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anonymous

U.S.-Pakistani Relations: Islamabad's Perspective on the Tensions - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...slamabads_perspective_tensions

geopolitics gwot

shared by anonymous on 06 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Islamabad realizes that it is more dependent than ever on U.S. financial assistance, especially in the wake of devastating floods that ravaged some 20 percent of the country’s territory and 12 percent of its population. From the Pakistanis’ viewpoint, the Americans are trying to take advantage of this dependency and extract as many concessions from them as is possible. Having been forced to accept U.S. UAV strikes in their country as routine, the Pakistani leaders now fear that if they don’t draw the line, they could easily find themselves being forced to accept U.S. forces entering their territory to conduct raids against militant forces as a norm.
  • The latter scenario is a red line for Islamabad, as it could make the Pakistani state even more unstable than it already is (something which would also go against current and long-term U.S. interests).
  • Pakistan is also using its vulnerability to its advantage. The United States cannot afford severe destabilization in Pakistan and thus cannot push Islamabad too far. This gives Pakistan an advantage over the United States.
  • anonymous on 06 Oct 10
     
    "After years of tolerating countless UAV strikes and clandestine ground incursions by the U.S. military and particularly the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division, the Pakistanis are telegraphing that they can no longer tolerate violation of their borders by U.S. forces. Pakistan is making this move now out of a sense of vulnerability, and because the Pakistanis want to capitalize on the most recent affront." At StratFor on October 6, 2010.
anonymous

Despite highest health spending, Americans' life expectancy falls behind other countries' - 0 views

www.labspaces.net/..._falls_behind_other_countries_

layscience nutrition

shared by anonymous on 07 Oct 10 - Cached
  • While the U.S. has achieved gains in 15-year survival rates decade by decade between 1975 and 2005, the researchers discovered that other countries have experienced even greater gains, leading the U.S. to slip in country ranking, even as per capita health care spending in the U.S. increased at more than twice the rate of the comparison countries.
  • When the researchers compared risk factors among the 13 countries, they found very little difference in smoking habits between the U.S. and the comparison countries—in fact, the U.S. had faster declines in smoking between 1975 and 2005 than almost all of the other countries.
  • In terms of obesity, researchers found that, while people in the U.S. are more likely to be obese, this was also the case in 1975, when the U.S. was not so far behind in life expectancy.
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  • "But what really surprised us was that all of the usual suspects—smoking, obesity, traffic accidents, homicides, and racial and ethnic diversity are not the culprits. The U.S. doesn't stand out as doing any worse in these areas than any of the other countries we studied, leading us to believe that failings in the U.S. health care system, such as costly specialized and fragmented care, are likely playing a large role in this relatively poor performance on improvements in life expectancy."
  • anonymous on 07 Oct 10
     
    "America continues to lag behind other nations when it comes to gains in life expectancy, and commonly cited causes for our poor performance-obesity, smoking, traffic fatalities and homicide-are not to blame, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. " At Lab Spaces on October 7, 2010.
anonymous

Question of Pakistani Cooperation in bin Laden Strike - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...i-cooperation-bin-laden-strike

geopolitics pakistan

shared by anonymous on 02 May 11 - Cached
  • The detailed version of what led to the hit and the extent of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in the strike is not yet publicly known, but reports so far claim that bin Laden and his son were hiding in a massive compound with heavy security and no communications access when they were attacked.
  • Two key questions thus emerge. How long was the Pakistani government and military-security apparatus aware of bin Laden’s refuge deep in Pakistani territory? Did the United States withhold information from Pakistan until the hit was executed, fearing the operation would be compromised?
  • anonymous on 02 May 11
     
    "U.S. President Barack Obama announced late May 1 that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead and that the body of the jihadist leader is in U.S. custody. Obama said bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. special operations forces in Abbottabad, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) north of Islamabad. Prior to Obama's announcement, Pakistani intelligence officials were leaking to U.S. media that their assets were involved in the killing of bin Laden. Obama said, "Over the years, I've repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we've done. But it's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding." Obama said he had called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and that his team had also spoken to their counterparts. He said Islamabad agreed it is "a good and historic day for both of our nations and going forward it's essential for Pakistan to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates." "
anonymous

In Dispute Over Islands, a Chance for Beijing | Stratfor - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...te-over-islands-chance-beijing

shared by anonymous on 21 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • . Chinese pilots are more actively shadowing U.S. military aircraft flying through the airspace between China and Japan. Chinese aircraft have also reportedly violated Japanese airspace near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands several times since mid-December, prompting Japan to send its aircraft, including F-15Js, to monitor Chinese actions. 

  • Tokyo has identified several gaps in its ability to address Chinese actions. Japan will depend on the United States to fill these gaps as its military purchases new systems, shifts its existing forces and adjusts its rules of engagement.
  • Until 2012, the dispute over the islands was only an occasional source of tension between China and Japan. The two sides had operated under a tacit agreement: China would not push its claims if Japan did not develop the islands. In April 2012, then-Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, announced the city's plans to purchase the Senkaku Islands from their Japanese private owner. This action forced the Japanese central government to purchase the islands outright rather than continue to rent them from the private owners or allow Ishihara to buy the islands and possibly begin to build facilities on them.

  • ...11 more annotations...
  • What took place was effectively a change in the deeds to the islands, which in reality were already under Japanese control.
  • Beijing, however, exploited the move to set in motion a nationalist campaign against Japanese businesses and products and to justify the new pace of Chinese maritime and air activity around the islands.
  • In the first case, Japan does not acknowledge China's claim to the islands, and thus it does not recognize a dispute, instead characterizing Beijing's moves as Chinese aggression.
  • In the second instance, China sees its increased presence as a way to either cow the other claimant or to help China build a stronger case should the dispute ever go to international arbitration.
  • Japan has already recognized several shortcomings in its own defense capabilities
  • But most Japanese plans are slated for implementation no sooner than 2015. This leaves Tokyo unable to effectively counter Chinese activity for two more years.
  • Washington has said it does not recognize any sovereignty over the islands, but it does recognize Japanese administrative control, meaning that by default, Washington supports Japan. But the United States does not want a violent clash between Japan and China. By increasing its direct involvement, Washington can reassure Tokyo of its support, softening the pressure for Japan to take more aggressive action, and it can serve notice to China that more aggressive action would involve not only Japan but also the United States. 

  • But this approach assumes China is willing to step back. In China's view, the United States is trying to contain Beijing and encroach on its sphere of influence. Beijing sees the evidence of this in Washington's pivot to Asia, in the expansion of its political and defense relations with Southeast Asian states and in its strengthened military posture throughout the region, particularly in Australia and the Philippines.
  • The involvement of the United States, then, may not suffice to alter China's actions around the disputed islands.
  • In 2001, after a collision between a Chinese Jian-8 and a U.S. EP-3E, China held the plane on Hainan Island and demanded a U.S. apology. But more than just seeking an apology or trying to pry secrets from the plane's airframe, China used the opportunity to try to show other Asian states that the United States and its military could be countered in Asia.
  • Beijing's ability to resist U.S. demands and Washington's unwillingness to intervene militarily were, for China, a victory. The 9/11 attacks on the United States shifted U.S. attention and the stresses of U.S.-China relations were quickly deprioritized. But those tensions are rising once again, and at a time when more military flights and ships are moving near the disputed area, Beijing may be on the lookout for another opportunity to reshape regional perceptions of Washington's military commitment to Asia. And with the United States engaged for more than a decade in a war in Afghanistan, Beijing is calculating that Washington will continue to seek to avoid new conflict in Asia, giving China a short window of opportunity to make its point.
  • anonymous on 21 Jan 13
     
    "As Japan and China increase naval and air activity around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, the United States is steadily increasing its active involvement to reassure Tokyo and send a warning to Beijing. But Beijing may seek an opportunity to challenge U.S. primacy in what China considers its territorial waters."
anonymous

Russia: Rebuilding an Empire While It Can - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...rebuilding-empire-while-it-can

shared by anonymous on 05 Nov 11 - Cached
  • The reset actually had little to do with the United States wanting Russia as a friend and ally. Rather, Washington wanted to create room to handle other situations — mainly Afghanistan and Iran — and ask Russia for help.
  • Russia’s ultimate plan is to re-establish control over much of its former territories. This inevitably will lead Moscow and Washington back into a confrontation, negating any so-called reset, as Russian power throughout Eurasia is a direct threat to the U.S. ability to maintain its global influence.
  • This is how Russia has acted throughout history in order to survive. The Soviet Union did not act differently from most of the Russian empires before it, and Russia today is following the same behavioral pattern.
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  • Russia’s defining geographic characteristic is its indefensibility, which means its main strategy is to secure itself.
  • In short, for Russia to be secure it must create some kind of empire.
  • There are two problems with creating an empire: the people and the economy.
  • Russian empires have faced difficulties providing for vast numbers of people and suppressing those who did not conform
  • This leads to an inherently weak economy
  • Russian power must be measured in terms of the strength of the state and its ability to rule the people. This is not the same as the Russian government’s popularity (though former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s popularity is undeniable)
  • It is when the Russian leadership loses control over the security apparatus that Russian regimes collapse. For example, when the czar lost control of the army during World War I, he lost power and the Russian empire fell apart.
  • Economic weakness and a brutal regime eventually were accepted as the inevitable price of security and of being a strategic power.
  • Under Josef Stalin, there was massive economic dysfunction and widespread discontent, but Stalin maintained firm control over both the security apparatuses and the army, which he used to deal with any hint of dissent.
  • Moscow is using the same logic and strategies today.
  • Putin then set his sights on a Russian empire of sorts in order to secure the country’s future. This was not a matter of ego for Putin but a national security concern derived from centuries of historic precedent.
  • Putin had just seen the United States encroach on the territory Russia deemed imperative to its survival: Washington helped usher most Central European states and the former Soviet Baltic states into NATO and the European Union; supported pro-Western “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; set up military bases in Central Asia; and announced plans to place ballistic missile defense installations in Central Europe. To Russia, it seemed the United States was devouring its periphery to ensure that Moscow would forever remain vulnerable.
  • Over the past six years, Russia has pushed back to some degree
  • Washington has held the misconception that Russia will not formally attempt to re-create a kind of empire. But, as has been seen throughout history, it must.
  • Putin announced in September that he would seek to return to the Russian presidency in 2012, and he has started laying out his goals for his new reign.
  • Russia will begin this new iteration of a Russian empire by creating a union with former Soviet states based on Moscow’s current associations, such as the Customs Union, the Union State and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. This will allow the EuU to strategically encompass both the economic and security spheres.
  • The forthcoming EuU is not a re-creation of the Soviet Union.
  • Putin is creating a union in which Moscow would influence foreign policy and security but would not be responsible for most of the inner workings of each country.
  • The Kremlin intends to have the EuU fully formed by 2015, when Russia believes the United States will return its focus to Eurasia. Washington is wrapping up its commitments to Iraq this year and intends to end combat operations and greatly reduce forces in Afghanistan, so by 2015, the United States will have military and diplomatic attention to spare.
  • It is the creation of a new version of the Russian empire, combined with the U.S. consolidation of influence on that empire’s periphery, that most likely will spark new hostilities between Moscow and Washington.
  • Putin’s other reason for re-establishing some kind of Russian empire is that he knows the next crisis to affect Russia most likely will keep the country from ever resurging again: Russia is dying.
  • The country’s demographics are among some of the world’s worst, having declined steadily since World War I. Its birth rates are well below death rates, and it already has more citizens in their 50s than in their teens. Russia could be a major power without a solid economy, but no country can be a global power without people. This is why Putin is attempting to strengthen and secure Russia now, before demographics weaken it. However, even taking its demographics into account, Russia will be able to sustain its current growth in power for at least another generation. This means that the next few years likely are Russia’s last great moment — one that will be marked by the country’s return as a regional empire and a new confrontation with its previous adversary, the United States.
  • anonymous on 05 Nov 11
     
    "U.S.-Russian relations seem to have been relatively quiet recently, as there are numerous contradictory views in Washington about the true nature of Russia's current foreign policy. Doubts remain about the sincerity of the U.S. State Department's so-called "reset" of relations with Russia - the term used in 2009 when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed a reset button to her Russian counterpart as a symbol of a freeze on escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington. The concern is whether the "reset" is truly a shift in relations between the two former adversaries or simply a respite before relations deteriorate again."
anonymous

U.S. Defense Policy in the Wake of the Ukrainian Affair - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...e-policy-wake-ukrainian-affair

shared by anonymous on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • There was a profoundly radical idea embedded in this line of thought. Wars between nations or dynastic powers had been a constant condition in Europe, and the rest of the world had been no less violent. Every century had had systemic wars in which the entire international system (increasingly dominated by Europe since the 16th century) had participated. In the 20th century, there were the two World Wars, in the 19th century the Napoleonic Wars, in the 18th century the Seven Years' War, and in the 17th century the Thirty Years' War.
  • Those who argued that U.S. defense policy had to shift its focus away from peer-to-peer and systemic conflict were in effect arguing that the world had entered a new era in which what had been previously commonplace would now be rare or nonexistent.
  • The radical nature of this argument was rarely recognized by those who made it, and the evolving American defense policy that followed this reasoning was rarely seen as inappropriate.
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  • There were two reasons for this argument.
  • Military planners are always obsessed with the war they are fighting. It is only human to see the immediate task as a permanent task.
  • That generals always fight the last war must be amended to say that generals always believe the war they are fighting is the permanent war.
  • The second reason was that no nation-state was in a position to challenge the United States militarily.
  • After the Cold War ended, the United States was in a singularly powerful position. The United States remains in a powerful position, but over time, other nations will increase their power, form alliances and coalitions and challenge the United States.
  • No matter how benign a leading power is -- and the United States is not uniquely benign -- other nations will fear it, resent it or want to shame it for its behavior.
  • The idea that other nation-states will not challenge the United States seemed plausible for the past 20 years, but the fact is that nations will pursue interests that are opposed to American interest and by definition, pose a peer-to-peer challenge. The United States is potentially overwhelmingly powerful, but that does not make it omnipotent. 
  • It must also be remembered that asymmetric warfare and operations other than war always existed between and during peer-to-peer wars and systemic wars.
  • Asymmetric wars and operations other than war are far more common than peer-to-peer and systemic wars.
  • They can appear overwhelmingly important at the time. But just as the defeat of Britain by the Americans did not destroy British power, the outcomes of asymmetric wars rarely define long-term national power and hardly ever define the international system.
  • Asymmetric warfare is not a new style of war; it is a permanent dimension of warfare.
  • Peer-to-peer and systemic wars are also constant features but are far less frequent. They are also far more important.
  • There are a lot more asymmetric wars, but a defeat does not shift national power. If you lose a systemic war, the outcome can be catastrophic. 
  • A military force can be shaped to fight frequent, less important engagements or rare but critical wars -- ideally, it should be able to do both. But in military planning, not all wars are equally important.
  • Military leaders and defense officials, obsessed with the moment, must bear in mind that the war currently being fought may be little remembered, the peace that is currently at hand is rarely permanent, and harboring the belief that any type of warfare has become obsolete is likely to be in error.
  • Ukraine drove this lesson home. There will be no war between the United States and Russia over Ukraine. The United States does not have interests there that justify a war, and neither country is in a position militarily to fight a war. The Americans are not deployed for war, and the Russians are not ready to fight the United States.
  • But the events in Ukraine point to some realities.
  • First, the power of countries shifts, and the Russians had substantially increased their military capabilities since the 1990s.
  • Second, the divergent interests between the two countries, which seemed to disappear in the 1990s, re-emerged.
  • Third, this episode will cause each side to reconsider its military strategy and capabilities, and future crises might well lead to conventional war, nuclear weapons notwithstanding.
  • Ukraine reminds us that peer-to-peer conflict is not inconceivable, and that a strategy and defense policy built on the assumption has little basis in reality. The human condition did not transform itself because of an interregnum in which the United States could not be challenged; the last two decades are an exception to the rule of global affairs defined by war.
  • U.S. national strategy must be founded on the control of the sea. The oceans protect the United States from everything but terrorism and nuclear missiles.
  • The greatest challenge to U.S. control of the sea is hostile fleets. The best way to defeat hostile fleets is to prevent them from being built. The best way to do that is to maintain the balance of power in Eurasia. The ideal path for this is to ensure continued tensions within Eurasia so that resources are spent defending against land threats rather than building fleets. Given the inherent tensions in Eurasia, the United States needs to do nothing in most cases. In some cases it must send military or economic aid to one side or both. In other cases, it advises. 
  • The main goal here is to avoid the emergence of a regional hegemon fully secure against land threats and with the economic power to challenge the United States at sea.
  • The U.S. strategy in World War I was to refuse to become involved until it appeared, with the abdication of the czar and increasing German aggression at sea, that the British and French might be defeated or the sea-lanes closed.
  • At that point, the United States intervened to block German hegemony. In World War II, the United States remained out of the war until after the French collapsed and it appeared the Soviet Union would collapse -- until it seemed something had to be done.
  • Even then, it was only after Hitler's declaration of war on the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that Congress approved Roosevelt's plan to intervene militarily in continental Europe.
  • And in spite of operations in the Mediterranean, the main U.S. thrust didn't occur until 1944 in Normandy, after the German army had been badly weakened.
  • In order for this strategy, which the U.S. inherited from the British, to work, the United States needs an effective and relevant alliance structure.
  • The balance-of-power strategy assumes that there are core allies who have an interest in aligning with the United States against regional enemies. When I say effective, I mean allies that are capable of defending themselves to a great extent. Allying with the impotent achieves little. By relevant, I mean allies that are geographically positioned to deal with particularly dangerous hegemons.
  • If we assume Russians to be dangerous hegemons, then the relevant allies are those on the periphery of Russia.
  • The American relationship in all alliances is that the outcome of conflicts must matter more to the ally than to the United States. 
  • The point here is that NATO, which was extremely valuable during the Cold War, may not be a relevant or effective instrument in a new confrontation with the Russians.
  • And since the goal of an effective balance-of-power strategy is the avoidance of war while containing a rising power, the lack of an effective deterrence matters a great deal.
  • It is not certain by any means that Russia is the main threat to American power.
  • In these and other potential cases, the ultimate problem for the United States is that its engagement in Eurasia is at distance. It takes a great deal of time to deploy a technology-heavy force there, and it must be technology-heavy because U.S. forces are always outnumbered when fighting in Eurasia.
  • In many cases, the United States is not choosing the point of intervention, but a potential enemy is creating a circumstance where intervention is necessary. Therefore, it is unknown to planners where a war might be fought, and it is unknown what kind of force they will be up against.
  • The only thing certain is that it will be far away and take a long time to build up a force. During Desert Storm, it took six months to go on the offensive.
  • American strategy requires a force that can project overwhelming power without massive delays.
  • In Ukraine, for example, had the United States chosen to try to defend eastern Ukraine from Russian attack, it would have been impossible to deploy that force before the Russians took over.
  • The United States will face peer-to-peer or even systemic conflicts in Eurasia. The earlier the United States brings in decisive force, the lower the cost to the United States.
  • Current conventional war-fighting strategy is not dissimilar from that of World War II: It is heavily dependent on equipment and the petroleum to power that equipment.
  • It also follows that the tempo of operations be reduced. The United States has been in constant warfare since 2001.
  • There need to be layers of options between threat and war. 
  • Defense policy must be built on three things: The United States does not know where it will fight. The United States must use war sparingly. The United States must have sufficient technology to compensate for the fact that Americans are always going to be outnumbered in Eurasia. The force that is delivered must overcome this, and it must get there fast.
  • Ranges of new technologies, from hypersonic missiles to electronically and mechanically enhanced infantryman, are available. But the mindset that peer-to-peer conflict has been abolished and that small unit operations in the Middle East are the permanent features of warfare prevent these new technologies from being considered.
  • Losing an asymmetric war is unfortunate but tolerable. Losing a systemic war could be catastrophic. Not having to fight a war would be best.
  • anonymous on 08 Apr 14
     
    "Ever since the end of the Cold War, there has been an assumption that conventional warfare between reasonably developed nation-states had been abolished. During the 1990s, it was expected that the primary purpose of the military would be operations other than war, such as peacekeeping, disaster relief and the change of oppressive regimes. After 9/11, many began speaking of asymmetric warfare and "the long war." Under this model, the United States would be engaged in counterterrorism activities in a broad area of the Islamic world for a very long time. Peer-to-peer conflict seemed obsolete."
anonymous

The United States, Europe and Bretton Woods II - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...es_europe_and_bretton_woods_ii

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 30 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The conventional wisdom is that Bretton Woods crafted the modern international economic architecture, lashing the trading and currency systems to the gold standard to achieve global stability.
  • The origin of Bretton Woods lies in the Great Depression.
  • Economically, World War II was a godsend. The military effort generated demand for goods and labor. The goods part is pretty straightforward, but the labor issue is what really allowed the global economy to turn the corner.
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  • The war removed tens of millions of men from the labor force, shipping them off to — economically speaking — nonproductive endeavors.
  • Policymakers of the time realized that the prosecution of the war had suspended the depression, but few were confident that the war had actually ended the conditions that made the depression possible.
  • When all was said and done, the delegates agreed to a system of exchangeable currencies and broadly open rules of trade. The system would be based on the gold standard to prevent currency fluctuations, and a pair of institutions — what would become known as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank — would serve as guardians of the system’s financial and fiduciary particulars.
  • In fact, we are still using Bretton Woods, and while nothing that has been discussed to this point is wrong exactly, it is only part of the story.
  • Think back to July 1944. The Normandy invasion was in its first month. The United Kingdom served as the staging ground, but with London exhausted, its military commitment to the operation was modest.
  • The shape of the Cold War was already beginning to unfold. Between the United States and the Soviet Union, the rest of the modern world — namely, Europe — was going to either experience Soviet occupation or become a U.S. protectorate.
  • The Continental states — and even the United Kingdom — were not simply economically spent and indebted but were, to be perfectly blunt, destitute.
  • This was not World War I, where most of the fighting had occurred along a single series of trenches. This was blitzkrieg and saturation bombings, which left the Continent in ruins, and there was almost nothing left from which to rebuild.
  • For the United States, the issue was one of seizing a historic opportunity.
  • The United States entered World War II late and the war did not occur on U.S. soil. So — uniquely among all the world’s major powers of the day — U.S. infrastructure and industrial capacity would emerge from the war larger (far, far larger) than when it entered.
  • The United States had to have not just the participation of the Western Europeans in holding back the Soviet tide, it needed the Europeans to defer to American political and military demands — and to do so willingly. Considering the desperation and destitution of the Europeans, and the unprecedented and unparalleled U.S. economic strength, economic carrots were the obvious way to go.
  • Put another way, Bretton Woods was part of a broader American effort to extend the wartime alliance — sans the Soviets — beyond Germany’s surrender.
  • The United States would allow Europe near tariff-free access to its markets, and turn a blind eye to Europe’s own tariffs so long as they did not become too egregious — something that at least in part flew in the face of the Great Depression’s lessons.
  • The “free world” alliance would not consist of a series of equal states. Instead, it would consist of the United States and everyone else.
  • When loans to fund Western Europe’s redevelopment failed to stimulate growth, those loans became grants, aka the Marshall Plan.
  • And fast-forwarding to when the world went off of the gold standard and Bretton Woods supposedly died, gold was actually replaced by the U.S. dollar. Far from dying, the political/military understanding that underpinned Bretton Woods had only become more entrenched.
  • For many of the states that will be attending what is already being dubbed Bretton Woods II, having this American centrality as such a key pillar of the system is the core of the problem.
  • a crisis in the U.S. economy becomes global.
  • The U.S. economy remains the largest, and dysfunctions there affect the world. That is the reality of the international system, and that is ultimately what the French call for a new Bretton Woods is about.
  • Relying on a currency that is not in the hands of a sovereign taxing power, but dependent on the political will of (so far) 15 countries with very different interests, does not make for a reliable reserve currency.
  • The French in particular look at the current crisis as the result of a failure in the U.S. regulatory system.
  • The Bretton Woods institutions — specifically the IMF, which is supposed to serve the role of financial lighthouse and crisis manager — proved irrelevant to the problems the world is currently passing through.
  • Fundamentally, the Europeans are not simply hoping to modernize Bretton Woods, but instead to Europeanize the American financial markets. This is ultimately not a financial question, but a political one.
  • Far more important, any international system that oversees aspects of American finance would, by definition, not be under full American control, but under some sort of quasi-Brussels-like organization. And no American president is going to engage gleefully on that sort of topic.
  • anonymous on 30 Mar 10
     
    An article about this misunderstood institution. From StratFor back on October 20, 2008.
anonymous

China's Military Comes Into Its Own - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-chinas-military-comes-its-own

geopolitics generations china

shared by anonymous on 18 Jan 11 - Cached
  • The Chinese fear a potential U.S. blockade of their coast. While this may not seem a likely scenario, the Chinese look at their strategic vulnerability, at their rising power and at the U.S. history of thwarting regional powers, and they see themselves as clearly at risk.
  • For Beijing, it is critical to keep the U.S. Navy as far from Chinese waters as possible and delay its approach by maximizing the threat environment in the event of a conflict.
  • The Chinese role for the J-20 is based on a different set of realities than those the Soviets and Americans faced during the Cold War, meaning the J-20 prototype should not be judged solely by the American standards for fifth-generation aircraft. More than having the most advanced aircraft in the sky, the Chinese value the ability to maintain high sortie rates from many bases along the country’s coast to overwhelm with numbers the superior U.S. combat aircraft, which would be expected to be operated from aircraft carriers or from more distant land bases.
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  • Chinese defense and security officials also closely monitor such boards, but the officials chose not to shut them down — clearly indicating Beijing’s intent to draw attention to the test.
  • anonymous on 18 Jan 11
     
    "Chinese President Hu Jintao is visiting the United States, perhaps his last state visit as president before China begins its generational leadership transition in 2012. Hu's visit is being shaped by the ongoing China-U.S. economic dialogue, by concerns surrounding stability on the Korean Peninsula and by rising attention to Chinese defense activity in recent months. For example, China carried out the first reported test flight of its fifth-generation combat fighter prototype, dubbed the J-20, during U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to China the previous week."
anonymous

The Withdrawal Debate and its Implications - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...al-debate-and-its-implications

geopolitics U.S.

shared by anonymous on 17 Jun 11 - Cached
  • The ballpark figure of this first reduction is said to be on the order of 30,000 U.S. troops — mirroring the 2009 surge — over the next 12-18 months. This would leave some 70,000 U.S. troops, plus allied forces, in the country.
  • Far more interesting are the rumors — coming from STRATFOR sources, among many others — suggesting that the impending White House announcement will spell out not only the anticipated reduction, but a restatement of the strategy and objectives of the war effort
  • The stage has certainly been set with the killing of Osama bin Laden
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  • Nearly 150,000 troops cannot and will not be suddenly extracted from landlocked Central Asia in short order. Whatever the case, a full drawdown is at best years away. And even with a fundamental shift in strategy, some sort of training, advising, intelligence and particularly, special-operations presence, could well remain in the country far beyond the deadline for the end of combat operations, currently set for the end of 2014.
  • Recall the rapid dwindling, in the latter years of the Iraq war, of the “coalition of the willing,” which, aside from a company of British trainers, effectively became a coalition of one by mid-2009
  • Potential spillover of militancy in the absence of a massive American and allied military presence in Afghanistan affects all bordering countries. Even in the best case scenario, from a regional perspective, a deterioration of security conditions can be expected to accompany any U.S. drawdown.
  • Others, like Russia, will be concerned about an expansion of the already enormous flow of Afghan poppy-based opiates into their country. From Moscow’s perspective, counternarcotics efforts are already insufficient, as they have been sacrificed for more pressing operational needs, and are likely to further decline as the United States and its allies begin to extricate themselves from this conflict.
  • Domestically, Afghanistan is a fractious country. The infighting and civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal ultimately killed more Afghans than the Soviets’ scorched-earth policy did over the course of nearly a decade.
  • But ultimately, for the last decade, the international system has been defined by a United States bogged down in two wars in Asia. For Washington, the imperative is to extract itself from these wars and focus its attention on more pressing and significant geopolitical challenges. For the rest of the world, the concern is that it might succeed sooner than expected.
  • anonymous on 17 Jun 11
     
    "U.S. President Barack Obama met with the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, and Obama's national security team Thursday to review the status of the counterinsurgency-focused campaign. At the center of the discussion was next month's deadline for a drawdown of forces, set by Obama when he committed 30,000 additional troops at the end of 2009. An announcement on this initial drawdown is expected within weeks."
anonymous

Agenda: The U.S. and China Find Common Ground - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...s-and-china-find-common-ground

geopolitics u.s. china

shared by anonymous on 19 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Joe Biden is saying that a close relationship with China is of the utmost importance. The Chinese side of the three-day talks appear to agree, drawing back from sharp criticism of America in recent weeks. But does the dialogue spell improving relationships between the world’s two biggest economies?
  • On the public front there certainly is a lot of apparent ups and down
  • Underneath it, there’s a fairly strong economic link between the two. That link doesn’t necessarily guarantee good relations between them.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • they’re both trying to get a sense of reassurance and a sense that at least there is an element of stability between what are now the world’s two biggest economies.
  • I think that the talk about pulling Chinese investment out of U.S. bonds out of U.S. treasuries is more rhetoric than anything, although certainly there are elements within China that are raising that up.
  • in the end, the Chinese really have two questions:
  • One, who’s going to buy their stuff if they yank all these savings out of the U.S. and if they contribute to the crash of the U.S. economy. And the second would be who in the world is going to buy all of these if they try to dump them on the market and sell them, there have to be buyers out there.
  • two other trends
  • There seems to be a significant drop in students from the provinces enlisting in the better universities. It also looks as if Beijing is planning a new crackdown on bloggers and social networks.
  • On the one hand, being able to allow their citizens to kind of display their frustration or express themselves through these social networks has been a way to reduce potentially some of the steam that would build up in China that could ultimately kind of explode out against the government.
  • anonymous on 19 Aug 11
     
    "Rodger Baker reviews U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's speech in Beijing and discusses China's dilemma over social networks."
anonymous

U.S. and Pakistan: Afghan Strategies - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...and-pakistan-afghan-strategies

shared by anonymous on 22 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Any withdrawal from Afghanistan, particularly an accelerated one, will leave a power vacuum in Afghanistan that the Kabul government will not be able to fill.
  • There is a prior definition of success that shaped the Bush administration’s approach to Afghanistan in its early phases. The goal here was the disruption of al Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan and the prevention of further attacks on the United States from Afghanistan.
  • It was more modest and, in many ways, it was achieved in 2001-2002. Its defect, of course, was that the disruption of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, while useful, did not address the evolution of al Qaeda in other countries.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • The ultimate Iraq strategy was a political settlement framed by an increase in forces, and its long-term success was never clear. The Obama administration was prepared to repeat the attempt in Afghanistan, at least by using Iraq as a template if not applying exactly the same tactics.
  • However, the United States found that the Taliban were less inclined to negotiate with the United States, and certainly not on the favorable terms of the Iraqi insurgents, simply because they believed they would win in the long run
  • As we pointed out after the death of Osama bin Laden, his demise, coupled with the transfer of Petraeus out of Afghanistan, offered two opportunities.
  • The first was a return to the prior definition of success in Afghanistan
  • Second, the departure of Petraeus and his staff also removed the ideology of counterinsurgency
  • The conventional understanding of war is that its purpose is to defeat the enemy military. It presents a more limited and focused view of military power.
  • Counterinsurgency draws its roots from theories of social development in emerging countries going back to the 1950s.
  • In the view of this faction, defeating the Taliban was impossible with the force available and unlikely even with a more substantial force. There were two reasons for this.
  • First, the Taliban comprised a light infantry force with a superior intelligence capability and the ability to withdraw from untenable operations
  • Second, sanctuaries in Pakistan allowed the Taliban to withdraw to safety and reconstitute themselves, thereby making their defeat in detail impossible.
  • The United States can choose to leave Afghanistan without suffering strategic disaster. Pakistan cannot leave Pakistan.
  • while Afghanistan is a piece of American global strategy and not its whole, Afghanistan is central to Pakistan’s national strategy. This asymmetry in U.S. and Pakistani interests is now the central issue.
  • After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States became indifferent to Afghanistan’s future. Pakistan could not be indifferent. It remained deeply involved with the Islamist forces that had defeated the Soviets and would govern Afghanistan, and it helped facilitate the emergence of the Taliban as the dominant force in the country.
  • Sept. 11, 2001, posed a profound threat to Pakistan.
  • On one side, Pakistan faced a United States in a state of crisis, demanding Pakistani support against both al Qaeda and the Taliban.
  • On the other side Pakistan had a massive Islamist movement hostile to the United States
  • The Pakistani solution was the only one it could come up with
  • they did as much as they could for the United States without completely destabilizing Pakistan while making it appear that they were being far more cooperative with the Americans and far less cooperative with their public.
  • The United States wanted to disrupt al Qaeda regardless of the cost. The Pakistanis wanted to avoid the collapse of their regime at any cost. These were not compatible goals.
  • The United States accepted this publicly because it made Pakistan appear to be an ally at a time when the United States was under attack for unilateralism. It accepted it privately as well because it did not want to see Pakistan destabilize. The Pakistanis were aware of the limits of American tolerance, so a game was played out.
  • That game is now breaking down, not because the United States raided Pakistan and killed bin Laden but because it is becoming apparent to Pakistan that the United States will, sooner or later, be dramatically drawing down its forces in Afghanistan.
  • First, Pakistan will be facing the future on its western border with Afghanistan without an American force to support it.
  • Second, Pakistan is aware that as the United States draws down, it will need Pakistan to cover its withdrawal strategically.
  • Finally, there will be a negotiation with the Taliban, and elements of Pakistan, particularly the ISI, will be the intermediary.
  • Publicly, it is important for them to appear as independent and even hostile to the Americans as possible in order to maintain their domestic credibility.
  • From the American point of view, the war in Afghanistan — and elsewhere — has not been a failure. There have been no more attacks on the United States on the order of 9/11, and that has not been for al Qaeda’s lack of trying.
  • In the end, the United States will leave Afghanistan (with the possible exception of some residual special operations forces). Pakistan will draw Afghanistan back into its sphere of influence.
  • A play will be acted out like the New Zealand Haka, with both sides making terrible sounds and frightening gestures at each other.
  • The United States is furious at Pakistan for its willingness to protect American enemies. Pakistan is furious at the United States for conducting attacks on its sovereign territory. In the end it doesn’t matter. They need each other. In the affairs of nations, like and dislike are not meaningful categories, and bullying and treachery are not blocks to cooperation. The two countries need each other more than they need to punish each other. Great friendships among nations are built on less.
  • anonymous on 22 Jun 11
     
    "U.S. President Barack Obama will give a speech on Afghanistan on June 22. Whatever he says, it is becoming apparent that the United States is exploring ways to accelerate the drawdown of its forces in the country. It is also clear that U.S. relations with Pakistan are deteriorating to a point where cooperation - whatever level there was - is breaking down."
anonymous

From Estonia to Azerbaijan: American Strategy After Ukraine - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...merican-strategy-after-ukraine

shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Whatever the origins of the events in Ukraine, the United States is now engaged in a confrontation with Russia.
  • At most, the Russians have reached the conclusion that the United States intends to undermine Russia's power. They will resist. The United States has the option of declining confrontation, engaging in meaningless sanctions against individuals and allowing events to take their course. Alternatively, the United States can choose to engage and confront the Russians. 
  • A failure to engage at this point would cause countries around Russia's periphery, from Estonia to Azerbaijan, to conclude that with the United States withdrawn and Europe fragmented, they must reach an accommodation with Russia.
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • This will expand Russian power and open the door to Russian influence spreading on the European Peninsula itself. The United States has fought three wars (World War I, World War II and the Cold War) to prevent hegemonic domination of the region. Failure to engage would be a reversal of a century-old strategy.
  • The American dilemma is how to address the strategic context in a global setting in which it is less involved in the Middle East and is continuing to work toward a "pivot to Asia."
  • Nor can the United States simply allow events to take their course. The United States needs a strategy that is economical and coherent militarily, politically and financially. It has two advantages.
  • Some of the countries on Russia's periphery do not want to be dominated by her. Russia, in spite of some strengths, is inherently weak and does not require U.S. exertion
  • Putin is now in a position where, in order to retain with confidence his domestic authority, he must act decisively to reverse the outcome. The problem is there is no single decisive action that would reverse events.
  • Whatever Putin does in Ukraine, he has two choices.
  • One is simply to accept the reversal, which I would argue that he cannot do. The second is to take action in places where he might achieve rapid diplomatic and political victories against the West -- the Baltics, Moldova or the Caucasus -- while encouraging Ukraine's government to collapse into gridlock and developing bilateral relations along the Estonia-Azerbaijan line.
  • The United States has been developing, almost by default, a strategy not of disengagement but of indirect engagement. Between 1989 and 2008, the U.S. strategy has been the use of U.S. troops as the default for dealing with foreign issues. From Panama to Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States followed a policy of direct and early involvement of U.S. military forces.
  • However, this was not the U.S. strategy from 1914 to 1989. Then, the strategy was to provide political support to allies, followed by economic and military aid, followed by advisers and limited forces, and in some cases pre-positioned forces.
  • Main force was the last resort. 
  • Because the current Russian Federation is much weaker than the Soviet Union was at its height and because the general geographic principle in the region remains the same, a somewhat analogous balance of power strategy is likely to emerge after the events in Ukraine.
  • The coalescence of this strategy is a development I forecast in two books, The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years, as a concept I called the Intermarium. The Intermarium was a plan pursued after World War I by Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski for a federation, under Poland's aegis, of Central and Eastern European countries. What is now emerging is not the Intermarium, but it is close. And it is now transforming from an abstract forecast to a concrete, if still emergent, reality.
  • A direct military intervention by the United States in Ukraine is not possible.
  • First, Ukraine is a large country, and the force required to protect it would outstrip U.S. capabilities.
  • Second, supplying such a force would require a logistics system that does not exist and would take a long time to build.
  • Finally, such an intervention would be inconceivable without a strong alliance system extending to the West and around the Black Sea.
  • If the United States chooses to confront Russia with a military component, it must be on a stable perimeter and on as broad a front as possible to extend Russian resources and decrease the probability of Russian attack at any one point out of fear of retaliation elsewhere.
  • The problem is that NATO is not a functional alliance. It was designed to fight the Cold War on a line far to the west of the current line. More important, there was unity on the principle that the Soviet Union represented an existential threat to Western Europe. 
  • That consensus is no longer there. Different countries have different perceptions of Russia and different concerns. For many, a replay of the Cold War, even in the face of Russian actions in Ukraine, is worse than accommodation.
  • The countries that were at risk from 1945 to 1989 are not the same as those at risk today. Many of these countries were part of the Soviet Union then, and the rest were Soviet satellites.
  • The rest of Europe is not in jeopardy, and these countries are not prepared to commit financial and military efforts to a problem they believe can be managed with little risk to them.
  • the Baltics, Moldova and the Caucasus are areas where the Russians could seek to compensate for their defeat. Because of this, and also because of their intrinsic importance, Poland, Romania and Azerbaijan must be the posts around which this alliance is built.
  • The Baltic salient, 145 kilometers (90 miles) from St. Petersburg in Estonia, would be a target for Russian destabilization. Poland borders the Baltics and is the leading figure in the Visegrad battlegroup
  • . Poland is eager for a closer military relationship with the United States, as its national strategy has long been based on third-power guarantees against aggressors.
  • The Dniester River is 80 kilometers from Odessa, the main port on the Black Sea for Ukraine and an important one for Russia. The Prut River is about 200 kilometers from Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Moldova is between these two rivers.
  • In Western hands, Moldova threatens Odessa, Ukraine's major port also used by Russia on the Black Sea. In Russian hands, Moldova threatens Bucharest.
  • At the far end of the alliance structure I am envisioning is Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea bordering Russia and Iran.
  • Should Dagestan and Chechnya destabilize, Azerbaijan -- which is Islamic and majority Shiite but secular -- would become critical for limiting the regional spread of jihadists.
  • Azerbaijan also would support the alliance's position in the Black Sea by supporting Georgia
  • To the southwest, the very pro-Russian Armenia -- which has a Russian troop presence and a long-term treaty with Moscow -- could escalate tensions with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.
  • Previously, this was not a pressing issue for the United States. Now it is. The security of Georgia and its ports on the Black Sea requires Azerbaijan's inclusion in the alliance.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Mar 14
       
      I hope I can remember to revisit this and check his assertions.
  • Azerbaijan serves a more strategic purpose. Most of the countries in the alliance are heavy importers of Russian energy
  • The key to the pipeline will be Turkey's willingness to permit transit. I have not included Turkey as a member of this alliance.
  • I view Turkey in this alliance structure as France in the Cold War. It was aligned yet independent, militarily self-sufficient yet dependent on the effective functioning of others.
  • Turkey, inside or outside of the formal structure, will play this role because the future of the Black Sea, the Caucasus and southeastern Europe is essential to Ankara. 
  • These countries, diverse as they are, share a desire not to be dominated by the Russians.
  • This is not an offensive force but a force designed to deter Russian expansion.
  • In each case, the willingness of the United States to supply these weapons, for cash or credit as the situation requires, will strengthen pro-U.S. political forces in each country and create a wall behind which Western investment can take place.
  • There are those who would criticize this alliance for including members who do not share all the democratic values of the U.S. State Department. This may be true. It is also true that during the Cold War the United States was allied with the Shah's Iran, Turkey and Greece under dictatorship and Mao's China after 1971.
  • The State Department must grapple with the harsh forces its own policies have unleashed. This suggests that the high-mindedness borne of benign assumptions now proven to be illusions must make way for realpolitik calculations.
  • The balance of power strategy allows the United States to use the natural inclination of allies to bolster its own position and take various steps, of which military intervention is the last, not the first.
  • It recognizes that the United States, as nearly 25 percent of the world's economy and the global maritime hegemon, cannot evade involvement. Its very size and existence involves it. 
  • Weak and insecure states with temporary advantages are dangerous. The United States has an interest in acting early because early action is cheaper than acting in the last extremity. This is a case of anti-air missiles, attack helicopters, communications systems and training, among other things.
  • These are things the United States has in abundance. It is not a case of deploying divisions, of which it has few.
  • anonymous on 25 Mar 14
     
    "As I discussed last week, the fundamental problem that Ukraine poses for Russia, beyond a long-term geographical threat, is a crisis in internal legitimacy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent his time in power rebuilding the authority of the Russian state within Russia and the authority of Russia within the former Soviet Union. The events in Ukraine undermine the second strategy and potentially the first. If Putin cannot maintain at least Ukrainian neutrality, then the world's perception of him as a master strategist is shattered, and the legitimacy and authority he has built for the Russian state is, at best, shaken. "
anonymous

U.S., Mexico: The Decline of the Colorado River | Stratfor - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-mexico-decline-colorado-river

shared by anonymous on 13 May 13 - Cached
  • In 1922, the seven U.S. states in the Colorado River Basin established a compact to distribute the resources of the river.
  • As the United States' territory expanded to the west, the Colorado River briefly was considered a portal to the isolated frontier of the southwestern United States, since it was often cheaper to take a longer path via water to transport goods and people in the early 19th century.
  • the geography and erratic flow of the Colorado made the river ultimately unsuitable for mass transportation.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Irrigation along the river started expanding in the second half of the 19th century, and agriculture still consumes more water from the Colorado than any other sector.
  • When the original total allocation of the river was set in the 1920s, it was far above regional consumption. But it was also more than the river could supply in the long term.
  • The river was divided based on an estimated annual flow of roughly 21 billion cubic meters per year. More recent studies have indicated that the 20th century, and especially the 1920s, was a time of above-normal flows. These studies indicate that the long-term average of flow is closer to 18 billion cubic meters, with yearly flows ranging anywhere from roughly 6 billion cubic meters to nearly 25 billion cubic meters. As utilization has increased, the deficit between flow and allocation has become more apparent.
  • Populations in the region are expected to increase; in some states, the population could double by 2030. A study released at the end of 2012 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation predicted a possible shortage of 3 billion cubic meters by 2035.
  • The Colorado River provides water for irrigation of roughly 15 percent of the crops in the United States, including vegetables, fruits, cotton, alfalfa and hay. It also provides municipal water supplies for large cities, such as Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas, accounting for more than half of the water supply in many of these areas.
  • There is an imbalance of power along the international border.
  • The United States controls the headwaters of the Colorado River and also has a greater macroeconomic interest in maintaining the supply of water from the river. This can make individual amendments of the 1944 Treaty somewhat misleading. Because of the erratic nature of the river, the treaty effectively promises more water than the river can provide each year. Cooperation in conservation efforts and in finding alternative water sources on the U.S. side of the border, not treaty amendments, will become increasingly important as regional water use increases over the coming decades.
  • The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation oversees the whole river, but the management of each basin is separate.
  • Additionally, within each basin, there are separate state management agencies and, within each state, separate regional management agencies.
  • For the Colorado River, the U.S.-Mexico border is likely less relevant to the competition for the river's resources than the artificial border drawn at Lees Ferry.
  • While necessary, conservation efforts and the search for alternative sources likely will not be able to make up for the predicted shortage. Amendments to the original treaty typically have been issued to address symptomatic problems. However, the core problem remains:
  • More water is promised to river users than is available on average. While this problem has not come to a head yet, there may come a time when regional growth overtakes conservation efforts.
  • It is then that renegotiation of the treaty with a more realistic view of the river's volume will become necessary. Any renegotiation will be filled with conflict, but most of that likely will be contained in the United States.
  • anonymous on 13 May 13
     
    "An amendment to a standing water treaty between the United States and Mexico has received publicity over the past six months as an example of progress in water sharing agreements. But the amendment, called Minute 319, is simply a glimpse into ongoing mismanagement of the Colorado River on the U.S. side of the border. Over-allocation of the river's waters 90 years ago combined with increasing populations and economic growth in the river basin have created circumstances in which conservation efforts -- no matter how organized -- could be too little to overcome the projected water deficit that the Colorado River Basin will face in the next 20 years."
anonymous

Fourth Quarter Forecast 2010 - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...7_fourth_quarter_forecast_2010

geopolitics forecast predictions

shared by anonymous on 13 Oct 10 - Cached
  • in Afghanistan, there is no real “victory” to be had, and the question is just how much needs to be accomplished before U.S. forces can withdraw.
  • The United States will be forced once again this quarter to balance the reality that Pakistan is both a necessary ally in the war in Afghanistan and a battlefield in its own right.
  • shape two other global trends
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • Russia will strengthen its influence over former Soviet republics Belarus, Ukraine and the Central Asian “Stans” while reaching into Moldova and the Baltics to extend its influence along the European frontier.
  • China is often the focus of U.S. domestic politics, particularly during times of economic trouble, and the upcoming election is no different. China’s yuan policy is the most obvious target, but while Washington is unlikely to carry out any action that will fundamentally harm economic ties with Beijing, the political perception of actions could have a more immediate impact.
  • In this quarter, Washington will be both preoccupied with the Congressional elections and seeking ways to compromise enough to get out of its long-running wars. The election distraction gives China and Russia a brief opening, and neither is likely to pass up the opportunity to accelerate and consolidate its influence in its near abroad.
  • The U.S.-Iranian Struggle in Iraq
  • The War in Afghanistan
  • The Russian Resurgence
  • U.S.-Chinese Tensions
  • This sparring will continue in the fourth quarter, with one rather significant exception: Washington and Tehran are likely to reach a preliminary agreement on the factional balance in Baghdad, with a new power-sharing government for Iraq emerging.
  • no major strategic shift is likely to occur before the strategy review being prepared for the end of the year is completed.
  • consolidate gains made in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.
  • Moscow will also assert itself in Moldova and the Baltics to prepare the ground for the future expansion of Russian influence there.
  • With its sights on reinforcing its leadership in Europe, Berlin will not look for a break in its ties with Russia
  • the two countries will prevent their relationship from fundamentally breaking down this quarter.
  • a tenuous stability globally
  • Two areas where this could become unhinged in the quarter are Europe and U.S.-China relations.
  • The battle inside the Kremlin will intensify in the fourth quarter as the tandem of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin begins to purge high-level Russian figures and the campaign season leading up to the 2011 legislative and 2012 presidential elections starts.
  • Islamabad will continue working with Washington in the counterinsurgency offensive against Taliban and al Qaeda-led transnational jihadists, but tensions have become evident
  • Recovery from the massive floods that took place in the third quarter will consume most of the Pakistani state’s focus in the fourth quarter.
  • Domestically, the Justice and Development Party government will focus on consolidating the gains it made with the referendum on constitutional changes approved in September.
  • The bigger competition is playing out between Mubarak and his allies and the army’s top brass over a presidential succession plan.
  • China will continue showing a strong sense of purpose in pursuing its influence in its periphery.
  • Beijing will continue its active fiscal stimulus and relatively loose monetary policies amid concerns of slowing growth too quickly, with the intention of carrying out those structural reforms in a way that will limit the associated negative effects on growth and social stability.
  • The fourth quarter will see more such appearances by the new heir apparent as he begins to build his public image and the elder Kim manages the various elite interests in North Korea to build support for his son.
  • Nigeria will not see a sustained militant campaign this quarter, but there will still be an increased level of unrest in the Niger Delta, as well as in other parts of the country, as militants’ political patrons use their proxies to intimidate and undermine their political opponents.
  • Preparations for the referendum on Southern Sudanese independence will be the primary focus for both the north and the south this quarter.
  • High levels of violence between Islamist insurgents and African Union (AU) Mission in Somalia/Transitional Federal Government forces will continue, but neither side will be able to tip the scales enough to achieve a strategic victory.
  • Germany will continue using the economic crisis to impose its vision for more stringent European economic requirements on its neighbors.
  • A key issue that the two are already cooperating on is the debate on the European Union’s next budget period (2014-2020), which is set to intensify in the fourth quarter.
  • Central Europeans, including the Baltic States, will continue attempting to re-engage the United States in the region, particularly via ballistic missile defense and military cooperation.
  • After losing its two-thirds legislative majority, the ruling party now has an imperative to push through as much legislation as it can to expand the executive branch’s powers before the legislative session concludes at the end of the year and more opposition lawmakers are seated in January.
  • The more vulnerable Venezuela becomes, the harder-pressed it will be to find an external ally willing to provide the economic and political capital needed to sustain the regime.
  • Brazil will have a presidential runoff election Oct. 31, but the country’s attention is primarily occupied with its currency crisis.
  • Brazil will continue its military modernization plan and will play a more proactive rol
  • the coming quarter will see a more defined balance of power emerge among the drug-trafficking organizations within Mexico
  • anonymous on 13 Oct 10
     
    "The U.S. preparation to disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan will remain the international system's center of gravity in the fourth quarter." By StratFor on October 13, 2010.
anonymous

The Implications of U.S. Quantitative Easing | STRATFOR - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...cations_us_quantitative_easing

geopolitics economics

shared by anonymous on 03 Nov 10 - Cached
  • QE is expanding the money supply — in essence printing money — and using that money to purchase items that investors are avoiding for whatever reason. This forces money into the system and — in theory at least — lowers the cost of credit throughout the economy. It also allows the central bank to target specific portions of the economy where it thinks the most good can be done. QE is generally shunned by central banks, as unduly increasing the money supply tends to be inflationary, and nothing eats away at purchasing power (and with it political support) like inflation.
  • The United States has not engaged in large-scale QE since it combated the Great Depression.
  • STRATFOR does not see the current round of QE as large-scale.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Put simply, 0.86 percent is well within the range of “normal” operations and so is very unlikely to have an appreciable impact on inflation levels.
  • This leaves STRATFOR weighting two potential — and not mutually exclusive — implications of the Fed’s decision.
  • First, this could be the Fed reassuring all concerned that the American economy is, in fact, all right.
  • Second, the Fed — in league with the White House — is attempting to shape discussions at the upcoming G-20 summit on Nov. 11 in Seoul.
  • Put simply, an unrestrained QE effort can quite effectively drive the value of the currency down. The dollar is the world’s dominant trade and reserve currency — accounting for roughly 42 percent of all transactions and some two-thirds of all reserves.
  • anonymous on 03 Nov 10
     
    "The U.S. Federal Reserve announced Nov. 3 that it will engage in quantitative easing (QE), a method of expanding the money supply often used when an economy is in a recession. The amount of QE the Fed intends to allow, compared to the size of the U.S. economy, is at most moderate. Rather than being intended to revamp the economy, the move likely is instead a means of rebuilding confidence in the U.S. economy. Likewise, it could be a way to set the tone for currency policy discussions at the G-20 summit on Nov. 11." At StratFor on November 3, 2010.
anonymous

China: Crunch Time - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...20100329_china_crunch_time

shared by anonymous on 30 Mar 10 - Cached
  • It is that, but it is much, much more.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 30 Mar 10
       
      This statement links to a great StratFor article from 2008 that looked at European efforts to reorient the structure of Bretton Woods.
  • For the Europeans, Bretton Woods provided the stability, financing and security backbone Europe used first to recover, and in time to thrive. For the Americans, it provided the ability to preserve much of the World War II alliance network into the next era in order to compete with the Soviet Union.
  • Militarily and economically, it became the bedrock of the anti-Soviet containment strategy.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Applying this little history lesson to the question at hand, Bretton Woods is the ultimate reason why the Chinese have succeeded economically for the last generation.
  • But this may be changing
  • the shift in tone in U.S. trade policy is itself enough to suggest big changes, beginning with the idea that the United States actually will compete with the rest of the world in exports.
  • If — and we must emphasize if — there will be force behind this policy shift, the Chinese are in serious trouble.
  • Japan’s economy, in 1990 and now, only depended upon international trade for approximately 15 percent of its GDP. For China, that figure is 36 percent, and that is after suffering the hit to exports from the global recession.
  • First, Chinese currency reserves exist because Beijing does not want to invest its income in China.
  • Second, those bond purchases largely fuel U.S. consumers’ ability to purchase Chinese goods.
  • Third, a cold stop in bond purchases would encourage the U.S. administration — and the American economy overall — to balance its budgets.
  • the United States has more disposable income than all of China’s other markets combined.
  • Beijing perceives the spat with Google and Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama as direct attacks by the United States
  • With the Democratic Party in the United States (historically the more protectionist of the two mainstream U.S. political parties) both in charge and worried about major electoral losses, the Chinese fear that midterm U.S. elections will be all about targeting Chinese trade issues.
  • If there has already been a decision in Washington to break with Bretton Woods, no number of token changes will make any difference. Such a shift in the U.S. trade posture will see the Americans going for China’s throat (no matter whether by design or unintentionally).
  • STRATFOR sees a race on, but it isn’t a race between the Chinese and the Americans or even China and the world. It’s a race to see what will smash China first, its own internal imbalances or the U.S. decision to take a more mercantilist approach to international trade.
  • anonymous on 30 Mar 10
     
    A great StratFor article about the coming full-blown trade dispute with China. From March 30, 2010.
anonymous

The Netanyahu-Obama Meeting in Strategic Context - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...netanyahuobama_meeting_context

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 23 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The polemics in this case are not the point. The issue is more fundamental: namely, the degree to which U.S. and Israeli relations converge and diverge. This is not a matter of friendship but, as in all things geopolitical, of national interest. It is difficult to discuss U.S. and Israeli interests objectively, as the relationship is clouded with endless rhetoric and simplistic formulations. It is thus difficult to know where to start, but two points of entry into this controversy come to mind.
  • The first is the idea that anti-Americanism in the Middle East has its roots in U.S. support for Israel, a point made by those in the United States and abroad who want the United States to distance itself from Israel. The second is that the United States has a special strategic relationship with Israel and a mutual dependency. Both statements have elements of truth, but neither is simply true — and both require much more substantial analysis. In analyzing them, we begin the process of trying to disentangle national interests from rhetoric.
  • Arab anti-Americanism predates significant U.S. support for Israel.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • the United States was not actively involved in supporting Israel prior to 1967, yet anti-Americanism in the Arab world was rampant. The Arabs might have blamed the United States for Israel, but there was little empirical basis for this claim.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Mar 10
       
      This is important for anyone pointing at American policy toward Isreal and claiming a causal relationship.
  • American grand strategy has always been derived from British grand strategy. The United States seeks to maintain regional balances of power in order to avoid the emergence of larger powers that can threaten U.S. interests.
  • Note that the United States is interested in maintaining the balance of power. This means that the U.S. interest is in a stable set of relations, with no one power becoming excessively powerful and therefore unmanageable by the United States.
  • The United States, given its overwhelming challenges, is neither interested in Israel’s desire to reshape its region, nor can it tolerate any more risk deriving from Israel’s actions. However small the risks might be, the United States is maxed out on risk.
  • Therefore, Israel’s interests and that of the United States diverge. Israel sees an opportunity; the United States sees more risk.
  • It may not be the most persuasive threat, but the fact is that Israel cannot afford any threat from the United States, such as an end to the intense U.S.-Israeli bilateral relationship. While this relationship might not be essential to Israel at the moment, it is one of the foundations of Israeli grand strategy in the long run. Just as the United States cannot afford any more instability in the region at the moment, so Israel cannot afford any threat, however remote, to its relationship with the United States.
  • What is clear in all this is that the statement that Israel and the United States are strategic partners is not untrue, it is just vastly more complicated than it appears.
  • Israel has an interest in housing in East Jerusalem. The United States does not. This frames the conversation between Netanyahu and Obama. The rest is rhetoric.
anonymous

U.S. Handling of the Egyptian Crisis - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...09-us-handling-egyptian-crisis

shared by anonymous on 10 Feb 11 - Cached
  • While behind the scenes, the United States was dealing closely with Egyptian military leaders who were appealing for restraint, in public, Washington was seen by many Arab leaders as dealing recklessly with the crisis.
  • On the one hand, it has a strategic need to keep Egypt’s military-dominated regime in place.
  • moreover it did not want to be caught on the wrong side of a brutal crackdown, and felt the need to maintain its image of supporting democratic popular demands.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Washington’s response, while confused at times, certainly has evolved.
  • Washington is becoming more critical of the regime’s failings, more supportive of the grievances of the protesters, and more vocal about the need for reforms in Egypt and even elsewhere in the region.
  • While behind the scenes, the United States was dealing closely with Egyptian military leaders who were appealing for restraint, in public, Washington was seen by many Arab leaders as dealing recklessly with the crisis.
  • On the one hand, it has a strategic need to keep Egypt’s military-dominated regime in place.
  • This U.S. administration in particular has put considerable effort into trying to reshape the U.S. image in the Islamic world.
  • Moreover, Washington was juggling among various relationships it had in Cairo in trying to shape a resolution to the crisis.
  • others with the military were split between the old guard elite and new guard, who spent much of their life training in the United States and had thus built strong relationships with Washington — hence the uncertainty and mixed signals from Washington
  • Washington appears to have caught its breath following the early days of the crisis and is seeking a more coherent policy — one that better balances the promotion of what it labels “universal values” with an understanding of strategic interests in the region.
  • No doubt the United States is fully aware of the danger of weakening the very allies that it is supposed to be buttressing in the contest with Iran, but it also sees that cracks are spreading across the facade of the old regimes, and a push toward a more pluralistic setup, to pacify the most frustrated elements in Arab societies, could be a lever that can ease pressure and avoid a catastrophic collapse.
  • The Arab states may view U.S. policy as detrimental to their interests, but the reality is that – aside from the significant amount of aid the United States provides to the Egyptian military — there are serious limits on the U.S. ability to shape the outcome of the current turmoil.
  • anonymous on 10 Feb 11
     
    "Wednesday saw a rising chorus of criticisms from Arab states over the United States' handling of the Egyptian crisis, specifically its perceived attempts to hasten President Hosni Mubarak's resignation. Reports indicate that Jordanian King Abdullah II, reshuffling his Cabinet amid fears of popular opposition inspired by Egyptian unrest, has called on the United States to promote a smooth transition in Egypt; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have meanwhile criticized the manner in which Washington has dealt with the situation in Egypt and the wider region. U.S. President Barack Obama spoke for a second time in as many weeks with Saudi King Abdullah, presumably about the direction of events and coordinating responses."
anonymous

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war - 1 views

www.salon.com/...libya

geopolitics libya

shared by anonymous on 13 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Why -- at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war -- would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war?  Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations -- even from his own Party -- that he's fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval?  Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war?  And why would we, to use the President's phrase, "stand idly by" while numerous other regimes -- including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria -- engage in attacks on their own people at least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?
  • I have two points to make about all this:
  • The reason -- the only reason -- we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts. 
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Is there anyone -- anywhere -- who actually believes that these aren't the driving considerations in why we're waging this war in Libya?  After almost three months of fighting and bombing -- when we're so far from the original justifications and commitments that they're barely a distant memory -- is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya?
  • Instead, what distinguished Gaddafi and made him a war target was that he had become insufficiently compliant -- an unreliable and unstable servant to the West.
  • Wars are typically caused by the interests of multiple factions and rarely have just one motive.  As Jim Webb explained in arguing that the U.S. has no vital interest in Libya, the French and British are far more reliant on Libyan oil than the U.S. is (and this reader offers a rational dissent and alternative explanation for the war).  But the U.S. has long made clear that it will not tolerate hostile or disobedient rulers in countries where it believes it has vital interests, and that's particularly true in oil rich nations (which is one reason for the American obsession with Iran).
  • anonymous on 13 Jun 11
     
    "When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake." This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued -- regime change through the use of military force. We're in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West. That's not even a debatable proposition at this point." - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
anonymous

Hiding in Plain Sight - The Problem with Pakistani Intelligence - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...roblems-pakistani-intelligence

shared by anonymous on 04 May 11 - Cached
  • Clearly, Pakistan is coming under a great deal of pressure to explain how authorities in the country were not aware that the world’s most wanted man was enjoying safe haven for years in a large facility in the heart of the country.
  • It is no secret that Pakistan’s army and foreign intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, actively cultivated a vast array of Islamist militants – both local and foreign, from the early 1980s until at least the events of Sept. 11, 2001 – as instruments of foreign policy.
  • the policy of backing Islamist militants for power projection vis-a-vis India and Afghanistan had been in place for more than 20 years, and was instrumental in creating a large murky spatial nexus of local and foreign militants (specifically al Qaeda) that had complex relations with elements within and close to state security organs.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • One of the key reasons for this situation is that while the stakeholders of the country (civil as well as military) are engaged in a fierce struggle against local and foreign Islamist insurgents, significant societal forces and sympathetic individuals from within the state are providing support to jihadists. But it’s more problematic that there are no quick fixes for this state of affairs. Further complicating this situation is that the U.S. objectives for the region require Islamabad to address these issues on a fast-track basis.
  • anonymous on 04 May 11
     
    "The fallout continued Tuesday from the revelation that until his death at the hands of U.S. forces on May 2, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden been living in a large compound not far from the Pakistani capital. A number of senior U.S. officials issued tough statements against Pakistan. President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said that while there was no evidence to suggest that Pakistani officials knew that bin Laden was living at the facility, the possibility could not be ruled out. The chairwoman of the U.S. Senate's Select Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein, sought more details from the CIA about the Pakistani role and warned that Congress could dock financial assistance to Islamabad if it was found that the al Qaeda leader had been harbored by state officials. CIA chief Leon Panetta disclosed that American officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets."
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