Posts Tagged ‘Stratfor’

“Greece is not salvagable”

Friday, September 30th, 2011

That’s the rather bracing judgment from this Stratfor overview of Greece’s problem. Moreover, they’re saying that about its existence as a nation-state, even absent the European debt crises. Also: “Greece has to be kicked out of the Eurozone if the Eurozone is to survive.” Problem? They don’t have enough “firebreak” funds to do it. “Until the Europeans have 2 trillion Euro in funding stashed away, they can’t kick Greece out of the system.”

I’m not sure I share the pessimism about Greece in the long run. After all, nation-states can exist for an awful long time, despite crappy conditions (see, for example, Haiti). Of course, that assumes that a newly Islamic Turkey doesn’t decide to settle old scores by conquering them outright. (Assuming, of course, that Turkey is still predominately Turkish rather than Kurdish. Claire Berlinski is a little more sanguine about that prospect.)

Honestly, of the two, I think Greece will outlast the Eurozone by a good measure. The question isn’t the whether Eurocrats can prevent the Eurozone from breaking up, but rather how long they can delay the inevitable, how much sovereign debt can they put taxpayers on the hook for, and how much harder will the inevitable market correction be when it comes? It seems to be a race between how much European taxpayer money can be wasted propping up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states vs. how much of American taxpayer money can the Obama administration waste channeling payouts to well-connected Democratic cronies. The Eurocrats may be winning the race to insolvency, if only due to the lack of a European Tea Party.

In other Euro Debt Crises news:

  • Europe votes to throw more money down the rat hole.
  • But don’t take that as any kind of victory for the Euro. Quite the opposite. “The furious debate over the erosion of German fiscal sovereignty and democracy – as well as the escalating costs of the EU rescue machinery – has made it absolutely clear that the Bundestag will not prop up the ruins of monetary union for much longer. Horst Seehofer, the leader of Bavaria’s Social Christians, said his party would go ‘this far, and no further’.”
  • Greece passes the tax increase the Eurocrats say is necessary to stave off default.
  • How broke is Europe? They’re considering a tax on every financial transaction. This is great news…for stock exchanges outside of Europe.
  • How Charles de Gaulle foresaw the Euro crackup.
  • The German finance minister says that a leveraged Euro-TARP is dead. I would say why U.S. regulators were pushing such a scheme was puzzling, except of course it isn’t. The goal is to put off the Euro-collapse until after the 2012 elections.
  • Meanwhile, liberal moneybags mastermind George Soros says that the Euro crises is dragging us toward another depression. His solution? I know you’re going to be shocked, shocked to learn that it’s bigger, more central government. “The governments of the eurozone must agree in principle on a new treaty creating a common treasury for the eurozone. In the meantime, the major banks must be put under the direction of the European Central Bank.” To be followed shortly thereafter by the formation of the First European Airborne Swine Squadron.

    • Is there any other place desperate Eurocrats can get money to prop up their falling welfare states? Are they perhaps hoping that Obama will bail them out? After all, what’s a few more trillions in unsupported debt between friends?

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    Posted in Budget, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Stratfor: Police and Army Redeploying, Both Suporting Mubarak For Now

    Sunday, January 30th, 2011

    Or so say their sources:

    The Egyptian military and internal security forces have coordinated a crackdown for the hours ahead in an effort to clear the streets of the demonstrators. The interior minister has meanwhile negotiated his stay for the time being, in spite of widespread expectations that he, seen by many Egyptians as the source of police brutality in the country, would be one of the first ministers that would have to be sacked in order to quell the demonstrations. Instead, both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and al-Adly, the two main targets of ire for the demonstrators, seem to be betting that they can ride this crisis out and remain in power. So far, the military seems to be acquiescing to these decisions.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

    Obama, Afghanistan, and the Pakistani ISI

    Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

    George Friedman at Stratfor on Obama’s plans for Afghanistan and the parallels with Vietnam. He notes that US/ARVN forces were never defeated by the NVA, but that the NVA won because of their superior intelligence thanks to widespread penetration of ARVN forces by communist sympathizers. He says (and I think he’s correct) that Afghan forces are similarly riddled with Taliban sympathizers, making it impossible for us to win without marshaling similar penetration of the Taliban with intelligence assets.

    The problem with this is, the Afghans are already compromised and lack the expertise, while the US doesn’t have the personnel to place intelligence assets with the Taliban. Both of these are also probably true.

    His suggestion to fill this gap is to use the Pakistani ISI (the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA or KGB), or at least elements therein. If that is indeed our best hope in Afghanistan, we are totally screwed. He mentions that Taliban has worked closely with the ISI and are already compromised, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough. My understanding is that the Taliban were essentially created by the ISI, or at least Jihadist elements in it, with more than a little help from Saudi money. The degree to which Islamists have been purged from the ISI is open to debate (my gut feeling is very little). They’re not so much a subordinate part of the government as a power player within it, with their own goals and agendas, in an country that not only suffers from ethnic divisions, but is largely an artificial conglomerate created by the post-Independence partition of India in 1947. There’s no reason to believe that Pakistan is any more unified than, say, Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union was in 1990.

    My guess is that the United States would be better off creating our own Afghan intelligence service from the ground up, possibly starting with old elements of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance, assuming elements of such could be scrounged up, and the Tajik/Pushtan divide bridged.

    It was almost certainly a mistake for Obama to pre-announce when US troops would start withdrawing. But there are no good choices or easy victories to be had here.

    (Just for the record, I had an article called “The Way to Afghan Peace” published in The World & I way back in 1992, so I actually have a long-running interest in the region. But the players, positions, and motivations of what actually goes on there are frequently murky not only to me, but even to far more experienced experts.)

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

    Problems Presented by the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial

    Monday, November 16th, 2009

    There’s an interesting article up by George Friedman at Stratfor discussing the difficulties of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court of law:

    “Imagine that in addition to stating that the United States was at war with Japan, Franklin Roosevelt also called for bringing the individual Japanese pilots who struck Hawaii to justice under American law. This would make no sense.”

    But, of course, terrorist members of al Qaeda are not soldiers under international law. Friedman spells it out quite clearly:

    “International law is actually not particularly ambiguous about the status of the members of al Qaeda. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to them because they have not adhered to a fundamental requirement of the Geneva Conventions, namely, identifying themselves as soldiers of an army. Doing so does not mean they must wear a uniform. The postwar Geneva Conventions make room for partisans, something older versions of the conventions did not. A partisan is not a uniformed fighter, but he must wear some form of insignia identifying himself as a soldier to enjoy the conventions’ protections. As Article 4.1.6 puts it, prisoners of war include ‘Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.’ The Geneva Conventions of 1949 does not mention, nor provide protection to, civilians attacking foreign countries without openly carrying arms.”

    “Under the Geneva Conventions, [Mohammed]’s actions in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, which were carried out without uniforms or other badges of a combatant, denies him status and protection as a POW.”

    Clear, succinct, and what conservatives have been saying for the past eight years, which pretty much ensures that no one in the Obama Administration will read it.

    “The real problem here is international law, which does not address acts of war committed by non-state actors out of uniform. Or more precisely, it does, but leaves them deliberately in a state of legal limbo, with captors left free to deal with them as they wish.”

    The article goes on at length to explain taht it is equally impossible to try him under civilian law in a “fair” manner, and how international law has woefully failed to keep up with the realities of modern warfare and terrorism.

    Read the whole thing.

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    Posted in Jihad | No Comments »