Der Spiegel - April 3
"Western Outrage over Discriminatory Afghan Law"
By Matthias Gebauer

A new law signed by President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan requires Shiite women to ask their husband's permission before leaving the home and forces them to have sexual intercourse. The West is outraged, and German politicians are mulling restrictions in development aid.

It was only recently that Afghan President Hamid Karzai placed his signature under a new law pertaining to Shiite families in Afghanistan. But it didn't take long for a storm of protest to begin washing over Kabul.

Human rights activists say the new law grants even fewer rights to women than when the Islamist Taliban held sway. And in the West, more and more heads have begun shaking in disbelief. The US and Canada, in particular, are putting pressure on Karzai as a result of the law with other NATO member-states following suit.

(...)

Especially shocking for Western observers is that part of the law which deals with the sex lives of Shiites. The Afghan constitution provides for Shiites, which represent between 10 and 20 percent of the population, to pass their own family law based on their legal traditions. But the new law is particularly restrictive. Article 132, for example, mandates that "the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband." Furthermore, if her husband is not travelling or sick, the wife is required to have sex with him at least every fourth night. The only exception is if the wife herself is ill.

Article 133 is just as problematic. "The husband can stop the wife from any unnecessary act," it reads. Furthermore, the law requires wives to get the permission of their husbands before they leave the house, except in cases of emergency. In addition, the legal age of marriage for Shiite women has been lowered from 18 to 16.

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Read on at Der Spiegel

The Guardian - April 4
"Outcry in Pakistan after video of a 17-year-old girl's flogging by the Taliban is shown on TV"
By Declan Walsh

The Pakistani government has ordered an inquiry into the flogging of a 17-year-old woman by Taliban militants in the troubled Swat valley, after public outrage triggered by shocking video footage of the punishment.

The images, played yesterday on private television channels, show a burka-clad woman being pinned to the ground by two men while a third whips her backside 34 times. The woman is seen screaming and begging for mercy as a crowd of largely silent men look on. She is accused of having had an illegal sexual relationship, according to local law. Her brother is among those restraining her.

President Asif Ali Zardari led a wave of public condemnation, and ordered the arrest of the perpetrators. Prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani termed it "shocking" and called for an immediate inquiry. At the supreme court, the newly reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, summoned officials to a hearing scheduled for Monday to investigate the incident.

(…)

But the talk of arrests and inquiries are unlikely to amount to much. The Pakistan government's writ has all but collapsed in Swat, where armed militants loyal to a hardline preacher named Maulana Fazlullah have taken control. The teenage woman was flogged in Kabbal, a remote district where Taliban rule is the law. An order by the chief justice to produce the woman in Islamabad next Monday is unlikely to be heeded.

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Read on and watch video at The Guardian

By Hannes Artens

With leaders like this … Hungary's Ferenc Gyurcsány and the Czech Republic's Mirek Topolanek (current EU president) at the EU Summit on March 19 - since then both have resigned (Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Much has been written on Europe by American columnists these days. Nothing good, so much is obvious. Either American conservatives conjure up the specter of what America will turn into, if they don't put the brakes on President Obama - I wonder how many generations it will take for the Red Scare and the bogeyman of socialism to lose their deterrent effectiveness - or rejoice about it as a doomed cause on the edge of abyss. Distracting the public from the total shipwreck of Reaganomics and the Republican model for society - which actually is what? Proving Edward Gibbon wrong that it can take only two decades to bring an empire down? Indebting the youngest Agonist reader's children's children up to their necks? Selling out a superpower to its future competitor in a street sale called globalization? - they exult in the only good thing about the recession being the demise of God- and spineless Europe.

To be perfectly honest, the EU hasn't given its own people much reason for confidence these days. The G20 summit is hosted by a political zombie, a walking dead soon to have plenty of time to enjoy the "America's Greatest Movies" collection he was recently given by the White House, the heads of government in Eastern Europe are toppling at a speed the originator of the Domino Theory could have never envisioned - even Mirek Topolanek, the current president of the EU Council, is among the victims - Nicolas Sarkozy, well, he does what he's known for, pretending hyper-activism and emitting hot air like a fast breeder producing more futile, eh fissile than he consumes, and last but not least Silvio Berlusconi, who, well, also does what he's known for, 24/7 reinventing himself and his party - Forza Italia was yesterday, today it's Il Popolo della Liberta - and, at 72, entertaining Italy and the world with tales about his sex life. Hardly the leadership one would wish for when facing the worst economic contraction since World War II.

By Hannes Artens

Partners in crime: Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak (Source: Der Spiegel)

He has really dared to go through with it. On March 25, Israel's Labor Party agreed to join Benjamin Netanyahu's nationalist ultra-right wing coalition - with six of its 13 parliamentary members opposing the move. I have no intention to hide my utter disgust for the remaining seven, who, like their leader Ehud Barak, put personal ambitions and sinecures before their responsibilities towards their country and party. Under Ehud Barak's leadership Labor, the founding party of the state of Israel, has reached absolute rock bottom. From here it can only go further down. Ehud Barak can take pride in the dubious reputation of having single-handedly thwarted a Palestinian state twice - at first in Camp David and now by making Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's new foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman a respectable brand.

When in February 2000 Austrian Wolfgang Schüssel formed a coalition with the late ultra-nationalist Jörg Haider, Schüssel was compared in the Israeli press to Franz von Papen, the German conservative politician whose entry into the 1933 coalition made Adolf Hitler Reichskanzler. Today, I'm barely less disgusted than nine years ago, and although, as a historian, I resolutely abstain from these hapless comparisons, I wonder what analogies the Israeli press has at hand for Ehud Barak these days? What other compliant tools for the rise of fascism to power, if any, may they come up with? For what else has just happened in Israel, almost over night, but the hideous antic of nationalist authoritarianism lusting after the highest levels of power; for what is Avigdor Lieberman but a fascistoid hate preacher, and Ehud Barak the useful idiot who made him possible?

Asia Times - March 26
"Liquid War: Welcome to Pipelineistan"
By Pepe Escobar

What happens on the immense battlefield for the control of Eurasia will provide the ultimate plot line in the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order, also known as the New Great Game.

Our good ol' friend the nonsensical "global war on terror", which the Pentagon has slyly rebranded "the Long War", sports a far more important, if half-hidden, twin - a global energy war. I like to think of it as the Liquid War, because its bloodstream is the pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet. Put another way, if its crucial embattled frontier these days is the Caspian Basin, the whole of Eurasia is its chessboard. Think of it, geographically, as Pipelineistan.

All geopolitical junkies need a fix. Since the second half of the 1990s, I've been hooked on pipelines. I've crossed the Caspian in an Azeri cargo ship just to follow the $4 billion Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, better known in this chess game by its acronym, BTC, through the Caucasus. (Oh, by the way, the map of Pipelineistan is chicken-scratched with acronyms, so get used to them!)

I've also trekked various of the overlapping modern Silk Roads, or perhaps Silk Pipelines, of possible future energy flows from Shanghai to Istanbul, annotating my own do-it-yourself routes for LNG (liquefied natural gas). I used to avidly follow the adventures of that once-but-not-future Sun-King of Central Asia, the now deceased Turkmenbashi or "leader of the Turkmen", Saparmurat Niyazov, head of the immensely gas-rich Republic of Turkmenistan, as if he were a Conradian hero.

Read on at Asia Times

By Hannes Artens

It is by clicking through the columns and op-eds of the past two months you best get an idea of the fundamental change in public and media opinion on Iran from a year ago. SecDef Gates can maintain that all options remain on the table for as long as he wants, the public doesn't want to hear about it. They're tired of another war looming on the horizon, and of worrying about their sons and daughters in uniform being sent on another vacation in a foreign land, on which, as Billy Joel sang, they'd come "in spastic like tameless horses and left in plastic as numbered corpses", instead, they'll demand another "Nixon-goes-to-China" opening. And they're right to do so.

No one, from the LA Times to the Boston Globe, is talking about war or how to contain Iran anymore - except the notorious, wrong-from-cradle-to-grave on every single issue John Bolton, the exception to prove the rule. Instead, every scribbler to distinguished pundit is having an opinion on how to best engage Iran, it seems even interns usually tasked to provide Seymour Hersh and the like with ever warm coffee are throwing in their two cents worth on how to reach out to Tehran. This occasionally can reach quite heart-warmingly naive levels, such as the suggestion for President Obama to celebrate Newroz, the Iranian New Year, with the diaspora community in Teherangeles. As most of them are adherers of the late Shah, I fear this won't go down well with President Ahmadinejad or Ayatollah Khameini. In principle, though, all these well-meaning, self-declared analysts are right: the White House seems in desperate need of advice and unorthodox, new ways of thinking or it will review US Iran policy until there's nothing left to review.

By Hannes Artens

When the first results of the Iraqi government elections of January 31 came in, there was great rejoicing in Baghdad and Washington. The American press unison declared Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama the big winners at the polls:

-Al-Maliki, not until long ago and presumably still a puppet on Iran's strings, for having abandoned religious sectarianism and by adopting a pragmatic, secular garb saving himself, if not his party, from sound defeat.

-Obama, because the strong showing of secular nationalist alliances would allow him to abide by his campaign promise to withdraw combat troops from Iraq ASAP.

Consequently, when President Obama revealed his withdrawal plans at Camp Lejeune last week, there was a big furor. The liberal press shouted betrayal, and General Nancy Pelosi, joined by the brilliant military strategists Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid, voiced her lack of understanding why 50,000 troops would have to remain in Iraq past the 19 months timeframe the president had decided on to withdraw all major combat troops. Conspiracy theorists had a heyday, alleging Generals Petraeus and Odierno to have carried out a clandestine putsch.

No need to worry, the civilian control over the military hasn't been reversed.

The simple reason why the president has opted for a phased out drawback is that he has come to understand the realities of Iraq and America's responsibilities there, while Pelosi, Schumer, and Reid care little about what happens to the Iraqi people as long as they can keep their comfy positions by ensuring a Democrat majority in Congress.

He'll provide Netanyahu with the fig leaf he's been desperately looking for. Thus the right-wing government will find it much easier to evade Barack Obama's pressure. Barak, an egomaniac, narcissistic flip-flopper with the strategic foresight of a blind owl has bungled Camp David before. And now this. I have nothing but contempt for him - Hannes Artens

Barak tells MKs: We must join coalition

Gil Hoffman | March 2

Jerusalem Post - Labor chairman Ehud Barak has called Labor MKs in recent days and told them that the party should join a national unity government led by Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu, sources close to Barak said Sunday. Barak's associates confirmed a Channel 2 report that he had called Labor MKs to check whether he could obtain a majority in the faction for joining the government, but that he might try to bring Labor into the coalition without his faction's support.

"We have to go in," Barak told the MKs. "Be on my side. I don't care if I don't have a majority in the faction. I can pass it in the central committee." A source close to Barak said the party leader felt it would be better for the country and for himself to remain defense minister, and that it was now a matter of persuading his party that this would not harm Labor.     more

By Hannes Artens

In a foregone conclusion, Israel's President Shimon Peres mandated Likud's leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to form a coalition government. With Likud counting on the support of the entire right-wing block, and thus 65 out of 120 seats in the Knesset to back it, the task shouldn't be too strenuous. And yet Netanyahu is all but cheerful. Uncomfortable to join the cabinet table with the fascistoid Avigdor Lieberman who recommended him to Peres, he dithers and desperately vies for Kadima's Tzipi Livni and Labor's Ehud Barak to join in him a unity government.

In the coming negotiations Netanyahu is expected to offer Livni all but his boxers and the premiership. In no use of the former, the latter is exactly what Livni, whose Kadima came out one seat ahead of Likud in the legislative election of February 10, demands. Her price for acting as Netanyahu's compliant tool for his return to power is a rotating premiership, modeled on Shimon Peres and Yitzakh Shamir changing guards during the 80s. If I may dare to add my two cents, she'd be well-advised to send him home with his briefs, the premiership and as many cabinet posts as Liebermann will concede to him, and watch from the comfy sidelines of the opposition bench Netanyahu, Lieberman, and Eli Yishai, the leader of Shas, tearing each other apart. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition has no future, and because he knows that he courts Livni and Barak. They'd be pretty dimwitted to join him on the Titanic.

Hindustan Times - February 21
"Half a solution for half of Pakistan"
By Feryal Ali Gauhar

In the last few months, Swat has largely fallen to militants who have beheaded opponents, burned scores of girls' schools and banned many forms of entertainment. Gun battles between security forces and militants have killed hundreds, while up to a third of the valley's 1.5 million people have fled. A few days ago, the government of the North West Frontier Province - recently renamed Pakhtunkhwa, or the Land of the Pakhtun - reached an accord with the leader of the Tehrik e Nifaz e Shariat e Mohammadi (TNSM).

Jailed until recently, Maulana Sufi Mohammad had led over 10,000 men into battle with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He was arrested in 2002 by the government of General Pervez Musharraf, and released last year on the vow that he would renounce violence as a means to establish his notion of an Islamic order. This accord was reached in Peshawar through a 'jirga' where the Chief Minister of the province and members of the TNSM where present to sign it.

The questions that have been raised by the signing of this accord are many. As a Pakistani woman, foremost in my mind are the following concerns: In a so-called democratic polity, how is it possible to engage in a completely undemocratic process engendered by a jirga (assembly of elders) that excludes half the population of any community?

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Read on at Hindustan Times

... although I disagree with the recommended withdrawal.

The Guardian - February 14

"NATO is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever was"
By Jonathan Steele

Twenty years ago tomorrow the last Soviet units left Afghanistan after a nine-year intervention that took 15,000 soldiers' lives. As they crossed the river Oxus I was in the air above them, the only foreign journalist to fly to Kabul that day.

Russian friends in Moscow, where I was this newspaper's correspondent, doubted my sanity, convinced a bloodbath was bound to follow the Soviet exodus. I disagreed. The secular regime under Mohammed Najibullah that the Kremlin left behind had a firmer base than many outsiders realised, thanks in part to support from Kabulis who feared chaos and blood-letting if the mujahideen won the civil war.

Two decades later the ironies of America's war in Afghanistan are telling.

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Read on at The Guardian

Foreign Policy in Focus - Washington, February 13

"Multilateralism in Munich"
By Hannes Artens

Team Obama's debut on the world stage at last weekend's security conference in Munich was highly anticipated. With his pledge for a "new era of cooperation," Vice President Joe Biden struck the right note for a European audience still haunted by the Bush administration's "with us or against us" approach. But once the memory of Bush fades, Europeans will realize the price of Barack Obama's multilateralism. Like the U.S. president, they'll be forced to define what kind of multilateralism they want and what they're willing to sacrifice for it. More than any other issue, Afghanistan will produce this moment of truth sooner than might be expected, while determining NATO's relations with Iran to a greater extent than expected.

On the surface, Biden's rejection of "rigid ideologies" and his claim that the United States "is sincere in seeking [its allies'] advice" and counsel, was balm for the European soul. Many in the audience remember the performances of John McCain and Donald Rumsfeld in Munich six years ago when, on the eve of the Iraq War, they accused Germany of "calculated self-interest" and lambasted its "vacuous posturing."

Below the surface, however, Biden's speech also rang of the past. His pledge to "work in a partnership whenever we can, and alone only when we must," reminds one of Bill Clinton's a la carte multilateralism. But these aren't the golden 1990s, when U.S. power was at its zenith. In this first decade of the 21st century, the capitalist West is facing defeat in Afghanistan and is on the verge of "the worst recession in a hundred years," as British minister Ed Balls put it in perhaps only slight exaggeration. This combination will force the Obama administration to stop cherry-picking issues on which it wants to cooperate and forging ahead on those issues it believes it can still handle alone. Necessity will dictate a more pragmatic multilateralism, in which all sides humbly accept what is realistically possible.

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Read on at Foreign Policy in Focus

Ok, instead of you having to go through the whole article, of which 70% is outright, biased nonsense, I frontpage the three paragraphs I wanted to draw your attention to:

National Review Online - New York, February 13

"Bibi's Choice"
By Mario Loyola

... Thus the dilemma facing the Israeli government last November: The public demanded action, but would abide neither the reoccupation of Gaza nor a surrender to Hamas’s demands. This left only one possible policy goal, namely to manage an indefinite conflict by suppressing the rocket fire, which in turn meant deterring Hamas. Hence Tzipi Livni’s explanation of Israeli war aims in the final days of the Gaza operation: We want to show them that Israel “has gone insane.”

The government prepared a series of options, starting with a massive campaign of precision air strikes, followed by a single reinforced division’s invading Gaza with the initial mission of punishing Hamas. If that proved insufficient, another division would be introduced, and then another, in an attempt to discover whether any level of force could bring Hamas to heel. In the end, diminishing returns on the field of battle, a growing mountain of civilian casualties, and Obama’s looming inauguration forced Israel to halt operations and withdraw its forces—under rocket fire.

Predictably, Netanyahu went from supporting the operation to charging that it hadn’t gone far enough. But the startling fact of the Gaza operation is that Hamas had to survive in order for the strategy to work. One prominent Israeli says, tongue in cheek, “The IDF was quite careful not to destroy them inadvertently.” Prof. Dan Sheuftan of Haifa University explains why: For Israel to deter Hamas, Hamas must be left with something to lose. Moreover, since 2006 Hamas has been caught in the vise of a dilemma between governing Gaza and “resisting” Israel. Overthrowing Hamas would in practice free it from the responsibility of governance and allow it to concentrate on terrorism. Right now, the political reality of governance places real constraints on Hamas; even with the flood of “humanitarian assistance” into Gaza, it still has to deliver for its people ...

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Read what comes before and after that excerpt at National Review Online

By Hannes Artens

A perfect stalemate (Source: BBC, as of February 11, 11AM EST)

If there's one politician this week not to be envied it must be Israel's Shimon Peres. After having fought in the War of Independence, having survived uncounted political intrigues, assassination attempts, his nemesis Yitzakh Shamir, and the verbal sallies of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Davos two weeks ago, the president faces his most challenging hours. Voters at yesterday's parliamentary elections have propelled the country into a stalemate, a Gordian knot-like deadlock, at the moment in the country's history when decisive leadership is needed more than ever.

Peres has no more than a week to mandate either the head of Kadima or Likud to enter negotiations to form a coalition government. While in many Western countries the constitution or political customs require the leader of the strongest party to be given the first shot, the Israeli president is free to mandate whoever he thinks most likely to succeed in forming a stable government. Who is Peres going to choose, is he going to act on his beliefs (he's a member of Kadima and made his staunch support for a two-state solution explicit as recent as on election day) or is pragmatism going to force his hand? And what will his decision and the prolonged stalemate mean for the train-wrecked peace process?

By Hannes Artens

The former and future President of Iran? (Photo Source: Wikipedia)

Brian snatched the laurel from me for writing first about this groundbreaking development on our site, so let's give him credit where credit is due. Now it's official what we all have been speculating on for months and what has become almost a certainty over the last weeks: former president and the standard bearer of the reform movement in Iran, Mohammad Khatami announced his candidacy in June's presidential elections. His decision is rather dictated by sense of duty than conviction.

Conviction that he can muster the support to beat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - for despite Khatami's prominence and reputation the race is far from being called - nor that, if he gets elected, he'll be given the freedom to implement the reforms he thinks pivotal for Iran to advance from international pariah to the status of a respected and pragmatic member of the family of nations.

So how is the coming showdown of titans, the personifications of the deep division running through Iranian society, to asses and where does yesterday's development leave the Obama administration, struggling to formulate a comprehensive approach to the Iranian stalemate?

By Hannes Artens

Friday's, January 23, missile strikes (Source: Washington Post)

The first guns of the Obama presidency were fired. Friday, January 23, five missiles from Afghanistan-based Predator drones hit two compounds in North and South Waziristan, Pakistan. Hours later, the president held his first meeting with his national security staff, focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan and reportedly endorsing the strikes.

The very day, we all were celebrating the nomination of George Mitchell as President Obama's Special Envoy for the Middle East, we were also reminded of the grim reality that the inauguration of a new American president hasn't altered the dire situation on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan a mite. On the contrary, the progress made in what the President named "the central front of the war on terror," together with the global financial crisis, will be the yardstick his entire presidency will be measured by.

And while the policy reformulations Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made during her Senate confirmation hearings gave reasons to hope for a new approach, the bombardment of Friday at least yielded a whole truckload of salt to take the new administration's assurances with.

Just one day before the strikes, the Pakistani ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, expressed hope, "that Obama will be more patient while dealing with Pakistan." With all due respect, your Excellency, I strongly take issue with you on that. Too much patience, forbearance and ignorance with Pakistan is what got us into this quagmire. For much too long the Pakistani army was tolerated to invest the $10 billion military aid the Bush administration bestowed on them into expendable gadgets and its military buildup against India instead of supplying its counter-insurgency units with boots to walk the rocky ground; for much too long the US has turned a blind eye on ISI, the Pakistani intelligence, breeding and employing Islamist fundamentalists like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) - responsible for the carnage in Mumbai in November - as canon fodder in Kashmir and proxies to serve its imperialistic great power ambitions in Afghanistan; for much too long the West has set its hopes on military strongmen and corrupt agitators in Islamabad, who never considered delivering and thus undermining their power-base, in the ill-fated belief that Pakistani civil society is too feeble to take charge of their own fate.

By Hannes Artens

Rama Yade, French Undersecretary for Human Rights (Source: France Soir)

A great deal of the fascination Barack Obama elicits in Europe is rooted in the acknowledgment that Europe lags behind the U.S. in the integration and political representation of its ethnic and religious minorities. Yet there are examples of rising stars thrusting against the glass ceiling. Obama's inauguration last week seems a fitting occasion to introduce three of the most promising.

Although a fifth of Germany's residents are of foreign descent, for instance, less than 10 of the Bundestag's 600-plus seats are occupied by ethnic minorities; the house of representatives of Vienna, Austria -- where 25 percent of the city's 2 million citizens originate from abroad -- has only three.

There are many causes of this lamentable state. Unlike America, which identifies as an immigrant country, national identity in Europe has often resulted in a wariness towards immigrant culture, with some countries (notably Austria) historically defining themselves as bulwarks against the spread of Islam. Also, the numbers, composition, nature and backgrounds of Europe's immigrant communities differ significantly from America's. And an emphasis, after the horrors of the Holocaust, on the ethnic equivalent of a "color-blind society" has meant that the European approach to tolerance too often amounts to indifference, ignorance, and forbearance -- encouraging the development of ethnic ghettos and the formation of parallel societies.

By Hannes Artens

(Source: BBC)

Update: internationalization of the conflict, US gets involved:
According to Austrian Der Standard, Russia's motives might have to do with taking over the Ukrainian Naftogaz and thus the transit pipeline system after bringing the Ukrainian govt. to its knees with damage suits. Ukrainian politicians, even Timoshenko, cry foul. On the other hand, Russian Iswestija just made a memorandum of understanding between SecState Condoleeza Rice and her Ukrainian counterpart, Wladimir Orgysko from December public, in which US companies are held out the prospect to modernize the Ukrainian pipeline system in exchange for shares in Naftogaz.

For more than a week now no natural gas is flowing from Russia west via Ukraine. In several eastern European countries, who obtain up to 90 percent of their gas supply from Russian energy giant Gazprom, strategic reserves have reached rock bottom, and hundreds of thousands of consumers are forced to sit out the political row between Moscow and Kiev in increasingly freezing premises (see map). On Tuesday a deal brokered by the EU over the weekend failed; now Brussels is threatening both sides with legal action.

But even if billions-of-Euros litigations will force Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy, the company in charge of the transit pipelines, to eventually yield, the triangular conflict between Brussels, Moscow and Kiev will be far from solved. The dispute over gas prices and transit has shifted from a merely economic to a political level. With both sides playing with loaded chips and digging their heels in - and Europe being caught between two stools - this conflict threatens to have wide-spread impacts and to escalate to an ultimate showdown between strongmen in the Kremlin and the hopelessly divided leadership in Kiev. What is at stake is not only Europe's energy supply, but also the EU's relations with Russia and Ukraine, and the political survival of the Ukrainian government.

An appropriate mind game for the beginning of a new year, a new presidency, perhaps even a new era in IR: what are your predictions for the coming two years, what developments are we to witness between now and 2011, what themes and topics will dominate the international headlines, what will be our (America’s) prime concerns?

Imagine you’re a political novelist expected to deliver a spy thriller set in the Middle East in mid 2010, to hit bookstores in the fall of 2011. What do you anticipate the public’s interest to be? Resource wars (oil – a bit trite, isn’t it? – water), new developments in the “war on terror” (although I hope this phrase to no longer exist in 2011), private military contractors gone berserk, Iranian nuclear enrichment, the never-ending quest for peace in Israel/Palestine, the economic rise of the Gulf States, the quagmire the US faces in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the future of Iraq after US withdrawal? Most important, do you think the American public will continue to be interested in developments abroad at all or is the coming recession going to overshadow everything and turn readers’ demands from tales from foreign shores to bread and butter issues at home, is America going to experience an isolationist revival?

Perhaps all this won't matter as former KGB analyst, Russian professor Igor Panarin predicts a breakup of the US (check out the map!) for June 2011. According to him, Sarah Palin will have a Russian passport, Californians the Yuan as their currency, and Sean Paul will have to return home to San Antonio via immigrations in Ciudad Mexico by then.

Let’s share well-grounded thoughts, estimations, predictions, forecasts, prophecies (no end time scenarios and nothing like the above wishful thinking, please)in an open thread, the more the better!

I'm glad you all enjoy debating Professor Panarin's pipe dreams, but that was only meant as an amusing side note. What I'm truly interested in is your take on whether the current recession will overshadow interest in the wider Middle East among American fiction readers. Please share your thoughts with me on that one, too!

By Hannes Artens

With merely a month to go until the Obama administration will have to helm the West's more or less united front against Iranian nuclear enrichment a fierce struggle for posts, policies and priorities of/in the Obama team is raging behind the Washington scenes. Far from brought to a conclusion, let alone a policy cast in stone, the world - Tehran and Jerusalem in particular - is trying to figure out what direction the new president will follow, whether his approach will be a more conciliatory one, defined by dialogue, engagement, and an unprecedented reaching out, or rather a continuation of W.'s ham fisted cluelessness with alternating variations of speaking softly and martial rhetoric. A nut almost as hard to crack as to decode Tehran's often contradictory signs and to discern its true nuclear ambitions.

The more so as matters are not so simple. As usual, the American media wallows in simplifications and exaggerations they believe their sheepish audience appreciates: carrots and/or sticks, hawks vs. doves, a boxing match between Thomas Pickering and Dennis Ross and who wins either hosts Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for dinner at the White House or bombs the odious mullahs back into the stone age. A world view as black-and-white dominated as the one we thought we had just trashed in the dustbin of history. And one that could not be less in line with realities on the ground. In the real world outside the Situation Room the battle lines within the Obama team are far from clearly drawn and what at first sight appears a kneeling down before the neocon altar of warmongers might emerge as a smart move and a win for diplomacy on the long run. A good case in point is the "nuclear umbrella" for Israel the Obama team deliberately leaked to the press last week.

By Hannes Artens

When I put my article on Pakistan that referred to the Mumbai attacks in just a subordinate clause online last Thursday, no one could imagine the horrendous scope of the unfolding mayhem in India's financial capital. Six days later the death toll is close to 200 innocent victims and more than 300 wounded. The November 26-29 simultaneous terror attacks on the Oberoi and Taj hotels and at least half a dozen other targets are justifiably termed "India's 9/11", not only for the number of casualties, but also for the symbolism of targets and the high sophistication and disciplined conduct of the operation.

While reports and analyses in the media continue to contradict each other and rumors and idiotic accusations of false flag operations (CIA, Mossad, the usual suspects) keep flooding the internet and the blog scene busy, mounting evidence seems to point to an indirect involvement of Pakistan, the notorious Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to be more precise. If proven well-founded, this connection will put the two nuclear powers on collision course and constitute the first major challenge for the Obama administration.

By Hannes Artens

One might say, I've saved the worst for last in my series on the global challenges President Obama will inherit on January 20 - and that would be a gross understatement. The military/security situation in Afghanistan is beyond hopelessness; safe a miracle - no, I'm talking of divine intervention, not the fetish-like worshipped "surge" - the country appears lost. Pakistan, which has earned for years the top spot in geo-strategic nightmare scenarios and enjoys the dubious reputation of having exported more terrorist since the 90s than all other Muslim countries together, is even more on the brink than usual. The financial crisis is about to hit Islamabad full speed and plunge the country with an unofficial youth unemployment rate of 30 percent into chaos. The world's next failed state is about to emerge - one with an arsenal of 70 to 120 nuclear warheads.

The Agonist's own Alex Thurston, whose articles I always enjoy for their valuable insight and keen analysis even if I don't agree with his conclusions, has recently provided us with two formidable summaries on the options the Obama administration will face (here and here), I'd like to refer to:

I deny myself the "I told you so," am glad that my sources proved as reliable as usual, and await things to come with growing unease. William Galston sums up my take on it nicely in The New York Times:

You have to be either very young or naïve to believe change begins with erasing the slate," said William Galston, a top Clinton domestic policy aide who remains outside Mr. Obama's circle. "The world doesn't work that way. The way to ensure that nothing changes is to place people in positions of authority who are incapable of effecting change - whatever their good intentions may be."

Before Hillary Clinton has been formally offered the job as Secretary of State, a purge of Barack Obama's top foreign policy team has begun. The advisers who helped trash the former First Lady's foreign policy credentials on the campaign trail are being brutally shunted aside, as the price of her accepting the job of being the public face of America to the world (…)
A question remains about the fate of Susan Rice, the public face of Mr Obama's foreign policy throughout the campaign. She too had been expected to take a prominent position at the State department, but in a conference call with reporters during the campaign she ridiculed Mr Clinton's claims to foreign Policy experience. She may now end up as Deputy National Security adviser to the president, in the expectation that she would be frozen out by Mrs Clinton at the State Department, a situation that does not augur well for the future.

Look, Hillary insisting on picking her own staff and on having direct access to the president is only logical, I wouldn't do it any different. But if the Clintons are also going to decree who's going to be NSA, thus taking over the entire foreign policy apparatus, we'll really have Clinton III instead of Obama I. This is particularly troublesome in the case of Susan Rice, who I thought perhaps not the world, but a lot of, and who would have been a formidable NSA who could have had a great, positive impact.

By Hannes Artens

Recent developments prompt me to postpone the third part of my series on President Obama's global agenda until next week in order to instead invite you to speculate with me on what a Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would mean to the US and the world.

I'm dying to learn of your thoughts on this development because I completely fail to understand it, both President-elect Obama offering her the job, and Senator Hillary Clinton possibly accepting it (as of now we don't have a confirmation; the same day, Tuesday, The Guardian and CNN declared her having accepted, The New York Times reported on strong reservations on her side). Both doesn't make any sense to me, is outright illogical as it will sooner than later result in a ruinous competition and constant strife between the White House and Foggy Bottom, a lose-lose situation for Obama, Clinton, and ultimately for us all, who have set such high hopes on this fresh start.

By Hannes Artens

Dennis Ross, AIPAC's mouthpiece, to become Obama's Special Envoy for Iran? (Source: Time)

This article concludes with an appeal to all Agonistas, I kindly ask you to consider!

When I talked on speakerphone to a class of extraordinarily bright Cornell undergrads the week before the election I was, and still am, of the opinion that on November 4 actually two elections were decided: the one whose formidable outcome we're still celebrating, but also the presidential - ok, not quite so, but for the sake of universal détente and in the absence of a single word to better describe its complexity, let's call it - election in Iran next year. Here at The Agonist I have argued that the single most important signal heralding change and a new approach to the Middle East Barack Obama can send to Tehran, is to actually get elected. He did with flying colors, and heads are already spinning in Tehran how to react to this game changer of all changers.

Let me get this straight, I believe that if President Obama still has to deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad past June 2009, it is the clearest sign you can get that Iran is not interested in serious and honest negotiations but is on self-destruction mode. The hand Iran claims to be waiting for has been reached out. Now it's up to Tehran to react. If they reject it, continue to play for time, or mandate a team for negotiations that cannot be understood but an overt provocation, we at least know where we are. Faced with the choice to either lead the Islamic Republic across into a multi-polar world, in which it could become a regional power, respected and dealt with at eye level by its peers, or go first into the abyss, I believe Iran will decide for a pragmatic opening. Theoretically, there is reason for optimism that the Supreme Leader will back a more moderate candidate for president in March (see Hossein Askari in Asia Times for an analysis and list of hopefuls), and that defusing the Iranian powder keg will rank among Barack Obama's major historic accomplishments.

There, however, is one player with the potential to spoil things for us all, to rain on President Obama's parade, and still make the horror scenario of The Writing on the Wall come true: AIPAC and its mouthpiece, Dennis Ross.