Battle for Mosul: Prospects for the Immediate Future

Ranjit Gupta

On 17 October 2016, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi announced the commencement of the battle for Mosul. He also said that except for the Iraqi army, police and security forces, “no others will be allowed to enter Mosul;” Iraqi troops have agreed to stay out of Kurdish territory and the Peshmerga have promised they will not enter Mosul. However, the Iraqi government has little political clout or military capability to enforce this eminently desirable restraining measure in respect of non-state groups. Unexpectedly, rapid advances have been made despite Islamic State (IS) fighters putting up fierce resistance. The IS being defeated and Mosul and Nineveh Provinces being recaptured is now a certainty. Though this would mark the welcome end of a savagery infused and blood soaked episode, it is distinctly possible that another, and longer term, unhappy episode in this northern Iraqi region could begin. 

The assault on Mosul is led by the Iraqi army, police and special forces, supported by the Kurdish Peshmerga and backed by US coalition led air strikes and special forces. Additionally, Sunni militias, many trained by/proxies of Turkey, and the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) or Hashd al-Shaabi, composed of approximately 40 predominantly Shia militia groups many of which have close ties to Iran, are also involved, but outside Mosul. Once the common enemy – the IS – is removed from the scene, the centrifugal and competing forces of sectarianism and separatism will inevitably come to the fore. In fact, this may well start happening while the fight against the IS is still underway, even potentially risking an abortion of a successful outcome of the battle. 

Given the deserved ill-repute of the PMF for vengeance attacks on Sunni populations of towns liberated from the IS earlier, it would be a miracle if clashes do not occur between them and others involved in the assault. In early November, they took control of key points on the highway between Mosul and the IS capital Raqqa in Syria and are seeking to take over the strategic town of Tel Afar, near the Syrian border, which is populated mainly by Sunni Turkmens; this could prompt Turkish intervention against them. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other Turkish leaders have made it clear that they will protect the Turkmen community and other Sunni populations in the battle theatre wherever needed. 

Turkey’s unambiguously stated intent of intrusive involvement is an ominous portent. Brazenly rejecting the Iraqi government's repeated demands for removal of its forces from Iraqi territory and despite the Iraqi government’s categorical opposition, Erdogan has insisted that Turkey, with 2,000 well-armed and equipped troops stationed near Bashiqa, only 8 kms northeast of Mosul, and more troops and armour in other border regions and just across the border, must and will be involved in the battle for Mosul and must be at the table to decide Mosul’s future since Mosul and Kirkuk, indeed the whole of Nineveh province, are “part of our [Turkey’s] soul,” (incorporated into Iraq, established in 1920, only in 1923/26). Reopening the issue almost a century later, Erdogan has said that "Insistence on (the 1923 borders) is the greatest injustice that can be done to the state and the nation…If everything is changing in the world of today, we cannot consider adherence to the treaty of 1923 a success.” 

On 07 November 2016, the Kurdish Peshmerga won back control of Bashiqa from the IS. Despite having cordial political and particularly strong economic relations with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), the Turkish foreign minister very recently said that “If there is a threat to Turkey from Iraq, we will use all our resources and rights, including a ground operation…We aren't saying this to Iraqis alone, but to the United States and all coalition nations, (and) to the northern Iraqi government” (Kurdish Regional Government). 

A century-long struggle for independence for the Kurds may be nearing a turning point. Having enjoyed de facto self-governance for over a decade, they will not easily let go of this new opportunity, keeping in mind its particularly significant role in the fight against the IS. The Iraqi Kurds are savouring a sense of empowerment and self-confidence as never before. In a February 2016 interview to the German newspaper ‘Bild’, KRG President Masoud Barzani, inter alia, said that Iraqi Kurds have been waiting for independence “for too long…..We are not Arabs, we are our own Kurdish nation... If the people of Kurdistan are waiting for someone else to present the right of self-determination as a gift, independence will never be obtained. That right exists and the people of Kurdistan must demand it and put it into motion. The time has long been ripe for it, but we are currently concentrating on the fight against Daesh; as soon as Mosul is liberated, Kurds will meet with ’partners in Baghdad’ and talk about our independence.” If pursued excessively assertively, new conflicts could arise. 

The question of who will control/govern Mosul will immediately arise. No plans have been announced, partly because this could unravel the coalition seeking to liberate it. Shia-Sunni clashes and atrocities on different minorities are almost inevitable. Then, almost inevitably, the PMF and the Sunni forces trained by Turkey will also almost certainly enter the fray and in the context of increasing mayhem, direct Turkish intervention is a very distinct possibility and this in turn could bring in other countervailing foreign intervention.

Oil rich Kirkuk is a city that has been particularly hotly contested between the Kurds and the Iraqi central government for decades. The defeat of the IS will reopen the issue of Kurdish control of Kirkuk – the Kurdish Peshmega had taken over after 12 June 2014, when the Iraqi army fled following the success of the IS’ 2014 Northern Iraq offensive. Once the dust settles in Mosul, the central government will seek to reclaim disputed territories and/or recently Kurdish-occupied areas (see map) and Kirkuk in particular – all of which the Kurd leadership has no intentions of withdrawing from. Thus, another conflict is in the making. 

Iraq’s misfortunes are unlikely to end with the defeat of the IS.

Trump's Trade Scenarios: Implications for India

Amita Batra



The year 2016 has sprung many a surprise, not the least of which has been the outcome of the US presidential elections. The economic policy stance of the president-elect Donald Trump has been evident in his oft-repeated ‘inward-looking’/isolationist pronouncements in the course of the election campaign. These though, have not been substantiated with any policy detail for a serious analysis. Much commentary therefore remains in the realm of speculation. There is, however, no doubt that the globalisation engendered inequities have been at the heart of Trump’s economic policy declarations. Expectations of a reversal of some of the earlier trade agreements and policies may therefore not be entirely misplaced. 

If the expression of an aversion to trade as reflected in the pre-election speeches was to turn into reality then it is possible that the largest trading economy becomes more protectionist in its trade policy. The core elements of trade policy as specified in the course of the election campaign include imposition of higher tariffs on imports from China and Mexico specifically, and a general increase in tariffs otherwise. Mega regional trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will in all likelihood not be taken forward. Trade agreements in general seen as instruments of unfair concessions breeding inequities may also be subject to re-negotiation; the intention of building a wall between the US and Mexico being most symptomatic of this impending trend. There have also been indications of a US pull-out from the multi-lateral rule making trade organisation, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), in case there is any resistance to its imposition of protectionist policies. Other stated intentions have been with regard to changes in immigration policies with a more restrictive visa regime. The broad objective of the policy changes being bringing manufacturing back to the US, greater employment and hence greater prosperity, and in the process, recovery of losses in global trade for the US economy, in particular vis-à-vis the Chinese economy.  

As has been predicted by many analysts already, any attempt by the US economy towards the use of protectionist instruments will be countered by retaliatory measures by other economies, including China, with the likely impact being serious in terms of not just the initiation of a trade war with China but that of applying brakes to international trade in general. The WTO has already expressed concern at the slowdown of world trade in 2016 as the pace of growth has been slower than that of the global economy, unlike the trend over the last decade and a half. The US being the world’s largest importer with a share of almost 14 per cent in world imports, the imposition of higher tariffs will naturally be detrimental to world trade. In addition, the US economy may not gain as the attempt to push domestic manufacturing may imply higher costs and inefficient production, as long established comparative advantages will be altered in the process. While aimed at some, costs of the re-adjustment may be spread across to other economies as well. India, for example, will find it difficult for its ‘make in India’ programme to yield substantive benefits in such an adverse global trade environment. Higher tariff walls will be detrimental to manufacturing exports. As the largest export market for India with a share of 15 per cent in India’s total exports in 2015-16, higher tariffs in the US may prove to be a difficult hurdle for India to surmount and to convert its potential comparative advantage through the ‘make in India’ initiative into higher exports. 

The US is also a major destination for India’s IT, ITeS and BPO services exports. Together, these accounted for US$ 82 billion-worth of exports in the financial year ending in March 2015, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data. If Trump, again as per the campaign rhetoric against immigrants, decides to adopt a restrictive H-1B visa regime, India’s existing comparative advantage in the services sector would be diluted. 

The pull- out from the mega regional trade agreement, the TPP, may have multiple effects on the Asia Pacific trade architecture. It is likely that the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, which is seen as an alternative trade configuration to the TPP for the Asian economies, including India, may now emerge as the main trade agreement for regional economies. The higher trade standards (WTO plus) of the TPP, it is possible, will now be sought in the RCEP by those economies that are members of both the RCEP and TPP. India, with its persistent stance of differentiated tariff liberalisation offers to the RCEP economies, may then find negotiations more difficult. In the absence of the US-led agreement from the region, there may even be the possibility of China acquiring a pre-eminent position not just in the RCEP but also in the Asia Pacific region, to the extent of pushing forward its own proposal of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). In fact, in the absence of the US counter, the China-led FTAAP - first proposed in the 2014 APEC meeting -may even become the lead trade configuration in the Asia Pacific region. India may have to rethink its strategy for participation in the regional trade architecture if this APEC members’ configuration gains traction in the near term. India is not yet a member of the APEC.  

A possible alternative, though, to accepting Chinese leadership in global and/or regional trade deals, would be a return to the multilateral system and the rise of the WTO, where it may be difficult for China to emerge as the dominant player. This may even be a favourable outcome for India, a longstanding WTO loyalist. But for this, the WTO needs to reassert itself as the international body that deals with trade issues in a more inclusive manner. Given the dragging of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) now for a decade and a half, this seems like a humongous task. But if developing country coalitions comprising the more dynamic economies could pave the way, this may just be the time for a resurrection of the WTO and the DDA. And, India could actually take the lead in this process. 

Donald Trump and China: A Contest for Primacy

Srikanth Kondapalli


The dramatic win of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the US at the hustings has caught many a nation by surprise given the critical outreach of the country in the economic, political, strategic and military spheres of the world. 

Trump’s foreign policies after assuming office from January 2017 have become major debating points in terms of their impact on the rest of the world. While Trump made several disparaging remarks during the heat of the election campaign, in the last three decades, there is a definite trend in the US of a huge chasm between electoral-time barbs and criticism of other countries, and the pragmatic policies followed while in office. If this trend continues, predictable outcomes in US foreign policy towards the rest of the world may be witnessed.

Traditionally, US foreign policy has veered between isolationism till World War II, and off-shore balancing through the hundreds of naval bases and facilities globally through controlled engagement policies or a mix of the latter policies. With over US$18 trillion in gross domestic product and by heading the 'new economy' of information and communications technologies, apart from its cutting edge military forces, US policies influence every nook and corner of the Earth, although interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have dented this US profile.
Trump has promised to make the US great again. He has also been critical of its uneven and costly relations with allies, and mounting trade deficits with China and its currency manipulation policies. If Trump expands cooperative relations with Russia as promised during the elections – thus making radical departures in US policy that has so far stressed further isolation in the backdrop of developments in Crimea – then China is likely to face US' wrath in the coming years. 

More significantly, China has been challenging US' primacy in all the three new security domains – cyber, space, and maritime. This would constrain Trump’s plan to make the US great in the decades to come. While Trump may not flag the Democratic Party’s obsession with human rights violations in China, China’s contestation of US primacy in global and regional affairs is likely to be the flashpoint between the two in the coming years. Domestically, the new leadership in China since 2012 has jettisoned Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “keeping a low profile” and has instead had been following a policy to “accomplish something” -  which is protecting China’s interests abroad. 

Despite his isolationist streak, Trump understands that China’s advances globally and regionally came at the cost of the US and Russia playing one against the other. Thus China became a swing state in the later part of the Cold War by aligning with the US and contributing to the disintegration of the then Soviet Union. Also, by joining the US-led globalisation process China became the largest trading country, displacing the US and its allies. By staying neutral in the Georgian and Crimean crises, China forced Russia to veer towards Beijing in the light of mounting European sanctions. Trump’s approach towards Russia thus will alter geo-strategic equations and expose Chinese vulnerabilities.

Trump is also aware that China has been attempting to force the US out of Asia since the USS Impeccable was shooed away from the South China Sea in 2009. Comments made by the Chinese President at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in May 2014 on Asian countries looking after their own security rubbed the US the wrong way. Weaning the Philippines and Malaysia away from the US camp has further curtailed US manoeuvrability in the South China Sea. Beijing's free trade policies vis-à-vis Australia, New Zealand, East Asia and other regions has added momentum towards the nudging of the US from these regions. 

China unsuccessfully sold the US the idea of a “new type of major power” relationship at the Sunnylands meeting between Obama and Xi Jinping in June 2013, even as it denied a similar status to Japan and India. China is nudging the US to acknowledge Beijing’s 'equal' status with the US – a point Trump will find unpalatable in the coming years. 

As a businessperson, Trump also noted in the election campaign the acute asymmetry in US' trade relations with China. Of the more than half a trillion in trade with China, Beijing has a surplus of nearly US$400 billion with the US. China, with its tight control over Renminbi valuation, artificially kept it as low as over 40 per cent, despite the International Monetary Fund (IMF) accommodating it as a part of the global basket of currency in December 2015. This is hurting the US economy, as Trump noted during the election campaign. 

Despite reaching out to Trump soon after the election results were known and despite the outwardly calm, China’s leadership is wary of the unchartered course of its relations with the US under the new presidency. Soon after the election results, while President-elect Trump made statements regarding the pursuit of pragmatic policies during his tenure, including being even in his policies with other countries, China is a concerned country.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Internship Programme 2017

Application Deadline: 28th February, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries

To be taken at (country): WHO regional and out-posted offices (Africa, Americas, Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia, and Western Pacific)

About the Award: Participants include both students and young professionals from different cultural, academic, as well as geographic backgrounds with a common interest: a motivation to pursue a career in supporting public health. Interns/volunteers come from the region of the Africa, and Asia. WHO had interns from Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, Saudi Arabia, Romania, Turkey, Japan, Jamaica to name a few. They are from various academic backgrounds, from international politics, political sciences, computer sciences, marketing finances, biology, journalism and public health, to political communications and video editing.

Type: Internship

Eligibility: 

• You are at least twenty years of age on the date of application;
• you are enrolled in a course of study at a university or equivalent institution leading to a formal qualification (graduate or postgraduate) (applicants who have already graduated may also qualify for consideration provided that they start the internship within six months after completion of their formal qualification);
• you have completed three years of full-time studies at a university or equivalent institution prior to commencing (bachelor’s level or equivalent) the assignment;
• you possess a first degree in a public health, medical or social field related to the technical work of WHO or a degree in a management-related or administrative field;
• you are not related to a WHO staff member (e.g., son/daughter, brother/sister, or mother/father);
• you are fluent at least in one of the working language of the office of assignment; and
• you have not previously participated in WHO’s Internship Programme.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Internship: WHO’s Internship Programme offers a wide range of opportunities for students to gain insight in the technical and administrative programmes of WHO. WHO internships are not paid and all costs of travel and accommodation are the responsibility of the intern candidate.

Duration of Internship: six to twenty four weeks.

How to Apply: If you are interested in completing an internship at a WHO office please follow the relevant below link(s). You will find information on the application process and additional information on WHO’s Internship Programme on the website of the respective office. Choose to apply in any of the offices via the links below:

• WHO Headquarters
• WHO Regional Office for Africa (email)
• WHO Regional Office for the Americas
• WHO Regional Office for Europe
• WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean
• WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia
• WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific

Visit Internship Webpage for details

Award Provider: World Health Organisation (WHO)

Important Notes: WHO does not charge for internships. If you encounter programmes that “facilitate” your obtaining an internship by paying money, please contact the WHO. WHO does not charge for internships.

KECTIL Youth Leadership Program 2017 for Young Leaders in Developing Countries. Fully-funded to the US

Application Deadline: 30th November, 2016

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

To be taken at (country): Online, USA (for the Youth Leadership Conference)

About the Award: KECTIL that refers to the Knowles Educational and Charitable Trust for International Leadership, is based on the following principles:

• Creating an authentic, collaborative network of high potential youth from developing and least developed countries can break down prejudices, lead to cultural, religious and gender understanding and give youth the comfort that they are more than just themselves– they are part of a mutual youth-based support system with the goal to make a positive difference in their lives, their Colleagues’ lives and the lives of those in their communities.
• Identifying, embracing and mentoring high potential youth (17-24) from developing and least developed countries can have a dramatic effect on the youths’ dreams, service to others and life accomplishments.
• Nothing comes easy and there is “no free lunch.” The results will not be achieved without hard work, dedication and an open mindedness to cultural understanding and compassion.

Kectil comprises of the following program categories:

• Web-Based Mentoring Program
  • Monthly Kectil Talks with Leaders in Science, Business, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Public Service
• Assignments & Sharing
  • Connect with other students on social media (Facebook & Twitter) with facilitated web-based group discussions
• Youth Leadership Conference
  • Intensive Leadership Training, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Workshop, Meetings with Successful Leaders, and Creation of Network of Youth Peers in Developing Countries
• Alumni Web-Portal
  • Maintenance of Network of Youth Peers in Developing Countries, Interaction with New Youth Participants, Availability of Mentorship from Program

Type: Training

Eligibility: Participants must be talented Youth (aged 17-25) in least developed and developing countries who have demonstrated a talent and passion for leadership, scholarship or innovation, are proficient in English and have access to a computer and the internet.

Number of Awardees: 15

Value of Programme: 

• The Kectil Program will select fifteen of the most active participants in the Web-based Program to be given a special award.
• The participants will have attended all of the Sessions and completed the online pre and post assignments.
• The Kectil Program will host a Youth Leadership Conference in Atlanta the first week of August 2017 for a select group of highly qualified youth from least developed and developing countries.
• The conference will include intensive leadership training, an innovation and entrepreneurial workshop, community service training, and meetings with successful leaders in a small group interactive setting.
• The Conference will provide additional instruction over and above the year-long web-based program to Kectil Colleagues who have the greatest potential to be future leaders and who come from communities in most need of passionate and positive youth role models.
• The Conference will be held on the campus of Emory University. Participants will stay in University dormitory rooms and will eat in a cafeteria serviced by the University dining program.

Duration of Programme: 1 year

Eligible Countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial, Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

How to Apply: Please Register to Submit An Application

Interested Participants must go through the Application requirements before registering to submit an application

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: Knowles Educational and Charitable Trust for International Leadership (KECTIL)

The TPP is Dead

Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers

We have worked to stop the TPP and other Obama trade agreements for more than five years. We were part of the ‘movement of movements’, the largest coalition ever opposing a corporate trade agreement, which stopped it. It included all sorts of activists who work on human rights, worker rights, the environment, climate change, Internet freedom, health care, food safety and more.

People told us stopping the TPP was impossible. Even after the election of Trump, people still told us we could not win, the corporations wanted this and they would get it. But, after years of work, the impossible became the inevitable and the TPP is dead.

Even before the election the TPP was near death. Years of people working to stop it made TPP stand for Toxic Political Poison. First, the movement exposed the TPP which the Obama administration had sought to keep secret while it negotiated a global corporate coup with the aid of hundreds of corporate lawyers, executives and lobbyists.

The movement organized spectacle protests that drew attention to an agreement being secretly negotiated. People across the country organized leafletting, teach-ins and visibility actions. There were national and global days of action, and there were Twitter storms and memes on Facebook. It became impossible to hide the TPP. The secret was exposed. Once exposed, the movement educated people about what it contained. Wikileaks and others leaked portions of the document. As more was exposed, it became less popular.

The movement conducted national call-in days that garnered hundreds of thousands of calls to Congress. When we went to Congressional offices, phone calls coming in on the TPP were constant. When fast track was being considered in 2015, we built an encampment on Capitol Hill for three weeks. We worked across the political divide with Tea Party and conservative Republicans who shared our concerns about the trade deficit, lost jobs and loss of sovereignty.

The battle over fast track trade promotion authority slowed the progress of the TPP. It took years longer to get fast track than the administration had hoped. One compromise that the administration made to get fast track was to publish the TPP text after it was completed so the public and members of Congress could read it. Again, the more people read about it, the less popular it became.

These political battles also showed the risk associated with the TPP. John Boehner, the former Speaker of the House, lost his job because of how he twisted arms to get votes for fast track and how he punished Republicans who exposed fast track. Members fought back against these tactics and Boehner’s career was quickly ended. He may have won fast track for Obama, but lost his place in Washington, DC. A message was sent to all elected officials – be careful with the TPP, it is politically toxic.

By delaying fast track the TPP was pushed into an election year and that was a key to our victory. In the campaign, those running for office were forced to answer to the people. Do you support the TPP? Do you support giving up US sovereignty? Allowing unsafe foods into the country? Forcing GMO’s into global agriculture? Increasing the prices of pharmaceuticals? Making corporations more powerful than governments? The questions kept coming because the TPP affects everything.

Every candidate for president had to come out against the TPP. The only one who didn’t was Gary Johnson who did not seem to understand the agreement. He believed the slogan “free” trade when in fact it was corporate trade, crony capitalism on an international scale. Senators who supported TPP changed their positions in order to keep their jobs. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan continually warned the President that the votes were not there to ratify the agreement, even in a lame duck session.

Popular Resistance has been planning all year for an action camp and series of protests next week to kick off the lame duck and stop ratification. This will now turn into a celebration — the people stopped a global corporate coup. The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) also died as a result of people powered pressure on both sides of the Atlantic. We will ensure that the final agreement, the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), perhaps the most dangerous of Obama’s three agreements, is also dead. TiSA is also in trouble as member nations experience difficulty completing its negotiations.

All these Obama agreements failed because the corporations demanded too much. They wanted to force the US big finance capital system on countries all over the world. They wanted to institutionalize pushing public services into private profit centers. They wanted the power to sue corporations if their profits were impacted by laws written to protect the public interest. Leaks showed the US was the most aggressive on behalf of corporate interests out of all the countries involved in these negotiations. This almost made it impossible to reach agreement on the TPP and has stopped agreement on TTIP and TiSA. If Trump attempts to negotiate a “better deal” for US corporations it will be almost impossible to get other countries to agree. The TPP and Obama trade agenda may end up like the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has made little progress since the Seattle protests of 1999. They are likely to flounder and go nowhere.

Now, we need to put forward a new approach to trade, an approach that protects the people and planet and that is negotiated in a transparent and participatory way. Trade must make the Paris climate agreement goals a reality, lift up international labor standards and protect the environment as well as the food supply, Internet, access to healthcare and more. We need agreements that allow communities to protect themselves from corporate abuses. The death of the TPP is a step toward ending neo-liberalism that has privatized public goods, enriched corporations and created a global wealth divide. Future trade agreements should work toward making the International Declaration of Human Rights and related agreements reality. Trade can uplift the world but it must be clear that is one of the goals of trade.

The defeat of the TPP is a tremendous victory that should propel us forward. It shows organized people have power even in the US oligarchy. We need to build on this power, continue our unity as a movement of movements and demand that the people’s agenda becomes the political agenda, not the agenda of big business and the wealthy oligarchs. It is time for people power to rule. We still have a lot of work to do, but we should celebrate this great victory and move to set a people’s agenda for the United States.

Panic in America: People in Revolt

Luciana Bohne

A “grab them by the pussy,” racist, sexist white man has grabbed the White House, and the polite class is twirling in outrage like dervishes approaching oblivion. 

This insult to the “dignity of the office” and the “nation” is more shocking than the action of the black man who took the Nobel Peace Prize and then proceeded to bomb seven countries.

Hillary Clinton’s victory was projected as the sole possible outcome of a reasonable, civilized, and progressive society, as the elite see it, which only eight years earlier had voted for the first African American president in its history. Instead—vanity, vanity, all is vanity—the troglodytes won.

Not so simple. Liberal brains pickled in the formaldehyde of identity politics are unwilling to recognize in the politically incorrect catastrophe of Donald Trump’s victory the blowback to the ferocious economic plunder by the neoliberal order, backed by decades of wanton and unchecked military aggressions.

The neoliberals’ vaunted “internationalism” (more realistically, American neocolonialism) has created a weak domestic economy which to a degree justifies the nationalist call to look homeward and entrench behind the borders of sovereignty—one of Trump’s rallying cries.

A Chinese observer, Qiao Liang, author of Unrestricted Warfare(1999), abused in English translation with the inaccurate subtitle,  “China’s Master Plan to Destroy America,” recently identified the germ of the country’s general economic disease in the neoliberal shift from productive to financial investment:

“This financial economy (using money to make money) is much easier than the real (industry-based) economy. Why will it bother with manufacturing industries that have only low value-adding capabilities? Since August 15, 1971, the U.S. has gradually stopped its real economy and moved into a virtual economy. It has become an ‘empty’ economy state. Today’s U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has reached US$18 trillion, but only $5 trillion is from the real economy.”

People in revolt against the neoliberal order

For forty-five years, the neoliberal elite ruled the US by the “free hand of the market.” In plain terms, among other abuses of the social contract, they have launched a class war to maximize profits by depressing wages.”  The mystical “hand” has been slapping around American workers by moving industry to places where labor is cheaper and unions weak. In turn, the exploited foreign workers have sought relief from desperate wage conditions in their countries by immigrating to the US, embittering the native workforce.

Nearly 50 million Americans, nearly twenty percent out of 325 million, are poor. The unemployment rate, officially around five percent, is closer to ten percent.

Twenty years ago Patrick Buchanan’s “pitchfork populism” appealed to only twenty percent of Republicans. After the crash of 2008 and the recession, which rescued the “banksters” and immiserated masses of Americans, public attitudes against the neoliberal global order (“internationalism” in the Establishment’s lingo) solidified and hardened, crossing party lines.

Buchanan’s political heir, Trump gathered the motley disaffected masses into a surge of revolt against the neoliberal status quo, winning the White House. As a tiny minority of sober voters had predicted in 2008, Obama’s presidency disappointed and enraged the masses of people whose material conditions his administration worsened by continuing and even accelerating the policies that his voters had expected him to reverse. In this sense, Obama’s blithe indifference to domestic poverty is responsible for Trump’s victory. The liberals have no one to blame but themselves.

Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, Corbyn, Sanders, and even Syriza and Podemos, in a discordant, confused, and unfocused cacophony of warning bells, are ringing the changes of public revolt. With any luck, the deafness of the international elite may in good time force a global social revolution. This is why the left should keep an open mind both about the limitations of these disgruntled popular forces and their potential for radicalization as a result of repeated frustration to effect change.

The elite are shaken

As the one percent of ruling elite well understands, Trump’s victory signals the rejection of their policies. This week’s issue of The Economist is devoted to Trump’s “stunning victory” and to what it means for the world economy and corporate America, “now that the old certainties are gone” (emphasis mine).

Trump’s election reveals, in the first place, the extent of the public’s animosity toward globalization. Though they may not yet understand it as the re-colonization of the world, the people certainly feel its material effects and resent being its losers. The trade pacts, which Trump so cleverly and justifiably denounced, have benefitted no one but the corporations and the [indebted] consumers.

In the second place, Trump’s election has tapped into the public weariness of the endless wars, though not in the spirit of international solidarity or appeals to pacifism. He is definitely not a socialist.  His appeal is nationalist, in the “isolationist” tradition—not an innovative perspective.

Instead of denouncing militarism (he expressed support for the galactic size of the defense budget), Trump has fueled resentment of allies in military alliances (NATO, specifically) as “free-loaders,” ignoring the fact that these military alliances do not serve any other interests than the interests of the US.

Nevertheless, to the elite this change of course from intervention to retrenchment presents an unwelcome shake-up, especially since it bodes a foreign policy of detachment, including relinquishing the aggressive face-off with Russia and China.

In the third place, Trump’s invidious stance on immigration—not different de facto from Obama’s—drives Trump to emphasize “sovereignty” (“got to have a country, people”), a most unwelcome word to the architects of invasions and regime change. It is understood by them that there is only one sovereignty, the sovereignty of international capital in a borderless world. That Trump advocates pulling back from wars and regime change and making the US an isolated national fortress goes against everything they have sought to achieve.

In sum, Trump’s presidency bodes a return to tariffs and protectionism, a more restrained military posture, and a curb on the movement of labor. Less a political “revolution” than a change of course back to the 1840s’ populism of the unpleasant Andrew Jackson, who was hardly a man of peace or of social justice. Not much in it for left hopefuls except for the significant factor that popular rage has driven the change. Undeniably, Trump’s election is the working class’ payback for the elite’s betrayal and damage during over four decades of undeclared but effective class war.

It is doubtful that Trump will achieve much of his isolationist agenda, though he will have to make some concessions to the popular expectations of attenuating and even reversing neoliberal choices, as the conservative government of Theresa May is having to do in Britain.

In the US, as in Europe, the social structure has come under pressure, and the neoliberal regime feels threatened and insecure.

Regime change and its terrors

In the first hours and days after Trump’s election, the Western media—just as it did with Brexit—was disguising the elites’ terror at the looming regime change and their horror at the prospect of seeing the “free hand” in handcuffs as a moral revulsion at the arrival in the White House of a tribe of primitive white-trash rude-necks, straight out of the racist “populism” of the 1920s’ Ku Klux Klan, fueling public hysteria with hyperbole and sensationalism.

The headlines in The Guardian on Thursday morning after the US election read like tabloids from the gutter press.

“Mourning in America: Will Trump Destroy the Country?’

“I think he’s a damaged person”

“A night of shattered dreams”

“Transgender Americans fear for safety after Trump win: ‘We are traumatized.’”

“The first black American president will now be succeeded by a man endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. This, according to Trump and his supporters, male and female, is what the American dream actually looks like.”

“Misogyny won the US election – let’s stop indulging angry white men.”

“Forget angry white men – white women pushed Trump to victory”

Gloria Steinem’s article in the same Guardian blames it all on “white-lash and man-lash,” even though fifty-three percent of white women voted for Trump, but some of these women have no college degree, so they probably don’t count.

For Steinem, it was the exceptional quality of Clinton’s character that lost her her chance. She was too good, too full of integrity, too devoted to women’s rights, too un-conniving to break through the highest of the glass ceilings.

She hoped but never expected her to win:

“If a first female president were someone like, say, Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin, or another woman who knew how to play the game and win, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But Hillary Clinton didn’t just play the game; she changed the rules. She insisted that women’s rights are human rights, that women can decide the fate of our own bodies, that workers of all races should get paid the same as white men for the same work.”

Steinem’s plaintive hagiographic obituary of Clinton’s defeat omits mentioning that Clinton opposed raising the minimum wage of Haitian workers to 62 cents per hour because it would have lowered the profits of American corporations, exploiting the poorest of the poor there.

It must be difficult for a feminist Democrat to mention Haiti and Clinton Foundation in the same breath, for the racist and sexist profiteering of Bill and Hillary is most nakedly documented there. Its account can be read here.

As to evaluating character, it’s been a long time apparently since Steinem read Virginia Woolf’s idea of a feminist: “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.” (A Room of One’s Own).

These are not the virtues usually associated with the bellicose, corrupt, and ruthlessly ambitious Clinton, even if one refrains from calling her the Butcher of Libya and the Wrath of Honduras, her legacy as Secretary of State.

Clinton incarnates the most ferocious interests of international financial capital and of the high-tech industries that feed the military-industrial complex and the global surveillance system.

So, Gloria, yours is stupid stuff. If feminism is not about the pursuit of peace, it is simply the female version of patriarchal exploitation and opportunism. Weep not that she lost; weep that feminism has sunk so low as to celebrate in her person anti-feminist qualities such as ambition, careerism, competition, imperialism, and warmongering.

Such feminism has lost the moral ground to accuse anyone of sexism, let alone the people who voted for Trump.

It is now evident that identity politics, the mantra of race and gender, has been cultivated by the neoliberal order to obscure the category of class, while actually waging class war, and to relegate the working poor to the realm of the unmentionable.

Under worsening economic conditions, masses of the alienated have perceived their alienation. This is happening all over the neoliberally ravaged world.  To side with the elite against the rage of the people is madness. Worse, it is to alienate the people further to the right in a classic social dynamic that, under severe conditions, delivers full-blown fascism.

So This Is How The US ‘Revolution’ Will Unfold

Dan Glazebrook

In late 2012, Peter Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut made a startling claim. Based on an analysis of revolutionary upheavals across history, he found that there were 3 social conditions in place shortly before all major outbreaks of social violence: an increase in the elite population; a decrease in the living standards of the masses; and huge levels of government indebtedness. The statistical model his team developed suggested that, on this basis, a major wave of social upheaval and revolutionary violence is set to take place in the US in 2020. His model had no way to predict who would lead the charge; but this week’s election gives an indication of how it is likely to unfold.

Let’s take the first condition, which Turchin calls “elite overproduction”, defined as “an increased number of aspirants for the limited supply of elite positions”. The US has clearly been heading in this direction for some time, with the number of billionairres increasing more than tenfold from 1987 (41 billionairres) to 2012 (425 billionairres). But the ruling class split between, for example, industrialists and financiers, has apparently reached fever pitch with Trump vs Clinton. As Turchin explains, “increased intra-elite competition leads to the formation of rival patronage networks vying for state rewards. As a result, elites become riven by increasing rivalry and factionalism.” Indeed, based on analysis of thousands of incidents of civil violence across world history, Turchin concluded that “the most reliable predictor of state collapse and high political instability was elite overproduction”.

The second condition, popular immiseration, is also well advanced. 46 million US citizens live in poverty (defined as receiving an income less than is required to cover their basic needs), whilst over 12 million US households are now considered food insecure. Whilst this figure has been coming down consistently since 2011 (when it reached over 15 million), it remains above its pre-recession (per-2007) levels. Trump’s policies are likely to sharply reverse this decrease. Trump’s second promise in his ‘contract with voters’ is a “hiring freeze on all federal employees”, amounting to a new onslaught on public sector jobs. This is in addition to what seems to be a promise to end the direct funding of state education (to, in his words, “redirect education dollars to…parents”), and to end all federal funding to so-called ‘sanctuary cities’, that is cities which do not order the state harassment of immigrants or force employers to reveal the nationalities of their workers. These cities are some of the most populated in the country, including NYC, LA, Dallas, Minneapolis and over two dozen others.

In concert with his avowed intention to lower taxes on the wealthy, including slashing business tax from 35 to 15%; to smash hard fought workers’ rights (under the mantra of ‘deregulation’); and to scrap what little access to healthcare was made available to the poor throgh Obamacare – not to mention his threat to start a trade war with China – poverty looks set to skyrocket. It is not hard to see how social unrest will follow.

As for the third condition – government indebtedness – it is hard to see how the massive tax breaks Trump has proposed can lead to anything else.

Turchin writes that “As all these trends intensify, the end result is state fiscal crisis and bankruptcy and consequent loss of the military control; elite movements of regional and national rebellion; and a combination of elite-mobilized and popular uprisings that manifest the breakdown of central authority.”

But Trump is also preparing for that. Exempt from his public spending cuts, of course, are police and military budgets, both of which he promises to increase. And when questioned on the issue of police brutality last year, Trump said he wanted to see the police be given more powers. In other words, the tacit impunity which currently exists for police violence looks set to be legalised. And history shows that there is nothing like police impunity to spark a riot.

Meanwhile, as his policies fail to deliver the land of milk and honey he has promised, the demonisation of scapegoats will continue. Having already vowed to round up and deport two million immigrants, and to ban Muslims from entering the US, it is already clear who these scapegoats will be. However, as well as migrants, popular anger will also be directed towards whatever namby-pamby liberals have blocked him from waging his promised war against them: be it Congressmen, judges, trade unions, pressure groups, or whoever. A combination of increased executive powers plus the use of his newly mobilised mass constituency will be directed towards purging these ‘enemies within’.

“My model suggests that the next [peak in violence] will be worse than the one in 1970” says Turhcin, “because demographic variables such as wages, standards of living and a number of measures of intra-elite confrontation are all much worse this time”. All that remains to be seen is – who will win.

Australian government mounts attack on Human Rights Commission

Peter Symonds

Over the past week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Liberal-National Coalition have used the outcome of a case under the Racial Discrimination Act to mount a vicious attack on the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and its president Gillian Triggs. In a cynical attempt to divert attention from the ongoing crisis within the government’s ranks, they have launched a phony “freedom of speech” crusade against the Act.

Under section 18C of the Act, it is unlawful to do anything that is reasonably likely “to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group of people” because of their “race, colour or national or ethnic origin.” On Friday last week, the Federal Circuit Court threw out a long-running case against the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and three ex-students who had allegedly contravened that section.

The QUT case underscored the anti-democratic character of the Act’s provisions that were being used to sue the three students. Their allegedly “offensive” behaviour consisted in posting Facebook posts expressing their objection to being asked to leave a computer lab reserved for indigenous students. The staff member in charge at the time, Cindy Prior, initiated a formal complaint with the HRC over the Facebook posts, one of which declared: “QUT stopping segregation with segregation?” When no resolution of the complaint was reached within the HRC, Prior took it to the court, seeking $250,000 in damages from the university and the students.

Turnbull, backed to the hilt by the Murdoch media, is now engaged in a frontal assault on the HRC, accusing it of “bringing” the legal case to court. In an extraordinary attack, he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio on Monday: “What the judge was saying to the Human Rights Commission is, ‘You’ve been wasting the court’s time. You’ve been wasting government money.”

Triggs replied on the ABC’s “7.30” program last Monday, explaining that her commission did not bring the case to court, but rather carried out its remit, which was to attempt to conciliate the complaint in an effort to prevent it from becoming a legal battle. She said the Act set a “low threshold” on accepting a complaint and, if that threshold were met, the commission was obligated to investigate and seek to conciliate the parties. In the event that no agreement was reached, either party could take it to court.

Undeterred, the Coalition government ramped up the pressure, announcing on Tuesday a joint parliamentary inquiry into the HRC that would examine its procedures and consider amendments to the Act.

Amending or removing section 18C has been a hobby horse of the Coalition’s right wing ever since 2011, when Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt was found guilty of racial vilification for having accused “fair-skinned” Aborigines of taking advantage of indigenous programs.

Last month, before the QUT judgment, the Murdoch media found another martyr for the cause, after complaints were lodged under 18C against cartoonist Bill Leak, who had depicted an Aboriginal father, holding a beer and unable to remember his son’s name when told by police to control him. The cartoon was clearly a political dog whistle to racist sentiment that Aborigines are drunks who cannot care for their children.

In waging their campaign against the HRC and 18C, the government and its media allies are posturing as defenders of free speech. This is a sham, and no one should be taken in by it. In the first place, their aim is not to uphold the democratic right to freedom of speech for all, but to selectively remove any legal obstacle to the inflammatory rants of commentators like Bolt and their open whipping up of racism and xenophobia.

Successive governments, Coalition and Labor alike, have made deep inroads into basic democratic rights under the reactionary banners of the “war on terror” and “border protection.” The government ministers and media hacks now parading as defenders of the right to “free speech,” have themselves backed legislation that severely curtails that basic right.

* In May 2015, the Coalition government passed the Border Force Act, with Labor’s support, that made it a crime, punishable by two years in prison, for doctors, nurses and other professionals working inside Australia’s offshore detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island to divulge information about the horrendous conditions facing refugees in these far-flung hell-holes.

* In late 2014, the Coalition, with Labor’s backing, enacted a new power to jail whistle-blowers for up to 10 years for revealing information concerning anything that the attorney-general had unilaterally deemed a “special intelligence operation.”

* Under the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) passed in November 2014 with bipartisan backing, anyone can be jailed for five years, or groups can be outlawed, for advocating “terrorism,” even if no terrorist act actually occurs. “Terrorism” is so vaguely defined that it potentially allows for the prosecution of opponents and critics of the illegal US-led wars in the Middle East.

Such laws are only possible because Australia has no bill of rights or constitutional guarantee of free speech or of other fundamental democratic rights. Moreover, the High Court, Australia’s supreme court, has, in recent years, eviscerated the limited right to freedom of political communication that the court’s judges had previously found to be implied by the country’s 1901 colonial-era constitution.

Moreover, successive Coalition and Labor governments have joined the US-led persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for the “crime” of exposing the diplomatic intrigues, provocations, human rights abuses and war crimes of American imperialism and its allies, including Australia. In the case of Assange, Canberra refused to take the most elementary steps to protect the rights of an Australian citizen.

The current witch hunt against the HRC is particularly aimed at Triggs, who has already come under intense pressure to resign after criticising the government over its flouting of international refugee law. It was launched just weeks after Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson resigned in protest against the government’s attempt to muzzle him. These attacks underscore the increasingly lawless character of the government and its determination to free itself from the formal strictures of official departments and bodies.

The broad scope of the campaign against the HRC was highlighted in a comment in Murdoch’s Australian last Monday by right-wing commentator Jennifer Oriel. Taking her cue from US presidential candidate Donald Trump, she declared it was time to drain the “swamp” of the “human rights industry.” Oriel not only called for the repeal of section 18C and the dismantling of the HRC, but also of the state Discrimination and Equal Opportunity Commission, arguing that “the Australian people cannot afford the vast system of activism swamping taxpayer-funded minority groups, media, academe and the law.”

Like Trump, Oriel and the Murdoch media are making a pitch to wide layers of the population whose lives are dominated by the insecurities and distress caused by unemployment, low wages, casual jobs, poverty and the lack of decent health and education services, and seeking to divert their hostility to official politics into a reactionary direction. At the same time, those who defend section 18C and the Racial Discrimination Act—the Labor Party, the Greens, ethnic and legal organisations, and the various pseudo-left organisations—promote the divisive politics of identity based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual preference in order to weaken and divide the working class, and suppress the class nature of the ever-widening social divide.

The social base for identity politics lies in layers of the upper middle class for whom the mechanisms of “positive discrimination,” based on gender and race, have been a useful lever for advancing their careers in academia, the media, the state apparatus and party politics. As the social crisis facing working people has intensified following the 2008-09 global economic breakdown, identity politics has been increasingly promoted to block a unified movement of the working class to defend its common interests against the profit system.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) opposes the Racial Discrimination Act.  In unequivocally defending the basic democratic right to free speech for all, the SEP opposes the Act from the left, not from the right. We have nothing in common with the fraudulent posturing of the Turnbull government and its media allies as proponents of free speech, even as they enact laws to muzzle their critics and opponents.

Freedom of speech is not something that can be applied selectively, according to whether one agrees or disagrees with the views being advanced.

That is why, in 2011, the SEP opposed all those—Labor, the Greens and the pseudo-lefts—who cheered the conviction of the right-winger Bolt as a “victory” in the struggle against racism. We insisted that the working class could not cede the fight against racism and xenophobia to the capitalist state—its courts, laws and police—which was itself established on the basis of the genocide of Aborigines and has played the central role in promoting racism ever since, including through the “White Australia Policy,” which operated for more than 60 years.

The SEP warns that while Section 18C is being invoked today against right wingers such as Bolt and Leek, their cases will be utilised in the future as precedents to silence socialist opponents of the political establishment. Under conditions of mounting political economic and social crisis, the ruling elites will not hesitate to exploit the entire battery of anti-democratic laws, developed as part of the “war on terror,” to suppress the emerging opposition and political radicalisation of millions of ordinary workers and youth.