Democracy

Mongolia Moves Toward Europe and Implications for the OSCE
Testimony for The U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission)
by John Tkacik

Published on October 12th, 2011
On the question of Mongolia's application for status as a participating state in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mongolia has become even more important geopolitically – in every way – to America’s and Europe’s security.  The imperative of giving Mongolia status as a participating OSCE state lies in its geopolitical importance in Eurasia, specifically as a moderating influence in relations between Russia and China.Mongolians themselves are acutely sensitive to their role as a buffer between Eurasia’s two most massive powers. They understand the absolute necessity of not allowing their land to become a satellite of either great power lest the other great power seek to rebalance in the opposite direction. Mongolians descriptively call their strategy the “Third Neighbor Policy.”

Hezbollah in Latin America: Implications for U.S. Security
Testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security
by Douglas Farah

Published on July 7th, 2011
Today the U.S. faces a significant and growing threat in the Western Hemisphere: the presence of Hezbollah and its primary sponsor, the government of Iran, with its full arsenal of intelligence and specialized military units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Qods Force. The threat is not limited to the region and the Homeland alone, but more broadly its aims include an ability to hold the U.S. at risk in terms of exercising options in other theatres, most specifically with respect to Iran, Syria and the Middle East, including Israel.

Confronting the News: The State of Independent Media in Latin America
A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 28th, 2011
Freedom of expression and of the press in much of Latin America are under sustained attack by numerous authoritarian governments in the region, as well as non-state armed actors such as drug trafficking organizations and paramilitary groups. These attacks have made Latin America one of the most dangerous places in the world in which to be a journalist. Overall, the region, with the exception of the Caribbean, has suffered an almost uninterrupted deterioration of press freedoms over the past five years, reaching its lowest point since the military dictatorships of the 1980s.

Why Taiwan Matters
Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
by June Teufel Dreyer, Ph.D

Published on June 16th, 2011
The current state of U.S.-Taiwan relations leaves much to be desired.  A recent analysis describes the island’s narrowing options, tracing a trajectory toward absorption by China. Given a continuation of current trends, it is difficult to disagree with this conclusion.   It is my belief that U.S. actions bear a large measure of responsibility for this drift, and that for two major reasons—first, to ensure its national security and maintain regional peace; and second, to remain true to its own founding beliefs, the United States must make efforts to reverse this drift.

Terrorist-Criminal Pipelines and Criminalized States: Emerging Alliances
Prism 2, No. 3
by Douglas Farah

Published on June 1st, 2011
On July 1, 2010, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment that outlined the rapid expansion of operations of transnational criminal organizations and their growing, often short-term strategic alliances with terrorist groups. These little-understood transcontinental alliances pose new security threats to the United States, as well as much of Latin America, West Africa, and Europe.

Cyber Warfare Challenges and the Increasing Use of American and European Dual-Use Technology for Military Purposes by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Testimony for the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on April 15th, 2011
Uunder the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and as part of its total effort to harness its own cyber realm as a weapon against its citizens, the People's Republic of China very likely has built the world’s most formidable cyber warfare capability. It is the most formidable in both the breadth of its actors, in its global reach and in the daily threat it poses to America’s strategic and economic security.  It  imposes a heavy financial burden on Americans. A 2009 industry estimate held that annual U.S. cyber security expenditures could reach $25 billion by 2013.  Current open source figures for cybersecurity range from $10-13 billion per year, slated to rise at 9% a year, or $1.2 billion -- with cumulative spending under this administration estimated to be $55 billion for the 2010-2015 period. It is broadly understood that this spending is primarily in reaction to the PRC's cyberespionage efforts.  One current estimate asserts that cyber espionage alone costs the United States $200 billion a year, with, again, the PRC being responsible for most of that burden. According to the April 11, 2011 testimony of U.S. Northern Command commander Admiral James Winnefeld, this amount surpasses the national cost war on drugs, estimated at $181 billion annually.  Clearly this challenge is growing.

Harvard for Tyrants
Foreign Policy
by Douglas Farah

Published on March 4th, 2011
Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers.  Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. The ties that bind Qaddafi to some of the world's most repressive regimes and armed movements began in the 1980s, when he was regarded as one of the premier terrorist threats in the world. Flush with oil money, Qaddafi orchestrated a training campaign for those who became the most brutal warlords in much of Africa, a legacy that has left the region crippled and unstable today.

Organized Crime in El Salvador: The Homegrown and Transnational Dimensions
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars
by Douglas Farah

Published on February 1st, 2011
When El Salvador's brutal civil war ended in a negotiated settlement in 1992 after 12 years and some 75,000 dead, it was widely hoped that the peace agreements would usher in a new era of democratic governance, rule of law, and economic growth. Yet today El Salvador is a crucial part of a transnational “pipeline” or series of overlapping, recombinant chains of actors and routes that transnational criminal organizations use to move illicit products, money, weapons, personnel, and goods. The results are devastating and wide-ranging in the Massachusetts-sized country, and are a key part of the crisis of governance and rule of law crippling the Central American region and Mexico.

Winds From the East: How the People’s Republic of China Seeks to Influence the Media in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia
A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance
by Douglas Farah, Andy Mosher

Published on September 8th, 2010
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is using various components of public diplomacy to influence the media in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. China’s primary purposes appear to be to present China as a reliable friend and partner, as well as to make sure that China’s image in the developing world is positive. As part of its efforts to do this, the Chinese government seeks to fundamentally reshape much of the world’s media in its own image, away from a watchdog stance toward the government to one where the government’s interests are the paramount concern in deciding what to disseminate.

Transnational Drug Enterprises: Threats to Global Stability and U.S. National Security from Southwest Asia, Latin America and West Africa
Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
by Douglas Farah

Published on October 1st, 2009
What we are seeing in the era of globalization, is that flexible criminal and terrorist pipelines -- where key facilitators are vital to the operations of both sets of actors -- are highly adaptable and forward thinking. These pipelines or recombinant chains of actors and commodities now have the ability to move goods, both licit and illicit, around the globe to wherever the environment is most hospitable and tolerant. While by far the most lucrative commodities in the pipeline are cocaine and heroin, the same pipelines serve weapons traffickers, human smugglers, fraud and contraband.