African Leadership Centre (ALC) Peace and Security Fellowship for African Women 2017/2018

Application Deadline: The deadline for applications is 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Kings College London, UK. Candidate’s home country

About the Award: This Fellowship is an intellectual and financial award to those who are able to portray convincing demonstrable or potential capacity to bring about intellectual, policy or other change in their field. The Fellowship is a postgraduate non-degree programme, and does not lead to an academic qualification. Since October 2011 the ALC, King’s College London and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Nairobi, have delivered the Peace and Security Fellowships for African Women in partnership.

Offered Since: 2011

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• Candidates must be female citizens of African countries.
• Successful candidates must hold valid travel documents prior to acceptance.
• Candidates must have knowledge of, or experience of women’s rights, gender and development issues.
• Candidates must be able to demonstrate a commitment to contribute to work on peace and security in Africa.
• Candidates must demonstrate commitment to the core values of the programme: Independent thinking; Integrity; Pursuit of Excellence; and respect for all forms of Diversity
• Candidates must have a relevant institutional base and be endorsed by an organisation with which they have been involved for at least two years. Exceptional candidates without such organisational ties may be given special consideration.
• Candidates must have a demonstrable plan for how to utilise knowledge gained in the Fellowship upon return to their countries and/ or organisations
• Candidates must hold a Master’s or Bachelor’s degree with an equivalent level of professional experience.
• Candidates must be fluent in spoken and written English.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: This is a fully funded opportunity, not including any visa application and processing costs. Funds will be made available to the Fellows to cover tuition, subsistence in the UK and Africa, and travel expenses related to the programme in both phases.

While funding will be made available to pay for accommodation, successful applicants are expected to find their own accommodation both in the UK and Africa. Fellows are strongly advised to make all necessary accommodation arrangements prior to taking up their positions on the Fellowship Programme.

Duration of Fellowship: This is a one-year Fellowship, divided into two six-month phases.

Phase 1: The first phase will be delivered at the ALC, Nairobi and King’s College London. During the training, the Fellows will be encouraged to engage critically with the discourse on conflict, security and development in Africa. They will also visit and study institutions working in the field of peace and security in Africa and Europe. This phase will include a simulation seminar series during which mock conflict management situations will be practiced.

Phase 2: In the second phase, Fellows will be attached to an African regional organisation or Centre of Excellence to undertake practical work in the field of peace and security including peace and conflict management processes.

How to Apply: Applications will be accepted Online at the following link:  Peace and Security Fellowship for African Women .

The following documents are required, before your application will be considered complete:

 A letter of application detailing your relevant experience and qualifications.

 A supporting statement no longer than 1,000 words, detailing why you think that this programme is important and future plans for engagement with peace and security issues.

 2 letters of recommendation (To be received directly from the Referees by the deadline of 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017.)

 Recent curriculum vitae.

 Two writing samples (maximum 3000 words each).

All supporting documents should be submitted via the online portal. Please note that no email applications will be accepted. If you are experiencing problems with the online application portal, please contact us at admissions@africanleadershipcentre.org . We encourage all applicants to submit their applications early to avoid delays and failure to submit because of technical challenges.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, University of Nairobi

African Leadership Centre (ALC) Peace, Security & Development Fellowships for African Scholars 2017/2018

pplication Deadline: The deadline for applications is 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be taken at (country): Kings College London, UK. Candidate’s home country

About the Award: The Peace, Security and Development Fellowships for African Scholars seeks to nurture junior African Scholars interested in pursuing a career in peace and security and to equip them with the skills necessary to achieve this. This training will conclude with attachments of Fellows to Universities in Africa working on development, peace and security issues where Fellows will participate in research and teaching. The programme will contribute to building academic expertise on peace and security that is grounded in the pursuit of excellence and integrity. They are funded by the Carnegie Corporation, New York.

The ALC aims to build a new community of leaders generating cutting edge knowledge on peace, security and development. To this end, the ALC undertakes to do the following:

• Taught MScs on Security, Leadership and Society, including mentoring and institutional attachments;
• Peacebuilding and Security research – with a focus on “Future Peace and the Role of the State in Africa”;
• Consolidating partnerships with African universities through transfer of specified and joint research outputs into virtual learning across partner institutions;
• Creating and strengthening digital knowledge transfer platforms and policy influencing processes.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• In order to be considered eligible, candidates must have citizenship in an African country.

• Successful candidates must hold valid travel documents prior to acceptance.

• The competition is open only to junior faculty members based in universities in Africa from departments of political science; international relations; history; law; development studies; peace; security and conflict studies, and related departments.

• Candidates need to demonstrate an interest in pursuing careers in the field of peace, security and development. Previous study or engagement with the issues of security and development is not required. However candidates must demonstrate a basic familiarity with these issues.

• Candidates must additionally be able to demonstrate capacity to undertake research on issues relating to peace and security in Africa. Successful candidates will be attached to a Research Cluster where they will work with ALC Research Associates and Senior Research Fellows to undertake research on select aspects of the ALC Research Agenda on “Future Peace and the Role of the State in Africa”.

• Candidates will be expected to have a clear plan on how to utilise knowledge gained in the Fellowship upon returning to their countries and academic institutions.

• Candidates must be fluent in spoken and written English.

• Candidates must be able to demonstrate the following values during the application phase: Independent thinking; Integrity; Pursuit of excellence; and respect for all forms of diversity.

Number of Awardees:  Not specified

Value of Fellowship: This is a fully funded opportunity, not including any visa application and processing costs. Funds will be made available to cover tuition, subsistence in the UK and Africa, accommodation, research-related costs, and all travel expenses related to the programme. However, successful applicants are expected to find their own accommodation both in the UK and Africa. In the UK successful candidates will be able to apply for University of London accommodation, and they can also make their own accommodation arrangements. Candidates are strongly advised to make all necessary accommodation arrangements well in advance of taking up their positions at King’s College London. Information on KCL student accommodation can be found at this link:

Duration of Fellowship: This Fellowship covers an 18-month period, comprising a rigorous training and research programme on peace, security and development, which includes a 12-Month MSc programme at King’s College London and a six-month attachment to an African University to undertake an independent research project.

How to Apply: Applicants to the Fellowship Programme must make individual applications to the MSc Security, Leadership and Society by 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017.

The following documents are required, before your application will be considered complete:

• A letter of application detailing your relevant experience and qualifications.
• A supporting statement no longer than 1,000 words, detailing why you think that this programme is important and your future plans for engagement with peace and security research.
• 2 letters of recommendation (To be received directly from the Referees by the deadline of 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017).
• Recent curriculum vitae.
• One writing sample (maximum 1000 words).
• One research proposal of no more than 1000 words on a topic dealing with any one of the following 5 sets of questions:
  • What is the predominant vision of peace among Africa’s youth and future leaders? What are the greatest sources of insecurity for African youth?
  • What leadership issues confront a next generation of youth seeking to build and sustain peace?
  • What can we learn about African youth experiences for future discourses about the governance of security and development?
  • How are the dynamics in African societies and societal responses to security and development challenges compelling a change in the state?
  • How are African regional organisations responding to the rapidly changing African security landscape?
• Please indicate in your application letter, if you have completed the University application (Note that you are required to submit your application to the MSc Security, Leadership and Society, as detailed above by the deadline of 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017).

All supporting documents should be submitted via the online portal. Please note that no email applications will be accepted. If you are experiencing problems with the online application portal, please contact us at admissions@africanleadershipcentre.org. We encourage all applicants to submit their applications early to avoid delays and failure to submit because of technical challenges.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Providers: The African Leadership Centre jointly with King’s College London and University of Nairobi

Important Notes: Applicants to the Fellowship Programme must make individual successful applications to the MSc Security, Leadership and Society by 23:59 hrs, Sunday 30th April 2017. The MSc is a separate but parallel application procedure handled by King’s College London, rather than ALC. To be accepted on to the Fellowship, applicants must be accepted on both the MSc programme by King’s and the Fellowship Programme by ALC.

Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) International Scholarship 2017/2018 – Iran

Application Deadline: 31st May, 2017 for the September academic session. Anything later than this date will be considered for the January academic session

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries except Iran

To be taken at (country): Iran

Eligible Field of Study: Scholarship is open for students pursuing studies in the following schools:
Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Advanced Technology in Medicine, Allied Health Sciences, Public Health, Nursing and Midwifery and Rehabilitation

About the Award: The TUMS Scholarship Program is set up by TUMS-IC to facilitate students and scholars from all over the world to conduct their study and research at TUMS-IC. The scholarship aims to increase the mutual understanding and scientific exchange of scholars and students of Iran and scholars and students from the rest of the world. TUMS is the best university in the field of medical sciences in Iran and it is the second best medical university in the Middle East.

Offered Since: 2012

Type: Doctor of Medicine Scholarship

Eligibility: 

• For undergraduate level of studies: The applicant must have finished her or his high school.
• For graduate level of studies: The applicant must have had obtained a degree in the field related to her/his desired field of study
• The teaching language will be in English. The applicant need to have proof of English language ability to write, read, and understand.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The value of the scholarship varies from 3,000 to 15,000 US$. The scholarship covers students’ first transport from the airport, housing, partial food plans, computer labs, sports and student union membership, library, and internet access.

Duration of Scholarship: Seven (7) years

How to Apply: Applicant must complete an online Application Form.
Once the application has been submitted successfully the Scholarship Coordinator will contact the prospect student to submit further documents.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Office of Vice Chancellor for Global Strategies and International Affairs, Tehran University of Medical Sciences

Important Notes: Classes during the first 2 years of the program are held in English, but the rest of the M.D. program (the third year onwards) will be held in Persian.

The language of instruction at TUMS for international students is English both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, since some of the majors and programs at the undergraduate level require students to have interaction with patients who speak Persian, learning Persian could be obligatory for the students of those majors.

Vilnius University Full-fee Masters Scholarships for International Students 2017/2018: Lithuania

Application Deadline: 1st May 2017

Eligible Countries: International non-EU/EEA countries

To be taken at (country): Lithuania

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• Candidates must be non-EU and non-European Economic Area citizens.
• Candidates cannot recieve other financial support to cover tuition fee from other Lithuanian or Foreign organizations.
• Candidates must be applying for one of Vilnius University Master Degree programmes taught in English or Russian language.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: This scholarship covers full cost of the tuition fee.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: Application for tuition waver is available when applying through Online Admission System. Candidates must submit all necessary documents for admission and tick an appropriate field in the admission system.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Vilnius University

Enough of Russia! There’s an Epidemic of Despair in the US

Howard Lisnoff

If the left is waiting for Donald Trump to be impeached by the Republican Congress, then we need to take a collective deep breath and be ready to wait until hell freezes over. Trump-Russia ties are all the rage on nightly news programs and in the print media. The pontificating is almost without end. And it’s the liberal commentators who seem to be giving the issue the most emphasis on their nightly programs.

James S. Henry gets to the heart of the matter on The Reality News Network in “Why Further Revelations on Trump’s Russian Connection Might Fail to Bring Him Down” (March 24, 2017). Henry, an economist, attorney, and investigative journalist put it this way:

I think there’s a risk that the U.S. center-left is basically obsessed with this story and is looking for kind of a magic bullet solution to the Trump administration. That’s going to distract us from going back to work doing the kind of organizing at the grassroots level that’s necessary for the 2018 elections. We need to fight and get ready for all of the issues that are on the table… with respect to climate change, Obamacare, the social programs that are being stripped, the outrageous increases in the defense budget.

James S. Henry got it right! This obsession over Trump’s and Trump’s advisers’ connections both before and after the 2016 election to Vladimir Putin and Putin’s lapdog oligarchs is keeping those on the left focused on issues that won’t add up to a hill of beans save some nonexistent photo or video of Donald Trump literally in bed with someone. And even that wouldn’t do all that much damage given the words and audacious actions by Trump that are already known. People were beaten up at Trump campaign rallies and that didn’t do much to sway his base and, it may even have garnered him more support. He refers to women with the degrading word  “pussy,” and he gets a lion’s share of a segment of the vote of white women. He talks about an O.K. Corral scenario on Fifth Avenue and he still gets elected! He gets pummeled on healthcare and his base conducts extremely small but sometimes violent rallies around the country.

If readers really want to see some compromising information about interference in elections around the world, then a brief journey into U.S. direct interference in democratic elections would fill volumes, in fact it’s an alphabet soup of interventions of both electoral and military kinds (“The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere,” The Washington Post, October 2016). Interventions in Chile, Iran, Iraq, and Vietnam come to mind with disastrous and lethal human consequences.

This is not 1974 and there aren’t tapes from the Oval Office that pointed a damning finger at Richard Nixon for his part in covering up the break-in at Watergate office complex. And there isn’t a Congress that has just recently come out of an unpopular war with hundreds of thousands of people who have taken big risks in heroically fighting the power of the government over several years.

Back on the ground and grounded in reality, The Washington Post reports in “New research identifies a ‘sea of despair’ among white, working-class Americans” (March 23, 2017), that suicide rates among both white working-class men and women have skyrocketed since the late 1990s and dwarfs the suicide rate among people from other industrialized countries. The two Princeton University researchers who conducted the study point to “family dysfunction, social isolation, addiction, obesity, and other pathologies,” for the worsening suicide epidemic in the U.S. And this is the electoral cohort who gave Trump his Electoral College victory and propelled him in a losing alliance with the extreme right in Congress in their failed attempt to take healthcare benefits away from this voter base. Besides the terror of despair that can cause people to turn to suicide, it seems that this base of disaffected people are crying out for social, political, and economic remedies that will bring them back to health and well-being in the wealthiest society on Earth. Digging up dirt, both real and imagined, on Vladimir Putin isn’t going to accomplish anything and will serve to keep us occupied while the far right tries and succeeds in getting away with murder of one type or another.

The Smart Way Of Beating Poverty

Moin Qazi

I often wondered why was it that when there were so many social programmes for the poor that poverty was yet so endemic and stubborn. Despite such vast investments there were regions in which we could just nibble at the frozen layers of poverty. This is not to discount the enormous progress we have made in improving the social indicators, but it is when we benchmark our societies with those of other we realize that our achievement pales away.

Either the nets were not cast sufficiently wide or too many holes were blown in them. But money, as a senior programme officer told me, is irrelevant. “What is the point of putting more water into a bucket already leaking badly? The problem is not lack of money. It is lack of accountability of those who spend it.”Even the government feels that 85% of development spending does not reach the poor, being either sponged up by the ‘delivery mechanism’—the consultants, advisers, their equipment or studies—or simply pocketed outright. This has become a touchstone for all government programmes and is now parroted in all Indian development literature.

According to  Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, “In far too many countries, the benefits of growth are being enjoyed by far too few people. This is not a recipe for stability and sustainability.” She says, “Let me be frank: in the past, economists have underestimated the importance of inequality. They have focused on economic growth, on the size of the pie rather than its distribution. Today, we are more keenly aware of the damage done by inequality. Put simply, a severely skewed income distribution harms the pace and sustainability of growth over the longer term. It leads to an economy of exclusion, and a wasteland of discarded potential.”

She compares rising inequality in the US and India. “In the US, inequality is back to where it was before the Great Depression, and the richest 1% captured 95% of all income gains since 2009, while the bottom 90% got poorer. In India, the net worth of the billionaire community increased twelvefold in 15 years, enough to eliminate absolute poverty in this country twice over.”

In the village, each successive generation is born into the rigidity of caste; each generation must bear, at some stage in his life, the rapacity of the moneylender and the merchant and the random cruelty of nature: famines, floods, and pestilence. And yet the majority survives and adapts relying on their grit and their raw native wisdom. These are individuals who are repositories of both knowledge and wisdom and their survival in adverse situations is accomplished by their own ingenious methods of social and economic engineering. , There is thus in the villages some collective wisdom for which the professional’s knowledge is not a substitute. This is why the divide between the professionals and the villages is so serious. Successful development practitioners have always recognized the richness of this local wisdom and have used both it and its bearers in both designing solutions and implementing them. they have used their expertise to fashion out programme from inside out so that their strategies    can gel with the local matrix .these are the programmes that have enjoyed local acceptability and ownership and have given the h  most sustainable results. Thus the mantra for development professionals must be: if we go to the villages, it is to study them, to learn from and to do good for them.

Their trust cannot be bought outright or manipulated with money, or by grafting urban assumptions of development onto existing rural practices, which in fact may destroy existing workable structures. We must first understand their economy at a granular level and, most important, thoroughly understand their local culture. That approach is a welcome contrast to the grandiose foreign-aid schemes that do more harm than good. Experiences show that governments too often derail the money intended to help the poor to pad the pockets of civil servants instead

A critical success factor is creating organizational capabilities at the local level that can mobilize and manage resources effectively to benefit the many intended recipients. We need plans, systems, mutual accountability and financing mechanisms. And even before we have all of that apparatus in place—what I call the economic plumbing—we must first understand more concretely what such a strategy means to the people who can be helped. Capacity building at the village level is crucial to making them aware of the entire development process, including the aid structure, so that they are in a position to monitor it effectively.

For rural communities, participation is a way of engaging with development agencies to ensure better use of   resources and planning for objectives that can have real benefits for them. To do this, communities  need to analyze constraints as well as available resources, identify and agree on the nature of priorities , develop action plans to address the various constraints, take charge of implementation, and use collective pressure for making sure that the service providers   do their job. Communities also identify what incremental resources are needed and organize themselves for mobilizing these resources. Through their empowered organizations, villagers can more strongly voice their approval or disapproval with the services received, and indicates how service delivery can be improved.

This, however, is not to diminish the role of professional outsiders who have successfully entered into the conditions and outlooks of rural people in order to fashion programmes from the inside out, so to speak, by showing deep respect for the capabilities of the people whose lives they hope to improve and being persistent as well as patient (being impatiently patient, one might say) in their goals and mission.. We must try to relate to our clients as people and not as some mathematical abstraction, some algebraic alphabets. What is now needed is that development manager’s work with people at the lowest level of the economic ladder rather than dealing them as statistics in a file.

Tackling poverty requires an approach that must start with the people themselves and encourages the initiative, creativity and drive from below. The strategy must be at the core of any transformatory exercise if the results are to be lasting and enduring. I had the privilege of watching the village women acquire a sense of dignity once they were given tools for self-sufficiency. And I learned, maybe most importantly, to listen with my heart and not just my head. Are poor clients last in the long list of our objectives?

I was once associated with the setting up of a village centre which I supervised delegated the villagers the entire job. It showed me the potential for collective action that lay beneath the villagers’ apparently passive exterior and paved the way for the building of the village centre. Villagers worked together, stitching banners, painting posters, erecting flagstaffs on the roofs, and stringing wires across the street for the reception of government officials who came to visit. They marvelled at this voluntary initiative of the local community. It was a major lesson even for them.

I saw villages that enjoyed a dramatic increase in crop yield and incomes after agricultural scientists advised farmers on watershed techniques—a fancy term for digging ditches so good that soil is not washed away. While it will not solve India’s deep-rooted agriculture problems, better information can significantly boost food production and rural incomes.

Although there is much discussion in public forums of involving stakeholders for appropriate development of the society in which the poor live, poor people rarely get the opportunity to develop their own agenda and vision or set terms for the involvement of outsiders.

The right way ahead to let the poor lead the development agenda .We need to heed the wisdom of the legendary philosopher Lao Tzu:

“Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.”

How the Conflict in Syria Benefits Washington’s Allies

Nauman Sadiq

In the wake of Arab Spring uprisings in March 2011, protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months, violence between demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarization of conflict. Moreover, the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq was completed in December 2011. Thus, during the initial few months of the Syrian conflict, the United States troops were still stationed across the border in Iraq.

More to the point, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report of 2012 clearly spelled out the imminent rise of a Salafist principality in northeastern Syria in the event of an outbreak of a civil war in Syria. Under pressure from the Zionist lobby in Washington, however, the Obama Administration deliberately suppressed the report and also overlooked the view in general that a civil war in Syria will give birth to radical Islamic jihadists.

The hawks in Washington were fully aware of the consequences of their actions in Syria, but they kept pursuing the ill-fated policy of nurturing militants in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan to weaken the Baathist regime in Syria.

The single biggest threat to Israel’s regional security has been posed by the Shi’a resistance axis, which is comprised of Iran, the Assad regime in Syria and their Lebanon-based surrogate, Hezbollah. During the course of 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel; and Israel’s defense community realized for the first time the nature of threat that Hezbollah and its patrons, Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, posed to Israel’s regional security.

Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what will happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel?

The American interest in the Syrian civil war is partly about ensuring Israel’s regional security and partly it is about doing the bidding of America’s regional Sunni allies: Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States. Saudi Arabia, which has been vying for power as the leader of Sunni bloc against the Shi’a-dominated Iran in the regional geopolitics, was staunchly against the invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2003.

The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein constituted a Sunni Arab bulwark against the Iranian influence in the Arab World. But after Saddam was ousted from power in 2003 and subsequently elections were held in Iraq which were swept by the Shi’a-dominated parties, Iraq has now been led by a Shi’a-majority government that has become a steadfast regional ally of Iran. Consequently, Iran’s sphere of influence now extends all the way from territorially-contiguous Iran and Iraq to Syria and Lebanon.

The Saudi royal family was resentful of Iranian encroachment on traditional Arab heartland. Therefore, when protests broke out against the Assad regime in Syria in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the Gulf Arab States along with their regional allies, Turkey and Jordan, and the Western patrons gradually militarized the protests to dismantle the Iranian resistance axis.

Regarding the Western interest in collaborating with the Gulf Arab States against their regional rivals, bear in mind that in April last year, the Saudi foreign minister threatened that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets if Congress passed a bill that would allow the Americans to sue the Saudi government in the United States courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack.

Moreover, $750 billion is only the Saudi investment in the United States, if we add its investment in the Western Europe and the investments of UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investments in North America and Western Europe. Only yesterday, Middle East Eye published a report that Qatar has invested $50 billion in the UK and that its property portfolio in London is three times larger than the Queen’s.

Furthermore, in order to bring home the significance of Persian Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few rough stats from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 265 billion barrels and its daily oil production exceeds 10 million barrels; Iran and Iraq, each, has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day, each; while UAE and Kuwait, each, has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day, each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold more than half of world’s 1500 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves.

Additionally, regarding the Western defense production industry’s sales of arms to the Gulf Arab States, a report authored by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy found that the Obama Administration had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training during its eight years tenure. Similarly, £43 billion Al-Yamamah arms deal between the BAE Systems of UK and Saudi Arabia is another case in point.

Thus, keeping the economic dependence of the Western countries on the Gulf Arab States in mind during the times of global recession when most of manufacturing has been outsourced to China, it is unsurprising that when the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decided to provide training and arms to Sunni Arab jihadists in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan against the Shi’a-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Obama Administration was left with no other choice but to toe the destructive policy of its regional Middle Eastern allies despite the sectarian nature of the proxy war and its attendant consequences of breeding a new generation of Islamic jihadists who would become a long-term security risk not only to the Middle East but also to the Western countries.

Similarly, when King Abdullah’s successor, King Salman, decided to invade Yemen in March 2015, once again, the Obama Administration had to yield to the dictates of Saudi Arabia and UAE by fully coordinating the Gulf-led military campaign in Yemen not only by providing intelligence, planning and logistical support but also by selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition to the Gulf Arab States during the conflict.

Bloodletting in Polish army leadership

Clara Weiss 

The current wave of bloodletting in the senior ranks of the Polish army is unprecedented in the history of NATO.

Some 92 percent of the cadre in the general staff and 82 percent of colonels have been replaced in recent months, according to the Polish defence ministry. Information from the right-wing online website Wprost.pl indicates that between November 17, 2015 and January 31, 2017, 504 high-ranking officers resigned from military service, including 34 generals and 47 colonels. Numerous senior officers have also resigned in the subsequent period.

The most fundamental reason for the resignations are sharp differences between senior officers, many of whom are closely integrated into NATO, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and in some cases were trained in the United States, and the ultra-nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS) government.

The officers accuse Minister of National Defence Antoni Macierewicz, a close ally of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, of bypassing them on important strategic decisions, awarding leading positions according to political loyalty, purging officers with even a remote connection to Poland’s “Communist” (Stalinist) past and, as a result, weakening the professionalism and fighting ability of the Polish army.

Strong opposition also exists in the army to the plans to establish a Territorial Defence Force (WOT), a paramilitary force made up of volunteers, whose creation was agreed to by the Sejm (Polish parliament) last November.

Retired General Waldemar Skrzypczak stated that the army had been gripped by “an atmosphere of persecution for anyone with a different opinion from the government. They are treating the generals dismissively. They throw anyone out of the army who stands up for their own opinion and replace them with those with no backbone.”

Skrzypczak accused Macierewicz of purges comparable to the actions of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and warned, “The question now is whether we are still credible for NATO.”

General Stanislaw Koziej, a brigadier general and a professor of military science, attacked the government for “overt political interference into the competencies of the army command.” In addition, he said, other problems included “civil servants taking the role of political superiors and the politicisation of the army along party lines.” He added, “The scale and speed of the changes generate a risk to the effective functioning of the army.”

The US magazine Foreign Policy wrote in January, “The chief of defence was not consulted when the ministry replaced his deputies. People are appointed to positions without the necessary ranking required. The NATO-Corps deputy commander is supposed to be a two-star general, but a colonel was given the post instead. The Washington military attaché—also at least a one-star position—has been empty since April.”

Among the officers who have resigned are all three generals who led NATO’s Anaconda exercise last year: Marek Tomaszycki, Mieczysław Gocuł and Mirosław Różański.

Różański, former general commander of the Polish armed forces, tendered his resignation in December, the same day as protests by the liberal opposition escalated to a blockade and occupation of parliament. He had held his post, which nominally made him the most influential general in the Polish army, since 2015 and was to have served until 2018. At 52, he was one of the youngest officers in the Polish army and served in the military interventions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to a report in the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Różański opposed all of the important policy goals of Defence Minister Macierewicz. Like many other generals and officers, he rejected the construction of the WOT.

This militia is directly under the command of the Defence Ministry and not the army’s supreme command. It is to be composed of at least 30,000 men and is being recruited mainly from far-right paramilitary units. Many professional officers view it as a competitor to the army and as PiS’ armed wing.

Jerzy Gut, the supreme commander of the Polish army’s special forces, resigned on March 13 due to “personal reasons.” The relatively young Gut, born in 1960, is one of the Polish army’s most experienced officers and has close ties to NATO and Washington. Media reports indicated that Gut had been bypassed by Macierewicz for months prior to his resignation on decisions relating to rearming the military and filling empty posts.

In “liberal” opposition circles, hopes are now being expressed about an intervention by the US government or the military. The magazine Polityka, which is aligned with the bourgeois opposition, in a comment headlined “How will the Americans respond?,” wrote that Gut’s resignation would “surely encourage the US to concern itself with the changes in our army.”

The special forces under Gut’s command were built up over the past decade under the direct supervision of the American army. Almost the entire leadership of the unit, which cooperated closely with the US, has been replaced over the past few months.

After deployments in Bosnia and Iraq, Gut studied at the National Defense University in Washington and in 2014 received the US Special Operations Command medal from the United States army. In 2015, he was commander of the “special forces” unit of NATO’s Response Force (NRF).

Polityka wrote that while the US military has other priorities at present with a new president, there have been indications for some time that “some of Minister Macierewicz’s nominations have produced astonishment among the Americans…Poland has got rid of many military leaders in recent times who had excellent relationships with their NATO colleagues.”

Janusz Bronowicz, who was one of the first generals to resign in early 2016, has been sharply critical of the Defence Minister. He described Macierewicz in Polityka as the “first civilian leader of the armed forces,” and declared that his military reforms would be catastrophic for the country. He wrote further, “The situation is totally unacceptable. And in case of a possible conflict, it is paving the way for a repetition of the defeat of September 1939.” That was when the Nazis overran Poland, beginning World War II.

The “liberal” opposition’s hope for the US to step in or even for the intervention of the military says a great deal about its democratic character. Although the opposition Citizens Platform (PO) has sharp disagreements with PiS over Poland’s attitude towards the European Union and Germany, it fully agrees with PiS on the military build-up against Russia, which threatens to transform Europe into a nuclear battlefield. PO accuses PiS of endangering the fighting ability of the Polish army and its position in NATO with its clique politics.

Despite the bloodletting in the army leadership and the construction of the territorial army, Poland is rearming rapidly. According to official figures, the number of soldiers in the army rose from 96,000 in 2015 to 106,000 in 2017. Over the same period, the number of students at officer schools increased from 490 to 906. Wages for the lower ranks in the army have been increased substantially.

In addition, there are the 30,000 WOT members, a further 30,000 employees of the Defence Ministry and various institutions which supply the military, as well as numerous paramilitary units whose members are neither under the control of the government nor the military.

Tensions erupt between the Philippines and China over disputed island

Joseph Santolan

Over the past several weeks, sharp tensions emerged between Beijing and Manila over the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, exposing the advanced character of the crisis gripping the Philippines, a result of Washington’s preparations for war with China.

The Scarborough Shoal is a triangular chain of rocks and atolls located 140 miles west of the Philippine island of Luzon. In the wake of the Obama administration’s launching its “pivot to Asia” in 2010, this collection of rocks in the South China Sea became the subject of fierce contention. Manila and Beijing came to the brink of a shooting war over the shoal in a military stand-off that lasted for months in the first half of 2012.

Tensions flared up again over Scarborough in the first part of March, as Reuters reported on March 17 that Xiao Jie, mayor of Sansha, a prefecture of Chinese claimed islets and features in the South China Sea, had announced that China would be constructing an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough.

Washington has repeatedly indicated that Scarborough is a geopolitical red-line, and moves by China to construct facilities there would not be tolerated. Speaking in 2016, then US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter threatened that a reclamation activity by Beijing in Scarborough would “result in actions being taken by both United States and ... by others in the region which would have the effect of not only increasing tensions, but isolating China.”

The report on Scarborough coincided with a larger provocation staged by Washington over the South China Sea. Two days earlier, on March 15, Reuters released a report on alleged new Chinese construction in the South China Sea. On the same day, US Senators Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin introduced the South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act, calling for a ban on visas for Chinese people “helping to build South and East China Sea projects.” It would impose “sanctions” on foreign financial bodies that “knowingly conduct or facilitate a significant financial transaction for sanctioned individuals and entities.”

The politics of the Philippines are in an advanced state of crisis as a result of President Rodrigo Duterte’s attempt to rebalance the country’s economic and diplomatic ties toward Beijing by downplaying Manila’s claims in the South China Sea. Prominent sections of his own administration have publicly contradicted the president over questions relating to geopolitics, among them the military, the justice department, and most recently, the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The announcement that China was going to engage in construction on Scarborough brought these tensions to the fore.

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on March 19 demanded that Beijing give an explanation for the reports of planned construction. Duterte, seeking to contain tensions and continue developing relations with Beijing, declared “We cannot stop China from doing this thing. ... What do you want me to do? What do you want? Declare war against China?”

Philippine Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, who has played a central role in promoting the Philippine legal claim in the South China Sea, intervened in the dispute on March 20. He sharply informed the president that he had a “constitutional duty” to defend the Philippines against China. Carpio admitted, however, that in a war, the Philippines was too weak to defeat the Chinese military. He then proposed his solution: “Send the Philippine Navy to patrol Scarborough Shoal. If the Chinese attack Philippine navy vessels, then invoke the Phil-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty which covers any armed attack on Philippine navy vessels operating in the South China Sea.”

In other words, a justice of the Philippine Supreme Court is publicly proposing that Manila provoke a conflict with China in order to invoke Washington’s treaty obligations.

Emboldened by Carpio’s speech, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre declared that Manila was going to file a formal protest against Beijing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. The PCA handed down a ruling against China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea in the middle of 2016, a ruling which Duterte has studiously avoided invoking.

Chinese Foreign Minister Hua Chunying declared on March 22 that China had no plan to build on Scarborough. Hua added that the Chinese “cherish the good momentum of the bilateral relationship [with the Philippines] and will be committed to pushing forward the sound, steady and rapid growth of the relationship.”

An openly acknowledged difficulty with Carpio’s proposal for war with China is that the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) between Manila and Washington, which obligates either party to go to war in event the other signatory is attacked, does not in fact cover the South China Sea, but only “island territories” and ships “in the Pacific.”

Over the past weeks, simultaneous with those over Scarborough, tensions have erupted over a previously politically irrelevant volcanic ridge known as the Benham Rise, a submerged land mass to which no country but the Philippines lays claim, stretching 250 kilometers east of the northern island of Luzon, into the Pacific Ocean. Several leading Filipino political figures, among them Carpio, have publicly speculated that a conflict in the Pacific, not the South China Sea, would be needed to invoke the MDT.

In mid-March, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana—a man who has repeatedly revealed that he speaks for the interests of Washington far more than he does for his supposed boss, Duterte—abruptly denounced Chinese vessels for “conducting maritime surveys” over the Benham Rise.

China responded that they acknowledged that the Benham Rise was part of the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and that they were just sailing through the waters which they were free to do. Duterte announced that he had authorized the Chinese to sail through the Benham Rise. Lorenzana publicly contradicted Duterte, stating that he had received no notice of this authorization and declaring that he was sending ships to the Benham Rise to patrol, and if necessary, confront Chinese vessels. The foreign affairs secretary chimed in, declaring that he also had received no notice of authorization being given to China.

Confronted with this incipient mutiny within the cabinet, Duterte’s national security adviser, Hermogenes Esperon, angrily denounced the defense and foreign affairs statements. He declared that Duterte as the “chief architect of foreign policy, does not need to inform his subordinates about all his decisions. The DFA and DND [Defense] are departments under the President. Are you telling me everything the President does, he has to inform the department?”

On Monday, Duterte met with Chinese ambassador Zhao Jianhau in Davao City where they confirmed plans for Duterte to travel to Beijing at the invitation of Xi Jinping in May. The May meeting, presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella declared, would be the first implementation of a new “bilateral mechanism” for handling “the South China Sea issue.”

This is a remarkable development. Beijing has long pressed for bilateral resolution to the territorial disputes, to which Washington has aggressively counter-posed the need for multilateral discussions—in which it could be a participant and directly influence the outcome. Under former President Benigno Aquino, Manila relentlessly opposed Beijing’s appeals on this issue. What is more, Abella referred to the disputed waters as the “South China Sea,” dropping the nomenclature established under Aquino of “West Philippine Sea.”

At the same meeting, Duterte and Zhao confirmed arrangements for members of the Philippine Coast Guard to travel to China for joint exercises with their Chinese counterparts.

This sharp infighting all points to bitter and intensifying divisions in ruling circles in the Philippines over foreign policy with powerful sections of the Manila elites moving against Duterte over his tilt away from the US, its military ally, and towards China, its major trading partner.

Market turbulence fuels warnings on health of global economy

Nick Beams

Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have pointed to a modest uptick in the global economy over the coming year. But they have warned that growth remains below that attained in previous recoveries and could be rapidly disrupted.

They have two major concerns: the impact of the Trump agenda, based on economic nationalism, on the global trading system and the potential for financial volatility because of over-valuations of the stock market and divergent interest rate policies by the world’s major central banks.

In its Interim Economic Outlook report, issued earlier this month, the OECD said global growth could pick up modestly in 2018 to around 3.6 percent from a projected level of 3.3 percent this year.

But the OECD acknowledged that this slight upturn will make little difference to the living conditions of broad sections of the population.

Commenting on the report, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria said: “Growth is still too weak and its benefits too narrowly focused to make any real difference to those who have been hard hit by the crisis and who are left behind.”

The report noted that the “strength of financial market valuations appears disconnected to the outlook for the real economy, where the growth of consumption and investment remains subdued.”

The US stock market has surged since the election of Trump, largely on the back of hopes for major cuts in corporate and personal tax rates and the prospect of a boost to companies, through generous tax and write-off concessions, engaged in infrastructure projects.

The US stock market shuddered early this week, experiencing significant falls following the failure of the Trump administration to get its repeal of Obama’s health care legislation passed by Congress. This was taken as a signal that the administration may have difficulties with the passage of major tax cuts. While it has recovered somewhat in the past few days, the underlying issue of what many regard as over-valuation remains.

The OECD also pointed to the risk of global financial market tensions as interest rates diverge across major markets. In the US the Federal Reserve is engaged in rate tightening, with a minimum of two further increases in its base rate this year, following an increase of 0.25 percentage points earlier this month. Across the Atlantic, the European Central Bank (ECB) is maintaining its program of quantitative easing keeping interest rates at ultra-low and in some cases even at negative levels.

The prospect of a growing divergence has increased. Yesterday, San Francisco Federal Reserve chief John Williams, an alternate member of the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee, warned that investors should not “rule out” the prospect of more than a total of three rises this year. His remarks reflect the view that the Fed should move rapidly if there are any signs that tightening in the labour market provokes a push for higher wages.

At the same time, the ECB has sought to dampen speculation that a slight shift in the wording of its most recent statement, when it removed a phrase saying it was prepared to act “with available instruments,” might be the start of financial tightening. It said the decision had been over-interpreted amid calls that, with an increase in European growth, the ECB should revert to a more normal policy.

In addition to possible financial market turbulence the IMF and the OECD are fearful of the consequences of the Trump agenda of “America First” economic nationalism.

In a blog post issued on the eve of the meeting of G20 finance ministers held earlier this month, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said that while the global economy was moving to a “better position” it would be a mistake to assume it would automatically return to “rude health.”

“In fact, there has rarely been a period when policy choices have mattered more for what comes next, especially since there are considerable risks to the outlook,” she wrote.

While not directly naming Trump, Lagarde emphasised that “we should avoid self-inflicted injuries” and this required “steering clear of policies that would seriously undermine trade, migration, capital flows and the sharing of technologies across borders.”

But the G20 meeting, at the insistence of US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, removed a clause from its communiqué committing to “resist” protection.

The OECD is also concerned about the impact of the Trump agenda on the global economy, noting that “uncertainties in many countries about future policy actions and the direction of politics are high.”

It warned that a “roll-back of existing trade openness would be costly with a significant share of jobs in many countries linked to participation in global value chains.”

Such concerns were underscored by remarks delivered on Tuesday by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to a meeting of Australian ambassadors considering a “reset” of Australian foreign policy.

In a major speech delivered in Singapore this month Bishop had noted that the output of goods was increasing faster than the capacity of markets to absorb them. Addressing the country’s ambassadors, she said that the US president was “driving an economic nationalist agenda” which was reversing a trend that had contributed to economic growth.

In the post-war period, economic integration had been “historically supported by the United States” and deepened by the opening up of China but “in the last year a counter trend has gathered steam.”

The consequences of this “counter trend” were the subject of remarks this week by IMF deputy managing director David Lipton to government representatives and parliamentarians in Germany.

According to a report in Der Spiegel yesterday, Lipton said that the greatest risk to the global economy was not rising prices for commodities or financial and currency crises but what he called a “geopolitical recession.” This was a reference to Brexit, withdrawal of Britain from the European Union, which formally began this week, and the increasingly protectionist policies emerging from the US.