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anonymous

Dispatch: German-Russian Security Cooperation - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...n-russian-security-cooperation

geopolitics russia germany

shared by anonymous on 13 Jun 11 - Cached
  • Russia and Germany are currently negotiating a potentially new institution within the European Union. It is the European Union and Russia Security and Political Committee. The actual organization — its name and its purpose — is quite vague. But what is clear is it would introduce Russia to the political and security decision-making of the European Union.
  • What’s interesting to watch is to what extent Germany is actually aligning itself with Russian interests on this specific issue. This is because Berlin doesn’t really care how the Transdniestria issue plays out in the region. What it does care about is to be able to prove to the rest of Europe that it can in fact control Russia, that it can in fact bring Russia to the table, and then once at the table Berlin can get Moscow to give some sort of conciliatory gestures towards the rest of Europe.
  • anonymous on 13 Jun 11
     
    "Analyst Marko Papic looks at the strategies Berlin may use to facilitate greater security collaboration between Germany and Russia without the input of the United States."
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

Beyond the Post-Cold War World - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...beyond-post-cold-war-world

shared by anonymous on 07 Apr 13 - Cached
  • An era ended when the Soviet Union collapsed on Dec. 31, 1991. The confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union defined the Cold War period. The collapse of Europe framed that confrontation.
  • Three things defined the post-Cold War world.
  • The first was U.S. power. The second was the rise of China as the center of global industrial growth based on low wages. The third was the re-emergence of Europe as a massive, integrated economic power.
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • Meanwhile, Russia, the main remnant of the Soviet Union, reeled while Japan shifted to a dramatically different economic mode.
  • The post-Cold War world had two phases. The first lasted from Dec. 31, 1991, until Sept. 11, 2001. The second lasted from 9/11 until now.
  • The initial phase of the post-Cold War world was built on two assumptions.
  • The first assumption was that the United States was the dominant political and military power but that such power was less significant than before, since economics was the new focus. The second phase still revolved around the three Great Powers -- the United States, China and Europe -- but involved a major shift in the worldview of the United States, which then assumed that pre-eminence included the power to reshape the Islamic world through military action while China and Europe single-mindedly focused on economic matters. 
  • In this new era, Europe is reeling economically and is divided politically.
  • Nothing is as it was in 1991.
  • Europe primarily defined itself as an economic power, with sovereignty largely retained by its members but shaped by the rule of the European Union. Europe tried to have it all: economic integration and individual states. But now this untenable idea has reached its end and Europe is fragmenting.
  • Germany wants to retain the European Union to protect German trade interests and because Berlin properly fears the political consequences of a fragmented Europe.
  • But as the creditor of last resort, Germany also wants to control the economic behavior of the EU nation-states.
  • In the indebted peripheral region, Cyprus has been treated with particular economic savagery as part of the bailout process. Certainly, the Cypriots acted irresponsibly. But that label applies to all of the EU members, including Germany, who created an economic plant so vast that it could not begin to consume what it produces -- making the country utterly dependent on the willingness of others to buy German goods.
  • There are thus many kinds of irresponsibility.
  • Europe can no longer afford pride, and it is every nation for itself. Cyprus set the precedent that the weak will be crushed. It serves as a lesson to other weakening nations, a lesson that over time will transform the European idea of integration and sovereignty.
  • In such an environment, sovereignty becomes sanctuary.
  • Authoritarian nationalism is an old European cure-all, one that is re-emerging, since no one wants to be the next Cyprus.
  • Leaving aside all the specific arguments, extraordinarily rapid growth in an export-oriented economy requires economic health among its customers.
  • It is nice to imagine expanded domestic demand, but in a country as impoverished as China, increasing demand requires revolutionizing life in the interior. China has tried this many times. It has never worked, and in any case China certainly couldn't make it work in the time needed.
  • Instead, Beijing is maintaining growth by slashing profit margins on exports.
  • It is interesting to recall the extravagant claims about the future of Japan in the 1980s. Awestruck by growth rates, Westerners did not see the hollowing out of the financial system as growth rates were sustained by cutting prices and profits. Japan's miracle seemed to be eternal. It wasn't, and neither is China's. And China has a problem that Japan didn't: a billion impoverished people. Japan exists, but behaves differently than it did before; the same is happening to China.
  • Both Europe and China thought about the world in the post-Cold War period similarly. Each believed that geopolitical questions and even questions of domestic politics could be suppressed and sometimes even ignored.
  • They believed this because they both thought they had entered a period of permanent prosperity.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Apr 13
       
      See also: All those 1990's op-eds about "the end of history" which now seem so completely ludicrious that it's hard for me to believe that so many Americans and Europeans ever bought it.
  • Periods of prosperity, of course, always alternate with periods of austerity, and now history has caught up with Europe and China.
  • And the United States has emerged from the post-Cold War period with one towering lesson: However attractive military intervention is, it always looks easier at the beginning than at the end.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Apr 13
       
      You think?
  • The greatest military power in the world has the ability to defeat armies. But it is far more difficult to reshape societies in America's image.
  • A Great Power manages the routine matters of the world not through military intervention, but through manipulating the balance of power.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Apr 13
       
      This is where I start to sound like a broken record: American civic perception is wildly at odds with MANY of the realities of international relations.
  • The United States has emerged into the new period with what is still the largest economy in the world with the fewest economic problems of the three pillars of the post-Cold War world. It has also emerged with the greatest military power.
  • But it has emerged far more mature and cautious than it entered the period. There are new phases in history, but not new world orders.
  • Eras unfold in strange ways until you suddenly realize they are over.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Apr 13
       
      This is so curt and quotable and (I think) so true. Like John Green says, one non-revolution leads to another until... well, you realize you HAD a revolution. :)
  • Now, we are at a point where the post-Cold War model no longer explains the behavior of the world. We are thus entering a new era. I don't have a good buzzword for the phase we're entering, since most periods are given a label in hindsight.
  • But already there are several defining characteristics to this era we can identify.
  • First, the United States remains the world's dominant power in all dimensions. It will act with caution, however, recognizing the crucial difference between pre-eminence and omnipotence.
  • Second, Europe is returning to its normal condition of multiple competing nation-states. While Germany will dream of a Europe in which it can write the budgets of lesser states, the EU nation-states will look at Cyprus and choose default before losing sovereignty.
  • Third, Russia is re-emerging. As the European Peninsula fragments, the Russians will do what they always do: fish in muddy waters.
  • The deals they are making, of which this is a small sample, are not in their economic interests, but they increase Moscow's political influence substantially. 
  • Fourth, China is becoming self-absorbed in trying to manage its new economic realities.
  • And fifth, a host of new countries will emerge to supplement China as the world's low-wage, high-growth epicenter. Latin America, Africa and less-developed parts of Southeast Asia are all emerging as contenders
  • There is a paradox in all of this. While the United States has committed many errors, the fragmentation of Europe and the weakening of China mean the United States emerges more powerful, since power is relative.
  • It was said that the post-Cold War world was America's time of dominance. I would argue that it was the preface of U.S. dominance.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 07 Apr 13
       
      This is a hard sell to many Americans (and others) that don't have the benefit of hindsight to guide their judgements. Of course, I'm a bit of StratFor buff and so trust George & company on this, but there are plenty of aspects to explore and debate. I hope to do both with my readers in the coming years.
  • Its two great counterbalances are losing their ability to counter U.S. power because they mistakenly believed that real power was economic power. The United States had combined power -- economic, political and military -- and that allowed it to maintain its overall power when economic power faltered. 
  • A fragmented Europe has no chance at balancing the United States.
  • And while China is reaching for military power, it will take many years to produce the kind of power that is global, and it can do so only if its economy allows it to. The United States defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War because of its balanced power. Europe and China defeated themselves because they placed all their chips on economics. And now we enter the new era.
  • anonymous on 07 Apr 13
     
    "Many shifts in the international system accompanied the end of the Cold War. In fact, 1991 was an extraordinary and defining year. The Japanese economic miracle ended. China after Tiananmen Square inherited Japan's place as a rapidly growing, export-based economy, one defined by the continued pre-eminence of the Chinese Communist Party. The Maastricht Treaty was formulated, creating the structure of the subsequent European Union. A vast coalition dominated by the United States reversed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait."
anonymous

Was Hitler Really a Fan of Gun Control? - 0 views

www.motherjones.com/...hitler-stalin-gun-control

shared by anonymous on 11 Jan 13 - Cached
  • Gun enthusiasts often mention that the Soviet Union restricted access to guns in 1929 after Joseph Stalin rose to power. But to suggest that a better armed Russian populace would have overthrown the Bolsheviks is also too simplistic, says Spitzer. "To answer the question of the relationship between guns and the revolutions in those nations is to study the comparative politics and comparative history of those nations," he explains. "It takes some analysis to break this down and explain it, and that's often not amenable to a sound byte or a headline."
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Jan 13
       
      That's what's stuck in my mind the last week. Do militia members really think they're some bulwark against the nation that spends more on national defense than the next 12 nations combined? If America becomes some Orwellian police state, it will have nothing to do with gun laws. We have the most effective vanguard fighting force in *history* and I think it can manage it's home turf pretty well when it continues to field materials all over the fucking world.
  • Even if President Obama suddenly unleashes his inner totalitarian, there's no chance he could successfully round up all of America's 300 million-plus firearms. Such an idea is practically and politically impossible. A tough assault weapons ban like one Democrats are currently proposing would affect just a fraction of the total privately owned firearms in the country. Yet by invoking the historical threat of disarmament, Spitzer says, "the gun lobby has worked to throw a scare into gun owners in order to rally them to the side of the NRA."
  • anonymous on 11 Jan 13
     
    ""But guns didn't play a particularly important part in any event," says Robert Spitzer, who chairs SUNY-Cortland's political science department and has extensively researched gun control politics. Gun ownership in Germany after World War I, even among Nazi Party members, was never widespread enough for a serious civilian resistance to the Nazis to have been anything more than a Tarantino revenge fantasy. If Jews had been better armed, Spitzer says, it would only have hastened their demise. Gun policy "wasn't the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group.""
anonymous

NATO's Lack of a Strategic Concept - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...1_natos_lack_strategic_concept

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • The gravity of the Soviet threat and the devastation of continental Europe after World War II left the European NATO allies beholden to the United States for defense. Any hope of deterring an ambitious USSR resided in Washington and its nuclear arsenal.
  • the Soviets were confident enough throughout the Cold War to maintain a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons in the belief that their conventional advantage in armor would yield quick results. NATO simply did not have that luxury.
  • Three major developments changed how different alliance members formulate their threat perception.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • First, 9/11 brought home the reality of the threat represented by militant Islamists.
  • Second, NATO’s enlargement to the Baltic states combined with the pro-Western Georgian and Ukrainian color revolutions — all occurring in a one-year period between the end of 2003 and end of 2004 — jarred Moscow into a resurgence that has altered the threat environment for Central Europe.
  • When the United States does fully reawaken to the Russian resurgence, it will find that only a portion of NATO shares a similar view of Russia.
  • Third, Europe’s severe economic crisis has made Germany’s emergence as the political leader of Europe plain to all.
  • Central Europeans are nervously watching as Paris and Berlin draw closer to Moscow while committed Atlanticists — Western European countries traditionally suspicious of a powerful Germany — such as Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom want to reaffirm their trans-Atlantic security links with the United States in light of a new, more assertive, Germany.
  • The United States launched proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam largely to demonstrate unequivocally to European governments — and the Kremlin — that the United States was willing to bleed in far corners of the planet for its allies. U.S. troops stationed in West Germany, some of whom were in immediate danger of being cut off in West Berlin, served to demonstrate U.S. resolve against Soviet armor poised on the North European Plain and just to the east of the Fulda Gap in Hesse. Recent years have not seen a reaffirmation of such resolve, but rather the opposite when the United States — and NATO — failed to respond to the Russian military intervention in Georgia, a committed NATO aspirant though not a member. This was due not only to a lack of U.S. forces but also to Germany’s and France’s refusal to risk their relationships with Russia over Georgia.
  • The disparate threat environment is grafted on to a membership pool that can be broadly split into three categories: the United States, Canada and committed European Atlanticists (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark)
  • Led by the United States, Atlanticists want the alliance oriented toward non-European theaters of operation (e.g., Afghanistan) and non-traditional security threats (think cybersecurity, terrorism, etc.); an increase of commitments from Core Europeans in terms of defense spending; and a reformed decision-making system that eliminates a single-member veto in some situations while allowing the NATO secretary-general to have predetermined powers to act without authorization in others.
  • Led by Germany and France, Core Europe wants more controls and parameters predetermined for non-European deployments (so that it can limit such deployments); a leaner and more efficient alliance (in other words, the freedom to cut defense spending when few are actually spending at the two percent gross domestic product mandated by the alliance); and more cooperation and balance with Russia and more consultations with international organizations like the United Nations (to limit the ability of the United States to go it alone without multilateral approval).
  • The Central Europeans ultimately want NATO to reaffirm Article 5 both rhetorically and via military exercises (if not the stationing of troops); commitment to the European theater and conventional threats specifically (in opposition to the Atlanticists’ non-European focus); and mention of Russia in the new Strategic Concept as a power whose motives cannot be trusted (in opposition of Core European pro-Russian attitudes).
  • The problem with NATO today, and for NATO in the next decade, is that different member states view different threats through different prisms of national interest. Russian tanks concern only roughly a third of member states — the Intermarum states — while the rest of the alliance is split between Atlanticists looking to strengthen the alliance for new threats and non-European theaters of operations and the so-called “Old Europe” that looks to commit as few soldiers and resources as possible toward either set of goals in the next 10 years.
  • Without that looming threat, other matters — other differences — begin to fracture the alliance.
  • During the Cold War, NATO was a military alliance with a clear adversary and purpose. Today, it is becoming a group of friendly countries with interoperability standards that will facilitate the creation of “coalitions of the willing” on an ad-hoc basis and of a discussion forum.
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 10
     
    "Twenty-eight heads of state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will meet in Lisbon on Nov. 20 to approve a new "Strategic Concept," the alliance's mission statement for the next decade. This will be NATO's third Strategic Concept since the Cold War ended. The last two came in 1991 - as the Soviet Union was collapsing - and 1999 - as NATO intervened in Yugoslavia, undertaking its first serious military engagement." By Marko Papic at StratFor on October 12, 2010.
anonymous

Ireland Refuses EU Bailout - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...116_ireland_refuses_eu_bailout

geopolitics europe ireland

shared by anonymous on 17 Nov 10 - Cached
  • where the Greeks begged for a bailout earlier this year and then railed (and continue to rail) against the budget cuts they are being forced to abide by to maintain the intravenous drip of euros, the Irish are already nearly two years into a self-imposed austerity, all without any serious protests or strikes. 

  • Few argue that Germany is the economic center weight of the union, with every significant member-state counting Germany as its single largest trading partner. But not Ireland. Ireland is dependent upon Germany for a smaller proportion of its economic well being than any other state in the union, trading about twice as much with the United States or the United Kingdom than it does with Germany.
  • Ireland has — twice — voted down EU treaties, and in the aftermath been immune to the political pressure emanating from Paris and Berlin.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Berlin’s goal is pretty clear, so clear that a key architect of the Greek bailout — Christian Democratic Union lawmaker Michael Meister — has emphatically noted that not only is an Irish bailout inevitable, but one condition for it will be the alteration of Ireland’s corporate tax structure to something more in line with European norms.
  • What STRATFOR finds the most interesting about this is that Ireland is no longer alone in resisting Germany’s rising strength: There are now glimmers of recognition across Europe that the Germans are attempting to use their dominant economic position to rewire the European Union more to their liking.
  • anonymous on 17 Nov 10
     
    "Financial markets roiled Tuesday on rumors - often reported as news - that the European Union (EU) was about to issue a second bailout, this time to Ireland. In a curious twist of events, the rumors of a bailout didn't start in Dublin, but in Berlin. And the denials of those rumors came from the Irish themselves. The Irish government went on to emphasize that Dublin had not only not asked for a bailout, but that Irish officials at Tuesday's meeting of EU finance ministers went with the explicit goal of convincing everyone that such a bailout was not needed. After several years of everyone from banks to airlines to construction firms to Greece asking for a bailout, it's a little odd to have a state refuse one so emphatically." At StratFor on November 17, 2010.
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

Portfolio: Eurozone's Future To Rely Heavily On Germany - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...es-future-rely-heavily-germany

geopolitics germany

shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 11 - Cached
  • When the euro came into existence it granted unlimited volumes of cheap capital to states that had no history of having access to moderately priced capital whatsoever.
  • The result was a series of sovereign debt crises as the debt ballooned beyond the ability of these states to pay.
  • Normal bailouts share two characteristics.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • First, the terms are normally onerous.
  • Second, a bailout is only appropriate if the entity that you’re bailing out can’t in time repair its finances and get back in working order.
  • Neither of these conditions really apply to the weaker states in Europe.
  • First, the conditions of the European Financial Stability Fund, the ESFS, that’s the bailout program, are really not all that tough.
  • Second, many of the states under bailout or who have been flirting with bailouts simply do not have long-term income potential.
  • the Germans simply have not wanted to permanently take on responsibility for these weak states that can’t grow on their own.
  • But on July 21 the Germans made a decision that they were going to back the eurozone to the hilt. It all comes down to the way they changed the way that the ESFS works.
  • First, the ESFS no longer has to go back the Council of Ministers to get permission for a bailout
  • Second, the ESFS can really take any action it deems fit.
  • Germany’s commitment to this new program means that for us, the eurozone crisis is over. But there are two things you must keep in mind.
  • First is why did Germany change its mind?
  • Finally, European banks are some of the most unhealthy in the world
  • anonymous on 30 Jul 11
     
    Vice President of Analysis Peter Zeihan explains how the German redesign of the European Financial Stability Fund will secure its influence over the financially troubled states of Europe.
anonymous

Seeking the Future of Europe in the Ancient Hanseatic League - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...urope-ancient-hanseatic-league

shared by anonymous on 11 Dec 14 - Cached
  • anonymous on 11 Dec 14
     
    "A bargain, forged in the fires of 2012's economic emergency, has defined the European Union for the past two years. It was an agreement made between two sides that can be defined in several terms - the center and the periphery, the north and the south, the producers and the consumers - but essentially one side, led by Germany, provided finance, while the other, fronted by Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece, promised change. In order to gauge this arrangement's chances of ultimately succeeding, it is important to understand what Germany was hoping to achieve with its conditional financing. The answer to that question lies in Germany's own history. "
anonymous

Questions Surround the Netherlands' Future - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ns-surround-netherlands-future

shared by anonymous on 19 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • In light of its economic problems and its leadership's waning popularity, the Netherlands will likely soften austerity measures in the short- and medium-term. In May, the European Commission gave The Hague permission to miss its deficit target for 2013. The country will probably fail to meet the required EU deficit goals again in 2014 -- the Dutch government has become increasingly worried about the negative effects of expedited spending cuts. While the European Commission is likely to pressure The Netherlands to implement additional spending cuts, it probably will not punish the country when it does not comply with those demands.
  • This goes beyond austerity measures; the Dutch parliament is currently assessing its broader relationship with the European Union. In a document released in June, the Dutch Cabinet indicated that no additional concessions of sovereignty should be made to supranational institutions, and that The Hague should keep as many of its own prerogatives as possible.
  • Because of its physical location in Europe, the Netherlands keeps strong political and economic ties with France and Germany. The Dutch will avoid any meaningful policy decisions until after Germans elections, which are scheduled for late September. The Hague will not openly criticize Berlin or Brussels as Paris has, but it will pursue a more independent fiscal policy by relaxing austerity at home in order to avoid a further drop in popular support.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Regardless of who governs Germany after September, in the short term Europeans will have to debate measures to reactivate financing for small- and medium-sized companies to try to stimulate economic growth and create new jobs.
  • In the long term, Germany and France will have to begin discussions for reforming European treaties. EU institutions and member states simply are reaching the limits of what they can do in the bloc's current institutional framework.
  • Both negotiations will force the Netherlands to define its position in Europe. As a country that traditionally relies on trade, the Netherlands will support any measure that protects the European free trade agreements -- which means that The Hague will not opt out of the European Union.
  • anonymous on 19 Jul 13
     
    "In a new indication that the economic crisis has reached the eurozone's core countries, the Dutch statistics office announced today that seasonally adjusted unemployment reached 8.5 percent in June, up from 6.3 percent the previous year. Clearly the EU unemployment crisis is far from over, and the bloc's structural weaknesses continue to affect even Europe's politically and economically stable nations."
anonymous

This Is the Man Bill Gates Thinks You Absolutely Should Be Reading - 0 views

www.wired.com/...vaclav-smil-wired

shared by anonymous on 25 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Let’s talk about manufacturing. You say a country that stops doing mass manufacturing falls apart. Why? In every society, manufacturing builds the lower middle class. If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks.
  • You also say that manufacturing is crucial to innovation. Most innovation is not done by research institutes and national laboratories. It comes from manufacturing—from companies that want to extend their product reach, improve their costs, increase their returns. What’s very important is in-house research. Innovation usually arises from somebody taking a product already in production and making it better: better glass, better aluminum, a better chip. Innovation always starts with a product.
  • American companies do still innovate, though. They just outsource the manufacturing. What’s wrong with that? Look at the crown jewel of Boeing now, the 787 Dreamliner. The plane had so many problems—it was like three years late. And why? Because large parts of it were subcontracted around the world. The 787 is not a plane made in the USA; it’s a plane assembled in the USA. They subcontracted composite materials to Italians and batteries to the Japanese, and the batteries started to burn in-flight. The quality control is not there.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Restoring manufacturing would mean training Americans again to build things. Only two countries have done this well: Germany and Switzerland. They’ve both maintained strong manufacturing sectors and they share a key thing: Kids go into apprentice programs at age 14 or 15. You spend a few years, depending on the skill, and you can make BMWs. And because you started young and learned from the older people, your products can’t be matched in quality. This is where it all starts.
  • You claim Apple could assemble the iPhone in the US and still make a huge profit. It’s no secret! Apple has tremendous profit margins. They could easily do everything at home. The iPhone isn’t manufactured in China—it’s assembled in China from parts made in the US, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and so on. The cost there isn’t labor. But laborers must be sufficiently dedicated and skilled to sit on their ass for eight hours and solder little pieces together so they fit perfectly.
  • But Apple is supposed to be a giant innovator. Apple! Boy, what a story. No taxes paid, everything made abroad—yet everyone worships them. This new iPhone, there’s nothing new in it. Just a golden color. What the hell, right? When people start playing with color, you know they’re played out.
  • Let’s talk about energy. You say alternative energy can’t scale. Is there no role for renewables? I like renewables, but they move slowly. There’s an inherent inertia, a slowness in energy transitions. It would be easier if we were still consuming 66,615 kilowatt-hours per capita, as in 1950. But in 1950 few people had air-conditioning. We’re a society that demands electricity 24/7. This is very difficult with sun and wind.
  • What about nuclear? The Chinese are building it, the Indians are building it, the Russians have some intention to build. But as you know, the US is not. The last big power plant was ordered in 1974. Germany is out, Italy has vowed never to build one, and even France is delaying new construction. Is it a nice thought that the future of nuclear energy is now in the hands of North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Iran? It’s a depressing thought, isn’t it?
  • You call this Moore’s curse—the idea that if we’re innovative enough, everything can have yearly efficiency gains. It’s a categorical mistake. You just cannot increase the efficiency of power plants like that. You have your combustion machines—the best one in the lab now is about 40 percent efficient. In the field they’re about 15 or 20 percent efficient. Well, you can’t quintuple it, because that would be 100 percent efficient. Impossible, right? There are limits. It’s not a microchip.
  • So what’s left? Making products more energy-efficient? Innovation is making products more energy-efficient — but then we consume so many more products that there’s been no absolute dematerialization of anything. We still consume more steel, more aluminum, more glass, and so on. As long as we’re on this endless material cycle, this merry-go-round, well, technical innovation cannot keep pace.
  • What is the simplest way to make your house super-efficient? Insulation!
  • Right. I have 50 percent more insulation in my walls. It adds very little to the cost. And you insulate your basement from the outside—I have about 20 inches of Styrofoam on the outside of that concrete wall. We were the first people building on our cul-de-sac, so I saw all the other houses after us—much bigger, 3,500 square feet. None of them were built properly. I pay in a year for electricity what they pay in January. You can have a super-efficient house; you can have a super-efficient car, a little Honda Civic, 40 miles per gallon.
  • Your other big subject is food. You’re a pretty grim thinker, but this is your most optimistic area. You actually think we can feed a planet of 10 billion people—if we eat less meat and waste less food. We pour all this energy into growing corn and soybeans, and then we put all that into rearing animals while feeding them antibiotics. And then we throw away 40 percent of the food we produce.
  • So the answers are not technological but political: better economic policies, better education, better trade policies. Right. Today, as you know, everything is “innovation.” We have problems, and people are looking for fairy-tale solutions—innovation like manna from heaven falling on the Israelites and saving them from the desert. It’s like, “Let’s not reform the education system, the tax system. Let’s not improve our dysfunctional government. Just wait for this innovation manna from a little group of people in Silicon Valley, preferably of Indian origin.”
  • anonymous on 25 Nov 13
     
    ""There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil," Bill Gates wrote this summer. That's quite an endorsement-and it gave a jolt of fame to Smil, a professor emeritus of environment and geography at the University of Manitoba. In a world of specialized intellectuals, Smil is an ambitious and astonishing polymath who swings for fences. His nearly three dozen books have analyzed the world's biggest challenges-the future of energy, food production, and manufacturing-with nuance and detail. They're among the most data-heavy books you'll find, with a remarkable way of framing basic facts. (Sample nugget: Humans will consume 17 percent of what the biosphere produces this year.)"
anonymous

Domestic Hurdles to European Integration - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...c_hurdles_european_integration

geopolitics europe

shared by anonymous on 08 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Three developments from Europe brought a degree of optimism to the economically beleaguered Continent on Wednesday
  • First, Germany showed leadership in Europe’s ongoing efforts to reduce government budget deficits when Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet approved an 81.6 billion euro ($101 billion), four-year austerity package. Second, the EU Commission proposed synchronizing its rules on retirement age with life expectancy across the 27-member bloc: A legal mechanism would automatically increase retirement age as life expectancy increases. Third, the EU Commission said that Greece was “broadly on track” with its Herculean task of cutting its enormous budget deficit.
  • Europe’s recent history does not point to an optimistic answer. The euro — itself a product of European integration — arose from the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War’s end. Unified Germany needed to be restrained and committed to the EU, so its fellow member states decided to hand it the keys to European monetary policy while giving up their ability to undercut Germany’s exports with currency depreciation.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • But nobody — starting with Germany and France — stuck to the rules laid out by the Stability and Growth Pact
  • even at the height of the economic crisis, Europeans are thinking of a future when they will want to go back to less rigid interpretations of fiscal rules.
  • recent elections across the Continent have illustrated how politics — specifically getting elected — are still the most important motivating facto
  • If even one member state faces a domestic political calculus arrayed against integration, the entire effort could be thrown off course.
  • anonymous on 08 Jul 10
     
    "Three developments from Europe brought a degree of optimism to the economically beleaguered Continent on Wednesday." By StratFor on July 8, 2010.
anonymous

France in Turmoil | STRATFOR - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...20101021_france_turmoil

geopolitics france europe

shared by anonymous on 22 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • The two groups have different economic and social interests, but they are coming together in their angst toward the government and in their anger toward President Nicolas Sarkozy. This presents a dangerous situation for Paris, as it has the potential to spark wider societal unrest unless the government moves to satisfy one of the groups.
  • The origins of the French welfare state go back to the 60-year period of nearly constant turmoil following the 1789 French Revolution. The revolution was followed by the 1793-94 Reign of Terror; the White Terror of 1794; Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule from 1804 to 1814, which included an almost uninterrupted period of pan-European warfare; another White Terror in 1815; and two more revolutions, in 1830 and 1848. The 1848 Revolution took on a particularly socialist tinge, as a nascent working class that was growing amid the country’s industrialization united with the peasantry in protest of their conditions.
  • Under Napoleon III, social order was largely restored for the next 20 years — to be disrupted by the war against Prussia in 1870 — but more importantly, the French social welfare state became a crucial part of the government’s social contract with its citizens. In order to pacify and unite its restive population, the state vowed that it would take care of its citizens from cradle to grave.
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  • The French, in other words, are neither lazy nor illogical. The protesters see the reforms as a threshold that, if crossed by the government, could undermine the foundation of the last 150 years of French society. Thus, while only 7-8 percent of the working population belongs to a labor union — the lowest percentage in the EU and even lower than that in the United States — nearly 70 percent of the population supports the ongoing strikes and believes they should continue if the proposed reforms pass, which they likely will by Oct. 23.
  • The context of the 2010 unrest is therefore not very different from 1995. The French budget deficit is forecast to hit 8.2 percent of GDP, and Paris is being forced by Germany to rein in spending to conform to the EU’s fiscal rules. Germany is making EU-wide fiscal discipline an essential condition of its continued support for EU institutions, a message that was elucidated during the Greek sovereign debt crisis but understood to apply to everyone.
  • In addition to protests from the French middle classes and workers demanding a continuation of the established social contract, there are protests from French citizens who feel they were never offered that social contract in the first place.
  • The protests of the last couple of days in France have seen both groups pour out onto the streets. The rioting and violence are still not in any way at a level that could be construed as threatening to the government; both the 2005 and 2007 riots were more intense. However, the protesters are using more strategic tactics, targeting the country’s energy infrastructure, and hence are less reliant on drawing out the masses to the streets.
  • The youth need a flexible labor market and thus would need substantial portions of the French welfare state to be eroded if their employment situation were to be remedied. Therefore, Paris will have a hard time satisfying both groups.
  • Ultimately, the commitments Paris has made to its people over the last 150 years are incompatible with the commitments it has made to Berlin in the last 20 years.
  • However, the French state has a very clear history of conceding to its population’s demands. At the very least, it is inevitable that Paris will have to give in to one of the groups, either by admitting that the social contract cannot be changed or by offering it in an amended form to the disaffected youth and citizens of immigrant descent.
  • It is likely that it will give in to the more established group — the workers and middle classes — since they have shown with their tactics that they have the ability to seriously threaten the French state’s efforts to function by targeting its energy infrastructure. Simply moving forward with a policy that three-quarters of the population rejects is unsustainable. At the point when Paris gives in to one side, however, France may cease to be at conflict with itself and instead come into conflict with Germany.
  • anonymous on 22 Oct 10
     
    "Unrest in France sparked by protests against the government continued Oct. 21. The turmoil is ostensibly over proposed government pension reforms, but it is about much more than that. The protests themselves are a confrontation between the government and unionized labor - older generations that want to protect benefits hard won in the 19th century and enhanced in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, another group of French citizens - disaffected youths, many of immigrant Arab and African descent - are protesting not for employment benefits, but for employment itself." By StratFor on October 22, 2010.
anonymous

Central European Fears and the German 'Question Mark' - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...fears_and_german_question_mark

geopolitics germany fsu

shared by anonymous on 01 Dec 10 - Cached
  • But in 2007, NATO’s purpose was “for the newer European and Baltic members, given their fear of Russia, ‘rational or not’ — to keep the Americans in.” Araud added: “For other members, NATO provides a way to meet their defense — without having to pay for it.”
  • The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia had moved ground-based tactical nuclear warheads to its borders with NATO member states sometime in the spring.
  • Russian plans to deploy the nuclear-capable Iskander-M (known as the “Tender”) short-range ballistic missile throughout the country. While The Wall Street Journal report is likely referring to this missile system and therefore does not expose a new threat, the timing of the report is very telling. It comes mere hours after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev warned in his State of the State address that if an agreement with the West was not reached on ballistic missile defense, the world would “plunge into a new arms race.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • First, Poland and Sweden continued their diplomatic pressure on Ukraine, a key border state that is firmly in the Russian sphere, but that Sweden and Poland want to target as part of their jointly coordinated European Union Eastern Partnership initiative.
  • Second, Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo was in the United States on Tuesday for a weeklong visit, during which he will meet with his U.S. counterpart and the United States will stress network security.
  • Romanian President Traian Basescu said he saw Moldova becoming part of Romania within the next 25 years. This comes after Moldova held contentious elections over the weekend that have seen its pro-Western factions fail to strengthen their position against the pro-Russian Communist Party.
  • owever, specific to the Central European fears — and a reality that is rarely spoken publicly in Central Europe — is the fact that Germany is becoming unhinged from the Cold War-era institutions. Russia may be the obvious security threat, but it is Germany’s evolving role — and, crucially, its warming relations with Moscow — that troubles Warsaw and other Central European capitals, most precisely because it is unclear which way Berlin is heading. Or, as Araud put it in 2007, Germany may have been “America’s model ally” during the Cold War, but it is quickly becoming “a question mark.”
  • anonymous on 01 Dec 10
     
    "Perusing the collection of U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, we came across what we at STRATFOR consider a gem of recent history. Gerard Araud, now the French permanent representative to the United Nations, briefed several U.S. officials in late February 2007 on the difference between the purpose of NATO in 2007 and during the Cold War. Recounting an adage, he said that during the Cold War, NATO was supposed "to keep Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in." But in 2007, NATO's purpose was "for the newer European and Baltic members, given their fear of Russia, 'rational or not' - to keep the Americans in." Araud added: "For other members, NATO provides a way to meet their defense - without having to pay for it." "
anonymous

Geopolitical Journey, Part 3: Romania - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...litical_journey_part_3_romania

geopolitics romania russia

shared by anonymous on 20 Nov 10 - Cached
  • In school, many of us learned the poem Invictus. It concludes with the line, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” This is a line that a Victorian gentleman might bequeath to an American businessman. It is not a line that resonates in Romania.
  • empires collide where Romania is.
  • the great powers are sorting themselves out again and therefore Romania is becoming more important to others.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The Carpathian Mountains define Romania, but in an odd way. Rather than serving as the border of the country, protecting it, the Carpathians are an arc that divides the country into three parts.
  • To the south of the mountains is the Wallachian Plain
  • To the northwest of the Carpathians is Transylvania, more rugged, hilly country.
  • In the east of the Carpathians is the Moldavian Plain.
  • Romania is one nation divided by its geography. None of the three parts is easy to defend.
  • About the only time before the late 19th century that Romania was united was when it was completely conquered.
  • Some of us experience geopolitics as an opportunity. Most of humanity experiences it as a catastrophe.
  • To understand Romania as an ally one must bear this in mind: When the Soviets began their great counterattack at Stalingrad, they launched it over Romanian (and Hungarian) troops. Romanians maneuvered themselves into the position of fighting and dying for the Germans, and then got their revenge on the Germans by being slaughtered by the Soviets.
  • The way the Romanians got the Soviets to tolerate this was by building a regime more rigid and oppressive than even that of the Soviet Union at the time.
  • Contemporary Romania cannot be understood without understanding Nicolae Ceausescu.
  • Stalin didn’t trust communists who stayed home and resisted. He preferred communists who had fled to Moscow in the 1930s and had proved themselves loyal to Stalin by their betrayal of others.
  • Ceausescu decided to pay off the national debt. His reason seemed to flow from his foreign policy — he didn’t want Romania to be trapped by any country because of its debt — and he repaid it by selling to other countries nearly everything that was produced in Romania.
  • One of her books, The Appointment, takes place in Romania under the communists.
  • When one reads this book, as I did in preparing for this trip, one understands the way in which the Securitate tore apart a citizen’s soul — and remembers that it was not a distant relic of the 1930s but was still in place and sustaining the Romanian regime in 1989.
  • Romania emerged from the previous 70 years of ongoing catastrophe by dreaming of simple things and having no illusions that these things were easy to come by or things Romanians could control.
  • Romanians yearned to become European simply because being Romanian was too dangerous.
  • For Romania, national sovereignty has always been experienced as the process of accommodating itself to more powerful nations and empires. So after 1991, Romania searched for the “someone else” to which it could subordinate itself. More to the point, Romania imbued these entities with extraordinary redemptive powers. Once in NATO and the European Union, all would be well.
  • Germany remains an exporting country exporting into Romania and leaving precious little room for Romania to develop its economy.
  • a good part of Romania’s exports to Germany are from German-owned firms operating in Romania.
  • During the period of relative prosperity in Europe from 1991 to 2008, the structural reality of the EU was hidden under a rising tide.
  • Romania is a developing country. Europe’s regulations are drawn with a focus on the highly developed countries. The laws on employment guarantees mean that Europeans don’t hire workers, they adopt them. That means that entrepreneurship is difficult. Being an entrepreneur, as I well know, means making mistakes and recovering from them fast. Given the guarantees that every worker has in Europe, an entrepreneur cannot quickly recover from his mistakes. In Romania, the agility needed for risk-taking is not readily available under EU rules drawn up for a mature economy.
  • There are regulations and there are relationships. The latter mitigate the former. In Germany this might be called corruption. In Romania it is survival.
  • First, there is no doubt that NATO and the European Union did not work in Romania’s favor at the moment. Second, there is no question of rethinking Romania’s commitment to either.
  • NATO and the European Union keep the anti-democratic demons of the Romanian soul at bay. Being part of Europe is not simply a matter of strategic or economic benefits. It represents a transitional point in Romanian history.
  • The Western Europeans are not about to be drawn into Eastern European paranoia fed by nostalgic American strategists wanting to relive the Cold War, as they think of it.
  • I raised two strategic alternatives with Romanian officials and the media.
  • One was the Intermarium — an alliance, perhaps in NATO, perhaps not — of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
  • Turkey is Romania’s fourth-largest export target, and one of the few major trading partners that imports more from Romania than it exports.
  • In this region, the fear of the past dominates and oppresses while the confident, American-style military planning and economic restructuring I suggested is alien and frightening.
  • I had thought that Romania’s problem was that it was part of Europe, a weak power surrounded by stronger ones. They seem to believe that their solution is to be part of Europe, a weak power surrounded by stronger ones.
  • anonymous on 20 Nov 10
     
    "This is the third installment in a series of special reports that Dr. Friedman will write over the next few weeks as he travels to Turkey, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. In this series, he will share his observations of the geopolitical imperatives in each country and conclude with reflections on his journey as a whole and options for the United States. " By George Friedman at StratFor on November 16, 2010.
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

StratFor Annual Forecast 2013 - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...annual-forecast-2013

shared by anonymous on 18 Jan 13 - Cached
  • Generational shifts take time to play out and often begin with a period of denial as the forces of the international system struggle to preserve the old order. In 2013, that state of denial will persist in many areas. But we are more than four years into this cyclical transformation, and change is becoming more palpable and much harder to deny with every passing month.
  • In Europe, short-term remedies that are so far preserving the integrity of the European Union are also papering over the deep, structural ailments of the bloc.
  • China is not so much in denial of its current predicament as it is constrained in its ability to cope with a dramatic shift from high export-oriented growth to more sustainable development of its interior.
  • ...56 more annotations...
  • The emerging economies of the post-China world will take time to develop, but 2013 will be an important year in determining which are best positioned to fill the growing void left by China.
  • Change will be primarily violent in nature -- and thus harder to miss -- in the Middle East.
  • The United States is also not immune to change. In this generational shift, and all the tumult that comes with it, Washington will be forced to learn the value of restraint in balance-of-power politics, preferring to lean on regional partners and encourage strategic competition as a way of preserving its own power.
  • The Arab world is moving uncomfortably between two eras. The post-World War II era, in which Arab dictatorships and monarchies supplanted colonial rule, is now roughly blending with -- or in some cases outright colliding with -- a fractured landscape of long-repressed Islamist forces.
  • This dynamic will be particularly visible in the northern Levant region this year as Syria and Lebanon continue coming apart. From Stratfor's perspective, the regime in Syria has already fallen and is giving way to a familiar state of warlordism, where militias and clan interests reign supreme. There is no longer a political entity capable of wielding control over the entirety of Syrian territory, nor will there be for some time.
  • once Syrian President Bashar al Assad is removed from power, whether through a negotiated deal or by force, the Sunni forces will fragment along ideological, ethnic and geographic lines, with Salafist-jihadist forces battling against a more politically minded Muslim Brotherhood and secular Sunnis.
  • As their grip over Aleppo slips, Alawite forces will try to hold Damascus while preparing a mass retreat to their coastal enclave. The battle for Damascus could extend beyond the scope of this forecast.
  • The potential use of chemical weapons by Alawite forces in a state of desperation could accelerate the unraveling of the region; a U.S.-led coalition would have to assemble in haste to contain the chemical weapons threat.
  • To be clear, the United States is not looking for a pretext to intervene militarily in Syria. On the contrary, the United States will make every effort possible to avoid another military campaign in the Islamic world this year.
  • A military conflict between the United States and Iran remains unlikely in 2013.
  • The growing disparity in the U.S. and Iranian negotiating positions will largely relegate Iran to the role of regional spoiler. So long as Iran can create pain for its regional adversaries, it can slow its own descent.
  • Iraq remains Iran's primary regional imperative, however. The momentum building among Sunni forces in Syria will eventually spill into Iraq and challenge Shiite dominance.
  • Iran's presidential elections in June will reveal the declining relevancy of the clerical elite and the populist faction embodied by outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This creates a political void for the Revolutionary Guard to fill. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will try to check the Corps' growing influence by bolstering rival military and security agencies and backing a less controversial and more politically malleable ally from the pragmatic conservative camp for the presidency.
  • In Egypt, the military will adapt to an emerging Islamist political order. The military will remain the ultimate arbiter of the state and will rely on a number of factors -- including a fragmented judiciary, the military's economic leverage, a divided Islamist political landscape and the military's foreign relationships -- to check the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Egypt's consuming political transition will leave opportunities for flare-ups in the Sinai Peninsula and in Gaza, but we do not expect a significant breach between Israel and Egypt this year.
  • Jordan, the oft-overlooked casualty of the Arab Spring, will continue to destabilize quietly and slowly in 2013
  • Israel and Turkey are both greatly affected by the shifting political dynamics of the Arab world, but both have little means to influence the change. The two former allies will continue exploring ways to restore a quiet working relationship under these new regional stresses, but a public restoration of diplomatic ties is less likely.
  • Israel will struggle internally over how to adapt to a new regional framework in which the reliability of old working partners is called into question.
  • Turkey sees an opportunity in the rise of Islamist forces in the Arab world but Ankara's limited influences restrain its actions beyond Turkish borders.
  • A more aggressive Saudi role in Syria will aggravate the civil war and create competition with other regional stakeholders, including Turkey, Qatar and Jordan.
  • In 2012, the European Union took numerous steps to mitigate the financial impact of its ongoing crisis.
  •  These actions, which helped to keep the eurozone afloat in 2012, will remain effective in 2013, making it very likely that the eurozone will survive another year. But these tools do not solve three fundamental aspects of the European crisis. 
  • First, the European crisis is fundamentally a crisis of competitiveness.
  • Second, the crisis has a political aspect. The European Union is not a federation but a collection of nation-states bound together by international treaties.
  • Third, the European crisis is threatening the social stability in some countries, especially in the eurozone's periphery.
  • In 2013, the two largest economies of the eurozone (Germany and France) will face low growth or even stagnation. This will have negative effects across Europe.
  • In 2013, the crisis will keep damaging economic conditions in the eurozone periphery. Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy will see their economies shrink and unemployment rates rise. In all these countries, the social unrest will grow and the year will be marked by permanent protests and strikes. 
  • The conspicuous divide between the ruling elite and the populations of the periphery will be a key element in 2013, and some governments could fall. But even if opposition parties take power, they will face the same constraints as the governments that preceded them. In other words, a change in politicians will not bring a substantial change in policies regarding the European Union.
  • The only country in the eurozone periphery that has scheduled elections is Italy (in February). If the next Italian government fails to achieve political stability and apply economic reforms, the increased market pressure on Italy will make Rome more likely to require financial assistance from Brussels.
  • Because of the fundamental contradictions in the national interests and foreign policy strategies of the EU member states, the European crisis will continue generating political and economic divisions in the Continent in 2013.
  • Outside the eurozone, the United Kingdom will seek to protect its sovereignty and renegotiate its status within the European Union. But London will not leave the European Union in 2013.
  • Domestic Issues After the political tumult of 2012, Russia will face another year of anti-Kremlin protests, tensions among various political factions and ethnic groups, crackdowns and government reshuffles. Overall, the political tensions will remain manageable and will not pose a serious challenge to Moscow's control.
  • Russia has made significant progress recently in re-establishing influence in its former Soviet periphery.
  • Russia's relationship with Ukraine could be its most important connection in the former Soviet Union in 2013. Russia has been pursuing integration with Ukraine, primarily by taking over its natural gas transit infrastructure and calling on Kiev to join the Customs Union.
  • Georgia will be Russia's main concern in the Caucasus in 2013. With the political emergence of billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream movement, Russia's position in the country strengthened at the expense of the anti-Russian camp of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
  • In the past year, Russia has changed its tactics toward Europe to preserve its presence and leverage for the future. Russia's primary link to Europe is the Europeans' dependence on Russia's large energy supplies, which Moscow knows will be threatened when more non-Russian supplies become available.
  • In 2012, Russia began shifting away from its aggressive stance on energy -- particularly its high prices -- to strike long-term deals that will maintain Russia's market share with its primary strategic customers, such as Germany, Italy and Turkey. Russia will continue this strategy in 2013 as it continues to build new infrastructure to directly link its supplies to Europe.
  • The United States and Russia will continue sparring over trade matters, negotiations for a new nuclear arms treaty and Russia's role in Iran and Syria. Stratfor does not expect major changes from Washington or Moscow that would break the gridlock in negotiations on these issues.
  • The low-level violence and instability that occurred throughout Central Asia in 2012 will continue in 2013.
  • Three things will shape events in East Asia in 2013: Beijing's struggle to maintain social and political stability amid lower economic growth rates; China's accelerating military modernization and increasingly aggressive moves to secure its territorial and economic interests in the region; and varied efforts by other regional players, including the United States, to adapt to China's changes. 
  • In 2013, the Chinese economy will continue the gradual, painful process of moving away from high export-driven growth and toward a model that is more sustainable in the long run.
  • But barring another global financial meltdown on the scale of 2008-2009, China's coastal manufacturing economy will not collapse outright. The decline will be gradual.
  • The ongoing, gradual eclipse of coastal China as a hub of global manufacturing over the next several years will lead to higher unemployment and social dislocation as more of China's 250 million-strong migrant labor force returns inland in search of work. 
  • Shadow banking is by no means new in China. But it has grown significantly in the past few years from the geographically isolated informal loan markets of coastal cities to a complex network of semi-legal entities that provides between 12 and 30 trillion yuan (between $1.9 trillion and $4.8 trillion) in credit -- at interest rates of 20-36 percent -- to thousands of struggling small businesses nationwide.
  • The Party's growing sense of insecurity -- both internally and with regard to the social consequences of China's economic transition -- likely will be reflected in continued censorship of online social platforms like Weibo, crackdowns on religious or other groups perceived as threatening, and the Chinese military's growing assertiveness over China's interests in the South and East China seas and Southeast Asia.
  • The decline of low-end coastal manufacturing in China will present enormous opportunities for Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and potentially Myanmar -- all of whom will continue to push strongly for foreign investment not only into natural resources and raw materials industries but also into developing better urban, transport, power generation and materials processing infrastructure.
  • Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines -- China's most vocal opponents in Southeast Asia -- will continue to push for greater integration among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and for U.S. business and military engagement in the region.
  • The Coming U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan Ahead of the 2014 drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, efforts will intensify to negotiate a settlement that gives the Taliban a place in a new government.
  • The negotiations will face numerous obstacles this year. There will be an upsurge in violence -- both in terms of officially sanctioned attacks designed to gain advantage on the negotiating table and spoiler attacks by Taliban elements allied with al Qaeda on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
  • Washington's intention to reduce its presence in the region will spur regional actors to fill the void. Pakistan will increase its interactions with Russia, Central Asia and Iran to prepare for a post-U.S. Afghanistan.
  • India will also turn its attention eastward, where the United States is quietly trying to forge a coalition of regional partners to keep a check on China in the Indo-Pacific basin. Myanmar in particular will be an active battleground for influence this year.
  • Preparing for a Post-Chavez Venezuela After a year of successful campaigning for re-election, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in questionable health. Although the ultimate outcome of December's medical treatment for the ailing leader is unpredictable, Chavez's decision to name Vice President Nicolas Maduro as a political successor at the end of 2012 indicates that there is significant concern for his ability to remain in power.
  • Although it remains possible that Chavez will stay in power through the year, for Maduro to capitalize on Chavez's recent political gains, elections may need to be called sooner rather than later, regardless of Chavez's immediate health status.
  • Throughout 2013, Colombia will continue the incremental process of negotiating an end to the conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym FARC.
  • This will be a year of significant transition for Mexico. Policy issues that were bottled up by intra-party competition in the waning years of the National Action Party's administration have begun coming to the fore and will dominate 2013. These include socio-political issues like education, tax and pension reform.
  • The most important issue facing Mexico in 2013 will be energy policy.
  • anonymous on 18 Jan 13
     
    "At the beginning of 2012, we argued that the international system is undergoing a generational transformation -- the kind that occurs every 20 years or so. The cycle we are now in started in 2008-2009, when global financial contagion exposed the underlying weaknesses of Europe and eventually cracked China's export-oriented economic model. The Middle East then began to deviate from its post-World War II paradigm with an attempted resurgence by Iran, the regional rise of Islamists and the decline of age-old autocratic regimes in the Arab world."
anonymous

Geopolitical Journey: Europe, the Glorious and the Banal - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...rney-europe-glorious-and-banal

shared by anonymous on 14 May 13 - Cached
  • How prosaic business opportunities generate the most risky and grandiose undertakings has come to interest me. This school arose with the specific goal of training sailors to go farther and farther south along the African coast in search of a sea route to India.
  • The Portuguese sought this route to cut out the middleman in the spice trade. Spices were wealth in Europe; they preserved and seasoned food, and were considered medicinal and even aphrodisiacs. But they were fiendishly expensive
  • The more I learn more about Henry, the more his program reminds me of NASA and of Tom Wolfe's classic, The Right Stuff, about America's space program. Like NASA, each mission built on the last, trying out new methods in an incremental fashion. Henry didn't try to shoot to the moon, as they say. He was no Columbus, risking everything for glory, but rather a methodical engineer, pushing the limits a little at a time and collecting data.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Europe wasn't kind to the world it discovered. But over time it did force each culture to become aware of all the others; after centuries, a Mongol student might learn about the Aztecs. Instead of a number of isolated worlds, each believing itself to be the center of the Earth, each new discovery fed the concept of a single world.
  • On this cape, early in the 15th century, well before Columbus sailed, Henry planned Europe's assault on the world. In the process, he laid the foundation of the modern world and modern Europe.
  • If Henry created his school solely for knowledge, then perhaps sending messages in a bottle and waiting for a reply would have done that. But Henry, the prince who became a monk, also acted for wealth, God's glory and to claim his place in history.
  • Today, we have entered a phase of history where the buccaneering spirit has left us. The desire for knowledge has separated itself from the hunger we have for wealth and glory. Glory is not big today, cool is. Cool does not challenge the gates of heaven, it accepts what is and conforms to it.
  • This is a passing phase, however. Humans will return to space to own it, discover unknown wealth and bring glory.
  • Out in West Texas and other desolate places, private companies -- privateers -- are reinventing the space program. They are searching for what Henry sought -- namely, wealth and glory.
  • Certainly, European imperialism brought misery to the world. But the world was making itself miserable before, and has since: One group of people has always been stealing land from other groups in a constant flow of history. What culture did not live on land stolen from another culture, either annihilated or absorbed? Ours has always been a brutal world. And the Europe Henry founded did not merely oppress and exploit, although it surely did those things. It also left as its legacy something extraordinary: a world that knew itself and all of its parts.
  • Only the dead leave legacies, and Europe is not dead. Yet something in it has died. The swagger and confidence of a great civilization is simply not there, at least not on the European peninsula.
  • Instead, there is caution and fear. You get the sense in Europe -- and here I think of conversations I had on previous trips in the last year or so -- of a fear that any decisive action will tear the place apart.
  • The European search for comfort and safety is not trivial, not after the horrors of the 20th century. The British and French have given up empires, Russia has given up communism, Germany and Italy have given up fascism and racism. The world is better off without these things. But what follows, what is left?
  • I am not talking here of the economic crisis that is gripping Europe, leaving Portugal with 17 percent unemployment and Spain with 26 percent. These are agonizing realities for those living through them. But Europeans have lived through more and worse.
  • Instead, I am speaking of a crisis in the European soul, the death of hubris and of risk-taking. Yes, these resulted in the Europeans trying to convert the world to Christianity and commerce, in Russia trying to create a new man and in Germany becoming willing to annihilate what it thought of as inferior men.
  • The Europeans are content to put all that behind them. Their great search for the holy grail is now reduced to finding a way to resume the comforts of the unexceptional. There is something to be said for the unexceptional life. But it cannot be all there is. 
  • We humans are caught between the hunger for glory and the price you pay and the crimes you commit in pursuing it. To me, the tension between the hunger for ordinary comforts and the need for transcendence seems to lie at the heart of the human condition. Europe has chosen comfort, and now has lost it. It sought transcendence and tore itself apart. The latter might have been Henry's legacy, but ah, to have gone to his school with da Gama and Magellan.
  • anonymous on 14 May 13
     
    "We flew into Lisbon and immediately rented a car to drive to the edge of the Earth and the beginning of the world. This edge has a name: Cabo de Sao Vicente. A small cape jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, it is the bitter end of Europe. Beyond this point, the world was once unknown to Europeans, becoming a realm inhabited by legends of sea monsters and fantastic civilizations. Cabo de Sao Vicente still makes you feel these fantasies are more than realistic. Even on a bright sunny day, the sea is forbidding and the wind howls at you, while on a gloomy day you peer into the abyss. Just 3 miles east of Cabo de Sao Vicente at the bas"
anonymous

The Crisis of the European Common Market | Stratfor - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...crisis-european-common-market

shared by anonymous on 15 Apr 13 - Cached
  • The creation of a common market where people, goods, services and capital could move freely was one of the main goals of the Treaty of Rome
  • The free movement of people is the principle that allows EU citizens to travel to or live and work in any member country.
  • The creation of the eurozone put 17 countries with varying levels of economic development and competitiveness in a currency union. This has created significant trade imbalances between the less developed economies in the eurozone periphery and Germany, Europe's main exporter.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The European Union is trying to address the problems of its banking sector through the creation of a banking union -- a mechanism that would put all the eurozone banks under the supervision of a single entity, provide joint funds to rescue banks in distress and provide all banks with the common deposit guarantee.
  • This idea has been controversial since the beginning.
  • First, there was a debate regarding which banks should be supervised. In December 2012, the European Union agreed that only the largest banks in the eurozone would be put under supervision.
  • Second, the idea of a joint insurance mechanism and bank resolution fund was highly controversial because countries with strong banking sectors refuse to take responsibility for failing banks.
  • As a result, EU leaders decided to postpone the insurance mechanism's implementation.
  • anonymous on 15 Apr 13
     
    "The European Union was founded on the free movement of people, goods, services and capital. All of these basic freedoms are inextricably intertwined with the European crisis. The free movement of people is being questioned in numerous countries, while the free movement of goods and services is in part responsible for the current crisis. The free movement of capital has forced EU leaders to face the consequences of different national banking regulations that allow capital flight and tax evasion. While better oversight and collaboration make tax collection across borders easier, they do little to stem capital flight, which weakens banking sectors in already struggling economies."
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