Diplomacy & Crisis News

Read this and ask yourself, which was the U.S. military in Iraq?

Hold on there, technophobe hippies. When it comes to “doing no harm,” robots are a hell of a lot better than humans.

By Paul McLeary with Ariel Robinson Things fall apart. Iraqi forces broke and fled the city of Ramadi in the face of a renewed assault by the Islamic State on Sunday, recalling the full-fledged retreat from Mosul last summer that gave the extremist group access to whole divisions’ worth of American-supplied Iraqi military equipment. Despite ...

The Islamic State has taken the Iraqi city of Ramadi, it’s first major victory since the international coalition began targeting its operations in Iraq and Syria last September. The attack began on Friday when fighters disguised as police officers infiltrated the city and seized key government buildings. According to Iraqi officials, at least 500 people ...

From drone strikes to prison torture, the CIA has been pulling the strings of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11. And if history is a guide, the agency will be calling the shots in the Middle East for years to come.

Cette recension d’ouvrages est issue de Politique étrangère (1/2015). Norbert Gaillard propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de James K. Galbraith, The End of Normal. The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth (New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 2014, 304 pages) et de celui d’Atif Mian et Amir Sufi, House of Debt (Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press, 2014, 228 pages).

La crise économique que les pays industrialisés traversent depuis 2007 continue de susciter de nombreuses réflexions. Dans son dernier ouvrage, James Galbraith estime que cette Grande Récession est d’une nature radicalement différente des crises précédentes. Selon lui, quatre facteurs semblent indiquer que l’Amérique entre dans une période de stagnation durable qui ne serait autre que l’état normal du capitalisme, comme le défendaient dès 1966 les deux économistes néomarxistes Paul Baran et Paul Sweezy, que Galbraith cite abondamment. D’abord, la hausse du prix de l’énergie et l’inévitable adaptation aux changements climatiques pèsent négativement sur les stratégies des entreprises et les habitudes de consommation. Ensuite, la capacité des États-Unis à imposer des évolutions politiques par la force militaire ou les sanctions financières est de plus en plus limitée. Enfin, il y a ce que l’auteur nomme la « tempête digitale », génératrice de chômage, et les conséquences de la crise immobilière qui se feront sentir encore longtemps.

Face à ces quatre défis, l’auteur considère que les raisons diversement invoquées pour expliquer la crise – telles que le poids du big government, la faillite des régulateurs ou le surendettement privé – sont insuffisantes. Il en va de même des remèdes avancés par la plupart des économistes, à l’instar de ceux qui, classés à gauche comme Galbraith, en appellent à une relance de la demande. Celui-ci préconise en fait un nouveau New Deal dans un cadre capitaliste complètement régulé et rénové. Son analyse est brillante, mais son pessimisme est exagéré quand on connaît le potentiel de croissance et de développement qui existe en Afrique et en Asie du Sud – soit plus de 40 % de la population mondiale – et qui pourrait dynamiser durablement les économies occidentales.

Pour Atif Mian et Amir Sufi, la Grande Récession est le produit d’un système financier qui a poussé les ménages à s’endetter massivement. Leur démonstration est impressionnante et implacable. L’explosion des prêts immobiliers jusqu’à 2007 a créé un effet de richesse fictif, qui a conduit les propriétaires américains à poursuivre leur politique d’endettement. En réalité, la dette s’apparente à une « anti-assurance » appauvrissant les ménages au moment où ils sont vulnérables – en période de perte d’emploi ou de récession. D’ailleurs, selon les auteurs, la chute de la consommation très marquée dans les foyers fortement endettés constitue bien la preuve que la crise immobilière et le fort endettement privé sont à l’origine des difficultés. Dès lors que la récession est installée et se propage, il devient stérile de condamner moralement les ménages surendettés. Que faire alors ?

Les solutions classiques consistant à baisser les salaires et à pousser les travailleurs à migrer ne sont pas réalistes. Les politiques d’austérité visant à rééquilibrer les comptes publics sont dangereuses. Les politiques monétaires accommodantes sont quant à elle inadaptées. D’une part, la baisse des taux d’intérêt est inopérante car les individus ayant la plus forte propension à consommer sont déjà très endettés. D’autre part, les quantitative easings ne sont d’aucune utilité aux grandes entreprises, et ne font qu’alimenter le gonflement de bulles sur les marchés actions. Mian et Sufi en arrivent à la conclusion qu’il serait nettement plus efficace de restructurer la dette des ménages. Cette initiative permettrait d’accroître la demande globale et de prévenir de futures bulles, qui sont le plus souvent le résultat d’une expansion excessive de l’offre de crédit.

S’abonner à Politique étrangère.

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(Own report) - In cooperation with NSA, a US military intelligence service, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has massively intercepted and stored emails from Austria, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic. This became evident through an internal email from an employee of the Deutsche Telekom AG, responsible for cooperation with the intelligence service and police. According to the email, published by the Austrian parliamentarian Peter Pilz, Telekom, already in early February 2005, had given a green light to the BND having access to a fiber optic cable for internet communication connecting Luxembourg to Austria and numerous other countries. At the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), as Head of the Federal Chancellery, bore the highest responsibility for the activities of the BND. According to reports, Austria's domestic intelligence was also being tapped. Whoever is cognizant of this communication, knows "almost everything about the Republic's political life," summarized Pilz. The governments concerned have raised no serious protests, in the Germany-dominated EU. The German government is continuing the BND's technological upgrading, aimed ultimately toward raising German espionage "to an equal footing" with the NSA - also in internet spying.

Delta Force operators killed a senior Islamic State leader inside Syria, but the intelligence they collected could be just as important -- and might open the door to new raids in the future.

The Camp David summit concluded on Thursday with a stack of assurances from President Barack Obama to representatives of the Arab Gulf states that America has their back. To prove his intentions, he promised to sell them more and better weapons, and to increase the frequency of combined training and exercise opportunities for their forces ...

The best stories from around the world.

The Defense Department has long praised a support program for troubled troops. That wasn't enough to save it from the budget axe.

Victoria Nuland, America’s top diplomat for Europe, has tapped an experienced Capitol Hill staffer as her new senior adviser, officials tell Foreign Policy.

Nearly every day, it seems, a new report arrives of hundreds of migrants being pulled out of the sea or drowning in anonymity. Both in the Mediterranean Sea and the waters of South East Asia, desperate migrants are being packed into rickety boats and transported across dangerous waterways toward the hope of a new life, ...

Some financial companies in the U.S. resort to carrying cash on airplanes to keep remittances flowing to needy Somalis.

A federal jury in Massachusetts sentenced Tsarnaev to death on six of 17 counts.

The country's bold strategy to fight maternal mortality flouts conventional wisdom and relies on a controversial drug -- and in the wake of the devastating earthquake, it could be more important than ever.

Islamic State fighters are pushing deeper into the key Iraqi city of Ramadi while launching new attacks against the sprawling Baiji oil refinery, but a top U.S. military official involved in the Pentagon’s training and advising mission there says that the group remains “on the defensive.” Speaking by phone from his headquarters in the Middle ...

Thousands of Nepali workers in Qatar struggle to find a way to go home -- and give back -- to a country in crisis.

Relief efforts continue in Nepal. Photo Credit: Rajan Shrestha via Wikimedia Commons

The Crusades: A Complete History
By Jonathan Phillips
History Today

The crusades may not be recent history, but the number of times they’ve been appropriated by politicians in the past few years you’d think they might be. Phillips provides a fairly comprehensive history of these wars and the logic behind them.

Nepal’s Aid System is Broken. So These Lifesavers Hacked It.
By Abe Streep
Wired

As governments and international NGOs struggled to provide aid in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Nepal, a number of ad hoc, unregistered and unlicensed efforts have sprung up to fill the void these larger organizations have left. Wired looks at one of them, which was borne out of an bed-and-breakfast called the Yellow House.

How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield
By Sebastian Junger
Vanity Fair

Junger, who has experience with PTSD on a personal level as well, explores the history of the disorder, its effects and why it’s so prevalent in Western societies. Ultimately, he notes, it boils down to making society feel more inclusive for soldiers who have left the perils of war to return home.

The Killing of Osama bin Laden
By Seymour M. Hersh
The London Review of Books

Love it or leave it, Hersh’s “alternative narrative” of the killing of Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad has sparked conversations the world over. Hersh’s account posits that bin Laden had been held by Pakistani officials for a number of years and tries to poke holes in the official narrative presented by the Obama administration. Agree with him or not, it’s worth a read to see what all the fuss is about.

Theorizing the Drone
By Grégoire Chamayou
Longreads

What does the rise of the drone mean for modern warfare? How does it, if it does at all, change the moral calculations in war? What even counts as a drone? These are just a few of the questions French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou tries to answer in these four chapters republished by Longreads from his book Theorizing the Drone.

Blogs:

Climate Change: A Generational Challenge by Elly Rostoum
Turkmenistan and Europe’s pipe dreams by Mark Varga
International Security: We’re Doing It Wrong by Oliver Barrett
Turkey Cracks Down on NGOs by Gary Sands
Countering the Sunni-Shia Divide by Ali G. Scotten

Over at FPA.org:

Great Decisions 2015 Spring Updates by Eugene Steinberg, Paul Mutter, Daniel R. Donovan, Hannah Gais, and Jordan Stutts

The 15-year-old diarist was a singular talent. Let’s stop pretending every young woman tweeting her life under fire is doing the same.