from Ian Bremmer:
G-zero and the end of the 9/11 era top 2012 risks
In a video for Reuters, Ian Bremmer discusses the biggest risks facing the markets in 2012 and says the next phase in the Middle East and the post-9/11 environment pose the greatest uncertainty:
As we begin 2012, political risks dominate global headlines in a way we’ve not experienced in decades. Everywhere you look in today’s global economy, concerns over insular, gridlocked, or fractured politics affecting markets stare back at you. Continuation of the politically driven crisis in the eurozone appears virtually guaranteed. There is profound instability across the Middle East. Grassroots opposition to entrenched governments is spreading to countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan that were thought more insulated. Nuclear powers North Korea and Pakistan (and soon Iran?) face unprecedented internal political pressure... Read the full top risks report here.
from Ian Bremmer:
Turkey ascendant, Palestine in tow. Whither Israel and the U.S.?
By Ian Bremmer The opinions expressed are his own.
If President Obama thinks he's having a tough month, he's got nothing on Israel's Bibi Netanyahu. In Tel Aviv, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are protesting the cost of living. In New York, the Palestinians are readying a statehood resolution at the United Nations. In Ankara, the Turkish government has expelled the Israeli ambassador from the country. And in Cairo, an Egyptian crowd is taking the job on themselves, attacking the Israeli embassy.
Of all of these events, though, Turkey is the biggest worry. Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has steadily escalated an anti-Israel tack for over a year now, most recently by accusing Israel of behaving like a "spoiled child." More directly, Erdogan has also proclaimed that the Turkish navy will stop the planned start of gas drilling explorations off the Cyprus coast by an Israel-Cypriot consortium. That's tantamount to threatening armed conflict. Why is Turkey so ascendant in Middle East politics, to Israel’s dismay? There are three very good reasons:
1. The U.S. is playing less of a role in the Middle East.
Under President Obama, the U.S. has become a “taker” not a “maker” of foreign policy there. Simply put, this Administration has spent less time on the Middle East peace question than any other since the creation of the Israeli state. With all the issues facing Obama at home -- joblessness, a tanking economy and his own re-election, to name a few -- and all the more pressing international issues, like winding down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and dealing with the euro zone and China -- Israel has taken a political backseat. As NATO allies like Turkey fill the void and create their own regional strategies, Israel, being in the most unnatural geopolitical position there, has had the hardest time establishing its own power center.
2. A newfound sense of Islamic populism.
It’s been almost a year since the first rumblings of the Arab spring. With the Middle East very much still unstable -- albeit a different kind of instability than has usually been evident -- it’s been necessary for governments of all stripes to start listening and acceding to the demands of their people. Turkey’s prime minister is far from clinging to power, but it’s safe to say that taking a hard line on Israel is low hanging fruit for any leader in the Islamic world, even in a country with a longstanding secular tradition.
I think the problem is that Turkey is descendant, not ascendant. The AKP won the latest elections with a reduced majority even thoough they passed a law expanding the voters base, and the economy has been deteriorating rapidly. Erdogan’s key domestic accomplishment is subjecting the military to civilian control, which is also the biggest risk externally as now he can order this military around in the region.
from Ian Bremmer:
The coming Palestinian statehood
By Ian Bremmer The opinons expressed are his own.
As violent protests rock the Arab world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government has tried to keep a low profile. It has largely succeeded. That’s about to change.
This year’s upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East is not quite finished. As President Saleh recovers from injuries suffered during an attack on Yemen’s presidential palace, the country remains plagued with protests and crackdowns. Libya’s Qaddafi clings to power, Syria’s Assad copes with surges of public anger, and Egypt’s zigzag path toward democracy reminds us how hard it is to fill the hole left behind by a castoff autocrat.
Israelis have watched closely from the sidelines to better understand what all this turmoil means for their future. As the dust begins to settle, it has become clear that they have plenty to worry about. Populism is taking root in the Middle East, a region where ordinary people have been forced for years to scream in unison to make themselves heard. Now they find that they have the power to bring about change. In response, Arab leaders—the newly elevated, those clinging to power, and even those simply facing a more uncertain future—are now listening to public opinion much more closely.
That’s bad news for Israel, because one of the most popular causes across the Middle East is a more genuine and vigorous defense of Palestinians. The Arab world’s uprisings have had virtually nothing to do with Israel. They are spontaneous expressions of public outrage that governments are corrupt, that average citizens have no power to do anything about it, that living standards aren’t rising, and that nothing ever changes. But the protests have now empowered large numbers of people who also want to see Israel face enormous political pressure.
Bremmer writes: “one of the most popular causes across the Middle East is a more genuine and vigorous defense of Palestinians”.
If this were true, the Palestinians would be warmly welcomed as equals in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait and the other Arab countries. Instead, they live in squalid refugee camps, discriminated against by the locals, unable to obtain citizenship or jobs. The dirty little secret in the Middle East is that the Arabs care less for the Palestinians than do the Israelis. Kuwait expelled half a million of them following the Gulf War for their support of Saddam Hussein.
The other Arab tribes are only interested in the Palestinians to the extent that they can be put to use in the relentless effort to rid the region of Jews.
Syrian dissidents unite to oust Assad
By Ahed Alhendi The opinions expressed are his own.
Twenty years ago, I was a school kid chanting with my peers, “Our leader forever, the father, Hafez Assad!” Back then, I could not have imagined that one day I would see his statues destroyed all over Syria by the people — a sight now common within the country.
Most of those demonstrating in Syria are young people who were taught to love and adore our only president, and later his son, Bashar. As young Syrians, we have always treated the Assads as something of a holy family. We all were forced to join the Baath Party Pioneer Organization at the age of six and we grew up soaking in the Assads’ propaganda — the school system, the single TV station, the official newspaper; they all had a picture of Assad as their logos.
Now, the voices of freedom are sounding louder than the engines of armored vehicles and the whistling of tanks shells. Bashar Assad thought that the military would intimidate and quiet the protesters, but the shout “Bashar must go!” is only getting louder.
Those shouts, however, are not particularly well-organized. Because Syria has been ruled by the Assad clan for more than 40 years, the country’s political life is effectively nonexistent. Nearly all leaders and members of serious opposition parties — both Islamic and secular — have been kidnapped, exiled, jailed or killed.
The year 2000 brought with it a so-called “Western-educated doctor” to inherit the “republic” from his father. Syrian dissidents thought that they would be able to recover from three bloody decades of Hafez’s rule that resulted in more than 30,000 deaths and 15,000 forced deportations. The exhausted opposition groups succeeded in forming an alliance called the Damascus Declaration. This alliance brought together a multitude of diverse groups calling for democratic change within the country, creating what was widely seen as a shadow government.
If the foundation is laid on delusion it will falter. Peoples power can never be underestimated.
Does everyone have a price?
On Monday I went to Bloomingdales, the Gap and Starbucks but passed on a visit to Magnolia Bakery. Instead I stopped by the St. Moritz bakery where you can order hot chocolate and sit by a video of a cozy winter fire that overlooks the indoor ski slope and is just around the corner from the largest candy store in the world, which happens to face an aquarium that occupies an entire wall on one side of the world’s largest shopping malls. This by the way is opposite of what claims to be the world’s largest candystore whose mission statement is to make every day “happier’. Earlier, while exploring the watery depths of the bright Pink Atlantis Hotel (one of the white elephants of the property crash of 2007) I knew it was really the last kingdom because the fish swam around two cracked thrones and other kitschy stone artifacts.
Dubai is utterly overwhelming, the kind of dystopia that blogger Evgeny Morozov sees in Huxley, a consumeristic paradise where mind-numbing shopping replaces real thought. Most of the I had no idea where I was except that my passport had been stamped Dubai and many of the mall-going women were shrouded in black. After a few hours I sank into a state of ennuie. Given boatloads of oil money in the 1970s and the chance to build a whole new city, who on earth would decide to build a series of shopping malls?
It’s not like the developers didn’t have ambition, what with the architecture that demands superlatives — the gondolas, medieval stone houses and soaring illuminated sky scrapers and islands built in absurd never-before-seen configurations. But why not build a museum with, say, the most incredible collection in the world or a university with the finest research laboratories? With so much money why build this Disneyland? And what about the workers who make up most of the population?
Who would go to expensive old Harvey Nichols or French boulangerie Eric Keyzer? The answer is pretty much anyone who can afford it goes not just to shop but to eat. For Arabs living in the region, the malls are closer than a flight to London or New York, they are air conditioned in the sultry summer, they have indoor sports and entertainment facilities, and are safe and family friendly. They are the old village green and the public square that Jurgen Habermas wrote about though not as he imagined it, surely.
The choices are limitless: an ice skating rink, a swimming pool, cinemas, as well as Penhaligon’s, Haagen Daz, California Pizza Kitchen and Nando’s. Even a tiny artsy neighborhood in an even tinier industrial quarter that showed angry Iranian sculptures of war-time prisoners, some held by Iraqis and some by Israelis on their knees with their hands behind their heads. My favorite piece was a video of a row of colorful balloons bobbing on the water that were tied together and shot one by one. This piece was done by a Turkish artist, who also filmed the balloons being executed. Metaphor for the human condition, anyone?
Was there a reason why you failed to mention that Dubai needed a bailout, of sorts, during the 2008 economic crisis? It invested extravagantly, namely on one of the most extravagant hotel. Fortunately, it did get bailed out.
Why democracy will win
Philip N. Howard, an associate professor at the University of Washington, is the author of “The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam”. The opinions expressed are his own.
The Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia was a tepid affair, and Libyan rebels have suffered strategic losses. Only two months ago, popular uprisings in Tunisia inspired Egyptians and others to take to the streets to demand political reform. Will the tough responses from Gadaffi and the Saudi government now discourage Arab conversations about democratic possibilities? It may seem like the dictators are ahead, but it’s only a temporary lead.
Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for 20 years, Mubarak reigned in Egypt for 30 years, and Gadaffi has held Libya in a tight grip for 40 years. Yet their bravest challengers are 20- and 30-year-olds without ideological baggage, violent intentions or clear leaders. The groups that initiated and sustained protests have few meaningful experiences with public deliberation or voting, and little experience with successful protesting. These young activists are politically disciplined, pragmatic and collaborative. Where do young people who grow up in entrenched authoritarian regimes get political aspirations? How do they learn about political life in countries where faith and freedom coexist?
The answer, for the most part, is online. And it is not just that digital media provided new tools for organizing protest and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia and Egypt. The important structural change in Middle East political life is not so much about digital ties between the West and the Arab street, but about connections between Arab streets.
Research has demonstrated three clear democratizing effects of the Internet, especially among young people in the region: more individuals are using the Internet to openly discuss the interpretation of Islamic texts, more people are forming individuated political identities online and creating their own media, and more citizens are actively debating gender politics and pan-Islamic identity. Satellite television has fed a transnational Middle East identity for several decades. But it is only in the last decade that people have started transnational conversations about politics and shared grievances.
Some experts thought the Internet was going to be a boon for radical voices and fundamentalist Islam. But it turns out that digital media more often push such extremists to the side, and bolster the networks of civil society groups over terrorist groups. Individuals learn that they can become sources of information, and that Dropbox accounts, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google and a host of other tools provide ways for people to spread information beyond the reach of their despot.
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya revolt going on in these place and now it is spreading to the East. It sounds good. People coming out into street and chasing the autocrats out, wow what a wonderful view to see. Or is it so? Isn’t this a Déjà vu? Haven’t we seen this happening in Soviet Union last century? What happened there after that? People with no experience of democracy came to power and all got lost to Organized criminals. Now women in those countries are prostituting all around the world and online to earn a living. No safety for anything. It is true and is needed the autocrats should be gone but that should be a systematic transfer not chaos which will only lead to anarchy. In a place that is already saturated by violence and terror. This will only lead to more confusion and chaos. I don’t know what should be a solution to this confusion I think people or anyone with any political experience should suggest a way out for these monarchs and autocrats. Maybe give these guys an Island to and live. Maybe they will accept that to save their lives. Take all the money from their bank accounts and extradite them there. Then a UN panel should conduct democratic elections. Easier said than done though, well what if the winners of the elections are something like Hamas? Okay enough is already there for paranoia what is going on there can only add fuel to the already burning fire.
Let them eat oil
By Erik Mielke, who is a partner at Namir Capital Management LLC, a New York-based investment management firm that invests in emerging markets. The opinions expressed are his own.
The winds of change are forcing fundamental political and economic shifts across the Arab world. But one area of economic reform is likely to be brought to a stop as regimes respond to popular protests with populist measures. These initiatives include extending and expanding the region’s massive energy-price subsidies. For the rest of the world, this matters tremendously. One additional barrel consumed in Tehran or Riyadh is effectively one less barrel for the export market, and that means higher global oil prices.
Fueled by petrodollars and subsidized oil, energy consumption has been rising rapidly throughout the region. In the 10-year period to 2009, oil consumption in Middle East and North Africa rose by 50%, or 2.7 million barrels per day, second only to China’s rate of growth. In the same period, the region’s oil production only rose by 2.5 million barrels per day. The net result was a decline in oil exports from the world’s key producers.
Current energy subsidies are huge. The International Energy Agency’s most recent estimate for global fossil-fuel subsidies was $312 billion in 2009. That number is likely significantly higher in 2010, as the market price for oil rose by nearly one-third, and will be even higher still in 2011 (at the recent peak in oil prices in 2008, global subsidies reached a staggering $558 billion). Iranian subsidies, alone, amounted to $66 billion in 2009, a budget-busting 20% of the country’s GDP, with Saudi Arabia and Russia in second and third place with $35 billion and $34 billion, respectively.
In an attempt to placate protestors, regimes across the region have now increased these handouts and subsidies. Most of the initiatives have a one-year window, but will likely remain in place for much longer in some countries.
In Kuwait, the government announced in January a 1,000 dinar (approximately $3,600) cash windfall to each citizen and free food staples until March 2013 (these measures do not apply to the foreign workers who make up two-thirds of the population). Similar measures have been introduced in Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia in the last two months.
America, Iran and a terrorist label
Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Who says that the United States and Iran can’t agree on anything? The Great Satan, as Iran’s theocratic rulers call the United States, and the Islamic Republic see eye-to-eye on at least one thing, that the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) are terrorists.
America and Iran arrived at the terrorist designation for the MEK at different times and from different angles but the convergence is bizarre, even by the complicated standards of Middle Eastern politics. The United States designated the MEK a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997, when the Clinton administration hoped the move would help open a dialogue with Iran. Thirteen years later, there is still no dialogue.
But the group is still on the list, despite years of legal wrangling over the designation through the U.S. legal system. Britain and the European Union took the group off their terrorist lists in 2008 and 2009 respectively after court rulings that found no evidence of terrorist actions after the MEK renounced violence in 2001.
On July 16, a federal appeals court in Washington instructed the Department of State to review the terrorist designation, in language that suggested that it should be revoked. But Hillary Clinton’s review mills appear to be grinding very slowly.
A group of lawmakers from both parties reminded Clinton of the court ruling this week and drew attention to a House resolution in June — it has more than 100 co-sponsors and the list is growing — that called for the MEK to be taken off the terrorist list. Doing so would not only be the right thing, the six leading sponsors said in a letter, it would also send the right message to Tehran. Translation: using the terrorist label as a carrot does not work, so it’s time to be tough.
Come January, when a new, Republican-dominated House of Representatives begins its term, Clinton and President Barack Obama are likely to come under pressure from hawkish members of congress to act tough towards Iran, further tighten economic sanctions and ensure that those already existing don’t erode.
Hilarious!
Spend half a century fighting communism, then move onto the Islamists, and then in the midst of all this Americans cry the merits of an ISLAMO-MARXIST TERRORIST GROUP. Yes you complete bunch of idiots, they are Islamists, Marxist and Terrorists… Remember the evil reds? Remember the evil mullahs? Remember the planes in New York? Combine the three and you have your average MEK nutbag… Nevermind the personality sect aspect.
Even funnier, you guys do realise they tried to assasinate Nixon in Tehran? Like i said, HILARIOUS!
Friggin tools the lot of you…
The U.S. war in Iraq is over. Who won?
The end of America’s combat mission, after seven and a half costly years, has raised questions that will provide fodder for argument for a long time to come: Was it worth it? And who, if anyone, won?
It’s too early to answer the first question, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a man of sober judgment. “It really requires a historian’s perspective in terms of what happens here in the long run … How it all weighs in the balance over time remains to be seen.”
For a sizeable group of Middle East experts, the second question is easier to answer than the first. “So, who won the war in Iraq? Iran,” says the headline over an analysis by scholar Mohammed Bazzi for the Council on Foreign relations, a New York-based think-tank. His argument: “The U.S. ousted Tehran’s sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, from power. Then Washington helped install a Shi’ite government for the first time in Iraq’s modern history.
“As U.S. troops became mired in fighting an insurgency and containing a civil war, Iran extended its influence over all of Iraq’s Shi’ite factions.” As a consequence, U.S. influence has been waning, Iran’s has been rising, and there are predictions that Iran will fill the vacuum created by the drawdown of U.S. troops to 50,000 who will “advise and assist” the Iraqis.
When President Barack Obama announced the completion of the drawdown in a somber speech on August 31, he made no reference to Iran – a curious omission – but said that “in an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners.” In the case of Iraq, only optimists find it easy to see shining success.
Six months after national elections, there is still no Iraqi government, with Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds unable to agree on how to share power and, as importantly, the country’s enormous oil wealth. A squabbling, deadlocked parliament is not much to show for more than 4,000 American, up to 100,000 Iraqi deaths and $1 trillion in war spending.
Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, and the neoconservative war hawks who agitated for an attack on Iraq, predicted that the country would become a model of democracy that would inspire the rest of the Arab world, largely run by autocratic regimes, to follow suit. That proved a pipedream. Instead, in the words of Wathiq al-Hashemi, a political analyst in Baghdad, Iraq has become a theatre for settling foreign disputes.
our goals were met. therefore the United States of America, NATO, and the International Security Assistance Force have meta victory in the no man’s land out there in the east. Israel is sure happy about all the dead iraqis. iran is surely happy about all of the dead americans. so desicevly the US wo. get over it, liberals.
US intelligence spending – value for money?
America’s spy agencies are spending more money on obtaining intelligence than the rest of the world put together. Considerably more. To what extent they are providing value for money is an open question.
“Sometimes we are getting our money’s worth,” says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington think tank. “Sometimes I think it would be better to truck the money we spend to a large parking lot and set fire to it.”
The biggest post-Cold War miss of the sprawling intelligence community was its failure to connect the dots of separate warnings about the impending attack on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. It also laid bare a persistent flaw in a system swamped by a tsunami of data collected through high-tech electronic means: not enough linguists to analyse information.
That problem was thrown into sharp focus by the government’s disclosure, long after September 11, that it had a 123,000-hour backlog of pre-attack taped message traffic in Middle Eastern languages, clear evidence of a system drowning in its own information.
The overall amount of money spent on the collection and analysis of intelligence as well as on covert actions and counter-intelligence by civilian agencies and the military was long shrouded in secrecy. It was disclosed last September by Dennis Blair, then President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence: $75 billion a year.
No other country comes even close and no other country has as many people working in the intelligence industry — at least 200,000, counting private contractors. Russia and China lag behind.
“Nobody is quite as ambitious as the United States because nobody is trying to project global power as much as the U.S.,” said Steven Aftergood, an expert on intelligence spending who heads the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.
In terms of terrorist threats I think it is fair to say that intelligence is our only front line hope to success, it is quite clear from Afghanistan, Hamas, Yemen, Pakistan, etc. that armed confrontations cannot remove these threats. Really we are better off spending the money we do on intelligence than on the regular military.
As far as whether or not the money spent yields the results it should we must recognize a couple things, first the difficulty of dealing with the sheer amount of information our services need to deal with, and secondly how daunting it is to really reform entrenched bureaucratic interests. The first issue makes it clear how important the second issue is. By creating the Department of Homeland Security we had hoped to solve a lot of the problems we have in duplication of efforts and sharing of information between departments. It is clear that effort at reform fell short and that we need to revisit that.
It isn’t the money we spend, it is what we get in return for it.
You’re doing a good job describing the risks but what about quantifying them and further depict the negative impacts or positive opportunities that would occur if these risks would materialize. Moving more towards risk analysis rather than risk reporting….
Also for the sake of transparency, who is taking these risks you describe? Global economy is rather vague… be more specific from what perspective you see things. What can be described as a risk for a political segment can be an opportunity for another segment.