by CKR
I was planning to go to a Sunday afternoon band concert (Washington Post march promised - dee-dum-de-didddly-da-dee-dee - I am a sucker for John Philip Sousa), but a very rumbly raincloud is moving overhead, so I'll put on a cd and work through the good stuff I found this morning. Then maybe I'll get my e-mail running regularly.
Rodger Payne provides a succinct observation that capability no longer seems to be a part of threat assessments. I've been wanting to write about this for some time, and, since I have some things to add to what Rodger has said, I probably will.
Zev Chafets doesn't care that the Christian pre-millenialists expect the Jews to convert or die at the final call, as long as they support Israel. Loonies are okay as long as they support your program. Or perhaps the concept of useful idiots isn't dead on either side of that friendship.
Wondering why North Korea hasn't collapsed economically yet? Stephen Mihm explains their counterfeiting operations, as far as an outsider can infer what's going on. It's easier to keep the economy going if you can just print dollars. And they do it quite well.
Nicholas Sambanis concludes that we may call what is going on in Iraq a civil war. Dana Priest also did, somewhat less academically, in her Thursday chat (scroll to the very bottom). Thomas Ricks treats us to some of the material from his new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Not too many surprises there; it sounds like this book brings together a lot of things we've suspected and sort of known into a coherent story of how the US missed opportunities to slow or defeat the insurgency before it started. He notes something else I've been wanting to write about: how stuff that seems obvious to some of us was rejected or ignored.
Naturally, there's a lot on Israel and its enemies. The New York Times has a rather complex graphic purporting to illuminate the conflicts in the region. I don't think it does, but there are a number of tidbits that may be helpful. If there's one takeaway message, it's all the hostility links to and from Israel and Iran. Clearly the two problem centers in the region.
David Bosco presents a number of scenarios for a World War III [roll eyes] expansion of the current conflict. Some are considerably less likely than others, but the point is that it's not at all difficult to imagine ways that armed conflict could start in any number of places.
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is concerned that Hezbollah is overconfident and overreaching and that the overreach on both sides means that bloodier battles are yet to come. Ned Temko worries about another occupation of Lebanon by Israel and wonders if Israel's leaders have learned from history.
The Bush administration's theory on democratization of the Middle East, as I understand it, is that Iraq's keystone position made it the central candidate for a model democracy that would cause other countries in the region to become democratic. The trouble is, things don't seem to be working out that way. Anatol Lieven argues that the United States's strategy in the region has collapsed into a remake of Israel's as the democratization project fails. Noah Feldman takes note of the new subnations of Hamas and Hezbollah, how Israel is addressing their threat, and the complexity they add to negotiations in that area, another topic on which I'd like to write more. Robert Worth surveys a number of Middle Eastern scholars on the topic of democratization and America's role. Jason Burke looks at the Shia resurgence.
[I had to take a few minutes off in the middle of composing this post. When I put my two Sousa cd's on shuffle, "The Stars and Stripes Forever" came up first, one version following the other. Too much happiness for this old piccolo player. I hope the neighbors didn't mind.]
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