The Hungarian Prime Minister of Hungary has used inflammatory rhetoric against what he considers to be a Muslim invasion of Christian Europe to justify his treatment of the refugees from Syria. That rhetoric is not new to that region of Europe. In 1389 Serbian forces faced an invasion of the Ottoman Empire on the “field of blackbirds” (kosovo polje). In 1989, on the 600th anniversary of the battle, Slobodan Milosevic, who ultimately became the leader of Serbia and waged a brutal genocidal war against the primarily Muslim Bosnians, referred to that battle in these terms:
“Six centuries ago, Serbia defended itself in the field of Kosovo, but it also defended Europe. Serbia was at that time the bastion that defended the European culture, religion and European society in general.”
The fear of Muslim “invasions” in southeast Europe is long-standing and apparently impossible to erase.
Hundreds of refugees stranded at the Hungary-Serbian border stormed past the border control and entered Hungary. They complained of inadequate facilities at the border and feared being stranded there without any support. Germany stepped up its promises to aid the refugees, as did the French. The British promised to admit 5,000 refugees over the next five years. These promises are important steps but remain inadequate to the problem. The US still refuses to make substantial commitments.
Uzbekistan has banned the teaching of Political Science in the country. Islam Karimov has been President of the country since its independence after the break-up of the Soviet Unionand one can safely classify the regime as authoritarian. The ban is based upon Karimov’s belief that Political Science does not take into account the “Uzbek model” and is a pseudo-science. According to The Guardian: “The last remaining course in the subject widely taught in the country, which will now be called The Theory and Practice of Building a Democratic Society in Uzbekistan.” I always knew I was dangerous.
Austria has announced that it intends to lift the emergency measures which allowed the free flow of refugees across its borders. The emergency steps of lifting any checks on the people crossing the border was in response to the flood of refugees who had been bottled up in Hungary. Austria, after consultation with both Germany and Hungary, has decided to reinstate the controls indicating that it wished to resume to a more “normal” situation. Border checks are a long-standing feature of the nation-state system so the move is not a surprise. But such checks are time-consuming and subject to capricious implementation–both attributes somewhat inappropriate in the present desperate circumstance.
UN humanitarian programs such as the High Commissioner on Refugees are rapidly running out of money. These agencies had a 10% cut in their budgets last year, and the needs for their services has simply exploded this year with the crisis in Syria. We tend to focus on the flow of refugees into Europe, but other countries, such as Turkey, are bearing a much heavier burden. The World Health Organization was severely taxed because of the Ebola crisis in West Africa, and the World Food Programme has had very high demands this year as well. It seems clear that the global institutions entrusted with humanitarian protections are not up to the tasks they currently confront.
There is increasing evidence that Russia is building a military base in Syria in order to prop up the regime of President Assad. Russia already has a naval base in Tartus and there is satellite evidence that the Russians are building an air base at Latakia from which the Russians can fly missions against the Islamic State (the same objective as current US policy). Nonetheless, US Secretary of State Kerry has expressed concern to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov about the build-up. Obviously, the US does not believe in the balance of power proposition: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
US President Obama met with Saudi King Salman in Washington and discussed the Iranian nuclear agreement. Saudi Arabia has expressed great anxiety about the prospect of Iran developing nuclear weapons, but King Salman left Washington apparently satisfied with Obama’s assurances that the agreement will prevent that outcome. The US-Saudi alliance has been under great strain in recent years, but it seems clear that both sides believe that they need each other in the Middle East. The successful outcome of the meeting gives additional impetus to the Iranian agreement which the US Congress will debate on 17 September.
Vietnam and the Philippines are close to agreement on a strategic partnership. Such an alliance would be truly historic and reflects the apprehension on both sides about increased Chinese power in the South China Sea. The Philippines already has a relationship with both Japan and the United States. It is likely that China will find the proposed relationship offensive, a classic problem of the security dilemma.
Enough Senators have come out in favor of the Iranian nuclear deal to assure that the US Congress will not be able to scuttle the deal. The news assures US President Obama of a significant political and diplomatic victory, and also assures that the US will be able to keep its promises to its allies: Britain, France, and Germany. It also suggests a new and still undefined relationship to Israel. US support for Israel was never really in question; the only question was whether the deal improved or degraded Israel’s security. But the evidence suggests that the defining moment in the minds of many Senators was House Majority Leader Boehner’s decision to invite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress without first consulting with President Obama. The move implicitly raised the question of whether a vote against the deal was a vote for American or Israeli national interest.
In what can only be described as a macabre situation, Czech police are reportedly taking refugees off trains bound for Germany and writing numbers on their arms in ink. The parallel to the treatment of Jews in the 1930s is striking, but appears to have been not fully appreciated by Czech authorities. No one disputes that the handling of such a large number of desperate people must be orderly, but European authorities seem unwilling to devise plans to treat the refugees in a more effective and humane manner. The treatment of refugees is outlined in the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees adopted on 28 July 1951 by the UN and signed by all the European states.
Those refugees who had been stranded in the train station in Hungary have set off on foot to walk to Vienna. The desperation of the refugees is matched only by their determination. Fortunately, it appears as if Hungary is backing down from its refusal to allow the refugees to pass through. We should remember that Steve Jobs was the child of a Syrian migrant to the US who came in 1954.
The number of displaced persons in the world is the largest since World War II. Many of these refugees are from war torn areas, particularly Syria. Ishaan Tharoor of The Washington Post examines the rhetoric in Europe about the refugees and how closely it parallels anti-Jewish rhetoric in the 1930s, although in the present case the rhetoric is anti-Islamic. The reactions in Europe to the refugees has been mixed. By and large, the cities, particularly in Germany, have been welcoming to the refugees. But in the smaller towns, the attitudes have been quite harsh. One thing is clear: the refugees are not entering Europe in search of a “better” life; they are entering Europe to simply stay alive. The question few in the mainstream media have been asking, however, is where is the US in this tragedy? Why hasn’t it stepped up to take in the refugees?
A Turkish Border Guard Carries the Body of a Dead Syrian Child
Hungary is refusing to allow the refugees to leave the country on trains, insisting that the refugees must first go to camps. The decision reflects the attitude of Prime Minister Orban who considers the refugees as a threat to Europe’s “Christian identity”. In an op-ed written for the German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Orban wrote:
“We shouldn’t forget that the people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture. Most are not Christian, but Muslim…. That is an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots.”
The refugees are stranded in the Keleti rail terminus in Budapest and they have no place to go and are surrounded by Hungarian police.
One should not underestimate the difficulties associated with accepting refugees. But there are about 300,000 refugees seeking entry into Europe, a continent with about 490 million people. The countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq have taken in the vast number of the estimate 4 million Syrian refugees, and those countries are significantly less well off than those in Europe or in the US. The country of Lebanon, for example, has taken in a total number of refugees that equal about a third of the Lebanese population: an unbelievable hardship.
One of the negative consequences of globalization is its bias towards capital and the consequent growing inequality which virtually every country in the world has experienced over the last 40 years. Indeed, in the US income inequality is as skewed toward the rich as it was in the late 1920s, just before the onset of the Great Depression. Many think that income inequality is merely an economic issue, but the growing dissatisfaction of those at the bottom of the income spectrum poses as national security risk as well.
One of the interesting aspects of income inequality is how the bias toward capital influences our policy choices. The management teams of the 30 largest fossil fuel companies have taken home $6 billion over the past five years. These companies have carbon-based reserves that, if burned, would emit approximately 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide, “five times the amount of carbon that researchers tell us would push the globe into catastrophic climate change, everything from extreme flooding and drought to a significant rise in sea level. ” In short, we are heavily rewarding those who would doom civilization. Strange choice.
The Times of India is reporting that recently declassified documents from the American CIA indicate that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi considered attacking presumed nuclear facilities in Pakistan in 1981. India exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1974 and Gandhi wished to preserve Indian nuclear superiority. At that time, India and Pakistan had fought three wars since securing independence in 1947. Pakistan ultimately exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1998. Relations between the two states remain, however, quite strained.
An update to a previous post. I earlier noted that William Bradford, a professor at West Point, had published a paper entitled “The Treason of the Professors” in which he claimed that there were about 40 professors in the US who should be tried as “enemy combatants” because of their Islamist sympathies. West Point has just announced that Mr. Bradford has left West Point.
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of World War II. The German army moved into Poland on 1 September 1939 and the British decided that the expansion of German power in the Rhineland, in Austria, and in Czechoslovakia had gone far enough. The Soviet Union also announced the approval of the German-Russian non-aggression pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, which freed Germany from worrying about Russian intervention on the Eastern front. That Treaty paved the way for the Soviet invasion of Poland later on in the month.
US President Obama has called for new icebreakers to patrol the Arctic Ocean to counter what he considered to be a Russia threat to dominate the polar region. Russia currently has a large number of icebreakers (not surprisingly given the extent of the Russia border that is above the Arctic Circle), but the US only has a small number (again, not surprisingly given that it is only the Alaskan coastline that is above the Circle). But Russia is also building up a large number of forward bases to buttress its claims to own an area that may have very large reservoirs of oil and natural gas.
There have been 2,135 nuclear detonations since the very first one in 1945. Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto made an animation showing each one over time. The video is sobering. It is hard to comprehend how assiduously humans have developed a technology that can never be used without the commission of horrific crimes against humanity.
Violence broke out near the Ukrainian Parliament building in Kyiv as legislators were debating a bill to give more local autonomy to the eastern parts of the state which is controlled by Russian-speaking separatists. The protesters consider the bill a capitulation to the separatists and could signal the end of Ukraine as a unified state. The violence is an indication of how hard and fast the positions are in Ukraine and how difficult it will be to forge some sort of agreement to bring about peace to the people.
NASA has released satellite images going back to 1992 which indicate that sea levels have already risen substantially due to global warming. Many tend to think that the problem of sea levels is a future problem, but the evidence suggests that the phenomenon is already occurring. Interestingly, the rise is not uniform: some parts of the ocean are rising faster than others. But there is little question that the oceans act as the most important sink for warming temperatures.
The economic slowdown and the market decline in China has seriously affected the global economy. But the biggest problem for China is not economic: it is political. China has made promises to both the Chinese people and the investors that invest in China that it will deliver economic growth if its techniques for doing so were not questioned. Now the question is being asked if the government has honored its part of the bargain. If the economic situation in China continues to slowdown, then the legitimacy of the government may come under closer scrutiny.
Imperialism is impossible to reverse or undo. One of the first things new settlers do when territory is claimed by their home country is to give familiar names to the landscape. Many of the indigenous names for mountains, rivers, and other features of the environment have been lost in the process. Today, US President Obama decided to rename a mountain in Alaska (the highest in North America). In the most recent past it has been known as Mount McKinley. Its Alaska Athabascan name, Denali (“the high one”), will return as its official name.
After three years without a parliament, Egypt has set a date for parliamentary elections in October. The country has been ruled in the interim by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former military general, and his rule has been marked by a sharp decline in freedoms and a crackdown on anyone who could possibly be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The election will be held in rather desperate economic conditions and a deteriorating security situation in the region as a whole. It is difficult to assess how effective an elected parliament might be in the immediate future.
There are large protests in Malaysia, as people display their outrage over an alleged “slush-fund” held by the Prime Minister, Najib Razak. The money is believed to have come from three bond deals arranged by the US investment bank, Goldman Sachs. The bond deals were brokered by Goldman’s Southeast Asia chairman Tim Leissner who is married to hip hop mogul Russell Simmons’ ex-wife Kimora Lee who, in turn, is good friends with Najib’s controversial wife Rosmah Manso (sounds like a soap opera). The three deals totaled $6.5 billion and the accusation is that about $700 million ended up in Razak’s personal bank account. The pro-democracy organization Bersih(which means “clean” in Malay) has organized the protests and the government banned the wearing of yellow T-shirts which were a symbol of Bersih. As the photo below suggests, however, the ban was not particularly effective.
The protests come at a vulnerable time for Malaysia as its currency, the ringgit, has recently depreciated (almost 13% this year) along with many other currencies from emerging markets. Malaysia has used much of its foreign reserves to prop up the currency and is in danger of running out of those reserves.
Many cultures have not accepted, and do not wish to accept, Western standards of human rights which revolve centrally around the freedom of individuals and the presumed equality of all individuals. For many cultures, it is more important to protect social stability and the sense of the collective and for individuals to find their proper place within the social collective. The difference between these two perspectives is obvious is the decision of a local village in India to punish two sisters because their brother eloped with a married woman. The two sisters were ordered to be raped and paraded around the village naked. The case has been brought to the attention of state courts, but enforcement of a different outcome will be very difficult. Amnesty International, an non-governmental organization dedicated to the Western view of human rights, has intervened in the case.
There are times when studying International Relations is like trying to live out Alice in Wonderland.The Guardian has an article about an Assistant Professor of Law at West Point, William Bradford, who published an essay in the National Security Law Review entitled “Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column”. The National Security Law Review is a student-run journal at George Mason University. The Guardian article describes the essay in this way:
In a lengthy academic paper, the professor, William C Bradford, proposes to threaten “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against undifferentiated Islamic radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage”.
Other “lawful targets” for the US military in its war on terrorism, Bradford argues, include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” – all civilian areas, but places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist.
The idea that such a nutjob is currently teaching young military leaders is incomprehensible to me. Jeremy Rabkin, a Professor of Law at George Mason, has a searing critique of Bradford’s essay which I recommend highly.
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