This is cool. McFaul’s an accomplished scholar and has taken his expertise right to the top of the diplomatic side of things. From Josh Rogin, at Foreign Policy , ” Meet the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul .” And McFaul gets a shout out from Michael Rubin at Commentary, ” Russia Resets Relations… With Syria .” (Here’s one of the classic McFaul pieces, read widely in graduate school in the 1990s: ” A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era .”)
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Political Scientist Michael McFaul Confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to Russia
From political scientist John M. Owen IV, at New York Times : Political Islam, especially the strict version practiced by Salafists in Egypt, is thriving largely because it is tapping into ideological roots that were laid down long before the revolts began. Invented in the 1920s by the Muslim Brotherhood, kept alive by their many affiliates and offshoots, boosted by the failures of Nasserism and Baathism, allegedly bankrolled by Saudi and Qatari money, and inspired by the defiant example of revolutionary Iran, Islamism has for years provided a coherent narrative about what ails Muslim societies and where the cure lies. Far from rendering Islamism unnecessary, as some experts forecast, the Arab Spring has increased its credibility; Islamists, after all, have long condemned these corrupt regimes as destined to fail. Liberalism in 19th-century Europe, and Islamism in the Arab world today, are like channels dug by one generation of activists and kept open, sometimes quietly, by future ones. When the storms of revolution arrive, whether in Europe or the Middle East, the waters will find those channels. Islamism is winning out because it is the deepest and widest channel into which today’s Arab discontent can flow. The implications of this are pretty dire, actually. Islamism is a destabilizing force for international relations. It rejects the legitimacy of the status quo and will work to topple it. But RTWT for context. Owen makes an interesting argument, despite the troubling implications of the analysis.
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Why Islamism Is Winning
At Los Angeles Times , ” Gingrich’s record belies his conservative image “: For months, many Republicans have cast about for an alternative to Mitt Romney, decrying him as insufficiently conservative. Now they appear to have settled on a new front-runner — Newt Gingrich — who is no more conservative than Romney. Both men have parted company with the party’s most active voters on many of the same issues. Both backed requiring individuals to purchase healthcare insurance. Both supported the Wall Street bailout known as TARP and government subsidies for ethanol production. Both agreed that human activity is contributing to climate change (though each has backtracked in recent months). In the past, both supported trading systems designed to cap carbon emissions. Gingrich has favored research using stem cells from fertility clinics, putting him to the left of Romney on that issue. This year, Gingrich undercut his own candidacy by criticizing a House GOP plan to restructure Medicare as “right-wing social engineering” — though he pushed for a similar plan when he was House speaker in the mid-1990s. But unlike Romney, who supports moving to Medicare vouchers, Gingrich now favors letting seniors remain in the current system, a stance that puts him more in line with Democrats. For some GOP voters it may come down to image: Gingrich, who boasts that he is more conservative than Romney, forged his by leading a partisan revolt in 1994 that brought Republicans to power in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. And some Republicans have chosen to forgive his ideological straying because they appreciate his lacerating tone, far more brittle than Romney’s. Like other longtime politicians, Gingrich, 68, has evolved considerably over the years, shifting rightward with his party. He started out as a liberal Republican, working for Nelson Rockefeller’s 1968 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon (there were few Republicans of any stripe in the South at the time, and Gingrich, who had recently moved to Louisiana, filled a void in the Rockefeller campaign there). His shift has caused some awkwardness: Just this week, Gingrich said in a CNN interview that he regretted his 1979 vote to create the federal Department of Education, a target for elimination by many conservatives…. His rivals for the GOP nomination argue that Gingrich’s record doesn’t match his conservative image. Rep. Ron Paul, after cataloging what he deemed to be repeated betrayals by Gingrich and Romney, said that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two men. Rep. Michele Bachmann calls them “the great pretenders.” The trailing candidates are likely to amplify their critiques in a televised debate Saturday night, when Gingrich will for the first time defend his position as the clear GOP front-runner.
It’s interesting that Angela Merkel is so determined to preserve the Eurozone, even if that means making structural changes that weaken her European partners. The alternative is a collapse of the single currency and perhaps the disintegration of the European Union. The EU began as an effort to tie down France and Germany in a web of mutual cooperation and multilateral institutions. Germany now is the leading state working to prevent a return to balance of power politics on the continent. Strange how things work like that, but in the post-WWII era, no other political regime has undergone a great cultural change than Germany. See Los Angeles Times , ” Germany’s hand will be uppermost as Europe writes new fiscal rules .”
It’s interesting that Angela Merkel is so determined to preserve the Eurozone, even if that means making structural changes that weaken her European partners. The alternative is a collapse of the single currency and perhaps the disintegration of the European Union. The EU began as an effort to tie down France and Germany in a web of mutual cooperation and multilateral institutions. Germany now is the leading state working to prevent a return to balance of power politics on the continent. Strange how things work like that, but in the post-WWII era, no other political regime has undergone a great cultural change than Germany. See Los Angeles Times , ” Germany’s hand will be uppermost as Europe writes new fiscal rules .”
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German Power to Shape Europe’s New Rules
One of the better, more concise discussions I’ve read on this, at Counterpoint , ” From the Editors: On the Controversy of John Mearsheimer ” (via Instapundit ). And from Pejman Yousefzadeh, ” It Is Time for John Mearsheimer to Go .” I wrote on this here: ” The Tragedy of John Mearsheimer .”
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More on the John Mearsheimer Anti-Semitism Controversy
From Jacob Heilbrunn, at National Interest : Is Iran a threat to America? Or is it a fading power? The Iranian storming of the British embassy should not be interpreted as a sign of growing radicalism in Iran but as testament to the weakness of the regime. It has nothing in common with the 1979 takeover of the American embassy. There is no mass support inside Iran for attacking the United Kingdom. The calls in the Iranian parliament for “death to Britain” have an obligatory feel to them. Yet the possiblity of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons has prompted a number of neoconservatives to maintain that it’s imperative to launch a strike against it. Max Boot’s column in the Los Angeles Times is a case in point. Paul Pillar points to the abuse of Nazi analogies in his post today. But Boot’s column can be questioned on other grounds as well. What caught my eye were the other historical analogies that Boot made. He asks why the West remained passive not just during the rise of Nazi Germany, but also While the Soviet Union enslaved half of Europe and fomented revolution in China in the late 1940s? And, again, while Al Qaeda gathered strength in the 1990s? Those questions will forever haunt the reputations of the responsible statesmen, from Neville Chamberlain to Bill Clinton. Continue reading . Heilbrunn is right to take after Boot for that misguided analogical turn, although he’s kidding himself if he really thinks Iran’s an imaginary threat. See my earlier entry, ” Melanie Phillips: Britain Impotently Warns Iran of ‘Serious Consequences’ .”
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The Neocon Rush to War Against Iran
From Tyler Cowen, at the new special issue of Foreign Policy , ” 100 Top Global Thinkers 2011 “: 4. The eurozone is for pretty much everyone in Europe . By now, it should be obvious that a 17-nation eurozone was a bad idea. The only questions left are how many countries do not belong and how painful will it be to push out those that shouldn’t be there. Whether or not you think the current patchwork bailouts will work (probably not, see No. 5 below), just what, precisely, are those bailouts fighting to defend? No one knows anymore. The peripheral countries, like Greece and Portugal, used to think that if they suffered through a bit of deflation from eurozone membership, they still could benefit from the lower borrowing rates enjoyed by stronger economies like Germany. Now they’re getting the deflationary pressures, stronger than ever before, but without the low borrowing rates. So what’s in it for them to remain? What’s in it for Germany and Finland and the Netherlands? It’s hard to see.
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6 Ideas for the Ash Heap of History
From Tyler Cowen, at the new special issue of Foreign Policy , ” 100 Top Global Thinkers 2011 “: 4. The eurozone is for pretty much everyone in Europe . By now, it should be obvious that a 17-nation eurozone was a bad idea. The only questions left are how many countries do not belong and how painful will it be to push out those that shouldn’t be there. Whether or not you think the current patchwork bailouts will work (probably not, see No. 5 below), just what, precisely, are those bailouts fighting to defend? No one knows anymore. The peripheral countries, like Greece and Portugal, used to think that if they suffered through a bit of deflation from eurozone membership, they still could benefit from the lower borrowing rates enjoyed by stronger economies like Germany. Now they’re getting the deflationary pressures, stronger than ever before, but without the low borrowing rates. So what’s in it for them to remain? What’s in it for Germany and Finland and the Netherlands? It’s hard to see.
Originally posted here:
6 Ideas for the Ash Heap of History
