World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Henry Kissinger is one of the most prominent realists in the world, and he has written an op-ed piece for the Washington Post about how the United States should address the continuing unrest of the Arab Spring.  He raises some important questions about the role of humanitarian intervention and what he regards as the “Isalmist” tendencies of the movements in the Middle East.  I disagree with a lot of what he says, but his opinion is definitely worth considering.

One of the bravest women in the world is Aung San Suu Kyi and after many years of repression she is finally leading her supporters in an election in Burma (I continue to refuse the name Myanmar until I am convinced that the people of Burma approve of the name change imposed by the military junta).  I doubt that the election will be completely fair, but the fact that she is being allowed to run is an important step forward for the Burmese people.  Patience and perseverance ultimately pay off, but that course of action is very difficult to maintain.  The lessons of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, however, all suggest that it can change the world.

Gary Sick has written extensively on politics in the Middle East, and he has written a piece for CNN entitled “What if Israel Bombs Iran?”  It is a fairly detailed of how such an attack might play out (it is not comprehensive, but it hits the important points).

President Obama has imposed another set of sanctions against Iran.  Any foreign bank found to be handling Iranian transactions will be barred from operating in the US.  There’s a three-month grace period from today, but the sanctions will significantly affect many countries still buying Iranian oil (most of which are in South and East Asia).  I suspect that many of these countries will find ways to avoid the sanctions (Iran, for example, is providing Syria with an oil tanker to ship oil to China–giving Syria an incredible boost to its governmental revenues), but they will still have a major effect on the Iranian economy.  Iran will probably become more eager to engage the West in negotiations, but I doubt that its nuclear program will slowdown at all.

The pressure for reform in the US/European/Japanese domination of the global economy is slowly increasing, as the emerging nations demand a greater voice in the decision-making of the IMF and World Bank.  The calls for reform are intense, but the BRICS are riven with their own internal disputes.  I doubt, however, that the pressures for reform will diminish any time soon.

The situation in Mali remains tense, but the rebel group is getting little in the way of outside support.  Right now it appears as if there is a stand-off between the government and the rebels, but without some external aid, the rebels will be hard-pressed to maintain their position.

Ha’aretz is a lefty newspaper in Israel but it also has unusually good sources in the Israeli government.  In the most recent issue an article suggests that the Americans are not taking the Israeli threat to attack Iran seriously enough and predicts that such an attack is likely before Christmas.   Note–this deadline differs from the earlier prediction made by US Defense Secretary Panetta, but might be more realistic given the timing of the Presidential elections in the US (perhaps a concession made by Netanyahu to Obama during their recent meeting).  The matter is further complicated by the growing cooperation between Azerbaijan and Israel–perhaps the military strike will start in the Caucasus.  If so, there’s no surer way to involve both Turkey and Russia in the conflict.  So more to think about and assess.

There’s an interesting article in The Guardian (another lefty newspaper, but this time from Britain) about an extraordinary intelligence failure on the part of the US CIA and FBI prior to September 11, 2001.  Apparently the Taliban had contracted with a joint US-UK telecommunications firm to build a telephone system in Afghanistan.  The possibility created the potential for US intelligence to tap into the Afghan network to an extraordinary degree.  According to the article: “Because the Taliban wanted American equipment for their new phone network, this would allow the FBI and NSA, the National Security Agency, to build extra circuits into all the equipment before it was flown out to Afghanistan for use. Once installed, these extra circuits would allow the FBI and NSA to record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan. The FBI would know the time the call was made and its duration. They would know the caller’s name, the number dialled, and even the caller’s PIN.”  The opportunity was wasted because the CIA and FBI fought over which agency would be in charge of the operation.  It was finally approved on September 8, 2001.  If the agencies had not been fighting, the US would have known everything about the planned attack on the US.

Iran has announced its intention to send a satellite into space–an admirable advance for any country.  The problem is that the missile used to launch a satellite is indistinguishable from a missile used to launch a nuclear warhead.  President Obama, in South Korea for the Nuclear Security Summit, has warned North Korea that the missile launch would be highly provocative, although no sanction was specified.  We can be sure that Iran is watching what the West does if North Korea does launch the missile.  So much will be revealed, and policies will be determined in short order.

Israel has decided to sever relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council after the Council voted to investigate the effect of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.  This action will make it difficult for the Council to conduct its investigation. The international law of occupation is quite explicit on the duties and responsibilities of occupying powers.  According to the International Red Cross: “The duties of the occupying power are spelled out primarily in the 1907 Hague Regulations (arts 42-56) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV, art. 27-34 and 47-78), as well as in certain provisions of Additional Protocol I and customary international humanitarian law.”  These duties and responsibilities can be found here.

The quiz in American foreign policy on 28 march 2012 will be on Ambrose and Brinkley, Chapters 14-16, John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005), “Epilogue: The View Back,” pp. 259-66, and Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest, Summer 1989.  It will also include the blog articles from 25-26 March.

The recent very warm weather in South Hadley has made grading very difficult.  But that’s the least of my worries about the weather.  The World Meteorological Organization has just issued its climate change report for 2011 and it’s a very sobering report.  We are, quite literally, sowing the wind.

Writing a constitution is an extraordinarily difficult process, and the process in Egypt has been fraught with all sorts of complications.  Balancing the interests of the majority with the rights of minorities is difficult enough in practice; trying to balance those interests in the abstract is significantly more complicated when everyone involved is aware of all the possible pitfalls.

Looking for economic data about the US?  Go to FRED, the data site for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.  The site is well-organized and absolutely loaded with arcane information.

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.

Defense expenditures are still rising globally.  The United States remains the world’s largest military spender.  For a graphic view of global defense expenditures, check out this article.

The UN sanctions against Iran have been partially implemented.  Certain nations have been granted exemptions from the sanctions, and the two most important receiving exemptions are China and India.  The exemptions mean that there will no confrontations and that the sanctions will not have been “broken.”  But it also means that no one wanted to confront Chinese and Indian dependence on Iranian oil.  We’ll see what happens in six months when the exemptions expire.

Since 1945, the President of the World Bank has always been an American (and the head of the IMF has always been a European).  That tradition is being challenged and the United States is resisting the change.  Since the US is a major contributor to the Bank, the change will be difficult to implement.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has voted to investigate the effect of the Israeli settlements on Palestinian Human Rights.  The United States was the only state to vote against the measure, but the Israeli response was sharply negative.  The investigation certainly seems to be justified considering the international law of occupation, but the credibility of the Commission to conduct a fair and impartial investigation remains to be seen.

Jeffrey Goldberg, an analyst with exceptionally good connections in Israel, has written an article that predicts that Israel will attack Iran within the next 6 months.  apparently, the Netanyahu government has decided that a carefully targeted attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will not necessarily trigger a fierce Iranian counterattack.  There are plenty of very good reasons to believe that Iran would not wish to widen a war, particularly if the counterattack brought an American response.  But the subject and the predicate do not mesh: if Iran is crazy enough to want to obliterate Israel, why then would one make an assumption of a carefully calibrated response to a pre-emptive attack?  I suspect that Israel does not actually fear a nuclear attack from Iran; rather it fears that a nuclear-armed Iran would limit its ability to use force with impunity in the region.

The assumption that the Iranians would not respond with vigor is not borne out by the war games the US has mapped out to predict what would happen if Israel attacked Iran.  The discrepancy on outcomes between Israel and the US is deeply troubling.

The decision to go to war ought to be an incredibly complex one.  In the past, we have seen decisions that reflected little more than short-term considerations.  Here’s a very good framework for how one ought to think about such a monumental decision.

Paul Pillar, a Professor at Georgetown and former CIA analyst (and a friend of mine at Dartmouth many years ago),  has written a very good essay on living with a nuclear-armed Iran.  It is a long read, but well worth the time.