The Diplomat of the Future

2012-01-30T20:41:00.003-05:00

RUSSIA AND THE CRISIS IN SYRIA: A COMMENT.

"This week, as the Arab League urged Mr Assad to hand power to a national unity government, Moscow said it would sell Syria 36 fighter jets for $550m. Russia’s staunch support of Mr Assad is driven partly by a determination to avoid a repeat of what happened in Libya, when Moscow abstained from a UN resolution imposing a no-fly zone that contributed to the demise of Muammer Gaddafi, the country’s ruler.

The result was a diplomatic and commercial fiasco for Russia, with the new Libyan government vowing to punish Russian, and Chinese, companies for their government’s support of the former regime.

But the Kremlin said its mistake was not that it backed the wrong horse in Gaddafi – rather that it did not back him hard enough. This time they mean to defend their man.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, who made the decision to abstain in the UN vote on Libya in March, was heavily criticised when Nato warplanes went on the offensive and the operation, originally designed to protect civilians, became “a classic regime change scenario”, according to Fedor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow- based foreign policy journal.

“The decision to abstain is widely seen in Russia as a mistake. No one wants to put themselves in that position again,” he said.

Veto-wielding Russia has quashed any similar attempt to get a UN resolution on Syria, and seems certain to do so again, despite Arab League pressure.

“From the standpoint of strategy, it doesn’t seem to me that military intervention would be a successful step,” Mikhail Margelov, presidential envoy to Africa, who has been the Kremlin’s point man in Middle East diplomacy, told Russian television. “ISyria today needs additional efforts in order to get a dialogue started.”

In an attempt to pre-empt talk of armed intervention, Mr Margelov said the Arab League’s measures were working. “Monitors are a stabilising factor in Syria,” he insisted, despite Tuesday’s withdrawal of monitors from Gulf Co-operation Council nations from the league’s mission to Syria.

Russian analysts also believe the west is naive in allowing itself to be drawn into yet another Arab revolution with unclear consequences. “The Russian side doesn’t buy the argument about a popular uprising,” Mr Lukyanov said. “Instead, the Syrian crisis is seen as a geopolitical battle between the Sunni Arab monarchies and Iran [for whom Syria is an important ally],” he added.

“The western idea to crush every dictatorship and open a Pandora’s box across the Middle East is just madness,” said Sergei Markov, deputy director of the Plekhanov Economic Academy in Moscow and former member of parliament, who accused US and its Nato allies of “deception” in their imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya.

Russia’s decision once again to back what seems like a lost cause may be rooted in its past. Mr Assad is one of Russia’s last allies in the Middle East: Hafez, his father, was a long-time Soviet client and the relationship has been passed down a generation.

“Russia’s presence in the Middle East is a legacy of Soviet times,” Mr Lukyanov said. “We don’t think the Mideast’s new rulers will need Russia, whatever our position was when they came to power. The only chance we have to continue a relationship and to earn dividends from it is if the old regimes stay.”'

Charles Clover, "Moscow's ties with Syria grow Stronger." The Financial Times. 24 January 2012, in www.ft.com

"Seen from the Soviet point of view, the demise of militant Arab nationalism and the decline of goodwill toward the Soviet Union has meant that those regimes which still remain loyal to the Soviet position must be nurtured much more carefully. In the 1950's and 1960's Moscow could afford to make mistakes (and it made many of them), first of all because if it had troubles with one regime it could concentrate on another, and secondly because it was the only source of economic, military and political support for the anti-Western policies almost universally adopted by Arab leaders at that time."

Karen Dawisha, "The U.S.S.R. in the Middle East: Superpower in Eclipse?" Foreign Affairs. (Winter 1982/1983), p. 444.

The grandstanding by the Putin-Medvedev duumvirate over the crisis in Syria is au fond the end result of Moskva's endeavor to remain an 'independent player', id. est., a Great Power in the old sense, in the Near and Middle East. In reality of course, both during the Cold War and certainly at present, the Russian 'jeu' in the region is of the sideshow variety. Per se, Moskva has no real interests to speak of in the region. Even the alleged worth of the Syrian naval base in the Mediterranean is in point of fact questionable, when once considers how weak and second-rate Russia's Black Sea fleet is at present. Sans a first-class naval power projection capability from the Black Sea, then any bases in the Mediterranean sink into the military equivalent of hot air. Which is not to say of course, that there might very well indeed be good reasons to object to American-Nato-Turkish-Sunni Arab military intervention in Syria. Merely that as far as one can make out, the true reason that Russia refuses to pass a Security Council resolution on Syria, has little to do with such reasoning. From a more realistic perspective, Mosvka's positioning, unless it is for purposes of obtaining some type of gage, from someone or other (Saudi Arabia? the United States? Turkey?), makes very little sense. Aside from nostalgia for the Near Eastern diplomacy of Sovietskaya Vlast, Russia has nothing concrete at stake in the Syrian affair. And threats to veto or even vetoing Security Council resolutions will not convince anyone that Moskva is a major actor in the region. It is most certainly not. And as the Dawisha article of almost thirty years ago, shows, even at the height of the Cold War, Russia's Near Eastern position was not all that it seemed to be. As for the future, nor will it be, unless and until Russia's economic and military foundations are strengthened infinitely more than what they are at present. And of course, when Russia's domestic political scene becomes much more stable than what it is at present. Besides these very concrete variables, the duumvirate's diplomatic posturing is nothing more than a very damp squib.

2012-01-18T20:07:00.003-05:00

THE NEW AMERICAN STRATEGIC OUTLOOK: CONTINUITY OR CHANGE?

"The United States has played a leading role in transforming the international system over the past sixty-five years. Working with like-minded nations, the United States has created a safer, more stable, and more prosperous world for the American people, our allies, and our partners around the globe than existed prior to World War II. Over the last decade, we have undertaken extended operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring stability to those countries and secure our interests. As we responsibly draw down from these two operations, take steps to protect our nation’’s economic vitality, and protect our interests in a world of accelerating change, we face an inflection point. This merited an assessment of the U.S. defense strategy in light of the changing geopolitical environment and our changing fiscal circumstances. This assessment reflects the President’’s strategic direction to the Department and was deeply informed by the Department’’s civilian and military leadership, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretaries of the Military Departments, and the Combatant Commanders. Out of the assessment we developed a defense strategy that transitions our Defense enterprise from an emphasis on today’’s wars to preparing for future challenges, protects the broad range of U.S. national security interests, advances the Department’’s efforts to rebalance and reform, and supports the national security imperative of deficit reduction through a lower level of defense spending. This strategic guidance document describes the projected security environment and the key military missions for which the Department of Defense (DoD) will prepare. It is intended as a blueprint for the Joint Force in 2020, providing a set of precepts that will help guide decisions regarding the size and shape of the force over subsequent program and budget cycles, and highlighting some of the strategic risks that may be associated with the proposed strategy.

A Challenging Global Security Environment
The global security environment presents an increasingly complex set of challenges and opportunities to which all elements of U.S. national power must be applied. The demise of Osama bin Laden and the capturing or killing of many other senior al-Qa’’ida leaders have rendered the group far less capable. However, al-Qa’’ida and its affiliates remain active in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. More broadly, violent extremists will continue to threaten U.S. interests, allies, partners, and the homeland. The primary loci of these threats are South Asia and the Middle East. With the diffusion of destructive technology, these extremists have the potential to pose catastrophic threats that could directly affect our security and prosperity. For the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to take an active approach to countering these threats by monitoring the activities of non-state threats worldwide, working with allies and partners to establish control over ungoverned territories, and directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary.

U.S. economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. Our relationships with Asian allies and key partners are critical to the future stability and growth of the region. We will emphasize our existing alliances, which provide a vital foundation for Asia-Pacific security. We will also expand our networks of cooperation with emerging partners throughout the Asia-Pacific to ensure collective capability and capacity for securing common interests. The United States is also investing in a long-term strategic partnership with India to support its ability to serve as a regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region. Furthermore, we will maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula by effectively working with allies and other regional states to deter and defend against provocation from North Korea, which is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The maintenance of peace, stability, the free flow of commerce, and of U.S. influence in this dynamic region will depend in part on an underlying balance of military capability and presence. Over the long term, China’’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the U.S. economy and our security in a variety of ways. Our two countries have a strong stake in peace and stability in East Asia and an interest in building a cooperative bilateral relationship. However, the growth of China’’s military power must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region. The United States will continue to make the necessary investments to ensure that we maintain regional access and the ability to operate freely in keeping with our treaty obligations and with international law. Working closely with our network of allies and partners, we will continue to promote a rules-based international order that ensures underlying stability and encourages the peaceful rise of new powers, economic dynamism, and constructive defense cooperation.

In the Middle East, the Arab Awakening presents both strategic opportunities and challenges. Regime changes, as well as tensions within and among states under pressure to reform, introduce uncertainty for the future. But they also may result in governments that, over the long term, are more responsive to the legitimate aspirations of their people, and are more stable and reliable partners of the United States. Our defense efforts in the Middle East will be aimed at countering violent extremists and destabilizing threats, as well as upholding our commitment to allies and partner states".

United States Department of Defence. "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21st century." The Council of Foreign Relations. 5 January 2012, in www.cfr.org.

"At the end of the day, less money results in less capability. And less capability is something we cannot afford at a time when we face a rising China, a nuclear North Korea, an Iran on the verge of going nuclear, a Pakistan threatened as never before by jihadists, and numerous terrorist groups, ranging from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to the Shabab in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. These groups threaten not only vital U.S. interests abroad but also increasingly the American homeland itself, as evidenced by AQAP's attempt to mail parcel bombs to the U.S. and by the Pakistani Taliban's sponsorship of an attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

China presents a particularly worrisome long-term problem. It is in the midst of a rapid defense buildup which has allowed it to field a stealth fighter, an aircraft carrier, diesel submarines, cyberweapons, "carrier-killer" and satellite-killer ballistic missiles, and numerous other missiles. Even as things stand, China is increasingly able to contest the U.S. Navy's freedom of movement in the Western Pacific. As long ago as 2008, Rand predicted that by 2020 the U.S. would not be able to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, and that was before the surprise unveiling of China's J-20 Stealth fighter or its new aircraft carrier. The timeline for American dominance being threatened is shortening. The safety of U.S. bases in Okinawa, Guam, and elsewhere in the region can no longer be assured, creating the potential for a 21st-century Pearl Harbor. That trend will be exacerbated—leading to a potentially dangerous shift in the balance of power—unless we build up our shrinking fleet. But given the budget cuts being discussed, we will have trouble maintaining the current size of our fleet, much less expanding it.

We have already cancelled the F-22 and cut back the procurement of the F-35. Is the F-35 to be cancelled altogether or cut back to such an extent that we will have no answer to the fifth-generation fighters emanating from Russia and China? If that were to come to pass, it would signal the death knell for American power in the Pacific. If our power wanes, our allies will have to do what they need to do to ensure their own security. It's easy to imagine, under such a scenario, states such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan acquiring their own nuclear weapons, thus setting off a dangerous and destabilizing nuclear arms race with China.

Even given the dire consequences, it might still make sense to cut the defense budget—if it were bankrupting us and undermining our economic well-being, which is the foundation of our national security. But that's not the case. Defense spending, including supplemental appropriations, is less than 5 percent of gross domestic product and less than 20 percent of the federal budget. Both figures are lower than the historic norm. That means our armed forces are much less costly in relative terms than they were throughout much of the 20th century. Even at roughly $550 billion, our core defense budget is eminently affordable. It is, in fact, a bargain, considering the historic consequences of letting our guard down.

The United States' armed forces have been the greatest force for good the world has seen during the past century. They defeated Nazism and Japanese imperialism, deterred and defeated Communism, and stopped numerous lesser evils—from Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing to the oppression perpetrated by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Imagine a world in which America is not the leading military power. It would be a brutal, Hobbesian place in which aggressors rule and the rule of law is trampled on. And yet Congress will be helping to usher in such a New World Disorder if it continues to slash defense spending at the currently contemplated rate—just as previous Congresses did with previous rounds of "postwar" budget cuts going back to the dawn of the Republic.

But there is nothing inevitable about the outcome. The first tranche of sequestration cuts is not scheduled to take effect until the 2013 fiscal year. That means Congress has most of 2012 to find an alternative. Unfortunately, President Obama has threatened to veto any bill that tries to exempt the defense budget from sequestration. But that should not prevent pro-defense Democrats and Republicans from pushing such a bill anyway. If even one year of sequestration were to occur, major weapons systems (which will be costly and difficult to restart) might be cancelled—and great numbers of veterans (whose experience would be lost forever) might be layed off.

In the long run, the question of whether or not—and to what extent—we will cut defense will be decided in the 2012 elections. Obama appears sanguine about the impact of defense cuts, but his Republican challengers are not. Mitt Romney has promised to protect the defense budget and expand naval shipbuilding. Rick Perry has called on Leon Panetta to resign rather than accept massive cuts. Even Newt Gingrich, who has been critical of wasteful Pentagon spending, has said that sequestration would be "totally destructive" and "very dangerous to the survival of the country."

It is commonly said that every election is a turning point in our history. In many cases that's nothing more than partisan hype. In the case of the 2012 election, it's true: The future of the U.S. armed forces, and of American power in general, could depend greatly on the outcome".

Max Boot, "Slashing America's Defence: a suicidal trajectory." The Council on Foreign Relations. (January 2012), in www.cfr.org.

The American Department of Defence new strategic blueprint has raised the hackles of some commentators of the Max Boot variety (see above). As per them, the proposed reductions in the American Defence Department spending plans for the next ten years, with its changed emphasis on the Pacific-Orient theatre, will entail a drastic reduction in American military strength overseas. And with the same a drastic reduction in the United States ability to intervene actively overseas as well as to properly project Pax Americana. From a neutral perspective how accurate is this assessment? From what I am able to judge, the reductions in American military forces will primarily come at the expense of the Army (reduced from approximately 569,000 to 450,00) and the Marines (reduced from 200,000 to 175,000). Reductions of over twenty percent for one and over ten percent for the other. Such figures while they seem to be quite high, are as Mr. Boot himself admits, are quite well within the range of troop reductions in the aftermath of past wars. particularly as they relate to the Army 1. And indeed, based upon total numbers, the size of the Army will be roughly what it was circa 1999, not exactly a year when American forces could be said to be dangerously ill-manned or reduced in size. Looking at matters from a historical perspective, the strategic outlook of the current American Administration, is (as I have noted in this journal in the past) very similar indeed to those of past American Administrations, such as Eisenhower's and Nixon's, where in a post-bellum atmosphere, force reduction and a greater reliance (whether real or imagined is a different issue) on allies in different areas of the world was the goal. The thinking of the current American Administration, once one strips away the rhetoric of novelty (which all American Administrations feel some need to proclaim for reasons of publicity) is nothing so much as those of Eisenhower's 'New Look' and Nixon's 'Doctrine' 2. As the past master of American foreign relations historians of the second half of the twentieth century, John Lewis Gaddis, noted in his magnum opus, Strategies of Containment:

"Triangular politics had made possible progress toward John Foster Dulles's old goal of maximum deterrence at minimum cost-not by threatening escalation, though, but through the simple approach, made feasible by the triumph of geopolitics over ideology, of reducing the number of adversaries to be deterred. This reduction in adversaries, in turn made possible a fourth key element in the Nixon-Kissinger strategy: a phasing down of American commitments in the world, formally expressed in what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine...Kissinger later further generalized the doctrine into an assertion 'that the United States will participate in the defence and development of allies and friends, but that America cannot--and--will not--conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions and undertake all the defence of the free nations of the world'. The United States would give first priority to its own interests: 'our interests must shape our commitments, rather than the other way around'" 3.

And while the emergence of Red China as a potential military rival in the Pacific-Orient theatre, can be said to be a (to use a vernacular expression) 'game changer', I for one, while recognizing that the PRC is indeed, a potential Great Power rival in the Pacific, do not feel that at present possesses anything close to the military power or reach that say Sovietskaya Vlast possessed for most of the Cold War 3. Indeed, insofar as the reductions planned in the American military budget are intended to shore-up American governmental finances, then they are indeed warranted. One may merely note that per se, such reductions will not by themselves cure the American patient of the various illnesses that he suffers from at present. However that calls for an altogether different post.

1. Max Boot. "Overspending the Peace Dividend." The Los Angeles Times. 10 January 2012, in www.latimes.com; Peter Orszag, "Pentagon Fires at Budget Targets that cannot be hit." Bloomberg. 10 January 2012, in www.bloomberg.com.

2. John Lewis Gaddis. Strategies of Containment: A critical appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War. Revised and Expanded Edition. (2005), pp. 130-45, 293-296, et. passim.

3. See for this point, recently reiterated with good effect: Philip Stephens, "How American Could go it Alone." The Financial Times. 13 January 2012, in www.ft.com. For a different point of view of this important topic, in an important new book, to be reviewed in this space, see: Aaron L. Friedberg. A contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the struggle for mastery in Asia. (2011).

2012-01-12T20:06:00.007-05:00

THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE KILLING OF PERSIAN SCIENTISTS

"TEHRAN, Jan 12 (Reuters) - An Iranian nuclear scientist was blown up in his car by a motorbike hitman, prompting Tehran to blame Israeli and U.S. agents but insist the killing would not derail a nuclear programme that has raised fears of war and threatened world oil supplies. The fifth daylight attack on technical experts in two years, the magnetic bomb delivered a targeted blast to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car during Wednesday's morning rush-hour. The chemical engineer's driver also died, Iranian media said, and a passer-by was slightly hurt.

Israel, whose military chief said on Tuesday that Iran could expect to suffer more mysterious mishaps, declined comment. The White House, struggling for Chinese and Russian help on economic sanctions, denied any U.S. role and condemned the attack. While Israeli or Western involvement seemed eminently plausible to independent analysts, a role for local Iranian factions or other regional interests engaged in a deadly shadow war of bluff and sabotage could not be ruled out.

The killing, which left debris hanging in trees and body parts on the road, came in a week of heightened tension:

Iran has started an underground uranium enrichment plant and sentenced an American to death for spying; Washington and Europe have stepped up efforts to cripple Iran's oil exports for its refusal to halt work that the West says betrays an ambition to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful. Tehran has threatened to choke the West's supply of Gulf oil if its exports are hit by sanctions, drawing a U.S. warning that its navy was ready to open fire to prevent any blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 35 percent of the world's seaborne traded oil passes.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Iran's threats to close the strait were "provocative and dangerous" and repeated the White House denial of any U.S. involvement in the killing of Ahmadi-Roshan....

Analysts saw the latest assassination, which would have taken no little expertise, as less a reaction to recent events than part of a longer-running, covert effort to thwart Iran's nuclear development programme that has also included suspected computer viruses and mystery explosions. While fears of war have forced up oil prices, the region has seen periods of sabre-rattling and limited bloodshed before without reaching all-out conflict. But a willingness in Israel, which sees an imminent Iranian atom bomb as a threat to its existence, to attack Iranian nuclear sites, with or without U.S. backing, has heightened the sense that a crisis is coming....

In Washington, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said: "The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this ... We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like what is being reported today."

Israel, which has a history of covert killings abroad, declined comment, though army spokesman Yoav Mordechai wrote on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding any tears."'.

Ramin Mostafavi & Parisa Hafezi, "Iran [Persia] says nuclear scientist killed in car bombing." Reuters. 11 January 2011, in www.reuters.com.

'“I think the assassination of an Iranian citizen is a blatant act of terrorism perpetuated by experts in targeted assassinations, and it has to be categorically denounced,” Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University told The Daily Beast. “These scientists are national treasures. This is an egregious act of violation of many different rights, to infiltrate into a sovereign state and to assassinate its citizens.”

“The United Nations has to intervene. Any civilized country has to intervene. And the [Israelis] claim to be the only democracy in the region?! That’s insane!,” he added....

“I don’t believe a program on such a large scale as Iran’s nuclear program is eliminated or slowed down as a result of the elimination of some individuals,” Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the former Tehran mayor and a close ally of reformist leader Mehdi Karroubi, told The Daily Beast. “It does have a psychological effect, but it will not have an impact in the nuclear program itself. Its psychological effect is not favorable, either, as people hate the perpetrators.”

Omid Memarian, "Why are Iran assassination backfiring, aiding nuclear program". The Daily Beast. 13 January 2012, in www.dailybeast.com.

The assassination of another Persian nuclear scientist on Wednesday past, has brought forth a torrent of claims and counter-claims concerning the legitimacy or not of such activities by a sovereign state which claims to be a legitimate member of the international community of nations. There are arguments, indeed good arguments on both sides of the issue. And while there are seemingly cogent reasons advanced to gainsay this alleged operation (Israeli more likelier than not), those which argue in its favor to my mind appear to have the upper hand. First, there appears to be very little legitimacy to the argument that the operations are hurting or making more difficult the position of the internal Persian opposition. As a well-argued piece in the American bi-monthly Foreign Affairs has noted, there is in effect 'no opposition' to the regime of Mullahs. The opposition such as it existed circa 2009 has in effect disappeared into thin air. As things presently stand, while the regime of Mullahs are hardly popular, there does not appear to be any signs that it will be overthrown in any time in the near future 1. Similarly, the argument that the assassination policy is either immoral or ineffective is also of questionable merit. Viz: as any well-informed historian of international affairs well knows, the assassination policy has a long prior history. From the Romans in antiquity to British attempts circa 1799-1800 to assassinate Bonaparte, such violent coercive 'diplomacy' has been very much par for the course in inter-state interaction 2. As per the argument that the policy is 'ineffective', the answer to that caveat is simply: what is the alternative? Certainly the policy as such is better than endeavoring to launch missile strikes on Persia. Or even a complete naval blockade. So far it would appear that the policy, along with more complex endeavors to slow-down or halt the Persian programme, has indeed had some positive effect. And while not completely successful has indeed retarded the Persian effort. So much so, that the date for Persia to acquire a nuclear capability is still uncertain and no one seems to predict that it will be during the current or next anno domini. At present this 'delaying operation' appears to be the very best that can be expected of Western policy, in addition to the application of oil sanctions. Hopefully, the combination of the two, will suffice to bring the regime of Mullahs to heel.

1. Hooman Majid, "Christmas is no time for an Iranian Revolution. Foreign Affairs. 11 January 2012, in www.foreignaffairs.com.

2. For the historical examples outlined here, see: Elizabeth Sparrow, "The Alien Office, 1792-1806." The Historical Journal. (December 1993), pp. 360-384; John Erhman. The Younger Pitt: the consuming struggle. (1996), pp. 470-471. In addition, see: A. D. Lee, "Abductions and Assassinations: the Clandestine face of Roman Diplomacy in Late Antiquity." The International History Review. (March 2009), pp. 1-23.

2012-01-10T20:23:00.003-05:00

THE STORM OVER HUNGARY: A COMMENT

"As friends of Hungary, we expressed our concerns and particularly called for a real commitment to the independence of the judiciary, a free press, and governmental transparency[1], because it’s important not only for Hungarians that this great democratic journey that our two countries are on – we for somewhat longer than you – but certainly sharing that commitment that we continue to exemplify democratic values and freedoms, first and foremost for the benefit of our own people and for the transatlantic alliance, but also as examples for those who are struggling to define their own democracies now in the Middle East and North Africa....

With respect to Hungary, the prime minister and I discussed every issue that you have raised – the constitutional court, the media law, just the whole gamut of concerns. And obviously, we consider Hungary a close friend, a strong NATO ally. We greatly respect Hungary’s commitment to freedom, the fact that the prime minister has fought for freedom his entire adult life, and we had a candid conversation today. We have encouraged our Hungarian friends to ensure a broad, inclusive constitution that is consistent with its own democratic values and the European values as well. And I underscored the importance, in any government, to enshrine checks and balances. Certainly, we believe in the United States that transparency and checks and balances are absolutely crucial.

And I think throughout the process of implementing the constitution and the accompanying cardinal laws, it is important, and certainly the prime minister made that very clear to me, that he is committed to ensuring that Hungary is very true to its democratic traditions, to protect individual liberties, maintain freedom of the press and the judiciary, and ensure checks and balances. So we had, as I said and as the prime minister has said, a very wide-ranging, comprehensive, productive discussion".

American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Remarks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban." 30th June 2010, in www.state.gov.

"Question: Last year took some very unusual turns as far as the contacts between the United States and our country are concerned. First, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State came to Hungary and she raised some criticism. And then you published some articles where you were very polite, but you also raised some criticism in terms of the operation of the Hungarian government. Then in October came this demarche, as far as I know, oral diplomatic note, and finally, on December 23 Mrs. Hillary Clinton sent another letter which according to some sources even harsher. So, now, how optimistic are you, is the Hungarian government listening to all these pieces of criticism?

Ambassador Kounalakis: Well you certainly laid out the course of events and the progression but I would really like to stress is that in all of these communications that we have been having with the Hungarian government the United States is engaging as a friend. We are not here to tell the Hungarian government which laws to pass, we are not here to determine what the policy should be. But as a friend, and as a country with a long history and reputation of promoting strong democracies, we have had some concerns. And yes over the course of this last year or so we have been consistently raising those concerns with the government.

Question: In your observation, is the government listening?

Ambassador Kounalakis: I can tell you that we felt our engagement was very open; the doors were always open to us. It really did appear as though we were getting our concerns through in a very constructive way. So, I can tell you quite sincerely that we were really surprised at the end of the year when several of the really key laws were moved forward in such a way that appeared not at all to have addressed our concerns. And again, we were promoting these things as a friend, but they were very serious concerns. We‘ve recognized from the beginning that the government came into office with a mandate for change, with a very rigorous agenda for reform in this country and we really respect that. In fact, we’ve taken every opportunity to be helpful as the government has attempted to reform many of the institutions that we agreed could use some reform. But at the same time, attention to the democratic institutions at the core of Hungary’s democracy, well, that’s something that we watch very carefully, we’re very concerned and we’re very interested in. So, as we presented our concerns, they were fairly narrow, we only brought up issues that tipped over the top into this area of Hungary’s democratic institutions and checks and balances. And we thought that there would be a very serious consideration of that and that they would be addressed. So the fact that we got to December and frankly, the concerns really were not addressed at all, is very, very disappointing for us.

Question: Of course we are democratic countries and we have limited means in terms of interfering; we don’t want to interfere in each other’s businesses and it’s obvious that the United States doesn’t want to do it either. But according to some Hungarian media sources, the State Department is so dissatisfied with the Hungarian government that they want to pressure Hungary and the Hungarian government to eliminate the current government and to have a government of experts.

Ambassador Kounalakis: I saw this morning on the Internet that there was a report suggesting that that was somehow U.S. foreign policy. But I can tell you absolutely clearly that is not U.S. foreign policy, that is not our position and those reports are untrue".

American Ambassador Kounalakis. "Ambassador Kounalakis interview with Ildiko Eperjesi, ATV." 6 January 2012, in www.state.gov.

In recent weeks, all of the usual bien-pensant voices on both sides of the Atlantic have been raising the alarm about the actions of the Magyar government of Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. With the rumor mill in Brussels stating that there is an outside possibility of the government in Budapest being officially rebuked or even losing its voting powers in the European Union 1. As per that epitome of bien-pensant logic, Mr. Philip Stephens of the Financial Times, the Orban government is nothing more than a Magyar version of the Putin regime in Moskva:

"This week saw the introduction of Mr Orban’s new constitution. Suffused with ethnic nationalism, it reeks of an ambition for one-party rule. It promises repression of personal freedoms within Hungary and, through an extension of citizenship to Hungarian minorities elsewhere, threatens instability in ethnically-diverse neighbours....The authority of the courts has been limited and the judiciary subjected to closer political supervision. The constitution asserts state control over personal conscience and faith. Abortion and same-sex marriages are outlawed and recognised religions limited. Paradoxically for a politician so visceral in his hostility to post-Soviet Russia, Mr Orban’s version of democracy is one that would surely win plaudits from Vladimir Putin. Much as in Mr Putin’s Russia, the rule of law is subordinated to the entrenchment of one-party rule. As in Russia, Hungarians can still vote; citizens can protest and privately owned media can criticise Mr Orban. But this is faux democracy. State institutions, the courts and the national broadcaster are firmly in Fidesz hands" 2.

Given all the outcry what is in fact the validity of the all this criticism of the new Hungarian constitution? From what can be ascertained in the English language press, it would appear that in point of fact, while certain aspects of the new Hungarian constitution can indeed be criticized (in particular those aspects dealing with certain clauses in the press law), much of the criticism is vastly overdone and indeed has a very clear partis pris aspect to it. To take a few examples: i) the articles dealing with the 'independence of the judiciary'. As per the constitution, judges are to be chosen by a monitor who will be appointed by the current ruling party. For those with a certain degree of memory: how does this differ, if at all, from the British 'unwritten' constitution, circa 1997, when a Cabinet Minister (the Lord Chancellor) not only participated in choosing judges but was also the de jure head of the judiciary? Was the United Kingdom circa 1997 deemed to be 'undemocratic'? ii) a similar objection can be raised to the issue of the 'independence' of the Central Bank. No doubt there are many good reasons for Central Bank independence. No doubt there are many good reasons for Central Bank non-independence. The name of Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht immediately comes to mind. As does the fact that the 'independence' of the Bank of England after 1997 has hardly given evidence by virtue of its subsequent performance that 'independence' per se is any harbinger of a better running of an economy than otherwise. The fact that the European Union's Central Bank is independent has not proven to be a greatly positive factor in its performance during the financial crisis of 2008 to present (to put it mildly). And to repeat the above referenced question again in a different key: was the non-independence of the Bank of England, circa 1995, evidence of the fact that the United Kingdom was 'undemocratic'? iii) legislation as per abortion, same-sex unions, and legislation towards 'odd', non-Christian sects (the so-called 'Church of Scientology', et cetera), are on the whole well in keeping perceived 'norms' of West European governance, circa 1970. These are more issues of morality rather than democracy or non-democracy. So-called 'Gay Parades', have been banned in various places in Central and Eastern Europe in the past few years: Warsaw, Moskva, et cetera. If one were to seriously use this criterion as a measuring stick to assess whether or not countries x, y, and z are or are not 'Democratic' than by definition all the countries in the West were, circa 1965 / 1970 'non-democratic'. Which by definition is non-sense and rubbish. The very ne plus ultra of bien-pensant idiocy. In short, while a few of the criticism of the new Hungarian constitution are with merit, most are without. This is very much a case, where it is the critics, rather than the object of criticism which stands under a cloud to mind way of thinking. The fact that the egregious American Secretary of State and its dim-witted (and completely unqualified) Ambassador have chosen to beat the drum on a completely extraneous and unimportant issue, speaks volumes about how impregnated is bien-pensant ideology in the foreign ministries of the West.

1. Peter Spiegel, "Can Hungary Avoid a Rebuke? A leaked letter makes the case. The Financial Times. 10 January 2012, in www.ft.com.

2. Philip Stephens. "A Hungarian Coup worthy of Putin." The Financial Times. 5 January 2012, in www.ft.com. Given the rumors running around in Budapest that the American State Department is endeavoring to unseat the current Cabinet in Hungary, the title of Stephen's article reads ironically indeed. For the rumors, see the above referenced interview with the American Ambassador in Budapest.

2012-01-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

PERSIAN SABER RATTLING OVER THE GULF: A COMMENT

"His remarks came a day after Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Iran’s first vice-president, warned that the country would not allow “even one drop of oil” to flow through the strait should the west impose oil sanctions on Tehran. Mr Rahimi’s comments caused a brief rise in the price of oil on Tuesday.

Washington yesterday warned Iran against any interruption to traffic through the waterway. “The free flow of goods and services through the Strait of Hormuz is vital to regional and global prosperity,” said Commander Amy Derrick Frost, a spokeswoman for the Bahrain-based US Navy Fifth Fleet.

“Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations. Any disruption will not be tolerated.”

Some 13 to 15 supertankers pass through the strait every day, most of them heading towards Japan, South Korea, India and China. The US Navy patrols the waterway and analysts believe Iran would not be able to shut it down.

Tehran began a 10-day naval exercise on Saturday in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, in a clear warning of the disruption the Islamic regime could cause to the world economy.

Iranian analysts believe the recent threats are an attempt by Tehran to prevent the European Union from extending sanctions to oil sales and the country’s central bank. France, Germany and the UK are pushing for an embargo on Iranian oil exports to Europe, although several countries, including Greece, have reservations. EU foreign ministers are due to discuss the embargo on January 30.

An Iranian reformist foreign policy website, irdiplomacy, said the exercises were a reminder that Iran’s army and elite Revolutionary Guards were capable of “cutting off the lifeline of the Arabs and the west'".

Monavar Khalaj & Najmeh Bozorgmehr, "Iran naval chief adds to Straits Tension." The Financial Times. 28 December 2011, in www.ft.com.

"There is nothing new about Iran’s threat to close the Gulf, but it does need to be put in context. Iran is reshaping its military forces to steadily increase the threat to Gulf shipping and shipping in the Gulf of Oman, It also is gradually increasing its ability to operate in the Indian Ocean.

This increase in Iranian capability is almost certainly not designed to take the form of a major war with the US and Southern Gulf states, which could result from any Iranian effort to truly close the Gulf. It does, however, give Iran the ability to carry out a wide range of much lower level attacks which could sharply raise the risk to Gulf shipping, and either reduce tanker traffic and shipping or sharply raise the insurance cost of such ship movements and put a different kind of pressure on the other Gulf states and world oil prices.

Any such Iranian actions do not have to be tied in any way to predictable attacks at or near the Strait of Hormuz. They could occur anywhere in the Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman. Iran could deny many such forms of attack, claim rogue operations or that they were provoked by US or other Gulf country actions, or keep the level of such attacks so low that it would be difficult to respond with high levels of force and Iran could keep exporting its own oil.

Moreover, Iran’s growing long-range missile forces, and movement towards a nuclear weapons capability will give it an increasing capability to compensate for its aging and low capability regular naval and air forces with a far more threatening level of deterrence.

It is also important to note that the current flow of oil and gas exports through the Gulf is critical to the global economy, as well as that of a US that must pay rising world oil prices in a crisis. The US Department of Energy projects that this global strategic dependence on the secure and steady flow of Gulf energy exports will increase steadily through 2035 – as far in the future as the Department makes projections.

Equally important, the same US Department of Energy projections make it clear that the US will not achieve any meaningful improvement in energy independence through 2025, although it will make limited reductions in total imports and increases its own conventional and unconventional liquids production....

In 2011, total world oil production amounted to approximately 88 million barrels per day (bbl/d), and over one-half was moved by tankers on fixed maritime routes. By volume of oil transit, the Strait of Hormuz leading out of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Malacca linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans are two of the world's most strategic chokepoints.

The international energy market is dependent upon reliable transport. The blockage of a chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs. In addition, chokepoints leave oil tankers vulnerable to theft from pirates, terrorist attacks, and political unrest in the form of wars or hostilities as well as shipping accidents which can lead to disastrous oil spills.

n average, 14 crude oil tankers per day passed through the Strait in 2011, with a corresponding amount of empty tankers entering to pick up new cargos. More than 85 percent of these crude oil exports went to Asian markets, with Japan, India, South Korea, and China representing the largest destinations.

At its narrowest point, the Strait is 21 miles wide, but the width of the shipping lane in either direction is only two miles, separated by a two-mile buffer zone. The Strait is deep and wide enough to handle the world's largest crude oil tankers, with about two-thirds of oil shipments carried by tankers in excess of 150,000 deadweight tons.

Closure of the Strait of Hormuz would require the use of longer alternate routes at increased transportation costs. Alternate routes include the 745 mile long Petroline, also known as the East-West Pipeline, across Saudi Arabia from Abqaiq to the Red Sea. The East-West Pipeline has a nameplate capacity of about 5 million bbl/d. The Abqaiq-Yanbu natural gas liquids pipeline, which runs parallel to the Petroline to the Red Sea, has a 290,000-bbl/d capacity. Additional oil could also be pumped north via the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea, but volumes have been limited by the closure of the Strategic pipeline linking north and south Iraq".

Anthony Cordesman, "Iran and the threat to 'close' the Gulf," Center for Strategic and International Studies.. 30 December 2011, in www.csis.com.

The Persian scare tactics of the last few weeks over threatening to close the Persian Gulf have manifestly failed. As it seems increasingly clear that both the Americans and the European Union will indeed place more economic sanctions upon the regime of Mullahs in Tehran 1. Which is not to deny, pace Anthony Cordesman's analysis that the Persians could indeed make things very difficult indeed for the Americans, et. al., if they endeavored to try to close the straits. Merely as has been proved in the past, `a la the Iran-Iraq War from 1987-1988, a determined American effort will by its very nature stop the regime in Tehran in its tracks in terms of endeavoring to stop traffic in the Gulf 2. What is needed is a firm, direct and loudly proclaimed policy that the West will not under any circumstances stand for any closure of the Persian Gulf by the regime in Persia. So far the American administration appears to be following this line. Unlike some commentators (Ray Takyh being the chief of these), I am of the opinion that the regime in Persia is in military and strategic terms a 'paper tiger' pur et simple 2. If the West takes and keeps to a tough line, the regime of Mullahs in Tehran will bluster but do nothing. As the ever wise, Mr. Max Boot has commented recently in the American broadsheet the Wall Street Journal:

"Closing the strait is not nearly as easy as Adm. Habibollah Sayari, commander of the Iranian Navy, would have it. He said that closing the strait is "as easy as drinking a glass of water." Actually it would be about as easy as drinking an entire bucket of water in one gulp" 3.

1. James Blitz & Guy Dinmore, "Italy urges gradual Iran [Persia] oil ban." The Financial Times. 6 January 2012, in www.ft.com; Tentative agreement: EU moves forward on Iran oil embargo." Der Spiegel.
5 January 2012, in www.spiegel.de.

2. For the 1987-1988 American policy, see: Max Boot & Bradley Russell, "Iran won't close the strait of Hormuz." The Wall Street Journal. 4 January 2012, in www.wallstreetjournal.com. On Ray Takeyh, "The Self-limiting Success of Iran [Persian] Sanctions." The Council on Foreign Relations. November 2011, in www.cfr.org.

3. Ibid.

2011-12-29T18:46:00.005-05:00

THE END-GAME IN SYRIA? A COMMENT

"One needs to look at it from a variety of different perspectives. First, if you look at it just from what I could describe as the Arab Awakening, what you're seeing is a leader [Bashar al-Assad] who, in the face of his people's peaceful desire for change, decided that the right answer was to engage in a kind of "killing machine," to quote the Saudi king. What you're seeing is someone who is resisting change and is prepared to use all the means at his disposal to kill his own citizens to resist that change. It is a measure of how this region has changed that the Arab League voted for sanctions.

Did the Arab League sanctions surprise you?

Although that is something that would have been literally unthinkable even a year ago, it's another reminder of the realities of the region. It was impossible for those in the Arab League to look like they would do nothing in the face of a regime killing its citizens the way the Syrian regime was doing. The first point is to put it in the context of the Arab Awakening, both in terms of what it says about a regime trying to hold on, but also what it says about others in the region who realize that you can't simply be passive in the face of that....

When the Assad regime goes--and it seems almost inevitable that it will go--it is going to be a major loss for Iran. The Saudis and others in the Gulf Cooperation Council see it through that lens.

Do we have any idea who would succeed Assad?

This is a regime that is entirely dependent on coercion, and the coercion is failing and when a regime is entirely dependent on coercion that is not succeeding, you know that that's a regime that's not going to be around for an extended period. I would say in answer to your question on succession, if you look at the Syrian National Council (SNC), if you look at local coordination committees, you know they represent a cross section of Syria.

One interesting thing about the opposition is that it's not sectarian. The Assad regime is trying to create the impression that it's the opposition that's sectarian and the reality is that it's the regime itself that is sharpening the sectarian divide and is increasingly responsible for the sectarian conflict.

When there were the first demonstrations in Syria in Daraa in March, many experts in the region thought Assad would make some reforms and that would quiet things down. Why did he become so hard line?

One of the great paradoxes is that he had presented himself to be avant garde, a reformer, a modern person, and he had convinced many that that was his persona and identity. Had that actually been the case, he would have actually been given the benefit of the doubt by the Syrian public.

In the very beginning, because he had cultivated an image of being modern and he had created the impression that he was opening up Syria, had he actually made reforms and acted on them and shown that he was truly determined to modernize Syria, both politically and economically, he could have succeeded. You asked the question why the crackdown. At the end of the day, the image he'd created about being a modernizer was purely an image and didn't reflect reality".

Dennis Ross interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman. "Why Syria's Regime is Doomed?" The Council on Foreign Relations. 21 December 2011, in www.cfr.org.

"Assad depends on the backing of key members of the Alawite clan, a quasi-Shiite group consisting of between 12 and 15 percent of Syria's mostly Sunni population. The Alawites make up 70 percent of Syria's career military, 80 percent of the officers, and nearly 100 percent of the elite Republican Guard and the 4th Armored Division, led by the president's brother Maher. In a survey of country experts we conducted in 2007, we found that Assad's key backers -- those without whose support he would have to leave power -- consisted of only about 3,600 members out of a population of about 23 million. That is less than 0.02 percent. Assad is not alone in his dependence on a small coalition. Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's coalition is even smaller. His essential supporters include the Revolutionary Guard's leadership, the economically essential bonyad conglomerates, key clerics, and a smattering of business interests, totaling, according to our survey of Iran experts, about 2,000 in a population of well over 70 million.

Any political system that depends on such a small percentage of the population to sustain a leader in power is destined to be a corrupt, rent-seeking regime in which loyalty is purchased through bribery and privilege. Syria possesses these traits in spades. Transparency International reports in its latest evaluation that Syria ranks in the top third of the world for corruption. So, when Assad says it is not his government, he is right. If he betrays the interests of his closest Alawite allies, for instance by implementing reforms that will dilute their share of the spoils, they will probably murder him before any protesters can topple his regime. Of course, the uprising or international intervention might eventually end his rule. But those possibilities remain potential. Should the loyalty of his 3,600 supporters falter and they stop working to neutralize protest, Assad will be gone immediately. Captive to the needs of his coalition, he ignores the welfare of the 23 million average Syrians and shuns world opinion....

And with the Arab League endorsing stiff economic sanctions, Assad's regime now risks steep economic decline. With Syrians facing a society in which the rewards go to so few and confronted with the example of the uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, it is little wonder that the people have rebelled. It is equally unsurprising that the privileged few have responded brutally to preserve their advantages.

There are two effective responses to a mass uprising (other than stepping down, of course, which leaders almost never do until all other options have been exhausted): liberalize to redress the people's grievances or crack down to make their odds of success too small for them to carry on. Leaders who lack the financial wherewithal to continue paying off cronies often choose to liberalize. (Remember South Africa's F.W. de Klerk, who negotiated a government transition with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress when economic decline made the apartheid system unsustainable.) Those who can muster the money to sustain crony loyalty do so. This is why the rich oil states to Syria's south have resisted reform and why, despite its popular uprising, Libya will not become democratic. Here is another case where Assad's statement that it is not his country is true, but only partially. As president, he could liberalize to buy off those rebelling, but his key backers will almost certainly not allow him to do so as long as there is enough money to keep paying foot soldiers to crack heads. With Syria's oil wealth in decline and with stiff economic sanctions, the regime's two choices are to liberalize or to find new sources of money. They have succeeded in the latter pursuit.

Reuters reported on July 15 that Iran and Iraq offered Assad's regime $5 billion in aid, with $1.5 billion paid immediately. The $5 billion is equal to about 40 percent of Syrian government revenue. Since the announcement of Arab League sanctions, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela have signed agreements to expand trade and investment in Syria to the tune of more than $7 billion in 2012, including building an oil refinery. That is just what Assad's political-survival doctor ordered. This injection of cash in the short term is likely to keep the military and security forces on his side. The military core of his coalition is likely to do whatever it takes to keep the president in power as long as that money keeps on flowing. That is the essential synergy of all leader-coalition arrangements".

Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, "Assessing Assad: the Syrian leader isn't crazy. He just doing whatever it takes to survive." Foreign Policy. 20 December 2011, in www.foreignpolicy.com.

The two above differing assessments of the current situation in Syria raises the acute question as to the the likelihood of the survival of the Assad Regime. For the most part it is not so much differing data which results in the differing assessments of the future trends in Syria so much as the differing views of the weight to be given to certain pieces of data. Dennis Ross the ultra-intelligent, veteran State Department & NSC official places it seems to me greater weight to the regional dynamics and opinion as well as the fact that per se Assad has not totally crushed the opposition to his regime. That notwithstanding the five thousand, mostly civilian and opposition deaths, there are still ongoing demonstrations and even armed attacks on the regimes forces. What I would say that Ross is missing is that the sine qua non of the fall of the Assad Regime is not merely the fact that the regime seems to be unable to crush the opposition, but that the regime commences losing territory, space to the opposition. Cities, towns, provinces, et cetera. At present there does not appear to be anything of this sort occurring. For reasons which are cited by Messieurs Smith and Mesquita. I myself would place a great deal of importance on the fact that the regime has been able to obtain financial assistance from its allies such as Persia, Iraq (!) and Venezuela as well to a lesser extent Russia and China. And while economic sanctions by the European Union and the Arab League will no doubt hurt, it seems to me that as long as Persia in particular is willing to under-write financially the Assad regime, then it is much, much too early to make predictions of its downfall 1. In the absence of course of outside military intervention by either the Turks or the NATO powers. Something which at the present time seems to be a very very far prospect indeed. For my own part, my surmise is the short of outside intervention or an internal military coup d'etat (also to my mind very unlikely) the Assad regime will be able to surival in power, albeit with difficulty. Just as the regime of Saddam Hussein was able to survive in power after both its defeat in the First Persian Gulf War and the twin uprisings by the Shiites in the South and the Kurds in the North, and the rigors of the sanctions regime from
1991 to 2003 2. A situation which informed opinion argued, Hussein was surviving quite easily 3.

1. For how ambiguous is the Arab League's role in the Syrian Crisis, see: William Wallis, et. al., "Alarm as Arab League Monitoring appears to play down Syria crisis."
The Financial Times. 29 December 2011, in www.ft.com.

2. For negative reviews of the sanctions regime, see: F. Gregory Gause III, "Getting it Backwards on Iraq." Foreign Affairs. (May / June 1999), pp. 54-55, et passim; Daniel Byman, "Farwell to Arms Inspection." Foreign Affairs.(January / February 2000), pp. 119-132. For the non-likelihood of American & or NATO military intervention in Syria, see: "U.S. quietly preparing to support the Syrian Opposition: report," Syria Comment 30 December 2011, in www.syriacomment.com.

3. See, Gause, op. cit., p. 55, where he states: "crippling economic sanctions on Iraq that have neither weakened Saddam's hold on power nor prevented him from pursuing his WMD programs" (sic!). And of course the ultra-influential The Threatening Storm: the case for invading Iraq. by Kenneth Pollock, (2002), pp. 71-103, 211-233 & passim.

2011-12-18T20:13:00.008-05:00

VACLAV HAVEL: REQUIESCANT IN PACE

"The role of Havel was equally crucial - no one individual of comparable public standing emerged in any other Communist country, and while most of the practical ideas and even the political tactics of the Civic Forum might have been forthcoming in his absence, it was Havel who caught and channeled the public mood, moving his colleagues forward while keeping the expectations of the crowds within manageable bounds. The impact of Havel and his public appeal cannot be overstated. Like Tomas Masaryk, with whom he came increasingly to be compared, the improbably charismatic Havel was now widely regarded by many as something akin to a national saviour....It was not just Havel's multiple incarcerations and his unflinching record of moral opposition to Communism that place him upon this pedestal: it was also his distinctly apolitical disposition."

Tony Judt. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. (2005), pp. 620-621.

"A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called 'dissent'. This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such non-conformity to be implemented within its official structures....The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possess a moral dimension as well; it appears among other things as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it is in fact a projection of it into society. Living within the truth, as humanity's revolt against an enforced position, is on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act."

Vaclav Havel. "The Power of the Powerless," in Open Letters: Selected writing, 1965-1990. Edited & translated by Paul Wilson. (1990), p. 127 & 153. First written and distributed in 1979.

"When I have gone, perhaps the age will have played out its role."

Charles de Gaulle quoted in Andre Malraux, Fallen Oaks. (1971), p. 16.

The passing away of playwright, ex-dissident, ex-President, Vaclav Havel encapsulates a moment, nay an era of European history. In some respects, Havel can be said to have been the last 'hero' in European history. In an age when public discourse is dominated by the banalities of International Economics and Finance, Havel spoke to a period in time, which while not so long ago chronologically speaking, seems centuries away in terms of dominant ideas. The period being that of the latter half of the Cold War, when ideas concerning 'truth', 'human rights', 'honesty', 'justice', in the Communist-dominated half of Europe suddenly seemed to acquire an intrinsic importance. When the 'machtpolitik' realities of diplomacy and International politics gave way to concerns about the fundamental importance of the individual and his place in society. Then and only then could someone of Havel's ilk have made his mark. By background coming from a haute-bourgeois family in Prague, Havel was by virtue of the same, completely excluded from participating in public life in Communist Czechoslovakia 1. Something which meant that unlike say his older contemporaries like the writer, Milan Kundera, Havel never had any illusions about 'reforming' Communism and never associated himself in any way with the post-February 1948 Communist regime 2. And yet by not emigrating, Havel was able to participate fully in both the Prague Spring of 1968 and the dissident movements of the 1970's and 1980's. His participation in the latter costing him several years in Czech prisons.

The above background, while unusual, was hardly unique to Havel and cannot per se explain his importance in the 'Velvet Revolution' of November 1989. What made Havel the indispensable man in Prague at that time, was the fact that due to his time in prison and his involvement in the dissident movement of the 1970's, he had given a great deal of serious and involved thought to the quandaries posed by both the totalitarian society and the banalities and alienation of modern-day, Western existence. As rendered in his essay, 'the Power of the Powerless', Havel sketched out an idea of a 'post-political' form of politics. The fact that this form of politics has not (post-1989) gained much traction in any of the other former 'Peoples Democracies', nor in the rest of the Advanced, Industrialized world, much less in the place of its origins, does not obviate the seminal importance of Havel's concept in the transition from Communism to Capitalist Democracy. Alongside the cry of 'return to Europe', Havel's ideas concerning 'post-politics' politics, exercised for a short, but needed amount of time, enormous influence on the course of events in Central & Eastern Europe 3. The fact that within a few years time, Havel's ideas and indeed Havel himself became to a degree passe, were in retrospect, par for the course. Like Churchill, like De Gaulle, Havel could be said to have been appointed by History to play an important but finite role. Once completed, Havel became politically sidelined and superfluous and his remaining years in power have an element of constant frustration to it. As more natural political animals, like the Cech Premier (and eventually Havel's successor as President) Vaclav Klaus, came to the fore. The fact that Klaus was able to steamroll the partition of the formerly unified Czechoslovak state in 1993-1994, over Havel's opposition being sine qua non of the new realities in post-Communist Cech politics 4. Havel's subsequent complaints about "the reemergence of Czech (sic) small-mindedness in Czech politics", while no doubt accurate enough are the off-stage laments of what Henry Kissinger once characterized as a "prophet" 5. Someone who:

"is less concerned with manipulating than with creating reality. What is possible interests him less than what is 'right'. He offers his vision as the test and his good faith as a guarantee 6."

As Kissinger notes, the prophet is opposed to the "Statesman", someone who is primarily interested in manipulating reality and whose 'first goal is survival'. Once again, like his historical confreres in European heroic status, Churchill and De Gaulle, Havel was in essence, a prophet with little or no honor in his own country at times. The only difference being that while Churchill and even De Gaulle were greatly honored in retirement by their countrymen, Havel was viewed more skeptically by his own. He was truly the last European Hero. I very much doubt that we will ever seen another one of his type on the European continent.

1. Vaclav Havel, Disturbing the Peace. Edited and translated by Paul Wilson. (1990), pp.3-8, et passim.

2. Ibid., pp. 93-99 & 171-178, et passim.

3. Besides Judt's book, see: Gyorgy Konrad's 1984 book, Antipolitics, as well as Adam Michnik's essays from the period (especially 'The New Evolutionism'), for the latter see: Adam Michnik, Letters from Prison and Other Essays. Translated by Maya Latynski. (1985), pp. 135-148.

4. Havel's description of Klaus in his memoirs are especially insightful as to why Havel became sidelined in the post-1989-1990 period: a "smart politician who is not overly burdened by scruples." See: Vaclav Havel, To the Castle and Back. Translated by Paul Wilson. (2007), p. 133 et passim.

5. For Havel's complaints about Cech 'small-mindedness,' see, Havel, To the Castle and Back, op. cit., p. 12, 117, 133, 173, et passim, see especially the latter for its complaints of Cech: 'mediocrity, banality, and a kind of middle-class philistinism'.

6. Henry A. Kissinger, "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy. " Daedalus. (Spring, 1966), pp. 526-527.

2011-12-09T18:17:00.006-05:00

THE RUSSIAN DUMA ELECTIONS RESULTS: A CRISIS OF THE REGIME?

"The disgruntlement has been there for a while. If you look at the polls one or two years ago, you will see a vast majority, way over 60 percent saying that civil servants in Russia do not live by the law or that abuse by the police is routine. However, it looks like people were ready to adjust to it and put up with it until it came to this election in which the obvious discontent was precipitated by exactly the factor that you mentioned, Putin's comeback as president after two terms in office. This sense of "Oh no, not for another twelve years" indicated the obvious fatigue that had accumulated. People may have expected him to run again, yet when it was eventually announced the reaction was that of frustration.

Also, the public was insulted by the way the two leaders traded places without even pretending that somehow public participation was involved. They decided it between the two of them and only presented it to the public as a fait accompli. Putin and Medvedev worsened the discontent and frustration that had already been there.

What the press is lacking is an accountability role in which the public can hold the government to account.

Finally what happened in this election was the shameless manipulation and fraud that was evident during the campaign; the harassment of activists, leading websites were under severe cyber attacks, and administrators blatantly abused their authority in order to deliver the desired result of the vote. These sort of shameless violations pushed people to a vote of defiance, in which they would do anything that would undermine the showing of United Russia".

Masha Lipman, "Understanding Putin's setback." The Council on Foreign Relations. 6 December 2011, in www.cfr.org.

"Vladimir Putin still has formidable financial resources, and the police has not yet hesitated to tackle the protesters roughly. The opposition is still split between the so-called “systemic” parties, to be represented in parliament, and the “non-systemic” groupings that are driving the street protests. The population, though increasingly restless, wants the system to improve, not another revolution. All this favours the Kremlin. However, other factors are eroding the regime’s ability to respond to the situation coherently.

Firstly, the United Russia party’s ratings have been falling for more than a year. But the government expected its usual combination of cash injections and vote rigging to maintain its previous parliamentary majority. People’s willingness to turn out and vote for any party but United Russia took the regime by surprise. The vehement reaction to the usual practice of stuffing the ballot boxes was also unexpected. Mr Putin and his team seem to have no “Plan B”.

Courts hand out sentences to protesters – but Russia is not Belarus and Mr Putin is not Alexander Lukashenko. While activists in Minsk serve five-year terms in tough prisons, their Russian counterparts get 15-day spells in city police jails – which merely boost their credibility. As previously apolitical celebrities rushed to the rally, some carried off to police vans in fur coats, one Moscow wit twitted: “Soon you won’t be received in polite society without a spell in a jail”.

This is another bad sign for the Kremlin. It is losing credence with intellectuals, bohemians and with a swathe of thirty-somethings, who have moved from political indifference or even support for Mr Putin to principled opposition. These people are not numerous, but they are educated, travelled, internet-savvy and forward-looking. They are irretrievably lost to the Kremlin and United Russia – and with them the majority in the nation’s two capitals. This is very significant. Both the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and the great anti-Communist revolution of 1989-1991 were decided by active minorities in Moscow and St Petersburg.

This was also the last election in which the government could rely on state-controlled TV to set the agenda. Internet penetration in Russia rose to more than 50m daily users in 2011: people are increasingly reading news from independent sources and comparing opinions with little or no state interference. State media must either ignore the facts, damaging their already shaky credibility, or present what is really happening – and thus contribute to the critique".

Konstantin von Eggert. "Spring comes to Moscow - the tug of war begins." The Financial Times. 7 December 2011, in www.ft.com.

The election results for the Duma in the Russian Federation, and the resulting protests last week-end in Moskva and other cities, with some of the largest demonstrations in the last twenty years taking place have raised questions about the long-term viability of the Putin regime. What does the relatively unbiased observer make of it all? I for one, can see that while it would be extremely erroneous to characterize what has occurred in Russia as a Russian 'Arab Spring', it would also be equally inaccurate to characterize what has occurred as merely a damp squib. What appears to have happened is that the lay, university-educated, liberal-bourgeois, Western-oriented elements in the major cities of European Russia in particular, have in electoral terms revolted against the type of neo-authoritarianism that has governed Russia since mid-1999. Which is not to gainsay the fact that a good portion of the anti-Kremlin vote in the elections, was a protest vote, pur et simple. And that currently there does not appear to be either a plausible candidate to stand against Putin or a plausible political organization to oppose the Kremlin-backed United Russia. Unless of course considers the Communist Party....Similarly, it would be good to remember that the strongest elements of the non-communist opposition, consists of strongly Russian nationalist elements, whose views are quite at variance with the more cosmopolitan, liberal-bourgeois elements that tend to be highlighted by Western journalists. Indeed, it would be a good surmise that if the Putin Regime were to be ousted and or voluntarily fall from power, it is more likelier than not that it would be followed by a much more, xenophobic, nationalist regime and not the Western-style, liberal-bourgeois politicians of the former 'Apple Party' and the 'Union of Right Forces'. Alternatively, it could be that elements within the existing regime, will join hands with former members of the same, like the ex-Finance Minister, Alexei Kudrin to expedite a transition to a neo-Putin regime, as sort of 'Putinism without Putin'. As the British commentator, Alex Nice of the Royal Institute of International Affairs recently noted, any sign that the Putin project was in serious difficulty, would result in a situation where "there could be a sudden surge for the exits", by said elite 1. The upshot of the current situation is that after a long period where politics in Russia appeared to be frozen in time, 'politics', 'events' of a unpredictable sort have returned. For good or for ill. With that in mind, one may only care to remember Tocqueville's dictum in his chef d'oeuvre, L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, that:

"It is not always going from bad to worse that a society falls into revolution...The social order destroyed by a revolution is almost always better than that which immediately preceded it, and experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally thatin which it sets about
reform 2."

1. Alex Nice, "Russian Elections: leadership doubts." Chatham House. 5 December 2011, in www.chathamhouse.org.

2. Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution. (1856).

2011-12-08T17:36:00.006-05:00

THE INITIAL EGYPTIAN ELECTIONS: A COMMENT

"In retrospect, it was all desperately naive.

Remember all that excitement about the Facebook revolution? The image of hip young Egyptians, organizing through social networking sites, to overthrow a military dictator was irresistible to many in the west. We were down with the kids in Tahrir. They were using our ideas and our gadgets to overthrow a crusty old dictator. Bliss was it on that dawn to be watching CNN.

Now the results of the first round of voting in the Egyptian elections are in – and we are discovering that things are a bit more complicated. Islamist parties have won around two-thirds of the vote: the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have got about 37 per cent; the Salafists, whose puritan version of Islam is much harder line even than the Brotherhood, have won about 25 per cent. Parties representing Egyptian liberals are trailing in third – despite the fact that the first round of voting took place in their strongest areas. When the rural south of Egypt votes in the next rounds, the Islamists are likely to do even better. Just after the revolution, Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who organised the first Facebook protests against Hosni Mubarak, was put at the very top of Time magazine’s list of the 100 “most influential people in the world”. As a US official commented to me drily this week: “He may be the most influential man in the world, but unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have much influence in Egypt.”

It wasn’t just western observers who failed to understand the nature of Egyptian society. Many Egyptian liberals were also operating in the dark, after decades of authoritarian rule that had forced all sorts of social and political forces underground. Back in April in Cairo I met Mohammed ElBaradei, the man who many liberals still hope (forlornly) will emerge as president. With commendable honesty, he admitted that he had barely heard of the Salafists, until they had emerged after the revolution and begun to give interviews. He was clearly horrified. “Some of them, well there is no common ground,” lamented Mr ElBaradei, an urbane international civil servant. “They want a completely theocratic state.” Returning from Egypt, I wrote that Salafists might get up to 10 per cent of the vote – and was worried that this might be considered hysterical".

Gideon Rachman, "Western Dreams and Egypt's reality." The Financial Times. 5 December 2011, in www.ft.com.

"The first round of Egyptian parliamentary elections has taken place, and the winners were two Islamist parties. The Islamists themselves are split between more extreme and more moderate factions, but it is clear that the secularists who dominated the demonstrations and who were the focus of the Arab Spring narrative made a poor showing. Of the three broad power blocs in Egypt — the military, the Islamists and the secular democrats — the last proved the weakest.

It is far from clear what will happen in Egypt now. The military remains unified and powerful, and it is unclear how much actual power it is prepared to cede or whether it will be forced to cede it. What is clear is that the faction championed by Western governments and the media will now have to accept the Islamist agenda, back the military or fade into irrelevance. One of the points I made during the height of the Arab Spring was that the West should be careful of what it wishes for — it might get it. Democracy does not always bring secular democrats to power. To be more precise, democracy might yield a popular government, but the assumption that that government will support a liberal democratic constitution that conceives of human rights in the European or American sense is by no means certain. Unrest does not always lead to a revolution, a revolution does not always lead to a democracy, and a democracy does not always lead to a European- or American-style constitution.

In Egypt today, just as it is unclear whether the Egyptian military will cede power in any practical sense, it is also unclear whether the Islamists can form a coherent government or how extreme such a government might be."

George Friedman, "Egypt and the Idealist-Realist debate in U.S. Foreign Policy." Stratfor. 6 December 2011, in www.stratfor.com.

Notwithstanding the arriere-pensee comments by Gideon Rachmann, there were some commentators, such as Stratfor's George Friedman who were highly skeptical of what Rachmann now refers to as 'desperately naive' hopes that Egypt was securely headed on the road to democratization. I myself in my own initial comments on the upheaval in Egypt, stated that there was a possibility of genuine Democratization in Egypt. I also stated that there was equally a possibility of an 'Algerian Scenario' 1. What I did not discuss in depth, nor do I believe many others commentators did, was to examine the likelihood that 'free and fair elections', would result in a heavy majority by the Muslim Brotherhood and related parties. A state of affairs which has now come about. The 'problems' raised by the election returns in Egypt, which as Rachmann cogently points out, are likely to become worse rather than better, are as follows: i) how radicalized will any Muslim Brotherhood government become under pressure from the more radical Islamists elements who look to gain a substantial representation in parliament? ii) how will the self-same government deal with the 'deep' Egyptian military apparatus which has been in place since July 1952? And concomitantly how will the self-same 'deep' military apparatus deal with a Muslim Brotherhood government? Will they endeavor to peacefully co-exist with each other, or will it be an omnium bellum contra omnies? iii) how will said regime deal, given the pressures coming from its hardline domestic critics and its nominally pro-Western military, craft its relations with Israel and the USA? Will Egypt remain on the sidelines peacefully during the next Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio? Given its domestic pressures can it afford to do so?

The above are some of the issues raised by the prospect of a future Muslim Brotherhood government in power. Per se, the fact that the Brotherhood would form a government is not a reason for alarm. What is a reason for alarm is that the next Egyptian Parliament will have a substantial radical Islamic presence. And as the Revolution in Persia, in fact as almost any revolutionary situation tends to show, it is the radicals and not the moderates who come to the fore. And in Egypt at the moment, it is the Muslim Brotherhood who are the 'moderates'. That fact alone is more than sufficient to be alarming. Perhaps not alarming enough to hope for a military coup d'etat, but certainly at this point in time, any reason for optimism as it concerns the situation in Egypt is completely unwarranted.

1. "Egypt without Mubarak: Revolution or Regime musical chairs?"Diplomat of the Future . 15 February 2011, in www.diplomatofthefuture.blogspot.com.

2011-12-05T18:04:00.004-05:00

THE EURO-ZONE IN CRISIS: THE TRIUMPH OF ADENAUER OVER DE GAULLE?

"Nixon had the amazing idea of asking me what I thought of de Gaulle's views on Europe....'I found it fascinating', I said. 'But I do not know how the President will keep Germany from dominating the Europe he has just described'. De Gaulle, seized by a profound melancholy at so much obtuseness, seemed to grow another inch as he contemplated me with the natural haughtiness of a snowcapped Alpine peak toward a little foothill. 'Par la guerre', he simply said."

Henry A. Kissinger, The White House Years. 1979, p. 110.

"For the first time in the history of the EU, Germany is the unquestioned leader, and France is number two. Since the financial crisis struck in 2008, the economic inequality between France and Germany has grown. Although regular summits between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy maintain the appearance of parity, France's higher levels of debt and public spending, its lower level of exports, its less well capitalised banks and its rising borrowing costs vis-à-vis Germany have forced it to accept German leadership on economic policy.

Last week I talked to officials in Paris about the eurozone crisis. The franker among them admit that on many of the key arguments – should the eurozone be run according to strict rules that minimise the scope for political discretion, should there be a treaty change, should the European Central Bank (ECB) intervene massively to support governments in trouble, and so on – German views have prevailed.

French officials fret about the sustainability of the euro. Their analysis is similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons: they worry that the German medicine being applied to the eurozone ignores the importance of demand and growth, and that few German policy-makers understand financial markets. But unlike the Anglo-Saxons, they think it better not to lecture the Germans in public on what they should do. The French think that the Germans will probably do what it takes to preserve the single currency, in the end. But several officials expressed the concern that, by the time the Germans decide to move, it may be too late to save the euro.

The French are reticent about the German plan to change the EU treaties. They assume that a new treaty will have to be preceded by a convention, as was the constitutional treaty. But when the convention – consisting of MEPs and national parliamentarians, as well as governments – meets, can the Germans ensure that it discusses only the euro, rather than every subject under the sun? Then there is the difficulty of ratifying a new treaty. The Irish, for example, would have to hold a referendum and in their current mood would probably vote no. But the French are going along with treaty change, because they hope that a new treaty with strict rules on government borrowing will make it easier for the Germans to change their current policies on the euro. In the short term that means accepting that the ECB should become a lender of last resort to eurozone governments.

In the forthcoming treaty negotiations, the French want to balance the German emphasis on budgetary discipline with some distinctively French thinking. Officials talk of treaty articles on economic growth and the co-ordination of macro-economic policy, tax rates and labour market rules. They also want to amend Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which allows the eurozone countries to adopt new rules on budgetary discipline. The French want to broaden the scope of that article, beyond the Germanic preoccupation with budgets.

The French hope that the new treaty will pave the way for eurobonds, but know that collective eurozone borrowing only makes sense once budgetary policy has been centralised, which will take several years. In the meantime the French think that the eurozone needs a European Monetary Fund (EMF) to support countries in trouble. An EMF would, like the IMF, lend to countries that cannot borrow commercially, and set conditions. It would also lend preventively to countries that might face problems. It could be based on the European Stability Mechanism, the bail-out fund that is currently under construction.

Many parts of the French government would be happy to see an EMF become a rival source of expertise and power to the European Commission, though the Trésor has doubts about such duplication. France would like an EMF to take decisions by majority vote, so that it could move quickly and not worry about, say, a potential Slovak veto. But the Germans generally prefer unanimous decision-making on bail-outs....

The French government worries about Le Pen – who is currently polling between16 and 21 per cent. In past presidential elections the Front National has scored better than the polls predicted. If the euro crisis worsens, and requires France to adopt painful austerity measures, Le Pen's implacable hostility to the single currency could earn her extra votes. She could get through to the second round of the presidential election in May 2012, as her father did in 2002, though she could not win. The presidential election is unlikely to change the broad thrust of France's EU policy, but the euro crisis and the increasingly dominant role of Germany could push the French people in a eurosceptic direction".

Charles Grant, "The French Learn Followership," The Centre for European Reform. 30 November 2011, in www.cer.org.uk.

One of the results of the yet unfinished crisis of the Eurozone is that in superseding of Mao's Tse-tung's infamous dictim, 'economics takes command'. And with this change over, it is Berlin rather than Paris which is truly in the driving seat as per formulating policy for both the seventeen members of the Eurozone and the twenty-seven members of the European Union. The fact that Berlin's ideas as how to resolve the crisis of the Eurozone are dangerously inadequate if in fact not dangerous, as sort of modern-day Brunningism, merely highlights Berlin's almost complete dominance 1. This 'dominance' one should remember is however not entirely structural in nature. While Berlin can boast that it is the fourth largest economy in the world, and the largest exporter, and that it has so far ridden out the financial crisis since 2007, infinitely better than any other large, advanced industrialized country, that per se does not obviate the fact that Germany's economy in the overall context of the Eurozone or the European Union, is not so large that it can issue diktatto the other members of the two unions. Which in turns highlights the near constant muddle that is current European Union policy making. German pre-dominance such as it is, is not of the type that can result in quick action on policy. And if nothing else, the financial and economic crisis of the last four plus years now, have shown repeatedly is that the traditional 'trade-offs' and bargaining that makes up European Union and Eurozone decision-making is antithetical to successful policy in the current situation. Hence what Martin Wolf in to-day's Financial Times characterizes as 'Euro-porridge', rather than effective policy which will save the Eurozone. Noting that:

"If the most powerful country in the eurozone refuses to recognize the nature of the crisis, the eurozone has no chance of either remedying it or preventing a recurrence. Yes, the ECB might paper over the cracks. In the short run, such intervention is even indispensable, since time is needed for external adjustments. Ultimately, however, external adjustment is crucial. That is far more important than fiscal austerity" 2.

1. Martin Wolf, "Merkel failed to save the Eurozone." The Financial Times.
7 December 2011, in www.ft.com.

2. Ibid.

2011-11-23T19:31:00.006-05:00

THE LATEST CRISIS IN EGYPT: THE COSTS OF POLITICAL MALADROITISM

"Some thoughts, as we watch developments, on the key questions or mysteries facing Egypt in this uncertain moment:

What is the military's objective here? The ruling generals played their hand a few weeks earlier, demanding legal guarantees of their own independence and power in any new system. The military clearly wants elections to go forward so there can be a choreographed transitional process that placates the public without diminishing military power. So why allow violence to spiral out of control for four days? The military certainly has the muscle to step between the demonstrators and the police. No one has offered a compelling explanation for why the military hasn't stopped the fighting in Tahrir. Many observers posit that the military simply can't figure out what it wants and isn't competent enough to enforce minimal order.

Who controls the police? Egypt's detested police were never disbanded or held to account, including the secret police, which were simply renamed "homeland security" instead of "state security." On Saturday, they sparked Cairo's still-ongoing fight by attacking a tiny group of holdover demonstrators who stayed overnight in Tahrir, beating them gratuitously even by Egyptian standards. Were they out of control, bent on revenge after their humiliating rout at the hand of revolutionaries in January? Were they intentionally trying to create problems for their rivals in the military? Or were they acting on orders from Egypt's military rulers, who appear to approve of police brutality but don't want to be the ones in the front hurting civilians? No one has a clear answer to this very important question".

Thanassis Cambanis, "6 Key Questions on Egypt's Escalating Violence." The Atlantic.22 November 2011, in www.theatlantic.com.

"The proximate cause for the current confrontations in Cairo -- and now it seems elsewhere around the country -- is the result of trigger-happy security forces. They presumably thought that clearing Tahrir Square of a few hundred protesters would be an easy win and help re-establish their authority. Yet even though some lowly CSF troopers and military policemen are directly responsible for the violence engulfing central Cairo, it's the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that is clearly at fault for creating an environment that made the ongoing clashes inevitable.

Over the past nine months, SCAF's attempt at governing has faltered at every conceivable step, alienating former allies and laying the ground for the current unrest. SCAF chairman Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi and his officers have never offered Egyptians a political horizon, never empowered civilian ministers, and favored fleeting tactical agreements with political groups over serious negotiations. That's how you get stunning ironies like the 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz -- a prominent activist -- dragged before a military tribunal for merely insulting Tantawi and the SCAF, while Mubarak regime stalwarts like former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly, a man responsible for actually killing Egyptians, goes before civilian judges who are suspected of being sympathetic to him.

Reservations about the SCAF's true intentions were further reinforced with their efforts to prejudice the content of Egypt's new constitution before the drafting process had even begun. It embraced a series of supra-constitutional principles designed to carve out an influential place for the armed forces in fashion similar to the privileges that Turkey's military enjoyed until recently. The idea was actually the brainchild of civilians such as Judge Hisham Bastawisi -- an ostensible liberal who was one of the first people to outline an enduring political role for the military -- and it is unclear whether he was working with the SCAF, or whether the military simply embraced the ideas floating around in the public debate that best suited their interests. Regardless, there can be no democracy in Egypt without civilian control of the armed forces. As to precedent, all the claims that the Turkish military prepared the ground for Turkey's transition to democracy through repression, forcing Islamists to moderate, run counter to both logic and history".

Steven Cook, "Revolution 2.0." Foreign Policy. 22 November 2011, in www.foreignpolicy.com.

Judging on the face of it, and merely the results in loss of life in the past five days, as well as their overall performance in the past few months, the Egyptian military must go down in the history of that country as the most incompetent government since the overthrow of the Monarchy almost sixty years ago in July 1952. As Mr. Cambanis, notes the military au fond could quite easily have cleared the streets of the capital of the rabble to be found in the same if it so wished. Sans such a wish, one is hard put to imagine what possible purpose was served by having the remnants of the Egyptian police in the capital, a force which was hard hit by the uprising in January-February of this year to endeavor by themselves to clear Tahrir Square this week-end just past. Indeed, it would appear to any intelligent observer that ANY attempt by the police, by themselves, with no overt backing by the army to clear the square was madness. And so it proved with a series of mini-replays of the see-saw struggles of earlier this year. With much the same result: protesters one, police nothing. Almost every move that the military has made in the political realm in the past few months has been a maladroit one. From floating a ballon d'essai about retaining special powers under any new constitution, which after the predictable protests was quietly withdrawn, to being unable to control the countries borders properly (in the Sinai peninsula), to being unwilling to conclude an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for purposes of securing a credit line. What we seem to have is a level of incompetence which is only explainable by a deliberate policy of pire ca va, mieux ca est. Unfortunately, given the rather less than intelligent looking faces that one sees on the chiefs of Egypt's military, and the fact that all of them were appointed by ex-President Mubarak, one can only conclude that their stupidity is deliberate rather than contrived. Be that as it may, one is at this point rather pessimistic about the ability of the current military government to keep a lid upon the situation, especially in Cairo and Alexandria. With I for one, afraid that at this point, short of a major and now, bloody crackdown, the time is not far off, when a Hobbesian omnium bellum contra omnes might indeed come to pass. With a complete collapse of government authority all over the country. A situation tailor-made to be taken advantage of by Muslim extremists with dangerous consequences for Egypt's internal and external position.

2011-11-18T19:29:00.006-05:00

PREMIER PUTIN AT THE VALDAI CLUB DISCUSSION CLUB: A COMMENT

"Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has acknowledged that the Russian political system is imperfect, telling top experts on Russia that he is preparing a number of reforms to fix it. However, Putin, who announced last month that he would seek a new term as president next year, said the reforms would be evolutionary and gradual, according to the experts, who met with him in the early hours of Saturday. The Russian prime minister rejected what he described as “alarmist scenarios” offered by the experts, who came from around the world to debate on Russia at the annual Valdai Discussion Club.

“Of course we are thinking how to make it so that citizens both at the municipal, regional and federal level feel a greater connection to the authorities, have a greater influence with the authorities and can count on feedback,” Putin said, during the three-hour-long dinner which lasted till late on Friday night....

But Putin defended the political system that he and his allies had put in place since 2000 and credited it with helping to stop the war in the Caucasus and propelling the growth of the country’s economy and social welfare system.

“I hope [the changes] will take place in a calm, evolutionary way, in harmony between the positions of the ruling elites and the citizens,” RIA Novosti reported Putin as saying.

Georgetown University Professor Angela Stent said that her main impression was there would be continuity. “I don’t think that we got any responses that would indicate that something is going to be that different; just that he is aware of the problems,” said Stent, who is also affiliated with Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C.-based think tank....

After drawn-out debates, the experts presented Putin with a critical assessment of the situation in the country and stressed that the dominating opinion during the sessions about the likely scenarios for Russia’s prospect in a five to eight years is that of inertia. The best case scenario was what Columbia University Professor Robert Legvold called “muddling through up.” The worst case scenario was degradation.

Alexander Rahr, Director of the Berthold Beitz Center for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations, DGAP, said that Putin unceremoniously brushed aside those concerns. “Putin effectively told us that we don’t understand and don’t see how successful his leadership has been for Russia,” Rahr said. “He is confident that whatever was done by him was done right."

Russian Prime Minister reminded the Valdai Club members about the poor situation in which Russia had been economically and politically when he assumed presidency in 2000. He pointed at Russia’s recent growth, including growth in the real income of the population as well as the budget surplus achieved by his government despite the global economic crisis. Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said Putin looked very comfortable and confident. “He never tried to be defensive in response to any questions,” Kuchins said.

He also said Putin assured his guests that he did not want to perpetuate a personalized system of power in the country. “The main goal in the next few years will be to strengthen the institutions that would promote Russian sovereignty and would long outlast the political personalities of today,” Kuchins related Putin as saying....

In their report, the experts had warned that Russia was under a serious threat of “degradation,” but there was little pressure for change from below. “People have little respect for law and property, paternalistic attitudes are still strong, the level of political morality is decreasing,” the report said. As a result, many educated Russians are emigrating.

“By losing the class of creative, energetic, educated, mostly young people, Russia is evolving towards an ‘African’ way of development, essentially – to degradation,” the report said. The mood among the intellectual elite and part of the business elite is increasingly reminiscent of the alienation of the late Soviet period that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union".

Andrei Zolotov,"Putin dismisses pessimistic scenarios, promises vague reforms." Novosti. 12 November 2011, in en.rian.ru.

"As I have mentioned when I assumed the reins of government the country was virtually in a state of madness. The most evident signs of the breakdown of public and governmental life was the universal dissatisfaction with the status quo that united all classes of the population. They all wanted changes in the political structure, but their aspirations differed according to class and status....In any case, everyone wanted change. Everyone attacked the power of the Autocracy and its tool the bureaucracy."

Graf Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte. Edited & translated by Sydney Harcave. (1990).

One does not have to be unduly pessimistic to not be entirely convinced by the protestations of Prime Minister, and now future President Putin, that tout va bien and that all that Russia needs is some type of 'evolutionary' changes and reforms de haut en bas. Which is not to gainsay the fact that: i) 'Putinism' was for perhaps upwards of six years a quite worthwhile and successful project for Russia; ii) that historically speaking, and 'Putinism' is no different in that respect, all reforms in Russia come from the top. The issue as I see it, is that perhaps (and in this I am speculating more than a bit with what may occur in the future), Russia is in the midst of one those odd switches of mentality. First elite and semi-elite mentality, then further down the social and economic scale. That the dissatisfaction with the status quo ante, is becoming more and more ingrained and accepted as the norm. This process (if it indeed is 'a process') can be stopped up to a certain point, after which, it becomes unstoppable. Id est., as in 1847 and early 1848, when Vormarz becomes merely a prelude to revolution.

As the Financial Times Moskva correspondent, noted in his report on the Valdai Club discussions:

"The mood in Russia has changed since the last electoral cycle four years ago. Back then, the economy was still growing at 7 per cent a year, the global financial crisis a distant cloud. Moscow’s leadership brimmed with confidence. Most Russians would have been happy to see then president Vladimir Putin remove a constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential terms and stay on. Instead, he installed Dmitry Medvedev as placeholder president and moved to the prime minister’s chair – respecting the letter, if not spirit, of the constitution.

Now Mr Putin is coming back for a third presidential term, Russia’s intellectual and business elites, at least, are no longer sure this is a good thing. Debates at last week’s annual Valdai Discussion Club, a Putin initiative dating from 2004 that brings together top foreign and domestic specialists on Russia, revealed deep unease. Emboldened, perhaps, by the off-the-record format, many Russian participants – including those who once broadly backed Mr Putin – openly questioned whether today’s ossified political system could deliver the modernisation Russia needs....1.”

Once again, I am not making a prediction about a Russian version of the so-called 'Arab Spring' a few years hence. What I am stating is that in the absence of some genuine reforms which shall free-up Russia's economic potential and in addition, change the dis-organized system of rampant government corruption and incompetence, then one should not be so readily assume that Grazhdanin Putin will be in the position to so readily and confidently offer up to his elite audience the plethora of sarcastic bon mots that are his wont.

1.Neil Buckley, "Rising Unease over Putin's return." The Financial Times. 16 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

2011-11-17T17:13:00.004-05:00

EX-SECRETARY OF DEFENCE WILLIAM COHEN AT THE OXONIAN SOCIETY

On Tuesday the 15th of November, ex-Congressman, Senator and Secretary of Defence in the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), William Cohen spoke to members of the Oxonian Society at the Cornell Club. The following are some of the remarks made by the ex-Secretary of Defence:

States that his ex-chief, President Clinton 'possessed a brilliant intellect'. And that Clinton gave him approximately ninety-nine percent of what he wanted while in office. On the threat posed by Al-Qaeda during his term of office, Cohen stated that he was in ignorance of their true ambitions, even after the attack on the USS Cole in the year 2000. Concerning the retaliatory missile attack on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 1998, Cohen related that due to the fact that the United States at the time did not possess any bases in the immediate area, and that any attack on Afghanistan had to come from the sea, the firing of cruise missiles was the only feasible alternative. A form of military action which by its very nature was 'imprecise' and subject to possible Pakistani leaks.

As per the current unrest in the Near East, Cohen stated that he foresees the regime in Damascus as being 'one the way out'. And the upshot of the so-called Arab Spring is that the United State 'will have less influence', both in the region and indeed in the rest of the world. With the USA, in 'relative decline', as opposed to Peking's being a 'rising power'. As per how to handle Peking, Cohen advocates a mixture of 'stakeholder' tactics and containment. As per Cohen, the regime in North Korea will survive as long as the PRC will prop it up.

Cohen itemized five major threats to the United States in the upcoming years, with the first two being: i) the American economy, stating 'you cannot be a strong country with a weak economy'. Citing of all people, the British emigre historian Niel Ferguson. Cohen argued that dealing imaginatively with the American fiscal deficit was a fundamental action to remedy the American economy for the long-term; ii) the spread of nuclear weapons, especially if Persia managed to become a nuclear power. The danger of uncontrollable proliferation in the Near East with Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia among others in a rush to acquire nuclear weapons. As per Cohen, none of the three widely discussed options to deal with the Persian situation: a) containment; b) military action; c)sanctions, offers a full-proof and effective 'solution' to this complex problem. With the problem of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands a frightening possibility for Cohen.

Overall, my reaction to Cohen's talk was that he while an ultra-safe pair of hands while in office during the Clinton years, he was almost completely out of his depth as soon as a more dangerous and challenging international climate came into being in September 2001. Although I should add, that his successor Mr. Rumsfeld, was not by any means the answer to the problem of imaginative thinking required in the new environment of the 11th of September attacks. That only came with the succession of Secretary Gates in 2006. Five years too late unfortunately.

2011-11-14T19:18:00.004-05:00

SHOULD WE BOMB PERSIA? A COMMENT

"Iran's acquisition of a nuclear bomb would upend the Middle East. It is unclear how a nuclear-armed Iran would weigh the costs, benefits, and risks of brinkmanship, meaning that it could be difficult to deter Tehran from attacking the United States' interests or partners in the region.

The November 8 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report casts further doubt on Iran's continual claims that its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful use. Rather than halting its weapons program in 2003, as was reported in a controversial 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, Iran has apparently continued to develop the various components necessary to produce a nuclear weapon, including neutron initiators, which trigger nuclear chain reactions, and complex explosives needed to build a warhead small enough to place atop a ballistic missile. Meanwhile, Tehran has openly worked to increase its stockpile of low-enriched uranium -- especially uranium enriched to 20 percent -- which could be further refined to weapons grade. If the IAEA's suspicions are correct, Iran might have both the technology and material to build a nuclear bomb in a matter of months.

To date, the United States has relied on a combination of sticks and carrots to prevent Iran from going nuclear. It has tightened economic sanctions against the regime, isolated it diplomatically, and offered improved relations in return for Tehran abandoning its nuclear ambitions. The attractions of this approach are readily apparent. The main alternative, a military operation against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, would likely be extremely costly and might not even succeed. Moreover, by slowing Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon, sanctions and isolation buy time for a "silver bullet," such as an internal political change that brings a more moderate Iranian leadership to power or a sabotage effort that derails the program for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, no such solution has presented itself: The current Iranian regime has remained in control despite popular unrest and an ongoing dispute between the president and the supreme leader, and the new IAEA report suggests that efforts to disrupt Iran's nuclear program have so far yielded naught. All the while, Iran is getting closer to crossing the nuclear threshold.

Even so, the U.S. government might persist with its existing approach if it believes that the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran are manageable through a combination of containment and deterrence. In fact, the Obama administration has downplayed the findings of the new IAEA report, suggesting that a change in U.S. policy is unlikely. Yet this view underestimates the challenges that the United States would confront once Iran acquired nuclear weapons.

For example, the Obama administration should not discount the possibility of an Israeli-Iranian nuclear conflict. From the very start, the nuclear balance between these two antagonists would be unstable. Because of the significant disparity in the sizes of their respective arsenals (Iran would have a handful of warheads compared to Israel's estimated 100-200), both sides would have huge incentives to strike first in the event of a crisis. Israel would likely believe that it had only a short period during which it could launch a nuclear attack that would wipe out most, if not all, of Iran's weapons and much of its nuclear infrastructure without Tehran being able to retaliate. For its part, Iran might decide to use its arsenal before Israel could destroy it with a preemptive attack. The absence of early warning systems on both sides and the extremely short flight time for ballistic missiles heading from one country to the other would only heighten the danger. Decision-makers would be under tremendous pressure to act quickly.

If Iran became a nuclear power and the United States reacted with a policy of containment, nuclear weapons would only be more appealing as the ultimate deterrent to outside intervention.

Beyond regional nuclear war, Tehran's acquisition of these weapons could be a catalyst for additional proliferation throughout the Middle East and beyond. Few observers have failed to note that the United States has treated nuclear-armed rogues, such as North Korea, very differently from non-nuclear ones, such as Iraq and Libya. If Iran became a nuclear power and the United States reacted with a policy of containment, nuclear weapons would only be more appealing as the ultimate deterrent to outside intervention.

Meanwhile, Iran's rivals for regional dominance, such as Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, might seek their own nuclear devices to counterbalance Tehran. The road to acquiring nuclear weapons is generally a long and difficult one, but these nations might have shortcuts. Riyadh, for example, could exploit its close ties to Islamabad -- which has a history of illicit proliferation and a rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal -- to become a nuclear power almost overnight.

During the Cold War, of course, the United States managed to prevent nuclear use and discourage proliferation by containing the Soviet Union and providing security commitments to U.S. allies. According to the conventional wisdom, a similar approach would work in the Middle East today. Yet there are a number of important differences between the two cases, the biggest being that the United States had formal security commitments with partners across Europe and Asia and deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to their territories.

The closer Iran gets to acquiring nuclear weapons, the fewer options will be available to stop its progress. At the same time, Iran's incentives to back down will only decrease as it approaches the nuclear threshold. Given these trends, the United States faces the difficult decision of using military force soon to prevent Iran from going nuclear, or living with a nuclear Iran and the regional fallout."

Eric Edelman, Andrew Krepinevich & Evan Braden Montgomery, "Why Obama Should Take Out Iran's Nuclear Programe. Foreign Affairs. 9 November 2011, in www.foreignaffairs.com.

The IAEA 'Safeguard Report' on Persia which was released last week, shows on balance that Persia is actively seeking to create a nuclear weapons programme 1. As per the report, Persia has enriched enough plutonium for upwards of four to five nuclear weapons. And while one does not have to necessarily accept the 'existentialist threat' rhetoric of the current Israeli government to be actively concerned with the situation 2. As the above referenced essay by two highly respected, high-level ex-government officials clearly show that the mere fact of Persia's possession nuclear weapons will au fond greatly change the underlying premises of the balance of power in the region. With not only a greatly increased likelihood of an Israeli-Persian nuclear clash, but also the danger that Persia's regional allies may, toute `a coup suddenly come under Persia's nascent nuclear umbrella. In particular the idea that Hezbollah or Hamas may come under de facto Persian nuclear protection will make the likelihood of an Israeli-Persian conflict, either nuclear or non-nuclear much more likely. Not to speak of the fact that the remaining non-nuclear powers in the region: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Egypt may all decide to acquire nuclear weapons as well. Given the fact that so far economic sanctions have not yet plus fort to divert Persia's mad mullah elites from their goal of acquiring nuclear weapons. And while for one, do not regard the possibility of an Israeli 'surgical strike' with anything but skepticism, I for one am gradually coming to the conclusion that a military or at the very least, a semi-military option (such as a naval blockade of oil exports) is which needs to be actively considered. With the current American administration public comments deprecating a military or semi-military solution becoming more and more problematic.

Unfortunately, the Near East circa anno domini 2011, is not Central Europe circa 1950, and Persia under the Mullahs is not Sovietskaya Vlast under Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. This difference of course undermining the notion that a policy of 'containment' will work in the contemporary situation.

1. For the report see: The Institute for Science and International Security's web site for a link to the report, at www.isis.online.org. The ISIS is probably the pre-eminent online resource on the technical aspects of Persia's nuclear ambitions.

2. See: Tobias Buck, "Ex-Spymaster's oppose Iran Attack." The Financial Times9 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

2011-11-10T18:45:00.003-05:00

SYRIA: IS THE END IN SIGHT FOR THE ASSAD REGIME?

"After seven months, the uprising in Syria shows no sign of abating. An estimated 3,000 people have been killed in a brutal crackdown on civilian protesters. Fears are growing of a full-blown civil war between the army and Sunni defectors, amid reports of increasing sectarian tensions. On 29 October, more than 40 people were reported to have been killed in the city of Homs, and President Bashar al-Assad warned against foreign intervention. Syria’s precarious sectarian balance makes it prone to the threat of civil war. A minority Alawite elite rules over a majority Sunni Muslim population and sizable minorities of Christians and Kurds. The regime has maintained a 40-year grip on power through heavy use of divide-and-rule tactics, while favouring the Alawite minority for high-level military and political positions.

Protesters who took to the streets in mid-March in a quest for greater political freedoms have been openly calling for regime change and even Assad's execution. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of mainly low-level Sunni soldiers have defected from the Alawite-led army. Activists have accused the government of deliberately stirring sectarian tensions in recent months, to try to deflect anger against it. But weekly Friday demonstrations and smaller daily protests continue across much of Syria. 'Gadhafi is gone; your turn is coming Bashar,' is among the latest chants from the streets.

Reports of small-scale army defections began surfacing in June, as soldiers refused orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators. As with most reports coming out of Syria, a general ban on foreign journalists meant these reports were unverified, and when several senior defectors declared a Free Syrian Army (FSA) at the end of July, there were doubts about its significance. Now, however, defections are accelerating and the FSA is being seen as a growing challenge to Assad.

The group is led by officers, including General Riadh Asaad, who is based across Syria's northern border in Turkey. He has said that the FSA's aim is to establish control over northern Syria and use the area as a launch pad for attacks against the regime, in much the same way as Libyan rebels used the region around Benghazi. Having done this, the FSA planned to call for a no-fly zone over the area, and launch an onslaught against the regime. 'It is the beginning of armed rebellion,' Gen. Asaad told the Washington Post in September. 'You cannot remove this regime except by force and bloodshed.'

The exact size of the FSA and the wider support for its proposed initiatives are still unknown. Gen. Asaad claims that 10,000 soldiers have defected, but some commentators put the FSA's strength in the hundreds. Before he left Syria in fear of his life, the outspoken US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said he did not think the numbers were 'big enough to have an impact one way or another on the contest between the protesters and the government’. He stressed that 'the vast majority of protests are still unarmed'.

Nevertheless, in October the FSA engaged in a four-day clash against government troops in Rastan, a town of 40,000 near Homs and home to the best-known of the FSA's units, the Khaled bin al-Walid Brigade. Syrian army tanks backed by helicopters pounded the city, and seven soldiers and police officers were reported to have been killed. This was the most coordinated and sustained period of fighting launched by the opposition so far. On 18 October, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that gunmen in the northwestern province of Idlib blew up an army vehicle, killing an officer and three soldiers. Earlier, five soldiers were also killed in clashes with gunmen in Homs. Since April, weapons have reportedly been smuggled into Syria, and this illicit trade is now flourishing, albeit apparently more as a means of individual self-defence than a concerted effort by foreign powers, as the Syrian government has often claimed".

Strategic Comments, "Signs of Civil War in Syria." International Institute of Strategic Studies. October 2011, in www.iiss.org.

"Today, the opposition remains weak and the Syrian military has the upper hand. That could change if the opposition begins to construct a real insurgency, if Turkey goes to war against Syria by supporting some sort of insurgency, or if a foreign intervention is launched, such as happened in Libya...None of these possibilities is on the horizon."

Professor Joshua Landis, quoted in, Alison Lyon, "Analysis: Syrian Attack on rebel city mocks Arab peace plan." Reuters. 8 November 2011, in www.reuters.com.

Professor Joshua Landis' most recent comments on the ongoing situation in Syria are of course more or less my own since the beginning of the unrest in that country. Unlike the good professor himself and many others, I have never subscribed to the idea that the Assad regime was about to collapse due to the protests in the various cities. And indeed the fact that the regime is able to both parlay with the Arab League on a so-called 'peace plan', while at the same time employ overwhelming force in the city of Homs and elsewhere merely shows that the regime is absolutely determined, come what may to remain in control of the country 1. And that any pour parlers with the Arab League or for that matter anyone else is merely a diplomatic smokescreen to divide et impera any potential international coalition in opposition to the Syrian regime from forming, `a la what occurred in the case of Libyan this past Spring. With the likelihood of either Turkey or NATO intervening militarily being the ultimate non-starter. In short, I for one, cannot fathom at the present time, any short-term collapse of rule of Assad Fils and his clique. To imagine anything else is merely a phantasm of the highest order.

1. For the situation in the city of Homs, see: Abigal Fielding-Smith, "Defiance of city seen as key to Syria's Fate." The Financial Times.10 November 2011, in www.ft.com. Obviously, I do not agree with the premise of the headline of this article, which one quickly notices is not supported by the information conveyed therein.

2011-11-08T20:02:00.006-05:00

THE G-20: A DAMP SQUIB?

"As a direct consequence of the 'Great Recession' of 2008-2009 and the continuing financial instability left in its wake, the G20 has moved into the putative position of premier forum for global economic governance. The immediate impace ofthe G20 as a 'crisis breaker' has been palpable. From the initial leaders' summit in Washington DC (November 2008) to the second in London (April 2009) and the third in Pittsburgh (September 2009), the G20 served as an effective catalyst for generating both big domestic stimulus packages and promises of new resources for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other multilateral development banks. Between the first two G20 summits nations raised their commitment to spending up to a combined 1.8 per cent GDP. London added the largest pledge in history, over $1 trillion. The collective desire to prevent a repeat of the crisis also produced additional reforms in the international institutional architecture, most notably through the move to a reconfigured Financial Stability Board (FSB). Beyond its immediate role as the primary locus for concerted initiatives on the crisis, the G20 attracts attention as a new form of reordering in global governance."

Andrew F. Cooper. "G20 as an improvised crisis committee and/or a contested 'steering committee' for the world." International Affairs. (May 2010), p. 741.

"After all of the talk of a 'Second Bretton Woods,' by people who should know better like Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, it is not surprising that post-facto the entire G20 meeting has aspects of an exploded bicycle pump: something which generates a great deal of noise, but, with almost nothing to show for it. In retrospect it is quite obvious, that the entire 'event', was more of a media circus rather than a productive exercise in crisis management. The real parallel to the meeting, as the prolific if sometimes facile, British expatriate historian, Niall Ferguson reminded us over the week-end, was that pre-eminent exercise in failed economic, crisis-management: the London Economic Conference of 1933."

Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, "The World Economic Summit: What did it mean and why?" Diplomat of the Future.18 November 2008, in Diplomat of the Future.

The much heralded meeting of the G20 group of leading economies has come and gone in Cannes. The upshot has anyone who has closely followed the prior meetings of the much-talked of grouping is negatory at best. Rather tha taking any measures to deal with the ongoing Eurozone crisis the meeting in essence produced little more than a series of press conferences and questions and answer sessions. In one of which, French President Sarkozy let the world know of his real (and not very favorable) opinion of Israeli Premier Netanyahu 1. Aside from this singular 'accomplishment', I for one do not see anything substantive or even mildly concrete that has resulted from the meeting. With Italian premier Berlusconi's adamant refusal in a press conference to accept that Italia is on the breaking point being perhaps the sine qua non of this state of affairs. In short, if the world economy is to be steered in the correct direction, if the Eurozone is to be 'saved' from the multi-layered crisies in Greece, Italia, Portugal and Spain, than none of this will occur as a result of anything that the G20 grouping does or does not do. Au fond this economic forum is merely the ultimate of talking shops. As the ever insightful German commentator Wolfgan Munchau, noted yesterday:

"The Group of 20 leading nations comprises the most powerful people on the planet. There is a tremendous competition over which countries should, and should not, be represented. Yet last week’s summit proved almost comically irrelevant to the future of the global economy. It was a big mistake to try to push Italy into an International Monetary Fund programme without being able to deliver such an outcome. If you really want to force such a momentous decision, the minimum condition is for leaders to say so openly, and for the European Central Bank to announce that it will no longer support the Italian bond market. But they blinked, and let Silvio Berlusconi once again off the hook. The prime minister’s assertion that Italy had no crisis because the restaurants are full is an appropriate reflection of the intellectual depth seen at such gatherings" 2.

Unless and until the world economic system has a hegemon which is able to function in a consistent and forceful fashion, which currently the world economy lacks, then I for one do not expect anything approaching either a functioning G20 as a 'steering committee' for the world economy, much less one that is able to put into place a new 'Bretton Woods' for the world economy.

1. Geoff Dwyer, Tobias Buck & Hugh Carnegy, "Sarkozy calls Netanyahu 'liar' in remarks to Obama." The Financial Times. 8 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

2. Wolfgang Munchau, "Summitry again proves its own irrelevance." The Financial Times. 7 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

2011-11-04T19:29:00.006-04:00

A TURKISH 'NO FLY-ZONE' IN SYRIA? A COMMENT

"Turkey has signalled possible support for a buffer zone to protect Syrian civilians if Damascus continues its crackdown on democracy protests, as tensions rise between the two former strategic partners. Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times that Ankara was preparing targeted sanctions against Damascus and left the door open for more drastic steps at a later date, such as a buffer zone or a no fly-zone on Syrian territory.

“The Syrian regime is attacking the Syrian people, which is unacceptable,” Mr Davutoglu said in an interview. “When we see such an event next door to us of course we will never be silent.”

When asked about Turkey’s stance on a buffer zone or a no-fly zone, he said: “We hope that there will be no need for these type of measures but of course humanitarian issues are important…There are certain universal values all of us need to respect and protecting citizens is the responsibility of every state.”

His comments are an indication of the growing pressure Turkey is putting on Syria, on the rhetorical level at least, to halt the crackdown. By contrast, in August Turkish officials rejected reports they were planning to impose a buffer zone, while Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato’s secretary general, dismissed the idea of a no-fly zone this week.

Turkey’s position is important because the country cultivated closer ties with Damascus until this year and is now taking an active role in reaching out to the Syrian opposition. Speaking at the Turkish parliament on Tuesday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, praised the Syrian protests as “glorious” and expressed his belief that they would succeed.

Ankara’s tougher approach has been greatly welcomed by the US, which has been leading calls for Bashar al-Assad, Syrian president, to leave power. On Tuesday Syrian state television announced that a final agreement had been reached between the Syrian government and an Arab League committee working to find a solution that could end the unrest, although it did not provide any details. The US said it welcomed any international efforts to end the violence in Syria, but reiterated its call for Mr Assad to step down.

Although in the interview Mr Davutoglu denied claims that Turkey allowed armed Syrian rebels to operate from its territory, last week he became one of the first international officials to meet leaders of the Istanbul-based opposition Syrian national council. Mr Erdogan is also likely to visit Syrian refugee camps in Turkey in the near future, and could announce further sanctions against Damascus when he does. The trip had previously been scheduled for last month, but was postponed because of the death of Mr Erdogan’s mother.

Although Mr Davutoglu said Turkish sanctions against Syria would be targeted rather than broad, any unilateral steps would mark a change of tack for Turkey, which has long depicted sanctions against its neighbours as both ineffective and damaging to its own economy. “We have always been against sanctions, economic sanctions which will harm people,” Mr Davutoglu said. “But certain measures [that] have an impact on a regime fighting against its own people are different.”

Daniel Dombey, "Turkey hardens stance against Syria." The Financial Times. 1 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

'“As civilian deaths increase in Syria we see that reforms have not materialized and they [Damascus] did not speak honestly. The Syrian people do not believe in Assad, nor do I. We also do not believe him...

“We have offered Syrian leader al-Assad every type of assistance from the outset, and recommended him to implement the necessary reforms in line with the legitimate demands of the Syrian people.”'

Turkish Premier Erdogna quoted in, "Syrian People don't believe in Al-Assad." Hurriyet Daily News. 14 September 2011, in www.hurriyetdailynews.com.

The idea which has been floated that the regime in Ankara is seriously interested in imposing a 'no-fly zone' upon its Syrian neighbors is to my mind nothing more than a ballon d'essai by the AK government to give the impression of acting positively in the Syrian crisis 1. In point of fact, aside from keeping its borders open with Syria, and thus to a degree sheltering refugees from the repression by the Assad regime, Turkey has been a laggard as it relates to taking positive action in the crisis. Certainly except for some harsh rhetoric in the last two months, Turkey has not taken any more active measures than the its NATO allies or the European Union. Indeed, as it relates to oil sanctions, in point of fact, Turkey has been less active 2. Au fond, what we have on display is another case of Ankara posturing for its domestic audience. Something akin to its rhetorical onslaught against Israel in the past two years. I for one do not anticipate that Prime Minister Erdogan's government will do anything of substance unless or until the Assad regime gives evidence that it is about to collapse. Then and perhaps only then, can one expect to see Ankara to move forcefully in this crisis.

1. For other examples of this, see: Lian Stack, "In slap at Syria, Turkey Shelters Anti-Assad Fighters." The New York Times. 27 October 2011, in www.nytimes.com.

2. On this point, see: Leader, "False Promises: International community must keep pressure on Syria." The Financial Times. 4 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

2011-11-02T18:38:00.004-04:00

GREECE'S PROPOSED 'REFERENDUM': WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

"Greece plans to hold a referendum on whether it should remain in the euro, sources close to the ruling party said, in the latest twist in Europe’s sovereign debt crisis ahead of a summit of world leaders in France.... Markets have seen sharp falls since George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, stunned his fellow European leaders by announcing on Monday that he would offer hard-pressed Greeks a plebiscite in the wake of the agreement between EU leaders and Greece’s creditors.

Sources close to the ruling Pasok socialist party told the Financial Times on Wednesday that voters would be asked not to approve or reject the terms for Greece’s next financial rescue but to vote on a broader question centred on support for Greece’s membership of the European Union and 17-nation eurozone. The government plans to hold the referendum in mid-December. However, it will go ahead only if the government survives the confidence vote, expected to be held late on Friday.

European policymakers fear that the referendum plan could undermine efforts to avoid a disorderly default on Greek debt, potentially worsening the pressure on other heavily indebted eurozone countries, partiularly Italy. One senior European official said: “I have no words to describe what I feel regarding Greece. A country in this kind of situation and they are making politics. Not only are they putting at risk their country, which I think is incredible, but they are putting at risk the euro area stability, and this is too much.”'

FT Reporters, "Greece to vote on Euro membership." The Financial Times. 2 November 2011, in www.ft.com.

"My instinctive response last night, confirmed by reading the newspapers, is that Greece's decision is a fearful, desperate gamble, which could so easily go horribly wrong and impoverish, not just Greeks, but all of us.

More than that, it is a shameful dereliction of duty by a government elected to take decisions, not pass the buck back to voters who put them in power and cannot sensibly be asked to resolve what are usually highly technical questions. Let's be generous to George Papandreou, the US-born Greek prime minister, leader of the Pasok socialist party of the left. His act of "unprecedented brinkmanship" - Guardian Athens correspondent, Helena Smith's description – may force angry and frightened citizens to face up to hard choices and accept that, as ministers put it overnight, they must take their collective medicine and stay inside modern Europe – or slip back into the long Levantine past.

Greeks tell pollsters they want to stay in the eurozone, but they don't want to pay off their debts, they want to have their baklava and eat it. Neither option is attractive, but the temptation to opt for debt default and a return to the drachma will be huge for voters who are suffering job losses, pay and pension cuts, the loss of public services and hope. Opposition parties – the politicians most responsible for Greece's plight before 2009 – may play fast and loose again. Soft options are usually repented at leisure.

It was Greece's past – its long Ottoman inheritance, as some commentators put it – which allowed successive governments to fiddle the books, play patronage politics, allow business to run on similar lines and the rich to avoid their taxes (around 30% goes uncollected). It also allowed ministers to fiddle the books in order to qualify for eurozone membership in 2002, compounding their subsequent difficulties.

As with Enron or Lehman Brothers, the dodgy accountancy should not have been believed in northern Europe, but it was. I well remember being assured at a press conference of pro-euro British politicians of all parties that Italy would not be allowed to join the new currency either. But in the spirit of the moment it was. As in Athens, Rome's government too is now tottering on the brink of collapse (a good thing too, if Silvio Berlusconi is finally driven out) with no clear political alternative or credible policy options.

But what if Papandreou's gamble fails"?

Michael White, "Greek Referendum: an abdication of responsibility." The Guardian. 1 November 2011, in www.guardian.co.uk.

The Greek - Euro sovereign debt crisis rumbles on, with this week's headlines about Greek Prime Minister Georges Papandreou's va banque policy of putting before the Greek electorate the option of a referendum on the EU and the Bail-out plan. A political manoeuvre which has absolutely shocked his fellow European Union and Eurozone members. Given the harshness of the proposed austerity measures on the table, it would not surprise anyone that the electorate will vote emotionally to turn-down the proposed measures. I for one, while not in the least a believe in any types of referendum / referenda, can understand the rationale of the Greek premier's decision. With all of the protests, strikes and political arguments, with his own Socialist Party divided and increasingly unpopular, and an absolutely irresponsible opposition party, it is not very surprising to my mind, that Papandreou decided to turn the tables on his opponents by unleashing the referendum option. The fact that the bien-pensant elites of the Eurozone are horrified by Papandreou's decision points up to the fundamental lack of legitimacy of the entire Euro project. A project, which au fond required that the various electorates be ignored and or not consulted when key decisions needed to be taken. The upshot is the current crisis where political leaders are prevented from taking difficult decisions because it requires consulting their populations on making unpopular and thus difficult decisions. Hence the political schizophrenia which has been on display in Berlin & to a lesser extent Paris, during the entire crisis. Au fond, the 'great and the good' of the European Union & the Eurozone are one with the DDR official, whose disquiet at the East Berlin uprising in the Spring of 1953, caused Bertolt Brecht to comment:

"Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government's confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler, If the government simply dissolved the people and elected another" 1?

1. "The Solution" ["Die Lösung"] (c. 1953), as translated in Brecht on Brecht : An Improvisation (1967) by George Tabori, p. 17

2011-10-31T20:32:00.001-04:00

CHATHAM HOUSE'S DR. NIBLETT TOUR D'HORIZON

On Wednesday the 26th of October, at the august and ultra-elegant, beaux-arts, ‘Studio Building’, Dr. Robin Niblett, Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (‘Chatham House’), spoke to a select audience of attendees (the total party was approximately twenty in all), in the splendidly luxurious & palatial apartment quarters of Mr. & Mrs. John Heimann, the patrician-like, Investment Banker, and former Comptroller of the Currency (1977-1981). In the midst of offerings of black caviar and champagne, the following were some of the pensee that Dr. Niblett threw-out in a most intellectually interesting tour d’horizon:

that the successful termination of the Libyan War, notwithstanding, Europe has a colossal need to rectify its ‘troubled’ relationship with the countries of North Africa and that rather than viewing the Mediterranean as merely a 'border', what European Union needs to do is view the Mediterranean as a meeting place, a venue of goods, peoples and ideas. Something that Dr. Niblett contended was the case, prior to the nineteenth century. That the failure to remedy this situation would produce many worse problems than what one sees on the horizon currently.

contrary to the headlines that one reads currently, the crisis over the Euro and the solvency of Greece and other peripheral countries of the Eurozone, is something hat EU can overcome, and that this will be done by simply expanding and deepening the institutional structures and capacities of the common institutions of the Eurozone. That a common Finance Ministry, and a common Eurozone budget will inevitably be the solution to the current problems of the Eurozone.

that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires a serious effort by Israel to meet the moderates of the Palestinian Authority ‘half-way’ and that in the absence of which, there is a very real danger that the situation will muddle on indefinitely unresolved with negative effects on the region as a whole.

What is one to make of Dr. Niblett’s exposition? Well aside from agreeing with his thoughts on the current impasse between the Israelis and the Palestinians, I cannot entirely agree with his suppositions. In particular, the idea that a ‘Braudelian’ view of the Mediterranean was ever a reality is completely ahistorical. The fact is that the Mediterranean has not been ‘whole’ in terms of being an economic and cultural center since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century anno domini. Conflict, not commonality was the hallmark of the Mediterranean in the period prior to European colonization in the second, third and forth quarters of the nineteenth century. With the ‘Retreat from Empire’, in the third quarter of the twentieth century, the earlier type of relationships between Europe and North Africa has merely reasserted itself. Quod erat demonstrandum. As per the future relations between Europe and North Africa, in the absence of the possibility of membership of the European Union, which even Dr. Niblett agrees is an impossibility, the only realistic scenarios from my perspective are: a) more financial assistance to develop the region’s economies; b) greater diplomatic and political ‘guidance’ and assistance in terms of institution-building and civil-society assistance; c) infinitely greater degrees of immigration controls and checks to ensure that illegal immigration from North Africa does not swamp Southern Europe in the next twenty years.

As per what Dr. Niblett regards as a de minimis, problem of the Euro, all one can say is that Dr. Niblett overlooks the fact that the Euro crisis has exposed the problem of the legitimacy of the entire European Union vis-`a-vis it's pays reel. That the fact is that the Euro project, was one which in retrospect was misguided and incompetently handled by the same pays legal, the bien-pensant, Europhile elites who now proclaim, urbi i orbi, that the only solution to the problem that they en fait created is more of the same. With the culprits who presided over this entire debacle, allowed to completely go scot-free. It is due to such hazy thinking that the entire Euro projet has come under scrutiny from the collective European pays reel. I for one, cannot fathom how possibly what Dr. Niblett proposes can in any way assist to lay aside the widespread skepticism that exists in many EU countries at the at the present time.

2011-10-28T19:16:00.005-04:00

AN AMERICAN 'SCUTTLE' OUT OF IRAQ?

"President Barack Obama has declared that all 46,000 US troops still in Iraq will be withdrawn by the end of the year, with his administration telling Baghdad that time has run out to reach a deal that would have allowed a small American training force to remain in the country next year.

The decision, made despite fears that Iraq could fall back into sectarian chaos or further into Iran’s orbit, comes after months of negotiations in which the two sides failed to agree on the terms under which American trainers would remain beyond

It will enable Mr Obama to take political credit at home for ending the unpopular $1,000bn war as his re-election campaign picks up speed.

“Today, I can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” Mr Obama said at a hastily arranged press appearance on Friday, after a videoconference with Nouri al-Maliki in which he informed the Iraqi prime minister of his decision.

“But even as we mark this important milestone, we’re also moving into a new phase in the relationship between the United States and Iraq,” the president said, adding that the two countries would move to “a normal relationship between sovereign nations, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect”.

Baghdad and Washington had been in discussions for months about the size and scope of a continued US mission in Iraq next year, with senior Pentagon officials expressing certainty that there would be some kind of residual force involving several thousand American military trainers".

Anna Fifield, "US troops to leave Iraq by end of year." The Financial Times. 21 October 2011, in www.ft.com.

"There should be no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There will be no 'hearts and minds' to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the over-whelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war. An American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel, or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil....For American power, there are two ways in the Arab world. One is restraint, pessimistic about the possibility of changing that stubborn world, reticent about the uses of American power. In this vision of things, the United States would either spare the Iraqi dictator or wage a war with limited political goals for Iraq and for the region as a whole. The other choice, more ambitious, would envisage a more profound American role in Arab political life: the spearheading of a reformist project that seeks to modernize and transform the Arab landscape. Iraq would be the starting point, and beyond Iraq lies an Arab political and economic tradition and a culture whose agonies and failures have been on cruel display....Iraq should not be burdened, however with the weight of great expectations. This is the Arab world, after all, and Americans do not know it with such intimacy. Iraq could disappoint its American liberators. There has been heartbreak in Iraq, and vengeance and retribution could sour Americans on this latest sphere of influence in the Muslim world".

Foud Ajami, "Iraq and the Arabs' Future." Foreign Affairs. (January / February 2003), pp. 2,7.

The announcement last week by the American Administration, that at the end of current anno domini, that the USA will withdraw all the remaining forty-six thousand troops from the country, means that the 'American interlude' in Iraqi history will be at an end. As will an 'Iraq War' interlude in American history as well. What does the historian, especially the diplomatic historian make of it all? Simply put, that notwithstanding the expenditure of hundred of billions of dollars, and the loss of more than four thousand dead, the American adventure into Iraq desires inclusion into the pantheon of 'miserable failures'. That while Iraq has been truly 'neutered' as a power political force in the region for years to come, the upshot of that factum is that Persia has to a degree assumed a much greater weight in the region. Albeit, not as a great a weight as it would like to imagine or some were predicting a few years back. That what remains in Iraq is a society which is as divided as it was previously, the only difference is that whereas there was a unstable Sunni Arab hegemony over close to eighty percent of the population, now there is an even more unstable Shiite primacy, vis-`a-vis the remaining half of the population that is either Sunni or Kurdish.

That the Maliki government, while not in any real way, 'anti-American', is en faite, quite willing to fall in to a degree with Persian political aims in the region. Something which is evident in the Baghdad government's policies towards Syria at the moment. This is not to say that the USA is engaged in a sort of 'scuttle' from the entire Near and Middle East. Indeed, the USA is still by far the leading power in the region. With more troops now in the area, then was the case back in 2001. What the Iraq debacle does indicate is that regardless of the need or not to overthrow the Hussein regime circa 2003, American society is completely incapable of undertaking the sort of 'nation-building' project which it handled fairly easily circa 1945 (Japan / West Germany) and in the 1950's (South Korea). As the long-time Near Eastern academic expert, then Iraq War enthusiast, subsequently disillusioned by the whole business, Fouad Ajami, noted presciently in 2003:

"If and when it comes, that task of repairing - or detoxifying - Iraq will be a major undertaking. The remarkable rehabilitation of Japan between its surrender in 1945 and the restoration of its sovereignty in 1952 offers a historic precedent....Granted no analogy is perfect; Iraq with its heterogeneity, differs from Japan. America, too is radically different society than it was in 1945 - more diverse, more given to doubt, and lacking the sense of righteous mission that drove it through the war years and into the work in Japan....But Iraq would also provide, as it did under British tutelage, a mirror for American power as well. A new American primacy in Iraq would play out under watchful eyes....The judgment that matters will be made at home, in the United States itself, as to the costs and returns of Imperial burden. The British Empire's moment in Iraq came when it was exhausted; on the eve of its occupation of Iraq, the United Kingdom's GDP was 8 percent of the world product, when the comparable figure for America today is at least three times as large. America can afford a big role in Iraq, and beyond. Whether the will and the interest are there is an entirely different matter 1."

With the definitive end of the direct American role in Iraq, a partial answer to Ajami's question can now be made. The only other question still outstanding is: will the current political 'set-up' in Iraq, remain in place as long as the Monarchy that the British left behind them in 1930 (twenty-eight years)? Or will there be merely a Kissingerian 'decent interval'?

1. Ajami, op. cit. pp. 15, 17.

2011-10-21T20:20:00.005-04:00

MOAMMAR AL-QADDAFI, 1942-2011: NI REQUIESCANT IN PACE

"Qaddafi was the last of the old-style Arab nationalist strongmen, and his death on Thursday marks the end of an era. His contemporaries were the likes of Saddam and of Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad -- military men from poor families and hardscrabble towns who fought their way to the top, riding the wave of revolutionary sentiment that swept the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s. Their inspiration was Egypt's charismatic military officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who overthrew the British-backed King Farouk in 1952. Nasser's rousing speeches, heard across the region via the newly invented transistor radio, kindled visions of Arab unity. It was a time of upheaval, in which the merchant and feudal elites -- the allies of the old European colonial powers -- were losing their grip. At first, Saddam, Qaddafi, and Assad seemed to embody a promising new era of populist reform.

Arab nationalism began to wane after the humiliating Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, which left many Arabs feeling betrayed by their leaders. With Nasser's death three years later, the great hope of Arab unity was extinguished. Citizens figured out that their heroes had turned into corrupt, authoritarian despots who suppressed any opposition, executed their critics, and squandered national resources. By the 1980s, Islamist movements were gaining ground across the region, buoyed by Iran's Islamic Revolution and the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Arab societies turned more conservative, and Islamic movements dislodged pan-Arab and secular parties, exerting significant influence over cultural and personal life. In an effort to crush any challenge to their authority, the region's autocrats built elaborate security apparatuses aimed at both Islamists and secular opponents. The Arab liberation movement would end in betrayal, exile, and carnage.

Now, one by one, the strongmen have begun to teeter and fall. A new generation of revolutionaries has fostered a revitalized sense of pan-Arab identity united around demands for broad political and social rights. As the protests that began in Tunisia have spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, each uprising has been inspired by the others. A vanguard of civilian leaders is beginning to emerge from the revolts, and although they draw on some of the old Arab nationalist doctrines, such as anticolonial rhetoric and resistance to Israel, they are well aware of the failures of Qaddafi's generation.

At the height of Arab nationalist and pan-Arab fervor, leaders such as Nasser sought to mobilize political support across borders by appealing to the idea that Arabs are bound by a common language, culture, history, and political identity. Today's revolutionaries are using similar rhetoric in their struggle against authoritarianism. It is no accident that the crowds in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere have been largely peaceful and repeat the same Arabic slogan: Al-shaab yurid isqat al-nizam ("The people want the fall of the regime"). Arabs are inspired by one another's methods and goals, and they no longer accept a social contract in which they effectively make peace with government repression, arbitrary laws, state-run media and censorship, and single-party rule, in exchange for security and stability. Instead, they demand justice, freedom, and dignity. "The people should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people," read a popular placard in Cairo's Tahrir Square earlier this year.

The current Arab revolutions are different from those of the mid-twentieth century in one crucial way: They are not top-down movements like those that brought the autocrats to power. They are not being led or instigated by military men or charismatic figures. The age of the Arab strongmen is over, and although it remains unclear who or what will ultimately take their place, today's revolutionaries are redefining Arab nationalism by making it more populist and grassroots".

Mohamad Bazzi, "The Death of the Qaddafi Generation: the era of the Arab Strongman comes to an end." Foreign Affairs. 21 October 2011, in www.foreignaffairs.com.

"A corpse died yesterday."
L'Humanite on the death of Andre Gide, 19 February 1951.

The death of the Libyan ex-dictator, Qaddafi represents au fond the terminus of the 'Arab Nationalist' generation of dictators, strongman, politicians in the Arab speaking world. With yesterday's killing, that generation which commenced with Nasser's July Revolution in 1952 has seen its role in world history played out. Finis. Which in its way is historical justice, as Qadaffi's revolution in 1969 overthrowing the Monarchy in Libya was the very last of the Arab Nationalist 'revolutions' in the region to succeed. No doubt in the future there will be other dictators in the Arab world, but insofar as they exist, they will not care to adorn themselves with the mantel of Pan-Arab nationalism `a la Nasser. For good or for ill (I happen to think for good), secular, statist, autocratic, Arab Nationalism has been played and found wanting. History I would surmise will not be very kind to it. Coming to power in the immediate aftermath of the colonial era, in the 1950's and 1960's, Arab Nationalism proclaimed that it would overthrow the existing, pro-Western elites and usher in an era of economic growth, political equality and independent development. Of course quite the opposite happened. The comparative statistics on the Arab World's economic well-being has been widely noted in recent years, and they make rather sad reading. Perhaps the best quoted one is that the State of Israel has more patents registered in the United States by a factor of three, then the entire Arab World 1. Whether or not, the newer generation coming to power in much of the region in the next five to ten years time, does better only time can tell. I will venture however, that if nothing else, they can hardly do as bad as the generation spanning Nasser to Qaddafi.

1. Bernard Lewis, "Free at Last? The Arab World in the Twenty-first Century." Foreign Affairs. (March / April 2009), pp. 81-82, for these and other sufficiently depressing statistics.

2011-10-10T18:42:00.008-04:00

RORY STEWART ON THE 'LESSONS' OF THE LIBYAN INTERVENTION: A COMMENT

"Already people are claiming that the euphoria and calm after the fall of Tripoli could have been predicted and can be easily explained. But such civility was not inevitable; it could not have been assumed from Libyan history or culture. Libya shares many features of countries where anarchy has prevailed. Like Afghanistan or Iraq, it has a distinguished history and has experienced periods of stability but lacks the essential trinity of the international state-building apostles: ‘a vibrant civil society’, ‘rule of law’ and ‘good governance’. It has a rapidly growing young population, which is only partially educated, and few jobs. The traditional forces of tribe and Islam co-exist with more cosmopolitan aspirations, as they do in the rest of the Islamic world.

Many of the positive things that can be said about Libya can be said about other more troubled countries – right down to the small details. Libyans, like Iraqis and Afghans, remember a moderate, tolerant, Western-friendly country in the late 1960s and 1970s, which fell unexpectedly victim to leaders – and an ideology – alien to its indigenous culture. In the same way, the Lebanese writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb maintained that there was nothing preordained in Lebanon’s civil war, that Lebanon had been ‘at peace for centuries’. And in the Balkans in the 1990s, people insisted: ‘I did not even know people’s ethnic group – I have a Serb father, a Croat mother … We were Yugoslavs.’

All these countries can offer equally plausible explanations of why things go right and why things go wrong. One Libyan woman said, ‘it is orderly because there is not the corrupt, gangster class in Libya that there was in Iraq’; but Suleiman, a 20-year-old businessman from Benghazi, replied that under Gaddafi every businessman paid bribes of more than half the value of the contract. An older Libyan minister said there was no looting because the population was ‘educated’, but Suleiman complained of how bad his schooling had been, and how ignorant and isolated Libyans had become. Huda, a young woman working with the TNC, suggested that the paperknives had not been stolen because Libyans were wealthy; others emphasised rural squalor and 30 per cent unemployment. One of the most senior members of the new government said that the mid-level civil service worked well, regardless of the ministers. All other Libyans assured me that Gaddafi had ‘hollowed out the state’ and left nothing functioning behind....

But it would have been easy to take the same factors – a weak Gaddafi state, a light foreign footprint and a weak rebel government – and assume these were ingredients for disaster. This is why the major lesson of the post-1989 interventions should not be a renewed confidence in ‘the responsibility to protect’, or a belief that we have found a new secret recipe in targeted air-power. We shouldn’t think we know how to construct ‘a transitional administration’; even to attempt to pin down the common elements in the successful cases – population size, GDP per capita, ethnic composition – would be misguided.

These events are inherently unpredictable. There are no universal traits that condemn a society to anarchy when the leviathan falls. The violence I witnessed in Iraq, and felt was the inevitable result of a revolution, was in fact specific to that moment in that place and in particular to its Shia parties, their fraught and contradictory relationship to their neighbours and to their nation. But even apparently clear differences between countries aren’t as helpful as they seem. For example, Libya, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, has no serious ethnic or sectarian divisions – no Arab-Kurd, no Pashtun-Tajik, no Sunni-Shia divides – but this on its own can’t explain the difference: Libya’s neighbour Algeria has no Shia population and has nevertheless experienced decades of civil war.

The lesson of all this shouldn’t be inaction. Intervention isn’t doomed to fail – countries can turn out unpredictably well, as well as unpredictably badly. If we cannot come to any satisfactory conclusions on the London riots – a limited event, exhaustively documented, in our own capital – what sense can we make of why they did not riot in Tripoli?"

Rory Stewart, "Because we weren't there?" The London Review of Books. 9 September 2011, in www.lrb.co.uk.

"To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire: it only wants to show what actually happened."

Leopold von Ranke, The History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514. (1824).

Rory Stewart is perhaps for some of us, the only, I repeat the only good thing to have come out of the Iraq debacle. A graduate of Eton and Balliol College, Oxford with a a First in PPE, Stewart spent his early years in an unusual fashion for someone of his generation: a gap year with the corps d'elite Black Watch unit, and following his graduation from Oxford entering the equally elite Foreign Office where he was posted to among other places, such hot spots as East Timor and the Balkans. Between 2000 and 2002, he undertook a 'walking tour' in the manner of such 'traveler' luminaries of the past as the recently deceased, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Robert Byron, of Afghanistan, Persia, Pakistan and India. Traveling by foot upwards of ten thousand kilometers. In 2003, he was appointed deputy provincial governor of two Iraqi provinces in the British sector in the south of the country. His erste-klasse book: 'The Prince of the Marshes', is perhaps the best description of the 'on the ground', experience of the Iraqi morass circa 2003-2004. After stints at Harvard University among other places, Stewart stood and was elected to Parliament for the Conservative Party in 2010. One hopes that he will go far in his new career. With all that being said, what does one make of Stewart analysis of the Libyan Intervention? Simply put, Stewart cogently points out the fact is that per se there are no single overriding variables which ensure that intervention x, y, or z will or will not succeed. Each and every intervention has to be undertaken or not, on its own merits. Just as there were pre-existing historical aspects which perhaps made the Iraq War by definition unwinnable, similarly there were pre-existing historical and other variables which made the Libyan intervention and the intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia successful. In short, what Stewart shows to us, is that history cannot (per contra to the writings of Political Scientists and International Relation theorists) be predicted, planned or compiled on a spread sheet. As Leopold von Ranke, the founder, of modern, scientific history noted, history is an empiricist, not a predictive activity. History can of course provide us a certain degree of insights into specific situations and contexts. It cannot provide us with a blueprint. Caveat lector, statesmen & diplomats!

2011-09-30T15:26:00.010-04:00

THE TWO FACES OF THE PRC: A COMMENT

"China and Britain have different histories, cultural traditions and social systems. It’s unavoidable that we may disagree here and there. What’s essential is that we should respect, accommodate and help each other instead of forcing our own ideas on each other. In real life no one is able to change others. The world is very much like a garden, whose most beautiful season comes when all kinds of flowers blossom. The world today has increasingly become a global village. Countries are more interdependent and their interests more closely interwoven than any time in history. And the destinies of developed and developing countries, the east and the west, and the South and the North, are inseparable. All countries must recognize such a significant change and take actions to adjust and adapt. Those outdated ideas and practices must be dropped, and new visions, policies, behaviours and governance approaches must be developed. No country alone can tackle the growing number of global challenges and non-conventional security threats. The only option for the international community is to come together to pursue harmony and win-win
solutions.

Developed and developing countries should build a sincere, genuine partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Some suggest that the global power is shifting away from the west to the east. It’s much too early to talk about that. In many aspects, western developed countries are still in the lead. If the world power is shifting, then I believe the power has started to diffuse toward relative equity and equilibrium. This is a positive development to the world. We sincerely hope developed countries will grow at a higher level and developing countries can continue to make greater progress at their own level.

China firmly commits to the path of peaceful development. Our focus is on our own development. We will not repeat the beaten track of the rising powers in the past. And invasion, expansion, beggar-thy-neighbour policy and hegemony are not our options. We hope to live in peace and seek common development together with the world. This policy is not for selling to other countries. Instead, it’s our own action plan that will be followed through. Because peaceful development is in the best interests of China and the world. We do not seek to maximize our own interests at the expense of others, but rather will carry out a win-win, opening-up strategy. We will continue to do what we can to help developing countries and, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, work collaboratively with developed countries".

China State Councillor Dai Bingguo, "Cooperation is the Only Choice." 'Summary of remarks' at a private meeting sponsored by Chatham House on the 26th of September 2011, in www.chathamhouse.org.

"China has warned Asian countries against provoking it under the cover of US military power, highlighting Beijing’s concern over moves from its neighbours and the US to contain its rise. “Certain countries think as long as they can balance China with the help of US military power, they are free to do whatever they want,” said the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist party, in an editorial on Wednesday. The piece came just one day after Japan and the Philippines pledged to boost maritime security ties and called for the protection of freedom of navigation and the peaceful settlement of disputes in the South China Sea, the resource-rich area which is home to vital sea lanes to all of east Asia but also subject to several territorial disputes involving China.

Kathrin Hille, "China warns neighbors over US backing." The Financial Times. 29 September 2011, in www.ft.com.

"You know as well as we do that right as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War ('The Melian Dialogue'). Book V, Chapter XVII.

Regardless of the verbal eyewash that the regime in power in Peking offers up to the more gullible elements of the Anglo-American / Western elite, the real thinking behind Peking's policies in the Orient is best displayed by the editorial in the Peoples Daily this week. Here of course, we have no nonsense about 'co-operation' and 'win-win solutions'. Merely the assertion of brute force and blatant warnings issued to Peking's neighbors in the region about allying themselves with the USA. A statement right out of the mouths of say Holstein or Kiderlen circa the early 20th century Wilhelmstrasse. Given this state of affairs, one would have to be indeed 'eyeless in Gaza' (or San Fransisco for that matter) to believe the recent remarks made by the former American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, about the need to handle the PRC with kid gloves. It is quite evident, that left to themselves (AKA, sans any American / Western involvement) that the PRC would coerce its neighbors in the Far Eastern littoral to the greatest extent possible. It is precisely for this reason that American-Western 'hard balancing' is an acute necessity both now and in the future. Otherwise I am afraid that the regional powers will over time, allow themselves to become captives of Peking's regional hegemonic tendencies 1.

1. For a recent book which advocates a policy very much along these lines, which I shall in due course review in this journal, see: Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia. (2011).

2011-09-28T20:07:00.007-04:00

ADMIRAL MULLEN AND PAKISTAN: A COMMENT

"WASHINGTON (Reuters)- U.S. officials said there was mounting evidence that Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency had encouraged a guerrilla network to attack U.S. targets, while a Senate committee voted to make aid to Islamabad conditional on fighting the militants.

The decision by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which did not specify any amount of aid for Pakistan in fiscal 2012, reflects growing anger in Washington over militants operating out of Pakistan and battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Some U.S. intelligence reporting alleges that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) specifically directed, or urged, the Haqqani network to carry out an attack last week on the U.S. Embassy and a NATO headquarters in Kabul, according to two U.S. officials and a source familiar with recent U.S.-Pakistan official contacts. The Haqqani network is one of three, and perhaps the most feared, allied insurgent factions fighting U.S.-led NATO and Afghan troops under the Taliban banner in Afghanistan.

However, U.S. officials cautioned that the information that Pakistan's spy agency was encouraging the militants was uncorroborated. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had pressed Pakistan's army chief for Islamabad to break its links with the militant group.

'We covered ... the need for the Haqqani Network to disengage, specifically the need for the ISI to disconnect from Haqqani and from this proxy war that they're fighting,' he said in a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday. 'The ISI has been doing this - working for - supporting proxies for an extended period of time. It is a strategy in the country and I think that strategic approach has to shift in the future.'"

Mark Hosenball & Susan Cornwell, "U.S. Blames Pakistan agency in Kabul attack." Reuters. 22nd September 2011, in www.reuters.com.

"Pakistani officials snapped back at the U.S. for saying its spy agency was aiding a militant group that targets Americans, warning Washington that such accusations could sink their alliance. Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani called the charges by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "very unfortunate and not based on facts."
Earlier Friday, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told an Indian news channel that "pointing fingers at each other will not help." Ms. Khar was in the U.S. for the United Nations General Assembly. 'We've never ventured into the blame game.'"

Tom Wright, "Pakistan Knocks Back U.S. Accusation of Militant Ties." The Wall Street Journal. 24 September 2011, in www.wsj.com.

"Pakistan is poor; politically unstable; in a state of religious turmoil (the mullahs have large tho' rather uncertain power) without a 'political' class - without so large an ICS [Indian Civil Service] tradition as India, and practising corruption on the grand scale....The one stable element in this situation is the Army --- the Air Force and Navy are also reliable."

Harold Macmillan, Diary entry on the 19th of January 1958, in, The Macmillan Diaries, Volume II: Prime Minister. edited by Peter Cattrell. (2011), p.90.

The facts as outlined by the outgoing American Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, last week in testimony to the American Congress speaks for itself. The allegations are obviously correct. The Haqqani network is merely another auxiliary arm of Pakistan's military intelligence agency ('ISI'). Just as the Afghanistan Taliban was (and perhaps still is?) au fond, in origins an arm of Pakistan's ISI. And there are of course a number of other terrorist groups operating in Indian Kashmir, who have in the past not only operated in Kashmir but in India proper (AKA the infamous 2008 terrorist bombing). Given the fact that the authorities in Pakistan are unwilling or unable of controlling these networks when operating abroad, that presents the American government with a very difficult problem. As in the past, I myself strongly urge that the only way of dealing with this problem is by putting as much pressure, hard pressure as possible. Cutting off, military assistance, cutting off, economic assistance. Increasing cross-border raids, both in terms of size and scope. Massively increase drone attacks on any and all targets in Pakistan proper. And if need be, prepare to adopt economic sanctions on Pakistan. As a major American expert on the country, Daniel Markey, in essence the Americans have de facto issued a sort of ultimatum on Islamabad 1. Having issued the ultimatum, there are no via media available in this affair. Only compliance or harsh retaliation on Pakistani targets. The problem of course is (as outlined by Harold Macmillan more than fifty years ago, and underlined more recently by Anatol Lieven in his book on Pakistan), that the army is en faite the only, repeat the only stable institution in this rather horrid country 2. Sans that and there is every possibility of the entire state apparatus collapsing like tin pins. And in any American escalation the Pakistani army will be a prime target.

1. "Tougher U.S. tack on Pakistan." The Council on Foreign Relations. 26 September 2011, in www.cfr.org.

2. Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country. (2011).

2011-09-27T19:25:00.003-04:00

PUTIN'S CHOICE: A COMMENT

"Yet a new Putin presidency is nonetheless a retrograde and risky step. Mr Medvedev has firmly embraced, at least verbally, the modernising political and economic agenda that Russia sorely needs. While he failed to build his own political team or support base – crucial omissions – he associated himself with advisers of like mind. A second term as president could have provided the opportunity finally to consolidate his position and start delivering reforms, especially if Mr Putin’s influence had begun to fade. The former president’s lingering authority has always stemmed in part from the possibility of his return. Mr Putin has, by contrast, shown little appetite for modernising reforms, or much understanding of their urgency. His instincts are cautious, conservative. But the stability he promised in the first years of his presidency after the chaotic post-Soviet transition of the 1990s has turned, over time, into a straitjacket that is hampering Russia’s development.

If it is to return to the 5 per cent-plus annual growth it needs to catch up with the world’s advanced economies, Russia must allow more competition of ideas and policies, and reduce the state’s distorting role in the economy. It must tackle the corruption that is corroding the Russian system from within. It has to replace “managed” democracy with the institutions of genuine pluralism. Mr Putin may yet surprise the doubters by moving in this direction. But that would mean dismantling central elements of the very system he put in place in his previous eight-year presidency.

If Mr Putin does shrink from reform at home, however, he risks sowing the seeds of his own downfall. Stirrings of disillusionment are starting to show up in pollsters’ research. These may not be strong enough to prevent the Kremlin from managing the transition of power. But unaddressed they are likely to multiply. A whole generation of Russians has reached voting age that was not born when communism collapsed. This generation gets its news not from Kremlin-controlled television but from an internet which, unlike China, Russia has never censored. Russia’s next president should take account of such shifts. Otherwise, like Arab counterparts, he could yet discover the power of social networks – and of the street".

Leader, "Putin votes for the return of Putin." The Financial Times.
27 September 2011, in www.ft.com.

"We can assume that there will be no movement forward if there are not serious changes along the lines of a replacement of the entire system...Without this, we could lose six years. I think the future president needs to think about this very seriously."

Former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev quoted in "Russian Minister quits after Presidential Clash." Deutsche Welle. 27 September 2011, in www.dw-world.de.

"The cemetries of the world are full of [once] indispensable men."
Charles de Gaulle.

The return to both de jure as well as de facto power by current Russian Prime Minister, Vladmir Putin is as the Financial Times correctly points out, a retrograde step. There does not appear to be much in the way indications that Putin has any fresh or new ideas to reform the existing Russian state apparatus. An edifice which at this point in time, requires pretty much close to wholesale reform. There is every indication that Grazhdanin Putin feels that something close to the status quo ante is for the most part acceptable. Unfortunately, as the FT points out, unless and until Russia is able to regain trend-growth rates of at least five percent (5%) per annum, then the likelihood of Russia being able to escape what George Magnus has called the 'Middle-income trap', is pretty much non-existent 1. Instead we have a situation where the state is overly dependent upon resource exports for both funding its budget and for powering economic growth. Reform of the Russian state apparatus and economy does not necessarily mandate that 'Western-style' pluralistic democracy be adopted. The example of Singapore more than suffices as a pro-contra. What is required of Russia is (among other things): i) a true openness to foreign investment; ii) a clampdown on corruption; iii) heavy investment in the country's declining infrastructure; iv) sustained attempts to improve the lives of ordinary Russian people by increasing male longevity and reducing the ravages of alcoholism and violent crime. Sans reforms along these lines, there is not much hope that much will change in Russian by the time that Putin will retire from the political scene. Assuming of course that there is not a complete collapse of the state apparatus in the meantime `a la the FT's prediction in its leader above. Unfortunately, with Putin one is indeed reminded of nothing so much as the post-Napoleonic Bourbons: 'ils n'ont rient appris, ni rien oublie'.

1. George Magnus, "Through the BRIC Wall." George Magnus first published on 30 June 2011. www.georgemagnus.com.

2011-09-22T19:57:00.008-04:00

THE AMERICAN DEBACLE AT THE UNITED NATIONS: A COMMENT

"The French leader, speaking from the famous green marble podium of the General Assembly barely an hour after President Obama, also said it was time to change the formula in trying to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace, taking an indirect swipe at the United States by saying the efforts so far were a complete failure.

“Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise timetable.”

The timetable he suggested is resuming the negotiations in one month, agreeing on borders and security within six months and finishing a definitive agreement within one year. The Palestinians have sought a specific timeline, suggesting that endless stalling was slowly erasing the chances for a two-state solution. In the meantime, if the Palestinian effort at membership faces a Security Council veto, the deadly reverberations will be felt across the Arab world, Mr. Sarkozy warned.

"Each of us knows that Palestine cannot immediately obtain full and complete recognition of the status of United Nations member state," he said. "But who could doubt that a veto at the Security Council risks engendering a cycle of violence in the Middle East?" The Palestinians currently have the status of an observer “entity” in the United Nations.

"Why not envisage offering Palestine the status of United Nations observer state?” said the French leader. “This would be an important step forward. Most important, it would mean emerging from a state of immobility that favors only the extremists.”

Recognition as an observer state would not mean much here except for some procedural changes, but it would allow the Palestinians to join subsidiary bodies and treaties of the United Nations. Alain Juppé, the French foreign minister, told a news conference that the Palestinian bid for full membership via the Security Council would proceed as expected, but that France anticipates that it is bound to fail given American opposition. In the ensuing weeks, France would work on refining its plan, which was based on four pillars, he said. First is changing the method, because that of the past decades has failed; second is to get the negotiations between the two parties started again as quickly as possible and without preconditions from either side; third is to establish a concrete timetable; and finally is to work on elevating the Palestinians to a full observer state in the General Assembly".

Neil MacFarquhar, "France Breaks With Obama on Palestinian Statehood Issue." The New York Times. 21 September 2011, in www.nytimes.com.

"The world, therefore, is facing at least 14 months with the United States being at best reactive and at worst non-responsive to events. Obama has never been a foreign policy president; events and proclivity (I suspect) have always drawn him to domestic matters. But between now and the election, the political configuration of the United States and the dynamics of his presidency will force him away from foreign policy. This at a time when the Persian Gulf is coming to terms with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the power of Iran, when Palestinians and Israelis are facing another crisis over U.N. recognition, when the future of Europe is unknown, when North Africa is unstable and Syria is in crisis and when U.S. forces continue to fight in Afghanistan. All of this creates opportunities for countries to build realities that may not be in the best interests of the United States in the long run. There is a period of at least 14 months for regional powers to act with confidence without being too concerned about the United States.

The point of this analysis is to try to show the dynamics that have led the United States to this position, and to sketch the international landscape in broad strokes. The U.S. president will not be deeply engaged in the world for more than a year. Thus, he will have to cope with events pressed on him. He may undertake initiatives, such as trying to revive the Middle East peace process, but such moves would have large political components that would make it difficult to cope with realities on the ground. The rest of the world knows this, of course. The question is whether and how they take advantage of it".

George Friedman, "Obama's dilemma: U.S. Foreign Policy and Electoral Realities." Stratfor: Global Intelligence. 20 September 2011, in www.stratfor.com.

The speech of the American President on Tuesday of this week was a complete capitulation to the pro-Israeli lobby (or more specifically its pro-Likuidnik / pro-settler elements). Pur et simple. There are no other words to describe his speech to the United Nations. Even for someone such as myself who did not expect very much from the USA in the last eighteen months prior to the November 2012, am surprised by the posture of American policy. As was pointed out in the Israeli periodical Haaretz, the fact that the ultra-hawkish Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman has stated that he could: "sign with both hands", the speech in question is most telling 1. Given this state of affairs it is not surprising that the French President has made an attempt (no doubt fruitless and indeed toothless) to break the American monopoly on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Unfortunately, in the absence of a united European position on the politics of the issue, it is quite impossible to imagine any change in the current impasse. Instead we have a situation where the Israeli military is preparing for potential mass violence on the West Bank 2. Something which underlines the essential bankruptcy of current American policy. I for one can only hope that any outbreak of violence is limited to the West Bank and does not involve any more serious ruptures in the wider Near and Middle East. This may indeed be a mere faut de mieux, but under the circumstances, such is indeed the plus ultra of peacemaking in the region for the next fourteen months if not longer. As Anne-Marie Slaughter who until recently served in the Clinton State Department as head of the Policy Planning Staff noted earlier this week, the potential for a complete breakdown in the region, with the resulting violence is now potentially within the realm of possibility:

"So, fine, let the US issue its veto. Then what? The move is likely to trigger violence in Gaza and possibly the West Bank; Israeli countermeasures risk igniting more anti-Israel demonstrations across the Middle East, particularly in Egypt, and possibly in Syria. In both cases a direct clash between the Israeli and Egyptian or Syrian soldiers in the Sinai or the Golan Heights is all too possible, with potentially catastrophic consequences....These are threats growing daily on the horizon. The move from threat to confrontation may seem unlikely, but remember the inexorable, deadly sequence of mobilisation that turned the assassination of an Austrian archduke into first world war. These things can get out of hand quickly" 3.

Is the Jewish vote in the next American Presidential election really worth the above consequences?

1. Natasha Mozgovaya, "U.S. Jews give Obama mixed reviews for 'pro-Israeli' UN speech." Haaretz. 22 September 2011, in www.haaretz.com; Tony Karon, "Why's Obama's U.N. Speech Won't Raise U.S. Credibility in the Middle East." Time. 21 September 2011, in www.time.com; David Gardner, "A Diplomatic bid to call Israel's bluff." The Financial Times. 21 September 2011, in www.ft.com.

2. Anshel Pfeffer, "Israel security forces braces for mass Palestinian protests in West Bank." Haaretz. 23 September 2011, in www.haaretz.com; Anne-Marie Slaughter, "Veto or no Veto, the Middle East is on the brink." The Financial Times. 22 September 2011, in www.ft.com.

3. Slaughter, Op. cit.

2011-09-19T19:57:00.006-04:00

THE COMING AMERICAN COUNT-DOWN IN IRAQ: A COMMENT

"It's hard to understand why the Obama administration would consider leaving only about 3,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011. A force so small would have little ability to contribute to U.S. interests by helping to build a democratic Iraq or by preventing it from sliding back into civil war. But it would incur all the risks and costs of a continuing troop presence. A few thousand troops would have some residual capacity to provide training and modest logistical support for the Iraqi Security Forces. But that's about it.

They certainly will not be in any position to play the vital peacekeeping role that produced the phenomenal drop in violence starting in early 2007 and that made possible Iraq's hopeful—but entirely incomplete—democratic progress in 2008-2010. The loss of that role could well result in a relapse of Iraq's civil war that might suck in neighboring states and metastasize from civil war to regional war".

Kenneth Pollock, "In Iraq: 3,000 troops worse than none?" The Brookings Institute. 12 September 2011, in www.brookings.edu.

"The plain fact of the matter is that we are no longer in a position to impose our will upon Egypt, regardless of the cost of men, money and international goodwill throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world."

Anthony Eden to Winston Churchill, 10 March 1952. PREM [Prime Ministerial Papers] 11 /91. Public Records Office, Kew.

The issues raised by Kenneth Pollock are quite pertinent and to the point. At merely 3,000, the number of American troops to be left in Iraq are almost worse than useless. With the terms 'hostages to fortune', being quite literally a description of what their position will be in Iraq. Especially with Persian money and arms flowing into the country virtually unimpeded by the Iraqi authorities. It is quite easy to imagine that come next year, with only three thousand or so troops in the country as trainers, that the Mahdi Army, or some other outfit will endeavor to either kidnap American troops or alternatively launch attacks on American posts in hopes of the same or worse. Unless, the Americans intend to retain an substantial air arm, or alternatively intend to retain the right to over-flow the country from Kuwait or the American fleet in the Gulf, it is hard to understand how the USA, can possible protect its troops sufficiently to make it a worthwhile endeavor to retain such a small number of troops 'in-country'. Much less endeavoring to stabilize things on the ground in Iraq. Frankly, I have a difficult time understanding the purpose behind the American (actually the American Defence Department) proposal. Except (nota bene) that the proposal is merely pro forma, and is more intended to force the current regime in Baghdad to allow a more substantial number of American troops to remain (perhaps 10,000-20,000) after December 2011. Pro contra it can be argued that given the current American budgetary problems, that a substantial reduction in American troop numbers to something approaching the three thousand number seems indeed what Washington is looking to achieve. If true, all one can say is that a pessimist (which I am not) would argue that the writing is on the wall for the decline of American primacy in the Near and Middle East.

2011-09-16T18:04:00.009-04:00

THE COMING ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN TRAIN WREAK AT THE UNITED NATIONS: A COMMENT

"To be sure, attaining some form of UN membership for Palestine could indeed enhance the Palestinian leadership's leverage in final status negotiations with Israel. They would be negotiating on behalf of a state, not a provisional body and non-state entity. As a UN member, Palestine could resort to legal recourse at the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and possibly the International Criminal Court. Moreover, attaining UN membership would arguably enhance the Palestinians' claim to the pre-1967 armistice line, since that line will have been recognized internationally. Of course, U.S. President Barack Obama already enshrined the 1967 line as the basis for negotiations over a final border in his May 19 State Department address on the Middle East.

For its part, the Palestinian leadership has good reasons to be reluctant to return to the negotiating table without a clear reference point. The three weeks of talks with Israel last September damaged, rather than strengthened, their confidence in their Israeli interlocutors. Israel's subsequent refusal to renew its settlement moratorium or offer an alternative peace plan further diminished faith in the process.

With the plans to petition the Security Council for statehood already set, the least costly option would be to provide the Palestinians a symbolic face-saving achievement in New York short of statehood. In the increasing likelihood that Palestine could achieve recognition as a "non-member state" at the UN General Assembly this September, Palestinians could gain a few additional diplomatic tools for the next round of talks. But the net outcome would likely set back, rather than advance, their national aspirations. First, accession to the UN would undermine Palestinians' moral and historical claims to being a stateless people, a status that has kept their plight at the top of the international agenda for decades. In the international community's eyes, moreover, the conflict with Israel would effectively become a border dispute -- one of scores around the world -- not an existential challenge to the Palestinians. This would reduce the saliency and centrality of the Palestinian issue for many.

As the Oxford University law professor Guy Goodwin-Gill recently argued in a legal brief to Palestinian leadership, the move to statehood would also terminate the legal status of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The state of Palestine's authority would effectively be limited geographically to parts of West Bank and perhaps Gaza. Palestinian refugees outside of the newly recognized state would be left without any representation within international institutions. And Gaza would presumably be considered a Hamas-occupied Palestinian territory, given the failure to date to implement its April 2011 unity agreement with Fatah. At best, the state of Palestine would thus rule around forty percent of the West Bank. The other territories that the Palestinians claim -- the remaining sixty percent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza -- would all be controlled by Israel or Hamas.

Practically, Palestine's newfound ability to confront Israel in international fora would not be the boon many believe either. Rather than pressuring Israel to become more forthcoming and to rapidly seek an agreement with the Palestinians, the confrontational atmosphere could trigger an Israeli public backlash. With its preponderance of power and control of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, Israel would likely take harsher countermeasures on the ground, such as withholding tax remittances, restricting Palestinian movement, and possibly annexing some West Bank territory, arguing that Palestinians had abrogated the Oslo framework, which has preserved some semblance of cooperation and Palestinian governance.

Having defied Israel, the United States, and possibly parts of Europe, the Palestinian leadership's UN gambit would cast them as acting unilaterally, a charge Israel has generally suffered. Palestinians' alleged provocative behavior would rapidly increase tensions on the ground, creating an extremely combustible environment. Meanwhile, a failure at the UN could easily spark violence on the Palestinian side as dashed expectations lead to rage. It would also deal the Palestinian leadership a huge public embarrassment".

Robert M. Danin, "The UN vote and Palestinian Statehood: why the move is an Unnecessary Gamble." Foreign Affairs. 14 September 2011, in www.foreignaffairs.com.

"For months, the US and the EU have tried to discourage the Palestinians from asking the UN to recognise the state of Palestine. On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are concerned that the UN bid will exacerbate the conflict with Israel. But so far, American and European efforts have failed. Instead Washington and its EU counterparts should exploit the Palestinian initiative. If framed constructively, UN recognition could actually strengthen the prospects for peace....

The UN bid is very popular amongst the Palestinian population and it has gained support from numerous countries, including those in the Arab League. But the US and several EU governments worry that UN recognition would only make peace harder to achieve. Israel is already threatening to sever all assistance and contact with the Palestinian authorities out of concern that they will use recognition to pursue claims against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Furthermore, emboldened Palestinian grass roots movements and Israeli settlers might try to reclaim land from each other in the West Bank, triggering unrest and potentially violence....

Instead of opposing the UN bid, Washington and its European partners should use the Palestinian initiative to strengthen their efforts to re-launch peace talks. The US and the EU should inform the Palestinians that they will support a request for UN membership so long as the Palestinians ask the UN to recognise a state of Palestine whose borders broadly resemble those of 1967; they commit themselves to resolving outstanding disputes with Israel through negotiations (including the exact demarcation of borders); and they extend their executive control over the territory only through agreement with Israel.

Such a resolution would curtail the risks envisaged by Israel and others about UN recognition. It would reaffirm the primacy of negotiations as the way to solve the conflict. And by eliminating legal ambiguities about who controls Palestinian territory, it would reduce the scope for Palestinian and Israeli popular protests. In addition, when presented under such terms, UN recognition could help address some of the obstacles which have stalled the peace process in recent years. It would ensure that the Arab world, while undergoing a major upheaval, endorsed the concept of a two-state solution. And it would force the militant group Hamas, which is still in control of Gaza and has so far been disdainful of the UN effort, to either endorse it or lose support amongst the Palestinian people.

It is unusual for the UN to grant membership to a state with such extensive caveats. And many of the challenges which have blighted peace talks in the past are set to remain. Nevertheless Abbas’ initiative could offer the best platform to re-launch negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. And at a time when violence is flaring up around Gaza and the Israeli-Egyptian border, the US and the EU must do their utmost to ensure that the Palestinian UN bid does not trigger further instability".

Clara Marina O'Donnell, "The US and the EU should support the Palestinian bid for UN membership." Centre for European Reform. 25 August 2011, in www.cer.org.uk.

The issue of the the Palestinian Authority's (hereafter 'PA') bid for United Nation's membership as a sovereign, legitimate state, has been a one of the most predictable diplomatic train wreaks in the past ten years. The fact of the matter is, that this diplomatic manoeuvre, however maladroit it may be in certain aspects, is for the PA in the final analysis a political fait de mieux . As with the almost complete surrender by the current American Administration to the Netanyahu Cabinet in the past year or so, and the continuation of the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the UN bid is for PA President Abbas a last throw of the diplomatic dice 1. Contrary to Mr. Danin's conjecture that the Palestinian move is a sort of diplomacy of va banque , quite the contrary is the case. Sans this admittedly mostly public relations manoeuvre, it is difficult to envisage what diplomatic crumbs the PA would be able to obtain by remaining on the sidelines. Certainly with the upcoming American Presidential elections, the likelihood of the anything coming from Washington which savors of positive pressure on Israel is almost a complete non possumus. And while I for one am not as optimistic about the end-results of the PA being given official recognition by the United Nations as Mlle. O'Donnell, that does not gainsay the fact that at the moment, and for at the very least another year if not for longer, this gambit is for the PA the only game in town. More's the pity that the Americans will of course veto the proposal 2. The erratum of which will only become apparent, when the inevitable explosion in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip occurs sometime next year, if not sooner.

1. "Arab League Discusses Palestinian Statehood." Al-Jazeera.
4 August 2011, in www.aljazeera.net.

2. Steven Lee Myers & David D. Kirkpatrick. "U.S. Scrambling to Avert Palestinian Vote at the UN." The New York Times. 13 September 2011, in www.nytimes.com; James Blitz & Tobias Buck, "Palestinians seek UN backing for Statehood." The Financial Times. 16 September 2011, in www.ft.com.

2011-09-14T17:49:00.010-04:00

DONALD RUMSFELD AT THE OXONIAN SOCIETY

"Rumsfeld afforded me a close-up look at a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in who ambition, ability, and substance fuse seamlessly. Rumsfeld had served briefly on the domestic side of the Nixon White House; there he skillfully avoided involving himself in the controversies of an embattled presidency…Charming, tough and capable of being quite decisive. Rumsfeld neither explicitly supported nor explicitly defied the critics of Ford’s foreign policy. As Secretary of Defence, he thwarted new diplomatic initiatives or military moves by a rigorous insistence on bureaucratic procedures and playing the devil’s advocate with respect to every new proposal, as I shall discuss in a later chapter…Whatever the motive---and they were all honorable---Rumsfeld was skillful at deflecting every controversial issue into some bureaucratic bog or other…With the passing of time, I grew more mellow about Rumsfeld’s brilliant single-mindedness, especially after I left government and was no longer in his line of fire. He was tough, capable, personally attractive, and knowledgeable, I came to believe that if he ever reached the presidency, he might be a more comfortable chief executive than Cabinet colleague---indeed, he had the makings of a strong President.”

Henry Alfred Kissinger, Years of Renewal (1998), pp. 175-177.

"OMNIUM CONSENSU CAPAX IMPERII, NISI IMPERASSET."

Tacitus on the Emperor Galba (68-69). HISTORIES, Book I,chapter 49.

On Wednesday the 8th of September, Donald Rumsfeld, the man who has been both the youngest and the oldest Defence Secretary in American history spoke to a select audience at the Oxonian Society. The following is a rough transcription of Secretary Rumsfeld's remarks. Prior to however relating his words, I did wish to offer up my own brief assessment of Secretary Rumsfeld's tenure at the Department of Defence. The disjunction between the words of praise by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on his one-time bureaucratic rival, a full three years prior to Rumsfeld resuming office in 2001, and the famous dismissal of the great Roman historian Tacitus on the brief reign of the Emperor Galba is harsh, but I do believe just from a historical standpoint. As per why? To my mind the reasons are rather simple: the goals that he set for himself to accomplish: the 'transformation' of the American military for the twenty-first century were for the most part not properly or left undone. In addition, and more problematically, by his great success in 'end-running' his counter-part at the State Department, General Powell as well as the hapless National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice, Rumsfeld helped to ensure the disaster that was the Iraq debacle as well as the bungled diplomacy behind it. Indeed that reign of diplomatic errors which went under the name of 'unilateralism' in the years anno domini 2001 to 2006. Au fond of course, there are few American Defence Secretaries who one can say characterize as being in some overall sense 'successful.' The only ones that come to mind are Robert Lovett, Tom Gates, Melvin Laird, and perhaps Harold Brown. The rest even the most ambitious (Robert McNamara and James Forrestal come immediately to mind) ended up as failures. In the case of Mr. Rumsfeld, it could very well be argued that his failure as Defence Secretary was intimately tied up with his ambitions. That in point of fact, that notwithstanding his past tenure in the office and his intermittent involvement in national security affairs in the 1990's, that his views were too idiosyncratic, unformed and in the final analysis ill-formed about the nature of the American Defence establishment and the changes needed to properly 'transform it'. Indeed, one may argue that the 'transformation' that Rumsfeld argued for was the very last thing needed by the American Defence establishment. As to some extent the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq seem to indicate. And however unfortunate, it is the latter two conflicts more than anything else in his tenure as Secretary of Defence, which will seal Rumsfeld historical reputation. With all of the above being said, it is true that Rumsfeld does still possess a most attractive personality and indeed quite literally had the audience at this event eating out of his hands (giving the same a quite full round of applause as he left the room after the event). He was quite gracious in his remarks about his former (mostly defeated) ex-colleagues such as General Powell and Dr. Rice. All in all, Rumsfeld seems very much of a piece with an older generation of American policy-makers, and that rather than being someone who is seventy-nine years old, his language gives the appearance of someone who is closer to being born circa 1910 or 1915. In short of an older, more homogeneous, settled and self-confident America of the immediate post-war years (1945-1960), rather than the post-1960's era. In a certain sense, notwithstanding the provincialism of that platoon of policymakers (Rumsfeld's Mid-Western accent being the epitome of the latter), I do have a certain degree of nostalgia for that period's brand of policy-makers and the America that they represented. More's the pity that so few of them are left among us.

The following are remarks made by Donald Rumsfeld at the Russian Tea room in the early afternoon of the 8th of September:

As per the character of Saddam Hussein, who Rumsfeld met back in 1983: 'a typical Middle Eastern dictator' and thus 'not someone who you wanted bring home to dinner'. On the idea of Gerry Ford-Ronald Reagan 'Co-presidency', as proposed by Henry Kissinger at the Republican convention in 1980: 'the dumbest idea possible'.

That there: 'was no Rumsfeld doctrine, merely a Bush doctrine' of putting in place structures to combat terrorism both at home and abroad. Not to treat terrorists as merely criminals. And that the policy was in essence: 'putting pressure on terrorists all over the world', that the USA 'cannot defend everywhere' against the same. And that the 'Obama Administration [has] kept Bush Administration measures in place', contrary to campaign rhetoric to discard them.

That the 11th of September 2001, was an impetus to modernize the military. Especially 'the development of asymmetrical capabilities in practice'. That it was 'bad journalism' to harp on the so-called looting of the antiquities museum in Baghdad in 2003. It would not have been possible to have left Saddam Hussein in power (Rumsfeld employs many of the same, not very convincing arguments employed circa 2002-2003). War as 'a failure of diplomacy'.

Rumsfeld disclaims ownership of the phrase and idea behind: 'the war on terror'. As per Rumsfeld, this was indeed a 'Bushism' and that he endeavored to try to have President Bush no longer use the phrase. The chief problem is that the phrase implies that the conflict with Terrorism is similar to that say World War I or World War II. Whereas as per Rumsfeld, the situation was more akin to the 'Cold War' in both its ambiguity and its length.

As per the current situation in the Near and Middle East, Rumsfeld expressed mixed emotions about the same: both optimistic about the long-term possibilities of change and concerns about short-term instability in the region. As per him Libya per se, is not an important American interest, unlike say Egypt or Saudi Arabia. States that the overall situation even in Egypt is 'unclear', much less in the rest of the region.

States that 'China is big and India is even going to be bigger'. As per Rumsfeld, the PRC's many internal, domestic problems will prevent it from even approaching a potential challenge to the United States in the Far Eastern region.

2011-09-06T21:36:00.009-04:00

ANKARA'S GAZA GAMBIT: A POLICY OF 'VA BANQUE'?

"Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday Turkey would implement further sanctions against Israel and said that "our ships will be seen more frequently in those waters," referring to the Eastern Mediterranean. Erdoğan said that Turkey was "totally suspending" defense industry ties with Israel, after downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel.

"Trade ties, military ties, ties regarding defense industry, we are completely suspending them. This process will be followed by different measures," Erdoğan told reporters in Ankara. Turkey started to implement sanctions on Israel upon Israel's refusal to apologize for the botched raid on a Gaza-bound protest flotilla that killed nine Turks last year.

Israel has expressed regret for the loss of lives. Erdoğan described the raid as "savagery" and accused Israel of acting like "a spoiled boy" in the region. Erdoğan also told reporters that he may visit Gaza and would decide whether to do so after talks with Egypt. Erdoğan is planning to visit Cairo later this month".

"Turkey to enforce more sanctions on Israel: PM Erdogan." Hurriyet Daily News. 6 September 2011, in www.hurriyetdailynews.com.

"Turkey has set the stage for a potential naval confrontation with Israel by announcing that Turkish ships attempting to breach the maritime blockade of Gaza will be given an armed escort. The threat, made by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, sharply escalated a diplomatic row with Israel that has seen relations between the two former allies plunged into their worst crisis in decades.

Incensed by Israel's refusal to apologise for its deadly raid on a Gaza bound aid flotilla last year, which led to the deaths of nine Turkish activists on board the MV Mami Marmara, Mr Erdogan has announced a series of sanctions against the Israeli government in recent days. But it is his latest outburst that will cause most alarm in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. "Turkish warships will be tasked with protecting the Turkish boats bringing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip," Mr Erdogan told the Arabic television network Al Jazeera.

"From now on, we will no longer allow these ships to be the targets of attacks by Israel like the one on the Freedom Flotilla, because then Israel will have to deal with an appropriate response."

Senior Israeli officials were quick to denounce the threat, while insisting that they had no interest in worsening the increasingly noxious rhetoric. "These remarks are grave and serious, but we have no wish to add to the polemic," Dan Meridor, Israel's intelligence minister, told the country's army radio service. "It is better to stay quiet and wait. We have no interest in aggravating the situation by replying to such attacks." But, while some in Mr Netanyahu's government are hoping to defuse tensions, relations could deteriorate still further with Avigdor Lieberman, the fiery Israeli foreign minister, expected to announce a series of retaliatory steps against Turkey over the weekend. Reports in the Israeli press suggested that Mr Lieberman could even announce plans to meet and even finance Turkey's Kurdish rebels....

It is unclear whether Mr Erdogan's threat to give naval protection to future Turkish aid vessels trying to breach the blockade amounts to anything more than populist posturing. He did not reveal whether Turkish naval vessels would enter the territorial waters of either Israel or Gaza. The raid on the Mavi Marmara took place in international waters."

Adrian Bloomfield, "Turkey to provide armed escort for new Gaza Flotilla." The Daily Telegraph. 9 September 2011, in www.telegraph.co.uk.

The rising crescendo of threats & hostile actions emanating from Ankara raises questions in my mind at the very least as to the exact rationale for the AK governments actions vis-`a-vis Israel. I myself thought that whatever domestic Turkish political mileage which could be derived from the entire affair was more or less exhausted by the AK relative triumph in the recent Parliamentary elections. If that is still the case (and I do believe that it is), one can only surmise that the reason for Ankara's increasing overt hostility on this subject is caused by Erdogan, et. al., need to: camouflage as much as possible Ankara's inactivity vis-`a-vis the ongoing Syrian uprising. Where a series of Turkish statements about the Assad regime's need to de-escalate its repression of its population has in fact resulted in a mere nullity. Positioning Ankara in a cul de sac position diplomatically, as unlike the other Sunni regimes in the region (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States), Turkey has refused to go beyond his hectoring tone in its interactions with the Assad regime. The result being that in terms of the Near Eastern public, Ankara has come across as being possessing 'paper tiger' status in the Syrian crisis. And the whole Gaza contretemps, which first saw the Turkish premier become famous regionally speaking back in 2009 and 2010, from Ankara's perspective offers best means of burying or partially burying the embarrassment of the Syrian diplomatic debacle. The fact that relations with Tel Aviv might be pushed to the breaking point does not appear to faze in the least the Erdogan regime. Indeed, it would appear to be the case that perhaps breaking ties with Israel, or at the very least engaging in a policy of va banque in this almost entirely contrived dispute, in which Ankara leaves it up to Israel to decide to break off diplomatic relations with Turkey (and Ankara knows quite well that breaking relations with Turkey is something that Tel Aviv is loath to do). With all that being said, I for one highly doubt that Turkish ships will deliberately enter Israeli or Gaza territorial waters. Indeed, it could very well be the case, that Ankara is hoping (a forlorn hope?), that at the very last second, either immediately prior to the flotilla setting sail or nearing Israeli-Gaza waters, that the Americans, et. al., will intervene and contrive a modus vivendi, which Turkey will endeavor to proclaim to Urbi et Orbi represents a triumph of Turkish policy. In short what we have here is an old-fashioned 'policy of prestige', which I for one did not expect to see ever again employed by any but the smallest powers. Certainly not a regional power of Turkey's ilk. What the results will be, and if Ankara's calculations prove correct only time will tell.

2011-09-01T18:04:00.003-04:00

THE 11TH OF SEPTEMBER IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

"Some observers have compared the impact of 9/11 on U.S. policy to the impact on U.S. policy of North Korea's attack on South Korea in June 1950. Back then, the Truman administration had also been stunned. It had been pondering new initiatives, but the president was still waffling. He had approved the National Security Council report known as NSC-68 but was not quite ready to implement it. The dimensions of a coming U.S. military buildup were uncertain; the global nature of the Cold War still unclear; the ideological crusade still somewhat inchoate. But Dean Acheson, the secretary of state, and Paul Nitze, the director of policy planning at the State Department, knew they had to reconfirm the United States' preponderance of power, recently shattered by the Soviets' first nuclear test. They knew they had to increase the United States' military capabilities, regain the country's self-confidence, and avoid being self-deterred. They knew they had to take responsibility for the operation of global free trade and the reconstruction of the West German and Japanese economies (their successful resuscitation was still uncertain). They knew the United States' supremacy was being contested by a brutal and formidable rival with an ideology that had considerable appeal to impoverished peoples beginning to yearn for autonomy, equality, independence, and nationhood. In this context, the North Korean attack not only led to the Korean War but also unleashed a major expansion of U.S. global policy more generally.

The long-term significance of 9/11 for U.S. foreign policy should not be overestimated. Whether or not one thinks that such analogies are appropriate, it is incontestable that Bush and his advisers saw themselves as being locked in a similar struggle. And they, too, sought to preserve and reassert the primacy of the United States while they struggled to thwart any follow-up attacks on U.S. citizens or U.S. territory. Like Acheson and Nitze, they were certain that they were protecting a way of life, that the configuration of power in the international arena and the mitigation of threats abroad were vital to the preservation of freedom at home.

More than Acheson and Nitze, Bush's advisers had trouble weaving the elements of their policy into a coherent strategy that could address the challenges they considered most urgent. It seems clear now that many of their foreign policy initiatives, along with their tax cuts and unwillingness to call for domestic sacrifices, undercut the very goals they were designed to achieve.

Thus, U.S. primacy was ultimately damaged by the failure to execute the occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq effectively and by the anti-Americanism that these flawed enterprises helped magnify. U.S. officials might declare the universal appeal of freedom and proclaim that history has demonstrated the viability of only one form of political economy, but opinion polls throughout the Muslim world have shown that the United States' actions in Iraq and support of Israel were a toxic combination. As liberation turned into occupation and counterinsurgency, the United States and its power were thrown into disrepute.

U.S. primacy was also damaged by the unexpected cost of the protracted wars, recently estimated by the Congressional Research Service to be $1.3 trillion dollars and mounting. It was eroded by the debts that accrued as a result of tax cuts and increased domestic expenditures. Defense spending climbed from $304 billion in 2001 to $616 billion in 2008, even as the U.S. budget went from a surplus of $128 billion to a deficit of $458 billion. Federal debt as a percentage of GDP rose from 32.5 percent in 2001 to 53.5 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, the U.S. debt held by foreign governments climbed steadily, from about 13 percent at the end of the Cold War to close to 30 percent at the end of the Bush years. U.S. financial strength and flexibility had been seriously eroded".

Melvyn Leffler, "9/11 in Retrospect: George W. Bush's Grand Strategy, Reconsidered."
Foreign Affairs. (September / October 2011).

As the tenth anniversary approaches of the 11th of September 2001, I thought that it would be worthwhile to publish an extract from an essay by the erste-klasse, American 20th century diplomatic historian Melvyn Leffler. Leffler having written perhaps the very best book dealing with the early origins of the American national security state and its foreign policy 1. Given his background, one can only observe that unfortunately, his essay dealing with the 11th of September 2001, is less than totally inspiring from an analytical perspective. Indeed, from my (admittedly biased) perspective, his text seems to be filled with rather commonplace bien-pensant apercu:

"Americans can affirm their core values yet recognize the hubris that inheres in them. They can identify the wanton brutality of others yet acknowledge that they themselves are the source of rage in many parts of the Arab world. Americans can agree that terrorism is a threat that must be addressed but realize that it is not an existential menace akin to the military and ideological challenges posed by German Nazism and Soviet communism. They can acknowledge that the practice of projecting solutions to their problems onto the outside world means that they seek to avoid difficult choices at home, such as paying higher taxes, accepting universal conscription, or implementing a realistic energy policy. Americans can recognize that there is evil in the world, as Obama reminded his Nobel audience in December 2009, and they can admit, as he did, that force has a vital role to play in the affairs of humankind. But they can also recognize that the exercise of power can grievously injure those whom they wish to help and can undercut the very goals they seek to achieve. Americans can acknowledge the continuities in their interests and values yet wrestle with the judgments and tradeoffs that are required to design a strategy that works in a post-Cold War era, where the threats are more varied, the enemies more elusive, and power more fungible"2.

However, be that as it may, the larger and more pertinent point that he makes, is that rather than the policies of the Bush regime, being at variance with those of prior administrations, in point of fact there is a great deal of continuity between the general outline of said policies and those of the Clinton Administration before it. A point made ex-number of years ago, by Leffler's nemesis in the American historical profession, John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University in a series of lectures that I was able to attend at the New York Public Library 3. Where the Bush regime differs significantly from its predecessors and indeed its successor is not so much in the goals that it sought, or even necessarily the means employed, merely in the persistently inept & amateurish manner that the policies were pursued. Rumsfeld et. al., in retrospect reminds one of nothing ever so much as Bethmann-Hollweg's comment about Erich Ludendorff: 'a mixture of political primitivism and old-Prussian directness'. With the end result being both the isolation that American diplomacy found itself in the Iraq War from 2003 onwards as well as the grossly incompetent fashion that the war was waged. The Iraq mis-adventure being a principal example of 'political primitivism' par excellence. Similarly the entire concept & policy the the so-called 'War on Terror' (a term which displays an infinite lack of conceptualization). Which is not to gainsay the fact that Leffler engages in the usual (as noted above) parti pris against the Bush regime and its defenders: id est., while the costs of the Iraq War were in total dollars a seemingly large amount (1.3 Trillion), per se, that does not explain the difficulties of the American economy since the so-called 'Dot-com' bust, nor does account for the devastation of the financial crisis on the American economy since. Per contra: countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Italia, Germany, et. cetera., all suffered as much as if not more than the USA, even though none of these had to deal with the costs of two foreign wars, nor tax cuts for the wealthy `a la the USA 4. Hence, to pre-suppose that the former (Iraq / Afghan War & tax cuts) resulted in the latter (economic difficulties since 2000 and especially 2007) is merely an example of the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Sans partis pris, I for one would rather doubt that Leffler would engage in such a simplistic syllogism. In short, the value of Leffler's piece is that he demonstrates that au fond, the 11th of September 2001, was in the larger stream of history, what the great French historian Fernand Braudel would characterize as an 'un evenement', a mere event 5. And not a structural or conjectural change in the larger historical or geopolitical landscape. It is more akin to the earlier American mis-adventure in Indo-China, than say something equivalent to say the Great War or World War II in its effects on the world politics.

1. Melyvn Leffler, A Predominance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War. (1993).

2. Leffler, 9/11 in Retrospect, op. cit.

3. John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security and the American Experience. (2004).

4. Martin Wolf, "Struggling with a Great Contraction." The Financial Times. 31st August 2011, in www.ft.com.

5. For the origins of this term, see: Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean & the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II . (1949).

2011-08-30T18:47:00.003-04:00

CHINA'S MILITARY BUILD-UP: A DISSENTING POINT OF VIEW

"China’s rise as a major international actor is likely to stand out as a defining feature of the strategic landscape of the early 21st century. Sustained economic development has raised the standard of living for China’s citizens and elevated China’s international profile. This development, coupled with an expanding science and technology base, has also facilitated a comprehensive and ongoing military modernization program. The United States welcomes a strong, prosperous, and successful China that reinforces international rules and norms and enhances security and peace both regionally and globally. China is steadily assuming new roles and responsibilities in the international community. In 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao articulated new guidance for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including missions extending beyond China’s immediate territorial interests. This catalyzed China’s growing involvement in international peacekeeping efforts, counter-piracy operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and the evacuation of Chinese citizens from overseas trouble spots. China’s 2010 Defense White Paper asserts that China’s ―future and destiny have never been more closely connected with those of the international community.‖ Nonetheless, China’s modernized military could be put to use in ways that increase China’s ability to gain diplomatic advantage or resolve disputes in its favor. Although the PLA is contending with a growing array of missions, Taiwan remains its main strategic direction.‖ China continued modernizing its military in 2010, with a focus on Taiwan contingencies, even as cross-Strait relations improved. The PLA seeks the capability to deter Taiwan independence and influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms. In pursuit of this objective, Beijing is developing capabilities intended to deter, delay, or deny possible U.S. support for the island in the event of conflict. The balance of cross-Strait military forces and capabilities continues to shift in the mainland’s favor. Over the past decade, China’s military has benefited from robust investment in modern hardware and technology. Many modern systems have reached maturity and others will become operational in the next few years. Following this period of ambitious acquisition, the decade from 2011 through 2020 will prove critical to the PLA as it attempts to integrate many new and complex platforms, and to adopt modern operational concepts, including joint operations and network-centric warfare. China has made modest, but incremental, improvements in the transparency of its military and security affairs. However, there remains uncertainty about how China will use its growing capabilities. The United States recognizes and welcomes PRC contributions that support a safe and secure global environment. China’s steady integration into the global economy creates new incentives for partnership and cooperation, particularly in the maritime domain. Although China’s expanding military capabilities can facilitate cooperation in pursuit of shared objectives, they can also increase the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation. Strengthening our military-to-military relationship is a critical part of our strategy to shape China’s choices as we seek to capitalize on opportunities for cooperation while mitigating risks. To support this strategy, the United States must continue monitoring PRC force development and strategy. In concert with our friends and Allies, the United States will also continue adapting our forces, posture, and operational concepts to maintain a stable and secure East Asian environment".

The Office of the Secretary of Defence, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2011: Annual Report to Congress." No Date, in www.defence.gov.

“It’s a combination of the lack of understanding that’s been created by the opacity of their system, but it is also because there are very real questions given the overall trends and trajectory in the scope and the scale of China’s military modernization efforts,” Mr. Schiffer said. “I wouldn’t put it on any one particular platform or any one particular system. There’s nothing particularly magical about any one particular item.”

American Defence Department Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Michael Schiffer, quoted in Elizabeth Bumiller, "U.S. Official Warns About China's Military Build-up." The New York Times. 24 August 2011, in www.nytimes.com.

"About thirty years ago the fear of the 'Yellow Peril' was the fashion. It was said that China and Japan were about to advance towards economic and perhaps also military conquest of Europe and other regions. Much was written to stress the vast size of the yellow races, their modest standard of living which ensured the low prices of manufactured goods, the political sense of Japan, the reawakening of China after a sleep of centuries. Then gradually these fears abated and were replaced by others."

Vilfredo Pareto, "Russia." 13 June 1922, in The Other Pareto. Edited & translated by Placido & Gillian Bucolo. (1980), p. 258.

It is quite easy to become excessively alarmed by the American Defence Department report. Indeed, au fond that is part and parcel of the rationale of the report in the first place. Since with the likelihood of cuts (albeit from a
high level of current spending) in future years of American defence spending, the temptation by American military officials to beat the drum of a future 'Chinese military threat' is perhaps too much to overlook. Regardless of the reasoning behind the report, is there currently any danger posed by the PRC to American and Western interests in the Pacific, much less beyond the same? Based upon the information provided in the report, as well as other sources, the short answer is a resounding no. Which is not to gainsay the fact that, if (a very very contingent variable here) American-Western economies do not eventually recover by say 2020 from the deleveraging process currently under way, then, and only then perhaps there might be a real danger that the Americans could be under pressure to cut substantially their military budget. Id est, real cuts resulting in reductions in spending in real terms (AKA before factoring in projected increases). Currently, the American defence budget is upwards of forty-two percent of total military spending in the world. A figure higher than say 1988-1990 1. Even if this figure were to recede to something approaching forty percent, per se that would not change the strategic balance very much, given the fact that most of the other major military powers are American allies, either de facto or de jure, and thus not allied with the PRC: Japan, India, and the countries of Western Europe 2. With only the Russian federation among major military powers not being either de facto or de jure in the American camp. It is this pre-dominance of military hardware and allies, over and above the sheer size of the American military machine, which makes I for one a tad bit skeptical about the the likelihood that the Peking could possibly be a real military threat. Especially, since in geo-strategic terms, the PRC is 'boxed-in' its East Asian land space. As one China specialist, recently described the situation graphically from the PRC's perspective:

"Chinese decision-makers realize that China’s overall strategic position in East asia does not provide any leverage for China to adopt a confrontational approach towards any other major player in the region. After two decades of laborious efforts in consolidating its strategic foothold in the region, China is, by and
large, still a strategically isolated big power in East asia. China is not pleased with the situation but its leaders regard it as a strategic quandary that China will have to live with for a long time" 3.

None of the above is to gainsay the fact, that the best guarantee of continued long-term, Western (American & European) global predominance is: i) increased economic growth (over and above the current trend-rate of 1.5%-2.0%) 4; ii) increased diplomatic outreach to those countries: India, Vietnam inter alia, who share Western concerns about Chinese expansionism. With one hopes in time a resurgent Russian Federation also involved; iii) a shared willingness to employ when needed Western military might vis-`a-vis the PRC `a la former American President Clinton's policy in the crisis over Formosa in 1996. There would be no greater risk to Western world-wide hegemony than a failure of nerve to employ directly or indirectly military force when the situation shows that it is needed. Especially against the regime in power in Peking.

1. On this subject matter, see: Sebastian Mallaby, "American power requires economic sacrifice." The Financial Times. 6 July 2011, in www.ft.com & Neil Bouhan & Paul Swartz. "Trends in U.S. Military Spending." Council on Foreign Relations. 28 June 2011, in www.cfr.org.

2. Bouhan & Swartz, op cit.

3. Mingjiang Li, "China's Non-confrontational Assertiveness in The South China Sea." The Freeman Report. (July / August 2011), p. 2.

4. As the 'Lex' column in Monday's Financial Times cogently notes: much of the much vaunted, American budget deficit would disappear, if economic growth would return to the trend-rate of 3.0% of the 1982-1990 & 1992-2001 periods. With the key quandary being if this is in fact possible in the aftermath of the financial crisis of the last three years. See: Lex, "US Budget: forecast tax take flaw." The Financial Times 29 August, in www.ft.com.

2011-08-22T19:04:00.007-04:00

LIBYA & THE COLLAPSE OF THE QADDAFI REGIME: ANOTHER 'L'ETRANGE DEFAITE'?

"In talks in London late Monday, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, met his French counterpart, Alain Juppé, who said last week that “one of the scenarios” to resolve the conflict in Libya “is that he stays in Libya on one condition, which I repeat: that he very clearly steps aside from Libyan political life.”

Previously, Britain had insisted that Colonel Qaddafi leave the country as part of a settlement. That could expose him to arrest under a warrant on war crimes charges issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

But, adopting a newer formula used by the State Department in Washington, Mr. Hague said on Tuesday that “what happens to Qaddafi is ultimately a question for the Libyans.”

“What is absolutely clear is that whatever happens, Qaddafi must leave power. He must never again be able to threaten the lives of Libyan civilians nor to destabilize Libya once he has left power.”

“Obviously him leaving Libya itself would be the best way of showing the Libyan people that they no longer have to live in fear of Qaddafi,” Mr. Hague said. “But as I have said all along, this is ultimately a question for Libyans to determine.”

After Mr. Juppé raised the idea last week, an Obama administration spokesman, Jay Carney, said Colonel Qaddafi “needs to remove himself from power — and then it’s up to the Libyan people to decide.”

The shift came as NATO maintained its four-month air campaign to support Libyan rebels by hampering pro-Qaddafi forces. The latest NATO attack was reported on Tuesday with a strike the previous day against targets near the town of Zliten east of Tripoli, the capital".

Alan Cowell, "Britain says Qaddafi Could remain in Libya." The New York Times. 26 July 2011, in www.nytimes.com.

"Reports of explosions and heavy gunfire in Tripoli on Aug. 20 indicate that rebel fighters may be beginning an attempt to lay siege on the Libyan capital with the aim of removing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Based on the limited information available so far and the immense complications entailed in trying to seize a metropolis like Tripoli, however, it does not appear that the rebels are in a position to wage a final assault against Gadhafi....

Though Gadhafi appears to be on the defensive, the challenges of laying siege to and then taking a city defended by forces that have had a significant amount of time to dig in and prepare for an attack cannot be understated. If Gadhafi can retain the loyalty of his remaining troops, the rebels will have a difficult time seizing the city".

Stratfor, "Libyan Rebels Closing in on Tripoli." Stratfor: Global Intelligence. 20 August 2011, in www.stratfor.com.

"TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Remnants of forces still loyal to Muammar Gaddafi staged a desperate stand in Tripoli on Tuesday as rebels fought their way into the capital, but the whereabouts of the veteran leader was a mystery....Rebels say they are now in control of most of Tripoli, a sprawling coastal city of two million people on the Mediterranean Sea, but it was not clear whether Gaddafi was still in the Libyan capital. Rebels swept into Tripoli two days ago in tandem with an uprising within the city. Reuters reporters saw firefights and clashes with heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, as rebels tried to flush out snipers and pockets of resistance. Hundreds seem to have been killed or wounded since Saturday. But Gaddafi tanks and sharpshooters appeared to hold only small areas, mainly around Gaddafi's heavily fortified Bab al-Aziziyah compound in central Tripoli".

Ulf Laessing & Missy Ryan, "Gadaffi on the run as rebels fight in Tripoli." Reuters. 22 August 2011, in www.reuters.com.

The sudden collapse of the Qaddafi regime in the past few days must rank as one of the more sudden and complete examples in history of how the balance of forces on the battlefield can change tout`a coup.As recently as three weeks ago (viz the New York Times report of pour-parlers from Paris & London about allowing Qaddafi to remain in power above), it was widely feared (by myself among others) that NATO's campaign had become bogged down and that there was every likelihood of the war continuing into the fall 1. The fact that even the American intelligence outfit, Stratfor was still issuing caveats on Saturday evening (EST), about the likelihood of the rebels being able to gain control of what then seemed Qaddafi's strong-hold of Tripoli would appear to show how quickly circumstances were changing on the ground. From a purely military standpoint it would appear that what occurred was that while the regimes forces were still able to hold-off the rebels in the East of the country, the advances made by the rebels in the mountains and hills to the south and west of Tripoli, both commenced and were a sign of the gradual collapse of the regime's forces. No doubt, the fact that supplies were gradually becoming more and more difficult to obtain as well as the fact that with the ever-present NATO air campaign, the regime's more efficient elements were becoming more and more degraded. Another variable, not easily predictable, but, I would surmise perhaps equally important was that the morale of the regimes forces were beginning to collapse. As the conflict's continuation led even the most loyal elements of the regime to begin to engage in sauve qui peut. Hence the veritable disappearance, beginning on Friday-Saturday of what was widely viewed as the strongest battlefield force in the entire country, regime or rebel: the Khamis brigade personally commanded by Qaddafi's own son Khamis. As Stratfor cogently notes to-day, the key issue of what occurred in Tripoli in the past few days is that the brigagde "put up almost no resistance as the rebels pushed eastward from Zawiya" 2. And while the regime is still holding-out in perhaps ten to fifteen percent of the city of Tripoli, the fact is that no one would have predicted the degree and scale of the rebel success at this time last week. Once again as the collapse of say Imperial Germany in October-November of 1918 or for that matter the 'strange defeat' of France in May-June 1940, questions of troop morale and loyalty rather than more empirical variables, will I believe be found to have been the key determinate of the resolution of the campaign 3.

1. For this see in addition to the above referenced report: Peter Grier, "Has Obama's approach to Libya been vindicated?" The Christian Science Monitor. 22 August 2011, in www.csmonitor.com.

2. Stratfor, "Libyan Rebels Immediate Security Concerns." Op cit.

3. The 'Strange Defeat' (Etrange Defaite) is of course the title of the great Annales historian Marc Bloch's contemporary (written in the summer of 1940, first published in 1946) study of the French collapse in May-June 1940. For a recent look at the causes of the German collapse in October-November 1918, see: David Stevenson, With our backs to the wall: Victory & Defeat in 1918. (Harvard University Press, 2011).

2011-08-20T13:08:00.004-04:00

THE GAZA ATTACKS ON ISRAEL: A COMMENT

"At least seven of the attackers – who Israel says belong to the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees – were killed by Israeli and Egyptian forces. Since Thursday evening, the Israeli air force has also struck a series of targets in the Gaza Strip, killing seven Palestinians, including the PRC commander. According to Gaza-based observers, the committees have more than 1,000 gunmen in their ranks, and are considered one of the most active, and aggressive, militant groups in the Gaza Strip. They have claimed responsibility for a series of high-profile attacks on Israeli targets in recent years, including the 2006 abduction of Gilad Shalit , the Israeli soldier currently held in Gaza. The PRC operates largely independently from Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the strip. There has been no claim of responsibility for the Eilat attacks from any group. Hamas leaders, however, have said the group’s fighters had nothing to do with the assault.

The first Israeli target hit on Thursday was a bus driving from the city of Beersheva to Eilat. It was sprayed with gunfire close to the Egyptian border by a group of men who reportedly disguised themselves as soldiers. It was followed by a second shooting attack on another bus. The third incident occurred when an Israeli military vehicle rushing to the scene was hit by a roadside bomb. This was followed by mortar fire, apparently from the Egyptian side of the border, and the launching of at least one anti-tank missile on an Israeli vehicle....

Israeli officials have long been concerned about the country’s southern frontier, which runs for 255km through unpopulated desert and is therefore difficult to monitor and even harder to defend. The Sinai is widely considered the most lawless region in Egypt, and has long functioned as a base for gangs of smugglers and for militant Islamist groups. The assault came just days after the Egyptian army and police launched a crackdown in the peninsula, aimed at weeding out Islamic militants after a rise in attacks against police stations and security check points since the revolution that overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak in February.

In the past six months, suspected Islamist militants in the Sinai have blown up a pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel five times. More than a hundred militants, armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, attacked a police station in al-Arish, the main city in northern Sinai at the end of July. Six people, including an army officer and two policemen, were killed in the siege of the station, which involved a nine-hour gun battle. Dubbed “Operation Eagle”, the continuing crackdown in the Sinai is reported to have led to the discovery of at least three stores containing large amounts of explosives as well as automatic weapons and grenades. The security services said they arrested four people on Tuesday as they prepared to blow up the gas line again.

More than a dozen others were arrested on Monday and at least one suspected militant was killed during a gun battle with the security services. The Israeli government decided last year to build a new security fence along the border with Egypt, saying it was necessary to stop the flow of illegal migrants into the country and to undermine the smuggling of arms and other goods. The fence, which was estimated to cost at least Shk1bn ($280m), has not yet been completed".

Tobias Buck & Heba Saleh, "Israel and Gaza Militants trade attacks." The Financial Times.19 August 2011, in www.ft.com.

"In light of recent unrest in the Arab world and the new political and security reality in Egypt, these latest attacks in Israel potentially represent a new kind of threat — one posed by transnational jihadists who have long wanted to undermine Egypt without operational success. It is quite possible that al Qaeda is trying to exploit the post-Mubarak political environment to mobilize its Sinai- and Gaza-based assets in order to create an Egyptian-Israeli crisis that can (potentially) undermine Cairo’s stability....

Egypt’s rolling back of the police state and subsequent political reforms have made it difficult to maintain domestic security and keep militants under control. Indeed, militants are already taking advantage of the political opening. They have stepped up their operations, as evidenced by attacks against energy infrastructure and other targets in the Sinai Peninsula. The new era of Egyptian multiparty politics has also allowed a variety of Islamist actors to emerge as legitimate political entities. At the same time, Egyptian national sentiment is emerging as a major factor in the foreign policymaking process. This change alone constitutes a threat to Israel’s national security, though it is a more of a long-term issue.

The rise of different types of Islamist actors (Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and Sufists, among others) as legitimate political entities who pursue constitutional means to come to power makes it difficult for jihadists to directly threaten the stability of the Egyptian regime. With even Salafists and former jihadist groups such as Gamaah al-Islamiyah and Tandheem al-Jihad embracing the political mainstream, the jihadists will have a hard time gaining support for an armed insurrection against the Egyptian state. Realizing that they are not able to directly confront the Egyptian state (despite the Arab unrest), the jihadists are trying to indirectly undermine the regime by exploiting the Israeli-Gaza situation and the renewed militancy in the Sinai. Even before today’s attacks, the Israelis responded to increasing attacks in the Sinai by allowing Cairo to deploy an additional 1,000 troops to the peninsula. That concession indicated that Israel is likely skeptical of the Egyptian military’s ability to effectively deal with this problem, considering current political and security circumstances. Cairo is under a lot of stress domestically and regionally. Egypt is in the early stages of trying to manage political and militant opposition in a tense political climate and it is unable to maintain internal security as effectively as it once did.

Israel, therefore, will likely see today’s attacks as a new kind of threat. The Israeli leadership realizes that the problem is no longer strictly confined to Gaza but has now spread to Egypt itself. However, Israel doesn’t have any good way to control the situation unfolding within the borders of its Arab neighbor. That said, Israeli officials have already begun pointing fingers at the deteriorating security situation in Egypt, a response which likely going to cause tensions between the two countries. For decades, the al Qaeda leader has longed to be capable of undermining the Egyptian state, and now the Arab unrest provides an opportunity (albeit not without challenges of its own). Al-Zawahiri’s status as al Qaeda chief after the death of Osama bin Laden boosts the viability of this endeavor. In this new role, he is more or less free to steer the movement toward his preferred direction. His ascension to the top of the jihadist hierarchy also signals a rise of Egyptians (who have long held a disproportionate amount of influence) within the global jihadist network. The result is that al Qaeda can be expected to focus heavily on the Egyptian-Gaza-Israeli fault line. This fixation will not only complicate matters for Israel and its efforts to deal with the Gaza Strip, it could also begin to unravel the Egyptian-Israeli relationship that has existed since the signing of the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords".

"Attacks in Egypt and new militant opportunities in Egypt." Stratfor: Global intelligence.19 August 2011, in www.stratfor.com.

It would be kinderspiel to blame the Israeli government for 'overreacting' to the latest Gaza incursions. Indeed, that was at first my own initial reaction. However, per contra, as both the Financial Times and the American intelligence firm, Stratfor clearly agree, the incursion into Israeli territory is part of a fundamental weakening of Egyptian security in the Sinai Peninsula in the past six months with the downfall of the Mubarak regime 1. With an end-result that we now have a situation where Islamist terrorist groups are apparently infiltrating themselves into the Sinai with a view of launching attacks upon both Israeli and Egyptian targets. Whether the security lapses on the Egyptian side are merely a case of a temporarily breakdown which shall in due course be righted or (as per Stratfor) perhaps a semi-deliberate policy by the interim military regime to allow Islamist elements some 'space' due to a fear of the political unpopularity of launching a needed & necessary crackdown, is unknowable at this time. Although the manner in which Egypt has reacted to the Israeli response does not offer any real optimism on that score 2. Au fond security in the Sinai Peninsula is Egypt's responsibility. Just as security in the Gaza Strip is Hamas' responsibility. If either party fails to abide by their obligations under international law, then both should pay the forfeit as it were. In the case of Egypt, one would hope that the Americans and the other, responsible members of the Quartet powers: the European Union and the United Nations would apply the requisite amount of both diplomatic & and economic pressure on Cairo to properly enforce security in the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula. In the case of the Hamas regime in Gaza Strip, there the matter presents us with a greater dilemma. While under international law, Tel Aviv is allowed to engage in hot pursuit of those terrorists who have attacked its territory or indeed launched rocket attacks on the same (`a la those of yesterday), unfortunately Israel's leaders have in the past (id est, 'Operation Cast Lead') chosen to employ the sledge hammer approach, where something less heavy-handed would do. Given everything else going on in the Near and Middle East, it would be a political disaster of the first rank, if there was a repetition of the Israeli military response of January 2009. Which left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins. Based upon the scale of Israel's retaliation so far, one can only hope that the Netanyahu Cabinet will continue to exercise moderation in its reaction to these latest and senseless attacks. Attacks which I for one, am convinced have some connection with elements who are following orders from the Assad regime in Damascus or even perhaps the regime in Persia. Both powers would be overjoyed for Israel to be provoked into another 'Operation Cast Lead' and thus refocus attention in the Near and Middle East from the uprising in Syria to the Israel-Palestinian dispute 3. Insofar as it is possible, it is quite imperative for Israel to be prevented from falling into this trap. One can only hope that the Saudis can be prevailed upon to exercise necessary caution and to indeed engage in the appropriate pourparlers with Hamas regime. Hopefully, before matters spiral out of control entirely. The Americans, one would hope would do the same with Israel, but given the less than cordial relations between the current American government and the Netanyahu Cabinet (id est, they cordially despise each other), one is not entirely certain if anything positive would result from any official or un-official demarches on the subject 4. Like most diplomacy in the region at the moment, it would be very much a case of faute de mieux.

1. For a confirmation of the analyses of both the Financial Times and Startfor, see: "Attacks in Israel: terror down South." The Economist. 18 August 2011, in www.economist.com. For the Egyptian response to the Israeli military reprisal, see: Hiba Afify & Isabel Kerschner, "A long Peace is threatened in Israel military attack." The New York Times 19 August 2011, in www.nytimes.com.

2. On the subsequent Israeli response and in turn the rocket attacks on Israel, originating from the Gaza Strip, see: Ansel Pfeffer, "30 Rockets strike Israel day after coordinated Terror attacks kill 8." & Avi Issacharoff & Ansel Pfeffer,"Israel Air Force Bombs Gaza following deadly terror attack, killing four PRC activists." Haaretz 19 August 2011, in www.haaretz.com.

3. Hezbollah, the creature of both Damascus and Persia, came out with a statement hailing the attacks on Israel, is if nothing else an indication of where both powers interest in the matter lies. Obviously, sans hard evidence, my own surmise that the initial attack was co-ordinated or planned by the two powers in question is purely speculative. For Hezbollah's statement see: "Hezbollah hails operation in Israel as heroic." Daily Star. 20 August 2011, in www.dailystar.com.

4. For a view of the current American administration that would appear close to that held by the Netanyahu Cabinet, see: Elliott Abrams, "0 for 2: Obama's Failed Middle East Policy." The Council on Foreign Relations.13 July 2011, in www.cfr.org.

2011-08-18T09:24:00.004-04:00

RUSSIA TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE COUP: A POINT OF VIEW

"For most in Europe and the United States, 1991 takes a back seat to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This clearly demonstrates that what mattered to the West, then and now, was the reunification of Europe and of Germany within it. The fate of the Soviet Union itself was not an issue in the Cold War. The sudden collapse of the Soviet empire had to be managed and made permanent, but anything beyond that was deemed too difficult ? and, frankly, unnecessary....

This is the principal meaning of August 1991. It marks the watershed between Soviet Russia and the present-day Russian Federation. Unlike its Communist predecessor, today's Russia is essentially free. Russians enjoy most civil rights. They are free to speak out, to practice the religions they choose, to leave their country and return home. They can own property, engage in business, and keep their money in the currency and place of their choice. This freedom has important caveats. Not everyone has the means to fully enjoy it. Russians are quite free in their private domains, but the public space is not hospitable for most people. Thus, Russia, while demonstrably free, is anything but a democracy. Undivided power is owned by a small corporation. Democratic procedure is imitated rather than practiced. The parliament is a rubber stamp, and the courts of law bow to the authorities.

The Russian Federation 1.0, however, is not your typical authoritarian regime. It is authoritarianism with the consent of the governed. For the time being, most of those holed up in their private domains simply do not want to be bothered and are content to leave governing to the authorities. Many are also dependent on these authorities for various social handouts. The government feels virtually no need to tax individuals and thus no need to be accountable to them. For those who want to know what is going on, and comment on it, the Internet is free. For those who find such a life unbearable or unworthy, the borders are open. Yet, we have also seen cracks in these freedoms. Look more closely, and what looks like an all-powerful state machine is in reality privatized, parceled out to office holders and their clans at all levels. Most people call it corruption, but the word is too weak. Corruption is not a bug in the system; it is its debilitating disease. The state has failed to keep kickbacks and extortions within the limits that those outside the system would find tolerable. If the current trend continues, the system will eventually lose its legitimacy. If this happens, the governed will withdraw their consent in Russia's warped "social contract," and what passes for social and political stability will be gone.

But the death of Soviet communism in August 1991, in some sense, transported Russia back to the pre-revolutionary days. There are a few important lessons to be drawn from 100 years ago. Much like during the Russian Empire, Russia today has a monarchy of sorts, and it has capitalism without democracy. What's more, the State Duma functions with little independent power. There is a poignant plea from the top for "20 years of peace and quiet," but also distinct grumbling from below and a sense that troubled times are on the horizon. Like then, there is still time to do one's best to avert the worst. To the would-be successors of Pyotr Stolypin, building cyber walls against future revolutionary mobs or engaging football fans to win elections is a weak and flawed strategy. The Kremlin needs to focus on growth, development and governance. None of this is possible without tackling corruption at the very top. Once the sobriquet of "the party of swindlers and thieves" is transferred to its nominal leader, it will be too late. Honesty and professionalism is crucial.

To the would-be detractors of the ruling elite, believing that "the worse, the better" and hoping to see the dawn of a brave new world once the books close on the existing one is both naive and dangerous. Rather than creating a small-time nuisance for the authorities, they need to clamor to be part of the decision-making processes and press for their representation. Their slogan could be: 'Turning Consumers Into Citizens!' To those who still reject 1991 ? either because it destroyed communism or led to the dismantlement of the Soviet empire ? it is time to accept the verdict of history as final and redefine their beliefs and goals. There is a place in Russia for both social democracy and vibrant civic nationalism. Indeed, both are sorely missing and should be welcomed. Twenty years after August 1991, what is missing in Russia is a sense of being a nation. Putting a premium on survival or self-enrichment may have been the right strategy in the last two decades, but this strategy has now run its course. There is a price to be paid when society lacks a responsible and accountable government ? from unkempt, stinking stairwells to sinking pleasure boats. We need a new debate on nation-building. There is only one Russia, and it can be either shared or divided. A Soviet Russia is a clear anachronism, United Russia is a status quo model and offers little in terms of modernizing the country, and a liberal Russia is a pipe dream. If Russia remains divided, it may not survive much longer. Conservatives, liberals, socialists and others need to come together as one nation under one flag. Symbolically, the parade of the victorious Russian tricolor marking the defeat of the August putsch has become an official national holiday ? Flag Day on Aug. 22. What Russia needs, 20 years after the putsch, is a republic in the literal sense of the word: a common concern".

Dmitry Trenin, "Building a Republic 20 years after the putsch." The Moscow Times. 16 August 2011. www.themoscowtimes.com.

"In foreign policy, and in domestic policy alike, the Soviet Government is guided entirely by 'Real Politik'. It is quite true that its calculations are often based upon on entirely false premises, and that it has numerous obsessions. In this connection I need only refer to the entirely disproportionate importance of oil....
As regards its internal position, the Soviet Government is independent of recognition by foreign powers. Whatever opinion may be held of the present Moscow Government, there can be no doubt that it is in point of fact the one and only Government of Russia, and that there does not appear to be any prospect of its being replaced by some alternative Government in the measurable future. It controls the entire political machine. No organized political opposition is allowed, and although there is and will continue to be a great deal of discontent, this discontent is confined to grumbling, and does not show signs of expression in action. It is true that the economic basis on which the Soviet Government rests is not sound and the Government itself recognizes that unless it can run the main branches of industry, which are still directly controlled by the State, at a profit, its position will become weaker.
Adaptability is, however the keynote of Soviet policy."

Peters (Moscow) to Lord Curzon (Foreign Secretary), 5 December 1921. Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, First Series, Volume XX, pp. 957-958.

On the twentieth anniversary of the failed coup d'etat of August 1991, which en faite, lead directly to the downfall of Sovietskaya Vlast, one of the finest scholars of contemporary Russia, Dmitry Trenin offers up, to my mind a very cogent and learned view of the status quo ante of the present-day Russian Federation 1. While one does not have to necessarily agree with every aspect of his analysis, it seems to my mind beyond doubt that the following aspects of his oeuvre are beyond dispute or caveat: i) there is no 'going back' to some semblance of Sovietskaya Vlast, however much some people both in and out of power in Russia would like that idea. Any more than (unfortunately) there is any going back to say Tsarist Russia circa 1916; ii) that twenty years, and nay indeed thirty years does not appear to be enough time for Russia to recover from the criminal insanity of Sovietskaya Vlast. A regime as one of the first Westerners (the German military attache) characterized it in the Spring of 1918 as: 'insanity in power'. Hence the distortions and anomalies that Westerners see in present day Russia, when one compares it to say, Poland or the Baltic States, indeed even to some degree Ukraine 2; iii) that however much the current regime is distorted and indeed dysfunctional in many, many respects, with its corruption, waste, inefficiencies, lack of modernization, lack of responsible government, resulting at times for at least this observer, as making the regimes of say Nikolai Pavlovich (Nicholas I) or Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (Alexander III) seem in comparison as wonderful examples of efficiency, functionality and modernization, that does not obviate the fact that a 'pire ca va, mieux que est' point of view, is not the best or indeed correct answer to Russia's current situation; iv) similarly, any idea that merely assuming that Russia can muddle along in its present state, with an economy which while growing, is not growing at nearly the rate to allow Russia to escape what one observer has described as the 'middle-income trap', sans which, Russia will never join the advanced Western countries either economically or socially. With the end-result being that Russia may revert to a status similar to what it occupied under the Tartar Yoke, with an energy hungry China assuming the role of the Mongols 3. In short, while the Putin-Medvedev regime did a yeoman's service in its initial five years (2000-2005) in power, the past six years have been no more than a muddle. With no fundamental improvements in governance, economic modernization, transparency and many indices of social conditions of the population. Instead, au fond the current government appears to believe it own rhetoric that it is very best regime that Russia has on offer and that anyone else who chooses not to believe this modest claim is politically suspect if not worse. Hence, the rather idiotic and indeed embarrassing harassment of political opponents and semi-opponents by the powers that be on occasion. The upshot is that without a new course in the next five years, Russia can expect societal stalemate and stagnation. With results that Russophiles like myself, would rather not even care to contemplate. As the British academic, David Kerr argued last year, in the Royal Institute of International Affairs house journal, International Affairs:

"As China looms larger on its Asian frontiers, Russia may not only experience pressure on its sphere of autonomy, but may feel increasingly exposed trying to deal with China in a space that requires it to be detached from the West. In essence, China's rise will change the frontiers between East and West, and may force Russia to conclude that its belief that it could stand apart from the West was something of an illusion 4."

1. John Lloyd, "Russia must forget its Imperial aims." The Financial Times.16 August 2011, in www.ft.com. This is a review of Trenin's new book which is just out: Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story.

2. For how the Russian intelligentsia and the lay educated (Moskva & Petersburg centered) public views both the Putin-Medvedev regime and both the 'alternatives' in the Baltics & Ukraine, see: Lilia Shestova, "Russia's Liberal Standpoint." Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2 August 2011, in www.carenegieendowment.org.

3. For this rather grim prognosis of Russia's possible future, see: David Kerr, "Central Asian and Russian perspectives on China's strategic emergence." International Affairs. (January 2010), pp. 127-152. For China's view of its energy diplomacy in Central Asia and vis-`a-vis Russia, see: Simon Hui Shen, "'Qualitative Energy Diplomacy' in Central Asia: A comparative analysis of The United States, Russia and China." Brookings InstitutionApril 2011, in www.brookings.edu. For the 'middle-income trap', see: George Magnus, "China can yet avoid a middle-income trap." The Financial Times.29 June 2011, in www.ft.com.

4. Kerr, op. cit., p. 152 & passim.

2011-08-16T17:35:00.008-04:00

STRATFOR ON THE SO-CALLED 'ARAB SPRING': A COMMENT

"Since late 2010, we have seen three kinds of uprisings in the Arab world. The first are those that merely brushed by the regime. The second are those that created a change in leaders but not in the way the country was run. The third are those that turned into civil wars, such as Libya and Yemen. There is also the interesting case of Bahrain, where the regime was saved by the intervention of Saudi Arabia, but while the rising there conformed to the basic model of the Arab Spring — failed hopes — it lies in a different class, caught between Saudi and Iranian power.

The three examples do not mean that there is not discontent in the Arab world or a desire for change. They do not mean that change will not happen, or that discontent will not assume sufficient force to overthrow regimes. They also do not mean that whatever emerges will be liberal democratic states pleasing to Americans and Europeans.

This becomes the geopolitically significant part of the story. Among Europeans and within the U.S. State Department and the Obama administration is an ideology of human rights — the idea that one of the major commitments of Western countries should be supporting the creation of regimes resembling their own. This assumes all the things that we have discussed: that there is powerful discontent in oppressive states, that the discontent is powerful enough to overthrow regimes, and that what follows would be the sort of regime that the West would be able to work with.

The issue isn’t whether human rights are important but whether supporting unrest in repressive states automatically strengthens human rights. An important example was Iran in 1979, when opposition to the oppression of the shah’s government was perceived as a movement toward liberal democracy. What followed might have been democratic but it was hardly liberal. Indeed, many of the myths of the Arab Spring had their roots both in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and later in Iran’s 2009 Green Movement, when a narrow uprising readily crushed by the regime was widely viewed as massive opposition and widespread support for liberalization.

The world is more complicated and more varied than that. As we saw in the Arab Spring, oppressive regimes are not always faced with massed risings, and unrest does not necessarily mean mass support. Nor are the alternatives necessarily more palatable than what went before or the displeasure of the West nearly as fearsome as Westerners like to think. Libya is a case study on the consequences of starting a war with insufficient force. Syria makes a strong case on the limits of soft power. Egypt and Tunisia represent a textbook lesson on the importance of not deluding yourself.

The pursuit of human rights requires ruthless clarity as to whom you are supporting and what their chances are. It is important to remember that it is not Western supporters of human rights who suffer the consequences of failed risings, civil wars or revolutionary regimes that are committed to causes other than liberal democracy.

The misreading of the situation can also create unnecessary geopolitical problems. The fall of the Egyptian regime, unlikely as it is at this point, would be just as likely to generate an Islamist regime as a liberal democracy. The survival of the Assad regime could lead to more slaughter than we have seen and a much firmer base for Iran. No regimes have fallen since the Arab Spring, but when they do it will be important to remember 1979 and the conviction that nothing could be worse than the shah’s Iran, morally or geopolitically. Neither was quite the case.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people in the Arab world who want liberal democracy. It simply means that they are not powerful enough to topple regimes or maintain control of new regimes even if they did succeed. The Arab Spring is, above all, a primer on wishful thinking in the face of the real world".

George Friedman, "Re-examining the Arab Spring." Stratfor. 15 August 2011, in www.stratfor.com.

"Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya have had their turn; now Syria occupies centre stage. More than 1,000 people have been killed in recent fighting, while hundreds of thousands still risk their lives challenging the regime. Syria's future rests on whether a handful of Alawite generals are prepared to keep killing their fellow citizens to preserve the Assad regime and, more fundamentally, Alawite primacy. The outside world, fearing the alternative and bogged down in Libya, is little more than a bystander. Syria's violence is just one further sign that the promise of the Arab spring has given way to a long, hot summer in which the geopolitics of the Middle East are being reset for the worse. Syria is not unique. Other threatened leaders around the regions have clearly now decided against emulating the former presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, who went gently into the night. Violence, along with the threat of imprisonment and international tribunals, has persuaded them that the future is winner takes all and loser loses all. Not surprisingly, they have chosen to resist.

Meanwhile, the most organised groups in Arab societies tend to be the army and other security organs on one hand and Islamist entities on the other. Secular liberal groups (if they exist) tend to be weak and divided, and unlikely to prevail in any political competition in the near term. Facebook and Twitter matter but not enough. Looked at more broadly, the stalling of the Arab spring has both revealed and widened the breach between the US and Saudi Arabia. Saudi leaders were alienated by what they saw as the US abandoning the regime in Egypt after three decades of close cooperation. The Americans, for their part, were unhappy with the Saudi decision to intervene militarily in Bahrain. But such independent, uncoordinated policies are now likely to become more frequent, especially if international efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program come up short....Take all this together, and you see a series of developments that are beginning to produce a region that is less tolerant, less prosperous, and less stable that what existed. To be sure, the authoritarian old guard that still dominates much of the Middle East could yet be forced or eased out and replaced with something relatively democratic and open. Unfortunately, the odds now seem against this happening".

Richard Hass, "The Arab Spring Has Given Way to a Long Hot Summer." Council on Foreign Relations. 6 July 2011, in www.cfr.org.

Although the American intelligence forecasting outfit (widely quoted in such venues as the Financial Times, the New York Times and even the New York Review of Books), has to my mind a quite uneven track record (does anyone now remember Mr. Friedman's early 1990's book on the 'Coming war with Japan'?, or his predictions about the easy outcome of the Iraq War?), but regardless of this fact, Mr. Friedman's opus is well worth looking at in depth, as unlike some of his past writings, in the case of the Arab Spring, his views are not merely a reflection of his clients in the American Defence and Intelligence establishment. As a quite similar analysis by the ultra-establishment, ex-State Department Policy Planning Staff chief and NSC Near Eastern head, Richard Hass seems to indicate, a pessimistic prognosis of the ongoing upheavals in the Near & Middle East, this calendar anno domini 2011, is not merely a case of undue pessimism. Au fond of course, both gentleman are partially correct in some of their surmises, that there are few reasons to be optimistic as to the future course (or should one say 'courses') that the various Arab countries may take. Simply put, on most measurable levels almost all of the Arab countries in the Near & Middle East, lack the requisite developmental indices that have in the past indicated a smooth transition to democratic rule. Such indices include: urbanization, secularization, literacy rates, poverty rates, median per capita income, et cetera. As well as the all-important cultural variable (id est, 'democracy' is not ingrained in the Arab cultural psyche, as it is in say the European cultural nerve or even the Philippine or Indian cultural nerve). With all that being said, per se, there is no Weberian 'iron law' of modernization which dictates that all or even most of the Arab countries of the region should necessarily remain un-democratic and or ruled by authoritarian, Islamist governments. The examples of Indonesia and even semi-democratic & pluralist Malaysia (both Muslim majority countries) offering pro contra examples.

With the above being understood, what can we say concretely at this time? I would say that we have three different types of 'situations' in which we can group Arab countries: i) countries where the existing regimes are fully in the saddle and are not facing any serious threats of overthrow: the Gulf States (including Bahrain), Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq; ii) countries where the regimes have indeed been overthrown and where there is some alleged transition to democratic rule, albeit unfinished at this time: Egypt and Tunisia; iii) countries where the existing regimes are facing serious uprising and or where there is an ongoing civil war: Libya, Yemen, Syria. And therefore the route to stable democratic rule appears to be far, far away. The key to the current and future situation in the area is of course those countries in 'ii' and 'iii'. Since if neither column of countries is able to succeed in seriously embarking on democratic rule or the semblance of the same, one can hardly expect that to be the case for those countries in the first column. Especially, since what is currently the most important Arab country in the region Saudi Arabia), is also the country which is the most steadfast in opposition to any democratization trend in the region. Riyadh's recent attacks on the regime in Damascus being almost entirely opportunistic (id est, attacking an ally of Shiite Persia) than for purposes of assisting pro-democratic forces in that country. In short, if neither Egypt in particular or Tunisia is able by the end of the current calendar anno domini, to make serious progress in embarking on the road to democratic, pluralistic rule, and if the existing regimes & or civil upheavals in Yemen, Syria or Libya not replaced with a democratizing scenario, then one can reasonably expect that like Europe circa 1852, a return of the ancien regime throughout the entire region. Perhaps as early as this time next year. Except that as Richard Hass correctly notes, such a return to the status quo ante, will be an extremely brittle and unstable state of affairs. With in most cases of soupcon of Islamist incense to cover-up the paucity of legitimacy of these regimes. More akin to say Tsarist Russia between 1905 and 1917 than anything else.

2011-08-12T18:19:00.005-04:00

SYRIA: A DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION IN SIGHT?

"The Gulf Cooperation Council, a coalition of six Arab, oil-rich, Gulf states dominated by Saudi Arabia, then issued a statement asking for an end to the bloodshed in Syria.

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, in the first such public speech, asked Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end the military campaign against protesters and to enact sweeping reforms.

It is very likely that these various statements were coordinated, and that they form part of a process aimed at building a coalition against Syria's government. The next step would likely be for other Muslim and Arab states, prompted by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to become more vocal in their criticism of President al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia, through its connections to insurgents and Sunni tribes in Iraq and to Sunni politicians in Lebanon, will likely provide additional financing for weapons smuggling operations into Syria.

Turkey is the only country with the military capability, national security interests and favourable geographic location that can intervene in Syria.

Turkey is increasingly likely to receive international support, from Nato and the Arab League and possibly from the UN Security Council, to send troops into northern Syria. In its initial stages, this would likely involve the creation of a 10km-20km buffer zone in Hasaka, Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo Provinces.

Further, the statements by the GCC and Saudi Arabia indicate increased Arab support for Syria's Sunni majority, which will likely lead to increased protests against the Ba'ath ruling party".

"Exclusive Analysis: Syria's Neighbours building a coalition against Assad's government," Daily Telegraph. 8 August 2011 in www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria.

"Turkey's foreign minister says he and Syrian leader Bashar Assad have discussed 'concrete steps' Syria should take to stop the bloodshed there.But Ahmet Davutoglu did not say what those steps would be and whether Assad had agreed to consider taking them. Speaking to reporters on his return from Damascus on Tuesday, Davutoglu said Turkey would continue talking with Assad in a bid to halt the violence.

Syria's army has defied international criticism of the regime's deadly crackdown on a 5-month-old uprising, and the soldiers continued their raids on restive areas Tuesday. Davutoglu said: 'We discussed ways to prevent confrontation between the army and the people in the most open and clear way.' Davutoglu said the atmosphere was cordial when he met with Assad for more than six hours in Damascus on Tuesday, including a two-hour tete-a-tete".

"Turkey, Syria discuss steps to end violence."The Associated Press. www.trib.com/news/national/europe/article.

Judging from some of the comments that one reads in the past few days, one would be forced to believe that the diplomatic actions this week taken by many of Syria's neighbors will suffice to effect the overthrow of the Baathists regime 1. Something that the American Secretary of State's comments yesterday seem to strongly imply. Albeit with a soupcon of special pleading (or should one say: faite de mieux?), for outside powers to assist in the ouster of the regime of Assad Fils 2. How plausible is this scenario? Certainly, as has been stated here, if and only if outside powers were to effectively boycott Syrian oil sales and reinforce that with a naval blockade of the same, then there might very well be reason to suppose that this would suffice to push the Assad regime out. Sans that, I for one do not expect that mere diplomatic demarches and recalling of ambassadors to result in anything concrete. Something that the shelling of towns on the Syrian-Turkish border would seem to indicate. Notwithstanding rumors (groundless to my mind) that the regime in Turkey was preparing to resolve the Syrian conflict via a military invasion (if nothing else the recent upheaval in the Turkish military would put paid to such ideas) 3. As a practical matter, having shed over two thousand lives, there is little reason to believe that Assad Fils et. al., is prepared to be eased out `a la the ex-rulers of Egypt and Tunisia. Consequently, in the absence of forceful measures, and with Persia no doubt assisting their confreres in Damascus as much as possible, to remain in power. Therefore, I foresee no early end to the violence in Syria. Any more than I can see an early end to the military conflict in Libya.

1. See in particular: "The World Closes in on Bashar Al-Assad." Syria Comment. 10 August 2011, www.syriacomment.com; Rami G. Khoury, "Middle East vultures circle over a wounded Syria." Syria Comment. 11 August 2011, in www.dailystar.com.lb.

2. See: Anna Fifield, "Clinton calls for oil groups to shun Syria." The Financial Times. 12 August 2011, in www.ft.com.

3. "Syrian forces storm town near Turkish border." Reuters. 11 August 2011, in www.reuters.com.

2011-08-10T19:18:00.005-04:00

THE RIOTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: WAS ENOCH POWELL RIGHT AFTER ALL?

"The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen."

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.

After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.

I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office.

There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.

The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party....

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.

Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly....

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.

That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.

Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal".

Enoch Powell, "Speech to the Conservative Association of Birmingham," 20 April 1968.

Of course it is almost absurdly 'bien-pensant' to shout down as 'racist', et cetera, by our post-enlightenment, Liberal bourgeois cosmopolitan elites, the brillant cut-glass reasoning & logic displayed by Powell in the speech which (in a grave misfortune) en faite ended his political career as a front-rank politician in British politics. Making him, in conjunction with Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Oswald Mosley the three great prematurely exploded comets of British politics in the last one-hundred and fifty years. The question that I have, in light of the recent riots in London and other urban centers of the United Kingdom is: was Powell right?Given the fact that the vast majority of the canaille who constituted the rioters were non-European, mostly Afro-Caribbean in origins. Just the same as in the riots of 1981, which the current variety seems to resemble 1. Aside from the fact that the Metropolitan Police have in the past twenty to twenty-five years, been inexcusably permissive and lacking in forcefulness in policing the streets of London and other urban centers; can anyone doubt that sans these non-British, non-European elements in the United Kingdom, that neither the riots of 1981 or those of this week have occurred? The question answers itself and at the same time answers whether or not Powell was right. The great sadness is that the United Kingdom currently lacks a politician who possesses Powell's vision, brilliance of mind and all-around general culture 2.

1. For the composition of the rioters, both now and in 1981, see: Martin Bright, "A Crisis that has been brewing for years." The Spectator. 9th August 2011, in www.spectator.co.uk; Bob Sherwood, "Alienation and Communication fuelled unrest." The Financial Times.10 August 2011, in www.ft.com.

2. For those ignorant of such things, all one needs to remember is that Powell, graduated with a Double First at Trinity, Cambridge. Was named Professor of Classics at the advanced age of twenty-five. Wrote three books of poetry in the course of his life, in addition to an erste-klasse biography of Joseph Chamberlain. And wrote a Lexicon to Herodotus, a revised edition of Stuart-Jones's Thucydides' Historiae and finally for Yale University Press at the end of his life, a new translation from the Greek of the First Book of the Gospel.

2011-08-06T13:31:00.005-04:00

THE SYRIAN 'CONUNDRUM': AN UPDATE

"I met today with a small group of U.S.-based Syrian activists and members of the Syrian-American community to express our profound sympathy for all Syrian victims of the Assad regime’s abuse of its own citizens. In our discussion, the activists reaffirmed the internal opposition’s vision of a transition plan for a Syria that will be representative, inclusive and pluralistic; a new, united Syria with a government subject to the rule of law and fully respectful of the equality of all Syrians, irrespective of sect, ethnicity or gender. I encouraged the activists to work closely with their colleagues inside Syria to create this unified vision.

I admire the courage of those brave Syrians, both inside and outside Syria, who continue to defy their government’s brutality in order to freely express their universal rights. And I remain confident in the Syrian people’s ability to chart a new course for Syria’s future.

As I told the activists today, the United States will continue to support the Syrian people in their efforts to begin a peaceful and orderly transition to democracy in Syria and to have their aspirations realized. We have nothing invested in the continuation of a regime that must kill, imprison and torture its own citizens to maintain power.

The United States is working to move forward with additional targeted sanctions under existing authorities. We are exploring broader sanctions that will isolate the Assad regime politically and deny it revenue with which to sustain its brutality. The United Nations Security Council has also consulted this week on the escalating violence in Syria. Our view remains that strong action by the Security Council on the targeting of innocent civilians in Syria is long overdue. Some members of the Security Council continue to oppose any action that would call on President Assad to stop the killing, and we urge them to reconsider their positions".

American Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, "Press Release: Meeting with Syrian Activists." The Department of State. 2 August 2011, in www.state.gov.

"More than any other Arab uprising in this year’s upheaval across the region, Syria has left world powers grappling for a policy. Some western diplomats say the weakness of the response is due to the intervention in Libya, which has yet to break the back of the regime of Muammer Gaddafi.

“We messed up Libya, that’s what complicates Syria,” as one diplomat put it, pointing to Russia’s fears that a UN resolution would open the way for a similar involvement in Damascus....

In a remarkable turnround, Washington has gone in a few months from suggesting Mr Assad is a reformer to recognising that his regime is the very source of instability in its neighbourhood. The US now recognises that political change in Syria would greatly benefit American policy, shattering Damascus’ alliance with Iran and radical groups in the Middle East. Western diplomats are expecting the US to soon call for Mr Assad’s departure, a declaration it has already come close to, with the White House saying on Wednesday that Syria would be a “better place” without its president. More US sanctions are being prepared and three senators are working on a bill to target companies that invest in Syria’s energy sector or buy its oil.

“US policy is a slow and deliberate game,” says Jon Alterman of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There is not much the US can do in the short term, in part because there is not much of a bilateral relationship to put at risk and in part because there is little chance of committing US troops or firepower. But there is a deep desire in Washington for Bashar to go.”

In Europe, where the commercial relationships are more important for Syria, the brazen attack on Hama has outraged policymakers but has not broken the resistance to more substantial pressure. Britain, for one, is still engaged in a tortuous concoction of nuanced statements about how Mr Assad is gradually losing legitimacy and risking international isolation. London is among those reluctant to heed Syrian opposition (and apparently US) calls for sanctions against the oil industry which could cripple the regime’s finances (and not significantly affect oil markets). Indeed, some European statements still hold out hope that Mr Assad will somehow lead a democratic transition.

Economic pressures could be a decisive factor in the crisis. And although going beyond measures that target regime figures is always a risky strategy, the EU is running out of names of officials to add to the travel bans and asset freezes. In any case, if the US slaps sanctions on Syria’s oil industry and the killings continue, European companies will come under increasing pressure to stop oil purchases and investments. As Robert Ford, the US ambassador to Damascus, said this week, markets are beginning to understand that Syria is “radioactive”'.

Roula Khalaf, "West Fails to Answer Syrian Conundrum." The Financial Times. 4 August 2011, in www.ft.com.

The 'conundrum' identified by the Financial Times erste-klasse Near Eastern correspondent, Roula Khalaf has still not been resolved. As she notes, this week's United Nation's Security Council statement, was for all intents and purposes toothless 1. Unfortunately, with the stalemate in the Libyian conflict, as Khalaf notes, the willingness of the Western powers to overtly intervene in Syria is at this point next to zero. Not to speak of the widespread economic weakness evident in most Western countries that possess the means of intervening in the conflict, id est, USA, UK and France. In addition to the fact that there is almost no possibility of the Security Council at present passing a resolution enabling the Western powers to intervene `a la Libya 2. With all that being said, where does that leave a positive Western policy? Especially, as it is widely acknowledged, the ouster of the regime of Assad Fils, would no doubt be an important victory for Western policy. A fact which one does not have to be a pro-Israeli zealot `a la the egregious Elliot Abrams to believe to be true 3. With that being said, the issue then becomes for Western policy-makers: how short of the employment of outside military intervention, can the West oust or one should say, assist the Syrian people (really in fact certain elements within the Syrian elite) oust the regime of Assad Fils? Sharp economic pressure, the type that might, just might cause the Sunni mercantile elite in the two key cities of Aleppo and Damascus to join actively join the opposition. Bearing in mind of course, that traditionally since 1949, if not in fact 1927, said elites have been mostly apolitical and have not played a key role in Syrian politics. Indeed, one of the key developments of the regime of Assad Fils, has been the rapprochement between the governmental, security, military Alawite elites centering on the Assad clan and the Sunni mercantile elites in the two cities previously mentioned. One of the key reasons that both cities so far have not erupted into demonstrations on the same scale as other areas of the country 4. However, if the Americans in conjunction with the European Union were to not only proclaim a boycott of purchases of Syrian oil, but endeavor via naval interdiction in international waters in the Mediterranean to actively prevent exports of the same as well, this situation might very well change. While perhaps this policy endeavor may not be a (to use a demotic American expression) 'game-changer', it might add to the other pressures on the inner-ring of the Assad Fils regime to perhaps make way for the beginning of the end of the dynasty. At the very least, this policy option will be infinitely much more worthwhile and effective than toothless United Nation's Security Council Presidential statements 5. Especially in light of the assistance (financial and otherwise) that the Persians are providing to their allies in Damascus. Or as the American political philosopher Michael Waltzer noted cogently approximately twenty years ago, at the time of the First Persian Gulf War: 'what counts in politics is action'.

1. For this statement, see: "Statement by the President of the Security Council." United Nation's Security Council. 3 August 2011, in www.un.org.

2. For the latest semi-official Russian statement underlining its opposition to any further Security Council resolutions along the Libyan model, see: "NATO plans campaign in Syria, tightens noose around Iran [Persia]-Rogozin." Novesti. 5 August 2011 in www.rian.ru.

3. For Elliot Abrams views, see his online journal for the Council on Foreign Relations: "Pressure Points". www.blogs.cfr.org/abrams. One should add that Abrams alleged expertise on the Near East, is sans any knowledge of the major language and culture of the area (Arabic)...

4. On the efficacy of economic sanctions, see: Andrew Tabler, "Lights Out." Foreign Policy 19 July 2011, in www.foreignpolicy.com. On the 'Alawite deep state' and its relationship with the traditional Sunni elites, see: Michael Doran & Salman Shaikh, "Getting Serious in Syria." The Brookings Institute 29 July 2011, in www.brookings.edu. In 1925 the Sunni elites in Damascus and Aleppo joined the Arab Revolt against French rule. A revolt which was ruthlessly crushed by the French (employing by-the-bye Alawite irregulars among other troops). In 1949, Syria saw its first elected Sunni President overthrown in a military coup d'etat. Thus ending tout `a coup, the political ascendency of the Sunni mercantile elites forever. On this subject, see the classic study by Philip Khoury: Syria and the French Mandate (1987).

5. See what are rather cogent statements by Century Foundation Near Eastern specialist, Michael Hanna, to the effect that without a serious internal revolt by the Alawite military apparatus, Assad Fils can probably remain in power indefinitely `a la Saddam Hussein after 1991, see: Josh Rogin & Blake Hounshell, "The Last Stand of Bashar al-Assad?" Foreign Policy1st August 2011, in www.foreignpolicy.com.

2011-08-02T10:58:00.019-04:00

HAROLD JAMES & THE 'INTERNATIONAL ORDER AFTER THE FINANCIAL CRISIS': A COMMENT.

"The geography of power is being transformed, in particular by the rise of China. What are the consequences of the rise of major new powers for the structure and the functioning of the international system? In the past, seismic changes, associated with great wars or great financial crises, led to a disorientation about the moral foundations of society, domestically and internationally; led to confusion and uncertainty about values, not just in a technical sense (we can believe in gold as money, in the pound sterling, in the US dollar?) but also in a broader sense....

An international order is not just an exercise in power projection. It is also built around a set of ideas. We often like to think of past versions of order as generated by particular countries which propagated a grand vision of order: for example, the nineteenth-century British view of John Bright or Richard Cobden about the universalization of an American vision of commercial prosperity in the second half of the twentieth century. But even visionary international orders do not last for ever. Some events or dates---1688, 1776, 1789, 1914---mark an epochal shift. We are now at one such great historical caesura. What historians will call the 'long twentieth century' ended not with the terrorist attacks of 2001 but with the financial crisis that started in 2007.

On particular historical example offers a powerful analogy to the current transition of economic leadership and also political power. Great Britain's economic position took a bad tumble in the financial crisis of 1931, when the pound was taken off the gold standard, but it was only some 25 years later that the full implications for power politics were really felt. In 1956, the humiliating fiasco of the Suez Crisis combined military incompetence and failure with vulnerability to financial pressure, and marked the end of Britain's claim to be an arbiter of the international order....There is an obvious parallel between Great Britain at the time of the Suez and the travails of the United States after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its confusion at the prospect of a shift in the geography of economic influence and political power. Moreover the parallels have become even closer in the aftermath of the ill-prepared and politically divisive intervention in Libya....

The swing back to a world in which the advantage lies with the strong, who can muster large concentrations of economic and demographic resources, was already visible before the 2007 financial crisis. It has become much more evident since then. It was enunciated in Europe, rather brutally, by Germany's Chancellor Angel Merkel on 19 May 2010, when she laid out the conditions for aid to Greece in the crisis of that spring. She stated that 'the rules must not be oriented towards the weak, but towards the strong. That is a hard message. But it is an economic necessity.' On the global scene, we are now becoming obsessed with the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as new giants. The continuation of the crisis will turn them into Big Really Imperial Countries. The future of globalization is thus one in which power politics rather than markets will drive events....

The real challenge for China's leaders will be to develop a coherent view of the world that does not scare its neighbors---and others. The Chinese dilemma today is not unlike the American one of the mid-twentieth century. How can a new superpower
maintain and extend its power in a world playing by commercial rules?"

Harold James, "International Order after the Financial Crisis" International Affairs, (May 2011), pp. 525-537. Originally delivered as a lecture at Oxford University on 4 November 2010 as the Cyril Foster Memorial Lecture. Unfortunately, the article cannot be accessed via the Internet.

"Discussions of U.S. decline usually assume that there exists a successor waiting in the wings to take over from the failed hegemon. In the 1980's, the successor was generally held to be Japan or Europe; today the answer is more likely to be India or China (though Europe still has its advocates, who think that Europe is experimenting with a new kind of nontraditional power), India or China are clearly much farther removed from being able to mount an effective challenge to the major technological, social or military dimensions of U.S. strength than were the Europeans or the Japanese in the 1980's."

Harold James, The Roman Predicament: How the rules of International order creates the politics of Empire (2006), p. 71.

Allow me to say that notwithstanding my criticisms to follow of Professor Harold James, formerly of Cambridge now of Princeton University, I actually have always had a high opinion of his academic work, and like of lot of graduate students in the late 1980's & early 1990's, I was highly impressed by his work on entre-deux-guerre Germany, 'the German Slump' 1. And having seen him deliver what can only be described as one of the most humorous and at the same time insightful, reading of his friend, Richard Overy's paper on 20th century economic history at the American Historical Association conference back in 1990, I can only say that time will never quite remove that positive opinion of his overall oeuvre. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I am highly impressed with his latest endeavor at contemporary economic and geopolitical analysis, as presented in the May 2011 issue of the Royal Institute of International Affairs house journal, International Affairs. With its rather jejune message of inexorable Western & American decline, James' piece puts one in mind of the fact as Heather Conley expressed it recently: 'a painful and disorienting process’ is what one experiences when reading all too many simplistic articles and essays on this oversubscribed topic 2. And unfortunately, James' contribution is very much more of the same, with its erroneous history (viz: H.A.R. Philby was never the Head of the American Department at the Foreign Office) and equally erroneous statements about contemporary events (Chinese purchases of European sovereign debt did not put a stop to the Eurozone crisis this past Spring, something which has become all too clear subsequently)3. The real problem with James essay is the reductionist supposition correlating the soon to be fact (how soon by-the-bye?), that the PRC shall soon have a higher GDP than the USA. The first time since the 1870's, that the USA shall not have the largest GDP on the planet. As per James this coming factum, following from the financial crisis of 2007 to present, shall have the same repercussions in international affairs and geopolitics as the Great War, Britain's going off the Gold Standard and the Suez Crisis of 1956. In this instance, just as in previous episodes, what we have or are about to have is a passing of hegemony from the soon-to-be ex-hegemon the United States, to the soon-to-be future hegemon, the Peoples Republic of China.

Now dear reader, what is wrong with this very much over-subscribed picture? Well leaving aside the issue of when exactly the PRC shall overtake the USA (nota bene: as per the latest statistics available the PRC's global percentage of GDP is only 7.5% versus the USA's 26%), to my mind the most problematical aspect of James (and all too many others in this regard) are the facts that: i) when the USA overtook the UK as the nation having the world's largest GDP, the USA also had a higher per capita income than the UK 4. Something which no one has suggested that the PRC will be able to do within the next half-century; ii) the mere fact that the USA had a greater GDP than the UK, did not for almost fifty years have any significant geopolitical ramifications. Indeed, sans the tremendous struggle put up by Kaiserreich Germany in the Great War, one is tempted to say that it would have been another fifty years before the greater American economic size, would have made itself felt geopolitically speaking. In the case of the PRC and the USA, the likelihood that the former will be able to oust the latter from its pinnacle as the leading hegemonic power is not something that is easy to fathom in either the near or mid-term future. Vis-`a-vis both the PRC as well as every other military power on the planet, the Americans still enjoy unparalleled military and strategic superiority. Far greater than what the Americans enjoyed during the Cold War, much less what the UK enjoyed vis-`a-vis the non-European world during the so-called Pax Britannica 5. And while one may argue that the PRC has now acquired the economic ability to outspend the Americans on arms, the fact is that history shows (the best example being the USA circa 1880-1940) that the mere circumstance of the ability to spend does not necessarily indicated that power x, y or indeed z shall indeed spend monies on armaments. As the Lord Selbourne, the First Lord of the British Admiralty noted in 1900, the Americans could at that point have easily outspent the UK on naval spending 6. For reasons relating to American political culture and geopolitical ambitions and traditions, the USA failed to do so. In the case of the PRC, I would surmise that due to the fact of the its endemic political instability (for which see reports in yesterday's & to-day's Financial Times), the regime in Peking while quite likely to bluster for purposes of domestic consumption on matters relating to foreign affairs, will not wish to spend precious resources in a society which by most available data can only still be described as poor one, on building what another British First Lord of the Admiralty once described as a 'luxury fleet,' or for that matter a luxury army & air force 7. What the above comments highlight I do believe is the fact that Professor James' essay is merely another, not very cogent argument about Western and and American decline. Such arguments can be made and indeed one hopes to find in the future, very good attempts at so doing. But, unfortunately Professor James' endeavor was not a successful one. Finally, need one add the fact that he in essence almost completely negates the argument that he himself made in his last book published as recently as 2006?

1. Harold James, The German Slump: Politics and economics, 1924-1936 (1987).

2. Heather Conley, "Review Article, The end of the West: the once and future Europe," International Affairs(July 2011),p. 975. For recent discussions of the whole 'declinist debate' and how it for the most part reflects aspects of internal Western / American domestic politics as opposed to say
realities of contemporary international politics, see: Michael Cox, "Is the United States in decline again?" International Affairs (July 2007), pp. 643-653; Josef Joffe, "The default Power: the false prophecy of America's decline." Foreign Affairs (September-October 2009), pp. 21-35.

3. The erratum as per 'Kim' Philby occurs on page 526. And that relating to Chinese purchases of Europe-zone government bonds occurs on page 532.

4. For 2010 figures on world GDP for both the USA and the PRC, see: Amitav Acharya, "Can Asia Lead? Power Ambitions and global governance in the twentieth-first century," International Affairs (July 2011), p. 858. For the
data concerning the UK versus the USA circa the period in which the USA became the world's largest economy, see: David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. (1998), p. 307. Paul Kennedy,The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. (1988), pp. 242-243.

5. For the current situation and that going back to the late 1980's, see: "Trends in U.S. Military Spending," 28 June 2011, The Council of Foreign Relations . Available in www.cfr.org. For historical comparisons with the UK see: Bernard Porter, Empire and Superempire: Britain, America and the World. (2006) and John Darwin, The Empire Project:the rise and fall of the British World System, 1830-1970 (2010),pp.26-36 and passim which delineates the matter extremely well in terms of the military limitations of the British Empire during the era of Pax Britannica.

6. For Lord Selbourne's quote, see: D. George Boyce, Edited. The Crisis of British Power: The Imperial and Naval Powers of the Second Earl of Selbourne, 1895-1910(1990), p. 115, in which he states on the 19 April 1901: "It has not dawned on our countrymen yet, but doubtless it has on you as it has on me, that, if the Americans chose to pay for what they can easily afford, they can gradually build up a Navy, firstly as large and then larger than ours."

7. See: Patti Waldmeir, "Xianjiang unrest leaves 14 dead." The Financial Times. 1 August 2011, in www.ft.com; Patti Waldmeir, "Chinese taxi drivers stage violent protest over rising cost of fuel." The Financial Times. 2 August 2011, in www.ft.com. For the difficulties that China faces in making a 'leap to world power', much less hegemonic status, see: Acharya, op. cit., pp. 854-860 and passim. See also an important article by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times: "How China could yet fail like Japan," 14 June 2011, in www.ft.com. The phrase 'luxury fleet,' was of course coined by Winston Churchill on the 7th of February 1912, when comparing the British and the German navies. See: Bernadotte E. Schmitt, England and Germany, 1740-1914, p. 345.

2011-07-29T05:34:00.011-04:00

BIEN-PENSANT EUROPE & THE RISE OF POPULIST RIGHT

"Since becoming leader of France's Front National in January, Marine Le Pen has started to shift her party away from the far right. She has not only dropped the overt racism and Islamophobia of her father but also adopted hard-left economic policies. "Left and right don't mean anything anymore – both left and right are for the EU, the euro, free trade and immigration," she said when opposing me in a recent dinner debate on the future of Europe in Paris. "For 30 years, left and right have been the same; the real fracture is now between those who support globalisation and nationalists...."

She presents her party as a nationalist force – in British terms, the United Kingdom Independence Party rather than the British National Party. In its hostility to the EU and to immigration, the Front National has much in common with Austria’s Freedom Party, the Danish Peoples’ Party, the True Finns, the Sweden Democrats and Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. Populist, illiberal parties are flourishing in the most sophisticated, liberal societies of Northern Europe.

Although Le Pen is changing her party's brand, she is no Gianfranco Fini: he led his party away from neo-fascism towards the pro-European centre of Italian politics. Le Pen's European policies remain extreme: she urges France to leave not only the euro but also the EU. Her economic platform is one of national economic autarky: she wants to protect France from globalisation by erecting high tariff barriers. Her economic platform is in fact quite close to that of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the veteran anti-European and former Socialist minister. Earlier this month she appealed to Chevènement to work with her – but he rebuffed her advances.

Le Pen's line on the euro and the EU may be extreme, but given the mess that Europe is in, her views may not cost her votes among those who want to kick the Paris and Brussels elites for their (apparent) complacency, smugness and incompetence. She wants France to leave the euro so that it can devalue and become more competitive. While China and the US benefit from being able to devalue, she said, the eurozone suffers from low economic growth. "To save the euro we are asking the Greeks to make huge sacrifices through austerity, and soon we will ask the same of people elsewhere, even in France. The euro will lead to war."

When I responded that devaluation would destroy the French people's purchasing power, she said that only 'BCBGs' (short for bon chic bon genre, that is to say the fashionable middle class) would complain about devaluation; they buy the foreign goods and holidays that would cost more, whereas most poor people buy things made in France (a point that is highly debatable).

She complained about sovereignty draining away to Brussels and said that we live in a Union Soviétique Européenne. The EU represents the interests of big financial groups, she said, and encourages immigration in order to put downward pressure on salaries. She said that her country needs a French agricultural policy, rather than a Common Agricultural Policy, since the CAP was giving too much aid to Central Europeans....

When I said that rather than trying to compete directly with China, France should go up market and produce goods and services that the Chinese cannot, she argued that they could now beat France in any industry – as they were doing by building high-speed trains. I responded by praising the prowess of France’s world-beating companies in areas such as luxury goods, agribusiness, energy and aerospace – so she joked that the best proponents of Sarkozyism came from Britain.

The obvious critique of her line on the EU is that France, on its own, is rather small compared to China and other emerging powers, and that it therefore needs the EU to amplify its voice in the world. But she had no truck with that argument, saying that France on its own had a big voice. "I am a gaullienne, and the general would be horrified to see the EU today…I want an association of sovereign nation-states; that would allow us to influence Russia and the wider world." And when I suggested that the EU had the merit of constraining German power, she said Germany already dominated the EU. "When Germany has a constitutional problem, we change the EU treaty; but if France has a problem, we have to change our constitution...."

I think Le Pen is right when she says that the main political divide in Europe is between nationalists and globalisers. But the solutions that she offers to complex problems are far too simple. Her language resonates with the common man: she is on the side of the little people against foreigners, international bureaucrats and big capitalists. And her economic nationalism goes down particularly well in France, a country that is probably more hostile to globalisation than any other European country".

Charles Grant, "Marine Le Pen and the Rise of the Populist Right," Centre for European Reform 20 July 2011, in www.cer.org.uk.

"Men live not in markets but in communities. For the past few hundred years, those communities have been grouped, voluntarily or (more often) coercively, in states. After the experiences of 1914-1945, Europeans everywhere felt an urgent need for the state: the politics and social agendas of the 1940's reflect this anxiety above everything else. With economic prosperity, social peace and international stability, however, that need slowly evaporated....Legitimacy is a function of capacity: it is in part because the disarticulated, ultra-federal state of Belgium, e.g. has sometimes appeared to not keep its citizen safe that its legitimacy has been called into question. And although the capacity of the state begins with arms it does not end there, even today. So long as it is the state---rather than a trans-state entity---which pays pensions, insures the unemployed and educates children, then that state's monopoly of a certain sort of political legitimacy will continue unchallenged. Over the course of the twentieth century the European nation-state took on considerable responsibilities for is citizen's welfare, security and well-being. In recent years its has shed its intrusive over-sight of private morality and some-but not all-of its economic initiative. The rest remains intact."

Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945(2005).

With last week's horrific events in Norway it is easy and indeed almost morally justified to dismiss out of hand the arguments and nay indeed the thinking of the likes of Mlle. Le Pen. And indeed avant the events in question, Mr. Charles Grant cogently if rather one-sidedly makes the classical bien- pensant argument against right-wing Populist politics. And to be perfectly honest, Mr. Grant does indeed score a good number of debating points vis-`a-vis Mlle. Le Pen. An exercise which au fond is hardly a difficult one. Regardless of this factum and regardless of the fact that most if not all of the Droit Populist movements and parties in Europe have an air of inveterate and inexorable stupidity and indeed chicanery, it would be mistaken I believe to simply ignore the underlying forces and motives which help to explain the resurgence, now indeed almost European-wide of the likes of Mlle. Le Pen. Simply put, the European project has in the last twenty to twenty-five years run into the ground as it relates to improvements to people's economic situation. As the Financial Times recently reminded everyone, in the past twenty to thirty years, growth in per capita income has been abysmally small if non-existent in most of Western Europe if one is looking at the middle and lower-middle classes. It is only among the truly upper-crust (people's whose per capita income is $250,000.00 and above) and to a lesser extent the poorer elements of society, that per capita income has still continued to grow at a healthy pace 1.

And as is widely noted, much of this stagnation if not necessarily due directly to so-called 'globalization' of the last twenty or more years, at the very least it seems to be affected by the same. And this correlation has not passed unnoticed among the demographic groups which provide the electoral cannon fodder for the Populist parties of the Right in Europe. Unlike say the bien- pensant, 'chattering classes', who until quite recently were impervious to the economic changes of the last twenty to twenty-five years or so, the traditional manual lower orders, as well as the lower-rung of the white collar salariat, have been feeling for quite sometime the negative effects mentioned above. In that respect, Mlle. Le Pen's gibe that it is only the 'BCBG's' which would be negatively impacted by a 'go-it-alone' economic strategy is to some degree correct. And while no one can argue that France or any other European country can alone successfully endeavor to engage in economic autarky, it is not very surprising given the trajectory of the recent past that much of the wider European public, is unconvinced if not negatively impressed by the vision of a 'wider and deeper' European Union as advocated by elites in Brussels, and the various national capitals. Indeed, one is highly amused over the fact that nowhere in Mr. Grant's essay, is there the least understanding of how much legitimacy the entire EU project has lost with the European public, due to the debacle of the Euro-crisis, first in Greece, then Ireland & Portugal with the both Spain and Italia now also coming under pressure. Given the fact that the self-same elites who are chiefly responsible for the Euro-crisis, are still in power in almost every European capital and in Brussels, the popularity of Mlle. Le Pen, et. al., is all too readily understandable. And what pray you might ask is the 'solution'? Insofar as one may view 'Populism' as a sort of political illness, one is tempted to say that ignoring the symptoms and for that matter the disease is hardly likely to result in anything positive. And in fact, I for one am quite willing to view with favor some aspects of the Populist programme: i) much, much stricter controls on non-European immigration; ii) a much greater distrust of the role that the financial services industry plays in the European economy; iii) the need for a greater emphasis on traditional values and allegiances and the need to relegate permanently in storage that policy dysfunctionality known as 'multi-culturalism'. Ideas which unfortunately our bien-pensant elites view with disfavor if not worse. All of these items, if employed with moderation and intelligence can hold the fort when confronting the 'populist tide'. Otherwise, I am afraid that horrific occurrences such as those which occurred last week may not be a one-time event.

1. Chris Gilles,"Spectre of stagnating incomes stalks globe," The Financial Times. 27 June 2011, in www.ft.com.

2011-07-24T13:36:00.002-04:00

Russia's Economic Future: a differing point of view

"Russian industrial production has been growing at a rate as fast as that of any society of which we have record, and greater than most. The technical quality of their heavy industry is no less impressive....In 1928 in Russia 'the state of technology was generally backward, and labor skilled in modern technology was scarce'. Two years ago the Soviet Union produced more than twice as many bachelors
of science as the United States and over two and half times as many engineers."

Dean Acheson, Power and Diplomacy (1958), pp. 11-13.

"It is significant that in the 1970's Japan and Russia are at similar levels of per capita development. Individual indicators naturally vary, due to many factors. On a per capita basis, for example, Japan produces twice as much steel as Russia, but consumes only three-quarters as much energy. In terms of real gross national product
per capita the two countries were at about the same level in the 1960's, though since then Japan has forged ahead. Instead of being one-quarter to one-third the level of the United Kingdom in real GNP per capita, as they were in the 1870, they
are not about equal with it."

Cyril Black, et. al. The Modernization of Japan and Russia: A Comparative Study (1974), pp. 14-17 & passim.

As the above two texts clearly show, Russian economic prognoses have not altogether been a very clear-cut business. In retrospect, the near-paranoia of the American decision-making elite, circa the mid-1950's (Acheson's words hardly being unusual for that time period) reads most ironically indeed. Of course it is child's play to see post-facto, that beginning in the mid-1950's the Stalinist economic model had become dysfunctional and was no longer able to produce the requisite growth rates of earlier time-period for an economy which had au fond, become modernized (albeit at the costs of oceans of blood). It was only in the late 1960s', early 1970's that a dawning awareness was sinking in among both policymakers and academic experts that Sovietskaya Vlast was beginning to suffer serious problems in economic growth, productivity & efficiency 1. In that respect, the Cyril Black et. al., book appears to have been completely outdated prior to even publication. And of course one may very well ask how valid were the statistics that Black and company use to obtain those per capita income measurements that resulted in Sovietskaya Vlast being equal to or greater than the contemporary United Kingdom. At this point one may very well recall that the American intelligence outfit, the CIA, which still sponsored much academic Sovietology in the later Cold War, only considerably reduced Soviet GDP in the late 1980's in the period of Glasnost. In short when discussing the Russian economy (like one is tempted to say the contemporary Chinese economy), one is tempted to warn: caveat lector!

With all that being said, the article found below by Anatoly Karlin, is I believe worth reading inasmuch as he correctly I believe puts paid to a certain amount of negative analysis of the Russian economy which one reads rather constantly in the Anglo-American press 2. Not that per se there are not criticisms that one can make of the current Putin-Medvedev duumvirate. Merely that a good deal of the criticism made are either misplaced or completely erroneous 3. The chief one to my mind is the fact that with Russian having both rates of urbanization and per capita income which are measurably higher than that of the other so-called 'BRIC' countries, it is hardly possible to expect that Russia would duplicate the rates of growth of these countries. Especially since as Karlin points out, those of Brazil are hardly higher than those of Russia as of 2010. The upshot is that as Karlin correctly notes, 'declinist rhetoric' about Russia's economic future is based more upon comparing apples and oranges than about making a fully contextualized comparative study of Russia and those other economies which it should be compared to. But then again, Russia in the Putin era, if not before always seem to provoke these types of unfair comparisons. With that being said of course, one on the other hand cannot gainsay analysis such as those offered by the ever-wise, Dmitri Trenin and company that in point of fact, in absence of structural changes in the certain key sectors of the Russian economy in the next ten to fifteen years, what George Magnus in the Financial Times has characterized as the 'middle-income trap', will indeed 'trap' Matushka Russia 4.

"In the wake of the 2009 recession, declinist rhetoric has come to dominate discussion of Russia’s economic prospects. Jim O’Neill, the founder of the BRIC’s concept, has his work cut out defending Russia’s expulsion from the group in favor of Indonesia, Mexico, or some other random middle-sized country. Journalists in the Western media claim its economy is “not growing”, as do liberal Russian newspapers such as Vedomosti. Comparisons between Putin and Brezhnev (who presided over the Soviet Union’s period of stagnation, or zastoi) are piling up. Even President Medvedev isn’t helping the situation, telling a forum of international businesspeople that Russia’s “slow growth” hides stagnation.

I don’t want to exchange rhetorical barbs in this post (which you may note is not tagged as a “rant“), and my skills at mockery and picking apart tropes aren’t nearly as well developed as those of Mark Adomanis or Kremlin Stooge, so I’ll do what I do best and go straight to the statistics. And so we have Fact #1: what is described as stagnation for Russia is a growth rate of 4%. It grew 4.0% for 2010. It was 4.1% in Q1 2011, and the government predicts it will be 4.2% for the whole year. The World Bank predicts 4.4% in 2011, 4.0% in 2012; the OECD expects 4.9% in 2011 and 4.5% in 2012; and the IMF forecasts 4.8% in 2011, 4.5% in 2012, tapering off to less than 4.0% in the “medium-term.”

This does not strike me as being particularly bad by global standards. This is obviously no miracle economy of Chinese-like 10% growth rates, but Russia (4.4%; 4.0%) does not compare badly to the World Bank’s projected growth for other typical middle-income countries such as Turkey (4.1%; 4.3%), Thailand (3.2%; 4.2%), Brazil (4.4%; 4.3%), Mexico (3.6%; 3.8%), or South Africa (3.5%; 4.1%). Facing real stagnation, many countries in the developed world such as the UK could only wish for Russia’s growth rate; though this is an unfair comparison, because Russia is poorer and can therefore find it easier to grow faster (see economic convergence), it is not less unfair comparing Russia to countries such as India (8.4%; 8.7%) or Indonesia (6.2%; 6.5%) because the latter are so much poorer than Russia in their turn.

This discussion suggests that CONTEXT is vital when discussing the degree of stagnation in a country. One of the two major factors here is the current GDP of the country in question; real GDP, that is, because that is what growth refers to (i.e. if a country devalues its currency by half but output remains constant, then nominal GDP will fall by half but real GDP will remain constant; as such, real GDP per capita is also the better proxy for living standards and economic sophistication). Now there are two major estimates by international organizations of Russia’s real GDP. The IMF estimates it at $15,800 as of 2010, whereas the World Bank believes it is $19,800 (relying on recent joint research by OECD-Eurostat-Rosstat). There are grounds to believe that the latter is more accurate because the international price comparison data that goes into real GDP estimates is much more recent for the World Bank*. But regardless of which one you use, Russia’s GDP is still much higher than the other emerging markets or BRIC’s with which it is so frequently compared to – Brazil has $11,100, China has $7,500, Indonesia has $4,400, and India has $3,600.

This is extremely important for two reasons. First, it is much harder to grow quickly when you are already a mostly developed country (like Russia, Poland, Korea) than when you are a mid-level developing country (China, Brazil) or a poor developing country (India, Indonesia). The most important reasons are: (1) The potential to achieve rapid growth by transferring your population from rural agriculture to urban industry and services becomes exhausted; (2) the services sector, where productivity can’t be improved as fast as in industry, assumes a bigger share of GDP; (3) most importantly, those countries are far closer to the technological frontier or “best practice”, and hence must increasingly innovate their way to growth instead of reaping low-hanging fruit by adopting and copying from elsewhere. All this isn’t debatable – there is a ton of economic literature on this, it passes the common sense test, and it is basically a given.

The results, as you can see, are fairly stunning. A low population growth and relatively high base – Russia’s GDP per capita of $20,000 is equivalent to that of Poland, Hungary, and Estonia - means that as soon as 2020 Russia will be where Italy is today, with a GDP per capita of $31,500. Now granted Italy may have grown as well, but given its dismal record for the past decade and the growing financial tremors in the Eurozone even this is far from certain. In other words, even at “stagnant” growth rates of 4% per year Russia will have converged to the lower ranks of Western Europe’s rich countries (having overtaken Greece and Portugal outright)....

Nonetheless, the main facts remain intact: (1) It is growing from a relatively high base; (2) In an environment of approximately zero population growth; (3) The strength of state finances preclude any fundamental economic cataclysm as happened/is happening in Ireland, Greece, Latvia, etc. Taking into account these adjustments, a growth rate of 4% is entirely respectable and better than many if not most countries in the same general income bracket".

1. For an archtypical example of the state of the literature, circa the late 1960's, see the pertinent chapter in Alec Nove standard text of the time: Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR(1969).

2. Anatoly Karlin, "Russia's Economic Stagnation in Global Perspective," 19 July 2011, in www.russiaotherpointsofview.com.

3. Anders Aslund, "The Kremlin's Crisis," Foreign Affairs. 20 May 2011, in www.foreignaffairs.com, for a rather typical example. Others of the same ilk can be found regularly in the Financial Times, the Economist, the New York Times and the Washington Post inter alia`.

4. Dmitri Trenin et. al. "Russia in Mid-2011," Carnegie Europe Center. 22 June 2011, in www.carnegieeurope.eu; George Magnus, "China can yet avoid a middle-income trap," The Financial Times 29 June 2011, in www.ft.com. The article intelligently describes and delineates the 'middle-income trap' generally.

2011-07-20T19:27:00.000-04:00

AMERICA'S LIBYAN POLICY: THE COSTS OF 'LEADING FROM BEHIND'

"Britain has asked the US to step up its support for the Nato mission in Libya, amid continuing doubts over how the conflict against Colonel Muammer Gaddafi’s forces can be brought to an end.

Officials have told the Financial Times that Liam Fox, UK defence secretary, asked Leon Panetta, his new US counterpart, for more help with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and aerial refuelling. The two men spoke in a phone call last week.

The request leaves the Obama administration facing a choice between disappointing its ally’s call for help and potentially angering the US Congress, which is increasingly sceptical about the conflict.

The issue is coming to a head as western officials express concern about the endgame in Libya. Many defence officials doubt whether Libya’s rebels, who on Sunday were battling for control of the town of Brega, can push their way through to Tripoli. But Nato countries are limited in the additional aid they can provide both because of the terms of the United Nations resolution authorising force and constraints on their own resources.

After leading the initial assault on Libyan defences in March, the US has insisted on taking a supporting role in the operation, partly because of problems on Capitol Hill.

Neither house of Congress has endorsed the action. The administration argues that such authorisation is not necessary, and maintains that Washington’s current participation in the conflict falls far short of “hostilities”. An enhanced US role could further strain such arguments.

UK defence officials said that Mr Panetta gave no commitment during the conversation with Mr Fox and the UK is still waiting for an answer from the Pentagon.

Mr Fox appeared on British television on Sunday, accusing Nato members of not doing enough to support the organisation’s military missions, including that in Libya. He noticeably did not mention the US in a list of countries that were playing a prominent defence role, adding: “There are rather too many absentees, which is unfair on our defence forces....”

But the defence secretary is under pressure to ensure the UK is not over-committed in Libya, having taken the de facto lead in planning for what happens after the conflict ends. He will outline to the UK parliament further cuts to the size of the regular army on Monday as part of a settlement with the Treasury on the size and cost of the UK’s armed forces by 2020".

David Dombey & Kiran Stacey, "Britain urges US to step up Libyan support." The Financial Times. 17 July 2011, in www.ft.com.

"To complete this survey, the present position of the United States must be summarised. At present they are trying to have it both ways. Either Europe is the messy, dangerous place that she imagines, and pooled security full of snags and alligators; in that case, it cannot logically be trusted with a toothless pact. Or Europe is not half so bad; in that case, American post-war policy will be hardly judged by the future historian. Already there is among instructed Americans some uneasiness lest their policy be compared with that of Dogberry and Verges....For the purposes of our enquiry, however America may largely be written off since, comprehensibly, she neither lives, nor desires to live, in touch with reality so long as filmland is open to her and she has a good spell of illusion still ahead."

Sir Robert Vansittart, "An Aspect of International Relations in 1930." 1 May 1930, in Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, Series Ia, Volume VII, (1975: Her Majesty's Stationary Office) pp. 848-849.

The perils of the Americans 'leading from behind', are fully laid out in the above referenced article in Monday's Financial Times. It is certainly quite clear by now, that sans greater American support, the entire NATO operation in Libyan will soon face the test of exhaustion of essential materials and support. With some news articles stating that if the conflict enters the month of October, that there will be very serious pressure put on British forces in particular. The fact of the matter is, that inasmuch as the Americans decided to endorse (admittedly belatedly) the Anglo-French push to oust the current regime in Libya back in late March, the Americans are part 'owners' of what is coming to be seen (perhaps erroneously) as a military stalemate. Au fond, if in fact the conflict were to enter the month of October, it would raise very serious questions about NATO's ability to operate militarily without the operation being almost entirely led, manned and thus controlled by the Americans military. And while the mere fact of a stalemate should not per se act as a sort of force majeure in terms of greater American involvement, one can see few plausible alternatives. Since if indeed NATO's prestige is dragged into the mud due to a near-debacle in the Libyan deserts, the USA's prestige will inevitably follow suit and surely be judged as the then Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office presciently judged that American entre deux guerre foreign policy would be judged by future historians: 'hardly'.

2011-07-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

MICHAEL MCFAUL & THE 'RESET' BETWEEN THE USA & RUSSIA: A VIEW

"If Michael McFaul becomes the next U.S. ambassador to Russia, it will be another case of a scholar becoming a top diplomat, which is not uncommon in U.S. practice. Before he was appointed in 2009 as senior director at the National Security Council responsible for Russia, McFaul’s entire career was in academia and think tanks. His performance since then proves that scholars can be successful bureaucrats and, given the powers of office, achieve valuable strategic results that they would only dream about in their op-eds.

The Russian media have attributed McFaul with being the architect of the U.S.-Russian reset. This is certainly true, but as an architect, he could achieve what he did because he was only working to order and was given the backing of U.S. President Barack Obama. It was the president who commissioned McFaul to redesign U.S. policy toward Russia in accordance with Obama’s own worldview and in pursuit of his larger goals.

The irony, of course, was that when Obama moved into the White House, he cared relatively little about Russia per se. Focused on Afghanistan and Iran, he saw Moscow as a potential resource to help reach Washington’s central objectives in both Muslim countries. That resource, however, could not be used because of the botched Russia policies of the previous administration of President George W. Bush. Hence, the obvious and very pragmatic need for a reset.

Two years later, this approach has led to spectacular results. The Northern Distribution Network across Russia now amounts to 50 percent of the U.S. military transit to Afghanistan and is likely to become the principal supply route as the Pakistan option becomes more hazardous. On Iran, not only has Moscow supported United Nations Security Council sanctions against Tehran, but it canceled the sale to Iran of the S-300 air defense system, foregoing $1 billion in revenue. In an equally rare development, Moscow recently abstained at the UN Security Council abstention to allow the use of force against Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. Although Russia is still not central to Obama’s foreign policy, it is a truly one of his largest success stories.

To Washington, this pragmatism has not come at the price of keeping mum on the issues where the U.S. and Russian governments disagree. McFaul has been criticized for co-chairing a group on civil society with Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov. Yet he speaks openly on matters dealing with civil society and democracy in Russia, including the safety of journalists, the conditions in prisons and the fate of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He speaks with as much candor as anyone in the current or previous U.S. administrations.

This is the hallmark of the scholar-turned-official — to be intellectually incisive and precise and to stay focused on what is practically achievable. Before he joined the Obama administration, some took McFaul for an ideologue; after he had spent 2 1/2years at the National Security Council, he sometimes passes for a realpolitiker. In fact, he is neither. McFaul is a person who is clearly wedded to his values, norms and principles, but who is equally mindful of the real world out there and of U.S. national interests in that world.

As the probable next Tenant No. 1 at Spaso House, McFaul will have a difficult task. In what direction will U.S.-Russian relations move now that the reset has been achieved? Changing the very nature of the strategic relationship between the nuclear superpowers by cooperating on missile defense will be an arduous endeavor. Yet this is precisely what is needed — to move away from the still dominant adversarial strategic relationship and toward a cooperative one where neither party will regard the other as a potential adversary. The United States, the obviously stronger partner in the relationship, could be more accommodating, and this would serve its own best interests".

Dmitri Trenin, "Ambassador 'Mike' McFaul Could Help Reset." The Carnegie Moscow Center. 2 June 2011, in www.carnegie.ru.

"The conventional explanation for Vladimir Putin's popularity is straightforward. In the 1990s, under post-Soviet Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, the state did not govern, the economy shrank, and the population suffered. Since 2000, under Putin, order has returned, the economy has flourished, and the average Russian is living better than ever before. As political freedom has decreased, economic growth has increased. Putin may have rolled back democratic gains, the story goes, but these were necessary sacrifices on the altar of stability and growth....

This conventional narrative is wrong, based almost entirely on a spurious correlation between autocracy and growth. The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either. The reemergence of Russian autocracy under Putin, conversely, has coincided with economic growth but not caused it (high oil prices and recovery from the transition away from communism deserve most of the credit). There is also very little evidence to suggest that Putin's autocratic turn over the last several years has led to more effective governance than the fractious democracy of the 1990s. In fact, the reverse is much closer to the truth: to the extent that Putin's centralization of power has had an influence on governance and economic growth at all, the effects have been negative. Whatever the apparent gains of Russia under Putin, the gains would have been greater if democracy had survived".

Michael McFaul & Kathyrn Stoner-Weiss, "Mission to Moscow: Why Authoritarian Stability is a myth." Foreign Affairs. January-February 2008, in www.foreignaffairs.com.

Allow me be the first to admit that I was erroneously filled with foreboding when Professor McFaul was first mentioned as being appointed to head the National Security Council's Russian 'desk'. As the Senior staffer dealing with Russia on the American National Security Council, McFaul I thought was going to preside over a continuation of the Bush regime's anti-Russian / anti-Putin policies. And as we see from Dmitri Trenin's article, this has proven to be not the case. Which merely means that one cannot necessarily take entirely seriously the writings of academics on foreign affairs, prior to their term of office & time in power. The example of Henry Kissinger being of course the most notable of all: a skeptic of unbridled American hegemony vis-`a-vis Western Europe, he of course became notoriously thin-skinned and arrogant vis-`a-vis those same Western Europeans when he came to power, especially in the years spanning 1971-1976. Many other examples spring to mind of course. The upshot is that in the irony of history, the American President, least interested in both Europe and Russia has put forth possibly most rational and constructive Russian policy since the days of Bush the Elder. As Trenin cogently argues, while not necessarily muzzling American concerns about Russian human rights problems, McFaul has decided to work around such pitfalls and come to agreement with Moskva on issues of mutual benefit. Such as Afghanistan, Persia and so it appears so far Libya. While one cannot gainsay the fact that the current rulers in the Kremlin, for reasons of primat der Innenpolitik may engage in policies which might overturn the entire 'reset', at the moment, the policy appears to be one that in comparison with the state of the relationship circa 2007-2008, is almost idyllic. Leading this observer to echo, Mme. Mere (Mme. Bonaparte): 'let us just hope that it lasts'.

2011-07-11T14:21:00.001-04:00

THE 'NEWS OF THE WORLD' SCANDAL & BRITISH PUBLIC LIFE

"David Cameron, who has returned from Afghanistan as a profoundly damaged figure, now faces exactly such a crisis. The series of disgusting revelations concerning his friends and associates from Rupert Murdoch’s News International has permanently and irrevocably damaged his reputation.

Until now it has been easy to argue that Mr Cameron was properly grounded with a decent set of values. Unfortunately, it is impossible to make that assertion any longer. He has made not one, but a long succession of chronic personal misjudgments.

He should never have employed Andy Coulson, the News of the World editor, as his director of communications. He should never have cultivated Rupert Murdoch. And – the worst mistake of all – he should never have allowed himself to become a close friend of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of the media giant News International, whose departure from that company in shame and disgrace can only be a matter of time.

We are talking about a pattern of behaviour here. Indeed, it might be better described as a course of action. Mr Cameron allowed himself to be drawn into a social coterie in which no respectable person, let alone a British prime minister, should be seen dead.

It was called the Chipping Norton set, an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency. Brooks and her husband, the former racing trainer Charlie Brooks, live in a house scarcely a mile from David and Samantha Cameron’s constituency home. The two couples meet frequently, and have continued to do so long after the phone hacking scandal became well known.

PR fixer Matthew Freud, married to Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, is another member of this Chipping Norton set. When Mr Cameron bumped into Freud at Rebekah Brooks’s wedding two years ago, he and Mr Freud greeted each other with exuberant high-fives to signal their exclusive friendship.

So the Prime Minister is in a mess. To put the matter rather more graphically, he is in a sewer. The question is this: how does he crawl out and salvage at least some of his reputation for decency and good judgment?".

Peter Obourne, "David Cameron is in the sewer because of his News International Friends." The Daily Telegraph. 8 July 2011, in www.telegraph.co.uk.

"A Statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote; A journalist makes up his lies and he takes you by the throat; So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote. Because this age and the next age engender in the ditch, No man can tell a happy man From a passing wretch; If Folly link with elegance no man knows which is which."

William Butler Yeats, "The Old Stone Cross," in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1956), p. 314.

The miasma of corruption that is the 'telephone hacking' scandal in the United Kingdom is a most wretched business. Ordinarily it would not be a matter that I would care to comment on, except for the fact that: i) the whole business encapsulates the vulgarity and stupidity of both modern-day life and politics. That a plebeian and infra dig publication like the News of the World and its sub-human owners the Murdoch clan and their henchmen, were able to play such an important role in British public life as outlined by the Telegraph's chief political correspondent, Peter Obourne, is distressing in the extreme. Particularly, since such trends are observable throughout the Western World in the last half century if not longer; ii) I rely upon the British press for much of my own reading on a regular basis: from the daily Financial Times, to weeklies such as the Spectator & the TLS, as well as the London Review of Books and the Literary Review among others. What is to my mind one of the most unfortunate aspects of the entire business as outlined in Obourne's piece is that the current British Prime Minister, Mr. Cameron, and the Chancellor, Mr. Osborne, would allow themselves to become intimate with such obvious cads and bounders from the Murdoch circle as Mr. Coulson and Mlle. Brooks. What could they be thinking of? As Mr.Obourne correctly notes, they en faite, allowed themselves to sink into the sewer that is the News International apparatus. One can hardly imagine that either Lord Home or Harold MacMillan would have displayed such ill-judgment as to associate themselves with such odious creatures. All one needs to do is to paraphrase, Gladstone in reference to such a familial crew to sum them up, tutti quanti:

"There was never a Murdoch from Rupert of Adelaide on down, that had either morals or principles."

2011-07-08T15:30:00.002-04:00

THE GRECIAN FINANCIAL NIGHTMARE: A COMMENT

"The Greek parliament has voted, but the crisis goes on. The European Union’s current policy has been driven by the political imperatives of preserving the euro and avoiding another banking crisis – but it will not yield an enduring solution. The EU’s future depends on enabling its poorest member countries to regain their competitiveness – and this requires a very different approach.

Everyone knows that lending more money to someone who is already heavily indebted, and has few realisable assets and woefully inadequate income or earning power, creates problems. Putting the repayment date off for 30 years simply ensures that no one in authority today will be around when the time comes.

Moreover, it is plain that a large part of the new lending to Greece, which obviously cannot possibly be repaid by Greece, is in substance going to repay Greece’s existing creditors. New official lending is public (taxpayers’) money, and it is going to bail out Greece’s creditors; in particular banks with exposure not yet written down. There is certainly a need to prevent another crisis. Hence the motive for the proposed “rescue”: to prevent banks, including the European Central Bank, being hit by losses large enough to be embarrassing.

So the process of putting off the evil day is likely to continue. Anyone still holding or buying Greek government debt is relying on this; and there are indeed some people buying because the discount on Greek bonds is now so large that the price has almost arrived at a market clearing level and may be thought worth a speculative bet for those who believe the policy of postponing default will continue.

This policy is firmly entrenched, thanks to eurozone leaders’ focus on preserving the single currency and avoiding further turmoil in the banking system. But unfortunately, it will not be sufficient.

Economic distress in Europe’s periphery is real and will continue. The worst manifestation of this is unemployment, particularly among young people, inevitably bringing with it misery and the danger of unrest. This is the human cost of bad policy governing the management of the euro, combined with bad lending. This seems to have been forgotten or pushed to one side.

Greece cannot earn its way out of this mess. Its adoption of the euro made it uncompetitive and, so long as the euro remains its currency, this state of affairs will go on....

Regaining competitiveness is bound (as it always does) to involve a temporary reduction of labour costs and living standards and, in practice, the only way this can be done with relative harmony is through devaluation. We ourselves in the UK have been reminded of this very recently. As our own currency has depreciated over the recent past, we have regained competitiveness.

Accordingly, unattractive, expensive and messy though this is, dismantling the euro is the least woeful course of action. Otherwise social as well as economic trouble lies ahead and the economic future of the EU itself will be threatened".

Sir Martin Jacomb, "Greece has no future within the Eurozone." The Financial Times. 5 July 2011, in www.ft.com.

"Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back"

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. (1936), Book, III, Chapter X.

The Grecian debt charivari or debacle continues apace with no real end in sight. The recent resolution of the latest installment of the crisis, has of course not resulted in any real solutions or even half-solutions. Merely a postponement of the ultimate question facing both Greece and the leaders of the Eurozone and the European Central Bank of either a real restructuring of the debt, with write-offs of seventy to eighty percent of the existing debt, or falling which, Greece declaring default and leaving the Eurozone. Either decision will be a difficult one to take, as the consequences of each are hard to contemplate. And rightly so, as there are justified dangers of either event becoming one of 'Lehman-like' proportions as the aftershocks of either decision are reverberated throughout the Eurozone. As the commentator, Philip Whyte, of the Centre for European Reform argued recently:

"It is unsurprising, then that the unpleasant choice facing Eurozone leaders has not gone away. If some of the peripherals are indeed insolvent, then relief in one form or another – via bail out or default – is inevitable. A taboo of sorts was lifted when the possibility of restructuring (or 'reprofiling') peripheral country debt was discussed by finance ministers at a 'secret' meeting on May 6th. But the question remains as politically divisive as it is explosive. It divides the German government internally. And the European Central Bank (ECB) is so implacably opposed to the very idea that its president, Jean-Claude Trichet, walked out of the meeting at which it was discussed. What explains the ECB's hostility to the prospect of debt restructuring?

Partly, it reflects an odd theological attachment to the idea of creditor sanctity: come what may, debtors should pay. But it also reflects a legitimate fear of the consequences. There are 'known knowns': a restructuring of Greek sovereign debt, for example, would inflict losses on banks inside and outside Greece (at a time when many are still thinly capitalised), as well as on the ECB (which built up sizeable exposures to peripheral debt in 2010). And there are 'known unknowns': the ECB is not confident that a sovereign debt restructuring could be achieved without provoking 'another Lehman' – that is, a catastrophic loss of confidence in financial markets resulting in a pan-European banking crisis and contagion to countries such as Spain and Italy" 1.

While the above referenced fear is a legitimate one, currently the policy in place is one that can only be with politeness called: 'papering over the cracks', AKA a 'faut de mieux' policy. Something that Mr. Micawber would no doubt be pleased with, but hardly anyone else should be. The fact is, as countless commentators have argued, the premise of the recent austerity measures voted on by the Greek Parliament with its privatization programme, is completely unreal and unworkable. With Greece's economy going into a prolonged reverse, cutting government spending will merely add fuel to the fiscal and economic fire. When added to the fact that no one seriously believes that sales of state assets will net anywhere near the twenty to forty billion Euros figures, that are being banded about. The upshot being that as Philip Whyte cogently notes:

"In any case, countries across the eurozone's indebted periphery will not return to solvency if their economies continue to contract. In the meantime, the three countries that have been shut out of the government bond markets – Greece, Ireland and Portugal – look set to become wards of European and multilateral institutions: they will owe a growing share of their outstanding liabilities to bodies such as the IMF, the ECB, the European Financial Stability Facility and its successor.

All this could poison European politics without resolving the economics. Taxpayers in the creditor countries will grow increasingly angry with their own politicians as the size of their contingent liabilities to the indebted periphery increases. Meanwhile, citizens in the periphery could revolt at endless, and potentially quixotic, austerity programmes – particularly if these come to be seen as policies imposed by foreigners to rescue private investors abroad. With national politics becoming ever more toxic, the very scenario that the ECB wishes to avoid (contagion and a messy default) might become impossible to avoid. If such an event came to pass, moreover, taxpayers in the creditor countries would bear more of the losses than private investors" 2.

While in some circumstances a policy of 'muddling through', might conceivably make some sense, this is not one of those times to put it mildly. What needs to be done, is a hard restructuring of the private debt owed by Greece and other Eurozone peripheral countries. The fact that some French and German banks will be hard hit, and will have to tabulate on their books these losses, while regrettable can hardly be said to a 'Lehman moment'. The truth of the matter is that the leaders of the Eurozone and Monsieur Trichet in particular need to dispense with their obsession with 'creditor sanctity'. And the sooner the better. The fact is that Greece and most likely the other peripherals (Ireland, Portugal and perhaps Spain), will either need to do a hard restructuring or default and leave the Eurozone. And this decision cannot be postponed for another few years down the line. It needs to be made sooner rather than later. Any postponement will only make the situation worse and not better for all concerned. Unfortunately, Monsieur Trichet et. al., in their unjustified dislike of the first option, will inevitably result in making the second option the only one possible for the countries involved.

1. Philip Whyte, "Eurozone Debt Crisis: To restructure or not?" The Centre for European Reform. (June / July 2011), in www.cer.org.uk.

2. Whyte, op. cit.

2011-07-06T15:10:00.006-04:00

A REVIEW OF HENRY A. KISSINGER'S 'ON CHINA'

"Mao dominated any gathering; Zhou suffused it. Mao’s passion strove to overwhelm opposition; Zhou’s intellect would seek to persuade or outmaneuver it. Mao was sardonic; Zhou penetrating. Mao thought of himself as a philosopher; Zhou saw his role as an administrator or a negotiator. Mao was eager to accelerate history; Zhou was content to exploit its currents".

Henry A. Kissinger, On China (2011).

"Whatever the qualities of Soviet Leadership, its training is eminently political and conceptual. Reading Lenin or Mao or Stalin, one is struck by the emphasis on the relationship between political, military, psychological and economic factors and the insistence on finding a conceptual basis for political action and on the need for dominating a situation by flexible tactics and inflexible purpose. And the internal struggles in the Kremlin ensure that only the most iron-nerved reach the top....As a result, the contest between us and the Soviets has had many of the attributes of any contest between a professional and an amateur: even a mediocre professional will usually defeat an excellent amateur, not because the amateur does not know what to do, but because he cannot react sufficiently quickly or consistently."

Henry A. Kissinger, "Reflections on American Diplomacy." Foreign Affairs. (October 1956).

Former American Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger's new book, On China, has received voluminous reviews and attention. The reviews, especially on this side of the Atlantic has been positive overall, even if few commentators are either unimpressed, much less convinced by Kissinger's apologia for the human rights record of the regime in Peking 1. Nor has the fact that Kissinger failed to disclose to readers his three decades of lucrative consulting work dealing with the leadership of the PRC, gone unnoticed. Not that per se, Kissinger's ultra-gingerly treatment of the PRC leadership a direct consequence of his business ties with every PRC leader from Deng Xiao-ping to Hu Jintao. Whatever else one may say about Kissinger and his views and past-policy dealing with the PRC, corruption is far from being the prime reason for Kissinger's behavior & viewpoint as it relates to China. Au fond,as the two above Kissinger quotes, one from 1956 and one from 'On China', show is that for reasons which are difficult for myself to explain fully, the former Secretary of State has never quite disengaged himself from his admiring if deeply mistaken view of the PRC's early leaders. For lack of a better description, one can only label it as 'Hegelian', in the sense of Hegel's 'world historical' view of Bonaparte in the aftermath of the battle of Jena. A point of view which confuses and obfuscates as much as it illustrates. Indeed, there are passages in Kissinger's book, as they relate to Mao and his involvement with the 'Great Leap Forward' as well as the 'Cultural Revolution', which clearly ring the 'weltgeschichte' bell. The fact that these musings are at best nonsensical, and at worse can be read as a form of exculpation for mass murderers (Mao, Chou et. al.) seems to have passed by most American reviewers by (not thankfully British ones) 2. With this mind-set it is not that surprising that as Margaret Macmillan, William Burr and other have pointed out in recent years, Kissinger and Nixon both came away mostly empty-handed from Peking in terms of the original diplomatic desiderata (mostly Vietnam-centric) for their rapprochement with the PRC 3.

Given the above background, it is not very surprising to find out that Kissinger has a very specific view of the future of Sino-American relations. As per Kissinger, notwithstanding the difference political and cultural make-ups of the two countries and their almost completely opposed views on such issues as Human Rights, the fact is, pace Kissinger that the two powers would best endeavor to overcome such differences in the hope of avoiding the worst:

"Neither the more triumphalist Chinese analyses nor the American version—that a successful Chinese "rise" is incompatible with America's position in the Pacific, and the world—have been endorsed by either government, but they provide a subtext of much current thought. If the assumptions of these views were applied by either side—and it would take only one side to make it unavoidable—China and the U.S. could easily fall into an escalating tension.

China would try to push American power as far away from its borders as it could, circumscribe the scope of American naval power, and reduce America's weight in international diplomacy. The U.S. would try to organize China's many neighbors into a counterweight to Chinese dominance. Both sides would emphasize their ideological differences. The interaction would be even more complicated because the notions of deterrence and preemption are not symmetrical between these two sides. The U.S. is more focused on overwhelming military power, China on decisive psychological impact. Sooner or later, one side or the other would miscalculate.

The question ultimately comes down to what the U.S. and China can realistically ask of each other. An explicit American project to organize Asia on the basis of containing China or creating a bloc of democratic states for an ideological crusade is unlikely to succeed—in part because China is an indispensable trading partner for most of its neighbors. By the same token, a Chinese attempt to exclude America from Asian economic and security affairs will similarly meet serious resistance from almost all other Asian states, which fear the consequences of a region dominated by a single power.

The appropriate label for the Sino-American relationship is less partnership than "co-evolution." It means that both countries pursue their domestic imperatives, cooperating where possible, and adjust their relations to minimize conflict. Neither side endorses all the aims of the other or presumes a total identity of interests, but both sides seek to identify and develop complementary interests" 4.

The problem with this point of view, a problem which is overtly present in Kissinger's entire oeuvre as a 'historian' is that it neglects to take into account the true wellsprings of Chinese foreign policy 5. At the bottom, Chinese foreign policy is fundamentally shaped, just as the foreign policy of the Kaiserreich after the fall of Bismarck in 1890 was shaped, not by axioms of 'eternal' bases of the so-called 'Middle Kingdom,' but by contemporary-based primat der innenpolitik. Peking's current rulers, like Bulow, Hohenlohe and Bethmann, are obsessed with not being viewed as 'weak-willed' and 'unpatriotic' by its public and outlets which can be said to express 'public opinion', in a bureaucratic, authoritarian state. That and not any ahistorical, essentialist nonsense explains Peking's recent militaristic bombast over say Tibet, the South China Seas, and last years conflict with Japan. Much the same can be said about Peking's policy vis-`a-vis Formosa. If and only if, the leadership of the PRC, is changed by some internal disturbance or reform process, can we expect to see a more rationale, unemotional and peaceful foreign policy coming out of Peking. Until then, expect more of the types of roller-coaster foreign policy 'mood swings' from the PRC which the world has been subjected to in the last few years. Which is not to gainsay the fact of course that Kissinger is correct in noting that whatever their other faults, the ruling elite in Peking has no real wish to either succeed the USA as 'hegemon', or even to aggressively push-out the Americans from the Pacific-Orient region. And similarly, there is no reason to unnecessarily quarrel with the PRC, if this can be at all avoided. If indeed, China's rulers wish to be good 'stakeholders' in the current international system, then by all means let us endeavor to make that possible. With that being said, it behooves American and Western policy-makers to avoid a newer and costlier version of the Nixon-Kissinger policy of needless concessions to a ruthless and basically hostile ruling clique in Peking. Unlike the case of Bulow's Kaiserreich, such concessions will net us nothing, certainly not good-will merely a demand for more of the same from the rulers in Peking.

1. For American reviews, see: Max Frankel,"Henry Kissinger on China." The New York Times. 13 May 2011, in www.nytimes.com; Bret Stephens, "A Diplomat looks East." The Wall Street Journal. 12 May 2011, in www.wsj.com;
Brantly Womak, "Henry Kissinger's 'On China.'" The Washington Post. 3 June 2011, in www.washingtonpost.com; Jonathan Spence, "Kissinger and China." The New York Review of Books.9 June 2011, in www.nybooks.com.

2. See: Jonathan Mirsky, "What Henry Saw." The Literary Review. June 2011, in www.literaryreview.co.uk; Jasper Becker, "On China by Henry Kissinger -a Review." The Guardian.21 May 2011, in www.guardian.co.uk.

3. Margaret MacMillan, Nixon and Mao: a week that changed the world. (2007); William Burr, The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret talks with Bejing and Moscow. (1999).

4. Henry A. Kissinger, On China, op. cit.

5. One of the essentials aspects of the Kissingerian oeuvre is that per se, he is not, notwithstanding the subject matter of his first book (A World Restored) an academically trained 'historian'. At least not a historian in the empiricist, Rankean sense of the term. Kissinger's view of the craft of history is one closer to pre-Rankean 'historians', such as Arnold Toynbee, Spengler and even Hegel (nota bene: Kissinger's dissertation was not for Harvard's Department of History, but that of its Departmet of 'Government'). For whom 'history' is made of timeless and unchanging variables (AKA exactly the idea behind the 'eternal Middle Kingdom' view of China's foreign relations). The fact that history and its interpretation is forever being changed and changed again, is something for which Kissinger apparently has no idea of. Hence it is not at all surprising that the concepts of 'Primat der Aussenpolitik' and 'Primat der Innenpolitik' singularly fail to make a appearence in any of Kissinger's writings in the last fifty-five years. Nor that the causation of the Great War had many more reasons than merely the fact that England and its allies failed to 'integrate' into the international system, post-Bismarckian Kaiserreich. Id est. Fritz Fischer and his school.

2011-06-30T18:13:00.007-04:00

GENERAL HAYDEN SPEAKS TO THE OXONIAN SOCIETY

"No, I'm not all pleased. When my gatekeeper shoots a fox, he doesn't go and hang it up outside the Master of Foxhounds' drawing room; he buries it out of sight. But you just can't shoot a spy as you did in the war. You have to try him....better to discover him, and then control him, but never catch him."

Then British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan on being informed of the capture of the Russian spy, W. John Vassall in September 1962. See: Alistair Horne, Harold MacMillan, Volume II: 1957-1986. (1989). pp. 460-461.

On Tuesday 28 June, former Central Intelligence Director (CIA) & National Security Agency Director (NSA), as well as Deputy-Director of National Intelligence under John Negroponte, General Michael Hayden spoke before a packed room, to members of the Oxonian Society here in Manhattan at the Russian Tea Room. General Hayden who was CIA director from early 2006 to February 2009, had operated at the summit of American intelligence and foreign policy for upwards of a decade, had the following insights which I believe to be of value: i) that due to the changes instituted by the current American Administration, that American policy no longer aimed to 'capture' potential terrorist and other operatives, merely 'kill them'. A policy which the General thought mistaken in view of the valuable intelligence which was regularly provided in the past by captured operatives; ii) that Chinese intelligence was as intelligence agencies go, 'particularly aggressive', and in fact the General told the audience that he was 'in awe' of the PRC's intelligence operations. Noting however that Chinese intelligence behavior was very much par for the course, and 'nothing was out of the ordinary'; iii) being a former head of the NSA, General Hayden had strong views on the secure basis of the Internet. As per the General, 'the Internet that we have built is inherently indefensible'; iv) concerning the recent upheavals in the Near and Middle East, General Hayden noted that the country by country differences are of much greater importance than the more ephemeral similarities. He also cautioned the audience with the sensible comment that Americans should be very leery indeed about 'reading' events in foreign countries through the prism of American narrative discourse. Something which he sees as being very much the case with the semi-intervention in Libya by the USA and its NATO allies. Indeed one sensed that the General if asked his opinion by the current American Administration, would have demurred from intervening in the Libyan conflict; v) Going further afield, General Hayden foresaw the possibility of Persian intervention in the ongoing troubles in Syria. Especially if the regime of Assad Fils were to become seriously at risk of collapsing. Similarly, the General suggested that such Persian intervention might in turn cause Saudi Arabian intervention on the opposing (Sunni) side. Stating that there was a possibility of a proxi-war between these two sides `a la the Lebanon in the 1970's and 1980's. The General expressed a mild surprise that the demonstrations in Syria have lasted as long as they have. He stated that he did not anticipate anything of the kind. Adding that he: 'fears what comes next [aka after the current regime] in Syria'; vi) Staying in the region, General Hayden stated that he found the monarchies of the Near and Middle East, much more stable both in the short term and in the long term, than what he labeled as 'faux republics' `a la Syria, Libya, Egypt, et cetera. Staying on the Persian versus Sunni-Arab divide, General Hayden recalled for the audience that in his experience, most of the Sunni elites were five percent concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and ninety-five percent obsessed with the threat coming from Persia and its local allies; vii) touching base on relations with Pakistan and especially Pakistani intelligence (the ISI), the General stated that the current American-Pakistan relationship was a very troubled one, and that in essence that there was going to be in the near future, a 'parting of the ways', between the two powers, unless Pakistani elites, especially in the military, no longer indulged in their 'obsession' with the alleged threat from India.

Summing up, the General Hayden, noted for the audience that as CIA Director, he never met his Russian counter-part, while he did in his time, meet with as many as fifty other intelligence heads around the world. Of the other intelligence agencies around the world, he in particular expressed admiration for the Israel's Mossad, while noting that it was merely 'a regional player', and not a global one, AKA `a la the CIA. Similarly, while MI-6 was also the recipient of the General's admiration, he once again noted that it was no longer, a global player. The difference between the former and the latter, as per the General, was the a 'regional player', was able to develop a high-level of expertise on very minute and intricate matters, whereas a 'global player', by definition could not indulge to quite the same extent in such minutiae and specifics. Indeed, as per General Hayden, one of the key aspects of the CIA directorships is maintaining functioning relationships with many of the regional players who in essence provide the CIA with local expertise and deep background knowledge. That concluded the General's talk to a very pleased and grateful audience. One might conclude that General Hayden was a natural and one is tempted to say, gifted speaker, who possessed a natural air of command (par for the course in view of his military rank). Speaking with a mild, but noticeable provincial accent, employing the usual demotic and banal metaphors from American sports or television, that many in American officialdom tend to use when speaking to either their fellows or to the general public.