Atlantic Sentinel

Category: Explainer

  • How We Got to Brexit

    British parliament London
    Westminster Palace in London, England (Unsplash/Matt Milton)

    So they went ahead and did it.

    They were warned; boy, were they warned. Economist after economist, leaders both near and far, even their own prime minister, all with the same line: to leave is to suffer. Upon the eve of the vote, even the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) did not fully believe Britons would do such a thing.

    But they did and clearly so. 52 to 48 percent, a democratic majority if ever there was one, with high turnout and nary a voting irregularity.

    I argued last week that Brexit or not, the world curves toward union: the costs of isolation, of high walls, of strict migrant controls far outweigh the supposed benefits. The markets seem to agree, as the pound slumps, the United Kingdom heads for recession and two of the three major political parties endure various levels of meltdown.

    Even in geopolitics, punishment like that rarely comes so swiftly. (more…)

  • United Kingdom May Take Its Time to Trigger EU Exit

    David Cameron Angela Merkel
    British prime minister David Cameron walks with German chancellor Angela Merkel outside his Chequers country residence in Buckinghamshire, England, October 9, 2015 (Bundesregierung/Guido Bergmann)

    While the presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament have called on Britain to invoke Article 50 of the EU treaty to start its withdrawal from the bloc, it may take a while.

    The referendum is only advisory. Parliament, where two-thirds of lawmakers want Britain to remain in the EU, is sovereign. David Cameron has left the decision to activate Article 50 to his successor. He or she will almost certainly want parliamentary approval. Politicians will be reluctant to ignore or overturn the referendum result, but they may be willing to complicate Brexit by laying down conditions for the negotiations, for example, by insisting on access to the single market. (more…)

  • How Vietnam Went from American Foe to American Friend

    Nguyễn Phú Trọng Joe Biden
    American vice president Joe Biden listens to a speech by Nguyễn Phú Trọng, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in Washington DC, July 7, 2015 (State Department)

    It’s easy to hold grudges; it envelopes one in a sense of superiority, a feeling of wronged righteousness, that allows irrational behavior to feel very, very good. When someone hurts you, it can be wonderful to lord that over them forever.

    Few wars in American history involve as many hurt feelings as the Vietnam War. Depending on when you chart it, the war lasted anywhere from the late 40s to 1975, when North Vietnam conquered the South. For the US, earnest combat began in 1965 and lasted until 1973, when the Nixon Administration washed its hands of Southeast Asia.

    The toll was hefty: 58,000 Americans and anywhere from 1.4 to 3.8 million Vietnamese died. On the American side of the Pacific, the war gave counterculturalism a salient boost in the body politic and for decades much of American foreign and domestic policy hung on the legacy of those years. In Vietnam, the regime used fear of another American invasion to build legitimacy — and support war in Cambodia — up until the 1990s.

    So it would be rather easy for both sides to neither forgive nor forget. Whole careers could be made off holding a grudge.

    And yet the Americans are about to start arming the Vietnamese.

    What the hell just happened here? (more…)

  • Why Central Asia Is Dumping Russia for China

    Central Asia has long been stuck between a rock and hard place in terms of its geopolitical environment. Landlocked, with China to the east and Russia to the north and west, Central Asian leaders have had to balance their alliances with the powers that surrounded them.

    In pre-Soviet times, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek leaders would utilize relationships to gain wealth for their countries. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it became more about security, making sure the newly-formed states were not overrun by the bigger boys. To this end, Central Asian states entered into regional cooperative organizations with China and Russia like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the hopes of controlling the influence each power exerted on the five nation states.

    25 years on, this struggle to balance relations has failed and China is now poised to make a spectacular economic conquest of Central Asian markets.

    In 2015, China became Uzbekistan’s largest trading partner with $3 billion worth of trade and Kazakhstan’s largest investor with 33 deals delivering $23.6 billion to the nation.

    China has also focused heavily on Turkmenistan’s energy sector, where it has been purchasing some 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year since 2009 while providing substantial military aid. China also took over in Kyrgyzstan last month as the builder and partner in two hydropower projects. (more…)

  • Culture, Power, Geopolitics: How All Three Explain Us

    Manhattan New York
    View of Manhattan, New York from the Empire State Building (Unsplash/Phil Hauser)

    It’s very easy to make geopolitics seem simple — Country A and Country B have a bad history. Both want something from Country C. Alas for Country C, it’s rather weak, so Countries A and B go ahead and have proxy war in Country C.

    And while that may explain the rough outlines, it’s still too Civilization V — as if millions of people can be motivated by a leader’s whims as readily as a video game’s AI.

    Delving deeper into the human condition provides better understandings of why we get along — and sometimes don’t — on the scale of world war.

    Thankfully, someone’s been hard at work helping us with that. (more…)

  • NATO Could Destroy Islamic State So Why Don’t They?

    Italian F-16 fighter jet
    An Italian F-16 fighter jet prepares to take off from Decimomannu Air Base, Sardinia, November 3, 2011 (IDF)

    NATO is the most powerful military alliance in human history: it combines three of the world’s seven nuclear-armed powers and tops it off with the conventional power of the world’s lone superpower. It has potentially formidable military powers within it: France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom could all well rearm to much success should they so choose.

    And the Islamic State just set off bombs right near their headquarters.

    A wholly reasonable and often asked question will be: Why doesn’t NATO do something? Why, when so powerful and so unassailable, doesn’t the mighty military alliance annihilate the Islamic State?

    This article is intended to help frame those conversations as friends, family and Facebook randoms begin asking just that. (more…)

  • Why the Free Syrian Army Never Went Anywhere

    As the Syrian Civil War embarks upon an odd ceasefire — one replete with exceptions and violations — it’s worth looking back at some of the failures that led up to this point. There are plenty to choose from and that long sad path is better detailed elsewhere. Instead, we’ll focus on just one: the Free Syrian Army.

    The overarching failure is that Syria, a stable enough place by most accounts, has consumed itself. There is plenty of blame to go around; the Gulf states, the Russians, the Americans, the Iranians, Bashar Assad, the jihadists all have blood on their hands one way or another.

    Yet often overlooked in these recriminations is the flailing Free Syrian Army. Had the FSA ever emerged as a powerful and coherent force, the civil war might have ended years ago or, at the very least, have been considerably less chaotic and murderous.

    As we conduct an informal autopsy, we can find useful lessons in understanding geopolitics and how humans interact with power. (more…)

  • Saudis Not into Syria Just Because They Hate Assad

    As if the war in Syria weren’t worrisome enough, Saudi Arabia is now contemplating open intervention to match the Russians. Beyond the obvious implications of Saudi special forces shooting down Russian jets, with all the madness that would entail, is an essential question: Why? Why would Saudi Arabia, long one of the few quiet, reliably dull countries in the Middle East, embark upon war? What’s happened to the Saudi ruling mentality?

    The short answer is that Saudi Arabia is terrified of the future and is lashing out in hopes it will be so feared it will not be disposed of. The longer answer requires a full article. (more…)

  • Why the Middle East Never Went Secular

    Ruhollah Khomeini
    Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran, February 1, 1979 (David Burnett)

    The great struggles in the Middle East are tinged with religion: Sunni supremacists in the Islamic State, Shia supremacists in Tehran, Arabs and Jews waging war on one another over the old mandate of Palestine, to name just a few.

    And yet, not so long ago, many Middle Eastern states were using the language of socialism, nationalism and even communism — “isms” that brook little competition from religion. Inconsistent, yes, but also truth of a wider trend: Once upon a time, many Arab states were actively switching their social glue from Islam to modern ideologies.

    Consider the national anthem of the United Arab Emirates, whose notes were penned in 1971 and whose lyrics were written in 1996. Full of socialist and nationalist language, the anthem extols work, Arabism and the Emirati homeland. The Egyptian of 1971 cried out for Arab unity while Gaddafi’s Green Book was an odd hodgepodge of nationalism and socialism. The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s founding charter of 1964 doesn’t even mention Islam.

    Algeria practiced Algerian socialism until the 1990s; the largest party today in Tunisia, Nidaa Tounes, draws heavily from secularism and socialism. Officially Arab socialist states included Mubarak’s Egypt, Saddam’s Iraq and Assad’s Syria. Even after a communist coup in 1971, Sudan continued to pursue socialism.

    Once the United States fretted it was losing the Arab world to communism; now, hardly anyone even mutters the world “socialism.” The Middle East has taken a trajectory that seemed to aim for ideological parity with Europe to one that has gone almost entirely the opposite. (more…)

  • What Oil Prices Mean for Geopolitics

    Persian Gulf drilling platforms
    Saudi drilling platforms in the Persian Gulf (Aramco)

    2003 was a different era. The United States waged a war of choice in Iraq; Vladimir Putin’s Russia was seen as a paper tiger; China’s economic boom roared but didn’t threaten; Dubai was unknown; and the United States seemed like it would forever be an oil importer.

    Much has changed. But today, the price of oil dropped to $27 a barrel, last seen in the heady days of the first W. Bush Administration.

    There’s a lot going on here. Let’s get super. (more…)

  • How America Earned Donald Trump

    From Coney Island apartment tower lord to Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump has come a long way. But nobody should assume the man has remade America: rather, his success is not in changing Americans but following the most profitable trends.

    His real estate empire was built upon a New York City ready to renew itself at nearly any cost: his real estate deals capitalized on the frantic rebuilding of much of the city’s decayed infrastructure in the 1980s and 1990s. He set up casinos in New Jersey; he made himself into a reality TV star. He didn’t create such conditions but rather exploited them.

    And this tendency explains virtually all his successes. Trump is not a man who invents trends: he exploits them. Now he is exploiting the Republican Party and the American electorate and Americans have no one but themselves to blame. (more…)

  • No Good Options: Why America Dithers in Syria

    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Barack Obama
    Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Barack Obama of the United States meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, December 7, 2009 (White House/Samantha Appleton)

    Haters do hate and many of President Barack Obama’s greatest haters despise what he’s done about Syria; or, more accurately, what he hasn’t done. Some of that criticism is fair but much of it is not, for Syria is not worth the blood, treasure or time of the United States when there are much bigger, nuclear-armed fish to fry elsewhere.

    Here’s why. (more…)

  • Why They Come: The Balkans’ Desperation

    Belgrade Serbia
    Skyline of Belgrade, Serbia, August 22, 2011 (Serzhile)

    Much of the world’s attention is fixed on the refugee crisis emanating from the warzones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It’s a simple enough narrative for journalists: fleeing the bombs and bullets of the Islamic State or the Taliban, refugees swarm peaceful Europe, hoping for humanitarian salvation.

    But that narrative overlooks a key failure of European migration policy. This wave of migration is hardly new. On the continent itself are states that have long propelled their citizens to jump the borders for greener pastures in Western Europe.

    Three of Germany’s top five asylum-seeking countries of origin are not in the wartorn Middle East but rather the overlooked Balkans: Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. Macedonia, another Balkan state, ranks seventh.

    What’s happening here? Why are fellow Europeans from peaceful states fleeing to Germany? (more…)

  • What the Hell Is Putin Doing in Syria?

    Vladimir Putin
    Russian president Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting in Voronezh, August 5, 2014 (Kremlin)

    And more importantly, what does he want?

    It’s important to remember how swears like that will net the sort of Google-searching folks I very much want here: the sort who want to understand, but who don’t need the gross, and largely unimportant, blow by blows.

    In two years, Vladimir Putin has taken Russia to war in not one but two countries; he’s conquered the strategically vital Crimea, froze a conflict in Ukraine and now has turned his war machine upon Syria’s conflict. The hapless United States under Barack Obama seems paralyzed with handwringing indecision and the Google searches for “World War III” are skyrocketing.

    Yes, we all ought to be worried and we all should try to understand why powerful places choose to seek war in faraway lands.

    So why is Russia now at war in Syria? What the hell happened, and, most importantly, what can happen?

    Let’s get super. (more…)

  • Why Japan Is Readying for War Again

    American Japanese ships
    American and Japanese ships conduct a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan, June 1, 2017 (USN/Z.A. Landers)

    Ironically, the final vote was accompanied by a fist fight but it’s official: Japan may go to war again. The third largest economy on Earth entering the geopolitical sphere as a military power is absolutely huge. For Beijing, it’s a disaster. For DC, it’s the geopolitical coup of the decade. And for Japan, it’s increasingly necessary.

    But why, and how? Let’s get super. (more…)