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August 22, 2008
No Deal
The deal brokered in Lebanon to end Muslim on Muslim violence is off. Maybe way off. Several Sunni factions in Lebanon announced Tuesday night that they are freezing a truce they had signed with Hizbullah a day earlier.Hmmm. Something has happened to weaken the Hizballah position in Lebanon. Meekness has never been one of their virtues. Normally a change like this would be accompanied by threats and bombast. It appears the correlation of forces in the world is changing. Something has shaken Iran. Could it be economic troubles? Tehran, 13 August: The punch line of economic models for single- product countries is that they can considerably quicken the process of non-reliance on mono-product policies.The Russian economy is also highly dependent on oil these days. Might this explain their move into Georgia? Perhaps the move was not about South Ossetia at all. Perhaps it was really an attempt to keep oil and natural gas from flowing through Georgia in an attempt to prop up world oil prices. Perhaps the Russians and Iranians are anticipating further drops in oil prices over the coming year. Especially since the Russian grab for the Georgian oil pipeline has failed. Maybe not totally, but essentially. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the interests of the newly emerging states of the Caucasus and countries such as Ukraine and Belarus have repeatedly and fiercely clashed with those of Russia. In particular, they have competed with each other over energy resources and the transmission corridors of the former Soviet Union.If the Iranians are expecting further drops in the price of oil they may be cutting back on funding for their Hizballah Army in Lebanon. Armies like to be paid. Without pay they dissolve. Talleyrand is reputed to have said something like: "you can do anything with bayonets, except sit on them". Maybe this is one of those cases where the bayonets must be sent home for lack of maintenance. If America starts drilling for oil (which is looking more and more likely) it is more than possible we can put an end to a lot of unrest in the world by forcing oil exporters to focus on economics rather than war. And that may explain the changes in the correlation of forces. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon on 08.22.08 at 03:34 AM |
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