Global Paradigms

(According to the British National Party...) Dr. Strauss has been the inspiration and role-model for my blog. Checkout his latest exchange with a reader . Apropos 2015. Did you know that on September 9 if Queen Elizabeth II is still alive, she will become the longest-reigning monarch in British History, surpassing Queen Victoria? .

"Old Friends" Checkout Billmon's Whiskey Bar on Porter's resignation in CIA Confidential . And read why I think that Intelligence Services Are Not `Intelligent' . Finally, six recommended spy novels: Eric Ambler's The Mask of Dimitrios ; Graham Greene's The Third Man : Alan Furst's Dark Star ; Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn ; John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ; Len Deighton's Berlin Game . I would recommend reading everything by Ambler, Greene, Le Carre, and Furst (a relatively new author who has written great stuff using Nazi-occuppied Europe, epsecially Paris, during WWII as backdrop). As far as Deighton and McCarry, I would recommend their earlier novels. The more recent ones are not so good.

I'm not an oil/energy expert (although I'm interested in global political-economic apsects of the issue; and I do own a not-a-red-sport car). But Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute makes a lot of sense when it comes this topic and that is why I quote him in the following commentary (online access to the Business Times is restricted; so I'm pasting the entire piece here): Business Times - 05 May 2006 Ending US 'oil crisis': consumers hold the key By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT LET us get one thing straight: the United States is not going through an 'oil crisis'. But that certainly is the impression you will get watching American television and listening to yet another speech by a US lawmaker urging Washington to 'take action' to punish the greedy ExxonMobil executives and come to the help of the struggling American energy consumer filling the gasoline tank of his oversized SUVs. (And notice that the owner of the SUV is not complaining that th...

Who is Who? And who cares? Richard Cohen, who is on my very short list of writers whose column I continue to read and who argues today in a piece in the Washington Post that Stephen Colbert was "so no funny" in the recent WHCAD (I disagree), describes the blogsphere as a place where you're supposed to be telling like-minded people what they already know and alienating all the others. (read more) Since my guess is that those who like (worship) Christopher Hitchens don't like (despise) Juan Cole (and vice versa), what I'm about to do ensures that I'll be alienating two powerful constituencies on the blogsphere. So be it! But perhaps there are two or three people out there who share my lack of admiration for these two individuals who seem to be engaged is some kind of a King Kong vs. Godzilla battle (see above; and my apologies to Kong and Godzi for the comparison) that has been the main topic of discussion on their respective admirers' and detractors...

Dr. Strauss on Stop The Spirit Of Zossen ponders the relationship between our popular culture and foreign policy with a special focus on "United 93" and "24" after watching Agent Bauer hijack a plane: All the more reason to be jarred then to come home and watch a recording of last night's “24”. There, Jack Bauer stowed aboard an airplane, attacked the federal marshal and stole his gun. Bauer then stormed the passenger section, pointing the gun at terrified passengers promising he would shoot them. All the more reason to be stunned when Bauer grabs a stewardess and hauls her terrified down an aisle. In the name of national security and the “good guys”. An interesting bookend to the earlier experience. Here was mass American entertainment clearly comfortable depicting and inverting the United 93 scenario into a transgressive Bauer moment. At first the thought arose immediately and unbidden, 'is this somehow right?' The emotions from United 93 were...

Most of what's available now in the media and online are mostly a recycling of old stuff, some of which I've written in the past like about the I-say-Chalabi, you-say-Pahlavi lobbies , and the need to make a deal with Iran or the the need to develop a coherent strategy on Iran . (Hey, imitation is a form of flattery). But Edward Luttwak's Three Reasons Not to Bomb Iran—Yet and Tony Karon's Does the New York Times Know Who Rules Iran? are actually original and interesting. I don't necessarily agree with the everything that Luttwak and Karon write in their analyses. They're worth reading. And checkout readers' responses to Reason magazine forum on Iraq, etc. on Hit and Run blog. (I'll try to respond later to the two other writers). Also I saw Hard Candy . My proposed title: The Girl Scout and the Pedophile: These Balls are Made for Cutting. You've been warned. Finally, if you liked Bernard Wasserstein's The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln ...

It's part of a special "package" on Iraq and the Middle East which also includes articles by Michael Young and Tom Palmer. You Can’t Bring Order to the Middle East Leon Hadar After a storm, be it political or meteorological, passes over the Middle East, the region returns to its eternal stillness. The people come out of hiding, remove the sand from their faces, and return to the desert’s routine: the daily struggle over water wells and grazing spaces. The desert’s tribes go back to the ritual of signing and breaking alliances, and their leaders meet at night before the fire to contemplate the next raid against their hostile neighbors. If an American guest is there, he’ll be treated to another ritual of Middle Eastern hospitality. The tribe’s elders listen to his advice and nod with polite approval as the foreigner, the child of some faraway green pasture land, suggests that the time has come to replace despotic rule with liberal government and primal desert hatred with et...

Is available here . Also an old interview on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" on Alternative Exit Strategies in Iraq in which I propose dividing Iraq into three autonomous regions as Senator Joe Biden and Les Gelb are doing in the New York Times today.

I don't know if it's the real picture of United 93, but I agree that the movie is a Gripping, Sensitive Portrayal of Terror Victims' Brave Final Act and of the heroism of Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick the other passangers who stormed the cockpit and forced the plane down and prevented it from hitting the U.S. Capitol. I also agree with the reviewer in the Washington Post : "United 93" is a great movie, and I hated every minute of it . Tod Beamer's father had a very moving piece in the WSJ in which he pointed out that: There are those who question the timing of this project and the painful memories it evokes. Clearly, the film portrays the reality of the attack on our homeland and its terrible consequences. Often we attend movies to escape reality and fantasize a bit. In this case and at this time, it is appropriate to get a dose of reality about this war and the real enemy we face. It is not too soon for this story to be told, seen and heard. But it is too soon ...

In 1930, legendary economist John Maynard Keynes published an essay called "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." Keynes surmised that the main problem of Americans today would be what to do with our copious leisure time. Keynes figured productivity would surge (correct), wages would rise (of course), and people could do more in less time (yes). We'd wind up with all this time to hang around. This would lead to pool halls, Hummers and Hooters restaurants. I'm telling you, the man was uncanny. However, the central claim of Keynes’s essay failed to come true, even though it rested on logic as simple as one plus one equals two: The little work that needed to be done would be spread out among the population in portions of perhaps fifteen hours per week, because “everybody needs to do some work if he is to be contented.” Keynes spent a large part of the essay discussing the promise and difficulty of adjusting to life when we are freed from the struggle for subsist...

Reason magazine, which is the premier and most popular libertarian magazine has published in its new June issue an article by yours truly, "You can't Bring Order to the Middle East." It's sandsiched between two other articles by Michael Young and Tom Palmer, all part of a cover issue, "Mission Accomplised. Three Years Later. Iraq's Troubled Present and Haunted Future." The issue is not yet accessible online. But if you'll click on the following images you can read the article.

I've been reading a lot of stuff recently about a Maoist-led guerrilla campaigns in India and Nepal. The Financial Times had a long and intresting analysis today about the Insurgency in India - how the Maoist threat reaches beyond Nepal . It notes that: Aspectre is haunting South Asia - the spectre of Maoism. An ideology ofpeasant-led revolution that swept the villages of rural China in the 1920s has made an unexpected reappearance on the Indian subcontinent. At just the moment that India is emerging as an economic powerhouse on the world stage, landless revolutionaries committed to the class struggle and the destruction of the state are gaining control of vast swathes of territory at home. Prompted by the political crisis in Nepal, where the world's only Hindu king is battling to save his throne from a Maoist-led campaign, India is belatedly waking up to the gravity of the threat from leftwing extremists. Motivated by resentment at generations of social injustice made all the...

According to Reuters Rumsfeld makes surprise visit to Baghdad : Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to show U.S. support for Iraq's new leadership on Wednesday, making a surprise visit to Baghdad just days after Shi'ite politician Jawad al-Maliki was chosen as prime minister. Rumsfeld swooped into the capital aboard a military cargo plane for his first visit to Iraq in 2006. In addition to Iraqi political developments, Rumsfeld's trip comes as U.S. military commanders contemplate reducing the number of American troops in the country in the coming months. There are about 132,000 American troops in Iraq at present. Rumsfeld indicated earlier this week that the Pentagon intended to stick with plans to reduce the size of the U.S. military presence, but he gave no specific numbers nor a timetable. Opinion polls show U.S. public support for the three-year-old Iraq war eroding, which is contributing to a drop in President George W. Bush's job approval ratings. Rumsfeld hi...

Yes, our new Middle Eastern friend, the Kooky G. makes a few predictions via watching america . G and B: Separated at birth? Like his more attractive brother?

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My futuristic scenario about Sino-American relationship, originally published in the Singapore Business Times, was posted in antiwar.com: April 21, 2006 The War on Terror Is Over, and China Won by Leon Hadar Imagine 40 years from now how a global affairs columnist for the Fox-Xinhua (or New Shanghai Times) content-providing service will analyze the world's geo-strategic and geo-economic balance of power. This might be the way he or she recalls the visit that China's former president Hu Jintao made in April 2006 to Washington, the capital of what was then known as the "United States." Now in 2046, the city is a major tourist attraction for Chinese and Indian tourists, many of whom stay at the seven-star hotel previously known as the "White House" (the Lincoln Suite is the most expensive). He or she (cloned in 2011) might write the following: "As I downloaded news reports that were published in the American media on that week, what really astonished me w...

I usually don't advertise my interviews on the broadcast media outlets for two main reasons: They are quite often cancelled or rescheduled (a few weeks ago I was waiting for a limouisine that was supposed to be dispatached by Fox-TV to take me to their studios and then received a phone call from the producer of the show letting me know that, well they had to bump me off in favor of "former under-secretary"). And then most of the interviews last anyway no more than three minutes and involve such exchanges as: "So do you think that Iraq remains unstable?" "Yes, I do." But this weekend I'll be on the "American Forum" radio program which is hosted by Karen Kwiatowski. I doubt that I have to introduce her to the readers of my blog. But here is her bio . And here is some info on the program .

...Now that Tony Judt published a long op-ed A Lobby, Not a Conspiracy in the New York Times. You can just imagine the number -- and the tone -- of the emails, phone calls, etc. that the Times is receiving at exactly this moment. Is Alan Dershowitz going to have a huge letter to the editor or a long counter piece in the op-ed section tomorrow? Or is it going to be long signed letter to the editor or perhaps a paid ad? We'll have to wait and see... I agree in general with most of the points that Judt makes although I continue to argue that Americans need a serious debate on the entirety of U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the relationship with Israel. (see my From the China Lobby to the Israel Lobby ).In any case, I think the most important and biting part of Judt piece is the following: Looking back, we shall see the Iraq war and its catastrophic consequences as not the beginning of a new democratic age in the Middle East but rather as the end of an era that began in the...

You're not so important Get elected or shut up! In a recent article I insisted that while I've been critical of the influence of the Israel Lobby on U.S. Mideast policy and have focused on the role of the neocons in driving the Bush Administration's agenda in the Middle East, it's President Bush and the members of his cabinet -- the politicians -- who have been responsible for the war in Iraq: That President George W. Bush and his top foreign policy aides (Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) have decided to adopt the neocon agenda has to do with their perception of U.S. national interests, not the power of the Israel lobby or, for that matter, American Jews (the majority of whom did not vote for Bush and were against the war in Iraq). I've also made it clear in a recent post that while I'm not great fan of Rumsfeld, I'm also very uneasy with the idea of current and retired military of...

Humble Kaplan? I've received an email with the following commentary (I'm not sure where it was published) by Robert D. Kaplan , the ex-travel writer who has been transformed into a geo-political thinker and amateur imperialist. Here he explains why he supported the war in Iraq but shouldn't have, and why he now still supports it. Or something like that: Haunted by Hussein, humbled by events Firsthand knowledge supported the invasion in Iraq; now it shakes our faith in the use of military power. By Robert D. Kaplan April 17, 2006 I WAS AN EARLY supporter of the invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Since 2003, my firsthand experiences in Iraq have shaken my faith in large-scale demonstrations of military power on land, but I cannot disavow my earlier support, because it was also based on firsthand experiences in Iraq. To know a totalitarian regime abstractly is different from knowing it intimately. Iraq in the 1980s was so terrifying that going to Damascus from Baghdad was l...