Iran: Economic Sanctions Success Story?

Economic sanctions don't always get the best rap. Frustrated Middle East watchers and myriad Obama critics point to Iran as proof that sanctions aren't coercive, but the detractors may have spoken too soon.

FP's The Cable blog (which, incidentally, has impressed me with its coverage of the Syrian chemical weapons story) put up a new piece this Friday on the reputation of Hasan Rouhani, Iran's new president, in the US intelligence community. Former IC officials who met Rouhani during the Reagan administration say he struck them as a genuine moderate.

If they're right, his election could be a first step toward real progress on ending Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. But the article also mentions another contributing factor: the UN sanctions regime.

Russponsibility to Protect

Vladimir Putin says the U.S. needs more evidence before any military action in Syria could possibly be justified. And even if conclusive proof of Assad's use of chemical weapons were to be found, our favorite amateur aquatic archaeologist continues, any military action would have to have the approval of the UN Security Council.

One may well ask, as Jonathan did today: doesn't Putin remember his own 2008 "intervention" in Georgia?

Korea Checkpoints #2: The Kaesong Industrial Complex

The first bit of post-crisis peninsular rapprochement is slow going so far. The Kaesong Joint Industrial Complex in Kaesong, just on the North Korean side of the DMZ, saw over 50,000 North Korean workers employed by South Korean firms until the DPRK shut it down in April.

Korea Checkpoints #1

I've been in Korea about 8 months now. I've been thinking and reading a lot about Korean affairs and international affairs more generally, but I'm getting the itch to start writing about it, too. Here's what I'm paying attention to in Korean affairs right now:

Romney Needs a Russian Reset on Libyan Consulate

Let's compare Mitt Romney's and Russian President Vladimir Putin's responses to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues.

Here's Mitt:

It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

And here's Our #1 Geopolitical Foe:

...there can only be one opinion: we condemn this crime and express our condolences to the families of the victims.

With Ryan, Romney Rolls the Hard Six

Until Friday evening, my thoughts on Mitt Romney's likely running mate were limiteded to my certainty that it would not be Marco Rubio. Romney's whole campaign had been based on making the election a "referendum on Obama," An up-or-down vote on the incumbent President, into which Romney himself barely figured at all.

Ryan and his famed budget wonkiness are a clear departure from that strategy. Combine that with Obama's widening lead in the polls over the past few weeks, and to me the Ryan pick is pretty clearly a Hail Mary. Convinced he was going to lose, Romney changed the conversation. Now, instead of a referendum on Obama, the election will certainly be about the size of government.

Greece's Past and the Debt Crisis

Here is an interesting article I read on Greece's debt crisis. The basic argument is that the Greeks resent their northern European creditors - despite an enormous amount of leniency - because they feel that they have been taken advantage of historically. The author does not present any quantifiable polling data, but his historical examples do offer some food for thought. This is the kind of wedding of history to current events which helps us understand why people can behave so stupidly. It is sometimes difficult to see how the history of Classical Greece, the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and the Third Reich can still have an effect on the present.