Category: GeoPolitics
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The Geopolitics of Shale Oil and Gas / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Robert D. Kaplan writes: According to the elite newspapers and journals of opinion, the future of foreign affairs mainly rests on ideas: the moral impetus for humanitarian intervention, the various theories governing exchange rates and debt rebalancing necessary to fix Europe, the rise of cosmopolitanism alongside the stubborn vibrancy of nationalism in East Asia and so on. In other words, the world of the future can be engineered and defined based on doctoral theses. And to a certain extent this may be true. As the 20th century showed us, ideologies -- whether communism, fascism or humanism -- matter and matter greatly.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: MISES
Robert Higgs writes: Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only after its declarations of war against these nations in December 1941. In truth, the United States had been at war for a long time before making these declarations. Its war making took a variety of forms. For example, the U.S. navy conducted "shoot [Germans] on sight" convoys - convoys that might include British ships — in the North Atlantic along the greater part the shipping route from the United States to Great Britain, even though German U-boats had orders to refrain (and did refrain) from initiating attacks on U.S. shipping. The United States and Great Britain entered into arrangements to pool intelligence, combine weapons development, test military equipment jointly, and undertake other forms of war-related cooperation.
Friday, November 09, 2012
Will President Obama Be Able to Stand Up To China? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Money_Morning
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
While U.S. Presidential headlines dominate the airwaves this week, there is another "election" under way thousands of miles from our own shores that may be even more important when it comes to your money.
The 18th National Party Congress is now underway in Beijing. Attendees are girding for a week of symbolic posturing and speeches, the culmination of which will be a new set of Chinese leaders and a new Chinese President for the next 10 years.
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Thursday, November 08, 2012
Can Iran Save the World? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: LewRockwell
Thomas H. Naylor writes: As Secretary-General of the fifty year old Non-Aligned Movement, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be in a unique position to inject new life into the moribund 120-member organization by positioning it to confront the American Empire and its principal apologists – Israel, England, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and NATO.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Nobel Peace Prize for Europe for Not Starting World War III / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Adrian_Ash
Sorry, but history didn't end sometime between your birth and your breakfast today...
BACK in 2009 when Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize just nine months after becoming US president, he said he felt "surprised" and "deeply humbled".
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
U.S. Emerging Doctrine of Controlled Engagement / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Over the past weekend, rumors began to emerge that the Syrian opposition would allow elements of the al Assad regime to remain in Syria and participate in the new government. Rumors have become Syria's prime export, and as such they should not be taken too seriously. Nevertheless, what is happening in Syria is significant for a new foreign doctrine emerging in the United States -- a doctrine in which the United States does not take primary responsibility for events, but which allows regional crises to play out until a new regional balance is reached. Whether a good or bad policy -- and that is partly what the U.S. presidential race is about -- it is real, and it flows from lessons learned.
Friday, October 05, 2012
China to Use Rare Earth Metals as Pawns in Conflict Over Islands With Japan / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Submissions
Heiko Ihle: As China and Japan continue to ratchet up tensions over a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea, many investors may be wondering how the dispute could affect the marketplace. One potential area for fallout is the market for rare earth elements (REEs): the futuristic sounding group of 17 minerals with unpronounceable names that play a critical role in everything from hybrid cars to flat screen TVs. As discussed in our October edition of the Euro Pacific Capital Global Investor Newsletter, these minerals have shown particular sensitivity to the diplomatic relationship between the two Asian giants. If the current situation deteriorates (as it has this week when several major Chinese banks pulled out of International Monetary Fund events in Tokyo), the REE market may come under intense pressure.
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Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Contest for East Asian Supremacy, Understanding the China-Japan Island Conflict / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Sept. 29 will mark 40 years of normalized diplomatic relations between China and Japan, two countries that spent much of the 20th century in mutual enmity if not at outright war. The anniversary comes at a low point in Sino-Japanese relations amid a dispute over an island chain in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan and Diaoyu Islands in China.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Fury at the American Raj / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: LewRockwell
Eric Margolis writes: The killing of the US ambassador to Libya and angry demonstrations across the Muslim world over a tacky anti-Islamic hate video have produced the usual flood of wrong-headed commentary from our so-called foreign affairs experts and assorted media propagandists.
Across the land comes the cry, "why do they hate us?" That any Americans can in this day and age can still be surprised their nation is hated by many people from Morocco to Indonesia to Nigeria is by far the biggest surprise. We have learned little from 9/11.
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Monday, September 24, 2012
Economic Collapse Triggering the First Great War Of The 21st Century / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: John_Rolls
John Rolls Submits: Top trends forecaster Gerald Celente says, “The first great war of the 21st century has begun, and people are afraid to call it what it is.” Celente says the extreme violence in in the Middle East and North Africa is Not because of a movie that pokes fun at Islam. It’s because of decades of bad U.S. foreign policy. Celente calls people like Rudolf Giuliani a “s***head” and a “scumbag” for lying to the American people about the real reasons why the Muslim world is enraged. Celente goes on to say, “If anybody says I went over the edge, this is a matter of life and death.” Celente also believes the world is being taken to war because the world economy “. . . is collapsing. It’s collapsing in front of our eyes. The numbers are there.” Celente tells people to “buy gold and silver” to preserve wealth and says, “All around the world they are dumping dough into their economies to keep them going.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Colonizing Nations 101 / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Stephen_Lendman
Last December, Truth 11.com offered a model for destroying and colonizing nations. In Orwellian newspeak, it said:
(1) Global "Mafia" scoundrels target nations "ripe for 'Regime Change.' " Calling them rogue states enlists support.
(2) CIA/Mossad/MI6 and collaborators "arm, train, (and) finance local and foreign mercenaries/terrorists." Freedom fighters they're called for the same reason.
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Monday, August 13, 2012
The Games Of Summer From Playing Fields To Battle Fields / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Danny_Schechter
Johannesburg South Africa: When the modern Olympics were first conceived, they were intended as a peaceful alternative to war. The nations of the world were supposed to lay down their arms and stop fighting during the games out of respect for the Olympic ideal. That, of course has not happened.
In 1936, Adolph Hitler used the Berlin Olympics to showcase his “ideals,” and, now, today, the sports spectacle in London became a showcase of corporate branding and entertainment while wars rage without comment by the global TV machine that focuses only on the play by play of who’s ahead and who’s behind on the fields of sports and politics.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Geopolitical Consequences of the Fall of the Syrian Regime / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
We have entered the endgame in Syria. That doesn't mean that we have reached the end by any means, but it does mean that the precondition has been met for the fall of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. We have argued that so long as the military and security apparatus remain intact and effective, the regime could endure. Although they continue to function, neither appears intact any longer; their control of key areas such as Damascus and Aleppo is in doubt, and the reliability of their personnel, given defections, is no longer certain. We had thought that there was a reasonable chance of the al Assad regime surviving completely. That is no longer the case. At a certain point -- in our view, after the defection of a Syrian pilot June 21 and then the defection of the Tlass clan -- key members of the regime began to recalculate the probability of survival and their interests. The regime has not unraveled, but it is unraveling.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Putin’s Geopolitical Chess Game with Washington in Syria and Eurasia / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: F_William_Engdahl
Since reassuming his post as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another “world war by miscalculation.” His activities in recent weeks involve active personal diplomacy with Syria’s government as well as the so-called opposition “Syrian National Council.” It involves intense diplomacy with Erdogan’s Turkey regime. It involves closed door diplomacy with Obama. It involves direct diplomacy with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
China’s Land Bridge to Turkey Creates New Eurasian Geopolitical Potentials / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: F_William_Engdahl
The prospect of an unparalleled Eurasian economic boom lasting into the next Century and beyond is at hand. The first steps binding the vast economic space are being constructed with a number of little-publicized rail links connecting China, Russia, Kazakhstan and parts of Western Europe. It is becoming clear to more people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia including China and Russia that their natural tendency to build these markets faces only one major obstacle: NATO and the US Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance obsession. Rail infrastructure is a major key to building vast new economic markets across Eurasia.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Assessing China's Strategy / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
Simply put, China has three core strategic interests.
Paramount among them is the maintenance of domestic security. Historically, when China involves itself in global trade, as it did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the coastal region prospers, while the interior of China -- which begins about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the coast and runs about 1,600 kilometers to the west -- languishes. Roughly 80 percent of all Chinese citizens currently have household incomes lower than the average household income in Bolivia. Most of China's poor are located west of the richer coastal region. This disparity of wealth time and again has exposed tensions between the interests of the coast and those of the interior. After a failed rising in Shanghai in 1927, Mao Zedong exploited these tensions by undertaking the Long March into the interior, raising a peasant army and ultimately conquering the coastal region. He shut China off from the international trading system, leaving China more united and equal, but extremely poor.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Western Civilisation Slow Decline or Fast Fall? / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: John_Mauldin
I had my nose in Niall Ferguson's newest book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, at every possible moment during my recent trip to Hong Kong and Singapore. It's powerful and very, very timely, and I strongly recommend it. To help get the word out, I asked Niall for a short, somewhat personal piece on the thinking behind the book – in other words, what moved him to write it?
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The State of the World: Explaining U.S. Strategy / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
The fall of the Soviet Union ended the European epoch, the period in which European power dominated the world. It left the United States as the only global power, something for which it was culturally and institutionally unprepared. Since the end of World War II, the United States had defined its foreign policy in terms of its confrontation with the Soviet Union. Virtually everything it did around the world in some fashion related to this confrontation. The fall of the Soviet Union simultaneously freed the United States from a dangerous confrontation and eliminated the focus of its foreign policy.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The European Crisis, China and the Asian Model / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
The evolution of geopolitics is cyclical. Powers rise, fall and shift. Changes occur in every generation in an unending ballet. However, the period between 1989 and 1991 was unique in that a long cycle of human history spanning hundreds of years ended, and with it a shorter cycle also came to a close. The world is still reverberating from the events of that period.
On Dec. 25, 1991, an epoch ended. On that day the Soviet Union collapsed, and for the first time in almost 500 years no European power was a global power, meaning no European state integrated economic, military and political power on a global scale. What began in 1492 with Europe smashing its way into the world and creating a global imperial system had ended. For five centuries, one European power or another had dominated the world, whether Portugal, Spain, France, England or the Soviet Union. Even the lesser European powers at the time had some degree of global influence.
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Roads To War And Economic Collapse / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President’s statement about his country’s response to Washington’s missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction.