US Congress begins repeal of anti-pollution regulations

Patrick Martin

The US Congress took its first legislative action of the new congressional term on behalf of the corporate elite, as the Senate voted by 54-45 to pass a resolution rescinding the Stream Protection Rule adopted by the Department of the Interior in December. The rule restricts the dumping of waste by coal companies engaged in a technique known as “mountaintop removal.”

Four Democrats joined 51 Republicans to approve the resolution, which passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday, in a similar near-party-line vote, by a margin of 228-194. The resolution now goes to the White House, where President Trump will sign it, repealing the regulation.

The Stream Protection Rule was finalized by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement on December 20, 2016 after years of delaying tactics by the coal companies and their legislative allies, Democratic and Republican. The rule runs to thousands of pages in an effort to counteract the various methods employed by the coal companies to evade responsibility.

At the time of the rule’s enactment, the Department of the Interior said it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby waters. The rule also establishes stricter guidelines for exceptions to the rule banning mining within 100 feet of a waterway.

The regulation requires coal companies engaging in surface mining to set aside resources to clean up waste and prevent it from going into local rivers and streams. It requires companies to pay for the cleanup of waterways affected by the dumping of mine waste.

Prior to adoption of the rule, companies could engage in mountaintop removal while promising to remedy at some later time the environmental horrors that resulted. They could then file for bankruptcy and escape the financial consequences of the pollution disasters they created. At least 2,000 miles of waterways in coalfield regions have been devastated in this way.

The four Senate Democrats who backed repeal are from states with either significant coal industries or the headquarters of major coal companies: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Republicans portrayed the bill as a measure to liberate American industry from the stranglehold of misguided overregulation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday, “In my home state of Kentucky and others across the nation, the stream buffer rule will cause major damage to communities and threaten coal jobs.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, “The stream protection rule is really just a thinly veiled attempt to wipe out coal mining jobs.” He claimed, “The Department of Interior’s own reports show that mines are safe and the surrounding environment is well-protected.”

Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was more explicit about the ideological basis of the repeal, calling the rule part of “a radical leftist elitist agenda against carbon-based jobs.”

Environmental organizations condemned the congressional action. Brandi Colander of the National Wildlife Federation said that “the people of coal country deserve to have states empowered with regulatory certainty to implement these rules with confidence that their water is safe to drink and land will be left behind for future generations to enjoy.”

The congressional action takes place under the auspices of the Congressional Review Act, which allows a new Congress to repeal, by a simple majority vote of each house, any regulation enacted by a federal department during the last 60 legislative working days of the previous Congress. This makes quick congressional action possible, since the repeal requires only 51 votes in the Senate and cannot be filibustered.

The law has been used only once since its passage in 1996. In 2001, the Republican-controlled Congress voted to repeal a Labor Department regulation protecting workers from repetitive-motion injuries, adopted in the final days of the Clinton administration, and the new president, George W. Bush, signed the bill into law.

House and Senate Republican leaders have set out to employ this previously obscure law as a mechanism for the wholesale repeal of environmental, workplace and other regulations enacted toward the end of the Obama administration. Some congressional aides have argued that the timeframe could be expanded to include virtually any regulation enacted by the previous administration.

The repeal of the Stream Protection Rule was the first in a series of five House resolutions to repeal regulations enacted last year under the Obama administration. These measures demonstrate the priorities of the Republican-controlled Congress and the new Trump administration.

The second resolution to pass the House Wednesday, and awaiting a Senate vote Thursday night, will repeal a regulation enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Resource Extraction Rule requires energy companies to report payments they make to foreign governments for the right to extract oil, gas and minerals.

While seemingly arcane, the rule, authorized under the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulation law, is aimed at allowing the citizens of impoverished Third World countries to know what corporations are paying their governments to loot their countries’ resources. It has been fiercely opposed by the oil industry because it would shed light on their payoffs to foreign government officials.

The Reuters report on the House vote Wednesday to repeal the two regulations, the Stream Protection Rule and the Resource Extraction Rule, carried the unusually blunt headline “US House axes rules to prevent corruption, pollution.”

The other three regulations targeted for repeal include:

• The so-called “blacklisting” rule for federal contractors. This rule, finalized by the Department of Labor in August 2016, requires companies bidding on federal contracts to disclose any labor law violations in the previous three years, such as failure to pay the minimum wage, cheating workers out of overtime, and so on. A corporate lawsuit resulted in a court injunction temporarily blocking the rule, which would now be repealed.

• A rule enacted by the Social Security Administration requiring background checks before people who receive disability benefits because of mental illnesses are allowed to buy guns. This was opposed by right-wing politicians as an infringement of Second Amendment rights.

• The Methane Waste Rule, also established by the Department of the Interior, which requires oil and gas companies operating on federal or Native American tribal land to reduce methane leaks, capturing the methane instead of releasing it into the air. Methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gas emissions.

According to numerous press accounts, venting and flaring of methane from oil and gas drilling has led to the creation of a methane cloud the size of the state of Delaware, situated above the Four Corners area where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado come together. The cloud was first detected by NASA satellites.

The Congressional Review Act not only expedites the repeal of regulations, it makes it far more difficult to re-enact them later. Once a rule has been repealed, federal agencies are barred from ever again adopting new rules that are in “substantially the same form.” Such rules would have to be authorized by new legislation that would be subject to a Senate filibuster. Moreover, the law bars any judicial review of any “determination, finding, action, or omission” under the CRA.

Congressional Republicans are limited in how far they can proceed with the repeal of regulations using the CRA only by the law’s provision that each regulation requires a separate resolution, and each resolution requires 10 hours of debate in the House and the Senate.

There is not enough legislative time available to pass separate resolutions for all 200 of the regulations identified by the Congressional Research Service as eligible for repeal. On January 4, to address this difficulty, the House passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, which allows Congress to bundle an entire group of regulations into a single bill for up or down vote by a simple majority. This act, however, faces a likely filibuster in the Senate.

The following day, the House passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. This bill requires regulations that cost US corporations more than $100 million to be approved by a vote of both houses of Congress before they take effect. Passage of the REINS Act would effectively shut down all federal regulation of corporate business—the real goal of the Trump administration and its congressional allies.

While the House of Representatives has taken the lead in repealing regulations, the Senate is pushing ahead with the greatest gift to polluters, the installation of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. As attorney general of the state of Oklahoma, Pruitt was widely regarded as the best friend of the oil and gas industry, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against EPA anti-pollution regulations and even directly incorporating text provided by the corporations into his legal briefs.

Pruitt’s nomination was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by an 11-0 vote after the minority Democrats boycotted the hearing and the Republicans voted to suspend the rules and proceed to a vote. The nomination now goes to the floor of the Senate for a confirmation vote, expected next week, along party lines.

Where is Egypt Headed?

KP Fabian

To understand where Egypt is going, we need to look at its recent history. The 1952 Revolution led by Col Nasser saw Egypt rid itself of the monarchy subservient to the UK that dominated Egypt even after granting independence in 1922. However, that revolution did not take Egypt in a democratic direction. Col Nasser, the most charismatic leader in the Arab world, ruled till his death in 1970. He was succeeded by his colleague Anwar Sadat who ruled till he was assassinated in 1981. Hosni Mubarak who succeeded Sadat ruled for almost thirty years till he was overthrown by the 25 January 2011 Revolution, less than a fortnight after Tunisian President Ben Ali fell from power.

It was the Tunisian revolution that inspired the Egyptians who asked themselves why they could not do what the Tunisians did. When Mubarak fled to Alexandria on the 11 February 2011, the Egyptians at Tahrir Square and elsewhere genuinely thought that it was the dawn of new era of democracy. Egypt’s well-wishers the world over agreed enthusiastically.

Why did the 2011 Revolution fail?

Although Mubarak fell, the military, led by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF), grabbed power. The SCAF told the Egyptians that it was assuming power only temporarily and that it would arrange for elections and thereafter hand over power to a civilian government. The people initially believed the SCAF, but soon came to realize that it was in no hurry to relinquish power. Under pressure from the street, the SCAF arranged for elections by the end of 2011; but to its chagrin, the Muslim Brotherhood won a majority.

If the SCAF’s intentions were honorable, it should have withdrawn from the scene and permitted the majority party to form a government answerable to the parliament. Instead, the SCAF held on to power and months later when it was clear that a candidate of the Brotherhood was likely  to win the second round of the presidential elections, the SCAF, with the collusion of the higher judiciary, got the parliament dissolved citing flimsy technical reasons. Furthermore, the SCAF saw to it that the new President, Mohammed Morsi, was without any powers associated with his office. The SCAF retained control over the budget and even legislation by colluding with the higher judiciary ever prepared to rule that Morsi’s decrees were null and void.

In August 2011, Morsi sacked Gen Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s defence minister, and chairman of the SCAF, and replaced him with Gen Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the chief of military intelligence. Little did Morsi know then that in approximately ten months, Gen el-Sisi would carry out a military coup.

Morsi resorted to some imprudent actions to regain his legitimate powers. He was unaware that the intelligence and security set-up, the higher judiciary, and the higher bureaucracy, were part of a Deep State led by the SCAF that had never accepted him as president. Morsi was unable to improve the economy, create jobs, and make the police respect the rights of the people.

The Deep State watched with increasing satisfaction as the discontent and anger of the people mounted, and secretly funded and guided a new movement called Tamarod (Rebellion). Demonstrations against Morsi grew increasingly larger as he was about to complete his first year in office on 30 June 2013.

Gen el-Sisi issued an ultimatum to the president to talk to and reach a settlement with his opponents. They obviously refused to talk to Morsi and on 3 July 2013, Morsi was kidnapped and taken to an undisclosed destination giving rise to the worst fears among the Brotherhood followers who began protests for Morsi’s restoration. The security forces used as much violence as possible to put down the protests. In one case, they fired at unarmed and peaceful protesters at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, killing at least eight hundred. That killing was similar to the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India by the then British administration in India, but with one difference. Gen el-Sisi’s propaganda machinery convinced a good part of the population that the killing was necessary in order to save Egypt.

Egypt Under el-Sisi 

Ten months later, Gen el-Sisi, by then elevated to the rank of a Field Marshal, contested in the election and got elected with an overwhelming majority. He promised to revive the economy and to restore security. He has signally failed on both counts. The security situation is bad and earnings from tourism have plummeted. Egypt is facing a serious economic crisis. The IMF has agreed to lend $12 billion over three years if Egypt carries out reforms, primarily devalue currency and cut down subsidies. Gen el-Sisi has done both and the 40 million Egyptians below the poverty line are suffering from inflation. For instance, the price of sugar has shot up by 300 per cent.

Egypt is heavily dependent on financial support from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Over the past two years, Saudi Arabia had pumped in $26 billion, but by voting for a Russian resolution on Syria, Egypt offended Saudi Arabia, which stopped the supply of subsidised crude oil. Earlier, in April 2016, Gen el-Sisi had announced with much fanfare that the two Red Sea islands (Tiran and Sanafir) would be handed over to Saudi Arabia. Months later, the judiciary invalidated Gen el-Sisi’s decision. This shows that the Deep State solidarity is fracturing.

Criticism of Gen el-Sisi is growing louder and he has lost his image of a saviour. But, in the absence of any alternative, Gen el-Sisi does not risk any serious challenge to his position because, at the moment, those who have the courage to protest are either in jail or in exile.

Korean Government Scholarships for 170 Bachelors, 800 Masters & PhD for Developing Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: Applicants submit their applications either to the Korean Embassies around the world or to the partnering universities in Korea.

Applications (Embassy, University) are expected from:

• Graduate: February 2017 to  March 2017
• Undergraduate: September 2017 to October 2017 (To open in September 2017)

Offered annually? Yes

Accepted Subject Areas: Courses offered at one of the 60 participating Korean higher institutions

Eligible Countries: The scholarships are open to students from the following countries:

China, Japan, Russia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Chinese Taipei, Uzbekistan, Turkey, USA, Ethiopia, Colombia, Nepal, Senegal, Bangladesh, Ukraine, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Egypt, Tanzania, Germany, France, Dominica, Chile, Iran, Canada, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Pakistan, Gabon, Romania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Czech, Guatemala, Ecuador, Algeria, Yemen, Uganda, Belize, Honduras, Italy, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Poland, Ghana, Georgia, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Republic of South Africa, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Rwanda, Libya, Lithuania, Moldavia, Bahrain, Barbados, Bahamas, Venezuela, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Brunei, Serbia, Seychelles, Sudan, Sweden, Slovenia, Armenia, Argentina, Haïti, Ireland, Afghanistan, Angola, Oman, Austria, Uruguay, Iraq, Israel, Zambia, Cameroon, Qatar, Kenya, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Panama, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Fiji, Hungary, Australia, Jordan

About Scholarship: The Korean Government Scholarship Program (KGSP) is offered to international students who want to pursue Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees in Korean Universities. The scholarship is aimed to provide international students with an opportunity to conduct advanced studies at higher educational institutions in Korea, to develop global leaders and strengthen Korea-friendly networks worldwide.

Eligibility Criteria

Citizenship

• Candidates and their parents must hold non-Korean citizenship.

Age

• KGSP-G: under 40
• KGSP-U: under 25

Health

• Candidates must be physically and mentally healthy for their studies in Korea.

Degree Requirements

• KGSP-G: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree
• KGSP-U: High school diploma

Grades

• The cumulative grade point average (CGPA) must be 80% or higher; or
• The CGPA must be 2.64/ 4.0, 2.80/ 4.3, 2.91/ 4.5, or 3.23/ 5.0 or higher.

Number of Scholarships

• KGSP Undergraduate: around 170 grantees will be awarded annually
• KGSP Graduate: around 800 grantees will be awarded annually

Scholarship Benefits: Flight | Tuition | Stipend | Medical Insurance | Settlement Allowance | Completion Grants

Selection Procedure:

1st Selection: Applicants submit their applications either to the Korean Embassies around the world or to the partering universities in Korea. The embassies and universities select the successful candidates among the applicants in the 1st round of selection. The applicants of the successful candidates will then be forwarded to NIIED

2nd Selection: The NIIED selection committee selects the successful candidates among those who passed the 1st round.

3rd Selection: Among the successful candidates who have passed the 2nd round, the applications of those who applied through the Korean Embassies will be reviewed by universities for admission. Successful candidates must get admission from at least one of the universities.

Duration:

• 1 year Korean language course +2 year Associate degree
• 1 year Korean language course + 4 year Bachelors degree
• 1 year Korean language course+ 2 years of Master’s degree
• 1 year Korean language course + 3 years of Doctoral degree

To be taken at: Korean Universities.

How to Apply: Applicants can only apply for the scholarships through the Korean Embassy in their home country or a participating Korean University.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details about this scholarship. Also check here

Sponsors: The Korean Government, National Institute for International Education (NIIED)

UNICEF International Internship Program for Students 2017

Application Deadline: Different application deadlines exist for the different number of internships. Click the link below to view the Internship positions and deadlines.

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: The UNICEF Internship Programme offers eligiblestudents the opportunity to acquire direct practical experience in UNICEF’s work. UNICEF is active in various functional areas related to its mandate, which can be categorized in three main pillars: Programme and Policy, External Relations and Operations. 

Internships are offered depending on the needs and capacity of offices to receive and supervise interns. Currently available internship opportunities are:

Type: Internship

Eligibility: To be considered for an internship, applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Be enrolled in an undergraduate, graduate or PhD degree programme. Applicants enrolled in an undergraduate school must have completed at least two years of full-time studies.
• Be proficient in at least one of UNICEF’s working languages: English, French or Spanish. Fluency in the working language of the office you are applying to is required.
• Have excellent academic performance as demonstrated by recent university or institution records.

Additional consideration will be given to any past professional experience.

Number of Awardees: Several

Value of Internship: Internships at UNICEF are typically non-remunerative. All successful applicants are expected to make their own arrangements for travel, lodging and living expenses during the internship period.   There are a number of resources for supporting internships.  Start the search at your own college.

Duration of Internship: For the internship to be worthwhile and effective, the duration is usually between six (6) and sixteen (16) weeks.

How to Apply:  Visit our employment page for a list of available internship opportunities.

All applications must be submitted through the online e-recruitment system. To apply for an internship, open the internship advertisement page and click on the “Apply” button found at the bottom.

Returning applicants who already have a profile may log into the e-recruitment system here.

For more details on the Internship Programme, please see our Internship FAQ page.

Visit Internship Webpage for details

South Africa Washington International Program (SAWIP) 2017 for South African Students

Application Deadline: Midnight 14th February 2017

Eligible Countries: South Africa

To be taken at (country): USA

Type: Training

Eligibility: SAWIP candidates:

• May be from any academic discipline
• Must be South African citizens or permanent residents
• Must be in their second year (or beyond) of university
• Must be prepared for a high demand programme
• Must be available to participate in the international component of the program from 10 June to 24 July 2017
• Must be between the age of 19 – 25 years
• Must be currently studying at the University of Cape Town, the University of Johannesburg, the University of Stellenbosch, the University of Pretoria or the University of the Western Cape
• Must have a record of community engagement and leadership, with a strong service ethic
• Should envisage themselves as future leaders in South Africa

Duration and Number of Scholarships: The selected 20 team members participate in a demanding seven-month development experience which includes community engagement and six-weeks of global and work exposure in Washington, DC.

Eligible students can apply here.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: South Africa Washington International Program

End the Patent and Copyright Requirements in NAFTA

Dean Baker

The trade deals negotiated in the last quarter century are becoming less focused on traditional trade barriers like tariffs and quotas. Instead, they are imposing a regulation structure on the parties, which tend to be very business oriented. In many cases, the rules being required under the trade deals would never be accepted if they went through the normal political process.

The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement allows the United States, Canada and Mexico to get rid of rules that have no place in trade deals. At the top of this list is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (I.S.D.S.) tribunals. These tribunals operate outside the normal judicial process. Their rulings are not bound by precedent, nor are they subject to appeal. Also, they are only open to foreign investors as a mechanism to sue member governments.

These tribunals can be used to penalize governments for measures designed to protect the environment, consumers, workers or to ensure the stability of financial institutions. TransCanada, the company that had been building the XL pipeline, gave us an example of how these tribunals can be used. It initiated a suit after President Barack Obama decided to cancel the pipeline. It is likely that we would see many more suits in the future using the I.S.D.S. tribunals if they are left in NAFTA and other trade deals.

The other non-trade elements that should be removed from Nafta are the provisions requiring strong patent and copyright protection. These are forms of protectionism – the opposite of free trade – that can raise the price of the protected items by a factor of 10 or even 100. The impact of these protections is especially pernicious in the case of prescription drugs.

Drugs that would be readily available in a free market can be prohibitively expensive because of patent protection. For example, the Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi has a list price of $84,000 in the United States. A high-quality generic version is sold in India for less than $200.

While companies need an incentive for innovating, there are far more efficient mechanisms than patent monopolies. It doesn’t make sense for a 21st century economy to be dependent on this relic of the feudal guild system for supporting innovation.

Ending the patent and copyright requirements in NAFTA would be a good first step. We need a fuller debate on modernizing our systems for financing innovation and creative work.

Blundering Into a War With China

Conn Hallinan

In his January 13 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson made an extraordinary comment concerning China’s activities in the South China Sea. The U.S., he said, must “send a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops,” adding that Beijing’s “access to the those islands is not going to be allowed.”

President Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated the threat on January 24.

Sometimes it is hard to sift the real from the magical in the Trump administration, and bombast appears to be the default strategy of the day. But people should be clear about what would happen if the U.S. actually tries to blockade China from supplying its forces constructing airfields and radar facilities on the Spratley and Paracel islands.

It would be an act of war.

While Beijing’s Foreign Ministry China initially reacted cautiously to the comment, Chinese newspapers have been far less diplomatic. The nationalist Global Times warned of a “large-scale war” if the U.S. followed through on its threat, and the China Daily cautioned that a blockade could lead to a “devastating confrontation between China and the US.”

Independent observers agree. “It is very difficult to imagine the means by which the United States could prevent China from accessing these artificial islands without provoking some kind of confrontation,” says Rory Medcalf, head of Australia’s National Security College. And such a confrontation, says Carlyle Thayer of the University of New South Wales, “could quickly develop into an armed conflict.”

Last summer, China’s commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, Wu Shengli, told U.S. Admiral John Richardson that “we will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway.” Nansha is China’s name for the Spratlys. Two weeks later, Chang Wanquan, China’s Defense Minister, said Beijing is preparing for a “people’s war at sea.”

A certain amount of this is posturing by two powerful countries in competition for markets and influence, but Tillerson’s statement did not come out of the blue. In fact, the U.S. is in the middle of a major military buildup, the Obama administration’s “Asia Pivot” in the Pacific. American bases in Okinawa, Japan, and Guam have been beefed up, and for the first time since World War II, U.S. Marines have been deployed in Australia. Last March, the U.S. sent B-2 nuclear-capable strategic stealth bombers to join them.

There is no question that China has been aggressive about claiming sovereignty over small islands and reefs in the South China Sea, even after the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague rejected Beijing’s claims. But if a military confrontation is to be avoided, it is important to try to understand what is behind China’s behavior.

The current crisis has its roots in a tense standoff between Beijing and Taiwan in late 1996. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was angered that Washington had granted a visa to Taiwan’s president, Lee Teng-hui, calling it a violation of the 1979 U.S. “one-China” policy that recognized the PRC and downgraded relations with Taiwan to “unofficial.”

Beijing responded to the visa uproar by firing missiles near a small Taiwan-controlled island and moving some military forces up to the mainland coast facing the island. However, there was never any danger that China would actually attack Taiwan. Even if it wanted to, it didn’t have the means to do so.

Instead of letting things cool off, however, the Clinton administration escalated the conflict and sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region, the USS Nimitz and USS Independence. The Nimitz and its escorts sailed through the Taiwan Straits between the island and the mainland, and there was nothing that China could do about it.

The carriers deeply alarmed Beijing, because the regions just north of Taiwan in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea were the jumping off points for 19^th and 20^th century invasions by western colonialists and the Japanese.

The Straits crisis led to a radical remaking of China’s military, which had long relied on massive land forces. Instead, China adopted a strategy called “Area Denial” that would allow Beijing to control the waters surrounding its coast, in particular the East and South China seas. That not only required retooling of its armed forces—from land armies to naval and air power—it required a ring of bases that would keep potential enemies at arm’s length and also allow Chinese submarines to enter the Pacific and Indian oceans undetected.

Reaching from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in the north to the Malay Peninsula in the south, this so-called “first island chain” is Beijing’s primary defense line.

China is particularly vulnerable to a naval blockade. Some 80 percent of its energy supplies traverse the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, moving through narrow choke points like the Malacca Straits between Indonesia and Malaysia, the Bab al Mandab Straits controlling the Red Sea, and the Straits of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. All of those passages are controlled by the U.S. or countries like  India and Indonesia with close ties to Washington.

In 2013, China claimed it had historic rights to the region and issued its now famous “nine-dash line” map that embraced the Paracels and Spratly island chains and 85 percent of the South China Sea. It was this nine-dash line that the Hague tribunal rejected, because it found no historical basis for China’s claim, and because there were overlapping assertions by Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines.

There are, of course, economic considerations. The region is rich in oil, gas and fish, but the primary concern for China is security. The Chinese have not interfered with commercial ship traffic, although they have applied on-again, off-again restrictions on fishing and energy explorations. China initially prevented Filipino fishermen from exploiting some reefs, and then allowed it. It has been more aggressive with Vietnam in the Paracels.

Rather than trying to assuage China’s paranoia, the U.S. made things worse by adopting a military strategy to checkmate “Area Denial.” Called “Air/Sea Battle” (renamed “Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons”), Air/Sea Battle envisions attacking China’s navy, air force, radar facilities and command centers with air and naval power. Missiles would be used to take out targets deep into Chinese territory.

The recent seizure of a U.S. underwater drone off the Philippines is part of an on-going chess game in the region. The drone was almost certainly mapping sea floor bottoms and collecting data that would allow the U.S. to track Chinese submarines, including those armed with nuclear missiles. While the heist was a provocative thing to do—it was seized right under the nose of an unarmed U.S. Navy ship—it is a reflection of how nervous the Chinese are about their vulnerability to Air/Sea Battle.

China’s leaders “have good reason to worry about this emerging U.S. naval strategy [use of undersea drones] against China in East Asia,” Li Mingjiang, a China expert at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told the Financial Times. “If this strategy becomes reality, it could be quite detrimental to China’s national security.”

Washington charges that the Chinese are playing the bully with small countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, and there is some truth to that charge. China has been throwing its weight around with several nations in Southeast Asia. But it also true that the Chinese have a lot of evidence that the Americans are gunning for them.

The U.S. has some 400 military bases surrounding China and is deploying anti-ballistic missiles in South Korea and Japan, ostensibly to guard against North Korean nuclear weapons. But the interceptors could also down Chinese missiles, posing a threat to Beijing’s nuclear deterrence.

While Air/Sea Battle does not envision using nuclear weapons, it could still lead to a nuclear war. It would be very difficult to figure out whether missiles were targeting command centers or China’s nukes. Under the stricture “use them, or lose them” the Chinese might fear their missiles were endangered and launch them.

The last thing one wants to do with a nuclear-armed power is make it guess.

The Trump administration has opened a broad front on China, questioning the “one China” policy, accusing Beijing of being in cahoots with Islamic terrorists, and threatening a trade war. The first would upend more than 30 years of diplomacy, the second is bizarre—if anything, China is overly aggressive in suppressing terrorism in its western Xinjiang Province—and the third makes no sense.

China is the U.S.’s major trading partner and holds $1.24 trillion in U.S. Treasury Bonds. While Trump charges that the Chinese have hollowed out the American economy by undermining its industrial base with cheap labor and goods, China did not force Apple or General Motors to pull up stakes and decamp elsewhere. Capital goes where wages are low and unions are weak.

A trade war would hurt China, but it would also hurt the U.S. and the global economy as well.

When President Trump says he wants to make America great again, what he really means is that he wants to go back to that post-World War II period when the U.S. dominated much of the globe with a combination of economic strength and military power. But that era is gone, and dreams of a unipolar world run by Washington are a hallucination.

According to the CIA, “by 2030 Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power based on GDP, population size, military spending and technological investments.” By 2025, two-thirds of the world will live in Asia, 7 percent in Europe and 5 percent in the U.S. Those are the demographics of eclipse.

If Trump starts a trade war, he will find little support among America’s allies. China is the number one trading partner for Japan, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam and India, and the third largest for Indonesia and the Philippines. Over the past year, a number of countries like Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines have also distanced themselves from Washington and moved closer to China. When President Obama tried to get U.S. allies not to sign on to China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, they ignored him.

But the decline of U.S. influence has a dangerous side. Washington may not be able to dictate the world’s economy, but it has immense military power.  Chinese military expert Yang Chengjun says “China does not stir up troubles, but we are not afraid of them when they come.”  They should be. For all its modernization, China is no match for the U.S. However, defeating China is far beyond Washington’s capacity. The only wars the U.S. has “won” since 1945 are Grenada and Panama.

Nonetheless, such a clash would be catastrophic. It would torpedo global trade, inflict trillions of dollars damage on each side, and the odds are distressingly high that the war could go nuclear.

U.S. allies in the region should demand that the Trump administration back off any consideration of a blockade. Australia has already told Washington it will not take part in any such action. The U.S. should also do more than rename Air/Sea Battle, it should junk the entire strategy. The East and South China seas are not national security issues for the U.S., but they are for China.

And China should realize that, while it has the right to security, trotting out ancient dynastic maps to lay claim to vast areas bordering scores of countries does nothing but alienate its neighbors and give the U.S. an excuse to interfere in affairs thousands of miles from its own territory.

Unspoken Words: Nuclear War Provocations and Plans

Judith Deutsch

During the election campaign there was a brief period of anxiety about Clinton or Trump taking possession of the nuclear code, with the power to eradicate our species at the push of a few buttons.  But where has discussion, let alone mention, of nuclear weapons gone?   An exception is the brief article by Robert Dodge in Counterpunch  about the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advancing the Doomsday Clock to 2 ½ minutes before the midnight of human extinction caused by nuclear war or climate change:  “Nuclear weapons are not even on the radar of our congress. Their phones are not ringing off the hook about nuclear weapons.”

In a January 30^th interview with Sonali Kolhatkar, George Lakoff discussed Trump’s trial balloon about nuclear weapons in which Trump said that if we have them, we should use them.  Lakoff said that there was a very brief reaction and then it’s gone, signaling that the public doesn’t care.  Doesn’t care or doesn’t know? Harvard professor Elaine Scarry has said that some of her students had never heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is a dangerous time to not know about nuclear weapons.  Trump inherited from Obama the ongoing US/NATO/Israeli escalation and military encirclement against  Iran, China, and Russia, and  the $1tn program to modernize nuclear weapons.   On January 28^th the Ron Paul Institute reported that Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) introduced a bill to Congress:    “… it specifically authorizes the president to launch a pre-emptive war on Iran at any time of his choosing and without any further Congressional oversight or input, as the President determines necessary and appropriate in order to achieve the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” (Emphasis added).

Among the challengers to Iran’s purported nuclear threat are  Richard Falk (UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, expert on nuclear weapons and international law):  “What has Iran done to justify this frantic war-mongering … the outright threats emanating from Israel and the U.S. that leaves ‘all options’ on the table”?   Seymour Hersh investigated Israel’s nuclear weapons program in his book The Samson Option.  About Iran, Hersh wrote of “the repeated inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran….. with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.”  And perhaps most damning, the U.K. Guardian: “Leaked spy cables show Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document.”  Robert Fisk in The Independent 2012: “The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago.  Same old story. We’ve been here before – and it suits Israel that we never forget ‘Nuclear Iran.’”

Noam Chomsky reported that a  nuclear Iran suited the U.S. pre-1979, before the Islamic revolution overthrew the brutal shah regime.  “A secret agreement made between MIT and the Shah of Iran, … pretty much amounted to turning over the Nuclear Engineering Department to the Shah.”  Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, and Wolfowitz “wanted Iran to develop nuclear facilities and they were allies at the time.” 

Demonizing Iran at this time deflects attention from real nuclear dangers.  According to the 2016 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the nine nuclear states together possess a total of approximately 15,395 nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia accounting for more than 93%.   The public likely does not know that shortly after the UN pledged to end the scourge of war, shortly after two atomic bombs killed minimally 140,000 Japanese people, that the U.S. embarked on developing far more lethal hydrogen bombs.   The explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb was 15-16 kilotons, whereas today’s bombs are in the range of 100 Kt to 550Kt of TNT (6 to 34 times the Hiroshima force). “Even a small-scale nuclear war involving one hundred Hiroshima-type (15 Kt) nuclear bombs between two countries such as India and Pakistan, would have a devastating effect on Earth’s climate” and “it is unlikely there would be any survivors.”  “At most, this would involve only 0.3% of the world’s nuclear explosive power”

Nuclear weapons are deployed by intercontinental ballistic missiles, by submarine launched ballistic missiles, and by strategic bombers.   Submarines carrying up to 24 missiles, with each carrying  four to five warheads, possibly as many as 144 warheads per submarine, constantly patrol the oceans.   In a striking example of apparent disregard for the people of this planet,  a CNN newscast from August 2016 shows a smiling Michelle Obama “christening” a General Dynamic Virginia-class submarine manufactured in Connecticut, named after her, and designed to carry nuclear weapons.     According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, even though a Russian first-strike is not a credible risk, the United States still keeps its 450 silo-based nuclear weapons, and hundreds of submarine-based weapons, on hair-trigger alert and ready to launch within ten minutes toward their targets.

The five year UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review met in April, 2015, following four years of preparatory meetings.  Given the volatile tension between the U.S. and Russia and China, there was an urgency to take nuclear weapons off high alert status.  Instead, the focus of the month-long meeting was diverted to Iran’s nuclear weapons and to political opposition by the U.S., U.K., and Canada to establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East in order to shield Israel’s nuclear program from international laws and oversight.  In violation of the NPT, Germany has provided Israel  with a fleet of advanced submarines equipped to fire long-range nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.  Astonishingly, two of these submarines, which carry weapons of mass destruction, were given to Israel as Holocaust reparation!  According to Netanyahu, the submarines carry nuclear weapons pointed at Iran.  “The Obama administration’s pretense that it knows nothing about any nuclear weapons in Israel makes intelligent discussion about the dangers of nuclear weapons in the Middle East all but impossible.” India provides Israel with a launching site in the Indian Ocean.

During the Cold War, nuclear weapons strategy was based on deterrence, or mutually assured destruction (MAD).  Deterrence necessitated the capacity to retaliate with nuclear weapons, so the strategy in itself required weapons proliferation.  Shortly after 9/11,  G.W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM).   Missile defence systems are designed to destroy incoming nuclear missiles shortly after they are launched.   There is a belief within the military that the U.S. could destroy its enemy’s full nuclear arsenal and prevent retaliation.  Nuclear strategy shifted from deterrence to pre-emptive first strike, with the belief that a nuclear war is winnable and acceptable.

Frustrated by the decades-long paralysis in regulating and eliminating these weapons, and fearful that there is even more likelihood of nuclear war than during the Cold War, the UN-formed Open Ended Working Group (OPEG), made up of all nations, is now focusing entirely and explicitly on eliminating nuclear weapons.  The nuclear-armed nations, plus many liberal democracies like Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain and other NATO countries, have voted against the majority.  Iran voted for.

The late Jonathan Schell dedicated his life to the abolition of nuclear weapons.  He wrote that nuclear exterminism did not come from 20^thcentury totalitarian regimes, but that “the most radical evil imaginable – the extinction of the human species— [was] first placed in the hands of a liberal republic”.  A graver suspicion was that the United States and its allies did not build these weapons to face extraordinary danger, but because of “an intrinsic element of the dominant liberal civilization itself – an evil that first grew and still grows from within that civilization rather than being imposed from without.”  Entire societies, the human species itself, are merely a pawn.   Schell writes that nuclear strategy is the “very epicenter of banality” and is manufactured in think tanks and academic institutions from the pseudoscience of game theory.

The anti-nuclear and antiwar movements have been relatively silent about Israel and about Obama’s nuclear program.    One current political opening may be women’s timely activism on the ground, with the precedent of women having led the successful opposition to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in 1961.  Women, in their historical role of caring for the young and old, for growing food and carrying water, are the unseen victims of war and should have the power to veto.