A look at a gross diplomatic blunder – BBC News – Dominick Chilcott: Iran may feel remorse over UK tensions

In this video (linked below) we see British Ambassador to Tehran, Dominick Chilcott recounting the events around the invasion of the UK Diplomatic Mission, which included two properties (one of them housing families of British diplomats) in the Iranian Capital.

Despite his calm demeanour, Ambassador Chilcott  delivers a scathing judgement of the events that unfolded in the Embassy storming.

BBC News – Dominick Chilcott: Iran may feel remorse over UK tensions.

I agree with the Ambassador that this has the makings of a concerted and conceited effort on the part of the Iranian state to get back at the United Kingdom for sanctions imposed on the former’s financial sector.

Apart from the seriousness of this blunder -and I believe the Iranian government knows it judging by this video (also below)- this whole event smacks of, not only fanaticism, but activist infantilism.

 

The incompetence of the Iranian state is reflected in this event.  Allowing fanatical students to storm a foreign diplomatic mission is a serious violation of diplomatic protocol and international law.  If there ever was a chance to engage in constructive dialogue with the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this single happening curtailed it.  I’m not sure what the Iranians hope to gain by depleting British good faith. It seems to me like an unwise effort on the part of the state to have their younger generations (those that are faithful to them anyway) reminisce 1979.

There is also the matter of distracting the population of their everyday problems and the Iranian government’s lack of capacity to engage them.  It is always easier to play the role of tragic hero, blaming outsider for national woes, than to govern.

What is to be done?

Article: Will Eurozone Countries Give Up Control Of Budgets?

To be honest I don’t think the French will go for it, so jealous of their sovereignty as they are. Germans are open to it, seeing as how they have the most to lose fiscally and politically.

…and the Eurozone is fast running out of options. Catastrophe looms ever nearer.

What is to be done?

Will Eurozone Countries Give Up Control Of Budgets?
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/01/142987449/will-eurozone-countries-give-up-control-of-budgets

(Sent from Flipboard)

Euro Fears Spread to Italy In a Widening Debt Crisis – NYTimes.com

Here’s a quote from the article,

“But in a speech delivered Wednesday night in Berlin, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, pleaded for unity and called on all member states to join the euro. “A split union will not work,” a written draft said. “That is true for a union with different parts engaged in contradictory objectives; a union with an integrated core but a disengaged periphery; a union dominated by an unhealthy balance of power.”

That is indeed a strange exhortation considering the critical juncture the Eurozone finds itself in. What is the incentive for non-Euro countries? “Join us so we can share in the crisis together?” try selling that to an electorate.

So. What is to be done? Read the article below and tell me about it…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/world/europe/euro-fears-spread-to-italy-in-a-widening-debt-crisis.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Euro Fears Spread to Italy as the Debt Crisis Deepens

PARIS — Since the start of the euro crisis two years ago, the big fear has been contagion, that market unease about the high debt and slow growth in Europe’s southern rim would infect the core. On Wednesday, contagion arrived with brute force.

Italy, a central member of the euro zone and its third-largest economy, struggled to find a new government as anxious investors drove Italian bond rates well above 7 percent and the markets tumbled worldwide. And although critics have warned of just such an escalation for months, European leaders again were caught without a convincing response.

Unappeased by the imminent resignation of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, investors appeared to have focused on the political gridlock in Italy that seemed likely to follow his departure from office, and the unenviable task awaiting a successor: restoring growth in a country that has seen almost none in a decade, and financing $2.57 trillion in debt. Italy, unlike Greece, is seen as too big to default and too big for Europe to bail out.

Only days after the Group of 20 meeting in Cannes, France, where President Obama and other world leaders urged European officials to take bolder action, they appeared frozen in past positions. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, met with her kitchen cabinet of economic “wise ones.” They proposed the creation of a $3.1 trillion debt repayment fund that would pool and jointly finance debts of all 17 members of the euro zone in return for some conditions like legal debt limits and collateral.

But Mrs. Merkel effectively dismissed the idea, saying that it could be studied and would in any case require major treaty changes, which would take time. She instead emphasized that deep economic changes were required in some member states and that Europe needed to restore fiscal discipline.

“It is time for a breakthrough to a new Europe,” Mrs. Merkel said. “A community that says, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world, that it can never again change its ground rules, that community simply can’t survive.”

But the German prescription of austerity is not popular. It is Berlin, citing the very treaties that it now wants to adjust, that has resisted the boldest answer to the euro crisis — using the European Central Bank as the euro zone’s lender of last resort. Berlin does not even want to sanction American-style quantitative easing to promote economic growth, one recipe to stoking growth and reducing the debt burden.

“Contagion is alive and well,” said Rebecca Patterson, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Unlike Greece, she said, Italy could pose “systemic” risks to the global economy, accounting for 20 percent of the gross domestic product of the euro zone. “People are wondering if we’ve moved to a new level of the crisis.”

Europe has set up a special bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, but it has taken months to work out the details of how it would be financed and what its role would be, and at any rate it is far too small to cover the debts of a major country like Italy.

European promises to leverage the fund even up to $1.4 trillion have not been fulfilled. Efforts to get other nations to invest in it or in a proposed parallel fund were flatly rejected in Cannes. At most, surplus nations like China and Russia said that they would prefer to deal with an enlarged International Monetary Fund, where at least the rules are clear and there are firmer guarantees that money would be deployed effectively.

The European Central Bank itself appeared flat-footed on Wednesday. It has been buying Italian and Spanish bonds in a special and supposedly temporary program to try to keep down rates to sustainable levels while the bailout fund was allowed to enlarge.

On Tuesday, there was a suggestion that the new head of the bank, Mario Draghi, an Italian, had restricted its purchases of Italian bonds to try to put more pressure on Mr. Berlusconi to quit and on Rome to pass the deep economic reforms he had promised earlier in the summer. If so, the pressure worked. But if the bank was buying a lot of Italian bonds on Wednesday, as some reports suggested, it was overwhelmed by investors who are clearly beginning to wonder if the euro itself is failing.

Markets also seemed panicked by rumors out of Brussels that France and Germany were even discussing the expulsion of some countries from the euro zone, a suggestion quickly denied by French government spokesmen. France and Germany are discussing possible treaty changes that would create more coordinated “economic governance” for countries that use the euro, including more central surveillance of national budgets and their financial estimates, clearer rules and sanctions for those countries that violate them.

Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Kulish from Berlin, Rachel Donadio from Rome, Stephen Castle from Brussels, and Graham Bowley from New York.

Britain and some of the other nine members of the European Union that do not use the euro are opposed to any treaty change, which should be approved by all 27 members. But Germany has suggested that countries using the common currency could adopt new political and fiscal treaties, accepting new rules that could potentially force some weaker countries to choose the difficult and equally uncharted path of leaving the euro.

Even if the euro stabilizes, that kind of treaty move would institutionalize a “two-speed Europe” — of the euro zone and the others — with different rules and conditions, which many members oppose. On Wednesday, Nick Clegg, the pro-European deputy prime minister of Britain, warned the euro zone nations not to create “a club within a club” as they integrate further to try to save the currency. That followed a quiet dinner of the 10 non-euro zone finance ministers in a Brussels hotel, a kind of warning to the others that the non-euro-using members intended to fight jointly for their interests.

It was another example of the way that the euro, which was meant to unite the Continent after the Soviet collapse and promote more federalism, is now pulling the European Union apart, both within the euro zone and between the euro zone and the others.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France fueled anxiety on Tuesday when he said that the two-speed model for Europe was the only way forward given the prospect of an even larger European Union. “There are 27 of us,” Mr. Sarkozy told French students in Strasbourg. “Clearly, down the line, we will have to include the Balkans. There will be 32, 33, 34 of us. No one thinks that federalism, total integration, will be possible with 33, 34 or 35 states,” he said.

But in a speech delivered Wednesday night in Berlin, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, pleaded for unity and called on all member states to join the euro. “A split union will not work,” a written draft said. “That is true for a union with different parts engaged in contradictory objectives; a union with an integrated core but a disengaged periphery; a union dominated by an unhealthy balance of power.”

But the crisis has sidelined Mr. Barroso, and plans for more integration seem almost utopian. In any case, they would take far longer to execute than most market investors want to contemplate.

The confusing Greek government drama — the country has yet to select a new interim prime minister — has already become a sideshow, given the small size of Greece. Investors, perhaps spooked by the 50 percent write-down in the face value of privately held Greek debt, want to hear that Italy is being fully backed and supported by its colleagues and partners. So far, that is a message that Germany, let alone France, is unwilling or unable to deliver.

And of course the fear in Paris is that France will be next. Mr. Sarkozy’s government just announced another set of budget cuts and tax increases in the face of lower growth, to keep to its promises to cut its own budget deficit.

But on Wednesday, the spread of 10-year French government bonds over their German equivalent rose to a euro area high of around 140 basis points. “Contagion” is not just a movie.

Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Kulish from Berlin, Rachel Donadio from Rome, Stephen Castle from Brussels, and Graham Bowley from New York.

Professor José R. Rivera
Department of Political Science
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

Sent from my iPad

The bid for Palestinian Statehood and the crisis of Israeli statehood

There are all sorts of wrangling regarding the Palestinian Authority’s request for statehood. The UN is dealing with the request, which will take several weeks, if not months to debate before making a final decision on the matter.  Some countries are abstaining from it altogether making suggestions along the way.  Worse still, others (Israel and the United States) are predicting doom (as if it wasn’t already here) and the Obama administration is threatening to exercise its power of veto to prevent the aspirations of the Palestinians from materializing.  So much for the US’s even-handed approach in the process.  This analysis from The Associated Press gives you a pretty good idea of how uphill the way for the Palestinians is from here.

Putting predictions of debacle aside, I ask critics of Abbas’ petition at the UN what else could have been done?  There is intransigence from both sides (Palestinian authorities, old and new, are not exempt from responsibility in this diplomatic mess), an unwillingness to find a political solution that would allow these two entities to cohabit in relative peace.

Security concerns, especially for the Israeli right, supersedes political dialogue with the Palestinians.  It also supersedes democratic, societal, and economic concerns.  Recent protests in the State of Israel were displaced from media despite considerable turnout in numbers and expressions of solidarity from diverse sectors of Israeli society.  There is always an imaginary of fear present, a possible bomb, another militant attack, and as such Israel cannot – will not, really – accept such a diversion.  Truly sad: a political coalition that cannot articulate everyday policy to address the burdens of ordinary Israelis.  But the precedent is set, and as Naddad Eyal has written: ‘the protests [have] changed the national conversation’.

One other thing displaces, not by much, security policy and that is extremist religious ideology.  Separation of religion and state is not evident in Israel and the power wield of extremist religious groups allows for them to hold governments hostage.  I believe this trend is what is behind settlement construction in the occupied territories, seeing no other explanations as to why successive administrations have pursued such a counterproductive policy for so long and why we encounter such fanaticism among settlers.  In essence, there are not only physical settlements being built but also existential ones.  It is all part of the imagined community that is Israel, and one that secular, democratic, and peace-loving Israelis must confront.  A frank conversation is needed here and a honest debate on the ever-changing nature and limits of the national project.  The same way most people, Palestinians included, have accepted - grudgingly, mind you – that Israel exists, so Israelis must come to terms that, if they want peace they must re-imagine their nation as one that embraces diversity internally, and peaceful co-existence with those with whom it shares its geopolitical space.

With regards to the Palestinians and their aspirations for statehood there is perhaps no better juncture than this.  It was also the only course of action left to them, not only because of Israeli reluctance, but also because of self-inflicted wounds and critical errors made in the last decade.  I just want to point out the gross failure on the part of Yasser Arafat and his entourage to act decisively in the Camp David Summit of 2000.  It is my contention that a Palestinian state could have risen then and there, one born in a pre-9/11 context with little baggage and prejudice.  A monumental opportunity was lost.  From this point forward the political game, for Palestinians took a turn for the worst.  Extreme political organizations and groups often come to being or are strengthened by the lack of ability of mainstream political-movements (I’m assuming this role for Fatah and the PLO since the 1993 Oslo Accords) to articulate ground-breaking solutions and everyday policy that would make life for ordinary Palestinians less uncomfortable.  Frustration and despair are contagious and people in this state are often taken, and tolerant with, organisations that offers other possibilities.  Hamas feeds from this.

To be sure, the move towards the recognition of a Palestinian state changes the dynamics of the Geopolitical game. As the AP article says, ‘it changes the paradigm’.  Indeed!  The mere move indicates Palestinian willingness to occupy a political space from which it has been historically marginalized, feeding on the crumbs of world, and Arab, solidarity that have offered them little in return.  That is, they are – now -, to the world and reluctant Israeli authorities, political subjects.  It is important then not to belittle the gesture that took place on September 23, 2011, this is the day when Palestinians went from being Ζοο έξω πολιτική, or a subject outside of politics and the political, to becoming Ζοον πολιτικον, or political subject.  As such, they carry a strengthened legitimacy, even if it is a symbolical one (worst-case scenario, Palestinian Authority status at the UN is enhanced) that Israelis and, by extension Americans, will have to deal with, if not recognize.

Perhaps it was the necessary gesture, the one that needed to happen in order to move forward.  The rest is up to the negotiating parties, building a political solution that will usher them away from the state of nature.  We’ll see.

Such ironies… China Blasts U.S. Over Credit … (npr.org)

Reading the article linked below I couldn’t help but notice China’s reaction to the US credit downgrade. This in itself is not strange, after all if you own nearly half of US assets and that country’s credit just went from trusted to questionable, it is your right to say a thing or two about it. Check it out…

China Blasts U.S. Over Credit Rating Downgrade : NPR
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/06/139047006/china-blasts-u-s-over-credit-rating-downgrade?sc=tw&ft=1&f=1001

One specific quote to this article made me raise my brows,

“Xinhua said the U.S. must slash its “gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs” and accept international supervision over U.S. dollar issues.”

What!? I mean, sure, I understand the critique on military expenditure (quite obvious that one), but talk about cutting social welfare is quite odd for a “socialist” country, even a nominal one.

Tell me what you think…

Vietnam Mounts Artillery Drill Amid Tensions With China

Got to hand it to the Vietnamese. Only they would defy the giant that is China. Check the article out…

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2011/06/mil-110613-voa01.htm?_m=3n%2e002a%2e222%2ewj0ao0123g%2e77n

Though worrying (nobody wants to see heightened tensions, especially with the People’s Republic of China involved), it is a quite interesting situation to observe. One curious remark though, the article says rare public displays of anti-Chinese sentiments. I may be misinterpreting but the Vietnamese have had a turbulent relation with the Chinese throughout their history. Anti-Chinese feelings and Vietnamese nationalism are constants and, most often than not, go hand in hand. Something few Americans ever understood (at least it would’ve given them some perspective, but I think a little “Communist paranoia” got in their way of rational thinking.

Still it’d be interesting to observe the outcome of this particular situation. Even more interesting would be who will mediate between these two parties. I can venture a guess…not the Americans.

Tell me what you think…

Turkey offers itself as a broker in hopes of finding a political solution in Libya…

In the increasingly difficult situation in Libya there are third parties that rise to the occasion and offer political brokerage towards a possible solution. And while Turkey may have its work cut out for it (how they will manage to turn Gadhafi into a reasonable man is beyond me) the mere gesture reveals something utterly positive about them. Check the article…

Turkey offers to broker early Libya ceasefire
THE GUARDIAN WORLD NEWS | MARCH 27, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/16ble

It is indeed meritorious on the part of Turkey to play the role of mediator, rising this way their profile as a diplomatic and political player in the region. It is also in their self-interest to keep their neighbourhood safe. After all, what country could rest easy if it has a multiplicity of political unrest in their flanks.

I also happen to like their foreign policy assertiveness. Standing up to France keeps it (and NATO) at bay, and forces them to consider the possibility that airstrikes, though acceptable at this juncture, might not be the long term (much less the only) solution for political stability in Libya. All of this within NATO; allowing itself to cooperate, collaborate, coordinate through this international military alliance gives Turkey broad, and blunt, political clout, much to the irritation of France.

But the possibility of failure remains, and that is something the Turkish government should factor-in in their strategic calculations.

Tell me what you think…

BBC News – Libya unrest: Violence against protesters backfires

This news article by the BBC (see below) analyzes how Libya’s repressive measures against anti-government protesters is, evidently, back-lashing against the Gaddafi regime.  Check it out.

BBC News – Libya unrest: Violence against protesters backfires.

That there is a backlash is hardly a surprise.  Neither is the extensive commentary made in the piece on US involvement in the country after restoring full diplomatic relations and validating a head figure that was considered an enemy during much of the 1980s and 1990s.

And I can’t shake the feeling that – except with, Jordan -, the United States seems to have a poor track-record, always betting on the wrong horse.  I swear, these inconsistencies (liberal discourse/practice based on the worst interpretation of realist theory) are going to bring the US a boatload of trouble one of these days… Oh!  That’s right! It already has.

Tell me what you think…

Germany makes its case to join the U.N. Security Coucil; America shrugs – By Colum Lynch | Turtle Bay

I’m sure that with all the efforts its been doing Germany deserves a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.  It would at least bring a fresh perspective from a country that doesn’t consider aggression as a first option.  In fact, I would support Germany’s entry alongside South Africa, Brasil, India, and Japan.  Check this interesting article from Foreign Policy.

Germany makes its case to join the U.N. Security Coucil; America shrugs – By Colum Lynch | Turtle Bay.

That US republicans would oppose a German bid for the Security Council is not surprising.  What really has me baffled is this Democratic administration’s lack of enthusiasm for it.  All this cordiality between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany doesn’t translate into something beneficial for a country that has spent the good part of its sixty-five year Post-War history reinserting itself in the international community.

Could it be simple reluctance?  A genuine shifting of strategic interests on the part of the United States towards (South?) Asia?  Or worse, meaning that Germany’s slipping of support for its bid is just a symptom of ever-increasing waning of the European Union’s influence in matters of international affairs/diplomacy?

Tell me what you think…