Archive for October, 2007
The Washington Post reported yesterday that there is a way for things to suddenly get much worse in Iraq: a giant dam could collapse, releasing a 143-square-mile reservoir on the Tigris River. This would destroy much of the city of Mosul, which lies downstream, and could drown as many as 500,000 people.
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No one interviewed for the article ventures an estimate of probabilities for the event. Some Iraqi engineers are skeptical about the level of danger, while some American officials are said to think that “the dam could collapse any day.”
According to a recent New York Times article, many in the US intelligence community “believe that Pakistan, not Iraq, is the place Mr. Bush should consider the ‘central front’ in the battle against terrorism,” as it threatens “political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play.”
The article includes these forecasts:
- “If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s army, they could also threaten the security of Pakistan’s potent nuclear arsenal.”
- “Some experts … argue that Pakistan’s army is overwhelmingly moderate and will remain so, even without General Musharraf.”
- Instability in Pakistan “could cripple a renewed [US] effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.”
Despite Pakistan now constituting one of the chief threats to American security, there may be little the US can do about it: according to “recent intelligence assessments,” “American influence over events in Pakistan may be ebbing fast.”
Writing in the Washington Post, Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji says that “The Bush administration may be striving to help Iranian democrats, but any Iranian who seeks American dollars will not be recognized as a democrat by his or her fellow citizens.”
What can the US do, if monetary aid to democratic forces is unconstructive? He writes that “The Iranian people, myself included, need freedom, democracy and peace — not war conditions and constant worries about a potential barrage of U.S. missiles.”
Ganji notes several reasons that US funds are not helpful:
- “Over the past two centuries, many Iranian politicians were paid or influenced by foreign powers. As a result, most Iranian intellectuals and democratic forces are deeply critical of external support.”
- “The Iranian people do not want their democratic movement to be dependent on or subservient to any foreign government.”
- “The Iranian regime uses American funding as an excuse to persecute opponents. Although its accusations are false, this has proved effective in poisoning the public against the regime’s opponents. Fear of foreign meddling is one reason for the regime’s staying power.”
Ultimately, he writes, “Iranians themselves must support the transition to democracy; it cannot be presented like a gift.”
A Newsweek article last week places a date on potential political change in China: 2022.
The driver? A generation of Communist Party leaders now in their 40s could come to power around that time, and bring with them a “worldlier, more traveled and less doctrinaire” perspective than their predecessors. “These younger officials will have liberal thinking and open minds. They’ll see an era of change,” Renmin University professor Mao Shoulong told Newsweek.
The so-called Sixth Generation has a broader educational background as well — all nine of the current Politburo Standing Committee’s members are engineers by training, while this new generation studied diverse subjects.
They have negative baggage as well: they are said to be “nationalistic, even arrogant.”
The Sixth Generation’s accession to power is not inevitable: the article notes that the “formalized system of generational politics” within the party “may be headed for a breakdown,” making old patterns less probable.
Potential indicators of future instability for the United States have been in the news lately. They are all weak signals of future trouble, but each has at least a low probability of becoming significant, and they are also all potentially mutually reinforcing:
- Americans increasingly see themselves as divided between haves and have-nots, according to a new Pew study. Crucially, twice as many (34%) see themselves as have-nots than did 20 years ago, a significant departure from the American vision of a broadly middle-class society.
- Income inequality is increasing, and wealth is increasingly concentrated at the very top of the income pyramid, meaning that the elite can more easily disengage from the rest of society.
- At least in some local jurisdictions, Hispanics are feeling threatened by the anti-illegal immigration campaign now playing out (and the anti-immigrant sentiment that underlies it), and are uniting in the face of the threat. This drives exactly the kind of scenario of unified, estranged Hispanics that anti-immigrant groups fear.
- Actual secessionist groups, albeit fringe groups, met this month to discuss possible secession by both “red” and “blue” states.
A recent report by the US Government Accountability Office suggests why devolution into a narcostate controlled by drug lords must be counted among the possible scenarios for Mexico’s future.
As reported in the Washington Post:
- Mexico is now the principal conduit for drugs into the US.
- Mexican drug cartels now “bring in as much as $23 billion a year in revenue.”
- “Mexican drug cartels generate more revenue than at least 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and the U.S. government’s highest estimate of cartel revenue tops that of Merck, Deere and Halliburton.”
- “A climate of ‘impunity’” enables the cartels to prosper.
- In some Mexican states cartels are so influential that the government rarely attempts counter-narcotics action there.
Still, the government is not pervasively compromised: it continues to extradite major traffickers to the US, and nearly a 1,000 federal law enforcement officers have been fired since 2000. Overall, the chance of a full-fledged takeover appears low.