Middle East

[Federate]

Re: Middle East

Thank you very much for the update
Appreciate it
Do you have a source for this?

Here's them releasing the kids: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/0...dren-abducted/ The count of 11 is my own personal count over the last year. Unclear if any of the ones kidnapped over the last year have been released. The kidnapping toll is most likely higher.

[Mher]

Re: Middle East

Here's them releasing the kids: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/0...dren-abducted/ The count of 11 is my own personal count over the last year. Unclear if any of the ones kidnapped over the last year have been released. The kidnapping toll is most likely higher.

thank you for the information

[Haykakan]

Re: Middle East

Gagik Harutyunyan
Executive Director, Noravank Scientific Educational Foundation, Yerevan

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president
to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle
East or Africa should have his head examined."

Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defense (2006-2011)

Today hardly anyone would contest the fact that scrambling for spheres
of influence on the world-scale, which started at the end of 20th
century with monopole domination, now transforms into a multi-vector
persistent standoff. It takes place by some new rules (sometimes no
rules) of multipolar world order that have not been fully established
yet and hence, are still more than vague [1]. This new order is
first of all characterized by the circumstance that the United States
remains the world leader, but no longer is the hegemon. Interestingly,
some even predict breakdown of the superpower, among which are not
only somewhat opinionated characters, such as Paul C. Roberts, former
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration (one
of the fathers of Reaganomics) and Gerald Celente, Director of the
Trends Research Institute, but also some renowned university professors
(see, for example [2]). Another worrisome signal is persecution of
dissidents like J. Assange and E. Snowden, who made stands against
total informational control. Actions against such people (due to
which even a "prisoner of conscience" emerged, Private B. Manning)
once again actualized the ingenious works of George Orwell.

However, if one prescinds from predictions and follows the more
realistic wording of Fareed Zakaria, in the post-American World
strengthening of other geopolitical actors has significantly changed
and continues to change the balance of powers in the world arena [3].

Processes occurring against this backdrop have significantly reduced
the level of global security, especially as far as the nuclear area is
concerned. The observed trend differs from assumptions previously made
by some experts that multi-polarity would lead to global stabilization,
as it happened, for example, in the era of bipolar Cold War. However,
it cannot be ruled out that after a "transition period" of the
multicenter world evolvement something like a Peace of Westphalia
would be concluded and relative stability would follow.

The logic of "new times" is most vividly reflected in developments in
the "New Middle East" (NME), a sizable segment of Eurasia and Africa
from Morocco to Pakistan. The USA made a decision to reduce their
military presence in this region - they withdraw troops from Iraq and
Afghanistan, which is related to the shortage of economic resources.

At the same time military retreat is accompanied with increasing
activity by European and regional partners and intensification of some
traditional, and most of all, non-traditional political methods. One
way or another, it has to be noted that military/political upheavals
of the recent years lead to destabilization of the NME. Moreover,
these developments resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe, which can
be well classified as genocide.

Currently there is a wide range of interpretations of the political
processes in the conditions of "new times". We believe that
such multitude of interpretations contributes to a more adequate
comprehension of realities and therefore, we would like to share
our perception of these problems as well. However, for more or less
proper discussion of these complicated issues, we will first attempt
to briefly present some characteristic traits of the multipolar world.

"This multipolar world"

The meanings of political terms change over time and this is the case
with "multi-polarity". The content of this notion has considerably
expanded, first of all because the word "multi" now encompasses not
only nation-states, but also non-government structures (this new
world has been quite vividly described by Parag Khanna [4]). These
structures can be conditionally divided into following categories.

The role transnational corporations (TNC) has increased in the world
economy, with their financial and organizational capabilities on a
par with and sometimes even exceeding those of developed states.

Previously the TNCs were directly or indirectly associated to one
country or another, but now some of them act quite independently,
based exclusively on their own interests.

According to some Swiss researchers1 the core of TNCs consists of 147
corporations that combined with their partners and subsidiaries control
60% of the total world GDP. Characteristically, this consortium is
dominated not by production companies, but by financial corporations,
such asBarclays, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch & Co Inc., etc. Under
such circumstances it is no surprise that the "super TNCs" are quite
capable of dictating their conditions to the governments of nation
states. The developments in the system of "government - finance sector"
relationships fully correspond to the concept of "post-democratic"
society described by the English sociologist Colin Crouch as domination
of oligarchy in the government system and erosion of democratic norms
in the Western societies [5].

The second category consists of international non-government
organizations (NGOs), the number of which has significantly increased
over the past decade, mostly due to their replication in countries.

The influence of these network-mode operating organizations has
respectively increased: for example, the "color revolutions" in
ex-Soviet republics and Middle East were implemented with direct
contribution from some NGOs. In the past the NGOs, as well as TNCs were
perceived solely as tools in the political arsenal of superpowers. Some
countries (particularly Russia) attempted to legislatively constrain
the influence of these NGOs in their domestic political affairs. Notice
that such actions became possible only after establishment of the
multipolar form, since in the past NGOs enjoyed kind of a "sacred cows"
status and even criticizing them was considered an encroachment on
fundamentals of democracy.

However, over the time NGOs began transforming. The mosaic of
information flows leaves an impression that some strengthened NGOs
(especially those with ideological orientation) have started acting a
lot more independently. Currently they take contracts not only from
specific government structures, but service political and financial
groups (e.g. TNCs) both inside and outside their countries, as well as
act autonomously at their own discretion. To a large extent this is
because part of the NGOs are ideology-driven, following the concepts
of M. Bettati and B. Kouchner on necessity to "protect human rights
despite national sovereignty", which in 2005 became an international
legal norm in the form of the UN resolution "Responsibility to
Protect."2 It is well known that treating any idea as a cure-all
is fraught with unpredictable outcomes, and the consequences of NGO
actions in the Middle East vividly demonstrate this.

Various religious/confessional structures, both traditional and
relatively recently formed (often as different types of sects) also
have to be included in the category of non-government organizations.

Such structures, conditionally speaking, have been using network
management methods since long ago, and their role steadily increases
not only in the public life, but also in international politics. In
particular, the political standoff in the Middle East took the shape
of a fierce confrontation between representatives of various Sunni
and Shia sects, Islamists and Anti-Islamists, and in this background
of intolerance the Christian communities of the region were pushed
to the brink of extinction.

In the epoch of multi-stage informational revolution the large media,
Internet corporations and the like have to be included in the group
of influential non-government actors. The virtual social networks had
gained special prominence, in particular, playing important role in
the Middle East revolutions. Total "facebookization" of the entire
planet has a serious influence on the societies of all countries [6].

It has to be noted that monopolization of resources takes place also in
information sphere and for instance, control over the print media is
concentrated in the hands of five media giants3. All these structures
conduct global informational politics, something that rather than
being a supplementary and stimulating process to the politics, is
defined by RAND Corporation experts as a political genre in its own
right - Noopolitik4, in full accordance with the concept of second
generation informational warfare [7].

The information flows currently form the system of values and mentality
of the whole world community more than ever. Unsurprisingly, big
players of this sphere pursue also their own interests, to an extent
ignoring the state interests and even more so, the public ones.

Typically, the information space was previously dominated by western
media. However, due to the "multipolar trends" today the media from
other countries, first of all Russia and China, try to compete with
them. As a result, even the global "newspeak" has been somewhat
changing. For example, in the comments on Syria along with such
cliché as "opposition" or, as a last resort, "rebels", more adequate
definitions like "militants" and "mercenaries" are occasionally used.

And finally, the role of terrorist and other criminal structures
has increased in international developments. These structures have
always maintained ambiguous and complicated relations with intelligence
services of various countries and were considered their instruments of
sorts in shadow politics. However with the changed situation some of
them escaped the control and play their own games, which admittedly,
happened both in the past and during the recent developments in Syria.

Because of the large number of "variables", intricacies of conflicts
and collaborations taking place in parallel, the world order that
is being formed represents a lot more complicated system than it
used to be during the era of bipolar or monopole world orders. As
some commentators note, in a way the world has regressed into
pre-Westphalia epoch, albeit adjusted for Internet and weapons of
mass destruction. Such situation objectively makes it difficult to
comprehend and conceptualize the quickly changing characteristics
of the surrounding world. Naturally, this makes it harder to
respond appropriately to such changes. In the current conditions
likelihood of making mistakes increases, even for the USA - the most
"intellectualized" power, the policies of which are formed to a certain
extent in a substrate consisting of a multitude of high-class think
tanks, universities and scientific centers. In this context it is
understandable that in their studies the US military experts emphasize
the importance of strengthening the government institutions5. However,
in some specific cases collisions of a different nature may take place;
for instance, strengthening of the national military-industrial complex
may lead to creation of so-called "states within a state" [8, p. 196].

The combination of all these factors leads to crises felt not only
in economy, but also in all areas of public and international life.

Understandably, today one may often come across eschatological
interpretations of the processes occurring around the world. All of
this is most vividly and dramatically exhibited in the Middle East
developments.

"Clear skies over the whole Middle East"

It appears that the multitude of motives and final objectives is a
characteristic trait of processes in the Middle East. If all known
publications on this issue are to be summarized based on the dominant
attributes, then the following versions will emerge, that in no way
contradict to each other, but rather are mutually supplemental.

The version of "Arab spring". The main thesis of this version is that
socio-economic, demographic, ethnic and religious/confessional problems
accumulated into a critical mass in the countries of the region. This
resulted in mass protests with demands of reforms, modernization and
democratization in accordance with the modern notions.

There is no doubt that in the Middle East problems were more than
abundant. This issue has been discussed in many fundamental works6,
and yet another proof of it is the Revolting Index7, where among the
top 16 countries five are Arab states. Yet nothing special happened
to date in many other countries, which are a lot more "advanced"
in revolutionary sense according to the same rating list. Perhaps,
the Arab societies would have selected the evolutionary development
path if these objective domestic circumstances were not aggravated
by some external factors, such as launching the known technologies of
color revolutions, this time with an accentuation on "Friday prayers".

Organizations like April 6 Youth Movement and the one with "Kefaya"
(Enough!) moniker (remember "Kmara" in Georgia) played an important
role in this. In addition, the protest movement made use of such
effective tools of informational operations as social media and
blogosphere8. For instance, already in June 2010 Wael Ghonim, Head
of Google Middle East and North Africa opened an anti-Mubarak page in
Facebook, where daily visits at some point reached half a million. It
cannot be ruled out that in this particular case action came not so
much from the USA and its allies, but from independently operating
"democratizing" NGOs together with giant media, which enthusiastically
commented on the events and in every possible way encouraged Tahrir
Square rally participants.

A conclusion can be made from all of this that it is hard to imagine
a revolutionary movement without objective prerequisites, but in the
modern world it is equally hard to imagine mass public movements
without external resource contributions, whether from states or
new entities of the multipolar order. That is not to mention direct
military interventions, such as in the case with Libya. But this brings
us closer to the version of geopolitical motives in these events.

The version of "Geopolitics". According to this approach the
revolutionary movements were not necessarily initiated for
modernization of Arab countries and their integration in the global
community (as in fact, just the opposite thing happened), but for
achieving certain geopolitical objectives. Such statement of issue is
logical and not too original, because at least in the last decades (or
by some opinions - in the last hundred years) externally instigated
revolutions pursued exactly such objectives. However, previously
these final goals were relatively clear and hence, needed no special
deciphering. In case of the processes in the Arab world the plot
is much more complicated, especially given the prior history of the
issue and specifically the American intervention in Iraq in 2003.