This article seeks to answer two questions: What is the current state of our international system, how did it develop, and where is it going? Where does the individual fit in within the developing international system?

The nuclear weapons era heralded by the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki initiated a shock to the world Zeitgeist whose repercussions have rippled through to societies today. But contrary to the expectations of those who witnessed the two terrifying displays of human destruction, the dropping of the A-bombs ushered in a period of what John Lewis Gaddis called “The Long Peace.”

What transpired since the shadow of the Second World War was a “Cold War,” a period dominated by two superpowers locked in a nuclear-armed stalemate against one another: nominally, the capitalist United States and the communist USSR. Also following the Second World War‘s closing was the institutionalization of a grand vision of world peace in a United Nations, which would presumably bring countries together in a commitment to international harmony. The Bretton Woods economic order effectively made the United States the banker of last resort for failed economies, and as the sole remaining major power in the West, the preserver of the peace.

The Russians however, as a former ally of the U.S. during World War II, took Europe’s weakness as a cue to drive to the West, and to demarcate a sphere of influence behind an “Iron Curtain.” The Russians’ acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1948, the same year Truman “lost China,” was an aftershock to the international system.  While Mutually Assured Destruction led to the resolving of conflicts between the two superpowers in proxy wars, a third power eventually developed – Maoist China. China would serve as balancer in a deadly game between Russia and the United States, one that would lead to America attempting to ease relations with the Maoist regime during “detente.”

Since the 1970s, the USSR stagnated, and after a period of glasnost and perestroika, whose actual effects should be severely scrutinized by the analyst, the Soviet Union formally dissolved. While former apparatchiki and state security personnel found a home in the new Russia, the greatest emblem of communism in the world was legally and ideologically dead.

Despite the horror of living under the existential threat of world annihilation, no “hot” wars between major powers broke out during The Cold War.  What seemed to many to have been an ongoing nightmare was actually a relative period of peace.  Speculation abounded that it wasn’t a “balance of power” that ruled international relations, but rather what Stephen Walt coined a “balance of threat.”

The end of the bipolar order, by the surmise of the realists, was not necessarily a good thing. A bipolar order was held to be more stable, as it provides a ready channel for weaker states in terms of alliances and neutrality, while hegemons tend to be universally feared and eventually loathed.  This tends to be the case despite the hegemon’s accommodations or tributes of self-sacrifice to maintain prestige and the legitimacy of its authority. Due to the reality of self-interest, the lone superpower becomes a sitting target for revisionist states looking to upset the status quo. The costs to the superpower of maintaining the status quo become even too great for it to manage without pressure building for a redistribution of powers and a change to the international system, as Robert Gilpin has noted.

During the Cold War, the United States became so firmly tethered to the fates of so many states through trade and through its currency, and through its role as global policeman, that it was yanked forward into commitments too burdensome for even it to bear after the Soviet Union formally collapsed. The absence of the USSR as the face of world communism (which had not yet transmogrified into radical environmentalism) made America’s overarching role in the world seem less legitimate.  So while America has scrambled across the world expending vast resources trying to put out local brushfires, and free-riding Europe sat back lobbing tomatoes at the haughty hyperpower, China, Russia, and Iran laid low and quietly developed their respective capabilities.

Another trend that took place after the legal disbanding of the USSR was the flourishing of regional and international trade alliances. The European Union blossomed. ASEAN and NAFTA were formed. GATT became the WTO. The IMF and World Bank took on more aggressive roles. Even Russia and China, though they have skirmished on a few occasions, have largely cooperated, as demonstrated by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Meanwhile, NATO has declined to largely symbolic status. Under Obama, the United States unilaterally scrapped its anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) program in Poland and the Czech Republic. It yielded to Russia in renegotiation of a nuclear arms reduction pact, said nary a word about the country’s violation of the Joint Forces in Europe treaty, and has even invited the former Cold War enemy to partake in the joint administration of an ABM regime. These actions would be inconceivable to undertake for those of a Cold War mentality. But is this progress?

To answer this question we have to consider if nuclear weapons, and the pervasive taboo that has developed against using them, has led to a novel environment where states have stopped fearing one another and instead are concentrating on a much more fundamental threat to the status quo: The empowerment of the individual.

The Internet has made communication and information in abundant supply, and individuals are enlightening themselves and each other, as well as spontaneously self-organizing against the big lies that underlie various kinds of state power. The unregulated universe of shared intelligence is turning out to be an inherently democratizing force, as we see not only with the American tea party, but more violently with the Middle Eastern “revolutions.” Apparently, it looks like world powers are coming together to redirect any truly democratizing uprisings, in the Western liberal sense, and to steer them towards usurping organizations, like the socialist-Islamic hybrid The Muslim Brotherhood.

The presence of nuclear weapons is such a fait accompli that the scary development of the insane Iranian mullahs getting nuclear weapons, even after threatening to obliterate Israel, hardly makes an eyebrow raise nowadays. Instead of concentrating on deterring Iran, the West is fostering revolutions through seemingly self-defeating monetary and economic policy and trying to co-opt them.  In international relations parlance, the core appears to be  integrating the periphery and semi-periphery into the world system. This process entails not just militaristic, but ideological breakdown, using such active measures as demoralization and fusion tactics.

So when world powers are both destabilizing and integrating minor powers into the world system, that is, the burgeoning global governance regime being planned by the UN, IMF, and World Bank, one must wonder, have states stopped fearing each other? And if they have, is that good or bad?

While some may think that such a possible development as states ceasing to fear each other would be good, because there would probably be less nationalism and less war, on the other hand, after a bit of forethought, there may be signs that point to the realization that for the individual, to quote Egon from Ghostbusters, “It would be bad.”

World events lead me to believe that major powers no longer seriously fear each other as a result of an extended period of MAD and America’s role as ‘benevolent hegemon.’  Unfortunately for us and the world, America looks domestically to be becoming less and less benevolent every day.  A political elite has come to power that is actively seeking to erode our national sovereignty, as well as our exceptionalist role in the world as champion of the individual. If the world remains on the current path, what lay ahead is an international system whose rationalization would be a diminished role for the individual.

What we are seeing more and more internationally, instead of military alliances among major powers and war treaties, are global governance schemes, such as cap-and-trade and Agenda 21. There are also potential international agreements brewing regarding children’s rights and a small arms ban that would egregiously intrude upon the individual. Most noticeably, these agreements look to undercut the ability of the individual to defend himself and his family from statists, of both the national and international variety.

This is cause for grave concern for the individual who believes his life should be his own to lead, but not reason for despair. We should be motivated to action, not inaction. Alliances have come and gone throughout history, from the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League, to the Congress of Vienna, to the Congress of Berlin, to the League of Nations, to the laughable outlawing of war by the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to the threatened EU of today.

What seems to happen throughout history is that megalomaniacs are attracted to concentrated power, and when arrangements seem to be set, one narcissist stabs another narcissist in the back. This is what Hitler did to Stalin after they agreed to separate spheres of influence and jointly invaded Poland, for example. The two of them could have taken over and split Europe, but their megalomaniacal personalities made such a power-sharing arrangement impossible.

But with all these caveats in mind, the current international environment is decidedly hostile to the individual. It appears to be not only ‘America Alone,’ but “the tea party alone.” It all boils down to this: the statist and internationalist busybodies have way too much time on their hands. For the die-hard individualist the message is clear: Pray for a major war.

See also related articles:

US Consider Removing Tactical Nukes From Europe (Aerofutures)

World Peace: An Imminent Threat to Mankind (RogueOperator)

The rebels in Libya aren’t going to win anytime soon – not without a lot more help than they’re getting.  NATO’s been blowing up everything bigger than a Safeway cart for nearly three months now.  Some countries are actually running out of ordinance, for God’s sake.  Yet, all I see on TV are smoke plumes in the distance and some scrubby guys with automatic weapons, firing wildly into the desert.  No offence, but what are they shooting at?  One would think, Gaddafi couldn’t have enough hardware left to defend himself against my nephew’s hockey team.  Not so.  Apparently, Muammar is just as nasty as he always was and about twice as defiant.  Again I ask, what is the UN mandate?

The Canadian commander of the mission, General Charles Bouchard, has called this Libyan adventure “a knife fight in a phone booth.”  I have never been in a knife fight — either in or outside a phone booth — but common sense tells me the object would be to stick the other guy.  Unfortunately, the UN won’t let anybody do that: regime change is not on the table.  I hate to keep asking obvious questions but…  what, then, is the purpose of this Libyan debacle?  Honestly, it’s beginning to look like the only way to get a favourable result is if NATO somehow manages to kill Muammar – accidently.  Pack a lunch, folks: we could be here for a while.

Of course, the unforeseen side effect reality of sixty missions a day in Libya is every other dictator within F-18 distance of Tripoli can do as he damn well pleases.  Bashar al-Assad isn’t really too worried about shooting protesters out of season in Syria when NATO is otherwise engaged.  He knows the Western powers aren’t going to launch anything more than a stern warning in his direction, and he’s acting accordingly.  The same goes for whoever is trying to be in charge in Yemen.  The extra added attraction there is Al Qaeda already has a firm presence.  Fortunately, Ahmadinejad in Iran has his own problems.  He’s just one magic lamp away from getting charged with sorcery or cavorting with genies or some other such madness.  Otherwise, he’d be putting the boots to his dissidents, as well.

What’s happened here is the West has squandered its power to influence events by actually using it.  It has always been the threat of unleashing unlimited Hell that has kept the more petty of the dictators in line.  They knew they could only go so far, dishing out nasties to their own people, before Hillary, Cameron and Sarkozy said enough is enough.  The problem is power is not what you do, necessarily; it’s what you’re willing to do.  If dictator A knows you’re willing to blast him out of his jackboots, he tends to tiptoe.  Once he knows you’re not, he’s kinda got you over a barrel.

Everybody knows that the West can’t disentangle itself from Libya now without looking like jackasses.  If Gaddafi’s still there when NATO goes home, Bashar and the boys aren’t going to worry about the UN, NATO — or anybody else, for that matter.  Syrian dissidents might as well be put on the Endangered Species List.  The best bet is for NATO to forget about UN Resolution 1973 and get rid of Muammar as quickly as possible.  From there, the West could relax and rearm and tell guys like Assad to shape up and fly right — or there’s a good possibility they’re going to get the same treatment as the last guy who pissed us off.  Maybe then the West could start directing traffic again — instead of standing on the curb watching the world go by.

Despite the aerial bombardment of Colonel Gaddafi’s forces, the ragtag militia of the rebels do not have the training or the weaponry to withstand his forces which have now adapted measures to blunt the effectiveness of air raids–using human shields, riding in pickup trucks, using camouflage. About the rebels, a New York Times correspondent wrote:

… by almost all measures by which a military might be assessed, they are a hapless bunch. They have almost no communication equipment. There is no visible officer or noncommissioned officer corps. Their weapons are a mishmash of hastily acquired arms, which few of them know how to use.

Military chiefs on both sides of the Altantic had urged caution but France’s Nicholas Sarkozy to boost his domestic poll ratings and Britain’s David Cameron seeking some of the glory that Margaret Thatcher reaped from her victory over Argentina in the Malvinas conflict urged President Obama to support their ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya. Yet, there was never any clarity as to who the rebels were–as General Carter Ham, commander of the US Africa Command, told Congressional leaders and it appears that they represent coastal tribes of Cyrenaica while the tribes of the interior and the west continue their allegiance to Colonel Gaddafi.

Most notably, the objectives of the NATO mission in Libya are unclear or cannot be achieved merely by an air campaign. Its efforts have certainly postponed the defeat of the insurgents but without ground troops, it cannot oust the Colonel from power even though Sarkozy, Brown, and Obama have all called for his departure as the only acceptable solution. Note that this was not mandated by the UN Security Council resolution 1973 which sanctions the NATO operation and the resolution had explicitly forbidden ‘foreign occupation troops of any form.’ Yet, Britain, France, and Italy have all said they would send ‘unarmed military advisors‘–a prospect almost certain to involve deeper involvement: what would happen if these ‘unarmed’ advisors were targeted by the Libyan government forces as they surely are a legitimate military target?

Insistence of the removal of Colonel Gaddafi from power rules out a negotiated settlement. A more likely prospect is that Libya will be partitioned into an eastern part which will effectively become a NATO protectorate with the bulk of Libya’s oil supplies. Neither France nor Britain has sufficient forces to keep pro-Gaddafi forces from attacking the Benghazi enclave–and it would require US boots on the ground–making the first African-American president of the US to be the first American president to invade and occupy an African state! After all, Khalifa Haftar who has been claiming to be the field commander of the rebel forces had been living near the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia for 20 years and they had provided him with a training camp.

The whole of Libya–east and west–would require massive reconstruction assistance given the damage done to its infrastructure by civil war and aerial bombardment. Who is going to fund this reconstruction? Is it ‘humanitarian to bomb the hell out of a country and then leave it in shambles? After all, the neo-conversatives claim that Iraq–which has far greater oil reserves–can pay for its own reconstruction remains hollow eight years after the US invasion.

Even if the Gaddafi regime were to implode due to economic sanctions and the loss of the bulk of its oil revenues, his boast of arming every Libyan is likely to plunge the country into a prolonged phase of violent disruptions.

The Dutch and British governments–which had used anti-terrorist legislation to seize assets of the failed Icelandic banks–have threatened to scupper Iceland’s application to join the European Union and to take the island nation to court. Reykjavik has insisted that the two governments would get most of their money back and the assets of the Landsbanki bank which set up the Icesave operation would be sold and was expected to realize 90 percent of the Icesave debt. What was at issue in the referendum was not whether London and Amsterdam would be compensated or not–but whether private citizens should be expected to shoulder the burden of repayment of a bank’s debt in which they had no hand in incurring and from which they did not benefit. The threat to take Iceland to court is important because it is to frighten off other states which also face indebtedness due to the financial crisis like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. It is simply the question of whether the bankers have to bear the burden of the bad loans they have extended.

Iceland is, in fact, a case study of neo-liberalism gone awry. Before the late 1990s, Iceland’s financial sector had been small and the banks were largely government-owned. In 1998, the two leading parties–the Independence Party and the Centre Party–embarked on a privatization of the banking sector, assigning Landsbanki to grandees of the Independence Party and Kaupthing to the Centre Party. A new private bank, Glitnir, was also set up merging several smaller banks. None of these banks had much experience in international finance, but like South Korean banks a decade earlier, these banks tapped into abundant cheap credit and easy capital mobility. Unlike the South Korean banks, their strong ties to political parties, the merger of commercial and investment banking, and low soveriegn debt meant that they got extremely high grades from the credit ratings agencies and as Robert Wade and Silla Sigurgeirsdottir note: “government policy was now subordinated to their ends.”

With the government relaxing mortgage rules to permit loans up to 90 percent of value, the banks rode the wave–by buying shares in each other they inflated share prices and enticed depositors to shift their savings to shares. In less than 10 years after the privatization of banks, Iceland had the fifth highest GDP in the world, 60 percent higher than that of the United States, and the assets of their banks was valued at 800 percent of Iceland’s GDP. As land prices soared, Icelanders loaded up on lower-interest yen- or Swiss-franc debt.

By 2006, Iceland’s current account deficit had soared to 20 percent of its GDP. Late in that year, Landsbanki established an online bank, Icesave, to attract deposits from overseas clients and by offering highly attractive interest rates, it raked in millions of pounds from England, and later millions of euros especially from the Netherlands. This was soon copied by the two other banks. These were established as ‘branches’ rather than as ‘subsidiaries‘ which meant that they were to be supervised by the icelandic Central Bank rather than regulators in Britain or the Netherlands. Because of Iceland’s obligations as a member of the European Economic Area to insure bank deposits, no one thought to worry about whether the Icelandic Central Bank had the capacity to oversee the vastly extended operations of the island’s three major banks.

This happy bubble burst in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, within a fortnight of which the three big Icelandic banks collapsed and by November of that year the krona had fallen from its pre-crisis level of 70 to the euro to 190 to the euro, so sharply cutting the islanders’ purchasing power that the three McDonald’s franchises were forced to close as the cost of importing ingredients made the price of burgers prohibitive! The country’s stock market lost 98 percent of its value! If ever there was a definition of crisis, this was it. It was the first time in over 30 years that a ‘developed’ state had to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund.

In the light of all this, Iceland’s voters have had the courage to face up to the crisis. It was the first country to kick out the government which had failed so spectacularly. Unlike its neighbor in the North Atlantic–Ireland which underwrote its own banking collapse and loader every household with €80,000 in debt–Iceland let the three banks go under and they imposed capital controls to prevent the flight of capital. Though unemployment in Iceland today is 7.5 percent in Iceland–up from 2 percent in 2002–but just over half of Ireland’s 13.6 percent. Though the krona lost almost half its value, inflation is down sharply and without having to pay back foreign creditors, its government finances are in much better shape than those of Greece, Ireland, or Portugal.

How are we to react to this exercise of Western military might against a state of the Global South? People like Gilbert Achcar and Juan Cole have vigorously defended the intervention in Libya. To them, the alternative would have been a brutal massacre of Gaddafi’s opponents by the better trained and equipped militias of the regime. For them, there were no other countervailing forces capable of intervening–not the African Union or Arab States. Western intervention was the only available option to stop a murderous dictator. It was sanctioned by the Arab League and the rebels themselves had pleaded for a ‘no-fly’ zone–a plea from a popular movement that could not be ignored. This was, a humanitarian intervention and not an attempt to secure access to Libya’s oil resources. After all, as Achcar points out, virtually all Western countries had oil companies operating in Libya already: ”Italy’s ENI, Germany’s Wintershall, Britain’s BP, France’s Total and GDF Suez, US companies ConocoPhillips, Hess, and Occidental, British-Dutch Shell, Spain’s Repsol, Canada’s Suncor, Norway’s Statoil.”

There is of course the obvious objection: the West applies double standards, not only to Israel’s murderous assault on the Palestinians in Gaza but also to the brutal repression of protest movements in Bahrain and Yemen. As Richard Falk puts it:

How is this Libyan response different in character than the tactics relied upon by the regimes in Yemen and Bahrain, and in the face of far less of a threat to the status quo, and even that taking the form of political resistance, not military action. In Libya the opposition forces were relying almost from the outset on heavy weapons, while elsewhere in the region the people were in the streets in massive numbers, and mostly with no weapons, and in a few instances, with very primitive ones (stones, simple guns) that were used in retaliation for regime violence.

Indeed, almost from the very beginning of the protests, the rebels had taken arms and before Colonel Gaddafi’s forces launched a counter-assault, ragtag rebel militias had taken towns militarily from the regime’s gendarmes. Claiming that the regime was using African mercenaries, the rebels targeted anyone who looked “African’ including members of Libya’s African tribes because it is both an African and an Arab state.

Analogies are often drawn to the situation in Rwanda but as the allusion to the African tribes in Libya suggests, no binary ethnic divide exists in Libya. There are many tribes and the confrontation between the regime and its opposition does not fracture along a single overriding ethnic divide and there is no genocidal intent in what is essentially a civil war between the regime and its opponents.

The character of the opposition also remains ambiguous–they include former members of the regime, local notables, radical Islamists, and eastern tribes opposed to western tribes. This was not the democratic movement that had swept autocrats from office in Tunisia and Egypt. The Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council may have supported the imposition of ‘no-fly’ zone but they do not speak for the Arab street and many of their members–Bahrain, Yemen–are actively engaged in brutally repressing democracy movements in their own states, and Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have intervened in Bahrain to help the al-Khalifa family crush its opponents.

The United Nations Security Council authorized the intervention–but only because the five members who abstained (Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany) did not exercise their responsibilities. If they did not have enough information as the Indian delegate said–they should have abstained. The Russian Foreign Minister has subsequently said that the US-led air raids have far exceeded the Security Council’s authorization: this had been also raised by Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League before he was pressured to retract his words.

Moreover, since Gaddafi has paid off many tribes, especially in the west, with oil revenues over the last 40 years, he has a solid core of support. What happens when the rebel forces attacks these population centers? Does the Security Council resolution to ‘protect the civilians’ not apply to them?

As also mentioned in an earlier post, if the regime follows through on its promise to arm its supporters, it could lead to a prolonged period of civil strife if Gaddafi is ousted as remnants of his supports could mount an armed resistance. This could lead to a new flow of African asylum-seekers to Europe. After all, as Achcar notes, a deal struck between Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Gaddafi reduced the flow of asylum-seekers to Italy from 36,000 in 2008 to a mere 4,300 in 2010. A prolonged stalemate or civil war in Libya, moreover as Vijay Prashad has written would constrain the West’s “ability to transit the oil that sits under its soil, and so dangerously harm the “way of life” of those who matter. Events had to be hastened.”

Intervention in Libya also raises a question: if Gaddafi had not abandoned his nuclear program in 2003, would the West have intervened in its civil war. Even though Gaddafi had sided with Idi Amin, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda harshly criticizes ”by now habit of the Western countries over-using their superiority in technology to impose war on less developed societies without impeachable logic. This will be the igniting of an arms race in the world.”

Finally, to the argument that there was no alternative to Western intervention in preventing a blood bath, the African Union had created an ad hoc commission to negotiate between the Libyan regime and its opponents but it was not allowed to begin its work on account of the air strikes and missile launches.

It is also perhaps worth wondering whether the United States which had been opposed to the French and British clamor for intervention, suddenly changed its mind just as Der Spiegel published photographs of grinning American troops posing with Afghan corpses–an event that got scant coverage in the event of the war against Libya. Otherwise, it may have got as much coverage as the atrocities in the Abu Gharib prison in Iraq. So much for humanitarian intervention!

Even if it was a foregone conclusion that their national legislatures would have supported the assault against Colonel Gaddafi’s forces–as the British House of Commons did by a lopsided margin–this was largely due to a blanketing of other options in the mainstream media which made no mention of the ad hoc commission established by the Peace and Security Council of the African Union to mediate between the Colonel and his opponents. Equally importantly, in the absence of a detailed debate, there has been little planning on what would happen were a stalemate to develop–a possibility that Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted was a real possibility–or in a post-Gaddafi Libya

Indeed, this is hardly a war against Libya. The superiority of the United States in the air is so overwhelming that as Tom Englehardt has noted there is no element of danger for the pilots of US planes who last faced a serious threat in Vietnam in the early 1970s. The Serbian air force did not even bother to take to the air in the war over Kosovo, and in the First Gulf War, the powerful Iraqi air force flew most of its planes to Iran rather than engage with the US-led forces. For American pilots it is as safe to bomb another country as it is to pilot drones over Afghanistan from the Creech Air Force base in Nevada where “those leaving [the base] pass that warns them to “drive carefully” as this is “the most dangerous part of your day”!

With the absence of any danger to US pilots, this resembles colonial wars where well-armed European troops mowed down with their repeater rifles hordes of native warriors armed only with spears and bows and arrows. Once American planes have taken out all Libyan air defense systems, British and French planes will enforce a no-fly zone, again at no risk to themselves. Underlining the suspension of the ordinary calculus of war, President Barack Obama embarked on his previously scheduled tour of three South American states even as his planes and missiles were pounding Libya.

For NIcolas Sarkozy of France, after the right wing Front National led by Marine Le Pen made historic gains in the first round of municipal elections, an image as a ‘war President‘ may just be the thing to propel him to victory in next year’s presidential elections–damn the consequences for Libyans, in true imperialist tradition!

But the sheer ferocity of the assault is causing anguish even among those who initially called for the imposition of a no-fly zone. Though the League of Arab States had called for the imposition of a no-fly zone, images of the carnage wrought by missiles and bombs led its Secretary-General Amr Moussa to say after the second day of air strikes: ”what is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.” Intense pressure however made him back-track, despite widespread revulsion in the Arab world at the carnage sustained by Libyan civilians. Nevertheless, only two small states–Qatar and the United Arab Emirates–among the 22-member states of the League have agreed to take part in war effort. Russia and China which abstained from the Security Council vote have voiced concerns about the attacks and India, which also abstained from the Security Council resolution, became the first country to call for a cessation of air strikes.

The role of the League of Arab States also appears compromised. First, Robert Fisk reported that Washington had asked Saudi Arabia to furnish arms to the rebels in Benghazi to which King Abdullah, facing his own problems, had failed to respond even though he loathes the Libyan leader who had tried to have him assassinated just over a year ago. Then the Wall Street Journal reported that with Washington’s encouragement and knowledge, the Egyptian military had begun to slip arms to the rebels. This raises the question of whether the post-Mubarak regime is going to play the role of another Western puppet–indeed Amr Moussa sudden back-tracking of his condemnation of the killings of civilians in the Western air raids gives no assurance of an independent regime emerging from the ashes of Mubarak’s autocracy. Indeed, it may well be that as Ali Abunimah wrote in the Electronic Intifada: “The greatest danger to the Egyptian revolution and the prospects for a free and independent Egypt emanates not from the baltagiyya–the mercenaries and thugs the regime sent to beat, stone, stab, shoot and kill protestors in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities– but from Washington.”

Many of the commentators who support the assault against forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi suggest, even if grudgingly, that only the Western powers have the means to stop his slaughter of his opponents. This is not only to conveniently forget that the Colonel has ruled Libya with an iron hand but also that after he agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction and join the war on terror, Western powers cosied up to him for lucrartive arms and oil contracts.

It is also to ignore that the African Union had opposed military intervention in the Libyan conflict and that the AU’s own ad hoc commission which Colonel Gaddafi had agreed to meet was not permitted to work as Western military intervention effectively ruled out a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Most importantly, there appears to be no clarity on the goals of the air attacks on Libya. The British and American military leaderships claim that the removal of Colonel Gaddafi is not the aim of the air strikes–and indeed not within the scope of the Security Council resolution–but their political leaderships assert that regime change is indeed the goal. Responding to the attacks, the Libyan regime has said that it would arm civilians to fight against ‘crusader colonialists’–this could lead to a prolonged conflict were the regime to be deposed as what is left of his forces and supporters launch a bloody civil war. A civil war on the footsteps of Europe could lead to a flood of refugees and may well pave the way to occupation. Alternatively, in the case of a stalemate, Benghazi and eastern Libya may turn into a Western protectorate.

Advocates of the resolution have evoked humanitarian reasons–chiefly the regime’s brutal counter-assault using its air force and paramilitary forces to roll back the rebels–for intervention. This is buttressed by the belief that Libya is not even a third-rate power and its defenses can easily be destroyed. And the rebels are clothed in the accoutrements of democracy though the only thing that unifies the rebels is their opposition to the Gaddafi regime and it is not clear what a post-Gaddafi Libya will look like or even whether it will remain unified.

If humanitarian reasons are the chief justification, then it is clear that there is a double standard that is applied. Much has been made of the Arab League’s call for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, but there has been no report of the fact that it was opposed by both Syria and Algeria. The states in support of the resolution–Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Oman, and Yemen–are hardly paragons of democracy. The governments of Yemen and Bahrain have brutally crushed demonstrations in their own countries; and Saudi Arabia and four other Gulf Cooperation Council states have sent more than 2000 troops to Bahrain to help the regime stay in power! Saudi Arabia has moreover prohibited protests in its eastern province, declaring such protests “illegal and un-Islamic”–and Saudi Arabia has more than 8,000 political prisoners!

More importantly, there has been virtually no report in mainstream media in the West, that the African Union has condemned attempts to impose a no-fly zone on Libya. The AU’s 15-member peace and security council resolved, to “reaffirm[s] its firm commitment to the respect of the unity and territorial integrity of Libya, as well as its rejection of any form of foreign intervention in Libya.” It formed an ad hoc committee composed of South Africa, Mauritania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to engage in dialogue with all parties in Libya for a speedy resolution of the crisis.

There is no certainty that the military operation will be a smooth and easy one. Less than a month ago, US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, had told cadets at West Point that any secretary of defense who advises a president to intervene militarily in Asia or Africa ought to have his head examined. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that even the imposition of a ‘no-fly zone’ let alone all the other ‘necessary actions’ voted on by the Security Council will be “an extraordinarily complex operation to set up”–and of course, the major burden will be on the United States which is already engaged in two wars. British Prime Minister David Cameron may have led the charge for a ‘no-fly zone’ but Britain does not even have an aircraft carrier! General Wesley Clark, who commanded NATO forces in Kosovo, has argued that intervention in Libya does not meet critical tests: it is not in US national interest, the purpose of intervention is not clear, political prospects were Gaddafi to be ousted is unclear.

A ‘no-fly zone’ moreover, might have had a chance of success ten days ago when the Gaddafi regime launched its counter-assault. Now with the rebels in full retreat, and the regime ascendant–with the regime poised to assault the rebel capital of Benghazi–it is not clear whether a no-fly zone alone will suffice. A ‘no-drive zone’ is an even more ‘complex operation’ and increases the odds of British, American, and French casualties–Germany has refused to contribute troops to a NATO operation against Libya and Turkey is unlikely to participate as well. Colonel Gaddafi has promised to take the battle into the Mediterranean and that increases the prospects of Western civilian casualties and an escalation of the war. It will be a war Gaddafi may well lose, but it is not likely that NATO can extricate itself easily–and remember there is no international sanction for a foreign occupation force ‘of any form’ in the Security Council resolution!

If intervention is to promote democracy, George Monbiot notes that the Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Libya 158th of 167 countries on its Democracy Index while Saudi Arabia is ranked 160th–and in Libya “women are not officially treated as lepers were in medieval Europe.”

Here, the double standard is all too obvious. Saudi Arabia in the only remaining “swing producer”–the only oil-producing nation with enough excess capacity to raise production if supplies fall short of demand. But US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks suspect that Saudi claims of reserves are exaggerated by almost 40 percent.

The Arab Revolt is not really about democracy–elections have not delivered results in the past, and when election results have angered the United States as in the Hamas triumph in Palestine, the US has condemned the results and applauded Israel’s punitive punishment of Gaza. The protests are about a wholesale change–not merely a change of rulers–because where there is a legal opposition, the opposition is often equally discredited.

Key to the revolt has been an explosion of information–not only through al-Jazeera, but also through the Internet, travel, and TV–and the enormous growth of people aged below 25 to levels unmatched almost anywhere else. The youth exposed to a wider range of information and experiences have greater aspirations–and now that two of the tyrants have been ousted, the sense of empowerment is raised as Brian Whittaker notes.

It is this sense of empowerment that will take a beating if Western forces occupy Libya for a long while. It will signal pro-Western governments in the Persian Gulf–Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich sheikdoms that they can count on mealy-mouthed appeals for restraint from Washington, London, and Paris as they crush their domestic oppositions. Ironically, this may play well in Iran’s favor. The Islamic Republic is very careful not to portray the conflicts in a sectarian light: if it can portray it as an attack on Muslims, and when Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of Holy Places, sends its troops to slaughter other Muslims, Iran raised the issue not with the Arab League but with the Organization of Islamic Conference. The Iranian Foreign Minister asked the Conference: “How can one accept that a government has proceeded to invite foreign military forces for the crackdown of its own citizens?” Tehran will gain even more credibility with the Arab forces when American, British, and French forces intervene in Libya.

After an initial period of paralysis, when the rebels quickly consolidated their control over the oil-rich eastern parts of the country and began advancing to towards the regime strongholds of Sirte and Tripoli, Gaddafi launched a murderous counter-assault with tanks, heavy artillery, and air planes. The paramilitary forces commanded by his sons were far better equipped that the rebels and the military deserters who had joined them and have been steadily rolling back the rebels. Stopping the rebel advance in Bin Jawad, a small town between the oil refinery port of Ras Lanuf and Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte. The regime’s forces have now captured the ports of Ras Lanuf and Brega and are advancing towards the rebel headquarters of Benghazi, though Misurata in central Libya still appears to be holding out despite assaults by the pro-Gaddafi forces.

After having swiftly called for Gaddafi to go, the United States and West European leaders are now in a quandary. In the first instance, it is not clear whether President Barack Obama gets it at all: on March 4, he told Florida Democrats in Miami:

“All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt are forces that naturally should be aligned with us, should be aligned with Israel — if we make good decisions now and we understand sort of the sweep of history.”

The fact that demonstrators across North Africa and the Persian Gulf are not chanting anti-Israel or anti-US slogans merely shows that the protests are rooted in domestic conditions, not that they are pro-Israel. Indeed, the demand for accountable governments is a demand for governments not to be subserviently enforcing Israeli policies as Mubarak had done!

When the British Prime Minister David Cameron initially called for a no-fly zone, and other Western leaders called on Gaddafi to go, it was expected to increase pressure on him to follow Ben Ali and Mubarak and leave quietly. And as the Libyan rebels were rolling from the east towards Tripoli everyone was keen to ensure that this was a Libyan revolution, one without foreign assistance. But the regime’s counter-assualt has changed all this. Now the rebels, the Benghazi-based Libyan National Council, recognized by France as the legitimate government of the country is calling for the imposition of a no-fly zone, a call endorsed by the Gulf Cooperation Council and the League of Arab States. On March 11, the European Union also said it would keep military action as an option “provided there is demonstrable need, a clear legal basis and support from the region.”

If the purpose of intervention–even the imposition of a ‘no-fly zone’–is to protect civilians, it reeks of double-standards. Not only have the United States, European leaders, or the Arab League not reacted in a similar manner to the killing of protesters elsewhere–in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, not to speak of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories–but members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League are themselves guilty of killing protesters. At the time of writing, Yemeni forces are killing protesters in Sana’a and wounding hundreds elsewhere in the country.

While the imposition of a no-fly zone–an act of war and would imply at the very least the bombing of Libyan anti-aircraft defenses–may prevent Gaddafi from launching air raids, Anthony Cordesman, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes it will not severely dampen the regime’s counter-assault. It will do nothing to its heavy artillery and its trained paramilitary forces.

Arming the rebels poses problems of another order. The Libyan National Council is headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, a former Justice Minister in the Gaddafi regime but the names and identities of many of its members have not been revealed. They appear to be united only in their opposition to Gaddafi and include the entire spectrum from Islamic fundamentalists to pro-democracy activists and workers and the relative balance between these factions is anything but clear. What is clear is that the rebels have little or no military training and hence it is anything but certain that they can withstand the regime’s counter-assault even if they were provided with arms.

It is also clear that Gaddafi has a powerful constituency, bought off with his oil revenues and tribal loyalties. This inevitably implies that effective intervention on the terms being discussed by the European Union, NATO, and the United States would involve putting US and European forces on the ground. it is not clear how the US can sustain a third war in difficult financial circumstances and the intervention may strengthen Gaddafi’s hands if the Libyans see “French and English speaking troops conducting Iraq War style raids into their homes” as Vijay Prashad has rightly suggested. And any intervention coming on the heels of the US House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims will be doubly egregious.

Indeed, the autocrats represented in the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council may well have called for the imposition of a no-fly zone to divert attention from the domestic problems fueling the protests back to anti-imperialism!

What is additionally noteworthy is that the military government in Egypt has not taken a strong stand against the assault launched by the Libyan regime. Its military, provisioned by the US, its infinitely better equipped than the Libyan forces and yet does nothing to intervene. Rather than supporting the Libyan protestors it does not even help Egyptian workers in Libya get back home!

If Gaddafi is able to capture Benghazi, then the tide of Arab rebellions would have been turned especially as the Saudis have allocated $37 billion to buy the loyalty of its people and the Gulf Cooperation Council is channeling $20 billion to Bahrain and Oman to similarly buy off their oppositions.

Alternatively, we could see an effective partitioning of Libya into a rebel dominated eastern wing and a Gaddafi controlled west. If this happens the control of oil, mainly located in the east and the very sparsely populated South would be crucial and the stalemate could be prolonged.

While it is much too early to predict how the civil war will pan out, it has provided a wedge for US and European leaders to speculate openly about intervening in Libya. That Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman called to arm the rebels comes as no surprise, it is troubling that President Barack Obama has refused to take the options of imposing a ‘no-fly zone’ and military intervention off the table, especially after his Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, injected a rare bit of sanity when he told cadets at West Point:

“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Ostensibly, the case for intervention is couched in humanitarian terms and cloaked under the UN doctrine of the “responsibility to protect.” It is easy to dismiss the humanitarian justifications as Seumas Milne has shown:

“When more than 300 people were killed by Hosni Mubarak’s security forces in a couple of weeks, Washington initially called for “restraint on both sides”. In Iraq, 50,000 US occupation troops protect a government which last Friday [25 Feb 2011] killed 29 peaceful demonstrators demanding reform. In Bahrain, home of the US fifth fleet, the regime has been shooting and gassing protesters with British-supplied equipment for weeks.”

The ‘prime directive’ if you will of the UN doctrine of “responsibility to protect” is that intervention does no harm–and on these grounds, any intervention in Libya would fail spectacularly! Even some opponents of the Libyan regime have warned against foreign intervention. Certain Russian and Chinese vetoes ensure that there will be no UN Security Council sanction for intervention and that any intervention will be under NATO auspices–or by the US, the UK and some of their allies acting on their own initiative.

If there is intervention, it is almost certain that it will have to be followed by an occupation–the opposition is disparate and only united against the regime; it is clear that the regime has some significant support–otherwise it would not have been able to mount an offensive. Since both factions will have access to weapons, an occupation to pacify the country would have to follow.

Moreover, for all the talk of Libyan government forces launching murderous assaults against its citizens, the Libyan military has been largely ineffective. Opposition forces already are reported to control some 80 percent of Libya’s oil supplies. Government planes have been unable to bomb targets–leading to speculation that the sympathies of pilots are with the rebels though it is at least equally plausible that it is because they are poorly trained.

Aljazeera English that the strength of the Libyan military is overly exaggerated. Years of sanctions and poor maintenance has meant that much of its military hardware are obsolescent or unusable and it estimates that the regime has only about 10-12 thousand well-trained and well-armed troops.

The very weakness of the Libyan forces makes threats of foreign intervention ominous. If US, British or NATO forces can intervene on a pretext, they can establish bases in Libya as they can install another kleptocratic regime–once such bases are established, they take a life of their own and are rarely dismantled as shown by the history of post-Second World War US bases.

Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa and that as world demand for petroleum surges insatiably, there is a greater urgency to control sources of supply. However, Michael Klare has documented that every effort by the UK and the US to control supplies has led to disaster–stretching from the coup d’etat that London and Washington engineered to depose the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, to the fall of the Shah in 1979, and to the two invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003. To site bases that could be used for war against another Arab country would be anathema to the protestors.

Advocates of foreign intervention, as Milne also notes,

“seem brazenly untroubled by the fact that throughout the Arab world, foreign intervention, occupation and support for dictatorship is regarded as central to the problems of the region. Inextricably tied up with the demand for democratic freedoms is a profound desire for independence and self-determination.”

Riots across North Africa and the Persian Gulf for once is not about imperialism or Israel–but about food and employment, for democracy and dignity, and against corruption and nepotism. Here too Libya is noteworthy in that it has the best Human Development Index among all African states. Here it is a case of the young and the middle class demanding an end to autocracy more than the bread-and-butter struggles that animated the Egyptian revolts and these rebels are not going to tolerate the establishment of another pro-Western kleptocracy.

It reminds me of a book I read a few years ago that speaks to the increasing interconnectivity of world events and experiences and the domino effect of world-wide civil disruption that it fosters.  The book is entitled,  The Upside of  Down : Catastrophe, Creativity, and the renewal of civilization, by Thomas Home Dixon and it documents the  interplay of economic, social, political, and environmental factors in contemporary society, along with the challenges, consequences, and possible solutions to the disruptions that are a result of it.

A laundry-list type of notes from that book is found here.

The central purpose of this book is to help us recognize the signs and prepare for breakdown in world peace and civil order.

Stresses are accumulating deep beneath the surface of our contemporary societies.

Population stress arising from differences in populaiion growth rates between rich and poor societies and from spiralling growth of megacities in poor countries

These stresses in combination with what Homer Dixon calls multipliers will make breakdown more likely, widespread, and severe. These multipliers are:

1. Rising speed and global connectivity of our activities, t3echnologies, and societies
2. Escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people

“Especially worrisome is the spread of lethal technologies that have raised destructive power of angry and violent people. Technologies that provide killing power to fanatics, insurgents, and criminal gangs. Never before has it been possible for small groups to destroy entire cities.This one fact will ensure our future is entirely different from our past.”

In 1950 there were about 2 poor people for every rich person on Earth; today there are about 5;  this has grave implications for world peace

Discrepancy between rich and poor and the poor’s knowledge of it because of technology. Migration of young men especially at interfaces between rich and poor regions (US and latin America; Timor and Australia; North Africa and Europe).

Features of rapid urbanization in poor countries (43% of whom live in slums) and their inherent problems includes; (weakness of governance and police, crime and gangs, extreme income discrepancies – rich resorts and gated communities next to slums); also the growth and number of mega-cities.
Young men, out of school, out of work and charged with hatred.
15-29 year old cohort of young men is 40% or more of the population in Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Makes up 50% or more in the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, and Yemen

Likelihood of violence in our world is the power shift allowing fewer people to kill large numbers of people more quickly than ever before. This is particularly visible in poor countries that have been flooded with small arms and light weapons. This gives militias, ethic groups, political factions, and gangs the opportunity to wreak havoc. Places like Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and eastern Congo have experience this resulting in the virtual collapse of govt authority. Organized crime and armed militias have quickly filled the vacuum

Things could go one of two ways in a social earthquake:
1. Fanatics could frame reality and define a tumultuous future
2. Social creativity could shape the future

In order to achieve #2 above, we need to enact the following steps:
1. Reduce underlying stresses (population imbalances, energy shortages, environmental damage, climate change, income gaps) We need more integrated approaches to these problems. Need risk of weapons of mass destruction; secure and destroy enriched uranium (perhaps the most urgent). We’re unlikely to weaken these stresses enough to significantly reduce the danger we face so we need to prepare for social earthquakes
2. Cultivate a prospective mind – we need to be comfortable with change, surprise, transience; exercise our imagination otherwise we’re more likely to be afraid
3. Build a resilience into all systems critical to our well-being. Gi ve up extra efficiency and productivity to achieve resiliency (i.e. draw on support and resources from elsewhere BUT be self-sufficient enough to provide for essential needs in an emergency). We need to boost the resilience of the weakest societies, namely those with damaged environments, endemic poverty, inadequate skills and education, and those with weak and/or corrupt governments. Otherwsie the entire global socio-ecological system will become increasingly vulnerable to disease, terrorism, economic collapse. These goals go against the ideology of global capitalism (which calls for larger scale, faster growth, less government, more efficiency, connectivity, and speed). We currently work against resiliency by piling on debt, building track housing on agricultural land, use distant sources of energy, and “fill every nook and cranny of our days with so much junk information and pointless running around that we don’t have time to reflect on what we’re doing or where we’re going”.

Rich countries need to find alternatives to blind commitment to economic growth which is incompatible with the Earth’s long term viability. Globalized capitalism sees economy as separate from nature and acts like a machine whose operation is linear, predictable, and reversible. We need to recognize there are no good substitutes for biodiversity and a benign climate. We need to find ways to give these explicit economic value so that people are motivated to protect them. Conventional economics is dominated by intellectual rationalization of today’s world order.

Characteristics of adaptive complex systems :
1) Extraordinary diversity
2) Decentraliation of power and decision-making
3) Systems are unstable enough to experience unexpected innovations yet orderly enough to learn from their failures and successes.
Systems with these three characteristics stimulate constant experimentation and generate a number of problem-solving strategies.
The internet provides us with the potential for this kind of system. Unfortunately, we have barely tapped the potential of the internet because instead of its being used for problem-solving, adaptation, and social inclusion, it has turned into a venue for “a screaming cacophony of electronic narcissism”.

Open source materials need to be used fro problem-solving, not just technical programming.
“In western liberal societies, public discussion of values is dreadfully impoverished”

Re: consumerism: we get drawn into discussions about superficialities because of this dearth of value debate. This serves the interests of the political and economic elites who value growth above all else.
Only a broader and deeper democratic practice will develop the expansive moral commonwealth essential to our collective e survival.

We must acknowledge that our global situation is urgent and begin wide-ranging and vigorous discussion about what we can and should do.

Yet, the reaction of Western governments to the uprisings in Egypt and Libya could not have been more different–tragedy and farce…or perhaps tragedy repeating as tragedy as Eduardo Galeano adapted Marx’s famous dictum for the Third World.

In Egypt, the US administration initially equivocated–before President Barack Obama finally called on Mubarak to leave office, US policies zigged and zagged repeatedly. Once Mubarak appointed his henchman and army intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as the first-ever vice president in his almost 30-year reign, the United States and its European allies shifted their support to Suleiman as he planned to diffuse the crisis by constitutional reform and outreach to opposition groups. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton explained that these things ‘take time’ even as Suleiman told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that democracy can come only “when people here have the culture of democracy.” It only remained for the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to say what everybody already knew: “A democratic Egypt that abrogates its treaty with Israel and becomes hospitable to radical Islamists is not in our interests.”

There was no such equivocation as demonstrators took to the streets and squares of Bengazi and Tripoli. Here, almost as soon as protestors took to the streets, the US administration and its European allies–even Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi who had particularly strong ties to the Libyan leader–were quick to call for a regime change, freeze Libyan assets, impose sanctions, call for UN Security Council resolutions condemning Muammar Gafafy, and even speculate on military intervention–to ‘take out’ Libyan air defenses to impose a ‘no-fly zone’ and with Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman even advocating the supply of arms to the Libyan opposition. And the Security Council even had the bald-faced temerity to refer Libya to the International Criminal Court which the United States does not even recognize as Seumas Milne noted in the Guardian!

Calls to intervene militarily and at least to impose a ‘no-fly zone’ were couched in humanitarian terms, and explicitly because of the Libyan regimes murderous assault on its own citizens. Brutal as the Libyan regime has been, it underlines the hypocrisy of the West that the weapons used by the Libyan government forces were supplied by these very Western powers and that in the present upheavals in Libya, Gadafy’s forces have killed far fewer people than Israel did in Gaza in early 2009 just before the George W. Bush Administration left office as Pepe Escobar wrote in AsiaTimes Online. And as the protests were gathering steam in Libya, the Afghan government found that NATO forces had killed 65 civilians including 40 children in the eastern Kunbar province, a fact conveniently ignored in the shrill outrage over Gadafy’s brutality! And of course the US occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan do not even keep a tally of the civilians killed there in one of the greatest war crimes of recent history.

The disparity between Western responses to uprisings in Egypt and Libya are partly due to the nature of the two regimes. The Mubarak regime is central to the continued oppression of the Palestinians–they have been collaborators in the incarceration of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israel’s gruesome blockade to punish the residents for electing Hamas–so much too for Western advocacy of democracy: elect our puppets or we will wreak havoc on your house is the message from Washington and the European capitals! The Egyptian armed forces had, as a result, not only got many billions in aid from the US, but its senior leadership had developed close ties with the American military.

Military leaders in Egypt had also profited handsomely from the Mubarak regime. Since reporting on the Egyptian military is a crime, the extent of its economic holdings are unclear and estimates of its share of the national economy range from 5 to 40 percent. General Sayed Meshal, former head of the Ministry of Military Production claimed that it employed 40,000 civilians and took in about $345 million a year. The popular uprising, the people’s revolution, provided them a convenient cover to derail Mubarak’s plan to anoint his son as his successor and by assuming charge of the  country, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces can be expected to safeguard their own privileges, prerogatives, and powers.

There was no Libyan counterpart to the Egyptian army. Having come to power in a military coup himself, Muammar Gadafy was quick to ensure that there was no other power center to challenge his rule. His sons and other family members controlled powerful militias that were better equipped than the regular army and he carefully cultivated the top brass of the air force. There were no comparable links between the US and Libyan militaries. Here the powerful militias and the Libyan elite were directly tied to Gadafy and without him, their power, privilege, and prerogatives would evaporate.

Unlike Tunisia–where also the West-supported autocrat, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was sent packing by a popular protest–and Egypt, Libya has oil. Unrest in North Africa and the Persian Gulf has already pushed up oil prices and since 85 percent of Libya’s oil exports are directed towards Europe, a continued spike in oil prices would threaten Eurozone economies already buffeted by credit crises in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. If NATO can intervene in Libya, and install a pro-Western post-Gadafy government, it will not only ensure Europe’s oil supplies but provide Israel with additional security. And NATO forces will have easy access to, and oversight over, the 4,128 kilometer Trans-Saharan pipeline from Nigeria to Algeria scheduled to be operational in 2015.

What is also troubling in all this is that the so-called emerging powers–India, Brazil, South Africa–have been deafeningly silent. The stage of global politics, it seems, is still reserved for the North Americans and the Europeans–though fortunately the Russians and the Chinese may be counted on to bloc any UN endorsement of military action by NATO forces. If ever there was an opportunity to mediate in the crisis in Libya, it is the Arab League and the African Union that should take the lead–and indeed, it is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who has offered his services to the Arab League to mediate the crisis.

Jan. 25. Two days before that we have a religious fiesta in my hometown. Did people change after that fiesta or they become worse. Is drunkenness justified in a Catholic Fiesta. For catholics, to have a fiesta there should be a Patron Saint. In our case it is supposed to be the Holy Child fondly called the Sto. Nino. It is unfortunate if not tragic that the celebration goes further and further from the virtues of the Holy Child. Drunkenness is one of them.

In Tahrir, all has to be true to himself as a dignified and descent human being. He should be himself, true, good and therefore beautiful. You could not be otherwise in Tahrir. Either you are or you are not!

In Tahrir the Egytians are truly what they are as human beings. They have transcended their individualistic interests for the sake of the common good. They sacrificed their personal comforts event their own vital security for the sake of the other, irrespective of religion or religious alliances. In a sense they forget their individual selves, for the sake for the other. Yet they do this without loosing their identity. Their identity is affirmed.

It is only when we offer our lives for the others that we become what we are. This is a form of martydom, though a “white” one. In is in loving that we exist. Men, women, children, youths, parents, grandparents in Tahrir are truly martyrs.

Fulfillment of our of our personality like that of Khaled Said, one of the many martyrs in Tahrir is realized since in a sense he loosed his life so that Egypt could live.

We do this not so much on dry, ritualistic religious practices like a fiesta which is becoming more expensive in our country but with less and less desirable effects!

EDSA was the long avenue that we expressed our willingness to die for the other. We will celebrate it on Feb 25. It means: Epifanio De Los Santos, a name which means Epiphany of the Saints. Martydom is a sure means towards good moral life, others call it sanctity. People in Tahrir, when they remain faithful to their ideals, surely will live a life with their Creator, the source of all goodness. ]]> http://thebeaglez.net/2011/02/04/free-speech/ Fri, 04 Feb 2011 06:16:23 +0000 beaglezmom http://thebeaglez.net/2011/02/04/free-speech/ Free speech is fundamental in the lives of free people. As we learned from the violent reaction to the closure of the Internet and phone service in Egypt – people will sacrifice their very safety in order to maintain their ability to reach out with their experience.  Here in the U.S. we need to remember that we don’t have to agree with everything we hear, but we should never stop allowing people the right to express themselves.

In the most profitable sector of the economy–where derivatives traders are routinely paid tens and hundreds of millions of dollars as compensation and bonuses–markets do not function the way the politicians, economists, commentators, and bureaucrats tell us they do: the forces of supply and demand do not operate without distortions; there is no free flow of information or transparency and customers are price-takers rather than price-makers.

This, of course, has always been true of capitalism. Fernand Braudel had argued that contrary to prevailing myths, capitalism is anti-market. The market economy, the world of transparent visible realities on which ‘economic science’ was founded, he contended was ‘the not unacceptable face of ‘micro-capitalism,’ barely distinguishable fro ordinary work,” it was very different from the rarefied heights from where exceptional profits–as cornered by the derivatives traders and financiers–are reaped.

It is precisely because derivatives are ‘exotic’ instruments and not understood by the public, that the virtual identity between free markets and capitalism incessantly proclaimed by policymakers, economists, and journalists live on in the public domain. In many transactions at the corner grocery store or a farmers’ market, there is an appearance of free markets–of small producers and shop keepers selling goods to the public, “barely distinguishable from ordinary work.” But even here, the principles of the market do not operate. No seller in a farmer’s market can know the costs of production of their competitors and nor could consumers go to every seller even in a nearby area to compare prices–in most cases, sellers quote prices they think they can get away with and consumers pay what they think they can afford.

Derivatives trade, of course, is very different. They are designed to shift risks. Typically, if the price of a gallon of oil is $2.50, large consumers may choose to lock in future supplies at $2,80 a gallon so that if prices soar to $3.00 or $3.50 a gallon, they will be insulated from the rise. Their suppliers have no idea how much lower they could charge their customers because the banks dont disclose the process by which prices are set. This is where the collusion takes place–and where the big profits are reaped.

If this is not enough, we also learn that as the financial crisis set in 2008, the US Federal Reserve opened its vaults a staggering 174 times within a 13-month period to the Citigroup, that Barclays, the British Bank owed the Fed some $48 billion at one time and on and on the list goes of the US Central Bank massively shoring up domestic and foreign banks and even to corporations such as Harley Davidson and McDonalds without public scrutiny. Needless to say, no such facility was ever considered for smaller operators. So much for free markets without the distorting influence of the state!

If the Obama Administration cite these and other remarks to justify a broad-based Arab opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, as Sharif Abdul Kouddous notes, none of these are democratic regimes and are propped up by American military, diplomatic, and financial support. The opposition to Iran expressed by these regimes was not reflected in the Arab Street. A Brookings Institute poll indicates a vast majority of the Arab population believe that the United States and israel are a greater threat to regional peace and political stability than Iran and they clearly recognize the double standards applied to Israel and Iran. Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads and faces no sanctions while Iran has not a single warhead, has said that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program, is facing increasingly stringent sanctions. The Wikileaks expose autocratic Arab rulers to be what they are: stooges dependent on the United States for their survival.

Moreover, as the media was focused on the information divulged by Wikileaks and the arrest of Julian Assange, the Obama Administration gave up trying to persuade the Israeli government to freeze settlement activity for 90 days so that the ‘peace talks’ with the Palestinian Authority could be resumed. They had concluded that even with a bribe of $3 billion dollars, the Israeli government was unwilling to cease constructing settlements in the Occupied Territories for a mere three months. As Andrew Bacevich notes, though the Israeli military power is unparalleled in the region, the continued offer of advanced US weaponry–as the offer of 20 F-35 aircraft for a nonrenewable 90-day freeze on settlement activity–continues to give credence to Israeli politicians’ claim that the security of the Jewish state is in jeopardy.

Bizarrely, as Palestinians dispatched firefighters to fight the Mount Carmel fire–the largest fire in Israel’s history–in early December 2010, Israeli soldiers were deployed near the Palestinian villages of Bil’in, Nil’in and Nabi Saleh, where Israelis, Palestinians, and international activists organize weekly non-violent protests against Israel’s 480-mile separation wall and its policy of settlements in the Occupied Territories. And the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren while acknowledging the contributions of the Palestinian fire-fighters chose to castigate the Palestinian leadership for not returning to the talks without mentioning the reasons for their refusal–the continued and unlawful expropriation of their land!

Indeed, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is in such an untenable situation with the Obama Administration urging him to continue to talk to the Israelis while the latter continue to gobble up Palestine and work to render any potential Palestinian state unviable, that he has threatened to extinguish “Palestinian self-rule” in the West Bank. This would imply that the Israelis will have to resume responsibility for the 2.2 million Palestinians as the military occupying power, a responsibility they had relinquished after the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. If this would cause chaos in the short-run as the Palestinian Authority employs some 150,000 people, it will put an end to a farcical situation and will undercut any legitimacy to these meaningless “peace process.” It would end too, all prospects of a two-state solution which of course was no solution at all.

While the bonuses will not be paid till January 2011 as the financial firms assess their performance in the fourth quarter, luxury purchases are booming and The Lion, a new restaurant that opened in New York;s Greenwich Village in May, recently sold a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild for $3,950. Though public outrage has led firms to scale back on corporate excesses like private jets and corporate retreats, personal indulgences have come roaring back.

While much of the attention has been focused on the top executives who make the 19th century ‘robber barons’ look like petty juvenile delinquents–Goldman Sachs’ chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein pocketed a cool $68.5 million in pay and shares in 2007–this has obscured the fact that lower-level employees making between $100,000 and $200,000 receive hefty year-end bonuses. Wall Street firms typically set aside 40 to 50 percent of their revenues as bonuses.

In the bizarre logic of Wall Street, if firms do not pay top bonuses to their employees even if the firms post losses, the employees will jump ship to a competitor willing to pay higher bonuses or salaries. This is of course a case of inverted logic: if the employee was responsible for losses, why not let the employee go–or better yet, fire and blacklist the employee?

And now that the Republicans have won control of the US House of Representatives, they are clamoring to make the Bush era tax cuts permanent. Though Candidate Obama had campaigned on a platform that promised to end the tax cuts for those earning over $200,000, there are signs that the White House will now cave in to Republican demands or at the very least extend them for another two years.

Despite the media claiming that the Democrats’ loss of approximately 60 seats in the House of Representatives was a “bloodbath”–to which President Obama concurring by admitting they received a “shellacking”–if the overall percentage of votes cast for the two parties are examined, John Kane noted, the Democrats received 47.3 percent of the vote and the Republicans 50.1 percent: hardly a “shellacking”. Moreover, only 38.2 million of the eligible voters cast their ballots–hardly a case of the “American people” rejecting the President’s message. In fact, the reason for the large fall in the percentage of eligible voters exercising their franchise in the 2010 mid-term elections may precisely be because they did not see the Democrats making a difference. After all, the $700 billion bailout may have secured the health of the financial sector–and guaranteed the return of good times to the financiers–but has done little to ease unemployment.

Hence, it would clearly be a mistake for the Democrats to throw in the towel and cave in to Republican demands. But perhaps it is too much to expect of this President!

I can’t remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president.  Certainly, in statements on one specific issue or another — building in Jerusalem, or somesuch — lawmakers have taken the sides of other nations.  But to have-a-face to face and say, in general, we will take your side against the White House — that sounds to me extraordinary.

And of course, the Obama Administration was not unduly pressuring the Israelis! A year ago, President Obama had demanded a freeze on Israeli settlements which extended even to what was blithely called “natural growth” of existing settlements. But on the very same day that Representative Cantor met Prime Minister Netanyahu, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton promised the Israeli leader $3 billion worth of fighter bombers in return for a 90-day moratorium in building settlements on the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem–that is to say a bribe of $3 billion to halt illegal activity and stealing other people’s land for 3 months! An act of appeasement if there ever was one, as Robert Fisk scathingly noted and an appeasement all the more egregious when the US economy is in the worst shape it has been since the 1930s and Americans everywhere are urged to tighten their belts. In the same week, as the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recommended a wide-ranging plan to cut the federal deficit affecting virtually every sector of US society, there were no recommendations to cut aid to Israel. Cantor had, in fact, proposed last month that aid to Israel not be classified as ‘foreign aid’ to shield it from cuts even as Americans suffer cuts in welfare, farm subsidies, jobs, etc.

It is clear that the newly-energized Republicans will be even more pro-Israel than the current administration (much as that might boggle the mind) even though Israeli repression of Palestinians is a direct threat to the national security of the United States as admitted by the top US general in Afghanistan, General David Petreus. When the Obama Administration has lacked the spine for a fight even when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Republican gains in the mid-term elections is likely to ensure a continuing stalemate in the ‘peace process’ and effectively ruling out a two-state solution as illegal Israeli settlements make it impossible to construct a viable Palestinian state.

If ever a super-power is hobbled, it is here in the US relations with Israel. Unable to defend its own national interests, it has become a vassal of a smaller state!

Of course, as the history of peace negotiations have long illustrated, a two-state solution was never a viable option as the Israelis always demanded that the Palestinian state be non-militarized and Israel demanded control of acquifers. But as the Palestinian population continues to grow and they cannot be shunted out–Israel’s existence as a Jewish state becomes increasingly untenable.



As the almost decade-long occupation has failed to pacify the insurgency which is, in fact gathering such steam that NATO forces are transporting Taliban leaders to Kabul to meet with the Karzai regime to negotiate a cease-fire, the US commander in Afghanistan escalated night-time raids to about 200 a month–more than 6 times the level 18 months ago. Whereas US Special Operations forces were carrying out an average of 5 raids a night as recently as last July, in the three months before November 11, they were conducting an average of 17 raids a night leading to the death or capture of 368 ‘insurgent leaders’ and the death of 968 ‘other insurgents’ and the capture of an additional 2,477 according to NATO sources. ”Many Afghans see the raids as a flagrant, even humiliating symbol of American power,” some New York Times correspondents reported, “especially when women and children are rousted in the middle of the night.”

Finally, last Saturday, in an interview with the Washington Post, President Karzai sharply criticized the massive increase in night-time raids and said that US and NATO failure to respect the sanctity of Afghan homes was fuelling the insurgency. Karzai turning against his US patrons is ironic since he was parachuted into the Afghan presidency precisely because he was seen as a complaint figure. And indeed, in his first appearance as the Afghan Interim President before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we sat like a minor provincial satrap while the Senators sat on an elevated platform and quizzed him as one would an errant schoolboy

But as the occupation continues, for his own survival he recognizes that he has to assert some autonomy from the incoherent military policies of the Occupation forces. Though he holds office only at the pleasure of the United States–his recent “electoral” win was questionable and in any case the Afghan armed forces are no match for the insurgents–he knows that the US cannot forsake him as they have no other ‘leader’ in the wings to take over. Thus, last April when he was pressured by the US to reform his administration, he even brazenly threatened to “join” the Taliban!

What is perhaps more surprising, given Karzai’s earlier protests against US policies, is that General Petreus could only respond by registering his “astonishment and disappointment” at Karzai’s pointed criticism. What is astonishing about noting that the killing of civilians, the rousing of women and children in the dead of the night, the violation of the sanctity of private homes is a humiliating reminder of the powerlessness of the Afghans, and that continued humiliations fuels the insurgency?

Appearing before the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles who served two terms as ambassador to Afghanistan, said that army commanders who told their superiors that the military strategy was not working were told to make their reports more optimistic and that the Afghan government was much less popular in the country’s south than the Taliban who were seen as ”a fairer, more predictable alternative than a corrupt and predatory government.”

Afghanistan is not merely a military quagmire from which a face-saving exit is now almost impossible, but it is also turning to be a bottomless money pit. One recent audit found that between 2007 and 2009, the Pentagon, the US Agency for International Development, and the US State department gave $18 billion to some 7000 contractors and that they cannot account for much of this money or to whom it was given! Other reports show that police stations, hospitals, schools and other buildings that were to have been constructed were so badly built that they are unusable. Louis Berger, a New Jersey construction firm, was assessed a fine of $69.3 million in fines for overbilling the government for things like a music system in its Washington DC offices for money that were to have been for reconstruction in Afghanistan!

First, most of the technology for the Chinese C919 plane will be provided by Western companies. The plane’s computer system, brakes, wheels, and power units by Honeywell; its navigation systems by Rockwell Collins; avionics by GE Aviation; fuel and hydraulics by Eaton Corporation; and flight controls by Parker Aerospace. These companies have agreed to a Chinese stipulation that they set up joint ventures with Chinese companies. Though the companies claim that they will safeguard their intellectual property, David Pierson suggests that the example of high-spreed rail proves otherwise. After European and Japanese firms shared their technology with their Chinese joint venture partners, they are now in direct competition with their former Chinese partners both in and out of China.

Yet, projections of China’s rapid rise compels there Western aviation companies to bid aggressively for the Chinese market. In the next twenty years, Chinese air traffic is expected to grow at an annual average rate of 8 per cent a year and to meet this demand the country’s domestic airlines are estimated to purchase some 4,330 planes worth $480 billion over the same period. No supplier of aviation parts wants to miss out on this lucrative market.

If the sheer size of its market confers a competitive advantage on China in technology transfer, it is also the case that 55% of Chinas exports are accounted by foreign-owned companies. Moreover, China’s large current account surpluses with the United States and the European Union is matched by large deficits with other countries as shown by a recent article in the Financial Times. In many cases, transnational production and procurement networks span across national  borders to take advantage of wage and cost differentials and a substantial part of China’s exports are only assembled and packaged there from components made elsewhere. This means that these foreign-owned companies are not particularly receptive to calls for China to revalue its currency–or indeed, the attempt by the US Federal Reserve to force down the value of the greenback by releasing $600 billion to buy US Treasury bonds: what a former Chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan termed ”a policy of currency weakening.”

Devaluing the dollar by releasing more greenbacks is “clueless” as the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called it because it would raise the cost of living in the United States when the unemployment rate is hovering at double digits and is unlikely to create a spurt in job growth in the United States. In fact, though President Obama trumpeted that his visit to India would create 54,000 jobs in the US, that is merely a third of the jobs created in the country in just the last month as Alan Beattie noted in the Financial Times.

In part, trade imbalances have taken center-stage because during the financial meltdown in 2008 and 2009, trade contracted sharply and thereby reduced trade imbalances as Floyd Norris noted in the New York Times. A modest recovery however highlighted the imbalances and governments began to accuse each other of undervaluing currencies.

Such charges and counter-charges ignore the changes in competitive pressures. With the greater deployment of automated technologies and numerically-controlled machines, and the Taylorization of even skilled work, wage charts increasing resemble a time-glass: fewer and fewer extraordinarily well-paying jobs, and more and more sub-subsistence jobs as indicated in several prior posts. These underlying conditions can be addressed only in the long-run through well developed plans that do not respect two-year electoral cycles which is the focus  not only of Washington politicians but also of the US punditocracy!

The one remaining competitive advantage the United States has is that its currency is the only reserve currency but if the Fed devalues the dollar–and already uncertainties in currency markets has led to the price of gold soaring to $1,400 a troy ounce–as Robert Zoellich, the President of the World Bank, has suggested it is likely to lead to multiple reserve currencies. And that will seal the end of the United States as an economic superpower.

Just as Sir Stafford Cripps came with the offer of full Dominion status to India if it joined the Allied war effort, President Obama said that he saw India being a permanent member of the UN Security Council sometime in the future. Not only was Obama not specific about when this would happen–and since it depended at the very least on the agreement of the four other veto-bearing members of the Security Council, he was in no position to offer a timetable unlike Cripps–but what it would entail. Indeed, the current members of the Security Council jealously guard their veto privileges and would not easily surrender it nor admit other veto-bearing powers to their ranks.

At the same time, with breath-taking arrogance President Obama declared that India must play a ‘responsible’ role in world affairs–chiding India for not speaking up against Burma’s military rulers. This was echoed by an editorial in the Los Angeles Times: “India’s government has seldom acted in the interest of the world, and humanity, when doing so might clash with its own economic interests. Nowhere is this more apparent than on India’s border, where New Delhi is coddling a repressive military junta in Myanmar. India’s trade ties with this brutal regime, and its silence on human rights abuses there and elsewhere around the world, don’t recommend it for greater influence in the United Nations.”

And yet, US abuses of human rights are legion: Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, still defends water-boarding as not being torture. The last few US administrations have wantonly killed hapless civilians: Madeleine Albright, President Clinton’s Secretary of State, said that the death of half a million Iraqi children as a result of sanctions imposed after the end of the first Gulf War was worth it in a 1996 60 Minutes interview, George W. Bush’s murderous assault on Iraq and Afghanistan killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis, and Obama has escalated the use of drones to indiscriminately kill Pakistani villagers on the Afghan border. When has the United States spoken about Israeli abuses against the Palestinians…and the list goes on.

While Obama was calling the US-India partnership as a ‘defining relationship, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was defining the US-Australia alliance as a “core partnership” and explicitly calling for Australia to relegate its relationship to China–a country that accounts for 23 percent of its exports–to a secondary partnership because of the shared ideals between the two countries.

She said, “And it is important to recognise that just because you increase your trade with China or your diplomatic exchanges with China, China has a long way to go in demonstrating its interest in being – and its ability to become – a responsible stakeholder.” Once again, the US sets itself as the arbiter.

Yet, what has the US got to offer India? Much as the Indian political elite wishes for a permanent seat with veto powers in the UN Security Council, that is not in the power of a US President to bestow–and even if it were, how ‘great’ can a country be if its ‘greatness’ is bestowed by some other power as a favor?

If Obama plays up to the aspirations of the Indian elite, it is to enlist them in an alliance to check the rise of China–and in tandem, Hillary Clinton was given the easier chance of recruiting Australia, one of the more slavish allies of the US.

It is a pity that Manmohan Singh and other Indian leaders did not tell Obama, as Gandhi told Cripps, that his offer is ‘a post-dated check on a failing bank!’

The US should give up its veto over important decisions in the International Monetary Fund in return for Europe accepting a smaller say, Germany has proposed.

…

Currently important decisions require a supermajority of 85 per cent of votes, and the US has a 17 per cent share. The Bric countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – also have enough votes between them to block decisions.

This is likely to be strongly resisted as even by reducing the supermajority threshold to 75%, Europe would still have veto power (30% of votes). Even I wouldn’t go for that.

Abstract:

We analyze the link between economic conditions and the quality of suicide terrorism. While the existing empirical literature shows that poverty and economic conditions are not correlated with the quantity of terror, theory predicts that poverty and poor economic conditions may affect the quality of terror. Poor economic conditions may lead more able, better-educated individuals to participate in terror attacks, allowing terror organizations to send better-qualified terrorists to more complex, higher-impact, terror missions. Using the universe of Palestinian suicide terrorists against Israeli targets between the years 2000 and 2006 we provide evidence on the correlation between economic conditions, the characteristics of suicide terrorists and the targets they attack. High levels of unemployment enable terror organizations to recruit more educated, mature and experienced suicide terrorists who in turn attack more important Israeli targets.

Update: Thanks to Paul Kedrosky, I just realised that the last sentence does say experienced suicide terrorists. Say what?!?