The United States, Germany and Beyond – By George Friedman.
Three major meetings will take place in Europe over the next nine days: a meeting of the G-20, a NATO summit and a meeting of the European Union with U.S. President Barack Obama.
The week will define the relationship between the United States and Europe and reveal some intra-European relationships. If not a defining moment, the week will certainly be a critical moment in dealing with economic, political and military questions.
To be more precise, the meeting will be about U.S.-German relations. Not only is Germany the engine of continental Europe, its policies diverge the most sharply from those of the United States.
In some ways, U.S.-German relations have been the core of the U.S.-European relationship, so this marathon of summits will focus on the United States and Germany.
Although the meetings deal with a range of issues — the economy and Afghanistan chief among them — the core question on the table will be the relationship between Europe and the United States following the departure of George W. Bush and the arrival of Barack Obama. This is not a trivial question.
The European Union and the United States together account for more than half of global gross domestic product. How the two interact and cooperate is thus a matter of global significance. Of particular importance will be the U.S. relationship with Germany, since the German economy drives the Continental dynamic.
This will be the first significant opportunity to measure the state of that relationship along the entire range of issues requiring cooperation.
Relations under Bush between the United States and the two major European countries, Germany and France, were unpleasant to say the least. There was tremendous enthusiasm throughout most of Europe surrounding Obama’s election.
Obama ran a campaign partly based on the assertion that one of Bush’s greatest mistakes was his failure to align the United States more closely with its European allies, and he said he would change the dynamic of that relationship.
There is no question that Obama and the major European powers want to have a closer relationship. But there is a serious question about expectations. From the European point of view, the problem with Bush was that he did not consult them enough and demanded too much from them.
They are looking forward to a relationship with Obama that contains more consultation and fewer demands. But while Obama wants more consultation with the Europeans, this does not mean he will demand less.
In fact, one of his campaign themes was that with greater consultation with Europe, the Europeans would be prepared to provide more assistance to the United States. Europe and Obama loved each other, but for very different reasons.
The Europeans thought that the United States under Obama would ask less, while Obama thought the Europeans would give more.
The G-20 and Divergent Economic Expectations
Begin with the G-20 summit of 20 of the world’s largest economies, which, along with the Americans and Europeans, include the Russians, Chinese and Japanese. The issue is, of course, the handling of the international financial crisis.
In contrast to the G-20 meetings held in November 2008, the economic situation has clarified itself substantially — itself an improvement — and there are the first faint signs in the United States of what might be the beginning of recovery. There is still tremendous economic pain, but not nearly the panic seen in October.
There is, however, still discord. The most important disagreement is between the United States and United Kingdom on one side and France and Germany on the other. Both the United States and the United Kingdom have selected a strategy that calls for strong economic stimulus at home.
The Anglo-American side wants Europe to match it (though the United Kingdom has begun tempering its demands). It fears that the heavily export-oriented Germans in particular will use the demand created by U.S. and British stimulus on their economies to surge German exports into these countries as demand rises.
Germany and France would thus get the benefit of the stimulus without footing the bill, enjoying a free ride as the United States builds domestic debt.
We must focus here on Germany and the United States because Germany is the center of gravity of the European economy just as the United States is of the Anglo-American bloc. Others are involved, but in the end this comes down to a U.S.-German showdown.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued that Germany could not afford the kind of stimulus promoted by the Anglo-Americans because German demographic problems are such that the proposed stimulus would impose long-term debt on a shrinking population, an untenable situation.
Germany and France’s position makes perfect sense, whether it is viewed as Merkel has framed it, or more cynically, as Germany taking advantage of actions Obama already has taken.
Either way, the fact remains that German and U.S. national interest are not at all the same. As Merkel put it in an interview with The New York Times, “International policy is, for all the friendship and commonality, always also about representing the interests of one’s own country.”
Paralleling this is the issue of how to deal with the Central European financial crisis. Toxic U.S. assets did not create this problem, internal European practices did.
Western European banks took dominant positions in Eastern Europe in the past decade. They began to offer mortgages and other loans at low interest rates denominated in euros, Swiss francs and yen.
This was an outstanding deal unless the Polish zloty and the Hungarian forint were to plunge in value, which they have over the past six months. Loan payments soared, massive defaults happened, and Italian, Austrian and Swedish banks were left holding the bag. The United States viewed this as an internal EU matter, leaving it to European countries to save their own banks.
Meanwhile, the Germans — who had somewhat less exposure than other countries — helped block a European bailout, arguing that the Central European countries should be dealt with through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was being configured to solve such problems in second-tier countries.
From the German point of view, the IMF was simply going to be used for the purpose for which it was created. But Washington saw this as the Germans trying to secure U.S. (and Chinese and Japanese) money to deal with a European problem.
Add to this the complexity of Opel, a German carmaker owned by GM, which Germany wants the United States to bailout but which the United States wants nothing to do with, and the fundamental problem is clear: While both Germany and the United States have a common interest in moving past the crisis, Germany and the United States have very different approaches to the problem.
Embedded in this is the hard fact that the United States is much larger than any other national economy, and it will be the U.S. recovery (when it comes) pulling the rest of the world — particularly the export-oriented economies — out of the ditch.
Given that nothing can change this, the Germans see no reason to put themselves in a more difficult position than they are already in.
The Germans will not yield on the stimulus issue and Obama will not press, since this is not an issue that will resonate politically. But what could be perceived as a massive U.S. donation to the IMF would resonate politically in the United States. The American political system has become increasingly sensitive to the size of the debt being incurred by the Obama administration.
A loan at this time to bail out other countries would not sit well, especially when critics would point out that some of the money will be going to bail out European banks in Central Europe.
European Fragmentation
Obama will need something in return from the Europeans, and the two-day NATO summit will be the place to get it. The Obama administration laid out the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan last Friday in preparation for this trip.
Having given on the economic issue, Obama might hope that the Europeans would be forthcoming in increasing their commitment to Afghanistan by sending troops.
But there is almost no chance of Germany or France sending more troops, as public opinion in those countries is set against it and they have vastly limited military resources.
During the U.S. presidential debates, Obama emphasized that he would be looking to the Europeans to increase aid in Afghanistan (the “good” war) while Iraq (the “bad” war) ends.
The Germans will make some symbolic gestures — aid to Pakistan, reconstruction workers — but they will not be sending troops. This will put Obama in a difficult position.
If he donates money to the IMF, some of it earmarked for Europe, while the Europeans not only refuse to join the United States in a stimulus package but refuse to send troops to Afghanistan, the entire foundation of Obama’s foreign policy will start becoming a public issue.
Obama argued that he would be more effective in building cooperation with European allies than Bush was or U.S. Sen. John McCain would have been. If he comes home empty-handed, which is likely, the status of that claim becomes uncertain.
Which brings us to the third meeting: the Obama-EU summit. We have been speaking of Germany as if it were Europe.
In one sense, it is, as its economic weight drives the system. But politically and militarily, Europe is highly fragmented. Indeed, one of the consequences of German nationalism in dealing with Europe’s economy is that Europe’s economy is fragmented as well.
Many smaller EU members, which had great expectations of what EU membership would mean, are disappointed and alienated from Germany and even the European Union itself largely due to the lack of German willingness to help them in their time of need.
More Fertile Ground for Obama
These are the waters Obama can go fishing in. Clearly, NATO is no longer functioning as it was a generation ago. Reality has shifted, and so have national interests. The international economic crisis has heightened — not reduced — nationalism as each nation looks out for itself. The weaker nations, particularly in Central Europe, have been left to fend for themselves.
The Central European countries have an additional concern: Russia. As Russia gets bolder, and as Germany remains unwilling to stand in Moscow’s way due to its energy dependence on Russia, countries on the EU periphery will be shopping for new relationships, particularly with the United States.
Obama’s strategy of coming closer to the Franco-German bloc appears to be ending in the same kind of train wreck in which Bush’s attempts ended. That is reasonable since these are not questions of atmospherics but of national interest on all sides. It therefore follows that the United States must consider new strategic relationships.
The countries bordering Russia and Ukraine are certainly of interest to the United States, and share less interests with Germany and France than they thought they did. New bilateral relations — or even multilateral relations excluding some former partners like Germany — might be a topic to think about at the EU summit, even if it is too early to talk about it.
But let’s remember that Obama’s trip doesn’t end in Europe, it ends in Turkey. Turkey is a NATO member but has been effectively blocked from entry into the EU.
It is doing relatively well in the economic crisis, and has a substantial military capability as well. The United States needs Turkey to extend its influence in Iraq to block Iranian ambitions, and north in the Caucasus to block Russian ambitions. Turkey is thus a prime candidate for an enhanced relationship with the United States.
Excluded from Europe out of fears of Turkish immigration, economically able to stand on its own two feet, and able to use its military force in its own interest, it doesn’t take a contortionist to align U.S. and Turkish policies — they flow naturally.
However planned, Obama’s visit to Turkey will represent a warning to the Germans and others in its orbit that their relationship with the United States is based, as Merkel put it, on national interest, and that Germany’s interests and American interests are diverging somewhat.
It also drives home that the United States has options in how to configure its alliance system, and that in many ways, Turkey is more important to the United States than Germany is.
Obama has made the case for multilateralism. Whatever that means, it does not have to mean continued alignment with all the traditional allies the United States had.
There are potential new relationships and potential new arrangements. The inability of the Europeans to support key aspects of U.S. policy is understandable.
But it will inevitably create a counter pressure on Obama to transfer the concept of multilateralism away from the post-World War II system of alliances toward a new system more appropriate to American national interests.
From our point of view, the talks in Europe are locked into place. A fine gloss will be put on the failure to collaborate. The talks in Turkey, on the other hand, have a very different sense about them.
This article has been republished www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.comhttp://www.g20.org/about_what_is_g20.aspx
Weblinks:
Central America: An Emerging Role in the Drug Trade – By Stephen Meiners.
As part of STRATFOR’s coverage of the security situation in Mexico, we have observed some significant developments in the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere over the past year.
While the United States remains the top destination for South American-produced cocaine, and Mexico continues to serve as the primary transshipment route, the path between Mexico and South America is clearly changing.
These changes have been most pronounced in Central America, where Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have begun to rely increasingly on land-based smuggling routes as several countries in the region have stepped up monitoring and interdiction of airborne and maritime shipments transiting from South America to Mexico.
The results of these changes have been extraordinary. According to a December 2008 report from the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center, less than 1 percent of the estimated 600 to 700 tons of cocaine that departed South America for the United States in 2007 transited Central America.
The rest, for the most part, passed through the Caribbean Sea or Pacific Ocean en route to Mexico. Since then, land-based shipment of cocaine through Central America appears to have ballooned.
Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Stephen McFarland estimated in an interview with a Guatemalan newspaper that cocaine now passes through that country at a rate of approximately 300 to 400 tons per year.
Notwithstanding the difficulty associated with estimating drug flows, it is clear that Central America has evolved into a significant transshipment route for drugs, and that the changes have taken place rapidly.
These developments warrant a closer look at the mechanics of the drug trade in the region, the actors involved, and the implications for Central American governments — for whom drug-trafficking organizations represent a much more daunting threat than they do for Mexico.
-
Some Background
While the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere is multifaceted, it fundamentally revolves around the trafficking of South American-produced cocaine to the United States, the world’s largest market for the drug.
Drug shipment routes between Peru and Colombia — where the vast majority of cocaine is cultivated and produced — and the United States historically have been flexible, evolving in response to interdiction efforts or changing markets.
For example, Colombian drug traffickers used to control the bulk of the cocaine trade by managing shipping routes along the Caribbean smuggling corridor directly to the United States.
By the 1990s, however, as the United States and other countries began to focus surveillance and interdiction efforts along this corridor, the flow of U.S.-bound drugs was forced into Mexico, which remains the main transshipment route for the overwhelming majority of cocaine entering the United States.
A similar situation has been occurring over the last two years in Central America. From the 1990s until as recently as 2007, traffickers in Mexico received multiton shipments of cocaine from South America.
There was ample evidence of this, including occasional discoveries of bulk cocaine on everything from small propeller aircraft and Gulfstream jets to self-propelled semisubmersible vessels, fishing trawlers and cargo ships.
These smuggling platforms had sufficient range and capacity to bypass Central America and ship bulk drugs directly to Mexico.
By early 2008, however, a series of developments in several Central American countries suggested that drug-trafficking organizations — Mexican cartels in particular — were increasingly trying to establish new land-based smuggling routes through Central America for cocaine shipments from South America to Mexico and eventual delivery to the United States.
While small quantities of drugs had certainly transited the region in the past, the routes used presented an assortment of risks.
A combination of poorly maintained highways, frequent border crossings, volatile security conditions and unpredictable local criminal organizations apparently presented such great logistical challenges that traffickers opted to send the majority of their shipments through well-established maritime and airborne platforms.
In response to this relatively unchecked international smuggling, several countries in the region began taking steps to increase the monitoring and interdiction of such shipments. The Colombian government, for one, stepped up monitoring of aircraft operating in its airspace.
The Mexican government installed updated radar systems and reduced the number of airports authorized to receive flights originating in Central and South America.
The Colombian government estimates that the aerial trafficking of cocaine from Colombia has decreased by as much as 90 percent since 2003. Maritime trafficking also appears to have suffered over the past few years, most likely due to greater cooperation and information-sharing between Mexico and the United States.
The United States has an immense capability to collect maritime technical intelligence, and an increasing degree of awareness regarding drug trafficking at sea.
Two examples of this progress include the Mexican navy’s July 2008 capture — acting on intelligence provided by the United States — of a self-propelled semisubmersible vessel loaded with more than five tons of cocaine, and the U.S. Coast Guard’s February 2009 interdiction of a Mexico-flagged fishing boat loaded with some seven tons of cocaine about 700 miles off Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Presumably as a result of successes such as these, the Mexican navy reported in 2008 that maritime trafficking had decreased by an estimated 60 percent over the last two years.
While it is impossible to independently corroborate the Mexican and Colombian governments’ estimates on the degree to which air- and seaborne drug trafficking has decreased over the last few years, developments in Central America over the past year certainly support their assessments.
In particular, STRATFOR has observed that in order to make up for losses in maritime and aerial trafficking, land-based smuggling routes are increasingly being used — not by Colombian cocaine producers or even Central American drug gangs, but by the now much more powerful Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
-
Mechanics of Central American Drug Trafficking
It is important to clarify that what we are defining as land-based trafficking is not limited to overland smuggling. The methods associated with land-based trafficking can be divided into three categories: overland smuggling, littoral maritime trafficking and short-range aerial trafficking.
The most straightforward of these is simple overland smuggling. As a series of investigations in Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua demonstrated last year, overland smuggling operations use a wide variety of approaches.
In one case, authorities pieced together a portion of a route being used by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel in which small quantities of drugs entered Costa Rica from Panama via the international point of entry on the Pan-American Highway.
The cocaine was often held for several days in a storage facility before being loaded onto another vehicle to be driven across the country on major highways.
Upon approaching the Nicaraguan border, however, the traffickers opted to avoid the official port of entry and instead transferred the shipments into Nicaragua on foot or on horseback along a remote part of the border.
Once across, the shipments were taken to the shores of the large inland Lake Nicaragua, where they were transferred onto boats to be taken north, at which point they would be loaded onto vehicles to be driven toward the Honduran border.
In one case in Nicaragua, authorities uncovered another Sinaloa-linked route that passed through Managua and is believed to have followed the Pan-American Highway through Honduras and into El Salvador. The second method associated with land-based trafficking involves littoral maritime operations.
Whereas long-range maritime trafficking involves large cargo ships and self-propelled semisubmersible vessels capable of delivering multiton shipments of drugs from South America to Mexico without having to refuel, littoral trafficking tends to involve so-called “go-fast boats” that are used to carry smaller quantities of drugs at higher speeds over shorter distances.
This method is useful to traffickers who might want to avoid, for whatever reason, a certain stretch of highway or perhaps even an entire country.
According to Nicaraguan military officials, several go-fast boats are suspected of operating off the country’s coasts and of sailing outside Nicaraguan territorial waters in order to avoid authorities.
While it is possible to make the entire trip from South America to Mexico using only this method — and making frequent refueling stops — it is believed that littoral trafficking is often combined with an overland network.
The third method associated with land-based drug smuggling involves short-range aerial operations. In these cases, clandestine planes make stops in Central America before either transferring their cargo to a land vehicle or making another short flight toward Mexico.
Over the past year, several small planes loaded with drugs or cash have crashed or been seized in Honduras, Mexico and other countries in the region. In addition, authorities in Guatemala have uncovered several clandestine airstrips allegedly managed by the Mexican drug-trafficking organization Los Zetas.
These examples suggest that even as overall aerial trafficking appears to have decreased dramatically, the practice continues in Central America.
Indeed, there is little reason to expect that it would not continue, considering that many countries in the region lack the resources to adequately monitor their airspace. While each of these three methods involves a different approach to drug smuggling, the methods share two important similarities.
For one, the vehicles involved — be they speedboats, small aircraft or private vehicles — have limited cargo capacities, which means land-based trafficking generally involves cocaine shipments in quantities no greater than a few hundred pounds.
While smaller quantities in more frequent shipments mean more handling, they also mean that less product is lost if a shipment is seized. More importantly, each of these land-based methods requires that a drug-trafficking organization maintain a presence inside Central America.
-
Actors Involved
There are a variety of drug-trafficking organizations operating inside Central America. In addition to some of the notorious local gangs — such as Calle 18 and MS-13 — there is also a healthy presence of foreign criminal organizations. Colombian drug traffickers, for example, historically have been no strangers to the region.
However, as STRATFOR has observed over the past year, it is the more powerful Mexico-based drug-trafficking organizations that appear to be overwhelmingly responsible for the recent upticks in land-based narcotics smuggling in Central America.
Based on reports of arrests and drug seizures in the region over the past year, it is clear that no single Mexican cartel maintains a monopoly on land-based drug trafficking in Central America. Los Zetas, for example, are extremely active in several parts of Guatemala, where they engage in overland and short-range aerial trafficking.
The Sinaloa cartel, which STRATFOR believes is the most capable Mexican trafficker of cocaine, has been detected operating a fairly extensive overland smuggling route from Panama to El Salvador.
Some intelligence gaps remain regarding, for example, the precise route Sinaloa follows from El Salvador to Mexico or the route Los Zetas use between South America and Guatemala. It is certainly possible that these two Mexican cartels do not rely exclusively on any single route or method in the region.
But the logistical challenges associated with establishing even one route across Central America make it likely that existing routes are maintained even after they have been detected — and are defended if necessary.
The operators of the Mexican cartel-managed routes also do not match a single profile. At times, Mexican cartel members themselves have been found to be operating in Central America.
More common is the involvement of locals in various phases of smuggling operations. Nicaraguan and Salvadoran nationals, for example, have been arrested in northwestern Nicaragua for operating a Sinaloa-linked overland and littoral route into El Salvador.
Authorities in Costa Rica have arrested Costa Rican nationals for their involvement in overland routes through that country. In that case, a related investigation in Panama led to the arrest of several Mexican nationals who reportedly had recently arrived in the area to more closely monitor the operation of their route.
One exception is Guatemala, where Mexican drug traffickers appear to operate much more extensively than in any other Central American country; this may be due, at least in part, to the relationship between Los Zetas and the Guatemalan Kaibiles.
Beyond the apparently more-established Zeta smuggling operations there, several recent drug seizures — including an enormous 1,800-acre poppy plantation attributed to the Sinaloa cartel — make it clear that other Mexican drug-trafficking organizations are currently active inside Guatemala.
Sinaloa was first suspected of increasing its presence in Guatemala in early 2008, when rumors surfaced that the cartel was attempting to recruit local criminal organizations to support its own drug-trafficking operations there.
The ongoing Zeta-Sinaloa rivalry at that time triggered a series of deadly firefights in Guatemala, prompting fears that the bloody turf battles that had led to record levels of organized crime-related violence inside Mexico would extend into Central America.
-
Security Implications in Central America
Despite these concerns and the growing presence of Mexican traffickers in the region, there apparently have been no significant spikes in drug-related violence in Central America outside of Guatemala. Several factors may explain this relative lack of violence.
First, most governments in Central America have yet to launch large-scale counternarcotics campaigns. The seizures and arrests that have been reported so far have generally been the result of regular police work, as opposed to broad changes in policies or a significant commitment of resources to address the problem.
More significantly, though, the quantities of drugs seized probably amount to just a drop in the bucket compared to the quantity of drugs that moves through the region on a regular basis.
Because seizures have remained low, Mexican drug traffickers have yet to launch any significant reprisal attacks against government officials in any country outside Guatemala.
In that country, even the president has received death threats and had his office bugged, allegedly by drug traffickers.
The second factor, which is related to the first, is that drug traffickers operating in Central America likely rely more heavily on bribes than on intimidation to secure the transit of drug shipments.
This assessment follows from the region’s reputation for official corruption (especially in countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala) and the economic disadvantage that many of these countries face compared to the Mexican cartels.
For example, the gross domestic product of Honduras is $12 billion, while the estimated share of the drug trade controlled by the Mexican cartels is estimated to be $20 billion.
Finally, Mexican cartels currently have their hands full at home. Although Central America has undeniably become more strategically important for the flow of drugs from South America, the cartels in Mexico have simultaneously been engaged in a two-front war at home against the Mexican government and against rival criminal organizations.
As long as this war continues at its present level, Mexican drug traffickers may be reluctant to divert significant resources too far from their home turf, which remains crucial in delivering drug shipments to the United States.
-
Looking Ahead
That said, there is no guarantee that Central America will continue to escape the wrath of Mexican drug traffickers. On the contrary, there is reason for concern that the region will increasingly become a battleground in the Mexican cartel war.
For one thing, the Merida Initiative, a U.S. anti-drug aid program that will put some $300 million into Mexico and about $100 million into Central America over the next year, could be perceived as a meaningful threat to drug-trafficking operations.
If Central American governments choose to step up counternarcotics operations, either at the request of the United States or in order to qualify for more Merida money, they risk disrupting existing smuggling operations to the extent that cartels begin to retaliate.
Also, even though Mexican cartels may be reluctant to divert major resources from the more important war at home, it is important to recognize that a large-scale reassignment of cartel operatives or resources from Mexico to Central America might not be necessary to have a significant impact on the security situation in any given Central American country.
Given the rampant corruption and relatively poor protective security programs in place for political leaders in the region, very few cartel operatives or resources would actually be needed if a Mexican drug-trafficking organization chose to, for example, conduct an assassination campaign against high-ranking government officials.
Governments are not the only potential threat to drug traffickers in Central America. The increases in land-based drug trafficking in the region could trigger intensified competition over trafficking routes.
Such turf battles could occur either among the Mexican cartels or between the Mexicans and local criminal organizations, which might try to muscle their way into the lucrative smuggling routes or attempt to grab a larger percentage of the profits.
If the example of Mexico is any guide, the drug-related violence that could be unleashed in Central America would easily overwhelm the capabilities of the region’s governments. Last year, STRATFOR considered the possibility of Mexico becoming a failed state.
But Mexico is a far stronger and richer country than its fragile southern neighbors, who simply do not have the resources to deal with the cartels on their own.
This article has been republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
For further information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu3Z8QqUgtE
Iran’s View of Obama – By George Friedman
U.S. President Barack Obama released a video offering Iran congratulations on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on Friday. Israeli President Shimon Peres also offered his best wishes, referring to “the noble Iranian people.”
The joint initiative was received coldly in Tehran, however. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the video did not show that the United States had shifted its hostile attitude toward Iran.
The video is obviously part of Obama’s broader strategy of demonstrating that his administration has shifted U.S. policy, at least to the extent that it is prepared to open discussions with other regimes (with Iran being the hardest and most controversial case).
The U.S. strategy is fairly straightforward: Obama is trying to create a new global perception of the United States. Global opinion was that former U.S. President George W. Bush was unwilling to engage with, and listen to, allies or enemies.
Obama’s view is that that perception in itself harmed U.S. foreign policy by increasing suspicion of the United States. For Obama, offering New Year’s greetings to Iran is therefore part of a strategy to change the tone of all aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
Getting Peres to offer parallel greetings was undoubtedly intended to demonstrate to the Iranians that the Israelis would not block U.S. initiatives toward Iran. The Israelis probably were willing to go along with the greetings because they don’t expect them to go very far.
They also want to show that they were not responsible for their failure, something critical in their relations with the Obama administration.
The Iranian response is also understandable. The United States has made a series of specific demands on Iran, and has worked to impose economic sanctions on Iran when Tehran has not complied.
But Iran also has some fairly specific demands of the United States. It might be useful, therefore, to look at the Iranian view of the United States and the world through its eyes.
From the Iranian point of view, the United States has made two fundamental demands of Iran. The first is that Iran halt its military nuclear program. The second, a much broader demand, is that Iran stop engaging in what the United States calls terrorism.
This ranges from support for Hezbollah to support for Shiite factions in Iraq. In return, the United States is prepared to call for a suspension of sanctions against Iran.
For Tehran, however, the suspension of sanctions is much too small a price to pay for major strategic concessions. First, the sanctions don’t work very well. Sanctions only work when most powers are prepared to comply with them.
Neither the Russians nor the Chinese are prepared to systematically comply with sanctions, so there is little that Iran can afford that it can’t get. Iran’s problem is that it cannot afford much. Its economy is in shambles due more to internal problems than to sanctions.
Therefore, in the Iranian point of view, the United States is asking for strategic concessions, yet offering very little in return.
The Nuclear Question
Meanwhile, merely working on a nuclear device — regardless of how close or far Iran really is from having one — provides Iran with a dramatically important strategic lever. The Iranians learned from the North Korean experience that the United States has a nuclear fetish.
Having a nuclear program alone was more important to Pyongyang than actually having nuclear weapons. U.S. fears that North Korea might someday have a nuclear device resulted in significant concessions from the United States, Japan and South Korea.
The danger of having such a program is that the United States — or some other country — might attack and destroy the associated facilities. Therefore, the North Koreans created a high level of uncertainty as to just how far along they were on the road to having a nuclear device and as to how urgent the situation was, raising and lowering alarms like a conductor in a symphony. The Iranians are following the same strategy.
They are constantly shifting from a conciliatory tone to an aggressive one, keeping the United States and Israel under perpetual psychological pressure. The Iranians are trying to avoid an attack by keeping the intelligence ambiguous.
Tehran’s ideal strategy is maintaining maximum ambiguity and anxiety in the West while minimizing the need to strike immedi ately. Actually obtaining a bomb would increase the danger of an attack in the period between a successful test and the deployment of a deliverable device.
What the Iranians get out of this is exactly what the North Koreans got: disproportionate international attention and a lever on other topics, along with something that could be sacrificed in negotiations.
They also have a chance of actually developing a deliverable device in the confusion surrounding its progress. If so, Iran would become invasion- and even harassment-proof thanks to its apparent instability and ideology.
From Tehran’s perspective, abandoning its nuclear program without substantial concessions, none of which have materialized as yet, would be irrational. And the Iranians expect a large payoff from all this.
-
Radical Islamists, Iraq and Afghanistan
This brings us to the Hezbollah/Iraq question, which in fact represents two very different issues. Iraq constitutes the greatest potential strategic threat to Iran. This is as ancient as Babylon and Persia, as modern as the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Iran wants guarantees that Iraq will never threaten it, and that U.S. forces in Iraq will never pose a threat to Iran.
Tehran does not want promises alone; it wants a recognized degree of control over the Iraqi government, or at least negative control that would allow it to stop Baghdad from doing things Iran doesn’t want.
To achieve this, Iran systematically has built its influence among factions i n Iraq, permitting it to block Iraqi policies that Iran regards as dangerous.
The American demand that Iran stop meddling in Iraqi policies strikes the Iranians as if the United States is planning to use the new Baghdad regime to restore the regional balance of power. In fact, that is very much on Washington’s mind.
This is completely unacceptable to Iran, although it might benefit the United States and the region. From the Iranian point of view, a fully neutral Iraq — with its neutrality guaranteed by Iranian influence — is the only acceptable outcome.
The Iranians regard the American demand that Iran not meddle in Iraq as directly threatening Iranian national security.
There is then the issue of Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Islamist groups. Between 1979 and 2001, Iran represented the background of the Islamic challenge to the West: The Shia represented radical Islam. When al Qaeda struck, Iran and the Shia lost this place of honour.
Now, al Qaeda has faded and Iran wants to reclaim its place. It can do that by supporting Hezbollah, a radical Shiite group that directly challenges Israel, as well as Hamas — a radical Sunni group — thus showing that Iran speaks for all of Islam, a powerful position in an arena that matters a great deal to Iran and the region.
Iran’s support for these groups help it achieve a very important goal at little risk. Meanwhile, the U.S. demand that Iran end this support is not matched by any meaningful counteroffer or by a significant threat.
Moreover, Tehran dislikes the Obama-Petraeus strategy in Afghanistan. That strategy involves talking with the Taliban, a group that Iran has been hostile toward historically.
The chance that the United States might install a Taliban-linked government in Afghanistan represents a threat to Iran second only to the threat posed to it by Iraq.
The Iranians see themselves as having been quite helpful to the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as they helped Washington topple both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
In 2001, they offered to let U.S. aircraft land in Iran, and assured Washington of the cooperation of pro-Iranian factions in Afghanistan. In Iraq, they provided intelligence and helped keep the Shiite population relatively passive after the invasion in 2003.
But Iranians see Washington as having betrayed implicit understandings that in return for these services, the Iranians would enjoy a degree of influence in both countries. And the U.S. opening to the Taliban is the last straw.
-
Obama’s Greetings in Context
Iran views Obama’s New Year greetings within this context. To them, Obama has not addressed the core issues between the two countries. In fact, apart from videos, Obama’s position on Iran does not appear different from the Bush position.
The Iranian leadership does not see why it should respond more favorably to the Obama administration than it did to the Bush administration.
Tehran wants to be very sure that Obama understands that the willingness alone to talk is insufficient; some indications of what is to be discussed and what might be offered are necessary.
Many in the U.S. administration believe that the weak Iranian economy might shape the upcoming Iranian presidential election. Undoubtedly, the U.S. greetings were timed to influence the election. Washington has tried to influence internal Iranian politics for decades, constantly searching for reformist elements.
The U.S. hope is that someone might be elected in Iran who is so obsessed with the economy that he would trade away strategic and geopolitical interests in return for some sort of economic aid.
There are undoubtedly candidates who would be interested in economic aid, but none who are prepared to trade away strategic interests. Nor could they even if they wanted to. The Iran-Iraq war is burned into the popular Iranian consciousness; any candidate who appeared willing to see a strong Iraq would lose the election.
American analysts are constantly confusing an Iranian interest in economic aid with a willingness to abandon core interests. But this hasn’t happened, and isn’t happening now.
This is not to say that the Iranians won’t bargain. Beneath the rhetoric, they are practical to the extreme. Indeed, the rhetoric is part of the bargaining.
What is not clear is whether Obama is prepared to bargain. What will he give for the things he wants? Economic aid is not enough for Iran, and in any event, the idea of U.S. economic aid for Iran during a time of recession is a non-starter.
Is Obama prepared to offer Iran a dominant voice in Iraq and Afghanistan? How insistent is Obama on the Hezbollah and Hamas issue? What will he give if Iran shuts down its nuclear program? It is not clear that Obama has answers to these questions. Rebuilding the U.S. public image is a reasonable goal for the first 100 days of a presidency.
But soon it will be summer, and the openings Obama has made will have to be walked through, with tough bargaining.
In the case of Iran — one of the toughest cases of all — it is hard to see how Washington can give Tehran the things it wants because that would make Iran a major regional power. And it is hard to see how Iran could give away the things the Americans are demanding.
Obama indicated that it would take time for his message to generate a positive response from the Iranians. It is more likely that unless the message starts to take on more substance that pleases the Iranians, the response will remain unchanged.
The problem wasn’t Bush or Clinton or Reagan, the problem was the reality of Iran and the United States.
Only if a third power frightened the Iranians sufficiently — a third power that also threatened the United States — would U.S.-Iranian interests be brought together.
But Russia, at least for now, is working very hard to be friendly with Iran.
This article has been republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
Weblinks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY_utC-hrjI&feature=related
Counterterrorism Funding: Old Fears and Cyclical Lulls – By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart.
Two years ago, we wrote an article discussing the historical pattern of the boom and bust in counterterrorism spending.
In that article we discussed the phenomenon whereby a successful terrorist attack creates a profound shock that is quite often followed by an extended lull.
We noted how this dynamic tends to create a pendulum effect in public perception and how public opinion is ultimately translated into public policy that produces security and counterterrorism funding.
In other words, the shock of a successful terrorist attack creates a crisis environment in which the public demands action from the government and Washington responds by earmarking vast amounts of funds to address the problem.
Then the lull sets in, and some of the programs created during the crisis are scrapped entirely or are killed by a series of budget cuts as the public’s perception of the threat changes and its demands for government action focus elsewhere.
The lull eventually is shattered by another attack — and another infusion of money goes to address the now-neglected problem.
On March 13, The Washington Post carried a story entitled “Hardened U.S. Embassies Symbolic of Old Fears, Critics Say.” The story discussed the new generation of U.S. Embassy buildings, which are often referred to as “Inman buildings” by State Department insiders.
This name refers to buildings constructed in accordance with the physical security standards set by the Secretary of State’s Advisory Panel on Overseas Security, a panel chaired by former Deputy CIA Director Adm. Bobby Inman following the 1983 attacks against the U.S. embassies in Beirut and Kuwait City.
The 1985 Inman report, which established these security requirements and contributed to one of the historical security spending booms, was also responsible for beefing up the State Department’s Office of Security and transforming it into the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS).
It has been 11 years since a U.S. Embassy has been reduced to a smoking hole in the ground, and the public’s perception of the threat appears to be changing once again. In The Washington Post article, Stephen Schlesinger, an adjunct fellow at the Century Foundation, faults the new Inman building that serves as the U.S.
Mission to the United Nations in New York for being unattractive and uninviting. Schlesinger is quoted as saying: “Rather than being an approachable, beckoning embassy — emphasizing America’s desire to open up to the rest of the globe and convey our historically optimistic and progressive values — it sits across from the U.N. headquarters like a dark, forbidding fortress, saying, “Go away.”
When opinion leaders begin to express such sentiments in The Washington Post, it is an indication that we are now in the lull period of the counterterrorism cycle.
Tensions Over Security
There has always been a tension between security and diplomacy in the U.S. State Department.
There are some diplomats who consider security to be antithetical to diplomacy and, like Mr. Schlesinger, believe that U.S. diplomatic facilities need to be open and accessible rather than secure.
These foreign service officers (FSOs) also believe that regional security officers are too risk averse and that they place too many restrictions on diplomats to allow them to practice effective diplomacy. (Regional security officer — RSO — is the title given to a DSS special agent in charge of security at an embassy.) To quote one FSO, DSS special agents are “cop-like morons.”
People who carry guns instead of demarches and who go out and arrest people for passport and visa fraud are simply not considered “diplomatic.”
There is also the thorny issue that in their counterintelligence role, DSS agents are often forced to confront FSOs over personal behaviour (such as sexual proclivities or even crimes) that could be considered grounds for blackmail by a hostile intelligence service.
On the other side of the coin, DSS agents feel the animosity emanating from those in the foreign service establishment who are hostile to security and who oppose the DSS efforts to improve security at diplomatic missions overseas.
DSS agents refer to these FSOs as “black dragons” — a phrase commonly uttered in conjunction with a curse.
DSS agents see themselves as the ones left holding the bag when an FSO disregards security guidelines, does something reckless, and is robbed, raped or murdered.
It is most often the RSO and his staff who are responsible for going out and picking up the pieces when something turns bad.
It is also the RSO who is called before a U.S. government accountability review board when an embassy is attacked and destroyed.
In the eyes of a DSS special agent, then, a strong, well-protected building conveys a far better representation of American values and strength than does a smoldering hole in the ground, where an “accessible&# 8221; embassy once stood.
In the mind of a DSS agent, dead diplomats can conduct no diplomacy.
This internal tension has also played a role in the funding boom and bust for diplomatic security overseas.
Indeed, DSS agents are convinced that the black dragons consistently attempt to cut security budgets during the lull periods.
When career foreign service officers like Sheldon Krys and Anthony Quainton were appointed to serve as assistant secretaries for diplomatic security — and presided over large cuts in budgets and manpower — many DSS agents were convinced that Krys and Quainton had been placed in that position specifically to sabotage the agency.
DSS agents were suspicious of Quainton, in particular, because of his history.
In February 1992, while Quainton was serving as the U.S. ambassador to Peru, the ambassador’s residence in Lima was attacked by Shining Path guerrillas who detonated a large vehicular-borne improvised explosive device in the street next to it.
A team sent by the DSS counterterrorism investigations division to investigate the attack concluded in its report that Quainton’s refusal to follow the RSO’s recommendation to alter his schedule was partially responsible for the attack.
The report angered Quainton, who became the assistant secretary for diplomatic security seven months later.
Shortly after assuming his post, Quainton proclaimed to his staff that “terrorism is dead” and ordered the abolishment of the DSS counterterrorism investigations division.
Using a little bureaucratic sleight of hand, then-DSS Director Clark Dittmer renamed the office the Protective Intelligence Investigations Division (PII) and allowed it to maintain its staff and function.
Although Quainton had declared terrorism dead, special agents assigned to the PII office would be involved in the investigation of the first known al Qaeda attacks against U.S. interests in Aden and Sanaa,Yemen, in December 1992.
They also played a significant role in the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, the investigation of the 1993 New York Landmarks Plot and many subsequent terrorism cases.
Boom-and-Bust Funding
One of the problems problem created by the feast-or-famine cycle of security funding is that during the boom times, when there is a sudden (and often huge) influx of cash, agencies sometimes have difficulty spending all the money allotted to them in a logical and productive manner.
Congress, acting on strong public opinion, often will give an agency even more than it initially requested for a particular program — and then expect an immediate solution to the problem. Rather than risk losing these funds, the agencies scramble to find ways to spend them.
Then, quite often, by the time the agency is able to get its act together and develop a system effectively to use the funds, the lull has set in and funding is cut. These cuts frequently are accompanied by criticism of how the agency spent the initial glut of funding.
Whether or not it was a conscious effort on the part of people like Quainton, funding for diplomatic security programs was greatly reduced during the lull period of the 1990s.
In addition to a reduction in the funding provided to build new embassies or bring existing buildings up to Inman standards, RSOs were forced to make repeated cuts in budgets for items such as local guard forces, residential security and the maintenance of security equipment such as closed-circuit TV cameras and vehicular barriers.
These budget cuts were identified as a contributing factor in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
The final report of the Crowe Commission, which was established to investigate the attacks, notes that its accountability review board members “were especially disturbed by the collective failure of the U.S. government over the past decade to provide adequate resources to reduce the vulnerability of U.S. diplomatic missions to terrorist attacks in most countries around the world.”
The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was known to be vulnerable. Following the August 1997 raid on the Nairobi residence of Wadih el-Hage, U.S. officials learned that el-Hage and his confederates had conducted extensive pre-operational surveillance against the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, indicating that they planned to attack the facility.
The U.S. ambassador in Nairobi, citing the embassy’s vulnerability to car bomb attacks, asked the state department in December 1997 to authorize a relocation of the embassy to a safer place.
In its January 1998 denial of the request, the state department said that, in spite of the threat and vulnerability, the post’s “medium” terrorism threat level did not warrant the expenditure.
Old Fears
The 1998 East Africa embassy bombings highlighted the consequences of the security budget cuts that came during the lull years. Clearly, terrorism was not dead then, nor is it dead today, in spite of the implications in the March 13 Washington Post article.
Indeed, the current threat of attacks directed against U.S. diplomatic facilities is very real.
Since January 2008, we have seen attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities in Sanaa, Yemen; Istanbul, Turkey; Kabul, Afghanistan; Belgrade, Serbia; and Monterrey, Mexico (as well as attacks against Ameri can diplomats in Pakistan, Sudan and Lebanon).
Since 2001, there have also been serious attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Karachi, Pakistan; Damascus, Syria; Athens, Greece; and Baghdad, Iraq.
Even if one believes, as we do, that al Qaeda’s abilities have been severely degraded since 9/11, it must be recognized that the group and its regional franchises still retain the ability to conduct tactical strikes.
In fact, due to the increased level of security at U.S. diplomatic missions, most of the attacks conducted by jihadists have been directed against softer targets such as hotels or the embassies of other foreign countries.
Indeed, attacks that were intended to be substantial strikes against U.S. diplomatic facilities in places like Sanaa, Jeddah and Istanbul have been thwarted by the security measures in place at those facilities.
Even in Damascus, where the embassy was an older facility that did not meet Inman standards, adequate security measures (aided by poor planning and execution on the part of the attackers) helpe d thwart a potentially disastrous attack.
However, in spite of the phrase “war on terrorism,” terrorism is a tactic and not an entity. One cannot kill or destroy a tactic.
Historically, terrorism has been used by a wide array of actors ranging from neo-Nazis to anarchists and from Maoists to jihadists.
Even when the Cold War ended and many of the state-sponsored terrorist groups lost their funding, the tactic of terrorism endured.
Even if the core al Qaeda leaders were killed or captured tomorrow and the jihadist threat were neutralized next week, terrorism would not go away. As we have previously pointed out, ideologies are far harder to kill than individuals.
There will always be actors with various ideologies who will embrace terrorism as a tactic to strike a stronger enemy, and as the sole global superpower, the U.S. and its diplomatic missions will be target ed for terrorist attacks for the foreseeable future — or at least the next 100 years.
During this time, the booms and busts of counterterrorism and security spending will continue in response to successful attacks and in the lulls between spectacular terrorist strikes like 9/11.
During the lulls in this cycle, it will be easy for complacency to slip in — especially when there are competing financial needs.
But terrorism is not going to go away any time soon, and when emotion is removed from the cycle, a logical and compelling argument emerges for consistently supplying enough money to protect U.S. embassies and other essential facilities.
Weblinks: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB114/index.htm
This article has been republished by: www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
Turkey and Russia on the Rise – By Reva Bhalla, Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev reportedly will travel to Turkey in the near future to follow up a recent four-day visit by his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, to Moscow. The Turks and the Russians certainly have much to discuss.
Russia is moving aggressively to extend its influence throughout the former Soviet empire, while Turkey is rousing itself from 90 years of post-Ottoman isolation.
Both are clearly ascendant powers, and it would seem logical that the more the two bump up against one other, the more likely they will gird for yet another round in their centuries-old conflict. But while that may be true down the line, the two Eurasian powers have sufficient strategic incentives to work together for now.
-
Russia’s World
Russia is among the world’s most strategically vulnerable states. Its core, the Moscow region, boasts no geographic barriers to invasion.
Russia must thus expand its borders to create the largest possible buffer for its core, which requires forcibly incorporating legions of minorities who do not see themselves as Russian.
The Russian government estimates that about 80 percent of Russia’s approximately 140 million people are actually ethnically Russian, but this number is somewhat suspect, as many minorities define themselves based on their use of the Russian language, just as many Hispanics in the United States define themselves by their use of English as their primary language.
Thus, ironically, attaining security by creating a strategic buffer creates a new chronic security problem in the form of new populations hostile t o Moscow’s rule.
The need to deal with the latter problem explains the development of Russia’s elite intelligence services, which are primarily designed for and tasked with monitoring the country’s multiethnic population.
Russia’s primary challenge, however, is time. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the bottom fell out of the Russian birthrate, with fewer than half the number of babies born in the 1990s than were born in the 1980s.
These post-Cold War children are now coming of age; in a few years, their small numbers are going to have a catastrophic impact on the size of the Russian population.
By contrast, most non-Russian minorities— in particular those such as Chechens and Dagestanis, who are of Muslim faith — did not suffer from the 1990s birthrate plunge, so their numbers are rapidly increasing even as the number of ethnic Russians is rapidly decreasing.
Add in deep-rooted, demographic-impacting problems such as HIV, tuberculosis and heroin abuse — concentrated not just among ethnic Russians but a lso among those of childbearing age — and Russia faces a hard-wired demographic time bomb.
Put simply, Russia is an ascending power in the short run, but it is a declining power in the long run.
The Russian leadership is well aware of this coming crisis, and knows it is going to need every scrap of strength it can muster just to continue the struggle to keep Russia in one piece.
To this end, Moscow must do everything it can now to secure buffers against external intrusion in the not-so-distant future.
For the most part, this means rolling back Western influence wherever and whenever possible, and impressing upon states that would prefer integration into the West that their fates lie with Russia instead.
Moscow’s natural gas crisis with Ukraine, August 2008 war with Georgia, efforts to eject American forces from Central Asia and constant pressure on the Baltic states all represent efforts to buy Russia more space — and with that space, more time for survival.
Expanding its buffer against such a diverse and potentially hostile collection of states is no small order, but Russia does have one major advantage: The security guarantor for nearly all of these countries is the United States, and the United States is currently very busy elsewhere.
So long as U.S. ground forces are occupied with the Iraqi and Afghan wars, the Americans will not be riding to the rescue of the states on Russia’s periphery.
Given this window of opportunity, the Russians have a fair chance to regain the relative security they seek. In light of the impending demographic catastrophe and the present window of opportunity, the Russians are in quite a hurry to act.
-
Turkey’s World
Turkey is in many ways the polar opposite of Russia. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, Turkey was pared down to its core, Asia Minor.
Within this refuge, Turkey is nearly unassailable. It is surrounded by water on three sides, commands the only maritime connection between the Black and Mediterranean seas and sits astride a plateau surrounded by mountains.
This is a very difficult chunk of territory to conquer. Indeed, beginning in the Seljuk Age in the 11th century, the ancestors of the modern Turks took the better part of three centuries to seize this territory from its previous occupant, the Byzantine Empire.
The Turks have used much of the time since then to consolidate their position such that, as an ethnicity, they reign supreme in their realm.
The Persians and Arabs have long since lost their footholds in Anatolia, while the Armenians were finally expelled in the dying days of World War I.
Only the Kurds remain, and they do not pose a demographic challenge to the Turks. While Turkey exhibits many of the same demographic tendencies as other advanced developing states — namely, slowing birthrates and a steadily aging population — there is no major discrepancy between Turk and Kurdish birthrates, so the Turks should continue to comprise more than 80 percent of the country’s population for some time to come.
Thus, while the Kurds will continue to be a source of nationalistic friction, they do not constitute a fundamental challenge to the power or operations of the Turkish state, like minorities in Russia are destined to do in the years ahead.
Turkey’s security is not limited to its core lands. Once one moves beyond the borders of modern Turkey, the existential threats the state faced in years past have largely melted away. During the Cold War, Turkey was locked into the NATO structure to protect itself from Soviet power.
But now the Soviet Union is gone, and the Balkans and Caucasus — both former Ottoman provinces — are again available for manipulation.
The Arabs have not posed a threat to Anatolia in nearly a millennium, and any contest between Turkey and Iran is clearly a battle of unequals in which the Turks hold most of the cards.
If anything, the Arabs — who view Iran as a hostile power with not only a heretical religion but also with a revolutionary foreign policy calling for the overthrow of most of the Arab regimes — are practically welcoming the Turks back.
Despite both its imperial past and its close security association with the Americans, the Arabs see Turkey as a trusted mediator, and even an exemplar.
With the disappearance of the threats of yesteryear, many of the things that once held Turkey’s undivided attention have become less important to Ankara.
With the Soviet threat gone, NATO is no longer critical. With new markets opening up in the former Soviet Union, Turkey’s obsession with seeking EU membership has faded to a mere passing interest.
Turkey has become a free agent, bound by very few relationships or restrictions, but dabbling in events throughout its entire periphery. Unlike Russia, which feels it needs an empire to survive, Turkey is flirting with the idea of an empire simply because it can — and the costs of exploring the option are negligible.
Whereas Russia is a state facing a clear series of threats in a very short time frame, Turkey is a state facing a veritable smorgasbord of strategic options under no time pressure whatsoever.
Within that disconnect lies the road forward for the two states — and it is a road with surprisingly few clashes ahead in the near term.
-
The Field of Competition
There are four zones of overlapping interest for the Turks and Russians.
First, the end of the Soviet empire opened up a wealth of economic opportunities, but very few states have proven adept at penetrating the consumer markets of Ukraine and Russia. Somewhat surprisingly, Turkey is one of those few states.
Thanks to the legacy of Soviet central planning, Russian and Ukrainian industry have found it difficult to retool away from heavy industry to produce the consumer goods much in demand in their markets.
Because most Ukrainians and Russians cannot afford Western goods, Turkey has carved out a robust and lasting niche with its lower-cost exports; it is now the largest supplier of imports to the Russian market.
While this is no exercise in hard power, this Turkish penetration nevertheless is cause for much concern among Russian authorities.
So far, Turkey has been scrupulous about not politicizing these useful trade links beyond some intelligence-gathering efforts (particularly in Ukraine). Considering Russia’s current financial problems, having a stable source of consumer goods — especially one that is not China — is actually seen as a positive.
At least for now, the Russian government would rather see its trade relationship with Turkey stay strong. There will certainly be a clash later — either as Russia weakens or as Turkey becomes more ambitious — but for now, the Russians are content with the trade relationship.
Second, the Russian retreat in the post-Cold War era has opened up the Balkans to Turkish influence. Romania, Bulgaria and the lands of the former Yugoslavia are all former Ottoman possessions, and in their day they formed the most advanced portion of the Ottoman economy.
During the Cold War, they were all part of the Communist world, with Romania and Bulgaria formally incorporated into the Soviet bloc.
While most of these lands are now absorbed into the European Union, Russia’s ties to its fellow Slavs — most notably the Serbs and Bulgarians — have allowed it a degree of influence that most Europeans choose to ignore.
Additionally, Russia has long held a friendly relationship with Greece and Cyprus, both to complicate American policy in Europe and to provide a flank against Turkey.
Still, thanks to proximity and trading links, Turkey clearly holds the upper hand in this theater of competition.
But this particular region is unlikely to generate much Turkish-Russian animosity, simply because both countries are in the process of giving up.
Most of the Balkan states are already members of an organization that is unlikely to ever admit Russia or Turkey: the European Union. Russia simply cannot meet the membership criteria, and Cyprus’ membership in essence strikes the possibility of Turkish inclusion.
(Any EU member can veto the admission of would-be members.) The EU-led splitting of Kosovo from Serbia over Russian objections was a body blow to Russian power in the region, and the subsequent EU running of Kosovo as a protectorate greatly limited Turkish influence as well.
Continuing EU expansion means that Turkish influence in the Balkans will shrivel just as Russian influence already has. Trouble this way lies, but not between Turkey and Russia.
If anything, their joint exclusion might provide some room for the two to agree on something.
The third area for Russian-Turkish competition is in energy, and this is where things get particularly sticky. Russia is Turkey’s No. 1 trading partner, with energy accounting for the bulk of the trade volume between the two countries. Turkey depends on Russia for 65 percent of its natural gas and 40 percent of its oil imports.
Though Turkey has steadily grown its trade relationship with Russia, it does not exactly approve of Moscow’s penchant for using its energy relations with Europe as a political weapon.
Russia has never gone so far as to cut supplies to Turkey directly, but Turkey has been indirectly affected more than once when Russia decided to cut supplies to Ukraine because Moscow felt the need to reassert its writ in Kiev.
Sharing the Turks’ energy anxiety, the Europeans have been more than eager to use Turkey as an energy transit hub for routes that would bypass the Russians altogether in supplying the European market.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipelineis one such route, and others, like Nabucco, are still stuck in the planning stages.
The Russians have every reason to pressure the Turks into staying far away from any more energy diversification schemes that could cost Russia one of its biggest energy clients — and deny Moscow much of the political leverage it currently holds over the Europeans who are dependent on the Russian energy network.
There are only two options for the Turks in diversifying away from the Russians. The first lies to Turkey’s south in Iraq and Iran.
Turkey has big plans for Iraq’s oil industry, but it will still take considerable time to upgrade and restore the oil fields and pipelines that have been persistently sabotaged and ransacked by insurgents during the fighting that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The Iranians offer another large source of energy for the Turks to tap into, but the political complications attached to dealing with Iran are still too prickly for the Turks to move ahead with concrete energy deals at this time.
Complications remain for now, but Turkey wi ll be keeping an eye on its Middle Eastern neighbors for robust energy partnerships in the future.
The second potential source of energy for the Turks lies in Central Asia, a region that Russia must keep in its grip at all costs if it hopes to survive in the long run. In many ways this theater is the reverse of the Balkans, where the Russians hold the ethnic links and the Turks the economic advantage.
Here, four of the five Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan — are Turkic. But as a consequence of the Soviet years, the infrastructure and economies of all four are so hardwired into the Russian sphere of influence that it would take some major surgery to liberate them.
But the prize is a rich one: Central Asia possesses the world& #8217;s largest concentration of untapped energy reserves.
And as the term “central” implies, whoever controls the region can project power into the former Soviet Union, China and South Asia. If the Russians and Turks are going to fight over something, this is it.
Here Turkey faces a problem, however — it does not directly abut the region. If the Turks are even going to attempt to shift the Central Asian balance of power, they will need a lever.
This brings us to the final — and most dynamic — realm of competition: the Caucasus.
Turkey here faces the best and worst in terms of influence projection. The Azerbaijanis do not consider themselves simply Turkic, like the Central Asians, but actually Turkish.
If there is a country in the former Soviet Union that would consider not only allying with but actually joining with another state to escape Russia’s orbit, it would be Azerbaijan with Turkey.
Azerbaijan has its own significant energy supplies, but its real value is in serving as a willing springboard for Turkish influence into Central Asia.
However, the core of Azerbaijan does not border Turkey. Instead, it is on the other side of Armenia, a country that thrashed Azerbaijan in a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and still has lingering animosities toward Ankara because of the 1915 Armenian “genocide.”
Armenia has sold itself to the Russians to keep its Turkish foes at bay.
This means Turkish designs on Central Asia all boil down to the former Soviet state of Georgia. If Turkey can bring Georgia fully under its wing, Turkey can then set about to integrate with Azerbaijan and project influence into Central Asia.
But without Georgia, Turkey is hamstrung before it can even begin to reach for the real prize in Central Asia.
In this, the Turks do not see the Georgians as much help. The Georgians do not have much in the way of a functional economy or military, and they have consistently overplayed their hand with the Russians in the hopes that the West would come to their aid.
Such miscalculations contributed to the August 2008 Georgian-Russian war, in which Russia smashed what military capacity the Georgians did possess. So while Ankara sees the Georgians as reliably anti-Russian, it does not see them as reliably competent or capable.
This means that Turkish-Russian competition may have been short-circuited before it even began. Meanwhile, the Americans and Russians are beginning to outline the rudiments of a deal.
Various items on the table include Russia allowing the Americans to ship military supplies to Afghanistan via Russia’s sphere of influence, changes to the U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) program, and a halt to NATO expansion. The last prong is a critical piece of Russian-Turkish competition.
Should the Americans and Europeans put their weight behind NATO expansion, Georgia would be a logical candidate — meaning most of the heavy lifting in terms of Turkey projecting power eastward would already be done.
But if the Americans and Europeans do not put their weight behind NATO expansion, Georgia would fall by the wayside and Turkey would have to do all the work of projecting power eastward — and facing the Russians — alone.
-
A Temporary Meeting of Minds?
There is clearly no shortage of friction points between the Turks and the Russians. With the two powers on a resurgent path, it was only a matter of time before they started bumping into one another.
The most notable clash occurred when the Russians decided to invade Georgia last August, knowing full well that neither the Americans nor the Europeans would have the will or capability to intervene on behalf of the small Caucasian state.
NATO’s strongest response was a symbolic show of force that relied on Turkey, as the gatekeeper to the Black Sea, to allow a buildup of NATO vessels near the Georgian coast and threaten the underbelly of Russia’s former Soviet peri phery.
Turkey disapproved of the idea of Russian troops bearing down in the Caucasus near the Turkish border, and Ankara was also angered by having its energy revenues cut off during the war when the BTC pipeline was taken offline.
The Russians promptly responded to Turkey’s NATO maneuvers in the Black Sea by holding up a large amount of Turkish goods at various Russian border checkpoints to put the squeeze on Turkish exports.
But the standoff was short-lived; soon enough, the Turks and Russians came to the negotiating table to end the trade spat and sort out their respective spheres of influence.
The Russian-Turkish negotiations have progressed over the past several months, with Russian and Turkish leaders now meeting fairly regularly to sort out the issues where both can find some mutual benefit.
The first area of cooperation is Europe, where both Russia and Turkey have an interest in applying political pressure. Despite Europe’s objections and rejections, the Turks are persistent in their ambitions to become a member of the European Union.
At the same time, the Russians need to keep Europe linked into the Russian energy network and divided over any plans for BMD, NATO expansion or any other Western plan that threatens Russian national security.
As long as Turkey stalls on any European energy diversification projects, the more it can demand Europe’s attention on the issue of EU membership.
In fact, the Turks already threatened as much at the start of the year, when they said outright that if Europe doesn’t need Turkey as an EU member, then Turkey doesn’t need to sign off on any more energy diversification projects that transit Turkish territory.
Ankara’s threats against Europe dovetailed nicely with Russia’s natural gas cutoff to Ukraine in January, when the Europeans once again were reminded of Moscow’s energy wrath.
The Turks and the Russians also can find common ground in the Middle East. Turkey is again expanding its influence deep into its Middle Eastern backyard, and Ankara expects to take the lead in handling the thorny issues of Iran, Iraq and Syria as the United States draws down its presence in the region and shifts its focus to Afghanistan.
What the Turks want right now is stability on their southern flank. That means keeping Russia out of mischief in places like Iran, where Moscow has threatened to sell strategic S-300 air defense systems and to boost the Iranian nuclear program in order to grab Washington’s attention on other issues deemed vital to Moscow’s national security interests.
The United States is already leaning on Russia to pressure Iran in return for other strategic concessions, and the Turks are just as interested as the Americans in taming Russia’s actions in the Middle East.
Armenia is another issue where Russia and Turkey may be having a temporary meeting of minds. Russia unofficially occupies Armenia and has been building up a substantial military presence in the small Caucasian state.
Turkey can either sit back, continue to isolate Armenia and leave it for the Russians to dominate through and through, or it can move toward normalizing relations with Yerevan and dealing with Russia on more equal footing in the Caucasus.
With rumours flying of a deal on the horizon between Yerevan and Ankara (likely with Russia’s blessing), it appears more and more that the Turks and the Russians are making progress in sorting out their respective spheres of influence.
Ultimately, both Russia and Turkey know that this relationship is likely temporary at best. The two Eurasian powers still distrust each other and have divergent long-term goals, even if in the short term there is a small window of opportunity for Turkish and Russian interests to overlap.
The law of geopolitics dictates that the two ascendant powers are doomed to clash — just not today.
This article has been republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
Pakistan: A Bogus Threat and the bigger picture – by Scott Stewart and Kamran Bokhari.
On March 5, the Saudi Embassy in Islamabad reportedly received threatening e-mails warning of attacks on Saudi interests in Pakistan.
According to English-language Pakistani newspaper The Nation, the e-mails purportedly were sent by al Qaeda and threatened attacks on targets such as the Saudi Embassy and Saudi airline facilities in Pakistan.
When we heard the reports of this threat, our initial reaction was to dismiss it. While al Qaeda has sometimes made vague threats before executing an attack, it does not provide a list of precise targets in advance.
Prior to the June 2008 bombing of the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, al Qaeda leaders repeatedly threatened to attack European (and Danish) targets in retaliation for a series of cartoons published in Denmark in 2005 that satirized the Prophet Mohammed.
When the issue was reignited in early 2008 with the release of a film critical of Islam called “Fitna,” by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, Osama bin Laden himself issued a statement in March 2008 in which he threatened strikes against European targets in retaliation.
However, in all of these threats, al Qaeda never specified that it was going to strike the Danish Embassy in Islamabad. In addition to being out of character for al Qaeda, it is foolish to issue such a specific threat if one really wants to strike a target.
While we were able to discount the most recent e-mail threat reportedly sent to the Saudi Embassy in Islamabad, it generated a robust discussion among our analytical staff about Saudi counterterrorism and anti-jihadist activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the large number of threatening statements senior al Qaeda members have made against the Saudis and the very real possibility of an attack against Saudi interests in Pakistan.
Threats Against the Saudis
Beginning with some of bin Laden’s early public writings, such as his August 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” al Qaeda leaders have spoken harshly against the Saudi royal family.
Bin Laden and others have accused the Saudis of collaboration with the “Zionist-Crusaders alliance” that bin Laden claimed was using military force to impose “iniquity and injustice” on the people of Islam.
However, the verbal threats directed against the Saudi royal family have escalated in recent years in the wake of a string of attacks launched inside Saudi Arabia by the Saudi al Qaeda franchise in 2003 and 2004, and as the Saudi government has conducted an aggressive campaign to crush the Saudi franchise and combat the wider phenomenon of jihadism.
In fact, it is rare to see any statement from a senior al Qaeda leader that does not condemn the Saudi government specifically or in more general terms.
In a July 28, 2008, video message, al Qaeda ideologue Abu Yahya al-Libi called on Muslims to act quickly and decisively to kill the Saudi king, reminding them that “killing this reckless tyrant, who has declared himself the chief imam of atheism, will be one of the greatest qurubat” (an act of devotion bringing man closer to God).
In a May 2008 message, al-Libi also had urged Saudi clerics to lead uprisings against the Saudi monarchy similar to the July 2007 uprisings at the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Al-Libi never mentioned Saudi King Abdullah by nam e in that message, preferring to call him the “lunatic apostate” because of the king’s call for a dialogue among Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Commenting on this interfaith dialogue in the July 2008 message, al-Libi also said, “By God, if you don’t resist heroically against this wanton tyrant … the day will come when church bells will ring in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula.”
In March 2008, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri said the Saudi monarchy was part of a “satanic alliance” formed by the United States and Israel to blockade the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In a January 2009 message, al-Zawahiri said: “Oh lions of Islam everywhere, the leaders of Muslim countries are the guards of the American-Zionist interests.
They are the ones who have given up Palestine and recognized Israel … Abdallah Bin Abd-al-Aziz has invented the interfaith dialogue and met Peres in New York, paving the way for the complete recognition of Israel.” Al-Zawahiri continued, “Thwart the efforts of those traitors by striking the interests of the enemies of Islam.”
In a February 2009 audio statement, al-Zawahiri declared, “The Muslim nation must, with all its energy and skills, move to remove these corrupt, corrupting and traitorous rulers.”
After a January 2009 video by jihadists in Yemen announcing the formation of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Zawahiri proclaimed in a February statement that the new organization “is the awakening, which aims to liberate the Arabian Peninsula from the Crusader invaders and their treacherous agents.
It is escalating and flourishing, with God’s help and guidance, despite all the campaigns of repression, misleading, and deception, and despite all the obstacles, difficulties and hindrances.”
Focus on the Saudis
All these threats raise an obvious question: Why is al Qaeda so fixated on the Saudis? One obvious reason is that, since the launching of a disastrous offensive by the Saudi al Qaeda node, the Saudi government — which previously had turned a blind eye to many of al Qaeda’s activities — has launched a full-court press against the organization.
Al-Zawahiri acknowledged this in a December 2005 message entitled “Impediments to Jihad,” in which he said the Saudi franchise in the kingdom had been defeated by collaborators.
The Saudi offensive against al Qaeda also played a significant part in the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. Saudi cajoling (and money) helped persuade Iraqi tribal leaders to cooperate with the coalition forces.
One way the Saudis have really hurt al Qaeda is by damaging its ability to raise funds. For example, in March 2008, the top Saudi cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, cautioned Saudis against giving money to charities or organizations that finance “evil groups” who are known for harming Islam and its followers — a clear reference to al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations.
We have repeatedly seen appeals for more funds for the jihad, and in a Jan. 14, 2009, message by bin Laden, he noted that the jihadists were under financial “distress” and that it was the duty of the Muslim ummah to support the jihadists “with all their soul and money.”
Perhaps one of the greatest threats the Saudis pose to al Qaeda is the threat to its ideological base. As STRATFOR has long argued, there are two different battlespaces in the war against jihadism — the physical and the ideological.
For an ideological organization such as al Qaeda that preaches persecution and martyrdom, losses on the physical battlefield are expected and glorified.
The biggest threat to the jihadists, therefore, is not a Hellfire missile being dropped on their heads, but an ideological broadside that undercuts their legitimacy and ideological appeal.
Many Saudi clerics have condemned jihadism as a “deviance from Islam.” Even prominent Saudi clerics who have criticized the Saudi government, such as Salman al-Awdah, have sent open letters to bin Laden condemning violence against innocents and claiming that al Qaeda was hurting Muslim charities through its purported ties to them.
The sting of the ideological attacks is being felt. In a May 2008 speech, al-Libi addressed the ideological assault when he said, “and because they knew that the key to their success in this plan of theirs is to turn the people away from jihad and mujahidin and to eliminate them militarily and intellectually.”
Al-Libi recognized that without new recruits and funding, the jihad will wither on the vine.
In addition to financial and ideological threats against the organization, the Saudi assault has also gone after al Qaeda where it lives — in Pakistan.
Deep Connections
Saudi Arabia has long had a strong relationship with Pakistan, based on shared perspectives toward regional and international matters. A key common sphere of influence for the two sides over the past four decades has been Afghanistan.
This close Saudi-Pakistani relationship was well-illustrated by the pairing up of Saudi petrodollar wealth with Pakistani logistics (along with U.S. weapons and intelligence) to support the Islamist uprising that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
After the Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Saudis and the Pakistanis continued to cooperate. Even though the world at large refused to accept the Taliban regime after it took power in 1996, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. (These three were the only countries to do so.)
However, while enjoying support from Riyadh and Islamabad, the Taliban also established relations with the transnational jihadist forces led by al Qaeda.
The Saudi and Pakistani relationship with the Taliban was shattered by the events of 9/11. In spite of aggressive negotiations with the Taliban, neither the Saudis nor the Pakistanis could convince Mullah Omar to surrender bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership to the Americans.
Because of this, the two countries were forced to end their overt relationship with the Taliban as the Americans invaded Afghanistan, though they obviously have maintained some contact with members of the Taliban leadership.
The U.S. response to 9/11 placed the Saudis and the Pakistanis into a very difficult position, where they were forced to fight jihadists on one hand and try to maintain control and influence over them on the other.
As previously discussed, the Saudis possessed the resources to effectively clamp down on the al Qaeda franchise in the kingdom, but Pakistan, which is weaker both financially and politically — and which has become the center of the jihadist universe on the physical battlefield — has been hit much harder by the U.S.-jihadist war.
This situation, along with the ground reality in Afghanistan, has forced the United States to begin working on a political strategy to bring closure to the U.S.-jihadist war that involves negotiating with the Taliban if they part ways with al Qaeda and the transnational jihadists.
Hence the recent visit by Taliban officials to Saudi Arabia and the trips made by Riyadh’s intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin bin Abdel-Aziz, to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, is also rumored to be personally involved behind the scenes in efforts to pressure Taliban leaders to break free from al Qaeda. But as in the past, the Saudis need help from their allies in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and here is where they are running into problems.
A weak and threatened Pakistani state means that before working with the Pakistanis on the Afghan Taliban, Riyadh has to help Pakistan combat its own Taliban problem, which the Saudis currently are attempting. The Saudis obviously have much to offer the Pakistanis, in terms of both cash and experience.
They also have the religious cachet that other Pakistan allies, such as the Americans and the British, lack, giving them the ability to broach ideological subjects.
However, as is the case with the Afghan Taliban, the Saudis will have to get the Pakistani Taliban to part ways with al Qaeda and are working hard to drive a wedge between Pakistani militants and their foreign guests.
These efforts to divide the Taliban from the global jihadists are happening not only during the plush, Saudi-sponsored trips for Taliban members to conduct Hajj and Umrah in the kingdom.
Following a strategy similar to what they did in Iraq, the Saudis and their agents are meeting with Taliban commanders on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan to twist arms and offer cash.
They also are coordinating very closely with the Pakistani and Afghan authorities who are leading the campaign against the jihadists.
For example, Rehman Malik, the Pakistani adviser to the prime minister on the interior (Pakistan’s de facto terrorism czar), traveled to Saudi Arabia in January at the invitation of Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul-Aziz to discuss improving counterterrorism cooperation between the two countries.
Many of the 85 most-wanted militants on the list recently released by the Saudi government are believed to be in Pakistan, and the Saudis are working with Malik an d the Pakistanis to arrest those militants and return them to Saudi Arabia.
A Clear and Present Danger
Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, et al., are well aware of these Saudi moves, which they see as a threat to their very existence.
When asked in a November 2008 interview what he thought of the Saudi efforts to mediate between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban, al-Zawahiri responded that the Saudi efforts pointed out “the historical role of saboteur played by the House of Saud in ruining the causes of the Muslim ummah, and how they represent the agents whom the Crusader West uses to disperse the ummah’s energy.”
The al Qaeda leadership has nowhere to go if circumstances become untenable for them in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Caught between U.S., Pakistani and Saudi forces, the last thing al Qaeda wants is to lose local support from the Taliban.
In other words, Pakistan is their final battleground, and any threat to their continued haven in Pakistan poses a clear and present danger to the organization — especially if the Saudis can play a pivotal role in persuading the Taliban in Afghanistan also to turn against them.
Leveraging its successes against the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Riyadh also is working closely with governments to combat the jihadists in places like Yemen as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It is, in effect, a global Saudi campaign against jihadism, and we believe al Qaeda has no choice but to attempt to derail the Saudi effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
There is not much al Qaeda can do to counter Saudi financial tools, but the militant group is in a position to hit back hard on the ideological front in order to counter any Saudi attempt to moderate and rehabilitate jihadists.
As noted above, we have seen al Qaeda launch a sustained stream of ideological attacks in an attempt to undercut the Islamic credentials of the Saudi monarch and the Saudi clerical establishment.
Another avenue that al Qaeda can take to interfere with the Saudi charm offensive is to strike Saudi targets — not only to punish the Saudis, but also to try to drive a wedge between the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
Al Qaeda’s military capabilities have been greatly degraded since 2001, and with the remnant of its Saudi franchise fleeing to Yemen, it likely has very little ability to make a meaningful strike inside the kingdom.
However, the one place where the al Qaeda core has shown the ability to strike in recent years is Pakistan.
Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the group’s operational commander in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Danish Embassy in Islamabad and for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and we have no reason to doubt his claims.
Also, an attack against a diplomatic mission in Pakistan that represents a regime considered an enemy of the jihadists is not unprecedented. In addition to the Danish Embassy bombing and several attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel in Pakistan, al Qaeda also bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad in November 1995.
According to al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian Embassy was targeted because it “was not only running a campaign for chasing Arabs in Pakistan but also spying on the Arab Mujahedeen.”
Based on the totality of these circumstances — Saudi activities against al Qaeda in South Asia and elsewhere, the al Qaeda perception of the Saudis as a threat and al Qaeda’s operational ability in Pakistan — we believe there is a very real threat that Saudi interests in Pakistan might be attacked in the near future.
This article has been republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
Corrective Rape in South Africa
South Africa, the Rainbow Nation holds a “Dark Continential” secret about its nature. World renowned for its ideological strivings towards trying to achieve racial harmony and firm judicial processes, the country is sometimes able to shake your conscience to the absolute core when news of violent “hate crimes” are reported upon.
The latest phenomena carries the same hint of twisted logic which is characteristic of the place entirely. The crime is known as a “corrective rape” with lesbians being the expressed target for gangs or individuals to physically signify their digust and unacceptance of a woman’s homosexual orientation. In many cases these women are also murdered.
I have heard a few commentators mention that South Africa is still a relatively “young democracy” and admits to progess needing to be made in such civil and politcal contexts where personal sexual orientation and freedoms are concerned.
But despite this, what we have here is not only the killing of women being thought of as trivial, there is also the question of how this cruel persecution can be challenged and stopped.
For more information:
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/101756/hate_crimes_the_rise_of_corrective_rape_in_south_africa.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/200903130747.html
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/africa/corrective+rape+in+south+africa+/3027797
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=Corrective+Rape&yhdr_submit_button=Web+Search&fr=ush1-mail
Security Implications of the Global Financial Crisis – By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
As anyone with a stock portfolio knows, it is a rough time for the markets. With many portfolios down 50 percent or more, this large loss of equity and wealth has been very difficult on individuals and corporations. The problems, of course, have not been confined to the stock markets.
With property values plunging and variable-rate mortgages ballooning, many homeowners are also caught in a bad situation — the number of homeowners behind in their mortgage payments has been increasing and the number of foreclosures has grown.
Unemployment is also an issue. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, in January 2009 there were 2,227 mass layoff actions in the United States involving 237,902 workers.
Significantly, the financial crisis is not just restricted to the United States — it is a global event that is also having a severe impact on economies in Europe, Asia and the developing world. Things are tough all over, and this financial strain will create some large security problems for corporations and governments.
Threats to the Bottom Line During times of financial hardship, companies often have to make cuts like the aforementioned layoffs. When companies plan cuts, they often focus on eliminating those corporate functions that do not appear to be contributing to the company’s profitability.
And one of the first functions cut during tough times often is corporate security. A security department typically has a pretty substantial budget (it costs a lot for all those guards, access-control devices, cameras and alarms), and security is usually viewed as detracting from, rather than contributing to, the company’s bottom line.
The “fat” security budget is seen as an easy place to quickly reduce costs in an effort to balance the profit-and-loss statement. This view of security is due to a number of factors.
First, it must be recognized that there are certainly some security programs that are indeed bloated and ill-conceived that have consumed far too many corporate resources for the results they produce.
Furthermore, there is a long tradition of corporate security directors who are not good communicators and who do not take the effort to educate upper management about ways their programs contribute to corporate goals.
However, even when a security director has an effective program and is a good communicator, it can be very difficult to quantify the losses that the corporation did not suffer due to the presence of effective security measures.
The lack of losses and incidents due to a robust security program can be interpreted by some to mean that there is no threat to guard against.
Indeed, effective security can make it appear that there is no need for security, a paradox we have also seen in the historical pattern of U.S. government security funding — a pattern that has resulted in a number of disastrous attacks against U.S. embassies.
In times of economic hardship, the relentless focus on operating expenses and even corporate cutbacks can lead to definite security challenges.
As we discussed last November, one of these problems is workplace violence, but during times when people are hurting financially, issues such as employee theft, fraud and product theft by non-employees must also be carefully monitored.
However, while the theft of a tractor-trailer full of computers or flat screen televisions can quickly get someone’s attention, there is a far more subtle, and no less dangerous, threat lurking just under the surface.
That threat is espionage — both corporate and state-sponsored. The Human-Intelligence Process Espionage is always a problem corporations must face.
Competitors, criminals and even foreign governments often seek ways to gather proprietary information from companies, sometimes to boost their own operational capacities (e.g., to apply critical or emerging technologies to their weapons programs) and sometimes to sell on the open market.
Once a company has been identified as having the information sought, the first thing the human-intelligence practitioner will do is look for weak links in the targeted company’s operations.
If the required information is readily available, there is no need to undertake a time-intensive and costly operation to retrieve it.
Indeed, it is shocking to see the amount of sensitive and critical information that is openly available on the Internet and in research libraries, or that is freely given out at technical conferences.
When open source collection efforts fail, more invasive measures must be employed.
Sometimes the required information can be obtained via technical surveillance.
A faulty information technology system, for example, can expose the company’s secrets via remote electronic intrusion conducted from a continent away.
Other times, information can be obtained by eavesdropping on telephone calls made by corporate leaders or by using other technical surveillance measures.
However, technical surveillance has its limitations, and sometimes critical information must be obtained through human intelligence, which means obtaining the required data from an employee working within the targeted company.
Due to human nature, human-intelligence practitioners use the same time-tested principles in the recruitment of corporate sources that they use when recruiting sources in the government sector.
(The risks associated with obtaining unclassified proprietary information from private companies are often far less than those associated with obtaining classified information from government agencies or national research laboratories.)
The first step in the human-intelligence process is called spotting. This is when the human-intelligence practitioner attempts to identify those workers who have access to the required information.
Then the practitioner conducts a thorough examination of the backgrounds and situations of the employees who have that access in an effort to determine which employee is most vulnerable to exploitation.
Employees who are in dire need of extra cash to maintain extravagant lifestyles or to support drinking, drug or gambling habits, or those who are hiding extramarital affairs or other secrets that can be used for blackmail, make prime candidates.
A background check might also reveal that a certain worker is angry with his or her employer over issues of salary or placement in the company. There also are employees who disagree ideologically with the product their company makes or the process the company uses to produce it.
Finally, there are the employees whose egos are so big that they might be willing to risk committing industrial espionage just to prove they can get away with it.
Robert Hanssen, an ex-FBI special agent accused of selling secrets to Russia, was motivated by the belief that he was above the system and could commit espionage without being caught.
Of the four major motivations for committing espionage — money, ideology, compromise and ego (known to security officials as MICE) — money has proven to be the No. 1 motivation, though two or more motivations can be used to turn an employee.
More often than not, simple bribery is sufficient to obtain the desired information, especially if the employee is living beyond his or her means for one reason or another.
Outside agents looking to turn an employee can also use blackmail (“compromise” in the MICE acronym). Demanding proprietary information in exchange for not exposing a personal secret, for instance, is a cost-effective approach that also allows the agent to return again and again to the same source.
This method is a bit riskier, however, since it can cause more resentment than other means and make the source more likely to rebel. However, sexual entrapment and blackmail is still widely used as a recruitment tactic, one that has been used with great success in recent years by the Chinese government against targets such as Japanese and Taiwanese government officials, FBI special agents — and foreign businessmen.
Emphasizing the ‘M’ Once the practitioner has identified the weakest link, decided on the approach to take and made a specific plan on how to proceed, the next step in the human-intelligence process is to actually approach the employee and “pitch” him or her.
This step is often a gradual effort to establish a relationship of trust between the practitioner and the employee, and contact can begin gradually with requests for small, seemingly harmless bits of information such as internal phone numbers.
In this approach, known as the “little hook,” the employee is offered “gifts” in exchange for these favours. The requests gradually become greater in scope until the targeted information is obtained.
Other times, the pitch is far more blatant and the human-intelligence practitioner does not take the time to establish a relationship or gradually recruit the target.
Instead the practitioner makes a flat-out cash offer for the required goods or shows the target the evidence that will be used for blackmail.
In the current economic environment, with many 401(k) plans now more like 201(k)s, stock options severely underwater and homeowners facing foreclosure, cold hard cash — the M in MICE — is an even more attractive approach.
In fact, with employees seeing their investment accounts decline dramatically, and perhaps even facing the possibility of home foreclosure, it is not at all unreasonable to anticipate that companies and foreigners will face a windfall of walk-in sources who will volunteer to sell critical information — and in such a buyer’s market, information can often be bought at fire-sale prices.
Employees attempting to sell proprietary information are somewhat common; one of the most publicized examples of this in recent years was the disgruntled Coca-Cola Co. employee who was arrested in July 2006 after attempting to sell Coke’s recipe to rival soft drink company Pepsi.
Mass layoffs also complicate the equation, especially when some of the employees being laid off have access to critical information.
If measures are not taken to ensure that the information is protected, the information could easily find itself in the hands of competing companies or even foreign intelligence services.
Not Just a Corporate Concern The current financial crisis — and vulnerability to espionage — is not just confined to the private sector.
There are many federal government employees in the United States who have watched their investments in the stock-based funds of the government’s Thrift Savings Plan wither on the vine over the past two years, and judging from the performance of foreign stock exchanges, the investments of employees in other governments have followed suit.
Additionally, government employees tend to live in places with very expensive real estate, like Washington, London, Paris and Tokyo.
This means that a foreign intelligence officer armed only with a briefcase full of dollars, euros or yen can make a substantial amount of money.
With many corporate security departments being cut to the bone, many internal security services focused on the counterterrorism mission and many law enforcement agencies chasing white-collar criminals, it is a good time to be in the intelligence business.
One day we will look back on this time through a counterintelligence lens and see that, although it was a time of bear stock markets, it was a tremendous bull market for practitioners of human intelligence.
This article was republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this article goes to www.stratfor.com
The Financial Crisis and the Six Pillar of Russian Strength – By Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan
But this is Russia. And Russia rarely follows anyone else’s rulebook.
The State of the Russian State
Russia has faced a slew of economic problems in the past six months. Incoming foreign direct investment, which reached a record high of $28 billion in 2007, has reportedly dried up to just a few billion.
Russia’s two stock markets, the Russian Trading System (RTS) and the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX), have fallen 78 and 67 percent respectively since their highs in May 2008.
And Russians have withdrawn $290 billion from the country’s banks in fear of a financial collapse .
One of Moscow’s sharpest financial pains came in the form of a slumping Russian ruble, which has dropped by about one-third against the dollar since August 2008.
Thus far, the Kremlin has spent $200 billion defending its currency, a startling number given that the currency still dropped by 35 percent.
The Russian government has allowed dozens of mini-devaluations to occur since August; the ruble’s fall has pushed the currency past its lowest point in the 1998 ruble crash.
The Kremlin now faces three options. First, it can continue defending the ruble by pouring more money into what looks like a black hole.
Realistically, this can last only another six months or so, as Russia’s combined reserves of $750 billion in August 2008 have dropped to just less than $400 billion due to various recession-battling measures (of which currency defense is only one).
This option would also limit Russia’s future anti-recession measures to currency defense alone. In essence, this option relies on merely hoping the global recession ends before the till runs dry.
The second option would be to abandon any defense of the ruble and just let the currency crash.
This option will not hurt Moscow or its prized industries (like those in the energy and metals sectors) too much, as the Kremlin, its institutions and most large Russian companies hold their reserves in dollars and euros. Smaller businesses and the Russian people would lose everything, however, just as in the August 1998 ruble crash.
This may sound harsh, but the Kremlin has proved repeatedly — during the Imperial, Soviet and present eras — that it is willing to put the survival of the Russian state before the welfare and survival of the people.
The third option is much like the second. It involves sealing the currency system off completely from international trade, relegating it only to use in purely domestic exchanges.
But turning to a closed system would make the ruble absolutely worthless abroad, and probably within Russia as well — the black market and small businesses would be forced to follow the government’s example and switch to the euro, or more likely, the U.S. dollar. (Russians tend to trust the dollar more than the euro.)
According to the predominant rumor in Moscow, the Kremlin will opt for combining the first and second options, allowing a series of small devaluations, but continuing a partial defense of the currency to avoid a single 1998-style collapse. Such a hybrid approach would reflect internal politicking.
The lack of angst within the government over the disappearance of the ruble as a symbol of Russian strength is most intriguing. Instead of discussing how to preserve Russian financial power, the debate is now over how to let the currency crash.
The destruction of this particular symbol of Russian strength over the past ten years has now become a given in the Kremlin’s thinking, as has the end of the growth and economic strength seen in recent years.
Washington is interpreting the Russian acceptance of economic failure as a sort of surrender. It is not difficult to see why.
For most states — powerful or not — a deep recession coupled with a currency collapse would indicate an evisceration of the ability to project power, or even the end of the road.
After all, similar economic collapses in 1992 and 1998 heralded periods in which Russian power simply evaporated, allowing the Americans free rein across the Russian sphere of influence.
Russia has been using its economic strength to revive its influence as of late, so — as the American thinking goes — the destruction of that strength should lead to a new period of Russian weakness.
Geography and Development
But before one can truly understand the roots of Russian power, the reality and role of the Russian economy must be examined.
From this perspective, the past several years are most certainly an aberration — and we are not simply speaking of the post-Soviet collapse.
All states economies’ to a great degree reflect their geographies.
In the United States, the presence of large, interconnected river systems in the central third of the country, the intracoastal waterway along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the vastness of San Francisco Bay, the numerous rivers flowing to the sea from the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains and the abundance of ideal port locations made the country easy to develop.
The cost of transporting goods was nil, and scarce capital could be dedicated to other pursuits. The result was a massive economy with an equally massive leg up on any competition.
Russia’s geography is the polar opposite. Hardly any of Russia’s rivers are interconnected. The country has several massive ones — the Pechora, the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena and the Kolyma — but they drain the nearly unpopulated Siberia to the Arctic Ocean, making them useless for commerce.
The only river that cuts through Russia’s core, the Volga, drains not to the ocean but to the landlocked and sparsely populated Caspian Sea, the center of a sparsely populated region. Also unlike the United States, Russia has few useful ports.
Kaliningrad is not connected to the main body of Russia. The Gulf of Finland freezes in winter, isolating St. Petersburg.
The only true deepwater and warm-water ocean ports, Vladivostok and Murmansk, are simply too far from Russia’s core to be useful.
So while geography handed the United States the perfect transport network free of charge, Russia has had to use every available kopek to link its country together with an expensive road, rail and canal network.
One of the many side effects of this geography situation is that the United States had extra capital that it could dedicate to finance in a relatively democratic manner, while Russia’s chronic capital deficit prompted it to concentrate what little capital resources it had into a single set of hands — Moscow’s hands.
So while the United States became the poster child for the free market, Russia (whether the Russian Empire, Soviet Union or Russian Federation) has always tended toward central planning.
Russian industrialization and militarization began in earnest under Josef Stalin in the 1930s. Under centralized planning, all industry and services were nationalized, while industrial leaders were given predetermined output quotas.
Perhaps the most noteworthy difference between the Western and Russian development paths was the different use of finance.
At the start of Stalin’s massive economic undertaking, international loans to build the economy were unavailable, both because the new government had repudiated the czarist regime’s international debts and because industrialized countries — the potential lenders — were coping with the onset of their own economic crisis (e.g., the Great Depression).
With loans and bonds unavailable, Stalin turned to another centrally controlled resource to “fund” Russian development: labor. Trade unions were converted into mechanisms for capturing all available labor as well as for increasing worker productivity.
Russia essentially substitutes labor for capital, so it is no surprise that Stalin — like all Russian leaders before him — ran his population into the ground. Stalin called this his “revolution from above.”
Over the long term, the centralized system is highly inefficient, as it does not take the basic economic drivers of supply and demand into account — to say nothing of how it crushes the common worker.
But for a country as geographically massive as Russia, it was (and remains) questionable whether Western finance-driven development is even feasible, due to the lack of cheap transit options and the massive distances involved.
Development driven by the crushing of the labor pool was probably the best Russia could hope for, and the same holds true today.
In stark contrast to ages past, for the past five years foreign money has underwritten Russian development. Russian banks did not depend upon government funding — which was accumulated into vast reserves — but instead tapped foreign lenders and bondholders.
Russian banks took this money and used it to lend to Russian firms. Meanwhile, as the Russian government asserted control over the country’s energy industries during the last several years, it created a completely separate economy that only rarely intersected with other aspects of Russian economic life.
So when the current global recession helped lead to the evaporation of foreign credit, the core of the government/energy economy was broadly unaffected, even as the rest of the Russian economy ingloriously crashed to earth.
Since Putin’s rise, the Kremlin has sought to project an image of a strong, stable and financially powerful Russia. This vision of strength has been the cornerstone of Russian confidence for years.
Note how words are being used here! No definite assurance that visions solidly deliver can soundly be given.
For in reality, Russian financial confidence is solely the result of cash brought in from strong oil and natural gas prices — something largely beyond the Russians’ ability to manipulate — not the result of any restructuring of the Russian system.
As such, the revelation that the emperor has no clothes — that Russia is still a complete financial mess — is more a blow to Moscow’s ego than a signal of a fundamental change in the reality of Russian power.
The Reality of Russian Power
So while Russia might be losing its financial security and capabilities, which in the West tend to boil down to economic wealth, the global recession has not affected the reality of Russian power much at all.
Russia has not, currently or historically, worked off of anyone else’s cash or used economic stability as a foundation for political might or social stability. Instead, Russia relies on many other tools in its kit.
Some of the following six pillars of Russian power are more powerful and appropriate than ever:
- Geography: Unlike its main geopolitical rival, the United States, Russia borders most of the regions it wishes to project power into, and few geographic barriers separate it from its targets. Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states have zero geographic insulation from Russia.
- Central Asia is sheltered by distance, but not by mountains or rivers. The Caucasus provide a bit of a speed bump to Russia, but pro-Russian enclaves in Georgia give the Kremlin a secure foothold south of the mountain range (putting the August Russian-Georgian war in perspective).
- Even if U.S. forces were not tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States would face potentially insurmoun table difficulties in countering Russian actions in Moscow’s so-called “Near Abroad.” Russia can project all manner of influence and intimidation there on the cheap, while even symbolic counters are quite costly for the United States.
- In contrast, places such as Latin America, Southeast Asia or Africa do not capture much more than the Russian imagination; the Kremlin realizes it can do little more there than stir the occasional pot, and resources are allotted (centrally, of course) accordingly.
- Politics: It is no secret that the Kremlin uses an iron fist to maintain domestic control. There are few domestic forces the government cannot control or balance. The Kremlin understands the revolutions (1917 in particular) and collapses (1991 in particular) of the past, and it has control mechanisms in place to prevent a repeat.
- This control is seen in every aspect of Russian life, from one main political party ruling the country to the lack of diversified media, limits on public demonstrations and the infiltration of the security services into nearly every aspect of the Russian system. This domination was fortified under Stalin and has been re-established under the reign of former President and now-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
- This political strength is based on neither financial nor economic foundations. Instead, it is based within the political institutions and parties, on the lack of a meaningful opposition, and with the backing of the military and security services. Russia’s neighbors, especially in Europe, cannot count on the same political strength because their systems are simply not set up the same way.
- The stability of the Russian government and lack of stability in the former Soviet states and much of Central Europe have also allowed the Kremlin to reach beyond Russia and influence its neighbors to the east. Now as before, when some of its former Soviet subjects — such as Ukraine — become destabilized, Russia sweeps in as a source of stability and authority, regardless of whether this benefits the recipient of Moscow’s attention.
- Social System: As a consequence of Moscow’s political control and the economic situation, the Russian system is socially crushing, and has had long-term effects on the Russian psyche. As mentioned above, during the Soviet-era process of industrialization and militarization, workers operated under the direst of conditions for the good of the state.
The Russian state has made it very clear that the productivity and survival of the state is far more important than the welfare of the people. This made Russia politically and economically strong, not in the sense that the people have had a voice, but in that they have not challenged the state since the beginning of the Soviet period.
The Russian people, regardless of whether they admit it, continue to work to keep the state intact even when it does not benefit them. When the Soviet Uni on collapsed in 1991, Russia kept operating — though a bit haphazardly. Russians still went to work, even if they were not being paid. The same was seen in 1998, when the country collapsed financially.
This is a very different mentality than that found in the West. Most Russians would not even consider the mass protests seen in Europe in response to the economic crisis. The Russian government, by contrast, can count on its people to continue to support the state and keep the country going with little protest over the conditions.
Though there have been a few sporadic and meager protests in Russia, these protests mainly have been in opposition to the financial situation, not to the government’s hand in it.
In some of these demonstrations, protesters have carried signs reading, “In government we trust, in the economic system we don’t.” This means Moscow can count on a stable population.
- Natural Resources: Modern Russia enjoys a wealth of natural resources in everything from food and metals to gold and timber. The markets may take a roller-coaster ride and the currency may collapse, but the Russian economy has access to the core necessities of life.
- Many of these resources serve a double purpose, for in addition to making Russia independent of the outside world, they also give Moscow the ability to project power effectively. Russian energy — especially natural gas — is particularly key: Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas for a quarter of its demand. This relationship guarantees Russia a steady supply of now-scarce capital even as it forces the Europeans to take any Russian concerns seriously. The energy tie is something Russia has very publicly used as a political weapon, either by raising prices or by cutting off supplies. In a recession, this lever’s effectiveness has only grown.
- Military: The Russian military is in the midst of a broad modernization and restructuring, and is reconstituting its basic warfighting capability.
- While many challenges remain, Moscow already has imposed a new reality through military force in Georgia. While Tbilisi was certainly an easy target, the Russian military looks very different to Kiev &# 8212; or even Warsaw and Prague — than it does to the Pentagon. And even in this case, Russia has come to rely increasingly heavily on its nuclear arsenal to rebalance the military equation and ensure its territorial integrity, and is looking to establish long-term nuclear parity with the Americans.
Like the energy tool, Russia’s military has become more useful in times of economic duress, as potential targets have suffered far more than the Russians.
- Intelligence: Russia has one of the world’s most sophisticated and powerful intelligence services. Historically, its only rival has been the United States (though today the Chinese arguably could be seen as rivaling the Americans and Russians).
The KGB (now the FSB) instills fear into hearts around the world, let alone inside Russia. Infiltration and intimidation kept the Soviet Union and its sphere under control. No matter the condition of the Russian state, Moscow’s intelligence foundation has been its strongest pillar.
The FSB and other Russian intelligence agencies have infiltrated most former Soviet republics and satellite states, and they also have infiltrated as far as Latin America and the United States.
Russian intelligence has infiltrated political, security, military and business realms worldwide, and has boasted of infiltrating many former Soviet satellite governments, militaries and companies up to the highest level.
All facets of the Russian government have backed this infiltration since Putin (a former KGB man) came to power and filled the Kremlin with his cohorts. This domestic and international infiltration has been built up for half a century.
It is not something that requires much cash to maintain, but rather know-how — and the Russians wrote the book on the subject. One of the reasons Moscow can run this system inexpensively relative to what it gets in return is because Russia’s intelligence services have long been human-based, though they do have some highly advanced technology to wield.
Russia also has incorporated other social networks in its intelligence services, such as o rganized crime or the Russian Orthodox Church, creating an intricate system at a low price.
Russia’s intelligence services are much larger than most other countries’ services and cover most of the world. But the intelligence apparatus’ most intense focus is on the Russian periphery, rather than on the more expensive “far abroad.”
Thus, while Russia’s financial sector may be getting torn apart, the state does not really count on that sector for domestic cohesion or stability, or for projecting power abroad.
Russia knows it lacks a good track record financially, so it depends on — and has shored up where it can — six other pillars to maintain its (self-proclaimed) place as a major international player.
The current financial crisis would crush the last five pillars for any other state, but in Russia, it has only served to strengthen these bases.
Over the past few years, there was a certain window of opportunity for Russia to resurge while Washington was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This window has been kept open longer by the West’s lack of worry over the Russian resurgence given the financial crisis. But others closer to the Russian border understand that Moscow has many tools more potent than finance with which to continue reasserting itself.
Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia has been re-establishing much of its lost Soviet-era strength. This has given rise to the possibility — and even the probability — that Russia again will become a potent adversary of the Western world.
But now, Russia is yet again on the cusp of a set of massive currency devaluations that could destroy much of the country’s financial system.
With a crashing currency, the disappearance of foreign capital, greatly decreased energy revenues and currency reserves flying out of the bank, the Western perception is that Russia is on the verge of collapsing once again.
Consequently, many Western countries have started to grow complacent about Russia’s ability to further project power abroad.
This report was republished by www.jotl.wordpress.com
Attribution for this report goes to www.stratfor.com
