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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-324836132015-07-29T18:01:22.041-04:00The Diplomat of the Future"In the future there will be no diplomacy and no diplomats." Graf Nesselrode, 1859.Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-85575549424615678912015-07-28T20:08:00.000-04:002015-07-29T18:01:22.061-04:00PERSIAN AGREEMENT: WHAT TO MAKE OF IT?
"The Iran deal presented at Vienna is both weak and also far more dangerous than most observers had anticipated. Weak because it very evidently does not definitively meet its own objective of ensuring Iran won't be able to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities, and dangerous because in return for the temporary limitations set on Iran's nuclear programme, the regime and its conventional military capabilities will be profoundly emboldened.... Despite all of this, the Obama administration insists that the deal will be effective and that no better deal would have been attainable. To his critics, Obama accuses that if they favour war, then they should say so. But for years, the Obama administration insisted that all options were 'on the table' when it came to confronting Iran, and everyone understood this to be reference to possible military intervention. 'I don't bluff' insisted Obama when referring to the use of force in 2012. And yet more recently the President has made plain his belief that there is no realistic military solution to the Iranian threat, rather suggesting that he was indeed bluffing. Many suspected so at the time, not least the Iranians. And therein lies the problem. When it comes to the military option – an unpalatable prospect to be sure -there is an important role for the military deterrent. That doesn't mean that the West would have to use military force, but it would need to convince Iran that it was serious about doing so if need be. We shouldn't forget that the one time Iran appeared to voluntarily halt work on its nuclear programme was during the invasion of Iraq. Clearly the mullahs' thought there was a real likelihood that they could be next. The same is true of sanctions. During these negotiations, Obama consistently resisted congressional pressure to have new tougher sanctions ready in the event that Iran walked away from a deal that actually met the West's security objectives. The threat of yet more sanctions could well have given the negotiators the leverage for securing a deal that was actually robust enough to be taken seriously. If Iran knew that the West was prepared to stop at nothing to derail any attempts to go for the bomb, then regime might think twice, certainly if it thought its own hold on power would be jeopardised. But in reality, Tehran could see just how badly Obama needed to get a deal signed and they cashed in accordingly. The capitulationist agreement that emerged from Vienna is the result, and history will judge our leaders for not showing resolve and pushing for better."
 Tom Wilson, "There was a credible alternative to the Iran deal. Obama just chose to ignore it". The Spectator. 20 July 2015, in www.spectator.co.uk
"After so much wrangling — the false starts, constant setbacks and mutual suspicion — the nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers was always likely to disappoint. Many will say it has lived down to expectations. It should be applauded anyway. For one thing, there is a fair chance that history will take a kinder view. For another, the agreement must be measured against the more unpalatable alternatives. Benjamin Netanyahu will not agree. The Israeli prime minister's fulminations against the Tehran regime have grown louder and, it must be said, somewhat delusional. The other day, Mr Netanyahu said that Iran's goal "is to take over the world". Iran has been ruthless in promoting its Shia proxies as much of the Arab state system has fallen into collapse, but taking over the world? Mr Netanyahu's answer to Tehran's nuclear programme has long been to start another war.... Supporters of the agreement should not try to hide from its weaknesses. Even with a new, uniquely intrusive inspection regime, Tehran might still press ahead with a clandestine nuclear programme. Once sanctions are lifted, Iran will have access to tens of billions of frozen and new resources. It will pump more oil and buy technologies hitherto denied it. If it breaks its pledge to stick to a civilian nuclear programme, the so-called "snapback" provisions of the deal may struggle to reinstate effective sanctions. But then who could claim that sanctions have themselves been effective? As Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, has pointed out, economic isolation has not prevented Iran from increasing the number of uranium-spinning centrifuges from 200 to 20,000. By US calculations that leaves Tehran within three months of producing enough fissile material for a bomb. One of the purposes of the deal is to push that timeline out to a year."

Philip Stephens, "Three cheers for a flawed Iran deal". The Financial Times. 14 July 2015, in www.ft.com

 One does not have to be a ideological soulmate of Mr. Philip Stephens of the Financial Times, to feel that au fond, what he says apropos the Persian nuclear deal is indeed correct. The simple fact of the matter is, that from a historical vantage point, the time, if there ever was a time to engage in the va banque policy of 'regime-change' towards Persia was circa either 1992 or 2002. And a quick look at both dates shows how reluctant and unevenly such a policy would have played-out in the chancellories of the West. With as much if not more opposition to such a policy among both the Western publics and in International opinion in the rest of the world as was inspired by the Iraq adventure in 2003. And, even if such a policy were engaged in and nominally 'successful' what would have been the ultimate end-result?  The triumph of Western Democracy pluralism in Tehran? The mind reels at the thought. Infinitely more likely would have been a repeat, on a larger and grander scale of the debacle in Iraq. However, mere facts are not things that our neo-conservative ideologues and their political enablers in the USA and the UK were ever much concerned about. Faute de mieux, let us try: to engage in a policy of regime change, or conversely to employ force in order to destroy or retard Persia's nuclear programme, would be sheer and unadultered madness given the fact that currently almost the entire Near and Middle East, from Libya in the West to Iraq in the East is in flames and chaos as it undergoes assault by Sunni, religious fanatics of one sort or the other. Resulting in the absurdity that it is (in a strange and perverted fashion), Persia and its allies in the Lebanon and in Syria, who are the 'conservative' forces supporting the status quo ante. Favoring (albeit in an extremely limited fashion) pluralism of religion and sect. Accordingly, the agreement that the Americans and their allies have cobbled together with the regime of Mullahs in Persia, is as former high State Department official in the governments of Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger, Richard Haas noted recently, the very best that can be gotten at the present time given the overall situation in the Near & Middle East:
 "The net result is that the accord should lengthen the period it would take Iran to produce one or more nuclear weapons from several months to as much as a year, making it more likely that such an effort would be discovered in time. The prospect that the JCPOA could keep Iran without nuclear weapons for 15 years is its main attraction. Sanctions alone could not have accomplished this, and using military force would have entailed considerable risk with uncertain results. On the other hand (there always is another hand in diplomacy), the agreement permits Iran to keep far more nuclear-related capacity than it would need if it were interested only in civil research and in demonstrating a symbolic ability to enrich uranium. The agreement also provides Iran with extensive relief from economic sanctions, which will fuel the regime's ability to support dangerous proxies throughout the Middle East, back a sectarian government in Baghdad, and prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime" 1.

'Politics', as the greatest statesman of the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck once aptly put it, 'is the art of the possible'. The accord arrived at with the detestable regime of Mullahs in Persia is simply the very best that can be negotiated at the present time. And there is nothing to suggest that there were or are any levers: either economic or military which would have successfully resulted in Tehran agreeing to anything much better.

1. Richard Haas, "Living With the Iran Nuclear Deal". The Council on Foreign Relations. 14 July 2015, in www.cfr.org. See also with many of my own caveats, and reluctance, in the conservative, British periodical, the Spectator, in: Leader, "Iran can't be trusted: This is an awful plan, but it's the best option we've got". The Spectator. 18 July 2015, in www.spectator.co.uk. See also the following analysis by Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute:
"Without rehearsing its strengths and weaknesses, the most important feature is that Iran's nuclear programme will be limited and monitored such that, over the next two decades or so, any Iranian efforts to construct a nuclear weapon – whether in secret or in declared facilities – will not only be detected swiftly, but in ample time for the United States and its allies to craft a diplomatic and, if necessary, military response. Iran will be rewarded with sanctions relief only when it has imposed these restrictions and, if disputes arise, any of the E3+3 can - after an admittedly complex process of adjudication and arbitration - re-impose sanctions by notifying the UN Security Council".
 Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-1781220654176559312015-07-16T20:48:00.002-04:002015-07-16T20:50:04.010-04:00THE GREEK DEBACLE: A COMMENT
"Greece's ruling Syriza party erupted into rebellion and recriminations on Wednesday as prime minister Alexis Tsipras appealed for support for a new bailout deal that will heap more austerity measures on the country. In a sign of the tensions before a key parliamentary vote, radical leftist demonstrators opposed to further cuts hurled petrol bombs outside parliament and riot police used tear gas to disperse protesters, whose numbers had swelled to more than 10,000. Mr Tsipras was expected to prevail in the vote, scheduled for some time after midnight in Athens, with the help of opposition parties keen to grasp an €86bn bailout package to prevent Greece from crashing out of the eurozone. Still, the backlash from his own party could see more than 30 MPs rebel against their leader. Widening rifts within the leftwing, anti-austerity party also seem likely to force Mr Tsipras to reshuffle his cabinet to keep Syriza together in the aftermath of the vote. In a sign of the potential threats to the stability of the Greek government, more than half of Syriza's Central Committee signed a letter opposing the deal and slamming it as a "coup". Nadia Valavani, deputy finance minister, also resigned. "The solution imposed today in such a depressing way is not sustainable for the Greek people and for the country," Ms Valavani said in a letter sent to Mr Tsipras on Monday and made public on Wednesday. Addressing his unruly party, Mr Tsipras called on MPs to maintain unity given the gravity of the situation, and asked them what they would have done instead. "I exhausted all possibilities and looked at all the negotiating solutions. Tell me what is the credible alternative that I did not think and did not say?" he asked".

Christian Oliver and Henry Foy in Athens and Peter Spiegel, "Syriza splinters ahead of crucial vote on Greece bailout deal". The Financial Times. 15 July 2015, in www.ft.com

"I had a long conversation today with Mr Hudson on his return from Athens where he has been serving as first secretary to our Legation. He emphasised the extent to which the Government were replacing the efficient Venezelist officers and officials by incompetent Constantinist [sic] amateurs. He is afraid that if some action is not taken in the near future the whole executive machinery will be irremediably ruined, and complete disintegration will set in. His views merit attention in that he was the only one of our officials in Athens who consistently forecasted the present crisis. I venture to urge the following considerations: (1) The Greek people, rightly or wrongly, are under the impression that in the end we will come to their assistance. At our request they are maintaining eight divisions of 150,000 men in all in Anatolia at the cost of two million drachmae a day. For the last two months they have been doing this on their own resources in order to convince us of their good faith....They know that they cannot hold out much longer, and that we shall be forced to show our hand. They are confident of the result and they look to us to appear as the friend and Protector of Greece....But if we really intend to help Greece we can only do so by positive action, and all negative compromises merely afford the French and the Italians an occasion for overt or subterranean opposition. (3) By 'positive action' I mean something like the following: - send someone to Greece at once to get into touch with King Constantine and to inform him that we shall be prepared to afford him support under certain conditions.... (4) I fully realise that the above suggestion may appear drastic. My point is however that unless we do something drastic the situation will collapse of itself."

"Memorandum by Mr. Nicolson on the Greek situation". 8 January 1921. In Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939. First Series, Volume XVII: Greece and Turkey, January 1, 1921-September 2, 1922. Edited by W. N. Medlicott, Douglas Dakin & M. E. Lambert. (1970), pp. 7-8.

 The rather hectic and indeed almost unprecedented changes in the Greek situation is almost breathtaking. First the idiotic and ultra-gauchiste Syriza government rejects the proposed extension to the bailout programme by the troika and instead has insists upon a referendum by the Greek people to vote on the matter. Which to my own great surprise the Greek people, taking leave of their senses once again, voted in accordance with the wishes of the Syriza government and rejected the last bailout offer by the European Union and its partners of the IMF and the European Central Bank. When predictably enough Brussels announced that it would not offer Athens any further concessions and indeed hardened its stance on the negotiations with Prime Minister Tsipras, the latter only to my surprise staged a very quick climbdown at the very last second and agreed to an even more onerous, nay perhaps more accurately much more onerous bailout formula. Indeed as per the EU Observer:
the deal represents capitulation on nearly all points for the left-wing Greek government, which was elected on a platform to stop austerity and which, just one week ago, held a referendum in which Greek people rejected creditors' demands 1.
 In short, financially at least, the radical Syriza government has been almost completely fettered in exactly the way that that most elegant and timeless of diplomats, Harold Nicolson suggested almost one-hundred years ago. Unfortunately, Nicolson's advice was rejected at that time by the more august and perhaps cynical mandarins of the Foreign Office 2. Thankfully, his European Union successors have successfully managed to implement his programme. Of course it is probably the case that as advocated by the IMF, the bailout programme should also include at the very least some degree of debt forgiveness 3. If not perhaps immediately then in a few years time, once the Syriza government or whoever (hopefully) succeeds it, manages to implement the needed reforms which Greece's almost completely corrupt and inefficient governmental structure and the society which supports it, cries out for. But for that the sooner that the Syriza government is ousted the better. In that respect if nothing else the hardline pursued by the European Union and Germany in particular has been quite praiseworthy.

1.Honor Mahony, "Greece capitulates at EU summit". EU Observer. 13 July 2015, in www.euobserver.com.

2. See as Minute by the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Sir Eyre Crowe, dated the 10 January 1921, in Documents, op. cit., p. 9.

3. Shawn Donnan, Peter Spiegel, "Latest IMF debt relief push baffles eurozone creditors". The Financial Times. 15 July 2015, in www.ft.comCharles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-36327227353342126172015-07-10T19:01:00.000-04:002015-07-10T19:01:37.511-04:00THE AFGHAN CONUNDRUM: SOME THOUGHTS
Taliban fighters have killed 11 Afghan soldiers in an ambush on a military convoy in western Afghanistan. Military sources said on June 29 that the convoy came under heavy fire late on June 28 in the Karokh District of Herat Province. The fighting lasted for five hours, a military spokesman told the Reuters news agency. Afghan security forces have suffered increased casualties since the Taliban launched their annual spring-summer offensive in April. Most international combat troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan at the end of last year, with a small NATO mission called Resolute Support remaining to train and support local security forces.

"Taliban Attack Kills 11 Afghan Soldiers In Herat." Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. 29 June 2015, in www.rferl.org

"As was the case in Vietnam and Iraq in 2011 ---, the US ended its combat presence at a time when Transition involved a serious risk that the war would fail to achieve any form of security and stability. The combat situation was intensifying rather than declining, and the Afghan government was still partially paralyzed by the crisis growing out of the 2014 Presidential election."

Anthony Cordesman. Afghanistan at Transition: the lessons of the longest War. (March 2015). p. x.

The issues at stake in Afghanistan are similar to those which have confronted the Americans and their allies formerly in Iraq and now in a new fashion in both Iraq and Syria. The question can be posed in a very simple manner: can and will the Afghan National Army perform or collapse if and when the Americans withdraw circa 2016 / 2017? Presuming that the Americans do indeed withdraw from Afghanistan in the same fashion that the Americans withdrew from Iraq circa 2011, it would seem to be a good surmise that the Taliban will stage many ferocious and perhaps very successful attacks. The conundrum is: will the Afghan National Army collapse or not? At the very least, it should be possible that if the Americans were to retain x number of troops on the ground as advisors and in the air, for the situation to be fairly stable. If the Americans as per the original plans of the White House, were to completely withdraw at the end of the 2015 / 2016, then it would be quite possible to expect that the Afghanistan National Army will, under hammer blows of the Taliban, begin to first withdraw into the enclaves of the major urban areas and then to collapse. Not, mind you a collapse tout à coup  but in stages so that after two or three years, it would not be too surprising to begin to see something akin to what happened in South Vietnam in 1975 and in Kabul with the Najibullah regime circa 1992. Given the overall situation in the Near and Middle East at present a collapse of the current Kabul government to either the Taliban or to chaos would be an unmitigated disaster. Pur et simple. Accordingly, those like the American military commentator Anthony Cordesman who advocate that the Americans retain forces in some form or other for the long-run are surely correct. The only alternative being a collapse in stages by the Afghan National Army. As the greatest of all military theorists, Karl von Clausewitz once noted:

"There are times when a general must rise above it, calmly hold to his plans and face the short-term objections that are advanced by fainter hearts. Still, this impression is no mere specter that can easily be dismissed; it is not like a force that affects only a single point, but rather one that spreads instantaneously through every sinew, and paralyzes all military and civil activity....These consequences of retreat should not be underrated 1."

1. Karl von Clausewitz. On War. Edited & translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. (1976), p.471. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-76174075230418524702015-06-25T18:27:00.002-04:002015-06-26T17:41:03.527-04:00RUSSIA IS A 'REVISIONIST' NOT A 'ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY' POWER
"After hearing the news of the outbreak of the 1848 Paris revolution, Nicolas I is said to have rushed to the palace to interrupt the dancing and give the counter-revolutionary command: "On horses! To Paris!" Vladimir Putin's Kremlin is in a similar mood. When protesters in the small, strategically insignificant Balkan state of Macedonia, outraged at revelations of corruption and the abuse of power, last month besieged a government building and demanded the resignation of the government, the Russian minister of foreign affairs raced to denounce Skopje's colour revolution in the making. Why? A clue lies in Sergei Lavrov's appearance before the UN General Assembly this year, when the Russian foreign minister asked for a declaration "on the inadmissibility of interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and the non-recognition of coups d'état as a method for changing governments". Moscow, once the combative centre of world communist revolution, has become the world's pre-eminent defender of sitting governments against their restless citizens. Western politicians imagine the Kremlin's anxiety about colour revolutions is rhetorical, not real. But Mr Putin and his colleagues believe what they say: that street protests are stage-managed by Russia's bitterest enemies. In the words of Mr Lavrov: 'It is hard to resist the impression that the goal of various 'colour revolutions' and other efforts to topple unsuitable regimes is to provoke chaos and instability.'"

Ivan Krastev, "Russian mistakes and western misunderstandings". The Financial Times. 17 June 2015, www.ft.com.

"In the reign of Nicholas patriotism became something associated with the Knout, with the police, especially in Petersburg, where the savage movement ended, conformably to the cosmopolitan spirit of the town, in the invention of a national hymn after Sebastian Bach and in Prokopy Lyapunov---after Schiller! To cut himself off from Europe, from enlightenment, from the revolution of which he had been frightened since the Fourteenth of December, 1825. Nicholas on his side raised the banner of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism, embellished after the fashion of the Prussian standard and supported by anything that came to hand---the barbaric novels of Zagoskin, barbaric ikon-painting, barbaric architecture, Uvarov, the persecution of the Uniats, and 'The Hand of the Most High saved the Fatherland'. The encounter of the Moscow Slavophils with the Petersburg Slavophilism of Nicholas was a great misfortune for the former. Nicholas was simply flying to nationalism and Orthodoxy from revolutionary ideas. The Slavophils had nothing in common with him but words".

Alexander I. Herzen. My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen. Volume II. Translated by Constance Garnett. Revised by Humphrey Higgens. (1968), pp. 514-515.

Per contra to surmises and analyses such as the one cited above by Ivan Krastev or the recent piece in the Times of London Literary Supplement (TLS) by Lesley Chamberlain, there is in fact very little correspondence between the Putin regime and any sort of 'conservative' regimes from Russia's past 1. Whereas in the case of Tsarist Russia, it viewed itelf as part and parcel of the European order of states (AKA Russia as 'the Gendarme of Europe'), that is hardly the case to-day nor has it been for quite awhile under Putinism. Au fond, 'Putinism' is nothing more and nothing less than a systemic institutionalization of corruption, bribery and rent-seeking. Putinism as a regime, has almost nothing in common with Tsarist Russia, especially the latter's more cosmopolitan aspect, id. est., the non-Russian, power elite who helped run the empire from the beginning of the 18th century to almost 1917. The names of such individuals as Benckendorf, Nesselrode, Witte, Lambsdorf, Kleinmichel, Munnich, Richelieu, Kankrin, Campenhausen, Kaufman, Barclay de Tolly, Giers, et cetera, et cetera. They gave the Russian Empire a European and indeed cosmopolitan visage and coloration 2. We see absolutely nothing of the sort in contemporary Russia under Grazhdanin Putin 2. While it is of course absolutely the case that Putin, et. al., were and are wildly frightened of the potential spread of another 'Colored Revolution', to Russia itself, this has little to do with 'ideology' and everything to do with a clique of criminals who wish to keep their ill-gotten gains 3. As the Financial Times recent interview with Putin's close colleague, Sergei Ivanov, indicates, those elements in the ruling circle (such as ex-Finance Minister, Kudrin), who would like to stage a climb-down over Ukraine and seek a rapprochement with the Western Powers are still currently sidelined 4. Of course if offered the Western powers should jump at any opportunity to wrench Matushka Russia from its current isolated and forlorn condition and stance. Something which is far and away different from anything in terms of diplomatic isolation that Tsarist Russia ever suffered from. Or indeed allowed itself to venture into. Viz, the current position of Moskva vis-`a-vis the Western Powers resembles nothing so much as Sovietskaya Vlast in the 1920's and the 1930's. Something which a perusal of the historical literature on the subject matter clearly shows for both periods 5. When for reasons of both ideology and primat der Innenpolitik, Moskva was (along with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italia) the leading revisionist power on the European continent. The sad truth of the matter is that looking back to Tsarist Russia to ascertain the future policies of Putin's Russia leads very quickly to a speculative cul-de- sac. Insofar as one wishes to look back at all for an idea of future Russian policies one has to look at the early Soviet period and unfortunately, that does not provide one with a very optimistic or hopeful view of Russia's future policy towards Europe.

1. Lesley Chamberlain, "New Eurasians: How Russians have long reacted to revolution". The TLS (Times of London Literary Supplement). 15 May 2015. in www.the-tls.co.uk.

2. On this theme see an essay by the Polish intellectual, Adam Michnik, "1863: Poland in Russian Eyes", wherein he quotes the Emperor Nicholas I in his famous conversation with the jailed Slavophile writer, Yuri Samarin in 1849, as saying: "You have attacked whole classes [the German Baltic aristocracy] which have served us faithfully: beginning with Pahlen, I could list a hundred and fifty generals....You have aimed directly at the government: you have wanted to say that from the times of Emperor Peter I we have all been surrounded by Germans and we ourselves have become Germanized". In Letters from Prison. (1985), pp. 251-252.

3. On the nature of Russian policy in Ukraine since 2013, see: Sten Rynning, who cogently argues: "The restoration of Russian state power under Putin has thus benefited the old security elite---and especially those close to Putin---rather than the Russian state as such. Continental repression follow when a predatory elite, bereft of easy oil and gas revenues, is tempted to channel popular frustration into foreign affairs". In: "Russia, the West and the necessary balance of Power". International Affairs. (May 2015), p. 548 and passim.

4. On the interview with Ivanov see: Kathrin Hille, "Putin's right-hand man plays down talk of crisis". The Financial Times. 22 June 2015, in www.ft.com.

5. On Tsarist Russia, in particular the late 18th and early 19th century, see: Paul Schroeder. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848.(1994), pp. 515-520, 555-559, 730-735 and passim. Also see: A. J. P. Taylor. The Struggle for Mastery in Europe. (1954), p. 9, where as the author notes for the post-1848 period, that: "the directors of Russian policy were themselves mostly Germans--Meyendorff, the ambassador at Berlin, a Baltic baron; Nesselrode, the Chancellor, a Lutheran, who never learnt to speak Russian". For the Soviet period, see (for one example among many): Zara Steiner. The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919-1933. (2005), pp. 548-558, 620-622 and passim; Jiri Hochman. The Soviet Union and the Failure of Colletive Security. (1984). Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-9847486668712418602015-06-16T19:34:00.002-04:002015-06-16T19:35:30.966-04:00GREECE ON THE BRINK?
"Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, vowed not to give in to demands made by his country's international creditors, accusing them of "pillaging" Greece for the past five years and insisting it was now up to them to propose another rescue plan to save Athens from bankruptcy. Mr Tsipras's remarks came less than 24 hours after the collapse of last-ditch talks aimed at reaching agreement on the release of €7.2bn in desperately needed rescue funds. The comments were part of a chorus of defiance in Athens that left many senior EU officials convinced they can no longer clinch a deal with Greece to prevent it from crashing out of the eurozone. Without a deal to release the final tranche of Greece's current bailout, Athens is likely to default on a €1.5bn loan repayment due to be paid to the International Monetary Fund in two weeks, an event officials fear would set off a financial chain reaction from which Greece would be unable to recover. "One can only suspect political motives behind the fact that [bailout negotiators] insist on further pension cuts, despite five years of pillaging," Mr Tsipras said in a statement. "We are carrying our people's dignity as well as the aspirations of all Europeans. We cannot ignore this responsibility. It is not a matter of ideological stubbornness. It has to do with democracy....Hardliners in Mr Tsipras's ruling Syriza party demanded a definitive break with creditors, calling on supporters to stage street protests against further austerity measures.".

Peter Spiegel and Kerin Hope, "Defiant Alexis Tsipras accuses creditors of 'pillaging' Greece". The Financial Times. 16 June 2015, in www.ft.com.

"The Communists must exert every effort to direct the working-class movement and social development in general along the straightest and shortest road to the victory of Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world-wide scale. That is an incontestable truth. But it is enough to take one little step farther—a step that might seem to be in the same direction—and truth turns into error. We have only to say, as the German and British Left Communists do, that we recognise only one road, only the direct road, and that we will not permit tacking, conciliatory manoeuvres, or compromising—and it will be a mistake which may cause, and in part has already caused and is causing, very grave prejudices to communism."

Vladimir I. Ulyanov [Lenin]. 'Left-wing' Communism: an Infantile Disorder. (1920).

 The Syriza Government of Tsipras, et. al., appears to be inclined, nay eager to commit national suicide for purposes of proving his and his party's soixante-huitard like credentials. The fact that it will mean that Greece will be thrown into a violent recession, nay Depression, with capital controls, wild-inflation, plunging values and with the final upshot being violence in the streets, does not in the least appear to influence the Tovarish Tsipras. Au fond, if Greece possessed something approaching a normal government and a normal governing regime, then I would strongly contend that it is incumbent upon the European Union, et. al., to come to some compromise with Athens over the austerity programme. As I for quite awhile now would agree that austerity per se, is a political and economic cul-de-sac. However, given the overtly gauchiste, if not indeed left-wing Communist tenor to the Syrizia Government, it seems to the case that the responsible negotiators for the European Union, have no chose in the matter but let Greece hang itself by its own revolutionary petard. As Ulyanov if he were alive to-day (and thankfully he is not...), would comment, it is due to left-wing infants of the Syrizia type that Europe has never had (thankfully) a Communist Revolution. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-78381530509428813822015-05-19T23:46:00.001-04:002015-05-19T23:47:59.286-04:00THE FALL OF RAMADI: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
"The loss of the strategically important city of Ramadi has cast further doubt on Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi's efforts to regain control of a war that is fragmenting the country. For months, Mr Abadi has sought to strengthen his position against the rising authority of the Shia militias some of them supported by — or loyal to — Iran as those forces played a key role in the campaign to retake the city of Tikrit. But the fall of Ramadi to the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) on Sunday has forced Mr Abadi to lean on the Shia militia and volunteer forces he had until recently hoped to sideline. Mr Abadi on Monday met with their leaders to discuss what state television described as the "redefinition of the defence lines" in Anbar. "The fall of Ramadi is more of a commentary on the Iraqi government than on the strength of Isis. [The US] has a partner in Iraq that is very weak," says Kirk Sowell, a political risk analyst who publishes Inside Iraqi Politics, a newsletter. Surrounded by Isis and other insurgent groups, Ramadi had fought off jihadi advances for nearly 18 months. But by all accounts Iraqi troops there performed poorly when Isis launched its offensive this weekend. Sunni tribal leaders have complained publicly about the way Iraqi troops' withdrew from the city without putting up a serious fight — reviving memories of the army's flight from Mosul last June. The tribes also say they lack the heavy weaponry to take on Isis — who are armed with millions of dollars worth of US equipment they looted when they over-ran northwestern Iraq last summer. For now, Baghdad, as well as Iraq's Shia shrine cities to the south, such as Karbala, and the Kurdish controlled cities in the north, are well defended and out of Isis's reach. The main strategic consequence of Ramadi's fall will be to push back the timeframe for retaking Mosul, Iraq's second city. But the battle for control of Ramadi also offers a sign of what a future Iraqi state might look like. ."

Borzou Daragahi, Erika Solomon, "Ramadi's fall casts doubt on al-Abadi's control of Iraq war". The Financial Times. 19 May 2015, in www.ft.com

"War plans cover every aspect of a war, and weave them into a single operation that must have a single, ultimate objective in which all particular aims are reconciled. No one stars a war---or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so---without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective. This is the governing principal which will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort which is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail. We said in the opening chapter that the natural aim of military operations is the enemy's overthrow, and that strict adherence to the logic of the concept can, in the last analysis, admit no other. Since both belligerents must hold that view it would follow that military operations could not be suspended, that hostilities could not end until one or the other side were finally defeated."

Karl von Clausewitz. On War. Edited and Translated by Michael Howard & Peter Paret. (1976), p. 579.

The recent ISIS victory in capturing the Iraqi city of Ramadi highlights the fact that the Americans have not entire thought through their operational strategy for this particular military campaign. Regardless of what the Americans would ideally like to occur, it does not appear from current vantage point that a purely American air campaign will carry the day anytime soon against ISIS in Iraq. Not to speak of what is going on in Syria. The fact of the matter is that unless the Americans either: i) devote much more resources to the air campaign, with the concomitant greater likelihood of innocents being killed or wounded in occupied ISIS territories; ii) bring in some outside military force to assist the Iraqis (such as the say the regular Persian military). There at present being no readily available 'outside' force to so employ; iii) introduce American ground forces in sufficient numbers to quickly and effectively overthrow ISIS in a lightning campaign. If I had to choose which of the three above scenarios I would recommend the last one is the one that I would (reluctantly) go for. Which is not to gainsay the strictures that people like Anthony Cordesman have raised against putting American ground forces in harms way 1. Merely that having decided to go to war against ISIS (something which I was in favour of, albeit with scepticism as to how effective a purely air campaign would ultimately be), the Americans will be hard put to allow the continuation of a situation in which ISIS can boast that it is fighting the world's premier Great Power to a standstill. With all that implies in terms of the enormous prestige and the recruits and money following that ISIS will garner as a result. The sad and unfortunate truth of the matter is that the Americans have saddled themselves for a long time to come, with a burden which comes from having overthrown the Hussein regime back in 2003. Twelve years is not nearly long enough a time period to have absolved themselves from the consequence of their (admittedly stupid and irresponsible) actions....

1. See: Anthony Cordesman, "Boots on the Ground: The Realities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria". Center for Strategic and International Security. 13 February www.CSIS.org, wherein he argues that:
" It is important to realize that unless major U.S. combat forces are deployed in significant enough numbers to actually do all or most of all the fighting, local or host country forces will fail if they cannot get emergency support and reinforcements. They also face a very different challenge in large countries, when they face a dispersed force of nonstate actors that is on the scene and knows their weaknesses in detail, and where the real war is less one of short tactical victories and more one of lasting attrition in fighting for control of the population. And, these are wars that local forces must ultimately win. As was clear in Vietnam, and became all too clear in Afghanistan and Iraq, even the best U.S. combat units and a constant series of tactical victories can still fail if the United States and its other outside allies fully occupy an area or the country. Worse, doing it our way can deprive the local forces or host country of popular legitimacy, temporarily suppress sectarian and ethnic divisions, identify the United States as an occupier rather than an ally, and create a culture of military dependency where the local or host country forces never really learn to stand on their own".
Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-17146155019875429992015-05-12T23:34:00.001-04:002015-05-12T23:44:40.589-04:00THE PROBLEM TRULY IS ISLAM
"These days, on the subject of Islam, non-Muslims have mostly divided into two camps — though there's a little wandering about between the tents. Camp one says Islam is a religion of peace, and points for proof to the millions of non-violent Muslims around the world. Warlike Muslims are an anomaly, they say, and fight not because they are religious but because they are politicised. Bad guys like Isis aren't Muslims so much as Islamists, which is different. Most politicians and public figures belong to this camp, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. Camp two is more furtive. Members look around before they speak. In this gang, sotto voce, everyone agrees there is something intrinsically violent about Islam and that Islamism — Isis, for example — is a natural offshoot of its angry soul. The Queen's chaplain appears to be in camp two. He sent a wave of revulsion through the media last month when he suggested the Quran might incite violence. Round here they say 'Islam was spread by the sword', meaning that conquest is in its DNA. Though Allah has a compassionate face, war is in his nature too. Ploughshares must sometimes become swords. How else will the caliphate be established?.... Is that there really isn't much in the Quran to suggest that Allah gives a hoot for non-believers. Muslims are encouraged to forgive one another, but it is not required to forgive infidels, the apostate or people who blaspheme. We're not all in it together. That Pew study also predicted that sometime soon after 2050 the number of Muslims will begin to overtake the number of Christians worldwide. In England, nearly one in ten British children is now Muslim — and is that what they're taught? No need to say sorry to an infidel."

Mary Wakefield, "Original sin makes us better people. I wish Muslims believed in it." The (London) Spectator. 11 April 2015, in www.spectator.co.uk

"Christianity's doctrine is found in three sources: the Bible, Tradition, and the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church. An unbiased and clear inspection will show that Christianity is a religion of peace. Islam, not so much. Christianity offers peace through redemption, freedom through penance, joy through forgiveness, perfection through sanctification, and charity as the crown and driving force of every Christian life. Nowhere does Christianity's Divine Founder counsel violence, mandate war, or promise something sinful as a reward for fidelity. Yet a careful reading of the Qur'an, the "founding document" of Islam, reveals that these three elements are present in its pages. A sampling: - "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them; thereafter is the time for either generosity or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens…. But those who are slain in the way of Allah, he will never let their deeds be lost" (47:4). - "May the two hands of Abu Lahab [Muhammad's uncle who betrayed him] perish! May he himself perish! Nothing shall his wealth and gains avail him. He shall be burnt in a flaming fire, and his wife, laden with faggots [firewood], shall have a rope of fiber around her neck" (111:1-5 sura). - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and his messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued'".
 Father John Perricone. "Christianity and Islam: morally equivalent?" The New Oxford Review. (April 2015), p. 24.

The wise mots of both Father Perricone and Mary Wakefield highlight something which any cursory reading about Islam quickly reveals: that notwithstanding the fact that most of its adherents are peaceful and law abiding, it is au fond a religion of violence. Akin to what Simon Weil thought was the major characteristic of pre-diaspora Judaism, Islam in its origins shows itself to be a religious belief system which incalculates a theology of warfare and violence towards all those who do not adhere to its tenets 1. Whereas the intermittent violence which one can associate with Christianity (the Crusades, et cetera), can be said to be at variance with the central tenets of Christianity, that is hardily the case with Islam. Its founder, the so-called Prophet Mohammed, was a figure who it is easy to see, from any unbiased point of view, had hands filled with blood of innocent people. It is not too far a thing to say, that from any humane standpoint, Mohammed was an evil man. Pur et simple. And unless and until the two billon plus human beings who claim some relationship with Islam, own up to this fact about their religion, the relations between these two billion and the other five million people on the planet earth will be filled with more violence. Because violence and hatred is something that Islam is filled with. To claim anything else is both idiocy and propaganda. Unless and until a true reformation of this religion of hatred takes place, the world can, must and will be on guard to stop in its tracks any more advances by this faith system.

 1. For Simone Weil's rather negative view of pre-diaspora Judaism, see: Waiting on God. Translated by Emma Crauford. (1954), pp. 157, where she comments: "The tradition of Noah and his sons throws a startling light on the history of Mediterranean civilisation. It is necessary to delete what the Hebrews added to the story out of hatred....The Hebrews boasted of having utterly exterminated a number of cities and tribes in the land of Canaan when Joshua was leading them. Give a dog a bad name and you can hang him. After he has been hanged you can accuse him more than ever". See also: Letter to a Priest. Translated by A. F. Wills. (1951), p. 15, where she comments: "If some Hebrews from classical Jewry were to return to life and were to be provided with arms, they would exterminate the lot of us--men, women and children, for the crime of idolatry". For the recent historiographical discussion of Jewish influences on early Islam, see: The Cambridge Ancient History. Volume XIV. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A. D. 425-600. Edited by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Michael Whitby, (2000), pp. 684-697. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-24112765363427190292015-05-08T21:53:00.000-04:002015-05-08T23:10:59.539-04:00 THE BRITISH ELECTION RESULTS: WHAT DO THEY PORTEND?
"David Cameron was last night back in Downing Street after a remarkable election victory and immediately began to address the two issues that could define his second term: the union and Europe. Mr Cameron defied the pollsters and his own expectations as the Conservatives won an overall majority with 331 seats in the House of Commons, routing the Labour party and his coalition partners the Liberal Democrats in the process. Voter turnout was the highest since 1997. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, and the Liberal Democrats' Nick Clegg, who both joined Mr Cameron at the VE Day ceremony in London later on Friday, resigned immediately, but the election also revealed a United Kingdom under unprecedented strain, after a night of triumph for Scottish nationalists. The SNP won 56 out of 59 seats north of the border, prompting Alex Salmond, the party's former leader, to declare: "The Scottish lion has roared." The SNP refused to rule out calling next year for a second independence referendum. Mr Cameron fuelled tension in the union during the election campaign by railing against the threat of a Labour government propped up by the SNP. In an attempt to heal the wounds, Mr. Cameron promised on the steps of Downing Street to govern "for one nation, one United Kingdom" and to deliver new tax raising powers to the Scottish parliament "as soon as possible". Boris Johnson has called for "some sort of overall offer" to create a more federal Britain and Mr Cameron's allies said they "did not exclude" proposing an even greater transfer of powers to Holyrood. Mr Cameron completed a frenetic day of political activity by reappointing George Osborne as chancellor and as de facto deputy prime minister, with a key role in Britain's proposed EU renegotiation. British officials said Mr Osborne, officially first secretary of state, would be a lead negotiator in talks ahead of the Conservatives' planned EU referendum, scheduled before the end of 2017. Mr Cameron's election has focused minds in Europe on the threat of "Brexit" and European leaders pressed for long-awaited guidance from Number 10 on how to answer the "British question".."

George Parker, "Europe and union to dominate Cameron's second term". The Financial Times. 8 May 2015, in www.ft.com.

"This general election will determine what Britain's place will be in the world in a way that no other general election has done previously, but the importance of this is chronically underdiscussed. Britain could look very different, could feel very different, and could be a different kind of partner to its allies over the next couple of years as a consequence of this election. As political elites become more navel-gazing and less engaged with the wider world, the UK's international standing will diminish."

Richard G. Whitman, "Is Britain retreating from the World". Chatham House. 6 May 2015, in www.chathamhouse.org

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,' Young Peterkin, he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; 'Now tell us all about the war, And what they fought each other for.' 'It was the English,' Kaspar cried, 'Who put the French to rout; But what they fought each other for I could not well make out; But everybody said,' quoth he, 'That 'twas a famous victory....'And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win.' 'But what good came of it at last?' Quoth little Peterkin. 'Why, that I cannot tell,' said he, 'But 'twas a famous victory'."

Robert Southey, "THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM". 1796.

One does not have to be as cynical as Robert Southey was at the time of the French Revolutionary wars, to express some skepticism that the triumph of British Prime Minister Cameron and his Tory party will change very much in the British political and diplomatic firmament. Which is not to gainsay the fact that the victory of Cameron's Tories is on the whole a 'good thing'. While I would certainly not have actively supported a party which (among other things) voted for the Gay Marriage Bill, it is without a doubt the case that a return of the Labour Party to office, with or without the de jure support of the Scottish Nationalist Party, would have been little short of a disaster. Like Evelyn Waugh in 1959, I can very well remember the last term of office of the Blair & Brown regime, and (to quote Waugh) the Kingdom did indeed give the appearance 'of being under enemy occupation' 1. Something which the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition did not entire dispel unfortunately. With all that being said, it is the case that a Tory government will to a limited ( indeed very limited) extent be more conscious then previously of the importance of Britain's diplomatic position in the world. Something which indeed the Americans (and not only the Americans) were highly concerned about very recently2. Ideally, of course an effective Tory government will 'resolve' (as Cameron appears to realize) the twin conundrums of both the Scottish Nationalist challenge to the United Kingdom and the 'in or out' of the European Union question. With that being said, it is difficult to imagine that this government, nor indeed any future British (or English) government will have either the capacity and more importantly the will to exercise the type of diplomatic and military influence that was the norm for Britain since the early to mid-17th century. The fact that Cameron himself appears to be obsessed with channeling more money to international assistance at the cost of military spending is something which is quite illustrative by itself. Of course it is obviously the case, that the British people are to a degree 'exhausted' by the twin wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. What is less clear is why these two wars were more exhausting to the British to-day then say the various 'emergencies' of the immediate post-bellum period from 1945 onwards: Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Suez, Cyprus, and Aden among others. It would appear to be the case that in the past forty to fifty years or so, something which the late American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles stated in his hospital deathbed in the Spring of 1959, has finally come to pass in its entirety:

"Something has happened to the British. We can no longer rely upon them. For years we've had a very special relationship with them, an equality in partnership. We must now accept the fact that something has happened, not just to British politicians of both parties, but to the British people 3."

With the end result being that regardless of the talk of a 'Special Relationship', between the USA and the UK, all such talk is at present and most likely going forward no more than eyewash. The United Kingdom has now most definitely passed from being a Great Power of the second rank, or if you like a Great Power manqué to nothing more than a middle-ranking European power. Or as the mandarins of the Foreign Office perhaps best described it in 1958: "the neutrality and comparative isolation of the purely commercial Powers such as Sweden or Switzerland" 4.

1. Evelyn Waugh, "Aspirations of a Mugwump". In: The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh. Edited Donat Gallagher. (1984), p. 537.

2. Steven Erlanger, "Britain's Drift From the Global Stage Becomes an Election Issue". The New York Times.  27 April 2015, in www.nytimes.com

3. John Foster Dulles quoted by Livingston Merchant (a high State Department official). As per Merchant, this swan song was Dulles' 'Foreign Policy Testament'. See: Livingston Merchant papers, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University.

4. Quotation is from: "The Position of the United Kingdom in World Affairs: report by officials". 9 June 1958. In: The Conservative Government and the End of Empire. Series A, Volume 4. Edited Ronald Hyam & William Roger Louis. (2000), p. 44. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-50971397515847626932015-05-01T22:46:00.000-04:002015-05-01T22:51:57.143-04:00THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND WHY THE APPEASEMENT OF CHINA WILL NOT WORK
"For all his flaws, Mr Abe is on balance a good thing for a country that has drifted too long under a succession of fleeting, nondescript leaders. Yet Washington should not back him under all circumstances. That is especially true when it comes to relations with China. Above all, Washington must not give the impression that it wants to use Japan as a tool of containment. If it looks as though the US and Japan are ganging up on China, Beijing is likely to conclude that there is no peaceful path to its legitimate ambitions. The debacle over the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank — boycotted by both Washington and Tokyo — is a case in point. During Mr Abe's visit, the joint attitudes of Japan and the US towards China will be tested in three broad arenas. The first is history. In his speech to Congress, Mr Abe will reflect on Japan's actions in the second world war, which ended 70 years ago. Mr Abe is among those on the Japanese right who think the country has apologised enough. He has hinted that he wants to drop language used in previous apologies referring to "colonial rule", "aggression" and "remorse". Any manifestation of "Abenesia" would be a big mistake. Of course it is galling for Japan to be lectured by China, which has whitewashed much of its modern history, on the importance of historical accuracy. But as the aggressor in the second world war, Japan does not have the luxury to decide when the apologies end.... Second, and related, is defence. Mr Abe wants to reinterpret Japan's pacifist constitution to give Tokyo more leeway to participate in international affairs. The Pentagon wholly supports this. So do some of Japan's neighbours that are worried about growing Chinese military power. This week, the US and Japan will issue new guidelines for defence co-operation designed to bring contingency planning up to date. There is no harm in this so long as it does not look like an anti-Chinese pact."

Leader, "US should back Japan but not at any price". The Financial Times. 26 April 2015, in www.ft.com

"Kennedy was well to the fore in the Times's endeavours to support Chamberlain. The sacrifice of Czechoslovakia seems not to have bothered him in the slightest. He seconded Dawson's turning of the paper into an organ of the Prime Minister and his henchmen. With Dawson's backing he wrote the leader of 1 April 1939 that prepared a way for pulling the rug out from under the guarantee just given to Poland, just as the rug had earlier been pulled out from under Czechoslovakia. None of this fancy footwork was of any avail. Hitler continued the cleverer; and unappeasable. Kennedy didn't change his mind. The penultimate entry, written six weeks after the war began, finds him and Dawson concurring in the astounding opinion: 'There was no statesmanship in our foreign policy between the two Chamberlains – Austen and Neville".'

Geoffrey Best, "Heiling Hitler" [A review of The 'Times' and Appeasement: The Journals of A.L. Kennedy 1932-39 edited by Gordon Martel]. The London Review of Books. 21 June 2001 in www.lrb.co.uk

The recent leader in the Financial Times  on the topic of China and Japan is to put it quite bluntly akin to something that would have appeared in the Geoffrey Dawson's London Times circa 1936. With Japan of course in the role of France and China in the role of Hitler's Germany. The fact of the matter is that contemporary China, however much bien-pensant minded people like the leader writers of the Financial Times, or greedy and unscrupulous businessmen like Jim Rodgers or ex-statesman like Hank Paulson or Henry Kissinger, is au fond a revisionist power pur et simple. And will seek to expand its power and influence as much as it can get away with if not actively opposed. The idea that the PRC will of its own volition "seek to be integrate (sic) China more closely into a rules-based system", bears no relationship with reality 1. The regime in Peking is an insecure, authoritarian state, who uses an aggressive foreign policy to appease and divert its citizenry. Id. est., Chinese foreign policy is primarily governed by considerations of Primat der Innenpolitik. The aggressive stance that the regime in Peking has taken towards almost all of its neighbors in the past five to six years, is of a piece with the above analysis. And however much the leader writers of the FT, think that Peking is truly interested in being 'integrated' into the existing American-lead world-system, it is difficult to believe that a regime which the heroic, emigre dissident, Chen Guangcheng has aptly described as: "a barbaric dictatorship masquerading as a government", will ever willingly abide by the rules and laws of the current international system 2.

1. Leader, "US should back Japan but not at any price". op. cit.

 2. Chen Guangcheng quoted in: Jonathan Mirsky, "He Fought the Law". The Literary Review. (April 2015), p. 22. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-10045482052697815882015-04-24T22:50:00.002-04:002015-04-25T12:13:34.158-04:00THE VATICAN AND FRANCOIS HOLLANDE: A COMMENT
"In the two years that he has occupied the throne of St Peter, Pope Francis has been an inspirational figure for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Following the conservative reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he has been hailed for trying to make the church more open, inclusive and accountable. At a time of global economic uncertainty, his personal humility sets him apart from many world leaders. Yet a diplomatic impasse between France and the Vatican over the nomination of a gay French diplomat as envoy to the Holy See risks damaging his reputation. In January, France announced that it would send Laurent Stefanini, the head of protocol for President François Hollande, to be its new ambassador to the Vatican. Mr Stefanini is well qualified for the post. He is a practising Catholic and served in the French embassy to the Holy See between 2001 and 2005. The Vatican normally approves such applications within six weeks of the request being made. Its failure to do so after three months has prompted growing speculation that it is dragging its feet because the nominee is homosexual. To many Vatican watchers, this diplomatic stand-off is somewhat unexpected. In the past two years, Pope Francis has relaxed some of the church's anathemas on matters of sexuality and faith, making conciliatory remarks about gays and atheists. A comment early on in his pontificate — "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" — struck an unusual new tone on homosexuality. The slowness in approving Mr Stefanini may reflect little more than the creakiness of the Vatican's centuries-old bureaucracy. But further delay can only confirm that the Holy See is blocking the envoy on grounds of his sexuality. This would greatly damage both the pontiff and the Church".

Leader, "A diplomatic test for the Vatican on gay rights". The Financial Times.  17 April 2015, in www.ft.com.

"I come now to the actual procedure which governs the appointment of a diplomatic envoy from one State to another. I shall take as my example of the usual practice the system adopted in the British Foreign Service. The head of some mission retires, or is transferred elsewhere, and it becomes necessary to choose his successor....Having decided on a suitable person, the Secretary of State then writes him a private letter offering the post. It is possible that the incumbent may plead ill-health or domestic reasons and may asked to be excused. The British Foreign Office is considerate in such cases. If he accepts, the next step is to obtain the agrement of the country to which he is to be sent. It is customary to make private enquiries before asking officially whether a given individual is likely to prove persona grata.  The government to which the enquiry is addressed will, if in any doubt, consult their own embassy as to the character and the antecedents of the person suggested. If the agrement is refused, some mortification will result, and the rejected envoy will be glad if he has had sufficient discretion not to inform his friends of the offer which had been made to him".
Harold Nicolson. Diplomacy. (1939), pp. 185-186.

The idiocy of the comments in the ultra-bien pensant Financial Times speaks for itself. It is readily self-evident from the simplest knowledge of diplomatic protocol that the authorities in Paris knew quite well that the nomination of a full-fledged and public pederast as Ambassador to the Vatican was a complete non possumus. Pur et simple. Instead of dealing with the matter in the time honoured method of diplomacy as outlined above by Harold Nicolson, the Hollande regime, the most unpopular government in France since the 1950's has decided for purely domestic political purposes to make the matter a cause célèbre. What is truly noxious however is the complete and unmitigated hypocrisy and gall of the Hollande government in the entire matter. As the likelihood that Paris would (to take a few readily available examples): nominate the same individual to head the embassy in say Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Turkey among other places, is absolutely nil. Or for that matter nominate someone who was a practicing Jew or for that matter an openly practicing Christian to Saudi Arabia or other Arab / Muslim countries? The question answers itself. Unlike in those other cases, Paris knows quite well that the Vatican serves as a convenient and harmless punching bag. Putting paid to any validity of the charges formulated by the dull and rather sluggish minds of the Financial Times. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-53237637315750985442015-04-20T11:12:00.000-04:002015-04-20T11:16:36.035-04:00EYELESS IN THE WEST BANK OR ELLIOTT ABRAMS ON BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
"For the first time in over 15 years, Israel may soon form a coalition government that is composed solely of right-wing factions. This could have major implications for settlement expansion. After all, both of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's previous governments (2009–2013 and 2013–2015) included center-left parties that opposed settlement expansion outside areas that—according to past negotiations and in any realistic future peace accord—would end up as part of Israel. That is, his governments allowed population growth to expand freely in the major settlement blocs that Israel is expected to keep, but they constrained growth in the smaller settlements beyond Israel's security barrier, which would likely be part of any future Palestinian state. In the years to come, though, the United States might have to contend with a new policy. During Netanyahu's past six years as prime minister, his settlement policy has been the subject of great controversy and contradiction. On the one hand, the United States and Europe frequently criticized the policy as expanding Israeli presence in the West Bank. On the other, right-wing constituencies in Israel lashed out at Netanyahu for doing the exact opposite—implementing a "quiet freeze" policy that effectively halted Israeli construction outside of Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs. Netanyahu's policy allowed him to enjoy the best of both worlds—but also suffer the worst of them. On the positive side for Netanyahu, constant critiques by the international community (because there was considerable construction in East Jerusalem and the major blocs) solidified his position as the irreplaceable leader of the Israeli right leading up to his reelection. Meanwhile, his constraints on construction beyond the security fence kept alive the option of a two-state solution and encouraged peace hopefuls, such as State Secretary John F. Kerry, to stay engaged. On the negative side, Netanyahu's equivocation bought him the distrust and scorn of many, in Israel and abroad, on the left and right. As a result, he is surprisingly unpopular for someone who just won a solid reelection victory".

Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot, "Settling Settlements: Netanyahu's Real Policies, Before and After the Election". The Council on Foreign Relations.  16 April 2015, in www.cfr.org

"Designed for great exploits, if I must die / Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out, Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze, To grind in brazen fetters under task / With this heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength, Put to the labour of a beast, debased / Lower than bond-slave! Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver! Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him / Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke".

John Milton. Samson Agonistes  (1666-1671), lines 32-42.

The comparison between Samson and Israeli premier Netanyahu was of course merely rhetorical in nature. Samson of course was a great hero of the Jewish Old Testament. Whereas Netanyahu of course is the wiliest and canny of opportunistic politicians. Which of course answers in full the nature of Elliott Abrams query (no doubt also a rhetorical query). As can be seen from his fully ambidextrous positioning in the just concluded Israeli elections, the Israeli premier will change his policies surface content to suit almost any occasion 1. That is of fairly obvious and self-evident by this point. What is not quite so evident, but is in fact without a doubt true, is that the Israeli premier will to the maximum extent possible endeavour to colonialise as much Palestinian land and resources as possible. The rights or the wrongs of the Palestinian case, do not in the least bother or hinder the Israeli premier in taking what he regards as policies which fits in with his own ultra-Zionist vision of the so-called 'Land of Israel'. The fact that almost the entire world regards such policies with active disdain if not worse does not in any fashion give pause to the Israeli premier. Much less his ultra-right-wing colleagues in the Israeli Knesset & Cabinet. In short, while Elliott Abrams may have convinced himself that despite himself Netanyahu is a 'moderate' who is endeavouring to balance the demands of the Israeli right-wing and the views of the vast majority of the international community, the reality of both the situation and Netanyahu's past and present argue to the contrary.

1. Simon Schama, "Will the real Netanyahu please stand up?" The Financial Times. 20th March 2015 in www.ft.com. See also: José Ignacio Torreblanca, "The Israeli Spell". European Council on Foreign Relations. 26 March 2015, in www.ecfr.euCharles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-70017445706650006292015-04-17T17:38:00.002-04:002015-04-17T17:38:16.275-04:00TENSIONS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE NORDIC COUNTRIES: A COMMENT
"The Kremlin has complained that a new Nordic defence pact is "directed against Russia" and amounts to a "confrontational approach" on the Ukraine crisis. The Russian foreign ministry issued the statement on its website on Sunday (12 April). It said "Nordic defence co-operation … has begun to be directed against Russia in a way that could undermine the positive engagement accumulated over the past decade". It voiced "concern" that Finland and Sweden, which are not Nato members, are showing "increasingly strong convergence" with the alliance. It also said that "instead of an open and constructive dialogue" on issues such as the Ukraine conflict, "the principles of confrontation are being foisted on the public opinion of the Nordic countries". The defence ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden unveiled the agreement in an op-ed in Norwegian daily Aftenposten last Thursday. They said they would: share information on maritime and airspace movements; take joint steps on cyber defence; conduct military drills; consider launching a new air-police mission called Northern Flag; share air bases; and explore joint military acquisitions. "Russia's conduct [in Ukraine] represents the gravest challenge to European security. As a consequence, we must be prepared to face possible crises or incidents", they warned. They said "Russia is undertaking huge economic investments in its military capability" and that its military "is acting in a challenging way along our borders". They added that Russia is trying to "sow discord" in the West and that their pact "strengthen[s] the cohesion of Nato and the EU, and helps to maintain transatlantic links". Russian jets have violated the airspace of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania hundreds of times over the past year."

Andrew Rettman, "Nordic pact heightens tension with Russia". The EU Observer. 13 April 2015, in www.euobserver.com

"Communists and the people of the Baltic states favoured joining the Soviet Union. Their bourgeois leaders came to Moscow for negotiations but refused to sign such an agreement with the USSR. What were we to do? I must tell you confidentially that I pursued a very hard line. I told the Latvian minister of foreign affairs when he came to visit us, 'You won't go home until you sign the agreement to join us'. A popular minister of war from Estonia came to see us---I've forgotten his name. We told him the same thing. We had to go to such extremes. And to my mind, we achieved our aims quite satisfactorily."

V. M. Molotov, Foreign Minister of the USSR, 1939-1949, 1953-1956, in Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. (Edited and translated by Albert Resis. (1993), p. 9.

The statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry is typical of the type of overbearing and belligerent behavior of Russia under the Putin regime in the past three to four years. Out goes a sense of co-operation and pour parler with Russia's neighbors. In comes a sort of fist-pounding type of diplomacy whose aim is to intimidate in the most drastic fashion possible, Russia's smaller and weaker neighbors. The fact that Russia's neighbors are actually frightened by Moskva's behavior in recent years is something that Putin, Lavrov, et. al., studious are choosing to ignore. Au fond of course Russia's diplomatic modus operandi is by definition self-defeating and will inevitably have negative results for Matushka Russia. As the article above indicates, the countries of the Baltics and the North Sea will inevitably regroup into a purely anti-Russia political-diplomatic phalanx. Given this rather self-evident result of Russia behavior, one is almost tempted to say that Grazhdanin Putin is almost consciously seeking this very same result. As the diplomatic and political isolation of Russia from the rest of Europe & the West will have the end-result of making Putinism a much more plausible ideology to Russia's poor and misguided people. A extremely unfortunate tragedy for a country which was perhaps the chief sufferer of the nightmare that was most of twentieth century history.

 Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-7242198766594390782015-04-10T22:28:00.000-04:002015-04-10T22:30:51.240-04:00THE POSSIBILITIES OF AMERICAN DECLINE: ILLUSION OR REALITY?
"This British tendency to believe that America's "empire" will decline is more than just a curiosity of intellectual debate. It also has real-world effects. Behind the scenes, many British policy makers also seem to be operating on the assumption that the continuing rise of China and the relative decline of America are both inevitable. As a result, they are making decisions that reflect a cautious adaptation to this wind of change. Britain's recent decision to defy Washington and join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is one straw in that wind. The British "declinists" have also had a big impact on America's own debate about the future. Mr Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers was a best-seller in the US when it came out in 1987 and has shaped the discussion ever since. In the late 1980s, an era of high budget deficits and industrial decline, his argument that America — like Spain and Britain before it — would succumb to "imperial overstretch" seemed particularly persuasive. Paraphrasing Shaw, he predicted: "Rome fell; Babylon fell; Scarsdale's turn will come...." It is possible that British professors based in America have the right combination of knowledge and detachment to have an unclouded vision of America's future. Alternatively, it is also possible that they may be over-projecting the fate of the British empire on to its rather more robust American successor. Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard (and an American) points out that: "By the outbreak of World War I, Britain ranked only fourth among the great powers . . . in GDP, and third in military spending." By contrast, America still has the largest or second-largest economy in the world (depending on the measure you choose) and easily the biggest military budget. What is more, the collapse of the British empire was precipitated by the draining effects of two world wars, which left the UK close to bankrupt. If the US can avoid being sucked into a similar global conflict, it should do a better job of preserving its power".

Gideon Rachman, "UK's risky obsession with US decline: Many policy makers seem to see the rise of China as inevitable". The Financial Times. 6 April 2015, in www.ft.com.

"Reputation is so very necessary to a prince that the one who enjoys it does more with his mere name than can be achieved with their armies by those who do not".

Cardinal Richelieu. Testament Politique. (1688), p. 373.

 The issues highlighted by Gideon Rachman in his article of the other day are as follows: i) is American power in decline per se? ii) And if it is, how seriously can it be said to be in decline? Meaning are we approaching an end to the American world hegemony and or primacy of the past seventy-years? As per the first issue: by definition in terms of economic statistics, the USA is not as important to the world economy as it was circa 1945, 1955, 1965, or for that matter 1995. With that being said, it is still the case that by some measurements (but not all) the USA is still the largest economy in the world. With the Peoples Republic of China in second place. As per the second, more complex issue, the question is: a) how important in geopolitical terms is the relative, economic decline of the USA? b) can this relative economic decline be said to have impacted upon the American world position? And if so how seriously? It would seem the case that while China's economic expansion in many parts of the world has given it a much higher, diplomatic profile of late, it cannot be said to have garnered the PRC, much by the way of diplomatic hard diplomatic gains or fruits. With the exceptions Burma,(until recently), North Korea and Pakistan, China is still singularly lacking in allies of any sort. Its relations with most of its closest neighbours (Russia excepted) being singularly bad if not atrocious. Nor can Peking be said to have much by way of 'soft' or culture power. Certainly nothing akin to what the Americans or even some of the European powers possess. Similarly, notwithstanding all the military hardware that it has recently purchased, China's military is still woefully inadequate to engage in anything approaching a real military conflict with another erste-klasse power. With the historical record showing that it was on the losing side in two of the last three military conflicts it has engaged in: India - 1962 (winner), Russia - 1969 (loser), Vietnam - 1979 (loser). As a recent piece in the Financial Times has cleared exposed 1. Au fond though, the real issue is that all the recent talk of American decline has been inspired partly by the debacle of the Iraq war and partly by the world financial crisis of 2008-2009. In the case of the former, obviously, the policies of the current American administration, have to a certain degree, lend themselves to precisely such talk. In this case, the perception factor that Cardinal Richelieu so cogently identified low these almost four-hundred years ago, is most apt. 'Strategic patience' is perhaps a needed, nay a necessary tactic from time to time for any Great Power. When it is seemed to become not a tactic, but a determined and fixed strategy, then it is very easy for others to talk of said power's 'decline' and suchlike. At this point in time, no one can easily say if the current hesitancy in the application of American power abroad is something which will last-out the current American administration or will it become the default power position for the USA. Just as, viz Gideon Rachman, at a certain point, circa 1957-1960, a strategy of withdrawal and in fact 'decline' did become the default position of the United Kingdom. And soon enough a new mindset was created which in turn added to and reinforced what may at first have been merely a momentary tactic. While I myself and skeptical that the USA is in full-fledged decline, only time and nothing else will tell if I am correct or not.

1. Charles Clover, "China: Projections of power". The Financial Times. 8 April 2015, in www.ft.com.Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-52042459945245146672015-04-07T17:38:00.000-04:002015-04-07T17:41:05.326-04:00THE NUCLEAR AGREEMENT WITH PERSIA: WHAT TO MAKE OF IT?
"FOR years Iran has lied about its nuclear plans. The Islamic Republic insists that it wants peace, but it has built secret, bomb-proof facilities for enriching uranium and, most outsiders conclude, begun work on designs for nuclear weapons. At the same time, it has spouted anti-Semitism and sponsored terrorists and militias in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It is fighting directly or by proxy in Syria, Iraq and now Yemen, often supporting vicious sectarian clients. And yet, despite Iran's transgressions, this week's progress towards an agreement to limit its nuclear programme is still welcome. The declaration that emerged on April 2nd, after marathon negotiations between Iran and six world powers in Lausanne, was surprisingly comprehensive. Iran will curb its programme and open it to inspection in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions. Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama called it a good deal that will make the United States, its allies and the world safer. However, the details remain to be thrashed out by the end of June. The president warned that this process could still fail—and hardliners in both Tehran and Washington will do their damnedest to see that it does. Failure would be a grave loss. This agreement offers the best chance of containing Iran's nuclear ambitions. And it also offers the faint promise of leading the Middle East away from the violence that has been engulfing it. The best reason for wanting the next three months to produce a deal is that the alternatives are so unattractive. Military action to destroy Iran's programme would have only a temporary effect. Air raids cannot annihilate know-how, but they would redouble the mullahs' determination to get hold of a weapon, further radicalise Muslims, and add to the mayhem in a part of the world that is already in flames. Then there are sanctions. Some people, such as Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, argue that Iran is too malign to be left with anything but a symbolic ability to enrich uranium. He recommends redoubling sanctions and holding out until Iran is forced to concede to the world's demands. But there is a contradiction here. On the one hand, Iran is so bent on destruction that it cannot be treated as a normal negotiating partner; on the other it is so pliant than more sanctions will make it give up a nuclear programme that it has defended, at great cost, for many years. Besides, waiting for Iran to make concessions does not have a good record. In 2003 the Bush administration ignored tentative Iranian signals that it was ready to talk. Since then, the mullahs have enhanced their expertise and increased their count of centrifuges from 164 to 19,000 or so. As Mr Obama argues, this second option very quickly leads back to either war or negotiations—and on worse terms. By contrast the deal that has comes out of Lausanne is at least attainable. Iran will cut its capacity to enrich by two-thirds compared with today for a minimum of ten years; it will radically shrink its stockpile of enriched uranium for a minimum of 15; and it will permanently cut off the route to a bomb placed on plutonium. Iran will also submit itself to intrusive inspections throughout the nuclear supply chain. In exchange, the outside world will lift economic sanctions and agree to Iran's right to enrich uranium."

The Economist, "Negotiating with Iran: Is this a good deal?" 2 April 2015, in www.economist.com.

"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."

Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique.

Monsieur Arouet's dictum is I believe the soundest way of looking at the results of the Persian nuclear talks that were announced last week. It is very much the case, that this agreement is not the very best from the Western perspective that could be hoped for. It is merely the case that this agreement, presuming that the details can indeed be negotiated in this next three months, does au fond provide the essential and needed safeguards concerning Persia's ability to quickly develop nuclear weapons undetected. Given the other voluminous & ongoing problems in the region at present, from the chaos in Libya to the ongoing war in Syria and the Sunni-ISIS insurrection in Iraq, with Yemen's problems added to the mix, the likelihood of a diplomatic settlement to Persia's quest for nuclear weapons can only be looked upon with favor. Unfortunately, none of the other options discussed in the British periodical, the Economist, makes any sense. A bombing campaign to stop and or derail Persia's nuclear ambitions would in the current Near and Middle East, be erste-klasse disaster. And heaping more sanctions on Persia, while perhaps effective in the long-run, will not necessarily result in either a quicker nor necessarily a better agreement in the medium to short term. Given both its economic exhaustion and its internal political difficulties, it is probably the case that the current agreement is the very best that Persia will agree to voluntarily. As the man who I regard as the leading American military expert, Anthony Cordesman cogently stated last week:

"The proposed parameters and framework in the Proposed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has the potential to meet every test in creating a valid agreement over time of the kind laid out earlier in the Burke Chair analysis circulated on March 30. It can block both an Iranian nuclear threat and a nuclear arms race in the region, and it is a powerful beginning to creating a full agreement, and creating the prospect for broader stability in other areas. Verification will take at least several years, but some form of trust may come with time. This proposal should not be a subject for partisan wrangling or outside political exploitation. It should be the subject of objective analysis of the agreement, our intelligence and future capabilities to detect Iran's actions, the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) capabilities to verify, and enforcement provisions if Iran should cheat. No perfect agreement was ever possible and it is hard to believe a better option was negotiable. In fact, it may be a real victory for all sides: A better future for Iran, and greater security for the United States, its Arab partners, Israel, and all its other allies" 1.
 In short to quote Fürst von Bismarck: 'politics is the art of the possible'.

1. Anthony Cordesman, "Verify and Trust May Come with Iran: The Parameters for the Proposed Joint Comprehensive Plan". The Center for Strategic and International Studies. April 2015, in www.csis.org. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-71948859907041922132015-04-05T23:50:00.002-04:002015-04-05T23:50:55.556-04:00FELIX PASCHA TO ALL!
"AND in the end of the sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. And his countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as snow. And for fear of him, the guards were struck with terror, and became as dead men. And the angel answering, said to the women: Fear not you; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come, and see the place where the Lord was laid. And going quickly, tell his disciples that he is risen: and behold he will go before you into Galilee; there you shall see him. Lo, I have foretold it to you. And they went out quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, running to tell his disciples. And behold Jesus met them, saying: All hail. But they came up and took hold of his feet, and adored him. Then Jesus said to them: Fear not. Go, tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, there they shall see me".

Matthew 28, as found translated from the Vulgate in the Douay-Rheims Bible, circa 1582.Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-71029936863062988052015-04-02T01:20:00.003-04:002015-04-02T01:21:52.575-04:00THE SAUDI MILITARY INTERVENTION IN YEMEN: A COMMENT
"Shia Houthi rebels clashed with Saudi military units on Yemen's northern border on Friday. The rebels vowed to intensify their campaign for control of the country after a second night of air strikes by a coalition of regional Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia. Houthi fighters also clashed with rival militias in the south of the country. As the fighting intensified, president Abd-Rabbu Hadi, who this week fled the southern port city of Aden in the face of the Houthi advance, travelled to Egypt to attend a summit of Arab leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh. The president vowed to call for an Arab "Marshall Plan" to rebuild his country once the Houthis have been ousted. Tensions grew on Friday as Saudi and Egyptian warships deployed to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait in an effort to stop Houthis taking control of the waterway. Large volumes of Gulf oil and trade flow through the strait, bound for the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia fears that the Houthis — who seized Yemen's capital, Sana'a in September and placed Mr Hadi under house arrest — are helping Iran expand its power base in the Arab world. The Saudis are also concerned about their border with Yemen, near the Houthis' northern stronghold. Saudi Arabian officials said they believed the multinational operation, dubbed Resolute Storm, had degraded the Houthis' military capabilities. But Abdelmalek al-Houthi, Houthi leader, vowed to confront what he called Saudi Arabia's "criminal, unjust and unjustified aggression". Cairo is considering sending troops to take part in a ground war in Yemen. The US is backing the aerial campaign by providing logistical support and satellite imagery. The Houthis' precipitous rise to power was backed by Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president overthrown in a 2011 popular uprising in Yemen. The group's military victories are largely due to the backing of armed forces units loyal to the former leader. But this week's targeting of military installations held by the Houthis and soldiers loyal to the former president has given rise to fears that the Saudis and their allies may have to become an occupying force to prevent the country spiralling into the kind of chaos and sectarian violence seen in Iraq or Syria. "The coalition's strikes have succeeded in decimating much of the capacity of the Yemeni army," said Adam Baron, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. "[But] it poses a huge challenge moving forward, threatening to exacerbate a pre-existing power vacuum in the country."

Peter Salisbury, "Houthi rebels clash with Saudi troops on Yemen's northern border". The Financial Times. 27 March 2015, in www.ft.com.

The intervention, as of now in the air, but shortly perhaps on the ground as well, by Saudi Arabia and its allies provokes in one, a mixture of views: i) that faute de mieux, the Saudis intervention while obviously motivated by sectarian hatred of the Shiite-oriented, Houthis, is better than no intervention at all by any outside power. That while the Houthis may perhaps have solid grounds for being opposed to the status quo ante in Yemen, this fact does not provide a rationale for their overt power grab. Especially, given their alignment with the former Saleh regime; ii) on the other hand, it is somewhat self-evident that per se, a mere air campaign will not fundamentally change the dynamics on the ground in Yemen. That the recently ousted President, Mr. Abd-Rabbu Hadi, does not himself possess the wherewithal militarily speaking to defeat the Houthi rebels 1. Accordingly, there is much talk of a coalition of ground forces between the Saudis and the Egyptians which will invade Yemen and defeat the Houthis. Which is of course by far the best case scenario. The only issue is that neither Saudi Arabia, its Gulf allies or even the Egyptians have shown themselves in recent years able to perform anything akin to the scenario just outlined above. And of course the history of the failed Egyptian military intervention in the 1960s, shows how fraught with dangerous possibilities is any type of unplanned military intervention in a country like Yemen with its extensive deserts and mountains. Which is not to say that per se, any outside military intervention will automatically fail. The success of the combined British-Persian military intervention in Oman in the early 1970s, shows that such interventions can indeed work. But it does require employing a trained and capable as well as a numerically overwhelming military force. Half-hearted measures will in the current situation in Yemen will most definitely not work; iii) finally, as per the issue of possible Persian military intervention, it is very much the case, that while the Persians would love to see the Saudis and their allies suffer a defeat, both military and political, it is also the case that the Persians themselves, with both the sanctions regime still in place and with their existing military and other commitments in Iraq and Syria are hardily in a position to overtly assist the Houthis. Especially, given how difficult it would be to concretely give such assistance in not very accessible (from Persia that is) Yemen. In short, it is safe to assume that while Tehran, will diplomatically speaking, complain and indeed complain loudly, it will not care to overtly intervene to counter-balance the Saudi lead intervention. Especially as it is in the process of perhaps negotiating an agreement with the Western Powers over its nuclear capabilities. In short, it is my opinion that while the Saudi-lead intervention into Yemen is a course of action with manifold risks, there does not appear to be any 'good' or plausible alternatives, short of allowing this country to follow Syria, Iraq and Libya to fall into anarchy. With all the attendant dangers as seeing the spread of Islamic radicalism and terrorism following from the very same. Whether the Saudis, et. al., have the wherewithal to effectively intervene `a la the British-Persian intervention into Oman in the early 1970s is a question which I do not have an answer to at this time. One may only hope that the Christian God will intervene on the side of the Holder of the two sacred places of Islam.

1. Alistair Burt, et. al., "Yemen on the Brink?" Chatham House collequal. 23 March 2015, in www.chathamhouse.org Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-11505331166258578692015-03-26T21:16:00.002-04:002015-03-26T21:21:35.817-04:00LEE KUAN YEW: A GREAT STATESMAN OR A MERE 'QUARTERMASTER'?
"Lee Kuan Yew, the founder and patriarch of modern Singapore who has died at the age of 91, was one of postwar Asia's most revered and controversial politicians and one of its last remaining independence leaders. His greatest achievement was to promote the concept of good governance in Southeast Asia, a region long plagued by corrupt, inefficient governments. As Singapore's prime minister for more than 30 years, he built his small island republic into one of the world's economic success stories. Average per capita income just after independence in 1965 was a mere US$511. By the time Lee resigned as prime minister it had topped $50,000. Singapore is one of Asia's largest financial centres, and is the world's biggest ship bunkering port. Lee was the embodiment of a new Asian dynamism: smart, tough and pragmatic and displaying unshakeable self-confidence. His style of leadership had many foreign admirers and he was credited with being a pioneer of "authoritarian capitalism", which has influenced other countries including China, Russia and the Gulf states. Richard Nixon once described Lee as a big man on a small stage who, "in other times and other places, might have attained the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli or a Gladstone". Perhaps at times Lee yearned to put his talents to work outside the narrow confines of Singapore but he was pleased to be acknowledged as a leading spokesman for Asia. Few other leaders have stamped their personalities so firmly on a country. His perfectionism, farsightedness, elitism, authoritarianism and intolerance, along with his obsessions with security, cleanliness and order, are reflected in nearly every aspect of modern Singaporean life. The sale of chewing gum is still banned — a nannyish rule he instigated that is arguably the most-recognised fact about Singapore abroad. "What is required is a rugged, resolute, highly trained, highly disciplined community," Lee once said, believing that Singapore's multi-ethnic population and the political instability of Southeast Asia represented a constant threat to his creation. He achieved his goal at the expense of curbing some civil liberties, such as freedom of the press. Lee was unapologetic about his means, dismissing the idea of western liberal democracy as unsuitable to Asian societies. His death comes as the city-state, whose economic and political model he oversaw, has reached a crossroads. Singapore is straining to cope with a declining working-age population, increasing reliance on foreign immigrants and unprecedented popular pressure for a less authoritarian government".

By John Burton, Peter Montagnon, Kevin Brown and Jeremy Grant, "Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father, 1923-2015". The Financial Times. 22 March 2015, in www.ft.com.

"He had performed the dramatic feats required by the crises that had brought him to power. He had consolidated new political institutions. He had achieved the decolonisation of French Africa while maintaining French self-confidence at home and its prestige in the former colonies. Barely overcoming incipient civil war, he had restored French pride by giving it a central role in the policies of Europe and the Western Alliance. His challenge to the United States had to a great degree the purpose of inspiring French self-assurance. But the student upheavals of 1968 had shaken de Gaulle. And the challenges facing him thereafter were not of a magnitude he considered relevant to his vision of himself. To ensure a growing economy, to arbitrate contending claims on limited resources, to organise and manager a bureaucratic state---these were tasks for what he half-contemptuously called 'quartermasters', not for heroic figures."

Henry Alfred Kissinger. The White House Years. (1979), pp. 387-388.

The query raised above is pertinent in considering the career and legacy of the late Singaporean Prime Minister (1959-1990). At least on the surface, Mr. Lee was an outstanding leader who via a mixture of political smarts and intelligent policies managed to raise the once relatively poor island of Singapore to unprecedented wealth and luxury. Something of a martinet or if you like an usually authoritarian Prefect from an early 20th century British Public School, Lee enforced policies and programmes which ordinarily would have landed him in an early and long-lasting retirement in almost any Western country in the past forty-five year: banning the chewing of bubble gum in public being the epitome of the very same. The fact that Lee enjoyed being in office for upwards of fifty years, highlights the differing political culture of Singapore to the post-soixante-huitard West. What would have become of Lee in the much less forgiving atmosphere in say Britain, France or indeed any Western country is perhaps best pointed to by the similar political denouements of General de Gaulle and Lady Thatcher. In both cases, political leaders who had accomplished much in a period of ten-years were ousted (directly in the case of Thatcher or indirectly in the case of General de Gaulle), soon thereafter. Given his overtly authoritarian tendencies in the latter part of his premiership, it is difficult to envisage Lee lasting longer than either of these two Western leaders. Whether or not Lee's so-called 'Confucian' model of authoritarian capitalism, is something that the contemporary West can or should adopt is of course a speculative question to put it mildly. Au fond, there is nothing in Lee's model of statecraft that cannot be found in say Meiji or early post-bellum Showa Japan (sans of course the endemic corruption of the latter), or 18th and 19th century Prussia. One can merely note that neither of these two models survived democratization of the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. It is difficult to imagine at this point in time, that any Western country would be willing to step back into time and adopt the ways or the methods of the Prussian State. Perhaps this fact is an unfortunate one (and to a degree I do believe this to be true), but I cannot for the life of me, imagine this occurring. At least not in my lifetime. So in short, to answer my own query: I believe that Lee Kwan Yew was more of a Gaullist 'quartermaster' than a visionary statesman. The reason being that Lee's political career in Singapore did not require him to be anything else. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-20210302118832637722015-03-25T19:33:00.001-04:002015-03-25T19:33:58.098-04:00MOSKVA'S NUCLEAR WARNING TO COPENHAGEN: A COMMENT
"Tensions between Denmark and Russia were ratcheted up a notch on Saturday. Russia's ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, wrote in an opinion piece published by Jyllands-Posten that Denmark has made itself a target of a potential nuclear attack by joining Nato's missile defence system. "I don't think the Danes fully understand the consequences of what will happen if Denmark joins the American-controlled missile defence. If it happens, Danish war ships will become targets for Russian atomic missiles," Vanin wrote. Denmark announced in August that it will will contribute at least one frigate to Nato's defence system. At the time, Defence Minister Nicolai Wammen said that joining the missile defence system was not a move aimed at Russia. "That Denmark will join the missile defence system with radar capacity on one or more of our frigates is not an action that is targeted against Russia, but rather to protect us against rogues states, terrorist organisations and others that have the capacity to fire missiles at Europe and the US," Wammen told Jyllands-Posten in August. Vanin's op-ed made it clear that Russia doesn't share that interpretation. "Denmark will become a part of the threat against Russia. It will be less peaceful and the relationship with Russia will be harmed. It is of course your decision – I want to simply remind you that it will cost you both money and security," Vanin wrote. "At the same time, Russia has missiles that are guaranteed to break through future global missile defence systems," he continued. Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard called Vanin's statements 'unacceptable'".

"Russia delivers nuclear threat to Denmark". The Local DK: Denmark's news in English. 22 March 2015, in www.thelocal.dk

"It seems fairly clear that plan [sic] of Soviet Government is to extort some agreement satisfactory to themselves from the Persian Government by threat, and indeed if necessary by use of force and to delay making any reply to United States Government or His Majesty's Government until they can say that matter has been settled with a Persian Government direct: meanwhile Persian Government is to be stopped from bringing matter up again before Security Council when this meets on March 25h....Persian Prime Minister....was obviously anxious to know what practical help United State Government and His Majesty's Government could give, if Soviet Government disregarded or flouted United Nations Organization procedure....Tarle [in Ivestiya] further asserts that Britain will not take military action and that we could not count upon American support. Confident as they seem on both scores the Soviet authorities will hardily be deterred from achieving their ends in North Persia by fear of unpleasant consequences in United Nations Organization. I interprete Tarle's article as a clear warning to us and above all to the Persians. We should therefore be prepared for the Russians to stick at nothing in North Persia".

Roberts [British chargé d'affaires in Moskva] to Foreign Office, on 13 March 1946. In: Documents on British Policy Overseas: Series I, Volume VII. Edited K.A.Hamilton & H.J. Yasamee. (1995), pp. 60-61.

The comments by the Russian ambassador to Denmark are of a piece with much of recent Russian activity in the Baltic Sea area. From aggressive submarine activity off the coast of Sweden to over-flights of many if not all of the Baltic States in the past six months. More recently, there has been a large-scale military build-up of Russian forces in the enclave of Königsberg  1. All this is in keeping with the recent turn in Russian foreign policy of the past twelve to fifteen months. A policy of brute force, threats, ultimatums, et cetera. Something out of the rule book of Nikita Khrushchev and Iosif Stalin. Even Tsarist Russia, which in many ways was hardily a laggard in the employment of the language of machtpolitik in its foreign relations, rarely if ever employed such brutal and crass language. With that being said what is to be done? Simply put: the Western powers must prepare themselves for any unexpected events by our Russian friends. Put forces on a higher state of alert and readiness, but at the very same time, not allow themselves to fall into the habit of provoking Moskva needlessly. Without ignoring the fact that in the case of Ukraine, Western policy should now aim to increase the pressure on Moskva by supplying large volumes of military assistance, both offensive and defensive to Kyiv. The sooner the better. The quicker that the West increases the costs of Russia's military intervention in Ukraine, the quicker that Russia will end its intervention in that poor and unfortunate land. The perspective herein is in fact that of the late, thoroughly unlamented Stalinist Foreign Minister, V. M. Molotov, who in his memoirs noted of the Russian pressure tactics in the Persian Crisis of 1946:

"In this matter we admittedly went to far, but something has been brewing in the South. You have to understand that there are limits to everything otherwise you can choke" 2.

1. Richard Milne, "Russia delivers nuclear warning to Denmark". The Financial Timnes. 22 March 2015, in www.ft.com.

2. V. M. Molotov quoted in, Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics. Conversations with Felix Chuev. Edited and Translated by Albert Reiss. (1991), p. 8. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-42716745226984087272015-03-10T14:47:00.000-04:002015-03-10T15:15:28.618-04:00THE GREAT WAR REVISTED OR THE LAST GASP OF THE 'OLD HATS' ? PROFESSOR SCHUKER REPLIES
"For a fully documented account of how the Auswaertiges Amt doctored Die Grosse Politik, see Holger Herwig, "Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany after the Great War," International Security 12 (Autumn 1987), 5-44."

Stephen Schuker, "Reply to 'THE GREAT WAR REVISTED OR THE LAST GASP OF THE 'OLD HATS' ?". Diplomat of the Future. 16 February 2015, in www.diplomatofthefuture.blogspot.com.

"The most obvious shortcoming of the Grosse Politik stemmed from its very nature as a publication from the files of the former foreign office. In other words, the collection does not include the highly important, indeed critical materials of several other, powerful planning agencies: the General Staff, the War Ministry, the Naval Office, the bureaus responsible for economic preparation for the war....Of course, not all materials, even in a forty-volume series, and there is little doubt that many documents were suppressed or even destroyed. Moreover, some of the documents published were shortened with potentially damaging sections deleted."

Holger Herwig, "Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany after the Great War". International Security. Fall 1987, p. 15.

"I went over to see [Sir Walter] Monckton one day this week at the Ministry of Labour in St. James's Square to talk about the 'Windsor' papers --- captured German documents which show how the Germans tried to get a hold of the Duke in 1940 when he was in Portugual....Cabinet decided --- feebly and under pressure from the PM [Sir Winston Churchill] --- to try to suppress the Windsor papers. There is sure to be a row with the historians who will regard this as tampering with history. The PM and [Lord] Salisbury are to see the British editor, Miss Lambert, and try to 'persuade' her. She has already threatened to resign if her historian's conscience is assailed. We shall see".

Sir Charles Arthur Evelyn Shuckburgh. Descent to Suez: diaries 1951-1956. (1986), p. 100.

 Do allow me to be the very first to offer my gratitude to Professor Stephen Schuker for replying to my piece last month, dealing with the ongoing historiographical debate over the origins of the Great War. In the very same, Professor Schuker was along with Professor John Röhl, made to carry the ball for the aforementioned 'old hats' of the older, Fritz Fischer school and generation of historians. In the course of my piece, I criticized Professor Schuker for raising what I thought was something of a red herring. Namely that the famous Weimar German, collection of diplomatic documents, Die Grosse Politik, covering the years from 1871 to 1914, were in Professor Shucker's words 'doctored'. Well, as you can see from his response, Professor Schuker is able to cite a most reputable source for his claim. And now having read Holger Herwig's essay which was subsequently was turned into a book, I will admit that Professor Schuker was indeed correct in his claim as it pertains to Grosse Politik. With that being said, this fact by itself does not change very much as it relates to Professors Schuker and Röhl's attacks on the new, revisionist scholarship relating to the origins of the Great War. As I stated in my piece, both gentlemen are quite careful to stay clear of actually critiquing the scholarship of Christopher Clark, Sean McMeekin, and Stefan Schmidt. Instead we are treated to a species of semi-ad hominem attacks on the revisionist school and on Professor Clark in particular. However, even when looking at the issue of the doctoring of Grosse Politik, which I am now agree was indeed 'doctored', what do we make of this fact? As the citation above from the diary of the high foreign office official, Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh clearly shows, it is in the nature of both governments and bureaucracies to endeavour to either 'hide' or indeed as the example of the so-called Windsor papers show, suppress documents which may be deemed to be 'sensitive' or embarrassing 1. However, the uniqueness of the doctoring of Grosse Politik becomes even more questionable, once we note that Weimar Germany was not the only combatant to doctor and or suppress diplomatic papers which were thought to be less than supportive of the national narrative that the war was caused by the enemy nation or nations. Specifically, of course I am referring to France, which as was noted first by the late, great Luigi Albertini in his magnum opus, The Origins of the War of 1914, that from the publication of the infamous Yellow Book, to their post-bellum memoirs, that Poincaré, Viviani, Paléologue all engage in falsification of the voluminous evidence that: a) France and in particular Paléologue 'egged on' (in Albertini's words) Russia to mobilize against both Austria and Germany; b) that Austria mobilised first prior to Russia 2. And it is in particular a new and much more critical examination of the Balkan policies of the Entente Powers, which the revisionist historians have focused on. In short, while I greatly appreciate Professor Schuker's kindness in replying to my prior piece on this subject, his rebuttal does not in any way or fashion cause me to change my position. Indeed, insofar as Professor Schuker, like Professor Röhl refuses to engage in any substantive fashion with the revisionist school, my own prior opinion is not only upheld but fortified.

1. On the 'Windsor Papers', see: Andrew Morton, "How Britain covered up the friendship between Hitler & Edward VIII". The New York Post. 1 March 2015, in www.nypost.com. Should one add, that Annika Mombauer, who Schuker cites with evident approval in his article and who is of course a protégée of John Röhl, in her own collection of documents dealing with the origins of the Great War, notes of Grosse Politik: "For the purposes of compiling the present addition of collected documents, individual documents contained within the volumes of Die Grosse Politik have been included without undue concern about their authenticity".See: The Origins of the First World War: Diplomatic and military documents. Edited and translated by Annika Mombauer. (2013), p. 12.

2. See in particular: Volume II, pp. 582-595, and Volume III, pp. 112-164. Both in: Luigi Albertini. The Origins of the War of 1914. Volumes I-III. Revised Edition. Edited & Translated by Isabella M. Massey. (2002). My comments above in no way gainsays the fact that Albertini himself, while highly critical of both French and Russian actions in bringing about the war, placed a higher degree of fault with Germany and Austria. However, given the fact that Albertini was a Liberal, Italian Nationalist of the pre-war school, it would be difficult to imagine that he would be able to overcome a life-time of prejudices as per this issue.

 Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-72193669062514195312015-03-08T12:45:00.001-04:002015-03-08T19:34:27.323-04:00NETANYAHU'S 'BRAZEN CHALLENGE' TO THE WHITE HOUSE OVER PERSIA: A COMMENT
"No one could claim Benjamin Netanyahu lacks chutzpah. Snubbing a Democratic US president by appealing to a Republican Congress to wreck the White House's set piece initiative two weeks before facing his own election — well, that takes gumption. But guts are not the same thing as wisdom. It is doubtful Mr Netanyahu's gambit will have persuaded US lawmakers to change their minds. Most were already sympathetic to Israeli misgivings about the outlines of Barack Obama's proposed nuclear deal with Iran. By making it a US partisan issue, Mr Netanyahu's flouting of norms has opened cracks within pro-Israeli groups where none existed. He has also invited deeper scrutiny of his own objections to any kind of Iran agreement. Mr Obama still has much ground to cover before he can secure an acceptable deal. Even then, it may be unattainable. But he has an obligation to try. Ironically, Mr Netanyahu's actions may have made his task a little easier. Mr. Netanyahu's main objection is that Iran can never be trusted to honour any nuclear deal. Only a full dismembering of all of Iran's civil nuclear capacity — every centrifuge it possesses and every ounce of enriched uranium it has produced — would be acceptable to Israel. Even then, US sanctions on Iran should still be kept in place. As the chief sponsor of Syria's Assad regime, Hizbollah and other regional instruments of terror, Iran should continue to be treated as a pariah. But this sets the bar unrealistically high. Under Mr Obama's deal, Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity would be drastically pared back and subject to a clear regime of international inspections. It would push Iran's "nuclear breakout" capacity to one year, enough time for the world to detect and react to any breach. The deal would hold for a minimum of 10 years with the hope that Iran would have moderated its stance towards the world within that time, and relaxed its politics at home. In exchange, the US and its allies would ease the sanctions that are crippling Iran's economy."
 Leader, "Netanyahu's brazen challenge to Obama". The Financial Times. 3 March 2015, in www.ft.com.
"From the American perspective, the main question about Iran is, assuming it is a threat, can it be destroyed militarily? The Iranians are not fools. They observed the ease with which the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. They buried theirs deep underground. It is therefore not clear, regardless of how far along it is or what its purpose is, that the United States could destroy Iran's nuclear program from the air. It would require, at the very least, special operations on the ground, and failing that, military action beyond U.S. capabilities. Aside from the use of nuclear weapons, it is unclear that an attack on multiple hardened sites would work. The Israelis are quite aware of these difficulties. Had it been possible to attack, and had the Israelis believed what they were saying, the Israelis would have attacked. The distances are great, but there are indications that countries closer to Iran and also interested in destroying Iran's nuclear program would have allowed the use of their territories. Yet the Israelis did not attack. The American position is that, lacking a viable military option and uncertain as to the status of Iran's program, the only option is to induce Iran to curtail the program. Simply maintaining permanent sanctions does not end whatever program there is. Only an agreement with Iran trading the program for an end of sanctions would work. From the American point of view, the lack of a military option requires a negotiation. The Israeli position is that Iran cannot be trusted. The American position is that in that case, there are no options".

George Friedman, "Geopolitical Weekly: Netanyahu, Obama and the Geopolitics of Speeches". Stratfor: Global intelligence. 3 March 2015, in www.stratfor.com.

"My moment came at dinner in the embassy - Dulles, Eden, Livvy Merchant, Douglas MacArthur, Ambassador Dillon, Gladwyn [Jebb], Harold Caccia and Tony Rumbold....I found them amenable to the idea of trying to get concessions out of Israel....Dulles, however, gave us an enlightening account of the power and influence of the Jews in America. Subscriptions to Israel, alone of all non-local charities, are (quite illegally) exempt from tax. But he said we have another twelve months to do something in, before another election looms up and makes all action impossible."

Sir Charles Arthur Evelyn Schuckburgh. Descent to Suez: diaries 1951-1956. (1986). pp.242-243.

Whether the Israeli Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu's speech this week to the American Congress was a 'brazen challenge' is in the eyes of the beholder. Certainly, it is a highly unusual thing for a foreign leader to make a speech before the parliament of the country in which he is a guest to attack the policy of the home government. But then again, the American-Israeli relationship has defied the grounds of 'normality' for quite awhile now. As John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt have shown in their book (which per se merely brought out into the open the findings of many books and articles by professional historians who specialized in this area), the normative aspects of foreign relations are strikingly absent in America's relations with the Jewish State 1. With that being said and understood, it would be truer to argue that Netanyahu's 'brazen challenge' to the current American Administration is merely the ne plus ultra of the peculiarity of Washington's relations with Tel Aviv. After all, the current Israeli government's position on the Western Powers nuclear negotiations with Persia are hardly novel. It has been stated and reiterated time and again for several years now. And insofar as Netanyahu singularly failed to waive the stick of preventive air strikes to 'solve' the problem posed by Tehran's quest for nuclear power (and or nuclear weapons), then it could be argued that there has been 'progress' in how Israel views the matter of resolving the problem posed by Persia's nuclear ambitions. It is useful to remember that it was not too far distant in time to hear sotto voce, from either Israel or its American supporters that if the negotiations with Persia did not result in an acceptable modus vivendi by day x, then Israel would take matters into its own hands. AKA endeavor by means of air strikes to destroy Persia's nuclear programme. Well day 'x' has come and gone. Several years and several times ago, and Israel has chosen not to act. The fact of the matter is, that as George Friedman of Stratfor cogently argues, Israel lacks the requisite military capacity to unilaterally to destroy Persia's nuclear infrastructure 2. Accordingly, with a military option not available, Israel has instead chosen to try to propel the Americans to either ensure that any agreement is airtight as it relates to Persia's nuclear programme, or conversely to employ military means to destroy said nuclear programme in the absence of an agreement acceptable to Israel. Hence the point of the Israeli premier's speech to the America Congress is to lobby the very same to prevent the American administration from negotiating any agreement acceptable to the mullahs of Persia. Knowing this to be the case himself, one can only wonder what au fond the Israeli's premier true motives are. Ones that comes immediately to mind is of course 'regime change'; and no matter how desirable that outcome might be in the abstract, that fact is that with the ongoing wars in Syria and Iraq, as well as the concurrent upheavals in Yeman and Libya, to endeavor to overthrow the detestable regime in Persia would be pure madness at this point in time. Like it or not, some mutually acceptable modus vivendi agreement over the nuclear issue with the regime in Tehran is vital. The Israeli premier's challenge to the proposed agreement must be rejected pur et simple. And one may only hope in doing so that Netanyahu will be ousted in the forthcoming Israeli elections.

1. John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt. The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. (2007). See also for a historical perspective the following two books by Peter Hahn: The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945-1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War(1991) &  Caught in the Middle East: U.S. Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1945-1961 (2004).

2. Friedman, op. cit. This point is emphasised greatly and at length, by someone who I conceive of as the premier American military 'expert', Anthony Cordesman, in his: Iran, Sanctions, Energy, Arms Control, and Regime Change. (2014), pp. 134-142 and passim.Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-29123670513182263792015-02-28T23:56:00.000-05:002015-03-02T18:04:31.928-05:00THE NEMTSOV ASSASSINATION: PUTIN'S 'MATTEOTTI AFFAIR'?
"Putin's rating will not stay at above 80 per cent forever. It will start coming down, very gradually," says Mr Nemtsov. "And once it does, the fear will diminish, too, and at some point some big business will start supporting and financing us."
 Kathrin Hille and Courtney Weaver, "Russia: Left out in the cold". The Financial Times. 26 February 2015 in www.ft.com.
"Russian television announcing the shooting death of a top opposition figure late Friday night. 55-year-old Boris Nemtsov was shot four times in the back while walking along a bridge in central Moscow, just meters from the Kremlin. Police say he was shot from a passing white car which fled the scene. His shooting death comes nearly on the eve of a big opposition protest he was due to lead in Moscow on Sunday. The march is to protest against the war in Ukraine and another opposition figure has said that Nemtsov was preparing a report on the presence of Russian troops there. Boris Nemtsov was a former deputy prime minister and a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has condemned the killing, calling it a "brutal murder." He's taken the investigation under presidential command, saying it could have been a contract killing designed as a "provocation". The White House, too, condemned the killing and called on the Russian government to make a "prompt" and "transparent" investigation to bring those responsible to justice."

"Russian opposition leader Nemtsov shot dead in Moscow". Reuters. 27 February 2015, in www.reuters.com.

"I declare, in the presence of this assembly and that of the whole Italian people, that I, and I alone, assume the political, moral and historic responsibility for everything that has happened....If outbreaks of violence have been the result of a particular historic, political and moral climate I take the responsibility, because I created this historical, political and moral climate".

Benito Mussolini, speaking to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in his official response to the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, on 3 January 1925. Quotation from Richard Bosworth. Mussolini. (2002). p. 203.

Of course only time will tell if indeed the murder of ex-Prime Minister, Boris Nemtsov proves to be the Russian State President Vladimir Putin's 'Matteotti Affair'. By employing this particular example from Italian history I am referring to two aspects of the Nemstov assassination: i) that regardless of whether or not Mussolini was directly implicated in the murder of the fearless Socialist Deputy (and the evidence is not clearcut enough for historians to make a positive decision about the matter), the Italian Fascist leader was honest enough in his official response to the storm of protest which greeted the murder, to acknowledge that by both word and deed, he was au fond 'responsible' for the murder 1; ii) that Mussolini used the aftermath of the affair to make a clear break with parliamentarism and to proceed to inaugurate a the beginnings of the full-fledged authoritarian regime, which was subsequently labeled as 'Fascist' 2. In the case of contemporary Russia, it is evident that to a degree the regime is in an economic cup de sac. With (in the words of a former Putin era Deputy Minister) Russia is suffering: "the biggest crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union" 3. Given this circumstance and the fact that popular discontent is undoubtedly on the rise (if admittedly from very low levels), it would not surprise me that a group or groups in the regime decided to: a) make an example of Nemtsov, given his more recent prominence as seen in his interview with the Financial Times late last week; b) to perhaps use the affair to force the regime, Putin, et. al., into a full-fledged, authoritarian, non-democratic direction, by jailing and or forcing into exile the rest of the opposition. I am not stating that Nemtsov's murder was intended to commence 'b' above. Merely that there is a good likelihood that the inevitable result of the murder and its aftermath is that Putin, will either willingly or unwillingly decided to take Russia in this direction. Only time will tell of course.

1. See Bosworth, op. cit., pp. 195-197. See also: Richard Bosworth. Mussolini's Italy. (2006), p. 211. For a contrary point of view as per Mussolini's direct responsibility, see: Denis Mack Smith. Modern Italy: A political history. (1997), pp. 329-330.

2. Bosworth. Mussolini., op. cit., pp. 194-195, 200-207 and passim. See also: Bosworth. Mussolini's Italy, op. cit., pp. 212-216 & Smith, op. cit., pp. 332-338 & passim.

3. Kathrin Hille and Courtney Weaver, op. cit. Some analysts already state that the climate of 'official hate' mandated by the regime, made Nemtsov's murder possible, if perhaps not necessary. See: Ivan Nechepurenko, "Analysts Blame Nemtsov's Death on Russia's 'Legitimized Hate'". The Moscow Times. 28 February 2015, in www.themoscowtimes.com

Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-19277743716279958572015-02-21T00:16:00.000-05:002015-02-21T11:40:43.071-05:00ISLAM AND THE CAUSES OF MUSLIM EXTREMISM
"It is in this setting that recent French debates over laicity in the schools must be seen. The positions are highly polarized. Integrationists see an increasingly fundamentalist Islam as a threat to the French model and think that the schools should actively resist it by teaching secular values; classic republicans think that the state must keep religion completely out of the schools but should not interfere with private beliefs; and multiculturalists think that Islam is simply being stigmatized, that social exclusion is mainly to blame, and that differences of all sorts should be represented and celebrated in schools. ach of these views has problems, but it is the multiculturalist one that seems the least in touch with social and political reality today. Not because the French don't need to learn to accommodate more differences, but because it refuses to recognize the very disturbing developments in the Islamic world today (which are anything but accommodating to differences) and how they have already affected French life. The current mantra, which President Hollande felt obliged to repeat, is that Islamic terrorism has "nothing to do with Islam" and that the most important thing is not to "make an amalgam" of all Muslims. (The Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, went even further, declaring the terrorists to be "without faith"—in other words, infidels.) But this attitude only reinforces an institutional and intellectual omertà that makes it difficult even to discuss what is really going on in the schools. The evidence has been there for anyone who cared to look for it, in books like those of Kepel and the growing literature of memoirs written by former teachers in the quartiers who gave up because they could not control their classes or enforce the principle of laicity. In 2004, for example, the Chirac government received a report it had commissioned on the presence of religious "signs and belonging" in the schools, which was promptly buried because its results were so disturbing. This Obin Report was based on on-site visits government inspectors made to over sixty middle and high schools across France, concentrating on disfavored quartiers. The extent to which life in many of them had been, to employ Kepel's term, "halalized" shocked them. The report recounts stories of girls being under constant surveillance by self-appointed older brothers who mete out corporal punishment with fists and belts if they deem modesty to have been violated. Wearing skirts or dresses is impossible in many places, also for female teachers. There is an obsession with purity, as students and their parents demand separate swimming hours or refuse to let their children go on school trips where the sexes might mix. If they do go, some refuse to enter cathedrals or churches. There are fathers who won't shake hands with female teachers, or let their wives speak alone to male teachers. There are cases of children refusing to sing, or dance, or learn an instrument, or draw a face, or use a mathematical symbol that resembles a cross. The question of dress and social mixing has led to the abandonment of gym classes in many places. Children also feel emboldened to refuse to read authors or books that they find religiously unacceptable: Rousseau, Molière, Madame Bovary. Certain subjects are taboo: evolution, sex ed, the Shoah. As one father told a teacher, "I forbid you to mention Jesus to my son...." The situation of Jewish students is far worse and a great number have transferred to private schools (though also because they, too, have become more observant). In 1996 a principal in Lyons had to arrange the departure of the last two Jewish students in his school because he could not assure their safety. As the report says, "there is a stupefying and cruel reality: in France, Jewish children, and Jewish children alone, cannot be educated in all of our schools.' "

Mark Lilla, "France on Fire". The New York Review of Books. 5 March 2015, in www.nybooks.com.

"Another week and another completely random attack by a gunman hunting down cartoonists before inexplicably heading to the local synagogue. My guess is that events in Copenhagen yesterday have already been put down in many quarters to what President Obama describes as 'a random bunch of folks' being targeted by somebody who has 'misunderstood' what every Western leader agrees is an entirely peaceful and harmless religious tradition.... The first is that supporting an artist in 21st century Europe should have become a brave thing to do and that a conversation about free speech in Europe in 2015 should have — and need — substantial police protection. Today's UK newspapers refer to Vilks as 'controversial.' But Vilks wouldn't be 'controversial' if almost the entirety of the Western media and the political and arts establishments had not in recent years abandoned their principles and chosen to avoid mentioning anything negative or worthy of satire in one single religion. The jihadists just want to kill Lars Vilks. It was the Western media and political class that made him 'controversial'. And then there is the second point — which is how many attacks like yesterday's have to happen before there is a semblance of serious discussion around all this? A few years ago when the offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed in Paris the French Foreign Minister said about drawing cartoons of Mohammed and thus potentially 'insulting' Islam: 'Is it really sensible or intelligent to pour oil on the fire?' My reply to which is 'Who made our societies into this powder-keg apparently able to catch fire at any moment Now the pretence of the current European political class continues to be that that's all just fine. We're all nice cool Europeans once we live under the same roof. When a Somali arrives in London they become as local as a cockney. And when an Arab Muslim arrives in Copenhagen they become as Danish as Carlsberg. Except that they don't, do they? Or at least a substantial number certainly don't. And although the vast majority of European Muslims obviously don't want to gun down cartoonists and Jews, a certain percentage do, or are happy to carry water for those who do. But why worry when it's just a 'small percentage' who want to do things like the Copenhagen gunman did yesterday? For the time being we are all meant to say how racist it would be to talk about immigration restrictions, and so countries like Sweden continue to commit a form of cultural suicide. And soon it becomes totally normal to point out to Europe's remaining Jews and free speech advocates that they are kind of out numbered these days, aren't they. The answer to which is yes, they are. And are likely to remain so. And what happens after that?"

Douglas Murray, "How many more terror attacks until we have a serious discussion about offending religions". The Spectator.  15 February 2015, in www.spectator.co.uk.

The importance of Mark Lilla's essay appearing as it does in the premier intelligentsia periodical on this side of the Atlantic is that it fully gives the lie to the idea that Islamic radicalisation in the Western world and the concomitant tendency to repress criticism of the malevolent effects and influence that Islam and certain sectors of the Muslim diaspora have on life in Western countries is something that only conservatives, reactionaries and or 'Islamophobes' adhere to. And that Muslim extremism is merely a figment of the imagination. As can be fully seen from the evidence that Lilla presents, it is the multiculturalists among us, who are engaged in make-believe and wish-fulfillment. Something that Douglas Murray's own piece in the London Spectator is equally good at demonstrating. The fact is, that per contra to the prognostication of the futile 'Extremism Summit' in Washington this past week, Islam as it is practiced by many of its adherents worldwide, is very much a part, not mind you the entirety, but certainly a part of the problem 1. To argue, pace the American President this week, that the problems of Muslim extremism is caused in part by: "young people facing a lack of job or educational opportunities", is completely fallacious and without any empirical data 2. Something which the usually bien-pensant Financial Times admitted to-day 3. The very best counter-examples being: a) how many terrorists has the deep deprivation suffered by the gypsy population of Europe produced? Answer: less than one; b) how many terrorists has the widespread violence and discrimination suffered by the Christian community in the Near and Middle East produce? Answer: less than one. In short, as the writer Graeme Wood argues most cogently, in the American periodical, the Atlantic, concerning the ultra-extremists of ISIS:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam 4.

Most pertinent to our argument, Wood quotes Princeton Professor Bernard Haykel, who is the leading expert on ISIS in the United States, to the effect that to argue, pace much of Muslim establishment, both in and out of the Near East, that ISIS is not really Islamic, is: "'interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition'" 5.

In short, the sooner that the West realises that Islam, qua a religious ideology is a considerable part, not the entirety surely, but a considerable part of the problem of Muslim extremism, the sooner that we will be able to come seriously to grips with this horrible phenomenon. Hopefully, before it is too late.

1. Geoff Dyer, "White House grapples with jihadi threat". The Financial Times. 20 February 2015, in www.ft.com.

2. Geoff Dyer, "Isis is not about Islam, says Obama". The Financial Times. 19 February 2015, in www.ft.com

3. Dyer, "White House grapples", op. cit.

4. Grame Wood, "What ISIS really wants". The Atlantic. (March 2015), in www.theatlantic.com

5. Ibid.

 Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-69061252454020828062015-02-18T15:51:00.001-05:002015-02-18T17:41:10.308-05:00THE FALL OF DEBALTSEVE AND THE WAY FORWARD IN UKRAINE
"Ukraine has pulled most of its troops out of Debaltseve, the strategic town in the east of the country that has been the focus of fighting in the past few days with Russia-backed separatists. Petro Poroshenko, the pro-western president of Ukraine, ordered the withdrawal on Tuesday after international monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe were prevented from entering the railway hub, according to Reuters. Mr Poroshenko said 80 per cent of Ukraine's forces in the town had withdrawn from their positions and two more columns have yet to leave the area. Rebels claimed to have seized control of the town over the weekend, despite the introduction of a ceasefire on Sunday, leaving thousands of government forces trapped in the region. Before flying to the east of the country on Wednesday to meet soldiers recently withdrawn from Debaltseve, Mr Poroshenko said: "Debaltseve was under our control, it was never encircled. Our troops and formations have left in an organised and planned manner." Anastasiya Stanko, a journalist from Ukraine's Hromadske television channel, posted photographs of soldiers, some on foot, others sitting on armoured personnel carriers, moving north towards the government-held city of Artemivsk. Debaltseve has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the near one-year conflict in eastern Ukraine as Russia-backed rebel fighters fought to seize control of the strategically important railway hub, between the breakaway cities of Donetsk and Lugansk. Fatality and casualty numbers were not immediately available following the government retreat but thousands of soldiers were thought to have been surrounded and reports from the region suggested Ukraine's army suffered heavy casualties in the run-up to the introduction of the ceasefire on Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether the ceasefire, agreed by the leaders of Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia in the Belarusian capital of Minsk last week, would hold following the events in Debaltseve."

Roman Olearchyk, "Ukraine's forces retreat from key town of Debaltseve". The Financial Times. 18 February 2015, in www.ft.com.

"For all the complexity of Ukraine, there is a way forward. It can be summarised in 14 words: Putin must withdraw his forces and Ukraine have full control of its eastern frontier. So, unlike in Syria, the key lies in a single political actor changing his behaviour. To be sure, this would not overnight stop angry separatists fighting for their Donetsk People's Republic. In eastern Ukraine, as in Bosnia, as in Syria, the radicalising brutality of war has turned neighbours into enemies. Great statecraft and imagination would then be required from Kiev to rebuild an effectively federal Ukrainian state, one in which people who identify themselves as Russians could again feel reasonably at home. But the path to any lasting peace starts with those 14 words".

Timothy Garton Ash, "There'll be no peace while Putin is squatting in Ukraine's living room". The Guardian. 16 February 2015, in www.theguardian.com.

Timothy Garton Ash's mordent but ultra-pertinent mots are very precise and to the point. Unless and until Grazhdanin Putin chooses to curtail the ravages of his auxiliaries fighting in eastern Ukraine, then any hope that the situation therein will magically resolve itself is completely unrealistic. As predicted here last week, the likelihood that Minsk II would resolve the onging fighting in Ukraine was a complete nonsense from start to finish. As Niall Ferguson wrote in the Financial Times, au fond Minsk II represents a policy of surrender and 'appeasement', pur et simple 1. As the American analyst and ex-ambassador, Stephen Sestanovich, has very cogently argued, it is precisely the absence of military assistance for Kyiv which has encouraged Putin and his cohorts to run rampant in Ukraine 2. And while I do not always agree with his point of view, the Moskva-based analyst, Dmitri Trenin, does have a valid point when he states that the conflict in Ukraine portends a more anarchic and dangerous world in the years to come 3. Only if the crisis in Ukraine is positively resolved by the reunification of the country and the ouster of Russian forces and their auxiliaries will this very dangerous scenario perhaps be blunted. Sans this occurring, expect the current crisis in Ukraine to be repeated in any number of other places in the world in the years to come. As any number of Regional and Great Powers increasingly choose to violate international law and equilibrium in the pursuit of some perceived national interest.

1. Niall Ferguson, "The meaning of the Minsk agreement". The Financial Times. 13 February 2015, in www.ft.com.

2. Stephen Sestanovich, "Diplomacy, Putin, and What Comes After a Cease-Fire in Ukraine". The Wall Street Journal. 9 February 2015, in www.wsj.com.

3. Dmitri Trenin, "Ukraine Points Towards the Start of a Tumultuous New Era in World Politics". Carnegie Moscow Center. 15 February 2015, in www.carnegie.ru . See also: Dmitri Trenin, "The Disturbing Legacy of the Ukraine Crisis". The National Interest. 12 February 2015, in www.nationalinterest.org. Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-35026664424710588492015-02-17T12:20:00.000-05:002015-02-17T12:20:10.788-05:00THE EGYPTIAN BOMBING RAIDS IN LIBYA: A COMMENT
 "Egyptian war planes pounded jihadi targets in Libya as the chaos in the north African state began to suck in its neighbours and European leaders raised the alarm about the growing threat on their doorstep. Egypt and France called for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the deteriorating situation in Libya after Cairo said it had launched dawn air strikes on positions of Libyan jihadi groups affiliated to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis. The Egyptian military said the attacks on targets in the eastern town of Derna, which is controlled by a confederation of jihadi groups, were carried out to avenge the slaughter of Egyptian Christian workers in Libya by groups loyal to Isis. The brutal slaying of the workers in territory which is outside the control of both the rival governments vying for power in Libya underscores the risks to both Arab and European neighbouring states of the country's disintegration. In an interview with La Repubblica, Angelino Alfano, the Italian interior minister, called for a UN peacekeeping mission to be deployed in Libya, for "the future of the western world". "There is not a moment to lose," he said. Egyptians were shocked and outraged by a chilling video posted on the internet by the extremists on Sunday night showing masked men in black beheading the Egyptian hostages on a Libyan beach said to be in Sirte, the central coastal town now largely in the hands of the jihadis. The militants were shown threatening to "take Rome" - a threat which has reinforced fears in Italy that they will seek to export their jihadi campaign across the Mediterranean and into Europe. France is also concerned. The office of Francois Hollande said the French president spoke with Abdul Fattah al -Sisi, the Egyptian leader, on Monday and that the two had "underscored the importance of the security council meeting and for the international community to take new measures" against the threat from jihadis in Libya. The Egyptian foreign ministry said the country's air force bombed training camps and weapon stores belonging to the extremists, and called on the international coalition fighting Isis in Syria and Iraq to take measures "to confront the terrorists of Isis and other groups in Libya". It said that by launching the air strikes Egypt had used its legitimate right to self defence under international law".

Heba Saleh,"Egypt bombs jihadi targets in Libya after beheadings". The Financial Times. 16 February 2015, in www.ft.com.

"The last two decades of intervention suggest one thing: that interventions are intrinsically unpredictable, chaotic and uncertain. They can work: the international community played a prudent and constructive role in Bosnia, and the Bosnia of 2005 was far better than that of 1995. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, disorder and chaos seemed predestined. Guilt at lost lives, embarrassment, pride, fear of Islamists and hubris all prevented the West from acknowledging failure: instead of pulling back, they dived ever deeper. And their occupation bloated, warped and corrupted the fundamental structures – social, political and economic – of the countries they were purporting to help. The lesson for Libya was that the West should not be dragged too far in and that it should anticipate chaos. The language of the UN resolution emphasised restraint: there were to be no troops on the ground and the military operations were designed to protect civilians, primarily in Benghazi, not to topple Gaddafi. But Nato was soon flying 400 miles away from Benghazi, targeting Gaddafi's headquarters in Tripoli. Lawyers assured me that no one was using the bombing raids to try to kill Gaddafi, generals whispered that Gaddafi could only last another two weeks, and diplomats denied that the rebel government was extremist or divided. But five months later, there had been numerous raids on Gaddafi's compound; Gaddafi was still in power; and the rebel general, formally arrested on the orders of the rebel deputy leader, had been tortured and executed by an Islamist faction. Yet so far Libya has proved, not unpredictably awful but unpredictably good. After 15 years working around interventions, I was watching for any hint of disaster. I noted, for example, that a Berber militia had occupied a prime hotel beside the arch of Marcus Aurelius on the grounds that the owner 'was a Gaddafi sympathiser'. But even after 24 hours, I couldn't escape the sense that things were not that bad: that Libyans were delighted and confident, and with justification."

Rory Stewart, "Because we weren't there?". The London Review of Books. 22 September 2011, in www.lrb.co.uk

In retrospect, it is difficult to recapture the illusion, shared by both Rory Stewart and myself among others, however brief in retrospect, that the outcome in Libya would be positive and thus join those seen in Bosnia and Kosovo. Instead of course, what has occurred since a little time after Stewart penned his original article has been a tale of woe and desolation. In fact a smaller version of what occurred in Afghanistan circa 1992-1994. With a minimal to non-existent Western presence on the ground, the victorious warlords were able to fight it out in an increasingly vicious and bloody series of battles. So far of course, Libya has not quite reached Afghanistan levels of violence and mayhem. Unfortunately, Libya unlike Afghanistan is on the southern shore of the Mediterranean and not in Central Asia. The West has chosen so far chosen to pretend, that regardless of the violence and the almost total breakdown of state and increasingly of society in Libya, that the country is indeed located in Central Asia. To-day's bombing by Egypt of Islamic bases and or cells in the eastern portion of the country shows that this Western pretence is becoming more and more illusory and tread-bare by the day. The only question that remains to be answered is: will the Western powers take action now, before the disorder and Islamic madness comes to them (from Libya or elsewhere in the Near and Middle East) or will they wait until afterwards. One can only hope that the Western powers react by conceiving a policy, applying it forcefully and at the very same time, thinking in concrete and strategic terms, before it is too late. Or in the words of Anthony Cordesman, who is perhaps the leading military analyst in the United States to-day:

"Strategy does not consist of stating a broad policy goal and empty rhetoric. It consist of stating an actual plan with clearly defined goals, specific means to achieve, milestones for action, estimates of the necessary resources and their availability, estimates of cost-benefits and risks, and metrics to measure success. A sound bite that fits in Twitter or a fortunate cookie is not a strategy 1."

In other words, convening White House Summits on 'Countering Violent Extremism', is at this point in time, as Libya, along with Iraq and Syria appear to be going up in flames, nothing more than meaningless and empty rhetoric 2.

1. Anthony Cordesman, "Boots on the Ground: The Realities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria". Center for Strategic and International Studies. 13 February 2015, in www.csis.org.

2. Maya Rhodan, "White House Prepares for Summit on Countering Violent Extremism". Time. 16 February 2015, in www.time.comCharles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-32483613.post-78660817764076305932015-02-16T01:15:00.001-05:002015-02-16T17:47:31.507-05:00THE GREAT WAR REVISTED OR THE LAST GASP OF THE 'OLD HATS' ?
Yet this interpretation has recently been challenged by a wave of revisionism, exemplified by the astronomical success—especially in Germany, where it has sold many hundreds of thousands of copies—of the book The Sleepwalkers by our colleague Christopher Clark. He and the other revisionists largely exonerate the Kaiser's Germany from responsibility for the First World War. While claiming to argue that war broke out by accident, with no one government more at fault than any other, in practice Clark places the blame to a large extent on little Serbia, followed by Russia, France and Britain in that order, presenting Austria-Hungary as doing its genuine best to avoid war and simply omitting altogether the evidence of any German intention to bring the war about. This is a revival of an interpretation expressed in Lloyd George's dictum of the interwar years that in 1914 'the nations of Europe slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war'. By the late 1920s, the Churchillian belief that Britain had been right to enter the war to defend its vital interests and those of the rest of Europe from German aggression had given way in Britain to a mood of disillusionment fuelled by the writings of John Maynard Keynes, the war poets and Robert Graves's book Goodbye to all that. It had all been a pointless waste, and the carnage had only gone on for four and a half years because no one had known how to stop it. In a tragic twist, this British mood accorded perfectly with the insistence of the German right in the Weimar Republic on a revision of the punitive Treaty of Versailles on the grounds that its claim that Germany had deliberately brought about war in 1914 was nothing but a Kriegsschuldlüge, a war guilt lie. An uneasy consensus emerged; but the consensus of the interwar years was based not on any research but on wishful thinking—pacifist on one side, revanchist on the other. Serious research into the causes of the Great War then became impossible with Hitler's rise to power when critical books were burned, democratic historians forced into exile (and worse), and British historians—the tiny handful with knowledge of the language and the ability to decipher the German Schrift—lost all hope of gaining access to the German archives. As far as German intentions in and before 1914 are concerned, then, the new revisionism seems to me to be taking us back to the state of knowledge of the interwar period. Politically, of course, this is nowhere near as dangerous as was the campaign against the 'war guilt lie' which acted as a rallying cry of the nationalist right in the Weimar Republic, for Germany is today a stable and peaceful democracy. But in terms of scholarship I find the new revisionism dismaying, as it involves the sidelining or suppression of so much of the knowledge we have gained through painstaking research over the past 50 years....Is one interpretation as good as any other, the evidence to be used on a take it or leave it basis? Or is historical evidence more akin, say, to Galileo's observation of the circular motion of the moons of Jupiter, incontrovertible proof, however faint, of a henceforth irrepressible truth? With this rather bold cosmological analogy I am referring, as you will realize, to the discoveries made in the archives in the late 1950s by the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer: discoveries that changed our perception of the First World War for ever—or so we thought.

John C. G. Rohl, "Goodbye to all that (again)? The Fischer thesis, the new revisionism and the meaning of the First World War". International Affairs. (January 2015), pp.154-155.

Clark deploys his literary virtuosity to make two fundamental arguments, one implicitly at variance with the other. First, he declines to play "the blame game" concerning the 1914 slide into war. When nations have conflicting objectives, it is "meaningless" to call one enterprise more right or wrong than the other. All the same, Clark freely offers value judgments about other conflicts. Thus he has no trouble assigning guilt for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 to Russia or in saying that in 1911 Italy launched an "unprovoked" war of conquest in Libya. He likewise waxes indignant over Serbian savagery against civilians in the follow-on Balkan Wars. Only in the outbreak of World War I does he principally see a signaling problem. Here we witness "rapid-fire interactions between executive structures with a relatively poor understanding of each other's intentions, operating with low levels of confidence and trust." That contention will appeal to political scientists who consider multipolar systems unstable because of a so-called security dilemma. Each actor tends to increase its armaments owing to threat perception. But no one feels more secure in the end. The 1914 scenario has contemporary relevance because we live again in an uncertain world with several power centers and terrorist movements controlled by none. Notwithstanding this theoretical stance, Clark conveys indirectly, through a description of personalities, where his fundamental sympathies lie. He displays estimable virtuosity in juggling developments in six major powers, yet sees them all from the vantage point of Berlin. An "economic miracle" had transformed the German economy. In a few decades, that country's industrial output had forged ahead from one-fifth the size of England's to a position surpassing the latter. Still, Germanophobes in the British Foreign Office had an "almost comical tendency" to view British imperialism as natural and expect the Reich to punch below its weight in world affairs. With the tightening of the Franco-Russian alliance, Germany found itself surrounded by jealous states, even though it had done nothing to justify formation of the hostile Entente in 1907.... In short, Clark's account of the countdown to war reverses the current orthodoxy. A bitter controversy over war culpability erupted at the 1919 peace conference. The Versailles treaty included no war-guilt clause. To establish a predicate for reparations, however, John Foster Dulles of the American delegation drafted an article requiring Germany to accept civil responsibility for all damage imposed upon the Allies. The fledgling Weimar government reacted strongly to this stain upon its honor and perceived an opportunity to undermine reparations as well. It established a Foreign Ministry division to combat war guilt. During the 1920s, that unit published fifty-seven volumes of doctored diplomatic documents stretching back to 1871 and funded a panoply of scholars who deemed the Versailles imputation unfair. In 1930 the Nazi Reichstag delegation demanded the death penalty for anyone admitting war guilt. The official campaign proved wildly successful. Even following World War II, many serious people distinguished sharply between German aims in the two world wars. In 1961, after years of painstaking labor in East as well as West German archives, Fritz Fischer published his blockbuster, later translated as Germany's Aims in the First World War, demonstrating Germany's primary responsibility after all. At first Fischer's findings elicited widespread outrage".

Stephen Schuker, "Old wine in new bottles" [A review of Christopher Clark's the Sleepwalkers]. The New Criterion. (January 2015), pp. 83-85.

In recent months there has been something akin to a concerted attack on much of the new scholarship concerning the origins of the Great War. John Rohl's and Stephen Schuker's articles having aspects of the opening up of a military campaign. Unlike Ferdinand Mount's recent piece in the London Review of Books, both gentlemen's opinions and criticism have a certain value (unlike say Mount's who has no credibility in the historical profession) 1. In the case of both RÖHL and Schuker the criticism of the new scholarship has the unfortunate tendency to almost completely ignore (not mind you brush aside or distort, but instead ignore) the findings that Christopher Clark, Sean Mckeekin and Stefan Schmidt among others. Clark's book in particular has been on the receiving end of most of the borderline ad hominen attacks. Which is of par for the course, given the fact that in the words of British historian William Mulligan in a recent review article in the English Historical Review:

"Mastering literature in six languages and drawing on archival and documentary sources for each belligerent, Christopher Clark represents the most complete international analysis of the origins of the war since Luigi Albertini's three volume study published in the 1940's"2.
 Unfortunately, neither Rohl nor Schuker care to be bothered with the ambidextrous nature, and wide scope of Clark's work. Instead one is merely treated to comments which are: a) completely absurd as in Rohl comments that the Reizler diaries, the document which perhaps more than any other provides us with the insight into the key actor of the entire July Crisis, German Reich Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, were (in his words):
"had obviously been rewritten by Riezler after Germany's defeat in 1918 to provide an apologetic gloss on Bethmann's policy". 3

This despite the fact that Rohl's own protegee, Annika Mombauer, in her own recent compilation of documents on the Origins of the Great War, makes very extensive usage of the very same diary entries. 4; b) or borderline conspiratorial in nature, such as Schuker's nonsensical statement that what is perhaps the greatest source material for pre-war European diplomacy, Die gross politik, published by the Weimar German Foreign Ministry was made up of 'doctored' materials. Not surprisingly, Schuker makes no endeavour to either prove or cite any evidence for this statement. It is merely a sort of obiter dicta with no authority whatsoever 5. Underlying both Rohl's and Schuker's treatments is a reliance of extra-historical arguments to justify ignoring or belittling Clark's and the other new scholarship. With a particular emphasis on the fact that prior to 1939, it was German state policy to argue against the thesis that Germany was uniquely responsible for the war. Employing the very same logic of extra-historical argumentation, one may well argue that Fritz Fischer entire opus was merely a sort of channeling the guilt that Fischer felt for being a member of the National Socialist party. An argument which I for one find spurious but which au fond is no worse than those employed by Professors Rohl and Schuker. At bottom the 'arguments' made by Rohl & Schuker are the arguments of historians who singularly fail to grasp the insights provided by the recent scholarship of Christopher Clark, et. al. To make a more plausible, extra-historical argument, perhaps this refusal to deal with, or to engage in a honest fashion with the new scholarship is merely the fact that Rohl & Schuker represent an older generation of historians, born in the entre-deux-guerre period, and who came of age as historians in the 1960's at the height of the Fischer thesis, that Imperial Germany was as responsible for the Great War as Nazi Germany was for World War II. That fact is that the recent scholarship has not so much 'ignored' Fischer's original thesis as to put it in a larger perspective of the entire structure of Great Power relationships in the years prior to the Great War 5. With perhaps the greatest contribution of the recent literature as discussed previously in this journal in 2014, was the Balkanization of the Triple Entente. That whereas previously, the French and the British were reluctant to countenance the idea of becoming involved in a great power war over Russia's Balkan policies and ambitions, by 1912 onwards this was very much no longer the case. A point made recently by among other Annika Mombauer who quoted then French Premier Raymond Poincare, in September 1912, that:

"Poincare assured Isvolsky [Russian Ambassador in Paris] that should Russia be forced to become involved in a war against Austria-Hungary, 'the French government would recognise this in advance as a casus foederis [casus belli] and would not hesitate for one moment to fulfil the obligations which it has incurred in respect of Russia' " 6.

In conclusion it is apparent to me that in these erroneous and I should add, unprofessional criticism we are dealing with a case of what a leading historian of 17th and 18th century British History, J. C. D. Clark, once characterised as arguments made by historians who we may label as a combination of 'Old Hat' and 'Old Guard' 7. AKA, historians from an older generation. And accordingly, I will quote from Professor Clark's own words as to how such arguments between different generations of historians usually are 'settled':

"The debate is one between generations; it will be resolved in the way all such debates have to be settled. Indeed, its general outlines have come into sharp focus only at a moment when the arguments of certain historians suddenly seemed no longer to be eternal truth, or even modern scholarship, but voices from the past - a surprisingly remote past." 7

1. Ferdinand Mount, "Easy-Going Procrastinators". The London Review of Books. (8 January 2015), pp. 17-20.

2. William Mulligan, "Review-Article. The Trial Continues: New Directions in the Study of the Origins of the First World War". English Historical Review. (June 2014), p. 658. See also on the mostly positive assessment of the new scholarship, Hew Strachan, "Review Article: The Origins of the First World War". International Affairs. (March 2014), pp. 429-439. The books referenced in the 'new scholarship' refers primarily to: The Sleepwalkers (by Clark), July 1914 & The Russian Origins of the First World War (both by McMeekin) and Frankreichs Aussenpolitik in der Julikrise 1914 (by Schmidt).

3. Rohl, op. cit., p. 161.

4. The Origins of the First World War: Diplomatic and military documents. Edited and Translated by Annika Mombauer. (2013), pp. 219-220, 222,234 and passim.

5. Shucker, op. cit., p. 84. Actually, as Mombauer, notes, it was the French, rather than the Germans who engaged the most in 'doctoring' documents. See, Mombauer, op. cit., p. 38.

6. Mombauer, op. cit. On the so-called failure by the new scholarship to deal with Fischer, see Stephen Schuker, "What Historians Get Wrong About World War I". Time Magazine. 1 August 2014, in www.time.com. On the discussion in this online journal of the recent scholarship, see: Charles Coutinho, "Sarajevo after One-Hundred years: A Comment". Diplomat of the Future. 1 July 2014, & The Great War after One-hundred years: A point of view". 5 August 2014 in www.diplomatofthefuture.blogspot.com.

7. J. C. D. Clark. Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (1986), p. 170.Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.Dhttp://email@example.com