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anonymous

The Nord Stream Pipeline's Possible Expansions - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-pipelines-possible-expansions

geopolitics energy

shared by anonymous on 24 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Analysis
  • The Nord Stream pipeline project was initially designed by Russia to bypass transit states to supply Russian natural gas directly to Germany, its largest European market. In the mid-to-late 2000s, Russia had a series of energy and political spats with states that its oil and natural gas transited to reach greater Europe, leading to energy cutoffs and intentional pipeline breaks. So Gazprom, in consortium with the Netherlands' Gasunie, Germany's E.ON and Wintershall and France's GDF, built two lines from the Russian coast at Vyborg under the Baltic Sea to the German coast at Greifswald. Once on German soil, Nord Stream's natural gas supplies split into two systems. The first goes through the Opal pipeline system that supplies eastern Germany and connects to Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The other spur goes through the NEL pipeline system to enter northern and eastern Germany.
  • Currently, the first two legs of Nord Stream have a shared capacity of 55 billion cubic meters, though the pipeline carried only 28 billion cubic meters in 2012, since the second leg was unfinished. The 2012 exports also were intended mostly for German consumption. Though the primary purpose of Nord Stream was to link Russia directly to Germany, Moscow has long had further plans for the pipeline system. Since Nord Stream 1 and 2 were conceived, two more legs -- Nord Stream 3 and 4 -- have been considered. Nord Stream 3 would expand Nord Stream 1 and 2 under the Baltic Sea to Germany, while Nord Stream 4 would connect Russian supplies through the Dutch export networks to the United Kingdom. The Netherlands exports natural gas to the United Kingdom via the Balgzand-Bacton underwater interconnector pipeline (with a capacity of 16 billion cubic meters) and via Belgium along the Belgium-U.K. underwater interconnector (with a capacity of 25.5 billion cubic meters). Gazprom has said that preliminarily it would like to export an additional 40 billion cubic meters along Nord Stream 3 and 4 to the United Kingdom -- something BP said it is interested in discussing. If completed, these expansions would bring large amounts of Russian natural gas to Western Europe at a time when regional supplies are in decline and some of Russia's Central and Eastern European customers are diversifying their options.
  • anonymous on 24 Apr 13
     
    "The Nord Stream pipeline project was initially designed by Russia to bypass transit states to supply Russian natural gas directly to Germany, its largest European market."
anonymous

The Geopolitics of France: Maintaining Its Influence in a Changing Europe - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...tralized_system_guarding_plain

geopolitics france

shared by anonymous on 14 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Mountain ranges inhibit trade and armies alike while peninsulas and islands limit the ability of larger powers to intimidate or conquer smaller ones. Because of such features, it isn’t as much of a surprise that Europe has never united under a single government as it is that anyone has ever tried.
  • two other geographic features that push Europe together
  • The first is the North European Plain
  • ...58 more annotations...
  • Northern Europe is home to the densest concentration of wealth in the world
  • The second feature — the Mediterranean Sea — plays a similar role to the continent’s south
  • Mix the geographic features that inhibit unification with the features that facilitate trade and communication and Europe becomes a very rich, very violent place.
  • three places on the Continent where this pattern of fragmentation does not hold
  • The first are the Seine and Loire river valleys
  • The second and third places where the fragmentation pattern does not hold are the Garonne and Rhone river valleys
  • The one thing these three geographic exceptions have in common is that they all have long resided in the political entity known as France.
  • France is nearly always engaged but is only rarely ascendant.
  • Mountain chains, rivers and seas therefore enclose France at all points save for one: the North European Plain.
  • Internally, aside from the Massif Central in the southeast, France is a country of relatively low-lying terrain with occasional hills.
  • The Beauce region is therefore the French core.
  • Paris is also close enough to the Atlantic — connected by the Seine — to benefit from oceanic trade routes but far enough away to be insulated somewhat from a direct naval invasion.
  • In comparison with its continental neighbors, France has almost always been at an economic advantage because of its geography.
  • Phase I: Centralization (843-1453)
  • The Beauce region of France has always been the core of the French state because of its fertile land and strategic location on the North European Plain.
  • Early France faced two problems, both rooted in geography.
  • The first dealt with the plains.
  • The solution to this military reality was feudalism.
  • French, one of the Langue d’oil, did not become the official tongue until the 1500s, and linguistic unification was not completed until the 1800s.
  • England considered continental France their playpen for much of the Middle Ages. In fact, the Norman leaders of England did not distinguish much between their French and English possessions
  • As in the conflict with the Muslims, it was a technological innovation that forced France’s political system to evolve, and this time the shift was toward centralization rather than decentralization.
  • The combination of the political disasters of the feudal period and the success of consolidation in the battles with the English served as the formative period of the French psyche.
  • Phase II: The Hapsburg Challenge and Balance of Power (1506-1700)
  • Europe’s Hapsburg era was a dangerous time for the French.
  • In three major wars — the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763, against Britain in North America) — France expended great financial resources in efforts to dominate one region or another, only to emerge at each war’s end with little to show for its efforts.
  • Phase III: Nationalism and the Rise of Germany (1789-1945)
  • two equally damning results
  • First, the depleted treasury led to a general breakdown in internal order, contributing to the French Revolution of 1789.
  • Second, Paris’ distraction with England and Spain led it to miss the emergence of Prussia as a serious European power that began to first rival and ultimately superseded Hapsburg Austria for leadership among the cacophony of German kingdoms.
  • One of the many unintended side effects of the French Revolution was the concept of nationalism,
  • From nationalism grew the nation-state, a political entity that harnesses all people sharing a similar ethnicity into a single governing unit.
  • The result was the one near-unipolar moment in European history.
  • Not only was France the only state to have embraced the concept of nationalism, but it also grafted the concept onto an already centralized system, allowing French power to pour forth across Europe and North Africa.
  • From 1803 to 1815, France nearly overwhelmed the rest of Europe before a coalition of nearly every major and minor power on the Continent combined forces to defeat her.
  • The lesson was a simple one, again rooted in geography. Even when France is united and whole, even when she is not under siege, even when her foes are internally distracted and off balance, even when she is led by one of the greatest organizational and military minds in human history, even when she holds the advantage of nationalism — she still lacks the resources and manpower to rule Europe.
  • But most of all the advantage of nationalism spread. Over the next few decades the political innovation of the nation-state spread throughout Europe and in time became a global phenomenon.
  • The culmination of this dichotomy was the events of May-June 1940, when the French military crumbled in less than six weeks. The defeat was by no means solely the result of geopolitical forces, but it sprang from the fundamental imbalance of power between France and a unified Germany.
  • Phase IV: Managing Germany
  • as France is concerned, however, STRATFOR views the entire post-World War II era as a single chapter in French history that has yet to come to a conclusion. In this phase, France is attempting to find a means to live with Germany, a task greatly complicated by recent shifts in the global political geography.
  • And far from being exposed and vulnerable, France found itself facing the most congenial constellation of forces in its history.
  • The stated gains of the EEC/EU have always been economic and political, but the deeper truth is that the European project has always been about French geopolitical fear and ambition.
  • Eventually the Cold War ended, and the Soviet collapse was perceived very differently in France. While most of the free world celebrated, the French fretted.
  • the Soviet collapse led to the reunification of Germany — and that was a top-tier issue.
  • Twenty years on, Germany cannot abandon the European Union without triggering massive internal economic dislocations because of the economic evolutions Maastricht has wrought.
  • that leaves the French with two long-term concerns.
  • First, the cage breaks, Germany goes its own way and attempts to remake Europe to suit its purposes.
  • Second, the cage holds, but it constrains France more than Germany.
  • Geopolitical Imperatives
  • Secure a Larger Hinterland
  • France is the only country on the North European Plain that has an option for expansion into useful territories beyond its core without directly clashing with another major power.
  • Always Look East
  • Being situated at the western end of the North European Plain makes France the only country on the plain that has only one land approach to defend against.
  • Maintain Influence in Regions Beyond Western Europe
  • Unlike the United Kingdom, whose expansion into empire was a natural step in its evolution as a naval power, France’s overseas empire was almost wholly artificial.
  • These colonial assets served one more critical role for Paris: They were disposable.
  • Louisiana was sold for loose change in order to fund the Napoleonic wars, while Algeria was ultimately abandoned — despite being home to some 1 million ethnic French — so that Charles de Gaulle could focus attention on more important matters at home and in the rest of Europe.
  • Be Flexible
  • Geopolitics is not ideological or personal, although few countries have the discipline to understand that.
  • anonymous on 14 Sep 10
     
    "France is bound by the Alps in the southeast and the Pyrenees in the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea in the south and the Atlantic in both the west and north. In the east, France is bound by the river Rhine and the low mountains of the Ardennes, Vosges and Jura." At StratFor on September 13, 2010.
anonymous

Germany and the Failure of Multiculturalism - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...y_and_failure_multiculturalism

geopolitics germany

shared by anonymous on 19 Oct 10 - Cached
  • The statements were striking in their bluntness and their willingness to speak of a dominant German culture, a concept that for obvious reasons Germans have been sensitive about asserting since World War II. The statement should be taken with utmost seriousness and considered for its social and geopolitical implications. It should also be considered in the broader context of Europe’s response to immigration, not to Germany’s response alone.
  • To resolve the continuing labor shortage, Germany turned to a series of successive labor recruitment deals, first with Italy (1955). After labor from Italy dried up due to Italy’s own burgeoning economy, Germany turned to Spain (1960), Greece (1960), Turkey (1961) and then Yugoslavia (1968).
  • For most of its history, the United States thought of itself as a nation of immigrants, but with a core culture that immigrants would have to accept in a well-known multicultural process. Anyone could become an American, so long as they accepted the language and dominant culture of the nation. This left a lot of room for uniqueness, but some values had to be shared. Citizenship became a legal concept. It required a process, an oath and shared values. Nationality could be acquired; it had a price.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • To be French, Polish or Greek meant not only that you learned their respective language or adopted their values — it meant that you were French, Polish or Greek because your parents were, as were their parents. It meant a shared history of suffering and triumph. One couldn’t acquire that.
  • For the Europeans, multiculturalism was not the liberal and humane respect for other cultures that it pretended to be. It was a way to deal with the reality that a large pool of migrants had been invited as workers into the country.
  • Multiculturalism is profoundly divisive, particularly in countries that define the nation in European terms, e.g., through nationality.
  • Simply put, Germany is returning to history. It has spent the past 65 years desperately trying not to confront the question of national identity, the rights of minorities in Germany and the exercise of German self-interest. The Germans have embedded themselves in multinational groupings like the European Union and NATO to try to avoid a discussion of a simple and profound concept: nationalism. Given what they did last time the matter came up, they are to be congratulated for their exercise of decent silence. But that silence is now over.
  • Two things have forced the re-emergence of German national awareness.
  • The first, of course, is the immediate issue — a large and indigestible mass of Turkish and other Muslim workers. The second is the state of the multinational organizations to which Germany tried to confine itself.
  • Germany now sees itself as shaping EU institutions so as not to be forced into being the European Union’s ultimate financial guarantor. And this compels Germany to think about Germany beyond its relations with Europe.
  • This isn’t to say that Germany must follow any particular foreign policy given its new official view on multiculturalism; it can choose many paths. But an attack on multiculturalism is simultaneously an affirmation of German national identity. You can’t have the first without the second. And once that happens, many things become possible.
  • Merkel’s statement is therefore of enormous importance on two levels.
  • First, she has said aloud what many leaders already know, which is that multiculturalism can become a national catastrophe. Second, in stating this, she sets in motion other processes that could have a profound impact on not only Germany and Europe but also the global balance of power.
  • anonymous on 19 Oct 10
     
    "German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared at an Oct. 16 meeting of young members of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, that multiculturalism, or Multikulti, as the Germans put it, "has failed totally." Horst Seehofer, minister-president of Bavaria and the chairman of a sister party to the Christian Democrats, said at the same meeting that the two parties were "committed to a dominant German culture and opposed to a multicultural one." Merkel also said that the flood of immigrants is holding back the German economy, although Germany does need more highly trained specialists, as opposed to the laborers who have sought economic advantages in Germany. " By George Friedman at StratFor on October 19, 2010.
anonymous

EU, Somalia: Targeting 'Mother Ships' in Anti-Piracy Efforts - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...other_ships_antipiracy_efforts

africa

shared by anonymous on 08 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Foreign forces conducting anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia have started targeting pirates’ “mother ships” — vessels used to increase pirates’ attack range — in a shift from defensive to offensive tactics.
  • The mandates of the anti-piracy missions have not changed, but the European Union and NATO have shifted their tactics to target key pirate vessels. As more mother ships are seized, pirates’ capabilities are expected to weaken since their attack ranges will shrink. If foreign naval attacks on mother ships continue, the number of pirate hijackings off the Somali coast could decrease substantially.
  • Disabling pirates’ offshore capabilities will have a short-term effect, but pirates’ ships and personnel are easily replaceable. (In fact, the pirates likely will respond to the foreign naval offenses by seizing more ships to use as offshore bases.) Anti-piracy missions do not address the underlying issue of the lack of governance and abundance of sanctuary for pirates in Somalia. Furthermore, pirate villages in the otherwise impoverished Somalia are awash with money. Until the underlying conditions that gave rise to piracy in the region are addressed, it will remain a challenge.
anonymous

Russia's Expanding Influence, Part 4: The Major Players - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...influence_part_4_major_players

shared by anonymous on 12 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Russia is working to form an understanding with regional powers outside the former Soviet sphere in order to facilitate its plans to expand its influence in key former Soviet states. These regional powers — Germany, France, Turkey and Poland — could halt Russia’s consolidation of control if they chose to, so Moscow is working to make neutrality, if not cooperation, worth their while.
  • Moscow is working to cultivate an understanding with regional powers outside the former Soviet Union that are critical to its expansion: Germany, France, Turkey and Poland.
  • Russia throughout the 19th century coveted territory held by the crumbling Ottoman Empire — especially around the Black Sea and in the Balkans — and had plans for dominating Poland. Currently, however, Moscow understands that the two regional powers with most opportunities to subvert its resurgence are Poland (in Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states) and Turkey (in the Caucasus).
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • If it chose to, Germany could become Russia’s greatest roadblock. It is geographically more of a threat than the United States, due to its position on the North European Plain and the Baltic Sea, and it is a leader in the European Union and could offer Ukraine and Belarus substantial political and economic alternatives to their ties to Russia.
  • France and Germany are important partners for Russia because Moscow needs guarantees that its resurgence in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus will not face opposition from a united EU front.
  • Russia has less leverage over France than over any of the other regional powers discussed. In fact, Russia and France have few overlapping geopolitical interests.
  • Russia gives France and Sarkozy the respect reserved for Europe’s leader, for example by allowing Sarkozy to negotiate and take credit for the peace deal that ended the Russo-Georgian war in August 2008.
  • Russia wants to manage its relationship with Turkey for two main reasons: to guarantee its dominance of the Caucasus and assure that Turkey remains committed to transporting Russia’s — rather than someone else’s — energy to Europe. Russia also wants to make sure that Turkey does not use its control of the Bosporus to close off the Black Sea to Russian trade, particularly oil exports from Novorossiysk.
  • Russia maintains a considerable military presence in nearby Kaliningrad, with more than 200 aircraft, 23,000 troops and half of Russia’s Baltic fleet stationed between Poland and Lithuania.
  • Ultimately, Moscow’s strategy is to assure that Germany, France, Turkey and Poland stay out of — or actively support — Russia’s consolidation efforts in the former Soviet sphere. Russia does not need the four powers to be its allies — although it certainly is moving in that direction with Germany (and possibly France). Rather, it hopes to reach an understanding with them on where the Russian sphere ends, and establish a border that is compatible with Russian interests.
anonymous

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...00503_global_crisis_legitimacy

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 04 May 10 - Cached
  • Political crises — as opposed to normal financial panics — emerge when the reckless appear to be the beneficiaries of the crisis they have caused, while the rest of society bears the burdens of their recklessness.
  • think of nations as consisting of three basic systems: political, economic and military. Each of these systems has elites that manage it. The three systems are constantly interacting — and in a healthy polity, balancing each other, compensating for failures in one as well as taking advantage of success. Every nation has a different configuration within and between these systems. The relative weight of each system differs, as does the importance of its elites. But each nation contains these systems, and no system exists without the other two.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      This is a useful observation. It'd be interesting to contrast other nations' manifestation of each.
  • The corporation is built around the idea of limited liability for investors, the notion that if you buy part or all of a company, you yourself are not liable for its debts or the harm that it might do; your risk is limited to your investment.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • It is also a political invention and not an economic one. The decision to create corporations that limit liability flows from political decisions implemented through the legal subsystem of politics.
  • In a more natural organization of the marketplace, the owners are entirely responsible for the debts and liabilities of the entity they own. That, of course, would create excessive risk, suppressing economic activity.
  • contrary to the idea that there is a tension between the political and economic systems, the modern economic system is unthinkable except for the eccentric but indispensible political-legal contrivance of the limited liability corporation.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      Statements like these are a reason why the accusations about StratFor being a Neocon front don't stick very well. This passage could have been lifted from the most pinko-leftist propaganda. :)
  • this is why classical economists never spoke of “economics” but always of “political economy.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      This cuts to the myth of some idyllic "free market" in some earlier time. There may have been simpler economic creations, but there has not *been* a time when the political didn't mingle with the economic. Randians take note.
  • Emerging out of this complexity — and justifying it — is a moral regime. Protection from liability comes with a burden: Poor decisions will be penalized by losses, while wise decisions are rewarded by greater wealth.
  • Systemic risk emerges when it appears that the political and legal protections given to economic actors, and particularly to members of the economic elite, have been used to subvert the intent of the system.
  • the crisis occurs when it appears that the financial elite used the politico-legal structure to enrich themselves through systematically imprudent behavior while those engaged in prudent behavior were harmed, with the political elite apparently taking no action to protect the victims.
  • We now have a political, not an economic, crisis for two reasons. First, the crisis qualitatively has moved beyond the boundaries of a cyclical event. Second, the crisis is rooted in the political-legal definitions of the distribution of corporate risk and the legally defined relations between management and shareholder.
  • problem lies not with the market but with the political system that invented and presides over the limited liability corporation.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      This is why the right-wing calls to stop persecuting the "wealth creators" are so hollow. On one level, they're right - those people aren't responsible. They're just gaming a system that's probably broken. This is why some kind of political alteration to corporations needs to occur.
  • The crisis was rooted in the appearance that it was triggered by the behavior not of small town banks or third world countries, but of the global financial elite
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      "Appearance" is an operative word, too. No matter the cause, there's a perception problem that must be addressed.
  • The political elite is responsible for the corporate elite in a unique fashion: The corporation was a political invention, so by definition, its behavior depends on the political system.
  • part of this analysis is designed to explain why the Obama administration must go after Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and others.
  • The goal is not so much to achieve something as to create the impression that it is achieving something, in other words, to demonstrate that the political system is prepared to control the entities it created.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      More of that "perception" stuff.
  • Europe thus has a double crisis. As in the United States, there is a crisis between the financial and political systems. This crisis is not as intense as in the United States because of a deeper tradition of integration between the two systems in Europe. But the tension between masses and elites is every bit as intense. The second part of the crisis is the crisis of the European Union and growing sense that the European Union is the problem and not the solution. As in the United States, there is a growing movement to distrust not only national arrangements but also multinational arrangements.
  • the important thing is to understand that both Europe and the United States are facing fundamental challenges to the legitimacy of, if not the regime, then at least the manner in which the regime has handled itself.
  • This is not simply a crisis within national elites, but within the multinational elite that created the European Union. If this leads to the de-legitimization of the EU, then we are really in uncharted territory.
  • The politically contrived corporation, and particularly the financial corporations, stands accused of undermining the wealth of nations. As Adam Smith understood, markets are not natural entities but the result of political decisions, as is the political system that creates the allocation of risk that allows markets to function.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 May 10
       
      Politics is everything, it seems.
  • anonymous on 04 May 10
     
    By George Friedman (StratFor) on May 4, 2010.
anonymous

Europe, Nationalism and Shared Fate | STRATFOR - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...pe_nationalism_and_shared_fate

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 11 May 10 - Cached
  • The European financial crisis is moving to a new level. The Germans have finally consented to lead a bailout effort for Greece. The effort has angered the German public, which has acceded with sullen reluctance. It does not accept the idea that it is Germans’ responsibility to save Greeks from their own actions. The Greeks are enraged at the reluctance, having understood that membership in the European Union meant that Greece’s problems were Europe’s.
  • Northern and Southern Europe are very different places, as are the former Soviet satellites still recovering from decades of occupation. Even on this broad scale, Europe is thus an extraordinarily diverse portrait of economic, political and social conditions. The foundation of the European project was the idea that these nations could be combined into a single economic regime and that that economic regime would mature into a single united political entity. This was, on reflection, a rather extraordinary idea.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 May 10
       
      I think that the EU is actually quite a radically entity. We Americans tend to view Europe is stuffy and old, but some of the most inventive political arrangements have emerged. By constrast, America's constitutional tradition, next to that, seems quite *old*.
  • Europe feared nationalism out of a very nationalist impulse.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The European Union was designed to create a European identity while retaining the nation-state. The problem was not in the principle, as it is possible for people to have multiple identities. For example, there is no tension between being an Iowan and an American. But there is a problem with the issue of shared fate. Iowans and Texans share a bond that transcends their respective local identities. Their national identity as Americans means that they share not only transcendent values but also fates. A crisis in Iowa is a crisis in the United States, and not one in a foreign country as far as Texans are concerned.
  • At root, Europe’s dilemma was no different from the American dilemma — only the Americans ultimately decided, in the Civil War, that being an American transcended being a Virginian. One could be a Virginian, but Virginia shared the fate of New York, and did so irrevocably.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 May 10
       
      But the history of Virginia is not the long thing that it is for a European nation. Drawing on a few hundred years of shared heritage is not the same as 1,000 years or more in a deeply vibrant and heterogenous land.
  • The nation is the place of tradition, language and culture — all of the things that, for better or worse, define who you are. The nation is the place where an economic crisis is inescapably part of your life.
  • They might share interests, but not fates.
  • it was a treaty that sought to reconcile the concept of Europe as a single entity while retaining the principle of national sovereignty
  • Europe is divided into nations, and for most Europeans, identification with their particular nation comes first.
  • When the Greek financial crisis emerged, other Europeans asked the simple question, “What has this to do with me?”
  • Economic crisis meant that choices had to be made, between the interests of Europe, the interests of Germany and the interests of Greece, as they were no longer the same
  • Ultimately, Europe was an abstraction. The nation-state was real.
  • The unwillingness of the Europeans to transfer sovereignty in foreign and defense matters to the European Parliament and a European president was the clearest sign that the Europeans had not managed to reconcile European and national identity.
  • The European experiment originated as a recoil from the ultranationalism of the first half of the 20th century. It was intended to solve the problem of war in Europe. But the problem of nationalism is that not only is it more resilient than the solution, it also derives from the deepest impulses of the Enlightenment. The idea of democracy and of national self-determination grew up as part of a single fabric. In taking away national self-determination, the European experiment seemed to be threatening the foundation of modern Europe.
  • Europe will not counterbalance the United States because, in the end, Europeans do not share a common vision of Europe
  • The European Union is an association — at most an alliance — and not a transnational state. There was an idea of making it such a state, but that idea failed a while ago. As an alliance, it is a system of relationships among sovereign states. They participate in it to the extent that it suits their self-interest — or fail to participate when they please.
  • Europe is Europe, and its history cannot be dismissed as obsolete, much less over.
anonymous

Greece: Defense Spending and the Financial Crisis - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/..._spending_and_financial_crisis

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 18 May 10 - Cached
  • the modern Greek state owes its independence to the support of the United Kingdom, which sought to use Greece as a means to balance the unraveling Ottoman Turkey with the rise of Imperial Russia in the early 19th century.
  • With the disappearance of regional power Yugoslavia and the Soviet superpower, however, such support has ended.
  • Greece spends more on defense as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) than any other EU member including the United Kingdom, which maintains a global defense reach, and Poland, which sees itself as needing to be ready to hold out against the vastly superior Russian army.
  • anonymous on 18 May 10
     
    From May 17, 2010.
anonymous

Germany After the EU and the Russian Scenario - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...many_after_eu_russian_scenario

shared by anonymous on 25 May 10 - Cached
  • While the Patriot does not enhance America’s ability to protect itself against long-range ballistic missiles from, for example, Iran, it does give Poland some defense against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles and substantial defense against conventional air attack. Russia is the only country capable of such attacks on Poland
  • Still, the Russians — with a long history of seeing improbable threats turning into very real ones — tend to take hypothetical limits on their power seriously.
  • Moscow is not unhappy about the European crisis and wouldn’t want to do anything that might engender greater European solidarity.
  • anonymous on 25 May 10
     
    May 25, 2010.
anonymous

Whoa There, Rising Powers! - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...whoa_there_rising_powers

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 26 May 10 - Cached
  • Some critics have alleged that the U.S. administration passed up a golden opportunity for peace in a fit of pique at diplomatic interlopers, or that Iran had made painful concessions to fellow emerging nations that it would not make to the West.
  • something important has shifted in the world order, and we will have to get over our flinch reflex. Brazil and Turkey are middle-sized powers -- eighth and 17th in the world, respectively, in GDP -- that live at peace with their neighbors and believe they have a calling to play a role on the global stage.
  • "rhythmic diplomacy," which sounds like jazzercise but in fact, as he put it, "implies active involvement in all international organizations and on all issues of global and international importance."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Brazils and Turkeys of the world are not likely to form a coherent new bloc, but they will be far less inclined than they were in the past to stay within the lines chalked in by the referees of the West.
  • Partisans of a "concert of democracies" have assumed that maturing democracies in the developing world would seek to advance the same, supposedly universal, values prized by their elders in the West, but it hasn't worked out that way.
  • There's no question that Brazil's interests, or Turkey's, overlap in many places with those of the U.S. and Europe; Turkey seeks nothing more ardently than full EU membership, for instance. But in many other places, interests diverge, and the middle powers are inclined to view the current world order as an instrument to advance Western designs, not theirs.
  • For Obama, the really important question is whether he should reconcile himself to an unavoidable clash of interests with rising powers, or try to win them over by offering a deeper and more substantive kind of engagement -- for example, by pushing for a greater democratization of the institutions from which those states now feel excluded. It may be that the only chance to get Brazil to act more like a global citizen is to treat it like one.
  • When I first read the news about the nuclear deal that Brazil and Turkey reached last week with Iran, I flinched. My reflex reaction was: Third-World troublemakers rally to the side of evil-doer in the face of Western pressure. That was, of course, the wrong reflex.
  • anonymous on 26 May 10
     
    "Brazil and Turkey's diplomatic forays may be annoying, but they also signal a huge shift in the way the world works. Is Obama paying attention?" By James Traub in Foreign Policy on May 25, 2010.
anonymous

Eurozone Crisis: Not a Greek Drama - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...urozone-crisis-not-greek-drama

geopolitics eu greece

shared by anonymous on 22 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Lost in the coverage is the fact that Greece constitutes 2.5 percent of Eurozone GDP and Eurozone member states’ direct exposure to Greece is manageable.
  • After a year and a half of watching the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis unfold, we should put one notion to rest: no one event, crisis or decision will cause the Eurozone to collapse. Such a complex system of financial and monetary relationships will not unravel in a day, a month or a year.
  • Eurozone member states have proven highly flexible in their handling of the crisis.
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  • Skeptics contend that because the Eurozone was primarily a political creation, its economic logic is fundamentally flawed. A singular economic or political shock — such as the collapse of the Greek government — could therefore unravel the entire bloc by exposing a slew of economic problems.
  • Precisely because the Eurozone is a political creation, however, fundamental changes in the geopolitics of Europe are required to undermine it. Furthermore, the greater the imminent financial crisis, the greater the likelihood that Eurozone member states will find flexible means to resolve it. This resourcefulness has been evidenced throughout the crisis.
  • Therefore if all else fails, the ECB will print money.
  • The idea that the ECB would participate in its own dissolution because it is committed to its independence, or to maintaining 2 percent inflation, is a theoretical assumption that takes little account of the ECB’s behavior over the last 24 months.
  • This analysis leads us to two conclusions.
  • First, the Eurozone is not going to collapse in the middle of the sovereign debt crisis.
  • Second, fundamental political changes underway in Europe — such as the weakening of the NATO alliance, the regionalization of security alliances, and especially the developing Russian-German relationship — are far more important to the future of the Eurozone than a Greek confidence vote.
  • Because the Eurozone is fundamentally a political project, the weakening of the political bonds that tie Eurozone member states into a currency union are what will ultimately lead to its dissolution or modification.
  • Monumental shifts are underway in Europe. We have no reason to believe that Greece is at the center of them. What is most interesting is that the focus, both in terms of risks and solutions, continues to be on both short-term effects and singular events. This myopia is in part because Eurozone member states, in particular Germany, have not offered a long-term solution or plan.
  • The question that needs to be asked is: what do Europeans, and specifically the Germans, plan to do with Europe’s security and political architecture in the long term? The answer to that question cannot be found in the financial databases of Eurostat or the Bank of International Settlement, nor especially in the coverage of 24-hour investor-news stations.
  • anonymous on 22 Jun 11
     
    "It has been 2,000 years since Athenian legislators last received the kind of global attention fixed upon them Tuesday. News coverage of the Greek parliament's June 21 confidence vote captivated the global financial sector. The vote was carried live on most global 24-hour investment-news stations and links to live online feeds of the Greek vote were posted across the world wide web. The vote passed, giving Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou the political authority to try to pass further austerity measures mandated by the Eurozone in another vote on June 28."
anonymous

Portfolio: Russia Takes Advantage of the Eurozone Crisis - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...akes-advantage-eurozone-crisis

russia eu

shared by anonymous on 23 Jun 11 - Cached
  • The key issue right now is whether Greek parliament will be able to pass the June 28 austerity measures vote. If it fails, it could lead to further panic throughout Europe. This has unsettled the markets and generally panicked investors throughout the world.
  • Russia has considerable opportunities opening up before itself because of the eurozone crisis.
  • First of all, Europeans are distracted and generally not unified on a number of issues but because the economic crisis has engulfed the eurozone
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  • The two greatest geopolitical interests are the upcoming privatizations in Greece and also the news that Russia is interested in Austrian banks.
  • One of the interesting assets that Athens is looking to sell is DEPA, its natural gas company.
  • if DEPA falls to Russian hands, Gazprom has been quoted to be interested in its privatization, it would really complicate European efforts of using Greece as an alternative to Russian natural gas routes.
  • Another appealing opportunity for the Kremlin is the rumored interest of Sberbank and VTB, Russia’s two largest state-owned banks and Austria’s ­Raiffeisen Bank and Fokus Bank.
  • The reason that Russia’s interest in Austrian banks is something to look at is because Austrian banks control quite a number of banks in Central and Eastern Europe.
  • there are opportunities for investment that Russia can parlay into geopolitical advantage.
  • anonymous on 23 Jun 11
     
    "Analyst Marko Papic examines how Russia is able to gain geopolitical leverage over Europe because of the eurozone's ongoing crisis."
anonymous

Traveling Through Multiple Europes - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...eling-through-multiple-europes

shared by anonymous on 06 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The crisis is having an uneven effect on EU member states because the eurozone locks countries with different levels of economic development into the same currency union.
  • Europe's geography helps explain these differences: Countries in the south have traditionally dealt with high capital costs and low capital-generation capacity, while countries in the north have seen the opposite.
  • Merely moving people and goods from point to point on the Iberian Peninsula has always posed formidable challenges for governments and traders.
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  • In contrast, most of Germany is flat.
  • The lack of any real physical borders to the east and west also helps explain Germany's historical conflict with its neighbors.
  • The same geography that made Germany a place of conflict also explains its economic power: Germany is the center of Europe from almost every possible point of view.
  • Greece is a rugged country with narrow coastal plains that swiftly give way to mountains.
  • Greece's extremely fragmented geography and its strategic position on the eastern Mediterranean helps explain why it has struggled throughout history to get anything done.
  • Whenever I'm in a foreign country, I make an effort to visit bookstores because the books people read and write offer insights into the social mood.
  • In an Oporto bookstore, among the bestsellers was a book called We Are Not Germans, while a Rome bookstore had a book called It's Not Worth a Lira, a plea to leave the euro and return to Italy's old currency, that appeared to be quite popular.
  • Germany is seen as a country where everything works and governments are efficient. On the other hand, it is also seen as a hegemon that doesn't understand or care about the situation in the nations it is trying to lead.
  • While conservative forces are moving to the right and nationalist forces are gaining strength, the center-left is going through an identity crisis that is generating frictions within the parties and confusing their traditional voters
  • The irony is that the same process that is creating political and social tensions in Europe's core is helping to mitigate the negative effects of a demographic change.
  • Poland was a country confident about its economic strength but worried about its future. History has given the Poles a deep understanding of geopolitics and too many reasons to be worried about the events beyond their borders.
  • The Poles are proud of being members of the European Union, but they are not completely confident that Brussels will come to their rescue should the crisis with Russia escalate.
  • . The crisis has now reached a point where its two main players are under extreme pressure. Germany joined the eurozone under the assumption that no bailouts would be given to nations in distress and no monetization of debt would take place. France joined the eurozone under the assumption that it would remain the political leader of Europe. The crisis has put all the promises and agreements that supported the Franco-German unity in doubt.
  • Europeanists believe that things would be much better if the European Union became a true federation. They are probably right. The question is how to accomplish this.
  • anonymous on 06 Nov 14
     
    "Europe is overcrowded with people and with nations. Six decades ago, the need to suppress the dangerous forces of nationalism led to the unprecedented political, economic and social experiment now known as the European Union."
anonymous

Why Moldova Urgently Matters - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...why-moldova-urgently-matters

shared by anonymous on 10 Jul 14 - Cached
  • The president ran his finger over a map showing how Romania's neighbors such as Bulgaria and Hungary were almost completely dependent on Russian natural gas, while Romania -- because of its own hydrocarbon reserves -- still has a significant measure of independence. In the 21st century, the president explained, Gazprom is more dangerous than the Russian army.
  • The national security adviser then added: "Putin is not an apparatchik; he is a former intelligence officer," implying that Putin will act subtly. Putin's Russia will not fight conventionally for territory in the former satellite states, but unconventionally for hearts and minds, Fota went on. "Putin knows that the flaw of the Soviet Union was that it did not have soft power."
  • Thus, Moscow's strategy is about taking over countries from within. In this battle, it is precisely during the quiet periods, when an issue like Ukraine drifts off the front pages because of the Middle East, for example, that we should be worried.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • With this in mind I traveled to Iasi on Romania's northeastern frontier with Moldova. There I met Iasi's county council president, Cristian Mihai Adomnitei
  • "In his heart, he is a Bolshevik. He knows that you can conquer vast territories without big armies."
  • From Iasi I crossed the Prut River into Moldova -- historic Bessarabia, a territory that has been traded back and forth through the centuries between Romania and Russia but that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, has been independent.
  • Witness Balti, a city in northern Moldova, heralded by Soviet-era apartment buildings that resemble yellowing teeth. Here I met a local politician, Cecilia Graur, who told me that, "everyone is afraid. The situation in eastern Ukraine could happen here. We all know this because of our own divisions," political, ethnic and linguistic. "People talk about it all the time."
  • Comrat, in southern Moldova, is home to the Christian Orthodox and Russian-speaking Turkic Gagauz -- a potential fifth column that Putin could use to undermine Moldova. Vitaliy Kyurkchu, a local Gagauz politician, told me that with 160,000 Gagauz in Moldova and 40,000 over the border in Ukraine, "we have ongoing kitchen discussions -- discussions mainly among ourselves, I mean -- about the creation of a Greater Gagauzia" should Moldova and Ukraine weaken or ever collapse.
  • This was dangerous irredentism, of course. The Gagauz themselves are uncertain about their origins. Local identity is so complex that Georgetown's Charles King, among the leading experts in the field, calls nationality in Moldova a "decidedly negotiable proposition."
  • Then there is Transdniestria, a sliver of territory east of the Dniester River that is officially part of Moldova but that, with its heavily ethnic Russian population, seceded from Moldova after a brief war in the early 1990s. Transdniestria is now packed with Russian troops to act as a hammer against Moldova should the latter ever want to pivot toward the West. Transdniestria is the kind of legally murky, ill-defined smugglers' paradise that Putin wants to see multiply in eastern Ukraine.
  • For weeks I traveled around Moldova. Indeed, the common theme everywhere was that Russia is a reality while the West is only a geopolitical concept.
  • I am not here providing a fully fleshed-out policy toward Moldova or the other states facing Russia. I am saying only that there are incalculable human costs to Western inaction. And Western action must mean a whole-of-government approach -- political, intelligence, economics and so forth -- in order to counter what the Russians are doing.
  • anonymous on 10 Jul 14
     
    ""NATO's Article 5 offers little protection against Vladimir Putin's Russia," Iulian Fota, Romania's presidential national security adviser, told me on a recent visit to Bucharest. "Article 5 protects Romania and other Eastern European countries against a military invasion. But it does not protect them against subversion," that is, intelligence activities, the running of criminal networks, the buying-up of banks and other strategic assets, and indirect control of media organs to undermine public opinion. Moreover, Article 5 does not protect Eastern Europe against reliance on Russian energy. As Romanian President Traian Basescu told me, Romania is a somewhat energy-rich island surrounded by a Gazprom empire."
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