Category: Geopolitics

The Suicide Bomb Morality

RealClearPolitics – Articles –

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live,” Ayn Rand

The worship of suffering is the world’s disease… self-sacrifice is the essence of moral virtue.

The Palestinians show us a society based on sacrifice in its purest, most fanatical form. It is a society built around a single moral model: the suicide bomber, who is lionized on billboards, on television, in popular songs. And this is not just the propaganda of the corrupt Palestinian rulers. One of the delegates elected to the Palestinian parliament in the populist upsurge for Hamas was Umm Nidal, the “mother of martyrs,” who has sent three of her sons to kill themselves in terrorist attacks on Israel, proclaiming that their “sacrifice…makes me happy.”

For the great mass of Palestinians this worship of sacrifice is sincere. By rejecting every chance at peace and coexistence with Israel–breaking every truce and turning down every peace offer–they have lost everything and gained nothing. Taking the suicide bomber as their moral model, the Palestinians seek to emulate his fate: in their lust to destroy Israel, they are willing to accept the utter destruction and collapse of their own society. Continue reading “The Suicide Bomb Morality”

Palestinian suicide strategy

The Region: Palestinian suicide strategy | Jerusalem Post
The things many in the West think motivates Palestinians – getting a state, ending the occupation – are of no interest in their own right.

Fatah and PLO strategy rests on the belief that defeat is staved off as long as you keep fighting. Their only true victory is to continue the struggle. If Palestinians become obsessed with job creation, educational or health systems or a successful economy this makes them satisfied with their lot and less willing to fight and die for the cause.

On Policing the Frontiers of Freedom

Association of the United States Army: Front and Center

This article shows the military learning how to cope with the non-Cold War reality of 21st century conflicts, with frequent references to what the British have learned in Northern Ireland.

How politicians define the problem of a nonstate adversary is an important strategic decision. Not all violent groups have political agendas, and of those that do, some can be tolerated, and even those that might sound dangerous may not represent foes that are truly implacable. Being able to define the problem in terms other than war is a privilege reserved to the strong, and such decisions are profoundly political. Politicians often think their constituents would rather commit to necessary action if they label it war. They forget that, in war, closure only comes when the enemy accepts defeat, and the war continues until he does. Words like defeat and victory often get in the way of good enough solutions. There are some advantages to defining the adversary as a problem rather than as the enemy.

China’s U.S.-like time machine

KnoxNews: Columnists

I find China as clueless about the future as most emerging countries. That’s why they plan so much. People really confident about the future don’t have to plan. They simply know what to do. I believe this is a naturally accruing capability with age, and in that regard, China is “young” despite the age of its civilization. Again, we need to think of them more like the U.S. at the start of the 20th century: getting brash but essentially uncertain and nervous about how to behave in the world. The more the bluster, the more the fear–I always say.
Forget trying to figure out today’s China through its own history, which consists of a seemingly endless cycle of disintegrating peace and integrating war. Instead, simply stipulate that China’s last extended civil war, which did not spin to a complete stop until the murderous Mao Zedong departed and eventual successor Deng Xiaoping opened the country back up for business in the early 1980s, deposited China somewhere in the vicinity of rising America of the late 1800s – absent democracy, of course. Continue reading “China’s U.S.-like time machine”

Report urges funding Castro foes

Report urges funding Castro foes
The report also says there is growing evidence that ”senior elements of the regime” are hiding their financial assets overseas, including properties and bank accounts. It recommends tracking down these assets and returning them “for the benefit of a Free Cuba Government.”

According to the text, Castro and his inner circle ”have begun a gradual but intrinsically unstable process of succession” working with “like-minded governments, particularly Venezuela, to build a network of political and financial support designed to forestall any external pressure to change.”

This maefesto from inside Cuba in the Washington Post ” The Unstoppable Cuban Spring”

The New Geopolitics – By Jeffrey Sachs

Scientific American: The New Geopolitics
Each era has its own dominating themes of global politics. The 19th century had the politics of industrialization and empire. The first half of the 20th century bowed to world wars and economic depression. The second half was overshadowed by the cold war. Our era, I believe, will be dominated by the geopolitics of sustainability.

With that increase in economic output have come some phenomenal benefits, such as rising life expectancy and improved overall public health, and some planet-threatening adverse effects, such as massive tropical deforestation, ocean fisheries depletion, man-made climate change, violent competition over limited hydrocarbon resources, and newly emerging diseases such as SARS and avian flu (H5N1). Until now, the favorable outcomes have outweighed the bad.

Muslims and the West: Antipathy and mistrust

Muslims and the West: Antipathy and mistrust – Europe – International Herald Tribune
Muslims view people from the West, especially the United States and Europe, as selfish, immoral and greedy. People from the U.S. and Europe view Muslims as arrogant, violent and intolerant.

The deep divide between Muslims and the West was clearly illustrated in the findings of a new 15-country poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Solid majorities in Indonesia (65 percent), Turkey (59 percent), Egypt (59 percent) and Jordan (53 percent) said they do not believe the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States were carried out by groups of Arabs. Even in Britain, 56 percent of the Muslims surveyed did not believe that Arabs carried out the attacks; only 17 percent said they believed it. The results show that many Muslims are still in denial about something that even Osama bin Laden has acknowledged.

The distance that separates Lula da Silva from Wen Jiabao

The distance that separates Lula da Silva from Wen Jiabao

Jiabao, like his predecessors for the past 15 or 20 years, had learned a lesson that Lula da Silva, like so many other left-wing politicians in Latin America, has not managed to understand fully.
By 1976, the year Mao died, the better-informed Chinese, especially those in the ruling circles of the Communist Party, had already noticed a painful reality that distanced them from the dogmas stubbornly defended by The Great Helmsman: the Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore were on the road to riches, prosperity and popular development. The Chinese who believed in private property and the market, who had embraced globalization, triumphed. In contrast, those who clung to the superstitions of collectivism and waved the Little Red Book at mass demonstrations lived in misery and scarcity. Continue reading “The distance that separates Lula da Silva from Wen Jiabao”

Southeast Asia’s new best friend

Southeast Asia’s new best friend – Los Angeles Times
THE MAPS SPREAD ACROSS the desk of senior Thai trade official Pisanu Rienmahasarn show an important piece of Southeast Asia’s future: a highway that, when it opens next year, will run more than 1,000 miles from Kunming in southwestern China, through Laos, to the ports of southern Thailand and beyond.

Beijing’s diplomatic message to Asia is fundamentally reassuring: Let’s get rich together. China’s modernization can only succeed if its neighbors also grow prosperous. That’s a far cry from the ideological clashes of a generation ago, when from behind its bamboo curtain, China bankrolled leftist groups to foment revolution in the capitalist Asian nations.

The Race for Iran

The Race for Iran – New York Times
Unfortunately, by refusing to consider a “grand bargain” with Iran — that is, resolution of Washington’s concerns about Tehran’s weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism in return for American security guarantees, an end to sanctions and normalization of diplomatic relations — the Bush administration is courting failure in its nuclear diplomacy and paving the way for Russia and China to win the larger strategic contest.

Iran has the world’s second-largest proven reserves of conventional crude oil, after Saudi Arabia, and the second-largest reserves of natural gas, after Russia. Its relatively low production levels make it one of the few states with the potential to greatly increase its exports of both oil and gas over the next two decades. Continue reading “The Race for Iran”