Reset those geopolitical calendars, folks. It's not post-1991 anymore. It may not be post-1945 anymore. Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are interacting more in the pre-WWII (WWI-era?), pre-American-superpower mode every day. Things are happening so fast now it's hard to keep up with them.
And the time for lament is past. Too many things are changing; we cannot recapture the post-WWII, post-Cold War Pax Americana along its old outlines. But neither will the world leave us alone, or retain its generally beneficial features -- such as peaceful tradeways and uncoerced agreement to borders -- without the use of American power. No other aspirant to international leadership even has those things as objectives. With the exception of the British Empire, no other aspirant ever has. The old Pax Americana is gone; our task now is to get to work on the new one.
h/t Gates of Vienna
Enough about The Big G's downfall. Now comes the real nitty-gritty; Afghanistan 2.0, Iraq 2.0, or a mix of both.
The "NATO rebels" have always made sure they don't want foreign occupation. But the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - which made the victory possible - can't control Libya without boots on the ground. So multiple scenarios are now being gamed in NATO's headquarters in Mons, Belgium - under a United Nations velvet cushion.
According to already leaked plans, sooner or later there may be troops from Persian Gulf monarchies and friendly allies such as Jordan and especially NATO member Turkey, also very keen to bag large commercial contracts. Hardly any African nations will be part of it - Libya now having being "relocated" to Arabia.
The Transitional National Council (TNC) will go for it - or forced to go for it - if, or when, Libya spirals into chaos. Still it will be an extremely hard sell - as the wildly disparate factions of "NATO rebels" are frantically consolidating their fiefdoms, and getting ready to turn on each other.
There's no evidence so far the TNC - apart from genuflecting in the altar of NATO member nations - has any clue about managing a complex political landscape inside Libya.
* MEMRI.ORG > SENIOR OFFICIAL IN EGYPTIAN ISLMAIC JIHAD [Sheikh Adel Shehato]: IFF WE COME TO POWER [in Egypt] WE WILL LAUNCH A CAMPAIGN TO ENFORCE SHARIA LAW: THE CHRISTIAN IS FREE TO WORSHIP HIS GOD IN HIS OWN CHURCH, BUT IFF THE CHRISTIANS MAKE PROBLEMS FOR THE MUSLIMS, I WILL ANNIHILATE THEM.
ARTIC = ...
> THERE IS ONLY THE KORAN + SHARIA = TRUE FAITH + VALUE FOR ANY + ALL MUSLIMS, NOT DEMOCRACY WHICH IS A JUSDEOCHRISTIAN FALSE CONCEPT.
> After Egypt, attention will be turned towards LIBYA + SUDAN.
> "BATTALIONS" TO BE FORMED TO DEFEND + ENFORCE SHARIA LAW WORLDWIDE.
> TOURISM SITES IN EGYPT POPULAR WID FOREIGNERS, e.g. PYRAMIDS will be shut down.
> NO SUCH THING AS ART OR LITERATURE IN A TRUE ISLAMIC STATE.
IOW, SHEIKH = ITS ISLAM, THE KORAN + SHARIA RULE, OR NOTHING.
#5
I think the connection to Africa has indeed been severed. Africa desperately needs the vast water Libya has for it could last a thousand years. Gone are the workers Libya needs. Import workers for industry from Egypt but they won't do the manual labor the Africans did. Corruption will rule Libya.
#6
Given the small population (about 7M) and the distance between population centers, a Swiss canton type system would probably be the best solution for Libya.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
09/07/2011 11:04 Comments ||
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#7
Import workers for industry from Egypt but they won't do the manual labor the Africans did.
[Tripoli Post] My two personal contacts with Libya have been at airports and both were shocking.
The first was at Tripoli airport seven years ago. The airport was in a very bad shape considering I was at the capital of an oil rich country. I wondered then why few billion dollars were not spent on the facility.
The second time it was at a London airport's book store three months ago when I picked up the second edition of a 2005 British book with, "He is a prophet and revolutionary. A seer and fighter," the reference was to Muammar Al Qadaffy ...Megalomaniac dictator of Libya, admired everywhere for his garish costumes, funny hats, harem of cutie bodyguards, and incoherent ravings. As far as is known, he is the only person who's ever declared jihad on Switzerland... and his "vision". I wondered then how much Al Qadaffy paid to get this propaganda published twice, and to whom he paid?
The final chapter of the life of Al Qadaffy has not been written but what we know is shocking even for a dictator. He ruled his country for 42 years as a family business. He held onto power when he was losing his touch with his people.
He claimed to be "The King of African Kings," "Grand Imam of Mohammedans," and "The Dean of Arab Leaders." He managed to buy his way to gain favours with the West. But last week Bab Al-Azziziyah compound in Tripoli, Al Qadaffy's headquarters, was liberated by Libya's revolutionary youth with AK-47s.
For all its oil wealth, Libya is a country that lacks the basic structures of a state and there has been little investment in education, health care or civil society.
Al Qadaffy spent the country's oil revenues on his family and on what he considered revolutionary causes around the globe, from Columbia to Ireland's IRA. But it was his involvement in the Lockerbie affair that unleashed the full wrath of the West and led to an economic embargo that crippled the country.
Two main differences distinguish Libya's revolution from that of Egypt and Tunisia. The first is that Libya has no constitution, no parliament, no legal system, no ruling or opposition parties and no national army but rather a military run by his family to protect him and to keep him in power.
The second is that the response of the Libyan dictator to the peaceful protesters was not to use violence to disperse them as in the case of Egypt and Tunisia.
Instead Al Qadaffy started to use the full military might of his air, land and navy (all run by his sons) to kill all the one million inhabitants of the city of Benghazi near the Egyptian border where the protesting started on 17 February, five days after Mubarak was forced out.
The Libyan people had no choice but to take up arms to protect themselves and their families and to seek the help of the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... , the Security Council and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... to impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
On the military side the challenges facing the people liberation army of the National Transitional Council (NTC) are two folds. One is to capture Al Qadaffy and his family, especially his son Seif Al-Islam who was groomed to take over his father's job.
The second is to liberate Al Qadaffy's hometown of Sirte, a coastal city of 140,000 and the southern desert city of Sebha with a population of 130,000 which has an important military and air force base located at a strategic crossroad to neighbouring African countries of Algeria, Chad, Mali and Niger.
Al Qadaffy failed to mobilise support last week even though he tried hard with his desperate speeches for his people to rise up against "the Crusaders and Western imperialists".
If he is captured alive he will be tried by his own people or by the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... (ICC) based in The Hague, Netherlands. The NTC leadership rightly cautioned against a policy of vengeance and retribution.
But more challenging to the NTC is to build a modern democratic state with executive, legislative and judicial institutions where there are none. All this has to be done, and soon, by a coalition of contradictory revolutionary factions, many ideological movements and several political interest groups from the far right to the far left.
Is Libya's revolution up to the task? I believe it is.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Is Libya's revolution up to the task? I believe it is.
#2
> Libya is a country that lacks the basic structures of a state and there has been little investment in education, health care or civil society.
Eh? They're the metastasis of the state. The state is external defence, property rights, courts and communication (i.e. common land to allow citizens to travel between private land).
#3
Some distinctions don't make a difference. Property rights / courts / communication are key elements of a civil society. A collection of warring tribes, each trying to impose its strong man on the others and steal the others' property, is a long way from that.
[Dawn] SO then, 53 carefully selected and chosen carefully Pakistani foreign policy elite retired civilian and military officials, analysts, journalists and civil society practitioners with established expertise on Afghanistan and/or with knowledge of the modalities of policymaking in the US were gathered together.
They came together at different dates and times, in big groups and small in Islamabad and Peshawar, under the joint aegis of the Jinnah Institute, Islamabad and the United States Institute for Peace, Washington D.C.
Their perceptions were then captured for the report aimed at better comprehending Pakistans outlook on the situation in Afghanistan, and which has recently been let loose upon an unsuspecting world.
The report is copious but to start:
Pakistani foreign policy elite [I kid you not] believe that only a truly inclusive government in Kabul can usher in an era of relatively efficient and stable governance in Afghanistan. Most participants defined this as a politically negotiated configuration with adequate Pakhtun representation that is recognised by all ethnic and political stakeholders in Afghanistan.
While far from a consensus, some opinion-makers insisted that given the current situation, a sustainable arrangement would necessarily require the main Taliban factions particularly Mullah Omars Quetta Shura Taliban, and the Haqqani network to be part of the new political arrangement. Specifically, a decentralised system of governance is more likely to be sustainable than an overly centralised one. Such an inclusive dispensation, it is believed, will view the relationship with Islamabad favourably and be sensitive to Pakistani concerns.
Really now? So there is, after all, a Quetta Shura of the Taliban, what? Now, which of the foreign policy elites has opened this particular can of worms please? Well, good and well as my friend Ashraf Afridi used to say, for prior to this there were stout denials from the security establishment and its handmaidens with only some non-foreign policy elites such as yours truly saying repeatedly that there was a Quetta Shura as large as death itself in Quetta.
It is also true then that President Karzai and his former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, the most hated of those that matter in the Land of the Pure, were always right when they said that the top leadership of the Taliban were headquartered in Quetta, one of Pakistans largest, most important cantonments? As were the Americans, who repeatedly said that the Quetta Shura was alive and kicking and should be apprehended to loud and cacophonic cries of Israeli/Indian/US conspiracy against the Citadel of Islam.
And this despite Baloch politicians such as Hasil Bizenjo saying on record that the people of Quetta (and by extension Balochistan) were at the mercy of these terrorists. Indeed, despite Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar saying a year ago that not only was there a Quetta Shura, it had already been degraded by the Pakistan Army. The degrading bit was nonsense of course.
So then, there is insistence on the part of some opinion makers that Mullah Omars Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani network have to necessarily be part of the new political arrangement for this inclusive dispensation, it is believed, will view the relationship with Islamabad favourably and be sensitive to Pakistani concerns?
How pray will these opinion makers (and foreign policy elites, let us never forget) make sure that their friends will find place in the new arrangement? Will there be elections so that the Afghans will freely choose the new arrangement? If so, what if these people are not elected? What then? Will it then be arranged to get them on to the new political arrangement by force of arms, and further terrorism? Will we never learn our lessons?
As for a decentralised system of governance being more likely to be sustainable than an overly centralised one (and which will be sensitive to Pakistani concerns!), how do our elites intend to ensure this system of governance in a sovereign, foreign country, named Afghanistan? At the point of terrorists guns? I mean is there any sense at all in any of this?
While there are mealy-mouthed references to how the Deep State and the civilian government (dragged onto the scene for no good reason for we know just where the policy on Afghanistan is manufactured) have now given up on a return to the 1990s type of dispensation in Afghanistan (please note the utter arrogance), there is nothing new in this report: it is merely an exercise in recollecting stuff that has been said umpteen times over, making some believe that this report is nothing but an insidious attempt at subtly propagating the views and the thoughts of, with notable exceptions, the very same people who got us into this mess in the first place.
One of the most ludicrous perceptions is the China question. Ill let the report speak for itself: Some from among the policy elite take seriously the notion that Indias Afghanistan presence is part of a regional strategy to counter China, and in that sense, it complements long-term US interests in the region. For this cohort, Indian presence in Afghanistan will remain a major sticking point in the Pakistan-US bilateral relationship even after 2014. Boggles the senses, eh reader? Cohort?
And to top it all: Responses reflected an acute awareness that the Pakistani state had been embarrassed and cornered, with the world viewing Bin Ladens presence in Pakistan as proof that it is Pakistan, not Afghanistan that remains the centre of gravity of the problem. And we Pakistanis do not view our country as being the centre of gravity of the problem? Osama was killed in Timbuktu? Tens of our own people are not blown to smithereens every day?
Our sahib log will never learn. We have had it.
My goodness -- that was a fast and bumpy ride. I shall have to sit down for a moment to catch my breath.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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What is interesting about Gates' comments is not that they're new, because they're not, but why they were made public.
Several different bright ideas -- or what the denizens of the White House would consider bright ideas -- are proposed as possibly underlying the "Gates says Israel ungrateful ally" story. No mention of lunch with the J Street gang, however.
Anyone who has paid any attention to Israel-US ties since the start of the "Obibi" era in early 2009, when US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took power in their respective countries, knows well that this relationship has been anything but a honeymoon.
What is interesting about the Goldberg piece is not the content of what Gates was reported to have said, but rather that someone wanted his having said it to be out there now. One question that has to be asked is why Gates. Why put these words in Gates' mouth.
Anyone who has paid any attention knows there are wide gaps in the way the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government view the world and the swiftly changing region.
Continued on Page 49
#2
Perfidenous behavior. We've now surpassed even the Albionites having taken it to an entirely new level. No training wheels needed for Gates and Obama. Netanyahu has evidently made the notification phone call. Likely to get much worse as Israel prepares to bitch slap a few of these goat buggering urchins.
#5
Greenberg/Carvill/Shrum have been trying to use their astroturf process to put a leftist in power in Israel. This is just more of the same. Bibi doesn't take orders from this failure of a POTUS
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/07/2011 10:05 Comments ||
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#6
Israel should have plans to reorganize their neighborhood the next time they are pushed into war. Expel local populations if required.
Better to be considered a villian short term and have security than to have the continual blame and escallating body count they've suffered for the past few decades.
Until then say the nice things and do what has to be done. Similar to the Arab policy of doing one thing and saying another.
#7
Gates is smoking O'Buttwipes pole. The whole crew should be in the dock for treason.What does it take before we pluck the chickens and heat the tar?
I wonder if there is a way for the next president rescind the O'Buttwipes pardons by EO, then try the whole lot.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man (New Delhi) ||
09/07/2011 10:25 Comments ||
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#8
This Greenberg fellow needs to trip and fall in front of a D9. Cat. These Leftists have really become bold, I hope they realize once the O is out of office, they're vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. Shades of Billy Jeff, bring on the small aircraft accidents and self inflicted shotgun wounds to the back of the head.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man (New Delhi) ||
09/07/2011 10:34 Comments ||
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#9
# 6 is going to get his wish sooner than most think. I hope the Israelis are of the same mind -- Gaza, Sinai,southern Lebanon, the Golan and the West Bank, all will be in play. Likely to be very bloody no matter how quickly Israel moves, unlike its dreadful performance in Lebanon in 2006. The unknown is whether WMD will be used. If Syrians and Iranians go for the gas, Syria will be reoccupied in part by Turks as the country disintegrates. It could get that bad. Eastern tribes in Syria will link with Sunna cousins in Iraq.
#10
"An ungrateful Ally" is merely a response to our schizophrenic and imbecilic political class that includes this idiot Gates.
If you were the leader of any nation, you would be looking at the US in a suspicious manner. Especially with that stupid pitiable dung-assed President from HELL we have.
#11
The Obama administration, through leaks and various on-and off-the-record statements by various officials over the last three years, has made clear that it feels that with the US giving Israel so much in terms of security assistance and diplomatic cover, it should not be so much to ask once in a while for something in return
#2
"The Russian Air Force is trying to send a message to pilots and ground crews to exercise more care, and pay attention, when they are handling these expensive aircraft."
GFL on that one.
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/07/2011 18:48 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Reset those geopolitical calendars, folks. It's not post-1991 anymore. It may not be post-1945 anymore. Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are interacting more in the pre-WWII (WWI-era?), pre-American-superpower mode every day. Things are happening so fast now it's hard to keep up with them. 
International Criminal Court
