About HIPJ
HIPJ History
HIPJ Homepage
HIPJ FAQ
Weblog Archives

Search



Alternative News
Democracy Now
Z Magazine
Indypendent Magazine
Indymedia(US)
Indymedia(UK)
Counterpunch
Corporation Watch

US News
NY Times
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
Washington Times
Boston Globe
LA Times
ABC News
CBS News
MSNBC
Fox News
CSPAN
CNN
Reuters

World News
BBC (UK) News
The Independent (UK)
The Guardian (UK)
The Hindu(India)
The Indian Express
The Dawn(Pakistan)
Globe and Mail (Canada)
Ha'aretz(Israel)
Jerusalem Post
Le Monde(France)
Mail and Guardian(South Africa)
Moscow Times (Russia)
Christian Science Monitor
United Press International
Colombia Times

Magazines/ Journals
The Economist
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Policy
Business Week
News Week
Time Magazine
The Atlantic Monthly
Harpers
The New Republic
Outlook India
Frontline (India)

Harvard Publications
The Crimson
The Harvard Independent
The Harvard College Economist
Harvard Focus Europe
Diversity and Distinction
Flare
Harvard International Review
Harvard Perspective

Harvard Organizations
Harvard Friends of Amnesty International
Harvard Living Wage Campaign
Harvard Students Against Sweatshops

Archives By Category
Africa
Blog Notes
Cuba
HIPJ Meetings
Imperialism
India/Pakistan
Iran
Iraq
Israel/Palestine
Latin America
Mainstream Media
Militarism
Misc
Oil and Energy
Russia
Student Activism
United States
Video
Vietnam


Last 20 Posts
Georgia, Russia, Gas, Oil and Kosovo
Stephen Kinzer: America's Century of Regime Change
The Bush Administration's WMD Case for the Iraq War: Intelligence Sought to Justify a Decision Already Made
Naomi Klein Article: China's All-Seeing Eye
Seymour Hersh: U.S. Funding Covert Operations in Iran
New York Times Op-Ed: The Two Israels
Proposed US - Iraqi Alliance/ Status of Forces Agreement
KSG Article: "Playing Favorites on Dictators Robs U.S. of High Ground"
A Foreboding Day in History
Peak Oil Primer
Bush's Appeasement Speech in Israel & Recent History with Iran
Imperial Life in the Emerald City
Pangea Day
Lie by Lie: The Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline
McCain Implies Energy Guides U.S. Involvement in the Middle East
Kissinger's New Domino Theory
Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar
Harvard SDS Iraq War Die In
Letter from Jose Ramos-Horta
A History of HIPJ (September 2001 to April 2008)

Recent Comments


www.iraqbodycount.org


Note: Iraq body count only uses media reported, corroborated casualty figures. The number above therefore represents a lower bound on the number of deaths. Other estimates are shown here





Georgia, Russia, Gas, Oil and Kosovo
The attack and entry of Russian troops into Georgia has already claimed an estimated 1500 civilians lives. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili gave an 11 minute interview on the BBC describing what he called an outright Soviet invasion. He claims that the Russians are intentionally targeting civilians and oil pipelines going to Europe. He also points out, in response to Russian claims of protecting a minority in Southern Ossetia that this has been the excuse for previous Soviet invasions of Poland, Hungary, Finland, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and although he doesn't add, this was also the excuse of the Nazis for invading the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia.

There are two salient points to touch upon in other coverage of the conflict. The first is a theme of Russian imperialism, that it is doing this primarily to try to reassert influence over the southern Caucus region where the construction of alternative oil and gas pipelines going to Europe could undermine Russian control (where the current pipelines are) over the region's energy resources. A long piece in the New York Times by James Traub comments on this:
Marshall Goldman, a leading Russia scholar, argues in a recent book that Mr. Putin has established a "petrostate," in which oil and gas are strategically deployed as punishments, rewards and threats. The author details the lengths to which Mr. Putin has gone to retain control over the delivery of natural gas from Central Asia to the West. A proposed alternative pipeline would skirt Russia and run through Georgia, as an oil pipeline now does. "If Georgia collapses in turmoil," Mr. Goldman notes, "investors will not put up the money for a bypass pipeline." And so, he concludes, Mr. Putin has done his best to destabilize the Saakashvili regime.
The book by the Harvard scholar mentioned, Marshall Goldman, "Petrostate" is available to search inside on Amazon.com. The fact that this may largely be a play to control the region's energy resources, as opposed to simply being a case for "humanitarian intervention", increases the chance that the west could ponder a military or economic response.

The second theme is the role of Kosovo in the Russian justification for its actions. This is also touched upon in the piece by James Traub in the New York Times while recounting the history of the conflict:
This brief interval of talk came to an abrupt end two summers ago, when Mr. Saakashvili sent troops to retake the Kodori Valley in Abkhazia -- in order, once again, to curb banditry (of which there was, in fact, a great deal). Both the Abkhaz and the Russians took this as a sign that Georgia was prepared to fight to regain its former province. Indeed, last year Mr. Saakashvili traveled to the Abkhaz border and promised a crowd of Georgian refugees that they would be back home within a year.

The breakaway regions were thus a stick of dynamite waiting to be lit. And Mr. Putin struck a match. Although Russia, as the peacekeeping power, was charged with preserving an international consensus that recognized Georgia's claims over Abkhazia, Russia lifted sanctions on Abkhazia last March. This had nothing to do with local events: Mr. Putin had tried for years to prevent Kosovo from declaring its independence from Serbia, and when the Kosovars went ahead, with strong American and European support, last February, Mr. Putin responded by leveling a blow at America's Caucasus darling.

Soon afterward, the Russian Duma held hearings on recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova. Moscow argued that the West's logic on Kosovo should apply as well to these ethnic communities seeking to free themselves from the control of a hostile state. And then, in mid-April, Mr. Putin held out the possibility of recognition for the breakaway republics.

Now things began to degenerate rapidly.
Another article in the New York Times mentions the same theme:
When Kosovo won Western backing for its bid for independence from Russia's historical ally Serbia, the Kremlin answered by vowing to win similar status for South Ossetia and for the Black Sea enclave of Abkhazia, which fall inside Georgia's borders. Georgian leaders, meanwhile, hoped to quiet the conflict once and for all before applying for NATO membership.
Regardless of how slighted the Russian leadership actually feels for the support of the West for the unilateral declaration of independence of by Kosovo, it has allowed them to stoke feelings of Russian nationalism as a cover for invading and taking innocent lives in a nearby democracy. By what clear criteria can the west say that its support for the breakaway republic of Kosovo is different than Russian involvement in Southern Ossetia?


Posted on August 09, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Stephen Kinzer: America's Century of Regime Change
Former New York Times Reporter Stephen Kinzer has written several books about regime change as a tool of US foreign policy. In 1982 he co-wrote Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala and has written two more recent books All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003) about the US engineered coup against Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006), an omnibus history of 14 US engineered overthrows of foreign governments starting in 1893. There are several talks available online where Kinzer talks about Overthrow and All the Shahs men. Here is a talk from Fora.tv where he discusses Overthrow:


The 14 interventions Kinzer discusses in Overthrow are:
  1. 1893: The overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.
  2. 1898: Spanish-American War - Takeover of Cuba.
  3. 1898: Spanish-American War - Takeover of Puerto Rico.
  4. 1898: Spanish-American War - Takeover of the Philippines.
  5. 1910: Installation of General Estrada in Nicaragua.
  6. 1912: Installation of President Bonilla in Honduras.
  7. 1953: Coup against Mossadegh in Iran.
  8. 1954: Overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala.
  9. 1963: Coup against Diem in South Vietnam.
  10. 1973: Coup against Allende in Chile.
  11. 1983: Invasion of Grenada.
  12. 1989: Invasion of Panama.
  13. 2001: Invasion of Afghanistan.
  14. 2003: Invasion of Iraq.
Kinzer also has two interviews on Democracy Now for each of his two latest books, two about Iran and All the Shahs Men and two about Overthrow. Here is an excerpt from the first of the Democracy Now Overthrow interviews regarding the standard pattern that Kinzer sees in the development of these interventions:
You ask about the motivations, and that is one of the patterns that comes through when you look at these things all together. There's really a three-stage motivation that I can see when I watch so many of the developments of these coups. The first thing that happens is that the regime in question starts bothering some American company. They start demanding that the company pay taxes or that it observe labor laws or environmental laws. Sometimes that company is nationalized or is somehow required to sell some of its land or its assets. So the first thing that happens is that an American or a foreign corporation is active in another country, and the government of that country starts to restrict it in some way or give it some trouble, restrict its ability to operate freely.

Then, the leaders of that company come to the political leadership of the United States to complain about the regime in that country. In the political process, in the White House, the motivation morphs a little bit. The U.S. government does not intervene directly to defend the rights of a company, but they transform the motivation from an economic one into a political or geo-strategic one. They make the assumption that any regime that would bother an American company or harass an American company must be anti-American, repressive, dictatorial, and probably the tool of some foreign power or interest that wants to undermine the United States. So the motivation transforms from an economic to a political one, although the actual basis for it never changes.

Then, it morphs one more time when the U.S. leaders have to explain the motivation for this operation to the American people. Then they do not use either the economic or the political motivation usually, but they portray these interventions as liberation operations, just a chance to free a poor oppressed nation from the brutality of a regime that we assume is a dictatorship, because what other kind of a regime would be bothering an American company?
Kinzer's books are worth reading and his interviews worth listening to.

Posted on July 15, 2008 | Comments? (0)

The Bush Administration's WMD Case for the Iraq War: Intelligence Sought to Justify a Decision Already Made
Current US strategy in Iraq is dependent on why the war was waged in the first place. If it was for neutralizing weapons of mass destruction programs, and removing a potential base and allies for terrorists then the strategy today will be substantially different than if the goal was to promote a regime pliable to western access to the region's resources.

The goal of this post is to analyze the evidence that was available before the war demonstrating that there was a credible threat of weapons of mass destruction development by the government of Iraq. The conclusion reached is that the evidence was so shoddy that it is next to impossible to believe that this was what motivated those who most ardently pushed for war, ie Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. Instead the Bush administration used whatever evidence it could find to justify a decision to invade Iraq that they had already made.

In the years since 2003 many reports and good books, most notably "Hubris" by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, have emerged painting a clearer picture of whether this really could have been the casus belli for war in the minds of the instigators. In the extended entry a summary of this material is given. If this evidence convinces us that WMD couldn't have really been the driving force for war, we can go on to analyze what was.

Posted on July 08, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Naomi Klein Article: China's All-Seeing Eye
Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein had an article in the May issue of Rolling Stone entitled China's All Seeing Eye which documents the increasing level of surveillance being instituted by the Chinese government to watch its citizens and how this fits in to the larger context of China as a bastion for "Market Stalinism":
American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" -- a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.

Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range -- a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)

The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology -- thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric -- to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square.

Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.
A ways into the article there is a reference to a longer piece also available online by Glen Walton called "China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China"
China today faces a very modern paradox. On one side, the government understands that information technologies are the engine driving the global economy, and that Chinese economic growth will depend in large measure on the extent to which the country is integrated with the global information infrastructure. At the same time, however, China is an authoritarian, single-party state. Continued social stability relies on the suppression of anti-government activities. To state the problem simply, political control is dependent on economic growth and economic growth requires the modernization of information technologies, which in turn, have the potential to undermine political control...

In November 2000, 300 companies from over 16 countries attended a trade show in Beijing called Security China 2000. Among the organizers was the "Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Commission for the Comprehensive Management of Social Security." A central feature of the show was the Golden Shield project, launched to promote "the adoption of advanced information and communication technology to strengthen central police control, responsiveness, and crime combating capacity, so as to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of police work." China's security apparatus announced an ambitious plan: to build a nationwide digital surveillance network, linking national, regional and local security agencies with a panoptic web of surveillance. Beijing envisions the Golden Shield as a database-driven remote surveillance system - offering immediate access to records on every citizen in China, while linking to vast networks of cameras designed to increase police efficiency...

The self-interested high-tech discourse promises that new information and telecommunication technologies are inherently democratic and will foster openness wherever they are used. China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China debunks this myth. Technology is embedded in a social context and, in this report, it has been shown to bolster repression in a one-party state in the name of expanding markets and exponential profits.
PBS Frontline also has a good documentary called The Tank Man (after the famous picture in Tiananmen square), viewable online, which discusses labor conditions and information control in China.

Posted on July 06, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Seymour Hersh: U.S. Funding Covert Operations in Iran
There is an article in the most recent addition of the New Yorker, by journalist Seymour Hersh called Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran that describes how the US has been funding covert action in Iran trying to destabilize the regime:
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Buried deeper in the article is a description of an event that happened earlier in the year when there was a confrontation between Iranian and American ships in the Gulf of Hormuz:
The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. No warning shots were fired, the Admiral told the Pentagon press corps on January 7th, via teleconference from his headquarters, in Bahrain. "Yes, it's more serious than we have seen, but, to put it in context, we do interact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their Navy regularly," Cosgriff said. "I didn't get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats."

Admiral Cosgriff's caution was well founded: within a week, the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the ominous radio transmission, and press reports suggested that it had instead come from a prankster long known for sending fake messages in the region. Nonetheless, Cosgriff's demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn't do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. "The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington," he said.
Given Cheney's preeminent role in bringing about the war with Iraq, we should be on the lookout for him now trying to do the same with Iran. Hersh gave an interview on Democracy Now regarding the article.

Posted on June 29, 2008 | Comments? (0)

New York Times Op-Ed: The Two Israels
Nicholas Kristof had a good op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday called "The Two Israels" that highlights both the abuses of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli occupation as well as the actions of Israeli human rights organization in their defense.
It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won't let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)

Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation's mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.

All told, the most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. This scrupulous honesty and fairness toward Israel's historic enemies is a triumph of humanity.

In short, there are many Israels. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be "pro-Israeli," let's hope that they clarify that the one they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness -- and peace.
This highlights the important idea that people are not their governments. The New York Times has a couple more examples of how bad conditions have gotten in the West Bank and Gaza, in the article "West Bank Boys Dig a Living in Settler Trash"
The boys are part of a loose-knit colony of scavengers, nearly 250 people who scramble over fetid hills of other people's trash to eke out a living for their families and themselves. Most are younger than 16; some sleep here during the week to maximize the hours they can hunt for goods to sell. Many are related, from a few large clans, and they have a kind of organization, with a 23-year-old bulldozer driver who settles disputes, and a code of conduct, so that every digger's finds are respected.

For all the agonizing about nearby Hebron -- how far Israel should go to resolve competing Jewish and Palestinian claims to the city -- this desolate spot is a symbol of the impact of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and of the dire economic state of the Palestinian territories, where about a third of adults are without work. Many of the adults working the site have been unable to get jobs in Israel since 2000 and the second intifada, when Israel instituted stronger security measures to try to prevent suicide bombings.

This dump has become a lifeline, and informal workplace, for them and for the children helping to support poor families in the southern West Bank. The scene is reminiscent of the third world, of places like Manila's notorious garbage mountain, but this desperate place is next door to a country with the highest per capita income in the Middle East: Israel.
The NY Times editorial board also had a piece describing the situation in Gaza called "Trapped in Gaza"
Life got truly desperate last week when Israel, reacting to a sustained and intense barrage of rocket fire, blockaded Gaza and stopped all shipments except emergency supplies. When the border wall was breached on Wednesday, Gazans went on a buying spree in Egypt, stocking up on fuel, medicine, soap, cigarettes, cement, chickens and goats.

We are deeply concerned about the many innocent Israelis who live along the border with Gaza and must suffer through the constant bombardment. But Israel's response -- shutting off power and other essential supplies -- is a collective punishment that will only feed anger and extremism.
Of course, the effect of rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, as described in another New York Times article, also deserves attention, and the perpetrators should be condemned for it. Each side should be held accountable commensurate with the toll they take on innocent civilians.

The Israeli human rights organization BT'Selem mentioned in the Kristof op-ed is very impressive, and their website is definitely worth several visits. They have very informative sections on Israeli settlements, the separation barrier, and several other topics. They recently started a project called shooting back, where they have given out video cameras to Palestinians in the West Bank to document abuses. Harvard's Cambridge Common blog highlights another, somewhat more colorful, instance of Israeli protest to the ongoing occupation.

Posted on June 22, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Proposed US - Iraqi Alliance/ Status of Forces Agreement
Details were revealed earlier this month regarding a new security arrangement being pursued by the Bush administration in Iraq. The story was first reported by Patrick Cockburn in the London independent:
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
Cockburn also later reported that the United States was trying to leverage $50 billion dollars of Iraqi Assets that the US still has control over as a relic of the first gulf war to compel the Iraqis to accept the deal. He discussed both of these articles on democracy now.

The former finance minister of Iraq and author of "The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War and Losing the Peace", Ali Allawi, compared the proposed agreement to a similar one imposed by the British in 1930 in a piece in the independent called "This raises huge questions about our independence".
In 1930 the Anglo-Iraqi treaty was signed as a prelude to Iraq gaining full independence. Britain had occupied Iraq after defeating the Turks in the First World War, and was granted a mandate over the country. The treaty gave Britain military and economic privileges in exchange for Britain's promise to end its mandate. The treaty was ratified by a docile Iraqi parliament, but was bitterly resented by nationalists. Iraq's dependency on Britain poisoned Iraqi politics for the next quarter of a century. Riots, civil disturbances, uprisings and coups were all a feature of Iraq's political landscape, prompted in no small measure by the bitter disputations over the treaty with Britain.

Iraq is now faced with a reprise of that treaty, but this time with the US, rather than Britain, as the dominant foreign partner. The US is pushing for the enactment of a "strategic alliance" with Iraq, partly as a precondition for supporting Iraq's removal from its sanctioned status under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. It is a treaty under any other name. It has been structured as an alliance partly to avoid subjecting its terms to the approval of the US Senate, and partly to obfuscate its significance. Although the draft has not been circulated outside official circles, the leaks raise serious alarm about its long-term significance for Iraq's sovereignty and independence. Of course the terms of the alliance for Iraq will be sweetened with promises of military and economic aid, but these are no different in essence from the commitments made in Iraq's previous disastrous treaty entanglements.
Some additional perspective on the amount of building and preparation for long term US involvement in the region is provided by Tom Engelhardt on Tom Dispatch in two pieces called "Baseless Considerations" and ""The Mother Ship Lands in Iraq".

Posted on June 20, 2008 | Comments? (0)

KSG Article: "Playing Favorites on Dictators Robs U.S. of High Ground"
There was a good article written last year by Robert Rotberg, professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and president of the World Peace Foundation in a Chicago Tribune op-ed in 2007 called "Playing Favorites on Dictators Robs U.S. of High Ground".
Should we behave cynically, as so many nations do, and simply befriend those countries that can supply oil or gas, or can help us battle terrorism?

Washington backs Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf -- who was favored going into national elections this weekend -- despite his military origins and, at best, quasi-democratic tendencies. U.S. officials figure that without Musharraf, the battle against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan would be lost, and Al Qaeda, now based in northwestern Pakistan, would become even stronger.

The U.S. lavishly supports President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt despite the fact that ordinary Egyptians have few human rights, fundamental freedoms are ignored and democracy is honored more in the breach than in reality. The U.S. State Department occasionally clucks disapproval of Mubarak's excesses but keeps on showering aid. Without him, the U.S. fears, Muslim fundamentalists would govern Egypt and join hands with Osama bin Laden and his ilk.

Earlier we befriended President Islam Karimov, another strong-minded non-democratic ruler, in Uzbekistan. We needed his help in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. However, when he brutalized his own people, massacring hundreds at Andijan in 2005, we were critical. Karimov retaliated by denying the U.S. continued use of a convenient Uzbek air base.

In late September, Bush welcomed President Kurbanguli Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan to the White House with a great show of bonhomie. But Turkmenistan is as depraved a country as Myanmar, and Berdymukhamedov, who assumed office earlier this year, seems to be continuing his predecessor's tight control of the long-deprived Turkmen citizenry. Admittedly, Turkmenistan has oodles of natural gas in its corner of the Caspian Sea, and Washington seeks to have that gas exported through Turkey, not Russia (which now buys trillions of cubic feet at special rates).
The US support for such regimes is especially pertinent when analyzing wars, such as in Iraq or Kosovo, that some try to justify on humanitarian grounds.

Posted on June 07, 2008 | Comments? (0)

A Foreboding Day in History
Today is the centennial of the Western discovery of oil in the middle east. On May 26, 1908 the British businessman William D'Arcy struck oil in Iran. Wired has an article about it, here is an excerpt:

Exactly 100 years ago today, the smell of sulfur hovered in the air at Masjid-i-Suleiman. That was a good sign for an experienced oil hand like Reynolds. At 4 in the morning, the drill reached 1,180 feet below the desert and struck oil. A huge gusher shot 75 feet into the air.

The site was so remote that it took five days before D'Arcy got word by telegram in England. "If this is true," he replied, "all our troubles are over." It was indeed true, and more wells hit oil elsewhere in Persia, including a huge one in September.

D'Arcy and Burmah reorganized their holdings in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (which became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. in 1935, British Petroleum in 1954 and BP in 2000.) Its initial public offering of stock shares sold out in 30 minutes in London. People stood five deep around the tellers' cages to buy shares in Glasgow. The race for oil accelerated throughout the Middle East.

Let's hope the second century is better for the region than the first.

Posted on May 26, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Peak Oil Primer
A recurring theme on this blog is that fossil fuel dependence is the determining factor of Western involvement in the middle east. This is hardly a groundbreaking observation, but is one that is far too absent from discussions in the mainstream media. There, the involvement is described as concerns from actors in the region directly threatening our security, rather than asserting power over their own resources.

A key to understanding contemporary petro-politics is the phenomenon known as peak oil - a prediction of how the supply of oil will evolve over time. The basic premise is that given a finite amount of oil in a region, the production (barrels produced per year) will approximately follow a bell shaped curve, starting at zero gradually climbing to maximum production and then irreversibly declining. This was true of the continental United States, as can be seen in the curve below:

HIPJUSOilScaled.png

It is also true for the United States as a whole (including off shore drilling and Alaska). Oil production has also already peaked in dozens of other countries so there is a fear that eventually the world as a whole will peak and then go into irreversible decline. Given how dependent the world economy is on the use of oil for transportation and natural gas for energy production, this could have very serious consequences. There is a wide amount of disagreement on when that peak will occur. There are even those who dispute that there will be a peak, claiming instead that there will be an undulating plateau. The pessimists however, believe that oil could peak in the near future. Below is a scenario put together by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO).


Although this phenomenon has been barely discussed in the mainstream media it has started to get attention at relatively high levels of government. There is a peak oil caucus in the house of representatives as well as a study by the GAO (Government Accountability Office). The GAO study demonstrates the extreme divergence of views that exist on when the World peak for oil production is expected to occur, as demonstrated by this figure lifted from the report:


HIPJGAOPeakOil.png
If such peak will occur in the near future, some believe it has happened already, it has very important consequences for policy and everyone's well being. The extended entry of this post contains further comments and links regarding the topic of peak oil.

Posted on May 25, 2008 | Comments? (0)