Trump's war against Iran has been nearly over for a long time

9 March 2026 Trump says "the war is very complete," and he's considering taking over Strait of Hormuz (CBS)

11 March 2026 Trump tells Axios war in Iran will end soon, 'practically nothing left' to target (Reuters)

15 March 2026 Energy Secretary Chris Wright says Iran war will likely end in weeks (Politico)

27 March 2026 Rubio says US expects to finish Iran war 'in next couple of weeks' (BBC)

28 March 2026 VP JD Vance says US will get out of Iran 'soon' and fuel prices will come down (WION)

31 March 2026 Trump says U.S. could end Iran war in two to three weeks (Reuters)

31 March 2026 Pete Hegseth says "upcoming days will be decisive" in war against Iran (CBS)

2 April 2026 Trump says Iran war objectives 'nearing completion' in address to nation (BBC)

5 April 2026 Trump says deal with Iran possible by Monday, Fox News reports (Reuters)

15 April 2026 Iran war 'very close to over,' Trump says — and the stock market 'is going to boom' (CNBC)

16 April 2026 Trump says war in Iran is going 'swimmingly' and 'should be ending pretty soon' (CNBC)

17 April 2026 Trump says Iranians have "agreed to everything," including removal of enriched uranium (CBS)

24 April 2026 Trump claims US has total control over strait of Hormuz after Iran seizes two container ships (Guardian)

4 May 2026 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says offensive stage of Iran war is ‘over' (BBC)

6 May 2026 Trump says war will be ‘over quickly’ as Iran reviews US peace proposal (Al Jazeera)

6 May 2026 Rubio says Iran offensive ‘has concluded,’ insists US accomplished its operational aims (Times of Israel)

7 May 2026 Trump says war on Iran will be 'over quickly’ (Middle East Eye)

20 May 2026 Trump says Iran war will end 'very quickly' (Independent)

23 May 2026 Trump says Iran deal 'largely negotiated' including reopening Strait of Hormuz (BBC)

Ukraine: Tankie Logic

1.The USA and NATO are bad.

2. The USA and NATO oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

3. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. NATO is bad.

2. The Ukrainian government wants to join NATO

3. The Ukrainian government is therefore bad.

4. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. The USSR was good.

2. Vladimir Putin's regime is the heir to the USSR.

3. Vladimir Putin's regime is therefore good.

4. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. The USA has invaded various countries around the world.

2. Russia is therefore allowed invade any country it likes.

3. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. Ukraine had applied to join NATO.

2. Ukraine applying to join NATO made many Russians sad.

3. Russians should never be sad.

4. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. There are some fascists in Ukraine.

2. Any country is entitled to invade any other country if there are fascists in it.

3. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. People in Ukraine are actually Russians, even if some of them speak a funny language.

2. Ukraine is not a real country but a region of Russia.

3. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. Big countries are allowed to invade their neighbours whenever they like.

2. Russia is a big country.

3. Ukraine neighbours Russia.

4. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. The media is currently reporting that Russian forces have committed atrocities in Ukraine.

2. However, the media lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction.

3. The media is therefore lying about atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

4. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

1. Bad things are happening in various places in the world.

2. People are not doing anything about these bad things.

3. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is therefore good.

images

Iranian poster (University of Chicago Library: "The Graphics of Revolution and War: Iranian Poster Arts")

No to war, no to NATO (BBC: "Russia urges Montenegro to hold referendum on Nato")

May Day Parade (Independent: "Trump says he's 'thinking about' attending Russia's May Day parade")

US troops in Iraq (Al Jazeera: "Invasion of Iraq: The original sin of the 21st century")

Sad Vladimir Putin (CNN: "Putin presents a profound threat to peace in Europe as 'drumbeat of war' sounds on Russia-Ukraine border")

Putin rides with the Night Wolves (Time: "Putin's Favorite Biker Gang Gets Millions of Rubles to Put on Kids' Show")

Map popular with the “Ukraine is not real” crowd. (Big Think: "Ukraine: made by Lenin, unmade by Putin?")

1912 newspaper cartoon illustrating the Monroe Doctrine (Wikipedia: "Sphere of Influence")

"45 Minutes from Attack" (Working Class History, Facebook)

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Istanbul (News 18: "Mum on Plight of Uighurs, Rohingyas, Why OIC's Outburst Against India's Citizenship Law Reeks of Hypocrisy")

How is this going to end?

I don't know how this is going to end. I am writing this to think through possible scenarios and the possible outcomes that might result from them.

Scenario 1: Ukraine collapses

While Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been an embarrassing shambles, Russia has vast reserves of men and stuff to throw into the war. They retain considerable advantages in air power and missiles. If they stick to the brutal tactics they used in Chechnya and Syria (bomb and shell enemy cities until nothing but rubble remains) then there is a good chance that the outnumbered Ukrainian forces will eventually crack. Then Kyiv will fall and Russian forces will overrun the country. In the chaos Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders might find themselves captured or even killed by Russian death squads.

But I don't think this ends it. While Ukraine remains under occupation the West is not going to lift sanctions on Russia, so the atmosphere of tension will remain. And the level of resistance the Ukrainians have shown to the invaders suggests that they will not meekly accept the occupation of their country. Any quisling regime the Russians put in place will rule only so long as the occupiers' guns are pointing at the populace.

And the Russians may even find themselves faced with an ongoing partisan war. If the West supports a resistance movement then Putin may be tempted to strike across the border into Poland or Romania (or wherever material aid to the rebels is being routed from). They are both NATO countries, so that would mean a wider war, one which could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange.

Even if there is no significant armed resistance to the occupation, Putin's situation remains very problematic. Western sanctions strangle Russia's economy, degrading his ability to keep his armed forces functional and also driving unrest against his regime. Might he be tempted towards some kind of nuclear display in an attempt to cajole the West into a return to normal trading?

Scenario 2: Russia collapses

By any objective measure Russia's invasion of Ukraine has gone very badly. Many expected a swift victory but instead Russian forces have struggled to make gains and suffered heavy casualties. Meanwhile the Ukrainians have performed far better than many expected. And now arms from the West (anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles in particular) are flowing into the country. What if the military balance were to decisively shift in the Ukrainians favour? Then they might counterattack against the invaders, pushing the Russians back towards their borders. Rather than throw their lives away for nothing, Russian troops then start to flee, with a general rout ensuing. The scale of the military disaster cannot be hidden from a Russian people already reeling from the sanctions-induced economic collapse. Putin faces an eruption of unrest and increasingly finds himself under siege from his own people.

This in many ways is the most appealing scenario, but it is not without its dangers. Russia is after all a nuclear power. Generally people assume that nuclear weapons will only be used when the countries possessing them face an existential threat (e.g. invasion or nuclear attack). Defeat in Ukraine would not threaten the future existence of Russia, but it would I think be an existential threat to Putin himself, who could realistically fear that failure in Ukraine would lead to his overthrow and possibly his delivery to an international tribunal by a new Russian regime anxious to see an end to the West's sanctions. So might he be tempted to order a nuclear strike to either stave off defeat in Ukraine or trigger a Götterdämmerung that brings everyone else down with him.

If Putin were to order a nuclear attack, would his orders be obeyed? Maybe that would be the moment the spell snaps and he finds himself hustled into early retirement. Or perhaps a mushroom cloud rises over Kyiv while the West struggles with a response even as Sergei Lavrov denies that the nuclear explosion had anything to do with Russia.

Scenario 3: On and on and on

But what if no one wins the war and it just keeps going on? Russia maybe captures some more cities after flattening them but the Ukrainians keep fighting back against them. Death and destruction continue to rage across the country as Russian conscripts, Ukrainian soldiers and innocent civilians see no end to their suffering. But while all this is happening the economic war continues, with the Russian economy collapsing in the face of the West's sanctions. The West suffers too as energy prices rocket but with more diverse economies they have more capacity to endure.

This could go on for a while (years even). It might turn into scenario 2 eventually, as economic crisis makes it harder for Putin to keep his army going in Ukraine while continuing casualties and sanctions make the Russian home front increasingly restive. Or perhaps support from China allows Putin to keep his army in the field, effectively transforming Russia into a giant North Korea.

What do you think?

Which of these scenarios seems the most credible? And do you seem them developing in the same way I do?

images:

Russian tanks (U.S. Mission to the OSCE: "The Situation in and around Ukraine, including the Recent Non-Compliance with OSCE Commitments")

A burning vehicle and a sad Putin (Metro: "Putin 'sacks eight generals' in anger at slow progress in Ukraine invasion")

Civilians fleeing (BBC: "Images of people fleeing the town of Irpin, close to Kyiv")

Map (BBC: "Battle for Mykolaiv: 'We are winning this fight, but not this war' ")

Three Greek questions

1. What do you think the government of Greece should do?
2. Why do you think this would be better for Greece than other courses of action?
3. What do you think would happen if the Greek government followed your course of action?

image source (Guardian)

The Fall of Dien Bien Phu

60 years ago today the last French defenders of Dien Bien Phu were overrun by Vietnamese rebels. This was in the first Indochina War, when Vietnamese communists were fighting to free their country from colonial rule. The fall of Dien Bien Phu hastened the departure of French forces from Vietnam and the establishment of a communist regime in the north of the country.

Dien Bien Phu was an odd location for the decisive battle that would end a war. It was located far from major population centres in the north west of Vietnam, near the border with Laos. It only became the site of a major battle because the French chose to send a large force there. By 1953 their position in Indochina was deteriorating. The French commander, General Henri Navarre, decided to establish a fortified base in Dien Bien Phu for two reasons. Firstly, the hope was that a strong force there would be able to block the supply of arms from China through Vietnam to communist rebels in Laos. The more ambitious hope, though, was that the Vietnamese rebels would choose to deploy a large force to attack Dien Bien Phu, a force that could then be destroyed by the better armed and trained French forces.

Dien Bien Phu was so remote that it could only be supplied from the air, but this was not seen as a problem. There was an old airstrip there from the Second World War that the French would be able to use to fly in supplies and evacuate the wounded. French paratroopers secured the runway on the 20th November 1953 and then more troops and heavy equipment were flown in, including a number of light tanks. A series of forts were established in the surrounding area. The French commander at Dien Bien Phu was Colonel de Castries, a French cavalry commander who looked forward to the showdown with the Vietnamese rebels. All told he had some 16,000 men under him.

The political leader of the rebels was the famous Ho Chi Minh, but the military commander was Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap decided to accept the challenge posed by Dien Bien Phu and moved a 50,000 strong force to invest the defenders. By the end of January the first clashes between the two armies had occurred, but it was only on the 13th of March that the battle erupted in earnest. The rebels had dug in artillery in bunkers overlooking one of the French forts. After a devastating bombardment the Vietnamese stormed the fort with a mass infantry assault. The French artillery commander was so shocked by his inability to counter the Vietnamese guns that he blew himself up with a hand grenade.

On the next day the rebels overran another fort in the same manner as the first Now they could pore artillery fire down on the airstrip, rendering it useless for the French defenders. The French could still haphazardly receive supplies dropped by parachute, but there was no way out for their wounded. The garrison was now trapped.

Thereafter the battle progressed more like something from the First World War than the kind of mobile fighting the French had hoped for. Shelling and infantry assaults gradually forced the French back into an ever smaller area. The fighting was not all one-sided - in bold counter-attacks the defenders sometimes recovered lost positions. The suffering on both sides was horrendous. But without use of the runway for the French there could only be one eventual outcome.

As the situation became more desperate, the United States stepped up its material aid for the French in Indochina, but avoided overt direct involvement. There were some in leadership positions who wanted to commit significant American forces to help the French; there are even suggestions that the Americans proposed to use nuclear weapons to break the siege or to give them to the French for this, but this has never been definitively established. In the end those who favoured non-intervention won out, and the Americans left Dien Bien Phu to its fate.

The end came on the 7th of May. By then the French defenders were shattered and isolated. Giap ordered an all-out attack to bring the battle to an end. In his last radio broadcast to his commander, de Castries recounted the desperate situation in which the garrison found itself and was ordered to fight on till the very end. By nightfall the battle was over, with all the French positions overrun. The surviving defenders were led off into captivity.
As well as the captured male soldiers, the French prisoners included one French woman, the nurse Geneviève de Galard, who had been trapped when the runway became unusable. Also captured were the Algerian and Vietnamese women who worked in the two bordels mobiles de campagne serving the garrison. Some 3,290 French troops were eventually repatriated, together with Ms de Galard. The Vietnamese sex workers were apparently sent off somewhere for re-education. The eventual fate of the Vietnamese loyalists who fought on the French side is mysterious.

For the Vietnamese the battle was a triumph, albeit one bought at terrible cost. The rebels had gone in a few short years from waging a guerrilla war to being able to take on a first world army in conventional battle. For France, Dien Bien Phu was a disaster. They had chosen the ground and invited the rebels to fight them and then had been comprehensively defeated. But the defeat did not end France's colonial pretensions. While the French were soon after to quit Indochina, the debacle hardened the resolve of the military to fight on against the nationalist rebels in Algeria, in the hope that some kind of victory there would restore their honour.

By coincidence, a conference to end the Indochina War opened in Geneva the day after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. The conference saw Vietnam partitioned into a northern zone under Ho Chi Minh and southern Republic of Vietnam supported by France (and subsequently the USA). Elections in 1956 were meant to reunite the two parts of the country, though events unfolded otherwise.

More:

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (Wikipedia)

Dien Bien Phu: Did the US offer France an A-bomb? (BBC News)

The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (BBC Radio 4 documentary)

The Butcher of Buenos Aires

Jorge Rafaél Videla has died. Mr Videla led a military regime in Argentina from the 1976 coup until he handed over power to one of his army colleagues in 1981. He presided over a bloodbath that saw up to 30,000 people murdered in an episode known as the Dirty War.

Calling something a war, even a "dirty" war implies that it is a struggle with at least two sides. In Argentina that would be a bit misleading. Before Videla and his gang took over Argentina, the country was indeed in a state of near civil war. Leftist guerrillas had embarked on an armed revolutionary struggle and the state security apparatus responded in kind; levels of violence escalated alarmingly. Then in 1976 Videla, the army's commander in chief, overthrew the civilian government of President Isabél Peron and gave his uniformed pals a completely free hand to crush the insurgents.

"As many people as is necessary will die in Argentina to protect the hemisphere from the international communist conspiracy", Mr Videla had said in 1975. Once in power, he proved as good as his word. The armed forces instituted a reign of terror against the actual guerrillas, but they also targeted anyone who might be assisting them or who had dangerous left wing ideas or who just looked funny. The regime moved beyond combating the rebels (who were soon crushed) to trying to exterminate Argentina's left.

To make it harder for friends and relatives of the murdered to bring troubling court cases against the regime, Videla's cronies made their victims disappear. One trick was to drug captives and then throw them out of airplanes into the south Atlantic. On the off-chance that any of the corpses were washed ashore, the drugged victims were stripped naked to remove anything that might identify them.

Videla and his accomplices were amnestied during Argentina's transition to democracy, but gradually the law caught up with him. In 1998 he was forced to stand trial for the "appropriation of minors" - the kidnapping of the children of the disappeared for illegal adoption by army officers and others sympathetic to the military regime. Then in 2007 the general Dirty War amnesty was overthrown by the courts; in 2010 he received a life sentence for the torture and murder of 31 victims of the military regime. He died in prison.

It is easy to focus on sinister figures like Videla and reduce their victims to a faceless mass - with 30,000 people killed by Videla, it can be hard to remember that they all had names, friends, a life, ambitions and dreams that were brutally cut short. El Proyecto Desaparecidos attempts to humanise this victims, posting photographs and brief biographies of the killed.

One of the more heartbreaking parts of El Proyecto Desaparecidos' website is the Wall of Memory - face after face of those killed by Argentina's army, with links to a summary of their life and what is known of their fate.

Some random victims:

Silvia de Raffaelli de Parejo - 28 years old when she was abducted from her home and never seen again.

Alicia Eguren de Cooke - a writer, poet and political activist who was 52 years old when she was thrown from a helicopter into the River Plate.

Juan Carlos Galván - a 24 years old artist who taken from his widowed mother's home and never seen again.

Oscar Luis Hodola & Sirena Acuña - 28 and 26 when they were taken away from their son.


More:

Jorge Rafaél Videla obituary (Guardian)

Argentina ex-military leader Jorge Rafael Videla dies (BBC)

Painful search for Argentina's disappeared (BBC)

Argentina marks 'Night of the Pencils' (BBC) An account of the abduction, torture and murder of left wing secondary school students.

Project Disappeared (in English)

El Proyecto Desaparecidos (in Spanish)

The Wall of Memory

Syria

In 2011, when the civil war there was only starting, I posted a three-part history of Syria. It may still be of interest to those curious as to how that country has reached its current sorry state.

Part 1 - Before the Assads
Part 2 - The Hafez al-Assad years
Part 3 - Bashir al-Assad

By their friends shall ye know them?

I hope to write at some length about Hugo Chavez, but may never get round to it. In the meantime, here is a photograph of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran standing beside his coffin.

Source

What is going on in Mali?

Mali is a country in Africa. It used not to make the news much. If people heard anything about it, it was usually to do with the surprising number of Malian musicians who have acquired some popularity in the western world - Tinariwen, Afel Bocoum, Toumani Diabaté and so on. The country is also known to some as home of the Dogon people, who have strange folk practices some suggest indicate that they have had past contact with extra terrestrial civilisations. And it also has the town of Timbuktu, sometimes seen as the epitome of places that are far away from anywhere (people who live in Timbuktu probably do not see things like this).

Mali is also very poor but for a while anyway had a reputation as being fairly functional. It was something of a poster child for the idea that representative democracy can work in countries that are very poor and also predominantly Muslim. And the combination of its interesting music and desert location (partly combined in the hip Festival In The Desert) meant that it attracted a fair amount of tourism.

But, sadly, things have gone very wrong for Mali. In the north of the country, largely inhabited by the Touareg people, a separatist revolt sprung into being. Then the separatists were joined by a bunch of Muslim extremists allegedly sympathetic to al-Qaeda. The Islamists are led by one Iyad ag-Ghaly, a shady customer who in the past staged several Touareg particularist revolts in the north of Mali (revolts that typically ended with Mr ag-Ghaly being made a member of Mali's government). He seems now to have switched effortlessly from Touareg separatism to Islamic extremism.

The Islamists largely swallowed up their Touareg separatist allies, establishing a zone in the north where they could apply their particular no-fun variety of Islam. Back in Bamako, Mali's capital, members of the Malian army staged a coup. The coup was ostensibly a protest against the government's weak response to the northern revolt, but its main effect was to paralyse the Malian state and lead to the rebels further expanding their area of control.

These days military regimes are very much out of fashion and foreign intervention (by Mali's neighbours) was threatened to crush the putschists in the capital. That was averted when they agreed to hand over power to an interim president, pending elections, but that still left the rebels in control of the north.

The rebels then proceeded to display their badass no-fun credentials by attacking and destroying the shrines and graves of various Muslim saints in their zone of control. Islamists destroying Muslim shrines might seem strange to western readers, but the rebels seem to be inspired by the kind of austere Islam popular in Saudi Arabia, where shrines and saints are seen as unacceptably pagan and contrary to "real Islam". One might see them as Muslim equivalents of those Calvinists in 16th century Europe who went around smashing up stained glass windows and Catholic religious iconography.

This might have chugged along as one of those conflicts you read about in faraway countries were it not for the fear some people have that if the rebels were to take over Mali they would turn the country into a giant al-Qaeda training camp. Or maybe even if they did not take over the whole country, they would turn the huge zone they control into an al-Qaeda camp larger than metropolitan France. There was also the fear that the rebels might spread Islamic extremism to Mali's neighbours. None of this seemed like an appealing prospect. Mali's west African neighbours started gearing up for intervention at some point in the future, as Mali's own military did not seem to be up to the job of crushing the rebels. The French government also gave the impression that it might be interesting in helping to defeat the rebels, albeit also at some indeterminate point in the future.

That was the situation just a week or two back, but now suddenly France is at war in Mali. Its air force is attacking the rebels in the north of the country and French troops have started arriving in Bamako. This sudden intervention seems to have been triggered by a new rebel advance that made it look like they were about to overrun the south of the country. The French intervention looks like it was almost a panicked response to stop that happening.

The situation now is a bit unclear. Although French aeroplanes have been pounding the rebels, they still managed to capture the town of Diabaly, leaving them 250 miles from the Malian capital. That makes it look like they could just possibly overrun the capital before enough French troops arrive to stop them. That is probably unlikely - the combination of air power and the superior training and equipment of French ground troops will block the rebels, but it does leave France stuck in what could be an ongoing conflict with no obvious end in sight.

More:

Hollande’s War Aims Remain Unclear (Irish Times)

Malian rebels overrun garrison town and advance towards capital (Guardian)

Mali Crisis: Who’s Who (BBC)

Iyad Ag Ghaly - Mali's Islamist leader (BBC)

Strange developments in North Korea

The BBC news website has a fascinating piece on North Korea by the German conductor Alexander Liebreich. Mr Liebreich has made a number of cultural trips to North Korea over the years. On his most recent trip, with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, he was astonished by the changes he observed in Pyongyang. There seemed a new openness in the air, with the members of his orchestra being able to walk the streets of the city without the company of official minders. Furthermore, the locals seemed far more relaxed in the presence of foreigners (when previously association with anyone from outside the DPRK would excite the suspicions of the authorities). And the North Koreans he interacted with seemed far less inclined to quote the wise words of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-Il than previously, with current leader Kim Jung-un being conspicuous by his absence. Mr Liebreich also noticed a considerable presence of Chinese tourists and a general smartening up of Pyongyang.

Who knows what these changes signify. Maybe they are merely superficial, but maybe the wind of change is starting to blow through what has long been one of the world's most isolated countries.

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Farewell Meles Zenawi

Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia since 1995 has died. Meles is the first leader of Ethiopia to die in office (rather than being overthrown by force or murdered) since the death of Empress Zewditu in 1930 (and it is often felt that Zewditu was herself murdered to facilitate the accession of Tefari Makonnen, who took the name Haile Selassie as emperor). If Empress Zewditu was indeed murdered then the last Ethiopian ruler before Meles to die in office was Emperor Menelik in 1913, almost 100 years ago. I think one would have go back a long way to find a leader of Ethiopia who left office voluntarily or was removed by constitutional means, though the same is probably true of most monarchies (as Ethiopia was before 1974).

Meles came to power after a long civil war that had pitted the military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam against a variety of enemies. Meles led the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, a group based in the northern province of Tigray, which had particularly suffered at the hands of Mengistu. The TPLF were allied to the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, a separatist movement in the coastal province of Eritrea. The EPLF had been fighting a longer war against both Mengistu's clique and before him Emperor Haile Selassie.

In power Meles and his were initially a breath of fresh air after the erratic Stalinism of the Mengistu regime. Eritrea was allowed to secede from Ethiopia and the TPLF was reconstituted as the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, to broaden its base beyond the Tigray province. As a counter to the centralising tendencies of Mengistu, a federal constitution was adopted, with the various provinces allowed a considerable degree of autonomy. And in contrast to most African countries, Ethiopia adopted a parliamentary rather than presidential system of government.

However, things did not turn out as well as initially promised. Elections held under Meles proved to be a bit of a joke, with non-EPRDF prevented from campaigning properly and votes not being counted in a fair and transparent manner. When opposition activists protested against this in 2005 they were massacred and leading opposition politicians thrown in jail until they admitted that the violence had all been their fault. The press in Ethiopia remained subject to crippling censorship and the broadcast media resembles something from pre-1989 Eastern Europe in its fawning devotion to Meles and his pals. The new federalism of Ethiopia seemed just to be a mask for EPRDF dominance, with many in Ethiopia feeling that now the country was being run for the benefit of Meles' base in Tigray. The human rights situation remains abysmal, with journalists being arrested recently for reporting that Meles was a bit unwell.

Meles Zenawi also led his country into war with his erstwhile allies in Eritrea. This border conflict, which seems to have been initiated by the President Isias Afewerki, the neo-Stalinist leader of Eritrea, was eventually won by Ethiopia. However, the conflict claimed the lives of several hundred thousand people in fighting that recalled the First World War. Since then relations with Eritrea have remained poisonous, with each country's paranoid leadership accusing the other of plotting to overthrow it and accusing their domestic opposition of being in the pay of the national enemy. War is peace.

More successfully (for him), Meles made his country a firm ally of the United States of America. Post 11-9, he declared Ethiopia a junior partner in the war on terror, which meant that the USA supplied him with military and diplomatic support against Eritrea and allowed him to project Ethiopian power into neighbouring Somalia, by accepting his claims that this was some kind of battle against Islamist terrorists. The support of the USA and its friends also allowed Meles to shrug off any criticism from do-gooders about his human rights record and Ethiopia's crypto-dictatorial system of government.

And now he has gone. What will be interesting will be to see whether his passing allows some kind of opening up of Ethiopian politics and a transition to open electoral politics. The fear of many, however, will be that his authoritarian political system will now disintegrate in a messy and violent manner, plunging Ethiopia back into chaos and civil war.

Image source

Ethiopian Government to Stop Internet

The BBC reports that the Ethiopian government is cracking down on the Internet. To me this is a bit surprising. When I was in the country a couple of years ago, internet access there was so erratic and hard to come by that I am amazed the authorities thought it was worth trying to control. Back then they were more inclined to control mobile phone networks and had blocked SMS so that people could not organise demonstrations by text message, as had happened after the current government was suspected of stealing the 2005 election.

That was in 2008. With the passage of time, the Internet must have developed in Ethiopia to the extent where it became worth trying to control, so the government have stepped in. Use of Skype and Internet telephony services have been criminalised, with some reports saying that use of such things now carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail.

Security considerations may not be the only concern here. One other fear is that people might use Skype in Internet cafés to make voice calls, eating into the revenue of the state telecommunications provider. But Ethiopia is a country whose authoritarian government wants total control of communications. Skype and things similar to it are hard to monitor, so it represented a danger to the regime's censors and had to go.

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Migrating bird ruffles Turkish feathers

When villagers in southwestern Turkey found a dead bird with a metal ring round its leg stamped "Israel", they reached the obvious conclusion – that the bird had been sent from Israel to spy on Turkey. Local police discovered that the bird had unusually large nostrils, in which they suspected a microchip may have been hidden. A special counter-terrorism unit of the police also became involved, perhaps suspecting that the bird may have been trying to make contact with Kurdish separatists or other extremists operating within Turkey.

Officials from the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture eventually managed to convince locals and the police that the bird – a common European bee-eater – was not a threat to national security and had merely been tagged in the Zionist Entity as part of a routine tracking of the movements of migratory birds. But why were the Ministry officials so keen to dampen down concerns as to the bird's true purpose? Whose orders were they following?

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From Hunting Monsters

"Our hands are tied"

I saw a Socialist Party MEP on the news talking about how if the referendum on the European Stability Treaty thing was passed then Ireland would be stuck with austerity budgets forever – no future government would ever be able to break out of this austerity straitjacket. I am not entirely convinced by this. For one thing, I suspect that if the Socialist Party are ever leading a government they will not say: "We would really love to bring austerity to an end, but alas, our hands are tied by this treaty".

There might be a deliberate missing of the point with what is being voted on in the referendum going on. If passed, it allows the state to ratify the European Stability Treaty thing. The actual terms of the Treaty thing are then incorporated into Irish law by ordinary legislation. I am no lawyer, but my understanding is that at some future stage these provisions could then be taken out of Irish law by future legislation – ordinary legislation, not a consitutional amendment, as the constitutional amendment in the referendum merely allows the state to ratify the Treaty thing, but does not require it to do so or require it to stick to the terms of the Treaty thing forever.

What do you think?

Greece – what next?

Join me as I gaze into my crystal ball and attempt to predict what will happen over the next while in Greece. Bookmark this page and come back to laugh at me when my predictions prove to be completely nonsensical.

First up, where is Greece now? Well it is not in great shape. Its public finances are in a disastrous state and its economy is contracting at an alarming rate. It has been unable to borrow on the open markets at affordable rates and instead has been borrowing from a combination of the European Central Bank and the IMF. These institutions have laid down stringent conditions to their loans, which have contributed to Greece's economic decline. But Greece has been a bit slack at meeting its lenders' targets, leading to a certain lack of confidence on their part.

The May 6th election result was inconclusive, largely thanks to a quirk of the Greek electoral system. 250 MPs are elected by proportional representation, but an extra block of 50 seats are given to the party with the largest share of the votes. That was New Democracy, Greece's long-standing centre-right party. Together with PASOK (the old centre-left party) and a small leftwing party a parliamentary majority in favour of continuing with the EU/IMF bailout programme could have been scraped together, but anti-bailout parties clearly won a majority of votes cast. A pro-bailout government would have lacked popular legitimacy and so could not be formed, while an anti-bailout government would have lacked a parliamentary majority. So Greece is calling new elections.

At the time of writing, my understanding is that these elections will happen on either the 10th or the 17th of June. This time I expect that they will produce an anti-bailout majority. Last time, nearly a fifth of Greeks voted for small anti-bailout parties that failed to pass the 3% threshold required to get into parliament. This time enough of them will switch to more popular anti-bailout parties. In particular, I reckon that Syriza, a far-left coalition in some ways akin to the United Left Alliance in Ireland, will finish ahead of New Democracy and pick up the 50-seat bonus. Together with the Communists and perhaps another anti-bailout party or two (but not the Golden Dawn, who are evil) they will form an anti-bailout government.

Things might get awkward if the election results fall in such a way that the far right nutters in the Golden Dawn are needed for an anti-bailout majority in parliament, but I am assuming that this will not happen.

Now, the anti-bailout lot in Greece are not actually against being lent money at advantageous rates by the EU/IMF, they just do not want to have to conform to the conditions attached to the loan. And they may also not want to pay the loan back either. So when they get into government they will basically say: "Keep sending us the money, however we are not going to stick to the austerity conditions agreed with previous governments". Their possibly naïve assumption is that Greece can tough it out with its creditors, because at the end of the day Greek bankruptcy would hurt the other European countries so badly that they will keep the money tap on to prevent thishappening.

The next tranche of bailout money is due to Greece in the middle of June, at the same time as the elections. If that money is not paid over, Greece will be bankrupt; apparently there is a possibility of the Greek state going bust even before then. My prediction is that one way or another, Greece will find itself with an anti-bailout government and no bailout money – the people who are stumping up the money for Greece (primarily Chancellor Merkel of Germany) would rather take the hit on the country leaving the Euro than give more money to a government that is repudiating the bailout conditions.

Things will then get very messy very quickly. With no one lending to it, the Greek government will only be able to spend money it can raise itself in Greece. This is not nearly enough to cover its expenditure (if it was, the Greek state would not need a bailout). It goes without saying that it will then be in the situation they call messy default – abruptly telling its creditors that they are not going to be getting any more repayments any time soon, if ever. But the problem for Greece is that it is running a deficit on current spending – the money it pays to state employees, social welfare recipients, and the other recipients of state spending is way more than what it is raising in taxes. With no bailout money it will have to start defaulting on these payments as well.

Now, in the normal run of things, if you are a country's minister for finance and you cannot borrow money and are spending more money than you are taking in there is only one thing you can do – print more money. Greece is in the Eurozone and cannot print more Euros. I think the only way around this conundrum is an abrupt introduction by Greece of a new currency, a neo-Drachma or some such. The Greek government will be able to print this up to their hearts content and pay people as much of it as they like. Perhaps initially the neo-Drachma will be a parallel currency with Greece still notionally in the Euro zone, but I reckon that the introduction of this banana money will drive the Euro out of circulation and lead to an effective Greek exit from the Eurozone.

Why will the Euro drop out of circulation in Greece? Well, the Greek government have introduced the neo-Drachma to get around the imbalance between its revenue and expenditure. Instead of cutting back on expenditure (easier said than done in a country as depressed as Greece), it will print money to make up the difference. But this gross expansion of the money supply, backed by nothing except the Greek government's not very convincing claims to be setting the country on a new economic tack, mean that the neo-Drachma will rapidly start collapsing in value relative to the Euro. Anyone holding Euro funds will hoard them or, even better, get them out of Greece as their relative value to the neo-Drachma soars.

So Greece enters into a period of hyperinflation. Public sector workers start striking in protest at being paid in increasingly worthless monopoly money and social welfare recipients fall ever further into poverty. The public sector generally starts to fall apart. Anyone with access to money outside Greece may well find that they are doing very well now, as their hard currency goes a long way, but for a lot of Greeks this period is nightmarish. Maybe further along, the devaluation of the neo-Drachma is good for Greek exporters, as their products are so much cheaper on the international market, but what exports does Greece potentially have? Maybe it will see a flood of tourists coming to spend their money in a country that is now amazingly cheap, but do people holiday in a country that is disintegrating?

Well, that's the best I can do. What do you think will happen?

From Hunting Monsters

What if the USA was run by Realists…

I have previously mentioned Realism (see here and here), the international relations framing theory that purports to describe the- world-as-it-really-is. Of course, all international relations theorists purport to say how things really are, but by describing themselves as "Realists", the followers of this school are claiming to be far closer to the truth than their rivals. The Realists say that they describe the world as it is, not as how they would like it to be. They agree that a world without war and conflict would be a nice one, but they argue that we will always face threats to our security and that we should act accordingly.

Generally speaking, Realists always come across as the bad guys when you study international relations theory. Partly this is because their "it was ever thus" outlook comes across as a bit smug and self-satisfied, and partly it is because they can come across as a cynical bunch who are only too happy to justify any nefarious activity as necessary to advance state security; Realists do sometimes claim Machiavelli as one of their own, after all. In practice, though, the Realists can often be less like the crazed warmongers that their theoretical position makes them appear. They have a sense of the limitations of state power that makes them wary of any attempt to do more than can realistically be accomplished.

And so I bring you to a recent article on the Foreign Policy website by the prominent Realist academic Stephen M. Walt. He argues that since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has largely been under the control of liberal internationalists and neoconservatives. The former have pushed America into the business of promoting democracy and human rights everywhere in the world, while the latter have tried to seize the moment by establishing a permanent US hegemony over the world. Their interests have merged because the neoconservatives reckon that democracy and human rights would probably favour the interests of the USA, while advancing them gives an opportunity to interfere everywhere; the liberal internationalists see US hegemony as allowing for the advancing of their goals.

Walt is hostile the programme these people have adopted, not because he hates human rights or wants the USA to be weak, but because he reckons that the promotion of human rights and democracy is a waste of time and effort, while the neocons' attempt to secure global hegemony seriously overestimates the capabilities of the USA and is actually undermining the security of the USA by encouraging other powers to unite against it. In the article, Walt puts forward ten ways in which US foreign policy would have been radically different over the last twenty years if it had been run by Realists. In doing so he is not just looking back with the benefit of hindsight and advocating different policies to ones which failed, but rather he is restating policies that he and his fellow Realists had actually advocated.

What is striking about Walt's counterfactual is how much it leads to the USA doing less than it has been doing since the end of the Cold War. Walt's Realist USA would not have invaded Iraq, would not have launched a global "War on Terror", would not have encouraged NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, and would not have provided Israel with the blank cheque support it has enjoyed. The Realist USA would also have stayed out of the former Yugoslavia (good news for alternative Earth Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic) and Libya. The only thing on Walt's list that amounts to some new thing a Realist USA would have done is increase its focus on China. Realists have a bit of a thing about China. Walt is not saying that the USA should have invaded China or pursued an aggressive policy towards it, but he feels that a Realist approach would focus on trying to build Asian alliances that would stop China becoming too powerful or dangerous to US interests.

In some respects, then Walt's Realist USA would have been a lot more isolationist than the one of Clinton, Bush and Obama with which we are familiar, though it would still be taking some interest in affairs beyond its borders and trying to broker alliances where its interests appeared to need them. But it would definitely be far less interventionist than the actual USA. Many people see the USA's interventionism as the source of all the world's problems, so maybe they would prefer to live in the world of Realist USA. Or maybe not.

Still, I am not convinced that the Realists are fundamentally different from the neoconservatives. US Realists and neoconservatives are united in thinking that the USA should maximise its security by any means necessary – they just calculate differently the ability of the USA to reorder the world to its advantage. At root they are basically the same – for all Walt's apparent non-interventionism, if something were to happen tomorrow morning that greatly increased the power of the USA he probably would be quite happy for his government to continue with its policies of global intervention.

From Hunting Monsters

Eskinder Nega and press freedom in Ethiopia

The east African nation of Eritrea is famous for being the country with world's least-free press. But now its neighbour and enemy Ethiopia is catching up from behind. Roy Greenslade reports in the Guardian that the journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega is in danger of being sentenced to death tomorrow (on Friday the 11th May 2012). Nega has been under arrest since last September, when he wrote an article critical of the arrest of other Ethiopian journalists under the country's sweeping legislation, which head in the direction of making it a crime to say anything critical of the country's government or supportive of anyone or anything the government dislikes. As well as being accused of supporting terrorism (by writing his critical article), Mr Nega has been accused of membership of a banned political party (opposition parties are often banned in Ethiopia) and of smuggling explosives in from Eritrea.

Mr Nega is no stranger to Ethiopia's prison system. Earlier last year he spent some time inside after writing an article on the Arab Spring that was viewed as an attempt to incite a revolt against the faux democratic regime of Meles Zenawi. He was also banged up in 2005 for writing about that year's disputed elections and newspapers that he and his wife, Serkalem Fasil, write for were closed by the government. There are reports that he has been subjected to torture while in detention.

Mr Nega's detention and possible death sentence is symptomatic of the slight into naked authoritarianism Ethiopia has seen under the regime of Meles Zenawi. Meles and his EPRDF colleagues came to power by overthrowing the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam, ushering in a new era of hope. Since then, however, his party has settled into a cynically authoritarian rule white-washed by increasingly farcical "elections" every couple of years. The fear must be that this new despotism will usher in the kind of violent reaction that erupted against Mengistu in the 1970s and 1980s, with Meles the midwife of another round of civil war.

More (and image source) (IFEX: The global network for free expression)

Even More (PEN)

From Hunting Monsters

GREECE IN CRISIS

Greece held a general election yesterday but the leader of New Democracy, the largest party, has said that he is unable to form a government. Antonis Samaras has suggested calling new elections as the only way out of the country's political crisis.

New Democracy (centre right) and PASOK (centre left) had dominated Greek politics, but they haemorrhaged support at the election as the public blamed them for the economic storm that has engulfed the country. Where previously one or other party would have been able to govern alone, their combined share of seats in the Greek parliament would leave them short of a parliamentary majority. Together they won less than a third of the vote and are only in striking distance of a majority because Greece gives a sixth of the parliamentary seats as a bonus to the party winning the largest share of the votes, in this case New Democracy; they also benefited from nearly 20% of Greeks voting for parties that failed to secure parliamentary representation.

In Greece if the leader of the largest parliamentary party is unable to form a government, the leader of the second biggest is then invited to have a go. That is Mr Alexis Tsipras, leader of Syriza, an umbrella grouping of various far left groups who are opposed to the EU/IMF bailout and to further austerity measures. Anti-austerity parties won more votes than supporters of the bailout, but they have less parliamentary seats. Even if Mr Tsipras was leading a coherent group that wanted to govern rather oppose things, he would find it impossible to form a government unless he can somehow lure PASOK into a coalition that would also have to include the Greek Communists. As PASOK contested the election on a pro-bailout ticket, such efforts are unlikely to succeed.

So maybe Greece will face another election. Or maybe Evangelos Venizelos of the third-placed PASOK can form a coalition including New Democracy and the small centre left Europhile party Democratic Left. Together these three groups would have a parliamentary majority and their share of the popular vote would not be too embarrassingly behind that of the anti-bailout parties represented in parliament (38.2% v. 42.9%).

If fresh elections are held then Syriza will be hoping to pass New Democracy and gain the 50-seat bonus for being the largest party. Their leader would then be in position to form a far left anti-bailout coalition, particularly if the people who voted for parties that failed to make the country's 3% threshold can be persuaded to vote for Syriza or the Communists. Things would then get very interesting. A Syriza-Communist government would most likely repudiate the EU-IMF deal, cutting the country off from any external sources of funding. The country would then be looking at a disorderly default on its international debts, expulsion from the Eurozone, and at having to balance its government books from its own resources. Given the predilections of the Communists and Syriza, Greece might also withdraw voluntarily from the European Union. I suspect that all this would be accompanied by economic collapse as anyone with Greece with anything that is not nailed down tries to get it out of the country, but either way it could be rather exciting.

More:

Greek election: Antonis Samaras coalition bid fails (BBC)

Greek legislative election, 2012 (Wikipedia; with breakdown of votes and seats for parties elected to the Greek parliament)

Elections Are Fun

In France, exit polls are saying that Francois Hollande has comfortably won the presidential election. Nicolas Sarkozy thus becomes only the second incumbent president of France to lose an election. Hollande will almost certainly call an election to the French parliament to secure a socialist majority there.

Before the election, Hollande had suggested that he would seek to renegotiate the European Fiscal Compact, to introduce some kind of programme for growth and make it less about the kind of budget balancing beloved of conservatives. He also proposed some quite draconian tax increases on rich people. It will be interesting to see whether he delivers on any of this or if his election has any impact on the referendum in Ireland on ratifying the Compact.

In Greece, meanwhile, today's general election has seen support for the two hitherto dominant parties collapse. PASOK and New Democracy have been blamed for the country's economic collapse and their vote has fallen to c. 14% and 20% respectively.

PASOK and New Democracy are now too weak to govern together in a grand coalition without support from the smaller parties who have seen their vote surge. The other parties are however a bit of an ideological dogs dinner, united by nothing other than their opposition to further austerity measures in Greece. It may not be possible to form a government with majority support in parliament. Or perhaps if a government is formed, it will repudiate the bail-out programme and set off on a road leading to disorderly default, leaving the Eurozone, capital flight, and a chaotic economic and political future.

EDIT (based on Nicholas Whyte's comment): The Greek electoral system gives a seat bonus to the largest party such that New Democracy and PASOK should be able to form a majority grand coalition after all. So maybe Greece is not going to disappear down the plughole just yet.

In Germany, meanwhile, state elections in Schleswig-Holstein appear to signal the end of the CDU-FDP coalition that had governed there. The FDP (a party of rightwing liberals, in some ways akin to the now vanished Progressive Democrats of Ireland) in particular have seen their support tumble.

The CDU (the Christian Democrat party of Angela Merkel) may still be able to form a government in Schleswig-Holstein, but it may be a grand coalition with the Social Democrats. This suggests that a left-right coalition could be on the cards at a national level after the next election. Angela Merkel herself apparently remains popular in Germany, her tough stance towards the more profligate countries of the European periphery reassuring voters that their bail-out monies are not going to be squandered.

Armenia too is holding parliamentary elections today, but I am not familiar with politics in that country so I must refer you to this BBC News article: Armenia votes in parliamentary elections

And just to be part of all the election fun, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel has announced plans to hold early elections in four months time. Elections are likely to lead to a coalition similar to the hawkish one Netanyahu currently heads. I do not know if Netanyahu is planning to synchronise the elections with any kind of military action against Iran.

From Hunting Monsters

Exciting News from Turkmenistan

History has been made in the country of Turkmenistan – the nation's first car race has been held. And the winner is none other than the great leader of Turkmenistan, President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov himself. President Berdymukhamedov is used to winning electoral races (increasing his share of the vote to 97% in the elections held earlier this year) but motor racing is as new to him as it is to the rest of the Turkmen. He had not planned to take part in this motor race. However, when he arrived to watch the contest he decided that he would compete, and easily defeated the other competitors despite their intensive training for the event.

President Berdymukhamedov won while driving a Volkicar, a Turkish-made vehicle.

More

From Hunting Monsters