Columnist.
2011's great cascade of Arab rebellions continues, and even China's oligarchs are feeling its effects. Libya may be next. Meanwhile, back in Iran, the rebellions have energized the opposition Green Movement. Iran's Khomeinist dictators have placed its leaders under house arrest. As this astonishing spring proceeds, Iran's clerical tyrants have also ordered an Iranian naval task force to sail the Mediterranean Sea for the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
As revolutions go, it was the first liberal democratic domino -- and 235 years later, its proclamation that human beings are endowed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continues to empower democratic revolutionaries challenging autocracies and dictatorships. The American Revolution also provides the emerging architects of Egyptian democracy with very practical advice: Hang together, or you'll substitute one tyrant for another.
This week, the Pentagon published a national military strategy document, its first revision since 2004. "The National Military Strategy, 2011" (NMS 2011) begins with the assertion that the U.S. has reached a "strategic inflection point." Economic and information interconnectedness and what are euphemistically described as "ongoing shifts in relative power" (meaning comparative power among nation states) have produced this strategic change in direction.
Egypt's complex rebellion is rushing toward revolution. For the near-term, how the Egyptian military promotes, thwarts, and/or negotiates the inevitable redistribution of power among individuals and factions within the country is the most critical issue. Even if the current president, Hosni Mubarak, survives, his personal authority will be drastically diminished.
On Jan. 14, Tunisia's president for life, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, resigned in the face of nationwide protests and fled the country for exile in Saudi Arabia. Media reports indicate his wife brought along a ton and a half of gold bullion. This is a familiar script for besieged tyrants in South America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. In 1979, the Shah of Iran quit his country in vaguely similar circumstances. In 1986, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier left Haiti with family and filched millions. Duvalier recently returned to that sad land and could face criminal charges.
The Jan. 17, 1991, air attacks on Iraq that launched Operation Desert Storm two decades ago gave the world a spectacular look at the high-tech weaponry the United States had developed to thwart a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The initial air strikes on Baghdad riveted a global television audience. On that first night of the air offensive, reporters with cameras poking from Baghdad hotel windows provided real-time video of Iraqi anti-aircraft guns firing streams of tracer rounds into a blue-black sky randomly lit by the bursts of American precision munitions hitting targets on the city's perimeter.
Last August, the government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), the semi-autonomous government administering Southern Sudan, asked a South Sudanese lyricists to write a national anthem. The anticipatory anthem was one of literally thousands of tit-for-tat political exchanges between the GOSS and Sudan's national government in Khartoum, as both governments maneuvered for advantage in the Jan. 9, 2011, referendum on southern independence.
Conditions -- and human intentions -- can change quickly, but creating capabilities takes time. This applies in virtually every realm of human endeavor. The global recession has required painful economic adjustment that in the case of a nation like Greece may take decades to repair. An epidemic can strike, but a vaccine or cure may take years to develop.
"Just how real is the holiday terrorist threat?" The question isn't rhetorical, nor is it an arid theoretical. Since Thanksgiving, it's been the query of the season, reflecting the uneasy spirit of our times. I've had it popped on me at parties, in the gym, on the phone and by my wife. Even though I'd rather drink party punch and talk about football, each unique questioner deserves a thoughtful answer. At some sincere level, the person is asking for a thoughtful opinion regarding the likelihood of life during a season proclaiming joy to the world weighed against the possibility of death at the hands of mass murders driven by a malignant religious zealotry.
The political framework that has kept Korea's smoldering 60-year-old war from fatally reigniting is changing and changing rapidly. Japan is publicly altering its political approach to North Korea and China. This week, Japan indicated it plans to more fully integrate its military forces with those of the U.S. as well as deploy mobile forces capable of reacting to threats to its southern islands. That sends a hard message to China. These mobile forces could also be employed against North Korea.
Julian Assange, the man behind the WikiLeaks dump of secret US State Department cables, has been frank about his reasons for releasing thousands of classified -and stolen -- documents. Assange says he wants to seriously damage the United States. If this damage forwards America's ultimate destruction, so be it. The son of leftist America-haters, Assange was born and weaned during the Cold War. Then the wrong side won. What the superpower Soviet Union failed to do with its armies, he, a super-empowered individual, will accomplish via the information anarchy of the Internet.
He repeatedly insisted he wanted to kill Americans. Bloody carnage was his explicit goal, and a crowd of 12,000 Oregonians in downtown Portland provided the human targets. His targets -- men, women and children -- gathered in the city's Pioneer Courthouse Square last Friday to light a public Christmas tree. Attacking this infidel ceremony, with its hint of pagan tree worship, would give his murderous act iconic stature. Militant Islamists around the globe would appreciate the religious symbolism.
Why did North Korea lace a South Korean island with artillery fire this week, then threaten further escalation? Because sensational attacks are a vicious form of advertising that reap significant political and economic dividends. Deadly fits of violence followed by diplomatic tantrums advance the interests of North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Il and his Stalinist regime. Since the Cold War ended, Pyongyang has played a calculated game with South Korea and its allies, Japan and the United States. The North launches a military attack or terrorist foray, which is followed by vicious bluster.
When Brazil and Turkey tried to negotiate a complex uranium swap with Iran this past summer, international media focused on Turkey's diplomatic role. That focus was understandable. Turkey is a neighbor of Iran's and is a military and economic power in the Middle East.
Last April, President Barack Obama placed al-Qaida terrorist and unabashed American traitor Anwar al-Awlaki on the CIA's "capture or kill" list. Obama's authorization means Awlaki can be killed by U.S. security agencies, with the likely bullet a laser-guided Hellfire missile fired by a CIA Predator as it flies over Awlaki's hideout somewhere in Yemen.
Tea party-inspired candidates primarily stressed U.S. domestic issues during the midterm elections, with special focus on the economy. Though the tea party victors now headed for Capitol Hill are in many respects a disparate group, an emphasis on free-market principles, a healthy skepticism of big government and a confirmed populist faith in the wisdom of average American voter were common themes in their campaigns.
President Barack Obama's looming post-election state visit to India is another indication of evolution and maturation -- the incremental but genuine change measured in decades that marks the coalescing of U.S. and Indian global interests.
The cyber-warrior scenario goes something like this: If the worm is a computer worm (or other digital malware) infecting a dam's computer system, it might be possible to use the malicious code to take control of the supervisory operating system. The attacker then orders the computer to open the dam's gates and thus create a destructive flood inundating cities downstream. The computer worm would breach the dam with deniable finesse, rather than the concrete and traceable mess left by a high explosive bomb or a nuclear weapon.
Dissident Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize has scared China's communist elites. The Beijing government has responded viciously by vilifying Liu and the prize selection committee. China's cyber-sheriffs have tried to keep news of Liu's award off the Internet. Its secret police shadow Liu's wife. The People's Republic's foreign ministry has even snubbed Norwegian diplomats engaged in discussions about the fishing industry.
