"Transcendent" Presidents Can't Change National Interests Of Others

When Barack Obama won the presidency in November of 2008, there was a wave of euphoria amongst his supporters and a sentiment that he was the man to reverse the bad relations the United States supposedly had with the rest of the world. The common theme was that the world hated us because Bush was such an obnoxious boob. With Obama in power, it was said that: Iran would shed its nuclear ambitions, Syria would leave Lebanon for good, the Russians would cease their belligerent behavior towards their former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia, Venezuelan Hugo Chavez would cease his saber rattling and relax his drive towards being a totalitarian dictator, and on and on it goes. One year plus in, nothing has changed, and if anything, the aforementioned have calcified their positions and behaviors. The Iranians are closer to a nuclear weapon than ever, Russia's Putin has become more authoritarian and wily than ever, Chavez still consolidating his power and now talking badly about Obama instead of Bush, and Syria has spat in the face of Obama's initiatives and tightened both its ties to Iran and its clutches on Lebanon. Oh....and the Europeans still don't like us, as exhibited by the Netherlands' inclination to withdraw troops (non-combat, I would assume) from Afghanistan, despite being a part of NATO.

It was always going to be. Now the meme is that Bush did so much damage to America's standing in the world that Obama can't undo the damage. Malarkey.

Nation-states will always do what is in their best interests, and they only have few courses of action to choose from. For example, one of Obama's foreign policy initiatives was to "flip" Syria and turn them into an ally, thus isolating Iran. Needless to say, Syria did just the opposite. Despite the Obama Administration's reinstatement of full diplomatic ties with Syria, the Syrians a.) increased their diplomatic and military ties with Iran, b.) wrapped their tentacles ever so tighter around Lebanon. It was always meant to be. Syria gets nothing of value from improving its diplomatic ties with the United States. From a geographic standpoint, Syria is bordered by Israel and Jordan to the south, Turkey to the north, and Iraq to the west. Israel is no friend to Syria, for good reason, but what does Syria get if it becomes a good neighbor to Israel? Increased trade? The Golan Heights? Syria is a totalitarian police state abutting a parliamentarian democracy (Israel); this in and of itself is a threat to Syria's dictatorship. In Jordan, there are diplomatic ties, but the Jordanians have played both ends against the middle for decades; again, no advantage. Iraq is currently under occupation from American and coalition forces, and hopefully will morph into a reliable democracy (a stretch, but there's hope). Turkey is also a democracy, albeit a precarious one that is currently in the clutches of an Islamist party led by Tayyip Erdogan. But remember one thing about Turkey: they're muslim, but they're not Arab. Additionally, they're still a part of NATO. There is good reason for Syria to feel threatened in their geographic position: they're surrounded by forces that are contrary to their ruling ethos. So why would they "flip" on Iran? Iran brings them boatloads of petro-dollars (Syria has no oil to speak of), essentially to buy their allegiance and to use their ports. Both Iran and Syria are military dictatorships, and more importantly, Shi'ite in character. (The Assads are Alawite, offshoots of Shia Islam.) Obama's people clearly were dreaming if they thought they flip them. Additionally, as Syria was implicated (by UN investigators, in fact) in the assassination of once (and in all probability, had he not been killed) future Prime Minister Rafik Harari, why reward them with the reinstatement of an American ambassador? Say what you want about Bush, but he understood the levers of American diplomatic power, in that bad behavior isn't rewarded by undiminished American diplomatic relations. Bush pulled out ambassador to Syria after the Harari assassination and demanded the Syrians leave Lebanon, which (at least in the form of the Syrian army, if not Hezbollah) did. With no concessions on the part of Syria, we have restored full diplomatic ties, and Syrian forces are back in Lebanon.

Same goes for Iran, but for different reasons. Iran is cornered geographically by Iraq, filled as it is with American-led coalition forces, and Afghanistan, with American-led NATO forces. They've been belligerent towards the United States and Israel since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. They are a religious/military dictatorship. They are also the locus of all international terrorism, and have been since 1979. Their memories are long and their history is deep. The Persians were, circa 500 BC, the world's most powerful empire, and though their powers waxed and waned under both the Achaemenid and Sassanid empires, they still fancy themselves as a superpower. There is no reason why they would discontinue their quest for a weaponized atomic bomb. It would mean that they are now a player in the big leagues, a position they feel is their birthright, based on their former, ancient glories. Obama's absurd "unclench your fist and we'll extend an open hand" offer was a joke from the moment it was uttered; it smacked of a naive, intellectual academic who has no experience or feel for how the world really works. And it is so.

Russia also gets nothing for changing its behaviors to suit Obama's liking. Despite a silly PR stunt by the likes of Hillary Clinton (see here), talking of "rebooting" relations with the Russians, they'll be no "reboot". Russia feels vulnerable on a number of fronts: the expansion of NATO into former Soviet bloc states like Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and even to former Soviet republics such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, makes the Russians extremely nervous. As George Friedman, CEO of independent intelligence agency STRATFOR wrote, the expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc now puts NATO forces "1200 miles from St. Petersburg to 120 miles...from 1000 miles to Moscow to 100 miles". Russian incursion into former Soviet republic Georgia over South Ossetia was meant to send a message: this is OUR sphere of influence. Russian routinely shuts off its natural gas pipeline to Ukraine for days, or sometimes weeks, just to make a similar point. It sells plans and materials to the Iranians because it is a.) profitable, and b.) alters the balance of power in Asia/Middle East in their direction. Again...why would they change, and for what? Because Obama was nicer to them than Bush was?

Which brings us to Western Europe, or as Donald Rumsfeld correctly referred to them, "Old Europe".

I have little doubt that the Europeans like Obama more than they liked Bush. They hemmed and hawed about Bush endlessly and repeatedly. People like George Soros likened him to Hitler. And so with Obama in the White House, all will be well, right? Wrong. Once again, despite their rhetoric, the Europeans are behaving like, well, Europeans.

The first domino to fall was the Netherlands. The government of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende fell this past week, particularly due to Dutch involvement in Afghanistan. Other European NATO forces are sure to follow suit. Western European countries in particular have large muslim minority populations that scare the heck out of their respective governments. Again, the soothing words of Obama can do nothing to stop nation-states from doing as they've always done: act in their own best interests.

It had nothing to do with Bush, and everything to do with this concept of self-interest. Always was, always will be. Obama claims he's "frustrated" with the Israeli/Palestinian impasse. Only a very arrogant, self-important man could think that he could fix that mess by the mere sound of his sonorous voice and agreeable personality. Only a man with a terminal case of hubris could think that he could re-shape the world in his own image. A visit from Nemesis is forthcoming.

Iran On The Brink....I Hope

Amir Teheri breaks it down here. Worth a read. The Green Revolution is, perhaps, upon us.

No Sense Of History

Whilst in the midst of the worst snowstorm in recent memory and confined to barracks as a result of, a couple of things have occurred to me. Today, while waiting for my train at Penn Station to arrive, I happened to have caught a snippet of a news story on CNN that was being played at one of the food/beverage shoppes that dot the station. In said news story, a delegation from the National Urban League, a predominantly black and Hispanic organization spoke outside the White House. Their concerns were that this "Great Recession" that we are currently undergoing is disproportionately affecting minority communities, and that the President needs a "stronger focus on employment counseling, job creation and direct aid to public employers." I'm always a bit suspicious, and rightly so, such entreaties; essentially, what these folks are speaking of is a greater expansion of the already over-bloated welfare state, but I digress. What I did find of interest was the continued use of this phrase:

The Jobless rate for black men last month, 17.6% and rising, is approaching the worst of the Great Depression.

Could be, but I'm not sure those numbers jive with the official government numbers. The unofficial government unemployment numbers have an overall unemployment number of about what the National Urban League, in their press release, said it was for just black men. I'm not writing this blog entry to either endorse or dispute these numbers, but rather to point out that this meme, that we are in the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression", is just a tad suspect to me. First off, statistically this is not true, and I'm not even sure that this is even remotely as bad as anything that occurred in the 1970's, or for that matter, the very deep recession of '81-'82. So....let's go to the numbers:

Maximum Rate of Inflation:
'80-'82 Recession-10.8%
Current Recession-2.7%

Maximum Unemployment:
10.8% (December, 1982)
9.7% , 10.2% maximum in November of 2009

Maximum Interest Rate (as measured by Federal Funds Rate):
20% (June, 1981)
.25% (Now)

Consider also, in the recession of the early '80's, mortgage rates approached 21%. Imagine that: paying 21% for a mortgage. (See sixth chart from the top here.) Sheesh.

Now, I'm not trying to mitigate what has just occurred with our financial system. One of my clients, who happens to be a personal injury attorney, referred to it as a "serious injury to the spinal column". (He said this before the Lehman/AIG/Citi meltdowns, but after the Bear Stearns implosion.) Of this, I cannot dispute. But I do find the constant and endless referral to this financial situation to that of the Great Depression a bit hard to swallow. I'm not even sure that this is as bad as '81-'82, and if one were to go by the numbers, it isn't as of now. That said, I think that Reagan had the better remedy than Obama currently does, but even with the obscene deficit spending going on courtesy of the Pelosi/Reid/Obama triumvirate (one, if not two of the three will be gone by next January), I'm quite hopeful that recovery is but a year or two away. Additionally, with Obama's mad government expansion schemes scuppered for now (and probably for all time), and a GOP congress (if not majority, than certainly strong minority) in the works, fiscal sanity will find its way back to our government policies. (Or, what counts for fiscal sanity in Washington.)

Conclusion? This is not the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It's not even worse than the Recession of '81-'82. Bad...but not that bad.

Quote

"By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation."-Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish Statesman (1729-1797)