Geopolitical Weekly: Population Decline and the Great Economic Reversal, February 17, 2015

By George Friedman

In recent weeks, we have been focusing on Greece, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. All are still burning issues. But in every case, readers have called my attention to what they see as an underlying and even defining dimension of all these issues — if not right now, then soon. That dimension is declining population and the impact it will have on all of these countries. The argument was made that declining populations will generate crises in these and other countries, undermining their economies and national power. Sometimes we need to pause and move away from immediate crises to broader issues. Let me start with some thoughts from my book The Next 100 Years.

Reasons for the Population Decline

There is no question but that the populations of most European countries will decline in the next generation, and in the cases of Germany and Russia, the decline will be dramatic. In fact, the entire global population explosion is ending. In virtually all societies, from the poorest to the wealthiest, the birthrate among women has been declining. In order to maintain population stability, the birthrate must remain at 2.1 births per woman. Above that, and the population rises; below that, it falls. In the advanced industrial world, the birthrate is already substantially below 2.1. In middle-tier countries such as Mexico or Turkey, the birthrate is falling but will not reach 2.1 until between 2040 and 2050. In the poorest countries, such as Bangladesh or Bolivia, the birthrate is also falling, but it will take most of this century to reach 2.1.

The process is essentially irreversible. It is primarily a matter of urbanization. In agricultural and low-level industrial societies, children are a productive asset. Children can be put to work at the age of 6 doing agricultural work or simple workshop labor. Children become a source of income, and the more you have the better. Just as important, since there is no retirement plan other than family in such societies, a large family can more easily support parents in old age.

In a mature urban society, the economic value of children declines. In fact, children turn from instruments of production into objects of massive consumption. In urban industrial society, not only are the opportunities for employment at an early age diminished, but the educational requirements also expand dramatically. Children need to be supported much longer, sometimes into their mid-20s. Children cost a tremendous amount of money with limited return, if any, for parents. Thus, people have fewer children. Birth control merely provided the means for what was an economic necessity. For most people, a family of eight children would be a financial catastrophe. Therefore, women have two children or fewer, on average. As a result, the population contracts. Of course, there are other reasons for this decline, but urban industrialism is at the heart of it.

There are those who foresee economic disaster in this process. As someone who was raised in a world that saw the population explosion as leading to economic disaster, I would think that the end of the population boom would be greeted with celebration. But the argument is that the contraction of the population, particularly during the transitional period before the older generations die off, will leave a relatively small number of workers supporting a very large group of retirees, particularly as life expectancy in advanced industrial countries increases. In addition, the debts incurred by the older generation would be left to the smaller, younger generation to pay off. Given this, the expectation is major economic dislocation. In addition, there is the view that a country's political power will contract with the population, based on the assumption that the military force that could be deployed — and paid for — with a smaller population would contract.

The most obvious solution to this problem is immigration. The problem is that Japan and most European countries have severe cultural problems integrating immigrants. The Japanese don't try, for the most part, and the Europeans who have tried — particularly with migrants from the Islamic world — have found it difficult. The United States also has a birthrate for white women at about 1.9, meaning that the Caucasian population is contracting, but the African-American and Hispanic populations compensate for that. In addition, the United States is an efficient manager of immigration, despite current controversies.

Two points must be made on immigration. First, the American solution of relying on immigration will mean a substantial change in what has been the historical sore point in American culture: race. The United States can maintain its population only if the white population becomes a minority in the long run. The second point is that some of the historical sources of immigration to the United States, particularly Mexico, are exporting fewer immigrants. As Mexico moves up the economic scale, emigration to the United States will decline. Therefore, the third tier of countries where there is still surplus population will have to be the source for immigrants. Europe and Japan have no viable model for integrating migrants.

The Effects of Population on GDP

But the real question is whether a declining population matters. Assume that there is a smooth downward curve of population, with it decreasing by 20 percent. If the downward curve in gross domestic product matched the downward curve in population, per capita GDP would be unchanged. By this simplest measure, the only way there would be a problem is if GDP fell more than population, or fell completely out of sync with the population, creating negative and positive bubbles. That would be destabilizing.

But there is no reason to think that GDP would fall along with population. The capital base of society, its productive plant as broadly understood, will not dissolve as population declines. Moreover, assume that population fell but GDP fell less — or even grew. Per capita GDP would rise and, by that measure, the population would be more prosperous than before.

One of the key variables mitigating the problem of decreasing population would be continuing advances in technology to increase productivity. We can call this automation or robotics, but growths in individual working productivity have been occurring in all productive environments from the beginning of industrialization, and the rate of growth has been intensifying. Given the smooth and predictable decline in population, there is no reason to believe, at the very least, that GDP would not fall less than population. In other words, with a declining population in advanced industrial societies, even leaving immigration out as a factor, per capita GDP would be expected to grow.

Changes in the Relationship Between Labor and Capital

A declining population would have another and more radical impact. World population was steady until the middle of the 16th century. The rate of growth increased in about 1750 and moved up steadily until the beginning of the 20th century, when it surged. Put another way, beginning with European imperialism and culminating in the 20th century, the population has always been growing. For the past 500 years or so, the population has grown at an increasing rate. That means that throughout the history of modern industrialism and capitalism, there has always been a surplus of labor. There has also been a shortage of capital in the sense that capital was more expensive than labor by equivalent quanta, and given the constant production of more humans, supply tended to depress the price of labor.

For the first time in 500 years, this situation is reversing itself. First, fewer humans are being born, which means the labor force will contract and the price of all sorts of labor will increase. This has never happened before in the history of industrial man. In the past, the scarce essential element has been capital. But now capital, understood in its precise meaning as the means of production, will be in surplus, while labor will be at a premium. The economic plant in place now and created over the next generation will not evaporate. At most, it is underutilized, and that means a decline in the return on capital. Put in terms of the analog, money, it means that we will be entering a period where money will be cheap and labor increasingly expensive.

The only circumstance in which this would not be the case would be a growth in productivity so vast that it would leave labor in surplus. Of course if that happened, then we would be entering a revolutionary situation in which the relationship between labor and income would have to shift. Assuming a more incremental, if intensifying, improvement in productivity, it would still leave surplus on the capital side and a shortage in labor, sufficient to force the price of money down and the price of labor up.

That would mean that in addition to rising per capita GDP, the actual distribution of wealth would shift. We are currently in a period where the accumulation of wealth has shifted dramatically into fewer hands, and the gap between the upper-middle class and the middle class has also widened. If the cost of money declined and the price of labor increased, the wide disparities would shift, and the historical logic of industrial capitalism would be, if not turned on its head, certainly reformulated.

We should also remember that the three inputs into production are land, labor and capital. The value of land, understood in the broader sense of real estate, has been moving in some relationship to population. With a decline in population, the demand for land would contract, lowering the cost of housing and further increasing the value of per capita GDP.

The path to rough equilibrium will be rocky and fraught with financial crisis. For example, the decline in the value of housing will put the net worth of the middle and upper classes at risk, while adjusting to a world where interest rates are perpetually lower than they were in the first era of capitalism would run counter to expectations and therefore lead financial markets down dark alleys. The mitigating element to this is that the decline in population is transparent and highly predictable. There is time for homeowners, investors and everyone else to adjust their expectations.

This will not be the case in all countries. The middle- and third-tier countries will be experiencing their declines after the advanced countries will have adjusted — a further cause of disequilibrium in the system. And countries such as Russia, where population is declining outside the context of a robust capital infrastructure, will see per capita GDP decline depending on the price of commodities like oil. Populations are falling even where advanced industrialism is not in place, and in areas where only urbanization and a decline of preindustrial agriculture are in place the consequences are severe. There are places with no safety net, and Russia is one of those places.

The argument I am making here is that population decline will significantly transform the functioning of economies, but in the advanced industrial world it will not represent a catastrophe — quite the contrary. Perhaps the most important change will be that where for the past 500 years bankers and financiers have held the upper hand, in a labor-scarce society having pools of labor to broker will be the key. I have no idea what that business model will look like, but I have no doubt that others will figure that out.

Population Decline and the Great Economic Reversal is republished with permission of Stratfor.

This Is the City: H-Town!

Where did a year go? It was like yesterday I got the bad news call from personnel saying I was heading to a rotational assignment at the jail. Not what I became a sergeant to do, but that comes with the territory. I went from a senior police officer to a junior sergeant and bottom of the totem pole. There are guys senior to me who did go, there are guys junior to me who will not go. Just your luck of the draw and as many of my fellow sergeants from last year said, better to just get it done with than live with the possibility over your head for three years.

Tonight I spend my last night as an assigned jail sergeant. My soon to be former boss has asked if I’m willing to come in now and then if he’s shorthanded and I’m cool with that. But I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do for months. I got the key, opened the door that says “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” and walked onto the roof. It has a beautiful view of the Houston skyline at night. Man I wish I had thought of this for Independence Day.

The staff surprised me with a dinner, a cake and a card for me. I figured they would celebrate after I left, damned, it’s nice to be wanted! :<)

But for the moment, I’ll just take it easy in the last few hours. I really don’t want a disturbance/confrontation as I’m walking out this place. I have a knack for on the last assignment before I leave, there is a minor disaster and I want to avoid that now. And seeing I get to make the decisions, I think me and my coffee Thermos will stay away
.
All in all a good year, dealt with some excellent people who are doing the a dirty job that has to be done for small wage and little recognition. But to all the staff, thank you for your help in breaking me in, answering a question or two, executing my direction well and serving the people of this city. Even the morons we process.

Well, pleasant dreams Houston. My final hours are in front of me. I’m going to try and not get into trouble. Night.

Security Weekly: The Islamic State's Use of Extreme Violence, February 12, 2015

By Scott Stewart

The Islamic State's Feb. 3 release of a macabre video recording showing Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned to death caused shock and outrage. But though the video was appallingly gruesome, the fact that the Islamic State's public relations team continues to amp up the shock value of its media offerings should not surprise anyone who has monitored the group's media output.

Indeed, over the past several months, the Islamic State has released videos documenting the executions of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi prisoners of war. In one of the videos, the group forced prisoners to dig their own graves and to kneel on the edge before shooting them. In another video, the group paraded hundreds of prisoners through the desert to a large mass grave dug by a bulldozer, ordered them to lie down and shot them. In yet another video, prisoners were marched one by one to the edge of a dock along the Tigris River, shot with a pistol in the back of the head and thrown into the river. Undoubtedly coalition pilots have either seen these videos or have been briefed about the Islamic State's policies regarding prisoners of war.

An interview with al-Kaseasbeh that was featured in the sixth edition of Dabiq magazine concluded with the question, "Do you know what the Islamic State will do with you?" Al-Kaseasbeh replied, "Yes … They will kill me."

A Long History of Violent Media

In January, the Islamic State released photos and videos of the group throwing men accused of being homosexual from a tall building in Mosul. Recent videos also have often depicted beheadings. The group's beheading videos have not only featured foreign hostages, including Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig and British prisoners David Haines and Alan Henning, but also prisoners of war. For example, the group beheaded a large number of Syrian soldiers in July after overrunning the Syrian army's 17th Division base near Raqaa. The Islamic State claimed to have captured and beheaded 75 members of the division, and Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State posted photos of the beheaded Syrian soldiers.

The video chronicling Kassig's death also contained footage of the mass beheading of 18 Syrian prisoners of war. That video in some ways presages the al-Kaseasbeh video; the executioners were all wearing matching uniforms and load-bearing equipment and wielding identical knives. This is something rarely seen among Islamic State troops on the actual battlefield and was clearly done for cinematic effect. Also, unlike the Western hostages, whose actual beheadings are never shown, the Syrian troops were beheaded in graphic slow motion.

But this type of grotesque public display is by no means a new thing for the Islamic State. In fact, violent and brutal media productions have been a part of the group's organizational DNA since 2004, when the founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is believed to have personally beheaded American hostage Nick Berg in a May 2004 video posted online.

The Berg execution video, along with a number of other brutal videos the group posted during the al-Zarqawi era, prompted al Qaeda's then-deputy and now-leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to send a letter to al-Zarqawi in 2005 admonishing him for his brutality. In it al-Zawahiri wrote, "Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable . . . are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages."

Al-Zawahiri also tried to dissuade al-Zarqawi from too literally interpreting the Koran verses asking Muslims to strike terror in the hearts of non-Muslims, but the reprimand went unheeded.

Interestingly, al-Zarqawi was not the first jihadist leader to appear in a beheading video. That honor goes to al Qaeda's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of the 9/11 attacks, who beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. It is fairly obvious that the Pearl video influenced al-Zarqawi's decision to produce a video of Berg's execution.

Al-Zarqawi and later his followers continued releasing media that contains extreme violence. Indeed, their video production capabilities have become far more sophisticated since the shaky, grainy Berg video, and the group's understanding of the Internet and how to effectively use social media has far surpassed that of al Qaeda or any of its franchise groups. Last week, Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute wrote an article comparing al Qaeda to Microsoft, the old, stodgy player faced with a newer, hipper competitor — the Islamic State. Al-Zawahiri sits in hiding and writes letters while al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State carve out an empire in the heart of the Middle East and document it all on social media.

Taking Watts' analogy one step further, if al Qaeda is Microsoft, the Islamic State is Facebook and Twitter: It is all about networking and publishing horrific selfies. Arguably, the Islamic State has experienced great tactical success through its business model. The psychological advantage its terrorist campaign gave it allowed it to defeat much larger and better-equipped military forces in places such as Mosul. It also allowed the group to subsume several other Syrian and Iraqi militant groups, recruit local fighters, raise funds from international donors and draw thousands of foreign fighters to its ranks. Furthermore, its campaign has sparked an unprecedented amount of grassroots activity across the globe over the past five months. However, these tactical advantages are not achieved without some strategic consequences.

Facing the Consequences

As al-Zawahiri warned in 2005, the Islamic State's behavior in Iraq — including but certainly not limited to its execution videos — alienated its local support base. In 2006, the group was dealt another blow when a U.S. airstrike killed al-Zarqawi; the group was nearly destroyed by 2010. Indeed, one of the primary reasons the group survived was because the Iraqi Sunni sheikhs chose not to totally destroy it so they could use it to distract the Shiite-led government in Baghdad (a Frankenstein monster that has certainly gone out of control).

Looking at the Islamic State today, the group appears to have learned little from the events that ushered it from its last boom to a severe bust. It certainly has not changed its tactic of using extreme violence and publicizing it. This recklessness is not just prompted by the desire to gain tactical advantages, such as shocking and terrorizing the enemy into capitulation, recruiting more fighters, raising funds and provoking nations into reactionary measures. Though certainly each of these tactical objectives is a facet of the Islamic State's strategy, the heart of its decision to use extreme violence is in its belief system.

Members of the Islamic State truly believe that they are invincible and that if they practice what they believe to be true Islam, Allah will bless them and use them to conquer the Earth to bring all people to their form of Islam under their brand of Sharia. Because of this belief system, they have little room for the type of pragmatism or moderation other jihadist leaders have suggested. Indeed, they believe that such attitudes reflect a lack of faith, and they have openly criticized jihadist leaders like al-Zawahiri and the Taliban's Mullah Mohammad Omar for displaying pragmatism and calling for moderation.

I believe that the reckless hubris of this belief system will once again be the group's downfall. We are already beginning to see signs of the organization's next bust cycle in reports that the group is executing defectors, forcibly conscripting young men to fight, and sending very young and inexperienced fighters to the front lines. Indeed, using poorly trained young recruits and foreign fighters as cannon fodder might lead to more internal dissent than the group's public displays of violence. The group's use of mentally disabled individuals and women as suicide bombers had terrible consequences for it in the last go-round.

Because of their belief that Allah protects them, the leaders of the Islamic State may not see a problem with publishing grotesque videos — even when those videos cause a visceral international reaction that results in an international coalition mobilizing against them. Most recently, the group has provoked Jordan and other Arab states to increase their campaign to destroy the organization. It is becoming increasingly clear that the rest of the world no longer believes that the Islamic State is inexorable, and that realization is going to manifest itself in some very real strategic consequences on the battlefield.

The Islamic State's Use of Extreme Violence is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Geopolitical Weekly: Germany Emerges, February 10, 2015

By George Friedman

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, accompanied by French President Francois Hollande, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 6. Then she met with U.S. President Barack Obama on Feb. 9. The primary subject was Ukraine, but the first issue discussed at the news conference following the meeting with Obama was Greece. Greece and Ukraine are not linked in the American mind. They are linked in the German mind, because both are indicators of Germany's new role in the world and of Germany's discomfort with it.

It is interesting to consider how far Germany has come in a rather short time. When Merkel took office in 2005, she became chancellor of a Germany that was at peace, in a European Union that was united. Germany had put its demands behind it, embedding itself in a Europe where it could be both prosperous and free of the geopolitical burdens that had led it into such dark places. If not the memory, then the fear of Germany had subsided in Europe. The Soviet Union was gone, and Russia was in the process of trying to recover from the worst consequences of that collapse. The primary issue in the European Union was what hurdles nations, clamoring to enter the union, would have to overcome in order to become members. Germany was in a rare position, given its history. It was in a place of comfort, safety and international collegiality.

The world that Merkel faces today is startlingly different. The European Union is in a deep crisis. Many blame Germany for that crisis, arguing that its aggressive export policies and demands for austerity were self-serving and planted the seeds of the crisis. It is charged with having used the euro to serve its interests and with shaping EU policy to protect its own corporations. The vision of a benign Germany has evaporated in much of Europe, fairly or unfairly. In many places, old images of Germany have re-emerged, if not in the center of many countries then certainly on the growing margins. In a real if limited way, Germany has become the country that other Europeans fear. Few countries are clamoring for membership in the European Union, and current members have little appetite for expanding the bloc's boundaries.

At the same time, the peace that Germany had craved is in jeopardy. Events in Ukraine have aroused Russian fears of the West, and Russia has annexed Crimea and supported an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Russia's actions have sparked the United States' fears of the re-emergence of a Russian hegemon, and the United States is discussing arming the Ukrainians and pre-positioning weapons for American troops in the Baltics, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. The Russians are predicting dire consequences, and some U.S. senators are wanting to arm the Ukrainians.

If it is too much to say that Merkel's world is collapsing, it is not too much to say that her world and Germany's have been reshaped in ways that would have been inconceivable in 2005. The confluence of a financial crisis in Europe that has led to dramatic increases in nationalism — both in the way nations act and in the way citizens think — with the threat of war in Ukraine has transformed Germany's world. Germany's goal has been to avoid taking a leading political or military role in Europe. The current situation has made this impossible. The European financial crisis, now seven years old, has long ceased being primarily an economic problem and is now a political one. The Ukrainian crisis places Germany in the extraordinarily uncomfortable position of playing a leading role in keeping a political problem from turning into a military one.

The German Conundrum

It is important to understand the twin problems confronting Germany. On the one hand, Germany is trying to hold the European Union together. On the other, it wants to make certain that Germany will not bear the burden of maintaining that unity. In Ukraine, Germany was an early supporter of the demonstrations that gave rise to the current government. I don't think the Germans expected the Russian or U.S. responses, and they do not want to partake in any military reaction to Russia. At the same time, Germany does not want to back away from support for the government in Ukraine.

There is a common contradiction inherent in German strategy. The Germans do not want to come across as assertive or threatening, yet they are taking positions that are both. In the European crisis, it is Germany that is most rigid not only on the Greek question but also on the general question of Southern Europe and its catastrophic unemployment situation. In Ukraine, Berlin supports Kiev and thus opposes the Russians but does not want to draw any obvious conclusions. The European crisis and the Ukrainian crisis are mirror images. In Europe, Germany is playing a leading but aggressive role. In Ukraine, it is playing a leading but conciliatory role. What is most important is that in both cases, Germany has been forced — more by circumstance than by policy — to play leading roles. This is not comfortable for Germany and certainly not for the rest of Europe.

Germany's Role in Ukraine

The Germans did play a significant part in the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's government. Germany had been instrumental in trying to negotiate an agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, but Yanukovich rejected it. The Germans supported anti-Yanukovich demonstrators and had very close ties to one of the demonstration leaders, current Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who received training in a program for rising leaders sponsored by the Christian Democratic Union — Merkel's party. The Germans condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea and Moscow's support for the Ukrainian secessionists in the east. Germany was not, perhaps, instrumental in these events, but it was a significant player.

As the Germans came to realize that this affair would not simply be political but would take on a military flavor, they began to back away from a major role. But disengagement was difficult. The Germans adopted a complex stance. They opposed the Russians but also did not want to provide direct military support to the Ukrainians. Instead, they participated in the sanctions against Russia while trying to play a conciliatory role. It was difficult for Merkel to play this deeply contradictory role, but given Germany's history the role was not unreasonable. Germany's status as a liberal democracy is central to its post-war self-conception. That is what it must be. Therefore, supporting the demonstrators in Kiev was an obligation. At the same time, Germany — particularly since the end of the Cold War — has been uneasy about playing a direct military role. It did that in Afghanistan but not Iraq. And participating in or supporting a military engagement in Ukraine resurrects memories of events involving Russia that Berlin does not want to confront.

Therefore, Germany adopted a contradictory policy. Although it supported a movement that was ultimately anti-Russian and supported sanctions against the Russians, more than any other power involved it does not want the political situation to evolve into a military one. It will not get involved in any military action in Ukraine, and the last thing Germany needs now is a war to its east. Having been involved in the beginnings of the crisis, and being unable to step away from it, Germany also wants to defuse it.

The Greek Issue

Germany repeated this complex approach with Greece for different reasons. The Germans are trying to find some sort of cover for the role they are playing with the Greeks. Germany exported more than 50 percent of its gross domestic product, and more than half of that went to the European free trade zone that was the heart of the EU project. Germany had developed production that far exceeded its domestic capacity for consumption. It had to have access to markets or face a severe economic crisis of its own.

But barriers are rising in Europe. The attacks in Paris raised demands for the resurrection of border guards and inspections. Alongside threats of militant Islamist attacks, the free flow of labor from country to country threatened to take jobs from natives and give them to outsiders. If borders became barriers to labor, and capital markets were already distorted by the ongoing crisis, then how long would it be before weaker economies used protectionist measures to keep out German goods?

The economic crisis had unleashed nationalism as each country tried to follow policies that would benefit it and in which many citizens — not in power, but powerful nonetheless — saw EU regulations as threats to their well-being. And behind these regulations and the pricing of the euro, they saw Germany's hand.

This was dangerous for Germany in many ways. Germany had struggled to shed its image as an aggressor; here it was re-emerging. Nationalism not only threatened to draw Germany back to its despised past, but it also threatened the free trade essential to Germany's well-being. Germany didn't want anyone to leave the free trade zone. The eurozone was less important, but once they left the currency bloc, the path to protectionism was short. Greece was of little consequence itself, but if it demonstrated that it would be better off defaulting than paying its debt, other countries could follow. And if they demonstrated that leaving the free trade zone was beneficial, then the entire structure might unravel.

Germany needed to make an example of Greece, and it tried very hard last week to be unbending, appearing to be a bit like the old Germany. The problem Germany had was that if the new Greek government wanted to survive, it couldn't capitulate. It had been elected to resist Germany. And whatever the unknowns, it was not clear that default, in whole or part, wasn't beneficial. And in the end, Greece could set its own rules. If the Greeks offered a fraction of repayment, would anyone refuse when the alternative was nothing?

Therefore, Germany was facing one of the other realities of its position — one that goes back to its unification in 1871. Although economically powerful, Germany was also extremely insecure. Its power rested on the ability and willingness of other countries to give Germany access to their markets. Without that access, German power could fall apart. With Greece, the Germans wanted to show the rest of Europe the consequences of default, but if Greece defaulted anyway, the only lesson might be that default works. Just as it had been in the past, Germany was simultaneously overbearing and insecure. In dealing with Greece, the Germans could not risk bringing down the European Union and could not be sure which thread, if pulled on, would unravel it.

Merkel's Case in Washington

It was with this on her mind that Merkel came to Washington. Facing an overwhelming crisis within the European Union, Germany could not afford a war in Ukraine. U.S. threats to arm the Ukrainians were exactly what she did not need. It wasn't just that Germany had a minimal army and couldn't participate or, in extremis, defend itself. It was also that in being tough with Greece, Germany could not go much further before being seen as the strongman of Europe, a role it could not bear.

Thus, she came to Washington looking to soften the American position. But the American position came from deep wells as well. Part of it had to do with human rights, which should not be dismissed as one source of decision-making in this and other administrations. But the deeper well was the fact that for a hundred years, since World War I, through World War II and the Cold War, the United States had a single rigid imperative: No European hegemon could be allowed to dominate the Continent, as a united Europe was the only thing that might threaten national security. Therefore, regardless of any debate on the issue, the U.S. concern about a Russian-dominated Ukraine triggered the primordial fear of a Russian try at hegemony.

It was ironic that Germany, which the United States blocked twice as a hegemon, tried to persuade the United States that increased military action in Ukraine would not solve the problem. The Americans knew that, but they also knew that if they backed off now, the Russians would read it as an opportunity to press forward. Germany, which had helped set in motion both this crisis and the European crisis, was now asking the United States to back off. The request was understandable, but simply backing off was not possible. She needed to deliver something from Putin, such as a pledge to withdraw support to Ukrainian secessionists. But Putin needed something, too: a promise for an autonomous province. By now Merkel could live with that, but the Americans would find it undesirable. An autonomous Ukrainian province would inevitably become a base for undermining the rest of the country.

This is the classic German problem told two ways. Both derive from disproportionate strength overlying genuine weakness. The Germans are trying to reshape Europe, but their threats are of decreasing value. The Germans tried to reshape Ukraine but got trapped in the Russian reaction. In both cases, the problem was that they did not have sufficient power, instead requiring the acquiescence of others. And that is difficult to get. This is the old German problem: The Germans are too strong to be ignored and too weak to impose their will. Historically, the Germans tried to increase their strength so they could impose their will. In this case, they have no intention of doing so. It will be interesting to see whether their will can hold when their strength is insufficient.

Germany Emerges is republished with permission of Stratfor.

The selective full memory of the liberal intelligentsia

I noted two weeks ago the 50th anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest men of the 20th Century, Sir Winston Churchill. I was not alone as many noted the passing of this great leader who stood alone as the dark forces of Nazism, Communism and Fascism moved along Europe, seemingly unstoppable. Naturally those who despise the west are not impressed by this date or the man. I give you a nobody named Ishaan Tharoor.

The dark side of Winston Churchill’s legacy no one should forget

There's no Western statesmen — at least in the English-speaking world — more routinely lionized than Winston Churchill. Last Friday marked a half century since his funeral, an occasion that itself led to numerous commemorations and paeans to the British Bulldog, whose moral courage and patriotism helped steer his nation through World War II.

Churchill, after all, has been posthumously voted by his countrymen as the greatest Briton. The presence (and absence) of his bust in the White House was enough to create political scandal on both sides of the pond. The allure of his name is so strong that it launches a thousand quotations, many of which are apocryphal. At its core, Churchill's myth serves as a ready-made metaphor for boldness and leadership, no matter how vacuous the context in which said metaphor is deployed.

For example, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair earned comparisons to Churchill after dragging his country into the much-maligned 2003 Iraq war. So too Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose tough stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions has been cast by some in Churchill's heroic mold — the Israeli premier's uncompromising resolve a foil to the supposed "appeasement" tendencies of President Obama.

In the West, Churchill is a freedom fighter, the man who grimly withstood Nazism and helped save Western liberal democracy. It's a civilizational legacy that has been polished and placed on a mantle for decades. Churchill "launched the lifeboats," declared Time magazine, on the cover of its Jan. 2, 1950 issue that hailed the British leader as the "man of the half century."

But there's another side to Churchill's politics and career that should not be forgotten amid the endless parade of eulogies. To many outside the West, he remains a grotesque racist and a stubborn imperialist, forever on the wrong side of history.

Churchill's detractors point to his well-documented bigotry, articulated often with shocking callousness and contempt. "I hate Indians," he once trumpeted. "They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

Mr Tharoor, I would not defend his exact words but them again I don't know what context they were said in. He may have seen something quite disgusting to anyone and used it to generalize the Indian people. Now, you may recall the experience of General Sir Charles Napier when he was informed of the Hindu custom of burning the widow alive on the funeral pyre of the deceased. His response,

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

Should we judge every Hindu or Indian on this one act?

He referred to Palestinians as "barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung." When quashing insurgents in Sudan in the earlier days of his imperial career, Churchill boasted of killing three "savages." Contemplating restive populations in northwest Asia, he infamously lamented the "squeamishness" of his colleagues, who were not in "favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."

At this point, you may say, so what? Churchill's attitudes were hardly unique for the age in which he expounded them. All great men have flaws and contradictions — some of America's founding fathers, those paragons of liberty, were slave owners. One of Churchill's biographers, cited by my colleague Karla Adam, insists that his failings were ultimately "unimportant, all of them, compared to the centrality of the point of Winston Churchill, which is that he saved [Britain] from being invaded by the Nazis."

But that should not obscure the dangers of his worldview. Churchill's racism was wrapped up in his Tory zeal for empire, one which irked his wartime ally, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a junior member of parliament, Churchill had cheered on Britain's plan for more conquests, insisting that its "Aryan stock is bound to triumph." It's strange to celebrate his bravado in the face of Hitler's war machine and not consider his wider thinking on other parts of the world. After all, these are places that, just like Europe and the West, still live with the legacy of Churchill's and Britain's actions at the time....

Churchill and the British may not have been angles, but they also brought India (and many other nations) under a single language, a rule of law and growth under a massive amount of investment. I want to say a decade ago India's middle class was rising because the low cost of telecommunications combined with the large number of English speaking highly trained employees were able to corner the market for computer service assistance. Without the intervention of the British Empire, India would not have that. Not to mention the rule of law, for both criminal and civil actions. Were the English the best in all aspects, no. Was Churchill a saint, absoutly not. But his greatness in standing alone against the appeasers, warning the world of the threat of Hitler during the 1930s, rallying the last nation in Europe to stand against the NAZIs, leading the nation he loved through it's "finest hour" will not be degraded by his, at the time common, racial beliefs. Unlike you Mr. Tharoor, he was and is forever on the right side of history.

One of the favorite movies is The Shoes of the Fisherman, a story of a Russian becoming pope in the middle of the 1960s Cold War. Discussing the plans to bury the previous pope, the reporter tells his audience:

The Pope was dead. They would mourn him with nine days of Masses and give him nine Absolutions-of which, having been greater in his life than other men, he might have greater need after his death.

Greatness generally means you will not be an angle. Churchill was great and his memory will survive. Thank God for men like him at the time we needed him most.

Geopolitical Weekly: Guantanamo Bay's Place in U.S. Strategy in the Caribbean, February 3, 2015

By Sim Tack

Last week, the Cuban government declared that for the United States and Cuba to normalize relations, the United States would have to return the territory occupied by a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Washington clearly responded that returning the base is not on the table right now. This response makes sense, since quite a bit of politicking goes into the status of the base. However, the Guantanamo Bay issue highlights a notable aspect to the U.S.-Cuban negotiations — one that is rooted in the history of the U.S. ascension to superpower status as it challenged European powers in the Western Hemisphere.

U.S. Expansion in the Western Hemisphere

Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, has a prominent position at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, separating access to the gulf into two choke points: the Yucatan Channel and the Straits of Florida. It is also situated on the sea-lanes between the U.S. East Coast and the Panama Canal, the shortest route for naval traffic between the two coasts of the United States. Cuba thus has been pivotal to the U.S. strategy to safeguard economic activity in the Gulf of Mexico and naval transport routes beyond that. The evolution of U.S. naval capabilities, however, has changed the part that Cuba, and thus the base at Guantanamo, has played.

The United States began extending its ambitions into the Caribbean, challenging the classical European colonial powers and arguably starting its ascent to the rank of a global power, with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Named after then-President James Monroe, the doctrine sought to prevent intervention by European powers — most notably Spain and Portugal — in their former colonies as the colonies achieved independence. The doctrine largely was a hollow statement at first because the United States did not have the naval power it would need to enforce it and establish the hegemony that it sought to put in place with the doctrine. However, the United Kingdom, which at the time had considerable naval capabilities, supported the Monroe Doctrine and committed to enforcing it because it also secured British access to the markets in these former colonies as long as they were not recovered by their former rulers.

Although it was a notable shift in U.S. foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere as a whole, the Monroe Doctrine did not affect Cuba directly. The doctrine did not seek to meddle in the affairs of existing European colonies, and the Spanish ruled Cuba and Puerto Rico until the Spanish-American War in 1898. At that point, after the Monroe Doctrine had set the stage, U.S. military capabilities were catching up with its foreign policy intent. It was during the Spanish-American War that U.S. naval power entered the global stage and eventually resulted in the United States' taking Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain.

However, Washington first needed a reason for intervention in Cuba. That opportunity came with the USS Maine explosion. The ship was deployed to Havana to protect U.S. business interests on the island. Moreover, news was spreading of atrocities committed by Spanish forces against the Cuban population. This intervention included the exact moment when U.S. forces arrived in Guantanamo Bay. In June 1898, a battalion of Marines landed at Fisherman's Point in the Bay of Guantanamo to pin down the Spanish forces in the city of Guantanamo, preventing them from reinforcing the Spanish positions on San Juan Hill as Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders led the charge there.

Several years after the U.S. victory against the Spanish, in 1903, the newly independent Cuban government signed an agreement with Washington for the perpetual lease of Guantanamo Bay as a naval base. Initially, the peace agreement with Spain had transferred sovereignty over the island to the United States, but Washington decided to leave the island under the control of the local Cuban leaders who had started the rebellion against the Spanish. The U.S. naval station at Guantanamo, the result of the first real show of U.S. expeditionary power, went on to become instrumental in the further deployment of U.S. naval power. In those days, the time that naval vessels spent at sea was limited significantly by the fuel they required: coal. Having access to forward deployed coaling stations such as the one at Guantanamo extended the U.S. Navy's ability to operate in the Caribbean.

Guantanamo's Changing Role

After World War II, during which Guantanamo also played a direct part in supporting merchant shipping convoys from the U.S. East Coast, the role of Guantanamo Bay changed considerably as a consequence of the Cuban Revolution. Throughout the revolution, Guantanamo Bay not only became a key element of U.S. resistance to the rebels led by Fidel Castro, it also became a pawn in the new bipolar world order pitting the United States against the Soviet Union. The relations between the new Cuban government and the Soviet Union made Cuba the Soviets' most forward position toward the continental United States — something made very obvious during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The naval base at Guantanamo did not necessarily play a leading role in this part of history, although the continued U.S. presence in Guantanamo Bay persisted as a major source of dispute between Washington and Havana.

After the Cold War, the base's military significance began to wane. The fall of the Soviet Union left Cuba a much less significant element in U.S. foreign policy, and the development of new technology had reduced the need for the base to support U.S. naval operations in the Caribbean. As much as geopolitics dictates history, the evolution of manmade technology can significantly alter states' physical limitations and capabilities. The use of new and more efficient fuels in naval vessels improved the range and speed of these vessels to the point where the Gulf of Mexico's security and naval movement beyond the U.S. coastline no longer required a logistical support node in Cuba.

The U.S. Navy continued using Guantanamo as a training ground, but the base's significance even in this regard evaporated. By the mid-1990s, activity at the naval base at Guantanamo was demoted to Minimum Pillar Performance (limiting the activities and presence there to only that which is necessary to maintain the existence of the facilities). The U.S. military has maintained this caretaker presence at Guantanamo, but it has done so mostly in the service of the State Department, which intends to retain Guantanamo as a bargaining chip or leverage in relations with Havana, rather than out of military need.

The United States also realized that other similar naval operating bases in Latin America lost their utility in a new geopolitical and technological reality. During World War II, the United States had established such a base in Rio de Janeiro, but after the war this base closed, having served its military purpose. Similarly, the United States managed a series of naval bases throughout former British territories in the Western Hemisphere that it obtained in return for 50 Town-class destroyers through the lend-lease agreement with London. Most of these bases also were shut down shortly after World War II or during the Cold War. The United States intends to use its forward deploying military capabilities without establishing full-blown bases, as seen in Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but even then Guantanamo falls outside of Washington's "places-not-bases" intent.

A new use for the base was discovered after 9/11, when it became host to a detention facility holding suspected terrorists. The ambiguous legal status of the base at Guantanamo Bay provided grounds for this sort of use because it is technically a base leased by the U.S. government located on foreign soil. Terrorism suspects are not subject to the same guarantees they would receive if held on sovereign U.S. soil, generating a useful dynamic in the complex issue of dealing with enemy combatants in the U.S.-jihadist war. Guantanamo served a similar purpose when it was used to hold HIV-positive refugees in the early 1990s.

The potential for Guantanamo Bay to be returned to Cuba will depend greatly on the negotiations between Washington and Havana, as well as the domestic U.S. politicking that is influenced significantly by the anti-Castro Cuban immigrant population of Florida, a swing state that is key in presidential elections. It is key, however, to see Guantanamo in its current context and not in its past role in the development and protection of U.S. power in the Caribbean and beyond. The part Guantanamo plays in U.S.-Cuba negotiations is defined by Washington's desire to play this card at will. The only constraint on Washington is the requirement to disband the detention camp at Guantanamo to accommodate Cuba's demands, though this does not mean that the United States will give up the naval base easily. Once played, the Guantanamo card will be gone and Washington's long-term leverage over Havana will be forever altered

Guantanamo Bay's Place in U.S. Strategy in the Caribbean is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Security Weekly: Is Terrorism an Existential Threat?

By Scott Stewart

In an interview that aired on CNN on Feb. 1, Fareed Zakaria asked U.S. President Barack Obama to respond to charges that he is downplaying the threat of terrorism to the United States. Obama responded by saying that he believes the threat of terrorism must be kept in the proper perspective and that it is important not to overinflate the importance of terrorist networks. He also said he believes that terrorist groups do not pose an existential threat to the United States or the world order.

As with almost any statement made by a U.S. president, Obama's belief that terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States became grist for many pundits. Leaving the politics of this statement aside, however, there are some significant facets to Obama's claim that are worth unpacking and examining in detail.

The Nature of Terrorism

In the interest of full disclosure, I must begin by admitting that I agree with the president's statement that terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, Stratfor has long argued this point, even when the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate disagreed with our assessment in July 2007. We stood by our conclusions and continue to note that terrorism must be kept in proper perspective.

The reason we can boldly proclaim that terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States has far more to do with the nature of terrorism — what terrorism is — than it does with the intent and capability of the actors who employ terrorism.

An examination of terrorist theory shows us that terrorism is a tactic or a tool used by militant groups unable to wage an insurgency or fight a conventional war. In fact, it is often used as a way to conduct asymmetrical armed conflict against an enemy with a stronger military. This fact is why Marxist, Maoist and Focoist revolutionary theories all consider terrorism — that is, small-scale, politically motivated attacks against vulnerable targets — as the first step in an armed struggle that is to be built upon to form an insurgency.

In many ways al Qaeda and other jihadist groups have also followed a type of Focoist vanguard strategy by using terrorism to shape public opinion through the propaganda of the deed, the concept that a group can better spread its messages through action than through social media posts or YouTube videos. Terrorist attacks raise popular support for their causes while raising doubts about the target government's legitimacy and ability to maintain order.

Aside from being a potential first step of revolutionary violence, terrorism can also be used to supplement insurgency or conventional warfare when employed to keep the enemy off balance and distracted, principally by conducting strikes against vulnerable targets behind the enemy's front lines. The Afghan Taliban employs terrorism in this manner. Defending against such attacks on "soft" targets requires a disproportionate allocation of material and manpower, but such an allocation is absolutely necessary for the security forces to prevent the targeted population from feeling terrorized.

Weaker opponents in a struggle can also use terrorism as a tool of vengeance and retribution. For example, after the United States humiliated Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi's military forces in a series of naval and air confrontations in the Gulf of Sidra during the early 1980s, Gadhafi responded with terrorism and ordered the April 1986 bombing of the La Belle Disco in Berlin — a site frequented by U.S. servicemen. After it became clear that Libya was behind the La Belle bombing, the United States conducted airstrikes against Tripoli and Benghazi. Gadhafi responded with additional terrorist attacks — although they were conducted more carefully and in a manner intended to provide a bit more plausible deniability.

In the 1980s, Hezbollah effectively used terrorism to push U.S. forces out of Lebanon. This example later inspired jihadist groups such as al Qaeda. These groups have employed terrorism in efforts to drive U.S. forces out of the Muslim world so they could weaken and overthrow the governments supported by the United States.

While a diverse range of groups practice terrorism, it is important to understand that terrorism for the sake of terror is not their end goal. Instead, it is merely one step toward their greater purpose, whether that objective is launching a revolution that will bring about "workers' paradise," providing animals the same rights as humans or establishing a global caliphate.

Beyond Terrorism

However, terrorist attacks still pose a threat. Attacks result in death and destruction; and their psychological impact is even wider-felt than the physical damage they cause. To the people involved, this threat is existential, but on their own, terrorist attacks do not pose an existential threat to the governments they are aimed at — even the extremely destructive ones conducted by highly capable, state-sponsored groups. For example, the Provisional Irish Republican Army's 1996 Canary Wharf bombing, the Italian Red Brigade's kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro and Hezbollah's 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut posed no real threat to the U.K., Italian and U.S. governments. While the March 2004 Madrid train bombings did have an impact on the country's parliamentary elections just three days later and doomed the re-election hopes of then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the attack did not topple the Spanish system.

The only way a terrorist attack could pose a true existential threat to a country is if an actor were to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction, namely, nuclear devices. However, non-state actors have not yet developed such capabilities, and the consequences of such a strike for a nuclear-capable state actor supplying the weapon would be massive and catastrophic. In this sense, a nuclear weapon would present as much of an existential threat for the supplier as it would for the target.

Indeed, terrorist attacks are not the true threat to governments. Instead, what is most dangerous is what militant groups can accomplish after carrying out terrorist attacks. For example, Viet Cong terrorist attacks in Hanoi did not topple the South Vietnamese government, but the battlefield successes of large-scale Viet Cong insurgent and regular army units and the North Vietnamese Army did. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq's terrorist attacks against the Shah of Iran's government and its foreign backers did not result in the overthrow of his government, but the massive popular uprising that followed spelled its doom. Terrorism can help create the environment for revolution, but terrorist attacks alone cannot overthrow a government.

Events in recent years have also proven this truth. Terrorist attacks from groups such as al Shabaab, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb did not permit them to assume governance of large sections of Somalia, southern Yemen and northern Mali. Rather, the attacks enabled these groups to foment dissent and launch insurgencies. The same holds true for the Islamic State. Employing terrorism did not conquer large swaths of Syria and Iraq for the group, but sophisticated insurgent tactics and mobile maneuver warfare did.

This is where terminology becomes vitally important. Whether we realize it or not, it influences how we perceive things. Advertising executives have understood this truth for many years, taking advantage of it to benefit their clients. This same principle holds true for analyzing threats. The taxonomy used to describe actors impacts how we assess them. We must use the correct taxonomy if we hope to reach an accurate analysis.

Some have criticized Stratfor's decision to refer to jihadists as "militants" rather than "terrorists" after perceiving our selection of the term to be some form of political correctness. However, we purposefully chose the term "militant" because jihadists are more than just terrorists, and they clearly aspire to do more than merely conduct terrorist attacks. They want to progress along the continuum of military force until they can pose a threat to existing governments and create jihadist polities as we have seen in Somalia, Yemen, Mali, Syria and Iraq, among other places. Because of this fact, thinking of such groups as merely terrorist organizations is dangerous. Anyone who does so is at great risk of underestimating the threat they pose. Perhaps this is why the large-scale offensive operation the Islamic State conducted last summer caught so many people by surprise. They thought of the Islamic Sate as mere terrorists rather than militants who employ terrorism as only one of the many forms of violence in their arsenal.

This mistake is also where I find fault with Obama's comments to Zakaria: He repeatedly referred to the Islamic State as a terrorist group. I understand that Obama and the U.S government are trying to use rhetoric in an effort to discredit and insult the group. This attitude is also reflected by their continued use of the name ISIS, an acronym for Islamic State in Syria and al Sham, to refer to the organization rather than using the group's preferred name, the Islamic State. But when one makes the decision to use such terms, one must be careful to ensure that the terms do not influence their analysis.

Certainly, terrorist attacks do not pose an existential threat to the United States or the world order. Terrorism is a fact of modern life and the threat of terrorism must be kept in the proper perspective. The response to terrorist attacks must also be logical and measured. However, large militant groups with thousands of capable fighters — or in the Islamic State's case, tens of thousands of fighters — that not only employ terrorism, but also insurgent tactics and maneuver warfare to capture and then govern large chunks of territory, are another matter. Such organizations pose a threat to the governments in the countries where they operate and in the region around these areas. Ultimately, we must be extremely mindful of the difference between terrorism, insurgency and other forms of militancy.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Witness to an execution: And now there are three

Texas has a reputation for a very active death chamber, although per capita we’ve come in second to Georgia (if memory serves) for a year. But the thing closest to high speed rail to the death chamber is murdering a cop. In December 2000, seven felons broke out of prison and committed multiple robberies between Houston, San Antonio and Dallas until the night of December 24, 2000.

On the night of Christmas Eve 2000, the Texas 7 murdered Irvine TX Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins while robbing a sporting goods store. The members of the Texas 7 were caught a month later in Colorado Springs CO, where one of the escapees, Larry Harper, cleansed the human gene pool by taking his own life.

The remaining six were tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The man who’s time is up tonight, Donald Newbury, is the third to make it to the execution chamber. He had a unique defense, I didn’t mean to do it.

Newbury contended he didn't shoot to kill Hawkins and pointed his gun far above the officer's head.

Right. Well, the state has eliminated two of the other members of the Texas 7 in the last few years. The leader, George Rivas, met his end in 2012 and George Rodriguez was executed in 2008. Tonight, Newbury is eliminated.

Again the Thin Blue Line organizes the ride to support the family and Irvine Police officers present at Huntsville. Two members of my Blue Knights Club, Texas Seven, meet up with the rest of the members two hours before the scheduled execution. Well, I got off a bit late and made it to Huntsville with just a little time to spare.

Texas schedules executions at 600pm on Wednesday night because the court order expires at midnight. This allows us time to handle any last minute appeals and stays and still preform the execution. But fortunately we don’t have to deal with this like we did with this like we did last year during the Tamayo execution.

Eight riders from the Thin Blue Line and three from Blue Knights TX -VII
at Huntsville Unit, supporting the Hawkins family during the execution
of Donald Newberry

As we arrive we link up with Huntsville staff and they thank us for coming.

The officers from the Irvine Police Department who have driven four hours to see this murder put down, move from the prison house and take a position in front of the location. And we wait for a bit, but the word comes quick, “Two minutes!”

We jump on our bikes and the work comes to make it loud!


We finish up and the word comes down, “Pronounced DOA at 625.” A few minutes later the DA staff comes out and thanks us again for being there. Then a friend of Officer Hawkins comes up and explains we is a witness to the execution. He tells us how Newbury only me this view for a second then turned his head down. He then told us how the he made a rambling statement, taking no responsibility for his actions. Finally, he thanks us because “it took a few seconds and people were asking ‘what is that sound?’, but we and Newberry heard those bikes!” He again thanks us for coming up and asks if anyone is coming to Sturgis this year.

We’re all humbled by the thought this man would thank us as he had to bury a close friend and just saw one of his murderers sent to his Final Judge. We will try and link up at a reception scheduled at the Holiday Inn and say goodbye.

Four down, three to go: Joseph Garcia, Patrick Murphy Jr. and Randy Halprin, sit on Death Row and wait for an order and a date. And we will be there.

Not about to say I will be at all, no one can say for sure that what the future holds. But thanks to the members of the Thin Blue Line and their actions, we will have someone there to support the families, friends and partners of these fallen officers. We have two more cop killers scheduled in the next three months. I’ll be there.

We try and make it to the reception (I really need to get some coffee in me! :<) ) and get lost on the way there. Most of the Thin Blue Line members have gone off to their homes and I need to get going myself. It’s cold (thankfully not as bad as last year with the salt trucks) but it’s time to get going. After an hour of very cold riding I make it home for dinner with the family and some Jack and Cole to take the chill off the night.

Rest In Peace Officer Hawkins. Hopefully this helps your family and friends and you can rest a little easier. Even if there was no one else, the Thin Blue Line and Blue Knights will be there.

God Rest your Soul.

Security Weekly: Jihadism in 2014: Jihadist Franchises, January 29, 2015

By Scott Stewart

In the first part of this series, we discussed the changes in the global jihadist movement following the split between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. We then examined the current state of the al Qaeda core and, in subsequent parts, the Islamic State and the grassroots jihadist movement.

This week we will focus on regional jihadist franchise groups. Last year all of the franchise groups were al Qaeda affiliates or, at the very least, sympathetic toward al Qaeda. This year, however, the split in the jihadist movement means that rather than assessing them specifically by name, we will need to gauge them by region. This is because many groups now have their own internal splits as well: Both al Qaeda and Islamic State franchise groups exist in many jihadist areas of operation.

The Arabian Peninsula

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has long been one of the most robust al Qaeda franchise groups and has perhaps the closest ideological as well as personal ties with the al Qaeda core. It has also assumed a leadership role in the al Qaeda movement's efforts to conduct transnational attacks in the West over the past several years.

The close relationship between the al Qaeda core and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been evident during the public spat between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has urged the Islamic State to reconcile with al Qaeda and groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. The group has also published statements critical of the manner by which Islamic State militant leadership declared the establishment of a caliphate. This criticism has unleashed a backlash. The sixth issue of the Islamic State's English-language Dabiq magazine contained not only scathing attacks on the al Qaeda core but also on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The magazine specifically focused on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ideologue Harith al-Nadhari, who is characterized as a misguided windbag whose "expressions trickle with blood, forebode evil, and contain wickedness."

Given this back and forth — plus the egos of the personalities involved — reconciliation between al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State is unlikely in the near future. This conflict also has reportedly led to the establishment of an Islamic State jihadist group in Yemen, presumably rivaling al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in its area of operation. This Islamic State move, however, has limitations. Yemenis have indeed fought alongside the Islamic State on the battlefields in Syria and Iraq in addition to working with other jihadist groups. But it is unlikely that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would permit the establishment of an Islamic State organization in Yemen that could become a rival for recruits, resources and power. If there is an Islamic State franchise in Yemen, it is very small and is keeping a low profile to evade attention until it is strong enough to challenge the stronger group. Efforts by this Islamic State group, though, might be given a boost if al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is significantly weakened by its fight against al-Houthi militants.

As we noted last year, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has struggled in Yemen since the group seized large swaths of territory in 2011. This triggered a 2012 government offensive to dislodge the group, in which al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula suffered terrible losses. The group continues to be hit by both Yemeni government operations as well as occasional U.S. airstrikes and is clearly weaker than it was in 2011. One sign of the group's weakness was its inability to launch significant attacks against huge crowds aligned with al-Houthi rebels in Sanaa in August and September. It did dispatch two individual suicide bombers, but those attacks were not well executed or very effective.

Recent al-Houthi advances in Yemen, however, do seem to have breathed new life into al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula because al-Houthi opponents see the group as a potential ally. The more conservative Yemeni tribes — the Salafists within the state security apparatus and the Salafist wing of the al-Islah party, led by Abdul Majid al-Zindani — all fear the al-Houthi movement. They have aligned with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, strengthening the group. Since the beginning of December, we have seen al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula conduct larger and more effective attacks against al-Houthi forces in Marib, Ibb and Bayda provinces.

However, the United States remains firmly focused on containing the group and, despite the current political crisis in Yemen, continues to apply all the tools in its terrorist toolbox against it. This means that the group will likely continue to struggle in 2015.

Egypt and North Africa

Over the past year, Algerian security forces have continued to apply immense pressure to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's units in the mountain hideouts of Algeria's north. This pressure has been compounded by Tunisian military campaigns against Ansar al-Sharia (Tunisia) on the Tunisian side of the border.

Jihadist units associated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and their rival al Qaeda franchise, known as al-Mourabitoun, continue to range far and wide across the Sahel region seeking to kidnap Westerners, smuggle contraband and engage in occasional terrorist attacks. But these groups remain a chronic rather than an acute threat and are kept in check by regional governments working together with France and the United States.

Libya continues to be a very confusing and muddled place, with a large number of militias operating in the country, several of which are jihadist. Groups such as Ansar al-Sharia (Libya) have demonstrated contacts with al Qaeda while jihadists in Darnah have claimed allegiance to the Islamic State and have even declared wilayahs, or "provinces," in three areas of Libya. We have also seen reports of al Qaeda and Islamic State operatives being dispatched to Libya to work with sympathetic groups there. Jihadists in the country will continue to pose a concern for the foreseeable future. The Jan. 27 suicide bombing and armed assault against the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli underscores this danger.

In Egypt, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has splintered. A faction of the group in the Sinai Peninsula has declared allegiance to the Islamic State and now calls itself the Wilayah Sinai, meaning "Sinai Province," while the leadership in the Egyptian mainland remains loyal to al Qaeda. The fact that the Sinai militants are split is not surprising given the groups' past connections to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, founder of the Islamic State predecessor al Qaeda in Iraq, and the current involvement of Egyptian nationals in the al Qaeda core, most notably Egyptian-born leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Iraq and the Levant

Like Libya, the militant landscape in Syria is complex, fluid and difficult to decipher. This ambiguity is seen in the difficulty the United States has experienced in finding so-called "moderate" rebel units to support with weapons and training. In addition to the Islamic State and al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, there is an array of other groups that coexist, and in some cases cooperate, with the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra or both. The Islamic State has also claimed to have rounded up and executed members of ultra-extremist groups that believe Islamic State sectarianism is too lax, and the group has labeled them "Kharijites."

The al Qaeda core has sent a number of senior leaders to Syria in an attempt to influence the jihadist groups there. It also appears that the al Qaeda core has sought to use Syria as a place to regenerate its terrorist capability by dispatching an operational group from the al Qaeda core called the "Khorasan Group" to work in Jabhat al-Nusra areas. U.S. airstrikes in Syria have targeted this group, which the core purportedly tasked with staging attacks abroad from northern Syria.

South Asia

The Afghan Taliban are a nationalist jihadist organization, and they have never demonstrated the intent to conduct transnational terrorist attacks. Even some of the members of the Quetta Shura who have demonstrated more sophisticated terrorist tradecraft, such as the Haqqani network, have not conducted attacks outside the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Due to the support the Taliban still enjoy from elements within the Pakistani state and society, it is quite likely they will become an even more powerful force in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal, either through some sort of political settlement or by the force of arms.

The unrelated Pakistani Taliban, aka Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, have declared war on the Pakistani government and non-Sunni Muslims in Pakistan. The sectarian bent of some Pakistani Taliban factions has made them susceptible to the Islamic State's ideology, and some factions of the Pakistani Taliban have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The Islamic State has declared the Afghan Taliban to be misguided and practicing a flawed form of Sharia; this is likely to increase the tension between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban factions that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State — some of which are operating in southern Afghanistan.

In September 2014, al Qaeda announced the formation of a new franchise group in South Asia called al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. Jihadists have long been active in the region including India and Bangladesh. Because of this, the announcement of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent's existence seems to be more of a public relations stunt or a branding initiative than an actual increase in operational capability or even effort in the region. Therefore, we do not expect to see a significant increase in the residual threat in the region due to this new group.

Somalia

Al Shabaab has continued its downward spiral over the past year as the group has been racked by infighting and defections. It also suffered a significant loss in September 2014 when its leader, Ahmad Abdi Godane, was killed by a U.S. airstrike. Godane's death gave the group the opportunity to defect to the surging Islamic State, but instead the group's new leadership reiterated its pledge of allegiance to al Qaeda. In all likelihood this decision was probably influenced by its close relationship to, and dependence upon, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

While al Shabaab is badly damaged, the group has been down before and has rebounded, so it is quite premature to declare it defunct. It still poses a risk of sophisticated terrorist attacks inside Somalia as well as less sophisticated attacks elsewhere in the region, including Uganda and Kenya.

Nigeria

Boko Haram has grown in size and danger over the past year. In many ways its development has been similar to that of the Islamic State, progressing from merely conducting terrorist attacks and hit-and-run insurgent operations to actually seizing and holding a significant area of territory in northern Nigeria. The group has also conducted occasional raids into northern Cameroon, but so far those forays have been beaten back.

Despite its past dealings with groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Shabaab, Boko Haram appears to have been heavily influenced by the activities of the Islamic State. Like the Islamic State, Boko Haram has conducted large-scale kidnappings of women and brutal massacres of people who oppose it, including other Muslims. Indeed, the group has even declared a caliphate in northern Nigeria.

Boko Haram has not demonstrated the intent or capability to conduct transnational terrorist attacks and, with its heavy focus on its territorial goals, likely has little time or resources to devote to such adventures.

East Asia

The first generation of East Asian jihadists — figures such as Hanbali, Dulmatin and Janjalani — was trained in terrorist tradecraft in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. They were then allowed to operate with little or no pressure. Even then, they were able to hit very soft targets, such as nightclubs and restaurants in Bali, but struggled to hit harder targets such as the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

Counterterrorism operations in the region have removed most of the highly trained terrorist cadres from the region and the capability of East Asian jihadists has been reduced dramatically. East Asian Muslims have also not been a particularly susceptible audience for jihadist recruitment, and despite the large numbers of Muslims there (Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world), few East Asian Muslims have adopted the jihadist ideology.

We have seen Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir pledge allegiance to the Islamic State from prison, but many of his followers, including his own son, have criticized that decision.

Some factions of the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines have also joined the Islamic State. But like their brethren in Indonesia, it does not really matter what they call themselves: Their capabilities and the threat they pose are not going to change simply because they call themselves Islamic State.

Caucasus and Central Asia

The leaders of the Caucasus Emirate's Dagestan network have pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State in defiance of the overall Caucasus Emirates leader. This is not surprising given the large number of Chechens and Dagestanis fighting with the Islamic State and the high profile they have taken on. However, one of the important reasons there are so many militants from the Caucasus region in Syria to begin with is the intense pressure they are under from Russian and Chechen security forces at home. The Caucasus Emirates has already been hit hard by the security services, and the split will only serve to make them weaker.

We have also seen a number of reports from Central Asia that countries such as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have serious concerns about the threat of jihadism to their stability after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, as we have discussed elsewhere, we believe that these concerns are valid but certainly not beyond the capacity of the Central Asian governments to handle. Indeed, internal social and economic problems pose a greater threat to stability in the region than returning jihadists.

No Military Solution

As long as the ideology continues to thrive and mutate it will continue to attract adherents. Because of this, we continue to stress that there is no military solution to the threat. The West simply cannot kill its way out of this problem. Nor does the West have any real standing on the ideological battlefield where jihadism must be confronted and defeated. Of course, the West must continue to fight jihadist groups with all the counterterrorism tools it has available — military, intelligence, law enforcement, diplomatic and financial — but such tools can only serve to mitigate the jihadist threat, not eliminate it.

The split between al Qaeda and the Islamic State has divided and weakened the jihadist movement globally. This competition is not only harmful to jihadist groups because of social media arguments or physical battles in places such as Syria, it is also something that can and will be taken advantage of by those seeking to undermine the movement ideologically. As ideologues affiliated with the Islamic State and those opposed to it point out one another's hypocrisy and deviance, they supply ample ammunition to the theological warriors seeking to discredit jihadism.

Geopolitical Weekly: The New Drivers of Europe's Geopolitics, January 27,, 2015

By George Friedman

For the past two weeks, I have focused on the growing fragmentation of Europe. Two weeks ago, the murders in Paris prompted me to write about the fault line between Europe and the Islamic world. Last week, I wrote about the nationalism that is rising in individual European countries after the European Central Bank was forced to allow national banks to participate in quantitative easing so European nations wouldn't be forced to bear the debt of other nations. I am focusing on fragmentation partly because it is happening before our eyes, partly because Stratfor has been forecasting this for a long time and partly because my new book on the fragmentation of Europe — Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe — is being released today.

This is the week to speak of the political and social fragmentation within European nations and its impact on Europe as a whole. The coalition of the Radical Left party, known as Syriza, has scored a major victory in Greece. Now the party is forming a ruling coalition and overwhelming the traditional mainstream parties. It is drawing along other left-wing and right-wing parties that are united only in their resistance to the EU's insistence that austerity is the solution to the ongoing economic crisis that began in 2008.

Two Versions of the Same Tale

The story is well known. The financial crisis of 2008, which began as a mortgage default issue in the United States, created a sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Some European countries were unable to make payment on bonds, and this threatened the European banking system. There had to be some sort of state intervention, but there was a fundamental disagreement about what problem had to be solved. Broadly speaking, there were two narratives.

The German version, and the one that became the conventional view in Europe, is that the sovereign debt crisis is the result of irresponsible social policies in Greece, the country with the greatest debt problem. These troublesome policies included early retirement for government workers, excessive unemployment benefits and so on. Politicians had bought votes by squandering resources on social programs the country couldn't afford, did not rigorously collect taxes and failed to promote hard work and industriousness. Therefore, the crisis that was threatening the banking system was rooted in the irresponsibility of the debtors.

Another version, hardly heard in the early days but far more credible today, is that the crisis is the result of Germany's irresponsibility. Germany, the fourth-largest economy in the world, exports the equivalent of about 50 percent of its gross domestic product because German consumers cannot support its oversized industrial output. The result is that Germany survives on an export surge. For Germany, the European Union — with its free-trade zone, the euro and regulations in Brussels — is a means for maintaining exports. The loans German banks made to countries such as Greece after 2009 were designed to maintain demand for its exports. The Germans knew the debts could not be repaid, but they wanted to kick the can down the road and avoid dealing with the fact that their export addiction could not be maintained.

If you accept the German narrative, then the policies that must be followed are the ones that would force Greece to clean up its act. That means continuing to impose austerity on the Greeks. If the Greek narrative is correct, than the problem is with Germany. To end the crisis, Germany would have to curb its appetite for exports and shift Europe's rules on trade, the valuation of the euro and regulation from Brussels while living within its means. This would mean reducing its exports to the free-trade zone that has an industry incapable of competing with Germany's.

The German narrative has been overwhelmingly accepted, and the Greek version has hardly been heard. I describe what happened when austerity was imposed in Flashpoints:

But the impact on Greece of government cuts was far greater than expected. Like many European countries, the Greeks ran many economic activities, including medicine and other essential services, through the state, making physicians and other health care professionals government employees. When cuts were made in public sector pay and employment, it deeply affected the professional and middle classes.

Over the course of several years, unemployment in Greece rose to over 25 percent. This was higher than unemployment in the United States during the Depression. Some said that Greece's black economy was making up the difference and things weren't that bad. That was true to some extent but not nearly as much as people thought, since the black economy was simply an extension of the rest of the economy, and business was bad everywhere. In fact the situation was worse than it appeared to be, since there were many government workers who were still employed but had had their wages cut drastically, many by as much as two-thirds.

The Greek story was repeated in Spain and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in Portugal, southern France and southern Italy. Mediterranean Europe had entered the European Union with the expectation that membership would raise its living standards to the level of northern Europe. The sovereign debt crisis hit them particularly hard because in the free trade zone, this region had found it difficult to develop its economies, as it would have normally. Therefore the first economic crisis devastated them.

Regardless of which version you believe to be true, there is one thing that is certain: Greece was put in an impossible position when it agreed to a debt repayment plan that its economy could not support. These plans plunged it into a depression it still has not recovered from — and the problems have spread to other parts of Europe.

Seeds of Discontent

There was a deep belief in the European Union and beyond that the nations adhering to Europe's rules would, in due course, recover. Europe's mainstream political parties supported the European Union and its policies, and they were elected and re-elected. There was a general feeling that economic dysfunction would pass. But it is 2015 now, the situation has not gotten better and there are growing movements in many countries that are opposed to continuing with austerity. The sense that Europe is shifting was visible in the European Central Bank's decision last week to ease austerity by increasing liquidity in the system. In my view, this is too little too late; although quantitative easing might work for a recession, Southern Europe is in a depression. This is not merely a word. It means that the infrastructure of businesses that are able to utilize the money has been smashed, and therefore, quantitative easing's impact on unemployment will be limited. It takes a generation to recover from a depression. Interestingly, the European Central Bank excluded Greece from the quantitative easing program, saying the country is far too exposed to debt to allow the risk of its central bank lending.

Virtually every European country has developed growing movements that oppose the European Union and its policies. Most of these are on the right of the political spectrum. This means that in addition to their economic grievances, they want to regain control of their borders to limit immigration. Opposition movements have also emerged from the left — Podemos in Spain, for instance, and of course, Syriza in Greece. The left has the same grievances as the right, save for the racial overtones. But what is important is this: Greece has been seen as the outlier, but it is in fact the leading edge of the European crisis. It was the first to face default, the first to impose austerity, the first to experience the brutal weight that resulted and now it is the first to elect a government that pledges to end austerity. Left or right, these parties are threatening Europe's traditional parties, which the middle and lower class see as being complicit with Germany in creating the austerity regime.

Syriza has moderated its position on the European Union, as parties are wont to moderate during an election. But its position is that it will negotiate a new program of Greek debt repayments to its European lenders, one that will relieve the burden on the Greeks. There is reason to believe that it might succeed. The Germans don't care if Greece pulls out of the euro. Germany is, however, terrified that the political movements that are afoot will end or inhibit Europe's free-trade zone. Right-wing parties' goal of limiting the cross-border movement of workers already represents an open demand for an end to the free-trade zone for labor. But Germany, the export addict, needs the free-trade zone badly.

This is one of the points that people miss. They are concerned that countries will withdraw from the euro. As Hungary showed when the forint's decline put its citizens in danger of defaulting on mortgages, a nation-state has the power to protect its citizens from debt if it wishes to do so. The Greeks, inside or outside the eurozone, can also exercise this power. In addition to being unable to repay their debt structurally, they cannot afford to repay it politically. The parties that supported austerity in Greece were crushed. The mainstream parties in other European countries saw what happened in Greece and are aware of the rising force of Euroskepticism in their own countries. The ability of these parties to comply with these burdens is dependent on the voters, and their political base is dissolving. Rational politicians are not dismissing Syriza as an outrider.

The issue then is not the euro. Instead, the first real issue is the effect of structured or unstructured defaults on the European banking system and how the European Central Bank, committed to not making Germany liable for the debts of other countries, will handle that. The second, and more important, issue is now the future of the free-trade zone. Having open borders seemed like a good idea during prosperous times, but the fear of Islamist terrorism and the fear of Italians competing with Bulgarians for scarce jobs make those open borders less and less likely to endure. And if nations can erect walls for people, then why not erect walls for goods to protect their own industries and jobs? In the long run, protectionism hurts the economy, but Europe is dealing with many people who don't have a long run, have fallen from the professional classes and now worry about how they will feed their families.

For Germany, which depends on free access to Europe's markets to help prop up its export-dependent economy, the loss of the euro would be the loss of a tool for managing trade within and outside the eurozone. But the rise of protectionism in Europe would be a calamity. The German economy would stagger without those exports.

From my point of view, the argument about austerity is over. The European Central Bank ended the austerity regime half-heartedly last week, and the Syriza victory sent an earthquake through Europe's political system, although the Eurocratic elite will dismiss it as an outlier. If Europe's defaults — structured or unstructured — surge as a result, the question of the euro becomes an interesting but non-critical issue. What will become the issue, and what is already becoming the issue, is free trade. That is the core of the European concept, and that is the next issue on the agenda as the German narrative loses credibility and the Greek narrative replaces it as the conventional wisdom.

It is not hard to imagine the disaster that would ensue if the United States were to export 50 percent of its GDP, and half of it went to Canada and Mexico. A free-trade zone in which the giant pivot is not a net importer can't work. And that is exactly the situation in Europe. Its pivot is Germany, but rather than serving as the engine of growth by being an importer, it became the world's fourth-largest national economy by exporting half its GDP. That can't possibly be sustainable.

Possible Seismic Changes Ahead

There are then three drivers in Europe now. One is the desire to control borders — nominally to control Islamist terrorists but truthfully to limit the movement of all labor, Muslims included. Second, there is the empowerment of the nation-states in Europe by the European Central Bank, which is making its quantitative easing program run through national banks, which may only buy their own nation's debt. Third, there is the political base, which is dissolving under Europe's feet.

The question about Europe now is not whether it can retain its current form, but how radically that form will change. And the most daunting question is whether Europe, unable to maintain its union, will see a return of nationalism and its possible consequences. As I put it in Flashpoints:

The most important question in the world is whether conflict and war have actually been banished or whether this is merely an interlude, a seductive illusion. Europe is the single most prosperous region in the world. Its collective GDP is greater than that of the United States. It touches Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Another series of wars would change not only Europe, but the entire world.

To even speak of war in Europe would have been preposterous a few years ago, and to many, it is preposterous today. But Ukraine is very much a part of Europe, as was Yugoslavia. Europeans' confidence that all this is behind them, the sense of European exceptionalism, may well be correct. But as Europe's institutions disintegrate, it is not too early to ask what comes next. History rarely provides the answer you expect — and certainly not the answer you hope for.

The New Drivers of Europe's Geopolitics is republished with permission of Stratfor.