Iran may soon be unable to export oil due to declining production, a scholar writes in PNAS.
Economic geographer Roger Stern asserts that Iranian oil exports could fall rapidly in the next few years, possibly even coming to a halt by 2015, due to production difficulties brought on by lack of domestic and foreign investment.
Stern suggests two implications:
- Iran might actually need the nuclear energy program it is pursuing.
- In a few years, Iran will be much more vulnerable to sanctions.
Endangered: the Amazon forest
Danger level: medium
Time frame: 50-100 years
Causes: climate change, deforestation
A new study of the effects of climate change suggests that without significant action to reduce the phenomenon, rising temperatures and falling rainfall could destroy the ecosystem completely, transforming the rain forest into savanna and wiping out vast amounts of biodiversity.
In a new poll, most Japanese feel that North Korea and China are potential military threats to their country.
When asked whether these countries constituted threats, Japanese responded:
- 80% — North Korea
- 55% — China
- 39% — Russia
These results suggest that:
- Japanese may be inclined to keep the US close if it is viewed as a responsible protector
- the North Korean nuclear program will continue to cause great alarm in Japan, and in certain circumstances could overcome the Japanese aversion to nuclear weapons
Der Spiegel reports that German women will be trying to delay birth for the next week, as a new law will make it much more lucrative to be a parent after December 31st.
The government will greatly increase subsidy payments to new parents — up to €1,800 ($2,380) a month for 14 months.
This is an attempt to stave off population decline, which according to the Federal Statistical Office could lower the population from 82 million people to 69 million by 2050. As in places such as Japan and Russia, Germans fear the consequences for the pension system, the labor force, and the nation’s innovation capabilities.
The death of brutal (and comically megalomaniacal) dictator Saparmurat Niyazov makes the future of the tightly controlled Central Asian nation suddenly uncertain.
Says a Russian expert in the Christian Science Monitor, “We might see a military coup, or an extended period of clashes among the elite.”
Another Russian expert adds, “Basically, there is no predictable script for a power transfer in Turkmenistan.”
Observers also suggest that Turkmenistan’s energy resources might become more accessible to Western energy companies in the future.
More broadly, Turkmenistan may end up at the center of a renewed multipolar “Great Game” in the 21st century. As the IHT puts it, “The country is of great interest to the West, Russia, China and Iran because of its vast natural gas reserves and its geographical position.”
Another indication from China of the population’s rising sense that they have rights, and that the government’s power should be constrained: a public shaming of prostitutes drew “a hail of criticism for violating the right to privacy.”
Says a Chinese sociologist,
Twenty years ago, this kind of parade would have been greeted with unanimous applause. But now it gets more criticism than support because more people realize their rights should be protected. And of course, they have more channels to voice their criticism, like the Internet.
While most Chinese appear content with the overall bargain the Communist Party offers — stability and rising wealth for lack of democracy — the public continues to move the line, claiming more rights for themselves, and envisioning more constraints on the government.
It is a trajectory that leads naturally, though not inevitably, to democracy.
Neoconservative Cold Warrior Jeane Kirkpatrick has died.
She came to prominence on the basis of a forecast: that right-wing regimes could be supported because they can evolve into democracies, while communist countries never could.
Despite the fact that this theory had already been proven false in instances such as the Czechoslovak Prague Spring, and that it seemed to require substantial faith in the durability of communism, it was seen as justification for the Reagan administration’s support of some of the worst human rights abusers on the planet in the early 1980s.
Only four years into the Reagan presidency Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, and Kirkpatrick’s forecast rapidly began to unravel. In the end, many communist regimes abandoned power while governments Kirkpatrick had defended in Central America were still murdering dissidents.
Paul Krugman reviews some forecasts by people who got Iraq right:
Former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining in 1998 why they didn’t go on to Baghdad in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
Representative Ike Skelton, September 2002: “I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.”
Al Gore, September 2002: “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”
Barack Obama, now a United States senator, September 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
Representative John Spratt, October 2002: “The outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker-elect, October 2002: “When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited.”
Senator Russ Feingold, October 2002: “I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. … When the administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the administration’s motives.”
Howard Dean, then a candidate for president and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, February 2003: “I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time. … Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.”
Krugman concludes:
We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.
Michael Lind of the New America Foundation predicts that President Bush and the war in Iraq will be remembered harshly:
He will be remembered for the Iraq conflict for generations, long after tax-cut-driven deficits, No Child Left Behind and comprehensive immigration reform are forgotten. The fact that Bush followed the invasion of Afghanistan, which had sheltered al-Qaeda, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, will puzzle historians for centuries. It is as though, after Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR had asked Congress to declare war on Argentina.
Why did Bush do it? Did he really believe that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Was it about oil? Israel? Revenge for Hussein’s alleged attempt on Bush’s father’s life? The war will join the sinking of the USS Maine and the grassy knoll among the topics to exercise conspiracy theorists for generations, and the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib will join images of the napalmed Vietnamese girl and executed Filipino rebels in the gallery of U.S. atrocities.