The US' newly approved strategy hyping the intelligence threat from China and Russia is an old trick by Washington attempting to provoke camp opposition in the Asia-Pacific region, serving its plan to implement unilateralism and hegemonism in the region, which will only bring insecurity and instability to the international community, Chinese experts said on Friday.
According to VOA, US President Joe Biden signed on Thursday a new strategy claiming Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the "main culprits" that caused the US to face "a series of unprecedented threats from foreign intelligence agencies."
The strategy also claimed that Moscow and Beijing are "the most significant intelligence threats," and hyped that they are increasingly cooperating with each other "to undermine the US."
The US' aggressive smearing of countries in the Asia-Pacific is a deliberate attempt to create divisions and foster hostility in the region, Chinese experts said.
"By painting China and Russia as adversaries, the US is seeking to create the formation of opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region," Lü Chao, dean of the Institute of American and East Asian Studies at Liaoning University and a research fellow at the Charhar Institute, told the Global Times on Friday.
It has been the consistent practice of the US to stigmatize China in an effort to tarnish its international reputation, Lü said, noting that this is aimed at serving Washington's unilateral hegemonism in the Asia-Pacific region. However, Lü warned that such actions will only bring serious insecurity and instability to the international community.
When asked about US hyping of the bilateral cooperation between China and Russia, Lü emphasized that these partnerships are conducted with a focus on mutual benefit and are never targeted at a third party. Despite this, the US continues to take a provocative attitude toward China-Russia cooperation, and is also trying to sabotage the coordination between other countries and China and Russia.
The US' reliance on spreading disinformation to sow discord and conduct provocation is a futile endeavor that is destined to end in failure, analysts said.
Experts also noted that the US hype has significantly eroded the bedrock of mutual trust in China-US relations. Both sides stand to benefit from cooperation and lose from confrontation, but the US continues to wantonly smear China, constantly exaggerating the bilateral relationship as being a hostile one, Lü said.
It is imperative for the US to approach its interactions with China in a rational manner and avoid crossing red lines. China will resolutely fight back if any further provocative actions are taken by the US, experts said.
US officials have called for Washington to prioritize matching China's presence in the Global South. However, Chinese experts noted that China's approach of equal and mutually beneficial cooperation, as opposed to the US' Cold War mind-set and its carrot-and-stick approach, has been key in winning hearts in Global South countries.
Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Ben Cardin, a Democratic senator and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the US needs to offer the Global South an alternative to China.
"In order to address these challenges, the US should not only be investing in our military, but also our diplomatic and economic development tools," Cardin said.
Echoing Cardin, US State Department Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at the hearing that he has traveled to Africa twice since his appointment in February and has plans for a third trip. He also noted that there are 14 ambassador nominations for posts on the continent yet to be approved by the Senate, according to Voice of America.
Several senators at the hearing stressed the need to increase the US diplomatic footprint and fill empty ambassadorial posts, particularly within the Global South.
Campbell said the lack of US ambassadors in key posts is "embarrassing" and "antithetical to US strategic interests."
The US has quickened its pace in competing with China over influence in the Global South in recent years. In the latest move, the US opened an embassy in the Pacific island country of Vanuatu earlier this month, described as part of Washington's long-running competition with China for influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The US has overlooked a crucial distinction in its approach to cooperation with Global South countries compared to China. While China offers equal and mutually beneficial partnerships that contribute to the development of these nations, the US often employs a carrot-and-stick approach to coerce support for its own interests, and treats these countries as tools in a geopolitical competition, Song Wei, a professor from the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times.
Campbell also said that "we need to do more, and we have to contest Chinese actions, not only in terms of their forward basing strategy, but their desire to go after Africa's rare earths that will be critical for our industrial and technological capabilities."
US competition with China in obtaining critical minerals, such as rare earths, will further politicize and intensify the global scramble for resources in developing countries, which is not conducive to the development of these countries, Song said.
A new Gallup report released in April this year shows median approval ratings for the US in Africa slipped from 59 percent in 2022 to 56 percent in 2023. Of the four global powers asked about, the US was the only one not to see its image improve across Africa in 2023. Meanwhile, China's approval in the region rose six percentage points, from 52 percent in 2022 to 58 percent in 2023, two points ahead of the US.
A series of ASEAN-related meetings and bilateral sideline talks have been held in Vientiane, capital of Laos in recent two days, as foreign ministers from ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific region gathered to discuss shared concerns and emphasize unity amid rising global uncertainties.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's busy schedule in Laos, which included discussions on China-ASEAN relations, regional development and major global issues, demonstrated that despite geopolitical tensions and competition among major countries, dialogue and cooperation with an open China remain attractive to other nations.
As instability grows globally and interference from external countries intensifies, especially on the South China Sea issue, ASEAN countries are placing greater emphasis on regional unity and prioritizing cooperation with China and other major countries, rather than being drawn into small cliques that could undermine regional collaboration, analysts said.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, attended the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference with China, together with the ASEAN foreign ministers or their representatives and Secretary-General of ASEAN Dr. Kao Kim Hourn on Friday in Vientiane.
During the meeting, Wang outlined the fruitful achievements made between China and ASEAN in various aspects from trade and investment to people-to-people exchanges and energy cooperation. For instance, China has remained ASEAN's largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years, while ASEAN has become China's largest trading partner for four years straight, with bilateral trade growing 10.5 percent year-on-year in the first half year of 2024.
The ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting and related events were held against the backdrop of sluggish global economic growth and protracted geopolitical conflicts. All parties hope to turn this region into a driving force for global economic development and to activate new momentum for international cooperation, Xu Liping, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
ASEAN is a priority direction and key region for the high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, and it is also one of the first regions to benefit from China's efforts to advance high-level opening-up, Xu said.
The expert noted that Wang's visit to Laos, which is also his first overseas visit after the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, as well as his extensive exchanges with ASEAN foreign ministers, will promote the implementation of reform measures proposed by the session and further deepen China-ASEAN cooperation.
Growing challenges
The 57th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting started in Vientiane on Thursday, followed by meetings with East Asian countries and other global players, including Russia, the US, and the EU. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, from Thursday to Friday, Wang Yi held bilateral meetings with the foreign ministers of Russia, India, Japan, South Korea, the UK and Norway on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related meetings.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Friday that Wang will also meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Laos at the latter's request. Although Mao did not provide specific information on the time and other details of the meeting, she said that it is believed Wang and Blinken will exchange views on issues of mutual concern.
According to Xu, the ASEAN-related meeting and sideline talks have become a crucial platform for China to engage in bilateral diplomacy and participate in multilateral cooperation. Over the years, China has consistently prioritized its neighboring regions in its diplomatic strategy, actively articulating its perspectives on the international stage and expanding its global influence.
Some analysts noted that China's stance on settling disputes through dialogue was clearly demonstrated in Wang's interactions with other countries' diplomats during the sideline talks, aligning with ASEAN's common aspirations.
For example, Wang met with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Vientiane on Thursday, and the two sides agreed to jointly commit to maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas and promote new progress in border affairs consultations.
Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, said that the latest remarks of the Chinese and Indian top diplomats on the border issue underscore both countries' commitment to resolving border disputes through diplomatic channels and dialogues, despite existing divergences. Such efforts to prevent differences from escalating into conflicts is particularly important given the current international context.
The current global instability makes peace in Asia, especially Southeast Asia, particularly valuable. Most ASEAN countries cherish their hard-earned peace and wish to avoid conflicts like those in Europe, Gu Xiaosong, dean of the ASEAN Research Institute of Hainan Tropical Ocean University, told the Global Times.
Foreign ministers of China and majority regional countries have emphasized the importance of peaceful dispute resolution, agreeing that war would disrupt the region's economy. Many also expressed a strong desire to prevent the escalation of the South China Sea situation through dialogue and cooperation, aiming to maintain regional peace and stability, Gu said.
However, analysts noted that efforts by China and most ASEAN members to resolve South China Sea issues through dialogue, as well as ASEAN's efforts to strengthen unity, have faced provocations from external interference. For example, the US and some of its allies have intensified attempts to draw ASEAN countries into their small cliques and back the Philippines in its provocations over South China Sea issues, raising concerns in the region.
Most Southeast Asian countries have expressed a strong willingness to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, which will positively influence the current tense situation to some extent, said Liu Chang, a research fellow from China Institute of International Studies.
Liu said that US Secretary of State Blinken's meeting with ASEAN foreign ministers and visit to Southeast Asia are unlikely to yield significant results. "Until the dust settles on the US presidential election, Southeast Asian countries are expected to be more cautious in their cooperation with the US."
ASEAN will continue to emphasize its collective stance, adhering to its existing foreign policy and avoiding taking sides in major power rivalries. This reflects ASEAN's determination to uphold regional peace and stability while remaining vigilant against potential instability from major power conflicts, said observers.
The second phase of a high-definition deep-space active observation facility, China Fuyan, which is dubbed as the world's most far-reaching radar system, kicked off in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, the Global Times learned from the project lead Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) on Tuesday.
The second phase of the project, codenamed China Fuyan [faceted eye], will involve building 25 radars with a 30-meter aperture, so as to realize the detection and imaging of asteroids over 10 million kilometers away, which will provide strong support for China's near-Earth asteroid impact defense and planetary science research.
Construction of phase II, which will cover an area of over 300 mu (20 hectares), is expected to be completed by 2025. It will be a new research and development phase for the project, Long Teng, president of BIT and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in a statement sent to the Global Times.
China Fuyan will consist of distributed radars with more than 20 antennas, and each antenna will have a diameter of 25 to 30 meters. It is expected to become the world's most far-reaching radar system capable of carrying out high-definition observation of asteroids within 150 million kilometers.
Long said that because the system has multiple antennas, like the faceted eyes of an insect, it was given the vivid name of China Fuyan.
Through high-resolution observation of asteroids, spacecraft, the moon, Earth-like planets and Jupiter Galileo satellites and other deep-space targets, China Fuyan will meet the need for the defense of near-Earth asteroids and situational awareness of space. It will provide key support for the study of habitability of the Earth, planet formation and other frontier scientific research.
The project has three stages of construction. The first stage was completed in December 2022 in Chongqing, consisting of four radars with a 16-meter aperture. It successfully captured the country's first ground-based three-dimensional radar image of lunar craters.
After the completion of the second phase, the third phase of the project will expand the number of radar units to over 100, the Global Times learned.
Unlike the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope nicknamed Tianyan, which is designed to collect passive observations of radio signals from space, Fuyan will be actively shooting radio signals to celestial bodies in order to obtain new observations, experts noted.
This will be very helpful for China's lunar exploration, as it is capable of monitoring Chinese spacecraft' journey to the moon, they said.
John Lee Ka-chiu, chief executive (CE) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), listened to public concerns and suggestions from hundreds of people on Sunday during a district forum for the upcoming policy address in October, which is expected to include some new measures to attract talents and boost tourism.
The two-session forum, held in Aldrich Bay Government Primary School and lasting two hours, was attended by about 120 people from all walks of life. During the forum, community members voiced their opinions on topics including land and housing, transport, innovation and technology, finance, culture and sports, education, youth, poverty alleviation, healthcare and social welfare, according to the website of the HKSAR government.
In the second session, participants were divided into four groups with the goal of engaging in extensive discussions with principal officials on themes that include boosting the economy and people's livelihoods. Lee interacted with those participating in each group in turn.
Lee delivered his first policy address at the Legislative Council in October 2022, rolling out a series of measures in regard to attracting global talents, enhancing the city's competitiveness as an international financial hub, and further integrating into the country's overall development plan.
The CE said the public generally agreed to the governance policy in the 2022 Policy Address, and he hopes to listen to more public views and consolidate the objectives and implementation of different policies, so as to deepen and broaden policies as well as identify priorities.
The 2023 Policy Address is scheduled to be delivered on October 25, and the HKSAR government will conduct more than 30 consultation sessions to listen to views and suggestions of Legislative Council members, representatives of various sectors and members of the public.
Following the uncertainties in the global economy, Hong Kong society now expects the HKSAR government to formulate and implement policies to foster the local economy and business sustainability, some observers said.
Lau Siu-kai, a member of the Chief Executive Policy Unit Expert Group, told the Global Times on Sunday that the HKSAR government should implement the important policies proposed in last year's policy address and deliver tangible results as soon as possible, so as to boost public confidence in the government and Hong Kong. "There's no need to force new policies every year," he said.
"Many of the important policies proposed in last year's policy address have crossed the five-year term. The HKSAR government has been facing the financial pressure and grim external situation, so it should cherish and make good use of resources," Lau said.
"We have too much experience in tolerating the poor standard of civil services. Several departments have not done their roles properly. Patients have to queue up for a year just for a five-minute medical consultation in public hospitals. Somehow the public housing resources are wrongly allocated to those with their assets hidden outside the jurisdiction," Chu Kar-kin, a Hong Kong-based veteran current affairs commentator who has been following the forum, told the Global Times on Sunday.
Also, talents are attracted to the city, but jobs are not secure and careers are not promising. Taxpayers are paying for services or resources they cannot enjoy, Chu said.
"Property prices and rents have rocketed for a decade and is in an adjustment stage. The government should allocate more resources to invest in our future such as education and welfare for the elderly. The government should also foster the cultivation of the technology and creative sector," he said.
During the forum, Lee said that "it is necessary to look at the different needs of the public in their daily lives and understand the living conditions of various community sectors when formulating policies," so as to respond proactively to the people's aspirations, local media The Standard reported.
A baby titanosaur looked a lot like a grown-up — and it probably acted like one, too.
The (relatively) tiny fossils of a roughly 1- to 2-month-old dinosaur, Rapetosaurus krausei, discovered in what is now Madagascar, suggest that babies and adults had similar limb proportions, researchers report in the April 22 Science. That’s a sign that the babies were precocious, or didn’t require a whole lot of parental care, says study coauthor Kristi Curry Rogers, a vertebrate paleontologist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. After hatching, she says, the tiny titanosaur may have been more self-reliant than babies of other dinosaur species.
A lack of very young titanosaur specimens has made it tough to understand the enormous dinosaurs’ growth patterns. Curry Rogers and colleagues estimate that when newly hatched, the baby weighed 3.4 kilograms — about the weight of a newborn human. But in just a few weeks, the dinosaur’s weight shot up to 40 kilograms, roughly as heavy as a 12-year-old boy.
During the growth spurt, all of the baby’s limbs grew at about the same rate, the team calculated with data from microscopic images and CT scans. Those data plus features of the bones’ tissue point toward a life that, though cut short by starvation, was both active and independent.
In a chorus of indris, young males vie for the spotlight, riffing in alternation rather than singing in unison. Not content to be the Joey Fatone of the group, these guys strive for Justin Timberlake status.
Indris (Indri indri), the only singing lemur species, begin their songs with roars that descend into long, phrased howls. These choirs are composed of males and females, with one dominant pair. Marco Gamba of the University of Turin in Italy and his colleagues wanted to analyze variation among individual singers.
Listening to 496 indri songs recorded over 10 years in the dense forests of Madagascar, the team found that pitch varies between males and females. And indri groups typically sing in synchrony, amplifying their tunes and vocally marking their territory to other groups. When one singer starts to croon, the others join in and match rhythm.
Solos are rare, but young male singers tend to sing out of sync — probably to stand out and advertise their masculinity, Gamba and his colleagues propose June 14 in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
There are degrees of slothfulness, it turns out, even when it comes to sloths. And three-toed sloths may be the most slothful of them all: A species of the animal has a field metabolic rate that is the lowest ever recorded for any mammal in the world.
Jonathan Pauli, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, got interested in sloths not because they’re adorable but because “other things eat them,” he says. And he stayed interested in the animals because they are “biologically fascinating.”
Sloths are a type of arboreal folivore, a group that includes all animals that live in trees and eat only leaves. What most people lump into the category of “sloth” are really six species in two families (two-toed and three-toed) separated by millions of years of evolution. Both families live in trees in Central and South America and eat leaves, but three-toed sloths tend to have smaller ranges and more constricted diets, eating from only a few species of trees and only a limited number of them. Studies have also shown that these sloths have a very slow metabolic rate.
But how slow? To find out, Pauli and his colleagues captured 10 brown-throated three-toed sloths (Bradypus variegatus) and 12 Hoffmann’s two-toed sloths (Choloepus hoffmanni) from a study site in northeastern Costa Rica. There, the sloths live among a variety of habitat types, ranging from pristine forest to cacao agroforest to monocultures of banana and pineapple. “It’s really a quilt of different habitat types,” Pauli says, and one that allows the researchers to not only study many habitats at once but also more easily capture and track sloths than if they were in dense jungle.
The researchers injected the sloths with water labeled with isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen and released the animals, tracking them with radiotelemetry. After a week to a week and a half, the scientists again captured the sloths and took blood samples. By seeing how much of the oxygen and hydrogen isotopes remained, the scientists could calculate the sloths’ field metabolic rate — the energy that an organism uses throughout the day.
The field metabolic rate for the three-toed sloths was 31 percent lower than that of two-toed sloths and lower than that found in any mammal outside of hibernation, the researchers report May 25 in the American Naturalist.
“There seems to be kind of a cool combination of behavior and physiological characteristics that lead to these tremendous cost savings for three-toed sloths,” Pauli says. Three-toed sloths spend a lot of time in the canopy eating and sleeping, he notes. “They don’t do a lot of movement, whereas two-toed sloths are much more mobile. They’re moving around a lot more.”
But it’s more than just that. “Three-toed sloths have the capacity to fluctuate their body temperature,” he says. Unlike humans, who need to keep their temperature within a few degrees to function properly, the sloths can let theirs rise and fall with the ambient temperature, a bit like how a lizard or snake might regulate its body temperature. “Those are big cost savings to let your body change with your surroundings.”
The results of the study help explain why there aren’t more kinds of sloths and other arboreal folivores, Pauli and his colleagues argue. “Being an arboreal folivore is really tough living,” Pauli says. Leaf eaters tend to be big because they need to accommodate a large digestive system capable of processing all the leaf matter they need to survive. But to live in the trees, an animal can’t be too big. And this could be why arboreal folivory is one of the world’s rarest lifestyles. The need for all the various adaptations for that lifestyle could prevent the rapid diversification seen among other groups, such as Darwin’s finches.
Fierce combat erupted in February 2016 at the northern Iraqi village of Kudilah. A Western-backed coalition of Arab Sunni tribesmen, Kurds in the Iraqi army and Kurdish government forces advanced on Islamic State fighters who had taken over the dusty outpost.
Islamic State combatants, led by young men wearing explosive vests, fought back. The well-trained warriors scurried through battle lines until they reached their enemy. Then they blew themselves up along with a few coalition soldiers, setting the stage for an Islamic State victory. These suicide bombers are called inghamasi, meaning “those who dive in deep.” The inghamasi’s determination and self-sacrifice inspires their comrades to fight to the death, says anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Outnumbered about 6-to-1, Islamic State fighters still retained control of Kudilah after two days of heavy fighting. Coalition forces retreated, unwilling to lose more soldiers.
Atran and colleagues arrived in northern Iraq a couple of weeks later. Their plan: study “the will to fight” among soldiers on both sides of the Kudilah clash, even as fighting in the area continued. Their goals: try to understand what motivates people to join brutal organizations such as the Islamic State, and describe the personal transformations that push people leading comfortable, peaceable lives to commit acts of incredible violence and self-destruction.
Atran wondered whether there were common individual traits that explain the fierce devotion held by fighters for the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) as well as troops trying to take down ISIS. Scientists typically treat extreme sacrifice for others as premised on a careful weighing of pros and cons by “rational actors” who behave in a way that best satisfies their own interests even if others benefit as well. But it’s hard to see how a “what’s in it for me” formula applies to inghamasi, Atran says, much less someone who operates in a more conventionally altruistic way, such as a Navy SEAL. It’s a mistake to write off ISIS fighters as lonely losers, each seeking death as a gateway to a heavenly rendezvous with a private stock of virgins, he contends. To break out of the rational-actor rut, Atran shifted his experimental focus nearly a decade ago to examine cherished values that mobilize people to take collective action, regardless of risks or rewards. In the last several years, he has moved his studies to the field, to focus on combatants in current conflicts and their sympathizers. And he’s finding that extreme personal sacrifices made for outfits such as the Islamic State can be understood, but only by accounting for values he describes as “sacred” and by tracking the way in which individuals identify with like-minded comrades.
Collective identity Academics who study warfare and terrorism typically don’t conduct research just kilometers from the front lines of battle. But taking the laboratory to the fight is crucial for figuring out what impels people to make the ultimate sacrifice to, for example, impose Islamic law on others, says Atran, who is affiliated with the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.
Atran’s war zone research over the last few years, and interviews during the last decade with members of various groups engaged in militant jihad (or holy war in the name of Islamic law), give him a gritty perspective on this issue. He rejects popular assumptions that people frequently join up, fight and die for terrorist groups due to mental problems, poverty, brainwashing or savvy recruitment efforts by jihadist organizations.
Instead, he argues, young people adrift in a globalized world find their own way to ISIS, looking to don a social identity that gives their lives significance. Groups of dissatisfied young adult friends around the world — often with little knowledge of Islam but yearning for lives of profound meaning and glory — typically choose to become volunteers in the Islamic State army in Syria and Iraq, Atran contends. Many of these individuals connect via the internet and social media to form a global community of alienated youth seeking heroic sacrifice, he proposes.
Preliminary experimental evidence suggests that not only global terrorism, but also festering state and ethnic conflicts, revolutions and even human rights movements — think of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s — depend on what Atran refers to as devoted actors. These individuals, he argues, will sacrifice themselves, their families and anyone or anything else when a volatile mix of conditions are in play. First, devoted actors adopt values they regard as sacred and nonnegotiable, to be defended at all costs. Then, when they join a like-minded group of nonkin that feels like a family — a band of brothers — a collective sense of invincibility and special destiny overwhelms feelings of individuality. As members of a tightly bound group that perceives its sacred values under attack, devoted actors will kill and die for each other.
His team’s studies of devoted actors may help to explain why a growing number of people from around the world are leaving their families and home nations to join ISIS. Congressional and United Nations reports suggest that by October 2015, nearly 30,000 recruits from more than 100 countries had become fighters in Syria and Iraq, primarily for the Islamic State.
“The rise of the Islamic State is a revolutionary movement of historic proportions,” Atran says. “Many of its members are devoted actors with an apocalyptic belief that they must destroy the world to save it.” That uncompromising vision feeds off the promise of a global caliphate — a joint political and Islamic entity that kills or controls nonbelievers — that will bring on the end of the world and replace it with God’s true kingdom. Volunteers to that cause have participated in more than 50 terror attacks in 20 countries since June 2014. Muslim militants carried out 450 suicide bombing attacks in 2015, with 174 attributed to the Islamic State.
Atran’s research may provide a rare tool to study soldiers’ will to fight, whether or not they’re Islamic State adherents, says psychologist and terrorism researcher John Horgan of Georgia State University in Atlanta. Too many investigators have dismissed those deemed to be terrorists “as either incomprehensible or not even worthy of understanding,” Horgan says.
At the time of the Kudilah battle, the Islamic State controlled hundreds of thousands of square kilometers in the Middle East. It had successfully defended a 3,000-kilometer-long military front stretching from Iraq to Syria against multi-national forces. It’s certainly possible to destroy the Islamic State with overwhelming military might, Atran says, but that approach would come at a price. It would leave a fragmented Sunni Muslim world, from which the Islamic State arose, as well as a global pool of passionate young men and women seeking liberation through sacrifice and martyrdom. A military takedown alone might trigger “a volcanic resurgence of rebels with a cause, even readier for doomsday,” he predicts.
Sacred apocalyptic values are best opposed by the spread of deeply held, life- and freedom-affirming values that supporters are willing to defend unconditionally, Atran argues. The Kurds have had success with this approach.
Sacred kin In the Middle East, only Kurdish people living in northern Iraq have consistently held off Islamic State attacks. The Kurds, Atran finds, display a will to fight equal to that of captured Islamic State fighters. As important as guns and other material support are to a military operation, an indomitable will to fight may be even more crucial, he says. Both the Islamic State and the Kurdish army have achieved considerable military success without all the hardware of Western armies.
At Kudilah, Kurdish soldiers showed their mettle in a fierce clash. Several of these men later described the event to Atran. As Iraqi army units withdrew, Islamic State forces rapidly pushed forward. A small company of Kurds stood their ground. After the fight raged for several hours, Iraqi army reinforcements arrived, enabling the Kurds to live to fight another day.
Atran’s team interviewed 28 Kurdish soldiers plus 10 Kurds who provided supplies, medical care and other frontline assistance. Seven Islamic State fighters, six of them prisoners, also agreed to be interviewed. One had been freed and changed sides, working with groups opposed to the Islamic State.
Among the 38 Kurdish volunteers, 22 reported devotion to a homeland of “Kurdistan” as a sacred value that they would fight and die for, even overriding family ties and their Islamic religion, Atran reports in the June Current Anthropology. All but one of the 22 reported feeling a collective bond, or what Atran calls identity fusion, with the Kurdish people.
Captured ISIS members reported visceral, family-like bonds with their fellow fighters. All Islamic State prisoners cited an absolute commitment to an imposition of Islamic law, or Sharia, on nonbelievers.
Investigators measured identity fusion by presenting participants with touch-screen computer tablets showing a small circle labeled “me” and a large circle with a group label, such as “Kurds” or “family.” To represent their relationship to a particular group, individuals could move the circles together so that they partly or completely overlapped. Those who moved the small circle inside the large circle were regarded as fully fused with that group. Atran adopted this test from ongoing research initiated nearly a decade ago by psychologist William Swann of the University of Texas at Austin. An international team led by social anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse of the University of Oxford, including Swann, studied Libyan men who tried to overthrow their government in 2011. The researchers found that nearly all the men reported intense, family-like bonds with fellow combatants. Revolutionary leaders granted the researchers access to 42 Libyan soldiers and 137 support personnel, including mechanics and ambulance drivers, as hostilities wound down in late 2011.
On the overlapping circles test, 45 percent of fighters reported being more strongly bonded to their battalions of three to five comrades than to their families, the researchers reported in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A smaller portion of support personnel, 28 percent, identified more with revolutionary battalions than with their families. That’s consistent with the idea that frontline fighters most often bond tightly to their units, upping their readiness to give their lives for comrades.
Libyan soldiers who felt intense connections to their battalions probably qualified as devoted actors, says psychologist Hammad Sheikh of the New School for Social Research in New York City, who was not involved in Whitehouse’s study. The soldiers’ commitment to the revolution’s goals probably transcended even family loyalties, Sheikh suspects. He bases that opinion on Atran’s findings. Whitehouse’s team did not try to identify devoted actors among Libyan fighters.
People willing to sacrifice everything in defense of the Islamic State’s sacred values also exist outside of the war zone. Among 260 Moroccans who lived in either of two city neighborhoods known as pro-ISIS hotbeds, testing indicated that about 30 percent were devoted actors. They described the imposition of Sharia as a nonnegotiable necessity, Sheikh and his colleagues, including Atran, report in a second paper in the June Current Anthropology.
On the overlapping circles test, devoted actors in Morocco depicted especially close bonds with family-like groups of friends, ranging from Islamic State supporters to soccer buddies. Western weakness Such dedication to collective values may be tougher to come by in Western nations. Online testing of 644 people in Spain identified only 12 percent as devoted actors willing to sacrifice all for democracy, even after being reminded of threats by ISIS and Al Qaeda. Frequent corruption scandals have left many Spaniards disillusioned with democracy, Sheikh says. Whether a similarly weak devotion to democratic values applies to citizens of other European countries or the United States remains to be tested.
Field research suggests that collective commitments to democratic values may be weaker in the West. When devoted actors among Islamic State fighters, Kurds and members of a Kurdish-speaking religious community known as Yazidis were given a hypothetical choice between abandoning their sacred values if others in their group do, or leaving the group to fight on for their sacred values, they nearly always opted to fight on for their values, Atran says.
Devoted actors in Spain, however, typically say they’d follow their group if it rejected democratic values. People in France and Spain tested by Atran’s team also rate their own society’s “spiritual force,” or the strength of collective beliefs and commitments, as much weaker than that of ISIS.
Among U.S., British and former Soviet soldiers, there have long been indications from interviews, field reports and personal letters of a stronger willingness to die for close comrades in war than in defense of broader values, Atran says. Historical evidence, however, suggests that certain relentless fighters, including Nazi troops during World War II and Viet Cong soldiers in the Vietnam War, were devoted actors inspired by beliefs in a higher cause, he says, adding that the same may have been true for soldiers on both sides of the U.S. Civil War. Sacrificial appeal Atran and his colleagues now have their own cause: describing more fully how some people go from holding extreme beliefs on the sidelines to becoming devoted actors at the front lines of extreme movements.
It would help, says political psychologist Clark McCauley of Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, if researchers could clarify what counts as a sacred value and why some sacred values outweigh others. Identity fusion is also a tricky concept to pin down, McCauley says. Further research needs to determine whether a person who moves a “me” circle inside a circle representing a fighting unit still feels a sense of individuality or totally buys into a collective identity, he suggests.
Only by venturing into war zones can researchers begin to understand the will to fight on all sides, from the perspectives of the fighters themselves, Atran argues. It’s daunting work. He has seen ISIS fighters advancing on an Iraqi army outpost, then detonating their explosive vests in the ultimate show of commitment to their cause. He has spoken to Kurdish veterans missing arms or legs and men who had joined the Kurdish army back in the 1950s, all of them now fighting at the front to defend their homeland.
A young Yazidi fighter told Atran that he used vacation time from college to train for a week with Kurdish Marxists in Syria to defend his Kurdish religious community against the Islamic State. Fighting with a few comrades in August 2014, the student-soldier fended off ISIS attackers long enough for reinforcements to arrive. He helped save thousands of Yazidis from slaughter. The young man then returned to his studies. He wanted to be an archaeologist.
“You learn more in five minutes in the field than in five years of analysis from afar,” Atran says.
Despite careful planning, Atran’s team sometimes gets distressingly close to warring parties while conducting research in Iraq. It’s an unavoidable risk but not a deal breaker for the researchers. “There’s something so compelling,” he says, “about trying to figure out humans in extreme circumstances such as war.” This article appears in the July 9, 2016, issue of Science News under the headline “Deadly devotion: New studies explore why ordinary people turn terrorist.”
Grasses have top-notch border control to conserve water in their leaves. Now, scientists have identified the genetic switch that makes them such masters at taking in carbon dioxide without losing water. The find might eventually help scientists create more drought-resistant crop plants, the researchers report in the March 17 Science.
Adjustable pores called stomata on the undersides of leaves help plants take in CO2 while minimizing water loss. Like pupils responding to sunlight, plants open and close their stomata in response to changing light, humidity and temperature. Grass stomata can open wider and respond more quickly than those in other plants, which helps grasses photosynthesize more efficiently. This ability might help explain why grasses grow successfully in so many places on Earth, says Brent Helliker, a plant ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania who wasn’t part of the new study. For instance, grasses are particularly well equipped to deal with the rapidly changing weather and strong winds that can hit plains and prairies.
In most plant stomata, two kidney bean–shaped cells, one on each side of the pore, swell or deflate like balloons to control the size of the opening. But in grass, each of these cells is shaped like a dumbbell instead. And each dumbbell is linked to two other cells called subsidiary cells. Scientists have long suspected that grasses’ subsidiary cells might give the dumbbells, known as guard cells, an assist by making it easier for them to open and close. But that’s been hard to test in a controlled way. When a stoma opens, “it’s elbowing its way into the neighbor cells,” says study coauthor Dominique Bergmann, a biologist at Stanford University. “If the neighbors don’t want to move, you’re stuck.” But subsidiary cells have some squish. As guard cells inflate, their neighboring subsidiary cells deflate. Bergmann and her colleagues mutated a gene called MUTE in purple false brome (Brachypodium distachyon) so that the grass didn’t make the MUTE protein. Without MUTE, plants didn’t make subsidiary cells. And without the helping hand, the plants were less efficient than usual at opening and closing their stomata.
Grasses aren’t the only plants that have the MUTE gene, Bergmann says. But in other plants, the gene provides instructions to help make guard cells, not subsidiary cells. At some point in grasses’ evolution, the MUTE gene took on a function that differs from the rest of the plant kingdom.
Although the new work confirms that subsidiary cells and guard cells work together to make grass stomata more responsive, more research is still needed to understand exactly how subsidiary cells lend a hand. “It would be really nice to show that there’s actually an exchange of ions between the two cell types,” says Michael Blatt, a plant physiologist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Sharing ions could incentivize water to flow from one cell type to the other, controlling which one is more inflated.
More responsive stomata may have helped grasses survive during periods when Earth’s climate was warm and dry. “Grasses got lucky,” says study coauthor Michael Raissig, also at Stanford. As Earth’s climate continues to change, Raissig says, these genetic innovations might be exploited to help other plants make it through, too.
