Re: [A-List] France: Latin America (Support for Argentina)

["Anyutka" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

On Feb 9, 2004, Michael K. wrote:

"No wonder there is a crisis of intelligence in the US if this is the
best that the "retired" spooks can come up with. And to think that people
pay for this stuff...."

Michael, I agree with all your criticisms of Stratfor and I posted the
item for the sheer self-serving lunacy of their "analysis," knowing full
well the Europeans on the A-List would have a ball with it.  As far as
why anyone pays for "this stuff," well, I think they do because Stratfor
apologists give them assurance all is mostly going according to Fedgov's
enlightened plan along with a little "zing" of feeling as if they are
reading
"inside stuff."  Since the service isn't cheap you would think the audience
more sophisticated, but the US enjoys a self-centered culture made up of
amazingly naive, ignorant, and intellectually lazy people, even among the
corporate and managerial elite.

As far as my own motives go, after some hesitation I decided to renew my
subscription
because Stratfor's patter gives a lot of insight into what the elite feels
they
need to do to assuage the well-to-dos' burgeoning doubts.  For instance,
last
November Stratfor was quite hilariously explaining that Khodorkovsky's
arrest
was no cause for alarm to American interests nor an indirect challenge to
past
US policies, because what was really going on, "according to our
sources in the Kremlin," was that cleaning up Yukos was a necessary step
before Putin could turn over Russian energy assets to Western investors!
Yes, everyone - including the White House - was being patient with Putin
because he had lots of "goodies" for them on the serving table.  Simply
fantastic nonsense.

In that spirit, I post Stratfor's commentary today on Bush's Meet the Press
interview of yesterday.  (BTW, this performance has received negative
reviews,
even among his own supporters.  He looked just as week, bumbling, and
stupid as he, in fact, is.  I am positive absolutely no one was re-assured
or
persuaded by Dubya's pathetic efforts, and he stood increasingly naked
before
the millions watching. )   -A.

PS  Do note the new Pakistan-is-the-problem thinking.........I believe it
heralds a new line coming in lamestream US media coverage of the Middle
Eastern "Mess O'Potamia," as the Comedy Channel puts it.


STRATFOR'S MORNING INTELLIGENCE BRIEF
SITUATION REPORTS - Feb. 9, 2004


************************************************************************
Geopolitical Diary: Monday, Feb. 9, 2004

U.S. President George W. Bush did something Sunday that he rarely does -- he
went on television for an unscripted interview. The fact that he did it is
far more revealing than anything he actually said. The White House does not
normally risk putting the president on the spot, but officials clearly felt
they had to in this case -- which measures the level of discomfort that
exists in the administration over the question of why the United States went
to war in Iraq.

The president's problem is simple. As we have argued, there were solid
strategic and political reasons for invading Iraq that had been extensively
discussed within the administration. However, the ultimate justification
given for the invasion was the threat of WMD. It was not the real reason,
but the Bush administration felt it was easier to sell that explanation than
the complex reasoning that led them to the conclusion that an invasion was
needed. They assumed that: (a) no one would object to invading over WMD, and
(b) that they would find the weapons there. They miscalculated on both
points. More precisely, there were objections to invasion without prior
verification of weapons and worse, the core assumption -- that the weapons
were there -- proved to be false.

Bush's strategy Sunday on "Meet the Press" was to deny the undeniable. He
kept insisting that the weapons would be found. He is now conceding the
obvious -- that they haven't been found -- which makes it likely, at this
point, that they aren't there. His problem is that if he were to lay out the
full strategic rationale behind the invasion now, it would appear that it
was simply post hoc rationalization. Bush's enemies are characterizing him
as so desperate to invade Iraq that he would tell any lie to justify the
move. They never provide a satisfactory explanation as to why he had this
urgent need to invade, but it doesn't matter. Bush is strangling on the
cleverness of his own PR managers, and he can't get out of the way. His
political situation is serious and should not be trivialized. His political
managers certainly can't be naïve enough to believe that the intelligence
review panel will defuse the issue until after the election: CIA Director
George Tenet signaled last week that there were limits to which he would
fall on his sword.

This is particularly the case because the Pakistani situation is ratcheting
out of control. At casual glance, it appears that while the CIA was
obsessively focused on getting it wrong in Iraq, it missed the real force
behind Islamic nuclear proliferation: Pakistan. The crucial question is
this: Did the CIA actually miss this entire global operation, or did the
United States know about it and accept it because Pakistan was a key ally?
This is not a question about this administration. It is a much broader
question, beginning with Reagan and continuing through Bush I and Clinton.
Unfortunately for George W. Bush, he will get to pay the bill for them all,
because he turned WMD into a core national policy.

What makes this extraordinarily weird is information being leaked Sunday
that the CIA actually knew about Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer
Khan's activities, physically tracking him back in the 1990s. The United
States is providing Pakistan with that evidence now, and U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell is planning a trip to discuss it with President Pervez
Musharraf. We are obviously missing something here. The United States knew
in the 1990s that Khan was engaged in the transfer of nuclear technology to
some of the states Washington feared the most. If all of this is to be
believed, the United States is confronting Musharraf with the intelligence
only now.

The only explanation that makes sense is that Washington did not believe
that Khan was acting alone, but that he was carrying out Pakistani state
policy. The United States did not confront Pakistan because: (a) the
Pakistanis knew about the situation, since they were behind it, and (b) they
did not want to tip off the Pakistanis to the fact that Washington knew.
However, if this theory is true, then the United States simply monitored the
situation without doing anything about it. If the United States had
intervened with Libya or Iran at the time, the Pakistanis would have known
it, and the game would have been up. What the Clinton administration was
thinking of during this time is not easy to fathom; why Bush waited this
long to confront Musharraf is equally unclear.

There is something more here, something that is vital and missing. It will
emerge around the time that Powell meets with Musharraf. Perhaps Musharraf
was deeply involved in creating the Islamic bomb himself, and his
cooperation with the United States was simply cover. Perhaps the United
States used his cooperation while it needed it and now, as the endgame
approaches, is in the process of dealing with Pakistan as a whole. Perhaps
something entirely different is involved.

The problem the Bush administration has is this: Pakistan's nuclear policy
hits directly at U.S. national interest. Whatever is going on, the
administration will have to act with confidence and subtlety, not be
constrained by domestic considerations. This is clearly a very serious
situation. Unfortunately for the administration, the one thing that no one
trusts it over is its handling of WMD issues. Its behavior in Iraq has
simply burned through a huge amount of trust. Therefore, the administration
is approaching what is clearly one of the most serious episodes in its
tenure, without the self-confidence absolutely necessary this crisis.

On a variety of levels, the situation is both serious and dangerous. A
crisis with Pakistan over nuclear weapons touches all aspects of American
war policy, from the hunt for al Qaeda to securing WMD. A report appeared
Sunday in Al-Hayat, claiming that al Qaeda got a nuclear device from Ukraine
in 1998 and is holding it for the right moment. That may or may not be true,
but serious nuclear nightmares are going to start percolating in the
national consciousness at a time when the administration's handling of
nuclear issues is reasonably doubted by serious people.

Going on "Meet the Press" was not a bad move for Bush, but it was only the
beginning. The administration has lost the ability to conduct this war in
absolute secret. It could do that only while retaining the national trust,
and it can regain the national trust only by laying out its actual thinking
on the way to Baghdad and Islamabad.

Whatever is going on is too murky for comfort.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>
To: "The A-List" <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [A-List] France: Latin America (Support for Argentina)


Stratfor writes:

Over the past year, France has seen its influence significantly
diminish in the arena of global affairs and within the European
Union. This has greatly upset France, which likes to think of
itself as a leading voice in the world; after all, it has a
permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and, with Germany, is
a co-founder of the European Union.

MK: No wonder there is a crisis of intelligence in the US if this is the
best that the "retired" spooks can come up with. And to think that people
pay for this stuff. France's "influence" is hardly diminished, unless by
"global affairs" you really mean "Capitol Hill". Indeed, for such an
inconsequential state it attracts a lot of attention, however negative. But
this exercise in wishful thinking/lazy prejudice ignores the increased
effort of Chirac within the EU to push ahead with deeper integration -- the
fact that, largely at France's behest, the "directorate" of the big three
member states has begun to take charge of key areas of the EU agenda, not
least in military matters (see this list's archives on this).

Stratfor continues:

Lately, France's perception of its place in the world has taken a
beating. First the Iraq war, which Paris opposed bitterly in a
joint alliance with Berlin, demonstrated that French foreign
policy did not match the European Union's foreign policy. France
and Germany tried to make their anti-war position the common EU
foreign policy, but seven countries voted instead to back the
United States. In the end, French President Jacques Chirac and
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder wound up looking to all the
world like a pair of curmudgeons who the Bush administration and
many of their EU peers simply ignored.

MK: Yeah, sure. And both quaked when mighty Portugal told them where to get
off. Actually "all the world" was rather more impressed by the refusal of
Chirac and Schröder to go along with the Bush administration's bloodlust, if
15 February 2003 was anything to go by. Perhaps Stratfor could exercise some
effort investigating the extent to which the "coalition of the willing" was
bribed into being.

Stratfor continues:

More recently, Paris has realized that the inclusion in May 2004
of 10 new EU members -- several of which also supported the Bush
administration on the Iraq war and the fight against global
terrorism -- will weaken French influence within the union even
more. The incoming members have made it clear to Paris and Berlin
that they will not let the Franco-German alliance dominate them
on foreign policy or anything else.

MK: This is the hope of the US ruling class writ large. Isolate France and
you have a chance of keeping the EU under control, such that the expensive
mopping up operations required after US military adventures are outsourced
to a compliant dogsbody.

Stratfor writes:

In recent months, Paris has intensified a far-reaching diplomatic
offensive designed to make France a key force in a multipolar
alliance of developing powers like China, Russia, India and South
Africa. This week it was Latin America's turn. French Foreign
Minister Dominique de Villepin made a five-day trip to Chile,
Argentina, Brazil and Mexico from Feb. 2 through 6 to lay the
foundations of a new alliance between Paris and the four
countries in Latin America that France perceives as having any
real importance to its interests.

<snip>

France clearly views Brazil as the Latin American pillar of the
new alliance that would support multilateralism against U.S.
unilateralism. European diplomatic sources in Buenos Aires told
Stratfor on Feb. 5 that the Chirac government views Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva as the most credible and
geopolitically relevant head of state in Latin America today.
Argentina and Chile are perceived as being pulled along in
Brazil's wake. Mexico is viewed as important because of its
membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the
free trade agreement it already has with the European Union.

Although de Villepin's trip didn't produce any major political
announcements or economic agreements, France's new foreign policy
foundations in Latin America were laid. They include securing
Latin American support for a major overhaul of the United
Nations, most particularly the U.N. Security Council. Paris might
not be happy about the prospect that new EU members will create a
more vigorously, pugnaciously democratic union, but it does want
an expanded and more democratic U.N. Security Council to prevent
the United States from unilaterally imposing its will.

<snip>

Ultimately, the new relations Paris is pursuing in South America
likely won't translate into a surge in French investments and aid
there. Nor will France change its position on some policy
positions, such as in agriculture, that are dear to South
American hearts. However, the presidents de Villepin met with
were happy to host him. At a time when the Bush administration
isn't paying much attention to the region, de Villepin's tour
probably felt like balm on a sunburn.
...................................................................

MK: The unadulterated smugness and self-satisfaction of this prose is
nauseating. There has been enough accumulated on this list recently to
suggest that the developments dismissed above are in fact gathering some
momentum, and for deeper structural reasons that have also been discussed
here.

The EU's expansion spells the death knell of the Commission, since it is
that institution that would, if allowed to continue as before, ensure
"pugnacious democracy" in its instrinsically undemocratic way by giving
disproportionate weight to the smaller, newer entrants, in much the same way
as the U.S. Senate is organised. That the bigger states are finally pulling
their weight -- very much the substance of the British government's position
during the constitutional convention -- is indeed more "democratic", in that
the "majority" is going to get its way much more than before, and very much
at the expense of the minority, which is certainly pugnacious democracy, if
not very nice for a lot of people. Of course each member state is pursuing
what it perceives to be its own interests in all this, and how Blair, Chirac
and Schröder understand "union of nation-states" will diverge in key areas.
This is not the point. The point is that the Commission is doomed in its
present form and that the financiers of the EU are finally going to be more
brazen about calling the shots, thereby diminishing the political importance
of the smaller states (it cannot be otherwise) whilst deepening the European
centre of gravity and thereby lessening the transatlantic pull. The French
are the leaders in this, because their conception of "French interests" now
encompasses the EU as a whole. In this, they are streets ahead of the rest,
who will nevertheless do their best to catch up. The crisis within the EU
really concerns how to legitimate all of this, since without the Commission
it is harder to pretend that the EU is functioning subject to the impartial
arbitration of an objective administrator. Given that the Commission itself
has become a captive of neoliberal dogma this is potentially good, although
it also holds dangers. The most important way ahead for the smaller
countries would be to use their public services as a bargaining chip, in
which they agree to key elements of the Big Three's agenda in exchange for
the abandonment of the crazy "single market in services" which threatens to
recreate the British railway system (among others) across Europe.

Michael Keaney