World View: South Korea Announces Missile Capable of Targeting Anywhere in North

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com:

• Russia’s mass arrest of St. Petersburg Muslims raises specter of blowback
• Economists shocked at severe shrinkage of eurozone economy
• S. Korea unveils cruise missile that can strike anywhere in N. Korea

Russia’s mass arrest of St. Petersburg Muslims raises specter of blowback

Russian police apparently panicked last week and blindly conducted alarge-scale operation target radical Muslim groups in various parts ofSt. Petersburg. Reports indicate that as many as 700 Muslims weredetained and questioned. As part of such operations, the policedeliberately break into prayer rooms with their dogs to desecrateMuslim prayer rugs, infuriating and humiliating the Muslims. Russia’spolice were caught by surprise by this enclave of allegedly radicalMuslim groups because they were not from the North Caucasus provinces,but instead were from the east, including Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.The huge operation produced almost no results, though seven Muslimswere deported for having insufficient documentation. This operationhas electrified the Muslim community, and Russia can expect blowback,possibly in the form of terrorist operations. The attack on theSt. Petersburg mosque was justified because the mosque wasillegal any unsanctioned prayer services held outside of religioussites or cemetaries, without permission from authorities. Jamestown and Russia Today

Economists shocked at severe shrinkage of eurozone economy

The euro zone slipped deeper into recession in the fourth quarter of2012, much more severely than economists had predicted. Germany’seconomy contracted 0.6%, while France’s fell 0.3%. Furthermore,France’s figures for the first and second quarters of last year wererevised to negative, indicating negative growth for three of the fourquarters of 2012. This is not a minor thing. All the speeches byEuropean politicians, all the policies by financial ministers, all theplans and budgets by analysts — all of them are based on theassumption that all the 1980s and 1990s macroeconomic models stillwork. As I’ve said repeatedly, the only models that work today arethe ones from the 1930s, because that was the last generational crisisera. Alan Greenspan has also pointed out that every macroeconomicmodel has been a failure for the last five years. Reuters

S. Korea unveils cruise missile that can strike anywhere in N. Korea

North Korea’s nuclear weapon test has changed some of the dynamics inAsia. The American administration has reaffirmed that it will defendboth South Korea and Japan, honoring previous treaty commitments. Butwith North Korea becoming a nuclear weapons state, and with neitherChina nor the United Nations able to take any meaningfulcounter-steps, some experts believe that the focus will have to changeto find ways to prevent it from transferring technology or weapons toother rogue states or to terrorist groups. (It’s hard for me to seehow this new focus will be any more successful than the old focus.)South Korea has announced measures to strengthen its own military, todeter the North Koreans. 

On Thursday, South Korea announced a cruisemissile that it said can strike anywhere in North Korea: “The cruise missile being unveiled today is aprecision-guided weapon that can identify and strike the window ofthe office of North Korea’s leadership.”

Asia One (Singapore) and Reuters

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