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Today is my last day at the Council on Foreign Relations after eight and one-half fun and fulfilling years. An archive of everything I authored or co-authored remains here. Subsequently, this is the final post of this blog after more than 400 posts. Read More
Austria’s Presidential Election and the Race for the White House
Anna-Sophia Haub is an Interdepartmental Program Assistant at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Just .6 percent was needed to defeat the far right candidate for the Austrian presidency. That was the difference of 31,000 votes in favor of Alexander Van der Bellen, an independent and former Green Party delegate, to defeat Norbert Hofer of the far right, anti-immigration Freedom Party. Although the Austrian presidential role is mostly ceremonial, it is nevertheless important to the development of the country’s national identity.
Preliminary voting pointed to the Hofer, who was leading by 35 percent to Van der Bellen’s 21 percent. It was unsurprising that a far right politician was winning in the preliminary round. Austria is a predominantly conservative, Catholic country, whose people are dissatisfied with the current center-left, center-right coalition in dealing with unemployment, the euro crisis, and especially the refugee crisis. Hofer campaigned on the premises of strengthening Austrian boarders and armed forces in order to limit the number of Islamic refugees crossing through or remaining in Austria, and to reducing the ever-encroaching presence of the European Union. On the other hand, Van der Bellen encouraged voters to be “open, Europe-friendly, [and] Europe-conscious” and favored a fence–free immigration policy for refugees. The rise of Hofer’s right-wing party is attributed to the refugee crisis and the rise of a modern democratic retreat in Europe and in the United States. Yet, while refugees were a factor, the elections exposed a multiplicity of fissures that pre-existed in Austria that deeply frustrated the electorate. These include the steady increase in unemployment, the euro crisis, and security concerns directly related to terrorist attacks in Europe.
Of course, these electorate issues are not unique to Austria, and polls in the United States suggest that the top three concerns for U.S. voters include: terrorism and homeland security, the economy, and employment. What implications does Austria have for the U.S. presidential race in regard to these electorate concerns?
Trump’s campaign shares similar extremist views to Hofer’s, whereas Clinton’s relates more to Van der Bellen’s. Yesterday, Trump officially stated in a recent national security speech, “I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there’s a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats” in response to the horrific tragedy in Orlando. Additionally, he supports deportation policies, including mandatory return of all criminal aliens after detainment, cracking down on refugee and asylum-seekers, and of course, building his infamous wall on the Mexican border. On the other hand, Clinton vows to keep Americans safe by strengthening the home front by calling for more stringent restrictions on guns, strengthening alliances with Middle East, Asia, and Europe, and taking out the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s “strongholds in Iraq and Syria by intensifying the air campaign.”
As for economic insecurity and inequality, Trump vows to eliminate economic inequality by reducing the $19 trillion of national debt, providing tax relief for middle class America, simplifying the tax code, and discouraging corporate inversions. Clinton promises to put forth a middle-class tax-cut plan, create good-paying jobs, and provide salary raises by investing in infrastructure, clean energy, and scientific and medical research, and closing corporate tax loopholes. In regard to employment and jobs, Trump argues that he will be “the greatest jobs president” by keeping the minimum wage at its current rate ($7.25) to maintain the United States’ competitive edge in the foreign spectrum and implementing nationwide e-verify to protect jobs for unemployed U.S. citizens from immigrants. Conversely, Hillary’s goals include increasing the minimum federal wage to $12 an hour and raising incomes for lower and middle class families.
Although Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee and opinion polls suggest larger support for Trump regarding the three electorate concerns above, Clinton leads in the primary polls. Will Clinton be able to maintain her lead come November? Quite possibly by a small percentage, if the outcome of the Austrian election provides any indication.
The Orlando Massacre and Global Terrorism
A brief note to place Sunday morning’s horrific massacre in Orlando, Florida, within the broader global context of terrorism. In 2014, the last year for which there is complete data, there were eighty-two terror attacks around the world that killed more than fifty people—twenty-eight of them killed over 100 people. This is according to the Global Terrorism Database, which is maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The country and number of attacks with more than fifty fatalities is listed below.
Nigeria: 37
Iraq: 17
South Sudan: 7
Syria: 7
Cameroon: 3
Ukraine: 3
Central African Republic: 2
Afghanistan: 2
Pakistan: 2
Somalia: 1
Sudan: 1
The United States has fortunately avoided being the location of such mass-fatality terrorist attacks since 9/11 through new laws, vastly more funding, and a massive expansion of homeland security and intelligence capabilities. Indeed, before the attack against the Pulse night club, forty-five Americans had been killed within the United States by “violent jihadist attacks,” according to the New America Foundation. Not only was the hate crime perpetrated in Orlando the deadliest terror attack within the United States since 9/11, it was deadlier than every other jihadist terror attack combined since then.
In countries where large and highly-capable militant armies exist, governments lack the homeland security and law enforcement infrastructure needed to prevent mass-fatality attacks as successfully as been the case for the United States. The innocent victims of terrorism within these countries suffer so greatly, because they try to create a life among ongoing insurgencies and civil wars, cannot rely upon the state to protect them, and then are killed by terrorists searching for the least well-defended populations, in order to spread fear and elicit recruits. Few of these eighty-two attacks were covered by Western media, and even those (like myself) who try to understand terrorism probably knew of only a dozen of them. Though we do not know their individual stories, we should recognize that they too are the tragic victims of the scourge of terrorism, which overwhelmingly has devastated those living within conflict-prone Middle Eastern and African countries.
What Clinton’s E-mails Reveal About Her Support for CIA Drone Strikes
A revelation today about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State may indicate her preference using military force over diplomatic considerations. It was known since January that the content of twenty-two emails that went through the private server were classified at the “top secret/SAP [special access programs]” level, referring to highly classified intelligence gathering or covert programs run by the Pentagon and CIA. At the time, Clinton told NPR, "the best we can determine" is that the emails in question consisted solely of a news article about drone strikes in Pakistan. As Clinton stated: "How a New York Times public article that goes around the world could be in any way viewed as classified, or the fact that it would be sent to other people off of the New York Times site, I think, is one of the difficulties that people have in understanding what this is about.”
Today, Adam Entous and Devlin Barrett reported that the e-mails were not merely forwarded news articles, but consisted of informal discussions between Clinton’s senior aides about whether to oppose upcoming CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. According to Entous and Barrett when a potential strike was imminent—or if it occurred during the holidays when staffers were away from government computers—the covert operation was then debated openly, albeit vaguely without mentioning the CIA, drones, or the militant targets specifically.
The State Department was given a voice in the intensity and timing of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, after then-Ambassador Cameron Munter reportedly opposed certain covert operations that occurred during especially sensitive points in the U.S.-Pakistani bilateral relationship, or when domestic opposition to the strikes were at their highest. As he later described this process: “I have a yellow card,” Munter recalled, describing the new policy. “I can say ‘no.’ That ‘no’ goes back to the CIA director. Then he has to go to Hillary. If Hillary says ‘no,’ he can still do it, but he has to explain the next day in writing why.” It was after Munter raised objections to drone strikes that Sec. Clinton and her aides would debate the merits of them, including through emails that were forwarded to Clinton’s private account.
Entous and Barrett’s reporting includes this critical passage:
“With the compromise, State Department-CIA tensions began to subside. Only once or twice during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State did U.S. diplomats object to a planned CIA strike, according to congressional and law-enforcement officials familiar with the emails.”
During Clinton’s tenure between January 2009 and February 2013, the CIA conducted 294 drone strikes that killed 2,192 people, 226 of whom were civilians. (For the data see here, which is based on averages within the ranges provided by the New America Foundation, Long Wars Journal, and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.) In other words, of the 294 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Clinton’s State Department objected to fewer than one-percent of them. If elected to the White House, would she similarly prioritize CIA counterterrorism operations over the concerns of senior U.S. diplomats? The evidence from her time as Secretary of State suggests that the answer is overwhelmingly “yes.”
Responding to Coast Guard Expansion in the South China Sea
Aaron Picozzi is the research associate for the military fellows and Lincoln Davidson (@dvdsndvdsn) is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
South China Sea claimants are awaiting a decision by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in an arbitration case on the legality of the Chinese government’s claims. But regardless of how the UN tribunal decides, South China Sea disputes won’t go away anytime soon. Military activity in the South China Sea is expanding, increasing the risk of “dangerous brinksmanship” over the islands and reefs scattered throughout the region. While the United States Navy has taken the lead in responding to regional military activity, we believe that coast guard-coast guard exchanges can reduce the risk of conflict, while still assuring regional partners of American dedication in the South China Sea.
Over the last year, China has conducted dredging activities at an unprecedented scale, using the newly-built islands to base missile systems and military aircraft. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has conducted substantial drills in the region. India has considered joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, and the Philippines and Vietnam have considered similar cooperation. Just last week, the French defense minister called on European countries to have a “regular and visible” presence in the region to maintain freedom of navigation.
The United States has also long been active in the South China Sea, conducting known freedom of navigation operations near Chinese-controlled features in October 2015 and in January and May 2016. In April, the U.S. Air Force stationed four A-10 Warthogs—which carry one of the most powerful aircraft guns ever built—in the Philippines, sending a clear signal to China that the United States is prepared to deal with military conflict in the South China Sea.
The U.S. military has increased the presence and visibility of aircraft and naval vessels to assure regional partners that the United States remains committed to their security, going tit-for-tat with the Chinese military in force escalation. Recent expansion of the Chinese Coast Guard marks a pivot point for America’s posturing, however. Chinese Coast Guard cutters—although lacking sufficient armament to challenge a U.S. Navy vessel in direct combat—are capable of meaningfully affecting the situation in the South China Sea. Lots of ink has been spilled about how China’s reclamation activities “change facts on the ground,” but Chinese Coast Guard activities do at least as much to alter the reality in the South China Sea. When the Chinese Coast Guard threatens or actually uses force to enforce Chinese law within areas that Zhongnanhai claims are their waters, they are effecting functional control of the region.
The islands claimed by the countries surrounding the South China Sea have little intrinsic value—their value hinges upon the effective assertion of sovereignty and subsequent control over surrounding waters. With approximately $5 trillion worth of international trade passing through the region annually, an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas located under the region, and nearly 10 million tons of fish caught in the South China Sea each year, the control of these waters is extremely important to regional economies.
Coast guard cutters enable governments to enforce law and assert sovereignty claims without the overt presence of a warship. This ability to maintain control over an area, without fear of an impending attack, offers an entirely different set of tactics compared to the involvement of a naval vessel. Cutters and the embarkable boarding parties they carry can effectively control merchant vessels within their jurisdiction.
China is not the only South China Sea claimant expanding its coast guard activities. In March, an Indonesian Coast Guard vessel apprehended a Chinese fishing vessel illegally fishing in Indonesian waters. The Chinese Coast Guard responded by ramming the apprehended vessel, freeing it from Indonesian control. Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia have all expanded their coast guards in recent years, and the United States has committed to selling more cutters to partners in the region.
Continuing the United States’ current tactic of mirroring Chinese show of force in the South China Sea by deploying Coast Guard assets to the region would be a mistake.
Conducting law enforcement activities in certain parts of the South China Sea on behalf of regional allies and partners would involve a recognition of those countries’ territorial claims, something the United States government has been unwilling to do. And while interactions between the PLAN and the U.S. Navy are tense, they exist within a set of predictable, well-defined rules that govern the way the navies of different countries handle encounters.
Interactions between military vessels and civilians, on the other hand, are inherently volatile, as civilian ships are not as well trained and regimented as naval vessels—nor are they governed by the same established procedures or subject to as robust government oversight. As Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, director of operations for U.S. Pacific Command, recently pointed out, it is highly unlikely that an interaction between military vessels sparks a conflict in the South China Sea. Civilian vessels, however, are another story. “My worst maritime experiences have been with fishing boats,” Montgomery said. “The highest risk is associated with non-military vessels.” Compounding this risk, any action taken by the U.S. Coast Guard towards Chinese civilians would be a propaganda victory for the Chinese government, cementing their claims of American aggression.
The United States is not left without options. By training and equipping the coast guards of our regional partners, the United States can help them counter control of commerce in the South China Sea by the growing Chinese Coast Guard. The United States has worked alongside Pacific partners in a number of exercises in the past, including coast guard training with the Philippines in 2015, the U.S. Navy training operation Exercise Balikatan in 2016, and the training of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force for expeditionary warfare. While in Vietnam last month, President Obama acknowledged the importance of the Vietnamese Coast Guard, stating that the United States would continue to train them in maritime law enforcement in order to improve capabilities in the South China Sea.
These trainings are designed as responses to specific Chinese actions. For example, during this year’s Exercise Balikatan, the United States, Australia, and the Philippines conducted “a simulated gas and oil platform recovery raid in the South China Sea”—a clear counter to China’s positioning of an oil platform in disputed waters south of the Spratly Islands in 2014. At the same time, by increasing the professionalism of the maritime law enforcement forces of claimants, trainings serve to mitigate the spectre of conflict in the South China Sea. By continuing to train and support the coast guards of regional partners, the United States will contribute to countering Chinese claims,while reassuring partners and allies of our dedication to our regional commitments—in a way that reduces potential conflict between U.S. forces and Chinese sailors and civilians.
The State of Global Terrorism in 2015
Five significant findings from the latest U.S. State Department's Report on Terrorism.
