#Mexico has world's 11th-highest GDP based on PPP. As Europe weakens, it will be in the top 10 @johnfmauldin

Mexico as a Major Power

By George Friedman

March 14, 2016

This from Mauldin Economics



Mexico has the 11^th-highest GDP in the world based
on purchasing power parity, according to the International Monetary
Fund. As Europe weakens, it will be in the top 10 in the not-too-distant
future. Yet, this country is regarded by many Americans as a Third
World nation, dominated by drug cartels and impoverished people
desperate to get into the United States.

While it is true that organized crime exists in Mexico and
that many Mexicans want to immigrate to the US, a roughly equal number
are leaving the US and returning to Mexico… drawn by economic
opportunities in their home country. The largest auto plant in the
Western Hemisphere is in Mexico, and Bombardier builds major components
for aircraft there. Mexico has many problems, of course, but so does the
U.K. (the 10^th-largest economy) and Italy (12^th).

No one would be surprised by the U.K. or Italy rankings, but many
people would be stunned to find that Mexico is ranked right up with
them. Obviously, Mexico is not as developed as Britain is. Like most
nations transitioning from underdevelopment to greater development,
Mexico suffers from substantial class and regional inequality, and the
emergence of a dominant middle class is still unfolding.

At the same time, Italy also has substantial regional inequality.
Mexico can't aspire to British standards, but Italy is a reasonable
model. Inequality diminishes the significance of being 11th in some
ways, but it doesn't change the basic reality of Mexico’s relative
strength.

Mexico is commonly perceived, far too simplistically, as a Third
World country with a general breakdown of law and a population seeking
to flee north. That perception is also common among many Mexicans, who
seem to have internalized the contempt in which they are held.

Mexicans know that their country’s economy grew 2.5 percent last year
and is forecast to grow between 2 percent and 3 percent in 2016—roughly
equal to the growth projection for the US economy.  But, oddly, they
tend to discount the significance of Mexico’s competitive growth numbers
in a sluggish global economy.

Here, therefore, we have an interesting phenomenon. Mexico is, in
fact, one of the leading economies of the world, yet most people don’t
recognize it as such and tend to dismiss its importance.



Read the rest of the article here: Mexico as a Major Power

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#Kissinger on the #MiddleEast: Too much of our public debate deals with tactical expedients. What we need is a strategic concept" @WSJ

Finally some intelligent analysis on the current situation in the Middle East. 

A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse

ENLARGE

Syrians in Damascus thank Vladimir Putin for aiding the Assad regime, Oct. 13. Photo: SANA/Associated Press

By

Henry A. Kissinger

Oct. 16, 2015 7:18 p.m. ET

The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity. Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the region.

That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) as an unrelenting foe of established world order. It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law.

ISIS’ claim has given the millennium-old split between the Shiite and Sunni sects of Islam an apocalyptic dimension. The remaining Sunni states feel threatened by both the religious fervor of ISIS as well as by Shiite Iran, potentially the most powerful state in the region. Iran compounds its menace by presenting itself in a dual capacity. On one level, Iran acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy, even invoking the safeguards of the international system. At the same time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony based on jihadist principles: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; Hamas in Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen.

Thus the Sunni Middle East risks engulfment by four concurrent sources: Shiite-governed Iran and its legacy of Persian imperialism; ideologically and religiously radical movements striving to overthrow prevalent political structures; conflicts within each state between ethnic and religious groups arbitrarily assembled after World War I into (now collapsing) states; and domestic pressures stemming from detrimental political, social and economic domestic policies.

The fate of Syria provides a vivid illustration: What started as a Sunni revolt against the Alawite (a Shiite offshoot) autocrat Bashar Assad fractured the state into its component religious and ethnic groups, with nonstate militias supporting each warring party, and outside powers pursuing their own strategic interests. Iran supports the Assad regime as the linchpin of an Iranian historic dominance stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean. The Gulf States insist on the overthrow of Mr. Assad to thwart Shiite Iranian designs, which they fear more than Islamic State. They seek the defeat of ISIS while avoiding an Iranian victory. This ambivalence has been deepened by the nuclear deal, which in the Sunni Middle East is widely interpreted as tacit American acquiescence in Iranian hegemony.

These conflicting trends, compounded by America’s retreat from the region, have enabled Russia to engage in military operations deep in the Middle East, a deployment unprecedented in Russian history. Russia’s principal concern is that the Assad regime’s collapse could reproduce the chaos of Libya, bring ISIS into power in Damascus, and turn all of Syria into a haven for terrorist operations, reaching into Muslim regions inside Russia’s southern border in the Caucasus and elsewhere. 

On the surface, Russia’s intervention serves Iran’s policy of sustaining the Shiite element in Syria. In a deeper sense, Russia’s purposes do not require the indefinite continuation of Mr. Assad’s rule. It is a classic balance-of-power maneuver to divert the Sunni Muslim terrorist threat from Russia’s southern border region. It is a geopolitical, not an ideological, challenge and should be dealt with on that level. Whatever the motivation, Russian forces in the region—and their participation in combat operations—produce a challenge that American Middle East policy has not encountered in at least four decades.

American policy has sought to straddle the motivations of all parties and is therefore on the verge of losing the ability to shape events. The U.S. is now opposed to, or at odds in some way or another with, all parties in the region: with Egypt on human rights; with Saudi Arabia over Yemen; with each of the Syrian parties over different objectives. The U.S. proclaims the determination to remove Mr. Assad but has been unwilling to generate effective leverage—political or military—to achieve that aim. Nor has the U.S. put forward an alternative political structure to replace Mr. Assad should his departure somehow be realized. 

Russia, Iran, ISIS and various terrorist organizations have moved into this vacuum: Russia and Iran to sustain Mr. Assad; Tehran to foster imperial and jihadist designs. The Sunni states of the Persian Gulf, Jordan and Egypt, faced with the absence of an alternative political structure, favor the American objective but fear the consequence of turning Syria into another Libya.

American policy on Iran has moved to the center of its Middle East policy. The administration has insisted that it will take a stand against jihadist and imperialist designs by Iran and that it will deal sternly with violations of the nuclear agreement. But it seems also passionately committed to the quest for bringing about a reversal of the hostile, aggressive dimension of Iranian policy through historic evolution bolstered by negotiation.

The prevailing U.S. policy toward Iran is often compared by its advocates to the Nixon administration’s opening to China, which contributed, despite some domestic opposition, to the ultimate transformation of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The comparison is not apt. The opening to China in 1971 was based on the mutual recognition by both parties that the prevention of Russian hegemony in Eurasia was in their common interest. And 42 Soviet divisions lining the Sino-Soviet border reinforced that conviction. No comparable strategic agreement exists between Washington and Tehran. On the contrary, in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear accord, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and rejected negotiations with America about nonnuclear matters. Completing his geopolitical diagnosis, Mr. Khamenei also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 25 years.

Forty-five years ago, the expectations of China and the U.S. were symmetrical. The expectations underlying the nuclear agreement with Iran are not. Tehran will gain its principal objectives at the beginning of the implementation of the accord. America’s benefits reside in a promise of Iranian conduct over a period of time. The opening to China was based on an immediate and observable adjustment in Chinese policy, not on an expectation of a fundamental change in China’s domestic system. The optimistic hypothesis on Iran postulates that Tehran’s revolutionary fervor will dissipate as its economic and cultural interactions with the outside world increase.

American policy runs the risk of feeding suspicion rather than abating it. Its challenge is that two rigid and apocalyptic blocs are confronting each other: a Sunni bloc consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States; and the Shiite bloc comprising Iran, the Shiite sector of Iraq with Baghdad as its capital, the Shiite south of Lebanon under Hezbollah control facing Israel, and the Houthi portion of Yemen, completing the encirclement of the Sunni world. In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be treated as your friend no longer applies. For in the contemporary Middle East, it is likely that the enemy of your enemy remains your enemy.

A great deal depends on how the parties interpret recent events. Can the disillusionment of some of our Sunni allies be mitigated? How will Iran’s leaders interpret the nuclear accord once implemented—as a near-escape from potential disaster counseling a more moderate course, returning Iran to an international order? Or as a victory in which they have achieved their essential aims against the opposition of the U.N. Security Council, having ignored American threats and, hence, as an incentive to continue Tehran’s dual approach as both a legitimate state and a nonstate movement challenging the international order?

Two-power systems are prone to confrontation, as was demonstrated in Europe in the run-up to World War I. Even with traditional weapons technology, to sustain a balance of power between two rigid blocs requires an extraordinary ability to assess the real and potential balance of forces, to understand the accumulation of nuances that might affect this balance, and to act decisively to restore it whenever it deviates from equilibrium—qualities not heretofore demanded of an America sheltered behind two great oceans.

But the current crisis is taking place in a world of nontraditional nuclear and cyber technology. As competing regional powers strive for comparable threshold capacity, the nonproliferation regime in the Middle East may crumble. If nuclear weapons become established, a catastrophic outcome is nearly inevitable. A strategy of pre-emption is inherent in the nuclear technology. The U.S. must be determined to prevent such an outcome and apply the principle of nonproliferation to all nuclear aspirants in the region.

Too much of our public debate deals with tactical expedients. What we need is a strategic concept and to establish priorities on the following principles:

• So long as ISIS survives and remains in control of a geographically defined territory, it will compound all Middle East tensions. Threatening all sides and projecting its goals beyond the region, it freezes existing positions or tempts outside efforts to achieve imperial jihadist designs. The destruction of ISIS is more urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who has already lost over half of the area he once controlled. Making sure that this territory does not become a permanent terrorist haven must have precedence. The current inconclusive U.S. military effort risks serving as a recruitment vehicle for ISIS as having stood up to American might. 

• The U.S. has already acquiesced in a Russian military role. Painful as this is to the architects of the 1973 system, attention in the Middle East must remain focused on essentials. And there exist compatible objectives. In a choice among strategies, it is preferable for ISIS-held territory to be reconquered either by moderate Sunni forces or outside powers than by Iranian jihadist or imperial forces. For Russia, limiting its military role to the anti-ISIS campaign may avoid a return to Cold War conditions with the U.S.

• The reconquered territories should be restored to the local Sunni rule that existed there before the disintegration of both Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty. The sovereign states of the Arabian Peninsula, as well as Egypt and Jordan, should play a principal role in that evolution. After the resolution of its constitutional crisis, Turkey could contribute creatively to such a process.

• As the terrorist region is being dismantled and brought under nonradical political control, the future of the Syrian state should be dealt with concurrently. A federal structure could then be built between the Alawite and Sunni portions. If the Alawite regions become part of a Syrian federal system, a context will exist for the role of Mr. Assad, which reduces the risks of genocide or chaos leading to terrorist triumph.

• The U.S. role in such a Middle East would be to implement the military assurances in the traditional Sunni states that the administration promised during the debate on the Iranian nuclear agreement, and which its critics have demanded.

• In this context, Iran’s role can be critical. The U.S. should be prepared for a dialogue with an Iran returning to its role as a Westphalian state within its established borders.

The U.S. must decide for itself the role it will play in the 21st century; the Middle East will be our most immediate—and perhaps most severe—test. At question is not the strength of American arms but rather American resolve in understanding and mastering a new world.

Mr. Kissinger served as national-security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse - WSJ

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#UCLA student is latest victim of campus #AntiSemitism @CNN

54% of Jewish students reported experiencing or witnessing ant-Semitism on campus during the six months of September 2013-March 2014. Our survey covered 1,157 Jewish students on 55 campuses.

UCLA student is latest victim of anti-Semitism on campus

Rachel Beyda, a UCLA student, was initially turned down for a student government post after questions were raised about whether her Jewish faith would affect her impartiality.

(CNN)The story of the Jews in the United States is a testament to "American exceptionalism" and stands in contrast to a long history of discrimination and pariah status in Europe and Muslim lands. In fact, the economic prosperity and social standing of America's Jews shows that generally they have fared better than many other minorities. 

This positive record is a fulfillment of the assurance given to the Newport, Rhode Island, Hebrew Congregation in 1790 by President George Washington: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Since then, American Jews have been appointed and elected to public offices as governors, senators, mayors, Cabinet officers and in the military, and today, most American adults are unaware of and don't seem to care who's Jewish.

Thus it comes as a shock when at the University of California Los Angeles, a Jewish woman student applicant for the Student Council's Judicial Board is initially rejected after being asked: "Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?" According to The New York Times, the discussion that followed had "seemed to echo the kind of questions, prejudices and tropes -- particularly about divided loyalties -- that have plagued Jews across the globe for centuries."

The minutes and video of the event suggest some student leaders seemed to be auditioning for the Salem witch trials and others for jobs as political commissars in Communist North Korea. And in February, at another University of California campus in Davis, Jewish students opposed to a Student Council resolution advocating a boycott of Israel were heckled by cries of "Allahu Akbar" and a Jewish fraternity house was daubed with a swastika.

Chancellor Gene Block of UCLA called the dust up on his campus a "teachable moment." Yes, agreed. It seems UCLA's diverse body of students requires remedial classes in civics. Would UCLA students consider it appropriate to ask U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan similarly hostile and demeaning questions?

Apparently it's necessary for the university to teach its student leadership that the U.S. Constitution bans religious tests for public office. While they are at it, they also can inform them that the Bill of Rights assures freedom of religion, speech and assembly to all citizens.  California's university administrators might need to be reminded that Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies to all Americans, and they have an obligation to ensure equal educational opportunity for all students. This includes, among other things, promptly and effectively addressing certain hostile environments.

As for the UC Davis students, they need to learn that support for Israel is a legitimate American tradition. A century ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis asserted: "Zionism is the Pilgrim inspiration and impulse all over again ... to be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists." Students are of course free to disagree with Brandeis but not to harass or intimidate Jews who support his argument.

The events in California might be regarded as isolated incidents and youthful excesses of the type that has always marked campus life. Except of course that is not true. This type of hatred, stereotyping and bias is a worrying new development that suggests a generational problem.

In our recent study, my Trinity College colleague, Ariela Keysar, and I found that 54% of Jewish students reported experiencing or witnessing ant-Semitism on campus during the six months of September 2013-March 2014. Our survey covered 1,157 Jewish students on 55 campuses. The patterns and high rates of anti-Semitism that were reported were surprising. Another finding was that female students were more likely than males (58% versus 51%) to report anti-Semitism. Jewish women seem more vulnerable on campus today.

America's universities need to foster American exceptionalism and values. They should take special care to avoid following current "European fashion trends." The situation in France today demonstrates the price of failing to nip youthful extremism in the bud.

Twenty years ago, complaints by Jewish students in Paris that they were subject to anti-Semitism from a strange coalition of Marxist, fascist and Islamist groups were ignored by complacent university and government officials.

The dangerous streets of Paris are witness to what results when a country ignores problems and panders to extremist opinions. The army is currently deployed across France to protect synagogues and Jewish community buildings. But history has taught us what begins with the Jews doesn't end with the Jews. The French army also has to defend the nation's shopping malls, government buildings and of course, its cartoonists.

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UCLA student is latest victim of campus anti-Semitism - CNN.com

"We face a #leadership deficit of global proportions" We Have Reached Peak President by @AaronDMiller2

From @ForeignPolicy, Aaron David Miller tackles the lack of leaders in the world today.

We face a leadership deficit of global proportions. In fact, we seem to be pretty well along into what you might call the post-heroic leadership era

We Have Reached Peak President

Why the time of great American leadership is over.

• BY AARON DAVID MILLER
• OCTOBER 14, 2014

A couple years back, I gave a talk to a group of Princeton graduate students and faculty on the indispensable role leaders play in successful Arab-Israeli negotiations. Having worked on the Middle East peace process for over 20 years, I had come to the conclusion that, far more than any other factor, it was willful leaders -- masters, not prisoners, of their political houses -- who produced the agreements that endure.

It proved to be a pretty tough crowd.

One graduate student insisted that I had been taken hostage by Thomas Carlyle and his "Great Man" theory of history. Another critic, a visiting professor from Turkey, protested that I had completely ignored the broader social and economic forces that really drive and determine change.

I conceded to both that the debate about what mattered more -- the individual or circumstances -- was a complicated business. But I reminded the professor that she hailed from a land in which one man,Mustafa Kemal -- otherwise known as Ataturk -- had fundamentally changed the entire direction of her country's modern history. We left it at that.

History, to be sure, is driven by the interaction between human agency and circumstance. Based on my own experiences in government and negotiations, individuals count greatly in this mix, particularly in matters of war, peace, and nation-building. Historian John Keegan made the stunning assertion that the story of much of the 20th century was a tale -- the biographies, really -- of six men: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, FDR, and Mao. Wherever you stand on the issue of the individual's role in history, its impact must be factored into the equation, particularly when it comes to explaining turning points in a nation's history.

Nonetheless, the professor from Turkey had a point. Today we are consumed with leaders and leadership as the solution, if not the panacea, to just about everything that ails us. We admire the bold, transformational leader who seeks fundamental change, and value less the cautious transactor who negotiates, triangulates, and settles for less dramatic results. And we tend to forget too that great leaders almost always emerge in times of national crisis, trauma, and exigency, a risk we run if we hunger for the return of such leaders. Still, in Holy Grail-like pursuit, we search for some magic formula or key to try to understand what accounts for great leadership. Indeed, we seem nothing short of obsessed with the L-word.

Micah Zenko, my fellow columnist at Foreign Policy, in a column on this very word, notes that if you type "leadership books" into the Amazon search engine you get 126,288 results. Want to study leadership or, better yet, become a leader? There is certainly a program for you. The International Leadership Association lists over 1,500 academic programs in the field. Yale University alone has a Leadership Institute, a Women's Leadership Initiative, a Global Health Leadership Institute, and an MBA on Leadership in Healthcare.

This focus on leaders is understandable, particularly during times of great uncertainty and stress. The psychologists and mythologists tell us that the need to search for the great leader to guide or even rescue us is an ancient -- even primordial -- impulse. But what happens when we reach for something we may no longer be able to have?

Indeed, these days, those who favor and align with the Carlyle crowd and the "Great Man" view of history -- myself included -- have a serious problem.

We are now well into the 21st century, a full 70 years after Keegan's six transformers either tried to take over the world or to save it. Look around. Where are the giants of old, the transformers who changed the world and left great legacies? Plenty of very bad leaders have come and gone -- Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Qaddafi, Slobodan Milosevic -- and some larger-than-life good ones too, like Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Anwar Sadat, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II, and Nelson Mandela.

Leaders, to be sure, can emerge from the most unlikely places and at the least expected and most fortuitous times. Think only of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. And who knows what kind of leaders history's long arc might produce in the future?

That said, today things don't look that bright. We face a leadership deficit of global proportions. In fact, we seem to be pretty well along into what you might call the post-heroic leadership era.

Today, 193 countries sit in the United Nations, among them 88 free and functioning democracies. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the so-called great powers -- the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia -- are not led by great, transformative leaders. Nor do rising states such as Brazil, India, and South Africa boast leaders with strong and accomplished records. We certainly see leaders who are adept at maintaining power and keeping their seats -- some, like Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for many years. Germany's Angela Merkel is certainly a powerful leader and skilled politician.

But where are those whom we could honestly describe as potentially great, heroic, or inspirational? And how many are not only great, but good -- with compassion and high moral and ethical standards -- too? Today, if I were pressed to identify a potentially great leader, I might offer up not a traditional head of state at all, but rather a religious figure: Pope Francis I, whose greatness as well as goodness may well be defined by the irony of his anti-greatness, commonness, and humility.

Nowhere is this leadership vacuum more acutely felt than in the politics of the United States, the world's greatest and most consequential power.

Nowhere is this leadership vacuum more acutely felt than in the politics of the United States, the world's greatest and most consequential power. Greatness is certainly not missing in the American story. Despite talk of decline, America remains the world's sole superpower, with a better balance of military, political, economic, and soft power than any other nation in the world. With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States accounts for a full 25 percent of the world's economic output, nearly half of its military expenditures, and has the best capacity to project its educational, cultural, and social media soft-power resources. We surely have no shortage of great athletes, actors, entrepreneurs, and scientists.

Still, great nations are supposed to have great political leaders too, right? And yet today in America we hear very little talk of greatness in our politics. Instead, the focus is on the leadership deficit, on America the ungovernable, and on the sorry state of its dysfunctional politics. One 2013 poll revealed that the public's view of Congress was significantly less positive than its view of root canal operations, NFL replacement refs, colonoscopies, France, and even cockroaches.

It should come as no surprise that the concern about the leadership deficit in our political class also extends to the presidency itself, an institution that has become, both for better and worse, the central element in our political system.

Yet the centrality of the presidency must be reconciled with the limitations of the office and the constraints that bind it. The presidency has always been an implausible, some might even say an impossible, job. But the following mix of challenges and constraints -- some old, some new -- has made the post-World War II presidency harder still: constitutional and practical constraints on the office itself; the president's expanding reach and responsibilities; the expanding role of a government we trust less, even when we demand more from it; America's global role; and an intrusive, omnipresent, and nonstop media.

These challenges have created the ultimate presidential bind. On one hand, we have become presidency-dependent in a president-centric system; on the other hand, our expectations have risen while the president's capacity to deliver has diminished.

In essence, we are lost in a kind of presidential Bermuda Triangle, adrift between the presidents we still want and the ones we can no longer have.

That bind is the subject of my new book, The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President. And three elements define and drive the core argument:

First, greatness in the presidency may be rare, but it is both real and measurable.

Three undeniably great presidents straddle the American story: Washington, the proverbial father of his country; Lincoln, who kept it whole through the Civil War; and Franklin Roosevelt, who shepherded the nation through its worst economic calamity and won its greatest war. Their very deeds define the meaning of greatness in American political life. So let me be clear about my definition of that greatness: Each of the undeniably great presidents overcame a truly nation-wrenching challenge or crisis; each used his crisis moment to fundamentally alter the way we see ourselves as a nation and the way we govern ourselves too, and in doing so changed the nation forever for the better; and each in the process transcended narrow partisanship and in time came to be seen even by critics as an extraordinary national leader.

In addition to these three undeniable greats, perhaps five others whom historians and the public judge favorably too -- their own legacies secured through great accomplishments at critical moments in the nation's story -- round out the group of top performers. The operative point is that this greatness club has created a frame of reference, a high bar really -- and a problematic one, at that -- against which we have come to judge and evaluate our modern presidents and they have come to judge themselves. In the book's early sections, I look at what defines greatness in the presidency and look at who gets admitted into this elite presidential club and why.

Second, historic greatness in the presidency has gone the way of the dodo.

And it is unlikely to return any time soon. The presidents we judge to be great are very much with us still -- everywhere, really. They are on our money and monuments, stars of our HBO specials and Hollywood movies, and subjects of best-selling presidential biographies. They are everywhere, that is, except in the White House.

As we will see, what I describe as "traces of greatness," both real and perceived, have appeared in several of our more contemporary presidents. But those "traces" are not to be confused with the performance of the three undeniables or the handful of other top performers we hold in high esteem. The greatness I described earlier belongs to an America of a different time and place, to a different country really. In the second part of the book, I explain why the history of the post-FDR presidency has been such a challenging tale, and why the times and circumstances have narrowed the prospects, the need, and the opportunity for sustained heroic action in the presidency.

Third, and there really is no other way to say this: We need to get over the greatness thing and stop pining for the return of leaders we can no longer have.

Like the ghosts in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, great presidents continue to hover, to teach, and to inspire. And we have much to learn from their successes and failures. But there is a risk in thinking, let alone succumbing to the illusion, that we will see their likes again, even in an altered contemporary guise. The world and country have changed and so have we. And besides, we should not want to see them again. Greatness in the presidency is too rare to be relevant in our modern times and -- driven as it is in our political system by big crisis -- too risky and dangerous to be desirable. Our continued search for idealized presidents raises our expectations and theirs, skews presidential performance, and leads to an impossible standard that can only frustrate and disappoint. To sum up: We can no longer have a truly great president, we seldom need one, and, as irrational as it sounds, we may not want one, either. And the final chapters of the book contemplate why.

So what do we do about our seemingly insatiable presidential addiction?

Americans will always aspire to more. And we can no more give up on our presidents than we can on ourselves.

Maybe our story, a journey really through a period of presidential greatness once revealed and now gone, will offer up some answers. And perhaps at journey's end we can even begin to discover a way to narrow the gap between the presidents we want and the ones we can realistically have.

This piece was adapted from Aaron David Miller's recent book, The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President.

We Have Reached Peak President

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What Really Happened in #Iran in 1953?

Conventional wisdom about the 1953 coup in Iran rests on the myth that the CIA toppled the country's democratically elected prime minister. In reality, the coup was primarily a domestic Iranian affair, and the CIA's impact was ultimately insignificant.

What Really Happened in Iran

Back in 2009, during his heavily promoted Cairo speech on American relations with the Muslim world, U.S. President Barack Obama noted, in passing, that “in the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Obama was referring to the 1953 coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and consolidated the rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Obama would go on to remind his audience that Iran had also committed its share of misdeeds against Americans. But he clearly intended his allusion to Washington’s role in the coup as a concession -- a public acknowledgment that the United States shared some of the blame for its long-simmering conflict with the Islamic Republic.

Yet there was a supreme irony to Obama’s concession. The history of the U.S. role in Iran’s 1953 coup may be “well known,” as the president declared in his speech, but it is not well founded. On the contrary, it rests heavily on two related myths: that machinations by the CIA were the most important factor in Mosaddeq’s downfall and that Iran’s brief democratic interlude was spoiled primarily by American and British meddling. For decades, historians, journalists, and pundits have promoted these myths, injecting them not just into the political discourse but also into popular culture: most recently, Argo, a Hollywood thriller that won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture, suggested that Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was a belated response to an injustice perpetrated by the United States a quarter century earlier. That version of events has also been promoted by Iran’s theocratic leaders, who have exploited it to stoke anti-Americanism and to obscure the fact that the clergy itself played a major role in toppling Mosaddeq.

In reality, the CIA’s impact on the events of 1953 was ultimately insignificant. Regardless of anything the United States did or did not do, Mosaddeq was bound to fall and the shah was bound to retain his throne and expand his power. Yet the narrative of American culpability has become so entrenched that it now shapes how many Americans understand the history of U.S.-Iranian relations and influences how American leaders think about Iran. In reaching out to the Islamic Republic, the United States has cast itself as a sinner expiating its previous transgressions. This has allowed the Iranian theocracy, which has abused history in a thousand ways, to claim the moral high ground, giving it an unearned advantage over Washington and the West, even in situations that have nothing to do with 1953 and in which Iran’s behavior is the sole cause of the conflict, such as the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program.

All of this makes developing a better and more accurate understanding of the real U.S. role in Iran’s past critically important. It’s far more than a matter of correcting the history books. Getting things right would help the United States develop a less self-defeating approach to the Islamic Republic today and would encourage Iranians -- especially the country’s clerical elite -- to claim ownership of their past.

Day in court: Mohammad Mosaddeq on trial, November 1953. (Getty / Carl Mydans)

HONEST BROKERS

In the years following World War II, Iran was a devastated country, recovering from famine and poverty brought on by the war. It was also a wealthy country, whose ample oil reserves fueled the engines of the British Empire. But Iran’s government didn’t control that oil: the wheel was held by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose majority shareholder happened to be the British government. By the early 1950s, as assertive nationalism swept the developing world, many Iranians were beginning to see this colonial-era arrangement as an unjust, undignified anachronism.

So strong was the desire to take back control of Iran’s national resources that it united the country’s liberal reformers, its intelligentsia, elements of its clerical establishment, and its middle-class professionals into a coherent political movement. At the center of that movement stood Mosaddeq, an upper-class lawyer who had been involved in Iranian politics from a young age, serving in various ministries and as a member of parliament. Toward the end of World War II, Mosaddeq reemerged on the political scene as a champion of Iranian anticolonialism and nationalism and managed to draw together many disparate elements into his political party, the National Front. Mosaddeq was not a revolutionary; he was respectful of the traditions of his social class and supported the idea of constitutional monarchy. But he also sought a more modern and more democratic Iran, and in addition to the nationalization of Iran’s oil, his party’s agenda called for improved public education, freedom of the press, judicial reforms, and a more representative government.

In April 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to appoint Mosaddeq prime minister. In a clever move, Mosaddeq insisted that he would not assume the office unless the parliament also approved an act he had proposed that would nationalize the Iranian oil industry. Mosaddeq got his way in a unanimous vote, and the easily intimidated shah capitulated to the parliament’s demands. Iran now entered a new and more dangerous crisis.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer... State of Politics in #Venezuela Unsettled by Chávez Appointments

A classic case of, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer..."

Appointments Unsettle State of Venezuelan Politics

NYTimes.com

Ever since President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela fell ill with cancer last year, intense speculation has focused on his inner circle and who might be groomed as a possible successor. Now, with a lengthy re-election campaign ahead of him, Mr. Chávez has once again upended expectations, scattering some of his closest confidants and promoting some old associates in a way that seems certain to provoke alarm at home and abroad.

On Thursday, a top official in Mr. Chávez's political party, Diosdado Cabello, was sworn in as president of the National Assembly. Mr. Cabello, a former vice president with close ties to the military and an on-again off-again relationship with Mr. Chávez's inner circle, wasted no time in announcing to opposition legislators that he had no intention of negotiating with them over issues.

Then came a bombshell with international implications: On Friday, Mr. Chávez announced that his new defense minister would be Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, a longtime military ally who has been accused by the United States of links to drug traffickers and by opposition politicians in Venezuela of being hostile to the democratic process. A former head of the Venezuelan intelligence service, General Rangel was accused by the United States Treasury Department in 2008 of working closely with the main leftist Colombian rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to help them transport drugs through Venezuela. Since then, further evidence has emerged fleshing out allegations that General Rangel aided the FARC's efforts to move both drugs and weapons.

"Naming him while he's on the list that the United States has of likely corrupt officials involved in the drug trade in Venezuela is clearly a thumb in the eye of the United States," said Bruce M. Bagley, chairman of the international studies department at the University of Miami.

The announcement was sure to play well to Mr. Chávez's base, which cheers his frequent taunting of the United States as an imperialist power seeking to trample on Venezuelan sovereignty. (Mr. Chávez will burnish his anti-American credentials further on Sunday when he hosts a visit by Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)

The appointment may have been equally calculated to infuriate the opposition. In 2010, General Rangel gave an interview in which he said that the military was deeply loyal to Mr. Chávez and "married" to his political project. Some of his remarks were interpreted as suggesting that the military would not accept the formation of an opposition government if Mr. Chávez lost the 2012 presidential election, although the government later said his words were misinterpreted.

On Friday, Diego Arria, an opposition politician, issued Twitter posts criticizing the appointment of General Rangel, citing the drug trafficking allegations and his remarks about the coming election.

The appointment "is an act of profound embarrassment for the Armed Forces and a threat to all of us," wrote Mr. Arria, who is seeking the opposition presidential nomination but is not considered a front runner.

Carlos Blanco, an adviser to another opposition candidate, María Corina Machado, said that General Rangel's appointment carried a political message.

"Rangel Silva is connected to that image, the military officer that won't allow another leader being in office," Mr. Blanco said. "That's the symbol that he represents, and I think that's what Chávez is bringing into his cabinet." He said that Mr. Chávez's intentions would become clearer when he appointed a new vice president, an announcement that is expected soon.

The moves come as Mr. Chávez prepares for an extended political campaign against an opposition that appears more unified than it has been in years. A group of opposition politicians will hold a primary election next month to choose a single candidate to face Mr. Chávez. The presidential election is scheduled to take place in October.

Mr. Chávez's doctors diagnosed cancer last June, and he spent the remainder of the year shuttling back and forth to Cuba, where he received treatment. But he has refused to give details of his illness and insists that he is fully recovered.

That has not cooled speculation about who might be waiting in the wings. Some speculation has focused on his brother, Adán, the governor of Barinas state and a close confidant. Others have looked to politicians high up in Mr. Chávez's government.

The equation changed last month, when Mr. Chávez announced that he would be moving several key figures of his inner circle out of important government positions. They included Nicolás Maduro, the foreign minister; Elías Jaua, the vice president; Tareck El Aissami, the interior minister; and Gen. Carlos Mata Figueroa, the defense minister. All four, he said, would run for governorships in states currently held by the opposition.

Mr. Maduro, and to a lesser extent Mr. Jaua, were often spoken of as possible successors to Mr. Chávez. But commentators say that Mr. Chávez has never felt comfortable keeping potential rivals close by.

To many, the ascent of Mr. Cabello and General Rangel represents a strengthening of the military's hand.

Both men took part in the failed 1992 coup attempt that first brought Mr. Chávez, then a military officer, to the attention of most Venezuelans.

Rocío San Miguel, a legal scholar who heads an organization that monitors Venezuelan security issues, said that Mr. Chávez might be seeking to solidify the loyalty of military officers in case the result of the October elections is in dispute.

"They are really who he has the most confidence in," she said. If the October election is close or if the opposition disputes the results, she said, the military wing of Mr. Chávez's party would be "absolutely indispensable."

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas.

Read the story online here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/world/americas/state-of-politics-in-venezuela-unsettled-by-chavez-appointments.html?_r=1&ref=world

Is the yuan really so undervalued?

According to the Big Mac Index from The Economist, the answer would be no...

 The wages of China bashing

Sep 7th 2011, 18:07 by R.A. | WASHINGTON

YESTERDAY, Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for the presidential nomination, released his plan to invigorate the American economy. It's mostly a collection of Republican orthodoxy, with one notable exception: Mr Romney declared his intention to get tough with China and push for a revaluation of the yuan against the dollar. The Obama has been reluctant to apply heavy pressure on China toward this end, despite populist criticism of the yuan's valuation from the left and the right. In that sense, the policy seems like a useful political weapon. As a means to boost the economy, however, its potency has significantly deteriorated.
Kevin Drum wisely points to our Bic Mac index in showing that the yuan may no longer be heavily undervalued.


That's hardly the final word on the matter, but two trends have contributed to a meaningful shift in China's terms of trade. One is change in the nominal dollar-yuan exchange rate. Since China resumed a managed appreciation in June of last year, the yuan has risen over 6% against the dollar.

The other is growth in Chinese labour costs. Mary Amiti and Mark Choi note that manufacturing sector unit labour costs in China likely rose by over 4% in 2010, contributing to a sharp rise in Chinese import prices in America. Meanwhile, yesterday's Financial Times pointed out that rising Chinese wages are already leading some manufacturers to move production outside of China:

Last week, Jonathan Anderson, a UBS economist, released a report after crunching the numbers of the US and European Union’s import data for the first half of 2011. He found China’s light manufacturing share is starting to decline from more than 50 per cent to about 48 per cent. The beneficiaries include Bangladesh (up 19 per cent in exports to the US) and Vietnam (16 per cent). The first half of 2011 “looks a pretty convincing turning point”, says Mr Anderson of a shift in labour-intensive manufacturing to south-east Asia. India and the Philippines, by contrast, which should be “natural destinations” for labour-intensive investment, appear to be sitting out the action, he says.

More yuan appreciation would in many cases simply accelerate the relocatin of labour-intensive manufacturing to other countries. It might also lead to more internal adjustments in China to raise domestic consumption, but as Michael Pettis frequently points out, the exchange rate is hardly the only tool China uses to encourage investment-led growth.
Mr Romney's China talk might be good politics, but America's economy will need much more than a floating yuan to get back to full employment.

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Iran is Building a Secret Missile Installation in Venezuela - FoxNews.com

Iran is Building a Secret Missile Installation in Venezuela - Opinion FoxNews.com

AP Photo/Iranian Defense Ministry, Vahid Reza Alaei, HO

This photo released by the Iranian Defense Ministry, alledgedly shows a Nasr1 (Victory) missile in a factory in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 7, 2010. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi announced on state TV Sunday a new production line of highly accurate, short range cruise missiles capable of evading radar. The missile named Nasr 1 (Victory) will be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size according to Vahidi. Iran frequently makes announcements about new advances in military technology that cannot be independently verified.

In November of last year, the German daily Die Welt reported that a secret agreement between the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been signed.

The agreement was said to have been signed and finalized on October 19 by both parties, though no details were offered. Hugo Chávez, who had traveled to Iran on what was called expansion of relations between the two countries, acknowledged that the details of the latest accords were not released, and that some agreements went beyond those put on paper.

The leaders of Iran and Venezuela hailed what they called their strong strategic relationship, saying they are united in efforts to establish a “New World Order” that will eliminate Western dominance over global affairs.

Now, the German newspaper, however, confirms that the bilateral agreement signed in October was for a missile installation to be built inside Venezuela. Quoting diplomatic sources, Die Welt reports that, at present, the area earmarked for the missile base is the Paraguaná Peninsula, located 120 kilometers from the Colombian border.

A group of engineers from Khatam Al-Anbia, the construction arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, covertly traveled to this area on the orders of Amir Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force.

Die Welt writes that the Iranian delegation had been ordered to focus on the plan for building the necessary foundations for air strikes. The planning and building of command stations, control bases, residential buildings, security towers, bunkers and dugouts, warheads, rocket fuel and other cloaking constructs has been assigned to other members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps of Engineers. The IRGC engineers will also be interfacing with their Venezuelan counterparts in fabricating missile depots that are said to go as deep as 20 meters in the ground.

The report maintains that building such depots is not easy and that they must be built to accommodate a network of special pipes necessary for the transfer of fuel within the installation, while expelling poisonous materials to the outside. At the same time, necessary precautions must be taken to withstand all possible air strikes.

Security sources have stated that the plans for the underground missile depots will be prepared by experts from the chemical engineering department of the Sharif Industrial University and Tehran Polytechnic. Apparently, these experts have produced and presented their first proposal to the Revolutionary Guards’ Khatam Al-Anbia headquarters.

Based on sources inside Iran, reports indicate that the Revolutionary Guards have established many entities and facilities in Venezuela as front companies involved in covert operations, such as exploration of uranium.

Venezuela is said to have significant reserves, something that Iran is desperately in need of for the continuation of their nuclear bomb project. Other activities include housing of the Quds forces, along with Hezbollah cells in these facilities, so they can expand their activities throughout Latin America and form collaborations with drug cartels in Mexico and then enter America.

Many of the Iranian so-called commercial facilities in Venezuela are under strict no-fly zone regulations by the Venezuelan government, and are only accessible by the Iranians in charge of those facilities!

With Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear program and the progress they’re making with their missile delivery system, this new military alliance with Venezuela is most alarming for our national security here in America.

Based on my sources, I believe the radicals ruling Iran are emboldened by the confusion of the Obama administration in confronting Iran’s nuclear program. The Iranian regime feels that America has exhausted all of its options with its negotiation and sanctions approach and therefore no longer poses a serious threat to Iran’s nuclear drive.

The Iranian officials recently announced that Iran will continue enriching uranium to the 20 percent level (enriching uranium to 20 percent is going 80 percent of the way to nuclear bomb material), and that it also intends to install centrifuges in the previously secret site at the Fardo enrichment plant.

With Iran’s pursuit of the bomb, its collaboration with rogue states, and its continuous support of terrorist groups in the Middle East and around the world, it is time to realize that the Iranian regime poses the gravest danger to world peace, global stability and our national security.

The Obama administration needs to take immediate action to stop the jihadists in Tehran from acquiring the nuclear bomb. Failing to do that means we will face a new brand of terrorism on a scale that will dwarf 9/11 by comparison!

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. He is the author of "A Time to Betray," a book about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, published by Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, April 2010.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/05/17/iran-building-secret-missile-installation-venezuela/#ixzz1MfT1V268

Opinion: Iran is Building a Secret Missile Installation in Venezuela - FoxNews.com