zenpundit.com

RECOMMENDED READING

With a hearty hat tip to Regan Walker, the Washington Institute has a ME white paper entitled ” Security, Reform and Peace: The Three Pillars of US Strategy in the Middle-East”. It is over 100 pages long so you won’t be getting commentary from me today but relatively soon. A somewhat unlikely, eclectic, group of thinkers put this paper together, from moderate liberals to the hard neocon Right.

For those who subscribe to Foreign Policy magazine and can access the restricted articles, Robert Baer’s commonsensical, CIA reforms, proposed in” Wanted: Spies Unlike Us”.

A short, Washington Qarterly/CSIS article on the triangular relationship between the U.S., Eastern Europe and the ” old Europe ” EU.

And Mithras had an unusually explosive post ( 97 comments thus far) on the developments in the slaughter of New Jersey Coptic Christian family. Police have charged local and very non-Muslim thugs with robbery and murder.

THE IRANIAN QUESTION [ Updated]

Ken Pollack and Ray Takeyh argue for trying to split the radicals and pragmatists among Iran’s hardline Islamist rulers in Foreign Affairs. I essentially agree that an attempt at a ” Grand Bargain” must be made even though I’m fairly certain that such a bargain will be rejected by the radicals no matter how generous the terms if it requires irrevocable and verifiable nuclear disarmament. That rejection will leave the EU and IAEA with little to say. If I’m wrong and the Iranians accept and stick to the agreement, that’s one headache solved bloodlessly.

We very well may have to strike at Iran and killing off this numerically tiny faction of totalitarian lunatics because a) that is what is militarily feasible ( probably not what Teheran intended by dispersing and burying its nuclear program but there you are) and b) they are the crux of the problem between Iran and the rest of the world. If Teheran had a normal government the question of its nuclear program would not even be on the radar screen.

On a Related Note…. Check out the Adventures of Chester on speculation for military operations against Iran.

UPDATE: On a related note to the related note, visit Coming Anarchy for Sir Younghusband’s take

ARE DEMOCRACIES REALLY MORE PEACEUL THAN OTHER STATES

H-Diplo is having a superb and thoughtful debate on ” Democratic Government and Foreign Policy”. It is a particularly apt question given the common assumption that ” democracies do not go to war against each other ” and the increase in democratic states in the last decade.

Skeptics are pointing to Ancient Greece and the relative scarcity of true democratic states until very recently to argue that this Fukuyama-esque maxim is merely wishful thinking.

RETURN OF THE ZENPUNDIT

Took part in a seminar of sorts today as part of a group presenting on educational theory, to an audience mostly composed of professional women in their twenties and thirties. Rough work, I know, but somebody has to do it.

NECK DEEP IN WORK

Sorry for the lack of activity. I have a major project on my hands at the moment. If I don’t get some new material up tonight I’ll definitely have some new posts by sometime tomorrow