What do you think about the situation in the Middle East?

The mainstream media likes to make generalizations about this very diverse region. Most of these are idiotic, simplistic tropes (oil, Islam, terrorists, etc). I don’t think this is productive, so instead I’ll highlight two things that get little traction in the Western mainstream media.

First, water scarcity is the root of many of the region’s problems. The Middle East is the world’s only major region perennially incapable of feeding itself, forcing it to import “virtual water” in the form of food. One of the main causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is over the unfair distribution of water, which is skewed towards Israel and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. On a bigger scale, water flows are almost as important to the region’s strategic balance as the distribution of oil deposits. Control of the headwaters of the Jordan, Euphrates and Tigris rivers, coupled with the biggest economic base in the region, gives Turkey immense strategic clout. To the contrary, Egypt’s food production deficits make it potentially vulnerable, as seen in the food riots of 2008 when global grain prices spiked. The urban poor who are hardest hit tend to resent their secular authoritarian rulers and support Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood. As such, making good with Israel and seeking US protection and subsidies makes perfect sense for the Egyptian political elites: resources can be freed up from military spending towards maintaining domestic stability.

Second, the “Islamic Resurgence” is rather simplistically portrayed as single-minded opposition to the West. The real situation is a lot more complex. The movement takes a variety of guises, from the moderate Islamism of Turkey’s AKP to Al-Qaeda’s franchise-based terrorist cells to the internal clan-based conflicts of Shi’ite Iran’s “Velayat-e faqih” system. It is inaccurate to treat them as a hostile monolith. And many of their grievances do sound genuine to ordinary Muslims. For instance, even Osama bin Laden doesn’t hate the US for its “freedom”, but for its support of Arab elites that he sees as corrupt, anti-democratic and hostile to Islam — e. g., the House of Saud’s acquiescence in stationing US troops in the holy lands of Mecca and Medina to protect the oil exports whose proceeds overwhelmingly benefit influential cliques. But arguing that this interpretation has some validity to it is a sure road to a wrecked career in American mainstream journalism.

Should we wait for radical change in Afghanistan?

No. Even Ronald Reagan and Rambo were pessimistic, back in the 1980’s! Americans don’t want to stay in Afghanistan for much longer, and their finances won’t allow them to anyway. In a few years, the Afghan government will have to sink or swim without US ground forces to support it.

However, I doubt the Taleban will seize central control again. Afghanistan has $1 trillion in untapped mineral reserves, and regional giants China, India, Russia and Iran have no interest in fundamentalists blocking access to them — especially in our world of increasingly scarce, harder-to-get resources.

How real is the possibility of US or Israeli strikes on Iran?

It’s one of those things that everyone talks about all the time, but never happens: until a spark sets of the bonfire, the Big Thing happens, and acquires the tinge of inevitability as viewed in the rear-view mirror of our common history. Kind of like World War One…

I wrote about this in my post The US Strategic Dilemma and Persian Deadlock. The key players are the US, Russia and Iran (the “triangle”) and Israel (the “wildcard”). Each have diverging interests that are hard, if not impossible, to reconcile.

the Strait of Hormuz

Iran wants nuclear weapons to secure its mountain base, acquire the capability to project influence through its proxies (e. g. Hezbollah) with impunity and become the hegemon over the oil riches of the Gulf. Russia wants to keep the US occupied in the Middle East as it rebuilds its Eurasian sphere of influence, but all things considered, it would rather Iran not get the Bomb. The US is firmly against both Iranian hegemony in the Gulf and Russian hegemony in Eurasia: however, the tools at its disposal are insufficient to prevent both (it doesn’t have the hard power to contain Russian influence within its current borders, while a strike against Iran will have severe repercussions — up to and including a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which pass 40% of the world’s oil exports, the commodity underpinning America’s own global hegemony). As such, the US, Russia, and Iran are locked into an uneasy, but potentially sustainable, strategic “triangle”.

However, this “triangle” is broken by the “wildcard”, Israel. While the Israelis couldn’t care less what Russia gets up to, it sees an Iran armed with nuclear weapons as an existential threat: not exclusively in a military sense — Israel has 200 nukes of its own (though Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic rantings aren’t reassuring) — but in a political and cultural one. If Iran gets the Bomb, a nuclear race will break out in the Middle East. A sense of doubt and uncertainty will seep into Israel. Hezbollah will grow bolder; the possible entrenchment of political Islam in Turkey or Egypt will create a strategic nightmare for Israel. Educated Jews will start leaving the Jewish homeland, undermining the tax base needed for increased military expenditures (e. g. on anti-ballistic missile systems), as well as the Jewish nature of the Israeli state itself. In short, a nuclearized Middle East will make Israel’s foothold in the Levant vulnerable, even untenable.

If Israel feels that the US is wavering in its commitment to prevent the emergence of a nuclear Iran, then it will go it alone — perhaps with the covert agreement of states like Saudi Arabia, which aren’t much interested in seeing a hostile, nuclear-armed Shi’ite state on the other side of the Gulf either. The US will almost certainly be drawn into the fight in the aftermath — e. g. by an Iranian attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian missile attacks on US bases in Iraq, or even false flag Israeli attacks on the US.

In my opinion, the dates of likely Israeli action are from early-2011 (when the US acquires its Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb capable of busting concrete bunkers 60m deep) to end-2012 (the date by which Iran is likely to have developed workable nuclear weapons). Otherwise, the stage is set for the eventual nuclearization of the Middle East.

Should we expect a further strengthening of sanctions against Iran?

President Medvedev said on 23 September, 2009, “sanctions rarely lead to productive results, but in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.” What he means by this Aesopian language is that it is Russia that will be able to decide whether the results of strengthened sanctions are going to be ”productive” (however you define that). Russia’s position is crucial because it is the only country with the spare refining capacity and secure trans-Caspian transport routes to successfully break any gasoline sanctions against Iran.

But even Russia’s participation will not dissuade Iran from working on the Bomb. To the contrary, it can even increase Iranian resolve if it creates the conditions for a ”siege mentality” within the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, sanctions are in the interests of both the US (it would prefer accommodating with Iran to fighting it, if possible) and even Russia (to appease the US in exchange for concessions on other policy fronts). As such, sanctions are a very convenient pretext for delaying military action. But for understandable reasons, Israel is unlikely to be as patient.

What do you think are the real Russian, Indian and Chinese positions on Iran?

Though Russia might have a few more friends than just her Army and Navy, Iran certainly isn’t one of them. It’s just a lever to be used for extracting concessions from the US. At this time, supporting sanctions is good for Russia because the Americans are compromising on many spheres (e. g. on modernization, START, Georgia). However, a time may come when Russia performs volte face, e. g. if the US shows signs of reaching a reconciliation with Iran in order to refocus its energies on containing Russia, or ceases supporting Russia’s modernization drive.

China and India are both interested in cooperating with Iran to develop its hydrocarbons sector and lock in its oil and LNG exports. Both countries espouse non-Western values of ”national sovereignty” and non-interference. Furthermore, India is interested in recruiting Iran as a western counterweight against its rival Pakistan. As a result, neither country has any interest whatsoever in stringently enforcing sanctions against Iran out of pure altruism.

What do you think are the positions of Georgia and Azerbaijan on military action against Iran and its aftermath?

map of Iran's ethnicities

Since Iran is in a ”cold war” with Azerbaijan and supports its prime enemy Armenia, the Azeri elites would probably secretly welcome military action against Iran. Furthermore, there are twice as many Azeris in Iran than in Azerbaijan, and though they enjoy equal rights with Persians, it is Islam — or the system of Guardianship of the Islamic Jury — that really keeps Iran united (with help from the security apparatus). If Iran were to suffer military defeat, the regime may be discredited, and a liberal democratic one may even take its place. In that case, centrifugal tendencies may become predominant — as in the last years of the Soviet Union — and maybe even a Greater Azerbaijan will emerge on both sides of the Caspian Sea in alliance with Turkey to the west. On the other hand, Azerbaijan can’t be too openly enthusiastic about undermining Iran because it borders Russia to the north, which is friendlier with Iran. That is why the Azeris categorically refuse to let Israeli planes fly over its airspace in a strike on Iran.

Georgia’s position is much harder to decipher, as it maintains fairly good relations with everyone except Russia — against which it is irrevocable opposed because of its liberation / occupation (cross out as you wish) of S. Ossetia and Abkhazia. Though in previous years they’d have supported Israel, their current interests aren’t clear, since the Israelis stopped delivering arms to Georgia in exchange for Russia not delivering the S-300 air defense system to Iran. I don’t think a strike against Iran by either Israel or the US will cardinally change Georgia’s situation.

What do you think about the situation in the Russian North Caucasus and the Caucasus region in general?

Russia’s North Caucasus remains bloody and unstable, but secure under Russian control. Kadyrov is the Kremlin’s vassal in Chechnya: should he turn renegade, they’ll find another baron to replace him easily enough.

I doubt there’ll be another Georgia-Russia war. Its clear that the Ossetians and Abkhazians prefer implicit Russian control to explicit Georgian rule, and Saakashvili has no chance of changing this reality by military force. On the other hand, he remains genuinely popular amongst Georgians and secure in his rule. The cold war between Russia and Georgia will continue, but it’s unlikely to turn hot again; not unless Saakashvili is a total loon and tries to replay 08/08/08.

Another war between Armenia and Azerbaijan is also unlikely. Though Azeri military spending, bolstered by its oil wealth, now exceeds the entire Armenian state budget, the latter has had fifteen years to reinforce its positions in Nagorno-Karabakh. (Furthermore, direct Azeri attacks on Armenia proper will probably provoke a Russian military response through the mutual defense provisions of the Collective Security Treaty Organization). Aliyev is a rational, calculating leader and would much rather enjoy Azerbaijan’s oil bounty than run the risk of military defeat and popular uprisings against his regime.

How would you interpret the recent Brazil-Turkey-Iran deal in the context of multipolarity?

It’s an ideological statement: the voices of formerly peripheral countries rejecting the Western consensus on nuclear rights and proposing an alternative project amongst members of the “Rest”. As such, it is a very strong endorsement of the multi-polar ideal. But in real life, the actors playing the key roles are the countries with both interests in the issue and power projection capabilities in the region: Israel, the US, Iran, and Russia. West or Rest, it doesn’t matter: only power and the will to power.

I’d like to thank Marat Kunaev for this interview. I tried to make my answers as thought-provoking as his questions, and though I might have failed in that endevour, I hope the gap is not unbridgeable.

Interviewed by Marat Kunaev.

Peter Lavelle: In His Own Words…

What first sparked your interest in journalism and Russia, and how did the twain meet?

The reason I started to write about Russia – circa 1999 – came about for two reasons. First, having an education in Eastern European and Russian history gave me a reason to write about where I lived. I didn’t like much of what the commentariat was writing on contemporary Russia. The second reason was to earn some money, which later led to needing to make a living.

I came to Russia to live in late 1997. I was employed as an equity analyst at what was then called Alfa Capital. I was lured to Russia by my former boss (an American) I worked with in Poland. I never wanted to move to Russia – actually I must say I was rather adverse to Russia, having lived in eastern Europe for about 12 years. As a result of the financial crisis of 1998, I was given a generous severance package. This allowed me to stay in Russia for a while without worrying too much about money. In spring of 2000 I started to work for a small Russian bank. The money wasn’t great, but at least the bank organized and paid for my visa. Plus, I had time to write now and then. It was at this time I discovered the JRL – Johnson’s Russia List. I have been hooked on (even an addict to) Russia watching ever since.

So you ask “how did the twain meet?” I was furious with what some journalists passed off as serious analysis and commentary on Russia and I was given opportunities to express myself as a corrective to what I thought was awful journalism. The synthesis is me today (and not just regarding Russia).

My first stop was the Russia Journal. It wasn’t much of a newspaper, but I sure did write a lot for it and really enjoyed it. Then UPI’s former Moscow bureau chief asked me to come on board as a stringer – I was thrilled. That was the first time I called myself a journalist.

Later, I wrote for Asia Times Online and – yes! – for Radio FreeEurope/Radio Liberty. Being published in “Current History” was also a special benchmark for me as a journalist.

This was also the first time I started butting heads with the commentariat. I would like to point out that this is way before I had anything to do with Russian state (funded) media. Please remember my Untimely Thoughts newsletter was going full blast during all of this.

And for all those interested: I started to work at RIAN (2005) becauseI was tired of the “slave wages” UPI was paying and for problems associated with getting a new visa. Thus, I had very practical reasons to make this move.

It is simply not true I went to RIAN (later RT) due to “ideological” motivations. I had already settled in Russia and wanted to stay settled. My journalism in front of a camera today differs little from the journalism I practiced in print years before RT came into existence.

What were your best and worst experiences as a Russia journalist?

The highlight of my career to date in journalism, in which I include television, was covering Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia in August 2008. I was in the news studio hour after hour, day in and day out. I lived on cigarettes and coffee, and with very little sleep. Watching such a story from the start and unfold was exhilarating. I am proud to say RT did an excellent job and that we at RT got the story right from the beginning when other news outlets either got it wrong or played catch-up (following RT’s lead of course!).

Having my own television program (aired three times a week) remains a great highlight. I dreamed (or day dreamed) of having such an opportunity at a very early age watching the Sunday political chat shows in the US. So dreams can come true, I suppose.

What is my worst experience? This will surprise you: not getting paid for my work. I have lost count of the number of articles I wrote without being compensated when I was still in print journalism. Today I can write for media outlets without asking for compensation – a wonderful position to be in.

I would like to also mention that while not directly under the category of “worst experience” I can say an on-going “unpleasant experience” is being called “Putin’s mouth piece” or the “Kremlin’s tool.” I speak my mind, I have always done this. Anyone acquainted with my long lost friend – my Untimely Thoughts newsletter – knows I have changed very little over the years. Television has not changed me; it has only allowed me to amplify my worldview.

Who are the best Russia commentators? Who are the worst?

Who are the best? There are some really great ones – ones that come to mind immediately: Patrick Armstrong, Vlad Sobell, Thomas Graham, Eugene Ivanov, Dale Herspring, Stephen Cohen, Paul Sauders, Dmitry Sims, Anatol Lieven, Mary Dejevsky, and Chris Weafer (and of course you Anatoly!).

Who are the worst? I think it is pointless to answer this question. Among the commentariat there is a small cottage industry that regularly condemns me – everyone reading this interview knows who I am referring to. To this day not one aspersion said or written about me warrants my reply. These are small minded people and most of them are journalists because they lack the ability and talent to do anything else. These are the worst kind of people – they get along by going along. When it comes to writing about Russia, the majority of them don’t have the guts to stand alone and speak up.

What is your favourite place in Russia? Is there anywhere you haven’t been yet, but would love to visit?

I love and hate Moscow! Moscow is my home so I make the best of it. Because of my CrossTalk program, I very rarely travel anymore. In fact, I have seen very little of this vast country. I have visited various cities between Moscow and St Petersburg and down south as far as Chechnya. By my own admission, I should be better travelled after so many years. I am still hoping to make it to Vladivostok.

If you could recommend one book about Russia, what would it be?

Martin Malia’s “Russia under Western Eyes” [AK: Click to buy] – I can’t remember how many times I have read this great tome, but each time I do I learn something new to reflect upon.

Do you think today’s Russian media environment is better than in 1999? The late 1980′s? Are Russian journalists freer or safer than they were before?

Comparing Russian media of the 80’s to the 90s to the 00s is not very constructive. The ending of Soviet era censorship was a great moment for Russians and Russian society. Some embraced honest and professional journalism; others practiced this trade with regrettable irresponsibility.

The way I look at Russia’s media transition – and the journey is long from over – is through the prism of business models. In the 80s the state’s monopoly had to be broken and eventually was. In the 90s the oligarchs divided up among themselves huge media empires – none ofwhich had any interest in real journalism or the social good. These media empires were political tools that terribly damaged journalism as a trade, profession, the political environment and even the world of business.

Since about 2000 (circa Putin), media in Russia is very much a business and a very profitable one at that! Today media caters more to audience interests and tastes – mostly entertainment (particularly when it comes to television). Is this good? Does this make a better society? Are people well enough informed? On the whole I don’t see Russian media being all that different from other media markets in the world. Russians – like their global counterparts – are well enough informed about their environment to make rational decisions about their lives. There is plenty of diversity, though one has to make an effort to satisfy interests beyond Russia’s mainstream.

As for the safety of journalists in Russia: this is a very painful and even shameful state of affairs. The police and judiciary need to do much more for journalists. Their inability to prosecute those behind high profile murders hurts journalism as a profession and public trust in state authorities.

Also, I want to point out that journalists are killed more likely because of “kompromat” being investigated or written about someone else’s money – not politics in its normative sense. In Russia money is everything – politics is a sideshow that amuses Russia’s hopelessly retarded liberal intelligentsia.

On balance, do you think Putinism was good or bad for Russia? (Try not to sit on the fence here).

I don’t like the term “Putinism.” There is no such “ism.” Russia is going through what I call the “post-soviet purgatory” – and doing well at that by my estimation, considering the other post-soviet states.

Vladimir Putin is the best thing to happen to Russia in its modern history – he is a rational person and a true patriot. Because of Putin, Russians are freer and richer now than any time since the Russian state came into existence centuries ago. Putin saved the Russian state from thieving oligarchs and their highly paid western advisors. Putin reconstructed the Russian state, was behind the creation of a middle class, and Russia’s dignified turn to the world stage. And he rightfully fought terrorism in the Caucasus when the West hoped for the slow and painful collapse of the Russian state in the wake of the Soviet collapse.

Putin is also the indirect creation of western hubris and the gross irresponsibility of Russia’s self-hating cappuccino-drinking liberals. Russia doesn’t need to be lectured by an outrageously hypocritical West, especially American posturing. Putin is the antithesis of Western hypocrisy and history will be very kind to him. Russians give him a lot of credit and he deserves it.

How will Russia-West relations be affected by Obama’s “reset” policy and Medvedev’s new emphasis on modernization? Which was the main party responsible for their deterioration in the first place?

The so-called “re-set” is a media strategy and in a sense a fraud – it has nothing to do with reality or political facts on the ground. Washington caved to reality – the American empire is collapsing. To slow the inevitable, Washington needs Moscow’s help. Out of self-interest Russia is willing to engage Obama. Pragmatic Russia today is helping Soviet Amerika out of a mess of its own making.

Most of the world’s problems can’t be resolved without Russia’s involvement – Washington now acknowledges this. Moscow does not give a hoot about Obama or the US. What Moscow does care about is how the world will evolve as the US deals with its own and much needed, but rarely spoken about, perestroika. The US is in decline and Russia (along with the emerging world) is readying itself for the inevitable paradigm shift.

Lastly, Russia and the US are not enemies, but they are competitors at times. Competition is good for both countries – even when dealing with common problems facing the world.

If you could advise the Russian government to do one thing it isn’t already doing, what would it be?

The Russian government claims it is fighting corruption (and there are signs of this), but it is not doing nearly enough. If Russia is to modernize itself to be competitive in the global marketplace, then it must to do more to fight this cancer. If this is not done, then history will pass Russia by.

HARD Talk* with Peter Lavelle

ANATOLY KARLIN: You are a fierce critic of US policy towards the Muslim world, and its enabling of Israeli expansionism and sidelining of dissenters like Robert Fisk and Norman Finkelstein. First, could you please expound on the similarities between Russophobia and Islamophobia? Second, why are Israeli policies towards the Palestinians / Hamas worse than Russia’s towards the Chechens / Caucasus Emirate?

PETER LAVELLE: First of all, I don’t like the terms Russophobia and Islamophobia – both terms are emotive and lack precision. That said, it is obvious that Russia and Islam today serve as the West’s “other” – meaning both are feared because they are different and will not submit. It is the highest form of hubris on the part of the West to believe (even demand) that everyone in the world should be like the West. The fact is many in the world simply don’t want this. They want good education, health care, prosperity, etc., but not necessarily Western values and certainly not Western (read: American) militarism. This really annoys the West, particularly poorly educated and poorly informed Americans.

Russia sees itself as its own unique civilization. This may or may not be true, but many Russians seem to think so. Islam is obviously a civilization different from the West. Islam is experiencing a resurgence and a great deal of this resurgence is the rejection that Muslims must become more like American, Europeans, etc. I blame Western mainstream media for misleading Western audiences about Islam and the Muslim world. Tragically this is part of the grossly one-sided reporting when it comes to Israel and Greater Middle East politics.

Russia is terribly misinterpreted and misunderstood in the West. Russia is presented as the loser in the Cold War and thus should act as a defeated power. Russia refuses to do this. This infuriates many in the West. The fact is Russia and Russians liberated themselves from communism! According to the Western discourse regarding history, Russia is not repenting for the past, thus it still must be the enemy. The good news is Russia is a political fact on the ground and the West has no choice but to do business with it.

You ask: why are Israeli policies towards the Palestinians / Hamas worse than Russia’s towards the Chechens / Caucasus Emirate? You are asking me to compare apples with cement bricks!

The Israelis threw the Palestinians off their land and deny them their own state. Chechens have their republic within the Russian Federation, which is generously supported by the federal government.

Palestinians are less than second class citizens in Palestine, Chechens have the same rights as any other Russian citizen. Israel is a zionist state; Russia is a secular state protecting the religious rights of all citizens. Hamas was democratically elected; the Caucasus Emirate was not elected by anyone.

I could easily go on. As you can see I don’t see there is much of a comparison.

ANATOLY KARLIN: In my question to you about Russia-US relations, you claim the “American empire is collapsing” and allude to “Soviet Amerika” (that’s even the title of one your Crosstalk programs). Now it’s no secret that the United States has its share of problems: an overstretched military, awning budget deficits, etc. Nonetheless, we need some perspective. The US economy is still much larger than that of its nearest competitor, China (which has lots of bad loans and will be devastated if it were to pull the plug on its prime export market). The Eurozone may already be on the verge of unraveling. As for Russia, its GDP is an order of magnitude smaller than America’s.

So is it then reasonable to speculate about the collapse of Pax Americana, considering its current strength and the problems afflicting potential rivals? If it does collapse, which country or bloc will take its place, if any? Finally, have you heard of Dmitry Orlov’s idea of “the Collapse Gap” between the USSR and America today?

PETER LAVELLE: Yes, I have come across Orlov’s work and remain skeptical – he simply wants to the US to collapse. Everything you point out in your question is correct about the US. But you left out one important issue – the current weakness of America’s democracy. There is no political will in America to live within the country’s means. No one wants to sacrifice – and so many want too much without paying for it. This cannot last much longer – a couple of decades at best. America simply cannot maintain a global empire and prosperity at home. The only card up America’s sleeve is the dollar at the moment, but there is every indication that it will be replaced by a basket of currencies by mid-century.

Who will lead in the wake of America’s inevitable retreat? Hopefully the world will truly become multi-polar. Such a world is better for all of humanity. Multipolarity is better suited to dealing with issues such as climate change, food and energy security, non-proliferation, dealing with HIV/AIDs, etc. Today the world has to wait on all these issues because the US is very often the greatest barrier to positive change in world.

ANATOLY KARLIN: You say that you’re not a paid shill because you are quite sincere in your beliefs: you’re not “the man who $old his homeland”, as alleged by Russia Today’s (RT) former Tbilisi correspondant William Dunbar**. That may be so.

Nonetheless, many observers believe you and RT are hardly free of the same biases that you claim pervade the Western MSM. Though accusing you of being a “latter-day Lord Haw Haw” is surely extreme (as well as a reductio ad hitlerum), the perception definitely exists that what you call “challenging the Western media hegemony” is really just a euphemism for pushing Kremlin spin on unwitting Westerners.

First, do you think this is a valid argument? (If you use the “whataboutism” response, e.g. but the Western media is controlled too!, explain why you think that justifies Russia doing the same.) Second, if you still insist that you’re not beholden to the Kremlin, could you make three criticisms of the Medvedev-Putin tandem?

PETER LAVELLE: I knew William Dunbar and know a few of the details connected to his departure from RT. He is entitled to his opinion, though they are not opinions I agree with. Indeed, he does claim I am “the man who $old his homeland.” This only informs me that he knows little about me and my opinions.

So I will answer my critics on the compensation issue. Yes, I live a comfortable life in Moscow as far as a journalist is concerned, but that is not saying much these days! I am compensated because my work is hard, presenting truly alternative viewpoints, and promoting the station – no different from other television professionals around the world.

What does it mean to sell out one’s homeland? I am American and proud of it. Being American allows me to dissent – and I dissent all the time! RT allows me to do this when most western media outlets could never dream of giving a journalist so much free space. My program CrossTalk is my creation and I am very thankful RT management supports me. I decide the program’s topics and approve guests. I inform my boss what I am doing; I don’t ask for permission.

I don’t care what some disgruntled RT employee has to say about me. The same applies to others in the commentariat because their lack of talent or success. How often these days do I openly attack my critics? The answer is that I don’t. I am attacked and vilified because of my employer, but not my message. That is cheap.

I do not speak for RT – I can only speak for myself and my work at the television station. And let me make it clear – I don’t alway like every story RT broadcasts. At the same time I will defend the station’s commitment to being different. Again being honest – some RT reports are a bit over the top. But this is a good thing in the end – we ask our audience one basic thing: Question More. We may not always get it right, but our intention is spot on.

As far as Kremlin spin-doctoring is concerned, all I can say that this assumption is laughable. I come across this accusation all the time, but after working at RT for almost 5 years I still don’t see the evidence. Does RT present the government’s point of view? Yes, of course it does (and many other viewpoints as well). But is this “Kremlin spin-doctoring”? Obviously Russia’s political elite views the world differently from let’s say the US. Why should anyone be surprised by this? Also, anyone who has watched RT will tell you that the station is not only about politics. How can non-political stories be “Kremlin spin-doctoring”? RT wants to be and is competitive. This is because it is consciously different from its competitors.

RT doesn’t do the same. It is part of my job to watch the competition. I watch CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera. CNN and BBC are wildly one-sided on most global issues compared to RT. Where I work you can come across opinions never heard by RT’s competitors. I give Al Jazeera very high points for its coverage of the Greater Middle East (though not its Russia coverage). Thus, I have no need to use the “whataboutism” argument.

You want me to prove that I am not the Kremlin’s slave and live to talk about it! I welcome this opportunity. You asked for 3 examples, well I will give you 10. Over the past 10 years Russia’s leading politicians haven’t done enough regarding:

1. Corruption at all levels.
2. Support of the older generation (pensions).
3. Repair of and construction of new infrastructure.
4. Support of small and medium size businesses.
5. Development of political parties.
6. Promotion of civil society’s role in solving social problems.
7. Over reliance on the oil and natural gas sectors.
8. Introduction of a volunteer-only military and military reform in general.
9. Finding justice in so-called high-profile murders.
10. The lack of competition in the marketplace.

I could easily go on. Russia has a lot of problems, no different from ALL OTHER countries in the world.

ANATOLY KARLIN: Global warming [deniers / skeptics] (delete as needed) like Alex Jones, Piers Corbyn and Chris Monckton – all with fairly minimal scientific credentials – get prominent coverage at RT. The entire topic of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is treated as a debate in which either side has yet to prove its case.

However, in the real world, there is a consensus: in a 2004 study, Naomi Oreskes concluded that 75% of papers backed the AGW view, while none directly dissented from it. (And the latest studies are almost always more pessimistic about the magnitude of future warming than “previously expected”.) Given the sheer amount of evidence in favor of AGW, it seems strange to put a hereditary aristocrat who calls his opponents “Hitler Youth” and organizes witch hunts on the same pedestal as climate scientists. Even though more Americans believe in creationism than in evolution, news channels don’t normally give equal weight to both sides in that “debate”, do they?

So I’m at a loss how to explain this. Does RT want to get the scoop on the Western media, even at the cost of its own credibility? Or were you guys told to spin up Climategate because global warming is expected to benefit Russia? Or do you really believe that the AGW “debate” is still far from “settled”?

PETER LAVELLE: Again you are asking me to speak for RT – I am not RT’s spokesperson. And to be frank, I find your “Or were you guys told to spin up Climategate…” insulting. The fact is many of our viewers are interested in climate change. RT follows its viewers.

Nonetheless, I am glad you ask about AGW. I have done two programs on the subject – a topic I want to learn more about. I have no problem having Piers Corbryn and Chris Monckton on my program. Could you debate them? My other guests were actually quite keen to debate them. Let me be clear about something: RT gets credibility because it gives air time to different voices. And you are right, there really is no debate on American television. That can’t be said about my CrossTalk program and RT. Speaking about different voices: I may be one of the most prominent backers of dissent in the world of television today! I am proud of that.

ANATOLY KARLIN: Thank you for answering four very HARD questions. I’ll go easy on the last one. As you told us earlier in the interview, you dreamed of having your own TV program from an early age. Your wish came true. There are many who share your dream. Some of them might even be reading this interview! What advice would you give them on becoming a made man or woman in journalism? (The mafia reference isn’t entirely whimsical: from a distance, the profession does appear distinctly cliquish.)

PETER LAVELLE: This is the hardest question of all. All I can say is if you really want to be a journalist (including a TV journalist) you have to make a huge commitment. The competition is enormous and at times talented. Be different because you really are – not because being different might sell. Start blogging and pitching your material. Be prepared for rejection – many times over before things start to happen. Stay away from attacking individuals – staying with your convictions will be enough. Don’t try to become famous, that will come with hard work and honest and fair beliefs. Be willing to learn from others. And lastly stay away from journalists – a caste of people who, for the most part, aren’t worth even having a cup of coffee with.

Back to the Future

Many Russia watchers don’t like to put their money where they mouth is. Though I’m sure you’re not the type, feel free to confirm it by making a few falsifiable predictions about Russia’s future. After a few years, we’ll see if you were worth listening to.

Ok, Peter Lavelle’s predictions:

• The current tandem will rule for the foreseable future – which is a good thing.
• The next election cycle will go smoothly – parliamentary and presidential. Fingers crossed Russia’s political parties will mature some.
• Russia will continue to recover and grow during the on-going global slump. If the US and Europe experience another turn-down, Russia will be spared.
• Over the next few years, Russia and its eastern European neighbors will continue a robust process of reconciliation.
• Russia will have to step in to play a greater role in the Greater Middle East as Washington is anything but a fair broker.
• Russia will not continue down the path of pressuring Iran regarding Tehran’s nuclear program – Russia-US relations again will be strained (though nothing like during the Bush years).
• Russia will continue to expand its influence in the Western Hemisphere, though not as a direct competitor to the US.
• NATO will start to seriously listen to Russia (as most European capitals will pretend they have never heard of Saak!).
• Mainstream western media will continue to get Russia wrong — that is an easy preduction!
• Eventually, Putin will be blamed for the oil spill in the Gulf and creating the HIV/AIDS virus.

Do you plan to revive your Untimely Thoughts blog? Could you throw us a bone about any other projects you may have in the works?

What about the future? I am having a new website created to mirror my CrossTalk program. There, I intend to return to blogging in a big way in September.

Anatoly, thanks for the interview!

And thank you too, Peter, for a brilliant interview that gives fans and critics alike a lot to chew on!

If you wish me to interview you or another Russia watcher, feel free to contact me.

* A note on HARD Talk: My job as an interviewer is be a contrarian and even a “devil’s advocate” of sorts; to air common, common-sense or germane criticisms of the interviewee’s arguments and worldview, REGARDLESS of what my opinions might or might not be. (For instance, though I criticized Peter Lavelle’s views on the collapse of “Soviet Amerika”, I’ve made the same arguments on this very site: e.g. see here, here). I hope this clarifies things for the angry person who wrote me the email accusing me of Russophobia (LOL) in my HARD Talk with A Good Treaty.

** UPDATE August 14, 2010: William Dunbar has since deleted his only comment at that Facebook Group, which is reproduced below:

William Dunbar: hi, i just resigned from RT because i was being censored about georgia, i was the tbilisi correspondent. i have to say this is among the best groups i have ever seen on facebook. peter used to have a profile, i guess he left because it was another example of the double standards of the biased western media… or maybe putin prefers myspace

After I contacted him, Dunbar said that 1) he never alleged that Peter Lavelle is ““the man who $old his homeland” and that he left the Facebook group after reading this interview, 2) the last sentence is an inside joke between Dunbar and Lavelle that is “light hearted and not had absolutely nothing to do with how much Peter may or may not be paid”, and 3) he thinks that Peter Lavelle “is a true believer”, albeit his “commentary is objectionable, prejudiced and misleading.”

You say "fascist", as if it's a bad thing. But dude, people love fascists!

Depressingly fatalist, morbidly truthful, irresistibly Nietzschean. That’s Howard Bloom’s “The Lucifer Principle” in a nutshell: a meandering trawl through disciplines such as genetics, psychology and culture that culminates in a theory of evil, purporting to explain its historical necessity, its creative potential and the possibility of it ever being vanquished. The odds do not appear to be good. For in the world painted by Bloom, peace is submission, social hierarchies are natural, ideas are polarizing, and liberal individualism is invidious to the collective “superorganism” that both oppresses, nourishes and saves us. Fascism really is the “natural state” in every sense of the term.

Bloom, Howard – The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (1995)
Category: human society, psychology, history; Rating: 5/5
Summary: Amazon reviews, James Schultz

More S/O material on related topics:

• Violence is Reality – the grisly reality of prehistoric war.
• If Malthus and Ibn Khaldun were to meet for coffee… – the overwhelming importance of social cohesion, or Asabiyah, to national success.
• The Belief Matrix – my own ideas on the role of sobornost’.

Superorganism, or: The Whole is Greater than its Parts

Bloom starts off by providing reams of evidence on why it is completely logical for nature to be “red in tooth and claw”. Selfish genes need to replicate and it is no great loss if they doom billions of individuals to untimely deaths in the struggle for evolutionary survival. Hence, creatures battle for the “privilege of procreation”. High-ranking gorilla females kill their harem rivals’ offspring. Existence in primitive societies is so brutish and short that it is as if they were fighting World War Two every year and life eternal (the myth of the “noble savage” really is just that). The wellspring of Western civilization, the Romans, have the rape of the Sabines as one of their proudest foundational myths. In short, violence is reality.

[The Rape of the Sabine Women, Pietro da Cortona.]

One interesting theory he mentions is that of the triune brain, according to which the human mind is actually composed of three brains – the reptilian (stimuli, mating, territoriality), mammalian (loyalty to family and clan) and primate (reasoning faculty). The reptilian component makes creatures nasty and violent, while the mammalian reinforces the power of social groups. It is only the latter that allows man to dream about peace, even as they hack each other to pieces in the waking world.

In the next section, Blooms asks why people commit suicide. He cites a lot of research showing that isolation is the ultimate poison – without social approval, people not only tend to become depressed, but their physiology goes on self-destruct mode, encouraging illnesses, insanity and suicidal tendencies. This is a negative feedback loop because once you are depressed, other people no longer want to be around you or make friends with it (but that, too, works in the interests of the group). He ties this in to the larger idea that just as cells, sponges and ants can only survive as constituent particularly of a greater whole or not at all, so humans are part of a greater “superorganism” that is society.

Paradoxically, the logic of “group selection” encourages loyalty to the superorganism that cares little if at all for the individuals that owe it their fealty. For instance, upon seeing a pride of lions beginning to stalk a herd of gazelles on the African savanna, the beasts that notice the predators begin prancing about in warning. This actually diminishes their individual chances of survival, since lions are likeliest to go for animals that are acting unlike the rest of the herd. The best outcome for the individual gazelle upon noticing the lions would be simply to retreat slowly to the safe center of the herd. However, over the evolutionary eons, groups with many individuals exhibiting these self-preserving tendencies presumably got weeded out, for self-interest is the bane of group interests. Hence in real life we do get a lot of genuinely altruistic loyalty to the group – amongst ants, gazelles, humans.

Humans who are no longer needed by the group really are no longer needed and might as well wane and die (“the Moor has done his duty, he can now go home”). Durkheim suggested suicide was essentially individuals altruistically relieving society of their own burden to it, and I would suggest that this is especially evident in societies like Japan without the traditional Western Christian guilt. I would also suggest that this is the reason why ostracism and exile were so much more fearful punishments in the pre-industrial world than they would seem in today’s global rootless cosmopolitanism. In an age when bonds were strong and essential, but geographically tied to small regions, being shorn of human contact would have been psychologically crippling.

All this of course has a more than passing resemblance to Turchin’s and Ibn Khaldun’s work on social cohesion and Asabiyah. There’s a reason why through the ages soldiers have willingly charged cold steel pikes and machine gun fire for the glory of their nation. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and far more important too – and the superorganism knows this.

[The Battle of Gettysburg. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!]

Though shalt not kill… but only as long as they’re members of your tribe. Otherwise it’s cool. Note that primitive societies believe “humans” to be only their own tribe or clan (in fact if you look at the etymology, many ethnicities call themselves “the people” in their own tongues). Civilization has expanded the definition of those considered to be human to their own nations: in the case of the Jews, to the Israelites; in the case of later “universal” religions, potentially to all humanity (except inveterate heathen, of course). Even many modern liberals are intolerant of those who don’t share their liberal ideals. Why these divisions? Having enemies is really good for social consolidation (see “castle identity”, “residential fortress”, “siege mentality”); human societies are defined not by what they are, but by what they oppose and hate. Or as Orwell would say, war is peace.

There is always a deep wellspring of frustration in any society. Bloom quotes interesting research showing that fro cells to ants to humans, each unit performs a preordained role. In any ant colony, there are industrious workers and lazy workers, soldiers and queens. Separate the industrious and lazy workers into separate group and new social roles are created as some former busybodies become idlers and former idlers become industrious. In observations of summer campers, it was noted that after a few hours, bunk-mates assumed four specific social roles: dominant “alpha male”, unpopular “bully”, “joker” sidekick and the over-eager “nerd” who is kicked around by everyone.

All human minds possess thousands of unrealized personalities which could have been but aren’t. This results in an undercurrent of frustration, which can be channeled into the hatred of the interloper that binds it together. Early cellular lifeforms discovered that they could dispose of calcium, poisonous in high quantities, by using it to build shells. In similar fashion, common hatreds glue societies together, such “that every tribe regards outsiders as fair game; that every society gives permission to hate; that each culture addresses the demon of its hatred in the garb of righteousness; and that the man who channels this hatred can rouse the superorganism and lead it around by the nose”.

From Genes to Memes, Yet Us vs. Them Always

In another chapter full of worthy insights, Bloom notes that the main vector of evolution shifted from genes swimming through “the protoplasmic soup of the early earth” to memes floating through a “sea of human brains”. Both genes and memes mercilessly exploit their hosts in their struggle for survival and bid to overspread the earth. Though rat broods are normally loving to each other, insert a rodent from a different clan that smells different, and they tear the unfortunate apart – even if he carries their genetic stock (rats tell who is who by smell). Humans are more advanced: they have language, culture and religions that bind closer than any uniform. The Hebrew genocide of the Canaanites was just and splendid, for their ethno-genetic stock was chosen by the LORD God.

Over the millennia of ancient history, memes gradually divorced themselves from the genetic level altogether, appearing in “universal” religions like Zoroastrianism and Christianity after St. Paul. Competing universal religions and ideologies now encompass nearly the whole world. The confer several advantages. First, the effective illusion of control, which is good guarantor of health and mental agility (note that most medical procedures even today are based on getting the patient to believe she will recover and hence doing so). Second, memes help consolidate huge communities, and hence ensure their own long-term survival.

A society is, in effect, a vast, problem-solving neural net – humans are to it like brain cells are to a mind. As a swarm of individuals interact in limited and simply ways (bees, humans), an extraordinarily complex structure emerges (a beehive, the modern economy). One feature of human society is male expendability – from cradle to old age, men have weaker immune systems, are more accident-prone and die quicker. This is especially marked in primitive societies where warfare is brutal and incessant.

The reasons are biologically obvious: whereas one man can inseminate dozens of women, one woman can only reproduce about once a year at most. So Mother Nature can afford to play with men as dice, ensuring that only the fittest survive. Interestingly, life is most brutal and profligate in the south, where resources are plentiful. In the tropics, male birds tend to have bright plumes to attract female attention (which also makes them highly visible to predators); but in the north, birds have grayer colors designed to blend into the surroundings, and their sex tends to be indistinguishable to the human eye. That is because the female needs male help to rear her chicks through the hard winter months of dearth. Likewise with humans, polygamy has been most prevalent in southern cultures – even if many guys die in battles for prestige, territory and slaves, the women can continue the race without most of them.

Most men failed, and died early or had little reproductive success (in primitive societies only 50% of men end up having offspring, compared to 80% of women). But those who made it, like Chinggis Khan, became the biological fathers of millions (King Saud was probably the last such very influential warlord). But as history progressed, memes steadily took center place. The generators of successful memes, like St. Paul, Marx or Sayyid Qutb, took the center place in the lives of millions and billions!

The Pecking Order: Hierarchy is Good

Stalin was right: the weak get beaten. That’s what happens to those at the bottom of the pecking order, the phenomenon observed in the 1920′s where chickens formed a fixed hierarchy that determined priority access to food and shelter. While the top hen was well fed, warm and respected, the one at the bottom was ostracized and pecked by everyone else. Likewise, those at the top are most sexually successful in primitive societies. In a series of experiments in which three male rats and three female rats were brought together in a cage, some 92% of offspring accrued to the dominant male!

Success breeds success, failure breeds failure. Low ranking baboons suffer increased levels of glucocorticoids, a stress hormone that acts as a slow poison, and walk around slouched and defeated. The same thing operates in human societies – being at the bottom of the pecking order is bad for you, as you suffer from increased rates of depression, blood pressure, heart attacks, etc – obviously this also makes you unattractive and entrenches your gutter status. In contrast, higher ranking monkeys people walk upright and their testicles hang down further. (So consequently no wonder that that is the reason why men are recommended Alexander posture and walking with one’s legs wide apart… it is to project the image of the physical aspects of the alpha male; on third thought that would explain society’s dislike for the “pick-up artist”, since their craft essentially cheats the naturally emergent hierarchy by getting men to mimic alpha traits instead of actually being one).

There’s a very good reason for the existence of these feedback loops that reinforce social hierarchy – the alternative to hierarchy, with its inherent, diffuse coercion, is anarchy. This entails a state of constant expenditure of previous, limited energy on banditry and defense. In this situation, the weak and friendless get trampled down even more quickly and ruthlessly than if they were (merely) oppressed within a hierarchic system. So it is actually in the interests of everyone, including even its lowliest members. (The exceptions are, of course, those who believe that their position in the hierarchy is unjustified on the basis of their abilities or beliefs, e.g. the Bolshevik insurrectionist, the Islamist cell member, etc, who would like to level the current hierarchic system in a cleansing purge before rebuilding it in their own image). Bloom notes that “superior chickens make friends”, not only within societies, but within the community of tribes and nations. Just as powerful Yanamamo tribes attracted allies and clobbered the weak and friendless tribes, and Rome maintained coalitions awed by its political and military prowess, so the modern US draws on the loyalty of many of its allies in the West and elsewhere through the visibility of its hegemonic power. (It even gets financial credit at low prices due to an effect called American alpha!)

In the last few chapters, Bloom ingeniously – or in an act of unintentional hypocrisy, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt – shows “us vs them”, memes and hierarchy at work in his own book! He states America’s refusal to support France and Britain in their neo-colonial 1956 endevour to seize back the Suez Canal was morally wrong, proclaims the superiority of the West over the cultures of the Third World and labels Islam a “killer culture” harboring the next barbarians. (Of course, the Islamist crazies promptly did their best to prove him right). No, you don’t need to be a PC-head to realize that in the last hundred pages Bloom strays from his fascinating insights into a morass of opinion(ated) projections of his social theories onto modern geopolitics and the “clash of civilizations”. They can be skipped. The only more or less useful additional point he makes is that giving gifts is insulting, like the World Bank does with Africa, because it created humiliating cultural dependency relationships (e.g. demands to Africans to do things the way armchair economists with no practical experience there want them to). China’s straightforward infrastructure or cash for resources approach is better for Africans, both spiritually and probably even economically.

The Lucifer Principle: Superorganism, Memes & Hierarchy

These elements combined form the Lucifer Principle. The superorganism – be it body, village, nation (“imagined community”) or civilization – curtails your individuality, and has no qualms about throwing your life and health away if doing so would serve the greater good. It can throw you against another superorganism so as to weed out the weak, identify the strong, and consolidate itself internally and ideologically (war is peace). It can – and does – trample your mental and physical health under the social stratification it requires to maintain its own complexity (peace is submission). But it also nurtures and protects you with a love harsh but true… for while you can surmount the burdens and realize yourself (slavery is freedom), without society, that would be impossible… survival itself is impossible (freedom is death). I would say that the essence of the Lucifer Principle is that fascism is the natural state.

[The essence of the book in one comic. Translation: "What's the matter, you fat monkey?" "Fuck off, fucking fascist!" "You say 'fascist', as if it's a bad thing. But dude, people love fascists. Have you ever met a woman who fantasizes about being tied up and raped by a *liberal*?"]

Though Rome “had been an oppressor, it was also “the source of nourishment and peace”. It’s end brought not freedom, but death, says Bloom, as roving bandits moved in to pick its carcass. (Though I would make the caveat that by its end the Western Empire armies were themselves no better than bandits). In conclusions: “Superorganism, ideas, and the pecking order – these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle”.

There were several problems with the book. It was tied in loosely with the book and while chock full of fascinating details, many of them did little or nothing to advance or support the argument. The poor organization made writing this review rather tedious. The two chapters at the end, in which Bloom tried to apply disjointed elements of the Lucifer Principle onto modern politics and geopolitics, were largely irrelevant and should have been split off into a separate volume.

1. The Third World is experiencing a fertility-driven population explosion. Whereas this was true a generation ago, today most countries outside sub-Saharan Africa are in the later throes of demographic transition (the term “Third World” itself is no longer a very useful moniker). Not only is practically all of the industrialized world – Europe, the Anglo-Saxon world, Eurasia – at or below replacement level fertility rates (TFR), but countries like China, Turkey, Iran, Algeria and Brazil have joined them. Population growth in these countries is now driven primarily by the (artificially) low death rates and high birth rates typical of young populations.

As the map of world fertility rates below shows, there are now practically no regions outside Africa where women are expected to bear three or more children, even in traditional societies like the Middle East.

There are few exceptions. These include particularly poor countries like Pakistan (4.0), oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia (3.1) where resource wealth has charged ahead of socio-economic development, and countries like Israel (3.0) that are afflicted by conflict demography.

Beware of the Eternal Mohammedan!

2. Fast-breeding Muslims will soon take over Europe and create a “Eurabia” Caliphate. This theory that fecund Muslims will stage a demographic takeover of Europe because of their innate hatred of Western civilization only really enjoys support from assorted yahoos like radical Islamists, European fascists and American neocons like Mark Steyn in his book America Alone (which I reviewed here). More serious demographers tend to dismiss these scenarios because they rely on many questionable assumptions such as the following:

• There are already hordes of uncounted Muslims in the EU. At least on paper, that is not the case – most estimates give Muslims around 15m-20mn of the EU’s 450mn+ population; only in France do they approach 10% of the population. Though it is possible some are uncounted, there is no convincing evidence for this.
• Muslims form a monolithic, illiberal entity resistant to secularization. While there are such pockets in Europe’s inner cities, Islam in Europe is so differentiated by ethnicity and levels of religiosity that it makes little sense to speak of a united Islamist front. The future of religious fervor is nigh impossible to predict, but the current pro-Islamist trend may – or may not – last as long as the post-colonial nationalist one from 1945 to the 1970′s.
• Muslim fertility rates are much higher than native Europeans’ and will not converge to their level. As a rule, Muslim fertility in the EU tends to be around one child higher than amongst the indigenous population, though there are plenty of variations by region and Muslim ethnicity. Furthermore, these is a general trend towards convergence of Muslim fertility towards European averages. Though Muslims can be expected to keep expanding their share of the population due to their younger age profiles (lower death rates, higher birth rates) and immigration, at current trends they will not become majorities any time soon.
• Europeans will take in ever bigger numbers of Muslim immigrants to support their failing welfare states. But most Muslim countries are already far advanced in their demographic transitions. Traditional people exporters like Turkey or the Maghreb are hardly bursting at the seams nowadays, and economic growth is bringing opportunities to their youth. Why would they want to migrate to sclerotic Europe that is, furthermore, becoming increasingly right-wing on immigration?
• More Europeans will “revert” to Islam, while ever more Christians leave emerging Eurabia for America Alone. While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for both trends, they do not seem to have any significant impact in absolute numbers.

In conclusion, all or most of these assumptions will have to be fulfilled for Europe as a continent to become endangered by the specter of “Eurabia” within the next decades. As it stands, however, the 1) retention of post-religiosity, 2) intensified clash of civilizations, or 3) return to fascism, must all figure as more likely scenarios for Europe’s future than the Crescent*.

3. Europe is a demographic abyss whose welfare states are doomed to collapse under their aging and shrinking populations. This is a favorite of American neocons and European right-wingers. Though this is a serious threat to some European states (particularly Club Med), the picture across Europe is far more varied and complex. In terms of their demographic health, there are three main groupings.

[The TFR's of the five biggest European countries 1960-2008.  Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators - Last updated June 15, 2010.]

First, the Scandinavian states, France, and the UK have total fertility rates (TFR’s) of 1.7-2.1 children per woman, which corresponds to long-term demographic stability. Barring severe fiscal mismanagement or vulnerability to energy cutoffs (both most visible in Britain) their current welfare states are probably sustainable.

Second, the East-Central European nations have an uncertain future. Although their fertility rates plummeted during the early 1990′s, they may yet recover in the years ahead – though it is important that they do so before the big 1980′s cohort passes its child-bearing years. This is more likely in pro-natality and energy-rich Russia, less likely in indebted Hungary or crippled Latvia. Poland lies in the middle.

Third, the countries in the worst positions are in the Teutonic and Mediterranean regions. The German fertility rate fell well below the replacement level rate of 2.1 children per woman back in the early 1970′s and has since hovered below 1.5. They have not been replacing themselves for a full generation now – and with desired TFR’s at 1.8, the lowest in Europe, they are not going to start doing so any time soon. Their fall into a “death spiral” is now near inevitable, albeit its consequences will be mitigated by Germany’s enduring fiscal and industrial strength.

Though the TFR of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece fell below 1.5 children per woman about ten to fifteen years after the Teutons, their futures may be even bleaker because they have unsustainable debt loads and few competitive export industries. Their coming economic collapse will pull them further into the demographic abyss.

4. People in developing nations are dying like flies. Much like the myth of their high fertility rates, this is no longer true in most cases. Most countries in Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia, and even South Asia have life expectancies above or approaching 70 years. This is not much different from the typical life expectancy in an advanced industrialized nation which is typically at 75-83 years. This is not surprising. Once a country acquires basic sanitation, obstetrics, vaccination and antibiotics services, life expectancy usually rises to around 70-75 years. Advanced – and very expensive – healthcare adds on the additional decade seen in the most developed nations.

[Beyond a certain minimal level of income, life expectancy approaches the boundaries of its theoretical maximum. Source.]

Today, the only world region that has not acquired the rudiments of basic healthcare is sub-Saharan Africa. Places where life expectancy is somewhat lower than expected relative to their income are 1) nations like South Africa or Botswana afflicted with uncontrolled AIDS epidemics and 2) post-socialist nations like Russia or Ukraine which drink far too much**. Likewise, even relatively poor or middle-rank countries like Cuba or Costa Rica can achieve developed nation life expectancies though good policies and health environments.

5. Demographic projections, such as those of the UN, are reliable for both individual countries and the world. In reality, they become largely useless after about a single generation.

First, fertility trends are extremely difficult to predict. Back in the 1920′s, one statistician’s “low scenario” indicated that France’s population would fall to around 29 million by 1980 based on a linear projection of current trends; in reality, it rose to 54 millions. Predictions of an Iranian population spiraling into the hundreds of millions in the 1980′s have been invalidated by the unprecedentedly rapid fertility decline in the Islamic Republic. Much the same criticism can be made of the apocalyptic visions generated by linear extrapolations showing Russia’s population falling to 100 million or less by 2050.

Second, these global forecasts all tend to ignore the intimate relation demographic trends have with the economy, politics, and the environment. According to the findings of the Club of Rome, the world’s population has already overshot its limits and cannot be sustained in the long term without major transformations. If their darker forecasts materialize, the world’s future demography could be determined by the geography of economic collapse, Malthusian crisis and climate refugees by as early as 2030.

[The alternate future of the Limits to Growth "standard run". Source.]

* I’ll be doing a more detailed post on the assumptions behind the Eurabia debate in the future.

** However, the alcohol epidemic mostly afflicts middle-aged men in Eurasia. It has little to no discernible impact on the mortality of women before or during their child-bearing years and as such does not much affect those countries’ long-term demographic prospects. Ironically, it actually strengthens their fiscal position, because many men die before reaching their retirement age.

The most fundamental point is that the current situation suits everyone just fine. The Arab regimes (and the Palestinians themselves) are weak and disunited and no longer represent the strategic threat to Israel that they did during the Cold War. Israel’s actions give them a chance to vent their fury to satiate the “Arab street”, but it is not in their interests to push the envelope any further. In turn, Israel is big enough to accept the verbal lashing in return for keeping its enforcement of the Gaza blockade credible. However, this Flotilla Affair may also presage much more significant long-term developments.

Last week’s events off the coast of Israel continue to resonate. Turkish-Israeli relations have not quite collapsed since then but are at their lowest level since Israel’s founding. U.S.-Israeli tensions have emerged, and European hostility toward Israel continues to intensify. The question has now become whether substantial consequences will follow from the incident. …

The most significant threat to Israel would, of course, be military. International criticism is not without significance, but nations do not change direction absent direct threats to their interests. But powers outside the region are unlikely to exert military power against Israel, and even significant economic or political sanctions are unlikely to happen. Apart from the desire of outside powers to limit their involvement, this is rooted in the fact that significant actions are unlikely from inside the region either.

The first generations of Israelis lived under the threat of conventional military defeat by neighboring countries. More recent generations still faced threats, but not this one. Israel is operating in an advantageous strategic context save for the arena of public opinion and diplomatic relations and the question of Iranian nuclear weapons. All of these issues are significant, but none is as immediate a threat as the specter of a defeat in conventional warfare had been. Israel’s regional enemies are so profoundly divided among themselves and have such divergent relations with Israel that an effective coalition against Israel does not exist — and is unlikely to arise in the near future.

Given this, the probability of an effective, as opposed to rhetorical, shift in the behavior of powers outside the region is unlikely. At every level, Israel’s Arab neighbors are incapable of forming even a partial coalition against Israel. Israel is not forced to calibrate its actions with an eye toward regional consequences, explaining Israel’s willingness to accept broad international condemnation.

Now for more detail on the internal Palestinian divisions between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

To begin to understand how deeply the Arabs are split, simply consider the split among the Palestinians themselves. They are currently divided between two very different and hostile factions. On one side is Fatah, which dominates the West Bank. On the other side is Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip. Aside from the geographic division of the Palestinian territories — which causes the Palestinians to behave almost as if they comprised two separate and hostile countries — the two groups have profoundly different ideologies.

Fatah arose from the secular, socialist, Arab-nationalist and militarist movement of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s. … Hamas arose from the Islamist movement. It was driven by religious motivations quite alien from Fatah and hostile to it.

Hamas and Fatah are playing a zero-sum game. Given their inability to form a coalition and their mutual desire for the other to fail, a victory for one is a defeat for the other. … Though revolutionary movements frequently are torn by sectarianism, these divisions are so deep that even without Israeli manipulation, the threat the Palestinians pose to the Israelis is diminished. With manipulation, the Israelis can pit Fatah against Hamas.

And on why the Arab elites don’t really care that much for Palestinians, despite their rhetoric.

The split within the Palestinians is also reflected in divergent opinions among what used to be called the confrontation states surrounding Israel — Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

Egypt, for example, is directly hostile to Hamas, a religious movement amid a sea of essentially secular Arab states. Hamas’ roots are in Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Egyptian state has historically considered its main domestic threat. … For this and other reasons, Egypt has maintained its own blockade of Gaza. Egypt is much closer to Fatah, whose ideology derives from Egyptian secularism, and for this reason, Hamas deeply distrusts Cairo.

Jordan views Fatah with deep distrust. In 1970, Fatah under Arafat tried to stage a revolution against the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. … The idea of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank unsettles the Hashemite regime, as Jordan’s population is mostly Palestinian. Meanwhile, Hamas with its Islamist ideology worries Jordan, which has had its own problems with the Muslim Brotherhood. …

Syria is far more interested in Lebanon than it is in the Palestinians. Its co-sponsorship (along with Iran) of Hezbollah has more to do with Syria’s desire to dominate Lebanon than it does with Hezbollah as an anti-Israeli force. Indeed, whenever fighting breaks out between Hezbollah and Israel, the Syrians get nervous and their tensions with Iran increase. And of course, while Hezbollah is anti-Israeli, it is not a Palestinian movement. It is a Lebanese Shiite movement. … So Syria is playing a side game with an anti-Israeli movement that isn’t Palestinian, while also maintaining relations with both factions of the Palestinian movement.

… the Saudis and other Arabian Peninsula regimes remember the threat that Nasser and the PLO posed to their regimes. … And while the Iranians would love to have influence over the Palestinians, Tehran is more than 1,000 miles away. … But Fatah doesn’t trust the Iranians, and Hamas, though a religious movement, is Sunni while Iran is Shiite. Hamas and the Iranians may cooperate on some tactical issues, but they do not share the same vision.

And now on why Israel feels it has a free hand in the short-term to carry out what it views as its optimal security policy.

Given this environment, it is extremely difficult to translate hostility to Israeli policies in Europe and other areas into meaningful levers against Israel. Under these circumstances, the Israelis see the consequences of actions that excite hostility toward Israel from the Arabs and the rest of the world as less dangerous than losing control of Gaza. The more independent Gaza becomes, the greater the threat it poses to Israel. The suppression of Gaza is much safer and is something Fatah ultimately supports, Egypt participates in, Jordan is relieved by and Syria is ultimately indifferent to.

Nations base their actions on risks and rewards. The configuration of the Palestinians and Arabs rewards Israeli assertiveness and provides few rewards for caution. The Israelis do not see global hostility toward Israel translating into a meaningful threat because the Arab reality cancels it out. Therefore, relieving pressure on Hamas makes no sense to the Israelis. Doing so would be as likely to alienate Fatah and Egypt as it would to satisfy the Swedes, for example. As Israel has less interest in the Swedes than in Egypt and Fatah, it proceeds as it has.

A single point sums up the story of Israel and the Gaza blockade-runners: Not one Egyptian aircraft threatened the Israeli naval vessels, nor did any Syrian warship approach the intercept point. The Israelis could be certain of complete command of the sea and air without challenge. And this underscores how the Arab countries no longer have a military force that can challenge the Israelis, nor the will nor interest to acquire one. Where Egyptian and Syrian forces posed a profound threat to Israeli forces in 1973, no such threat exists now. Israel has a completely free hand in the region militarily; it does not have to take into account military counteraction. The threat posed by intifada, suicide bombers, rockets from Lebanon and Gaza, and Hezbollah fighters is real, but it does not threaten the survival of Israel the way the threat from Egypt and Syria once did (and the Israelis see actions like the Gaza blockade as actually reducing the threat of intifada, suicide bombers and rockets). Non-state actors simply lack the force needed to reach this threshold. When we search for the reasons behind Israeli actions, it is this singular military fact that explains Israeli decision-making.

And while the break between Turkey and Israel is real, Turkey alone cannot bring significant pressure to bear on Israel beyond the sphere of public opinion and diplomacy because of the profound divisions in the region. Turkey has the option to reduce or end cooperation with Israel, but it does not have potential allies in the Arab world it would need against Israel. Israel therefore feels buffered against the Turkish reaction. Though its relationship with Turkey is significant to Israel, it is clearly not significant enough for Israel to give in on the blockade and accept the risks from Gaza.

At present, Israel takes the same view of the United States. While the United States became essential to Israeli security after 1967, Israel is far less dependent on the United States today. The quantity of aid the United States supplies Israel has shrunk in significance as the Israeli economy has grown. In the long run, a split with the United States would be significant, but interestingly, in the short run, the Israelis would be able to function quite effectively.

This is my major quibble with this article. I wouldn’t be so sanguine about the longer term consequences of this Israeli-Turkish spat. While Douglas Muir would interpret Erdogan’s grandiose theatrics as a function of internal Turkish politics, this does not mean it is not part of a larger “declaration of what Turkish identity has become”, as suggested by commentator Yigit Karabak. Mubarak might be risk-averse and friendly with Israel, but he is getting old and his successors will probably be more adventurous and in sync with Egyptian national sentiment (which is anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian).

In the meantime, the Turkish economy is growing, its military is rapidly modernizing and it is expanding its influence in the Near East. Turkey is now (arguably) already conventionally superior to Israel. It is also a de facto nuclear power. There are 90 US nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base, of which 40 are slated to pass unto Turkish control if it is ever attacked by non-NATO nukes. Though it is true that the US has recently began to make noises about withdrawing its nukes from Turkey and Europe, the Turks have also recently – and perhaps not entirely coincidentally – made deals with Russia about massively expanding its nuclear power capacity. Now I’m not saying that Turkey’s sole or even main goal here is to provide a justification for pursuit of nuclear weapons, as argued in The Real Israeli Raid Fallout: Turkey with a Bomb? by Thomas Barnett***. Nonetheless, in a region with a nuclearizing Iran and intense all-round rivalries, it is a possibility that should not be immediately dismissed.

What emerges is a disquieting prospect for Israeli strategists, one in which Turks throw them down the river in their quest for regional dominance while successfully staying the moral high ground and mobilizing the Arab states in their support.

Israel does, however, face this strategic problem: In the short run, it has freedom of action, but its actions could change the strategic framework in which it operates over the long run. The most significant threat to Israel is not world opinion; though not trivial, world opinion is not decisive. The threat to Israel is that its actions will generate forces in the Arab world that eventually change the balance of power. The politico-military consequences of public opinion is the key question, and it is in this context that Israel must evaluate its split with Turkey.

The most important change for Israel would not be unity among the Palestinians, but a shift in Egyptian policy back toward the position it held prior to Camp David. Egypt is the center of gravity of the Arab world, the largest country and formerly the driving force behind Arab unity. It was the power Israel feared above all others. But Egypt under Mubarak has shifted its stance versus the Palestinians, and far more important, allowed Egypt’s military capability to atrophy.

Should Mubarak’s successor choose to align with these forces and move to rebuild Egypt’s military capability, however, Israel would face a very different regional equation. A hostile Turkey aligned with Egypt could speed Egyptian military recovery and create a significant threat to Israel. Turkish sponsorship of Syrian military expansion would increase the pressure further. Imagine a world in which the Egyptians, Syrians and Turks formed a coalition that revived the Arab threat to Israel and the United States returned to its position of the 1950s when it did not materially support Israel, and it becomes clear that Turkey’s emerging power combined with a political shift in the Arab world could represent a profound danger to Israel.

… The Israelis can’t dismiss the threat that its actions could trigger political processes that cause these countries to revert to prior behavior. … It is remarkable how rapidly military capabilities can revive: Recall that the Egyptian army was shattered in 1967, but by 1973 was able to mount an offensive that frightened Israel quite a bit.

The Israelis have the upper hand in the short term. What they must calculate is whether they will retain the upper hand if they continue on their course. Division in the Arab world, including among the Palestinians, cannot disappear overnight, nor can it quickly generate a strategic military threat. But the current configuration of the Arab world is not fixed. Therefore, defusing the current crisis would seem to be a long-term strategic necessity for Israel. [AK: But defusing the crisis is not in the Turks' interests].

Israel’s actions have generated shifts in public opinion and diplomacy regionally and globally. The Israelis are calculating that these actions will not generate a long-term shift in the strategic posture of the Arab world. If they are wrong about this, recent actions will have been a significant strategic error. If they are right, then this is simply another passing incident. …

* I’ve also gotten some pretty hilarious email feedback about my post on The Geopolitics of Israel vs. Flotilla in which I got called both a “antisimite in objectivist [you mean objective?] apeasement cloth” [sic] and a Zionist extremist. I guess that’s what you get for stepping into this debate, it is every bit as binaried as the Russophile vs. Russophobe one and ten times as vitriolic.

** Yes, I know, Stratfor is a varied quality. Some of their analyses are downright loony, like the nonsense about Poland or Mexico becoming superpowers. But occasionally they are right on the ball (see 1, 2). This time it is one of those latter cases.

*** I would also note that in recent weeks Turkey, along with Brazil, announced a deal with Iran under which it would send some of its low-enriched uranium abroad and voted against the sanctions against Iran on offensive weaponry. In practice this amounts to tacit acceptance of Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons (since even if Iran sent some of its LEU abroad it still thought to have enough to build at least one nuclear weapon). Now Brazil is far away… but why on Earth would Turkey accept a nuclear Iran? (Haven’t the civilizations on the Anatolian and Persian plateaus been in almost permanent conflict with each other from ancient times through the struggles between the Ottomans and the Sassanids?)

Here is my wacky theory. Turkey believes that Israel will not accept a nuclear Iran. The Israelis have said as much. Eventually it could come to an Israeli or US-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear capabilities, followed by incredibly damaging fallout. The US and Israel will become completely delegitimized in the lands of Islam. The ground will be cleared for Turkey to fill in this space, the Arab rulers either following in its wake or being marginalized or overthrown. Three birds with one stone. Iran out as a regional power – its military will have been decimated should Israel and the US launch serious strikes against its nuclear capabilities and its regime internally discredited – bringing to the fore Azeri (Turkish) separatism. The US influence sidelined out of the region as the resulting oil shock ripples through its debt-loaded economy. Third, this shock and resulting siege mentality may finally spur on the Arabs to recover a united front towards Israel, at which point a Turkey (with latent nuclear capabilities) may offer Israel a deal in which it accepts becoming a client state in exchange for security guarantees.

(Of course, causal chains work in various ways. Fear of exactly this scenario may explain why Israel will not attack Iran after all; perhaps the Israelis consider it better to manage their way though a deteriorated balance of power in the Middle East rather than face the specter of a far superior hegemon in Turkey. And this also, in turn, may explain why the Iranians in turn can feel so confident in getting away with the provocations they do. And why the Americans may be, contrary to all conventional wisdom, secretly seeking some kind of grand bargain with Iran).

PS. This footnote is almost becoming a post in its own right. I’ll probably expand on it a later post.

The Israeli position on the Gaza blockade is understandable (which is not to say optimal). The Palestinians elected Hamas, a militant group to Israel that lobs rockets at them and talks of driving it into the sea – as well as being seen as a defender of and social services provider to the Palestinian people, which accounts for its domestic popularity. Israel is caught between a rock and a hard place. How to dislodge Hamas from power? And how to appease the settler and nationalist lobbies? And do it without attracting (too much) international opprobrium. Some kind of blockade begins to seem like an eminently reasonable idea.

Maintaining this blockade required that it be credibly enforced. By international conventions on the laws of the seas, Israel was well within her rights to conduct a stop and search on the flotilla prior to its embarkation to Gaza. But how stupid do you have to be to do this as an armed boarding in international waters? Now even lawyers can’t defend you, only ideologues are left.

Some of the peace activists and so forth on the ship were idealists, but a large number were clearly fanatics. Sorry, but if you bring knives and iron bars to a gunfight with IDF commandos, you richly deserve your Darwin’s Award. The reaction of the commandos was understandable – it was fire or be lynched. But the blowback, in this age of live Internet feeds and Facebook and Twitter, was both inevitable and inevitably against Israel’s interests. Europeans already hold negative opinions on Israel and need little cause to be reinforced in their views of its badness, and even sentiment in the US may shift towards a plague-on-both-your-houses position.

So Israel screwed up from the get go. Real story – bunch of angry young men attacked IDF soldiers who were reluctant to fire, but eventually had to in order to avoid getting killed. Media story – Israeli pirates assaulted and murdered 9 good-meaning civilians and confiscated their property. Mission accomplished for the anti-Israel propagandists. Total fail for the IDF.

True, they’re somewhat responsive – the IDF spokesperson is busy on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, disseminating material like this video. But even their efforts seem to be subpar, even ham-fisted. Said video purports to show “Weapons Found on the Flotilla Ship Mavi Marmara Used by Activists Against IDF Soldiers”. But if you have a look at it, the only weapons there seem appear to be things like hammers and knifes and machetes and the like – not exactly national security threats to Israel. I mean really, Israel, you’ve seized the boats. What’s so hard about simply “discovering” crates packed full of assault weapons and explosives on the ship? The “Freedom Flotilla” propagandists aren’t afraid to play dirty with information; why can’t you be at least equally ruthless about it?

The United States is stuck in a bind. Israel is a vital geopolitical ally, its bridgehead to the oil-rich Middle East. It can’t throw it down the river. But nor can it really defend it too vigorously, since other allies and semi-allies – the Europeans and Turks – have condemned the action. Hence Obama’s position of ambiguity on the issue is understandable, and the least politically damaging of all possible actions. (It also happens to be the most truthful position).

Finally, the one clear winner in this mess is Turkey. First, using the people on the flotilla as its pawns, Turkey massively raised its prestige in the Muslim world by portraying itself as a defender of the Palestinians (and taking this mantle from regional competitor Iran). Of course, the Turkish state couldn’t care less for the Palestinians or human rights – as is true of every single other Middle East state – but it does care for its image amongst the Arabs, especially given that European rejection and Russian reassertion in the Caucasus has left the Fertile Crescent as its only remaining path for expansion in the near future.

Second, this has given Turkey a convenient excuse to freeze relations with Israel, with loud proclamations about Israeli barbarism, the ordering of Israelis out of Turkey, the cancelling of joint military exercises, and talk of providing the next aid with a military escort. But beneath the surface, things remain more placid – for instance, Turkey still expects Israel to deliver drones. And this attitude is not surprising, since the balance of power between Turkey and Israel has shifted to the former since the end of the Cold War.

During the 1960′s-70′s, Turkey had to contend with a powerful Soviet Union and its high armed client regimes in Syria and Iraq; a close relationship with Israel made manifest sense for both. But the Syrian military is now a shadow of its former self; Iraq is a non-player; and Turkey has reached a temporary accommodation with Russia, freeing itself to pursue its interests in a neo-Ottoman direction. Hence, unshackling itself from being associated to the West or to Israel is important to the success of Turkey’s larger geopolitical ambitions to becoming a hegemon in the Near East (a trend which must bring some disquiet to Israeli strategists).

2. Putin made a conciliatory speech on the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, much more so than the one a year ago. It was balanced and considered, condemning the crimes of totalitarianism, while avoiding any acknowledgement of modern Russia’s responsibility.

In a bitter irony for the Poles, three days later the firebrand Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tumbled out of the sky while flying (uninvited) to attend a separate commemoration. Among the dead were assorted members of the Polish military, clergy, politicians, and Katyn victims’ families (see list).

First, putting all your eggs in one basket is pretty stupid. High-ranking politicians and generals are important national assets. They shouldn’t all be packed into one plane just to save a little money. In banana republics – which fortunately for Poland it is not – such accidents can cause state breakdown and revolution.

Second, the insistence on continuing to land in Smolensk against the advice of ground control is key to understanding the tragedy. Lech Kaczynski has a history of interference with pilots’ decisions. During the South Ossetian War, he threatened to fire the pilot for countermanding his orders to land in a war zone and instead continuing on to Azerbaijan. Though the threat wasn’t carried out, the pilot is known to have suffered from depression afterwards. The same pilot was flying the aircraft in this case. It will not be surprising if some similar, irresponsible stubbornness typical of Kaczynski was at play here. Or perhaps the pilot just really, really didn’t want to “fail” Kaczynski again.

Few people explicitly blamed Putin, the FSB, or even NKVD trees planters from the 1940′s for the crash. The exceptions were ultra-nationalist Artur Gorski (he who also tried to make Jesus Christ proclaimed King of Poland) and the ever reliable Russian liberast Novodvorskaya. There is absolutely nothing indicating a conspiracy, which in any case is highly unlikely given that this would have produced great risks for very limited payoffs.

Russia has been using the crash as an opportunity to mount a charm offensive towards Poland: Putin hugging Polish PM Donald Tusk; shows of solidarity towards Poland from Russia’s leaders and citizens; the prime-time airing of the Polish movie “Katyn”. I am almost certain that most of it is simulated, at least amongst the Russian leadership. Would America’s elites shed any real tears if Chavez, or Putin for that matter, fell out of the sky while flying to the United States? No, I don’t think so. But it seems to be working.

The fortuitous (for Russia) death of Kaczynski kills two birds with one stones. One of the most prominent and respected Polish proponents of the anti-Russian agenda is elimated, while relations with Poland can be improved so as to ease its concerns over Russia’s westwards-creeping sphere of influence.

3. In recent months, there has been talk of Poland’s reserves of shale gas, which – or so some commentators have suggested – will wean off east-central Europe from its dependency on Russian gas. US giants announced exploratory drilling will begin in Poland within the next few weeks. One oil and gas research group estimates there could be as much as 1.4tn cubic meters of unconventional gas in tight rock formations across northern and central Poland, which have recently become accessible thanks to American developments in hydraulic fracturing technology. These reserves would boost the EU proven reserves of natural gas, now at 2.8tn cubic meters, by 50%. Furthermore, Poland itself – whose own gas consumption is pretty low at 14bn cubic meters of gas (72% imported) – will become self-sufficient for decades. Poland is clearly very enthused about this, offering foreign companies excellent tax incentives for developing the shale gas.

Will this actually produce the desired results? First, the high costs mean that only 28% of gas-producing wells have generated decent profits, making investment risky. Second, they have amazingly huge decline rates – e.g., around 60% per year for the Barnett shale fields in Texas (and up to 80-90% in the Haynesville wells). This makes ramping up production quickly difficult since you have to run so hard just to keep still. Third, the projections indicate European gas production (now c. 200bn cubic meters) will decline while demand (now c. 520bn cubic meters) will increase. Poland’s 1.4tn cubic meters of shale gas reserves are insignificant relative to Russia’s 43tn cubic meters of conventional gas reserves, for which the infrastructure is already built. Finally, it is not even at all clear that Poland switching from coal to shale gas will even be that environmentally-friendly.

Now if there is the political will in Poland, it will probably be able to build up a shale gas infrastructure and ensure itself – and even its Visegrad and Baltic neighbors – energy independence for a few decades, starting from around 2020. (That period may also coincide with Nabucco coming onstream by 2015, if it gets the go ahead this year). The geopolitical configuration of Europe will change. Poland will become a far more significant pole in the European power balance than it is today, while Germany – and Britain further downstream – will become even more dependent on Russian gas, delivered by the Nord Stream pipeline bypassing Poland and the Baltics.

4. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupts, covering northern Europe with a haze of ash and disrupting transatlantic flights.

There are three things to be said about this. First, people in Britain have been reporting that the sky was unusually clear, with nary a cloud in sight, and that there was a spike in temperatures, with people even sunbathing. This was to be expected following the grounding of air fleets in the affected regions, since aircraft contrails, or vapor trails, are a major source of global dimming. This effect limits the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface of the Earth, and has caused the real extent of global warming to have been underestimated. (Or put another way, if all the world’s air fleets were to vanish today, temperatures would immediately spike by about 1C).

Second, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano could trigger off the much bigger Katla volcano. Katla has seen a significantly increased incidence of tremors in the past day. In the worst scenario, albeit a pretty unlikely one, the skies over Europe could remain ashen for up to two or three years – wrecking havoc on transatlantic transport and nudging already-strained airlines into bankruptcy. However, there shouldn’t be any major cooling effect, since even the larger Katla eruptions have historically been an order of magnitude less intense than that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. (Unless the really big one blows off, that is Laki, whose eruption in 1783 caused dearth throughout Europe). That said, the global warming-induced melting of the Icelandic glaciers could make its volcano eruptions both bigger and more frequent in the decades to come.

Finally, see this Oil Drum post about The Possible Impact of the Icelandic Volcanoes on Energy Production. In short, major Icelandic eruptions could cause energy problems due to 1) a decrease in biofuel crop yields and 2) wind turbines having to be shut down so that their turbines don’t get damaged by air particles from the eruption.

5. With the British elections on May 6th 2010 fast approaching, the key debates center around the economy. During the recession, Britain experienced a peak-to-trough fall in GDP of 6.2% and its budget deficit this year will account for 12-13% of GDP. Foreigners are beginning to look at Britain as the new “sick man of Europe”. Below are three articles which, roughly speaking, offer an “optimistic”, a “realistic”, and a “pessimistic”, respectively, view on the British economy.

A) The pain to come: A terrible recession will be followed by a lacklustre recovery, but Britain is no basket-case (Economist). ”The economy may have been lopsided before the recession, but on nothing like the scale of southern Europe. In 2007 Spain’s current-account deficit ran at 10% of GDP; Greece ran one of 14.4%. By comparison, Britain’s 2.7% was a mere bagatelle. The fall in the pound has allowed the economy to regain competitiveness in a way not open to the weaker members of the euro area. As for the resemblances with the 1970s, history is not repeating itself. Inflation has recently flared up, but at 3% in February it is tame; the post-war high, reached in 1975, was 27%… But [Britain's debt figure] is inflated by London’s role as a global financial hub where foreign banks cluster to do international business. Adjusting for this, McKinsey reckoned that debt amounted to 380% of GDP in 2008. Although this was the second-highest after Japan (459%), four other countries – Spain, South Korea, Switzerland and France – had debt above 300%… Britain’s economy was overhyped before the recession, but the gloom has been overdone since the great fall.”

B) A Prayer from the Death Bed: Great Britain Stars in Its Own Greek Tragedy (Spiegel). “The country that was once referred to as “Cool Britannia” is in a serious crisis, with a hole in its budget even bigger than Greece’s budget deficit, now at 12.2 percent. And nobody knows how to fix the problem. Indeed, the problem has become so worrisome, that the European Commission told London on Wednesday to do more to tighten its budget, … “The fiscal strategy outlined in the United Kingdom’s convergence program does not foresee the correction of the excessive deficit by the fiscal year 2014/2015, as recommended by the Council,” the European Commission said in a statement… The accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers have calculated that starting next year, Britain would have to make across-the-board budget cuts of 5 percent a year to come close to cutting the deficit in half by 2014. But because the Brown government has already declared the budgets for health, law enforcement and schools to be off-limits, cuts of up to 10 percent – per year – are to be expected in most areas… And things could even turn out to be much worse if there is no strong economic upturn during this period. … There will also be massive cuts in low-income housing construction and transportation, translating into even more dilapidated housing, more potholes on Britain’s already miserable roads, and new cutbacks in high-speed train service. Universities have already lost close to £1 billion in funding, and various think thanks predict that the defense budget could shrink by about 15 percent between now and 2015.”

C) Election 2010: Debt – A conspiracy of silence (The Independent). ”In 1975 the UK had government interest-bearing debt of about 45 per cent of the total economy (GDP) and the debt was rising at about 8 per cent per year. We then had to crawl to the IMF in 1976.Today, that interest-bearing debt is about 65 per cent of GDP, rising nearly 13 per cent a year. A degree in economics will not be necessary to spot that things are a lot worse than in 1975… The mid-1970s IMF crisis was triggered largely by the fact that foreign buyers of government debt were so nervous of the UK’s ability to repay debt that interest rates roared into the teens. Inflation was a much bigger issue then than now, and foreigners and Brits alike also feared we intended to “repay” our debt with relatively worthless scraps of paper. So there was a buyers’ strike on government debt and we had to be bailed out. Rationally, the currency collapsed in value, and as the cost of importing oil and the like rose, so did inflation. … So how can we get out of this financial hole before our creditors get to us? There are three ways to reduce our national debt: let inflation rip to destroy the debt; increased tax revenues from higher taxes and economic growth; cut government spending. … The political debate talks of a few hundred million here and there – it needs to be about tens and scores of billions. Neither party has plans to deploy actions for the economy remotely commensurate with the size of the problem.”

I lean towards the “realistic” / “pessimistic” sides of the debate. The Government’s rosy projections of 2.5%+ growth are unlikely to materialize. Consumption is going to be kept down by consumer indebtedness, the upcoming hikes in interest rates, and increases in tax rates. There’s little room for export growth, considering the deindustrialization of the British economy. Finally, there itsenergy problems. The North Sea oil and gas fields are fast depleting and Britain’s reliance on gas supplies is increasing. Having failed to make any long-term arrangements with suppliers like Gazprom on the cheap, it will be forced to bid at spot prices on the LNG market to a greater extent than the European nations. Finally, the emerging trends towards the unraveling of liberal globalization cannot bode well for a nation that derived so much of its prosperity from open markets and international financial, legal, and consulting services.

Now what about the elections? Below is a graph of party approval ratings. Of late, the Conservatives, New Labor, and the Liberal Democrats have been running neck and neck.

[Opinion polls on British election: Conservatives, New Labor, Liberal Democrats].

My suspicions are that if the Tories win, there will be attempts at a strong fiscal rentrenchment. The shrinking of the public sector will hurt living standards, but lay the foundations for eventual stabilization. On the other hand, New Labor or the Liberal Democrats will be unwilling, or unable, to follow through will this, and the eventual result would be one default or another accompanied by a sharp drop in living standards. Another possibility is a “hung parliament”, should the three parties all win roughly equal shares of the vote (as seems to be a strong likelihood today). Such a paralysis would delay any actions to address Britain’s imbalances.

6. Demography watch.

• U.S. Birth Rate Decline Linked to Recession – small fall in US birth rates in 2009.
• On migration and population in reunification-era Korea (Randy McDonald) and discussion.
• Russia’s demography Jan-Feb 2010: relative to same period last year, births fall 0.8%, deaths fall 2.0%. Not too surprising since Russia’s recession troughed some nine months back.
• Comparative demography in the CIS states (Demoscope).
• Таджикские трудовые мигранты во время кризиса (Demoscope).

7. Energy & climate blast – lots of important reads these last two weeks.

• Online World3 simulator @ http://live.simgua.com/World.
• Confidential document reveals Obama’s hardline US climate talk strategy.
• The dark side of coal – some historical insights on energy and the economy (Ugo Bardi). 1) In a world devoid of coal or other high-EROEI energy sources, life is hard and dependent on muscle power. 2) It is justifiable, and if so to what extent, to cite the economic ramifications of “peak coal” as a contribution factor to the European crisis of 1914-45 (since oil only began to expand in a big way from the 1950′s).
• Avoiding Collapse (Global Guerrillas)
• Easter Island : A Case Study in the Response to Resource Depletion.
• Hottest Jan-Feb-March on record in 2010. Could the deniers and fudgers STFU already? More.
• The Future of Capitalism – Profits and Growth (George Mobus).
• Peak asphalt: the return of gravel roads (Ugo Bardi).
• Social Security and Medicare Funding Issues: Even Worse when One Considers Resource Constraints (Gail Tverberg).
• Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis (Chris Clugston) – important reference.
• Tipping towards the unknown – “Researchers propose critical planetary boundaries, transgressing them could be catastrophic. But there is hope.”
• You think only leftist losers go on about peak oil? US military warns oil output may dip causing massive shortages by 2015.
• Dancing with the devil known as geohacking & Birth control vs. geohacking (Lou Grinzo).
• The Twilight of the Machine & A Blindness to Systems (John Michael Greer).
• An Introduction to Global Warming Impacts – a summary from Climate Progress. For another key post on Limits, see World Oil Production Forecast – Update November 2009 from Oil Drum.
• A Superstorm for Global Warming Research, an 8-part skeptic series by Spiegel. Criticized here at Real Climate.

8. Eurasia watch.

• The Failure of the Anti-Russian “Freedom Agenda” (Daniel Larison).
• Yanukovych removes Ukraine’s application to join NATO, a move that is supported by the majority of the Ukrainian population.
• Russia’s industrial production in Q1 2010 continues a slow recovery. More encouragingly, after the sudden collapse in late 2008-early 2009, Russian consumer expectations are rapidly approaching their old boomtime highs. Merrill Lynch is particularly optimistic – Russian Economy May Get ‘Biggest Bounce’ in World, making the highest yet prediction of 7% growth  for 2010 (most analysts suggest 4-6%).
• Randy McDonald writes about Soviet computers.
• A detailed study from Russia’s VTsIOM polling agency on the Internet in Russia. Summary: 81% of Russians have cell phones; 46% have computers; 38% are Internet users (23% use it daily).
• Russia Weekly Sitrep (Patrick Armstrong).
• The Sirens of Russia. Post by A Good Treaty about Russia’smigalka culture of impunity – and how it is perhaps slowly beginning to retreat under public pressure and the influence of social media.
• Russian attitudes towards Katyn (Levada). Some 50% of Russians view Poland positively, 26% negatively (AK: these figures are likely the reverse in Poland). Only 43% of Russians have heard about Katyn. Asked who was responsible for it, 19% said the USSR, 28% Nazi Germany, and 53% didn’t know. Around 15% think it was “genocide”, 38% a “crime”, 14% consider it justified under wartime conditions, and 33% didn’t answer. Only 18% think Putin should apologize for Katyn in Russia’s name, while 46% disagree. Of the latter, 47% think he shouldn’t apologize because Nazi Germany was responsible; 34% – because today’s Russia shouldn’t answer for the USSR; and 8%, because it would weaken Russia’s position in relation to Poland.
• Russia: Other Points of View analyzes Stratfor’s coverage of Russia and The Dangers of Meddling in Russia’s North Caucasus.
• The new Journal of Eurasian Studies (h/t Sean) from South Korea. I checked out the first article in its first issue: Eurasian polities as hybrid regimes: The case of Putin’s Russia, which is basically accurate: “It is argued that Russian political development under Putin is best understood not as “authoritarianization” but as a process in which Russia transitioned from a system of “competing pyramids” of machine power to a “single-pyramid” system, a system dominated by one large political machine. It turns out that in single-pyramid systems that preserve contested elections, as does Russia, public opinion matters more than in typical authoritarian regimes.”

9. Mexico and the Failed State Revisited (free Stratfor) has the counter-intuitive take that far from challenging the state, the drug cartels are actually benefiting the Mexican economy because the immense profits reaped from selling drugs to the affluent US can be reinvested into Mexico.

…It is not clear to STRATFOR that Mexico is becoming a failed state. Instead, it appears the Mexican state has accommodated itself to the situation. Rather than failing, it has developed strategies designed both to ride out the storm and to maximize the benefits of that storm for Mexico. First, while the Mexican government has lost control over matters having to do with drugs and with the borderlands of the United States, Mexico City’s control over other regions — and over areas other than drug enforcement — has not collapsed (though its lack of control over drugs could well extend to other areas eventually). Second, while drugs reshape Mexican institutions dramatically, they also, paradoxically, stabilize Mexico. …

On the whole, Mexico is a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade. Even if some of the profits are invested overseas, the pool of remaining money flowing into Mexico creates tremendous liquidity in the Mexican economy at a time of global recession. It is difficult to trace where the drug money is going, which follows from its illegality. Certainly, drug dealers would want their money in a jurisdiction where it could not be easily seized even if tracked. U.S. asset seizure laws for drug trafficking make the United States an unlikely haven. Though money clearly flows out of Mexico, the ability of the smugglers to influence the behavior of the Mexican government by investing some of it makes Mexico a likely destination for a substantial portion of such funds.

Of course, there’s also the problem that Mexico’s oil production is plummeting as the supergiant Canterell depletes. (the state oil company is blamed for managerial fecklessness, but geological reasons are more important). An interesting scenario: if Mexico becomes a net oil importer and the US relaxes its drug policies, could it experience a liquidity crisis?

10. Ahmed Karzai and the US have fallen into a blame game of necessity. Karzai criticizes the West for electoral fraud and legitimizing the insurgency. Since NATO troops are, one way or another, going to leave Afghanistan in a few years, Karzai needs to build a base of support amongst his own people and his neighbors (Iran, China) if he wants to survive. The US in turn blames Karzai’s corruption for the sabotage of the war effort, because the alternative would be an indictment of the entire American war strategy. As of now, Karzai may be rightly feeling like Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, – the US no longer regards him as a reliable asset and he is at risk of being overthrown in favor of someone more manageable.

11. From Stratfor. There is relative optimism in Iraq and the US about the security situation as American troops continue a steady withdrawal. However, there remain questions about the governing capability of the new government and the ability of the security forces to maintain stability. Iran retains the potential to inflame ethno-sectarian strife, albeit thus far it prefers to (successfully) exercise its influence through “softer” means. The main problem is that by invading Iraq, the US has destroyed the old Iran-Iraq balance of power – and the forthcoming withdrawal of US forces will actually give Iran much better opportunities for extending their sphere of influence over Mesopotamia.

According to another source, Iraq will take 5-10 years to (re)build a military capable of defending the country against Iran or Syria. “The Iraqi plan is to stock up on superior American weapons, and train Iraqis to use that stuff with effectiveness approaching that of the Americans. That takes money, and time. Iraq is buying second-hand F-16s, but it will take three or four years to get the pilots and ground crews up to an acceptable level of performance. Along with this, the Iraqis want to buy modern anti-aircraft missile systems, and get them into service.” Also recall that it will take about a decade to ramp up Iraqi oil production, if the effort is successful.

Conclusion? The US is withdrawing from Iraq, bogged down Afghanistan, and in uncertain fiscal straits. Iraq has the potential to stand on its own feet, but will need a few years of stability. Thus, Iran will now enjoy a “window of opportunity” of around 5 years to make a play for hegemony in the Persian Gulf.

12. Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Senior Palestinian leaders — men who once commanded militias — are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies and are being arrested. Goods produced in Israeli settlements have been burned in public demonstrations. The Palestinian prime minister has entered West Bank areas officially off limits to his authority, to plant trees and declare the land part of a future state.

Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance. …

Nonviolence has never caught on here, and Israel’s military says the new approach is hardly nonviolent. But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, just visited Bilin, a Palestinian village with a weekly protest march. Next week, Martin Luther King III is scheduled to speak here at a conference on nonviolence.

Reminds me a bit of this scene from A Sum of All Fears.

13. Peter Lavelle interviews Middle East journalist Robert Fisk back in September 2009. If you want a ten minute video summary of why the West fails in Dar al-Islam – this is it.

14. United States watch.

• Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms to states that have nuclear weapons or haven’t renounced or violence the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is rational and profitable for US interests.
• US gunships attack Iraqi civilians in Wikileaks scandal (see video). This is a non-story – mistakes do occasionally happen (if you really want to get all moral and uptight about this, the relevant question is why the US is in Iraq in the first place). Some might complain the soldiers were cold-hearted by laughing and making morbid jokes, but humor is a typical defense mechanism to scenes of carnage.
• Obama administration ‘looks backwards’ to punish heroes. As I’ve said before, most of the Obama administration’s “change” is more cosmetic than real. It is a continuation of Bush post-2006.
• The march to American Caesarism continues. When did it become legal to assassinate Americans? “Anwar al-Awlaqi, the New Mexico-born cleric living in Yemen, has been placed on a target list that makes him fair game for assassination by the U.S. military or CIA”. The problem isn’t so much the authorization of assassination, which is a useful anti-terrorist tool, but the fact that this further widens the gap between US liberal/rule-of-law pretensions and reality, and hence undermines its international legitimacy. After all, Israel or Russia, states that are not averse to assassinations on foreign soil, don’t portray themseves as guarantors of liberal internationalism. America does.

15. The consevative reaction in Europe spreads to Hungary, with the election of the Fidesz Party to power. By itself this is a normal development unworthy of much comment, except for the fact that the democratic left (the Socialists) have now been marginalized, and now enjoy about the same level of support as the far-right Jobbik and his Movement for a Better Hungary. This party is truly extremist – it has a “Magyar Garda” militia, its symbology draws on the banned Nazi-era Arrow Cross Party, and its rhetoric attacks the Jews above and the Roma below.

Hungary is going to face lean economic times in the years ahead and Viktor Orban of Fidesz can be expected to come under attack by a Jobbik energized by supporters dissilusioned of conventional politics. As Walter Mayr of Spiegel writes in “The Monster at Our Door”: Hungary Prepares for Shift in Power, the end result could be that Orban deserts austerity politics for the seemingly greener pastures of identity politics – for instance, it is known he is in favor of double citizenship for ethnic Hungarians outside Hungary, which could lead to clashes with Romania and Slovakia. (Though it should be stressed this is hardly unusual for Eastern Europe – for instance, Russia’s conferral of dual citizenship was one of the factors provoking conflict with Georgia over S. Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the Romanians themselves are at odds with Russia and Ukraine thanks to their issue of Romanian citizenship to Moldovans).

16. The Caucasus Emirate (Scott Stewart & Ben West), free Stratfor article about what is now the foremost jihadi group operating against Russia in the North Caucasus.

Umarov’s founding statement for the Caucasus Emirate, in which he called for the region to recognize the emirate as the rightful regional power and adopt Shariah, marked a shift from the motives of many previous militant leaders and groups, which were more nationalistic than jihadist. This trend of regional militants becoming more jihadist in their outlook increases the likelihood that they will forge substantial links with transnational jihadists such as al Qaeda — indeed, our Russian sources report that there are connections between the group and high-profile jihadists like Ilyas Kashmiri.

However, this alignment with transnational jihadists comes with a price. It could serve to distance the Caucasus Emirate from the general population, which practices a more moderate form of Islam (Sufi). This could help Moscow isolate and neutralize members of the Caucasus Emirate. Indeed, key individuals in the group such as Umarov and Kosolapov are operating in a very hostile environment and can name many of their predecessors who met their ends fighting the Russians. Both of these men have survived so far, but having prodded Moscow so provocatively, they are likely living on borrowed time.

17. Maoists kill 75 police in central India attack. Not much comment, except to note that many countries, including ostensibly succesful and democratic ones, have violent, festering insurgencies. Russia/Chechnya is hardly unique.

18. Turkey Overtaking Germany No Wishful Thinking on Paradigm Shift (h/t Randy McDonald). “Turkey’s $620-billion economy could move ahead of Germany’s to become the third-biggest in Europe by 2050, behind Russia and the UK”. Such long-term projections are pretty useless, but it’s true that in the medium-term Turkey has bright prospects, in part thanks to its demographic vigor and favorable geographical position.

19. @ any Asian readers or people familiar with the region – how accurate is this “Spenglerian” article on “Asia’s Permanent Advantage” by Chan Akya?

For the frequent traveler, there is a stark dichotomy across the world. Almost without exception, traveling with an Asian carrier to any Asian airport is a pleasure. In contrast, using any airline domiciled in Europe or North America with passage through airports in that part of the world is stunningly inconvenient. …

When you leave the airport in Shanghai and can get to the main city 30 kilometers away within eight minutes on the superfast magnetic levitation train, you cannot help but notice that the actual technology for this wonder comes from Germany. Yet, there are no such trains in operation anywhere in Europe, let alone Germany. …

Surely this is because, here in Asia, we are in the biggest cities you say. … Well, drive from Shanghai in virtually any direction and the first time you see roads that are any worse than those around the city you are a good 200 kilometers away. And even there, the roads are better than many American motorways.

Yeah alright, so the Chinese truck driver barreling towards you looks like he hasn’t slept in three days (very likely), and there is the occasional car wrapped into the milestone on the side of the road; but none of that detracts from the sheer robustness of the infrastructure. …

And then the last observation sinks in. Every single Asian city is heaving at the edges, with millions of people. Yet, crime rates are negligible and social tensions appear well under control. A far cry from the banlieu of Paris or the Turkish quarter of Berlin, for example, not to mention the public housing nightmares of Chicago or Detroit.

It is not the gargantuan dams of China or the super-efficient underground in Singapore that impresses you, but rather the fact that even the most economically backward parts of Asia have taken growth to be their mantra. What’s more, they have the financial muscle to push it through.

With that, your despondency turns to depression. How, you ask, can the “developed” world ever regain its luster?

For a start, all American and European cities will have to reinvest hundreds of billions into their cities to rejuvenate the existing infrastructure. Then the states/smaller countries will have to connect the cities to the rest of the region, install new technology infrastructure, focus on customer service and improve productivity to new heights to compete with the Asians.

Ah, but a minor detail intervenes. Who has got the money to do all that? Well, let us raise taxes you say. Problem is, no one in your country is making much money in the first place so raising taxes will simply drive consumption down and drive the deficit wider. Well, let us borrow the lot you say. Trouble is, no one has the money to lend to you at your abysmally low rates. Except the Asians – who you then recall can play tough once in a while.

And that’s about when you reconcile to the inevitable future – Asia with its apparently permanent advantage on infrastructure and operating efficiency leaving Europe and North America ever further behind. Nothing appears to have the ability to reverse this trend.

See also It’s China’s World. We’re Just Living in It (Rana Foroohar & Melinda Liu) - “The middle kingdom is rewriting the rules on trade, technology, currency, climate—you name it.” Another related post on the same theme is Coal and Treasuries by Gregor McDonald.

20. Military blast.

• The Post New START Nuclear Arsenal – a summary: “1,550 strategic warheads; 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and deployed nuclear capable heavy bombers; A combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and nuclear capable heavy bombers.” See Sublime News #7 for more details.
• Sizing Up Sukhoi’s PAK FA 5th Gen Fighter. Summary: it is a superb dog-fighter and its IRST may be the first to pick up a hostile stealth fighter, but there are questions over whether the Russian MIC is advanced enough to produce and maintain many of these complex planes (more).
• Chinese Fleet Closes In On Okinawa, increases tensions since China started drilling offshore gas halfway between Okinawa and the mainland. Also illustrates increasing ambitions of the Chinese Navy (PS. No longer PLAN) to carve out a maritime buffer space beyond its eastern seaboard.
• South Korea buys CBU-105 sensor fuzed weapons, a cluster-type bomb that is programmed to hunt for tanks below it. An excellent way of stopping any Northern armored assault, this tilts the militay balance on the peninsula further in the South’s favor.
• Andrew Barton describes environmental warfare as a “target-rich environment” and predicts it will become more prevalent. That is in line with my own thinking.
• Iran gets advanced military speedboats, illustrating its asymmetrical strategy geared at closing down the Straits of Hormuz in the event of war with Israel or the US.
• France Backs Away From The Chinese Threat – France won’t supply Pakistan with advanced military hardware since it would pass them on to Chna.
• Case in point – China copies Swedish Bv206 all-terrain vehicle.
• Russia has problems with their Yasen nuclear powers cruise-missile subs.
• Gates Says U.S. Has Conventionally Armed ICBMs. They are not a good idea.
• Iran boosts air defenses with new missile system – an upgraded version of the Hawk, a 1960′s system and probably vulnerable to Israeli/US jamming.
• India sets sights on killer drones.
• Smart trucks in Afghanistan.
• Global IT Supply-Chain Insecurity is important.
• From the Monitor scam to the Gorschkov scam, corruption in military procurement – an eternal scam.
• Future for US naval procurement looks bleak as costs rise and budgets are slashed. Substantial decline in Navy size is inevitable.

21. Things are getting more interesting in North Korea. There is danger of famine. The people are increasingly disillusioned, but unlikely to revolt. A coup by pro-Chinese military officers is a possibility. “Rumors of a North Korean submarine being responsible for the March 26th sinking of a South Korean corvette are growing more popular in the media… Survivors of the explosion agree that the blast came from outside the ship.” Watch this space.

22. Russophobe & liberast watch.

• Link to The Soviet Story propaganda flick. I haven’t yet seen it, or plan to, despite having had the chance. (The screening coincided with my gym-going time).
• David Satter, respected Russia-watched: “The present Russian leadership not only does not care about America’s security concerns, it is indifferent to Russia’s own.” Need more be said?
• The bear is back: Poland’s tragedy, Russia’s gain (Arthur Herman) – “the most insane column in the entire history of mankind”, according to Mark Adomanis.
• Putin wins again: Rebuilding imperial Russia (Ralph Peters), whom Mark Adomanis says is “very likely the single most repulsive figure in American  journalism”. More on Ralph Peters.
• Paul Goble the Propagandist flip-flops from “Muslims will take over Russia!” in 2006 to “Muslims are no longer a demographic reserve” in 2010. Either way, however, Russia is doomed according to according to Goble’s cherry-picked sources. There is something resembling a “discussion” of this article on SWP’s blog.

23. Remember what I wrote about Russians’ attitudes to Stalinism in Sublime News #7? An “interesting” discussion about it developed on a far-right forum.

24. Flotsam and jetsam.

• GDP by… language (Randy McDonald).
• Phrases people search for to arrive at poemless blog.
• Spiegel has a 7-part series on The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI.
• Richard Dawkins plans to arrest the Pope. George Monbiot approves.
• The “Pedophile’s Paradise” (Brendan Kiley) – “Alaska Natives are accusing the Catholic Church of using their remote villages as a “dumping ground” for child-molesting priests—and blaming the president of Seattle University for letting it happen.”
• Just An ‘Average Brunette’ from the Banlieue – the three female challengers to Sarkozy from the Socialist, Communist, and Green Parties. I hope they win!
• Journalist on the run from Israel is hiding in Britain: ‘Haaretz’ writer fled to London fearing charges over exposé on Palestinian’s killing. Now while there’s no argument Israel is a liberal democracy, it is highly influenced by the prerogatives of the national security state.
• Why are so many girls lesbian or bisexual?
• Ending the Myth of ‘Market Fundamentalism’ (Dean Baker)
• «Я опознал свою дочь» – the Moscow shahidka‘s father speaks out.
• For all their problems, North Korea remains firmly committed to Juche, release “Red Star” operating system based on Linux. (h/t Randy)
• Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics.
• San Francisco “anti-war” rally (are commies, Islamists) according to this conservative-leaning blogger.
• Stalinist Icon (h/t Jason)
• The East German bunker that was to have been the Warsaw Pact operational center for conducting a nuclear war against NATO forces in Europe.
• Cannibal trial halted after juror falls ill looking at pictures of girl, 16, who was ‘eaten with potatoes’. Why did Russia have to cancel the death penalty in deference to European cultural Diktat?
• Dmitry Rogozin: “Sergey Kovalev is a parody and a loser compared with the great human rights activist and intellectual Andrey Sakharov”. Links to К портрету Сергея Ковалёва.
• Tourist attractions… wait a second, how can that be?!
• How do you perform in this Zombie Survival Quiz?

Warre bringeth ruine, ruine bringeth poverty, poverty procureth peace, and peace in time increaseth riches, riches causeth statelinesse, statelinesse increaseth envie, envie in the end procureth deadly malice, mortall malice proclaimeth open warre and bataille, and from warre again as before is rehearsed.

Turchin, Peter – War and Peace and War (2006)
Category: history, cliodynamics, war; Rating: 4/5
Summary: Amazon reviews

Ibn Khaldun, Malthus, and Saint Matthew meet up for coffee

1) According to the Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, empires only form when a tribe, nation, or religious sect attains a high degree of asabiya, – the ability of a group’s members to cooperate with each other, to maintain their identity and discipline in the face of adversity, and to impose their beliefs, values, and control over other groups. Other similar expressions are social cohesion or “social capital”. As Ibn Khaldun wrote, “royal authority and dynastic power are attained only through a group and asabiya. This is because aggressive and defensive strength is obtained only through… mutual affection and willingness to fight and die for each other”. (To put this in context, this is similar to Lev Gumilev’s theories of “passionarity” / пассионарность (willingness to sacrifice oneself for one’s values) or my own ideas on the sobornost’-poshlost’ / rationalism-mysticism belief matrix, in which a state of sobornost’, of course, refers to a high level of asabiya).

This is not surprising – military cooperation and morale is an important factor in military success. See the stunning successes of the early Islamic armies spreading the revelations of Mohammed, or of Nazi Germany. Later in the book, Turchin references the work of Trevor Dupuy, who showed that the Germans had a “combat efficiency” of 1.45, compared to the British 1.0 and American 1.1, in the battles on the western front of 1944 – in other words, excluding equipment and terrain, each Germany soldier was militarily “worth” 20% more than an Anglo-Saxon one.

Now why do some societies have higher asabiya than others? Ibn Khaldun’s analysis covered the dynamics of the desert / settled boundary in the North African Maghreb. Amongst the desert Bedouin tribes, constant inter-tribal warfare exerts group selective pressure favoring the emergence of tribes high in asabiya. These selective pressures are much weaker in settled civilizations with rule of law. Now these defects are more than made up for civilizations’ greater population density and better technologies, which can normally yield much bigger, better-equipped armies than anything the barbarians can muster. However, should civilization fall into a state of internal strife and social dissolution, it becomes “vulnerable to conquest from the desert” by a coalition of Bedouin tribes organized around one group with a particularly high asabiya. However, as soon as the barbarians become ensconced within their new domains, they gradually assimilate into the urban civilization, the high asabiya of the core group dissipates, and the cycle begins anew.

Turchin extends Ibn Khaldun’s beyond the Maghreb into a general theory of the rise of empires, almost all of which arise along “meta-ethnic frontiers” featuring bloody conflicts between starkly alien peoples. The constant military pressure and hatred for the Other binds the borderlanders together, fostering the relative economic equality, social solidarity, and discipline that will in time build an empire. Examples of this include the conflict of the Roman farmer-warriors against the Celtic barbarians of the Po Valley that melded the Latin peoples into the Roman Empire, the centuries-long struggle against the raiding, slave-taking steppe Hordes that incubated Muscovy’s rise, and the violent frontier wars against the Native Americans that formed the “melting pot” identity of the United States. The entire history of Europe from the Roman Empire to Poland-Lithuania has been characterized by the millennial, north-eastern drift of the meta-ethnic frontier between Rome/Christianity and tribal pagans, a frontier which repeatedly spawned new states and empires (Rome itself, the Caroliangian Empire, and the myriad Germanic and Slavic states.

2) The author notes that Ibn Khaldun’s blaming of “luxury” and “senility” for the degeneration of civilizations is an inadequate explanation, being nothing more than a biological metaphor with questionable applicability. Instead, Turchin lays out the theory of cliodynamics, the “mathematized history” that attempts to provide a comprehensive explanation of the “secular cycles” of imperial rise and fall by modeling Malthusian dynamics, i.e., when a great empire arises the resulting stability and prosperity produce overpopulation, which results in dearth, rising inequality (i.e. the old middle-class shrinks, while oligarchs and the landless indigent veer into prominence), and an intensified struggle for scarce resources that undermines social solidarity. Eventually, a severe shock such as a disastrous harvest, peasant uprisings, civil war, or foreign invasion provokes a full-fledged Malthusian crisis that triggers the collapse of the empire. I’ve already written about cliodynamics in detail here.

(Incidentally, I’ve also connected the decline of asabiya (or in my terminology, the transition from sobornost’ to poshlost’) to the socio-demographic cycles of cliodynamics. The theme of The Ages of Man, in which the bounteous Golden Age of the first dynasties (imperial rise) degenerates into the “immorality” and dearth of the Iron Age (social atomization, Malthusian stress, decline), – finally followed by an apocalyptic “cleansing” and start again (Malthusian collapse, barbarian invasions, Dark Ages, etc), is common to all civilizational traditions. See my Musings on the decline and fall of civilizations and explanation of the Malthusian Loop.)

3) Matthew 25:29: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath”. In other words, there is a natural tendency for wealth to become concentrated in the hands of the few, called the Matthew Principle. In other words, if a pre-industrial civilization enjoys socio-political stability, has ineffective redistributive mechanisms, no free land / overpopulation, and a social mentality that accepts (or even glorifies – see “conspicuous consumption”) big levels of wealth inequality, within several generatons it will develop prodigal levels of social stratification. Wealth inequality tends to reach a maximum just before a collapse of the entire system: for instance, the Roman Empire fell for the last time just decades after reaching “peak inequality” in 400AD. Similar things can be said about the end of republican Rome, the decline of medieval France, and even Russia 1917 or Iran 1979.

Why does the Matthew Principle operate so strongly in Malthusian settings? In agrarian societies, private property is the normal way of storing inherited wealth. If a family has lots of children, each one will inherit ever smaller plots. To make ends meet, they will be eventually forced to borrow loans; if they can’t, their land is taken over by their creditors, and they now have to hire themselves out as agricultural laborers or drift into the cities where they can try to join a trade (hence the reason why cities expand so much in times of subsistence stress). Meanwhile, those who have land can 1) rent it out at exorbitant rates (since the demand for it is so high in an overpopulated country) or 2) they can sell the grain their tenants or serfs produce at high prices (again because there are more mouths to feed). The resulting accumulation of drifting unemployed are matchwood for social unrest (e.g. see the role of the sans-culottes in the French Revolution).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the social spectrum, the elites or nobility grow at a faster rate than the commoners because they have better access to food and can afford more children, and die less quickly. Those with land benefit from cheaper labor and the rise in rent prices, while manufactures become easier to afford thanks to the increase in trade and urban artisans. However, intra-elite inequality also increases, and there is increasing tension as some poor nobles see peasant arrivistes rising above them in social status. Because the king depends on the nobles for governing his kingdom, state institutions must be expanded to “feed” all those nobles who are left out of inheritances, fostering corruption, aristocratic intrigues, and social stratification. Those at the very top of the social pyramid engage in the most extravagant conspicuous consumption, provoking envy amongst the have-nots. All these widening social chasms reduce the society’s asabiya.

The plagues, wars, and internal violence unleashed by Malthusian collapse tends to kill off most of the top and bottom of the social period. The landless indigent starve to death, or their weakened immune systems succumb to disease, or they get carried away as the cannon fodder in the uprisings that wrack the failed state. The nobles also die fast, thanks to their status as a military caste. Generational cycles of violence and wars and political purges carry many of them off. After the collapse, land becomes cheaper and labor becomes more expensive. Subsistence stress largely subsides and society becomes much more egalitarian. The cycle begins anew.

Criticisms and Consequences

I think Turchin’s book is a good introductory text to the new science of cliodynamics, one he himself did much to found (along with Nefedov and Korotayev). However, though readable – mostly, I suspect, because I am interested in the subject – it is not well-written. The text was too thick, there were too many awkward grammatical constructions, and the quotes are far, far too long.

More importantly, 1) the theory is not internally well-integrated and 2) there isn’t enough emphasis on the fundamental differences separating agrarian from industrial societies. For instance, Turchin makes a lot of the idea that the Italians’ low level of asabiya (“amoral familism”) was responsible for it’s only becoming politically unified in the late 19th century. But why then was it the same for Germany, the bloody frontline for the religious wars of the 17th century? And why was France able to build a huge empire under Napoleon, when it had lost all its “meta-ethnic frontiers” / marches by 1000 AD? For answers to these questions about the genesis of the modern nation-state, one would be much better off by looking at more conventional explanations by the likes of Benedict Anderson, Charles Tilly, or Gabriel Ardant.

Nowadays, modern political technologies – the history textbook, the Monument to the Unknown Soldier, the radio and Internet - have long displaced the meta-ethnic frontier as the main drivers behind the formation of asabiya. Which is certainly not to say that meta-ethnic frontiers are unimportant – they are, especially in the case of Dar al-Islam, which feels itself to be under siege on multiple fronts (the “bloody borders” of clash-of-civilizations-speak), which according to Turchin’s theory should promote a stronger Islamic identity. But their intrinsic importance has been diluted by the influence of modern media.

Turchin has an interesting discussion of the future of the US, China, Russia, and the European Union based on the conclusions of War and Peace and War. In particular, one very relevant point he made is that to become a true empire, the EU requires 1) the development of a European-wide loyalty towards it, willing to shed blood for it, and 2) its core state, Germany, must continue to underwrite it financially. None of these conditions, I think it is safe to say, will be met. As I’ve recently pointed out, Germany is most emphatically not prepared to sacrifice its national interests in favor of a European project over which it does not have direct control; the Germans have their own problems, foremost among them the demographic aging of the population. Furthermore, only 37% of Germans are today prepared to fight for their own country, according to the findings of the World Values Survey*; if that is the case, then how many Germans would fight (and risk death) for the Brussels bureaucracy? 5% would probably be generous. Quite simply the EU does not have any foundations for an imperial future, nor the will to create one; it is very fragile and will start unraveling at the smallest shocks.

Another major problem with the book that makes it incomplete is that although Turchin touches and speculates about the modern world and the future – in particular, he notes that the rising inequality, crime rates, slower growth, etc, of the post-1960′s industrialized world is similar to the traditional symptoms of an emerging Malthusian crisis – he does not connect the dots with the Limits to Growth, the theory that explicitly states that we are being swept into a Malthusian crisis due to global overpopulation and resource depletion. This is a far more important development than the techno-hype he devotes much of the last chapter to.

In the end I gave a 4/5 for this book, although it could have potentially gotten 5*/5. Turchin did valuable work in emphasizing how the material (e.g. the Malthusian) interacts with the spiritual (asabiya) in history, whereas many lesser theorists regard the latter as a “mystical” factor unworthy of serious attention. However, the book suffered from 1) poor writing, 2) too many marginal details that should have been edited out, and 3) unsuccessful application of the theory to the current, post-agrarian era. He should either have left it out entirely, or spent a lot more time doing it better.

* From the latest “wave” of the World Values Survey, “Of course, we all hope that there will not be another war, but if it were to come to that, would you be willing to fight for your country?” I think this question is an excellent way of gauging asabiya in a nation, since it directly addresses the issue of life, death, and self-sacrifice. The results are very interesting.

The Scandinavian countries – limp-wristed feminist socialists that they are – all say a resounding “yes” (Sweden 86%, Norway 88%, Finland 84%). Similarly, for all the problems of the post-Communist transition, Eastern European nations also retain high levels of asabiya (Poland 75%, Russia 83%, Georgia 70%), though Serbia 61% is lower (maybe because they’ve already fought) and so is Ukraine 69% (its Russophones aren’t as loyal as West or Central Ukrainians). Most of the Muslim countries say “yes” (Iran 81%, Egypt 80%, Morocco 77%), including a whopping 97% in Turkey. Iraq 37% is the sole outlier. Similarly, the Asian nations also have high levels of patriotism (China 87%, India 81%, South Korea 73%).

The United States 63% isn’t as high as one might think, and curiously close to France 61%, Great Britain 62%, and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world. The nations of Latin America tend to have similar figures. The Mediterranean countries, the old countries, and the countries defeated in World War Two are the last willing to put their lives on the line for their nation (Italy 43%, Spain 45%, Japan 25%, Germany 37%).

2. Is Obama transforming America into Amerika? Let me explain. Take a look at the details of the healthcare bill, which was passed despite my pessimism (to be fair I think I had a good excuse). Essentially, it will eventually require everyone to buy a health insurance, but there will be subsidies for the poor / employers and continuing competition amongst insurance providers. Overall, could it even be said that the current administration is essentially transforming the American welfare state from one based on liberalism (in which markets are the primary guarantors of welfare with government only stepping in to restrict un-competitive practices, streamline market distortions, and assume only minimal relief obligations from private charitable and religious groups) to corporatism (in which the provision of welfare is tied to the imperative of maintaining social stability)?

Second, the US is developing a proper industrial policy in a bit to reverse deindustrialization. For instance, there are the plans to double exports by 2015, expand into foreign markets, and react strongly against currency manipulation by China. In other words, the US may be beginning to abandon its status as the world’s consumer of last resort – an important foundation of the current international system. These is also a higher focus on equality of opportunity, energy efficiency and greentech, closer ties between the state and the “commanding heights” (see Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Google, etc).

This is a suggestion, not a conclusion, and certainly not a moral judgment. Quite possibly, a “convergence to Europe” is inevitable as the US population ages and comes under increasing limits-to-growth pressures (e.g. peak oil). Incidentally, Matt Taibbi has a different take - his best line, ”The whole picture is strange: Democrats running as Republicans, Republicans running as Turner-Diaries conspiracy theorists.”

3. Climate change & energy blast.

• The Oil Drum celebrates its fifth birthday. I wish it well – it has been an invaluable resource on energy and sustainability issues. (I have two articles in the pipeline which I plan to submit to them).
• Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production – Part 1 – Summary. This is an introduction to a 55-page paper (pdf) on the topic that sounds like a must-read, and I may write more about it in the next few weeks. ”We are living within dynamic processes. It matters little what technologies are in the pipeline, the potential of wind power in some choice location, or that the European Commission has a target; if a severe economic and structural collapse occurs before their enactment, then they may never be enacted.”
• The Logic of Abundance (John Michael Greer) – excellent piece debunking cornucopian myopia.
• Study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice.” Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed.”
• Americans’ Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop. No comment.
• UK Telegraph Reports, “Oil Reserves ‘Exaggerated by One Third’”–An Analysis – no kidding, “peakists” have been harping on about this for years!
• India-Bangladesh border dispute solved by island in question sinking due to global warming.
• James Cameron, director of Avatar, lashes out at the GW deniers.

4. Geoengineering watch

• 6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth (Brandon Keim) – draining the rivers; painting the Earth black; the infinite farm; wiping out reefs; the plastic revolution (note: will probably be mankind’s longest-lasting legacy); altering the atmosphere. (h/t Lou Grinzo)
• A Survival Guide to Geoengineering (James Cascio) – “despite its potential to trigger conflict, geoengineering will likely be part of the global response to climate change. Be prepared.”
• On terraforming the solar system, with pictures & What do you think of geoengineering (Randy McDonald) – in my huge post on the topic, I’ve described it as a “final gambit”. We will soon be so far beyond climatic tipping points that sacrificing prodigal resources into geoengineering, in the hope that it will provide a big payoff (e.g. avert the collapse of industrial civilization), will become both rational and inevitable.

5. Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart – Gallup measured life satisfaction for 155 nations by “asking respondents to place the status of their lives on a “ladder” scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life”.

The results? Dernmark 82%, Canada, Australia & Israel 62%, Brazil 58%, USA 57%, Britain 54%, Germany 43%, France 35%, Poland 28%, Russia & Ukraine 21%, Japan 19%, India & Egypt 10%, China 9%, Togo 1%. For some reason, only the the Americas, northern Europeans, and Anglo-Saxons consider themselves to be thriving, while most of Eurasia and Africa are heavily depressed.

6. In other news from Gallup, 49% of Americans believe that the healthcare bill is a “good thing”, whereas just 40% believe it is a “bad thing”. Some have critisized this as an outlier, however. Time will tell as passions die down and Americans get access to more affordable healthcare (and assuming the fiscal situation remains more or less under control – no certainty given the range of possible discontinuities).

7. Russia watch. Mark Adomanis does a good summary of the week’s main issues: START, pipelines, and economic growth. Now for my thoughts.

I agree with Mark that the agreement over START will not overspill into better overall Russia-America relations. What they have is a fundamental geopolitical clash of interests that simply cannot be resolved while both nation-states retain imperial mentalities. The deal to cut nukes is 1) a rational cost-cutting measure – though not an imperative one, ignore the talk that Russia can’t afford maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal, it can but would rather not, and 2) in any case the age of the ICBM is slowly drawing to a close with the proliferation of effective ABM systems covered on this blog.

PS. Nikolas Gvosdev on START.

So what do we have? Based on preliminary reports, the Russians will get language that recognizes that there are important linkages between offensive and defensive systems–acknowledging their concerns over how U.S. missile defense systems could impact the strategic balance–but that language is nonbinding, and does not prevent Washington from moving ahead, if it so chooses, with plans to deploy limited BMD systems in the Black Sea region. Both sides will have an upper limit of 1,675 warheads and may shoot for an even lower number of delivery vehicles than originally outlined in last year’s MOU–from 1100 to an upper limit of 800. Some of the Russian reductions are likely to occur from attrition and the retirement of aged systems. This will test the willingness of the Senate to accept a compromise, because it has been argued that Russia would have “no choice” but to bring down the size of its nuclear arsenal, to a size it can more effectively maintained–but now Russia will get binding limits on the size of the U.S. arsenal as well.

Russia’s potential buyout of the Ukrainian gas pipeline network in return for selling Ukraine gas at lower prices is potentially a huge deal that will further tighten its control over European energy supplies – agreed with Mark. (It would also in large part remove the need for South Stream). Note that Ukraine is now very strapped for cash and its implicit social obligations to provide subsidized gas to the populace are placing it between a rock and a hard place (popular unrest, fiscal collapse, and increased Russian influence).

World Bank predicts Russia will grow at 5.0-5.5% in 2010 (not news: most investment banks predict 4-6%, Citibank predicts 6.2%), but will slow to 3.5% in 2011 “as tight credit and unemployment constrain consumption”. Nonetheless, this means that by 2012, Russia will have regained its peak GDP level of 2008 (which in turn was roughly equal to its peak Soviet-era GDP in 1989 – excellent, a whopping 23 wasted years!). But anyhow, still better than common expectations during the crisis…

8. Military & hi-tech blast (no, I’m not a Sinophobe, I admire good spies).

• Cyber-attack on U.S. firms, Google traced to Chinese (Bill Gertz) – describes how 2000+ Chinese hackers infiltrate US companies to steal industrial R&D. Makes perfect sense for a country looking to leapfrog development, of course.
• Jihadism and the Importance of Place – free Stratfor article on the geopolitics of jihad. The jahidi movement is transitioning from being based on large organizations to clandestine cells and individuals, as country after country is “drained” of its ability to sustain Islamist militants.
• The people have been liberated. China no longer has a People’s Liberation Army, now it’s just the Chinese Army. I think they should go all-out and rename it to Ever Victorious Army!
• Has you Gmail been hacked by the Chicoms? Find out!
• Stratfor has a long, detailed history of Chinese espionage efforts (“mosaic intelligence”). Behind subscriber wall.
• Is Russia Google’s next weak spot? – the Kremlin to launch “national search engine” and give government e-mail accounts to every Russian to rationalize social services. (PS. Paranoiacs hold your breath, totalitarian Turkey already has a system. PSS. Apprecite deadpan humor).

9. This whole nonsense about the “Day of Wrath” and how the foundations of the Putin regime are crumbling in the recent wave of “protests” that are hardly large enough to even deserve the name! According to Barret Brown anyway, who believes that “it is worth noting that a poll conducted this month indicated that almost 30 percent of Russians are inclined to engage in protests of this sort, and that this percentage is higher than it was just a month ago”, hence spelling the apocalypse for the Kremlin. Erm, this is basically the same figure as in early 2005 (coinciding with protests over welfare reform), and LESS than two occasions in the 1990’s. Give me a call when it breaks 50%, then we might have something to talk about.

[Blue line = "yes I think protests are possible"; light blue line = "yes I will probably participate in protests. Opinion polls from Levada].

The fact of the matter is that most Russians if not happy, at least satisfied, with the political system, and 70% believe they are “free” today (this figure was much lower under Yeltsin and the early Putin years).

10. The Israel-US spat over settlements. Nothing will come of it as usual. The two countries are bound together by mutual geopolitical interests – the US needs its Middle East bridgehead, Israel needs its insurance policy.

11. What’s really wrong with Russia? by Ben Aris – (h/t poemless). An excellent article that I recommend very much. It points out Russia’s real economic weaknesses, without succumbing to Russophobia or hyperbole – a rare achievement in the mainstream Russia-watching community, regretfully. A few quick comments:

The big omission here on the Kremlin’s part is that while they are spending on power and trains, they have ignored badly needed investment into social infrastructure.

I agree, but it’s not quite accurate to say that social infrastructure has been ignored – at least, not after 2007-2008. E.g., there is a lot of investment in newly-equipped hospitals and clinics since 2007, and positive results are already showing.

Oil is heavily taxed, with the state taking 90 cents on every dollar when prices for oil are over $27. The extra revenue has been used to subsidise income and profit taxes (13% and 24% respectively) in an effort to boost economic diversification. Even this largesse can’t soak up all the petrodollars, so the excess cash is siphoned off into the “lockbox” of the Stabilisation Fund and kept out of the reach of free-spending MPs by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.

Good points, but note that some extreme free marketeers would decry the heavy taxation on oil (they’re incorrect of course, having never heard or serious studied lock-in or dependency theory).

The Kremlin’s solution is to lift struggling sectors up by the bootstraps by pouring enough money into them so that even if they can’t compete on price, they can compete on quality. The trouble is that state-led rescues of industry look intrinsically wrong-headed to almost everyone.

Katinka Barysch… spoke for many recently in a recent paper when she wrote: “A genuine modernisation alliance would have to be bottom-up and driven by the private sector. The Russian leadership is pursuing a model of modernisation that is state-centric and top-down. It throws money at new institutes to foster research, it nationalises big industries, it tells state-owned banks which sectors to lend to. It does not do the things that would be required for genuine economic diversification. … Barysch assumes there is a foundation of business that will flourish if the shackles of government are removed, but the Kremlin is facing an economy where rafts of products and services are simply missing and can’t get started.

State spending is inherently wasteful, but as Russia has the money thanks to oil, the issue at hand is not the efficiency of state spending, but rather its effectiveness: can the spending create sectors that don’t exist now or upgrade those that can’t compete now? “As there is no vibrant [small and medium-sized enterprise] sector, the only option left is heavy state spending. The Kremlin is doing this not because they want bigger versions of the existing state-owned behemoths, but because how else are they going to change the nature of the Russia economy?” says Plamen Monovski…

Head. Nail. Railing about how a large degree of state involvement is necessary for Russia to develop has been one of S/O’s common themes.

More worryingly, these nascent attempts to remake the system have already led to an increase in political risk. Up until now Russia has grown by first putting bums in empty seats, and then building new factories when the Soviet-era capacity was fully used. To go to the next stage, the system itself has to be liberalised, as it is efficiency not volume that counts now. This means cutting into the vested interests and they are already fighting back. In March, Medvedev told ministers that they had to obey orders “or take a hike” – a rare visible sign of the growing tension.

Conventional wisdom has it that Putin is a virtual dictator, but bne’s sources in diplomatic, business and government circles say that Putin is visibly under an increasing amount of strain, frustrated by the government machinery’s failure to implement his plans. On top of this, bringing in Medvedev has considerably weakened his position. “Two camps have formed around Medvedev and Putin. The first wants to see Medvedev go further with the liberalisation of the economy and politics, whereas the people close to Putin want to keep things as they were prior to the crisis – where they were making money,” says an economist who has been advising the government at a top level. “Putin is visibly stressed, as some people are starting to ignore him and others are openly calling for him to leave.”

1) Demonstrates how the anti-Putinistas have no appreciation for nuance or the institutional intricacies of the system Russia’s leaders have to operate in.

2) The more portentous conclusion one could possibly draw from this is that at times when plans for reform ran into heavy vested opposition, what followed was either a) a period of conservative retreat and stagnation or b) the opposite – an upping of the tempo and increase in coercion, centralization, mobilization. It will be interesting to see what will happen this time round.

PS. One major thing Aris leaves out is Russia’s awfully low level of energy efficiency. Not that it matters for now, given that it is so well-endowed with resources, but nonetheless all good things come to an end. Furthermore, improvements in energy efficiency can translate into higher foreign export earnings or domestic saving (in the form of resources-left-in-the-ground).

13. Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux (Peter Zeihan) from Stratfor (free article) – an interesting take on the rise of German power in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis – and the possible responses of its neighbors.

All this and more has happened. We saw the 2008-2009 financial crisis in Central Europe as particularly instructive. Despite their shared EU membership, the Western European members were quite reluctant to bail out their eastern partners. We became even more convinced that such inconsistencies would eventually doom the currency union, and that the euro’s eventual dissolution would take the European Union with it. Now, we’re not so sure. …

Back-of-the-envelope math indicates that in the past decade, Germany has gained roughly a 25 percent cost advantage over Club Med. … The implications of this are difficult to overstate. If the euro is essentially gutting the European — and again to a greater extent the Club Med — economic base, then Germany is achieving by stealth what it failed to achieve in the past thousand years of intra-European struggles. In essence, European states are borrowing money (mostly from Germany) in order to purchase imported goods (mostly from Germany) because their own workers cannot compete on price (mostly because of Germany). This is not limited to states actually within the eurozone, but also includes any state affiliated with the zone; the relative labor costs for most of the Central European states that have not even joined the euro yet have risen by even more during this same period.

It is not so much that STRATFOR now sees the euro as workable in the long run — we still don’t — it’s more that our assessment of the euro is shifting from the belief that it was a straightjacket for Germany to the belief that it is Germany’s springboard. In the first assessment, the euro would have broken as Germany was denied the right to chart its own destiny. Now, it might well break because Germany is becoming a bit too successful at charting its own destiny. And as it dawns on one European country after another that there was more to the euro than cheap credit, the ties that bind are almost certainly going to weaken.

14. Liberast & Russophobe watch.

• Mark Adomanis in epic blog fight with Barrett Brown.
• A Good Treaty on Ilya Yashin’s escapades.
• Clinically insane Russian “liberal” Yulia Latynina writes about Why Putin Isn’t Afraid of a Free Internet because unlike the industrious Chinese, “Vanya the tractor driver will never vote for a liberal opposition candidate [because] deep in his soul, he understands that he doesn’t deserve anything more in life than his beloved bottle of vodka”. And equally insane or ignorant Westerners wonder why most Russians despise their liberals… (h/t Carl Thomson).
• The Economist’s criminally awful Russia coverage – Mark Adomanis revelas the obvious, kind of like I did with Paul Goble recently. Still, Mark Ames’ The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine remains the defining pinnacle of the Economist-bashing genre.

15. Odds and Ends.

• Greg Palast on the dispossession of New Orleans by the connected rich (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Whoever says corruption and social injustice are limited to Third World countries and Russia?
• Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 – China hits back at Western cultural imperialism and double standards! As for Russia, it “indignantly dismissed U.S. criticism of its human rights record on Friday, saying the United States was guilty of its own abuses from Afghanistan to “the streets of America”.” Really, I’ve no idea why the State Department insists on bringing out these ridiculous human rights assessments. Nobody likes being lectured, least of all by a black pot.
• Some anti-healthcare bill protesters are racists, thugs.
• La Russie n’a pas à rougir de son passé – “Russia doesn’t have to be ashamed of its past”, a (very rare) “Russophile” article from the French media (Le Figaro in this case). I particularly liked one comment, “Cet article peut nuire a la santé de A.Glucksman…” (“this article may hurt the health of A. Glucksmann” [a famous Russophobe, in fact the denizens of inoSMI.ru have designed a "Russophobe scale" in which a "Gluck" (глюк) is the basic unit!]). (h/t Alexandre Latsa)
• Obama Derangement Syndrom – Republicans are the Party of Stupid: 67% believe Obama is a socialist, 57% a Muslim, 45% a non-US citizen, and 24% the Anti-Christ.
• All the ‘Nuance’ That’s Fit to Print – The New York Times relaxes taboos about Nazi Germany. Probably a natural development as the Holocaust fades from first-hand memory to history.
• Report: Current Knesset most racist of all time
• A lot of fuss about Russian Blackjack bombers invading Scotland. NATO “buzzes” close to Russian airspace all the time too.
• Ukraine’s Yanukovich to repeal Bandera hero decree – about time!
• @ those losers who loved criticising Russia for its below-usual performance in the Winter Olympics because it is not a “a good global citizen” (whatever that is) - Russian Paralympians at Top With 38 Medals!
• A New Human Relative from the Siberian Mountains. (h/t Ali Novruzov)
• CIA, State Department Apparently Acting on Plan to Destroy Wikileaks (Barrett Brown) – I found him through his exchanges with Mark Adomanis. What do you think of this article?
• Russian propaganda poster in Washington Times about why Saakashvili is a madman. (h/t Dmitry Rogozin)
• Journal of Hate Studies founded. (h/t Ali Novruzov)
• Contrary to stereotypes, the Brits have pretty good teeth (best in Europe).
• US states ranked by “size”.

16. Happy Earth Hour Day! (Personally, I think it’s a ridiculous and meaningless gesture that does absolutely nothing except assuage the guilt feelings of green-washy liberals for fucking up the planet).

Sure, he might be a fact-challenged Russophobe propagandist who worked for the CIA, Radio Liberty, and “democracy-promoting” NGO’s. Yes, he has extensive professional links to the Baltic nations and Azerbaijan. True, he is essentially an agent of a latter-day Promethean Project, the interwar Polish strategy to preempt the reemergence of a Eurasian empire by stirring up ethnic separatism in the Soviet space, a project now pursued by Washington and its proxies. That is all understandable and commendable – he serves US geopolitical aims, and geopolitics is profoundly amoral, so what’s the problem? Why am I writing a hit piece on Paul Goble? Simple. The utter hypocrisy and double standards I encountered in his Jan 2010 ‘No Ordinary Year’ for Azerbaijan article, in which the guy who incessantly condemns Russia’s human rights, takes to advising Western countries to refrain from reprimanding authoritarian Azerbaijan because the “level of anger about such criticism is so great” that it could lead to a “rebalancing of Azerbaijan’s foreign policy away from the West”. Or translated from quackademic neocon-speak into English, “They might be bastards – though nowhere near as bastardly as the Russians, I mean they even pay me my salary!, – but they are our bastards!”

Ali Novruzov, an Azeri human rights blogger, condemns this duplicity, characterizing Goble’s viewpoint as: “Don’t criticize Azerbaijan, no matter how many Emins and Adnans are beaten and jailed, how many grams of heroin are found in shoes of Eynulla Fatullayev, how many villages like Benaniyar is ransacked by government militia and its residents detained en mass, shut up you, Amnesty International and State Department, otherwise Azerbaijan will get angry, turn away from you and befriend Russia”.

He certainly has reason to be concerned. Even Freedom House, a “democracy measuring” organization that gives freedom cookies for being friendly with the US (bonus points if you have oil) and takes them away for being “anti-Western”, rates Azerbaijan as “unfree”, on the same level as despised Russia. Given that Azerbaijan hits the Full House in that it is 1) relatively pro-Western, 2) oil-rich, and 3) nestled in a crucial geopolitical region, there is cause to suspect that it would perform a lot worse on any objective analysis of political freedoms. We don’t even have to suspect this, we can just head over to Polity IV, – a vast research project that attempts to quantify levels of democratization in different countries since World War 2 – and observe that Azerbaijan scored -7 in 2008, on a scale from -10 to 10. This makes it a formal “autocracy”, the same as China (-6) or Iran (-7), – and far worse than its neighbors Russia (5), Armenia (5) or Georgia (6). No wonder, since unlike in Russia there is not even the simulacrum of political competition, and the Presidency is passed down along hereditary lines.

However, as alluded to at the beginning, hypocrisy, double standards, and Western chauvinism aren’t Goble’s only talents – they’re just the ones that roused my ire enough to write this piece. The fact of the matter is that article after article, Goble demonstrates the most fact-challenged, non-sequiturial, inane claptrap – and manages to get himself cited and listened to by major institutions which determine Western policy towards the region. Debunking his drivel is thus in any case long overdue.

1. Let’s start with this article (October 2008) on how the financial crisis was supposed to “compound” Russia’s demographic decline. It conveniently illustrates Goble’s OM – seek out the most sensational (and wrong) opinions in the Russian language media and reproduce them in his articles. By adding his label/name to them, they become citable to the rest of the Cold Warrior clique and even some respectable institutions that are ignorant of Goble’s incompetence and bias.

The financial crisis in the Russian Federation has pushed up the already high rates of mortality from heart and circulatory diseases there to third world levels, according to medical experts.

This sentence is wrong on so many levels. First, in Third World countries, mortality from heart/circulatory diseases is typically LOWER than in industrialized nations (since there are few older people and the population continues dying from infectious diseases, particularly amongst younger ages). Second, Russia has had one of the world’s highest levels of mortality from heart/circulatory diseases SINCE AT LEAST the 1980’s – it is NOT a recent development, as implied by Goble! Third, how the financial crisis figured into this I have absolutely no idea, since it only began to affect most Russians in October (the same month Goble’s article was written), and at which time the latest Russian demographic statistics only covered AUGUST 2008!

Yevgeny Chazov, one of Russia’s senior specialists on heart disease, told a Duma hearing that as a result of the difficult psycho-social circumstances and stresses from instability in the country, 1.3 million people – 56 percent of the total number of deaths there – now die from heart disease.

As has been the case FOR THE PAST 60 YEARS – i.e., a pattern of mortality heavily tilted towards heart disease – ever since the epidemiological revolution from 1930-50. And instability has been a feature of Russian life for the PAST 20 YEARS. Chazov was misquoted, or is a dummy; Goble, in any case, is certainly a dummy.

But if many speakers blamed the financial crisis or personal behavioral choices like smoking or alcohol consumption, one, Aleksandr Baranov, the vice president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, was prepared to blame the Russian government. Medical science knows how to lower mortality, he said, but we haven received an order from the powers that be.

There is a lot of investment in newly-equipped hospitals and clinics since 2007, and positive results are already showing. The current situation is far better than under Yeltsin or the early Putin years, when healthcare and social spending in general were cut and neglected, back when Russia’s robber barons wallowed in their ill-begotten billions with Western connivance. Baranov either lives under a rock, or wants to score rhetorical points. The financial crisis is irrelevant. Excessive alcohol consumption is what  causes 1/3 of all Russia’s deaths. Reducing it is should be by far the #1 priority of any harm reduction strategy for Russia, and the “powers that be” have indeed recognized this and launched an anti-alcohol campaign. Nor surprisingly, Goble fails to mention any of this.

Finally, and most importantly, REAL LIFE HAS PROVED GOBLE TOTALLY, 200% WRONG. Contrary to the vision of demographic doom he peddled, deaths from cardio-vascular disease fell by 4.6% in 2009. Furthermore, RUSSIA SAW ITS FIRST POPULATION INCREASE IN 15 YEARS! And Goble’s predictable response to his utter failure at prediction?… “Russia’s Population Stabilization Only Temporary“.

2. Now let’s move on to the more general theme of Goble’s thesis on Russia – as an imperialistic country in rapid decline (demographic, cultural, etc), afflicted by an imminent, sub-Saharan scale AIDS epidemic, it will break up along its ethnic faultlines (Tatars, Bashkirs, Finno-Ugric peoples, Caucasians) and become majority Muslim by 2050. For instance, see a 2006 briefing he gave to Radio Liberty, which they summarized thus:

But Russia’s Muslims are bucking that trend. The fertility rate for Tatars living in Moscow, for example, is six children per woman, Goble said, while the Chechen and Ingush communities are averaging 10 children per woman. And hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been flocking to Russia in search of work. Since 1989, Russia’s Muslim population has increased by 40 percent to about 25 million. By 2015, Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s conscript army, and by 2020 a fifth of the population. “If nothing changes, in 30 years people of Muslim descent will definitely outnumber ethnic Russians,” Goble said.

Goble’s comments to RFERL made their way into the wider commentariat in 2006-07, such as this article in SFGate, Daniel Pipes, and certain plain demented Russophobe bloggers.

Unfortunately for Russophobes, Islamophobes, and Islamists alike (quite an adorable grouping, isn’t it?!), Goble’s projections are complete twaddle. In 2005, the year before Goble started spouting off about Russia’s Islamification, the homeland of Russia’s Tatars, Tatarstan (1.26), had a LOWER total fertility rate than the Russian average (1.29)! Where did Goble get the figure of 6 women per children amongst Tatar women in Moscow? Stormfront Russia?!

Likewise, the figure of 10 children per women amongst Muscovite Ingush and Chechen women is risible and should be laughed off by anyone with the smallest knowledge of demographic history. Not only did Ingushetia (1.56) and Chechnya (2.91) themselves have far lower figures in 2005, a total fertility rate of 10 children per woman HASN’T BEEN OBSERVED IN PRACTICALLY ANY COMMUNITY, EVER!! (Even in PRE-INDUSTRIAL times, the fertility rate typically flunctuated between 4-8 children per woman, depending on factors like urbanization and food affordability. The idea that it could be 10, or anyone near that number, in a modern metropolis, is ludicrous in the extreme).

As for the Muslim-takeover-by-2050ish claim, this is the usual bogus fallacy of linear extrapolation of the worst-case trends with total, cavalier disregard for positive trends (e.g., the convergence of ethnic Russian and Muslim fertility rates) and current day facts (e.g., that ethnic Russians still make up nearly 80% of the population, WHEREAS ONLY 4-6% OF THE POPULATION CONSIDER THEMSELVES TO BE MUSLIMS in opinion polls; that the fertility rates of the biggest Muslim ethnicities, Tatars and Bashkirs, is little different from the national average; and that Russia’s Muslims are far less religious than their counterparts in the Middle East and Western Europe alike).

In fact, sometimes I wonder if Goble really works for the CIA/Azerbaijan, or Russian Slavophile nationalists. He is certainly willing to cite the propaganda of the latter when it suits his purposes.

3. Now what about the imminent AIDS apocalypse, that will further decimate the ranks of Russia’s vodka-swilling, impotent hordes, making them too sick and too few to prevent Russia from disintegrating “into as many as 30 pieces by the middle of this century” (March 2009)? In his ominous-sounding article February 2009 article Russia’s HIV/AIDS Epidemic Enters New and More Dangerous Phase, Goble wrote:

In his briefing yesterday, Onishchenko did not provide much context for the numbers he reported. But in an interview with “Nauka i zhizn’,” Boris Denisov, a demographer at Moscow State University, suggested that figures like those Onishchenko provides are more disturbing than the public health chief in fact suggested (www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/15097/). …

The Moscow State researcher pointed to three aspects of the situation which suggest Russia has reached the tipping point regarding HIV/AIDS and that the epidemic is likely to result in an increasingly large number of deaths, something that will have a serious impact on the over-all demographic picture of that country.

First and foremost, 63 percent of the new cases in the Russian Federation last year were the result of sexual contact rather than intravenous drug use, a pattern that means the disease has now passed into the general population where it may spread more slowly but could potentially touch far more people and where an increasing share of its victims will be women.

This Eurasia “expert” can’t even copy from his Russian sources correctly. If you look at the source Goble cites, what Denisov actually said was that 63% of new FEMALE infections came from sexual contact in 2007, whereas 34% of OVERALL new infections came from heterosexual contact. If he’s so wrong on such basic facts, why should we have to listen to anything he says on Russia’s AIDS problem?

4. And it goes on and on. One of his most amusing/ridiculous articles was about how Putin was starving his miserable subjects (December 2009):

After seeing an improvement in caloric consumption since the 1990s, Russians are again consuming an average of only 2550 calories a day, an amount comparable to the amount provided by the diet given German POWs in Soviet camps at the end of 1941 and one that casts a shadow on that country’s demographic future. …

“According to the estimates of international experts,” the Russian leader said in striking language, “if the population goes hungry for two or more generations, a situation that in fact is quite characteristic for a large group of countries, then processes of physiological and intellectual degradation at the genetic level arise.”

What a load of claptrap even by Goble’s dismal standards. First, the recommended caloric intake for not very active adult men is around 2500 and around 2000 for adult women. Averaging it and taking into account children and the elderly, and the optimal for a nation where most people do office jobs is around 2100-2200 calories. In this respect Russia is far better off at its quoted 2550 calories, than the US is at 3700.

This is not to deny that there are problems. During crisis-wracked 2009, some 10% of Russians had difficulty buying food – slightly up from 9% in 2008, but massively down from the glorious prosperity of 1998-99, when some 36% of Russians could barely afford this privilege. (Incidentally, in the “free” Ukraine of 2009, the hungry indigent made up 35% of the population – i.e., the same as Russia ten years ago!).

But it gets worse. I simply have no words to describe the sheer inanity of the comparison between 2009 Russia and 1941 German POW’s. Really – how the fuck can he even take himself seriously after writing shit like this? Unless he means to say that during the 1990′s, when Russia’s economic policies were directed by a neoliberal cabal from Washington and many people really did go hungry, Yeltsin’s government treated Russians worse than Stalin treated soldiers who were fighting a war of extermination against Russians. So is Goble also a crypto-Stalinist, or just an asinine idiot?

(Not that Medvedev is the sharpest tool in the box either, if he actually spewed that insane drivel about genetic degradation. Since most of humanity has spent 99.9%+ of its entire history at near-subsistence levels of food consumption, why the hell isn’t everyone intellectually degraded like Goble or Medvedev?)

And the same shit goes on and on, Goble’s never-ending Groundhog Den’. All of Russia’s negatives are made apocalyptic, all its positives made into negatives.

Two examples of the latter. Take his befuddling assertion that the “Russian Federation will be more profoundly and negatively affected by global warming over the next 40 years than will any other country”. Come again? Sure the melting of Siberian permafrost might collapse a few buildings and fuck up some gas pipelines, but ALL serious analyses of global warming suggest that Russia will suffer FAR LESS than almost all other nations in a warmer world, and may even make big bank under moderate warming as its agriculture expands into Siberia, new energy and mineral deposits become accessible, and the Arctic becomes the world’s major trade region.

Second example. Medvedev declared a need for modernization and more accountability, and guess what – Russia is therefore a failing, decrepit state about to embark on perestroika 2.0! Ok, if you want (superficial) historical comparisons for Putvedev’s Russia, you could justify making it with Stolypin’s reforms, with Peter the Great’s “revolution from above”, even with the “Great Break” of 1929 if you’re feeling really bold and unafraid of being accused of reducing everything in Russian politics to Stalin. But the late 1980′s = today = WTF? Back then, the Soviet state truly was in a profound state of “imperial overstretch”, its citizens were disillusioned, and its mounting fiscal obligations were outrunning the resources and foreign currency at its disposal. Today’s Russia is a confident, rising Power, its elites are united, and a firm and consistent majority of Russians uphold the Putin system of illiberal statism (and if anything the main complaint you will hear from them is not that there is too much illiberality and statism, but too little!). Given such a tectonic shift in the very foundations of the Russian state during the past two decades, such vapid analogizing is superficial in the extreme, and indicative of an ideological decrepitude amongst the neocons that is every bit as profound as the one which afflicted the late Soviet Union.

So what is Goble’s game? He seems to be genuine in his bizarre beliefs – for instance, in an interview shortly after the 2008 South Ossetia War, he stated that Russia’s “illegal” violation of Georgia’s borders is “not in the interest of continued existence of the Russian Federation”, which will lead to “a more authoritarian and hence a more unstable and poor Russia in the future”. (Of course, how letting regional upstarts like Saakashvili rip off chunks from Russia’s southern underbelly would HELP the continued existence of the Russian Federation is not at all clear). Nonetheless, this kind of analysis seems highly favored by the lowest common denominator in the Russia-watching world – Paul Goble is, at least according to the number of tags assigned to him (“43 topics” at the time of this article’s writing), is the most popular outside authority at the infamous hate blog La Russophobe. He is also highly regarded at his former place of employment, the corrupt Radio Liberty.

Why? All these institutions are, in some way, and whether they realize it or not, pursuing a script first written in 1918 Poland – the Promethean Project to permanently break Russia’s Sisyphean Loop and forever forestall its reemergence as an empire. What few of them realize is that 1) they are utterly ineffectual in this endevour, and 2) their overt Russophobia, and close association with Russia’s “liberal” West-worshiping ass-lickers, ACTUALLY REINFORCES THE VERY SIEGE MENTALITY that the Kremlin shares with ordinary Russians, and which it MAY (or may not) eventually exploit to “regather” the Russian lands. In other words, the lies and double standards espoused by people like Goble strengthen the very same “retrogressive” tendencies in Russia that they profess to loathe.