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The Dragon and the Eagle: Where the United States’ Chinese Foreign Policy is Failing

written by Corrado Chirico

The hostile relationship between the People’s Republic of China and the United States isn’t anything new. Profound fear of the adversary has always been a defining characteristic of China-US relations. Though there have been a few moments in the past decades where a possible harmonization of bilateral relations was in sight, particularly in the 80s during the era of Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalization, the Chinese-American relationship has mostly been characterized by a cold and uncomprehending approach from both sides. This unsatisfying and often dangerous course is rooted in a deep misjudgement and lack of knowledge about the counterpart. But, if the U.S. is interested in improving relations with China in the future and wants to maintain an international balance of power, the American government should stop sharpening its weapons and work to de-escalate the ongoing economic confrontation with the Celestial Empire.

Recently, as President Trump has kept increasing the economic pressure on Beijing, many international observers and experts have started describing this new trade war between the superpowers as a new version of the Cold War. Indeed, the confrontation has become harsher and harsher but Washington doesn’t seem keen on loosening its grip anytime soon. Although the U.S. might be right that the Chinese approach to intellectual property is unfair and that off-shoring is having negative effects on American industry, the U.S. should maintain a certain caution in its policies towards China. Whether President Trump likes it or not, good relations with Beijing are critical for the U.S. because of specific security and political concerns. Additionally, as paradoxical as it may sound, if the U.S. wants to maintain its status as a global hegemon, they will need to cool tensions with China.That said, there are multiple instances where Washington could make a greater effort in order to prevent significant threats to international security.

The North Korean Dossier

Since he took office in January 2017, President Trump has made it clear that one of his foreign policy intentions is to bring the North Korean Leader, Kim Jong Un, to the negotiation table in order to prevent an escalation of the already fragile situation on the Korean peninsula. He has tried to do this by persuading the Chairman to put an end to the nuclear tests, which from a North Korean perspective serve the purpose of scaring off their southern neighbor and getting the regime into international spotlight. The first interactions between the two leaders were quite rough, at least according to their initial tactless tweet exchanges. The tweets immediately made headlines because of the insults and childish accusations issued from both sides; Some may recall the famous “red button policy” that characterized President Trump’s first approach to the North Korean dossier. Luckily enough, right when these tensions were reaching their peak, a reconciliation process between the leaders of North and South Korea began. After several guard posts within the Demilitarized Zone had been destroyed, Kim Jong-Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-In agreed to meet on several occasions. Soon after President Trump and Chairman Kim were the guests of honor at two bilateral summits, held respectively in Singapore and Hanoi, Vietnam, which brought very little progress in the denuclearization process on the Korean peninsula. Though Kim has softened his initial aggressiveness towards the US and reduced the number of missile launches, the summits were mainly useful to Trump as an instrument to strengthen his approval at home, as he was able to sell the (very disappointing) outcome of the two meetings as a major foreign policy achievement. This interpretation, according to which the summits and the now “friendlier” attitude of the North Korean leader were both the fruits of President Trump´s great abilities as a negotiator, was also shared by some American analysts and the media. But those who give Trump credit are neglecting an even more critical source of the success; None of the summits would have taken place without China’s approval.

With a yearly trade volume close to six billion dollars, Beijing represents North Korea’s most important trading partner and has always helped its neighbor and ideological cousin to bypass international sanctions. The origins of the ties between the two countries can be found in the early 1950s, when China decided to intervene in the Korean War (1950-1953) in support of Pyongyang. Since then Beijing has both politically and economically backed all the North Korean leaders, from Kim Il-Sung to the current leader of the Workers’ Party, Kim Jong- Un. However China has shown that it is not above putting pressure on its ally when it showed the potential of threatening the stability of the Korean Peninsula and the broader east Asian region. An example of this “carrot and stick” policy of the Chinese government was the Security Council Resolution 1718. This resolution, which the Chinese government voted in favor of, criticized the nuclear test carried out by North Korea in October 2006. Considering all the aspects mentioned above it is clear how China has kept playing a major role in the security architecture of the region and is still the only country able to both support and “control” Chairman Kim´s intentions. As a consequence, if Washington is interested in keeping Pyongyang on the denuclearization path and hopes to preserve Kim Jong-Un’s willingness to remain open to further dialogue occasions, it should respect China’s hegemonic position in the region and avoid an escalation of the trade war, since the deterioration of the diplomatic channel with North Korea would represent a much bigger risk to regional and international security than the current economic tensions. In summary, the Trump administration should keep the following in mind: no peace with Kim is possible without Xi.

The Risks of an “Asian Bloc”

The North Korean dossier is far from being the only reason why Washington should focus more on Beijing’s real ambitions and put an end to its determined confrontation with the Asian superpower. As reported by the National Bureau of Chinese Research, many experts have already recognized the potential threats of closer cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. That said, the American administration is still doing too little when it comes to resuscitating its almost non-existent relations with Russia and countering the intensification of economic and security ties between Moscow and China.

The history of Sino-Russian relations has always been a troubled one. Despite an initial, mainly ideological partnership, sealed by the Treaty on Friendship, Union and Mutual Assistance signed in 1950, economic and political cooperation, which Beijing was strongly hoping for, didn’t last long. Though in the early 1950s the Soviet Union started contributing to the weak economy of its Asian neighbor by taking part in several industrial projects on Chinese territory, only a few years later relations began to deteriorate gradually. The turning point has been identified by historians in the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist party held in Moscow in 1956 under Nikita Krushev. In fact, in that occasion the party’s Secretary General announced that a plan of “de-Stalinization” of the whole Soviet territory was to be implemented soon. This decision by the Soviet leadership caused great disappointment in Beijing, where Chairman Mao and his associates accused Moscow of “revisionism” and feared that the communist partner would no longer be China’s closest ally, since it was apparently distancing itself from its founding ideology, the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Only in 1982 did the ties between the two countries experience a revival.

Since then Beijing and Moscow have been gradually increasing their cooperation in many different sectors. In this light, the US should be worrying about the fact that this historical partnership is now being sustained by a strong personal relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. This gradually growing rapport between the two leaders is rooted in the extremely similar ways in which they lead their respective countries and their vision of both the liberal world order and (declining) western culture. In this regard an interview President Putin recently gave to the Financial Times is paradigmatic of this diffuse idea among autocrats that western liberalism has somehow become an “obsolete” form to organize societies. This particular approach to international affairs shared by Moscow and Beijing has been a cornerstone for much more comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, which could pose a serious threat to international security in the long term, if not countered in time. Indeed, over the past years China and Russia have been increasing their military cooperation exponentially. Notable examples for this new development are the joint military exercises, such as those held in September 2018, which were the biggest of their kind since 1981, the new joint Chinese-Russian air patrol and Beijing’s dependence on Russia’s advanced military technology. At the same time agreements between the Russian and Chinese governments have been made in regard to deeper economic cooperation, especially in the energy sphere as announced at the bilateral energy business forum in St. Petersburg earlier this year. The most prominent amongst the already existing projects in this sector are the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well as the Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean pipeline. Furthermore Russia is playing a crucial role, especially in relation to Central Asia, in the broader framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is already bringing massive infrastructural investments to large parts of Russian territory.

The elements mentioned above, which characterize the current state of relations between Moscow and Beijing, show how both countries are strongly interested in building an alternative political and social model to the western one and are ready to use their nuclear arsenal as leverage. In this light, in order to avoid escalation of violence and military confrontation between the “Asian bloc” and the U.S., possibly followed by its NATO allies, a solution could be to introduce a new sort of INF treaty, which would include China in addition to the U.S. and Russia. With this kind of initiative the chance of preserving a multipolar and secure world might be higher than with a new unregulated race to arms. Based on this, the American Administration should put more effort into promoting talks and negotiations both with Moscow and Beijing. Otherwise, without a basic consensus about international security between the major world powers, the United States will be worrying about much more serious problems in the future than just China’s intellectual property theft.

December 4, 2019 0 comment

Featured Geopolitics Middle East Security and Conflict

Drip Diplomacy: Israeli Foreign Policy in the Climate Change Age

written by Zach Emanuel

Six. That’s the number of times Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has visited an African nation since being re-elected to his fourth term in March of 2015. That is only one fewer than the seven times Barack Obama visited an African country over the course of his entire presidency. It’s also six more than Bibi’s grand total of zero official visits throughout his first three terms as Prime Minister.¹ Add to this his two trips to China in the last five years, only one fewer than Obama’s three visits, and one begins to wonder what the Prime Minister of a country the size of New Jersey is doing in Africa and Asia as much as the former leader of the free world. A shrewd politician like Netanyahu, however, is not one to act without a purpose, and these foreign trips to nations one would hardly consider Israeli allies are not to be overlooked.

Over the last decade, Israel has continued its controversial construction of settlements in the West Bank, engaged in a costly war in Gaza in the summer of 2014 that left over 2,000 Palestinians dead, and as recently as last spring was criticized from abroad for an overly-aggressive military response to protests in Gaza following the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on the 70th anniversary of Israeli independence. Israeli actions against its neighbors- whether one believes them to be necessary or not- have begun to elicit increasingly serious reprimands from international bodies such as the United Nations.

For example, just prior to leaving office, Barack Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power abstained on a U.N. Security Council vote that demanded the immediate end to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, a stark departure from the traditionally tight American-Israeli relationship.² Up until that point, Obama- like his predecessors- had wielded the U.S.’s permanent veto in the Security Council to ensure no anti-settlement resolutions passed. Additionally, since the creation of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006, the Council has resolved almost more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined.³

Recognizing the need to reverse its status as a pariah at the U.N., Netanyahu saw the necessity in developing international allies in other places like Africa and Asia–allies who would vote alongside Israel at the U.N. and who wouldn’t be quick to meddle in its relationship with its neighbors. Netanyahu has even said as much. Before a visit to Liberia in the summer of 2017, the Prime Minister announced that the purpose of his trip was to “dissolve…this giant bloc of 54 African countries that is the basis of the automatic majority against Israel in the UN and international bodies.” ⁴ Although trade, technology, and security have too been cited as the ways Israel intends to deepen ties, perhaps Netanyahu targeted China and West and East Africa specifically because Israel could gain their support at the UN and in return give these nations something they so desperately needed: water.

Over the last 25 years, 28,000 rivers in China have disappeared. Groundwater levels have fallen by up to three meters a year, and the flow of the Yellow River, one of China’s leading water sources, is a tenth of what it was in the 1940s. China’s current Five Year Plan, which calls for halving per capita water consumption, is an idealistic goal at best. Moreover, in 2017, as a result of pollution and industrial waste nearly 10% of China’s water was unfit even for agricultural or industrial use.⁵

In Africa, the story is similar. The Sahel region in West Africa has experienced a string of deadly droughts over the last decade. In 2010, nearly 10 million Africans across four countries were left either hungry or highly food insecure due to the loss of livestock and crops. In 2012, the same story unfolded. Millions more found themselves without food and increases in crop prices only amplified the problem.⁶

On the other side of the continent, the 2011 East Africa drought, which hit Kenya and Ethiopia among other countries, was said to be “the worst in 60 years.” Crops withered, food prices rose, nearly 9.5 million East Africans were affected, and several hundred thousand lost their lives.⁷

As climate change worsens, droughts and water crises are only expected to worsen. Enter Israel. Like China, the Sahel, and East Africa, Israel too has experienced both droughts and water shortages. However Israeli advancements in water technology have kept pace with both climate change and a growing population. One notable example is the significant improvement of drip irrigation, the process of dripping a small amount of water directly onto a plant’s roots rather than flooding the field. Netafim, the Israeli firm that makes drip irrigation technology, claims the technique uses 75% less water than traditional techniques and allows farmers to use less fertilizer and fewer pesticides. In turn, crops yield at higher rates causing food prices to drop, and aquifers suffer from less chemical pollution.⁸

Additionally, take Watergen, another Israeli firm that produces 2,000-pound generators capable of extracting 600 liters of clean drinking water directly from the air each day. The generators simply require electricity, and their weight allows for easy transportation to rural areas that are often hit hardest by droughts and lack the necessary infrastructure to transport water.⁹

With just these two Israeli technologies, West and East Africa and China can drastically reduce the intensity of droughts, the cost of food, and the level of pollution in their waterways. Is it really any wonder then that China, Kenya, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Guinea are interested in receiving Netanyahu or that Bibi has targeted these countries as potential like-minded voters at the U.N.?

When Netanyahu visited in Kenya in February of 2016, he and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a joint agreement and established a bilateral committee to focus specifically on addressing water and agricultural issues.¹⁰ On the Prime Minister’s trip to Liberia, he too emphasized Israel’s commitment to investing in Liberian “water treatment…water purification,” while planning a visit to Israel for ten Liberian leaders to learn efficient and effective Israeli agricultural techniques.¹¹ Moreover, the city of Shouguang will also play host to Israel’s flagship “Water City” project in China. The plan is to “advance Israeli companies and incorporate Israeli technology” into China’s massive water infrastructure in an attempt to deepen ties between the two nations. The project has headlined Bibi’s multiple trips to the country since 2014.¹²

Climate change is precipitating a worldwide water crisis and it is clear that Israel has solutions. Netanyahu simply wants to be sure Israel gets something of equal value- in this case support at the U.N- in return for offering its extended assistance and investment. A canny politician like Netanyahu surely knows never to let a crisis go to waste.

And it isn’t just parts of Africa and China that Bibi has in his crosshairs. Vietnam has been experiencing a water crisis of its own as only 39% of the rural population has access to clean drinking water.¹³ It may be no coincidence then that in 2011 former Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Vietnam and in 2015 Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely did the same. In 2014 former Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang visited Israel, and last November Vietnam received its first Watergen generators- as gifts no less- for use across the country.^{14, 15}

Over the last decade Colombia has suffered from the “worst drought” in the country’s history, causing food prices to skyrocket and leaving farmers in economic straits. In 2015, the Israeli firm RWL Water completed construction of a major water treatment facility in the country and in 2017 Netanyahu attended a State Visit.¹⁶

In 2016 Paraguay declared a state of emergency during a severe drought of its own. Netanyahu made an official visit there too just before heading to Columbia.¹⁷ Back up five years to 2011 and Mexican farmers were suffering through their “worst drought in 70 years.” Bibi visited Mexico as well.¹⁸ Finally, in February of 2017 Netanyahu became the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Australia, a country that has been racked by droughts for much of the last two decades.

Despite Bibi’s best efforts, this “Drip Diplomacy” has yet to yield results at the U.N. For all the traveling and water technology, these countries have so far declined to vote alongside Israel when significant resolutions come up for votes. But as climate change worsens, droughts increase in frequency, and Israel begins to play a much larger role in combating the crises, Netanyahu and his successors may well demand cooperation at the U.N. in exchange for continued cooperation. If Israel becomes one of Africa and Latin America’s most important international benefactors via their assistance in modernizing these nations’ water infrastructure and agricultural technology, several years from now it shouldn’t shock us when Liberia, Ethiopia, or Colombia all of a sudden have something to say about Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

However regardless of if Drip Diplomacy succeeds, the strategy says something about how Netanyahu views Israel’s status on the world stage. Since the advent of the U.N., the U.S has been able to wield its military and economic strength to coax and cajole allies into voting the way it wants them to at the U.N. The capability to do so however is unique to superpowers like the U.S. Even Beijing and Moscow don’t possess nearly the international influence that Washington does. Bibi’s continuing gamble to reject the U.N.’s reprimands and instead attempt to use Israeli technological power to change the votes of certain countries demonstrates his unwavering belief in Israel’s future as a global leader. Israel may be the size of New Jersey, but Bibi is betting that its influence can be just as large as that of the whole United States.

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “List of International Prime Ministerial Trips Made by Benjamin Netanyahu,” (accessed December 3), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_prime_ministerial_trips_made_by_Benjamin_Netanyahu
Eric Cortellessa, “Choosing not to veto, Obama lets anti-settlement resolution pass at UN Security Council,” The Times of Israel, Published December 23, 2016. https://www.timesofisrael.com/choosing-not-to-veto-obama-lets-anti-settlement-resolution-pass-at-un-security-council/
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “List of United Nations resolutions concerning Israel,” (accessed December 3), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel
Alexander Fulbright and Raphael Ahren, “PM heads to West African summit seeking support at UN,” The Times of Israel, Published June 4, 2017. http://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-heads-to-west-african-summit-seeking-support-at-un/
Charles Parton, “China’s acute water shortage imperils economic future,” Financial Times, Published February 27, 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/3ee05452-1801-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44
Xan Rice, “Severe drought causes hunger for 10 million in west Africa,” The Guardian, Published June 3, 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/03/drought-hunger-west-africa
BBC News, “Horn of Africa tested by severe drought,” BBC, Published July 4, 2011. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14023160
Ruth Schuster, “The Secret of Israel’s Water Miracle and How It Can Help a Thirsty World,” Haaretz, Published July 4, 2017. https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/how-israel-can-help-a-thirsty-world-1.5392651
http://www.watergen.com/
Raphael Ahren, “Netanyahu to visit Africa, first Israel PM to do so in 50 years,” The Times of Israel, Published February 29, 2016. https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-to-visit-africa-first-israeli-pm-to-do-so-in-50-years/
Joaquin M. Sendolo, “Israel Celebrates 70th Anniversary, Underscores Relations with Liberia,” Liberian Observer, Published April 30, 2018. https://www.liberianobserver.com/news/israel-celebrates-70th-anniversary-underscores-relations-with-liberia/
Ora Coran, “Netanyahu’s China Visit is All About Business,” Haaretz, Published March 20, 2017. https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-netanyahus-china-visit-is-all-about-business-1.5450835
Sahisna Suwal, “Water in Crisis – Vietnam,” The Water Project, https://thewaterproject.org/water-crisis/water-in-crisis-vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Vietnam_relations
Eytan Halon, “Hanoi to Benefit from innovative Israeli Air-to-Water Technology,” The Jerusalem Post, Published November 8, 2018. https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Hanoi-to-benefit-from-innovative-Israeli-air-to-water-technology-571377
Rose Lander, “Colombia suffering worst drought in recorded history,” Colombia Reports, Published September 22, 2015. https://colombiareports.com/colombia-suffering-worst-drought-in-recorded-history/
Vladimir Hernandez, “Paraguay declares state of emergency as drought shrinks economy,” BBC, Published February 26, 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-17171858/paraguay-declares-state-of-emergency-as-drought-shrinks-economy
Noe Torres, “Mexican farmers suffer worst drought in 70 years,” Reuters, Published November 25, 2011. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-drought/mexican-farmers-suffer-worst-drought-in-70-years-idUSTRE7AO18Q20111126

April 25, 2019 0 comment

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Featured Globalization Human Rights Internet Journalism Security Security and Conflict Society and Culture

Multinational Corporations and the EU’s New Data Laws

written by Eden Ballard

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12

“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

This sentiment is echoed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Article 17, Right to Privacy. On April 8th 1988 the UN adopted general comment number 16 to article 17 which states that:

The gathering and holding of personal information on computers, data banks and other devices, whether by public authorities or private individuals or bodies, must be regulated by law. Effective measures have to be taken by States to ensure that information concerning a person’s private life does not reach the hands of persons who are not authorized by law to receive, process and use it, and is never used for purposes incompatible with the Covenant. In order to have the most effective protection of his private life, every individual should have the right to ascertain in an intelligible form, Whether, and if so, What personal data is stored in automatic data ﬁles, and for What purposes. Every individual should also be able to, ascertain which public authorizes or private individuals or bodies control or may control their ﬁles. If such ﬁles contain incorrect personal data or have been collected or processed contrary to the provisions of the law, every individual should have the right to request rectification or elimination.

Nearly 31 years old, this statement has gone largely ignored as the internet exploded and user engagement far outpaced any thought to user privacy. This changed on May 25th, 2018 when the European Union took a major step in protecting the privacy rights of individual users by adopting the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The website created for the GDPR boasts that it is “the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years.” This regulation impacts how the the privacy of more than 500 million EU citizens will be protected from exploitation by online service providers. With the approval of the General Data Protection Regulation, the European Union has shown that it holds individual privacy to be of the utmost importance.

The GDPR applies to the conduct of all companies that provide services for EU residents, even if it is only for one EU resident. It aims to safeguard against individual users’ data being used in ways they do not knowingly consent to and mandates that consent can be withdrawn as easily as it is granted. This ability to withdrawal consent protects what they call “The Right to Be Forgotten.” One of the main ways that this is protected is by prohibiting from using “long illegible terms and conditions full of legalese.” Apple’s “Terms and Conditions” updated as of September 17, 2018 was a lengthy 7,006 words. The contract ambiguously ends: “Children under the age of majority should review this Agreement with their parent or guardian to ensure that the child and parent or legal guardian understand it.” However, the parents or legal guardians themselves are likely not reviewing nor understanding it; it’s unfair to expect that average users feel comfortable or have the spare time to try to understand the needlessly verbose contracts drawn up by lawyers working for multimillion dollar firms. Now behemoth companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, each serving a network of users across the globe, are being asked to rise to the occasion… and they will.

The amount of revenue generated from the more than 400 million internet users in the EU is more than enough to incentivize companies to adhere to the GDPR. If they fail to change their policies or decide to pull out of the European market, the business face the loss of millions of dollars through fines or from decreased profits respectively For violations of the GDPR’s stipulations on consent, among other legal issues, fines are the greater of twenty million euro or 4% of the entity’s gross global revenue. That said, Google and Facebook were quick to make sure that they updated their user policy to adhere to the GDPR.

Google will be making data they collect viewable under “My Activity” and users will be able to delete specific activity or data from entire time frames that they would rather not have associated with their account. Data privacy information has been made more easily accessible and users are provided with clearer explanations of Google’s data practices through a series of video tutorials outlining a user’s options for managing, exporting, and deleting data.

Both Facebook and Google will have special protection features for their users who are under 18 years old. Facebook’s include requiring parent or guardian permission for the use of target ads and restricted sharing.

On April 17th, 2018 Facebook’s Newsroom published an outline of changes being made to accommodate the GDPR. In addition to allowing the data to be more easily deleted, Facebook will ask users to agree to their updated terms of service and data policy, whether they want to see ads targeted to the information they have filled out on their profile, and if they want to turn off Facebook’s face recognition features. This last option will also be available to users in Canada.

All of this comes shortly after Facebook’s now infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal in which data mined on Facebook was collected and used to strategically place ads pertaining to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Users were inadvertently handing over their data to a third party by playing games and taking quizzes that were seemingly innocuous.

This particular application of mined data, and many other similar instances, highlights that as our dependence on technology and virtual programs has increased over the years, we have slowly but steadily bought into a system without taking the time to critique it. Collectively, people have become complacent about what contracts they absentmindedly agree to mean in the context of their everyday lives. Although we understand that anything shared on the internet will never truly disappear, we fail to ponder what happens when we hand over our addresses, credit card information, age, and other personal statistics to sites like Amazon, Twitter, banking sites, and dating services.

Unfortunately, even with the publicized steps corporations are taking to meet the expectations of the GDPR, business is business and companies continue to look for ways to maximize profits and minimize accountability. In response to the GDPR, Facebook now handles their user responsibility out of their offices in California instead of their international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. This allows them to circumvent the GDPR and that user rights are now subject to the much lighter U.S. data protection regulations. On top of that, Facebook is still able to advantage of comparable tax breaks by booking their revenue through their Irish office. Alex Hern of The Guardian summed up the issue on April 18th, 2018: “Facebook has moved more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally.”

The GDPR is a step in the right direction for privacy rights but the fact remains that the very companies that so many people depend on in their day to day lives continue to abuse their global dominion. As illustrated by Facebook’s move to California, regulations lack strength unless they are implemented globally. The data privacy values outlined by the Article 17 of the ICCPR should be regarded equally around the world. Until there are universal norms, corporations will exploit legal irregularities to serve themselves, not their trusting customers. Looking to the EU as an example, one can only hope that soon the international community will begin to ask, and rightly so, about individuals’ right to privacy on the world wide web.

March 11, 2019 0 comment

Africa Environmental Change Featured Geopolitics History Security and Conflict

The Renaissance of Water Conflict

written by Katarina Kosmala-Dahlbeck

Ethiopia first announced its plan to construct the Grand Renaissance Dam in 2010, as the Arab Spring began to threaten political stability throughout the region. Upon completion, the hydropower plant on the Blue Nile River will become the largest dam in Africa, storing about 70 billion cubic meters of water and flooding 1,680 square kilometers of land. In addition to displacing 20,000 Ethiopians from their homes, the dam also poses a serious water security threat to Ethiopia’s powerful downstream neighbor, Egypt. Ethiopia’s damming of the Blue Nile will propel Egypt into absolute water scarcity, severely limiting supply to its agricultural sector and to urban residents in Cairo. Tensions regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) have consequently spanned nearly a decade as the two countries have struggled to reach a deal that will supply both of them with a desirable amount of water.

Due to colonial-era agreements, Egypt historically owns the rights to a majority of the Nile’s water. The 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and its modification in 1959 granted Egypt control over the Nile as well as veto power over any water projects upstream. These agreements were signed under British rule to maintain colonial control over Egypt’s agricultural exports and the Suez Canal, but did not take into account the needs of any other Nile Basin countries. Ethiopia, which controls the supply of 70-80% of the Nile’s water, was not included in either of these treaties and continues to deny their validity to this day. Addis Ababa has thus viewed GERD as a rightful opportunity to become the primary energy exporter in the region and lift the country out of poverty. Egypt, however, has viewed its construction as a secretive and unilateral decision to violate these treaties, escalating a conflict that has at times even threatened at military action.

Conflict over the Nile is not a new phenomenon, but Ethiopia’s announcement of the dam’s construction came at a time of particular uncertainty following the Egyptian Revolution in 2010. This had significant implications for the balance of power in North Africa, and Ethiopia took the opportunity to move on a neighbor preoccupied with domestic instability. However, tensions flared regardless as Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi asserted in 2013 that “if our share of Nile water decreases”, the alternative will be “our blood”. Egypt’s dependence on the Nile goes far beyond water resources and national security. The river is frequently mythologized in Egyptian culture, and the country’s constitution even characterizes Egypt’s existence as a “gift of the Nile”. After securing peace with Israel in 1979, President Anwar Sadat famously wrote that the only issue that could bring Egypt to war again is water.

More pressing than geopolitics, however, is Egypt’s domestic water security threat. Even without the dam, overpopulation and increasing desertification have forced the government to increasingly import water-intensive crops, especially rice. 625,000 acres of arable land are currently vulnerable to drought, and hundreds of thousands of farmers face a lack of livelihood should these trends continue. GERD’s completion, expected within the next five years, will reduce Egypt’s water levels by an additional 25%, posing major challenges for the desert-ridden country as droughts only continue to lengthen. The government has taken few steps to address this issue, and has instead mitigated the problem through increasing food imports and threatening the dam’s construction in Ethiopia. While Egypt’s attachment to the Nile is understandable, military action will not guarantee Cairo its water supply. Instead, the country should take the changing status quo as an opportunity to renegotiate water rights in the region outside of colonial dependence. A deal that provides all Nile Basin countries with water would help prevent dissatisfaction in Ethiopia and set a precedent for sharing international water bodies as resources become more scarce.

Fortunately, Ethiopia’s new prime minister Abiy Ahmed reached out this May stating his intention to “aid development in Ethiopia without harming the Egyptian people”. Known as a reformer, Abiy has made it clear that he wants to collaborate with Ethiopia’s neighbors rather than threaten them. However, the country’s staunch defense of the dam’s construction has signaled that Ethiopia does intend to rival Egypt as the primary energy exporter in the region and is now bargaining from a position of strength. The best course of action for Egypt now would be to concede its regional power and resort to diplomacy rather than threatening war. Temporary lapses in GERD’s construction due to domestic corruption and infrastructure problems have slowed the dam’s progress, and Egypt would be well advised to take advantage of this opportunity to negotiate a deal with Ethiopia. A temporary reprieve in construction allows all parties to preemptively negotiate without the pressure of full development underway.

Meanwhile, Egypt can more effectively mitigate the dam’s threat through its domestic water policy. Relying more on wastewater recycling would utilize its already available water supply, and drawing from groundwater aquifers would decrease its reliance on surface water. The government can even invest in desalination plants to help support its urban populations along the coast. In the agriculture sector, the country can update its irrigation technology to more efficient techniques that require much smaller amounts of water. Smarter irrigation and a transition away from water-intensive crops will considerably decrease agricultural water demand without decreasing food output. All of these strategies can help Egypt better adapt to water shortage while preparing for resource scarcities already expected due to climate change.

Unfortunately, this kind of conflict is not uncommon, and water grabbing has become one of the most profound vestiges of colonialism around the world. Powerful countries facing a water deficit have offset their losses by acquiring water in developing countries, often without the institutional protections and regulations to guard against resource exploitation. The majority of water grabbing takes place in Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, although nearly 60% of global water appropriation is made by the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Israel. As water resources become more scarce, historical power structures continue to define the allocation of resources that seem to provide too little for both the rich and the poor. To make matters worse, legal agreements concerning international water bodies do not include climate adaptation policies or incorporate climate models for the future. As a result, the Grand Renaissance Dam is a powerful example of what we can expect in the coming years as water resources become increasingly limited and valuable.

The utilization of water as a national rather than a collective right has historically harmed all states involved and resulted in the power imbalances existent in the Nile Basin. All parties would be better off bargaining if they approached water as essential to their collective security rather than as the property of singular national governments. However, this requires the dismantling of centuries of unequal water distribution rights and the power hierarchies surrounding them. Until sufficient agreements can be made regarding the just allocation of water rights going forward, we can expect to see a surge in water conflict not only in Africa but throughout the world.

January 13, 2019 0 comment

Featured Geopolitics Human Rights Middle East Security and Conflict

Ethnicity and Democracy: A Dangerous Mix?

written by Katarina Kosmala-Dahlbeck

In July 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed a law defining Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people”. This so-called “nation-state law” establishes Hebrew as the state’s official language, lauds Jewish settlement as a “national value”, and delineates the right to self-determination in Israel as “unique to the Jewish people”. It also demotes Arabic from an official language to a “special status” and states that Jerusalem, which both Israel and the Palestinians claim as their own, is the capital of Israel. A law that many say has turned a political reality into a legal one, the nation-state bill has generated widespread criticism and inflamed the very crux behind Israel’s identity: the tension between its Jewish and democratic nature. This dual yet contradicting truth has sparked questions about the viability of Israel’s future as a democracy – even leading scholars to term Israel as the only “ethnic democracy” in the world. The implications of the nation-state law are profound. Besides severely weakening the Palestinian narrative, the law strips away the rights of 20 percent of Israel’s population as well as introduces a concerning model for populist-leaning democracies across the West.

Supporters of the law argue that it does not effectively change the status quo but reaffirms what has always been true. Some even express frustration that the law does not do more to protect Jewish interests, especially regarding the building of settlements in the West Bank. However, the bill’s codification into Israeli Basic Law is significant because it delineates this highly contentious reality into law. The state of Israel does not have a constitution; as a result, its Basic Law is the highest law in the land. Moreover, the context and timing of the law’s passing give it a salience that has sparked controversy both in Israel and abroad. Whereas Israel’s particular brand of ethno-nationalism used to be unique in the world of Western democracies, in today’s age of rising global populism it may serve as an example to right-wing governments appealing to the racial identities of their supporters. This, combined with its effects on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gives the nation-state law a unique potential to affect the politics of the region as well as the character of ethnic expression in democracies around the world.

Within Israel, the law has directly affected Arab citizens, many of whom feel as though the government has turned its back on their desire for civil rights. A law stating that the right to self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people explicitly discriminates against Arabs, who make up over 20 percent of the country’s population and already face institutional discrimination in many ways. Additionally, some of the most outspoken opponents of the law have been members of the Israeli Druze community, a religious group that “participate[s] in nearly every aspect of Israeli society” but as a result of the law will not receive the same legal recognition as Jewish citizens. For decades the Druze have been active in the Israeli government and served in the Israeli Defense Forces, often in positions of influence and authority. Many have criticized the law for unjustly stripping them of rights when they have contributed substantially to the survival and success of their country.

In spite of the effects the law will undoubtedly have on non-Jewish citizens of Israel, some of its larger implications stretch beyond Israel’s borders. The legal establishment of Jewish self-determination over the land of Israel effectively delegitimizes the Palestinian right to self-determination, as well as to ownership over the land they claim. Yet this law is just the latest in a series of blows to the Palestinian cause from the combined leadership and close collaboration of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May, the withdrawal of American funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), and increased violence in Gaza has led to growing Palestinian disillusionment with Israel as well as with American ability to mediate the conflict. The Palestinian Authority recently expressed dismay at the fact that the United States had never been an unbiased mediator, but noted that at least it had been a respectable one. Now however, that reality has come into question. With the U.S unabashedly taking Israel’s side in its conflict with its Palestinian neighbors, Washington may be throwing away its ability to control events in the region and dictate terms in any future agreement.

Furthermore, some of the more lasting effects of the law may have little to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all. In a global political climate of rising populism and appeals to race in democracies across the West, the legal establishment of ethnic superiority in Israel sets a powerful precedent. While the circumstances of Israel’s founding as a Jewish state have always differed from other Western countries, the tide of ethno-nationalism sweeping traditionally liberal democracies may lead to Israel becoming an example rather than an outlier. Conservative politicians in democracies around the world may well use Israel’s nation-state law to legitimize their own racialized legislation, endangering the very nature of liberal democracy as it exists today.

October 18, 2018 0 comment

Europe Featured Geopolitics History Military Russia Security and Conflict Territorial disputes Vladimir Putin

The Russo-Georgian War, 10 Years Later

written by Conor McDonald

On August 7th, 2008, the leaders of the Russian Federation shocked the world and made the controversial decision to mobilize and invade Georgia, a small, sovereign nation located in the Caucasus Mountains just south of Russia. The Georgian military had been engaged with separatists from the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia for just under a week, yet by the time a large batch of Russian military personnel entered their territory through the mountainous Roki tunnel at 11:00 PM, it was too late. Despite what any news outlets would later report, the international community knew that Georgia had just lost a major chunk of its territory to this aggressor from the north. What no one knew, however, was that this seemingly minor excursion would begin a decade’s worth of continued Russian belligerence and adventurism toward its neighbors. But why start with Georgia?

Historically, the strained relations between Russia and Georgia are nothing new, and can be traced back as early as the year 1785 when the Russian Empire violated a treaty and refused to defend the eastern Georgian Kingdom during a Persian invasion. Some decades later, in 1801, Georgia joined the Russian Empire, and it remained a protected member up until 1918 when the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia was established following the Russian Revolution and the abdication of the Russian Tsardom. This was short-lived, however, as the Bolsheviks and the Red Army overthrew the Georgian government in 1921 and forcibly annexed the region into the newly-established United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) in 1922.

The USSR forced an era of tension, fear and powerlessness upon the citizens of Georgia. Under the first three years of Soviet control alone, approximately 50,000 Georgians were executed by the government, while an insurmountable 150,000 were purged up through 1951 by Joseph Stalin, a native Georgian himself. Additionally, basic rights to citizenship were stripped; according to Michael Parrish in The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953, Stalin forced entire Ingush, Chechen, Balkarian and Karachay populations, all native to Georgia, into deportation. Georgian territories were seized and distributed amongst various states, including Armenia and Turkey, and nearly half of the 700,000 soldiers that the country was forced to contribute toward the Red Army were killed over the course of World War II. Even when relatively progressive leaders like Nikita Khrushchev took control of the Soviet Union — “progressive” in that he succeeded Stalin — Georgian protests promoting independence from the USSR resulted in the massacring of hundreds of college students and demonstrators.

Thus, it should surprise no one that, upon the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Georgian officials were quick to declare sovereignty and begin holding democratic elections. Unfortunately, the radical and autocratic Georgian presidency of Zviad Gamsakhurdia prompted some to lose faith in their nation, and pro-Russian separatist groups gained prominence in certain regions — most notably in South Ossetia and Abkhazia — leading to a short-lasting civil war in the latter. Somewhat ironically, this forced Georgia to join the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in order to receive Russian military support, and, in 2001, Abkhazia and Georgia co-signed “an accord pledging not to use force against each other.”

After the accord’s ratification, a shaky sense of peace was established between Georgia and the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was clearly imperfect, though, as protests and skirmishes continued to break out while political tensions rose unwaveringly; South Ossetia even went so far as to hold an unofficial referendum in which 99% of the public voted in favor of independence, an act ignored by the European Union but supported by the Russia Duma. Two years later, after hearing direct pleas for support from Abkhazian and South Ossetian officials, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev stated that allying with the separatist regions “is not an easy choice, but it is the only way to save the lives of people,” and pledged both political and military support to both. Several months later, after the Georgian military responded to another South Ossetian attack, Russia launched its now-infamous military invasion.

Russia’s 2008 seizure of the Ossetian and Abkhazian territories provided eerie foreshadowing for what the Federation’s neighbors had in store. Six years later, in 2014, a near-identical crisis transpired in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donbas regions, disputes which continue to the time of this article’s publication. The primary characteristic that both the Georgian and Ukrainian annexation attempts had in common is that they highlighted deep, pervading insecurities from within the highest ranks of Russian leadership. These insecurities are two-pronged, with stress placed on both military and political pressures. From a military perspective, the intimidating reach of NATO expansion is obviously considered to be a pervading, existential threat; Georgia and Ukraine were invaded while the United States and the West considered their bids to enter NATO. However, the more alarming insecurities are political, and they continue to grow increasingly problematic as democracy gains popularity within Russian spheres of influence.

During a 2005 visit, President George W. Bush proudly referred to Georgia as a beacon of liberty in a region where freedom is not always to be taken for granted. He spoke glowingly about the 2003 Georgian Rose Revolution, in which a peaceful change of power allied Georgia more strongly with the West. This revolution preceded and arguably inspired Ukraine’s 2004-2005 Orange Revolution, which forced the overturning of then-President Viktor Yanukovych and his corrupt, Russophilic administration in favor of the more Western-oriented candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. These so-called Color Revolutions, which also took place in post-Soviet Yugoslavia and Kyrgyzstan, sent a message to their former occupier that these nations were now independent and desirous of fair domestic representation. Seeing that his neighbors were quickly working to distance themselves from the influence of a relatively weakened Russia, it would not take a foreign affairs specialist to understand that Vladimir Putin, a longstanding disbeliever in the promises of democracy, was far from pleased with the symbolism of these revolts.

Following the 2008 invasion of Georgia, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko began to indirectly lay the groundwork for his own country’s invasion by publicly voicing his support for Georgian independence. It is no coincidence that this controversial anti-Russian stance hurdled Ukraine toward further political crisis in November of that year, a window which Russia seized to further exacerbate political troubles. When Yanukovych successfully regained his presidency in 2013, Ukraine spiraled into yet another revolution, and this time Putin chose to involve himself on his pro-Russia counterpart’s behalf. Shortly after, the autonomous region of Crimea was annexed by Russian soldiers.

Russia had been guilty of testing Western resolve all throughout the 21st century, particularly in Eastern Europe, but the dramatic actions against Georgia in 2008 marked a critical shift in Russian foreign policy. Long gone were the days of press releases or discrete political subversion, and ushered in was an era of violent military intervention and territorial seizures. The only thing protecting Russia’s other Western-oriented, post-Soviet neighbors is their NATO membership, and the United States and its allies should not be surprised to see Russian intervention on behalf of other separatist groups from non-member states in the coming years. Ten years after the events in Georgia, the world still waits to see who will be next.

September 26, 2018 0 comment

Africa Europe Featured History Military Security and Conflict Uncategorized

La Guerre du Sahel

written by Grayson Peters

Along a desert road, a military convoy is passed by an unassuming gray car. There is a sudden explosion, then gunfire. Fifteen minutes later, four civilians are dead and eight Western soldiers are wounded. This is not the first act of terrorism in the region, nor will it be the last. The story is familiar – an Islamic terrorist attack against Western soldiers stationed in the region – but the players and setting are not. These foreign forces are not American, and the battleground is not Iraq or Afghanistan. The soldiers are French, and they are in the Sahel, a sub-Saharan strip of Africa that links the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Red Sea to the east.

The Sahel is a vast, scarcely populated, and loosely governed region that stretches across fourteen African countries, including Mali, Chad, and Niger. In recent decades, the absence of effective governance has allowed the Sahel to become a hotbed of political violence and a safe haven for transnational terrorist organizations. Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and smaller, regional terrorist organizations have all used the Sahel as a base of operations and refuge from counter-terrorist operations. The Sahel states’ porous borders enable militant groups to travel unchecked across vast swaths of the continent and strike targets in North African nations such as Algeria and Tunisia.

Ethnic and economic tensions in the Sahel predate the arrival of transient Islamic terrorist organizations, but temporary alliances between militant groups and villagers increase the scale and danger of regional violence. The New York Times reported that France and Mali estimate that ISIS in the Greater Sahara has only 40 to 60 core members. By inflaming local passions and escalating grievances between villagers, small groups of transnational militants are able to create disproportionately large violence and chaos. For instance, Niger and Mali’s cattle-herding Tuareg people, who had previously only taken up arms to defend their cattle and on occasion engage in small-scale ethnic violence, became involved with international terrorism. Far from home, Tuareg recruits have been involved in terrorist incidents in Libya, raids in Nigeria, and “banditry” in northern Niger and southern Algeria. Ethnic grievances between the Tuareg and Fulani peoples in both Mali and Niger led to ethnic armed conflict which was dramatically escalated by the presence of Islamic militant groups. Because these ethnic grievances are often intertwined with economic concerns, especially cattle ownership, external pressures that threaten the livelihood of Sahelian villagers can catalyze conflict.

As global warming progresses, the increased frequency of droughts, expanding desertification of the Sahel, and dwindling resources in the area will likely worsen regional tensions and create conditions favorable for the growth of terrorist networks. In 2012, according to the State Department, droughts and failed harvests in the Sahel placed 18.7 million Africans at risk for food insecurity, further fueling instability in the region. It is no coincidence that, immediately following the outbreak of drought, cattle die-offs, and famine, relations between Mali’s Tuareg and Fulani peoples worsened. A series of escalating cattle raids led to an arms race and created an opportunity for al-Qaeda affiliates to supply villagers with automatic weapons. Within the year, the Tuareg people of northern Mali, with support from al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, formed the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) and rebelled against the central government of Mali.

When French military assets entered Mali in 2013, the campaign, known officially as Operation Serval, aimed to support the beleaguered Malian government and block the NMLA’s war for a Tuareg ethnostate in northern Mali. Although Mali and France decisively defeated the NMLA after only a few months, the French remained in Mali in an attempt to suppress a continued insurgency. Five years later, Operation Barkhane, France’s ongoing operation to stabilize the greater Sahel is ongoing and there are fresh casualties. As recently as July 1, a car bombing in Gao injured French soldiers and killed dozens of Malian civilians. Nusrat al-Islam, an al-Qaeda linked organization and the primary terrorist network currently operating in the Sahel, claimed responsibility.

In 2013, three-quarters of the French citizenry supported Operation Serval, the original intervention against NMLA secessionists in Mali. Today, substantial French support endures for the ongoing Operation Barkhane despite the campaign’s duration and casualties.

At first, it may seem surprising that France is leading the international effort to stamp out terrorism in the Sahel. After all, in 2003, the French government’s opposition to American intervention in Iraq was widely mocked in the United States. In protest, Los Angelenos (and even some UCLA students) publicly poured out French wine in front of the French consulate, and the U.S. House of Representatives cafeteria menu infamously renamed French fries to Freedom fries. During this wave of anti-French sentiment, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman declared that “France is becoming our enemy.” In 2003, France insisted on a multilateral diplomatic approach to Iraq, in opposition to U.S. President Bush’s insistence on unilateral military action. Yet, ten years later, the French army unilaterally entered Mali, touching off a protracted five-year campaign that has expanded to include the entire Sahel region.

What changed between Freedom fries and a permanent French presence in the Sahel? In reality, France’s relationships with Iraq and the Sahel are vastly different. Countries in the western Sahel such as Mali and Niger were colonized and imperialized by France during the European Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century. These Francophone African nations still bear both the trauma and cultural legacy of French rule.

Many leftist and African scholars argue that France’s reassertion of authority and military power over historic colonial possessions is best characterized as neo-imperialist. Skeptical that France’s primary concern is protecting Malian citizens from terrorism, these critics of French intervention point to plausible ulterior motives including the protection of French corporate mining interests and nearby uranium mines (in both Niger and Nigeria) on which the French energy sector relies. In February, Congolese novelist and UCLA professor Alain Mabanckou criticized la Francophonie, the informal and institutionalized network of French speaking countries, and described it not as a partnership of equals but as an instrument of French neo-imperial domination.

However, there is also evidence that the French feel a sense of obligation to and fraternity with the Francophone Africans of the Sahel. Cultural ties, a shared language, and a sense of historical interconnectedness (despite the region’s colonial past) are all factors. Arguably, elements within France feel a sense of guilt and noblesse oblige, or responsibility of the privileged, towards the nations their ancestors exploited. Whether this concern is genuine or paternalistically self-serving is a matter of debate. What is clear, however, is that the security situation in the Sahel is as of yet unresolved and that the potent mixture of ethnic conflict, Islamic terrorism, rising global temperatures, and increasingly severe droughts represents a enduring security risk for African nations and a source of serious concern for France.

September 19, 2018 0 comment

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Adam Schiff: Bernard Brodie Lecture and Interview

written by Andrea Zachrich

Congressman Adam Schiff came to UCLA to give the Bernard Brodie Lecture on the Conditions of Peace on May 31st of this year. Before the lecture, members of The Generation were fortunate enough to sit down with Congressman Schiff and ask him questions about the House Intelligence Committee- of which he is currently the Ranking Member- his responsibility to his constituents and the American people, democratic institutions and the rule of law, and the reputation of the United States internationally. He echoed and elaborated on many of these topics during his lecture and audience questions, which we were also able to attend following the interview. While there has been a summer that has past since the time of interview, many of his comments remain relevant as we’ve watched President Trump’s antics unfold over the past few months.

Congressman Schiff has a great sense of humor. He began the lecture by telling an anecdote about when President Trump called him “sleazy”. Schiff said that he felt the need to explain to his son what had happened in case the other children at school talked about it. He told his son that “the President called your dad sleazy”, and his son, wholly unconcerned, replied, “Can I call you sleazy?” Congressman Schiff used humor frequently throughout his lecture to highlight the absurdity of some of the administration’s recent actions, such as President Trump calling Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on his win. He even went so far as to mimic how that phone conversation might have gone, which had the entire audience laughing.

In the interview with us, however, Congressman Schiff’s tone was markedly more serious. We began by asking him about the partisanship on his committee in the House of Representatives, which is the House Select Intelligence Committee. The committee has been charged with conducting an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections between President Trump and members of his team and Russia. Despite the traditionally bipartisan nature of the Intelligence Committee, Schiff noted that one particular instance- what he called the “midnight run“– which divided the committee along partisan lines. The “run” occurred in March of 2017 when Republican Chairman Devin Nunes went to an undisclosed location to reportedly receive classified materials unmasking a conspiracy that claimed that the Obama administration had done surveillance on members of President Trump’s transition team. Nunes then went to the White House to present this evidence. However in a matter of days it as revealed that the supposedly undisclosed location was the White House. Schiff states, “But we learned within a matter of days that in fact the secret location he had gone too had been the White House and the materials he had received were from the White House that he was presenting to the White House.That kind of blew up the investigation because it became clear that the mission for the chairman was to protect the President at all costs rather than doing an objective investigation. The incident troubled Schiff for illustrating Nunes’ blatant disregard for the committee’s constitutional duty and for demonstrating the vastly different goals of its members.

We then asked Schiff what would change on his committee if Democrats win a majority in the House in the upcoming midterm elections and he becomes chairman. His first priority, he said, would be a return to “comity” on the committee, and blames the current chairman Nunes’ divisive actions for the current level of partisanship. When asked a similar question during the lecture, Schiff responded that he would like his committee to “get back in the oversight business”. Based on some recent special election results, Schiff may get his wish for his committee from the midterm elections. In a recent special election in Ohio, the vote came down to closer than 1 percent in a district that has had Republican representation in Congress for 35 years, the past incumbent consistently cruised to victory by 10 percentage points, and where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a whooping 11 percent. These election results, while not representative of the entire nation, have led many to predict that Democrats may shortly regain the majority in Congress, making Congressman Schiff the leader of the House Intelligence Committee.

On a different note, one idea that Schiff kept highlighting throughout both the interview and his lecture was the breakdown of democratic institutions and the rule of law, and how this is affecting the U.S.’s reputation and negotiating power abroad. Schiff even went so far as to say “I think that the health of our democracy is very much at risk”. He mentioned numerous examples that ranged from President Trump’s tendency to ban reporters from news outlets he doesn’t like such as the New York Times and BBC from press briefings, to discussing the possibility of him pardoning himself for any possible crimes he may be charged with in the future. Additionally, the president’s constant Twitter tirades about the “fake news” press and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation have led many of his supporters to distrust both the press and the Justice Department. The United States was downgraded from a full to a flawed democracy by the “Economist Intelligence Unit” the year Trump came into office, and has remained in the flawed category for its 2018 ranking, currently ranked 21 out of 167 countries for its democracy score. It seems as though Schiff may well be justified in worrying about the state of our democracy.

On a similar note, Schiff also noted his concerns with the way the rest of the world currently views the US, stating “our America first and everyone else be damned has really left us isolated and the rest of the world deeply concerned”. As evidence, he cited examples of this poor perception of America from our allies such as a Politico article titled “Leader of the Free World meets Donald Trump” referring to Angela Merkel, and Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Since this interview, President Trump has continued to take actions that worry world leaders and isolate the U.S. on the world stage, such as placing tariffs on Chinese and European goods against the advice of most of the world’s economists and Trump’s troubling actions during and after June’s G7 meeting such as arriving late for the first meeting of the conference and acting outraged at Prime Minister Trudeau’s easily predictable retaliatory actions to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. Congressman Schiff stated in the interview that “It’s hard to imagine a time when the United States has been held in lower regard around the world than right now”, but after Trump’s antics this summer, we may be even lower in the opinion of the world than we were in May when the interview was conducted.

This interview was conducted shortly before the first North Korea negotiations had occured. Congressman Schiff was glad to hear that the negotiations were back on after being canceled for a spell, but was concerned with this administration’s approach to North Korea, calling it “erratic and at times dangerous”. He warned that North Korea’s nuclear program was not going to be an easy problem to solve stating, “If it were not a hard problem, it would have been solved by any number of presidents in the past”. This statement has proven to be true since the interview. While President Trump and Kim Jong-Un did sit down for negotiations in June, the joint statement that came out of this was widely criticized as vague. President Trump conceded an important bargaining chip by agreeing to give up military exercises in South Korea while gaining no time table for denuclearization from the North Korean leader. Additionally, on August 24th President Trump called off talks between North Korean leaders and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, citing concerns that not enough progress has been made in regards to the country’s denuclearization. Congressman Schiff’s warning has proven true; it seems that the problem of North Korean denuclearization has shown itself to be trickier than President Trump first believed it to be.

In a time where dishonorable behavior has come to be expected from the current administration, the political backbone displayed by Congressman Adam Schiff was refreshing. He asked his audience “What’s the point of being there [in Congress] if you’re not going to do what the country needs you to do when they need you to do it?” At one point during the lecture, he received an spontaneous round of applause from the audience after declaring he believes politicians should “do the right thing and still find a way to get reelected”.

It was a pleasure speaking with the Congressman and listening to his lecture, and it will be interesting to witness any potential changes within his Committee following the November midterm elections.

schiff 8

September 10, 2018 0 comment

Photo credits: Stanford University Hoover Institution

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Condoleeza Rice and Amy Zegart: A Lecture on Political Risk and US Foreign Policy

written by Andrea Zachrich

Earlier this month, Condoleezza Rice and Amy Zegart visited UCLA to speak about their newly published book, “Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurities” and about other foreign policy issues. While a number of topics were covered, Rice and Zegart’s comments regarding North Korea’s nuclear program, Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, and nuclear and cyber risk trends were the most striking.

Personally, I found the discussion about the book fascinating because it takes a unique approach in that it focuses on how political risk can affect businesses. Both Rice and Zegart are extremely qualified to discuss this topic. Condoleezza Rice served as the 20th National Security Advisor and the 66th Secretary of State under George W. Bush. She is also a professor of political science and business at Stanford University. In the private sector, Rice headed the committee for public policy for Chevron and has also been on the board of directors for companies such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, and Chevron, among others. Similarly, Zegart has a background in international security. She currently serves as co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. Zegart is considered a leading expert on the US Intelligence Community and national security. She has a PhD in political science from Stanford and has published three books on this topic. She also has private sector experience, and worked for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company where she advised Fortune 100 companies.

Political risk, as defined by the speakers in an article for the Harvard-Review is “essentially the probability that a political action will significantly affect their business—whether positively or negatively”. During the discussion, the speakers emphasized that while political risk has always been a factor for multi-national businesses, it is a more pressing issue today due to several recent trends around the world. One example the speakers discussed was social media. Social media makes collective action such as protests and boycotts by ordinary citizens much easier and more effective. Using social media can decrease the costs of coordination and spreads messages around the globe quickly. Small groups of people can have much larger effect in their communities and the world than ever before. This collective action may increase political risk by disrupting normal business functions such as shipping of materials and goods or governmental oversight functions. These effects were seen in the Arab Spring which began in 2010. This series of revolutions resulted in government overthrows in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and civil war in Syria. Many of the protests were organized on sites like Facebook, and protesters used social media as a platform to share their stories and generate awareness for their cause on a global scale. Social media use in this time was so prolific among users who had access to it that the Arab Spring has been dubbed both the “Facebook Revolution” and “Twitter Revolution”.

When asked about the drivers of the changes in political risk, Rice and Zegart gave a number of possible explanations. One is the changing geopolitical landscape. The speakers asserted that we all have taken for granted the liberal world order established after World War II. Over the last 70 years, there has been a general and almost worldwide belief in the benefits of free trade, capitalism, and open economies that more and more countries bought into. The post-war period saw the establishment of international regulatory committees such as the International Monetary Fund in 1945 whose stated goal is to “build a framework for economic cooperation” among countries. The idea was that countries who trade with one another and have diplomatic relations are less likely to go to war. According to the speakers, this liberal worldview is being challenged globally by what Rice and Zegart jokingly called the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”: Populism, nationalism, isolationism, and protectionism. These ideological shifts are exemplified by the recent unilateral tariffs placed on steel and aluminum by President Trump, an unprecedented move in today’s globalized economy. These tariffs raise the possibility of a trade war with China and possibly the EU, threatening businesses with supply chains running through these countries. In a world that is so undeniably and irreversibly connected, these four ideologies, and the policies they bring with them, do indeed seem apocalyptic.

Another reason for the changing “political risk landscape” identified by the speakers is that we are witnessing the emergence of great power rivalry between the United States and Russia in a way the world has not seen since the Cold War. The speakers asserted that as great powers behave badly, they substantially increase political risk. One example of this is Russia’s spread of fake news and propaganda in support of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on Facebook and other social media outlets during the 2016 presidential election. While it is unclear if this propaganda affected the election results, Russian interference with the US on this scale has not been seen since the height of the Cold War. Russian meddling in US elections is a huge political risk for social media and technology companies, and one that is incredibly difficult to anticipate or prevent.

Another particularly insightful aspect of the conversation on political risk came from Rice and Zegart’s analysis of the different kinds of hazards associated with doing business in countries with authoritarian versus democratic governments. The speakers avoided giving a moral judgement on whether or not companies should conduct business in places with authoritarian regimes, and instead focused on the practicalities of it, stating that there are both advantages and disadvantages to doing business in each system of governments. In authoritarian states, companies can often do business efficiently, but they tend to lack both transparency and rule of law, which can be bad for business due to a lack of security and the threat of asset seizures. There is also no peaceful transfer of power, which can become an issue for companies if violence disrupts business. In contrast, doing business in a country with a democratic government typically ensures transparency and retention of property, but business may be less efficient due to burdensome regulations and large bureaucracies. While Rice and Zegart avoided making a determination as to which type of government was better for business, and instead emphasized that it is vital for businesses to understand the risks that are associated with both.

In addition to discussing their book, the speakers also discussed current foreign policy issues. Both Rice and Zegart had suggestions as to how the U.S should move forward regarding the upcoming nuclear negotiations with North Korea. Surprisingly, they don’t think that the US should try to negotiate with Kim Jong Un because such attempts have not been successful in the past. During Rice’s tenure as secretary of state, she tried to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korea, which was unsuccessful. The speakers did however acknowledge that the current situation is unique because no previous president has had to negotiate with a nuclearized North Korea, and that negotiating with Kim Jong Un, while not recommended, may be necessary. They believe that there is a possibility that a deal could be struck, but that it will require nuanced and detailed discussions that need to be handled well with minimal negotiations. Rice, however, did not place much confidence in President Trump stating, “our President is someone whose first job in government is President”. Regardless, the speakers advocated for the US to take this opportunity, but for the administration not to forget that they are still dealing with Kim Jong Un. Rice also stated that she does not believe the US should pull their troops out of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea because she believes that withdrawing military support would encourage Japan to remilitarize, causing even more tension in the region and possibly leading to an arms race between North Korea, China, and Japan.

The speakers also discussed recent happenings in Russia. Rice scrutinized Russian president Vladimir Putin as a leader, saying that, based on her past conversations with him, he believes that Russia has only been successfully ruled by “great men”, such as the czars of the past. He believes himself to be one of them in his quest to reestablish Russian influence worldwide. Rice stated, however, that Russia may attempt to offset their declining power by reasserting their military dominance. An example of this can be seen in Putin’s invasion of the Ukrainian region of Crimea and sending troops to support the Assad regime in Syria. In 2014, Putin invaded the Crimea, claiming that Crimeans wanted to separate from Ukraine while acting in defense against the spread of NATO. Despite the International Criminal Court calling this action a crime, Putin continues to keep troops in the region, perhaps as a way to display his military might in a world where Russia retains little diplomatic power. Similarly, Russia continues to send troops and military support to President Assad’s regime in Syria despite allegations of chemical weapon use and war crimes. Supporting Syria’s militarily allows Russia to maintain influence in the Middle East. Both actions demonstrate Russian attempts to display military power and influence at a time when Moscow has little diplomatic leverage.

Finally, Rice and Zegart discussed the four countries most likely to produce political risk in the form of nuclear development and cyber security issues. Rice called China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran the “Big Four” due to these countries’ threats to both company security and a country’s national security. Most of these state are sophisticated adversaries in cyber security. As discussed earlier, Russia, for example, has already displayed some of their cyber warfare capabilities during the 2016 election with a massive disinformation campaign. North Korea hacked Sony Picture Entertainment in 2014 to attempt to block the release of a movie that satirized Kim Jong Un. Their cyber attacks have only gotten more sophisticated since; in 2015 the country stole millions of dollars from the New York Federal reserve. In addition, when compared with countries such as North Korea and Iran, the US is asymmetrically vulnerable due to the number of internet users and the country’s digital connectivity. In North Korea, for example, only 10 percent of their population uses the internet compared to 89 percent in the US. In regards to nuclear threats, Rice and Zegart were concerned about all the countries mentioned above, but noted Iran in particular due to speculation at the time of the lecture that Trump would pull the U.S out of the Iran nuclear deal (He has since done so). With Trump withdrawing from this deal, there is a possibility that Iran could restart their nuclear program immediately, leading to a potential nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The speakers asserted that businesses that operate in or run supply chains through these four countries must be wary of potential tariffs and sanctions due to actions such as cyber hacking or nuclear escalation.

It was captivating to be able to listen to individuals with as much as experience as Rice and Zegart discuss business risks and foreign policy. Many thanks to both of them for visiting UCLA and giving this lecture.

May 24, 2018 0 comment

Donald Trump Featured Geopolitics Middle East Security and Conflict United States

Broader Regional Implications of Trump’s Jerusalem Embassy Move

written by Zach Emanuel

In one of the more contentious decisions in a presidency already packed with controversy, President Trump’s announcement in December of 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S Embassy there remains one of the more diplomatically significant choices he has made so far. Yet not for the reasons most would think. While many express fear over disrupting the potential for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it is rather America’s broader goals in the Middle East that are threatened by the decision.

Despite near-unanimous passage of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 mandating the move of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump’s predecessors have continuously delayed the decision citing fears of disrupting peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Unsurprisingly, in the wake of Trump’s precedent-breaking announcement, similar concerns were raised. The New York Times called the move “destabilizing,” saying that it “would make achieving peace even more difficult.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson echoed that concern by claiming that recognition would further disrupt peace talks. Moreover, other allies and editorials alike expressed fear that the decision would jeopardize American credibility as an honest peace broker between the two parties.

Although these desires for peace- and therefore the concerns about endangering its success- are genuine, the fear that recognition of Jerusalem’s status will be the decision that triggers a breakdown in the peace process are naïve. Rather, negotiations are at a standstill and have been for years. Ever since the 2000 Camp David Summit between President Bill Clinton, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ended without an agreement, there has been little to no meaningful discussion of peace between the parties. Trump’s decision will do little to change that. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have rarely met during their lengthy tenures and the leaders never developed a framework for furthering the peace process. Negotiators on both sides, such as former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, have said the peace process is “ended” and “dead”. As Israeli society continues to move to the right and the last bastion of Palestinian officials involved in genuine peace talks have aged, both sides seem to be losing the political will to make the necessary sacrifices for peace. As both peoples are increasingly tolerant of the deadliness of the status quo, peace is becoming impossible.

Thus, while recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will have little impact on an already moribund peace process, America’s broader goals in the Middle East are seriously threatened by the decision, specifically the U.S’s objective of building a Sunni Muslim alliance to confront an budding Iranian menace. With a centuries-old religious rivalry between the two main Muslim denominations– Sunnis and Shi’ites– construction of a Sunni alliance to limit Shi’a-led Iran’s power would seem to appeal to the region’s majority-Sunni states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In the eyes of the State Department, such an alliance would ideally be led by these nations, with the goal of luring other Middle Eastern states such as Qatar, Oman, and majority-Shi’a Iraq away from Iran’s grip. The objective would be to construct a military, economic, and diplomatic coalition that isolates the Iranians by locking them out of the region’s affairs, and in the process, effectively reduces their regional power and influence.

The goal of a Sunni bloc to confront Iran is an admirable one on the part of the U.S given Tehran’s growing influence in the Middle East over the last two decades. Prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Tehran’s sole ally in the region was fellow Shi’ite Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite government in Syria. Yet after the invasion, dominoes began to fall in Iran’s favor. The first was the election of a Shi’ite-led government in Iraq in 2006 following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, once an Iranian adversary. Additionally, the political power of Hezbollah- the influential and militantly anti-Israel political party- and its Shi’a allies in Lebanon has grown since the 2008 Doha Agreement granted the Iranian-proxy veto power in the Lebanese national legislature. These two changes, while seemingly small, have left Iran with a crescent of control from Tehran, through Baghdad and Damascus, to the Mediterranean.

Furthermore, relations have warmed between the Iranians and several Sunni states as well. In April of 2017, joint-military exercises were conducted between Iran and Oman, an American and Saudi ally. Likewise, Qatar has signaled intentions to increase ties with Tehran following a falling out with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies due to its support for Islamist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Qataris announced in August of 2017 that they would be returning an ambassador to Tehran while also expressing interest in improving bilateral ties. Therefore, as Iran’s diplomatic power in the region has grown, U.S officials increasingly view a Sunni coalition as essential to curbing Tehran’s influence and protecting American allies and regional interests.

Yet as the U.S. pulls its military and economic resources from the Middle East, it is clear that many of these nations see more opportunity in aligning themselves with a regional player who’s power and influence seem to be growing– such as Iran– as opposed to waning. Additionally, the religious citizenry that makes up a vast majority of the Sunni states will undoubtedly question allying with the outwardly pro-Israel Americans to confront a fellow Muslim state.

Thus, even as construction of an alliance is already tenuous, Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem will only serve to make a difficult job more challenging. As both The Washington Post and The New York Times noted, the embassy move dealt a blow to the U.S’s credibility of being a fair mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as it outwardly showed America’s bias in the negotiations. This bias will not be lost on the Sunni allies that Trump seeks to persuade to join him in confronting Iran. For the Saudis and Emiratis, among others, actively associating and cooperating with the Americans to work against a Muslim nation is already politically risky. Doing so in the wake of American recognition of the third holiest city for Muslims as Jewish in nature however, will not only prove to be an even tougher case to sell to their respective populaces, but also damaging to their credibility within the anti-Israel Arab world.

Additionally, a country such as Qatar, whose support is crucial for any anti-Iran coalition, will be harder pressed to align with the Americans following the Jerusalem decision. Given Qatari aversion to Israel’s very existence and its financial support for groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah which openly seek the state’s destruction, the embassy move will only hinder American attempts to win Qatar’s support. Similarly, Iraq– another nation whose backing is critical– will be further discouraged from supporting any coalition as well. Having to maintain support from a majority Shi’a population, Iraqi President Haider al-Abadi will find few reasons to challenge Iran and ally himself with the Americans as doing so would threaten political credibility with his constituency. On the contrary, abandoning an alliance with the “American imperialists” in favor of aligning with a Muslim country like Iran that strongly supports the Palestinian crusade and is increasing its military and diplomatic role in the region will be a safer bet for countries such as Qatar and Iraq.

If Trump is truly committed to an American-led alliance of Sunni states to lock Iran out of the Middle East, he must provide every incentive for these countries to align themselves with the U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital however only serves to show where America’s real interests lie, and thus the decision jeopardizes American attempts to gain the support of countries whose backing is essential for the coalition’s success. While U.S officials may debate the consequences of the embassy move on the peace process, Trump’s decision on Jerusalem unquestionably threatens the larger and fundamentally more important American objective in the region. In a Middle East fraught with civil wars, failed states, and shifting power dynamics, a unified stance against Iran is more important than a unified capital in Israel.

April 11, 2018 0 comment

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