Politics and Governance

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – July 11, 2014

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Greg Austin interprets Putin’s latest speeches and sheds light on Russia’s point-of-view. Read more

Writing for New Europe, EWI's Professorial Fellow Greg Austin argues that the creation of the Eurasian Union—a union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan—will test relations with the EU. Read more 

There were clear warning signs to the Ukraine crisis, says Greg Austin. "If we want to get that future plan right, we do need to have some understanding of what went wrong." Read more 

Greg Austin writes "The Luhansk Border: A New Crisis Point," for New Europe. Read more 

EWI’s Danila Bochkarev busts some prevailing myths and explains why the Ukraine crisis is a political earthquake and not an energy quake. Read more 

Bochkarev says the recent China-Russia gas deal is more practical than political. Read more 

Gady Writes on Sykes-Picot Origins and Effects

EWI's Senior Fellow Franz-Stefan Gady writes for The National Interset on the events leading up to the Sykes-Picot Agreement that has stirred and embattled the Middle East to this day.

A historical look at the development of the Middle East, Gady examines the life and impact of Lieutenant Muhammad Sharif Al-Faruqi. Preaching for a Pan-Arab empire, Al-Faruqi manipulated and lied his way to control territory through British and French support, leading to what we now refer to as the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. These are the building blocks for today’s chaos throughout the region.

Read the full article here.

Gady Writes on RIMPAC 2014 and the Future of Military-to-Military Relations

EWI's Senior Fellow Franz-Stefan Gady writes for China US Focus about the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and its decision to join the biennial Rim of the Pacific Expertise (RIMPAC)—the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise. Gady says this is a clear signal that neither the United States nor the People's Republic are interested in a detirioration of military-to-military relations.

In China, participation in RIMPAC is widely seen as a positive step towards Xi Jinping's call for stronger U.S-China military relations. Not only is this involvement an important part of stronger U.S-China military relations, it is likely to allow the PLA Navy to call into service capabilities that relate to humanitarian service and disaster relief efforts. China will ultimately see this opportunity as a way to undermine the Anti-China coalition in East Asia and the Pacific region spearheaded by the United States. 

Read the full piece here. 

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For more from Franz-Stefan Gady's commentary on China's debut at RIMPAC, see the following video and article.

 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – July 10, 2014

What EWI Stands For

Internal Security News

Diplomacy News

Governance News

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More Stories 

Greg Austin interprets Putin’s latest speeches and sheds light on Russia’s point-of-view. Read more

Writing for New Europe, EWI's Professorial Fellow Greg Austin argues that the creation of the Eurasian Union—a union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan—will test relations with the EU. Read more 

There were clear warning signs to the Ukraine crisis, says Greg Austin. "If we want to get that future plan right, we do need to have some understanding of what went wrong." Read more 

Greg Austin writes "The Luhansk Border: A New Crisis Point," for New Europe. Read more 

EWI’s Danila Bochkarev busts some prevailing myths and explains why the Ukraine crisis is a political earthquake and not an energy quake. Read more 

Bochkarev says the recent China-Russia gas deal is more practical than political. Read more 

Afghan Narcotrafficking: Bringing U.S.-Russia Cooperation Back on Track

Political disagreements between the United States and Russia over Ukraine should not hamper their cooperation in search of strategic solutions to the issue of Afghan drugs production and trafficking. This was a key conclusion drawn by the EastWest Institute’s project team following a three-day meeting of its U.S.-Russia experts steering group on Afghan narcotrafficking, held in Moscow at the end of June. Co-chaired by EastWest’s vice president, David Firestein, and the institute’s Russia office director, Vladimir Ivanov, the meeting in Moscow was convened specifically to assess the implications of the current systemic crisis in Russia’s relations with the West on the security situation and counternarcotics efforts in and around Afghanistan. 

The meeting involved leading experts from the EastWest Institute’s bilateral Joint U.S.-Russia Working Group on Afghan Narcotrafficking: Ilnur Batyrshin, head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service’s research center; Ivan Safranchuk, associate professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations; Konstantin Sorokin, advisor at the International Training and Methodology Centre for Financial Monitoring; Ekaterina Stepanova, head of the Peace and Conflict Studies Unit at the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations; George Gavrilis, visiting scholar at the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia University; and Austin Long, assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The steering group meeting also included Patricia Nicholas, project manager in the International Program at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, whose generous contribution makes possible the work of this EastWest Institute experts group on Afghan narcotrafficking.

Participants discussed the effect of the drawdown in Afghanistan of NATO International Security Assistance Force troops after 2014, with many noting that poppy cultivation and exports of illicit drugs from the country are likely to increase and that a basic precondition to solving this problem in the longer term would be political reconciliation and increased stability and functionality of the Afghan government at both the central and local levels. Discussion also focused on possible measures for managing the situation in the interim, such as continued international assistance to help raise the capacity of Afghan military and security forces as well as enhanced efforts to secure the borders around Afghanistan to counter both illicit drugs exports and the possible spillover of violent extremism to the neighboring countries. In this context, it was pointed out by some participants that even if U.S.-Russian counternarcotics cooperation continues at the operational level in this post-Crimea-sanctions environment, this is not enough to effectively address the complexity of Afghan drugs and security issues. 

The steering group devoted one full meeting day entirely to consultations with key regional players that contribute to shaping security and counternarcotics strategies around Afghanistan. The consultations involved senior diplomats from the embassies in Moscow of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Kazakhstan as well as the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Secretariat of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Ambassador Zamir Kabulov, Special Envoy of the Russian Federation President for Afghanistan, also addressed the group. 

The outcome of the steering group meeting in Moscow made it clear that the EastWest Institute’s leadership of this dialogue is particularly important against the backdrop of the recent challenges in the U.S.-Russia relationship at the governmental level. The steering group concluded that increasing efforts to engage regional players in this project could be an effective step towards helping restore regular communication between the Russian and U.S. counternarcotics communities. 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – July 9, 2014

What EWI Stands For

Internal Security News

Diplomacy News

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More Stories 

Greg Austin interprets Putin’s latest speeches and sheds light on Russia’s point-of-view. Read more

Writing for New Europe, EWI's Professorial Fellow Greg Austin argues that the creation of the Eurasian Union—a union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan—will test relations with the EU. Read more 

There were clear warning signs to the Ukraine crisis, says Greg Austin. "If we want to get that future plan right, we do need to have some understanding of what went wrong." Read more 

Greg Austin writes "The Luhansk Border: A New Crisis Point," for New Europe. Read more 

EWI’s Danila Bochkarev busts some prevailing myths and explains why the Ukraine crisis is a political earthquake and not an energy quake. Read more 

Bochkarev says the recent China-Russia gas deal is more practical than political. Read more 

The Iraq Crisis Puts India's "Strategic Partnership" with America Into Question

EWI Board Member Ambassador Kanwal Sibal writes in The Daily Mail of the consequences for the U.S. and India in light of confused U.S. policy in the Middle East. Ambassador Sibal served as the Foreign Secretary of India from July 2002 to November 2003.  

 

See the full article here.

Current developments in Iraq expose further the failure of US policies in West Asia.

With all the resources at its command, of information, analysis and technical expertise, and the sense of responsibility that must accompany the overwhelming power it possesses, the US should not be committing egregious mistakes in dealing with an unstable region like West Asia, riven with historical enmities, issues of nationhood, religious extremism, sectarian conflict and terrorism.

Instead of stabilising the region and releasing forces that would bring about real improvements in governance, participatory politics, institution building and social modernisation, US policies have largely done the opposite.

This becomes glaring as the declared reasons for interventions are the promotion of democracy, pluralism, human rights and western values.

Terrorism

The Arab Spring, supposedly the harbinger of democracy in West Asia and evidence that Islam and democracy are not antithetical, has degenerated into an ouster by the military of a democratically-elected regime in Egypt that seemed determined to Islamise the polity, contrary to majority opinion.

After endorsing the toppled Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate force, the US now backs a military regime that is determined to decimate it in the name of democracy and human rights.

Libya's Gaddafi was eliminated in a brutal manner to general glee, and now lawlessness and political anarchy reign in the country.

The killing of the US Ambassador in Benghazi illustrated the folly of assuming self-imposed burdens to end tyranny in third countries and gift western freedoms to their peoples.

Pursuing ill-thought-out regime change policies, a peaceful street protest in Syria suppressed by force by the Syrian government became the peg for the West to hound President Assad, peremptorily summoning him to step down, threatening military reprisals, supporting a motley of violent opposition groups to force his eviction, all unmindful of the religious and ethnic diversity of the country and the danger of sectarian forces destroying its secular fabric.

With the country torn by a raging civil war worsened by external meddling, the cause of democracy and human freedoms in Syria has been buried under the debris of destruction there.

If military interventions in the region were intended to eliminate international terrorism, that objective has not been achieved either.

The US had wrongly accused Saddam Hussain of Al Qaida links. Afghanistan was attacked and the Taliban regime evicted for harbouring Al Qaida.

Although remnants of the Osama-led Al Qaida leadership remain in Pakistan, the overall success in vanquishing Al Qaida was cited as reason for US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Today, Al Qaida-linked forces are active across a much wider geography than before  - in Mali, Yemen, Libya and Syria - not to mention the emergence of various extremist jihadi groups, some even more radical than Al Qaida like the salafists linked to Saudi Arabia, a US ally.

Oddly, even as the US fights Al Qaida, its Gulf allies finance death-dealing jihadi groups promoting an ideology diametrically opposed to US's value-based policies for the region.

The contradictions in US policies have resulted in stultifying its regime change plans in Syria for fear of hard core Islamists taking over there.

Worse, Al Qaida has finally surfaced in Sunni dominated parts of Iraq and adjoining Syrian territory dressed up as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The US has either failed to closely monitor ground developments in Iraq and Syria, or is now incapable of controlling the emergence of these fanatical forces because of their links to some of its Arab allies and its own vanishing appetite for renewed military intervention.

Ironically, the US now seems open to working with Shia Iran to stem the rising tide of Sunni zealotry in the region.

Combat

In our region, US policy confusion prevents the use of those instruments at its disposal against Pakistan's complicity with religious extremism and terror directed against US interests in Afghanistan, that it has used liberally against Iran and threatens to use to modify Russian behaviour in Ukraine.

The release of prominent Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay suggests preparatory work for a possible deal with this obscurantist force ideologically linked to extremist Sunni groups in West Asia.

The US seems less interested in confronting extremist Islamist ideologies, as they have used them in the past to achieve geopolitical ends, and more in channelling their hostility away from itself and, failing that, combating them.

Assessment

Ironically, the country at the forefront of combating terrorism and extremist forces westwards of us is the main cause of their expanding footprint because of misguided policies.

In the quest to impose democracy, freedom and western values by force if necessary, it has unleashed forces of bigotry and sectarianism, placing the lives of millions in distress.

If ISIS claims it is out to unravel the Sykes-Picot agreement, the US intervention in Iraq was the first ominous step in that direction. India has been exposed to security threats because of US policies.

They have distorted relations with Iran, especially in the area of energy security.

From being our second largest oil supplier, Iran has dropped to fifth place, while Iraq has become our second largest oil supplier, with Indian purchases reaching $20billion in 2012.

But now our energy interests are threatened in Iraq because of policy errors of the political and military overlords of the region.

We should assess the impact of US policies in our western neighbourhood on our security. This exercise is important in the light of our "strategic partnership" with the US and the assumption that we have a convergence of interests globally.

 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – July 8, 2014

What EWI Stands For

Internal Security News

Diplomacy News

Governance News

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More Stories 

Greg Austin interprets Putin’s latest speeches and sheds light on Russia’s point-of-view. Read more

Writing for New Europe, EWI's Professorial Fellow Greg Austin argues that the creation of the Eurasian Union—a union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan—will test relations with the EU. Read more 

There were clear warning signs to the Ukraine crisis, says Greg Austin. "If we want to get that future plan right, we do need to have some understanding of what went wrong." Read more 

Greg Austin writes "The Luhansk Border: A New Crisis Point," for New Europe. Read more 

EWI’s Danila Bochkarev busts some prevailing myths and explains why the Ukraine crisis is a political earthquake and not an energy quake. Read more 

Bochkarev says the recent China-Russia gas deal is more practical than political. Read more 

Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – July 4-7, 2014

What EWI Stands For

Internal Security News

Diplomacy News

International Observation Missions

Governance News

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More Stories 

Greg Austin interprets Putin’s latest speeches and sheds light on Russia’s point-of-view. Read more

Writing for New Europe, EWI's Professorial Fellow Greg Austin argues that the creation of the Eurasian Union—a union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan—will test relations with the EU. Read more 

There were clear warning signs to the Ukraine crisis, says Greg Austin. "If we want to get that future plan right, we do need to have some understanding of what went wrong." Read more 

Greg Austin writes "The Luhansk Border: A New Crisis Point," for New Europe. Read more 

EWI’s Danila Bochkarev busts some prevailing myths and explains why the Ukraine crisis is a political earthquake and not an energy quake. Read more 

Bochkarev says the recent China-Russia gas deal is more practical than political. Read more 

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