The Post-American World: Crooke, Escobar, Blumenthal, and Marandi

 

Even if you disagree violently with the viewpoints expressed in this discussion, it will inform you as to how the rest of the world thinks about the decline of US empire. 

The group is very diverse: a former UK diplomat, an Iranian professor educated in the West but now at University of Tehran, a progressive author and journalist (son of Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal) who spent 5 years reporting from Israel, and a Brazilian geopolitical analyst who writes for Asia Times (if I recall correctly, lives in Thailand).

Thirty years ago, the United States dominated the world politically, economically, and scientifically. But today? 

Watch this in-depth discussion with distinguished guests: 

Alastair Crooke - Former British Diplomat, Founder and Director of the Conflicts Forum 

Pepe Escobar - Brazilian Political Analyst and Author 

Max Blumenthal - American Journalist and Author from Grayzone 

Chaired by Dr. Mohammad Marandi - Professor at University of Tehran

See also two Escobar articles linked here. Related: Foreign Observers of US Empire.  

David Goldman (Spengler): China's Plan to Sino-Form the World

The latest from the always entertaining David Goldman, who writes (wrote?) the Spengler column at Asia Times.

 

See 2018 post David Goldman: Will China overtake the U.S. as the world's leading superpower? 

In the lecture below, Goldman summarizes the main themes of his new book You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World.

 

In this next interview (on the China-Iran deal of summer 2020) Goldman drops his guard a bit and waxes poetic with anti-Chinese rhetoric, as he discusses Israel, Iran, and China.

He refers to the Chinese (speaking broadly) as philo-semitic, but then jokes that this means anti-semites who like jews! In light of that remark I wonder how one should characterize Goldman's views on China and the Chinese: philo-sinic or just plain anti-Chinese?

Foreign Observers of US Empire

Four recommended discussions, with perspectives largely absent from US media and establishment sources. 

1. US, Russia, China, Iran: Geopolitics and Realpolitik, discussed by a former UK diplomat, a professor at Tehran University, and a Brazilian journalist who covers Eurasia, living in Thailand.

   

2. Carl Zha, Caltech alumnus and China watcher. TikTok, WeChat, Huawei, semiconductors. The insidious role of US intelligence agencies in the tech war. Part 2.

      

3. Columbia economic historian Adam Tooze: World Order, Then And Now, ChinaTalk Podcast. Among other topics: State Capitalism, or National Socialism? Why Carl Schmitt is widely studied among Chinese intellectuals. The US won the cold war in Europe, but perhaps not in Asia...  More Tooze

4. The New Great Game: Bruno Maçães and diplomat, writer and former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon discuss Asia’s search for a constructive new equilibrium in the wake of growing tensions between China and its neighbours.

 

Bonus! Energy, Geopolitics, And The New Map: A Book Talk With Daniel Yergin.

 

Manhattan Institute: 

The shale revolution brought about not only an American competitive advantage in the global oil and gas market, but also an entirely new geopolitical dynamic. Energy is the bedrock of every industrial economy, and even minor shifts in production and prices have had resounding impacts on international diplomacy. 

Today, the global energy landscape differs drastically from a decade ago. The U.S. now leads the world in oil production thanks to fracking, and the world is reacting. But even as Russia pivots to China, and Middle Eastern producers try to recalibrate, every oil-producing country faces the same questions about the future of energy: Will renewable energy reign? And how will international relationships fare with this new map? These issues will become even more controversial during the presidential campaigns.

See also Remarks on the Decline of American Empire for earlier discussion of the impact of fracking on geopolitics.

Real cyberwar

Details of the Stuxnet exploit against Iranian centrifuges in this Times article. The results are impressive on a number of levels. But the US and Israelis should keep in mind that what goes around comes around -- cyberwar is potentially 24/7, and it's very hard to know who your enemy is. Luckily the terrorist threat we face doesn't seem to be very technologically able.

NYTimes: ... The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults.

“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.

... The most detailed portrait of the damage comes from the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington. Last month, it issued a lengthy Stuxnet report that said Iran’s P-1 machines at Natanz suffered a series of failures in mid- to late 2009 that culminated in technicians taking 984 machines out of action.

... Publicly, Israeli officials make no explicit ties between Stuxnet and Iran’s problems. But in recent weeks, they have given revised and surprisingly upbeat assessments of Tehran’s nuclear status.

“A number of technological challenges and difficulties” have beset Iran’s program, Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, told Israeli public radio late last month.

The troubles, he added, “have postponed the timetable.”

The killing of more physicists in Tehran

I wrote about an earlier assassination, using similar methods, back in January. Several murders of physicists, using the same techniques? I can only think of one intelligence service with sufficient motive, chutzpah and capability.

The recent WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables reveals just how agitated governments in the Middle East are about Iran's bomb program. Neither Arabs nor Israelis want the Iranians to get nuclear weapons. But I don't suppose they can work together on this one...

Physics World: Academics in Iran have been left in a state of critical fear following the murder in Tehran yesterday of nuclear physicist Majid Shahriari and the attempted assassination of another nuclear researcher, Fereydoon Abbasi.

The separate attacks occurred yesterday morning and both were carried out by unidentified assailants on motorbikes who attached explosives to the victims' vehicles as they travelled through the capital. Both scientists were based in the faculty of nuclear engineering at the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran and they are both said to be key figures in Iran's controversial nuclear programme.

Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, immediately blamed the attacks on foreign enemies saying that "undoubtedly the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved". As yet, however, no nation or group has claimed responsibility.

"Everyone is shocked. Programmed assassination of scientists is the last thing we could imagine," says Reza Mansouri, a cosmologist at Sharif University in Tehran and a former Iranian deputy science minister. He confirmed that the widely held view in Iran is that this attack was carried out by foreign agents.

The killing of a physicist in Tehran

The top story on the Times web site today is about the assassination of a physicist at Tehran University.

A remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle killed an Iranian physics professor outside his home in northern Tehran on Tuesday, state media reported, blaming the United States and Israel for the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. One state broadcaster, IRIB, quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that “in the initial investigation, signs of the triangle of wickedness by the Zionist regime, America and their hired agents are visible in the terrorist act” against the scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi.

... The Web site of Iran’s state television declared the bombing a “terrorist act by counterrevolutionaries and elements of arrogance,” a reference to the United States. Security forces are investigating, The A.P. quoted the report as saying.

The United States and western allies have been pressing Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program, which Tehran insists is solely for civilian purposes to produce electricity. But the West fears Iran is seeking to build a nuclear weapon that would threaten Israel and upset the regional power balance.

Last year, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, disappeared during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia; Iran accused the United States of helping to kidnap him.

After Tuesday’s explosion, the government’s supporters and opponents traded accusations and claims that the scientist had supported their camp.

Here is a picture of the victim. My condolences to his family and friends.

His recent publication list (below) does not suggest he was involved in the bomb program, although you never know what people do in their spare time. If I had to guess I would suppose he was killed for being pro-reform.

49. Non-Douglas-Kazakov phase transition of two-dimensional generalized Yang-Mills theories, Eur. Phys. Jour. C 51 (2007) 193 [pdf]

50. Asymptotic behavior of $\omega$ in general quintom model, Gen. Rel. Grav. 40 (2008) 107 [pdf]

51. Klein-Gordon and Dirac particles in non-constant scalar-curvature background, Int. Jour. Mod. Phys. A 23 (2008) 1613 [pdf]

52. Quantum induced w = -1 crossing of the quintessence and phantom models, JCAP 0901 (2009) 035 [pdf]

53. Remarks on generalized Gauss-Bonnet dark energy, Phys. Rev. D 79 (2009) 063006 [pdf]

More details at the blog post here. Coincidentally, I first learned quantum mechanics (during high school) from the Iowa State University Professor Hauptman mentioned at the link. He is a high energy experimentalist and his work has no near-term military applications.

When I was growing up my father, a professor, had graduate students from Iran. I remember attending a traditional Iranian wedding. One of the students pointed to another guest, saying to me, "Look, he is SAVAK" -- referring to the Shah's secret police.

A physicist from Iran

We have a sabbatical visitor in our institute who is professor of theoretical physics in Iran. He did his doctoral work at Oxford but this is his first time in the US. He kindly agreed to answer some questions for this blog. I'll try to follow up with more in the future; I realize these first questions are a bit superficial.

Q: How would you describe the scientific situation today in Iran? Do you feel researchers there are up to date on current progress, or is there a gap? Is the government serious about scientific research?

Almost all governments of developing countries have a lot of financial problems and they have to choose where to spend money.

In a few countries such as India and China, the government spends a lot of money for research on purely scientific projects. Other countries don't spend so much money as they have lots of problems to solve. In Iran the financial situation is not so good and there is not enough money to solve these kinds of problem and so scientific research is not similar to the west. I am sure there is gap in some topics.


Q: How popular is physics in Iran (say, versus engineering)? What do the brightest students in Iran tend to study?

Many high school students like physics, however they don't choose physics as their first choice.

The brightest students choose: Medical subjects, Electrical eng., Mechanical eng. and Civil eng. because they may get a job more easily in the future. I mean these subjects are more secure from the economical point of view. Someone with a BSc or even a PhD in physics won't be able to find a job easily.


Q: What is the attitude of scientists in Iran about nuclear weapons development?

Nobody likes nuclear weapons and everyone wants to live in a world without nuclear arms. People in Iran hate war. Iran had 8 years of war with Iraq and people don't like war as they know its consequences. People in Iran are against nuclear weapons.


Q: What is the general attitude of scientists towards the US, the West, etc.?

They like to have scientific relations with all countries.


Q: Can you characterize academic ties to developing countries like India and China? Comparable to those between Iran and the West? Increasing faster?

There is not too much academic interaction between Iran and India or China. There is a little bit more interaction between Iranian scientists and western countries.


Q: The same question for economic ties.

There are strong economic ties between Iran and China (not with India). This is not strange: you go anywhere in the world for shopping and you will see "made in china" almost everywhere. However, economic relations between Iran and Europe are much stronger.