Russian military, FSB openly command 'rebels' in Ukraine

Putin's fig leaf of "separatism" is gone; this is now an out-in-the-open Russian war against Ukraine. 

Is this the beginning of a wider-ranging Russian war of aggression in Eastern Europe?

Pushing locals aside, Russians take top rebel posts in east Ukraine

By Gabriela Baczynska and Aleksandar Vasovic

July 27, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0FW07020140727

Elite 'liberal' media slants toward war in Syria

Lately, I've been posting op-eds and editorials from the "liberal" Washington Post about Syria because it shows how strong is the consensus of Left-Right elite opinion in America that the U.S. Government must be actively involved and "leading" in every conflict zone in the world, but especially in the Middle East.  

The good news is, 70 percent of Americans oppose the U.S. sending weapons to Syria's "good" rebels.  Only 20 percent favor it.  

Whereas elite U.S. opinion makers believe that President Obama should "lead" on Syria, which is elite-speak for "ignore public opinion." 

Some opinion elites might argue that 80 percent of Americans doesn't really understand what's at stake in Syria.  But the onus is on them -- and President Obama, if he wants to get the U.S. military involved -- to explain to us what's at stake.  Myself I have been following developments there and I cannot say what vital U.S. interests are at stake in Syria.  Sure, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia are supporting Assad, but if Assad prevails, then they will have only paid dearly in materiel and diplomatic face to preserve the status quo ante.  As noted CNN/Time's Fareed Zakaria, one of the few "big thinkers" on foreign policy in the mainstream media:

Contrary to much of the media commentary, the fact that Iran and Hezbollah are sending militias, arms, and money into Syria is not a sign of strength. It is a sign that they are worried that the Syrian regime might fall and are desperately seeking to shore it up. Keeping them engaged and pouring resources into Syria weakens them substantially.

Unlike Iran and Hezbollah, Russia might yet enjoy the additional moral satisfaction of having publicly stood up to America and gotten its way, but so what? Let Russia choose its battles; we'll choose ours.  

Even if we believe some of our interests are at stake in Syria, we now understand too well the potential for sectarian war, U.S. escalation, and eventual terrorist blowback in our faces.  So far, the costs of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan have far outweighed any benefits.  And two years after Gadhafi's death and NATO intervention, Libya is a tribal-sectarian basketcase.  Why should Syria be any different?    

Some pundits are still trying their best to convince us.  For example, WaPo's Jim Hoagland actually warned us, quoting an unnamed French diplomat, "that a loss of U.S. credibility in Syria will encourage Iran to intensify its quest for nuclear weapons."  Really?  If we don't get involved in Syria then Iran will develop nuclear weapons?  Gimme a break!

This argument is the last refuge of neoconservative scoundrels.  Think what he's saying: the U.S. must lead in every instance or forfeit its right to lead in necessary instances.  This is the road to empire, overreach and collapse.

Hoagland's main cheapshot argument is that Obama is worried about his presidential legacy: Obama wants to be known for getting us out of two wars, not starting a third one in Syria.  But even if it's true, what's so wrong with that?  

It's too bad Hoagland and the Washington Post's editorial board don't read the Washington Post's news section:

The difference this time is that the mobilization [of foreign fighters] has been stunningly rapid — what took six years to build in Iraq at the height of the U.S. occupation may have accumulated inside Syria in less than half that.

For Syria's neighbors, the conflict in Syria has become a Sunni-Shia regional war by proxy.  And the U.S. is injecting itself into this sectarian divide, taking the Sunnis' side... that incidentally includes al-Qaeda.

Next, let's take the "liberal" New York Times' Thomas Friedman, America's biggest "big thinker" on foreign policy, (God help us).  In his latest op-ed, Friedman gives two options for U.S. actions in Syria.  Conspicuously, not arming the rebels is not one of those options.  This is how elite opinion-makers do their black magic: they give a sense of inevitability to U.S. military action. 

Friedman actually describes the "idealist approach" to Syria (option #2) as putting U.S. boots on the ground and doing another Iraq debacle, er, occupation.  This is what "idealists" want in Tom Friedman's mind!  Who are these people?!

Next, for the record let's note that the "liberal" Chicago Tribune also supports America's arming Syria's "good" rebels.  But the Tribune holds onto the very slim hope that those arms will force a stalemate and Syria's President Assad to the negotiating table.  (I should note that the Tribune's owner, McClatchy Newspapers, has been doing excellent reporting on Syria.)

Likewise the "liberal" Boston Globe also agrees with President Obama's decision to arm Syria's rebels, although it urges mommy-like "caution" and "care" in doing so: "Now you be careful playing with those guns, rebels!  Don't shoot at anybody who doesn't shoot at your first.  And remember, we're not giving these weapons to you because we hate Shiites; and don't give them to terrorists!"  Pathetic.     

Some of you may say I'm getting too worked up about a few U.S. weapons to Syria.  Maybe so.  Maybe this is a classic Obama maneuver: appearing to do something while actually doing nothing.  According to the New York Times, "Mr. Obama expressed no confidence it would change the outcome, but privately expressed hope it might buy time to bring about a negotiated settlement."

However, once he involves the U.S. and puts his and our nation's credibility on the line, President Obama will be under immense international pressure and pressure from Congress to turn the tide against Assad's forces.  Then he (we) could be "dragged into an escalating level of support: from light arms to anti-tank weapons to a no-fly zone and so on" ... and so forth, up to putting U.S. boots on the ground -- the "idealist" outcome for the Friedmanites, but the nightmare scenario for Americans.

For admirable lessons on U.S. military restraint vis-a-vis Syria (and Iran), you have to look past the major U.S. newspapers and read stuff like...Daniel Larison at The American Conservative.  

I know, I know, these are strange times....

If El Nino triggers wars, what about MMGW?

If climate change is unavoidable then maybe we should act like the rest of the world does when faced with drought: stop producing stuff and start preparing for war. Put down your plows and PCs, horde your supplies and ammo, and get ready to conquer and pillage!

P.S. - This might be a good time to remind yourself of zombie survival skills, which would also come in handy during climate wars or against marauders.

Weather and War

A new study suggests El Niño may be to blame for nearly a quarter of recent global conflicts.

By Ray Fisman

August 24, 2011 | Slate

What accounts for the collapse of history's great civilizations? Retired anthropologist and author Brian Fagan blames it on the weather, and in particular on the pernicious effects of El Niño, a periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that brings a hotter, drier climate to tropical countries worldwide. Fagan and others have suggested that El Niño had a hand in the biblical droughts in Egypt, the disappearance of the Mayan Empire, and even the French Revolution.

A newly released study in this week's Nature suggests that there may be some science underlying this speculation and that El Niño's effects on the wealth and stability of nations has continued into recent times. Combining cutting-edge climate science with data on civil conflicts during the second half of the 20^th century, the researchers estimate that more than a fifth of violent flare-ups worldwide may have been triggered by El Niño. And if climate experts are correct in predicting that in the next century El Niño-like conditions will become more commonplace due to climate change, the study's findings point to a hotter, drier, and more violent planet in the years ahead.

The primary mechanism by which warmer, drier weather potentially causes civil conflict is none too subtle—heat and drought reduce the food supply, leaving hungry, rebellious populations in their wake. The unruly hordes take up arms against the government or fight amongst themselves for scarce resources.

El Niño promises not just one lean season but up to 18 months of heat and drought, which can sometimes be predicted well in advance. Indigenous societies have for centuries had ways of divining El Niño's arrival. Andean potato farmers, for example, learned to predict El Niño's onset from the brightness of stars in the Pleiades constellation. Why bother tilling the soil if you know there's nothing but drought on the horizon? Better to prepare for war instead, especially if you expect your neighbors will be taking up arms as well.

The new Nature study isn't the first to consider the link between global climactic changes and war. But most large-scale shifts in weather take place over centuries or millennia, amid technology revolutions and social upheaval that make it impossible to discern any measurable effect due to climate. Saying that the world is less violent now than it was 500 years ago—or more violent than it was during the last ice age—isn't a very useful observation, even if we had comparable data on violence going back that far. El Niño causes the tropics to randomly flip back and forth between weather extremes every few years, which allows the researchers to compare the level of civil conflict within a given country under very different climactic conditions but just a few years apart.

The authors (who include eminent oceanographer Mark Cane, the first person to successfully forecast El Niño through numerical modeling) classify El Niño months based on equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures, with extended periods of warming as the indicator of El Niño's arrival. Unusually cool surface temperatures indicate the onset of La Niña, El Niño's kinder, wetter mirror image. Using data on armed conflicts during 1950-2004 compiled by Swedish and Norwegian researchers, they compare the likelihood that conflicts flare up during El Niño versus La Niña years. (The researchers use a standard measure of conflict onset, defined as a new civil dispute that breaks out between the government and an organized adversary, resulting in at least 25 battle-related deaths in that year.)

In regions affected by El Niño fluctuations the authors find a doubling of conflict risk during El Niño as compared to La Niña. El Niño is a relatively frequent event, occurring every four to seven years, and it affects fully half of the world's population (including most of Latin American, South and Southeast Asia, and all of Sub-Saharan Africa). Given this high frequency and wide-ranging impact, the paper's findings suggest that El Niño has had a hand in triggering as much as 21 percent of recent conflicts worldwide. In a "placebo" set of countries relatively removed from El Niño's influence—including most of North Africa, the Middle East, and northern parts of Asia—conflict risk is the same during both El Niño and La Niña periods, bolstering the claim that weather is indeed behind their results. The authors also found that El Niño's impact on conflict took place relatively soon after its arrival, and well before food shortages would have really set in. While they don't speculate on the explanation for these patterns in the data, they are broadly consistent with the critical role that expectations of future hardship play in causing people to switch from agriculture to waging war.

These findings are of grave concern, if you believe—as many climate scientists do—that climate change will produce global weather patterns that are more El Niño-like, with just as much year-to-year climate variability as exists today, but with warmer and drier conditions overall. While it would be premature to draw any conclusions, given the randomness in year-to-year appearances of El Niño and the extreme complexity of global climate systems, it does hint at one more reason to worry about a warming planet.

But linking the onset of violence to a relatively predictable phenomenon like El Niño might help us head off impending conflict before it starts. Scientists can with some certainty spot an El Niño half a year away, which means aid organizations should have more than enough time to deliver El Niño-dependent relief that can diminish the conflict-inducing effects of drought and famine before bad weather even arrives. By uncovering the link between El Niño and violence, this study may serve as a very early first step in shielding the developing world from the ill effects of its hotter, drier future.