UCG-World News & Prophecy Articles

wanted to send you some articles that were referenced on our church's website for you to read when you can. I hope you find them interesting if you haven't read them already.


Will Israel Bomb Iran?
Sep 28, 2008
Greg Sheridan of The Australian writes this weekend about a larger problem than Wall Street-the Iranian nuclear threat. He gives a preview of a report on the Middle East to come out from The American Enterprise Institute later this week. Here are some excerpts: The report is sobering and in some ways shocking reading. It begins [...]

Thoughts at the end of the week…
Sep 26, 2008
This has been a dramatic week on Wall Street. A congressional plan to “solve” the problem is still coming together and many hope it will be in place before the start of trading on Monday morning. It will be several days before we can evaluate the impact on our economy and America’s standing in the [...]

German Official Says U.S. to Decline
Sep 26, 2008
This morning in the Wall Street Journal, on page two, an article with the headline, “German Official Says U.S. Stature to Fall”. Here is a a quote from the German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck while speaking Thursday to the German parliament. “The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system, not [...]

What Lies Ahead?
Sep 25, 2008
The last two weeks have seen the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression hit the United States. Large Wall Street financial firms went bankrupt and the government nationalized others. The stock market lost nearly a thousand points and gained most of it back in less than a week of trading. Panic and fear seized [...]

Bomb Blast in Pakistan
Sep 20, 2008
A bomb has gone off in Islamabad, Pakistan in front of the Marriott Hotel. Dozens appear to have died and the building is on fire. This BBC report gives details. Pakistan has been a key supporter of America’s war on terror and recently obtained a new president. President Asif Ali Zardari had today told parliament he [...]

Jerusalem Day

I wanted to send you this article about Islamic Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic) Day. I hope you find it interesting and timely.

Muslims around the world demonstrate "expressing resentment of Israel's control of Occupied Jerusalem"Feel the loveWhile thousands of Muslims in Iran and elsewhere are busy condemning Israel today, at least one imprisoned ayatollah is beseeching the aid of Rabbis. "Muslims around the world mark Al Quds Day," from Gulf News, September 26:
Tehran: Hundreds of thousands of Iranians rallied on Friday to join millions of Muslims around the world to mark Al Quds Day, according to media reports.
Press TV reported that a massive rally was held in Tehran in support of Palestinian people's rights. Many demonstrators carried banners expressing resentment of Israel's control of Occupied Jerusalem. Demonstrations were also being held in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Bangladesh. In Iraq, thousands of people staged massive demonstrations in key cities, including Baghdad and Basra.Besides, it gives Iraqis a break from fighting each other.
In Indonesia, Muslim women rallied outside the US embassy in Jakarta to mark Al Quds Day.Al Quds Day is held on the fourth Friday of Ramadan and is being observed to show support for Palestinians in Occupied Jerusalem.
Posted by Raymond at September 26, 2008 12:37 PMhttp://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022854.php#comments (H/t)

Cell Phone Gouging

I wanted to send you this article about cell phone prices. I wonder how many people are not able to afford to pay their other bills because of the expense of cell phone prices. And Yet, we don't hear anything about Cell Phone Companies being charged with gouging. I hope you find this interesting.

Paying Too Much for Cell Phones
By Brad in VA Beach
My wife and I love our cell phones. We had been with this company for 4 years, and we were paying as much as $275 a month for service.
Since graduating from Financial Peace University, we have been whittling away our budget to gain more debt money. Over the previous 3 months we were making changes to our service, bringing our monthly bill to around $135. The customer service rep on the phone gave me a great idea of deleting the special "push-to-talk" feature (which we didn't use) in order to save $10 per month on each line, bringing our monthly bill within our budget amount. Excellent! Let's do it! Two days later, we received a package containing two new phones with instructions on activating them. We were all happy and life was good until the following month when the bill arrived for $532.38.
Upgrade fee: $18
Equipment: $196.46
New plan (partial month): $111.99
New plan (month in advance): $136.49
Tax: $69.44
Not reading the fine print: PRICELESS. Now my new plan is more expensive, and in order to get out of it there is a $200 (per line) early termination fee. We don't like our cell phones as much now.

UCG Financial Meltdown Commentary

I wanted to send you this article from one of the members of our church. It does point out the greed by lenders, borrowers and lawmakers. I hope you find it interesting.


What Lies Ahead?
September 25, 2008 by wnponline
The last two weeks have seen the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression hit the United States. Large Wall Street financial firms went bankrupt and the government nationalized others. The stock market lost nearly a thousand points and gained most of it back in less than a week of trading. Panic and fear seized the markets, prompting massive government intervention.What is behind this crisis? What does it mean for the future of America and its role in the world? The most vital question is, what should you be doing in these turbulent times?It is a long and complicated trail backwards to understand the source and cause of this present crisis. Beyond the accusations and sensational charges being lobbed back and forth is a tale of unregulated greed. One headline in the Financial Times said, “This greed was beyond irresponsible” (John Gapper, Sept. 17, 2008). Even today legislation to deal with the crisis is being held up over alarm at paying failed executives millions of dollars in severance packages. Greed, mismanagement and incompetence have combined on Wall Street to create a crisis that will likely lead to a recession.America is still the key player in the global economy. It is the largest consumer market, and the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. Last week central banks around the world were buying and providing dollars to keep business going in their sectors. The world cannot afford to let America fail. They hold too much of its debt, and Americans consume many of the goods manufactured in their workshops and defend the skies and seas, keeping the world safe from anarchy, chaos and dictatorship. Everyone loves to bash the United States, but it is presently the indispensable element in the world system.America has taken a staggering economic blow, but it still stands. It will likely recover but it may not be the same in its world standing. The world has the perception of weakness and sometimes perception translates into reality. The European Union and nations like China, India, Brazil and Russia are not going to let the global economy remain dependent on the weaknesses of America’s economy. Look for these nations to work toward a solution that creates a larger and more powerful economic system.The United States has been in relative decline for some time while other nations have been rising in economic and political significance. We are moving closer to the time described in Revelation 18 when a super economic system described as Babylon will dominate world headlines.This is not “just another” economic crisis that we can ignore while we go about our consumer-driven comfortable lives. Real changes are coming to pass that will impact America’s standard of living and place in the world. America is not “just another” large empire that will one day pass from the scene like all the others in history. America, like its cousin Great Britain, has occupied its unique role in history because of the promises God made to Abraham of astounding national blessings. These have been realized in these two nations in modern times and the world has been the better for it. The decline of their blessing and influence in the world, also prophesied by God because of sin and moral failure, will change the course of the coming years.It is time you focused on this fact and awakened to the reality that the Great God controls the destiny of nations. This current crisis is significant and will mark a milestone in prophetic events. While we need to try to manage our finances in ways to protect ourselves and our families, the most important thing you can do is wake up to the urgency of the times and understand them from God’s perspective.It is time you and I examine whether we have been guilty of neglecting God and making idols of wealth, culture and people, and even ourselves, thus becoming blinded to the true God. I can think of nothing more important for you to do than repent and acknowledge God in your life. This is a very serious time in our generation. We will ignore it at our peril.Read, or reread, our booklet The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy for the complete story of why these two nations have occupied their significant role in world history. And above all pray and keep watching.

Vacation Book Picks - Readers are Leaders

I wanted to send you this article below which reviews some books that explain things that are going on in the world. As the phrase goes, "Leaders are Readers." It is good to have an explaination as to how and why some of the things that are going on in this present age are happening and getting some of these books from the library or bookstore to read on your next vacation might be something worth doing.

Book picks By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com Some parents who are concerned about their children receiving a steady diet of liberal-left indoctrination in schools and colleges regard vacation as a time to show these young people a different way of looking at things, with readings presenting viewpoints that are unlikely to be heard in classrooms that have become indoctrination centers.
Fortunately, there is a growing body of literature — both books and articles — presenting a very different viewpoint in readable language.
The academic year often ends with commencement speakers who have been in government, academia, foundations or various crusading movements, who tell the graduates how much nobler it is to go into such organizations, rather than into business.
Such self-flattering talk is seldom challenged by educators. But an outstanding recent book, "The Best-Laid Plans" by Randal O'Toole, gives a richly documented account of government actions and their consequences, and shows a far from flattering side of politicians, "experts," and environmentalists— who have ruined cities and suburbs in countries around the world.

Highly praised projects created by leading "experts" have repeatedly led to economic and social disasters, whether in Europe or the United States. The fundamental problem is that people don't want to live the way elites want them to live.
A classic example was the Pruitt-Igoe project in St. Louis, which had an extraordinary vacancy rate of 25 percent, rising eventually to 65 percent, before the whole project was demolished.
But, tragically, the assumptions behind such projects have not been demolished.
One statistic in "The Best-Laid Plans" shoots down one of the biggest lies of the environmentalist movement— that laws are needed to keep development from paving over the last remnants of open space. That statistic is that all the urban areas in the United States, put together, cover less than 3 percent of the land.
This statistic is all the more remarkable when you realize that O'Toole uses the Census definition of "urban"— any community with at least 2,500 people. That would include towns and villages, as well as cities.
Another remarkable and eye-opening book is "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg. So many liberals use the term "fascism" to condemn conservative ideas that it may come as a revelation to many that the original fascism was in fact a doctrine having far more in common with the left than with conservatism.

While people on the left may deny that today, when fascism first emerged back in the 1920s it was widely recognized as a kindred doctrine by the leftists of that era.
Only after the international aggressions of Mussolini and Hitler during the 1930s made them pariahs did the left start reclassifying fascists as being on the right.
Since this is an election year, there may be more interest than usual in Barack Obama. Best-selling author Shelby Steele's book on Obama, titled "A Bound Man," gives both facts and insights that will take the reader far deeper than most media accounts.

Among my own books, the one that will probably be of the most interest to young people with no knowledge of economics is "Basic Economics." Apparently many people find it easier to understand than most economics books, since it has been translated into six other languages overseas.

My latest book on economics, however, is the recently published "Economic Facts and Fallacies." In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild It looks in-depth at fallacies about such things as housing, income, race, sex discrimination, the economics of academia and the Third World.

Fallacies are not just crazy ideas. Usually they are notions that sound very plausible, which is what enables them to be used by politicians, intellectuals, the media, and all sorts of crusading movements, to advance their causes or their careers.
It is precisely because most of the popular fallacies of our time, which are always especially popular during election years, sound so plausible that we need to stop, before we get swept along by rhetoric, and scrutinize the underlying flaws that turn brilliant-sounding "solutions" into recipes for disaster.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell052108.php3

Film Review: The Stoning of Soraya M.

I wanted to send you this information about a movie that is coming out later this year. It is timely since the country of Iran is in the news. Whether or not you see the movie, I hope you find the article interesting.

Film Review: The Stoning of Soraya M.
Send to a Friend printer-friendly The Stoning of Soraya M has not yet hit theaters, but believe me, this is one film that will not appear quietly and disappear without notice. I attended a pre-release screening last night, and it reminded me of all the reasons I love film as an art form and as a medium of communication. When it finally makes it to the theaters, people should line up to see this powerful, dramatic, and disturbing representation of a true story.The film comes from a book of the same name, written by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, about the stoning execution of a young wife and mother for the crime of infidelity. Sahebjam discovers this story by accident and had to wait until he gets out of Iran to tell it. The regime in Tehran officially denies that any such executions take place, but at least one videotape of a stoning has been smuggled out of Iran, and many more people have testified to their occurrence.Soraya’s husband Ali has tired of Soraya after having four children with her, and wants to marry the 14-year-old daughter of one of his prisoners. He can’t afford two wives, so he demands a divorce from Soraya, who refuses for economic reasons. Instead, Ali conspires with the local mullah — a fraud who has to keep Ali from exposing him — to frame Soraya for infidelity. The “evidence” is laughably transparent, but as Soraya notes in the film, “voices of women do not matter here”.Her aunt Zahra, played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, provides the central voice for the film. It’s mostly told in flashback as she explains what happened to the journalist who only came to town because his car broke down. Aghdashloo provides the voice of conscience and reason in a town gone mad, a village where Soraya’s own father calls her an unprintable name and where her sons join in the stoning. Even with most of the film in subtitles, it is easy to follow and heartbreaking and enraging to watch.The performances are universally excellent. Aghdashloo, an Iranian ex-patriate herself, brings Zahra and her defiance and despair to life. Mozhan Marno portrays Soraya beautifully, especially in the execution scene. Jim Caveziel plays the journalist, and while he doesn’t get much screen time, he does well with what he has. Navid Negahban provides a malevolent presence as Ali, while David Diaan’s Ebrahim winds up being perhaps the worst of the villains — a good man who refuses to stop an injustice he knows to be happening.After the film, Aghdashloo and producer Stephen McEveety spoke for a while about their experiences making the film. Ms. Aghdashloo was tremendously open and honest about her own experiences, speaking of her flight from Iran and her efforts to get her family out, and her thoughts on the current regime and their barbaric treatment of women. I introduced myself to McEveety, who remembered that I wrote a review for his other film, An American Carol. After I pried his hands off my neck — you laugh, but it’s true! — I told him what an amazing film this was.I’d recommend you see both this fall. An American Carol will entertain you and its success will send a message to Hollywood, but The Stoning of Soraya M will send a much more powerful message all around the world — and it will haunt you for a very long time, especially the execution sequence, which had most of the audience tonight in sobs.If you want more information about stonings in Iran and elsewhere around the world, please visit the film website, www.thestoning.com.Update: The director, Cyrus Nowrasteh, also stars in John Ziegler’s new film, Blocking the Path to 9/11. Be sure to check Ziegler’s essay on that from yesterday.

74%!!!

Assimilation?

74% speak Spanish at home
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_10533937?source=most_viewed
Language statistics
By Gustavo Reveles Acosta / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 09/23/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT
El Paso y Más Community gallery EL PASO -- Nearly three quarters of the 727,070 El Pasoans last year said buenas noches when they went to sleep and buenos días when they woke up, according to new information released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The census' American Community Survey figures for 2007 indicate that 74 percent of all residents in the El Paso metropolitan area spoke Spanish at home, even if they are fluent in English.
The numbers also say that one out of every five people living in the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California use mainly Spanish, and not English, at home.
"Spanish was my first language and it's the language that my parents speak, so I just use it when I'm there. I don't even think about it," said Mariana Solis, a registered nurse who grew up in the Lower Valley. "And although I speak English, I sometimes feel more comfortable speaking Spanish. It's like going back home."
The census indicates that 24 percent of the El Paso population speaks English only, and that fewer than 2,000 people said they speak a language other than English or Spanish at home.
Dennis Bixler-Márquez, a University of Texas at El Paso professor of multicultural education and the director of the Chicana/o Studies Program there, said he was not surprised to hear the numbers released by the census. "Border communities like El Paso, by virtue of their proximity to the home land, will continue to have tremendous linguistic renewal," he said. "People here, even those who have been in the country various generations, will retain their language much more than the Hispanic populations formed in the interior of the United States."
Bixler-Márquez said the steady flow of new immigrants into the U.S.

Southwest could also be responsible for the common use of Spanish and the widespread distribution of Spanish-language media, music, literature and even signage in the region. "When you have an increase in immigration, like we have seen in El Paso for decades, you will see an increase in the Spanish-speaking communities and the institutions that support them," he said.
The wide use of Spanish by people of El Paso has forced local governments, agencies and stores to publish most local notices in English and Spanish.
Aracely Lazcano, the spokeswoman for the county of El Paso, said it makes sense for her to write news releases and public notices in both languages.
"Our goal is for our message to reach the intended audience as quickly as possible," she said. "If we were to send out notices in English only, the message will eventually get to Spanish-speaking families but it will take some time."
Eastsider Bonnie Ortiz, 64, said she used to speak Spanish at home when she was a girl, but that the custom was lost with her children and grandchildren, who speak "very little Spanish."
"I only spoke English to my children and they only speak English to their children. It's sad, but the Spanish was lost in my family," she said. "I think it's just part of living in America. You lose your ties to Mexico."
Bixler-Márquez said only a slowing trend in immigration would stop the strong influence Spanish has over El Paso and the rest of the Southwest.
"But in the foreseeable future, I don't see that happening. Our trends don't seem to show any slowdown on immigration."
Gustavo Reveles Acosta may be reached at greveles@elpasotimes.com; 546-6133.


More figuresThe U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday also released the following facts for 2007:
The number offoreign-born people living in the United States reached an all-time high of 38.1 million, or about 12.6 percent of the total U.S. population.
Of those foreign-born residents, 12 million, or 31 percent, were born in Mexico.
Of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the country, Miami and Los Angeles had the highest percentage of foreign-born residents at 37 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
St. Louis had the lowest at 4 percent.
In El Paso, 27 percent of the residents were born outside the United States.Source:"U.S. Census Bureau.

Mother Of All Financial Scandals: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

How Prophetic Was This?

I wanted to send you this article that I came across written a few years ago. It describes some of the events going on now almost to a Tee. It was a very interesting read to describe some of what is happening even from back then and you can click on the links for further info. I do hope you find it interesting!

June 10, 2003
Mother Of All Financial Scandals: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
By Michelle Malkin
Martha Stewart is a too-easy target, an overstuffed pink piñata swinging in the wind, waiting to be thwacked by every last critic of capitalist excess. But the stock-dumping doyenne is no match for the real mother of all brewing financial scandals. That moniker belongs to the twin behemoths, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Who, you say? Unlike Martha, or the three-piece-suited villains of Enron or Tyco or WorldCom, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven’t been plastered all over the tabloids and prime-time TV. That’s because they are faceless, government-sponsored enterprises in a complex, loosely regulated, highly leveraged monopoly business that has engaged in questionable accounting practices and put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk—with plenty of private profiteering for company executives and Washington lobbyists, but almost zero accountability to the public. As federally chartered "government-sponsored enterprises," the two institutions have been exempt from normal securities regulations for almost their entire lives. Analysts unable to decipher Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s incomprehensible annual and quarterly reports have long suspected book-cooking with regard to their real cash flow. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Freddie Mac faces an SEC probe over possible accounting irregularities. Investigators will examine whether Freddie Mac may have deferred some income to smooth out results in future periods. The SEC will also probe the actions of the chief executive and chief financial officer, who were fired on Monday over an accounting review of earning restatements.The news sent stocks south and roiled some foreign markets as well.Clothed in politically correct fashions (“Catch the dream,” beckons Freddie Mac’s program to boost minority home ownership; a “leader in diversity,” brags a Fannie Mae press release), these public-private hybrids are two dangerous pigs feeding at the federal trough. Congress created Fannie Mae (nickname for the Federal National Mortgage Association) in 1938 to bolster home ownership during the Depression. Three decades later, it was partially privatized, but retained a host of government benefits. In 1970, Congress spawned Freddie Mac (nickname for the Federal Home Mortgage Corp.) to provide a lending competitor to Fannie Mae. Both entities expand the pool of money for home purchasers by snapping up loans that lenders make to homebuyers, and then converting those loans into relatively safe mortgage-backed securities that are attractive to investors. So, what’s wrong with this picture?As Fred Smith, president of the Washington, D.C-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, has noted, these financial beasts are a textbook example of "profit-side capitalism and loss-side socialism." When things go right for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, they keep the profits. But when things go wrong, taxpayers—not just private shareholders, managers, and employees—will be on the hook.Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae each receive $2.25 billion lines of credit with the U.S. Treasury. These special pipelines give the institutions an implied federal guarantee available to no other private sector competitors in the mortgage market. That protection makes them immune to the costs normally associated with riskier and riskier behavior. Moreover, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not required to pay state and local income taxes. In addition, the standard for how much money the government requires them to keep on hand in case homebuyers default on their mortgages is lower for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae than for fully private banks and thrifts. The two corporations receive an estimated $10 billion a year in hidden taxpayer subsidies. Political appointees to the companies’ boards pocket millions in stock options to bolster support on Capitol Hill. Clinton-appointed board members at Fannie Mae include March Rich lawyer Jack Quinn and Janet Reno’s lieutenant at the Justice Department, Jamie Gorelick. At the helm of Fannie Mae is another Clinton appointee, Franklin Raines, who was paid more than $4 million and had almost $6 million in unexercised stock options in his first year at the helm. Cheerleaders in both major political parties have opposed privatizing Fannie and Freddie.If Martha Stewart is the face of capitalist excess, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the poster children for government-sponsored gluttony. The potential fall of Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae could rival the savings and loan collapse of the 1980s. Too bad the Martha bashers, blind to the far greater catastrophes of market socialism, won’t pay attention until it’s too late.Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website.

Presidential Debate Preview

If you have had some interest in the Presidential Campaign, the series below might be worth reading. It isn't written in a way to take sides, but rather does analyse what is likely to happen depending on who wins. It is more of an assessment series, rather than a persuasive one. I do hope you find it interesting, and send me any additional comments you might have yourself.
www.wnponline.org

Click to view this email in a browser

Dear Stratfor Reader:
Below is the first installment of a four-part report from Stratfor founder and Chief Intelligence Officer, George Friedman, on the United States Presidential Debate on Foreign Policy.
On Friday night, every government intelligence agency in the world will be glued to television sets watching the US Presidential Debate on foreign policy. Government intelligence agencies won't be rooting for one candidate or the other, nor are they trying to call the "winner" of the debate - or even ultimately the election.
A government intelligence agency's goal is to provide national policy makers an unbiased analysis of contingencies. In this instance, they're attempting to answer two questions, "What will US foreign policy look like under an Obama or McCain administration? And how will that impact our country?"
Stratfor is a private-sector, independent intelligence service and approaches the debates from a similar perspective. We have zero preference for one candidate or the other, but we are passionately interested in analyzing and forecasting the geopolitical impact of the election.
The essence of our business is non-partisan, dispassionate analysis and forecasting. For individuals in today's global world - oil traders and missionaries, soldiers and equity analysts, educators and travelers - Stratfor provides the intelligence analysis that has long been exclusively available to governments.

Part 1 - The New President and the Global Landscape - September 23
This introductory piece frames the questions that the next president will face. Regardless of a given candidate's policy preferences, there are logistical and geographical constraints that shape US and foreign options. The purpose of this analysis is to describe the geopolitical landscape for the next administration. The analysis concludes with a list of questions for the debate that define the parameters facing both candidates.
Part 2 - Obama's Foreign Policy Stance - September 24
Senator Obama has issued position papers and made statements about his intended foreign policy. Like all Presidents, he would also be getting input from a variety of others, principally from his own party. This second analysis analyzes the foreign policy position of Sen. Obama and the Democratic Party.
Part 3 - McCain's Foreign Policy Stance - September 25
Senator McCain has issued position papers and made statements about his intended foreign policy. Like all Presidents, he would also be getting input from a variety of others, principally from his own party. This second analysis analyzes the foreign policy position of Sen. McCain and the Republican Party.
Part 4 - George Friedman on the Presidential Debate - September 29
The final installment in this series will be produced after the debate. This is NOT an effort to call a "winner" or "loser." That's for pundits, not an intelligence service. This will be an analysis of the candidates' statements and positions.
This is a special four-part report, distinct from the geopolitical analysis that we provide our Members on a daily basis. As such, we encourage you to re-post this special series to your website or to forward this email as you like. We would ask that you provide a link to www.stratfor.com for attribution purposes.
To receive your own copy of each installment of this special series as well as other free Stratfor intelligence, please click here.
Very truly yours,
Aaric S. Eisenstein
SVP Publishing
If you're not already receiving Stratfor's free intelligence, CLICK HERE to have these special reports emailed to you. For media interviews, email PR@stratfor.com or call 512-744-4309.
By George Friedman It has often been said that presidential elections are all about the economy. That just isn’t true. Harry Truman’s second election was all about Korea. John Kennedy’s election focused on missiles, Cuba and Berlin. Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s elections were heavily about Vietnam. Ronald Reagan’s first election pivoted on Iran. George W. Bush’s second election was about Iraq. We won’t argue that presidential elections are all about foreign policy, but they are not all about the economy. The 2008 election will certainly contain a massive component of foreign policy. We have no wish to advise you how to vote. That’s your decision. What we want to do is try to describe what the world will look like to the new president and consider how each candidate is likely to respond to the world. In trying to consider whether to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, it is obviously necessary to consider their stands on foreign policy issues. But we have to be cautious about campaign assertions. Kennedy claimed that the Soviets had achieved superiority in missiles over the United States, knowing full well that there was no missile gap. Johnson attacked Barry Goldwater for wanting to escalate the war in Vietnam at the same time he was planning an escalation. Nixon won the 1968 presidential election by claiming that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. What a candidate says is not always an indicator of what the candidate is thinking. It gets even trickier when you consider that many of the most important foreign policy issues are not even imagined during the election campaign. Truman did not expect that his second term would be dominated by a war in Korea. Kennedy did not expect to be remembered for the Cuban missile crisis. Jimmy Carter never imagined in 1976 that his presidency would be wrecked by the fall of the Shah of Iran and the hostage crisis. George H. W. Bush didn’t expect to be presiding over the collapse of communism or a war over Kuwait. George W. Bush (regardless of conspiracy theories) never expected his entire presidency to be defined by 9/11. If you read all of these presidents’ position papers in detail, you would never get a hint as to what the really important foreign policy issues would be in their presidencies. Between the unreliability of campaign promises and the unexpected in foreign affairs, predicting what presidents will do is a complex business. The decisions a president must make once in office are neither scripted nor conveniently timed. They frequently present themselves to the president and require decisions in hours that can permanently define his (or her) administration. Ultimately, voters must judge, by whatever means they might choose, whether the candidate has the virtue needed to make those decisions well. Virtue, as we are using it here, is a term that comes from Machiavelli. It means the opposite of its conventional usage. A virtuous leader is one who is clever, cunning, decisive, ruthless and, above all, effective. Virtue is the ability to face the unexpected and make the right decision, without position papers, time to reflect or even enough information. The virtuous leader can do that. Others cannot. It is a gut call for a voter, and a tough one. This does not mean that all we can do is guess about a candidate’s nature. There are three things we can draw on. First, there is the political tradition the candidate comes from. There are more things connecting Republican and Democratic foreign policy than some would like to think, but there are also clear differences. Since each candidate comes from a different political tradition — as do his advisers — these traditions can point to how each candidate might react to events in the world. Second, there are indications in the positions the candidates take on ongoing events that everyone knows about, such as Iraq. Having pointed out times in which candidates have been deceptive, we still believe there is value in looking at their positions and seeing whether they are coherent and relevant. Finally, we can look at the future and try to predict what the world will look like over the next four years. In other words, we can try to limit the surprises as much as possible. In order to try to draw this presidential campaign into some degree of focus on foreign policy, we will proceed in three steps. First, we will try to outline the foreign policy issues that we think will confront the new president, with the understanding that history might well throw in a surprise. Second, we will sketch the traditions and positions of both Obama and McCain to try to predict how they would respond to these events. Finally, after the foreign policy debate is over, we will try to analyze what they actually said within the framework we created. Let me emphasize that this is not a partisan exercise. The best guarantee of objectivity is that there are members of our staff who are passionately (we might even say irrationally) committed to each of the candidates. They will be standing by to crush any perceived unfairness. It is Stratfor’s core belief that it is possible to write about foreign policy, and even an election, without becoming partisan or polemical. It is a difficult task and we doubt we can satisfy everyone, but it is our goal and commitment.
The Post 9/11 WorldEver since 9/11 U.S. foreign policy has focused on the Islamic world. Starting in late 2002, the focus narrowed to Iraq. When the 2008 campaign for president began a year ago, it appeared Iraq would define the election almost to the exclusion of all other matters. Clearly, this is no longer the case, pointing to the dynamism of foreign affairs and opening the door to a range of other issues. Iraq remains an issue, but it interacts with a range of other issues. Among these are the future of U.S.-Iranian relations; U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan and the availability of troops in Iraq for that mission; the future of U.S.-Pakistani relations and their impact on Afghanistan; the future of U.S.-Russian relations and the extent to which they will interfere in the region; resources available to contain Russian expansion; the future of the U.S. relationship with the Europeans and with NATO in the context of growing Russian power and the war in Afghanistan; Israel’s role, caught as it is between Russia and Iran; and a host of only marginally related issues. Iraq may be subsiding, but that simply complicates the world facing the new president. The list of problems facing the new president will be substantially larger than the problems facing George W. Bush, in breadth if not in intensity. The resources he will have to work with, military, political and economic, will not be larger for the first year at least. In terms of military capacity, much will hang on the degree to which Iraq continues to bog down more than a dozen U.S. brigade combat teams. Even thereafter, the core problem facing the next president will be the allocation of limited resources to an expanding number of challenges. The days when it was all about Iraq is over. It is now all about how to make the rubber band stretch without breaking. Iraq remains the place to begin, however, since the shifts there help define the world the new president will face. To understand the international landscape the new president will face, it is essential to begin by understanding what happened in Iraq, and why Iraq is no longer the defining issue of this campaign.
A Stabilized Iraq and the U.S. Troop DilemmaIn 2006, it appeared that the situation in Iraq was both out of control and hopeless. Sunni insurgents were waging war against the United States, Shiite militias were taking shots at the Americans as well, and Sunnis and Shia were waging a war against each other. There seemed to be no way to bring the war to anything resembling a satisfactory solution. When the Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 elections, it appeared inevitable that the United States would begin withdrawing forces from Iraq. U.S expectations aside, this was the expectation by all parties in Iraq. Given that the United States was not expected to remain a decisive force in Iraq, all Iraqi parties discounted the Americans and maneuvered for position in anticipation of a post-American Iraq. The Iranians in particular saw an opportunity to limit a Sunni return to Iraq’s security forces, thus reshaping the geopolitics of the region. U.S. fighting with Iraqi Sunnis intensified in preparation for the anticipated American withdrawal. Bush’s decision to increase forces rather than withdraw them dramatically changed the psychology of Iraq. It was assumed he had lost control of the situation. Bush’s decision to surge forces in Iraq, regardless by how many troops, established two things. First, Bush remained in control of U.S. policy. Second, the assumption that the Americans were leaving was untrue. And suddenly, no one was certain that there would be a vacuum to be filled. The deployment of forces proved helpful, as did the change in how the troops were used; recent leaks indicate that new weapon systems also played a key role. The most important factor, however, was the realization that the Americans were not leaving on Bush’s watch. Since no one was sure who the next U.S. president would be, or what his policies might be, it was thus uncertain that the Americans would leave at all. Everyone in Iraq suddenly recalculated. If the Americans weren’t leaving, one option would be to make a deal with Bush, seen as weak and looking for historical validation. Alternatively, they could wait for Bush’s successor. Iran remembers — without fondness — its decision not to seal a deal with Carter, instead preferring to wait for Reagan. Similarly, seeing foreign jihadists encroaching in Sunni regions and the Shia shaping the government in Baghdad, the Sunni insurgents began a fundamental reconsideration of their strategy. Apart from reversing Iraq’s expectations about the United States, part of Washington’s general strategy was supplementing military operations with previously unthinkable political negotiations. First, the United States began talking to Iraq’s Sunni nationalist insurgents, and found common ground with them. Neither the Sunni nationalists nor the United States liked the jihadists, and both wanted the Shia to form a coalition government. Second, back-channel U.S.-Iranian talks clearly took place. The Iranians realized that the possibility of a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad was evaporating. Iran’s greatest fear was a Sunni Iraqi government armed and backed by the United States, recreating a version of the Hussein regime that had waged war with Iran for almost a decade. The Iranians decided that a neutral, coalition government was the best they could achieve, so they reined in the Shiite militia. The net result of this was that the jihadists were marginalized and broken, and an uneasy coalition government was created in Baghdad, balanced between Iran and the United States. The Americans failed to create a pro-American government in Baghdad, but had blocked the emergence of a pro-Iranian government. Iraqi society remained fragmented and fragile, but a degree of peace unthinkable in 2006 had been created. The first problem facing the next U.S. president will be deciding when and how many U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq. Unlike 2006, this issue will not be framed by Iraq alone. First, there will be the urgency of increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Second, there will be the need to create a substantial strategic reserve to deal with potential requirements in Pakistan, and just as important, responding to events in the former Soviet Union like the recent conflict in Georgia. At the same time, too precipitous a U.S. withdrawal not only could destabilize the situation internally in Iraq, it could convince Iran that its dream of a pro-Iranian Iraq is not out of the question. In short, too rapid a withdrawal could lead to resumption of war in Iraq. But too slow a withdrawal could make the situation in Afghanistan untenable and open the door for other crises. The foreign policy test for the next U.S. president will be calibrating three urgent requirements with a military force that is exhausted by five years of warfare in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan. This force was not significantly expanded since Sept. 11, making this the first global war the United States has ever fought without a substantial military expansion. Nothing the new president does will change this reality for several years, so he will be forced immediately into juggling insufficient forces without the option of precipitous withdrawal from Iraq unless he is prepared to accept the consequences, particularly of a more powerful Iran.
The Nuclear Chip and a Stable U.S.-Iranian UnderstandingThe nuclear issue has divided the United States and Iran for several years. The issue seems to come and go depending on events elsewhere. Thus, what was enormously urgent just prior to the Russo-Georgian war became much less pressing during and after it. This is not unreasonable in our point of view, because we regard Iran as much farther from nuclear weapons than others might, and we suspect that the Bush administration agrees given its recent indifference to the question. Certainly, Iran is enriching uranium, and with that uranium, it could possibly explode a nuclear device. But the gap between a nuclear device and weapon is substantial, and all the enriched uranium in the world will not give the Iranians a weapon. To have a weapon, it must be ruggedized and miniaturized to fit on a rocket or to be carried on an attack aircraft. The technologies needed for that range from material science to advanced electronics to quality assurance. Creating a weapon is a huge project. In our view, Iran does not have the depth of integrated technical skills needed to achieve that goal. As for North Korea, for Iran a very public nuclear program is a bargaining chip designed to extract concessions, particularly from the Americans. The Iranians have continued the program very publicly in spite of threats of Israeli and American attacks because it made the United States less likely to dismiss Iranian wishes in Tehran’s true area of strategic interest, Iraq. The United States must draw down its forces in Iraq to fight in Afghanistan. The Iranians have no liking for the Taliban, having nearly gone to war with them in 1998, and having aided the United States in Afghanistan in 2001. The United States needs Iran’s commitment to a neutral Iraq to withdraw U.S. forces since Iran could destabilize Iraq overnight, though Tehran’s ability to spin up Shiite proxies in Iraq has declined over the past year. Therefore, the next president very quickly will face the question of how to deal with Iran. The Bush administration solution — relying on quiet understandings alongside public hostility — is one model. It is not necessarily a bad one, so long as forces remain in Iraq to control the situation. If the first decision the new U.S. president will have to make is how to transfer forces in Iraq elsewhere, the second decision will be how to achieve a more stable understanding with Iran. This is particularly pressing in the context of a more assertive Russia that might reach out to Iran. The United States will need Iran more than Iran needs the United States under these circumstances. Washington will need Iran to abstain from action in Iraq but to act in Afghanistan. More significantly, the United States will need Iran not to enter into an understanding with Russia. The next president will have to figure out how to achieve all these things without giving away more than he needs to, and without losing his domestic political base in the process.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the TalibanThe U.S. president also will have to come up with an Afghan policy, which really doesn’t exist at this moment. The United States and its NATO allies have deployed about 50,000 troops in Afghanistan. To benchmark this, the Russians deployed around 120,000 by the mid-1980s, and were unable to pacify the country. Therefore the possibility of 60,000 troops — or even a few additional brigades on top of that — pacifying Afghanistan is minimal. The primary task of troops in Afghanistan now is to defend the Kabul regime and other major cities, and to try to keep the major roads open. More troops will make this easier, but by itself, it will not end the war. The problem in Afghanistan is twofold. First, the Taliban defeated their rivals in Afghanistan during the civil war of the 1990s because they were the most cohesive force in the country, were politically adept and enjoyed Pakistani support. The Taliban’s victory was not accidental; and all other things being equal, without the U.S. presence, they could win again. The United States never defeated the Taliban. Instead, the Taliban refused to engage in massed warfare against American airpower, retreated, dispersed and regrouped. In most senses, it is the same force that won the Afghan civil war. The United States can probably block the Taliban from taking the cities, but to do more it must do three things. First, it must deny the Taliban sanctuary and lines of supply running from Pakistan. These two elements allowed the mujahideen to outlast the Soviets. They helped bring the Taliban to power. And they are fueling the Taliban today. Second, the United States must form effective coalitions with tribal groups hostile to the Taliban. To do this it needs the help of Iran, and more important, Washington must convince the tribes that it will remain in Afghanistan indefinitely — not an easy task. And third — the hardest task for the new president — the United States will have to engage the Taliban themselves, or at least important factions in the Taliban movement, in a political process. When we recall that the United States negotiated with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, this is not as far-fetched as it appears. The most challenging aspect to deal with in all this is Pakistan. The United States has two issues in the South Asian country. The first is the presence of al Qaeda in northern Pakistan. Al Qaeda has not carried out a successful operation in the United States since 2001, nor in Europe since 2005. Groups who use the al Qaeda label continue to operate in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they use the name to legitimize or celebrate their activities — they are not the same people who carried out 9/11. Most of al Qaeda prime’s operatives are dead or scattered, and its main leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, are not functional. The United States would love to capture bin Laden so as to close the books on al Qaeda, but the level of effort needed — assuming he is even alive — might outstrip U.S. capabilities. The most difficult step politically for the new U.S. president will be to close the book on al Qaeda. This does not mean that a new group of operatives won’t grow from the same soil, and it doesn’t mean that Islamist terrorism is dead by any means. But it does mean that the particular entity the United States has been pursuing has effectively been destroyed, and the parts regenerating under its name are not as dangerous. Asserting victory will be extremely difficult for the new U.S. president. But without that step, a massive friction point between the United States and Pakistan will persist — one that isn’t justified geopolitically and undermines a much more pressing goal. The United States needs the Pakistani army to attack the Taliban in Pakistan, or failing that, permit the United States to attack them without hindrance from the Pakistani military. Either of these are nightmarishly difficult things for a Pakistani government to agree to, and harder still to carry out. Nevertheless, without cutting the line of supply to Pakistan, like Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Afghanistan cannot be pacified. Therefore, the new president will face the daunting task of persuading or coercing the Pakistanis to carry out an action that will massively destabilize their country without allowing the United States to get bogged down in a Pakistan it cannot hope to stabilize. At the same time, the United States must begin the political process of creating some sort of coalition in Afghanistan that it can live with. The fact of the matter is that the United States has no long-term interest in Afghanistan except in ensuring that radical jihadists with global operational reach are not given sanctuary there. Getting an agreement to that effect will be hard. Guaranteeing compliance will be virtually impossible. Nevertheless, that is the task the next president must undertake. There are too many moving parts in Afghanistan to be sanguine about the outcome. It is a much more complex situation than Iraq, if for no other reason than because the Taliban are a far more effective fighting force than anything the United States encountered in Iraq, the terrain far more unfavorable for the U.S. military, and the political actors much more cynical about American capabilities. The next U.S. president will have to make a painful decision. He must either order a long-term holding action designed to protect the Karzai government, launch a major offensive that includes Pakistan but has insufficient forces, or withdraw. Geopolitically, withdrawal makes a great deal of sense. Psychologically, it could unhinge the region and regenerate al Qaeda-like forces. Politically, it would not be something a new president could do. But as he ponders Iraq, the future president will have to address Afghanistan. And as he ponders Afghanistan, he will have to think about the Russians.
The Russian ResurgenceWhen the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Russians were allied with the United States. They facilitated the U.S. relationship with the Northern Alliance, and arranged for air bases in Central Asia. The American view of Russia was formed in the 1990s. It was seen as disintegrating, weak and ultimately insignificant to the global balance. The United States expanded NATO into the former Soviet Union in the Baltic states and said it wanted to expand it into Ukraine and Georgia. The Russians made it clear that they regarded this as a direct threat to their national security, resulting in the 2008 Georgian conflict. The question now is where U.S.-Russian relations are going. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union a geopolitical catastrophe. After Ukraine and Georgia, it is clear he does not trust the United States and that he intends to reassert his sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. Georgia was lesson one. The current political crisis in Ukraine is the second lesson unfolding. The re-emergence of a Russian empire in some form or another represents a far greater threat to the United States than the Islamic world. The Islamic world is divided and in chaos. It cannot coalesce into the caliphate that al Qaeda wanted to create by triggering a wave of revolutions in the Islamic world. Islamic terrorism remains a threat, but the geopolitical threat of a unifying Islamic power is not going to happen. Russia is a different matter. The Soviet Union and the Russian empire both posed strategic threats because they could threaten Europe, the Middle East and China simultaneously. While this overstates the threat, it does provide some context. A united Eurasia is always powerful, and threatens to dominate the Eastern Hemisphere. Therefore, preventing Russia from reasserting its power in the former Soviet Union should take precedence over all other considerations. The problem is that the United States and NATO together presently do not have the force needed to stop the Russians. The Russian army is not particularly powerful or effective, but it is facing forces that are far less powerful and effective. The United States has its forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan so that when the war in Georgia broke out, sending ground forces was simply not an option. The Russians are extremely aware of this window of opportunity, and are clearly taking advantage of it. The Russians have two main advantages in this aside from American resource deficits. First, the Europeans are heavily dependent on Russian natural gas; German energy dependence on Moscow is particularly acute. The Europeans are in no military or economic position to take any steps against the Russians, as the resulting disruption would be disastrous. Second, as the United States maneuvers with Iran, the Russians can provide support to Iran, politically and in terms of military technology, that not only would challenge the United States, it might embolden the Iranians to try for a better deal in Iraq by destabilizing Iraq again. Finally, the Russians can pose lesser challenges in the Caribbean with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, as well as potentially supporting Middle Eastern terrorist groups and left-wing Latin American groups. At this moment, the Russians have far more options than the Americans have. Therefore, the new U.S. president will have to design a policy for dealing with the Russians with few options at hand. This is where his decisions on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan will intersect and compete with his decisions on Russia. Ideally, the United States would put forces in the Baltics — which are part of NATO — as well as in Ukraine and Georgia. But that is not an option and won’t be for more than a year under the best of circumstances. The United States therefore must attempt a diplomatic solution with Russia with very few sticks. The new president will need to try to devise a package of carrots — e.g., economic incentives — plus the long-term threat of a confrontation with the United States to persuade Moscow not to use its window of opportunity to reassert Russian regional hegemony. Since regional hegemony allows Russia to control its own destiny, the carrots will have to be very tempting, while the threat has to be particularly daunting. The president’s task will be crafting the package and then convincing the Russians it has value.
European Disunity and Military WeaknessOne of the problems the United States will face in these negotiations will be the Europeans. There is no such thing as a European foreign policy; there are only the foreign policies of the separate countries. The Germans, for example, do not want a confrontation with Russia under any circumstances. The United Kingdom, by contrast, is more willing to take a confrontational approach to Moscow. And the European military capability, massed and focused, is meager. The Europeans have badly neglected their military over the past 15 years. What deployable, expeditionary forces they have are committed to the campaign in Afghanistan. That means that in dealing with Russia, the Americans do not have united European support and certainly no meaningful military weight. This will make any diplomacy with the Russians extremely difficult. One of the issues the new president eventually will have to face is the value of NATO and the Europeans as a whole. This was an academic matter while the Russians were prostrate. With the Russians becoming active, it will become an urgent issue. NATO expansion — and NATO itself — has lived in a world in which it faced no military threats. Therefore, it did not have to look at itself militarily. After Georgia, NATO’s military power becomes very important, and without European commitment, NATO’s military power independent of the United States — and the ability to deploy it — becomes minimal. If Germany opts out of confrontation, then NATO will be paralyzed legally, since it requires consensus, and geographically. For the United States alone cannot protect the Baltics without German participation. The president really will have one choice affecting Europe: Accept the resurgence of Russia, or resist. If the president resists, he will have to limit his commitment to the Islamic world severely, rebalance the size and shape of the U.S. military and revitalize and galvanize NATO. If he cannot do all of those things, he will face some stark choices in Europe.
Israel, Turkey, China, and Latin AmericaRussian pressure is already reshaping aspects of the global system. The Israelis have approached Georgia very differently from the United States. They halted weapon sales to Georgia the week before the war, and have made it clear to Moscow that Israel does not intend to challenge Russia. The Russians met with Syrian President Bashar al Assad immediately after the war. This signaled the Israelis that Moscow was prepared to support Syria with weapons and with Russian naval ships in the port of Tartus if Israel supports Georgia, and other countries in the former Soviet Union, we assume. The Israelis appear to have let the Russians know that they would not do so, separating themselves from the U.S. position. The next president will have to re-examine the U.S. relationship with Israel if this breach continues to widen. In the same way, the United States will have to address its relationship with Turkey. A long-term ally, Turkey has participated logistically in the Iraq occupation, but has not been enthusiastic. Turkey’s economy is booming, its military is substantial and Turkish regional influence is growing. Turkey is extremely wary of being caught in a new Cold War between Russia and the United States, but this will be difficult to avoid. Turkey’s interests are very threatened by a Russian resurgence, and Turkey is the U.S. ally with the most tools for countering Russia. Both sides will pressure Ankara mercilessly. More than Israel, Turkey will be critical both in the Islamic world and with the Russians. The new president will have to address U.S.-Turkish relations both in context and independent of Russia fairly quickly. In some ways, China is the great beneficiary of all of this. In the early days of the Bush administration, there were some confrontations with China. As the war in Iraq calmed down, Washington seemed to be increasing its criticisms of China, perhaps even tacitly supporting Tibetan independence. With the re-emergence of Russia, the United States is now completely distracted. Contrary to perceptions, China is not a global military power. Its army is primarily locked in by geography and its navy is in no way an effective blue-water force. For its part, the United States is in no position to land troops on mainland China. Therefore, there is no U.S. geopolitical competition with China. The next president will have to deal with economic issues with China, but in the end, China will sell goods to the United States, and the United States will buy them. Latin America has been a region of minimal interest to the United States in the last decade or longer. So long as no global power was using its territory, the United States did not care what presidents Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua — or even the Castros in Cuba — were doing. But with the Russians back in the Caribbean, at least symbolically, all of these countries suddenly become more important. At the moment, the United States has no Latin American policy worth noting; the new president will have to develop one. Quite apart from the Russians, the future U.S. president will need to address Mexico. The security situation in Mexico is deteriorating substantially, and the U.S.-Mexican border remains porous. The cartels stretch from Mexico to the streets of American cities where their customers live. What happens in Mexico, apart from immigration issues, is obviously of interest to the United States. If the current trajectory continues, at some point in his administration, the new U.S. president will have to address Mexico — potentially in terms never before considered.
The U.S. Defense BudgetThe single issue touching on all of these is the U.S. defense budget. The focus of defense spending over the past eight years has been the Army and Marine Corps — albeit with great reluctance. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was not an advocate of a heavy Army, favoring light forces and air power, but reality forced his successors to reallocate resources. In spite of this, the size of the Army remained the same — and insufficient for the broader challenges emerging. The focus of defense spending was Fourth Generation warfare, essentially counterinsurgency. It became dogma in the military that we would not see peer-to-peer warfare for a long time. The re-emergence of Russia, however, obviously raises the specter of peer-to-peer warfare, which in turn means money for the Air Force as well as naval rearmament. All of these programs will take a decade or more to implement, so if Russia is to be a full-blown challenge by 2020, spending must begin now. If we assume that the United States will not simply pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but will also commit troops to allies on Russia’s periphery while retaining a strategic reserve — able to, for example, protect the U.S.-Mexican border — then we are assuming substantially increased spending on ground forces. But that will not be enough. The budgets for the Air Force and Navy will also have to begin rising. U.S. national strategy is expressed in the defense budget. Every strategic decision the president makes has to be expressed in budget dollars with congressional approval. Without that, all of this is theoretical. The next president will have to start drafting his first defense budget shortly after taking office. If he chooses to engage all of the challenges, he must be prepared to increase defense spending. If he is not prepared to do that, he must concede that some areas of the world are beyond management. And he will have to decide which areas these are. In light of the foregoing, as we head toward the debate, 10 questions should be asked of the candidates:
If the United States removes its forces from Iraq slowly as both of you advocate, where will the troops come from to deal with Afghanistan and protect allies in the former Soviet Union?
The Russians sent 120,000 troops to Afghanistan and failed to pacify the country. How many troops do you think are necessary?
Do you believe al Qaeda prime is still active and worth pursuing?
Do you believe the Iranians are capable of producing a deliverable nuclear weapon during your term in office?
How do you plan to persuade the Pakistani government to go after the Taliban, and what support can you provide them if they do?
Do you believe the United States should station troops in the Baltic states, in Ukraine and Georgia as well as in other friendly countries to protect them from Russia?
Do you feel that NATO remains a viable alliance, and are the Europeans carrying enough of the burden?
Do you believe that Mexico represents a national security issue for the United States?
Do you believe that China represents a strategic challenge to the United States?
Do you feel that there has been tension between the United States and Israel over the Georgia issue?

Church Attendance and Avoidance

I wanted to send this article that you might find interesting. In it, the author surveys some of the differences between people who attend church and those that don't. Of course God does have to call someone, but as we know, there are a lot of people who are reading the Good News magazine www.gnmagazine.org , and yet don't attend church with us. I thought you might find this article interesting. There is a book that you can link to mentioned in the article that you can read a review about and then get it from the library or bookstore if you want. Also if you'd like more articles from this source, you can subscribe to his newsletter here http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Subscribe, and of course, if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe from it later. Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting.


New Statistics on Church Attendance and Avoidance
(Ventura, CA) With Americans pursuing a growing number of "church" options, some of the traditional measures of church health are being redefined. According to a new study released by The Barna Group, which has been studying church participation patterns since 1984, popular measures such as the percentage of people who are "unchurched" - based on attendance at a conventional church service - are out of date. Various new forms of faith community and experience, such as house churches, marketplace ministries and cyberchurches, must be figured into the mix - and make calculating the percentage of Americans who can be counted as "unchurched" more complicated. The fact that millions of people are now involved in multiple faith communities - for instance, attending a conventional church one week, a house church the next, and interacting with an online faith community in-between - has rendered the standard measures of "churched" and "unchurched" much less precise.
The latest national surveys by The Barna Group address these new behavioral patterns and provide a different approach to evaluating church participation.
New Measures
According to Barna, one way of examining people's participation in faith communities is by exploring how they practice their corporate faith engagement. Unveiling a new measurement model, Barna identified the following five segments:
Unattached - people who had attended neither a conventional church nor an organic faith community (e.g., house church, simple church, intentional community) during the past year. Some of these people use religious media, but they have had no personal interaction with a regularly-convened faith community. This segment represents one out of every four adults (23%) in America. About one-third of the segment was people who have never attended a church at any time in their life.
Intermittents - these adults are essentially "under-churched" - i.e., people who have participated in either a conventional church or an organic faith community within the past year, but not during the past month. Such people constitute about one out of every seven adults (15%). About two-thirds of this group had attended at least one church event at some time within the past six months.
Homebodies - people who had not attended a conventional church during the past month, but had attended a meeting of a house church (3%).
Blenders - adults who had attended both a conventional church and a house church during the past month. Most of these people attend a conventional church as their primary church, but many are experimenting with new forms of faith community. In total, Blenders represent 3% of the adult population.
Conventionals - adults who had attended a conventional church (i.e., a congregational-style, local church) during the past month but had not attended a house church. Almost three out of every five adults (56%) fit this description. This participation includes attending any of a wide variety of conventional-church events, such as weekend services, mid-week services, special events, or church-based classes.
Cross-Pollinating the Church
In addition to those five segments, the Barna report revealed that there is a growing degree of ministry crossover in America. When examining the spiritual participation of adults during the past month, the Barna team discovered that more than one out of every five adults had been involved in two or more types of churches: a conventional church, a house church, a marketplace church, a real-time ministry event on the Internet, or a live ministry event in the community.
Demonstrating the complexity of measuring people’s faith commitments, the Barna study identified the nature of people’s overlapping faith practices.
Among adults who were churched (either conventionally or alternatively) 15% had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a faith-oriented website within the past month. Half as many (7%) said they had such an experience through a real-time event on the Internet.
One out of every eight churched adults (13%) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a ministry that met in the marketplace (e.g., their workplace, athletic event, etc.) during the past month.
Twice as many churched people (28%) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through their involvement with a special ministry event (such as a worship concert or community service activity).
A majority of the public claimed to have experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through some form of interaction with religious television or radio programs. Reaching the Unattached
The Barna study also identified some of the characteristics of the Unattached that might enable conventional churches or other ministries to more adeptly connect with those people.

Compared to regular churchgoers, the Unattached are:
more likely to feel stressed out
less likely to be concerned about the moral condition of the nation
much less likely to believe that they are making a positive difference in the world
less optimistic about the future
far less likely to believe that the Bible is totally accurate in its principles
substantially more likely to believe that Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic figures, but are not real
more likely to believe that Jesus Christ sinned while He was on earth
much more likely to believe that the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles even though they use different stories
less likely to believe that a person can be under demonic influence
more likely to describe their sociopolitical views as "mostly liberal" than "mostly conservative"

A Unique Profile
Six out of ten adults in the Unattached category (59%) consider themselves to be Christian. Even more surprising was the revelation that 17% of the Unattached are born again Christians - defined as people who have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that they consider to be very important in their life, and who believe that they will experience Heaven after they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior.
A significant proportion of the Unattached engages in traditional faith activities during a typical week. For instance, one-fifth (19%) read the Bible and three out of every five (62%) pray to God during a typical week.
The Unattached distinguished themselves from the churched population demographically, too. They are more likely to be single, male, and to have been divorced at some point. They are also less likely to be registered to vote, which is often a sign of people who feel less connected to or influential in society.
Insights into the Unchurched
George Barna, whose book Grow Your Church from the Outside In describes people who are not connected to a church, discussed the larger context of the unchurched.

To read more about George Barna’s book on the unchurched population, click here.

"The numbers consistently point out that those who live without a regular face-to-face faith connection tend to be relatively isolated from the mainstream of society, tend to be non-committal in institutional and personal relationships, and typically revel in their independence. Attempting to get them involved in the life of a church is a real challenge. The best chance of getting them to a church is when someone they know and trust invites them, offers to accompany them, and there is reason to believe that the church event will address one of the issues or needs they are struggling with at that moment."
Barna indicated that if past years are any indication, comparatively few of the Unattached are likely to visit a church during this Easter season, but that a significant number of the Intermittents are likely to return at least once.
About the Research
This report is based upon two nationwide telephone surveys conducted by The Barna Group. One survey was a sample of 1003 adults, age 18 and older, conducted in December 2007 randomly selected from across the continental United States. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample of adults is ±3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The other survey was based on a national random sample of 1006 adults interviewed in January 2008, also with a maximum margin of sampling error of ±3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. In situations in which the identical question was asked in each survey, and the data were combined, the maximum margin of sampling error for the aggregate sample of 2009 adults is ±2.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables. All interviews in both surveys were conducted via telephone, and multiple callbacks were made to each telephone number to provide a representative sample.
The Barna Group, Ltd. (which includes its research division, The Barna Research Group) conducts primary research, produces media resources pertaining to spiritual development, and facilitates the healthy spiritual growth of leaders, children, families and Christian ministries. Located in Ventura, California, Barna has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984. If you would like to receive free e-mail notification of the release of each new, bi-monthly update on the latest research findings from The Barna Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna website www.barna.org.

Ramadan "Fast- A-Thon"

I wanted to send you this article about how much Islamic worship practices are becoming common at American Universities. It shows that at least these religious practices aren't going to meet with protest at these places. I wanted to send this to you so you can know what is going on in the country that we live in ourselves.


Ramadan "fast-a-thons" raise awareness about Islam among college students
Infidels showing solidarity with Muslims
And whatever the appeal, "it's all the rage" with college students. CAIR explains why: "The fear is still there, but people are looking for answers, especially the youth. There is a genuine interest to understand, and they don't see the world the same way as the older generation. They're not as uptight." "Ramadan fast-a-thons raise awareness about Islam among college students," by Jessica Meyers for the Dallas Morning News, September 19:
RICHARDSON – In a banquet room above the student union's bopping pingpong balls and blaring arcade games, the groan of empty stomachs met the hum of Arabic prayer.
Tables of 20-somethings at the University of Texas at Dallas drooled over plates of hummus as their Muslim counterparts concluded their pre-dinner supplications for Ramadan. Then everyone ate for the first time since dawn. "Why do they put that in front of us to stare at?" whined 19-year-old Sara Arnold before she got permission to rip a hunk of pita bread and dunk it into the chickpea dip. The Muslim Students Association's fast-a-thon – a riff on religious doctrine – draws hundreds of non-Muslim students who choose to fast for one day with their Muslim peers and attend the daily iftar banquet in the evening to break it. They now share in the age-old custom of spiritual and physical cleansing tied to the holiday, which runs through September this year. Participation numbers have more than doubled in the last several years, a factor religious scholars and students attribute to an outreach by the Muslim community, solidarity on the part of those who have become fascinated by the Islamic faith, and a curiosity about the spiritual act of fasting itself. "A lot of people know what Ramadan is now," said Ayaham Nahhas, the president of the Muslim Students Association at UTD, who says the fast-a-thon – which drew about 120 people – is the biggest activity his organization holds. "Islam has been getting more attention in the media, and people just want to know what we are all about."So Muslims are "all about" fasting, nothing more? What about tawhid? How about the shehada -- asserting that "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah"? What about jihad fi sabil Allah, warfare against all non-Muslims? Sharia law? Learning what Muslims are "all about" is definitely important, but let's keep it comprehensive, shall we?
More than 240 Muslim Students Associations host fast-a-thons – groups at Southern Methodist University and Texas Christian University are among them – and have raised more than $50,000 for charity. Local businesses donate at least a dollar for each non-Muslim who participates. [...]All area groups are reporting increased attendance and are donating money to an orphan drive organized by the nonprofit Islamic Relief. No one's quite sure why attendance has increased so dramatically recently, seven years after 9/11. "Maybe it's a political empathy post-9/11, a wanting to stand alongside and experience something like this for the first time," said Edina Lekovic of the Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.-based Muslim Public Affairs Counsel. She said she's noticed more non-Muslims across the country fasting in solidarity with their Muslim friends this year than ever before. "Whatever it is, it's all the rage." Part of the heightened awareness comes from Muslim outreach efforts, especially fast-breaking celebrations hosted by area mosques that incorporate lessons about Ramadan. But these interfaith actions are most obvious among college students, said Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "The fear is still there, but people are looking for answers, especially the youth," he said. "There is a genuine interest to understand, and they don't see the world the same way as the older generation. They're not as uptight."...
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Russia III (SPIES!!)‏

I recently sent two articles http://brianleesblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/russia-i-including-israel-and-middle.html , http://brianleesblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/russia-ii-including-mexico-latin.htmlabout Russia expanding it influence in both the Middle East, and Latin America. The article below describes now how Russia has now stepped up its own spy program throughout the world and in particular against the United States. I hope you find this, and the two previous articles interesting.



Militant Possibilities on the New-Old Front
September 17, 2008


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The Russian ResurgenceBy Fred Burton and Scott StewartOver the past several months we have written quite a bit about the Russian resurgence. This discussion predates Russia’s military action in Georgia. Indeed, we have discussed the revival of Russian power since at least 2005, the implications of the FSB’s return since April and the potential return of the Cold War since March. After the Aug. 7 confrontation between Georgia and Russia and the Sept. 10 deployment of Russian strategic bombers in Venezuela, there is little doubt that Russia is reasserting itself and that we are entering a period of heightened geopolitical tension between Russia and the United States. This period of tension is, as forecast, beginning to resemble the Cold War — though as we have noted in previous analyses, the new version will be distinctly different.It is very important to remember that while the hallmark of the Cold War was espionage, the efforts of the intelligence agencies engaged in the Cold War were far broader. Intelligence agencies like the CIA and KGB also took part in vast propaganda campaigns, sponsored coups and widely used proxies to cause problems for their opponent. Sometimes the proxies were used directly against the opponent, as with Soviet support for the North Koreans and North Vietnamese against the United States, or U.S. support of Islamist rebels in Afghanistan. In other cases, the proxies were used indirectly to cause problems for the opposing country and its allies in a broader attempt to expand or defend one side’s geographic and ideological sphere of influence. Because of this, we saw the KGB supporting Marxist insurgents from Mexico to Manila and the United States supporting anti-communist militants in places such as Nicaragua and Angola. This history means it is highly likely that as the present period of U.S.-Russian tensions progresses, the conflict will manifest itself not only through increased espionage activity, but also in the increased use of militant proxies. We’ve seen a steady uptick in covert intelligence activity since former KGB officer Vladimir Putin took the helm in Russia and turned Moscow’s focus back to Cold War tactics. Over the past few years we’ve witnessed, among other things, the poisoning of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and of former KGB officer and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London. With a former KGB man in charge, it is no surprise that the Russians would fall back into old habits, including the use of militant proxies. In fact, the former KGB officers who carried out the technical side of setting up relationships, establishing arms trading, etc. with these militant proxies during the Cold War now occupy critical positions in the Kremlin. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin — who has been very active in his diplomatic trips recently — used to be the KGB’s primary covert arms conduit to Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Because of these factors, much can be learned about what types of activities the Russians might engage in by reviewing Soviet activities during the Cold War.
Soviet Use of Militant ProxiesDuring the Cold War, the Soviets, like the Americans, were very busy trying to export their ideology to the rest of the world. A basic tenet of Marxist thought is that class transcends national boundaries and that the proletariat everywhere needs to be freed from the tyranny of the capitalist class. Marxist thought also holds that politics and economics are evolutionary, and that the natural evolution of societies leads to the replacement of exploitative capitalist systems with superior communist systems. Essentially, this view sees capitalism as inherently flawed and destined to destroy itself, only to be replaced by a more just and fair society. This evolutionary process can, however, be helped along by revolutionary action. Such a belief system meant that communists in places like the Soviet Union were ideologically motivated to support communist movements in other parts of the world out of communist solidarity. This expansionist concept was captured by the anthem of the communist and socialist world, “L’Internationale.” It was widely put into action through institutions such as the Communist International, or Comintern, which was founded in 1919 and committed to using “all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State.” From a nonphilosophical perspective, there also was much to be gained geopolitically in practical terms during the Cold War by expanding the Soviet sphere of influence and working to diminish that of the United States. Indeed, a number of geopolitical imperatives drove the conflict between Russia and the United States, and these imperatives transcended ideology. Ideology was merely an accelerant feeding the flames of a conflict spawned by geopolitics. Many key leaders on both sides of the Cold War were driven more by realpolitik than by ideology.Operating in this atmosphere, the KGB was very busy. Inside the United States, they sought to recruit agents to provide intelligence and act as agents of influence. They also sought to encourage or fund many domestic U.S. groups that could cause problems for Washington. These groups ranged from Marxist Puerto Rican separatist groups, such as the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional and Los Macheteros, to anti-Vietnam War groups, which were responsible for much civil unrest and later spawned militant factions like the Weathermen. Files released after the fall of the Soviet Union showed that most U.S. scholars underestimated the breadth and depth of KGB efforts inside the United States. But the extent of Soviet efforts should not have been a surprise. The KGB had a distinct advantage in this realm over the United States because of the long and very active history of Soviet intelligence agencies such as the Cheka. At a time when the U.S. government was shutting down espionage efforts because “gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail,” the Soviets’ NKVD was involved in all forms of skullduggery. Outside the United States, the KGB was also quite busy working against U.S. interests. In addition to supporting Marxist insurgencies and sponsoring coups, the Soviets directly intervened in places like Afghanistan and Hungary to sustain communist allies who had come to power. The KGB and its very active allies, like the East German Stasi, the Cuban DGI and the Bulgarian Committee for State Security, were also very busy creating and training terrorist groups. In a process that somewhat resembles the recruiting process used by jihadist groups, the KGB and its sister services identified likely recruits, indoctrinated them and then sent them to training camps where they received advanced training in terrorist tradecraft, including surveillance, use of small arms, bombmaking and document forgery. Some of this training occurred on military bases in East Germany or Cuba, but Marxist groups established training camps in other places, such as South Yemen, Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Iraq, Syria and Libya, where prospective recruits were taught guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism.In the spirit of “L’Internationale,” it was not uncommon to find Japanese Red Army members living and training at a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine camp in Lebanon, or for Irish Republican Army members to teach German Red Army Faction or Italian Red Brigade members how to make improvised explosive mixtures and improvised ordnance at camps in Libya or South Yemen. Of course, while most of these groups went through ideological indoctrination, not all of them bought into it. Some of them merely tolerated the ideology as the price for access to Soviet cash, training and weapons. Trainers from the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany and other countries also would visit insurgent training camps in South and Central America, Africa and Asia in their efforts to spread the armed revolution. The Cubans were very active in Latin America and the Caribbean and fairly active in Africa. They also were part of a large international arms-trafficking circle in which Soviet money was sent to Cuba, Cuban sugar was sent to Vietnam, and arms from Vietnam were sent to Latin American Marxist groups. This arms trade was not just hypothetical: In many attacks on U.S. interests or allies in South and Central America from the 1970s to the 1990s, traces conducted on U.S.-manufactured ordnance such as LAW rockets and hand grenades conclusively tied the ordnance used in the attacks to lots that were either abandoned by the United States in Vietnam, or provided to the South Vietnamese and later captured by the North Vietnamese Army.
Today’s EnvironmentFast-forward to 2008. Russia is no longer a Soviet republic in league with a number of other communist republics. Today, Russia is technically a constitutional democracy with a semicapitalist economic system; it is no longer a model communist society or the shining light of Marxist achievement. In spite of these ideological changes, the same geopolitical imperatives that drove the Soviet Union and the United States to the Cold War are still quite real, and they are pushing these powers toward conflict. And in this conflict, the Russians will reach for the same tools they wielded so deftly during the Cold War. In the new conflict, Russia can be expected to reach out to some of its old radical contacts across the world. Many of these contacts, like Ahmed Jabril and Sabri al-Bana (aka Abu Nidal), are now dead, and many other radicals from the 1970s and 1980s, such as Carlos the Jackal and the core members of groups ranging from the Japanese Red Army to the Greek group November 17, have been caught and imprisoned. Additionally, most of the KGB’s old contacts who remain alive and out of prison are getting on in years. This means any current Russian efforts will not focus on convincing geriatric former militants to pick up their arms once more, but instead will focus on using them to reach younger militants cut from the same cloth — militants who likely remain under the radar of Western intelligence. The Soviet collapse and the end of its patronage system hit Marxist insurgent and militant groups very hard. Many of these groups were forced to search for alternative forms of funding and became engaged in kidnapping, narcotics trafficking and extortion. Other groups simply folded under the strain. While many of these groups were left high and dry by the demise of the Soviet Union, and while the Russians are no longer the ideological vanguard of the international Marxist movement, many remaining Marxist groups —such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Philippines — would certainly welcome funding, training and weapons. In Latin America, this undoubtedly will be coordinated with the Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, who along with Bolivia appear to be replacing Cuba as Russia’s footholds in the region. In addition to reactivating contacts with the FARC and remnants of other Marxist groups in South America, we anticipate that the Russians will also step up activities with Marxist groups in Mexico. Elsewhere in North America, they could resume their support of the radical left in the United States and with radical elements of the Quebecois separatist movement in Canada.In Eurasia and the Middle East, the places that really strike us as sites where the Russians will try to become active again are Lebanon (as we’ve discussed elsewhere) and Turkey. During the Cold War, the KGB was very involved in Turkey and supported a number of radical left-wing groups, from the rural Kurdistan Workers’ Party to the urban Dev Sol. Turkey’s left-wing community remains very active and is ripe for Russian exploitation. We also believe the Russians can be expected to reconnect with radical left-wing groups and individuals in places like Italy and Greece, which still maintain very active such groups. Given the U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines, the Russians could also renew contact with the NPA there. In Russia today, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stands as a model for strong authoritarian leadership emphasizing a healthy dose of nationalism and pride in one’s own nation. As such, he could appeal to a whole variety of Bolivarian movements, like those in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Furthermore, the Russians will certainly attempt to appeal to Slavic nationalism through pan-Slavic ideology, particularly in places like Bulgaria and Serbia, where there are well-organized ultranationalist movements and even political parties.Another consideration is that ideological change in Russia could mean Moscow will reach out to radical groups that the KGB traditionally did not deal with. While many KGB officers didn’t completely buy in to communist ideology, the Communist credo did serve as both a point of attraction and a limiting factor in terms of whom the Soviets dealt with. Since the Russian state is no longer bound by Soviet ideology — it is really all about power and profit these days — that constraint is gone. The Russians are now free to deal with a lot of people and do a lot of things they could not do in Soviet times.For example, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke is very popular in Moscow and very well-connected there, as are a number of other American white nationalists. There are also close contacts between various neo-Nazi, skinhead and nationalist groups in Europe and their Russian counterparts. These contacts could be a very easy way for the Russians to make contact with and support radical elements of the far-right in places like the United States, Ukraine, the Baltic states and Germany.There is also a distinct possibility that through their relationship with the FARC, the Russians could gain entree to open a dialogue with some of the more radical elements of the Latin American drug trafficking organizations, including the hyperviolent Mexican cartels. Even Central American drug trafficking groups like Los Kaibiles, who began life strongly anti-communist, might be willing to accept weapons and funding from “democratic” Russians. Considering that Los Kaibiles are now quite mercenary, they also just might be willing to undertake specific attacks if their price point is met. Many Russian organized criminal groups are closely linked to the Kremlin and are a tool Putin and company are already using. These groups could be used to act as an interface with organized criminal groups elsewhere.In this new-old front, the Russian SVR’s activities will need to be studied carefully. Militant arms caches and ordnance used in attacks will need to be carefully reviewed for potential links to Russia, and potential militant training camps will need to be watched. Doing so will require quite a bit of adjustment for the U.S. intelligence community, which has spent so much effort over the past seven years focusing on the jihadist threat.Tell Stratfor What You Think