bayou musings--opinions and observations on politics and life

"Rethinking American Options on Iran is republished with permission of STRATFOR." Read more: Rethinking American Options on Iran | STRATFOR

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:05:00 +0000

By George Friedman

Public discussion of potential attacks on Iran’s nuclear development sites is surging again. This has happened before. On several occasions, leaks about potential airstrikes have created an atmosphere of impending war. These leaks normally coincided with diplomatic initiatives and were designed to intimidate the Iranians and facilitate a settlement favorable to the United States and Israel. These initiatives have failed in the past. It is therefore reasonable to associate the current avalanche of reports with the imposition of sanctions and view it as an attempt to increase the pressure on Iran and either force a policy shift or take advantage of divisions within the regime.

My first instinct is to dismiss the war talk as simply another round of psychological warfare against Iran, this time originating with Israel. Most of the reports indicate that Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran. From a psychological-warfare standpoint, this sets up the good-cop/bad-cop routine. The Israelis play the mad dog barely restrained by the more sober Americans, who urge the Iranians through intermediaries to make concessions and head off a war. As I said, we have been here before several times, and this hasn’t worked.

The worst sin of intelligence is complacency, the belief that simply because something has happened (or has not happened) several times before it is not going to happen this time. But each episode must be considered carefully in its own light and preconceptions from previous episodes must be banished. Indeed, the previous episodes might well have been intended to lull the Iranians into complacency themselves. Paradoxically, the very existence of another round of war talk could be intended to convince the Iranians that war is distant while covert war preparations take place. An attack may be in the offing, but the public displays neither confirm nor deny that possibility.

The Evolving Iranian Assessment

STRATFOR has gone through three phases in its evaluation of the possibility of war. The first, which was in place until July 2009, held that while Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon, its progress could not be judged by its accumulation of enriched uranium. While that would give you an underground explosion, the creation of a weapon required sophisticated technologies for ruggedizing and miniaturizing the device, along with a very reliable delivery system. In our view, Iran might be nearing a testable device but it was far from a deliverable weapon. Therefore, we dismissed war talk and argued that there was no meaningful pressure for an attack on Iran.

We modified this view somewhat in July 2009, after the Iranian elections and the demonstrations. While we dismissed the significance of the demonstrations, we noted close collaboration developing between Russia and Iran. That meant there could be no effective sanctions against Iran, so stalling for time in order for sanctions to work had no value. Therefore, the possibility of a strike increased.

But then Russian support stalled as well, and we turned back to our analysis, adding to it an evaluation of potential Iranian responses to any air attack. We noted three potential counters: activating Shiite militant groups (most notably Hezbollah), creating chaos in Iraq and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which 45 percent of global oil exports travel. Of the three Iranian counters, the last was the real “nuclear option.” Interfering with the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf would raise oil prices stunningly and would certainly abort the tepid global economic recovery. Iran would have the option of plunging the world into a global recession or worse.

There has been debate over whether Iran would choose to do the latter or whether the U.S. Navy could rapidly clear mines. It is hard to imagine how an Iranian government could survive air attacks without countering them in some way. It is also a painful lesson of history that the confidence of any military force cannot be a guide to its performance. At the very least, there is a possibility that the Iranians could block the Strait of Hormuz, and that means the possibility of devastating global economic consequences. That is a massive risk for the United States to take, against an unknown probability of successful Iranian action. In our mind, it was not a risk that the United States could take, especially when added to the other Iranian counters. Therefore, we did not think the United States would strike.

Certainly, we did not believe that the Israelis would strike Iran alone. First, the Israelis are much less likely to succeed than the Americans would be, given the size of their force and their distance from Iran (not to mention the fact that they would have to traverse either Turkish, Iraqi or Saudi airspace). More important, Israel lacks the ability to mitigate any consequences. Any Israeli attack would have to be coordinated with the United States so that the United States could alert and deploy its counter-mine, anti-submarine and missile-suppression assets. For Israel to act without giving the United States time to mitigate the Hormuz option would put Israel in the position of triggering a global economic crisis. The political consequences of that would not be manageable by Israel. Therefore, we found an Israeli strike against Iran without U.S. involvement difficult to imagine.

The Current Evaluation

Our current view is that the accumulation of enough enriched uranium to build a weapon does not mean that the Iranians are anywhere close to having a weapon. Moreover, the risks inherent in an airstrike on its nuclear facilities outstrip the benefits (and even that assumes that the entire nuclear industry is destroyed in one fell swoop — an unsure outcome at best). It also assumes the absence of other necessary technologies. Assumptions of U.S. prowess against mines might be faulty, and so, too, could my assumption about weapon development. The calculus becomes murky, and one would expect all governments involved to be waffling.

There is, of course, a massive additional issue. Apart from the direct actions that Iran might make, there is the fact that the destruction of its nuclear capability would not solve the underlying strategic challenge that Iran poses. It has the largest military force in the Persian Gulf, absent the United States. The United States is in the process of withdrawing from Iraq, which would further diminish the ability of the United States to contain Iran. Therefore, a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear capability combined with the continuing withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would create a profound strategic crisis in the Persian Gulf.

The country most concerned about Iran is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia. The Saudis recall the result of the last strategic imbalance in the region, when Iraq, following its armistice with Iran, proceeded to invade Kuwait, opening the possibility that its next intention was to seize the northeastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. In that case, the United States intervened. Given that the United States is now withdrawing from Iraq, intervention following withdrawal would be politically difficult unless the threat to the United States was clear. More important, the Iranians might not give the Saudis the present Saddam Hussein gave them by seizing Kuwait and then halting. They might continue. They certainly have the military capacity to try.

In a real sense, the Iranians would not have to execute such a military operation in order to gain the benefits. The simple imbalance of forces would compel the Saudis and others in the Persian Gulf to seek a political accommodation with the Iranians. Strategic domination of the Persian Gulf does not necessarily require military occupation — as the Americans have abundantly demonstrated over the past 40 years. It merely requires the ability to carry out those operations.

The Saudis, therefore, have been far quieter — and far more urgent — than the Israelis in asking the United States to do something about the Iranians. The Saudis certainly do not want the United States to leave Iraq. They want the Americans there as a blocking force protecting Saudi Arabia but not positioned on Saudi soil. They obviously are not happy about Iran’s nuclear efforts, but the Saudis see the conventional and nuclear threat as a single entity. The collapse of the Iran-Iraq balance of power has left the Arabian Peninsula in a precarious position.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did an interesting thing a few weeks ago. He visited Lebanon personally and in the company of the president of Syria. The Syrian and Saudi regimes are not normally friendly, given different ideologies, Syria’s close relationship with Iran and their divergent interests in Lebanon. But there they were together, meeting with the Lebanese government and giving not very subtle warnings to Hezbollah. Saudi influence and money and the threat of Iran jeopardizing the Saudi regime by excessive adventurism seems to have created an anti-Hezbollah dynamic in Lebanon. Hezbollah is suddenly finding many of its supposed allies cooperating with some of its certain enemies. The threat of a Hezbollah response to an airstrike on Iran seems to be mitigated somewhat.

Eliminating Iranian Leverage In Hormuz

I said that there were three counters. One was Hezbollah, which is the least potent of the three from the American perspective. The other two are Iraq and Hormuz. If the Iraqis were able to form a government that boxed in pro-Iranian factions in a manner similar to how Hezbollah is being tentatively contained, then the second Iranian counter would be weakened. That would “just” leave the major issue — Hormuz.

The problem with Hormuz is that the United States cannot tolerate any risk there. The only way to control that risk is to destroy Iranian naval capability before airstrikes on nuclear targets take place. Since many of the Iranian mine layers would be small boats, this would mean an extensive air campaign and special operations forces raids against Iranian ports designed to destroy anything that could lay mines, along with any and all potential mine-storage facilities, anti-ship missile emplacements, submarines and aircraft. Put simply, any piece of infrastructure within a few miles of any port would need to be eliminated. The risk to Hormuz cannot be eliminated after the attack on nuclear sites. It must be eliminated before an attack on the nuclear sites. And the damage must be overwhelming.

There are two benefits to this strategy. First, the nuclear facilities aren’t going anywhere. It is the facilities that are producing the enriched uranium and other parts of the weapon that must be destroyed more than any uranium that has already been enriched. And the vast bulk of those facilities will remain where they are even if there is an attack on Iran’s maritime capabilities. Key personnel would undoubtedly escape, but considering that within minutes of the first American strike anywhere in Iran a mass evacuation of key scientists would be under way anyway, there is little appreciable difference between a first strike against nuclear sites and a first strike against maritime targets. (U.S. air assets are good, but even the United States cannot strike 100-plus targets simultaneously.)

Second, the counter-nuclear strategy wouldn’t deal with the more fundamental problem of Iran’s conventional military power. This opening gambit would necessarily attack Iran’s command-and-control, air-defense and offensive air capabilities as well as maritime capabilities. This would sequence with an attack on the nuclear capabilities and could be extended into a prolonged air campaign targeting Iran’s ground forces.

The United States is very good at gaining command of the air and attacking conventional military capabilities (see Yugoslavia in 1999). Its strategic air capability is massive and, unlike most of the U.S. military, underutilized. The United States also has substantial air forces deployed around Iran, along with special operations forces teams trained in penetration, evasion and targeting, and satellite surveillance. Far from the less-than-rewarding task of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, going after Iran would be the kind of war the United States excels at fighting. No conventional land invasion, no boots-on-the-ground occupation, just a very thorough bombing campaign. If regime change happens as a consequence, great, but that is not the primary goal. Defanging the Iranian state is.

It is also the only type of operation that could destroy the nuclear capabilities (and then some) while preventing an Iranian response. It would devastate Iran’s conventional military forces, eliminating the near-term threat to the Arabian Peninsula. Such an attack, properly executed, would be the worst-case scenario for Iran and, in my view, the only way an extended air campaign against nuclear facilities could be safely executed.

Just as Iran’s domination of the Persian Gulf rests on its ability to conduct military operations, not on its actually conducting the operations, the reverse is also true. It is the capacity and apparent will to conduct broadened military operations against Iran that can shape Iranian calculations and decision-making. So long as the only threat is to Iran’s nuclear facilities, its conventional forces remain intact and its counter options remain viable, Iran will not shift its strategy. Once its counter options are shut down and its conventional forces are put at risk, Iran must draw up another calculus.

In this scenario, Israel is a marginal player. The United States is the only significant actor, and it might not strike Iran simply over the nuclear issue. That’s not a major U.S. problem. But the continuing withdrawal from Iraq and Iran’s conventional forces are very much an American problem. Destroying Iran’s nuclear capability is merely an added benefit.

Given the Saudi intervention in Lebanese politics, this scenario now requires a radical change in Iraq, one in which a government would be quickly formed and Iranian influence quickly curtailed. Interestingly, we have heard recent comments by administration officials asserting that Iranian influence has, in fact, been dramatically reduced. At present, such a reduction is not obvious to us, but the first step of shifting perceptions tends to be propaganda. If such a reduction became real, then the two lesser Iranian counter moves would be blocked and the U.S. offensive option would become more viable.

Internal Tension in Tehran

At this point, we would expect to see the Iranians recalculating their position, with some of the clerical leadership using the shifting sands of Lebanon against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, there have been many indications of internal stress, not between the mythical democratic masses and the elite, but within the elite itself. This past weekend the Iranian speaker of the house attacked Ahmadinejad’s handling of special emissaries. For what purpose we don’t yet know, but the internal tension is growing.

The Iranians are not concerned about the sanctions. The destruction of their nuclear capacity would, from their point of view, be a pity. But the destruction of large amounts of their conventional forces would threaten not only their goals in the wider Islamic world but also their stability at home. That would be unacceptable and would require a shift in their general strategy.

From the Iranian point of view — and from ours — Washington’s intentions are opaque. But when we consider the Obama administration’s stated need to withdraw from Iraq, Saudi pressure on the United States not to withdraw while Iran remains a threat, Saudi moves against Hezbollah to split Syria from Iran and Israeli pressure on the United States to deal with nuclear weapons, the pieces for a new American strategy are emerging from the mist. Certainly the Iranians appear to be nervous. And the threat of a new strategy might just be enough to move the Iranians off dead center. If they don’t, logic would dictate the consideration of a broader treatment of the military problem posed by Iran.

Read more: Rethinking American Options on Iran | STRATFOR

Sunday News Talk Show Schedule for Sunday, June 6, 2010

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 12:14:00 +0000

ABC's "This Week" - Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX); Roundtable: George Will, Liz Cheney, Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Admiral Thad Allen, National Incident Commander for the Deepwater BP Oil Spill Response, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL); Roundtable: CBS' Sharyl Attkisson, Washington Post's Dan Balz, CBS' Jan Crawford.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Preempted for coverage of the French Open.

CNN's "State of the Union" - AR LG Bill Halter (D), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), New York Times' Jackie Calmes, Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus.

"Fox News Sunday" - Admiral Thad Allen, National Incident Commander for the Deepwater BP Oil Spill Response, MS Gov. Haley Barbour, Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US, RNC Chair Michael Steele .

Carl Jung On Death | The New Republic

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:47:00 +0000

Carl Jung On Death | The New Republic

Let's Lose the "Race Card"

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:37:00 +0000

I am disheartened by the subtle and blatant racism that I see bubbling to the surface as reasonable and civil people attempt to debate solutions to the very serious issues we face in this country. And let's be clear here. As I noted in a recent article, when Sean Hannity espouses the view that "he's [President Obama] not one of us" and the birthers question whether or not President Obama is an American citizen, they endorse and encourage a subtle, insidious racism that ultimately is just as damaging as the blatantly racial slurs and signs we see and hear from the dumbed-down bigots that have been given a disproportionate voice in the current debates.

Having acknowledged that, it's time for Dems and progressives to put aside the "race card". While it is certainly a legitimate criticism of the attitudes and tactics of many on the right wing fringe, focusing our attention on this issue is a distraction that our opponents invite and fully use to their advantage to divert attention from what should be the real focus of our debate--our fragile and struggling economic system that continues to be significantly impacted by the exponential rise in health care costs and a broken healthcare system that fails to address the needs of all of our citizens.

It's time to put the "race card" back in the deck and play the "smart card". The facts speak for themselves and they fully support the position espoused by President Obama and his supporters. The current healthcare system is broke. Millions of our fellow citizens lack insurance and access to adequate health care and those of us with benefits should be mindful, particularly in the current economic climate, that we all face the risk of falling into that category. Thousands of Americans (including those with health insurance) each day file for bankruptcy precipitated by their inability to pay their medical bills. The impact of rising health care cost continues to impact the ability of corporate America to compete in a global economy and is crippling the small business sector. Many on the right and the center argue that we're moving too fast and it's foolhardy to tackle this issue at the same time that we're attempting to revive a fragile economy without fully comprehending that true health care reform is vital to the long term viability of our economy.

There exists in this nation an intelligent, rational, responsible and fair-minded majority that is ready and willing to support reasonable solutions to the serious problems we face. It's time to reject racism and the use of the "race card" and get on with a serious debate of how to solve the serious problems our nation faces.

Sunday Morning Talk Show Lineup September 6, 2009

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:30:00 +0000

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We can expect to see the health care debate again take center stage this Sunday as tempers continue to flare at heated town hall meetings across the country, President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress' polled approval rate declines and negotiations step up as President Obama prepares to use the bully pulpit of a prime time address to Congress to present his case for health care care reform now. Also in the spotlight this week is the US mission in Afghanistan in the aftermath of growing dissent from the left and right factions of the political spectrum, the controversy swirling around President Obama's planned speech to students across the country the following Tuesday and growing concerns regarding the H1N1 flu as students return to school and the nation anticipates the approaching winter season.

ABC's "This Week": White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. A special health care roundtable with former Senate Majority leaders Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), chairman of the House Republican Conference and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Roundtable: George Will ; ABC’s Matthew Dowd, The Nation’s Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times.

NBC's "Meet the Press": David Axelrod, White House Senior Adviser and the roundtable: Rudy Giuliani , Fmr. Mayor of New York City (R); Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tn), Chair, Democratic Leadership Council; Tom Brokaw , NBC News and Tom Friedman, Columnist, New York Times

CBS's "Face the Nation": Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

CNN's "State of the Union": Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minnesota; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota; Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska; Center for Disease Control Director Thomas Frieden And a leader in the fight for a public health care option, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota

"Fox News Sunday": Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Gov. Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman; Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, and John Podesta, president and CEO of Center for American Progress.Roundtable: Bill Kristol , Weekly Standard & Fox News; Mara Liasson. National Public Radio & Fox News; Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard & Fox News and Juan Williams, National Public Radio & Fox News

HEALTH CARE REFORM--The Republican Playbook

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:12:00 +0000

First of all, let's consider the facts.....The United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare expenses, more than any other industrialized country. This figure includes costs to our government, the private sector, and individuals. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School have estimated the United States spends 44 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the country with the second highest expenditures, and 134 percent more than the median for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (whose member states include all of the European nations, Mexico, Japan and S. Korea). And U.S. economic woes have only increased the burden of health care costs on individuals and businesses. The United States spent 16 percent of its GDP in 2007 on health care, also higher than any other developed nation. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that number will rise to 25 percent by 2025 without changes to federal law. In November 2008 Kaiser Foundation reported health premiums for workers have risen 114 percent in the last decade. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has noted that, at 12 percent, health care is the most expensive benefit paid by U.S. employers.

The Republican spin machine has been working fast and furious during the recent presidential campaign and since to avoid and obscure the real truth about the very serious issue of heath care in our country. Sadly, the truth is that tens of millions of our fellow citizens are uninsured, not because they have opted out, but rather because they can not afford it. And the United States--the sole remaining superpower also has the dubious distinction of being the only developed country remaining in the world community where health care is a privilege and not a right of citizenship. And the ever-rising costs of health care is a concern to small business owners. Small Business Majority, according to its website, sets out its goal as, “solving the single-biggest problem facing America’s 27 million small businesses: affordable and accessible health care.” Its chief executive, John Arensmeyer, says, “We’re trying to make sure that policymakers understand how critical getting health care reform is for small business and how our health care crisis is killing small business.” Even for those of us that have health care insurance, the reality is that we are only a heartbeat away from bankruptcy if we experience a serious accident or major medical illness or lose our jobs.

And the tactics of the Republican and right wing conservative nay-sayers can be summed up neatly--delay, distract, distort, demagogue and disrupt.

Delay.... Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has said he could "almost guarantee you this thing won't pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month's break in August...Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people." He further adds, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
Distract....The Wall Street Journal summed up nicely the impact of President Obama weighing in on the Henry Gates arrest controversy, "Clear to all sides are the political ramifications of the flap. Both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have used it to try to drive a wedge between the president and conservative Democrats in Congress, and to cast him as hostile to law-enforcement officers -- a politically damaging label Democrats have long been tarred with. And Mr. Obama said the controversy is swamping his efforts to drum up support for his health-care overhaul."
Distort...."The House bill may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia," said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio on July 23 in reference to a bill provision that would require Medicare to pay for advance directive consultations with health care professionals but would not require anyone to use the benefit.
Demagogue....Rep. Virginia Foxx, (R-N.C.), gave an excellent demonstration of this tactic on the House floor when she announced her pro-life objections to the the health care reform bill which she stated would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government". Former AK governor and Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin, sagely asked on her blog, "And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
Disrupt....The disruption of town hall meetings has been encouraged and applauded by Sean Inanity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck and their ilk and the tactics are simple-- front-load the event with conservative activists and Fox News drones with instructions on how to discourage a real discussion of issues.

The health care crisis is real and the time has come to address it in an intelligent and rational fashion. It's time to call the Republican and conservative right wing nay-sayers on their negative tactics and get on with the serious business of meeting this challenge with a civil and responsible national dialogue. Our future and the futures of generations to come are at stake!

The Politics of Fear, Hate and Division

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:21:00 +0000

Image by tsevis via Flickr

In the wake of an inept, corrupt and misguided administration that scared the American people and manipulated the Congress into an ill-advised war and left our economy in ruins there emerged a pivotal figure--a voice for hope and meaningful change and politics conducted in a new way. Barrack Obama challenged us to honestly confront the enormous changes we face at this critical point in history. His up-lifiting message was welcomed by many who saw a refreshing contrast with the dumbed down, polarizing message of the conservative right-wingers. And their response-- "he's not one of us", "he hates white people", "he's Un-American", and now, "he's not an American", reflects the fear that his success has engendered in the partisan, hate-filled closet bigots that have an inordinate influence on the views of our citizens.

So, at this crucial juncture, the hate and fear mongers at Fox News and conservative talk radio show hosts have doubled down on their efforts to tear down this perceived threat to the status quo by playing the race card. When you cut to the chase, Sean Hannity stating that President Obama is not one of us, Michelle Malkin referring to Obama's "cronies of color" and the birthers (and the complicit Republicans who decline to repudiate their viewpoint) ultimately appeal to our baser instincts--the fear and distrust in people that has always been at the very core of that lingering stain on our national character--racism.

There are legitimate differences of opinion and philosophy on the solutions to the serious problems our nation and world faces. Let's debate them civilly and earnestly--keeping our citizens' and country's best interests always in mind. The time has come to repudiate the politics of fear, division and hatred promulgated by Inanity, Limbaugh, Beck, Malkin, Coulter and their ilk and move forward in a truly bipartisan effort to meet the challenges we face. Our future and the future of generations to come hangs in the balance!

Russia, Ahmadinejad and Iran Reconsidered by George Friedman | July 20, 2009

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:44:00 +0000

At Friday prayers July 17 at Tehran University, the influential cleric and former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani gave his first sermon since Iran’s disputed presidential election and the subsequent demonstrations. The crowd listening to Rafsanjani inside the mosque was filled with Ahmadinejad supporters who chanted, among other things, “Death to America” and “Death to China.” Outside the university common grounds, anti-Ahmadinejad elements — many of whom were blocked by Basij militiamen and police from entering the mosque — persistently chanted “Death to Russia.”

Death to America is an old staple in Iran. Death to China had to do with the demonstrations in Xinjiang and the death of Uighurs at the hands of the Chinese. Death to Russia, however, stood out. Clearly, its use was planned before the protesters took to the streets. The meaning of this must be uncovered. To begin to do that, we must consider the political configuration in Iran at the moment.

The Iranian Political Configuration

There are two factions claiming to speak for the people. Rafsanjani represents the first faction. During his sermon, he spoke for the tradition of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took power during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Rafjsanjani argued that Khomeini wanted an Islamic republic faithful to the will of the people, albeit within the confines of Islamic law. Rafsanjani argued that he was the true heir to the Islamic revolution. He added that Khomeini’s successor — the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — had violated the principles of the revolution when he accepted that Rafsanjani’s archenemy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won Iran’s recent presidential election. (There is enormous irony in foreigners describing Rafsanjani as a moderate reformer who supports greater liberalization. Though he has long cultivated this image in the West, in 30 years of public political life it is hard to see a time when has supported Western-style liberal democracy.)

The other faction is led by Ahmadinejad, who takes the position that Rafsanjani in particular — along with the generation of leaders who ascended to power during the first phase of the Islamic republic — has betrayed the Iranian people. Rather than serving the people, Ahmadinejad claims they have used their positions to become so wealthy that they dominate the Iranian economy and have made the reforms needed to revitalize the Iranian economy impossible. According to Ahmadinejad’s charges, these elements now blame Ahmadinejad for Iran’s economic failings when the root of these failings is their own corruption. Ahmadinejad claims that the recent presidential election represents a national rejection of the status quo. He adds that claims of fraud represent attempts by Rafsanjani — who he portrays as defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi’s sponsor — and his ilk to protect their positions from Ahmadinejad.

Iran is therefore experiencing a generational dispute, with each side claiming to speak both for the people and for the Khomeini tradition. There is the older generation — symbolized by Rafsanjani — that has prospered during the last 30 years. Having worked with Khomeini, this generation sees itself as his true heir. Then, there is the younger generation. Known as “students” during the revolution, this group did the demonstrating and bore the brunt of the shah’s security force counterattacks. It argues that Khomeini would be appalled at what Rafsanjani and his generation have done to Iran.

This debate is, of course, more complex than this. Khamenei, a key associate of Khomeini, appears to support Ahmadinejad’s position. And Ahmadinejad hardly speaks for all of the poor as he would like to claim. The lines of political disputes are never drawn as neatly as we would like. Ultimately, Rafsanjani’s opposition to the recent election did not have as much to do with concerns (valid or not) over voter fraud. It had everything to do with the fact that the outcome threatened his personal position. Which brings us back to the question of why Rafsanjani’s followers were chanting “Death to Russia?”

Examining the Anomalous Chant

For months prior to the election, Ahmadinejad’s allies warned that the United States was planning a “color” revolution. Color revolutions, like the one in Ukraine, occurred widely in the former Soviet Union after its collapse, and these revolutions followed certain steps. An opposition political party was organized to mount an electoral challenge the establishment. Then, an election occurred that was either fraudulent or claimed by the opposition as having been fraudulent. Next, widespread peaceful protests against the regime (all using a national color as the symbol of the revolution) took place, followed by the collapse of the government through a variety of paths. Ultimately, the opposition — which was invariably pro-Western and particularly pro-American — took power.

Moscow openly claimed that Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, organized and funded the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. These agencies allegedly used nongovernmental organizations (human rights groups, pro-democracy groups, etc.) to delegitimize the existing regime, repudiate the outcome of election regardless of its validity and impose what the Russians regarded as a pro-American puppet regime. The Russians saw Ukraine’s Orange Revolution as the breakpoint in their relationship with the West, with the creation of a pro-American, pro-NATO regime in Ukraine representing a direct attack on Russian national security. The Americans argued that to the contrary, they had done nothing but facilitate a democratic movement that opposed the existing regime for its own reasons, demanding that rigged elections be repudiated.

In warning that the United States was planning a color revolution in Iran, Ahmadinejad took the Russian position. Namely, he was arguing that behind the cover of national self-determination, human rights and commitment to democratic institutions, the United States was funding an Iranian opposition movement on the order of those active in the former Soviet Union. Regardless of whether the opposition actually had more votes, this opposition movement would immediately regard an Ahmadinejad win as the result of fraud. Large demonstrations would ensue, and if left unopposed, the Islamic republic would come under threat.

In doing this, Ahmadinejad’s faction positioned itself against the actuality that such a rising would occur. If it did, Ahmadinejad could claim that the demonstrators were — wittingly or not — operating on behalf of the United States, thus delegitimizing the demonstrators. In so doing, he could discredit supporters of the demonstrators as not tough enough on the United States, a useful charge against Rafsanjani, whom the West long has held up as an Iranian moderate.

Interestingly, while demonstrations were at their height, Ahmadinejad chose to attend — albeit a day late — a multinational Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in Moscow on the Tuesday after the election. It was very odd that he would leave Iran at the time of the greatest unrest; we assumed that he had decided to demonstrate to Iranians that he didn’t take the demonstrations seriously.

The charge that seems to be emerging on the Rafsanjani side is that Ahmadinejad’s fears of a color revolution were not simply political, but were encouraged by the Russians. It was the Russians who had been talking to Ahmadinejad and his lieutenants on a host of issues, who warned him about the possibility of a color revolution. More important, the Russians helped prepare Ahmadinejad for the unrest that would come — and given the Russian experience, how to manage it. Though we speculate here, if this theory is correct, it could explain some of the efficiency with which Ahmadinejad shut down cell phone and other communications during the postelection unrest, as he may have had Russian advisers.

Rafsanjani’s followers were not shouting “Death to Russia” without a reason, at least in their own minds. They are certainly charging that Ahmadinejad took advice from the Russians, and went to Russia in the midst of political unrest for consultations. Rafsanjani’s charge may or may not be true. Either way, there is no question that Ahmadinejad did claim that the United States was planning a color revolution in Iran. If he believed that charge, it would have been irrational not to reach out to the Russians. But whether or not the CIA was involved, the Russians might well have provided Ahmadinejad with intelligence of such a plot and helped shape his response, and thereby may have created a closer relationship with him.

How Iran’s internal struggle will work itself out remains unclear. But one dimension is shaping up: Ahmadinejad is trying to position Rafsanjani as leading a pro-American faction intent on a color revolution, while Rafsanjani is trying to position Ahmadinejad as part of a pro-Russian faction. In this argument, the claim that Ahmadinejad had some degree of advice or collaboration with the Russians is credible, just as the claim that Rafsanjani maintained some channels with the Americans is credible. And this makes an internal dispute geopolitically significant.

The Iranian Struggle in Geopolitical Context

At the moment, Ahmadinejad appears to have the upper hand. Khamenei has certified his re-election. The crowds have dissipated; nothing even close to the numbers of the first few days have since materialized. For Ahmadinejad to lose, Rafsanjani would have to mobilize much of the clergy — many of whom are seemingly content to let Rafsanjani be the brunt of Ahmadinejad’s attacks — in return for leaving their own interests and fortunes intact. There are things that could bring Ahmadinejad down and put Rafsanjani in control, but all of them would require Khamenei to endorse social and political instability, which he will not do.

If the Russians have in fact have intervened in Iran to the extent of providing intelligence to Ahmadinejad and advice to him during his visit on how to handle the postelection unrest (as the chants suggest), then Russian influence in Iran is not surging — it has surged. In some measure, Ahmadinejad would owe his position to Russian warnings and advice. There is little gratitude in the world of international affairs, but Ahmadinejad has enemies, and the Russians would have proven their utility in helping contain those enemies.

From the Russian point of view, Ahmadinejad would be a superb asset — even if not truly under their control. His very existence focuses American attention on Iran, not on Russia. It follows, then, that Russia would have made a strategic decision to involve itself in the postelection unrest, and that for the purposes of its own negotiations with Washington, Moscow will follow through to protect the Iranian state to the extent possible. The Russians have already denied U.S. requests for assistance on Iran. But if Moscow has intervened in Iran to help safeguard Ahmadinejad’s position, then the potential increases for Russia to provide Iran with the S-300 strategic air defense systems that it has been dangling in front of Tehran for more than a decade.

If the United States perceives an entente between Moscow and Tehran emerging, then the entire dynamic of the region shifts and the United States must change its game. The threat to Washington’s interests becomes more intense as the potential of a Russian S-300 sale to Iran increases, and the need to disrupt the Russian-Iranian entente would become all the more important. U.S. influence in Iran already has declined substantially, and Ahmadinejad is more distrustful and hostile than ever of the United States after having to deal with the postelection unrest. If a Russian-Iranian entente emerges out of all this — which at the moment is merely a possibility, not an imminent reality — then the United States would have some serious strategic problems on its hands.

Revisiting Assumptions on Iran

For the past few years, STRATFOR has assumed that a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran was unlikely. Iran was not as advanced in its nuclear program as some claimed, and the complexities of any attack were greater than assumed. The threat of an attack was thus a U.S. bargaining chip, much as Iran’s nuclear program itself was an Iranian bargaining chip for use in achieving Tehran’s objectives in Iraq and the wider region. To this point, our net assessment has been accurate.

At this point, however, we need to stop and reconsider. If Iran and Russia begin serious cooperation, Washington’s existing dilemma with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its ongoing standoff with the Russians would fuse to become a single, integrated problem. This is something the United States would find difficult to manage. Washington’s primary goal would become preventing this from happening.

Ahmadinejad has long argued that the United States was never about to attack Iran, and that charges by Rafsanjani and others that he has pursued a reckless foreign policy were groundless. But with the “Death to Russia” chants and signaling of increased Russian support for Iran, the United States may begin to reconsider its approach to the region.

Iran’s clerical elite does not want to go to war. They therefore can only view with alarm the recent ostentatious transiting of the Suez Canal into the Red Sea by Israeli submarines and corvettes. This transiting did not happen without U.S. approval. Moreover, in spite of U.S. opposition to expanded Israeli settlements and Israeli refusals to comply with this opposition, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will be visiting Israel in two weeks. The Israelis have said that there must be a deadline on negotiations with Iran over the nuclear program when the next G-8 meeting takes place in September; a deadline that the G-8 has already approved. The consequences if Iran ignores the deadline were left open-ended.

All of this can fit into our old model of psychological warfare, as representing a bid to manipulate Iranian politics by making Ahmadinejad’s leadership look too risky. It could also be the United States signaling the Russians that stakes in the region are rising. It is not clear that the United States has reconsidered its strategy on Iran in the wake of the postelection demonstrations. But if Rafsanjani’s claim of Russian support for Ahmadinejad is true, a massive re-evaluation of U.S. policy could ensue, assuming one hasn’t already started — prompting a reconsideration of the military option.

All of this assumes that there is substance behind a mob chanting “Death to Russia.” There appears to be, but of course, Ahmadinejad’s enemies would want to magnify that substance to its limits and beyond. This is why we are not ready to simply abandon our previous net assessment of Iran, even though it is definitely time to rethink it.

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:08:00 +0000

The Medvedev Doctrine and American Strategy

September 2, 2008 | 1705 GMT

By George Friedman
The United States has been fighting a war in the Islamic world since 2001. Its main theaters of operation are in Afghanistan and Iraq, but its politico-military focus spreads throughout the Islamic world, from Mindanao to Morocco. The situation on Aug. 7, 2008, was as follows:

The war in Iraq was moving toward an acceptable but not optimal solution. The government in Baghdad was not pro-American, but neither was it an Iranian puppet, and that was the best that could be hoped for. The United States anticipated pulling out troops, but not in a disorderly fashion.
The war in Afghanistan was deteriorating for the United States and NATO forces. The Taliban was increasingly effective, and large areas of the country were falling to its control. Force in Afghanistan was insufficient, and any troops withdrawn from Iraq would have to be deployed to Afghanistan to stabilize the situation. Political conditions in neighboring Pakistan were deteriorating, and that deterioration inevitably affected Afghanistan.
The United States had been locked in a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program, demanding that Tehran halt enrichment of uranium or face U.S. action. The United States had assembled a group of six countries (the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) that agreed with the U.S. goal, was engaged in negotiations with Iran, and had agreed at some point to impose sanctions on Iran if Tehran failed to comply. The United States was also leaking stories about impending air attacks on Iran by Israel or the United States if Tehran didn’t abandon its enrichment program. The United States had the implicit agreement of the group of six not to sell arms to Tehran, creating a real sense of isolation in Iran.

THE IRANIAN ELECTION AND THE REVOLUTION TEST By George Friedman

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:38:00 +0000

Successful revolutions have three phases. First, a strategically located single
or limited segment of society begins vocally to express resentment, asserting
itself in the streets of a major city, usually the capital. This segment is
joined by other segments in the city and by segments elsewhere as the
demonstration spreads to other cities and becomes more assertive, disruptive and
potentially violent. As resistance to the regime spreads, the regime deploys its
military and security forces. These forces, drawn from resisting social segments
and isolated from the rest of society, turn on the regime, and stop following
the regime's orders. This is what happened to the Shah of Iran in 1979; it is
also what happened in Russia in 1917 or in Romania in 1989.


Revolutions fail when no one joins the initial segment, meaning the initial
demonstrators are the ones who find themselves socially isolated. When the
demonstrations do not spread to other cities, the demonstrations either peter
out or the regime brings in the security and military forces -- who remain loyal
to the regime and frequently personally hostile to the demonstrators -- and use
force to suppress the rising to the extent necessary. This is what happened in
Tiananmen Square in China: The students who rose up were not joined by others.
Military forces who were not only loyal to the regime but hostile to the
students were brought in, and the students were crushed.


A Question of Support
This is also what happened in Iran this week. The global media, obsessively
focused on the initial demonstrators -- who were supporters of Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents -- failed to notice that while large, the
demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating.
Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice
that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In
constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just
how many of the demonstrators spoke English and had smartphones. The media thus
did not recognize these as the signs of a failing revolution.


Later, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke Friday and called out the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, they failed to understand that the troops --
definitely not drawn from what we might call the "Twittering classes," would
remain loyal to the regime for ideological and social reasons. The troops had
about as much sympathy for the demonstrators as a small-town boy from Alabama
might have for a Harvard postdoc. Failing to understand the social tensions in
Iran, the reporters deluded themselves into thinking they were witnessing a
general uprising. But this was not St. Petersburg in 1917 or Bucharest in 1989
-- it was Tiananmen Square.


In the global discussion last week outside Iran, there was a great deal of
confusion about basic facts. For example, it is said that the urban-rural
distinction in Iran is not critical any longer because according to the United
Nations, 68 percent of Iranians are urbanized. This is an important point
because it implies Iran is homogeneous and the demonstrators representative of
the country. The problem is the Iranian definition of urban -- and this is quite
common around the world -- includes very small communities (some with only a few
thousand people) as "urban." But the social difference between someone living in
a town with 10,000 people and someone living in Tehran is the difference between
someone living in Bastrop, Texas and someone living in New York. We can assure
you that that difference is not only vast, but that most of the good people of
Bastrop and the fine people of New York would probably not see the world the
same way. The failure to understand the dramatic diversity of Iranian society
led observers to assume that students at Iran's elite university somehow spoke
for the rest of the country.


Tehran proper has about 8 million inhabitants; its suburbs bring it to about 13
million people out of Iran's total population of 70.5 million. Tehran accounts
for about 20 percent of Iran, but as we know, the cab driver and the
construction worker are not socially linked to students at elite universities.
There are six cities with populations between 1 million and 2.4 million people
and 11 with populations of about 500,000. Including Tehran proper, 15.5 million
people live in cities with more than 1 million and 19.7 million in cities
greater than 500,000. Iran has 80 cities with more than 100,000. But given that
Waco, Texas, has more than 100,000 people, inferences of social similarities
between cities with 100,000 and 5 million are tenuous. And with metro Oklahoma
City having more than a million people, it becomes plain that urbanization has
many faces.


Winning the Election With or Without Fraud


We continue to believe two things: that vote fraud occurred, and that
Ahmadinejad likely would have won without it. Very little direct evidence has
emerged to establish vote fraud, but several things seem suspect.


For example, the speed of the vote count has been taken as a sign of fraud, as
it should have been impossible to count votes that fast. The polls originally
were to have closed at 7 p.m. local time, but voting hours were extended until
10 p.m. because of the number of voters in line. By 11:45 p.m. about 20 percent
of the vote had been counted. By 5:20 a.m. the next day, with almost all votes
counted, the election commission declared Ahmadinejad the winner. The vote count
thus took about seven hours. (Remember there were no senators, congressmen, city
council members or school board members being counted -- just the presidential
race.) Intriguingly, this is about the same time in took in 2005, though
reformists that claimed fraud back then did not stress the counting time in
their allegations.


The counting mechanism is simple: Iran has 47,000 voting stations, plus 14,000
roaming stations that travel from tiny village to tiny village, staying there
for a short time before moving on. That creates 61,000 ballot boxes designed to
receive roughly the same number of votes. That would mean that each station
would have been counting about 500 ballots, or about 70 votes per hour. With
counting beginning at 10 p.m., concluding seven hours later does not necessarily
indicate fraud or anything else. The Iranian presidential election system is
designed for simplicity: one race to count in one time zone, and all counting
beginning at the same time in all regions, we would expect the numbers to come
in a somewhat linear fashion as rural and urban voting patterns would balance
each other out -- explaining why voting percentages didn't change much during
the night.


It has been pointed out that some of the candidates didn't even carry their own
provinces or districts. We remember that Al Gore didn't carry Tennessee in 2000.
We also remember Ralph Nader, who also didn't carry his home precinct in part
because people didn't want to spend their vote on someone unlikely to win -- an
effect probably felt by the two smaller candidates in the Iranian election.


That Mousavi didn't carry his own province is more interesting. Flynt Leverett
and Hillary Mann Leverett writing in Politico make some interesting points on
this. As an ethnic Azeri, it was assumed that Mousavi would carry his
Azeri-named and -dominated home province. But they also point out that
Ahmadinejad also speaks Azeri, and made multiple campaign appearances in the
district. They also point out that Khamenei is Azeri. In sum, winning that
district was by no means certain for Mousavi, so losing it does not
automatically signal fraud. It raised suspicions, but by no means was a smoking
gun.


We do not doubt that fraud occurred during Iranian election. For example, 99.4
percent of potential voters voted in Mazandaran province, a mostly secular area
home to the shah's family. Ahmadinejad carried the province by a 2.2 to 1 ratio.
That is one heck of a turnout and level of support for a province that lost
everything when the mullahs took over 30 years ago. But even if you take all of
the suspect cases and added them together, it would not have changed the
outcome. The fact is that Ahmadinejad's vote in 2009 was extremely close to his
victory percentage in 2005. And while the Western media portrayed Ahmadinejad's
performance in the presidential debates ahead of the election as dismal,
embarrassing and indicative of an imminent electoral defeat, many Iranians who
viewed those debates -- including some of the most hardcore Mousavi supporters
-- acknowledge that Ahmadinejad outperformed his opponents by a landslide.


Mousavi persuasively detailed his fraud claims Sunday, and they have yet to be
rebutted. But if his claims of the extent of fraud were true, the protests
should have spread rapidly by social segment and geography to the millions of
people who even the central government asserts voted for him. Certainly, Mousavi
supporters believed they would win the election based in part on highly flawed
polls, and when they didn't, they assumed they were robbed and took to the
streets.


But critically, the protesters were not joined by any of the millions whose
votes the protesters alleged were stolen. In a complete hijacking of the
election by some 13 million votes by an extremely unpopular candidate, we would
have expected to see the core of Mousavi's supporters joined by others who had
been disenfranchised. On last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when the
demonstrations were at their height, the millions of Mousavi voters should have
made their appearance. They didn't. We might assume that the security apparatus
intimidated some, but surely more than just the Tehran professional and student
classes posses civic courage. While appearing large, the demonstrations actually
comprised a small fraction of society.


Tensions Among the Political Elite

All of this not to say there are not tremendous tensions within the Iranian
political elite. That no revolution broke out does not mean there isn't a crisis
in the political elite, particularly among the clerics. But that crisis does not
cut the way Western common sense would have it. Many of Iran's religious leaders
see Ahmadinejad as hostile to their interests, as threatening their financial
prerogatives, and as taking international risks they don't want to take.
Ahmadinejad's political popularity in fact rests on his populist hostility to
what he sees as the corruption of the clerics and their families and his strong
stand on Iranian national security issues.

The clerics are divided among themselves, but many wanted to see Ahmadinejad
lose to protect their own interests. Khamenei, the supreme leader, faced a
difficult choice last Friday. He could demand a major recount or even new
elections, or he could validate what happened. Khamenei speaks for a sizable
chunk of the ruling elite, but also has had to rule by consensus among both
clerical and non-clerical forces. Many powerful clerics like Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani wanted Khamenei to reverse the election, and we suspect Khamenei
wished he could have found a way to do it. But as the defender of the regime, he
was afraid to. Mousavi supporters' demonstrations would have been nothing
compared to the firestorm among Ahmadinejad supporters -- both voters and the
security forces -- had their candidate been denied. Khamenei wasn't going to
flirt with disaster, so he endorsed the outcome.

The Western media misunderstood this because they didn't understand that
Ahmadinejad does not speak for the clerics but against them, that many of the
clerics were working for his defeat, and that Ahmadinejad has enormous pull in
the country's security apparatus. The reason Western media missed this is
because they bought into the concept of the stolen election, therefore failing
to see Ahmadinejad's support and the widespread dissatisfaction with the old
clerical elite. The Western media simply didn't understand that the most
traditional and pious segments of Iranian society support Ahmadinejad because he
opposes the old ruling elite. Instead, they assumed this was like Prague or
Budapest in 1989, with a broad-based uprising in favor of liberalism against an
unpopular regime.

Tehran in 2009, however, was a struggle between two main factions, both of which
supported the Islamic republic as it was. There were the clerics, who have
dominated the regime since 1979 and had grown wealthy in the process. And there
was Ahmadinejad, who felt the ruling clerical elite had betrayed the revolution
with their personal excesses. And there also was the small faction the BBC and
CNN kept focusing on -- the demonstrators in the streets who want to
dramatically liberalize the Islamic republic. This faction never stood a chance
of taking power, whether by election or revolution. The two main factions used
the third smaller faction in various ways, however. Ahmadinejad used it to make
his case that the clerics who supported them, like Rafsanjani, would risk the
revolution and play into the hands of the Americans and British to protect their
own wealth. Meanwhile, Rafsanjani argued behind the scenes that the unrest was
the tip of the iceberg, and that Ahmadinejad had to be replaced. Khamenei, an
astute politician, examined the data and supported Ahmadinejad.


Now, as we saw after Tiananmen Square, we will see a reshuffling among the
elite. Those who backed Mousavi will be on the defensive. By contrast, those who
supported Ahmadinejad are in a powerful position. There is a massive crisis in
the elite, but this crisis has nothing to do with liberalization: It has to do
with power and prerogatives among the elite. Having been forced by the election
and Khamenei to live with Ahmadinejad, some will make deals while some will
fight -- but Ahmadinejad is well-positioned to win this battle.

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT D-DAY 65TH ANNIVERSARY CEREMONY Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial Normandy, France

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon. Thank you, President Sarkozy, Prime Minister Brown, Prime Minister Harper, and Prince Charles for being here today. Thank you to our Secretary of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, for making the trip out here to join us. Thanks also to Susan Eisenhower, whose grandfather began this mission 65 years ago with a simple charge: "Ok, let's go." And to a World War II veteran who returned home from this war to serve a proud and distinguished career as a United States Senator and a national leader: Bob Dole. (Applause.)

I'm not the first American President to come and mark this anniversary, and I likely will not be the last. This is an event that has long brought to this coast both heads of state and grateful citizens; veterans and their loved ones; the liberated and their liberators. It's been written about and spoken of and depicted in countless books and films and speeches. And long after our time on this Earth has passed, one word will still bring forth the pride and awe of men and women who will never meet the heroes who sit before us: D-Day.

Why is this? Of all the battles in all the wars across the span of human history, why does this day hold such a revered place in our memory? What is it about the struggle that took place on the sands a few short steps from here that brings us back to remember year after year after year?

Part of it, I think, is the size of the odds that weighed against success. For three centuries, no invader had ever been able to cross the English Channel into Normandy. And it had never been more difficult than in 1944.

That was the year that Hitler ordered his top field marshal to fortify the Atlantic Wall against a seaborne invasion. From the tip of Norway to southern France, the Nazis lined steep cliffs with machine guns and artillery. Low-lying areas were flooded to block passage. Sharpened poles awaited paratroopers. Mines were laid on the beaches and beneath the water. And by the time of the invasion, half a million Germans waited for the Allies along the coast between Holland and northern France.

At dawn on June 6th, the Allies came. The best chance for victory had been for the British Royal Air Corps to take out the guns on the cliffs while airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines. But all did not go according to plan. Paratroopers landed miles from their mark, while the fog and clouds prevented Allied planes from destroying the guns on the cliffs. So when the ships landed here at Omaha, an unimaginable hell rained down on the men inside. Many never made it out of the boats.

And yet, despite all of this, one by one, the Allied forces made their way to shore -- here, and at Utah and Juno; Gold and Sword. They were American, British, and Canadian. Soon, the paratroopers found each other and fought their way back. The Rangers scaled the cliffs. And by the end of the day, against all odds, the ground on which we stand was free once more.

The sheer improbability of this victory is part of what makes D-Day so memorable. It also arises from the clarity of purpose with which this war was waged.

We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It's a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it's all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.

The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology sought to subjugate and humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.

The nations that joined together to defeat Hitler's Reich were not perfect. They had made their share of mistakes, had not always agreed with one another on every issue. But whatever God we prayed to, whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped. Citizens of all faiths and of no faith came to believe that we could not remain as bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and destruction. And so we joined and sent our sons to fight and often die so that men and women they never met might know what it is to be free.

In America, it was an endeavor that inspired a nation to action. A President who asked his country to pray on D-Day also asked its citizens to serve and sacrifice to make the invasion possible. On farms and in factories, millions of men and women worked three shifts a day, month after month, year after year. Trucks and tanks came from plants in Michigan and Indiana, New York and Illinois. Bombers and fighter planes rolled off assembly lines in Ohio and Kansas, where my grandmother did her part as an inspector. Shipyards on both coasts produced the largest fleet in history, including the landing craft from New Orleans that eventually made it here to Omaha.

But despite all the years of planning and preparation, despite the inspiration of our leaders, the skill of our generals, the strength of our firepower and the unyielding support from our home front, the outcome of the entire struggle would ultimately rest on the success of one day in June.

Lyndon Johnson once said that there are certain moments when "history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom."

D-Day was such a moment. One newspaper noted that "we have come to the hour for which we were born." Had the Allies failed here, Hitler's occupation of this continent might have continued indefinitely. Instead, victory here secured a foothold in France. It opened a path to Berlin. It made possible the achievements that followed the liberation of Europe: the Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance, the shared prosperity and security that flowed from each.

It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide.

More particularly, it came down to the men who landed here -- those who now rest in this place for eternity, and those who are with us here today. Perhaps more than any other reason, you, the veterans of that landing, are why we still remember what happened on D-Day. You're why we keep coming back.

For you remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control. You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance. Our history has always been the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each individual man and woman. It has always been up to us.

You could have done what Hitler believed you would do when you arrived here. In the face of a merciless assault from these cliffs, you could have idled the boats offshore. Amid a barrage of tracer bullets that lit the night sky, you could have stayed in those planes. You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the seawall. You could have done only what was necessary to ensure your own survival.

But that's not what you did. That's not the story you told on D-Day. Your story was written by men like Zane Schlemmer of the 82nd Airborne, who parachuted into a dark marsh, far from his objective and his men. Lost and alone, he still managed to fight his way through the gunfire and help liberate the town in which he landed -- a town where a street now bears his name.

It's a story written by men like Anthony Ruggiero, an Army Ranger who saw half the men on his landing craft drown when it was hit by shellfire just a thousand yards off this beach. He spent three hours in freezing water, and was one of only 90 Rangers to survive out of the 225 who were sent to scale the cliffs.

And it's a story written by so many who are no longer with us, like Carlton Barrett. Private Barrett was only supposed to serve as a guide for the 1st Infantry Division, but he instead became one of its heroes. After wading ashore in neck-deep water, he returned to the water again and again and again to save his wounded and drowning comrades. And under the heaviest possible enemy fire, he carried them to safety. He carried them in his own arms.

This is the story of the Allied victory. It's the legend of units like Easy Company and the All-American 82nd. It's the tale of the British people, whose courage during the Blitz forced Hitler to call off the invasion of England; the Canadians, who came even though they were never attacked; the Russians, who sustained some of the war's heaviest casualties on the Eastern front; and all those French men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than lived within its grasp.

It is the memories that have been passed on to so many of us about the service or sacrifice of a friend or relative. For me, it is my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived on this beach six weeks after D-Day and marched across Europe in Patton's Army. And it is my great uncle who was part of the first American division to reach and liberate a Nazi concentration camp. His name is Charles Payne, and I'm so proud that he's with us here today.

I know this trip doesn't get any easier as the years pass, but for those of you who make it, there's nothing that could keep you away. One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene, was a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Division of the 101st Airborne. Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep. Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return. But just as he did 65 years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here.

In the end, Jim Norene came back to Normandy for the same reason we all come back. He came for the reason articulated by Howard Huebner, another former paratrooper who is here with us today. When asked why he made the trip, Howard said, "It's important that we tell our stories. It doesn't have to be something big -- just a little story about what happened -- so people don't forget."

So people don't forget.

Friends and veterans, we cannot forget. What we must not forget is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and the selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century. At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found within themselves the ability to do something extraordinary. They fought for their moms and sweethearts back home, for the fellow warriors they came to know as brothers. And they fought out of a simple sense of duty -- a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their countrymen had once fought and bled for over two centuries.

That is the story of Normandy -- but also the story of America; of the Minutemen who gathered on a green in Lexington; of the Union boys from Maine who repelled a charge at Gettysburg; of the men who gave their last full measure of devotion at Inchon and Khe San; of all the young men and women whose valor and goodness still carry forward this legacy of service and sacrifice. It's a story that has never come easy, but one that always gives us hope. For as we face down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore.

To those men who achieved that victory 65 years ago, we thank you for your service. May God bless you, and may God bless the memory of all those who rest here.

Shameless

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Sean Inanity incessantly impugning President Obama's past associations, but refusing to own up to his former associations with Andy Martin, Hal Turner and Bob Grant

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/hannity-quotes-anti-semit_n_132236.html

Mark Levin's snide references to those with opposing views as "statists and "brownshirts"

Rush Limbaugh reporting his desire that President Obama [and hence our nation's economy] fails

Liz Cheney referring to actions by Present Obama's administration to address the unconstitutional practices of her father's former administration as "Un-American"

Dick Cheney pronouncing for the benefit of all of this country's enemies that President Obama and his administration have made this country less safe from attacks.

Inanity, Levin, Limbaugh and their loudmouth right wing cohorts amassing fortunes preaching hate and division and demeaning the office of the Presidency.

Shameless....

THE GEOGRAPHY OF RECESSION By Peter Zeihan

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:32:00 +0000

The global recession is the biggest development in the global system in the year
to date. In the United States, it has become almost dogma that the recession is
the worst since the Great Depression. But this is only one of a wealth of
misconceptions about whom the downturn is hurting most, and why.

Let's begin with some simple numbers.

As one can see in the chart, the U.S. recession at this point is only the worst
since 1982, not the 1930s, and it pales in comparison to what is occurring in
the rest of the world. (Figures for China have not been included, in part
because of the unreliability of Chinese statistics, but also because the
country's financial system is so radically different from the rest of the world
as to make such comparisons misleading. For more, read the China section below.)


But didn't the recession begin in the United States? That it did, but the
American system is far more stable, durable and flexible than most of the other
global economies, in large part thanks to the country's geography. To understand
how place shapes economics, we need to take a giant step back from the gloom and
doom of the current moment and examine the long-term picture of why different
regions follow different economic paths.

The United States and the Free Market

The most important aspect of the United States is not simply its sheer size, but
the size of its usable land. Russia and China may both be similar-sized in
absolute terms, but the vast majority of Russian and Chinese land is useless for
agriculture, habitation or development. In contrast, courtesy of the Midwest,
the United States boasts the world's largest contiguous mass of arable land --
and that mass does not include the hardly inconsequential chunks of usable
territory on both the West and East coasts.

Second is the American maritime transport system. The Mississippi River, linked
as it is to the Red, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee rivers, comprises the largest
interconnected network of navigable rivers in the world. In the San Francisco
Bay, Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound/New York Bay, the United States has
three of the world's largest and best natural harbors. The series of barrier
islands a few miles off the shores of Texas and the East Coast form a
water-based highway -- an Intercoastal Waterway -- that shields American coastal
shipping from all but the worst that the elements can throw at ships and ports.

The real beauty is that the two overlap with near perfect symmetry. The
Intercoastal Waterway and most of the bays link up with agricultural regions and
their own local river systems (such as the series of rivers that descend from
the Appalachians to the East Coast), while the Greater Mississippi river network
is the circulatory system of the Midwest. Even without the addition of canals,
it is possible for ships to reach nearly any part of the Midwest from nearly any
part of the Gulf or East coasts. The result is not just a massive ability to
grow a massive amount of crops -- and not just the ability to easily and cheaply
move the crops to local, regional and global markets -- but also the ability to
use that same transport network for any other economic purpose without having to
worry about food supplies.

The implications of such a confluence are deep and sustained. Where most
countries need to scrape together capital to build roads and rail to establish
the very foundation of an economy, transport capability, geography granted the
United States a near-perfect system at no cost. That frees up U.S. capital for
other pursuits and almost condemns the United States to be capital-rich. Any
additional infrastructure the United States constructs is icing on the cake.
(The cake itself is free -- and, incidentally, the United States had so much
free capital that it was able to go on to build one of the best road-and-rail
networks anyway, resulting in even greater economic advantages over
competitors.)

Third, geography has also ensured that the United States has very little local
competition. To the north, Canada is both much colder and much more mountainous
than the United States. Canada's only navigable maritime network -- the Great
Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway --is shared with the United States, and most of its
usable land is hard by the American border. Often this makes it more
economically advantageous for Canadian provinces to integrate with their
neighbor to the south than with their co-nationals to the east and west.

Similarly, Mexico has only small chunks of land, separated by deserts and
mountains, that are useful for much more than subsistence agriculture; most of
Mexican territory is either too dry, too tropical or too mountainous. And Mexico
completely lacks any meaningful river system for maritime transport. Add in a
largely desert border, and Mexico as a country is not a meaningful threat to
American security (which hardly means that there are not serious and ongoing
concerns in the American-Mexican relationship).

With geography empowering the United States and hindering Canada and Mexico, the
United States does not need to maintain a large standing military force to
counter either. The Canadian border is almost completely unguarded, and the
Mexican border is no more than a fence in most locations -- a far cry from the
sort of military standoffs that have marked more adversarial borders in human
history. Not only are Canada and Mexico not major threats, but the U.S.
transport network allows the United States the luxury of being able to quickly
move a smaller force to deal with occasional problems rather than requiring it
to station large static forces on its borders.

Like the transport network, this also helps the U.S. focus its resources on
other things.

Taken together, the integrated transport network, large tracts of usable land
and lack of a need for a standing military have one critical implication: The
U.S. government tends to take a hands-off approach to economic management,
because geography has not cursed the United States with any endemic problems.
This may mean that the United States -- and especially its government -- comes
across as disorganized, but it shifts massive amounts of labor and capital to
the private sector, which for the most part allows resources to flow to wherever
they will achieve the most efficient and productive results.

Laissez-faire capitalism has its flaws. Inequality and social stress are just
two of many less-than-desirable side effects. The side effects most relevant to
the current situation are, of course, the speculative bubbles that cause
recessions when they pop. But in terms of long-term economic efficiency and
growth, a free capital system is unrivaled. For the United States, the end
result has proved clear: The United States has exited each decade since
post-Civil War Reconstruction more powerful than it was when it entered it.
While there are many forces in the modern world that threaten various aspects of
U.S. economic standing, there is not one that actually threatens the U.S. base
geographic advantages.

Is the United States in recession? Of course. Will it be forever? Of course not.
So long as U.S. geographic advantages remain intact, it takes no small amount of
paranoia and pessimism to envision anything but long-term economic expansion for
such a chunk of territory. In fact, there are a number of factors hinting that
the United States may even be on the cusp of recovery.

Russia and the State

If in economic terms the United States has everything going for it
geographically, then Russia is just the opposite. The Russian steppe lies deep
in the interior of the Eurasian landmass, and as such is subject to climatic
conditions much more hostile to human habitation and agriculture than is the
American Midwest. Even in those blessed good years when crops are abundant in
Russia, it has no river network to allow for easy transport of products.


Russia has no good warm-water ports to facilitate international trade (and has
spent much of its history seeking access to one). Russia does have long rivers,
but they are not interconnected as the Mississippi is with its tributaries,
instead flowing north to the Arctic Ocean, which can support no more than a
token population. The one exception is the Volga, which is critical to Western
Russian commerce but flows to the Caspian, a storm-wracked and landlocked sea
whose delta freezes in the winter (along with the entire Volga itself).
Developing such unforgiving lands requires a massive outlay of funds simply to
build the road and rail networks necessary to achieve the most basic of economic
development. The cost is so extreme that Russia's first ever intercontinental
road was not completed until the 21st century, and it is little more than a
two-lane path for much of its length. Between the lack of ports and the
relatively low population densities, little of Russia's transport system beyond
the St. Petersburg/Moscow corridor approaches anything that hints of economic
rationality.

Russia also has no meaningful external borders. It sits on the eastern end of
the North European Plain, which stretches all the way to Normandy, France, and
Russia's connections to the Asian steppe flow deep into China. Because Russia
lacks a decent internal transport network that can rapidly move armies from
place to place, geography forces Russia to defend itself following two
strategies. First, it requires massive standing armies on all of its borders.
Second, it dictates that Russia continually push its boundaries outward to
buffer its core against external threats.

Both strategies compromise Russian economic development even further. The large
standing armies are a continual drain on state coffers and the country's labor
pool; their cost was a critical economic factor in the Soviet fall. The
expansionist strategy not only absorbs large populations that do not wish to be
part of the Russian state and so must constantly be policed -- the core
rationale for Russia's robust security services -- but also inflates Russia's
infrastructure development costs by increasing the amount of relatively useless
territory Moscow is responsible for.

Russia's labor and capital resources are woefully inadequate to overcome the
state's needs and vulnerabilities, which are legion. These endemic problems
force Russia toward central planning; the full harnessing of all economic
resources available is required if Russia is to achieve even a modicum of
security and stability. One of the many results of this is severe economic
inefficiency and a general dearth of an internal consumer market. Because
capital and other resources can be flung forcefully at problems, however, active
management can achieve specific national goals more readily than a hands-off,
American-style model. This often gives the impression of significant progress in
areas the Kremlin chooses to highlight.

But such achievements are largely limited to wherever the state happens to be
directing its attention. In all other sectors, the lack of attention results in
atrophy or criminalization. This is particularly true in modern Russia, where
the ruling elite comprises just a handful of people, starkly limiting the amount
of planning and oversight possible. And unless management is perfect in
perception and execution, any mistakes are quickly magnified into national
catastrophes. It is therefore no surprise to STRATFOR that the Russian economy
has now fallen the furthest of any major economy during the current recession.

China and Separatism

China also faces significant hurdles, albeit none as daunting as Russia's
challenges. China's core is the farmland of the Yellow River basin in the north
of the country, a river that is not readily navigable and is remarkably flood
prone. Simply avoiding periodic starvation requires a high level of state
planning and coordination. (Wrestling a large river is not the easiest thing one
can do.) Additionally, the southern half of the country has a subtropical
climate, riddling it with diseases that the southerners are resistant to but the
northerners are not. This compromises the north's political control of the
south.

Central control is also threatened by China's maritime geography. China boasts
two other rivers, but they do not link to each other or the Yellow naturally.
And China's best ports are at the mouths of these two rivers: Shanghai at the
mouth of the Yangtze and Hong Kong/Macau/Guangzhou at the mouth of the Pearl.
The Yellow boasts no significant ocean port. The end result is that other
regional centers can and do develop economic means independent of Beijing.

With geography complicating northern rule and supporting southern economic
independence, Beijing's age-old problem has been trying to keep China in one
piece. Beijing has to underwrite massive (and expensive) development programs to
stitch the country together with a common infrastructure, the most visible of
which is the Grand Canal that links the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The cost of
such linkages instantly guarantees that while China may have a shot at being
unified, it will always be capital-poor.

Beijing also has to provide its autonomy-minded regions with an economic
incentive to remain part of Greater China, and "simple" infrastructure will not
cut it. Modern China has turned to a state-centered finance model for this.
Under the model, all of the scarce capital that is available is funneled to the
state, which divvies it out via a handful of large state banks. These state
banks then grant loans to various firms and local governments at below the cost
of raising the capital. This provides a powerful economic stimulus that achieves
maximum employment and growth -- think of what you could do with a near-endless
supply of loans at below 0 percent interest -- but comes at the cost of
encouraging projects that are loss-making, as no one is ever called to account
for failures. (They can just get a new loan.) The resultant growth is rapid, but
it is also unsustainable. It is no wonder, then, that the central government has
chosen to keep its $2 trillion of currency reserves in dollar-based assets; the
rate of return is greater, the value holds over a long period, and Beijing
doesn't have to worry about the United States seceding.

Because the domestic market is considerably limited by the poor-capital nature
of the country, most producers choose to tap export markets to generate income.
In times of plenty this works fairly well, but when Chinese goods are not
needed, the entire Chinese system can seize up. Lack of exports reduces capital
availability, which constrains loan availability. This in turn not only damages
the ability of firms to employ China's legions of citizens, but it  also removes
the primary reason the disparate Chinese regions pay homage to Beijing. China's
geography hardwires in a series of economic challenges that weaken the coherence
of the state and make China dependent upon uninterrupted access to foreign
markets to maintain state unity. As a result, China has not been a unified
entity for the vast majority of its history, but instead a cauldron of competing
regions that cleave along many different fault lines: coastal versus interior,
Han versus minority, north versus south.

China's survival technique for the current recession is simple. Because exports,
which account for roughly half of China's economic activity, have sunk by half,
Beijing is throwing the equivalent of the financial kitchen sink at the problem.
China has force-fed more loans through the banks in the first four months of
2009 than it did in the entirety of 2008. The long-term result could well bury
China beneath a mountain of bad loans -- a similar strategy resulted in Japan's
1991 crash, from which Tokyo has yet to recover. But for now it is holding the
country together. The bottom line remains, however: China's recovery is
completely dependent upon external demand for its production, and the most it
can do on its own is tread water.

Discordant Europe

Europe faces an imbroglio somewhat similar to China's.

Europe has a number of rivers that are easily navigable, providing a wealth of
trade and development opportunities. But none of them interlinks with the
others, retarding political unification. Europe has even more good harbors than
the United States, but they are not evenly spread throughout the Continent,
making some states capital-rich and others capital-poor. Europe boasts one huge
piece of arable land on the North European Plain, but it is long and thin, and
so occupied by no fewer than seven distinct ethnic groups.

These groups have constantly struggled -- as have the various groups up and down
Europe's seemingly endless list of river valleys -- but none has been able to
emerge dominant, due to the webwork of mountains and peninsulas that make it
nigh impossible to fully root out any particular group. And Europe's wealth of
islands close to the Continent, with Great Britain being only the most obvious,
guarantee constant intervention to ensure that mainland Europe never unifies
under a single power.

Every part of Europe has a radically different geography than the other parts,
and thus the economic models the Europeans have adopted have little in common.
The United Kingdom, with few immediate security threats and decent rivers and
ports, has an almost American-style laissez-faire system. France, with three
unconnected rivers lying wholly in its own territory, is a somewhat
self-contained world, making economic nationalism its credo. Not only do the
rivers in Germany not connect, but Berlin has to share them with other states.
The Jutland Peninsula interrupts the coastline of Germany, which finds its sea
access limited by the Danes, the Swedes and the British. Germany must plan in
great detail to maximize its resource use to build an infrastructure that can
compensate for its geographic deficiencies and link together its good -- but
disparate -- geographic blessings. The result is a state that somewhat favors
free enterprise, but within the limits framed by national needs.

And the list of differences goes on: Spain has long coasts and is arid; Austria
is landlocked and quite wet; most of Greece is almost too mountainous to build
on; it doesn't get flatter than the Netherlands; tiny Estonia faces frozen seas
in the winter; mammoth Italy has never even seen an icebreaker. Even if there
were a supranational authority in Europe that could tax or regulate the banking
sector or plan transnational responses, the propriety of any singular policy
would be questionable at best.

Such stark regional differences give rise to such variant policies that many
European states have a severe (and understandable) trust deficit when it comes
to any hint of anything supranational. We are not simply taking about the
European Union here, but rather a general distrust of anything cross-border in
nature. One of the many outcomes of this is a preference for using local banks
rather than stock exchanges for raising capital. After all, local banks tend to
use local capital and are subject to local regulations, while stock exchanges
tend to be internationalized in all respects. Spain, Italy, Sweden, Greece and
Austria get more than 90 percent of their financing from banks, the United
Kingdom 84 percent and Germany 76 percent -- while for the United States it is
only 40 percent.

And this has proved unfortunate in the extreme for today's Europe. The current
recession has its roots in a financial crisis that has most dramatically
impacted banks, and European banks have proved far from immune. Until Europe's
banks recover, Europe will remain mired in recession. And since there cannot be
a Pan-European solution, Europe's recession could well prove to be the worst of
all this time around.

THE NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR TEST AND GEOPOLITICAL REALITY By Nathan Hughes

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:03:00 +0000

North Korea tested a nuclear device for the second time in two and a half years
May 25. Although North Korea's nuclear weapons program continues to be a work in
progress, the event is inherently significant. North Korea has carried out the
only two nuclear detonations the world has seen in the 21st century. (The most
recent tests prior to that were the spate of tests by India and Pakistan in
1998.)

Details continue to emerge through the analysis of seismographic and other data,
and speculation about the precise nature of the atomic device that Pyongyang may
now posses carries on, making this a good moment to examine the underlying
reality of nuclear weapons. Examining their history, and the lessons that can be
drawn from that history, will help us understand what it will really mean if
North Korea does indeed join the nuclear club.

Nuclear Weapons in the 20th Century

Even before an atomic bomb was first detonated on July 16, 1945, both the
scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project and the U.S. military
struggled with the implications of the science that they pursued. But
ultimately, they were driven by a profound sense of urgency to complete the
program in time to affect the outcome of the war, meaning understanding the
implications of the atomic bomb was largely a luxury that would have to wait.
Even after World War II ended, the frantic pace of the Cold War kept pushing
weapons development forward at a break-neck pace. This meant that in their early
days, atomic weapons were probably more advanced than the understanding of their
moral and practical utility.

But the promise of nuclear weapons was immense. If appropriate delivery systems
could be designed and built, and armed with more powerful nuclear warheads, a
nation could continually threaten another country's very means of existence: its
people, industry, military installations and governmental institutions.
Battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons would make the massing of military
formations suicidal -- or so military planners once thought. What seemed clear
early on was that nuclear weapons had fundamentally changed everything. War was
thought to have been made obsolete, simply too dangerous and too destructive to
contemplate. Some of the most brilliant minds of the Manhattan Project talked of
how atomic weapons made world government necessary.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the advent of the nuclear age is how
little actually changed. Great power competition continued apace (despite a new,
bilateral dynamic). The Soviets blockaded Berlin for nearly a year starting in
1948, in defiance of what was then the world's sole nuclear power: the United
States. Likewise, the United States refused to use nuclear weapons in the Korean
War (despite the pleas of Gen. Douglas MacArthur) even as Chinese divisions
surged across the Yalu River, overwhelming U.S., South Korean and allied forces
and driving them back south, reversing the rapid gains of late 1950.

Again and again, the situations nuclear weapons were supposed to deter occurred.
The military realities they would supposedly shift simply persisted. Thus, the
United States lost in Vietnam. The Syrians and the Egyptians invaded Israel in
1973 (despite knowing that the Israelis had acquired nuclear weapons by that
point). The Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan went to war in
1999 -- and nearly went to war twice after that. In none of these cases was it
judged appropriate to risk employing nuclear weapons -- nor was it clear what
utility they might have.

Enduring Geopolitical Stability

Wars of immense risk are born of desperation. In World War II, both Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan took immense geostrategic gambles -- and lost -- but
knowingly took the risk because of untenable geopolitical circumstances. By
comparison, the postwar United States and Soviet Union were geopolitically
secure. Washington had come into its own as a global power secured by the buffer
of two oceans, while Moscow enjoyed the greatest strategic depth it had ever
known.

The U.S.-Soviet competition was, of course, intense, from the nuclear arms race
to the space race to countless proxy wars. Yet underlying it was a fear that the
other side would engage in a war that was on its face irrational. Western Europe
promised the Soviet Union immense material wealth but would likely have been
impossible to subdue. (Why should a Soviet leader expect to succeed where
Napoleon and Hitler had failed?) Even without nuclear weapons in the calculus,
the cost to the Soviets was too great, and fears of the Soviet invasion of
Europe along the North European Plain were overblown. The desperation that
caused Germany to seek control over Europe twice in the first half of the 20th
century simply did not characterize either the Soviet or U.S. geopolitical
position even without nuclear weapons in play. It was within this context that
the concept of mutually assured destruction emerged -- the idea that each side
would possess sufficient retaliatory capability to inflict a devastating "second
strike" in the event of even a surprise nuclear attack.

Through it all, the metrics of nuclear warfare became more intricate. Throw
weights and penetration rates were calculated and recalculated. Targets were
assigned and reassigned. A single city would begin to have multiple target
points, each with multiple strategic warheads allocated to its destruction.
Theorists and strategists would talk of successful scenarios for first strikes.
But only in the Cuban Missile Crisis did the two sides really threaten one
another's fundamental national interests. There were certainly other moments
when the world inched toward the nuclear brink. But each time, the global system
found its balance, and there was little cause or incentive for political leaders
on either side of the Iron Curtain to so fundamentally alter the status quo as
to risk direct military confrontation -- much less nuclear war.

So through it all, the world carried on, its fundamental dynamics unchanged by
the ever-present threat of nuclear war. Indeed, history has shown that once a
country has acquired nuclear weapons, the weapons fail to have any real impact
on the country's regional standing or pursuit of power in the international
system.

Thus, not only were nuclear weapons never used in even desperate combat
situations, their acquisition failed to entail any meaningful shift in
geopolitical position. Even as the United Kingdom acquired nuclear weapons in
the 1950s, its colonial empire crumbled. The Soviet Union was behaving
aggressively all along its periphery before it acquired nuclear weapons. And the
Soviet Union had the largest nuclear arsenal in the world when it collapsed --
not only despite its arsenal, but in part because the economic burden of
creating and maintaining it was unsustainable. Today, nuclear-armed France and
non-nuclear armed Germany vie for dominance on the Continent with no regard for
France's small nuclear arsenal.

The Intersection of Weapons, Strategy and Politics

This August will mark 64 years since any nation used a nuclear weapon in combat.
What was supposed to be the ultimate weapon has proved too risky and too
inappropriate as a weapon ever to see the light of day again. Though nuclear
weapons certainly played a role in the strategic calculus of the Cold War, they
had no relation to a military strategy that anyone could seriously contemplate.
Militaries, of course, had war plans and scenarios and target sets. But outside
this world of role-play Armageddon, neither side was about to precipitate a
global nuclear war.

Clausewitz long ago detailed the inescapable connection between national
political objectives and military force and strategy. Under this thinking, if
nuclear weapons had no relation to practical military strategy, then they were
necessarily disconnected (at least in the Clausewitzian sense) from -- and could
not be integrated with -- national and political objectives in a coherent
fashion. True to the theory, despite ebbs and flows in the nuclear arms race,
for 64 years, no one has found a good reason to detonate a nuclear bomb.

By this line of reasoning, STRATFOR is not suggesting that complete nuclear
disarmament -- or "getting to zero" -- is either possible or likely. The nuclear
genie can never be put back in the bottle. The idea that the world could ever
remain nuclear-free is untenable. The potential for clandestine and crash
nuclear programs will remain a reality of the international system, and the
world's nuclear powers are unlikely ever to trust the rest of the system enough
to completely surrender their own strategic deterrents.

Legacy, Peer and Bargaining Programs

The countries in the world today with nuclear weapons programs can be divided
into three main categories.

Legacy Programs: This category comprises countries like the United Kingdom and
France that maintain small arsenals even after the end of the threat they
acquired them for; in this case, to stave off a Soviet invasion of Western
Europe. In the last few years, both London and Paris have decided to sustain
their small arsenals in some form for the foreseeable future. This category is
also important for highlighting the unlikelihood that a country will surrender
its weapons after it has acquired them (the only exceptions being South Africa
and several Soviet Republics that repatriated their weapons back to Russia after
the Soviet collapse).
Peer Programs: The original peer program belonged to the Soviet Union, which
aggressively and ruthlessly pursued a nuclear weapons capacity following the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 because its peer competitor, the
United States, had them. The Pakistani and Indian nuclear programs also can be
understood as peer programs.
Bargaining Programs: These programs are about the threat of developing nuclear
weapons, a strategy that involves quite a bit of tightrope walking to make the
threat of acquiring nuclear weapons appear real and credible while at the same
time not making it appear so urgent as to require military intervention.
Pyongyang pioneered this strategy, and has wielded it deftly over the years. As
North Korea continues to progress with its efforts, however, it will shift from
a bargaining chip to an actual program -- one it will be unlikely to surrender
once it acquires weapons, like London and Paris. Iran also falls into this
category, though it could also progress to a more substantial program if it gets
far enough along. Though parts of its program are indeed clandestine, other
parts are actually highly publicized and celebrated as milestones, both to
continue to highlight progress internationally and for purposes of domestic
consumption. Indeed, manipulating the international community with a nuclear
weapon -- or even a civilian nuclear program -- has proved to be a rare instance
of the utility of nuclear weapons beyond simple deterrence.

The Challenges of a Nuclear Weapons Program

Pursuing a nuclear weapons program is not without its risks. Another important
distinction is that between a crude nuclear device and an actual weapon. The
former requires only that a country demonstrate the capability to initiate an
uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, creating a rather large hole in the ground.
That device may be crude, fragile or otherwise temperamental. But this does not
automatically imply the capability to mount a rugged and reliable nuclear
warhead on a delivery vehicle and send it flying to the other side of the earth.
In other words, it does not immediately translate into a meaningful deterrent.

For that, a ruggedized, reliable nuclear weapon must be mated with some manner
of reliable delivery vehicle to have real military meaning. After the end of
World War II, the B-29's limited range and the few nuclear weapons the United
States had on hand meant that its vaunted nuclear arsenal was initially
extremely difficult to bring to bear against the Soviet heartland. The United
States would spend untold resources to overcome this obstacle in the decade that
followed.

The modern nuclear weapon is not just a product of physics, but of decades of
design work and full-scale nuclear testing. It combines expertise not just in
nuclear physics, but materials science, rocketry, missile guidance and the like.
A nuclear device does not come easy. A nuclear weapon is one of the most
advanced syntheses of complex technologies ever achieved by man.

Many dangers exist for an aspiring nuclear power. Many of the facilities
associated with a clandestine nuclear weapons program are large, fixed and
complex. They are vulnerable to airstrikes -- as Syria found in 2007. (And
though history shows that nuclear weapons are unlikely to be employed, it is
still in the interests of other powers to deny that capability to a potential
adversary.)

The history of proliferation shows that few countries actually ever decide to
pursue nuclear weapons. Obtaining them requires immense investment (and the more
clandestine the attempt, the more costly the program becomes), and the ability
to focus and coordinate a major national undertaking over time. It is not
something a leader like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez could decide to pursue on a
whim. A national government must have cohesion over the long span of time
necessary to go from the foundations of a weapons program to a meaningful
deterrent capability.

The Exceptions

In addition to this sustained commitment must be the willingness to be suspected
by the international community and endure pariah status and isolation -- in and
of themselves significant risks for even moderately integrated economies. One
must also have reasonable means of deterring a pre-emptive strike by a competing
power. A Venezuelan weapons program is therefore unlikely because the United
States would act decisively the moment one was discovered, and there is little
Venezuela could do to deter such action.

North Korea, on the other hand, has held downtown Seoul (just across the
demilitarized zone) at risk for generations with one of the highest
concentrations of deployed artillery, artillery rockets and short-range
ballistic missiles on the planet. From the outside, Pyongyang is perceived as
unpredictable enough that any potential pre-emptive strike on its nuclear
facilities is too risky not because of some newfound nuclear capability, but
because of Pyongyang's capability to turn the South Korean capital city into a
proverbial "sea of fire" via conventional means. A nuclear North Korea, the
world has now seen, is not sufficient alone to risk renewed war on the Korean
Peninsula.

Iran is similarly defended. It can threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, to
launch a barrage of medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel, and to use its
proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere to respond with a new campaign of artillery
rocket fire, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. But the biggest deterrent to a
strike on Iran is Tehran's ability to seriously interfere in ongoing U.S.
efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- efforts already tenuous enough without direct
Iranian opposition.

In other words, some other deterrent (be it conventional or unconventional)
against attack is a prerequisite for a nuclear program, since powerful potential
adversaries can otherwise move to halt such efforts. North Korea and Iran have
such deterrents. Most other countries widely considered major proliferation
dangers -- Iraq before 2003, Syria or Venezuela, for example -- do not. And that
fundamental deterrent remains in place after the country acquires nuclear
weapons.

In short, no one was going to invade North Korea -- or even launch limited
military strikes against it -- before its first nuclear test in 2006. And no one
will do so now, nor will they do so after its next test. So North Korea with
or without nuclear weapons remains secure from invasion. With or without
nuclear weapons, North Korea remains a pariah state, isolated from the
international community. And with or without them, the world will go on.

The Global Nuclear Dynamic

Despite how frantic the pace of nuclear proliferation may seem at the moment,
the true pace of the global nuclear dynamic is slowing profoundly. With the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty already effectively in place (though it has not
been ratified), the pace of nuclear weapons development has already slowed and
stabilized dramatically. The world's current nuclear powers are reliant to some
degree on the generation of weapons that were validated and certified before
testing was banned. They are currently working toward weapons and force
structures that will provide them with a stable, sustainable deterrent for the
foreseeable future rooted largely in this pre-existing weapons architecture.

New additions to the nuclear club are always cause for concern. But though North
Korea's nuclear program continues apace, it hardly threatens to shift underlying
geopolitical realities. It may encourage the United States to retain a slightly
larger arsenal to reassure Japan and South Korea about the credibility of its
nuclear umbrella. It also could encourage Tokyo and Seoul to pursue their own
weapons. But none of these shifts, though significant, is likely to alter the
defining military, economic and political dynamics of the region fundamentally.

Nuclear arms are better understood as an insurance policy, one that no potential
aggressor has any intention of steering afoul of. Without practical military or
political use, they remain held in reserve -- where in all likelihood they will
remain for the foreseeable future.
Although North Korea's nuclear weapons program continues to be a work in progress, the event is inherently significant. North Korea has carried out the only two nuclear detonations the world has seen in the 21st century. (The most recent tests prior to that were the spate of tests by India and Pakistan in 1998.) Details continue to emerge through the analysis of seismographic and other data, and speculation about the precise nature of the atomic device that Pyongyang may now posses carries on, making this a good moment to examine the underlying reality of nuclear weapons. Examining their history, and the lessons that can be drawn from that history, will help us understand what it will really mean if North Korea does indeed join the nuclear club. Nuclear Weapons in the 20th Century Even before an atomic bomb was first detonated on July 16, 1945, both the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project and the U.S. military struggled with the implications of the science that they pursued. But ultimately, they were driven by a profound sense of urgency to complete the program in time to affect the outcome of the war, meaning understanding the implications of the atomic bomb was largely a luxury that would have to wait. Even after World War II ended, the frantic pace of the Cold War kept pushing weapons development forward at a break-neck pace. This meant that in their early days, atomic weapons were probably more advanced than the understanding of their moral and practical utility. But the promise of nuclear weapons was immense. If appropriate delivery systems could be designed and built, and armed with more powerful nuclear warheads, a nation could continually threaten another country's very means of existence: its people, industry, military installations and governmental institutions. Battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons would make the massing of military formations suicidal -- or so military planners once thought. What seemed clear early on was that nuclear weapons had fundamentally changed everything. War was thought to have been made obsolete, simply too dangerous and too destructive to contemplate. Some of the most brilliant minds of the Manhattan Project talked of how atomic weapons made world government necessary. But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the advent of the nuclear age is how little actually changed. Great power competition continued apace (despite a new, bilateral dynamic). The Soviets blockaded Berlin for nearly a year starting in 1948, in defiance of what was then the world's sole nuclear power: the United States. Likewise, the United States refused to use nuclear weapons in the Korean War (despite the pleas of Gen. Douglas MacArthur) even as Chinese divisions surged across the Yalu River, overwhelming U.S., South Korean and allied forces and driving them back south, reversing the rapid gains of late 1950. Again and again, the situations nuclear weapons were supposed to deter occurred. The military realities they would supposedly shift simply persisted. Thus, the United States lost in Vietnam. The Syrians and the Egyptians invaded Israel in 1973 (despite knowing that the Israelis had acquired nuclear weapons by that point). The Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan went to war in 1999 -- and nearly went to war twice after that. In none of these cases was it judged appropriate to risk employing nuclear weapons -- nor was it clear what utility they might have. Enduring Geopolitical Stability Wars of immense risk are born of desperation. In World War II, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan took immense geostrategic gambles -- and lost -- but knowingly took the risk because of untenable geopolitical circumstances. By comparison, the postwar United States and Soviet Union were geopolitically secure. Washington had come into its own as a global power secured by the buffer of two oceans, while Moscow enjoyed the greatest strategic depth it had ever known. The U.S.-Soviet competition was, of course, intense, from the nuclear arms race to the space race to countless proxy wars. Yet underlying it was a fear that the other side would engage in a war that was on its face irrational. Western Europe promised the Soviet Union immense material wealth but would likely have been impossible to subdue. (Why should a Soviet leader expect to succeed where Napoleon and Hitler had failed?) Even without nuclear weapons in the calculus, the cost to the Soviets was too great, and fears of the Soviet invasion of Europe along the North European Plain were overblown. The desperation that caused Germany to seek control over Europe twice in the first half of the 20th century simply did not characterize either the Soviet or U.S. geopolitical position even without nuclear weapons in play. It was within this context that the concept of mutually assured destruction emerged -- the idea that each side would possess sufficient retaliatory capability to inflict a devastating "second strike" in the event of even a surprise nuclear attack. Through it all, the metrics of nuclear warfare became more intricate. Throw weights and penetration rates were calculated and recalculated. Targets were assigned and reassigned. A single city would begin to have multiple target points, each with multiple strategic warheads allocated to its destruction. Theorists and strategists would talk of successful scenarios for first strikes. But only in the Cuban Missile Crisis did the two sides really threaten one another's fundamental national interests. There were certainly other moments when the world inched toward the nuclear brink. But each time, the global system found its balance, and there was little cause or incentive for political leaders on either side of the Iron Curtain to so fundamentally alter the status quo as to risk direct military confrontation -- much less nuclear war. So through it all, the world carried on, its fundamental dynamics unchanged by the ever-present threat of nuclear war. Indeed, history has shown that once a country has acquired nuclear weapons, the weapons fail to have any real impact on the country's regional standing or pursuit of power in the international system. Thus, not only were nuclear weapons never used in even desperate combat situations, their acquisition failed to entail any meaningful shift in geopolitical position. Even as the United Kingdom acquired nuclear weapons in the 1950s, its colonial empire crumbled. The Soviet Union was behaving aggressively all along its periphery before it acquired nuclear weapons. And the Soviet Union had the largest nuclear arsenal in the world when it collapsed -- not only despite its arsenal, but in part because the economic burden of creating and maintaining it was unsustainable. Today, nuclear-armed France and non-nuclear armed Germany vie for dominance on the Continent with no regard for France's small nuclear arsenal. The Intersection of Weapons, Strategy and Politics This August will mark 64 years since any nation used a nuclear weapon in combat. What was supposed to be the ultimate weapon has proved too risky and too inappropriate as a weapon ever to see the light of day again. Though nuclear weapons certainly played a role in the strategic calculus of the Cold War, they had no relation to a military strategy that anyone could seriously contemplate. Militaries, of course, had war plans and scenarios and target sets. But outside this world of role-play Armageddon, neither side was about to precipitate a global nuclear war. Clausewitz long ago detailed the inescapable connection between national political objectives and military force and strategy. Under this thinking, if nuclear weapons had no relation to practical military strategy, then they were necessarily disconnected (at least in the Clausewitzian sense) from -- and could not be integrated with -- national and political objectives in a coherent fashion. True to the theory, despite ebbs and flows in the nuclear arms race, for 64 years, no one has found a good reason to detonate a nuclear bomb. By this line of reasoning, STRATFOR is not suggesting that complete nuclear disarmament -- or "getting to zero" -- is either possible or likely. The nuclear genie can never be put back in the bottle. The idea that the world could ever remain nuclear-free is untenable. The potential for clandestine and crash nuclear programs will remain a reality of the international system, and the world's nuclear powers are unlikely ever to trust the rest of the system enough to completely surrender their own strategic deterrents. Legacy, Peer and Bargaining Programs The countries in the world today with nuclear weapons programs can be divided into three main categories. Legacy Programs: This category comprises countries like the United Kingdom and France that maintain small arsenals even after the end of the threat they acquired them for; in this case, to stave off a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. In the last few years, both London and Paris have decided to sustain their small arsenals in some form for the foreseeable future. This category is also important for highlighting the unlikelihood that a country will surrender its weapons after it has acquired them (the only exceptions being South Africa and several Soviet Republics that repatriated their weapons back to Russia after the Soviet collapse). Peer Programs: The original peer program belonged to the Soviet Union, which aggressively and ruthlessly pursued a nuclear weapons capacity following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 because its peer competitor, the United States, had them. The Pakistani and Indian nuclear programs also can be understood as peer programs. Bargaining Programs: These programs are about the threat of developing nuclear weapons, a strategy that involves quite a bit of tightrope walking to make the threat of acquiring nuclear weapons appear real and credible while at the same time not making it appear so urgent as to require military intervention. Pyongyang pioneered this strategy, and has wielded it deftly over the years. As North Korea continues to progress with its efforts, however, it will shift from a bargaining chip to an actual program -- one it will be unlikely to surrender once it acquires weapons, like London and Paris. Iran also falls into this category, though it could also progress to a more substantial program if it gets far enough along. Though parts of its program are indeed clandestine, other parts are actually highly publicized and celebrated as milestones, both to continue to highlight progress internationally and for purposes of domestic consumption. Indeed, manipulating the international community with a nuclear weapon -- or even a civilian nuclear program -- has proved to be a rare instance of the utility of nuclear weapons beyond simple deterrence. The Challenges of a Nuclear Weapons Program Pursuing a nuclear weapons program is not without its risks. Another important distinction is that between a crude nuclear device and an actual weapon. The former requires only that a country demonstrate the capability to initiate an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, creating a rather large hole in the ground. That device may be crude, fragile or otherwise temperamental. But this does not automatically imply the capability to mount a rugged and reliable nuclear warhead on a delivery vehicle and send it flying to the other side of the earth. In other words, it does not immediately translate into a meaningful deterrent. For that, a ruggedized, reliable nuclear weapon must be mated with some manner of reliable delivery vehicle to have real military meaning. After the end of World War II, the B-29's limited range and the few nuclear weapons the United States had on hand meant that its vaunted nuclear arsenal was initially extremely difficult to bring to bear against the Soviet heartland. The United States would spend untold resources to overcome this obstacle in the decade that followed. The modern nuclear weapon is not just a product of physics, but of decades of design work and full-scale nuclear testing. It combines expertise not just in nuclear physics, but materials science, rocketry, missile guidance and the like. A nuclear device does not come easy. A nuclear weapon is one of the most advanced syntheses of complex technologies ever achieved by man. Many dangers exist for an aspiring nuclear power. Many of the facilities associated with a clandestine nuclear weapons program are large, fixed and complex. They are vulnerable to airstrikes -- as Syria found in 2007. (And though history shows that nuclear weapons are unlikely to be employed, it is still in the interests of other powers to deny that capability to a potential adversary.) The history of proliferation shows that few countries actually ever decide to pursue nuclear weapons. Obtaining them requires immense investment (and the more clandestine the attempt, the more costly the program becomes), and the ability to focus and coordinate a major national undertaking over time. It is not something a leader like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez could decide to pursue on a whim. A national government must have cohesion over the long span of time necessary to go from the foundations of a weapons program to a meaningful deterrent capability. The Exceptions In addition to this sustained commitment must be the willingness to be suspected by the international community and endure pariah status and isolation -- in and of themselves significant risks for even moderately integrated economies. One must also have reasonable means of deterring a pre-emptive strike by a competing power. A Venezuelan weapons program is therefore unlikely because the United States would act decisively the moment one was discovered, and there is little Venezuela could do to deter such action. North Korea, on the other hand, has held downtown Seoul (just across the demilitarized zone) at risk for generations with one of the highest concentrations of deployed artillery, artillery rockets and short-range ballistic missiles on the planet. From the outside, Pyongyang is perceived as unpredictable enough that any potential pre-emptive strike on its nuclear facilities is too risky not because of some newfound nuclear capability, but because of Pyongyang's capability to turn the South Korean capital city into a proverbial "sea of fire" via conventional means. A nuclear North Korea, the world has now seen, is not sufficient alone to risk renewed war on the Korean Peninsula. Iran is similarly defended. It can threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, to launch a barrage of medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel, and to use its proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere to respond with a new campaign of artillery rocket fire, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. But the biggest deterrent to a strike on Iran is Tehran's ability to seriously interfere in ongoing U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- efforts already tenuous enough without direct Iranian opposition. In other words, some other deterrent (be it conventional or unconventional) against attack is a prerequisite for a nuclear program, since powerful potential adversaries can otherwise move to halt such efforts. North Korea and Iran have such deterrents. Most other countries widely considered major proliferation dangers -- Iraq before 2003, Syria or Venezuela, for example -- do not. And that fundamental deterrent remains in place after the country acquires nuclear weapons. In short, no one was going to invade North Korea -- or even launch limited military strikes against it -- before its first nuclear test in 2006. And no one will do so now, nor will they do so after its next test. So North Korea – with or without nuclear weapons – remains secure from invasion. With or without nuclear weapons, North Korea remains a pariah state, isolated from the international community. And with or without them, the world will go on. The Global Nuclear Dynamic Despite how frantic the pace of nuclear proliferation may seem at the moment, the true pace of the global nuclear dynamic is slowing profoundly. With the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty already effectively in place (though it has not been ratified), the pace of nuclear weapons development has already slowed and stabilized dramatically. The world's current nuclear powers are reliant to some degree on the generation of weapons that were validated and certified before testing was banned. They are currently working toward weapons and force structures that will provide them with a stable, sustainable deterrent for the foreseeable future rooted largely in this pre-existing weapons architecture. New additions to the nuclear club are always cause for concern. But though North Korea's nuclear program continues apace, it hardly threatens to shift underlying geopolitical realities. It may encourage the United States to retain a slightly larger arsenal to reassure Japan and South Korea about the credibility of its nuclear umbrella. It also could encourage Tokyo and Seoul to pursue their own weapons. But none of these shifts, though significant, is likely to alter the defining military, economic and political dynamics of the region fundamentally. Nuclear arms are better understood as an insurance policy, one that no potential aggressor has any intention of steering afoul of. Without practical military or political use, they remain held in reserve -- where in all likelihood they will remain for the foreseeable future.

AN ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER COMES TO WASHINGTON AGAIN

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:29:00 +0000

By George Friedman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington for his first official visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. A range of issues -- including the future of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israeli-Syrian talks and Iran policy -- are on the table. This is one of an endless series of meetings between U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers over the years, many of which concerned these same issues. Yet little has changed. That Israel has a new prime minister and the United States a new president might appear to make this meeting significant. But this is Netanyahu's second time as prime minister, and his government is as diverse and fractious as most recent Israeli governments. Israeli politics are in gridlock, with deep divisions along multiple fault lines and an electoral system designed to magnify disagreements. Obama is much stronger politically, but he has consistently acted with caution, particularly in the foreign policy arena. Much of his foreign policy follows from the Bush administration. He has made no major breaks in foreign policy beyond rhetoric; his policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Europe are essentially extensions of pre-existing policy. Obama faces major economic problems in the United States and clearly is not looking for major changes in foreign policy. He understands how quickly public sentiment can change, and he does not plan to take risks he does not have to take right now. This, then, is the problem: Netanyahu is coming to Washington hoping to get Obama to agree to fundamental redefinitions of the regional dynamic. For example, he wants Obama to re-examine the commitment to a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. (Netanyahu's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has said Israel is no longer bound by prior commitments to that concept.) Netanyahu also wants the United States to commit itself to a finite time frame for talks with Iran, after which unspecified but ominous-sounding actions are to be taken. Facing a major test in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama has more than enough to deal with at the moment. Moreover, U.S. presidents who get involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations frequently get sucked into a morass from which they do not return. For Netanyahu to even request that the White House devote attention to the Israeli-Palestinian problem at present is asking a lot. Asking for a complete review of the peace process is even less realistic. Obstacles to the Two-State Solution The foundation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for years has been the assumption that there would be a two-state solution. Such a solution has not materialized for a host of reasons. First, at present there are two Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, which are hostile to each other. Second, the geography and economy of any Palestinian state would be so reliant on Israel that independence would be meaningless; geography simply makes the two-state proposal almost impossible to implement. Third, no Palestinian government would have the power to guarantee that rogue elements would not launch rockets at Israel, potentially striking at the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor, Israel's heartland. And fourth, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have the domestic political coherence to allow any negotiator to operate from a position of confidence. Whatever the two sides negotiated would be revised and destroyed by their political opponents, and even their friends. For this reason, the entire peace process -- including the two-state solution -- is a chimera. Neither side can live with what the other can offer. But if it is a fiction, it is a fiction that serves U.S. purposes. The United States has interests that go well beyond Israeli interests and sometimes go in a different direction altogether. Like Israel, the United States understands that one of the major obstacles to any serious evolution toward a two-state solution is Arab hostility to such an outcome. The Jordanians have feared and loathed Fatah in the West Bank ever since the Black September uprisings of 1970. The ruling Hashemites are ethnically different from the Palestinians (who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Jordanian population), and they fear that a Palestinian state under Fatah would threaten the Jordanian monarchy. For their part, the Egyptians see Hamas as a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the Mubarak government's ouster -- meaning Cairo would hate to see a Hamas-led state. Meanwhile, the Saudis and the other Arab states do not wish to see a radical altering of the status quo, which would likely come about with the rise of a Palestinian polity. At the same time, whatever the basic strategic interests of the Arab regimes, all pay lip service to the principle of Palestinian statehood. This is hardly a unique situation. States frequently claim to favor various things they actually are either indifferent to or have no intention of doing anything about. Complicating matters for the Arab states is the fact that they have substantial populations that do care about the fate of the Palestinians. These states thus are caught between public passion on behalf of Palestinians and the regimes' interests that are threatened by the Palestinian cause. The states' challenge, accordingly, is to appear to be doing something on behalf of the Palestinians while in fact doing nothing. The United States has a vested interest in the preservation of these states. The futures of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are of vital importance to Washington. The United States must therefore simultaneously publicly demonstrate its sensitivity to pressures from these nations over the Palestinian question while being careful to achieve nothing -- an easy enough goal to achieve. The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served U.S. and Arab interests quite well. They provide the illusion of activity, with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions -- all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again. The Palestinian Peace Process as Political Theater One of the most important proposals Netanyahu is bringing to Obama calls for reshaping the peace process. If Israeli President Shimon Peres is to be believed, Netanyahu will not back away from the two-state formula. Instead, the Israeli prime minister is asking that the various Arab state stakeholders become directly involved in the negotiations. In other words, Netanyahu is proposing that Arab states with very different public and private positions on Palestinian statehood be asked to participate -- thereby forcing them to reveal publicly their true positions, ultimately creating internal political crises in the Arab states. The clever thing about this position is that Netanyahu not only knows his request will not become a reality, but he also does not want it to become a reality. The political stability of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is as much an Israeli interest as an American one. Indeed, Israel even wants a stable Syria, since whatever would come after the Alawite regime in Damascus would be much more dangerous to Israeli security than the current Syrian regime. Overall, Israel is a conservative power. In terms of nation-states, it does not want upheaval; it is quite content with the current regimes in the Arab world. But Netanyahu would love to see an international conference with the Arab states roundly condemning Israel publicly. This would shore up the justification for Netanyahu's policies domestically while simultaneously creating a framework for reshaping world opinion by showing an Israel isolated among hostile states. Obama is likely hearing through diplomatic channels from the Arab countries that they do not want to participate directly in the Palestinian peace process. And the United States really does not want them there, either. The peace process normally ends in a train wreck anyway, and Obama is in no hurry to see the wreckage. He will want to insulate other allies from the fallout, putting off the denouement of the peace process as long as possible. Obama has sent George Mitchell as his Middle East special envoy to deal with the issue, and from the U.S. president's point of view, that is quite enough attention to the problem. Netanyahu, of course, knows all this. Part of his mission is simply convincing his ruling coalition -- and particularly Lieberman, whom Netanyahu needs to survive, and who is by far Israel's most aggressive foreign minister ever -- that he is committed to redefining the entire Israeli-Palestinian relationship. But in a broader context, Netanyahu is looking for greater freedom of action. By posing a demand the United States will not grant, Israel is positioning itself to ask for something that appears smaller. Israel and the Appearance of Freedom of Action What Israel actually would do with greater freedom of action is far less important than simply creating the appearance that the United States has endorsed Israel's ability to act in a new and unpredictable manner. From Israel's point of view, the problem with Israeli-Palestinian relations is that Israel is under severe constraints from the United States, and the Palestinians know it. This means that the Palestinians can even anticipate the application of force by Israel, meaning they can prepare for it and endure it. From Netanyahu's point of view, Israel's primary problem is that the Palestinians are confident they know what the Israelis will do. If Netanyahu can get Obama to introduce a degree of ambiguity into the situation, Israel could regain the advantage of uncertainty. The problem for Netanyahu is that Washington is not interested in having anything unpredictable happen in Israeli-Palestinian relations. The United States is quite content with the current situation, particularly while Iraq becomes more stable and the Afghan situation remains unstable. Obama does not want a crisis from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. The fact that Netanyahu has a political coalition to satisfy will not interest the United States, and while Washington at some unspecified point might endorse a peace conference, it will not be until Israel and its foreign minister endorse the two-state formula. Netanyahu will then shift to another area where freedom of action is relevant -- namely, Iran. The Israelis have leaked to the Israeli media that the Obama administration has told them that Israel may not attack Iran without U.S. permission, and that Israel agreed to this requirement. (U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went through the same routine not too long ago, using a good cop/bad cop act in a bid to kick-start negotiations with Iran.) In reality, Israel would have a great deal of difficulty attacking Iranian facilities with non-nuclear forces. A multitarget campaign 1,000 miles away against an enemy with some air defenses could be a long and complex operation. Such a raid would require a long trip through U.S.-controlled airspace for the fairly small Israeli air force. Israel could use cruise missiles, but the tonnage of high explosive delivered by a cruise missile cannot penetrate even moderately hardened structures; the same is true for ICBMs carrying conventional warheads. Israel would have to notify the United States of its intentions because it would be passing through Iraqi airspace -- and because U.S. technical intelligence would know what it was up to before Israeli aircraft even took off. The idea that Israel might consider attacking Iran without informing Washington is therefore absurd on the surface. Even so, the story has surfaced yet again in an Israeli newspaper in a virtual carbon copy of stories published more than a year ago. Netanyahu has promised that the endless stalemate with the Palestinians will not be allowed to continue. He also knows that whatever happens, Israel cannot threaten the stability of Arab states that are by and large uninterested in the Palestinians. He also understands that in the long run, Israel's freedom of action is defined by the United States, not by Israel. His electoral platform and his strategic realities have never aligned. Arguably, it might be in the Israeli interest that the status quo be disrupted, but it is not in the American interest. Netanyahu therefore will get to redefine neither the Palestinian situation nor the Iranian situation. Israel simply lacks the power to impose the reality it wants, the current constellation of Arab regimes it needs, and the strategic relationship with the United States on which Israeli national security rests. In the end, this is a classic study in the limits of power. Israel can have its freedom of action anytime it is willing to pay the price for it. But Israel can't pay the price. Netanyahu is coming to Washington to see if he can get what he wants without paying the price, and we suspect strongly he knows he won't get it. His problem is the same as that of the Arab states. There are many in Israel, particularly among Netanyahu's supporters, who believe Israel is a great power. It isn't. It is a nation that is strong partly because it lives in a pretty weak neighborhood, and partly because it has very strong friends. Many Israelis don't want to be told that, and Netanyahu came to office playing on the sense of Israeli national power. So the peace process will continue, no one will expect anything from it, the Palestinians will remain isolated and wars regularly will break out. The only advantage of this situation from the U.S. point of view it is that it is preferable to all other available realities.

THE STRATEGIC DEBATE OVER AFGHANISTAN

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:00:00 +0000

By George Friedman 
 
After U.S. airstrikes killed scores of civilians in western Afghanistan this 
past week, White House National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones said the 
United States would continue with the airstrikes and would not tie the hands of 
U.S. generals fighting in Afghanistan. At the same time, U.S. Central Command 
chief Gen. David Petraeus has cautioned against using tactics that undermine 
strategic U.S. goals in Afghanistan -- raising the question of what exactly are 
the U.S. strategic goals in Afghanistan. A debate inside the U.S. camp has 
emerged over this very question, the outcome of which is likely to determine the 
future of the region. 
 
On one side are President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a 
substantial amount of the U.S. Army leadership. On the other side are Petraeus 
-- the architect of U.S. strategy in Iraq after 2006 -- and his staff and 
supporters. An Army general -- even one with four stars -- is unlikely to 
overcome a president and a defense secretary; even the five-star Gen. Douglas 
MacArthur couldn't pull that off. But the Afghan debate is important, and it 
provides us with a sense of future U.S. strategy in the region. 
 
Petraeus and U.S. Strategy in Iraq 
 
Petraeus took over effective command of coalition forces in Iraq in 2006. Two 
things framed his strategy. One was the Republican defeat in the 2006 midterm 
congressional elections, which many saw as a referendum on the Iraq war. The 
second was the report by the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group of elder 
statesmen (including Gates) that recommended some fundamental changes in how the 
war was fought. 
 
The expectation in November 2006 was that as U.S. President George W. Bush's 
strategy had been repudiated, his only option was to begin withdrawing troops. 
Even if Bush didn't begin this process, it was expected that his successor in 
two years certainly would have to do so. The situation was out of control, and 
U.S. forces did not seem able to assert control. The goals of the 2003 invasion, 
which were to create a pro-American regime in Baghdad, redefine the political 
order of Iraq and use Iraq as a base of operations against hostile regimes in 
the region, were unattainable. It did not seem possible to create any coherent 
regime in Baghdad at all, given that a complex civil war was under way that the 
United States did not seem able to contain. 
 
Most important, groups in Iraq believed that the United States would be leaving. 
Therefore, political alliance with the United States made no sense, as U.S. 
guarantees would be made moot by withdrawal. The expectation of an American 
withdrawal sapped U.S. political influence, while the breadth of the civil war 
and its complexity exhausted the U.S. Army. Defeat had been psychologically 
locked in. 
 
Bush's decision to launch a surge of forces in Iraq was less a military event 
than a psychological one. Militarily, the quantity of forces to be inserted -- 
some 30,000 on top of a force of 120,000 -- did not change the basic metrics of 
war in a country of about 29 million. Moreover, the insertion of additional 
troops was far from a surge; they trickled in over many months. Psychologically, 
however, it was stunning. Rather than commence withdrawals as so many expected, 
the United States was actually increasing its forces. The issue was not whether 
the United States could defeat all of the insurgents and militias; that was not 
possible. The issue was that because the United States was not leaving, the 
United States was not irrelevant. If the United States was not irrelevant, then 
at least some American guarantees could have meaning. And that made the United 
States a political actor in Iraq. 
 
Petraeus combined the redeployment of some troops with an active political 
program. At the heart of this program was reaching out to the Sunni insurgents, 
who had been among the most violent opponents of the United States during 
2003-2006. The Sunni insurgents represented the traditional leadership of the 
mainstream Sunni tribes, clans and villages. The U.S. policy of stripping the 
Sunnis of all power in 2003 and apparently leaving a vacuum to be filled by the 
Shia had left the Sunnis in a desperate situation, and they had moved to 
resistance as guerrillas. 
 
The Sunnis actually were trapped by three forces. First, there were the 
Americans, always pressing on the Sunnis even if they could not crush them. 
Second, there were the militias of the Shia, a group that the Sunni Saddam 
Hussein had repressed and that now was suspicious of all Sunnis. Third, there 
were the jihadists, a foreign legion of Sunni fighters drawn to Iraq under the 
banner of al Qaeda. In many ways, the jihadists posed the greatest threat to the 
mainstream Sunnis, since they wanted to seize leadership of the Sunni 
communities and radicalize them. 
 
U.S. policy under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been unbending 
hostility to the Sunni insurgency. The policy under Gates and Petraeus after 
2006 -- and it must be understood that they developed this strategy jointly -- 
was to offer the Sunnis a way out of their three-pronged trap. Because the 
United States would be staying in Iraq, it could offer the Sunnis protection 
against both the jihadists and the Shia. And because the surge convinced the 
Sunnis that the United States was not going to withdraw, they took the deal. 
Petraeus' great achievement was presiding over the U.S.-Sunni negotiations and 
eventual understanding, and then using that to pressure the Shiite militias with 
the implicit threat of a U.S.-Sunni entente. The Shia subsequently and painfully 
shifted their position to accepting a coalition government, the mainstream 
Sunnis helped break the back of the jihadists and the civil war subsided, 
allowing the United States to stage a withdrawal under much more favorable 
circumstances. 
 
This was a much better outcome than most would have thought possible in 2006. It 
was, however, an outcome that fell far short of American strategic goals of 
2003. The current government in Baghdad is far from pro-American and is unlikely 
to be an ally of the United States; keeping it from becoming an Iranian tool 
would be the best outcome for the United States at this point. The United States 
certainly is not about to reshape Iraqi society, and Iraq is not likely to be a 
long-term base for U.S. offensive operations in the region. 
 
Gates and Petraeus produced what was likely the best possible outcome under the 
circumstances. They created the framework for a U.S. withdrawal in a context 
other than a chaotic civil war, they created a coalition government, and they 
appear to have blocked Iranian influence in Iraq. But these achievements remain 
uncertain. The civil war could resume. The coalition government might collapse. 
The Iranians might become the dominant force in Baghdad. But these unknowns are 
enormously better than the outcomes expected in 2006. At the same time, 
snatching uncertainty from the jaws of defeat is not the same as victory. 
 
Afghanistan and Lessons from Iraq 
 
Petraeus is arguing that the strategy pursued in Iraq should be used as a 
blueprint in Afghanistan, and it appears that Obama and Gates have raised a 
number of important questions in response. Is the Iraqi solution really so 
desirable? If it is desirable, can it be replicated in Afghanistan? What level 
of U.S. commitment would be required in Afghanistan, and what would this cost in 
terms of vulnerabilities elsewhere in the world? And finally, what exactly is 
the U.S. goal in Afghanistan? 
 
In Iraq, Gates and Petraeus sought to create a coalition government that, 
regardless of its nature, would facilitate a U.S. withdrawal. Obama and Gates 
have stated that the goal in Afghanistan is the defeat of al Qaeda and the 
denial of bases for the group in Afghanistan. This is a very different strategic 
goal than in Iraq, because this goal does not require a coalition government or 
a reconciliation of political elements. Rather, it requires an agreement with 
one entity: the Taliban. If the Taliban agree to block al Qaeda operations in 
Afghanistan, the United States will have achieved its goal. Therefore, the 
challenge in Afghanistan is using U.S. power to give the Taliban what they want 
-- a return to power -- in exchange for a settlement on the al Qaeda question. 
 
In Iraq, the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds all held genuine political and military 
power. In Afghanistan, the Americans and the Taliban have this power, though 
many other players have derivative power from the United States. Afghan 
President Hamid Karzai is not Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; where 
al-Maliki had his own substantial political base, Karzai is someone the 
Americans invented to become a focus for power in the future. But the future has 
not come. The complexities of Iraq made a coalition government possible there, 
but in many ways, Afghanistan is both simpler and more complex. The country has 
a multiplicity of groups, but in the end only one insurgency that counts. 
 
Petraeus argues that the U.S. strategic goal -- blocking al Qaeda in Afghanistan 
-- cannot be achieved simply through an agreement with the Taliban. In this 
view, the Taliban are not nearly as divided as some argue, and therefore their 
factions cannot be played against each other. Moreover, the Taliban cannot be 
trusted to keep their word even if they give it, which is not likely. 
 
From Petraeus' view, Gates and Obama are creating the situation that existed in 
pre-surge Iraq. Rather than stunning Afghanistan psychologically with the idea 
that the United States is staying, thereby causing all the parties to reconsider 
their positions, Obama and Gates have done the opposite. They have made it clear 
that Washington has placed severe limits on its willingness to invest in 
Afghanistan, and made it appear that the United States is overly eager to make a 
deal with the one group that does not need a deal: the Taliban. 
 
Gates and Obama have pointed out that there is a factor in Afghanistan for which 
there was no parallel in Iraq -- namely, Pakistan. While Iran was a factor in 
the Iraqi civil war, the Taliban are as much a Pakistani phenomenon as an Afghan 
one, and the Pakistanis are neither willing nor able to deny the Taliban 
sanctuary and lines of supply. So long as Pakistan is in the condition it is in 
-- and Pakistan likely will stay that way for a long time -- the Taliban have 
time on their side and no reason to split, and are likely to negotiate only on 
their terms. 
 
There is also a military fear. Petraeus brought U.S. troops closer to the 
population in Iraq, and he is doing this in Afghanistan as well. U.S. forces in 
Afghanistan are deployed in firebases. These relatively isolated positions are 
vulnerable to massed Taliban forces. U.S. airpower can destroy these 
concentrations, so long as they are detected in time and attacked before they 
close in on the firebases. Ominously for the United States, the Taliban do not 
seem to have committed anywhere near the majority of their forces to the 
campaign. 
 
This military concern is combined with real questions about the endgame. Gates 
and Obama are not convinced that the endgame in Iraq, perhaps the best outcome 
that was possible there, is actually all that desirable for Afghanistan. In 
Afghanistan, this outcome would leave the Taliban in power in the end. No amount 
of U.S. troops could match the Taliban's superior intelligence capability, their 
knowledge of the countryside and their willingness to take casualties in 
pursuing their ends, and every Afghan security force would be filled with 
Taliban agents. 
 
And there is a deeper issue yet that Gates has referred to: the Russian 
experience in Afghanistan. The Petraeus camp is vehement that there is no 
parallel between the Russian and American experience; in this view, the Russians 
tried to crush the insurgents, while the Americans are trying to win them over 
and end the insurgency by convincing the Taliban's supporters and reaching a 
political accommodation with their leaders. Obama and Gates are less sanguine 
about the distinction -- such distinctions were made in Vietnam in response to 
the question of why the United States would fare better in Southeast Asia than 
the French did. From the Obama and Gates point of view, a political settlement 
would call for either a constellation of forces in Afghanistan favoring some 
accommodation with the Americans, or sufficient American power to compel 
accommodation. But it is not clear to Obama and Gates that either could exist in 
Afghanistan. 
 
Ultimately, Petraeus is charging that Obama and Gates are missing the chance to 
repeat what was done in Iraq, while Obama and Gates are afraid Petraeus is 
confusing success in Iraq with a universal counterinsurgency model. To put it 
differently, they feel that while Petraeus benefited from fortuitous 
circumstances in Iraq, he quickly could find himself hopelessly bogged down in 
Afghanistan. The Pentagon on May 11 announced that U.S. commander in Afghanistan 
Gen. David McKiernan would be replaced, less than a year after he took over, 
with Lt. Gen. Stan McChrystal. McKiernan's removal could pave the way for a 
broader reshuffling of Afghan strategy by the Obama administration. 
 
The most important issues concern the extent to which Obama wants to stake his 
presidency on Petraeus' vision in Afghanistan, and how important Afghanistan is 
to U.S. grand strategy. Petraeus has conceded that al Qaeda is in Pakistan. 
Getting the group out of Pakistan requires surgical strikes. Occupation and 
regime change in Pakistan are way beyond American abilities. The question of 
what the United States expects to win in Afghanistan -- assuming it can win 
anything there -- remains. 
 
In the end, there is never a debate between U.S. presidents and generals. Even 
MacArthur discovered that. It is becoming clear that Obama is not going to bet 
all in Afghanistan, and that he sees Afghanistan as not worth the fight. 
Petraeus is a soldier in a fight, and he wants to win. But in the end, as 
Clausewitz said, war is an extension of politics by other means. As such, 
generals tend to not get their way.

The Lieberman Dilemma

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:28:00 +0000

Avid Obama supporter here--precinct captain during my state's Democratic primary. I've made my calls, canvassed, blogged and contributed within my means. And Senator Lieberman's actions and words leading up to and during the recent campaign infuriated me. And while,in my heart, I haven't yet forgiven Senator Lieberman, I feel there's a real opportunity here for President-elect Obama to show benevolence and send a loud and clear message re his message of unity by stepping in and calling off the attack dogs and allowing Lieberman to continue to caucus and work with his Democrat peers in the Senate. In my estimation that would be the win-win choice.

Sideline Observations…The Upcoming Final Debate

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:07:00 +0000

Started out with some observations on McCain and his erratic behavior and mean-spirited campaign, but scrubbed them. The lack of honor and honesty and steadiness he has shown over the past month has essentially made he and his ticket superfluous in this election cycle and there’s really nothing he can say or do in the debate that I will find credible. I applaud Senator Obama’s overall response to the serious financial crisis our nation continues to face. And he has put forth an impressive plan for addressing job creation and providing hope and relief to small businesses and middle class voters. As he prepares to transition into the Presidency, now and in the coming months, the one thing that has been lacking is being completely and painfully honest with the American people in terms of how we got here and what it will take to right ourselves. Everyone is aware of the excesses of Wall Street and the absence of viable regulation and its impact on the economy. But we as citizens also played our part. We overspent and under-saved and failed at managing our own budgets and there are actions that we personally need to take as individuals to turn this economy around and it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s going to be tough and we can do it if we’re honest with each other and inspired to make the necessary sacrifices. It’s time for the voters to have a dose of reality. We can take it and we’ll appreciate the honesty and we stand ready to vote for the change that we all need and, if inspired, prepared to do our part to make that change happen.

Sideline Observations..."Who Won the Debate?...."That One"!

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:51:00 +0000

My son, who missed the debate due to a scheduling conflict, asked me what Senator Obama's response was to being referred to as "that one". I can't imagine that in his gut Senator Obama did not have the urge to take McCain out back and open up a can of South Chicago whup a__ on him. But once again he prevailed with his calm, confident, knowledgeable and Presidential demeanor. Senator Obama outshone his opponent by effectively addressing the real issues that concern the middle class. It's become even more apparent that McCain will do and say anything to win, honor be damned. If he and his surrogates continue their current fierce campaign of fear and smear politics, I feel it will be entirely appropriate and relevant for Senator Obama in his final debate closing remarks to address Senator McCain as follows, "John we've worked together in the past and I have hope that with the healing that comes with the passing of time, we will be able to work together during my administration, but, right here, right now, I have to tell you that I am genuinely embarrassed for you. I've meant it when I've honored your service and expressed my admiration for the courage you displayed in captivity, but you have besmirched your name and your honor by running the most vile and mean-spirited campaign this country has witnessed in modern times. And so tonight all I can really bring myself to share with you is shame on you, John McCain, shame on you.
And I can't close without expressing my pleasure with the whupping Obama's communications director put on Sean Inanity....hey Sean is that infomercial career I suggested in a recent post looking a bit more attractive?

Sideline Observations….the Biden/Palin debate and going forward…..

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:40:00 +0000

I had planned to write a lengthy piece about the last “debate”, but it’s a cold trail and there’s not much I can add to Rachel Madow’s description of Palin as frenetic, folksy and cartoonish (my mind wanders to Boris and Natasha as I ponder the Republican ticket) and Chris Matthews' observation on her spelling bee-like performance. Senator Biden, I felt, was infinitely more genuine and certainly more effective in presenting his campaign’s message although traversing the politically correct minefield he faced seemed to put him a little off his game. And if Hannity and Buchanan and that crowd seriously believe that she “knocked it out of the park” in any sense other than waking/exciting the right-wing activist drones then they raise serious questions re their intellectual acumen and honesty.

I’ve decided to refer to the Republican candidates as the “Palin/McCain” ticket from this point forward because, given his age and increasing concerns re his mental competence and reality testing, it just seems to make sense to give her at least equal billing. And if the thought of either or both of them attaining the Oval Office doesn’t scare the hell out of any thoughtful person who is aware of the serious challenges this nation faces I don’t know what could.

"An Open Letter to Senator Obama"

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Senator Obama,

You've spoken eloquently of the "fierce urgency of now" and lifted our hopes that we can meet our serious challenges with a new, bi-partisan approach. Now--right now is one of those urgent moments in our country's history. Rebuke the partisan posturing of Nancy Pelosi and John McCain and the left and right wing pundits, talk show hosts and ideologues. There will be plenty of time to assign blame and examine who played what role in bringing our economy to the brink of disaster. Return to Washington immediately and work urgently with your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to resolve this crisis. We desperately need your leadership now--we need a solution now for the sake of the economic security of our country.

Respectfully,

Bobby Watts

Sideline Observations--The First Presidential Debate

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:00:00 +0000

I guess a good starting point is a comment on Senator McCain's vaudevillian pre-debate political theatrics. As Senator Obama reached out to explore a joint, bi-partisan statement encouraging their colleagues to work together with a sense of urgency to address the Wall Street crisis, McCain and his campaign staff calculated how best to use the crisis to their political advantage. The "campaign suspension" never actually occurred and McCain proceeded to interject Presidential politics into an already volatile situation resulting in discord and division.
And what did we learn from the debate itself? One could view it as a micrososm of the candidates' differing political styles. McCain communicated a disdain for his opponent as he took every opportunity to attack and belittle Obama. Senator Obama, on the other hand, presented a calm, confident demeanor demonstrating his firm grasp of the relevant facts and voicing cogent arguments for how best to move the country forward in addressing serious financial and foreign policy issues. Much has been made of the fact that Obama "agreed with" McCain on numerous points. From my vantage point, he was merely exhibiting the bi-partisan, collaborative approach which is his forte and which is so desperately needed if we are going to be able to break the Washington gridlock which has stymied our political representatives and frustrated the citizens whose values and issues they purport to champion.
And a final point or two...Why did the moderator and Senator Obama give McCain a pass on the issues of torture? He had maintained a principled stand throughout most of the Republican primary debates and then reversed himself last February by voting against a bill to curtail the CIA's use of harsh interrogation tactics. And does anyone honestly believe that a provocative, saber-rattling President McCain who has "looked into the eyes of Putin and seen 3 letters--KGB" would be able to deal effectively with a resurgent Russia or that after joking about "bomb-bombing Iran" he is the leader to deal with that nation and the overall complexities of a Mideast foreign policy.
My overall takeaway from the debate--Senator Obama held his own, counter-punched effectively and exuded a Presidential calmness and breadth of knowledge of national and international issues and an understanding of the importance of of reviving and enhancing collaborative relationships with key allies. Senator McCain, on the other hand, appeared petulant, demeaning, provocative and dangerously out-of-touch and ill-equipped to deal with with the complex foreign policy and financial issues we face.

Sean Inanity and The Politics of Division

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:30:00 +0000

Really don't mean to leave out Limbaugh, Hewitt, Levin and the rest of that noisy right wing crowd, but I've had more exposure to Hannity via his talk radio and tv shows. I tune into his radio show for an hour or so so 3-4 times a week on my commute home from work. Not because I agree with hardly any of his views, but rather just to check out the daily buzz and the corresponding Republican talking points which Hannity faithfully recites. His callers routinely greet him as a "great American". And while I do not question his patriotism (as he does in response to anyone who disagrees with him or dares to engage in democratic debate) and I am sure that he is a good father, spouse, son and friend, from my vantage point, he's a pretty lousy American. You have to ask yourself if Hannity truly loves this country then why has he devoted his life to dividing it's citizens along political and cultural lines. And I guess one answer is that it's made him filthy rich. He and Limbaugh and their ilk have built multi-million dollar empires based on the politics of division. Little wonder that Senator Obama and his campaign for change and a return to civil and bipartisan politics have engendered such a ferocious and vile response from Hannity and the hate-mongers. If Obama and his supporters were to achieve their vision of a united America where politicians and citizens worked across party and cultural lines to address the serious challenges this country faces they'd be out of a job. And wouldn't that be a loss [sic].....[Update 9/20/08....kudos to Hannity on the recent Palin infomercial he put together....thinking there might be a career opportunity in that genre if his day job ever tanks]

Reflections on the Past Week...The New Palin-McCain Double-Talk Express, etc.

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:45:00 +0000

Once again I honor Senator's McCain's military service and the courage he displayed as a POW in Vietnam. Certainly worthy of an inspirational movie or naming streets, bridges or buildings for him or we could even construct a McCain memorial in the appropriate setting. But it does not uniquely qualify him to hold the office of President of the United States. And his biography from that life experience forward is certainly not an untarnished testimony to honor and courage. There is the failed marriage and his involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. He developed a reputation as a maverick over the years, but his words and actions since his failed bid for the Republican nomination for President in 2000 reflect either a change in his core values and principles or an unmasking of an underlying cynicism and political ambition that the country was not aware of. Little wonder that we recently witnessed his angry refusal of a reporter's request to define "honor". McCain "the maverick" might have shown the courage he did as a freshman congressman when he opposed Reagan's disastrous deployment of our marines to Lebanon and spoken out against the infinitely more foolhardy decision of Bush and the neo-cons to manipulate the country into the ruinous Iraq conflict. He would not have voted with Bush and his peers 90% of the time over the past 8 yrs and so easily reversed his positions on tax cuts for the rich, torture, immigration and a host of other critical issues. McCain "the maverick" would have chosen Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as his running mate. And even though I do not share many of their views, I could have felt reasonably assured that they had the seasoning and judgment to safely be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. He would not have courted Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson or more recently sought out the support of John Hagee and Rod Parsley and he surely would not have allowed himself to be forced into the choice of a ultra-conservative neophyte as his running mate by a social conservative cabal. The nomination of Gov Palin as VP for the Republican Party--a "pit bull with lip stick" as she so aptly described herself. She delivered the offensively sarcastic and condescending lines they wrote for her with such relish. Nothing out of character there if you've had the opportunity to review her record as a politician and the calculating, ruthless approach she has taken to furthering her career. And the smoothness with which she misrepresented her record and belittled Senator Obama's life story and accomplishments--she effectively energized the Republican base as we all sat and watched the final transformation of the McCain Straight Talk Express into the Palin-McCain Double Talk Express. And now the right wing pundits and hate-mongers scathingly attack the media for their hurried attempts to vet this little-known, political neophyte with the potential of being elected in less than eight weeks to an office which would place her a heartbeat away from the Presidency . I'll close for now by recommending to you the excellent commentary of Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on the hypocrisy so evident in their protestations--http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

"PRICELESS"

bjwordman@tx.rr.com (Wordweaver) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:51:00 +0000

The $500 shoes McCain sports as he campaigns in his wife's private jet
His response to the question of how many homes he owns--"I'm going to have to let my staff get back to you on that one"
Cindy McCain proudly showing off at last week's convention a $313,000 outfit whose value exceeded the average voter's current mortgage
The rich symbolism of how out-of-touch they are with the values and needs of the average citizen who McCain cynically purports to champion
"PRICELESS"