Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Geopolitics

The Scottish Nationalist Party is offering us a one-way ticket to a deeply uncertain future

Is Scotland in Europe? The SNP doesn’t even know Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, is flying by the seat of his pants. Hardly a week goes by without another embarrassing U-turn on his claims about what independence will mean for Scotland. The SNP has had 80 years to plan for this. Yet it is increasingly clear that they are woefully underprepared for the referendum to be held in less than two years’ time. A diet of bluster is proving no substitute for the hard-headed argument needed to win over Scots’ hearts and minds. With each U-turn, Mr Salmond’s party creates a loss of confidence. No wonder the voices of dissent within its ranks are beginning to be heard. Whether it is on Scotland’s admission to the European Union, on what currency we would use, or the impact on energy supplies, the nationalists are all over the place. You might have hoped that the SNP would have thought out a credible positio

Russia and Its Syrian Debacle: When the Enemy of My Friend Becomes My Friend - By Simon Shuster

Narciso Contreras / AP A Free Syrian Army fighter offers evening prayers beside a damaged poster of Syria’s President Bashar Assad during heavy clashes with government forces in Aleppo, Dec. 8, 2012. On the night of Nov. 29, a dozen Syrian opposition figures gathered at a student eatery in Moscow called Picasso, a cheap dive on the campus of the University of People’s Friendship whose walls are decorated with a mashup of images from the artist’s blue period. It may sound odd that enemies of Bashar Assad were gathering in a country that still had the dictator’s back. But these men and their organization may be Russia ’s only hope of influence in a post-Assad Syria. As young men, several of the Syrians at Picasso had studied at the university, which hosted the exchange programs that formed the early bonds between Moscow and Damascus in the 1960s. Indeed, the gathering could have been mistaken for a class reunion, as toa

Obama's Syria disaster - By John Hannah

Watching the nightmare in Syria unfold, you have to ask yourself: Could the Obama administration have made a worse hash out of the situation if it had tried? Short of an outright Iranian victory that saw the Assad regime's power fully restored, it's hard to imagine a more dire set of circumstances for U.S. interests. The Syrian state is well on its way to imploding. A multiplicity of increasingly well-armed militias are rushing to fill the vacuum. At the forefront of the fight are a growing number of radical Islamist groups, including some affiliated with al Qaeda. The prospect that Assad' s demise will be accompanied by the use (and/or proliferation) of chemical weapons and massive communal bloodletting gets higher by the day. Libya on steroids is what we're looking at, only this time not on the distant periphery of the Middle East but in its heartland, a gaping strategic wound that is likely to threaten the stability and wellbeing of Syria's five neighbors --

Recognizing Disaster: Please, Mr. President, Don’t Intervene in Syria

in Share When it comes to the grueling civil war in Syria, it's been a while since the relevant question was whether the regime of Bashar Assad would fall. It's only a matter of time until it does. The more pressing policy choice has been whether the United States would actively hasten its demise. When President Obama announced on Tuesday evening—a full 21 months after the first protests erupted against Bashar al-Assad’s rule—that the United States government would officially recognize the Syrian opposition, that question seems to have been answered in the affirmative. To the extent that this announcement signals a plan for deeper intervention into the Syrian crisis, it will no doubt be cheered by the growing chorus of commentators eager for Washington to assume a larger role. The rest of us, however, have good reason to be concerned. Simply put, it would be a mistake for

Obama Dangerously Blurs Syria 'Red Lines' - Evan Moore, World Report

Evan Moore is a senior policy analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative . Last August, as the death toll in the Syrian crisis reached more than 25,000, President Obama declared that a red line for America's direct involvement would be if Washington were to see "chemical weapons moving around or being utilized" by the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Yet last week, amid intelligence reports that the Assad regime had moved stockpiles of its chemical weapons and is preparing for a possible aerial attack using the deadly nerve gas sarin, the commander-in-chief appeared to back away from his original statement and draw a revised red line: now only the "use" of chemical weapons would be "totally unacceptable" to the United States. The problem here is that if or when the Assad regime crosses the president's red line, it will already be to

Why The World Hates America?

As long as unchecked American militarism continues, the phenomena of anti-Americanism will continue to spread and damage the ability of the US to find necessary allies in a strategically-important part of the world [EPA] The incongruity of it seemed to be nothing short of a betrayal. After lightheartedly dancing his way into the hearts of Americans and gaining entrance to the inner sanctum of their cherished cult of celebrity, the Korean rapper, Psy, whose song "Gangam Style" became the most watched video in the history of YouTube and made him a pop culture sensation, has been revealed to have a politically active past which places him directly at odds with the American mainstream worldview and which violently decries its most basic articles of faith . The man whom they enjoyed as an unthreatening, com

The True Costs of America's Empire - By David Vine

"Are you monitoring the construction?" asked the middle-aged man on a bike accompanied by his dog. "Ah, sì," I replied in my barely passable Italian. "Bene," he answered. Good. In front of us, a backhoe's guttural engine whined into action and empty dump trucks rattled along a dirt track. The shouts of men vied for attention with the metallic whirring of drills and saws ringing in the distance. Nineteen immense cranes spread across the landscape, with the foothills of Italy's Southern Alps in the background. More than 100 pieces of earthmoving equipment, 250 workers, and grids of scaffolding wrapped around what soon would be 34 new buildings. We were standing in front of a massive 145-acre construction site for a "little America" rising in Vicenza, an architecturally renowned Italian city and UNESCO world heritage site near Venice. This was Dal Molin, the new military base the U.S. Army has been readying for the relo

United States & Russia Relations - Why the Reset Should Be Reset?

AS President Obama approaches his second term, few foreign policies are more in need of reassessment than his stance toward Russia. Recent events have eroded the promise of the “reset” proclaimed in 2009. Its achievements — the New START Treaty, cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran, Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization — have faded, replaced by stubborn differences over Syria, Iran and other high-profile issues amid rising, gratuitously antagonistic rhetoric in both capitals. Obama will now try to reverse this deterioration, perhaps demonstrating some of the “flexibility” he promised Russian leaders earlier this year. Putin, for his part, has talked about giving the relations “a new quality” by adding a strong economic dimension. We may hear talk of a second phase of the reset. There may be more deals of the kind ExxonMobil struck with Rosneft . But glib formulations and major energy projects should not cover up the fundamental cho

United States's fondness for China’s government is enabling North Korea's bad behavior

Americans wondering why North Korea has gotten away with building A-bombs and ballistic missiles—like the one it successfully tested Tuesday—need only consider Jeff Immelt.  The day before the missile launch, the CEO of General Electric and friend of President Obama endorsed China’s economic model and said “state-run communism may not be your cup of tea, but their government works.” What do the unpatriotic sentiments of GE’s boss have to do with U.S. policy toward North Korea? Both are based on the faulty but soothing assumption held by the elite establishment in American government and big business: that China is our partner. Two successive administrations—Bush and Obama—have based U.S. policy on North Korea on supposed Chinese cooperation. The theory is that Beijing doesn’t want North Korea armed with effective nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles any more than Washington or its allies, and will thus be of help. In 2003, Washington kicked off six-way talks hoping to

What is the Future of Russian Power?

We have seen growing speculation about President Vladimir Putin’s health over recent weeks. A break in his foreign trips and reports of a sports-related injury unleashed a torrent of rumors, and even suggestions that the severity of his condition could be being concealed. Unflattering comparisons were made to leaders of the late Soviet period and the ailing Boris Yeltsin . There are few facts to back up this heated speculation. After all, Putin has not disappeared from the public eye, though he has become a little less active. But the intense focus on Putin and his health speaks to the leader’s major, if not overstated role in Russian politics and foreign policy. This year began with stormy political events that cast doubt over the government’s stability and even sparked talk about the end of the Putin era. His victory in the presidential election showed that his opponents’ talk of his decline was preemptory. The government outwitted the opposition in various