Young Diplomats

Analysis

Though many mysteries still surround the recent crash of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula, some explanations of what happened are more likely to be true than others. On Oct. 31, Metrojet Flight 9268 broke into pieces shortly after reaching a cruising altitude of 9,500 meters (31,000 feet), killing all 224 passengers and crew members onboard. Stratfor, along with the rest of the world, is waiting for additional details to emerge from the aircraft’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

Though we cannot fully rule out the possibility of a catastrophic structural failure, such an explanation would be unusual given the circumstances of the crash. Most aircraft accidents that involve a structural failure occur amid the physical stress of takeoff and landing; it is uncommon for aircraft to break apart at cruising altitude.

01 Nov 2015, Egypt — EGYPT. NOVEMBER 1, 2015. Wreckage at the site where a Russian aircraft crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula near El Arish city. Kogalymavia Airbus A321 came down in central Sinai as it traveled from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, killing all 217 passengers and 7 crew members on board. Maxim Grigoryev/TASS — Image by © Maxim Grigoryev/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

It is also unlikely that jihadists in Sinai shot down the aircraft with a man-portable air defense system, or MANPAD. Although militants in the area have managed to use a MANPAD to shoot down an Egyptian helicopter and have fired missiles at Israeli aircraft, Flight 9268 would have been well out of range of these weapons. In addition, according to an initial review of the flight data recorder, the aircraft was not struck by an object from outside the plane.

Finally, the crash probably was not caused by an electrical failure. Under such circumstances, the aircraft’s pilots likely would have been able to maneuver the plane so that it glided to the ground without any sort of catastrophic consequences.

The More Likely Explanation

Given the unlikelihood of the alternative scenarios, it seems that the most probable explanation for the downed plane is the existence of an explosive device onboard.

Jihadists have long fixated on the idea of attacking passenger aircraft with bombs. Aircraft make attractive targets not only because they are fragile, which makes it possible to cause damage with a relatively small amount of explosives, but also because previous attacks against them have generated a massive amount of media attention that has magnified the amount of terror felt among the population. Chechen suicide bombers have taken down Russian aircraft before, and al Qaeda has nearly managed to do the same in several instances, such as the 2001 shoe bombing plot, the 2006 liquid bombing plot and the 2009 underwear bombing plot.

Jihadists have also used a number of fairly sophisticated explosive devices in Egypt in recent months, so the creation and deployment of a small but effective improvised explosive device would fall within the capabilities of the al Qaeda or Islamic State groups active in the country. Flight 9268 took off from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport, whose state of security is known to be particularly poor. The airport’s security agents frequently offer to accept bribes in exchange for allowing passengers to bypass security screening checkpoints, and its cargo security screenings are not nearly as stringent as those conducted in the United States or Europe. While certain airlines, especially European and Israeli carriers, often require additional security checks because of heightened threats to civilian aviation, Russian carriers typically do not follow suit by requesting additional screening procedures.

Combined with the fact that it is quite easy to smuggle explosives onto an aircraft, the airport’s lax security increases the likelihood that an explosive device detonated onboard Flight 9268. The device could have been carried by a person on the flight or loaded into the cargo hold. Stratfor will be watching carefully for any claims of responsibility that might shed more light on the perpetrators and their motives, but so far no credible claims have been made. (The Islamic State’s Wilayat Sinai released a statement asserting its responsibility for the attack, and several Islamic State supporters released a bogus video on social media, but no credible evidence to support the group’s claim has emerged.)

The reality of airline security is that with enough persistence and innovation, an attacker will inevitably get a device through any security system. And the next device might function better than the shoe and underwear bombs — two attempts in which disaster was only narrowly averted. If a bomb did indeed bring down Flight 9268, the public must maintain a realistic expectation of aviation security efforts and fight the understandable impulse to ascribe superhuman abilities to the attackers or make unrealistic demands of passenger screeners. The costs of such demands are enormous, and they will never be able to fully guarantee passengers’ security. The world is a dangerous place; there will always be people who wish to do terrible things to other human beings, and occasionally, they will succeed.

Update: According to CNN, no explosive residue has been located on the wreckage so far. The new information, if true, increases the probability that the aircraft suffered a catastrophic structural failure. However, the existence of explosive residue on other pieces of the scattered wreckage has not yet been ruled out. 

Analysis

The balance of economic power in Mozambique has undergone a major change, rekindling dissatisfaction with the country’s entrenched ruling elite. The change means the East African country’s longtime ruling party will have to make political and economic concessions to central and northern Mozambique, areas where it has traditionally neglected to foster development. As part of the lengthy process, there will continue to be occasional violence between the ruling party, the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo), and the main opposition, headed by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo). The conflict will be of the sort that has been ongoing — and intensifying in the past three months — since the disputed presidential election held Oct. 15, 2014.

Frelimo has governed Mozambique since independence in 1975. It fought a bloody civil war against the South African- and Western-backed Renamo until the 1992 Rome General Peace Accords. For most of the 1990s and 2000s, Frelimo focused on promoting economic development around the capital, Maputo, in far southern Mozambique. That region has long benefited from its proximity to South Africa’s relatively well-developed economy. Meanwhile, much of the central and northern parts of the country — the historical stronghold of Renamo and other opposition groups — was overlooked, both by Maputo and by the international community, which lost interest in Renamo after the end of the Cold War. Since the mid-2000s, however, international interest has grown in the traditionally poor region thanks to its natural gas and coal resources and suitability as a transport node for infrastructure linked to inland African countries.

Natural Gas, Ports and Coal

The most significant of Mozambique’s potential new economic resources is its natural gas. Mozambique’s massive offshore natural gas reserves primarily lie in areas known as exploration blocks Area 1 and Area 4. Controlled by Anadarko and Eni, respectively, they could attract at least $31 billion in investment over the next five years.

Discoveries in Area 1 alone have totaled 2.1 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas. Standard Bank noted that a full development of Anadarko’s Area 1 resources would add $28 billion to Mozambique’s gross domestic product over the next two decades and that additional domestic natural gas sales from Area 1 could add another $11 billion, to say nothing of Eni’s Mozambican natural gas deposits or potential discoveries elsewhere in what has become one of the world’s most successful new deep-water natural gas plays. To put this into perspective, Mozambique’s GDP in 2014 stood at around $14 billion.

Mozambique’s natural gas could turn the country’s economy into one based on hydrocarbons, with an economic profile similar to that of Angola. Exactly when that could happen, however, is unclear. Global natural gas and liquefied natural gas prices are currently quite low. Moreover, a host of new supplies will go online in the next five years from the United States and Australia, potentially continuing the price decline in LNG markets. While Anadarko has signed deals with purchasers for two-thirds of its initial LNG export capacity, those agreements are not binding.

Like most market players, Anadarko has struggled to convert nonbinding agreements into long-term purchasing commitments needed to underwrite the development of its LNG project on its proposed timeline, which calls for first production in 2020. This means that Mozambique may need to wait until the market recovers before Anadarko, Eni and others can commit to financing and developing its natural gas deposits. The wait could delay Mozambique’s natural gas development deeper into the 2020s and perhaps postpone the full development of its fields for even longer. Delays aside, the development of Mozambique’s natural gas resources will eventually happen, though it will require Frelimo to pay more attention to the areas with natural gas.

And although Mozambique’s natural gas resources have the largest economic potential in the long run, other sectors have garnered significant interest over the past five years, too. Like most coastal southern African countries, Mozambique has sought to position itself as a logistical hub for interior nations. It has potential port development opportunities at Maputo, Beira and Nacala. The latter two are ideally situated as bases for routes into Zimbabwe and Malawi, respectively. Mozambique’s potentially giant government take from natural gas sales means it should be able to help finance infrastructure projects on its own, unlike its competitors.

Mozambican coal has proved less promising than natural gas and transport infrastructure. There has been a flurry of interest in Mozambique’s inland coal resources in the past decade. Rio Tinto, Vale and others have looked at Mozambique as a long-term coal development option, but low coal prices and high operating and development costs in Mozambique have so far largely held up any projects. In fact, Rio Tinto sold its Mozambican coal assets in October 2014 for $50 million, assets for which just three years earlier it had paid $3.7 billion. Interest in coal deposits did, however, lead to investment in rehabilitating Beira’s railway and the coal terminal at its port. Beira is one of the regions where Renamo enjoys the strongest support, and even though the coal projects turned out not to be economical, the newfound economic interest in the region has emboldened Renamo.

Ruling Party Faces Transition, Opposition Gets Bolder

At the same time that the northern half of the country’s economic prospects have brightened, Renamo’s recognition of the legitimacy of Mozambique’s elections has waned. This trend intensified after incumbent President Armando Guebuza won 75 percent of the vote in 2009. Frelimo began undergoing an internal transition after Guebuza won a second and final five-year term in 2009. From independence in 1975 until 2014, Mozambique had just three presidents. All earned their party bona fides during the war of liberation from the Portuguese. Advancing age has forced this cadre to yield to a new generation, embodied by the current president, Filipe Nyusi.

The renewed economic activity outside of the Maputo region and Frelimo’s looming internal transition both contributed to Renamo’s abrogation of the 1992 peace agreement in October 2013. This marked a return to sporadic violence in the country’s middle region between October 2013 and a second peace deal in September 2014. In the second deal, Frelimo offered Renamo’s forces the chance to integrate into existing military structures, widespread amnesty for Renamo’s fighters and the chance for a greater devolution of financial resources beyond Frelimo’s inner circle.

But the 2014 peace deal did not last. After Nyusi won the presidency, Renamo and its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, quickly rejected the electoral results. In December 2014, they threatened to set up parallel governments in the northern and central provinces where they had won elections and to set up a secessionist Republic of Central and Northern Mozambique if their demands to annul the election were not met.

In February 2015, Nyusi eventually induced Dhlakama to come to the negotiating table. He also allowed Renamo to table a bill in parliament that would grant greater autonomy to the provinces it controlled. In May, however, parliament rejected the autonomy proposal on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.

Since then, Dhlakama and Renamo have tried to act on their promise to set up a parallel government, establishing a military headquarters and barracks. Violence approached levels not seen since the 1992 peace deal. Tensions reached a new high in September, when Dhlakama announced that Renamo would soon set up its own police and military. On Sept. 13, government troops attacked a convoy carrying Dhlakama in what Renamo called an assassination attempt. A month later, Maputo seized Dhlakama and placed him under house arrest; he has not appeared publicly since then.

Compromise Ahead

Given the north and center’s economic empowerment and its own internal changes, Frelimo will have to strike some sort of political and economic compromise with the leaders from outside of Maputo if it wants to unlock the long-neglected region’s rich economic potential, especially since Renamo could stymie economic development in the north if it desired.

Frelimo can therefore be expected to placate northern and central stakeholders by distributing economic patronage. Though this could be done by allowing opposition parties a greater say in the national government, it could also be accomplished through the distribution of social spending through Frelimo’s local-level party apparatus. The latter is more likely than a broad deal with Renamo involving greater autonomy for the north and center or Frelimo relinquishing dominance at the national level.

But Frelimo will have only so much in the way of funds to distribute until natural gas deposits are developed, something that will take at least five years. Before then, the government itself will remain too cash-strapped to pay off Renamo to stop its low-level insurgency.

Since Renamo itself faces major financial limitations, its activities will remain too minor to scare off all development, much less to eject Frelimo from the region. Despite its claims, Renamo cannot directly threaten the Mozambican government, though it can carry out insurgent-style attacks on convoys, army barracks and physical infrastructure such as railways and highways. Its ability to threaten what will become Maputo’s economic lifeline — offshore natural gas — is extremely limited. And once these resources come online, their vast size will give whoever is in power in Maputo the ability to cement itself politically for an extended period.

Forecast

• A recent agreement to resolve some historical grievances will not seriously assuage deep anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea.
• South Korea will likely ignore U.S. and Japanese calls to send ships into the South China Sea, which risk antagonizing China.

Analysis 

Several countries have been courting an increasingly active Japan to support them in asserting their maritime rights in the South China Sea against China’s expanding presence. But South Korea may be slow to follow Japan’s example. Though the waters off the southeast Chinese coast are a vital trade route for South Korea, as they are for other surrounding countries, committing military force there would risk hurting the country’s close trade relationship with China. That is a risk South Korea may not be ready to take, especially since it would mean throwing its lot in with its historical colonizer, Japan.

So far, Japan has led efforts to counter Chinese influence in the South China Sea. Its own military engagement in the region has taken the form of joint naval and coast guard exercises and the delivery of patrol ships to regional coast guards — such as that of Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia — to assist them in competing with the Chinese coast guard. Eventually Japan may even start periodically sending its own ships or planes to patrol the area as part of its drive to take a more active role in regional security.

Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe recently attempted to draw South Korea to the cause. At a meeting on Nov. 2, Abe invited his South Korean counterpart, President Park Geun Hye, to join Japan in maintaining an “open and peaceful South China Sea” — a thinly-veiled euphemism that could refer to any number of joint efforts in the contested waters, such as joint exercises, joint patrols, arms sales and technical assistance.

South Korea certainly has resources it could commit. It has a robust navy and is one of the world’s largest shipbuilders. The claimant countries around the South China Sea have been clamoring for more naval vessels and patrol craft, along with the technical expertise to operate and maintain them. South Korea is well equipped to meet that need. And as a U.S. ally, it would make sense for South Korea to participate in what the United States considers a strategic priority in the region — maintaining freedom of navigation in the waters off China’s coast.

Historical Grievances

However, in marked contrast to countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, which are eagerly signing deals for equipment from Japan, South Korea has traditionally been unenthusiastic about cooperating with Japan, even on Northeast Asian security issues. U.S. efforts to push South Korea and Japan to work together have historically yielded only modests results.

This is partly because of lingering distrust following World War II. South Koreans largely view Japan as the aggressive colonial occupier it once was, and many view cooperation with its leaders — who have yet to even acknowledge the harm Japan inflicted on South Korea, much less to offer remuneration — as something of a betrayal.

Among South Korea’s many historical grievances with Japan is the issue of “comfort women,” Imperial Japan’s wartime system of coerced prostitution into which many Korean women were forcibly enlisted. Despite an agreement between Park and Abe to reach an “early settlement” on the issue of comfort women, the flimsy diplomatic pronouncement is not likely to resolve tension over what South Koreans view as Japanese war crimes anytime soon. In addition, the two countries’ already sour relationship is being further strained by their territorial dispute over Dodko Island, situated between Korea and Japan and a focal point of Korean nationalism.

Moreover, even if officials recognize the benefits of cooperating with Japan, there are deep political costs for South Korean politicians seen as being too intimate with their former colonizer. When Abe visited South Korea on Nov. 2, there was no joint press conference, no joint statement and no state luncheon held for the prime minister — a stark contrast to the state dinner that Park held for Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who was also in South Korea at the time. South Korea’s anti-Japanese sentiment will not help Japan and other regional powers trying to solicit the country’s aid in patrolling the South China Sea.

Strategic Calculations

Apart from the domestic political costs, South Korea’s unwillingness to get involved is tied to its position as a relatively small power situated between China on one side and Japan and the United States on the other.

Though South Korea has strong strategic military ties with the United States, its economy is closely intertwined with China’s. In 2014, over a quarter of Korean exports went to China, and 17 percent of South Korean imports came from China. In addition, South Korea needs China’s help to manage disruptive actions from North Korea. And because China has placed enormous importance on limiting Japan’s role in the South China Sea, Seoul can expect serious retribution from Beijing if it opts to cooperate with Tokyo. The political and economic costs for South Korea may be unbearable — unlike for the Philippines and Vietnam, which consider parts of the South China Sea as their own territory, and for Japan, which can better weather poor relations with China.

Moreover, though South Korea has a military alliance with the United States, the costs of doing nothing to aid U.S. efforts in the South China Sea are relatively low. The United States will keep working to keep the sea lanes open for South Korea and other countries in the region, regardless whether or not South Korea takes an active military role in the South China Sea. In short, South Korea can simply depend on U.S. military power with little to no consequences.

Absent major change, South Korea is unlikely to accelerate military engagement with South China Sea claimants, least of all with Japan. And U.S. and Japanese calls for South Korean involvement are likely to fall on deaf ears. Japan, for its part, has little to offer South Korea in return for its cooperation. The very factors that make South Korea an attractive partner in the South China Sea — economic wealth, military capability, and well-developed armaments and shipbuilding industries — also make the incentives Japan offers to its other partners of little value to South Korea.

On Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping will have a 20-minute meeting with his counterpart from across the Taiwan Strait, President Ma Ying-jeou, followed by dinner in Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel. Both the Communist-ruled People’s Republic of China and Taiwan (officially known as the Republic of China) claim to be the sole rightful government of all of China. This state of affairs precluded all government-to-government contact between China and Taiwan until 2013, when the minister of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office met with the minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council in a hotel lobby on the sidelines of the 2013 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. This modest start to low-key official contacts laid the groundwork for Saturday’s meeting — the first between the heads of state on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

With both sides cognizant of the strange formalities involved in even the most minor government-to-government interaction, the meeting was tightly orchestrated to manage public perception. The sides will split the cost of the dinner and the venue to avoid the impression of an unequal relationship and will hold separate press conferences after the fact. The tight choreography extends down to terminology. Xi and Ma will refer to each other as “mister,” carefully dodging the use of the term “president” — particularly important given that neither side officially recognizes the other as a legitimate state. Artfully ambiguous terminology aside, this is a historic face-to-face meeting between two presidents in their capacity as heads of state. There had been speculation that the two might meet as heads of their political parties — not as heads of state — at some point, but Ma resigned as chairman of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party in December 2014.

Although this is a landmark meeting, its significance — as the attention to appearances suggests — lies in its symbolic value. Taiwan’s opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has already accused Ma of using the meeting to attempt to influence Taiwan’s upcoming presidential and legislative elections in January 2016. Given that the main source of Ma’s unpopularity (and, by extension, that of the KMT) in Taiwan was the impression that his drive to build tighter economic ties with the mainland was enriching wealthy businessmen and compromising national security while the economy as a whole stagnated, however, a meeting with Xi is unlikely to significantly benefit the KMT’s electoral performance in 2016.

Others have raised alarm that Ma could use the opportunity to sign secret deals with China, achieving some sort of fait accompli before his presidential term ends in January 2016. Countering these rumors, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council has promised that no secret deals would be signed during the short meeting. While it is not totally outside the realm of possibility for the government to attempt anyway, this would make little political sense on the eve of elections, when it would be most difficult to maintain secrecy. The KMT was severely punished in November 2014’s local elections following its legislative bid to pass the Cross-Strait Service Agreement through procedure, widely seen as an under-the-table attempt to bypass public opinion. Any significant deal signed at this meeting would have the potential to damage KMT prospects for multiple rounds of elections to come. For Ma, a lame-duck president with only limited ability to direct his own party, the milestone meeting is likely to deliver more personal satisfaction than political gain.

For Xi’s part, although he is meeting with Ma, he almost certainly has his eyes on the post-Ma future. Barring a major upset in Taiwanese elections — currently, KMT candidate Eric Chu lags behind the DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen 16.4 percent to 47.1 percent in polls — this will almost certainly be a world in which the DPP controls the Taiwanese presidency (and most likely Taiwan’s legislature). This potential future has been in the making since demonstrations against the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement in the first half of 2014 delineated the Taiwanese public’s tolerance of economic integration with the mainland. After these protests, the KMT suffered massive reversals  in local government elections and switched presidential candidates midway through the campaign season in 2015. At every stage of the process, the mainland found itself with few tools to influence the outcome in its favor.

The mainland now fears that the DPP, with a strong position in the Taiwanese government, would be in a position to greatly alter cross-strait relations, potentially doing away with what little alignement there is between Taiwan’s interests and the mainland’s. Although the mainland has traditionally detested dealing with the DPP, which it views as being pro-independence, it appears that Beijing is simply accepting reality. Although the mainland made a strong point to ensure that the first meeting between Chinese and Taiwanese heads of state was held with a KMT president, the door has now been opened for the mainland to meet with any Taiwanese head of state — ostensibly without regard for their party orientation. The meeting is a sign that the mainland recognizes that contacts by nongovernmental organizations and fleeting government-to-government meetings may no longer be sufficient if it wants to preserve its interests.

Several years into a Chinese economic slowdown, the Latin American economies that relied on China to buy up their key exports are feeling the pain. With less hard currency coming in, governments across the region are rapidly readjusting their spending plans and preparing to govern in an environment in which they will have fewer resources to secure their key constituents’ political loyalties.

The Role of Geography

Ever since commodity prices began dropping several years ago, much has been written about how slow economic growth and potential political instability will plague Latin America in coming years. But what will Latin America as a whole look like in a decade as a result of the Chinese economic downturn? What ideologies will dominate in a continent that over the past decade shifted toward leftist populism ? And what issues will define its relationship with the United States, the hemisphere’s undisputed hegemon?

The region’s geopolitics hold the beginning of an answer. The first step is to view Latin America’s geographic regions and countries as a series of divided islands rather than a united entity. Unlike Western Europe, where the relative absence of natural obstacles eventually gave rise to interconnected political entities, South America is bisected by the dense Amazon rainforest and divided lengthwise by the nearly insurmountable Andean mountain range. Latin American colonies were divided even before the collapse of the Spanish Empire in the Americas more than two centuries ago. After independence, this disconnected geographic landscape created dozens of economies of wildly varying sizes often more linked by trade with partners outside the region than with each other . With few unbroken expanses of arable land and high transport costs  across the forests and mountains, Latin America was simply not in a position to create capital on the scale of the United States or Western Europe. Consequently, even major Latin American states such as Brazil or Mexico remain highly reliant on inflows of cash from abroad to keep their economies afloat and rely on exports to China or the United States for a significant part of their foreign trade.

Unsurprisingly, the goal of forming institutions that can provide lasting political and economic unity has eluded Latin American statesmen. Numerous attempts have been made to unite the fractious region: Simon Bolivar’s ill-fated 19th-century bid to unite South America, a similar attempt at uniting the Central American states into a federation and the more recent creation of separate economic blocs in Latin America. Yet the isolation created by geographic barriers has foiled leaders’ attempts to unite the region’s countries into a real economic or political union on the scale of the European Union or even the North American Free Trade Agreement. In recent history, the closest that Latin American states came to some sort of unity — besides regional trading blocs such as the Common Market of the South and the Pacific Alliance — was the wave of leftist populist governments that swept the continent beginning in the early 2000s. But after a decade of budgets and politics buoyed by high commodity prices, the raw realities of geopolitics are back with a vengeance.

The Shape of Governments to Come

We cannot define the exact nature of the national governments that will emerge during the next decade; short-term actions are less predictable than long-term trends, and attempting to forecast which people or parties will lead countries such as Brazil after its 2018 elections or Venezuela after its presidential election in 2019 is very risky. However, we have a rough idea of the shape these governments will take. With less revenue available to pacify restive populations, the new governments will likely be more economically pragmatic than their predecessors. This is not to say that populism as a means of governance in Latin America will subside; rather, rulers are likely to take more care in how they relate to their voters and the outside world.

Because the region is so dependent on foreign capital for continued economic growth, and because states’ export revenues are so depleted (in Bolivia, for example, export revenue is down by nearly a third compared with last year), leaders are more likely to refrain from mass nationalizations or hostility to foreign companies. During the past decade, leftist governments seized numerous private assets in disputes with private firms. Except for extreme cases such as Venezuela  — which, because of its default risk, economic problems and past expropriations, is already de facto cut off from most foreign lending and many investments — most states will likely now try to encourage investments rather than scare them off. Consequently, Latin America is likely entering an era in which the grand populist gestures of the past decade will no longer yield the same results as before and can, in fact, be counterproductive for leaders trying to restart their faltering economies.

The weakening of Latin American left is another factor that will shape the coming decade. In the next 10 years, the governments that came to power during the boom times will reach the end of their tenures. The list of states that will evolve from leftist administrations into some other type of government is lengthy. Venezuela will reach the painful point of reckoning in which its ruling United Socialist Party will split apart. And as the party splits, Venezuela will undergo a painful economic restructuring and a political shift away from extreme populism. In Ecuador, leftist President Rafael Correa may not secure even another four-year term. In Bolivia, low export prices for natural gas will put President Evo Morales’ ability to secure another decade in office to the test.

Perhaps the only exception will be Colombia, where a possible peace deal with rebels grouo could bring the left into the national fold, which could lead other parties to co-opt more leftist ideas. But even Cuba, long the bastion of Latin America’s left and its ideological center, will eventually move into the United States’ political orbit, likely in exchange for the lifting of the five-decade trade embargo.

The left’s decline will give the United States an exceptionally benign climate for managing its relationships and priorities to the south. To be sure, longstanding concerns — such as trade, drug trafficking and illegal migration — guiding the United States’ actions in much of Latin America will remain. But the bumper crop of leftist states that were often minor hindrances to U.S. political moves in the region will become less of a factor in the next decade. Washington’s new priorities in the region, such as cushioning Venezuela’s economic collapse and bringing Cuba into some sort of improved trade relationship, will occupy the United States’ time.

Of the states currently undergoing deep economic downturns, several seem poised to make a resurgence. Mexico is an outlier, given than it is so linked to the United States through trade. But those links will ensure that despite problematic public finances, Mexico will remain a major force in Latin American economic growth. For Peru and Colombia, international trade will drop over the next several years, but their stable public finances will likely ensure some degree of social stability. And even Brazil, in the midst of a massive corruption scandal at Petrobras, will ride out the crisis due to its strong (albeit currently strained) domestic manufacturing base and sheer economic size.

Re-Emerging Differences

The rampant populism of the past 15 years — bolstered by rapidly increasing exports to hungry markets abroad — imposed a false appearance of unity among the Latin American leftist states. Superficially, Nestor’s Kirchner Argentina appeared to have much in common with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, even though both countries’ individual geographic and political characteristics ultimately dictated the governments’ decisions. With the rise of another leftist bloc unlikely in the next decade, the divided nature of Latin America will again become evident.

And the continent’s divided nature means that the shortcomings of international bodies there, such as the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), will become even more self-evident. For example, Brasilia will use Mercosur to do what is in its own immediate benefit: increase trade links with Latin American states outside its immediate neighborhood, such as Mexico . But truly lucrative deals, such as a Mercosur-European Union trade agreement, will remain just out of reach because they require full approval of all the group’s members. Mercosur’s other key member, Argentina, opposes any such deals lest they harm its domestic industry. Consequently, Brazil will continue looking for small bilateral deals, but it will continue to be hamstrung by Mercosur. Unasur, on the other hand, which was originally conceived of as a sort of South American United Nations, is highly unlikely to progress beyond a regional body that meets a couple of times a year. It is not that there is no political will in Latin America to push toward greater unity, but unlike the European Union, such bodies cannot be superimposed onto a region whose trade ties and key political relationships are focused toward other continents rather than each other.

The next decade will bring with it some political and economic continuity. The region will maintain its fundamental relationship with the rest of the globe, in which its foreign trade is overwhelmingly skewed toward the export of raw materials and its economies are heavily reliant on foreign capital markets. But deeper internal changes are already in motion, and the states of the region will change accordingly. The parties at the helm of these states will be different, and the way these parties relate with the outside world on a political and economic level will be undeniably different. Over the next 10 years, the shortcomings of extreme reliance on the Chinese economy will spur cost-cutting and domestic economic diversification. The trappings of the Cold War will fade in Latin America as leaders are replaced and political institutions evolve, but the new Latin America will continue to be more defined by its divisions than by any idea of unity.

It is a shift in US strategy against terrorist movement Daech. Although the White House ensures that its “strategy in Syria has not changed,” the US has given the green light to sending ground troops in the north of Syria. Until now, Washington had refused any military presence on Syrian soil in order not to be drawn into the conflict such as in Iraq or in Afghanistan.

For the first time in four and a half years of conflict which left more than 300,000 dead, Barack Obama has “authorized the deployment of a small staff, fewer than 50, US Special Forces operations in northern Syria, “said Friday a part of the US administration. This small contingent of elite soldiers will be responsible for contributing to the war effort against the terrorist group Islamic State, said the US official. These special forces “will help coordinate local troops on the ground and coalition efforts to counter the IE,” he said. “These forces do not have a combat mission,” stressed the spokesman of the White House, Josh Earnest, during his press briefing Friday.

“These forces have no combat mission”

Officially, these forces will therefore be confined to an advisory role and support to armed rebel groups said Syrian moderated, and will therefore not directly involved in the fighting. However, they will be “equipped to defend themselves.” Because “it is undeniable that these military take real risks,” said the spokesman of Barack Obama.

These numbers will they grow in the future? The White House does not exclude this possibility: “I do not want to predict the future,” said the spokesman. How long will they stay there? Here again, Josh Earnest was evasive: “I would not describe that mission as permanent.”

Furthermore, as part of the war effort, an official in Washington confirmed that the US military would deploy ground attack aircraft A-10 and F-15 fighters at an air base in Turkey, neighboring Syria and member of the coalition.

These military decisions came as US Secretary of State, John Kerry, participated Friday in Vienna, the Austrian capital in multilateral discussions on Syria to war with other key diplomatic players in the dossier. But no final decision on the future of Bashar al-Assad regime has been concluded. A new meeting is scheduled in two weeks.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in March 2011, Obama has long refused to get involved militarily in Syria. In September 2013, US President repeated that he “would not put American troops on the ground in Syria”, causing anger at the time of its allies,  including France and Sunni Gulf Countries, renouncing in time to militarily strike the regime of Bashar al Assad. Then in the summer of 2014, Washington has assembled a coalition of 65 countries to bomb the positions of IE and other jihadist groups in Syria and neighboring Iraq. For over a year, these strikes are almost daily.

Dana Chocron is a specialist of Middle East political landscapes. She is specialized in the Levant. She holds a BA in Government,Security and Diplomacy from the prestigious school of IDC. She is currently an analyst for a top Israeli Organization.

The great part of history is that it constantly repeats itself. Past events will probably reoccur in the future in a very similar nature; therefore, we know to extract lessons from them. However, the smart extraction of lessons does not necessarily promise the application of these into practice. Probably the gap between the two steps, extraction and application of lessons, is well reflected in the American history related to terrorism-dealing with.

This article aims to compare two big scenarios that the United States has been confronted with: the past war against the Afghan Taliban and the present war against the Islamic Iraq and Syria. When analyzing the lessons that the U.S. could have pulled out of their first combat against terrorism in Afghanistan, we can tell some of them have definitely been applied, while others seem to remain on the list of errors.

The historical analysis: a gap between theory and practice   

Talking about the eternal “American paranoia”: the year 2001 marked for the United States the starting point for the development of a strong feeling of mistrust and suspicious towards the world, and essentially, towards its biggest nightmare – the terrorists.

The 9/11 attacks conducted a tremendous amount of American troops towards the field in Afghanistan, convinced of the need to turn down the reason that caused a huge damage on the American strength and sense of indestructibility. The Taliban forces were far from imagining the long-lasting and bloody nature of the battle that they were about to face. Neither the American soldiers would have grasped the conditions and consequences that such battle would bring about.

This entire scenario ended up representing a fatal succession of events both for Afghanistan and the U.S., and meant the longest struggle that the U.S. military had ever been involved in. However, the drill, the amount of public critiques, the worrying instilled within society, and the political implications of it, the U.S. was forced to end the war, expose its mistakes and, above all, demonstrate it had managed to extract out of it meaningful lessons that would be applied in future similar scenarios. Have these lessons been indeed applied?

The answer to this question is probably, yes to the most. Indeed, the U.S. has firmly changed its attitude when facing the nightmare—the terrorist threat. Nevertheless, when analyzing a new current period in which dealing with terrorism has come to being a priority, some of those lessons have quite been put aside. In fact, it seems that the so-called American paranoia is stronger than it can allow for an ameliorated attitude vis-à-vis terrorism.

Currently, the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the claimed Islamic Caliphate has rather been shadowing the implementation of the learnt lessons, setting the U.S. back into an offensive mindset, which has once again conducted military forces to the respective scenario. The major critique received by the public back in Afghanistan was definitely the ground strategy employed, which had left a never-seen-before amount of deaths on the field. Since then, soldiers’ lives have needed increased protection. Today, the on-going situation in Iraq and Syria hasn’t conducted ground forces to the field, but, it has brought about airplanes strikes on the ground. As of now no casualties had been declared on the side of the American forces deployed, nevertheless, it didn’t take too long for the first death to be claimed by the U.S. military.

It is clearly not expected to reach death tolls like in Afghanistan; that would be ridiculous. Yet, it is interesting to try to think of how many soldiers will the U.S. be willing to sacrifice in today’s, more-then-ever dangerous, battlefield. Again, it seems that the U.S. has fallen into the spiral trap of terrorism and has again opted for a military deployment to the battlefield.

Then, if military direct intervention is not to be the solution to combat terrorism, what should the U.S. move be instead? I’d argue: prevention instead of reaction to the threat. Acting before needing to cure the damage and deal with the already advanced problem. That is, preventing terrorist networks from expanding, limiting their extent, influence and impact in terms of recruitment of followers, interfere between the terrorist groups and their providing sources for weapons, censor their worldwide spread propaganda, prohibit French, Swiss, American nationals from quitting the country to join the cause of terror, and above all, de-legitimize their cause, their promises, their reason of being and the methods employed to achieve their purposes. Probably the major problem in dealing with terrorists is that the world waits too long, expects proofs, wants to see the potential of the threat before anticipating it.

In June, Turkey’s ruling AK Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in the 13 years since it came to power. But, following a landslide victory in the renewed elections held on Sunday, it is now firmly set to return to the helm of the country. Backed strongly by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AKP won 49 percent of the vote with a narrative emphasizing political stability. The scale of AKP’s victory will have significant ramifications for Turkey’s foreign policy.

The strong government that will now be established in Ankara will enjoy a considerable margin of maneuver on its foreign policy options. Compared with many other governments in Europe, it will not only have the luxury of being the exclusive owner of executive power, but it can also take advantage of the absence of any near-term electoral calculations, with the next electoral cycle slated for 2019.

The new government can therefore sign on to new foreign policy initiatives almost in isolation of the dynamics of the local environment. It has little to fear from any domestic backlash especially from the country’s strong nationalist constituency. The victory margin essentially creates an ideal setting for foreign policy-making that has the potential to allow Turkey to win back its diplomatic prestige and re-establish its role as the indispensable ally of the West.

The relationship with the rest of Europe will be among the first to be affected in this transformation. The new Turkish government can now firmly back a settlement for Cyprus at a time when the U.N.-sponsored negotiations between the two communities of the island are nearing their conclusion. The settlement of this frozen conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean will be a significant achievement for a region where other conflicts continue to rage. It will give a significant boost to the Turkey-EU relationship.

On the question of Syrian refugees, Turkey also has a strengthened hand. Ankara is now in a position to deliver what Europe needs. In order to maintain the cohesion of its plan for the resettlement of the Syrian refugees in European countries, the EU wants the long-term collaboration of Turkey with a firm commitment to manage the orderly outflow of Syrian refugees. Yet this expectation can be fulfilled only if the vast number of Syrians currently being hosted in Turkey are given economic prospects. Turkey can now more easily consider a gradual opening of its employment market to Syrians, allowing this large population sound options for integration and employment. In return, Turkey can press Europe for the acceptance of the principle of burden-sharing for the refugees, fast-tracking its demand for visa freedoms and a revitalization of the stalled process of accession.

An equally challenging task facing Turkish policy makers will be the settlement of the country’s Kurdish question. With its comfortable majority in Parliament, the new government should be expected to resuscitate the settlement talks with the representatives of the Kurdish political movement. A resolution will positively impact the quest for peace and stability in Syria. It will also ensure a better cohesion among the anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition, with Ankara becoming less concerned with the backing of the Syrian Kurds as an effective ground element against the jihadist entity.

These initiatives will complement the ongoing transformation of Ankara’s foreign policy vision. Faced with the ill-fated consequences of its activism in the Middle East, which has left Turkey with a diminishing influence and a smaller accolade of regional friends, Ankara had initiated a re-calibration of its foreign policy even before the elections. A more realistic assessment of its capabilities resulted in a shift of its policy on Syria, as Ankara dropped its categorical objection for allocating a role to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the negotiations on the future of Syria. At the same time, Turkey agreed to be in the vanguard of the fight against ISIS, eliminating a point of friction with its allies in the West.

But this more optimistic assessment of Turkish foreign policy will very much depend on how President Erdogan and the AKP leadership interpret their large electoral success. The hope is that they shall construe this vote as a support for the more recent transformation of Turkish foreign policy, driven by a more realistic and less ideological perspective on regional dynamics. The alternative is a return to the over-confident AKP policies of the post-Arab Spring underpinned by a romanticized narrative of the Ottoman legacy. It is this crucial choice that will shape the future trajectory of Turkey’s regional diplomacy.

Sinan Ulgen writes for Carnegie Europe and for Newsweek.

Renata Segura is an expert of Latin America. She currently works for the IPI Global Observatory.

Since the peace process between the government of Colombia and the guerrilla group Fuerzas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) began in October 2012, perhaps the greatest question has been if the negotiations will yield an agreement that both facilitates peace and also responds to the claims for justice. The justice architecture that was made public on September 23, 2015 addresses both, and while pending questions on how exactly will it operate remain, the newSistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación y No Repetición(Cohesive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and No Repetition) unveiled in Havana is an innovative take on transitional and restorative justice. By announcing this new agreement, together with a final date for the negotiations (March 2016), and that the FARC would demobilize and disarm 60 days after the signing, a peace process that at times seemed moribund has regained strength, with most (but certainly not all) Colombians celebrating the possibility of a near-end to the 60-year civil war.

A very important feature of this new system is that it aims to address all crimes committed during the conflict, and not only those of the FARC. This has been a salient feature of the process, which has infuriated its opponents. The FARC has consistently argued that their actions need to be reviewed within the context of a conflict that saw excesses from the state and the paramilitary. In fact, early in the negotiations, the FARC declared themselves a victim of the war. It is notable, then, that the FARC has decided to admit their responsibility. The system announced last week creates two main institutions to address these issues while seeking to have some balance between peace and justice:

• A Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (Commission for Truth, Coexistence, and No Repetition) will be created, and will focus on reparations for victims. With 7.6 million registered victims, achieving fair reparations will demand important resources. It hasn’t been established what assets will be used for that purpose.
• A Jurisdicción Especial de Paz (Special Jurisdiction for Peace), formed by Salas de Justicia (Justice Halls) and a Tribunal para la Paz (Peace Tribunal), will be staffed by a majority of Colombian Justices, and also some foreign ones. Besides contributing to the goal of finding truth and help with reparations, this will be the central tool to impart sanctions to those responsible for the gravest crimes committed during the conflict. The statement emphasizes they will focus on the most serious and representative crimes.

From the beginning of the process, a central tension was evident: as the FARC came to the table as a negotiating party and not a defeated army, they openly refused to “spend one day in jail.” At the same time, the Rome Statue and other international legislation that hadn’t been in place in previous peace negotiations with other armed groups in Colombia imposed new justice standards. Additionally, the question of how an already overwhelmed justice system could handle trying every single guerilla member remained.The agreement announced a law granting “the widest possible amnesty” for political crimes and the crimes associated with them. To satisfy the requirements of Humanitarian International Law, this amnesty law will exclude crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, including taking of hostages, torture, forced displacement, extrajudicial executions and sexual violence. These crimes will be investigated and judged by the Special Jurisdiction.The Special Jurisdiction has laid out two different processes. Those who are willing to acknowledge their responsibilities in the conflict will get sentences between five and eight years—sentencing guidelines that mirror those of the demobilization process of right wing paramilitaries in 2005. The announcement, however, refers to these sentences as “restrictions of freedoms and rights,” which means that these guerrillas won’t serve regular jail sentences, as they had stated from the beginning. It is important to note that the system will also apply to members of the Colombian Armed Forces or right wing groups. In particular, there has been a preoccupation that the almost 3,500 extrajudicial executions known as the “falsos positivos” were not left in impunity. Those unwilling to acknowledge their responsibilities, or do so late, will receive sentences of up to 20 years.To be sure, there are numerous open questions, and as always, the devil will be in the details. Who gets elected to the Tribunal and the Justice Halls, and how this endeavor will be financed are the first and most obvious ones, but far from the only ones. The agreement, for example, includes a component of restorative justice which states that the sentencing will guarantee the fulfillment of duties and work that satisfy victims’ rights. This vague description will no doubt invite complicated debates. Another important pending question is if drug trafficking can be conceived as a political crime (or an associated crime) and thus eligible for amnesty. A clue in this regard can be found in the recent statement of the President of the Supreme Court José Leonidas Bustos, who said it could be understood in this way if it was used “as a tool to financially support the political ends of the armed struggle.” Given the widespread involvement of both FARC and right-wing paramilitary in the traffic of illicit drugs, this decision will be hugely important—and no doubt the United States will keep a close eye on this issue.The road ahead is by no means clear, especially as the parties have decided that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” and there is strong opposition to the process led by ex-president and now Senator Álvaro Uribe. The sticking point at the negotiating table on how the demobilization and disarmament will take place will be no doubt extremely difficult. The government has promised that this peace agreement will be endorsed by the Colombian public, but it’s not clear yet if there will be a referendum or a different tool will be used. In the meantime, Congress is already studying a constitutional reform that would allow for the implementation of the agreements, and the Attorney General announced a halt on the imputations of charges to all members of the FARC. For Colombia to succeed in the enormous task ahead, it will need broad support from the international community. But more importantly, it will need support from Colombians themselves in the form of a radical step: to search for forgiveness and reconciliation. Ending the longest and one of the most violent conflicts in the continent surely is worth all of these efforts.