George Friedman offers his analysis in The New York Review of Books.

The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It has simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted.

The Russians knew that the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior US leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk. The Russians also know something else that is of vital importance. For the United States, the Middle East is far more important than the Caucasus, and Iran is particularly important. The United States wants the Russians to participate in sanctions against Iran. Even more importantly, it does not want the Russians to sell weapons to Iran, particularly the highly effective S-300 air defense system. Georgia is a marginal issue to the United States; Iran is a central issue. The Russians are in a position to pose serious problems for the United States not only in Iran, but also with weapons sales to other countries, like Syria.

Therefore, the United States has a problem—either it must reorient its strategy away from the Middle East and toward the Caucasus, or it has to seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a Russian counter in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for war in Georgia at this time, it would have to calculate the Russian response in Iran—and possibly in Afghanistan (even though Moscow's interests there are currently aligned with those of Washington).

In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner.

Georgia and the Balance of Power

Tony Wood, in the LRB:

What explains the Georgian willingness to go on the offensive this August? The spring and summer had seen increased tension in both regions: in April, a Russian plane shot down a Georgian drone over Abkhazia; in late June, bombs exploded in the Abkhazian town of Gagra and its capital, Sukhumi, and there were exchanges of fire between South Ossetian and Georgian troops throughout June and July. But the August assault on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, wasn’t a knee-jerk response to Russian prodding. On 7 August Saakashvili publicly announced himself ready to negotiate with South Ossetia, before ordering the shelling of Tskhinvali that same evening. Noting that there were undoubtedly provocations from Russia, the Economist nonetheless quoted a Saakashvili ally as saying: ‘He wanted to fight.’

Saakashvili seems to have reasoned that, given Georgia’s good standing with the West, Russia would not respond with force to an attempt to retake what is still internationally recognised as Georgian territory. Further, in the wars of the early 1990s, though Russia had armed both the Abkhaz and Ossetians, it had not officially dispatched its own troops to fight the Georgians. Saakashvili perhaps also thought that, if Russia did retaliate, Nato or at least the US would ride in to his rescue. These were all dreadful miscalculations.

What Condoleezza Said

The partition of Georgia may cause a long-term confrontation between Russia and the West, with echoes of the cold war. Too bad, Mr Medvedev said this week: “Nothing scares us, including the prospect of a cold war…we have lived in different situations and we will survive.” (“If it’s only cold, that’s not a problem,” Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister retorted.) Russia’s elite is convinced that the West is weak and will swallow Russia’s decision. “When you cross the road you have to check for dangers,” declares Mr Zatulin. “The West can apply psychological pressure. But Europe cannot afford to turn down our gas and America needs our help with Afghanistan and Iran.”

Put out even more flags

Thomas Powers on Bush and Iran.

At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to have lost its capacity to think clearly.

The seriousness of American threats to Iran is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them.

Two of the skeptics, Gates and Mullen, are running the Pentagon, and their cautioning remarks, only a step this side of insubordination, would seem to make attack impossible. But if attack is impossible, why does Bush talk himself into an ever-tighter corner by continuing to issue threats? Does he believe Iran will cave? Are these the only words he thinks people will still listen to? Is he hoping to tie the hands of the next president? Or is he preparing to summon the power of his office to carry out the last option on the table? One hardly knows whether to take the question seriously. It seems alarmist and overexcited even to pose it when the realities are so clear. But it is impossible to be sure—Bush has a history.

From the archive:

Standing there, the doctor's wife watched the two blind men who were arguing, she noticed they made no gestures, that they barely moved their bodies, having quickly learned that only their voice and hearing now served any purpose, true, they had their arms, that they could fight, grapple, come to blows, as the saying goes, but a bed swapped by mistake was not worth so much fuss, if only all life's deceptions were like this one, and all they had to do was to come to some agreement, Number two is mine, yours is number three, let that be understood once and for all, Were it not for the fact that we're blind this mix-up would never have happened, You're right, our problem is that we're blind. The doctor's wife said to her husband, The whole world is right here.

Being “always on” is being always off, to something.

Due to the nature of the threat revealed by this investigation, we are prohibiting any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions from being carried on the airplane. This determination will be constantly evaluated and updated when circumstances warrant.

"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists.

"Nooooo!" the audience roared.

Iran: The Threat

Friedman wrote that it was a visit to a Toyota Lexus factory in Japan that got him thinking about the importance of weaning the undeveloped world from arguing "over who owns which olive tree" (which is how he characterized matters in the Middle East), and onto a path that might one day allow them to produce luxury cars. He concluded that these countries will need to fit themselves into the "Golden Straitjacket," a regimen of privatization, free trade and low government spending otherwise known as the "Washington Consensus." The path is "not always pretty or gentle or comfortable. But it's here and it's the only model on the rack this historical season."

The irony, the South Korean-born economist Chang notes, is that "the Japanese government kicked out General Motors and Ford in 1939," subsequently bailed out Toyota with public money, and even then, the company failed badly with its first U.S. export attempts in 1958. Yet Japan persevered in its support of the industry, with the result that "today, Japanese cars are considered as 'natural' as Scottish salmon or French wine," but "[h]ad the country donned Friedman's Golden Straitjacket early on, Japan would have remained the third-rate industrial power that it was in the 1960s, with its income on a par with Chile, Argentina and South Africa. ... In other words ... the Japanese would now not be exporting the Lexus but still be fighting over who owns which mulberry tree."

As Chang describes the way it really was, you realize how amazing it is that free market ideologues have been able to shoehorn Great Britain into a free-trade version of world history, given that it rose to economic dominance while building a world empire.

'Bad Samaritans' and 'myth' of free trade

Here is Thomas Powers, on why the NIE is bad news for Israel:

"In fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."

With those nine much-argued words, the American intelligence community abruptly cut the ground from beneath years of threats to bomb or invade Iran if it did not do what the NIC concluded "with high confidence" that it had already done. In the pained bleat of denial that predictably followed from the White House and its allies, a basic question got pushed to the back of the line: Who pressed to declassify these highly inconvenient findings?

...

The fact that the NIE says what it says, and its release, both show that the White House has lost control over American intelligence. This good news probably needs a lot of hedging and qualification, but it is good all the same.

...

Absent a big surprise or sudden turn in the road, the president's attempt to remake the Middle East leaves an Iraq with a Shiite government in friendly concert with a Shiite Iran whose leader speaks with a new confidence as he brushes aside American threats not to "allow" or not to "tolerate" -- words used by Cheney and Bush -- a bomb program, which American intelligence says was abandoned four years ago.

See also:

The White House ordered a stepped-up effort [to encourage defectors] in hopes of gathering stronger evidence that Tehran was making progress toward building a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration "wanted better information" on Iran's nuclear programs, said a US official briefed on the expanded collection efforts.

"I can't imagine that they would have ever guessed that the information they got would show that the program was shut down," the official said.

Nine little words in the NIE

“We’re all flabbergasted,” one European diplomat said of the report generally.

Bush Insists Iran Remains a Threat Despite Arms Data

A selection of important articles recommended by George Packer. It's a cycle of inter-related stories; the effect is greatest once all of the articles have been read.

With every passing day, Johnathan Rapley's conception of the New Middle Ages seems increasingly likely.

Letter from Iraq: Inside the Surge

Amar was a lifelong friend of Karim’s. Three months earlier, Amar and his older brother, Jafaar, had been riding in the van of a friend, Sayeed, when a group of gunmen hailed them. Amar recognized them as Mahdi Army men, and assumed that they were coming to say hello. As Sayeed braked, the car was riddled with gunfire. Amar crouched as low as he could, as the Mahdi Army men emptied their Kalashnikovs. He was unhurt, but Jafaar and Sayeed were dead.

That night, Amar told Karim that, at the morgue, he had sworn over his brother’s body to take revenge. He had vowed to kill a hundred Mahdi men—ten for each of Jafaar’s fingers. His mother, Um Jafaar, supported him, and begged Karim to help her son. He agreed.

...

“Americans are too honorable, too clean,” he said. “They have to kill these people. They are dirty. Anyway, if they don’t kill them, I will. But helping the Americans arrest them helps them not suspect me.”

Baghdad's Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves

... for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom ... Iraqis are clearly surprised and relieved ... But the depth and sustainability of the changes remain open to question.

Many Iraqis say they would still rather leave the country than go home.

The Americans describe the volunteers as heroes, part of a larger nationwide campaign known as the Sunni Awakening. But Abu Nebras said he did not trust them. "Some of the Awakening members are just Al Qaeda who have joined them," he said. "I know them from before."

Mrs. Aasan said she was thrilled and relieved just a few days ago, when her college-aged son got stuck at work after dark and his father managed to pick him up and drive home without being killed.

"They drove back to Dora at 8!" she added, glancing at her husband, who beamed, chest out, like a mountaineer who had scaled Mount Everest.

Iraqis Wasting An Opportunity, US Officers Say

A window of opportunity has opened ... but "it's unclear how long that window is going to be open."

"It is painful, very painful," dealing with the obstructionism of Iraqi ... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

Here is Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll, in this week's New Yorker:

It is difficult to imagine that Musharraf will ever recover the political strength necessary to govern the country.

Not surprisingly, neither the General nor President Bush seems to be aware of this.

Watch this interview with Musharraf, published today by the New York Times. It's nine minutes long. Listen to him try to explain why he can't resign as Army chief. For a more congenial interview, you might want to go back and review his appearance (part 1, part 2) on the Daily Show, during his book tour. At one minute into part two, Stewart asks:

You met with our President a few days ago, are you able to speak candidly with him about what you feel is working, and what isn't, and is he, [does he] seem open, or ... paying attention, or ... does he let's say have the TV on, ...

More Steve Coll:

His Way

The President has spent December in sleeves-rolled-up discussions with State Department experts and military officers, apparently searching for such ideas. It seems a little late in his chief-executive-style Presidency for such an earnest return to graduate school.

The Planner

In a competitive democracy, it is difficult to rescue a war built on distortions and illusions, because, to protect falsehoods proffered to voters in the past, a President and his advisers may find it tempting to manufacture more of them. It does not require a cynic to see that even an implausible escalation plan has the virtue of putting domestic political opponents back on their heels. The Bush Administration is now reworking this sad axiom, and, once again, American soldiers will be asked to give their lives for its assumptions.

A Secret Hunt Unravels in Afghanistan

If at first you don't succeed, at least learn from your mistakes.

"The Planner" was about Iraq, but Coll's analysis fits with Pakistan, too; see Tariq Ali on doubling the doses.

Miscalculations | Steve Coll | The New Yorker

Start with this:

"It is an illusion to think you can sustain constitutionalism, democratization, without addressing its Islamic foundation."

"Because for Muslims you cannot say, 'I’m a Muslim, but—' That 'but' does not work."

Then rewind to the Lewis essay, from 1990:

"Enemies of God" -- this phrase must seem very strange to the modern outsider, whether religious or secular. The idea that God has enemies, and needs human help in order to identify and dispose of them, is a little difficult to assimilate. It is not, however, all that alien.

For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-style economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western-style warfare brought defeat. It is hardly surprising that so many were willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways were best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan innovations of the reformers and return to the True Path that God had prescribed for his people.

Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States. The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.

This is no less than a clash of civilizations -- the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both. It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival.

This essay appears in The American Idea. The full text of the original is available.

See also:

Islam in Europe | Timothy Garton Ash | NYRB
Islam's Imperial Dreams | OpinionJournal
The Philosopher of Islamic Terror | NYT Magazine

The Roots of Muslim Rage | Bernard Lewis | September 1990 | The Atlantic