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.

Cameron vs. Twitter?

I am not a big believer in the idea that web-based social media is a revolutionary political tool. My fellow 20-somethings tend to embrace this idea because twitter et al. are so widely used in their social circles. I suspect that those in older demographics jump into social media because they see the 20-somethings doing it and don't want to feel old. But Facebook doesn't change the way people think, or the concerns they have about their political situation. It simply changes the speed at which ideas are exchanged.

Additionally, I have little patience for the claims that the current riots in London are a youth-led political movement in the vein of the Arab Spring. Unlike Tahrir,  the Tottenham riots represent the worst rather than the best potential of collective youth activity. The rioters are involved basically in theft and arson, not political activism. If your biggest political grievance is that you don't want to pay market value for a PS3, then you probably have no legitimate political grievances.

However, none of that means I'm OK with David Cameron's recent talk of disrupting UK access to social networks to combat the riots.

Critical Juncture in EU Integration?

Dueling Banjos today in RCW's afternoon edition: a Daily Mail op-ed says the Euro must end, while ex-Eurocrats counter that the Euro could be saved with further EU integration. The authors' biases are obvious enough, but what might be less obvious is that they don't actually disagree with each other.

Both articles present the separation of monetary and fiscal policy as the source of the Eurozone crisis, and they're right. If Greece and the rest of the PIIGS still had national currencies, they could mitigate the problems austerity is giving them through inflation. And if fiscal policy were at least partially elevated to the EU level, redistributive assistance to the PIIGS wouldn't be left to the caprice of national politics in Germany. Monetary integration without fiscal coordination has proved to be a dangerous half measure.

Revolution Number Nile

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has pledged not to seek reelection this September. On January 24, this would have been shocking, too-good-to-be-true news for most Egyptians. The fact that many Egyptians view this as too little change, happening too slowly, is proof of how dramatically the political climate in Egypt has been changed by this week of protests. 

All the same, Mubarak has given the Egyptian public something to think about. I'm curious to see how many protesters continue to come out into the streets in the days ahead. These protests have essentially shut down the country. Are Egyptians prepared to risk food shortages and a continued frozen economy to try and get Mubarak out on their terms rather than his? 

Divided Government 2.0

This winter's edition of The Economist's annual predictions issue, The World in 2011, is on the shelves. Arianna Huffington's contribution is "The Year of Hope 2.0," an article that appears to be too short for the size of its ideas, whatever they may in fact be. Here, I will only address the supposition that "Hope 1.0," and its accompanying President have failed irredeemably.

WikiLeaks continues to be harmful in a different way than it thinks it is

The latest Wikileaks "scandal," a dump of over 250,000 US diplomatic cables and other documents, is alleged by many in the press and assumed by much of the public to be extremely revelatory and shocking. In fact, very, very little, if anything, in the leak, has surprised anyone who's been paying even a minimum of attention to international news over the past 8-12 months.

What in this leak is actually surprising news?

Even China has domestic politics

Drezner over at Foreign Policy seems surprised that China would be so belligerent towards Japan over custody of the Chinese fishing trawler captain. Drezner points out that China's apparent rare-earth embargo against Japan makes little sense internationally. A belligerent China is pushing the Pacific Rim towards Washington; according to Drezner, China doesn't seem to realize this. I think they must.

A.Q. Khan network may be active again

This is why Global Zero won't end the threat of nuclear weapons.

Russia to resume military cooperation with NATO

New START, a hands-off response in Kyrgyzstan, and now Russia's ready to provide logistical support for the war in Afghanistan.There are plenty of factors at play in this move, not least of which is the fact that Georgian and Ukrainian efforts to join NATO have stalled.

But it looks like Russia is finally starting to see relations with the West in something other than zero-sum terms, and you can't tell me the "Reset" hasn't had something to do with that.

Global Zero vs Global Nine

Last week, I received an email from my school alerting me to an upcoming program run by "Global Zero" on our campus. Global Zero is an organization that promotes the total elimination of all nuclear weapons the world over by 2030.

I have serious doubts about whether a world without nuclear weapons would be a universally good thing. But whether or not "Global Zero" is a desirable goal, I don't think it's really possible. I can't see many of the nine current nuclear powers being ready to dismantle their weapons in the near or intermediate future.

Here's why.