This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Time Magazine spares Americans the pro-Putin cover photo humiliation
- Russia continues to torpedo the Syria ‘deal’
- Syria’s civil war versus Sri Lanka’s civil war
Time Magazine spares Americans the pro-Putin cover photo humiliation
U.S. edition of Time Magazine, Sept 16, 2013, has a different cover photo than Time’s three international editions (Time)
Apparently Time Magazine feels that it’s necessary to protectAmericans’ feelings with regard to the ability of Russian president Vladimir Putin to repeatedly humiliate the UnitedStates and President Barack Obama over the Syria issue.The cover of Time’s three international editions has a coverpicture of Putin with the caption:
America’s weak and waffling, Russia’s rich andresurgent — and its leader doesn’t care what anybody thinks ofhim. The World according to Vladimir Putin by SimonShuster.
Actually, Putin is down in polls in Russia, and he cares verymuch what the Russian people think of him.
Time Magazine July 1, 2013, cover portraying Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu as ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’ – banned in Burma (Myanmar)
Time Magazine in the past hasn’t worried too much about hurting thefeelings of its readers. The July 1st issue of Time for Asia featuring Burmese Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu was so offensive to the governmentof Burma (Myanmar) that the magazine was banned.
Many people are saying that Time Magazine was protecting presidentBarack Obama by using a different cover in the America edition. Thisis entirely plausible since Time has been totally in the tank forObama since the beginning. The managing editor, Rick Stengel, hasbeen so completely in the tank for Obama that he’s now leaving Timeand being rewarded with a plum job in Obama’s State Department.Time Magazine and Daily Caller
Russia continues to torpedo the Syria ‘deal’
Until last month, Russia was insisting that Syria’s Bashar al-Assadregime didn’t even have chemical weapons. Now they’ve been forced toadmit that al-Assad has huge stores of chemical weapons but insistthat he would never use them, despite massive amounts ofevidence that he did on August 21. The Russians keep demanding moreand more evidence to show that al-Assad’s regime is guilty, but theyoffer not an iota of evidence to support their claim that oppositionrebels were guilty.
France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Monday:
When you look at the amount of sarin gas used, thevectors, the techniques behind such an attack, as well as otheraspects, it seems to leave no doubt that the regime [of PresidentBashar al-Assad] is behind it.
Sitting next to Fabius at a joint news conference was Russian ForeignMinister Sergei Lavrov, who said:
We want objective professional assessment of theevents of 21 of August. We have serious grounds to believe thiswas a provocation… But the truth needs to be established andthis will be a test of the future work of the SecurityCouncil.
I guess Lavrov doesn’t believe that the U.N. team gave anlike to get rid of secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who saidthat al-Assad has committed “many crimes against humanity.”
It’s beginning to appear that Russia is going to get away with itagain. As I’ve been reporting since 2011, Putin has adopted a policyof using the United Nations as a tool to cripple American and Europeanpolicy. After the horrific August 21 chemical weapons attack inSyria, it was beginning to appear that events would spin out ofRussia’s control, but Lavrov is quickly bringing the situation backunder Russian control. BBC
Syria’s civil war versus Sri Lanka’s civil war
Vladimir Putin may be enjoying the experience of humiliating BarackObama and the United States, but Russia’s Syria policy is disastrousfor Russia for several reasons. We’ve previously described some ofthese reasons:
- Syria is providing a training ground for Sunni jihadists from Russia’s Caucasus and other countries to learn how to defeat Russian weapons and Russian tactics, and they’ll be returning to Russia to use those new skills against Russians.
- By using the U.N. as a tool to cripple American and European foreign policy, and allowing al-Assad to commit crimes against humanity with impunity, Putin is also crippling the United Nations itself, and is destroying whatever effectiveness it might have. A crippled or destroyed U.N. is not in Russia’s interest.
- At some point, Barack Obama will “revolt” against the repeated humiliation being inflicted by Putin, and will take some military action unilateral. The military action may succeed, or it may be a disaster, or it may start a war.
- Russia’s policy, in cooperation with Iran, Hezbollah and al-Assad, is inflaming the entire Mideast along the Sunni/Shia fault line, and this is trending towards all-out Mideast war, which will certainly spread to Russia’s Caucasus.
However, there’s one more reason why Putin’s strategy is disastrous: AGenerational Dynamics analysis indicates that the entire strategycannot succeed, and this can be illustrated by comparing Syria’s civilwar with Sri Lanka’s civil war that recently ended in 2009.
According to a number of analysts, Russia’s strategy is as follows:Use the United Nations to give Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad time and provide al-Assad with huge quantities of heavy weapons so al-Assad can win the war and end it quickly. Once the opposition iscrushed, things will return to the pre-war “normal,” with al-Assadstill in power, owing a great deal to Russia.
This strategy assumes that al-Assad can win a clear victory thatwill end the war. However, Syria is in a generational Awakeningera, so this is not going to happen.
Long-time readers will remember that I followed the Sri Lanka civilwar for a number of years as it turned into a generational crisiswar. As the war approached a generational crisis, I predicted that avictory by the Sinhalese government over the Tamil rebels would, infact, be an end to the war after 30 years. Every other journalistand analyst organization in the world, as far as I’m aware, said thatthe war had been going on for 30 years and therefore would continueafter a Sinhalese victory. But this was a generational crisis warreaching a climax, and a victory would mean the end of the war, justas the American victory over Germany and Japan in WWII ended thatwar. My prediction, based on generational theory, turned out to beabsolutely correct, and everyone else’s turned out to be wrong. (See “Tamil Tigers surrender, ending the Sri Lanka crisis civil war” from 2009.)
However, analysts, including Russian analysts, are making the oppositemistake in the case of Syria’s civil war. They look at the 1982victory of al-Assad’s father over the rebels, and they look at othercivil wars like the Sri Lanka civil war, and conclude that al-Assadcan score a victory and end this war. But those two other wars weregenerational Crisis era wars. Syria is in a generational Awakeningera, and there will not be a generational crisis to this war.Al-Assad cannot end this war with a victory.
That means that war-weary Syrian opposition figures may agree to acease-fire, and may sign a “peace agreement,” but they will continuethe protests that caused al-Assad to start slaughtering people in thefirst place. Furthermore, the Sunni jihadists that are arriving inSyria will never agree to a “peace agreement” with the Shia/Alawiteal-Assad. So al-Assad will never reach the kind of peace that he andthe Russians are hoping for.
I keep saying that if politicians could only become familiar withgenerational theory, they wouldn’t make so many stupid decisions.This is a prime example. Russia and Vladimir Putin may be riding highthese days, but they’re following a disastrous policy that Russianswill soon regret.
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin,Time Magazine, Rick Stengel, Syria, Bashar al-Assad,Burma, Myanmar, Ashin Wirathu,France, Laurent Fabius, Sergei Lavrov,Ban Ki-moon, Iran, Hezbollah, Sri Lanka