Bharat Rakshak

This can come in if the Gulf states discover that Anglo American power can be disloged from the area if they can. This could be World War III but of a different nature.

They want to protect and expand the greater Israel area including Jordan and northern Iraq.

Greater Israel? I still remember Ariel Sharon begging on live television for more jews to migrate. There is no chance for a greater israel, that is just a conspiracy theory.

India and US most certainly don't have the same interests in ME. US coddling of Islamists shows this. of course, as long as the present basic structure of Indian rashtra remains, there is this illusion of that "same interests" of US and India in ME. but once this structure collapses, Indian interests will aggressively turn against Islamism. so this supposed "same interests" is actually not true. it is a forced jacket that India is coerced into wearing.

You think so

You think so

You think so

I am talking about oil security and safe passage of oil. You know there are other issues besides islamism in the world .

I am talking about oil security and safe passage of oil. You know there are other issues besides islamism in the world .

Dont forget the world is interdependent - why do you think China manufacture so much for the US? Its cheaper. The US cares about oil there because it needs oil for its allies and also believe it or not for PRC and others so that it can keep the world economy going.

The Failure of Reset

The reset button Hillary Clinton gave to the Russians symbolized Obama's strategy. Obama wanted to reset U.S. foreign policy to the period before 9/11, a period when U.S. interventions, although frequent, were minor and could be justified as humanitarian. Economic issues dominated the period, and the primary issue was managing prosperity. It also was a period in which U.S.-European and U.S.-Chinese relations fell into alignment, and when U.S.-Russian relations were stable. Obama thus sought a return to a period when the international system was stable, pro-American and prosperous. While understandable from an American point of view, Russia, for example, considers the 1990s an unmitigated disaster to which it must never return.

The problem in this strategy was that it was impossible to reset the international system. The prosperity of the 1990s had turned into the difficulties of the post-2008 financial crisis. This obviously created preoccupations with managing the domestic economy, but as we saw in our first installment, the financial crisis redefined the way the rest of the world operated. The Europe, China and Russia of the 1990s no longer existed, and the Middle East had been transformed as well.

During the 1990s, it was possible to speak of Europe as a single entity with the expectation that European unity would intensify. That was no longer the case by 2010. The European financial crisis had torn apart the unity that had existed in the 1990s, putting European institutions under intense pressure along with trans-Atlantic institutions such as NATO. In many ways, the United States was irrelevant to the issues the European Union faced. The Europeans might have wanted money from the Americans, but they did not want 1990s-style leadership.

China had also changed. Unease about the state of its economy had replaced the self-confidence of the elite that had dominated during the 1990s in China. Its exports were under heavy pressure, and concerns about social stability had increased. China also had become increasingly repressive and hostile, at least rhetorically, in its foreign policy.

In the Middle East, there was little receptivity to Obama's public diplomacy. In practical terms, the expansion of Iranian power was substantial. Given Israeli fears over Iranian nuclear weapons, Obama found himself walking a fine line between possible conflict with Iran and allowing events to take their own course.

Limiting Intervention

This emerged as the foundation of U.S. foreign policy. Where previously the United States saw itself as having an imperative to try to manage events, Obama clearly saw that as a problem. As seen in this strategy, the United States has limited resources that have been overly strained during the wars. Rather than attempting to manage foreign events, Obama is shifting U.S. strategy toward limiting intervention and allowing events to proceed on their own.

Strategy in Europe clearly reflects this. Washington has avoided any attempt to lead the Europeans to a solution even though the United States has provided massive assistance via the Federal Reserve. This strategy is designed to stabilize rather than to manage. With the Russians, who clearly have reached a point of self-confidence, the failure of an attempt to reset relations resulted in a withdrawal of U.S. focus and attention in the Russian periphery and a willingness by Washington to stand by and allow the Russians to evolve as they will. Similarly, whatever the rhetoric of China and U.S. discussions of redeployment to deal with the Chinese threat, U.S. policy remains passive and accepting.

It is in Iran that we see this most clearly. Apart from nuclear weapons, Iran is becoming a major regional power with a substantial sphere of influence. Rather than attempt to block the Iranians directly, the United States has chosen to stand by and allow the game to play out, making it clear to the Israelis that it prefers diplomacy over military action, which in practical terms means allowing events to take their own course.

This is not necessarily a foolish policy. The entire notion of the balance of power is built on the assumption that regional challengers confront regional opponents who will counterbalance them. Balance-of-power theory assumes the leading power intervenes only when an imbalance occurs. Since no intervention is practical in China, Europe or Russia, a degree of passivity makes sense. In the case of Iran, where military action against its conventional forces is difficult and against its nuclear facilities risky, the same logic applies.

In this strategy, Obama has not returned to the 1990s. Rather, he is attempting to stake out new ground. It is not isolationism in its classic sense, as the United States is now the only global power. He appears to be engineering a new strategy, acknowledging that many outcomes in most of the world are acceptable to the United States and that no one outcome is inherently superior or possible to achieve. The U.S. interest lies in resuming its own prosperity; the arrangements the rest of the world makes are, within very broad limits, acceptable.

Put differently, unable to return U.S. foreign policy to the 1990s and unwilling and unable to continue the post-9/11 strategy, Obama is pursuing a policy of acquiescence. He is decreasing the use of military force and, having limited economic leverage, allowing the system to evolve on its own.

Implicit in this strategy is the existence of overwhelming military force, particularly naval power.

Europe is not manageable through military force, and it poses the most serious long-term threat. As Europe frays, Germany's interests may be better served in a relationship with Russia. Germany needs Russian energy, and Russia needs German technology. Neither is happy with American power, and together they may limit it. Indeed, an entente between Germany and Russia was a founding fear of U.S. foreign policy from World War I until the Cold War. This is the only combination that could conceivably threaten the United States. The American counter here is to support Poland, which physically divides the two, along with other key allies in Europe, and the United States is doing this with a high degree of caution.

China is highly vulnerable to naval force because of the configuration of its coastal waters, which provides choke points for access to its shores. The ultimate Chinese fear is an American blockade, which the weak Chinese navy would be unable to counter, but this is a distant fear. Still, it is the ultimate American advantage.

Russia's vulnerability lies in the ability of its former fellow members of the Soviet Union, which it is trying to organize into a Eurasian Union, to undermine its post-Soviet agenda. The United States has not interfered in this process significantly, but it has economic incentives and covert influence it could use to undermine or at least challenge Russia. Russia is aware of these capabilities and that the United States has not yet used them.

The same strategy is in place with Iran. Sanctions on Iran are unlikely to work because they are too porous and China and Russia will not honor them. Still, the United States pursues them not for what they will achieve but for what they will avoid -- namely, direct action. Rhetoric aside, the assumption underlying U.S. quiescence is that regional forces, the Turks in particular, will be forced to deal with the Iranians themselves, and that patience will allow a balance of power to emerge.



Read more: The State of the World: Explaining U.S. Strategy | Stratfor

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/state-world-explaining-us-strategy

Europe is not manageable through military force, and it poses the most serious long-term threat. As Europe frays, Germany's interests may be better served in a relationship with Russia. Germany needs Russian energy, and Russia needs German technology. Neither is happy with American power, and together they may limit it. Indeed, an entente between Germany and Russia was a founding fear of U.S. foreign policy from World War I until the Cold War. This is the only combination that could conceivably threaten the United States. The American counter here is to support Poland, which physically divides the two, along with other key allies in Europe, and the United States is doing this with a high degree of caution.

China is highly vulnerable to naval force because of the configuration of its coastal waters, which provides choke points for access to its shores. The ultimate Chinese fear is an American blockade, which the weak Chinese navy would be unable to counter, but this is a distant fear. Still, it is the ultimate American advantage.

In Democracy in America, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through America in the early 19th century when the market revolution, Western expansion, and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life. One purpose of writing Democracy in America, according to Joshua Kaplan, was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading aristocratic order and an emerging democratic order, and to help them sort out the confusion.[2] Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community. Tocqueville's impressions of American religion and its relationship to the broader national culture are likewise notable:
"Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."
Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337, respectively.
Tocqueville saw equality as an emerging and unstoppable force in modern life.[2] He wrote of "Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans" by saying "But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom".[17] He further comments on equality by saying "Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence."[18] The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote due to previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation from Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet;[19] the actual text does not contain the words "Americans were so enamored by equality" anywhere in the text.

just as Roman universalism failed in Europe, are we seeing the "American" universalism beginning to "fail" in North America?

The war on terror is corrupting all it touches

Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 April 2012

Prime Minister Tony Blair meets Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2007. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader.
On Monday the Modern Spies programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into legal abyss. The claim was that MI6 rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Gaddafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in Bangkok, where he and his wife were en route to Britain. It's been suggested they were "rendered" via the British colony of Diego Garcia to Tajoura jail in Tripoli. Belhaj spent six years, and his wife four and a half months, at the tender mercies of Gaddafi's security boss, Moussa Koussa. Belhaj's pregnant wife was taped like a mummy on a stretcher, and he was systematically tortured. Koussa himself denies any involvement in torture.

With this gift came a covering letter from MI6's Mark Allen, offering Koussa congratulations on the "safe arrival" of the "air cargo [Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years." Within two weeks Gaddafi was welcoming a fawning Blair in his famous desert tent, and announcing that he would abjure terrorism and set aside his "planned" weapons of mass destruction. The plans were spurious, but the deal allowed Blair to walk tall in Washington at a time when the Iraq invasion was turning sour.

Less spurious were other elements in the strange relationship. It was claimed Britain would not just deliver Belhaj but lift sanctions. Gaddafi would greet BP's Lord Browne, accompanied by Allen, who switched with full ministerial approval from being an MI6 officer to a £200,000 special adviser to BP. When, three years later, the £15bn deal with BP seemed to falter, it's claimed Allen pressed his old boss, Jack Straw, to release Libya's Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Allen was a senior adviser to Monitor consultancy, which helped boost Gaddafi's world image, and assisted the London School of Economics, on whose advisory board Allen sat and where Gaddafi's son Saif was receiving a much-heralded PhD. The new chairman of BP was none other than Sir Peter Sutherland, also chairman of the LSE.

When, in 2011, Gaddafi's regime was visibly tottering, Britain coolly deserted him. Sanctions were reimposed, but no one thought to tell Nato special forces, present at the fall of Tripoli, to find and secure the building in which the incriminating documents lay. Presumably to the horror of MI6, Human Rights Watch got there first and found Allen's letter, which was handed to journalists. To make things worse, Belhaj was now out of jail and head of Tripoli's military council. Worse still, his old nemesis, Koussa, had shrewdly defected as Gaddafi crumbled and was able to confirm Belhaj's suspicions of British complicity in his fate.

Belhaj is not a man to hide a grievance and is now suing Allen and the British government for "complicity in torture" and "misfeasance in public office". He has reportedly been offered and refused £1m from the British government to shut up. As a tale of panic and cock-up it beats Smiley's People.

MI6 puts out the usual line that it only follows "ministerially authorised government policy". The relevant ministers at the time were Straw and Blair, who should have been fully briefed in 2004 on Gaddafi's apparent U-turn and the reasons behind it. Both men have denied knowledge of Belhaj's rendition and torture, or the suggestion that it and Megrahi's release were a quid pro quo for oil. Both have plaintively remarked that ministers may be responsible yet cannot know everything.

In Allen's defence, it can be said that he was doing exactly what his masters so badly wanted. Blair in 2004 was craven to Washington, desperate to win a spur in George Bush's crusade against militant Islamism. At the time, CIA rendition flights were criss-crossing the world with Muslims bolted to the floor. A couple more as a gift to a kindly dictator seemed small beer. As for whether Allen mentioned it to Straw, known to be supporting his bid to head MI6, neither he nor Straw is telling.

On Monday the foreign secretary, William Hague, grasped at the straw of Belhaj's law suit in declining to comment. He said, with a broad smile, that the whole matter was "sub judice". The implication, that his remarks might prejudice a trial, was that this would be held in public. But these are precisely the cases that the cabinet now wants to ensure are conducted in secret.

The morass now thickens. On 22 February, the court of appeal in London showed itself equally mesmerised by the "war on terror". It upheld the conviction of a London university student, Mohammed Gul, for disseminating "terrorism" over the internet. Not content with imprisoning the pathetic and repentant Gul for five years, their lordships felt an urge to political theory.

They declared that the war on terror embraced not just Gul but "acts by insurgents against the armed forces of a state anywhere in the world which sought to influence a government and were made for political purposes". Under legislation, terrorism included not just acts of violence but any threat made for "the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause". These threats might include nothing more than a "serious risk to public health and safety" or "seriously to disrupt an electronic system".

From this catch-all lexicography, dissidents and insurgents under any regime were not excluded. Their lordships noted that it seemed there was nothing that would exempt those engaged in attacks on the military during the course of insurgency from the definition of terrorism. It was hard luck all Kurds, Kosovans, Benghazians, Tibetans and Iranian exiles – and today's Syrian rebels. They are all terrorists.

This is ridiculous. Gul's Bin Laden fantasies were not remotely in the same boat as Belhaj's opposition to Gaddafi. Yet both were seized as terrorists and imprisoned by agents of British government. They are joined in judicial calumny with millions round the world who are struggling against dictatorial regimes and willing harm to their "armed forces". Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader. The war on terror is corrupting all it touches, while parliament meekly passes each twist of the ratchet of repression.

• This article was amended on 13 April 2012. It originally referred to Monday night's programme as a Panorama documentary. This has now been corrected

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Torture warnings pushed aside for Britain to join US in 'war on terror'

India and US most certainly don't have the same interests in ME. US coddling of Islamists shows this. of course, as long as the present basic structure of Indian rashtra remains, there is this illusion of that "same interests" of US and India in ME. but once this structure collapses, Indian interests will aggressively turn against Islamism. so this supposed "same interests" is actually not true. it is a forced jacket that India is coerced into wearing.

Even east asian sea routes and the security of the East Asian states, passage of oil through the straits of hormuz and security of crucial choke points, piracy, suez etc? Lets be realistic..

Unprecedented Latin American opposition to U.S. sanctions on communist Cuba left President Barack Obama isolated at the Summit of the Americas on Sunday and illustrated Washington's waning influence in the region. In contrast to the rock-star status he enjoyed at the 2009 summit in Trinidad and Tobago shortly after taking office, Obama has had a bruising time at the two-day meeting in Colombia of some 30 heads of state from across the Americas.

Thanks to the U.S. and Canadian line on Cuba, the heads of state were unable to produce a final declaration as the summit fizzled out on Sunday.

In an ironic twist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went dancing after midnight on Sunday at a Cartagena bar called "Cafe Havana" where Cuban music is played.

Havana was kicked out of the OAS a few years after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, and has been excluded from its summits due to opposition from the United States and Canada.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa boycotted the meeting over Cuba, and fellow leftist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua also stayed at home. The leftist ALBA bloc of nations - including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and some Caribbean nations - said they will not attend future summits without Cuba's presence.

It seems superman is being questioned in his own backyard. Pretty interesting.

Note the Morales is stamping his foot on exactly ground that once executed Che with CIA help. Che must be laughing heartily.

The summit of the informal network of rising centers of global power known by the acronym BRICS held in New Delhi from March 28-29 gave politicians and experts greater confidence in the organization’s long-term geopolitical viability. BRICS was based on the affinity the economies of its member states have for one another, and that gave rise to doubts about its future, particularly its ability to represent the positions of its five countries on a consolidated basis. In addition, BRICS’s foreign policy component lags far behind its economic activities, something that all of its members recognize. The informality of BRICS also shows up in the way it is organized.The BRICS summit in India highlighted Russia in terms of the organization’s ability to consolidate international positions in order to create a meaningful counterweight to the West, which has the United States at its forefront.BRICS is facing numerous objective and subjective difficulties en route to becoming a completed geopolitical project. The continuing strategic distrust between China and India is among the foremost obstacles. Beijing and New Delhi have not overcome their mutual suspicions. On the contrary, they grow more suspicious of one another with each passing year. The autumn of 1962 can be considered the point at which their antagonism began growing. That was when a territorial war broke out between the two giants of South and East Asia and ended with the Chinese winning a positional victory. This situation has changed little in the 60 years since the war.
The opponency between the two countries has had both positive and negative aspects for other global actors that would like to have closer relations equally with both India and China. It is not difficult to see that Washington derives most of the benefit from the strategic Indo-Chinese confrontation. The United States is improving its relations with India and is putting China on the defensive, as a country under threat of a naval blockade of all of its vital lines of communication. The threat to China’s marine and land access to the Middle East through India is increasingly more vividly apparent in China’s recent vulnerability to the United States and its Asia-Pacific allies in the South China and East China seas..The situation between India and China is predominantly negative for Russia, but it appears that Moscow can also derive strategic benefits from the Indo-Chinese conflict. The Indians and the Chinese are almost equally in need of a so-called “third force” that would function, if not as an arbiter between them, at least as a global power which, by its very presence and smooth relations with both states, would contribute to regional balance and stability. A simple analysis shows that Russia is in fact the only actor that can claim to be that so-called “third force.”Statements by Russia’s president at the BRICS summit in India show that Moscow wants to pursue a consistent policy of improving relations between India and China. Medvedev said that “our strategic goal would be to gradually transform BRICS into a full-fledged mechanism for cooperation on the major issues of global economics and politics,” and “this modernization will be based on a concept that we arrive at together.” Those words effectively transferred the foreign policy baton to Russia’s new head of state.
Thus, all three of Eurasia’s major powers — which are members of BRICS and encompass 40% of the world’s population, 20% of the global economy and 15% of world trade — need a joint foreign policy concept, through which the association can become a geopolitically complete project. And Russia is the “third force” that can bring the Indo-Chinese strategic conflict into balance.