Geopolitical thread

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 27 Aug 2010 03:48

ramana wrote:What is the technology used? Can we have group create similar techniques fro TSP?

They're using a software package called Moviestorm.

http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/

You can download a free copy from their site.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 27 Aug 2010 05:24

Cabbie speaks about the attack on him:

The lady speaking after him is Bhairavi Desai, a spokesperson for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 27 Aug 2010 08:26

Intrigue at the IMF

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexch ... governance

THINGS are hotting up at the IMF, and it doesn’t have anything to do with bail-outs (or with the heat wave in Washington, DC). Instead, the chatter at the fund is about America’s decision to abstain in a routine vote on the size of the body’s executive board, news of which crept out into the world beyond 19th Street at the end of last week. This may sound arcane (and in a way it is), but it is something that could force the Fund’s members to make a more serious effort to ensure that the long-promised shift in decision-making power at the IMF towards big, fast-growing emerging economies (like China, India and Brazil) materialises.

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 08:50

Although,

this is the kind of argument that the Yamrikhans would have typically made especially in the nineties in the context of a communist state,
I believe that Turkey's future will depend a lot on whether it can retain its present modernity.

I do not see it as a power if it falls prey to some kind of islamist dirigism whether social or economic.

There was this article the other day in a Paki newspaper where the Author clearly states that he considers as semi-literate all those scientists, engineers, doctors etc in the Islamic world who do not have exposure to wide heterogeneous literature or a liberal upbringing. Indeed this is something which has great relevance to the Indian Islamic milieu as well and is something that a lot of bleeding hearts don't understand when they 'discuss home grown terror".

Some chap who's got a degree from some paid private college in kerala is hardly "educated".

PRC is PRC today because it liberalized its economy in certain key areas and allowed freedom of movement albeit without the vote. And I would say their rise is not inevitable either unless they can transition to a freer kind of fabric, difficult as that sounds. Turkey on the other hand has a lot to worry about if it starts regressing socially just as the Pukis have since Zia's time. It would be instructive to remember that the Pukis at one point of time had a higher per capita income than India.

Yamrika is never worried about countries showing regressive tendencies. It would really worry about Iran if it became properly democratic and secular tomorrow.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 27 Aug 2010 09:43

D Roy,

Agreed - but given that Turkey's economic growth has been fueled by economic integration with the EU and Russia, the businessmen who are the financial and political bedrock of Islamic parties like the AKP have a huge vested interest in remaining open to the wider world. Plus of course the old secular elite has not simply vanished or given up or died out. They remain a check and a balance as well.

Back in 1840 the Ottoman Sultan declared that all subjects, regardless of religion were equal before the law - something unheard of in any Islamic state, and there were fatwas to back it from the Sheikh-ul-Islam, aka Grand Mufti. In 1922-24 when the Sultanate and later the Caliphate were abolished there was relatively little outcry because of the large number of broadly educated and progressive ulema who were members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and who backed the measures.

That is the modern history of Islam in politics in Turkey - there isn't much of a comparison with Pakistan, where Islam has almost always been deployed in the most reactionary of ways. At the end of the day there is a strong national identity in which Islam is only one layer - a far cry from the insecurities of Pakistan.

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 10:31

The analogy of Pakistan is only meant to be indicative of what happens to regressive societies. Pakistan was effed up from the beginning especially because Jinnah died so soon after its inception but it is even more effed up now. that is the sense of the analogy.

However there is a huge difference between the nineteenth century and today the imperatives and impulses of pan-islamism are very different from the ottoman imperium, if you get what I am saying.

My view is that this not so much neo-ottoman as it is pan-islamist with oil money fuelling it from the back end i.,e from the poor end of Turkish society. And as the old elites die out and new guys with interaction with "gelf money" grow up eroded will be historical factors and the like.

Kashmir at one point was a Trika shaivisim hub and then a sufi "paradise". But now with new generations and the memory of the past erased selectively an Islamist core has formed.

Sometimes it is better to look at the here and now which is very much neo-islamist. People like Madudi are not unknown to the turks either and will be more known as Saudi money keeps pouring in.

We must remember that despite the developed veneer , Turkey does have a underclass milieu and is prone to severe financial fluctuations which will be "eased" by gelf money and its attendant issues.

Moreover the refusal of the Euros to accept them will naturally diminish the elites and strengthen those who believe that Turkey's fraternity lies in the opposite direction. So while they wanted to be part of Europe they would have naturally become more "posh" in the western sense. But now that they have to look in the other direction it is only fitting that they become more 'suitable' in the neo-moneyed arab sense.

Just like India where because of gelf money a lot of Sekoolar muslims make their wives and daughters wear the veil because they don't want to be left out.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 27 Aug 2010 10:45

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yH9yma5zKI
Riz Khan - India's growing aspirations

Check the question p ut by the viewers

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 10:49

and like the Pakistan of today the Turkish state also has a fractious ethnic issue wherein a turn to Islamism is always possible to keep the realm together especially in the face of financial crisis and the realization that post-kemalist Turkey is not really the Ottoman empire . Just as a Pakistan governed by Pindi is not a successor to the Mughal imperium.

Also given America's current economic situation I doubt whether Turkey will receive the same kind of hardcore handouts it received in the past. I won't be surprised if sooner than later it started receiving war on terror handouts a la Pakistan.

Turkey like Pakistan is also looking at the Chinese for strategic military support. It is already license manufacturing tactical BMs procured from China.

Crazy as this sounds, if economic woes persist Turkey may move from being a modern progressive state with economic and industrial linkeages to the west to a Sunni dirigiste enterprise that has weakened its conventional capability since it no longer has access to the same level of tech transfers from NATO as in the past, is instead considering nukes obtained from China and funded by Saudi money.

Seems far fetched and a hundred arguments ranging from history to economics can be made against it.

But I am afraid given how nations fall it can become all too real if Turkey's economy goes down being unable to compete with a cheaper Asia and blocked out of a more expensive Europe through trade barriers.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 27 Aug 2010 11:49

Turkey's GDP growth for 2008 was less than 1% and for 2009 was - 6.00 %!!!

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 12:27

Yes but right now the Islamist's are tom tomming their first quarter 11.7 per cent recovery.

here is the situation from 2009 however:

http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/turk ... onomy.html

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul20 ... -j07.shtml

This is an economy which depends mostly on services. And I am willing to bet that if it turns Islamist it will erode over time its competitiveness in the services sector.

In any case this is a country prone to boom bust cycles and that can never be good for the bottom 30 per cent. They will naturally look for safety nets and "gelf money" is the closest one.

Carl_T · Post by **Carl_T** » 27 Aug 2010 12:29

D Roy -

Now Pakistan is a nation that loves Turkey and both RAPEs and bearded Pakis look up to their Turkish counterparts. But I don't think it is right to equate Turkey with Pakistan.

One key difference is that Turkey is built around a core ethnic group and its culture, with a big Kurdish minority, the same cannot be said for Pakistan, which not only does not have a "core", it is built around the identity of Pan-Islamism bridging ethnic divides. (Did Turkey pick as its national language a non-native tongue?).

Pak is also constructed around the identity of "not India". While Turkey is certainly sitting on conquered Greek territory, can we really say that Turkish identity is "not Greek"? Turkey doesn't need to get into a game of denying it's own heritage because the Anatolian population doesn't really identify with any Greek heritage, and the very same ethnic group was the dominant force in the Islamic world for centuries.

In Turkey, the Islamist rulers have been favoring a policy of rapprochement towards the Kurds, and you must be aware of the rapidly strengthening relations between Turkey and the Kurdish gov in Iraq. On that line, I don't think the "fractious ethnic issue" will be a major impediment for Turkey. With strong relations between Turkey, Syria, Iran, and the KRG, I think the PKK will probably be blocked from all geographic areas.

With that said, I don't think your analogy is without merit. In both cases Islamism is led by the lays rather than the clergy and the desire for Islamism is mixed with a desire for modernization and leadership of the Islamic world. Both Islamists want Islam to pervade all facets of life, so a Zia style leadership as you say may not be out of the question.

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 12:48

Ha Ha,

I said that a hundred arguments can be made against ...

Anyway I have sometime today and will engage in this thought exercise....

1. Turkey stamped out the Byzantium in it a while ago. But not that far back either. It was the eastern roman empire till as late as the 14-15th century as we all know, and the home of orthodox Christianity despite the schisms. Some would say the Russkis are the inheritors of that legacy.

So Turkey definitely has a history of denying something viz "not byzantium" , not christian.

2. The relative percentage of Turk versus other ethnicities differs from the Pakjabi versus others . However the fact is Armenians, Crypto-christians and Kurds cannot simply be wished away.

Of course one of the great things that the Turks did was to improve their relative position vis a vis the Armenians through the genocide post WWI.

3. The post- Ottomans also adopted the kemalist path because it was "modern" and NOT bedouin who were earlier subjects and looked down upon.

But now the wheels of time have put the Goat Arabs in a cushy financial position so for the bottom 20 empty slogans about Turkish pride mean nothing when Gelf money is at hand.

4. Turkey's conventional forces will decline because Israel will be more circumspect besides NATO.

5. The fact is it is the Islamists who are indeed reaching out to the Kurds. That in my opinion says something and is not at all surprising.

The military apparatus wants to snuff the kurds out but the islamists want to co-opt them.

6. Kurds are kurds first today because yamrika and israel have kept it that way doling out pol-mil support not the least because of oil. But given that neither may be in a shape to keep doling out goodies gelf money may takeover.

In fact Kurds are not particularly averse to Gelf money either. Especially those in Iran.

We should also remember that some of the "greatest Arab thinkers and champions" like Saladin were in fact ethnic kurds. Of course this is history and not worth much.

Carl_T · Post by **Carl_T** » 27 Aug 2010 12:52

Briefly, on the topic of turkey denying byzantium. What do you mean "denying byzantium? Byzantium was very weak by the 14th century (remember Turks were already in Kosovo by then). Would you say Americans "deny" the indigenous cultures?

Point is, this is a distinct ethnic identity originating in Central asia and Iran, whereas Pakistan has been created from the same culture as India while...denying it...

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 12:53

With consumerism and wannabeness Islamist tendencies will only rise in the middle east and not fall, because the bottom want in. And if the way to do it is to grow and beard and make your wife wear a burkha why the effing not?

Of course this will all come to a pass if the oil runs out or something similarly calamitous comes to pass for the goat ahem cadillac arabs.

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Aug 2010 12:58

Byzantium was weak, which is precisely why it was defeated. But its cultural legacy was really huge given the 1000 year existence and the population of the area of what is Turkey today was very much Christian despite the Seljuks.

Of course Turkey denies byzantium and what it stood for.

There is nothing strange about this. The Ottomans were islamic victors over a christian population and like Islamic conquerors everywhere they tried to stamp out the religo-culture that preceded them and in this case succeeded. What was mostly a christian population became Sunni in a process started by the Seljuk predecessors in Anatolia.

The religious wars of the Ottomans in the balkans were an extension of both empire and Mazhab. They were after all for a long time the custodians of the two holy mosques.

Its for nothing that the largest church in the world is one of the largest mosques today. I think you know what I am talking about. And Constantinople is Istanbul.

The Ottomans snuffing out Byzantium is very well documented and the subject of so many poet bards from the West.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 27 Aug 2010 23:41

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middle ... th_russia/

Iran proposes nuclear fuel deal with Russia

We have made a proposal to Russia to create a consortium under Russian license to do part of the work in Russia and part in Iran,’’ the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted as saying by state-run Press TV. “We should show the world our capability in uranium production and its conversion into nuclear fuel.’’Salehi, who is also Iran’s vice president, said Moscow is “studying the proposal.’’
An official at the Russian nuclear agency said the two countries have discussed the possibility of creating a facility to assemble the fuel rods for Bushehr. The facility would operate under Russian license on Iranian territory.

Pratyush · Post by **Pratyush** » 28 Aug 2010 12:18

The world must be India specific

Nice read regarding the attitudes of the Indian power elites when it comes to dealing with dealing with the ROW. Especially the Alphabet soup treaties.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 30 Aug 2010 06:57

From a tableau at the Japanese War Museum:

http://i.imgur.com/PD8aE.jpg

Why Can't This Japanese War Museum Also Be Built at Nanking?

I hope that Chinese bigots wouldn't oppose it! We don't need any more Japanophobia!

Where's Jon Stewart? Where's Keith Olbermann? Why don't they lend their voices to the cause?

After all, not all Japanese participated in the Rape of Nanking! It was just a comparatively small number. The rest were sitting back in Japan.

If it makes you all happy, it wouldn't really have to be a full-blown Japanese War Museum built there - it could include a swimming pool (with just a small Yasukuni-style Shinto Shrine at the top floor)

Supporting the building of this shrine - I mean, Japanese Cultural Center - would be a step towards fostering closer Sino-Japanese relations. China's state is committed towards not favoring or disfavoring any particular religion, isn't it?

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 31 Aug 2010 08:38

Would a smaller IMF board be better?

http://bosco.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... _be_better

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 02 Sep 2010 07:09

Top 10 reasons why wars last too long

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201 ... t_too_long

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 04 Sep 2010 02:03

Turkmenistan inks deal on Afghanistan pipeline

Afghanistan and the Central Asian republic Turkmenistan have agreed to build a gas pipeline through Afghanistan, despite the ongoing security concerns in the country.

The planned 1680-kilometre pipeline, which had been under discussion for more than a decade, is due to supply up to 33 billion cubic metres of gas per year from 2015, mostly to India and also to Pakistan, the report said.

Turkmenistan holds the world's fourth largest gas reserves, which are also eyed by the European Union.

Turkmenistan recently also opened pipelines to China and to Iran.

Iran, Pakistan Loom Large in Caspian Basin Pipeline Developments

Pakistan is one of the chief proponents of the so-called TAPI pipeline, which would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Islamabad and India.

While TAPI developments have garnered headlines, another deal involving Pakistan stands a better chance of delivering results. At the end of June, Iran and Pakistan announced that they had finalized the negotiations on a 1,100-kilometer-long pipeline that would carry Iranian gas to Pakistan. This $7.5-billion project would allow Iran to supply Pakistan with up 750 million cubic feet of gas daily, starting in 2014.

But in July, India revealed that it had reopened discussions with Iran on two different pipeline options. One of these was the revival of the so-called IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) route. And the second involved a new project, which would involve the construction of an underwater pipeline connecting Iran and India. Iran naturally has trumpeted India’s volte-face as a major diplomatic victory, one that undermines US economic isolation efforts.

The mere possibility of such projects coming to fruition undermines Washington’s attempts to isolate Iran, and can validate the utility of playing the energy card in Iranian eyes. Second, China has clearly expressed interest in a pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and from there to China. Indeed, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has suggested that if India does not get back into the project, the pipeline could be renamed the Iran-Pakistan-China route. So clearly there is more to the story than South and Central Asia.

Unlikely for beggaristan to oppose uncle publicly or go ahead in its oil pipeline. OTOh may cry beg and steal nuclear deal similar to the one India got from uncle. Despite uncle refusing it bakis are persistent or else dlagon gives it.
dlagon entering the picture makes it tough for India.
If only POK was in our hands a lot of issues would have been settled- direct access to central asia, afghanisthan being our neighbour. blocking china across to pakistan.

Sanjay M · Post by **Sanjay M** » 04 Sep 2010 05:48

Key Donor to NYC Baraabri Masjid Was Insurance Fraudster

furthermore:

He Was Also Hamas Sympathizer

El-Gamal has so-far declined to reveal the names of his other financial backers, but has said the eight-member group is diverse and includes Jews and Christians, Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and others. El-Gamal, who was born in Brooklyn, and Elzanaty are the only Muslims.

Those involved with the Islamic Center proposal have come under intense scrutiny from groups opposed to the project, and critics point to a donation Elzanaty made to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development a decade ago as evidence that its backers secretly harbor extremist views.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 06 Sep 2010 05:12

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 06 Sep 2010 05:12

The Next 100 years

Friedman

January 2009: "Be Practical, Expect the Impossible." So declares George Friedman, chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Gathering information from its global network of operatives and analysts (drawing the nickname "the Shadow CIA"), Stratfor produces thoughtful and genuinely engrossing analysis of international events daily, from possible outcomes of the latest Pakistan/India tensions to the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels to challenges to Obama's nascent administration.

In The Next 100 Years, Friedman undertakes the impossible (or improbable) challenge of forecasting world events through the 21st century. Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future, some intuitive, some surprising: more (but less catastrophic) wars; Russia's re-emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power; China's diminished influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances; and the dawn of an American "Golden Age" in the second half of the century. Friedman is well aware that much of what he predicts will be wrong--unforeseeable events are, of course, unforeseen--but through his interpretation of geopolitics, one gets the sense that Friedman's guess is better than most. --Jon Foro

With a unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling, Friedman (Americas Secret War) offers a global tour of war and peace in the upcoming century. The author asserts that the United States power is so extraordinarily overwhelming that it will dominate the coming century, brushing aside Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the 2010s and 20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile systems that Friedman names battle stars. Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, an independent geopolitical forecasting company, and his authoritative-sounding predictions are based on such factors as natural resources and population cycles. While these concrete measures lend his short-term forecasts credence, the later years of Friedmans 100-year cycle will provoke some serious eyebrow raising.

The armed border clashes between Mexico and the United States in the 2080s seem relatively plausible, but the space war pitting Japan and Turkey against the United States and allies, prognosticated to begin precisely on Thanksgiving Day 2050, reads as fantastic (and terrifying) science fiction. Whether all of the visions in Friedmans crystal ball actually materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment. (Feb.)

Imagine that you were alive in the summer of 1900, living in London, then the capital of the world. Europe ruled the Eastern Hemisphere. There was hardly a place that, if not ruled directly, was not indirectly controlled from a European capital. Europe was at peace and enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Indeed, European interdependence due to trade and investment was so great that serious people were claiming that war had become impossible—and if not impossible, would end within weeks of beginning—because global financial markets couldn’t withstand the strain. The future seemed fixed: a peaceful, prosperous Europe would rule the world.

Imagine yourself now in the summer of 1920. Europe had been torn apart by an agonizing war. The continent was in tatters. The Austro- Hun gar ian, Russian, German, and Ottoman empires were gone and millions had died in a war that lasted for years. The war ended when an American army of a million men intervened—an army that came and then just as quickly left. Communism dominated Russia, but it was not clear that it could survive. Countries that had been on the periphery of European power, like the United States and Japan, suddenly emerged as great powers. But one thing
was certain—the peace treaty that had been imposed on Germany guaranteed that it would not soon reemerge.

Imagine the summer of 1940. Germany had not only reemerged but conquered France and dominated Europe. Communism had survived and the Soviet Union now was allied with Nazi Germany. Great Britain alone stood against Germany, and from the point of view of most reasonable people, the war was over. If there was not to be a thousand- year Reich, then certainly Europe’s fate had been decided for a century. Germany would dominate Europe and inherit its empire.

Imagine now the summer of 1960. Germany had been crushed in the war, defeated less than five years later. Europe was occupied, split down the middle by the United States and the Soviet Union. The European empires were collapsing, and the United States and Soviet Union were competing over who would be their heir. The United States had the Soviet Union surrounded and, with an overwhelming arsenal of nuclear weapons, could annihilate it in hours. The United States had emerged as the global superpower. It dominated all of the world’s oceans, and with its nuclear force could dictate terms to anyone in the world. Stalemate was the best the Soviets could hope for—unless the Soviets invaded Germany and conquered Europe. That was the war everyone was preparing for. And in the back of everyone’s mind, the Maoist Chinese, seen as fanatical, were the other danger.

Now imagine the summer of 1980. The United States had been defeated in a seven- year war—not by the Soviet Union, but by communist North Vietnam. The nation was seen, and saw itself, as being in retreat. Expelled from Vietnam, it was then expelled from Iran as well, where the oil fields, which it no longer controlled, seemed about to fall into the hands of the Soviet Union. To contain the Soviet Union, the United States had formed an alliance with Maoist China—the American president and the Chinese chairman holding an amiable meeting in Beijing. Only this alliance seemed able to contain the powerful Soviet Union, which appeared to be surging.

Imagine now the summer of 2000. The Soviet Union had completely collapsed. China was still communist in name but had become capitalist in practice. NATO had advanced into Eastern Europe and even into the former Soviet Union. The world was prosperous and peaceful.

Everyone knew that geopolitical considerations had become secondary to economic considerations, and the only problems were regional ones in basket cases like Haiti or Kosovo.
Then came September 11, 2001, and the world turned on its head again.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 06 Sep 2010 05:39

^^^^

There are many who predict that China is the next challenger to the United States, not Russia. I don’t agree with that view for three reasons. First, when you look at a map of China closely, you see that it is really a very isolated country physically. With Siberia in the north, the Himalayas and jungles to the south, and most of China’s population in the eastern part of the country, the Chinese aren’t going to easily expand. Second, China has not been a major naval power for centuries, and building a navy requires a long time not only to build ships but to create well-trained and experienced sailors.

Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished. This leads to tension, conflict, and instability. It also leads to economic decisions made for political reasons, resulting in inefficiency and corruption. This is not the first time that China has opened itself to foreign trade, and it will not be the last time that it becomes unstable as a result. Nor will it be the last time that a figure like Mao emerges to close the country off from the outside, equalize the wealth—or poverty— and begin the cycle anew.

There are some who believe that the trends of the last thirty years will continue indefinitely. I believe the Chinese cycle will move to its next and inevitable phase in the coming decade. Far from being a challenger, China is a country the United States will be trying to bolster and hold together as a counterweight to the Russians. Current Chinese economic dynamism does not translate into long- term success.

TonyMontana · Post by **TonyMontana** » 06 Sep 2010 06:06

Acharya wrote:^^^^
Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished. This leads to tension, conflict, and instability. It also leads to economic decisions made for political reasons, resulting in inefficiency and corruption. This is not the first time that China has opened itself to foreign trade, and it will not be the last time that it becomes unstable as a result. Nor will it be the last time that a figure like Mao emerges to close the country off from the outside, equalize the wealth—or poverty— and begin the cycle anew.

Here's a very interesting point. As I mentioned before, Chinese growth/decline is cyclic. However, in older times, this cycle takes up to hundreds of years. I wonder how long it will take in the modern age.

Thoughts?

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 06 Sep 2010 09:20

Tony Blair Interview available at:

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 07 Sep 2010 00:19

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman

The war in the mid-twenty-first century will have classic origins. One country, the United States, will place tremendous pressure on a coalition of two other countries. The United States will not intend to go to war, or even to seriously damage Japan or Turkey. It simply will want these two countries to change their behavior. The Japanese and Turks, to the contrary, will feel that the United States is trying to destroy them. They also will not want war, but fear will compel them to act. They will try to negotiate with the United States, but while the Americans will view their own demands as modest, the Turks and Japanese will see them as existential threats.
We will see the collision of three grand strategies.

The Americans will want to prevent major regional powers from developing in Eurasia and will be concerned that these two regional powers would merge into a single Eurasian hegemon. Japan will need a presence in Asia in order to deal with its demographic problems and to get raw materials; for that it will have to control the northwest Pacific. And Turkey will be the pivot point of three continents that are all in various degrees of chaos; it will have to stabilize the region if it is to grow. While Japanese and Turkish actions will cause anxiety for the United States, Japan and Turkey will feel they cannot survive unless they act.

Accommodation will be impossible. Each concession made to the United States will bring new demands. Each refusal by Japan and Turkey will increase American fears. It will come down to submission or war, and war will appear to be the more prudent option. Japan and Turkey will have no illusion that they could destroy or occupy the United States. Rather, they will simply want to create a set of circumstances in which the United States would find it in its interests to reach a negotiated settlement guaranteeing Japan and Turkey their spheres of influence, which in their view will not affect fundamental American interests.

Since they won’t be able to defeat the United States in a war, Turkey and Japan’s goal will be to deal the United States a severe setback at the opening of the conflict in order to put the United States at a temporary disadvantage. This would be intended to generate a sense in the United States that the prosecution of the war would be more costly and risky than accom modation. It will be Turkey and Japan’s hope that the Americans, enjoying a period of prosperity, and vaguely uneasy about Mexico’s resurgence, will decide to decline extended combat and accept a reasonable negotiated settlement. Japan and Turkey will also understand the risks if the United States doesn’t agree to settle, but will feel they have no choice.

It will be a replay of World War II in this sense: weaker countries trying to redefine the balance of power in the world will find it necessary to launch sudden, preemptive wars before the other side is ready. The war will be a combination of surprise attack and exploitation of that surprise. In many ways, war in the mid-twenty-first century will be similar to war in the mid-twentieth century. The principles will be the same. The practice, however, will differ dramatically—and that is why this conflict will mark the dawn of a new age in warfare.

World War II was the last major war of the European Age. In that age there
were two kinds of wars, which sometimes occurred simultaneously. One was global war, in which the world as a whole was the battlefield. Europeans waged wars on that scale as far back as the sixteenth century. The other was total war, in which entire societies were mobilized. In World War II, a nation’s entire society was mobilized to field armies and to supply them. The distinction between soldiers and civilians, always tenuous, completely collapsed in the global and total wars of the twentieth century. War became an extraordinary display of carnage, unlike anything yet seen—both global and total.

The roots of total war are to be found in the nature of warfare since the emergence of ballistic weapons—weapons that delivered bullets, artillery shells, and bombs. A ballistic weapon is simply one that, once fired or released, can’t change its course. That makes these weapons inherently inaccurate. A bullet fired from a rifle, or a bomb released by a bombardier, depends on the hand–eye coordination of a soldier or airman trying to concentrate while others try to kill him. In World War II, the probability of any one projectile hitting its target was startlingly low.

The ability to see the target created the need for more accurate weapons. Precision- guided munitions (PGMs), which could be guided to their target after they were fired, were first deployed in the late 1960s and 1970s. This might appear to be a minor innovation, but its impact was huge. It transformed war. In the twentieth century, thousands of bombers and millions of rifles were needed to fight wars. In the twenty- first century, the numbers will be slashed to a small fraction—signaling an end to total war.

This change in scale will be of tremendous advantage to the United States, which has always been at a demographic disadvantage in fighting wars. The primary battlefields in the twentieth century were Europe and Asia. These were heavily populated areas. The United States was thousands of miles away. Its smaller population was needed not only to fight but to build supplies and transport them great distances, siphoning off manpower and limiting the size of the force available for direct combat.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 07 Sep 2010 00:46

Earlier in this book I talked about history as a chess game in which there are many fewer moves available than appears to be the case. The better a player you are, the more you see the weaknesses of moves, and the number of moves shrinks to a very few. We can apply this principle to the future. I have tried to lay out the logic of how Japan and Turkey will become major powers and how this will create friction with the United States. Looking at both history and the likely conditions at the time

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 07 Sep 2010 04:48

India takes note of Chinese 'bid' to influence Nepal polls

While admitting that the ongoing prime ministerial polls in Nepal were an internal matter of the country, India on Monday expressed concern over reports of China using money to influence the outcome of the elections. After reports about massive Chinese military build-up in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, this is the second time India aired its concern over China's actions in the neighbourhood.

China wants India in state of 'low-level equilibrium': PM

Despite his unflagging efforts to improve relations with India's neighbours -- especially, India and Pakistan -- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday sounded somewhat frustrated by the continuing "pinpricks" from Beijing and Islamabad.

Singh agreed that Beijing could be tempted to use India's "soft underbelly", Kashmir, and Pakistan "to keep India in low-level equilibrium".

Looks like the soft spoken PM has been suggesting some thing new thinking.
There has been dawning of the new ground realities visa vis chinakistan attitude towards India.
Hope any slackness in diplomatic moves is dealt with a firm hand.
Likely to see sort of cold war like situation developing.
Chinakistan does have upper hand at the moment. Weak spot will definitely be the rentier state at present.
Uncle has to be courted. India will be the underdog for sometime.India should clean up its act internally meanwhile.
Dlagon can be felled only by diplomatic manoeuvrings & economically over years.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 08 Sep 2010 01:07

http://www.cfr.org/publication/22886/co ... hange.html
The Coming Conflicts of Climate Change

The case of Pakistan reflects how natural disasters can weigh on U.S. national security considerations. Interest in these types of contingencies is such that the U.S. Navy recently conducted a gaming exercise at the Naval War College in Newport, RI, to study scenarios where the Navy might have to support U.S. or international relief efforts to help maintain regional and global stability. In each scenario, a climate-induced disaster (or disasters) triggered catastrophic death tolls, migration, and panic affecting regional or global security and spurring the UN Security Council to issue a humanitarian response resolution. This was the first time the Navy had conducted a gaming exercise to determine how to respond to climate-induced challenges. This unique effort brought together climate scientists, water experts, health practitioners, logisticians, diplomats, aid workers, and military officers to think through possible response options.
The exercise follows a real world trend of Navy support for humanitarian aid missions and responses to natural disasters at home and abroad.
South Asia Flashpoints

Perhaps nowhere is this more concerning than in South Asia. Aside from floods in Pakistan, consider the ramifications of years of flooding due to the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. Those mountains are a primary source of water for people in Nepal, India, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; flooding damages crops, carries water-borne disease, and forces migration. If the glaciers completely melt, the region's rivers will experience considerably lower flow and could see a far worse fate: "desertification." The Indus River is particularly critical: It's Pakistan's longest river, but it flows from the Himalayas and then through India before reaching Pakistan. Pakistan is guaranteed a certain amount of water through the Indus River Treaty, but India still controls that flow. Add to that tension the risk of rising sea levels forcing the migration of millions of people living along the coastal regions of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, and the picture turns even darker.
If catastrophes resulting from these sorts of climate change aren't handled through multinational cooperation early on, they may spark intense competition for water resources, humanitarian relief, and international aid funds. These threats could also draw into question the territorial integrity of the region's states--among which are three nuclear powers. The United States needs to begin a consultative process with other states' security and relief agencies on how to mount rapid responses to such irregular challenges, or it could face the tricky prospect of deescalating tensions amidst the threat of climate-induced state collapse

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 09 Sep 2010 02:32

Changing face of Russia-Pakistan ties

India will have to learn to live with the new Russian-Pakistani bonhomie, just as Russia has taken India's entanglement with the U.S. in its stride.

Last month's quadripartite summit of Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan hosted by President Dmitry Medvedev at the Black Sea resort, Sochi, must have made South Block strategists sit up

President Pervez Musharraf's visit to Moscow in 2003, first by a Pakistan leader in 33 years, helped to clear the air but failed to break the ice. Russia-Pakistan relations continued to be defined by Moscow's ties with India.

In another breakthrough for Pakistan, Mr. Medvedev in Sochi gave the green signal for an inaugural meeting of the Russian-Pakistani Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade and Economic and Scientific-Technological Cooperation in Islamabad this month.

Two main conclusions can be drawn from the Medvedev-Zardari meeting: the Russian-Pakistani dialogue has, for the first time, been promoted to the level of Presidents; and Moscow has overcome its reluctance to develop full-fledged relations with Islamabad.

The only taboo for Russia still is sale of weapons to Pakistan but its defence technologies have been trickling into Pakistan, mostly through third countries. Ukrainian main battle tanks, T-80, supplied to Pakistan in the 1990s, had Russian-built key systems and components. Following a “private” visit to Russia by Gen. Musharraf and an official visit by army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani last summer, Russia lifted its objections to the supply to Pakistan of Chinese JF-17 fighter planes powered by Russian RD-93 engines. Many years ago, Russia had sold Pakistan over 40 MI-171 transport helicopters of a non-military version.

What has made the Moscow turnaround is the realisation that seeing Islamabad as part of the region's problems does not help to advance the Russian goal of playing a bigger role in the region.

The format of four-way cooperation with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan should help Moscow prepare for the eventual pullback of the U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan: engage Pakistan, return to Afghanistan and tighten Russian hold over the former Soviet Central Asia.

Russia agreed to join two long-planned regional infrastructure projects that would create energy and transport corridors from Central Asia to Pakistan across Afghanistan.

One project, CASA-1000 (Central Asia-South Asia), involves the export of electricity from power-rich Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The other project is a motor road and a railway from Tajikistan to Pakistan across the Wakhan corridor in extreme northeast Afghanistan — a buffer the British created at the end of the 19th century between the Russian and British empires. The proposed transport link resurrecting the ancient Silk Road would be a strategic gain for the countries involved. Pakistan will receive direct access to the markets of Central Asia and Russia, while Tajikistan — and Russia — will get access to Pakistani ports. China will also stand to gain, as the road is likely to be linked with the Karakorum Highway connecting Pakistan with China's Xinjiang region.

Russia may become a donor of economic, social and military-political security for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan,” Chairman of the Russian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said commenting on the Sochi summit.

In Sochi, Mr. Medvedev renewed Russia's offer to rebuild about 140 industrial and infrastructure projects in Afghanistan,

The deals may be worth over $1 billion, and may entail further Russian investments in Afghanistan's oil, gas and minerals. Russia's comeback will also encourage many of the 2,00,000 Soviet-educated Afghans, who fled the Taliban to Russia, to return to their homeland.

The U.S., which is crafting an exit strategy in Afghanistan, welcomed Russia's new role in the region.

India could theoretically gain from joint economic projects mooted by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Some Russian analysts have even suggested that Russia might try to incorporate India in the new alliance. This possibility, however, looks highly remote given the current state of relations between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Unless New Delhi succeeds in turning around its relations with Islamabad, it will stand to lose in a big way when a new transport corridor links Pakistan with Central Asia.

The Sochi summit also dimmed India's hopes of gaining a strategic foothold in Tajikistan. India and Russia had planned to jointly use the Ayni airfield, which India helped to renovate, but Indian presence there looks doubtful now in the context of the emerging Russia-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Tajikistan axis.

south block has to awaken from is slumber. the key again is the access to POK which can be immensely important.
Russia wants to control the central asia and take the initiative from china which has been laying pipelines all over central asia. the main bottleneck for Russia was pakistan. For pakistan also having Russia a friend is good along with china and uncle.
US wants Russian help to exit af pak. It would want Russia to help secure afghanisthan. By allowing in all 3 powers- Russia, china and US, India is effectively shut out of central asia.
How will GOI tackle this situation.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 09 Sep 2010 12:27

Did we read right?! Pres.Castro "never lies" ,old CIA saying,and so we should take him at his word.Great opportunities exist for Indian entrepereneurs.

Cuba's economic model no longer working, says Castro
Fidel Castro has said Cuba's economic model no longer works, according to reports.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... astro.html

The former Cuban leader, 84, reportedly told Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, that Cuba's Soviet-style model "doesn't even work for us anymore".

The comment appeared to reflect Castro's agreement, which he also expressed in a column for Cuban media in April, with his younger brother President Raul Castro, who has initiated modest reforms to stimulate Cuba's troubled economy.

Castro also reportedly criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for anti-Semitism and denying the Holocaust.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 09 Sep 2010 18:22

The Pope's forthcoming visit to Britain-a bitter critic of the visit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 74029.html

Johann Hari: Catholics, it's you this Pope has abused

It is my conviction that if you review evidence of the suffering he has inflicted on your fellow Catholics, you will stand in solidarity with them - and join the protesters

Excerpts:

We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish. And on, and on. Over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round. The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own "canon" law – which can only "punish" child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking.

Ratzinger was at the heart of this. He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican's documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway. We know what he did. We have the paper trail. Here are three examples.

In Germany in the early 1980s, Father Peter Hullermann was moved to a diocese run by Ratzinger. He had already been accused of raping three boys. Ratzinger didn't go to the police, instead Hullermann was referred for "counselling". The psychiatrist who saw him, Werner Huth, told the Church unequivocally that he was "untreatable [and] must never be allowed to work with children again". Yet he kept being moved from parish to parish, even after a sex crime conviction in 1986. He was last accused of sexual abuse in 1998.

In the US in 1985, a group of American bishops wrote to Ratzinger begging him to defrock a priest called Father Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and molested two young boys in a rectory. Ratzinger refused for years, explaining that he was thinking of the "good of the universal Church" and of the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke among the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age" of the priest involved. He was 38. He went on to rape many more children. Think about what Ratzinger's statement reveals. Ratzinger thinks the "good of the universal Church" – your church – lies not in protecting your children from being raped, but in protecting the rapists from punishment.

In 1996, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appealed to Ratzinger to defrock Father Lawrence C Murphy, who had raped and tortured up to 200 deaf and mute children at a Catholic boarding school. His rapes often began in the confessional. Ratzinger never replied. Eight months later, there was a secret canonical "trial" – but Murphy wrote to Ratzinger saying he was ill, so it was cancelled. Ratzinger advised him to take a "spiritual retreat". He died years later, unpunished.

These are only the cases that have leaked out. Who knows what remains in the closed files? In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with "in absolute secrecy... completely suppressed by perpetual silence". That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: "I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration." The commendation was copied to all bishops.

Once the evidence of an international conspiracy to cover up abuse became incontrovertible to any reasonable observer, Ratzinger's defenders shifted tack, and said he was sorry and would change his behaviour. But this June, the Belgian police told the Catholic Church they could no longer "investigate" child rape on Belgian soil internally, and seized their documents relating to child abuse. If Ratzinger was repentant, he would surely have congratulated them. He did the opposite. He called them "deplorable", and his spokesman said: "There is no precedent for this, not even under communist regimes." He still thinks the law doesn't apply to his institution. When Ratzinger issued supposedly ground-breaking new rules against paedophilia earlier this year, he put it on a par with... ordaining women as priests.

There are people who will tell you that these criticisms of Ratzinger are "anti-Catholic". What could be more anti-Catholic than to cheer the man who facilitated the rape of your children? What could be more pro-Catholic than to try to bring him to justice? This is only one of Ratzinger's crimes. When he visited Africa in March 2009, he said that condoms "increase the problem" of HIV/Aids. His defenders say he is simply preaching abstinence outside marriage and monogamy within it, so if people are following his advice they can't contract HIV – but in order to reinforce the first part of his message, he spreads overt lies claiming condoms don't work. In a church in Congo, I watched as a Catholic priest said condoms contain "tiny holes" that "help" the HIV virus – not an unusual event. Meanwhile, Ratzinger calls consensual gay sex "evil", and has been at the forefront of trying to prevent laws that establish basic rights for gay people, especially in Latin America.

vina · Post by **vina** » 09 Sep 2010 18:53

Now , now.. MMS and the UPA govt seems to be losing sleep. It is a wonder that they wake up only when it is a "Muslim" issue and keep snoring otherwise.

India Calls for Action to Stop Koran burning

Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said no one who was interested in "harmony and peace" could condone the plan.

"We hope that the U.S. authorities will take strong action to prevent such an outrage being committed," Chidambaram said in a statement, calling on the media to exercise restraint.

"While we await the action of the U.S. authorities, we would appeal to the media in India -- both print and visual media -- to refrain from telecasting visuals or publishing photographs of the deplorable act," he said.

While that sentiment on stopping the Koran burning is indeed very noble and laudable, I somehow wonder whey we don't see similar extortions from Chidambaram on another pressing issue of religious books.

Everyone knows what happens when anyone tries taking in any religious book other than a Koran, like say Bible, Torah, Gita or Zendavesta into Saudi Arabia. It is confiscated at customs and THROWN INTO THE DUSTBIN . Somehow I have never heard any Indian Govt functionary or any Indian muslim raise his abhorrence to the "Guardian of the two sacred mosques" treating other religion's sacred texts shabbily and denying freedom of worship.

Ok, if burning is the problem would it be okay if the pastor who is organizing the Koran burning changes it into "Throw it into the garbage bin day?" Surely if the Saudis do it, it should be alright innit?

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 09 Sep 2010 21:09

^^^ It's just posturing for their votebanks. Besides, like it or not India has huge stakes in the Middle East.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 10 Sep 2010 08:06

System for appointing judges 'undermining international courts'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/sep/ ... tice-legal

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 10 Sep 2010 14:34

Tony Blair Interview

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11196

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 10 Sep 2010 22:32

Well it just so happens that the spokesman for Terry Jones is one K.A. Paul. SDRE incarnate. Keen observers of the evangelical scene will recall him. This fellow Paul has been referred to as the "craziest preacher ever"! Blowback is a beaatch

He just spoke live giving a deadline of 2 hours for the New York mosque imam to give clarify his stand on the issue of abandoning the mosque idea.

Oh by the way, K.A. stands for Kilari Anand

Some juice on the gent.

http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2006/1 ... %E2%80%9D/

One rarely gets an opportunity for smugness these days. This is one such.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 11 Sep 2010 07:54

An open letter to Osama bin Laden

http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... _bin_laden

Editors note: below and reproduced in full with the author's permission is an open letter written by Noman Benotman, a former commander in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and a former associate of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.