December, 2018 - peacefare.net

Month: December 2018

Brexit is broken

Posted in Daniel Serwer - December 10, 2018 - 0 Comment

UK Prime Minister May today delayed a parliamentary vote to approve the allegedly temporary deal she negotiated with the European Union to allow Britain to begin to leave the Union without creating a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The contradictions should not be lost: she is trying to prevent a parliamentary vote from defeating her Brexit plan in order to ensure implementation of the referendum result without all the consequences that Brexit referendum necessarily entails.

The simple fact is that Brexit is a bad idea. It will make the UK poorer than it would otherwise be, cost billions of pounds to replace European services of many different sorts, cause international companies to relocate, and diminish the UK’s clout world wide. Popular sentiment has turned against withdrawal from the EU as the costs have become clearer. The Russian role in promoting the #leave campaign has also become clearer. President Putin set out to weaken Europe, America’s strongest ally, and has come close to succeeding.

Meanwhile Brussels has sent a gesture of friendship: a court decision that gives the UK leeway to suspend the process and return to the status quo ante. President Trump, as is his wont, sent the opposite signal: that the US would negotiate a quick free trade agreement with the UK once Brexit was finalized. There are no quick free trade agreements, and it is unclear how the UK could get as good a deal with the US as the EU, which has far more leverage due to its market of 500 million people, almost 10 times the population of the UK. Nothing about the Trump Administration trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico as well as China would make anyone think Britain could get a good deal quickly.

At this point, May’s options are grim. She can try to get some concessions from the EU that will convince Brexit supporters that her “back stop” will not be permanent and then put the deal to a vote in parliament that she could still lose. Or she can opt for a new referendum on the deal she has negotiated, the options being a “no deal” Brexit, which has predictably catastrophic consequences, her still unappealing “back stop” with whatever concessions she can squeeze from the EU, and no Brexit at all.

I would prefer that “no Brexit” win in a referendum, though admittedly defeat of May in a parliamentary vote would point in the same direction. Either result would help to push back Putin’s efforts to divide the Western alliance, re-invigorate Europe, and undermine those who look to overwrought nationalism as a serious alternative to liberal democracy. President Trump is already on the ropes fighting an investigation that gets closer every day to demonstrating his criminal behavior. Brexit broken is a fitting accompaniment to Trump’s well-deserved nose dive.

For more on the “back stop”:

Tags : Brexit, European Union, United Kingdom

Peace Picks December 10 – 16

Posted in Rory Coleman - December 10, 2018 - 0 Comment

Reflections on the Middle East in 2018 | Tuesday, December 11 | 12 pm – 1:30 pm | Middle East Institute and Arab American Institute | 1319 18th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here

The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Arab American Institute (AAI) are pleased to host James Zogby (Co-founder and President, AAI and Director, Zogby Research Services) to reflect on his latest poll of perspectives from across the Middle East and North Africa. The report includes the opinions of 8,628 adults from eight Arab countries as well as Turkey and Iran on the current landscape of employment opportunities, confidence in governmental institutions, and the future of Palestine. The poll also assessed regional attitudes towards the U.S.’s role in the region, the Iran Nuclear Deal, the region’s refugee crisis, and the fight against extremism.

Joining James Zogby to discuss these findings are Nadia Bilbassy(DC Bureau Chief, Al Arabiya News), Steven Cook (Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies, Council on Foreign Relations), and Alex Vatanka (Senior Fellow, MEI).

The poll and resulting report were organized by the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The findings are available for use by the public on the website of Zogby Research Services.

The North Korean nuclear crisis and the US–Republic of Korea (ROK) military alliance dominate international coverage of the Korean Peninsula, but what about South Korea itself? South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s administration has reportedly clamped down on media outlets, restricted freedom of speech, and encouraged partisanship in the judiciary and civil service.

Is the ROK government on a path to limit freedoms in the South? Or is this all just politics as usual in a democracy with different rules from our own? Please join AEI for a discussion on the domestic politics of South Korea and their implications for the ROK, the US, and North Korea.

Agenda

2:45 PM
Registration

3:00 PM
Panel: Toward illiberal democracy? South Korea under the Moon administration

Panelists:
Jean Lee, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Tara O, Pacific Forum; Institute for Corean-America Studies
Joshua Stanton, One Free Korea

Moderator:
Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI

4:10 PM
Conversation: The open society and its enemies in Korea: Reckoning with the ironies of history

Participants:
Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI
Sung-Yoon Lee, Tufts University

5:00 PM
Adjournment

The world’s most violent conflicts are being fought within its most youthful populations. In the five countries that suffered nearly 80 percent of recent deaths from violent extremism, half of all people were younger than 22. The youth in these countries are also some of their communities’ most effective peacebuilders and best hopes for breaking cycles of violence. What does it take for these young leaders to overcome crisis, conflict, and displacement? Please join the U.S. Institute of Peace on December 12 for a streamed forum with thought leader and youth leader participants from USIP’s Youth Leaders’ Exchange with His Holiness the Dalai Lama as they share their expertise, discuss what it takes to build inner resilience and, crucially, examine how to strategically apply it to peacebuilding.

In the third year of the Exchange, USIP’s Generation Change program brought 27 youth leaders from 12 countries to Dharamsala, India, where they enhanced their peacebuilding skills through trainings in conflict management, leadership, and prejudice awareness and reduction. They engaged His Holiness the Dalai Lama on issues ranging from cultivating inner peace, building bridges across social divides, human rights and the refugee crisis, and youth leadership. By the end of the program, the participants had learned from and inspired each other, and returned home ready to redouble their efforts to reduce violence in their communities.

Speakers

Wadi Ben-Hirki
Founder, Wadi Ben-Hriki Foundation (Nigeria)

Jimmie Briggs
Executive Director, Leave Out Violence-U.S., (U.S.)

Meron Kocho
Member of Council, MESPO-Iraq (Iraq)

Maya Soetoro-Ng
Advisor, Obama Foundation (U.S.)

Gregg Zoroya
Editorial Writer, USA Today (U.S)

The West is searching for a response to Russia’s ongoing malfeasance, including its recent attack on Ukraine in the Black Sea and its just-revealed effort to “muck around” in U.S. 2018 midterm elections. These are the latest in a long sequence of transgressions on the part of the Kremlin, ranging from the invasion of Georgia, to the violation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, to interference in the democratic processes of NATO member states, perhaps most dramatically seen in Putin’s assault on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As a result, on both sides of the Atlantic, democratic values and institutions—and the trans-Atlantic alliance predicated upon them—are at risk.

On Dec. 12, Governance Studies and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings will jointly co-host an event with the bipartisan Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG), featuring an expert panel that will discuss the threats emanating from Russia and elsewhere to security, democracy, and the trans-Atlantic alliance—and what the alliance can and should do about it.

Panel Speakers

Mary Louise Kelly, Host, All Things Considered – NPR

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Senior Fellow and Director, Transatlantic Security Program – Center for a New American Security

Bill Kristol, Editor at Large – The Weekly Standard

Alina Polyakova, David M Rubenstein Fellow – Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, Distinguished Fellow – The Atlantic Council

Organizing Democracy, a new book by Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen, argues that new democracies are more likely to flourish when they receive support from international organizations to help them provide public goods to their populations. This event will present the findings of Organizing Democracy, analyze the relationships between new democracies and international organizations in the cases of Ukraine and Libya, and explore policy implications for democracy promotion by the U.S. government.

FEATURING:

PAUL POAST, Co-Author, Organizing Democracy, and Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Chicago

STEPHEN LENNON, Director, Office of Transition Initiatives, USAID

STEVEN GRINER, Director, Department of Sustainable Democracy and Special Missions, Organization of American States

AMANDA KADLEC, Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation

ADITI GORUR, Director, Protecting Civilians in Conflict Program, Stimson Center (Moderator)

The Trump Administration has implemented a wholesale shift in US policy in Jerusalem. From the moving of the US embassy and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to de-funding Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, to the decision to close down the US Consulate General, to removing the brakes on East Jerusalem settlement activity, the policies playing out today in Jerusalem have profound implications locally, regionally, and in the geopolitically. Please join FMEP and the Carnegie Endowment for a discussion with Jerusalem expert Danny Seidemann examining these and related issues.

Speakers:

Daniel Seidemann is a practicing attorney in Jerusalem who specializes in legal and public issues in East Jerusalem. He has participated in numerous Track II talks on Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians and served in an informal advisory capacity to the final status negotiations as a member of a committee of experts commissioned by Prime Minister Barak’s office to generate sustainable arrangements in Jerusalem. He is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an Israeli nonprofit that that works to identify and track developments in Jerusalem that could impact the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city, spark violence, or create humanitarian crises.

Michele Dunne is the director and a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on political and economic change in Arab countries, particularly Egypt, as well as U.S. policy in the Middle East. She was the founding director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council from 2011 to 2013 and was a senior associate and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2006 to 2011. Dunne was a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Department of State from 1986 to 2003, where she served in assignments that included the National Security Council, the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, the U.S. embassy in Cairo, the U.S. consulate general in Jerusalem, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She also served as a visiting professor of Arabic language and Arab studies at Georgetown from 2003 to 2006.

Zaha Hassan is a Middle East Fellow at New America. She is a human rights lawyer and former coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership (2010-2012). She is a member of Al Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and is a contributor to the Hill and Ha’aretz. Her political commentary and analysis has been published by the New York Times, CNN, Salon, the Oregonian, the Detroit News, and other outlets. She is the former cohost of the Portland, Ore.-based radio show, One Land Many Voices, on KBOO 90.7 FM.

Donald Trump’s announcement of intent to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty constitutes another severe blow to a treaty-based system of nuclear arms and threat reduction. One last treaty governing formal, verifiable draw-downs of nuclear forces remains — the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Mr. Trump has vacillated wildly in his comments on the future of U.S. strategic forces, ranging from an expressed interest in deep cuts to significant arms build-ups. For now, he has declined Vladimir Putin’s offer of extending New START. Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, might be expected to seek withdrawal from New START, and he might well succeed, rather than to leave the decision of its extension and further reductions to the winner of the next presidential election.

Please join us for a discussion of our nuclear future with Nina Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Program at Brown University, Jon Wolfsthal, Director of the Nuclear Crisis Group and Senior Advisor to Global Zero, and Lynn Rusten, Vice President of the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Our speakers will address the following questions: What role will norms play in our nuclear future? What role will treaties play, with specific reference to New START? Will we be entering a future of “arms control without agreements”? If so, what might this look like? Stimson’s Co-founder, Michael Krepon, will moderate our discussion.

8. Targeted Sanctions on Human Rights Abusers and Kleptocracies: Lessons Learned and Opportunities from the Global Magnitsky Santions | Thursday, December 13 | 9 am – 10:30 am | Center for Strategic and International Studies | 1616 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here

Please join the Human Rights Initiative for reflections from U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), the author of the Global Magnitsky Act. He will be followed by a panel examining the impact of the Global Magnitsky sanctions, opportunities to improve implementation, and how the sanctions fit within financial sector approaches to human rights and corruption. These sanctions enable targeted designations based on human rights abuse and corruption around the world, and have been imposed on officials and companies in a number of recent high profile situations, including Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nicaragua.

Keynote Speaker
U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)

Panel
Robert Berschinski
Senior Vice President Policy at Human Rights First

Robert Peri
Director of US Sanctions at Citibank

Joshua White
Director of Policy and Analysis at The Sentry

Americans are increasingly skeptical that the U.S. role abroad benefits them economically at home. What will it take to bridge the divide between America’s foreign policy and domestic imperatives? Join Susan Glasser for a conversation with two former White House chiefs of staff on how to make U.S. foreign policy work better for America’s middle class.

This event will launch a new report, U.S. Foreign Policy for the Middle Class: Perspectives from Ohio — the first in a series of state-level case studies from Carnegie’s bipartisan task force on foreign policy for the middle class

William J. Burns is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously served as U.S. deputy secretary of state.

Joshua Bolten served as White House chief of staff under president George W. Bush, and is currently president and CEO of the Business Roundtable.

Denis McDonough is served as White House chief of staff for president Barack Obama’s second term, and is currently a visiting senior fellow in Carnegie’s Technology and Internatinal Affairs Program.

Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Trump’s Washington. She was a founding editor of Politicoand editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine.

Tags : Democracy and Rule of Law, Iran, Israel/Palestine, NATO, Nuclear weapons, Russia, South Korea, The Middle East, Turkey

Evenhanded would be wrongheaded

Posted in Daniel Serwer - December 6, 2018 - 2 Comments

Yesterday, I said Kosovo’s 100% tariff imposed on Serbian imports was a violation of its international obligations under the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA).

Today, my email brought me this from the Kosovo Government. I still think these issues should be mainly resolved within the CEFTA framework, but certainly the government paper casts doubt on the bona fides of Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina (where policy is essentially dictated by Republika Srpska). I’m sure there are trade complaints as well in the other direction. They all need to be resolved, as much as possible within CEFTA.

The Kosovo Customs Agency is ensuring that it is exempting humanitarian goods from the tariffs.

Some of my Serb friends are suggesting that the only reason for a Kosovo army is to chase Serbs imminently from the country. That’s silly. NATO is there and will remain for some years still, until Kosovo can defend itself at least for a few days from whatever threat Serbia presents. The less the threat, the smaller the army. No army is needed to chase people from their homes, as the tragic rioting of March 2004 demonstrated.

It is far more likely that the Serb Army would seize northern Kosovo, on grounds that its population is threatened, a notion Belgrade has been pumping up relentlessly for weeks if not months. NATO might even fall for such a ploy, given its weak-kneed and gullible reaction to the Serbian Prime Minister’s threat of the use of force if Kosovo votes to create an army.

There is right and wrong here. Serbia is wrong to harass Kosovo’s exports, to prevent it from joining international organizations, to seek to block it from creating an army, and to threaten the use of force. Evenhanded at the moment would be wrongheaded.

Tags : Balkans, NATO

The right medicine

Posted in Daniel Serwer - December 5, 2018 - 3 Comments

Serbia is threatening to intervene in Kosovo if its parliament votes to create an army. NATO is backing Belgrade.

This is ridiculous. The Alliance should be telling Belgrade to stuff it. NATO-led forces in Kosovo should be put on alert to underline the point.

Kosovo has been without an army since the 1999 NATO intervention that saved it from Serbian President Milosevic’s efforts to reduce its Albanian population by force and its 2008 declaration of independence. NATO has provided the country’s territorial defense, though it governs itself and has been recognized as sovereign by about 110 countries.

Pristina now wants to convert its security forces, which are only lightly armed, into an army. The US, UK and NATO have been thoroughly consulted. The process will take 10 years or more. If NATO forces are ever to be removed from Kosovo and sent on to higher priority missions, the country will have to have the means to defend itself at least for a few days. NATO should be supporting those who want to lighten its burdens, not those who threaten aggression.

Belgrade’s agenda has nothing to do with any threat from a Kosovo army, which is non-existent, now and in the future. What Serbia is trying to do is deprive Pristina of one of the vital elements of sovereignty. It is also trying to find an excuse to intervene and occupy the Serb-majority portion of Kosovo’s north, where organized crime figures aligned with Belgrade’s ruling authorities reign supreme.

NATO backing for these objectives is a serious mistake. So too is Europe’s refusal to give Kosovo a visa waiver program, despite its assiduous and successful efforts to meet the criteria that the European Commission set. Citing domestic political pressures, France and others are saying Kosovo will need to wait until at least 2020. While the EU has consistently lowered the bar for Serbia’s progress on its EU agenda, Brussels seems determined to raise the bar for Kosovo.

Kosovo makes its mistakes too. The 100% tariffs it recently imposed on Serbian imports is a violation of its international obligations under the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), so far as I can tell. But that mistake will be corrected through the normal CEFTA process. The NATO and EU mistakes are far harder to correct and will leave serious scars on their relationship with an admittedly small country with no near-term prospects of accession.

But that is precisely the reason the EU and NATO should rethink what they are doing. Kosovo as much as Serbia needs Euro-Atlantic prospects if the two countries are to escape the negative spiral they are currently locked in. A visa waiver program for Kosovo, a strong NATO warning to Serbia, initiation under NATO guidance of the evolution of its security forces into an army designed mainly for international deployments, and an end to prohibitive tariffs on Serbian goods are the medicine that can cure the current fever.

Tags : Balkans, European Union, United States

Peace Picks: December 3 – 9

Posted in Tal Marom - December 3, 2018 - 0 Comment

An acute crisis has been unfolding in the Gaza Strip for over a decade. Its nearly 2 million residents live amid a man-made humanitarian disaster, with severe urban crowding, staggering unemployment, and a dire scarcity of basic services, including electricity, water, and sewage treatment. Three rounds of open warfare have devastated Gaza while placing Israelis under constant threat. Recent weeks have seen a sharp escalation in fighting, again illustrating the precarious balance of this situation. Moreover, the continued political and physical separation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank hinders Palestinian national development while making a two-state solution even more remote.

On December 3, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings and the Center for a New American Security will launch their new report, “Ending Gaza’s Perpetual Crisis: A New U.S. Approach.” The authors, informed by the deliberations of a high-level task force on the future of U.S. policy toward Gaza, argue that the United States should no longer accept the perpetuation of the current state of affairs in Gaza, given its moral, security, and political costs. They propose instead a route by which American policymakers can help bring an end to this continued state of crisis.

Speakers
Hady Amr
Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy

Natan Sachs
Director, Center for Middle East Policy

Ilan Goldberg
Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Security Program at Center for a New American Security

Khaled Elgindy
Fellow, Foreign Policy & Center for Middle East Policy

Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen
Director, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Program at US Institute of Peace

Dennis Ross
William Davidson Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

After the Ukraine crisis, Belarus has improved its image as a contributor to regional security. Part of this shift stems from greater cooperation with the West. This, along with Minsk’s selective non-compliance with Eurasian integration, however, brings closer scrutiny and potential pressure from Moscow. This panel will host a delegation of Belarusian analysts, organized by Pact and USAID, to offer a fresh examination of Belarus’s relationship with the West and with Moscow

Speakers
Vasili Kukharchyk
Country Director, Pact Belarus
Chief of Party, USAID BRAMA Activity

Kateryna Bornukova
Academic Director, Belarus Economic Research and Outreach Center

Yauheni Preiherman
Director, Minks Dialogue

How is the threat of terrorism defined in the East Asia Pacific? Who are the actors and what are their objectives? What are the technologies of terrorism and appropriate policy measures to combat the evolving threat? Moreover, how do individual states and the international community ensure that counterterrorism policies protect individual rights under the rule of law?

On December 4, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings will host distinguished U.S. and Asian counterterrorism experts to articulate the terrorist threat in East Asia and how it has evolved in the region. Panelists will also assess the mechanisms for protecting civil liberties and good governance under a counterterrorism strategy, as well as its implications for regional and international cooperation. This conference is part of the Asia Transnational Threats Forum, an interdisciplinary forum launched by the Brookings Korea Chair that harnesses the collective expertise of U.S. and foreign partners to tackle key strategic issues affecting all of Asia. The first event was on cybersecurity in Asia on June 2018.

Speakers
Jung H. Pak
SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy & Center for East Asia Policy Studies

Yeong Gi Mun
Director, National Counterterrorism Center of the Republic of Korea

Audrey Kurth Cronin
Professor of International Security, American University

Mayuko Hori
Chief Officer, Counterterrorism Cooperation Unit of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan

Samm Sacks
Cybersecurity Fellow and China Digital Economy Fellow, New America

Joshua Geltzer
Visiting Professor of Law, Georgetown University

Zachary Abuza
Professor of National Security Strategy, National War College

James Baker
Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies

Ji-Hyang Jang
Senior Fellow, Asian Institute for Policy Studies

Jeffrey Feltman
Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy

The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) are pleased to announce the 9^th Annual Conference on Turkey. The conference will bring together international policy makers and experts to discuss the challenges Turkey faces domestically and its relations with the Middle East and the West.

Speakers
Knut Dethlefsen
Representative to the US and Canada, FES

Gonul Tol
Director, Center for Turkish Studies at Middle East Institute

Mustafa Akyol
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the CATO Institute

Abdullah Akyuz
Former President, Turkish Industry and Business Association

Sinan Ciddi
Executive Director, Institute for Turkish Studies at Georgetown University

Menderes Cinar
Professor of Political Science, Baskent University

Max Hofman
Associate Director, National Security and International Policy at Center for American Progress

The Honorable Serpil Midyatli
Member, State Parliament of Germany

Berkin Safak Sener
International Consultant on Employment, UN Development Programme

Semuhi Sinanoglu
PhD Student at Department of Political Science, University of Toronto

Amb. (ret.) Gerald Feierstein
Senior Vice President, Middle East Institute

… and others.

Over the past two years, the Atlantic Council’s Rebuilding Syria Initiative has worked to inform and advance transatlantic policy to foster a transition toward legitimate public order in Syria through economic reconstruction and stabilization. In this effort, we have pooled expertise from specialists to cover the many challenges of rebuilding Syria, including in political economy, development, infrastructure, civil society, law, and employment.

Lessons learned from these engagements are captured in the Initiative’s final report, “Rethinking Stabilization in Eastern Syria: Toward a Human Security Framework,” authored by Dr. Steven Heydemann.

The report finds that as the focus of the Syrian conflict narrows to the two remaining contested areas of the country, the presence of US forces on the ground gives the United States some leverage in shaping the closing trajectory of the conflict. In eastern Syria, the United States has an opportunity to use stabilization—a political endeavor to create conditions where locally legitimate authorities and systems can peaceably manage conflict—to advance both short- and long-term interests.

Speakers
Dr. Steven Heydemann
Professor in Middle East Studies, Smith College

Dr. Tamara Cofman Wittes
Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution

Faysal Itani
Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council

Hudson Institute will host a timely discussion on the increasing risk that rapidly emerging advanced technologies pose to U.S national security. To explore these critical issues, Rep. Mike McCaul, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, will deliver keynote remarks then engage in a moderated Q&A with Senior Fellow Arthur Herman, director of Hudson’s Quantum Alliance Initiative.

Competitor nations, such as Russia and China, have devoted significant resources in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science, particularly quantum computing. A recent report from the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States warned that “U.S. superiority in key areas of innovation is decreasing or has disappeared [while] U.S. competitors are investing heavily in innovation.” Given their enormous promise for benefiting human kind, how should Washington respond to ensure U.S. military superiority while also promoting the peaceful use of AI and quantum technology?

A panel discussion will follow Rep. McCaul’s remarks with Dr. Herman, Aaron VanDevender from Founders Fund, Elsa Kania from the Center for New American Security, Andrew Kim from Google, and Hudson Senior Fellow Sorin Ducaru, a former senior NATO official for emerging security challenges.

Speakers
The Honorable Mike McCaul (R-TX)
Chair, Homeland Security Committee, House of Representatives

Aaron Van Devender
Chief Scientist, Founders Fund

Elsa Kania
Adjunct Fellow, Technology and National Security Program, Center for New American Strategy

Sorin Ducaru
Former Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, NATO
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

Arthur Herman
Senior Fellow and Director, Quantum Alliance Initiative, Hudson Institute

Andrew Kim
Senior Analyst, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google

Please join CSIS and the United States Naval Institute (USNI) for a Maritime Security Dialogue event featuring a conversation with the Honorable Richard V. Spencer, 76th Secretary of the Navy. He will be discussing the state of the Navy and Marine Corps and innovation in the naval domain.

Speakers
The Honorable Richard V. Spencer
76th Secretary of the Navy

Vice Admiral Peter Daly, USN (ret.)
Chief Executive Officer, US Naval Institute

John J. Hamre
CSIS President and CEO

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is pleased to host a moderated conversation on Syria with Salman Shaikh, the founder and CEO of The Shaikh Group, and Ambassador Frederic C. Hof. Syria’s political process is at a standstill, with a constitutional commission still not formed and UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, soon to depart his role. With the conflict continuing to evolve and international attention shifting, new thinking is needed to tackle the Middle East’s most thorny issue: how to resolve the crisis in Syria.

Shaikh will discuss his lessons learned from many years of intensive Track II efforts on Syria and how they might be applied to designing more effective, alternative pathways forward; and Hof will expand on the implications and sustainability of the newly announced U.S. strategy in Syria and prospects for progress on the political track.

MEI’s senior fellow and director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism program Charles Lister will moderate the conversation.

Speakers
Amb. Frederic C. Hof
Professor and Diplomatic in Residence, Bard College
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council

Salman Shaikh
Founder and CEO, The Shaikh Group

Charles Lister
Senior Fellow and Director, Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program, Middle East Institute

Tags : artificial intelligence, Asia, Counterterrorism, eastern europe, gaza, Israel, maritime, Palestine, Security, South Korea, Syria, The Middle East, Turkey

Iraqi trends

Posted in Tal Marom - December 1, 2018 - 0 Comment

The Washington Institute on Near East Policy hosted a panel on emerging political trends in Iraq’s post-election period on November 27th. The panel featured Munqith Dagher, CEO of Baghdad-based Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS), Ahmed Ali, program officer at the National Endowment for Democracy, and David Pollock, Berinstein Fellow at the Washington Institute and director of its Fikra Forum.

While many Americans are tired of Iraq, Pollock reminded that it is still of strategic importance to American interests, which include preventing the country from incubating terrorism and tipping the region in a hostile, pro-Iran direction. It is also a potential demographic, economic, and religious powerhouse in the region. Iraqi oil exports are half those of the Saudis. Because of the 2003 invasion, the success of Iraq reflects on America’s political clout in the region, with many people seeing Iraq as a US responsibility.

Pollock pointed out the importance of public opinion polling in Iraq, a powerful but underutilized tool. The rise of the Islamic State in 2014 and the divisions arising from Kurdistan’s 2017 independence referendum were in line with Dagher’s polling at the time. To avoid being taken by surprise in the post-election space, public opinion-informed policy is crucial.

Dagher stated that we are at a crossroads in Iraqi attitudes, with three transformative shifts in public opinion.

1. A shift in inter-sectarian dynamics

For the first time since 2003, Sunnis are overall happier than Shi’a and Kurds. More specifically, they have more trust in the central Iraqi government than their Shi’a counterparts, an increase from 20% in 2016 to 50% today. Sunni Arabs have been reluctant to participate in the political process since Saddam’s ousting, and Dagher emphasized that this moment should be capitalized on to get them involved in the political process.

2. From inter to intra-sectarian conflicts

Iraq has a long history of sectarian politics. We are finally seeing a shift towards interest-based politics. Sectarian identity as the most important source of identity has dropped to below 10% for all three groups. It was as high as 61% in 2013 among Kurds. Iraqi citizenship as the most important source of identity has increased significantly among Shi’a. While it is still very low for Kurds at 6%, there are so signs of further decrease. Across various polling questions, namely if Iraq is heading in the wrong direction, geography is playing a more important role than ever. For example, Sunni Arabs in Mosul are significantly more likely to believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction (69%) than Sunni Arabs in general (55%), as are the Shi’a Arabs of Basra than Shi’a at large.

3. Less international polarization

The ability of regional actors to take advantage of Iraq’s traditional sectarian divisions has also diminished. Iran’s popularity, when asked if it is a reliable partner, has dropped from 75% to 44% among Shi’a Arabs in the last two years alone. The most significant drop was between 2017 (70%) and today (44%), which Dagher attributed to the protests in Basra as well as the visible interference of both the US and Iran in the recent election. Access to information has increased as a result of growing internet use among Iraqis. It jas increased from 40% in 2014 to 80% today. Ninety per cent of Iraqi youth have at least one social media account. Among Sunni Arabs, favorable views of Saudi Arabia have decreased from 90% in 2012 to 61% today.

These trends are overshadowed by more alarming shifts under the surface. The population thinks the country is heading in the wrong direction more than ever, with 80% of respondents agreeing compared to 50% in April 2012. The most recent election has been marred by the fact that less than 1 in 5 respondents thought it free and fair. Dagher warned that lack of trust in the democratic political system might explain why 66% prefer a “strong leader who doesn’t care about Parliament nor elections,” accompanied by dramatic decreases in voter turnout. Ali attributed this legitimacy crisis to the gulf between politicians’ and the public’s views. He cited the Basra anti-corruption protests, which were predictable, and the lack of serious response from the Iraqi government.

For Ali, the big area for policy makers is post-ISIS reconstruction. Addressing grievances in post-ISIS regions and reunifying the country requires institutional governance reforms. Most importantly, the electoral process needs to be transparent and accountable to improve public trust, as demonstrated by post-election fraud allegations. The new Iraqi government has its work cut out for it.

Tags : Arabs, Democracy and Rule of Law, Iraq, ISIS, Kurds, The Middle East, United States

peacefare.net

Month: December 2018

Brexit is broken

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