The American Conservative

Whenever I become depressed over the current state of this country’s election campaigns I know I can always count on Russia to remind me how worse it could be.

Today the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, gave a speech to a stadium in Moscow as he bid for re-election as President, a post he held from 2000 to 2008. Standing below a banner proclaiming “Defend the Country” in front of a crowd of tens of thousands, Putin pledged to win the “battle for Russia,” while emphasizing Russia’s independence and appealing to the crowd’s patriotism.

The speech comes not long after large scale protests against corruption and fraud in December’s elections took place in Moscow’s Red Square. With public signs of dissent growing, it makes sense for Putin to put on a publicity stunt like today’s rally.

Putin is of the old guard, a politician molded by the Soviet political machine and the KGB. He understand the importance of Russian patriotism and a “strong man” image in Russian politics. Yet even among crowds of “supporters” there is evidence of fakery and deception, with some of the participants at today’s rally saying that they had been forced to attend by their employer, paid to attend, or that they thought it was going to be a folk festival, not a political rally. With people like this in the second-biggest rally for Putin thus far, it is easy to see why the opposition are so angry. How is it possible for Putin to have the support he claims when he cannot bring legitimate supporters to a rally in Moscow? Read More…

Notwithstanding the neverending stream of all those based-on-reliable-intelligence-sources analyses, it is doubtful whether these same analysts would be willing to bet whatever is left of their 401K retirement accounts on their predictions that Israel will — or will not — attack Iranian nuclear sites this year.

And while research institutions have conducted interesting exercises to try to figure out the military, diplomatic and economic repercussions of a confrontation between Israel and Iran, the dictum that no military plan survives the contact with the enemy applies also here — in addition to the unintended consequences, blowbacks and the proverbial ‘black swans’ that are bound to show up even in the unlikely scenario under which Israel achieves all or most of its military goals.

If I can put my ten cents worth of strategic thinking, it seems to me that the ousting of Saddam Hussein and the American fiasco in Iraq helped tip the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the Levant in the direction of Iran and its allies. And that made it more likely that Israel and other Sunni Arab players that regard the Islamic Republic as a threat to their core national interests would use all their available resources to deprive Iran from having access to a military instrument that would allow it to formalize the new regional balance of power.

In his magisterial study of the 1812-1814 military campaigns in Europe, Russia Against Napoleon, historian Dominic Lieven suggests that while Tsar Alexander recognized that France would never be able to control Europe, he also concluded that the price of adhering to Napoleon’s Continental System would have undermined Russia’s position as a great power and that the Russians had no choice but to use the full power of their military to prevent that from happening.

My guess is that Israel, as well the Saudis and their Arab-Sunni allies, know that it would be possible to contain a nuclear Iran — in the same way that Russia could have embraced a cost-effective strategy to contain Napoleon’s France. But as long as Israeli leaders believe that they have a realistic option of blocking Iran’s nuclear program — and by extension, of setting major constraints on its ability to assert its position as a regional power — they will probably use their military capacity. The Saudis and their Gulf partners would probably cheer them behind close doors while publicly condemning them.

But as quite a few Israeli and American military experts have warned, a military strike on Iranian facilities would not achieve the declared Israeli goal of ending Iran’s alleged nuclear military program and the expected costs in terms of Israeli casualties could be very high.

Moreover, if Iran gives the green light to its Shiite Hezbollah allies in Lebanon to attack Israel and mobilize the Shiites in Iraq and the Persian Gulf to retaliate against American and Saudi targets, Tehran would be in a position to strengthen its regional power. The ayatollahs would also be able to exploit an Israeli attack to ignite Iranian nationalism and win support even from those Iranians who actually oppose the ruling clerics and would like to see them removed from power.

And while the Obama administration insists that it wants to apply peaceful means to get Iran to freeze its nuclear enrichment program, it is not clear that Washington and its Europeans allies would succeed in coming up with a diplomatic formula that would be acceptable to Iran and to Israel (and its supporters in Washington) or that the Americans would be able to prevent Israel from taking military action against Iran. Those of us who believe that an Israeli military attack would not serve American and Israeli interests and may actually help consolidate the power of Iran in the Middle East and that of the clerics in Teheran should also recognize that President Barack Obama — who probably agrees with these assumptions — is not in a position for a diplomatic confrontation with Israel during a presidential election year. Read More…

The European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes has told a Dutch newspaper that the Euro would survive a Greek exit from the currency. The announcement comes during a strike endorsed by two of Greek’s largest public sector unions. The Greek government has been seeking foreign investment and additional funds from the IMF, EU and the ECB. These institutions have made spending cuts a prerequisite for additional funds, and it is looking increasingly unlikely that there is the political will in Greece to implement the necessary cuts.

It is refreshing to see Ms. Kroes say what many having been saying for some time. The Greek government has proven itself incapable of taking the necessary decisions that it needs to make in order to keep itself in the single currency. Ms. Kroes expressed the sentiments of many on the continent during the interview:

“The Greeks have to realize that we Dutch and we Germans can only sell emergency Greek aid to our taxpayers if there’s evidence of good will.”

It is well known that numbers were fudged and excuses made in order for Greece to join the euro in the first place, and it is only recently that the full ramification of that decision has been felt.

There is no reason to think that given another bailout the fiscal situation in Greece will improve. There is an opportunity now for some politicians to show that it is possible for the single currency to suffer one casualty. For too long European politicians have tried to keep Greece in the euro. Now it seems that all of the measures taken in Europe have been completely ineffective in getting the Greek government to pass the necessary austerity measures. Even with a Greek default, which will be disastrous for Greece, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe will be far from over.

I hope the realization that the European Commission finally seems comfortable with some countries defaulting will be a wake up call to other countries in the euro. If tough austerity measures are not taken soon the recession in Europe will deepen. All that is needed is more political will.

Image: Shutterstock/kanvag

Appearing alongside CIA Director David Petraeus before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said of Iran: “We don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon.”

Before the hearing, as James Fallows of The Atlantic reports, Clapper released his “Worldwide Threat Assessment.” It read, “We do not know … if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

Clapper thus reaffirmed the assessment of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007, reportedly repeated in 2011, that the U.S. does not believe that Iran has decided to become a nuclear weapons state.

In December, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that if Iran went all out, it might be able to build a nuclear weapon in a year, Pentagon spokesman George Little hastily clarified his comments: “The secretary was clear that we have no indication that the Iranians have made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon.”

On Jan. 8, Panetta himself told CBS: “(Is Iran) trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our redline to Iran is: Do not develop a nuclear weapon.”

On Super Bowl Sunday, President Barack Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer that he hopes to solve the Iranian problem “diplomatically.”

From the above, we may conclude that the administration does not believe that Iran has crossed any redline on the nuclear issue — and President Obama does not want war with Iran.

Who, then, does want war? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

From their actions, it would appear not. If Iran wanted war with the United States, any terror attack inside this country or on U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan could bring that about in an afternoon.

Expulsion of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the Natanz enrichment facility, covering up the IAEA cameras, breaking the seals on the low-enriched uranium stockpiled there, or removing the LEU would be a fire bell for the Pentagon.

But the IAEA inspectors and LEU are still there.

When the alleged plot by a used-car salesman in Texas to hire Mexican cartel criminals to blow up a D.C. restaurant and kill the Saudi ambassador was revealed, Iran denied it emphatically and demanded to interview the alleged mastermind.

Moreover, Tehran has yet to retaliate for the assassinations of five of its nuclear scientists and four terror attacks by Jundallah in Sistan-Baluchistan and PJAK, a Kurdish terrorist organization operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran has alleged Western and Israeli involvement in these attacks.

Now that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denied any U.S. involvement, Mossad is the prime suspect behind the killing of the nuclear scientists. And U.S. writer Mark Perry, in Foreign Policy, alleges that Mossad agents posed as CIA and used U.S. dollars in London to recruit Jundallah.

If this is true, this would be a false flag operation to provoke Iran into lashing out at America. Apparently, Iran did not take the bait.

Why have the Iranians not followed through on their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and begun to dial it back?

War with the United States would be a disaster. Though the Tehran regime might survive — as Saddam Hussein’s survived Desert Storm — Iran’s navy, most of its armor, anti-aircraft and anti-ship defenses, and its strategic missile force would be destroyed, as would much of the country’s infrastructure. Iran would be set back years.

Who, then, wants war with Iran?

All those who would like to see exactly that happen to Iran.

And who are they? The Netanyahu government and its echo chamber in U.S. politics and media, the neoconservatives, members of Congress, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Read More…

Today the President signed an executive order freezing all Iranian government assets held or traded in the U.S. This order is the latest in a series of sanctions that have been placed on Iran by the European community and the U.S. The new sanctions include blocks on the Iranian central bank. The move comes quickly after the President said that Israel and the U.S. were “in lockstep” regarding their policies on Iran. These sanctions are an unwise move that will serve only to encourage anti-western rhetoric in Iran, and will damage an already suffering Iranian economy.

The animosity between Iran and the west is escalating. The assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist (almost certainly carried out by Israeli intelligence), economic sanctions from Europe and the U.S., British and American Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, and unconfirmed reports that Israel will strike Iran as soon as April are all kindling to the neoconservatives’ fire.

What seems to be constantly overlooked is the fact that economic sanctions and assassinations will only unite a country that has a legitimate opposition. As has been noted here at TAC before, if there is one issue that will dilute the political opposition in Iran, it is foreign intervention. The backlash against a pre-emptive western strike against Iran would be severe enough without the economic hardship which our sanctions are placing on the country.

The President in his State of the Union said that no option was off the table in regards to Iran, and we should believe that he means what he says. It is a shame that the President who campaigned so heavily on the follies of the Iraq war is now engaging in eerily familiar rhetoric.

Image: Shutterstock/yui

It was reported today that Greece needs an extra 15 billion euros in order to bring its debt down to a workable level. Greece is currently in negotiations with private investors, which could end in a deal that could reduce the Greek debt burden by up to 100 billion euros. It was hoped that a deal would make a bailout from the Eurozone bailout fund and the IMF more plausible, however a European Union official has suggested that such a deal would not restore enough confidence in the Greek economy to secure additional funds.  Read More…

U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, Obama’s man in Moscow, who just took up his post, has received a rude reception. And understandably so.

In 1992, McFaul was the representative in Russia of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S. government-funded agency whose mission is to promote democracy abroad.

The NDI has been tied to color-coded or Orange revolutions such as those that dethroned regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Lebanon. The project miscarried in Belarus.

The NDI is one of several agencies, dating to the 1980s, that were set up to subvert communist regimes. With the end of the Cold War, however, these agencies were not decommissioned, but recommissioned to serve as something of an American Comintern.

Where the old Comintern of Lenin sought to instigate communist revolutions across the West and its empires, post-Cold War America decided to promote democratic revolutions to remake the world in the image of late 20th century America.

In 2002, McFaul wrote a book: Russia’s Unfinished Revolution.

Vladimir Putin’s men are not unreasonably asking if he was sent to Moscow to finish that revolution. Putin has already accused Hillary Clinton of flashing the signal for street demonstrations to begin — to protest Russia’s December’s elections.

Nor is it surprising the Putin’s people are suspicious of McFaul, who added to his problems by meeting with anti-Putin dissidents the day after he presented his credentials.

McFaul says this is part of his “dual-track engagement” with Russian society. Before leaving for Moscow, he told NPR’s “Morning Edition”: “We’re not going to get into the business of dictating (Russia’s) path (to democracy). … We’re just going to support what we like to call ‘universal values’ — not American values, not Western values, universal values.”

But what, exactly, are these “universal values”?

And who are we to impose them on other nations? Did Divine Providence assign us this mission? Who do we Americans think we are?

After all, we do not even agree ourselves on what is moral and immoral, good and evil. Indeed, our own deep disagreements on what is moral and what is not are at the root of the culture wars tearing this country apart.

In America, women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Scores of millions have availed themselves of that right since Roe v. Wade. Yet traditionalists of many faiths — Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Orthodox and Jewish — reject any such woman’s right and regard it as a moral abomination. Read More…

Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is talking sense. On the eve of her speech to Davos delegates Merkel has hinted that she will resist the IMF’s calls for a further 500 billion euro injection for bailout funds to struggling eurozone nations.

In an interview with six European newspapers Merkel said, “It makes no sense if we keep promising money but don’t combat the causes of the crisis.” She is right. The root cause of the eurozone crisis was not a lack of funds but an almost unimaginably irresponsible amount of government spending.

It is particularly reassuring to see Merkel speaking this way. Germany is the largest contributor to the already existing bailout fund, and it is understandable that Merkel would be hesitant to ask Germans to pay higher taxes or work longer so that irresponsible governments can exculpate themselves. There is only so long that German voters will put up with this.

Many of the countries at the root of the eurozone crisis should never have been let into the euro. Economically there was not a strong case for Greece to share a currency with Germany and France. However from a European federalist position, an expansive Europe made sense. The idea that Europe could ever be federalized in the same way as countries such as the United States is one of the central flaws of the European Union. No one in Europe feels like a European first and a Belgian or Spaniard second in the same way that someone might feel like an American first and a Floridian second. If Europe is going to recover from its current sovereign debt crisis then Europeans must face the fact that some countries should leave the euro. This is of course not to exclude these countries from the European community. Europe needs strong domestic trade amongst nations, but constituent nations need some of their sovereignty and responsibility back in order to achieve economic stability and growth.

Image: shutterstock/Karuka

According to Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, 500 billion more euros in rescue funds are needed in order to avoid a “1930s moment” characterized by high inflation and unemployment. The comments come soon after talks between Greece and its creditors were adjourned on Friday. Considering last week’s downgrade of the Eurozone’s own bailout fund, it is remarkable that this sort of rhetoric is still being voiced by those who have a significant amount of power and influence.

The problem with suggestions such as those made by Ms. Lagarde is that they are politically useful and influential. If you are in charge of an organization such as the IMF, it is impossible to advocate a market-oriented solution to the current crisis that allows for the default of certain countries and a radically different monetary policy. The problem with the proposed resolutions to the eurozone crisis is that those in authority approach the issue with too much political baggage. If the euro had not been a political endeavor it would be a lot clearer what steps need to be taken, particularly in regards to the PIGS nations (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain). Unfortunately, too many politicians in Europe are unwilling to admit their mistake, and millions of Europeans will suffer more than necessary because of their stubbornness.

Economic stimuli can sometimes provide temporary economic stability. However, long-term economic stability and growth cannot be achieved through the sort of measures being advocated by the IMF and governments across Europe. Indeed such measures can be harmful in the long term. Economists such as Robert Barro have been arguing this point for some time.

Ms. Lagarde has not explicitly said where the new 500 billion euros she wants will come from. Whatever its source, be it increased taxation, contributions from a more fiscally responsible country, another round of quantitative easing, or a combination of these, the outlook for the long term looks bleak. It is a shame that we are in this incredibly volatile situation, but we have the politicians of Europe to thank for making the situation worse than it could have been.

There has been more bad news out of Europe today. On top of the downgrades of several eurozone countries and the EFSF bailout fund, Germany today announced that it has lowered its growth forecasts for 2012 from 1% to 0.7%. Throughout the euro crisis Germany has been central to the bailouts of struggling countries, contributing a huge amount to the recently downgraded EFSF. Economic recovery in Europe is not possible without an economically stable and strong Germany. While this would be very worrying in isolation, the World Bank today announced that it has cut global economic growth forecast from 3.6% for both 2012 and 2013, to 2.5% in 2012 and 3.1% in 2013. While there is some hope of a more relaxed monetary policy for Europe in the future, this is only because of China’s slow economic growth, something that should not be welcomed in the long term.

While there are serious economic concerns in Europe the continent is also facing domestic political upheaval. The unelected Greek government is failing to implement needed austerity measures, Italy’s technocratic government is making too few changes too late, and the patience of the German people is being tried. There is only so long that Germans will put up with contributing to the clean up of their neighbor’s mess, and we could soon see domestic German politics reflect this growing attitude.

While the continual downgrade of European countries and the slowing growth of China are out of the responsibility or remit of any American politician, the GOP should take note. The sovereign debt crisis in Europe is our future if serious measures are not taken to adapt an aggressive and serious fiscal policy that tackles spending and government growth. Unfortunately the only candidate who understands the severity of the situation and is advocating such measures is alienated by the GOP because of his pro-peace, pro-trade and pro-diplomacy foreign policy.