Christopher Layne: The (Almost) Triumph of Offshore Balancing
Although cloaked in the reassuring boilerplate about American military preeminence and global leadership, in reality the Obama administration’s new Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) is the first step in the United States’ adjustment to the end of the Pax Americana—the sixty-year period of dominance that began in 1945. As the Pentagon document says—without spelling out the long-term grand-strategic implications—the United States is facing “an inflection point.” In plain English, a profound power shift in international politics is taking place, which compels a rethinking of the U.S. world role.
FP: The last people you want to manage US decline are Barak Obama, Leon Panetta and Hilary Clinton and the current failed leadership of Congress.
Elliott Abrams: Is Turkey purchasing Hamas from Iran?
One recent report says “a high-ranking Hamas official told the Al-Sharq newspaper on Thursday” that “Turkey has agreed to carry out a project to support Hamas and rebuild Gaza. According to the official, Hamas will open an official office in Turkey in the coming weeks.” I have seen other reports suggesting that Turkey has replaced Iran as the largest donor to Hamas, pledging $300 million over the coming year.
This would be a significant development in many ways. In the context of Turkey’s relations with Iran and Syria, it would reflect the anticipated demise of the Assad regime in Damascus and the problems this causes for Hamas–which has long been headquartered there. With Assad gone and Iran’s role in Syria greatly weakened, Hamas would need a new sponsor and protector and Turkey could play that role. For Turkey, this would provide obvious advantages in its rivalry with Iran for influence in the Arab world and in its contest with Israel.
What has Turkey demanded from Hamas, recognized as a terrorist group by both the United States and the EU? Nothing visible. For the moment Hamas is not shooting rockets from Gaza into Israel, but there is no way of knowing if Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan demanded, for instance, that Hamas permanently renounce terror or remove the anti-Semitic poison in its charter as a precondition for support. Given his own attitude toward Israel, it seems unlikely. Should Hamas launch another round of terror against Israel, the Turks could find that their new alliance is an embarrassment, complicating relations not only with Israel but with the United States and the EU.
FP: No, Turkey will find no embarassment. Neither a re-elected Obama, nor a bankrupt Europe oil-boycotted by Iran will embarass a Sunni power to defend Israel. On the contrary: the abandonment of Israel will be complete in the elusion that this will placate both Iran and the ruling Arab Islamists.
Josh Rogin: Egypt gets dumped by its Washington lobbyists
The Livingston Group, run by former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA), the Moffett Group, run by former Rep. Toby Moffett (D-CT), and the Podesta Group, run by Tony Podesta, unanimously severed their combined $90,000 per month contract with the Egyptian government, Politico reported late Friday, quoting Livingston directly. The three firms had formed what is known as the PLM Group, a lobbying entity created to advocate on behalf of the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in February 2011 after 18 days of massive street protests. According to the disclosure filings, Egypt has paid PLM more than $4 million since 2007.
The trio came under fire last week for circulating talking points defending Egypt's Dec. 29 raid of several NGOs working to train political parties in Egypt, including three organizations partially funded by the U.S. government. The groups had been working in Egypt for years without being technically registered with the government, but now stand accused of fomenting unrest against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has been ruling the country since Mubarak's ouster.
FP: Your patriotic former representatives would sell their mother for a buck (well, for millions of bucks, but the principle is the same).
Daniel Schatz: Human rights and wrongs
Universal rights are being trampled in Syria, North Korea, Iran and China. So why do we only hear about Israel’s policies in Palestinian territories?
FP: Because the West is in decline and instinctively scapegoats the Jews for its self-destruction. The decline has propelled Islamists regimes in the ME and the West is now deluding itself that by abandoning Israel it can switch the Islamists into allies and thus save itself from collapse in the ME and generally. It’s called cowardice.
Reuters Middle East Watch
In yet another example of a propaganda mantra demonstrating Reuters transparent bias, correspondent Alistair Lyon characterizes the relationship between Syria and Lebanon between 1976 and 2005:
The turmoil in Syria has fuelled tensions in neighboring Lebanon where Syria has many allies, including the powerful Shi'ite group Hezbollah, as well as foes who resent the nearly three decades of Syrian military presence which ended in 2005.
That "military presence" involved the illegal stationing of thousands of Syrian troops, tanks, and warplanes in Lebanon for the explicit purpose of suppressing anti-Syrian sentiment, securing geopolitical leverage against Israel, and providing economic gains for the Syrian population.
Yet, Lyon willfully downplays it as a mere "military presence".
Apparently, "occupation", the agency's favorite word to employ when describing Israel's quite legal presence in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") doesn't apply when referring to illegal Arab control of the sovereign territory of other states.
FP: Israel occupies, Syria has presence.
Walter Russell Mead: New Iran Crisis Wrinkle: Who’s Bluffing Whom?
Yesterday, the Iranians threatened to call what they hope is Europe’s bluff. Today, Israel is musing out loud whether it is Iran that is bluffing.
The EU recently announced plans to embargo oil shipments (starting in six months) while admitting that, due to Greek and Italian dependence on Iranian supplies, the boycott can’t start immediately. Iran thinks the whole thing could be a bluff, and its Parliament wants to cut Europe off immediately by imposing an Iranian ban on shipping oil to Europe, effective now.
The Israelis, meanwhile, are arguing over whether Iran’s threats of massive retaliation in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran are a bluff. As the New York Times reports,
“A war is no picnic,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio in November. But if Israel feels itself forced into action, the retaliation would be bearable, he said. “There will not be 100,000 dead or 10,000 dead or 1,000 dead. The state of Israel will not be destroyed.”
Some analysts also think Iran’s threats of setting off regional wars and chaos are also overblown. Hamas appears to be drifting out of Iran’s orbit, Hezbollah is worried by the threat to its Syrian patrons, and Shiite Iran’s ability to win support from Sunni radicals at a time of religious polarization in the Middle East may not be that high.
There are still others who think Israel’s threats to attack Iran are a bluff intended to push Europe into tougher action and to force Washington to take a stronger stand.
It’s too soon to tell how things will shake out in the struggle over the Iranian bomb program, but by the time this is done, some of these players are going to have their bluffs called
FP: Europe: the mouse that roared. Israel is becoming one by too much talk and no action.
Mark Steyn: Obama Promises More Of The Unaffordable Same
Newt, meanwhile, has committed himself to a lunar colony by the end of his second term, and, while pandering to an audience on Florida's "Space Coast," added that, as soon as there were 13,000 American settlers on the moon, they could apply for statehood. Ah, the old frontier spirit: I hear Laura Ingalls Wilder is already working on "Little House in the Crater."
Maybe Newt's on to something. Except for the statehood part. One day, when America gets the old foreclosure notice in the mail, wouldn't it be nice to close the entire joint, put the keys in an envelope, slide it under the door of the First National Bank of Shanghai and jet off on Newt's Starship Government-Sponsored Enterprise?
There are times for dreaming big dreams, and there are times to wake up. This country will not be going to the moon, any more than the British or French do. Because, in decline, the horizons shrivel. The only thing that's going to be on the moon is the debt ceiling.
FP: I would qualify Steyn’s argument: most of the debt in the corporate welfare state goes to the bailout of speculation and fraud of Wall Street and crony capitalists. To the extent that the US is to collapse under its own public debt, it better go to the average working taxpayer rather than to the political and corporate kleptocracy (see next).
Matt Taibbi: Is Obama's 'Economic Populism' for Real?
The question is, how real of an investigation will we get? The fact that Schneiderman’s co-chairs are Lanny Breuer and Robert Khuzami make me extremely skeptical. I’m actually not sure that both men, in an ideal world, wouldn’t be targets of their own committee’s investigation.
Before joining the SEC, Khuzami was senior counsel of the fixed-income desk at Deutsche Bank, which was creating exactly the sort of dicey CDOs that this investigation ought to be targeting.
Breuer, meanwhile, worked for the hotshot defense firm Covington and Burling, which among other things provided legal help that led to the creation of the electronic mortgage registry system MERS.
The MERS issues are probably more the province of the foreclosure settlement, but the banks’ joint efforts to evade the paper registry system are certainly an element of the larger effort to defraud MBS investors that will be covered by this committee. In fact, I’m not sure that mortgage securitization and the proliferation of CDOs and CDS could have taken place on anywhere near the scale that it did without MERS.
So having those two guys attached to Schneiderman’s hip makes me wonder what is going on here. Khuzami’s presence is especially odd. The theoretical reason we need a committee like this in the first place is because the federal agency that is supposed to be doing this work – the SEC – has stubbornly refused to do so.
If as SEC enforcement chief Bob Khuzami has not investigated the vast corruption involved with the creation of mortgage backed securities (it’s called “securitization” – it should be policed by the SECURITIES and exchange commission), then why would he start now? Even leaving out his potential culpability from his Deutsche days, Khuzami has been part of the problem, if anything.
FP: Lefty or no lefty, when it comes to Wall Street and the corporate welfare state, Obama is not different than anybody else, past and future, in the US political system. After bailing WS out, it now looks that he’s also letting them off the hook on fraud and highway robbery. Whatever the personality, ideology and declarations to a gullible public, one thing is constant: kleptocracy.
CAMERA: Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood on Rampage in Egypt?
The Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) has issued a report about a mob attack on Copts in in the village of Kobry-el-Sharbat (el-Ameriya), Alexandria. Three people were injured. The property damage appears to be extensive. AINA reports:
The violence started after a rumor was spread that a Coptic man had an allegedly intimate photo of a Muslim woman on his mobile phone. The Coptic man, Mourad Samy Guirgis, surrendered to the police this morning morning for his protection. According to eyewitnesses, the perpetrators were bearded men in white gowns. "They were Salafists, and some of were from the Muslim Brotherhood," according to one witness. It was reported that terrorized women and children who lost their homes were in the streets without any place to go.
Further down in the story, AINA quotes a Coptic priest who states the attack was not perpetrated by "Islamists" but by ordinary Muslims. The priest could not explain "why people who have lived together amicably for years could commit such violence." His answer: "Maybe because of lack of security, they think that they can do as they please."
FP: I’m sure the Jews are somehow responsible.
Blogs vs. Term Papers
OF all the challenges faced by college and high school students, few inspire as much angst, profanity, procrastination and caffeine consumption as the academic paper. The format -- meant to force students to make a point, explain it, defend it, repeat it (whether in 20 pages or 5 paragraphs) -- feels to many like an exercise in rigidity and boredom, like practicing piano scales in a minor key.
And so there may be rejoicing among legions of students who have struggled to write a lucid argument about Sherman's March, the disputed authorship of "Romeo and Juliet," or anything antediluvian. They have a champion: Cathy N. Davidson, an English professor at Duke, wants to eradicate the term paper and replace it with the blog.
Her provocative positions have lent kindling to an intensifying debate about how best to teach writing in the digital era.
"This mechanistic writing is a real disincentive to creative but untrained writers," says Professor Davidson, who rails against the form in her new book, "Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn."
"As a writer, it offends me deeply."
Professor Davidson makes heavy use of the blog and the ethos it represents of public, interactive discourse. Instead of writing a quarterly term paper, students now regularly publish 500- to 1,500-word entries on an internal class blog about the issues and readings they are studying in class, along with essays for public consumption.
She's in good company. Across the country, blog writing has become a basic requirement in everything from M.B.A. to literature courses. On its face, who could disagree with the transformation? Why not replace a staid writing exercise with a medium that gives the writer the immediacy of an audience, a feeling of relevancy, instant feedback from classmates or readers, and a practical connection to contemporary communications? Pointedly, why punish with a paper when a blog is, relatively, fun?
FP: Exterminating whatever is left of education by lazy professors and students.
