Pompeo in Middle East to cement Israel-Gulf alliance against Iran

Jean Shaoul

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a five-day visit to the Middle East in Israel before travelling on to Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Pompeo met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, where, according to the US State Department, the two discussed “regional security issues related to Iran’s malicious influence, establishing and deepening Israel’s relationships in the region, as well as cooperation in protecting the US and Israeli economies from malign investors,” meaning China.

In a brief press briefing after their meeting, Netanyahu praised Washington for its unilateral sanctions regime against Iran, which he wildly accused of “targeting countries with rockets, with terrorism, with pillage and plunder and murder—

Murder—all over the Middle East.” He also boasted that the US would continue to “ensure Israel’s qualitative edge” in terms of military might in the Middle East, even as it steps up arms sales to the Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. (Image credit: Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

While Israel likes to promote itself as Washington’s key ally in the region, Pompeo made it very clear who was the master in this relationship and that China’s increasing trade and investment ties with Israel were unacceptable. The Secretary of State allowed that the two discussed “the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to the entire world.”

The meeting followed the Security Council’s refusal on August 14 to extend a weapons embargo against Iran when the current ban ends in October. Yesterday, the president of the Security Council dismissed the US demand to invoke the “snapback” mechanism and reimpose sanctions on Iran that were in place before the deal on Tehran’s nuclear program in light of Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the treaty. These setbacks have provoked a furious US response accusing the opposing countries of “supporting terrorists.”

Pompeo also met Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi. Following the meeting, Gantz said the two countries would lead “an uncompromising line toward Iran,” which he claimed was a danger to the world, the region and Israel. He added, “We will act across diplomatic, defence and economic lines, and respond with force and determination so as to safeguard regional stability. We will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons and will act on every front and by every means to prevent that.”

Most controversially, Pompeo broke with the tradition for sitting secretaries of state to avoid overt partisan political activity, particularly while abroad, using Jerusalem, which plays well with the Republicans’ Evangelical base, as a backdrop to record a speech for the Republican National Convention,

His visit to Tel Aviv comes in the wake of the US-brokered agreement between Israel and the UAE to “normalise” relations between the two states, whose purpose is to cement an alliance between the Sunni petro-monarchies and Israel against Iran.

The normalisation of relations, which have been covert for years, is supposedly the quid pro quo for Israel halting plans to annex swathes of Palestinian land in the West Bank occupied since the June 1967 war. It thereby sidelines the fate of the Palestinians which for decades had at least formally defined the Arab states’ attitude towards the Zionist state. More crucially, it is bound up with the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime targeting Iran.

Tantamount to a state of war, these punishing sanctions are aimed at overturning Iran’s government and installing a client regime that would reinforce American hegemony over the resource-rich Middle East and strengthen its position against China. Israel, as Washington’s chief attack dog in the region, plays a key role in this offensive.

Complementing Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is Israel’s own policy towards Tehran, known as the “campaign between wars,” involving attacks directed against Iran’s allies in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq and aimed at preventing Iran from establishing an advantageous position in the event of a direct conflagration. This has included hundreds of attacks on Iranian-backed militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and their weapons dumps and facilities in Syria and on Syrian regime soldiers.

Israeli politicians have begun to acknowledge quite openly that Israel is behind these attacks, transforming its so-called shadow war with Iran into a more open and direct conflict.

Since 2018 and increasingly after the Trump administration unilaterally abandoned the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, this has evolved into the “octopus doctrine,” which Naphtali Bennett, later to become defence minister and now leader of the far-right opposition Yamina Party, described as going after the “head,” meaning Iran. He said, “When the tentacles of the octopus strike you, do not fight only against the tentacle but suffocate its head. Likewise, with Iran.”

This now involves targeting Iranian advisers and officials and their facilities directly, rather than just targeting Iranian allies, with Israeli strikes believed to have killed dozens of Iranians in Syria in recent years, after having been greenlighted by the Trump administration, as well as damaging or destroying installations in Iran itself.

On Tuesday, Pompeo went to Sudan on what he said was the first official nonstop flight between the two countries. There he met Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Sovereign Council Chairman General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to “express support for deepening the Sudan-Israel relationship.” This is a cover for discussing Washington’s conditions for supporting Sudan’s military-dominated transitional government. The new government was established following last April’s ouster of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, whose Muslim Brotherhood-aligned regime was backed by Turkey and Qatar, in a pre-emptive military coup that was backed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Sudan wants to be removed from the US list of state sponsors of “terrorism,” which is dependent on its finalising a compensation agreement for victims of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Pompeo’s visit follows a meeting between Netanyahu and al-Burhan during Netanyahu’s visit to Uganda last February that secured the opening of a new air corridor shortening Israeli flights to South America. However, Sudanese officials have sent mixed signals about the country’s willingness to establish official diplomatic relations with Israel, widely seen as a necessary but unpopular condition for US support.

Pompeo was also to meet with Crown Prince of Bahrain Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa in Manama, which is home to the US Sixth Fleet and its 9,300 troops and their families. While Bahrain had been identified as one of the states likely to follow the UAE’s lead, the country’s economic and military dependency on its neighbour Saudi Arabia makes this uncertain. Riyadh, which authored the 2002 Arab Initiative making normalisation with Israel dependent upon a Palestinian state, has refused to follow the UAE’s example until Israel signs a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Pompeo is to visit the UAE, which hosts about 3,500 US military personnel at its bases. It is a major purchaser of sophisticated US military equipment, including missile defences and combat aircraft, training and intelligence systems, and supports Washington’s policy toward Iran. Under discussion is the sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets and other advanced weaponry to the country.

Netanyahu has opposed the sale in order to prevent any Arab state from gaining military equivalency with Israel, and Abu Dhabi had cancelled a meeting with Israeli and American officials to formalise normalisation, due to Netanyahu’s opposition to the deal. But Pompeo dismissed his concerns with bromides about Washington’s commitment to “maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge” as required legislation passed in 2008.

Pompeo pledged to bolster the UAE’s defence capabilities, saying, “We have a 20-plus year security relationship with the United Arab Emirates as well, where we have provided them with technical assistance and military assistance.” He added, “We will now continue to review that process to continue to make sure that we’re delivering them with the equipment that they need to secure and defend their own people from this same threat, from the Islamic Republic of Iran as well.”

He will conclude the Mideast tour in Oman, strategically located on the Strait of Hormuz through which much of the region’s oil must pass. Israel had maintained secret links with Oman since the 1970s, even setting up an office there after the signing of the Oslo Accords, although this was closed after Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinian intifada in 2000-05. Relations have since warmed, leading to an official visit by Netanyahu to Oman in October 2018.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior Middle East adviser, is set to follow up on Pompeo’s visits.

Despite Israel’s pariah status in the Arab world, relations have become increasingly close. Egypt has played a key role in maintaining Israel’s 13-year-long blockade of Gaza, while Israel has bombed ISIS and other Islamist militias in the Sinai Peninsula to help Egypt and allowed Qatar to send millions of dollars every month to Gaza. Israel has supported Saudi Arabia against Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, citing Iran’s “regional subversion,” and steadily built covert links with Riyadh over recent years.

China's Curious Wars

Vijay Shankar

Never to be undertaken thoughtlessly or recklessly wars are to be preceded by measures that make it easy to win.

—Sun Tzu, Art of War (Griffith, p 39)

The Chinese tradition of warfare differs from contemporary understanding. Instead of focusing on their own weaknesses, they seek to avoid exposing their flaws by instituting long-term measures to alter and isolate the environment. This is before subversion and morale-breaking disinformation generate the advantage.

This strategy uses every possible means to manipulate forces at play well before confrontation. In this context, the significance of the clash neither constitutes the ‘moment of decision’ nor would its outcome be the end of the engagement. And, if conclusion is not to China’s terms, it is effectively delayed and kept animated in order to erode the will to resist. A favourable consequence is thus sought through an ‘isolate-subvert-sap’ strategy.  

All of China's recent actions must be viewed in the context of its larger geopolitical ambitions of attaining pre-eminent global hegemon status by 2049 (China’s National Defence in the New Era, July 2019). These include the militarisation of the South China Sea (SCS), build-up and assault in Ladakh, repression in Hong Kong, establishment of the East China Sea (ECS) air defence identification zone (ADIZ), incarceration of Uighurs in Xinjiang, and dubious involvement in the global pandemic set off by the Wuhan virus.

The SCS imbroglio and recent assault in Ladakh will be examined in a little more detail to try and discern the elements that hold sway in a Chinese military campaign.  

Militarisation of the SCS

China has laid claim to all the waters of the SCS based on a demarcation they call the ‘nine-dash’ line. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that the origin of the entitlement, bereft of legal legitimacy, could not be used by Beijing to make historic claims on the SCS. The line, first inscribed on a Chinese map in 1947, has “no legal basis” for maritime claims, deemed the Court.

In a brazen dismissal of the Tribunal’s ruling, China persists in its sweeping claims of sovereignty over the sea, its resources, and de-facto control over the trade plying across it that amounts to USD $5.3 trillion annually.

Satellite imagery has shown China’s efforts to militarise the Woody Island while constructing artificial islands and setting up military bases, and rejecting the competing claims made by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Most of the world along with claimant countries demand the rights assured under UN Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

In sum, China’s strategy for managing its SCS claims has emphasised delaying dispute settlement. And in time, with swelling military capability, occupation of contested features, building artificial islands, and locating military bases for control of the waters within the ‘nine-dash’ line. In the face of these aggressive moves, the other claimant states are left in awe as they are handed down a grim fait accompli.

In the meantime, the US, Japan, Australia, and India have formed the ‘Quad’ as a response—an emerging alliance to improve their maritime security capacity and deter Chinese aggression. The ‘Quad’ has initiated freedom of navigation exercises intended to affirm that Beijing cannot unilaterally seize control of the waterway.

Ladakh: High Place for a Showdown

China has in the last eight years attempted to put India in a strategically ‘benign’ economic-client slot. Beijing uses its proxy, Pakistan, to keep the Kashmir cauldron on the boil while it presses on with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). At the UN, it vetoes India's efforts to become a permanent member of the UNSC, and blocks its membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). All the while playing India at Wuhan and Mamalapuram, promoting its dysfunctional non-aligned policy, or at least attempting to nudge India away from the US. This is the ‘isolate-subvert-sap’ strategy at work.

Xi’s military assault in Ladakh has been underscored to assert that geography will not be allowed to come in the way of China’s strategic objectives; be it the CPEC, BRI, or the arterial national highway 219 linking Lhasa to Xinjiang that cuts across India’s Aksai Chin.

India for its part has given a resolute and matching military riposte in Ladakh. It has quite boldly launched surgical strikes on terrorist training camps in Pakistan by air and land forces and robustly rebuffed kowtowing to either Xi’s BRI or his grand economic plans. On the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India has followed a decrepit and emasculated policy of infrastructure-building along the un-demarcated LAC with China for more than half a century. Doklam changed all that, and more strategic infrastructure has come up now than in the past five decades. The more recent Wuhan virus pandemic has provided opportunity for Indian leadership to pin accountability.

All of India’s actions have left Beijing a trifle red-faced.

To Untangle Beijing’s Behaviour

China’s century of humiliation (1839-1949) coincided with the start of the First Opium War and ceding of Hong Kong to Britain. The conflict provided other colonial powers a blueprint for usurping territories from the crumbling Qing dynasty. And so northern China was seized by the tsar, and Formosa taken by Japan, while Germany, France, and Austria carved out coveted real estate through ‘loaded’ treaties.

The period remains etched in Chinese institutional memory—of a rapacious international system over which it had little influence. It has shaped China’s thrust for control in the very same system. More importantly, it provides a rallying point internally, and a persistent reminder to its people of ‘why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Conclusion

Indeed, Xi’s 2017 declaration that “…the world is not peaceful” is turning out to be an engineered self-fulfilling prophecy. When put on a strategic template, the delaying actions to resolve simmering discord effected only to exasperate; Janus-faced policies that serve to deceive and subvert alliances; coercive manoeuvres; lease-for-debt economic deals; and flouting of international norms bear a bizarre semblance to the words of Sun Tzu: “The master conqueror frustrated his enemy’s plans and broke up his alliances. He created cleavages…He gathered information, sowed dissension and nurtured subversion. The enemy was isolated, divided and demoralised; his will to resist broken.” (Griffith, p 39).

Fortunately we are not in Sun Tzu’s times. Strategies are not so opaque, nor are Xi’s people with him. Yet, China would do well to heed Sun Tzu’s sage words: of avoiding a reckless path to unintended war.

Police violence continues unabated three months after the murder of George Floyd

Niles Niemuth

Three months after the murder of George Floyd sparked mass multiracial and multiethnic demonstrations demanding an end to police violence and racism, the police continue their reign of terror across the United States without any sign of slowing down.

Since May 25, the day Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into his neck for more than 8 minutes, at least 235 people have been killed by police in the US. The pace of killings is on track to surpass 1,000 this year, with nearly 3 people shot dead by the police every day.

The latest incident to produce an eruption of angry protests is the attempted murder of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African American father of six, shot seven times in the back by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While Blake amazingly survived the shooting, his father told the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday that his son is now paralyzed from the waist down and doctors are uncertain if he will fully recover from his injuries.

A cellphone video taken by a bystander and posted on social media shows that Blake was walking away from police officers and attempting to get into his SUV, when a white officer, with gun drawn, pulled him by his shirt and pumped seven shots into his back at point-blank range. Three of Blake’s sons were in the back of the vehicle when he was shot.

“Those police officers that shot my son like a dog in the street are responsible for everything that has happened in the city of Kenosha,” Blake’s father said, referring to incidents of arson and looting after demonstrators were attacked by police. “My son is not responsible for it. My son didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t have a gun.”

Black and white protestors who took to the streets Sunday and Monday night in Kenosha to demand that the responsible officer be charged and arrested were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper balls. Residents attempting to attend a press conference with the city’s Democratic mayor Monday afternoon were similarly met with police in riot gear and pepper spray when they raised demands, heightening tensions.

Protests across the country in recent days against the unending slaughter—from Portland, Oregon to Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan—have been met by an unrelenting crackdown by the police. Hundreds, including journalists, have been arrested, and many more have been hit by pepper spray, pepper balls, rubber bullets and other munitions deemed “less than lethal” by the police.

Federal agents were directed by President Donald Trump last month to wage an assault on Portland protestors, including carrying out snatch-and-grab operations using unmarked vans in scenes reminiscent of Latin American dictatorships.

While these forces—including the US Border Patrol’s paramilitary BORTAC unit—have been largely relegated to the background following widespread outrage over their direct use against protestors, the police have taken their cue from Trump, carrying out their own snatch operations by unmarked officers in New York City and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, hundreds of federal agents have been deployed to work alongside police in multiple large cities, including Detroit and Chicago, with the consent of Democratic mayors.

Trump and the Republicans are openly inciting police violence and attacks on protestors; the term ‘police’ was invoked 25 times on the first day of the Republican National convention, invoked as the guardians of society from “mob rule” by the “far left.” The president has spent much of his time in office building up the police at the local and federal level in defense of his personalist rule.

However, it is important to note that it is the Democratic Party in Wisconsin that is overseeing the reign of police terror against protesters in Kenosha.

After the first night of protests Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers deployed 125 National Guard soldiers to aid the police in enforcing an 8 p.m. curfew. Military Humvees were used to patrol city streets and dump trucks deployed to block off exit ramps from the main freeway into the city. Evers declared a state of emergency Tuesday afternoon to allow for the marshaling of even more resources against anti-police violence protests.

While there has been a lot of talk from Democratic politicians declaring their support for Black Lives Matter—repeatedly mouthing the phrase and having it painted in big block letters on city streets while promising to confront “white supremacy” and “systemic racism”—nothing has changed. Nothing has been done to even slow the pace of police killings.

In fact, the Democrats distanced themselves from demands to defund the police, a popular slogan among protesters, almost as soon as they were pronounced. Minneapolis’s Democratic Party-controlled city council has kicked the can on a much-heralded proposal to “disband” the city’s police force made in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s killing as part of the efforts to corral and disperse popular anger.

In an interview with ABC News Friday, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrat’s presidential candidate, alongside his running mate Senator Kamala Harris, made clear that his administration would work to provide more funding for the police and claimed that it was in fact Trump who would defund the police. “I don’t want to defund the police departments,” Biden declared, “I think they need more help, they need more assistance…”

Biden suggested at a campaign event in June that the solution for police killings would be to train officers to “shoot them in the leg instead of the heart.” Meanwhile, Biden’s former primary opponent and now leading surrogate, Senator Bernie Sanders, has called for officers to be paid higher salaries as a possible solution to police killings!

The United States is a tinderbox, with the mass social crisis intensified by the murderous response of the ruling elite to the COVID-19 pandemic driving the outbreak of explosive protests. Millions of people have been thrown out of work and it has been a month since the $600 federal extension to unemployment benefits was allowed by Congress and the White House to expire. Tens of millions face the possibility of eviction and foreclosure in the coming months as moratoriums expire.

The police, as special bodies of armed men, are essential to the protection of the state and enforcement of class rule, defending the property interests of the rich and policing the immense social gulf that separates them from the bottom 90 percent. Regardless of who sits in the White House in January, police violence will continue and in fact intensify. The more the social tensions rise, the more violence the campaign of police terror overseen by both parties will become.

With COVID-19 Under Control, Cuba Launches New Economic Battle

Helen Yaffe

The exemplary domestic and international response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been recognised worldwide. By late July, authorities had the virus under control; 87 people had died, none of them children or healthcare workers, and Cuba was entering phase three of post-Covid-19 recovery.

While Cuba’s public health response protected the population, the economic cost was high, particularly through the loss of international tourism – the country’s second largest source of foreign revenue – as borders were closed. This compounded adverse conditions already imposed by external factors, principally the economic crisis in Venezuela and the intensification of US sanctions under the Trump administration from 2017.

From GDP growth of 4.4% in 2015, following US President Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba, growth slowed to 1.3% between 2016 and 2019 and was forecast at just 1% for 2020. Now in the context of the pandemic, on 15 July, the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean forecast a fall in Cuba’s GDP of 8% for 2020; the forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean was -9.1%.

Challenges facing the Cuban economy

On 16 July, in a speech to the Council of Ministers, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel pointed out that ‘in recent months we have faced numerous [US] attempts to prevent the arrival of fuel at our ports, shortages of food, supplies and raw materials to sustain important production processes, and [US] sanctions that have reduced our foreign exchange earnings in the midst of the pandemic.’ Despite this, he said, ‘we raised, as far as possible, wages in the budgeted sector; [electricity] blackouts were avoided; we maintained the vitality of productive activity, the fundamental investments for developing the country; we approved measures to protect and serve the entire Cuban population, without distinction, from the impacts of Covid-19.’

However, the country’s approach has to change, he said, as it recovers from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, faces the resulting global economic crisis and advances with the country’s National Plan for Economic and Social Development until 2030. He announced a strategy of economic transformation which, within the framework of the centrally planned economy, will introduce greater emphasis on market mechanisms and the private sector to stimulate domestic production, particularly in agriculture, decentralise decision making and unify Cuba’s dual economy. Increasing market mechanisms heightens contradictions within the socialist planned economy, but is a necessary concession under the adverse circumstances listed below:^[1]

+ Intensification of the US blockade. In 2019 alone, 86 new sanctions were introduced by the Trump administration, including application of Title III of the Helms Burton Act of 1996, which seeks to curb foreign investment in Cuba, and measures to obstruct oil shipments from Venezuela. The cost of the US blockade in 2019 alone was calculated at $4bn; a figure that will rise substantially in the coming period. That was double Cuba’s 2019 debt servicing obligations.

+ The ongoing economic crisis in Venezuela, one of Cuba’s main trading partners, which suffered a 25.5% fall in GDP in 2019 as US sanctions were intensified.

+ A growing shortage of foreign exchange due to several factors: the 9.3% decrease in international tourism in 2019 (resulting from US measures); the loss of export markets in medical services (from Brazil and Ecuador), which by January 2020 had seen a 19.6% fall in earnings on the previous year; and the freeze on tourism in late March 2020 due to the pandemic. With the emerging global economic crisis, remittances are expected to fall dramatically.

+ From September 2019, Cuba had to function with 50% of the fuel it requires and oil from Russia, Algeria and Angola was purchased under less favourable conditions.

+ A Caribbean-wide drought saw agricultural production in Cuba fall below planned output; shortages were exacerbated by the pandemic.

+ US sanctions created shortages of medicines, and prevented Cuba from purchasing, or receiving donations of medical equipment to treat Covid-19 patients.

Shortages have seen long queues for food staples during the pandemic. President Diaz-Canel recognised this in his speech: ‘…there is a shortage in stores, yes, and why is that? Why does Cuba not have more hard currency? Among other things, because of the blockade, because of the financial persecution…because every time we export to someone, they try to cut that export; because every time we are arranging credit, they try to take away the credit; because they try to stop fuel getting to Cuba and then we have to buy in third markets at a higher price.’

The loss of tourism revenue and a falling demand for exports has meant a sustained loss of income while additional expenses were incurred in the health sector; financing the isolation centres for treatment of Covid-19 patients, covering workers’ wages and social security for the population. In April and May, the state-controlled prices of some staple products were reduced. Inevitably, the budget deficit has risen. Internal factors which contribute to Cuba’s economic weaknesses, inefficiency and low productivity, have frequently been identified and measures to address them were announced by President Diaz-Canel in summer 2019.

Planning to combat uncertainty

The new ‘economic-social strategy’ was approved by Cuba’s Council of Ministers on 16 July and announced to the population the same day via the daily televised Round Table (Mesa Redonda) programme, which began by airing the President’s speech.²

In the subsequent discussion, Cuba’s Minister of the Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, explained that the strategy covers 16 key economic areas. ‘We always say that the more the uncertainty, the greater the planning must be’, he said. ‘So we have a detailed strategy that is in line with our economic model and guidelines [for updating the Cuban economy], while focusing on lifting obstacles and operating our economy in a more functional way’. The new strategy is based on nine principles:

1) Maintaining centralised planning, while decentralising the administrative allocation of resources.

2) Augmenting national production and ending dependence on imports.

3) Regulating the market through (mainly) indirect methods.

4) Increasing integration between different economic actors in the state and non-state sectors.

5) Harnessing domestic demand to generate jobs and productive growth.

6) Increasing the autonomy of management in state sector enterprises to improve efficiency.

7) Implementing approved but pending aspects of policy that update forms of management and ownership.

8) Encouraging internal competitiveness, to guarantee efficient use of material and financial resources, and by expanding incentives.

9) Adhering to environmental policies and sustainable development.

The objective is to increase national production, decrease imports and increase and diversify exports. Policies will aim to diversify commerce in agricultural production, strengthen the autonomy of state enterprises, create mini-, small- and medium-sized state enterprises in industry, permit non-state businesses to import and export via 37 specialised state enterprises, allow cooperatives to sell directly to foreign and mixed-ownership companies, encourage foreign direct investment, especially in food production, foster cooperatives and improve and expand self-employment. Many of these measures were announced last summer, now the aim is to speed up their simultaneous implementation.

Other measures enable the state to capture urgently needed hard currency from a population which holds a lot of cash (liquidity in the hands of the population was 59% of GDP in 2018). In late 2019, the government opened 80 outlets selling domestic appliances, electric motorcycles and car parts in freely convertible (globally traded) currencies, including the US dollar which was removed from domestic commerce in 2004. Used cars went on sale for US dollars in February. From 20 July, an additional 72 state stores run by Tiendas Caribes and Cimex began selling ‘medium and high-range’ food, toiletries and hardware goods in freely convertible currencies. Purchases can be made with a national bank card from an account opened with tradable currencies, or international MasterCard and VISA cards not linked to US banks. The hard currency collected at these stores will help purchase the supplies required in the over 4,700 stores which continue to sell to the population in Cuban national pesos (CUP) or convertible pesos (CUC). Cuban state and non-state entities can hold current accounts in hard currency. Tourists can pay for some services in hard currency. Also, from 20 July, the 10% tax applied to US dollars that enter the Cuban banking system was removed.

Reducing the importation of food and fuel is vital; but progress has been painfully slow. 70% of the food Cubans consume is imported, despite the potential for domestic substitution. The US blockade obstructs external financing of investments in the technologies Cuba needs to shift from imported hydrocarbons to domestic renewable energies. Meanwhile, encouraged by the Trump administration, right-wing Cuban exiles are intensifying media attacks on Cuba, demanding tougher sanctions and a community boycott of remittances and visits to the island.

President Diaz-Canel said: ‘…globally we are witnessing the confluence of a deep crisis as a consequence of the impact of Covid-19 [and] the definitive collapse of neoliberal paradigms defended by imperialism…’ Cuba’s public health response to Covid-19 put those neoliberal paradigms to shame. Now it needs an end to the US blockade so it can develop the potential of its welfare-centred economy.’

Syria Faces Calamity as Trump’s New Sanctions Combine With Surging Coronavirus

Patrick Cockburn

“If I don’t buy masks or medicine, I may die or survive, but if I don’t buy bread for the family, we will all die of starvation,” says a retired 68-year-old teacher in Damascus, explaining why he does not have masks, sterilisers or medicines. “We need two bundles of loaves every day which costs us at least 600 Syrian pounds (24 US cents), but if we buy masks, they will cost us about 1000 SP (40 cents). The choice is between bread and masks.”

Millions of ordinary Syrians are having to choose between buying food to eat and taking precautionary measures against coronavirus, which local witnesses say is much more widespread than the Syrian government admits.

Poverty and deprivation have worsened dramatically since the US introduced all-embracing sanctions on Syria on 17 June under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which Donald Trump signed into law late last year. Named after the individual who documented the murder of thousands of Syrians by the Syrian government (Syrian officials deny the allegations), the legislation is supposedly intended to restrain it from carrying out further acts of repression.

In practice the Caesar Act does little to weaken President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, but it does impose a devastating economic siege on a country where civilians are already ground down by nine years of war and economic embargo. The eight in 10 Syrians who are listed by the UN as falling below the poverty line must now cope with a sudden upsurge in the coronavirus pandemic.

As with UN sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1990s, the Syrian leadership will be least affected by the new American measures because it controls resources. The real victims are the poor and the powerless who suffer since the price of foodstuffs has risen by 209 per cent in the last year. The cost of a basic food basket is 23.5 times what it was before the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011 according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Beneath a hypocritical pretence that it is helping ordinary people, the Trump administration is stoking a humanitarian catastrophe in a bid to deny a victory to Russia and Iran, the two main supporters of Assad during the conflict. Confirming this aim, the US special representative for Syria James Jeffrey says that US policy is to turn Syria into “a quagmire” for Russia, like the one the US faced in Vietnam, and to give the US a degree of control over Syria similar to what it had in Japan at the end of the Second World War.

Such aims are dangerously unrealistic as Assad, Russia and Iran have already won the war militarily, but US wishful thinking does have the potential to further devastate the lives of millions of Syrians. Detailed and reliable information has been lacking about how they are surviving, or failing to survive, as the Caesar Act is implanted and the virus spreads. Access to Syria by journalists is limited and news from Syria, however dire, has largely dropped out of the international news agenda because everybody is preoccupied with the progress of the pandemic in their own countries.

A nurse at one of the largest hospitals in Damascus has given The Independent a detailed account of how coronavirus and the Caesar Act are combining to bring fresh disasters to Syria, a country already ruined by nine years of war. Muhanad Shami (which is not his real name) is 28 years old and works in the giant al-Mouwasat University Hospital in Damascus. He speaks graphically and convincingly of the worsening crisis in the Syrian capital and in his own hospital as the virus spreads amid crippling shortages and soaring prices.

“It’s an atmosphere of fear and panic in the hospital,” says Muhanad. “Every day hundreds of sick people come here, most of them suffering from coronavirus symptoms, but the hospital is already full.” Its buildings hold more than a thousand patients, many of them sleeping on mattresses on the floor.

He says that the official numbers of infections announced by the Syrian authorities may be only about 10 per cent of the real figure: “On Friday 14 August, the ministry of health announced only 72 cases in Syria, but in my hospital alone there were about 200 people crowded into the yard nearby and all of them were sick, coughing, with a high temperature, a need for oxygen, and no feeling of taste and smell.” The hospital management only had enough equipment to test three people who all tested positive.

The swift rise in the number infected is scarcely surprising, given that, until recently, the government played down the threat from coronavirus, leading people to take few precautions to avoid catching it. Muhanad says: “Every day, I go to work in a bus or minibus which should carry eleven people, but is mostly crowded with 15 people and I am the only one who wears a mask.” He normally gets a mask and disinfectant from his hospital but, when these are not available, he walks 45 minutes from his flat to the hospital rather than risk being crammed into a bus.

“I am surprised I am not sick so far,” he says. “Maybe it is because I am walking to work most days and sweating and that makes me more immune.” Three doctors and several nurses, two of whom he knew, have died at the hospital, where there is a shortage of masks. “I just wash my hands and drink water every 10 minutes. I spend the day in a state of anxiety.”

Private hospitals are also full up and oxygen cylinders and ventilators often have to be purchased privately. Muhanad says that his “aunt has four children and the whole family are sick with coronavirus, so our relatives living in the United Arab Emirates sent her some money to buy equipment.” She spent about $450 (£345) on medicine, ventilators and oxygen cylinders, but then faced the problem that there is no continuous supply of electricity in Damascus to keep equipment like a ventilator running all the time.

The pandemic strikes at a population already weakened during nine years of war and sanctions – already stringent and economically destructive before the Caesar Act provoked a collapse in the Syrian currency this summer. Muhanad’s monthly salary is the equivalent of $20, which he doubles by taking tips from patients for injections and other medical procedures. He can no longer afford the modest two-room flat he shares with two others, because the landlord is raising their rent by a third: “About four months ago, before the Caesar Act, things were expensive but now they are unaffordable.” He used to buy a kilo of tomatoes for 100 Syrian pounds (4 cents), but since the act the tomatoes are three or four times more expensive, while the cost of a taxi ride has tripled and that of a bus has doubled. There is a cheap government bread ration but enormous queues outside the bakeries.

Muhanad blames the Syrian government for pretending that coronavirus was less widespread than it really was, leading people to crowd together without masks in the markets. He sees the Caesar Act plunging an impoverished people deeper into misery.

The number of Syrians who are food insecure has risen in the last six months by 1.4 million to 9.3 million, more than half the population, according to the WFP. The Caesar Act and coronavirus do not appear to be weakening Assad, Russia and Iran, but there is every sign they are together plunging ordinary Syrians into a deep and lethal quagmire.

COVID-19 and the Nakedness of the Corporate University

David Schultz

The coronavirus pandemic has both changed everything and accelerated trends that were already occurring across the world in business, politics, and how people shop and interact. The same is true with American higher education. As colleges and universities across America are restarting, Covid-19  has laid bare the nakedness of the corporate university, revealing how education and learning have long been displaced as the primary purpose of colleges and universities.

The corporate university is a product of the 1970s and 1980s.  After World War II  government funding for higher education, especially state universities, was seen as a tool of economic development, a battle line in the Cold War, and an instrument of democracy.  Science and technology were important, but arts, humanities, foreign languages, and the social sciences were part of a traditional liberal arts education that benefited society and produced, as philosopher John Dewey once said, the next generation of democratic leaders.  The benefits of college education were a public good, worthy of public investment.  But beginning with the economic retrenchments of the 1970s and the onset of neo-liberalism, higher education changed.  States cut investments to their universities, grants to students shrank, and college education increasingly came to be viewed as a private good or investment.

Higher education responded by turning corporate.  Colleges and universities sought business sponsorships and partnerships.   They restructured and assumed top-down management styles that increasingly viewed faculty as workers and less as co-participants in education.  Boards of trustees become more heavily composed of business leaders who in turn hire school presidents with corporate tendencies or experiences and less traditional education backgrounds or resumes.  Higher education, as did corporate America, restructured and replaced workers (full time tenured professors) with part time and contingent staff, and layered yet pricey middle and senior management with little knowledge or affection for traditional liberal arts education.

But colleges and universities also turned corporate in transforming education into a commodity and students into customers.  One, students were told college was an investment in their future and therefore borrowing to finance it became a cost-benefit decision in their career options.  Two,  admissions departments increasingly sold schools not on the basis of the quality of education they received but on career placement.  Then schools emphasized internships, dorm life,  on-campus activities, sports, technology, and internet connectivity for convenience. Three, at the graduate level, the expansion of face-paced but expensive professional programs (often offered without the traditional rigor of a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation) in business and other fields  were sold as career investments for Baby Boomers anxious for credentials, with the tuition reaped by the schools helping to finance undergraduate programs.  Four, going to college was all about the amenities of learning and not learning itself.  Higher education transformed the college experience into a cash nexus–pay us a lot of money and we will provide you with a host of on-campus activities and connections that will be a worthy return on your investment.

The 2008 global recession destroyed the business plan for American higher education.  Public education budgets were slashed and student debt topped that of personal credit cards.  Students were tapped out, and the number of eligible and college ready 18-year olds was declining.  Higher education should have collapsed but it managed to limp along by intensifying its cost cutting and tuition hiking measures.

Then came Covid-19.  When schools went on-line last spring students rightly revolted.  They demanded  refunds not just for dorms but on tuition.  They argued that the college experience they were sold included all those campus-based experiences, internships, and connections that they no longer were receiving.    College administrators were in a bind.  They tried to say the tuition was justified because they were still getting an education but such a claim was shrill at best since this aspect of college experience had long since disappeared or had become merely one stick in a bundle of goods sold as the university experience.

Students and their parents are not buying this argument. Take away all these other amenities and what do you really have?  The nakedness of colleges and universities that is about anything but education.  College has become a collection of  commodified externalities surrounded by a central core of educational nothingness.  For this fall, the reality is, as recent decisions by Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill already show, on-campus learning is a huge public health risk.  Yet no college wants to say it is going completely on-line for fear that students will not attend or want price reductions.   Yet what will happen is that much of higher education will do a bait and switch–begin school in-person and once the tuition dollars are in switch back on-line.  This will be the short-term fix for the crisis of corporate universities, yet it does little to address decades of damage to the disappearing educational mission of higher education.

UK Government Darwin Fellowship Award 2021

Application Deadline: 19th January 2021

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To Be Taken At (Country): UK

About the Award: The Fellowship programme is intended to support Fellows to draw on UK technical and scientific expertise in the fields of biodiversity and sustainable development to broaden their knowledge and experience.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Applications for Fellowship funding should come from an organisation (the Lead Organisation) and not an individual. There should be a named individual within the Lead Organisation responsible for the application, called the Project Leader. The host organisation where the individual will carry out the training or research must be in the UK.
The Lead Organisation:

• must have expertise in natural resource management
• can be either a public or private sector organisation
• should provide experts from within the organisation with a proven track record and at the forefront of their discipline(s) to work closely with or supervise the Fellow. This expertise is typically expected to be a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience

Darwin Fellowships will support promising individuals who:

• have a link with a recent or current Darwin Initiative project or
• are currently involved directly in the implementation of the key biodiversity conventions and agreements listed above

Further information is available in the guidance.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Eligible costs (depending on the nature of the Fellowship) include a monthly subsistence, Lead organisation expenses, travel costs and fees for academic qualifications. Further information on Darwin Fellowship awards can be found in the Darwin Round 25 Guidance.

How to Apply: 

• You will need to apply online for Round 27 Darwin Initiative Fellowship projects through the Flexi grant application portal.
• Before applying, please read the Guidance notes for applicants (round 27) and the The Darwin Initiative: Fellowship award Flexi-Grant user guide.
• Once you have read the guidance, complete the Darwin Fellowship Round 27 application form on the Flexigrant application portal. For drafting purposes, you may find the Darwin Fellowship Round 27 application form (MS Word Document, 152KB) useful.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Ignore at your peril: Palestine ranks high in Arab public opinion

James M. Dorsey

Rare polling of public opinion in Saudi Arabia suggests that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be more sensitive to domestic public opinion on foreign policy issues such as Palestine than he lets on. The polling also indicates that a substantial number of Saudis is empathetic to protest as a vehicle for political change.

The poll conducted on behalf of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy is likely to reinforce Prince Mohmmed’s resolve to crackdown on any form of criticism or dissent at a time that the kingdom is struggling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and a steep fall in oil prices and demand.

The Washington Institute survey strokes with polling by others, including James Zogby, an Arab-American researcher and activist and author of The Tumultuous Decade: Arab Public Opinion and the Upheavals of 2010–2019.

Saudi reluctance to follow in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates in recognizing the State of Israel suggests that autocratic Arab leaders, despite denying freedoms of expression and the media and cracking down on dissent, are at times swayed by public opinion. Polls are often one of the few arenas in which citizens can voice their views.

“I know that the Saudi government under MbS (Prince Mohammed) has put in a lot of effort to actually do its own public opinion polls… They pay attention to it… They are very well aware of which way the winds are blowing on the street. They take that pretty much to heart on what to do and what not to do… On some issues, they are going to make a kind of executive decision… On this one, we’re going to ignore it; on the other one we’re going to…try to curry favour with the public in some unexpected way,” said David Pollock, a Middle East scholar who oversees the Washington Institute’s polling.

Mr. Pollock’s most recent polling suggests that Palestine ranks second only to Iran among the Saudi public’s foreign policy concerns.

Mr. Zogby’s earlier 2018 polling showed Palestine as ranking as the foremost foreign policy issue followed by Iran in Emirati and Saudi public opinion. The same year’s Arab Opinion Index suggested that 80 percent of Saudis see Palestine as an Arab rather than a purely Palestinian issue.

Speaking in an interview, Mr. Pollock said that with regard to Palestine, Saudi officials “believe that they have to be a little cautious. They want to move bit by bit in the direction of normalizing at least the existence of Israel or the discussion of Israel, the possibility of peace, but they don’t think that the public is ready for the full embrace or anything like that.”

Much of the internal polling is conducted by the Riyadh-based King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue, initially established in 2003 to promote government policies in the wake of the 9/11 bombings and Al Qaeda attacks in the kingdom itself.

Mr. Pollock concluded in 2018 on the basis of three years of polling of Saudi public opinion that only 20 percent favoured open relations with Israel prior to resolution of the Palestinian issue.

Saudi Arabia last week said it would only formalize its relations with Israel once the 2002 Arab peace plan that calls for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been adopted by Israel.

The UAE said its move had been in part designed to prevent Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, occupied during the 1967 Middle East war, that would have rendered the Arab peace plan irrelevant.

Mr. Zogby suggested that widespread doubt that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can be achieved may have softened public attitudes towards relations with Israel.

“This should not be overstated, however, since it appears from our survey that this shift may be born of frustration, weariness with Palestinians being victims of war, and the possibility that normalization might bring some benefits and could give Arabs leverage to press Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians,” Mr. Zogby cautioned.

Public responses in the Gulf to the formalization of the UAE-Israeli relationship have been divided, often more diverse in countries with a greater degree of freedom of expression and assembly.

Voices in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, countries with tightly controlled media and no legal political groupings, spoke out in favour of the UAE move.

Political groups, civil society organizations, trade unions and professional associations in Kuwait and Bahrain, many associated with the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement, were more critical.

A statement by more than half of the members of Kuwait’s parliament insisted that there could be no normalization without a resolution of the Palestinian problem.

Oman’s grand mufti, Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalili, sought to dampen potential Omani aspirations of following in the UAE’s footsteps by declaring the liberation of occupied land “a sacred duty.”

The importance of public opinion in the Gulf was highlighted in the Saudi poll by responses to the notion that “it’s a good thing we aren’t having big street demonstrations here now the way they do in some other countries” – a reference to the past decade of popular revolts that have toppled leaders in among others Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Algeria and Sudan.

Opinion was split down the middle. 48 percent of respondents agreed, and 48 percent disagreed.

Saudis, like most Gulf Arabs, are likely less inclined to take grievances to the streets. Nonetheless, the poll indicates that they may prove to be more empathetic to protests should they occur.

“Arabs know what they want and what they do not want. They want their basic needs for jobs, education, and health care to be attended to, and they want good governance and protection of their personal rights. While they are focused on matters close to home, at the same time they continue to care deeply about the denial of legitimate rights and the suffering of other Arabs, whether in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, or Yemen,” Mr. Zogby said.