Iran is taking the threats of an attasck seriously. Here are some excerpts from the Iranian press on how the country will resist a ground invasion. Such an attack is highly unlikely–israel lacks the capability to launch a ground attack, and the US clearly has no stomach to do so. But if an air attack does occur, there is little question that both Israel andthe US have contingency plans for a ground attack if things go awry.
China is due for a leadership change this year, but there is also a debate about the future of Chinese foreign policy. It can only be characterized as fairly hit-or-miss over the last three years–sometimes China seems provocative, such as in the Copenhagen climate talks, or passive, as in the various debates over humanitarian intervention since the Arab spring began. The debate is apparently pretty lively in China, but we do not hear much about it. The Guardian published a good article about the issues involved for China.
There has been a coup in Mali, a country that has had a good track record of constitutional government. The reports are that certain factions within the army, angered by the government’s handling of a rebellion in the north of the country, seized power while the principal government officials were away at an African Union meeting. The rebels are part of the Tuareg people, a fiercely independent people, whose lands were divided up during the period of African independence: the Tuaregs live in Niger, Mali, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Burkina Faso. There have been a number of agreements in the past between the Tuaregs and the Malian government, but it appears as if the accords were disrupted by the influx of Libyans into the Tuareg region after the overthrow of Qaddafi. We will watch how this disruption unfolds.
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