Sua Maestà, Sua Altezza Reale, membri del comitato norvegese per il Nobel, Eccellenze, Signore e Signori,

è per me un onore ricevere questo pre­mio. Mia moglie Michelle ne è entusiasta ed io quando sto con lei me ne compiaccio. Però devo confes­sarvi che ogni tanto, nella solitudine dello Studio Ovale, mentre le luci della sera scendono sulla Casa Bianca, be’ sì mi pongo quella domanda: «Davvero merito il Nobel? Cosa ho fatto?».

Lo so, non dovrei dubitare di me stesso, delle mie immense doti, del mio carisma. Mia moglie me lo dice sempre di avere fiducia e di infischiarmene degli invidiosi che pullulano a Washington. Io cerco di seguire i suoi consigli, ma la fiammella del dubbio arde.

Sapete, ho appena finito un incontro con i miei generali del Pentagono e ho deciso di inviare altri trentamila soldati in Afghanistan. Adesso da quelle parti saranno in centomila. I nostri ragazzi andranno là armati di tutto punto, dovranno sparare sui terroristi talebani. Devono garantire la democrazia. Come vedete sono perfetto per il Nobel: non uso la parola “esportare”, cara ai neoconservatori. Anche se devo confes­sarvi che da quando sono Pre­sidente degli Stati Uniti comincio a comprendere alcune cose fatte dal mio amico George W. Bush. Allora mi sembravano stranezze, errori gravi. Oggi mi sembra che qualche ragione il mio pre­deces­sore ce l’avesse.

La verità è che purtroppo io non sono fortunato come il primo ministro italiano Silvio Berlusconi. Là queste operazioni militari vengono chiamate “mis­sioni di pace”, mentre negli Stati Uniti continuano ad usare la fastidiosa parola “guerra”. Dopo aver deciso di incrementare il numero dei soldati, i giornali hanno scritto che quella in Afghanistan ora è “la guerra di Obama”. I soliti giornalisti a caccia di titoli sensazionali. In fondo finora ho ordinato solo 49 attacchi mis­silistici e ho aumentato il numero di aerei senza pilota. Gli esperti militari li chiamano “droni”, i miei comandanti dicono che sono indispensabili per far fuori il nemico. Silenziosi e letali.

Conosco bene le critiche dei miei sostenitori liberal ma no, ces­sare il fuoco ora proprio non è pos­sibile. È vero, Hillary Clinton l’altro giorno ha detto durante un vertice della Nato che «con i pro­iettili non si vince», quasi la stavo per prendere sul serio e ordinare il ritiro, poi quelli della Difesa mi hanno fatto notare che sono io il commander in chief, il capo supremo delle forze armate. A West Point mi hanno anche fatto capire in maniera piuttosto energica che i pro­iettili è meglio averli pronti in canna e di non dare retta a Hillary perché avrebbe perso la testa per il giovane ministro degli Esteri inglese David Miliband. L’ho letto anche sui giornali. E mi chiedo cosa ne pensi il buon Bill.

Signori, signore, amici di questo paese dove alberga la pace, non posso tacere le motivazioni che avete fornito al mondo per conferirmi questo ambito pre­mio. Sono le più alte: «per il mio straordinario impegno per rafforzare la diplomazia internazionale e la cooperazione tra i popoli». Sì, vero. Tutto questo faceva parte della mia campagna pre­sidenziale e ho cercato di mantenere gli impegni. In verità la cosa è piuttosto complicata. Con l’Iran per esempio ho dovuto spiegare agli amici europei che i loro straordinari sforzi diplomatici non servono a niente: sono io che ho le armi per far paura all’Iran, è la mia minaccia che forse li convincerà a smetterla di arricchire l’uranio. Ah, certo, il discorso del Cairo. Credevo fosse chiaro a tutti che l’ho fatto per levare qualsiasi scusa a chi dice che noi americani ci comportiamo come cow-boy. E poi attenzione, i discorsi dovete leggerli per intero, io l’ho detto ai miei nemici: «Voi non ci sopravviverete, e noi vi sconfiggeremo». Più chiaro di così.

È bello essere qui a riscuotere un grande riconoscimento come il Nobel per la Pace. Un pre­mio per i giusti e per chi cerca la via del perdono. E lo sapete bene che io sono un idealista. Non a caso quando vengo qui da voi in Europa le masse riempiono le piazze per ascoltarmi. Nel Vecchio Continente siete molto idealisti. Ve lo potete permettere perché da cinquant’anni noi americani vi difendiamo con le nostre armi e i nostri soldati. Ogni tanto mi verrebbe da pensare che l’Europa è un po’ ingrata con noi americani. Sto cercando di chiudere la prigione di Guantanamo come avevo promesso. Il problema è che l’operazione non è semplice: là dentro sono rinchiusi davvero dei tipi poco raccomandabili. E non se li vuol prendere nessuno.

A onor del vero gli italiani hanno subito collaborato con noi: due tunisini legati ad al Qaeda sono ora nelle carceri di Milano. Un bel gesto del pre­sidente Berlusconi. Fos­sero tutti così. Invece in America mi attaccano perché non ho ancora chiuso il carcere, all’estero mi rispediscono al mittente i terroristi. Un disastro. Io lo faccio in nome della pace, ma non è semplice essere pacifisti e mantenere l’ordine nel mondo.

Vi faccio una confes­sione: dopo la mia elezione ho dovuto fare qualche conces­sione al realismo. Non si può dar retta solo alle star di Hollywood e così non ho esitato a dire agli americani che i responsabili degli attentati dell’11 settembre 2001 vanno condannati a morte. Sì, lo so anche Michelle mi ha fatto notare che ancora non hanno subito il processo, ma si sono già dichiarati colpevoli. Per me devono morire, iniezione letale o sedia elettrica, scelgano i giudici in che modo, faccia il boia il suo dovere.

Signore e signori,

è con profondo senso di gratitudine che accetto il Nobel, ma voglio concludere con una rifles­sione che forse vi sorprenderà. Questo pre­mio ancora non lo merito, non sono come Alfred Nobel che in un lampo di genio inventò la dinamite, sono soltanto il Pre­sidente degli Stati Uniti che in questo momento conduce due guerre in due paesi lontani. Ecco, per queste semplici e limpide ragioni, il Nobel va ai miei soldati.

Grazie.

© Libero

Grazie a Sparks from the Anvil.

La riforma della sanità ha subito un rinvio, la situazione finanziaria ed economica è sempre difficile, Barack Obama è sceso per la prima volta al di sotto del 50 per cento nei sondaggi, fra i repubblicani c’è chi vede un riscatto già nelle elezioni di mid-term, ma… c’è il commander-in-chief che non ti aspetti. Perché il taglio del bilancio della difesa e il varo di una nuova dottrina della guerra procedono come un treno. Il Pentagono deve dimagrire, subito. I problemi del bilancio non concedono tempo a Obama, che ha l’obiettivo di fis­sare la spesa annua militare tra il 4 e il 5 per cento del pil.
Il problema è che gli Stati Uniti sono impegnati su due teatri di guerra (Iraq e soprattutto Afghanistan) e devono mantenere la loro supremazia. Se guardiamo i dati del 2008 sulle spese in armamenti pubblicati dal Sipri di Stoccolma, gli Stati Uniti sono saldamente in testa alla clas­sifica del budget: 607 miliardi di dollari, pari al 41,5 per cento della torta  mondiale. Lontanis­sima, al secondo posto c’è la Cina, con una stima di 84,9 miliardi di dollari, il 5,8 per cento del totale. Distanze siderali. Ma il rischio, che la Casa Bianca non ignora, è che l’arsenale diventi obsoleto nel giro di pochi anni e la supremazia in termini di spesa si riduca in misura esponenziale, se non resta al top della tecnologia e della ricerca. Che fare? L’orchestra cambia spartito, inserisce qualche nuovo elemento, ma si arrangia con gli strumenti che ha.
Così, mentre i soldati americani sono impegnati in Afghanistan nella prima grande operazione militare della pre­sidenza Obama, i critici puntano il dito su Robert Gates, ex direttore della Cia, già segretario della Difesa. Globetrotter della politica autodefinitosi come una sorta di Forrest Gump, l’uomo che il 28 luglio ha  compiuto una visita lampo in Iraq è pas­sato dall’amministrazione Bush a quella di Obama: nes­suna soluzione di continuità per il primo pre­sidente nero della storia americana, che con tale scelta ha voluto seguire le orme di un illustre pre­deces­sore, quel John Fitzgerald Kennedy, democratico, che scelse il repubblicano Robert McNamara per guidare il Pentagono.
Gates è un formidabile esecutore delle politiche di Obama. Non un semplice uomo macchina, ma la mente delle mosse che stanno rivoluzionando il Pentagono. Gates rappresenta la continuità con la strategia del secondo mandato di Bush jr. Così il generale David H. Petraeus, inventore del «surge» in Iraq, è diventato il responsabile del Centcom, il comando che controlla le operazioni militari in Medio Oriente. La revisione del bilancio si è accompagnata a un ripensamento generale della strategia militare: meno investimenti su progetti hi-tech di dubbia efficacia, più attenzione alla guerra di fanteria (che da Iraq e Afghanistan ha tratto lezioni importanti) e all’assistenza dei soldati e delle loro famiglie durante e dopo i conflitti. È l’ennesima rivoluzione negli affari militari? Forse no, ma che il Pentagono in fatto di forniture sia ancora in piena guerra fredda è provato da molti ciclopici (e spesso fantasiosi) programmi di spesa e ricerca. È anche certo che fra i repubblicani la svolta di Gates non piace.
La Heritage Foundation, centro studi repubblicano, ha addirittura lanciato il mese per la «protezione dell’America», sottolineando proprio i tagli al bilancio della difesa. Le forbici del duo Obama-Gates non convincono il pre­sidente della Heritage, Edward Feulner, che ha rispolverato un vecchio detto dei tempi della pre­sidenza di John Adams: «Milioni per la difesa, non un centesimo per le tasse». Secondo i repubblicani, Obama ha scelto invece la via del fisco. Soluzione proposta dall’ex senatore James Talent, specialista in affari militari della Heritage: «Occorre un budget della difesa non inferiore al 4 per cento del pil, se gli Stati Uniti vogliono mantenere la loro superiorità militare».
Nel campo opposto, oltre ai pensatoi vicini ai democratici, è da leggere con attenzione Slate, rivista del gruppo Washington post, e soprattutto la rubrica «War Stories» dove Fred Kaplan (al Boston Globe vinse il pre­mio Pulitzer per un’inchiesta sulla corsa al nucleare tra Stati Uniti e Rus­sia) applaude Gates a scena aperta e dice che il voto contro il rinnovo del programma per costruire il caccia F-22 «è l’inizio di una nuova fase nella politica della difesa, un ridimensionamento dell’influenza che i contractor hanno sulla politica e sul budget» del Pentagono.
Mentre si discute Gates va avanti come un rullo compres­sore (vedere schede qui sopra). Oltre ad avere tagliato il programma per l’aereo da caccia F-22, pre­ferendo il più collaudato caccia multiruolo F-35, ha pigiato il tasto reset sulla costruzione del supercacciatorpediniere Ddg-1000 Zumwalt (nave da guerra avveniristica, ma secondo alcuni esperti vulnerabile); ha archiviato il progetto del soldato del futuro (una cosa buona al mas­simo per una pellicola in stile Starship Troopers).
Ciliegina sulla torta, il nuovo trattato di disarmo nucleare siglato a Mosca dal pre­sidente Obama e dal pre­sidente russo Dmitri Medvedev, un’ulteriore revisione della dottrina della deterrenza. Non piace né ai nixoniani né ai neoconservatori, né agli esperti di giochi nucleari. Questi ultimi, tra cui il Lexington institute, temono che un taglio troppo netto possa fare crescere l’appetito dei paesi che fanno già parte del club nucleare o che la bomba la cercano e vogliono moltiplicarla.
Dai tagli non si salva nes­suno: aviazione e marina, settori dove gli investimenti in tecnologia sono enormi, sono a dieta forzata. Le difficoltà nel ricambio della fanteria in Iraq e Afghanistan e la situazione critica della Guardia nazionale hanno convinto il trio Obama-Gates-Petraeus a puntare sulla quantità e qualità delle truppe di terra, sul loro addestramento e sulla logistica. La ricerca in campo militare ne esce ridimensionata? Forse, ma Gates non è un pacifista travestito da segretario della Difesa e Obama non vuole mettere i fiori nei cannoni.
La visione della guerra al Pentagono è cambiata, ma sempre di conflitto si tratta. Sono cambiati i toni e le risorse si stanno spostando su altri settori. L’Air Force avrà l’opportunità di sviluppare un piano mas­siccio di investimenti sugli aerei senza pilota (i Pre­dator e i Reaper 9), una delle armi su cui la Casa Bianca punta per assestare colpi decisivi alle cellule terroristiche in Medio Oriente.
Il piano per lo sviluppo degli aerei senza pilota, in gergo Uav (unmanned aerial vehicle), è una lettura affascinante. Parte dal 2009, arriva al 2047 e pre­vede lo sviluppo di una flotta costituita da centinaia di velivoli. Prima saranno guidati da uomini a terra, ma in futuro alla cloche (anzi, al joystick) ci sarà un computer. Il risparmio economico sui costi dei piloti e la prospettiva mitica dello «zero perdite» (è dai tempi della guerra del Golfo nel 1991 condotta magistralmente dal generale Norman Schwarzkopf che se ne parla) favoriscono questa scelta strategica.
Questa è la guerra che più o meno si vede, però ce n’è un’altra: invisibile, fatta di operazioni coperte (e, a detta di non pochi, i fondi riservati sarebbero addirittura aumentati), affidata alla comunità dell’intelligence di cui la Cia è lo specialista. Un po’ logorato a dire il vero dai continui scandali sugli interrogatori e dalla battaglia di fine mandato tra il vicepresidente Dick Cheney e il pre­sidente George W. Bush. C’è chi parla di una vera e propria «caccia alle streghe» non solo sul personale Cia, ma anche sui consiglieri della Casa Bianca che hanno gestito la fase post 11 settembre. Ecco, alla fine del tutto, si torna alla data chiave da cui non solo ha origine la guerra di Bush, ma anche quella di Obama.

ESERCITO E MARINES. La vecchia-nuova dottrina di guerra elaborata da Obama, Robert Gates e David Petraeus pre­vede un impiego mas­siccio della fanteria. Per esercito e marines sono stati, quindi, stanziati 11 miliardi di dollari in più. Le guerre in Iraq e in Afghanistan hanno mostrato l’importanza di sostenere i feriti, aumentare l’efficienza degli ospedali, aiutare le famiglie. Così Gates ha chiesto e ottenuto che siano stanziati 400 milioni di dollari per la ricerca medica, 200 milioni per i figli e le spose dei soldati. Intanto il 14 luglio il Pentagono ha confermato che in autunno comincerà il turnover di 7.500 militari in Afghanistan. Saranno coinvolte la 101ª e la 173ª brigata in partenza da Fort Campbell e da Vicenza.

CACCIATORPEDINIERE. Stop alla costruzione  del cacciatorpediniere multiruolo Ddg-1000 Zumwalt. La flotta si ferma a tre unità invece delle pre­viste 32. Il costo di ogni nave si aggirava ormai intorno ai 2,5–3 miliardi di dollari. Troppi, come i dubbi sulla loro effettiva neces­sità. Così il Pentagono ha deciso di tornare a produrre gli affidabili Ddg-51 classe Arleigh Burke, concepiti in origine per fronteggiare attacchi sovietici e oggi dotati di sistemi elettronici Aegis, mis­sili Tomahawk e tecnologia stealth per renderli meno visibili ai radar. La Difesa ha anche incrementato il programma 2010 Litoral combat ships: le navi per operazioni anti­terrorismo salgono da due a tre.

AEREI DA CACCIA. Il senato Usa ha bocciato un finanziamento di 1,75 miliardi di dollari per produrre altri caccia F-22 Raptor (del costo di circa 140 milioni di dollari l’uno). Il segretario della Difesa Robert Gates è d’accordo perché pre­ferisce il più economico e fles­sibile  F-35 Lightning costruito dal Joint strike fighter program  (al quale partecipa anche l’Italia) e i velivoli di quinta generazione con le caratteristiche dei bombardieri invisibili Stealth.

ARMI NUCLEARI. Il 6 luglio a Mosca Barack Obama e Dmitri Medvedev hanno annunciato un nuovo trattato per la riduzione dei rispettivi arsenali nucleari. Ciascun paese taglierà le testate atomiche a 1.500–1.675 unità contro le 1.700–2.200 pre­viste dal vecchio trattato Start 1. I mis­sili che trasportano le testate saranno ridotti a 500–1.000 rispetto ai 1.600 del pas­sato. Il nuovo accordo durerà 7 anni e per ora non solleva proteste, ma il Lexington institute ha osservato che se le due superpotenze tagliano troppe testate   altri paesi produrranno più ordigni nucleari per trarne un vantaggio strategico.

IL SOLDATO DEL FUTURO. Il programma Future combat systems, uno dei pallini di Donald Rumsfeld, primo segretario alla Difesa del governo di George W. Bush, è di fatto morto.  L’insieme di hardware e software che avrebbe dovuto costituire la corazza e le armi dei militari del Terzo millennio aveva un costo di 150 miliardi di dollari. Poche le applicazioni pratiche immediate e nes­suna delle 15 brigate pre­viste attiva. L’obiettivo era dare al soldato e al suo comandante la piena disponibilità sul campo di battaglia di tutti i mezzi e le informazioni pos­sibili, attraverso l’integrazione degli attori su mare, aria e terra. Insomma, la fusione in rete di 18 componenti  a disposizione del fante. Per ora resta un miraggio.

CIA. Il futuro della Cia è un punto delicato dell’agenda di Obama. Dopo l’11 settembre George W.Bush ha cercato   di non destabilizzare l’agenzia lasciando al suo posto il direttore George Tenet e, attraverso il vicepresidente Dick Cheney, ha dato via libera alla distruzione delle cellule terroristiche all’estero. Il dos­sier sulle torture e le «extraordinary rendition» (clamoroso in Italia il rapimento di Abu Omar) ha gettato molte ombre sull’operato della Cia. Obama ha ammorbidito, non cancellato, gli interrogatori coercitivi e con il nuovo direttore Leon Panetta sta gestendo una difficile transizione.

DRONI. Gli aerei senza pilota si stanno rivelando efficaci  in Afghanistan e il capo del Pentagono Robert Gates    il 23 luglio ha pre­sentato il piano per l’espansione dei Pre­dator, dei Reaper e in generale di tutti i velivoli  teleguidati sui teatri di guerra. Erano cinque nel 2004, oggi sono 38, nei pros­simi due anni dovrebbero salire a 50. L’obiettivo del piano dell’Air Force per il 2009–2047 è arrivare a 185 Pre­dator e 319 Reaper. Il vantaggio non è solo quello di poter lanciare mis­sioni senza pilota, ma anche quello di poter affidare a un solo uomo  il controllo a terra di molti aerei. Fino ad arrivare a un sistema controllato totalmente da un computer.

© Panorama

by George Friedman | July 27, 2009

U.S. Vice Pre­sident Joe Biden’s visit to Georgia and Ukraine partly answered questions over how U.S.-Russian talks went during U.S. Pre­sident Barack Obama’s visit to Rus­sia in early July. That Biden’s visit took place at all reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the principle that Rus­sia does not have the right to a sphere of influence in these countries or anywhere in the former Soviet Union.

The Americans’ willing­ness to confront the Rus­sians on an issue of fundamental national interest to Rus­sia therefore requires some explanation, as on the surface it seems a high-risk maneuver. Biden provided insights into the analytic framework of the Obama administration on Rus­sia in a July 26 interview with The Wall Street Journal. In it, Biden said the United States “vastly” underestimates its hand. He added that “Rus­sia has to make some very difficult, calculated decisions. They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.”

U.S. Policy Continuity

The Rus­sians have accused the United States of supporting pro-American forces in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries of the former Soviet Union under the cover of supporting democracy. They see the U.S. goal as surrounding the Soviet Union with pro-American states to put the future of the Rus­sian Federation at risk. The summer 2008 Rus­sian military action in Georgia was intended to deliver a mes­sage to the United States and the countries of the former Soviet Union that Rus­sia was not pre­pared to tolerate such developments but was pre­pared to reverse them by force of arms if need be.

Following his July summit, Obama sent Biden to the two most sensitive countries in the former Soviet Union — Ukraine and Georgia — to let the Rus­sians know that the United States was not backing off its strategy in spite of Rus­sian military superiority in the immediate region. In the long run, the United States is much more powerful than the Rus­sians, and Biden was correct when he explicitly noted Russia’s failing demographics as a principle factor in Moscow’s long-term decline. But to para­phrase a noted economist, we don’t live in the long run. Right now, the Rus­sian correlation of forces along Russia’s frontiers clearly favors the Rus­sians, and the major U.S. deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan would pre­vent the Americans from intervening should the Rus­sians choose to challenge pro-American governments in the former Soviet Union directly.

Even so, Biden’s visit and interview show the Obama administration is maintaining the U.S. stance on Rus­sia that has been in place since the Reagan years. Reagan saw the economy as Russia’s basic weakness. He felt that the greater the pres­sure on the Rus­sian economy, the more forthcoming the Rus­sians would be on geopolitical matters. The more conces­sions they made on geopolitical matters, the weaker their hold on Eastern Europe. And if Reagan’s demand that Rus­sia “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” was met, the Soviets would collapse. Ever since the Reagan administration, the idee fixe of not only the United States, but also NATO, China and Japan has been that the weakness of the Rus­sian economy made it impos­sible for the Rus­sians to play a significant regional role, let alone a global one. Therefore, regardless of Rus­sian wishes, the West was free to forge whatever relations it wanted among Rus­sian allies like Serbia and within the former Soviet Union. And certainly during the 1990s, Rus­sia was paralyzed.

Biden, however, is say­ing that whatever the current temporary regional advantage the Rus­sians might have, in the end, their economy is crippled and Rus­sia is not a country to be taken seriously. He went on publicly to point out that this should not be pointed out publicly, as there is no value in embarras­sing Rus­sia. The Rus­sians certainly now understand what it means to hit the reset button Obama had referred to: The reset is back to the 1980s and 1990s.

Reset to the 1980s and 90s

To calculate the Rus­sian response, it is important to consider how someone like Rus­sian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin views the events of the 1980s and 1990s. After all, Putin was a KGB officer under Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB and later Chairman of the Communist Party for a short time — and the architect of glasnost and perestroika.

It was the KGB that realized first that the Soviet Union was failing, which made sense because only the KGB had a comprehensive sense of the state of the Soviet Union. Andropov’s strategy was to shift from technology trans­fer through espionage — apparently Putin’s mis­sion as a junior intelligence officer in Dresden in the former East Germany — to a more formal process of technology trans­fer. To induce the West to trans­fer technology and to invest in the Soviet Union, Moscow had to make substantial conces­sions in the area in which the West cared the most: geopolitics. To get what it needed, the Soviets had to dial back on the Cold War.

Glasnost, or openness, had as its price reducing the threat to the West. But the greater part of the puzzle was perestroika, or the restructuring of the Soviet economy. This was where the greatest risk came, since the entire social and political structure of the Soviet Union was built around a command economy. But that economy was no longer functioning, and without perestroika, all of the investment and technology trans­fer would be meaningless. The Soviet Union could not metabolize it.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was a communist, as we seem to forget, and a follower of Andropov. He was not a liberalizer because he saw liberalization as a virtue; rather, he saw it as a means to an end. And that end was saving the Communist Party, and with it the Soviet state. Gorbachev also understood that the twin challenge of conces­sions to the West geopolitically and a top-down revolution in Rus­sia economically — simultaneously—risked mas­sive destabilization. This is what Reagan was counting on, and what Gorbachev was try­ing to pre­vent. Gorbachev lost Andropov’s gamble. The Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the Communist Party.

What followed was a decade of economic horror, at least as most Rus­sians viewed it. From the West’s point of view, collapse looked like liberalization. From the Rus­sian point of view, Rus­sia went from a superpower that was poor to an even poorer geopolitical cripple. For the Rus­sians, the experiment was a double failure. Not only did the Rus­sian Empire retreat to the borders of the 18th century, but the economy became even more dysfunctional, except for a handful of oligarchs and some of their Western associates who stole whatever wasn’t nailed down.

The Rus­sians, and particularly Putin, took away a different les­son than the West did. The West assumed that economic dysfunction caused the Soviet Union to fail. Putin and his colleagues took away the idea that it was the attempt to repair economic dysfunction through wholesale reforms that caused Rus­sia to fail. From Putin’s point of view, economic well-being and national power do not neces­sarily work in tandem where Rus­sia is concerned.

Rus­sian Power, With or Without Prosperity

Rus­sia has been an economic wreck for most of its history, both under the czars and under the Soviets. The geography of Rus­sia has a range of weaknes­ses, as we have explored. Russia’s geography, daunting infrastructural challenges and demographic structure all conspire against it. But the strategic power of Rus­sia was never synchronized to its economic well-being. Certainly, following World War II the Rus­sian economy was shattered and never quite came back together. Yet Rus­sian global power was still enormous. A look at the crushing poverty — but undeniable power — of Rus­sia during broad swaths of time from 1600 until Andropov arrived on the scene certainly gives credence to Putin’s view.

The problems of the 1980s had as much to do with the weakening and corruption of the Communist Party under former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev as it had to do with intrinsic economic weakness. To put it differently, the Soviet Union was an economic wreck under Joseph Stalin as well. The Germans made a mas­sive mistake in confusing Soviet economic weakness with military weakness. During the Cold War, the United States did not make that mistake. It understood that Soviet economic weakness did not track with Rus­sian strategic power. Moscow might not be able to house its people, but its military power was not to be dismissed.

What made an economic cripple into a military giant was political power. Both the czar and the Communist Party maintained a ruthless degree of control over society. That meant Moscow could divert resources from consumption to the military and suppress resistance. In a state run by terror, dis­satisfaction with the state of the economy does not trans­late into either policy shifts or military weakness — and certainly not in the short term. Huge percentages of gross domestic product can be devoted to military purposes, even if used inefficiently there. Repres­sion and terror smooth over public opinion.

The czar used repres­sion widely, and it was not until the army itself rebelled in World War I that the regime collapsed. Under Stalin, even at the worst moments of World War II, the army did not rebel. In both regimes, economic dysfunction was accepted as the inevitable price of strategic power. And dis­sent — even the hint of dis­sent — was dealt with by the only truly efficient state enterprise: the security apparatus, whether called the Okhraina, Cheka, NKVD, MGB or KGB.

From the point of view of Putin, who has called the Soviet collapse the greatest tragedy of our time, the problem was not economic dysfunction. Rather, it was the attempt to completely overhaul the Soviet Union’s foreign and domestic policies simultaneously that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And that collapse did not lead to an economic renaissance.

Biden might not have meant to gloat, but he drove home the point that Putin believes. For Putin, the West, and particularly the United States, engineered the fall of the Soviet Union by policies crafted by the Reagan administration — and that same policy remains in place under the Obama administration.

It is not clear that Putin and Rus­sian Pre­sident Dmitri Medvedev disagree with Biden’s analysis — the Rus­sian economy truly is “withering” — except in one sense. Given the policies Putin has pursued, the Rus­sian prime minister must believe he has a way to cope with that. In the short run, Putin might well have such a coping mechanism, and this is the temporary window of opportunity Biden alluded to. But in the long run, the solution is not improving the economy — that would be difficult, if not outright impos­sible, for a country as large and lightly populated as Rus­sia. Rather, the solution is accepting that Russia’s economic weakness is endemic and creating a regime that allows Rus­sia to be a great power in spite of that.

Such a regime is the one that can create military power in the face of broad poverty, something we will call the “Chekist state.” This state uses its security apparatus, now known as the FSB, to control the public through repres­sion, free­ing the state to allocate resources to the military as needed. In other words, this is Putin coming full circle to his KGB roots, but without the teachings of an Andropov or Gorbachev to confuse the issue. This is not an ideological stance; it applies to the Romanovs and to the Bolsheviks. It is an operational principle embedded in Rus­sian geopolitics and history.

Counting on Rus­sian strategic power to track Rus­sian economic power is risky. Certainly, it did in the 1980s and 1990s, but Putin has worked to decouple the two. On the surface, it might seem a futile gesture, but in Rus­sian history, this decoupling is the norm. Obama seems to understand this to the extent that he has tried to play off Medvedev (who appears less traditional) from Putin (who appears to be the more traditional), but we do not think this is a viable strategy — this is not a matter of Rus­sian political personalities but of Rus­sian geopolitical necessity.

Biden seems to be say­ing that the Reagan strategy can play itself out permanently. Our view is that it plays itself out only so long as the Rus­sian regime doesn’t reas­sert itself with the full power of the security apparatus and doesn’t decouple economic and military growth. Biden’s strategy works so long as this doesn’t happen. But in Rus­sian history, this decoupling is the norm and the past 20 years is the exception.

A strategy that assumes the Rus­sians will once again decouple economic and military power requires a different response than ongoing, subcritical pres­sure. It requires that the window of opportunity the United States has handed Rus­sia by its wars in the Islamic world be closed, and that the pres­sure on Rus­sia be dramatically increased before the Rus­sians move toward full repres­sion and rapid rearmament.

Ironically, in the very long run of the next couple of generations, it probably doesn’t matter whether the West heads off Rus­sia at the pass because of another factor Biden mentioned: Russia’s shrinking demographics. Rus­sian demography has been steadily worsening since World War I, particularly because birth rates have fallen. This slow-motion degradation turned into collapse during the 1990s. Russia’s birth rates are now well below starkly higher death rates; Rus­sia already has more citizens in their 50s than in their teens. Rus­sia can be a major power without a solid economy, but no one can be a major power without people. But even with demographics as poor as Russia’s, demographics do not change a country overnight. This is Russia’s moment, and the generation or so it will take demography to grind Rus­sia down can be made very painful for the Americans.

Biden has stated the American strategy: squeeze the Rus­sians and let nature take its course. We suspect the Rus­sians will squeeze back hard before they move off the stage of history.

© Stratfor

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assas­sinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congres­sional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage.

That a program existed to assas­sinate al Qaeda leaders should certainly come as no surprise to anyone. It has been well-publicized that the Clinton administration had launched military operations and attempted to use covert programs to strike the al Qaeda leadership in the wake of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. In fact, the Clinton administration has come under strong criticism for not doing more to decapitate al Qaeda prior to 2001. Furthermore, since 2002, the CIA has conducted scores of strikes against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the MQ-1 Pre­dator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper.

These strikes have dramatically increased over the past two years and the pace did not slacken when the Obama administration came to power in January. So far in 2009 there have been more than two dozen UAV strikes in Pakistan alone. In November 2002, the CIA also employed a UAV to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader suspected of planning the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. The U.S. government has also attacked al Qaeda leaders at other times and in other places, such as the May 1, 2008, attack against al Qaeda-linked figures in Somalia using an AC-130 gunship.

As early as Oct. 28, 2001, The Washington Post ran a story discus­sing the Clinton-era pre­sidential finding authorizing operations to capture or kill al Qaeda targets. The Oct. 28 Washington Post story also provided details of a finding signed by Pre­sident George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks that reportedly provided authorization to strike a larger cross section of al Qaeda targets, including those who are not in the Afghan theater of operations. Such pre­sidential findings are used to authorize covert actions, but in this case the finding would also provide permis­sion to contravene Executive Order 12333, which prohibits assassinations.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and the members of his administration were very clear that they sought to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the members of the al Qaeda organization. During the 2004 and 2008 pre­sidential elections in the United States, every major candidate, including Barack Obama, stated that they would seek to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Obama was quite vocal in his criticism of the Bush administration for not doing more to go after al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. This means that, regardless of who is in the White House, it is U.S. policy to go after individual al Qaeda members as well as the al Qaeda organization.

In light of these facts, it would appear that there was nothing particularly contro­versial about the covert assas­sination program itself, and the contro­versy that has arisen over it has more to do with the failure to report covert activities to Congress. The political uproar and the manner in which the program was canceled, however, will likely have a negative impact on CIA morale and U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

Program Details

As noted above, that the U.S. government has attempted to locate and kill al Qaeda members is not shocking. Bush’s signing of a clas­sified finding authorizing the assas­sination of al Qaeda members has been a poorly kept secret for many years now, and the U.S. government has succeeded in killing al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

While Hell­fire mis­siles are quite effective at hitting trucks in Yemen and AC-130 gunships are great for striking walled compounds in the Somali badlands, there are many places in the world where it is simply not pos­sible to use such tools against militants. One cannot launch a hell­fire from a UAV at a target in Milan or use an AC-130 to attack a target in Doha. Furthermore, there are certain parts of the world — including some countries considered to be U.S. allies — where it is very difficult for the United States to conduct counterterrorism operations at all. These difficulties have been seen in past cases where the governments have refused U.S. requests to detain terrorist suspects or have alerted the suspects to the U.S. interest in them, compromising U.S. intelligence efforts and allowing the suspects to flee.

A prime example of this occurred in 1996, when the United States asked the government of Qatar for assistance in capturing al Qaeda operational mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was living openly in Qatar and even working for the Qatari government as a project engineer. Mohammed was tipped off to American intentions by the Qatari authorities and fled to Pakistan. According to the 9/11 commis­sion report, Mohammed was closely associated with Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, who was then the Qatari minister of religious affairs. After fleeing Doha, Mohammed went on to plan several al Qaeda attacks against the United States, including the 9/11 operation.

Given these realities, it appears that the recently disclosed assas­sination program was intended to provide the United States with a far more subtle and surgical tool to use in attacks against al Qaeda leaders in locations where Hell­fire mis­siles are not appropriate and where host government assistance is unlikely to be provided. Some media reports indicate that the program was never fully developed and deployed; others indicate that it may have conducted a limited number of operations.

Unlike UAV strikes, where pilots fly the vehicles by satellite link and can actually be located a half a world away, or the very tough and resilient airframe of an AC-130, which can fly thousands of feet above a target, a surgical assas­sination capability means that the CIA would have to put boots on the ground in hostile territory where operatives, by their very pre­sence, would be violating the laws of the sovereign country in which they were operating. Such operatives, under nonofficial cover by neces­sity, would be at risk of arrest if they were detected.

Also, because of the nature of such a program, a higher level of operational security is required than in the program to strike al Qaeda targets using UAVs. It is far more complex to move officers and weapons into hostile territory in a stealthy manner to strike a target without warning and with plausible deniability. Once a target is struck with a barrage of Hell­fire mis­siles, it is fairly hard to deny what happened. There is ample physical evidence tying the attack to American UAVs. When a person is struck by a sniper’s bullet or a small IED, the perpetrator and sponsor have far more deniability. By its very nature, and by operational neces­sity, such a program must be extremely covert.

Even with the cooperation of the host government, conducting an extraordinary rendition in a friendly country like Italy has proved to be politically contro­versial and personally risky for CIA officers, who can be threatened with arrest and trial. Conducting assas­sination operations in a country that is not so friendly is a far riskier undertaking. As seen by the Rus­sian officers arrested in Doha after the February 2004 assas­sination of former Chechen Pre­sident Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, such operations can generate blowback. The Rus­sian officers responsible for the Yandarbiyev hit were arrested, tortured, tried and sentenced to life in prison (though after several months they were released into Rus­sian custody to serve the remainder of their sentences).

Because of the physical risk to the officers involved in such operations, and the political blowback such operations can cause, it is not surprising that the details of such a program would be strictly compartmentalized inside the CIA and not widely dis­seminated beyond the gates of Langley. In fact, it is highly doubtful that the details of such a program were even widely known inside the CIA’s counterterrorism center (CTC) — though almost certainly some of the CTC staff suspected that such a covert program existed somewhere. The details regarding such a program were undoubtedly guarded carefully within the clandestine service, with the officer in charge most likely reporting directly to the deputy director of operations, who reports personally to the director of the CIA.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

As trite as this old say­ing may sound, it is painfully true. In the counterterrorism realm, leaks destroy counterterrorism cases and often allow terrorist suspects to escape and kill again. There have been several leaks of “sources and methods” by congres­sional sources over the past decade that have disclosed details of sensitive U.S. government programs designed to do things such as intercept al Qaeda satellite phone signals and track al Qaeda financing. A clas­sified appendix to the report of the 2005 Robb-Silberman Commis­sion on Intelligence Capabilities (which incidentally was leaked to the press) discus­sed several such leaks, noted the costs they impose on the American taxpayers and highlighted the damage they do to intelligence programs.

The fear that details of a sensitive program designed to assas­sinate al Qaeda operatives in foreign countries could be leaked was probably the reason for the Bush administration’s decision to withhold knowledge of the program from the U.S. Congress, even though amendments to the National Security Act of 1947 mandate the reporting of most covert intelligence programs to Congress. Given the imaginative legal guidance provided by Bush administration law­yers regarding subjects such as enhanced interrogation, it would not be surprising to find that White House law­yers focused on loopholes in the National Security Act reporting requirements.

The validity of such legal opinions may soon be tested. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, recently said he was considering an investigation into the failure to report the program to Congress, and House Democrats have announced that they want to change the reporting requirements to make them even more inclusive.

Under the current version of the National Security Act, with very few exceptions, the administration is required to report the most sensitive covert activities to, at the very least, the so-called “gang of eight” that includes the chairmen and ranking minority members of the congres­sional intelligence committees, the speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate. In the wake of the program’s disclosure, some Democrats would like to expand this minimum reporting requirement to include the entire membership of the congres­sional intelligence committees, which would increase the absolute minimum number of people to be briefed from eight to 40. Some congress­men argue that pre­sidents, prompted by the CIA, are too loose in their invocation of the “extraordinary circum­stances” that allow them to report only to the gang of eight and not the full committees. Yet ironically, the existence of the covert CIA program stayed secret for over seven and a half years, and yet here we are writing about it less than a month after the congres­sional committees were briefed.

The addition of that many additional lips to briefings pertaining to covert actions is not the only thing that will cause great consternation at the CIA. While legally mandated, disclosing covert programs to Congress has been very problematic. The angst felt at Langley over potential increases in the number of people to be briefed will be compounded by the recent reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations and ethics reporting.

In April we discus­sed how some of the early actions of the Obama administration were having a chilling effect on U.S. counterterrorism programs and personnel. Expanding the minimum reporting requirements under the National Security Act will serve to turn the thermostat down several additional notches, as did Panetta’s overt killing of the covert program. It is one thing to quietly kill a contro­versial program; it is quite another to repudiate the CIA in public. In addition to damaging the already low morale at the agency, Panetta has announced in a very public manner that the United States has taken one important tool entirely out of the counterterrorism toolbox: Al Qaeda no longer has to fear the pos­sibility of clandestine American assas­sination teams.

© Stratfor

Questo è il testo dell’intervento che ho tenuto ieri presso la Fondazione Magna Carta in occasione della pre­sentazione del libro “Scritti italiani” di David A. Harris, il direttore esecutivo dell’American Jewish Commitee.

Cari amici,

ho sentito parlare di pace, uguaglianza, libertà. Belle parole. Peccato che poi suonino i cannoni. Ho sentito molte certezze negli interventi pre­cedenti. Beati voi. Io invece nutro un sacco di dubbi e oltre al testo vorrei ricordare a tutti noi che c’è il contesto.  Quale? Ecco, osservate la prima pagina del settimanale Time: Obama e l’Orso Russo. Ora osservate la cover di questo bel mensile, è un prodotto editoriale dell’Eni, si chiama Oil: il titolo è “la scelta”, la mappa visualizzata è quella dell’Iran. L’Italia, bisogna ricordarlo, è uno dei principali partner commerciali dell’Iran. Su questo foglio invece ci sono le news d’agenzia del summit tra Rus­sia e Stati Uniti, il titolo è sull’accordo sul disarmo nucleare, ma la notizia è un’altra: c’è dis­senso totale sul sistema anti­mis­sile che gli Stati Uniti vogliono piazzare in Polonia. Il casus belli sul quale è ripartita una nuova Guerra Fredda non ha trovato una soluzione, la tensione su questo punto resta. Inoltre, la pur nobile idea del pre­sidente americano di ridurre le armi nucleari, in realtà avvantaggia la Rus­sia che ha un arsenale vecchio, con una scarsa manutenzione, e riduce il potere di deterrenza degli Stati Uniti proprio nel momento in cui sta ripartendo la proliferazione atomica. Tutto questo ha molto a che fare con Israele, è la scacchiera del gioco. E’ il contesto che in realtà produce il testo e questo nostro incontro si svolge alla vigilia del G8 dell’Aquila, mentre a  Mosca Barack Obama e Dmitri Medvevdev cercano un nuovo difficile equilibrio: la Rus­sia deve spuntare l’obiettivo di farsi accettare come potere egemone nella regione (Caucaso, Bielorus­sia, Ucraina, Georgia, tutta l’Asia centrale).  Gli Stati Uniti cercano al contrario di non perdere lo status di potenza egemone globale in un periodo di crisi economica e di taglio del bilancio della Difesa. Il problema è tutto qui nella sua brutale semplicità. Ho preso le mosse da Obama e Medvedev (e l’ombra gigantesca di Vladimir Putin) per ché è dalla convenienza storica di Rus­sia e Stati Uniti che 60 anni fa nasceva Israele. Entrambi cercavano di trarre un vantaggio geopolitico dalla nascita in Medio Oriente di uno Stato che occupava lo spazio geografico che un tempo era dell’impero britannico. Ecco perché gli esiti del vertice di Mosca e quelli del G8 saranno molto importanti per il futuro di Israele. In pas­sato Rus­sia e Stati Uniti hanno giocato il ruolo di pivot in Medio Oriente grazie a Israele. Si apprestano a farlo ancora. Per Israele si pone, ancora una volta, la questione del suo Essere nel Mondo, o meglio, della sua esistenza e permanenza nella regione del Medio Oriente e in quella zona geopolitica e letteraria che si chiama Levante e che da qui si dispiega in tutta l’Eurasia, l’area del Grande Gioco magistralmente raccontata dal romanziere Ryduard Kipling.

Tre modelli, uno Stato
Tremila anni di storia ci dicono che Israele è giunto fino a noi attraverso tre modelli:
1.    Il modello David. Israele è completamente indipendente e questo avviene in assenza di poteri imperiali nella regione.
2.    Il modello persiano. Israele mantiene la sua autonomia e identità ma non ha più capacità di manovra nella politica estera perché fa parte di un sistema di potere imperiale.
3.    Il modello babilonese. Israele perde completamente identità, autonomia, status giuridico e subisce la deportazione del suo popolo.

Tre dimensioni che giungono ai nostri giorni con gli esiti della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, il declino della Gran Bretagna del suo Impero, l’ascesa di Stati Uniti e Rus­sia che creano le condizioni per la nascita di Israele nella forma del modello David, o meglio un “quasi-David”, perché non dobbiamo dimenticare il ruolo chiave giocato dagli Stati Uniti fin dagli anni Sessanta.

La minaccia esterna
E’ sempre la storia ad offrirci lezioni a piene mani e a dimostrarci che la minaccia vitale per Israele non giunge dai paesi confinanti, ma da poteri lontani che puntano a giocare un ruolo imperiale e per questo guardano all’espansione a Levante e nel Mediterraneo Orientale come una tes­sera chiave del mosaico di potenza. Ecco perché il problema centrale per l’esistenza di Israele, la sua pre­senza nella carta geografica, non è il Libano storicamente instabile, non è Gaza né la West Bank con i suoi palestinesi male armati, non è l’Egitto stabile, non è la Siria incapace di manovra autonoma, non è la Giordania, ma è l’Iran, l’antico e mai domato spirito del Persian Power, potere rivoluzionario e non conservatore.

In questo scenario la nascita di Israele non è un fatto religioso, il sionismo non è il punto centrale del nostro discorso, siamo di fronte un fatto geopolitico: il declino del Regno Unito, la comparsa di Stati Uniti e Rus­sia nel Grande Gioco e il loro interesse contrapposto a manovrare nel Mediterraneo Orientale influenzando i destini di Grecia, Turchia e Israele. La Rus­sia con l’ideologia, le radici russe di molti ebrei (e la prima fornitura di armi attraverso la Cecoslovacchia nel 1948), gli Stati Uniti con la politica di difesa (e quando serviva attacco). L’obiettivo è sempre il Levante.

E’ dal 1967 che Israele diventa un alleato chiave degli Stati Uniti. Quando Washington controlla il Bosforo per bloccare l’ingresso delle navi sovietiche nel Mediterraneo e quindi ha bisogno della Turchia e Israele per pres­sare la Siria a Sud e calmare le sue mire espansionistiche a Nord.
Così le mosse di Israele sono sempre tra gli spazi di manovra delle due potenze e il suo modello David sempre limitato da Stati Uniti e Rus­sia. Limitato ma relativamente sicuro. Fino a oggi. Fino a quando l’Iran di Ahmadinejad non si mette di nuovo in marcia per tornare ad essere un potere imperiale, il leader della regione, e comincia a costruire la Bomba.

A questo punto della storia, dopo il cambio di rotta alla Casa Bianca, scopriamo che il modello David appoggiato solamente agli Stati Uniti non basta più. Per questo è fondamentale capire il gioco della Rus­sia. Per questo occorre essere molto più intelligenti e astuti – sì, astuti è la parola giusta – che in pas­sato. I mis­sili di Ahmadinejad verranno puntati a Levante e a Nord, su Israele, sui vicini e sull’Europa.

E qui torniamo al contesto. Ai fatti, alle notizie di oggi. Il vicepresidente degli Stati Uniti Joe Biden di fronte a questo movimento d’arsenali dice che “Israele può colpire” e che ha la sovranità per decidere. Interes­sante, soprattutto se dal contesto guardiamo al testo che ci tramanda la storia. E qui qualcosa non torna. Obama e Biden forse giocano a fare la parte del poliziotto buono e del poliziotto cattivo, ma potremmo anche leggere le frasi del vicepresidente in un’altra chiave: la certificazione che Israele è tornato nel modello David in full power, senza limitazioni e dunque pre­senta ora, qui, adesso, Israele come uno Stato libero di arrangiarsi perché non più a sovranità limitata (in politica estera) e di fronte alla sua responsabilità di agire con un pre­emptive strike.

Curioso ribaltamento no? Siamo forse di fronte al disimpegno dell’agenda militare – e sottolineo militare – degli Stati Uniti nei confronti del problema iraniano? Signori, io mi chiedo e vi chiedo: cosa sta succedendo tra Washington e Gerusalemme? La Casa Bianca riconsegna a Israele il modello David, ma in pre­senza di un potere imperiale in piena fase di politica di potenza, l’Iran. Quanto può durare l’autonomia e l’indipendenza di una nazione sotto potenziale minaccia nucleare? Ho letto stamattina che i top official dell’amministrazione israeliana sono molto scettici sulla riuscita dei colloqui con l’Iran. E già prospettano un “piano B”, un carico di sanzioni talmente grande da para­lizzare l’economia iraniana. Ho anche letto che dalla Casa Bianca rispondono picche, che non è il momento e non si può lavorare in parallelo a un draft di sanzioni con i colloqui in corso. E’ uno scenario molto istruttivo, perché l’intelligence israeliana considera la pos­sibilità di successo del round diplomatico vicina allo zero, mentre Washington va avanti con la mitologica strategia del soft power e nel frattempo a Teheran vedono che la loro tattica di talk and build (la bomba) ha un successo enorme. Prendono tempo. E l’Occidente gli consegna la clessidra.

Nel frattempo in Iran è successo qualcosa: le elezioni sono state vinte ancora dal pre­sidente Ahmadinejad. Certo, ci mancherebbe, so che ci sono state le proteste dell’opposizione e qualcuno in Europa si è strappato persino le vesti perché il regime ha bloccato Twitter e Facebook! Mentre a Busher si arricchisce l’uranio, qualcuno si meraviglia che dei satrapi censurino la rete, arrestino persone, uccidano manifestanti. Il fondamentalismo, che orrore per gli occhi dei colti europei e dell’establishment. Siamo al delirio e navighiamo in un oceano d’ipocrisia.

L’arte (perduta) della guerra
Torniamo alle frasi cripto-illuminanti del vicepresidente Biden e poniamoci la domanda: Israele può agire da solo? Può farlo, certo, ma sono pronto a scommettere che ne conseguirebbe un agghiacciante isolamento internazionale. E inoltre c’è da considerare che la qualità degli interventi militari israeliani – e della sua azione pre­ventiva e succes­siva di intelligence – è in pesante discus­sione fin dal 2006.

Dalla campagna militare in Libano e dall’invasione nella striscia di Gaza giungono segnali e lezioni pre­occupanti. Israele non è più invincibile. Chi ha letto i report sulle due campagne militari sa di cosa parlo. Hezbollah si è dimostrato un nemico temibile e organizzato in grado di rispondere al fuoco e fronteggiare i tank con mis­sili anti­carro, evento imprevisto per l’intelligence israeliana. Hamas un avversario capace di rigirare a suo favore una (semi)sconfitta militare attraverso un uso spregiudicato della percezione della guerra. In entrambi i casi, inoltre, non solo la tattica e la strategia del conflitto sono state sbagliate, sul Libano si è arrivati a costituire una commis­sione d’inchiesta per capire dove stava l’errore e su Gaza abbiamo assistito a un imbarazzante stop and go dell’operazione Cast Lead, a un assedio incompiuto.

L’obiettivo politico delle due campagne militari è inoltre mancato clamorosamente. Hezbollah è ancora una minaccia, Hamas nel frattempo ha approfittato del caos durante e dopo l’operazione Piombo Fuso per regolare i conti con al Fatah. Non è un bel risultato e non mi pare il caso, in queste condizioni, di lasciare che Israele sia travolto dalla sua crisi di leadership politica e militare, dai suoi errori, dalla cronica mancanza di coraggio dell’Europa e dalla finora contraddittoria risposta della nuova amministrazione americana, incapaci di vedere lo sguardo dei nemici della democrazia, ancora una volta, partire da Levante per mirare a Occidente.

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

Rey Guerra, the former sheriff of Starr County, Texas, pleaded guilty May 1 to a narco­tics conspiracy charge in federal district court in McAllen, Texas. Guerra admitted to using information obtained in his official capacity to help a friend (a Mexican drug trafficker allegedly associated with Los Zetas) evade U.S. counternarcotics efforts. On at least one occasion, Guerra also attempted to learn the identity of a confidential informant who had provided authorities with information regarding cartel operations so he could pass it to his cartel contact.

In addition to providing intelligence to Los Zetas, Guerra also reportedly helped steer investigations away from people and facilities associated with Los Zetas. He also sought to block progress on investigations into arrested individuals associated with Los Zetas to protect other members associated with the organization. Guerra is scheduled for sentencing July 29; he faces 10 years to life imprisonment, fines of up to $4 million and five years of supervised release.

Guerra is just one of a growing number of officials on the U.S. side of the border who have been recruited as agents for Mexico’s powerful and sophisticated drug cartels. Indeed, when one examines the reach and scope of the Mexican cartels’ efforts to recruit agents inside the United States to provide intelligence and act on the cartels’ behalf, it becomes apparent that the cartels have demonstrated the ability to operate more like a foreign intelligence service than a traditional criminal organization.

Fluidity and Flexibility

For many years now, STRATFOR has followed developments along the U.S.-Mexican border and has studied the dynamics of the cross-border illicit flow of people, drugs, weapons and cash.

One of the most notable characteristics about this flow of contraband is its flexibility. When smugglers encounter an obstacle to the flow of their product, they find ways to avoid it. For example, as we’ve pre­viously discus­sed in the case of the extensive border fence in the San Diego sector, drug traffickers and human smugglers diverted a good portion of their volume around the wall to the Tucson sector; they even created an extensive network of tunnels under the fence to keep their contraband (and profits) flowing.

Likewise, as maritime and air interdiction efforts between South America and Mexico have become more succes­sful, Central America has become increasingly important to the flow of narco­tics from South America to the United States. This reflects how the drug-trafficking organizations have adjusted their method of shipment and their trafficking routes to avoid interdiction efforts and maintain the northward flow of narcotics.

Over the past few years, a great deal of public and government attention has focused on the U.S.-Mexican border. In response to this attention, the federal and border state governments in the United States have erected more barriers, installed an array of cameras and sensors and increased the manpower committed to securing the border. While these efforts certainly have not hermetically sealed the border, they do appear to be having some impact — an impact magnified by the effectiveness of interdiction efforts elsewhere along the narco­tics supply chain.

According to the most recent statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration, from January 2007 through September 2008 the price per pure gram of cocaine increased 89.1 percent, or from $96.61 to $182.73, while the purity of cocaine seized on the street decreased 31.3 percent, dropping from 67 percent pure cocaine to 46 percent pure cocaine. Recent anecdotal reports from law enforcement sources indicate that cocaine prices have remained high, and that the purity of cocaine on the street has remained poor.

Overcoming Human Obstacles

In another interesting trend that has emerged over the past few years, as border security has tightened and as the flow of narco­tics has been impeded, the number of U.S. border enforcement officers arrested on charges of corruption has increased notably. This increased corruption represents a logical outcome of the fluidity of the flow of contraband. As the obstacles posed by border enforcement have become more daunting, people have become the weak link in the enforcement system. In some ways, people are like tunnels under the border wall — i.e., channels employed by the traffickers to help their goods get to market.

From the Mexican cartels’ point of view, it is cheaper to pay an official several thousand dollars to allow a load of narco­tics to pass by than it is to risk having the shipment seized. Such bribes are simply part of the cost of doing business — and in the big picture, even a low-level local agent can be an incredible bargain.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 21 CBP officers were arrested on corruption charges during the fiscal year that ended in September 2008, as opposed to only 4 in the pre­ceding fiscal year. In the current fiscal year (since Oct. 1), 14 have been arrested. And the problem with corruption extends further than just customs or border patrol officers. In recent years, police officers, state troopers, county sheriffs, National Guard members, judges, prosecutors, deputy U.S. marshals and even the FBI special agent in charge of the El Paso office have been linked to Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Significantly, the cases being prosecuted against these public officials of all stripes are just the tip of the iceberg. The underly­ing problem of corruption is much greater.

A major challenge to addres­sing the issue of border corruption is the large number of jurisdictions along the border, along with the reality that corruption occurs at the local, state and federal levels across those jurisdictions. Though this makes it very difficult to gather data relating to the total number of corruption investigations conducted, sources tell us that while corruption has always been a problem along the border, the problem has ballooned in recent years — and the number of corruption cases has increased dramatically.

In addition to the complexity brought about by the multiple jurisdictions, agencies and levels of government involved, there simply is not one single agency that can be tasked with taking care of the corruption problem. It is just too big and too wide. Even the FBI, which has national jurisdiction and a mandate to investigate public corruption cases, cannot step in and clean up all the corruption. The FBI already is being stretched thin with its other responsibilities, like counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence, financial fraud and bank robbery. The FBI thus does not even have the capacity to investigate every allegation of corruption at the federal level, much less at the state and local levels. Limited resources require the agency to be very selective about the cases it decides to investigate. Given that there is no real central clearinghouse for corruption cases, most allegations of corruption are investigated by a wide array of internal affairs units and other agencies at the federal, state and local levels.

Any time there is such a mixture of agencies involved in the investigation of a specific type of crime, there is often bureaucratic friction, and there are almost always problems with information sharing. This means that pieces of information and investigative leads developed in the investigation of some of these cases are not shared with the appropriate agencies. To overcome this information sharing problem, the FBI has established six Border Corruption Task Forces designed to bring local, state and federal officers together to focus on corruption tied to the U.S.-Mexican border, but these task forces have not yet been able to solve the complex problem of coordination.

Sophisticated Spotting

Efforts to corrupt officials along the U.S.-Mexican border are very organized and very focused, something that is critical to understanding the public corruption issue along the border. Some of the Mexican cartels have a long history of succes­sfully corrupting public officials on both sides of the border. Groups like the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) have succes­sfully recruited scores of intelligence assets and agents of influence at the local, state and even federal levels of the Mexican government. They even have enjoyed significant success in recruiting agents in elite units such as the anti-organized crime unit (SIEDO) of the Office of the Mexican Attorney General (PGR). The BLO also has recruited Mexican employees working for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, and even allegedly owned Mexico’s former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who reportedly was receiving $450,00 a month from the organization.

In fact, the sophistication of these groups means they use methods more akin to the intelligence recruitment proces­ses used by foreign intelligence services than those normally associated with a criminal organization. The cartels are known to conduct extensive surveillance and background checks on potential targets to determine how to best pitch to them. Like the spotting methods used by intelligence agencies, the surveillance conducted by the cartels on potential targets is designed to glean as many details about the target as pos­sible, including where they live, what vehicles they drive, who their family members are, their financial needs and their peccadilloes.

Historically, many foreign intelligence services are known to use ethnicity in their favor, heavily targeting persons sharing an ethnic background found in the foreign country. Foreign services also are known to use relatives of the target living in the foreign country to their advantage. Mexican cartels use these same tools. They tend to target Hispanic officers and often use family members living in Mexico as recruiting levers. For example, Luis Francisco Alarid, who had been a CBP officer at the Otay Mesa, Calif., port of entry, was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison in February for his participation in a conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens and marijuana into the United States. One of the people Alarid admitted to conspiring with was his uncle, who drove a van loaded with marijuana and illegal aliens through a border checkpoint manned by Alarid.

Like family spy rings (such as the Cold War spy ring run by John Walker), there also have been family border corruption rings. Raul Villarreal and his brother, Fidel, both former CBP agents in San Diego, were arraigned March 16 after fleeing the United States in 2006 after learning they were being investigated for corruption. The pair was captured in Mexico in October 2008 and extradited back to the United States.

‘Plata o Sexo’

When discus­sing human intelligence recruiting, it is not uncommon to refer to the old cold war acronym MICE (money, ideology, compromise and ego) to explain the approach used to recruit an agent. When discus­sing corruption in Mexico, people often repeat the phrase “plata o plomo,” Spanish for “money or lead” — meaning “take the money or we’ll kill you.” However, in most border corruption cases involving American officials, the threat of plomo is not as powerful as it is inside Mexico. Although some officials charged with corruption have claimed as a defense that they were intimidated into behaving corruptly, juries have rejected these arguments. This dynamic could change if the Mexican cartels begin to target officers in the United States for assas­sination as they have in Mexico.

With plomo an empty threat north of the border, plata has become the primary motivation for corruption along the Mexican border. In fact, good old greed — the M in MICE — has always been the most common motivation for Americans recruited by foreign intelligence services. The runner-up, which supplants plomo in the recruitment equation inside the United Sates, is “sexo,” aka “sex.” Sex, an age-old espionage recruitment tool that fits under the compromise section of MICE, has been seen in high-profile espionage cases, including the one involving the Marine security guards at the U.S Embassy in Moscow. Using sex to recruit an agent is often referred to as setting a “honey trap.” Sex can be used in two ways. First, it can be used as a simple payment for services rendered. Second, it can be used as a means to blackmail the agent. (The two techniques can be used in tandem.)

It is not at all uncommon for border officials to be offered sex in return for allowing illegal aliens or drugs to enter the country, or for drug-trafficking organizations to use attractive agents to seduce and then recruit officers. Several officials have been convicted in such cases. For example, in March 2007, CBP inspection officer Richard Elizalda, who had worked at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry, was sentenced to 57 months in prison for conspiring with his lover, alien smuggler Raquel Arin, to let the organization she worked for bring illegal aliens through his inspection lane. Elizalda also accepted cash for his efforts — much of which he allegedly spent on gifts for Arin — so in reality, Elizalda was a case of “plata y sexo” rather than an either-or deal.

Corruption Cases Handled Differently

When the U.S. government hires an employee who has family members living in a place like Beijing or Moscow, the background investigation for that employee is pursued with far more interest than if the employee has relatives in Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana. Mexico traditionally has not been seen as a foreign counterintelligence threat, even though it has long been recognized that many countries, like Rus­sia, are very active in their efforts to target the United States from Mexico. Indeed, during the Cold War, the KGB’s largest rezidentura (the equivalent of a CIA station) was located in Mexico City.

Employees with connections to Mexico frequently have not been that well vetted, period. In one well-publicized incident, the Border Patrol hired an illegal immigrant who was later arrested for alien smuggling. In July 2006, U.S. Border Patrol agent Oscar Ortiz was sentenced to 60 months in prison after admitting to smuggling more than 100 illegal immigrants into the United States. After his arrest, investigators learned that Ortiz was an illegal immigrant himself who had used a counterfeit birth certificate when he was hired. Ironically, Ortiz also had been arrested for attempting to smuggle two illegal immigrants into the United States shortly before being hired by the Border Patrol. (He was never charged for that attempt.)

From an investigative perspective, corruption cases tend to be handled more as one-off cases, and they do not normally receive the same sort of extensive investigation into the suspect’s friends and associates that would be conducted in a foreign counterintelligence case. In other words, if a U.S. government employee is recruited by the Chinese or Rus­sian intelligence service, the investigation receives far more energy — and the suspect’s circle of friends, relatives and associates receives far more scrutiny — than if he is recruited by a Mexican cartel.

In espionage cases, there is also an extensive damage assess­ment investigation conducted to ensure that all the information the suspect could have divulged is identified, along with the identities of any other people the suspect could have helped his handler recruit. Additionally, after-action reviews are conducted to determine how the suspect was recruited, how he was handled and how he could have been uncovered earlier. The results of these reviews are then used to help shape future counterintelligence investigative efforts. They are also used in the pre­paration of defensive counterintelligence briefings to educate other employees and help protect them from being recruited.

This differences in urgency and scope between the two types of investigations is driven by the perception that the damage to national security is greater if an official is recruited by a foreign intelligence agency than if he is recruited by a criminal organization. That assess­ment may need to be re-examined, given that the Mexican cartels are criminal organizations with the proven sophistication to recruit U.S. officials at all levels of government — and that this has allowed them to move whomever and whatever they wish into the United States.

The problem of public corruption is very widespread, and to approach corruption cases in a manner similar to foreign counterintelligence cases would require a large commitment of investigative, prosecutorial and defensive resources. But the threat posed by the Mexican cartels is different than that posed by traditional criminal organizations, meaning that countering it will require a nontraditional approach.

Stratfor