Can ISIS overcome the insurgency resource curse? - The Washington Post - 0 views
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IS is also gaining momentum in the struggle to control two natural resources that have defined the history of the Middle East – oil and water.
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If control of oil has driven economic development in the modern Middle East, control of water has been a fundamental component of civilization itself. For decades, both the Syrian and Iraqi governments focused on hydrology in their bids for socioeconomic development, building a bevy of dams, canals and other infrastructure to control floods, improve agricultural irrigation and generate electricity for their populations. Denying or diverting water, though, was also tantamount to war. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) Saddam Hussein fretted that Iran would destroy dikes and dams on the upper Tigris River in order to cause flooding in Baghdad. In the early 1990s Syria and Iraq nearly went to war with Turkey over plans to divert part of the Euphrates River, and in 1992 Iraq famously cut off the water to the marshes of southern Mesopotamia in order to destroy the terrain where Shiite insurgents were hiding out. Punishing drought conditions in rural Syria may even have caused social unrest that helped precipitate the beginning of the March 2011 uprising.
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In February 2013, IS took control of the Tabqa Hydroelectric Dam (Syria), once a showcase in Hafez al-Assad’s development plan and a major electricity source for Aleppo. Earlier this spring, IS opened up dikes around Fallujah to impede the Iraqi army as it tried to besiege the stronghold, causing flooding as far away as Najaf and Baghdad. With its recent advances, IS now controls the hydroelectric dam at Mosul, Iraq’s largest, and IS is poised to take the dam at Haditha, the country’s second largest. With the tables turned, the Iraqi government finds itself considering a preemptive opening of the Haditha floodgates to block IS’s path.
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What It's Like to Live in a Surveillance State - The New York Times - 0 views
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when it comes to indigenous Uighurs in the vast western region of Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) has updated its old totalitarian methods with cutting-edge technology
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The Qing Empire conquered Xinjiang in the 18th century. The territory then slipped from Beijing’s control, until the Communists reoccupied it with Soviet help in 1949. Today, several Central Asian peoples, including Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrghyz, make up about half of the region’s population; the remainder are Han and Hui, who arrived from eastern China starting in the mid-20th century
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the C.C.P. has since subjected the entire Uighur population of some 11 million to arbitrary arrest, draconian surveillance or systemic discrimination. Uighurs are culturally Muslim, and the government often cites the threat of foreign Islamist ideology to justify its security policies
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Members of new Pompeo task force have previously praised human-rights abusers | PBS New... - 0 views
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the formation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights on Monday, saying he hoped it would undertake the most extensive reexamination of what counts as an “unalienable right,” first laid out in a 1948 United Nations document known as “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
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the new chairperson of the 10-person commission has written in favor of practices that could undermine Pompeo’s stated goal of “ground[ing] our discussion of human rights in America’s founding principles.” Separately, two of the new commissioners are on record defending known human-rights abusers.
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In making the case for the commission, and the need for a wholesale revisiting of the concept of “human rights,” the State Department actually cited a white paper released by the Chinese Communist Party last year, in which it asserted that it had “blazed a trail of development in human rights that conforms to the national conditions.”
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Exclusive: Ex-NSA cyberspies reveal how they helped hack foes of UAE - 0 views
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Project Raven, a clandestine team that included more than a dozen former U.S. intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.
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in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cybersecurity firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance.
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former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists and political rivals
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NATO Viewed Favorably Across Member States | Pew Research Center - 0 views
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when asked if there are parts of neighboring countries that really belong to their country, relatively few surveyed agree. However, among NATO member states, majorities in Hungary, Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria agree that parts of other countries belong to them. In many European countries, those with a favorable view of right-wing populist parties are more likely to support this statement.
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In France, favorable views of NATO dropped from 71% in 2009 to 49% in 2019, a decrease of 22 percentage points. In Germany, favorable views of the organization declined by 16 points, and in Bulgaria favorable views are down by 12 points. In nonmember Russia, positive views have been nearly cut in half: In 2007, 30% had a favorable view of NATO. By 2019, just 16% expressed the same sentiment.
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Both Democratic and Republican views of NATO remained generally stable until 2017, when Democrats grew much more likely to support NATO than their counterparts, a difference that has not changed significantly since. In 2017, 74% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans had a favorable opinion of the alliance, a difference of 26 percentage points. Since 2018, U.S. views of NATO have declined among supporters of both parties. Positive views among Democrats fell 15 points, while views among Republicans dropped 7 points.
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Kerry first foreign policy speech - 2 views
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In his first major speech as secretary of state, John Kerry on Wednesday didn’t mention Syria even once or delve deeply into other urgent world crises. Instead, he focused on defending his department’s budget and encouraging international trade, especially with Asia
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While his remarks on campus were rooted in trade opportunities and American soft power – agricultural help for troubled South Sudan and increased educational opportunities for Afghan girls, for example – the destinations on his trip point to the national security priorities that are more likely to consume at least his early months in office. Beginning next week, Kerry is scheduled to discuss the U.S.-backed French intervention in Mali on a stop in Paris, hear the frustrations of Syrian opposition leaders in Italy, meet with Egyptian officials and civil society members in a volatile and sharply divided Cairo, and discuss the Syrian civil war and its worsening humanitarian crisis with Turkey and Arab Gulf allies.
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As dire budget cuts loom with sequestration – a projected $2.6 billion in cuts for the State Department, including $850 million from daily operations – Kerry defended his agency’s spending, stressing that the entire U.S. foreign policy budget is only slightly more than 1 percent of the national budget.“It sounds expensive, but, my friends, it’s not,” Kerry said. “The State Department’s conflict stabilization budget is around $60 million a year. That’s how much the movie ‘The Avengers’ took in on a single Sunday last May. The difference is, the folks we have on the ground are actual superheroes.”Kerry was particularly protective of foreign aid, which is often among the first items on the chopping block in tough times. The State Department projects roughly $1.7 billion in cuts to foreign aid under the mandatory budget cuts. Kerry lauded the fact that 11 of the top 15 U.S. trade partners were former recipients of U.S. assistance and said the money must continue to flow, as an investment, in order to grow a new crop of beneficiaries-turned-economic allies.
Obama's Syria Strategy Is the Definition of Insanity | Foreign Policy - 1 views
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The Russian government, much less the Assad regime, has never been a reliable partner for peace in Syria. But even after Russia’s alleged bombing of the aid convoy, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is still plowing its energies into a deal that aims to work with the Russian government.
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The Obama administration has viewed the Syrian crisis through the lens of counterterrorism. But diplomatic failures such as this one continue to embolden extremist actors like al Qaeda, which has purposely presented itself as a reliable and necessary opposition ally, seemingly dedicated only to the cause of ridding Syria of the Assad regime. By so deeply embedding within Syrian revolutionary dynamics and claiming to fill the vacuum left behind by insufficient foreign support or protection, al Qaeda’s narrative is constantly strengthened by perceptions of American inadequacy. Thus, U.S. failures do not exist in a vacuum — our adversaries quickly translate them into their own victories.
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the Russian government is not the key to controlling the Assad regime’s heinous behaviors. For a week straight, the Syrian government consistently ignored Moscow’s demands and destroyed a cease-fire deal that had been largely of Russia’s making. The regime also reinforced its troop positions around Aleppo and amassed forces opposite the strategic northern town of Jisr al-Shughour, and its aircraft were blamed for bombings around Aleppo, north of the city of Homs, and in parts of southern Daraa governorate. And after the Assad government declared the cease-fire over, Russia ferociously destroyed an aid convoy intended for 78,000 civilians
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Buzan on GWoT 2006 - 2 views
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Washington is now embarked on a campaign to persuade itself, the American people and the rest of the world that the ‘global war on terrorism’ (GWoT) will be a ‘long war’. This ‘long war’ is explicitly compared to the Cold War as a similar sort of zero-sum, global-scale, generational struggle against anti-liberal ideolo-gical extremists who want to rule the world.
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When the Cold War ended, Washington seemed to experience a threat defi cit, and there was a string of attempts to fi nd a replacement for the Soviet Union as the enemy focus for US foreign and military policy: fi rst Japan, then China, ‘clash of civilizations’ and rogue states
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the GWoT had the feel of a big idea that might provide a long-term cure for Washington’s threat defi ci
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Monsters of Our Own Imaginings | Foreign Policy - 0 views
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Terrorist attacks have occurred in Europe, America, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many other places, and no level of surveillance, police presence, border controls, drone strikes, targeted killings, or enhanced interrogation is going to prevent every one of them. Even if we could provide absolutely air-tight protection around one type of target, others targets would remain exposed
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the belief that we could eliminate the danger entirely is no more realistic than thinking better health care will grant you eternal life. For this reason, condemning politicians for failing to prevent every single attack is counterproductive — and possibly dangerous — because it encourages leaders to go overboard in the pursuit of perfect security and to waste time and money that could be better spent on other things. Even worse, the fear of being blamed for “not doing enough” will lead some leaders to take steps that make the problem worse — like bombing distant countries — merely to look and sound tough and resolute.
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there is no magic key to stopping terrorism because the motivations for it are so varied. Sometimes it stems from anger and opposition to foreign occupation or perceived foreign interference — as with the Tamil Tigers, Irish Republican Army, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, or Hamas. In other cases, it arises from opposition to a corrupt and despised ruling elite. Or it could be both: Osama bin Laden was equally angry at “crusader” nations for interfering in the Muslim world and at the Arab governments he believed were in cahoots with them. In the West, homegrown terrorists such as Anders Breivik or Timothy McVeigh are driven to mass murder by misguided anger at political systems they (falsely) believe are betraying their nation’s core values. Sometimes terrorism arises from perverted religious beliefs; at other times the motivating ideology is wholly secular. Because so many different grievances can lead individuals or groups to employ terrorist methods, there is no single policy response that could make the problem disappear forever.
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Oil Deposits Fuel Tension in Eastern Mediterranean - 0 views
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