Ethnicity, Economics and Energy – Russia’s relations with Central and Eastern Europe

17 May 2012

Gas pipeline ‘pig trap’

Russia’s energy supplies ensure that Moscow maintains a geopolitical foothold in the European part of the former Soviet space.

By Sonia Rothwell

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Yesterday we began charting how Russia seeks to maintain economic and geopolitical leverage across the former Soviet space. Our analysis inevitably reflects that it is now over two decades since the former USSR splintered into its constituent parts. Yet the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian Presidency nevertheless provides us with insights into how Moscow might attempt to increase leverage in its former sphere of influence over the next 5-10 years. It is currently estimated, for example, that almost 70% of Russia’s export receipts are made up of transfers of natural resources, with the former Soviet space being a major recipient of end-products. A very healthy trade-surplus of more than $500bn provides Putin with opportunities to use Russia’s finances to its flex geopolitical muscle. During his election campaign, Putin pledged to invest approximately $750 million in Russia’s defense sector.

But to what extent do the former Soviet republics look to their old imperial master for security and economic cooperation? To answer this question, today we focus upon three sub-regions of the former Soviet Union – the Baltic States, Ukraine and Moldova. While each of these regions are forging economic and political relations that look beyond Russia, Moscow has the potential to use its energy supplies – and to a lesser extent its ethnic ties – to maintain a strategic foothold in Central and Eastern Europe.

A Changed Eastern Europe

From an economic and geopolitical perspective, the Baltic States have done the most out of all the former republics to distance themselves from their Soviet past. Each state is now a fully-fledged member of the European Union (EU) with Estonia (whose trade and cultural links have traditionally favored Finland) taking a step further away from Moscow after it joined the Eurozone in 2011. Like the Baltic States, Moldova also aspires to closer economic ties with the West in general and Europe in particular. Recently, Moldova’s Prime Minister and President re-affirmed their commitment to membership of the EU. Moldova’s efforts to also join NATO are largely encouraged by Romania and underpinned by linguistic and cultural affiliations between the two countries.

Russia nevertheless maintains a significant strategic foothold within Moldova. Its 14^th army is stationed in the self-proclaimed majority Russian state of Trans Dniestra with Moscow also providing financial assistance to the government in Tiraspol. Strategically, it is in Russia’s interests to safeguard Trans-Dniestra’s independence to maintain Moscow’s influence within the region and divert Moldova’s attention away from full EU membership. Nevertheless, Russia maintains strong bilateral trade links with Moldova and there are calls for the country to join Russia’s nascent Customs Union. So in sharp contrast to the Baltic States, Moldova is seemingly pulled in two directions by its near- neighbor Romania and an economically significant Russia.

What Is the Role of Lawyers in Cyberwarfare?

Posted May 1, 2012 5:00 AM CDT By Stewart A. Baker and Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

What Is the Role of Lawyers in Cyberwarfare?Washington, D.C., attorney Stewart A. Baker and Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force, debate whether the U.S. should learn the practicalities of winning a cyberwar—and then ask lawyers for their input—or, instead, set the legal ground rules before conducting cyberwarfare in Patriots Debate: Contemporary Issues in National Security Law. The book is sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, which invited both writers to address the legal approach to cyberwar.

STEWART BAKER’S POSITION

Stewart A. Baker

Lawyers don’t win wars.

But can they lose a war? We’re likely to find out, and soon. Lawyers across the government have raised so many showstopping legal questions about cyberwar that they’ve left our military unable to fight, or even plan for, a war in cyberspace.

No one seriously denies that cyberwar is coming. Russia may have pioneered cyberattacks in its conflicts with Georgia and Estonia, but cyberweapons went mainstream when the developers of Stuxnet sabotaged Iran’s Natanz enrichment plant, proving that computer network attacks can be more effective than 500-pound bombs. In war, weapons that work get used again.

Unfortunately, it turns out that cyberweapons may work best against civilians. The necessities of modern life—pipelines, power grids, refineries, sewer and water lines—all run on the same industrial control systems that Stuxnet subverted so successfully. These systems may be even easier to sabotage than the notoriously porous computer networks that support our financial and telecommunications infrastructure.

No one has good defenses against such attacks. The hackers will get through.

Even very sophisticated network defenders—RSA, HBGary, even the Department of Defense’s classified systems—have failed to keep attackers out. Once they’re in, attackers have stolen the networks’ most precious secrets. But they could just as easily bring the network down, possibly causing severe physical damage, as in the case of Stuxnet.

So as things now stand, a serious cyberattack could leave civilians without power, without gasoline, without banks or telecommunications or water—perhaps for weeks or months. If the crisis drags on, deaths will multiply: first in hospitals and nursing homes, then in cities and on the road as civil order breaks down. It will be a nightmare. And especially for the United States, which has trusted more of its infrastructure to digital systems than most other countries.

We’ve been in this spot before. As Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell predicted, airpower allowed a devastating and unprecedented strike on our ships in Pearl Harbor. We responded with an outpouring of new technologies, new weapons and new strategies.

The New Mastermind of Jihad

A recently freed Islamist thinker has long advocated small-scale, independent acts of anti-Western terror

By DAVID SAMUELS

Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Islamist gunman who hunted down three Jewish children and a rabbi after murdering three French paratroopers in Toulouse last month, didn’t act alone. In his journey from the slums of Toulouse, to the local mosques, to the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan that he described to French police, to filming his murder of the terrified children in order to post video clips on the web, Mr. Merah was following a path marked out years earlier by the coldblooded jihadist theoretician Abu Musab al-Suri.

European Pressphoto Agency

Abu Musab al-Suri, in an undated photo released by the U.S. government’s Rewards for Justice program around 2004. He’s been called ‘the most dangerous terrorist you’ve never heard of.

What is perhaps more disturbing, Mr. al-Suri was recently set free from prison in Damascus, Syria, and his current whereabouts are unknown. Turned over to Syria after his capture by the CIA in late 2005, Mr. al-Suri was released sometime in December (according to intelligence sources and jihadist websites) by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad—a move apparently intended to warn the West of the consequences for opposing his rule.

Barely noticed in the midst of Mr. Assad’s own brutal assaults on civilians, Mr. al-Suri’s release may well contribute to the emergence of more attackers like Mr. Merah in the West. “His videos are already being reuploaded. His audios, reposted,” wrote Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst and the former director of West Point’s Center for Combating Terrorism, in a blog post after the news of Mr. al-Suri’s release first appeared on jihadist sites.

From Terrorist to Persona: Para-Social Interaction and the ETA Website

Image via Wikipedia

Yotam Ophir, Gabriel Weimann

Abstract

The great virtues of the Internet – ease of access, lack of regulation, vast potential audiences, and fast flow of information, among others – have been exploited by terrorist groups. Consequently, the Internet has become a useful and effective platform for terrorist organizations and their supporters. Applying para-social relationships theory, this study examines the ways terrorist groups utilize the Internet to gain sympathy and support for their appeals and goals. The case of ETA’s website (ETA – Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization), dedicated to Basque prisoners imprisoned in Ireland and fighting extradition to Spain, is used as an illustrative example of the applicability of the para-social theorem. The various tactics adopted for establishing and promoting para-social relationships between media characters and the audiences as revealed in Basque terrorist video clips on YouTube are analyzed. 

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Serbia wants to join global counter-terrorism pact

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15. February 2012. | 08:46

Source: Tanjug

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated Tuesday that Serbia wants to join the global counter-terrorism pact.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated Tuesday that Serbia wants to join the global counter-terrorism pact.

Dacic conveyed this position to the Australian Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism Bill Paterson in the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Serbian Interior Ministry released in a statement.
Serbia would like to join the global counter-terrorism pact, in which it would assist the tracking down of criminals in cases such as the recent one relating to an Australian citizen born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dacic said.

Dacic kicked off Monday a visit to Australia by a meeting with Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen on the possibilities of introducing visa facilitation for Serbian citizens.

The Hague makes capital out of criminal courts

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By Sara Webb

THE HAGUE | Tue Feb 14, 2012 6:36am EST

Feb 14 (Reuters) – In a tiny office on Zeestraat 100, Alice Helbing puts the final touches to a script for an imaginary counter-terrorism exercise in the Netherlands. A few doors down the corridor, staff from a legal aid group are digging into real war crimes in Ivory Coast.

Nearby at Humanity House, a small museum devoted to raising awareness about aid for the victims of disaster, visitors can find out what it’s like to be a refugee – to have to flee your home, leaving dinner on the table, with no money, no mobile phone, no passport, just the clothes you are wearing.

Behind its staid Dutch exterior, The Hague has become a hothouse for human rights ventures and international legal services, invigorating the local economy with new jobs and an influx of mainly foreign professionals.

But it has also become so much of an international hub that sometimes locals feel like strangers in their own town.

“The Hague has become an incubator, a sort of legal Silicon Valley,” said one diplomat who follows the courts.

Many of the rights and legal groups are housed in two utilitarian office buildings near the city centre: At Zeestraat 100, staff from non-government organisation Africa Legal Aid rub shoulders with game designer Alice Helbing and her fellow conflict resolution trainers from the Pax Ludens foundation. Around the corner, Laan van Meerdervoort 70 provides space for groups like the United Network of Young Peacebuilders.

The policy-makers, foreign or defence ministry officials, and students who attend Pax Ludens’s training sessions on negotiating tactics can role play to get a taste of what it is like to be U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, or to head the Israeli and Saudi Arabian delegations and hold secret talks over the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Kosovo – another attempt to abolish the UN in the north?

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Posted on February 10th, 2012 in the category Kosovo by TransConflict

Should the Kosovo government end funding of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Administration in Mitrovica (UAM), it will cut-off one of the few institutional linkages between north Mitrovica and Pristina.

By Gerard M. Gallucci

The Pristina press is reporting on secret meetings between the Kosovo government, the US ambassador and chief of the International Civilian Office (ICO), Pieter Feith, on a new plan to push the UN out of the north. According to Koha Ditore, the three have agreed to close the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Administration in Mitrovica (UAM) that administers north Mitrovica under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Koha Ditore says it has the document, titled “Kosovo Government carries over the financing of the municipal services in the north from UAM to AONM.” It refers to an action plan aiming at the closure of UAM by March 31 and its replacement with an “Temporary Administrative Office for North Mitrovica” (AONM) under the authority of Pristina and to be placed in the mixed neighborhood of Bosniak Mahalla. The plan is said to contain 10 actions which were due to begin implementation early this month. Space and equipment for the AONM were to be secured by February 10th, with a meeting with the UNMIK SRSG on the 17th to inform him that the Kosovo government would cease funding UAM.