivor’s recovery and prosperity.

The international community now has the opportunity to begin discussions on the human rights abuses that have taken place within North Korea. Part of the economic discussions should without a doubt include the shutting down of the concentrations camps within North Korea and allowing asylum to survivors. The process of reuniting blood relations between the two Koreas is also a necessary measure of good will that should be emphasized and not forgotten.

Now that North Korea has emerged promising peace and an effort for stability in the region, perhaps negotiations may begin surrounding humanitarian issues. It is not the sole duty of the United States to condemn the action of the North Korean regime, but the responsibility of the international community as a whole. The immediate concern is whether or not Kim Jong-Un will live up to his word and begin to denuclearize. Even if he does follow through on his promise, it will be a long while before Kim Jong-Un is recognized as a legitimate world player.

The post Is North Korea Actually Disarming? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.