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The first thing that leaps to mind is the manner in which World War II began for the three great powers: the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.
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A Net Assessment of the Middle East - 1 views
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World War II and the Origins of American Unease - 0 views
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For all three, the war started with a shock that redefined their view of the world.
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There was little doubt among American leaders that war with Japan was coming. The general public had forebodings, but not with the clarity of its leaders.
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Neither the leaders nor the public thought the Japanese were nearly so competent.
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Pearl Harbor intersected with another shock to the American psyche — the Great Depression. These two events shared common characteristics:
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First, they seemed to come out of nowhere.
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This introduced a new dimension into American culture.
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The Great Depression and Pearl Harbor created a different sensibility that suspected that prosperity and security were an illusion, with disaster lurking behind them.
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The two shocks created a dark sense of foreboding that undergirds American society to this day.
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Catastrophe therefore might come at any moment. The American approach to the Cold War is symbolized by Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain.
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The Americans analyzed their forced entry into World War II and identified what they took to be the root cause: the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia.
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If the origin of World War II was the failure to take pre-emptive action against the Germans in 1938, then it followed that the Pacific War might have been prevented by more aggressive actions early on.
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Acting early and decisively remains the foundation of U.S. foreign policy to this day. The idea that not acting in a timely and forceful fashion led to World War II underlies much American discourse on Iran or Russia.
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Pearl Harbor (and the 1929 crash) not only led to a sense of foreboding and a distrust in the wisdom of political and military leaders, but it also replaced a strategy of mobilization after war begins, with a strategy of permanent mobilization.
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The Soviet Union had its own Pearl Harbor on June 22, 1941, when the Germans invaded in spite of the friendship treaty signed between them in 1939.
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That treaty was struck for two reasons: First, the Russians couldn't persuade the British or French to sign an anti-Hitler pact. Second, a treaty with Hitler would allow the Soviets to move their border further west without firing a shot.
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The Soviets made a single miscalculation: They assumed a German campaign in France would replay the previous Great War.
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That the moment of attack was a surprise compounded the challenge, but the real problem was strategic miscalculation, not simply an intelligence or command failure.
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The Soviet forces were not ready for an attack, and their strategy collapsed with France, so the decision for war was entirely Germany's.
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What the Soviets took away from the June 1941 invasion was a conviction that political complexity could not substitute for a robust military. The United States ended World War II with the conviction that a core reason for that war was the failure of the United States. The Soviets ended World War II with the belief that their complex efforts at coalition building and maintaining the balance of power had left them utterly exposed by one miscalculation on France — one that defied the conventional wisdom.
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The Warsaw Pact was less an alliance than a geopolitical reality. For the most part it consisted of states under the direct military, intelligence or political control of the Soviet Union. The military value of the block might be limited, and its room for maneuver was equally limited.
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nuclear attack was not the Soviet's primordial fear, though the fear must not be minimized. The primordial fear in Moscow was an attack from the West. The Soviet Union's strategy was to position its own forces as far to the west as possible.
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The Soviets were not ideologues. They were geopoliticians, and China represented a potential threat that the Soviets could not control. Ideology didn't matter. China would never serve the role that Poland had to. The Sino-Soviet relationship fell apart fairly quickly.
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Beneath communist fervor, cynical indifference and dread of the Soviet secret police, the Russians found something new while the Americans found something old.
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The collapse of France caused them to depend on only two things:
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One was that the English Channel, combined with the fleet and the Royal Air Force, would hold the Germans at bay. The second was that in due course, the United States would be drawn into the war. Their two calculations proved correct.
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The Americans did not take the British Empire. It was taken away by the shocking performance of the French. On paper, the French had an excellent army — superior to the Germans, in many ways. Yet they collapsed in weeks. If we were to summarize the British sensibility, after defiance came exhaustion and then resentment.
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The Americans retain their dread even though World War II was in many ways good to the United States. It ended the Great Depression, and in the aftermath, between the G.I. Bill, VA loans and the Interstate Highway System, the war created the American professional middle class, with private homes for many and distance and space that could be accessed easily.
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Rather than a Machiavellian genius, Putin is the heir to the German invasion on June 22, 1941. He seeks strategic depth controlled by his own military. And his public has rallied to him.
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While we are celebrating the end of World War II, it is useful to examine its beginnings. So much of what constitutes the political-military culture, particularly of the Americans, was forged by the way that World War II began.
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"We are at the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. That victory did not usher in an era of universal peace. Rather, it introduced a new constellation of powers and a complex balance among them. Europe's great powers and empires declined, and the United States and the Soviet Union replaced them, performing an old dance to new musical instruments. Technology, geopolitics' companion, evolved dramatically as nuclear weapons, satellites and the microchip - among myriad wonders and horrors - changed not only the rules of war but also the circumstances under which war was possible. But one thing remained constant: Geopolitics, technology and war remained inseparable comrades."
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Coming to Terms With the American Empire | Stratfor - 1 views
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""Empire" is a dirty word. Considering the behavior of many empires, that is not unreasonable. But empire is also simply a description of a condition, many times unplanned and rarely intended. It is a condition that arises from a massive imbalance of power. Indeed, the empires created on purpose, such as Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, have rarely lasted. Most empires do not plan to become one. They become one and then realize what they are. Sometimes they do not realize what they are for a long time, and that failure to see reality can have massive consequences."
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Russia Nervously Eyes the U.S.-Iran Deal - 0 views
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"When a group of weary diplomats announced a framework for an Iranian nuclear accord last week in Lausanne, there was one diplomat in the mix whose feigned enthusiasm was hard to miss. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov left the talks at their most critical point March 30, much to the annoyance of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who apparently had to call him personally to persuade him to return. Even as Lavrov spoke positively to journalists about the negotiations throughout the week, he still seemed to have better things to do than pull all-nighters for a deal that effectively gives the United States one less problem to worry about in the Middle East and a greater capacity to focus on the Russian periphery."
Why You Should Be Disturbed at College - 0 views
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The Paradox of America's Electoral Reform - 0 views
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This election process matters to the world for two reasons.
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First, the world's only global power will be increasingly self-absorbed
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The United States sees itself as the City on the Hill, an example to the world. But along with any redemptive sensibility comes its counterpart: the apocalyptic.
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Likely an archaic institution, the Electoral College still represents the founders' fear of the passions of the people — both the intensity of some, and the indifference of others.
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They had two visions: that representatives would make the law, and that these representatives would not have politics as a profession.
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The founders saw civil society — business, farms, churches and so on — as ultimately more important than the state, and they saw excessive political passion as misplaced.
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First, it took away from the private pursuits they so valued, and it tended to make political life more important than it should be.
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Second, they feared that ordinary men (women were excluded) might be elected as representatives at various levels.
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They tried to shape representative democracy with standards they considered prudent — paralleling the values of their own social class, where private pursuits predominated and public affairs were a burdensome duty.
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Of course it was the founders who created political parties soon after the founding. The property requirements dissolved fairly quickly, the idea that state houses would elect senators went away, and the ideological passions and love of scandal emerged.
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Political parties were organized state by state, and within state by counties and cities. These parties emerged with two roles.
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The first was to generate and offer potential leaders for election at all levels.
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The second was to serve as a means of mediation between the public — for multiple classes, from the wealthy to the poor — and the state.
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The party bosses did not have visions of redemption or apocalypse. They were what the founders didn't want: professional politicians, not necessarily holding office themselves but overseeing the selection of those who would.
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This was a system made for corruption, of course, and it violated the founders' vision, but it also fulfilled that vision in a way. The party bosses' power resided in building coalitions that they could serve.
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The system was corrupt, but it produced leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as some less illustrious people.
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Starting in 1972, following Richard Nixon's presidency, the United States shifted away from a system of political bosses. This was achieved by broadly expanding primaries at all levels. Rather than bosses selecting candidates and controlling them, direct democratic elections were used for candidate selection. Since the bosses didn't select candidates, the candidates were beholden to the voters rather than the bosses. Each election year, the voters would select the candidates and then select the officeholder. Over time, the power of the political machine was broken and replaced by a series of elections. The founders did not want this level of democracy, but neither did they explicitly want the party boss.
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This change had two unanticipated consequences.
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The first was that the importance of money in the political process surged.
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Corruption moved from favors for bosses to special treatment of fundraisers, but it was still there.
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Reformers tried to limit the amount of money that could be contributed, but they ignored two facts.
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First, a primary system for the presidency is fiendishly expensive simply because delivering the message to the public in 50 states costs a fortune. Second, given the stakes, the desire to influence government is difficult to curb.
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The second unintended consequence was that it institutionalized political polarization.
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The founders designed politics to be less important than private life, and in the competition on Election Tuesday, private life tends to win, particularly in off-year elections and primaries.
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in the primaries, only two types of candidates win. One is the extremely well funded — and the passion of the wings make funding for them even more important. The other is the ideologically committed.
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All of this applies equally to elections to the House and Senate. It has been said that there has never been less bipartisanship than there is now. I don't know if that is true, but it is certainly the case that the penalties for collaboration with the other party, or for moving to the center, are extremely high.
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This is not meant to romanticize the bosses. We are, on the whole, better off without them, and we can't resurrect them. I am trying to explain why our elections have become so long, why they cost so much money, and why the wings of the parties get to define agendas and legislative and executive behavior.
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Geopolitics, as Stratfor uses the concept, argues that the wishes and idiosyncrasies of individual leaders make little difference in the long run. This is because leaders are constrained by global realities. It is also because internal political processes define what must be done to take and hold power. Those internal political processes have their own origins in impersonal forces.
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There has been a long struggle between the founders' vision of how politics should work and the reality of the process.
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The American Republic was invented and it is continually being reinvented on the same basic theme. Each reform creates a new form of corruption and a new challenge for governance. In the end, everyone is trapped by reality, but it is taking longer and longer to enter that trap.
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The political parties emerged against the founders' intentions, because political organization beyond the elite followed from the logic of the government. The rise of political bosses followed from the system, and simultaneously stabilized and corrupted it. The post-Watergate reforms changed the nature of the corruption but also changed the texture of political life. The latter is the issue with which the United States is now struggling.
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The problem endemic in American culture is the will to reform. It is both the virtue and vice of the U.S. government. It has geopolitical consequences.
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"We are now in the early phases of selecting the president of the United States. Vast amounts of money are being raised, plans are being laid, opposition research is underway and the first significant scandal has broken with the discovery that Hillary Clinton used a non-government email account for government business. Ahead of us is an extended series of primaries, followed by an election and perhaps a dispute over some aspect of the election. In the United States, the presidential election process takes about two years, particularly when the sitting president cannot run for re-election."
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The Top Five Events in 2014 - 0 views
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"'Tis the season to make lists, and a list shall be made. We tend to see each year as extraordinary, and in some senses, each year is. But in a broader sense, 2014 was merely another year in a long chain of human triumph and misery. Wars have been waged, marvelous things have been invented, disease has broken out, and people have fallen in love. Nonetheless, lists are called for, and this is my list of the five most important events of 2014."
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The Islamic State Reshapes the Middle East - 0 views
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"Nuclear talks with Iran have failed to yield an agreement, but the deadline for a deal has been extended without a hitch. What would have been a significant crisis a year ago, replete with threats and anxiety, has been handled without drama or difficulty. This new response to yet another failure to reach an accord marks a shift in the relationship between the United States and Iran, a shift that can't be understood without first considering the massive geopolitical shifts that have taken place in the Middle East, redefining the urgency of the nuclear issue."
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Thanksgiving and Puritan Geopolitics in the Americas - 0 views
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"The first winter took many of the English at Plymouth. By fall 1621, only 53 remained of the 132 who had arrived on the Mayflower. But those who had survived brought in a harvest. And so, in keeping with tradition, the governor called the living 53 together for a three-day harvest feast, joined by more than 90 locals from the Wampanoag tribe. The meal was a moment to recognize the English plantation's small step toward stability and, hopefully, profit. This was no small thing. A first, deadly year was common. Getting through it was an accomplishment. England's successful colony of Virginia had had a massive death toll - of the 8,000 arrivals between 1607 and 1625, only 15 percent lived."
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Seeking the Future of Europe in the Ancient Hanseatic League - 0 views
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"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. "
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Judgment and decision-making: brain activity indicates there is more than meets the eye - 0 views
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"People make immediate judgments about images they are shown, which could impact on their decisions, even before their brains have had time to consciously process the information, a study of brainwaves led by The University Of Melbourne has found."
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What the Fall of the Wall Did Not Change - 0 views
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"Twenty-five years ago, a crowd filled with an uneasy mixture of joy and rage tore down the Berlin Wall. There was joy for the end of Germany's partition and the end of tyranny. There was rage against generations of fear. One fear was of communist oppression. The other fear was of the threat of a war, which had loomed over Europe and Germany since 1945. One fear was moral and ideological, while the other was prudential and geopolitical. As in all defining political moments, fear and rage, ideology and geopolitics, blended together in an intoxicating mix."
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Traveling Through Multiple Europes - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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Merely moving people and goods from point to point on the Iberian Peninsula has always posed formidable challenges for governments and traders.
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In contrast, most of Germany is flat.
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The lack of any real physical borders to the east and west also helps explain Germany's historical conflict with its neighbors.
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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.
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Greece is a rugged country with narrow coastal plains that swiftly give way to mountains.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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. 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.
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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.
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"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."
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Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking, Study Says | TIME - 0 views
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"Nobody would mistake sugary soda for a health food, but a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health just found that a daily soda habit can age your immune cells almost two years."
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Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces at Work in the Nation-State - 0 views
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This dynamism is not limited to China. The Scottish referendum and waves of secession movements -- from Spain's Catalonia to Turkey and Iraq's ethnic Kurds -- are working in different directions.
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in China, one of the most intractable issues in the struggle for unity -- the status of Tibet -- is poised for a possible reversal, or at least a major adjustment.
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More important, a settlement between Beijing and the Dalai Lama could be a major step in lessening the physical and psychological estrangement between the Chinese heartland and the Tibetan Plateau.
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The very existence of the Tibetan issue bespeaks several overlapping themes of Chinese geopolitics. Most fundamentally, it must be understood in the context of China's struggle to integrate and extend control over the often impassable but strategically significant borderlands militarily and demographically.
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Perhaps no borderland is as fraught with as much consequence as Tibet under China's contemporary geopolitical circumstances. The Tibetan Plateau and its environs constitute roughly one-quarter of the Chinese landmass and are a major source of freshwater for China, the Indian subcontinent and mainland Southeast Asia.
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Starting in the 7th century, China made sporadic attempts to extend its reach into the Tibetan Plateau, but it wasn't until the Qing dynasty that the empire made a substantial effort to gain authority over Tibetan cultural and social structures through control of Tibetan Buddhist institutions.
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It is the Dalai Lama who represents the Tibetan identity in foreign capitals and holds a fractious Tibetan movement together, holding sway over both indigenous Tibetans in the homeland and the old and new generations of Tibetan exiles.
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Under the People's Republic, China has some of the clearest physical control and central authority over one of the largest and most secure states in China's dynastic history.
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Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama's international prestige exposed the central power in Beijing to numerous international critics. Moreover, it offered New Delhi an opportunity to exploit Beijing's concerns by hosting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile.
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Beijing's strategy has been to try to undermine the Dalai Lama's international prestige, constrain interaction between the exile community and Tibetans at home and hope that when the spiritual leader dies, the absence of his strong personality will leave the Tibetan movement without a center and without someone who can draw the international attention the Dalai Lama does.
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Central to Beijing's calculation is interference in the succession process whereby Beijing claims the right to designate the Dalai Lama's religious successor and, in doing so, exploit sectarian and factional divisions within Tibetan Buddhism.
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Beijing insists the reincarnation process must follow the Tibetan religious tradition since the Qing dynasty, meaning that it must occur within Tibetan territory and with the central government's endorsement, a process that highlights Tibet's position as a part of China, not an independent entity.
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the Dalai Lama has discussed the potential for succession through emanation rather than reincarnation. This would place his knowledge and authority in several individuals, each with a part of his spiritual legacy, but none as the single heir.
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More concretely, the Dalai Lama has split the role of spiritual and political leadership of the Tibetan movement, nominally giving up the latter while retaining the former.
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In doing so, he is attempting to create a sense of continuity to the Tibetan movement even though his spiritual successor has not been identified. However, it also separates the Dalai Lama from any Tibetan political movement, theoretically making it easier for the spiritual leader and Beijing to come to an accord about his possible return as a spiritual -- but not political -- leader.
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But the maneuvering by the Dalai Lama reflects a deeper reality. The Tibetan movement is not homogenous. Tibetan Buddhism has several schools that remain in fragile coordination out of respect for the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan political movement is also fragmented, with the younger foreign-born Tibetans often more strongly pressing for independence for Tibet, while the older exiles take a more moderate tone and call for more autonomy. The peaceful path promoted by the Dalai Lama is respected, but not guaranteed forever, by the younger and more radical elements of the Tibetan movement, which have only temporarily renounced the use of violence to achieve their political goals.
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At a minimum, the spiritual leader's fame means no successor will be able to exercise the same degree of influence or maintain internal coherence as he has done.
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both Beijing and the Dalai Lama -- and by extension his mainstream followers -- understand how little time they have and how, without a resolution, the uncertainties surrounding the Tibet issue could become permanent after the spiritual leader's death.
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Of course, many uncertainties surround the return of the Dalai Lama; it is even uncertain whether it could happen at all. Indeed, overcoming 55 years of hostile relations takes enormous effort, and even if the Dalai Lama is allowed to return to Tibet, it is only one of several steps in much broader negotiations between Beijing and the Tibetan exile community over how to reach a resolution, including the possible resettlement of 200,000 Tibetans in exile, the status of the government-in-exile, the authority of the Dalai Lama and, ultimately, the succession process for the spiritual leader.
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Perhaps more important, even if there were signs of a resolution developing, the succession issue is likely to be a roadblock. Beijing is unlikely to give any concession in its authority to appoint a reincarnated spiritual leader, and the Dalai Lama shows little intention of allowing Beijing's unilateral move.
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Again illustrating how an individual can play a role in geopolitics, the potential for reconciliation between Beijing and the Dalai Lama could affect the balance between China and India.
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China has long viewed India's decision to host the Tibetan government-in-exile as a hostile gesture. However, India's ability to exploit China's concerns about Tibet has diminished along with the government-in-exile's influence and claim to represent Tibet as a legitimate entity.
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a settlement would not eliminate the underlying geopolitical rivalry between India and China on other fronts -- from their 4,000-kilometer land border to the maritime competitions in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea and their competition for energy and other resources.
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""Here begins our tale: The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." This opening adage of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, China's classic novel of war and strategy, best captures the essential dynamism of Chinese geopolitics. At its heart is the millennia-long struggle by China's would-be rulers to unite and govern the all-but-ungovernable geographic mass of China. It is a story of centrifugal forces and of insurmountable divisions rooted in geography and history -- but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, of centripetal forces toward eventual unity."
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Turkey Must Tread Carefully Against Islamic State - 0 views
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Rumors have long circulated that Turkey has been aiding Islamic State fighters.
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Turkey's dealings with the Islamic State are much more nuanced than has generally been understood. Last year in July, Stratfor shed light on this dynamic, analyzing how the Turks were caught between two very threatening realities — both demanding simultaneous management — on their southern flank: jihadists of various stripes and Syrian Kurdish separatists.
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Turkey is all too aware of how Pakistan even today, nearly two generations after it agreed to serve as the staging ground for the U.S.-led effort to counter Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, continues to deal with the fallout of that war, which has not yet ended.
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From the Turks' viewpoint, the Americans and their Western and regional allies (with the exception of Jordan) all have the option of walking away from the conflict in Syria.
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Not only does Turkey feel that it will have to deal with the mess in Syria long after other stakeholders have moved on, it also knows that the United States expects Turkey to manage the Syrians as well as other regional matters.
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Turkey has not forgotten how, during the days of President Turgut Ozal, Ankara cut Iraq's export pipeline in 1990 at the behest of the United States in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War but was later left with the aftermath as promises of aid disappeared with the subsequent change of U.S. administrations.
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This bitter experience informed Turkey's 2003 decision to refuse Washington access to Turkish territory for a northern invasion of Iraq. At the same time Turkey is deeply worried about being caught between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are engaged in a vicious proxy sectarian war.
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But in the real world, not only does the Islamic State exist, it is actually in competition with Turkey for influence among the Sunni Arabs to the south of the Turkish Republic.
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Al-Hashimi is also very close to Turkey's main Arab partner, Qatar. Al-Hashimi periodically frequents Doha, which has significant influence among a range of jihadist groups and very likely played a key role in the release of the diplomats, which happened just days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Qatar.
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Clearly Erdogan is not worried about any fallout from a prisoner exchange, especially since the United States recently released five high-profile Afghan Taliban detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for an American soldier, a deal also mediated by Qatar.
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"As the United States begins its full assault against the Islamic State in Syria, backed by Arab allies, the absence of NATO ally Turkey is drawing attention and comment. Just days before the Sept. 22 beginning of U.S. airstrikes, Turkey managed to broker a deal with the Islamic State to return 49 diplomats held in Iraq for 101 days. Contrary to diplomatic and media speculation, however, Turkey is not supporting the transnational, Syria- and Iraq-based jihadist movement known as the Islamic State."
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