China Steps Up in Syria

The conventional picture of US policy in the Middle East is of a hellbound train rushing toward war with Iran, pulling burning coaches filled with European passengers howling praise of Western values out the windows at horrified bystanders.  Actually, I think it’s more like a monster truck exhibition.  Lots of sound, fury, testosterone, and bravado, but just spinning wheels, spewing mud, roaring in circles, and going nowhere.

What is very interesting is that China, usually an apostle of non-interference, believes it has something to contribute to the Syrian situation, probably for two reasons: 1) it needs to road-test some new approaches to managing and accommodating dissent in anticipation of the day when Arab-Spring type upheavals become an important factor in China and 2) the current situation is so screwed up the Chinese feel they can make a genuine contribution.

Though Russia has the lead role as defender of the Syrian regime, China has been following the situation closely.  One of the appendixes to the infamously suppressed Arab League report on Syria listed representatives of foreign media who had been allowed into the country; a large number of them were Chinese, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them, as Xinhua is known to do, were wearing intel hats in addition to their journalist roles.  

Interestingly, the Angry Arab news service noted an interview Al Jazeera Arabic did with China’s Foreign Ministry desk officer for Syria and remarked: “ His Arabic is as good as the best Arabic speakers.  It is incredible.  I never ever met an American diplomat with this fluency.  I mean that.  And his pronunciation is so excellent that it carries no trace of a Chinese accent.” 

Maybe the Chinese—highly dependent on Saudi and Iranian oil, with a government apparatus largely insulated from global and Israeli pressure, and providing generous human and financial resources to a foreign service designed to help China navigate through a dangerous neighborhood without the crutch of a dominating military presence—knows the Middle East better than we do?

For the sake of American peace of mind, maybe we’d better stick to the image of the PRC team as amoral, callous, resource-grubbing apparatchiks who know the address of every Chinese restaurant in the Middle East but little else.

Anyway, Syria represents an interesting case in the dynamics of great power diplomacy and rivalry in the Middle East.  My take on the situation is that the United States is willing to let the GCC chew up Syria as a consolation prize for not going all out on regime change against Iran.  China, I feel, has a diametrically opposite mindset: it thinks it has placated Saudi Arabia adequately on Iran (mainly by hosing Iran on energy pricing and not stepping up in a major way to crack the sanctions blockade that is beggaring the Iran’s economy and its citizens), so they feel they have the right to be treated as grown-ups with ideas worth listening to on Syria.

Since the West believes it has a monopoly on moral and political wisdom, that’s probably not going to happen.  But it’s interesting that the Chinese are trying.

According to the authoritarian playbook preferred by China, Syria’s President Assad is doing the right things: driving a wedge between the “loyal opposition” to his rule and hard-core rebels and revolutionaries through the use of targeted amnesties and concessions; forcefully isolating and suppressing violent political dissenters; incrementally escalating the use of military force to regain control of militia-held strongholds like Homs; and offering a way out with a new constitution.

Perhaps he has done the right things, but not in the right way; or perhaps not enough.  As the harsh crackdown approaching its first-year anniversary, the Assad regime has profoundly alienated a significant portion of its population.  Reconciliation and stability is going to take more than a new constitution, delivered with a pat on the head and an apology from the government.

A necessary and dangerous process of accommodation and power sharing will be needed.

China perhaps has grasped this point even more clearly than Russia, or the Assad regime itself.  As Syria and Western/Arab policy on Syria lurch from crisis to crisis, China may watch for opportunities to advance its strategy.

This weekend, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun will visit Damascus to try to create some space for a “third path” political strategy, one that eschews both regime change and perpetuation of the status quo for a process of evolutionary reform keyed on the new constitution.

The draft Syrian constitution is a multi-faceted political document.  It accommodates a multi-party system, addressing a key grievance of many moderate Syrians, but still offers the Ba’ath Party various advantages.  It outlaws “religion-based parties,” in order to wrong-foot  Assad’s mortal enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, but stipulates that the president must be a Muslim, in order to appease conservative Muslims. 

Assad has announced a referendum on the new constitution will be held on February 26.

It would be very interesting to see how the constitutional referendum played out, and what level of support the government could still command after a heavy-handed one year crackdown.

But it is unlikely that Assad’s enemies inside the country, in the West, the Gulf Coordinating Council (GCC), and Turkey will allow the Syrian government to use the referendum to buttress its legitimacy and demonstrate a capacity to guide the nation out of its political impasse.

As is inevitably the case, any effort by the Syrian regime to gain political-reform traction was met with determined “it’s too late/atrocity of the day” propaganda pushback designed to pre-empt any impetus toward reconciliation.

Even as the referendum was announced, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland (the wife of neo-con Robert Kagan and previously a national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney) stated that Assad’s departure was the only viable option; a WINEP pundit dismissed the referendum as “window dressing”; CNN reported “the vast majority of accounts from within the country say that al-Assad's forces are slaughtering civilians en masse”; and Western media uncritically passed on the opposition’s idiotic accusation that the Syrian air force had bombed the government’s  own diesel pipeline (which somebody, presumably of the aggressively violent opposition whose existence the West stubbornly refuses to acknowledge, apparently blew up).

Assad’s announcement of the pushed up date for the referendum (it was originally expected to happen in March) was probably a response to the latest escalation in regime-change activity, the “Friends of Syria” conference to be convened in Tunisia on February 24.

Assad’s foreign antagonists, deprived by a Russian/Chinese veto of the opportunity to further delegitimize the Assad regime through the UN Security Council, will use the Tunisian conference to formalize a case for humanitarian intervention in Syria—a moral imperative that justifies, even demands disregard for conflicting demands of treaties and international institutions when necessary--under the “responsibility to protect” or R2P doctrine similar to the one used for Libya.

In a parting gift to the anti-Assad forces,UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay raised the specter of a International Criminal Court indictment against Assad, of the sort which complicated the situation in Sudan, closed the door on a negotiated exit for Gaddafi, and would make any sort of negotiation with Assad virtually impossible.

The Fact-Finding Mission, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, and I myself have all concluded that crimes against humanity are likely to have been committed in Syria. I have encouraged the Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. All Member States must ensure that these crimes do not go unpunished. 

Pillay also issued a demand for humanitarian access that could form the cornerstone of West/GCC justifications for Syrian intervention:

International and independent monitoring bodies, including my Office and the independent Commission of Inquiry must also be allowed into Syria. And humanitarian actors must be guaranteed immediate, unhindered access. [emphasis in original]

There will be no “no-fly zone” for Syria; Assad has assiduously and, one would imagine, intentionally, avoided the use of air transport and air support in his security operations, thereby denying a pretext for the West and GCC to come in with a “no-fly zone,” which in Libya quickly morphed into a “no drive zone” and then into an “attack any government target of tactical or strategic value zone”.

To get around this obstacle, if the French have their way, humanitarian intervention would involve creating a “humanitarian corridor” to deliver food and medical supplies to Homs, thereby driving a stake through the heart of the Syrian regime’s claim to legitimacy and national sovereignty and energizing the opposition…at least that portion of the opposition whose strategy relies on foreign intervention to collapse the Assad regime.

In the western media, only the Syrian National Council, or SNC, exists as the voice of Syrian opposition.  The real situation is considerably more complicated and opposition to Assad is by no means typified by the SNC.

In fact it is a remarkable testament to the bankruptcy of the West/GCC’s Syria policy that the horse they have chosen to back is, to a large extent, a corrupt congeries of exiles with virtually no presence inside Syria and dominated by the Sunni Islamist militants of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has languished in exile for almost three decades.

At the end of January, 2012, Foreign Policy’s Justin Vela wrote:

A wide range of activists and diplomats are voicing concerns with the SNC, criticizing its lack of cohesion and effectiveness. While the majority of them have not given up on the council, they paint a picture of an organization out of touch with the protesters on the ground and dominated by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. 

"No one from the SNC has influence inside Syria. Most members of the SNC are jumping on a train that started from the street," says Ammar Qurabi, a Syrian human rights activist…

The most divisive issue surrounding the SNC, however, clearly remains the prominent role played by the Muslim Brotherhood. "The Muslim Brotherhood is the only party in town," says the Ankara-based Western diplomat. 

The Brothers have been exiled from Syria for 30 years after losing a bitter armed conflict with the regime in the 1980s, and some activists distrust its outlook on democracy and the future composition of a post-Assad government…

It appears that the Brotherhood’s insistence on overthrowing the Assad government is informed by its awareness that, whatever feelings Assad has about accommodating the aspirations of democratically-inspired dissidents, they do not extend to the MB. 

The Brotherhood’s best hope for a major, indeed dominant political role inside Syria requires regime collapse and the exploitation of the MB’s superior discipline and organization in the ensuing chaos to establish itself as the voice of conservative, orthodox Sunni Islam (the dominant confession in Syria) as their associates did so successfully (and to the chagrin of many secularly-inclined liberals) in Egypt.

Despite its lack of a Syrian presence and its apparently sectarian character, the SNC has been recognized as “the legitimate interlocutor of the Syrian people” by 16 governments, including the United States, several EU countries, and several Arab states. 

Reading between the lines, however, most countries are anxiously trying to reconcile their desire to see Assad fall with a queasy awareness that the SNC is perhaps a sectarian, Islamist train wreck ready to happen.  The only authority to give the SNC full recognition is similarly named (and equally shaky) Libyan National Council.  The rest of the 16 nations have offered vigorous lip service to the SNC in an effort to buttress its prestige, but have as yet declined to recognize it as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

It seems the main function of the SNC is to vocally implore—and thereby justify—foreign intervention in Syria.

Though unheard in the West, there are other opposition groups that don’t share the Muslim Brotherhood’s maximalist rejection of negotiation with the Assad regime.

The main in-country dissident organization, the National Coordination Committee, accepts a platform of negotiations with Assad.

In fact, the head of the SNC, Burhan Ghalioun, attempted to achieve a unified opposition with a significant presence both  inside and outside Syria by allying with the NCC.

Justin Vela describes the outcome of Ghalioun’s attempt to abandon the no-negotiation/ foreign-intervention franchise in favor of a broad-based movement:

One particularly damaging stumble occurred when SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun signed a draft agreement with the National Coordination Committee, a Syrian opposition group largely based inside the country, in an attempt to unite the two groups. The agreement rejected foreign military intervention and called for dialogue with the regime, conditions that infuriated many Syrian activists. In the face of widespread opposition, Ghalioun backed away from the agreement.

The PRC has, for the most part, let Russia take a leadership role in making the anti-regime-change case for Syria.

However, on February 4, China’s Global Times posted an op-ed, “Third Path” for Syria, which laid out a vision for a resolution of the Syrian crisis that called for compromise—and an active role for China:

History shows regime changes in restive regions mean endless turmoil and uncertainty. Therefore the Syrian opposition does not need to be that ambitious. Threats against al-Assad will persist as they always have. Compromises on critical issues in exchange for a "soft landing" of his country seem to be a good deal for him.

Interestingly, the article—which may not represent a formal policy of the Chinese government but undoubtedly represents at the very least the informed view of a faction within it—hinted at a decoupling from Russia’s approach, seemingly characterizing Russia, but not China, as a die-hard supporter of Assad.

 [A]l-Assad is backed by the Russians. If a war between Western and Russian "agents" occurs in Syria, as is speculated to happen by some in the European media, it would be an arduous and prolonged battle… China is obviously seeking to assume an active role. The busiest mediators on the world stage are not necessarily stronger than China.

Russia can be an ally in advocating a "third path."

The Global Times op-ed can be regarded as a warning to Russia, which, through its vigorous and vocal defense of the Assad regime, has become identified as its uncritical and committed ally.

More importantly, it presented China not only as an impartial mediator, a role that Russia had sacrificed; it stated that China’s willingness, in contrast with its usual abhorrence of “interference in the affairs of sovereign states” to “assume an active role,” and even have Russia follow its lead.

Statements of Wen Jiabao also fed into this narrative:

"On the issue of Syria, what is most urgent and pressing now is to prevent war and chaos so that the Syrian people will be free from even greater suffering," Wen told a press conference after a China-EU summit in Beijing on Tuesday.

"To achieve this goal, China supports all efforts in consistence with the U.N. charter and principles, and we are ready to strengthen communication with all parties in Syria and the international community and continue to play a constructive role," Wen said, adding that China would "absolutely not protect any party, including the Syrian government," Chinese media reported.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of Western observers, Wen is not signaling that he is ready to throw Assad under the bus.  Rather, the PRC is trying to save Assad—or, more accurately, promote a peaceful, incremental resolution to the Syrian crisis that leaves the current power structure reformed but to a significant degree intact—by positioning itself as an honest broker in the dispute.

Differences in the Russian and Chinese approaches can be seen in the choice of interlocutors among the non-SNC opposition.

Russia, with deeper ties to the current regime, appears to be placing its hopes for political resolution of the crisis on the “patriotic opposition”, a collection of eleven small parties closely associated with the Ba’ath Party and allowed to function even under the restrictive Section 8 of the current Syrian constitution.

 In an article written in January 2012, a Russian journalist described a certain amount of political ferment he observed during a recent trip to Syria:

At present there are three main trends in the Syrian patriotic opposition – democratic, liberal and left, which is mainly a communist one. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party is the most influential party among the democratic forces. … the party’s program is more conservative in comparison with the Baath’s program. Nevertheless there are no differences of principle between the two parties. ..

The liberal trend of the opposition is represented by the recently registered secular democratic social movement led by Nabil Feysal… He is an outright opponent of the Islamic fundamentalism, supporter of the liberal democracy. His goal is to turn Syria into “Middle Eastern Denmark”.

The National Committee for the Unity of Syrian Communists is the most influential component of the left (communist) trend of the opposition within the country…headed by Qadri Jamil, a prominent Syrian economist and the professor at the Damascus University. He is the only representative of the opposition who entered the committee on the design of the new constitution…

It is not difficult to characterize these political parties (including one that defines itself as “more conservative than the Ba’ath” and having “no differences of principle” with the ruling party) as part of the regime’s strategy to hopelessly muddy the opposition waters and retain the upper hand in a multi-party environment.

Nevertheless, Qadri Jamil, the Syrian Communist, is the focus of friendly interest from Russia.

Jamil led a delegation to Moscow in October 2011. The Russian media carefully noted his rejection of foreign intervention, and obligingly publicized his opposition bona fides:

“Any interference in Syria’s domestic life will be interpreted as occupation”, the head of the delegation representing the Syrian opposition, Qadri Jamil, told journalists in Moscow.

“We are ready to do everything to stop violence and sit down for talks”, -Jamil said, adding that dialogue is the only possible way to settle the crisis.

Mr. Jamil stressed the importance of a new constitution for Syria, as well as reforms required to meet the needs of Syrians.

The opposition also demands the release of all political prisoners, including those detained during the recent riots. 

Although Qadri Jamil is apparently the Syrian regime and Russia’s great hope for a peaceful transition to a multi-party future, he apparently enjoys no standing in the Syrian dissident and activist community.

China, on the other hand, appears to be turning to the considerably more credible (but equally opposed to foreign military intervention) National Coordination Committee as its preferred interlocutor with the forces of change transforming Syria.

In February, as the SNC-promoted and West/GCC backed UN resolution furor was nearing its height, China made the interesting decision to receive Haitham Manna, “vice chief coordinator and spokesperson abroad”of the NCC in Beijing, give him a meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun, and publicize the meeting with an official news release.

Furthermore, on February 10 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted spokesperson Liu Weimin’s response to two questions concerning Haitham Manna’s visit on its website, all indications that the NCC is, at least for China, in play.

Liu’s responses also promoted China’s position that it can interact with all Syrian opposition forces, including the SNC:

China has been in touch with major Syrian opposition groups over a stretch of time. During Chinese Special Envoy on the Middle East Issue Ambassador Wu Sike's visit to Syria last October, he met with leaders from the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change and other Syrian opposition groups. China has also made contact and maintained interactions with the National Council of Syria.

Reading between the lines, one can make the following deductions about the PRC’s calculations on Syria:

First, there is no clear consensus within the global community, in the Arab world, or even among the opposition for collapsing the Assad regime.

It looks like the US and Turkey are increasingly keen on Assad accepting a Yemen solution (obligingly floated by Tunisia)—for Assad to drift off into exile so the West can declare victory and turn its attention to other, easier matters while the locals slug it out for pre-eminence under the watchful eye of the Syrian army.

However, Assad, still enjoying a significant measure of support from Russia, China, and Iran, doesn’t seem willing to go anywhere.

There is a window of opportunity for the PRC to promote its desired outcome: reform of the Assad regime and its survival as a reasonably stable ally for China in the Middle East.

Second, the West, if not the GCC, is having second thoughts about its stated enthusiasm for acting as the SNC’s paymaster, arms supplier, and political and diplomatic ally.

The unpleasant experience in Egypt implies that catapulting the intransigent Muslim Brotherhood into a position of political advantage is not necessarily the formula for creating a stable, pro-Western, Israel-friendly democracy in Syria.

More worryingly, al-Qaeda’s enthusiastic attempt to piggyback on the spiraling unrest in Syria—and the car bombings in Aleppo which, if not the work of Zawahiri’s minions, can probably be traced back to al-Qaeda’s Gulf-funded Sunni Islamist fans in western Iraq—are a warning that backing the feckless SNC in an agenda of regime collapse is not going to be the carefree, Iran-bashing romp so many interventionists are advertising.

Third, if the US and Turkey are sufficiently squeamish about the possibility of negative outcomes in Syria, they may not facilitate the flood of arms, money, and advisors the Gulf states would probably be ready to unleash in order to implode the regime.

Fourth, there is a possibility that, as the crisis drags on, more activists and dissidents will decide they will not want to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood and its creature, the SNC.  The SNC might split, leaving the MB in a marginalized rump organization while the secularists, liberals, and moderates i.e. those more likely to be willing to negotiate a political resolution with Assad migrate to the NCC (the possibility hinted at by Burhan Ghalioun’s abortive alliance between the SNC and the NCC).

The one observation that can be made about strategies relying on four contingencies is that they rarely work out.

For the West, the political benefits of posturing against Assad may well outweigh any qualms about the adverse consequences of further empowering the SNC and militarizing the conflict.

Nevertheless, even if China’s offers to mediate come to naught, the costs to China are minimal.  If Assad’s regime collapses, so be it; China has its foot in the door of the New Syria through the NCC.

In any case, events inside Syria might soon escape the ability of anybody to control them—not Assad, not China or Russia, not the SNC, and not the GCC, NATO, or the West.

A poster (“who recently left Syria and has been working with opposition activists”) declared on the Syria Comment website of University of Oklahoma professor Josh Landis:

The Real Opposition in Syria is Not the Syrian National Council or Free Syrian Army

The real opposition is maturing and growing in influence inside and on the ground away from the influence of Qatar, Turkey, Saudi, France or the US. It is a matter of time before the regime gives way. Soon the SNC will be simply remembered as something like one of the many Iraqi opportunistic opposition groups that mushroomed just before the war on Iraq…New more realistic, mature, civic and political powers are taking shape on the ground and will be emerging as powerful players soon. Even if the regime survives this round, there will be new rounds between an exhausted regime and new re-envigorated opposition groups. Forget the SNC and the FSA [Free Syrian Army] if you want to talk about the future.

In other words, maybe the real opposition in Syria is someone we’ve never heard of.  And maybe that’s a good thing.

Subversion, American Style, the NED, and Egypt

The staff of US democracy promotion NGOs, including the son of Transportation Secretary Lahood, are currently experiencing legal travails in Egypt.  

The Egyptian junta is well aware that democratic agitation abetted by the National Endowment for Democracy, the IRI, and the NDI is often employed to install new regimes when local strongmen running quasi-democracies (featuring elections with a whiff of rigging or irregularities or ones that simply yield results that Uncle Sam thinks ain’t what they oughta be) aren’t up to snuff.

The US is not afraid to put its thumb on the scale to make sure democracy gains its preordained victory.

Maybe people in the US aren’t well aware.  So here’s an excerpt of a piece I wrote in 2007—when the US was promoting a color-revolution challenge to Musharraf through our chosen champion, Benazir Bhutto.

The original piece with links can be found here.

Subversion, American Style

This report torn from the AP newswire today (November 11, 2007) much says it all as far as the U.S. sponsored “Rose Revolution” in (ex-Soviet) Georgia is concerned:

Georgians looking to the TV for information on the country's worst political crisis in years are out of the luck these days. They'll find soap operas and comedies but no independent news programs.

Four days after being put into place following clashes between police and demonstrators, President Mikhail Saakashvili's ban on news broadcasts has deprived most Georgians of their primary source of news about the unrest.

The decision to pull the plug has also deprived the opposition of a platform before presidential elections and raised questions about Saakashvili's commitment to democracy.

Saakashvili — a pro-Western leader whose own rise to power was fueled by independent media — ordered a 15-day state of emergency to defuse a standoff with the opposition. Government troops had used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse thousands of protesters.
...
Though Saakashvili has been praised as one of the few post-Soviet leaders to champion democracy and freedom of speech, many Georgians say the media under Saakashvili are less free than under his predecessor, Eduard Sheverdnadze.

Great power exploitation of progressive political movements a.k.a. subversion is an interesting—and awkward—question.

Indeed, the most successful practitioner of communist subversion wasn’t the Soviet Union; it was Imperial Germany, which plunked Lenin on a sealed train to St. Petersburg with the intention of destabilizing Tsarist Russia and forcing its withdrawal from World War I, with spectacular results.

On the other hand, the Soviet-controlled Comintern, purportedly the gold standard of international subversion, was unable to do much more than foment transitory instability at enormous cost to its organization and adherents until the Red Army was added to its toolkit after the Second World War and Stalin switched to a strategy of conquest instead of subversion.

The great power that has been able to roll up a significant number of wins, particularly in the Great Game with Russia in the postwar era, has been the United States.

The U.S.pro-democracy effort operates like the Comintern wishes it had done—if it had a potent combination of attractive ideology, unattractive opponents, charismatic adherents, brains, money, and the freedom to operate freely and openly in its target countries with the explicit support of the World’s Only Hyperpower (TM).

The uneasy democracy coalition of patriots, opportunists, and fellow travelers works through an alphabet soup of “Gongos” ((government funded NGOs) and “Quangos” (quasi-non-government NGOs) dating from the Reagan era as described by journalist Sreeram Chaulia:

The watershed that brought INGOs to the forefront of global democracy promotion was the Reagan administration’s decision to create the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983 to roll back Soviet influence. With a stated raison d’etre of “strengthening democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts”, NED was conceived as a quasi-governmental foundation that funnelled US government funding through INGOs like the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and Freedom House.

These INGOs in turn ‘targeted’ authoritarian states through a plethora of programmatic activities.

NED’s first President, Allen Weinstein, admitted openly that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”32 The organisation was a deus ex machina in the face of scandalous Congressional investigations into the CIA’s “soft side” operations to destabilise and topple unfriendly regimes that embarrassed the government in the late 1970s. “An NGO helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have.”33

97 percent of NED’s funding comes from the US State Department (through USAID and before 1999, the USIA), the rest being allocations made by right-wing donors like the Bradley Foundation, the Whitehead Foundation and the Olin Foundation.34

Since its conception, and despite the bipartisan structure, “neoconservatives have held tight control over NED’s agenda and institutional structure.”35 Senior George W. Bush administration figures who are signatories to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which wears aggressive US foreign interventions on its sleeve, have officiated in NED.

Notwithstanding its claims to “independence” and “nongovernmental status”36, the US State Department and other executive agencies regularly appoint NED’s programme personnel. As one ‘Project Democracy’ (codename for NED in the Iran-Contra scandal) advocate put it, “These ‘private’ agencies are really just fronts for the departments they serve; the agency may prepare a report or a research project that it then gives to the private firm to attach its letterhead to, as if it were really a private activity or initiative.”37

A survey of NED’s partner INGOs reveals a similar pattern of public priorities forwarded by private agents. Freedom House, a neocon hub which succoured the Colour Revolutions, has a history of being headed and staffed by ex-CIA high-level planners and personnel.38 NDI is dominated by ‘liberal hawks’ or right-wing Democrats who find their way to prime foreign policy slots when their party is in power. IRI comprises a herd of far-right Republican politicians and representatives of major financial, oil, and defence corporations.39 IFES top brass belong to conservative Republican ranks, the CIA or military intelligence.40 IREX, the training school for Colour Revolution elite protagonists, is peopled by political warfare, public diplomacy and propaganda specialists from the news media, US Foreign Service and the US military.

The most signal successes of U.S.-supported democratic movements were scored in the nations of the ex-Soviet Union and Soviet bloc: the Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia), and Tulip (Kyrgyzstan) Revolutions.

In each case, a half-hearted commitment to democracy by the local government led to a disputed election, allegations of fraud fueled by U.S.-funded NGOs, pollsters, and media, then mass protests and the installation of a pro-U.S. regime.

The United States made no secret of its participation—while defending its actions as imbued solely with the altruistic democratic spirit.

In the case of Kyrgyzstan, the U.S. embassy openly pitched in:

[A] handful of opposition newspapers that have been rolling off a truck-sized printing press marked "United States Government Department of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor," housed at a former laundry on a remote stretch of road in the capital, Bishkek.

The press has operated since November 2003 under a program of the New York-based rights and democracy group Freedom House. The project has received more than $1 million in U.S. government funding.

At least three of the printing press' 60-odd clients, project director Mike Stone said, were opposition papers that fueled growing public anger at Akayev amid the campaign for the late-winter parliamentary elections — a vote whose flaws fueled the opposition push for his ouster.
Those publications embroiled the printing press in a dispute with Akayev's government, which responded with a power cutoff, police surveillance, the confiscation of a truckload of papers and suggestions of censorship from board members close to the president.

The press, meanwhile, received generators rushed over by the U.S. Embassy after the electricity was cut off, allowing it to print 182,000 copies of an opposition paper ahead of the first round of voting Feb. 27.

The democratic movements in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan were to a certain extent genuine and received external assistance from genuinely philanthropic entities, but also there is no question that they were egged on by the United States, directly, and through our NGOs.

The sometimes heavy U.S. hand is more easily seen in places where democratic movements falter because the local strong man is doing a pretty good job.

Our ineffectual harrumphing on behalf of democracy in Belarus is described by retired Indian career diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar in the virtual pages of Asia Times Online:

The Guardian commented in the run-up to the Belarusian election: "Europe and the US are pouring in money. According to the New York Times, cash is being smuggled from the National Endowment for Democracy, Britain's Westminster Foundation, and the German Foreign Ministry directly to Khopits, a network of young anti-Lukashenko activists."

But as Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center in Washington, explained to the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, "Despite all the flaws in the Belarusian political system, it's clear that the criticism of Minsk isn't based on its domestic policies, but on the fact that Lukashenko isn't oriented toward cooperation with the West and the US - not even as a formality. He's more focused on an alliance with Russia.

How things going since those revolutions?

Well, not so good. Apparently, in many cases they brought opportunistic U.S. clients to power who exacerbated public dissatisfaction.

I came across this charming post about Kyrgyzstan datelined November 2006 on the blog of a world traveler:

When I travel for long periods of time (I’m almost at five months now), some places and even countries fade from my memory quickly. When I left Bishkek in September, and then again in early October, it was a peaceful place. But today I got an email from Nargiza, the girl who posed as my translator at the Uzbek embassy:

hi Megan, i stady in university, nou im not working, today is not good because revolition. do you have pictures?

Now, I never said she was the best translator, but she got the job done. Notice how she casually mentions revolution? The Kyrgyz “Tulip Revolution” was only a few years ago and it seems that the current government isn’t cutting it.

Bhadrakumar notes dyspeptically that the anniversary of the glorious Tulip Revolution is known by many as “Looter’s Day” for the street justice that the protesters meted out to the goods and furnishings of the presidential palace.

At Antiwar.com, Justin Romaindo asserted in 2006 with blowtorch rhetoric that after the democratic hubbub died down in Ukraine, the result has the same mixture of corruption and repression but with a democratic tinge replacing the previous Soviet hue:

In any case, the so-called Orange Revolution has faded to a pale pinkish hue, with the color almost completely washed out of it. Ukraine is still corrupt, poor, and owned lock, stock, and barrel by a nomenklatura of unusual avariciousness. All that has changed is the likelihood of NATO membership, and that's all the U.S. government ever cared about anyway.

According to Wikipedia, it looks like Ukraine’s democracy is certainly not in a good way:

In late March and early April 2007, the Ukrainian political system dealt with another constitutional crisis. President Viktor Yushchenko dissolved the Ukrainian parliament and ordered an early election to be held May 27, 2007. Crowds of about 70,000 gathered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kiev, and supported the dismissal of parliament, with 20,000 supporting Yanukovych's plan to keep the parliament together.[14] On April 3, 2007, President Yushchenko signed the bill into existence. Two hours later on Kiev's Maidan, it was announced to the crowds that Parliament no longer existed.

The Verkhovna Rada immediately called an emergency session and voted against Yuschenko's decree (255 votes in favor; opposition didn't participate). A group of members of the parliament took the case to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, challenging the validity of the president's decree, but the court closed the case without opinion. A political struggle ensued between the parliamentary coalition and the opposition. Later, a compromise between Yushchenko and Yanukovych was reached to hold early parliamentary elections.[15] The elections were held on September 30, 2007 and the coalition of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc gained the majority of votes.

The legal status of the previous parliament is unclear. Formally, the parliament has been dismissed, because more than a third of its members have resigned, and their parties cleared the reserve deputies lists. According to the constitution, this rendered the parliament inoperative. On the other hand, the Constitution states that the existing parliament is valid until the new parliament is sworn in.

How ‘bout that.

Add to that the Georgia situation described above, U.S. record in successful democracy promotion (as opposed to successful subversion of hostile regimes) is pretty dismal.

In other words, the Bush administration has been happy to stir the democracy pot to discommode the Russians, but unwilling or unable to fix the stew after it curdled.

U.S.-promoted democratization is perhaps a poison best given to our enemies rather than an elixir suitable for our friends.

Suicide in DuPont/China Industrial Espionage Case

E-mails of my previous post on the DuPont industrial espionage case were kicked back, apparently because I referenced a randy site and/or used three xs to substitute for the names of the people named in the indictment.

At the time I wrote:

As an amusing sideline, one of the top Google hits for [my piece at Asia Times] was on [a site promoting strip clubs in Allentown], a site which, as you might expect, promotes strip clubs in Allentown, PA, previous home base for the Bethlehem Iron & Steel behemoth and now a piece of post-industrial fodder for Billy Joel ballads and the sex service industry.

I realized that the good people in Allentown had picked up on the piece because I had substituted [three x’s] for the names of people named in the indictment.  It is one of the melancholy privileges of the Internet and social media to be able to look at the personal Christmas pictures of somebody facing decades in jail on a charge of industrial espionage, and imagine his honor, his reputation, and his future evaporating before one’s eyes.  So, I decided, let somebody else strip away his last veneer of privacy.  Maybe my pity was misplaced; we’ll see.  

Today I read via Reuters:

In another development, Timothy Spitler, a former DuPont employee who consulted for ---, took his own life last week, say multiple people familiar with the situation. Spitler supplied material information to prosecutors in the investigation, these people say. A lawyer for Spitler did not respond to inquiries on Wednesday.

Spitler, by the way, wasn’t named in the indictment I referenced, presumably because he was cooperating.

The case, and the handling of defendants and cooperating/uncooperative witnesses, is in the hands of US Attorney Melinda Haag.

In early February she filed a motion with the court to block the release on bail of one of the principals in the case, who has been incarcerated for several months.

In attacking the credibility of the detainee--and undermine his protestations of not constituting a flight risk-- Haag (or, more likely the office functionary who wrote the brief for her signature) adopted a tone of breezy contempt, typified by this passage:


The FBI located in a search of the ---’ residence a telephone list on which the names and telephone numbers of these and other PRC officials and business leaders appear. It would be one thing to fabricate or exaggerate official contacts in a letter to try to get a job (more on that later), but it seems altogether unlikely that one would fabricate a corresponding telephone list to keep around the house. What would be the purpose of that? To impress yourself while sitting alone in the home office and spinning through the Rolodex? Obviously not.

The brief concludes, "Respectfully submitted, Melinda Haag".  Yes.  Respectfully.

I suspect that the first response of the prosecutor's office to Spitler's suicide will be to step up the pressure on witnesses in order to justify its previous tactics, and also assert the enormity of the transgressions that have resulted in Spitler's suicide.

People make disastrously wrong choices in their lives and I don't like to see the worst case scenario play out.  It reminds me the line Ross Macdonald gave to Lew Archer, when Archer was asked if he had a secret passion for justice.  No, he replied, I have a secret passion for mercy.  But justice is what keeps happening to people.

About that US Criminal Indictment Alleging Industrial Espionage by China

I have an article up today on Asia Times about an indictment of US and Chinese companies for industrial espionage and theft of DuPont’s trade secrets for the manufacture of titanium dioxide.

This will quite probably turn into a big deal in US-Chinese relations, because it’s a big deal for DuPont and DuPont is a big deal in American industry and politics.  

Titanium dioxide delivers hundreds of millions of dollars each year to DuPont’s bottom line, in large part because of DuPont’s unique know-how in operating a particularly filthy and dangerous piece of chemistry and also, allegedly, because the fact that the technology is very closely held offers opportunities to set up a pricing cartel with the few other Western manufacturers who have mastered the process.

I expect the Chinese will claim that their advances in titanium dioxide technology reflect their own indigenous achievements and any DuPont documentation that came over the transom was peripheral to their own accomplishments.  Maybe so, but maybe US courts, politicians, and public opinion will draw the opposite conclusion, especially in an election year during which Chinese job-poaching perfidy will be at the top of the political agenda.

As an amusing sideline, one of the top Google hits for the piece was on www.allentownstripclubs.com, a site which, as you might expect, promotes strip clubs in Allentown, PA, previous home base for the Bethlehem Iron & Steel behemoth and now a piece of post-industrial fodder for Billy Joel ballads and the sex service industry.

I realized that the good people in Allentown had picked up on the piece because I had substituted “XXX” for the names of people named in the indictment.  It is one of the melancholy privileges of the Internet and social media to be able to look at the personal Christmas pictures of somebody facing decades in jail on a charge of industrial espionage, and imagine his honor, his reputation, and his future evaporating before one’s eyes.  So, I decided, let somebody else strip away his last veneer of privacy.  Maybe my pity was misplaced; we’ll see.  

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

Jinzhou Titanium Industry Company, in Liaoning Province in Northeast China, is the proud operator of two 15,000 tpy chloride process titanium dioxide lines.

In 2010, it held a seminar for the trade to advertise its achievements:

For more than two decades' persistent and dauntless struggle, Jinzhou Titanium Industry Co, Ltd, has overcome multiple technique difficulties, making the whole process operate smoothly. The company continuously optimized the process and the key equipment, obtaining high level achievement which was never reached before. With excellent application properties, the CR serial titanium dioxide products developed by the company are continuously replacing some imported products in Chinese market ... [1]

Those achievements are now under a cloud. Jinzhou Titanium Industry Co, before it was spun off in 2010, was a subsidiary of Pangang Group, the Chinese corporation named in the criminal indictment for conniving at the theft of DuPont's trade secrets. The indictment lists three contracts involving the misappropriation of DuPont technology: a 1998 $5 million transaction with Chengde Iron & Steel Corporation, a second-tier mill in northern China whose transaction appears to have vanished into the mists of time; a $6 million deal in 2005 involving the 30,000 tons of capacity at Jinzhou; and a $17.8 million contract in 2009 for a 100,000 tpy titanium dioxide project in Chongqing for Pangang Group.

According to the indictment, about $13 million monies under the 2009 contract had been paid out. Pangang Titanium's website showed a picture of the June 8, 2010 groundbreaking and stated:

The technologies are from Jinzhou TiO2 [the chemical symbol for titanium dioxide] Pigment plant, Pangang has the certain share in this plant ... It's planned to commission the plant in the end of 2012. [2]

While embroiled in the civil suit, the principal of USAPTI labored to demonstrate that the services he provided to China had been generated without DuPont knowhow.

However, the indictment paints a picture of a relationship over 13 years between USAPTI and a retired DuPont engineer; proprietary documents - including a 407-page Basic Data document for DuPont's titanium dioxide plant in Kuan Yin, Taiwan - with various DuPont stamps and confidentiality instructions getting passed around; and the retired engineer providing photographs and technical assistance to USAPTI to scale the Kuan Yin documentation up to the capacity envisioned for the Pangang plant.

That “Disgusting” “Travesty” Over Syria at the UN

What went down at the UN:

As a riposte to the Arab League initiated, US/EU backed “Assad must step down” resolution, Russia proposed a resolution calling on both sides to pull back forces and negotiate.

Pretty reasonable proposal.  But reasonableness is not part of the program on Syria.

Instead, a Security Council vote was called on the West's proposal, even though everyone knew it was headed for a veto.

Not just as a gratifying piece of “moral outrage theater” designed to embarrass the Russians and Chinese.

The Gulf and Western powers wanted to advertise, no, make that provoke, a failure at the United Nations.

They got it when Russia and China, as promised, vetoed a resolution they considered one-sided.

Even though the resolution had been advertised as precluding armed intervention, i.e. so toothless as to be meaningless, it was paradoxically trumpeted as “the last chance” for peace.

What it really means is that, with the UN rejected as a suitable venue for great power diplomacy, it’s open season on Syria.

Time to crank up another extra-UN “coalition of the willing” (Iraq-speak) or “contact group on Syria” (Libya-speak).  In fact, the process has already started.

Basically, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, France, Turkey whoever can now meddle in Syria with cash and arms to their heart’s content.

My personal feeling: the United States is pushing  regime collapse in Syria (I’m not even going to dignify the process with “regime change”) as a consolation prize to the Gulf states for the US not going all out to start a war with Iran.  Assad’s scalp on the GCC’s belt will have to do for now.

A while back, I wrote that the people’s revolution in Syria had failed; and the rebellion would now have to make do with whatever nation the GCC, the US, the EU, and Turkey decide to give them.

I’ve got a feeling that, beyond the full-time insurrectionists and propagandists of the SNC, the people of Syria are not going to be happy with the increasingly militarized, bloody, and divisive rebellion executed in their name, accompanied by the high-minded bleating of the neo-liberal interventionists.

To me, that’s “disgusting” and a “travesty”

Israel Attack on Iran: Same BS Different Day

“Israel to attack Iran” is a hardy if never-blooming perennial.  I rerun this post (originally written on the occasion of Israel’s bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in Syria in 2007) every year as a reminder of the rather daunting technical issues involved in flying from Israel to Iran and blowing things up in a truly convincing fashion, even as the same threats are put forward again and again.

Blowing things up in a truly convincing fashion involves a) flying there b) getting refueled in mid-air c) getting rearmed d) going back and do it again and again against Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities.

So it won’t be an orgasmic one-off like the Osiraq reactor strike against Iraq, a nice quasi-surgical demonstration of civilized Israeli warfare.  It would be a grinding, prolonged assault, presumably with plenty of Iranian casualties, and with the unmistakable, sustained assistance of a local ally to keep the planes in the air.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are beyond the combat range of Israel’s fighter bombers.  So Israeli planes would not only need to overfly Iraq or Saudi Arabia and/or Turkey with or without permission; they would have need to get refueled over Iraq or Saudi Arabia as well on the return trip.

It doesn’t look like the US is going to provide refueling facilities, leaving it up to local partners (unlikely/infeasible) or Israel itself.

This year, the presence of a pro-Iranian government in Iraq would make it necessary for Israel to cross Iraqi airspace without permission, and defy the Iraqi government in prolonged fashion by having Israel’s tankers hovering over Iraq for multiple bouts of mid-air refueling.

And I don’t think Turkey’s going to be keen about permitting overflight, since they aren’t even signing on to the proposed bilateral sanctions against Iran.

That leaves the Saudis.  Saudi Arabia is in the midst of an aggressive rollback against Iran in particular and Shi’ites in general, and the London Times quoted an anonymous Saudi source as saying Israeli jets attacking Iran would be waved through Saudi airspace.

Doesn’t quite pass the smell test for me, though.  I don’t think the Saudi government is happy to harass the Iranians, but I don’t think they have the stomach for taking the Israeli side in a full-blown war.

On the record comments in December from Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s top security honcho, will undoubtedly be dismissed as disinformation by Western observers because he’s calling for a nuclear-free Middle East (a slap at Israel!), but I think his statement more closely reflect Saudi reality:

Replying to a question about the possibility of an attack on Iran to force it to roll back its nuclear program and the impact of such an action, Prince Turki reiterated that the impact will be “calamitous … cataclysmic, not just catastrophic.”

He said that Iranian actions have provoked worldwide opposition but at the same time suggests that Iran's nuclear program is being singled out, while Israel is being given a clean chit. Any unilateral decision to launch a military attack aimed at halting the nuclear program of Iran could have huge consequences, he warned.

As to the technical issues of refueling, the IDF has made a big deal of demonstrating that it does not need US refueling services, as this report indicates:

In the last days of May and first week of June, 2008, Israel staged an impressive and well-reported exercise over Crete with the participation of the Greek air force. More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter jets, as well as Israeli rescue helicopters and mid-air refueling planes flew a massive number of mock strikes. Israeli planes reportedly never landed but were continuously refueled from airborne platforms. Israel demonstrated that a 1400 km distance could be negotiated with Israeli aircraft remaining aloft and effective. Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility is 1400 km from Israel.

Early in 2011, the Jersusalem Post reported Israel took delivery of a 707 for conversion into a tanker for refueling its F15-I fighter bombers coming back for Iran.  How many additional tankers Israel has is “classified”, but an unsourced thread puts the total number of converted 707s to eight.

The JPost article went on to say:

The air force has conducted a major upgrade of its tanker fleet in recent years and now plans to wait for the US Air Force to choose its future tanker before buying additional aircraft.

Reading between the lines, maybe the United States is not particularly keen on delivering tankers and enhancing Israel’s capability to conduct unilateral air operations against Iran.

Accordingto Karl Vick at Time magazine, Israel doesn’t have the tanker capacity or, for that matter the ordnance, to devastate Iran for weeks:

What everyone agrees, however, is that as formidable as the Israeli Air Force is, it simply lacks the capacity to mount the kind of sustained, weeks-long aerial bombardment required to knock down Iran’s nuclear program, with the requisite pauses for damage assessments followed by fresh waves of bombing.  Without forward platforms like air craft carriers, Israel’s air armada must rely on mid-air refueling to reach targets more than 1,000 miles away, and anyone who reads Israel’s order of battle sees it simply doesn’t have but a half dozen or so.  Another drawback noted by analysts is Israel’s inventory of bunker-busting bombs, the sort that penetrate deep into concrete or rock that shield the centrifuge arrays at Natanz and now Fordow, near Qum.  Israel has loads of GBU-28s, which might penetrate Natanz. But only the U.S. Air Force has the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator that could take on Fordow, the mountainside redoubt where critics suspect Iran would enrich uranium to military levels.

So, why do we keep talking about Israel’s threats to attack Iran?

I’ve frequently commented that the main purpose of the attack-Iran threat is to yank America’s chain, and forestall possible rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

The Obama administration knows this, I think, and I find its politically-motivated willingness to continue with the sanctions charade, and the low level but cruel and destabilizing program of assassination, sabotage, and economic warfare against Iran rather shameful.

Friday, October 05, 2007

 

The Mystery of the Dropped Fuel Tanks

An e-mail from a reader concerning the Israeli raid on a purported North-Korea-linked military facility in Syria stated:

FYI, the combat radius of an F-15 in deep strike mode is 1800km
The distance to the Syrian target is ~ 700 km.

No need for drop tanks........

Hmmm. Too interesting to pass up.

The Internet is a treasure trove for armchair commanders and aviation and weapons enthusiasts. Industrious googling yielded the following information:

During the raid, some Israeli aircraft jettisoned two external fuel tanks up by the Turkish border.

The tanks were from an F-15I fighter bomber , called the “Ra’am” or “Thunder”, itself the Israeli variant of the F-15E Strike Eagle.

In agreement with my correspondent, the Observer states the Ra’am is:

...the newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop tanks.

But I think the Observer (and perhaps *gasp* a loyal reader) got it wrong. Either they confused cruising range with combat range, or confused the current F15I with its previous incarnations (for instance the F15C does have a combat radius of 2000 km).

The F-15E is a completely different animal from previous F-15s, which were sleek interceptors, designed “without a pound for the ground” i.e. no air to ground armament, for those days of air-to-air combat with the parfait knights of the Soviet bloc.

The F-15E is a big, fat hog of a plane, sometimes nicknamed the Flying Tennis Court, or Rodan for its resemblance to the ungainly but murderous superpterodactyl featured in the Godzilla movies.

It’s meant to carry big bombs and missiles to blow up stuff on the ground and the people standing in it or next to it, and fight its way out if necessary.

So it’s got bigger engines and less range than previous F15s.

According to the data I dug up, the F-15E has a combat radius—the distance it can be expected to fly for a mission assuming high speed, fuel-consuming maneuvers--of 790 miles (see here and here ).

To achieve this radius, it needs its internal fuel plus external fuel.

Internal fuel capacity is 5,952 kg.

External fuel consists of two components:

Conforming fuel tanks or CFTs with a total capacity of 4500 kg. They are integral parts of the plane—one report I read said the plane isn’t really designed to fly without them—and can’t be jettisoned.

Then there’s another 5500 kg in conventional external fuel tanks—the kind that were dropped during the mission.

With a fistful of caveats, the combat radius for an F-15I without the external fuel tanks would be around 500+ miles.

Distance from the Hatzerim airbase (home of the F-15I-equipped 69th Squadron) near Beersheba to Dayr az Zawr: 420 miles.

So you might think that the conventional external fuel tanks weren’t needed for this particular mission, and the only reason to carry them was for road-testing prior to some Iran-related hanky-panky.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

If the Israelis really did bomb Dayr az Zawr, it’s unclear why they went barnstorming up to the Turkish border a hundred miles away.

But they certainly did go, and to fly that kind of mission including a flyby of the Turkish border, I think they would need the external fuel tanks.

Maybe the Turkey excursion was to test some fancy new electronic countermeasures equipment mounted on another plane, called “Suter”, to disrupt Russian air defense hardware recently supplied to Syria—and Iran, for Israel’s benefit and our own.

Aviation Week put out the story courtesy of “U.S. officials”:

A Kuwaiti newspaper wrote that "Russian experts are studying why the two state-of-the art Russian-built radar systems in Syria did not detect the Israeli jets entering Syrian territory. Iran reportedly has asked the same question, since it is buying the same systems and might have paid for the Syrian acquisitions."


We got a certain amount of military chest-thumping about how cool this new gear is, but these planes only jettison their fuel tanks if they’ve been engaged and need extra speed and mobility, which leads one to believe it couldn’t have worked too great.

As to Israeli insistence that they’ll take out Iran if we can’t get off our collective rears, I found this analysis interesting and persuasive.

It argues that the Israeli air force simply doesn’t have the horses to haul the armament needed to make a terminal dent in the hardened and dispersed Iranian facilities on a 1200-mile mission—remember, more fuel means fewer weapons carried--unless the U.S. either assists in the refueling of the Israeli planes or allows them to stage the assault U.S. from bases in Iraq.

And maybe not even then.

Bottom line:

Theoretically, the Israelis could do this, but at great risk of failure. If they decide to attack Natanz, they will have to inflict sufficient damage the first time - they probably will not be able to mount follow-on strikes at other facilities.

When all the analyses are done, there is only one military capable of the sustained widespread air operations required to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons research program - the United States.

So it looks like the Israelis could start something—but it would be up to Uncle Sam to finish the job.

I take this as support for my thesis that a key data point for Israel from the Syria raid was the nature of the U.S. support it did—or did not—elicit, and what that would mean for Israel if it conducted a dramatic but less than conclusive raid on Natanz with the hope that the U.S. could be dragged into the campaign.

So: War with Iran—it’s up to us. Don’t know whether that’s reassuring or disturbing.

A Modest Proposal

How Niall Ferguson Can Save the World from the Rabble Unfit to Rule

An interesting conservative meme is bubbling to the surface in time for the 2012 presidential election.

Call it “The Rabble Are Unfit to Rule.”

In essence, it’s trying to turn the 99% doctrine on its head, saying “Yes, I am the 1%.  Not just the richest 1%.  I’m the best and smartest 1% too.”

Making this argument on behalf of the 1% also provides the delicious side benefit of celebrating one’s own intellectual endowment.

Niall Ferguson, history professor at Harvard University, set the argument forth in an article for Newsweek that, one year from now, may be remembered as the ultimate resume stain on his CV, or perhaps an opening salvo in the rich’s counterrevolution against the grasping poors.

The article, meant to reassure rich Americans in an unhappy period in which they are publicly identified as deliverers of financial dysfunction, economic inequality, and political gridlock, is titled, Rich America, Poor America.

Ferguson turns to the work of Charles Murray and Murray’s new book, Coming Apart, for inspiration.

Murray is famous for his previous book, The Bell Curve, a tendentious work that explained US racial inequality through the division of America into two separate gene pools.  The inbreeding white gene pool was locked in a virtuous cycle of moral and cognitive perfection, while the black gene pool…well, according to Murray, it’s headed in the opposite direction.

Murray’s book, though vigorously and effectively attacked for its confounding of cause and effect (the key issues: do poor people who do badly in school do badly because they are poor, or because they are dumb; or some combination of the two?  Maybe it’s the schools?  Yada yada yada), was adopted by conservatives of a certain Caucasian persuasion as a talisman, reassuring them that the U.S. racial hierarchy was indeed a meritocracy (and a rapidly diverging one at that), and that any attempts at liberal minded social engineering were just howls in the genetic whirlwind.

Murray recycles the same themes in Coming Apart, while simply substituting the labels “Rich” and “Poor” for “White” and “Black”.

Ferguson elaborates on Murray’s thesis that the world’s problem is that people on the top of the heap (like Ferguson himself) are just too darn smart and are pulling away from an ever more incapable and resentful lumpen class.  However, in a gesture toward inclusiveness, he does expand the elite from 1% to 5%:

Murray sees two nations where there used to be just one: a new upper class or “cognitive elite”—to be precise, the top 5 percent of people in managerial occupations and the professions—and a new “lower class,” which he is too polite to give a name. The upper class has gotten rich mainly because the financial returns on brainpower have risen steeply since the 1960s. At the same time, elite universities like Harvard (where I teach and where Murray studied) have gotten better at attracting the smartest students. The fact that these students are very often the offspring of better-off families reflects the fact that (as Murray puts it) “the parents of the upper-middle class now produce a disproportionate number of the smartest children.” They do this because smart people tend to marry other smart people and produce smart children.

An issue that I wish Ferguson would address is how it turned out that rich people did a lot of stupid things during the boom and bust of the Great Recession.

Could rich, smart people who studied at Harvard under the solicitous care of Niall Ferguson and maximized the financial return on their brainpower do stupid things like totally cock up the world’s economy?  Maybe there was a fifth column of cognitive proles that were dedicated to destroying the system from within?  How could their dim minds grasp the complexities?  Did they have help?  Shouldn’t there be some kind of investigation?

Ferguson’s argument is something of a refinement of the traditional conservative defense of rich people: accusing their critics of the politics of envy and divisive class warfare.

Instead, poor people are just plain stupid, and in their stupidity they will cook the goose that lays the golden eggs instead of waiting gratefully for it to drop out golden eggs out of its butt.

Where this is apparently headed is that what we really need is a Millionaire on Horseback, an omniscient and benevolent figure who will protect the rich, capitalism, the economic system, and even the poor themselves from the poor.

And you thought the rich were screwing things up.  Silly you!

It’s an interesting idea for a democracy, but conflating race and class is a potent American political cocktail.  Murray provides the intellectual underpinnings and Ferguson is pulling for Romney to make the sale:

I say we tackle the inequality issue head on. This is the perfect year to do it, after all. The choice in November will be stark. On one side, the president’s project to make America more like Scandinavia, with higher taxes on the rich and yet more federal programs to spend their money on the poor. And on the other?

As Murray shows, there is a conservative solution to the problem of inequality. Scrap the failing welfare programs of the ’30s and ’60s before they bankrupt America. Ensure that everyone has a basic income. Then simplify the tax code to restore the incentives that used to exist for everyone to work hard. Finally, end the state monopolies in public education to launch a new era of school choice and competition.

A welcome return to Dickensian squalor, however, does not offer a permanent solution to the underlying problem: the unwashed, undeserving, and underbrained majority racing to taxfarm the cognitive elite, the free market, and democracy utterly out of existence before they themselves succumb to terminal genetic decline.

Unfortunately, Ferguson is unwilling to grasp the nettle and propose a thoroughgoing solution to the problem: a massive sperm transfer from the cognitive 5%, the “supers” as it were, to the underclass.

Surely society’s losers would understand, albeit dimly, that superior sperm, freely offered, is their ticket out of the underclass, and the program will be enthusiastically oversubscribed.

Approximately 140 million babies were born last year; the ejaculate of a healthy man contains perhaps 30 million sperm.  It would seem to me that Niall Ferguson could set the world on the shining path to a eugenic future over a pleasant weekend, or even, with more energetic application, in a single day.

Less time, and time better spent, I would hazard, than Ferguson expended writing his article.