Regardless of whether you are among those who are baffled about the economic problems that continue to ail the U.S. with no end in sight, or among those who are cheering the noisy fall of the mightiest among nations, here is one of the most cogent explanations that Nathan Gardels provides in the Fall 2008 issue of the New Perspectives Quarterly about the grim situation that the lone uberpower faces.  He writes:

In the space of a few short months, we have morphed from the citadel of free-market capitalism and freewheeling consumerism — from a land of high-flying hedge funds, Hummers and homes that doubled as ATMs — to a system in which the banks, insurance companies, mortgage industry and auto manufacturers are quasi-socialized

The tax-and-spend epithet that defined America’s partisan politics for decades has been replaced overnight with a bipartisan mantra calling for a nearly trillion-dollar fiscal stimulus. No sooner had Milton Friedman been laid to rest (he died in 2006) than John Maynard Keynes was resurrected. Amazingly, even the historical aversion to state-guided industrial policy in the United States has yielded to urgent demands for political oversight of private enterprise, starting with the Big Three automakers in Detroit.

The year 2008 is thus likely to go down in American history as an even more pivotal one than 2001, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, because the life of the average American is going to be shaped far more by the consequences. We’re not talking about the inconvenience of lining up to go through metal detectors at the airport.

Notwithstanding these gloomy, albeit realist, annotations, there is no single power over the global horizon that is willing to or capable of replacing the uberpower.  However, the need for creating new approaches aimed at averting America’s decline has never before more urgent and imminent than now.

NOT RELEVANT NATO

The NATO is popular and unpopular, and relevant and irrelevant at the same time.  How can it be?  The chief reason is that at the conclusion of the first decade of the 21st Century, NATO members seem to treat it like a social club where they want to be seen, but do not want to pay the membership dues in blood.  That is right.  That is the price of membership that the European members must pay.  The United States wants to continue its occupation of Afghanistan, but under the flags of NATO.  It wishes to Europeanize an American-preferred war, which promises to become more intense and bloodier under the presidency of Barack Obama than it has been under George W. Bush.

Obama’s biggest shock is awaiting him in Afghanistan.  He has stated that he will focus on seeking international cooperation in solving global problems.  However, as a recent Pew Research Center report notes, “he will have to navigate a world that has grown highly critical of the United States.”

The Islamist forces do not care about their loss of life in their battle in Afghanistan—indeed, they appear eager to die.  But the Europeans do care.  After all, Europe is a region where war is supposed to have become a thing of the past as a means of settling disputes.  But for the Islamist forces, conflict is the only way to defeat the West out of Afghanistan, as they did the communist superpower in the 1980s.

In view of these widely stark perspectives on settling a conflict, NATO is facing, from within, mounting pressure related to its relevance.  One option for its members is to get out of Afghanistan; another is to buy into the U.S. seriousness and commitment to winning in that country.  However, winning means by shedding the blood of European soldiers, while the public opinion in various countries of that region is least gung-ho on winning in Afghanistan at any cost.  More to the point, the same Pew Center report states, “Opposition to key elements of American foreign policy is widespread in Western Europe, and positive views of the U.S. have declined steeply among many of America’s longtime European allies.”

Stay tuned. 

NO HE CAN’T

Despite his often-repeated mantra of “Yes we can,” President Barack Obama is bound to face the reality of “No he can’t” in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  The asymmetric war launched by Hamas is not promising for that organization, since Israel is determined to make Hamas the object of its resolve to reestablish its invincibility.  That invincibility was seriously shattered in its war against the Hezbollah in July 2006.  But pacifying Gaza is not out of the question, especially when Egypt is doing Israel’s bidding by closing its borders.

In comes President Obama next week.  He has already established his partisanship by observing free minority report , “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” 

Granted, he made that statement as a presidential candidate who was vying for Jewish votes in the United States.  It will be interesting to see how he wiggles out of that position.  As Obama acquires experience in foreign policy, he will realize that making such observations without having an historical understanding of who is tormentor and who is tormentee will shatter his credibility as an honest broker, if he continues that practice as President.  Then, it will not be long before the Arab and the Muslim side will envision little difference between him and his immediate predecessor.  The time is fast approaching for Obama to spell out the specifics of “Yes we can” regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

LET’S BAN THE LeT, ONCE AND FOR ALL!

It appears that an arrested “fighter,” Zarrar Shah, has confessed to Pakistani authorities that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), indeed, was involved in the Mumbai massacre in November.  

The first step for Pakistan is to ban the LeT, and not allow it to resurface by adopting another name.  That also means the end of an era when Pakistan used shady and murderous entities in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

The second measure should be to put the LeT’s leaders on trial and give them the stiffest possible sentence under the law.  The extradiction of any of them to India is out of the question, for legal as well as for political reasons.  Only the United States can make such demands from Pakistan and make it stick.  So, it behooves India to let the Paksitani legal process work this issue. 

Finally, if Pakistan were to go through the charade of trying the LeT and then put them under house arrest, then it ought to be brought to the international scrutiny.  The punishment for terrorizing India has to be the threat of labelling Pakistan a rogue nation.

The Cold War in its old form disappeared when the Soviet Union imploded.  But the U.S.-Russian competition did not.  The United States continued a strange policy of expanding the NATO membership and bringing that Alliance all the way to the Russian borders, despite strong and continued protestations from Mosow.  It was highly irrational on the part of the United States to think that Russia should only listen to its rhetoric—which went along the lines that “we are no longer adversaries”—and totally ignore its near obsession with the NATO enlargement.

Russia responded in its own way, when that little megalomaniac president of Georgia, Mikheil Saaskashvili, sent troops into the Moscow-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia, hoping to teach them a lesson.  Russia let loose its fury.  That was, to be sure, a disproportionate response, but it underscored that Russia does not wish to be taken for granted.  Even to this day, there is no certainty that American military advisers were not involved in that Georgian action.

Moscow’s antagonism is continuing.  It appears that its current rulers have decided to challenge the incoming president, Barack Obama, by escalating ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile production.  The arsenal includes multiple-warhead ICBMs called the RS-24, which was first test-fired in 2007.  The then Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, made oblique references to the U.S. decision to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and Hungary by stating that those new missiles are “capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems.”

President Obama’s dilemma will be how to respond to Russia.  His best option is to postpone the NATO expansion, not as a symbol of giving in to any Russian blackmail, but as a symbol of empathizing with Russia’s security concerns related to the seemingly endless enlargement of that Alliance.  If its raison detere is no longer to contian Russia, then why is it that NATO appears poised to take the entire Europe under its security umbrella?  Who is NATO’s “enemy” toward the end of the first decade of the 21^st Century?  If the motivation of rubbing Russia’s face into the dirt is no longer driving U.S. foreign policy, then what other objectives are?  If those objectives are as benign as Washington has claimed under the presidency of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, then why is the lone superpower relying on expanding a predominantly military alliance?

These are only some of the questions the Russian leaders are raising.  They deserve serious answers and a series of follow-up actions.  Otherwise, the totally illogical arms race appears set to get into full swing.

YOU HATE YOUR WAY; WE WILL HAVE A SHOE THROWING CONTEST

The Clinton and Bush administrations will be known for either underscoring or creating new hateful sobriquet for Iran.  In the 1990s, it was described as one of the so-called “rogue states.”  Then, in the post-9/11 era, it was referred to as a part of an imaginary “axis of evil.” 

On its part, Iran used a doozy of a characterization for the United States: “the Great Satan.”  A more benign version of that depiction was “tyrannical power,” a phrase that Iranian president Ahmadinejad recently used in his “alternative” Christmas message to the West.

In the aftermath of the shoe throwing incident at President George W.Bush in Iraq, Iran has started a new ‘mini-sport.’  On Christmas eve, a university in Teheran started a shoe-throwing contest at an effigy of Bush.  The news dispatch also contained the following observation: “No details on the prize, nor how the intensity of the shoe throwing will be judged.”

A GLOBAL FATWA CLEARINGHOUSE?

One of the chief differences between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam is that the Sunnis have no hierarchy of Ayatollahs who issue Fatwas (religious decrees) to which their followers adhere.  In Sunni Islam, a qualified religious person (a Mufti) or other equally learned scholar might issue a fatwa; however it is up to individual Muslims to follow or ignore it.  That is one reason why some scholars call a person who indulges in suicide attacks a shaheed (martyr), while others condemn those acts as inherently contradictory to the essence of Islam.

What about the concept of Jihad?  A number of foreign insurgents who were arrested in Iraq reported that they were following Fatwas that depicted their participation against the U.S. occupation as a conduct of Jihad.  There is a similar absence of any agreement among Muslim scholars on this matter.

As one dispatch entitled, “Fatwa Chaos in Sunni Islam,” in Open Source states:  “Fatwa chaos may lead to confusion among Sunni followers over which fatwa, or prescribed course of action, to follow.”

One suggestion that often pops up in Western circles is that some sort of central religious authority is required for interpretations that are followed by Sunni Muslims all over the world.   However, wishing for such a clearinghouse is akin to wishing for a Sunni version of a Pope.  You know that is not going to happen.

Somalia deteriorated into its present state, thanks to the decision of the Bush administration in 2006 to back the invasion of that country by the Ethiopian forces.  At that time, it had a “relatively diverse Islamic movement that had briefly gained control of the Capital, Mogadishu.”  The U.S. panicked and prompted the Ethiopian troops to install a government headed by a warlord “who allowed the United States to launch counterterrorism operation in the moderate Muslim nation.”  Today, Somalia’s most potent insurgency is as-Shahab (Youth).  That movement is expected to take over control when Ethiopian occupiers leave that country.  Citizens of that unhappy land have a simple but fateful choice today:  join the Islamists or flee.  Since not everyone who wishes to flee can, Somalia may become the cesspool of Africa’s eventual drowning into the vortex of chaos stemming from terrorism.

ITCHING FOR A FIGHT?

The spillover effect of the Mumbai terror attacks of last November may lead to military skirmishes between India and Pakistan.  India and the U.S. want Pakistan to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure.  The crux of the conflict is whether Pakistan can really do that.  India’s interpretation is that it can but will not. 

Pakistan’s position is that it is also a victim of the same scourge and is facing an uphill battle inside its own territory.  In fact, the recent evidence points towards the involvement of Jaish-e-Mohammad in the Marriot bombing of September 2008 in Pakistan. 

That terrorist group, which has strong affiliations with al-Qaida, is also high on India’s list.  Its members were involved in attacking India’s parliament in 2001.

There are several factors still poisoning the atmosphere between the traditional enemies.  Pakistan wants to resolve the Kashmir conflict, while India deems it settled.  The chief and only interest of the United States is that Pakistan totally obliterates the terror network.  That position is also strengthening India’s position vis-à-vis Pakistan.  However, both the U.S. and India know that they cannot push the current Pakistani government too far.  The alternative to that government is almost a tsunami of instability, which neither Washington nor New Delhi desires.  But there is a war lobby inside India—the Hindu fundos (extremists)—that is itching for a fight with Pakistan, for it knows that Pakistan is at the weakest point of its entire existence. 

India’s finest Prime Minister in its entire history, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has once again emerged as the sage that he really is when he observed: “The issue is not war, the issue is terror and territory in Pakistan being used to promote, aid and abet this terror. Nobody wants war.”  Even though the fundos disagree with the Indian Prime Minister, they will have to wait for that fight another day.

WHEN “REGIME CHANGE” APPEARS AN ATTRACTIVE OPTION

Robert Mugabe, the curse of Zimbabwe, refuses to fade away.  His propaganda minister, 

Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, recently bragged that his county won against the anti-Mugabe diplomatic campaign of America.  He went on to mutter that the United States was firing “blanks” toward his country while his country was firing “real shots against imperialism.” 

Thinking of how to bring an end to the ongoing misery of Zimbabwe, one wonders whether “regime change” can become a legitimate concept if applied under the auspices of the African Union, or better yet, under the U.N.?  But neither organization has the guts to implement it, for there are other actors in Africa that are equally qualified for such an option. Sudan, for instance.  In the meantime, citizens of Zimbabwe will continue to face cholera, starvation, and other miserable ways of dying.

RUSSIA’S CONFUSED PATH TO SUPERPOWERDOM

The Russian rubber-stamp parliament has approved the extension of the presidential term from four to six years.  Its rationale: Russia’s size and complexity justifies a longer term for its president.  No one is saying publicly that a longer term under an incompetent president means a longer period of misery and decay for Russia. 

The real reason for this extension appears to be that the current version of Russia’s ”czar,” Vladimir Putin, wishes to be re-coronated as president.  There is no doubt that Russia is craving to become a superpower.  What is vexing is that it also sees the return of authoritarianism as a vital precondition for its transformation into a superpower.  The most qualified current candidate under such a condition is Putin.

OPEC AND GOD

OPEC is reducing its production by 2.2 million barrels per day (bbl/d).  That is a desperate attempt of the oil cartel to firm up the declining oil prices, which stand at $41.99/bbl.  Recall that only three or four months ago, the same barrel of oil was going for around $140/bbl. 

Obviously, no one should be shedding any tears for OPEC’s “saga.”  What is important to note is that OPEC’s current “plight” stems from the fact that the world economy—and especially that of the United States and the EU states—has slowed down considerably.  Now, there are reports that another giant-sized economy—that of the PRC—is also slowing down.  Perhaps the era of the $10/bbl of oil will return, but only temporarily.