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It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot.

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The key is that in each country where they took place, there were significant differences in the details — but they shared core principles at a time when other countries were open to those principles, at least to some extent.

The key principle that appears to be driving the risings is a feeling that the regimes, or a group of individuals within the regimes, has deprived the public of political and, more important, economic rights — in short, that they enriched themselves beyond what good taste permitted.

One reason is that there was a tremendous amount of regime change in the region from the 1950s through the early 1970s, as the Muslim countries created regimes to replace foreign imperial powers and were buffeted by the Cold War.

In this case, the question of greatest importance is not why these revolutions are taking place, but who will take advantage of them.

In this case, whatever the cause of the risings, there is no question that radical Islamists will attempt to take advantage and control of them. Why wouldn’t they? It is a rational and logical course for them.

The first is the establishment of democracy. The second is the election of governments.

The first is the reaction against corrupt regimes. The second is the election itself. And the third? The United States needs to remember, as it applauds the rise of democracy, that the elected government may not be what one expected.

pictures of peaceful demonstrators are not nearly as significant as the media will have you believe, but pictures of demonstrators continuing to hold their ground after being fired on is very significant.

This leads to the key event in the revolution. The revolutionaries cannot defeat armed men. But if those armed men, in whole or part, come over to the revolutionary side, victory is possible. And this is the key event.

If the split in the military is roughly equal and deep, this could lead to civil war.

Far more common is for the military to split. If the split creates an overwhelming anti-regime force, this leads to the revolution’s success.

Therefore, looking at the students on TV tells you little. Watching the soldiers tells you much more.

The danger is not radical Islam, but chaos, followed either by civil war, the military taking control simply to stabilize the situation or the emergence of a radical Islamic party to take control — simply because they are the only ones in the crowd with a plan and an organization. That’s how minorities take control of revolutions.

Only in the case of Eastern Europe do we see broad revolutionary success, but that was against an empire in collapse, so few lessons can be drawn from that for the Muslim world.

One is that this is like 1848, a broad rising that will fail for lack of organization and coherence, but that will resonate for decades.

The second is 1968, a revolution that overthrew no regime even temporarily and left some cultural remnants of minimal historical importance.

The third is 1989, a revolution that overthrew the political order in an entire region, and created a new order in its place.

Also when comparing tools to life, the time scales are ridiculously different. Trilobites ranged the Earth for 270 million years. The Paleolithic axe is an infant by comparison, merely 100,000 years old. The homo sapiens who made that axe are only a 200,000 years old. Who's to say that our ideas won't vanish long before the trilobites did?

Ideas, what do they use? Not chemicals. Richard Dawkins says they leap from, "brain to brain, via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation." People see a new invention, then they tell friends about it, or they put it onto a cave wall, papyrus, into song, or a book, newspaper, radio, TV, movies, poems, the internet. That way, the invention can be stored and copied.

Or is it possible that technology is inherently persistant, that it just won't be thrown out? That's what Kevin is suggesting. That's "What Technology Wants." It "wants" to be copied, to last. I find this idea a bit too mystical for my tastes.

first, Russia was becoming more comfortable in its dominance over the former Soviet states that it could change tactics.

At the same time, the United States was becoming dangerously entrenched in the Islamic theater to the point where it pretty much couldn’t give any focus or bandwidth into its relationship and issues in Eurasia.

What happens to all the differences that have been put aside that will naturally lead to a conflict between the United States and Russia once again? This is the question which Biden is discussing with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

So if the Luddites weren’t attacking the technological foundations of industry, what made them so frightening to manufacturers? And what makes them so memorable even now? Credit on both counts goes largely to a phantom.

People of the time recognized all the astonishing new benefits the Industrial Revolution conferred, but they also worried, as Carlyle put it in 1829, that technology was causing a “mighty change” in their “modes of thought and feeling.

Even with a no-fly zone, Gadhafi would still be difficult for the rebels to defeat, and Gadhafi might still defeat the rebels.

It should also be remembered that the same international community that condemned Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator quite easily turned to condemn the United States both for deposing him and for the steps its military took in trying to deal with the subsequent insurgency. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where there is extended Libyan resistance to the occupying force followed by international condemnation of the counterinsurgency effort.

In the world of psychology, they call this attitude polarization; the more times the average person spends thinking about a subject, the more extreme his position becomes -- even if he doesn't run across any new information.

For example, a study asked Americans of various demographics and political stances about the ideal way they feel wealth should be distributed across the country. Young or old, male or female, Republican or Democrat, the answers they provided were almost identical.

Don't get us wrong; it's not that there are no disagreements, it's just that we vastly overestimate the degree to which we disagree, because the differences are all we focus on.

Knowing this, the news media decades ago started covering politics like a war, or a sport (in the biz, they call it "horse race coverage") where the reporting is entirely about which side is winning -- at the expense of figuring out the actual impact the resulting election or legislation will have on you as a human being. We tune in for "Us vs. Them," so that's what they give us.

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.

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 genetic references are thin and somewhat outdated

we must look to punctuation of cultural and demographic change as the norm, rather than the exception. The old diffusion models may be predicated on a level of smoothness and gradualism in historical and social process which are simply not feasible.

The long pause of agriculture on the north European plain was partly probably the structural constraint because of the poor fit between southern crops and northern climes. But once a sufficient fit was operative did that naturally result in the rapid sweep of farmers north? Perhaps not.

First, they felt that the Russian threat had declined if not dissipated following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Second, they felt that their economic future was with the European Union.

Third, they believed that membership in NATO, with strong U.S. involvement, would protect their strategic interests.

First, Russia has changed dramatically since the Yeltsin years. It has increased its power in the former Soviet sphere of influence substantially

Second, the infatuation with Europe, while not gone, has frayed. The ongoing economic crisis, now focused again on Greece, has raised two questions: whether Europe as an entity is viable and whether the reforms proposed to stabilize Europe represent a solution for them or primarily for the Germans.

Finally, there are severe questions as to whether NATO provides a genuine umbrella of security to the region and its members. The NATO strategic concept, which was drawn up in November 2010, generated substantial concern on two scores. First, there was the question of the degree of American commitment to the region, considering that the document sought to expand the alliance’s role in non-European theaters of operation.

Second, the general weakness of European militaries meant that, willingness aside, the ability of the Europeans to participate in defending the region was questionable.

Germany’s commitment to both NATO and the EU has been fraying. The Germans and the French split on the Libya question, with Germany finally conceding politically but unwilling to send forces. Libya might well be remembered less for the fate of Moammar Gadhafi than for the fact that this was the first significant strategic break between Germany and France in decades.

There are strong political forces in Germany questioning the value of the EU to Germany, and with every new wave of financial crises requiring German money, that sentiment becomes stronger.

The Nordic countries share the same concerns as the Visegrad countries — the future course of Russian power, the cohesiveness of Europe and the commitment of the United States.

Some will say this is over-reading on my part or an overreaction on the part of the V4, but it is neither. For the V4, the battle group is a modest response to emerging patterns in the region, which STRATFOR had outlined in its 2011 Annual Forecast. As for my reading, I regard the new patterns not as a minor diversion from the main pattern but as a definitive break in the patterns of the post-Cold War world

For the countries on the periphery, there is a perpetual sense of insecurity, generated not only by Russian power compared to their own but also by uncertainty as to whether the rest of Europe would be prepared to defend them in the event of Russian actions. The V4 and the other countries south of them are not as sanguine about Russian intentions as others farther away are. Perhaps they should be, but geopolitical realities drive consciousness and insecurity and distrust defines this region.

Pilsudski proposed an alliance stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and encompassing the countries to the west of the Carpathians — Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

An alliance with Ukraine would provide significant strategic depth. It is unlikely to happen. That means that the alliance must stretch south, to include Romania and Bulgaria. The low-level tension between Hungary and Romania over the status of Hungarians in Romania makes that difficult, but if the Hungarians can live with the Slovaks, they can live with the Romanians. Ultimately, the interesting question is whether Turkey can be persuaded to participate in this, but that is a question far removed from Turkish thinking now. History will have to evolve quite a bit for this to take place. For now, the question is Romania and Bulgaria.

In Washington, no politician is bound to reach a compromise to solve any long-term problem. Everyone, however, is playing a game called “election,” and the only possible goal in that game is to win the next one.

Anyone who promises to fix or change Washington is merely attempting to impose a cooperative game on a town that, by design, can’t play one.

A game theorist would say that the President is trying to play a cooperative game in a town that can’t play along with him. The trouble for the White House is that the Republicans aren’t playing a game called “fix the budget deficit.” They’re necessarily playing one called “defeat Barack Obama.” A reasonable offer seldom works in a divorce; there’s no reason to expect it would in Congress.

the two hemispheres have somewhat different personalities and skills -- this includes their abilities to think abstractly, create stories, draw inferences, determine the source of memory, and make good choices in a gambling game.

In alien hand syndrome, which can result from the split-brain surgeries we discussed a few pages ago, the two hands express conflicted desires. A patient's "alien" hand might pick up a cookie to put it in his mouth, while the normally behaving hand will grab it at the wrist to stop it. A struggle ensues.

The third category is the nitty-gritty, “Core Ideas in Four Disciplinary Areas,” namely “Physical Sciences,” “Life Sciences,” “Earth and Space Sciences,” and “Engineering, Technology, and the Applications of Science.”

"The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are dark for some other reason."

The Rocky Mountains dominate the Western third of the northern and central parts of North America

Farther east of this semiarid region are the well-watered plains of the prairie provinces of Canada and the American Midwest

East of this premier arable zone lies a second mountain chain known as the Appalachians.

North of the Great Lakes region lies the Canadian Shield, an area where repeated glaciation has scraped off most of the topsoil.

The continent’s final geographic piece is an isthmus of varying width, known as Central America, that is too wet and rugged to develop into anything more than a series of isolated city-states, much less a single country that would have an impact on continental affairs. Due to a series of swamps and mountains where the two American continents join, there still is no road network linking them, and the two Americas only indirectly affect each other’s development.

Very few of its tributaries begin at high elevations, making vast tracts of these rivers easily navigable. In the case of the Mississippi, the head of navigation — just north of Minneapolis — is 3,000 kilometers inland.

The unified nature of this system greatly enhances the region’s usefulness and potential economic and political power.

This factor is the primary reason why the major economic powers of the past half-millennia have been Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The vast bulk of the prime agricultural lands are within 200 kilometers of a stretch of navigable river.

First, navigable rivers by definition service twice the land area of a coastline (rivers have two banks, coasts only one).

Second, rivers are not subject to tidal forces, greatly easing the construction and maintenance of supporting infrastructure.

Third, storm surges often accompany oceanic storms, which force the evacuation of oceanic ports.

First are the severe indentations of North America’s coastline, granting the region a wealth of sheltered bays and natural, deep-water ports.

Second, there are the Great Lakes.

Third and most important are the lines of barrier islands that parallel the continent’s East and Gulf coasts.

There are many secondary stretches of agricultural land as well

The rivers of the American Atlantic coastal plain — flowing down the eastern side of the Appalachians — are neither particularly long nor interconnected. This makes them much more like the rivers of Northern Europe in that their separation localizes economic existence and fosters distinct political identities, dividing the region rather than uniting it. The formation of such local — as opposed to national — identities in many ways contributed to the American Civil War.

What is now Mexico lacks even a single navigable river of any size. Its agricultural zones are disconnected and it boasts few good natural ports.

Canada’s maritime transport zones

Its first, the Great Lakes, not only requires engineering but is shared with the United States.

The second, the St. Lawrence Seaway, is a solid option (again with sufficient engineering), but it services a region too cold to develop many dense population centers.

The eastern end of the border could be anywhere within 300 kilometers north or south of its current location (at present the border region’s southernmost ports — Brownsville and Corpus Christi — lie on the U.S. side of the border). As one moves westward to the barren lands of New Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua and Sonora, the possible variance increases considerably. Even controlling the mouth of the Colorado River where it empties into the Gulf of California is not a critical issue, since hydroelectric development in the United States prevents the river from reaching the Gulf in most years, making it useless for transport.

In the north, the Great Lakes are obviously an ideal break point in the middle of the border region, but the specific location of the line along the rest of the border is largely irrelevant. East of the lakes, low mountains and thick forests dominate the landscape — not the sort of terrain to generate a power that could challenge the U.S. East Coast.

So long as the border lies north of the bulk of the Missouri River’s expansive watershed, the border’s specific location is somewhat academic, and it becomes even more so when one reaches the Rockies.

On the far western end of the U.S.-Canada border is the only location where there could be some border friction. The entrance to Puget Sound — one of the world’s best natural harbors — is commanded by Vancouver Island.

It is common knowledge that the United States began as 13 rebellious colonies along the east coast of the center third of the North American continent. But the United States as an entity was not a sure thing in the beginning

Most of the original 13 colonies were lightly populated by European standards — only Philadelphia could be considered a true city in the European sense — and were linked by only the most basic of physical infrastructure. Additionally, rivers flowed west to east across the coastal plain, tending to sequester regional identities rather than unify them.

With European attentions diverted elsewhere, the young United States had an opportunity to carve out a future for itself relatively free of European entanglements.

This was not England, an island that forced the early state into the expense of a navy. This was not France, a country with three coasts and two land borders that forced Paris to constantly deal with threats from multiple directions. This was not Russia, a massive country suffering from short growing seasons that was forced to expend inordinate sums of capital on infrastructure simply to attempt to feed itself.

The early nation was particularly vulnerable to its former colonial master.

There are only two ways to protect a coastal community from sea power. The first is to counter with another navy.

The second method of protecting a coastal community is to develop territories that are not utterly dependent upon the sea.

Achieving such strategic depth was both an economic and a military imperative.

The United States was entirely dependent upon the English imperial system not just for finished goods and markets but also for the bulk of its non-agricultural raw materials, in particular coal and iron ore.

The Appalachians may not be the Swiss Alps, but they were sufficiently rugged to put a check on any deep and rapid inland expansion.

The Ohio River faced the additional problem of draining into the Mississippi, the western shore of which was the French territory of Louisiana

At the time, Napoleon was girding for a major series of wars that would bear his name. France not only needed cash but also to be relieved of the security burden of defending a large but lightly populated territory in a different hemisphere.

This single road (known in modern times as Interstate 40 or Interstate 70 for most of its length) allowed American pioneers to directly settle Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri and granted them initial access to Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.

The trail was directly responsible for the initial settling of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon. A wealth of secondary trails branched off from the main artery — the Mormon, Bozeman, California and Denver trails — and extended the settlement efforts to Montana, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California.

From beginning to end, the entire process required less than 70 years.

The Columbia River Valley and California’s Central Valley are not critical American territories.

among other things, they grant the United States full access to the Pacific trading basin — only that control of them is not imperative to American security.

The first land threat to the young United States was in essence the second phase of the Revolutionary War

the British navy could outmatch anything the Americans could float

Geopolitically, the most critical part of the war was the participation of semi-independent British Canada.

Canadian forces, unlike the British, did not have a supply line that stretched across the Atlantic.

Canada is far enough north that its climate is far harsher than that of the United States, with all of the negative complications one would expect for population, agriculture and infrastructure.

What few rivers Canada has neither interconnect nor remain usable year round.

Most of these river connections also have rapids and falls, greatly limiting their utility as a transport network.

the St. Lawrence Seaway — a series of locks that link the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and allow full ocean access — was not completed until 1959.

Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island — are disconnected from the Canadian landmass and unable to capitalize on what geographic blessings the rest of the country enjoys

what population centers Canada does have are geographically sequestered from one another by the Canadian Shield and the Rocky Mountains.

All four provinces have been forced by geography and necessity to be more economically integrated with their southern neighbors than with their fellow Canadian provinces.

The British were exhausted from the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and, with the French Empire having essentially imploded, were more interested in reshaping the European balance of power than re-engaging the Americans in distant North America.

the Americans were mobilized, angry and — remembering vividly the Canadian/British sacking of Washington — mulling revenge.

Using a combination of illegal settlements, military pressure and diplomacy, the United States was able to gain control of east and west Florida from Madrid in 1819 in exchange for recognizing Spanish claims to what is now known as Texas

the United States’ efforts to secure its southwestern borders shifted to a blatant attempt to undermine and ultimately carve up the one remaining Western Hemispheric entity that could potentially challenge the United States: Mexico.

the United States quickly transformed itself from a poor coastal nation to a massively capital-rich commodities exporter.

the biggest potential security threat to the United States was newly independent Mexico, the border with which was only 150 kilometers from New Orleans. In fact, New Orleans’ security was even more precarious than such a small distance suggested.

In the United States, the cheap transport system allowed early settlers to quickly obtain their own small tracts of land.

in time the wealth accumulated to the point that portions of the United States had the capital necessary to industrialize.

Mexico, in contrast, suffered from a complete lack of navigable rivers and had only a single good port (Veracruz).

First and most obviously, the lack of navigable waterways and the non-abundance of ports drastically reduced Mexico’s ability to move goods and thereby generate its own capital. Second, the disassociated nature of Mexico’s agricultural regions forced the construction of separate, non-integrated infrastructures for each individual sub-region, drastically raising the costs of even basic development.

Third, the highland nature of the Mexico City core required an even more expensive infrastructure, since everything had to be transported up the mountains from Veracruz.

very different economic and social structure

Instead of small landholdings, Mexican agriculture was dominated by a small number of rich Spaniards

The Mexican landowners had, in essence, created their own company towns and saw little benefit in pooling their efforts to industrialize. Doing so would have undermined their control of their economic and political fiefdoms.

In just two generations — by 1870 — the American population had ballooned to 38.6 million while Mexico’s was only 8.8 million.

The first was Texas, and the primary means was settlement as enabled by the Austin family.

Second, by providing for a specific path to war, it provides the president power and legitimacy he would not have without that declaration; it both restrains the president and empowers him.

First, it was not a war in the strict sense, he argued, but a “police action” under the U.N. Charter.

Second, the U.N. Charter constituted a treaty, therefore implicitly binding the United States to go to war if the United Nations so ordered.

It was understood that if nuclear war occurred, either through an attack by the Soviets or a first strike by the United States, time and secrecy made a prior declaration of war by Congress impossible. In the expected scenario of a Soviet first strike, there would be only minutes for the president to authorize counterstrikes and no time for constitutional niceties.

Johnson did not know that he could get a declaration; the public might not be prepared to go to war. For this reason, rather than ask for a declaration, he used all the prior precedents to simply go to war without a declaration. In my view, that was the moment the declaration of war as a constitutional imperative collapsed. And in my view, so did the Johnson presidency. In hindsight, he needed a declaration badly, and if he could not get it, Vietnam would have been lost, and so may have been his presidency. Since Vietnam was lost anyway from lack of public consensus, his decision was a mistake. But it set the stage for everything that came after — war by resolution rather than by formal constitutional process.

One of the dilemmas that could have been avoided was the massive confusion of whether the United States was engaged in hunting down a criminal conspiracy or waging war on a foreign enemy. If the former, then the goal is to punish the guilty. If the latter, then the goal is to destroy the enemy. Imagine that after Pearl Harbor, FDR had promised to hunt down every pilot who attacked Pearl Harbor and bring them to justice, rather than calling for a declaration of war against a hostile nation and all who bore arms on its behalf regardless of what they had done

First, it holds both Congress and the president equally responsible for the decision, and does so unambiguously.

Second, it affirms to the people that their lives have now changed and that they will be bearing burdens.

Third, it gives the president the political and moral authority he needs to wage war on their behalf and forces everyone to share in the moral responsibility of war.

And finally, by submitting it to a political process, many wars might be avoided.

I am not making the argument that constant accommodation to reality does not have to be made. I am making the argument that the suspension of Section 8 of Article I as if it is possible to amend the Constitution with a wink and nod represents a mortal threat to the republic. If this can be done, what can’t be done?

Second, the intervening countries clearly have regime change in mind as the ultimate goal, but have thus far limited their operations purely to the enforcement of the no-fly zone and the targeting of Gadhafi loyalist forces from the air.

The failure to evict Gadhafi from power and standing by while Misrata gets pounded presents a political problem, especially after so much political capital was spent in Paris and London on getting the intervention approved in the first place, specifically for the purpose of preventing civilian casualties. Yet again Europeans will look impotent and incompetent in foreign affairs, just as the Yugoslav imbroglio illustrated in the 1990s.

However (and this a very important point) even though Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Hardy wrote "fatalistic" narratives, this is hardly proof positive that they were determinists.

Ironically, Palestinian unity does not bode well for the peace process. Unless Hamas fundamentally changes it political platform and recognizes Israel’s right to exist — in addition to renouncing violence — then Israel can refuse negotiations on those grounds.