Conditions are Fertile for Anti-Semitism's Return!

Being Jewish I am particularly sensitive to prejudice and most specifically the bile and viral variety associated with anti-Semitism.

The articles below one might consider a bit alarmist or overboard but one is based on factual history and thus I take it quite seriously. Why? Because the current ingrediences are all there - fear, greed, economic and financial collapse and the shadow of fascism in the guise of radical nations in pursuit of nuclear arms for the purpose of eliminating Israel or doing serious harm to our own nation. (See 1 and 1a below.)

Obama really must have done a job of scaring the Saudis if the claims of this article are anywhere near factual or believable. (See 2 below.)

Lieberman has another take on peace talks which he claims are at a 'dead end.' (See 3 below.)

Meanwhile, Obama calls on Muslim students to realize there are two sides to every issue.

Maybe Obama needs to talk to these Gazan students as well. Lot of hate out there and I fear Obama is either naive enough or mistakenly embued with his own charm to not understand world reality. His words are no match for the destruction N Korea and Iran are striving for and intend to unleash given the chance.(See 4 and 4a below.)

More about the signficance of Turkey's role in being at the energy crossroad. (See 5below.)

Obama needs to see the movie 'Deliverance' according to Max Hstings. (See 6 below.)

No nukes and I also have a bridge for sale. (See 7 below.)

My friend, Bret Stephens, sees Obama through the same prism I do and concludes pretty much as I have - Obama continues to be an empty suited dreamer.

The more I see Obama travel and talk the more I see Carter.(See 8 below.)

Matt Miller still remains enamored with the messiah but even Matt is belatedly beginning to see through him. (See 9 below.)

And then there is Tom Sowell's take. (See 10 below)

Obama is being sized up and so far he is not making the grade according to this Chicago editorial. (See 11 below.)

Dick



1) Anti-Semitism and the Economic Crisis:Many people still blame Jews for capitalism's faults.
By IRA STOLL

Walking down the street in my solidly upper-middle-class New York City neighborhood the other day was a neatly dressed man angrily cursing into his cell phone about "Jew Wall Street bankers."

I was headed in the opposite direction and didn't stop to interview him about his particular grievances, but the brief encounter crystallized for me a foreboding that the financial crisis may trigger a new outbreak of anti-Semitism.

It is a fear that is being articulated ever more widely. President Bill Clinton's secretary of labor, Robert Reich, frets on his blog, "History shows how effective demagogic ravings can be when a public is stressed economically." He warns that Jews, along with gays and blacks, could become victims of populist rage.

In the New York Jewish Week newspaper, a column by Rabbi Ronald Price of the Union for Traditional Judaism begins, "In the 1930s, as Germany's economy collapsed, the finger was pointed at the Jews and the Nazis ascended to power. The famous Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jew was falsely accused of treason in France, followed on the heels of economic turmoil."

At this juncture, the trepidation may yet seem like paranoia, or special pleading akin to the old joke about the newspaper headline, "World Ends in Nuclear Attack: Poor, Minorities Hardest Hit." Everyone is feeling the brunt of the recession; why worry about the Jews in particular? After all, Jews today have two refuges: Israel and America, a land where Jews have attained remarkable power and prosperity and have a constitutionally protected right to exercise their religion freely. In that case, why worry about potential danger to the Jews at all?

One answer is that the historical precedents are exceedingly grim. The causes of the First Crusade, in which thousands of Jews were murdered, are still being debated, but some historians link it to famine and a poor harvest in 1095. As for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the foremost historian of its causes, Benzion Netanyahu (the father of Israel's new prime minister), writes of the desire of the persecutors "to get rid of their debts by getting rid of their creditors." More generally, he writes, "it is an iron-clad rule in the history of group relations: the majority's toleration of every minority lessens with the worsening of the majority's condition."

Lest this seem overly crude economic determinism, consider that the Jews have been victims not only of unrest prompted by economic distress but of attempts to remedy such economic distress with socialism. Take it from Friedrich Hayek, the late Nobel Prize winning Austrian economist. In "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek wrote, "In Germany and Austria the Jew had come to be regarded as the representative of Capitalism." Thus, the response in those countries, National Socialism, was an attack on both capitalism and the Jews.

There are ample indicators of current anti-Semitic attitudes. A poll conducted recently in Europe by the Anti-Defamation League found 74% of Spaniards believe Jews "have too much power in international financial markets," while 67% of Hungarians believe Jews "have too much power in the business world." Here in America, the Web site of National Journal is hosting an "expert blog" by former CIA official Michael Scheuer, now a professor at Georgetown, complaining of a "fifth column of pro-Israel U.S. citizens" who are "unquestionably enemies of America's republican experiment." And over at Yahoo! Finance, the message board discussing Goldman Sachs is rife with comments about "Jew pigs" and the "Zionist Federal Reserve."

So will the Jews come under attack? The existence of the Jewish state guarantees refuge for Jews around the world, but it carries with it its own risks. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that if the Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them world-wide." It's a comment all the more chilling as Nasrallah's Iranian sponsors are on the brink of making a nuclear bomb.

As for the idea that Jewish professional, political, and economic success in America is a guarantee of security, that, too, has its risks. As Yuri Sleskine recounted in his book "The Jewish Century," in 1900 Vienna more than half of the lawyers, doctors and professional journalists were Jewish, as were 70% of the members of the stock exchange. In Germany, after World War I but before the Nazis came to power, Jews served as finance minister and as foreign minister. Such achievements have a way of being fleeting.

It may yet be that the Jews escape the current economic crisis having only lost fortunes. But if not, there will have been no lack of warning about the threat. When Jews gather Wednesday night for the Passover Seder, we will recite the words from the Hagadah, the book that relays the Israelite exodus from slavery in Egypt: "In every generation they rise up against us to destroy us." This year, they will resonate all the more ominously.

Mr. Stoll is the author of "Samuel Adams: A Life" (Free Press, 2008).

1a) We are all anti-Semites now
By Stuart Schwartz

"We are all socialists now" Newsweek famously declared in a February issue this year, letting the nation know that our Knowledge Elites -- the cultural establishment that dominates higher education, media, government and entertainment, and collectively fancies itself the agenda setter for the rest of us -- is now officially backing the statist horse in the economic race. Good bye free market, hello socialism. Why? Because we say so. Call them the Knowledge Elites (KE's), who use position and information to shape our culture. Socialism has become trendy -- witness Harvard's recent conference devoted to trashing the free market, or the Obama administration's war on the private sector. ‘Correct' thinking influences corrective behavior and, in tandem, the culture.


And now it is time for Newsweek and the Knowledge Elites to make the next cultural realignment official: "We are all anti-Semites now."


With the Obama administration's new stance on terrorism (it's Israel's fault) and its embrace of Jimmy Carter-style anti-Semitism (we are joining the notorious UN Human Rights Council, which spends most of its time denouncing Israel, Zionism and --let's face it -- the Jews), and the universities and media piling on, it is obvious that the KE's have reached another consensus: the Jews -- as symbolized by the culture and politics of Israel and, in fact, by some obviously ‘Neocon' last names --are simply out of step with the world as we wish it to be. Therefore, they must follow free markets, individualism, and Judeo-Christian values into oblivion.


The Obama administration has officially embraced militant Arab positions that, in one form or another, are anti-Jewish. And it tried to bring in as head of one of our national security agencies an Arab lobbyist whose theories on the international Jewish conspiracy were described by even the Obama-manic Washington Post as "crackpot tirades." Carolyn Glick, who periodically acts as the canary in the mine of Jewish relations for a conservative inside-the-beltway think tank, writes in the Jerusalem Post that United States leadership has already decided the Israelis/Jews are " morally and politically inferior" to the worst terrorist groups in the world. Claudia Rosett, who writes for Forbes magazine, puts it this way: Increasingly, in leadership circles, we see "proliferating signs that in too many places, and too many ways, the world is tacitly coming to accept not only persecution of the Jews, but the possibility of a second genocide."


You can see it coming. Call it 1930's redux. Judea Pearl, the father of the Wall Street Journal reporter slain by Islamists for being Jewish, sees the slide, saying that "somehow, barbarism...has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society." The "barbarism" he refers to is the extermination first of selected Jews -- his son among them -- and the slaughter that has been taking place in the Middle East.


And, as they did with the wholesale misery accompanying socialist societies, our Knowledge Elites react with a blind eye followed by rationalization and, finally, embrace. The Associated Press -- a mainstay of the media Knowledge Elite -- recently covered a Davis Cup match in Sweden where Islamists gathered outside a stadium in which the Israeli team was playing and screamed for the death of the players and all Jews. Blind eye: it never mentioned the murderous nature of the crowd and the vile calls to exterminate the Jews. A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist whose works are carried in more mainstream media outlets than any other portrays Jews as goose-stepping Nazis out to devour innocent, defenseless Palestinians, in a style reminiscent -- deliberately so? -- of the worst of the 1930s Nazi propaganda. And that bastion of the journalistic Knowledge Elite, The New York Times, linked to the cartoon, positioning it below the newspaper's banner.


At the same time, our best universities employ and encourage faculty who rage at the Jews for causing many of the world's problems, while many administrators either agree or turn a deaf ear. At Boston College, anti-Semitism has become so deeply embedded that one professor felt free to describe Palestinian terrorists as possessing "courage and wisdom" in his syllabus. Columbia University has long allowed anti-Semitism to fester on its prestigious campus, in part because of financial support from Arab states. And Harvard now has a Middle Eastern studies department, of which the faculty and staff liberally use Israel as a codeword for ‘Jew' and is one of many prestigious universities that cheerlead Hamas terrorists in their avowed goal of destroying the Jews. Right behind them are many of our great state universities.


Noted Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes of a recent visit to United States campuses, finding "more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah." Many faculty back a boycott of peers from Israeli universities. Judea Pearl, who is also a California state university faculty member, says of the growing anger against Jews on campus, ""The verbal abuse is there, the intimidation is there, the feeling of helplessness is there, not only among students but among faculty." Faculty and guest speakers at Harvard, Columbia, University of California-Berkley, to name a few, routinely denounce Jews, Zionists, and American-Jewish imperialism, generally sounding like bad propaganda from the Nazi and old Soviet regimes.


The Knowledge Elites, although challenged now by a growing host of Internet sites and blogs, have traditionally set the agenda for the rest of us. They did it with communism and socialism, led the charge against the Vietnam War, and have shaped a climate in which our government and university elites can ignore results - truth -- and frankly declare the supremacy of statist-led economies. And now they have turned to the ‘Jewish' issue. You can get an idea of KE thinking by watching the recent Golden Globe award winner, Paradise Now, which unashamedly explores "the human side of two young terrorists recruited to kill innocent Jews."


Government, academia, media, and entertainment-a growing consensus is emerging with, perhaps, a Newsweek headline not too far behind: "We Are All Anti-Semites Now."

Stuart H. Schwartz, Ph.D., is a former newspaper and retail executive. He is on the faculty at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

2) Saudis also dismayed by Obama's seeming tolerance of nuclear Iran

A chilly encounter

President Barack Obama's declaration in the Turkish parliament Monday, April 6, that the US is not at war with Islam provided cold comfort in Riyadh and Cairo, where his drastic policy shift of détente with Tehran, is causing jitters.

The Financial Times' prediction that the US "may cede to Iran's nuclear ambition" only added to the unease in the Middle East at large.

On the sidelines of the G20 summit in London, Saudi King Abdullah made his views known in a face-to-face interview with the US president on April 2. The White House communiqué reported blandly: Obama and Abdullah discussed international cooperation regarding the global economy, regional political and security issues, and cooperation against terrorism.

Iran was not mentioned. However, according to Middle East sources, Abdullah took the US president sternly to task over his emerging policy on Iran, Syria and Iraq, accusing him to giving the Islamic Republic free rein for its nuclear, expansionist and terrorism-sponsoring Middle East policies.

Both parties tried to keep their abrasive encounter away from the public eye and their media, although the photo attached betrays its chilly atmosphere.

The Financial Times was the first Western mainstream publication to pick up on the new pro-Iran policy trend dominating Obama's Washington: "US officials are considering whether to accept Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment… discussing whether the US will eventually have to accept Iran's insistence on carrying out the process."

The newspaper quoted Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council as warning: "The US may still have zero as its opening position [in its dialogue with Iran], while recognizing it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement."

Military sources fear Tehran has been given a free run to perfect its ability to make bombs and warheads in the shortest possible time from the moment of decision.

Our sources report that the US president's two-day stay in Ankara and his words of peace towards the Muslim world were seen in Riyadh and Cairo as ignoring the most pressing concerns of the leading Muslim Arab powers of the region.

Israeli leaders have been less reticent about their concerns. President Shimon Peres pointed out to visiting US congressmen in Jerusalem Monday that Iran has hoodwinked the entire world in its drive for a nuclear bomb whose main target would be the Jewish state; Israel's population is short of adequate means of self-defense. Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would shield Middle East terror groups, so magnifying the threat to Israel manifold. But, he added, the IDF was fully capable of backing up any government decision to tackle this existential threat.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu diplomatically praised President Obama for his renewed commitment to Israeli security, omitting mention of Iran in the same way as he ignored the US president's demand for a Palestinian state to rise alongside Israel in his speech to parliament in Ankara. Netanyahu commented that his new government is in the process of formulating its policies. This left him an opening to dispute administration polices when he arrives in Washington on May 3.


3) Lieberman: Peace talks have reached 'dead end'
By Barak Ravid





Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that Western-backed
peace efforts with the Palestinians had reached a "dead end" and that Israel intended to present new ideas for diplomacy.

"There is definitely a regression here and we must understand and admit that we are at a dead end," Lieberman told members of Yisrael Beiteinu during a party meeting. "We definitely intend to present new ideas."


The Yisrael Beiteinu chairman also said that he planned to remain foreign minister for at least "four and a half years," and vowed that his faction would stay a central component of the current government coalition until the next round of elections.

His comments came a day after U.S. President Barack Obama, on his first long presidential visit abroad, said that he believed peace in the Middle East as long as Israelis and Palestinians each make compromises.

"I think we have a sense of what those compromises should be and will be. Now what we need is political will and courage on the part of leadership," Obama told a students meeting in Istanbul at the end of a two-day visit to Turkey.

In response to these remarks, Lieberman said Tuesday that external bodies must cease pressuring Israel with regard to the peace process.

"[Israel] has never gotten involved in the business of other, and I expected the same, that nobody will stand there with a stopwatch in hand," Lieberman told members of his party.

"They must let us develop a serious and responsible plan. People have begun working with vigor on developing new ideas," he said. We are working together with the prime minister, and we have no underhanded intentions to build an agenda of our own. We must work together, because these are big challenges."

At the handover ceremony at the Foreign Ministry last week, Lieberman sounded an aggressive foreign policy stance, emphasizing that the new government is not bound by the Annapolis process, under which former prime minister Ehud Olmert and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni conducted negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the core issues of a final-status arrangement.

Lieberman later told Haaretz that he was "committed to the road map" as approved by the cabinet, despite having opposed it during the 2003 vote.

"Israel undertook obligations regarding the road map and it will honor them, but there must be reciprocity," he told Haaretz in an interview earlier this week.

"Unlike others, we will carry out everything that is in writing, and there will be no contradiction between what we say and what we mean, but we will stick to the phased nature of the road map," he said.

"We will conduct talks with the PA, but we want to make sure their 'checks' don't bounce. The Palestinians must first of all confront terror, take control of Gaza and demilitarize Hamas. Without these, it will be difficult to move forward."

Meanwhile, Police questioned Lieberman on Tuesday morning for approximately five hours as part of a corruption probe against him for the third time since he took office as foreign minister.

Police believe the Yisrael Beiteinu leader will need to be questioned once more before fraud squad detectives can complete their work and hand over material from the investigation to the State Prosecutor's Office.

4) Obama: Don't blame it all on Israel


At the end of his two-day visit to Turkey on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama met with Muslim, Christian and Jewish students, and urged Muslims to look at the "two sides" to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"In the Muslim world, the notion that somehow everything is the fault of the Israelis lacks balance because there are two sides to every question," AFP quoted the US president as telling university students in Istanbul.

To the Jewish members of the group Obama said, "I say the same thing to my Jewish friends - you have to see the perspective of the Palestinians. Learning to stand in someone else's shoes, to see through their eyes... this is how peace begins."

"The world will be what you make of it," Obama told the students. "You can choose to make new bridges instead of new walls."

He left Turkey shortly after the meeting, flying into Iraq on a trip shrouded in secrecy, for a brief look at a war he opposed as a candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief.

Obama arrived in the country hours after a car bomb exploded in a Shi'ite neighborhood of the capital city, a deadly reminder of the violence that has claimed the lives at least 4,266 members of the US military since March 2003.

Shortly before leaving Turkey, the US president had held out Iraq as an example of the change he seeks in policies inherited from former president George W. Bush.

"Moving the ship of state takes time," he told a group of students in Istanbul. He noted his long-standing opposition to the war, yet said, "Now that we're there," the US troop withdrawal has to be done "in a careful enough way that we don't see a collapse into violence."

4a)Jews Portrayed as Blood Drinkers in Antisemitic Drama Aired on Hamas TV

Following are excerpts from a drama show presented at the Gaza Islamic University, during a festival commemorating Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin. The show aired on Al-Aqsa TV on April 4, 2009.

To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2073.htm.

"You Must Drink From the Blood of Muslims… But Mix It With Soda Water"

Jewish father: "We Jews hate the Muslims. We love killing Muslims. We Jews love drinking the blood of Muslims and the blood of Arabs. Are you Arabs? Are you Muslims? I hate you. Yes, I hate you. I hate you in order to please God. In order to please God… In order to please God…"

Shimon, his son: "Dad, I don’t know how God could possibly be pleased with you when you stink so much. You haven’t taken a shower for two years, yet you talk about pleasing God."

Father: "In order to please God… Shimon, my son, I’d like to teach you something. You must hate the Muslims."

Shimon: "Of course I hate them."

Father: "You must drink from the blood of Muslims."

Shimon: "But mix it with soda water."

Father: "I talked to the rabbi, [who told me] you should hate the Muslims, so God will be pleased with you."

Shimon: "Don’t worry, dad."

Father: "Very well, my son. I also want to remind you that you must hate the Muslims."

Shimon: "I do hate the Muslims!"


"Drink From the Blood of Muslims... Wash Our Hands with the Blood of Muslims"

Father: "You must drink from the blood of Muslims."

Shimon: "Okay, but just one cup, because I’m full."

Father: "Very well, my son. God will be pleased with you. Come, my son, I want you to pray. Stand next to me and pray.

[…]

"I’m telling you to stand next to me and pray."

Shimon: "I’ll be back in a minute."

Father: "Where are you going, son?"

Shimon: "To perform the ablution."

Father: "What?!"

Shimon: "I’m going to perform the ablution. Didn’t you want to pray?"

Father: "Ablution is for Muslims. We don’t do that."

Shimon: "They perform the ablution with water."

Father: "We should wash our hands with the blood of Muslims."

5) Turkey at the Energy Crossroads: Turkey, Present and Past
By Tuncay Babalı

Turkey is increasingly at the crossroads of the world energy trade. Because of tanker traffic through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, Turkey has become an important north-south oil transit route. The Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) natural gas pipelines make Turkey an important east-west route as well. Economic opportunities, however, can present diplomatic liabilities. As the importance of Turkey's energy sector has grown, Turkey has come under increasing pressure. Turkey finds itself caught between competing U.S. and Russian interests as a result of the August 2008 Georgia conflict. Turkish-Iranian energy trade has also brought Washington's ire down on Turkey. Turkey's efforts to minimize problems with its neighbors may make it popular with some, but it has led others to question the strength of the U.S.-Turkish strategic partnership. Analysis of Ankara's options show that it has little choice besides greater caution and engagement, and that energy concerns rather than a reassessment of its Western ties motivate its outreach to Russia and, to a certain extent, Iran.

Turkish-Russian Bilateral Relations


Istanbul straddles the Bosporus with a population of thirteen million. Over the last decade, oil tanker traffic on the strait has increased 240 percent. No other city in the world is exposed to the transit of such volatile cargo every day.

Historically, U.S.-Turkish relations have been strong. Throughout the Cold War, Turkey was a staunch member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Along with Norway, it was the only NATO country to border the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's collapse fundamentally altered Turkey's geopolitical position. To the east, Turkey found itself a neighbor to three new countries: Azerbaijan (through the Nakhchivan enclave), Armenia, and Georgia. The Warsaw Pact's demise made neighboring Bulgaria a promising new market. And the Black Sea, once the proving ground of the Turkish and Soviet navies, suddenly became a much friendlier place. It was not long before Turkish businessmen began exploring new economic opportunities.

Analysts and politicians have explained the rapprochment as "ever closer cooperation and [a] multidimensional partnership."[1] At the same time, many U.S. analysts and officials worry that Ankara's warming ties with Moscow signal a decline in the U.S.-Turkish alliance.[2] It need not be like this, however; rather, the growing Turkish-Russian relationship is based on the economic interests of both countries.

In many ways, the private sector has driven Turkish-Russian rapprochement. In 1990, Turkish-Soviet trade was $1.7 billion.[3] A decade later, it was $4.5 billion. By 2007, bilateral trade between Turkey and Russia reached a record $28 billion, albeit with an $18.6 billion Turkish trade deficit. In the first nine months of 2008, bilateral trade had already reached $30 billion with a total trade volume expected to reach $36 billion for the year. Whereas Germany was Turkey's number one trading partner up to 2007, today Russia has taken its place. Indeed, Turkish-Russian trade is now, by volume, almost three times that of U.S.-Turkish trade.[4]

In 2002, both countries completed the 16 billion cubic meter/day capacity Blue Stream pipeline, running from the Beregovaya compressor station in Arkhipo-Osipovka to the Durusu terminal located 38 miles from Samsun, Turkey. Gas flow from Russia to Turkey started in February 2003. However, because of a price dispute between the two countries, the inauguration ceremony could not be held until November 17, 2005.

Energy cooperation—both gas and oil—forms the basis of Russo-Turkish economic relations. Gas is Turkey's major import. In 2007, Turkey imported 23.15 billion cubic meters of natural gas through both western and Blue Stream pipelines, up 18 percent from the year before. Turkey, as the third largest importer of Russian gas after Germany and Italy, depends on Russia for almost two-thirds of its gas imports.[5] If Turkey cannot tap other major supplies from Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Turkmenistan by the early 2010s, then the Russian share of Turkey's gas supply will increase to 80 percent of the total.

In addition, Turkey imports approximately six million barrels of oil (seven million tons) annually from Russia, 30 percent of Turkey's total oil import and second only to that purchased from Iran. Turkey is also the third largest importer of Russian coal following Ukraine and Great Britain, spending $710 million in 2007.[6]

It is not just geography and energy that make Russia such an attractive trading partner for Turkey. Even though Russia's population is twice that of Turkey's, if the energy sector's contribution is subtracted, the Russian economy is smaller. Flush with cash from the still underdeveloped oil boom, Russia provides Turkish industry with ample opportunity. Turkish contractors have engaged in projects worth close to $28 billion; $5 billion in 2007 alone.[7] In addition, Turkish direct investments in Russia reached $6 billion by the end of 2007.

Tourism has also helped cement relations. In 2007, 2.5 million Russian tourists visited Turkey, almost four times the number of American visitors.[8] In only the first six months of 2008, Turkey welcomed two million Russians. Both Ankara and Moscow encourage this trend, which is unprecedented in the history of the two countries. According to the memorandum of understanding signed in 2006 between the Turkish Ministry of Culture and the Russian Federation's Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Ankara named 2007 the year of Russian culture in Turkey. Moscow reciprocated and declared 2008 the year of Turkish culture in Russia. On October 20, 2008, the Red Army Chorus and the Ottoman Army Military band (Mehter) gave a joint concert in the Kremlin.[9] Such a concert may seem a side note to a U.S. audience, but for both Turks and Russians, it had immense symbolic meaning, given that the Russian and Ottoman armies had clashed eleven times in major battles in the course of history. Few Turks ever expected a "Janissary" soldier to sing "Kalinka" in the Kremlin Palace.

The leaders of both Turkey and Russia have encouraged further bilateral developments. On December 5-6, 2004, Russian president Vladimir Putin paid his first bilateral visit to Turkey, the first by a Russian head of state since 1972 when Nikolai Podgorny, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, paid a symbolic visit to the country. Putting aside Podgorny's visit, Putin's was the first state visit by a Russian head of state since the beginning of official diplomatic relations 512 years before. During the visit, Putin and Turkish president Ahmet Necdet Sezer signed a joint declaration of cooperation which characterized bilateral relations as a "multilateral strengthened partnership."[10] The following year, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Russia three times, and Putin returned to Turkey to mark the opening of the Blue Stream pipeline. On June 28-30, 2006, Sezer became the first Turkish president to visit Russia,[11] and his successor, Abdullah Gül was scheduled to visit Moscow in January 2009. In contrast, during this period, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Turkey only twice (February 5-6, 2005, and April 25, 2006) and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just once.

Nor are the Russo-Turkish visits just symbolic. In follow-up agreements to the Turkish-Russian partnership, the foreign ministries of both countries established a bilateral consultation mechanism to cover twelve different subjects in February 2006. The commission held meetings in November 2006 and June 2008.[12] In contrast, the United States and Turkey do not enjoy such a comprehensive, regular mechanism for meetings or developing relations. Instead, because of the difference of opinion over the invasion of Iraq, they started in July 2006 to have irregular "Shared Vision and Strategic Dialogue" meetings. Although it is one of the key strategic partnership topics for Ankara and Washington, the parties were able to establish a working group on energy issues only in the summer of 2008.

Turkey's Energy Strategy
Turkey's energy strategy has three main pillars. The first is to ensure diversified, reliable, and cost-effective supplies for domestic consumption; the second is to liberalize its energy market; and the third is to become a key transit country and energy hub. Three quarters of the world's proven oil and gas resources are located in regions neighboring Turkey, and there is an increasing dependence on Russian, Caspian, and Middle Eastern oil and natural gas by Europe, the United States, and developing East Asian countries.

Approximately 3.7 percent of the world's daily oil consumption transits the Turkish Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. While this is currently only one-fifth of the traffic that passes through the Strait of Hormuz, it still represents a 240 percent increase in traffic over the last decade.[13] Two-thirds of these tankers carry Russian oil and gas exports; most of the bulk cargo trade is also Russian.

This creates a problem for Turkey, however. Istanbul, its largest city, straddles the Bosporus with a population of thirteen million. The 19-mile-long Bosporus has a convoluted morphological structure that requires ships to change course at least twelve times, including four separate bends that require turns greater than 45 degrees. At Kandilli, a blind 45-degree bend complicates navigation where the channel narrows to less than half a mile. At both Kandilli and Yenikoy, forward and rear lines of sight are blocked during turns. Moreover, two bridges built in 1973 and 1988 spanning the channel increase the navigational threats. Approximately 1.5 million people cross the waterway daily on intercity ferries and shuttle boats, accounting for about 1,000 east-west crossings.[14] No other city in the world is exposed to the transit of such volatile cargo every day.

Planning for an accident in the congested shipping passage is every Istanbul waterway official's nightmare. All Turkish officials remember the conflagration that followed a collision between two Cypriot tankers at the Black Sea entrance to the Bosporus on March 13, 1994. The accident killed twenty-nine crewmen, polluted the waterway with nineteen million gallons of crude oil, shut the channel for a week, and caused $1 billion in damage.[15] Today, ships four times as large as those involved in the accident ply the waterway. Turkey has been lucky that there have been no more major accidents. Still, between 2004 and 2007 alone, there were 103 minor accidents in the Bosporus strait. Over the same period, 651 tankers experienced technical breakdowns or malfunctions in the passage. Shipping is no longer a sustainable way of carrying hydrocarbons through the Bosporus.

Russian energy companies understand the gravity of the situation, and even as Moscow demands fulfillment of the 1936 Montreaux Convention's guarantee of "free and uninterrupted passage" through the Turkish straits, Russian officials and energy companies are aware that current traffic through the Bosporus is unsustainable. The solution lies in the use of alternative oil export options that bypass the straits.

The Blue Stream natural gas pipeline is one of the main components of a north-south axis alternative transport strategy. In 2007, Turkey imported 9.3 billion cubic meters of Russian gas through Blue Stream; the figure for 2008 is likely to be 25 percent higher. The Turkish Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy regards the implementation of gas transit projects through Turkey to third markets as possible new projects to strengthen Turkish-Russian energy cooperation.

Turkey also has begun work on other pipeline bypass options. While the Trans-Thrace pipeline has been cancelled because of environmental concerns, the Samsun-Ceyhan project (also called the Trans-Anatolian pipeline) broke ground at Ceyhan on April 24, 2007, in a joint venture between Turkey's Çalık Energy, Italy's Eni, and the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC); it is expected to have a capacity of 60 million barrels annually (70 million tons). Ceyhan provides distinct advantages for its existing infrastructure and linkages to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Originally meant to terminate at Samsun, its directors calculated that Unye, a small town in eastern Samsun province, would allow larger offshore facilities while reducing the total length by sixty miles. The proximity of Unye-Samsun to the oil outlets of Novorossiysk, Supsa, and Batum on the eastern Black Sea minimizes seaborne transportation of oil in the Black Sea.

While environmental concerns have also caused Turkish officials to oppose plans for an oil terminal in the Aegean Sea, there has been preliminary progress on the potential Medstream project, which envisions a network of pipelines to supply oil, natural gas, electricity, and water, possibly along with a fiber optic line from Turkey to Israel by connecting the Blue Stream and Samsun-Ceyhan pipelines to Israel's Ashkelon-Eilat pipeline. Feasibility studies have been positive, and Israeli demand would enable Russia's state oil company, Gazprom, to fill the Blue Stream pipeline although progress has stalled as Moscow and Jerusalem have yet to agree on a contractor to lay the pipeline from Ceyhan to Ashkelon.[16]

Turkey's Energy Relations with Iran
Despite frequent Iranian declarations of contracts and partnerships, since 2001 Turkey has been the only significant importer of Iranian gas. Turkey signed the Iran contract in 1996, during the short tenure of the Refah Party, whose leader Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist leanings later led to public pressure for his resignation. While the Islamic Republic is Turkey's second largest gas supplier after Russia, Ankara's dealings with Tehran have not been easy. Iran often demands prices higher than those of alternative suppliers, and gas quality and quantity often fall below the terms agreed. Even after renegotiation, Iran currently supplies Turkey with a little over half of its contracted 9.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year (6.16 billion cubic meters in 2007).[17] In both January 2007 and January 2008, Tehran slashed gas exports to Turkey in the face of high Iranian domestic demand.[18]

Turks certainly do not always consider Iran a reliable partner. Ankara and Tehran have also come to loggerheads over Iran's failure to respect commercial contracts. On May 8, 2004, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forced the expulsion of the Turkish construction consortium TAV from Tehran's flagship Imam Khomeini International Airport despite a 15-year service contract. That same year, the Iranian government also cancelled Turkcell's successful bid to enter the Iranian cell phone market.

Still, under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) chairman and prime minister Erdoğan's administration, there has been a renewed drive for energy partnership with the Islamic Republic. On July 14, 2007, Iranian oil minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh and his Turkish counterpart, Hilmi Güler, signed a memorandum of understanding by which the two sides agreed to build 2,200 miles of gas pipelines to transport up to forty billion cubic meters of gas annually to Europe through Turkey. They also agreed to increase cooperation in electricity generation and to construct natural gas power stations. This would allow the Turkish state oil company, Türkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortaklığı, to develop successive phases of the South Pars gas field, a $3.5 billion undertaking.[19] But one year later, the energy accords remained formally unconcluded.[20]

Turkish-Iranian energy cooperation has angered Washington because it undercuts White House efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic over its defiance of three U.N. Security Council sanctions seeking suspension of uranium enrichment.[21] Reuben Jeffery III, undersecretary of state for economic affairs, urged Turkish officials to bypass Iran and develop alternatives in the Caucasus and Central Asia. U.S. energy secretary Samuel Bodman and undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns have traveled to Ankara to underscore U.S. displeasure. Burns even alluded to possible application of the Iran Sanctions Act which would enable the U.S. government to sanction any company investing more than $20 million in the Iranian hydrocarbon sector.[22]

Erdoğan, however, has shrugged off Washington's displeasure and said Turkey seeks diversified energy supplies. It would be "out of the question to stop imports from either country [Russia or Iran],"[23] Erdoğan said following the Georgian war, especially as Turkey's energy needs grow by almost 6 percent per year.

Geopolitical Reality Check
The August 8, 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia has complicated Turkish strategy. Immediately after the invasion, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of Russia's General Staff, warned Ankara that Moscow would hold Turkey responsible for allowing U.S. navy ships through the Turkish straits to provide humanitarian assistance to Georgia should U.S. ships remain in the Black Sea for more than three weeks, as stipulated by the Montreaux Convention.[24]

According to some analysts, in apparent retaliation for allowing the U.S. ships passage, Russia has imposed new import controls on trucks at Russian border points. Russian foreign affairs minister Sergei Lavrov's September 2, 2008 visit to Turkey failed to resolve the dispute although he denied any connection with the U.S. ships' passage to the Black Sea.[25] Some Turkish trade officials say—depending upon the timing of final resolution of the problem—Turkey may lose roughly $3 billion because of these new Russian restrictions.

Turkey's leaders are treading carefully around the Georgia crisis. Although Turkey has called for Georgia's territorial integrity to be respected, it has refrained from embracing the stronger rhetoric coming out of Washington and Brussels. An explosion on the Turkish portion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline three days before the Russia-Georgia conflict highlighted Turkish vulnerability, even if it were caused by technical error.[26]

Prime Minister Erdoğan walked a very tight rope, explaining to the Turkish daily Milliyet, "It would not be right for Turkey to be pushed toward any side. Certain circles want to push Turkey into a corner either with the United States or Russia after the Georgian incident. One of the sides is our closest ally, the United States. The other side is Russia with which we have an important trade volume. We would act in line with what Turkey's national interests require."[27] Prime Minister Erdoğan's top foreign policy advisor Ahmet Davutoğlu explained, "You can't say that Turkish-Russian relations can be like Danish-Russian relations, or Norwegian-Russian relations, or Canada-Russian [sic] relations. ... Any other European country can follow certain isolationist policies against Russia. Can Turkey do this? I ask you to understand the geographical conditions of Turkey... We don't want to pay the bill of strategic mistakes or miscalculation by Russia, or by Georgia."[28]

As some analysts at Stratfor Intelligence Service put it, however, "Moscow got its point across: Europe can sink its money into projects designed to leave Russia in the cold [mainly east-west energy corridor projects like Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, and Nabucco], but the Russians still have the will and capacity to disrupt many of these projects."[29]

The Georgian crisis has shattered many of the assumptions in both the East and West about how oil and gas from the Caspian Basin can best be transported to international markets and, as a result, about the relations between producing and transit countries on the one hand and those two categories and the rest of the world on the other.[30]

Both Caspian Basin oil and gas producers and Western powers have wanted oil and gas export pipelines from that region to bypass Russia but, at the same time, have ruled out Iran as an alternative. Following the successful completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Erzurum pipelines and the first leg of the Turkey-Greece-Italy gas interconnector, the U.S.-Turkish "east-west energy corridor" concept envisions extending these pipelines east to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan via the Trans-Caspian pipeline and west to Europe via the Nabucco pipeline between Turkey and Austria. This would, for the first time, allow the European Union to buy Caspian gas without a Russian intermediary.

Given the continued standoff between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, that leaves only one route available: the current BTC pipeline route through Georgia. Georgian and Russian actions there have called into question the security of this pipeline. According to analyst Soner Cagaptay, "It is hard to imagine today how any energy company would invest in extensions to the East-West corridor, along which Georgia has become the weak link." [31] With its actions in Georgia, Russia has sent a strong message to "the U.S.-Turkish plans to boost the East-West corridor and make Turkey an entrepôt of Caspian energy. Moscow has also preemptively blocked the EU's plans to buy energy from the Caspian Basin without having to go through Russia." [32]

As a result, some Caspian Basin states are now considering exporting their hydrocarbons via Russia even if that gives Moscow leverage over them,[33] while some Western countries that want to punish Russia are discussing allowing exports via Iran;[34] still others are pushing to resolve the Karabakh crisis in order to allow the export of oil and gas via Armenia.[35]

No matter what solutions major powers pursue, the mere discussion of alternative energy strategies suggests old allies may come into conflict while old enemies may begin to cooperate. Perhaps the first major shift will be in Turkish-Armenian relations. On September 6, 2008, at the invitation of Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan, Turkey's president Abdullah Gül visited Armenia—a country with which Turkey does not have diplomatic relations—to watch the 2010 World Cup qualifier soccer match between their national teams.

A second outgrowth of the Georgian crisis has been plans to create a "Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform" to include Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia as well as Turkey and Russia.[36] In principle, each country has agreed to support the initiative.[37]

Conclusions
Energy dominates Turkish strategic thinking. While the United States enjoys a relatively peaceful neighborhood, Turkey exists in a tough and complicated region. As Turkey continues to industrialize and develop into a regional hub, its thirst for oil will only increase. This requires not only diversification but also good relations with all its neighbors, in addition to and not to the exclusion of its traditional partnerships. Turkey simply does not have the luxury to remain aloof from its neighbors, even if they are Russia and Iran.

Still, the Russian invasion of Georgia underlines the uncertainty that marks Turkey's diplomatic realignment. The future of Turkish-Russian energy relations and the north-south corridor depend largely on Moscow's vision of energy security for Europe and the world. Russian officials often point out that during the Cold War, they did not stop supplying oil to the West. While that is correct, it is equally true that the reputation of the Russian Federation as a consistent and trustworthy energy supplier is questionable. Moscow's use of energy as a trump card against Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the Czech Republic raised eyebrows. Even if Russian decision-makers perceive energy as not only an economic but also a political matter, energy bottlenecks due to political risks are always a possibility[38]—a situation that will increase the legitimacy of energy policies aimed at creating alternative supply routes.

This should make Turkey's long-term energy development important to the United States and Europe even if Washington remains upset at the short-term implications of Ankara's dealings with Tehran. Diversification of new energy supply routes remains crucial not only to Turkey's development but also for the West's energy security.

Tuncay Babalı, Ph.D., is counselor at the embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Washington D.C. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey.

[1] Igor Torbakov, "Making Sense of the Current Phase of the Turkish-Russian Relations," Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C. Oct. 11, 2007.
[2] Zeyno Baran, "Will Turkey Abandon NATO?" The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 29, 2008.
[3] Confidential report of the Commercial Counselor's Office of the Embassy of Turkey in Moscow, Nov. 11, 2008.
[4] "Trade with Turkey: 2007," Foreign Trade Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, accessed Jan. 7, 2009; "Turkish-American Trade and Economic Relations," General Directorate of Agreements, Undersecretariat of the Prime Ministry for Foreign Trade of the Republic of Turkey, May 8, 2008.
[5] Annual Report 2007, BOTAŞ (Petroleum Pipeline Corporation), p. 49, accessed Jan. 7, 2009; "Natural Gas Sale and Purchase Agreements, Natural Gas Pipeline Activities," Portrait of BOTAŞ Activities, accessed Jan. 21, 2009; "Natural Gas and LNG Purchases," "(Gas) Trade Movements 2007 by Pipeline," BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008, p. 30.
[6] Bill Powell, "Just How Scary Is Russia?" Fortune, Sept. 15, 2008.
[7] Interagency special 2007 report, International Contracting and Technical Services Department, Undersecretariat of the Turkish Prime Ministry for Foreign Trade.
[8] "Tourism Statistics for 2007," Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara, accessed Jan. 8, 2009.
[9] Today's Zaman (Istanbul), Oct. 22, 2008.
[10] Axis Information and Analysis news service, Aug. 21, 2005.
[11] Turkish Embassy, Moscow, news release, June 29, 2006.
[12] Internal Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Bureau Monthly Activity Announcement, Nov. 2006, June 2008.
[13] "Vessel Traffic Statistics in the Istanbul Straits 2003-2007," confidential report, Ministry of Transportation, General Directorate of Coastal Security, obtained from the Turkish representative to the International Maritime Organization.
[14] John C. K. Daly, "Tankers, Pipelines and the Turkish Straits," Eurasia Daily Monitor (Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C.), June 26, 2008.
[15] Anatolian News Agency (Ankara), Mar. 14-30, 1994.
[16] Turkish Daily News (Ankara), July 14, 2008; Agence France-Presse, Oct. 23, 2008.
[17] "Trade Movements 2007 by Pipeline," BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008, p. 30.
[18] Reuters, Jan. 1, 2008; Agence France-Presse, Jan. 1, 2008; Voice of America News, Jan. 1, 2008.
[19] John C. K. Daly, "Iran and Turkey Energy Ties Deepen," Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 2, 2008; Press TV (Tehran), Aug. 13, 2007.
[20] Eurasia Daily Monitor, Nov. 21, 2008.
[21] Milliyet (Istanbul), Sept. 28, 2007; Radikal (Istanbul), Sept. 28, 2007.
[22] John C.K. Daly, "Analysis: Turkey Iran Energy Ties," United Press International, Nov. 30, 2007.
[23] Gareth Jenkins, "Turkey Determined to Press Ahead with Iranian Gas Deal," Eurasia Daily Monitor, Oct. 5, 2007.
[24] Hurriyet, (Istanbul), Aug. 25, 26, 27, 2008; Milliyet, Aug. 25, 26, 27, 2008; Turkish Daily New, Aug. 25, 26, 27, 2008.
[25] Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Hamburg), Sept. 2, 2008.
[26] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 2, 2008; BBC Monitoring European (BBC Monitoring/Factiva), Aug. 6, 2008; John Roberts, "Georgia Falls Victim to Pipeline Politics," BBC Analysis, Aug. 12, 2008.
[27] Bulent Aliriza, "Turkey and the Crisis in the Caucasus," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Turkey Project, Washington, D.C., Sept. 9, 2008.
[28] "Turkey's Top Foreign Policy Aide Worries about False Optimism in Iraq," Council on Foreign Relations, Sept. 19, 2008.
[29] "Turkey: Eyeing Central Asian Energy Ties," Stratfor Intelligence Service (Austin, Tex.), Sept. 3, 2008.
[30] Paul Goble, "Assessing The Global Impact of Russia's Aggression in Georgia," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 3, 2008.
[31] Soner Cagaptay, "The Caucasus: Small War, Big Damage," Turkish Daily News, Sept. 8, 2008.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Lindsey Alexander, "Seeking a Way Forward on Trans-Caspian Pipeline," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 2, 2008; Spiegel Online (Hamburg), Sept. 12, 2008.
[34] Goble, "Assessing the Global Impact of Russia's Aggression in Georgia."
[35] "Turkey: Energy Cooperation with Armenia and Azerbaijan?" Stratfor Intelligence Service, Sept. 12, 2008.
[36] Zaman (Istanbul), Aug. 19, 2008.
[37] Azeri-Press Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan), Sept. 24, 2008.
[38] Suat Akgün, "The Russian Federation as an Energy Supplier," Turkish Policy Quarterly, Summer 2007.

6)It's the economy, stupid: Why Obama needs to learn to promise less and deliver more
By Max Hastings

President Barack Obama was the star of the G20 summit in London. On Friday at the Nato meeting in Strasbourg, he called on Europeans to do more to aid the struggle against Al Qaeda.

On Saturday in Prague, he proclaimed a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

In Ankara yesterday, he sought to extend a hand of friendship to the entire Muslim world, saying that the U.S. 'is not, and never will be, at war with Islam'.

Throughout his European tour he has provided a virtuoso display of charisma, dignity, rhetoric and personal statesmanship.



Barack Obama with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday. The US President has wowed Europe but faces grim political realities at home
He has shown himself to be a listening President such as the world dreamed of through the dismal years of George Bush.

Almost all of us watching this royal progress have felt a surge of excitement that the most important political role on earth is at last filled by a man who looks worthy of it.

But now he goes home, to face the brutal challenges of translating aspirations into realities. Martin Luther King had a dream. Barack Obama has many dreams, all of them admirable and, indeed, noble.

The big question in the minds of many Americans, however, is whether the breadth of their leader's ambitions threatens to cripple his prospects of fulfilling them.

'At home, Obama's power has its limits,' cautioned a columnist in yesterday's Washington Post. For all the acknowledged triumph of his overseas trip, it 'has also shown how much a president can't do'.

Now that initial euphoria about the G20 has faded, it is recognised that the meeting failed to generate the size of global fiscal stimulus Obama sought.

No Western nation, including the U.S., has figured out how to rid its banks of toxic assets - or how to reconcile taxpayers to the appalling cost of doing so.

For all the protestations of enthusiasm for free trade at the London summit, many nations are playing with protectionism.

The threat of a world slump will persist until these perils have been addressed successfully. The U.S. President failed to secure from Nato the extra soldiers he wants for Afghanistan to support the 21,000 additional American soldiers who are headed there.

Obama has committed himself to make Afghanistan work. Democrats decided during the election campaign that this is a 'good war', in contrast to the 'bad war' in Iraq. But Washington does not yet possess any clearer idea about how to win in Afghanistan - or even of what 'winning' might mean - than did the Bush administration.

There is still no coherent U.S. strategy. Obama has endorsed the troop 'surge' as an act of faith, not because he has a cunning plan.


North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (L) provided Obama's first real test on security issues, but economic problems could dog his presidency
Unless this changes fast, I have an uneasy feeling that, come autumn, not much will have changed on the battlefield except that there will be many more U.S. soldiers and helicopters there.

The President was awakened in his Prague hotel room in the early hours of Saturday to be told of North Korea's test missile launch. This news was none the less unwelcome for being expected.

Obama is doing his utmost to defuse the threat of nuclear proliferation by reaching out to Iran.

His administration was also expected to continue its predecessor's efforts to parley with the lunatic regime of Kim Jong II. But the North Korean action emphasises that some enemies of the West have no interest in accords with the U.S. or in reasonable behaviour.

Thus far, Obama's foreign policy strategy has hinged on playing Mr Nice Guy, after years of Bush as Mr Nasty.

A big test for the new U.S. President will come when generous words are seen to have failed and it becomes plain that some foreign foes can only be threatened with American power rather than wooed with American charm.

The Korean missile launch reminds us that Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world is a long, long way from realisation. Before he is much older, he might need to set his signature upon some unpalatably harsh policy decisions.

But the most important reality for the President is that his overseas triumphs of the past week scarcely count for a row of beans back home.

In the bewildered U.S., only one issue matters: the economic crisis that threatens unemployment and asset price collapses on a scale unknown in modern times.

Public anger is far more strident in the U.S. than it has so far been in Britain. If you think Sir Fred Goodwin is unpopular, take a look at what ordinary people up and down America are saying about their own bankers, business leaders and politicians.

Many proclaim from the rooftops - and mean it - that the big banks should be allowed to go bust rather than bailed out with their tax money. Far from joining any display of national unity, the Republicans who were beaten in November's elections are seeking to frustrate Obama in Congress at every turn.


General Motors headquarters in Detroit. The economic crisis has prompted Obama to intervene to prevent the collapse of America's vehicle manufacturers
They find receptive audiences for their denunciations of presidential policy and 'creeping socialism'.

The Right-wing syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer yesterday denounced Obama's intervention in the collapsing car industry, where the President has sacked the boss of General Motors and appointed most of a new board as the price of government aid.

'He has gotten himself so entangled in the car business,' writes Krauthammer contemptuously, 'that he is personally guaranteeing your muffler' - exhaust, as we would say.

'His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen.'

Meanwhile, it is not only U.S. conservatives who reel at the cost of Obama's visionary national healthcare scheme.

His first budget calls for an initial spend of $600 billion over ten years, as a downpayment on a total estimated cost of $1,200 billion.

At a time when U.S. government revenues are slumping like everybody else's, when there is already a vast deficit inherited from George Bush, Obama's health plan can be funded only by raising taxes to heights Americans are quite unaccustomed to, probably even before the next presidential election in 2012.

The President, then, goes home to an unhappy America, which is still deeply uncertain whether he knows how to fix what is wrong.

No one doubts that he talks a great game. The question is whether he can translate this into effective executive action.

He can still draw from a deep well of popular goodwill. But, less than 80 days into Obama's presidency, it seems possible to make one reliable prediction: if he can sort the economic crisis, he will be irresistible.

It could then become possible for him to address the rest of his impressive agenda.

But if he fails on the economy, his other dreams will be stillborn. Even if he remains president in name, like Bush in the later years, he will lack clout to make his will prevail at home or abroad.

The message, surely, is that in the months ahead, Barack Obama needs to promise less and deliver more.

He must labour 25 hours a day to dig America out of its economic hole. The nation's power of regeneration are so extraordinary that it is hard to doubt this is possible.

Everything about Obama suggests a man with the capacity for greatness - if only he does not over-reach himself in these first vital months.

Once the U.S. is back doing what it does best, providing the engine and inspiration for the world's economic growth, much else will become possible.

But for now, one dream should be enough even for a man of Barack Obama's extraordinary gifts.

7) No Nukes? No Thanks.Obama's odd obsession with universal nuclear disarmament.
By Anne Applebaum


Believe me, it is no fun to be the one who rains on the parade, and if nothing else, President Barack Obama's trip to Europe this past week was quite a parade. Or maybe "sold-out concert tour" is the better metaphor. There was a jolly town-hall meeting in Strasbourg, France; a wonderful encounter between Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni; spectacular street scenes in Prague. The world's statesmen fell all over themselves to be photographed with the American president. (Click here to watch Italian Prime Minister Silvio Bersluconi howling for the president's attention during a photo session—to the immense annoyance of the queen.)

Still, someone has to say it: Some things went well on this trip, and some things went badly. But the centerpiece of the visit, Obama's keynote foreign-policy speech in Prague—leaked in advance, billed as a major statement—was, to put it bluntly, peculiar. He used it to call for "a world without nuclear weapons" and a new series of arms-control negotiations with Russia. This was not wrong, necessarily, and not evil. But it was strange.

Clearly, the "no nukes" policy is one close to the president's heart. The Prague speech even carried echoes of that most famous of all Obama speeches, the one he made after losing the New Hampshire primary. "There are those who hear talk of a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it is worth setting a goal that seems impossible," he told his Czech audience. (Remember "We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics"?) "When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens," he continued. ("We are not as divided as our politics suggests.") He didn't say "Yes, we can" at the end, but he did say "human destiny will be what we make of it," which amounts to the same thing.

The rhetoric was his—as was the idea. Look at his record: One of the few foreign-policy initiatives to which Obama stuck his name during his brief Senate term was an increase in funding for nuclear nonproliferation. One of the few senatorial trips he managed was a nuclear inspection tour of Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan.

This is all very nice—but as the central plank in an American president's foreign policy, a call for universal nuclear disarmament seems rather beside the point. Apparently, the president's intention is to lead by example: If the United States cuts its own nuclear arsenal and bans testing, others will allegedly follow.

Forgive me for joining the chorus of cynics, but there is no evidence that U.S. nuclear arms reductions have ever inspired others to do the same. All the world's more recent nuclear powers—Israel, India, Pakistan—acquired their weapons well after such talks began more than 40 years ago.

As for the North Koreans, they chose the very day of the Prague speech to launch (unsuccessfully) an experimental missile. In its wake, neither China nor Russia wanted to condemn the launch, since to do so might set a precedent uncomfortable for them. "Every state has the right to the peaceful use of outer space," said a Russian U.N. envoy. His government does want arms-reduction talks, it is true, but only because the Russian nuclear arsenal is rapidly deteriorating. By agreeing to start them, we've unnecessarily handed over a bargaining chip.

More to the point, nuclear weapons, while terrifying in the abstract, are not an immediate strategic threat to Europe or the United States—even from Iran. Biological weapons are potentially more lethal. Chemical weapons are far cheaper to produce. Within the United States, ordinary bombs and rogue airplanes have already caused plenty of damage.

Conventional weapons, meanwhile, have not gone out of fashion. The most recent use of military force in Europe—the Russian-Georgian conflict of last August—involved tanks and infantry, not nukes. Even if Russia sold its remaining nuclear weapons for scrap metal, Russia's military would still pose a potential threat to its neighbors, just as a China without nukes could still invade Taiwan.

Ridding the world of nuclear weapons would be very nice, in other words, but on its own, it won't alter the international balance of power, stop al-Qaida, or prevent large authoritarian states from invading their smaller neighbors. However unsuccessful it has been so far, the promotion of democracy around the world is, ultimately, the only way to achieve these goals. Besides, however much the French loved Michelle's flowery dress, I'm not sure they have much interest in giving up their force de frappe. Ditto the British. And since they don't pose a threat, to us or anyone else, it's not clear to me why we should waste diplomatic capital trying to make them do so.

It could be, of course, that the Prague speech represented a holding pattern: Obama will talk about "no nukes" until he finds a more satisfying idea on which to hang his foreign policy. And if it didn't, all that goodwill, so much in evidence last week, might well go to waste.

Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.

8) Obama's Unreality Tour
By BRET STEPHENS


Barack Obama vowed to turn to the U.N. Security Council for strong action following North Korea's weekend missile launch. He would have done better by turning to Dr. Phil.

So, as the good doctor likes to say: Get real. Get real about North Korea. Get real about the U.N. Get real, also, about NATO, arms control, Russia, the global financial system, and every other item headlining the president's unreality tour through the capitals of Europe.

Start with North Korea. What was the purpose of the missile test? Surely not (or not mainly) to showcase the efficacy of North Korean technology, which Dear Leader Kim Jong Il must have known was likely to fail. The real test conducted Sunday was of Mr. Kim's international position. And here he scored a direct hit.

At the U.N., China's ambassador counseled a "cautious and proportionate" response, which is tantamount to no response at all. Russia wondered, in a style worthy of Andrei Gromyko, whether Pyongyang had actually violated the terms of Resolutions 1695 and 1718, which demand, inter alia, that the North "not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile." (My emphasis.)

But the greatest prize for Mr. Kim was the reaction from President Obama. "Rules must be binding," the president told his audience in Prague on Sunday. "Violations must be punished. Words must mean something." But how are words supposed to mean anything if all the administration proposes to do is offer up yet another resolution -- which is to say, more words?

To nobody's surprise (except, perhaps, Mr. Obama's) the Security Council has so far failed to agree on a resolution. But that's the U.N. for you, as opposed to a serious organization like NATO, at whose 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg . . . nothing much was accomplished, either.

Well, not nothing. A new NATO secretary-general was named. And France returned to NATO as a member of the military command, just a few decades too late for it to matter one way or the other.

Then again, on the pivotal question of Afghanistan, where it is often said that the future of NATO stands or falls, European members agreed to deploy a mere 5,000 additional troops, most of whom will be back following Afghan elections in August. So much, then, for the pretense that the reason the U.S. had previously failed to get better cooperation and support from Europe was that George W. Bush was president and Guantanamo wasn't being shut down.

In fact, the Europeans (minus Britain) are looking for the out-door from Afghanistan. As perhaps they should: No country should ask its soldiers to risk their lives in a faraway place for what amounts to an act of political symbolism.

Then again, no U.S. president should hazard America's security for political symbolism, either. That's just what Mr. Obama proposed in his Prague speech, calling for an arms control treaty with Russia, the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and another treaty to end the production of weapons-grade nuclear material. "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon," said the president, "the United States has a moral responsibility to act."

Now there's a line to linger over. Implicitly, it suggests that the nuclear challenges we now face from North Korea and Iran all stem from America's original sin of using atomic bombs to bring World War II to the swiftest possible conclusion. Never mind the estimated one million American and Japanese lives saved as result, or the peace kept and the prosperity built for six decades thereafter under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

It's also worth considering just what a new round of arms control is meant to accomplish. In his speech, Mr. Obama painted it as a matter of setting an example to the wider world.

But as the journalist Walter Lippmann observed in 1943, the disarmament movement of the interwar years only proved "tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament." Mr. Obama himself noted that "some countries will break the rules" of nuclear nonproliferation, adding that "That's why we need a structure in place that ensures when any nation does, they will face consequences."

And what kind of structure is that? See above for the consequences now being devised for North Korea.

In fairness, not everything about Mr. Obama's trip was unfortunate. At the G-20 Summit in London, the Europeans failed to get the U.S. to sign up to a new global regulatory agency, and the U.S. failed to convince the Europeans to dig themselves even deeper into debt -- a win for both sides, albeit unintentionally. Mr. Obama also got an ovation from reporters after a press conference in London. Call them fair and balanced.

Media sycophants may consider themselves duty bound, à la Chris Matthews, to work for Mr. Obama's success. Kim Jong Il and friends take a different view. In the real world, theirs are the views that count.

9) Secret Plan to Raise Taxes
By Matt Miller


When Obama returns home, former Clinton adviser Matt Miller says he'll face a mounting budget crisis—and will have to come clean about needing to raise our taxes.

Just before President Obama left for his boffo European tour, he offered an uncharacteristic evasion at home that revealed a looming political vulnerability. It came during his prime-time press conference on March 24, when he called on Chip Reid of CBS.

“At both of your town-hall meetings in California last week,” Reid began, “you said, quote, ‘I didn't run for president to pass on our problems to the next generation.’ But under your budget, the debt will increase $7 trillion over the next ten years. The Congressional Budget Office says $9.3 trillion. ... Isn't that kind of debt exactly what you were talking about when you said ‘passing on our problems to the next generation?’”

For a president who has been unusually willing to answer the questions he is actually asked, Obama’s reply was a telling Beltway dodge. He talked about his Republican critics having failed fiscal responsibility when they were in charge. He tweaked the GOP for lacking the courage to offer an alternative budget themselves. He offered a sidebar on the assumptions used by the White House and the CBO in their projections—differences that were irrelevant, because whichever forecast you believe, the new debt slated to be added on Obama’s watch is unprecedented. And he peddled the stock administration line that you can’t fix the budget without renewing economic growth and slowing the surge in health costs.

The one hard truth Barack Obama won’t utter is that all Americans will have to pay higher taxes before long.

But Obama never answered the question of how his epic debt can be squared with his call for generational responsibility. He can’t, because it can’t.

Behind this fudge is a secret: Obama and his advisers expect to limit such debt via broader tax increases, presumably in a second term. As every honest observer knows (and as I show in this chapter of my book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas), once this recession is past, taxes will go up in the years ahead no matter who is in power. John McCain’s top economic advisers from the campaign say so themselves. That’s because we’re retiring the baby boom, which means we’ll be doubling the number of people on Social Security and Medicare. We already have trillions of dollars in unfunded promises in these programs. The math simply doesn’t work at current levels of taxation.

This makes Obama’s debt dilemma an interesting case study in how an uncommonly forthright politician weighs the virtue of candor versus its political cost. Remember, Obama is the candidate who wouldn’t join the pandering when both McCain and Hillary Clinton were peddling that bogus gas-tax “holiday” last summer. He’s the president who routinely eschews happy talk, telling us the economy may well get worse before it gets better. But the one hard truth Barack Obama won’t utter is that all Americans will have to pay higher taxes before long.

Why not? The answer, at one level, is obvious, but it’s instructive to dissect. Having sat in such meetings in the early Clinton years, I suspect the conversation at the White House ran something like this. Yes, the president’s advisers told him, at some point taxes will need to rise broadly for the reasons described above. If we didn’t inherit this economic mess, we might be discussing it now as part of a plan to put Medicare and Social Security on a sounder footing. But tax cuts are needed for most Americans to combat the recession—and, by the way, that’s what you promised in the campaign. Saying the truth publicly—that taxes will need to rise once the recession is past—will let the GOP brand you as a tax-and-spend socialist. They’ll try to do that anyway based on the modest taxes for the top you’re proposing, but if you go this further step, their charge may well stick. Given how tough times are for most Americans today, floating the prospect of future tax increases would cost you too much support, and your ambitious agenda—hard to enact under any circumstances—would be imperiled. Better to finesse this tax thing for now.

The next question Obama’s team would have pondered is: What’s the political hit we’ll take for putting out a budget that appears to endorse enormous levels of new debt in the decade ahead? And how can we muscle through that? As Obama’s advisers would have explained, the White House would be giving Republicans the ability to say that in a few short years Barack Obama will add more debt than all the presidents that came before him combined. Centrist Democrats will share this concern, and will fear the political cost of embracing this path.

In the end, Obama and his team would have arrived at the strategy of finessing this vulnerability via the Blast-The-GOP-Change-The-Subject-And-Focus-On-Health-Care approach, which Obama deployed at the March 24 press conference. Meanwhile, with the White House able to focus the media on Obama’s wider activities and agenda, they’d hope to keep the debt issue from becoming politically salient.

This is a sensible strategy, to a point. But one piece of collateral damage is an intangible. By conspicuously fudging on debt and taxes, Obama undermines his reputation for intellectual honesty, one of his most attractive traits, and one which helped legitimize his claim to being a different kind of leader. In the end, Obama has made the judgment that, for now, some truths are just too hard to safely trust the public with.

Was this the right choice? I’ve debated this with friends and fellow commentators, who, like me, want Obama to succeed. Does he really have to be intellectually dishonest here? Would the price of candor be as high as the White House has calculated? In one sense, the very notion that this is up for debate shows how far we’ve moved from the Bush years, when intellectual dishonesty could simply be assumed. As I’ve mulled these questions, I’ve even hesitated to write a column like this—because it might give aid to the enemies of (what I view as) progress.

In the end, I’ve decided to weigh in because I’m convinced the political insufficiency of his current stance will force Obama to alter his position in any event. He may as well get out ahead of it. The drumbeat from the GOP about Obama’s colossal debt, previewed in the offstage budget skirmishes of the last two weeks, will become a primal Republican scream in the midterm elections. So rather than the divert-and-evade strategy, here’s how I would frame the debt issue if I were the president:

“Job one, two, and three is economic recovery,” Obama might say. “For the next three years that means unprecedented deficits to help boost this economy. I wish we didn’t have to run up $3 to 4 trillion in new debt to jumpstart growth—but I make no apologies for doing whatever it takes to get the economy out of the hole I found it in. Once we get past this downturn and back on the path to growth and prosperity, however—and we will—we’ll need to examine ways to ratchet this debt down much faster. The debt numbers in my budget for five or eight years from now are in that sense placeholders until we get through this mess. At that time, my view is that everything should be on the table. But first things first.”

When reporters ask, “does that mean higher taxes will be on the table,” Obama should merely repeat that “everything should be on the table—that’s the only sensible way for a great nation to tackle its challenges.”

Gamblers talk about a poker player’s ‘tell”—the small facial movement or tic that reveals when the player is bluffing. Obama’s tell on debt and taxes is the word “adjustments.” At the end of his long and otherwise cagey answer at the March 24 press conference, after being pressed in a rare follow-up question, Obama’s instincts led him to concede that when recovery came, to contain the debt, there might be a need to look at other “adjustments.” But the ones he stressed were further spending cuts.

Obama’s intellectual honesty is a political asset. Better that he adjust his rhetoric to say that once happy days are here again, everything needs to be on the table if we’re to solve the country’s problems.

Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is the author of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity. He hosts “Left, Right & Center,” public radio’s popular weekly political roundtable, and blogs at mattmilleronline.com.

10) Random Thoughts
By Thomas Sowell

Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent.

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

The famous editorial cartoonist Herblock could write as well as draw. In one of his books, he said something like: "You too can have the soothing feeling of nature's own baby-soft wool being pulled gently over your resting eyes." I think of that every time I see Barack Obama talking.

It has long been said that uncertainty is the hardest thing for a market to adjust to. No one can generate uncertainty as much as the government, which can change the rules in midstream or come out with some new bright idea at any time, as the current administration has already demonstrated.

We have now reached the truly dangerous point where we cannot even be warned about the lethal, fanatical and suicidal hatred of our society by Islamic extremists, because to do so would be politically incorrect and, in some European countries, would be a violation of the law against inciting hostility to groups.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences.

Barack Obama's favorable reception during his tour in Europe may be the most enthusiastic international acclaim for a democratic government leader since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, proclaiming "peace in our time."

How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.

What does "economic justice" mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

Perhaps the way President Obama will reduce the deficit is by making more presidential appointments of people who will pay the back taxes they owe, in order to get confirmed by the Senate.

Liberals seem to think that they are doing lagging groups a favor by making excuses for counterproductive and self-destructive behavior. The poor do not need press agents. They need the truth. No one ever said, "Press agents will make you free."

If I were Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, I would not sign any long-term lease on a home in Washington.

Socialists believe in government ownership of the means of production. Fascists believed in government control of privately owned businesses, which is much more the style of this government. That way, politicians can intervene whenever they feel like it and then, when their interventions turn out badly, summon executives from the private sector before Congress and denounce them on nationwide television.

11) Obama's missile crisis



Hours after North Korea dared to launch a long-range rocket in defiance of world pressure, President Obama issued a warning. "Rules must be binding," he said, a reference to the North's violation of a 2006 UN resolution that imposed sanctions on Pyongyang. "Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."

U.S. diplomats sailed into the UN on Sunday in high diplomatic dudgeon. They and allies demanded a strong Security Council resolution condemning North Korea and spiky new sanctions to punish Pyongyang.

They got zilch. Nothing. So far, not even a toothless, pro forma "president's statement" from the council expressing its opinion on the launch. The Chinese and Russians insist they're not sure North Korea broke any rules.

Welcome to the UN, Mr. President.
Obama, facing his first international crisis, is learning cold facts about world diplomacy.

The North Koreans are frustrating, to be sure. They're hard to read, they're tough bargainers and they don't hesitate to retaliate in dangerous ways.

But the UN? Well, that can be even more frustrating. North Korea has staged a rocket launch that can be read only as a threat to develop nuclear missiles capable of hitting the U.S. and other targets. North Korea was warned by most of the world's powers not to launch. Is it too much to expect a meaningful response from the UN?

North Korea tipped this provocation weeks in advance, so UN Security Council members have had plenty of time to coordinate a response. All we have gotten are three hours of meetings and a promise to spend the next couple of days discussing what to say. Feckless doesn't even begin to describe this debacle.

So far, North Korea's rocket has failed but its gambit has won.

Violations must be punished, the U.S. president said. Well, maybe not, the UN is saying.

A failure to respond would risk the modest progress that has been made toward slowing Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. Yes, there has been progress: Its nuclear reactor has been partly disabled. But now the negotiations are stalled over complicated you-said/no-I-didn't disputes on how to verify the North's nuclear dismantlement.

So we'll learn something quickly about the Obama administration. Can it make the president's words count? Can it persuade reluctant giants like the Chinese to cooperate on North Korea? Can it work the foot-dragging UN into doing anything meaningful in response to this rocket launch?

The rocket launched over the weekend flew for about 13 minutes and fell into the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles east of Japan. The third stage apparently failed.

This was more than a test of North Korea's ballistic missile capability, though. This was a test of the mettle of a new president.