Saturday’s Presidential debate saw most of the Republican candidates embrace torture.  Most pretend that “enhanced interrogation” is a magic incantation that prevents acts like waterboarding from being torture.  Herman Cain channeled his inner Romney to try to have it both ways, but the magic incantation trumped deference to the military (which calls waterboarding torture).

As Conor Friedersdorf  notes Newt Gingrich was outright scary on assassinating US citizens.   Friedersdorf reserves his praise for the two Republicans who understand why we do not torture, why it is counterproductive and how it militates against American values.  Neither of them will get the nomination, though Jon Huntsman could win the general election if nominated.  Ron Paul, while he has some kooky economic theories and is an isolationist, has always had the moral courage to stand up for what he believes in (like refusing to join the post 9/11 frenzy to rubber stamp the Patriot Act) – unlike most of the weasels in public life today.

The clip below highlights the stark contrast between the candidates of the soundbite (Cain and Bachmann) versus two men who have clearly given it some thought.

I don’t praise Republicans often in this blog, but today I will.  Thank you Mr. Paul and Mr. Huntsman for having the guts to stand up for American values and opposing a practice that has been illegal for over a century.

I wonder how loudly the rest of the candidates would howl in outrage if another country subjected captured Americans to “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

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Mitt Romney deviated from his tired canard about Obama apologizing for America to provide the sort of platitudes that comprise his foreign policy platform.  After all, you have to dig deep to call the President who ordered a raid into the heart of Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden and who helped bring down Gaddafi weak.  So the solution is the blanket statement below on the Iranian push for a nuclear bomb.

So Mitt, since you are evidently willing to go to war to achieve this end please tell us how you manage this:

• Almost every military expert agrees that an aerial bombardment of the type Israel is itching to launch would at best delay the Iranian push for the device.  So are you going to send in ground troops?
• Where would such an invasion be launched from?
• How would we pay for this?
• What would be the impact on an overstretched military that is seeing light at the end of the tunnel of two long wars in the countries on the West and the East of Iran?
• What will be the impact in Iraq if Iran unleashes its Sadrite proxies or on Israel if Hezbollah gets involved?
• How will you handle the economic shock of an almost certain spike in oil prices (to go with the mess in Europe)?
• If this is a snatch and grab, how will we prevent Iran from restarting the program?
• How will you handle the fallout with Russia and China – or do you just not give a damn?
• Are you willing to consider a full fledged invasion?  If so, how will you handle an occupation?

The ugly reality is that there are few good options to prevent Iran from getting the Bomb.  Iran has wanted the Bomb since the days of the Shah.  The pursuit of the Bomb is incredibly popular even among the anti-cleric democratic movement.  The Obama administration has been incredibly successful in getting Russian and Chinese support for a practical containment policy.  But if Mittens has a silver bullet for Iran other than his usual foreign policy bluster, I am all ears.

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This blog has been dormant for a while, but the graphic images from Sirte has shaken it out of its stupor.  Perhaps for the first time since Baghdad residents got to vent their anger on the corpse of Nuri as Said in 1958, has a middle eastern mob had a similar opportunity against a despised and hated leader.  A year ago the graphic videos from Libya were unthinkable.  A few months ago with his tanks at the gates of Benghazi it looked like the 41 year rule of the mercurial dictator would survive the Arab Spring.  And then NATO with the fig-leaf of Arab support got involved and the “Northern Alliance” strategy finally bore fruit.

And then the hunt for the deposed tyrant began.  The end was pathetic.  As his hometown of Sirte finally fell to his enemies the wounded Gaddafi was dragged from his hiding place (a drain pipe).  As the fallen dictator pleaded for mercy he met his end soon after in murky circumstances.  Cell phone videos of a bleeding Gaddafi are available for anybody willing to conduct a Google search.

The rest of the Gaddafi clan is either captured, dead or has fled (warning gruesome pictures in link).

Apart from one expected quarter, Gaddafi goes to his grave unmourned.  His legacy is broken, factitious oil rich tribal mish-mash bunched under a new/old national flag.   Libya faces an uncertain future once the euphoria over the lynching in Sirte fades.

Also uncertain is the future of NATO.  The French and the British wanted this operation, but soon discovered that they could not sustain a campaign against a fourth rate military without access to the American arsenal.  Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates departed with a well timed salvo at Europe questioning the worth of an alliance where only one country carries the weight.  The solution from Congressional hawks appears to be to bankrupt the United States by continuing to sustain 40% of global military spending alone.  A reappraisal of American military commitments and spending is long overdue.

With the specter of their crazy leader gone, the people of Libya sleep easier tonight.  So do perhaps diplomats in a land of cheese, chocolates and banks.

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After weeks of horrendous economic news, Barack Obama and NATO can heave a sigh of relief. The longest ruling despot in the world appears to have fallen.

As expected, the fall was dramatic. Just last week the squabbling rebel alliance cut off the dictator’s supply lines. Today they entered Tripoli to cheering crowds. Some of Gaddafi’s sons appear to be in custody. Gaddafi’s fate is yet unknown.

It remains to be seen whether the tribes united by the Libyan flag can create a national state. Hopefully a revenge bloodbath can be avoided.

This also turns the spotlight uncomfortably on Bashar Assad. The fears of unraveling Syria’s ethnic quilt kept many Western states quiet. Last week it became clear patience was running out. While NATO bombardment is unlikely, the younger Assad is finding it hard to emulate his father in suppressing dissent with an iron fist.

The bufoonish Gaddafi falls largely unmourned, except perhaps in Caracas, Havana, Harare and some African capitals.

The bloody Arab summer has harvested its first tyrant.

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As previously noted, South Sudan officially became the world’s latest nation today, triggering joyous celebration on the streets of Juba.  Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir magnanimously appeared for the independence celebrations in what was once the southern half of his country, but the conflict is not over yet.  The run-up to independence saw the two sides clash over the border town of Abeyi, and a division of oil revenues is still a sticking point.  But let the wringing of hands wait for next week.  This weekend South Sudan gets to celebrate the success of its struggle for independence.  Happy birthday.

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It appears the uniformed thugs of Europe’s last dictatorship (the authoritarian regime in Moscow deserves a bold asterisk on its classification as a democracy) are capable of medical miracles.  The regime of Alexander Lukashenko is struggling to contain public protests over the collapsing (and already impoverished) economy.  So the security services have started hauling in perceived dissenters.  And therein lies the miracle - one armed men have been convicted of clapping and deaf-mutes have been convicted of shouting.

Lukashenko has survived so far due to the tacit support of Moscow, which likes pliant states in its “near abroad.”  Yet last year Vladimir Putin sent out signals that the Kremlin’s patience for Lukashenko was not unlimited.  Russia’s favorite foreign policy bludgeon - cutting of gas supplies – was used to bring Belarus to heel.  Going forward Russia has denied Lukashenko’s bankrupt regime needed loans, focusing instead on (in competition with China – another regime used to dealing with nasty despots) buying up Belarusian assets at cut rate prices.

It is hard to see a clean solution to this crisis.  Lukashenko is unlikely to go without a fight.  Putin’s Russia is terrified of the “color revolutions” in its neighborhood planting subversive thoughts in the heads of its serfs…I mean citizens.  Russia can be counted on to sabotage any independent minded popular government that emerges from any such revolution (see Ukraine).

Unfortunately for Belarus, its past probably gives some hint of its future.  The frustration of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine has already shown Little Russia how hard it is to escape the suffocating embrace of Great Russia.  Poor White Russia which spent most of the last 800 years shuttling from the imperial domination of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Empire of the Czar of All the Russias is well on its way to repeating history.  Impoverished, with no functioning government structures or tradition of democratic rule and fatally dependent of the Kremlin for gas and oil, Belarus will likely end up in tighter Russian thralldom.  The West will probably lose interest after Lukashenko leaves, and in any case will not pick a fight with Russia over Belarus.

Yet another example of the perils of being a midget in a giant’s backyard.

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These are difficult times for Pakistan and its citizens. Since the 1980′s Pakistan’s military rulers have ridden the tiger of Islamic radicalism to bleed arch-rival India and install pliant regimes in Afghanistan.  However, Pakistan is now discovering how hard it is get off the tiger.  In recent years jihadists have slaughtered innocents in Pakistan’s cities, countryside, mosques, schools and even military bases.  Then came the national humiliation of the American military attack that killed Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani cantonment town of Abbotabad, a stone’s throw from its national military academy.

The raid that eliminated Bin Laden was a double humiliation: First, because the most wanted man in the world was found ensconced comfortably in the heart of Pakistan (leading to suspicions he was protected by Pakistan’s secret service agency the ISI).  Second, because the Americans launched a military raid deep into Pakistan without the Pakistani army’s knowledge or without them being able to do anything about it.

Not given to deep introspection, the military establishment has focused on the latter and has made ham handed to warn the Americans about future Pakistani cooperation against the Taliban by playing the China card.  Unfortunately for the generals, more humiliation was to come.  The Bin Laden raid was followed by a daring terrorist attack on a naval base, possibly with inside involvement.

All of this has severely dented the credibility of the Pakistani military establishment, previously immune from domestic criticism.  Yet criticism of the military can be fatal.  Shortly after writing about Al-Qaeda infiltration of the Pakistani navy, journalist Saleem Shahzad was found beaten to death - allegedly in ISI custody.  Which brings us to the indomitable Asma Jahangir.

Along with her sister Hina Jalani, Jahangir has been one of Pakistan’s foremost human rights advocates who bravely stands up for women’s right in the face of fundamentalist neanderthals.  In the clip below she boldly eviscerates the Pakistani military for sheer incompetence, impotence and venality.

For those of you who do n0t understand Urdu a rough translation from the blogger Beena Sarwar is provided below:

I don’t need to get a medal for patriotism especially from those who belong to the establishment. We must talk harshly and realistically. I remember during the Bangladesh war, we heard the same discourse. People said that those who criticised the army action in Bangladesh were not patriots. My father was imprisoned; many people we know called me the child of a traitor. But I know that the army’s policy – they are duffers, political duffers (idiots). If you go along with their policy the way we have been doing, Pakistan will not progress. I don’t care what people in America or Africa think. I want our people to be saved from the army. They have put us in a situation where terrorism is cropping up at every corner and neighbourhood. They encourage and support it, detract from debate. They’ve got a whole propaganda machinery going. I am not saying that this goes for all soldiers, but for these generals who play golf and laugh, and keep an eye out for plots. What happened in Karachi – there was a wedding hall at that sensitive place. They’ve made us their slaves. It is time to say please, with folded hands, go back to your barracks, let our children live here. We don’t want bloodshed. If you want acclaim, go and fight – and win — a war. You fought Kargil, killed the Light Infantry soldiers. You’ve become used to making young boys into human shields. You can’t fight, or run the country, or make policy. You are the ‘qabza group’ (land grabbers) of this country. Politicians and everyone should say this clearly. If you ask me, I can give several examples of their stupidity. We need to take out a procession on Mall Road, with folded hands, to say please go home, you ‘eating drinking’ party.”

Brave words against a military establishment whose raison d’être has been anti-India hostility, towards which end it leeches off a quarter of impoverished Pakistan’s budget in a unwinnable military race with its far larger and stronger neighbor.  In the process the army lost Pakistan its eastern wing in 1971.  And 3 out of its remaining 4 provinces (not counting the so-called Azad Kashmir) are seething with discontent at domination by the Punjabi majority.  It is a pity that Pakistan’s venal civilian politicians are incapable of fulfilling the promise of its brave human rights activists like Asma Jahangir.  Until a competent civilian leadership emerges, Pakistan will continue to be dominated by its incompetent uniformed thugs.

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For all those who have wasted hours on one of the most addictive games in recent history:

Somehow seems appropriate that an Israeli comedy show came up with this.

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After weeks of refusing to get involved in Libya with the war-mongerers Stateside accusing him of dithering, Barack Obama turned on a dime and endorsed military action in Libya.   The push for war was largely driven by the French and the British and cloaked with legitimacy by the Arab League’s call for a no-fly zone over Libya.  The French intervention appears driven by a desire to restore their tarnished prestige following a series of diplomatic blunders with respect to the Arab uprisings.  In my opinion Obama’s shift can be explained by the following:

• Nobody likes Muammar Gaddafi (other than Hugo Chavez) and everybody was excited at the thought of his imminent departure.
• But Gaddafi has proved surprisingly resilient and his opposition hopelessly disorganized.
• Last week as Gaddafi’s armor reached Benghazi there was the sudden unpalatable realization that Gaddafi was about to win.
• Gaddafi went on television once again promising wholesale slaughter, conjuring up memories of the failure to prevent the massacres at Srebrenica in 1995 and of the Iraqi Shiites in 1991.
• Even though he stood at the brink of victory, Gaddafi’s armed forces are weak and his advance was easily stopped.

It is interesting to speculate whether the UN would have acted if Gaddafi had not broadcast his genocidal intentions to the world.  The broadcasts may have been enough to prevent Russia and China from vetoing intervention in Libya (ironic given the willingness of both those regimes to slaughter their people in Chechnya and at Tiananmen respectively).  Yet the old fault lines are obvious.  The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and Germany all abstained at the vote.  The Arab League whose support lent legitimacy to the operation promptly flip-flopped when the bombs started to fall.

It is hard to avoid the impression that the war was a half-baked attempt to stop a Gaddafi victory.  To his credit Barack Obama is aware (unlike many of his domestic critics) that the United States no longer has the credibility to initiate an armed intervention in the Arab or Muslim world.  Unlike the coalition of the billing that accompanied the United States into Iraq, this is a true (if disorganized) coalition with NATO allies doing heavy lifting and a few Gulf monarchies sending their fighter jets to enforce the no-fly zone.  Gaddafi’s unpopularity on the Arab street has muted some of the reflexive anti-American voices.  People still carp that this is “about oil.”  That makes no sense since Gaddafi’s legitimization in the last decade was followed by the entry of western oil companies into Libya.  Getting rid of Gaddafi was no longer a prerequisite to get Libyan oil.

The problem is that nobody has explained the end-objective of what is likely to be an open-ended military commitment.  Nobody has any idea what the disorganized Libyan opposition stands for.  Various parts of the coalition differ on the wisdom or legality of killing Gaddafi with a military strike.  Other NATO allies are showing marked reluctance to being involved in the operation and the United States is on record wanting to hand off the baton to someone else.  With the rest of the world used to freeloading on US leadership and the casting stones at the United States for “causing civilian deaths,” it is difficult to see who that would be.  There has been no debate within the United States about what American strategic goals are and how this war will be paid for.

Basically the allies are gambling that elimination of Gaddafi’s air and armor advantage will allow the opposition to sweep into Tripoli.  The precedents for this exist in the success of the Bosnian Muslims and Croats after NATO’s bombing of Serb positions.  Aerial bombardment and limited special forces involvement enabled the Northern Alliance to sweep the Taliban out of Kabul in 2001.  Yet key differences exist.  The Bosnian and Northern Alliance forces had been tempered by years of war and had an organized command structure.  The Libyan opposition is hopelessly out-gunned by even Gaddafi’s ramshackle army and mercenaries.  On the flip side the ramshackle nature of Gaddafi’s military and regime makes it unlikely that his generals will want to go down shooting for him.  There is a rumor that a kamikaze attack by a Libyan pilot may have killed one of Gaddafi’s sons.  Combined with rumors of members of the regime seeking exit strategies, Gaddafi’s rule may be cracking.

The quickest solution to this military dilemma would be for the Egyptian army to march west.  Even if it is bloated and inefficient, the Egyptian army would probably sweep aside Gaddafi’s forces.  Such an intervention would probably play well with the Egyptian street that is suspicious of the Generals’ commitment to democracy.  But the Egyptians are playing coy and their aid to the rebels has been under the table.  Their Generals have some cause for worry that an invasion of Libya could trap their army in an unwinnable occupation of a failed tribal entity with a national flag (See: Ethiopian intervention in Somalia – 2006-2009).

This is a war where the ends will unfortunately justify the means.  The quick fall of Gaddafi (even though regime change is not a declared purpose of the war) with minimal bloodshed will vindicate Messrs. Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron.  If Gaddafi holds on and the result is a long drawn civil war and military stalemate the intervention will ultimately be seen as a failure.  The fall of Gaddafi followed by chaos will probably be seen as a failure as well.

For now we cross our fingers and wait….and hope.

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As Muammar Gaddafi digs in for his final stand, mockery of the brutal dictator is spreading across the web.  A couple of samples are below:

• The clip below “Zenga Zenga” by Israeli musician Noy Alooshe mocks the dictator’s speech last week.  The video has garnered over 1.6 million views and is a hit in the Arab world.  Using Autotune to turn an excerpt of his speech to song the dictator promises that he will clean Libya “inch by inch, house by house, room by room, alley by alley.”  At the edges bikini clad women gyrate to the music.  The Israeli origins of the video have not prevented it from becoming a hit in the Arab world.

• Vanity Fair which previously cataloged Gaddafi the fashionista now gives you the opportunity to craft your own hard line speech with Gaddafi as your muse.

Enjoy…

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Pervez Hoodbhoy has this pessimistic take on the perils of a nuclear-armed failing Pakistani state.  For all the opprobrium it received for the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan has still not brought the attack planners to justice or commenced dismantling its terror infrastructure.  Incredibly the bankrupt Pakistani state appears to be betting all its chips on the nuclear shield.  So a state which survives on financial aid is risking an arms race with its larger and stronger neighbor that will make its fragile condition even worse.

Hoodbhoy is probably right in that another attack on India is only a matter of time.  How will India then react to the rogue state on its western border?  Indians have noted that the Bush doctrine allowed the United States to invade Afghanistan, but the United States limits the Indian response to its terrorism sponsoring neighbor.  This perpetuates the Pakistani faith in its nuclear deterrent as a shield for any foreign misadventures.

It must be noted that the second and less appreciated part of Pakistan’s shield will eventually disappear.  The US will get out of Afghanistan and will no longer need Pakistan as a supply route for its troops.  Similar to 1989, it will be far easier for Washington to cut Pakistan loose after it withdraws from Afghanistan.  With China already sponsoring North Korea and Burma, will it want the Pakistani basket case in its lap?  Given its size, location and the size of its nuclear arsenal, the collapse of Pakistan will be a far greater geopolitical nightmare than the fall of the rickety regime in Pyongyang.

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I posted earlier in the week that Gaddafi’s Latin American friends other than Daniel Ortega were not sticking their necks out for him.  The silence of the garrulous Chavez was particularly unusual.  The Caudillo finally broke his silence a few hours ago on twitter by embracing Fidel Castro’s theory that this was an American plot to invade Libya.  Tweet below:

The tweet translates as follows: “Minister Nicolás [Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro]: Teach the far right yankee lovers” a lesson! Long live Libya and its Independence! Gaddafi is facing a civil war!”

Some context:  ”pitiyanqui” literally translates to little Yankee.  It is an insult Chavez created to mock opponents he deemed to be Yankee lovers.  The tweet followed a statement by Maduro echoing Castro’s theory that the United States was creating a movement to topple Gaddafi.

Even a blowhard like Chavez cannot bring himself to openly support Gaddafi like Nicaragua’s Ortega did.  So he wraps himself in his reflexive anti-Americanism to try to mask his support for Gaddafi. Kinda pathetic.

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Robert Fisk of the Independent files this report.  Given the regime’s threats against journalists, hope he stays safe.  Excerpt below:

There is little food in Tripoli, and over the city there fell a blanket of drab, sullen rain. It guttered onto an empty Green Square and down the Italianate streets of the old capital of Tripolitania. But there were no tanks, no armoured personnel carriers, no soldiers, not a fighter plane in the air; just a few police and elderly men and women walking the pavements – a numbed populace. Sadly for the West and for the people of the free city of Benghazi, Libya’s capital appeared as quiet as any dictator would wish.

But this is an illusion. Petrol and food prices have trebled; entire towns outside Tripoli have been torn apart by fighting between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces. In the suburbs of the city, especially in the Noufreen district, militias fought for 24 hours on Sunday with machine guns and pistols, a battle the Gadaffi forces won. In the end, the exodus of expatriates will do far more than street warfare to bring down the regime.

I was told that at least 30,000 Turks, who make up the bulk of the Libyan construction and engineering industry, have now fled the capital, along with tens of thousands of other foreign workers. On my own aircraft out of Tripoli, an evacuation flight to Europe, there were Polish, German, Japanese and Italian businessmen, all of whom told me they had closed down major companies in the past week. Worse still for Gaddafi, the oil, chemical and uranium fields of Libya lie to the south of “liberated” Benghazi. Gaddafi’s hungry capital controls only water resources, so a temporary division of Libya, which may have entered Gaddafi’s mind, would not be sustainable. Libyans and expatriates I spoke to yesterday said they thought he was clinically insane, but they expressed more anger at his son, Saif al-Islam. “We thought Saif was the new light, the ‘liberal’”, a Libyan businessman sad to me. “Now we realise he is crazier and more cruel than his father.”

If he cannot feed his mercenaries, time is running out for Gaddafi.  Time for the world to start freezing his assets.

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The beleaguered Muammar Gaddafi was expected to appear on state TV to deliver his latest rant.  But instead of appearing live he called in the latest paranoid delusions.  Even though he appears to have locked down Tripoli, the dictator’s failure to make a live appearance makes it seem he is afraid to appear in public.  Video below:

Also worth seeing is this survey by Vanity Fair of Gaddafi through the years in full sartorial splendor.  He will not be missed, but Gaddafi’s fall will make state summits really drab.

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Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.
-    Roman Emperor Septimius Severus to his sons just before his death.

Keeping your soldiers happy and loyal has been the surest way to a ruler’s survival since antiquity.  The Roman Republic ultimately collapsed because the the oligarchs in the Senate could not control the loyalty of the troops in the field.  When rulers like the Byzantine Emperor Michael VI forgot this maxim (on the advice of his bureaucratic cabal the emperor publicly humiliated his generals) the military coup and fall promptly followed.

In most of today’s dictatorships the armed forces occupy a favored position.  Business contracts are steered towards the generals.  The troops are showered with generous fringe benefits not available to the general populace.  Above all, since an army “marches on its stomach” it never ever starves.

It appears that the crumbling North Korean regime is losing the ability to feed its soldiers.  People have noted that decades of starvation has stunted the growth of North Koreans – who are now markedly smaller than their South Korean kin.  Now it appears that North Korea has had to lower the height requirements for military recruits who still remain malnourished.  Were he alive today, Prussia’s King Frederick William I would have shuddered at the sight of North Korea’s diminutive and underfed soldiers.

Which begs the question posted above.  At what point do hunger pangs (and the worse experience of their families) trump the decades of brainwashing North Korea’s soldiers have undergone?  Starvation helped speed along the German collapse in World War I which toppled the Kaiser.  Will the same occur in the Hermit Kingdom?  And what will be the spark that triggers the uprising to sweep aside North Korea’s obese rulers?

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Drowned out by the tumult in the Middle East, is the news of the crumbling North Korean autocracy.  The rogue regime has spent the last few months begging for food.  However, with its track record of diverting aid to the military, donor states are unwilling to prop up a crumbling regime.

North Korea’s starving population increasingly appears willing to protest conditions in the Stalinist state.  Even more unsettling for the regime is the willingness of the most brainwashed citizenry in the world to mock its leaders.  A few months ago the ailing Dear Leader commenced preparations for the eventual succession of his 28 year old son Kim Jong-un.  Even though state media started the usual absurd propaganda to buttress the thin resume of one of the few pudgy young men left in the country, the public appears to have greeted the new heir with derision.

A popular children’s song “Three Bears” about a cute bear family with a chubby papa bear, a slim mommy bear and a cute baby bear in a house was modified to mock the Kims:

Three bears in a house, pocketing everything; grandpa bear, papa bear and baby bear.  Grandpa Bear is fat, Papa Bear is fat, too, and Baby Bear is a doofus.

Meanwhile the cash starved regime is struggling to provide its people and elite with the usual bribes and gifts distributed to mark Kim Jong-il’s birthday.  Starved of cash, food and oil the military capacity of its million strong army is an open question.  Even with its diminished capacity, North Korea is still as unpredictable and dangerous as ever.

However, its ability to manage a second dynastic succession is in doubt.  Kim Jon-un faces a dynastic rival – his older, fatter and discredited brother Kim Jong-nam.  From his Chinese exile Jong-nam has criticized the planned succession.  There are rumors about his connection with North Korea’s benefactor China, who has reason to be irritated with the ruling Kims.  However, it is not clear that Jong-nam plans to give up his comfortable subsidized hedonistic lifestyle to rule a crumbling impoverished failed state.

The world is frighteningly unprepared for a North Korean collapse.  China which does not want a flood of refugees across the Yalu continues to prop up the regime.  It may also not want to share a border with a united and democratic Korea.  South Korea (particularly its left) parrots the cause of eventual unification but may not want to inherit or pay for such a basket case.  The cost of Korean reunification will dwarf the cost of unifying Germany.  With no media access into the country, it is hard to estimate when North Korea will reach its tipping point.

So for now we wait and watch as the Hermit kingdom crumbles and starves.

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With his back to the wall, his army crumbling and parts of his navy defecting to Malta, Muammar Gaddafi has lashed out at his people with little restraint.  This presents his pals abroad with a dilemma.  After providing an open embrace to Libya’s leader for the last decade, what do they do when he resorts to large scale bloodletting.

Other than the usual pro-forma comment accusing the US of hypocrisy in Egypt and plotting to take over that country, Venezuela’s caudillo has been uncharacteristically quiet.  He cannot be happy at the repeated rumors (angrily shot down by both sides) that Gaddafi fled to his country (or the ease with which people like me made the assumption).

But two of his ideological comrades have finally spoken out.  Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega called Gaddafi to express support.  The former Sandinista dictator had no words of sympathy for a populace assaulted by its own head of state.

Fidel Castro appears to have been a bit more circumspect, largely focusing on the alleged upcoming NATO invasion of the country. He avoided taking a position on the atrocities based on the difficulty of deciphering the news coming out of Libya thanks to Gaddafi’s military blackout.  Much easier to fall back on anti-American paranoia than condemning a dictator who just went on state TV promising to kill his countrymen.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales has come closest to a critique of his former buddy by issuing a pro forma statement of concern for the loss of life.

The dilemma facing Gaddafi’s Latin American friends highlights the risk of embracing rogues merely because they are enemies of your real or perceived enemies.  For countries that spend so much time criticizing the United States, it is a pity they did not learn from the harm to America’s reputation abroad for supporting apartheid South Africa, Zaire’s Mobotu Sese Seko and other third world dictators under the banner of anti-communism.  It is a lesson that Hugo Chavez, who actively seeks out the embrace of despots, and his acolytes need to learn.

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After a quixotic appearance on state TV yesterday night with his umbrella (clip in post below), the beleaguered Muammar Gaddafi made an appearance on state TV for a long rambling paranoid harangue that went on for over an hour.  The speech contained many ominous overtones as he promised to kill the “drugged” youth who rose in revolt against him.

Some of the quotes compiled by Al-Jazeera are listed below:

Muammar Gaddafi is not the president, he is the leader of the revolution. He has nothing to lose. Revolution means sacrifice until the very end of your life

Muammar Gaddafi is not a normal person that you can poison.. or lead a revolution against

I will fight until the last drop of blood with the people behind me

I haven’t even started giving the orders to use bullets – any use of force against authority of state will be sentenced to death

Also below is a video of a portion of the harangue.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The die is now cast.  Gaddafi will fight to the bitter end.  May that be soon.

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The slide is complete.  Libya is now in civil war as Muammar Gaddafi pulls out all the stops in desperate attempts to hold on to power.  The Libyan air force has been ordered to strafe the country’s two largest cities and a few pilots defected by flying off to Malta.  Earlier today there were reports of Libyan navy ships opening fire on Tripoli.  Its been a long time since a ruler indiscriminately strafed his own capital from the air (Gaddafi’s son claimed they were targeting ammunition depots) or the sea, let alone had such a gambit keep him in power.  Later in the day came a declaration from some Libyan officers asking their troops to switch sides.  Whether this will have any effect is still unclear.

Libya’s diplomatic outposts appear to think that the die is cast.  From New York to New Delhi the regime’s ambassadors are turning in their papers refusing to obey the diktats of a ruler willing to massacre his own people on a scale not seen since Tiananmen or perhaps even since Syria’s Hafez Assad blasted his own city of Hama (mention must be given to the Soviet pulverizing of Grozny, though the Chechens at the time were in open revolt and would have angrily denied suggestions that they were part of Russia).

On Monday, Khaled Al Ga’aeem, under-secretary of Libya’s foreign ministry, phoned Al Jazeera to create a Baghdad Bob moment in stating all was well in Tripoli.  Video below:

Also on Monday night, Gaddafi himself made a very brief and odd appearance on state TV with his umbrella to deny that he had fled Tripoli for the welcoming embrace of his buddy Hugo Chavez.  Video below:

The usually impotent UN Security Council is expected to huddle behind closed doors on Tuesday to figure out an international response to the situation.  Ironically, Libya is currently on the Security Council but no longer has any lackeys in New York willing to obey the beleaguered Gaddafi.  Other than the usual platitudes, travel bans and sanctions there are two things that the UN could do.  One is direct military involvement.  The obvious candidate for such an action would be Egypt’s bloated but well equipped army.  I think that outcome is unlikely.  The other would be to declare a no fly zone over Benghazi and Tripoli that would restrict Gaddafi’s ability to draw blood.  Whether China (which is actively censoring news of Middle East unrest) or Putin’s Russia will allow such action remains to be seen.

It is hard to imagine Gaddafi surviving this revolt.  If by some miracle he does wade through rivers of blood to hold on to power, his regime would revert to North Korea type pariah status.  Having tasted the lures of international acceptability the last few years, would Gaddafi’s henchmen be willing to put up with this?

If the insurrection does succeed, Libya is likely still headed for turmoil.  United by the Italian conquest of the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica in 1912, Libya like Iraq (the fusion of the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad) is very much an artificial creation of the colonial era.

Ottoman provinces that make up modern Libya

Tribal loyalties are still paramount and Gaddafi’s long rule has largely been a tribal balancing act instead of an exercise in nation building.  One of the few things that were probably accurate in Gaddafi’s son’s incoherent rant yesterday is that a post-Gaddafi civil war cannot be ruled out.

Libya's ethnic quilt

Post Gaddafi Libya will have to devise means to balance the interests of its tribes and ethnicities without Gaddafi’s brutality and cronyism.  The oil hungry countries of the world looking to harvest Libya’s oil wealth will be watching this exercise intently.  But before we can flesh out the post Gaddafi scenarios, the tyrant still has to fall.

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The regime of the longest ruling non-royal in the world is crumbling and the amount of blood likely to be spilled in its death throes should easily surpass that shed so far in the other Arab states.  Used to pariah status in the west, Muammar Gaddafi was always unlikely to bow to international pressure of the type that cowed Baharain’s al-Khalifas.  True to form, his regime reacted to protests this week with bullets.  With limited media and internet access, distinguishing fact from fiction in Libya is hard.  But it does appear that the regime’s forces shot to kill and the death toll was high.

And then things appear to have spiraled out of Gaddafi’s control.  Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, Libya is still a tribal society.  Gaddafi’s tribal balancing act appears to have collapsed when he ordered his troops to open fire.  Reports indicate that parts of his army switched sides enabling insurgents to seize control of Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, and the fighting has now spread to Gaddafi’s home turf of Tripoli.  The Warfala tribe, one of Libya’s largest, may have turned on Gaddafi as well.

The cornered dictator sent the respectable face of his regime, his son Saif, on state television to broadcast paranoid stories of foreign attempts to split Libya and the impending civil war.  That civil war appears to have already begun.  There may be no Saudi (or as rumored Venezuelan) exile for Libya’s long time autocrat.  He has indicated that he will fight to the “last man standing.”

Western countries who allowed the lure of Libya’s oil reserves to seduce them into rehabilitating Gaddafi can only sit and watch as this bloody denouement plays itself out.  The fall of Gaddafi would be truly momentous and will cause more and more Arab autocrats to doubt the fealty of their armies.  A sign of the times is a letter sent by senior commanders of Iran’s revolutionary guard to their commanding officer promising not to open fire on demonstrators.  If true, and if it holds up, Iran’s rulers may soon be faced with a popular revolution instead of the reformation sought by the Green Revolution two years ago.  In the latest bout of Iranian protests, the vitriol is increasingly directed at the true leader of Iran’s autocracy, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, instead of the President Ahmadinejad.

Protests also appear to have spread to Morocco.  The still popular King Mohammed VI once allegedly indicated that he wished to emulate Spain’s democracy bringing King Juan Carlos rather than his own father King Hassan II.  While Morocco may have eased up on the worst excesses of Hassan’s reign, it is time for the still absolute monarch to emulate his political idol more completely.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s worried rulers have promised to support the al-Khalifas of Bahrain.  The nature of that support is still unclear and for now Bahrain appears to have walked back from the brink.

With the Middle East convulsing, it will be interesting to see if the virus of unrest casts a wider web.  China’s rulers are on edge and Venezuela’s caudillo appears to be uncharacteristically quiet.  The next wobbly domino should emerge soon.

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There may yet be hope for Bahrain.  The Persian Gulf kingdom ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty has been rocked by protests in recent days from its Shiite majority underclass.  King Hamad then responded to peaceful protests by sending in the goons and using helicopters to strafe mourners at funerals.

And now the police have been abruptly withdrawn.  Pearl Square in downtown Manama, the heart of the protests like Tahrir Square in Cairo, now belongs to the protesters.

Like many if the Middle East dictatorships the al-Khalifas appear to have been split among the hardliners (led by the King’s uncle and long time Prime Minister) and the moderates (led by the crown prince and perhaps the King).  The tensions between the two camps were documented by the WikiLeaks cables.  Now the balance seems to have veered sharply towards the moderates, possibly helped along by admonishments from President Obama.

If the good news holds it appears that the virus of democracy is proving harder to suppress than previously thought.  The inbred royals ruling Bahrain’s neighbors must be looking at this in alarm.  People tend to discount the value of social networks in the recent bout of Arab unrest.  Personally, I think YouTube deserves far more credit.  Without the horrifying videos of police brutality, it is unlikely that Bahrain’s hardliners (who still value their ability to be integrated into world society) would have backed down so quickly.  The absence of such videos in Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia (no to mention the greater willingness of those despots to shed blood) poses a bigger challenge to regime change in those countries.

Next up Algeria?  Yemen?  Who knows….we live in interesting times.

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The fall of the Pharaoh raises the question whether the Middle East tumult will subside, or if this is the beginning of an avalanche not seen since Eastern Europe in 1989. While it is easy to get carried away, regime change in Tunis and Cairo occurred because the men with the guns did not act against the protesters. As Iran showed a couple of years back, unfortunately that is not always true. When the generals obey their masters and when the grunts obey the generals, democratic hopes come to a bloody end.

It is also still not clear whether Tunis and Cairo were soft coups, where the public face of the regime changed but little else did. However, some local despots do need to be more scared than others.  On cue the days of rage have commenced in three of the most vulnerable autocracies in the middle east.

• Iran – When Egypt erupted, the mullahs hypocritically cheered the right of Egyptians to protest.   They should have known that their restive masses were looking at Cairo and drawing encouragement.  Now the embers of the Green Revolution are reigniting.  The opposition leaders are already in preventive house arrest and the riot police are cracking skulls.
• Algeria – Algeria was the rare Arab country that held free elections in the early 1990s.  When it appeared the Islamists won, the military quashed the results (taking their cues from the Burmese junta who made the similar error of not rigging their elections a couple of years before).  The next few years saw a brutal and bloody civil war.  Though violence died down the last few years, unrest has always simmered underneath.  Now it has erupted.
• Bahrain - The Gulf monarchy’s presence in this list may seem unusual to people who do not follow the Middle East, but the Sunni monarchy ruling a 70% Shiite population has had periodic bouts of unrest.  After promising to respect peaceful rallies, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has opted for bullets.  Warning:  Violent video below.

The protests in all three countries already highlight one huge difference with Tunisia and Egypt.  These autocracies are willing to spill blood.  The men with guns and batons will have to refuse to take orders for these tyrants to fall or give way.  The list above is also not exhaustive.  Yemen, Jordan, Sudan and to a lesser extent Syria (where you have to frankly be foolhardy to publicly protest) have faced protests.  Then there is the longest ruling autocrat in the region who has seen his fellow dictators on either side of his country fall.  The recent cables leaked by Wikileaks revel how the 41 year regime of Muammar Gadaffi has been tarnished by his licentious progeny.  Even Libya may be facing the unthinkable, public protests.

It is very likely that no more dominoes will fall this go around, but the yearnings for freedom and respect on the Arab street will be harder to bottle up again.  And if one can dream, if Egypt actually manages to create a constitutional democracy the clock will start running out for the remaining autocracies in the region.  The 1990s saw the demise of assorted military juntas in Latin America.  Even though the Chavezs and Ortegas are threatening democracy in the region, by and large military rule is passe in the region.  Lets hope this decade sees similar change from the Maghreb to the Fertile Crescent, and beyond.

As a final note, do notice how quiet the murderous thugs of Al-Qaeda have been at the sight of the Pharaoh being toppled without suicide bombers.

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Talk about timing…barely 30 minutes after blogging about Mubarak refusing to go, the tired old dictator leaves. An inspiring moment for Egypt and the World. Hopefully this does not signify an attempt to perpetuate the Nasserite military dictatorship. Suleiman can help by keeping his promise to repeal the 30 year emergency law and not running for reelection. May the Ayatollahs be next.

That was anti-climactic.  With Egypt convulsing from the after-shocks from the Maghreb triggered by the self-immolation of a frustrated Tunisian fruit seller, rumors of Hosni Mubarak’s impending departure spread rapidly.  And then Mubarak doused cold water on those hopes with a vague rambling speech (blaming foreign influences) announcing that he was delegating unspecified powers to his man Friday, new Vice President Omar Suleiman.  The crowd’s displeasure is evident in the video below, particularly at the 12:30 mark where Mubarak tries to identify himself with the young people out in the streets.

Suleiman on whom the Obama administration has placed its wishful hopes for a transition to democracy the proceeded to rile the crowd by asking the protesters to go home.  The Egyptian army which has played a two faced role in this crisis has endorsed Mubarak’s plan, and Mubarak does seem to have handed some powers over to Suleiman.

So what now?  Nobody knows.  The White House was evidently blindsided by Mubarak’s defiance and has limited leverage on the situation.  Ultimately this is a crisis that must be resolved by the Egyptians.  Washington’s efforts should be focussed on preventing the army from initiating the type of bloody crackdown that crushed Iran’s Green Revolution two years ago.

With no obvious opposition candidate in the wings, Egypt faces a period of prolonged uncertainty and probably instability. A big concern in Egypt is a silent military coup, of the type that may have overcome Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution.   Suleiman is deeply tied to Mubarak’s repressive regime and in his 70s is unlikely to be a long term solution in any case.

Concerns have been raised that elections could result in the Muslim Brotherhood to power.  If the United States truly believes its pretensions of being the “defender of the free world”, it needs to come to grips with the reality that democracy can result in unfriendly governments.  For too long Washington has supported autocrats like Mubarak who provided “stability” in the form of stagnation and decay of their countries institutions, economies and societies.  After some hesitancy the Obama administration seems to be veering towards support for a democratic transition.  Here’s hoping that the Egyptians can pull it off (and by their example reignite Iran’s Green Revolution).

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It is time to update the world map.  As expected South Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the largely Muslim and Arab northern part of the country.  With Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir promising to respect the results, fears of a North-South civil war have receded.

The extremely impoverished new nation (whose name has not been formalized) faces a daunting task ahead.  It is riven with feuds, has almost no infrastructure and the desire to be free from Khartoum appears to have been the only glue that held its warring factions together.  It is blessed and cursed with an abundance of natural resources (and oil).  Mineral wealth has generally been the bane of developing countries.  Getting it out of the ground creates few jobs but generates a lot of revenue for venal kleptocrats to siphon into Swiss bank accounts.   Revenue sharing arrangements with the North have to still be negotiated and Khartoum will be eager to exploit any rifts that appear.

The creation of South Sudan could provide added impetus to secessionist movements across Africa.  The African Union has avoided opening up the Pandora’s box of redrawing colonial borders.  The sole exception to the rule, Eritrea could claim that it had been a separate Italian colony before being annexed by Ethiopia after World War II.  Now the genie is out of the bottle and secessionist claims in places like (oil rich) Southern Nigeria could re-emerge.

Maybe my pessimism is unjustified.  Having midwifed the creation of the new country (with the active encouragement of right-wing evangelical groups) it is likely that the United States will remain involved in the region and discourage mischief.  Equally or more likely the combination of a weak resource rich state surrounded by unscrupulous resource poor neighbors could result in another Congo.

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