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anonymous

Mubarak Transfers Some Powers - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...0210-mubarak-refuses-step-down

egypt geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 10 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Mubarak may still be attempting to hang onto power, but that does not mean the military does not have a plan. The military likely has anticipated the opposition’s complete rejection of Mubarak’s minor concessions. Thus, the coming hours will tell whether this is the reaction that the army is waiting for to legitimize their intervention, for if the military does not act, the next likely scenario is for the demonstrations to spiral out of control.
  • anonymous on 10 Feb 11
     
    "Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak delivered a speech the evening of Feb. 10 in which he announced that, while he would not resign, he would transfer some of his powers to Vice President Omar Suleiman. Mubarak also said he would repeal a three-decade-long state of emergency once the current security situation stabilizes. Once again, the embattled Egyptian president insisted on upholding his duty to the constitution in safeguarding the country until he can peacefully transfer the presidency through elections."
anonymous

Mubarak Stepping Down? - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...20110210-mubarak-stepping-down

egypt geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 10 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Egyptian Prime Minister and former air force chief Ahmed Shafiq announced to BBC Arabic that discussions are under way for Mubarak to step down.
  • Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, the military commander for the Cairo area, reportedly told protesters in Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met today.”
  • Then, Shafiq reportedly made a statement saying that Mubarak will in fact stay in his post as president and that Mubarak has not made a decision to step down.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Curiously, no statements from Suleiman have been issued Feb. 10, even though Suleiman assumed de facto leadership of the regime Jan. 29.
  • The details are still extremely murky, but based on the conflicting statements thus far and rumors that have been circulating over the past several days of the army’s distrust of Suleiman as a successor to Mubarak, there appears to be a struggle under way within the regime elite, specifically between serving officers and former officers who have maintained close ties with Mubarak, such as Shafiq and Suleiman. The situation remains in flux, but the army appears ready to intervene in order to usher Mubarak out.
  • anonymous on 10 Feb 11
     
    "Conflicting statements out of Cairo on Feb. 10 suggest that a struggle is under way between the Egyptian military and civilian elite over Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's political exit."
anonymous

Revolution and the Muslim World - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...21-revolution-and-muslim-world

stratfor geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 23 Feb 11 - Cached
  • There have been moments in history where revolution spread in a region or around the world as if it were a wildfire.
  • Each had a basic theme.
  • But in the end, the reasons behind them could reasonably be condensed into a sentence or two.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • The key is that in each country where they took place, there were significant differences in the details — but they shared core principles at a time when other countries were open to those principles, at least to some extent.
  • The Muslim countries of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula have been the prime focus of these risings, and in particular North Africa where Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya have had profound crises.
  • The key principle that appears to be driving the risings is a feeling that the regimes, or a group of individuals within the regimes, has deprived the public of political and, more important, economic rights — in short, that they enriched themselves beyond what good taste permitted.
  • Why has it come together now?
  • One reason is that there was a tremendous amount of regime change in the region from the 1950s through the early 1970s, as the Muslim countries created regimes to replace foreign imperial powers and were buffeted by the Cold War.
  • More than anything, if we want to define this wave of unrest, particularly in North Africa, it is a rising against regimes — and particularly individuals — who have been in place for extraordinarily long periods of time.
  • In this case, the question of greatest importance is not why these revolutions are taking place, but who will take advantage of them.
  • In this case, whatever the cause of the risings, there is no question that radical Islamists will attempt to take advantage and control of them. Why wouldn’t they? It is a rational and logical course for them.
  • Whether they will be able to do so is a more complex and important question, but that they would want to and are trying to do so is obvious.
  • But while there is no question that Islamists would like to take control of the revolution, that does not mean that they will, nor does it mean that these revolutions will be successful. Recall that 1848 and 1968 were failures and those who tried to take advantage of them had no vehicle to ride. Also recall that taking control of a revolution is no easy thing. But as we saw in Russia in 1917, it is not necessarily the more popular group that wins, but the best organized. And you frequently don’t find out who is best organized until afterwards.
  • Democratic revolutions have two phases.
  • The first is the establishment of democracy. The second is the election of governments.
  • So there are three crosscurrents here.
  • The first is the reaction against corrupt regimes. The second is the election itself. And the third? The United States needs to remember, as it applauds the rise of democracy, that the elected government may not be what one expected.
  • pictures of peaceful demonstrators are not nearly as significant as the media will have you believe, but pictures of demonstrators continuing to hold their ground after being fired on is very significant.
  • This leads to the key event in the revolution. The revolutionaries cannot defeat armed men. But if those armed men, in whole or part, come over to the revolutionary side, victory is possible. And this is the key event.
  • In Libya, the military has split wide open.
  • If the split in the military is roughly equal and deep, this could lead to civil war.
  • Far more common is for the military to split. If the split creates an overwhelming anti-regime force, this leads to the revolution’s success.
  • It is this act, the military and police coming over to the side of the demonstrators, that makes or breaks a revolution.
  • Therefore, looking at the students on TV tells you little. Watching the soldiers tells you much more.
  • The danger is not radical Islam, but chaos, followed either by civil war, the military taking control simply to stabilize the situation or the emergence of a radical Islamic party to take control — simply because they are the only ones in the crowd with a plan and an organization. That’s how minorities take control of revolutions.
  • Only in the case of Eastern Europe do we see broad revolutionary success, but that was against an empire in collapse, so few lessons can be drawn from that for the Muslim world.
  • democracy and pro-Western political culture do not mean the same thing.
  • There are three possibilities.
  • One is that this is like 1848, a broad rising that will fail for lack of organization and coherence, but that will resonate for decades.
  • The second is 1968, a revolution that overthrew no regime even temporarily and left some cultural remnants of minimal historical importance.
  • The third is 1989, a revolution that overthrew the political order in an entire region, and created a new order in its place.
  • anonymous on 23 Feb 11
     
    "The Muslim world, from North Africa to Iran, has experienced a wave of instability in the last few weeks. No regimes have been overthrown yet, although as of this writing, Libya was teetering on the brink."
anonymous

Turkey's Moment of Reckoning - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...10303-turkeys-moment-reckoning

geopolitics turkey

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 11 - Cached
  • With geopolitical opportunities presenting themselves on all of its borders, Turkey, having been out of the great power game for some 90-odd years, could afford some experimentation. In this geopolitical testing phase, Turkey could spread itself relatively far and wide in trying to reclaim influence, all under the Davutoglu-coined “zero problems with neighbors” strategy.
  • The invisible hand of geopolitics teaches that politicians, regardless of personality, ideology or anything else, will pursue strategic ends without being necessarily aware of their policies’ contributions to (or detractions from) national power. The gentle nudges guiding Turkey for most of the past decade are now transforming into a firm, unyielding push.
  • Whether Ankara is ready or not, the Middle East is accelerating Turkey’s rise.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • in Egypt (where the Turks ruled under the Ottoman Empire for 279 years from 1517-1796), there is not much Turkey can do or may even need to do.
  • The shaking out of Iraq’s Sunni-Shia balance (or imbalance, depending on how you view it) is the current pivot to Persian Gulf stability.
  • anonymous on 07 Mar 11
     
    "In a high-powered visit to Cairo, Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Thursday with the members of Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF). In addition to meeting with the military elite, the Turkish leaders are also talking to the opposition forces. On Thursday, Gul and Davutoglu met with Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and over the course of the next three days they are expected to meet with opposition figures Mohamed ElBaradei and Arab League chief Amr Mousa, as well as the Jan. 25 Youth Coalition."
anonymous

3 Media Narratives About The Middle East You Should Defend Against - 0 views

thelastpsychiatrist.com/...ia_narratives_about_the_m.html

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 08 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Of course the young(er) are looking for social changes and a better life.  And I don't doubt that they at least believe themselves to be earnest.  But the media narrative that it is they who are the force behind the acute changes is both wrong and manipulative.
  • It's manipulative because it is easy. 
  • Also, it's self-aggrandizing.  This is the folks at Time saying, "hey, man, we get this hip generation."  It makes them think they're young and in touch, ("they even figured out how to use the internet for something other than porn!") and I'd bet 10 piastres every guy working at Time thinks the girl in the bottom right would find them interesting.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • There are 80M people in Egypt, 10% unemployment and 40% in poverty, as defined as  less than $2/day.  About a third don't know how to read.  None of those people are in the picture.  None of those people want the same things as those in the picture.  None of them will ever listen to those in the picture.
  • "What's wrong with coming out in support?"  Well, go ahead and ask Time: "what's wrong with putting them front and center?"  Because if I was agnostic about unions, and interested in really deciding who I supported in this fight, one look at that picture guarantees I side with whoever they're yelling at.   If you want to know exactly what is wrong with the "political discourse in America today," it's that we are trained to pick a side against something we hate.
  • It's a narrative that existed long before the nights of Saddam, get rid of the dictator and things will get better.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and if your country has oil in it it usually doesn't.
  • It's so easy to get distracted by the Evil Despot that we aren't horrified that Egypt's chaperons of future democracy are the military.   Really?  "They didn't turn on their own people!"  Wow, that's your metric?  Do you think they're just going to step aside when the kids show up to sell off the tanks to pay for education?  
  • The media likes the Mad Despot narrative because, again, it's easy, but, again, it's wrong and manipulative. And it backfires.  When George Bush pulled the Mad Despot card, the media reacted against it-- but that was itself a manipulation, because they wanted the Mad Despot to be Bush himself.  Offered no other choices than "one of these guys is utterly, completely, evil," America was forced to choose who they thought was actually the Mad Despot; and-- tip for the media-- most Americans will think it's the foreign guy.
  • It's fairly obvious why media companies would push the idea that the media itself is responsible for puppies and Reese's Pieces cookies, but when the medium becomes the message, there's no message.
  • anonymous on 08 Mar 11
     
    The Last Psychiatrist
anonymous

Libya, the West and the Narrative of Democracy - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...libya-west-narrative-democracy

geopolitics libya

shared by anonymous on 22 Mar 11 - Cached
  • There is no question that the intervention is designed to protect Gadhafi’s enemies from his forces. Gadhafi had threatened to attack “without mercy” and had mounted a sustained eastward assault that the rebels proved incapable of slowing.
  • they want to intervene to protect Gadhafi’s enemies, they are prepared to support those enemies (though it is not clear how far they are willing to go in providing that support), but they will not be responsible for the outcome of the civil war.
  • Three assumptions have been made about this unrest.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The first was that it represented broad-based popular opposition to existing governments
  • Second, it assumed that these revolutions had as a common goal the creation of a democratic society.
  • Third, it assumed that the kind of democratic society they wanted was similar to European-American democracy, in other words, a constitutional system supporting Western democratic values.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 22 Mar 11
       
      As regards item #3, I call 'projection.' As usual, the West interprets events in a manner that reinforces our own sense of self importance and historical righteousness.
  • Whether they supported the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is a matter of conjecture. They might have, but the demonstrators were a tiny fraction of Egyptian society
  • a narrative on what has happened in the Arab world has emerged and has become the framework for thinking about the region.
  • The narrative says that the region is being swept by democratic revolutions (in the Western sense) rising up against oppressive regimes. The West must support these uprisings gently. That means that they must not sponsor them but at the same time act to prevent the repressive regimes from crushing them.
  • Gadhafi did not run Libya for the past 42 years because he was a fool, nor because he didn’t have support. He was very careful to reward his friends and hurt and weaken his enemies, and his supporters were substantial and motivated.
  • Italy has an interest in Libyan oil, and the United Kingdom was looking for access to the same. But just as Gadhafi was happy to sell the oil, so would any successor regime be; this war was not necessary to guarantee access to oil. NATO politics also played a role. The Germans refused to go with this operation, and that drove the French closer to the Americans and British. There is the Arab League, which supported a no-fly zone (though it did an about-face when it found out that a no-fly zone included bombing things) and offered the opportunity to work with the Arab world.
  • Waging war for ideological reasons requires a clear understanding of the ideology and an even clearer understanding of the reality on the ground. In this intervention, the ideology is not crystal clear, torn as it is between the concept of self-determination and the obligation to intervene to protect the favored faction. The reality on the ground is even less clear. The reality of democratic uprisings in the Arab world is much more complicated than the narrative makes it out to be, and the application of the narrative to Libya simply breaks down. There is unrest, but unrest comes in many sizes, democratic being only one.
  • anonymous on 22 Mar 11
     
    "Forces from the United States and some European countries have intervened in Libya. Under U.N. authorization, they have imposed a no-fly zone in Libya, meaning they will shoot down any Libyan aircraft that attempts to fly within Libya. In addition, they have conducted attacks against aircraft on the ground, airfields, air defenses and the command, control and communication systems of the Libyan government, and French and U.S. aircraft have struck against Libyan armor and ground forces. There also are reports of European and Egyptian special operations forces deploying in eastern Libya, where the opposition to the government is centered, particularly around the city of Benghazi. In effect, the intervention of this alliance has been against the government of Moammar Gadhafi, and by extension, in favor of his opponents in the east."
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