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anonymous

NATO: An Inadequate Strategic Concept? - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...o_inadequate_strategic_concept

geopolitics europe

shared by anonymous on 22 Nov 10 - Cached
  • The 1999 document, written during NATO’s air war against Yugoslavia, set the precedent for the expansion of NATO operations beyond mere self-defense, to account for humanitarian interventions and conflict prevention.
  • This massive consolidation took Putin roughly six years and gave Moscow a firm foundation so that it could start looking beyond its borders.
  • Starting in 2005, Russia began feeling comfortable enough with its domestic consolidation that it began to lay the groundwork for resurgence in its former Soviet states.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Berlin and Paris are far less worried about a strong Moscow than are Warsaw, Bucharest and other Central European capitals.
  • NATO breaks into three groups on this and other issues
  • the United States and its “Atlanticist” allies (such as the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom)
  • Core Europe wants to maintain its good relations with Russia and not provoke it with an alliance that is concentrating on rolling back Moscow’s control of its sphere of influence.
  • it is unclear what Russian participation in a NATO-wide BMD system — as was announced at the summit — really means
  • Core Europe (led by Germany and France)
  • the Central Europeans.
  • Washington pushed back against Moscow in several ways
  • First, it shored up its bilateral alliances in Central Europe via military supplies, new military bases and proposed BMD installations
  • The United States also attempted to solidify support for Georgia
  • Shifting tactics, both countries brokered an understanding that each had larger issues to focus on at the time, so the growing hostilities would be put on hold — at least temporarily.
  • At a loss for options, some Central Europeans — like Poland — shifted their stances and attempted to reach an understanding with Russia. Other Central Europeans have maintained hope that the United States soon will be able to refocus on Eurasia and support them once again.
  • So in essence, the disintegration of U.S.-Russian relations will divide the already-fracturing NATO even further.
  • NATO reached two main conclusions
  • First, it adopted the 2010 Strategic Concept. Second, it decided to build a NATO-wide BMD network and invited Russia to participate.
  • STRATFOR could spend a great deal of time going over the nearly 4,000-word Strategic Concept. But if a mission statement requires that many words, it probably means the mission is not easily stated or agreed upon.
  • Rogozin added that although the Strategic Concept leaves the possibility of further enlargement on the table via its Open Door policy, “this is furnished with the quite correct wording that these countries should meet the membership criteria.” One of the criteria, incidentally, is not having any territorial disputes — a requirement Moscow can certainly make sure Georgia can never fulfill.
  • NATO will not disappear. It is here to stay, if for no other reason than inertia.
  • First, sensing that Russia is no longer worried about NATO, the Central Europeans will start looking at bilateral agreements with the United States.
  • Second, other European countries will form agreements among themselves.
  • anonymous on 22 Nov 10
     
    "NATO leaders met in Lisbon on Nov. 19-20 to draft a new Strategic Concept - essentially a new mission statement for the alliance. The alliance is divided, however, particularly over the issue of how to handle Russia's renewed strength. This division has made it difficult for NATO to craft a Strategic Concept that effectively addresses all the issues the alliance currently faces, including the ongoing military operation in Afghanistan and what some NATO members see as a renewed threat from Russia." At StratFor on November 22, 2010.
anonymous

Empire and Social Spending - 0 views

fpwatch.blogspot.com/...mpire-and-social-spending.html

geopolitics military foreignpolicy

shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 10 - Cached
  • France, which spends more of its GDP on health care than any other European country, also spends a higher percentage than the rest of Europe on its military.
  • Britain's financial straits following the Second World War coincided with an expansion of the British welfare state that made imperial expenditures hard to maintain (though the British Empire was in its death throes in any case).
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Mar 10
       
      Another important difference is the rather unique situation of having your nation-proper repeatedly bombed whilst your ally (America) is working to secure the transfer of all Britain's Ports via the Lend-Lease agreement.
  • If a government is going to tax people heavily, those people had best feel as though they're getting something out of the bargain.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Mar 10
       
      A really big hole in this neocon logic is this: the example of Roosevelt during the Great Depression. WW2 gave us a showcase to build industrial momentum (free of direct threat, no less) after our muddled responses to the depression failed. Whether or not you view the creation of a truly heroic number of federal bodies as a good or bad thing, it would be foolish to argue that America has become *less* powerful since that time.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the idea that in order to have an empire (or be a "superpower" or an "indispensable nation" or whatever other euphemism you feel like using), a country must necessarily have a weak social safety net is worth exploring.
  • If people like Max Boot want the United States to remain a militarily-dominant superpower, it strikes me that they ought to counsel the development of a social contract that will encourage people to accept the concomitant financial sacrifices over the long term.
anonymous

Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...315_germany_mitteleuropa_redux

shared by anonymous on 16 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The global system is undergoing profound change. Three powers — Germany, Iran and China — face challenges forcing them to refashion the way they interact with their regions and the world. We will explore each of these three states in detail in our next three geopolitical weeklies, highlighting how STRATFOR’s assessments of these states are evolving.
  • German strategy in 1871, 1914 and 1939 called for pre-emptive strikes on France to prevent a two-front war.
  • They harnessed German capital and economic dynamism, submerged Germany into a larger economic entity, gave the Germans what they needed economically so they didn’t have to seek it militarily, and ensured that the Germans had no reason — or ability — to strike out on their own.
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  • STRATFOR has always doubted the euro would last. Having the same currency and monetary policy for rich, technocratic, capital-intensive economies like Germany as for poor, agrarian/manufacturing economies like Spain always seemed like asking for problems.
  • The resulting government debt load in Greece — which now exceeds annual Greek gross domestic product — will probably result in either a default (triggered by efforts to maintain such programs) or a social revolution (triggered by an effort to cut such programs). It is entirely possible that both will happen.
  • German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble on March 13 in which he essentially said that if Greece, or any other eurozone member, could not right their finances, they should be ejected from the eurozone. This really got our attention.
  • Back-of-the-envelope math indicates that in the past decade, Germany has gained roughly a 25 percent cost advantage over Club Med.
  • The implications of this are difficult to overstate. If the euro is essentially gutting the European — and again to a greater extent the Club Med — economic base, then Germany is achieving by stealth what it failed to achieve in the past thousand years of intra-European struggles.
  • It is not so much that STRATFOR now sees the euro as workable in the long run — we still don’t — it’s more that our assessment of the euro is shifting from the belief that it was a straightjacket for Germany to the belief that it is Germany’s springboard.
  • But this was not the “union” the rest of Europe signed up for — it is the Mitteleuropa that the rest of Europe will remember well.
anonymous

China's Military Buildup Stokes Regional Arms Race - 0 views

www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx

shared by anonymous on 16 Mar 10 - Cached
  • According to the latest data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), imports of major conventional arms by Indonesia rose by 84 percent in the two five-year periods. For Singapore, the increase was 146 percent. And Malaysia imported an astounding 722 percent more arms between 2005 and 2009 than it did during the previous five years. The large volume of weapons purchased by Singapore has resulted in that country becoming the first state in Southeast Asia to rank among the world's top 10 arms importers since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
  • Last year's stated figure was roughly $60 billion, a 17.6 percent increase over the previous year and more than a dozen times larger than the PRC's announced military budget for 1989.
  • The United States remains the world's largest arms exporter, with its $7 billion in annual military exports accounting for some 30 percent of all major conventional weapons sales during the last few years. Although Russia's share fell somewhat to 23 percent, it continues to occupy second place in global arms sales. Germany has advanced to the third-place position, with 11 percent, by doubling its weapons exports during the last five-year period. France is in fourth place, with 8 percent of all global arms sales. Britain's 4 percent share should rise after more of the 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft purchased by Saudi Arabia are delivered during the next few years.
anonymous

Germany: Looking for Bismarck - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...00325_germany_looking_bismarck

geopolitics military germany

shared by anonymous on 29 Mar 10 - Cached
  • According to the draft circulated on Thursday at the two-day EU heads of government summit, Greece would indeed be offered a financial aid package of around 22 billion euro, but only after Athens was no longer able to raise funds by selling its bonds in the international markets, and even then at above-market rates, entirely obviating the point of the bailout. That is akin to offering a homeowner, who is about to default on a mortgage, a refinancing offer that equals or increases his mortgage rates above the rate he already cannot pay.
  • The proposal may very well push Athens to pursue an International Monetary Fund package independent of the eurozone, which could be the intention of Berlin perhaps looking to wash its hands of the entire problem.
  • Germany essentially has a limited window of opportunity in the next 10 years to make or break its leadership of the European Union and therefore its claim to global relevancy. Germany’s birth rate is lower than all of the major European powers that surround it (France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden), while its population is significantly older than that of Poland.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The ultimate problem for Germany is that the moment the rest of Europe perceives that Berlin is looking out solely for its own national interests — such as when it refuses to put up money to save a eurozone member state — it ceases to be a viable European leader.
  • But the clock is ticking, and Europe’s demographic challenges are right around the corner. At that point, all of Europe will be so embroiled in domestic political, economic and social concerns that settling issues of leadership and power will be impossible, and that is if the EU even survives the coming crisis.
  • anonymous on 29 Mar 10
     
    The Geopolitical Diary entry (at StratFor) for March 26, 2010.
anonymous

Attention Whole Foods Shoppers - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...attention_whole_foods_shoppers

sustai sustainability contrarian longnow

shared by anonymous on 29 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
  • Yet 850 million people in poor countries were chronically undernourished before the 2008 price spike, and the number is even larger now, thanks in part to last year's global recession. This is the real food crisis we face.
  • Poverty -- caused by the low income productivity of farmers' labor -- is the primary source of hunger in Africa, and the problem is only getting worse. The number of "food insecure" people in Africa (those consuming less than 2,100 calories a day) will increase 30 percent over the next decade without significant reforms, to 645 million, the U.S. Agriculture Department projects.
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  • Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that "sustainable food" in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.
  • we need to de-romanticize our view of preindustrial food and farming. And that means learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural system we've developed in the West.
  • It's true that the story of the Green Revolution is not everywhere a happy one. When powerful new farming technologies are introduced into deeply unjust rural social systems, the poor tend to lose out.
  • Traditional food systems lacking in reliable refrigeration and sanitary packaging are dangerous vectors for diseases. Surveys over the past several decades by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that the U.S. food supply became steadily safer over time, thanks in part to the introduction of industrial-scale technical improvements.
  • The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last year published a study of 162 scientific papers from the past 50 years on the health benefits of organically grown foods and found no nutritional advantage over conventionally grown foods. According to the Mayo Clinic, "No conclusive evidence shows that organic food is more nutritious than is conventionally grown food."
  • Less than 1 percent of American cropland is under certified organic production. If the other 99 percent were to switch to organic and had to fertilize crops without any synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, that would require a lot more composted animal manure. To supply enough organic fertilizer, the U.S. cattle population would have to increase roughly fivefold. And because those animals would have to be raised organically on forage crops, much of the land in the lower 48 states would need to be converted to pasture. Organic field crops also have lower yields per hectare. If Europe tried to feed itself organically, it would need an additional 28 million hectares of cropland, equal to all of the remaining forest cover in France, Germany, Britain, and Denmark combined.
  • between 1990 and 2004, food production in these countries continued to increase (by 5 percent in volume), yet adverse environmental impacts were reduced in every category. The land area taken up by farming declined 4 percent, soil erosion from both wind and water fell, gross greenhouse gas emissions from farming declined 3 percent, and excessive nitrogen fertilizer use fell 17 percent. Biodiversity also improved, as increased numbers of crop varieties and livestock breeds came into use.
  • Foreign assistance to support agricultural improvements has a strong record of success, when undertaken with purpose. In the 1960s, international assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and donor governments led by the United States made Asia's original Green Revolution possible.
  • Development skeptics and farm modernization critics keep pushing us toward this unappealing second path. It's time for leaders with vision and political courage to push back.
  • anonymous on 29 Apr 10
     
    By Robert Paarlberg at Foreign Policy on May/June 2010. Hat tip from Modeled Behavior (http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/04/28/in-defense-of-the-industrial-farm-and-against-local-sustainable-and-organic/) - Printable, full version
anonymous

Europe: A Shifting Battleground, Part 1 | STRATFOR - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...e-shifting-battleground-part-1

shared by anonymous on 07 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Russia fundamentally opposes the system not because it threatens Moscow’s nuclear deterrent, but because it represents an entrenchment of U.S. forces near its buffer states — Ukraine and Belarus in particular.
  • The Central European corridor, comprising the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria — the so-called Intermarium Corridor — is emerging as the area of contention between Russia and U.S.-supported states in the region.
  • This transformation is the result of a two-step process.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The first step was the end of the Cold War, when Soviet Russia withdrew from its positions established by the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe, and former Communist European states — including the Baltic states, eventually — entered the NATO alliance.
  • The second step was Russia’s resurgence into its former Soviet sphere of influence, a process that gained momentum in 2005 and culminated with the formal reversal of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine at the beginning of 2010 as well as the integration of Belarus further into Russian structures.
  • The first step formally released Central Europe from Soviet control; the second step showed that Moscow’s withdrawal was temporary.
  • The next phase in Europe’s geopolitical evolution was Germany’s response to the first two changes.
  • The end of the Cold War also moved the U.S. focus eastward to the Central European NATO member states.
  • Germany and to a lesser extent other Western European powers, such as France and Italy, have a fundamentally different view of Moscow’s resurgence. Unlike the Intermarium Corridor countries, on which foreign powers are now making geopolitical moves as they were in Germany during the Cold War, Berlin is not troubled by Moscow’s resurgence.
  • “Intermarium” is a term borrowed from inter-war Polish leader Gen. Jozef Pilsudski, who understood that Germany and the Soviet Union would not be permanently weak.
  • His solution was to propose an alliance stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, encompassing countries west of the Carpathians.
  • this term is useful as a way to group together countries abutting Russia’s sphere of influence that are wary of Berlin’s relationship with Moscow. This essentially includes the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
  • Although the BMD plan was later reconfigured, that initial trade-off between Washington and Moscow showed the Intermarium that the United States would not hesitate to put its more immediate concerns in the Middle East ahead of long-term strategic reassurances to Central Europe.
  • The Intermarium countries are responding to this situation with two main strategies.
  • The first is to maintain U.S. engagement as much as possible. The second is to create regional political and/or military alliances independent of NATO that can serve as alternatives to the preferred strategy of U.S. engagement in the region.
  • While Washington is extricating its forces from Iraq, it is still heavily engaged in Afghanistan. Given these circumstances, the Intermarium countries are also turning to two regional alliances to build relationships with one another and with other actors similarly concerned with Russia’s resurgence and Germany’s acquiescence: the Visegrad Group (V4)
  • The V4 decided in May to form a Visegrad Battlegroup under Polish command by 2016. The actual capacities of this battlegroup are yet to be determined, but the decision shows very clearly that the V4 is evolving from a primarily political grouping to one that places security at the forefront of its mission.
  • anonymous on 07 Jun 11
     
    "Defense ministers from NATO members states will meet with Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on June 9 to discuss the ballistic missile defense (BMD) network that will be set up in Europe. BMD is just one way Central Europe is responding to geopolitical shifts in Europe that have created a strengthening German-Russian relationship as Russia resurges into its former Soviet sphere of influence."
anonymous

Visegrad: A New European Military Force | STRATFOR - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ad-new-european-military-force

shared by anonymous on 17 May 11 - No Cached
  • The Visegrad Group, or V4, consists of four countries — Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary — and is named after two 14th century meetings held in Visegrad Castle in present-day Hungary of leaders of the medieval kingdoms of Poland, Hungary and Bohemia.
  • The group was reconstituted in 1991 in post-Cold War Europe as the Visegrad Three (at that time, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were one).
  • On May 12, the Visegrad Group announced the formation of a “battle group” under the command of Poland. The battle group would be in place by 2016 as an independent force and would not be part of NATO command.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • First, they felt that the Russian threat had declined if not dissipated following the fall of the Soviet Union.
  • Second, they felt that their economic future was with the European Union.
  • Third, they believed that membership in NATO, with strong U.S. involvement, would protect their strategic interests.
  • Of late, their analysis has clearly been shifting.
  • First, Russia has changed dramatically since the Yeltsin years. It has increased its power in the former Soviet sphere of influence substantially
  • Second, the infatuation with Europe, while not gone, has frayed. The ongoing economic crisis, now focused again on Greece, has raised two questions: whether Europe as an entity is viable and whether the reforms proposed to stabilize Europe represent a solution for them or primarily for the Germans.
  • Finally, there are severe questions as to whether NATO provides a genuine umbrella of security to the region and its members. The NATO strategic concept, which was drawn up in November 2010, generated substantial concern on two scores. First, there was the question of the degree of American commitment to the region, considering that the document sought to expand the alliance’s role in non-European theaters of operation.
  • Second, the general weakness of European militaries meant that, willingness aside, the ability of the Europeans to participate in defending the region was questionable.
  • Germany’s commitment to both NATO and the EU has been fraying. The Germans and the French split on the Libya question, with Germany finally conceding politically but unwilling to send forces. Libya might well be remembered less for the fate of Moammar Gadhafi than for the fact that this was the first significant strategic break between Germany and France in decades.
  • There are strong political forces in Germany questioning the value of the EU to Germany, and with every new wave of financial crises requiring German money, that sentiment becomes stronger.
  • For all of the Visegrad countries, any sense of a growing German alienation from Europe and of a growing German-Russian economic relationship generates warning bells.
  • The Nordic countries share the same concerns as the Visegrad countries — the future course of Russian power, the cohesiveness of Europe and the commitment of the United States.
  • In the past, the Visegrad countries would have been loath to undertake anything that felt like a unilateral defense policy. Therefore, the decision to do this is significant in and of itself.
  • Poland is the largest of these countries by far and in the least advantageous geographical position. The Poles are trapped between the Germans and the Russians. Historically, when Germany gets close to Russia, Poland tends to suffer. It is not at that extreme point yet, but the Poles do understand the possibilities.
  • Some will say this is over-reading on my part or an overreaction on the part of the V4, but it is neither. For the V4, the battle group is a modest response to emerging patterns in the region, which STRATFOR had outlined in its 2011 Annual Forecast. As for my reading, I regard the new patterns not as a minor diversion from the main pattern but as a definitive break in the patterns of the post-Cold War world
  • We are in a new era, as yet unnamed, and we are seeing the first breaks in the post-Cold War pattern.
  • For the countries on the periphery, there is a perpetual sense of insecurity, generated not only by Russian power compared to their own but also by uncertainty as to whether the rest of Europe would be prepared to defend them in the event of Russian actions. The V4 and the other countries south of them are not as sanguine about Russian intentions as others farther away are. Perhaps they should be, but geopolitical realities drive consciousness and insecurity and distrust defines this region.
  • Pilsudski proposed an alliance stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and encompassing the countries to the west of the Carpathians — Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
  • An alliance with Ukraine would provide significant strategic depth. It is unlikely to happen. That means that the alliance must stretch south, to include Romania and Bulgaria. The low-level tension between Hungary and Romania over the status of Hungarians in Romania makes that difficult, but if the Hungarians can live with the Slovaks, they can live with the Romanians. Ultimately, the interesting question is whether Turkey can be persuaded to participate in this, but that is a question far removed from Turkish thinking now. History will have to evolve quite a bit for this to take place. For now, the question is Romania and Bulgaria.
  • the decision of the V4 to even propose a battle group commanded by Poles is one of those small events that I think will be regarded as a significant turning point. However we might try to trivialize it and place it in a familiar context, it doesn’t fit. It represents a new level of concern over an evolving reality — the power of Russia, the weakness of Europe and the fragmentation of NATO. This is the last thing the Visegrad countries wanted to do, but they have now done the last thing they wanted to do. That is what is significant.
  • anonymous on 17 May 11
     
    "With the Palestinians demonstrating and the International Monetary Fund in turmoil, it would seem odd to focus this week on something called the Visegrad Group. But this is not a frivolous choice. What the Visegrad Group decided to do last week will, I think, resonate for years, long after the alleged attempted rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn is forgotten and long before the Israeli-Palestinian issue is resolved. The obscurity of the decision to most people outside the region should not be allowed to obscure its importance. "
anonymous

Immaculate Intervention: The Wars of Humanitarianism - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ervention-wars-humanitarianism

shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Since World War II, a new class of war has emerged that we might call humanitarian wars — wars in which the combatants claim to be fighting neither for their national interest nor to impose any ideology, but rather to prevent inordinate human suffering.
  • In humanitarian wars, the intervention is designed both to be neutral and to protect potential victims on one side.
  • That no one intervened to prevent or stop these atrocities was seen as a moral failure. According to this ideology, the international community has an obligation to prevent such slaughter.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • In international wars, where the aggressor is trying to both kill large numbers of civilians and destroy the enemy’s right to national self-determination, this does not pose a significant intellectual problem.
  • In internal unrest and civil war, however, the challenge of the intervention is to protect human rights without undermining national sovereignty or the right of national self-determination.
  • I call humanitarian wars immaculate intervention, because most advocates want to see the outcome limited to preventing war crimes, not extended to include regime change or the imposition of alien values.
  • They want a war of immaculate intentions surgically limited to a singular end without other consequences. And this is where the doctrine of humanitarian war unravels.
  • What we are seeing in Libya is a classic slow escalation motivated by two factors.
  • The first is the hope that the leader of the country responsible for the bloodshed will capitulate.
  • The second is a genuine reluctance of intervening nations to spend excessive wealth or blood on a project they view in effect as charitable.
  • The expectation of capitulation in the case of Libya is made unlikely by another aspect of humanitarian war fighting, namely the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  • While a logical extension of humanitarian warfare — having intervened against atrocities, the perpetrators ought to be brought to justice — the effect is a prolongation of the war. The example of Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, who ended the Kosovo War with what he thought was a promise that he would not be prosecuted, undoubtedly is on Gadhafi’s mind.
  • But the war is also prolonged by the unwillingness of the intervening forces to inflict civilian casualties.
  • The application of minimal and insufficient force, combined with the unwillingness of people like Gadhafi and his equally guilty supporters to face The Hague, creates the framework for a long and inconclusive war in which the intervention in favor of humanitarian considerations turns into an intervention in a civil war on the side that opposes the regime.
  • It should be remembered that many of Libya’s opposition leaders are former senior officials of the Gadhafi government. They did not survive as long as they did in that regime without having themselves committed crimes, and without being prepared to commit more.
  • At some point, the interveners have the choice of walking away and leaving chaos, as the United States did in Somalia, or staying for a long time and fighting, as they did in Iraq.
  • Regardless of the United States’ other motivations in both conflicts, it would seem that those who favor humanitarian intervention would have favored the Iraq war. That they generally opposed the Iraq war from the beginning requires a return to the concept of immaculate intervention.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 05 Apr 11
       
      For those generally anti-war, this is a less-than-delightful realization, but (I think) jibes with reality more. However, former President Bush and his advisers established justification (WMD's) that affected both intentions and expectations from people on all sides of the debate. Notwithstanding the good intentions of those who advocate humanitarian wars, the effect can never be what is desired.
  • Hussein was a war criminal and a danger to his people. However, the American justification for intervention was not immaculate.
  • That it also had a humanitarian outcome — the destruction of the Hussein regime — made the American intervention inappropriate in the view of those who favor immaculate interventions for two reasons.
  • First, the humanitarian outcome was intended as part of a broader war.
  • Second, regardless of the fact that humanitarian interventions almost always result in regime change, the explicit intention to usurp Iraq’s national self-determination openly undermined in principle what the humanitarian interveners wanted to undermine only in practice.
  • for the humanitarian warrior, there are other political considerations.
  • In the case of the French, the contrast between their absolute opposition to Iraq and their aggressive desire to intervene in Libya needs to be explained. I suspect it will not be.
  • Perhaps it was about oil in this case, but Gadhafi was happily shipping oil to Europe, so intervening to ensure that it continues makes no sense.
  • Sometimes the lack of a persuasive reason for a war generates theories to fill the vacuum. In all humanitarian wars, there is a belief that the war could not be about humanitarian matters.
  • Therein lays the dilemma of humanitarian wars. They have a tendency to go far beyond the original intent behind them, as the interveners, trapped in the logic of humanitarian war, are drawn further in. Over time, the ideological zeal frays and the lack of national interest saps the intervener’s will.
  • My unease with humanitarian intervention is not that I don’t think the intent is good and the end moral. It is that the intent frequently gets lost and the moral end is not achieved. Ideology, like passion, fades. But interest has a certain enduring quality.
  • A doctrine of humanitarian warfare that demands an immaculate intervention will fail because the desire to do good is an insufficient basis for war.
  • In the end, the ultimate dishonesties of humanitarian war are the claims that “this won’t hurt much” and “it will be over fast.”
  • If you must go in, go in heavy, go in hard and get out fast. Humanitarian warfare says that you go in light, you go in soft and you stay there long.
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 11
     
    "There are wars in pursuit of interest. In these wars, nations pursue economic or strategic ends to protect the nation or expand its power. There are also wars of ideology, designed to spread some idea of "the good," whether this good is religious or secular. The two obviously can be intertwined, such that a war designed to spread an ideology also strengthens the interests of the nation spreading the ideology."
anonymous

Russia's Evolving Leadership - 4 views

www.stratfor.com/...04-russias-evolving-leadership

russia leadership geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 05 Jul 11 - Cached
  • In the past decade, one person has consolidated and run Russia’s political system: former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
  • Under Putin’s presidential predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s strategic economic assets were pillaged, the core strength of the country — the KGB, now known as the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the military — fell into decay, and the political system was in disarray. Though Russia was considered a democracy and a new friend to the West, this was only because Russia had no other option — it was a broken country.
  • While an autocrat and KGB agent (we use the present tense, as Putin has said that no one is a former KGB or FSB agent), he hails from St. Petersburg, Russia’s most pro-Western city, and during his Soviet-era KGB service he was tasked with stealing Western technology. Putin fully understands the strength of the West and what Western expertise is needed to keep Russia relatively modern and strong. At the same time, his time with the KGB convinced him that Russia can never truly be integrated into the West and that it can be strong only with a consolidated government, economy and security service and a single, autocratic leader.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • Putin’s understanding of Russia’s two great weaknesses informs this worldview.
  • The first weakness is that Russia was dealt a poor geographic hand.
  • The second is that its population is comprised of numerous ethnic groups, not all of which are happy with centralized Kremlin rule.
  • Russia essentially lacks an economic base aside from energy.
  • These geographic, demographic and economic challenges have led Russia to shift between being aggressive to keep the country secure and being accommodating toward foreign powers in a bid to modernize Russia.
  • However, Russia cannot go down the two paths of accommodating and connecting with the West and a consolidated authoritarian Russia at the same time unless Russia is first strong and secure as a country, something that has only happened recently.
  • Which face they show does not depend upon personalities but rather upon the status of Russia’s strength.
  • Putin, who had no choice but to appeal to the West to help keep the country afloat when he took office in 2000, initially was hailed as a trusted partner by the West. But even while former U.S. President George W. Bush was praising Putin’s soul, behind the scenes, Putin already was reorganizing one of his greatest tools — the FSB — in order to start implementing a full state consolidation in the coming years.
  • After 9/11, Putin was the first foreign leader to phone Bush and offer any assistance from Russia. The date marked an opportunity for both Putin and Russia. The attacks on the United States shifted Washington’s focus, tying it down in the Islamic world for the next decade. This gave Russia a window of opportunity with which to accelerate its crackdown inside (and later outside) Russia without fear of a Western response.
  • During this time, the Kremlin ejected foreign firms, nationalized strategic economic assets, shut down nongovernmental organizations, purged anti-Kremlin journalists, banned many anti-Kremlin political parties and launched a second intense war in Chechnya.
  • Western perceptions of Putin’s friendship and standing as a democratic leader simultaneously evaporated.
  • When Medvedev entered office, his current reputation for compliance and pragmatism did not exist. Instead, he continued on Russia’s roll forward with one of the boldest moves to date — the Russia-Georgia war.
  • By 2009, Russia had proven its power in its direct sphere and so began to ease into a new foreign and domestic policy of duality.
  • Only when Russia is strong and consolidated can it drop being wholly aggressive and adopt such a stance of hostility and friendliness.
  • With elections approaching, the ruling tandem seems even more at odds as Medvedev overturns many policies Putin put into place in the early 2000s, such as the ban on certain political parties, the ability of foreign firms to work in strategic sectors and the role of the FSB elite within the economy. Despite the apparent conflict, the changes are part of an overall strategy shared by Putin and Medvedev to finish consolidating Russian power.
  • These policy changes show that Putin and Medvedev feel confident enough that they have attained their first imperative that they can look to confront the second inherent problem for the country: Russia’s lack of modern technology and lack of an economic base
  • Russia thus has launched a multiyear modernization and privatization plan to bring in tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to leapfrog the country into current technology and diversify the economy. Moscow has also struck deals with select countries — Germany, France, Finland, Norway, South Korea and even the United States — for each sector to use the economic deals for political means.
  • two large problems
  • First, foreign governments and firms are hesitant to do business in an authoritarian country with a record of kicking foreign firms out.
  • At the same time, the Kremlin knows that it cannot lessen its hold inside of Russia without risking losing control over its first imperative of securing Russia.
  • The first move is to strengthen the ruling party — United Russia — while allowing more independent political parties.
  • While these new political parties appear to operate outside the Kremlin’s clutches, this is just for show. The most important new party is Russia’s Right Cause launched by Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov.
  • Right Cause is intended to support foreign business and the modernization efforts.
  • The Popular Front is not exactly a political party but an umbrella organization meant to unite the country. Popular Front members include Russia’s labor unions, prominent social organizations, economic lobbying sectors, big business, individuals and political parties. In short, anything or anyone that wants to be seen as pro-Russian is a part of the Popular Front.
  • It creates a system in which power in the country does not lie in a political office — such as the presidency or premiership — but with the person overseeing the Popular Front: Putin.
  • The new system is designed to have a dual foreign policy, to attract non-Russian groups back into the country and to look more democratic overall while all the while being carefully managed behind the scenes.
  • In theory, the new system is meant to allow the Kremlin to maintain control of both its grand strategies of needing to reach out abroad to keep Russia modern and strong and trying to ensure that the country is also under firm control and secure for years to come.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 06 Jul 11
       
      I would imagine that it seems that way to most Americans, but then we're tech-focused. We have a very hard time understanding that the only time Russia has ever felt geographically secure is *when* they're aggressive. This means upgrading tech, infrastructure, and social-glue all at the same time. Add: There are all those quotes from past leaders about feeling as though they had to expand their borders or influence just to feel secure at home. We Americans may as well be from Mars: We have two giant oceans and we culturally dominate our few neighbors with trade. This is why I agree with StratFor (read as: resignedly fear) that a confrontation with Russia is in the offing two decades hence. If they dominate central Asia and hold levers in Europe, as they are quite obviously trying to do, they will be perceived as a threat, and the U.S. is all too willing to help those who are afraid of Russia. All this strikes me as a prelude that we'll gloss over in future readings of the 'past'. But then, it's another case where I'm *begging* to be wrong.
  • anonymous on 05 Jul 11
     
    "Russia has entered election season, with parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections in March 2012. Typically, this is not an issue of concern, as most Russian elections have been designed to usher a chosen candidate and political party into office since 2000. Interesting shifts are under way this election season, however. While on the surface they may resemble political squabbles and instability, they actually represent the next step in the Russian leadership's consolidation of the state."
  • Erik Hanson on 06 Jul 11
     
    I get the security concern, but Putin has always seemed to overemphasize and overextend the issue into something bigger and more offensive. It seems to me that the infrastructure and tech needs are much more pressing and would yield more results.
  • Erik Hanson on 06 Jul 11
     
    There are still plenty of places where we're not willing to push back (the Polish Belorussian genocides being a prominent example in my mind), but you're right at how foreign that mindset is. Foreign or bizarrely 19th century.
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

Borderlands: Hungary Maneuvers - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...borderlands-hungary-maneuvers

shared by anonymous on 20 May 14 - No Cached
  • For me, Hungarian was my native language. Stickball was my culture. For my parents, Hungarian was their culture. Hungary was the place where they were young, and their youth was torn away from them.
  • For them, it was always the Germans who were guilty for unleashing the brutishness in the Hungarians.
  • This was my parents' view: Except for the Germans, the vastness of evil could not have existed. I was in no position to debate them.
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • This debate has re-entered history through Hungarian politics.
  • Some have accused Prime Minister Viktor Orban of trying to emulate a man named Miklos Horthy, who ruled Hungary before and during World War II.
  • It has become a metaphor for the country today, and Hungarians are divided with earnest passion on an old man long dead.
  • Adm. Miklos Horthy, a regent to a non-existent king and an admiral in the forgotten Austro-Hungarian navy, governed Hungary between 1920 and 1944.
  • Horthy ruled a country that was small and weak. Its population was 9.3 million in 1940. Horthy's goal was to preserve its sovereignty in the face of the rising power of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Caught between the two -- and by this I mean that both prized Hungary for its strategic position in the Carpathian Basin -- Hungary had few options.
  • Horthy's strategy meant a great deal to the Jews. He was likely no more anti-Semitic than any member of his class had to be. He might not hire a Jew, but he wasn't going to kill one. This was different from the new style of anti-Semitism introduced by Hitler, which required mass murder.
  • Thousands were killed early on, and anti-Jewish laws were passed. But thousands are not hundreds of thousands or millions, and in that time and place it was a huge distinction.
  • Horthy conceded no more than he had to, but what he had to do he did. Some say it was opportunism, others mere cowardice of chance. Whatever it was, while it lasted, Hungary was not like Poland or even France. The Jews were not handed over to the Germans.
  • Horthy fell from his tightrope on March 19, 1944. Realizing Germany was losing the war, Horthy made peace overtures to the Soviets. They were coming anyway, so he might as well welcome them.
  • Hitler, of course, discovered this and occupied Hungary
  • Horthy signed off on this. But that signature, as he pointed out, was meaningless. The Germans were there, they could do as they wanted, and his signature was a meaningless act that spared his sons' lives.
  • My parents were grateful to Horthy. For them, without him, the Holocaust would have come to Hungary years earlier. He did not crush the Hungarian Nazis, but he kept them at bay. He did not turn on Hitler, but he kept him at bay.
  • What Horthy did was the dirty work of decency.
  • He made deals with devils to keep the worst things from happening.
  • Hungary is in a very different position today, but its circumstances still bear similarities to Horthy's time.
  • This is the old argument about Horthy, and in fact, in Hungary there is a raging argument about Horthy's role that is really about Orban. Is Orban, like Horthy, doing the least he can to avoid a worse catastrophe, or is he secretly encouraging Jobbik and hastening disaster?
  • This discussion, like all discussions regarding Budapest, is framed by the tenuous position of Hungary in the world.
  • Orban sees the European Union as a massive failure. The great depression in Mediterranean Europe, contrasted with German prosperity, is simply the repeat of an old game.
  • Hungary is in the east, in the borderland between the European Peninsula and Russia. The Ukrainian crisis indicates that the tension in the region is nearing a flashpoint. He must guide Hungary somewhere.
  • There is little support from Hungary's west, other than mostly hollow warnings. He knows that the Germans will not risk their prosperity to help stabilize the Hungarian economy or its strategic position.
  • Nor does he expect the Americans to arrive suddenly and save the day.
  • The Ukrainian crisis can only be understood in terms of the failure of the European Union. Germany is doing well, but it isn't particularly willing to take risks. The rest of northern Europe has experienced significant unemployment, but it is Mediterranean Europe that has been devastated by unemployment. The European financial crisis has morphed into the European social crisis, and that social crisis has political consequences.
  • The middle class, and those who thought they would rise to the middle class, have been most affected.
  • The contrast between the euphoric promises of the European Union and the more meager realities has created movements that are challenging not only membership in the European Union but also the principle of the bloc
  • Compound this with the re-emergence of a Russian threat to the east, and everyone on Ukraine's border begins asking who is coming to help them. The fragmentation of Europe nationally and socially weakens Europe to the point of irrelevance. This is where the failure of the European Union and the hollowing out of NATO become important. Europe has failed economically. If it also fails militarily, then what does it all matter? Europe is back where it started, and so is Hungary.
  • Orban is a rare political leader in Europe. He is quite popular, but he is in a balancing act.
  • To his left are the Europeanists, who see all his actions as a repudiation of liberal democracy. On the right is a fascist party that won 20 percent in the last election. Between these two forces, Hungary could tear itself apart. It is in precisely this situation that Weimar Germany failed.
  • Orban knows what Horthy did as well. Hungary, going up against both Germany and Russia, needs to be very subtle. Hungary is already facing Germany's policy toward liberal integration within the European Union, which fundamentally contradicts Hungary's concept of an independent state economy.
  • Orban's strategy is to create an economy with maximum distance from Europe without breaking with it, and one in which the state exerts its power.
  • This is not what the Germans want to see.
  • I think Orban anticipated this as he saw the European Union flounder earlier in the decade. He saw the fragmentation and the rise of bitterness on all sides. He constructed a regime that appalled the left, which thought that without Orban, it would all return to the way it was before, rather than realizing that it might open the door to the further right. He constructed a regime that would limit the right's sense of exclusion without giving it real power.
  • if the United States enters the fray, it will not happen soon, and it will be even later before its role is decisive.
  • For Horthy, the international pressure finally overwhelmed him, and the German occupation led to a catastrophe that unleashed the right, devastated the Jews and led to a Russian invasion and occupation that lasted half a century. But how many lives did Horthy save by collaborating with Germany? He bought time, if nothing else.
  • Orban isn't Horthy by any means, but their situations are similar. Hungary is a country of enormous cultivation and fury. It is surrounded by disappointments that can become dangers. Europe is not what it promised it would be. Russia is not what Europeans expected it to be. Within and without the country, the best Orban can do is balance, and those who balance survive but are frequently reviled.
  • anonymous on 20 May 14
     
    "I am writing this from Budapest, the city in which I was born. I went to the United States so young that all my memories of Hungary were acquired later in life or through my family, whose memories bridged both world wars and the Cold War, all with their attendant horrors. My own deepest memory of Hungary comes from my parents' living room in the Bronx. My older sister was married in November 1956. There was an uprising against the Soviets at the same time, and many of our family members were still there. After the wedding, we returned home and saw the early newspapers and reports on television. My parents discovered that some of the heaviest fighting between the revolutionaries and Soviets had taken place on the street where my aunts lived. A joyous marriage, followed by another catastrophe -- the contrast between America and Hungary. That night, my father asked no one in particular, "Does it ever end?" The answer is no, not here. Which is why I am back in Budapest."
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.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • 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

Turkey's Geographical Ambition - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...urkeys-geographical-ambition-0

shared by anonymous on 12 Aug 14 - Cached
  • Erdogan knows that Turkey must become a substantial power in the Near East in order to give him leverage in Europe. Erdogan's problem is that Turkey's geography between East and West contains as many vulnerabilities as it does benefits. This makes Erdogan at times overreach. But there is a historical and geographical logic to his excesses.
  • Because Ottoman Turkey was on the losing side of that war (along with Wilhelmine Germany and Hapsburg Austria), the victorious allies in the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 carved up Turkey and its environs, giving territory and zones of influence to Greece, Armenia, Italy, Britain and France.
  • Turkey's reaction to this humiliation was Kemalism, the philosophy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the surname "Ataturk" means "Father of the Turks"), the only undefeated Ottoman general, who would lead a military revolt against the new occupying powers and thus create a sovereign Turkish state throughout the Anatolian heartland.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Gone, in fact, was the entire multicultural edifice of the Ottoman Empire.
  • Kemalism not only rejected minorities, it rejected the Arabic script of the Turkish language.
  • Kemalism was a call to arms: the martial Turkish reaction to the Treaty of Sevres, to the same degree that Putin's neo-czarism was the authoritarian reaction to Boris Yeltsin's anarchy of 1990s Russia.
  • The problem was that Ataturk's vision of orienting Turkey so firmly to the West clashed with Turkey's geographic situation, one that straddled both West and East. An adjustment was in order. Turgut Ozal, a religious Turk with Sufi tendencies who was elected prime minister in 1983, provided it.
  • In Ozal's mind, Turkey did not have to choose between East and West. It was geographically enshrined in both and should thus politically embody both worlds. Ozal made Islam publicly respected again in Turkey, even as he enthusiastically supported U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the last phase of the Cold War.
  • Ozal used the cultural language of Islam to open the door to an acceptance of the Kurds.
  • there were many permutations in Islamic political thought and politics in Turkey between Ozal and Erdogan, but one thing stands clear: Both Ozal and Erdogan were like two bookends of the period.
  • Remember that in the interpretation of one of the West's greatest scholars of Islam, the late Marshall G.S. Hodgson of the University of Chicago, the Islamic faith was originally a merchants' religion, which united followers from oasis to oasis, allowing for ethical dealing.
  • In Islamic history, authentic religious connections across the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world could -- and did -- lead to wholesome business connections and political patronage. Thus is medievalism altogether relevant to the post-modern world.
  • Turkey may be trying its best to increase trade with its eastern neighbors, but it still does not come close to Turkey's large trade volumes with Europe, now mired in recession.
  • The root of the problem is partly geographic.
  • Turkey constitutes a bastion of mountains and plateau, inhabiting the half-island of the Anatolian land bridge between the Balkans and the Middle East. It is plainly not integral to a place like Iraq, for example, in the way that Iran is; and its Turkic language no longer enjoys the benefit of the Arabic script, which might give it more cultural leverage elsewhere in the Levant. But most important, Turkey is itself bedeviled by its own Kurdish population, complicating its attempts to exert leverage in neighboring Middle Eastern states.
  • The de facto breakup of Iraq has forced Turkey to follow a policy of constructive containment with Iraq's Kurdish north, but that has undermined Turkey's leverage in the rest of Iraq -- thus, in turn, undermining Turkey's attempts to influence Iran.
  • Turkey wants to influence the Middle East, but the problem is that it remains too much a part of the Middle East to extricate itself from the region's complexities.
  • Erdogan knows that he must partially solve the Kurdish problem at home in order to gain further leverage in the region. He has even mentioned aloud the Arabic word, vilayet, associated with the Ottoman Empire. This word denotes a semi-autonomous province -- a concept that might hold the key for an accommodation with local Kurds but could well reignite his own nationalist rivals within Turkey.
  • anonymous on 12 Aug 14
     
    "At a time when Europe and other parts of the world are governed by forgettable mediocrities, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister for a decade now, seethes with ambition. Perhaps the only other leader of a major world nation who emanates such a dynamic force field around him is Russia's Vladimir Putin, with whom the West is also supremely uncomfortable."
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