by Peter Zeihan | August 4, 2009

This coming weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s assumption of a leadership position at the Kremlin. Much has happened since Putin’s appointment as first vice prime minister in August 1999, but Russia’s most definitive evolution was from the unstable but semidemocratic days of the 1990s to the statist, authoritarian structure of today.

While it has hardly been clear to STRATFOR that Putin would survive Russia’s transition from tentative democracy to near-police state, the transformation of Russia itself has always fit with our predictions. Authoritarian government is a geographically hardwired feature of Russia.

Russia’s authoritarian structure has its roots in two interlinking features: its size and its lack of geographically defined borders.

The Matter of Size

Russia is huge. Mind-numbingly huge. Even Americans, whose country is large in its own right, have difficulty absorbing just how large Russia is. Russia spans 11 time zones. Traveling from one end to the other via rail is a seven-day, seven-night journey. Commercial jets needed to refuel when flying the country’s length until relatively recently. The country’s first transcontinental road became operational only a few years ago. In sum, Russia — to say nothing of the substantially larger Soviet Union — is roughly double the size of all 50 U.S. states combined.

In being so huge, Russia is condemned to being hugely poor. With the notable exception of the Volga, Russia has no useful rivers that can be used to transport goods — and the Volga, which is frozen most of the year, empties into the commercial dead end of the Caspian Sea. Whereas the Americans and Europeans always could shuttle goods and people cheaply up and down their rivers and use the money this allowed them to save to build armies, purchase goods and/or train workers — and thus become richer still — the Russians had to apply their scarce capital to build the transportation systems necessary to feed their population.

Most Western cities grew on natural transportation nodes, but many Russian cities are purely the result of state planning. St. Petersburg, for example, was built exclusively to serve as a forward position from which to battle Sweden and control the Baltic Sea. Basic industrialization, which swept across Europe and the United States in the 19th century, required rapid, inexpensive transit to make the process economical and dense population centers to serve as cheap pools of labor and concentrated markets.

Russia had neither transit nor population going for it. Large cities require abundant, cheap food. Without efficient transport options, farmers’ output will rot before reaching market, preventing them from earning much. State efforts to confiscate farmers’ production led to rebellions. Early Russian governments consistently found themselves stuck having to choose between drawing upon already-meager finances to purchase food and subsidize city growth, or spending that money on a security force to terrorize farmers so the food could be confiscated outright. It wasn’t until the development of railroads — and the rise of the Soviet Union’s iron grip — that the countryside could be both harnessed economically and crushed spiritually with enough regularity to grow and industrialize Russia’s cities. But even then, cities were built based on a strategic — not economic — rationale. Magnitogorsk, one of Russia’s vast industrial centers, was built east of the Ural Mountains to shield it from German attack.

Russia’s obstacles to economic development could be overcome only through state planning and institutional terror. Unsurprisingly, Russia’s first real wave of development and industrialization did not occur until Stalin rose to power. The discovery of ample energy reserves in the years since has helped somewhat. But since most of them are literally thousands of miles from any market, the need to construct mammoth infrastructure simply to reach the deposits puts pressure on the country’s bottom line.

The Best Defense

Russia’s size lends itself to an authoritarian system, but the deeper cause for this system is rooted in Russia’s lack of geographically defined borders. The best illustration of this requires a brief review of the lessons of the Mongol occupation.

The strength of the Mongols — who once ruled the steppes of Asia, and in time most of what is now Russia (among other vast territories) — lay in their military acumen on horseback. Where the land was open and flat, the Mongol horsemen knew no peer. Russia’s populated chunks are as flat as they are large. It possesses no physical barriers that could stop, or even particularly slow, the Mongol’s approach and inevitable victory. The forests north of Moscow served as Russia’s best defense.

When the Mongol horde arrived at the forests’ edge, the cavalrymen were forced to dismount if they were to offer combat. Once deprived of their mounts, the Mongol warrior’s advantage over the Russian peasant soldier shrank precipitously. And so it was only in Russia’s northern forests where some semblance of Russian independence managed to survive during the three centuries of Mongol rule.

The Mongols taught Russians just how horrible invasions — especially successful invasions persisting for generations — could be. The Mongol occupation became indelibly seared into the Russian collective memory, leaving Russians obsessed with national security. Echoes of that terrible memory have surfaced again and again in Russian history, with Napoleon’s and Hitler’s invasions only serving as two of the most recent. Many Russians view today’s steady NATO and EU expansions into the former Soviet territories through this prism, as simply the most recent incarnation of the Mongol terror.

After the Mongol period ended, Russian strategy could be summed up in a single word: expansion. The only recourse to the challenge of size and the lack of internal transportation options — and the lack whatsoever of any meaningful barriers to invasion — was establishing as large a buffer as possible. To this end, massive and poor Russia dedicated its scarce resources to building an army that could push its borders out from its core territory in the search for security.

The complications flowing from such an expansion — like the one achieved during Soviet times — are threefold:

First, the security is incomplete. While many countries have some sort of geographic barrier that grants a degree of safety — Chile has the Andes and the Atacama Desert, the United Kingdom has the English Channel, Italy has the Alps — potential barriers to invasion for Russia are far-flung and incomplete. Russia can advance westward to the Carpathian Mountains, but it remains exposed on the North European Plain and the Bessarabian gap. It can reach the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia and the marshes of Siberia, but between mountain and marsh lies an extension of the steppe into China and Mongolia. Short of conquering nearly all Eurasia, there is no way to secure Russia’s borders.

Second, the cost of trying to secure its borders is enormously expensive — more massive than any state can sustain in perpetuity. Trying to do so means Russia’s already-stressed economic system must support an even longer border, which requires an even larger military. The bigger Russia gets, the poorer it gets, and the more critical it becomes for its scarce resources to be funneled toward state needs — meaning central control becomes more essential.

Third, any buffers Russia conquers are not empty, they are home to non-Russians. And these non-Russians rarely take a shine to the idea of serving as Russia’s buffer regions. Keeping these conquered populations quiescent is not a task for the faint of heart. It requires a security force that isn’t just large but also able to excel at penetrating resistance groups, gathering information and policing. It thus requires an internal intelligence service with the primary purpose of keeping multiple conquered peoples in line — whether those people are Latvian or Ukrainian or Chechen or Uzbek — and this intelligence service’s size and omnipresence tends to be matched only by its brutality.

The Kremlin Crucible

Russia is a tough place to rule, and as we’ve implied, STRATFOR is mildly surprised Putin has lasted. We don’t think him incompetent, it’s just that life in Russia is dreadfully hard and the Kremlin is a crucible, and leaders often are crushed swiftly. Before Putin took Russia’s No. 2 job, former President Boris Yeltsin had gone through no fewer than 10 men — one of them twice — in the position.

But Putin boasted one characteristic that STRATFOR identified 10 long years ago that set him apart. Putin was no bureaucrat or technocrat or politico; he was a KGB agent. And as Putin himself has famously proclaimed, there is no such thing as a former intelligence officer. This allowed him to harness the modern incarnation of the institutions that made Russia not just possible but also stable — the intelligence divisions — and to fuse them into the core of the new regime. Most of the Kremlin’s current senior staff, and nearly all Putin’s inner circle, were deeply enmeshed in the Soviet security apparatus.

This is hardly a unique coalition of forces in Russian history. Andropov ran the KGB before taking the reins of the Soviet empire. Stalin was (in)famous for his use of the intelligence apparatus. Lenin almost ran Russia into the ground before his deployment of the Cheka in force arrested the free fall. And the tsars before the Soviet leaders were hardly strangers to the role such services played.

Between economic inefficiency — which has only gotten worse since Soviet times — and wretched demographics, Russia faces a future that if anything is bleaker than its past. It sees itself as a country besieged by enemies without: the West, the Muslim world and China. It also sees itself as a country besieged by enemies within: only about three in four citizens are ethnic Russians, who are much older than the average citizen — and non-Russian birthrates are approximately double that of Russians. Only one institution in Russian history ever has proved capable of resisting such forces, and it is the institution that once again rules the country.

Russia may well stand on the brink of its twilight years. If there is a force that can preserve some version of Russia, it might not be identical to Putin, but it will need to look a great deal like what Putin represents.

© Stratfor

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 George Friedman

At Friday prayers July 17 at Tehran University, the influential cleric and former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani gave his first sermon since Iran’s disputed presidential election and the subsequent demonstrations. The crowd listening to Rafsanjani inside the mosque was filled with Ahmadinejad supporters who chanted, among other things, “Death to America” and “Death to China.” Outside the university common grounds, anti-Ahmadinejad elements — many of whom were blocked by Basij militiamen and police from entering the mosque — persistently chanted “Death to Russia.”

Death to America is an old staple in Iran. Death to China had to do with the demonstrations in Xinjiang and the death of Uighurs at the hands of the Chinese. Death to Russia, however, stood out. Clearly, its use was planned before the protesters took to the streets. The meaning of this must be uncovered. To begin to do that, we must consider the political configuration in Iran at the moment.

The Iranian Political Configuration

There are two factions claiming to speak for the people. Rafsanjani represents the first faction. During his sermon, he spoke for the tradition of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took power during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Rafjsanjani argued that Khomeini wanted an Islamic republic faithful to the will of the people, albeit within the confines of Islamic law. Rafsanjani argued that he was the true heir to the Islamic revolution. He added that Khomeini’s successor — the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — had violated the principles of the revolution when he accepted that Rafsanjani’s archenemy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won Iran’s recent presidential election. (There is enormous irony in foreigners describing Rafsanjani as a moderate reformer who supports greater liberalization. Though he has long cultivated this image in the West, in 30 years of public political life it is hard to see a time when has supported Western-style liberal democracy.)

The other faction is led by Ahmadinejad, who takes the position that Rafsanjani in particular — along with the generation of leaders who ascended to power during the first phase of the Islamic republic — has betrayed the Iranian people. Rather than serving the people, Ahmadinejad claims they have used their positions to become so wealthy that they dominate the Iranian economy and have made the reforms needed to revitalize the Iranian economy impossible. According to Ahmadinejad’s charges, these elements now blame Ahmadinejad for Iran’s economic failings when the root of these failings is their own corruption. Ahmadinejad claims that the recent presidential election represents a national rejection of the status quo. He adds that claims of fraud represent attempts by Rafsanjani — who he portrays as defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi’s sponsor — and his ilk to protect their positions from Ahmadinejad.

Iran is therefore experiencing a generational dispute, with each side claiming to speak both for the people and for the Khomeini tradition. There is the older generation — symbolized by Rafsanjani — that has prospered during the last 30 years. Having worked with Khomeini, this generation sees itself as his true heir. Then, there is the younger generation. Known as “students” during the revolution, this group did the demonstrating and bore the brunt of the shah’s security force counterattacks. It argues that Khomeini would be appalled at what Rafsanjani and his generation have done to Iran.

This debate is, of course, more complex than this. Khamenei, a key associate of Khomeini, appears to support Ahmadinejad’s position. And Ahmadinejad hardly speaks for all of the poor as he would like to claim. The lines of political disputes are never drawn as neatly as we would like. Ultimately, Rafsanjani’s opposition to the recent election did not have as much to do with concerns (valid or not) over voter fraud. It had everything to do with the fact that the outcome threatened his personal position. Which brings us back to the question of why Rafsanjani’s followers were chanting “Death to Russia”?

Examining the Anomalous Chant

For months prior to the election, Ahmadinejad’s allies warned that the United States was planning a “color” revolution. Color revolutions, like the one in Ukraine, occurred widely in the former Soviet Union after its collapse, and these revolutions followed certain steps. An opposition political party was organized to mount an electoral challenge the establishment. Then, an election occurred that was either fraudulent or claimed by the opposition as having been fraudulent. Next, widespread peaceful protests against the regime (all using a national color as the symbol of the revolution) took place, followed by the collapse of the government through a variety of paths. Ultimately, the opposition — which was invariably pro-Western and particularly pro-American — took power.

Moscow openly claimed that Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, organized and funded the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. These agencies allegedly used nongovernmental organizations (human rights groups, pro-democracy groups, etc.) to delegitimize the existing regime, repudiate the outcome of the election regardless of its validity and impose what the Russians regarded as a pro-American puppet regime. The Russians saw Ukraine’s Orange Revolution as the break point in their relationship with the West, with the creation of a pro-American, pro-NATO regime in Ukraine representing a direct attack on Russian national security. The Americans argued that to the contrary, they had done nothing but facilitate a democratic movement that opposed the existing regime for its own reasons, demanding that rigged elections be repudiated.

In warning that the United States was planning a color revolution in Iran, Ahmadinejad took the Russian position. Namely, he was arguing that behind the cover of national self-determination, human rights and commitment to democratic institutions, the United States was funding an Iranian opposition movement on the order of those active in the former Soviet Union. Regardless of whether the opposition actually had more votes, this opposition movement would immediately regard an Ahmadinejad win as the result of fraud. Large demonstrations would ensue, and if they were left unopposed the Islamic republic would come under threat.

In doing this, Ahmadinejad’s faction positioned itself against the actuality that such a rising would occur. If it did, Ahmadinejad could claim that the demonstrators were — wittingly or not — operating on behalf of the United States, thus delegitimizing the demonstrators. In so doing, he could discredit supporters of the demonstrators as not tough enough on the United States, a useful charge against Rafsanjani, whom the West long has held up as an Iranian moderate.

Interestingly, while demonstrations were at their height, Ahmadinejad chose to attend — albeit a day late — a multinational Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in Moscow on the Tuesday after the election. It was very odd that he would leave Iran during the greatest postelection unrest; we assumed he had decided to demonstrate to Iranians that he didn’t take the demonstrations seriously.

The charge that seems to be emerging on the Rafsanjani side is that Ahmadinejad’s fears of a color revolution were not simply political, but were encouraged by the Russians. It was the Russians who had been talking to Ahmadinejad and his lieutenants on a host of issues, who warned him about the possibility of a color revolution. More important, the Russians helped prepare Ahmadinejad for the unrest that would come — and given the Russian experience, how to manage it. Though we speculate here, if this theory is correct, it could explain some of the efficiency with which Ahmadinejad shut down cell phone and other communications during the postelection unrest, as he may have had Russian advisers.

Rafsanjani’s followers were not shouting “Death to Russia” without a reason, at least in their own minds. They are certainly charging that Ahmadinejad took advice from the Russians, and went to Russia in the midst of political unrest for consultations. Rafsanjani’s charge may or may not be true. Either way, there is no question that Ahmadinejad did claim that the United States was planning a color revolution in Iran. If he believed that charge, it would have been irrational not to reach out to the Russians. But whether or not the CIA was involved, the Russians might well have provided Ahmadinejad with intelligence of such a plot and helped shape his response, and thereby may have created a closer relationship with him.

How Iran’s internal struggle will work itself out remains unclear. But one dimension is shaping up: Ahmadinejad is trying to position Rafsanjani as leading a pro-American faction intent on a color revolution, while Rafsanjani is trying to position Ahmadinejad as part of a pro-Russian faction. In this argument, the claim that Ahmadinejad had some degree of advice or collaboration with the Russians is credible, just as the claim that Rafsanjani maintained some channels with the Americans is credible. And this makes an internal dispute geopolitically significant.

The Iranian Struggle in a Geopolitical Context

At the moment, Ahmadinejad appears to have the upper hand. Khamenei has certified his re-election. The crowds have dissipated; nothing even close to the numbers of the first few days has since materialized. For Ahmadinejad to lose, Rafsanjani would have to mobilize much of the clergy — many of whom are seemingly content to let Rafsanjani be the brunt of Ahmadinejad’s attacks — in return for leaving their own interests and fortunes intact. There are things that could bring Ahmadinejad down and put Rafsanjani in control, but all of them would require Khamenei to endorse social and political instability, which he will not do.

If the Russians have in fact intervened in Iran to the extent of providing intelligence to Ahmadinejad and advice to him during his visit on how to handle the postelection unrest (as the chants suggest), then Russian influence in Iran is not surging — it has surged. In some measure, Ahmadinejad would owe his position to Russian warnings and advice. There is little gratitude in the world of international affairs, but Ahmadinejad has enemies, and the Russians would have proved their utility in helping contain those enemies.

From the Russian point of view, Ahmadinejad would be a superb asset — even if not truly under their control. His very existence focuses American attention on Iran, not on Russia. It follows, then, that Russia would have made a strategic decision to involve itself in the postelection unrest, and that for the purposes of its own negotiations with Washington, Moscow will follow through to protect the Iranian state to the extent possible. The Russians have already denied U.S. requests for assistance on Iran. But if Moscow has intervened in Iran to help safeguard Ahmadinejad’s position, then the potential increases for Russia to provide Iran with the S-300 strategic air defense systems that it has been dangling in front of Tehran for more than a decade.

If the United States perceives an entente between Moscow and Tehran emerging, then the entire dynamic of the region shifts and the United States must change its game. The threat to Washington’s interests becomes more intense as the potential of a Russian S-300 sale to Iran increases, and the need to disrupt the Russian-Iranian entente would become all the more important. U.S. influence in Iran already has declined substantially, and Ahmadinejad is more distrustful and hostile than ever of the United States after having to deal with the postelection unrest. If a Russian-Iranian entente emerges out of all this — which at the moment is merely a possibility, not an imminent reality — then the United States would have some serious strategic problems on its hands.

Revisiting Assumptions on Iran

For the past few years, STRATFOR has assumed that a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran was unlikely. Iran was not as advanced in its nuclear program as some claimed, and the complexities of any attack were greater than assumed. The threat of an attack was thus a U.S. bargaining chip, much as Iran’s nuclear program itself was an Iranian bargaining chip for use in achieving Tehran’s objectives in Iraq and the wider region. To this point, our net assessment has been accurate.

At this point, however, we need to stop and reconsider. If Iran and Russia begin serious cooperation, Washington’s existing dilemma with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its ongoing standoff with the Russians would fuse to become a single, integrated problem. This is something the United States would find difficult to manage. Washington’s primary goal would become preventing this from happening.

Ahmadinejad has long argued that the United States was never about to attack Iran, and that charges by Rafsanjani and others that he has pursued a reckless foreign policy were groundless. But with the “Death to Russia” chants and signaling of increased Russian support for Iran, the United States may begin to reconsider its approach to the region.

Iran’s clerical elite does not want to go to war. They therefore can only view with alarm the recent ostentatious transiting of the Suez Canal into the Red Sea by Israeli submarines and corvettes. This transiting did not happen without U.S. approval. Moreover, in spite of U.S. opposition to expanded Israeli settlements and Israeli refusals to comply with this opposition, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will be visiting Israel in two weeks. The Israelis have said that there must be a deadline on negotiations with Iran over the nuclear program when the next G-8 meeting takes place in September; a deadline that the G-8 has already approved. The consequences if Iran ignores the deadline were left open-ended.

All of this can fit into our old model of psychological warfare, as representing a bid to manipulate Iranian politics by making Ahmadinejad’s leadership look too risky. It could also be the United States signaling the Russians that stakes in the region are rising. It is not clear that the United States has reconsidered its strategy on Iran in the wake of the postelection demonstrations. But if Rafsanjani’s claim of Russian support for Ahmadinejad is true, a massive re-evaluation of U.S. policy could ensue, assuming one hasn’t already started — prompting a reconsideration of the military option.

All of this assumes that there is substance behind a mob chanting “Death to Russia.” There appears to be, but of course, Ahmadinejad’s enemies would want to magnify that substance to its limits and beyond. This is why we are not ready to simply abandon our previous net assessment of Iran, even though it is definitely time to rethink it.

© 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

Cosa è una superpotenza? L’intreccio di molti fattori: geografici, demografici, economici, sociali, culturali, militari. Gli Stati Uniti hanno dominato gran parte del Novecento grazie all’organizzazione e alla crescita di industria, ricerca, difesa, risorse naturali e popolazione. La Grande Crisi del 2008 sta ridisegnando gli equilibri mondiali. A breve termine vediamo solo gli effetti della recessione (crollo della domanda e della produzione, perdita di posti di lavoro, etc.), ma nel lungo periodo i rapporti tra le potenze cambieranno. I cicli durano venti, trent’anni: nel 1970 chi avrebbe scommesso sul crollo del Muro di Berlino? Nel 1989 quando i sovietici abbandonarono l’Afghanistan qualcuno vide l’ascesa di al Qaeda e Bin Laden? Chi poteva immaginare la traiettoria della Cina quando Deng Xiaoping nel 1978 intraprese il cammino verso il capitalismo autoritario? Le rivoluzioni sono sempre in corso, ma gli esiti finali diventano visibili spesso all’improvviso.

In questo scenario di incertezza e trasformazione, osservare la strategia di espansione della Fiat è molto più che un semplice esercizio di analisi. E’ il tentativo di guardare al di là della polvere sollevata dal crash, immaginare una dimensione nuova per l’industria italiana. Guardare i movimenti del predatore di Torino con una lente riduzionista è davvero un peccato, perchè non siamo di fronte alla soluzione di un puzzle industriale, ma alla costruzione di un’opportunità unica per la diplomazia (economica e politica) del nostro Paese.

Cerchiamo di chiamare le cose con il loro nome, senza imbellettarle troppo e puntando alla sostanza: la Fiat in questo momento veste i panni del salvatore di giganti industrali in crisi che hanno il nome di Chrysler (accordo chiuso) e Opel (trattativa in corso).

Cosa fa un salvatore? E’ come il mitico personaggio inventato da Quentin Tarantino e interpretato da Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. La Fiat bussa alla porta di Chrysler e Opel e si presenta con la faccia di Sergio Marchionne: “Sono Mr. Wolf, risolvo problemi”.

E i problemi sul tavolo di Mr. Wolf-Marchionne sono grandi. Riguardano un intero modello di sviluppo economico (quello fondato sull’automobile) e il destino di centinaia di migliaia di lavoratori e relative famiglie. Dietro le quinte di una strategia di sviluppo industriale, c’è una questione sociale di portata storica che coinvolge due Paesi e due leader: Stati Uniti e Germania, Barack Obama e Angela Merkel. Per un paradosso della storia, l’industria di un Paese considerato debole e senza futuro si presenta in casa della prima potenza mondiale e del cuore pulsante dell’Europa continentale con una proposta chiavi in mano.

Obama e Merkel sono due campioni della politica che, per ragioni diverse, vivono una stagione particolare della loro avventura politica. Il presidente degli Stati Uniti è all’inizio del suo mandato, ha appena spento le candeline dei cento giorni alla Casa Bianca e sta cercando di far uscire il Paese da una spaventosa crisi finanziaria che si è trasformata in recessione. La cancelliera tedesca è l’emblema della politica conservatrice che in questo momento governa l’Europa, alla sua azione politica sono legati i destini del Vecchio Continente, la sua tenuta in Germania è di fronte a una prova che dal punto di vista dell’impatto sociale è seconda soltanto alla riunificazione, Opel infatti è un gigante che fa parte di General Motors Europe e offre lavoro a 50 mila persone (25 mila in Germania) e un suo collasso – solo in termini di ammortizzatori sociali – costerebbe nell’immediato una cifra vicina ai 5 miliardi di euro, ma l’impatto sul futuro del Paese è sconosciuto, tutto da calcolare non solo dal punto di vista economico ma soprattutto politico. Fiat è la soluzione pronta consegna per Obama, potrebbe esserlo anche per la Merkel.

Questo scenario è un colpo durissimo sul palazzo grigio costruito dalla letteratura declinista sul nostro Paese, ma incredibilmente la classe dirigente italiana non sembra essersi resa pienamente conto di cosa sta accadendo. Un manager e un intero gruppo di comando di un’azienda italiana stanno immaginando un Gorilla Game declinato sull’auto e non sull’hi-tech, ma quando la politica non muove i pezzi – in questo caso le mani sulla scacchiera sono solo e soltanto quelle di Marchionne – non riesce a catturare la strategia, a immaginare le mosse, a pensare ai benefici di questo gioco condotto dalla casa automobilistica torinese. I vantaggi per Roma e il governo in carica sono grandi, ma la fatica di comprendere una trama che si svolge fuori dal Palazzo è evidente: l’Italia da sempre dipinta come preda diventa predatore, un Paese immaginato come un esempio di inefficienza, superburocrazia (e corruzione) potrebbe uscire dalla crisi con un sistema industriale rafforzato e finalmente con un campione non più nazionale ma internazionale. Come notato dai fini analisti di Stratfor, Barack Obama grazie all’accordo di Chrysler e Fiat dà un senso alla bancarotta pilotata del gruppo e riempie di fatti l’immaginifico (ai tempi della campagna presidenziale) disegno di trasformare l’industria automobilistica americana da produttore di veicoli pesanti e inquinanti nell’avanguardia della mobilità leggera, efficiente e verde su quattro ruote. La Merkel, a cinque mesi dalle elezioni, salverebbe migliaia di posti di lavoro in nome di un’alleanza continentale tra privati e non di una improduttiva nazionalizzazione.

L’Italia così avrà negli Stati Uniti finalmente lo status non solo di partner militare ma di alleato industriale e una straordinaria portaerei in Nord America per far decollare le sue iniziative di diplomazia economica. E se al Lingotto riescono nell’impresa di chiudere l’accordo su Opel finalmente il nostro Paese lascerà la Francia con il cerino in mano (dopo esserci bruciati noi varie volte con il capitalismo di Stato di Parigi) per una più fruttuosa e concreta relazione con la Germania, vera potenza dell’Europa. Avremo qualche Legion d’onore in meno, ma vista la posta in palio – la costruzione di un supergruppo mondiale dell’auto -  ne possiamo fare tranquillamente a meno.

Tutto questo accade mentre il capitalismo dopo la sbornia dell’iperfinanza sta cercando di riscoprire il valore della buona manifattura, accade mentre la Grande Crisi segna sul tabellone vincitori e vinti, accade mentre emergono le nuove potenze globali e continentali. Accade mentre l’Italia ha la presidenza del G8: ce ne vogliamo ricordare?