Expanding Influence: Big China in Little Djibouti

Life as an Afghan Woman

A Weekly Political News Magazine

The Pro-Assad Alliance Is Coming Apart

Issue 1700 - June 15/06/2018

Expanding Influence: Big China in Little Djibouti www.majalla.com

A Tale of Two Photos

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1700- June 15/06/2018

A Tale of Two Photos

Life as an Afghan Woman

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Serbian hairdresser Mario Hvala creates a hair tattoo showing the portrait of Argentinian football player Lionel Messi on the head of a football fan in Novi Sad, Serbia, on June 2018 ,10.

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Expanding Influence: Big China in Little Djibouti

by Thomas J. Shattuck* In early May, Djibouti, a small African country located at the critical juncture between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, made headlines for a surprising reason: the United States demarched the People’s Republic of China for shining military-grade lasers at American pilots while they were flying aircraft. These incidents mark just another chapter in China’s constant attempts

to harass and aggravate American military personnel across the globe.

Djibouti is home to Camp Lemonnier, the only permanent American military base in Africa, which houses some 4,000 personnel. Originally controlled by the French, Lemonnier is now home to the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa.

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Taking a deeper look at the layout of the base and how China has conducted itself in East and South China Seas should cause nations to worry said, “They are very serious incidents. . . . We have formally demarched the Chinese government and we’ve requested the Chinese investigate these incidents.” The U.S. had determined that the lasers originated from the Chinese base, which is only a few miles away from the American one.

However, the Chinese Ministry of Defense quickly responded with the following statement: “We have refuted the false accusations through official channels. The Chinese side has consistently abided by international law and the laws of the local country strictly, and is committed to safeguarding regional security and stability.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying doubled down saying, “You can remind the relevant U.S. person to keep in mind the truthfulness of what they say, and to not swiftly speculate or make accusations.”

Similar incidents have reportedly occurred in the AsiaPacific, so it is hard to take the Chinese at their word on this matter.

Both the United States and China are signatories to the 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, which states, “It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices.”

Chinese People›s Liberation Army personnel attending the opening ceremony of China›s new military base in Djibouti on August ,1 2017. (Getty)

According to reports, around ten such incidents have occurred in the last few weeks, and in the most recent incident, two pilots flying a C130- suffered minor eye injuries while trying to land at the American base.

The injuries to the pilots are what sparked the official demarche, which is a formal diplomatic complaint.

On May 2018 ,3, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White

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The Soviet Union allegedly used military-grade lasers against the Chinese during the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict.

Shining military-grade lasers at pilots and aircraft is particularly dangerous and can cause pilots to lose control of the aircraft, but that has not stopped the Chinese from breaching the agreement. Now, even though there is an agreement on not intentionally blinding people with military-grade lasers, the U.S. has issued a notice to pilots in the area “to exercise caution when flying in

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certain areas in Djibouti.”

The Wall Street Journal also reports that pilots and others in aircraft are wearing eye protection, and “American pilots also are checking their flight plans to ensure that flight operations don’t conflict with air operations by the Chinese military or other nations’ militaries in the vicinity, to ensure that they are not doing anything to provoke the incidents.”

AN EXPANDING CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY In 2015, China began constructing its base on the coast of Djibouti. The construction—and subsequent opening— of the base marked a significant departure from Chinese foreign policy. Never before had the Chinese military established a permanent military base on foreign soil.

Nevertheless, 2015 marked a new chapter in China’s new expansive foreign policy strategy. The base demonstrated a key part of President Xi Jinping’s desire to modernize and expand China’s military to help propel the nation to its rightful place in the world.

When announcing the construction of the base, Xinhua News Agency said, “The base will ensure China’s performance of missions, such as escorting, peacekeeping and humanitarian aid in Africa and west Asia. The base will also be conducive to overseas tasks including military cooperation, joint exercises, evacuating and protecting overseas Chinese and emergency rescue, as well as jointly maintaining security of international strategic seaways.” A common talking point in 17-2015 was that the base would help China continue to support anti-piracy missions off of the coast of Somalia. It also has peace-keeping forces stationed throughout Africa.

The intentions sound noble, but taking a deeper look at the layout of the base and how China has conducted

Pushing into Africa with a military base in Djibouti, which houses militaries from other countries like Japan and France, is showing the world that China’s foreign policy has changed

itself in East and South China Seas should cause nations to worry. “Jointly maintaining security of international strategic seaways” could very well translate into whatever is convenient for China—especially if tensions escalate between any of its rivals like the United States or India, which is keeping a close eye on China’s “string of pearls.” As a part of its One Belt One Road Initiative (OBOR), China is developing ports, or “pearls,” that conveniently surround India along the Indian Ocean.

The base in Djibouti is the first pearl with an official military purpose. There are even reports that China plans to open its next military base in Pakistan.

One satellite imagery analyst, Col. (ret.) Vinayak Bhat of India, explained the structure of the base shortly after it opened on August 2017 ,1, when the Chinese military hosted a flag-raising ceremony. Bhat noted that it can accommodate a full brigade, had 4 layers of walls, a -1,300foot runway, can house unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and underground storage facilities.

He characterized it as a “massive fortress.” But having

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A ceremony is held before ships carrying Chinese military personnel depart at a port on July ,11 2017 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province of China. (Getty)

a state-of-the-art base with impeccable security is not necessarily surprising. However, what is surprising is that the base lacks a completed dock.

No dock would make it difficult for the Chinese military to fully utilize its only international “logistics support base.” Until a proper dock is built—which is currently under construction—China will have to rely on the dock at a nearby commercial port. According to Jane’s 360, construction on the dock began in May and reached 330 meters in length by May 20. The quick pace of construction demonstrates the critical importance of a dock for China’s future plans in the region.

A CROWDED DJIBOUTI Though China only has a -10year lease for the base, it is unlikely that its footprint in Africa will dissipate due to the continent’s importance to OBOR. This base marks the first step in China’s quest to assert its power far beyond its borders. It is one thing for China to claim sovereignty of islands in the South China Sea and use

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less-than-admirable tactics to maintain and to increase that claim. But pushing into Africa with a military base in Djibouti, which houses militaries from other countries like Japan and France, is showing the world that China’s foreign policy has changed.

It now can project its power thousands of miles away, and China is using the base to harass American troops abroad. While the Chinese military is still inferior to the U.S. military because it lacks a blue water navy and only has one antiquated aircraft carrier, the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Liberation Army Navy are setting the groundwork for its attempt to become a peer competitor with the United States in every corner of the globe.

Eventually, China shining a laser at aircrafts will be the least of American concerns. *Thomas J. Shattuck is the Editor of Geopoliticus: The FPRI Blog and a Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

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Life as an Afghan Woman The Quiet, Enduring Offensive Against Women in Rural Afghanistan

by Ann Toews * Clean-shaven and dressed in a Western-style suit, the stranger seated on Rasoul’s carpet asked to marry his host’s daughter, the wife he’d chosen for himself. Rasoul had never seen the caller before—a rarity in his tight-knit neighborhood near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad—so he stalled for time to ask around. Bullying and beatings followed, and a colleague soon confirmed what Rasoul had deduced: the beardless man was a Taliban fighter in disguise.

“I love my daughter more than myself,” Rasoul tells me, explaining why he chose to flee Afghanistan.

Two years later, he lives in a cramped flat in New Delhi’s “Little Kabul” neighborhood with his daughter, who works at a local dentist’s office, and wife. The aging man points to where the insurgents broke his bones. He struggles to stand when I depart.

The Taliban announced another annual spring offensive on April 25, though high profile attacks have shaken Kabul since the beginning of the year.

Afghan civilians are fleeing in large numbers. But

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The refugees of Delhi’s Little Kabul were unwilling to wait in expectation of Rula Ghani’s anticipated cultural change or risk their lives to help achieve it “We have enemies in Afghanistan,” says Firoz, a medical interpreter who lives a few blocks from Rasoul with her five children. She isn’t talking about the Taliban. After her husband died, she was unable to fend off brothers-in-law, who pressured her to marry off her only daughter, 16 at the time. Her own brothers couldn’t defend her from where they lived, so the family left in 2011, despite what Firoz described as a “normal” security situation. There was simply no future in the country for a single mother or her unmarried daughter.

Afghan women wait in line to be treated at the Kalakan health clinic in Kalakan, Afghanistan. (Getty)

outside the major urban centers where insurgents stoke fear and seek to make headlines, many rural Afghans continue to leave for an underreported reason: women’s exclusion from decision-making on marriage—and in marriages. For these refugees, the type of physical insecurity that tends to dominate news from Afghanistan is the terrifying backdrop to what one young Afghan convenience store worker in Delhi calls a less visible “crisis of culture”—a crisis that he believes allows the subjugation of women to persist.

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Several women of Little Kabul who were forced into marriage as children—like Marzia, a single mother of five—were left with untenable unions and few options. Soon after her husband moved his family to India in 2010, Marzia tells me, he’d left them behind for better prospects in Australia. Now, unable to find a job owing to her illiteracy, she is becoming increasingly desperate. She shows me photos of her sons on her phone before pausing, without warning, on one of a bloodied corpse: her sister, she tells me.

The subject of the next photo is a dismembered body: her brother-in-law, she says. Marzia had planned to move to Kabul to live with her sister, whose husband had promised to safeguard her fatherless family of six. But then the Taliban blew up the couple’s mosque, killing, along with Marzia’s sister, her only hope of a future in Afghanistan. Marzia hasn’t talked to her husband in a year, after he declined to sponsor his own family as refugees to Australia. She can’t tell her mother, who is sick in Afghanistan, about her problems. She says it might kill her to know the truth.

Rula Ghani, Afghanistan’s first lady and a bold advocate for Afghan women, agrees with the Delhi convenience store clerk’s assessment that “culture” is the problem—but she seems to think it’s also the

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solution. “The surest way to people’s mind (sic) is through the soft yet formidable power of culture,” she said in late October, and she’s optimistic about the role women can play in cultural renewal, starting by gaining the respect of their families. “To be durable,” Ghani says, “any change to culture needs to come from within. It needs to be owned by its people.”

The most recent Survey of the Afghan People, an annual report of the Asia Foundation based on more than 10,000 face-to-face surveys with Afghan citizens, suggests some gradual cultural shifts. Stated support for giving away a daughter to resolve a dispute (baad) and exchanging daughters in marriage (baddal)—two illegal but persisting practices—declined since 2016. Only 3.8 percent of all Afghans (and 4.4 percent of rural Afghans) think it is ideal for a woman to marry before age 16, though these rates have remained relatively stable since the survey question was introduced to the 2013 survey. An additional 8.6 percent of respondents said the ideal age is precisely 16—the current legal age in Afghanistan, but two years below the international human rights standard.

But the stated ideal is not the norm: forced and underage marriages persist, with effects that impact generations. According to 2017 UNICEF data, nine percent of girls in Afghanistan marry by age 15, and 35 percent by 18. Residents of certain provinces are loath to change tradition. Access to education is the biggest problem facing women, according to Afghans surveyed by the Asia Foundation, but

girls frequently drop out of school early to prepare for marriage or pregnancy. Young wives have little decision-making power in their households and little opportunity to participate in the economy. They often face complications during birth and have poorer overall health. Domestic violence is pervasive.

Access to education is the biggest problem facing women, according to Afghans surveyed by the Asia Foundation, but girls frequently drop out of school early to prepare for marriage or pregnancy

Rural women may soon be just as disadvantaged in the public square—where they have made gains on multiple fronts for more than a decade—as they are in their homes. Many observers call for women’s inclusion in projected talks with the Taliban, a group that brazenly treats women as second-class citizens.

This goal is admirable, and their voices are important.

But insurgents already control or influence 14.5 percent of Afghanistan’s districts and are expected to have a healthy negotiating position vis-à-vis Ashraf Ghani’s government. As a potentially viable political party in a future Afghanistan, the Taliban would have

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Afghan women with their children walk through dense fog on the outskirts of Jalalabad on March 2017 ,23. (Getty)

an official platform to roll back negotiated terms.

The refugees of Delhi’s Little Kabul were unwilling to wait in expectation of Rula Ghani’s anticipated cultural change or risk their lives to help achieve it. Homira, a tall, confident 26 year-old, left Afghanistan when her parents pressured her to marry her cousin. She’d refused: he smoked cigarettes and did drugs. Once in Delhi she met Ali, a similarly animated newcomer who became her husband two months ago. She shows me photos: getting ready at the beauty salon in Bhogal; posing in a blue dress and ethereal veil. Homira called home to Afghanistan before the ceremony, but her mother expressed only sadness. A woman who had known only subservience simply couldn’t imagine this free daughter of hers, laughing loudly in public, loosely veiled, beside a man who thought her his equal.

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* Ann Toews is the Lt. General Bernard E. Trainor USMC Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Outside the major urban centers where insurgents stoke fear and seek to make headlines, many rural Afghans continue to leave for an underreported reason: women’s exclusion from decision-making on marriage-and in marriages

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The Pro-Assad Alliance Is Coming Apart How the US can Push Back Against Iran and Syria 18

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Assad’s position today is as strong as it has been since 2012, when Syria’s armed opposition first started gaining momentum.

That may be about to change, thanks to an emerging fracture in the alliance backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On one side of the divide is Iran, which seeks to consolidate its gains in Syria in order to apply military pressure on Israel. On the other side are the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and Russia, all of which fear a major conflict with Israel that could undermine what they have fought for in the Levant over the past decade. These divisions may finally provide Washington with the opportunity it has been seeking to check Tehran’s ambitions in Syria.

COMING APART Assad’s position today is as strong as it has been since 2012, when Syria’s armed opposition first started gaining momentum. Over the past two years, the regime and its allies have made significant territorial gains, especially in the strategic areas in and around the capital of Damascus and in the last pocket of rebel rule in Homs Province. Assad’s opponents lack either the will or the capability to stop him from slowly winning the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin , Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani after a trilateral meeting on Syria in Sochi on November 2017 ,22. / AFP PHOTO / SPUTNIK / Mikhail KLIMENTYEV (Getty Images)

by Ilan Goldenberg, Nicholas A. Heras In a May 21 speech on U.S. strategy following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo struck a tough tone, promising to confront Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its multinational Shiite militia networks throughout the Middle East. But strong words have yet to be matched with action. For years, the United States has struggled to come up with a strategy for containing and eventually rolling back Iranian influence in Syria, the most hotly contested battlefield in the Middle East.

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Russia has been instrumental in helping Assad remain in power, but the regime’s most important ally has been Iran, which has used its intervention in Syria to lay the foundations of a permanent military presence. The IRGC’s expansive investment in the country has allowed it to reshape many sectors of Assad’s security state—it gave its blessing to Hezbollah’s deployment of thousands of troops inside Syria, has imported thousands more Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Yemenis to fight on behalf of Assad, and has recruited and mobilized local militias from Syria’s various identity communities, including Sunni Arabs. The IRGC has also become enmeshed in the Syrian economy by winning contracts for rehabilitating and expanding the country’s mining and telecommunications industries.

Iran is now trying to use its forces in Syria to apply strategic pressure on Israel. It is working to help Hezbollah build rocket and missile production facilities inside Lebanon and the Lebanese-Syrian border region and continues to transfer sophisticated weapons to the group, which can use them to threaten Israel. And in recent months, Iran has made a number

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of provocative deployments close to Israel’s border and launched rockets into the Golan Heights, triggering a fierce Israeli retaliation.

But this drive for confrontation is where Iran’s priorities are coming into conflict with those of Assad and his other allies. As Assad consolidates his rule, he and his backers are attempting to normalize his presence and secure funding for reconstruction. And although Assad is unlikely to get reconstruction money from the West, he is hoping that Brazil, China, India, and even some European states such as Italy may seek investment opportunities in a rebuilding Syria.

Assad does not want war with Israel, a military power capable of doing significant damage inside of Syria and undermining his drive for consolidation and normalization. Moreover, there will be no international investment if the Syrian civil war is replaced by fighting between Iran and Israel.

The Russians also wish to avoid a Syrian conflict with Israel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, would like to end Syria’s civil war in a way that brings him credit and international prestige. Moscow wants to solidify its hold on its naval base in Tartus and its only air base in the Middle East, in Khmeimim, which it is currently expanding to support future military operations across the region. Putin also wishes to secure reconstruction contracts for his allies, especially those concerning the natural gas reserves off the Syrian coast and the energy-rich desert areas of central and eastern Syria. A major Israeli intervention puts all of that at risk.

Hezbollah, too, is wary of conflict with Israel. Its position within Lebanon is stronger now than ever before, with the group having consolidated political power in the elections in May. It has also warded off the threat of extremist Sunni organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), both of which tried to establish Lebanon as a base for fighting in Syria. The one event that could threaten these gains would be a war with Israel, which could destroy all that Hezbollah

The Trump administration’s official position still emphasizes regime change through the application of economic pressure and a refusal to normalize Assad

has built since the last Israeli-Hezbollah war in July 2006.

The challenge for Hezbollah is that it is currently in a much weaker position vis-à-vis the IRGC than at any point in its history. Whereas Hezbollah used to be Iran’s only proxy in the Levant— giving it significant leverage against its patron— since the start of the Syrian civil war the IRGC has established a larger, multinational militia network inside Syria. It is an open question whether Hezbollah could refuse if the IRGC pushed it to go to war with Israel.

PUSHING BACK These tensions are already dividing Iran from its erstwhile partners in Syria. For instance, Israeli air strikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria have been carried out with the acquiescence, if not support, of the Russians—Russia has chosen not to collocate its forces with those of Iran, which, when combined with the Israeli-Russian deconfliction agreement over Syrian airspace, grants Israel the flexibility it needs to attack Iranian assets in Syria. Together, these act as a reminder from Moscow that the IRGC should not push its luck as it tries to make the Assad-controlled areas of Syria into a rear base for a future war with Israel.

Recently, there has also been a spat between Iran and Russia over whether foreign militias—the IRGC and its Shiite militia networks—should remain in Syria as the conflict winds down. In May, Putin said that all foreign forces should leave Syria. His Syria envoy, Alexander Lavrentiev, later clarified that Putin meant the Americans, Iranians, Turks, and foreign Shiite militias—but not the Israelis. In response, the Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that no one could force Iranian forces out of Syria and that they would remain until Assad formally asks them to leave.

There have also been reports of a decision by the Assad regime to acquiesce to the withdrawal of Iranian forces and allied Shiite militias from the de-escalation zone near the Israeli and Jordanian border. Instead of a military offensive in the southwest, which is what Iran would prefer, Assad may choose to work through Russia to peacefully co-opt opposition-held territories through reconciliation agreements that provide for a small degree of local autonomy. Local reporting from the southwest, especially in Daraa Province near the Syrian-Jordanian border, suggests that there is currently a withdrawal of Iranian and Hezbollah forces from the area, although no one can say for how long. If the withdrawal is real, it could be a major step in keeping the IRGC away from Jordan and Israel. It could also serve as a model for how Iran’s interests can be curtailed when faced with unified opposition from Assad, Hezbollah, and Russia and the threat of Israeli force.

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Syria›s President Bashar al-Assad during a meeting with Vladimir Putin at Bocharov Ruchei residence. Mikhail Klimentyev/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office/ TASS (Getty Images)

The challenge for Hezbollah is that it is currently in a much weaker position vis-à-vis the IRGC than at any point in its history

WASHINGTON›S OPTIONS Because the United States has chosen to limit its engagement in Syria—especially in the country’s west, where Iran is strongest—it does not have a great deal of leverage. Yet there are a number of steps the U.S. government can take to exacerbate the current divisions in the pro-Assad alliance, thereby diminishing Iran’s influence in the Levant.

First, the Trump administration’s official position still emphasizes regime change through the application of economic pressure and a refusal to normalize Assad. This position, however, keeps Assad close to the IRGC, without which he would be vulnerable, at a time when Russia is trying to drive the two apart. Sadly, at this point the self-interest of Damascus and Moscow is the best defense against Tehran.

The United States needs to recognize that and take advantage of it. This does not mean full reengagement with Assad, who is responsible for the deaths of some 500,000 of his own citizens. But it does mean abandoning the delusion that Assad or his regime can be displaced anytime soon.

Second, the United States must state in no uncertain terms that it plans to remain in northeast Syria for the long term. The U.S. zone in northern and eastern Syria contains the majority of the country’s major oil, water, and agricultural resources, providing the Trump administration with a lot of leverage over the future of Syria. Trump’s comments expressing a desire to get out of Syria were unhelpful, even if he later walked them back. If the United States leaves eastern Syria, it will unify Assad, Iran, and Russia in an effort to retake this territory. Moscow and Damascus covet this region’s energy resources, which could help fund both the Russian intervention and Syria’s reconstruction. For Iran, the control of this territory by friendly forces would significantly increase the maneuverability of its militia forces across Iraq and Syria.

As long as the United States keeps forces in this part of the country, pro-regime forces will be forced to focus elsewhere, exacerbating divisions inside the alliance.

Third, the United States still has the ability to shape the

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outcome in southwest Syria, where, working with Jordan and Israel, it has invested successfully in a moderate opposition force that has held this territory for the past few years. This area is in the crosshairs of the IRGC, and it is where a war in Syria between Israel and Iran is most likely to break out.

The Trump administration should state, publicly and clearly, that the opposition-controlled areas in southwest Syria should remain autonomous, maintain control over movement to and from their communities, and continue to access humanitarian assistance and cross-border trade with Jordan.

To support these objectives, Trump should unfreeze the 200$ million earmarked for stabilization funding in Syria.

A significant part of these funds is set aside for training and transitioning armed opposition groups into local security roles and supporting local governance in these communities. These efforts are practical and pragmatic: none of them would derail the current negotiations between Jordan, Russia, and the United States over the future of the southwest, and they would signal that Trump is still invested in the region’s stability.

Finally, in regard to Israel, the Israel Defense Forces has demonstrated its ability to strike Iranian targets in Syria.

The threat of future strikes is an important point of leverage against Tehran. However, this is a stick that should be wielded cautiously. The United States will certainly continue to support Israel, but it should also encourage restraint on the part of its ally.

A U.S. strategy that focuses on containing Iran’s influence in Syria by exploiting divisions with its partners will be consistent with limitations Iran has run into in other parts of the Middle East. The IRGC has succeeded by taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the region’s civil wars—first in Lebanon and more recently in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. It has entered these conflicts by working with local partners who grant it wide freedom to operate because their objectives converge. But time and again we also see the IRGC overreach, causing a nationalist backlash from its local partners. It may now be hitting a wall inside Syria, as its interests finally diverge from those of its allies. The United States and its partners should take advantage of this opportunity.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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A Tale of Two Photos In China, a Viral Set of Images Signals a Shift in International Relations

By Jeffrey Wasserstrom In April 1990, nearly a year after the Chinese government had quashed the protests in Tiananmen Square, sparking international outrage, recently retired leader Deng Xiaoping gave a speech in which he alluded to the crackdown and its aftermath, making a telling historical comparison in the process. “I am familiar with the history of foreign aggression against China,” he said. “When I heard that seven Western countries . . . had decided to impose sanctions on China, my immediate association was to 1900, when the allied forces of the eight powers invaded China.” Deng was referring to the Boxer Crisis, which began in 1899 with members of a rural religious sect attacking Chinese Catholics and Protestants; peaked with a mid1900- siege of Beijing’s legations quarter that

endangered the lives of hundreds of foreigners, including diplomats and their families; and ended in 1901 when the Qing dynasty, which had supported the anti-Christian agitation, agreed to pay a large indemnity to a consortium of foreign powers to compensate them for losses of life and property.

The actions of the anti-Christian Boxers and the Eight Nation Allied Army that invaded China to battle them have been and remain common and often highly charged points of reference in contemporary China. Today, as The New York Times and other publications have noted, many in China have taken a renewed interest in the Boxer Crisis, as evidenced by a pair of juxtaposed photographs—one taken more than a century ago, the other snapped earlier this month—that have gone viral on Chinese social media platforms.

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China, September 1901 ,7, Boxer Rebellion, The signing of the ‹Peking Protocol› by the plenipotentiaries, at the Spanish legation.

(Getty Images)

THE SIGN OF A NEW ERA? One of the images shows a group of American and Chinese officials arrayed around a table in Washington during a recent meeting. The other depicts a similarlooking international gathering held in Beijing in 1901. It was taken during the negotiation of what Westerners called the “Boxer Protocol,” one of the most infamous of the unequal treaties imposed on a weak China between the Opium War (42–1839) and World War II, a period known in the country as the “Century of Humiliation.” trending on Weibo...people compare the trade negotiation with the signing of Boxer Protocol in 1901 pic.twitter.com/oqhmJQvv4t — Krystal Hu (@readkrystalhu) May 2018 ,17

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As most Internet commentators noted, the photographs suggest a notable shift in international relations. In the 1901 picture, aged and weary-looking officials of the Qing dynasty sit across the table from their young international counterparts. The image seems to symbolize the inability of China to defend itself from vigorous young foreigners who hail from all over the world, including Japan, Russia, and the United States.

In the 2018 photo, by contrast, it is the Chinese trade officials who exude youth and vitality as they meet with U.S. congressional leaders of advancing age and worn-down dispositions. (One sign that some things have stayed depressingly resistant to change is that every single person in the 1901 photograph is male, while in 2018, despite heightened global concerns over gender disparities in the foreign policy sphere, there is just one woman at the table.)

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Chinese President Xi Jinping, who also heads the Chinese Communist Party, is striving to make his country the equal of the United States in the global arena. By posting the two photos together, social media users are suggesting that an even more dramatic change has already happened. The 1901 script has been flipped, and an era of Chinese dominance and U.S. withdrawal has begun.

In 1990, Deng remarked on something that, in his view, had not changed since the Boxer Crisis: foreign powers were still prone to ganging up on China. The juxtaposed photos are used to make the opposite point—that China today stands strong. Other commentators have added that it is now the United States under President Donald Trump that, like China under the late Qing dynasty, is closing itself off from the world and resisting the international order.

Yet there are problems with this reading of the photos, as some eagle-eyed analysts have been quick to note.

For one, Vice Premier Liu He, leader of the Chinese delegation, is 66 years old—not exactly in the first bloom of youth. Moreover, as the journalist James Palmer pointed out on Twitter, “China is massively gerontocratic,” with a looming demographic crisis brought on by an increasingly large population of elderly citizens. Although the juxtaposition makes for a tweetable post, the “young China versus old United States” dichotomy doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Similarly, although Xi may talk a good globalization game, his actions tell a different story. He, like Trump, is an economic nationalist. And he has made it clear that he will allow only certain kinds of ideas and information to flow into China.

This sudden reminiscing of the Boxer Crisis, a series of events that bear a familiar name but whose details are little remembered outside of China, may seem odd to many in the West. Even widely read Americans usually know very little about what happened; their knowledge of the crisis generally extends no further than the fact that for 55 days in 1900 all of Beijing’s In China, schoolchildren typically have much more foreigners were trapped in a siege and that, eventually, detailed, albeit skewed, bodies of knowledge to draw foreign armies rode to the rescue. on about the Boxer Crisis. They may have heard

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(Image Source: Twitter 2018)

little about the large number of Chinese Christians and smaller number of missionary families killed by the Boxers—whose name derives from their use of martial arts fighting techniques and who were not really “rebels,” as they have been labeled by many Western historians, since they worked with the Qing dynasty during the siege. Chinese students have read a good deal in their textbooks, however, about the violent campaigns of reprisal and looting, which Mark Twain aptly likened to brutal pirate raids, that foreign soldiers carried out after conquering Beijing.

BOXER ANALOGIES THROUGH HISTORY Comparing a breaking news story with the Boxer Crisis fits a pattern in international affairs. Whenever tensions rise in Beijing’s relations with other parts of the world, someone somewhere finds a Boxer angle.

In 1905, for example, some Americans in China decried a nonviolent boycott drive criticizing U.S. immigration policies as being a new Boxer movement; the Japanese raised this same cry in 1919 and the British in 1925 when boycotts targeted their countries.

In 1966, the Western press made Boxer analogies when Red Guards, inspired by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution–era calls for youths to take bold actions against all domestic counterrevolutionaries and representatives of imperialism, lashed out against foreigners.

self-confidence in the age of Xi. If one looks back a few years, though, another point of reference for this “see how times have changed” attitude comes to mind. It came also at another key moment in history, in the so-called Century of Humiliation: the SinoJapanese War that began in 1894 and ended with the Qing dynasty signing another “unequal” treaty in 1895.

In China, given the importance of -60year cycles, 120th anniversaries are symbolically laden in the way that bicentennials are in the West, so at the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, there were numerous reflections on the start of the Sino-Japanese War. As far as we know, no “then and now” photographs went viral. Many Chinese commentators pointed out, however, that although Japan had surprised the world by besting China in the mid1890-s to become, for the first time, the dominant power in East Asia, the situation was now very different. It was their country, not Japan, that was on the rise and reclaiming its old position as the largest economy and major military power of its region.

Despite Trump’s occasional boasts about how fast he has forged a strong friendship with Xi, the U.S.Chinese relationship remains in a fragile state owing to many factors, including how different the history of interactions between the two countries can look when viewed from Washington as opposed to from Boxer Crisis analogies were in the air yet again in Beijing. When Trump and his advisers invoke 1999, after NATO bombs hit the Chinese embassy history in threatening to launch a trade war against in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens—but in Beijing, for example, they present the story of the that case they flew in two very different directions. two countries as defined by the recent period when When crowds of young protesters trapped the U.S. a bullying China has been taking advantage of ambassador inside the American embassy in Beijing allegedly “weak” U.S. administrations. In Beijing, and threw paintballs at its walls, some Western by contrast, a key point of reference when thinking journalists thought that the Boxer spirit of madness about the history of the U.S.-Chinese relationship was taking hold again in China. Chinese media remains the point in 1901 when Washington outlets, by contrast, playing in part on the terms was part of a coalition that bullied an enfeebled “NATO” and “Eight Nation Allied Army,” which dynasty to accept yet another unequal treaty. It is share some of the same characters in the Chinese impossible to say what the future holds for U.S.language, lamented that nearly a century after the Chinese relations, but two things seem certain. One savage invasion of 1900, Chinese were again being is that there will be new crises. The other is that killed by a fighting force of which Americans were when these crises erupt, no matter what form they take, one or both sides will bring up analogies of part. some kind to the previous crisis that occurred in the When compared with these previous instances, the time of the Boxers.

Boxer Crisis reference in the juxtaposed photos offers something new: it illuminates the degree of Chinese This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Arab Leaders Need to Play a More Prominent Role on Peace-Making Than They Ever Have Before

by Dennis Ross *

President Trump calls making a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians the “ultimate deal.” He prides himself on being a deal-maker and believes somehow that he may yet produce that ultimate deal. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Jason Greenblatt, who worked as an attorney in the Trump real estate business, have been charged by the president with putting together a peace plan.

A few months ago when they briefed the UN Security Council members on their approach and the status of the plan, they emphasized that Israelis, Palestinians, and Arabs would love parts of it and hate parts of it. Fair enough, no plan that is credible can please or address only the needs of one side. By definition, no peace plan can succeed unless it addresses the needs of both sides.

What has made this such a difficult conflict to resolve is that there are two “rights” and not a right and a wrong in this conflict. Those two “rights” have to be reconciled. We are dealing with two national movements competing for the same space. Inevitably the conflict came to be defined in zerosum terms, with a win for one side always being seen as a loss for the other. The idea that both could win

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has been difficult to accept. A case in point is the Trump decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the embassy. Even though Trump said that he was not recognizing the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem because those needed to be negotiated, the decision was portrayed as an Israel win and a Palestinian loss. So much so that Mahmoud Abbas cut off all official contact with the Trump administration and said it could no longer be the sole mediator.

That has not deterred the Trump administration and it continues to say it will present its plan at some point.

With no real contact with official Palestinians, the president needs Arab leaders to play a more prominent role on peace-making than they ever have before. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that Arab leaders can take the place of Palestinians. They cannot.

But they can do something they have not done before: they can declare whether a proposal or plan is credible and meets the national aspirations of the Palestinian people in a dignified way.

Historically, the position of the Arab leaders, who accept a peaceful outcome and the principle of two

states for two peoples, has been to say that they can accept whatever the Palestinians can accept. The problem has been that the Palestinian national movement has been led by those who find it difficult to accept specific proposals for resolving the conflict.

As someone who helped to draft the Clinton Parameters in 2000, I know that at the time Arab leaders quietly urged Arafat to accept them.

But all this was done quietly. I was hosted at a dinner a few months ago by a number of Palestinians, including some I had negotiated with, and they lamented how different everything today would be if Arafat had said yes. He did not. The pressure he faced from Arab leaders was private. No one in the Arab world staked out a public position.

No leaders said that while the decision was a Palestinian one, these parameters were credible and met Palestinian national rights. History might have been rewritten if someone had done so.

peace team should work out the language of what will be said about the plan in advance so there are no surprises.

By rejecting President Carter’s Camp David Accords and the subsequent autonomy talks, the Palestinians lost an opportunity to stop additional Israeli settlement building; in 1980, in talks mediated by Ambassador Sol Linowitz, the Israelis agreed that one of the powers of the Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority would be a veto over new uses of land in the West Bank and Gaza. At the time, Israel had less than 5000 settlers. With 300,000 settlers today in the lands outside of Jerusalem, it is not hard to see what the Palestinians lost by foregoing this opportunity. And, obviously, saying no to Bill Clinton has left the Palestinians far worse off.

Perhaps, Arab leaders today can serve Palestinian interests by going public and making it possible for Palestinians not to miss an opportunity if there is one. At Is it possible that things could be different this point, I don’t know what is in the this time? Given the weakness and division administration’s peace plan; I don’t know if of the Palestinians, and Abbas’ rejection of it will meet a standard of credibility in Arab the Trump Administration, it seems clear eyes. However, I do know that if it crosses that whatever the Trump peace plan turns a threshold of credibility, Arabs can best out to be, the Palestinian instinct will be to support the Palestinians by being open and say no to it. Arab leaders might be able to saying that it does. affect the Palestinian position if they were in a position to say that the plan was credible Rejection has not served the Palestinian cause. Arab support for that cause today and worthy of discussion.

Of course, they could only say this if the might best be expressed by being honest plan was credible. For Arab leaders, at a with the Palestinians in public as well as minimum, the plan must address Palestinian private. national needs, both in terms of viable borders for the state and a capital in Arab part *American Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has of East Jerusalem. Presumably, the Trump served in the Administrations of Presidents Administration will go over the plan—not Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. generalities about it but its specifics—with Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, and key Arab leaders before presenting it. The is counselor and Distinguished Fellow at the president should know what the response Washington Institute for Near East Policy in is going to be before presenting it, and his Washington.

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In the wake of Kate Spade’s death, looking at suicide differently

By Cindy Dampier Chicago Tribune The list of warning factors for suicide reads, in part, like a catalogue of everyday modern ills: lagging self-esteem, depression, loss of relationships or economic security, insomnia.

“When you look at those lists,” says Eric Beeson, core faculty member at Northwestern University’s Counseling@Northwestern, “it almost seems like who’s not a candidate for suicide?” And yet, in the wake of highly publicized deaths by suicide like that of fashion designer Kate Spade and television personality Anthony Bourdain, our scrutiny of the act centers on a need to quickly settle on a cause and, on some level, to distance ourselves from it.

Spade’s longtime friend Elyce Arons told The

The philosophical debate on suicide is more present than ever

New York Times that when the subject of celebrity suicides came up in their discussions about Spade’s depression, her friend assured her, “‘I would never do that. I would never do that. I would never do that.’ And I believed her.”

“At some point in everyone’s life,” says Beeson, “they have said they would never do that. But I believe we are all just a few life events away from considering it. So for me, we’re all on that continuum.”

National Institute of Mental Health data show that, in 1 ,2016 million U.S. adults made plans for death and attempted suicide. Yet most of us lack even the most basic understanding of what leads to these deaths, beyond those well-known riskfactor lists. The picture is much more complicated, says Beeson, and it might be time to take a more nuanced view.

Suicide risk is not as simple as a list of risk factors.

“We talk about suicide as this one thing,” says Beeson, “but suicide is really this spectrum of behaviors. You always ask, ‘Are they suicidal?’

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1: A Kate Spade logo is seen on a Madison Avenue storefront City after Kate Spade was found dead in her apartment of an apparent suicide on June 2018 ,5 in New York City.

(Photo Source: Getty Images)

and for me that’s really a limiting question.” In assessing whether people might kill themselves, Beeson looks at “key variables that seem to be more related to death.” Those are: Perceived burdensomeness, “this idea that my death is more valuable than my life.”

Thwarted belongingness, “meaning I try to make meaningful connections, and they just don’t work out.”

Hopelessness, “OK, I have this, and it’s never going to get better.”

Acquired capability, the ability to set aside normal psychological and physical constraints and perform an act that may be painful or horrifying.

With the first two factors, Beeson says, people begin to have ideas about suicide. Adding hopelessness can bring on planning of a suicide.

But the final factor is the hardest to discern.

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Kate assured her friend, “‘I would never do that’ And I believed her.”

Clinicians like Beeson look for clues that the person might have become more inured to pain, shame or guilt. Past histories of abuse, substance abuse disorders, assaults or even professions such as medicine that make contact with death part of the everyday can constitute a slow wearing away of the mental and physical barriers to self-harm.

“People work along that continuum until they start to overcome the pain, the shame and the guilt,” he says, “and then the value of suicide starts to outweigh the pain, shame and guilt.”

Suicide is not typically an impulsive act. “People talk about it being selfish; people talk about it

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being irrational,” says Beeson, “but actually I think a lot of suicides are very well-thought out, very well-contemplated. And generally, not impulsive.

Generally, this is a long process for an individual that started with a faint idea that gradually took hold as those risk factors mounted and as the capability came into their purview.” Leaving behind a note, as Kate Spade reportedly did, can be interpreted as evidence of the contemplation suicide often entails — it may be an attempt to remove the last psychological barriers to death.

“Some people might say that it’s a last way to cope with some of the guilt,” says Beeson. “The guilt can be a protective factor in a certain way, so some people might say that’s a way to reduce that. There’s something about this that the person is still not OK with, so they are trying to address that.”

The philosophical debate on suicide is more present than ever. In ancient societies, suicide was sometimes interpreted as an available and even noble choice.

Today, in countries like Switzerland, where there are euthanasia clinics, assisted suicide is accepted.

And five U.S. states and the District of Columbia have “Death With Dignity” laws that allow assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness.

“That gets us into the discussion of whether it is ever OK and under what circumstances,” Beeson says. “Some people would argue that if I have a chronic mental health condition that interferes with my quality of life, is that any different than a fatal medical condition? And that’s a really really hard discussion to have.”

In 1 ,2016 million U.S. adults made plans for death and attempted suicide.

To shift your perspective on suicide, think back to the events of 11/9 and how you felt about the people who chose to jump from the Twin Towers before the burning buildings collapsed. “That analogy is not too different from someone who has a depressive disorder,” says Beeson. “It’s not true flames, but it’s the flames of something.

It’s easier for us to look at the 11/9 example and say, ‘Yeah, I’m not going to judge that person,’ but what if it’s flipped around and these are not real flames, but it’s something that’s very real to that

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Five U.S. states and the District of Columbia have “Death With Dignity” laws that allow assisted suicide in cases of terminal illness.

There is a movement aimed at destigmatizing suicide, including changing the ways in which we talk about it — “committed suicide” conjures an image of committing a crime, while more straightforward language — “died by suicide” or “killed himself” avoid those punishing overtones. Willingness to view suicide as a part of human behavior, without judgment, may be difficult. But, Beeson says, it can be the key to helping someone who is considering killing herself.

“If we view ourselves as too separate from people and we think that we’ll never be there, then it’s really hard to connect with people in a meaningful way.” Before talking to someone who might be contemplating suicide, he suggests, think about where you’re coming from.

The body of fashion designer Kate Spade is removed from her Manhattan apartment on June 2018 ,5 in New York City. (Photo Source: Getty Images)

person?” Given any of these circumstances — the burning building, the terminal cancer or the extreme, persistent mood disorder — Beeson points out, none of us really know what we would choose to do.

Condemning suicide might hinder prevention. “I think we run the risk of looking at it as a black and white thing,” says Beeson, “and that’s just not the way it is. I really do view suicide as a continuum and frankly we are all on it in some way. Some of us are just much farther from it than others.”

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“Have the hard dialogue with yourself: ‘Am I so far removed from this?’ and if I am, I’m probably going to be perceived as coming from a judgmental place. That’s going to make it harder to connect with someone and catch it sooner, if you will.

You want people to be able to be open enough to share with you before it gets to the point where they’ve made the plan, they’re set on this and it’s going to happen.” The goal? To get past the suicidal thoughts and offer an alternative. “We try to find out what they are trying to achieve with this choice,” says Beeson, “and then show them another way to get there.” ©2018 Chicago Tribune

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