Saudi Arabia’s National Action Plan for Human Rights

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What the United States Got Wrong in South Sudan

Issue 1710 - August 24/08/2018

Saudi Arabia’s National Action Plan for Human Rights Past Pillars, Present Policies and Future Visions www.majalla.com

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Issue 1710 - August 24/08/2018

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Venezuelan migrants wait outside the Ecuadoran Migration offices, at the Rumichaca International Bridge in Tulcan, Ecuador, on August ,19 2018, for an authorization that allows them to enter Ecuador. - Bogota said on August 17 it was 'worried' that tightened Ecuadorean entry requirements for Venezuelans fleeing the economic and political crisis would leave thousands stranded in Colombia.

Ecuador announced on Thursday that Venezuelans entering the country would need to show passports from Saturday onwards, a document many are not carrying. And Peru followed suit on Friday, announcing an identical measure due to begin a week later. (Getty)

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South Korean Lee Geum-Sum, 92 (L) meets with her North Korean son Lee Sung-Chul, 71, during a separated family reunion meeting at the Mount Kumgang resort on August 2018 ,20 in Mount Kumgang, North Korea. Almost a hundred South Koreans crossed the heavily armed border to meet their separated families for the first time since the 53-1950 Korean War, during a family reunion at North Korea. A total of 88 people from North Korea will also receive a chance to meet their families in the South during the six-day event which started on August 20 at Mount Kumgang, north of the border between North and South Korea. (Getty)

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Saudi Arabia’s National Action Plan for Human Rights Past Pillars, Present Policies and Future Visions Baku, Azerbaijan: Ahmed Taher Human rights and its protection is a dialectical issue that raises many discussions and debates because of its cultural implications, social and economic repercussions and its political and legal specificity, making it an area which is difficult for media experts and researchers to explore.

There are different perspectives and multiple frameworks for dealing with the issue human rights protection which is connected national security as it is directly linked to the considerations of state sovereignty and independence.

Therefore, the principle of international intervention for humanitarian purposes and how to achieve the balance between how to protect human rights on one hand and respect the sovereignty and independence of states on the other hand has been widely debated.

This debate has not been definitively resolved, and experiences based on the principle of intervention for humanitarian considerations have in many cases proven to be a failure for not having the legal justification for parties to intervene.

However, the debate over the role of the state in protecting and maintaining human rights has been resolved as there is consensus that the state and its organs and institutions are primarily responsible for ensuring that their citizens receive

their rights and freedoms. This means that every country shall also respect the rights of all citizens, protect their lives and maintain their security and stability – a duty that is very difficult to fulfill.

This introduction is necessary when tackling the subject of human rights protection in any country and when addressing this issue we must take into consideration two important factors. The first is that protecting and safeguarding the human rights system is not carried out in an absolute way. It is not applicable in all situations and all countries. In other words, the system must take into account the national, social and cultural specificity of each country. This is a critical criterion for a state or society to accept the framework governing human rights. In this regard, Saudi Arabia's honorable position is confirmed by its refusal to compromise on anything that conflicts with Islamic law, which is always a priority.

The second factor is that the protection of human rights does not mean protecting the rights of terrorists and saboteurs.

Some international organizations are trying to limit the issue of human rights protection to that of trials and guarantees for defendants in terrorist cases that affect the national security of the state.

Of course, it is necessary to provide the necessary guarantees in this regard, but there must also be a greater focus on the human rights of victims, the society as a whole and the State

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President Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz Meeting on the USS Quincy, February ,14 1945.

whose security and stability are threatened by these terrorists.

This brings us to the human rights system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has started preparing for the “national strategy for human rights and its executive plan”, as stated by Dr. Nasser al-Shahrani, Vice President of the Saudi National Human Rights Commission, during a speech he delivered at a meeting in Geneva to discuss the report on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in late April 2018.

The Saudi Basic Law has been keen to provide detailed provisions concerning the promotion and protection of family and society related rights.

In this light, human rights in the Kingdom can be addressed through reviewing the basic principles, historical foundations and the proposed national human rights strategy within the framework of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 and through two axes:

values that protect legitimate rights and freedoms.

Royal decree No. 3703 of June 1952 ,21 was issued by the founding King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud in this regard.

1: Reading Historical Records It is no coincidence that since its establishment the Kingdom has placed great importance on its citizens’ rights and has worked on protecting them. Although this issue wasn’t tackled in the same way that it is today, it was always handled according to the circumstances and requirements of each era.

Saudi Arabia has been protecting these rights in accordance with Islamic Shari'a, taking into consideration principles and

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“Any complaint brought to us (i.e to the King) through telegraph and mail, from any person, must be sent to us without any distortion or delay, and the defendant must not be informed about it, whether he is a prince, a minister or any other senior official,” the decree stated.

“And whoever is revealed to have delayed or stopped the receipt of a complaint for any reason shall be liable to be punished by strict penalties. We shall periodically send inspection bodies to all state centers in order to investigate the

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aforementioned. Every prince in the Kingdom shall declare this statement to the people in all forms of publishing and tell them that our door is open to all those who feel oppressed.

If any person is forbidden from sending his complaint to us, the oppressed will surely win over the oppressor who will be punished,” late King Abdulaziz added.

In continuation of the same approach, the process of protecting and promoting human rights was launched in several stages, reaching the basic system of governance which stated explicitly that human rights shall be protected in many of its provisions. This includes Article (8) which states that governance in Saudi Arabia is based on “justice, Shura, equality and in accordance with Islamic law,” as well as article (26), which stipulates that “The State protects human rights in accordance with Islamic law.”

Saudi Basic Law has been keen to provide detailed provisions related to the promotion and protection of certain rights when it comes to the family and society, as stipulated in Article 10 of this Law. "The State is keen to strengthen family bonds, preserve its Arab and Islamic values, take care of its members and provide appropriate conditions for the development of their talents and abilities,” Article 10 states.

Article (11) states that Saudi society will be based on the principle of adherence to God's command, mutual cooperation in good deeds and piety and mutual support and inseparability.

On this basis, the Kingdom's government believes in the vital role of society in supporting the process of protecting and promoting human rights.

The issue was not only internal as the Kingdom’s vision has reached abroad by boosting its efforts in cooperation with all States to protect and promote human rights.

“The State strives to achieve the aspirations of the Arab and Islamic nation through solidarity and unity and to strengthen its relations with friendly states,” Article (25) stated.

While Article (29) said that the State shall protect the Islamic and Arab heritage and contribute to Arab, Islamic and human civilization.

Thus, the framework and basis of the State's policy in protecting the rights of its citizens and safeguarding their freedoms is clear. Notably, the Kingdom was always the first to participate in many international and regional conventions, treaties and charters concerned with the protection of human rights. The conventions were the following: -1 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms

of Racial Discrimination -2 The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women -3 The Convention on the Rights of the Child -4 The Convention Against Torture -5 Arab Charter on Human Rights -6 The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities In line with this vision, the Kingdom has established many national institutions that are specialized in human rights. It first launched departments and human rights committees in the Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Justice and Islamic Affairs. This step was later developed as the government established a committee on Islamic affairs, judiciary and human rights in the Shura Council and then approved the establishment of the National Society for Human Rights (as a popular civil society) and the Human Rights Commission (as an official governmental body).

It also expanded its policy by seeking to establish some bodies and institutions that focused on dialogue as one of the basic pillars for the promotion and protection of human rights. The Kingdom established the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue at the internal level, and then decided to expand internationally by launching an initiative for interreligious and intercultural dialogue through the establishment of

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The honorable record and the outstanding steps taken by the Saudi Arabia over the past years have enabled the Kingdom to be reelected for the fourth term in the United Nations Human Rights Council and as a member of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women system of associations and civil institutions, regulation of domestic workers, amendment of judicial systems, Grievance Board, penal procedures and legal proceedings and the labor system as to be consistent with standards of international human rights.

the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna.

These steps have proven the Kingdom's approach to promoting the values of coexistence, understanding and cooperation among peoples, building peace and combating extremism.

2: The National Strategy for Human Rights in the context of Vision 2030 The Kingdom’s Vision 2030 included plans and programs aimed at contributing to the promotion and protection of human rights since its leadership and government have always sought to implement the best global practices in building a better future. They have also always worked on complementing the country’s achievements in the legal and institutional areas related to human rights including justice, criminal justice, promoting integrity, rights of women, children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and migrant workers, combatting corruption and racial discrimination, and boosting regional and international cooperation in this area.

The vision includes carrying out comprehensive reforms, continuous development and effective change in many systems. Among these systems are: the system of combating crimes of human trafficking and protection against abuse, the

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It also sought to amend the organizational structure of the Human Rights Commission in order to enhance its independence, relating it directly to the King and establishing institutions and organizations related to this area, including the establishment of the Saudi Bar Association, the Family Affairs Council and the Authority for the Care of People with Disabilities.

Notably, the Kingdom’s Vision was not only limited to the promotion of human rights in the political and legal realms but also gave a high priority to economic and social rights.

It included many procedures and measures to respect, protect and fulfill these rights and integrated them into the National Transformation Program, which contained strategic objectives linked to interim objectives up to year 2020.

The Program provides many human rights’ initiatives, including children’s rights. Among these initiatives are developing nursery and child care programs and expanding their services to all regions of the Kingdom, improving the quality of health services in both preventive and therapeutic aspects, optimizing the integration and continuity of care provided through the development of primary health care, enhancing the quality of life in Saudi cities and empowering and investing in women, promoting comprehensive sustainable food security and creating an integrated family protection system.

In this regard, it is noted that a specialized center to receive reports on family violence has been established on a tollfree number that is available around the clock to intervene

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quickly in cases of abuse.

This Vision also emphasized the importance of providing work opportunities for citizens and raising the skill level of Saudis to meet the needs of the labor market.

In this regard, the Vision emphasizes the importance of developing voluntary work as the Kingdom aspires to develop this field by raising the number of volunteers from 11,000 to one million by the end of 2030.

It is noteworthy that the Vision has not overlooked Kingdom's role in the region as it has given priority to human rights in the Kingdom's foreign policy. It emphasized Saudi Arabia’s supportive position on development issues in developing countries.

Notably, The Kingdom’s supporting stance on the right of the Palestinian people to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital and its rejection of the Houthi coup against Yemeni legitimacy.

Following the coup, Saudi Arabia has been facing the aggression against Yemenis by the Houthis who have committed assassinations, killed civilians, including women, children and the elderly, sieged cities and villages, carried out attacks targeting Saudi territory and have seized humanitarian aid. The Kingdom has been working with all international partners to provide humanitarian assistance to the Yemeni people through the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.

in the Saudi Vision on the protection and maintenance of human rights. An in-depth reading of the vision confirms that it provisions bear in essence a human rights dimension, whether political, economic, social or cultural.

In light of this vision, which will drive the country’s policies over the coming years, the National Human Rights Commission proposed to develop a national human rights

Moreover, it also reiterates its rejection of the horrific violations of the human rights in Myanmar, such as mass killings, killing of children and the raping of women. It has called on all relevant United Nations concerned bodies and mechanisms to put an end to these crimes and protect the Muslim minorities in this country.

The aforementioned represent only a part of what is included

The Kingdom's Vision 2030 did not only promote human rights on political and legal dimensions but also gave top priority to economic, political and social rights 12

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strategy to complement the strategic plan established by the Commission during the period from 2012 to 2016.

The Commission is keen to plan for the future by drawing a route that is based on scientific studies and intellectual visions, inspired by the Kingdom’s political, economic, social and human needs.

Based on this, the Commission is currently preparing a draft national human rights strategy centered around six axes: the legal framework, institutional capacity, civil society, business, human rights culture and regional and international cooperation.

A number of goals, programs and initiatives that address human rights will emerge from this strategy in line with the Vision, in order to ensure the achievement of best practices in accordance with international standards.

Until the finalization of this strategy and its introduction, we would like to emphasize that the honorable record and the outstanding steps taken by the Kingdom over the past years have enabled it to be reelected for the fourth term in the United Nations Human Rights Council between 2020-2017 and for four years as a member of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, starting from January 2019.

This serves as a confirmation of the Kingdom's efforts to

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The principle of international intervention for humanitarian purposes and how to achieve the balance between how to protect human rights on one hand and respect the sovereignty and independence of states on the other hand has been widely debated. establish justice and equality and to protect and promote human rights at the local and international levels. It also sheds light on the steadiness of the Kingdom’s positions and its honorable role towards the just human rights issues in the world. It is keen to end oppression and end all violations in the regional and international arenas. * Visiting researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Director of the Dialogue Center for Political and Media Studies in Cairo.

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The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, Mao and the Middle East Revisiting the Chinese Artillery Attack 60 Years Later

by Thomas J. Shattuck* Sixty years ago, on August 1958 ,23, Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army launched over 40,000 rounds of artillery at the island of Kinmen (also known as Quemoy), which was controlled by Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China (ROC). This action started the Second Taiwan

Strait Crisis. The crisis would last until October 6 when a one-week cease fire was announced—though shelling did continue later in the month. During this crisis, over 550,000 shells were fired at the Kinmen islands. The constant barrage of artillery created an artillery blockade of the island.

The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis marked a key point in

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U.S.-Taiwan relations as well as U.S.-China relations. It also serves as a lesson of American resolve in supporting an ally.

THE CRISIS’ CONNECTION TO THE MIDDLE EAST Oddly enough, the shelling of Kinmen had its origins in the Middle East. On July 1958 ,14, Abdel Karim Kassim launched a coup in Iraq, overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy and establishing a republic. In response, the United States and Great Britain sent troops into Lebanon and Jordan to prevent the disarray from spreading into these areas. The new government was seen as favorable to the socialist bloc, so the U.S. could not allow other governments to fall.

Mao Zedong viewed the U.S. intervention in the Middle East as a part of a larger action to prevent the spread of communism. If the U.S. would intervene in Lebanon, then what would stop it from doing more in Asia against the People’s Republic of China (PRC)? Words were not enough for Mao. He needed to show his compatriots in the Middle East that China would back up word with action. American imperialist actions would have to be addressed in every corner of the globe. On July 17, Mao ordered the Chinese air force to move into the Fujian Province, which borders the Taiwan Strait and surrounds the Kinmen archipelago, and artillery should prepare to shell the islands.

A Chinese propaganda poster depicting warships, warplanes and guns during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958. (Getty)

Also, Mao met with Nikita Khrushchev in early August, and at the end of the summit, the two leaders demanded the withdrawal of troops from the Middle East. The shelling did not begin until August 23. By this time, the U.S. had recognized the new government in Iraq and troops began to leave Lebanon and Jordan, so the initial connection to the struggle in the Middle East was lost. But Chinese leadership continued to make the connection in public statements throughout the crisis.

Mao Zedong viewed the U.S. intervention in the Middle East as a part of a larger action to prevent the spread of communism plan, and he wanted to test the will and resolve of the United States in its defense of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime.

At the beginning of 1958, Mao revealed his latest initiative to bring socialism to China: the Great Leap Forward.

However, as Chen Jian wrote in his book, Mao’s China and the Cold War, before he could introduce the most radical aspect of the plan—the communization of the people and the militarization of the workforce—he needed greater support from the people to fully mobilize.

Mao tellingly explained his need for tension on August 17, “In our propaganda, we say that we oppose tension and strive for détente, as if détente is too our advantage [and] tension is to [the West’s] advantage. [But] can we or can’t we look at [the situation] the other way around: is tension to our comparative advantage [and] to the West’s disadvantage? . . . To have an enemy in front of us, to have tension, is to our advantage.”

Time and time again Mao acknowledged the positive aspects of international tension and its effect on the population. The shelling of Kinmen and the U.S. response would help to awaken the people to fight in the socialist revolution.

On August 25, two days after the shelling began, Mao expressed his feelings about the U.S. involvement and yet another reason for orchestrating the crisis:

MAO TESTS THE WATERS

“From [Washington’s] reaction in recent days, the Americans are very afraid that we are going not only to land on [Kinmen] and [Matsu] but also liberate Taiwan.

In fact, we fired tens of thousands [of] shells on [Kinmen], [but that] is only a probing action by guns. We won’t say that we are going to land; we won’t say we are not going to land either. . . . Our main purpose in shelling is not to gauge the GMD’s defenses but to gauge the Americans’ resolve, to test the Americans’ determination.”

While one of the main reasons Mao decided to increase tension in the Taiwan Strait began in the Middle East, it was not the only reason that Mao unilaterally decided to start the crisis. He also needed to find a way to galvanize the public into supporting the next step in his revolutionary

Mao wanted to see what the United States would do to protect the “outlying islands,” the term used for the island groups of Kinmen and Matsu, where China was focusing its shelling. Defending Chiang on Taiwan was a guarantee, but that was not the case for Kinmen and Matsu.

On September 6, over a week after the shelling of Kinmen began, Zhou Enlai, the PRC’s Premier, said, “Recently, since the United States launched armed intervention against the Arab states, the harassing and disruptive activities of the Chiang Kai-shek clique against the Chinese mainland have become more unbridled.”

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Three years earlier, in 1955, the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty came in effect, which guaranteed that the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan if the PRC attacked. However, the status of the outlying islands was grey at best because they were omitted from the treaty: “The terms ‘territorial’ and ‘territories’ shall mean in respect of the Republic of China, Taiwan and the Pescadores.” In December 1954, when the treaty was about to be signed, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles clarified the position of the outlying islands. He noted that the defense of the islands would be determined by the president depending on the nature of the threat. The clarification was not written into law, so the CCP wanted to see if the U.S. would include Kinmen and Matsu as a part of Taiwan.

Quickly after the shelling began, the U.S. State Department noted the importance of the island for the defense of Taiwan. The announcement was preceded by an ominous radio message from China stating that “the landing on Quemoy is imminent.” The American notice sent a signal to Mao that if he played his hand too far it could mean war with the United States—something he did not want.

THE CRISIS ABATES

By September, Mao understood that he needed to work on an exit strategy to end the shelling and avoid escalation.

He did not want to go to war with the United States, and ambassadorial talks between the U.S. and China resumed on September 15 in Warsaw—after they stopped when President Dwight Eisenhower reassigned the ambassador in charge of the talks in late 1957. The talks were not particularly productive because the Chinese demanded

Time and time again Mao acknowledged the positive aspects of international tension and its effect on the population. The shelling of Kinmen and the U.S. response would help to awaken the people to fight in the socialist revolution

that the U.S. withdraw its forces from Taiwan. But they provided a necessary platform during a tense situation.

The channel of communication was key to avoid any sort of unnecessary escalation because the U.S. had stationed Matador missiles, which were capable of carrying nuclear weapons, on Taiwan in February 1958 before the crisis began. However, the United States did not desire to expand the conflict beyond the Taiwan Strait, so the military was only allowed to use non-nuclear options to respond to Chinese actions. The army and navy redirected resources and manpower to the Taiwan Strait to demonstrate U.S. resolve in defending Taiwan.

In the end, Mao decided to allow Chiang Kai-shek to keep Kinmen and not invade or demand a withdrawal of forces. He understood the benefit of keeping Nationalist forces close to Chinese fire. “We want to keep him within our reach. Having him [on Kinmen and Matsu] means we can get at him with our shore batteries as well as our air force. If we’d occupied the islands, we would have lost the ability to cause him discomfort any time we want.”

At the time, China did not have the offensive capability to attack Taiwan, so its only chance to harass Chiang’s

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A U.S. Navy Douglas F4D1- Skyray (BuNo 134967) from Fighter Squadron VF213"Black Lions" in flight.

VF213- was assigned to Carrier Air Group 21 (CVG21-) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CVA16) for a deployment to the Western Pacific from 14 July to 19 December 1958. (U.S Navy photo)

forces was on these islands.

His view of American involvement also changed. In what is called his “noose strategy,” Mao explained the benefits of keeping the United States wrapped up with Taiwan: “Taiwan is an old noose since America has occupied it for several years. Who ties America there? The People’s Republic of China ties it there.

600 million Chinese have a noose in their hands. This is a steel noose and it ties America’s neck. Who tied America? The noose was made by America itself and tied by itself, and it throws the other end of the noose to mainland China, letting us grasp it.”

of humanitarian considerations, I have ordered the bombardment to be suspended on the Fukien front for seven days starting from October 6. Within this period you will be fully free to ship in supplies, on condition that there be no American escort.” The announcement also called for Taiwan and China to engage in talks to end the war and to be wary of the United States because “the American imperialists are our common enemy.” Shelling did continue later in October every other day to allow for Chiang’s forces to be resupplied.

Allowing the Nationalist forces to remain on Kinmen and Matsu, Mao believed, would not harden the U.S. position there, but it would serve as a gadfly ever-annoying the United States. Keeping the Nationalists—and by default the United States—in reach was more important than definitively “winning” the crisis.

In the end, Mao’s forces never invaded Kinmen, and the islands that once almost caused a war are stilled controlled

by Taiwan. Chinese tourists now travel to Kinmen to visit museums dedicated to the “823 Artillery Bombardment” as well as other relevant war sites. However, unfortunately, recently relations between China and Taiwan have soured to low levels reminiscent of the Cold War. The world can only hope that China does not once against decide to escalate tensions and create a fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis.

On October 1958 ,6, Peng Teh-huai, the PRC Minister of National Defense, announced a cease fire, “Out

*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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What the United States Got Wrong in South Sudan Learning From Past Failures to Prevent Future Atrocities

by Jon Temin When a peace agreement is signed, the international community typically responds with congratulations, gratitude, and optimism that the deal will stop the fighting. Sometimes, well-wishes are accompanied by commitments of financial support to help the countries involved recover and rebuild.

But when the main belligerents in South Sudan’s five-year-long civil war signed a new peace agreement on August 5 in Khartoum, the international response was circumspect at best. The agreement is fundamentally a power-sharing deal between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar. It resembles a 2015 peace deal between the two sides that failed spectacularly

and triggered renewed fighting. The “Troika” of western countries long involved in issues related to South Sudan— Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States—criticized the agreement and its signatories. In a statement published on August 10, the group emphasized its concern. “The arrangements agreed to date are not realistic or sustainable,” it warned. “Given their past leadership failures, South Sudanese leaders will need to behave differently and demonstrate commitment to peace and good governance.” The White House issued a statement shortly before the deal was signed, saying that the United States was “deeply concerned about the direction of the current peace process,” citing the failure to include a broad range of South Sudanese groups in the negotiations.

This reaction reflects a new attitude on the part of the United

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Until mediators are willing to expand the circle of who is included in the peacemaking process, there are few reasons to believe that sustainable peace and genuine reconciliation are possible became the new nation’s first president. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army that he leads had been the major rebel movement during the second of two civil wars fought against the Sudanese government based in Khartoum. After South Sudan’s independence, the political wing of the same movement, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), became the new nation’s ruling party. Almost immediately, fissures appeared within the movement, especially between Kiir and Machar, the country’s new first vice president. In 2013, a full-on civil war broke out when forces loyal to Kiir clashed with factions supporting Machar in the capital city, Juba.

The United States attempted to prevent the tensions between Kiir and Machar from devolving into conflict and, after 2013, made repeated efforts to broker a lasting peace deal. Washington took such an active role thanks to its long-standing engagement with South Sudan and President Barack Obama’s commitment to preventing atrocities. Yet its efforts achieved little. To understand why and to draw lessons for preventing future atrocities, I recently interviewed more than 30 former and current U.S. government officials and policy experts, analysts, and civil society leaders who have worked on issues involving South Sudan for many years. Four lessons concerning the Obama administration’s attempts to prevent and end South Sudan’s civil war emerged from this process. (The findings are described in detail in a report I wrote for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide.)

South Sudanese civilians flee fighting in an United Nations base in the northeastern town of Malakal on February 2016 ,18, where gunmen opened fire on civilians sheltering inside killing at least five people. (Getty)

States, which for years failed to sufficiently pressure Kiir’s government even as his forces massacred civilians, carried out widespread sexual abuse, and tortured prisoners as part of a civil war that has displaced more than four million people since it began in 2013. The Trump administration’s skepticism toward the new agreement suggests that the United States might be rethinking the assumptions that have shaped its response to the conflict so far. Washington should seize the opportunity to learn from its past policy mistakes.

LESSONS LEARNED?

First, the United States should always question the legitimacy of belligerents in a mass-atrocity scenario, even if they are erstwhile U.S. allies. Throughout South Sudan’s civil war, the United States has treated Kiir as the rightful leader of the country, even though his claim to legitimacy is dubious. Kiir was elected in 2010 to be the president of the semiautonomous Government of Southern Sudan; he has never been elected president of the independent South Sudan. His mandate from the 2010 election expired in 2015, and the war has made new elections impossible.

(South Sudan’s parliament recently extended Kiir’s term until 2021.)

South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in 2011, and Kiir, as president of then semiautonomous Southern Sudan,

Forces loyal to Kiir have carried out multiple atrocities, such as ethnically targeted killings in Juba in the early days of the war

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and recent attacks in opposition-held villages. But the United States has consistently treated him favorably. The United States managed only a tepid response to the massacres committed by forces aligned with Kiir in Juba. In 2013, when the Ugandan military intervened to prop up Kiir, the United States acquiesced.

The next year, the Obama administration invited Kiir to a historic gathering of African heads of state in Washington, even as it excluded other leaders for committing human rights violations.

The United States did not hold Kiir and his government accountable for blatant breaches of the 2015 peace agreement.

In 2016, when government forces sought to assassinate Machar (who, it should be noted, is also responsible for massive levels of violence), the U.S. response was muted. And for years, Washington refused to support an arms embargo that would have hamstrung Kiir’s government.

Individually, each of these policy decisions was understandable, even justifiable. Taken together, they sent a clear message of U.S. support for the government of South Sudan and its president. A less favorable stance toward Kiir—and even refusal to recognize his legitimacy—could have weakened his domestic support base and international standing and changed the calculations he made.

A second takeaway is that policymakers should not overvalue individual relationships in peacemaking efforts. Throughout the interviews I conducted, former U.S. officials and others repeatedly referenced long-standing relationships between senior officials in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations and key South Sudanese political leaders. Although these relationships were valuable sources of access and information, they were also problematic and misunderstood. In some instances, they may have colored policymakers’ judgments, and too often, U.S. officials wrongly assumed that they could use their relationships with the South Sudanese as sources of leverage. As one former U.S. official put it, “You’re good friends because you have leverage. You don’t have leverage because you’re good friends.”

U.S. officials should not have placed so much value on these

Washington’s response to South Sudan’s civil war speaks to the underresourcing of crisis response in Africa - in terms of diplomatic capital and high-level attention - even though U.S. foreign assistance to South Sudan is quite robust

relationships, which may have crowded out other efforts to build leverage, such as through an arms embargo or similar pressures.

Third, when mass atrocities are involved, policymakers should always question their core assumptions and long-held beliefs.

South Sudan’s relatively smooth secession and independence process produced a feel-good narrative. As the venality of South Sudan’s leaders, and their disregard for the well-being of the broader population, became increasingly apparent, U.S. policy was slow to reorient. At multiple stages, policymakers failed to step back and broadly reassess policy or to undertake any sort of “red team” analysis. The presence of mass atrocities is indicative of the dissolution of basic norms and institutions— something fundamental is broken—that makes the need to question core assumptions about a society and its leaders even more urgent.

Finally, indecision in Washington compromised peacemaking efforts and sent mixed signals to South Sudan and others in the region. U.S. officials wavered between a desire to lead, on the one hand, and a preference to defer to African leadership, on the other, and there was internal disagreement over how much leverage the United States had at its disposal. More broadly, Washington’s response to South Sudan’s civil war speaks to

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US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (C) looks on with US Africa commander, General Thomas D Waldhauser (2L) as she meets President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir (R) at The President Office in Juba, South Sudan on October 2017 ,25.

(Getty)

the underresourcing of crisis response in Africa—in terms of diplomatic capital and high-level attention—even though U.S. foreign assistance to South Sudan is quite robust. If preventing atrocities is indeed a core U.S. foreign policy objective, in the future, the country should deploy the diplomatic and political resources needed to be effective.

The Trump administration, to its credit, has made some positive moves. It imposed a unilateral arms embargo on South Sudan and supported a broader arms embargo at the UN, which went into effect in July. The absence of ties between senior Trump officials and South Sudanese leaders may allow the administration to reassess its policy. But without those ties, the Trump administration might not prioritize South Sudan the same way the previous two administrations did. What’s more, the United States may not have the diplomatic capital necessary to meaningfully influence events on the ground in South Sudan and in regional capitals.

A DISSAPOINTING DEAL The United States’ response to the most recent peace agreement suggests that it might be learning from past mistakes.

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Unfortunately, the same does not appear to be true of the mediators behind the deal, which repeats several errors from prior attempts. The agreement creates three new vice-presidential posts, for a total of five, in an attempt to spread opportunities for patronage. But that will enlarge an already bloated government and is likely to deepen massive levels of corruption. In addition, Kiir and Machar have proven, through two previous stints as president and vice president, that they cannot peacefully coexist at the helm of government. Neither deserves another opportunity to lead.

Most worrisome, as the White House pointed out in its statement on the deal, the new agreement involves solely elites and belligerents and excludes the voices and interests of the South Sudanese people, who have suffered the most from the war.

A better process would be more inclusive of views from civil society, religious leaders, and displaced people, among others, leading to a more durable outcome. Until mediators are willing to expand the circle of who is included in the peacemaking process, there are few reasons to believe that sustainable peace and genuine reconciliation are possible.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The United States' Perpetual War in Afghanistan Why Long Wars No Longer Generate a Backlash at Home 22

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Because the war is but one source among many to blame for the growing mountain of U.S. debt, its financial impact is easily overlooked But why has the U.S. intervention lasted so long in the first place?

Part of the answer is that Afghanistan’s toxic mix of “state collapse, civil conflict, ethnic disintegration and multisided intervention has locked it in a self-perpetuating cycle that may be simply beyond outside resolution,” as Max Fisher and Amanda Taub summarized in a New York Times post.

But their diagnosis does not speak to a critical dimension of the conflict: namely, how the relative indifference of the U.S. public has allowed the war to drag on.

An Afghan soldier walks past photographs of victims of war on display to mark Human Rights day at the ruined Darlaman Palace in Kabul on December 2013 ,10.

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In theory, leaders in a democracy have incentives to heed public preferences or risk being voted out of office, which means that public opposition to a war makes its continuation untenable. Yet when it comes to Afghanistan, the U.S. public has favored the status quo at best and expressed deep ambivalence at worst. In polls taken a year ago, only 23 percent of Americans believed the United States was winning the war in Afghanistan, and a plurality (37 percent) supported a troop drawdown. At the same time, however, 44 percent wanted to either keep troop levels about the same or increase them, while 19 percent did not have an opinion. Another poll showed that 71 percent of respondents agreed that “full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan would leave a vacuum that would allow terrorist groups like ISIS to expand.” Americans are not necessarily enthusiastic about sending moretroops to Afghanistan, but they certainly are not clamoring for withdrawal.

by Tanisha M. Fazal and Sarah Kreps In October, the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan will turn 17. The human and material costs of what has become the United States’ longest-ever war are colossal. More than 2,000 U.S. military personnel have been killed and over 20,000 have been injured. The UN estimates that nearly 20,000 Afghan civilians have been killed and another 50,000 injured since 2009 alone. The United States has spent some 877$ billion on the war. The Trump administration’s recent initiative to seek direct peace talks with the Taliban—a first since the start of the war in 2001—highlights that Washington is actively looking for new ways to wind down its involvement in the conflict.

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Contrast this with the vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. What began as a small antiwar movement in –1964 65 scaled up as the war escalated in 1966, giving rise to massive protests in 100,000 :1967 people marching in Washington, D.C., and half a million protesting in New York City. Passions in the antiwar movement reflected opposition in the public as a whole. Most Americans knew little about the war until the Johnson administration ramped up troop levels, but as it became clear that the war would be long and protracted, elite disaffection increased.

And public opinion, dragged down by the unpopularity of the draft, began “a path of slow and steady decline” from which it would never recover. When citizens were asked

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in 1965 whether sending troops was a mistake, only 24 percent agreed. Three years on, 46 percent said yes. By 1970, the proportion rose to 57 percent, and it remained at around 60 percent until the end of the war.

LONG BUT PAINLESS That public disaffection at home hastened the end of the Vietnam War is now widely acknowledged. By contrast, the American public has so far failed to turn up the heat on leaders to end the war in Afghanistan—even though few think that the country is winning. Protests against the war have been few and far between.

Popular anger is absent because the public is no longer directly affected by the war legally, personally, or financially. For one, today’s wars are less noticeable because they are increasingly unofficial. As the laws of war have proliferated, putting ever more constraints on what states at war can and cannot do, governments have looked for ways to sidestep this legal regime. At times, this simply means not signing international agreements: U.S. presidents of both parties have been unwilling to push for ratification of the Rome Statute, the treaty that founded the International Criminal Court, lest U.S. military personnel abroad be prosecuted unjustly. More often, however, states avoid stepping over any bright lines that put them unequivocally in the legal domain of war. As a result, the United States has gradually moved away from the legal formalities that had defined war for centuries. It has not issued a formal declaration of war since World War II. Congress did not invoke its power to declare war under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to send troops to Afghanistan.

Instead, it passed the sweeping Authorization for Use of Military Force, which has limped along since 2001 despite a constant barrage of bipartisan criticism. Likewise, the United States has not signed any formal peace agreements since the 1973 Paris Peace Accords—a trend that bodes ill for negotiations with the Taliban. Because such treaties have become less frequent, citizens no longer expect a

Americans are not necessarily enthusiastic about sending moretroops to Afghanistan, but they certainly are not clamoring for withdrawal.

formal end to war. Today’s informal wars are more easily normalized and even obscured from public view, removing some of the pressure to conclude them at all.

Second, most U.S. citizens no longer bear the physical costs of war personally. The end of conscription and the creation of an all-volunteer military in the 1970s have led to an optin system and a growing gap between most citizens and the military. In 18 ,1980 percent of the population were veterans. By 2016, that number was down to 7 percent, which means that the average person today is far less likely to have experienced war. And the fact that not even one in 200 U.S. citizens serves in the military today means that few people directly know someone on active duty. Today’s public is more insulated from the human costs of war than previous generations.

Third, the nature of those physical costs has changed.

Nonfatal casualties have almost always outnumbered

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US Army soldiers in the 501/1st of the 25th Infantry Division shield their eyes from the powerful rotor wash of a Chinook cargo helicopter as they are picked up from a mission October 2009 ,15 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. (Getty)

fatal casualties in war, but this gap is increasingly stark for the United States today. For every U.S. soldier who died during World War II, four others were wounded. This wounded-to-killed ratio mostly held steady through Korea and Vietnam. In Afghanistan, however, it has more than doubled, and there are now ten wounded soldiers for every fatality. That media and polling organizations tend to focus on fatalities rather than the injured obscures this particular cost of war.

Finally, war no longer has the direct financial impact on U.S. citizens that it once did. Up until the Vietnam War, the United States levied war taxes. As a result, the public was patently aware of the costs of the war, and when citizens felt that a military campaign was no longer worth the costs they personally had to bear, they pressured leaders to bring it to a close. Tax hikes in 1968 to fund the fight in Vietnam were not the only reason millions took to the streets, but they were clearly a contributing factor. Based

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on official estimates, the war in Afghanistan had cost 714$ billion by 2017 and continues to cost about 45$ billion per year. But taxpayers wouldn’t know it, since these costs are just added to the national debt. Because the war is but one source among many to blame for the growing mountain of U.S. debt, its financial impact is easily overlooked.

All of these changes—legal, civil-military, and financial— are unlikely to reverse themselves anytime soon, which means that the way Americans feel the effect of conflict is unlikely to change either. But without being confronted with the grim realities of war, the public is unlikely to exercise the levers of accountability that it did in the past by voicing opposition and pressuring leaders to bring a close to the war. And without pressure from below, Congress is unlikely to act. War without end will be not the exception but the rule.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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How Democracies Can Fight Authoritarian Sharp Power New Laws Aren't Enough

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Sharp power is so effective because institutions in democratic settings are open to the outside world and thus vulnerable to foreign manipulation essential democratic values.

AUSTRALIA’S NEW LAWS Australia offers a good case study. On June 28, the Australian parliament voted to adopt two new bills to contend with the threat of foreign political interference, which the bills defined as efforts that are covert, corrupting, or coercive. Although recent attention to meddling by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) motivated the legislation, the new laws do not single out any specific country. The first, the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2018, updates the categories of behavior that constitute espionage and increases the state’s legal capacity to prosecute covert and deceptive conduct on behalf of a “foreign principal,” that is, a foreign government, political organization, or public enterprise, as well as individuals and entities connected to them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) enter the hall at the Grand Kremlin Palace on July ,4 2017 in Moscow, Russia. (Getty)

by Christopher Walker, Jessica Ludwig All around the world, authoritarian governments are interfering with the institutions of democratic societies in ways that would have been unthinkable even during the Cold War. Universities, news organizations, think tanks, film studios, museums, publishing houses, and every aspect of the political process are being targeted by outside influence. This kind of sharp power is so effective because institutions in democratic settings are open to the outside world and thus vulnerable to foreign manipulation.

Policymakers within democracies need to grapple with the challenge of repelling outside influence while upholding

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Its companion, the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2018, requires people who carry out certain specified activities on behalf of a foreign principal to register their relationship and disclose the nature of their activities. A proposed third piece of legislation, the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017, would prohibit political candidates from receiving campaign donations from abroad and create a public registry of non-party political actors, such as political campaigners, third-party campaigners, and associated entities. Parliament has not yet acted on the bill due to concerns that labor unions and nonprofits may face onerous registration and reporting requirements, but it has generated significant public debate and prompted some state governments to increase political donation disclosure requirements.

Australia’s civil society and media have played a vital role in the conversation about authoritarian interference and other harmful forms of influence. They have documented authoritarian activities, communicated them to the public, and vigorously debated the proposed legislation. Over

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the past several months, Australian universities, schools, China scholars, and other groups in civil society have voiced their varying levels of concern over, criticism of, and support for the laws. Australian and international media outlets have extensively covered the various drafts of the legislation. International human rights organizations have weighed in, too.

The issue has divided Australia’s scholarly community.

Two groups of academics issued separate public letters, one expressing concern about the tone and precision of the public discussion, the other registering support for the debate as “valuable and necessary.” Some in civil society, as well as some opposition politicians, were concerned that the laws would define political interference too broadly, thus impinging on freedoms of expression and association.

As a result, the two laws passed in June incorporated over 200 amendments aimed at safeguarding civil and political freedoms. Although the amendments may not address every possible concern, the new laws will allow Australia to begin taking meaningful action against foreign interference while reserving the possibility of fixing legal problems that arise.

FIGHTING BACK Yet Australia’s experience also shows that democracies cannot rely solely on governmental measures to address such a complex challenge. The world is still at an early stage of dealing with sharp power. For many years, Australia, and virtually every other democracy, did not recognize the growing problem or take the initiative to address it. For too long, observers in democracies interpreted authoritarian influence through an outdated lens, even as China and Russia embedded themselves in democratic societies as part of the autocratic regimes’ broader internationalist turn.

As we noted in Foreign Affairs last November, China, in particular, has established platforms for educational, cultural, and other forms of influence within democratic societies. Such initiatives tend to be “accompanied by an

In many democracies that are vulnerable to sharp power, there is a severe shortage of information about influence efforts by China, Russia, and other authoritarian governments

authoritarian determination to monopolize ideas, suppress alternative narratives, and exploit partner institutions.”

Because sharp power can affect democratic institutions so subtly and in so many different ways, understanding how it works is a tricky business. For instance, China’s authorities can disguise state- or party-directed projects as private media firms or grassroots associations. The CCP can also use academic exchange programs and other forms of institutional cooperation to disseminate its propaganda.

Our analysis of Beijing’s various influence initiatives suggests that the CCP seeks to preempt, neutralize, or minimize challenges to the regime’s presentation of itself.

The Chinese government often portrays the country as a benign influence, yet it systematically discourages anyone from challenging its standing or positions, which can lead people and organizations to censor themselves, even when the Chinese government cannot censor them directly.

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Australia’s new laws, and those that other democracies are bound to debate and adopt, may prove essential to defending against corrosive forms of authoritarian influence recently, election observers focused on upholding standards in countries where governments might seek to rig the election process. Today, democracies also need to defend their electoral systems from external attacks.

Such measures could include ensuring that governments share up-to-date information about hacking efforts with local authorities and equipping journalists with the knowledge they need to report accurately on the types of foreign disinformation tactics that typically spike before elections.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (Getty)

Democracies need better ways of responding. In the past, leaders of important public institutions—publishers, university administrators, media executives—did not need to take into account the prospect of censorship or manipulation by external authoritarian forces. Today, they must renew their commitment to democratic values and free expression. The institutions they run should establish common standards and transparency measures to reduce their exposure to sharp power and safeguard their integrity.

Universities, especially public ones, might commit to publishing any contracts they have entered into with foreign governments or entities connected with foreign governments. Private-sector groups could adopt voluntary codes drawing from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, or help set up new initiatives with other parts of civil society to discuss private and public responses to manipulation by authoritarian powers.

The same holds true for electoral systems. Until

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In many democracies that are vulnerable to sharp power, there is a severe shortage of information about influence efforts by China, Russia, and other authoritarian governments. Attempts by these regimes to curb free expression and corrode democratic institutions need to be rigorously documented in order to create a shared understanding of the challenge. That will require independent sources of expertise, such as academic centers, media outlets, and think tanks that are unbeholden to authoritarian governments’ agendas and that can understand authoritarians’ political objectives and monitor their influence activities. Such support is especially important in democracies in parts of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America that may be less able to defend their norms and institutions themselves.

Journalists, civil society organizations, and country and subject matter experts must work together—within their own countries and with international counterparts—to analyze events, share information, and combine expertise.

They should consider how they can agree upon common institutional standards to safeguard the integrity of the public sphere within their democracies.

Australia’s new laws, and those that other democracies are bound to debate and adopt, may prove essential to defending against corrosive forms of authoritarian influence. But they need to be the beginning, not the end, of the fight against sharp power.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com

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‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Makes History for Representation

And Dominates the Box Office 30

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“It really is the first time that we’ve seen in a contemporary setting an all-Asian cast with an Asian-American protagonist light up the screen.” figures from measurement firm ComScore. Analysts predicted that the film would collect 29$ million through Sunday.

“It’s a well-made movie, and it’s tapped into the zeitgeist culturally as an important touchstone across the domestic marketplace,” said Jeff Goldstein, the studio’s distribution chief.

According to Goldstein, 38 percent of audience members over the weekend were Asian, 41 percent were white, 11 percent were Latino and 6 percent were black. “We started on Wednesday with a 44 percent share for the Asian audience,” he said, which represents a rare trend. “The shift illustrates the broadening of the movie, which will continue as time progresses.”

The movie appeals to everyone, he said: “I think it just looks like fun. The people are handsome and pretty and the locations are exotic. It looks like a nice diversion from life.”

For author and CNN contributor Jeff Yang, whose son Hudson stars on the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” the film marks a sea change for Asian-American representation in mainstream culture.

Awkwafina, Jimmy O. Yang, Constance Wu, Kevin Kwan, Henry Golding, Ken Jeong and Michelle Yeoh attend SiriusXM's Entertainment Weekly Radio Spotlight With The Cast Of 'Crazy Rich Asians' on August ,15 2018 in New York City. (Getty)

by Sonaiya Kelley Warner Bros.’ highly anticipated “Crazy Rich Asians” dominated the box office this weekend, making history for Asian-American representation and becoming the highest-opening romantic comedy since 2015’s “Trainwreck.”

The first contemporary English-language Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast since “The Joy Luck Club” 25 years ago, “Crazy Rich Asians” grossed 25.2$ million over the weekend and a cumulative 34$ million since its opening Wednesday, according to

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“Certainly for Asian-American audiences, this is a signal moment for us,” he said. “It really is the first time that we’ve seen in a contemporary setting an allAsian cast with an Asian-American protagonist light up the screen. And the storyline itself, I’ve likened it as the first real Asian-American Disney princess story.

At its core, this is a story about an immigrant AsianAmerican woman who finds herself essentially in a fantasy land from which she couldn’t possibly have imagined coming herself.”

It’s this universal story that appeals to audiences outside of the Asian community, Yang said.

“Asian-Americans, we simply aspire to see a story

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from our community, from our perspective told, period. But I think it’s that Disney princess element that any viewer can key into. And we’re seeing already that many beyond the Asian-American community are responding to that tried-and-true ‘tale as old as time’ kind of context of this film.”

The romantic comedy, which cost 30$ million to produce, is based on the bestselling novel by Kevin Kwan about a Chinese American woman who learns her boyfriend is from one of Singapore’s wealthiest families. Starring Constance Wu, “Crazy Rich Asians” was shot in Malaysia and Singapore and will be released in international markets, including most Asian countries, in the coming weeks.

According to a July study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, of the top 100 films of 2017, only 4.8 percent featured a character of Asian descent with a speaking role.

With the success of this film and others like “Black Panther,” “Get Out” and “Girls Trip,” studios may soon be looking to change that.

Goldstein said the lesson for major studios here is to take risks and try things that are outside the box.

“We’re always looking to do that, it’s often hard to find that right project that you really believe in.

And it takes a lot of work to execute effectively and professionally a project like this and we’re proud that we were able to do it.”

“As someone who’s watched Hollywood undermarket and assign low expectations to uncompromising works by creators of color for all my life, to see films like this breaking out beyond expectations is incredibly satisfying,” Yang said. “At the same time, it does underscore the fact that this is not a new phenomenon.

“We’ve seen works by filmmakers of color and stories that feature performers and characters of color consistently outperform expectations,” he said.

“That’s great, but it also means studios are not doing enough. If you are surprised by how well your movie did, you left money on the table and that I think is one of the lessons that needs to be learned from this. If you believe in the work that you’re putting out there and you get it in front of the audiences that are most primed to consume it, the results will be there.”

“The Joy Luck Club,” which broke ground in 1993 as the first major studio movie to depict Asian-American

contemporary life, earned 32.9$ million — 57$ million adjusted for inflation — over the course of its entire run. “Crazy Rich Asians” is on track to surpass that by next weekend.

Period films like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” are the most recent Hollywood studio films featuring all-Asian casts.

“Crazy Rich Asians” earned positive reviews from audiences and critics, with an A rating on CinemaScore and a 92 percent “fresh” rating from review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

Now in its second week, the studio’s “The Meg” dropped one spot to No. 2, earning 21.1$ million over the weekend for a cumulative 83.7$ million.

STX Entertainment’s “Mile 22” debuted at No. 3 with

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Actor Henry Golding speaks before an audience during Showcase Cinemas' 'Crazy Rich Asians' screening at College Point Multiplex Cinemas on August 2018 ,13 in Whitestone, New York. (Getty)

13.6$ million.

cumulative 180.7$ million.

The film, which was intended to launch a franchise, is the second-lowest opening of the four collaborations between director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg as well as one of the worst-reviewed films of their careers — and of this summer.

In limited release, Sony Pictures Classics opened “The Wife” with 111,137$ in four theaters for a solid per-screen average of 27,784$. It earned a 93 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

About an American intelligence officer tasked with transporting an asset, the film earned poor reviews with audiences and critics, with a B- rating on CinemaScore and a 20 percent “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. With an estimated budget between 30$ million and 50$ million, the film is largely being considered a disappointment.

Sony’s “Alpha” opened at No. 4 and tied with Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” which added 10.5$ million in its fourth weekend, for a

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Roadside Attractions’ “Juliet Naked” opened in four theaters with 60,922$, a per-screen average of 15,230$.

Next week, Global Road opens the family adventure “A.X.L.” and STX Entertainment debuts the comedy “The Happytime Murders,” starring Melissa McCarthy.

In limited release, Magnolia Pictures opens the comedy “Support the Girls” and Sony reveals the Sundance prize-winning thriller “Searching” starring John Cho. This article was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.

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6 Ways to Improve

and Protect Your Vision Eating an ntioxidant-rich diet, wearing protective glasses, and controlling underlying conditions will help protect your vision Harvard Health

2. Control underlying conditions

Eating an antioxidant-rich diet, wearing protective glasses, and controlling underlying conditions will help protect your vision.

Chronic health problems can hurt your vision. For example, people with poorly controlled diabetes can get diabetic retinopathy — little areas of bleeding and swelling in the retina, the part of your eye that captures light and sends it to the brain via the optic nerve.

“Those areas of bleeding come from abnormal blood vessels and also can cause scar tissue that could lead to retinal detachment and blindness,” warns Dr. Gardiner. “Getting blood sugar down helps keep diabetic retinopathy from progressing.”

We all know how important vision is for remaining independent and enjoying the simple pleasures in life, like a colorful sunset or a grandchild’s precious smile. But appreciation isn’t enough to keep your vision intact. Aging increases the risk for vision loss and eye problems, including cataracts, diabetic eye disease, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and dry eyes.

Adopting the following healthy habits will increase the odds that you’ll protect your vision and independence as well as your view of the things that make life beautiful.

1. Get regular eye exams “A comprehensive dilated eye exam can detect conditions you may not be aware of, because many of these problems don’t have symptoms,” says Dr. Matthew Gardiner, an ophthalmologist with Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Even if you don’t have eye problems, many eye doctors recommend that you get a comprehensive eye exam every two years before age 70 and every year starting at age 70. (The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says the evidence for this recommendation is “insufficient” to warrant its endorsement.) You’ll have to go more often if you have eye problems.

People who have high blood pressure are at risk for retinal disease, too. Controlling your blood pressure helps prevent areas of bleeding and swelling in the eye.

3. Eat a healthy diet Eating foods that are good for your heart and blood vessels also helps protect your eyes. Aim for a diet that includes minimal saturated fat and salt; a moderate amount of lean proteins, including nuts, seeds, and legumes; and plenty of fresh vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

Dr. Gardiner says antioxidant-rich foods — like dark leafy greens, strawberries, blueberries, and walnuts — may help reduce the risk of cataracts (a clouding of the eye’s lens) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), an eye condition that causes vision loss in the macula, the part of the eye that controls central vision.

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For people at a middle stage of AMD, taking a combination of antioxidants and zinc in an eye health supplement known as the AREDS formulation reduces the risk for progression of the disease.

4. Stop smoking “After genetics, smoking is the No. 1 risk factor for AMD,” says Dr. Gardiner. “Smoking is also associated with cataract progression. We advise everyone to quit.”

5. Use eye drops Using artificial tears can relieve the gritty feeling of dry eyes.

“The drops will also let you see better if you have very dry eyes, because a dry eye surface makes things blurry,” says Dr. Gardiner. But beware: “Drops that ‘get the red out’ will make the eyes less red, but can make them worse in the long term from a rebound effect when the drops wear off,” Dr. Gardiner says.

He recommends using preservative-free artificial tears as often as you need them or artificial tears with preservatives no more than

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Eating foods that are good for your heart and blood vessels also helps protect your eyes six times per day.

6. Use eye protection Two kinds of glasses can protect your eyes. Sunglasses filter out the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. UV rays increase the risk for cataract formation and cancer on the eyelids. Make sure a pair of sunglasses has UV protection.

Wear safety glasses to prevent injury when you’re doing work around the house. “Most people ignore this risk,” Dr. Gardiner explains, “but we commonly see people who’ve suffered scratched corneas from gardening, working outside, or drilling,

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When China Rules the Web Technology in Service of the State

by Adam Segal For almost five decades, the United States has guided the growth of the Internet. From its origins as a small Pentagon program to its status as a global platform that connects more than half of the world’s population and tens of billions of devices, the Internet has long been an American project. Yet today, the United States has ceded leadership in cyberspace to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping has outlined his plans to turn China into a “cyber-superpower.” Already, more people in China have access to the Internet than in any other country, but Xi has grander plans. Through domestic regulations, technological innovation, and foreign policy, China aims to build an “impregnable” cyberdefense system, give itself a greater voice in Internet governance, foster more world-class companies, and lead the globe in advanced technologies.

China’s continued rise as a cyber-superpower is not guaranteed.

Top-down, state-led efforts at innovation in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and other ambitious technologies may well fail. Chinese technology companies will face economic and political pressures as they globalize. Chinese citizens, although they appear to have little expectation of privacy from their government, may demand more from private firms. The United States may reenergize its own digital diplomacy, and the U.S. economy may rediscover the dynamism that allowed it create so much of the modern world’s technology.

But given China’s size and technological sophistication, Beijing has a good chance of succeeding—thereby remaking cyberspace in its own image. If this happens, the Internet will be less global and less open. A major part of it will run Chinese applications over Chinese-made hardware. And Beijing will reap the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits

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Beijing has a good chance of remaking cyberspace in its own image good governance, and fosters economic growth but also is tightly controlled so as to stymie political mobilization and prevent the flow of information that could undermine the regime.

Second, China wants to reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers of digital and communications equipment. It hopes to eventually lead the world in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and robotics. As Xi warned in May, “Initiatives of innovation and development must be securely kept in our own hands.”

Third, Chinese policymakers, like their counterparts around the world, are increasingly wary of the risk of cyberattacks on governmental and private networks that could disrupt critical services, hurt economic growth, and even cause physical destruction. Accordingly, the People’s Liberation Army has announced plans to speed up the development of its cyberforces and beef up China’s network defenses. This focus on cybersecurity overlaps with China’s techno-nationalism: Chinese policymakers believe they have to reduce China’s dependence on U.S. technology companies to ensure its national security, a belief that was strengthened in 2013, when Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, revealed that U.S. intelligence services had accessed the data of millions of people that was held and transmitted by U.S. companies.

Customers at an internet cafe in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China.

(Getty)

that once flowed to Washington.

XI’S VISION Almost from the moment he took power in 2012, Xi made it clear just how big a role the Internet played in his vision for China.

After years of inertia, during which cyber-policy was fragmented among a wide array of government departments, Xi announced that he would chair a so-called central leading group on Internet security and informatization and drive policy from the top. He established a new agency, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and gave it responsibility for controlling online content, bolstering cybersecurity, and developing the digital economy.

Cyberpower sits at the intersection of four Chinese national priorities. First, Chinese leaders want to ensure a harmonious Internet. That means one that guides public opinion, supports

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Finally, China has promoted “cyber-sovereignty” as an organizing principle of Internet governance, in direct opposition to U.S. support for a global, open Internet. In Xi’s words, cyber-sovereignty represents “the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber development, model of cyber regulation and Internet public policies, and participate in international cyberspace governance on an equal footing.” China envisions a world of national Internets, with government control justified by the sovereign rights of states. It also wants to weaken the bottom-up, private-sector-led model of Internet governance championed by the United States and its allies, a model Beijing sees as dominated by Western technology companies and civil society organizations. Chinese policymakers believe they would have a larger say in regulating information technology and defining the global rules for cyberspace if the UN played a larger role in Internet governance. All four of Beijing’s priorities require China to act aggressively to shape cyberspace at home and on the global stage.

THE END OF THE OPEN INTERNET The Xi era will be remembered for putting an end to the West’s

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naive optimism about the liberalizing potential of the Internet.

Over the last five years, Beijing has significantly tightened controls on websites and social media. In March 2017, for example, the government told Tencent, the second largest of China’s digital giants, and other Chinese technology companies to shut down websites they hosted that included discussions on history, international affairs, and the military. A few months later, Tencent, the search company Baidu, and the microblogging site Weibo were fined for hosting banned content in the run-up to the 19th Party Congress. Officials ordered telecommunications companies to block virtual private networks (VPNs), which are widely used by Chinese businesses, entrepreneurs, and academics to circumvent government censors. Even Western companies complied: Apple removed VPNs from the Chinese version of its App Store. Beijing also announced new regulations further limiting online anonymity and making the organizers of online forums personally accountable for the contributions of their members.

Chinese censors are now skilled at controlling conversations on social media. In 2017, as the dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo became increasingly ill, censors revealed that they could delete his image from chats. In an even more Orwellian move, authorities have rolled out a sophisticated surveillance system based on a vast array of cameras and sensors, aided by facial and voice recognition software and artificial intelligence. The tool has been deployed most extensively in Xinjiang Province, in an effort to track the Muslim Uighur population there, but the government is working to scale it up nationwide.

In addition to employing censorship and surveillance, China has also created an interlocking framework of laws, regulations, and standards to increase cybersecurity and safeguard data in governmental and private systems. The government has enacted measures to protect important Internet infrastructure, it has mandated security reviews for network products and services, and it has required companies to store data within China, where the government will face few obstacles to accessing it.

Beijing has also introduced new regulations concerning how

At an artificial intelligence summit last year, Eric Schmidt, the former chair of Google, said of the Chinese, “By 2020, they will have caught up. By 2025, they will be better than us. And by 2030, they will dominate the industries of AI.”

government agencies respond to cybersecurity incidents, how and when the government discloses software vulnerabilities to the private sector, and how ministries and private companies share information about threats.

Different agencies and local governments could interpret and implement these policies in different ways, but at the least, the regulations will raise the cost and complexity of doing business in China for both domestic and foreign technology companies.

Draft regulations published in July 2017 were particularly broad, defining “critical information infrastructure” to cover not only traditional categories such as communications, financial, and energy networks but also the news media, health-care companies, and cloud-computing providers. Baidu, Tencent, and Weibo have already been fined for violating the new cybersecurity laws.

Foreign companies worry that an expansive interpretation of the requirements for inspections of equipment and storing data within China will raise costs and could allow the Chinese government to steal their intellectual property.

MADE IN CHINA Chinese policymakers believe that to be truly secure, China must achieve technological self-sufficiency. Small wonder, then, that support for science and technology is front and center in the country’s most recent five-year plan, which began in 2016.

China’s investment in research and development has grown by an average of 20 percent a year since 1999. It now stands at approximately 233$ billion, or 20 percent of total world R & D spending. More students graduate with science and engineering degrees in China than anywhere else in the world, and in 2018, China overtook the United States in terms of the total number of scientific publications. Western scientists have long ignored Chinese research, but they are now citing a growing number of Chinese publications.

Three technologies will matter most for China’s ability to shape the future of cyberspace: semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. For years, Beijing has tried and failed to build an indigenous industry producing semiconductors, that is, the integrated circuits (or microchips) found in nearly every technological device. In 2016, China imported 228$ billion worth of integrated circuits—more than it spent on imported oil—accounting for over 90 percent of its consumption, according to the consultancy McKinsey. The risk of relying on U.S. suppliers was brought home this April, when the Trump administration sanctioned ZTE, the world’s fourth-largest maker of telecommunications gear. ZTE relies on U.S.-made components, including microchips to power its wireless stations.

When the sanctions cut the company off from its supplies, it ceased major operations. In June, Trump reversed course on the sanctions, but the move did little to assuage Chinese concerns

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People congregate and take photographs at a make-shift tribute outside the Google Inc. office in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, Jan. 2010 ,13. (Getty)

The Xi Jinping era will be remembered for putting an end to the West’s naive optimism about the liberalizing potential of the Internet. quantum computing, but the sums are certainly substantial. It is spending 1$ billion alone on one quantum computing laboratory.

about dependence on foreign suppliers. Soon after the sanctions were announced, Xi called on a gathering of the country’s top scientists to make breakthroughs on core technologies.

In 2015, China issued guidelines that aim to get Chinese firms to produce 70 percent of the microchips used by Chinese industry by 2025. Since then, the government has subsidized domestic and foreign companies that move their operations to China and encouraged domestic consumers to buy from only Chinese suppliers. The government has committed 150$ billion over the next decade to improve China’s ability to design and manufacture advanced microprocessors. China has also acquired technologies abroad. According to the Rhodium Group, a research firm, from 2013 to 2016, Chinese companies made 27 attempted bids for U.S. semiconductor companies worth more than 37$ billion in total, compared with six deals worth 214$ million from 2000 to 2013. Yet these attempts have run into problems: many of the high-profile bids, including a 1.3$ billion offer for Lattice Semiconductor and a 2.4$ billion deal for Fairchild Semiconductor, were blocked by the U.S. government on national security grounds.

Then there is quantum computing, which uses the laws of quantum mechanics—essentially the ability of quantum bits, or “qubits,” to perform several calculations at the same time—to solve certain problems that ordinary computers cannot. Advances in this area could allow Chinese intelligence services to create highly secure encrypted communications channels and break most conventional encryption. High-speed quantum computers could also have major economic benefits, remaking manufacturing, data analytics, and the process of developing drugs. In 2016, China launched the world’s first satellite that can communicate using channels secured by quantum cryptography and constructed the world’s longest quantum communications cable, connecting Beijing and Shanghai. It’s not clear how much China spends on

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More than its investments in semiconductor research and quantum computing, it is China’s ambitious plans in artificial intelligence that have caused the most unease in the West. At an artificial intelligence summit last year, Eric Schmidt, the former chair of Google, said of the Chinese, “By 2020, they will have caught up. By 2025, they will be better than us. And by 2030, they will dominate the industries of AI.” China is racing to harness artificial intelligence for military uses, including autonomous drone swarms, software that can defend itself against cyberattacks, and programs that mine social media to predict political movements.

In 2017, the Chinese government outlined its road map for turning itself into the “world’s primary AI innovation center” by 2030.

The plan is more a wish list than a concrete strategy, but it does provide direction to central ministries and local governments on how to invest to achieve breakthroughs by highlighting specific fields for research and development. The government has singled out Baidu, Tencent, the e-commerce giant Alibaba, and the voice recognition software company iFLYTEK as national champions in AI, identifying these companies as the first group to develop systems that can drive autonomous cars, diagnose diseases, act as intelligent voice assistants, and manage smart cities, that is, urban spaces that use a wide variety of sensors to collect data on how people live and then analyze that data to reduce cities’ environmental impact, spur economic development, and improve people’s quality of life.

China is also striving to define international standards for the next wave of innovation, especially in fifth-generation mobile network technology, or 5G, which will offer much faster Internet speeds to mobile users and enable new uses for Internetconnected devices. To many Chinese leaders, China’s current place in the global division of labor looks like a trap: foreign firms reap high profits from the intellectual property they own, and Chinese companies survive on the thin margins they make by manufacturing and assembling physical products. If China can control technology standards, it will ensure that its firms receive royalties and licensing profits as others develop products that plug into Chinese-owned platforms.

Over the last decade, Beijing has increased the skill, sophistication, and size of the delegations it sends to standards organizations.

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China was essentially absent for the discussions about third- and fourth-generation mobile network technologies, but things have changed. In 2016, Huawei, China’s largest telecommunications company, sent twice as many representatives as any other company to the meeting in Vienna that defined the specifications for the coming fifth generation of mobile networks.

GOVERNING THE INTERNET Under Xi, China has also tried to shape the international institutions and norms that govern cyberspace. For much of the last decade, Chinese hackers de facto set those norms by engaging in massive cyber-espionage campaigns designed to steal military, political, and, worst of all in the eyes of the United States, industrial secrets. The Obama administration pressed Beijing on the subject, publicly attributing attacks on U.S. companies to state-backed hackers and threatening to sanction senior officials.

In 2015, the two sides agreed that neither would support digital theft for commercial advantage. China went on to sign similar agreements with Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. There was a marked downturn in activity in the wake of these agreements, but the decline seems to have been as much a result of a reorganization within the Chinese military as of U.S. diplomatic efforts. Now that the People’s Liberation Army has consolidated control over its cyber-forces, industrial espionage has shifted to more sophisticated hackers in China’s intelligence agencies.

China’s more visible efforts at writing the rules of the road for cyberspace have centered on the UN. Washington and its allies have promoted a distributed model of Internet governance that involves technical bodies, the private sector, civil society, and governments, whereas Beijing prefers a state-centric vision. In 2017, for example, China called for “a multilateral approach to governing cyberspace, with the United Nations taking a leading role in building international consensus on rules.” Beijing believes a multilateral approach located at the UN has two immediate benefits. It would prioritize the interests of governments over those of technology companies and civil society groups. And it would allow China to mobilize the votes of developing countries, many of which would also like to control the Internet and the free flow of information.

Given China’s size and technological sophistication, the country has a good chance of becoming the world's next cyper-superpower

Beijing has resisted U.S. efforts to apply international law, especially the laws of armed conflict, to cyberspace. A forum at the UN known as the Group of Governmental Experts has identified some rules of behavior for states in a series of meetings and reports from 2004 to 2017. Although in the 2013 report, Chinese diplomats accepted that international law and the UN Charter apply to cyberspace, and in 2015, they agreed to four norms of state behavior, they dragged their feet on discussions of exactly how neutrality, proportionality, the right of self-defense, and other concepts from international law might be applied to conflict in cyberspace. They argued instead that discussing international law would lead to the militarization of cyberspace.

Chinese diplomats, along with their Russian counterparts, stressed the need for the peaceful settlement of disputes.In 2017, the participating countries in the Group of Governmental Experts failed to issue a follow-on report in part because China and Russia opposed language endorsing the right of self-defense.

In addition to working through the UN, Chinese policymakers have created their own venue to showcase their vision for the Internet and strengthen their voice in its governance: the World Internet Conference, held annually in Wuzhen. In 2017, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, the chief executives of Apple and Google, respectively, attended for the first time. Cook, a vocal defender of privacy and free speech at home, stated that Apple shared China’s vision for “developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits.” By echoing Chinese officials’ language on openness despite the tight controls on the Internet in China, Cook was signaling Apple’s willingness to play by Beijing’s rules.

Beijing is likely to have its biggest impact on global Internet governance through its trade and investment policies, especially as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive effort to build infrastructure connecting China to the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and Europe. Along with the more than 50$ billion that has

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Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (R2) talks with the first AI citizen Sophia (L2) during the AmCham Smart City Summit 2018 at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on June 2018 ,27 in Hong Kong, China.

(Getty)

flowed into railways, roads, pipelines, ports, mines, and utilities along the route, officials have stressed the need for Chinese companies to build a “digital Silk Road”: fiber-optic cables, mobile networks, satellite relay stations, data centers, and smart cities.

Much of the activity along the nascent digital Silk Road has come from technology companies and industry alliances, not the Chinese government. Alibaba has framed its expansion into Southeast Asia as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. It has acquired the Pakistani e-commerce company Daraz and launched a digital free-trade zone with the support of the Malaysian and Thai governments, which will ease customs checks, provide logistical support for companies, and promote exports from small and medium-sized companies in Malaysia and Thailand to China.

ZTE now operates in over 50 of the 64 countries on the route of the Belt and Road Initiative. As well as laying fiber-optic cables and setting up mobile networks, the company has been providing surveillance, mapping, cloud storage, and data analysis services to cities in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Laos, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Turkey.

The Chinese government hopes that these enterprises will give it political influence throughout the region. But private firms are focused on profit, and Beijing has not always succeeded in converting business relationships into political heft, even when the projects have involved state-run enterprises, since these firms also often pursue commercial interests that conflict with diplomatic goals. In the short term, however, the presence of Chinese engineers, managers, and diplomats will reinforce a tendency among developing countries, especially those with authoritarian governments, to embrace China’s closed conception of the Internet.

THE FUTURE IS CHINESE Beijing’s vision of the Internet is ascendant. According to the think tank Freedom House, Internet freedom—how easily people can access the Internet and use it to speak their minds—has declined for the last seven years. More countries are pushing companies to store data on their citizens within their borders (which companies resist because doing so raises costs and reduces their ability to protect the privacy of their users) and to allow the government to carry out security reviews of their network equipment. Each country pursues these policies in support of its own ends, but they all can turn to China for material, technical, and political support.

The United States’ position at the center of the global Internet brought it major economic, military, and intelligence benefits.

U.S. companies developed the routers and servers that carry the world’s data, the phones and personal computers that people use to communicate, and the software that serves as a gateway to the Internet. In a similar way, the Chinese Communist Party sees technology companies as a source of economic dynamism and soft power. And so it is increasing its political control over Chinese technology giants. As those companies come to supply

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Almost from the moment he took power in 2012, Xi made it clear just how big a role the Internet played in his vision for China more of the world’s digital infrastructure, China’s spy services will be tempted to collect data from them.

Chinese technology companies have several advantages: access to a lot of data with few restrictions on how they can use it, talented workers, and government support. But the country’s legacy of central planning may lead companies to overinvest, build redundant operations, and stifle their employees’ creativity.

And Chinese technology firms have become the targets of political pressure in Australia, the United States, and Europe.

The Australian government is considering banning Huawei from supplying equipment for Australia’s fifth-generation mobile networks. Washington is working to limit Chinese investment in U.S. technology companies and has made it more difficult for Chinese telecommunications firms to do business in the United States: it has blocked China Mobile’s application to provide telecommunications services in the United States, banned the sale of Huawei and ZTE smartphones on U.S. military bases, and sought to prohibit U.S. telecommunications companies from spending critical infrastructure funds on equipment and services from China.

Yet none of these challenges is likely to deal a fatal blow to China’s digital ambitions. The country is too large, too powerful, and too sophisticated. To prepare for greater Chinese control over the Internet, the United States should work with its allies and trading partners to pressure Beijing to open up the Chinese market to foreign companies, curb its preferential treatment of Chinese firms, and better protect foreign companies’ intellectual property. U.S. policymakers should shift from simply defending the bottom-up, private-sector-led model of Internet governance to offering a positive vision that provides developing countries with realistic alternatives to working solely through the UN. Washington should talk to Beijing directly about norms of state behavior in cyberspace. The two countries should work together on setting global standards for government purchases of technology, determining how companies should secure their supply chains against cyberattacks, and planning government inspections of critical communications equipment. Yet these efforts will only shape trends, not reverse them. Whatever Washington does, the future of cyberspace will be much less American and much more Chinese. * ADAM SEGAL is Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs.

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Los Cabos: A Model for Sustainability

by Monica Poling Long a favored Mexican visitor destination, Los Cabos is as popular for its plethora of visitor activities as it for its proximity to the United States.

Less than a three-hour plane ride from most of Texas and California, Los Cabos can also be reached in just about five hours for New

Yorkers. Moreover, the destination welcomes 500 flights weekly from 40 cities in the United States and Canada, including a new Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago Midway, which will commence in November.

While the destination has struggled somewhat with its public image after the State Department upped its warning language last year, Los Cabos is now bouncing back with a roar. (In January,

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While Los Cabos’ focus on increased security has been well publicized, what is not as well known about the region is its commitment to healthy growth increasing, with the port welcoming a 14 percent increase in arrivals to date in 2018 over the same period last year.

For the Los Cabos Tourism Board, the plan to drive tourism is about much more than relying on a carefully orchestrated public relations strategy.

Last year, for example, a series of high-profile incidences, although not directed at visitors, left potential travelers wondering if it might be time to take a pass on visiting the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula.

But the Tourism Board, in partnership with other public and private entities, quickly jumped into action, establishing a “five-point action plan to ensure the safety of all tourists and citizens.”

They also funneled nearly 50$ million into security efforts throughout the region.

The efforts are working.

Inside the bay at Cabo San Lucas, a small tourboat is dwarfed by rock formations including the famous 'El Arco.'

(Getty)

the State Department re-classified Los Cabos as a Level 2 destination, which is on par with most countries in Europe.)

Also helping feed the re-invigorated interest in the area is a long list of well-publicized luxury hotel openings and a surge in arrivals by celebrity travelers.

Also helping, arrivals by cruise ship are also

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“We have seen a 90 percent decrease in violent crime this year,” said Rodrigo Esponda, the managing director for the Los Cabos Tourism Board in an interview with TravelPulse.

While Los Cabos’ focus on increased security has been well publicized, what is not as well known about the region is its commitment to healthy growth.

For Los Cabos, sustainability is more than just a catchphrase or a marketing slogan. Rather it is an ethos that long pre-dates the current administration.

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“Now we call it sustainability,” joked Esponda.

“Back then, we called it long-term vision.”

For example, despite the long list of new hotels opening their doors in Los Cabos, precautions against over-development are well-established.

Forget about ever finding Vegas-style properties here. Hotels in the region are capped at about 220 rooms each. Most hotels are also tasked with height limits, with most prohibited from exceeding six stories. Others still are limited to four and even two stories.

A drive along the Resort Corridor (the coastline between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas) will also quickly reveal that not a single billboard mars the ocean view. Billboards are prohibited on this stretch.

Even lesser known is that 42 percent of the state is protected area. The figure includes a number of marine preserves and a UNESCO World Heritage Biosphere. Which means Los Cabos’ world-famous diving and deep sea fishing operators must work within a strict set of parameters that protect the off-shore marine life.

Green efforts abound in Los Cabos.

In fact, said Esponda, “No other beach destination in Mexico has as many initiatives for sustainability as we do.”

Among them, the newly re-opened Los Cabos International Convention Center has the largest green wall in North America. Additionally, no straws are permitted anywhere in the state.

As for Los Cabos’ famed beaches, 19 of them have been designated as Blue Flag beaches, an eco-friendly certification given to the cleanest beaches in the world.

is driven by the community’s strong sense of corporate social responsibility. Here, public, private and civic leaders put the well-being of the collective destination over that of individual “To put it into context, there are only 800 Blue interests.

Flag Beaches in the world,” said Esponda.

At its core, said Esponda, Los Cabos’ success As an example, Esponda cited recovery efforts

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'Lover's beach in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The beach is only accesible by boat and opens to the Pacific on one side and the Sea of Cortez on the other.' (Getty)

after Hurricane Lidia deluged the region last year.

“Immediately after the storm, the community organized to clean the beach,” said Esponda.

“They didn’t have to be told to do so, they just did it.”

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Ultimately, says Esponda, the destination is committed to its role as a guardian of the environment.

“If you take care of the environment, you will see the benefits.”