Annual Forecast 2008: Beyond the Jihadist War
By George Friedman, Stratfor
There are three major global processes under way that will continue to work themselves out in 2008.
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First, the U.S.-jihadist war is entering its final phase; the destruction of al Qaeda’s strategic capabilities now allows the United States to shift its posture — which includes leveraging the Sunni world to finish the job begun in Iraq — and enables Washington to begin drawing down its Middle Eastern forces.
Second, an assertive Russia is re-emerging and taking advantage of the imbalance in U.S. power resulting from the war.
Third, oil at historical highs and continued Asian — particularly Chinese — exports have created a massive redistribution of financial might that is reshaping the international financial architecture. These processes intersect with each other, as well as with a fourth phenomenon: It is a presidential election year in the United States, which remains the center of gravity of the international system. These are the trends that shape our global forecast.
Normally in an election year, U.S. attention on global affairs dwindles precipitously, allowing other powers to set the agenda. That will not be the case, however, in 2008. U.S. President George W. Bush is not up for re-election, and there is no would-be successor from the administration in the race; this frees up all of the administration’s bandwidth for whatever activities it wishes. Additionally, Bush’s unpopularity means that each of the White House’s domestic initiatives essentially will be dead on arrival in Congress. All of the Bush administration’s energy will instead be focused on foreign affairs, since such activities do not require public or congressional approval. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, 2008 will see the United States acting with the most energy and purpose it has had since the months directly after the 9/11 attack.
Such energy is not simply a result of this odd hiccup in the American political system but of a major shift in circumstance on the issue that has monopolized American foreign policy efforts since 2003: Iraq. The Iraq war was an outgrowth of the jihadist war. After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States realized it lacked the military wherewithal to simultaneously deal with the four powers that made al Qaeda possible: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Pakistan.
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The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance.
The second was to invade the state that bordered the other three — Iraq — in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda.
The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda — the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate, not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name ? 2; broke.
As 2008 dawns, it has become apparent that though this strategy engendered many unforeseen costs, it has proven successful at grinding al Qaeda into nonfunctionality. Put simply, the jihadist war is all but over; the United States not only is winning but also has an alliance with the entire constellation of Sunni powers that made al Qaeda possible in the first place. The United States will attempt to use this alliance to pressure the remnants of al Qaeda and its allies, as well as those in the region who are not in the alliance.
This leaves Iran, the region’s only non-Sunni power, in the uncomfortable position of needing to seek an arrangement with the United States. The year 2008 will still be about Iraq — but in a different way. Iran cares deeply about the final status of Iraq, since every united Mesopotamian government has at some point in its history attempted a Persian invasion. Yet for the United States, the details of intra-Iraqi negotiations and security in Iraqi cities now are irrelevant to its geopolitical concerns. Washington does not care what Iraq looks like, so long as the Sunni jihadists or Tehran do not attain ultimate control — and evolutions in 2007 have made both scenarios impossible in 2008.
Iran recognizes this, and as a result Washington and Tehran are ever less tentatively edging toward a deal. It is in this context — as an element of talks with Iran — that Iraq still matters to Washington, and this is now the primary rationale for continued involvement in Iraq. The United States will not completely withdraw from Iraq in 2008 — indeed, it likely will have 100,000 troops on the ground when Bush leaves office — but this will be the year in which the mission evolves from tactical overwatch to strategic overwatch. (Roughly translated from military lingo, this means shifting from patrolling the cities in order to enforce the peace to hunkering in the desert in order to ensure that Iran does not try to seize Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula beyond.)
In the aftermath of the November 2007 Annapolis, Md., conference and the declassification of a National Intelligence Estimate on the nonexistence of the Iranian nuclear program, the ball is in the Iranians’ court. A U.S.-Iranian deal — no matter how beneficial it would be for both states — is not inevitable. But Stratfor finds it unlikely that Tehran would choose strategic confrontation with both the United States and the Arab world when the benefits of cooperation — and the penalties for hostility — are so potent. A framework for future relations, as well as for co-dominion of Iraq, is likely to emerge in 2008.
Still, frameworks come slowly, and crafting such a framework will require the bulk of American forces currently in Iraq to remain there for most of the year. The United States will draw forces down and eventually regain its bandwidth for other operations, but 2008 will not be the year that the United States returns to policing the world on a global scale. And considering the still-mounting costs of regenerating military capabilities after six years of conflict, manpower expansion and acquisitions, such force recovery might not even occur in 2009. The United States could have more energy and political freedom to act, but military realities will anchor the lion’s share of Washington’s attention on the Middle East for — at the very least — the year to come. And Afghanistan, and therefore Pakistan, will have to be dealt with, regardless of what happens in Iraq.
This means 2008 will be similar to 2007 in many ways: It will be a year of opportunity for those powers that would take advantage of the United States’ ongoing distraction. However, they will face a complication that was absent in 2007: a deadline. The Iraqi logjam is broken. Unlike in 2007, when Iraq appeared to be a quagmire and other powers therefore sensed endless opportunity, those hostile to U.S. interests realize that they only have a limited window in which to reshape their regions. Granted, this window will not close in 2008, since the United States will need to not only withdraw from Iraq but also rest and restructure its forces; but the United States no longer is mired in an open-ended conflict.
The state with the greatest need to take advantage of this U.S. occupation, bar none, is the Russian Federation. Moscow knows full well that when the Americans are finished with their efforts in the Middle East, the bulk of their attention will return to the former Soviet Union. When that happens, Russia will face a resurgent United States that commands alliances in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Russia must use the ongoing U.S. entanglement in the Middle East to redefine its immediate neighborhood or risk a developing geopolitic far less benign to Russian interests than Washington’s Cold War policy of containment. Russia needs to move — and it needs to move now.
And there are a host of secondary powers that will be interacting within the matrix of American actions in 2008. Some — such as Syria and Saudi Arabia — want to be included in the U.S. Iraqi calculus and will have their chance. Others — namely South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Japan — are looking for new ways to work with Washington as they adapt to their own domestic government transitions. All of Europe is shifting back to a power structure that has been absent for two generations: the concert of powers, with all of the instability and mistrust that implies.
Others will be pursuing bold agendas, not because of the United States’ distraction but because they are rising to prominence in their own right. Angola will rise as a major African power to rival South Africa and Nigeria. Brazil will lay the groundwork for reasserting its long-dormant role as a South American superpower. Turkey — now the strongest it has been in a century — will re-emerge as a major geopolitical weight in the eastern Mediterranean, albeit one that is somewhat confused about its priorities.
Quietly developing in the background, the global economy is undergoing a no less dramatic transformation. While we expect oil prices to retreat somewhat in 2008 after years of surges, their sustained strength continues to shove a great deal of cash into the hands of the world’s oil exporters — cash that these countries cannot process internally and that therefore will either be stored in dollars or invested in the only country with deep enough capital pools to handle it: the United States. Add in the torrent of exports from the Asian states, which generates nearly identical cash-management problems, and the result is a deep dollarization of the global system even as the U.S. dollar gives ground. The talk on the financial pages will be of dollar (implying American) weakness, even as the currency steadily shifts from the one of first resort to the true foundation of the entire system.
This will be a year in which the United States achieves more success in its foreign policies than it has since the ousting of the Taliban from Afghanistan in late 2001. But the actions of others — most notably a rising Russia — rather than U.S. achievements will determine the tenor and fury of the next major global clash.
Peskin; and your clone Philo the Shit: The friends and supporters of my enemies are my enemy. OK, so you then say well the whole wold…… So be it. Those sons of bitches are trying to kill me daily and Frankly since you are such a fucking bleeding heart for their well being may what happens to them be unto you,( sooner or later) it will catch up to you and yours if you have any (Yours?) It hardly matters to me who will do you- Arab, Muslim, Christian , or Jew. any will be Kosher and a Mitzva.
Funny thing Peskin when translated from English to Polish the term Gentile in Polish is:
I think the dumb Pollaks had you in mind!!!
Man Cuts off Genitals
A POLISH MAN burst into a busy central London restaurant and chopped off his own penis with a knife in front of horrified diners, police have reported.
The man, a 35-year-old Polish national, ran into Zizzi, in the Strand, and promptly committed the surprising act.
_Peskin:
“This guy came running in then charged into the kitchen, got a massive knife and started waving it about,” a diner who was eating at the restaurant with his girlfriend said. Apparently, the man was dissatisfied that since he came to England he was unable to get a Polish girlfriend, who all seem to be going with black men.
“Everyone was screaming and running out as he jumped on a table, dropped his trousers and popped out his penis,” the diner said. “Then he cut it off. I couldn’t believe it.” A Scotland Yard spokesperson said that a man aged between 30 and 40 was the only person hurt in the incident, and that his injuries were selfinflicted.
He was taken to hospital, where his condition was described as stable, after police had subdued him using CS gas, and recovered his severed penis, which surgeons have attempted to reattach.
It was not known whether the operation has been a success.
I agree with Laura:
Peskin, for you pls take the not so subtle hint!
Man Cuts off Genitals
A POLISH MAN burst into a busy central London restaurant and chopped off his own penis with a knife in front of horrified diners, police have reported.
The man, a 35-year-old Polish national, ran into Zizzi, in the Strand, and promptly committed the surprising act.
“This guy came running in then charged into the kitchen, got a massive knife and started waving it about,” a diner who was eating at the restaurant with his girlfriend said. Apparently, the man was dissatisfied that since he came to England he was unable to get a Polish girlfriend, who all seem to be going with black men.
“Everyone was screaming and running out as he jumped on a table, dropped his trousers and popped out his penis,” the diner said. “Then he cut it off. I couldn’t believe it.” A Scotland Yard spokesperson said that a man aged between 30 and 40 was the only person hurt in the incident, and that his injuries were selfinflicted.
He was taken to hospital, where his condition was described as stable, after police had subdued him using CS gas, and recovered his severed penis, which surgeons have attempted to reattach.
It was not known whether the operation has been a success.
For excellent comprehensive background to France’s position, read “Betrayal” by David Price-Jones (Encounter Books, 2006; ISBN 1-59403-151-7)
From the jacket notes:
France has betrayed its proud humanistic values…the French ruling elite have consistently opposed Zionist and the State of Israel…David Pryce-Jones has followed the evolution of these destructive attitudes abd policies through the archives of of the Quai d’Orsay, France’s foreign ministry…In this hard-hitting book, “Betrayal” explains how and why France has become a danger to itself and an ill omen for the West.
Mind you, Nicolas Sarkozy is most certainly one of the most reasonable French politicians for decades in relation to his attitude to Israel. However, if you read “Betrayal” you’ll see that the ability of even the President to take control of an civil service with entrenched “nepotism, patronage, and political persuasion…Catholic and hostile to Jews…” (HB Haynes).
Check Jewish Issues Watchdog for an interesting post on Sarkosy
Regards
Steve Lieblich
To the ignorant jackass who thinks I’m a degenerate, since islamic scum genitally mutilate females, I think its perfectly legitimate to turn the tables on them. Why is what I propose worse than what muslims already do to females, and hardly anyone bats an eye? If anything my proposal is more humane in the fact that I at least say wait until the muslim males reach their teens, whereas females in the muslim world are subjected to genital mutilation in infancy.
To peskin and the other mutant, the #10 poster, anyone who defends terrorists is not human. Nicholas sarkozy is sub-human and so is his wife just for being married to him. So what I said was perfectly acceptable.
Leviscinz (Levinsky) : Re 11
Ask a Polish person to define someone who is not Jewish.
Genitals are people of non-Jewish origins.
GREAT SALE ON USED FRNCH RIFLES. Dropped once.
Peskin:
MORAL DEPRAVITY IS MY GAME.I AM VERY INTERESTED.MY APPETITE IS WHETTED. HOW MAY I REACH THIS YOUNG LADY NAMED LAURA?
Laura:
Boy oh boy, what a degenerate. I shudder to think about what sadomasochistic, aoutoerotic,exotic practises you engage in-what about goats,chickens, underage boys and girls-are there any limits at all?
There’s an old joke about three people, one of them a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, who were shipwrecked and landed on a remote cannibal-infested island. They were captured before long, and as cauldrons of water were being hoisted on to the fire, the generous natives offered to grant each of their captives one last wish.
The first doomed man requested a pen and paper, and penned a farewell note to his family.
The second person asked for a five-course –non-human-meat – final meal.
The Israeli then asked that the tribal leader punch him in the face. A strange request, but in their final moments on earth, people don’t always think coherently… As soon as the Chief socked him, the Israeli pulled out an Uzi and mowed down the hapless captors.
“Why did you wait until he punched you before shooting them?” the two relieved friends asked.
“And have the world say that I was the aggressor?!”
source: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/800681/jewish/Israeli-Aggression.htm
Especially if those doing the bombing are Jews.
I thought it was on Italian war heroes or Polish culture? Take your pick.
As Yamit82 knows – Israel’s leaders have accepted they’re good dhimmis. Eventually, the Jews’ fate will be that of the Beni Quaraysh in Arabia. Now not perhaps but sometime down the road. And Israel’s Far Left welcomes the prospect of Israel’s extinction with a gusto. Such is the time in which we now live.
Very nicely put Yamit…
We can only hope that this will be shown only in the various university departments of History, and on the History Channel…
December 31st, 2008 11:07 pm
Surreal Gaza
Victor Davis Hanson
The World Reacts
I spent today reading accounts of Gaza—NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. There are no terrorists, just militants. Not much about past rocket attacks on Israel–most everything on the crowded conditions of Gaza. Iranian aid is rarely elaborated on; stories about quiet Arab support for defanging Hamas are likewise rare; common is the buzz about protests in Europe. In reaction, I jotted down the following random thoughts.
Gaza as Monte Carlo, perhaps Hong Kong, or is it to be Switzerland of the Mediterranean?
Gaza is a sort of lab experiment in the Middle East. Recall for a minute: the Israelis withdrew en masse, a so-called “retreat” that reverberated all over the Middle East. The West supported free and open elections that gave Hamas their legitimacy, such as it was. Gaza is strategically placed on the Mediterranean with a prime shoreline. It borders Egypt the traditional center of the Arab world. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Middle-East oil money, and Western relief donations have poured into the tiny state. Israeli clearly wants no more of it, and would love to let Gaza alone to be Dubai.
The result?
Hamas with its serial rocket attacks on Israel interprets all of the above not as an opportunity for prosperity, but as a stage one for the great accomplishment of its generation—the absolute destruction of the Jewish state. Its agenda is clear and unambiguous, and apparently shared by millions of elites in the West itself, without whose support Hamas could not exist. The common theme of Western press coverage is the misery of Gaza, never the misery of Gaza as a product of the garrison-state mentality of Hamas’s radical Islamic vows to wage perennial war against Israel.
The Enablers
Hamas counts on the fact that its own losses will be characterized as a “holocaust” and appear comparable in the Western media to something like Darfur or the slaughtering in Zimbabwe, or the usual carnage that we wake up to on the news. Take away Western press attention from Gaza, and Hamas is just another violent, illiberal regime that impoverishes its own people while seeking victim status in the West.
Is that too harsh? I don’t think so. Again, if it were to call a one-year truce with Israel, seek normal relations with Egypt, and swear off Iranian-Hezbollah terrorist aid while it sought to rebuild infrastructure, ensure security, and recruit foreign capital, then there would be no more world attention, and its cadres of hooded youth would lack the pizzazz of “militants.”
Jenin Redux
Meanwhile, we suffer through the Jenin reinvention of the rules of war: (1) proportionality: Hamas is allowed to keep trying to kill as many Jews as it can to “balance” those lost to far more lethal Israeli countermeasures. Rule I. War is a tit-for-tat game, where fairness is defined as killing no more than you lose.
(2) Civilians and warriors: there is no such difference. Hamas’s terrorists who shoot rockets against Israeli families burrow into their own civilian infrastructure. They are tragic innocents to the world when they are killed and heroes to their own if can they kill innocents Jews through their barrages. Rule II. The age of uniforms and battle lines is over, replaced by the civilian shield as the best mechanism of defense against Western mastery of traditional arms.
(3) War that is lost on the battlefield can be won through the international media. The Palestinians have counted on six truths in the international arena (a. the world remains largely anti-Semitic; b. the world appreciates the strategic calculus that Arabs are numerous with oil; and Israel is tiny without it; c. Westerners fear Islamic terrorists, not the IDF; d. The West is prone to self-loathing, and romanticizes any who best capture the mantel of victimhood; the Palestinians have brilliantly reinvented themselves by claiming a status akin to women, gays, Hispanics, and blacks—fellow victims of rich while male Westerners; e. Any culture abroad whose hospitals Westerners would not like to be operated in are idealized; any who emulate Western technological supremacy are shunned. Rule III: Just copy any group that sets up shop on an American campus free speech area, and the resulting sympathy is worth a division.
Incremental Victory
The Hamas way of thinking is that it has constantly redefined losses to such an extent that 300+ killed are now dubbed a “Holocaust.” Meanwhile the frequency and range of its rocketry are expanded and embedded into the “normalcy” of the Middle East. Hamas seeks to establish the principle that it can daily wear away the psyche of Israelis while carefully constraining Israeli responses. What a Westerner would call an Israeli “victory” (e.g., terrible destruction of Hamas infrastructure with far greater casualties inflicted than suffered), Hamas and others would call “progress” in a century-long war (e.g., the world now accepts that showering Israeli with rockets is not an act of war, and not deserving of serious retaliation).
A final note: some of the most vicious anti-Israeli sentiment comes from Europe, especially countries like Spain and Greece. Yet I remember Morocco and Spain nearly shooting at each other in 2002 in a dispute over an uninhabited rock in the Mediterranean, and Greece goes ballistic every time Turkey customarily overflies Aegean airspace. Israel alone is not supposed to respond to rocket barrages; our conclusions can only be that the world deems it an illegitimate state worthy of destruction, and will allow its enemies to keep trying until they succeed (Why else would a British television station invite Ahmadinejad to answer the Queen’s Christmas address—a thug who promised the destruction of Israel, is seeking the means to do it, and whose terrorists recently kidnapped British sailors?)
Meanwhile we await “Gaza, Gaza”—the anguished documentary movie as hundreds of filmakers have no doubt already descended to offer us by spring a must see movie on every American university campus.