OBAMA SEES TURKEY AS MAJOR PLAYER

The recent visit to Turkey by Sec. of State, Hilary Clinton, was more than just a diplomatic exercise. It was the beginning of a process to establish better relations with a Muslim nation, which could play a critical role in a new Middle East policy that will involve the withdrawal of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and their equipment from Iraq and the possible normalizing of relations with Iran.
During the Bush Administration, relations with Turkey, a NATO partner since 1952 with the second largest army in the Atlantic alliance, soured over U.S. Iraq policy and moves within Congress to pass a resolution stating that Turkey was guilty of genocide in the mass murder and deportation of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire at the close of World War 1.
On Iraq policy, the refusal by the Turkish parliament in 2003 to pass a resolution allowing the U.S. to stage part of its Iraq invasion from Turkey was considered treachery in Washington. It not only prolonged the invasion process but extended the time it took for U.S. troops to enter Baghdad, thereby allowing time for looters to bring chaos to the city. It subsequently led to bitter words on both sides and a feeling in Washington that Turkey was not a reliable NATO ally. On the issue of Armenia, it makes headlines every April 24 on Armenian Independence Day and raises tensions between Turkey and America. During President Bush’s term in office he made an annual statement condemning the mass killing of Armenians. At the same time, members of Congress representing Americans made their yearly attempt to drum up support for a resolution condemning Turkey and labeling the killings of almost a century ago as genocide.
This year, President Obama may have found a way round the Armenian issue by encouraging Turkey to make overtures to Armenia, which would allow for dialogue on the issue and pave the way for a successful visit Turkey by the president in April.
So why is Turkey important to Obama as he navigates his way through a raft of new foreign policy strategies? For a start, Turkey is not only a nation that has a 99% Sunni Muslim population of 77 million, it is also a parliamentary democracy that sits between East and West. To the West it looks towards the European Union and America and to the east it faces the Caucasus, Syria, Iraq and Iran. As a major maritime nation on the Black Sea, it is a vital economic partner for the West because it provides an important gateway for shipping oil and gas from the Caucasus to Europe and the United States.
How Turkey sees its role is crucial to understanding its true potential and that is best expressed in the words of Turkey’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, Koray Targay:
“We are located in the so-called Eurasian region. We have very good relations with all of our neighbors. Beginning with Russia, going to the East, it means Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and Syria; with all of them we maintain good-neighborly, close and balanced relations. We also play a bridging role between Europe and Asia. If you look at Turkey from the Asian point of view, we are considered as a European country, but if you look at us from the European point of view, we are considered as an Asian country. So this is a delicate situation, but it gives us also a lot of flexibility as well as responsibility to maintain all these balanced relations, understanding, considering and respecting the interests of all parties.”
The Obama White House recognizes that Turkey can bring a lot to the table in terms of its military commitment to NATO’s role in Afghanistan and to the realignment of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. For example, the secure withdrawal of U.S. troops and their equipment from Iraq and can be achieved if Turkey is involved. Like the Turks, Barack Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq and may therefore have more in common with them in negotiating their help for the Iraq withdrawal.
It is also clear that Turkey is an important military component in the expanding war in Afghanistan and now that the U.S. is about to be denied the use of the base it had leased from Kyrgyzstan it needs the massive Turkish airbase at Incirlik. It is located about 250 miles from Ankara and was built with the guidance of U.S. military engineers in 1951. Since then, it has played an important role in U.S. operations and could now be the staging point for materiel being routed to Afghanistan. The Pentagon would also like to see Turkey increase the number of troops it has in Afghanistan. As of 2009, Turkey has a standing army of over one million with a highly integrated air force and a special operations command. Its navy is the largest in the Mediterranean and it has a modern submarine fleet.
Observers who followed Hilary Clinton’s trip to Turkey were struck by the warmth of the greeting she received. It was rumored that she spoke to Turkey’s leaders not only about the Iraq withdrawal but about plans for the State Department to initiate back door talks with Syria and Iran, nations that respect Turkey’s international clout. Suggestions that she may have asked for Turkey’s help on the delicate matter of talks with Iran were given credence by the fact that days after her visit, the Turkish prime minister visited Teheran. The White House was thrilled with the Clinton visit, especially after the Turkish foreign minister said it marked “a new era” in American-Turkish relations and that Turkey was now ready to cooperate with the U.S. on a range of issues.
But what does Turkey want from such a new partnership. It will expect the U.S. to continue to press the E.U. to promote Turkey’s application for membership. As major Muslim nation it will also expect Washington to take steps to solve the Palestinian issue. Turkey feels that the Israeli invasion of Gaza was a dangerous step towards heightening tension throughout the Muslim world. It is also worried that a new Israeli Likud administration will reflect hard-line Israeli policies that could prove even more divisive across the Middle East. That may well be the case if the new Israeli leader, Benyamin Netanyahu makes the far right leader, Avigdor Lieberman his foreign minister. Turkey will also want the U.S. to improve relations with Russia, one of Turkey’s neighbor major trading partners, and to be more circumspect in giving unquestioned military support to Georgia. However, that could prove more difficult than Turkey imagines, given recent statements from Russia that it not only plans to re-build its nuclear forces but it may locate strategic bombers in Cuba with parking rights in Venezuela.
Overall, however, the benefits from a new U.S. closeness with Turkey could be immense. In terms of the U.S. presence in the Black Sea region alone it is ideal for the Pentagon to have Bulgaria, now an EU and NATO member, working closely with Turkey to ensure the region is not used a gateway by terrorists and that shipping is not threatened. As for energy, Turkey will remain a critical linchpin in the West’s energy policy for decades to come.

RUSSIA NOT AMERICA MAY FACE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

As the economic recession continues to impact global markets it is Russia and not America that has the most to fear with some experts predicting that Russia, as well as some former Soviet nations, could suffer an economic meltdown.
In order to raise cash for its ailing economy, Russia recently turned to China and offered that country a deal that would have been unthinkable a year ago. In return for $25 billion dollars in loans the Russian government promised to supply China with 300,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 20 years. The loans from China’s Development Bank were earmarked for Russia’s biggest energy companies, which were running out of money because of the major downturn in energy prices. The news that Russia was desperate for cash exposed the fact that since 2001 it has built its economy solely on energy, thereby leaving it exposed to the kind of problems facing all big oil producers, including Saudi Arabia. However, unlike the Saudis, the Russians have not been able to stockpile large reserves of cash because massive sums were wasted on propping up parts of the country’s ailing infrastructure and in efforts to rebuild its military in hopes of regaining its former superpower status.
In 2008, there were warning signs that much of the talk in Russia that the West was responsible for the country’s economic woes was merely propaganda to obscure serious failures in the way the Russian government had been handling its economy. State involvement, allied to endemic corruption, had led to some very bad choices amid a growing slowdown of industrial output. One of the most critical structural problems in the economy, created while Vladimir Putin was president, was a policy of regarding government as preferable to a private sector, thereby curtailing private sector growth and entrepreneurship. Last year, an economic report commissioned by the new Russian president, Dimitry Medvedev, warned that many centers throughout the country were reliant on single industries or companies and there was virtually no protection of private property.
The scale of the problems facing Russia may well become more apparent in the months ahead as areas outside of Moscow begin to feel the impact of central government ineptitude. Recently, there was evidence of unrest when people marched through Vladivostok, calling for Vladimir Putin to resign as prime minister. The very fact such a demonstration took place raised eyebrows in the corridors of power in Moscow and it may yet prove to have been the signal that there is more social discontent on the horizon.
While no one doubts the massive impact the credit crisis has had on the U.S., the fact is dollar is getting stronger against other currencies, including the Euro, and, at the same time, China is continuing to regard U.S. Federal bonds as the safest bet for its vast reserves of cash. So, despite the considerable damage to Wall Street it did not experience the same financial hurt as Russia’s stock market when the credit crisis began. Russia’s market lost 70% of its net worth overnight. That shocked investors worldwide because Russia had been flush with cash for eight years while oil prices were high. However, it had failed to use that cash to diversify its economy and it had also spent unwisely. There was also a mistaken belief outside of Russia that its major energy companies like Gazprom were in the black when it fact they were deeply in the red, having used their wealth to build new pipelines and expand output. Those companies had been certain they had no need to worry because crude oil was like liquid gold and they had lots of it. That was fine while prices remained at $100 a barrel and more. Now, it is a judgment, which has come back to haunt them hence their urgent need to ask China to bail them out.
Much of this is lost on leading Russians like Igor Panarin, a senior figure in the Foreign Ministry, who numbers Putin as a close friend. He has depicted America as the bogeyman responsible for the world recession. It is a view that feeds directly into the philosophy of Putin who has blamed Washington for creating an economic firestorm. Much to the delight of Kremlin figures, who would like to divert attention from their country’s plight, Panarin told the Russian media last November the U.S. would collapse by 2010. In February, he repeated the prediction while addressing professors and diplomats at the Foreign Ministry’s school for diplomats of which he is the Dean.
By his calculations, the U.S. will fracture into six independent regions with Alaska returning to the Russian fold. In his view, America is suffering a moral decline and the evidence is there in its increasing gay and prison populations. They are, he contends, signs of a growing social upheaval that will accelerate the end of America as we know it. His reference to gays and criminals could well have been taken from the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda playbook that likes to use similar arguments to convince the Chinese people that America is in moral decline. Panarin further contends that Russia and China will emerge as partners after America’s collapse and establish a global currency to replace the dollar. All of this is of course wishful thinking and is far removed from reality. In essence, it is a seminal part of a strategy to disguise the truth about Russia’s economic peril. It is also a familiar fantasy of the communist old guard, which argued after the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russia would rise like a Phoenix from the ashes and merge with China to dominate the world. It is worth noting that Panarin has been predicting America’s collapse for two decades. Even now, he cannot wrap his head around the fact that America is economically stronger than Russia.
The deepening crisis in Russia is matched by an even worsening crisis in many former Soviet nations such as Latvia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania, which have been receiving EU aid for years but are now asking for a massive bailout. In Brussels, there is a reluctance to grant large handouts to countries where corruption ensures that money often ends up in the wrong hands. More significantly, big EU players like Greece, Spain and Britain are in dire need of financial help and they are not prepared to see the funds they want earmarked for them to be diverted to the East. Hungary has warned that if the EU does not move swiftly to prop up central banks in many Eastern European nations they will collapse thereby undermining the EU and creating what Hungarians have called a new “Iron Curtain.”
Some experts worry that, as the global crisis gets worsens, there could be a reshaping of the map of Eastern Europe as former Soviet states turn away from Brussels and look to the Russian Bear and China for assistance.

IS THIS HOW THE CHINESE SEE AMERICA?

While we are telling the world about China’s human rights record, China is monitoring us and how it portrays us to its people is far from flattering. While some may argue that is only to be expected it is nonetheless important to know what more than one billion Chinese are being told by their government about America.
China likes to accuse the U.S. of having double standards on human rights issues and even now when China is finding favor with aspects of the Obama administration’s Afghan-Pakistan policy it has seized an opportunity to criticize us. That opportunity arose with the February 25 publication of the U.S. State Department’s 2008 Country Reports on human rights abuses across the globe. China knew it would receive its annual minus mark for its rights record and decided to hit back. Ironically, the State Dept. gave Afghanistan’s government, which America supports, a lower mark than China. Hamid Karzai’s administration, and is enemy, the Taliban, were condemned for creating a living hell for the Afghan people. The State Dept. issued the following indictment of the Karzai administration:
““Human rights organizations reported local authorities tortured and abused detainees. Torture and abuse included pulling out fingernails and toenails, burning with hot oil, beatings, sexual humiliation, and sodomy.”
That terrible criticism of another country did not deter China from releasing its own report entitled, “Human Rights Record of the United States in 2008. It was published in “China Daily,” the country’s major newspaper run by the Chinese Communist Party. The report was subdivided into sections, the first being “On Life and Personal Security,” which used FBI statistics and articles from newspapers like the Washington Post to point out that there were 1.4 million violent crimes and 17,000 murders committed in the U.S, in 2008. It also quoted a Washington Post report from September 2008 claiming that Americans aged 12 and over had experienced 23 million crimes of violence or theft. In a further attempt to show to the Chinese people that America was a violent society in which citizens were at risk of violence the report provided figures from the Christian Science Monitor showing that there were over 200 million privately owned weapons in the U.S. That section of the report ended by recalling the Christmas Eve 2008 killing of eight people in an L.A. suburb by a man in a Santa Claus outfit.
The report informed the Chinese people that in 2008 the FBI illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens at the request of the Bush White House and brand new technology was used in the surveillance program. The report also zeroed in on fact that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world:
“The proportion of U.S. prisoners to its population has hit a new high. The Washington Post reported on July 11, 2008 that the United States has 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation in the world. A report issued by the Justice Department on December 11, 2008, said that over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail, or on parole at the end of 2007, equivalent to 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents, or one in every thirty-one adults……….The rate of prisoners, higher than any period in U.S. history, was almost six times the world average,” said the report, also pointing out that a story from “The Economist” on May 10, 2008 stated that the U.S. was one of the few countries where felons were deprived f rights with some states not allowing them to vote.
It was clear the report’s authors, no doubt government-employed propagandists, had made great use of source material from U.S. media reports and federal documents. Capitalism, always a favorite target for Chinese communists, got special treatment with detailed figures showing how the richest fifth of Americans earned fifteen times more than the bottom fifth. Other figures were included to depict an America experiencing growing homelessness and poverty, with 23% of New Yorkers living beneath the poverty line. U.S. Department of Labor statistics were quoted to indicate increases in unemployment rates and a report from the New York State Labor Department was used to prove that workers were often ripped off. No mention was made of the fact that U.S. federal and local investigations were often responsible for exposing corruption and such issues were publicly reported, which was rarely the case in China.
The report made a big play about the tens of millions in the U.S. who lacked health insurance. It was claimed that one in five young American adults suffered from a personality disorder and that 25% of College-aged Americans with mental problems did not get treatment. Support for those claims came in sourced reports from a variety of outlets including the Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.
Racial discrimination was featured with evidence attributed to federal bodies, including the U.S. Labor Department and the National Urban League. The purpose of that part of the report was to highlight the high unemployment rates among African Americans and their failure rate in high schools. Figures showing that black men were six times more likely to be jailed than their white counterparts were attributed to U.S. Department of Justice findings published on June 5, 2008. The treatment of Native Americans and the erecting of a Border fence were quoted as examples of how the basic rights of “indigenous” Americans were “infringed.”
“There is serious racial hostility in the United States. According to a Voice of America report, a research report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice at the end of 2005 shows that the U.S. reports about 191,000 hates c rimes each year,” the report further alleged.
In order to demonstrate that China kept a close eye on events here, reference was made to an ongoing case in Pennsylvania where two judges are accused of taking bribes to send thousands of juveniles to detention centers run by private contractors. No mention was made of the fact that those judges are being prosecuted.
A final section of the report focused on what it described as the U.S. violation of human rights in other nations. It accused private contractors like Blackwater of killing innocent Iraqis and quoted a U.S. Congressional investigation which found that Blackwater soldiers were involved in 196 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005. An unusual paragraph, which dealt with the U.S. as the world’s major arms dealer, seemed somewhat strange given that China sells arms on a global scale.
“It’s (U.S.) arms sales greatly intensified instability across the world and severely violated human rights of foreign nationals. A report by the New American Foundation said arms sales reached $32 billion in 2007, more than three times the level in 2001. The weapons were sold to 174 nations and regions,” claimed the report.
The report concluded with criticism of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the questionable interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and other U.S. run detention facilities. For China, whose history of prisoner abuse, prisoner disappearances, secret trials and executions, is well known, the leveling criticism at the U.S. appeared almost absurd. But it has to be remembered the Chinese document was for internal consumption and for those nations who want to believe the worst about America. Whatever one might think of the report, especially given one’s tendency to dismiss it as clever propaganda, it is nevertheless a reminder that we are not perfect while we condemn others. Still, it should not be forgotten that our tendency is to announce to the world our failings and inadequacies, thereby inviting scrutiny and criticism. In contrast, China runs over student dissidents with tanks, sends people to labor camps if they question the system and prefers lies and obfuscation to freedom of expression and the truth.

ISRAELI HARD MAN TEST FOR OBAMA

Israel’s failed war in Lebanon in 2006 not only sent Israelis lurching to the political Right and the Far Right, it also enabled the meteoric rise of Avigdor Lieberman, often described as Israel’s own “strategic threat.”
Lieberman who has the charisma of a political thug, which can be an attribute in the bear pit of Israel’s politics, has emerged as his country’s political king maker and the leader of its third largest party, Yisrael Beiteinu - also called “Israel is Our Home .” He admits to being a controversial figure but claims it is not a negative thing, though it has to be said he has a penchant for allowing his mouth to work faster than his brain. Still, he is a shrewd political operative otherwise he could not have rallied considerable support for his party among settlers, Russian-born Jews and mainstream opinion which, prior to the war in Lebanon and the recent invasion of Gaza, supported leftwing or centrist politicians.
Ever since Israel’s military defeat in Lebanon in 2006, Lieberman’s political star has been rising, with some pundits predicting he has the talent and support to become a future prime minister. For now, however, his ambitions appear limited to holding a senior Cabinet post in the next Israeli government; a role that would give him more power than the government jobs he held under Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
Not everyone is happy with his growing ability to shape the future of Israeli politics. The Haaretz newspaper has called him irresponsible while some have warned that he is the most dangerous politician in the history of the state. The Labour Party leader, Ophir Pines-Paz has warned that, “Lieberman is himself a strategic threat.”
So who is Avigdor Lieberman? What are his roots? And why should the Obama administration and his allies in Europe be wary about his rise to power?
Lieberman was born on June 5, 1958 in what was the Soviet republic of Moldova, a country with a population of 4 million that had no natural resources and whose economy was based on agriculture. Today, it remains a poor country that has ambitions to join the EU and NATO. By his teens, Avigdor had the barrel-chested, tough guy image he still sports to this day and it enabled him to earn money as a nightclub bouncer. According to his version of history, he was also a broadcaster before he left Moldova in 1978 and settled in Israel. Once there, he earned a degree in political science from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
Within a decade, he was involved in building the Zionist Forum for Soviet Jewry and was running a branch of a workers’ union. As a consequence, he created a political base among Soviet immigrants and within the union movement. His party allegiance at that time was to Likud and he rose to become its Director General, remaining in the post for three years. By then, he had established close ties to the party’s figurehead, the tough, non-sense right-winger, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was prime minister. He recognized Lieberman’s strong ties to grass roots movements and made him Director General of his office. The two men had a lot in common in that both were brash and opinionated. Netanyahu also had a reputation for being devious and extreme and was the one Israeli leader whom President Clinton disliked intensely. The president’s White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart once said that Netanyahu was one of the most obnoxious men he had ever met and was also one of the most untrustworthy. “He could open his mouth and you had no confidence that what came out of it was going to be the truth,” claimed Lockhart. Lieberman served in Netanyahu’s office for a year and then went off to found his own party in 1999.
His party - Israel is Our Home - advocated making Israel a singular Jewish state based on the principle that the Arab minority within the country, numbering over 1 million, posed the greatest threat to future security. His solution was to hand over some Arab areas of Israel in return for seizing large parts of the West bank for building and expanding Jewish settlements. He also proposed that, aside from moving Arabs out of Israel, those living there should be subject to a “loyalty test” in which they could only hold identity cards if they swore allegiance to the Jewish state. Members of Lieberman’s party have also argued that Arabs could be deprived of the right to vote.
While many of those pronouncements attracted the ire of mainstream figures they paled in comparison to some of Lieberman’s more outrageous public utterances. He declared in January 2009, during the Gaza invasion, that Israel should deal with Hamas the way the U.S. dealt with the Japanese. His comments were seen as a reference to the dropping of the atom bomb. He has also called for Israeli politicians willing to talk to Hamas to be tried before Nuremburg-type courts. Back in 2002, his solution for dealing with the Intifada in Ramallah was to tell the Palestinians that they had 24 hours to end the violence or all their places of business would be bombed.
When it comes to issues like Iran, he has made no secret of his view that Hezbollah must be defeated, by whatever means necessary and Iran’s nuclear infrastructure should be bombed irrespective of international opposition. If such statements were coming from a politician on the fringes of Israeli society they would be dismissed as the ranting of someone unhinged. But Lieberman is not on the political fringes. He is now at the apex of the country’s political machinery, playing the king maker in a state in which its proportional representation voting system has created instability and at a time when the Israel public is m ore hawkish than ever.
At the core of the support for Lieberman are the people he, his wife and three children live among – West Bank settlers, who applauded him when he resigned from parliament in 2008 in protest at U.S. backed peace talks with the Palestinians. He has also benefited from the fact that over 1 million Soviet Jews like him have settled in Israel since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. More are arriving every year and they tend to be more extreme than Jews who have lived all their lives in Israel.
Lieberman has successfully argued that Israel cannot afford to make concession because they convey weakness. He has pointed to the failed war in Lebanon as an example of Israel not being prepared to use all its military might to crush Hezbollah. In doing so, he has tapped into hurt Israeli pride and a growing belief even among mainstream thinkers that only a strong military response to outside threats will keep Israel safe. He has equally received widespread support for his contention that uprooting Jewish settlements on Arab land only emboldens the Palestinians.
Some have called Lieberman a fascist while others have used terms like far-right nationalist and ultra-nationalist. In contrast, he sees himself as a populist and it could be argued that with Israel’s seeming political drift to the Right, his ultra- Right political philosophy is not far divorced from the type of mainstream thinking that applauded the bombardment of Gaza and sees value in the principles of Likud leader and former Lieberman mentor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
For the Obama administration and its European allies the rise of Lieberman and the growing political fortunes of Netanyahu present worrying challenges and make the prospects for a Middle East peace deal seem father off than ever. There is also a real possibility that Israel, with Netanyahu in charge and with Lieberman at his right hand, might decide in the year ahead to ignore Washington’s advice and attack Iran or invite a war with Hezbollah to ensure this time that Israel will be victorious. The new U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, will be well aware of the pitfalls of dealing with Netanyahu, given her husband’s history with him. Now she must also keep a wary eye on Lieberman. That duo could spell real danger for the Middle East and the West.
Finally, like many recent Israeli political figures, including Sharon and Olmert, Lieberman is reported to be the subject of an ongoing fraud investigation.