Geopolitical thread

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sum
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by sum »

When we we hear enemies of Desh being bumped off like this ( except in the odd movie)? :(( :((

Also, liked this comment from above article:
It's interesting to compare the language used in this report with that published a week ago:

Today:
"Russian hit squad accused of murdering Chechen dissidents in Istanbul...startling evidence reveals how agent may have been sent to take out the Kremlin-backed regime's enemies on foreign soil"

Last friday:
"Yemen says al-Qa'ida linked cleric Al-Awlaki killed...Anwar al-Awlaki was killed early today in a strike on his convoy carried out by a joint operation of the CIA and the US Joint Special Operations Command. Al-Awlaki had been under observations for three weeks while they waited for the right opportunity to strike."

In both cases a terrorist was murdered on foreign soil by a hit squad, end of story. The reasons for the murders are exactly the same and have exactly the same justfication / lack of justification.

Please report the facts. Stop telling us how to think.
:mrgreen:
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Soviet Union

with Lawrence Summers :evil: , Stephen Hadley, Zbigniew Brzezinski :evil: and Brent Scowcroft

Video
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by rohitvats »

JE Menon wrote:Complex but superbly executed and obviously outstanding evasion/exfiltration. Except for the loose end of passport/USB Stick, although the latter may be intentional.
While I sure the Russian Secret Service, FSB and erstwhile KGB, have/had dedicated hit squads, what has also been speculated for a long time that Spetznaz were also trained for these kind of operations, and much more.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

The end of history is also ending secularism in West.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Hari Seldon »

ramana wrote:The end of history is also ending secularism in West.
We're condemned to live in interesting times, seems like.... This struggle I'd pay to watch. I predict a civil war situ with enclaves and zones divvied up all over oirostan - much like Yugoslavia today..... Secularism is dead. Log live secularism!
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by SwamyG »

THE wind shifts. By an inevitable process, geopolitical alignments dissolve and coalesce in new configurations as nations and power blocs rise and fall. Today the West is in decline and that trend has recently accelerated.

Last Tuesday, two separate developments in one day demonstrated how the pattern of global power is changing, to the severe disadvantage of Nato, its leading member the United States, and the European Union.

Firstly, Afghanistan and India signed a “strategic partnership” agreement
Read more West may be swept away by eastern winds of change
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Klaus »

Straight from the horse's mouth, nothing we havent heard of before: Link
As successful as these alliances have been, we can't afford simply to sustain them - we need to update them for a changing world.

Our outreach to China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Brunei, and the Pacific Island countries is all part of a broader effort to ensure a more comprehensive approach to American strategy and engagement in the region.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

X-post...
parsuram wrote:The world is a far different place today than the one in which the US -paki relationship was born. That was the time fo the hot cold war. With the Berlin blockade, Soviet-PRC togetherness, US paranoia at home via the Anti American activities subcomitee in congress and Sec. Dulles running US foreign policy. Today has no relationship to those days. Today, The US is the sole super power - at least militarily. Today, the paki is the head of a world wide terror network, working to undermine the existing world order for the greater glory of islam, and to generate new opportunities for islam through jehad. Today, the paki has nukes with with it openly threatens the existing world order of trade and commerce in which it cannot compete. the world today functions in a way that totally excludes islamic skill sets. The oil producing islamic societies are hanging on by their oily finger nails, and when alternate enrgy sources replace oil, then, the entire islamic set of humanity will be reduced to abject poverty and irrelevence. The paki has enough brains to understand that. So the paki, in its self appointed role as the leader of islam, has taken on itself to develop the only alternative that is part of islamic tradition - jehad, embodying loot, plunder, rape, mayhem by which to live their lives. So, yes, the world is different, very different from what it was when the US and the paki joined hands.
As for the US having access to central asia, and the paki's hold on geography, the US does indeed have a problem. But it is more than just access to central asian markets, oil, gas, trade and commerce. China has almost completed a coup of coralling all those assets. The Russians have gone along with the PRCees out of habit and compulsion - they certainly have enough siberian resources and do not need to corall the others. Indeed, by providing unfettered access of the others to the PRCees, they are protecting their hold on siberia against encroaching chinese takeover in the face of declining russian population and russian social fatigue working against taking firm control of siberia. Taken together with the PRCees aggressive trade and geopolitical offensive in Africa and the islam world, their offensive posture in SE Asia, the US is stymed, for the moment. To all this, a strategic alliance with the paki is NOT the answer, whatever the answer might be. Now I do believe that the US will, in the end, enter into the "grand alliance" - a strategic partenship with Moscow. It is an historic necessicity, and both the PRC and the paki and islamic aggressive posture against Europe point to this happening. In that case, access to the heart of Eurasia will not be an issue for the Americans. In return, it is likely that the US will open the Monroe doctorine wide to let in the Russians as a partner. For the US does control, in hard geopolitical terms, what goes in latin america, as it own "western hemisphere" backyard (all, that is, other than Cuba - with the consequences for Cuba that we see). Once that Grand Alliance happens, the paki will be toast - burnt toast, and one of the first to be targeted, thanks to its nukes. It is in India's best interests that such a grand alliance comes about, so it should work towards making it happen and when it does, to become a significant partner with it. That is the only way the world can evolve in an orderly way, without total chaos and mayhem led by the islamists, who will attack any sense of order other than what is in its own interests, and the interests of the PRC. For a while, the US will, I believe, attempt to avoid the inevitable - allying with Moscow, and sharing some of the power, and, instead, try and work out its seperate deals with both the PRC and the paki and the islamists. This will not work, in the end.
Acharya wrote:http://www.america-russia.net/

http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20101230/161988632.html
Uncertain World: U.S.-Russian alliance cannot be ruled out
16:40 30/12/2010
Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov
When U.S. President Barack Obama was sworn in two years ago, no one thought the Russian question would become the focal point of not only his foreign but also his domestic policy.

© RIA Novosti.
Fyodor Lukyanov
The policy of resetting relations with Russia, launched to help resolve other more acute problems, has become Obama’s most successful foreign policy initiative. The ratification of the New START treaty, although it is more of a technical document than any kind of real breakthrough, is proof that the current U.S. administration can drive its point home.

We cannot be sure about relations between Russia and the United States in the 21st century. At least the Cold War paradigm was clear-cut and understandable. START-3 is the last of the big treaties designed to regulate the two superpowers’ rivalry in conditions when that very rivalry formed the backbone of global politics.
But the global situation has changed, and the international community is no longer tracking the ups and downs of U.S.-Russia talks. Iran and North Korea will attempt to produce their own nuclear bombs irrespective of how many missiles and warheads Russia or the United States may have, and China is steadily increasing its arsenal irrespective of what the nuclear giants do.
The U.S.-Russian relationship will only change when Moscow and Washington admit that much less depends on them in the world than they are accustomed to think, and that keeping the confrontations of yesteryear alive is actually a total waste of time and effort.
It is difficult to imagine Moscow and Washington as allies. But it would be unwise to rule out the possibility of any alliance in a world of such “mutable geometry,” where the lineup of forces is not set in stone but is an ever-changing quality.
parsuram wrote:Acharya: Thank you for your post. It makes my point, and that many others have been suggesting, that a grand alliance between Washington and Moscow is going to happen - just a matter of time, and when it happens, some order will be re asserted on world geopolitics, some thing that is needed in the face of islamic jehaadi and PRC destabilizing efforts throughout the world.
shiv wrote:
ShauryaT wrote: I will restate my question again.

The question is what facts, interests and risks have changed since 1951 for the US to make a fundamental different policy choice. A choice that reflects US interests and assessment of risks, going forward. What are its realistic choices?

The above is an open question, not to say nothing has changed. Not sure if this fast moving thread has a place for it.
I think it is important to understand that Britain became superpower by default. That is to say Britain did not say "We are going to become a superpower". They just did all the things needed to help themselves and luck was on their side One day people woke up and realised that Britain ruled the world in a multipolar world where other powers (like the French, Germans and Italians and Spanish) were all runners up.

The same thing is true of the US. The US did not set out to become superpower. The US was pulled into two wars (WW1 and 2) shortly after the industrial era. In those wars the existing powers bashed each other senseless leaving only the US. The USSR only became a political-military superpower. It was big enough not to be intimidated by anyone. But it was never a superpower in America's league. America was the only industrial giant standing at the end of WW2. That, compared with its huge military Industrial complex made it superpower. Americans never spent the 20s and 30s saying "We wil become superpower" like I hear Indians (and Chinese) saying today.

The point I seek to make is that the status "superpower" is not so much one of "national ambition" as one of forces of history that bring down old powers and leave others at the top of the heap. American found itself at the top of the heap and then said "Hey we are at the top of the heap. Therefore what we are doing must be right. So we will continue to do what we are doing and will stay at the top of the heap"

American interests in the post WW2 era have been aimed at staying on top of the heap on the assumption that it was something special about American-ness and American actions that put them at the top of the heap. Not chance or the forces of history. America made it seem like "Freedom" (in an American sense) and "Capitalism" were somehow the key to greatness. The world swallowed this because America was already great when they started saying it and no one could argue. But if we just wind the clock back 1000 years then "superpower" would mean Islam. Not freedom. Not democracy. Looting and not capitalism was the basis of economy, although capitalism requires some looting I guess.

i would not assume the continuing of American power. Pakistan may well end up having aspects of power that are greater than America's power. And as America fades we will be left with a extraordinarily powerful Pakistan that contributed to a small extent to the fading of American power. The only question is how much power America will give to Pakistan before it fades away in the mistaken belief that not opposing Pakistan is in American interests.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by sumishi »

So now, after Libya, next on the list, Iran?
US seeks to punish Iran for plot to kill Saudi envoy
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by JE Menon »

Xpost of a fantastic write up by Shiv in the TSP thread:

______________________________


I think it is important to understand that Britain became superpower by default. That is to say Britain did not say "We are going to become a superpower". They just did all the things needed to help themselves and luck was on their side One day people woke up and realised that Britain ruled the world in a multipolar world where other powers (like the French, Germans and Italians and Spanish) were all runners up.

The same thing is true of the US. The US did not set out to become superpower. The US was pulled into two wars (WW1 and 2) shortly after the industrial era. In those wars the existing powers bashed each other senseless leaving only the US. The USSR only became a political-military superpower. It was big enough not to be intimidated by anyone. But it was never a superpower in America's league. America was the only industrial giant standing at the end of WW2. That, compared with its huge military Industrial complex made it superpower. Americans never spent the 20s and 30s saying "We wil become superpower" like I hear Indians (and Chinese) saying today.

The point I seek to make is that the status "superpower" is not so much one of "national ambition" as one of forces of history that bring down old powers and leave others at the top of the heap. American found itself at the top of the heap and then said "Hey we are at the top of the heap. Therefore what we are doing must be right. So we will continue to do what we are doing and will stay at the top of the heap"

American interests in the post WW2 era have been aimed at staying on top of the heap on the assumption that it was something special about American-ness and American actions that put them at the top of the heap. Not chance or the forces of history. America made it seem like "Freedom" (in an American sense) and "Capitalism" were somehow the key to greatness. The world swallowed this because America was already great when they started saying it and no one could argue. But if we just wind the clock back 1000 years then "superpower" would mean Islam. Not freedom. Not democracy. Looting and not capitalism was the basis of economy, although capitalism requires some looting I guess.

i would not assume the continuing of American power. Pakistan may well end up having aspects of power that are greater than America's power. And as America fades we will be left with a extraordinarily powerful Pakistan that contributed to a small extent to the fading of American power. The only question is how much power America will give to Pakistan before it fades away in the mistaken belief that not opposing Pakistan is in American interests.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Agnimitra »

US sends in troops to take on Africa's most barbaric guerrillas
American special forces arrive in Uganda to help tackle group led by bloodthirsty Christian mystic...

In a highly unusual move, the United States is venturing into one of Africa's bloodiest conflicts, sending special forces to central Africa to support a decades-long fight against a guerrilla group accused of horrific atrocities. President Barack Obama said the troops will assist local forces in a long-running battle against the Lord's Resistance Army, considered one of Africa's most ruthless rebel groups, and help to hunt down its notorious leader, Joseph Kony.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Agnimitra »

Putin sends 'what reset?' message
Russian president-all-but-elect Vladimir Putin, in his current guise of premier, used his visit to China to emphasize the unprecedented level of trust between the leaders of the two world powers. He also sent a pronounced message that Russia is ready for a cooling and reversing of the reset in relations with the West.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/op ... 6173493029
On America, Keating is dismayed by the pivotal change in its outlook after the end of the Cold War. "When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried victory and walked off the field," he says.

"Yet the end of the Cold War offered the chance for America to develop a new world order. It didn't know what to do with its victory. This at the moment the US should have begun exploiting the opportunity of establishing a new world order to embrace open regionalism and the inclusion of great states like China, India and the then loitering Russia.

"Well, frankly, the US didn't have the wisdom. It just wanted to celebrate its peace dividend. The two Clinton terms and the two George W. Bush terms, that's four presidential terms, have cost US mightily."

For Keating, the malaise in US politics is the problem. He says: "The most compelling thing I've seen in years is that in the great burst of American productivity between 1990 and 2008, of that massive increment to national income, none of it went to wages. By contrast, in Australia real wages over the same period had risen by 30 per cent." Keating sees this "as the breakdown of America's national compact", the shattering of its prosperity deal. He says American conservatives abandoned the middle ground represented by Republican presidents such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Bush Sr and became radicals. The derailment, he argues, began under Ronald Reagan and reached its zenith under George W. Bush.

With the goodwill gone the US "is not able to produce a medium-term credible fiscal trajectory or get agreement on rebuilding its infrastructure". This paralysis "is significant not just for the US but for the world."

Keating links the collapse of this "prosperity compact" to the financial crisis. Too many Americans were unable to sustain themselves from wages and salaries.

How did they get by? They used the easy credit of the banking system, thereby feeding the frenzy that ended in bad loans and meltdown.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-sk ... -left-6053

Memo to Leslie Gelb: The Neocons Never Left

THE SKEPTICS
Leslie Gelb writes to warn that:

The neoconservatives who gave America clueless, unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a near doubling of military expenditures, during the Bush years have risen from their political graves.

He worries that:

The only ones to stand up to them effectively have been other Republicans, specifically the best of the foreign-policy realists such as George Shultz, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and George H.W. Bush.

There are a few points to be made here. The first is that the neocons never went into a political grave. Instead, they took over the Republican foreign-policy establishment. Think of the list of foreign-policy advisers released recently by the Romney campaign. Now try to envision a different candidate Romney who wanted to have his campaign dominated by realists instead of neocons. What names would appear? It’s a remarkably hard question to answer.

The irony here is that it was with the help of people like Leslie Gelb that the neocons took over the GOP establishment. When he was at the helm of the Council on Foreign Relations, Gelb brought in a real neocon’s neocon, Max Boot, to be a senior fellow, giving perhaps the most fervid neocon around the CFR stamp of approval—the imprimatur of the foreign-policy establishment. (It should also be acknowledged that Gelb himself supported the neocons’ Iraq project, shrugging afterward in the passive voice that his “initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility.”)

As Scott McConnell has pointed out, neoconservatism is a career. Or as Bill Kristol remarked in 2005, the neoconservatives have done such an excellent job building institutions and infrastructure for developing the next generation of neocons that “soon there are going to be more neoconservative magazines than there are neoconservatives.” There are dozens of twenty-something, thirty-something, forty-something and older neocons throughout Washington, working at think tanks, editorial pages, in government and elsewhere. I could probably count on two hands the number of youngish national-security types I know in town who I could strain to call realists. This imbalance among foreign-policy elites helps create the mistaken impression that there are lots of neoconservatives in America generally, which there aren’t. Neoconservatism really is a head without a body.

Now think about Gelb’s list of the people who have historically been able to resist neoconservative pressure. They’re all in their eighties.

If Gelb is worried about the failure to drive a stake through the heart of neoconservatism, he ought to think long and hard about the failures of the elders in the Washington realist establishment to develop the next generation of non-neocon national-security leaders. Those “unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community” that he laments are still there, and aspiring leaders are subject to them even more than presidents of the Council on Foreign Relations were.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by devesh »

http://english.donga.com/srv/service.ph ... 1101586108

Japan moves to review `3 principles` for arms exports
Just about a month after Japan`s conservative Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was sworn in, Tokyo is showing signs of taking a step toward the right in sensitive domestic and international issues.
Japan is trying to lay the foundation for easing its three principles on arms exports and a revision to its constitution. Tokyo has made little progress in the controversial issues that conservatives have long sought to tackle.

The Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun said Friday that Noda will convey his plan to ease the three principles in a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama next month. Established in 1967, the principles bans Japan from exporting weapons and related technology to communist states, countries under U.N. sanctions, and nations in conflict.

Since 1976, the export restriction has technically been applied to almost all countries. Japan`s conservatives have warned that their country`s weapons-developing technology is falling behind that of other countries due to the three principles, saying they prevent collaboration with other countries to jointly develop weapons under the premise of exporting them.

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan also decided Friday to allow the review of the three principles on the condition that arms exports be limited to peace-making or humanitarian purposes and that Tokyo has a limited choice of countries to work with for joint arms development.

The party agreed on easing the principles late last year but the review was postponed due to opposition by then Prime Minister Naoto Kan and certain opposition parties.

Seiji Maehara, chairman of the party`s policy bureau, is also positive about the review, which has gained momentum from the conservative Noda`s inauguration.

The ruling party reportedly plans to operate a parliamentary committee for the discussion of a constitutional revision. The body was established in the National Diet of Japan in 2007, when the Liberal Democratic Party was in power, along with the enactment of a law on national referendum.

The parliamentary panel has remained dormant for more than four years, however, due to opposition from other parties. The Democratic Party is said to be planning to form the committee even if other minor parties object to it.

Even if the committee starts its activities, it is unlikely to immediately seek a constitutional revision that allows Japan to go to war. Brisk debates, however, will likely be held over the proposed revision.

when Japan finally moves to "amend" these laws, it will mean the official end to the post-WWII order. from that point on, the Global Order built uner Pax-Americana post-1945, will be gone for good. there is no going back.

when Japan takes these measures, Pax-Americana is dead for all intents and purposes. it will also be a powerful move that will resonate in Germanic Europe.

the global chess game will truly heat up after that point......Jai Ho!
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

Devesh, You are the new find of BRF after Bji.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by devesh »

ramana garu, seriously, don't make such comparisons. nowhere close. I fall mostly under the "avid reader" category. beyond that, I don't really have any "expertise" on history. whatever I regurgitate is mostly on issues which interest me deeply and on which I've done a lot of reading. beyond that, I don't have any publications or original contributions.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

You are good. Take the credit. :D
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

devesh wrote:

when Japan finally moves to "amend" these laws, it will mean the official end to the post-WWII order. from that point on, the Global Order built uner Pax-Americana post-1945, will be gone for good. there is no going back.

when Japan takes these measures, Pax-Americana is dead for all intents and purposes. it will also be a powerful move that will resonate in Germanic Europe.

the global chess game will truly heat up after that point......Jai Ho!
All these alliances were built during cold war and were against the main enemy - soviet Union.

But with a fragmented world and regional rivalries these alliance will create conflict of interest.
If China - Japan confrontation happens US cannot be a pivot and work on the both sides.
US is creating itself a role where it will be a pivot in Asia and with bases in Guam and DG it will be able to balance the power in the sea lanes and all conflict in Asia from IOR region and the East Asia Pacific
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Prem »

Gorbachov was right when he said he is gonna do one terrible thing to WEST ..i.e devoid them from an enemy SU so they will loose thier sense of purpose. Both Germany and Japan are now back once agaion taking central postion. It will be interesting to watch how it plays out in next 20-30 years . One thing is certain, Britania wont be sitting on the high table as an independent power of 21st century.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhischekcc »

US built the alliances not just to keep Soviets out, but also to keep the developed countries from gutting each other again (as in WW1 and WW2). You need to understand these alliances along with the economic systems that were built in Europe and East Asia.

For W.Europe, the economic superstructure consisted of the EEC as well as economic exploitation of Africa. For Japan, the superstructure was economic exploitation of SEA countries. These regions were essential colonies of their respective colonial masters. America kept LatAm for itself as well as ME - which the Americans have themselves described as the greatest geopolitical prize.

ME oil flows to W.Europe and Japan, and US keeps their economies in a tight leash by controlling the flow and price of oil. ME is the lever with which the US controls its primary economic rivals. IOW, if you want to see a break in the economic and security superstructure of the post WW2 world, you first need to figure out how Japan/WE are going to meet their energy needs.

Germany is the only developed country that has a reasonable chance of becoming energy independent from the US - and only because of Russian energy. I don't think the Germans relish the idea of changing masters. Japan depends on imports for 97% of its energy needs, as does SK in a similar amount. No way are these countries ready to break the alliance with US. Does China have anything in energy security to offer to these countries? And even if it did, will Japan/SK trust it after the rare-earths incident?
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by devesh »

abhishekcc ji,

excellent point about the energy needs. ultimately, it comes down to who controls Malacca Straits and Hormuz. for now, and in foreseeable future, it is US. as long as this is the case, US will remain "in control" of Asia. only if another power (India/China) manage to take control of these two transit ways, will India/China become a superpower. until then, US is here to stay.

also, a what-if scenario for Japan:
what if SU wasn't a threat and US didn't need active Japanese cooperation/alliance against SU after WWII? the EJ invasion of Japan would have been greater by several magnitudes. the West's hatred toward non-Desert Ideology peoples would have shined like a raging fire. Japan would have been seriously compromised by a much more fierce EJ onslaught.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

devesh wrote: Japan would have been seriously compromised by a much more fierce EJ onslaught.
EJ is never a strategy especially against an Imperial power such as Japan
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by Airavat »

In both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan Clinton mentioned that crackdowns on religious expression risked going too far, and could ultimately bolster Islamic radicals, rather than contain them. In the Tajik capital Dushanbe, Clinton suggested that recent steps to control faith could drive “legitimate religious expression underground” and thus fuel extremism.

Admonitions aside, a central purpose for Clinton’s stopovers was to thank Uzbek and Tajik leaders for their support for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan. Both countries border Afghanistan and serve as transit points in the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), an overland supply route that delivers non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan from Europe through Central Asia. Uzbekistan is the key cog in the NDN network, handling the bulk of Afghan-bound supplies.

Against the backdrop of US-Pakistani tension, the strategic significance of the NDN has risen rapidly. Over half of coalition supplies going into Afghanistan by land now travel via the NDN network. Of late, Washington has stepped up its engagement of Uzbekistan, apparently with the aim of ensuring Tashkent’s support for NDN’s expanded operations.
Eurasianet
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by devesh »

Acharya wrote:
devesh wrote: Japan would have been seriously compromised by a much more fierce EJ onslaught.
EJ is never a strategy especially against an Imperial power such as Japan
not so sure Acharya ji. Japan was imperial rubble after WWII. the compulsion to put Japan's industrial potential to use against FSU was a huge motivation. the original plan under Roosevelt was a radical de-industrialization of Japan. basically, systematically destroy their industrial might and deny them any chances of rebuilding it. in essence, a forced serfdom.

there was a line of though at the time against Nukes on Japan. it had nothing to do with kindness of humanitarianism. on the contrary, these people felt that Nukes would bring a premature end to the war. they believed a massive home invasion of Japan and consequent mass death and destruction of Japan itself should be ultimate goal. and Nukes would hinder this project by ending Japanese resistance too quickly.

had there been no FSU threat, the vengeance on Germany and Japan (especially Japan) by the US would have been much greater. part of it would surely be mental colonization by EJ's.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhischekcc »

Devesh ji,

There are six critical choke points in the world - Straits of Hormuz, Malacca, and Gibraltar; Panama and Suez canals, and Cape of Good Hope. By God's design, 4 of these fall under India's immediate neighborhood. Which is good for us. But given the limp nature of Indian politicians in international politics, we have never been able to take advantage of that.


Anyway, the developing Indo-Pac alliance will ensure that we will finally take responsibility for our neighborhood. Which is good.


The difference between US and China wrt these choke points is that the US kept these points open to all, whereas China is sure to use it to interfere in other countries' strategic autonomy (such as it may be). But the imminent US withdrawal from Asia and the development of the Indo-Pac alliance means that the US is handing over the responsibility to keep this 'common' open to the alliance. There has been talk in the US since a long time to engage India in keeping these 'commons' (such as internet, shipping lanes, etc) open for all. The only reason it has not happened earlier is India's reluctance to take responsibility for it.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by RajeshA »

abhischekcc ji,

Lets call it Indo-Pacific Alliance and not Indo-Pac alliance. Somehow it rankles! :)
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by devesh »

I'm not sure how India's "reluctance" has led to "ignoring" Indo-Pacific. we've been boxed in so masterfully by the colonial regimes on their exit, that we're still putting out fires from that era. and we're going to continue to do so for foreseeable future. even in internal affairs, the colonial order still perpetuates. it will take a gigantic struggle to cleanse the legacy of British Raj from modern Bharatiya Rashtra. only then, will India *truly* take responsibility for periphery and broader global affairs.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by devesh »

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/ ... 2320111027
Japanese farmers talking about free trade...
the established political order being incapable of "reforms"...
increasingly leaning towards "constitutional reform"...
the Japanese political system is going to face a tough situation in the future. on the one hand, they've understood the undercurrents of changing "emotions" and are signalling that the Pacifist orientation isn't working. in the same vein, there are indigenous cultural related policies which need to become tuned to new times. historically, when the "rural"/"farmer" guys start showing dissatisfaction, it means the elite of Japan starts noticing changes and goes into hyperdrive. but in modern day, Japanese farming is a tiny part of Japanese economy...
Last edited by Gerard on 27 Oct 2011 18:48, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: edited - copyright
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by abhishek_sharma »

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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

Finding 21st Century Strategies for 21st Century War

The first feature of the 21st century model is that limited and targeted air strikes work better than a large ground presence. All of the major conflicts today, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya, prove that quality matters more than quantity. Precision matters more than force. When the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, it did so with tens of thousands of troops. Yet the conflicts still drag on nearly a decade later. The fallacy of the Bush administration was that it thought 21st century goals — combating terrorism, building democratic states, and stopping humanitarian disasters — could be achieved with 20th century methods based on military scale. But terrorists are wily and fickle and move across borders in a way that armies cannot. Insurgents hide amidst civilian populations. Revolutions cannot be won by outside forces alone.

The Obama administration has found success in a precision war with the use of drone attacks that target specific people and have limited collateral damage. I do not want to dismiss the legal and ethical controversies of drone forces, which I believe are valid in many cases. However, from a purely military standpoint, the drone program is justified by tremendous successes in the war against non-state actors. The NATO bombing campaign in Libya that carried out 26,000 sorties and 10,000 strikes over seven months occurred without a single casualty among NATO forces. This is a model that can be used again in future conflicts.

A second feature of 21st century military engagements is multilateralism. Indeed, it is also the more responsible choice. Multilateral efforts hold more legitimacy in the international community, especially when paired with UN Security Council resolutions, as was the case in Libya (and not the case in Iraq). Multilateralism ensures that the costs and risks of military engagement are spread across multiple countries.

A third feature of 21st century war is a definitive exit strategy. If you go in, you must have a way out. And if you don’t have a way out, you shouldn’t go in. This is the principle mistake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Wars used to be fought until one side either won or lost. Now, wars pitch powerful national armies against terrorist groups, insurgencies, and other actors that operate on the small scale. It is not always known if or when an enemy is defeated or when the goal is achieved. As Georgetown professor and former intelligence analyst Paul Pillar wrote, “The prospect of U.S. involvement in a war in the Middle East dragging out [nine years] would have killed the possibility of neocons being able to conduct their great experiment in trying to inject democracy through the barrel of a gun.” In other words, time-scale matters in modern warfare and should therefore be a principle consideration in decisions to engage in war. Libya succeeded in this goal even with a loosely defined endgame because the absence of ground forces made an exit clean and exact.

The lessons of modern wars and the successful strategies now being used show that the military must break out of its old mold and forge a new model. Indeed, military operations can now be won with fewer forces, better intelligence, and less money than previous conflicts. The principle lesson for the 21st century war is that the U.S. and its allies can succeed in their military and diplomatic goals with minimal troop deployments, precision bombing, and supportive intervention. The old model of war will have little benefit in future conflict.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

First, We Get a Second Mortgage for the Pentagon …
Since at least World War II, the costs of American wars have been measured in lives more than dollars. The Korean War was expensive on a scale almost unimaginable today, accounting for 14 percent of U.S. GDP. Congress eventually cut off funding for the Vietnam War, but that was because it wanted the troops home, not because it was worried about making ends meet. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been waged with surprisingly little thought to cost, at least until recently.
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Historically, the United States has funded wars through emergency supplemental spending for the first year or two. Then, as a conflict drags out, its cost gets integrated into the regular budgetary process. The Bush administration broke with that model in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, funding them “off the books” through emergency appropriations acts year after year. Obama has continued that practice, though he has changed the war-budgeting timeline to coincide with the regular budget, drawing greater attention to the tradeoffs involved.
So what are the tradeoffs, exactly? It’s hard to get a satisfying answer, which may be one reason there haven’t been even more complaints about war spending from the media and the American public. The money comes mainly from borrowing, so no dollar spent in Afghanistan can be directly identified as a dollar that was meant to go toward someone’s Medicare. Nor would any of the current budget caps force war spending to be made up from cuts elsewhere. The Budget Control Act limits the “base” defense budget to $684 billion in 2012 and $686 billion in 2013, a slight cut from 2011 levels.* But it explicitly exempts war appropriations from its calculations.
All of which is to say that the question of cost is unlikely to elude anyone the next time the country eyes a military adventure abroad. Voters on the left and right alike now clearly link the country’s budget problems to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Perhaps more than is warranted: Though we’re spending $700 billion a year on defense and war, the Bush tax cuts and the recession contributed more to the growth of the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office.) Most estimates put the country’s spending on Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade somewhere near $1.3 trillion. That sum sure could have come in handy, given that the supercommittee has deadlocked over the need for $1.2 trillion in cuts.
In his 2010 book, The Frugal Superpower, Johns Hopkins scholar Michael Mandelbaum foretold a future in which the United States’ foreign policy would be constrained by rising health care costs at home. That future may already be at hand.


In short, the United States is not too broke to make war, though it is too broke to continue to make war without at least seriously considering the financial implications. Ironically, though, we just might be too broke to make peace. The country’s foreign aid budget, at $53 billion, is less than half what it’s spending on war, but American University foreign policy professor Gordon Adams points out that it makes a more appealing target for politicians. In a recent GOP debate, Mitt Romney said the U.S. is spending “more on foreign aid than we ought to be spending,” while Rick Perry suggested defunding the United Nations. “It should be the easiest thing to cut,” Ron Paul chimed in. The American public seems to agree: In a Gallup poll earlier this year, 59 percent of respondents said they’d favor reductions in foreign aid. Just 42 percent would back military cuts.
Correction, Oct. 31, 2011: This article originally misstated the defense budgets for 2012 and 2013 as $684 million and $686 million, respectively, rather than $684 billion and $686 billion. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by ramana »

ARM or sub-prime?
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

EU incarnates Nazi Germany through Geopolitics

Geopolitics...Geo - Politics. Politics which are based on geography. The forms of such politics can be of all sorts, from cultural to military, from economic to diplomatic from soft to coercive. Whatever those may be, there is always one factor which remains constant and that is Geography. Since geography never really changes, so do the politics that are based on this undeniable reality.

Let's have a look at a striking example...What would you say if I told you that from a geopolitical perspective, Nazi Germany and today's Germany are practically the same? It might sound outrageous, or even offensive to say such things but its true and we shall see why.

One of the main objectives of the Nazi agenda was the acquisition of more "Lebensraum"-"Living Space". In simple terms, the Nazis wanted to control more land, which was seen as vital for the survival and growth of Germany. The means to achieve that end where purely military and coercive, no doubt about that, however the essence of that was that they wanted greater control of their surrounding areas.


What about modern Germany? Do they pursue more "Lebensraum"? In fact yes, though they never used that word. The European Communities and currently the E.U. and the Euro, have given the chance to Germany of increasing its control over its surrounding areas. Thus in short, we can safely say that European integration, is among many others, a way for Germany to acquire more "Lebensraum".

The EU could be viewed to be a “politically correct” version of Nazi Germany. Through NATO military expansionism in the Middle East that is responsible for more than one millions civilians deaths, the EU is showing is apparent true “Nazi colours”.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

Sanjaya Baru: Merkel's moment

Sanjaya Baru: Merkel's moment
Germany has deployed geoeconomics to alter the geopolitics of the euro zone
Sanjaya Baru / New Delhi October 31, 2011, 0:20 IST

Every major financial crisis has geopolitical consequences. The financial crises of the 1980s and 1990s in Latin America resulted in the emergence of Brazil as the dominant regional power, overtaking decisively other competitors like Mexico, Chile and Argentina. The Asian financial crisis contributed to the dominance of China over East and South-east Asia. The European fiscal and debt crisis has contributed to the consolidation of Germany’s power within Europe.

At the end of a long tunnel of painful political negotiations within Europe, the light of debt relief is powered by the German economy. However, a Germany that remains wary of asserting its political personality within Europe, as Japan has been in Asia, has firmly clasped the hand of France to form a Franco-German alliance providing political leadership to a distraught Europe.


German diplomats the world over are insisting that it is the “dual” leadership of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that is working together to provide relief to the distressed European economies. When the ambassadors of Germany and France chose to brief a few editors in New Delhi earlier this year about their joint leadership in Europe, the meeting took place in the German ambassador’s house.
With France itself in a fiscal and financial bind, it is not particularly averse to this warm German hug and so has chosen to be in step with the more economically robust and self-assured Germany. While President Sarkozy exudes French charm in the company of other heads of state, in the company of the matronly German chancellor he behaves more like an obedient schoolboy!

Germany’s hesitation in offering more assertive political leadership within Europe is understandable. The fact, however, remains that it has been more successful in consolidating its power in its own neighbourhood than Japan has been in Asia.

Today Germany is to Europe what China has become to East and South-east Asia. Both China and Germany are at once exporting as well as importing powers. They export to the world but import largely from their neighbours. This is the geoeconomic foundation of their power in a globally integrated world.

The only difference, and an important one, is that China has been increasingly unabashed in asserting its military power. Germany continues to shy away from doing so, given the burden of memory that still haunts the so-called “axis” powers of the last century.

Indeed, when France and Britain launched their offensive in Libya, Germany stood with Brazil, India and South Africa, fellow aspirants for United Nations Security Council membership, to abstain from voting for a UN resolution authorising a no-fly zone over Libya and stay away from military action.

Germany has consciously opted to project its power only within its own hinterland, as it did in the Balkans, ensuring that it emerges as the unquestioned leader of continental Europe. Beyond its own neighbourhood Germany remains a reluctant military power, but an aggressive economic power.

Given its industrial and technological leadership within Europe and its fiscal and financial strength, Germany has dealt with a changing world with greater self-assuredness than other European nations that have been unnerved both by the forces of globalisation and Asian competitiveness and by their domestic political inability to deal with fiscal and financial challenges.

As Ulrike Geurot, an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Affairs, puts it, “A European Germany is going global with or without its fellow Europeans... The huge transition that is occurring is that Germany (or more precisely, the German role in and for Europe) is shifting from geopolitics to geo-economics” (available at: http://www.alexanderbon.com/2011/06/peo ... -the-euro/).

What has helped Germany march ahead of its European neighbours is its ability to retain its share of world trade, shifting quickly to emerging markets, especially China. By exporting to the emerging markets, while importing from its neighbours, Germany has mimicked China’s strategy of exporting to the developed economies while importing from its neighbours. This, in brief, is the geo-economics of German geopolitics today.

“Business has exerted significant influence on key elements of German foreign policy,” says Hans Kundnani in a fascinating essay titled “Germany as a Geo-economic Power”. According to Mr Kundnani, “Energy companies like E.ON Ruhrgas have influenced policy towards Russia; auto makers such as BMW have influenced policy towards China; and manufacturers of technology and machinery such as Siemens have influenced policy towards Iran... The concept of geo-economics now seems particularly helpful as a way of describing the foreign policy of Germany, which has become more willing to impose its economic preferences on others within the European Union in the context of a discourse of zero-sum competition between the fiscally responsible and the fiscally irresponsible” (The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2011).

Thus, rather than accept a reflationary fiscal policy in the euro zone as the price of growth and employment generation, export-sensitive Germany insisted on austerity throughout the euro zone, undermining growth in the “periphery” and even threatening European unity, to ensure that it remains globally competitive. This mirrors China’s “beggar-thy-neighbour” strategy of the 1990s within Asia of retaining its export competitiveness at the cost of its neighbours.

Kudnani believes that “in the future, we can expect Germany to be increasingly willing to take decisions independently of – and sometimes in opposition to – its allies and partners, as it did during the Libya crisis. It is likely to pursue its national interests – defined above all else in economic terms – more assertively than it used to, while being more reluctant to transfer sovereignty to multilateral institutions”.

In bringing Germany to this point, after months of lying low and appearing at times confused, at times fussy, and at times a nit-picking and miserly aunt, Chancellor Merkel has emerged as the new Iron Lady of Europe.
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Re: Geopolitical thread

Post by svinayak »

People Power, Germany, Greece and the Euro
From Geo-politics to Geo-economics

Germany like other nations in Europe feels the pressure from globalization and has to chart a new and more assertive course for itself in the world. Institutional arrangements like the European Union or the European Stability Pact – the means to regulate the value of the Euro – sometimes are too cumbersome to bother with, many in Berlin believe. It was therefore no surprise that Berlin and Paris in 2005 engineered a lessening of the Stability Pact when their own deficits were above the official limit of 3% of GDP. Analyst Ulrike Guerot of the European Council on Foreign Affairs puts it this way in 2010: “A European Germany is going global with or without its fellow Europeans, and that the choice of whether to follow will be theirs and not Germany’s. The huge transition that is occurring is that Germany (or more precisely, the German role in and for Europe) is shifting from geopolitics to geo-economics.”

Adaptation or Bust?

This means the other nations in Europe will quickly have to reconcile their people’s wishes for a bigger say in European affairs with the pressing necessity to modernise the economy and the need for a more efficient decision making system in the European Union. Since this is a Herculean task and one at odds with the democracy wish of the people, they must also make a more nationally oriented plan B in case the rescue of Greece does not work out and further European integration becomes an unsellable commodity. This latter plan means a harsher European environment for most nations and more cuts and austerity for the people before things will get better.
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