Uyghur Unrest: Are China’s Policies Working?

21 May 2014

Rheanna Mathews

Research Intern, IPCS 

E-mail: rheanna.mathews@gmail.com

The recent bomb and knife attack on 30 April at a railway station in Urumqi, China has refocused the world’s attention on the Uyghurs and the unrest in China’s north-western Xinjiang province. The government has blamed “extremist religious thought and extremist religious activities” for the violent occurrence. Government action indicates that Uyghur separatists are responsible for the recent spate of attacks, evidenced by the number of Uyghurs detained for questioning, and the increase of police and paramilitary personnel in Uyghur-populated areas. Within a week of the Urumqi incident, there was another knife attack at Guangdong railway station – the third high profile attack in the recent months. Although not termed a terrorist act by the government, this raises a number of questions regarding China’s immediate and long-term measures to curb terrorism, and the possible outcomes of the crackdown on the Uyghur minority.

China’s Response to the Attacks

While it is undeniable that the government’s response time is quick, the effectiveness of its measures is questionable. Following the Urumqi attack, the affected area was cordoned off, cleared within hours, and the station was re-opened. All data regarding the incident was deleted from social media, leaving only those portions that conformed to the official statement on the attack. Over 1000 Uyghurs, including women and children, were detained for questioning due to their relations with the suspected perpetrators of the crime. Uyghur and other important cities across China, especially Beijing, also saw increased security. However, the government’s tough stand on the matter, heightened security and crackdown on the Uyghur population, failed to prevent another attack in Guangzhou, Guangdong. 

Although the latest attack does not resemble the previous ones in sophistication and seems to be the action of a single disturbed individual, it is indicative of the growing unrest in China and a tendency for “propaganda by the deed.” Chinese official media management which restricts the reportage of violence could be one of the reasons for the attacks becoming more numerous and elaborate.

The Urumqi attack itself occurred after the security measures were put in place following the Kunming attack in March. Terrorism in China has grown more sophisticated and random in the recent past and it is obvious that the government finds itself inexperienced in dealing with such blatant acts of terror. The pre-emptive action that President Xi Jinping promised is yet to be seen. 

How Effective Have the Government’s Strategies Been?

The Uyghur community has long complained of repression – an accusation the government has always denied, stating its Western Development Strategy as proof. However, it is obvious that the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority who have very little in common with the Han majority do receive secondary treatment. The government quite openly tries to suppress their right to religious and cultural expression. Moreover, they are held back economically. Employment opportunities for the Uyghurs are low due to existing prejudice and the preference for Mandarin Chinese speakers. The lack of jobs sees hundreds of the Uyghurs migrating to the larger cities in eastern China to find employment.

China Has Russia Over a Barrel

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/19/china_has_russia_over_a_barrel_putin_oil_gas_energy

When Putin arrives in Shanghai to try and ink a new multibillion-dollar energy deal, it'll be the Chinese -- not the Russians -- who will be laughing all the way to the bank.

BY ELY RATNER , ELIZABETH ROSENBERG

MAY 19, 2014

Chinese officials are notoriously tough negotiators, especially when they know you're in a pinch. Just ask Gazprom, Russia's natural gas giant, which is on the brink of capitulating to Beijing on a massive energy project, 10 years in the offing. Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp., one of China's oil giants, are gearing up to sign a 30-year multibillion-dollar deal to send natural gas from Russia to China through a colossal new pipeline network.

A week before Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Shanghai on May 20-21, Russia's deputy energy minister described the deal as "98 percent ready." However, a Chinese deputy foreign minister was far cagier, noting in mid-May: "We are still exchanging views with Moscow, and we will try our best to ensure that this contract can be signed and witnessed by the two presidents."

On the surface, this seems the kind of win-win outcome that Chinese diplomats regularly tout as the solution to nearly every international problem. Russia sits on the world's largest natural gas reserves, much of it buried in the Siberian hinterland north of its border with China. As the world's largest energy consumer, China is an obvious partner for Russia's economy, in which natural resources make up 70 percent of exports and over 50 percent of government revenue.

But energy trade between Russia and China is surprisingly limited, with only 9 percent of China's oil imports and 1 percent of its gas imports coming from Russia. China is eager to increase and diversify its energy supplies away from overreliance on expensive and volatile sources in Africa and the Middle East that have to pass through precarious sea lanes in the Strait of Hormuz and the South and East China seas. (Beijing really does worry about all the talk among U.S. strategists on how to blockade China's energy supplies in the event of armed conflict.)

Yet China has been unwilling to pay the premium prices that Russia has traditionally charged in Europe. Now, with Russia's worsening economy and an increasingly competitive Asian energy market, Beijing holds most of the cards -- and time is not on Moscow's side.

The Battle for the South China Sea

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/battle-south-china-sea

19 May 2014

Furious mobs fire-bombed Chinese-owned factories in Vietnam in retaliation for China placing an oil rig in what Vietnam claims are its territorial waters. Hanoi is cracking down on “hooligans” and even peaceful demonstrations, but Beijing still decided to evacuate thousands of its citizens.

Earlier this month the Vietnamese and Chinese navies squared off with each other in the South China Sea over the very same issue.

This is just the beginning of what could be a very long conflict. Vietnam and China both claim the Spratly Islands, as do Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei.

Nobody lives permanently on any of them. They’re a dispersed archipelago of specks, many of which are underwater at high tide, that in aggregate only make up one-and-a-half square land miles. They don’t have any resources per se, but maritime borders are extensions of land borders, so whoever claims the Spratlies can claim the waters around them. And the waters around them are valuable, hence the oil rig and Vietnam’s violent reaction.

Rioters spared at least one factory because it flies the American flag. Don’t be surprised. Vietnam’s people are no more angry at Americans right now than Americans are angry at the Vietnamese. The war between our two countries is almost forty years old, as far back in history as World War II was in 1984. Most of Vietnam’s negative energy is directed at China, which it has struggled on-and-off against for centuries. A Vietnamese diplomat put it into perspective: “China invaded Vietnam seventeen times. The US invaded Mexico only once, and look at how sensitive Mexicans are about that.”

Vietnam’s perception of China is more like Poland’s view of Russia than Mexico’s of the US. “This threat posed by China toward Vietnam comes not only from geographical proximity,” wrote Le Hong Hiep at East Asia Forum in 2011, “but also the asymmetry of size and power between the two countries. China is 29 times larger than Vietnam, while Vietnam’s population, despite being the world’s 14th largest, is still only equivalent to one of China’s mid-sized provinces.

The South China Sea will be contested for a long time. The United States has naval dominance now, and it aggravates the Chinese for the same reason Americans would be aggravated if Beijing had naval dominance in the Caribbean or off the coast of New York or California. There’s a difference, though, and it’s huge. The Caribbean is peripheral, but more than half the world’s merchant shipping passes through the South China Sea.

Forget Ukraine: Washington's Now Targeting Russians Tied to a Dead Lawyer

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BY JAMILA TRINDLE

MAY 20, 2014

The Obama administration added more Russian names to a U.S. blacklist Tuesday, risking a further deterioration in Washington's already troubled relationship with Moscow. The trigger wasn't the high-profile standoff over the future of eastern Ukraine, however. This time around the hard-hitting measures came in response to the mysterious 2009 death of a Russian lawyer-turned-whistleblower.

The U.S. added 12 people -- including doctors, prison officials and a judge -- to a list of Russian human rights abusers for their alleged roles in the deaths of Sergei Magnitsky and two other Kremlin critics. Magnitsky, the highest profile victim, was arrested after trying to bring to light a wide-ranging tax fraud and died in prison after authorities allegedly denied him urgently needed medical care. The new U.S. move -- which freezes the assets and denies visas to virtually everyone involved in Magnitsky's arrest, trial and medical treatment -- came in response to lobbying by powerful lawmakers who see the case as part of a broader pattern of abuse in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Washington took the move despite what appears to be a concerted attempt by the Putin government to prevent tensions with the West from rising further in the wake of Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its dispatch of tens of thousands of troops to its border with eastern Ukraine. Putin has struck a more conciliatory tone recently in advance of a two-day trip to China designed to try to seal a massive gas deal with Beijing. The Russian strongman has promised to withdraw his forces from the frontier with Ukraine and praised the pro-Western government in Kiev -- which he normally derides as a illegitimate junta -- for launching what he implied was a serious dialogue with the pro-Russian forces who have taken over swaths of eastern Ukraine.

It's not clear if those were just words, however. This is at least the third time Putin has promised to withdraw his forces from the Ukrainian border, but Pentagon officials and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said there's been no sign yet of a withdrawal.

Washington has tried to force Putin's hand by freezing the assets of 45 people, including some of the Russian president's closest allies, and 19 banks and companies since March in an attempt to pressure Putin to reverse his annexation of Crimea and abandon his threats of invading eastern Ukraine. The Treasury Department insisted that Tuesday's measures, by contrast, weren't prompted by anything Putin did or didn't do in Ukraine.

"Our action today is independent of Russia's actions in Ukraine," a spokeswoman for Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said in an email, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Instead, the Obama administration was responding to a congressional request made under a 2012 law the administration originally fought. The Magnitsky Act gave Congress the right to request sanctions against Russians accused of human rights abuses. The State Department, Treasury Department, and President Obama's National Security Council all originally opposed the idea, but came around to it after prominent senators made it clear they wouldn't vote to normalize trade relations with Russia unless the provision was attached.

Xi moots code of conduct for Asia on security issue

May 22, 2014 

Reuters

— PTI | 

Shanghai/Manila

http://www.asianage.com/international/xi-moots-code-conduct-asia-security-issue-506

Vietnam, Philippines denounce China; Beijing asks nations to solve security problems individually

Grappling with territorial disputes and bracing for US’ big military push into Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday mooted a code of conduct for Asian countries to resolve security issues among themselves while pledging to step up fight against terrorism.

He also issued a veiled warning to the US and its allies in Asia over forging military alliances to counter China, amid Beijing’s strained ties with countries like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. He also pledged “zero tolerance” for terrorism, separatism and extremism in the region as he called on Asian countries to build a new “sustainable” and “durable” security cooperation structure. Security problems in Asia should eventually be solved by Asians themselves, he said, outlining China’s new Asian security paradigm at the fourth summit of Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia here in the east China metropolis.

Asian countries should promote security in their own countries and across the region through dialogue and cooperation, Mr Xi said at the summit attended among others by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Presidents of Pakistan and Sri Lanka Mamnoon Hussain and Mahinda Rajapaksa respectively, besides those of nine other countries, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“We cannot just have the security of one or some countries while leaving the rest insecure,” said Xi in a keynote

speech.

“One who tries to blow (out) other’s oil lamp will get his beard on fire,” the President warned, citing a Kazakh proverb.

Without taking names, Mr Xi said: “To beef up an entrenched or military alliance targeted at a third party is not

conducive to maintaining common security.”

“We should strengthen... International and regional cooperation, and step up the fight against the ‘three forces’, in order to bring a life of happiness and tranquility to the people of this region,” said Mr Xi, also head of the ruling

Communist Party of China.

Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines are determined to oppose Chinese infringement of their territorial waters, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said on Wednesday, calling on the world to condemn China’s actions in a rare public show of unity bound to infuriate Beijing. “The President and I shared the deep concerns over the current extremely dangerous situation caused by China’s many actions that violate international law,” Mr Dung said in a statement after talks with Philippine President Benigno Aquino during a two-day visit to Manila. “.

“In particular, China’s illegal placement of the oil rig and deployment of vessels to protect the rig deep into Vietnam’s continental shelf and exclusive economic zone have seriously threatened peace, stability, maritime security and safety, and freedom of navigation in the East Sea.” Anti-Chinese violence flared in Vietnam last week after Chinese state oil company CNOOC deployed an oil rig 240 km off the coast of Vietnam in waters also claimed by Hanoi. The rig was towed there just days after US President Barack Obama left the region.

The move was the latest in a series of confrontations between China and some of its neighbours. Washington has responded with sharpened rhetoric toward Beijing, describing a pattern of “provocative” actions by China.

“The two sides are determined to oppose China’s violations and called on countries and the international community to continue strongly condemning China and demanding China immediately end its violations,” Mr Dung said.

The Muslim Brotherhood Thinks It's Winning Again

The dangerous delusions that will determine Egypt's future

By Eric Trager

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117820/egypts-muslim-brotherhood-thinks-its-winning-war-future

Since the uprising-cum-coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi last summer, Washington has encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood and the military-backed government to pursue “reconciliation.” Nearly a year later, however, neither side appears interested in conceding anything to the other. The military fears that a remobilized Brotherhood would quickly win power and seek vengeance. And despite an unrelenting crackdown that has claimed over 2,500 lives and jailed over 16,000 Egyptians, the Brotherhood’s demands haven’t softened: Morsi must return, at least temporarily, and those who removed him—particularly General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who is widely expected to win the presidential election next week—must be executed. Until then, Muslim Brothers vow to continue resisting the coup, because—they insist—they are winning. In other words, forget “reconciliation”: The existential struggle that has defined Egyptian politics since Morsi’s removal will likely continue, and worsen.

To be sure, there has been ongoing communication—sometimes direct, but mostly indirect—between the military-backed government and the Brotherhood since July. But the two sides’ demands remain mutually exclusive. While the Brotherhood often downplays its demand that Morsi return to power, it still emphasizes the restoration of “legitimacy,” which effectively means the same thing. “The return of Morsi, continuing his rule, is not what we want,” Mohamed Touson, a former Brotherhood parliamentarian and a member of Morsi’s legal team, told me, before adding: “Morsi should come back just to take the decision for new elections and leave office.” 

The Brotherhood is also demanding “transitional justice”—a phrase that Brotherhood leaders deliberately borrowed from post-apartheid South Africa, but then stripped of its conciliatory significance. According to one Brotherhood leader, the Brotherhood wants to appoint an “independent committee” to investigate security forces’ deadly crackdown on the Brotherhood’s anti-coup protests, “and the results will be compulsory for everyone, with the killings … considered murders”—meaning that Sisi and many of his colleagues would be convicted of mass murder and put to death. Younger Muslim Brothers are particularly emphatic on this point. “He should be executed when the coup falls,” said a Brotherhood student at Cairo University. Of course, the military won’t accept a set of demands that entail the generals’ deaths.

Egypt's next president

Ursula Lindsey

http://arabist.net/blog/2014/5/13/egypts-next-president

Now that campaigning for Egypt’s presidential election is well underway and Field Marshal Abdel Fattah El Sisi has made several media appearances, some observations can be made about the man who is expected to be Egypt’s next president. 

The former military commander is running a very controlled campaign, one in which he does not open himself up to any impertinent back-and-forth. In his media coming-out a few weeks back, he immediately bristled when would-be interviewers Ibrahim Eissa and Lamees Hadidi even gently pushed him, warning Eissa “I won’t allow you to use that word again,” about the apparently derogatory terms “askar” for the army, and admonishing them: “Are you going to talk or you going to listen?” The interview was pre-recorded, and glaringly failed to include what might have seemed like obvious questions (such as, given El-Sisi now oft-professed love of Egyptian women, how he defended forced virginity tests for female protesters two years ago). 

The field marshal’s electoral program remains shrouded in mystery. In an unorthodox move, his campaign has simply decided not to burden themselves with explaining how his vision might actually be implemented. His own campaign manager has told the press that presenting a program at this point “would provoke a discussion and debate that we don’t have the time to react to.” His few policy proposals (giving young men refrigerated trucks to deliver vegetables to market; encouraging the use of energy-efficient lightbulbs to face the electricity shortage) seem risibly modest, and when pressed on how he would actually implement them, the mushir simply says that the state will “make” people adopt them. 

El Sisi prefers to wax poetic about the extraordinary personal qualities of the Egyptian people, and his boundless love for them, rather than to address specific policy questions. He is clearly well-aware of his popularity with women, which he constantly plays to (although he seems incapable of imagining working women -- his idealized Egyptian Woman is adamantly domestic, anxiously watching over her home and wisely encouraging her man to action outside it). 

El Sisi is charismatic; he is also terribly aware of it. He radiates self-regard. His soft-spoken delivery is that of a man never used to being interrupted. But his veneer of kindliness and patience rubs off awfully quickly, the moment he is challenged. The unspoken message of his entire campaign is that he is actually above competing for the position -- it is already rightfully his, and he is accepting it as a patriotic sacrifice. 

One shouldn’t under-estimate the appeal of his displays of emotion or his paternalism (two sides of the same coin). Many Egyptians are waiting for a strong man to "take the country in hand"; they won’t bristle at the way he amalgamates the army and the state to his own person (rhetorically telling protesters and strikers: “I don’t have anything to give you!”, as if the country's budget and his own bank account were one and the same). But it is hard to gauge the field marshall's true level of support when the entire transitional period has been aggressively engineered to ensure his candidacy an aura of inevitability. 

The Deal That Wasn't

Source Link

Vladimir Putin went to Shanghai to sign an energy pact worth billions of dollars. Too bad China wasn't ready to play ball.

BY KEITH JOHNSON

MAY 20, 2014

Everybody from financial analysts to the Russian government expected Moscow and Beijing to finally ink a massive, $400 billion energy pact Tuesday that's been in the works for nearly two decades. But it didn't happen, with the first day of Russian President Vladimir Putin's much-touted trip to China ending not with a bang but a whimper.

After weeks of Russian insistence that the landmark energy deal was virtually in hand, including Putin's own comments just before jetting off to Shanghai, the two sides failed to clinch the deal Tuesday. That was a shock, a blow to Putin's objectives, and a reminder of how much China has the upper hand when it comes to gas deals with Europe's biggest gas supplier.

Indeed, the failure of Russian and Chinese negotiators to strike the deal on the first day of a two-day trip stems from the issue that has bedeviled them for years: price.

Russia still wants to charge roughly the same, high rates it charges customers in Europe, which average about $12 per million British Thermal Units, a standard measurement of gas volumes. But China only wants to pay what it already pays for gas piped in from Central Asia, which costs about $10 per million Btus. Over the expected, 30-year life of the contract, such a difference translates into at least a $60 billion difference between what the seller wants and what the buyer is willing to pay.

Gazprom executives said just before Putin's trip that the two sides were just "one digit" away from an agreement -- and apparently still are. Russian spokesmen told reporters in Shanghai that disagreements over the price kept the two sides from finalizing the big gas deal on the first day of the summit.

"There really was an expectation that things were going to be different this time. There was a widespread sense that the Ukraine crisis would change the political calculation" for Putin and make a deal more likely, said Erica Downs, an expert on Chinese energy at the Brookings Institution.

That doesn't mean the long-awaited deal is dead, of course. There are still opportunities to finally close the gap still separating both sides, starting as soon as Wednesday in Shanghai. Later this week, global business leaders will descend on St. Petersburg for a big international economic forum that offers another chance to cement an agreement.

But the surprising delay during Putin's high-profile visit makes clear that China can afford to keep playing hardball on the energy deal. There are a host of reasons for that. The European blowback in the wake of the Ukraine crisis has made Russia more eager to tap into a big new market in Asia. Russia's still-undeveloped Siberian gas fields don't have many potential big customers other than China. And global gas supplies are set to spike in years to come, giving China even more options than it has today.

The Age of Imperviousness

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/19/the_age_of_imperviousness_putin_assad_obama_human_rights

A dangerous new crop of dictators is learning that they really can get away with murder. But it's as much Obama's fault as it is Putin's.

BY SUZANNE NOSSEL

MAY 19, 2014

The problem of impunity -- the difficulty of punishing powerful wrongdoers -- has given birth to a new and potentially graver menace, the scourge of imperviousness. For years, advocates and activists have struggled against impunity, the lack of punishment for most of the worst human rights offenders. They decry the emboldening effect of this lack of sanction on other abusers, who dismiss international law and norms as toothless. But now, as Russian President Vladimir Putin muscles his way into Ukraine and Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi commits travesties of justice, we see impunity feeding into something potentially worse: imperviousness.

While the label may be new, the behavior isn't. Abusers who pay little or no mind to the outcry over their misdeeds have existed throughout human history. But they now seem to be emerging in places where, until recently, governments were more susceptible to shaming. Impunity is a problem of politics and structure, stemming from shortages of political will and weaknesses in national and international justice institutions. Imperviousness acts at a deeper, more subjective level. It is the judgment of heads of state that, when it comes to how they treat their people, what others think and say simply does not matter. 

Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, there have been outlier regimes galore that have not cared about international legal obligations or the stigma of noncompliance. These included closed countries like North Korea and Burma; the regimes of Ceausescu, Tito, and others of the communist bloc; Gen. Augusto Pinochet of Chile and his fellow South American dictators; Milosevic, Karadzic, and other Balkan tyrants; and African strongmen like Liberia's Charles Taylor and Uganda's Idi Amin.

In recent decades, though, their ranks thinned. In Eastern Europe and South America, authoritarians were replaced with mostly liberal, rights-respecting governments. Liberia and Rwanda left their dark histories behind to embrace democracy. Burma and Libya came out from under brutal dictatorships into fitful transitions. Pressure from foreign governments, human rights advocates, and above all these countries' own citizens helped force reform. 

Over the same period, organizations like Human Rights Watch and Freedom House began publishing hard-hitting exposés on a wide array of rights violations. Human rights activists adopted sophisticated tactics to generate media attention for wrongdoing, squiring around New York Times reporters and CNN cameras in crisis zones to expose the worst; human rights activists helped feed momentum for eventual, though belated, action to stop slaughters in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Darfur. In each case local dissident movements and rights defenders drew strength from outside supporters who backed their brave battles for freedom.

Vladimir Putin's New Fifth International

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putins-new-fifth-international-10498?page=show

Why things could go from bad to worse in Europe—and beyond.

Ariel Cohen

May 21, 2014

LONDON, UK- In the recent makeshift referenda in Donetsk and Luhansk unrecognized by the West, a small minority of eligible voters voted in favor of secession from Ukraine. Now, some Western politicians and analysts are wondering: If those people came out to vote for "independence," aren’t we obligated to consider their opinion when pondering the future of Ukraine?

The Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry are voicing similar thoughts, and carefully managing perceptions. In reality, the Kremlin does not care about the fate of the ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking voters in eastern Ukraine. It is concerned with whether Ukraine, which now has a major separatist enclave in the Crimea, can get into NATO and the EU.

Russia has a receptive audience in Western Europe. Germany does not want to intensify its confrontation with Russia and impose a new round of sanctions that could undermine Russian-German trade, which is flourishing. Germany buys billions of Euros worth of gas and raw materials from Russia, and sells back Siemens-made trains and turbines, along with Mercedes and Volkswagen automobiles.

However, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama understand that if they do not respond to Russia right now, they will have to either let Russian aggression slide—or be forced to confront it in a much tougher economic and political conflict. The West certainly is not interested in a hot war.

After Merkel's visit to Washington in early May, the United States and Germany spent the last two weeks in consultations about the details of future measures to be taken concerning Ukraine. The sanctions that are currently in place are not considered to be particularly effective, and the United States and the EU are likely to keep raising the stakes for Russia, hoping to deter any further attempts on the part of Moscow to dismember its "brotherly Slavic country." The alternative, according to experts in both Europe and the US, is another potential Cold War or even a future European hot war.

Another aspect of the current conflict, not yet understood by the United States, is being well monitored in European capitals. That is the foreign policy significance of the internal ideological transformation in Russia. The country’s officials and public figures are now spouting Eurasianism and ultranationalist ideology. Meanwhile, Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov, Molotov’s grandson, has talked about "the Aryan tribes descending from the Carpathian Mountains" to conquer Eurasia.

Moscow is also becoming a guiding light for the European far right, from Marine Le Pen to the neo-Nazi Jobbik party, as well as for the Italian Liga Norte.

As US-Saudi ties Soften, Hard Days for Assad?

21/05/2014

http://www.claws.in/as-us-saudi-ties-soften,-hard-days-for-assad-monish-gulati.html

Monish Gulati

E-Mail- m_gulati_2001@yahoo.com

The US President Barack Obama visited Saudi Arabia at the end of March for his first visit to the country since 2009 and met King Abdullah. The visit came amid rising Saudis concerns about the commitment of their security provider, the US, and its willingness to stand by its traditional allies. Though fresh ground was not broken during the visit, there appear to be four perceptible changes in US policy to accommodate Saudi concerns. First is the scaling up of US drone operations against the Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula. Second is the softening of stand on aid , specifically military aid, to Egypt; third seems to be the tacit US approval to the involvement of Pakistan in gulf security both in terms of manpower and military equipment; Lastly and more tangible of all the outcomes is the renewed US push to arm the Syrian moderate opposition against the Assad regime. The US decision not to carry out military strikes against the Assad regime in the aftermath of the chemical attacks on civilians had severely impacted the US-Saudi relations.

There is another narrative on the arming of the ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition which relates to the crisis in Ukraine. With increasing calls on the US administration to use force other than secret drone attacks or covert operations in response to strategic challenges in Eastern Europe, the US may have opted to do so in Syria. It is felt that enhanced military response in Syria might not end the civil war there, but could prevent the eruption of a new one in Ukraine.[1]

This article looks the US decision to step up military coercive measures against the Assad regime in Syria as an element of its foreign policy to reassure its traditional allies in the Middle East particularly Saudi Arabia and to counter critics back home of the increasing “isolationism” in US global strategic outlook.

Arming of the Syrian Opposition

On 07 April Israel’s Debkafile website reported that two moderate Syrian rebel militias, the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Revolutionary Front, had been supplied with US weapons, including anti-tank BGM-71 TOW missiles. The Hazm movement (Harkat Hazm), part of the opposition Free Syrian Army, for the first time received more than 20 TOW anti-tank missiles which have used them in flashpoint areas of Idlib, Aleppo and Latakia provinces in the north.[2] Saudi Arabian fighter jets stationed at the kingdom’s Faisal Air Base at Tabuk near Jordan reportedly provided air cover during the arms transfer. The CIA reportedly plans to send more arms to the Syrian opposition and the 50 TOW missile systems that had been sent to Harakat Hazam were a part of a “test” or pilot program.[3]

Complex Situation

The US decision to provide arms to the Syrian opposition was made in a complex environment. Presence of multitude of jihadi groups including foreign fighters with differing allegiance, cross borders influences, sectarian affiliations, regional aspirations and infighting has made the Syrian opposition structure chaotic and confusing. Earlier Western attempts to arm some of these groups saw arms proliferating to the hard-line extremist factions through looting and defections.

The US, in addition to a ‘pilot’ programme to arm moderate opposition with anti-tank missiles, in its recent response to the Syrian National Coalition's appeals has upgraded their mission status from informal to formal (Coalition offices in Syria will now be considered "foreign missions”), and promised to give a further $27 million in nonlethal aid to the opposition, bringing the total so far to $278 million. There is also been a fresh narrative on the situation being put out which includes the identification of a operationally effective moderate Syrian group, credible explanation for appearance of non-western high lethality weapons with Syrian opposition and renewed threat of use of chemical weapons on the civilians.

The Crisis-Prevention Directorate

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-crisis-prevention-directorate-10500

The president's National Security Council staff will increasingly be in the business of predicting the future. A new crisis-prevention methodology and a staff to help oversee it would be ideal.

Dafna H. RandMichael Horowitz

May 21, 2014

Three years after the Tunisian street toppled President Ben Ali, Maidan protestors in Ukraine, with dizzying speed, triggered a major great-power confrontation between the United States and Russia. The twenty-first century is prone, it seems, to a particular type of geopolitical crisis: domestic grievances that may have once been parochial affairs—teenagers arrested for graffiti doodles mocking the Syrian president, for instance—can quickly escalate into major international-security challenges. The unpredictable consequences of local conflicts are blurring the firewalls between states’ domestic politics and U.S. national-security interests. As a result, U.S. policy makers cannot afford to underestimate or overlook domestic sources of instability. Whether in Egypt, Mali or Ukraine over the past few years, or in Turkey, Brazil or Venezuela over the next few years, domestic political conflicts around the world have the potential to dramatically reshape America’s strategic landscape. Given the continuing pattern of relatively minor domestic triggers spiraling into major geopolitical unrest, the president deserves some dedicated staff, armed with expert knowledge and cutting edge methods, helping him to predict future crises.

These types of crises are not new. (See: Causes of World War I.) But they have occurred so often on this president’s watch to suggest the need for a new crisis-prevention methodology and a staff to help to oversee it. The president’s National Security Council staff will increasingly be in the business of predicting the future. While those responsible for regional policy in the White House, Pentagon, Intelligence Community and State Department are often forecasting dangerous events—and operating based on assumptions of the likelihood of these events occurring—a separate team should be charged with analyzing the likelihood of domestic crises spiraling outwards, and communicating potential mitigating U.S. policy actions. Imagine a memo in early 2013 that had suggested even a moderate likelihood that over the course of one year, there would be a coup in Egypt and a change of government in Kiev would lead to Russian intervention. These potential scenarios, given their significance for U.S. interests, would have certainly helped to focus U.S. policy efforts on mitigating the political crisis that had been brewing in Egypt since late 2012 or responding to the grievances against the Ukrainian president.

The Great Tea Party-GOP Merger

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-great-tea-party-gop-merger-10501?page=show

Evolution or revolution?

Robert W. Merry

May 21, 2014

Several recent articles highlight the state of the Tea Party movement in America some four years after it emerged on the scene. They also reflect a fundamental reality of how politics work in the U.S. system.

A week ago, Wall Street Journal reporter Janet Hook produced an analysis of Republican Party politics that posited the idea that, while hardline Tea Party candidates aren’t emerging in GOP primaries these days with the force they displayed in 2010 and 2012, the GOP itself has moved toward many Tea Party positions in order to neutralize the Tea Party insurgency. She cited the recent GOP primary results in North Carolina, where the state House speaker, Thom Tillis, backed by the party establishment, decisively defeated a Tea Party candidate for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.

But, notes Hook, “Mr. Tillis is no political centrist.” In fact, he has embraced many positions promoted by Tea Party forces in recent years. He questioned whether climate change is really in progress, opposed federal actions establishing a minimum wage, and suggested that perhaps the Department of Education should be abolished. Hook quoted an official of the Ohio GOP as saying, “The tea party has a home in the Republican Party. I don’t think it’s the end of the tea party.”

Then, the other day, the Journal’s Washington columnist, Kimberley A. Strassel, offered some intriguing reporting on what she called the GOP’s “trade-up strategy” in state races around the country. It seems that local party activists are targeting state legislators and executive officials who have been reluctant to get with the conservative program of tax reduction, pension reform and education overhaul. Strassel points out that the Republicans emerged from their blowout 2010 midterm elections with extraordinary local power, including twenty-three states in which it controls the governorship and both branches of the legislature.

Is Indicting Chinese Hackers a Smart Move or Dumb Strategy?

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ChinaFile A conversation about responding to Chinese cyberespionage. 

BY ROBERT DALY , CHEN WEIHUA , ROGIER CREEMERS

MAY 20, 2014

On Monday, May 19, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder accused China of hacking American industrial giants such as U.S. Steel and Westinghouse Electric -- an unprecedented criminal charge of cyber-espionage against Chinese military officials. Responding almost immediately, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing had canceled U.S.-China Internet working group activities and demanded that the United States rescind the charges, which the ministry said were "concocted." Will the United States succeed? Is Washington opening itself up to more criticism of its own electronic surveillance? And what are the charges likely to do to U.S.-China relations overall? 

Robert Daly:

I assume China is guilty as charged -- that the five accused People's Liberation Army officers or others in their demographic committed cyber-espionage against American firms to steal technology and gain other competitive advantages. I assume there were more than five people involved.

It's a serious problem, and China denies its existence. This makes bilateral discussion of the matter a bit one-sided. When China refuses to engage seriously on an issue, either through denial in the face of strong evidence or through unevidenced assertion of its own positions, the United States increasingly resorts to name-and-shame tactics. In the South China Sea, China's defense of its territorial claims is pushing the United States toward ever bolder rejection of the nine-dash line.

Against this background, and under American law, the Justice Department's indictments are justified. But they won't be effective, and they may prove counterproductive.

No one expects China's leaders to extradite the officers or to confess that they were following orders from the party they serve. What we should expect -- and what we got from China right after Holder's announcement -- is stronger denials, tit-for-tat accusations, and suspension of the Sino-U.S. Cyber Working Group's interactions. This response surely figured into the U.S. government's calculations. It went ahead with the indictments, probably in order to demonstrate its commitment to protecting American businesses and for lack of a better idea.

Name-and-shame is, after all, a tactic of last resort -- a throwing up of hands. It's an understandable reaction, but it doesn't work with China, at least in the short or medium term.

Can American Intelligence Leverage the Data-Mining Revolution?

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-american-intelligence-leverage-the-data-mining-10499?page=show

Will the United States be left behind?

Laura K. Bate

May 21, 2014

On Friday, the Chief Analytic Methodologist for the Defense Intelligence Agency Josh Kerbel said, in no uncertain terms, that the U.S. intelligence community (IC) needs to make changes to keep up with its changing environment. Its historical fascination with collecting secrets is dangerously outmoded, he claims, given the overwhelming availability of unguarded information on the internet. He is absolutely correct. With that said, the abundance of unclassified, useful data hardly simplifies the task set before the intelligence community; the fact of the matter is that such data is too abundant for the IC’s current capabilities. To address this problem, data mining has become a much-discussed keystone of the future intelligence system, and the current administration is certainly working to capitalize on cross-sector research in data mining.

Part of the rush of interest in data mining stems from changes in the state of the art that vastly increase the technology’s potential. In previous years, data-mining tools analyzed massive data sets looking for connections, especially connections that tie together social networks like terrorist organizations. This style of data analytics underpins widely used national-security data-management programs like Palantir and the army’s Distributed Common Ground System, and will no doubt remain a critical tool for national security.

Nonetheless, change is coming; government officials have clearly signaled a movement towards “non-predicated, or pattern-based, searches – using data to find patterns that reveal new insights.” While current tools have the capacity to connect a user’s query with points of information pulled from otherwise uselessly large and complex data sets, future tools will be able to generate genuinely novel intelligence based on patterns in massive data sets uncovered by computerized statistical modeling.

While this unfolding style of data mining is in its formative stages, it behooves technologists and policy planners alike to keep in mind that the development and deployment of powerful data-mining technologies in national security particularly causes a number of rather unique problems:

Why Did the US Indict PLA Officers for Hacking, Economic Espionage?

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The United States upset a delicate bilateral status quo with the indictment. Did it have good reasons for doing so?

By Ankit Panda

May 21, 2014

As my colleague Shannon reported yesterday, the United States Department of Justice formally charged five officers (Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, Gu Chunhui) in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with crimes related to cyber espionage, including “computer hacking, economic espionage and other offenses directed at six American victims in the U.S. nuclear power, metals and solar products industries.” The indictment states:

From at least in or about 2006 up to and including at least in or about April 2014, members of the People’s Liberation Army (“PLA”), the military of the People’s Republic of China (“China”), conspired together with each other to hack into the computers of commercial entities located in the Western District of Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the United States, to maintain unauthorized access to those computers, and to steal information from those entities that would be useful to their competitors in China, including state-owned enterprises (“SOEs”).

Following revelations like Mandiant’s 2013 APT1 report, it became quite apparent that the United States government would have to face the issue of cyber espionage originating in China head-on. We went from asking “if” the United States would pursue legal action against China to “when” it would do so. The DoJ’s indictment, the first of its kind, is a watershed moment in U.S.-China relations and tells us quite a bit about how the United States plans on handling non-kinetic asymmetrical threats originating in China.

First, as Paul Rosenzweig notes in Lawfare Blog, the DoJ indictment is “a perfect example of Lawfare (writ large).” Even though the indictment lacks any real teeth in terms of enforcement, it is an example of the United States government using the tools of the law to pursue the national interest and an important national security objective. The immediate benefit of the DoJ indictment, which has the Internet’s China watchers abuzz, is its effectiveness in signaling the United States’ goals and intentions. It tells China that the United States will not shy away from calling out its state agents publicly, naming and shaming them with evidence (evidence that China sees as insufficient and “fabricated”). The indictment additionally has an important effect on domestic audiences. Given widespread concern among U.S. corporations that state-sponsored cyber espionage may give Chinese firms a competitive edge, the DoJ indictment is a reassuring step that the U.S. government will step up for American economic interests.

Microsoft’s Pricey New Surface Pro Is More Laptop Than Tablet

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BY TIM MOYNIHAN

05.20.14 

Panos Panay introduces the Surface tablet during the Microsoft Surface unveiling. Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

Microsoft has a message it wants you to take away when you look at its new hardware: Your laptop is for getting work done, your tablet is for playing, and the Surface Pro 3 is the device that will supplant them both.

The company unveiled the new portable touchscreen computer at a press event in New York today. The newest model in the Surface line is both bigger and more powerful than previous versions: 12 inches (up from 10.6) though still remarkably thin, and loaded with the latest Intel Core processors. The Core i5 versions will ship in June, with other configurations shipping before the end of August.

Which is almost enough time to save up the money you’ll need to buy one. Pricing starts at $800 for the Core i3 version. A fully-loaded i7 device with the best storage options sits just shy of $2,000. And that’s without the keyboard case, an essential add-on that costs an extra $130.

That’s super-pricey for a tablet. But the new Surface is not just a tablet. Microsoft’s presenters, which included CEO Satya Nadella and Corporate VP for Surface Computing Panos Panay, were relentless in their hammering of this point during the event.

Tim Moynihan tests out a Surface tablet during the Microsoft Surface unveiling. Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

According to consumer research quoted by Microsoft, 96 percent of iPad owners also own a laptop – a statistic the company says points to fundamental differences in the ways people use each device.

“Tablets are designed for you to sit back and watch movies, read books, browse the web, snacking on apps,” Surface chief Panay said during the event. “Laptops are not designed that way at all… They’re designed for editing, they’re designed for making. There’s a design point, and they’re made that way for a reason.”

And then tablets weren’t mentioned much at all after that.

Instead, Panay focused on the ways the new Surface Pro stacks up to laptops. At 0.35 inches (9.1mm) thick, Microsoft claims the Surface Pro 3 is the thinnest Intel Core i7 device ever made. Panay twice placed the new Surface Pro on a scale – and once dropped it to showcase its resilience. He was also quick to note how much thinner and lighter it is compared to the MacBook Air: 1.7 pounds, compared to 2.38 pounds for Apple’s 11-inch laptop.

So the point of all this is that the Surface Pro 3 is much lighter than a laptop, but more of a workhorse than an iPad. That’s not a departure from previous versions of Surface Pro. Nor is the fact that it runs Windows 8.1 Professional, giving it the ability to run full desktop apps. With this edition, however, the company has honed the hardware to make it even more laptop-like than before. Not exactly thick, but thicker than you’d expect a tablet to be. Still, it’s an incredibly light load in your bag.

Tablets and keyboards were handed out to the press to use during the Microsoft Surface unveiling. Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

The new Surface’s larger display splits the difference between that of a tablet and a laptop: At 12 inches diagonally, its tack-sharp 2160-by-1440 screen looks great. It also has a 3:2 aspect ratio instead of 16:9, which is a better shape for laptopping, but a bit awkward for tabletting. The extra real estate shines, however, when you’re using the Surface Pro 3 in desktop mode—as you would a laptop—giving multiple open windows much more room to breathe. New design and engineering touches also enhance the laptop-like experience. It has a back-mounted kickstand like its predecessors, but it’s a completely reengineered version of the hinge that allows for about 130 degrees of motion with the ability to lock sturdily at every point along the way. The Surface Pro 3 isn’t fanless, but it’s close to silent. Little vent holes are hidden around the edges of the device, and a paper-thin fan circulates air inside the Surface Pro to keep the CPU cool.

Most of these hardware tweaks have served to make the Surface more laptoppy, but one tablet-like element has been added: Its touch-sensitive Start button has been moved so it sits at the bottom of the device in portrait mode rather than landscape mode.

Although Apple has traditionally shunned the use of styli on its own touchscreen devices, Microsoft is embracing the idea with its own Bluetooth pen that ships with each configuration of the Surface 3, even the cheap ones. Using the pen, you can input handwritten text that can be converted (via OCR technology) to type. This works in productivity apps, as well as fun ones such as the New York Times Crossword. Adobe VP of Experience Design Michael Gough was also on-stage to show how the pen and multi-touch gestures have been programmed into an upcoming version of Photoshop optimized for Surface.

So even while playing up how laptop-like the Surface is in terms of performance, screen design, and built-in software features, it’s still missing the one thing that leads most people to purchase a laptop instead of a tablet: a keyboard.

A Surface tablet and different color keyboards on display during the Microsoft Surface unveiling. Photo: Andrew White/WIRED

Microsoft makes its own keyboard for Surface, the TypeCover, which magnetically attaches to the bottom edge. There’s a new TypeCover (an extra $130) which has a much larger trackpad and a second magnetic strip to prop the keys up at a more comfortable angle while it’s sitting on your lap. It works extremely well; a sure improvement. The keys react nicely, the trackpad works fine, and the positioning is more comfortable this time around, but it’s still not the same thing as a real keyboard. There’s also a desktop dock (sold separately for $200) which looks cool and lets you use the Surface Pro with full-on peripherals.

The Surface Pro 3 looks like an amazing computer, but it may ultimately be a superb foundation for the world’s best thin-and-light laptop. With a light-but-sturdy clamshell design and a solid metal keyboard, it would be one hell of a competitor to the MacBook Air. But all the comparisons to laptops Microsoft tossed out at the launch event just served to remind us that it wasn’t one. The fact that the Surface is still Wi-Fi only with no 4G option, and the silence surrounding the future of Windows RT — the version of Windows optimized for ARM processors in cheaper touchscreen devices — served as hints that Microsoft had all but given up on the tablet-as-tablet experience.

Perhaps 96 percent of Surface Pro 3 owners will also buy an iPad.