Every so often there appear claims, not only in the Western press but the Russian one, that (rising but overpopulated) China is destined to fight an (ailing and creaking) Russia for possession of its resources in the Far East*. For reasons that should be obvious, this is almost completely implausible for the next few decades. But let’s spell them out nonetheless.

1. China regards India, Japan, and above all the USA as its prime potential enemies. This is tied in to its three geopolitical goals: (1) keep the country together and under CCP hegemony – an enterprise most threatened by its adversaries stirring up ethnic nationalism (India – Tibetans, Turkey – Uyghurs) or buying the loyalties of the seaboard commercial elites (Japan, USA), (2) returning Taiwan into the fold and (3) acquiring hegemony over the South China Sea and ensuring the security of the sea routes supplying it with natural resources. The major obstacles to the latter two are the “dangerous democracies” of Japan and India, with the US hovering in the background. In contrast, the northern border is considered secure, and more generally, Russia and Central Asia are seen as sources of natural resource supplies that are more secure than the oceanic routes.

2. But let’s ignore all that. It’s true that in a purely conventional war, it is now very likely that Russia will not be able to defend its Far East possessions thanks to China’s (mostly complete) qualitative equalization, (very substantial) quantitative superiority, and (huge) positional advantage. Short of the US and Japan interfering – which is unlikely, if not impossible if Russia were to make big concessions (e.g. on Kuriles ownership, rights to the Siberian resource base) – defeat and occupation are assured. BUT…

This ignores the all-important nuclear dimension. In the wake of post-Soviet demilitarization, it has become clear that any war with either NATO or China would likely end up going nuclear. The official military doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons against other nuclear powers in defense against conventional attack; post-Soviet military exercises explicitly model usage of tactical nukes to blunt enemy spearheads as Russian military formations beat a scorched-earth retreat. Though the quantity of Russia’s tactical nukes is now substantially smaller than their 16,000 peak, there are still probably thousands of them remaining (unlike strategic platforms these are not subject to inspection and verification procedures), and it’s difficult to see how a Chinese invasion could effectively counter them.

(But why would the Russians use nukes on their own territory, one might ask? The Russian Far East is very lightly populated, and in any case air bursts – which is presumably what they’ll be using against the enemy divisions – produce little radioactive fallout).

3. Aleksandr Khramchikhin goes on to argue that:

… Unfortunately, nuclear weapons don’t guarantee salvation either, since China also has them. Yes, at the time we have superiority in strategic forces, but it’s rapidly diminishing. Furthermore we don’t have medium range missiles, but China has them, which almost makes null their inferiority in ICBM’s… What concerns a strategic nuclear exchange, then the Chinese potential is more than enough to destroy the main cities of European Russia, which they don’t need anyway (it has a lot of people and few resources). There’s a strong argument to be made that, understanding this, the Kremlin will not use nuclear weapons. Therefore nuclear deterrenece with respect to China is a complete myth.

This is wrong on most points:

(A) As far as is known, China maintains a position of limited deterrence, its nuclear forces being constantly modernized but remaining small in comparison with those of the US and Russia (this may or may not change in the future). The big post-Soviet decline in Russia’s arsenal has largely run itself out and on recent trends is unlikely to resume. This shouldn’t be surprising, since Russia no doubt realizes that it is precisely its nuclear forces that do most to guarantee its current day security.

(B) Apart from the fact that China’s medium-range rocket forces still can’t reach deep into European Russia, even accounting for them it is still very much inferior to Russia: “In July 2010 the Russian strategic forces were estimated to have 605 strategic delivery platforms, which can carry up to 2667 nuclear warheads.” As of 2010, China is estimated to have (non-MIRVed) 90 intercontinental ballistic missiles (i.e. can reach European Russian cities) and a few hundreds of medium and short range ballistic missiles. The latter will comprehensively devastate the populated regions of the Russian Far East, and to a lesser extent east of the Urals, but these aren’t core Russian territories and have relatively small concentrations of population and industry. In any case, if anything these are likely to be used not against Siberian cities, but against Russian military and strategic objects.

(C) One must also include ballistic missile defense, civil defense and geography into the equation. Though China has more S-300 type missile systems and has recently demonstrated an ability to shoot down ballistic missiles in controlled tests, there is little doubt that Russia is still ahead in this sphere. The S-400 now replacing the S-300 has intrinsic anti-ICBM capabilities, and the A-135 system around Moscow – with its nuclear-tipped interceptor missiles – makes it better than even odds that the capital would survive intact.

Both China and Russia have substantial civil defense measures. The USSR in 1986 had shelter space for around 11.2% of its urban population, according to CIA estimates. As of 2001, it was estimated to be 50% in Moscow, and construction of bunkers continues. China too has a large-scale civil defense plan of building bunkers in its larger cities.

At first glance, it would appear that geography-wise, China has an advantage in its huge population, large size, and greater rural population as a percentage of the whole. In contrast, Russia’s population is largely urban, and seemingly more vulnerable. This however is misleading. Most of China’s population, fertile land and industry is concentrated on its eastern seaboard and along its great river valleys. Agricultural productivity will plummet in the years following a large-scale exchange, resulting in famine, and as so often in Chinese history, perhaps anarchy and the end of political dynasties – in this case the CCP. Even if the Russian Far East is “won” in time, it is unlikely that it could alleviate the suddenly critical population pressures, for building up the infrastructure for mass human accommodation in that cold, barren and mountainous will take decades. Since Russian agriculture happens over a greater area, is less intensive / reliant on machinery and fertilizer inputs, and generates a substantial export surplus in most year, it isn’t as likely as China to dip into all out famine.

(D) As things stand, the real result of a nuclear war between Russia and China would be (1) a crippled Russia with 20-30mn fewer people, with many tens of millions more at the edge of subsistence, shorn of its Far East territories, but with an intact state still endowed with a nuclear deterrent, and (2) a collapsed and c.90% deindustrialized China rapidly descending into mass famine and anarchy and knocked out of the Great Power game for the foreseeable future. Two tragic, but nonetheless distinguishable, postwar environments, as Herman Kahn would have said.

4. Obviously Chinese strategists comprehend these arguments, and as such cannot have any serious medium-term designs on Russian territory. This is not the case for Taiwan and the South China Sea, where Chinese interests are greater, and don’t fundamentally infringe on US security to the extent that it will contemplate using its far superior nuclear arsenal against China, as that would risk Los Angeles and San Francisco and a dozen other cities on the West Coast getting annihilated. This fulfills the main purpose of China’s long-range “minimal deterrence” strategy.

5. The strategic balance isn’t fixed in stone, and future developments may make the situation more precarious by 2030-50: (1) The development of truly effective ABM systems, (2) growing sustanance pressures in China due to climate change and the depletion of coal reserves, and (3) the opening of the Russian Far East and Siberian interiors to intensive settlement thanks to global warming. But this remains speculation, and the facts are that since both Chinese and Russians are more or less rational actors, the chances of large-scale war between them in the next few decades is very close to zero – no matter what the sensationalists claim.

* Their other major claim is that Russia is already facing a “demographic invasion” and that Siberia is rapidly becoming Chinese. This is completely wrong, as I’ve pointed out in my old post on The Myth of the Yellow Peril.

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.

2. Some Westerners like to condemn Russians for their ambivalence towards Stalin, since he killed far more Russians than Hitler! (This is a constant theme of anti-Stalin* and general Russophobe propaganda). Quite apart from this being simply wrong according to all objective estimates, Russians themselves say they suffered far more under four years of the Nazi assault than twenty plus years of Stalinism.

According to polls, 50% had a close relative die in the Great Patriotic War (33% – injured, 16% – missing in action). Only 14% say that nothing particularly bad happened to a close relative during the war. These answers are in line with the statistics on wartime demographic losses – some 27mn Soviet citizens died in that war (13mn Russian), of them 8.7mn soldiers (5.8mn Russian). In contrast, in response to the question, “Did anyone in your family suffer from the repressions shortly before or after the war?”, 22% of Russians said “yes”, while 63% said “no”. (Furthermore note that “suffer” does not imply death, since contrary to the popular anti-Soviet mythology most Gulag inmates survived).

* And before some fanatical ideologue comes out with the cheap “You’re a filthy Stalinist!” card, I would note that it is quite possible to condemn Stalin on the basis of his real crimes, without resorting to neo-Goebbelsian propaganda about “62 million victims of Communism” or “Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler”. If anything such rhetoric actually encourages the rehabilitation of Stalinism.

3. Related: The illiberalism of anti-Putinism (Mark Adomanis). Now make no mistake – as of now, I think he is one of the best, if not the best, “popular” Anglophone bloggers on Russian politics. Of course, I don’t agree with everything he writes, sometimes quite forcefully. Such as the following:

In short, if you’re willing to believe that, by virtue of opposing Putin, Russian communists aren’textremely nasty and scary people, you’re the sort of person who will believe anything.

Myself, I find it arrogant, narrow-minded, and frankly presumptuous to label a major stratum of a population as “extremely nasty and scary”. As another commentator pointed out, this is very similar to the rhetoric of the Russian “liberals” whom Mark attacks as conceited and illiberal. But instead of hearing it from me, feel free to go to the discussion in question and make you own conclusion.

4. The Return of the Reich watch. Carrying on from Sublime News #6, more from Stratfor on how Germany is becoming a “normal country” and unsettling traditional European arrangements in the process. First, Germany is no longer willing to underwrite EU stability, i.e. see the punitive terms of the bailout offered to Greece. Down the road, this might result in acrimony over the Common Agricultural Policy (benefiting France and the new Visegrad members) and the UK rebate, since a resurgent Germany is unlikely to want to pay for them as before. Second, the traditional Bismarckian policy of Germany is to “make a good treaty with Russia”; together with Nord Stream, this should increase the distance between Germany and Poland. A future consequence may be to reinforce the Visegrad-US relationship at the expense of EU integration.

Timothy Garton Ash has a quite brilliant historical overview in Berlin has cut the motor, but now Europe is stalled which I can’t help but quote in extenso:

On Saturday Helmut Kohl, the “chancellor of German unity“, will turn 80. To mark the occasion the chancellor, Angela Merkel, and many others in Germany will deliver nice tributes to old king Kohl; yet his country’s current approach to Europe, and especially to the embattled eurozone, risks dismantling his European legacy. If you ask why the European project is faltering today, one of the main reasons is that the German motor has stalled. And if you ask why that has happened, the short answer is: because Germany has become a “normal” nation, like France and Britain. Assuming, that is, anyone in their right mind would call us normal.

In the steps of his mentor, Konrad Adenauer, Kohl tirelessly insisted that German and European unity were “two sides of the same coin”. That coin eventually became the euro. Kohl, like most of his predecessors, was committed to European integration for two reasons: because, out of personal wartime experience, he believed in it; and because he understood that it served the German national interest. Only by reassuring Germany’s neighbours that Germany had changed, and was utterly devoted to integrating itself into Europe, could the Germans hope to achieve their national goal: the reunification of Germany in peace and freedom. It worked. When the chance came, unexpectedly, in 1989, Kohl seized it with both hands – and all Europe has benefited. We could not have a Europe whole and free without a Germany whole and free in its centre. …

Had he been chancellor today, Kohl’s response would surely have been to take the next step: putting the long-term politics of European unity before the short-term cost, but also moving towards a stronger fiscal, and by extension political, union. In the meantime, however, this has become a different Germany. Until unification, Germany wanted to be super-European, for reasons of personal memory, idealism and historical responsibility; but it also needed to be, in its own national interest. After unification, at last a fully independent, sovereign country, it no longer needed to be. Everything would now depend on the inner power of wanting.

Students of Germany then watched with interest to see if it would continue the exceptional European commitment of the Adenauer-to-Kohl Federal Republic. Or would it become a more “normal” nation state, like France and Britain, pursuing its own national interests, through European channels for choice, but on its own account, even at the expense of others, when it considered that necessary? The special relationship it developed with Russia, including the bilateral securing of its energy needs, gave a clear indication which way post-unification Germany was leaning. Now its response to the first historic crisis of the eurozone makes the conclusion definite.

Some critics blame Merkel personally for this. The former foreign ministerJoschka Fischer quips that the one-time Ms Europe seems to have become Frau Germania. Indeed, this cautious, consensus-building “chancellor of the centre” does not have the strategic boldness of an Adenauer or a Kohl; but even a bolder leader could only go so far against the grain of domestic opinion. And from the shrieking headlines of the tabloid Bild newspaper to the costive judgments of the German constitutional court it is plain that the Germans are not prepared to make any more sacrifices for the sake of “Europe”. For preference, they would probably rather have the D-mark back. Or, failing that, a right, tight little north European “nordo” (or perhaps “neuro”), leaving the feckless south Europeans to cope with a weaker “sudo” (or “pseudo” – hat-tip to the former Barclays boss Martin Taylor for this coinage). The economic ramifications are complex and uncertain, but this spring may yet be seen as the beginning of the end of the eurozone – that final, most daring step of postwar German Europeanism. …

So instead of complaining I note this final irony. Twenty years ago Eurosceptic British Conservatives shrieked with alarm at the prospect of a united Germany imposing a federal European superstate upon us. Some even cried: “A Fourth Reich!” Today, as Eurosceptic British Conservatives edge back towards power, we can see that the unintended result of German unification has actually been the emergence of a more British Europe: dramatically enlarged to the east, inter-governmental rather than federal, with Germany too calmly pursuing its own national interests in its own national way, like Britain and France. Come to think of it, Margaret Thatcher is the one who should be posting a message of thanks on Kohl’s 80th birthday website. Whether the old man would appreciate it is another question.

5. Lou Grinzo of Cost of Energy offers a useful graph summarizing the estimated cost / effectiveness ratios of various geoengineering options.

See also Hacking the planet: who decides?

6. Energy & climate blast.

• Copper Peak (Jean Laherrère) projected at c. 2020. (Gold peaked in 2000).

• James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change - ”Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.” Welcome to the ecotechnic dictatorship! (But really, kudos to Lovelock for having the balls to state this obvious but unpalatable fact).
• How Close will the U.K. Come to Running Out of Natural Gas in Storage this Spring? Britain’s minimum natural gas storage levels have seen a steady pattern of decline since 2005, in large part due to the depletion of its indigenous gas sources. Soon there will have to be additional LNG and Russian gas imports to prevent Britain from freezing during late winter. See also Power crunch looms for Britain. It is important to note that the UK is not only one of the most fiscally overstretched European nations (10%+ budget deficits for the next two years assuming reasonable growth), but also has one of the most precaurious energy situations.
• Riddles in the Dark (John Michael Greer)
• Our Future and the End of the Oil Age: Building Resilience in a Resource-Constrained World – a presentation by Dmitry Orlov.
• It’s STILL the coal, stupid (Lou Grinzo), or in other words, the brouhaha over Obama’s loosening of restrictions on offshore oil drilling is somewhat misplaced.
• The Copenhagen Accord at Three Months: 110 Countries Now Support a New Global Effort to Achieve Climate Safety. With interactive map.
• Koch Industries’ diabolical 20-year campaign to discredit AGW.
• Climate-row professor Phil Jones cleared of charges as anyone familiar with the situation would have expected from a neutral jury (note the hysterical denier rage in the comments). See the detailed write-up by Climate Progress.

7. Pavel Podvig writes on the New START treaty in numbers. The main conclusion is that the reductions are in fact very modest. See reproduced table below.

Russia

The United States (UPDATED 02/29/10)

8. Military blast.

• All Raucous On Cyber War Front
• China buys air defense systems from Russia. Some 15 S-300 batteries for around 2bn $. This sale isn’t detrimental to Russia, since 1) the Chinese already have a similar system in the HQ-9 “adapted” from stolen Russian and American data anyway, and 2) Moscow has the S-400 with incipient anti-ballistic missile capabilities and is developing the S-500 which is supposed to be a full-fledged ABM system.
• China’s DF-21 “carrier killer” ballistic missile and US plans to defend against it.
• F-16 Beats The F-35 – Romania to get 48 F-16C’s over 4.5bn $ by 2020.
• Russia’s fifth-generation tank the T-95 may be outed in 2010.
• RAF jets intercepted Russian bombers flying in British airspace, an increasingly frequent occurrence. AFAIK this is a two-way game – Russians too have complained of NATO aircraft violating their airspace.
• Dam Busting Russian Bombers At Work – apparently Russia uses bombers to blow away ice dams to prevent flooding. Cute.
• Russia begins constructing the 4th Borei submarine.

9. It appears the emerging consensus on the sinking of the South Korean corvette is that it detonated an old North Korean mine, though the hostile torpedo theory isn’t ruled out. Things may become clearer in a month once the ship is recovered and analyzed. Meanwhile, many rumors indicate that the hermit kingdom is now suffering from severe turbulence in the wake of the failed currency reforms.

One of the more damaging stories to spread through North Korea recently was the one about the several billion dollars Kim Jong Il has stashed in foreign banks. Bank secrecy laws in Europe, particularly Switzerland, have been under attack by major world economic powers, and it’s been getting harder to keep money hidden. The fact that Dear Leader Kim has billions stashed overseas, while millions go hungry in North Korea, is not very good PR.

An increasing unstable, and perhaps dangerous, situation. But at least they’ve finally completed Pyongyang’s first skyscraper after 23 years.

10. Serbians say sorry for 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Serbia’s parliament has apologised for the Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 but stopped short of calling the killings genocide, after a debate showed deep divisions over the country’s role during the Balkans conflict.

A document put forward by Belgrade’s ruling coalition of democrats and socialists condemning “the crime” and apologising that “not all was done to prevent this tragedy” was narrowly carried as Serbia continued its bid to become a member of the EU and attract business investors. …

They denied western accusations of mass executions and one, Slobodan Samardzic, warned: “Serbia will sign its own guilt with this declaration.” Another, Velimir Ilic, said that in Srebrenica, “the crime was no greater than in other places”, citing Croatian moves against Serbs.

Why should Serbia apologize for the Bosnian Serbs who were clearly not even under its control? Why apologize for it at all when doing so implies taking responsibility for genocide? I can’t believe the Serbs are naive or stupid enough to do it out of altruism, so clearly short-sighted economic reasons connected to EU membership are the cause. And the funny thing is that this act of false contrition only got them more humiliation from the Europeans.

The European Union, which has been coaxing Serbia into a historical reckoning about its bloody role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, gave a cautious welcome Wednesday to a declaration by the Serbian Parliament that condemned the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica. But it warned that what amounted to reluctant, latter-day contrition about the worst massacre in Europe since World War II was insufficient if Serbia wanted closer ties with the bloc.

I would venture to guess that Germany wants an admission of genocide from Serbia particularly badly. After all, it is weighted down by the unique guilt of the Holocaust, and getting another European nation – in particular the Serbs whom they tried to exterminate in WW2 – to explicitly admit to genocide would lessen the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust and help justify Germany returning to acting like a “normal nation” in the international sphere, as it is already beginning to do (see above).

11. Venezuela / “Rise of the Rest” watch. Putin will help us get nuclear power, says Chávez, causing Western chauvinists to squirm with indignation.

Russia has said that it will help Venezuela to set up its own space industry and develop nuclear energy, the Latin American country’s President announced yesterday. The two have also signed a new contract to exploit Venezuelan oil and are discussing a raft of further military and energy deals.

The deal will allow Moscow to entrench its foothold in Latin America through a deepening alliance with America’s main regional foe. As the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Caracas, Venezuela’s vocal, anti-imperialist leader, President Chávez, said that the allies were building “a new, multipolar world”. …

They discussed a range of military deals and a $2 billion (£1.3 billion) line of credit for weapons purchases secured by Mr Chávez during a visit to Moscow in September… Venezuela has spent more than $4 billion on Russian weaponry since 2005, including tanks, helicopters, Sukhoi fighters and the S300 anti- aircraft missile system. The deals helped Russia to oust the US as the No 1 arms supplier to Latin America. …

Mr Chavez took the opportunity of the anniversary of the Falklands war to demand the UK relinquish this “bastion of colonialism”, cheering: “Long live the Malvinas, they are Argentina’s”. He reiterated that Venezuela would stand beside Argentina in any war although he added “we don’t want conflict”.

A few comments. First, developing a nuclear industry would be highly beneficial for Venezuela. Though it theoretically has a lot of oil, most of it is unconventional heavy stuff locked up in the Orinoco belt that will probably never be exploited on a large scale because of the massive energy and water costs. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s current oil production is in slow decline. Second, Venezuelan arms acquisitions appear to be essentially defensive in nature, and perhaps partly aimed at buying off the conservative officer class. They certainly don’t constitute a real offensive threat to Colombia, whose terrain is unsuited for mobile armored warfare and is defended by a large, experienced army (not to mention 2,000 US troops).

Finally, one big, ongoing thing in Venezuela is the electricity crisis. This is due to a confluence of several factors: 1) a severe drought that has severely reduced water levels on the three dams that generate 70% of its electricity, – caused by this year’s El Nino and seen in China too, 2) the big rise in electricity demand during recent years, fueled by Venezuelans’ rising prosperity, while investment into the electricity-generating sector was slow to react. (Charmingly, one of the measures used to contain the crisis is to get soldiers to give out free energy-efficient light bulbs). This is all of course highly inconvenient for Chavez, but there is very little likelihood that it will topple him.

12. Interesting tidbit on Poland. In Sublime News 3, I referenced a discussion I had on Adomanis’ blog on Poland’s demographic and economic future. One of the major reasons for pessimism is that even if Polish fertility rates climb back up, labor demand from aging Western European states like Germany will only result in an accelerating exodus of young Polish workers, which will undermine any hopes of “convergence” to German levels of income. I disagreed with this:

I am not a big fan of the idea that West European labor shortages will prove an irresistible magnet to East-Central European laborers.

First, the economic disparity is no longer as big as it once was. Poland already has nearly 60% [AK edit: actually 52%] of Germany’s GDP per capita, and is more economically dynamic (because it is catching up). And Poland is one of the poorer Visegrad nations.

Second, migrants are drawn to economic dynamism – the highest inflows in the last ten years went to Britain, Ireland, Spain, etc, not Italy or Germany (which are demographically worse off). You say that Germany, Italy, etc will face labor shortages. But that assumes economic growth and growth of demand for labor can sustainably continue there. I think that assumption is questionable.

Why work in foreign nations who look down on you and where you pay a large chunk of your (stagnant) salary to support their elderly, when you can work in a still-growing Poland?

Article from March 22, 2010: Germans travel to Poland for work. “Unemployed Germans have begun travelling to Poland in search of jobs – in a dramatic reversal of the usual trend for immigrant workers.”

13. Russia watch. Detailed GDP stats revealed for 2010 (7.9% decline). In summary: agriculture 0%, extractive -3%, manufacturing -15%, construction -17%, retail -9%, finance 2% (!), government expenditures 2%. As shown in the graph below, the crisis essentially knocked Russia back to 2007.

Nonetheless, the emerging consensus is that it was a short-lived shock. Russia – Europe’s Bright Light of Growth. Not a headline you normally expect from CNBC, but with most commentators now predicting growth of 4-6% in 2010, there you go:

As the investment community gains confidence in the likelihood of a sustained economic rebound, Russia has emerged in far better shape than many other European markets. In fact, with low debt, inflation under control, a large consumer base primed to buy goods and services, and the price of oil recovering, Russia may well be the most dynamic place on the continent.

14. More on Eurasia.

• Russian Leader Meets Burjanadze: What is on Putin’s Mind? (Jamestown)
• Имя модернизации — социализм – Zyuganov, KPRF chief, on Medvedev’s modernization plans.
• Govt OKs Stalin Monument, Flirts With USSR 2 (Ukrainiana)

15. Ever wonder why Afghan insurgents love IED’s so much? The Weakness of Taliban Marksmanship…

16. Not often that I agree with Daniel Pipes, Iraq’s Cosmetic Election is an exception…

“It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq’s national elections.” So writes the Wall Street Journal editorial board today. I’m no cynic, but my mood about Iraq could variously be described as depressed, despairing, despondent, dejected, pessimistic, melancholic, and gloomy.

That’s because the Iraqi regime (along with those of Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority) is a kept institution that cannot survive without constant American support. As long as Washington pumps money and sacrifices lives to maintain the Baghdad government, the latter can hobble along. Remove those props and Iranian-backed Islamists soon take over.

17. Floatsam and Jetsam.

• Я “живущий в США российский экономист”.
• Check out Alexa Meade’s art. Normally, paintings try to imitate photography. Here, photography tries to imitate paintings!
• Google Shows How HTML5 Can Run Quake In The Browser.
• Krugman: GOP taken over by nutters.
• I Was Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch. “Pocket books called Stalags were practically the only pornography available in the conservative Israeli society of the early 1960s. Though it was claimed that the Stalags were translated from English, they were actually created and written by Israelis.”
• Briton recalls his risky view of Auschwitz horror
• The Sex Scholar: Decades before Kinsey, Stanford professor Clelia Mosher polled Victorian-era women on their bedroom behavior—then kept the startling results under wraps
• Pfizer ordered to pay up over ‘AIDS-like’ virus infections; creates dummy corporation to do it as to as not interrupt its relations with Medicare and Medicaid. Quoting a commentator, “Wow, I wish I could create a dummy corporation to take the rap for any illegal activity that I could get involved with.” (h/t eXiled Online)
• Welcome to Flatland! Way out of line…

18. Хрїстóсъ воскрéсе! Воистину воскресе! (My recommended Paschal reading: Three Versions of Judas by Jorge Luis Borges).