Journal of Diplomacy

(This article was originally published by the EastWest Institute)

Many countries are drafting domestic policies to combat cyber attacks and cyber crime, but the larger question is what can be done on the multilateral level since the digital world routinely ignores national boundaries. One measure of the problem is provided by the 2011 Symantec survey on the scale of cyber crime, showing that the annual cost of cyber crime to individuals in 24 major countries is $114 billion. But, so far, international initiatives are plagued by the lack of agreed upon frameworks, institutions and procedures. Below, a few examples—far from a complete list—of the organizations and initiatives dealing with cybersecurity on the multilateral level:

• Perhaps the largest player in the international cybersecurity arena is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). A United Nations organization comprised of 193 UN member states and over 700 private companies and organizations, the ITU seeks to create guidelines and frameworks for international initiatives. ITU facilitates the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA).  It also drafts UN General Assembly resolutions concerning information security and criminal utilization of information technology. ITU initiatives are voluntary and merely provide guidelines, serving as a foundation for customary international law, which means they lack a concrete legal framework. Still, they do serve to raise awareness on cybersecurity issues, which is an essential prerequisite for international action.
• The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a working group of 21 nations, which includes Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan and the United States. In 2002 APEC created theShanghai Declaration Program of Action, which illustrates the potential for intelligence sharing and cybersecurity defense through regional partnerships. However, there’s still a lack of clear policy statements to promote cooperation, and the organization has failed to meet the Bogor goals set forth in 1994.
• The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) is a working group tasked with protecting the critical information systems of European Union member states through prevention and reaction to attacks on these critical systems. The prevention measures are focused on raising awareness and information sharing.
• The CERT-EU (Computer Emergency Response Pre-configuration Team) is tasked with responding to cyber attacks on information systems of EU member states. But CERTS often get overloaded with calls and, as a result, responses are frequently delayed. Such delays and call-center overload illustrate the larger challenges of providing adequate funding and member state commitment within this regional organization.
• Cybersecurity is also an issue under discussion within the NATO-Russia Council, as both sides have expressed interest in possible cooperation. However, there are frequent disagreements over definitions, language and terminology.  Russia considers “cyber attacks” to be a military issue while the U.S. sees them as criminal activity. The U.S. uses the term “cybersecurity” and for what Russia calls “information security.” The two countries also have very different notions of what constitutes Internet censorship.

EWI’s experiences hosting international cybersecurity summits and leading bilateral Russia-U.S. and China-U.S. efforts have demonstrated that progress on the multilateral level is possible—but also can be hindered by mistrust. To ensure further progress, all sides need to place a greater emphasis on building up trust as they pursue the common goal of a safer, more secure digital world.

[Photo courtesy of Canonplanet]

By Courtney Page

Streets lined with cherry blossom trees in full bloom signals the advent of spring in Korea and Japan; however, over the past twenty years, a blanket of harmful and polluted sand and yellow dust covers both nations. The dust leaves a brown-yellowish film on city streets and cars and signals the arrival of spring. Yellow dust storms cause billions of dollars in damage, hundreds of deaths, and send millions to the hospital for respiratory problems. The Korean Environment Institute estimates that yellow dust kills up to 165 South Koreans per year, makes as many as 1.8 million ill, and causes 5.82 billion dollars in damage annually.[i]

As China becomes the world’s manufacturing headquarters, it has also witnessed rising environmental problems. Yellow dust sand storms, an environmental problem that originates in China has serious consequences for its neighbors in the region. Dust particles rise into the air and are driven across the Korean peninsula to Japan by strong winds. The storms are a result of the rapid spread of overgrazing, soil degradation, and desertification in Central Asia and China. These conditions, combined with unusually high levels of low atmospheric pressure and westerly prevailing winds, along with drier winters, result in massive of amounts of sand pulled into the atmosphere. Dust and sand particles carry with them chemicals and organic materials, such as aluminium (Al), ammonium(NH⁺₄), chlorite (ClO₂^-), feldspar (KAlSi₃O₈ – NaAlSi₃O₈ –CaAl₂Si₂O₈), iron (Fe), kaolinite (Al₂Si₂O₅(OH)₄), magnesium (Mg), nitrate (NO⁻₃), silicon (Si), sulfate (SO,2–4.), sulfure (S), and quartz(SiO₂).[ii] These particles are harmful when they make their way deep into the lungs of the young and elderly, causing respitory discomfort, damage, and can lead to death in extreme cases.

Since the first official mention of yellow dust storms in 1988, states affected by this phenomenon have invested millions into sophisticated technology, on-site evaluations, instituted new environmental measures and regulations, monitoring systems, data collection, data analysis, afforestation, and watershed managements programs. According to Yanzhong Huang, an expert in global health governance, health diplomacy and security, and Chinese politics and public policy, China considers yellow dust to be a ‘marginal issue’. As China fails to approach this problem with more resources, immediacy, and seriousness, the region will suffer increased loss of human life and deterioration of respiratory health among those living in China, South Korea, and Japan.

ECO-ASIA, ENVIROASIA, NEAFF, NEASPEC, UNEP, and UNCCD have made strides in ameliorating the cause and effect of yellow dust in the region.[iii] I propose China, South Korea, and Japan institute one single prevailing coordinating actor to address this issue with a clear, objective, and orchestrated response with benchmarks to track progress. This fundamental and structural change will maximize the efforts in addressing the issue and eliminate issues of overlap, waste, and duplication of efforts, energy, and time. Policy practitioners should communicate the gravity of this issue, construct and shift intersubjective meaning among and between actors in the region, and provide a framework to approach this issue with shared meaning.

The extent of the negative impact of yellow dust on human health is still unknown. Recent studies are just now finding that yellow dust can possibly contain viruses, such as influenza or foot and mouth disease, as well as bacteria that could have serious implications on health in Northeast Asia. Until this issue is addressed with equal perceptions of immediacy, substantial increases in the recourses that can ameliorate the causes, and policy makers create a consensus of shared ideas and solutions, the Asian spring will continue to consist of a polluted haze that blankets cities and wreaks havoc on the health of the young and elderly.

[i] More yellow dust to come. (2006, April 10). The Korea Herald Online (Provided by World News Connection). Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.shu.edu/docview/870534421?accountid=13793

From the Winter/Spring 2012 edition of the Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations:

How should the U.S. respond to the events that have gripped the Middle East over the past year? This question has been debated countless times by the media, academics, and politicians alike. Will the toppling of authoritarian regimes unleash a wave of democracy and individual freedoms across the region? Or will the power vacuums created allow darker forces to come to the fore? For a unique answer to these questions, the Whitehead Journal looked to Dr. Yaron Brook and Elan Journo, both of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, California. Founded to promote the philosophy of twentieth-century novelist Ayn Rand—Objectivism—ARI advocates for the principles of reason, rational self-interest, individual rights, and laissez-faire capitalism. In the 2009 book Winning the Unwinnable War, both of these scholars argue for a revised U.S. foreign policy—one based on the principles that Ayn Rand stood for. To examine just what a foreign policy based on Objectivism would mean for the U.S., the Whitehead Journal’s Christopher Bartolotta and Jordan McGillis spoke with Dr. Yaron Brook and Elan Journo on the Arab Spring, American interests, Iran, China, and much more.

Click here to continue reading (PDF)

(Photo Courtesy of Gage Skidmore)

Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations and history at Boston University, a speaker at the Affordable World Security Conference at the Newseum in Washington on March 27–28, 2012, spoke with EWI’s John Sinden, Jr. He addressed his views on the U.S. role in global security and the way the U.S. sees itself internationally.

(This interview was originally published by the EastWest Institute)

In your new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, what are the “Washington rules,” and how do the components you call the American credo and the sacred trinity play into them?

The “Washington Rules” are the hidden-in-plain-sight habits that constitute the essential elements of U.S. national security policy: “defense” forces designed not for defense but as instruments of global power projection; a vast network of bases to maintain a global military presence; the marriage of forces and presence to support a penchant for global interventionism. The “American credo” provides an ideological justification for this “sacred trinity” of practice.

You point to the trend of high-ranking U.S. policy officials mobilizing support from the citizenry for military endeavors abroad through scare tactics such as alluding to an inflated existential threat. You also argue that the U.S. government keeps the public cushioned from the human and fiscal costs of war. In your opinion, what actions can the U.S. public take to reverse these trends and become more involved in foreign policy and defense spending?

Americans universally claim to “support the troops.” Alas, that’s mostly talk. We need to demonstrate meaningful support for the troops by paying closer attention to how they are actually used. If we value the troops, we should wish to keep them from harm and to protect them from being abused.

Recent U.S. military initiatives have been primarily focused on combating networks of violent extremism. Can extremist ideology and resentment toward the United States be defeated militarily? If not, what other avenues do you advocate for countering these networks?

The American military’s MO over the past decade has gone from liberation to pacification to assassination. I’m all for killing bad guys when there is no alternative. The problem with targeted assassination as a policy is that it amounts to war divorced from politics rather than war as a continuation of politics. The animus directed against the United States and the West that comes out of the Islamic world has a historical and political basis. If our “war” in (against?) the Greater Middle East is ever to end, we’ve got to take seriously the political grievances that sustain the violence directed against us.

In Washington Rules, you suggest limiting the U.S. military footprint, specifically in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, because as you state: “Priority [for base closure] should be given to those regions where the American presence costs the most while accomplishing the least.” What do you think of the argument that the presence pays dividends in stability as several states in the Middle East and North Africa undergo violence and political change?

I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s bulls–t. If we survey the ever-intensifying levels of U.S. military activism in the Greater Middle East since the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine, the record is quite clear: Our actions promote instability, not the reverse.

Is there a specific point or message concerning U.S. defense policy, or defense policy in general, you want your readership to take away from your other new book The Short American Century?

The new book is a collection of essays in which distinguished scholars reflect on what the American Century was all about—a matter that falls within the purview of historians, since the American Century has ended. The views expressed vary greatly—that was my intent. As to what readers might take away from the book, I can only speak for myself.

I believe that the record of the American Century ought to teach us humility. Those who inhabit (or who seek) positions of power in Washington peddle the notion that history has a purpose and a destination and that Americans are called upon to guide—or, if need be, coerce—humanity toward that destination. It’s all nonsense. In reality, if history has a purpose, we humans are incapable of divining it. The best we can do is to try to cope with whatever surprise lurks just around the corner.

The Affordable World Security Conference is designed to weigh competing priorities for future security policy. What do you think receives too little attention?

What receives too little attention is the imperative of putting our own house in order—economically, politically, culturally, and morally.

What emerging security issue—economic stability, environmental sustainability, cybersecurity, etc.—do you think poses the greatest challenge to the current world security structure?

Damage to the environment that stems from the universalization of American-style consumer culture.

If you are unable to make it to the Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy launch event, tune in live. Panelists include:

• Alon Ben-Meir – Professor of international relations and middle eastern studies at the New School and NYU.
• Elan Journo – A fellow in foreign policy and director of policy research at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California.
• Paul Sullivan – Professor of economics at the National Defense University and adjunct professor of security studies and international affairs at Georgetown University.

The panel discussion will be moderated by David A. Andelman, editor of World Policy Journal. Any and all individuals or groups interested are encouraged to attend the event as we hope to promote dialogue on this important topic.