Foreign Policy Blogs

The Horn of Africa is among the most congested, eventful, and most volatile geopolitical intersections on earth. It is where the West meets the East in a highly competitive game of strategic positioning for economic or hegemonic advantage.

China and Turkey who, more or less, employ similar soft-power strategies have tangible investments in various countries in the region, including Ethiopia. However, the widespread discontent with Ethiopia’s repressive impulses and its ethnic favoritism that led to a particular ethnic minority (Tigray) to exclusively operate the state apparatus has inspired Arab Spring-like mass protests. These protests have caused serious rancor within the ruling party. It is only a matter of time before this haemorrhaging government might collapse.

So, who is likely to gain or lose from this imminent shockwave in the region’s balance of power?

The Nile Tsunami

Ethiopia — a country previously considered as a stable regional hegemon, a robust emerging market, and a reliable counter-terrorism partner — is on the verge of meltdown, if not long-term civil strife.

Today, the Ethiopian government is caught between two serious challenges of domestic and foreign nature: the Oromo/Amhara mass protests tacitly supported by the West, and the water rights conflict with Egypt, Sudan and Somalia.

Ethiopia is claiming the lion’s share on the Nile that runs through it and other rivers that flow from its highlands for the Grand Renaissance Dam – thus presenting existential threats to the connected nations.

For the third time in three years, the Shabelle River has dried up, putting millions of Somalis at risk of starvation.

But the current government is not ready for a substantive change of guard. The longer the mass protests continue and the minority-led government continues to offer artificial or symbolic gestures of prisoner releases — while declaring a second ‘state of emergency’ in two years— the faster Ethiopia will become destabilised and the faster foreign investments will fizzle away.

Worse — though seemingly unthinkable — the ‘favorite nation’ status granted to Ethiopia after becoming the US’ main partner in the global ‘War on Terroris’ is slowly corroding.

Despite this week’s visit from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the US State Department is gradually turning its back on Ethiopia for a number of reasons; chief among them, is its double-dealings on the South Sudan issue.

Despite the facade of US/China collaboration to end the South Sudan civil war, the geopolitical rivalry between these two giants has been pressuring Ethiopia to pledge exclusive allegiance to one over the other.

With China’s huge investments on Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan’s oil fields – making a choice won’t be too difficult.

The Kenya Factor

Several years ago I wrote an article arguing that the two most stable nations in the Horn (Kenya and Ethiopia) will become more unstable as Somalia becomes more stable.

Today, the Ethiopian government is facing the most serious threat since it took power by the barrel of the gun, and Kenya has a highly polarised population and two presidents ‘elected’ along clan lines.

Kenya — the nerve center of the international humanitarian industry — could just be one major incident away from inter-clan combustion.

The Somalia Factor

The Ethiopian government has launched a clandestine campaign of strategic disinformation intended to fracture or breakup opposition coalitions and recruit or lure potential comrades.

Ethiopian intelligence officers and members of the diplomatic corps together with some ethnic-Somali Ethiopians have been recruiting naive Somali government officials, intellectuals and activists with a Machiavellian disinformation campaign.

Meanwhile, IGAD — Ethiopia’s regional camouflage — calls for an open-borders agreement between member states. Despite broad-based public perception that for a fragile state like Somalia, such an agreement would be tantamount to annexation, some Somali politicians are eagerly carrying its banner.

These kinds of desperate campaigns and the abrupt resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn only underscore the fact that the government’s days are numbered.

The Sudan Factor

Sudan is caught in a loyalty triangle (Ethiopia, Egypt and Turkey) with competing powers. Sudan needs Egypt to address threats faced by the two nations regarding the diminishing access to the Nile by reasserting rights granted through the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty.

It needs Ethiopia to protect China’s economic partnership and to shield President Omar al Bashir from Western harassment through IGAD.

It also needs Turkey for development and for a long-term strategic partnership. Sudan has become the second country in Africa to grant Turkey a military base, with Somalia being the first.

The Eritrea Factor

When neocons dominated US foreign policy and the global ‘War on Terror’ was the order of all orders, Eritrea was slapped with sanctions. It was accused of being the primary funder and weapons supplier to al Shabab.

Today, though neither the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia or Eritrea nor any expert free from Ethiopian influence holds such a view, yet the sanctions have not been lifted.

The Ethiopian lobby and certain influential elements within US foreign policy-making circles continue to label Eritrea as a Marxist rogue state that undermines regional institutions such as IGAD and international ones like the UN Security Council; a closed society that espouses a deep rooted hatred towards the West.

Against that backdrop, the UAE has been investing heavily in Eritrea since 2015 or the beginning of the Yemen war that has created one of the the worst humanitarian disasters. The Emirati military (and its Academi/Blackwater shadow) now operates from a military base in Assab. Whether that’s a Trojan Horse or not, is a different discussion altogether.

Ins And Outs

The current wave of discontent against the Ethiopian government is likely to continue. But, considering how the Tigray has a total control on all levers of power, a transition of power will not be an easy process.

Ethiopia has also created an ethnically Somali counterinsurgency force in the Liyu Police. This ruthless force has already been used against the Oromos as they were used against Somalis of various regions that share a border with Ethiopia.

The extrajudicial killings and human rights violations are well documented. Despite all this, the Oromo and Amhara are set to reach their objectives albeit with bruised and bloody faces.

Will their coalition remain or, due to their historical distrust, will each eventually invoke its constitutional right to secede?

Whatever the outcome, any scenario of civil war or chaos in Ethiopia could put the entire Horn in danger and create a potential humanitarian catastrophe, especially in Somalia.

Meanwhile South Sudan is a lightyear away from sustainable political reconciliation especially since the foreign elements fueling the fire are not likely to stop any time soon. Djibouti remains the host of the most intriguing geopolitical circus. So, that leaves Eritrea as an island of stability in the region.

In the foreseeable future, Turkey could divest her investment out of Ethiopia into Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea. China will diversify her portfolio to include Eritrea. And the US — with no new policy — will continue droning her way through geopolitical schizophrenia.

** This article was first published by TRT World

** On Twitter:@Abukar_Arman

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At this critical hour, when the influence of radical Islamist groups such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Al Nusra Front, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Taliban and Lashkar e-Toiba alongside the oppressive Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi regimes plague the Islamic world, the Hindu, Buddhist, Yezidi, Christian, Druze and Jewish minorities who are presently being oppressed across the Islamic world should unite and stand together against their common persecutors. The minorities of the Islamic world are stronger together than they are divided.

For the radical Islamists and the regimes that support them, it does not matter if one is Jewish, Yezidi, Hindu, Christian, etc. In their worldview, the Hindus are polytheists, the Christians are crusaders, the Yezidis are devil worshippers and the Jews are the sons of apes and pigs. As a result of these perverted beliefs, from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to the Middle East, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Ahmadi Muslims, Sufis, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Yezidis and Druze are presently being gravely persecuted.

In Afrin, Syria, the Yezidis are currently being massacred by Turkish-backed jihadists as we speak. Hundreds of Yezidis have been forced to flee their villages after taking refuge in the Afrin region following the terror implemented by ISIS and other jihadist groups in the country. Turkish-backed jihadists have just arrived in the Afrin region but already, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut reported that they have destroyed many Yezidi temples and converted others into mosques. There have been reports that Turkey has been ethnically cleansing Afrin of Christians, Kurds, Yezidis and other groups, hoping to replace them with Syrian Muslims who are presently refugees in their own country.

Under ISIS, Yezidi men and women too old to be sexually appealing were massacred. ISIS sold Yezidi women and girls into sexual slavery while indoctrinating young Yezidi boys into becoming ISIS cannon fodder. Over 3,000 Yezidi women and girls are still being held captive by ISIS despite the fall of the Caliphate. Christians under ISIS rule faced a similar fate. However, ISIS is not the only Islamist group to have persecuted Christians. According to Father Gabriel Naddaf, a Christian is slaughtered every 5 minutes in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Islamist groups other than ISIS in Syria have forcefully converted Druze to Islam, destroyed Druze holy sites and forced Druze to sell their properties.

The Islamic Republic of Iran hosts the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East but it is one that is gravely oppressed. In Iranian courts, the testimony of a Jew is worth half that of a Muslim. Muslim principals control what Jewish students learn in Hebrew schools, the Shabbat is not respected as a Jewish day of rest and according to Iranian Jewish author Sima Goel, it is difficult for the local Jewish community to obtain Jewish religious items due to the fear that they could somehow be associated with Israel, an enemy state. The constant fear that Jews can be arrested due to their association with Israel permeates Iranian Jewish society and the fear is justified. Recently, the Times of Israel reported that a Jewish grandmother was sentenced to death in Iran merely for running an underground organization that found housing solutions for women with abusive husbands that could not obtain a divorce. It is very likely that the penalty would not have been that severe had the grandmother been Muslim. As a result of this reality, Iranian dissidents report that Jews in Iran are afraid to protest and celebrate their holidays under wraps, with the Iranian Secret Police ensuring that non-Jews cannot join the festivities.

In Bangladesh, Hindus have been raped, murdered, assaulted, kidnapped, forcefully converted to Islam and had their properties seized and their temples desecrated. The indigenous tribes of the Chittangong Hill Tracts, which are mainly Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Animist, face an especially horrific predicament. Routinely, the Bangladeshi military backed by Bengali settlers, who have burned down Buddhist and Hindu temples, have slaughtered and gang raped the population to the level that some describe it as genocidal.

While the conflict between the Bangladeshi government and the indigenous tribes officially ended in 1997, grave persecution of the Hindus of Bangladesh continues to date. According to local sources, JMB and ISIS, who are controlled by Sheikh Hasina, are in the process of ethnically cleansing Hindus and other minorities from the country. Not too long ago, a Hindu man and his wife were tortured within the same country. The victim related: “I cannot stretch my arms and legs. I don’t have any place in my body where he has not touched. Where is the law in the country?” In addition, the Dakeshwari Temple Committee reported that temple property was seized from them and handed over to the Muslims in order to destroy the property.

These are only a few incidents of the grave persecution experienced by the Hindu community in Bangladesh. The systematic persecution experienced by Hindus and other minorities such as Buddhists and Christians in Bangladesh is highlighted on a daily basis. For example, a Hindu man in Bangladesh was recently arrested merely for sharing a report on four women wearing a Burka playing cards in Mecca. According to local sources, no Muslim was arrested for sharing this report but as a Hindu, he was. The World Hindu Struggle Committee claims that Hindus are being ethnically cleansed from the entire region, noting that 39 Indian Hindus and Sikhs were killed by Islamists recently on the Indian Subcontinent merely for being born into the wrong faith.

As bad as the situation is in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, the situation is even direr for the minorities. The Blasphemy Law is spreading terror across the country and Christians as well as other minorities have fallen victim to it. Asia Bibi, a Christian field worker, was sentenced to death for no other reason than saying something that the witnesses around her considered blasphemous. In Pakistan, having a Muslim witness say that blasphemy was committed is sufficient evidence to arrest and charge someone. According to CNN, once blasphemy is alleged, Amnesty International claims that the accused is as good as dead for the legal system offers them zero safeguards to protect them against mob violence or to defend themselves in case they are innocent.

There also have been reports that the Pakistani Army is presently ethnically cleansing both the ethnic and religious minorities from the country at a much faster rate than what exists in Bangladesh. Whether one is Sufi, an Ahmadi Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Baloch, Bahai, Buddhist, Zoroastrian or a member of another minority group, the minorities have no future in Pakistan. Nadeem Nusrat, the president of the Free Karachi Campaign, told the Business Standard: “The Punjabi dominated elite of the Pakistani Army have carried out the systematic ethnic cleansing of every minority group in Pakistan and the intensity of the savagery continues to grow with every passing day. Thousands have been extra-judicially killed. Thousands have disappeared after being picked up by the Pakistani security forces and their families are living in a state of an unending fear and helplessness with no knowledge of the whereabouts of their kins.”

According to Shipan Kumer Basu, the President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, “The Hindu residents of the Sindh Province in Pakistan have suffered a serious calamity. These people from the border areas came to India seeking shelter but no one did anything to let them stay in the country. They have been sent back to Pakistan. Upon being returned, there, they are being pressured to convert to Islam. They are told that if they do not convert, the family members including the women cannot be saved. If they don’t agree, it will be ruthless torture. This is the situation in the Sindh Province, where more than 500 Hindus are being forced to change their religion.”

Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Relations and Public Diplomacy, has emphasized: “The Hindu minority and the other minorities especially those living in the Middle East and in Asia are persecuted and threatened with ethnic cleansing. It is our obligation in the free world to stand against any attempt to harm the Hindus and other minorities such as the Buddhists, Christians, Druze, Yezidis and others.” The time has long since passed for the voices calling for justice in the free world united with the minorities in the Middle East and Asia as one voice seek to end the human rights abuses and to begin a new reality, where minority rights will be respected. As the Passover Haggaddah states, “Now we are slaves. Next year, may we be free men.”

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Talk to them?  How?

Whatever the impact of a new national security team, and whether or not President Trump actually meets with Kim Jong Un in the next few months, the fundamental problems with North Korea remain the same. Former U.S. negotiator Evans Revere notes that we have heard Kim’s line before. Still, the atmospherics around  around the question are changing, and an unnecessarily negative response risks  painting the U.S. as the  belligerent party.

U.S. diplomacy might introduce a new note to the discourse with a two-part message. This would start with a fantasy scenario: If somehow North Korea became a state that served its public, our drive to isolate them would start to weaken, South Korea’s fears would abate, and the international community would find dealing with the Kim dynasty less distasteful. Such development of their regime into a responsible state would reduce tensions and make nuclear weapons less important, to them and so to us, whether or not they keep them.

Of course we know full well that North Korea will remain a brutal dictatorship, that its strategic aim has long been to take over the whole peninsula.  The purported diplomatic opening is most likely a stratagem or outright ruse.

So the second part of the message would point out the fragility of North Korea’s regime. With or without their nukes, it will be destroyed in any war, probably with a nasty death for Kim Jong Un himself, leaving only the question of how many others are killed in the process.

We should remind Kim that the nature of his dynasty supports our case for economic sanctions, and will help us to isolate them further. We have not mounted a campaign to undermine the dynasty, heinous as it is. But even if the nuclear question is somehow resolved, their brutality and belligerence will still be known; they will remain isolated, with or without nuclear weapons.

This reminder should invoke our half-century military deterrence of the Soviet Union, a much more powerful regime, and how its own tyranny killed it from within. The price for keeping their nuclear program is our concerted effort to inflict costs like those that hastened the Soviet collapse. We may lack the capacity to force North Korea to give up its weapons now, but the regime’s best guarantee of survival is to reduce their repugnance.

We don’t really know what drives former-Swiss-student Kim Jong Un, or any North Korean. In any case, just as rejecting an invitation to dialogue risks making us look belligerent, raising the fantasy scenario clarifies our true motive, to protect free people and advocate freedom. The simple observations of this message suggest a positive long-run possibility while ceding nothing. They are not a negotiating agenda, so raise no questions of reducing our military exercises. They do remind all that North Korea does have another option to ensure their security, however difficult; the onus of rejecting it falls on them.

Kim would have to craft a response. In a world that knows his regime’s tyrannical nature, he would either have to cut its weapons program, initiate real measures to liberalize, or admit to a disdain for any standard of decent government. The regime likely won’t bother with the fantasy scenario, and keep discourse in its current traces. But if somehow they pick up the idea, there may be some basis, over time, for reducing tension and fear.

The message can be transmitted by a President.  But the idea cannot be implemented by negotiations in the near term. North Korea’s history does not justify any tradeoff of commitments, to reduce sanctions on our side in exchange for certain policies on theirs. We could not, and should not offer, to tell them how to be more free — which could be taken as imposing our interests. But if the world sees basic commitments to rights, in unfettered views of their society, negotiating anything would become easier.

The idea of course carries risks. One is that North Korea makes enough cosmetic change to loosen South Korean resolve. The South Korean left has pursued conciliatory gestures for political purposes in the past, witness the cash-for-meetings to the north that yielded Kim Dae Jung a Nobel Peace Prize. Another risk is that our other policies worldwide fail to convey the priority we put on freedom and peace. But if credibility in tough talk to North Korea makes us tighten our self discipline, it’s good for America.

Furthermore, the proposed message should resonate for an America aching to revive its moral authority. We are most influential when we project our core nature. Should we move North Korea either to cut its nuclear program or evolve toward responsible governance, so much the better. Nothing else seems to be working.

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People walk by a poster of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for the upcoming presidential election, in Cairo, Egypt, March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is slated to win elections on March 28. His only contender, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, is someone who has not only called himself a “big supporter” of Sisi, but has also worked as member, until he announced candidacy in the last minutes of a final deadline, on the president’s re-election campaign team. Other contenders, who have been the likes of a former military officer, a former prime minister, and a human rights lawyer, have all either been arrested or forced to back down.

This year’s dummy election is, of course, the last of the anomaly that gives us a glimpse into Sisi’s repressive one-man rule. Under Sisi, the government has passed a series of restrictive laws that has effectively paralyzed civil society. In 2017, for instance, the government passed a law that threatened members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—like human rights groups—with criminal prosecution if they snubbed or went around restrictive rules.

In 2016, Sisi’s government brutally beat protesters who demonstrated against a deal that transferred Egyptian islands to Saudi Arabia. The demonstrations were especially important because in some ways, it revealed the wishes of Egyptians, who have time and again, expressed their ambition to gain political rights and achieve social justice as much as they have called for  an improvement to their standards of living.

When the wave of popular protests of 2011 felled Hosni Mubarak from power, one man, Wael Ghonim, as F. Gregory Gause III noted in Foreign Affairs, appeared as exactly the kind who could succeed in post-Mubarak Egypt. Ghonim spoke both Arabic and English, was educated at the American University in Cairo, and most significantly, worked as an executive at Google. Still, Ghonim traded economic opportunity in exchange for political freedom. He set up a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said,” in memory of an Egyptian activist who was beaten to death by the police, and fomented the critical turning that led people to rise against the Mubarak regime.

In addition to people’s demands, there is something to be said of social movements in Egypt, and more generally, in Arab countries. Most social movement theories build on the experiences of the West, and largely ignore critical aspects that punch momentum into movements in other countries. Social movement theorists, over the years, have, no doubt, realigned their thinking and contended to the fact that political opportunities, like the chance for people to act together—and not structural factors, like formal organizations—have been the real harbingers of change. Yet, as Jeff Goodwin, a leading scholar on social movements has explained, protests that entail a good element of “constructionism” or the way in which people construct their own history under circumstances that they are able to make the most of, have been largely underscored in social movement studies. Political opportunity continues to be studied against structural conduits, and social movement theories continue to retain a structural bias. Thus, Islamism, as a social movement that highlights the citizens prolonged efforts to gain political rights, along with their practise of Islam, falls dead on arrival. Neither politicians in Egypt, nor Western policy experts, can grapple adequately with the marriage of Islam and modernity.

The lack of understanding of this concept of social movement, and therefore the lack of support for “alternative modernity” from the international community, can be one way to explain why nascent democratic movements in Egypt have risen as quickly as they have died. The Kefaya movement of 2004 offers an example of this. Although the movement could not sustain itself in the long run, Kefaya, which means “enough” in Arabic, touched on the cornerstone of the people’s movement that ultimately forced Mubarak to open up presidential elections in 2005. It was also the first anti-Mubarak demonstrations in Egypt. Egyptians wanted an end to inheritance of power (Mubarak was set to transfer power to his son, Gamal), and demanded free, fair, and competitive elections (Mubarak held office for four consecutive terms in “yes-or-no” referendums). Kefaya was successful, in the beginning, because it brought people from all swaths of the society, from secularists and Islamists, from people of different social backgrounds, to demand structural change. The movement, like the protests of 2011, built itself from the bottom-up. Leaders communicated with protestors on their cell phones, instead of announcing their agendas from traditional headquarters. However, internal differences, such as differing interpretations of democracy among leaders, ultimately contributed to the end of Kefaya.

Today, Sisi has shown no sign of granting civil liberties to its citizens. Much of the talk lately has focused on Sisi’s agenda to revive the economy, and while he deserves some credit for it, the common man and woman, who have largely borne the brunt of harsh austerity policies, are still awaiting their turn to reap the benefits. The international community, now in disarray, has lost its power to condemn Sisi’s nationalistic tendencies. In that case, Sisi should remember that, the more he presses ahead and suppresses political will, the more likely he drives momentum to the cause.

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In this video grab provided by RU-RTR Russian television via AP television on Thursday, March 1, 2018, Russia’s new Sarmat intercontinental missile is shown at an undisclosed location in Russia. RU-RTR Russian Television via AP

Russia had a bigly moment recently when announcing their new invincible weapons systems that use new nuclear propulsion systems and travel at hypersonic speeds. The claim that these weapons are unable to be intercepted by modern air defense systems could likely be true. Beyond the testing of American THAAD interceptor systems, there are no extremely reliable anti-air systems in the US or NATO arsenal that would give anyone much confidence in preventing a ballistic missile strike. The THAAD and tests to upgrade and perfect its system capabilities are ongoing, and while they have been deployed to counter a possible North Korean missile threat, it is unclear if they would able to stop even lower grade North Korean ballistic threats when multiple warheads are involved.

The tradition of anti-air missiles often was linked with Soviet programs that arose from a generation that had suffered invasion during the Second World War. Defense of life and society during Russia’s Great Patriotic War produced a skeptical outlook on foreign interference in Russia and a dedicated defense strategy during the years of the Cold War. Even today, Moscow is ringed by an Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system to counter any ballistic missile threats coming from abroad, and it is most likely the case that their Anti-Ballistic Missile defense ring is fairly effective. From the infamous SA-2 SAM that punished American planes over Vietnam, to the SA-6 that changed strategies during Middle Eastern wars, Soviet and Russian air defense has a long tradition of producing viable missile shields against airborne threats. The motivation for these generations of programs is the belief that invasion is a possibility in the future as it was in the past. Out of necessity, they had to be effective.

The need for reliable defense likely motivated the production of effective Israeli systems like Iron Dome and the new Arrow system, but the added element of maintaining a low conflict scenario also contributed greatly to the political aspects of Iron Dome. When there is an immediate and impossible threat, the ability to stop aggression via missile strikes gives a great deal of breathing room to policy makers who do not want to escalate a conflict past the point of no return. A huge motivation for increased anti-air missile tests does not come solely from Russia’s recent announcement, but allows for the capability of extending a cooling off period in tense situations when there are little to no causalities due to an effective defense structure. While having Sarmat nuclear missiles may place Russia in a better position to strike US targets first, the US will be able to develop similar systems fairly rapidly. What might serve a skeptical Russian side and a nervous American side best is the ability to shoot down missile threats effectively, giving space for political negotiations where negotiations are the only way to achieve a lasting peace.

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A recent article in the Atlantic penned by Eliot Cohen, a former State Department luminary and currently Director of the Strategic Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, lamented the collapse of the global elite and its inability to offer anything of substance to a world in turmoil. He cited the political entropy recently on display at the Munich Security Conference, one of the most anticipated events of the year, at which breathless attendees jockey to be seen.

The picture he paints is of a perennial group of button-down government leaders, solipsistic, superficial policy wonks, and shoulder-rubbing wannabes, most of them oblivious to the notion of being held to account let alone shaking things up with an original idea.

Cohen’s is a weighty name, but his is not the only one to break the silence. In his recent book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Ed Luce, chief U.S. columnist for the Financial Times, tore into the World Economic Forum at Davos as “consistently one of the last places to anticipate what is going to happen next”. He opined that it “has made a brand of its blow-dried conventional wisdom”.

If Cohen and Luce are right, it is little wonder that large sections of the Western public have turned their backs. The trouble is that, in principle at least, major international gatherings that bridge government, military and business leaders with policy institutes, media outlets and grass roots organizations should be vital pieces of our democratic architecture. The current stand-off between the people and the elites is unsustainable. We can’t go on like this. What is to be done?

As advisers to the Halifax International Security Forum, North America’s leading foreign affairs and security conference, it is not our place to tell other major international gatherings such as Davos and Munich how to conduct themselves. Nor, by implicit comparison, do we pass judgment on the success or otherwise of Halifax. But there is a clear public interest in getting this issue right. In talking about what Halifax aspires to achieve that is what we are speaking to, and in so doing, we are open about where we ourselves have fallen short of the mark.

A case in point arose a couple of years ago when the Halifax hierarchy was startled to be hit by a tweet, shot right out of the middle of the audience of a plenary session, decrying the all male panel. Ouch. But as Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, pointed out at the most recent conference last November, inclusivity is a strategic imperative. This is not about political correctness, as Stoltenberg’s colleague on that panel, Canadian Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan, added. The (rather obvious) lesson for us was that major conferences earnestly in search of innovative solutions can’t expect people to engage with them if half the planet is excluded from the get-go.

Above all else, Halifax is a values-based forum for democracies. We are all too aware that much of the world’s population suffers under despotism, or inhabits a twilight landscape between democracy and tyranny. But Peter Van Praagh, President of the Forum, and his team are not ignoring the rest of the world by not seeking to replicate the General Assembly of the United Nations. We shouldn’t try to be all things to all people. Inclusivity is not the same as relativism. Democracy is better than tyranny. Halifax, we believe, demonstrates that there are certain debates and dialogues that are best undertaken among interlocutors who share the same core values, ones that support a liberal world order underpinned by a rules-based system.

At such a starting point, there is still a mountain to climb. How can we remain fresh? We are probably not alone in agonizing about that, and agonize we do. Given that every organization ultimately tends towards stasis and inertia, one technique Halifax employs is to hold fast to a policy that at least half of the 300 participants be new to the forum each year. It’s painful to turn away past participants who want to return, and it’s never personal. But fresh thinking and new perspectives require constant renewal.

Obviously, the death knell of freshness is fear of controversy. But stakeholders can sometimes get nervous about contentious topics. Everyone who has run anything from a high school debating society upwards can see the challenge: what if you start saying things your funders dislike? Again, that is where values come in. Criticism is central to a functioning democracy. If you’re frightened of controversy, you’re frightened of what makes a democracy come alive. Don’t accept stakeholders that can’t handle that. Be prepared to take the hit.

Halifax, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, has been fortunate in working with myriad governments of different political stripes from around the world. The vital role non-partisanship plays to our mission has been further buttressed over the years by Congressional delegations often led by John McCain for the Republicans and high ranking Democrats such as Tim Kaine, and Jeanne Shaheen.

Nonpartisanship is the right approach, but it is still not enough. One of the great criticisms of political elites is that whether from the Right or the Left, these days they all sound the same. Halifax is sensitive to that, which is why we actively seek individuals unafraid to rock the boat, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman, who took last year’s conference by storm on an all women security panel. Likewise, discussions featuring Google’s Eric Schmidt on how new technologies, from AI to quantum computing, shape the geopolitical landscape inspired spirited debate and challenged entrenched assumptions.

So, yes, there is no doubt that global elites must shoulder their share of responsibility for the daunting challenges that face us, from climate change to the rise of neo-nationalism, and the festering of bloody, regional conflicts. And, of course, gatherings of global leaders alone cannot solve all of the world’s problems.  But through open and inclusive dialogue, a commitment to renewal, and earnest debate, hope and progress can yet take stronger root. Later this year, in Halifax Nova Scotia, people who share that commitment will huddle together, working on a brighter future for the democratic world.

Robin Shepherd is Senior Advisor to the Halifax International Security Forum. Dean Fealk, an international attorney, is its General Counsel and a Fellow of Truman National Security Project. Views expressed are their own.

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Photo Credit: World Hindu Struggle Committee

Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi has declared that it is time for the world to act against the systematic destruction of Hindu homes.

The late Elie Wiesel once proclaimed, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” In recent days in Bangladesh, Hindu homes have been attacked and vandalized. According to Shipan Kumer Basu, the President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, the Bangladeshi government systematically encourages the destruction of Hindu property and blames the wanton act of violence on its political opponents. Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi called upon the world to stand up against this and to force the Bangladeshi government to stop permitting attacks on Hindu homes!

According to local reports, the Hindu homes that were attacked and vandalized recently occurred in the background of a local dispute. Following an arbitration meeting over the dispute, local sources reported that Chairman of Chatlarmi Sheikh Hizam Uddin and his people attacked the Hindus during the meeting. These reports claim that after the Hindus came out of the meeting, Uddin ordered two to three hundred people including Awami League leader Kishore Majumder and Rajat Roy to attack and vandalize the Hindu homes. Following the incident, Uddin denied the allegations against him and blamed the incident upon local UP member Paroshosh Mandal.

In another instance, local sources reported that a family home was looted in Shimoli. During the incident, they claim that an entire family was kidnapped and all of the valuables in their home were robbed including gold ornaments and money. The stolen goods were supposedly worth 36 taka and it took them two truckloads to take everything away. The abductors did not stop there. Later on, according to the report, they tried to kill Mihir Biswas by strangling him with something like a telephone cable around his neck. They beat him heavily and dragged him out of his home. They then proceeded to break a statue of Kali and left the broken part of the statue lying on the floor.

Not too long ago, local sources reported that another Hindu from Jaleshwar village was found dead with his legs and hands tied up. His home was vandalized as well. In addition, a Hindu home in Sarankhola was burned to the ground. Furthermore, a Hindu temple in Sirajdikhan was attacked and two idols were desecrated. According to the president of the temple, metal and copper plates, dishes, glasses, gold chains and other goods worth tens of thousands of dollars were looted. A temple is a spiritual home and yet in Bangladesh, local sources noted that holy places belonging to minorities are under attack.

While the culprits hate Hindus, they have not spared poor animals belonging to Hindus. According to local sources, two goats recently were burned to death in Hindu areas. In addition, there are reports of cows being burned. Radical Muslims in Bangladesh often burn cows due to the sanctity of this animal in the Hindu faith. It is reported that the homes of the dead are not even spared from these cruelties. According to local sources, the Kali Puja Cemetery was attacked recently. According to these sources, during the attack, the assailants started to harass a group of Hindu girls and then proceeded to beat up a grandmother before destroying the tools of a temple and vandalizing a house on the premises of the cemetery.

Basu is demanding that this cruel phenomenon of minority oppression come to an end in his country: “We cannot tolerate the vandalism of our homes, holy places and cemeteries in Bangladesh. We mourn over the plight of the wounded gods and goddesses as well as the desecration of our homes and the destruction of our property.”

Basu blames the Bangladeshi government for the recent atrocities: “While the Bangladeshi government likes to blame their political adversities or local Islamists, in reality, ISIS is the culprit and the Bangladeshi government has given them freedom of action to operate in. ISIS recently murdered a Hindu monk yet the Bangladeshi government denies that ISIS is active in Bangladesh. But we know better than to believe a government that recently arrested the main opposition leader Khaleda Zia, who just got HC bail and who is working to cleanse Hindus and other minorities from the country. It is time for the international community to pull in the reigns on Sheikh Hasina’s dictatorial rule. It is time for this grave injustice against the Hindu community to come to an end!” As Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi stressed: “It is our obligation in the free world to stand against anyone who stands up against the Hindu minority.”

The post Israeli Druze diplomat: Time to protest the destruction of Hindu homes! appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

There’s a scene in the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War when the titular character, a congressman played by Tom Hanks, tries to make a case to his congressional peers. He wants to allocate one million dollars toward building a school in Afghanistan, as a way for the United States to combat Soviet propaganda in the country. In response, one of his colleagues asks: “Afghanistan? Is that still going on?” seconds later, another quip follows: “We’re a little busy now reorganizing Eastern Europe, don’t you think?”

The film takes place in the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War. But even today, a similar scenario of political amnesia is playing out. In 2008, the entire transatlantic community, including Brussels and Washington, condemned Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Senator John McCain, known for his blistering critique of the Kremlin, famously declared: “Today, we are all Georgians.” But now, 10 years on, a familiar sort of forgetting has left Georgia, a country of geopolitical importance, jammed in a state of development limbo—one that actors neither inside nor outside the country seem to be in much of a hurry to remedy any time soon.

How to pluck out the heart of this particular mystery? In a sense, the current reality shouldn’t be all that surprising. After all, the West itself is facing challenges of the magnitude it hasn’t seen since the end of the Cold War. Its political, economic and even philosophical underpinnings seem to be losing legitimacy. Understandably, it’s in no mood to be a political cheerleader for a seemingly obscure country like Georgia.

Indeed, gone are the days of unfettered democracy promotion and calls for  NATO membership, even though Brussels, with support from Washington, had allowed for some progress in its relationship with Georgia. The issue isn’t necessarily the level of global support for Georgia, critical as it may be. Rather, it’s the carte blanche the West has traditionally given to Georgian governments. Which is to say: Western support for Georgia on the international stage might now be diluted by internal dynamics, ones unique to the long history of Sovietization of Georgia’s socio-political culture.

This domestic development has, in turn, cleaved Georgia into two entities: a pro-Western country on the one hand, and a post-Soviet one on the other. Yet the West has largely ignored this duality, fueling a mood of forgetfulness that in ways mirrors the one that came to beleaguer Afghanistan. (And the consequences have been severe: As the journalist Remy Tumin recently reported for The New York Times, “a truce was ostensibly called in 2008, but… ask any Georgian in the area and they will insist the conflict never really ended.”)

Yet this isn’t to point the finger of blame for Georgia’s glacial modernization solely at foreign powers. When it comes to Georgia’s relations with Russia, old habits appear to die hard. More specifically, the country hasn’t seemed to learn from the mistakes of its second and third presidents: Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Saakashvili, respectively. During their tenure as president—Shevardnadze between 1995 and 2003, and Saakashvili between 2003 and 2012—both men transferred strategic economic assets to clandestine Russian-Georgian business groups. On top of that, Washington had to interfere to prevent the sale of the main Georgian oil pipeline to Gazprom, a large Russian company. What was perhaps most disturbing, however, was that Saakashvili—the great modernizer, and a tireless fighter against Putin’s regime—sold off almost the entirety of Georgia’s economy. Far from modernizing these sectors, Russian businesses drove them into the ground.

Today, these sectors languish in inefficiency, and they’re run by what’s been dubbed by the literature as “red directors.” They’re also drowning in dilettantism, raising questions about favoritism and corruption. It seems that over seven decades of Soviet dictatorship have eroded some people’s ability to distinguish between adversaries and friends.

Other internal actors have derailed Georgia’s development, too. For one, billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his money in Russia, has decided to maintain the status quo. The political environment he’s created has worsened the investment climate in the country. Ivanishvili was previously prime minister of Georgia, but stepped down after only one year in office. (The political party he financed with his money, the Georgian Dream party (GD), beat Saakashvili in parliamentary elections in 2012, effectively removing him from power.) While in office, he summoned the heads of Georgian companies and publicly scolded them for distorting the rules of the game in their favor. But that was merely a PR stunt, and it was the extent to which he cared to address Georgia’s clandestine, post-Soviet business landscape.

Now, as a private citizen, Ivanishvili is widely believed to be an unofficial ruler of the country, working through a network comprised of his relatives, members of the GD, and popular support he receives from those social elites who are beholden to him (mainly because he still pays their salaries and serves as a sort of arbiter of their professional careers). More startling, he also arguably wields the real power behind current Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, though he still falls miserably short on his promises to develop a vibrant civil society and bolster human rights.

A decade after Georgia captured international attention, its development seems to be on no one’s mind—neither on the minds of international actors, nor on the minds of most domestic actors, who seem to care more about keeping their hands on the levers of power.

Both Brussels and Washington ought to use their political clout to reduce the crippling legacy of Soviet influence, which any wily person can mold to boost himself above institutions, creating a personal brood of followers. At the same time, it’s Georgia’s government that must ultimately do the grunt work of cleaning up its backyard. In the private sector, the government must create greater transparency of key economic sectors. It must also carve out a sense of social and political fairness (to see why, look at how Ivanishvili’s feud with the current Georgian president, Giorgi Margvelashvili, speaks to how he’s willing to place himself above his office; he’s yet to forgive Margvelashvili for allegedly disobeying directives, and has accused him of selling out to the opposition party).

Georgia’s political elites will likely avoid scrutiny from the West, but they’d be wise to remember that their fellow Georgians have a penchant for elevating politicians to the status of a deity—only to condemn them later with an equal and opposite intensity.

Giorgi Lasha Kasradze is an analyst focusing on political risk and a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The post Georgia on No One’s Mind appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The National People’s Congress meeting that kicked off on March 5 has ushered in some revolutionary stances . From the constitutional amendment to the two-term limit that was proposed by the Communist party on February 25 , the prospect of the abolition of the term limits looms large on the horizon. This indicates that the Chinese President Xi Jinping could stay on indefinitely beyond the expiration of his term in 2023. Such an act entails the continuity of Xi Jinping’s leadership which gives him greater control over the levers of power and money that underscores Xi’s standing as China’s most dominant political figure in decades . The move represents a dramatic departure from the rules and norms that nudges the country towards a kind of centralisation of power where China’s state-controlled media have sought to justify the move as one that guarantees stable leadership as China enters a period which Xi has identified as crucial in his vision to restore the country to its rightful place as a global power.’

The removal of term limits that was long the topic of speculation in the lead up to the 19th Party Congress is nevertheless audacious . From having his thought enshrined in the Constitution in a way that was only done by Mao Zedong previously , his failure to identify a successor at the 19th party Congress in October ,Xi Jinping believes that there is no other leader who is capable of pushing and achieving his vison . Recognising the imperative to reform the Party and state institutions which forms an integral part of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics the Politburo maintained that reforms should be implemented to strengthen the Party leadership and fulfil the requirements of the new era .In this sense the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set forward the agenda where the text mentions that the proposed two-term limit will be conducive to safeguarding the authority and the unified leadership of the CCP Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core  and strengthen the leadership as China realised its major economic and social development goals under Jinping over the past five years .  This marks an end to institutionalised leadership that was put in place under Deng Xiaoping and makes all the talk about the rule of law under the party at the 18th Party Congress ‘ fourth plenum somewhat quaint in retrospect.

A recap of the past

Deng Xiaoping enacted China’s term limit in 1982 during his tenure as China’s paramount leader in the 80’s as part of his effort to ensure that China was never  again subjected to a crushing dictatorship like that of Chairman Mao and the turmoil it occasioned. Breaking from the West ‘s system of governance which constituted epithets like balance and checks, Deng instituted a form of governance with Chinese characteristics designed to prevent the recurrence of a cultish like obedience that was shown towards Mao during that time.

Jinping’s quest to firm up China’s presence in the world

 Prior to the elimination of the term limits the approval of the enshrining of Mr. Xi’s eponymous political theory  Xi Jinping Thought for the New Era of Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics  as a new component of the party’s guide for action signifies that Xi is put on a doctrinal pedestal along with Mao and Deng which reaffirms that his reign would be supreme. Xi Jinping became the leader of China in 2012 where he espoused his Chinese doctrine of national rejuvenation. Since he assumed the mantle of leadership Jinping demonstrated that he is someone who does not shy away from breaking conventions . From methodically purging his potential rivals including Sun Zhengcai and Bo Xilai through anti-corruption campaign to assuming prominent positions related to military and national security Jinping is undertaking stronger stances to reframe the domestic structure of the country which reflects his overarching ambition to firm up his presence in the Communist Party. An appropriate instance includes Xi’s attitude to use his first term in office to monopolize an array of leadership positions reflected in the creation of several so-called leading groups which he heads to drive policies across a range of areas including finance, cybersecurity and relations with Taiwan . Although Mr. Xi was already provided the title  guojiya zhuxi which can be translated as state chairman , it is clear through Xi’s intention that he considers himself as  a transformational figure leading China and the party into new era when the Communist party conferred upon him the designation lingxiu or   China’s core leader that placed him on the same pedestal as Mao, Deng Xioping and Jiang Zemin . This is commensurate with Jinping’s position where he believes that it is only through attaining domestic stability and subsequently a stable relationship would be possible for China to reclaim its rightful place as a global power.

Apropos to Jinpin’s political theory his ardent desire to restore China’s eminence as a global power in the international arena got adequately reflected in  his statement at the historic 19th Communist Party Congress meeting. Outlining  two broader goals for China where first it will build a moderately prosperous society by 2020 and second  it will become a fully developed rich and powerful nation by 2050 , Jinping heralded the dawn of the new era of Chinese politics and power where the world witnessed Xi’s waxing poetic about the priorities of rejuvenating Chinese power and realising the Chinese dream . Although Jinping majorly stressed on domestic achievements , goals and challenges but for any foreign policy geek with an insight into present Chinese policy making will understand that his speech provides crucial insights into how China’s strongman leader seeks to advance his country’s role in the world.

A major takeaway for global community is Xi is extremely confident in China’s growing national power that has major implications for global politics . This was succinctly captured in Xi’s statement where he proclaimed that our Party, our country , our forces and our nation have changed in ways without precedent. The Chinese nation with an entirely new posture now stands tall and firm in the East . Against this backdrop of growing Chinese interest under Jinping’s leadership the assessment stands that the international community will face an increasingly assertive China . As was stated by a Beijing based political analyst right after the move to end term limits where he disclosed that  if we ‘ re beginning to see a much more aggressive international posture by china , expect more of that , turned upto 11  .

 The Chinese juggernaut rolls on

A corollary  of Jinping’s fervent commitment to establish Chinese prominence is the retrenchment of the US noticeable through Mr . Trump’s promise to Make America Great Again that smacks of a retreat into unilateralism which spells trouble for the fraying international liberal order. Two major instances in this regard include the evolving  Chinese maritime strategy where it has shifted from conducting coastal defense and near seas operations to far seas protection that underlie the expansion of China’s naval capabilities through deployment and berthing facilities under its String of Pearls strategy in the Indo-Pacific and secondly its colossal One belt one road ‘ global infrastructure initiative.

A stark reminder of the China’s increasingly expansive international agenda comprises of the recent phenomena of conclusion of the construction of the contested Spratly islands as part of its land reclamation activities . Through a host of installations which includes a ‘ 3 km long runway, large naval -grade berthing facilities and a range of military defences such as anti-aircraft guns and close -in weapons system (CIWS) ‘ reports on the built-up infrastructure in the islands suggest that the China has reclaimed almost seven  of the islands which houses surveillance measures. The reclaimed islands in the Spratleys are not merely fortified flag markers for China’s claim for sovereignty in the disputed South china sea but  they serve as a network of platform that strengthens Chinese military capabilities and  significantly enhances China’s projection of military power in the region.

Further on another accord through its Belt and Road initiative China under the garb of serving to enhance economic interconnectivity and facilitating development across regions including Eurasia, East Africa and more than 60 partner countries it is pursuing what analysts in the US has termed as a predatory economics. Through aggressively employing economic tools to advance its strategic interests Beijing has extended huge loans to financially weak states and ensnared in vicious debt traps that enhances its leverage . To exemplify of the 68 countries identified as potential borrowers in the BRI  23 were found to be  already at a quite high risk of debt distress  according to the Washington-based Centre for Global Development (CGD), a think tank. Moreover the report also determined that eight of those 23 countries would potentially face difficulties in servicing their debt because of future financing related to BRI projects that includes countries such as Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos , the Maldives, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan and Tajikistan . This not  solely increases Beijing’s economic clout in International politics but gives a clear signal about the principle that is guiding China’s rise in global politics which is buying friendship through its economic heft. In other words co-opting countries to expand its sphere of influence both in Asia and the world .

What to do ?

Although reigning between the established superpower predominantly the US and rising power like China has not led to a full scale war yet the recent constitutional amendment poses an inflection point for liberal nations. From broadening its core interests by asserting sovereignty claims contrary to international law, continuing with its military expansive tendencies in the Indo-Pacific region , pursuing a predatory form of economics and colonial type exploitative policies in dealing with developing nations that are clear manifestations of Xi’s growing thirst for power has raised the chance of devastating instability. A takeaway in regard to China’s rise under Jining that despite there have been concerted attempts by nations in global platform to present initiatives like the Quad but to counteract the China’s increasing belligerence both within Asia and the world the current trajectory shows that it is going to be a long winding road before these come to fruition .

Sreeja Kundu is presently a researcher working at the Strategic Studies Program in the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank based in New Delhi, India. She has graduated with an M.Sc in International Relations from the University of Bristol in November 2016. She tweets @SreejaKundu

The post The ascent of the dragon continues – Implications for global politics appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Allow me to make two observations before I turn to my remarks. The Mission statement of the Forum’s website asks that we be honest and direct.  And so, although I do not wish to appear overly harsh in my observations, nevertheless I am obliged to be frank and open.  Otherwise, why have a conference such as this at all?  Also, I want to emphasize that when I speak about the “West”, or use the term “we”, I do not at all include the people in this room who are not from Ukraine, and who know and understand far more than the general citizenry of the countries that they represent.  They and their institutions have labored tremendously on the very issues that we are so concerned about, and deserve much credit.

“Why Putin Likes the West” may seem to be an anomalous title for my remarks.  After all, what we incessantly hear is that Putin is blaming the West for everything.  We hear about Russia’s “lost pride,” that it is “humiliated,” “embittered,” “insulted,” “lost,” “confused.”  One of the advisors to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the last presidential campaign said, “Putin has been trying hard to find love, appreciation and recognition.”

The demonstrable facts are opposite.  Fiona Hill is formerly from the Brookings Institution, a well-recognized think tank in Washington, and is now with the National Security Council in the White House. She is recognized in many circles as a Russia and Putin expert. A few years ago, she wrote a book about Putin where she said that Putin is “unable to understand the mindset of Americans and Europeans and their political dynamics.”

For someone who doesn’t understand us, however, Putin has done quite well. Let’s just take one example. We have his money in our bank.  We hold the key. Yet he brazenly expands his aggression.  Russia–one country–taunts, menaces, intimidates, and threatens with nuclear war the collective of Western democracy.  And Putin doesn’t in the least feel that his money is at risk. Why not? Where does he get his self-assurance from?  We gave it to him.

Putin is not brilliant. But he knows and understand very well the hundred-year history of relations with the West. He has identified patterns of Western behavior, thinking and emotions that are clear, predictable, and reliable.  His conclusions, based on those patterns, are also themselves predictable.  He sees repeated strategic blunders by the West, squandered opportunities, and an inability and absence of political will to think and act strategically, in an affirmative, and not a reactive, manner. But how can this possibly be the case if, as we tell ourselves, it was the West that “won the Cold War”? We’ll return to that question later.

What is the history that Putin sees? In 1918, Ukraine declared independence, was recognized by Lenin and was promptly invaded. Ukraine turned to the West, requesting aid in the form of surplus WWI equipment and medication. Ukraine was denied. Ukraine warned that in a generation the West would be confronted directly by Russia. Ukraine was ignored. Moscow of course conquered and occupied Ukraine, and its control of Ukraine was pivotal to the formation and viability of the Soviet Union.

In 1933, the United States extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union at the same time that Moscow was using starvation to break the back of Ukrainian resistance, thereby ensuring the regime’s survival. In the eyes of the world, recognition represented America’s legitimization, acceptance and approval of Stalin’s murderous regime. Furthermore, this was legitimization, acceptance and approval by America, the devil of the capitalist world, the intended victim of the very regime that had declared itself the leader in the world campaign to destroy capitalist America.  How should Putin assess our strategic sense?

In World War II, the West liberated Europe, but only part of it. We facilitated one tyrant, Hitler’s partner, replacing the other.  The West in effect measured the dimensions of the Iron Curtain.  America’s Lend/Lease program delivered to the Kremlin far more equipment and material, both in type and quantity, than necessary for military needs. Unfortunately, Moscow used the “Made in America” label to crush the underground resistance movements in Ukraine and in the Baltics, and also the uprisings in the GULag in the early 1950’s.

From the late 1940’s and for 40 years, the West–essentially the United States–pursued a policy of containment, seeking to contain Soviet expansionism. Containment, however, did not contain.  Compare the relative position of the United States and the Soviet Union after WWII, and then 40 years later.  For all the treasure spent and precious lives lost on “containment”, there was a dramatic shift, with the Soviet Union massively increasing its global influence and military capacity as America retreated.

The problem with containment was that it was exclusively reactive, with no sense of the West undertaking any affirmative measures to bring about the dissolution of the USSR.  We surrendered situational control to the Kremlin. We concluded that the only way to deal with a pyromaniac was to build a very expensive, very large and very mobile fire department that would run around the world, putting out fires that were set by the Kremlin, at its choice of time, place and intensity.  Containment was based on hope.  But if hope is not a policy or strategy for the stock market, how can it be the basis for national security?  Not surprisingly, the prominent American journalist at the time, Walter Lippmann, described containment not as a strategy, but as a “strategic monstrosity.”

But containment’s most fundamental flaw was that it didn’t recognize, in the least, the multi-national structure of the Soviet Union, that it was a colonial empire.  Containment perpetuated the “Russia”/”Soviet Union” equivalence that distorted Western thinking from the very first days of the Soviet Union. This was a massive and continuing blunder, one that helped Moscow’s repression of the submerged nations of the Soviet Union.  Today, a full generation after the fall of the USSR precisely because it was not simply “Russia,” US government officials at the very highest levels often repeat that same “Russia”/”Soviet Union” equivalence.

The Reagan Administration broke the mold, and went beyond the purely reactive restrictions of containment.  He undertook affirmative measures to cause the dissolution of the USSR.  After the election of George Bush, Sr., however, the US reversed.  Astonishingly, we worked to preserve the USSR intact. Jack Matlock, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time, said directly: “The common assumption that the West forced the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus won the Cold War is wrong. The breakup of the USSR into 15 separate countries was not something the United States caused or wanted.”  As we know, Ukraine ignored Washington, declared independence, and the rest is history. So, if “winning the Cold War” meant the collapse of the Soviet Union, did that occur because of, or in spite of, America’s containment policy?

What happened after the fall of the USSR? We never implemented or even conceived of establishing a “Marshall Plan” to secure the independence and security of the former captive nations as a bulwark against Russia. We did not do what we did with the Marshall Plan in Europe in WWII, even though the necessity for doing so after the fall of the Soviet Union was ten times greater.  Unlike the devastated economy and military capacity of Germany, the Soviet economy, though in poor shape, was intact. And its military capability was very much intact as well. But most critically, while Germany came to terms with its past, and admitted, apologized for its crimes, Moscow accelerated in the opposite direction.  It celebrates its crimes.

Why were we so passive? Because, again, we simply “hoped” that things would change.  How, why? What, exactly, did we think the millions in the KGB, in the nomenklatura, would do, where would they go?  They would somehow become democrats overnight?  Why? How? What about the secret people making secret poisons in secret laboratories in secret cities?  How could we possible consider that that vast repressive system, with such a bloody history, would simply suddenly change?  Again, we simply “hoped” that it would. This total lack of responsibility by Western democracies for their very own security, the passivity and refusal to face reality and anticipate the future, is startling.  Unfortunately, it was not the first time.

History is another name for experience, and experience is another name for a book of lessons.  What lessons does Putin draw from all this?  His first conclusion is that the West itself has learned no lasting lessons.  We have not learned from our experience, and therefore have no predictive capacity.  Our experience was never sufficiently painful to leave a lasting imprint on our societal memory or political institutions.  Thus, for example, President Obama came into office wholly innocent about Moscow, but at the end he was hopefully at least somewhat more aware. But the revolving door in politics prevented the solidification of lessons to be learned. What conclusions do we expect Putin to reach?

Furthermore, Putin knows that we don’t have any understanding that Russia is a predator state.  We have no conception of the Soviet system, and cannot grasp the significance of Putin’s background, his resurrection of Stalin, and its implications for the West.  We don’t bat an eyelash over the fact that there is a “KGB Bar” in New York City, or that Jay Kearney, President Obama’s press secretary, has Soviet propaganda posters in his home, and splashed on the pages of a major Washington magazine with no objection by anyone.

In 1999, Putin celebrated Stalin’s birthday. In that year, we also saw the Moscow’s false flag operations in the Moscow apartment bombings, serving as a pretext for Moscow war against Chechnya.   His so-called Millennium Speech at the end of that year was an unmistakable blueprint for his future.  Only months later, in 2000, Condoleezza Rice was asked at a conference in the US what was the key issue that would indicate to her what kind of person Putin was, if he would be the kind of person that the US “could work with”. She replied that it would depend on what kind of tax reforms he would undertake.

Later that year, we saw no significance in Putin’s celebration of Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday, the notorious founder of the Cheka, precursor to the NKVD and KGB.  And that was on 9/11, the day of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.  In February 2002, at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, Putin, in his typically probing manner, tested a “light” version of Soviet symbolism. No reaction by the West. In the following year, in 2003, Michael McFaul, President Obama’s future ambassador to Russia, published a book predicting that Russia was no longer a threat to the West. By April 2005, when Putin lamented that the fall of the Soviet Union as a “tragedy”, he had already for six years been celebrating its bloody past.  The West ignored it all.  Today, Che Guevara remains a fashion statement.

Putin sees the West in a historically self-imposed requirement “not to offend” or “not to antagonize the Russians.”  On July 2, 1934, the British Foreign Office received an inquiry from the House of Commons about Moscow’s starvation of Ukraine.  The internal memo circulated within the Foreign Office read: “We do not want to make it [information about the Ukrainian genocide] public, because the Soviet Government would resent it and our relations with them would be prejudiced. We cannot give this explanation in public.”

George Orwell’s Animal Farm was rejected by 14 publishers because they “didn’t want to offend the Russians.”

In the 1970’s and 80’s, Western intelligence knew that the Kremlin was organizing, directing and financing Middle East terrorism against the West under the name of “Arab Nationalism”.  Later it also extended to terrorism by local actors in Germany, Italy and Ireland. Yet Western politicians wanted to keep this quiet, not wanting to “offend the Russians.”

The United States, in particular, seems to be particularly compelled to “make nice.”  “Can’t we just get along and be friends?” President Truman is generally recognized as having been more hard headed than President Roosevelt, but even Truman wrote in his diary, after the war was over and when it was already clear that Stalin had deceived the West about Eastern Europe: “I’m not afraid of Russia.  They’ve always been our friends, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t always be . . . so let’s just get along.” The same approach we see repeated by Presidents Carter, Bush and Obama.  Only months after Putin invaded Georgia, President Obama initiated his infamous “reset” with Russia.  How can it be that it is we who made the overture to Putin, and not the other way around?

Putin sees us trying to transfer our commercial genetic code and our deal making culture to our relations with the Kremlin.  That does not work.  The words “stability” and “management” appear endlessly in Western writing and commentary about Russia.  That is what “doing business” requires.  But that has never been the way that the Kremlin operates.  It thrives, needs and therefore creates instability.  It is always on the offensive. It exerts a hydraulic pressure of pushing, accusing, blaming, distorting, demanding and attacking. Relentlessly. The West, on the other hand, is reactive only, perpetually responding from one crisis to another to another.  We are Pavlovian.

And, of course, doing business means entering into agreements.  In our psyche, an agreement is a roadmap to resolving a problem. Agreements with Russia do work, but in the very opposite direction and with the opposite result that the agreements are meant to achieve. We scrupulously comply with agreements.  Russia scrupulously does not. Indeed, the one exception to our trying to superimpose our commercial heritage in dealing with Russia is that we tolerate and encourage the very kind of behavior that we would never tolerate in a business setting–endless breaches of agreements by the other side of the table.  The only exception to our lack of predictive capacity that I mentioned earlier is that we have superb predictive capacity about Moscow’s breach of the very next agreement. Inexplicably, we simply ignore the breaches, always coming back for more. After WWII, the US was #1 in the world, the sole superpower, economically and militarily.  Only the US had the atomic bomb.  After forty years of containment and dozens of agreements with Moscow, what was the result?  The USSR immeasurably expanded its global influence, and its military/nuclear capacity had at least reached parity with the US.  So much for agreements.

And finally, there is the question of money. During the course of a century, Western democracies were the source of untold amounts in economic value to Moscow, whether in forms of credits, technology, know how, or other direct or indirect economic benefit. Without the West having economically propped up the Soviet Union it would have collapsed much, much earlier.  The other side of it is that today it is we who are captive to Russia’s money, and not the other way around. In 2006, a British citizen was assassinated by a miniature nuclear device in the front yard of Buckingham Palace, so to speak.  Alexander Litvinenko, a British citizen, was the victim of nuclear warfare on British territory. What did three successive British Prime Ministers do?  Nothing. Russian money purchased London.

So, what are the consequences when the West has such a character profile? We are hugely susceptible to what I call “strategic deception”.  George Orwell called it “reality control.”  The late historian, Robert Conquest, was more direct and call it simply “mind slaughter.”  When dezinformatsia, maskirovka, provokatsia, kompromat, agitatsia combine together and superimpose a total disorientation, a false perception, whether upon a person or upon an entire nation, it creates not just an alternative reality.  It creates total reality reversal.  It’s doubly dangerous, because it’s in our subconsciousness.  I sometimes give the example of your waking up in the middle of the night and finding yourself in the wilderness.  You look for the bright star in the sky, the North star, in order to get your bearings.  You see the star, or you think you do.  However, you do not realize that while you were asleep you were transported to the Southern Hemisphere. All of your decisions and actions are correct, based on the assumption of that bright star that you see is what you assume it is– the North Star.  But it’s not.  You wind up walking in the opposite direction. You don’t even think about questioning the accuracy of the assumption because you’re not even aware of it.

What is the first reality reversal that confronts us?  That Russia is merely being “defensive.”  You’ve heard it all before, and I know that no one here shares that view.  Nevertheless, it remains an enormously powerful one, regardless of the fact that Russia’s most recent intrusion into the electoral processes in Europe and the US.  You all know the litany–that Russia has “security needs,” that it requires “spheres of influence,” that it is “afraid of NATO encirclement”, that it has “legitimate interests” and “historic claims,” that it feels “victimized” by World War II, that it needs a “buffer,” etc.

This is nothing new.  President Roosevelt assured us: “Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.”  That, obviously, was during the war. But after WWII, and similar to what President Truman had said, Secretary of State Dean Acheson added: “To have friendly governments along her borders is essential both for the security of the Soviet Union and the peace of the world.”

Much credit is due to Mitt Romney and his advisers, when during the first presidential debate with President Obama Romney identified Russia as America’s primary geopolitical foe.  Unfortunately, Mr. Romney later wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal that America should give the Kremlin assurances that we wouldn’t threaten Russia’s influence in Kyiv. This is reality reversal.

“Russia’s immense contribution in World War II is part of their proud history of standing up to imperialist powers.”  This is in the introduction of an extended speech that US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, gave in January of this year.  I was pleased to hear that, in the balance of the speech, and after many years Ambassador Power had begun to understand some of the hard reality about Russia, but her statement at the beginning is inexcusable. In the 1890’s, the Russian General Staff conducted a study of military campaigns between 1700 and 1870.  Russia waged thirty-eight wars. Two were defensive.  How else do you become the largest empire, and also the largest country, in the world, encompassing an entire one-third of Asia and much of the European sub-continent?  You do not do so by being “defensive.”

When we participate in such reality reversal we become multipliers in the denial of history, in the denial of the victimization of entire nations, and in the applause of the perpetrator. Why don’t they have the right to exist?  It is the victim nations that the Kremlin has persecuted for generations, and in many instances for centuries, that have the right to feel secure, who have “historic claims” against Russia, who need “spheres of influence,” and who require a “buffer.” And it was the failure of the West to recognize this that has led to the situation that now confronts us.

Part of that same “defensive” deception is Russia’s re-engineering of World War II. “Had it not been for the colossal sacrifices made by the Soviet Union in WWII–in which they lost more than 20 million people, many times more than any other nation, friend or foe–the war would have dragged on much longer.”  Again, this is Ambassador Power speaking on that same occasion. And note that Power again equates “Russia” with the “Soviet Union,” and even describes the Soviet Union as a “nation.” It was not.  It was an empire.  A quarter of century after the fall of the USSR, far too many Western politician and commentator continue to speak and think in precisely the same terms.  This is inexcusable, and again illustrates that we have never grasped the very essence of the USSR, or the meaning of Putin’s celebration of it.

As to World War II, itself, let’s be clear that Stalin and Hitler were not simply allies.  They were equal partners, joint venturers.  When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933, thanks to the Soviet Union the German armaments industry was already far along the path toward being rebuilt. Under the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany, in the 1920’s Moscow provided critical resources for the rebuilding of Germany’s military capability, much of it plundered, ironically, from Ukraine.  German military maneuvers took place on Soviet territory.  Tours of the growing GULag were provided. And this was at the same time that Western, particularly American, industrial assistance was flowing to the Soviet Union. How does Putin assess our strategic acumen?

How many decades have passed since the end of World War II?  Why don’t we ever hear about Hitler’s purpose for the war?  It was to colonize Ukraine. Only during this past summer did Yale’s Professor Timothy Snyder address the German Bundestag reminding Germany of its history.  It’s an astonishing distortion when Germany feels guilt about WWII and “Russland”, when it was “Russland” that started the war together with Germany, and when it was not “Russland” but Ukraine that was Germany’s target and greatest victim.  The number of Allied troops that invaded Normandy was 132,000.  The number of Wehrmacht and other troops that invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, was 3.2 million.  And that did not just include Germany troops, but Hungarian, Rumanian, Slovakian, Finnish, and Italian troops as well. Do we refer to those countries today as “Nazi”?  It’s no wonder that Ukraine suffered more than any other country during World War II, whether measured in terms of loss of humanity or physical destruction.  Four times more Ukrainian civilians were killed in World War II than the combined military deaths of the United States, France, Italy, Great Britain, Canada. Millions more Ukrainians were killed serving in the military and taken as slave laborers to Germany.  Ukrainians are Nazis? It’s another massive reality reversal, another strategic deception.

Yet another example in the strategic deception that Russia is merely being “defensive” is the drumbeat of NATO “encirclement”. First, I suggest we look at a map. How many NATO countries border Russia? “Encirclement” is a geographic impossibility. And even if it were possible, we are to somehow feel guilty about it?  Second, Putin knows that NATO is defensive. He knows there that is no chance, whatsoever, that NATO will invade Russia.  Stalin knew about NATO and its purpose before it even formally existed. Third, we never exhibited the psychology of affirmative, “take the offensive” thinking about Russia during the last 100 years even where there was never any military component. Fourth, if there was ever a time for fear of an invasion, it was during WWII and immediately thereafter.  That never happened, and could not have, given the absence in the West of any understanding of Moscow’s threat.  Fifth, how, exactly, will more than two dozen nations be coordinated?  For what purpose?  To achieve what?  Finally, for us to believe that “NATO encirclement” is something that Putin in fact fears would also require that we simply ignore the hard, demonstrable reality that he knows and understands our political dynamics better than we do.  He has proven that.  Does anyone here in the room really think that public panic (due to what, exactly?) in the West about Russia will rise to the level that it translates into political decisions for a coordinated military invasion of Russia? This is nonsense.  Putin and Lavrov may beat that drum for domestic and foreign consumption, but they know reality well enough.  So should we.

The second example of reality reversal is Western talk about “engaging” Russia in fighting ISIS.  Where is the logic of that, however, when the roots of ISIS and Al Qaeda reach back to the genetic code for “Arab nationalism” that the Kremlin created in the 1970’s and ’80’s at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow and the surrounding KGB training camps?   Today, Moscow does not have to be directing or controlling ISIS. It simply receives the benefit of a weakened, disoriented, disheartened and dispirited West.  Furthermore, consider the “genius” that it took for Moscow to be able to turn the Middle East against the West a generation or more ago.  First, the Soviet Union was an atheistic state.  Second, it –and before that, the Russian Empire–had a violent history of suppressing the Muslim nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia. And yet the Kremlin prevailed, and a Nobel Prize was awarded to its creation, Yasser Arafat. Truly, a remarkable achievement.

Finally, Ukraine.  I know there are those present for whom Ukraine is not on the mental map as are other “traditional” countries of Europe, such as Poland or Italy, for example, even though Ukraine’s now international recognized status is not questioned.  I will not get into the distortions of Russian historiography that were put in place in the 18th and 19th centuries, and will only mention that Russian historiographers who emigrated to the West after the Bolshevik coup d’état established the foundation of so- called “Russian studies” in the West.  Though the historiographers may not have been supportive of the Bolshevik regime, they nevertheless transplanted to the West the imperial history that they themselves fashioned and absorbed.

We’ve all heard the assertions: “Russia traces its 1000 year history to its beginnings in Kiev”, “Ukraine is a historic part of Russia,” “Kievan Russia was the beginning of modern Russia,” “a thousand years of Russian Christianity.” As a result, as Putin whispered in President Bush’s ear, Ukraine does not exist. Neither did it for Hitler, who identified Ukrainians in the camps as either Russians or Poles.

So let’s examine the reality reversal, the strategic deception that is grounded in the anomaly of the periphery of the Kyivan Rus’ state, Russia, pre-empting and laying claim to the center, Kyiv.  And remember, at that time the amount of Russian territory that was part of the Kyivan Rus’ empire was only some 3% or so of Russia that we know today.

Firstly, I know of no other instance in history or geography where the creation of an artificial 1000 year pedigree is used to justify war, invasion and terrorism today and accepted so totally uncritically by the West. Indeed, it is more logically and intellectually consistent to justify Kyiv’s “historic claim” to Russia, as part of Kyiv’s former empire.

Secondly, even if we accept the “1000 year history” argument, then what is the result?  Because of the Viking influence in the establishment of the Kyivan Rus’ state, Ukraine today can claim Oslo, Stockholm or Copenhagen as the beginnings of Ukraine?  Norwegians, Swedes and Danes are “really” Ukrainians”, or “Little Ukrainians” or “younger brothers”? The same holds true with the influence of Byzantium on Kyivan Rus’, complete with the Cyrillic alphabet and religion. Ukraine “really” began in Byzantium/Istanbul? Today’s France, as Spain, Germany and Israel, were part of the Roman Empire, as was part of Russia a part of the Kyivan Rus’ state. Does that mean that France can claim that Rome is “really” French, and that Italians are Frenchmen?  And what of Romania, which appropriated even the name of Rome, as Russia did with “Rus'”? What is the German word for France?  Frankreich.  Land of the Franks, a Germanic tribe.  What are we to conclude from that?  France has a claim to Germany, or is it the other way around?  I will not belabor the point.  Ignorance of history, and the lack of critical thinking on something that is not very deep, makes the West, again, a prime target for such reality reversal.

So why does Putin like the West?  First, the West does not understand how and why it finds itself in the situation that it is in today.  One country, with nothing to offer to the world, has managed to put the Western democracies on the ropes. How, why, is any of this possible?  And why are we suddenly so very surprised?  But where do we see any self-examination? Second, Western attention to Ukraine has historically been at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to Moscow’s razor focus. Even today, Western concern doesn’t even begin to approach the degree of seriousness that is necessary, given that Ukraine drove the nail into the coffin of the USSR, and in a very real sense saving the world from it.  In addition, as we know Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal, in large part to its historic persecutor.   What do we think that Putin makes of all this?  What conclusions does he draw about our strategic sense? His money is safe with us, and existing sanctions are and will remain inconsequential in impacting the situation on the ground.

I suggest that in the next two days we seek to benefit from the Forum so that we can return to our respective countries in order, ultimately, to work for their national security interests. And that is achieved by anchoring the security and independence of Ukraine as the best chance we have of turning Russia inward. We must think strategically and escape from the perpetual defensive, reactive position that we have frozen ourselves into.  And let there be no mistake. Only then will tyrants in the Middle East, China, and North Korea also understand that the West recognizes and has the will to act in its own self-interest.

L’VIV SECURITY FORUM, L’viv, Ukraine

28 November 2017

Victor Rud is the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Ukrainian American Bar Association. He has been practicing law for 40 years and has spoken before various audiences on Russia/US/Ukraine relations. Some of his more recent commentary was carried by Forbes and The Kyiv Post. The above is the keynote speech delivered at the dinner reception for the L’viv Security Forum, on November 28, 2017.  Mr. Rud holds an undergraduate degree in international affairs from Harvard College, and law degree from Duke University School of Law. 

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By Dominik P. Jankowski & Liana Fix

To many who assumed that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict would calm down in 2018, the end of 2017 foretold quite the opposite. The conflict is back in motion, yet with some contradictory signals. On the plus side, the biggest swap of prisoners was held between Ukraine and the Russian-backed militants since the beginning of the war. This demonstrated that some progress on humanitarian issues is possible with the help of the Normandy format and the Trilateral Contact Group.

On the minus side, Russia withdrew its military personnel from the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC), a Russian-Ukrainian military body that helped to monitor the ceasefire and facilitated the withdrawal of heavy weapons. Not only did the JCCC provide a direct military channel of communication between Ukraine and Russia, it also reduced security risks for OSCE monitors. Immediately after Russia’s withdrawal, some of the worst fighting since February 2017 took place in eastern Ukraine.

Against this backdrop, Russian President Vladimir Putin again raised his proposal for a UN peacekeeping force, which he first tabled as a draft UN Security Council resolution in September 2017. Putin claimed at his end-of-year press conference that he is in principle not against a broader mandate for international peacekeepers in Donbas, but that a decision should be negotiated between Kyiv and the militants, which is—for good reasons—not acceptable to Ukraine and the West.

Nevertheless, Western allies redoubled their diplomatic efforts to find a workable solution for a UN mission with several parallel tracks of negotiations, including a direct U.S.-Russia channel between Kurt Volker, U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations, and his Russian counterpart, Vladislav Surkov. After a few months, there was little evidence of progress, which led the UN Secretariat to stall all preparations of an assessment mission to Ukraine. Despite that fact, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel called for a decision on a UN peacekeeping force to be taken before the Russian presidential election in March.

On paper, the Russian proposal seems to be a shift in posture. In reality, it is part of Russia’s strategy to backtrack from the political responsibility for the conflict and instead position Russia as a mediator within a new UN framework. Moscow proposed a limited, six-month mission, equipped with small arms, and with the exclusive mandate to ensure the security of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) along the line of contact. A mission under such parameters would likely freeze the conflict; it is also hard to imagine how it could support the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Therefore, any Western proposal for a UN mission in Ukraine must embrace three key elements. First, its mandate must cover the whole territory of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, including the Russian-Ukrainian border—a precondition the Russian president has already agreed to during a phone conversation with the German chancellor. This is essential to ensuring an end to further rearmament of the militants by Russia. In practical terms, a UN mission should be deployed at once—or, at maximum, over no more than two phases—to prevent Russia from obstructing further deployments.

Second, a UN mission should reinforce—not replace—the operations of the OSCE mission on the ground. The UN lacks practical expertise in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and has been recently involved in peacekeeping operations mostly outside of Europe. UN peacekeepers should help the OSCE SMM to maintain peace, including by monitoring the withdrawal of heavy weapons and forces, guarding arms and ammunition depots, and protecting civilians. A joint OSCE-UN mission should hence be seriously considered. To effectively deliver on these tasks, such a mission should involve around 20,000 peacekeepers, excluding Russian forces.

Third, a UN mission should support the implementation of the Minsk agreements and facilitate the return of areas not controlled by Kyiv to Ukrainian authority, including creating conditions for credible local elections. The UN Security Council could grant the mission executive powers to help oversee the implementation of the Minsk agreements. The mission could also assist with the selection of local officials and police, as well as their training at later stages, and might also facilitate the safe return of displaced persons. In sum, it would engage the whole “UN family”— with its many affiliated programs, funds, and specialized agencies—in the post-conflict Donbas reconstruction.

How could Russia agree to such a UN mission? Most importantly, a coordinated policy of carrots and sticks by the U.S. and European partners is needed. The U.S. administration’s approval of the largest sale of weapons to Ukraine since 2014 has boosted Ukrainian defensive capabilities. Politically, it could have been used as a stick towards Russia, if it had been coordinated with European allies. Instead, it has created additional rifts with Germany and France. On the other hand, the West has a serious incentive on hand: sanctions. A proper UN mission, with a robust mandate, can help fully implement the Minsk agreements—a precondition to lift Donbas-related sanctions.

The proposal for a UN mission to Ukraine is a small window of opportunity for diplomacy. Yet it is not a silver-bullet to solving the conflict. Political will on both sides remains a prerequisite for keeping peace.

This article was originally published by Carnegie Europe.

Dominik P. Jankowski is a security policy expert, diplomat, think tanker, and social media aficionado.

Liana Fix is the program director of the Körber Foundation’s International Affairs Department.

The views and opinions expressed here are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the institutions they represent.

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Recently, the Trump Administration decided against nominating Victor D. Cha as Ambassador to South Korea due to his opposition to the “bloody nose” strategy against North Korea advocated by the White House. On the heels of this report, U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood declared that North Korea stands only months away from the ability to hit U.S. territory with a nuclear weapon.

During such a time of uncertainty, it would stand to reason that appointing a qualified ambassador to a long-standing ally neighboring a nuclear-armed country that has threatened the United States would rank as a top priority for President Trump. Nevertheless, the United States is left without the diplomatic expertise of someone like Cha and armed instead with a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that promotes a greater use of nuclear weapons than ever before.

The “bloody nose” strategy, opposed by Cha but favored by National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, argues for a preventative military strike against North Korea that would inevitably end in an untold number of causalities in South Korea and Japan—where combined more than 60,000 U.S. troops are stationed—as well as possibly in nearby China. This is not to mention the fate of U.S. coastal cities and territories such as Guam, who already has been threatened by the regime in Pyongyang partly as a result of bellicose, ignorant remarks by President Trump. There is far from any guarantee that North Korea would submit after an initial strike given Kim Jong Un’s erratic, unpredictable behavior, and with the recent NPR in hand, the United States could enter into a war with Pyongyang armed with even more readily deployable nuclear weapons.

The Trump Administration’s record thus far in handling nuclear threats and nonproliferation has only served to ratchet up tensions rather than make Americans any safer. In addition to provoking the regime in Pyongyang, President Trump has repeatedly threatened what’s commonly known as the Iran Deal. After “decertifying” it in October, he then only issued the waiver of key sanctions in January after saying it would be the last time.

The concerns behind these decisions—that the deal did not address Iran’s continued funding of terrorism, testing of ballistic missiles, and oppression of its citizens—are valid. The nuclear negotiations, however, were focused on removing nuclear weapons from Tehran with the understanding that further diplomacy would be required to address the other bad behavior. And currently, the deal is achieving what it set out to do: 17,000 centrifuges and 95 percent of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile have been removed and Iran’s only plutonium reactor has been disabled. Plus, trust in Tehran’s word is not needed to verify these achievements because the best nuclear inspectors in the world are on the ground, watching Iran’s uranium from the mines to the laboratories.

Undermining this deal would only result in setting the United States on a path to war with Iran. So rather than continuing down that course, the Trump Administration should instead encourage the enforcement of bipartisan, smartly targeted sanctions against Iran that do not violate the terms of the agreement. After all, sanctions, when used correctly, can be a strong tool—as seen when crippling sanctions helped move Tehran towards the negotiating table in the first place.

Just as sanctions have a role with regard to Iran, so do they have a role in pressuring North Korea. Last week, Vice President Mike Pence stated that the administration will soon roll out “the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever.” Carefully targeted sanctions are a smart step towards what must be the end goal in North Korea: phased denuclearization. This next round of sanctions will follow one announced two weeks ago, and it would similarly be best geared against those individuals and entities who are allegedly financing Kim’s nuclear programs—but specific details have yet to emerge.

Such economic action is a much surer and safer path what the NPR encourages. The review called for developing new, expensive nuclear weapons and stated that nuclear weapons will only be used in “extreme circumstances,” which could include “non-nuclear strategic attacks” such as cyber attacks. For decades, the United States has led the global charge to reduce nuclear weapons, but now, it is reversing course with unnecessary nuclear weapons and a lower threshold to using them—making nuclear war all the more likely.

So as the Trump Administration continues to grapple with charting the path through current nuclear issues facing the United States, they must set aside the unnecessary and expensive expansion of nuclear weapons as encouraged by the NPR. As evidenced by the succeeding Iran Deal, diplomatic and economic action remains the best bet in dealing with hostile, nuclear armed nations. Any brash military action and a withdrawal from diplomacy will only spark a war on the Korean Peninsula or in the Middle East respectively, risking the lives of Americans at home, abroad, and in uniform.

Shannon Bugos is the Communications and Writing Coordinator at Truman National Security Project. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. Views expressed are her own.

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The United States Embassy in Havana in October.  CreditYamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On January 9, U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson opened a formal inquiry into mysterious “sonic attacks” purportedly damaging the health of U.S. diplomatic personnel stationed at the American Embassy in Cuba.  The first reports surfaced in December 2016, and since then 24 United States personnel have complained of sharp ear pain, dull headaches, tinnitus, vertigo, disorientation, nausea and extreme fatigue.  Another 19 Americans who traveled to Cuba have reported similar symptoms to the U.S. State Department.  Canada has also reported several Canadians have experienced similar symptoms to the U.S. diplomats.

While the Cuban government has denied responsibility for the attacks, an investigation is being conducted by the F.B.I., the State Department and top American medical authorities.  The evidence currently under review by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board is “confounding and conflicting”, according to a New York Times report.   Democratic Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico has called for caution, warning, “I think we should be careful not to jump to conclusions.”

However, after reports of the illnesses of the embassy staff members reached U.S. President Donald Trump, he expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the United States.  More than half of personnel were pulled from the U.S. embassy back in September.  The diplomatic row reversing the trend toward friendlier relations instituted under former President Barack Obama, which made it easier for nearly 620,000 Americans to travel to Cuba in 2017.  “The idea that someone could put together some sort of action against them, 24 of them, and the Cuban government not know who did it, it’s just impossible,” Mr. Rubio said, while adding: “The Cuban government either did this or knows who did it.”  Francisco Palmieri, acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, concurred: “Cuba is a security state, the Cuban government in general has a very tight lid on anything and everything that happens in that country.”  In light of the concerns, the latest U.S. Department of State travel advisory on Cuba, issued on January 10, has advised Americans urges to “reconsider travel to Cuba due to health attacks directed at U.S. Embassy Havana employees.”

Clearly, there are trade-offs when considering travel to Cuba.  Should we potentially risk our health to bring our tourist dollars, euros and pounds to Cuba, helping a people struggling with day-to-day shortages of goods and still recovering from the damage wrought by Hurricane Irma in September?  Or in so doing, will we just be adding to government coffers used to prop up another country which continues to repress dissent and punish public criticism and may be behind the mysterious health attacks?

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The logo of Rabobank is seen at its headquarters in Utrecht, Netherlands, October 30, 2013. REUTERS/Michael Kooren/File Photo – RC167810E570

International banking has always been subject to laws and rules that apply where their head offices operate as well as via international rules and standards. For an international law to apply, it often has to be codified within a country, as even if the law is accepted and applied through international agreements or treaties, the enforcement of those laws are often only capably done by a country itself. In the banking industry where one large organisation is required to register and operate via the due diligence required in each region and state, norms and practices are often the best standard used by the bank as local laws can be weak and form an easily corrupted system. Larger countries often would make laws that may not be formally applied in smaller states, but act as a deterrent to illegal international banking operations if they did not operate in a legal or moral standard expected by the international community. American laws like Dodd-Frank have spurned on international regulatory standard for all international and local banks, many now operating with Compliance entities and AML departments as a permanent part of their organisations.

Policy approaches in dealing with issues of rogue state activities, money laundering and drug related financial transactions are applied to private financial institutions, and when HSBC was caught ignoring standards by providing financial services to Latin American cartels as well as accepting transactions from rogue states under sanction by the United States and many European countries, they were heavily fined $1.9 billion in 2012. Massive financial penalties have become the norm in cases were very large corporations commit illegal actions, stemming from one of the first European Union cases against Microsoft many years ago. Having a massive effect in a case of fraud, competition or money laundering decimates the profits of large corporations and has a lasting effect on the reputation and investors in those large corporate entities. Despite these severe measures, the penalties are often not applied to the degree where a large company would dissolve from the size of the penalty, as a loss of a major market player might cost more to the society via employment loss and a loss of tax revenue than compensating for the loss due to their actions.

With these standards in place, money laundering still occurs through international banks. Rabobank out of the Netherlands had their Mexican and Californian operations penalized when a US court fined them $369 million for laundering money linked to Mexican drug cartels. While these issues concern financial crimes, the real effect on cartel violence in Mexico has a wider criminal component. A Mexican national living in the Netherlands has taken the next step in applying international laws and standards to banks that are convicted of actions that violate international and local banking regulations. The funds that had been laundered through Rabobank may have contributed to other crimes by the cartel, and a legal precedent linking the bank to very severe crimes committed by the cartel would be an enormous shift in how financial violations are applied to larger crimes against populations, arms trading as well as financial supports linked to human rights atrocities. State or non-state actors who violate human rights can have their financial systems completely halted when rights violations and human rights atrocities are found to have occurred and been linked to international financial institutions. It would be a complicated development, and difficult to prove, but most likely a welcome policy change for victims of cartel violence, genocide survivors who are largely ignored by the international community as well as those who require a punishment to be applied in cases where power and justice have been lacking.

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Ever since the 2014 sham elections in Bangladesh, it was a huge question mark whether Sheikh Hasina could still be considered a ruler of a democratic country or not. However, recent events have demonstrated that Sheikh Hasina is in fact no democrat but rather is an emerging Asian dictator who is aligned with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to recent reports, Bangladeshi Opposition Leader Khaleda Zia, who has been struggling with Sheikh Hasina to rule Bangladesh for decades, is set to get 5 years imprisonment on corruption charges. The implication of this decision is that during a critical election year in the South Asian country, the main opposition leader will not be able to run against ruling Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during a time when the Awami League ruler’s popularity is at an all-time low and when Khaleda Zia as the widow of a former military ruler has gained increased prominence.

Given this reality, those who are associated with the Bangladeshi Opposition claim that the charges against Khaleda Zia are a sham specifically designed to undermine her ability to compete against Sheikh Hasina in the upcoming elections since Bangladeshi law bars someone who is sentenced to more than two years behind bars from running for office. Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi, the head of the Safadi Center for International Relations and Public Diplomacy, proclaimed following the conviction of Khaleda Zia: “It is true that there is an ideological gap between us and Khaleda Zia but we oppose the decision to stop her for the same reason that we oppose any other political arrest. Every citizen of the country has the right to conduct legal political activity and political activists must not be arrested because their views are contrary to the government’s position.”

“Many friends have been arrested because of their legitimate political activity,” Safadi added. “I myself have been persecuted for legitimate political activity for the sake of my people and for a good future for Bangladesh. We must not remain silent on the government’s oppression and should work for human rights, democracy and freedom in the country. The government of Sheikh Hasina violates all our rights. It uses oppression, terrorism and ethnic cleansing against minorities. It is time to stand up and to say we will not agree to this oppression. We want a fair leadership that respects us as citizens, even if we do not agree on the same ideology. Even if we are in the opposition, we have the right to conduct political activity.”

“After all of the human rights violations that occurred until the arrest of Opposition Leader Khaleda Zia, it seems like we have no choice but to go for mass demonstrations in the streets of Bangladesh, to lead a revolution against Sheikh Hasina’s government and to demand protection from the free world,” Safadi noted. “God bless the people of Bangladesh!”

Around the same period of time that Khaleda Zia was arrested, it has emerged that the Sheikh Hasina government is increasingly building up ties with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, another democratically elected leader who transformed his country into an unfree dictatorship. Last September, Turkish First Lady Emine Erdogan visited Rohinya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh. In addition, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu invited Bangladesh to open up their doors to assist Muslim Rohinya refugees and even offered to pay for the expenses associated with such a gesture but Turkey offered no such humanitarian gesture to the Hindu Rohingya, who have been ethnically cleansed from their homes and live under horrendous conditions in Bangladesh presently.

Soon after Erdogan highlighted his humanitarian concern for the Muslim Rohingya but not the Hindu Rohingya in Bangladesh, Turkey proceeded to attack the Kurds in Afrin and the ancient Temple of Ain Dara. The attack was strongly condemned by Syria’s Archaeological Survey Office. Mamum Abdul Karim, a former Syrian antiquities official, said that tourists used to be attracted to visit the lion sculptures in the temple, emphasizing that the attack on Ain Dara was a major loss and was en par with the destruction of the Temple of Bel in Palmyra. The Temple of Ain Dara is considered a UNESCO world heritage site in danger. The ancient temple dates back to the times of King Solomon and was considered by archaeologists to be a living monument to how King Solomon’s Temple could have looked like.

“The damage to Ain Dara is tragic,” Brian Daniels, co-director of the Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq Project, told Artnet News. “It does not strike me that there has been a particular lull in cultural destruction, only that it has been less reported and specifically less ISIS driven since the collapse of that group’s organization.”

Like Erdogan’s attack upon Ain Dara, Sheikh Hasina’s government is similarly not disturbed whenever historic Hindu temples are destroyed within her country. Shipan Kumer Basu, the head of the Hindu Struggle Committee, related: “Every day, Hindu women are gang raped and Hindu homes are being burnt down. The present government has no qualms about that and also ensures that there is no news going out on the persecution of minorities within the country. If any journalist publishes news on this issue, he or she will be punished. We need help to ensure the future of the minorities of Bangladesh.”

The post Sheikh Hasina: An Emerging Dictator appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

On January 27, Rodrigo Londoño began his campaign for president of Colombia. Will this move help the FARC achieve greater acceptance and further the peace process, despite the unlikelihood of a political victory?

Rodrigo Londoño is the leader of the FARC, which, in September 2017 became a political party in an attempt to vanquish a notorious guerilla past. The violent syndicate gave up arms in pursuit of political legitimization in a peace process that has moved mountains since its signing in November 2016.

Colombia’s elections in 2018 will demonstrate to the world just how far the Colombian peace process has progressed, and more importantly, if it can survive. Both the legislative elections in March as well as the campaign for president in May will bring the FARC into the media spotlight.

Despite the attention Londoño has garnered, the FARC’s 2018 political ambitions are destined to fail. A Polimétrica poll from November 2017 had 1% of voters pledging support for FARC candidates in March 2018. It is likely to take years, if not decades, for the FARC as a political party to gain any noteworthy support on the political podium. This is likely to cause mounting frustration among FARC sympathizers and perhaps lead to greater numbers of FARC defectors wanting to take up arms once more – an escalating issue since the FARC gave up their weapons in June 2017.

As part of the peace process, the FARC is guaranteed 10 seats in the upcoming legislative elections. It should be noted that the group’s ambitions shoot far beyond this. The group is fielding 74 candidates for the ballots in March. As pointed out in a recent GRI analysis, the FARC’s presence in Congress, as small as that of the 10 seats assured, will place a likely constraint on the ruling party’s efforts to form a governing coalition and to subsequently implement noteworthy legislation.

While this should preoccupy the attention of investors, faith in the peace process should remain of paramount importance. The campaign of Londoño and his party is of undeniable symbolism. The FARC’s political campaign will neither disrupt the political establishment nor the country’s institutions. What the FARC campaign can however achieve, intentionally or not, is the conveyance to other militant movements that a political road map to voicing concerns can be a viable alternative to violence.

In the summer of 2017, Londoño declared: “We will continue to exist as a movement of legal and democratic character, which will develop its ideological political organizational actions, and its propaganda, through legal methods.” Other groups such as the ELN – which have been the cause of major infrastructure damage – now find themselves at a crossroads, and will see the upcoming elections, and specifically the FARC campaign, as a drawing board for their own negotiations with the government.

The peace process has been an experiment in forgiveness which has, at least to a small extent, quashed security risks in many remote regions of the country. The hope is that the peace process will continue to encourage social stability and economic growth, not only in the short term, but in the medium and long term as well.

In January 2018, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres met with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as an appeal for everyone to stand behind the peace process. However, as the FARC’s election campaign now gets under way, the promise of peace has become more brittle. On January 17, two former FARC militants wereassassinated by armed men in the Peque Municipality in Antioquia Department while promoting their newly formed party.

The UN has wholeheartedly condemned the attack and insisted that the government provide greater security protection for FARC leaders and militants. The risk of attacks on FARC members will increase considerably as the elections approach, testing the resolve of all sides. For Guterres, such attacks are extremely damaging to the success of the peace process as a whole.

The Colombian government is likely to respond in kind with increased military and police operations in rural areas.

A power vacuum opened up in 2017 after FARC members gave up arms as part of the compromise to forming a political party. This has allowed other powerful and violent syndicates such as Los Urabeños and the ELN to move into previously controlled FARC regions.

On October 2017, the ELN entered into a recently expired ceasefire with the government. Immediately following its cessation in January 2018, the ELN attacked the Caño Limón–Coveñas oil pipeline. This pipeline alone was bombed 62 times in 2017, causing millions of dollars in damages.

The pipeline has historically been a target of militant groups. It is estimated to have been out of service for 30 percent (10 ½ years) of its lifespan since 1986. Effectively integrating members of groups such as the FARC and the ELN into Colombian society will thus be the cause of considerable relief for both nationalized and private infrastructure.

To understand, at least in part, the failure so far in peace talks with the ELN, we must look closely at the progression of the peace process with the FARC. Negotiations extend much further than simply allowing the FARC to form a political party. Economic and social integration programs, as well as the advancement of development and agricultural projects in former FARC concentrated zones of the country, must be followed through and implemented. The extent to which these policies have been effectively carried out has been contested.

The government has instead focused extensively on militarized operations in a bid to crack down on FARC defectors and other violent groups in these regions. These operations have indeed had some immediate positive impacts on security. However, analysts predict that by not tackling core socio-economic issues, many more FARC members will dissent.

Private sector as well as civilian vilification of the FARC’s political campaign is not conducive country’s ongoing stability. The distrust towards the success of the peace process has been of ongoing concern for years, particularly because it disparages notions of investor safety.

However, as security concerns increase over the coming months, in particular with the proliferation and violence of other militant groups, distrust in the peace process will continue. Still, if the FARC continues to display trust in the political system, and the number of FARC defectors does not continue to grow, this distrust may begin to dissipate.

The signing of the November 2016 peace process provided the foundations for a bridge to ending decades of conflict. That bridge is far from built. Bringing attention to Londoño’s campaign is less important for the message his party produces, and more so for the possibility of both greater social and market stability in the long term.

–

This article first ran on Global Risk Insights, and was written by Anthony Tipping.

The post The importance of the FARC’s 2018 political campaign appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

The New Year didn’t bring any respite for Albania’s beleaguered government as January saw the renewal of public protests with tens of thousands descending on capital Tirana, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama over his alleged links to organized crime.

The leader of the ruling Socialist Party has denied accusations of wrong-doing, although former minister Saimir Tahiri is currently under investigation for corruption and drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the opposition – led by the recently deposed, center-right Democratic Party – insists that cabinet members are exploiting their position for personal gain, while ordinary citizens struggle to survive on a few hundred euros a month in one of Europe’s poorest nations.

Unfortunately, the political elite’s tendency to benefit from corruption and collusion with organized crime groups is a pattern across the region – one that the EU has made clear it won’t ignore as it starts to devote renewed attention to the Western Balkans’ membership drive.  Indeed, just this week, the European Commission released a new regional strategy, saying that Montenegro and Serbia could be ready to join the bloc by 2025 and extending support to Albania and the three other aspiring members in the region. However, the Commission emphasized that lawmakers in all six countries will need to show real results in addressing persistent issues of crime, corruption, and patchy rule of law if they want to move forward.

Albania: Europe’s cannabis capital

The surging lawlessness in Albania was largely the result of the violent transition from Soviet state to self-ruling economy in the 1990s, which in turn led to the unchecked growth of organized crime groups. The country has since become a point of entry for drugs being smuggled into the EU and its home-grown, if illegal, cannabis trade has long been ignored by politicians who haven’t had the political will to tackle the gangs who profit from its continuance.

To be fair, the government can claim some success. In 2014, a successful police operation focusing on drugs hub Lazarat in southern Albania saw the arrest of more than 100 people, the seizure of cash and hashish and the closure of a number of illegal labs. However, no gang bosses were arrested, leading some to speculate that they were enjoying the benefit of high-level political protection. It’s also worth noting that the raid had the knock-on effect of stabilizing drug prices in the region which had been on the point of collapse.

Former Prime Minister Sali Berisha has admitted that it was unofficial government strategy during his administration to turn a blind eye to the processing and distribution of illegal drugs from Lazarat, as it enabled them to contain cannabis production, while underpinning claims that progress against drug smuggling was being made.

A Balkan-wide struggle

It’s a comparably dismal state of affairs in neighboring Montenegro, which has an ambitious EU accession target date of 2025 but where the escalating violence by criminal gangs has led to accusations of tacit government collusion. Police have stepped up patrols in Podgorica and Kotor following a string of clashes between rival Montenegrin gangs over the past year, but few arrests have been made. The towns have long been favored by criminal groups, most famously by drug baron Darko Saric – who was jailed in 2015 for smuggling cocaine from South America with a number of co-defendants, many of whom are still on the run. Gang warfare has also spilled over into Serbia, where it’s alleged that gang members with Serbian citizenship are also receiving support from people in positions of power.

Unfortunately, there is little hope for change with the expected return of strongman politician and former prime minister Milo Djukanovic to power following presidential elections slated for this April.  He bowed out of politics after the 2016 elections, yet over the past 25+ years he has twice before quit public office while maintaining considerable political influence. It is easy to see why, given the evidence that he has used his time in power to build lucrative ties with organized crime groups and to enrich his own associates.

EU membership no panacea

Even existing EU member states in the Balkans have been unable to shake off accusations of corruption and links with organized crime, notably in Romania. A new government was recently formed under the leadership of the country’s first female prime minister, Viorica Dancila, but it’s feared that little will change in the immediate future.

Although pledging to reduce bureaucracy and increase wages – as well as fast-tracking the construction of an extensive new road and rail system – Dancila supports proposals introduced by the ruling Social Democratic (PSD) party designed to make it harder to prosecute corruption and over which the European Commission (EC) has expressed concerns. The policies have already triggered mass protests in Bucharest.

Dancila is the third Romanian premier in seven months and is seen by some as prime minister in name only, with PSD chairman Liviu Dragnea calling the shots from behind the scenes as he is prohibited from taking office due to a conviction for vote-rigging. Dancila will have her work cut out convincing the public (and the EC) that her government is committed to fighting corruption given that five cabinet members are the subjects of current corruption investigations.

With the EU intimating the possibility of accession talks in mid-2018, Albania has begun efforts to clean up its act. These include the recent firing of the national police chief, Haki Cako, under whose auspices cannabis cultivation actually increased – despite his assertions that his force had ‘uprooted’ cannabis all over Albania.

Nevertheless, with Brussels getting tough about requirements for would-be joiners, it remains to be seen whether Albania’s attempts to address the country’s deeply entrenched criminality will bear fruit in the form of coveted EU membership.

The post Can the Balkans get serious about tackling crime? appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Addis Ababa is a very active city even by night. Taken near Bole MehaneAlem – Edna Mall.

Not many may know that Ethiopia was among the first countries to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when the latter was formed on 27 December 1945.  Nevertheless, it took another 72 years for Ethiopia to welcome its first visit from the IMF Managing Director, in this case, Christine Lagarde who in December 2017 visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and met with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. This followed the IMF’s  assertion that in 2017 Ethiopia’s economy surpassed Kenya’s to become East Africa’s largest economy. Lagarde’s visit served as the latest stamp of approval for Ethiopia’s bold plan to reach lower-middle income status by 2025.

It was Ethiopia’s late President Meles Zenawi who crafted Ethiopia’s ambitious goal of becoming a lower middle-income country by 2025. Following victory in 1991, the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) set in motion far-reaching economic reforms aiming to transform this poverty-stricken nation into a “developmental state” while maintaining an iron grip on power. Although achieving lower middle-income status by 2025 is ambitious, Ethiopia is making strides in combating poverty and improving economic conditions with the poverty rate falling from 44% in 2000 to 23.5% in 2015-16 (IMF, 2017).

Ethiopia’s government has made great strides in raising Human Development indicators, increasing female labour force participation as well as pursuing pro-poor growth policies. In the last decade Ethiopia has consistently registered double-digit GDP growth buoyed by state-led investments in infrastructure and manufacturing. According to the IMF Ethiopia’s economy will expand by 8.5% in 2017/18.

This growth will be supported by infrastructure spending and Ethiopia’s attempts to become a regional manufacturing base, in contrast to resource dependent economies in Africa such as Nigeria. The 2014 fall in commodity prices has had a negligible impact on Ethiopia’s growth trajectory and for this reason Ethiopia is becoming the new standard for a working, non-resource rich, African economy.

Ethiopia is driving economic growth through the government’s laser-like focus on sectors such as manufacturing, energy and infrastructure. A notable example can be found in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) where Ethiopia plans to leverage the Blue Nile to become Africa’s largest exporter of electricity. Although the GERD will boost the economy and meet Ethiopia and its neighbour’s energy needs the plan is facing severe pushback from Egypt which is traditionally the kingmaker when it comes to the River Nile. How Ethiopia negotiates this risk will be a key indicator of whether it achieves its goal of becoming a regional power supplier to neighbouring countries vis-à-vis Tanzania, Uganda and Sudan.

In terms of infrastructural investments, Ethiopia is fast becoming a destination of choice forChinese investors. 2018 was ushered in with the opening of the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway which cost $4 billion and was funded by Chinese state-owned rail and construction firms as part of China’s transformative One Belt One Road Initiative. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway connects the landlocked Ethiopia to Djibouti’s port which is significant as Djibouti handles 95% of Ethiopia’s cargo. With a growing population of 105 million Ethiopia is waking up to the perils of its landlocked status and dependence on Djibouti’s ports as proven by its recently acquired stake in Somaliland’s Berbera port. The ways in which Ethiopia capitalises on its economic linkages with neighbouring states will be key to it reaching lower-middle income status by 2025.

In addition to state-led Chinese investment, private Chinese companies have also invested in Ethiopia, creating over 28,000 jobs, mainly in the manufacturing sector. It was during the 21-year reign of autocrat Meles Zenawi that Ethiopia put in motion its industrial strategy that prioritises labour intensive sectors such as manufacturing as a means to create employment opportunities for its large and mostly poor population. Ethiopia has seen some success in manufacturing due to the creation of various industrial parks and the reduction of bureaucratic red tape for businesses through the introduction of “one-stop shop” type regulatory services from the government.

Ethiopia’s new-found economic confidence is embodied by its state-owned, national carrier Ethiopia Airlines which has grown to become one of the world’s fastest growing airlines.Ethiopia Airlines recently overtook South Africa Airways to become Africa’s largest carrier in terms of revenue and profit. Ethiopia Airlines has succeeded through its policy of establishing multiple global hubs and expanding to more than 120 destinations with regular flights to key cities such as Rio De Janeiro, London, Shanghai, Beijing and Washington DC among others.

However, Ethiopia’s most consistent economic risk factor is its historically weak private sector. Ethiopia’s policy of “state-led capitalism” has prevented the emergence of a strong private sector, especially when compared to regional peers such as Kenya where the dynamic private sector is driving growth. To put this into perspective, Ethiopia’s 105 million citizens are served by the state-owned Ethio Telecom which has a monopoly on all telecommunication and mobile services. The Ethiopian government is waking up to the need for competition in key sectors as highlighted in the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II) which aims to strengthen private sector development andincrease FDI.

Despite this, the state has no shown no appetite for privatisation in key sectors such as telecoms and banking where it considers state-owned monopolies and enterprises as cash cows. Going forward, Ethiopia’s ability to reach lower-middle income status by 2025 will be characterised by its ability to reduce the power of large, state-owned enterprises (SOE’s). Other policies for the state to pursue include implementing Public-Private Partnerships (PPP’s) and economic reforms aimed at driving efficiency and stimulating competition in the economy.

Although Ethiopia has made great strides in terms of development, it is in the political sphere that Ethiopia faces the greatest risks in the medium and long term. Although Ethiopia’s “Ethnic Federalism” governance model afforded it stability during the reign of strongman Meles Zenawi, recent cracks have emerged under Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Examples include the ongoing protests of Oromo activists opposed to the government’s forceful seizure of their ancestral lands around Addis Ababa in the name of FDI. As such, Ethiopia’s ability to maintain consistent economic growth will be tied to its ability to integrate marginalised communities who need to be persuaded that they too have a stake in Ethiopia’s bold, new future.

–

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

The post Under the Radar: Ethiopia’s economic growth offers opportunities and challenges appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Picture from City of Cape Town. (Source: Alberton Record)

Cape Town, South Africa (a city of four million people) is at a dangerous inflection point.
National Public Radio (NPR) reports that South Africa’s second main economic driver and
Africa’s third main economic hub city could be the first major city in the developed world to run
out of water, if residents do not heed new stricter water measures. The New York Times (NYT)
reported that “the day of reckoning the government has tagged as “Day Zero” will surpass
anything a major city has faced since World War II or the Sept. 11 attacks. So how did one of
Africa’s most promising cities – one that boasted high “green” credentials – so rapidly find itself
without water?

A Convergence of Factors

One of the undisputed story lines of this national emergency is that the Southern Africa region
has become drier in recent years. However, the cause of this dryness is somewhat disputed by
scientists. Experts such as Piotr Wolski, a hydrologist at the University of Cape Town who has
tracked rainfall in the region for most of the last two decades believe that climate change has
exasperated dryness in a historically dry region. Climate models support Mr. Wolski’s forecast
that Cape Town will remain on a dry trajectory and that precipitation will become less
predictable in the coming decades.

Other internationally renowned scientists like Dr. Augusto Jose Pereira Filho, (Professor of
atmospheric science at São Paulo University) believes that there are other atmospheric dynamics
in play causing the protracted dryness. He explained in an email response that lower mean water
temperatures in the Southern hemisphere continues to reduce ocean evaporation leading to a dry
lower atmosphere (read: no moisture for cloud formation) across the Southern Africa region.

This is the same cooler ocean and dry atmosphere dynamic Dr. Filho argued in 2015 was the
leading cause of Brazil’s once in a century drought in 2015. Though the precise causal factors
are debatable (i.e., how much is stunted ocean evapotranspiration versus how much is locked in
CO2 induced temperature rise), there is little argument as to who is getting the brunt of the blame
for Cape Town’s nightmare.

Lots of Finger Pointing

The much disputed part of the crisis backstory is how much city planners did to prepare for a
scenario that many warned was not only possible, but inevitable. According to David Olivier,
who studies climate change at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Global Change Institute,
“The national government has dragged its feet.” It is further alleged that in the first two years of
the drought, the unpopular African National Congress (ANC) led national government failed to
limit water supplies to farmers (the large wine industry ) thus intensifying the problem. But the
finger pointing doesn’t stop there.
It is also argued that the city government didn’t make common sense investments that could have
averted the crisis such as tapping into local aquifers and investing in desalination plants. Another
contributing stressor is rapid population growth as tens of thousands of regional migrants flowed
into a city that has been on the upswing seeking employment.

To diffuse culpability city officials have blamed residents for not heeding previous water
consumption edicts and restrictions. The embattled Mayor, Patricia de Lille alleges that well over
half the residents are not heeding warnings and she has threatened to impose fines. Ms. de Lille,
who is embroiled in a corruption scandal and facing a possible recall is staying the course
stating recently, “I’m committed to making sure that this well-run city does not run out of
water…We can all avoid Day Zero but we must do it together.”

Unfortunately, many don’t share her optimism and it is reported that talks are underway with
South Africa’s police to start planning for the impending chaos because “normal policing will be
entirely inadequate.” The city is hoping for the best and planning for the worst in advance of
“Day Zero” – a historic tipping point that will occur before the end of April if the already
implemented countermeasures (e.g., rationing and water sourcing) prove not to be effective.

Not the First; won’t be the Last

Sao Paulo, northern California, Paris (experiencing the heaviest rains in 50 years), Houston, and
Puerto Rico, and now, Cape Town are just representative examples of regions that were
grievously unprepared for protracted changes in weather patterns. Poor planning under-girded by
complacency (or misinformation) about the disruptive capacity of climate change effects, is a big
reason populations continue to be unnecessarily injured by a phenomenon that scientists,
politicians and activists have been warning about for over a decade.

Lastly, the most salient lesson to be learned from this unfolding drama is the imperative for
policy makers to factor environmental variability into their governance calculus, or face the risk
of tremendous loss of faith at best, or popular unrest at worst. This clarion call to action will
continue to ring true for many years to come.

The post Cape Town Awaits “Day Zero” appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Lula may face over 10 years in prison, or become re-elected as President

A well known song from Antonio Carlos e Jocafi could easily run though someone’s mind when reading about corruption in their native Brazil. Voce abusou, or You abuse me is how many citizens feel when members from political parties or elite members of a society take advantage of the public purse. It is not only a financial drain on society, but in order to ensure success of the few over the many the political system must be corrupted along with agencies, branches of government and even the judiciary. While politics permeates all institutions in society, even judicial ones at times, the complete corruption of a system always leads to the people being ignored and abused. Challenging the powers that be often results in extreme actions like humiliating and destroying opponents via ad hominem campaigning, and in some cases even going to the extremes of prison or death.

When a small group of people, be it political agents or an entire party, focuses more on their own ability to win a seat in their government’s capital than the people themselves, the system changes and rots from above. Corrupting the elite leads to an understanding from others in the institutions that success comes in the shadows, and at a certain point achievements become a standardization of abusive policies against the general public and individuals. For a small group to do literally anything to have access to the public purse is always to the detriment of others in society. Besides the open fight for free and fair elections, a barrier to corruption systemically is the judiciary.

Corruption can take place in many forms. Even in a country like Canada, a top aid to a former Premier of the largest Province of Ontario was recently convicted for knowingly hiding actions and erasing public documents relating to over one billion dollars being wasted out of the public purse. This was done so that his party could win a few seats in a past election. The loss of that amount of money from the public without anything to show for it damages the society on many levels. Any future efforts to improve a community are halted with that amount of money lost for the sake of a few greedy people. They effectively destroyed the opportunity for two new major hospitals from possibly being built in their community, possible social housing, welfare, employment insurance coverage and reduced power costs for the most vulnerable in their society, for the sake of a few politicians and their jobs. When funds are stolen or squandered, taxes rise to cover corruption, and those who contribute to society are punished and castigated for continuing to build their own fair societies. In Brazil, these types of issues are amplified many times over, and their judiciary has taken on the task to crush corrupt practices, even if it could be politically impossible to succeed.

The conviction of former popular President Lula da Silva to twelve years in prison for corrupt actions he took during his time in office in the 2000s may show Brazil and the world that corruption must be ended without fail. Whether or not he will serve any part of his sentence remains to be seen. The application of guilt in a fair trial might do more to halt a possible return to politics for Lula than serve justice through his sentence, as the difficulty in reversing corruption once it is institutionalized is almost impossible. With so many political agents in Brazil facing corruption charges, the politics of those in power will flood the judicial process with everything they can to muddy the process, and will likely hinder fairness in that process. A victory for justice in a corrupt system is really any victory that can be claimed, and in societies that are not yet wholly corrupted, a strong a forceful application of justice should be applied not only as the resulting judgment, but as deterrent against abusing the rest of us that just wish to put in a fair days work for our daily bread.

The post Voce Abusou: Corruption as a Permanent Impairment to Society appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.