Those of you looking to follow along with the latest by Husain Haqqani might like to check out the latest issue of The Washington Quarterly, which features a piece by him as well as two other scholars of the subject of Pakistan. I have no real time to read it now, but I trust that it's good -- feel free to warn otherwise in comments if you disagree. I hope to get around to it myself (as well as finishing Stephen Cohen's The Idea of Pakistan) one of these days.

Now, off to (re)write!

I hate to be belligerent, but what the heck, it's Monday and I'm grumpy.

Whoever wrote this post over at the Diplomad, a blog purportedly run by Republican foreign service officers, better not ever be in charge of anything important any time soon.

The gist of the post is that we need to invade Cuba and change the regime within the next four years because "it comes down to not letting the old killer die peacefully in bed with his delusions intact." They make the interesting claim that the increasingly minor irritant that is Castro is "an even greater menace" than Saddam. They advocate that we implement the Helms-Burton act and deliberately provoke Cuba by violating its airspace and territorial waters, clamping down on remittances and tourism, and, if that doesn't work, invading outright. To which I return to the question left unsatisfactorally answered at the beginning of their stupid post: WHY? WHY WHY WHY? Who cares about Fidel Castro? And if we can't figure out how to fix Haiti after approximately seven million interventions (to say nothing of Iraq), why should we have any more luck in Cuba? The solution to the Cuba problem is not to invade; rather, the solution is to reconnect Cuba to the world by ending the counterproductive embargo policy that everyone in the world except Jesse Helms, the Diplomads, Otto Reich, and a few bitter exiles in Miami knows is gobsmackingly stupid. Let capitalism work its magic.

Most troubling, however, is their assertion that Kennedy ought to have taken Castro out during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are these august Diplomads unaware that the Soviets had placed 160 nuclear warheads in Cuba, and that Castro had earnestly recommended to Kruschev that they be used in the event of an American attack? The Diplomads say:

While Americans fought and died against tyranny around the globe, for most of the past 46 years we resigned ourselves to allowing a nation 90 miles offshore, and with long historic ties to the US, to become a prison camp for our friends and a base camp for our enemies.

To which I say, so what? It worked just fine, and most importantly, nobody got nuked in the process.

Please tell me these people aren't going to be in charge of anything anytime soon.

Finally, the Bush administration nominates somebody who isn't either a total hack, a sycophant, or a loser to a domestic position in the Cabinet. We'll see how it works out.

[UPDATE 12:30PM EST 11-29-04] Potentially, some very good news. Kuchma has proposed new elections. From Reuters:

Outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, facing mass protests over a disputed presidential election, Monday called for a new poll to help end the crisis tearing the nation apart.

If we really want to preserve peace and consensus and build this just democratic society, of which we speak so much but have failed to carry out in a legal way, let us have new elections," Kuchma said in a statement.

Kuchma, in power for 10 scandal-tainted years and widely accused of mismanaging the economy, said he had no intention of running in a new poll.

He spoke as the Supreme Court sat to try to resolve the election stalemate, though a decision could take days.
[...]

Another positive sign is reports that some of the Ukrainian "oligarchs" may be switching sides, or at least backing off their support of Yanukovych. The English language Kyiv Post is generally viewed as reliable. The internet activist site, Maidan, has a mix of rumor and reliable reports. Volunteer translators are apparently working non-stop to provide English-language versions of as much as they can. Worth visiting simply as a remarkable example of "citizen internet."

Dan Drezner has a good analytical roundup from early this morning, when he was not feeling very upbeat.

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Want a feel for "as it happens" -- check out Le Sabot Post-Moderne, a passionate Western partisan for Yuschenko's "people power" movement. Lots of photos connected with blow-by-blow what's going on with negotiations, rallies, etc. Although he admits he's so close to the on-the-ground action that it's hard to keep sight of the broader strategic goings-on.

Nonetheless, he has very interesting explanations about how the election was stolen and the Orange movement, not only in Kiev (or Kyiv if you spend more time with Ukrainians than Russians). Especially helpful is the correction, echoed by other bloggers, of the distorting East vs West narrative being imposed by outside commentators. [Map: The Economist, Nov 25 2004 "Europe's New Divisions"] This post from Le Sabot Moderne Saturday rips apart the Guardian. It starts:

Jonathan Steele's hit piece in the Guardian is a sad example of the condescension that so many hold for Ukraine. He insists on spinning this as a West-Russia dispute, as if the Ukrainians themselves have nothing to do with it. If he'd troubled himself to talk to some actual Ukrainians, he'd know that they're viewing this as a fight against a Mafia-esque ruling class which is using its powers to repress dissent, monopolize political power and cannibalize the nation's infrastructure through corrupt "privatization" schemes.

These oligarchs sound like just the sort of people a nice Lefty like Steele would be against. But I guess it's just more fun to poke a stick at the United States.

In an incredibly Orwellian moment, he dings the US for "provocatively" financing exit polls. Let's get this straight, the oligarch government was financing rigged polls to help justify their theft of the election. Yet it's the WEST who is trying to use exit polls to perform a coup? What a jackal.
[...]

Another blogger from Kyiv, Tulipgirl has a rich collection of Ukrainian activist details as well as a good variety of other links to blogs, sites and photo collections. Especially recommended is a just-created "blog of the revolution," Orange Ukraine, by a former Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Kyiv with his Ukrainian-born wife.

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[UPDATE 8:30PM EST 11-28-04] For those of you who just can't get enough Ukraine. A lengthy background piece -- giving a good deal more on who's who and the various events leading up to the current situation -- can be found on John Quiggin's personal blog, via Dan Hardie, by Tarik Amar, "who, Dan says, is doing a PhD on Soviet history and speaks Ukranian, German and Russian, among other languages, and knows the place very well."

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Other bloggers following developments closely are Fist Full of Euros and Daniel Drezner, who has a running news roundup. Drezner catches this interesting bit from the Kyiv Post:

Roman Olearchyk's analysis in the Kyiv Post suggests that elites in the eastern parts of the country would take steps beyond autonomy to protect their interests:

The business tycoons in eastern Ukraine that supported Yanukovych appear to be taking extreme measures to protect their interests, which include lucrative assets in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv and Luhansk. Government officials and legislators in these oblasts have in the past two days demanded the formation of an autonomous eastern-southern Ukrainian republic and are threatening to split their oblasts away from Ukraine altogether.
[...]

Similar story in MosNews.com [Map: MosNews.com, Nov 26 2004 "Pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine Threatens to Secede if Yushchenko Wins"].

And in further apparent confirmation, this just in from AFP: Yuschenko calls for prosecuting "separatist governors," while Yanukovych is off with Moscow's Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, visiting the Russian-speaking regions. "After a short meeting [in Lugansk] they were due to head to Severodonetsk to attend a meeting of 3,500 local officials from 17 regions that was expected to discuss holding a referendum on autonomy."   more »

[UPDATE 10:30PM EST 11-30-04] John Robb has translated the Afghan terror/drug conundrum into his "Global Guerrillas"-speak.

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From AdamSmithee, a first-rate source of interesting observations on development economics:

Moral Conundrum

Afghanistan has managed to drag a fair number of people out of absolute poverty in the past two years, with some effect on a range of health indicators. One huge reason is a rebounding opium crop, which may have accounted for as much as 60% of Afghanistan's economic output in 2003. As Brad DeLong points out, if you don't buy Third World products, their makers just have to go off and do something less rewarding. In the case of Afghanistan, that's likely to throw people back into absolute poverty, and that in turn means higher mortality. Heroin addiction is terrible. But death is surely worse. Given that, how hard should we pursuing opium growers in the country?

Well it may not be how we ought to be proceeding, but it seems the way we'll claim we're proceeding is to fight the "war on drugs" as the great scourage of a free and democratic Afghanistan. Via the FT, from a press conference Nov 18 2004:

Britain, the lead nation in the anti-narcotics drive in Afghanistan, admitted that there was a risk of the opium boom re-creating the conditions that the “war against terror” was supposed to eliminate.

Bill Rammell, the British foreign office minister responsible, said Afghanistan was a “narco-economy” and that the west needed to take urgent action.

“We have always held the view that if you have a narco-economy, those are the very conditions in which terrorism breeds,” he told a press conference in Brussels.

On Wednesday the US announced an $800m plan to fight Afghanistan's ballooning opium industry a big increase in spending that reflects growing concern about the threat of the drugs trade to the fragile country.

But the UN report made it clear that such a move could further destabilise the country.

The UN's drugs and crime office suggested that the lucrative poppy crop is one of the few things keeping the lawless country from falling further into anarchy and poverty.

“Narcotics are the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond between previously quarrelsome people,” it said. The crop is now grown in all 32 Afghan provinces.

Afghanistan's opium economy is put at $2.8bn, producing 87 per cent of the world's total supply.

Now don't get me wrong, and I'm sure we're dealing with different time periods here, but $800 million in anti-drug trade efforts is almost one-third of the drug contribution to GDP. Maybe a simple set of cash transfers would do more to get some other economic activity going than trying to stamp out 60% of the economy?

They're at it again! Congress just can't seem to resist sticking their fingers in the foreign policy pie. This time, it's over the International Criminal Court. Granted, not the most sympathetic or easily defended of international endeavors from the US viewpoint. But Congress had already taken a major pot shot at it by conditioning military assistance on agreements to grant immunity to US servicemen.

Now they've buried in the Omnibus spending bill a provision that conditions economic assistance on immunity agreements.

Congress's action may affect U.S. Agency for International Development programs designed to promote peace, combat drug trafficking, and promote democracy and economic reforms in poor countries. For instance, the cuts could jeopardize as much as $250 million to support economic growth and reforms in Jordan, $500,000 to promote democracy and fight drug traffickers in Venezuela, and about $9 million to support free trade and other initiatives with Mexico.

At the behest of the State Department, a provision has been aded for executive waivers for NATO members and other key allies. So the countries most likely to be affected are the small poor ones that aren't strategically important to the US. Likely the ones most in need of the assistance, of course.

[UPDATE 1:30PM EST 11-29-04] Further information on which countries would be affected and the political battle lines within Congress is in a OneWorld.net piece today by Jim Lobe.

The PBGC funding crisis, which is finally getting the ink it deserves, is often laid at the feet of the lengthy, painful restructuring of the large traditional airlines. Although they're not the only firms involved, they certainly represent a significant part of the current problem, which is primarily the heritage of the era of defined-benefit pensions.

As employers continue to abandon defined-benefit-style pension programs, the PBGC exposure will not grow substantially in future decades from new pension practices. Putting aside the issue of whether shifting all financial risk to employees is a sustainable system politically in the long run, the big problems for the PBGC are handling the legacy of labor practices in older industry structures.

Now comes a proposal in the Wall Street Journal -- devilish details to be worked out -- jointly offered by an unusual trio, representing the perspectives of the PBGC, airline management, and airline workers. That in itself makes it worth looking at. The three authors clearly share a common villain: Chapter 11 bankruptcy. One doubts that it is the cause of the dilemma, but the three agree that it is certainly making things worse all around -- a "lose, lose, lose," they claim.   more »

The challenge of the Census of Marine Life: count all the forms of life in the oceans in a decade. Now in its fourth year, the rate of discovery of new species is far from slowing, even in waters that have already been studied extensively. Frederick Grassle from Rutgers' Institute of Marine and Costal Sciences believes they're just skimming the surface so far.

According to the New Scientist:

Studies are locating close to 50 new marine species every week, of which typically only two or three are fish. But the majority of unknown species may turn out to be tiny algae floating in the ocean and nematode worms on the sea bed, say the researchers.

The database recording the distributuion of species, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, shows more than 38,000 species, including about 15,500 fish. Reporting on a press conference earlier this week, the NYT explains:

The census is actually a network of research projects in more than 70 countries. Database records come from many sources, involving both current research and historical data from projects like one that has been monitoring plankton growth in the North Atlantic and North Sea for more than 70 years.

The 40,000 species cataloged so far represent less than one-fifth of the number of described marine species. And most scientists believe there are many more remaining to be discovered, particularly in the deep oceans.

Photo: A specimen de Narcomedusae, un sub-group of medusae, collected in the Canadian Arctic. (Kevin Raskoff, Census of Marine Life) printed in Le nouvel observateur   more »

My laptop has gone and screwed itself, won't boot up past the soothing grey Apple startup logo, may have just lost 25+ pages of papers a week and a half before they come due, and naturally all the computer service places around campus will be closed till Monday, meaning I lose three full days of prime paper-finishing time this weekend, if not the whole thing entirely.

On the plus side, the pies turned out great.

Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all that the next Secretary of State is an old Kremlinoligist. November has been an active month for Russia-watching, some good news, some not so good news.

Main areas of interest in this clippings collection:

1. A second term for President Bush -- views from Moscow
2. Black Gold - Russia has more... and then some
3. The evolving structure of Russia's political economy, and the dilemma of low growth and investment outside the energy sector
4. The CIS and the Near-Abroad -- Russia's posture in its sphere of influence, and the West's responses
5. NATO -- areas of collaboration and friction
6. Nuclear weapons and treaties
7. Chechnya

   more »