▲ Protest in London in October 2018 after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi [John Lubbock, Wikimedia Commons].

ANALYSIS / Naomi Moreno Cosgrove

October 2nd last year was the last time Jamal Khashoggi-a well-known journalist and critic of the Saudi government-was seen alive. The Saudi writer, United States resident and Washington Post columnist, had entered the Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul with the aim of obtaining documentation that would certify he had divorced his previous wife, so he could remarry; but never left.

After weeks of divulging bits of information, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, laid out his first detailed account of the killing of the dissident journalist inside the Saudi Consulate. Eighteen days after Khashoggi disappeared, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) acknowledged that the 59-year-old writer had died after his disappearance, revealing in their investigation findings that Jamal Khashoggi died after an apparent "fist-fight" inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; but findings were not reliable. Resultantly, the acknowledgement by the KSA of the killing in its own consulate seemed to pose more questions than answers.

Eventually, after weeks of repeated denials that it had anything to do with his disappearance, the contradictory scenes, which were the latest twists in the "fast-moving saga", forced the kingdom to eventually acknowledge that indeed it was Saudi officials who were behind the gruesome murder thus damaging the image of the kingdom and its 33-year-old crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). What had happened was that the culmination of these events, including more than a dozen Saudi officials who reportedly flew into Istanbul and entered the consulate just before Khashoggi was there, left many skeptics wondering how it was possible for MBS to not know. Hence, the world now casts doubt on the KSA's explanation over Khashoggi's death, especially when it comes to the shifting explanations and MBS' role in the conspiracy.

As follows, the aim of this study is to examine the backlash Saudi Arabia's alleged guilt has caused, in particular, regarding European state-of-affairs towards the Middle East country. To that end, I will analyze various actions taken by European countries which have engaged in the matter and the different modus operandi these have carried out in order to reject a bloodshed in which arms selling to the kingdom has become the key issue.

Since Khashoggi went missing and while Turkey promised it would expose the "naked truth" about what happened in the Saudi consulate, Western countries had been putting pressure on the KSA for it to provide facts about its ambiguous account on the journalist's death. In a joint statement released on Sunday 21st October 2018, the United Kingdom, France and Germany said, "There remains an urgent need for clarification of exactly what happened on 2nd October - beyond the hypotheses that have been raised so far in the Saudi investigation, which need to be backed by facts to be considered credible." What happened after the kingdom eventually revealed the truth behind the murder, was a rather different backlash. In fact, regarding post-truth reactions amongst European countries, rather divergent responses have occurred.

Terminating arms selling exports to the KSA had already been carried out by a number of countries since the kingdom launched airstrikes on Yemen in 2015; a conflict that has driven much of Yemen's population to be victims of an atrocious famine. The truth is that arms acquisition is crucial for the KSA, one of the world's biggest weapons importers which is heading a military coalition in order to fight a proxy war in which tens of thousands of people have died, causing a major humanitarian catastrophe. In this context, calls for more constraints have been growing particularly in Europe since the killing of the dissident journalist. These countries, which now demand transparent clarifications in contrast to the opacity in the kingdom's already-given explanations, are threatening the KSA with suspending military supply to the kingdom.

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE CEASED ARMS SELLING

Germany

Probably one of the best examples with regards to the ceasing of arms selling-after not being pleased with Saudi state of affairs-is Germany. Following the acknowledgement of what happened to Khashoggi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared in a statement that she condemned his death with total sharpness, thus calling for transparency in the context of the situation, and stating that her government halted previously approved arms exports thus leaving open what would happen with those already authorized contracts, and that it wouldn't approve any new weapons exports to the KSA: "I agree with all those who say that the, albeit already limited, arms export can't take place in the current circumstances," she said at a news conference.

So far this year, the KSA was the second largest customer in the German defense industry just after Algeria, as until September last year, the German federal government allocated export licenses of arms exports to the kingdom worth 416.4 million euros. Respectively, according to German Foreign Affair Minister, Heiko Maas, Germany was the fourth largest exporter of weapons to the KSA.

This is not the first time the German government has made such a vow. A clause exists in the coalition agreement signed by Germany's governing parties earlier in 2018 which stated that no weapons exports may be approved to any country "directly" involved in the Yemeni conflict in response to the kingdom's countless airstrikes carried out against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the area for several years. Yet, what is clear is that after Khashoggi's murder, the coalition's agreement has been exacerbated. Adding to this military sanction Germany went even further and proposed explicit sanctions to the Saudi authorities who were directly linked to the killing. As follows, by stating that "there are more questions unanswered than answered," Maas declared that Germany has issued the ban for entering Europe's border-free Schengen zone-in close coordination with France and Britain-against the 18 Saudi nationals who are "allegedly connected to this crime."

Following the decision, Germany has thus become the first major US ally to challenge future arms sales in the light of Khashoggi's case and there is thus a high likelihood that this deal suspension puts pressure on other exporters to carry out the same approach in the light of Germany's Economy Minister, Peter Altmaier's, call on other European Union members to take similar action, arguing that "Germany acting alone would limit the message to Riyadh."

Norway

Following the line of the latter claim, on November 9th last year, Norway became the first country to back Germany's decision when it announced it would freeze new licenses for arms exports to the KSA. Resultantly, in her statement, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ine Eriksen Søreide, declared that the government had decided that in the present situation they will not give new licenses for the export of defence material or multipurpose good for military use to Saudi Arabia. According to the Søreide, this decision was taken after "a broad assessment of recent developments in Saudi Arabia and the unclear situation in Yemen." Although Norwegian ministry spokesman declined to say whether the decision was partly motivated by the murder of the Saudi journalist, not surprisingly, Norway's announcement came a week after its foreign minister called the Saudi ambassador to Oslo with the aim of condemning Khashoggi's assassination. As a result, the latter seems to imply Norway's motivations were a mix of both; the Yemeni conflict and Khashoggi's death.

Denmark and Finland

By following a similar decision made by neighboring Germany and Norway-despite the fact that US President Trump backed MBS, although the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had assessed that the crown prince was responsible for the order of the killing-Denmarkand Finland both announced that they would also stop exporting arms to the KSA.

Emphasising on the fact that they were "now in a new situation"-after the continued deterioration of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the killing of the Saudi journalist-Danish Foreign Minister, Anders Samuelsen, stated that Denmark would proceed to cease military exports to the KSA remarking that Denmark already had very restrictive practices in this area and hoped that this decision would be able to create a "further momentum and get more European Union (EU) countries involved in the conquest to support tight implementation of the Union's regulatory framework in this area."

Although this ban is still less expansive compared to German measures-which include the cancellation of deals that had already been approved-Denmark's cease of goods' exports will likely crumble the kingdom's strategy, especially when it comes to technology. Danish exports to the KSA, which were mainly used for both military and civilian purposes, are chiefly from BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, a subsidiary of the United Kingdom's BAE Systems, which sold technology that allowed Intellectual Property surveillance and data analysis for use in national security and investigation of serious crimes. The suspension thus includes some dual-use technologies, a reference to materials that were purposely thought to have military applications in favor of the KSA.

On the same day Denmark carried out its decision, Finland announced they were also determined to halt arms export to Saudi Arabia. Yet, in contrast to Norway's approach, Finnish Prime Minister, Juha Sipilä, held that, of course, the situation in Yemen lead to the decision, but that Khashoggi's killing was "entirely behind the overall rationale".

Finnish arms exports to the KSA accounted for 5.3 million euros in 2017. Nevertheless, by describing the situation in Yemen as "catastrophic", Sipilä declared that any existing licenses (in the region) are old, and in these circumstances, Finland would refuse to be able to grant updated ones. Although, unlike Germany, Helsinki's decision does not revoke existing arms licenses to the kingdom, the Nordic country has emphasized the fact that it aims to comply with the EU's arms export criteria, which takes particular account of human rights and the protection of regional peace, security and stability, thus casting doubt on the other European neighbours which, through a sense of incoherence, have not attained to these values.

European Parliament

Speaking in supranational terms, the European Parliament agreed with the latter countries and summoned EU members to freeze arms sales to the kingdom in the conquest of putting pressure on member states to emulate Germany's decision.      

By claiming that arms exports to Saudi Arabia were breaching international humanitarian law in Yemen, the European Parliament called for sanctions on those countries that refuse to respect EU rules on weapons sales. In fact, the latest attempt in a string of actions compelling EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to dictate an embargo against the KSA, including a letter signed by MEPs from several parties.

Rapporteur for a European Parliament report on EU arms exports, Bodil Valero said: "European weapons are contributing to human rights abuses and forced migration, which are completely at odds with the EU's common values". As a matter of fact, two successful European Parliament resolutions have hitherto been admitted, but its advocates predicted that some member states especially those who share close trading ties with the kingdom are deep-seated, may be less likely to cooperate. Fact that has eventually occurred.

COUNTRIES THAT HAVE NOT CEASED ARMS SELLING

France

In contrast to the previously mentioned countries, other European states such as France, UK and Spain, have approached the issue differently and have signalled that they will continue "business as usual".

Both France and the KSA have been sharing close diplomatic and commercial relations ranging from finance to weapons. Up to now, France relished the KSA, which is a bastion against Iranian significance in the Middle East region. Nevertheless, regarding the recent circumstances, Paris now faces a daunting challenge.

Just like other countries, France Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, announced France condemned the killing "in the strongest terms" and demanded an exhaustive investigation. "The confirmation of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi's death is a first step toward the establishment of the truth. However, many questions remain unanswered," he added. Following this line, France backed Germany when sanctioning the 18 Saudi citizens thus mulling a joint ban from the wider visa-free Schengen zone. Nevertheless, while German minister Altmeier summoned other European countries to stop selling arms to Riyadh-until the Saudi authorities gave the true explanation on Khashoggi's death-, France refused to report whether it would suspend arms exports to the KSA. "We want Saudi Arabia to reveal all the truth with full clarity and then we will see what we can do," he told in a news conference.           

In this context, Amnesty International France has become one of Paris' biggest burdens. The organization has been putting pressure on the French government for it to freeze arms sales to the realm. Hence, by acknowledging France is one of the five biggest arms exporters to Riyadh-similar to the Unites States and Britain-Amnesty International France is becoming aware France's withdrawal from the arms sales deals is crucial in order to look at the Yemeni conflict in the lens of human rights rather than from a non-humanitarian-geopolitical perspective. Meanwhile, France tries to justify its inaction. When ministry deputy spokesman Oliver Gauvin was asked whether Paris would mirror Berlin's actions, he emphasized the fact that France's arms sales control policy was meticulous and based on case-by-case analysis by an inter-ministerial committee. According to French Defence Minister Florence Parly, France exported 11 billion euros worth of arms to the kingdom from 2008 to 2017, fact that boosted French jobs. In 2017 alone, licenses conceivably worth 14.7 billion euros were authorized. Moreover, she went on stating that those arms exports take into consideration numerous criteria among which is the nature of exported materials, the respect of human rights, and the preservation of peace and regional security. "More and more, our industrial and defence sectors need these arms exports. And so, we cannot ignore the impact that all of this has on our defence industry and our jobs," she added. As a result, despite President Emmanuel Macron has publicly sought to devalue the significance relations with the KSA have, minister Parly, seemed to suggest the complete opposite.

Anonymously, a government minister held it was central that MBS retained his position. "The challenge is not to lose MBS, even if he is not a choir boy. A loss of influence in the region would cost us much more than the lack of arms sales". Notwithstanding France's ambiguity, Paris' inconclusive attitude is indicating France's clout in the region is facing a vulnerable phase. As president Macron told MBS at a side-line G20 summit conversation in December last year, he is worried. Although the context of this chat remains unclear, many believe Macron's intentions were to persuade MBS to be more transparent as a means to not worsen the kingdom's reputation and thus to, potentially, dismantle France's bad image.

United Kingdom

As it was previously mentioned, the United Kingdom took part in the joint statement carried out also by France and Germany through its foreign ministers which claimed there was a need for further explanations regarding Khashoggi's killing. Yet, although Britain's Foreign Office said it was considering its "next steps" following the KSA's admission over Khashoggi's killing, UK seems to be taking a rather similar approach to France-but not Germany-regarding the situation.

In 2017, the UK was the sixth-biggest arms dealer in the world, and the second-largest exporter of arms to the KSA, behind the US. This is held to be a reflection of a large spear in sales last year. After the KSA intervened in the civil war in Yemen in early 2015, the UK approved more than 3.5billion euros in military sales to the kingdom between April 2015 and September 2016.

As a result, Theresa May has been under pressure for years to interrupt arms sales to the KSA especially after human rights advocates claimed the UK was contributing to alleged violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. Adding to this, in 2016, a leaked parliamentary committee report suggested that it was likely that British weapons had been used by the Saudi-led coalition to violate international law, and that manufactured aircraft by BAE Systems, have been used in combat missions in Yemen.

Lately, in the context of Khashoggi's death things have aggravated and the UK is now facing a great amount of pressure, mainly embodied by UK's main opposition Labour party which calls for a complete cease in its arms exports to the KSA. In addition, in terms of a more international strain, the European Union has also got to have a say in the matter. Philippe Lamberts, the Belgian leader of the Green grouping of parties, said that Brexit should not be an excuse for the UK to abdicate on its moral responsibilities and that Theresa May had to prove that she was keen on standing up to the kind of atrocious behaviour shown by the killing of Khashoggi and hence freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia immediately.

Nonetheless, in response and laying emphasis on the importance the upholding relationship with UK's key ally in the Middle East has, London has often been declining calls to end arms exports to the KSA. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt defended there will be "consequences to the relationship with Saudi Arabia" after the killing of Khashoggi, but he has also pointed out that the UK has an important strategic relationship with Riyadh which needs to be preserved. As a matter of fact, according to some experts, UK's impending exit from the EU has played a key role. The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) claims Theresa May's pursuit for post-Brexit trade deals has seen an unwelcome focus on selling arms to some of the world's most repressive regimes. Nevertheless, by thus tackling the situation in a similar way to France, the UK justifies its actions by saying that it has one of the most meticulous permitting procedures in the world by remarking that its deals comprehend safeguards that counter improper uses.

Spain

After Saudi Arabia's gave its version for Khashoggi's killing, the Spanish government said it was "dismayed" and echoed Antonio Guterres' call for a thorough and transparent investigation to bring justice to all of those responsible for the killing. Yet, despite the clamor that arose after the murder of the columnist, just like France and the UK, Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, defended arms exporting to the KSA by claiming it was in Spain's interest to keep selling military tools to Riyadh. Sanchez held he stood in favor of Spain's interests, namely jobs in strategic sectors that have been badly affected by "the drama that is unemployment". Thusly, proclaiming Spain's unwillingness to freeze arms exports to the kingdom. In addition, even before Khashoggi's killing, Sanchez's government was subject to many critics after having decided to proceed with the exporting of 400 laser-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia, despite worries that they could harm civilians in Yemen. Notwithstanding this, Sanchez justified Spain's decision in that good ties with the Gulf state, a key commercial partner for Spain, needed to be kept.

As a matter of fact, Spain's state-owned shipbuilder Navantia, in which 5,500 employees work, signed a deal in July last year which accounted for 1.8 billion euros that supplied the Gulf country with five navy ships. This shipbuilder is situated in the southern region of Andalusia, a socialist bulwark which accounts for Spain's highest unemployment estimates and which has recently held regional elections. Hence, it was of the socialist president's interest to keep these constituencies pleased and the means to this was, of course, not interrupting arms deals with the KSA.

As a consequence, Spain has recently been ignoring the pressures that have arose from MEP's and from Sanchez's minorities in government-Catalan separatist parties and far-left party Podemos- which demand a cease in arms exporting. For the time being, Spain will continue business with the KSA as usual.

CONCLUSION

All things considered, while Saudi Arabia insists that MBS was not aware of the gruesome murder and is distracting the international attention towards more positive headlines-suchas the appointment of the first female ambassador to the US-inorder to clear the KSA's image in the context of Khashoggi's murder, several European countries have taken actions against the kingdom's interests. Yet, the way each country has approached the matter has led to the rise of two separate blocks which are at discordance within Europe itself. Whereas some European leaders have shown a united front in casting blame on the Saudi government, others seem to express geopolitical interests are more important.

During the time Germany, Norway, Denmark and Finland are being celebrated by human rights advocates for following through on their threat to halt sales to the kingdom, bigger arms exporters-like those that have been analyzed-have pointed out that the latter nations have far less to lose than they do. Nonetheless, inevitably, the ceasing carried out by the northern European countries which are rather small arms exporters in comparison to bigger players such as the UK and France, is likely to have exacerbated concerns within the European arms industry of a growing anti-Saudi consensus in the European Union or even beyond.

What is clear is that due to the impact Saudi Arabia's state of affairs have caused, governments and even companies worldwide are coming under pressure to abandon their ties to the oil-rich, but at the same time, human-rights-violating Saudi Arabian leadership. Resultantly, in Europe, countries are taking part in two divergent blocks that are namely led by two of the EU's most compelling members: France and Germany. These two sides are of rather distant opinions regarding the matter, fact that does not seem to be contributing in terms of the so-much-needed European Union integration.

ANALYSIS / Nerea Álvarez

Relations between Japan and Korea are not easy. The Japanese annexation of the peninsula in 1910 is still very much present in the Korean report . For its part, Japan has a distorted sense of history, the result of having assumed its guilt in the war in a forced way, forced by the punishment suffered in World War II and the US occupation, and not as a result of a process of voluntary assumption of responsibility. All this has led Japan to resist revising its history, especially that of its imperialist era.

One core topic that hinders a sincere reconciliation between Japan and the neighboring countries that were invaded by the Japanese in the first half of the 20th century are the comfort women. This group of women, from China, the Philippines, Myanmar, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and South Korea (about 80% came from the latter country), are a consequence of Japan's expansion that began in 1910. During this period, Japanese soldiers took approximately 70,000 to 200,000 women to comfort stations where they were sexually abused. These stations continued to operate in Japan until the late 1940s. According to the testimonies of surviving women, Japanese soldiers took them away in various ways: kidnapping, deception and extortion are just a few examples.

According to the testimony of Kim Bok-Dong, one of the surviving women, the Japanese soldiers claimed they had to take her to work in a uniform factory because they did not have enough staff. She was 14 years old at the time. The soldiers promised her mother to return her when she was old enough to marry, and threatened the whole family with exile if her parents did not allow her to leave. She was transported by ferry from Busan to Shimonoseki (Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan), along with thirty other women. They then took another boat to Taiwan and then to Guangdong province. There they were met by officials, who escorted them into a building where doctors were waiting for them. They examined their bodies and escorted them to their rooms. The women were repeatedly assaulted and raped. After several weeks, many contemplated suicide: "We were much better off dead" (Kim Bok-Dong, 2018). Many died due to the conditions they were subjected to, from disease, killed by Japanese soldiers in the last years of the war, or, if they had the opportunity, by committing suicide. It is estimated that about a quarter to a third of the women survived.

Long process

After the war and despite the facts being known, this dramatic past was relegated to history, without the necessary attention being paid to it. South Korea was not prepared to help these women (and North Korea had gone into absolute isolation). During the 1960s, relations between the ROK and Japan worsened due to the anti-Japanese policies of South Korean political leaders. In 1965, Tokyo and Seoul signed the Normalization Treaty, but it became clear that economic issues were the priority. Bridges of cooperation were built between the two countries, but the emotional conflict prevented and continues to prevent further relations in fields other than economics. Japan continues to claim that the Treaty of Normalization contains the arguments to rule out that these women have the right of standing before international tribunals, even though the text does not mention them.

Things began to change in the 1970s, when the Asian Women's association was formed in Japan and began to shed light on this aspect of recent history. At first, even the Korean government ignored the problem. The main reason was the lack of evidence that the events had occurred, as the Japanese government had ordered the destruction of the compromising documents in 1945. In addition, Japan prevented the South Korean government from claiming additional reparations for damages incurred during the colonial period based on the 1965 treaty.

Southeast Asian culture played an important role in concealing the events that took place. The value of keeping up appearances in the oriental culture took precedence over denouncing situations such as those experienced by these women, who had to remain silent for decades in order not to be repudiated by their families.

When the Republic of Korea became democratic in 1987, the South Korean government began to attach importance to this issue. In 1990, President Roh Tae Woo asked the Japanese government for a list of the women's names, but the response from Tokyo was that the information did not exist because the documents had been destroyed. Socialist leader Motooka Shoji, a member of Japan's upper house of per diem expenses , demanded an investigation, but the parliament claimed that the problem had already been solved by the 1965 Normalization Treaty. In 1991, Kim Hak-Sun, one of the women who survived sexual exploitation, filed the first lawsuit and became the first victim to speak out about her experience. This marked the beginning of the struggle of a group of more than fifty Korean women who demanded recognition of the facts and an official apology from the Japanese government. Since January 8, 1992, "every Wednesday at 12 noon, the victims together with members of the Korean committee and other social groups march in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. The march consists of raising posters demanding justice and forgiveness and expressing their grievances in public".

The Tokyo government denied any involvement in the establishment, recruitment and structuring of the comfort women system from the beginning. Nevertheless, an apology had to be issued from the Cabinet administrative office in 1992, although it was vague and too generic, addressed to all women for acts committed during the war. It was not until that year that the Japanese government acknowledged its involvement in the administration and supervision of these stations. The UNHRC then determined that the Japanese government's actions represented a crime against humanity that violated the human rights of Asian women.

In 1993, Japan admitted to having coercively recruited Korean women. Coercion was a core topic to disprove previous statements that these women were voluntarily engaged in prostitution. Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono stated that "the Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of comfort stations, and in the transfer of comfort women.... who, in many cases, were recruited against their own will." The Government of Japan apologized and regretted what had happened, but there was no compensation for the victims. In 1994, the International Commission of Jurists recommended that Japan pay $40,000 to each survivor. The government wanted to structure a plan to pay the women with non-governmental funds, but the Korean committee for women abducted by Japan as sex slaves, founded in 1990 and composed of 37 institutions, did not allow it.

In 1995, Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi instructions the Asian Women's Fund, which would serve to protect women's rights in Japan and around the world. In international eyes, this organization was seen as an excuse to escape the required legal responsibilities, since public money was raised, making the government's involvement almost imperceptible. In addition, a growing minority opinion of citizens sympathetic to the Japanese right-wing began to make itself heard, calling comfort women 'prostitutes', who did not need to be compensated in any way.

However, monetary compensation is one of the issues that has mattered least to this group of women. Their priority first and foremost is to restore their dignity. The fact that the Japanese government has not become directly involved and does not silence opinions such as those of the right-wing minority is probably what affects them most. Above all, these women are fighting for Tokyo to publicly acknowledge the facts and offer an official apology for what happened.

The UN has continued to take on the role of mediator over the years. We find in several documents belonging to the UNHRC statements urging Japan to resolve the problem. In a document reviewing the organization' s first complaint (February 2, 1996) to the Human Rights committee , Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto replied: "the issue of reparations was settled by peace treaties and the Government will never pay compensation to the victims.

In the document in question, comfort stations were classified as military slavery. Japan responded by denying any subject of legal liability, given the inability to retroactively apply international law at the time, the vagueness of the definition of comfort stations, the non-existence of anti-slavery laws during World War II and the failure of international law to prohibit violations in situations of international conflict. In addition, he argued that the laws existing during the war could only apply to conduct committed by the Japanese military against citizens of a belligerent state, but not against citizens of Korea, since Korea was annexed and was part of Japanese territory.

In 1998, US attorney Gay J. McDougall submitted to the UNHRC a document concluding that the actions taken by the Japanese Armed Forces were crimes against humanity. Later that year, the UN adopted the text and changed the previous definition to rape stations.

Understanding that does not come

Over the years, the problem has only grown and Japanese policy has moved away from a possible path of improving diplomatic relations with its neighbors. This problem of revising history is the basis of the political movements we have seen in Japan since 1945. The reforms imposed by the U.S. occupation and the Tokyo courts played a major role, as did the San Francisco Treaty, signed in 1948. All this has established in the Japanese population a passive acceptance of past history and its responsibilities.

Having been judged in the 1948 courts, the responsibility and guilt that the Japanese bore was believed to have been absolved. On the other hand, the US occupation of the archipelago, taking military control, affected the pride of the citizens. The transformation of Economics, politics, defense and, above all, Education also had its repercussions. Since Japan's democratic beginnings, policy has focused on passive defense, anti-nationalist Education and foreign relations aligned with the interests of American power.

However, following the election of Shinzo Abe, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), as Prime Minister in 2012, numerous changes have been introduced in the country's foreign and domestic policy, with reforms in fields ranging from Economics to Education and defense. Regarding the latter, Abe has focused mainly on reintroducing military force in Japan through an amendment to article 9 of the 1945 Constitution. This shift is due to the party's own ideology, which wants to give Japan a greater weight in international politics. One of the core topic in his government is precisely the position on the controversial topic of comfort women.

In 2015, Shinzo Abe and the President of the Republic of Korea, Park Geun-hye, signed a treaty setting out three goals to be achieved: Japan's official apology, the donation of one billion yen to a South Korean foundation for the benefit of these women, and the removal of the statue in memory of the comfort women erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. This treaty was the greatest achievement in the long process of the conflict, and was received as the solution to so many years of dispute. The first two objectives were achieved, but the controversial statue was not removed from its place. The arrival of President Moon Jae-in in 2017 complicated the full implementation of the agreement. That year, Moon openly criticized the treaty as sidelining the victims and the Korean people in general. His presidency has shifted certain of South Korea's strategic approaches and it is unknown exactly what he wants to achieve with Japan.

agreement pending

What can be concluded is that delaying the solution is not beneficial to either side. Leaving the problem open-ended is frustrating all countries involved, especially Japan. A case in point is the recent breakdown of brotherhood between the cities of San Francisco and Osaka in 2018 due to a statue in the U.S. town depicting victims of this conflict. It features three girls, a Chinese girl, a Korean girl and a Filipino girl, holding hands. Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura and his predecessor, Toru Hashimoto, had written letters to their twin city since the resolution to build the memorial was drafted. Also, within the LDP itself, Yoshitaka Sakurada, called this group of women 'prostitutes' in 2016; shortly after the 2015 treaty on this topic was established. This has provoked a negative response to the treaty, as it is believed that Japan is not really seeking reconciliation, but rather to forget the topic without accepting responsibility for it. 

The problem lies in how these countries deal with the dispute. The Republic of Korea, under President Moon, seeks to heal past wounds with new agreements, but Japan only aims to close the issue as soon as possible. Renegotiating a treaty is not the best option for Japan: even if it seeks the best solution for both sides, it would lose out. Should President Moon succeed in reaching a new agreement with Prime Minister Abe to solve the problems of the previous treaty, it would prove that the previous negotiations and the measures taken by Japan in 2015 have failed.

No matter how many apologies the Government of Japan has issued over the years, it has never accepted legal responsibility for its actions regarding comfort women. Until this happens, future scenarios where the discussion is settled cannot be projected. President Moon will renegotiate the treaty with Japan, but the chances of it working out are slim. All indications are that Japan has no intention of renegotiating the treaty or taking a legal position . If they do not reach a solution, relations between the two countries may deteriorate due to the emotional burden of the issue.

The root of the tensions lies in the historical past and its acceptance. Both Moon Jae-in and Shinzo Abe must reevaluate the status with critical eyes in relation to their own countries. Japan must begin to engage with past actions and the ROK must maintain a consistent position and decide what its priorities are regarding comfort women. Only this can enable them to move forward in the search for the best treaty for both.

area area and adjacent territories [Wikimedia-Commons].

ANALYSIS / Emili J. Blasco

We are witnessing the effective birth of Eurasia. If that word arose as an artifice, to bring together two adjacent, unrelated geographies, today Eurasia is emerging as a reality, in a single geography. The catalyst has been above all China's westward opening: as China has begun to deal with its backside - Central Asia - and has drawn new land routes to Europe, the distances between the margins of Eurasia have also been shrinking. The maps of the Silk Belt and Road Initiative have the effect of first presenting a single continent, from Shanghai to Paris or Madrid. The trade war between Beijing and Washington and Europe's abandonment of the once American umbrella are helping China and Europe to seek each other out.

One consequence of the crossed gaze from the two ends of the supercontinent, whose meeting constructs this new mental map of a continuous territory, is that the world axis has shifted to the Indian Ocean. It is no longer in the Atlantic, as it was when the United States took over the banner of the West from Europe, nor is it in the Pacific, where it had moved with the emerging phenomenon of East Asia. What seemed to be the location of the future, the Asia-Pacific, is giving way to the Indo-Pacific, where China is certainly not losing prominence, but is more subject to the Eurasian balance of power. The irony for China is that in its desire to regain its former position as the Middle Kingdom, its expansionary plans end up giving centrality to India, its veiled nemesis.

Eurasia shrinks

The idea of a shrinking of Eurasia, which reduces its vast geography to the size of our visual field, gaining in its own entity, was expressed two years ago by Robert Kaplan in an essay that he has later collected in his book The Return of framework Polo's World (2018)[1]. It is precisely the revival of the Silk Road, with its historical reminiscences, that has ended up putting Europe and the East on the same plane in our minds, as in a few centuries when, unknown to America, nothing existed beyond the surrounding oceans. "As Europe disappears," says Kaplan in reference letter to Europe's increasingly vaporous borders, "Eurasia is cohesive. "The supercontinent is becoming a fluid, global unit of trade and conflict," he says.

For Bruno Maçães, author of The Down of Eurasia (2018)[2], we have entered a Eurasian era. Despite what might have been predicted just a couple of decades ago, "this century will not be Asian," Maçães assures. Nor will it be European or American, but we are as we were at the end of World War I, when we went from talking about Europe to talking about the West. Now Europe, detached from the United States, according to this Portuguese author, is also becoming part of something bigger: Eurasia.

In view of this movement, both Kaplan and Maçães predict a dissolution of the West. The American emphasizes Europe's shortcomings: "Europe, at least as we have known it, has begun to disappear. And with it the West itself"; while the European points rather to the disinterest of the United States: "One has the feeling that the American universalist vocation is not to guarantee the global preeminence of Western civilization, but to continue as the only global superpower".

Changes the axis of the world

Following the Spanish finding America, the 16th century saw the crowning of a gradual transfer of hegemony and civilization in the world to the West. "The empires of the Persians and Chaldeans had been replaced by those of Egypt, Greece, Italy and France, and now by that of Spain. Here would remain the center of the world," writes John Elliott quoting a writing of the time, by the humanist Pérez de Oliva[3]. The idea of final station was also held when the specific weight of the world was placed in the Atlantic, and then in the Pacific. Today we are once again pursuing this shift towards the West, to the Indian Ocean, perhaps without much encouragement to consider it definitive, even if the turn is completed, the beginnings of which were theorized by the Renaissance.

After all, there have also been shifts in the center of gravity in the opposite direction, if we consider other parameters. In the decades after 1945, the average location of economic activity between different geographies was in the center of the Atlantic. With the turn of the century, however, the center of gravity of economic transactions has been located east of the borders of the European Union, according to Maçães, who predicts that in ten years the midpoint will be on the border between Europe and Asia, and in the middle of the 21st century between India and China, countries that are "destined to develop the largest trade relationship in the world". With this, India "can become the central node between the extremes of the new supercontinent". Moving to one side of the planet, we have arrived at the same point - the Indian Ocean - as in the opposite direction.

Island world

Unlike the Atlantic and the Pacific, oceans that extend vertically from pole to pole, the Indian Ocean spreads out horizontally and, instead of having two shores, has three. This means that Africa, at least its eastern part, is also part of this new centrality: if the speed of navigation brought about by the monsoons has already historically facilitated close contact between the Indian subcontinent and the East African coast, today the new maritime silk routes can further increase exchanges. This and the growing arrival of sub-Saharan migrants in Europe reflect a centripetal phenomenon that even gives rise to talk of Afro-Eurasia. So, as Kaplan points out, referring to the island world as Halford Mackinder once did "is no longer premature". Maçães recalls that Mackinder saw as a difficulty in perceiving the reality of that island world the fact that it was not possible to circumnavigate it completely. Today that perception should be easier, when the Arctic route is opening up.

In the framework of Halford Mackinder's and Nicholas Spykman's complementary theories -verse and reverse- on the Heartland and the Rimland, respectively, any centrality of India has to translate into maritime power. With its access to the interior of Asia Closed by the Himalayas and by an antagonistic Pakistan (it is left with the unique and complex passage of Kashmir), it is at sea that India can project its influence. Like India, China and Europe are also in the Eurasian Rimland, from where all these powers will dispute the balance of power among themselves and also with the Heartland, which is basically occupied by Russia, although not exclusively: in the Heartland there are also the Central Asian republics, which have a special value in the skill for space and resources of a shrinking supercontinent.

Pivot to Eurasia

In this Indo-Pacific, or Greater Indian Ocean region, which stretches from the Persian Gulf and the coasts of East Africa to the second island chain of the Asia-Pacific, the United States has an external role to play. As the island world becomes more cohesive, the U.S. satellite character becomes more pronounced. The grand strategy of the United States then becomes what has been the traditional imperative of the United Kingdom with respect to Europe: to prevent one power from dominating the continent, something that is most easily achieved by supporting one or another continental power to weaken whichever is stronger at the time (France or Germany, depending on the historical period; today Russia or China). Already in the Cold War, the United States tried to prevent the USSR from becoming a hegemon by controlling Western Europe as well. Eurasia enters into a presumably intense game of balance of power, as was the European scenario between the 19th and 20th centuries.

For this reason, Kaplan says that Russia can be contained much more by China than by the United States, just as Washington should take advantage of Russia to limit China's power, as suggested by Henry Kissinger. To this end, the Pentagon should extend its strategic presence in the Western Pacific to the West: if as an external and maritime power it cannot access the continental center of Eurasia, it can take up a position in the very bowels of that great region, which is the Indian Ocean itself.

"If Obama pivoted to Asia, then Trump has pivoted to Eurasia. Decision-makers in the United States seem increasingly aware that the new center of gravity in world politics is neither the Pacific nor the Atlantic, but the Old World between the two," Maçães has written in an essay following his book[4].

Alliances with India

The shift in focus from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific by the United States was formally expressed in the National Security Strategy published in December 2017, the first of that subject of documents produced by the Trump Administration. Consequently, the United States has renamed its Pacific Command the Indo-Pacific Command.

Washington's strategy, like that of other leading Western countries in the region, especially Japan and Australia, involves a coalition of some subject with India, given India's centrality and as the best way to contain China and Russia.

The desirability of an enhanced relationship with New Delhi was already outlined by Trump during the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington in June 2017, and then by then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in October 2017. The latter's successor, Mike Pompeo, addressed a more defined framework in July 2018, when he announced $113 million in aid for projects aimed at achieving greater connectivity in the region, from digital technologies to infrastructure. The advertisement was understood as the U.S. desire to confront the Silk Belt and Road Initiative launched by China.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy is sometimes presented in association with the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP), which is the name given by Japan to its own cooperation initiative for the region, already outlined ten years ago by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Both coincide in counting on India, Japan, Australia and the United States as the main guarantors of regional security, but there are two main divergences. One is that for Washington the Indo-Pacific stretches from India's eastern seaboard to the U.S. west coast, while in the Japanese initiative the map runs from the Persian Gulf and the African coast to the Philippines and New Zealand. The other has to do with the way China is perceived: the Japanese proposal seeks Chinese cooperation, at least at the declarative level, while the US purpose is to confront the "risks of Chinese dominance", as stated in the National Security Strategy.

India has also developed its own initiative, presented in 2014 as Act East Policy (AEP), with the aim of promoting greater cooperation between India and Asia-Pacific countries, especially ASEAN. For its part, Australia presented its Policy Roadmap for the region in 2017, which builds on the security already provided by the United States and advocates a continued understanding with the "Indo-Pacific democracies" (Japan, South Korea, India and Indonesia).

Other consequences

Some other consequences of the birth of Eurasia, of different order and importance, are:

-The European Union is not only ceasing to be attractive as a political and even economic project for its neighbors, due to its internal convergence problems, but the reality of Eurasia reduces it to a peninsula on the margins of the supercontinent. For example, the old question of whether or not Turkey is part of Europe loses any interest: Turkey will have a better position on the chessboard.

-The corridors that China wants to keep open towards the Indian Ocean (Myanmar and, above all, Pakistan) are gaining in importance. Without being able to regain the millenary status of Middle Kingdom, China will value even more having the province of Xinjiang as a way of being less slanted on one side of the supercontinent and as a platform for a greater projection towards the interior of the same.

-The U.S. pivot to Eurasia will force Washington to spread its forces over a larger expanse of sea and its shores, with the risk of losing deterrent or intervention power in certain places. Looking after the Indian Ocean may unintentionally lead it to neglect the South China Sea. One way of gaining influence in the Indian Ocean without much effort could be to move the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain to Oman, also a stone's throw from the Strait of Hormuz, but outside the Persian Gulf.

-Russia has traditionally been seen as a bridge between Europe and Asia, and has had some proponents of a Eurasianism that presented Eurasia as a third continent (Russia), with Europe and Asia on either side, and reserved the name Greater Eurasia for the supercontinent. As the supercontinent shrinks, Russia will benefit from the greater connectivity between one end and the other and will be more on top of its former Central Asian republics, although these will have contact with a greater issue of neighbors.

(1) Kaplan, R. (2018) The Return fo framework Polo's World. War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Random House

(2) Maçães, B. (2018) The Dawn of Eurasia. On the Trail of the New World Order. Milton Keynes: Allen Lane

(3) Elliott, J. (2015) The Old World and the New (1492-165). Madrid: Alianza publishing house

(4) Maçães, B. (2018). Trump's Pivot to Eurasia. The American Interest. 21 August 2018.

▲Kim Jung-un and Moon Jae-in met for the first time in April, 2018 [South Korea Gov.]

ANALYSIS / Kanghun Ji

North Korea has always utilized its nuclear power as a leverage for negotiation in world politics. Nuclear weapons, asymmetric power, are the last measure for North Korea which lacks absolute military and economic power. Although North Korea lags behind the United States and South Korea in military/economic power, its possession of nuclear weapons renders it a significant threat to other countries. Recently, however, they have continued to develop their nuclear power in disregard of international regulations. In other words, they have not used nuclear issue as a leverage for negotiation to induce economic support. They have rather concentrated on completing nuclear development, not considering persuasion from peripheral countries. This attitude can be attributed to the fact that the development of their nuclear power is almost complete. Many experts say that North Korea judges the recognition of their nation with nuclear power to be a more powerful negotiation tool (Korea times, 2016).

In this situation, South Korea has been trying many different kinds of strategies to resolve the nuclear crisis because security is their main goal: United States-South Korea joint military exercises and United Nations sanctions against North Korea are some of those strategies. Despite these oppressive methods using hard power, North Korea has refused to participate in negotiations.

Most recently, however, North Korea has discarded its previous stance for a more peaceful and amicable position following the PyeongChang Olympics. Discussions about nuclear power are proceeding and the nation has even declared that they will stop developing nuclear power.

Diverse causes such as international relations or economic needs influence their transition. This essay would argue that the soft power strategies of South Korea are substantially influencing North Korea. Therefore, an analysis of South Korea's soft power strategies is necessary in order to figure out the successful way to resolve the nuclear crisis.

Importance of soft-power strategies in policies against North Korea

North Korea has justified its dictatorship through the development of its 'Juche' ideology which is very unique. This ideology is established on the theory of 'rule by class' which stems from Marxism-Leninism. In addition, the regime has combined it with Confucianism that portrays a dictator as a father of family (Jung Seong Jang, 1999). Through this justification, a dictator is located at the top of class, which would complete the communist ideal. People are taught this ideology thoroughly and anyone who violates the ideology is punished. To open up this society which has formerly been ideologically closed, their ideology should be undermined by other attractive ideology, culture, and symbol.

However, North Korea has effectively blocked it. For example, recently, many people in North Korea have covertly shared TV shows and music from South Korea. People who are caught enjoying this culture are severely punished by the government. In these types of societies, oppression through hard power strategies doesn't affect making any kind of change in internal society. It rather could be used to enhance internal solidarity because the potential offenders such as United States or South Korea are postulated as certain enemies to North Korea, which requires internal solidarity to people. North Korea has actually depicted capitalism, United States and South Korea as the main enemies on average. It intends to induce loyalty from people.

As a result, the regime has developed nuclear weapons successfully under strong censorship. Nuclear power is the main key to maintain the dictatorship. The declaration of 'Nuclear-Economy parallel development' from the start of Kim Jung-Eun's government implies that the regime would ensure nuclear weapon as a measure to maintain its system. In this situation, sending the message that its system can coordinately survive alongside South Korea in world politics is important. Not only oppressive strategies but also appropriate strategies which attract North Korea to negotiate are needed.

Analysis of South Korea Soft Power Strategies

In this analysis, I will employ a different concept of soft power compared from the one given by Joseph Nye. Nye's original concept of soft power focuses on types of behavior. In terms of his concept, co-optive power such as attraction and persuasion also constitutes soft power regardless of the type of resource (Joseph Nye, 2013). However, the concept of soft power I will use focuses on what types of resources users use regardless of the type of behaviors. Therefore, any kinds of power exerted by only soft resources such as images, diplomacy, diary and so on could be soft power. It is a resource-based concept compared to Nye's concept which is behavior based (Geun Lee, 2011).

I use this concept because using hard resources such as military power and economic regulation to resolve the nuclear problem in North Korea has been ineffective so far. Therefore, using the concept of soft power which is based on soft resources makes it possible to analyze different kinds of soft power and find ways to improve it.

According to the thesis by Geun Lee (2011: p.9) who used the concept I mentioned above, there are 4 categories of Soft Power. I will use these categories to analyze the soft power strategies of South Korea.

1. Oppression through diplomacy: Two-track diplomacy

South Korea takes advantage of soft power strategies that request a global mutual-assistance system in order to oppress North Korea. Based on diplomatic capabilities, South Korea has tried to make it clear that all countries in world politics are demanding a solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. Through these strategies, it wants to provoke fear in North Korea that it would be impossible to restore its relationship with the world. These strategies have been influential because they are harmonized with United Nations' Security Council resolutions. Especially, the two-track diplomacy conducted by the president Moon-jae-in in the United Nations general assembly in 2017 is evaluated to be successful. He gave North Korea two options in order to attract them to negotiate (The fact, 2017). The president Moon-jae-in stressed the importance of cooperation about nuclear crisis among countries in his address to the general assembly. Moreover, he discussed the issue with the presidents of United States and Japan and pushed for a firm stance against the North Korea nuclear problem. However, at the same time, he declared that South Korea is ready for peaceful negotiation and discussion if North Korea wish to negotiate and stop developing its nuclear power. By offering two options, South Korea not only aimed to incite fear in North Korea but also left room for North Korea to appear at the negotiation tables.

Strategies using diplomatic capabilities are valuable because they can induce coercive power through soft resources. However, it would be difficult to judge the effectiveness if North Korea didn't show any reaction to these strategies. Moreover, the cooperation with Russia and China is very important to persuade North Korea because they are maintaining amicable relationships with North Korea against United States and Japan. In the situation that North Korea has aimed to complete development of nuclear weapons for negotiation, diplomatic oppression is not effective itself for making change.

2. Sports and culture: Peaceful gesture

The attempt to converse through sports and culture is one of the soft power strategies used by South Korea in order to solve the nuclear crisis. This strategy intends to obtain North Korea's cooperation in non-political areas which could then spread to political negotiations. As a result of this strategy, South Korea and North Korea formed a unified team during the last Olympics and Asian games (Yonhapnews, 2018). However, for it to be a success, their cooperation should not be limited to the non-political area, but instead should lead to a constructive conversation in politics. In these terms, South Korea's peaceful gesture in the PyeongChang winter Olympic is seen to have brought about positive change. Before the Olympics, many politicians and experts were skeptical to the gesture because North Korea conducted the 6th nuclear test in 2017, ignoring South Korea's message (Korea times, 2018). In extension of the two-track diplomacy strategy, nevertheless, the South Korea government has continually shown a desire to cooperate with North Korea. These strategies focus on cooperation only in soft power domains such as sports, culture, and music rather than domains that expose serious political intent.

In the United Nations general assembly which adopted a truce for the PyeongChang Olympics, gold medalist Kim-yun-a required North Korea to participate in Olympics on her address (Chungang, 2017). Moreover, in the event for praying successful Olympics, the president Moon-jae-in sent another peaceful gesture mentioning that South Korea would wait for the participation of North Korea until the beginning of Olympics (Voakorea, 2017). This strategy ended up having successfully attracted North Korea. As a result, they composed a unified ice hockey team and diplomats were dispatched from North Korea during the Olympics to watch the game with South Korean government officials. And then, they exchanged cultural performances in PyeongChang and Pyeong-yang. Finally, the efforts led to the summit meeting between South-North Korea, and North Korea even declared that it would stop developing nuclear power and establish cooperation with South Korea.

It is too early to judge whether North Korea will stop developing their nuclear influence. However, it is a success in the sense that South Korea has attracted North Korea into conversations. Especially, South Korea has effectively taken advantage of the situation that all countries in international relations pay attention to the nuclear crisis of North Korea. They continuously pull North Korea into the center of world politics and leave North Korea without alternative option. Continuous diary and issue making has finally attracted North Korea.

3. diary and framing

It is important to continuously set agendas about issues which are related to North Korea's violations concerning the nuclear crisis and human rights. Although North Korea is isolated from world politics, it can't operate its system if it refuses to cooperate or trade with other countries. As a result, it do not want to be in constant conflict with world politics. Therefore, the focal point of diary South Korea should impress is the negative effects of nuclear policies and dictatorship of North Korea. Moreover, South Korea should recognize that the goal of developing nuclear influence of North Korea is not to declare war but to ensure protection for their political system. South Korea needs to continuously stress that political system of North Korea would be insured after nuclear dismantlement. These strategies change thoughts of North Korea and induce it to participate in negotiations.

However, South Korea has not been effectively employing this strategy. diary which might arouse direct conflict with North Korea could aggravate their relationship. This explains its unwillingness to resort to this strategy. On the other hand, the United States show effective diary which relates to the nuclear crisis mentioning Iran as a positive example of a successful negotiation.

South Korea needs to set and frame the diary about similar issues closely related to North Korea. For example, the rebellion against the dictatorship in Syria and the resulting death of the dictator in Yemen which stem from tyrannical politics could be a negative precedent. Also, the agreement with Iran that acquired economic support by abandoning nuclear development could be a positive precedent. Through this diary setting, South Korea should change the thought of North Korea about their nuclear policies. If this strategy succeeds, North Korea will obtain a new interpretative framework, which could lead them to negotiate.

4. Competition of system: North Korea defector and Korean wave

The last type of soft power strategy is a fundamental solution to provoke change. While the strategies I mentioned above directly targets the North Korea government, this strategy mainly targets the people and the society of North Korea. Promoting economic, cultural superiority could influence the North Korean people and then it could lead to movements which would require a transition from the current society. There are many different kinds of way to conduct this strategy and it is abstract in that we can't measure how much it could influence society. However, it could also be a strategy which North Korea fears the most in the sense that it could provoke change from the bottom of the society. In addition to this, it could arouse fundamental doubt about the 'Juche' ideology or nuclear development which is maintained by an exploitative system.

One of these strategies is the policy concerning defectors. South Korea has been implementing policies which accept defectors and help them adjust to the South Korea society. These defectors get a chance to be independent through re-socialization. And then, some of them carry out activities which denounce the horrible reality of the internal society of North Korea. If their voice became influential in world politics, it could become a greater threat to the North Korea system. In 2012, some defectors testified against the internal violation of human rights in UNCHR to gain attention from the world (Newsis, 2016).

In addition, recently, Korean dramas and music are covertly shared within the North Korea society (Daily NK, 2018). It could also provoke a social movement to call for change. Because the contents reflect a much higher standard of living, it triggers curiosity and admiration from North Korean people. These strategies lead society of North Korea to socialize with the co-optive power in the recipients. Ultimately, long term soft power could threaten North Korea itself.

Limits and conclusion

This essay has analyzed the strategies South Korea has used in order to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. South Korea threatens North Korea utilizing consensus among countries. Strategies its government has shown such as the speech of the president Moon-jae-in in the United Nations general assembly, the winter Olympics which reflected a desire for peace and the two-track diplomacy are totally different from the consistently conservative policies that the previous governments showed during the last ten years. In addition, the declaration of the Trump's administration that they would continuously pressure North Korea about nuclear issues offered the opportunity to react to North Korea's nuclear policies. In this process, active joint response among South Korea, United States and Japan is also necessary.

However, it is true that there are some drawbacks. In order for North Korea to eventually accept nuclear disarmament, South Korea absolutely needs to cooperate with Russia and China which are not only in a good relationship with North Korea but also in a comparatively competitive relationship with the United States and Japan. If South Korea will succeed in gaining their support, the process of reaching an agreement concerning nuclear issues would be much easier.

Eventually, in contrast with the hard power strategies with hard resources, soft power strategies with soft resources can only be effective when South Korea offers the second attractive option. The options are diverse. The main point is that North Korea should recognize the positive effects of abandoning nuclear.

Also, South Korea should recognize that the effect of soft power strategies is maximized when it coexists with economic / military oppression through hard power. In other words, South Korea must take into account Joseph Nye's smart power to solve the nuclear crisis.

In this process, the most important thing is to persuade North Korea by offering an attractive choice. The reason why North Korea desires to have a summit meeting with South Korea and the United States is because they judge that the choice would be more profitable. Therefore, the South Korean government needs to reflect upon what objectives North Korea has when they accept to negotiate. For example, China's economic opening is an example of a good precedent that North Korea could follow. South Korea needs to give North Korea a blue print such as the example of China and lead the agreement about the nuclear problem.

Lastly, it is difficult to apprehend the effectiveness of soft power strategies with soft resources, mentioned by Geun Lee, in the sense that the data and the figures about this strategy are not easy to measure in contrast with hard power strategies. Also, many causes exist concerning change of North Korea. Therefore, further research needs to establish a system to get concrete and scientific data in order to apprehend the complex causes and effects of this strategy such as that stem from smart power strategies.

References

Geun Lee (2009) A theory of soft power and Korea's soft power strategy, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 21:2, 205-218, DOI: 10.1080/10163270902913962

Joseph S. Nye. JR. (2013) HARD, SOFT, AND SMART POWER. In: Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh Thakur(eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, pp.559-574.

Jung Seong Jang.(1999) Theoretical Structure and Characteristics of the Juche Ideology. 북한연구학회보, 3:2, 251-273.

Chungang ilbo, (2017) 김연아, 평화올림픽 위해 UN에서 4분 영어연설 [Online] Available.

DAILY NK. (2018) 어쩔 수 없이 인도영화를 처벌강화에 南드라마 시청 주춤 [Online] Available.

Korea Times. (2018) 북한, 평창올림픽 참가 놓고 정치권 장외설전 가열 [Online] Available.

Korean Times. (2016) 왜 북한은 핵개발을 멈추지 않는가? [Online] Available.

Newsis. (2016) 탈북자들, 유엔 인권위에서 강제낙태와 고문 등 증언 [Online] Available.

The Fact. (2017) 文대통령'데뷔전' UN본부 입성... '북핵 파문' NYPD '긴장' [Online] Available.

Voakorea. (2017) 문재인 한국 대통령 "북한 평창올림픽 참가 끝까지 기다릴 것" [Online] Available.

Yonhapnews. (2018) 27년 만에 '남북 단일팀' 출범 임박... 올림픽은 사상 최초 [Online] Available.

▲Satellite imagery of the Jordan River [NASA].

ANALYSIS / Marina Díaz Escudero

Water is an essential natural resource, not only for individual survival on Earth, but also for nation-states and their welfare; having an effect on partner development, trade, health and population productivity.

As a natural determinant of power, its accessibility must be considered by states in their policies on national security; "hydropolitics" being the branch of study for this phenomenon. Although it has been, and continues to be, a major source of inter-state conflict, it is an arena in which cooperation and diplomacy between rival countries can set the ground for further political agreements, effectively leading to more stable and peaceful relations.

On the other hand, when water is used as a natural border or must be shared between various countries, concurrent cooperation between all of them is essential to find an effective and non-violent way to approach the resource. Otherwise, an overlapping of different, and potentially contradictory, bilateral agreements may lead to frictions. If one of the concerned countries is not present in negotiations, as some historical events suggest (e.g. 1992 multilateral negotiations in Moscow, where Lebanon and Syria where not present), this will always constitute an obstacle for regional stability.

Moreover, although 71% of the Earth's surface is covered by water, factors such as economic interests, climate change, and explosive population growth are also challenging the sustainable distribution of water sources among countries. The future effects of this scarcity in the region will demand consistent political action in the long-term and current leaders should bear it in mind.

Water availability and conflict in the MENA region

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is known as an arid and semi-arid region, with only 1% of the world's renewable water resources. On average, water availability is only 1,200 cubic meters, around six times less than the worldwide average of 7,000 cubic meters.

As global temperatures rise, more frequent and severe droughts will take place in the region and this will make countries which already have partner rivalries more prone to go to war with each other. According to the World Resources Institute, thirteen of the thirty three states that will suffer from worse water scarcity in the twenty-first century will be Middle Eastern countries.

To quote the findings of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) report, Global Trends: Paradox of Progress, more than thirty countries - nearly half of them in the Middle East - will experience extremely high water stress by 2035, increasing economic, social, and political tensions.

Although claims to the land were and are the main motives for much of the current conflict, water, as part of the contested territories, has always been considered as a primary asset to be won in conflict. In fact, recognition of the importance of water lent the term, the "War over Water", to conflicts in the region, and control over the resource constitutes a significant advantage.

Despite there being several water bodies in the Middle East (Nile, Euphrates, Tigris...), the Jordan River basin is one of the most significant ones today in terms of its influence on current conflicts. The Jordan River Basin is a 223 km long river with an upper course from its sources up to the Galilee Sea, and a lower one, from the latter to the Dead Sea. Territories such as Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank are situated to its West, while Syria and Jordan border it to the East. Water scarcity in the Jordan watershed comes from many different factors, but the existence of cultural, religious and historical differences between the riparian countries (situated on the banks of the river) has led to a centuries-long mismanagement of the source.

Tensions between Zionism and the Arab world on regards to the Jordan River became noticeable in the 1950s, when most Arab countries rejected the Johnston Plan that aimed at dividing the water by constructing a number of dams and canals on the different tributaries of the river. The plan was based on an earlier one commissioned by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) and was accepted by the water technical committees of the five riparian countries. Nevertheless, the Arab League didn't give the go-ahead and even hardened its position after the Suez Crisis.

In spite of this, Jordan and Israel decided to abide by their allocations and developed two projects, the Israeli National Water Carrier (to transport water from the north to the center and south) and Jordan's East Ghor Main Canal (King Abdullah Canal). In retaliation and with severe consequences, Arab states reunited in an Arab Summit (1964) and decided to divert Jordan's headwaters to the Yarmouk river (for the Syrian Arab Republic and Jordan), depriving Israel of 35% of its Water Carrier capacity.

This provocation led to a series of military clashes and prompted Israel's attack on Arab construction projects; a move that would help precipitate the 1967 Six-Day War, according to some analysts. As a result of the war, Israel gained control of the waters of the West Bank (formely Jordan-annexed in the 1948 war and today still controlled by the Israeli Civil Administration) and the Sea of Galilee (today constituting about 60% of the country's fresh water).

Later, in 1995, by the Article 40 of the Oslo II political agreement, [...] Israel recognized Palestinian water rights in the West Bank and established the Joint Water Committee to manage and develop new supplies and to investigate illegal water withdrawals. Nevertheless, the loss of control over water in the West Bank has never been accepted by neighboring Arab countries as, despite the agreement, much of the water coming from it is still directly given to Israeli consumers (and only a smaller fraction to Palestinians living under their control).

Role of water in Syrian-Israeli hostilities

Hostilities have been covering the diary of Syrian-Israeli relationships ever since the Armistice Agreements signed by Israel with each of the four neighboring Arab countries in 1949. This is compounded by the fact that there is seldom mutual agreement with resolutions proposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in south-western Syria, was taken away by Israel in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and is still considered an Israeli-occupied territory. In 1974 the Agreement on Disengagement was signed, ending the Yom Kippur War and resulting in the formation of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), a buffer zone separating the Israeli portion of the Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. Although Israel kept most of the Golan Heights territory, in 1981 it unilaterally passed the Golan Heights Law to impose its jurisdiction and administration on the occupied territory (refusing to call it "annexation"). These laws did not receive international recognition and were declared void by the UNSC.

The fact that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in April 2016 in a weekly cabinet meeting that "the Golan Heights will remain forever in Israeli hands" has once again triggered the rejection of UNSC's members, who have declared that the status of the Heights "remains unchanged."

Rainwater catchment in the Golan Heights feeds into the Jordan River and nowadays provides a third of Israel's water supply. Although "Syria has built several dams in the Yarmouk river sub-basin, which is part of the Jordan River basin", the Golan Heights are likely to remain an important thorn in future Israeli-Syrian relations.

Water as a casus belli between Lebanon and Israel

In March 2002, Lebanon decided to divert part of the Hasbani (a major tributary of the Jordan upper course) to supply the Lebanese Wazzani village. Ariel Sharon, the former Prime Minister of Israel, said that the issue could easily become a "casus belli". According to Israel, Lebanon should have made consultations before pumping any water from the Springs, but both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah (a shi'a militant group) condemned the idea.

The Wazzani project, according to Lebanon, only aimed to redevelop the south by extracting a limited amount of water from the Hasbani; 300 MCM per year (they drew 7 MCM by the time). The actual conflict with Israel began when Lebanon started constructing the pumping station very close to the Israeli border.

The United States (US) decided to establish a State Department water expert in order to assess the situation "and cool tempers" but in 2006, during the Lebanon war, the pumping station and other infrastructures, such as an underground water diversion pipe which run Letani river water to many villages, were destroyed.

Although Israeli-Lebanese tensions have continued due to other issues, such as spying, natural gas control and border incidents, water source domination has been a significant contributor to conflict between the two states.

Inter-Arab conflicts on water allocation

Some inter-Arab conflicts on regards to water distribution have also taken place, but they are small-scale and low level ones. In 1987, an agreement was signed between Jordan and Syria which allowed the latter to build twenty five dams with a limited capacity in the Yarmouk River. Later on it was proved that Syria had been violating the pact by constructing more dams than permitted: in 2014 it had already constructed forty two of them. New bilateral agreements were signed in 2001, 2003 and 2004, but repeated violations of these agreements by Syria in terms of water-allocation became unsustainable for Jordan. Most recently (2012), former Jordan's water minister Hazim El Naser stressed the necessity "to end violations of the water-sharing accords."

Although these are low-level tensions, they could quickly escalate into a regional conflict between Jordan, Syria and Israel, as a decrease of water from the Yarmouk released by Syria to Jordan may prevent Jordan to comply with its commitments towards Israel.

Regional cooperation: from multilateralism to bilateralism

Since the beginning of the last century, attempts to achieve multilateral cooperation and a basin-wide agreement between the five co-riparian countries have been hindered by regional political conflict. Boundary definition, choices about decision-making arrangements, and issues of accountability, together with other political divisions, can help explain the creation of subwatershed communities of interest instead of a major watershed agreement between all neighboring countries.

The Israeli-Palestine peace process began in 1991 with the Conference in Madrid, attended by all riparians: Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Co-sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union as representatives of the international community, it addressed several regional issues, such as environment, arms control, economic development and, of course, water distribution (in fact, water rights became one of the trickiest areas of discussion).

In 1992, multilateral negotiations about regional cooperation continued in Moscow but this time they were only attended by Israel, the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation and the international community; Syria and Lebanon were not present. "After the failed Johnston plan, external efforts to achieve a multilateral agreement through cooperation on water sources were attempted by the Centre for Environmental Studies and Resource Management (CESAR) [...] As Syria and Lebanon did not want to participate in a process involving Israel, (it) ran parallel processes for Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan on the one hand, and Syria and Lebanon on the other hand."

As a matter of fact, bilateral instruments grew in importance and two treaties, between Israel and Jordan/Palestine respectively, were signed: The Treaty of Peace between The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and The State of Israel (1994) and The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Oslo II, 1995). Discussions about water use and joint water management played an important role and were included in the annexes.

In 1996, the Trilateral Declaration on Principles for Cooperation on Water-Related Matters and New and Additional Water Resources was signed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and in 2003 the first two initiated a plan called Roadmap for Peace which included the revival of cooperation on regional issues like water.

Although Israel and Syria started some negotiations to solve the Golan Heights' problem in 2008, after the break out of the Syrian civil war distrust between both actors has increased, leaving the most important thorn in multilateral regional negotatiations still unsolved. Nevertheless, "a new government in Syria after the end of the war may provide new opportunities for improved bi- and ultimately multilateral cooperation," says the FAO. The previous year (2007) Jordan and the Syrian Arab Republic also signed some agreements "in regard to shared water in the Yarmouk river basin."

Role of Non-Governmental Organizations

Civil society has also been an important platform for resource-management discussions between riparian countries.

Middle Eastern rhetoric, according to the BBC, "often portrays the issue of water as an existential, zero-sum conflict - casting either Israel as a malevolent sponge sucking up Arab water resources, or the implacably hostile Arabs as threatening Israel's very existence by denying life-giving water."

For this reason, in 2010, Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME, also called EcoPeace Middle East) stressed the importance of replacing this win-lose approach for a compromising perspective of mutual gains for all. In this way, their proposals don't "include quantitative water allocations, but the implementation of a joint institutional structure that is continuously tasked with peaceful conflict resolution over water resources; [...] defining water rights not as the access to a certain water quantity, but as a broader bundle of rights and duties to access and use the available water and to uphold quality and quantity standards."

Through "The Good Water Neighbors" project (2001), the NGO tried to raise awareness about the negative consequences of leaving this issue unmanaged and reiterated its willingness to strenghten "institutional capacities for collaboration in the region." According to the staff, Israel, Jordan and Palestine could develop a certain interdependence, focused on water (Israel to Jordan/Palestine) and solar-generated electricity (Jordan to Palestine/Israel), in order to facilitate the powering of desalination plants and produce more cleanwater for sale.

The use of this type of political support for transboundary cooperation, based on water access but focused on solving less cultural and sensitive problems (like environmental sustainability), as a means to opening up avenues for dialogue on other political issues, could be the key for a lasting peace in the region.

According to Gidon Brombert, cofounder and Israeli director of FoEME, adopting "healthy interdependencies is a powerful way to promote regional water and energy stability as a foundation for long-lasting peace between our people".

A testament to the success of these initiatives is the fact that Jordan and Israel scored 56.67 under the Water Cooperation Quotient (WCQ) 2017, which means that there is currently zero risk of a water-related war between both states (50 is the minimum score for this to apply).

Final key points and conclusions

There is no doubt that water issues have been a key discussion point between riparian countries in the Jordan River watershed since the late nineteenth century, and rightly so, as the only way to achieve a long-lasting peace in the region is to accept that water management is an integral part of political discourse and decisions. Not only because it is an essential factor in the conflicts that arise between states, but because agreements on other political matters could be furthered through the establishment of sound agreements in the hydropolitical arena.

In other words, a "baby-step" approach to politics should be applied: peaceful discussions on this and other matters leveraged to talk about other sources of conflict and utilized to improve political relations between two parties. The Korean conflict is a good example: although both Koreas are far from agreeing with regards to their political outlook, they have been able to cooperate in other fields, such as the Winter Olympic games. Communication during the games was used to subtly suggest avenues for a political reapproachment, which now seems to be progressing satisfactorily.

As for multilateral-bilateral conditions of negotiations, it is important to take into account the fact that the Jordan River basin, mainly due to its geological condition as a watershed, has to be shared by several different countries, five to be exact. This may seem obvious but clearly many actors don't see its implications.

Understandably, it is very difficult for a state to manage various bilateral agreements concerning the same asset with countries that are mutually at odds with one another. Their contents can overlap, creating contradictions and making the achievement of a general arrangement not only disorganized, but also challenging. Notwithstanding, a multilaterally agreed distribution of the basin's water - taking into account the necessities of all riparians simultaneously, could more easily pave the way for further cooperation on other, pressing, political issues.

Last but not least, it is important not to forget about policies related to other regional affairs, and their potential effect on water management. Climate change, for instance, will certainly affect water availability in the MENA region and the Jordan River basin, easily disrupting and modifying past and future agreements on the resource's allocation and distribution. Attention should also be paid to interest groups and to the economic situation of the countries involved in the negotiations, as these will be determinant in states' decisions about the implementation of certain future projects.

▲Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and President Donald Trump during a meeting in Washington in 2017 [White House].

ANALYSIS / Naomi Moreno

Saudi Arabia used to be the only country in the world that banned women from driving. This ban was one of the things that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was best known for to outsiders not otherwise familiar with the country's domestic politics, and has thus been a casus belli for activists demanding reforms in the kingdom. Last month, Saudi Arabia started issuing the first driver's licenses to women, putting into effect some of the changes promised by the infamous Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) in his bid to modernize Saudi Arabian politics. The end of the ban further signals the beginning of a move to expand the rights of women in KSA, and builds on piecemeal developments that took place in the realm of women's rights in the kingdom prior to MBS' entrance to the political scene.

Thus, since 2012, Saudi Arabian women have been able to do sports as well as participate in the Olympic Games; in the 2016 Olympics, four Saudi women were allowed to travel to Rio de Janeiro to compete. Moreover, within the political realm, King Abdullah swore in the first 30 women to the shura council - Saudi Arabia's consultative council - in February 2013, and in the kingdom's 2015 municipal elections, women were able to vote and run for office for the first time. Finally, and highlighting the fact that economic dynamics have similarly played a role in driving progression in the kingdom, the Saudi stock exchange named the first female chairperson in its history - a 39-year-old Saudi woman named Sarah Al Suhaimi - last February.

Further, although KSA may be known to be one of the "worst countries to be a woman", the country has experienced a B in the last 5 years and the abovementioned advances in women's rights, to name some, constitute a positive development. However, the most visible reforms have arguably been the work of MBS. The somewhat rash and unprecedented decision to end the ban on driving coincided with MBS' crackdown on ultra-conservative, Wahhabi clerics and the placing of several of the kingdom's richest and most influential men under house arrest, under the pretext of challenging corruption. In addition, under his leadership, the oil-rich kingdom is undergoing economic reforms to reduce the country's dependency on oil, in a bid to modernize the country's economy. 

Nonetheless, despite the above mentioned reforms being classified by some as unprecedented, progressive leaps that are putting an end to oppression through challenging underlying ultra-conservatism traditions (as well as those that espouse them), a measure of distrust has arisen among Saudis and outsiders with regards the motivations underlying the as-of-yet seemingly limited reforms that have been introduced. While some perceive the crown prince's actions to be a genuine move towards reforming Saudi society, several indicators point to the possibility that MBS might have more practical reasons that are only tangentially related to progression for progression's sake. As the thinking goes, such decrees may have less to do with genuine reform, and more to do with improving an international image to deflect from some of the kingdom's more controversial practices, both at home and abroad. A number of factors drive this public skepticism.

Reasons for scepticism

The first relates to the fact that KSA is a country where an ultraconservative form of shari'a or Islamic law continues to constitute the primary legal framework. This legal framework is based on the Qur'an and Hadith, within which the public and many private aspects of everyday life are regulated. Unlike in other Muslim majority countries, where only selective elements of the shari'a are adopted, Wahhabism - which is identified by the Court of Strasbourg as a main source of terrorism - has necessitated the strict adherence to a fundamentalist interpretation of shari'a, one that draws from the stricter and more literal Hanbali school of jurisprudence. As such, music and the arts have been strictly controlled and censored. In addition, although the religious police (more commonly known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) have had their authority curbed to a certain degree, they are still given the authority to enforce Islamic norms of conduct in public by observing suspects and forwarding their findings to the police.

In the past few years, the KSA has been pushing for a more national Wahhabism, one that is more modern in its outlook and suitable for the kingdom's image. Nevertheless, the Wahhabi clergy has been close to the Al Saud dynasty since the mid-18th century, offering it Islamic legitimacy in return for control over parts of the state, and a lavish religious infrastructure of mosques and universities. Therefore, Saudi clerics are pushing back significantly against democratization efforts. As a result, the continuing prevalence of a shari'a system of law raises questions about the ability of the kingdom to seriously democratize and reform to become moderate.

Secondly, and from a domestic point of view, Saudi Arabia is experiencing disharmony. Saudi citizens are not willing to live in a country where any political opposition is quelled by force, and punishments for crimes such as blasphemy, sorcery, and apostasy are gruesome and carried out publicly. This internal issue has thus embodied an identity crisis provoked mainly by the 2003 Iraq war, and reinforced by the events of the Arab Spring. Disillusionment, unemployment, religious and tribal splits, as well as human rights abuses and corruption among an ageing leadership have been among the main grievances of the Saudi people who are no longer as tolerant of oppression.

In an attempt to prevent the spill over of the Arab Spring fervor into the Kingdom, the government spent $130 billion in an attempt to offset domestic unrest. Nonetheless, these grants failed to satisfy the nearly 60 percent of the population under the age of twenty-one, which refused to settle. In fact, in 2016 protests broke out in Qatif, a city in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich, eastern provinces, which prompted Saudis to deploy additional security units to the region. In addition, in September of last year, Saudi authorities, arguing a battle against corruption and a crack down on extremism, arrested dozens of people, including prominent clerics. According to a veteran Saudi journalist, this was an absurd action as "there was nothing that called for such arrests". He argued that several among those arrested were not members of any political organization, but rather individuals with dissenting viewpoints to those held by the ruling family.

Among those arrested was Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, an influential cleric known for agitating for political change and for being a pro-Shari'a activist. Awdah's arrest, while potentially disguised as part of the kingdom's attempts to curb the influence of religious hardliners, is perhaps better understood in the context of the Qatar crisis. Thus, when KSA, with the support of a handful of other countries in the region, initiated a blockade of the small Gulf peninsula in June of last year, Awdah welcomed a report on his Twitter account suggesting that the then three-month-old row between Qatar and four Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia may be resolved. The ensuing arrest of the Sheikh seems to confirm a suspicion that it was potentially related to his favoring the renormalization of relations with Qatar, as opposed to it being related to MBS' campaign to moderate Islam in the kingdom.

A third factor that calls into question the sincerity of the modernization campaign is economic. Although Saudi Arabia became a very wealthy country following the discovery of oil in the region, massive inequality between the various classes has grown since, as these resources remain to be controlled by a select few. As a result, nearly one fifth of the population continues to live in poverty, especially in the predominantly Shi'a South where, ironically, much of the oil reservoirs are located. In these areas, sewage runs in the streets, and only crumbs are spent to alleviate the plight of the poor. Further, youth opportunities in Saudi Arabia are few, which leaves much to be desire, and translates into occasional unrest. Thus, the lack of possibilities has led many young men to join various terrorist organizations in search of a new life.

Vision 2030 and international image

In the context of the Saudi Vision 2030, the oil rich country is aiming to wean itself of its dependence on the natural resource which, despite its wealth generation capacity, has also been one of the main causes of the country's economic problems. KSA is facing an existential crisis that has led to a re-think of its long-standing practice of selling oil via fixed contracts. This is why Vision 2030 is so important. Seeking to regain better control over its economic and financial destiny, the kingdom has designed an ambitious economic restructuring plan, spearheaded by MBS. Vision 2030 constitutes a reform program that aims to upgrade the country's financial status by diversifying its economy in a world of low oil prices. Saudi Arabia thus needs overseas firms' investments, most notably in non-oil sectors, in order to develop this state-of-the-art approach. This being said, Vision 2030 inevitably implies reforms on simultaneous fronts that go beyond economic affairs. The action plan has come in at a time when the kingdom is not only dealing with oil earnings and lowering its reserves, but also expanding its regional role. As a result, becoming a more democratic country could attract foreign wealth to a country that has traditionally been viewed in a negative light due to its repressive human rights record.  

This being said, Saudi Arabia also has a lot to do regarding its foreign policy in order to improve its international image. Despite this, the Saudi petition to push the US into a war with Iran has not ceased during recent years. Religious confrontation between the Sunni Saudi autocracy and Iran's Shi'a theocracy has characterized the geopolitical tensions that have existed in the region for decades. Riyadh has tried to circumvent criticism of its military intervention in the Yemen through capitalizing on the Trump administration's hostility towards Iran, and involving the US in its campaign; thus granting it a degree of legitimacy as an international alliance against the Houthis. Recently, MBS stated that Trump was the "best person at the right time" to confront Iran. Conveniently enough, Trump and the Republicans are now in charge of US' foreign affairs. Whereas the Obama administration, in its final months, suspended the sale of precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration has moved to reverse this in the context of the Yemeni conflict. In addition, in May of this year, just a month after MBS visited Washington in a meeting which included discussions regarding the Iran accords, the kingdom has heaped praise on president Trump following his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

All things considered, 2018 may go down in history as the irreversible end of the absolute archaic Saudi monarchy. This implosion was necessitated by events, such as those previously mentioned, that Saudi rulers could no longer control or avoid. Hitherto, MBS seems to be fulfilling his father's wishes. He has hand-picked dutiful and like-minded princes and appointed them to powerful positions. As a result, MBS' actions suggest that the kingdom is turning over a new page in which a new generation of princes and technocrats will lead the breakthrough to a more moderate and democratic Saudi Arabia.

New awareness

However, although MBS has declared that the KSA is moving towards changing existing guardianship laws, due to cultural differences among Saudi families, to date, women still need power of attorney from a male relative to acquire a car, and risk imprisonment should they disobey male guardians. In addition, this past month, at least 12 prominent women's rights activists who campaigned for women's driving rights just before the country lifted the ban were arrested. Although the lifting of the ban is now effective, 9 of these activists remain behind bars and are facing serious charges and long jail sentences. As such, women continue to face significant challenges in realizing basic rights, despite the positive average endorsement that MBS' lifting of the driving ban has received.

Although Saudi Arabia is making an effort in order to satisfy the public eye, it is with some degree of scepticism that one should approach the country's motivations. Taking into account Saudi Arabia's current state of affairs, these events suggest that the women's driving decree was an effort in order to improve the country's external image as well as an effort to deflect attention from a host of problematic internal and external affairs, such as the proxy warfare in the region, the arrest of dissidents and clerics this past September, and the Qatari diplomatic crisis, which recently "celebrated" its first anniversary. Allowing women to drive is a relatively trivial sacrifice for the kingdom to make and has triggered sufficient positive reverberations globally. Such baby steps are positive, and should be encouraged, yet overlook the fact that they only represent the tip of the iceberg.

As it stands, the lifting of the driving ban does not translate into a concrete shift in the prevailing legal and cultural mindsets that initially opposed it. Rather, it is an indirect approach to strengthen Saudi's power in economic and political terms. Yet, although women in Saudi Arabia may feel doubtful about the government's intentions, time remains to be their best ally. After decades of an ultraconservative approach to handling their rights, the country has reached awareness that it can no longer sustain its continued oppression of women; and this for economic reasons, but also as a result of global pressures that affect the success of the country's foreign policies which, by extension, also negatively impact on its interests.

The silver lining for Saudi woman is that, even if the issue of women's rights is being leveraged to secure the larger interests of the kingdom, it continues to represent a slow and steady progression to a future in which women may be granted more freedoms. The downside is that, so long as these rights are not grafted into a broader legal framework that secures them beyond the rule of a single individual - like MBS - women's rights (and human rights in general) will continue to be the temporary product of individual whim. Without an overhaul of the shari'a system that perpetuates regressive attitudes towards women, the best that can be hoped for is the continuation of internal and external pressures that coerce the Saudi leadership into exacting further reforms in the meantime. As with all things, time will tell.

signature of the peace agreement in Cartagena, in September 2016, before the referendum that rejected it and led to some modifications of the text [Government of Chile].

ANALYSIS / Camila Oliveros

The Peace agreement signed on November 26, 2016 between the Colombian Government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is one of the most decisive issues in the elections of this June 17, in its second round, and of the next presidential term.

After lengthy negotiations between the Government and the FARC in Havana, and the introduction of modifications to the initially agreed text, following the victory of the "no" vote in the plebiscite, the peace agreement was finally signed in November 2016. The long duration of the negotiations and the result the plebiscite show that the peace agreement is particularly controversial in Colombia, where the 52-year conflict resulted in the death of 220,000 people and the forced displacement of almost 6 million, in addition to 25,000 disappeared and almost 30,000 kidnapped.

Clearly, all Colombians long for a lasting peace, but while some believe that what was drafted in Havana is the solution to achieve that peace, others believe that there are still several modifications that can be made to the text. The decision on this and on the speed of the implementation of the agreement remains in the hands of the next president.

Degree of implementation

For now, more than a year after the signature the Finalagreement for the Termination of the Conflict, it is possible to highlight both negative and positive elements in the implementation of what was agreed in Havana. According to the Observatory for Monitoring the Implementation of the Peace agreement , at the beginning of 2018, before the country entered the long electoral process in which it finds itself, only 18.3% of the agreement had been fulfilled. This is a relatively leave figure, which in part may be due to insufficient economic and human resources to implement the agreements quickly and effectively, and not so much to a lack of commitment on the part of the government.

However, in contrast to this low percentage of what has already been implemented, there are other figures that show that the agreement is having some positive results. This is the case of the decrease in the homicide rate in Colombia. It is now one of the lowest in thirty years, with 24 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In addition, the issue of displaced persons was reduced by almost half, from 91,045 displaced persons in 2016 to 48,335 in 2017, according to the Victims Unit. The issue of displaced persons had already been decreasing significantly in previous years, even at a faster pace: in 2002 the figure had been 757,240 people; in the following 14 years there was a decrease of 47,598 people on average per year, including the 8 years of presidency of Álvaro Uribe, who has been the great opponent to the terms of the peace agreement .

The issue of landmine casualties has also decreased: from 72 in 2016 to 58 in 2017, which has helped generate a climate of greater confidence in rural communities.

It is important to highlight that in the areas that have been most affected by the armed conflict, in agreement with the peace agreement , new companies have been formed that benefit from the mechanisms foreseen for the "zones most affected by the armed conflict" or Zomac. However, these companies are facing a complicated environment, as although FARC has completed the various phases of its demobilization, such as the submission of weapons and the return of recruited minors, FARC dissidents and other drug trafficking groups continue to operate in several areas.

Although there has been some progress, the implementation of most of the agreement is still ahead. How are the two presidential candidates, Iván Duque and Gustavo Petro, dealing with it?

Duque or Petro

Iván Duque is a lawyer and politician who has been a senator of the Republic for the Democratic Center, a party headed by former president Uribe, a great opponent of the peace agreement . This has led many to think that if Duque becomes president, he will leave the Havana agreement a dead letter, without implementing it during his four years in office. His government proposal is aimed at improving Economics, reducing taxes for large companies, financing youth entrepreneurship and favoring investment. In addition, he promotes a major reform of the Colombian justice system.

Gustavo Petro is an economist and politician, but also demobilized from the M-19 guerrilla. He belongs to the center-left Progressive Movement political party. Petro proposes an economic model with socialist tones that focuses on "changing the extractivist model " and promoting agricultural policies. The central axes of his government proposal are in the public sphere, fully guaranteeing the rights to health, to "quality, pluralistic, universal and free" Education .

Colombia has never elected a leftist candidate to be president of the Republic, perhaps because the left is identified with communism and that associates it with the FARC. In any case, Petro has not been against the Havana agreements, and that makes him attractive to many Colombians who wish to preserve what was agreed in 2016, in the hope of ending the armed conflict experienced by the country.

The truth is that it is difficult to legally reverse the peace agreement , since a constitutional reform established that the next three governments are obliged to comply with the agreement. If Duque wins, the peace agreement may be subject to further changes, but in no way Duque is synonymous with war and Petro with peace. 

As Duque has expressed, making certain modifications to the agreements is not the same as ending them. The candidate of the Democratic Center maintains that the agreement must have certain adjustments that allow reaching a "credible, sustainable and based on justice" peace. agreement to his proposals, the main changes he would promote would be the following two:

Special Jurisdiction and political participation

The first has to do with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), since Iván Duque in his government plan seeks to simplify the Colombian justice system, going from the current six courts to only one, with the purpose of achieving greater speed and efficiency in judicial processes. However, with this change power may be highly concentrated and centralized. A modification of the JEP provided for in the peace agreement may cause some uncertainty among former guerrillas, with whom some leniency had been agreed.

On the other hand, the big change Duque could make has to do with political participation. He believes that former FARC members who have been responsible for crimes against humanity cannot reach congress without having served a sentence. Duque assures that he does not seek to do away with point 2 of the peace agreement , which talks about the political participation of former guerrillas in congress. If a member of the congress is ratified for a conviction for a crime of this subject, he should leave his seat and be replaced by someone from the same group who does not have any crime against humanity.

Although in the event of winning the elections, Gustavo Petro will not propose special modifications to the agreements, whoever the next president is, he will face serious challenges in relation to the peace process.

Most important challenges in the next presidential mandate

The presence of FARC dissidents in border areas of the country is one of the challenges facing the next president; not only for security reasons, but also because of their links to drug production, which has increased by 52%. The government is aware that around 10% of the FARC's fighting force has remained in the armed struggle, which represents an Issue of at least 700 individuals, although other entities even double that figure. This dissidence operates in fifteen different groups, which have been concentrated in areas of the country such as Nariño, Norte de Santander and Cauca. In addition, another armed group, the ELN (National Liberation Army), has begun to increase its presence in certain border areas, such as Norte de Santander. This not only poses a threat to Colombian security but may also trigger a war between guerrilla and organized crime groups for control of the illegal coca production and drug trafficking business.

Faced with the continued presence of armed groups in part of the Colombian territory, both candidates defend the increase of military troops in conflict zones. However, regarding the eradication of illegal crops, Iván Duque advocates the use of glyphosate, a strong herbicide whose employment is rejected by Gustavo Petro on the grounds of its environmental effects. The use of this chemical, somewhat controversial in Colombia, could be assumed as an effective way to end illicit crops if its contamination is counteracted, for example, by planting new trees in the areas where coca production is eradicated. In any case, some environmentalists have used the negative image of glyphosate to ask for Petro's vote in the second round of elections.

Another major challenge that the next president will face is the topic the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. The JEP is a body in charge of judging the former guerrillas. It has judicial powers and "represents the backbone of the signed agreements". It is composed of five bodies, each one in charge of the fulfillment of essential parts of the agreement: "the conference room of Truth and Responsibility Acknowledgment, the conference room of Amnesty and Pardon, the conference room of Definition of Legal Situations, the Unit of research and Accusation, and the Tribunal for Peace". The JEP is a complex body on which the progress of the peace process depends. In fact, one of the reasons for the great delays in the implementation of the agreement has been the slowness in the constitution of this institution, which did not begin to function until last January. However, the obstacles suffered by the JEP have not only had to do with lack of activity, but also with issues such as the case of Jesús Santrich.

Santrich, one of the guerrilla leaders who was a negotiator in Havana for the FARC and received one of the posts assigned to the new congress party, was arrested in April, accused of participating in a plan to bring 10 tons of cocaine to the United States. Based on an research by the DEA, the US anti-narcotics agency, US judicial authorities requested his arrest and are now awaiting his extradition. However, taking into account that all FARC members must be tried by the JEP, and that this body does not provide for extradition, Jesús Santrich could not be handed over to the United States. In addition, there is currently no evidence as to when the alleged drug trafficking crimes were committed, so for now it has not been possible to determine whether they occurred before or after the creation of the JEP. The former guerrilla is being held in a Bogotá prison and the FARC is insisting that he be released. The next president will have to determine how to proceed with the case. This is also a sample that there are loopholes in the agreement, which generates a lot of uncertainty and leaves room for the next president to take various courses of action.

Beyond peace

On June 17, in the presidential runoff between Iván Duque and Gustavo Petro, the future of Colombia will be decided. Although many Colombians believe that it is a choice between war or peace, this is wrong. As has been discussed before, the peace agreement is very difficult to roll back legally. The substance of the agreement must be respected by the next three governments. Although it is true that with the candidate of the Democratic Center in power the agreement may suffer more modifications than those that would be applied by the candidate of the Progressive Movement, the possibility of consolidating peace remains open with either of the two. Beyond peace, the economic and social model of Colombian society is also at stake. Even if peace is one of the most important issues, the next president should not leave behind other relevant elements such as corruption, security, trade and Economics in the 2018-2022 presidential term of the Republic of Colombia. The candidates' position on these issues should also influence voters.

▲ISIS Toyota convoy in Syria [ISIS video footage].

ANALYSIS / Ignacio Yárnoz

When you go to a Toyota distributor to buy a Toyota Land Cruiser or a Toyota Hilux, what they proudly tell you is how resistant, fast and reliable the truck is. However, what they do not tell you is how involved in wars and conflicts the truck has been due to the very same characteristics. We have seen in recent newscasts that in many of today's conflicts, there's a Toyota truck; no matter how remote the country is. This is because, if the AK47 is the favourite weapon for militias in developing countries, the Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser are the militia's trucks of choice.

This is no surprise when one considers that the Toyota Land Cruiser was initially designed to be a military car inspired by the famous Jeep Willis at the time Japan was occupied by the US after Japan's defeat in World War II. However, its popularity among terrorist groups, militias, as well as developing countries' national armies only gained ground in the 80's when a conflict between Chad and Libya proved the trucks' effectiveness as war machines; simultaneously calling into question the efficacy of traditional war strategies and military logistics.

This little-known story is about how an army comprising 400 Toyota pickups of the Chadian army outmanoeuvred and overwhelmed a vastly superior force equipped with soviet-era tanks and aircrafts of the Libyan army. The historical event demonstrated how a civilian truck was able to shape international borders, tipping the balance in favor of the inferior party to the conflict.

The Toyota War

The Toyota War is the name given to the last phase of the Chad-Libyan War that raged on for almost a decade, yet did not have relevance until its last phase. This last phase began in 1986 and ended a year later with a heavy defeat inflicted on the Libyan army by the Chadians. In total, 7,500 men were killed and 1.5 billion dollars worth of military equipment was destroyed or captured. Conversely, Chad only lost 1,000 men and very little military equipment (because they hardly had any).

The last phase of the conflict developed in the disputed area of the North of Chad, an area that had been occupied by Libyan forces in 1986 due to its natural resources such as uranium (highly interesting for Gadhafi and his nuclear armament project). At the beginning of 1987, the last year of the war, the Libyan expeditionary force comprised 8,000 soldiers, 300 T-55 battle tanks, multiple rocket launchers and regular artillery, as well as Mi-24 helicopters and sixty combat aircrafts. However, the Libyan soldiers were demotivated and disorganized. The Chadians, on the other hand, had nothing but 10,000 brave and motivated soldiers with neither air support nor armoured tanks. However, by 1987, Chad could count on the French Air Force to keep Libyan aircraft grounded but, perhaps more importantly, a 400 Toyota pickups fleet equipped with MILAN (Missile d'infanterie léger antichar) anti-tank guided missiles sent by the French Government. Additionally, it could also be equipped with .50 caliber machine guns, with archaic flak cannons for anti-air purposes or even rocket clusters to be used as WWII-style artillery.

This logistical combination proved to be superior to that employed by the Libyan army as Toyota pickup trucks could easily outmaneuver the heavily armed Russian tanks. Whereas the latter consumed around 200 L/100 km, the Toyota trucks consumed a fraction, at 10L/100 km. In addition, Toyota Trucks could mobilize groups of 20 people in a single truck, enabling faster transport and deployment of troops to the conflict scene; an advantage the Russian tanks did not have.

Reminiscent of the Maginot line when the Nazi army challenged the old trenches system utilizing a fixed artillery method with the innovative Thunder war strategy, the Chad Army emerged victorious over the Libyans through a simple strategic innovation in military logistics. Something clearly demonstrated in the Battle of Fada. In this instance, a Libyan armoured brigade defending Fada was almost annihilated: 784 Libyans and CDR (Democratic Revolutionary Council) militiamen died, 92 T-55 tanks and 33 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed, and 13 T-55s and 18 BMP-1s were captured, together with the 81 Libyan soldiers operating them. Chadian losses, on the other hand, were minimal: only 18 soldiers died and three Toyotas were destroyed.

All in all, this situation was one of the first deployments of the Toyota Hilux in a conflict zone, demonstrating the reliability of the truck and its high performance in harsh environments. A testament to the Toyota's endurance was its featuring in the famous TV show "Top Gear" where a 1980's Toyota Hilux was put to a wrecking ball, set on fire, submerged in a sea bay for 5 hours, then left on the top of a building awaiting its final demolishment, yet still rolled.

Ever since, Toyota trucks have been sighted in conflicts in Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, and Pakistan and as the New York Times has reported, the Hilux remains the pirates' 'ride of choice.' The deployment of Daesh of a fleet of hundreds of Toyotas in Mosul in 2014 was a lasting testament of the trucks' durability.

Adaptability

How could the West deal with this issue? To deploy a massive fleet of Humvees? It would be naïve to attack an enemy with their own means. This hardly appears to constitute an effective solution. Humvees are already being substituted by JLTV (Joint Light Tactical Vehicle) due to their vulnerability to IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices); something insurgents are allowed to use but western countries are not due to international treaties and ethical values (how can a mine be designed such that it can distinguish a civilian truck from a Toyota driven by insurgents?). This proves the challenge that counterinsurgency policies (COIN) entail and the need to move to a next generation as far as COIN strategies are concerned.

The Toyota example is one of many that clearly signals a need for conventional state armies to adapt their logistical capabilities to better match the challenges of non-conventional warfare and insurgencies; the primary forms of conflict in which our nations are today engaged. The first lesson is clearly that the traditional focus on high power and the availability of resources is poorly suited to respond to contemporary insurgencies and military engagement with primarily non-state entities. Rather, there is a growing need for logistical versatility, combining both attack power and high manoeuvrability. The Toyota issue is an interesting example that illustrates how groups like Daesh have been able to mobilize an easily accessible, relatively non-expensive market commodity that has proven to be effective in lending the group precisely the kind of logistical aid required to successfully wage its insurgency. This being said, there are a number of dilemmas posed to nation states engaging in COIN strategies that prevent them from being able to employ the same methodology. Clearly there is a need to constantly engage in the adaptation of COIN strategies to respond to new threats and the surprising innovation of the adversary. However, COIN campaigns have been difficult to manage, and even harder to win, since time immemorial.

Recent research in political science and economics investigates a number of difficulties security forces face during conflicts with insurgent actors (Trebbi et al., 2017). Development and military aid spending have uneven effects, and conventional military strategies, including aerial bombardment, can erode civilian support for the COIN. Although states have historically used mass killings of non-combatants to undermine logistical support for guerrilla actors, evidence from modern insurgencies indicates that these measures may have the opposite effect: in some cases, such measures may encourage recruitment and mobilization (Trebbi et al., 2017). As such, the challenge is to constantly adapt to meet the requirements of contemporary warfare, whilst simultaneously assessing and remaining cognizant of the effects that COIN measures have on the overall campaign.

Adaptation through learning and innovation occurs on a much different time-scale than evolution. Although both involve information exchange with the environment and with elements within the system, evolution occurs over long periods of time through successive generations that have been able to successfully survive to changes (Hayden, 2013). Learning is the process of modifying existing knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, or preferences, and innovation involves the incorporation of a previously unused element into the system, or the recombination of existing elements in new ways.

Airstrikes

In the previous example of the conflict between Chad and Libya, it was mentioned that the Libyan army had its air force inoperative due to the presence of French air support. Another important point to make is that Toyotas may have been effective war machines for the terrain and surrounding environment, yet would nevertheless have been vulnerable to airstrikes had the Libyan army been able to engage air power against the Chadians. Air and space are part of the future of COIN strategies, despite composing only one element of them. They are our eyes (UAV systems), our way to get away or deploy forces (Chinook helicopters for example) and also the sword that can eliminate the threat (e.g. Predator drones). However, maintaining complete dominance over the battle space does not guarantee victory.

Due to the success of the air campaign in Operation Desert Storm, airpower seemed to be the predominating weapon of choice for future warfare. Yet, recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have called that assertion into question. Airstrikes in ground operations have proven to be controversial in small wars, especially when it comes to civilian casualties and its impact on civilian morale (an element that could enhance local support to insurgents). This is why, to win popular support, the US air force had to rethink its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to win popular support (this also a result of Taliban and Pakistani propaganda and political pressure). Most recently, the US, along with France and the UK, have engaged in massive airstrikes on strategic infrastructure devoted to chemical development supposedly for a military use. Although being calibrated, proportional and targeted, those attacks have created a lot of internal discussion in the West and have divided society. As such, the future environment seems certain to further limit the kind of strikes it can make with airpower and missiles.

Consequently, technologically superior air assets nowadays face significant challenges in engaging dispersed and oftentimes unseen opponents. The Air Force must determine how modern airpower can successfully engage an irregular opponent. Air power, the "strategic panacea" of Western policymakers (Maxey, 2018), will no longer maintain the same utility that it does against rural insurgents. Although tactical Predator strikes and aerial reconnaissance may have shifted the street-to-street fighting against Daesh, such operations are severely limited within expansive megacities. The threat of civilian casualties is often too high, even for precision-guided munitions with limited blast radius. Further. buildings and layers of infrastructure often obscure a clear overhead view.

For 2030, the United Nations (UN) suggests that around 60 percent of global population will live in urban areas. There are 512 cities of at least one million inhabitants around the world, and this is expected to grow to 662 cities by 2030. Many of the megacities that will emerge will come from the developing world. That is why it is so urgent to design strategies to adapt to operating within metropolitan environments where small roads prevent large tanks to manoeuvre, where buildings give cover to heavy cannon targets and where one is more exposed to the crosshairs of insurgents taking cover in civilian infrastructure. 

As U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley remarked in 2016; "In the future, I can say with very high degrees of confidence, the American Army is probably going to be fighting in urban areas. We need to man, organize, train and equip the force for operations in urban areas, highly dense urban areas, and that's a different construct. We're not organized like that right now".

In addition to this, National armies must be able to work through host governments, providing training, equipment and on-the-ground assistance to their local partners. The mere presence of a foreign army in the area often creates a negative perception among the local population and, unfortunately, in other cases, violent opposition. However, if the army patrolling the city wears the national flag, things change. Defeating an insurgency depends upon effective state building.

REFERENCES

Engel, P. (2018). These Toyota trucks are popular with terrorists - here's why. Business Insider. [Accessed 21 Apr. 2018].

S.L.P., I. (2018). The Toyota war in Syria. Instituto de Estrategia S.L.P. [Accessed 21 Apr. 2018].

Wang, A. (2018). How did the Toyota pickup become terrorists' favorite truck?. Quartz.

Maxey, L. (2018). Preparing for the Urban Future of Counterinsurgency.

Smallwarsjournal.com (2018). Air and Space Power COIN / IW | Small Wars Journal.

Costas, J. (2018). The dark and warlike side of the Toyota Land Cruiser. Motorpasion.com.

Tomes, R. R. (2004). Relearning counterinsurgency warfare. Parameters, 34(1), 16-29.

Hayden, N. K. (2013). Innovation and Learning in Terrorist Organizations: Towards Adaptive Capacity and Resiliency. System Dynamics Society.

Ryan, A., & Dila, M. (2014). Disruptive Innovation Reframed: Insurgent Design for Systemic Transformation.

Trebbi, F., Weese, E., Wright, A. L., & Shaver, A. (2017). Insurgent Learning (No. w23475). National Bureau of Economic Research.

▲Viktor Orban, at a rally near the Romanian border in May 2017 [Károly Árvai/Hungarian government].

ANALYSIS / Elena López-Doriga

On April 8, 2018, parliamentary elections were held in Hungary for the renewal of the 199 members of the National Assembly, the only chamber of the Hungarian Parliament. The high turnout of 68.13% exceeded that of the 2010 elections, when 64.36% of the electoral roll turned out to vote, a record high not seen since 2002. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in power since 2010, secured a fourth term, the third in a row, as his party, Fidesz, and its ally, the Christian Democratic People's Party, won 134 of the 199 seats. Orban, the longest-serving European leader as head of government after Angela Merkel, has in some respects become as influential a leader as the German chancellor.

These electoral data - the high turnout and the broad support achieved by a leader not well regarded by all in Brussels - raise some questions. Why has there been so much social mobilization at the time of voting? Why is the result these elections in the spotlight of the European Union?

Historical background

Hungary is a country located in Central Europe bordering Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The second largest river in Europe, the Danube, crosses the entire country and divides the capital of Budapest into two different territories (Buda and Pest).

Hungary joined the European Union in 2004. This event was much desired by the Hungarians as they saw it as an advance in their democracy, a step forward for the development of the country and a rapprochement with the admired West. It was the desire to make a change of course in their history, since, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the country lived under two totalitarian regimes since World War II: first under the rule of the Arrow Cross Party (fascist, pro-German and anti-Semitic), during which 80,000 people were deported to Auschwitz, and later by the occupation of the Soviet Union and its post-war policies. In those times individual freedoms and freedom of speech ceased to exist, arbitrary imprisonment became commonplace, and the Hungarian secret police carried out series of purges both within and outside the Party hierarchies. Thus, Hungarian society suffered great repression from the beginning of World War II in 1945, which did not stop until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

In economic terms, the transition from communism to capitalism was very hard for vast social sectors. From a centralized Economics with highly protected sectors and heavy agricultural subsidies, a particularly severe adjustment plan was adopted by the government elected in March 1990 in the first free elections.

Accession to the European Union symbolized a turning point in Hungary's history, in a process of incorporation into the West that was previously marked by entrance NATO in 1999. Becoming part of the EU was the step towards the democracy that Hungary desired and that broad social consensus was evidenced by the majority support that the accession obtained - 83% of the votes - in the referendum of 2003.

Hungary in the European Union

Becoming a new EU member had a positive impact on Hungary's Economics , leading to a clear development and providing competitive advantages for foreign companies establishing a permanent presence in the country. But despite these appreciable advances and the enthusiasm shown by Hungary's accession to the EU, the picture has changed a lot since then, so that Euroscepticism has spread significantly among Hungarians. In recent years, a strong disagreement with the Brussels policies adopted during the 2015 refugee crisis has emerged in the domestic public opinion.

That year, Brussels decided to relocate the 120,000 refugees who had arrived in Hungary (from Syria, who were moving along the Balkan route to Germany and Austria) and Italy (mostly from North Africa). In order to distribute the refugees, quotas were established, setting the issue of refugees that each country should take in according to its size and GDP. The quota policy was challenged by the Visegradgroup countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia) and by Romania. Hungary erected a fence several hundred kilometers long on its southern border and refused to accept the reception quotas.

This attitude of closing borders and refusing to accept refugees was criticized by the leaders of the Union, who went so far as to threaten these countries with sanctions. The difficulty of reaching a consensus led to the signing in 2016 of an agreement with Turkey for this country to retain the flow of Syrian refugees. In 2017 the quotas for the distribution through the EU of the refugees who had previously arrived expired, without fill in the initially planned relocation. Although the moment of greatest political confrontation on this issue in the EU has passed, the refugee crisis has created a great divergence between the two blocks pointed out, eroding the supposed common European project .

In view of this status, Hungary's parliamentary elections on April 8, 2018 were particularly important, as the citizens of that country were going to have the opportunity to pronounce themselves on the ongoing pulse between Budapest and Brussels.

The main candidates

In the elections, the option that started with all the polls in favor was the coalition of the conservative Fidesz party and the Christian Democratic People's Party, with Viktor Orbán, 54, as candidate. Orbán first came to prominence in 1989 when, at the age of 26, he defied the communist regime and began to champion liberal principles, making him a symbol of Hungarians' aspirations to free themselves from totalitarianism and embrace Western values. However, his return to power in 2010, after a first term in office between 1998 and 2002, was marked by a shift towards a conservative tendency, characterized by greater control over Economics, the media and the judiciary. Orban claims to be an advocate of an "illiberal democracy": a system in which, although the Constitution may formally limit the powers of the Government, certain freedoms such as freedom of speech or thought are restricted in the internship . Orban often test the EU's red lines by presenting himself as a defender of a "Christian Europe" and an opponent of irregular immigration.

The party that intended to pose the main electoral challenge to Fidesz, taking away a good part of its voters, was surprisingly one located even further to the right: Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), founded in 2003 and considered one of the most powerful extreme right-wing political organizations in the European Union. For years, this party did not hide its xenophobic, anti-Roma, anti-Semitic, nationalist and radically opposed to the prevailing political system in the EU, betting on a Hungary outside it. However, from 2013 onwards he moderated his language. While Orban was adopting an increasingly radical line, the leader of Jobbik, Gábor Vona, was tempering the positions of his party to present it as a conservative option, alternative to Fidesz, capable of attracting votes from the center. Gyöngyösi, one of the party's nationalist leaders, said: "We are the party of the 21st century, while Fidesz is from the last century and represents the old. The division between left and right no longer makes sense, it is part of the past, of the old politics".

On the other side of the political spectrum, a list formed by the Socialist Party(MSZP) and the center-left ecologist party Parbeszed ("Dialogue"), headed by a leader of the latter, Gargely Karacsony, was running for the elections. The left-wing candidate had broad support from the MSZP, but not from his former colleagues in the environmentalist LMP party, from which he split five years ago, which could lead to a split vote.

The election campaign

During the campaign, there was speculation that Fidesz might lose votes due to a series of corruption scandals involving government officials accused of embezzling European aid money. Jobbik and other civil service examination groups took advantage of this status to promote themselves as anti-corruption parties, focusing much of their campaign on this issue and advocating an improvement in public services, especially healthcare. 

However, the most prominent topic of the election campaign was not corruption, the malfunctioning of the public health system or low wages, but immigration. The Orbán government had refused to accept the refugee quotas imposed by the EU from Brussels, arguing that taking in immigrants is a matter of domestic policy in which foreign organizations should not intervene. He insisted that Hungary has the right to refuse to receive immigrants, especially if they are Muslims, reiterating his rejection of multiculturalism, which he considers a mere illusion. Orbán was of the opinion that the refugees arriving at Hungary's gates were not fighting for their lives, but were economic migrants in search of a better life. Therefore, Orbán's political campaign was a clear message: Illegal immigrants in Hungary: yes or no? Who should decide about Hungary's future, the Hungarians or Brussels?

Reducing the electoral call to one question had the main effect of a broad social mobilization. According to the civil service examination, Orbán used the migration topic to draw popular attention away from widespread corruption.

Another core topic in Fidesz's political campaign was the constant accusations against George Soros, whom Orbán identified as the main enemy of the State. Soros is an American billionaire of Hungarian-Jewish origin who, through his Open Society Foundation (OSF), finances various NGOs dedicated to promote liberal, progressive and multicultural values in different parts of the world. In 1989 Soros funded Viktor Orban to study in England, and in 2010 he donated $1 million to his government to help with environmental cleanup after a chemical accident. But Soros' reputation in Hungary took a hit during the 2015 migration crisis. His advocacy of humane attention to refugees ran up against Orban's attitude. During the campaign, he accused Soros of using OSF to "flood" Europe with a million migrants a year and undermine the continent's "Christian culture."

In addition, prior to the elections, Fidesz approved an amendment to the Hungarian Higher Education Act, which establishes new conditions for foreign universities in Hungary, something that has been seen as a direct attack on the Central European University of Budapest. The Soros-funded institution is highly regarded for promoting critical thinking, liberal values and academic freedom. The new legislation threatens university autonomy, the free hiring of professors and the international character of degrees.

The European Commission showed its differences with the Orbán government on several of the issues that occupied the electoral campaign. Thus, it expressed its dissatisfaction with the new university law, considering that it is not compatible with the fundamental freedoms of the EU internal market, as it "would violate the freedom to provide services and the freedom of establishment". He also criticized that Orbán had not complied with the refugee quota, despite the ruling of the Court of Justice, and that he had campaigned using the disagreement he has with the EU for electoral purposes.

The result the elections

In the April 8, 2018 elections, the Fidesz party (in its alliance with the Christian Democratic People's Party) won a third consecutive wide victory, even bigger than the previous one, with almost half of the popular vote (48.89%) and its third two-thirds absolute majority (134 out of 199 seats). It was the first time since the fall of communism in 1989 that a party had won three elections in a row.

The Jobbik party managed to become the leading party in the civil service examination, coming in second place with 19.33% of the vote and 25 seats. However, its vote growth was minimal and it gained only two extra seats, remaining virtually stagnant at 2014 figures. Jobbik's second place was rather propitiated by the weakness of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), whose debacle pushed it into third place, with 12.25% of the vote and 20 seats. It was the first time since 1990 that the MSZP did not come in first or second place, putting an end to the bipartisanship it had maintained with Fidesz since 1998.

On the other hand, since his return to government in 2010, Fidesz has significantly modified the electoral system, reducing the issue of legislators from 386 to 199 and eliminating the second round, which does not favor smaller parties, which could form alliances between rounds of voting. By securing two thirds of the chamber, Fidesz will be able to continue governing comfortably and reforming the Constitution to suit itself.

EU reaction

A week after the elections, tens of thousands of opponents took to the streets of Budapest, disagreeing with an electoral system described as "unfair", which has given Prime Minister Viktor Orban a landslide victory at the polls after a campaign based on the refusal to accept refugees.

The congratulatory letter addressed to Orban by the president of the European committee , Donald Tusk, was considered by various media to be cooler than the one issued on other similar occasions. The EU is concerned that Orban continues with his defense of an "illiberal" democracy and that he seems to be leading the country towards authoritarian tendencies. The government's purchase of many media outlets in recent years, in order to isolate the civil service examination further propaganda, resembles what has happened in countries such as Russia and Turkey.

It is true that with Orban at the head of the government Hungary has grown economically at a good pace and that the middle classes have improved their status, but his latest victory has been due not only to good economic management , but also to the defense of values that the Hungarian people consider important (essentialism, Christianity, respect for borders).

European socialists have not been pleased with Orban's new victory, insinuating that it is a setback for democracy in Hungary. The joy that the populist parties have expressed over his victory is test that Orban, whose training Fidesz still belongs to the European People's Party, has become an exponent of modern ultra-nationalism, which threatens democratic ideas of the European Union.

For the moment, Brussels is being cautious with Hungary, even more so than with the British Brexit, since Viktor Orban, seen by many as "the EU rebel", unlike the UK, wants to remain within the bloc, but change part of the ideals he stands for.

▲Street art in the city of Medellín

ANALYSIS / María Gabriela Fajardo

Colombia experienced on March 11 the first elections held after the signature in 2016 of the Peace agreement between the government and the guerrilla of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). These elections to the country's bicameral congress - members of the Senate and the House of Representatives were elected - were the first occasion in which the different ideological sectors could measure their forces without the distortion of an armed struggle in significant parts of the territory. Traditionally, social rejection of the guerrilla campaign has been alluded to as an explanation for why the left in Colombia has usually enjoyed little popular support. Has the arrival of peace changed the correlation of political forces and has it led to an improvement in the electoral results of the left?

To answer these questions, we will examine the results obtained by the different political options, grouped into sections of the ideological spectrum (right, center-right, center-left and left), in the congress elections held since the beginning of this century. An examination of the political composition of congress over the last decade and average will give perspective to the results of the March 11 legislative elections. These elections meant the integration of the FARC into the Colombian political party system, under a different name - Fuerza Alternativa Revolucionaria del Común - but with the same acronym.

In the 2002-2018 period, in addition to the five congress elections, there were also five presidential elections. The latter are mentioned in the analysis because they help to clarify the contexts, but are not included in the comparative work , given that the presidential elections are governed by more personalistic dynamics and complex vote transfers take place due to the two-round process. The March 11 elections, however, provide considerations for the presidential elections of May 27.

Senate

The Parapolitics scandal distorted the reception of the 2002 legislative election results, after paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso claimed that 35% of the elected congress was a "friend" of his organization. The right wing, represented by the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, won 41.1% of the Senate seats. This figure does not include the seats won by other minor political groups, among them Colombia Siempre, whose list was headed by the current presidential candidate Germán Vargas Lleras. The left, on the other hand, was quite fractioned, in groups such as Vía Alterna and Movimiento Popular Unido, and obtained 14% of the Senate seats. The center-left won 12.9% and the center-right 7%.

In the 2002 presidential elections, held a few months after the legislative elections, Álvaro Uribe became head of state, with the vote of 53.1% of the voters. Uribe ran as an independent candidate , after splitting from the Liberal Party, and had the support of much of the right and center-right, including Cambio Radical, Somos Colombia and the Conservative Party, which then did not participate in the presidential race.

Thus, in the 2006 legislative elections, a new party, the Social Party of National Unity (better known as the U Party), created by Álvaro Uribe, played a major role. The Partido de la U won the elections, obtaining 20% of the seats: for the first time neither of the two traditional parties (Liberal and Conservative) had won. The new party was here to stay, so that the right wing was now represented by three parties (de la U, Liberal and Conservative), with 61% of the senators. The left, although it increased to 19% of the Senate seats, was split into several political parties without weight and without the possibility of proposing drastic legislative changes. The center-right, represented by Cambio Radical, was in fourth place, with 15% of seats, while the center-left obtained none.

In 2010 the right wing reached its highest point, with 66.7% of the Senate seats, a figure that includes the three right-wing parties mentioned above and MIRA, a group with a smaller presence. These were moments of political dominance of Uribismo. In the electoral months of 2010, President Uribe was expressing his support for Juan Manuel Santos as presidential candidate . It was thought that he would continue Uribe's policies of confronting the guerrillas and organizing the security forces. However, after coming to power, Santos surprised by disassociating himself from Uribe and opening negotiations with the FARC in 2012, which led to the rupture of the relationship between the two politicians (El periodico, 2017). The strength demonstrated by the right in the 2010 legislative elections was accompanied by a great weakness of the left, which obtained only 7.7% of the Senate seats and would become the perfect ally of President Santos to carry out his diary and his journey towards the political center. The center-left had a representation of 13.3%, thanks to the push of the new Alianza Verde party, and the center-right remained at 7.9%.

The 2014 legislative elections meant the consolidation of a new right-wing party, the Democratic Center, created by Uribe after his separation from the U Party, which had been left in the hands of Santos, who that year would win reelection as Colombian president. The Democratic Center came in second place in the Senate elections, with only one senator less than the U Party (Sanchez, 2018). In 2014, the right wing came to control 48.1% of the Senate, in agreement with the ideological realignment of the party system. Thus, several experts came to classify the Partido de la U as center-right, a label that they also began to grant to the Partido Liberal, in a political space shared with Cambio Radical; these three parties formed the "Unidad Nacional" (Castillo, 2018). With this, the center-right totaled 19.6% of the seats, while the center-left obtained 9.8%, due to the votes achieved by the Green Party and the Progressives, the latter led by Gustavo Petro, current presidential candidate . The left only reached 4.9%, represented by the minorities of the Polo Democrático, the Unión Patriótica, Marcha Patriótica and the groups that came from the demobilized guerrillas.

In the legislative elections of March 11, there was a reinforcement of right-wing positions, with the return of some parties which in previous elections had slid towards the center-right by defending the negotiation with the FARC and which now wanted to counteract the fear of part of the population of a rise of the radical left, in a very polarized electoral process. Thus, the right rose to 55.2% of the senators, led by those of the Democratic Center, while the center-right fell to 15.9%. The moderate and radical left increased their presence: the center-left rose to 11.5% and the left to 9%. This last percentage does not include the five seats guaranteed to the FARC, which despite not winning any senator electorally, will have those five seats guaranteed by the Peace Accords.

House of Representatives

The results in the 2002-2018 period of the elections for the House of Representatives, held simultaneously with those for the Senate, do not differ much from what was discussed in the previous epigraph; however, they present some variations that should be considered.

The institution was quite affected by parapolitics scandals, a factor that influenced the political polarization of the country, which would be reflected in the elections throughout this period. In 2002, the right won 47% of the seats in the House, with the Liberal Party having the largest representation; the left won 27.1%. From then on, the center-right, which in 2002 obtained 4.2% of the representatives (the center-left took 1.8%) began to take on a certain configuration, as the contours of the two traditional parties -Conservative and Liberal- blurred with the division into factions, from which new parties would emerge; this ended the bipartisanship experienced in Colombia throughout the 20th century: the Conservative governed for 48 years and the Liberal for 13.

The emergence of the Partido de la U, led by Álvaro Uribe and the wide acceptance of his political figure (Uribe became president in 2002 and was reelected in 2006), led for the first time a party other than the two traditional ones to come in second place in the 2006 legislative elections, in which the Partido de la U won 16.7% of the seats in the Chamber, raising the representation of the right to 54.2%. For its part, the left dropped its representation to 16.7% and entered a period of special political weakness (these elections were not good for the center-left either, which did not obtain representation). At a time of President Uribe's successes against the guerrillas, with measures supported by a large part of the population, although not without controversy, the left-wing parties were weighed down by sharing certain ideological assumptions with the guerrillas, as political scientist Andrés Dávila of the Universidad de los Andrés Dávila of the Universidad de los Andres points out.

This dynamic led to an even greater increase of the right wing and a new decline of the left wing in the House of Representatives in 2010, in parallel with what happened in the Senate, in a year in which the candidate promoted by Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos, would also win the presidency. The Partido de la U was ahead of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party in the House of Representatives, with these three right-wing parties accounting for 74.6% of the seats, the highest percentage of the entire period studied; the center-right party reached 9.7%. For its part, the left, whose largest party was the Polo Democrático, reached only 4%, its worst share in the period, minimally compensated by the maximum representation of the center-right, although this was a modest 8.5%.

The 2014 elections brought with them the presence of a new party headed by Uribe, the Democratic Center, which positioned itself to the right of the previous ones by positioning itself forcefully against the continuation of the peace dialogues with the FARC propitiated by President Santos (El periodico, 2017). The rupture between Santos and Uribe caused their electorate to split, so that in the elections to the House of Representatives the Liberal Party won, followed by the U Party, the Conservative Party and the Democratic Center. Taking into account the shift towards more moderate positions of some of these formations, when grouping them together we have that the right-wing advocates dropped to 46.7% of the seats in the House, while the center-right rose to 11.1%. The left, with the Polo Democrático, improved its representation somewhat to 10%, and the center-left languished at 3.3%.

Four years later, last March 11, the Liberal Party won again the elections to the House of Representatives, followed by the Democratic Center, the Radical Change, the U Party and the Conservative Party. Some of these formations returned during the electoral campaign to clear right-wing positions that they had previously moderated, so that the right wing added 61.1% of the seats (Sánchez, 2018), compared to 6% for the left. For its part, the center-right scored 9.1% and the center-left 6.1%. To these figures must be added the five seats in the House granted by the Peace agreement to the FARC, which also failed to win any by citizen vote, as in the Senate. With this enlargement, the Colombian bicameral congress goes from 268 to 280 members (the ten members of the FARC party and two that will correspond to the presidential ticket that comes second in the presidential elections).

The division of the left

The analysis carried out allows us to affirm that right-wing political approaches have remained in the majority in Colombia so far this century, as in previous decades, although no longer in the hegemonic framework of two major parties, but of a wider range of partisan options. In a period in which in many other Latin American countries there were turns to the left -notably, the Bolivarian revolutions- Colombia was a clear exception. In this time, the right in Colombia (not including the center-right) has controlled between 43.3% (2002) and 66.7% (2010) of the Senate seats and between 46.7% (2014) and 74.6% (2010) of those in the House of Representatives. In contrast, the left (not including the equally reduced center-left) has remained a minority: it has moved between 4.9% (2014) and 19% (2006) of the Senate, and between 4% (2010) and 27.1% (2002) of the House.

The 2016 Peace agreement and the integration of the FARC into political life have not so far led to a significant electoral boom for the left. In the legislative elections of March 11, 2018, the right actually recovered positions compared to 2014 in the two institutions of the Contreso, while the left, although it certainly improved its presence in the Senate, but far from the levels of 2002 and 2006, instead lost space in the Chamber.

The fear of broad sectors of the population that the political benefits granted to the FARC, such as guaranteed access to media or campaign financing, would contribute to an electoral advance of the ex-guerrillas did not materialize in these elections. The results of the October 2016 plebiscite, in which the Peace agreement was rejected (it came into force in 2017 after some changes, without a new plebiscite), were again reflected in the last legislative elections: Colombians oppose the participation of former members of the belligerent group in politics. FARC candidates obtained only 0.28% of the votes. Moreover, this party announced days before the legislative elections that it will not run in the presidential elections, for which the maximum leader of the group, Rodrigo Londoño, was running as candidate .

Is Colombia a conservative country? Why has the left in Colombia been so weak electorally? These recurring questions about Colombian politics are not easy to answer. "The left is a sector that has traditionally been very much divided among doctrinal tendencies, for strategic reasons and even by personalities", explains Yeann Basset, director of the Observatory of Electoral Processes of the Universidad del Rosario.

It is worth highlighting what Fabio López, author of the book "Izquierdas y cultura política", said in response to the question of whether there is a left in Colombia:

"One thing is that we come from a defeat, internationally thought, of the left, an enormous setback of the workers' movement, a discrediting of socialist ideas, and another thing is the disappearance of the causes, of the structural reasons that motivate at international and national level some leftist ideas, some roots and some justifications, to appeal to the rescue or better restructuring, a new beginning of some leftist approaches in Colombia".

One of the reasons usually given to explain the difficulty of the left in gaining greater support is the negative weight of the guerrilla subversion. In Colombia, after the constant conflicts, massacres and the pain that the armed conflict has left on Colombians, the leftist parties have not achieved the support of society as in neighboring countries since there is a direct association of the leftist party with the guerrillas and what comes with them. The arrival of political leaders such as Uribe to the presidency intensified this association and increased the taboo of supporting a leftist party that is present today in a large part of the citizens. At the same time, the left has not done much to repair this bad image; the great internal fragmentation and differences among political leaders have not helped the training a solid left with the capacity to increase its representation in congress.

Opportunity for the presidential election?

The presidential elections on May 27 are an opportunity for the left to improve its electoral results, which in any case could advance in the future to the extent that peace is consolidated and the past of violence can be forgotten.

The political polarization, which on other occasions has harmed the left, this time is assuming a certain unity of this ideological sector around the candidacy of Gustavo Petro, former mayor of Bogota. The celebration on March 11 of primaries on the right, won by the pro-Uribe Iván Duque, and on the left, won by Petro (Sánchez, 2018), have accentuated the polarization for the presidential elections, increasing citizen mobilization (in the legislative elections there were five more points of participation) and attracting media attention to both candidates. Polarization, at the same time, has reduced support to possible centrist alternatives, as divided as the left was before, so that it cannot be ruled out that Petro may go to a second round, on June 17. A victory against the odds for Petro, for which he should attract the bulk of the moderate electorate, would not mean a radical change in legislative policies, since the congress revalidated last March 11 the dominance of the right.