Thursday, February 19, 2009
Foreign affairs, a low US priority?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Looking at the first weeks of President Barak Obama’s reign in Washington, one is overwhelmed with the magnitude of the economic problems, which have been given first priority. Foreign affairs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s province, had faded in the background, until her current trip to the Far East. It may be of value to review the many crises, and try to classify them as low-boil persistent, vs. action-demanding or acute.
To start, we should accept the facts that the growth of international crises is a function of population growth in the underdeveloped continents and the consequent competition for resources, and therefore crises will continue. Meanwhile, the risk of international world-war type conflicts is a function of multinational and interdependent economic activity and therefore is receding. Irregularity is added by religious/ideology driven activities, characterized by the use of suicide terrorists. The best hope for a leveling off of crises is growth of women’s suffrage world-wide. That in a nutshell is my theory for the continued future of the world as we know it.
Meanwhile, to review. Afghanistan is a sinkhole, and the festering crisis is looming larger, with the Sunni Taliban gaining strength. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and President Barak Obama are working on redefining our mission. The supply routes for the 30,000 American and NATO forces are threatened, with the blowing up of a major bridge in the Pakistan border and the closing of the American military air supply base in Kyrgyzstan, with President Kurmanbek Bakiev declaring the compensation to be inadequate, after talks with the Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, who granted the Kyrgyzs a $2B loan and forgave a $180M debts and other benefits totaling $330. This is a ploy for negotiations aimed to stop the nuclear defense bases US is building in Poland and the Czech Republic. We seem to have offered, smartly, to play along, if Russia helps with removing Iran’s nuke threat.
Pakistan is acute and very significant, as a base for the Talibans, with a nuclear bomb and an unstable government, led by Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who favors us but has a complex constituency. In the Northwest the Taliban presence and attacks on federal police provide a constant threat to the national government, and the American drones systematically attacking Taliban houses are transgressions of international law that the government will protest against but may actually secretly favor. To keep internal peace and prove its independence of Americans, Pakistan has released from house arrest their nationally revered physicist Abdul Quader Khan, father of their nuclear bomb, who sold it secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and who promises to work in education. Khan is not a real threat and may actually become available as an information source, but there is worse, Pakistan has also approved a sharia law presence in Taliban-ruled Swat Valley, a major takeover threat. Meanwhile , festering North Korea, Khan’s major client, has once more intimidated the world with a potential attack on its southern neighbor, in hopes of exacting money from its economically hard-pressed benefactors, US, Japan and China, hence Clinton’s mission.
Iran, another Khan client, wants the new US government to fess up to past misdeeds and to the burning of bridges to peace (true, Bush rejected their offers in 2003), before starting new negotiations. There’s some hope, although the Persian Iran’s backing of Hezbollah and support of the Sunni Hamas via client Syria will get in the way. It may be more acute, with the new government in Israel, and the international fear that Iran’s development of nuclear bomb will start a counter-wave in the Sunni Maghreb and Arab League countries.
In festering Israel the aspects for peace and a two-state solution are dim, although ex-President Jimmy Carter holds out hope. The vote was split between Likud’s Bibi Netanyahu and Kadema’s Tzipi Livni, and the their potential coalition partners, the religious right and secular right and left are incompatible to each other. A Netanyahu/Livni coalition is still in the air – near-impossible, when one rejects and the other favors the two-state solution. The Gaza destruction seems to have impressed the badly hurt Palestinians, with Hamas actually holding out hope for a cease fire, if borders are opened for traffic. The Arab League, whose 22 members have not liked Hamas’s declared intent of wiping out Israel, has had some impact. Egypt and Jordan, whose governments have been actually threatened by the Palestinian holdouts, may succeed in containing the violence. George Mitchell will keep trying.
Iraq is in slow-motion, waiting for US withdrawal to break out in civil wars (at least two). President Obama and Gen. Petraeus, both scholars, should find a common ground.
If you want to see more festering areas, there’s Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, incapable –of-controlling crime Mexico and the Hugo Chavez dominion. Venezuela has accepted his second bid for permanent presidency. He has narco-Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba in his tow (he also loves Hezbollah and Carlos the Jackal). Too bad Gov. William Richardson is out as our Latin intermediary. Where are our old negotiators of talent and prestige, such as Strobe Talbott, Richard Armitage?
Washington to copy.
Looking at the first weeks of President Barak Obama’s reign in Washington, one is overwhelmed with the magnitude of the economic problems, which have been given first priority. Foreign affairs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s province, had faded in the background, until her current trip to the Far East. It may be of value to review the many crises, and try to classify them as low-boil persistent, vs. action-demanding or acute.
To start, we should accept the facts that the growth of international crises is a function of population growth in the underdeveloped continents and the consequent competition for resources, and therefore crises will continue. Meanwhile, the risk of international world-war type conflicts is a function of multinational and interdependent economic activity and therefore is receding. Irregularity is added by religious/ideology driven activities, characterized by the use of suicide terrorists. The best hope for a leveling off of crises is growth of women’s suffrage world-wide. That in a nutshell is my theory for the continued future of the world as we know it.
Meanwhile, to review. Afghanistan is a sinkhole, and the festering crisis is looming larger, with the Sunni Taliban gaining strength. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and President Barak Obama are working on redefining our mission. The supply routes for the 30,000 American and NATO forces are threatened, with the blowing up of a major bridge in the Pakistan border and the closing of the American military air supply base in Kyrgyzstan, with President Kurmanbek Bakiev declaring the compensation to be inadequate, after talks with the Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, who granted the Kyrgyzs a $2B loan and forgave a $180M debts and other benefits totaling $330. This is a ploy for negotiations aimed to stop the nuclear defense bases US is building in Poland and the Czech Republic. We seem to have offered, smartly, to play along, if Russia helps with removing Iran’s nuke threat.
Pakistan is acute and very significant, as a base for the Talibans, with a nuclear bomb and an unstable government, led by Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who favors us but has a complex constituency. In the Northwest the Taliban presence and attacks on federal police provide a constant threat to the national government, and the American drones systematically attacking Taliban houses are transgressions of international law that the government will protest against but may actually secretly favor. To keep internal peace and prove its independence of Americans, Pakistan has released from house arrest their nationally revered physicist Abdul Quader Khan, father of their nuclear bomb, who sold it secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and who promises to work in education. Khan is not a real threat and may actually become available as an information source, but there is worse, Pakistan has also approved a sharia law presence in Taliban-ruled Swat Valley, a major takeover threat. Meanwhile , festering North Korea, Khan’s major client, has once more intimidated the world with a potential attack on its southern neighbor, in hopes of exacting money from its economically hard-pressed benefactors, US, Japan and China, hence Clinton’s mission.
Iran, another Khan client, wants the new US government to fess up to past misdeeds and to the burning of bridges to peace (true, Bush rejected their offers in 2003), before starting new negotiations. There’s some hope, although the Persian Iran’s backing of Hezbollah and support of the Sunni Hamas via client Syria will get in the way. It may be more acute, with the new government in Israel, and the international fear that Iran’s development of nuclear bomb will start a counter-wave in the Sunni Maghreb and Arab League countries.
In festering Israel the aspects for peace and a two-state solution are dim, although ex-President Jimmy Carter holds out hope. The vote was split between Likud’s Bibi Netanyahu and Kadema’s Tzipi Livni, and the their potential coalition partners, the religious right and secular right and left are incompatible to each other. A Netanyahu/Livni coalition is still in the air – near-impossible, when one rejects and the other favors the two-state solution. The Gaza destruction seems to have impressed the badly hurt Palestinians, with Hamas actually holding out hope for a cease fire, if borders are opened for traffic. The Arab League, whose 22 members have not liked Hamas’s declared intent of wiping out Israel, has had some impact. Egypt and Jordan, whose governments have been actually threatened by the Palestinian holdouts, may succeed in containing the violence. George Mitchell will keep trying.
Iraq is in slow-motion, waiting for US withdrawal to break out in civil wars (at least two). President Obama and Gen. Petraeus, both scholars, should find a common ground.
If you want to see more festering areas, there’s Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, incapable –of-controlling crime Mexico and the Hugo Chavez dominion. Venezuela has accepted his second bid for permanent presidency. He has narco-Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba in his tow (he also loves Hezbollah and Carlos the Jackal). Too bad Gov. William Richardson is out as our Latin intermediary. Where are our old negotiators of talent and prestige, such as Strobe Talbott, Richard Armitage?
Washington to copy.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 11:16 AM 
