Federico Bordonaro

Michael Scheuer, ex analista della CIA, in disaccordo con le politiche fin qui promosse dall’Amministrazione Bush, sigla un interessante articolo per la “Jamestown Foundation”.

Eccone uno stralcio:

As noted, the 7 July bombings are best understood as an episode in al-Qaeda’s campaign against U.S. allies, a campaign separate from but running parallel to its campaign against the United Sates. The evidence now available shows al-Qaeda’s “Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades - the al-Qaeda of Jihad - the European Brigade” (AHMB) — a unit named after al-Qaeda’s late military commander, and the man closest to bin Laden personally — conducted the London attacks. Publicly, the AHMB has taken credit for the strikes. Its communiqué expressly said the London attacks were part of the campaign announced by al-Zawahiri. “Our words do not go to waste, nor do strikes stop,” the AHMB statement explained. “Our strikes were and are targeting the crusader enemies of God. … The start was in Madrid [March, 2003] and Istanbul [November 2004]; today, it is London, and tomorrow the mujahideen will have more statements to make.”

On the tactical and strategic levels, the London attacks were quintessentially al-Qaeda operations. At the tactical level, the attacks were preceded by the usual al-Qaeda warning that an operation in Europe was near. On 29 May 2005, the AHMB’s “European General” posted a statement on the Internet that foreshadowed the events of 7 July.

Riguardo al futuro, e alla plausibile tattica Qaedista, Scheuer aggiunge:

The London attacks show that U.S. allies will continue to be hit by al-Qaeda for supporting Washington’s policies and actions in the Islamic world. As they have since 2002, bin Laden’s fighters will attack U.S. allies at home and abroad: the UK has been attacked in London and Istanbul; France in Karachi and at sea; Germany in Tunisia and Pakistan; and Spain in Iraq and Madrid. For now, attacks on U.S. allies are unlikely to reach a 9/11 level of destructiveness; bin Laden does not want al-Qaeda in the absurd position of helping to mend the trans-Atlantic rift.

Da meditare. Insieme con le osservazioni finali sul rapporto terrorismo-economia.

La recente ondata di attentati terroristici, a Londra e nel villaggio turistico di Sharm el-Sheikh, frequentatissimo da italiani, pone drammaticamente la questione di una strategia politica per fronteggiare l’emergenza in Italia, Gran Bretagna, e in altri paesi del Vecchio Continente.

Le interpretazioni sulle origini e sulla natura del terrorismo islamico non sono affatto univoche — il che ha altresì un effetto politico. Lo si spiega in una Intelligence Brief per il P.I.N.R., scritta insieme a Erich Marquardt.

E’ uno dei dibattiti più delicati del momento. La guerra di Washington all’Iraq di Saddam, e più in generale la politica estera USA in Medio Oriente è fattore di contenimento o di ulteriore aumento del terrorismo islamico?

Ramzy Baroud, su AsiaTimes Online, si chiede chi, e che cosa, stia rendendo più spavalde le cellule del terrore:

On Wednesday, July 20, the House of Representatives resolved that an early withdrawal from Iraq would “embolden terrorists”, therefore any such notion must be scrapped. Written off as well by the House decision was the idea of a measurable timetable for any pullout. A withdrawal of the 160,000-strong US forces is only possible when national security goals are met, according to the measure. It also argued that such a move would “undermine the morale” of US and allied forces.

E continua:

This dwindling spirit and lack of confidence on the battlefield is met with increasing agitation with Bush’s war, as more than half of the American population now believes that the war has made their country “less safe”. The tiring argument that terrorists are attacking us because of our freedom and way of life is losing its constituents, and it is becoming clearer by the day that the price for such hollow rhetoric can no longer be swallowed.

Sarà interessante vedere come, di fronte a questo mutamento in negativo dei consensi per la guerra, agirà l’Amministrazione Bush; e sarà eventualmente ancor più importante capire come Washington pensi di sganciarsi dal “pantano iracheno” — dato che non pochi, negli USA, sono convinti non solo di non doversi ritirare, ma addirittura della necessità di colpire duramente l’Iran, prima che si doti di armi nucleari.

Articolo pubblicato dal P.I.N.R.: la crisi politica nei principali schieramenti del panorama istituzionale italiano e la minaccia terroristica, nella delicata fase pre-elettorale del 2005-2006. L’Iraq al centro del dibattito in politica estera. L’immigrazione come problema strategico non risolto.

Articolo scritto in collaborazione con Adam K. Wolfe e Yevgeny Bendersky, analisti del Power and Interest News Report.

L’Oceano Indiano è da sempre di grande rilievo geostrategico. Le recenti attività diplomatiche e militar-industriali indiane ne fanno, ancor di più, una delle zone-chiave per gli equilibri mondiali prossimi venturi.

Articolo segnalato anche su AsiaTimes Online.

Per James Sterngold, opinionista del San Francisco Chronicle, l’economia americana è da annoverarsi tra le “vittime della guerra“:

“Osama (bin Laden) doesn’t have to win; he will just bleed us to death,” said Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden and recently retired after writing two books critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations. “He’s well on his way to doing it.”

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, has estimated that the Korean War cost about $430 billion and the Vietnam War cost about $600 billion, in current dollars. According to the latest estimates, the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion.

Put simply, critics say, the war is not making the United States safer and is harming U.S. taxpayers by saddling them with an enormous debt burden, since the war is being financed with deficit spending.

Sono molti a pensare, peraltro, che il debito statunitense, pubblico e privato, sia fuori controllo e non sia sostenibile. (C’è però da notare che tale posizione è di tanto in tanto ripetuta ma che, finora, l’ipotesi “crollista” non si sia mai verificata). Di sicuro, diversi osservatori ritengono i costi della guerra ormai inaccettabili:

“The objective has always been to install a friendly government,” said Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, a libertarian think tank. “Are the costs worth that? No, because it’s not something we can accomplish for the long term. It’s just going to continue to drain the American taxpayer. I don’t see how it’s going to get better. It’s only going to get worse.”

L’enigmatico “Spengler” scrive oggi su AsiaTimes Online:

The spiritual tradition of the West, which begins with classic tragedy and continues through St Augustine’s Confessions, tells us just the contrary, namely, that one’s inner feelings are the problem, not the solution. The West is a construct, the result of a millennium of war against the inner feelings of the barbarian invaders whom Christianity turned into Europeans. Paganism exults in its unchanging, autochthonous character, and glorifies the native impulses of its people; Christianity despises these impulses and attempts to root them out. Western tradition demands that the individual must draw upon something better than one’s inner feelings. Narcissism where one’s innermost feelings are concerned therefore is the supreme hallmark of decadence.

Ora, il narcisismo — un segno tangibile della decadenza — è secondo “Spengler” il marchio di Harry Potter e dei suoi personaggi.

Inoltre nella grande letteratura occidentale, continua il nostro, è caratteristica fondamentale del personaggio-cardine il fatto di non essere ancora quel che deve diventare:

What characterizes the protagonists of great fiction in an ascendant culture? It is that they are not yet what they should be. The characters of Western literature in its time of flowering either must overcome defining flaws, or come to grief. Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet must give up her pride; Dickens’ Pip must look past the will-o’-the-wisp of his expectations; Mann’s Hans Castorp must confront mortality; Tolstoy’s Pierre must learn to love; Cervantes’ Don Quixote must learn to help ordinary people rather than the personages of romance; Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister must act in the real world rather than the stage. Goethe’s Faust I have long considered the definitive masterwork of Western literature, first of all because its explicit subject is the transformation of character.

Il successo di Harry Potter è dunque un segno di decadenza?

In una dettagliata analisi per il P.I.N.R., l’analista statunitense Erich Marquardt spiega i motivi che stanno accelerando l’ipotesi di “exit strategy” di Washington dall’Iraq.

John Helmer su AsiaTimes Online commenta le scelte energetico-strategiche del Presidente russo:

In his most detailed statement to date, President Vladimir Putin has spelled out Russia’s priorities for transporting crude oil to Asian markets in the next decade. In diplomatic but unambiguous language, Putin rejected Japanese proposals, in favor of China.

Una decisione non da poco. L’aggressività USA in Eurasia, apparentemente, ha come effetto il rinsaldarsi dei rapporti sino-russi. La storia della politica internazionale mostra che tale rapporto, quando è buono, non è la migliore prospettiva geopolitica per Washington.

Uno dei più letti, e controversi, opinionisti di Asia Times Online, colui che si firma “Spengler”, ha recentemente pubblicato una analisi del voto iraniano per Ahmadinejad.

Poverty is not the issue. The 17 million Iranians who cast their ballots for Ahmadinejad voted to remain in poverty, with a bare minimum of security provided by the Islamic state. On the contrary, they cannot imagine their lives outside of traditional society, in which Islam regulates every facet of existence.

Se Angela Merkel (CDU) dovesse vincere — come viene preventivato — le prossime elezioni in Germania, come cambierebbe la politica estera tedesca?

Mio articolo per il Power and Interest News Report

Michael Weinstein analizza la posta in gioco geopolitica della S.C.O. Nonostante la recente estensione dell’influenza U.S.A. in Asia Centrale, Cina e Russia non sembrano disposte a farsi da parte; i paesi centrasiatici, dal canto loro, cominciano a pagare il prezzo della loro “multi-direzionalità” est-ovest.

Gli screenshots di Knoppix 4, ultima release del Linux-Live più usato.

Vedi anche Sito di Knoppix

Il servizio Global Strategic Analysis di “Oxford Analytica” segnala interessanti differenze tra i due tragici attacchi terroristici di Madrid (11.3.04) e Londra (7.7.05).

Intelligence Brief scritta per il Power and Interest News Report riguardo le prime mosse del neo-eletto presidente iraniano, il controverso Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.