International Affairs: February 2011 Archives
With everything so in flux in "the Arab world" it's hard to form a coherent thought that hasn't been expressed much more expertly elsewhere. I guess the main point to realize is that these protests mark the end of the stability that the Cold War superpowers imposed on the region. America has three goals in the Middle East:
1. Protect the flow of oil. Necessary not just for America, but for the world economy.
2. Protect our ally, Israel.
3. Mitigate the influence of our enemies. For a long time this meant opposing Soviet influence, but now our enemies are Iran and various supranational Islamofascist groups.
These goals were a lot easier to achieve when we had local dictators than they will be if we have to deal with a host of new democracies -- especially if Islamofascist elements wield significant power in whatever new governments emerge.
Modern Russia shares at least goals one and three with America, and they seem to have decided to side with the dictators.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday predicted decades of instability in the Arab world if protesters whom he called fanatics come to power, adding no such scenario will be permitted at home. ...Speaking at a security meeting in the Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz, Medvedev didn't name countries, but he was referring to the crisis in the Middle East and North Africa — which has brought down governments in Tunisia and Egypt and sparked protests in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Morocco and Jordan.
"These states are difficult, and it is quite probable that hard times are ahead, including the arrival at power of fanatics. This will mean fires for decades and the spread of extremism," Medvedev said in televised comments.
He's right, but that doesn't mean that he's choosing the side that will eventually win. Stability is ephemeral.
Also interesting: "Why do protests bring down regimes?".
There are a lot of people in the world who need prayer right now.
Scott Stewart breaks down the various classes of weapons used by Mexican drug cartels and explains where the weapons come from. Hint: despite the widespread myth, far less than 90% come from America.
As we discussed in a previous analysis, the 90 percent number was derived from a June 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico (see external link).According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.
Perhaps Mexico should loosen their gun laws and America should loosen our drug laws?
I don't know enough to attest to Mark Blyth's correctness, but his explanation of Eurozone debt-buck-passing was enlightening to me. I don't feel I really grok the situation yet, but the imagery in his final paragraph is compelling.
So the state put that ‘put’ on the taxpayer. But in a democracy there is only so much you can put on the taxpayer before they throw out the rascals and vote for someone that promises to put that ‘put’ elsewhere, and the only place left is back on the bondholders. So if the bondholders know that the haircut is coming, they can try and put the put back on the banks, but given the state of the bank’s balance sheets and overall business model (it’s bust – and its not coming back), that’s not going to happen. So bondholders have only one out. They pressure the EU, and the Germans in particular, by squeezing peripheral bonds to make sure that taxpayers there take the hit that they don’t want to. But this of course, has a limit. That limit is called Spain. When you put $750 billion in a bag and say ‘bailout funds’ that tells everyone how much you are really willing to lose. It’s a chunk of change and it will take care of Ireland and Greece. But if everyone is, metaphorically speaking, trying to get towards the door in case someone shouts ‘fire’ in the crowded theater, then there is no guarantee it will stop there as contagion mechanisms take hold. In which case Spain’s liabilities, dotted across the bond portfolios of major Eurozone banks, blow through the bag of cash and the limit is reached. When that limit is reached, the mother of all bank runs will begin and the endgame for not just the Euro, but also the EU, will enter its final act.
If I can attempt to summarize: bondholders and taxpayers (from various nations) are struggling over who is going to lose money on all this debt. Bondholders have better organization and knowledge, but taxpayers have armies. It's not yet clear who is going to win, but the "final act" is going to be ugly.
