The regime of the longest ruling non-royal in the world is crumbling and the amount of blood likely to be spilled in its death throes should easily surpass that shed so far in the other Arab states.  Used to pariah status in the west, Muammar Gaddafi was always unlikely to bow to international pressure of the type that cowed Baharain’s al-Khalifas.  True to form, his regime reacted to protests this week with bullets.  With limited media and internet access, distinguishing fact from fiction in Libya is hard.  But it does appear that the regime’s forces shot to kill and the death toll was high.

And then things appear to have spiraled out of Gaddafi’s control.  Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, Libya is still a tribal society.  Gaddafi’s tribal balancing act appears to have collapsed when he ordered his troops to open fire.  Reports indicate that parts of his army switched sides enabling insurgents to seize control of Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, and the fighting has now spread to Gaddafi’s home turf of Tripoli.  The Warfala tribe, one of Libya’s largest, may have turned on Gaddafi as well.

The cornered dictator sent the respectable face of his regime, his son Saif, on state television to broadcast paranoid stories of foreign attempts to split Libya and the impending civil war.  That civil war appears to have already begun.  There may be no Saudi (or as rumored Venezuelan) exile for Libya’s long time autocrat.  He has indicated that he will fight to the “last man standing.”

Western countries who allowed the lure of Libya’s oil reserves to seduce them into rehabilitating Gaddafi can only sit and watch as this bloody denouement plays itself out.  The fall of Gaddafi would be truly momentous and will cause more and more Arab autocrats to doubt the fealty of their armies.  A sign of the times is a letter sent by senior commanders of Iran’s revolutionary guard to their commanding officer promising not to open fire on demonstrators.  If true, and if it holds up, Iran’s rulers may soon be faced with a popular revolution instead of the reformation sought by the Green Revolution two years ago.  In the latest bout of Iranian protests, the vitriol is increasingly directed at the true leader of Iran’s autocracy, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, instead of the President Ahmadinejad.

Protests also appear to have spread to Morocco.  The still popular King Mohammed VI once allegedly indicated that he wished to emulate Spain’s democracy bringing King Juan Carlos rather than his own father King Hassan II.  While Morocco may have eased up on the worst excesses of Hassan’s reign, it is time for the still absolute monarch to emulate his political idol more completely.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s worried rulers have promised to support the al-Khalifas of Bahrain.  The nature of that support is still unclear and for now Bahrain appears to have walked back from the brink.

With the Middle East convulsing, it will be interesting to see if the virus of unrest casts a wider web.  China’s rulers are on edge and Venezuela’s caudillo appears to be uncharacteristically quiet.  The next wobbly domino should emerge soon.

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There may yet be hope for Bahrain.  The Persian Gulf kingdom ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty has been rocked by protests in recent days from its Shiite majority underclass.  King Hamad then responded to peaceful protests by sending in the goons and using helicopters to strafe mourners at funerals.

And now the police have been abruptly withdrawn.  Pearl Square in downtown Manama, the heart of the protests like Tahrir Square in Cairo, now belongs to the protesters.

Like many if the Middle East dictatorships the al-Khalifas appear to have been split among the hardliners (led by the King’s uncle and long time Prime Minister) and the moderates (led by the crown prince and perhaps the King).  The tensions between the two camps were documented by the WikiLeaks cables.  Now the balance seems to have veered sharply towards the moderates, possibly helped along by admonishments from President Obama.

If the good news holds it appears that the virus of democracy is proving harder to suppress than previously thought.  The inbred royals ruling Bahrain’s neighbors must be looking at this in alarm.  People tend to discount the value of social networks in the recent bout of Arab unrest.  Personally, I think YouTube deserves far more credit.  Without the horrifying videos of police brutality, it is unlikely that Bahrain’s hardliners (who still value their ability to be integrated into world society) would have backed down so quickly.  The absence of such videos in Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia (no to mention the greater willingness of those despots to shed blood) poses a bigger challenge to regime change in those countries.

Next up Algeria?  Yemen?  Who knows….we live in interesting times.

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The fall of the Pharaoh raises the question whether the Middle East tumult will subside, or if this is the beginning of an avalanche not seen since Eastern Europe in 1989. While it is easy to get carried away, regime change in Tunis and Cairo occurred because the men with the guns did not act against the protesters. As Iran showed a couple of years back, unfortunately that is not always true. When the generals obey their masters and when the grunts obey the generals, democratic hopes come to a bloody end.

It is also still not clear whether Tunis and Cairo were soft coups, where the public face of the regime changed but little else did. However, some local despots do need to be more scared than others.  On cue the days of rage have commenced in three of the most vulnerable autocracies in the middle east.

• Iran – When Egypt erupted, the mullahs hypocritically cheered the right of Egyptians to protest.   They should have known that their restive masses were looking at Cairo and drawing encouragement.  Now the embers of the Green Revolution are reigniting.  The opposition leaders are already in preventive house arrest and the riot police are cracking skulls.
• Algeria – Algeria was the rare Arab country that held free elections in the early 1990s.  When it appeared the Islamists won, the military quashed the results (taking their cues from the Burmese junta who made the similar error of not rigging their elections a couple of years before).  The next few years saw a brutal and bloody civil war.  Though violence died down the last few years, unrest has always simmered underneath.  Now it has erupted.
• Bahrain - The Gulf monarchy’s presence in this list may seem unusual to people who do not follow the Middle East, but the Sunni monarchy ruling a 70% Shiite population has had periodic bouts of unrest.  After promising to respect peaceful rallies, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has opted for bullets.  Warning:  Violent video below.

The protests in all three countries already highlight one huge difference with Tunisia and Egypt.  These autocracies are willing to spill blood.  The men with guns and batons will have to refuse to take orders for these tyrants to fall or give way.  The list above is also not exhaustive.  Yemen, Jordan, Sudan and to a lesser extent Syria (where you have to frankly be foolhardy to publicly protest) have faced protests.  Then there is the longest ruling autocrat in the region who has seen his fellow dictators on either side of his country fall.  The recent cables leaked by Wikileaks revel how the 41 year regime of Muammar Gadaffi has been tarnished by his licentious progeny.  Even Libya may be facing the unthinkable, public protests.

It is very likely that no more dominoes will fall this go around, but the yearnings for freedom and respect on the Arab street will be harder to bottle up again.  And if one can dream, if Egypt actually manages to create a constitutional democracy the clock will start running out for the remaining autocracies in the region.  The 1990s saw the demise of assorted military juntas in Latin America.  Even though the Chavezs and Ortegas are threatening democracy in the region, by and large military rule is passe in the region.  Lets hope this decade sees similar change from the Maghreb to the Fertile Crescent, and beyond.

As a final note, do notice how quiet the murderous thugs of Al-Qaeda have been at the sight of the Pharaoh being toppled without suicide bombers.

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Talk about timing…barely 30 minutes after blogging about Mubarak refusing to go, the tired old dictator leaves. An inspiring moment for Egypt and the World. Hopefully this does not signify an attempt to perpetuate the Nasserite military dictatorship. Suleiman can help by keeping his promise to repeal the 30 year emergency law and not running for reelection. May the Ayatollahs be next.

That was anti-climactic.  With Egypt convulsing from the after-shocks from the Maghreb triggered by the self-immolation of a frustrated Tunisian fruit seller, rumors of Hosni Mubarak’s impending departure spread rapidly.  And then Mubarak doused cold water on those hopes with a vague rambling speech (blaming foreign influences) announcing that he was delegating unspecified powers to his man Friday, new Vice President Omar Suleiman.  The crowd’s displeasure is evident in the video below, particularly at the 12:30 mark where Mubarak tries to identify himself with the young people out in the streets.

Suleiman on whom the Obama administration has placed its wishful hopes for a transition to democracy the proceeded to rile the crowd by asking the protesters to go home.  The Egyptian army which has played a two faced role in this crisis has endorsed Mubarak’s plan, and Mubarak does seem to have handed some powers over to Suleiman.

So what now?  Nobody knows.  The White House was evidently blindsided by Mubarak’s defiance and has limited leverage on the situation.  Ultimately this is a crisis that must be resolved by the Egyptians.  Washington’s efforts should be focussed on preventing the army from initiating the type of bloody crackdown that crushed Iran’s Green Revolution two years ago.

With no obvious opposition candidate in the wings, Egypt faces a period of prolonged uncertainty and probably instability. A big concern in Egypt is a silent military coup, of the type that may have overcome Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution.   Suleiman is deeply tied to Mubarak’s repressive regime and in his 70s is unlikely to be a long term solution in any case.

Concerns have been raised that elections could result in the Muslim Brotherhood to power.  If the United States truly believes its pretensions of being the “defender of the free world”, it needs to come to grips with the reality that democracy can result in unfriendly governments.  For too long Washington has supported autocrats like Mubarak who provided “stability” in the form of stagnation and decay of their countries institutions, economies and societies.  After some hesitancy the Obama administration seems to be veering towards support for a democratic transition.  Here’s hoping that the Egyptians can pull it off (and by their example reignite Iran’s Green Revolution).

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It is time to update the world map.  As expected South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the largely Muslim and Arab northern part of the country.  With Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir promising to respect the results, fears of a North-South civil war have receded.

The extremely impoverished new nation (whose name has not been formalized) faces a daunting task ahead.  It is riven with feuds, has almost no infrastructure and the desire to be free from Khartoum appears to have been the only glue that held its warring factions together.  It is blessed and cursed with an abundance of natural resources (and oil).  Mineral wealth has generally been the bane of developing countries.  Getting it out of the ground creates few jobs but generates a lot of revenue for venal kleptocrats to siphon into Swiss bank accounts.   Revenue sharing arrangements with the North have to still be negotiated and Khartoum will be eager to exploit any rifts that appear.

The creation of South Sudan could provide added impetus to secessionist movements across Africa.  The African Union has avoided opening up the Pandora’s box of redrawing colonial borders.  The sole exception to the rule, Eritrea could claim that it had been a separate Italian colony before being annexed by Ethiopia after World War II.  Now the genie is out of the bottle and secessionist claims in places like (oil rich) Southern Nigeria could re-emerge.

Maybe my pessimism is unjustified.  Having midwifed the creation of the new country (with the active encouragement of right-wing evangelical groups) it is likely that the United States will remain involved in the region and discourage mischief.  Equally or more likely the combination of a weak resource rich state surrounded by unscrupulous resource poor neighbors could result in another Congo.

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Daniel Larison’s column discussing Barack Obama’s endorsement of India’s dreams of permanent security council membership notes the following:

The more interesting question is whether the U.S. is able to acknowledge that major and rising powers do not share its preoccupations and to adjust expectations of their cooperation with U.S. policy accordingly. Washington isn’t likely to abandon its fixation on Iran’s nuclear program, but it should give the administration some pause that it has just publicly endorsed permanent Security Council status for what is, in fact, one of the chief “rogue” nuclear states in the world. This is not a criticism of the administration’s engagement of India. On the contrary, the administration’s correct dealing with India stands as a rebuke to the administration’s Iran policy. Further, the favorable treatment shown to nuclear-armed India confirms that states that never join and flatly ignore the requirements of the NPT and go on to build and test nuclear weapons are not censured or isolated in the least. Instead, they are rewarded with good relations and high status.

The assignment of “rogue” status to India and Iran based on pursuit of nuclear weapons is a false equivalency.  For one major reason – India refused to sign the NPT because of its arbitrary limitation of nuclear powers to the five who got there first.  Iran (and North Korea – which has since withdrawn from the treaty) signed the NPT and by pursuing nuclear weapons violated its treaty obligations.  Larison fails to explain why a country falls into rogue status for not abiding by the requirements of a treaty it never accepted in developing its own nuclear weapons.  I make the distinction because non-signatory Pakistan earned its rogue status not for testing its own nukes, but for selling them to North Korea and Libya.  The stark contrast to Pakistan along with Indian assurances that they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict (a commitment not offered by the United States which during the Cold War felt itself to be at a conventional weapons disadvantage) is among the factors contributing to India’s special treatment (a booming economy does not hurt).

Left unsaid is the fact that the third non-signatory to the NPT, Israel appears to have been developed its own nuclear arsenal through NPT violations by Western Powers and apartheid South Africa (which renounced the bomb shortly before the transfer of power to Nelson Mandela).

That said Larison has a point in noting an element of hypocrisy in the wailing about Iran’s nuclear program.  However that does not stem from the treatment of India.  It is ultimately rooted in the NPT’s arbitrary designation of permitted nuclear weapon states that has miserably failed to stop the domino effect of countries seeking the bomb.

Larison closes out his column with the following:

More to the point, if the administration had what it wanted and India were on the Security Council as a permanent member with veto powers, how much weaker would U.N. sanctions against Iran have had to be to satisfy India? Put another way, if India is ready to be considered such an acceptable and responsible power, what does Indian indifference to Iran’s nuclear program tell us about the rationality of our government’s obsessive hostility towards the same?

The Indian posture is not very different from that of the Russians and the Chinese.  None of the three shares America’s hostile relationship with Tehran.  While none is eager to see an Iranian nuke they are not hyperventilating about it like the United States or Israel.  It is not clear that India would have diluted the sanctions against Iran even further than the Russians and the Chinese.  Most likely and in the finest traditions of modern Indian diplomacy, it would have abstained  - a posture that will have to gradually change if India wants to be taken seriously as a great power.

It is about time Washington appreciated that countries have different interests and policies – something that was lost in the first George W. Bush term as the Cheney/Rumsfeld duo went out of the way to alienate anybody who did not kowtow to American policy.  If the United States wants a puppet in the Security Council, it already has the United Kingdom.  It is also important to note that while Obama endorsed India’s permanent membership of the Security Council, he did not say anything about the veto power.  Frankly granting another 4 members (Japan, India, Brazil and probably South Africa) the veto power would make the Security Council even more irrelevant than it already is.

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London’s Daily Mail has alleged that China pressured judges to eliminate Miss Norway Mariann Birkedal in the 2010 Miss World contest – which was won by Miss USA Alexandria Mills.  The contest itself was held on China’s Hainan island.  If true, this would be the latest petulant outburst by the corporatist dictatorship that is still steaming over the award of the Nobel Peace Price to Liu Xiaobo.

Out of deference to copyright law I will not post gratuitous bikini shots of the contestants, but you can view them in the first two links above.

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Maybe I should not be surprised that the Washington Post published this blather from David Broder.  The last couple of years it has cheerfully published factually inaccurate or outright propaganda columns from George  Will, Charles Krauthammer and (the torture supporter) Marc Thiessen.  It also published Dinesh D’Souza’s garbage about the roots of Barack Obama’s ideology.

Somehow Broder seems to forget that we already fought two expensive wars in the last decade and primarily managed to blow up the deficit (with a lot of the money wasted abroad it produced almost no stimulative effects back home).  Saber rattling with Iran will also drive up oil prices which could lead to a double dip recession.  Even though Broder does not actually advocate bombing Iran he seems to assume that Iran will remain motionless while we ramp up preparations for war.  It has proxies in Iraq and Lebanon that can be unleashed against the United States and Israel.  The threat of war will also allow Iran’s isolated autocrats to rally support at home.

Since Broder’s column is essentially calling for more government spending to stimulate the economy, maybe he should call for spending on our infrastructure and education instead of fueling an already over-bloated military-industrial complex.

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Hwang Jang-yop the highest ranked defector from North Korea died this week.  The death of an 87 year old should not be a surprise, but the timing of his death and the repeated attempts by North Korea to assassinate him have spawned conspiracy theories.  His death also highlights the internal divide in South Korea.  The conservative parties had no reservations honoring Hwang Jang-yop.  South Korea’s leftists, always eager to make excuses for Pyongyang, have been much more lukewarm.  The much ballyhooed Sunshine Policy that earned former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung the 2000 Nobel peace price has been a dismal failure.  North Korea never had any intention of changing its ways and the policy may have actually propped up Kim Jong Il’s ramshackle regime.  Yet South Korea’s leftists place the blame for the recent freeze across the 38th parallel solely on their own government (and the Americans) with no blame attached to the dictator across the border – even when he sinks a South Korean naval vessel and kills South Korean sailors.  The presidency of Roo Moo-hyn (who committed suicide last year) saw Seoul turn a blind eye to North Korean spy infiltration.  At times you have to wonder if these parties are really that naive or are actually Manchurian candidates taking orders from Pyongyang (just as many Indians often cynically joke about their own communists taking orders from Beijing).

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Venezuela’s bloviating caudillo reaffirmed his totalitarian bonafides by supporting China’s outrage at the award of the Nobel peace prize to Liu Xiaobo.  I wonder what it will take for his celebrity allies in the United States like Sean Penn to come to grips with the realities of Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution.  When Chavez came to power, his charge that Venezuela’s oil riches had not been shared with its great unwashed had a certain resonance.  A decade later the mask has slipped.  His incompetent handling of Venezuela’s economy has led to food shortages and inflation.  Rising crime is taking its toll on his popularity.  Meanwhile he has supported leftist terrorists in neighboring Colombia and squandered Venezuela’s oil surplus in shoring up self admitted failures like Fidel Castro.  A reflexive desire to poke a finger in Uncle Sam’s eye has led to embraces of despots from Tehran to Beijing.  Given his attempts to muzzle his own opposition and internal media, it is no surprise Chavez has defended the despots in Beijing.

Meanwhile China’s has stepped up its hysterical outbursts against the award by placing Liu Xiaobo’s wife under house arrest.  It remains to be seen who accepts the award on Liu Xiobo’s behalf.

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Former Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf became the first Pakistani official to openly admit what everybody else already knew.  Pakistan used terrorism as a tool of foreign policy to wrest Kashmir from India (complete interview in German here).  He also openly admitted culpability for the Kargil War, which at the time he tried to pass off as an attack of “freedom fighters.”  Musharraf’s comments come as rumors of a coup in Pakistan are rising and he is planning to return home to wade into politics.

With Pakistan trying again to rake up Kashmir in international forums in its tediously predictable manner, the question is what exactly India needs to negotiate with Pakistan about.  Indian possession the Kashmir valley and the partition of the old princely state of Kashmir is a fait accompli.  While Kashmir has boiled over this summer and India has made more than its share of mistakes in the state (bungling made worse by the state’s demographics), Kashmiris enjoy constitutional protections that preserve their language, culture and property along with full rights as Indian citizens.  Kashmiris do not face the prospect of being swamped in their homeland like the Tibetans.  This is in stark contrast to the legal limbo or outright colonial rule faced by their brethren on the Pakistani side of the line of control.

Ultimately the geopolitical reality is that India cannot let Kashmir go without triggering similar vociferous demands elsewhere.  More than 60 years after partition it will not hand Kashmir over to the failing state on its western border.  The only parties to the negotiations should be the Indian government and the representatives of the Kashmiri people to address their legitimate grievances so that the military presence that infuriates Kashmiris can be drawn down and human rights issues resolved.  The sooner Pakistan comes to grip with this reality it can focus on the disaster within its borders that has been exacerbated by allowing its terrorist proxies free rein.

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When I heard about Christine O’Donnell being privy to a classified information about a Chinese strategic plan to take over the United States, I could not help but recall the South Park clip below about a descent into conspiracy theory paranoia.

As Fallows notes in the link above, it is not crazy to be worried about the threats posed to the United States by the rise of China.  It is the part about being privy to the classified information that she is unable to disclose that is is batshit crazy, particularly in a person whose career arc would not have put her anywhere near such information.

UPDATE:  The source of the secret plan appears to be non-profit missionary groups working in China.

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Months after Iraq’s election Nuri Kamal al-Maliki finally wheedled together a coalition to retain power.  But the long term prognosis for Iraq is not good.  The election unveiled the deep fissures in Iraqi society.  Al-Maliki’s support is largely confined to his Shiite community. His opponent (and former Prime Minister) Ayad Allawi drew his support from the embittered Sunni minority.  Once again the Kurds hold the balance of power.  The trouble will erupt when they demand and receive their pound of flesh – the provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh and Diyala which are also claimed by the Sunnis.

The Sunni community is deeply unhappy with al-Maliki’s conduct of the war against terror and his attempt to disenfrachise them after their block came so close to victory.  Al-Maliki will also have to contend with Moqtada al-Sadr with whom he clashed in the past, but whose support this week secured his re-election attempt.

Then there is al-Maliki’s desire to strengthen his divided country by concentrating more power in Baghdad.  That would reek of a Shiite attempt to dominate the other two communities could light a slow fuse towards civil war.

Joe Biden is often a late night punch line and for a man focussed on foreign policy has made more than his share of wrong decisions.  But in my opinion he has been prescient on two major issues in the last decade.  One, was the surge in Afghanistan last year.  The other was his plan to create a truly decentralized Iraq that drew bipartisan support in the Senate in 2007.  George Bush’s surge aided by a more competent local ally than our Kabul headache succeeded in military terms.   But it did not pave the way to the hoped for political reconciliation.  The nature of al-Maliki’s return to power makes that even less likely.

The examples of India and Pakistan show the perils of having an over-centralized government in an ethnically diverse country.  Unless Iraq’s factions discover so far unseen capacity for compromise and cooperation a Bosnian style conflict with foreign funding for their proxies may be the ultimate end result.

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Just when you thought that week 1 of this blog resuming posting could go by without a shout out to our favorite American “allies,” this week has has been full of delightful news in the region.

• Our venal, incompetent ally in the presidential palace in Kabul may be suffering a nervous breakdown, but we are stuck with him.
• Our venal, incompetent (though well meaning) ally in the presidential palace in Islamabad could be forced out of office in a shadow coup.
• Pakistan is seething about drone attacks that NATO is now aggressively carrying out on their side of the border for the logical reason that the terrorists are located there.  The problem is that the drones have tendency to kill Pakistani civilians and soldiers.
• As a result, American supply lines to Afghanistan are threatened by attacks on NATO convoys and by Pakistan blocking them.
• The overhyped Pakistani offensive in the tribal areas still has not worked (as evidenced by the stoning to death of a woman by the Taliban for being seen with a man).
• But Pakistan’s leaders are still focused on the drones crossing the border rather than fighting the Taliban in its North Waziristan stronghold.  Their elite in denial try to pretend that they are somehow being sucked into America’s war – even though Pakistan midwifed the Taliban and by sponsoring Al-Qaeda’s ideological allies as proxies against India was the training ground for terror.  This (and the recent discovery of a terror plot in Europe by men of Pakistani origin) got them a dressing down from CIA director Leon Panetta.
• And last but most importantly, the Afghan army will not be ready in time for the withdrawal of American troops.

I understand the political imperative that forced the Afghan surge, but it has not worked in the face of bumbling civilian allies and duplicitous military ones (as shown by the Wikileaks documents this summer).  The question remains whether the administration will have the courage to cut its losses and focus on a smarter war against Al Qaeda, rather than squandering blood and treasure in the Land of Bones.

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A bunch of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea seem unlikely candidates for a diplomatic showdown between China and Japan.  But the combustible mix of oil and natural gas reserves and aggressive nationalism egged on by Beijing to hide the regime’s ideological bankruptcy gives you a diplomatic explosion.  It also causes sleepless nights in Washington and other capitals concerned with managing the rise of China.  While this current spat seems to have been resolved, China’s aggressive adoption of imperial hauteur is ringing alarm bells across the Pacific Rim.

This blog has (before its unexpectedly long summer hiatus) noted China’s tensions with India.  China has also made (sometimes tenuous) claims to a bunch of islands in the South China Sea (which contain oil reserves) leading to tensions with Vietnam and other ASEAN countries.  This summer it essentially claimed exclusive rights to the Yellow Sea by objecting to a joint US-South Korean naval exercise aimed at North Korea.  Seoul is already peeved with China giving the rogue regime in Pyongyang diplomatic cover.  The recent saber rattling adds to the general alarm.

The last 20 years have seen the spectacular rise of China, largely by avoiding the type of spats that epitomized its foreign policy in the 60s and 70s.  But the result of its abandonment of Deng’s cautious foreign policy has been to force the Asian countries into Uncle Sam’s far more benign embrace.  So while China asks outsiders (i.e. Washington) not to meddle and tries to take down the Asian minnows one by one, America is reengaging in a region it had ignored amidst the distractions of Iraq and Afghanistan and so far has ignored Beijing’s bluster.  With North Korea in the midst of another dynastic succession and behaving more erratically than ever it is about time.

The effects of China’s policy also highlight the lack of wisdom in the muscular unilateral foreign policy that the neo-cons advocated during George Bush’s first term.  A great power that throws its weight around on every single issue soon finds that it is left with few friends.  While Beijing has cultivated clients among the world’s rogue gallery, it finds itself with very few friends in its backyard (other than the millstones North Korea and Pakistan).

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The United States and Russia signed a new treaty designed to slash nuclear warheads of each country by 30%.  See link.   This leaves  each with about 1,550 warheads, more than enough to create nuclear Armageddon many times over and each will still have more nuclear warheads than those of all the other nuclear powers combined.  This will ratchet up the pressure on other nuclear powers to trim their own stockpiles, which are not cheap to maintain in any case.

The treaty also explicitly gives the countries a free hand with violators of the NPT (Iran and North Korea).  The most controversial part of the treaty is a commitment not to threaten non-nuclear states in compliance with the NPT with with nuclear strikes even in response to chemical and biological attacks.  However, there remains sufficient wiggle room as the treaty does not specify who defines compliance with the NPT and provides the United States the ability to modify its commitment as the chemical and biological threat evolves.  See link.   The biggest importance in the treaty is likely a reduction in the chill in United States and Russian relations over the last couple of years.  See here.

The bellicose John Bolton has not surprisingly already starting barking disapproval on the odd grounds of sovereignty (See here) but one hopes that the party of no (whose support will be needed for ratification) understands the limited scope of the deal.  See here.

It does not help that Fox “News” in its inimitable fashion started characterizing the treaty (and some legitimate concerns) like this:

Former half-term governor Sarah Palin and Mr. 9/11 have started singing praises of Ronald Reagan in marking their opposition to the treaty (ignoring the fact that Reagan signed a similar treaty for a 30% reduction of the nuclear stockpile during the Cold War and (like Obama) set a Utopian goal of a nuclear weapons free world…but why let facts interfere with the random invocation of the GOP’s Reagan mythos).  It brought on the unusually sharp slap down below by the President on the “policy wonk” Palin:

This does raise the question whether the fairly pragmatic Reagan who was not averse to raising taxes if needed or was willing to (gasp) negotiate with the Evil Empire and thru back channels with Iran would have any place in today’s Republican party.  The mythology of the man grew in comparison with George Herbert Walker Bush and when the Republicans lost the White House to Bill Clinton and is now quoted as gospel by empty suits like Giuliani or Palin with little regard for whether their invocation comports to reality.  In today’s radicalized GOP rump, it is not impossible to think that Reagan would run the risk of being labeled a RINO (Republican in Name Only).  It is hard to see how Nixon with his far more moderate social stances and much greater willingness to have the government interfere in the economy would not earn the derisive label.

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Hamid Karzai is the gift that gives on giving.  The latest by Afghanistan’s venal leader was a burst of peevishness at members of his parliament for having the temerity to block his takeover of the Afghan electoral commission.  See link.  Karzai declared that any more pressure on him would make him join the Taliban.  I encourage him to make the jump, though expect that he will receive the Najibullah treatment in short order if he makes such a move.  Now it is understandable that Karzai is looking for room to maneuver as the United States prepares to leave.  See link.  But by repeatedly criticizing the United States and NATO troops attempting to secure Afghanistan as occupiers he makes the task of pacification that much harder.

Others have noted that Karzai seems to be banking on the fact of his supposed indispensability and perhaps Washington has long memories of the South Vietnam quagmire after it acquiesed in the removal of President Ngo Dinh Diem.  See link.  If so, I think it is a mistake.  It is a mystery of why this venal incompetent with no political base to speak of became indispensable.  Part of the Karzai appeal stems from his being one of the few Pashtun leaders acceptable to other Afghan ethnicities.  But the election fraud last year has dimmed that appeal in the non-Pashtun regions.  His government’s corruption has similarly sapped reservoirs of goodwill in the Pashtun heartland (not helped by the nefarious dealings of his brother Ahmad Wali Karzai).  The supposed indispensability largely stems from a fear of the unknown, something previous Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf exploited to the hilt.

Yet after Musharraf’s departure Pakistan has finally moved against its Taliban proxies and its feeble civil institutions are showing signs of life.  And yet for years Washington and its allies and neighboring India put up with Musharraf’s double dealing because of the fear of what would happen if the urbane English speaking dictator left.  Pakistan may yet fall apart but fears of its imminent cataclysmic collapse appear overstated.  The same appears true in Afghanistan.  The west needs a competent reliable ally in Kabul and it is increasingly clear that the urbane English speaking Karzai is simply not that man.  His presence in power is likely to result in the waste of American blood spilled during the ongoing surge.

Karzai’s departure obviously will not be a panacea to Afghanistan’s ills.  Yet at this point it is increasingly hard to see how it will be worse.  I will close with a couple of clips from yesterday night’s Jon Stewart.

The first is a tongue in cheek look at Karzai’s latest blathering and the consequence of Karzai’s departure.

The second is a more serious discussion with Reza Aslan on why and whether America should remain in Afghanistan.  While I understand Aslan’s point about the moral commitment made by the United States and the squandered opportunity, the reality is that the presence of foreign troops is increasingly unpopular and it is not clear that America will ever be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

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Pakistan has evidently asked the Interpol to issue arrest warrants for Ajmal Kasab and Fahim Ansari in connection with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.  See link.  The oddity stems from the fact that there is no mystery about their presence, both are lodged in Indian jails.  As the article notes it has raised speculation that this is an opening gambit in a sequence of moves designed to let Pakistan’s LeT proxies off the hook.  It could be just innocent bureaucratic paperwork, but this highlights the futility of talks in an atmosphere of deep distrust and until Pakistan’s commitment to dismantling its terror infrastructure is not established.

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As predicted in previous posts (see here and here) the Indo-Pak talks have hit a dead end.  See link.   The talks were taken for the benefit of the United States and Europe and were never going to go anywhere.  The undiplomatic truth from the Indian perspective is that there isn’t much to talk about as long as Pakistan keeps its terror proxies in reserve.  After being burned by the Pakistani security establishment many times New Delhi is not eager to repeat an experience akin to the classic clip from Animal House below.

What use is a composite dialog of the sort Pakistan wants when there is no trust on the ground and when Pakistan’s civilian government does not have the ability to rein in its military.  In the meantime Pakistan continues to ratchet up its complaints.  The latest concerns alleged violations of the long standing Indus Waters Treaty.  See link.  So the dance between the nuclear emerging power and the nuclear failed state continues.  The result will be headaches for the persons in charge of Washington’s Afghan policy.

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Update to the blog post from yesterday.  See here.  After shoving his foot firmly in his mouth the Mayor of Kabul has tried to “clarify” his comments by blaming every politicians favorite target – the media.  See link.  While Karzai likes to blame foreigners his own Parliament almost unanimously gave him an open handed slap by rejecting his attempt to pack the Electoral Complaints Commission with his cronies.  See link.  Its not clear whether this restores the autonomy of the commission, but its a small step for the rule of law in the face of a venal leader’s diktat.

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Words fail me.  The logic of the claim is baffling.  After blatantly rigging last year’s Afghan elections Hamid Karzai now claims that it was the EU and UN observers who committed the rigging to place a puppet regime in power.  See link.  Either Karzai’s delusions have deepened or this is his latest ham-fisted attempt to explain why he is trying to pack the  Afghan electoral commission with cronies appointed by him.  If he wants to bullshit his way out of his latest jam couldn’t his brain trust come up with something better?

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Its been a while since I picked on our old friend Hamid Karzai.  Like the itch you cannot scratch he is impossible to forget.  See link.  Ticked off at the brazen packing of the Afghan election commission (which unearthed his election fraud) with cronies the Obama administration sent him a message by withdrawing his invitation to visit Washington.  Since then the mayor of Kabul has been sulking in his palace, garbing himself in the cloak of Afghan nationalism and irritating Washington by flattering the electoral thief on his western border.  Its hard to see what Karzai’s strategy is.  He has no base and no army loyal exclusively to him.  He remains propped up by the dual support of Washington and his warlord cronies.  Washington’s patience has run out.  The fate of Mohammad Najibullah should warn him of the perils of relying on mercurial warlords.

What he needs more than ever is to midwife a resolution of the Afghan civil war before the Americans leave and then pray that Pakistan’s usual games in Afghanistan do not cause his regime to crumble.  It will require diplomatic tact and statesmanship that has not yet been on display.  But instead Karzai fiddles in the Afghan ruins, watches Pakistan force itself into the Afghan negotiating table and irritates the only people who can keep him in power.  Joe Biden once proposed partitioning Iraq.  That may be in Iraq’s future.  It is a pity he did not propose something similar for the basket case buffer that is the legacy of the Great Game.

Political cartoon depicting the Afghan Emir Sher Ali with his "friends" the Russian Bear & British Lion (1878).

The cartoon from 1878 above seems oddly prescient.  Just the participants have changed.

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After the conclusion of the second elections since Saddam Hussein’s removal from power, Iraq has reached the crossroads.  Still unclear is whether Iraq will manage its first peaceful transfer of power without the backing of American guns.  The elections marked the resurrection of former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi who holds on to a narrow lead over incumbent Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.  See link.  Swept from power in the last elections after being branded an American puppet, Allawi made a remarkable return by crafting a coalition of Sunnis, Shiites tired of religious parties and people opposed to Iran.

But all is not well.  Al-Maliki has yet to accept the results and worse is considering post election moves supposedly based on the constitution to modify the outcome.  See link.  Al-Maliki enjoyed the benefits of incumbency and spent many of the last few months trying to weed out potential Sunni rivals by using (or abusing) the de-Baathification process.   It is one thing to weed out avid supporters of Saddam.  But a blanket ban on anybody with any affiliation with the Baath Party, which as in the Communist world was the only game in town, reeks of an attempt to pick on the already disaffected Sunni minority.  It also insults the popular vote plurality that Allawi’s coalition assembled.

Even if al-Maliki was not sulking, an Allawi government would take some time to assemble.  While he edged out al-Maliki’s coalition for a plurality, he is well short of the 163 seats needed to get a majority.  He will have to cut a deal with the Kurds who are uncomfortable with some of his Sunni allies and the coalition partly led by the thuggish and volatile Moqtada al-Sadr (who has a bone to pick with al-Maliki for sending the Iraqi army against his militia a couple of years ago).

In the norms of most parliamentary democracies Allawi as the leader of the largest pre-election alliance would get the first shot at forming a government.  But if he fails to do so al-Maliki could yet return to power.  The result will be a period of uncertainty as the political horse trading begins and al-Maliki’s attempts to pull an Ahmadinejad or a Karzai on the election results is singularly unhelpful.  By picking on the Sunni majority he weakens the strongest rationale for a parliamentary system in a multi-ethnic country – the ability to get all sections of society a voice at the table.  This is something that is sorely absent in the winner take all Presidential system that exists in Afghanistan where the whims of the President and the executive have far fewer checks.

Of course the coming months will also highlight the primary flaw in a parliamentary system- the lack of stability when elections produce such a fractured and muddled mandate.  Coalition politics are not easy for mature democracies.  Iraq’s leaders need to pick up this skill fast and act in a good faith to avoid their nation, which was an artificial construct cobbled together after World War I to begin with, falling apart.

From the American perspective the elections likely ensure the withdrawal of American troops on schedule.  With the anti-American al-Sadr playing king-maker neither an Allawi or al-Maliki government (which normally would both be relatively pro-American) is likely to have the political support to keep American troops around even if they wanted to.  Ready or not Iraq will soon be taking its first steps on its own in its nasty neighborhood.  It is yet another example of how clueless and steeped in fantasy the Chenyites and neo-cons were when they assumed that toppling Saddam would enable the establishment of permanent American bases in Iraq.

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Pakistan’s foreign minister visited the United States this week.  On deck were a discussion for aid to Pakistan, a civilian nuclear deal similar to what India was granted in the Bush administration and a familiar litany of complaints on Indian intransigence on bilateral talks.  The timing seems propitious as Pakistan is still basking in the warm afterglow of approval for finally moving against its erstwhile Taliban proxies.  Some of the sheen on that accomplishment has started to wane, with Hamid Karzai angrily complaining that Pakistan had disrupted ongoing talks and with intelligence communities still suspicious of Pakistan’s motives.  See here.  Yet, it may be some time before Pakistan gets as favorable a reception in Washington.

However, apart from some more money Pakistan is unlikely to get much of its wish list.   See link.  Since independence Pakistan has aggressively sought diplomatic parity with India.  However, the economic, military and geopolitical gulf between the two countries has widened in the last 20 years.  It is a bitter pill that the Pakistani establishment has not come to terms with.

There was a lot of Congressional resistance for the nuclear deal with India.  A similar deal for a country whose nuclear scientists sold nuclear technology to Libya and North Korea will be dead on arrival.  The thin-skinned Indian response to the prospect does not seem needed.  See link.

The litany of complaints against India is not likely to go too far either.  For the last 30 years Pakistan has agressively sought to internationalize its dispute with India and India has stubbornly pointed to the 1972 Simla Accord as the bench mark for bilateral negotiations.  Foreign diplomats like Robin Raphael or David Miliband who hinted at third party facilitation of negotiations drew a sharp Indian response.  See here.  That is unlikely to change in the near future, particularly with Indian sensibilities sore after the plea bargain by (and the promise not to extradite) David Headley.  See here.

Pakistan’s security establishment seems still stuck in the 1980s when its allies in Congress would issue annual anti-India resolutions and India would have to go all out to stop them.  By the mid 1990s, Pakistan’s staunchest ally Dan Burton could not even get a sufficient number of co-signers for his resolutions to proceed.  The best Pakistan can hope for on the subject are bland statements calling for dialogue.  See link.

As noted in a previous blog the talks are meaningless so long as Pakistan’s terror support infrastructure remains in place.  See link.  From India’s perspective there is no point coming to the table to discuss disputes while Pakistan treats terrorism as a bargaining chip.  For all of Pakistan’s bluster of similar Indian activities in Baluchistan, precious little evidence has been made public.  Unlike Kashmir, Baluchistan does not lie along the India-Pakistan border making it hard logistically for India to provide much meaningful support to Baluch separatists.

On the flip side it is time for India (and its media) to recognize India’s rising maturity as a global player not hyperventilate on perceived slights every time the Obama administration dangles Pakistan a carrot.  American policy makers in both parties are only too aware of the greater desirability of India as a strategic ally.  However, the realities on the ground in Afghanistan force the United States to make some concessions to Pakistan.  It is the only strategic card Pakistan has at present and it is hardly surprising that it will be played as often as possible.  With low global tolerance of terrorism as a tool of foreign policy, Pakistan’s diplomatic options are limited.

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