US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger

Pepe Escobar, the author of this article, writes his convictions. Truly his Chinese employers see their agenda served, but in this case, it would appear both Pepe and China have a point. The US has taken on the traditional role of Great Britain. The Brits maintained their dominance of the world by playing divide and conquer. The US is doing the same. Except, it would appear, the availability of information via the internet is undermining the US effectiveness.

Has Obama simply filled Bushes shoes as the world's bully? At this point I'm thinking this is an engine independent of government. Is it a "rogue" CIA operation blacked out to even Obama? Totally blacked out, probably not, but buried in piles and piles of similar operations with few directors and no accountability to maintain plausible denial ability and accessible to the new president only with time and focus. Do you thing Obama has enough on his plate?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Asia Times Online

The New Great Game is not only focused on the face-off between the United States and strategic competitors Russia and China - with Pipelineistan as a defining element.

The full spectrum dominance doctrine requires the control of the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Horn of Africa to western China. The cover story is the former "global war on terror", now "overseas contingency operations" under the management of President Barack Obama's administration.

Most of all, the underlying logic remains divide and rule. As for the divide, Beijing would call it, without a trace of irony, "splittist". Split up Iraq - blocking China's access to Iraqi oil. Split up Pakistan - with an independent Balochistan preventing China from

accessing the strategic port of Gwadar there. Split up Afghanistan - with an independent Pashtunistan allowing the building of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline bypassing Russia. Split up Iran - by financing subversion in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan. And why not split up Bolivia (as was attempted last year) to the benefit of US energy giants. Call it the (splitting) Kosovo model.

Kosovo, incidentally, is known as the Colombia of the Balkans. What Washington calls the "Western hemisphere" is a sub-section of the New Great Game. The linkage between the recent military coup in Honduras, the return of the living dead - that is, the resurrection of the US Navy's Fourth Fleet in July 2008 - and now the turbo-charging of seven US military bases in Colombia is not to be blamed merely on continuity from president George W Bush to Obama. Not really. This is all about the internal logic of Full Spectrum Dominance.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

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Clinton: It Is a "Great Regret" the US Is Not in International Criminal Court

Hillary Clinton has signalled a significant shift by the US in favour of the international criminal court, the world body that pursues war criminals but was strenuously opposed by the Bush administration.

In the most public expression of support yet from Barack Obama's administration, the US secretary of state expressed regret that the US has not yet joined the ICC.

The court, set up in 2002, has pursued dictators, mainly from Africa, who are alleged to have been engaged in genocide and other war crimes.

The US is at present not only not a member but government officials are theoretically banned from any engagement with the ICC whatsoever. An administration official predicted there will be increased US cooperation with the ICC but cautioned against expecting early entry.

Clinton, speaking at a public meeting in Kenya, the first leg of an African tour, indicated she hoped this would come sooner rather than later: "This is a great regret that we are not a signatory. I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership. But that has not yet come to pass."

There is a divide in the Obama administration over entry. Clinton and some other senior figures at the White House and state department are passionately in favour, while others advocate caution, saying the president can afford not to rush membership and should wait to see how the ICC evolves.

Supporters of the ICC, including the UK, which is a member, have long advocated the US joining, saying this would immensely strengthen the body.

But President George Bush blocked American membership, expressing fears that US officials could be open to arrest for alleged war crimes. The Pentagon was concerned that US soldiers might end up in court in The Hague.

In December 2000, just before he left office, the former president Bill Clinton signed up to the ICC. But Bush two years later announced that the US would not be joining and a bill ratifying membership failed to get through Congress.

via t r u t h o u t.

He who is afraid of the justice of his peers is guilt of crimes.

Obama: Amaze us!

Image by BL1961 via Flickr

Global Research
By Michael Carmichael
planetarymovement.com

As Barack Obama approaches the helm of the American ship of state, he is facing many challenges.
Just as she was being born at the dawn of her journey into history, the American nation is poised on the brink of a new beginning. In those revolutionary times, America faced a roiling sea of danger, uncertainty and trepidation. Today, after more than two centuries of venture, America moves forward beyond and away from the final and most tragic acts of the second Bush presidency.
The American journey has been filled with triumph and tragedy. Triumph over the bonds of colonialism transformed into the tragedy of slavery, Manifest Destiny and the genocide of Native Americans followed by Civil War. Abolition began to right the wrongs of slavery, but America careened forward into the excesses of the Gilded Age and the arrogance of her Imperialist Presidency that extended her empire to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
The Roosevelts expanded the American vision to encompass economic justice, environmental preservation and the duty to deliver peace beyond our borders. At the same time, American philosophers advocated the virtue of selfishness, the goodness of greed and the siren song of supply side trickle down economic miracles, while Martin Luther King, Jr. marched to the beat of a different drummer to demand the fulfillment of civil rights for our black brothers and sisters.
In an ancient scenario, the culture of greed infiltrated the American defense establishment and commandeered the ship of state to instigate conflicts and to impose its will by force. American power came into conflict with competing ideologies promising a better and more just society through cooperation rather than competition. For more than three-quarters of a century, America has moved forward toward its promise of freedom for all her people: freedom of speech; freedom of religion; freedom from want and freedom from fear.
FDRAs Barack Obama approaches the dais to take his oath of office, he is focused on delivering the four freedoms to all Americans. Each of FDR's four freedoms is in danger in America today. Freedom of speech was curtailed in pursuit of solidarity against the Axis of Evil in the War on Terror. Freedom of religion is under threat as Muslims are treated like criminals and terrorists. Freedom from want is on its deathbed, for millions of Americans have been expelled from their homes, banished from their workplaces and shunned by their employers. Freedom from fear has vanished, as Americans are convulsed in a paroxysm of panic apprehensive about their financial security and in fear for their very lives.
Barack Obama faces an insurmountable Himalaya of fear. In its face, Obama brings a message of hope for change. Obama erases fear with the promise of hope. Now he must turn to the people of America and deliver the four freedoms they have been promised.
Obama faces anxiety over the economy. While there are differences of opinion about what must be done and what must not be done, Obama has few choices. Obama's errant predecessor capitulated to the demands of his capitalist coterie for massive federal bailouts of financial institutions. With the bloated banking system now in bankruptcy, the calls for government regulation from Wall Street and the Federal Reserve will herald the beginning of state capitalism, a propagandistic oxymoron for a socialized banking system. While the incomes of financiers, bankers and others will shrivel, the confidence of the American people will be restored. The new American banking system will resemble a vast public utility, where salaries are strictly limited and profits are regulated.
But, the American people fear for their very lives today. Faced with the rapacious appetite for corporate profit that no population of any other industrialized nation faces, Americans spend more than twice what citizens of other democracies spend for their healthcare. In order to restore the freedom from fear, Obama must deliver a better system for healthcare that will be nothing less than revolutionary for it must delete the profitability of illness, injury and disease from the national vocabulary. The people of America are suffering through a stupefying crescendo of ghoulish greed that is pervasive thoughout the healthcare industry. Obama believes that healthcare is a human right that government must deliver to a free people to ensure that they do not experience fears for their own lives.
statue of liberty dark and direBut, Americans fear for more than their financial futures and their health, they fear for their very existence under threat from those who would destroy the fabric of our society - the terrorists. Bush launched his War on Terror to galvanize political support for a Gotterdammerung of Islamist terrorists. In the process, Bush triggered a massive avalanche of fear within America that has led to two immoral and counterproductive wars in Asia. America's standing in the world has been toppled from the top of a tall column. For the world at large, the Statue of Liberty has lost all meaning. America's prestige has morphed into a global loathing of the stars and stripes. In 2008, America has become the most feared and hated nation on earth.
Like no other president before him, Obama faces a global challenge to America's faltering leadership. To address the global challenge, Obama must replace opprobrium with trust and restore equilibrium with peace. American Muslims must be freed from the burdens of ostracism, stereotyping and the prison of Guantanamo. But, the closure of Guantanamo will be only the first step. The American prison population has inflated beyond all sense of reason. Alone among all other nations, America imprisons one out of every one hundred of its citizens. For shame, more American prisoners are from the black and tan minorities rather than from the white majority. The American prison-industrial complex has transformed the land of the free into a police state where minorities are incarcerated for misdemeanors while whites go free for felonies. Obama must right this terrible wrong that tarnishes America's luster in the eyes of the world.
Even more importantly, Obama must forge a new foreign policy that does not genuflect to the Pentagon and resort to military interventions and wars to enforce American power by the simplsitic application of force -- for force has failed America in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the Information Age, hard power is indeed outmoded, outdated, obsolete and counterproductive. Soft power is now the only instrument available for forging ahead on the global seas of commerce, ecology and culture.
camp david accords bwObama's global challenges are manifold, but none more difficult than in the Middle East. In recent days, hard power inflicted pain and destruction in the Arab-Israeli conflict. America's involvement in the Middle East has not delivered peace or security of the freedom from fear to the peoples of the Middle East. Since the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Agreement, the Middle East has devolved into conflict and crisis. Under George W. Bush, American policy made the insufferable situation worse by launching the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unwise favoritism in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nowhere does Obama face a more difficult challenge than in the Middle East, but in challenge therein resides opportunity - a unique opportunity to redefine America's vision in the eyes of the world.
On Wednesday, the 21st of January 2009, Barack Obama will enter the Oval Office where he will wield the power of the American nation. On that date, the world will judge him for the priorities he engages from the very outset of his presidency.
While he has promised America that he will order the cessation of torture, the withdrawal from Iraq, the final phase of the war in Afghanistan and the restructuring of American involvement with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Obama's global reputation will be cast in the flames of the forge.
In that moment and in the others rapidly to come, we shall learn the extent and the tenor of the change Obama will bring - not only to America but to the tiny planet where he will be the most powerful leader in world history, a leader for all peoples - for better or worse -- and it is indeed quite difficult to imagine how he might be worse than George W. Bush.
obama bwPresident Obama, the time is now ripe. Bring on all the changes you have promised from sea to shining sea and from nation unto nation - you must now bring peace unto all the nations of the earth. We, Americans who summoned and supported you are waiting; the nations are gazing intently upon you. Amaze us.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Michael Carmichael, planetarymovement.com, 2009
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=11908
© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007

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Obama: Amaze us!

Image by BL1961 via Flickr

Global Research
By Michael Carmichael
planetarymovement.com

As Barack Obama approaches the helm of the American ship of state, he is facing many challenges.
Just as she was being born at the dawn of her journey into history, the American nation is poised on the brink of a new beginning. In those revolutionary times, America faced a roiling sea of danger, uncertainty and trepidation. Today, after more than two centuries of venture, America moves forward beyond and away from the final and most tragic acts of the second Bush presidency.
The American journey has been filled with triumph and tragedy. Triumph over the bonds of colonialism transformed into the tragedy of slavery, Manifest Destiny and the genocide of Native Americans followed by Civil War. Abolition began to right the wrongs of slavery, but America careened forward into the excesses of the Gilded Age and the arrogance of her Imperialist Presidency that extended her empire to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
The Roosevelts expanded the American vision to encompass economic justice, environmental preservation and the duty to deliver peace beyond our borders. At the same time, American philosophers advocated the virtue of selfishness, the goodness of greed and the siren song of supply side trickle down economic miracles, while Martin Luther King, Jr. marched to the beat of a different drummer to demand the fulfillment of civil rights for our black brothers and sisters.
In an ancient scenario, the culture of greed infiltrated the American defense establishment and commandeered the ship of state to instigate conflicts and to impose its will by force. American power came into conflict with competing ideologies promising a better and more just society through cooperation rather than competition. For more than three-quarters of a century, America has moved forward toward its promise of freedom for all her people: freedom of speech; freedom of religion; freedom from want and freedom from fear.
FDRAs Barack Obama approaches the dais to take his oath of office, he is focused on delivering the four freedoms to all Americans. Each of FDR's four freedoms is in danger in America today. Freedom of speech was curtailed in pursuit of solidarity against the Axis of Evil in the War on Terror. Freedom of religion is under threat as Muslims are treated like criminals and terrorists. Freedom from want is on its deathbed, for millions of Americans have been expelled from their homes, banished from their workplaces and shunned by their employers. Freedom from fear has vanished, as Americans are convulsed in a paroxysm of panic apprehensive about their financial security and in fear for their very lives.
Barack Obama faces an insurmountable Himalaya of fear. In its face, Obama brings a message of hope for change. Obama erases fear with the promise of hope. Now he must turn to the people of America and deliver the four freedoms they have been promised.
Obama faces anxiety over the economy. While there are differences of opinion about what must be done and what must not be done, Obama has few choices. Obama's errant predecessor capitulated to the demands of his capitalist coterie for massive federal bailouts of financial institutions. With the bloated banking system now in bankruptcy, the calls for government regulation from Wall Street and the Federal Reserve will herald the beginning of state capitalism, a propagandistic oxymoron for a socialized banking system. While the incomes of financiers, bankers and others will shrivel, the confidence of the American people will be restored. The new American banking system will resemble a vast public utility, where salaries are strictly limited and profits are regulated.
But, the American people fear for their very lives today. Faced with the rapacious appetite for corporate profit that no population of any other industrialized nation faces, Americans spend more than twice what citizens of other democracies spend for their healthcare. In order to restore the freedom from fear, Obama must deliver a better system for healthcare that will be nothing less than revolutionary for it must delete the profitability of illness, injury and disease from the national vocabulary. The people of America are suffering through a stupefying crescendo of ghoulish greed that is pervasive thoughout the healthcare industry. Obama believes that healthcare is a human right that government must deliver to a free people to ensure that they do not experience fears for their own lives.
statue of liberty dark and direBut, Americans fear for more than their financial futures and their health, they fear for their very existence under threat from those who would destroy the fabric of our society - the terrorists. Bush launched his War on Terror to galvanize political support for a Gotterdammerung of Islamist terrorists. In the process, Bush triggered a massive avalanche of fear within America that has led to two immoral and counterproductive wars in Asia. America's standing in the world has been toppled from the top of a tall column. For the world at large, the Statue of Liberty has lost all meaning. America's prestige has morphed into a global loathing of the stars and stripes. In 2008, America has become the most feared and hated nation on earth.
Like no other president before him, Obama faces a global challenge to America's faltering leadership. To address the global challenge, Obama must replace opprobrium with trust and restore equilibrium with peace. American Muslims must be freed from the burdens of ostracism, stereotyping and the prison of Guantanamo. But, the closure of Guantanamo will be only the first step. The American prison population has inflated beyond all sense of reason. Alone among all other nations, America imprisons one out of every one hundred of its citizens. For shame, more American prisoners are from the black and tan minorities rather than from the white majority. The American prison-industrial complex has transformed the land of the free into a police state where minorities are incarcerated for misdemeanors while whites go free for felonies. Obama must right this terrible wrong that tarnishes America's luster in the eyes of the world.
Even more importantly, Obama must forge a new foreign policy that does not genuflect to the Pentagon and resort to military interventions and wars to enforce American power by the simplsitic application of force -- for force has failed America in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the Information Age, hard power is indeed outmoded, outdated, obsolete and counterproductive. Soft power is now the only instrument available for forging ahead on the global seas of commerce, ecology and culture.
camp david accords bwObama's global challenges are manifold, but none more difficult than in the Middle East. In recent days, hard power inflicted pain and destruction in the Arab-Israeli conflict. America's involvement in the Middle East has not delivered peace or security of the freedom from fear to the peoples of the Middle East. Since the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Agreement, the Middle East has devolved into conflict and crisis. Under George W. Bush, American policy made the insufferable situation worse by launching the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unwise favoritism in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nowhere does Obama face a more difficult challenge than in the Middle East, but in challenge therein resides opportunity - a unique opportunity to redefine America's vision in the eyes of the world.
On Wednesday, the 21st of January 2009, Barack Obama will enter the Oval Office where he will wield the power of the American nation. On that date, the world will judge him for the priorities he engages from the very outset of his presidency.
While he has promised America that he will order the cessation of torture, the withdrawal from Iraq, the final phase of the war in Afghanistan and the restructuring of American involvement with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Obama's global reputation will be cast in the flames of the forge.
In that moment and in the others rapidly to come, we shall learn the extent and the tenor of the change Obama will bring - not only to America but to the tiny planet where he will be the most powerful leader in world history, a leader for all peoples - for better or worse -- and it is indeed quite difficult to imagine how he might be worse than George W. Bush.
obama bwPresident Obama, the time is now ripe. Bring on all the changes you have promised from sea to shining sea and from nation unto nation - you must now bring peace unto all the nations of the earth. We, Americans who summoned and supported you are waiting; the nations are gazing intently upon you. Amaze us.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Michael Carmichael, planetarymovement.com, 2009
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=11908
© Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca
Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia © Copyright 2005-2007

Related articles by Zemanta

• Obama touches every base for the masses
• Begala: Obama summons ghosts of history
• Obama Inaugural Speech Signaling Unity Era: Good Not Great
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Only a "For America" PAC Can Stop the Madness

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Informed Comment

I want to follow up today on my postings over the weekend on how organizing to defend progressive congressional representatives and punish reactionary ones is far superior to street protests as political action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Cont'd
People wrote to defend street protests or minded that I said I was annoyed. I stand by what I said. Street protests have not stopped the US Congress from turning Israel into a massive arms arsenal in the Middle East or from granting it $3 billion a year, in part for such military purposes. (Israel has received the lion's share of US foreign aid in recent decades, even though people in Rwanda need the help more and even though the Israeli per capita income in the early zeroes has been something like $17,000 a year, more than Potugal or Poland and similar to Greece.) Protests have not stopped US complicity in the creeping Israeli colonization of the West Bank, including the area around Jerusalem. They have not stopped the 2006 or 2009 wars of their client on weak and virtually defenseless opponents such as the south Beirut tenement buildings or Gaza hospitals.
Street protests have their uses as a means of creating a political movement, but they are helpless in this case because the important decisions are taken on Capitol Hill. I wrote on Saturday:

'Europe has ceded dealing with the Israelis to the United States. The people of the United States have ceded dealing with the Israelis to the US Congress. The US Congress generally abdicates its responsibilities when faced with large powerful single-issue lobbies such as . . . the Israel lobbies. So Congress has ceded Israel, and indeed, most Middle East, policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its myriad organizational supporters, from the Southern Baptist churches to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. The Israel lobbies take their cue on what is good policy from the Israeli government and the Likud Party. So, US Israel policy is driven by . . . the Israeli rightwing. That is why Congress voted 309 to five to support Israel's war on the people of Gaza, with 22 abstaining. '

The US Senate and the US House of Representatives are not afraid of street protests in San Francisco. And why should they be? What sort of threat is it to them, that we say if they don't change their legislation we will . . . walk in the street? Their response would be, "Make sure you have comfortable shoes; now, I have to see this nice lobbyist in my office in a thousand dollar suit and alligator shoes who has an enormous check for my current political campaign."
The representative would say to us, "I want to be reelected. You cannot stop that by walking in the street, nor can you help me win by doing so. This televangelist from an Israel lobby, in contrast, is going to help me buy loads of television commercials dissing my opponents in the next election. And, if I don't help the gentleman out, he's threatening to give the money instead to my rival and unseat me. So you'll forgive me if I turn my back on you and wish you well with your, uh, walking. But I've got an election to win, rather than to lose, and you are irrelevant to that task."
nd the big oak door in the Dirksen building slams in our faces.
The US Congress is the best proof of evolution. Its members are constantly subjected to unnatural selection by single-issue lobbies.. Run for office demanding gun control, and you will likely lose, because the National Rifle Association will arrange for its members to fund your opponent's campaign. If you do win, the NRA will redouble its efforts for the next time, which if you are a representative, is only 2 years later. After a while, there just aren't a lot of strong gun control proponents in Congress.
It is the same with the Israel lobbies, which are just as single-minded. We have had people in Congress who dared criticize Israel. They were Paul Findley, Charles Percy, William Fulbright, Roger Jepson, Pete McCloskey, Earl Hilliard, and Cynthia McKinney. They were all successfully ousted by AIPAC-coordinated campaigns. US political races are close and candidates have flaws, so AIPAC often denies in public that it made the difference and implies with high dudgeon that there is something wrong with alleging that it did. In private, AIPAC officials boast endlessly on the HIll about how no one messes with them and survives.
The reason AIPAC and its constituencies among the Evangelicals and American Likudniks has been so successful is that there is virtually no countervailing political force. Madison and other Founding Fathers set up the US, as Ian Lustick has argued, on the assumption that on most important issues there would be opposing factions who would check each other in the legislature. The drawback of their system is that when there is only one effective faction on an issue, it completely dominates politically. Madison's system worked to prolong the heyday of Big Tobacco far beyond what was reasonable. Anti-smoking campaigners who knew that smoking kills you dead could not make headway with Congress because the tobacco-growing and cigarette industries would counter-lobby.
But on some issues there is no one on the other side of it to lobby and threaten Congressmen. Thus, there was not much precentage until recently in pushing for an end to the boycott on Communist Cuba, since the Florida Cuba lobby would punish you politically and virtually no one would reward you.

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Only a "For America" PAC Can Stop the Madness

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Informed Comment

I want to follow up today on my postings over the weekend on how organizing to defend progressive congressional representatives and punish reactionary ones is far superior to street protests as political action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Cont'd
People wrote to defend street protests or minded that I said I was annoyed. I stand by what I said. Street protests have not stopped the US Congress from turning Israel into a massive arms arsenal in the Middle East or from granting it $3 billion a year, in part for such military purposes. (Israel has received the lion's share of US foreign aid in recent decades, even though people in Rwanda need the help more and even though the Israeli per capita income in the early zeroes has been something like $17,000 a year, more than Potugal or Poland and similar to Greece.) Protests have not stopped US complicity in the creeping Israeli colonization of the West Bank, including the area around Jerusalem. They have not stopped the 2006 or 2009 wars of their client on weak and virtually defenseless opponents such as the south Beirut tenement buildings or Gaza hospitals.
Street protests have their uses as a means of creating a political movement, but they are helpless in this case because the important decisions are taken on Capitol Hill. I wrote on Saturday:

'Europe has ceded dealing with the Israelis to the United States. The people of the United States have ceded dealing with the Israelis to the US Congress. The US Congress generally abdicates its responsibilities when faced with large powerful single-issue lobbies such as . . . the Israel lobbies. So Congress has ceded Israel, and indeed, most Middle East, policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its myriad organizational supporters, from the Southern Baptist churches to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. The Israel lobbies take their cue on what is good policy from the Israeli government and the Likud Party. So, US Israel policy is driven by . . . the Israeli rightwing. That is why Congress voted 309 to five to support Israel's war on the people of Gaza, with 22 abstaining. '

The US Senate and the US House of Representatives are not afraid of street protests in San Francisco. And why should they be? What sort of threat is it to them, that we say if they don't change their legislation we will . . . walk in the street? Their response would be, "Make sure you have comfortable shoes; now, I have to see this nice lobbyist in my office in a thousand dollar suit and alligator shoes who has an enormous check for my current political campaign."
The representative would say to us, "I want to be reelected. You cannot stop that by walking in the street, nor can you help me win by doing so. This televangelist from an Israel lobby, in contrast, is going to help me buy loads of television commercials dissing my opponents in the next election. And, if I don't help the gentleman out, he's threatening to give the money instead to my rival and unseat me. So you'll forgive me if I turn my back on you and wish you well with your, uh, walking. But I've got an election to win, rather than to lose, and you are irrelevant to that task."
nd the big oak door in the Dirksen building slams in our faces.
The US Congress is the best proof of evolution. Its members are constantly subjected to unnatural selection by single-issue lobbies.. Run for office demanding gun control, and you will likely lose, because the National Rifle Association will arrange for its members to fund your opponent's campaign. If you do win, the NRA will redouble its efforts for the next time, which if you are a representative, is only 2 years later. After a while, there just aren't a lot of strong gun control proponents in Congress.
It is the same with the Israel lobbies, which are just as single-minded. We have had people in Congress who dared criticize Israel. They were Paul Findley, Charles Percy, William Fulbright, Roger Jepson, Pete McCloskey, Earl Hilliard, and Cynthia McKinney. They were all successfully ousted by AIPAC-coordinated campaigns. US political races are close and candidates have flaws, so AIPAC often denies in public that it made the difference and implies with high dudgeon that there is something wrong with alleging that it did. In private, AIPAC officials boast endlessly on the HIll about how no one messes with them and survives.
The reason AIPAC and its constituencies among the Evangelicals and American Likudniks has been so successful is that there is virtually no countervailing political force. Madison and other Founding Fathers set up the US, as Ian Lustick has argued, on the assumption that on most important issues there would be opposing factions who would check each other in the legislature. The drawback of their system is that when there is only one effective faction on an issue, it completely dominates politically. Madison's system worked to prolong the heyday of Big Tobacco far beyond what was reasonable. Anti-smoking campaigners who knew that smoking kills you dead could not make headway with Congress because the tobacco-growing and cigarette industries would counter-lobby.
But on some issues there is no one on the other side of it to lobby and threaten Congressmen. Thus, there was not much precentage until recently in pushing for an end to the boycott on Communist Cuba, since the Florida Cuba lobby would punish you politically and virtually no one would reward you.

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Behind the Crisis in the Caucasus: Russian Isolation or Inclusion in the International Arena?

Image by Chewbacka via Flickr

RightSideNews.com

The outbreak of the crisis in the Caucasus goes much deeper than Russia's concern for the welfare of residents of South Ossetia, a non-Russian ethnic minority. The actual reason for Russia's invasion of Georgia stems from a clash of interests between Russia and the West on four fronts, each reflected in this crisis.
Indeed, while it was Georgia that Russia invaded, Russia's expectation was that reverberations of its invasion into Gori and Poti would resound not only in Tbilisi and Kiev, but also in Brussels and Washington. Understanding the geopolitical context and the time dimension will paint a clearer picture of the crisis and perhaps suggest directions for its possible resolution.
In most of the power struggles in recent years between Russia and the US, the US and the West have taken the initiative and occasionally scored successes, at least in the short term. In August 2008, following the incursion of Georgian soldiers into South Ossetia, Russia seized an opportunity to take the initiative and from its standpoint achieve success on those same fronts. The Russian invasion into Georgia is merely one battle in the overall broader campaign of the clash of interests waged between the sides.
The First Front: Insufficient Attention to Russian Interests in the International Arena
Kosovo can serve as an example of this front's clash of interests between the West and Russia. For several years the inhabitants of Kosovo, the separatist Albanian region in Serbia, have demanded independence. Russia, an ethnic federation and significant ally of Serbia, vehemently opposed granting independence to Kosovo. Russia feared that international recognition for an independent separatist ethnic district would serve as a precedent for separatist regions at home, for example, Chechnya. However prominent Western countries, including the US, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy decided for various reasons to ignore the Russian interest and recognize the state immediately following its declaration of independence in February 2008. The current Russian president, Medvedev, said then that Kosovo's independence would "lead to the undermining of stability and security in Europe and would set all Europe on fire."
In August 2008, Russia apparently found an opportunity to prove its claim and exact a price from the West and the US for their disregard of the Russian interest. Russia indeed has always supported autonomy for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but the timing of its invasion into Georgia was far from coincidental. The exercise of Russian force followed by recognition of the independence of these regions, while demonstrably ignoring the stances of the European Union and the US, was an initiated response by the Russians to the West turning its back on Russian interests in the matter of Kosovo. On August 27, one day after Russia recognized the independence of the regions, the Russian president assessed, "we acted like other countries did in regard to Kosovo."
The Second Front: The Renewed Struggle between East and West

Image by earthpro via Flickr

The US and some European countries are concerned about Iran's armament campaign and the progress of its nuclear program. Consequently, the US has for some time been deliberating with Poland and Czechoslovakia, its strategic partners in Central Europe, over the possibility of placing defense systems on their territories to guard against a potential Iranian threat. In order to dispel Russian concerns, the US proposed that Poland allow Russian observers permanent access to these systems, but the Poles rejected the proposal. For its part Russia has argued that the projected sites of the systems challenge the true intentions of the US and its partners. Poland borders Belarus, Russia's prominent ally and its western neighbor; in Russian eyes, locating the systems there is tantamount to placing missile systems on its actual border.
As far as the Russians are concerned, the US insistence on keeping Russia out of the picture regarding its decision over the location of the defense systems on the one hand, and its decision to install those systems precisely in Russia's "backyard" on the other, are possible indications of a return by the US to an era of a quasi East-West arms race. Already in April 2008, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that placing the systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia without supplying satisfactory assurances to Russia would lead Russia to a military-technological response. The Russian military attack on its southern neighbor, Georgia, may be an initial Russian signal to the US and Europe of the ability of the former superpower to return and activate its military might against the West in the 21st century.
The Third Front: A Western Foothold in Traditional Regions of Russian Influence
The US views partnership with the new democracies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia as an important strategic objective; it thus seeks to strengthen the democratic regimes there with assistance to their militaries and economies. Such US activity is not looked on favorably by the Russian leadership. Russia is not interested in the restoration of democratic regimes with Western style anti-Russian leanings in its immediate vicinity and in regions that historically were under its influence. Moreover, Russia views NATO's eastern expansion with suspicion and as an infringement along its borders.
The inclusion of central European countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and East European countries bordering Russia like Estonia and Latvia to NATO is perceived in Russia as an emerging potential threat to its security. Consequently, US support for the consolidation of anti-Russian Western regimes in Georgia and Ukraine, two former Soviet Union countries that border Russia, and their addition to NATO constitutes, in Russian eyes, the further crossing of a red line. But despite Russia's resolute and severe opposition, the secretary of the organization made a pledge at the NATO summit in April regarding Georgia and Ukraine joining the Alliance: Ultimately they would be accepted as full members of the organization. In response, the Russian deputy minister of foreign affairs, Alexander Grushko, said the acceptance of those countries to the organization would constitute "a terrible mistake with severe repercussions for pan-European security." Lavrov added that membership in NATO would prompt a worsening of Russia's relations with Georgia and the Ukraine.
The attack on Georgia, under the pretext of defending local inhabitants of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, demonstrates just how critical it is to Russia that Georgia and Ukraine remain under its patronage and not become military allies of the world's largest military power, the US, or its European partners. Moscow hopes this campaign will underscore to the West just how inadvisable it is to fan the flames of this regional fire and how important it is for Russia to retain influence and strategic supremacy in its immediate vicinity.
The Fourth Front: Russia's Primacy as an Energy Supplier (Oil and Gas)
Russia is one of the world's largest exporters of oil and natural gas. Moreover, because resource-rich Central Asian countries lack direct access to the Black Sea and to Europe, they sell Russia natural gas at half price while Russia in turn sells it at full price to Europe. In other words, Russian profits from energy sales to Europe depend not only upon those resources, but also on their transfer from Central Asia to Europe. Europe is naturally interested in reducing its growing dependency on Russia and therefore is working to find alternative ways of importing gas and oil from Central Asia. The most efficient alternative is to import directly from Georgia, the only country aside from Russia with a continental connection to both Central Asia (via Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea) and the European Union (via the Black Sea).
In recent years, two pipelines were opened through which Georgia exports Azeri oil to Europe, via its port on the Black Sea and the Turkish port on the Mediterranean. The pipeline running through Georgia to the Black Sea port runs near Gori and the port city of Poti, two cities the Russians took pains to conquer when they invaded the country. But what really worries the Russians are the plans by the West and Georgia to break the Russian monopoly on natural gas exports to Europe by building a pipeline in the Caspian Sea connecting gas reserves of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) to Azerbaijan and from there moving onward through Georgia to Europe (the Nabucco project). Russia's first and foremost interest is that Europe's dependency on it for supplying natural energy remains unaltered and that no viable alternative be found. By invading Georgia, Russia has attempted to signal that it will allow no such alternative to materialize. Undermining the stability of the regime in Georgia plus decisive Russian influence in South Ossetia (in close proximity to the routes of the proposed pipelines) and Abkhazia (with its strategic port on the Black Sea) will allow Russia to strengthen its footing as the sole export baron for energy resources from the eastern side of the world to the west.
Summary
The current crisis in the Caucasus is the outcome of a clash of interests between Russia and the US and the West in a number of arenas: insufficient consideration of the Russian interest in the international arena, the renewed struggle between East and West, a Western foothold in regions of Russian interest, and challenge to the Russian energy monopoly. Thus an attempt to solve the crisis in the Caucasus by focusing on the status of the separatist districts in Georgia would miss the mark and overlook the true roots of the problem. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are merely indications of a broader picture signifying a crisis of trust in relations between Russia and the West, and the lack of understanding, internalizing, and honoring each side's respective interests.
There are numerous diverse issues on the international agenda far more important than the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Cooperation and productive dialogue between the sides can happen only by seeing the range of mutual interests, prioritizing them, and understanding how the more important interests can be realized.
The contents are based on presentations by Dr. Brenda Shaffer and Yaakov Kedmi at a closed discussion at the Institute for National Security Studies.

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Zbigniew Brzezinski: The Weakness of America

American Interest Magazine

I think you’re putting your finger on a major weakness of contemporary America. The weakness is that we’re more democratic than we’ve ever been before, in the sense that popular pressures translate into policy pressures very quickly. And we’re probably as ignorant as ever about the rest of the world, because everybody now lives in a kind of simplistic, trivialized virtual reality in which fact and fiction, impressions and impulses, are mixed up in an incoherent fashion. The public really has no grasp of complexities, no sense of intellectual refinement in judging them, and our political leaders have become increasingly demagogic. The way George W. Bush campaigned for the war in Iraq, with reference to fictitious WMDs, and with sweeping, simplistic, black-and-white generalizations about freedom and tyranny, is a case in point. But he was responding to our increasingly imbecilized societal condition. This is very troublesome. I think the degeneration of the newspapers as a primary source of information, the collapse of serious television news programs, and the emergence of this kind of instant communion between reality and virtual reality creates a collective state of mind that is not derived from rational analysis.

The Rise and Fall of the Neocon American Empire

Thank you George Bush, for squandering America's political and economic capital, and it's bright future, on a useless war in Iraq, a war that will haunt us for many years to come.
IPSNEWS.net

What a difference five years and an invasion and bungled occupation of Iraq make! References to the Roman Empire at this point are more likely to refer to its decline than to its power -- an observation confirmed even by Donald Kagan, a dean of neo-conservatism and Kennedy’s colleague at Yale, whose sons, Robert and Frederick, have been champions of the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War.


"I’ve argued that not since the Roman Empire has anyone had such extraordinary power as the United States after the Cold War," Kagan told Kitfield. "But all of the elements of our strength are now being challenged, and it’s perfectly possible that we are seeing a relative decline in U.S. power that will prove lasting."


Indeed, that possibility has been transformed into a probability, if not a certainty, by a growing number of policy analysts who see major structural shifts in the distribution of global power -- both "hard" and "soft" -- none of which are likely to lead to the maintenance, let alone the enhancement of Washington’s post-Cold War dominance.


Not only have both Iraq and Afghanistan shown the world the limits of U.S. military power, but they are also exacting an increasingly fearsome toll on Washington’s ability to wage war.


Despite gains in the security situation in Iraq over the past year, top Pentagon brass and independent experts are warning that the current pace of deployments is creating a "hollow force" both in terms of personnel and equipment. In an echo of Kennedy 20 years ago, "overstretched" is the adjective most frequently associated with the U.S. military.


Just as Kennedy had warned against the deadly long-term impact on empires of budgetary deficits, the Bush years have seen an explosion not just of government debt -- currently more than nine trillion dollars -- but also of trade and balance-of-payments deficits. Much of this is due to the high price of oil and gas imports -- which a growing number of experts now believe has become a permanent fixture of the international economy.


The results of the evolving global geo-economy include a much-weakened dollar and increased reliance by both the U.S. government and U.S. business on foreign creditors. Among these creditors are state-controlled agencies (or sovereign wealth funds) some of which -- notably those of China, Russia, and oil-exporting Gulf states -- are not enthralled, to say the least, with Krauthammer’s unipolar vision.


If, for commercial or political reasons, any of these creditors decided to dump their hundreds of billions of dollars of dollar-denominated assets -- or in the case of key energy exporters, for example, to price their commodities in a currency other than the dollar -- the economic impact would be "grave", according to Charles Freeman, retired U.S Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Freeman’s point was echoed for the first time last week in the U.S. intelligence community’s annual review of the major global threats facing the nation.


The possibility that some combination of those creditors, whose own commercial ties have been growing at an accelerating rate, could decide to act in concert in order to constrain Washington’s freedom of action -- in Central Asia or Iran, for example -- is the emerging nightmare of U.S. policy- makers.


Some analysts, including the director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative of the New America Foundation (NAF), Flynt Leverett, profess to see the emergence of a potential counterweight to U.S. power -- one, significantly, that does not depend on the co-operation of Washington’s western allies.


"A ‘community’ of largely non-democratic manufacturing powers and energy exporters is already laying the groundwork for real strategic collaboration, aimed at limiting America’s ability to carry out [its] hegemonic agendas," Leverett, who served in the National Security Council under Bill Clinton and Bush, wrote recently in the ‘National Interest’ journal published by the Nixon Centre.


As a result, the degree to which Washington can slow its decline and preserve its primacy will depend increasingly on its willingness to suppress its unilateralist reflexes and "to take account of the perceptions and interests of others in its foreign-policy decision-making," according to Leverett.

Remaking the Middle East: The New Cold War

The Neocon dream is for the US to dominate the word. Dubya has damaged beyond repair attempts to influence Central Asia and the Middle East by persuasion and supporting human dignity. Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated such an approach. In his book The Grand Chessboard he explains the foreign policy imperative of first Great Britain, and now the United States to dominate the work through control of Eurasia.

Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.- (p. xiii)


... But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)


In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)

Bush has been so inept, he's blown any other option other than winning militarily. Winning is no longer an option in Iraq, so he's ready to take on Iran.
CRG Newsletter

It is no secret that the main purpose of the U.S. presidential tour of the Middle East was to raise opposition against Iran and anyone resisting the “New Middle East.” Almost immediately, Syria claimed that the presidential Middle Eastern tour of George W. Bush Jr. was mostly made to try and further isolate Syria and orchestrate a future war scenario against Iran. [11]


[..]U.S. and British foreign policies are more about the objectives of the Anglo-American establishment than the distinctiveness of the individuals that hold the office of American president and British prime minister. This reality has been confirmed in the course of the election campaign by the potential successors of George W. Bush Jr., Democrats and Republicans alike.


Aside from a few individuals who represent the true aspirations of the American people, the majority of presidential contenders in the U.S. are talking about a virtual continuation of the military policies of the Bush Jr. Administration.


John McCain has talked about attacking Lebanon and Syria. [14]


Hilary Clinton wants a permanent occupation of Iraq or a “post-occupation phase” as U.S. officials decadently call it and she has threatened Iran.


Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, has made it clear he intends to mirror the Bush Jr. Administration and that he does not intent to recognize a Palestinian state and that he would use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear Iran.


The era of wars will not be over with the departure of George W. Bush Jr. and Vice-President Cheney from the White House.


The problem is deeper and more complicated than the persona of one man and his cabinet. George W. Bush Jr. is only a figurehead in the mechanisms of a larger machine; he represents the establishment but he alone or his cabinet do not steer the helm of U.S. foreign policy.

A Culture of Violence

GlobalResearch.ca

What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier. Prescription and illicit drug use is out of control as well when tobacco, alcohol and other legal ones are included.


It get's worse. It's society is called a "rape culture" with data showing:

• one-fourth of its adult women victims of forcible rape sometime in their lives, often by someone they know, including family members;


• one-third of them are victims of sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend;


• 30% of people in the country say they know a woman who's been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year;


• one in four of its women report being sexually molested in childhood, usually repeatedly over extended periods by a family member or other close relative;


• its women overall experience extreme levels of violence; an astonishing 75% of them are victims of some form of it in their lifetimes;


• domestic violence is their leading cause of injury and second leading cause of death;


• statistically, homes are their most dangerous place if men are in them as millions experience battering by husbands, male partners or fathers;


• for most women with children, there's no escape for lack of means and because male assailants pursue them causing greater harm;


• adding further injury, its society is often unsupportive; it affords women second class status, privileges and redress when they're abused so many suffer in silence fearing coming forward may cause more harm than help;


• its children are abused as well; millions suffer serious neglect, physical mistreatment and/or sexual abuse; many get relief only through escape to dangerous streets; they end up alone, more vulnerable and at greater danger away than at home where there, too, families act more like strangers or predators forcing young kids to flee in the first place.

What country is it where things like these are normal and commonplace; where peace, tranquility and safety are illusions; where they're crowded out by foreign wars and violence at home in communities, neighborhoods, schools, throughout the media and in core families. What kind of country glorifies mass killing, assaults and abuse; one that looks down on pacifist non-violence as sissy or unpatriotic, yet claims to be peace loving. It's not in the third world, under dictatorship or controlled by religious extremists. It's the "land of the free and home of the brave, America the Beautiful" where human rights, civil liberties, common dignity and personal safety are more illusion than fact. More on this below.


Mahdi Nazemroaya writes in his August 29 "War and the 'New World Order' " article on Global Research.ca that war is "the ultimate (and most effective) economic shock therapy (that can) change societies and reshape nations," and that America today is embarked on achieving a long-standing vision for "global ascendancy" and supremacy. For the Trilateral Commission of "powerful" US, EU and Japanese "elites," its operative 1973 founding goal was a "New International Economic Order." For George HW Bush it became the "New World Order," and for GW Bush a permanent state of war for global hegemony.


Nazemroaya writes America's "foreign policy is based on economic interests" with military might used to enforce them. He states various US administrations have pursued "An (unbroken) agenda of perpetual warfare and violence (for) global domination through economic means." George Bush's current "war on terrorism" in the Middle East and Central Asia are just "stepping stones" toward that "global order" unipolar Pax Americana vision under which no nation is exempt.


It's nearly always been this way in a nation addicted to war and a culture of violence that's as commonplace at home as in foreign conflicts. It's in our DNA, our schools and reinforced through the media with seductive symbols and slogans glorifying wars for peace, their warriors, and righteousness of waging them. They're packaged as liberating ones, promoting democracy, and spreading the benefits of western civilization. [MORE]

Hypocrisy, Democracy, War and Peace

Here is an excerpt of a dinner keynote address by Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group, to Harvard University Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Conference on Democracy in Contemporary Global Politics, Talloires, France, 16 June 2007. The topic is about the wisdom promoting democratic government vs human rights.
International Crisis Group

It is interesting to ponder just which of our sins it is that – in the league tables of most admired professions – puts politicians down there with used car salesmen and child molesters. I don't think it is any of the familiar seven deadlies: we know from recent US history that electorates can live with lust, and – if my experience in Australia even begins to match that elsewhere – gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride don’t seem to be show-stoppers either.


My own judgment, for what it's worth, is what people most associate with politicians as a class, and most hate about them as a result, is hypocrisy, and all the familiar variations on that basic theme: double-standards, unprincipled inconsistency, saying one thing and doing another. And it's on the dangers and risks of hypocrisy, not just in domestic politics but in international relations, and in a number of different contexts, that I want to focus this evening, Far from consistency being the hob-goblin of small minds, it's something that voters take rather seriously – and so do states in their assessment of each others' international behaviour.


[..]There are quite a few things we've learned about democracy promotion over the last few years, and most of them have emerged pretty clearly in course of discussion at this conference, so I will not labour too long over familiar ground.


First, it is obvious now to just about everyone that democracy – or at least liberal democracy, the only kind that means anything – is about much more than holding elections. Protection of human rights, especially minority rights and those related to freedom of expression, and respect for the rule of law, are indispensable concomitants.


Secondly, it is rather obvious now to everyone, except perhaps those most capable of doing it, that bombing for democracy – trying to deliver it on the tip of precision guided missiles, as my Crisis Group colleague Chris Patten puts it – is not, on the whole, a very good idea.


Thirdly, and maybe not so obviously, democracy promotion can be rather bad news for democrats. I am thinking in particular of the cries of anguish we have been hearing recently from civil society and human rights activists in Iran, who have – following the US announcement that large dollops of democracy funding will be headed their way – been subjected to a rapid increase in state repression. Maybe it's possible for this kind of external support to distinguish between promotion of regime change and support just for building the preconditions of democracy (voter rights, better information flows, transparency and the like), but at the very least we should be asking first those in whose interests we are supposed to be acting. Fighting for our principles to the last drop of someone else's blood is never very edifying.


The fourth big thing we should have learned about democracy promotion, which directly leads into my main theme, but doesn't seem to be at all obvious to most US and European policymakers, is that inconsistency is totally counterproductive: it is wholly damaging to the cause to advocate the case for democracy only when you are sure the that democratic process will produce an outcome you like.


It has not been a pretty sight in this respect to watch the almost universal Western disavowal of Hamas after it won the Palestinian election that the West had so enthusiastically supported. An International Crisis Group report shortly after that election argued strongly that the international community needed to focus on encouraging Hamas to govern responsibly, not to force it out of government or make the government unworkable by imposing conditions that nobody believed could be immediately met, and we summarised the Hamas response as we found it as 'let us govern or watch us fight'. Events since then have done nothing but reinforce the accuracy of that assessment – with the outbreak of civil war-level violence, the complete collapse of the strategy to arm and support Fatah at Hamas’s expense, the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the collapse of the government of national unity, and the evaporation once more of hopes for resuming any kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace process for the foreseeable future.


[..]
This is another area of international relations where double standards are completely counterproductive, but unfortunately still in evidence. We may be past the Cold War days when political leaders could say openly and shamelessly of a given counterpart that 'he is a tyrant, but he's our tyrant, so what's your problem'? And we do, as an international community generally now accept that, after Rwanda and Srebrenica and Kosovo, that sovereignty is not a license to kill: that when a country's shamelessness reaches the point of a government being engaged in the large-scale killing or ethnic cleansing of its own people, or allowing others within the country to do so, then it’s the responsibility of the rest of the world to do something about it.


[..]
The point I am making is that just as it is part of the essence of liberal democracy that the rule of law prevail, there be no arbitrary decision making and that so far as possible like cases be treated alike, so too it is the essence of a rule-based international order, as distinct from a wholly anarchic order, that like cases be treated alike, that rules and principles be developed and applied to cover the kind of situations that will go on arising, and that those rules and principles be observed, by the great and small alike, consistently, without double standards and without overt hypocrisy.


My own favorite line on exceptionalism – the dangers inherent in applying different standards to oneself than others, and thinking not in terms of creating and applying rules but of exercising raw power – comes from Bill Clinton, speaking a few years ago (and before the understanding of the scale and speed of China's rise was anything like as acute as it is now):

America has two choices. We can use our great and unprecedented military and economic power to try and stay top dog on the global block in perpetuity. Or we can seek to use that power to create a world in which we will be comfortable living when we are no longer top dog on the global block.

Terror in the Weather Forecast

When we ignore the health of the environment of this planet, we endanger our children and grandchildren. Past environmental concerns have been about water and air pollution, loss of species and habitat.
But the equation has changed. Environmental damage has already happened. The outcome is global warming. The consequence is expanding deserts, war over arable land, water rights, mass starvation and pestilence on a scale we've never seen. We are now facing lost human habitat for hundreds of millions of people.
Events promise to drive other events and the spiral of increasingly damaging consequences may well put at risk the survival of the human species.
Serious problems are already inevitable. Huge portions of the earth have become increasingly hot and dry. Deserts are expanding. The SWern US is headed for dust bowl conditions. Bangladesh is losing land by rising ocean waters by the day. We won't have the option for ethanol when we need the arable land we have for food.
New York Times OP-ED
Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Trudeau Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, is the author of “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.”

Evidence is fast accumulating that, within our children’s lifetimes, severe droughts, storms and heat waves caused by climate change could rip apart societies from one side of the planet to the other. Climate stress may well represent a challenge to international security just as dangerous — and more intractable — than the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war or the proliferation of nuclear weapons among rogue states today.


Congress and senior military leaders are taking heed: Legislation under consideration in both the Senate and the House calls for the director of national intelligence to report on the geopolitical implications of climate change. And last week a panel of 11 retired generals and admirals warned that climate change is already a “threat multiplier” in the world’s fragile regions, “exacerbating conditions that lead to failed states — the breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.”


Addressing the question of scientific uncertainty about climate change, Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff who is now retired, said: “Speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.”


In the future, that battlefield is likely to be complex and hazardous. Climate change will help produce the kind of military challenges that are difficult for today’s conventional forces to handle: insurgencies, genocide, guerrilla attacks, gang warfare and global terrorism.


In the 1990s, a research team I led at the University of Toronto examined links between various forms of environmental stress in poor countries — cropland degradation, deforestation and scarcity of fresh water, for example — and violent conflict. In places as diverse as Haiti, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa, we found that severe environmental stress multiplied the pain caused by such problems as ethnic strife and poverty.


Rural residents who depend on local natural resources for their livelihood become poorer, while powerful elites take control of — and extract exorbitant profits from — increasingly valuable land, forests and water. As these resources in the countryside dwindle, people sometimes join local rebellions against landowners and government officials. In mountainous areas of the Philippines, for instance, deforestation, soil erosion and depletion of soil nutrients have increased poverty and helped drive peasants into the arms of the Communist New People’s Army insurgency.


Other times, people migrate in large numbers to regions where resources seem more plentiful, only to fight with the people already there. Or they migrate to urban slums, where unemployed young men can be primed to join criminal gangs or radical political groups.


Climate change will have similar effects, if nations fail to aggressively limit carbon dioxide emissions and develop technologies and institutions that allow people to cope with a warmer planet.


The recent report of Working Group II of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies several ways warming will hurt poor people in the third world and hinder economic development there more generally. Large swaths of land in subtropical latitudes — zones inhabited by billions of people — will experience more drought, more damage from storms, higher mortality from heat waves, worse outbreaks of agricultural pests and an increased burden of infectious disease.


The potential impact on food output is a particular concern: in semiarid regions where water is already scarce and cropland overused, climate change could devastate agriculture. (There is evidence that warming’s effect on crops and pastureland is a cause of the Darfur crisis.) Many cereal crops in tropical zones are already near their limits of heat tolerance, and temperatures even a couple of degrees higher could lead to much lower yields.


By weakening rural economies, increasing unemployment and disrupting livelihoods, global warming will increase the frustrations and anger of hundreds of millions of people in vulnerable countries. Especially in Africa, but also in some parts of Asia and Latin America, climate change will undermine already frail governments — and make challenges from violent groups more likely — by reducing revenues, overwhelming bureaucracies and revealing how incapable these governments are of helping their citizens.

Zbigniew Brzezinski - A Manifesto For the Next President

David Ignatius writes an Op-Ed today about Zbigniew Brzezinski's new book, Second Chance. Brzezinski writes that there is still perhaps one more chance to capture an historic opportunity to re-establish the US as a true Super Power, not based on grandiose schemes of world domination, but about world leadership. Brzezinski's thesis is based on his perception that the world has awakened to a common awareness of the need for human dignity. Ignatius uses his column to connect Obama to this thesis, even thought he admits he doesn't have a clue what Obama thinks.
But his idealism is shared by many. Whatever happened to that "shining city on the hill" so tarnished by the policies of the president that called us that and the Republican presidents that followed. Brzezinski's book is headed for my shelf.
washingtonpost.com

Brzezinski's real focus is the "catastrophic leadership" of the current president. Regular talk-show watchers know Brzezinski's views, but he lays them out here in blistering language: The war in Iraq "has caused calamitous damage to America's global standing," "has been a geopolitical disaster" and "has increased the terrorist threat to the United States." By Brzezinski's account, what drove Bush's presidency so far off course was a combination of sunny "End of History" optimism about America's ability to impose its values with a "Clash of Civilizations" gloom about the threat posed by Muslim enemies.


[..]Brzezinski argues that the world is undergoing a "global political awakening," which is apparent in radically different forms from Iraq to Indonesia, from Bolivia to Tibet. Though America has focused on its notion of what people want (democracy and the wealth created by free trade and open markets), Brzezinski points in a different direction: It's about dignity.


"The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening," he argues. His worry is that America -- enfeebled by "material self-indulgence, persistent social shortcomings, and public ignorance about the world" -- may not get it.


The next president, Brzezinski writes, will need "an instinctive grasp of the spirit of the times in a world that is stirring, interactive, and motivated by a vague but pervasive sense of prevailing injustice in the human condition."

A "Groatian Moment"

I'd say "Old Europe" was right all along.
Before the name of a blog obscures a symbolic term from legal history, lets visit A Grotian Moment in foreign policy.

A "Grotian Moment" is a legal development that is so significant that it can create new customary international law or radically transform the interpretation of treaty-based law.

Hugo Grotius (Huig de Groot, or Hugo de Groot; Delft, 10 April 1583 – Rostock, 28 August 1645) worked as a jurist in the Dutch Republic and laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law.

From an article on AlterNet, the writer talks about the historical significance of the end of the cold war, our allies concieved of a "New World Order" created by globalization.

After the cold war ended, the world faced a "Grotian moment" -- the end of an era in international politics brought an opportunity to pause and consider the fundamental assumptions underlying the international system. The consensus among our allies -- and our strategic class at the time -- was that we should develop a "New World Order" of strengthened international institutions based on the exigency of a far deeper degree of interdependence than existed previously.

No one country can survive with any level of citizen comfort without embedding itself in the world market. Once placed and maintained by it's producing economy, each country becomes another a cog in the gear of international commerce. No one country can afford to dictate terms in an aggressive manner to it's neighbors because they will share consequences of the economic disruption.
The US's adventure in Iraq was intended as military hegemony for economic gains in the oil market. The result has undermined the US position vis-a-vis oil by contributing to substantial increases in the price of oil, and undermining the US's longterm influence in Iraqi oil policy. The US has squandered it's future geopolitical position due to it's debt and loss of political influence. It has destabilized Iraq and its neighbors who control 25% of the world's oil. It has strengthened the position of our enemies, Iran and North Korea, and significantly contributed to world political power vacuum that ushered into world politics a resurgent Russia and launched prematurely a new super power, China.