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.
Revolutions are unpredictable. We still don’t know how many of the changes initiated by the Arab Spring will turn out. In Libya, the overthrow of Qaddafi was viewed as a successful humanitarian intervention. But it appears as if Libya might not hold together as a single state. Perhaps a fragmented Libya is a more viable nation-state, but it is likely that any secessionist movement will lead to more violence. The lure of oil profits will make the situation highly volatile.
The global arms race seems to be accelerating–a consequence of the emergence of new powers. India takes the top place as the world’s largest importer of arms. The arms race between India and China is going to be something to watch carefully.
Many are concerned by the slow economic recovery after the financial crisis of 2008-09. Some suspect that growth after a financial crisis will always be slow since it takes a long time for people to pay off the debts that they accumulated during the “bubble” years. There is, however, a more disquieting thread in some economic analyses; some suspect that high rates of economic growth may never return to the mature economies such as the US, Europe, and Japan. The Atlantic gives us a hint of this perspective.
A little more information on credit default swaps from my favorites financial blogger, Barry Ritholz.
Yet another self-immolation in an area of China populated by Tibetans–the 2nd this week and the 30th this year. It appears as if these protests are becoming more prominent, perhaps a sign that a movement is building.
Argentina has enlisted the support of other Latin American nations in its dispute with Great Britain over the Falklands/Malvinas islands. The ruling to support Argentina in the oil exploration dispute is probably not binding, but it will complicate the efforts to explore for oil. Oil companies will be reluctant to spend money in an ambiguous legal environment.
The prominent newspaper in Lebanon, The Daily Star, is reporting that a majority of the Cabinet Ministers in the Israeli government now favors an attack on Iran. The number of news reports on this particular issue has died down recently–since Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the US. As I’ve indicated before, the amount of “chatter” about a particular policy is a good index of how seriously it is being considered. Let’s hope that the number of news reports increases dramatically soon.
North Korea has announced that it intends to launch a satellite. Since the missile technology for launching a satellite is the same as launching a warhead, the West is threatening to withdraw its earlier offer of food aid in return for a halt to the North Korean nuclear program. The response raises some critical issues: does non-proliferation mean more than just nuclear bombs? is the West refining or reneging on its earlier deal? There are many ambiguities being raised right now.
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