Geopolitical thread

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abhishek_sharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Clinton on the Falklands

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201 ... _falklands

Here's what Clinton had to say about the ongoing dispute over the Falkland Islands:

And we agree. We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the table in a peaceful, productive way. [...]

As to the first point, we want very much to encourage both countries to sit down. Now, we cannot make either one do so, but we think it is the right way to proceed. So we will be saying this publicly, as I have been, and we will continue to encourage exactly the kind of discussion across the table that needs to take place.

Guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, Alex Massie writes:

So one hopes that Clinton was merely being polite, but her words carry weight and will increase a sense of expectation in Argentina (and more broadly across Latin America) that cannot possibly be met and that is guaranteed to infuriate the British. At best this is clumsy; at worst it's rather worse than that.

If me email is anything to go by... the average Briton is likely to react to this sort of American intervention by suggesting that it's time to bring our boys home from Afghanistan and leave the Americans on their own.

The Economist's Bagehot was even angrier, and seemed to speculate that the move by Clinton was some sort of retaliation for " the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the fuss over Binyam Mohamed":

...
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Did Obama push Sarkozy into Russian arms?

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201 ... ssian_arms
Sarkozy's calculations are simple, they make sense for France and they are being welcomed by both left and right. Sarkozy's overtures to Barack Obama have failed. The American leader looks down on him -- though he has finally invited him for his first White House visit later this month. Sarkozy received nothing from the Americans for resuming full Nato membership. Germany has so far beaten France hands down in reaping benefit from trade with Russia. So France is reverting to the old Russia card that was first played by President Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by SwamyG »

there is no need for any redistribution by westerners as well as developing countries. if everybody can keep what's theirs i'd be happy.
Sorry to give you an unhappy news, shift of clout and/or wealth has commenced.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Hari Seldon »

Brazil rebuffs US, says it will go own way on Iran
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazil vowed Wednesday not to "bow down" to gathering international pressure to impose new economic penalties on Iran over its nuclear program if further negotiations might be fruitful.

With visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton standing beside him, Brazil's foreign minister said his country is concerned about Iran's nuclear intentions.

But Foreign Minister Celso Amorim (SELL-so ah-more-EEM) says Brazil will make its own decision on Iran.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by derkonig »

Hari Seldon wrote:Brazil rebuffs US, says it will go own way on Iran
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazil vowed Wednesday not to "bow down" to gathering international pressure to impose new economic penalties on Iran over its nuclear program if further negotiations might be fruitful.

With visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton standing beside him, Brazil's foreign minister said his country is concerned about Iran's nuclear intentions.

But Foreign Minister Celso Amorim (SELL-so ah-more-EEM) says Brazil will make its own decision on Iran.
And we have a paki born MMS.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Philip »

"Right" on! The rise of right-wing entities appears to be growing as an antidote to the Islamic extremism afflicting many nations.Here are just two instances,in the US and in Holland.In India too we are seeing a gradual shift towards the right wing post last elections,because of Paki terrorism.

Extreme right on the march in Europe's most tolerant nation
Geert Wilders triumphs in Netherlands local elections
By Vanessa Mock
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 16481.html

Excerpt:
Mr Wilders, known for his blond mane and due in London today to show his anti-Islam film in the House of Lords at the invitation of a Ukip peer, has campaigned for an immediate freeze on immigration and a ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public. His Freedom Party was declared the surprise winner yesterday in Almere, a city just east of Amsterdam with a large immigrant population. It came second in The Hague, the only two cities where it chose to participate in the polls.
US facing surge in rightwing extremists and militias• Civil rights report shows 250% rise in 'patriot' groups
• Economy and media conspiracy theories fuel growth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma ... ist-groups
"The signs of growing radicalisation are everywhere. Armed men have come to Obama speeches bearing signs suggesting that the 'tree of liberty' needs to be 'watered' with 'the blood of tyrants'. The Conservative Political Action Conference held this February was co-sponsored by groups like the John Birch Society, which believes President Eisenhower was a communist agent, and Oath Keepers, a patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps," the SPLC said.

The report says that, unlike during the 1990s, the patriot movement's core ideas are more widely propagated and accepted by prominent politicians and some in the mass media, such as the Fox News presenter Glenn Beck.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

NightWatch comments 3/8/10
Germany- Russia: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today that Russian President Medvedev should discuss his security initiative "within the framework" of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, RIA Novosti reported. Merkel said, "President Medvedev and I spoke by telephone last week and we reiterated that we should discuss his initiative on partnership in the security sphere."

Note: The Russians are proposing a new European security treaty that rivals and might eventually replace NATO, but with Russia, Germany and France as the new leaders. The Germans plus some of the original NATO members appear to want more balance in their foreign relations, meaning they appear to be seeking to reduce their subservience to the US by establishing offsetting relations with Russia.

While that might seem odd, that is the way it looks. Even stranger is that the US is presented as supporting European NATO’s call for a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from western Europe, potentially leaving Russia and Frances as the only states possessing nuclear weapons in Europe. Of course, the French will not dismantle their nuclear weapons, even while they support withdrawal of American weapons.

US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past nine years have forced the maturation of relations and attitudes in Europe and Asia. The security regime of the post-World War II era is finally ending, albeit slowly and a decade after it should have ended.

US strategic planners need to be thinking about the implications of being first among equals, more than of being the only superpower.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Johann »

Gerard wrote:Twilight of the Arabs
The contest for leadership in the Muslim world.
The article is very premature.

Nationalism is stronger in the Arab world that it was a century ago. Its even stronger than it was 20 years ago.

Will the Arab world continue to lead the Muslim world? In the 20th century Arab leadership came from three sources
- engagement with modernity
- Arab control over the holy places of Islam (both Sunni and Shia)
- oil wealth

Turkey, Iran, even Indonesia all far outpace the Arabs on the modernity front, and have done so for a couple of decades now, and the gap is growing, with the exception of islands like Lebanon, and the Gulf sheikhdoms of Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar.

Arab states patronage and protection of Mecca, Medina, Najaf and Kerbala still count for a very great deal. Al-Azhar in Cairo is still the greatest seat of Sunni Islamic scholarship after 5 centuries, while Najaf is still the most important place for Shia scholarship.

Thirdly, although we are in slow transition to a post-oil economy, there's probably at least another 3-4 decades during which oil and gas will be enormously profitable, and those profits will go straight in to the hands of Gulf states, and to a lesser extent North Africa (Libya and Algeria).

A moderately Islamic Turkey has probably the strongest chance of becoming primus inter pares in the Islamic world, followed by a moderate Iran, but I dont think they can displace the Arab world as a whole for many decades.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Chrysanthemum or Samurai?

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2 ... or_samurai
In a thoughtful essay in today's Financial Times, Gideon Rachman asks whether Japan may now be tilting towards China after 60 years of aligning itself with the United States. This question is interesting on multiple dimensions -- including with regard to the future of U.S. primacy in Asia, the impact of China's rise on its neighbors, the nature of Japanese politics and identity, and our understanding of the deep structure of international relations at a time of systemic power shifts.

...
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Fidel Guevara »

1 in 3 Canadians will be visible minorities in 20 years

This is huge - I predict Canada will be the first country to become uniformly beige. With the biggest share of the growth coming from Indians, this can't but help improve relations between India and Canada, in the long term.
The number of visible minorities is expected to nearly double by 2031, when one in every three Canadians will be non-white, according to new Statistics Canada projections. In Toronto, nearly two in three faces will be non-white. In addition, at least a quarter of the population will likely be born outside Canada.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... of_the_day

Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former chief of the British domestic spy agency, MI5, discussing the American use of torture in interrogations.
The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Carl_T »

Umm...doesn't everyone torture in interrogation??
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

A Paki using India for expansion

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-asgha ... 81783.html
http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/search?q=Islam&type=fp
Islam 2.0 May Be on the Horizon

Even in an era when Hindu nationalists in India have angled for chances to clobber Muslim rivals, the Indian export of yoga has given Hinduism a wonderfully positive image within the West.

Islam certainly needs a makeover of its own. I'd argue for something ancient and something new - mainly, a greater emphasis on Sufism and psychology.

Muslims in South Asia may seem to be an ornery bunch in recent years. But few Westerners realize that the mystical, group-hugging Sufis are more indigenous to the region than the kind of grim Talibani fundamentalists. This brand of fundamentalism was pressure-cooked by Wahabis who were imported from the Middle East by Saudi and Pakistani and American officials in the 1980s, precisely because their angry resolve made them unrivaled commie-killers in Afghanistan.

But the Sufis, symbolized by Rumi, they tend to see a magnificent blurring of the boundaries between Creator and Created, and within Creation itself. That tends to make them all-embracing, tolerant, respectful and good-humored.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by brihaspati »

^^^^Some perfect examples of Sufi tolerance as this...again?!!!!

Siyar al-Aqtab [AD 1647 by Allah Diya Chishti] about the Sabriyya branch of the Chishtiyya silsila.
Sheikh Muin al-Din Chishti of Ajmer (d. AD 1236) Ajmer (Rajasthan)

“Although at that time there were very many temples of idols around the lake, when the Khwaja saw them, he said: ‘If God and His Prophet so will, it will not be long before I raze to the ground these idol temples....It is said that among those temples there was one temple to reverence which the Raja and all the infidels used to come, and lands had been assigned to provide for its expenditure. When the Khwaja settled there, every day his servants bought a cow, brought it there and slaughtered it and ate it…
[....]
“…Muin al-din had a second wife for the following reason: one night he saw the Holy Prophet in the flesh. The prophet said: ‘You are not truly of my religion if you depart in any way from my sunnat.’ It happened that the ruler of the Patli fort, Malik Khitab, attacked the unbelievers that night and captured the daughter of the Raja of that land. He presented her to Muin al-din who accepted her and named her Bibi Umiya.”
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

What Biden told Netanyahu behind closed doors: "This is starting to get dangerous for us"

LINK
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

A Saudi-Turkish alliance against Iran?

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... ainst_iran
ramana
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

abhishek_sharma wrote:A Saudi-Turkish alliance against Iran?

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... ainst_iran

Thats the old Byzantium +Arabs against the Persians or Ottomon Redux.

It was the defeat of the Ottomons against the Safavids which led to the Sultan sweeping thru Heajz and Arabia fell to the Ottomons with the later taking the title Caliph!
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Carl_T »

Hasn't Turkey been moving closer to Iran though?
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by amdavadi »

Biden also said " “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
ramana
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

Carl_T wrote:Hasn't Turkey been moving closer to Iran though?

How does that work? Its against their history (Ottomon vs Safavid) and even religion (Sunni vs Shia) and not to mention culture (Turkic vs Persian).

However you will see that line peddled by Western 'experts'.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Carl_T »

I don't disagree, but would it not be a useful partnership in light of their rivalry with the Arabs? "Turkic" culture was many centuries ago. They may not be a Persianised people now, but for a lot of their history they have been. Arabs will not accept Turkish leadership in the ME, but a Turkish-Iranian agreement would be a nightmare for them...
Last edited by Carl_T on 13 Mar 2010 01:17, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by skher »

Carl_T wrote:Hasn't Turkey been moving closer to Iran though?
Friends close, Enemies closer.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by akashganga »

Yoga is extremely popular in the US because it is very scientific. Patanjali's yoga sutras are like modern psychology. This Paki moron thinks islam can imitate the success of yoga. Yoga is backed by Bhagawat Gita, Upanishads, and yoga sutras. What does Islam 2.0 have to back it up. Sufism? What a joke. To understand any ideology you have to go to the source and in this case to the desert sands of arabia. At the end Satyameva Jayate.
Acharya wrote:A Paki using India for expansion

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-asgha ... 81783.html
http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/search?q=Islam&type=fp
Islam 2.0 May Be on the Horizon

Even in an era when Hindu nationalists in India have angled for chances to clobber Muslim rivals, the Indian export of yoga has given Hinduism a wonderfully positive image within the West.

Islam certainly needs a makeover of its own. I'd argue for something ancient and something new - mainly, a greater emphasis on Sufism and psychology.

Muslims in South Asia may seem to be an ornery bunch in recent years. But few Westerners realize that the mystical, group-hugging Sufis are more indigenous to the region than the kind of grim Talibani fundamentalists. This brand of fundamentalism was pressure-cooked by Wahabis who were imported from the Middle East by Saudi and Pakistani and American officials in the 1980s, precisely because their angry resolve made them unrivaled commie-killers in Afghanistan.

But the Sufis, symbolized by Rumi, they tend to see a magnificent blurring of the boundaries between Creator and Created, and within Creation itself. That tends to make them all-embracing, tolerant, respectful and good-humored.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Johann »

Carl_T wrote:Umm...doesn't everyone torture in interrogation??
Almost every security or intelligence service would torture if they were allowed to. For many of the same reasons many teachers and parents would beat children if they were allowed to. The innate belief that fear and pain will loosen tongues and change behaviour.

But for the same reasons that some societies have discouraged the use of force, some intelligence and security services have also discouraged the use of such tactics.

Some of those reasons are political - i.e. widespread social repugnance for such methods, but there have always been a group of professionals who rejected those methods for professional reasons.

I stand with them on the whole. Beating people is lazy. It usually makes them either stubborn or desperate. The stubborn say nothing, and deepen resistance, while the desperate will tell you what they think they want you to hear (which of course you, or your superiors will gladly believe).

There are far more recorded cases of intelligence success from offering people deals, taking advantages of grievances, and/or establishing rapport than from torture. But they require time, patience and perceptiveness - basically a lot more thought than a rubber hose or pair of telephone wires.

A lot of the time the people who run these things arent really after intelligence. What they want to do is punish the enemy who is fighting them and inflicting losses, and break them.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Johann »

Ramana,

There is far more anti-Arab than anti-Iranian sentiment in modern Turkey. That' because most Turks blame the Arabs for rebelling against the Ottoman Empire during WWI in alliance with their wartime enemies. It puts them in the same category as the Armenians. By contrast the last Turkish-Iranian war was back in 1823!

The Iranians and the Turks today have a Kurdish problem in common. Turkey and Iran would also like Turkey to serve as a pipeline route for Iranian oil and gas to Europe.

Both governments would like a larger role in the region, and both agree it will have to come at American expense, and both agree that the rhetoric of Islamic brotherhood is the best way to help re-order the region with a minimum of actual conflict. Both do business with Russia, and are happy to use them against the Americans but both lost territory to the Russian empire and do not want to see a return to the bad old days.

Turkey under the current brand of soft Islamism wants to be close to both Arab states *and* Iran, thus enhancing its leadership role in the ME. Iran would like the same thing, and cultivates Arab public opinion by doing its best to frighten and denounce Israel, but the majority of Arab states are dead set against it. The Justice party's modernist Muslim-Brotherhood lite version of Islam isnt particularly sectarian, so its not that hard for them to reach out to Iran in the name of Islamic fraternity.

p.s. The Sassanians, just like the Byzantines had Arab clients to protect their western desert frontiers. In their case it was the Lakhmids.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Carl_T »

Johann wrote:
Some of those reasons are political - i.e. widespread social repugnance for such methods, but there have always been a group of professionals who rejected those methods for professional reasons.
That's quite interesting, I always thought torture was widespread.


As for Turkey, I don't think the Safavid v Ottoman rivalry would prevent closer relations with Iran, not only were those days a long time ago, they get a significant portion of their natural gas from Iran and Arabs are their main rivals. While the Arabs are happy to stand against Iran, why is Turkey normalizing relations with Syria and defending Iran's right to be nuclear if Iran is a rival? Surely it is not just to irritate the West.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Gerard »

A “NEW” DYNAMIC IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE SECURITY ENVIRONMENT: THE MEXICAN ZETAS AND OTHER PRIVATE ARMIES
By Max G. Manwaring
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.ar ... PUB940.pdf
Beginning in the early 1990s, the Zetas was organized and staffed by former members (deserters) from the Mexican Army’s veteran elite Airborne Special Forces Group (GAFES). That private military organization now also includes former members from the formidable Guatemalan Kiabiles Special Forces organization. Thus, the Zeta is better trained, equipped, motivated, and experienced in irregular war than the Mexican police and army units that are supposed to control and subdue them. That new dynamic, as a consequence, employs an ambiguous mix of terrorism, crime, and conventional war tactics, operations, and strategies. This, in turn, generates relatively uncontrolled coercion and violence, and its perpetrators tend to create and consolidate semi-autonomous political enclaves (criminal free-states within the Mexican state) that develop into what the Mexican government has called “Zones of Impunity.” In such zones, criminal quasi states may operate in juxtaposition with the institutions of the weak de jure state, and force the local population to reconcile loyalties and adapt to an ambivalent and precarious existence that challenges traditional values as well as the law.
Mexico’s 2010 Murder Toll Surpasses 2,000
Turf battles among drug cartels and the security forces’ struggle against the illegal trade have claimed nearly 19,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006, when current President Felipe Calderon took office.

Vowing to crush the cartels, Calderon has deployed 50,000 soldiers and 20,000 federal police to the country’s most conflictive areas, yet the pace of drug-related killings has only accelerated, from 2,700 people in 2007 to 7,724 fatalities last year
The story of Los Zetas is emblematic of the challenge facing Mexico.

The group was formed by deserters from an elite Mexican special forces unit that received advanced training from the U.S. military. After several years as enforcers for the Gulf cartel, the Zetas branched out into kidnapping, extortion and murder for hire before entering the drug trade as an independent player.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Philip »

How Tony Blair gets rich rewards in secret from foreign oil cos.,which have extensive interests in...er,Iraq! What a woinderful little pressie for going to war in Iraq,batting for "Uncle Oil".It was all worthwhile for Blair as he could then afford his luxury property splurges in London,etc.,something he could never afford on his salary as British PM.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010 ... -korea-oil

Tony Blair got cash for deal with South Korean oil firmWatchdog orders publication of former prime minister's payment by oil firm that was kept secret for 20 months

EXcerpt:
Tony Blair has received cash from a South Korean oil firm in a deal kept secret until the business appointments watchdog intervened, the Guardian has learned.

After 20 months of secrecy, the former prime minister has now been overruled by the chairman of the advisory committee on business appointments, the former Tory cabinet minister Ian Lang.

Lang this week ordered publication of Blair's deal with UI Energy Corporation, which has extensive oil interests in the US and in Iraq.
Other lucky benefactors from "Uncle Oil".
The former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke has been one of its paid advisers. It also lists US politicians on its payroll, saying: "Congressman Stephen J Solarz, the former secretary of defence Frank C Carlucci, the former ambassador to Egypt Nicholas A Veliotes, and US commander for the Middle East General John P Abizaid exercise their network and political influence to promote UI Energy on the development of oil fields in Iraq where the USA governs."
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Sorry if this has been posted before:

Falkland Islands: The Special Relationship is now starting to seem very one-sided

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... sided.html
It was not that long ago that Washington was viscerally opposed to protecting any of Britain's interests. The formation of the League of Nations at the end of the First World War, with its commitment to guaranteeing the political and territorial independence of all states, was Woodrow Wilson's way of undermining the British Empire, while Britain's status as a world power to rival America finally ended with the humiliation of Suez. Relations between the two countries have since improved – but only as long as everyone accepts that it is Washington, not London, that calls the shots.

Even then, there have been occasions when it was unclear that Washington's support was guaranteed. Although Margaret Thatcher eventually won Ronald Reagan's support for Britain's liberation of the Falklands in 1982, the Americans were at first reluctant to back a campaign that had echoes of past imperial adventures, and which they feared might damage their own interests in Latin America. As John Nott, the defence secretary at the time, wrote, the Americans "were very, very far from being on our side".

...

While Mrs Clinton was no doubt made to feel very much at home in such a convivial environment, that does not excuse her support for Mrs Kirchner's suggestion that the Falklands issue be referred to the UN's decolonisation committee.

This might be a legitimate course of action if the overwhelming majority of Falkland Islanders had decided that they no longer wanted to be British. But this is not the case. The inhabitants are immensely proud of their British heritage, and have no desire to become Argentines.

...

A more likely explanation is that President Obama and his advisers find it incomprehensible that, in the 21st century, Britain continues to maintain its sovereignty over a remote group of islands that lie thousands of miles from its shores. And I fear that far from supporting their traditional ally, they will lend their support to any initiative that brings British influence in the South Atlantic to an end.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Philip »

deleted - copyright
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts ... gn_polices
Similarly, as Secretary Clinton returned from her Latin trip frustrated with her exchange with Brazil over Iran, many in the U.S. Latin policy community (which is broken with a few notable exceptions into two distinct groups -- hacks and old hacks) are fretting that this will be an impediment to a "real partnership" with Brazil. The problem is that the U.S. bases its idea of international partnerships on a very 1950s idea of marriage. America is the husband and our "partners" are our wives. We may call them "equal" in polite conversation but in the end we're the ones who get to decide who's going to get ****** and when. Not only is that old-fashioned sexual politics, it's an old fashioned view of relationships with a superpower in the Cold War. But we have entered into a world in which "you're with us or against us" and "you're with us or else" doesn't work. It's a world in which most of the major players with whom which we will have to deal will frequently be with us and against us.

Hopefully, the new centrality of China to American interests may introduce us to a more 21st century idea of international marriages -- one in which both sides really are equal and it is acknowledged from the outset that their interests may diverge and that when they do, it is possible to disagree and without undercutting the parts of the relationship that do work and where cooperation is possible. This idea -- of a U.S. that actually listens to and respects the autonomy of the other great powers with which we deal -- will be the key to building and maintaining successful coalitions in the future.

That's not to say, by the way, that Brasilia's samba with Tehran is in anyone's interest or is a good policy. It gives leverage to a very bad regime that is flaunting international law and seems intent on making the world a more dangerous pace. It's also not to say we shouldn't make our case clearly to the Brazilians or to pretend tensions won't result. However, we mustn't petulantly let our most important relationship in South America rise and fall on a single issue or on the notion that only one of the partners is in a position to set the terms of what is or is not acceptable.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Philip »

Bolivian general who captured Che Guevara investigated over plot against Evo Morales
The retired general who captured legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was summoned on Friday by Bolivian authorities investigating an alleged plot against President Evo Morales.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rales.html
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Why Obama's health-care victory won't make him stronger

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201 ... ign_policy
Will yesterday’s passage of health-care reform give a positive jolt to U.S. foreign policy? Is Obama the new “comeback kid,” with new clout at home and a more formidable hand to play abroad? Will he now pivot from domestic affairs to foreign policy and achieve a dazzling set of diplomatic victories? My answers: no, no, and no.

...

My sense is that yesterday’s House vote isn’t going to translate into a lot of new political clout, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Passing the health-care bill may mean that Obama doesn’t need coddle quite as many congressmen on foreign-policy issues they might care strongly about (such as trade policy or the Middle East), and that might give him a bit more flexibility to do what’s in the national interest. But overall, I don’t think yesterday’s vote in the House will have much impact at all.

...

More importantly, there isn’t a lot of low-hanging fruit in foreign policy. He might get an arms-control agreement with Russia, but there aren’t a lot of votes in that and there’s no way he’ll get a comprehensive test-ban treaty through the post-2010 Senate. Passing health care at home won’t make Iran more cooperative, make sanctions more effective, or make preventive war more appealing, so that issue will continue to fester. Yesterday’s vote doesn’t change anything in Iraq; it is their domestic politics that matters, not ours. I’d say much the same thing about Afghanistan, though Obama will face another hard choice when the 18-month deadline for his “surge” is up in the summer of 2011.

Passing a health-care bill isn’t going to affect America’s increasingly fractious relationship with China, cause Osama bin Laden to surrender, or lead North Korea to embrace market reforms, hold elections, and give up its nuclear weapons. And somehow I don’t think those drug lords at war with the Mexican government are going to go out of business because 32 million uninsured Americans are about to get coverage. And even if Obama does seize the moment to push Middle East peace talks -- a risky step in an election year -- only a cock-eyed optimist would expect a deal in short order.

So I’d ignore any stories you see about how this "historic legislative victory" gives the president new clout, greater momentum, or an enhanced ability to advance his foreign-policy agenda. Today’s euphoria will pass quickly, opponents at home will regroup, and enemies abroad don’t care. Bottom line: Obama's foreign-policy in box will look about the same at the end of the first term as it did when he took office.
Fidel Guevara
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Fidel Guevara »

Philip wrote:Bolivian general who captured Che Guevara investigated over plot against Evo Morales
The retired general who captured legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was summoned on Friday by Bolivian authorities investigating an alleged plot against President Evo Morales.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rales.html
Yes, this guy is a bad guy and should be tried and executed by a bullet to the back of the head. Long live the People's Revolution!

Fidel :D
Johann
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Johann »

prad wrote:seems like Turkey is focusing on economics for now. that is the only thing it can do with Russia breathing down its neck.
Not sure what you mean - Russia has never been weaker against Turkey in the last 250 years. It is in fact why perhaps Turko-Russian business has been booming.

In fact there is a faction within the Russian establishment that sees an alliance with Turkey as an expression of a common 'Eurasian' outlook - i.e. using their cross-continental cultural and geographical influence to stymie European and American pressure on the current political, economic and cultural systems. Unlikely to go anywhere, but you get the idea.
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

Only U.S. can end U.K.'s nuclear folly

http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/24/stories ... 531300.htm
The U.K. government is preparing for the last war, building a fantastical Maginot Line against the enemies of a previous century, the ghost armies that haunt the official imagination

The U.K.'s claim that it is working towards full multilateral disarmament while investing £70 billion in nuclear rearmament does not ring of conviction
Hari Seldon
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Hari Seldon »

breaking news.

Swapan dasgupta tweet: TIFWIW
http://twitter.com/swapan55
Sources say that Iran has 'called off' EAM S.M. Krishna's visit to Teheran later this week. Another diplomatic debacle?
abhishek_sharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

^^ This is really bad. :((
csharma
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by csharma »

While we should wait for confirmation, it would not be surprising. GoI had downgraded relations with Iran in favor of US. When India seems to be in need of them, they are giving ungli.

Maybe MKB is right when he says India's foreign policy is in shambles.
ramana
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

Pioneer Op-Ed, 25 March 2010

For US, the world is a chessboard
Thursday, March 25, 2010


For US, world is a chessboard

Premen Addy

The Obama Administration is as much in need of healthcare as the American people. By supping with the Pakistani leadership without the prescriptive long spoon, the US President and his advisers are guaranteeing a mightier inferno for the AfPak landscape than the one consuming it. The price demanded by the Pakistani Government for past and present services rendered to the American imperium amounts to a brazen $ 35 billion, with a few nuclear power plants, squadrons of F-16s and other lethal weaponry thrown in for good measure.

How the discussions in the Oval Office of the White House pan out will be known soon enough, but the promised consummation of the India-US relationship is likely to remain the 21st century’s unfulfilled dream. Just as well, for tying the knot on the deck of another doomed Titanic — Pakistan in this instance — would hardly make good copy or a riveting film. However, the mystery of David Coleman Headley might, one day, do both, with its darkest secrets revealed and an Oscar to be won.

The world's ‘sole superpower’, the prayerful refrain of acolytes of the living Moloch, bears more than a passing resemblance to Gulliver trussed up and bound to the ground by legions of Taliban and Al Qaeda Lilliputians in Afghanistan and Iraq and the earth beyond. Superpower hubris is no assurance of second sight. Mr George W Bush proclaimed a famous victory in Iraq from the deck of an American battleship and the pronouncement, in due course, crumbled to dust.

Newsweek reproduced a picture of the former US President savouring his triumph in 2004 against its report of the recently deemed success of an Iraqi general election. What price such traduced freedom? A broken nation boasting multitudes of orphaned cripples, thousands of dead and millions living as insecure refugees abroad; a country gifted with intermittent power and water by its mendacious occupier, its innards torn out, its confessional communities at each other’s throats with bombs, bullets and anything else that came to hand.

Truth will out, but not clearly in the Anglo-American media. The fourth-rate estate has long been reduced to a complicit parody in a lacquered criminal syndicate. Their news coverage refracts the seamless engagement between what can be seen as the world’s second-oldest profession with the world’s oldest. Checks and balances are nursery rhymes for lulled innocents cutting their milk teeth at their mother’s breasts. Al Capone and Goebbels embodied fascism’s infancy, today’s finished product boasts a corporate face.

International alignments, once cast in stone, are in flux. Nato, like Shelley’s Ozymandias, could well become a half-buried trunkless head of stone in the sands of Araby. You wouldn’t have thought so leafing through the insouciance of Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish American geostrategic guru hired by the Obama campaign team for the 2008 US presidential election, whose worldview may well be haunting the corridors of power in Washington, DC. As President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser between 1976-80, his advice was inevitably coloured with the Pole’s primordial hatred of Russians.

Apropos of clandestine US activity in Afghanistan, which pre-dated the Soviet appearance in the country, he said: “This secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap. You want me to regret that?” (Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism by John K Cooley). In his book, Cooley writes, “Brzezinski, like President Carter’s CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner ... freely acknowledged that the possible adverse consequences of the anti-Communist alliance with the Afghan Islamists (and shortly afterward, with their radical Muslim allies around the world) — the growth of a new international terrorist movement and the global outreach of South Asian drug trafficking — did not weigh heavily, if at all, in their calculations at the time.”

Years later, March 20, 2010, to be precise, The Times correspondent, Anthony Loyd, in Peshawar, described how a motley group of jihadis — Arabs, Uzbeks and Pakistani Punjabis — were giving the American and their allies a particularly hard time in Afghanistan. The 1,500 Uzbeks, apparently the most formidable of the lot, usually fought to the last man.

Three days later, on March 23, came a front-page Daily Telegraph report, with the headline: “Dirty nuclear bomb threat to Britain”. Duncan Gardham’s opening paragraph set the scene: “Britain faces an increased threat of a nuclear attack by Al Qaeda terrorists following a rise in the trafficking of radiological material, a Government report has warned. Bomb makers who have been active in Afghanistan may already have the ability to produce a ‘dirty bomb’ using knowledge over the Internet. It is feared that terrorists could transport an improvised nuclear device up the Thames and detonate it in the heart of London” and other British cities.

“Lord West, the Security Minister, also raised the possibility of terrorists using small small craft to enter ports and launch an attack similar to that in Mumbai in 2008 ... The terrorist group since then had approached Pakistani nuclear scientists, developed a device to produce hydrogen cyanide, which can be used in chemical warfare, and used explosives in Iraq combined with chlorine gas cylinders,” the report says. Frankenstein’s monster is now stalking its creator. President Barack Obama and his aides will have much to discuss with their Pakistani guests. If only the fly on the wall could speak and write proper English what a tale it would have to tell. :rolleyes:

Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Mr Brzezinski, inebriated by the chaos of the Yeltsin dispensation in Moscow, issued his projection of the future, The Great Chessboard. Eurasia, the subject of his title, with its oil and geostrategic location was preordained to be a giant American bailiwick. Controlled tenancies for Russia, India and China, etc, would form part of the Pax Americana. The book’s sting came in its tail, the reference to “China’s support for Pakistan (which) restrains India’s ambitions to subordinate that country and offsets India’s inclination to cooperate with Russia in regard to Afghanistan and Central Asia”.

Mr Brzezinski confides in his Chinese interlocutors in 1996 — recalled in an extensive footnote in his book, published the following year — on a possible US-China condominium for the region, inspiration, possibly, for Mr Obama’s hint of G2 summits floated in Beijing last autumn. Its eccentricity is reminiscent of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, whereby the Pope in Rome divided the newly discovered dominions of Asia and Africa between the Catholic Majesties of Spain and Portugal.

To George Nathaniel Curzon, player extraordinary of Kipling’s Great Game, belongs surely the final word: “Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia ... To me, I confess, these names are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world.” This being 2010, checkmate, alas, it must be.
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