China: Can Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” Vision be realized?

Paper No. 5629 Dated 03-Jan-2013

By D. S. Rajan

Essentially, the “Chinese Dream” vision reflects the aspiration of the supreme leader Xi Jinping to transform the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into a strong and fully modernized nation by 2050, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) playing a leading role. 

The paper finds that the situation in which reforms, a sure means to realize the vision, are progressing without a matching political liberalization programme in the country. This may prove to be a major handicap to realization of the dream. It also traces the implications of the dream for the Chinese society, military modernization and the PRC’s foreign policy. –

“Realizing the Chinese dream of the great national rejuvenation would mean China’s becoming a prosperous country, a revitalized nation, and having happy people”

– Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party- CCP, 19 August 2013

The quote above captures the essence of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s vision of a ‘Chinese Dream’, which began to take shape soon after his take over as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief last year. A key question is whether or not the dream can be realised, that too within the officially declared time limit of middle of the current century? Prior to trying for an answer, a close look at the background to and evolution of the vision might be necessary.

Inspiration for the “Chinese Dream”

There seems to be some justification in believing that the ideas of retired Senior Colonel and former Professor in the National Defence University, Beijing, Liu Mingfu could have influenced the making of “Chinese Dream” concept of Xi Jinping. There is indeed a striking similarity between Xi’s postulates and Liu’s writings in his book called “the China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-America Era in 2010”. Liu said that “since the 19th Century, China has been lagging on the world stage. The “Chinese Dream” should be for a ‘strong nation with a strong military’. China should aim to surpass the U.S. as the world’s top military power”. Also being seen as influencing is an article entitled “China Needs its Own Dream”, contributed by Thomas Friedman[1] that wanted Xi to come up with a ‘new Chinese Dream’ in order to meet expectations of the people on prosperity and sustainable economy. A Xinhua publication ‘Globe’ described Xi’s “ China Dream” concept as ‘best response to Friedman’; Professor Zhang Ming of Renmin University, Beijing , viewed the concept as one used by Xi to improve China’s ties with the US[2].

Evolution of “Chinese Dream” concept

Speaking at the National Museum “Road to Revival” exhibition at Beijing, Xi announced (29 November 2012) his vision for the achievement of ‘great renewal or rejuvenation of Chinese nation’ which would reflect a “national aspiration for a ‘Chinese Dream’ about making the country stronger through development”. Significant has been his choice of the occasion which was meant to recall the humiliations suffered by China in the past, for contrasting a China to emerge after ‘renewal’ with the ‘status of weakness prevailed in the country for 170 years since the Opium War, subjecting China to bullying.’ [3]

China Establishing Joint Command Structure for Its Military

January 3, 2014

China to Centralize Military Command to Improve Operations

Reuters, January 3, 2014

BEIJING — China’s increasingly sophisticated military will establish a joint operational command structure for its forces to improve coordination between different parts of the country’s defense system, the official China Daily reported on Friday.

China has been moving rapidly to upgrade its military hardware, but military analysts say operational integration of complex and disparate systems across a regionalized command structure is a major challenge for Beijing.

In the past, regional level military commanders have enjoyed major latitude over their forces and branches of the military have remained highly independent of each other, making it difficult to exercise the centralized control necessary to use new weapons systems effectively in concert.

The English-language newspaper, citing the Defense Ministry, said that China will implement a joint command system “in due course” and that it has already launched pilot programs to that effect.

"Setting up the system is a basic requirement in a era of information, and the military has launched positive programs in this regard," the report said, quoting a ministry statement. It provided no further details.

In November, the ruling Communist Party announced the establishment of a new national security commission, to enable the country to speak with a single voice on crises at home and abroad, as part of a slew of mostly economic reforms announced at the end of a key party meeting.

China currently has seven military regions traditionally focused around ground-based army units, but China’s changing security interests, including over claims to potentially rich energy reserves in the East and South China Seas, has highlighted its need to focus more on air and naval forces.

Why Japan Isn’t Back

Population decline will limit Tokyo’s ability to be a major power in the decades ahead.

By Zachary Keck

January 03, 2014

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s economic policies and more nationalistic rhetoric have led to much talk about a Japanese resurgence. As Abe himself put it confidently in a speech last year: “So ladies and gentlemen, Japan is back. Keep counting on my country.”

But whatever the merits of Abe’s policies—and regardless of whether he is able to pull the Japanese economy out of its two-decade long slump—the truth is that Tokyo does not have the potential to be a dominant force in Asia in the 21st Century.

This was reaffirmed earlier this week when Japan’s Health Ministry released its annual population figures.According to the Health Ministry, Japan’s population declined by 244,000 people in 2013. Although this was the seventh consecutive year in which Tokyo saw its population dwindle, this was the largest annual decrease to date.

Nor does the future offer reason for optimism. Japan’s population, which is currently at 126.3 million, is expected to decline to 116 million in 2030. By 2050, that number will shrink to just 97 million. As it shrinks, the population will also grow older; currently Japanese 65 years of age and older make up 25 percent of the population, a figure expected to jump to 40 percent by 2060.

This is all directly related to Japan’s ability to be a major force in the region in the Asia Century. For most of human history, the major sources of societies’ power were the size of its population and the size and quality of its territory. The last two centuries or so have been the exception to this rule as the industrial revolution created such disparities in labor productivity as to make land and population far less relevant to national power. Thus, Britain could once legitimately claim to be the world’s greatest power despite having a fraction of the world’s population and territory.

The transitory impact of the industrial revolution quickly became obvious, however. Notably, as the U.S., Russia, and a unified Germany modernized, they surpassed England in terms of national power. It was no accident, for instance, that the U.S. and Russia emerged as the superpowers of the second half of the 20thcentury. Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw this in the early 19th century.

Southeast Asian states continue to procure submarines for a variety of strategic goals.

By Carl Thayer

January 03, 2014

On December 31, Vietnamese media reported the delivery of the first Russian Project 636 Varshavyanka-class (enhanced Kilo) conventional submarine to Cam Ranh Bay. The sub was transported from the port of St. Petersburg on the heavy lift vessel Rolldock Sea.

The submarine was accompanied by experts from Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg who will undertake final work before the formal handover ceremonies. The submarine will be named HQ 182 Hanoi. The last of the remaining five Project 636 Varshavyanka-class submarines is expected to be delivered by 2016.

In late November, during the visit of Vietnam’s party Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong to India, it was announced that India would provide training for up to 500 submarines as part of its defense cooperation program with Vietnam. Training will be conducted at the Indian Navy’s modern submarine training center INS Satavahana in Visakhapatnam. The Indian Navy has operated Russian Kilo-class submarines since the mid-1980s.

The arrival of HQ 182 Hanoi provides a timely reminder that regional navies are embarking on naval modernization programs that increasingly include the acquisition of conventional submarines.

As long ago as 1967 Indonesia became one of the first Southeast Asian countries to acquire an undersea capability when it took delivery of a batch of Soviet Whiskey-class submarines. These were later replaced in 1978 by two West German diesel submarines.

In 2012 Indonesia’s Defense Ministry announced it was planning to expand its submarine fleet to twelve by 2020. Twelve is the minimum number of submarines required to cover strategic choke points or maritime entry passages into the archipelago.

Europe’s Tea Parties

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Insurgent parties are likely to do better in 2014 than at any time since the second world war

Jan 4th 2014 

SINCE 2010 or so, the Tea Party, a Republican insurgency, has turned American politics upside down. It comes in many blends, but most of its members share three convictions: that the ruling elite has lost touch with the founding ideals of America, that the federal government is a bloated, self-serving Leviathan, and that illegal immigration is a threat to social order. The Tea Party movement is central to the conflict that has riven American politics and the difficulty of reforming budgets and immigration laws.

Now something similar is happening in Europe (see article). Insurgent parties are on the rise. For mainstream parties and voters worried by their success, America’s experience of dealing with the Tea Party holds useful lessons.

The squeezed, and angry, middle

There are big differences between the Tea Party and the European insurgents. Whereas the Tea Party’s factions operate within one of America’s mainstream parties, and have roots in a venerable tradition of small-government conservatism, their counterparts in Europe are small, rebellious outfits, some from the far right. The Europeans are even more diverse than the Americans. Norway’s Progress Party is a world away from Hungary’s thuggish Jobbik. Nigel Farage and the saloon-bar bores of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) look askance at Marine Le Pen and her Front National (FN) across the Channel. But there are common threads linking the European insurgents and the Tea Party. They are angry people, harking back to simpler times. They worry about immigration. They spring from the squeezed middle—people who feel that the elite at the top and the scroungers at the bottom are prospering at the expense of ordinary working people. And they believe the centre of power—Washington or Brussels—is bulging with bureaucrats hatching schemes to run people’s lives.

America Unhinged

http://nationalinterest.org/article/america-unhinged-9639?page=show

John J. Mearsheimer | 

January 2, 2014

SINCE EARLY 2011, political developments in Egypt and Syria have repeatedly captured the attention of the American foreign-policy elite. The Obama administration has tried to guide the turbulent political situation in post-Mubarak Egypt and become increasingly engaged in Syria’s bloody civil war. The United States is already helping arm some of the forces fighting against the Assad regime, and President Obama came close to attacking Syria following its use of chemical weapons in August 2013. Washington is now directly involved in the effort to locate and destroy Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpiles.

These responses reflect three widespread beliefs about Egypt and Syria. The first is that the two states are of great strategic importance to the United States. There is a deep-seated fear that if the Obama administration does not fix the problems plaguing those countries, serious damage will be done to vital American interests. The second one is that there are compelling moral reasons for U.S. involvement in Syria, mainly because of large-scale civilian deaths. And the third is that the United States possesses the capability to affect Egyptian and Syrian politics in significant and positive ways, in large part by making sure the right person is in charge in Cairo and Damascus.

Packaged together, such beliefs create a powerful mandate for continuous American involvement in the politics of these two troubled countries.

Anyone paying even cursory attention to U.S. foreign policy in recent decades will recognize that Washington’s response to Egypt and Syria is part of a much bigger story. The story is this: America’s national-security elites act on the assumption that every nook and cranny of the globe is of great strategic significance and that there are threats to U.S. interests everywhere. Not surprisingly, they live in a constant state of fear. This fearful outlook is reflected in the comments of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, before Congress in February 2012: “I can’t impress upon you that in my personal military judgment, formed over thirty-eight years, we are living in the most dangerous time in my lifetime, right now.” In February 2013, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that Americans “live in very complex and dangerous times,” and the following month Senator James Inhofe said, “I don’t remember a time in my life where the world has been more dangerous and the threats more diverse.”

Egypt: A Tinderbox Waiting for a Spark

Behind the government's political transition and security measures lies a deeply unstable country.

ERIC TRAGER

JAN 2 2014

A supporter of the Egyptian army and police throws back a Molotov cocktail at students of Al-Azhar University who support the Muslim Brotherhood during clashes in Cairo, on December 27, 2013. (Reuters)

Nearly six months after the mass uprising-cum-coup that toppled Mohammed Morsi, the key cleavages of Egypt’s domestic political conflict are not only unresolved, but unresolvable. The generals who removed Morsi are engaged in an existential struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood: They believe they must destroy the Brotherhood—by, for instance, designating it a terrorist organization—or else the Brotherhood will return to power and destroy them. Meanwhile, Sinai-based jihadists have used Morsi’s removal as a pretext for intensifying their violence, and have increasingly hit targets west of the Suez Canal. Even the Brotherhood’s fiercest opponents are fighting among themselves: the coalition of entrenched state institutions and leftist political parties that rebelled against Morsi is fraying, and the youth activists who backed Morsi’s ouster in July are now protesting against the military-backed government, which has responded byarresting their leaders.The key cleavages of Egypt’s domestic political conflict are not only unresolved, but unresolvable.

So despite the fact that Egypt’s post-Morsi transition is technically moving forward, with a new draft constitution expected to pass via referendum in mid-January and elections to follow shortly thereafter, the country is a tinderbox that could ignite with any spark, entirely derailing the political process and converting Egypt’s episodic tumult into severe instability. What might that spark be? Here are three possibilities:

1. A high-profile political assassination

While he may be as well-guarded as any top official, Egyptian Defense Minister (and de facto ruler) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is squarely in the Muslim Brotherhood’s crosshairs. He is, after all, the face of the coup that toppled Morsi, and he latercalled Egyptians to the streets to seek their “authorization” for a subsequent crackdown that killed more than 1,000 Morsi supporters.

How a Mega Project Snafu Could Snarl America’s Gas Exports

The expansion of the Panama Canal is on hold -- and so is the U.S. dream of sending energy to Asia.

BY KEITH JOHNSON

JANUARY 2, 2014

The biggest construction project in the world is on the rocks. And that could have big negative implications for the United States as it tries to turn its natural-gas bonanza into an engine of export earnings and geopolitical influence.

The project is the expansion of the Panama Canal to allow more and bigger ships to pass through -- for instance, the large tankers that carry liquefied natural gas (LNG). Today, only about 6 percent of the global LNG tanker fleet can pass through the canal; after the expansion, about 90 percent of tankers will be able to use it, according to a U.S. government study. The bigger canal would provide a quicker and cheaper way to ship natural gas from the U.S. Gulf Coast and East Coast to markets in Asia that are desperate to secure supplies of natural gas.

But those plans now could be jeopardized because of a dispute over cost overruns -- which means America's gas export dreams could be in jeopardy, too.

The consortium building the third set of locks on the canal, which is the biggest part of the $5 billion canal expansion, said it can't continue work unless the Panama Canal Authority picks up the tab for about $1.6 billion in cost overruns. The construction of the new locks is a $3 billion contract, won by an international consortium with firms from Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Panama.

"If the customer doesn't provide additional funds to cover the unexpected costs, the project will soon face a cash crunch," a spokesman for Sacyr, the Spanish firm in the consortium, told Foreign Policy. Sacyr reportedly told the canal authority it must provide the funds within three weeks, or work will come to a halt.

The canal authority says the consortium has to complete the work, which has already fallen behind schedule and been plagued with a spate of construction problems, including fatal accidents and costly delays due to record rainfall.

The dispute could carry important consequences because the canal expansion has special importance for the United States, which hopes to start exporting natural gas, and Asia, which is desperate to buy it.

Japan, in particular, is eager to tap into the U.S. natural-gas boom: Since the 2011 accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan has been importing energy at high prices. Japanese shipbuilders plan to spend about $18 billion on new LNG tankers through the end of the decade, which, needless to say, would require the expanded canal to shave shipping times.

The End of the U.S.-India Honeymoon

Source Link

By Sadanand Dhume

Dec. 30, 2013

This columnist appears not to know that Russian diplomats got away with major frauds on Medicare under Bharara's nose, and that this would never happen to British or German diplomat

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304137304579289771348242380

New Delhi's overwrought reaction to a diplomatic kerfuffle jeopardizes ties that had been strengthening.

With the so-called Khobragade affair, involving the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York, stretching into its third week with little sign of resolution, it looks increasingly likely that the damage to U.S.-India ties will be long-term. Widely held assumptions in Washington and New Delhi—that both countries had found a way to forge a stable, mutually beneficial partnership—turn out to have been premature.

. . .

There's enough blame to go around. To describe the State Department's role in the showdown as clumsy would be an understatement. . . . Even expelling Ms. Khobragade would have been less inflammatory than arresting her. And if an arrest was unavoidable, it's still hard to justify treating a diplomat in a wage dispute like a Colombian drug lord.

To add insult to Indian injury, U.S. Embassy officials in New Delhi reportedly helped spirit out the former nanny's family days before Ms. Khobragade's arrest. To many Indians, both acts smacked of hostility. . . .

But while Indian anger is understandable, the government's overwrought response shows how far New Delhi remains from conducting itself like a major power. Removing security barriers in front of the U.S. Embassy little more than a year after the deadly attack in Benghazi shows a foreign office tone deaf to how the issue would play in the U.S. The withdrawal of diplomatic perks—a relatively trivial matter in itself—suggests less steely resolve and more smallness of spirit. Should a rising superpower care about where an American diplomat shops for wine and cheese?

In the weeks ahead, pundits will continue to quibble over the case. For much of the Indian media, Ms. Khobragade has emerged as a heroic figure, a young diplomat needlessly humiliated by a callous superpower. Most Indian journalists have portrayed Sangeeta Richard, the former nanny, as a scam artist who gamed the U.S. immigration system by falsely alleging mistreatment to secure visas for herself and her immediate family. Ms. Richard's supporters, of course, claim the opposite: that she, not Ms. Khobragade, is the victim of the piece.

The Future of the Military is Robots Building Robots

Why tomorrow's arsenal can't be created with the tools of the past.

BY AARON MARTIN , BEN FITZGERALD

JANUARY 2, 2014

From the B-2 bomber to the M1 Abrams tank, the United States has for decades developed, built, and fielded the most advanced and capable weapon systems in the world. That's changing because of declining budgets, emerging technologies, and global competition from rising powers like China. Today, for the first time in recent history, the Pentagon is in danger of losing its vast technological advantages over potential adversaries. And the evolution of the Air Force's most recent warplane provides a cautionary tale of what may lay in store.

The development of the F-22 -- a next-generation fighter with advanced stealth and electronic warfare capabilities -- took 22 years and cost, in constant dollars, roughly 60 percent more than the Manhattan Project. Building each aircraft also took several years, and today, with production complete, the U.S. Air Force has roughly 187 F-22s. The aircraft is expected to stay in service through the 2040s, up to 66 years after engineers first began developing the plane. By comparison, the development of the F-4 in the late 1950s took about 6 years and cost nearly 95 percent less, in constant dollars, than the F-22.

Of course, there is really no comparison between the quality of an F-22 and an F-4 -- they operate in different eras and face different threats. There is also no comparison between an F-22 and most current combat aircraft around the world. A recent RAND study anticipates an "exchange ratio" wherein the United States would down 27 adversary aircraft for each F-22 lost in combat. However, with such a small fleet, each aircraft becomes increasingly valuable. And in some operations, the loss of even one aircraft could turn into a public relations or strategic victory for an adversary -- even if that enemy cannot defeat U.S. forces outright.

The Real eHarmony

How young people meeting on the Internet might help build peace in some of the world's most volatile regions.

BY SHELDON HIMELFARB

JANUARY 2, 2014

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/27/longforms_picks_of_the_week

When 2013 began, there was still smoldering controversy over the Innocence of Muslims movie "trailer" that had gone viral, sparking riots across the Middle East that left 50 dead and reportedly fueling the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. A year prior, an attack on a United Nations compound in Afghanistan that left at least 12 dead was spurred by the pastor of a tiny church in Gainesville, Fla., who publicized his planned Quran burning online. The Internet, it appeared, was proving its power to amplify a few lone, offending voices from one corner of the world enough to spark violence thousands of miles away. Then, halfway through 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombing, we witnessed another brand of online hysteria, as users flocked to Reddit and Twitter to try to identify the bombers, prompting an apology from Reddit for what it called "online witch hunts and dangerous speculation."

In its 2013 Global Risks report, the World Economic Forum described these sorts of threats as "digital wildfires." "The Internet remains an uncharted, fast-evolving territory," with the power to "enable the rapid viral spread of information that is either intentionally or unintentionally misleading or provocative, with serious consequences. The chances of this happening are exponentially greater today," it said.

But as much as such incidents have evinced the violent power of the viral, last year also saw the emergence of a potential antidote: the exponential growth of "virtual exchanges" -- sustained, people-to-people educational programs that are carefully facilitated by trained staff and enabled by the explosion of connectivity. A concept invented 30 years ago, virtual exchanges offer the promise of a scalable, cost-effective way of allowing people to connect with each other across geographic and cultural boundaries. They've only just begun to take off in a real way -- but new research out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shown that their impact could be massive.

As the reality of international conflict demands that we think anew about whose hearts and minds we need to reach most -- and how we can do it -- virtual exchanges have shown the promise of succeeding where conventional programs can't reach. Traditional exchanges like study abroad offer sparse access to countries struggling with violent extremism, where bulging youth populations are especially vulnerable. The most popular destination for U.S. students studying abroad is Europe -- about 53 percent right now, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). Except for Israel, not one nation in the Middle East or North Africa -- where the need for deeper understanding is great -- makes the Top 25 list of host countries. In fact, the number of students heading for the Middle East or North Africa actually dropped 3.6 percent between the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 school years, according to IIE.

NSA Reportedly Developing the Ultimate Codebreaking Computer

January 2, 2014

NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption

Steven Rich and Barton Gellman

Washington Post, January 2, 2014

In room-size metal boxes, secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.

According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled, “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park.

[Read an annotated description of the Penetrating Hard Targets project]

The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields like medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets.

Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated whether the NSA’s efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agency’s research remains unknown, the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community.

“It seems improbable that the NSA could be that far ahead of the open world without anybody knowing it,” said Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

The NSA appears to regard itself as running neck and neck with quantum computing labs sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government, with steady progress but little prospect of an immediate breakthrough.

“The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland,” one NSA document states.

Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at MIT, said the NSA’s focus is not misplaced. “The E.U. and Switzerland have made significant advances over the last decade and have caught up to the U.S. in quantum computing technology,” he said.

The NSA declined to comment for this story.

Israel Tests Upgraded Version of ARROW Anti-Missile System

January 3, 2014

Israel Tests Arrow Missile Shield, Eyes Syria, Iran

Reuters, January 3, 2014

JERUSALEM — Israel successfully tested its upgraded Arrow ballistic missile interceptor for the second time on Friday, pushing forward work on a U.S.-backed defense against threats seen from Iran, Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas.

One of several elements of Israel’s still-developing defense against missile attacks, Arrow III is designed to deploy kamikaze satellites - known as “kill vehicles” - that track and slam into ballistic missiles above the earth’s atmosphere, high enough to safely disintegrate any chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.

Iran and Syria have long had such missiles, and Israel believes some are also now held by their ally Hezbollah, another knock-on effect of Syria’s civil war.

Friday’s launch of an Arrow III interceptor missile over the Mediterranean sea was the second flight of the system, but did not involve the interception of any target, Israeli defense officials said. Israel deployed the previous version, Arrow II, more than a decade ago and says it has scored around a 90 percent success rate in live trials.

"The Arrow III interceptor successfully launched and flew an exo-atmospheric trajectory through space," Israel’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Yair Ramati, head of the ministry’s Israel Missile Defence Organisation, told reporters that as part of the test, which was attended by U.S. officials, the interceptor jettisoned its booster and “the kill vehicle continued to fly in space (and) conducted various maneuvers … for a couple of minutes”.

Israel predicts Arrow III could be deployed by next year. The Pentagon and U.S. firm Boeing are partners in the project run by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

2014: A year of electoral fireworks

Source Link

A big year ahead for Dilma, Modi, Jokowi and Barry, too.

NEW YORK — Some of the largest nations on Earth — along with some of the most violent — will hold important elections in the coming year, any of which could affect the global political landscape profoundly.

The United States has entered a midterm election year, with all the sound and fury (and distortion) that brings.

But in a world now dotted with democracies, that’s only the start. National votes inIndonesia, Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Colombia and Brazil should command significant attention as all have the ability to improve or set back global growth and stability.

In the huge democracies of India, Brazil and Indonesia, corruption and lowered growth expectations will dominate political debate. Brazil’s opposition parties seem weak so far, but voters in the two Asian giants look likely to spark a power change after more than a decade of consistent rule by one party.

Colombia, Iraq and Afghanistan hope their new governments can draw a line under years of internal violence, though hopes seem more strained in Kabul's case. South Africa and Turkey, two emerging market powers that have suffered instability in the past year, also elect new parliaments.

And in Egypt, an interim regime promises parliamentary polls in the spring and a presidential ballot in summer — all against a backdrop of questionable legitimacy and violent protest by the Islamists ousted after winning the last national elections.

Here is a quick look at how these votes are shaping up:

Afghanistan: April 5, 2014

An Afghan woman shows her inked finger after casting her vote in September 2010 in Kabul. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Afghanistan’s presidential vote is particularly fraught as the country faces the withdrawal of remaining NATO forces (and important deadlines for negotiating any continuing deployments by United States and European forces).

Hamid Karzai has served as Afghan president since December 2001, shortly after US troops toppled the Taliban regime, and is constitutionally barred from running again. He has refused to sign a treaty to allow a smaller follow-on foreign force to remain, saying only the next president has the authority to do so — and thus further raising the stakes for the vote.

The US and its allies will be happy to see Karzai go, and blame him for failing to extend the central government writ and for tolerating high levels of corruption. Yet his exit could shine a light on the extent to which Karzai kept a lid on even greater chaos. Over a decade of investing Western blood and treasure hang in the balance.

Backgrounder on the Technology Behind NSA’s Quantum Computer Codebreaking Project

January 3, 2014

Confused about the NSA’s quantum computing project? This MIT computer scientist can explain.

Timothy B. Lee

Washington Post, January 3, 2014

My Washinton Post colleagues have reported on an National Security Agency program to to build a quantum computer. In principle, the unique capabilities of a quantum computer could allow it to easily crack cryptographic codes that cannot be cracked by even the most powerful conventional computers.

But right now, quantum computing is more a theoretical research topic than a practical technology. To understand how quantum computers could work and what the implications would be if they did, I talked to Scott Aaronson. Aaronson is a Computer Science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written extensively about quantum computation and its implications. We spoke by phone on Wednesday. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Timothy B. Lee: Let’s start at the beginning, how does a quantum computer differ from a conventional computer?

Scott Aaronson: The easiest way to say it is that a quantum computer would exploit quantum mechanics, laws of physics that are not familiar in everyday life but have been familiar to physics for more than 100 years. It’s hard to get across with newspaper-friendly analogies.

Quantum mechanics is the framework for subatomic physics which is probabilistic. You can only calculate the probability that an electron or proton will be in a certain place when you make a measurement with certainty. That’s not the most important part of it. We use probability all the time in everyday life.

But quantum mechanics has a completely different way to find probability. People talk about a 20 percent chance of rain tomorrow. But nobody talks about a negative 20 percent chance of rain. That would be nonsense. To find the probability that a photon will be found on the screen or the probability that a computer will come up with a particular number, you have to add up something called amplitude. Amplitudes can be positive or negative, or even complex numbers. What’s important is there are different ways that something can happen, and some of those ways have positive amplitude and some have negative amplitude. They can cancel each other out.

NSA intelligence-gathering programs keep us safe

Former CIA Deputy Director Argues That NSA Surveillance Programs Should Be Left Just The Way They Are

January 3, 2014

John McLaughlin

Washington Post, January 2, 2014

John McLaughlin teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He was deputy director and acting director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004.

It’s time we all came to our senses about the National Security Agency (NSA). If it is true, as many allege, that the United States went a little nuts in its all-out pursuit of al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it is equally true that we are going a little nuts again in our dogged pursuit of the post-Snowden NSA.

Those who advocate sharply limiting the agency’s activities ought to consider that its work is the very foundation of U.S. intelligence.

I don’t mean to diminish the role of other intelligence agencies, and I say this as a 30-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency who is “CIA” through and through. But in most cases, the NSA is the starting point for determining what holes need to be filled through other means of intelligence-collection. That’s because its information on foreign developments is so comprehensive and generally so reliable. It is the core of intelligence support to U.S. troops in battle. Any efforts to “rein in” the agency must allow for the possibility that change risks serious damage to U.S. security and the country’s ability to navigate in an increasingly uncertain world.

The presumption that the NSA “spies” on Americans should also be challenged. In my experience, NSA analysts err on the side of caution before touching any data having to do with U.S. citizens. In 2010, at the request of then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, I chaired a panel investigating the intelligence community’s failure to be aware of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the “underwear bomber” who tried to blow up a commercial plane over Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009.

3D Printing and Defence: A Silent Revolution

IDSA COMMENT

http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/3DPrintingandDefence_stomar_030114

Sanjiv Tomar

January 3, 2014

Imagine a technician in a war zone sending an e-mail along with a digital scan of an unserviceable part of an armoured fighting vehicle which then gets printed at the nearest available 3D printer and delivered to him in no time. This can possibly minimize the need of carrying and maintaining large inventories in battle zone. This revolution is taking place in a very silent manner and is likely to have far reaching implications for supply chain and logistics management of the armed forces. In a 3D printing technology, an object is created layer by layer through a specially designed printer using plastic or other materials.

The history of 3D printing dates back to 1984 when commercial 3D printing was based on ‘stereolithography’ technique in which ultraviolet beams were used to trace a slice of an object on the surface of liquid ‘photopolymer’ resulting in the hardening of the ‘photopolymer’. The process is repeated over several layers depending upon the shape and size of the object, till the complete object is printed.

As mentioned, 3D printing is likely to alter the ways in which supply chains and logistics are maintained in defence forces. For any supply chain the key elements are the manufacturer, goods/supply carrier and the end user. Considering the range and depth of the inventory maintained by defence forces, the supply chain and logistic lines of control stretches from one end of the country to remote border areas as also several hundred nautical miles into the sea carrying millions of tons of stores comprising of ammunition, spares and components, minor and major assemblies etc. Some of these stores are sensitive and a large number of them have limited shelf life.

Operational readiness of defence forces largely depend upon the serviceability state of equipment in the hands of the troops. Often, non-availability of critical spares and components leads to non-availability of equipments and weapons to the troops, seriously hampering their war-fighting capability and especially when it comes to vintage foreign origin equipments. Once the digital scan or drawing is made available, the component can be straightway printed by a suitable 3D printer and raw material made available close to the site of breakdown in repair workshops. To start with, critical components of armoured fighting vehicles, small arms, field guns, UAVs, aircraft components etc. can be identified for printing onsite or close to the deployment of equipment which will drastically reduce the downtime of the equipment. Logistic tails thus will get reduced, reducing security risk with favorable economy of scales. The advantage of 3D printing also lies in its efficiency. The waste generated during traditional manufacturing is drastically reduced by 3D printing. The labour can also be reduced by 3D printing.

NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption

By Steven Rich and Barton Gellman, E-mail the writers

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In room-size metal boxes ­secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.

According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park, Md.

Explore the documents

Penetrating Hard Targets

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics," said the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, widely regarded as the pioneer in quantum computing. The science video blog Vertiasium tries to help make sense of it.

The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields such as medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all current forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets.

Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated about whether the NSA’s efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agency’s research remains unknown, the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community.

Why factory jobs may be returning to America

What 2014 could bring after years of losing manufacturing jobs to low-cost Asia

by Tamsin McMahon

January 2, 2014

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Workers at the Motorola smartphone plant in Fort Worth, Texas.

With its 1.5 million factory workers earning as little as $300 a month to make iPhones, laptops and PlayStations, the Chinese behemoth Foxconn has become a potent symbol of America’s manufacturing decline and the transfer of jobs to Asia.

Which is why so many are taking Foxconn’s recent announcement that it would invest $30 million to hire 500 workers for a new robotics factory in Harrisburg, Pa., starting in 2014—and possibly a second factory in Arizona—as proof of a stunning reversal of fortune for American manufacturing, an industry long ago written off as a casualty of globalization.

From 2000 to 2009, America bled nearly six million manufacturing jobs, or a third of its industrial workforce, as companies shifted production overseas. But over the past two years, the country has seen the green shoots of manufacturing’s rebirth. Since 2011, the U.S. has added 550,000 new manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, marking the first positive news for the sector since 1997. The renaissance isn’t concentrated in any one industry or region. In the past year, companies as diverse as General Electric, Dow Chemical and Apple have opened or announced plans for new production facilities in places ranging from Pennsylvania to California. Google, which purchased Motorola’s handset division, is making its Moto X smartphone in a shuttered Nokia factory in Forth Worth, Texas. China’s Lenovo, the world’s second-largest PC manufacturer, plans to make ThinkPad laptops in North Carolina, while last month, Apple said it will build a factory in Mesa, Ariz.

Foxconn says its plans are largely driven by the fact that its customers, American tech darlings such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard, are under intense public pressure to reshore production in the aftermath of the financial crisis. “We are looking at doing more manufacturing in the U.S. because, in general, customers want more to be done there,” company spokesman Louis Woo told Bloomberg.

Wal-Mart has similarly jumped on the made-in-America bandwagon. Earlier this year, the company pledged to spend $50 billion over the next decade to source more domestic products, which it will sell under the banner Made Here. “Labour costs in Asia are rising. Oil and transportation costs are high and increasingly uncertain,” Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon told a manufacturing conference in August. “The equation is changing.”

In Defense of Kissinger

Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)

Source URL (retrieved on Jan 3, 2014): http://nationalinterest.org/article/defense-kissinger-9642

January 2, 2014

Robert D. Blackwill

IN HIS BOOK Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger concludes that the United States “faces the challenge of reaching its goals in stages, each of which is an amalgam of American values and geopolitical necessities.”1 The recent debates about U.S. military options in Libya and Syria reflect the enduring tension between these intertwined, at times competing components of our external relations. No U.S. statesman can ignore this dilemma, and none will find it easy to strike exactly the right balance between the two, especially in times of crisis. All would seek to simultaneously pursue the promotion of the national interest and the protection of human rights. Kissinger, famous for advocating an American foreign policy based on the national interest, has long stressed that values and power are properly understood as mutually supporting. As he argued in a 1973 speech, since “Americans have always held the view that America stood for something above and beyond its material achievements,” a “purely pragmatic policy” would confuse allies and eventually forfeit domestic support. Yet “when policy becomes excessively moralistic it may turn quixotic or dangerous,” giving way to “ineffectual posturing or adventuristic crusades.”2 The key to a sustainable foreign policy, in his view, is the avoidance of either extreme: “A country that demands moral perfection of itself as a test of its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.”3

This ever-present fusion of American values and national interests was evident in the spring of 1971, as a crisis erupted in South Asia during Kissinger’s tenure as Richard Nixon’s national-security adviser. When the British Raj ended in 1947, a partition of the subcontinent led to the creation of India and Pakistan as separate, estranged sovereign states. Pakistan, envisioned as a homeland for South Asian Muslims, emerged with an unusual bifurcated structure comprising two noncontiguous majority-Muslim areas: “West Pakistan” and “East Pakistan.” While united by a shared faith, they were divided by language, ethnicity and one thousand miles of Indian territory.

Over the course of a fraught sequence of events from 1970 to 1972, a party advocating East Pakistani autonomy won a national parliamentary majority, and Pakistan’s two wings split. Amid natural disaster (a cyclone of historic proportions struck the East on the eve of the vote, killing up to half a million people and devastating fields and livestock), constitutional crisis, a sweeping crackdown by West Pakistani forces attempting to hold the East, mass refugee migrations, guerilla conflict and an Indian-Pakistani war, East Pakistan achieved independence as the new state of Bangladesh. By most estimates, the victims of the Bangladeshi independence struggle, which included communal massacres unleashed during the crackdown, numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

In his new book, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, Princeton professor Gary Bass, who has written previous books on humanitarian intervention and war-crimes tribunals, portrays the American president and his national-security adviser as the heartless villains of these events. While Bass makes a cursory acknowledgement of the two men’s geopolitical accomplishments, he derides the thinking that informed their actions as the product of a “familiar Cold War chessboard.” His own implicit framework is a deeply heartfelt and contrary view to Kissinger’s, one that places human-rights concerns at the pinnacle of U.S. foreign policy, at least in this crisis.

But how persuasive is Bass’s history? Instead of producing a definitive account, he offers an ahistorical and tendentious rendition that, more often than not, lacks a broader context. He reduces a complex series of overlapping South Asian upheavals, Cold War alliances and diplomatic initiatives to “a reminder of what the world can easily look like without any concern for the pain of distant strangers.”4 He faults the United States for not taking a firmer, more public stand on Pakistan’s domestic repression while offering only vague assurances that this U.S. pressure would have brought about an actual improvement in conditions. Moreover, he trivializes the possibility that his human rights–dominated policy preferences could have had profoundly damaging strategic consequences for the United States. Ironically, in his previous book Freedom’s Battle, Bass sympathizes with precisely the sort of cautionary impulses that animated Kissinger:

DYER STRAITS: 2013 — wars on the ground and in cyber space

It’s always dangerous to declare “mission accomplished.”by Gwynne Dyer - Penticton Western News

posted Jan 2, 2014 

http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/opinion/238517861.html

Former U.S. president George W. Bush did it weeks after he invaded Iraq, and it will be quoted in history books a century hence as proof of his arrogance and his ignorance.

British Prime Minister David Cameron did it a couple of weeks ago in Afghanistan, and you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But when Edward Snowden said it this week, “In terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” nobody laughed.

Unless you just want a list of events, a year-end piece should be a first draft of history that tries to identify where the flow of events is really taking us. By that standard, Snowden comes first. The former National Security Agency contractor, once an unremarkable man, saw where the combination of new technologies and institutional empire-building was taking us, and stepped in front of the juggernaut to stop it.

“You recognize that you’re going in blind ...,” Snowden told the Washington Post. “But when you weigh that against the alternative, which is not to act, you realize that some analysis is better than no analysis.” So he fled his country taking a huge cache of secret documents with him, and started a global debate about the acceptability of mass surveillance techniques that the vast majority of people did not even know existed.

As Snowden, now living in exile in Russia, put it in a Christmas broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4: “A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought.” Unless, that is, the monster of state-run mass surveillance is brought under control.

This is not just an American issue, these techniques are available to every government, or soon will be. The tyrannies will naturally use them to control their citizens, but other countries have a choice. The future health of liberal democratic societies depends on the restrictions we place on these techniques in this decade.

“Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying,” Snowden said in his Channel 4 broadcast. He has paid a high price to give us this opportunity, and we should use it.

Cambodia Police Open Fire on Factory Protesters

Three are reportedly dead after Cambodia’s military police used live ammunition on demonstrators.

By Zachary Keck

January 03, 2014

At least three people have been killed in Cambodia after security forces opened fired on protesters demanding higher wages, Reuters is reporting.

Cambodia has been the scene of labor protests since last month. The protesters reportedly consist of disgruntled factory workers demanding higher wages and elements of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which is demanding that the government hold a new election because they claim the one held over the summer was rigged.

On Thursday, scores of protesters were injured when security forces beat demonstrators with batons. On Friday the Cambodian military police opened fire on protesters with assault rifles, according to journalists on the ground.

Although Reuters is reporting at least three protesters were killed, the Cambodia military police claim only one died in the assault.

A spokesperson for the military police said after the incident: “”We are sorry we heard one was killed and some were injured. But we were just following our duty, role and tasks. Now, we are securing the situation.”

The CNRP have rallied unions and factory workers to its side by promising to nearly double the minimum wage if another election is held and it emerges victorious. Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for decades, has so far refused to hold another election.

The Cambodia government is also refusing to raise the minimum wage beyond $100 a month. The minimum wage is currently $95 but the Cambodia government announced a hike of $5 earlier this week. That hike will go into effect next month, the government said. Last month it announced a $15 increase in an effort to get demonstrators to return to work.

The CNRP has promised to raise the minimum wage to $160 a month if it comes to power. Cambodia has a lower minimum wage than many of its neighbors like Vietnam, Thailand, and China. This has allowed it to attract foreign investment from multinational companies.

Workers disgruntled with the low pay began striking last month. Labor protests have been a fairly frequent occurrence in the country in recent years.

Is 2014 the Year Scotland Finally Gains Independence?

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BY JOHN HUDSON

JANUARY 2, 2014 

Stop eating junk food. Start exercising regularly. Most people have hopelessly boring 2014 New Year's resolutions. But not the nationalists of Scotland.

In just nine months' time, Scots will vote on whether to become an independent country. For Scottish nationalists, it's the culmination of a centuries-long struggle for independence. (Think Braveheart with fewer beheadings and more sober white papers on the material benefits of secession.) For unionists, the referendum risks forfeiting the many perks of London's tutelage. Beyond Scotland, the vote has wide implications for peaceful secessionist movements in multiethnic nation-states from Canada to Spain to the Balkans -- putting all the more pressure on Scottish partisans to fulfill their 2014 New Year's resolution: win over undecided voters.

"This issue of the referendum is whether Scotland is better off without the United Kingdom," David Mundell, the under secretary of Scotland, told Foreign Policy. "Obviously, we make the case that it's better as part of the United Kingdom."

Mundell has become London's poster child for keeping the United Kingdom united, and has spent part of December carrying that message to Washington in meetings at think tanks and influential congressional offices. A lifelong Scotsman, Mundell is the only Conservative MP who represents a Scottish constituency, making him an ideal courier for David Cameron's anti-independence message.

"He's a rare bird," said the Brookings Institution's Fiona Hill, "And perhaps more effective than having some British official who doesn't have the same cachet."

Sitting down with FP at the British Embassy in Washington, Mundell's message was simple: Scotland doesn't realize how much it has to lose as a tiny independent state of 5 million people. "I would rather be part of a Scotland that has an influence in the world than be part of a Scotland [with] absolutely no influence," he said.

As a part of the U.K., Scotland enjoys the benefits of London's longstanding clout in an array of international institutions from the United Nations, where it holds a seat at the Security Council, to NATO, to the European Union to the G8 and the G20. In a chaotic global economy, it also helps to belong to a country with a substantial credit line. In 2008, the British government bailed out two of Scotland's biggest banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. "If it hadn't been for the wide resources of the United Kingdom, Scotland would've been like Iceland where effectively the country went bankrupt," said Mundell.

Mundell was gearing up for a talk at the Brookings Institution the next day, where his intellectual rival, First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, spoke earlier in the year. Both men make compelling points, but there's a sense that they're speaking past each other. While Mundell talks economies of scale and the pragmatic downsides to independence, Salmond drapes his appeal in the universalist rhetoric of self-determination.