Hold in the East, Win in the West

A Freedom for Libya thread.

The celebrations have started, albeit a bit prematurely, in Libya's capital city of Tripoli.

With that underway, it seems time to sum up how it (at least in the main) happened:

The fight in the East, shielding the TNC rebel government in Benghazi, was mostly a distraction once the line could be held. So long as Sirte remained (and *still remains*) a regime stronghold, there could be no drive on the center of power from Cyrenaica.

The fight in and around Misrata (Misurata) on the coast in the West was more pivotal, and much dirtier and protracted, but again mostly a fixing action... something that drew the regime to fight. Doing that near the coast meant they could be punished by NATO air and naval assets, but not likely ever to be a springboard to an attack on Tripoli. That would be trying to rush the front door.

But...

...a determined effort by (mostly) Berber rebels in the Nafusa Mountains won against the regime on their home ground and *that* opened the side door to Tripoli. The campaign moved to the coastal plain on 13.August and yesterday, the 21st, the show moved to the big city.

Congratulations to the Berbers, to the TNC, and a quiet tip of the hat to French and German embedded efforts to hold up NATO's end of the bargain.

Now let's see if they can bag the rest of the Qaddafi family and put an end to the war stage of this revolution.

No Progress... No Surprise.

The Istanbul round of the P5+G negotiations (the five UNSC Permanent Members and Germany) with Iran over nuclear proliferation has ended with no progress. The two reasons for the failure can be found in the same quote from the BBC article:

EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton, who led the international team, said Iran had come to the talks with pre-conditions.

So long as negotiations are entrusted to a nearly-powerless lead negotiator, Iran obviously feels free to engage in non-productive distractions... after all, their goal is to negotiate for nothing and take a long time doing that.

A different dynamic is required for the forces opposing proliferation to succeed.

I would suggest taking on Amb. John Bolton, empowered with a letter authorizing military and economic coercion, to lead any future round of negotiations... but then the Iranians simply wouldn't show up and then push would come to shove.

...which it likely will, anyway. May as well be moving forward those intervention plans, folks. Bets are we will need to use them.

About the German Anti-Terror Alert

Here is an absolutely spectacular multipage article in Der Spiegel Online, in English, regarding the extremely high level of Anti-Terror alert in Germany right now.

If you aren't familiar with the "Reichstag Threat" story, this may all come as a bit of a shock, but even for informed readers I recommend this article for the inside look at the political part of the situation.

That was what they wanted...

The French and German governments had made it fairly clear that they wanted the new European Union President as defined under the Lisbon Treaty to be someone limited to greeting foreign dignitaries and chairing summits.

That was what they wanted...

Van Rompuy, 62, is a technocrat with a penchant for haiku poetry. A Dutch-speaking Christian Democrat, he is unknown abroad, and even in Belgium he keeps a low profile. Or as a Belgian commentator recently put it: "Van Rompuy opens his mouth only to breathe."

...and that was what they got. Herman Van Rompuy, currently Prime Minister of Belgium.

Same idea, but more lefty, for the E.U. Foreign Policy brief:

Ashton, who has never been elected to public office and is largely unknown outside Britain, had seemed an unlikely choice. She won the foreign policy brief after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and left-leaning leaders from Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia, Portugal and Austria decided to put her name forward.

Ashton, 53, was a junior minister and leader of the House of Lords in 2007 and had a history as an anti-nuclear weapons campaigner.

She has barely caused a ripple during her year as EU trade chief and has no known foreign policy experience.

Catherine Ashton of Britain, currently the E.U. Trade Commissioner.

So it appears that Henry Kissinger's famous question regarding Europe... (paraphrased) "who do I pick up the phone and call?" is still unanswered.

Some one is there to take the call now, but they appear to be a message center worker.

***

The article linked above has a line saying "German Chancellor Angela Merkel and often-outspoken Premier Nicolas Sarkozy of France did not reveal a preference before the meeting." Technically correct. Other sources have confirmed that the Von Rompuy choice was predetermined by Franco-German agreement before the nomination.

A wall longer than just Berlin came down

...a wall between families, a wall between people, a wall between freedom and a life of modern serfdom. The Restricted Zone.

The zone is now gone, but for a few marks on the ground like old watchtowers, but the memory lives on:

"When I talk about these times, I get quite angry,” Michaela says. “I'm furious, too, at those who now say that life was wonderful in East Germany. It was anything but wonderful."

Michaela and her parents also ask themselves why, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, no one has been punished for making them spend the better part of their lives behind fences.

A very good question, indeed.

The end of the Grand Coalition in Germany

The Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union; CDU ...in this telling also including the allied Bavarian regional party, the CSU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel have won pride of place in the German Federal Election this weekend, albeit by the lowest total in years. But, best of all, their ally-of-preference the Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party; FDP) did well enough to allow the formation of a two-party coalition government with the CDU.

The Socialist, the Left, and the Greens... are to be taken out with the recycling bin. The Socialists haven't done this badly since the Bundesrepublik came into being.

Bravo, Madam Chancellor. May this opportunity be put to good use. Europe, and The World, needs a Germany that can pull its weight.

2Q rebound... but not for all

It doesn't quite count as an "I told you so", but the economic downturn of the last 4 quarters seems to have run its course right on schedule in those economies that haven't the reliance on the financial sector that Great Britain and the U.S. of A. have... or the degree of singleminded interventionism on the part of the government in "doing something" about the economy.

France and Germany exited the recession in the 2nd Quarter.

There is the concern that, even in those countries, the banking sector in particular is dependent on government protections and much of the rise in consumer activity is tied to some degree of stimulus spending... terms like "very fragile" are still being used to describe the recovery.

No such love is being shown to Gordon Brown's extravagant effort to mortgage the nation to "save" the economy, and there should still be alarms sounding over both the pace of new government spending in the U.S. *and* the need to sell an extraordinary volume of bonds before September 30th to pay for what is committed already... that bond sale succeeds, things may hold together for a while longer... *if it fails*, though, the Americans can expect a currency exchange collapse of epic proportions. Think 70 en (Yen) to the US$. Remember that the current ~95 to the dollar is almost 20 percent below nominal par for the currencies.

Yes, that last is a nightmare scenario.

Yes, if the Obama administration does not learn some economics very very quickly, that is where things are headed. Running the printing presses will do that to even the world's strongest economy.

All the petro-economies and the East Asian trading nations are not going to be happy if (when?) their foreign exchange holding devalue by another 20%.

Tragic Turn to Yemen Kidnapping

The kidnapping of nine foreign aid workers in northern Yemen last Friday seems to have come to a tragic turn. Seven of their bodies have been found including one of the children, according to an official.

The Yemeni government blamed a local Shia rebel group, led by Abdulmalik al-Houthi, for the kidnapping.

The group has fought a sporadic insurgency in the Zaidi Shia heartland between the capital, Sanaa, and the border with Saudi Arabia.

But it denied any involvement in a statement.

A local tribal leader in the area, speaking to the Associated Press news agency anonymously, blamed al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda is known to have operated in the area, and analysts say it may be regrouping in Yemen after coming under pressure in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

ADDENDA: Jane Novak (*the* blog source for all things Yemeni) has a report that the two unaccounted for children were found alive.

***
UPDATE: Sources on this are very confused right now. The AP still has it as all nine are dead; Reuters and the Yemen Post have it as three dead (two German women and the South Korean woman).

***

hat tip to Mr. Bill for passing me the BBC report.

Wrong Choice

The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has placed a limit on European spending on (infrastructure) projects that will complete after 2010... which basically denies a major funding source for the Nabucco Gas Pipeline project.

Ms. Merkel, it seems, favors the NordStream project.

This actively undermines the declared priorities of the E.U. in their 2008 Energy Policy funding. It also smacks of a "big-country veto" of E.U. decisions.

This is a wrong choice if the declared goal of Europe reducing its dependence on Russian Natural Gas is to be met. NordStream *is a Russian project*, intended to enhance Russian dominance in the Central European market. Nabucco is to be an alternative, drawing on non-Russian Central Asian suppliers.

We've been over this ground before here; NordStream is at best just more risk, and at worst a Putin-Schroeder "get rich" scheme.

This is a choice that should be reversed, and quickly.

Still no gas

The Russia-Ukraine Natural Gas dance just gets more convoluted every day, and still no gas flows to Europe.

The unhappy customer base in Eastern Europe is holding meetings today in Ukraine, and that group is takings sides with Ukraine.

The talks, which bring together some of Moscow's toughest Eastern European critics, was organized with unusual speed and secrecy and announced just hours before it began.

Participants include Polish President Lech Kaczynski, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic, and Moldovan Prime Minister Zinaida Greceanii, according to a Ukrainian statement.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister V. Putin of Russia is meeting with German Chancellor A. Merkel today.

All this in run-up to the 17.January meeting in Moscow called in answer to an E.U. request for an all-parties round of talks.

Gazprom cuts the flow through Ukraine

This has been a developing story over the last few days, well covered in the mass media. The Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which is functionally an arm of the Putin-Medvedev regime (or some say, Putin and Medvedev work for Gazprom), has been locked in a dispute with Ukraine over price increases and Ukraine has responded by planning an increase in transhipment fees for gas moving through to Europe.

The fight has gotten ugly enough that Gazprom simply ordered a suspension of deliveries to Ukraine.

But with Gazprom cutting the taps and the pipeline pressure down, Officials in Sofia say that Bulgaria is getting no gas and that Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey are getting no gas from the via-Ukraine pipeline. (Turkey has access to a second line under the Black Sea, however)

A panic has now swept through the EU offices in Brussels, and they are demanding (not asking nicely) for a summit meeting with Russia and Ukraine. Yes, the document even reads like an ultimatum to restore flow.

Good luck on that.

For anyone who didn't see this author's shot at Gazprom and European collaborators back last November, perhaps a more current observation would be of interest. National Public Radio of the U.S.A. is running a three part story plus an overview article on Gazprom and Russia's Foreign Policy that is pretty damning in its message.

American President R. Reagan once warned against European dependence on Russian energy sources.

He was right, then and now.

Cat.Bag.Out

Remember this?

Mis-step in the Kosovo Dance.

Well, it seems that Ian Johnson at the Wall Street Journal managed to put the pieces together, in his story today about the EULUX law-enforcement aid program deployment.

Nice job. Wonder who let the Journal review the 2005 BND report on the Kosovar government, eh?

Mis-step in the Kosovo Dance

Just in case Kosovo has fallen out of the view-finder for you, here is a little update: The EU, the UN authorities, and the Government of Kosovo are still having trouble following the same music, and there is still a Serbian dancer involved (via the UN) in the northern part of the country.

Plenty of room for trouble, for ill-deeds, for misunderstandings, and for plain old-fashioned mis-steps.

This is going to take some explaining, to say the least.

Nord-Stream Risk

Word is now making its way out that Russia is at least posturing as if the huge Nord-Stream gas pipeline project may be curtailed. This project was designed to cut Eastern Europe out of the loop on Natural Gas deliveries to Germany (and the rest of Western Europe), and has been cited as the prime example of how the former Schroeder administration (1998~2005) in Germany was willing to mortgage the security of the nation for commercial advantage...

The most recent Jamestown Foundation analysis is pretty rough on the whole situation, ending with:

The single most important factor behind the gas demand growth in Germany, however, is the political decision to reduce reliance on nuclear power and eventually abandon it altogether. The former Social Democrat-Green government forced that decision on Germany and adheres to it rigidly in the current coalition government, despite growing objections by the Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union.

Given Gerhard F. K. Schroeder's current employment as head of the shareholders committee of Nord-Stream A.G., it certainly has been to *his* advantage.

G. Schroeder has pretty much filled the role of chief apologist for the Putin-Medvedev show in recent years, including such highlights as coming down firmly on their side in matters regarding Estonia and Rep. Georgia. The late U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos probably had the best take on G. Schroeder:

"I referred to him as a political prostitute, now that he's taking big checks from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. But the sex workers in my district objected, so I will no longer use that phrase," Lantos said.

One has to wonder whether Herr Schroeder is going to feel a bit *used* if the Nord-Stream project comes unravelled.

Naw, probably not.