"Hey, Dita like this is the first fan letter I ever wrote. Like I see where you're comin from man, I'm rappin about you. You don't let nobody past. You the anti-jive machine. Also you got me interested in foreign policy. It's all connected man, like I see that now. I can tell you why Bush opened fire on Putin. Putin dissed him, man. Like Bush had to refrigerate him.
[Signed] DetroitTHX5"
Dear DetroitTHX5:
That's an interesting if somewhat ornate thesis. Let's see if we can work our way through it. The protocol is that national leaders refrain from giving public support to political candidates in another country. Putin broke the protocol when he came out in support for Bush during the US presidential campaign. By doing so, he conveyed that his friendship with Bush took precedence over protocol, which would imply a close friendship. However, several of Putin's actions as head of state did not show friendship to Bush or the US war on terror.
Thus, it could be argued that Putin was practicing diplomacy judo--using Bush's own statement of friendship against him in order to gain a political advantage, and making Bush lose Face in the process. From that angle, Bush would be required to restore Face by verbally punching Putin in the face. It all makes perfect sense after a few beers.
On the other hand, the thesis ignores the similarly tough language used by Secretary Powell in the immediate wake of the Beslan massacre; Powell as much told the Russians that they had brought Beslan on themselves through the way they handled the Chechen situation. And it ignores the reportedly very tough language Secretary Rice used during the recent meeting with her Russian counterpart.
All this tough talk has been around for months in the Establishment US news media and voiced by certain factions in the GOP and Democrat party. To be specific, the talk burst into the US news during the election in Ukraine and has escalated since
However, Bush is famous for not following Washington Groupthink and media opinion, which lends some support to your thesis. So, on balance, it's possible there was something personal behind Bush's decision to beat up on Russia during the Brussels speech. I note that the passage about Russia was a last-minute addition, unless the White House kept it under wraps. The version of the speech released to the press the day before did not contain the toughly worded passage.
Whether or not Bush had an ax to grind with Putin, Pundita is getting a bad feeling about all this uniformly tough talk. It smacks of a programmatic approach, which translates to adopting an attitude in place of dialogue. The Russians are known to respect toughness in political leaders. But they're equally known for intellectualism and polemics. All these traits were on abundant display during a 3-1/2 hour press conference that Putin held soon after the Beslan massacre.
That press conference was a humdinger. Putin accused the United States and the United Kingdom of being responsible for the Beslan terrorist attack. He accused the US and the UK of colluding in a plot to destabilize Russia by fomenting anti-Russian sentiment in former Soviet republics. He accused the US and UK of being behind the breakaway movement in Chechnya. He clearly implied that the US and UK were trying to topple his government. And just to make sure he was perfectly understood, Putin came right out and said that the US and the UK had launched a covert war against Russia.
I add that Putin's remarks got very little coverage in the US media and only in attenuated form. The remarks were widely reported in painstaking detail by the European press and pored over and parsed for many days, to the great enjoyment of the Europeans who love opera and hate the Coalition invasion of Iraq. They particularly liked the part about Carthage. After he'd blown off steam it occurred to him that conjuring the image of Russia reduced to a salt flat was not a boost to Russian tourism and trade so eventually he scaled back on his accusations. However, he stuck by the gist, which still amounts to very serious charges.
I can't speak to the accusations about the United Kingdom but there is a grain of truth in the accusations directed at the US. It is true that some Chechens who eventually became terrorists got their original training in CIA-sponsored camps; this was during the Afghan struggle against the Soviet Union. In those days the US was training anyone who was willing to fight the Soviets, which included Arabs who became al Qaeda members.
With regard to the rest of the accusations about terrorism, it sounds as if Putin moved history forward to gloss the present. I would not be surprised to learn that British and US agents helped in Chechnya, as they did in every republic that wanted to break away from the Soviet Empire. And surely there are still groups in Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics who are helping the Chechen separatist movement. However, by the mid-90s, the love affair between the oligarchs and America was such that the US (and Britain) had a vested interest in seeing that Russia was as stable as possible.
The truth is that Chechnya became a magnet for al Qaeda; when the going got tough for AQ after the US crackdown Tehran stepped in with money, arms, and training. This said, it's wrong to dismiss Putin's studious blindness to the present as cynicism. True, Russia is doing big business with Arab countries that are known to be sponsoring terrorist organizations and with Iran, which is ruled by a terror-sponsoring regime. But we have to look at our own situation in the wake of 9/11 to understand Moscow's struggle with reality.
No State Department worker wanted to accept a certain number of terrorist attacks on the US as the price for doing business with Saudi Arabia, and with other countries that are tolerant of terrorist organizations or involved with funding them. But as the facts piled up in the wake of 9/11, the response behind closed doors in Washington was, 'Omigod, what are we going to do? We're in up to our necks with these governments.'
The same sentiments were expressed behind closed doors in Paris, London, and Berlin. Moscow had a delayed reaction; they clung to the idea that Russia had more leverage with the same governments because Russia wasn't dependent on any country for energy supplies. They thought that if push came to shove, they could make threats and make them stick. Thus, they learned the hard way that threats only work if you can deliver them to the enemy. The enemy in this case is like smoke.
To put all this another way, on September 11, 2001, the earth when seen from a satellite was a sea of ostrich bottoms. Everyone had their head stuck in the sand--and this includes the Israelis. They had tunnel vision about China's role in selling weapons and nuclear weapon technology to states that sponsor terrorism. The Israelis were hyperfocused on Arab terrorism and the terror-sponsoring regime in Iran. And the focus made them blind to the connection between terrorism and the Russian mobs that had burrowed into the Israeli financial markets. Every time there was a terror attack on Israel the Israeli military would ring up the mobsters and ask, 'You're not doing any smuggling deals with our enemies, are you?'
In reply, the mobsters would throw on a prayer shawl and go kiss the Wailing Wall.
This said, the Israelis had the only functioning and I mean only functioning intelligence organization among our allies. It's awful to contemplate the extent to which intelligence-gathering among NATO countries had fallen into disrepair. Now one might reasonably ask why the US didn't make use of Israeli intelligence during the decade running up to 9/11, if US intel was a basket case. One has to understand something about budget wars in Washington to get the full picture. There were intelligence analysts who spent the 90s piling Israeli intelligence data on Washington and drawing little stick figures in the effort to illustrate the growing danger to the US from Arab terrorism. The response in Washington boiled down to, "Oh it's just the Jews trying to scare up more aid dollars for Israel."
How could so many reasonably intelligent, sane people the world over be so blind to a steadily growing threat--a threat that was not hidden, but which continuously announced itself with escalating terrorist attacks?
The answer is buried under layers of myriad causes and conditions, which is why the world is lucky that George W. Bush landed in the White House. Bush has a drill-down mind; he has a knack for reaching through layers and grabbing onto the precipitating factor in a problem. The answer is quite simply that people were blind because they were up against something completely new. Seeing begins in the mind, which relies on memory. There was no memory, no way to think about what the new threat looked like, until after 9/11.
What Bush saw after 9/11 is that civilization had reached the point where it's suicidal for nations to allow expediency to govern their foreign relations.
Bush used simpler words to describe the problem; he said in essence that it was time to call a spade a spade, to say what you mean and mean what you say, and stick to your guns. However, the message was greatly obscured by the dust raised during the first years of the war on terror. Also, the war, and particularly the Iraq campaign, turned the Beltway into an armed camp of factions at State, Pentagon, CIA and Congress.
But the world changed on the day that Paul Bremer was ordered back to Washington from the Green Zone in Baghdad. The yelling inside the White House could be heard from across the Potomac. Pundita was not privy to exactly what was yelled, but the drift of the conversation was plainly evident in Bremer's actions when he returned to his duties in the Green Zone. He stopped practicing expediency and took actions that were in line with the promises that Bush had made to the Iraqi people.
From that day forward, the Bush administration made a wholehearted attempt to ditch Cold War policy, which had degenerated into a textbook on expediency. The response from the State Department and the CIA? They were so horrified at Bush's attempt to destroy the linchpin of foreign policy that they redoubled their efforts to block his reelection. They did this by deploying a machine-gun series of 'leaks' that portrayed Bush as an inept president and commander-in-chief.
The Beltway Wars continued even after Bush's reelection but slowly and surely, the White House is winning because many Americans are now at their back. This includes members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, and people inside State and the CIA. In short, it's taken a few years, but many people inside Washington are starting to 'get' what Bush has been trying to convey. Bush's second Inaugural speech and his speech at Brussels are not there yet. But they come close to articulating an epoch-making shift in US foreign policy.
The radical aspect of the shift diverts attention from its common sense. With hindsight, it's just plain stupid during these days of EFTs, Coach Class and portable nukes to give training, money and arms to people whose concept of civilization boils down to eating with a knife and fork. And it's plumb loco to turn your back on them, once your immediate need for them is finished.
So while Pundita basks in your compliment, it's really President Bush who's the anti-jive machine. I'm simply trying to fill out the basic idea Bush sketched and explore how to put it into practice. Many people the world over are engaged in this same effort, and the more the better. We're all out here in new territory, trying to lay down paths that we're improvising as we stumble along.
The problem is that civilization was raised on the foundation of expediency. True, expediency always had a way of blowing back on the government that relied on it to deal with neighbors and marauding tribes, but relying heavily on expediency got humanity this far. So if we're going to rely more on integrity and consistency in foreign relations, there are many wrinkles to be ironed out.
The sticking point is that is there's no such thing as partial integrity. You either have it or you don't. Ditto for consistency. So if you see "Made in China" stamped on weapons used by terror sponsoring regimes, what are you supposed to do? Tell Wal-Mart to stop trading with China? And should we return to horse and buggy until we figure a way to cease dependence on oil imported from autocratic or totalitarian regimes? The most vexing question is how far a nation should take a principled stand if the stand pits the nation against much of the world.
Yet 9/11, 3/11 and Beslan testify that humanity no longer has a choice about confronting the point Bush brought out. We've got to find ways to bring foreign policy in line with the basic ideals of modern democratic civilization. This is because data show that democracies tend to refrain from hot war and don't create large numbers of citizens who export terrorism around the world. The question is how to proceed according to what the data indicate.
Russia's advice in this regard should be welcomed, yet we don't have the luxury of engaging in weighty discussion during peacetime. The inescapable truth is that Russia is selling arms and dual-use nuclear technology to governments that are active enemies of the United States.
Russia is not alone in doing trade with US enemies. They are following the lead of China and the most powerful nations in the European Union. So it's practicing a double standard to criticize Russia on the issue without doing the same with allies.
Pundita can understand Bush taking a softer public with US allies. However, the uniformly tough talk to Moscow that has emerged from Washington during the past year smacks of a programmatic approach. This translates to adopting 'attitude' in place of dialogue.
The Russians are known to respect a tough attitude. However, they're equally known for intellectualism and polemics. All these traits were on abundant display during Putin's 3-1/2 hour press conference.
Thus, if Washington's tough attitude is not accompanied by informed debate and dialogue, the Russians will continue to throw out polemics and rationalizations that go unanswered by the US because attitude isn't reply.
Also, Washington could do more to bring the implementation of foreign policy in line with policy rhetoric. Putin has invoked the US Civil War in defending Russia's right to subdue a breakaway republic--Chechnya. We don't need to agree with the analogy but US policy should recognize Russia's policy toward Chechnya.
If we want to allow a Chechen rebel leader to take asylum in the United States, that's one issue. However, Russia has designated the leader as a terrorist. If we claim a willingness to work with Russia in the war on terror, our policy should match our words to the extent we can accomplish this without betraying our principles. That means the US government should not have direct or indirect dealings with the Chechen leader and should not provide him with financial or any kind of material assistance.
If US intelligence on Chechnya is so poor that we're rationalizing assistance to the leader as means to get good intel on Chechnya and Russia--this is a problem with US intelligence gathering, one that shouldn't drag foreign policy into it.
Also, the US government should ensure that the Chechen leader knows the difference between taking asylum and using the US as a base of operations against Russia.
The same observations apply to US government dealings with the Russian oligarchs who recently attended a White House prayer breakfast. Those oligarchs are fugitives from Russian justice. There's an Interpol warrant out on them. There was no need to give them asylum in this country; they have asylum in Israel. Inviting them to the US and showcasing them at a White House function was a nasty way of telling Moscow that Washington doesn't think the oligarchs should be considered criminals.
Okay. But then Moscow doesn't think Tehran should be designated a terror-sponsoring regime. They don't think Tehran will convert the nuclear technology that Russia is selling them into nuclear weapons. They don't think the Iranian military will figure out how to convert the vehicle-mounted rocket launchers that Russia's selling Syria into shoulder-fired launchers.
If Washington disagrees with Moscow's thinking--well, if foreign policy is silly putty, what's there to disagree with? Why have policy, if whatever thoughts pop into your mind can shift policy on a dime?
If rationality comes from the point of a gun, right now the United States is a paragon of reason because our guns are bigger and in better working order than any other nation's. But the enemy is not only making use of guns. He's turning humans into bombs. To win against such an enemy requires a great deal of cooperation from other nations, to include Russia.
The concept of cooperation has a rational basis, which is grounded in consistently applied policy. If we expect cooperation we need more than a good rap about democracy. We need to bring the implementation of foreign policy in line with fine words about policy. Else, all the fine words are just jive.
.
Wednesday, March 2
Tuesday, March 1
Paw, a Revenuer's at the door. "Quick Abdullah, put on your tribal headdress!"
"Pundita, the more I learn about world affairs, the more it seems that most countries are frozen in time. No matter how much aid the developed countries have given, no matter how many grand development schemes carried out by organizations such as the World Bank, there seem to be intractable problems in many countries. In every case, I come across a discussion of deeply entrenched government corruption. The World Bank and other international institutions have been trying for decades to deal with this problem but there never seems to be any progress.
Ann in Cincinnati"
Dear Ann:
To understand the situation, realize first that it's a joke to place Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among the richest people in the world. They're just among the richest who file accurate tax returns. But Gates and Buffet probably don't even make it onto the list of the top one million of the world's richest people--these being the filthy rich who don't file tax returns or file a complete fiction.
It's not corruption per se that's the fundamental problem in Russia, Mexico, India, Egypt, and continue down the list. The problem is that the richest people in such countries pay much, much more in taxes than the rest--but the payments are off the books. The payments are made directly to officials.
The payments should not be seen as bribes, if you want to get a handle on the problem. They are a form of taxation and because taxation means representation, the richest people are the first in line with demands for how government money is to be spent.
To put all this another way, the lights always work in certain sections of Cairo. There is never a problem with traffic lights because for certain Egyptians the police simply back up traffic for miles and hours so the special cars can get to their destinations on time. There is never a problem with the water supply for certain Egyptians because the government digs special wells for them.
Same situation in Mexico. There's plenty of government money in Mexico. It's just that it doesn't get spent very much on education and health facilities. It gets spent mostly on projects that the biggest taxpayers want done--these being the taxpayers whose payments are not recorded.
Same situation in India. Yet millions of Indians are literally brain-damaged from drinking water from the city supplies--the Indians who don't die first from a host of diseases brought on by bad drinking water.
To give you some idea of just how bad the situation is, and how it undermines all the backbreaking labor and brain sweat of ordinary working stiffs the world over--
When the British laid out pipes for sewage and water in New Delhi, they installed the pipes right next to each other. That was standard practice in those days. However, by the time the British quit India the pipes had corroded so that the sewage mixed with the water supply. Boiling the water only kills a fraction of the pollutants. As to what was done to fix the pipes, nothing. Maybe during the past decade the Indian government got around to making some repairs in response to complaints by Western businesspeople. But the situation went on for decades untreated. That was in India's capital city.
Now try to imagine how Washingtonians would respond to the same problem in America's capital city. In fact, you don't have to imagine, if you followed the news about the discovery last year that lead had been getting into the water supply for years and that this information had been suppressed. Believe you me, the water bureaucracy scrambled to ward off the lynch mobs. That's because all Washingtonians have something approximating representation along with their taxation.
That's just what the majority of Indians, Russians and Mexicans, etc., don't have--even though they pay taxes. What they pay is not enough to give them adequate representation against the representation that the richest receive via under-the-table tax payments.
At the bottom of it all is not organized crime. At bottom is a system of doing business that stretches back to the ancient civilizations. That system is the clan system, which differs from tribalism in that marriage can be outside the tribe in a clan.
Marriages in a clan system are actually business mergers and/or business contracts. Say my clan controls the lumber supply in a region and your clan controls the trucking industry. We make a merger to have your trucks handle the lumber transport by marrying my daughter to your son. That's why you'll see arranged marriages in Muslim northern India and other parts between children. The marriage isn't consummated but there has to be a marriage ceremony to cement the contract.
Alert readers might ask if polygamy gives clans a huge business advantage. Of course. If you have one wife, you maybe only have five sons. If you have four wives cranking out 25 sons between them, you've got lots of merger material to play around with.
So all this talk about Islam under fire from the modern era is twaddle. It's the clan system that's under fire and Muslims know it. And they don't want to give up polygamy because there goes the big business advantage in the clan system. This is what many Muslims don't want to confront. They say, "We look after our own."
Yes, they have big charity, but in the modern era where dams and bridges and road systems and electrical grids cost billions upon billions, and where human population in a small region can run into the tens of millions, the charity system is completely inadequate. The clan model is simply not capable of dealing with the modern age.
Yet still they want it both ways. They can't have it both ways. They can't have all the benefits of modern life plus hold onto a way of doing business which subverts the type of government that makes modern life work. Fair taxation with adequate representation for the majority is the base of modern civilization's pyramid. The clan model, when mixed with off-the-books taxation, stands the pyramid on it's head. The patriarchs of the most powerful clans throw enough money at officials to ensure that their neighborhood has its own water well, the lights working, and the garbage picked up. The rest of the neighborhoods can go to hell in a handbasket.
The flip side of the same problem is how tribes can wreck the tax base in a country by invoking nomad status. To understand this part of the problem--
Knock! Knock!
"Who's there?"
Taxman.
"Taxman who?"
Taxman you haven't paid your taxes to the Iraqi government for the last 60 years.
"I'm not Iraqi. I'm Wigeemeosooombbi Nomad. We Wigeemeosooombbi have no fixed abode for the past 200,000 years."
But you remain fixed enough during part of the year to use the electricity and garbage collection service in Iraq. Pay up.
"If you're going to persecute me, give me a moment to collect my satellite dish, 10-speed blender, refrigerator, washing machine, microwave, television, toaster oven, computer, electric breadmaker, electric spice grinder and my goats and sheep and continue my nomadic wanderings. Unless you'd like to accept this gift of gold dinars for your dear mother."
That's why Gazi al-Yawer, the Iraq interim President, was furious with the Coalition military for not locking down the Iraqi borders after the Coalition toppled Saddam's regime. It's not just the security issue. It's also the taxation issue. Unless that issue is dealt with, Iraq is always pedaling backward, Saddam or no Saddam.
Al-Yawer is part of the wave of Middle Easterners who came to the West and figured out everything Pundita sketched above. They know you can't have a modern nation unless you have an adequate tax base, and that you can't have a tax base without a census. You can't have a census if a third of the population doesn't participate on the grounds that they're just in country to visit their cousins for a couple months.
The response from al-Yawer's tribe to his demand that everyone in Iraq get a national ID? They put out a contract on his life.
To summarize, the developing nations don't have the tax base to support adequate programs to provide services that you and I consider baseline necessities. In country after country, the tax base is not adequate to provide baseline services because so much of the tax collection is off the books and doesn't figure into the government's spending budget.
Now we arrive at the most interesting part of the problem. Let's back up and take a look at all those electric appliances owned by Wigeemeosooombbi Nomad. Some of the appliances are manufactured locally or close nearby, such as in India or China, and some are imported from the developed nations. Now step back and look at Wigeemeosooombbi's neighborhood. It looks like Bam, Iran before or after the big earthquake hit, which is to say it's situated somewhere between the Fifth Century and 12,000 BCE.
Why are those residents buying 10-speed blenders? Why don't they spend on the big stuff, such as a step up from a mud hut for a domicile and cement to build real roads? For the answer watch carefully, don't blink:
If the tax base is adequate, the government can use myriad means to stimulate the private business sector. One way is using taxes to build and maintain infrastructures that allow private industry to take root and grow. For example, think of the US federal highway program, which interstate truckers use to deliver goods. But if much of the tax money is paid off the books to officials, what can the individual official do with that bribe money? Even if the bribe equates to a few thousand dollars, that's not enough to build a road system.
What the official can do with the money is start a very small business, which often turns out to be a merchandise sales outlet/import business, which in turn is a money laundering scheme. That's why you can go to the most remote regions anywhere in the poverty-stricken world and find a bazaar around every bend selling anything you can get at Best Buy. If the blender you want is not in stock, give them a week to special order it.
But all these electric chachka sales outlets are not going anywhere. They are not growing the tax base enough to fuel serious business development. The result? Governments favor the socialist economic model, and depend on low-cost development bank loans to make up the shortfall--at least enough to keep the nation from sinking into the sea.
So the next time you hear a discussion about corruption in the developing world, remember that government corruption is 'inadequate tax base' spelled backward.
.
Ann in Cincinnati"
Dear Ann:
To understand the situation, realize first that it's a joke to place Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among the richest people in the world. They're just among the richest who file accurate tax returns. But Gates and Buffet probably don't even make it onto the list of the top one million of the world's richest people--these being the filthy rich who don't file tax returns or file a complete fiction.
It's not corruption per se that's the fundamental problem in Russia, Mexico, India, Egypt, and continue down the list. The problem is that the richest people in such countries pay much, much more in taxes than the rest--but the payments are off the books. The payments are made directly to officials.
The payments should not be seen as bribes, if you want to get a handle on the problem. They are a form of taxation and because taxation means representation, the richest people are the first in line with demands for how government money is to be spent.
To put all this another way, the lights always work in certain sections of Cairo. There is never a problem with traffic lights because for certain Egyptians the police simply back up traffic for miles and hours so the special cars can get to their destinations on time. There is never a problem with the water supply for certain Egyptians because the government digs special wells for them.
Same situation in Mexico. There's plenty of government money in Mexico. It's just that it doesn't get spent very much on education and health facilities. It gets spent mostly on projects that the biggest taxpayers want done--these being the taxpayers whose payments are not recorded.
Same situation in India. Yet millions of Indians are literally brain-damaged from drinking water from the city supplies--the Indians who don't die first from a host of diseases brought on by bad drinking water.
To give you some idea of just how bad the situation is, and how it undermines all the backbreaking labor and brain sweat of ordinary working stiffs the world over--
When the British laid out pipes for sewage and water in New Delhi, they installed the pipes right next to each other. That was standard practice in those days. However, by the time the British quit India the pipes had corroded so that the sewage mixed with the water supply. Boiling the water only kills a fraction of the pollutants. As to what was done to fix the pipes, nothing. Maybe during the past decade the Indian government got around to making some repairs in response to complaints by Western businesspeople. But the situation went on for decades untreated. That was in India's capital city.
Now try to imagine how Washingtonians would respond to the same problem in America's capital city. In fact, you don't have to imagine, if you followed the news about the discovery last year that lead had been getting into the water supply for years and that this information had been suppressed. Believe you me, the water bureaucracy scrambled to ward off the lynch mobs. That's because all Washingtonians have something approximating representation along with their taxation.
That's just what the majority of Indians, Russians and Mexicans, etc., don't have--even though they pay taxes. What they pay is not enough to give them adequate representation against the representation that the richest receive via under-the-table tax payments.
At the bottom of it all is not organized crime. At bottom is a system of doing business that stretches back to the ancient civilizations. That system is the clan system, which differs from tribalism in that marriage can be outside the tribe in a clan.
Marriages in a clan system are actually business mergers and/or business contracts. Say my clan controls the lumber supply in a region and your clan controls the trucking industry. We make a merger to have your trucks handle the lumber transport by marrying my daughter to your son. That's why you'll see arranged marriages in Muslim northern India and other parts between children. The marriage isn't consummated but there has to be a marriage ceremony to cement the contract.
Alert readers might ask if polygamy gives clans a huge business advantage. Of course. If you have one wife, you maybe only have five sons. If you have four wives cranking out 25 sons between them, you've got lots of merger material to play around with.
So all this talk about Islam under fire from the modern era is twaddle. It's the clan system that's under fire and Muslims know it. And they don't want to give up polygamy because there goes the big business advantage in the clan system. This is what many Muslims don't want to confront. They say, "We look after our own."
Yes, they have big charity, but in the modern era where dams and bridges and road systems and electrical grids cost billions upon billions, and where human population in a small region can run into the tens of millions, the charity system is completely inadequate. The clan model is simply not capable of dealing with the modern age.
Yet still they want it both ways. They can't have it both ways. They can't have all the benefits of modern life plus hold onto a way of doing business which subverts the type of government that makes modern life work. Fair taxation with adequate representation for the majority is the base of modern civilization's pyramid. The clan model, when mixed with off-the-books taxation, stands the pyramid on it's head. The patriarchs of the most powerful clans throw enough money at officials to ensure that their neighborhood has its own water well, the lights working, and the garbage picked up. The rest of the neighborhoods can go to hell in a handbasket.
The flip side of the same problem is how tribes can wreck the tax base in a country by invoking nomad status. To understand this part of the problem--
Knock! Knock!
"Who's there?"
Taxman.
"Taxman who?"
Taxman you haven't paid your taxes to the Iraqi government for the last 60 years.
"I'm not Iraqi. I'm Wigeemeosooombbi Nomad. We Wigeemeosooombbi have no fixed abode for the past 200,000 years."
But you remain fixed enough during part of the year to use the electricity and garbage collection service in Iraq. Pay up.
"If you're going to persecute me, give me a moment to collect my satellite dish, 10-speed blender, refrigerator, washing machine, microwave, television, toaster oven, computer, electric breadmaker, electric spice grinder and my goats and sheep and continue my nomadic wanderings. Unless you'd like to accept this gift of gold dinars for your dear mother."
That's why Gazi al-Yawer, the Iraq interim President, was furious with the Coalition military for not locking down the Iraqi borders after the Coalition toppled Saddam's regime. It's not just the security issue. It's also the taxation issue. Unless that issue is dealt with, Iraq is always pedaling backward, Saddam or no Saddam.
Al-Yawer is part of the wave of Middle Easterners who came to the West and figured out everything Pundita sketched above. They know you can't have a modern nation unless you have an adequate tax base, and that you can't have a tax base without a census. You can't have a census if a third of the population doesn't participate on the grounds that they're just in country to visit their cousins for a couple months.
The response from al-Yawer's tribe to his demand that everyone in Iraq get a national ID? They put out a contract on his life.
To summarize, the developing nations don't have the tax base to support adequate programs to provide services that you and I consider baseline necessities. In country after country, the tax base is not adequate to provide baseline services because so much of the tax collection is off the books and doesn't figure into the government's spending budget.
Now we arrive at the most interesting part of the problem. Let's back up and take a look at all those electric appliances owned by Wigeemeosooombbi Nomad. Some of the appliances are manufactured locally or close nearby, such as in India or China, and some are imported from the developed nations. Now step back and look at Wigeemeosooombbi's neighborhood. It looks like Bam, Iran before or after the big earthquake hit, which is to say it's situated somewhere between the Fifth Century and 12,000 BCE.
Why are those residents buying 10-speed blenders? Why don't they spend on the big stuff, such as a step up from a mud hut for a domicile and cement to build real roads? For the answer watch carefully, don't blink:
If the tax base is adequate, the government can use myriad means to stimulate the private business sector. One way is using taxes to build and maintain infrastructures that allow private industry to take root and grow. For example, think of the US federal highway program, which interstate truckers use to deliver goods. But if much of the tax money is paid off the books to officials, what can the individual official do with that bribe money? Even if the bribe equates to a few thousand dollars, that's not enough to build a road system.
What the official can do with the money is start a very small business, which often turns out to be a merchandise sales outlet/import business, which in turn is a money laundering scheme. That's why you can go to the most remote regions anywhere in the poverty-stricken world and find a bazaar around every bend selling anything you can get at Best Buy. If the blender you want is not in stock, give them a week to special order it.
But all these electric chachka sales outlets are not going anywhere. They are not growing the tax base enough to fuel serious business development. The result? Governments favor the socialist economic model, and depend on low-cost development bank loans to make up the shortfall--at least enough to keep the nation from sinking into the sea.
So the next time you hear a discussion about corruption in the developing world, remember that government corruption is 'inadequate tax base' spelled backward.
.
Wednesday, February 23
The Kyoto treaty and a steamy situation
"Pundita my dear, don't you think Bush could have thrown Europe a bone and signed onto Kyoto? The treaty is so ineffective it wouldn't do any harm to go along with it and besides the US is now missing out on the hot action in emissions credits trading. The trade is going to generate big business, even bigger than the action from the UN Oil for Food program.
[Signed] Boris in Jackson Heights"
Dear Boris:
We appreciate your sarcasm but going along with Kyoto is anything but harmless. Kyoto represents the institutionalization of what's known in the trade as "dartboard" research. But this isn't just bad government-funded medical research we're talking about. This is an issue humanity can't afford to get wrong, and we can't afford to piddle around for a century to come up with the right answers.
Global warming is a fact. But we don't know why the globe is warming and whether the phenomenon is within human control in any significant way. We don't know how much of various human activity, such as industrial fishing, contributes to warming. We have many puzzle pieces but we haven't constructed a good working hypothesis that would allow us to integrate all the data that could possibly relate to presumed reasons for global warming.
Instead, we've seized on one piece of the puzzle--industrial emissions--and diverted billions of dollars to creating solutions that on one side might be worse than the problem, and on other side are completely ineffective.
In the one camp, which represents solutions President Bush is pushing, we've got a bunch of car companies investing billions in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. But has anybody done a study on the environmental impact of the steam generated by gadzillions of hydrogen fuel cells in operation?
At least one study done years ago on the impact of water from jet streams suggested that the cumulative effect of the water released into the atmosphere has a significant impact on the weather.
I don't think the study was pursued because it isn't sexy science; i.e., the line of research doesn't attract big government bucks, and because what airline manufacturer and carrier wants to read that kind of research?
But before billions more are invested, we need to figure out if steam producing solutions are taking humanity from the frying pan into the fire.
Now we turn to the Kyoto camp. Just three countries not under the Kyoto treaty--China, India and US--between them are building 850 coal-fired plants that will spew up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto treaty is meant to reduce. This is not counting the emissions from vehicles in China and other developing countries. That's a huge consideration because they're now building, importing and buying vehicles in China and India at the rate of a zillion per minute.
And the administration and monitoring of the Kyoto agreement is so hideously complicated that it calls for yet another massive supranational bureaucratic construct with the attendant waste in resources and, as you hinted with a sledgehammer, a great opportunity for graft.
And then there is the thundering herd of elephants in the living room, which is that China is looming as the biggest problem with regard to industrial emissions, and China doesn't want to sign the Kyoto accord.
So there is a Marx Brothers quality about Kyoto. It solves nothing, goes nowhere, and generates tons of paper (from trees) that are unread by the aides whose job it is to plow through data for their bosses in government. Yet this Nothing has become a foreign policy football and is seriously discussed at state dinners.
.
[Signed] Boris in Jackson Heights"
Dear Boris:
We appreciate your sarcasm but going along with Kyoto is anything but harmless. Kyoto represents the institutionalization of what's known in the trade as "dartboard" research. But this isn't just bad government-funded medical research we're talking about. This is an issue humanity can't afford to get wrong, and we can't afford to piddle around for a century to come up with the right answers.
Global warming is a fact. But we don't know why the globe is warming and whether the phenomenon is within human control in any significant way. We don't know how much of various human activity, such as industrial fishing, contributes to warming. We have many puzzle pieces but we haven't constructed a good working hypothesis that would allow us to integrate all the data that could possibly relate to presumed reasons for global warming.
Instead, we've seized on one piece of the puzzle--industrial emissions--and diverted billions of dollars to creating solutions that on one side might be worse than the problem, and on other side are completely ineffective.
In the one camp, which represents solutions President Bush is pushing, we've got a bunch of car companies investing billions in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. But has anybody done a study on the environmental impact of the steam generated by gadzillions of hydrogen fuel cells in operation?
At least one study done years ago on the impact of water from jet streams suggested that the cumulative effect of the water released into the atmosphere has a significant impact on the weather.
I don't think the study was pursued because it isn't sexy science; i.e., the line of research doesn't attract big government bucks, and because what airline manufacturer and carrier wants to read that kind of research?
But before billions more are invested, we need to figure out if steam producing solutions are taking humanity from the frying pan into the fire.
Now we turn to the Kyoto camp. Just three countries not under the Kyoto treaty--China, India and US--between them are building 850 coal-fired plants that will spew up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto treaty is meant to reduce. This is not counting the emissions from vehicles in China and other developing countries. That's a huge consideration because they're now building, importing and buying vehicles in China and India at the rate of a zillion per minute.
And the administration and monitoring of the Kyoto agreement is so hideously complicated that it calls for yet another massive supranational bureaucratic construct with the attendant waste in resources and, as you hinted with a sledgehammer, a great opportunity for graft.
And then there is the thundering herd of elephants in the living room, which is that China is looming as the biggest problem with regard to industrial emissions, and China doesn't want to sign the Kyoto accord.
So there is a Marx Brothers quality about Kyoto. It solves nothing, goes nowhere, and generates tons of paper (from trees) that are unread by the aides whose job it is to plow through data for their bosses in government. Yet this Nothing has become a foreign policy football and is seriously discussed at state dinners.
.
Pundita cuts EU and NATO some slack
"You seem opposed to the US continuing with NATO. Some EU leaders seem to want to abandon NATO in favor of an EU defense organization. Yet President Bush is strongly in favor of keeping NATO and strengthening it, and I agree with him. I don't think the US should abandon what has been a very effective organization, and I think the East Europeans who have joined NATO are very strongly in favor of keeping it.
[Signed} Jan in Reston"
Dear Jan:
Pundita is opposed to the State Department being dominated by foreign policy that does not emanate from the White House and opposed to any White House defense/foreign policy that does not serve American interests first. There should be no conflict between an America-first policy and NATO--or between any member country's defense policy and NATO. The idea behind NATO is that member countries pursue their own course within the basic guidelines of NATO membership and come together in times of crisis under a shared leadership to fight a common enemy. Over a period of decades the idea fell into disrepair.
The idea worked during the Soviet era because the alliance countries saw the Soviet Empire as a common enemy, so there was cohesiveness in basic outlook and policy for deciding on which situation merited a NATO response.
The cohesiveness was retained after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire because the shared goal was breaking up the Warsaw Pact--bringing as many former Soviet regions as possible into NATO and integrating them in the NATO-allied European community. But where was the common enemy for this task?
The State Department drifted from a NATO-centric view into a Eurocentric view that was dominated by issues that went considerably beyond the narrow confines of defense. Meanwhile, State had gained more power in Washington than the Pentagon. The flaws in this state of affairs became patently obvious on 9/11.
Yet even after a catastrophic attack on the US exposed how little attention the American defense/foreign policy agencies had paid the world outside Europe, State continued to support a Eurocentric view. State 'went along' with the invasion of Afghanistan because Europe went along with it and so NATO supported it. State openly broke with the White House over Iraq because Europe broke with the White House and NATO followed.
In short, NATO suffers from mission drift and State drifted along with the drift. That doesn't mean the basic principle of the organization is now wrong or that America should abandon NATO. But there needs to be review of NATO policy and tightening up on the organization's purpose. Before this can go forward the major NATO member countries need to review and retool their defense policy for the modern era. The US has made a big start with Bush's Security Doctrine and initiatives, but the State Department has yet to be brought in line with the doctrine and the Pentagon is still retooling--and under wartime conditions.
Europe's challenge is far more complex and difficult. For all the fights inside the Beltway and the disputes between Democrats and Republicans, this nation is not only powerful, it's also very strong--the institutions are strong and cohesive. It's amazing if you look back on how far we've come since 9/11; Americans were able to get it together very quickly on a wide range of complex issues.
Europe, on the other hand, was hit by 9/11 at a time when they were profoundly immersed in integrating at a new level. They were trying to reshape the Continent along very cohesive lines and asking themselves how much cohesiveness they could take.
At the banking and intel levels Europe rallied with stunning speed to help the United States in the critical hours after the 9/11 attack. But once the financial crisis was averted and the initial shock of the attack wore off, Europe was almost resentful that in the middle of all their refurbishing, they had stop and figure out how to respond to the larger issues surrounding 9/11.
Then came Bush's swift actions--the decision to attack the Taliban, the declaration of the war on terror, and the preemption doctrine. Over a period of weeks, Bush threw together a new national security policy for the United States.
Europe wanted time to think and there was no time; the Bush war on terror came together like lightning. Then came Iraq. Part of Europe's anger at Bush about Iraq is a rooted in a 'Stop the World I want to get off' feeling. If the war could just stop for a year and let them sort out what they need to do with regard to working out EU adjustments, they'd probably come around to several of the ideas that Bush threw at them with dizzying speed--and they already have come around in some key areas.
And since 9/11 the Europeans managed to get in a great deal of hard thinking about the issues Pundita sketched with regard to NATO, and they've come upon a serious problem. They've put together an EU constitution that calls for one foreign policy for the entire EU bloc. Because foreign policy rests on defense policy, the question is how a singular European defense policy fits in with NATO.
Also, a defense policy for the EU that's not a joke rests on greatly beefing up the Eurozone military and there's all sorts of questions, including funding questions, to be dealt with in that regard.
Ironically, the need to respond to Bush's shoot-from-the-hip security strategy galvanized the EU leaders to think about all the above much sooner, and more deeply, than they had intended before 9/11. All these defense questions are very sticky, very complex for the Europeans. They thought they could kick the can down the road during the 1990s because there was no looming military threat. Writing in December 2003 about Europe's first draft of a security strategy, Steven Everts of the International Herald Tribune observed:
War gives no time to construct defense policy from the comfort of the armchair. From that view, sticking with the tried-and-true alliance and doing patchwork repairs to it on the fly makes more sense than trying to build up a new alliance framework or revise the old one from the ground up. So for now staying with NATO makes sense. However, America needs to stick with NATO's original principle; our foreign office and defense agencies need to be very clear on American policy as distinct from the country policies of NATO members and a 'NATO view.'
Short takes on EU security strategy:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19269-1489226,00.html
http://www.aicgs.org/c/vanham.shtml
http://www.iht.com/articles/120673.html
.
[Signed} Jan in Reston"
Dear Jan:
Pundita is opposed to the State Department being dominated by foreign policy that does not emanate from the White House and opposed to any White House defense/foreign policy that does not serve American interests first. There should be no conflict between an America-first policy and NATO--or between any member country's defense policy and NATO. The idea behind NATO is that member countries pursue their own course within the basic guidelines of NATO membership and come together in times of crisis under a shared leadership to fight a common enemy. Over a period of decades the idea fell into disrepair.
The idea worked during the Soviet era because the alliance countries saw the Soviet Empire as a common enemy, so there was cohesiveness in basic outlook and policy for deciding on which situation merited a NATO response.
The cohesiveness was retained after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire because the shared goal was breaking up the Warsaw Pact--bringing as many former Soviet regions as possible into NATO and integrating them in the NATO-allied European community. But where was the common enemy for this task?
The State Department drifted from a NATO-centric view into a Eurocentric view that was dominated by issues that went considerably beyond the narrow confines of defense. Meanwhile, State had gained more power in Washington than the Pentagon. The flaws in this state of affairs became patently obvious on 9/11.
Yet even after a catastrophic attack on the US exposed how little attention the American defense/foreign policy agencies had paid the world outside Europe, State continued to support a Eurocentric view. State 'went along' with the invasion of Afghanistan because Europe went along with it and so NATO supported it. State openly broke with the White House over Iraq because Europe broke with the White House and NATO followed.
In short, NATO suffers from mission drift and State drifted along with the drift. That doesn't mean the basic principle of the organization is now wrong or that America should abandon NATO. But there needs to be review of NATO policy and tightening up on the organization's purpose. Before this can go forward the major NATO member countries need to review and retool their defense policy for the modern era. The US has made a big start with Bush's Security Doctrine and initiatives, but the State Department has yet to be brought in line with the doctrine and the Pentagon is still retooling--and under wartime conditions.
Europe's challenge is far more complex and difficult. For all the fights inside the Beltway and the disputes between Democrats and Republicans, this nation is not only powerful, it's also very strong--the institutions are strong and cohesive. It's amazing if you look back on how far we've come since 9/11; Americans were able to get it together very quickly on a wide range of complex issues.
Europe, on the other hand, was hit by 9/11 at a time when they were profoundly immersed in integrating at a new level. They were trying to reshape the Continent along very cohesive lines and asking themselves how much cohesiveness they could take.
At the banking and intel levels Europe rallied with stunning speed to help the United States in the critical hours after the 9/11 attack. But once the financial crisis was averted and the initial shock of the attack wore off, Europe was almost resentful that in the middle of all their refurbishing, they had stop and figure out how to respond to the larger issues surrounding 9/11.
Then came Bush's swift actions--the decision to attack the Taliban, the declaration of the war on terror, and the preemption doctrine. Over a period of weeks, Bush threw together a new national security policy for the United States.
Europe wanted time to think and there was no time; the Bush war on terror came together like lightning. Then came Iraq. Part of Europe's anger at Bush about Iraq is a rooted in a 'Stop the World I want to get off' feeling. If the war could just stop for a year and let them sort out what they need to do with regard to working out EU adjustments, they'd probably come around to several of the ideas that Bush threw at them with dizzying speed--and they already have come around in some key areas.
And since 9/11 the Europeans managed to get in a great deal of hard thinking about the issues Pundita sketched with regard to NATO, and they've come upon a serious problem. They've put together an EU constitution that calls for one foreign policy for the entire EU bloc. Because foreign policy rests on defense policy, the question is how a singular European defense policy fits in with NATO.
Also, a defense policy for the EU that's not a joke rests on greatly beefing up the Eurozone military and there's all sorts of questions, including funding questions, to be dealt with in that regard.
Ironically, the need to respond to Bush's shoot-from-the-hip security strategy galvanized the EU leaders to think about all the above much sooner, and more deeply, than they had intended before 9/11. All these defense questions are very sticky, very complex for the Europeans. They thought they could kick the can down the road during the 1990s because there was no looming military threat. Writing in December 2003 about Europe's first draft of a security strategy, Steven Everts of the International Herald Tribune observed:
It has forced European leaders to debate strategies and policies, rather than seek refuge in more familiar discussions on institutions and processes. It has already produced a "new realism" that pervades current debates on EU foreign policy. A year ago it would have been impossible to get all countries to sign up for a European strategic culture "that fosters early, rapid and, when necessary robust intervention."Not all the EU countries have yet ratified the EU constitution and it's not even clear whether England will accept the idea of a single Eurozone foreign policy run from Brussels. So there is still a lot of sorting out to be done. I think Bush and his advisors recognize this but clearly his approach is, 'America has a war to run.'
War gives no time to construct defense policy from the comfort of the armchair. From that view, sticking with the tried-and-true alliance and doing patchwork repairs to it on the fly makes more sense than trying to build up a new alliance framework or revise the old one from the ground up. So for now staying with NATO makes sense. However, America needs to stick with NATO's original principle; our foreign office and defense agencies need to be very clear on American policy as distinct from the country policies of NATO members and a 'NATO view.'
Short takes on EU security strategy:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19269-1489226,00.html
http://www.aicgs.org/c/vanham.shtml
http://www.iht.com/articles/120673.html
.
Tuesday, February 22
The price of Indian tea in Iran
"Pundita, I'm seeing why you still refer to the Group of 8 as the G7. There's a move afoot to get Russia's membership suspended until Putin toes America's line. Russia's place in the group is still not secure, even though they were supposed to host the G8 summit in 2006.
[Signed] Caesar in San Francisco"
Dear Caesar:
During his Brussels speech Bush spoke of Russia taking their full place in the European community. He criticized Moscow's actions in the context of how they fit with the standards of the EU. Moscow has been very concerned that NATO's expansion is 'surrounding' Russia. Bush's speech seemed to be saying to Moscow, 'Where's the problem? If you keep your nose clean, you can join the WTO and down the line you can join the EU and NATO.'
The problem is that Russia doesn't need to become a part of the Europeon community. Russia sits on the invisible line that divides Asia and Europe. During earlier centuries a series of French diplomats managed to convince Russia's tsars that they were barbarians unless they learned to speak French. But today's Russia doesn't need to fit in with Europe. They can fit in with Asia.
European Union countries as well as the US were deeply involved in promoting Yushchenko--an involvement that included trashing Russia. So if Russia needed a lesson on where they'd stand in NATO and the EU if they joined, the Ukraine affair was it. The lesson is that Russia can be treated as a full-fledged European country only if the people running Russia allow Brussels a big say in how Russia is run.
That's the same message Dame Neville-Jones conveyed to the National Intelligence Conference during her keynote speech--not about Russia but about Europe's view of the United States. She was not speaking in an official capacity but her previous standing in the British government gives her words much weight. Stripped of polite language, the message she passed on is that the EU's idea of improved cooperation with Washington is for things to return to the way they were during the Clinton era. That was the era during which US foreign/defense policy was run from a post box in Brussels.
I add that Neville-Jones is a Good Guy--a very staunch friend of the US war on terror. That's why she squished herself into the middle seat of Coach class to fly from London to Washington just to deliver a heads up to the US defense community.
It's doubtful that President Bush first heard the warning via Neville-Jones's speech. It's obvious that the EU has taken a hard line toward Washington and there's no indication they plan to soften, even if they find agreement over Syria's role in Lebanon. The EU leaders want to have more say in how US defense/foreign policy is run; if they don't get it, they can drag their feet on a host of issues. From that view, Bush's tough stance on Russia can be read as a bone thrown at the EU's demands for more say in US policy.
However, there have been big changes in the world since the US invaded Iraq. The US triumph in Iraq--and it is a triumph--brought up a situation that was greatly suppressed because of Saddam Hussein's aggression in the Middle East. The situation is that Iran is a Persian island in a sea of Arabs. As long as Iran could act to keep Saddam's aggression in check, Arabs were happy to invite Iran to their backyard barbecues. But now that Saddam's threat is removed, Iran is feeling, well, like an island. And they aren't going to reach out to Israel--not as long as the present regime in Tehran is in power.
What would you do, in Tehran's position? For the answer, look at a map. Iran sits on that invisible line that divides the Middle East from Asia. Iran has long been a big purchaser of Russian weapons technology and so they've had good relations with Russia. But to interest Russia in forming a bloc would take more than arms trade. It would take a bunch of countries getting on board.
The map shows that the first choice among the bunch is China. That was Beijing's idea when they formed the hilariously named Shanghai Cooperative. Beijing envisioned an Asian arc of power that included Russia, Iran, India and various satellites, such as whatever Stans the bloc could pry away from US influence.
Put in unpussyfooting language, the Shanghai Cooperative is a pussyfooting attempt to form an Asian version of NATO. Vajpayee had his own idea; he wanted to create an IT trade alliance with China that would leave the EU trade bloc and the US eating dust for the rest of the century.
One sticking point for Vajpayee's party was bringing Tehran on board with the Shanghai Cooperative. The Islamic fundamentalists in Tehran don't say nice about Hindus behind their back. Vajpayee's party represents Hindu nationalism. Iran didn't see why they should be allies with India and vice versa. So the Shanghai Cooperative sort of bumped along in getting off the ground.
Also, Iran and Russia, having many centuries of experience with China, knew that the Chinese have a penchant for never naming anything for what it actually is, if it has unpleasant or forceful connotations. That's why Chinese gulags in Tibet were given names such as Bluebirds Nesting in Feathered Fan.
To boil it down, Tehran and Moscow weren't sure they wanted to be run from a post office box in Beijing. Months passed. Moscow waffled and watched India and China waltz each other around, and Iran lost a lot of money and caused a lot of unnecessary bloodshed while trying to swing things their way in post-Saddam Iraq. Meanwhile, large numbers of Indians were getting more and more steamed at Vajpayee, who was so busy entertaining Microsoft executives and wooing China that he neglected his voter base. In what was a stunning surprise to no one but Vajpayee, the Hindu nationalists were routed last year from the seat in Delhi and the Congress party returned to power.
The thing to write on your hand about the Congress party is that they trust China no further than they can throw it. And with a Sikh in the top post in India--Sikhs being sort of an Indianized Islamic sect with a few nods to Hinduism--Tehran found they could deal with India, after Tehran faced the writing on the wall about Iraq and looked around at the sea of Arabs lapping at their shore.
The upshot is that Tehran is talking up the creation of a common market that would include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, the Central Asian states, and the Caucasus. Just to show they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, Tehran has dropped import barriers to Indian tea.
Tehran is doing more than agreeing to drink Indian tea. They want India to back them up regarding Tehran's stance on going nuclear. As sweetener, they've offered India a gas pipeline deal and India has reciprocated with all kinds of planned investment in Iran.
Thus, the outlines of the early 21st century are jelling. For all their hi-tech industrial knack, the EU, America, India and China are heavily dependent on regions in Russia, the Caspian Sea states, and the Middle East for energy supplies. Tehran has sized up the situation, and is making a pitch to Russia to play by the new geopolitical order.
Now put yourself in Putin's place listening to the pitch from Tehran. Putin's overriding concern is to build up Russia as a truly sovereign nation and from there a stable democracy. Imagine Dallas, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago running their own foreign policy counter to Washington's. That's pretty much where Russia's at.
Moscow has to get control of the regional governors and the oligarch clans. Putin doesn't want to do it by brute force, in the way China and Iran solved similar problems. So it's messy because Putin and his technocrats are making up solutions and correcting them as they go along.
Washington and Brussels don't care about the mess. They care about oil and gas and gas and oil and oil and gas. Russia has no other use to them other than maybe a place to set up US/NATO bases. Quite frankly, Russia doesn't have all that much offer during this era, aside from energy and a weapons industry left over from the Cold War era.
For now, Putin is trying to keep everyone at bay while he continues to fiddle with structural adjustment in the effort to wrest Russia away from the clan model of government.
The question is whether Bush should approach Russia in the way he indicated in his Brussels speech. His lecture to Russia might be a reflection of pressure from factions in the Democrat and Republican party that want to go along with Europe's lead on Russia.
However, the factions are still living in 1982 and Bush knows this. So we'll have to see what happens in Bratislava, now that Bush made his bread-and-butter speech to the EU and made a pass at placating the factions back home.
Just to throw in more suspense, Pundita suspects that Germany is particularly against the Bush-Putin friendship. Germany, we should all remember, is the most influential member of the European Union.
For more on Iran-India talks:
http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/?action=fullnews&id=75559
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=2/22/2005&Cat=2&Num=006
[Signed] Caesar in San Francisco"
Dear Caesar:
During his Brussels speech Bush spoke of Russia taking their full place in the European community. He criticized Moscow's actions in the context of how they fit with the standards of the EU. Moscow has been very concerned that NATO's expansion is 'surrounding' Russia. Bush's speech seemed to be saying to Moscow, 'Where's the problem? If you keep your nose clean, you can join the WTO and down the line you can join the EU and NATO.'
The problem is that Russia doesn't need to become a part of the Europeon community. Russia sits on the invisible line that divides Asia and Europe. During earlier centuries a series of French diplomats managed to convince Russia's tsars that they were barbarians unless they learned to speak French. But today's Russia doesn't need to fit in with Europe. They can fit in with Asia.
European Union countries as well as the US were deeply involved in promoting Yushchenko--an involvement that included trashing Russia. So if Russia needed a lesson on where they'd stand in NATO and the EU if they joined, the Ukraine affair was it. The lesson is that Russia can be treated as a full-fledged European country only if the people running Russia allow Brussels a big say in how Russia is run.
That's the same message Dame Neville-Jones conveyed to the National Intelligence Conference during her keynote speech--not about Russia but about Europe's view of the United States. She was not speaking in an official capacity but her previous standing in the British government gives her words much weight. Stripped of polite language, the message she passed on is that the EU's idea of improved cooperation with Washington is for things to return to the way they were during the Clinton era. That was the era during which US foreign/defense policy was run from a post box in Brussels.
I add that Neville-Jones is a Good Guy--a very staunch friend of the US war on terror. That's why she squished herself into the middle seat of Coach class to fly from London to Washington just to deliver a heads up to the US defense community.
It's doubtful that President Bush first heard the warning via Neville-Jones's speech. It's obvious that the EU has taken a hard line toward Washington and there's no indication they plan to soften, even if they find agreement over Syria's role in Lebanon. The EU leaders want to have more say in how US defense/foreign policy is run; if they don't get it, they can drag their feet on a host of issues. From that view, Bush's tough stance on Russia can be read as a bone thrown at the EU's demands for more say in US policy.
However, there have been big changes in the world since the US invaded Iraq. The US triumph in Iraq--and it is a triumph--brought up a situation that was greatly suppressed because of Saddam Hussein's aggression in the Middle East. The situation is that Iran is a Persian island in a sea of Arabs. As long as Iran could act to keep Saddam's aggression in check, Arabs were happy to invite Iran to their backyard barbecues. But now that Saddam's threat is removed, Iran is feeling, well, like an island. And they aren't going to reach out to Israel--not as long as the present regime in Tehran is in power.
What would you do, in Tehran's position? For the answer, look at a map. Iran sits on that invisible line that divides the Middle East from Asia. Iran has long been a big purchaser of Russian weapons technology and so they've had good relations with Russia. But to interest Russia in forming a bloc would take more than arms trade. It would take a bunch of countries getting on board.
The map shows that the first choice among the bunch is China. That was Beijing's idea when they formed the hilariously named Shanghai Cooperative. Beijing envisioned an Asian arc of power that included Russia, Iran, India and various satellites, such as whatever Stans the bloc could pry away from US influence.
Put in unpussyfooting language, the Shanghai Cooperative is a pussyfooting attempt to form an Asian version of NATO. Vajpayee had his own idea; he wanted to create an IT trade alliance with China that would leave the EU trade bloc and the US eating dust for the rest of the century.
One sticking point for Vajpayee's party was bringing Tehran on board with the Shanghai Cooperative. The Islamic fundamentalists in Tehran don't say nice about Hindus behind their back. Vajpayee's party represents Hindu nationalism. Iran didn't see why they should be allies with India and vice versa. So the Shanghai Cooperative sort of bumped along in getting off the ground.
Also, Iran and Russia, having many centuries of experience with China, knew that the Chinese have a penchant for never naming anything for what it actually is, if it has unpleasant or forceful connotations. That's why Chinese gulags in Tibet were given names such as Bluebirds Nesting in Feathered Fan.
To boil it down, Tehran and Moscow weren't sure they wanted to be run from a post office box in Beijing. Months passed. Moscow waffled and watched India and China waltz each other around, and Iran lost a lot of money and caused a lot of unnecessary bloodshed while trying to swing things their way in post-Saddam Iraq. Meanwhile, large numbers of Indians were getting more and more steamed at Vajpayee, who was so busy entertaining Microsoft executives and wooing China that he neglected his voter base. In what was a stunning surprise to no one but Vajpayee, the Hindu nationalists were routed last year from the seat in Delhi and the Congress party returned to power.
The thing to write on your hand about the Congress party is that they trust China no further than they can throw it. And with a Sikh in the top post in India--Sikhs being sort of an Indianized Islamic sect with a few nods to Hinduism--Tehran found they could deal with India, after Tehran faced the writing on the wall about Iraq and looked around at the sea of Arabs lapping at their shore.
The upshot is that Tehran is talking up the creation of a common market that would include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, the Central Asian states, and the Caucasus. Just to show they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, Tehran has dropped import barriers to Indian tea.
Tehran is doing more than agreeing to drink Indian tea. They want India to back them up regarding Tehran's stance on going nuclear. As sweetener, they've offered India a gas pipeline deal and India has reciprocated with all kinds of planned investment in Iran.
Thus, the outlines of the early 21st century are jelling. For all their hi-tech industrial knack, the EU, America, India and China are heavily dependent on regions in Russia, the Caspian Sea states, and the Middle East for energy supplies. Tehran has sized up the situation, and is making a pitch to Russia to play by the new geopolitical order.
Now put yourself in Putin's place listening to the pitch from Tehran. Putin's overriding concern is to build up Russia as a truly sovereign nation and from there a stable democracy. Imagine Dallas, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago running their own foreign policy counter to Washington's. That's pretty much where Russia's at.
Moscow has to get control of the regional governors and the oligarch clans. Putin doesn't want to do it by brute force, in the way China and Iran solved similar problems. So it's messy because Putin and his technocrats are making up solutions and correcting them as they go along.
Washington and Brussels don't care about the mess. They care about oil and gas and gas and oil and oil and gas. Russia has no other use to them other than maybe a place to set up US/NATO bases. Quite frankly, Russia doesn't have all that much offer during this era, aside from energy and a weapons industry left over from the Cold War era.
For now, Putin is trying to keep everyone at bay while he continues to fiddle with structural adjustment in the effort to wrest Russia away from the clan model of government.
The question is whether Bush should approach Russia in the way he indicated in his Brussels speech. His lecture to Russia might be a reflection of pressure from factions in the Democrat and Republican party that want to go along with Europe's lead on Russia.
However, the factions are still living in 1982 and Bush knows this. So we'll have to see what happens in Bratislava, now that Bush made his bread-and-butter speech to the EU and made a pass at placating the factions back home.
Just to throw in more suspense, Pundita suspects that Germany is particularly against the Bush-Putin friendship. Germany, we should all remember, is the most influential member of the European Union.
For more on Iran-India talks:
http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/?action=fullnews&id=75559
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=2/22/2005&Cat=2&Num=006
Sunday, February 20
Chinese spies! Russian arms merchants! German secret police! Is it a remake of Casablanca? No, it's the Ostrich school of defense policy!
"[Secretary] Rice was much tougher on the Russians during their meeting than was generally reported in the US press. So do you think Bush will keep up the heat on Putin over Syria and Iran during the Bratislava meeting?"
[Signed] Chicago Dan"
Dear Chicago Dan:
Is it me? Or has anyone else noticed that the spike in Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia coincided with Moscow's decision to favor Japan over China with a pipeline route and Putin's reluctance to accept China's 'invitation' to have Russia take a larger role in the Shanghai Cooperative.
And as coincidence would have it, terrorist attacks on Russia fell off markedly at just around the time Putin finally decided to:
(a) accept Beijing's 'invitation' to take a greater role in the Shanghai Cooperative
(b) do more oil business with China
(c) forgive much of Syria's debt to Russia and seal an arms deal, and
(d) give Tehran pretty much everything they want with regard to transfer of nuclear technology.
Well, perhaps Pundita reads too much into her haphazard following of news about terrorism attacks in Russia.
In any case, we extract two issues from your question. The most serious issue for the United States is drift toward the Ostrich School of foreign policy.
How is yelling at Putin about Syria and Iran going to convince France and Germany not to sell weapons and dual-use technologies to Syria and Iran? How does huffing at the Kremlin bring the British Foreign Office to cease their Appeasement Initiative toward Iran? And what does upbraiding the Russian arms industry have to do with the fact that the US is currently overrun with Chinese industrial spies?
The key issue is somehow always lost in the shuffle of the day's war and diplomacy news. The issue is that oppression and innovation don't go together.
China defends 'authoritarian' government, but you don't find China sending armies of industrial spies to Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea. No, they send the spies to the US and other democratic countries, where creativity flowers. The spies steal the innovations that come from the brain sweat of peoples who live in freedom. Then the Chinese make cheap knockoffs and sell them at a steep discount. Then they say, "See? You don't have to be a democracy to be a modern trading power!"
Then China gets invited to lunch at the G7 meeting.
If it ended there, we might take it in stride. But US soliders are getting shot at and blown up in Iraq with weapons that have Made in China stamped on their parts--when the stamp doesn't read Made in France or Made in Germany.
Meanwhile, US officials yell at the Saudis for helping to fund terrorist organizations. But selling weapons and WMD technology to the governments who run terrorist armies is a far greater problem.
Show me the Saudi who can operate a wrench and I'll show you a Yemini you've mistaken for a Saudi. The Saudis have a horror of physical labor. So where are the weapons factories in Saudi Arabia? Show them to Pundita.
No. The weapons factories and booming weapons industries are in Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Israel and China. They're in America also but during this era, at least, the American defense industry makes you steal the designs before you sell them to terror-sponsoring governments.
When we call out our allies on the issue, they come up with excuses that wouldn't get past any parent of a three-year old. Some perennial favorites:
"Where is the grand jury indictment showing evidence that X government sponsors terror?"
"We don't recognize those acts as terrorism. They are legitimate protests against oppression."
"Look, you can make a weapon out of toaster parts if you can read the computer code."
"We sold them stuff we dug up from a World War Two bunker."
"I'm a capitalist, not a moralist."
And the ever-popular, "Don't worry, they can't figure out how to detach the rocket launcher from the tank."
The Israelis came up with a creative way to deal with the problem of being attacked by the very weapon designs they sell to governments who turn around and sell them to Israel's enemies: They declared that Israel is perpetually at war.
However, Pundita awards her Ostrich Prize to Germany. To deal with the problem of terrorist attacks launched with weapons that the German defense industry sells to terror sponsoring governments, Germany is readying to become a police state:
Pay for your visits to the wine bar with EFT. No more cash payments for anything, just in case you're thinking of laundering money for a terrorist cell. Retinal scans at the dentist's office, in case you steal cavity filling material and convert it to a bomb. Computer chips inserted in your arm and pet cat, in case you and your cat turn out to be plotting a terrorist act against German wildlife. Minature cameras inserted under every toilet seat, in case you flush WMD down the can during a police raid.
That's just our allies playing ostrich. Now we turn to trading partners who are not allies. China only wants lunch invitations to the G7 meetings because acknowledging their true trade status means they can no longer trot out their favorite excuse.
Whenever you call out China over anything, they lapse into cute pidgin English: "Oh we just poor developing country. We can't wead patent and copyright law. Any weapons we sell is from 1916."
Whenever you snap at the Russians about their customers for arms deals, you get the same excuses our allies trot out. But if you back a Russian into a corner, you learn why it's possible to ace a test in Russian literature by answering, "The deathbed scene" to every question.
Russians are among the world's best storytellers and they don't believe in leaving a dry eye in the house. So Pundita will give everyone a moment to collect their Kleneex box before she lists the litany. Ready?
1. The Russian government has been broke since the Romanovs were overthrown.
2. During the UN embargo of Iraq the Russian government scared up cash to keep the lights burning in the Kremlin by (a) reselling oil they bought at a steep discount from Saddam Hussein and (b) selling Saddam every outdated weapon in the Russian arsenal going back to catapults and pitch arrows.
3. Those avenues of revenue-raising were shut down by the US invasion of Iraq.
4. That's why the Kremlin finally did what they should have done years earlier: go after tax-cheating oligarchs and wrestle back control of their energy sector from the oligarchs before it was sold piecemeal to US and European energy companies acting as fronts for Western banks.
5. Because the Kremlin dealt with reality only after the US invaded Iraq, they confronted their tax problem all at once and in a big hurry. That translated to highly questionable methods in going after the big-bucks tax cheats.
6. That's how two oligarchs with an Interpol warrant out on them ended up at a prayer breakfast at the White House the other week. When oligarchs on the lam from Russian justice are not in Washington sucking up to Republicans they're using Israel and Europe as a bunker for their war against the Kremlin.
7. If all the above sounds vaguely familiar, Beslan was Russia's 9/11. It was the inevitable consequence of many years of the government playing ostrich and not tending to gathering threats that were as plain as day to anyone who cared to look. That might be why Bush and Putin felt a kinship. They had both inherited a national security mess--a mess consisting of layers upon layers of neglect.
8. The big difference between the Putin and Bush presidencies is the advantage that a stable, wealthy democracy confers on America's leader. That meant Bush didn't need to build up a nation and a central government at the same time he declared war on terror.
The democracy that Yeltsin oversaw was a stage show--a carefully managed media event to please the West, in order to draw development/private bank loans. Behind the stage props was a ruin. Putin is trying to forge a Russian nation out of the ruin.
9. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has to scare up vast quantities of cash to keep the lights on and outspend the oligarch clans in order to remain in power. The clans have provided the only real stability Russia has known since the Soviet Union dissolved but they are also the greatest obstacle to Russia becoming a truly sovereign nation, not to mention a healthy democracy.
10. Putin's defense policy must be viewed against all the above considerations and Russia's place on the world map. He has the same policy as Roadrunner. The policy is to survive the day and make sure not to look down while running from one cliff edge to another.
11. With regard to foreign policy, Putin is taking the paths of least resistance that open up. Is that the right thing to do? No. It's dangerously shortsighted. But to take actions according to the long view would require a militarily powerful nation at Russia's back. Any hope Putin had that he might depend on America for back-up in dealing with China's 'invitations' was dashed when he saw American actions in Ukraine. The actions fully supported and encouraged the Yushchenko tactic of demonizing Russia and Putin.
12. So, even if Bush somehow convinced Putin that notwithstanding US actions in Ukraine and Georgia, America would be at Russia's back--the Russian military would not accept Bush's assurances. As with all military, they don't get paid to live on hope.
13. But even if the Russian military trusted Bush to stand by assurances to Putin, Bush is only in office four more years. Who knows what kind of defense/foreign policy will evolve from the next US administration?
14. And even if the Russians could be assured that Bush policy carries forward, geography is still the most important factor in Russia's foreign policy. Russia must find ways to get along with the European trading bloc, China, and Iran.
Now that we've all had a good cry, it's time to run the story through Pundita's handy pocket-sized Malarkey Translator:
Putin doesn't want to rumble with Washington any more than he wants to rumble with Beijing. But what Russia's weapons industry lost in sales to Saddam's regime, they can make up for with weapons sales to Syria. And what they lost from black market oil deals with Saddam, they can make up with sales of dual-use nuclear technology to Iran.
That bottom line brings Russia up against the US-led war on terror. But delivering threats to Moscow is delivering threats to the wrong address. Or rather, Russia should not be near the top of the address list. In their dealings with Iran and Syria, Russia is simply following the lead set by the European Union's most powerful nations. These very same nations are members of NATO--our dear allies.
This said, the US has a war to fight. So Pundita hopes President Bush reads the riot act to Putin over weapon sales to Syria and nuke technology to Iran. We hope even more that Bush trots out the same riot act for every head of state he meets with this coming week.
For their part, Moscow would be within their rights to lodge a formal protest with the US government over the White House inviting oligarchs on the lam to a prayer breakfast, and over the recent "testimony" before Congress by Yukos and Menatep officials.
The latter incident is so outrageous that Pundita, who is rarely at a loss for words, is speechless. Thus, we allow Peter Lavelle at untimely-thoughts.com to outline the situation: Yukos' Double Standard.
http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/index.html?alert=comments&art=1395
.
[Signed] Chicago Dan"
Dear Chicago Dan:
Is it me? Or has anyone else noticed that the spike in Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia coincided with Moscow's decision to favor Japan over China with a pipeline route and Putin's reluctance to accept China's 'invitation' to have Russia take a larger role in the Shanghai Cooperative.
And as coincidence would have it, terrorist attacks on Russia fell off markedly at just around the time Putin finally decided to:
(a) accept Beijing's 'invitation' to take a greater role in the Shanghai Cooperative
(b) do more oil business with China
(c) forgive much of Syria's debt to Russia and seal an arms deal, and
(d) give Tehran pretty much everything they want with regard to transfer of nuclear technology.
Well, perhaps Pundita reads too much into her haphazard following of news about terrorism attacks in Russia.
In any case, we extract two issues from your question. The most serious issue for the United States is drift toward the Ostrich School of foreign policy.
How is yelling at Putin about Syria and Iran going to convince France and Germany not to sell weapons and dual-use technologies to Syria and Iran? How does huffing at the Kremlin bring the British Foreign Office to cease their Appeasement Initiative toward Iran? And what does upbraiding the Russian arms industry have to do with the fact that the US is currently overrun with Chinese industrial spies?
The key issue is somehow always lost in the shuffle of the day's war and diplomacy news. The issue is that oppression and innovation don't go together.
China defends 'authoritarian' government, but you don't find China sending armies of industrial spies to Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea. No, they send the spies to the US and other democratic countries, where creativity flowers. The spies steal the innovations that come from the brain sweat of peoples who live in freedom. Then the Chinese make cheap knockoffs and sell them at a steep discount. Then they say, "See? You don't have to be a democracy to be a modern trading power!"
Then China gets invited to lunch at the G7 meeting.
If it ended there, we might take it in stride. But US soliders are getting shot at and blown up in Iraq with weapons that have Made in China stamped on their parts--when the stamp doesn't read Made in France or Made in Germany.
Meanwhile, US officials yell at the Saudis for helping to fund terrorist organizations. But selling weapons and WMD technology to the governments who run terrorist armies is a far greater problem.
Show me the Saudi who can operate a wrench and I'll show you a Yemini you've mistaken for a Saudi. The Saudis have a horror of physical labor. So where are the weapons factories in Saudi Arabia? Show them to Pundita.
No. The weapons factories and booming weapons industries are in Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Israel and China. They're in America also but during this era, at least, the American defense industry makes you steal the designs before you sell them to terror-sponsoring governments.
When we call out our allies on the issue, they come up with excuses that wouldn't get past any parent of a three-year old. Some perennial favorites:
"Where is the grand jury indictment showing evidence that X government sponsors terror?"
"We don't recognize those acts as terrorism. They are legitimate protests against oppression."
"Look, you can make a weapon out of toaster parts if you can read the computer code."
"We sold them stuff we dug up from a World War Two bunker."
"I'm a capitalist, not a moralist."
And the ever-popular, "Don't worry, they can't figure out how to detach the rocket launcher from the tank."
The Israelis came up with a creative way to deal with the problem of being attacked by the very weapon designs they sell to governments who turn around and sell them to Israel's enemies: They declared that Israel is perpetually at war.
However, Pundita awards her Ostrich Prize to Germany. To deal with the problem of terrorist attacks launched with weapons that the German defense industry sells to terror sponsoring governments, Germany is readying to become a police state:
Pay for your visits to the wine bar with EFT. No more cash payments for anything, just in case you're thinking of laundering money for a terrorist cell. Retinal scans at the dentist's office, in case you steal cavity filling material and convert it to a bomb. Computer chips inserted in your arm and pet cat, in case you and your cat turn out to be plotting a terrorist act against German wildlife. Minature cameras inserted under every toilet seat, in case you flush WMD down the can during a police raid.
That's just our allies playing ostrich. Now we turn to trading partners who are not allies. China only wants lunch invitations to the G7 meetings because acknowledging their true trade status means they can no longer trot out their favorite excuse.
Whenever you call out China over anything, they lapse into cute pidgin English: "Oh we just poor developing country. We can't wead patent and copyright law. Any weapons we sell is from 1916."
Whenever you snap at the Russians about their customers for arms deals, you get the same excuses our allies trot out. But if you back a Russian into a corner, you learn why it's possible to ace a test in Russian literature by answering, "The deathbed scene" to every question.
Russians are among the world's best storytellers and they don't believe in leaving a dry eye in the house. So Pundita will give everyone a moment to collect their Kleneex box before she lists the litany. Ready?
1. The Russian government has been broke since the Romanovs were overthrown.
2. During the UN embargo of Iraq the Russian government scared up cash to keep the lights burning in the Kremlin by (a) reselling oil they bought at a steep discount from Saddam Hussein and (b) selling Saddam every outdated weapon in the Russian arsenal going back to catapults and pitch arrows.
3. Those avenues of revenue-raising were shut down by the US invasion of Iraq.
4. That's why the Kremlin finally did what they should have done years earlier: go after tax-cheating oligarchs and wrestle back control of their energy sector from the oligarchs before it was sold piecemeal to US and European energy companies acting as fronts for Western banks.
5. Because the Kremlin dealt with reality only after the US invaded Iraq, they confronted their tax problem all at once and in a big hurry. That translated to highly questionable methods in going after the big-bucks tax cheats.
6. That's how two oligarchs with an Interpol warrant out on them ended up at a prayer breakfast at the White House the other week. When oligarchs on the lam from Russian justice are not in Washington sucking up to Republicans they're using Israel and Europe as a bunker for their war against the Kremlin.
7. If all the above sounds vaguely familiar, Beslan was Russia's 9/11. It was the inevitable consequence of many years of the government playing ostrich and not tending to gathering threats that were as plain as day to anyone who cared to look. That might be why Bush and Putin felt a kinship. They had both inherited a national security mess--a mess consisting of layers upon layers of neglect.
8. The big difference between the Putin and Bush presidencies is the advantage that a stable, wealthy democracy confers on America's leader. That meant Bush didn't need to build up a nation and a central government at the same time he declared war on terror.
The democracy that Yeltsin oversaw was a stage show--a carefully managed media event to please the West, in order to draw development/private bank loans. Behind the stage props was a ruin. Putin is trying to forge a Russian nation out of the ruin.
9. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has to scare up vast quantities of cash to keep the lights on and outspend the oligarch clans in order to remain in power. The clans have provided the only real stability Russia has known since the Soviet Union dissolved but they are also the greatest obstacle to Russia becoming a truly sovereign nation, not to mention a healthy democracy.
10. Putin's defense policy must be viewed against all the above considerations and Russia's place on the world map. He has the same policy as Roadrunner. The policy is to survive the day and make sure not to look down while running from one cliff edge to another.
11. With regard to foreign policy, Putin is taking the paths of least resistance that open up. Is that the right thing to do? No. It's dangerously shortsighted. But to take actions according to the long view would require a militarily powerful nation at Russia's back. Any hope Putin had that he might depend on America for back-up in dealing with China's 'invitations' was dashed when he saw American actions in Ukraine. The actions fully supported and encouraged the Yushchenko tactic of demonizing Russia and Putin.
12. So, even if Bush somehow convinced Putin that notwithstanding US actions in Ukraine and Georgia, America would be at Russia's back--the Russian military would not accept Bush's assurances. As with all military, they don't get paid to live on hope.
13. But even if the Russian military trusted Bush to stand by assurances to Putin, Bush is only in office four more years. Who knows what kind of defense/foreign policy will evolve from the next US administration?
14. And even if the Russians could be assured that Bush policy carries forward, geography is still the most important factor in Russia's foreign policy. Russia must find ways to get along with the European trading bloc, China, and Iran.
Now that we've all had a good cry, it's time to run the story through Pundita's handy pocket-sized Malarkey Translator:
Putin doesn't want to rumble with Washington any more than he wants to rumble with Beijing. But what Russia's weapons industry lost in sales to Saddam's regime, they can make up for with weapons sales to Syria. And what they lost from black market oil deals with Saddam, they can make up with sales of dual-use nuclear technology to Iran.
That bottom line brings Russia up against the US-led war on terror. But delivering threats to Moscow is delivering threats to the wrong address. Or rather, Russia should not be near the top of the address list. In their dealings with Iran and Syria, Russia is simply following the lead set by the European Union's most powerful nations. These very same nations are members of NATO--our dear allies.
This said, the US has a war to fight. So Pundita hopes President Bush reads the riot act to Putin over weapon sales to Syria and nuke technology to Iran. We hope even more that Bush trots out the same riot act for every head of state he meets with this coming week.
For their part, Moscow would be within their rights to lodge a formal protest with the US government over the White House inviting oligarchs on the lam to a prayer breakfast, and over the recent "testimony" before Congress by Yukos and Menatep officials.
The latter incident is so outrageous that Pundita, who is rarely at a loss for words, is speechless. Thus, we allow Peter Lavelle at untimely-thoughts.com to outline the situation: Yukos' Double Standard.
http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/index.html?alert=comments&art=1395
.
"Pundita!! The New York Times is going after Bush again! On the eve of his important meetings in Europe!"
"Pundita!! The New York Times is going after Bush again! On the eve of his important meetings in Europe! Have you seen the Times story up on Drudge about the Wead book!? Why doesn't the Times just move into the [UK] Guardian headquarters and free up all that office space in Manhattan?
[Signed] Sleepless in St. Louis again"
Dear SISLA:
From the few reviews now up on Barnes & Noble, which do not mention the tapes in question, it seems the part in Wead's book ("The Raising of a President") that deals with the Bush conversations Wead secretly taped is a small part of the writing.
But from the Times article up on Drudge, clearly the NYT was involved in the controversial part of the book for several weeks prior to the book's January publication. So, given the book's date of publication and the date of the Times article (today), it does seem at this moment that the Times waited until the day of Bush's trip to Europe to publicize the tapes.
According to the B&N website, the Wead offering is published by Atria Books, which is an imprint of Simon & Schuster. If this is indeed the same book the Times story mentions, then the plot thickens.
Simon & Schuster is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS. That's the same CBS which had their knuckles rapped about the very unbalanced 60 Minutes II treatment of Bush's National Guard Service, to put it politely.
Viacom's problem is that several members of the public loudly charged that 60 Minutes was serving as a showcase for Simon & Schuster books. CBS hotly denied the charge. But since the uproar, 60 Minutes (and 60 Minutes II) are under very close scrutiny.
It might be that 60 Minutes slips in mention of the book, but as of this moment, the 60 Minutes schedule for tonight is not showing any such segment.
To boil it down, there was no way 60 Minutes could do a segment on the Wead book on this evening's broadcast without raising howls from the public. So it's possible that The New York Times was doing Viacom a favor, given that it would sticky if 60 Minutes did a tie-in segment with the Atria book.
Pundita sympathizes with your irritation, but the Times editorial board doesn't seem to think that the United States is at war. So they would not see the timing of their story about the Bush tapes as an attempt to distract Europe from the points that Bush wants to impress on Europe.
On the other hand, the Times probably has more readers in Europe than the US. If so, it would make sense for the Times to spring something on the President just as he's making what is a triumphal return to Europe.
In any case, within a couple days the Times story will be all over Europe. By the time the Guardian and other Bush-bashing Euro rags get finished interpreting the story, this will add fuel to European fears that Bush is a religious fanatic.
Andrew Wallenstein, who did a 12/06/04 piece for the Hollywood Reporter on the Viacom controversy ("Viacom taking more of '60 Minutes' time"), had sobering words about the broader implications.
Vertical integration was not conceived to be a way of cooking up stories that are treated as hard news merely as a marketing ploy for a company product. That's exactly how Viacom used vertical integration, until they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. With some understatement, the CBS News part in the ploy is not an example of ethical journalism.
The best defense is to get to know your friendly conglomerate and all its spinoffs, and keep a close watch on their exercises in vertical integration. Because if you think propaganda is the worst thing that can happen to the nightly news, you don't know how creative today's marketeers can be.
For the full Hollywood Reporter article, go to:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/tv_reporter_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000731594
.
[Signed] Sleepless in St. Louis again"
Dear SISLA:
From the few reviews now up on Barnes & Noble, which do not mention the tapes in question, it seems the part in Wead's book ("The Raising of a President") that deals with the Bush conversations Wead secretly taped is a small part of the writing.
But from the Times article up on Drudge, clearly the NYT was involved in the controversial part of the book for several weeks prior to the book's January publication. So, given the book's date of publication and the date of the Times article (today), it does seem at this moment that the Times waited until the day of Bush's trip to Europe to publicize the tapes.
According to the B&N website, the Wead offering is published by Atria Books, which is an imprint of Simon & Schuster. If this is indeed the same book the Times story mentions, then the plot thickens.
Simon & Schuster is owned by Viacom, which also owns CBS. That's the same CBS which had their knuckles rapped about the very unbalanced 60 Minutes II treatment of Bush's National Guard Service, to put it politely.
Viacom's problem is that several members of the public loudly charged that 60 Minutes was serving as a showcase for Simon & Schuster books. CBS hotly denied the charge. But since the uproar, 60 Minutes (and 60 Minutes II) are under very close scrutiny.
It might be that 60 Minutes slips in mention of the book, but as of this moment, the 60 Minutes schedule for tonight is not showing any such segment.
To boil it down, there was no way 60 Minutes could do a segment on the Wead book on this evening's broadcast without raising howls from the public. So it's possible that The New York Times was doing Viacom a favor, given that it would sticky if 60 Minutes did a tie-in segment with the Atria book.
Pundita sympathizes with your irritation, but the Times editorial board doesn't seem to think that the United States is at war. So they would not see the timing of their story about the Bush tapes as an attempt to distract Europe from the points that Bush wants to impress on Europe.
On the other hand, the Times probably has more readers in Europe than the US. If so, it would make sense for the Times to spring something on the President just as he's making what is a triumphal return to Europe.
In any case, within a couple days the Times story will be all over Europe. By the time the Guardian and other Bush-bashing Euro rags get finished interpreting the story, this will add fuel to European fears that Bush is a religious fanatic.
Andrew Wallenstein, who did a 12/06/04 piece for the Hollywood Reporter on the Viacom controversy ("Viacom taking more of '60 Minutes' time"), had sobering words about the broader implications.
In fairness, it's hard to blame "60 Minutes" for its story selections considering that it is part of a media conglomerate with many tentacles in an increasingly consolidated industry. From CNN to Fox News Channel to the Big Three networks, all of the major U.S. TV news outlets are now cogs of media and entertainment behemoths.However, the type of consolidation that the CBS News/S&S partnerships represented is called 'vertical integration,' which is a way for parent corporations to integrate the marketing of products/services that are created by various companies within the conglomerate.
Vertical integration was not conceived to be a way of cooking up stories that are treated as hard news merely as a marketing ploy for a company product. That's exactly how Viacom used vertical integration, until they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. With some understatement, the CBS News part in the ploy is not an example of ethical journalism.
The best defense is to get to know your friendly conglomerate and all its spinoffs, and keep a close watch on their exercises in vertical integration. Because if you think propaganda is the worst thing that can happen to the nightly news, you don't know how creative today's marketeers can be.
For the full Hollywood Reporter article, go to:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/tv_reporter_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000731594
.
Friday, February 18
Taco Bell: The Final Solution
"Now that it's clear that Germany, France and Britain won't support a naval blockade of Iran do you think America would be justified in going it alone? Also, any ideas on how to respond to North Korea's latest demand?
[Signed] Chuck in Annapolis"
Dear Chuck:
North Korea....Iran....Germany....we're looking but we don't see those countries on our world map. We see a Korean-speaking province of China, a Farsi- and Arabic-speaking province of China, and a German-speaking province of China.
That reminds me; the raccoon mentioned last year that he had to lecture his son on etiquette. The child spit out a mouthful of "very hot strange noodles" that had been a gift from his friend at the German embassy. When his father asked what a nose is for, his explanation for putting fire in his mouth was he thought it might be a new recipe for Wiener schnitzel. Kids.
So you want a naval blockade of Iran, eh? That's leaping over a few steps. A naval blockade is an act of war, which requires teamwork to pull off. How can America fight a war, when half of Washington thinks the war ended with the occupation of Iraq? So first we need a naval blockade of the Beltway. If we use the Coast Guard we might not need to wrangle with the issue of Posse Comitatus. Anyhow, the idea would be that nobody at Foggy Bottom, Pentagon, and Langley goes home for the weekend until everybody gets on the same page.
Once the blockade is up, herd them into movie theaters around the Beltway and sequester Taco Bell to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner at the theaters. The audiences should stay in the theaters until they've watched every episode of Survivor, Apprentice, and the Amazing Race. In this way they can learn what happens when teamwork breaks down or never gets underway, and they can learn the meaning of good and bad teamwork.
With regard to our dear allies, London and Paris know which side Berlin would come down on, if they took opposition to what Beijing wants. Right now General Cao wants the EU to stall around with regard to Tehran while he scrambles to build up the Chinese navy, which he can then send steaming to the Strait of Hormuz. That means Berlin wants to stall around. If London and Paris say no to Berlin, they might reopen a chapter in history they'd rather not open. Pundita does not blame them for not wanting to reopen it.
.
[Signed] Chuck in Annapolis"
Dear Chuck:
North Korea....Iran....Germany....we're looking but we don't see those countries on our world map. We see a Korean-speaking province of China, a Farsi- and Arabic-speaking province of China, and a German-speaking province of China.
That reminds me; the raccoon mentioned last year that he had to lecture his son on etiquette. The child spit out a mouthful of "very hot strange noodles" that had been a gift from his friend at the German embassy. When his father asked what a nose is for, his explanation for putting fire in his mouth was he thought it might be a new recipe for Wiener schnitzel. Kids.
So you want a naval blockade of Iran, eh? That's leaping over a few steps. A naval blockade is an act of war, which requires teamwork to pull off. How can America fight a war, when half of Washington thinks the war ended with the occupation of Iraq? So first we need a naval blockade of the Beltway. If we use the Coast Guard we might not need to wrangle with the issue of Posse Comitatus. Anyhow, the idea would be that nobody at Foggy Bottom, Pentagon, and Langley goes home for the weekend until everybody gets on the same page.
Once the blockade is up, herd them into movie theaters around the Beltway and sequester Taco Bell to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner at the theaters. The audiences should stay in the theaters until they've watched every episode of Survivor, Apprentice, and the Amazing Race. In this way they can learn what happens when teamwork breaks down or never gets underway, and they can learn the meaning of good and bad teamwork.
With regard to our dear allies, London and Paris know which side Berlin would come down on, if they took opposition to what Beijing wants. Right now General Cao wants the EU to stall around with regard to Tehran while he scrambles to build up the Chinese navy, which he can then send steaming to the Strait of Hormuz. That means Berlin wants to stall around. If London and Paris say no to Berlin, they might reopen a chapter in history they'd rather not open. Pundita does not blame them for not wanting to reopen it.
.
Thursday, February 17
Go ask Alice
"Do you think greater cooperation on dealing with Iran can come out of Bush's trip to Europe?"
[Signed] Tom in Sioux City
Dear Tom:
There can't be cooperation between the US and Europe on how to deal with Iran--or any other non-NATO country. That's because the concept of cooperation implies that distinct entities develop common ground. For more than a half century US defense/foreign has been so dominated by the NATO viewpoint that there has been no distinct US policy.
Europe was in such ruin after World War II that the US had no choice but to remain deeply involved in European defense. Now Europe is not in ruins, and the major military threat to Europe dissolved with the end of the Soviet Union. So now it's past time for relations between the US and Europe to disengage from the familial.
What we've seen since Bush announced the preemption doctrine is a recognition of the need to define America as distinct from Europe and NATO. We still have a way to go before a truly American policy emerges but the Bush presidency has made a good start.
The bad news is that until the US ekes out their own patch of policy ground, the US is in the position of the spouse who's trying to get through a messy divorce by sending mixed signals. One week we make demands. The next week we don't find the word 'demand' in our dictionary. Then we ask why Europe is jumping on us. Of course they're jumpy; you'd be jumpy in their position. They don't know where we stand.
Pundita doesn't like to apply psychology to international relations; however, this situation is the exception. The similarities between the present EU-US relations and a messy divorce are so striking that we should deploy a team of psychologists as interlocutor. And throw in a team of divorce lawyers.
We can have good relations with Europe that will carry us through the war on terror--I emphasize good, not necessarily great. Yet first we need to reestablish the relations in the context of 'foreign' relations rather than family relations. Until that happens, Tehran and Pyongyang and a number of other governments will continue to exploit the confused situation. Examples of confused policy are the present US relations with Russia and China, although those two are at the top a long list.
I add that it doesn't seem to be Bush who's confused. But he can't fire the entire State Department and Pentagon. Nor can he order a blockade of Capitol Hill until everyone in Congress decides on what century this is.
That's not even the hard part. Countless US academic departments and policy institutes were born and raised in the NATO paradigm. So they're looking at Bush's American viewpoint in the way the Red Queen looked at Alice: Clearly it's making no sense, so that must mean it's out to destroy civilization.
_
[Signed] Tom in Sioux City
Dear Tom:
There can't be cooperation between the US and Europe on how to deal with Iran--or any other non-NATO country. That's because the concept of cooperation implies that distinct entities develop common ground. For more than a half century US defense/foreign has been so dominated by the NATO viewpoint that there has been no distinct US policy.
Europe was in such ruin after World War II that the US had no choice but to remain deeply involved in European defense. Now Europe is not in ruins, and the major military threat to Europe dissolved with the end of the Soviet Union. So now it's past time for relations between the US and Europe to disengage from the familial.
What we've seen since Bush announced the preemption doctrine is a recognition of the need to define America as distinct from Europe and NATO. We still have a way to go before a truly American policy emerges but the Bush presidency has made a good start.
The bad news is that until the US ekes out their own patch of policy ground, the US is in the position of the spouse who's trying to get through a messy divorce by sending mixed signals. One week we make demands. The next week we don't find the word 'demand' in our dictionary. Then we ask why Europe is jumping on us. Of course they're jumpy; you'd be jumpy in their position. They don't know where we stand.
Pundita doesn't like to apply psychology to international relations; however, this situation is the exception. The similarities between the present EU-US relations and a messy divorce are so striking that we should deploy a team of psychologists as interlocutor. And throw in a team of divorce lawyers.
We can have good relations with Europe that will carry us through the war on terror--I emphasize good, not necessarily great. Yet first we need to reestablish the relations in the context of 'foreign' relations rather than family relations. Until that happens, Tehran and Pyongyang and a number of other governments will continue to exploit the confused situation. Examples of confused policy are the present US relations with Russia and China, although those two are at the top a long list.
I add that it doesn't seem to be Bush who's confused. But he can't fire the entire State Department and Pentagon. Nor can he order a blockade of Capitol Hill until everyone in Congress decides on what century this is.
That's not even the hard part. Countless US academic departments and policy institutes were born and raised in the NATO paradigm. So they're looking at Bush's American viewpoint in the way the Red Queen looked at Alice: Clearly it's making no sense, so that must mean it's out to destroy civilization.
_
Friday, February 11
"There was just so much money to be made"
I don't know the total attendance figure for the three day National Intelligence Conference & Exposition but I'd guess it was under 1,000. So even if each attendee and speaker represented, say, 10,000 others working in an area of defense, policing, and private security, and excluding the number of active duty military in democratic nations, they could be characterized as the few who protect the many.
I hasten to add that attendees included a small but vocal minority whose only connection to the defense/security fields was that of Concerned Citizen. Pundita was a proud member of that group and relieved to discover it was represented at the conference. The second day of a conference always finds the ice broken. People you see on the first day remember you the next; conversations strike up, and by the last day Pundita was waving at people who were perfect strangers two days before.
Lunchtime on the second and third days found Pundita chattering like a magpie with people who had shyly avoided conversation with strangers on the first day. By the third day there were no more strangers. The gravity of the conference had sunk in. The theme of this year's Intelcon is "Widening the intelligence domain to include the public" but it could have been subtitled, "The dark side of consumerism in the globalized trade era."
Boomers will recall a fashionable saying during the activist 60s: The enemy is ourselves. Pundita had cause to recall the saying many times during the conference. Somewhere out there was Them during the decade running up to 9/11: the vote-chasing politicians who traded their country's security concerns in exchange for high poll numbers, the appointed officials who for partisan reasons suppressed vitally important issues relating to national defense, the businesspeople who pandered to tyrants in exchange for a piece of 'emerging markets,' the industrial spies and lobbyists who sold to the highest bidder. And of course there was what we call The Enemy: the one who prepared to make war on us.
Yet behind it all stood--us and our demands for faster and cheaper, and our refusal to care or even ask about the real human cost of all that efficiency and cost savings.
And so as Russians watched their children shot in the back while fleeing a schoolhouse in Beslan, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the end of the road for a defense industry that sells to despotic regimes which support terrorist armies.
And so as Spaniards retched at the sight of mangled human body parts strewn around a train station in Madrid, they couldn't allow themselves to ponder overmuch the penalty for refusing to look closely at an immigrant community that functioned as Spain's servant class.
And so as civilian volunteers searched the dust of the World Trade Center for traces of the dead, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the real price for cheap Arab oil.
"There was just so much money to be made," explained one of Pundita's lunch companions on the second day of the conference.
He was speaking of the Bubble Years. His firm, as with all other computer firms caught up in the bubble, knew their products had 'back doors' a mile wide that could be exploited by hackers working for industrial spies, unfriendly governments and terrorists. But velocity, not security, was king. The customer demanded products that were easy to use, priced cheap and above all delivered fast. Those who gave the customers what they wanted quickly raised up trade empires; those who didn't went under.
Have things changed all that much since 9/11? Well, that was partly what Intelcon was about: to discuss where we were on 9/11 with regard to intelligence gathering/security issues, how far we have come, and the ground still to be covered.
The people who came from the four quarters to attend the conference represented a vast improvement in priority-setting. Pundita spied a name tag belonging to a worker for the recreational parks services in a western city--a city that wouldn't likely be near the top of the terrorist hit list. So the voters in that city are awake, and demanding that more tax dollars and attention be given security concerns. The lunch companion that Pundita mentioned--after 9/11 his company snapped out of the dream, and they had the money to restructure their products and priorities around security issues.
The other side of the story was neatly summarized by one speaker, who said that for many companies "risk assessment" still equates to hiring MBAs instead of intelligence analysts. And by a Concerned Citizen, who described herself as a Liberal Democrat who refused to watch Fox cable, but who demanded to be kept better informed about the war on terror.
She was hooted down by Fox loyalists but Pundita took pity on her stated predicament. After the seminar we told her about the John Batchelor program, which looks at the war from the viewpoint of US national security rather than Democrat and Republican party lines. She replied that she would explore the option but added that her real concern was President Bush's lousy handling of the war on terror.
What would she have Bush do? Bomb nations when they threaten to put up trade barriers because of US demands for better security measures at airports and containerized shipping ports? Cut off diplomatic relations with London, Berlin and Paris because they insist that appeasement works? Ship US congressionals to Gitmo when they put pork barrel demands of constituents ahead of vital national and regional security interests?
And just where does the buck stop for all that? If you're a citizen of a democratic nation, go look in the mirror for the answer.
_
I hasten to add that attendees included a small but vocal minority whose only connection to the defense/security fields was that of Concerned Citizen. Pundita was a proud member of that group and relieved to discover it was represented at the conference. The second day of a conference always finds the ice broken. People you see on the first day remember you the next; conversations strike up, and by the last day Pundita was waving at people who were perfect strangers two days before.
Lunchtime on the second and third days found Pundita chattering like a magpie with people who had shyly avoided conversation with strangers on the first day. By the third day there were no more strangers. The gravity of the conference had sunk in. The theme of this year's Intelcon is "Widening the intelligence domain to include the public" but it could have been subtitled, "The dark side of consumerism in the globalized trade era."
Boomers will recall a fashionable saying during the activist 60s: The enemy is ourselves. Pundita had cause to recall the saying many times during the conference. Somewhere out there was Them during the decade running up to 9/11: the vote-chasing politicians who traded their country's security concerns in exchange for high poll numbers, the appointed officials who for partisan reasons suppressed vitally important issues relating to national defense, the businesspeople who pandered to tyrants in exchange for a piece of 'emerging markets,' the industrial spies and lobbyists who sold to the highest bidder. And of course there was what we call The Enemy: the one who prepared to make war on us.
Yet behind it all stood--us and our demands for faster and cheaper, and our refusal to care or even ask about the real human cost of all that efficiency and cost savings.
And so as Russians watched their children shot in the back while fleeing a schoolhouse in Beslan, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the end of the road for a defense industry that sells to despotic regimes which support terrorist armies.
And so as Spaniards retched at the sight of mangled human body parts strewn around a train station in Madrid, they couldn't allow themselves to ponder overmuch the penalty for refusing to look closely at an immigrant community that functioned as Spain's servant class.
And so as civilian volunteers searched the dust of the World Trade Center for traces of the dead, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the real price for cheap Arab oil.
"There was just so much money to be made," explained one of Pundita's lunch companions on the second day of the conference.
He was speaking of the Bubble Years. His firm, as with all other computer firms caught up in the bubble, knew their products had 'back doors' a mile wide that could be exploited by hackers working for industrial spies, unfriendly governments and terrorists. But velocity, not security, was king. The customer demanded products that were easy to use, priced cheap and above all delivered fast. Those who gave the customers what they wanted quickly raised up trade empires; those who didn't went under.
Have things changed all that much since 9/11? Well, that was partly what Intelcon was about: to discuss where we were on 9/11 with regard to intelligence gathering/security issues, how far we have come, and the ground still to be covered.
The people who came from the four quarters to attend the conference represented a vast improvement in priority-setting. Pundita spied a name tag belonging to a worker for the recreational parks services in a western city--a city that wouldn't likely be near the top of the terrorist hit list. So the voters in that city are awake, and demanding that more tax dollars and attention be given security concerns. The lunch companion that Pundita mentioned--after 9/11 his company snapped out of the dream, and they had the money to restructure their products and priorities around security issues.
The other side of the story was neatly summarized by one speaker, who said that for many companies "risk assessment" still equates to hiring MBAs instead of intelligence analysts. And by a Concerned Citizen, who described herself as a Liberal Democrat who refused to watch Fox cable, but who demanded to be kept better informed about the war on terror.
She was hooted down by Fox loyalists but Pundita took pity on her stated predicament. After the seminar we told her about the John Batchelor program, which looks at the war from the viewpoint of US national security rather than Democrat and Republican party lines. She replied that she would explore the option but added that her real concern was President Bush's lousy handling of the war on terror.
What would she have Bush do? Bomb nations when they threaten to put up trade barriers because of US demands for better security measures at airports and containerized shipping ports? Cut off diplomatic relations with London, Berlin and Paris because they insist that appeasement works? Ship US congressionals to Gitmo when they put pork barrel demands of constituents ahead of vital national and regional security interests?
And just where does the buck stop for all that? If you're a citizen of a democratic nation, go look in the mirror for the answer.
_
Tuesday, February 8
Pundita attends the National Intelligence Conference & Exposition (Intelcon): Day One
We arrived fashionably late, which in this case was halfway through the luncheon salad course and James Woolsey's keynote speech. This meant we missed the panel discussion of the media that John Batchelor moderated. Pundita consoled herself with Chicken Marsala, roasted potatoes, baby carrots and broccoli, and raspberry chocolate torte a la Hyatt Regency.
We munched in silence. The eight other diners at the ten-seat round table, perhaps after seeing our name tag (which screeched "Just a Member of the Public") avoided looking at Pundita until we piped up, "Please pass the butter" and in a childish bid for more attention set about mashing balls of butter into our roast potatoes.
The ballroom was packed. Pundita gave up trying to count the number of ten-seat tables, virtually of all which were filled, but there might have been as many as 400 diners. We divided our attention between eavesdropping on a conversation next to us and mulling over Woolsey's words.
A man who represented a company that produces some kind of gizmo or questionnaire to supplement the lie detector test told a story to illustrate the effectiveness of the product. It was the kind of story Sherlock Holmes would have liked:
Fires broke out in several places in a man's house. The man, who was seen running from the burning house, was suspected of committing arson for the insurance money. The man admitted that he had started the fires but adamantly maintained that this was accidental. Understandably the investigators did not believe his story, even after he passed a lie detector test.
Finally, the storyteller's company was asked to question the man. It turned out he had told the literal truth, which is why he passed the lie detector test. He had not intended to burn down his house. He had intended to kill himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. He thought that if he made enough smoke by starting small fires, that would do the trick. However, as so often happens with suicide attempts, there is nothing like imminent death to put life's blows in context. The survival instinct took over when the fires got out of control; the man fled in panic, leaving the house to burn down.
The story illustrates the very complex nature of police detective work and defense intelligence analysis. Being 'almost' right can mean the difference between solving a case (or extracting reliable intelligence) and chasing red herring.
Admiral Woolsey's speech, the part Pundita caught, was a thumping call to frame the hate-filled Wahabist doctrine as this era's Communist Threat and marshal the West's resources to battling the newest scourge of humankind.
After lunch Pundita wandered into the tender sunshine of a warm day--warm for this time of year in Arlington. We avoided the benches outside the Hyatt Regency entrance. Spying a bench near an alcove at a little distance from the entrance we settled down to peruse the contents of the Intelcon conference binder.
Hearing a sound behind us we turned to see an African man, dressed nearly in rags, carefully arranging a tattered prayer rug on the ground. He knelt on the rug; we politely returned to the conference book, so to allow him to pray in peace. Later we saw the man outside his taxi, talking with other drivers in the taxi line outside the hotel entrance.
Pundita doesn't like conferences. So many "tracks" and seminars to choose from and after making the choices we invariably wonder whether we're missing something more interesting in a concurrent seminar. This leads to room-hopping, which is impolite.
We doggedly set course for the seminar we'd chosen but halted in dread at the sound of the familiar voice, which had grated on Pundita's nerves over the course of many John Batchelor broadcasts. With never an approving word for the Bush doctrine, with not so much as a smidgen of praise for the US military's invasion of Iraq, with nothing but criticisms and complaints about US intelligence efforts in the Middle East, Yossef Bodansky was among Pundita's least-favorite Batchelor show regulars.
The man looked nothing like his voice sounded. The eyes behind the glasses held no fear of what others thought of him, only piercing assessment. He reminded Pundita of the Peregrine falcon member of our foreign policy team. We blurted, "When are you speaking?" He looked at his watch and replied, "Soon."
Thus, after years of wandering in the desert, Pundita arrived at the heart of the problem with US foreign policy--and learned why Dr. Bodansky is so harshly critical of the Bush administration, the Congress, and the US intelligence community.
His criticism is not political or personal, nor is directed exclusively at the United States. His talk at Intelcon addressed a systemic problem--a massive problem, of the kind that leads to bad defense/foreign policy decisions and a nation's blindness to looming enemy attacks.
With the able assistance of John Loftus (Intecon Program Director), and with wry humor and unfusty examples free of jargon, Bodansky summarized decades of "insider" criticism voiced by the wisest and most experienced defense intelligence analysts. How this interfaces with the formulation of US foreign policy requires the understanding of the American public, if our government is to be prodded to embrace the solutions.
To be continued.
We munched in silence. The eight other diners at the ten-seat round table, perhaps after seeing our name tag (which screeched "Just a Member of the Public") avoided looking at Pundita until we piped up, "Please pass the butter" and in a childish bid for more attention set about mashing balls of butter into our roast potatoes.
The ballroom was packed. Pundita gave up trying to count the number of ten-seat tables, virtually of all which were filled, but there might have been as many as 400 diners. We divided our attention between eavesdropping on a conversation next to us and mulling over Woolsey's words.
A man who represented a company that produces some kind of gizmo or questionnaire to supplement the lie detector test told a story to illustrate the effectiveness of the product. It was the kind of story Sherlock Holmes would have liked:
Fires broke out in several places in a man's house. The man, who was seen running from the burning house, was suspected of committing arson for the insurance money. The man admitted that he had started the fires but adamantly maintained that this was accidental. Understandably the investigators did not believe his story, even after he passed a lie detector test.
Finally, the storyteller's company was asked to question the man. It turned out he had told the literal truth, which is why he passed the lie detector test. He had not intended to burn down his house. He had intended to kill himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. He thought that if he made enough smoke by starting small fires, that would do the trick. However, as so often happens with suicide attempts, there is nothing like imminent death to put life's blows in context. The survival instinct took over when the fires got out of control; the man fled in panic, leaving the house to burn down.
The story illustrates the very complex nature of police detective work and defense intelligence analysis. Being 'almost' right can mean the difference between solving a case (or extracting reliable intelligence) and chasing red herring.
Admiral Woolsey's speech, the part Pundita caught, was a thumping call to frame the hate-filled Wahabist doctrine as this era's Communist Threat and marshal the West's resources to battling the newest scourge of humankind.
After lunch Pundita wandered into the tender sunshine of a warm day--warm for this time of year in Arlington. We avoided the benches outside the Hyatt Regency entrance. Spying a bench near an alcove at a little distance from the entrance we settled down to peruse the contents of the Intelcon conference binder.
Hearing a sound behind us we turned to see an African man, dressed nearly in rags, carefully arranging a tattered prayer rug on the ground. He knelt on the rug; we politely returned to the conference book, so to allow him to pray in peace. Later we saw the man outside his taxi, talking with other drivers in the taxi line outside the hotel entrance.
Pundita doesn't like conferences. So many "tracks" and seminars to choose from and after making the choices we invariably wonder whether we're missing something more interesting in a concurrent seminar. This leads to room-hopping, which is impolite.
We doggedly set course for the seminar we'd chosen but halted in dread at the sound of the familiar voice, which had grated on Pundita's nerves over the course of many John Batchelor broadcasts. With never an approving word for the Bush doctrine, with not so much as a smidgen of praise for the US military's invasion of Iraq, with nothing but criticisms and complaints about US intelligence efforts in the Middle East, Yossef Bodansky was among Pundita's least-favorite Batchelor show regulars.
The man looked nothing like his voice sounded. The eyes behind the glasses held no fear of what others thought of him, only piercing assessment. He reminded Pundita of the Peregrine falcon member of our foreign policy team. We blurted, "When are you speaking?" He looked at his watch and replied, "Soon."
Thus, after years of wandering in the desert, Pundita arrived at the heart of the problem with US foreign policy--and learned why Dr. Bodansky is so harshly critical of the Bush administration, the Congress, and the US intelligence community.
His criticism is not political or personal, nor is directed exclusively at the United States. His talk at Intelcon addressed a systemic problem--a massive problem, of the kind that leads to bad defense/foreign policy decisions and a nation's blindness to looming enemy attacks.
With the able assistance of John Loftus (Intecon Program Director), and with wry humor and unfusty examples free of jargon, Bodansky summarized decades of "insider" criticism voiced by the wisest and most experienced defense intelligence analysts. How this interfaces with the formulation of US foreign policy requires the understanding of the American public, if our government is to be prodded to embrace the solutions.
To be continued.
Sunday, February 6
Ambush! World Economic Forum springs nasty surprise on Bush and gets the jump on Richard Gere!
Written in memory of Rick Rescorla's martyrdom on 9/11. The team has asked Pundita to insert a warning: This essay is not for children.
Pundita is still stewing because she is the only American and for all we know the only person on the planet outside banking circles to have noticed that World War V * had broken out. Thus, our spirits lifted at seeing the title of an email sent by one of our favorite war bloggers, Bill Roggio at the fourth rail : "A call to arms."
Upon opening the email Pundita was crestfallen to discover that Bill was only calling for battle against CNN. This is partly over the matter of CNN stonewalling in the face of requests to release a transcript and/or video of a panel discussion at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF). Specifically, the part of the discussion that features a CNN vice president, Eason Jordan, saying that the US military had "targeted" journalists in Iraq; i.e., deliberately killed them.
Mr. Jordan clarified, backtracked or stood by his words, depending on which account you read from those in attendance, but exactly what was said is in dispute and thus, the request for a transcript or video. **
At the end of this post I provide additional links for readers interested in following the controversy about Eason Jordan's remarks. Pundita will not write about the controversy, which is outside our purview. However, we were struck by the venue. How did a panel on news reporting show up at a forum dedicated to economic concerns?
And how did it happen that out of all the news media executives on the planet, the forum invited Eason Jordan, a confessed collaborator with Saddam Hussein's regime and already on record for making inflammatory statements against the US military?
The answer is that the forum organizers were hopping mad because President Bush ignored their meeting. According to the BBC :
Come to think of it, this is a good place to rename Chirac's school to the more descriptive "Mercantile School." Pundita hastens to add that Zawahiri is barking mad; indeed, he's on record as the first person driven certifiably insane by World Bank policies. (Don't reach for your copy of the Guinness Book of World Records; there are so many candidates for the title that Guinness is still reviewing challenges to Z's claim.)
The World Economic Forum is among a group of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that the Globalist movement spawned, and which attached themselves to the United Nations. The WEF's stated goal is "to make the world a better place." Translation:
World Economic Forum Co-chairs
William H. Gates, Co-Founder, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation, USA
N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies
Lubna S. Olayan, Chief Executive Officer, Olayan Financing Company
Charles O. Prince, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup
John A. Thain, Chief Executive Officer, New York Stock Exchange
Daniel Vasella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Novartis
In other words, the WEF is a bunch of businessmen who want to make a buck in developing countries and find Chirac's justifications for pandering to tyrannies a convenient gloss. Thus, nobody should be surprised that no ranking member of the Bush administration showed at this year's WEF meeting.
What's surprising is that Richard Gere was in attendance. America's film stars are generally so naive about foreign affairs that one doesn't expect them to understand what the WEF is about. But of all the film stars, Richard Gere should be aware that it's NGOs such as WEF that help Red China maintain Face in the world community, which helps the Chinese maintain a tyranny over the Tibetan people and support the tyrannies in Burma and North Korea.
Charles Krauthammer has observed that one shouldn't expect capitalism to have a conscience and that's why we have the judicial system. He meant that business is not the place to expect support for democracy and the freedoms that go with it, but the businessplace can be kept within ethical bounds by application of laws.
However, the transnationalization of capitalism means that global corporations based in democratic countries are free to ignore the dictates in their own societies when they do business in other lands. They take full advantage of their freedom. They cozy up to tyrants who can give foreign corporations the okay for doing business in their countries. They avert their eyes to barbaric tribal customs and government atrocities carried out in the name of maintaining stability. They use organizations such as the WEF to put a pretty face on their utter lack of conscience.
When called out on their evil, they write million dollar checks to the World Wildlife Fund and NGOs fighting AIDS in Africa, and prattle that good business leads inevitably to humane government.
They are the engine that makes the Axis of Weasels turn, which in turn keeps the Axis of Terror spinning. And when it all falls down, when mad mad men such as Ayman al Zawahiri rage to God to wreak vengeance, when their bodyguards and armed enclaves are no longer sufficient to protect them, they run to their own government--the one that protects their freedoms--and scream, "Do something!"
Then men and women of good conscience and stout character have to shed blood and lose their lives to rescue them from their own doing.
And in the still of the night, when their spouses ask, "What did you do at the office today?" they answer, "I made the world a better place, my dear."
CNN and CNN International rose on the back of the Globalist movement and fed on it. Americans who have never seen CNN International--continue not seeing it, if you're watching your blood pressure. If you think CNN is down on America, you should see the international version. The executives defend the content and slant by saying that they have to appeal to audiences outside the USA. Translation: If you want to sell widgets in Saudi Arabia and China, don't report on anything that makes tyrants and barbarians lose Face.
Eason Jordan is a poster child for the Globalist movement. He admitted his corroboration with Saddam's regime only after the US military invaded Iraq. Jordan's heart-wrenching defense of his actions neglected to explain why he didn't move the CNN bureau to safety behind Kurdish lines. That would have allowed the bureau to report to the world about the atrocities that Jordan and others in his bureau knew about, but chose not to report to the world.
The furor over Jordan's admissions died down, or was lost in the shuffle of news about the post-invasion phase of the Iraq campaign. That left unanswered troubling questions raised by Hugh Hewett ; among them:
The grimmest irony of the war on terror is that if not for the 9/11 attack, the American people would have continued to follow blindfolded the lead set by the Mercantile School. Now it's a new day, but George W. Bush is just one American. Unless the American Establishment media (and the American wing of the blogosphere) work harder to explain the Bush Democracy Doctrine to the rest of the world, Bush will indeed make his upcoming European tour a "listening" one.
Yet if ever there was a time Europe needed to listen to an American president, now is the time.
* World War V
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-2-2/26225.html"
* * Sisyphean Musings reports that WEF is making a copy of the video available. http://sisypheanmusings.blogspot.com/2005/02/eason-jordon-wef-video_110754253214888238.html
Check Hugh Hewett and Captain Ed for latest roundup on the fast-moving Eason Jordan/CNN story.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003730.php
And see Carol Platt Liebau for a statement by Eason Jordan
http://carolliebau.blogspot.com/2005/02/response-from-
eason-jordan.html
Pundita is still stewing because she is the only American and for all we know the only person on the planet outside banking circles to have noticed that World War V * had broken out. Thus, our spirits lifted at seeing the title of an email sent by one of our favorite war bloggers, Bill Roggio at the fourth rail : "A call to arms."
Upon opening the email Pundita was crestfallen to discover that Bill was only calling for battle against CNN. This is partly over the matter of CNN stonewalling in the face of requests to release a transcript and/or video of a panel discussion at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF). Specifically, the part of the discussion that features a CNN vice president, Eason Jordan, saying that the US military had "targeted" journalists in Iraq; i.e., deliberately killed them.
Mr. Jordan clarified, backtracked or stood by his words, depending on which account you read from those in attendance, but exactly what was said is in dispute and thus, the request for a transcript or video. **
At the end of this post I provide additional links for readers interested in following the controversy about Eason Jordan's remarks. Pundita will not write about the controversy, which is outside our purview. However, we were struck by the venue. How did a panel on news reporting show up at a forum dedicated to economic concerns?
And how did it happen that out of all the news media executives on the planet, the forum invited Eason Jordan, a confessed collaborator with Saddam Hussein's regime and already on record for making inflammatory statements against the US military?
The answer is that the forum organizers were hopping mad because President Bush ignored their meeting. According to the BBC :
As every year, Davos [site of the WEF] was packed with top politicians. Germany, [France,] Britain, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, and many others sent their heads of state or government. But there was one glaring absence: From the US government only the outgoing top trade official (and soon to be deputy foreign minister) Robert Zoellick had made it to the Swiss mountain village. Pity, if you want, Republican Senators Bill Frist and John McCain, who quickly became the designated punch bags for critics of US foreign policy. Mr McCain spelled it out: "There's a lot of Anti-Americanism out there", and promised that President Bush's forthcoming trip to Europe would be a "listening tour".Clearly, the WEF organizers were not content just to kick Republican senators in the shins. Thus, the panel discussion titled, "Will Democracy Survive the Media?"
The concept of truth, fairness, and balance in the news was weighed against corporate profit interest, the need for ratings, and how the media can affect democracy. The discussion was moderated by David R. Gergen, Director for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The panel included Richard Sambrook, the worldwide director of BBC radio, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, Abdullah Abdullah, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, and Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive of CNN. The audience was a mix of journalists, WEF attendees (many from Arab countries), and a US Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd.Pundita hesitates to tell American readers too much about the World Economic Forum, lest they find themselves in the ungainly position of finding a point of agreement with America's Public Enemy #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Zawahiri did not pick that target out of a hat; the WTC, along with the World Bank and the IMF, symbolized for him the rampant mercantilism that characterizes the Globalist movement, and which forms the basis of the Chirac School of foreign policy. (See "The Central Debate" Pundita sidebar.)
Come to think of it, this is a good place to rename Chirac's school to the more descriptive "Mercantile School." Pundita hastens to add that Zawahiri is barking mad; indeed, he's on record as the first person driven certifiably insane by World Bank policies. (Don't reach for your copy of the Guinness Book of World Records; there are so many candidates for the title that Guinness is still reviewing challenges to Z's claim.)
The World Economic Forum is among a group of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that the Globalist movement spawned, and which attached themselves to the United Nations. The WEF's stated goal is "to make the world a better place." Translation:
World Economic Forum Co-chairs
William H. Gates, Co-Founder, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation, USA
N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies
Lubna S. Olayan, Chief Executive Officer, Olayan Financing Company
Charles O. Prince, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup
John A. Thain, Chief Executive Officer, New York Stock Exchange
Daniel Vasella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Novartis
In other words, the WEF is a bunch of businessmen who want to make a buck in developing countries and find Chirac's justifications for pandering to tyrannies a convenient gloss. Thus, nobody should be surprised that no ranking member of the Bush administration showed at this year's WEF meeting.
What's surprising is that Richard Gere was in attendance. America's film stars are generally so naive about foreign affairs that one doesn't expect them to understand what the WEF is about. But of all the film stars, Richard Gere should be aware that it's NGOs such as WEF that help Red China maintain Face in the world community, which helps the Chinese maintain a tyranny over the Tibetan people and support the tyrannies in Burma and North Korea.
Charles Krauthammer has observed that one shouldn't expect capitalism to have a conscience and that's why we have the judicial system. He meant that business is not the place to expect support for democracy and the freedoms that go with it, but the businessplace can be kept within ethical bounds by application of laws.
However, the transnationalization of capitalism means that global corporations based in democratic countries are free to ignore the dictates in their own societies when they do business in other lands. They take full advantage of their freedom. They cozy up to tyrants who can give foreign corporations the okay for doing business in their countries. They avert their eyes to barbaric tribal customs and government atrocities carried out in the name of maintaining stability. They use organizations such as the WEF to put a pretty face on their utter lack of conscience.
When called out on their evil, they write million dollar checks to the World Wildlife Fund and NGOs fighting AIDS in Africa, and prattle that good business leads inevitably to humane government.
They are the engine that makes the Axis of Weasels turn, which in turn keeps the Axis of Terror spinning. And when it all falls down, when mad mad men such as Ayman al Zawahiri rage to God to wreak vengeance, when their bodyguards and armed enclaves are no longer sufficient to protect them, they run to their own government--the one that protects their freedoms--and scream, "Do something!"
Then men and women of good conscience and stout character have to shed blood and lose their lives to rescue them from their own doing.
And in the still of the night, when their spouses ask, "What did you do at the office today?" they answer, "I made the world a better place, my dear."
CNN and CNN International rose on the back of the Globalist movement and fed on it. Americans who have never seen CNN International--continue not seeing it, if you're watching your blood pressure. If you think CNN is down on America, you should see the international version. The executives defend the content and slant by saying that they have to appeal to audiences outside the USA. Translation: If you want to sell widgets in Saudi Arabia and China, don't report on anything that makes tyrants and barbarians lose Face.
Eason Jordan is a poster child for the Globalist movement. He admitted his corroboration with Saddam's regime only after the US military invaded Iraq. Jordan's heart-wrenching defense of his actions neglected to explain why he didn't move the CNN bureau to safety behind Kurdish lines. That would have allowed the bureau to report to the world about the atrocities that Jordan and others in his bureau knew about, but chose not to report to the world.
The furor over Jordan's admissions died down, or was lost in the shuffle of news about the post-invasion phase of the Iraq campaign. That left unanswered troubling questions raised by Hugh Hewett ; among them:
Has Jordan failed to reveal other non-disclosures [about his knowledge of a murder plot and atrocities] that reasonable people would consider material?Mr. Jordan's actions in Iraq are the best answer to the question raised by the Davos panel. Of course democracy won't survive the media, if the media continues to give tyrants "fair and balanced" coverage.
Did Jordan previously disclose any or all of these revelations to any official from the United States government?
Are there any similar non-disclosure deals at work in Cuba, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Burma, or any other country in which CNN maintains a presence?
The grimmest irony of the war on terror is that if not for the 9/11 attack, the American people would have continued to follow blindfolded the lead set by the Mercantile School. Now it's a new day, but George W. Bush is just one American. Unless the American Establishment media (and the American wing of the blogosphere) work harder to explain the Bush Democracy Doctrine to the rest of the world, Bush will indeed make his upcoming European tour a "listening" one.
Yet if ever there was a time Europe needed to listen to an American president, now is the time.
* World War V
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-2-2/26225.html"
* * Sisyphean Musings reports that WEF is making a copy of the video available. http://sisypheanmusings.blogspot.com/2005/02/eason-jordon-wef-video_110754253214888238.html
Check Hugh Hewett and Captain Ed for latest roundup on the fast-moving Eason Jordan/CNN story.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003730.php
And see Carol Platt Liebau for a statement by Eason Jordan
http://carolliebau.blogspot.com/2005/02/response-from-
eason-jordan.html
Friday, February 4
Is Banfsheh Zand-Bonazzi actually Michael Graham in drag?
Anyone who has caught Zand-Bonazzi's appearances on the John Batchelor show will sense that a media star is in the making. Ms. Zand-Bonazzi is the editor of Iran Press News , which publishes reports on Iran that the mainstream Western news tend to studiously ignore. But one needs to hear her comments on the old-boy colonialist powers now sucking up to the Tehran tyrants to realize she's missed her calling.
Clearly, Zand-Bonazzi is in possession of a Sahib-0-Meter in excellent working condition. And if she was a Scottish American male working in talk radio she'd be Michael Graham . Graham, a self-described Southern Redneck Conservative Republican, has too much Scottish wit to let any authority off easy, including his own wife ("The Warden"). However, Graham doesn't risk his life every time he speaks on the air, which can't be said for the courageous Ms. Zand-Bonazzi.
Unfortunately, Iran Press News doesn't publish Zand-Bonazzi's very informative "insider gossip" observations about doings in Iran, which she provides for Batchelor's listeners. For those who missed last night's broadcast, she reported that taxi drivers in Iran demand in English to know the nationality of foreigners hailing their cabs. If the answer is "American," the cabbies exclaim, "Welcome! Get in!"
If the answer is any nationality among the Axis of Weasel nations (Germany, Britain, France, Russia, China, etc.) sucking up to the Tehran mullathugs, the cabbies tell them, "Go away!" and refuse to give them a ride.
John Batchelor's advice to Axis of Weasel nationals trying to hail cabs in Iran: Practice an American accent and remember it's no longer the "Brooklyn" Dodgers.
Cut-and-pastes for links in this post:
John Batchelor on WABC Radio (see also Sirius Satellite Radio)
http://www.wabcradio.com/showdj.asp?DJID=9178
Iran Press News
http://www.iranpressnews.com/english/
Michael Graham on WMAL Radio
http://www.wmal.com/showdj.asp?DJID=2514
Clearly, Zand-Bonazzi is in possession of a Sahib-0-Meter in excellent working condition. And if she was a Scottish American male working in talk radio she'd be Michael Graham . Graham, a self-described Southern Redneck Conservative Republican, has too much Scottish wit to let any authority off easy, including his own wife ("The Warden"). However, Graham doesn't risk his life every time he speaks on the air, which can't be said for the courageous Ms. Zand-Bonazzi.
Unfortunately, Iran Press News doesn't publish Zand-Bonazzi's very informative "insider gossip" observations about doings in Iran, which she provides for Batchelor's listeners. For those who missed last night's broadcast, she reported that taxi drivers in Iran demand in English to know the nationality of foreigners hailing their cabs. If the answer is "American," the cabbies exclaim, "Welcome! Get in!"
If the answer is any nationality among the Axis of Weasel nations (Germany, Britain, France, Russia, China, etc.) sucking up to the Tehran mullathugs, the cabbies tell them, "Go away!" and refuse to give them a ride.
John Batchelor's advice to Axis of Weasel nationals trying to hail cabs in Iran: Practice an American accent and remember it's no longer the "Brooklyn" Dodgers.
Cut-and-pastes for links in this post:
John Batchelor on WABC Radio (see also Sirius Satellite Radio)
http://www.wabcradio.com/showdj.asp?DJID=9178
Iran Press News
http://www.iranpressnews.com/english/
Michael Graham on WMAL Radio
http://www.wmal.com/showdj.asp?DJID=2514
We interrupt coverage of jury selection for Michael Jackson's trial with news that World War Five has broken out
"Pundita! China and Russia announced more about their plans for joint military exercises, the President of the United States gave a State of the Union speech, the Secretary of State announced a trip to Europe and the Middle East, and you're tattling on a website in China and getting sarcastic about a marriage proposal from a laboratory rat! Is this your idea of keeping your readers informed about US foreign policy issues?
[Signed] Not Born Yesterday in New York
Dear NBY:
Pundita waited in vain for the American news media to get around to announcing that the first battle in World War Five * had been launched. When these things happen Pundita plunges into a dark mood. We snap at the squirrel for leaping onto the conference table and accuse the raccoon of being a Trotskyist. And we lapse into sarcasm. But after all, allowing a lab rat to vent his spleen is not any less important to the grand scheme than endless nattering over what President Bush said and didn't say in the State of the Union address.
If we study the war plan, Syria is next on the list. What more do you need to know? Bush made a nice pitch to the Yushchenko Ukraine lobby. No news there. Let's see, what else.... Tyranny discussion a rehash of the Inaugural address....It was a great State of the Union speech but provided no news on the foreign policy or war front. Not that we're complaining, mind you; the last thing America needs during a war is a commander-in-chief who's bursting to tell all.
With regard to your worry about China-Russia military exercises, kindly read the report ("China Loans Russia 6 Billion for Yukos Deal") that the Chinese website cribbed from The New York Times . Then fit that report with the news via the link above about "Western" banks calling in a marker on Yukos debt. Take special note that both announcements, along with the announcement on more details of China-Russia military exercises, came at virtually the same time.
Pundita is not one of those punditas who cackle "I told you so" but we have mentioned more than once to our readers that West Europe might be staring at the abyss, if big money stashed from Soviet state companies taken over by the oligarchs is pulled from banks in Europe. But they were foolish to bluff at Russian poker and more foolish to attempt to use Ukraine against the Kremlin.
The biggest fool, however, was the US Department of State. They should have stood back from the battles that Putin and the oligarchs were waging against each other. They should have kept in mind that the country they're supposed to serve first and foremost is currently at war.
* cut-and-paste URL for Epoch Times "Western Banks Press Rosneft to Repay YUKOS Loan"
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-2-2/26225.html
.
[Signed] Not Born Yesterday in New York
Dear NBY:
Pundita waited in vain for the American news media to get around to announcing that the first battle in World War Five * had been launched. When these things happen Pundita plunges into a dark mood. We snap at the squirrel for leaping onto the conference table and accuse the raccoon of being a Trotskyist. And we lapse into sarcasm. But after all, allowing a lab rat to vent his spleen is not any less important to the grand scheme than endless nattering over what President Bush said and didn't say in the State of the Union address.
If we study the war plan, Syria is next on the list. What more do you need to know? Bush made a nice pitch to the Yushchenko Ukraine lobby. No news there. Let's see, what else.... Tyranny discussion a rehash of the Inaugural address....It was a great State of the Union speech but provided no news on the foreign policy or war front. Not that we're complaining, mind you; the last thing America needs during a war is a commander-in-chief who's bursting to tell all.
With regard to your worry about China-Russia military exercises, kindly read the report ("China Loans Russia 6 Billion for Yukos Deal") that the Chinese website cribbed from The New York Times . Then fit that report with the news via the link above about "Western" banks calling in a marker on Yukos debt. Take special note that both announcements, along with the announcement on more details of China-Russia military exercises, came at virtually the same time.
Pundita is not one of those punditas who cackle "I told you so" but we have mentioned more than once to our readers that West Europe might be staring at the abyss, if big money stashed from Soviet state companies taken over by the oligarchs is pulled from banks in Europe. But they were foolish to bluff at Russian poker and more foolish to attempt to use Ukraine against the Kremlin.
The biggest fool, however, was the US Department of State. They should have stood back from the battles that Putin and the oligarchs were waging against each other. They should have kept in mind that the country they're supposed to serve first and foremost is currently at war.
* cut-and-paste URL for Epoch Times "Western Banks Press Rosneft to Repay YUKOS Loan"
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-2-2/26225.html
.
Thursday, February 3
Pundita snitches on China Daily
Even if you paid Pundita to read The New York Times online, we wouldn't do it. What use it to have the little box that says "Remember me" if a website forces you to go through the entire registration process every time you visit? This is no great loss, which doesn't mean we never read anything the Times publishes. If it's up on Drudge, AOL News or another website, sometimes we find our way to a Times report.
That is exactly how Pundita discovered that China Daily stole an article from The New York Times. The China Daily Website was China's first news Website and according to their own blurb, "one of the country's top news portals today." Yes well if they're one of the top news portals, they can credit a source.
The China Daily 02/01/05 report Russia gets US$6b loan for Yukos Deal is a word-for-word republication of the 02/02/05 New York Times report China Loans Russia 6 Billion for Yukos Deal .
Please no letters to Pundita mentioning the time difference between New York and Beijing. The Times story was filed from Moscow. That means the Times paid to have a reporter endure Russian press conferences conducted by Russian oil ministers and whatnot. Or at the least they paid a reporter to sift news wires and write up the story. The China Daily simply clicked and pasted.
There, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with China. The Chinese are the fox in the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. They want to be a world power but they don't want to pay their dues. Chinese counterfeiting, knockoffs, and just plain theft of intellectual property cost Americans untold zillions of US dollars. But if you confront Beijing on the issue, they revert to cute pidgin English, "Oh we just poor developing country. We too poor to observe copyright and patent laws."
But. But! If America protests to Israel about weapons sales to China, General Cao draws himself up to his full height and tells Bush in perfectly grammatical English, "Mind your own business."
Obviously China is no longer a poor developing country, if they can afford to loan Russia 6 billion (that's in dollars, not yuan) to help Moscow with their Yukos problem, and if they are attending the luncheon at the upcoming G7 meeting.
The last time the G7 met it had to be on island in order to keep anti-Globalist mobs from crashing the meeting. Pundita suggests that American corporations spending billions trying to sue Chinese counterfeiters stage their own mobbed protest at the upcoming G7 meeting.
Come to think of it, that's the best idea Pundita's had since we recommended Eliot Spitzer for the job of World Bank president. Law suits are a waste of time but the Chinese government lives in terror of Disorder.
American corporations should contact George Soros for advice on how to stage a Spontaneous Uprising of the People event. But the basic drill is simple: dress up as a Hippie, smear your face with red paint, and hop up and down outside the G7 cordon.
And just think: after The New York Times writes up the story of the spontaneous uprising, China Daily could steal it for their readers. And Wal-Mart could sell the video of the event, which a Taiwan film company throws together from stolen BBC video coverage and titles, "Ninja Revenge: The Next Sequel."
That is exactly how Pundita discovered that China Daily stole an article from The New York Times. The China Daily Website was China's first news Website and according to their own blurb, "one of the country's top news portals today." Yes well if they're one of the top news portals, they can credit a source.
The China Daily 02/01/05 report Russia gets US$6b loan for Yukos Deal is a word-for-word republication of the 02/02/05 New York Times report China Loans Russia 6 Billion for Yukos Deal .
Please no letters to Pundita mentioning the time difference between New York and Beijing. The Times story was filed from Moscow. That means the Times paid to have a reporter endure Russian press conferences conducted by Russian oil ministers and whatnot. Or at the least they paid a reporter to sift news wires and write up the story. The China Daily simply clicked and pasted.
There, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with China. The Chinese are the fox in the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. They want to be a world power but they don't want to pay their dues. Chinese counterfeiting, knockoffs, and just plain theft of intellectual property cost Americans untold zillions of US dollars. But if you confront Beijing on the issue, they revert to cute pidgin English, "Oh we just poor developing country. We too poor to observe copyright and patent laws."
But. But! If America protests to Israel about weapons sales to China, General Cao draws himself up to his full height and tells Bush in perfectly grammatical English, "Mind your own business."
Obviously China is no longer a poor developing country, if they can afford to loan Russia 6 billion (that's in dollars, not yuan) to help Moscow with their Yukos problem, and if they are attending the luncheon at the upcoming G7 meeting.
The last time the G7 met it had to be on island in order to keep anti-Globalist mobs from crashing the meeting. Pundita suggests that American corporations spending billions trying to sue Chinese counterfeiters stage their own mobbed protest at the upcoming G7 meeting.
Come to think of it, that's the best idea Pundita's had since we recommended Eliot Spitzer for the job of World Bank president. Law suits are a waste of time but the Chinese government lives in terror of Disorder.
American corporations should contact George Soros for advice on how to stage a Spontaneous Uprising of the People event. But the basic drill is simple: dress up as a Hippie, smear your face with red paint, and hop up and down outside the G7 cordon.
And just think: after The New York Times writes up the story of the spontaneous uprising, China Daily could steal it for their readers. And Wal-Mart could sell the video of the event, which a Taiwan film company throws together from stolen BBC video coverage and titles, "Ninja Revenge: The Next Sequel."
Wednesday, February 2
Rugby revokes his marriage proposal
"Dear Pundita, I just noticed you removed the Comment section from your posts. Also, the Pundita Prize is now missing from your sidebar. Have you revoked the prize?
Claudia in Taos"
Dear Claudia:
The following deleted comments to earlier Pundita essays help explain why I've suspended the Comment Section and removed mention of the Pundita Prize from the sidebar. Perhaps after he's had time to reflect, or until he finds the Spell Check key, the less said about the prize the better. The Pundita Prize for Excellence in American Journalism is still in effect.
"pundiTa, I, Rugby, figuered out the password in my lab sectons computer so now I can writ you evrey nite if I want except I dont. I am very dissipointed in you. you gived a pundita Prize to belmont club insted of real arthor wretchard the Cat. This is discrimeination. now I see you remove sum mension of your Animal Team from your blog heder and put up puff quote about yourself insted. I thoght you were diferent but you are like all humans, vain, with a puffy head. I would have made you my queen, pondita."[*]
"STOP MAKING LIGHT OF THE ABUSE OF INSECTS. WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE AND WE HAVE SPRAY PAINT."
"Dear Ms. Pundita, We note that you have written essays that are sympathetic to Russia and Vladimir Putin, who as you surely know is an ex-KGB operative. We also note that rearranging sentences in letters that you publish from the "Sleepless in St. Louis" reader reveals a coded message disguised as a recipe for bouillabaisse. Please be advised we are watching your blog closely. Have a nice day!"
* "Dear pondiTa,I I really apressiate this. I will not be a rat forever. In my next lifetime I will be a rich handsom nanotesnonongist and make you my queen."
It's struck me that he always manages to hit the Caps key when typing his name but for no one else. Yet he lectures Pundita about vanity. We're best rid of this suitor in his next lifetime and all subsequent ones.
.
Claudia in Taos"
Dear Claudia:
The following deleted comments to earlier Pundita essays help explain why I've suspended the Comment Section and removed mention of the Pundita Prize from the sidebar. Perhaps after he's had time to reflect, or until he finds the Spell Check key, the less said about the prize the better. The Pundita Prize for Excellence in American Journalism is still in effect.
"pundiTa, I, Rugby, figuered out the password in my lab sectons computer so now I can writ you evrey nite if I want except I dont. I am very dissipointed in you. you gived a pundita Prize to belmont club insted of real arthor wretchard the Cat. This is discrimeination. now I see you remove sum mension of your Animal Team from your blog heder and put up puff quote about yourself insted. I thoght you were diferent but you are like all humans, vain, with a puffy head. I would have made you my queen, pondita."[*]
"STOP MAKING LIGHT OF THE ABUSE OF INSECTS. WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE AND WE HAVE SPRAY PAINT."
"Dear Ms. Pundita, We note that you have written essays that are sympathetic to Russia and Vladimir Putin, who as you surely know is an ex-KGB operative. We also note that rearranging sentences in letters that you publish from the "Sleepless in St. Louis" reader reveals a coded message disguised as a recipe for bouillabaisse. Please be advised we are watching your blog closely. Have a nice day!"
* "Dear pondiTa,I I really apressiate this. I will not be a rat forever. In my next lifetime I will be a rich handsom nanotesnonongist and make you my queen."
It's struck me that he always manages to hit the Caps key when typing his name but for no one else. Yet he lectures Pundita about vanity. We're best rid of this suitor in his next lifetime and all subsequent ones.
.
The Untouchables
"Pundita, I have an idea about how to improve relations between Moscow and Washington. Sure, Bush asked Putin a dumb question but Putin was dumb to answer with a history lesson. I mean, doesn't Putin watch Chris Matthews and Hannity & Colmes? A history lesson is no way to talk to Americans. You have to package your concept. I learned that from selling on eBay. When Bush asked Putin why he was appointing governors instead of allowing elections, he should have just said to Bush, "My team is The Untouchables. The elections for governors are fixed by the mobs. We're going to appoint governors until we clean up City Hall." Bush would have gotten it right away.
[Signed] Better Rested in St. Louis
PS: I received another weird letter from the post office. I understand about the anthrax attack but put four waterbugs in a plastic baggie with air holes and a little bit of shredded newspaper and lettuce. Now ask yourself, could that make any kind of noise remotely sounding like ticking? I give up. Next time I'm sending spaghetti and just hope the possum and rest of the team like it.
PPS: Re your Monday post on OK Corral I don't think our ancestors invented iron and copper. I think they discovered them."
Dear Better Rested:
Pundita was blowing off steam and taking poetic license in the process, but we're never irritated by a statement of facts. We find your suggestion interesting. The Untouchables are an apt analogy, at least with regard to a part of the situation that Putin's government faced when they began reforms.
(For readers outside the US: in North America "Untouchable" is law- enforcement slang for a police officer or prosecutor who can't be bribed or coerced by criminals.)
Corruption was so entrenched in the Russian bureaucracies that the reformers faced essentially the same situation the Chicago Crime Commission faced in the 1920s. Organized crime was running the State of Illinois. But as Diane Alden points out in an essay for NewsMax, mobsters were only one aspect of a much larger story of corruption in America. Corruption was so entrenched at all levels of government, and at all levels of Illinois civic society, that the commission had to create a secret branch to attempt to fight the corruption.
And The Untouchables were not always untouchable. The team originally consisted of 50 agents, which Eliot Ness put together after reviewing the records of every US Treasury Department agent. Because so many on the team eventually became suspect Ness had to cut the 50 down to 15, and finally to 9. That's what he had, to take on the entire Chicago Gangland: Nine men.
So Russians who think that Americans can't possibly understand what they're going through should learn more about American history. When it comes to corruption in government, America has been there, bought the T-shirt and the video game. The corruption in the 1920s and 1930s was not only the work of crime syndicates, "dirty" cops and corrupt judges. The corruption was endemic. It was a cancer that threatened to kill our democracy.
Americans would probably do well to learn more about that chapter in our history, which isn't taught much in public school. And keep the chapter in mind when following news about Vladimir Putin's government and modern Russia. The Russian government is not only dealing with mobsters but also with the oligarchs, whose wealth and power are mind-boggling.
The Chicago Crime Commission couldn't have imagined the power the oligarchs wielded in the world during the past decade. It's not for nothing that the Russians dubbed those people "oligarchs." Putin's government has been accused of relying on a tight inner circle of ex-KGB agents. I imagine the circle has to be very tight and for the same reason Ness had to cut down the size of his team.
As with Ness, Putin is not a perfect person. But in an imperfect world he's the best bet Russia has at this time to clean up City Hall.
[Signed] Better Rested in St. Louis
PS: I received another weird letter from the post office. I understand about the anthrax attack but put four waterbugs in a plastic baggie with air holes and a little bit of shredded newspaper and lettuce. Now ask yourself, could that make any kind of noise remotely sounding like ticking? I give up. Next time I'm sending spaghetti and just hope the possum and rest of the team like it.
PPS: Re your Monday post on OK Corral I don't think our ancestors invented iron and copper. I think they discovered them."
Dear Better Rested:
Pundita was blowing off steam and taking poetic license in the process, but we're never irritated by a statement of facts. We find your suggestion interesting. The Untouchables are an apt analogy, at least with regard to a part of the situation that Putin's government faced when they began reforms.
(For readers outside the US: in North America "Untouchable" is law- enforcement slang for a police officer or prosecutor who can't be bribed or coerced by criminals.)
Corruption was so entrenched in the Russian bureaucracies that the reformers faced essentially the same situation the Chicago Crime Commission faced in the 1920s. Organized crime was running the State of Illinois. But as Diane Alden points out in an essay for NewsMax, mobsters were only one aspect of a much larger story of corruption in America. Corruption was so entrenched at all levels of government, and at all levels of Illinois civic society, that the commission had to create a secret branch to attempt to fight the corruption.
And The Untouchables were not always untouchable. The team originally consisted of 50 agents, which Eliot Ness put together after reviewing the records of every US Treasury Department agent. Because so many on the team eventually became suspect Ness had to cut the 50 down to 15, and finally to 9. That's what he had, to take on the entire Chicago Gangland: Nine men.
So Russians who think that Americans can't possibly understand what they're going through should learn more about American history. When it comes to corruption in government, America has been there, bought the T-shirt and the video game. The corruption in the 1920s and 1930s was not only the work of crime syndicates, "dirty" cops and corrupt judges. The corruption was endemic. It was a cancer that threatened to kill our democracy.
Americans would probably do well to learn more about that chapter in our history, which isn't taught much in public school. And keep the chapter in mind when following news about Vladimir Putin's government and modern Russia. The Russian government is not only dealing with mobsters but also with the oligarchs, whose wealth and power are mind-boggling.
The Chicago Crime Commission couldn't have imagined the power the oligarchs wielded in the world during the past decade. It's not for nothing that the Russians dubbed those people "oligarchs." Putin's government has been accused of relying on a tight inner circle of ex-KGB agents. I imagine the circle has to be very tight and for the same reason Ness had to cut down the size of his team.
As with Ness, Putin is not a perfect person. But in an imperfect world he's the best bet Russia has at this time to clean up City Hall.
Tuesday, February 1
Lost in Translation: President Putin's history lecture to President Bush
Peter Lavelle's latest commentary Putin's "authoritarianism" vs. the 'commentariat' sent Pundita to Wikipedia for a crash history and overview of modern Russian politics. This still left us experiencing cognitive dissonance regarding the word "governor" in point #3 of Lavelle's discussion.
So what kind of democracy did Vladimir Putin inherit from Boris Yeltsin? How could you have a democracy, of the kind America represents, if there was no real sovereign nation? Seeking illumination, Pundita wrote Peter Lavelle. He responded:
Bush is famous for being a fast eater, even at state dinners hosted at the White House, so I suppose if he'd chewed more slowly or dawdled over dessert Putin could have extended the history lesson to include Yeltsin's era. However, I don't think Bush missed too much by leaving off at Stalin's era, at least in terms of governing structure.
As the Soviet Communist party spread from the sophisticated Russian cities, it met with tribal societies and clan governments, which the imperial Russian government had kept at bay with much the same tactics Saddam Hussein deployed in dealing with Iraqi tribes and clans.
Saddam did not remain in power by brute force alone. The Iraqi Baathist knockoff of a centralized western fascist government was window dressing. Behind the trappings was a nomadic tribal society meshed with a traditional decentralized clan society. Thus, Saddam relied on judicious application of bribes and a carefully tended alliances with chieftains.
The Soviet Communist government followed much the same tactic; thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the window dressing. The aftermath form of government is confusing to an outsider, if you apply the American concepts of nation, governors, democracy, government, etc., to Russia. Yeltsin's "democratic" reforms were more window dressing than democratic government. Another stage show, only this time a democracy stage show. Behind the stage paint was the same old clan system that pre-Revolutionary Russian imperial government had to deal with.
So it's jumping the gun for the Bush administration to launch "a high-level review of relations with Russia in the wake of Kremlin curbs on democracy..." *
First there has to be a sovereign nation, with only one administrative body setting foreign policy. Then there needs to be a national democratic government. Then is the time to start worrying about any perceived curbs on democracy.
All this helps explain an observation under #8 in Lavelle's commentary: "Putin is not a democrat. Putin is a reformer." But still seeking illumination, Pundita asked Lavelle to elaborate. His response:
It's a shame Putin's work to create the foundations for modern government in Russia has been greatly ignored by Washington policymakers. The struggles to reform Russian government from the ground up are very valuable lessons and with application to many societies struggling toward democracy
* From "Bush Reviews Ties to Russia Amid Rising Tensions" 01/26/2005, The Wall Street Journal
Appointment of governors is part of Putin's “vertical power” agenda to strengthen Russian sovereignty and against internal (oligarchs and corruption) and foreign (governors making foreign policy) threats..."I tried and failed to imagine the governors of Rhode Island, Alabama, New York, Iowa and all the other US governors making up their own foreign policy for the United States. In that event, there would be no United States of America, there would be no country.
So what kind of democracy did Vladimir Putin inherit from Boris Yeltsin? How could you have a democracy, of the kind America represents, if there was no real sovereign nation? Seeking illumination, Pundita wrote Peter Lavelle. He responded:
Regional governors experienced enormous independence from the Kremlin for years because there was little the Kremlin could do about it during the Yeltsin years. For a decade Russia's regions were run as private fiefdoms -- with little pretense supporting democracy. Many of Russia's governors ruled poorly with self interest in mind and in the service of oligarchs. This is something that the Kremlin can no longer tolerate. To modernize the economy, strengthen sovereignty, and serve the interests of citizens living in the regions the Kremlin had to do something. While most of the Western world doesn't agree with theLavelle's clarification puts an exchange between Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in a new light. In November 2004, at an economic summit luncheon, Bush questioned Putin's decision to eliminate direct elections for regional governors.
Kremlin's move [to appoint governors], most citizens in Russia's regions accept that they deserve better governance.
"Mr. Putin responded by launching into a 20-minute discourse on the history of Russian federalism from the tsars to Josef Stalin, and Mr. Bush didn't pursue the issue, according to both U.S. and Russian officials." *Now to an American who is not knowledgeable about Russia, Putin's answer showed no understanding of Bush's question. But once you understand the Russian form of government, Bush's question showed no understanding of the situation in Russia.
Bush is famous for being a fast eater, even at state dinners hosted at the White House, so I suppose if he'd chewed more slowly or dawdled over dessert Putin could have extended the history lesson to include Yeltsin's era. However, I don't think Bush missed too much by leaving off at Stalin's era, at least in terms of governing structure.
As the Soviet Communist party spread from the sophisticated Russian cities, it met with tribal societies and clan governments, which the imperial Russian government had kept at bay with much the same tactics Saddam Hussein deployed in dealing with Iraqi tribes and clans.
Saddam did not remain in power by brute force alone. The Iraqi Baathist knockoff of a centralized western fascist government was window dressing. Behind the trappings was a nomadic tribal society meshed with a traditional decentralized clan society. Thus, Saddam relied on judicious application of bribes and a carefully tended alliances with chieftains.
The Soviet Communist government followed much the same tactic; thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the window dressing. The aftermath form of government is confusing to an outsider, if you apply the American concepts of nation, governors, democracy, government, etc., to Russia. Yeltsin's "democratic" reforms were more window dressing than democratic government. Another stage show, only this time a democracy stage show. Behind the stage paint was the same old clan system that pre-Revolutionary Russian imperial government had to deal with.
So it's jumping the gun for the Bush administration to launch "a high-level review of relations with Russia in the wake of Kremlin curbs on democracy..." *
First there has to be a sovereign nation, with only one administrative body setting foreign policy. Then there needs to be a national democratic government. Then is the time to start worrying about any perceived curbs on democracy.
All this helps explain an observation under #8 in Lavelle's commentary: "Putin is not a democrat. Putin is a reformer." But still seeking illumination, Pundita asked Lavelle to elaborate. His response:
Putin is not a democrat recognizable to the West. He is primarily interested in creating an economy in which the average Russian voter has the means and interest to participate in politics. After a decade of "oligarch" rule and misguided reforms imported from the West, Putin realizes the only way Russia can be a democracy is when living standards increase significantly--and quickly. He also understands that tough and unpopular social reforms face resistance, but must be passed into law to create a modern Russian economy. Putin, incorrectly called a dictator, is using his personal popularity and control of the legislature to create the foundations of a meaningful democracy--and it won't happen tomorrow.I think the key concept is "foundations of a meaningful democracy."
It's a shame Putin's work to create the foundations for modern government in Russia has been greatly ignored by Washington policymakers. The struggles to reform Russian government from the ground up are very valuable lessons and with application to many societies struggling toward democracy
* From "Bush Reviews Ties to Russia Amid Rising Tensions" 01/26/2005, The Wall Street Journal
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