John Mearsheimer talks truth about Russia-Ukraine

Kudos to The American Conservative, whatever one thinks of it otherwise, for doing an extensive transcript of Mearsheimer's Nov. 11 presentation to the European Parliament, specifically as part of an EP commemoration of Armistice Day.

Video is here:

And, with that, let's dig into the transcript. 

First and up front, the relevance to the date:

Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today.

Mearsheimer later down gives a "realist" take on both World War I and II:

Remember that the U.S. entered both World Wars to prevent Germany and Japan from becoming regional hegemons in Europe and East Asia respectively. The same logic applies today.

I'd disagree on I, both on Wilson's motivation and the reality of the world stage at that time. But, hold on to that hegemony idea for a few paragraphs.

Then some of the specifics of what's gone wrong, including some of the lies by the US and/or EU. 

First, the EU-NATO relationship is succinctly spelled out:

Some might argue that the EU, not NATO, was the main cause of European stability during the unipolar moment, which is why the EU, not NATO, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But this is wrong. While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent on NATO keeping the peace in Europe.

Exactly, EU. You still don't have that rapid reaction force; you still must hide behind the skirts of NATO. Post-invasion political science, with NATO expansion, has seen membership of the two organizations more closely align, too.

Next, it's post-Cold War unipolarity vs the start of multipolarity, which Mersheimer dates to 2017. Gee, what happened in the US then?  Anyway, here you go:

Russia is the weakest of the three great powers and contrary to what many Europeans think, it is not a threat to overrun all of Ukraine, much less eastern Europe. After all, it has spent the past three and a half years just trying to conquer the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine. The Russian army is not the Wehrmacht and Russia—unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War and China in East Asia today—is not a potential regional hegemon.

OK, the pre-2014, if you will, stage has been set. Gee, what happened in 2014? 

But first, a side note on Israel. Noting the "special friendship" there, Mearsheimer adds this will always distract the US from elsewhere, no matter who's in the White House. 

Well, one more bit of final stage-setting, including a warning for the people to whom he's speaking at that moment:

Europe and the U.S. foolishly sought to bring Ukraine into NATO, which provoked a losing war with Russia that markedly increases the odds that the U.S. will depart Europe and NATO will be eviscerated. Let me explain.

Eviscerated, it will be. German carmakers, and to a lesser degree, others in Europe, bet wrong on both hybrids and full electrics, and China is eating their lunch more than Tesla, which has faced more of a backlash than in the US. A fair amount of the electronics world is either US companies building shit in China, or Chinese companies building shit ever faster, followed by Japan. Where's today's Nokia? Where's Europe sit on solar panel construction? Where's Europe sit without Russian natural gas? Oh,in the hands of either US or certain of the Arab petro-klepto states, even worse than it does on oil, where Norway and the UK have a fair amount still.

Then, truth vs lies.

The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. His aim, so the argument goes, is to conquer all of Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russia. Once that goal is achieved, Russia will move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after the Second World War. In this story, Putin is a mortal threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan that fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition. There are numerous problems with this story. Let me spell out five of them. 

First, there is no evidence from before February 24, 2022 that Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. Proponents of the conventional wisdom cannot point to anything Putin wrote or said that indicates he thought conquering Ukraine was a desirable goal, that he thought it was a feasible goal, and that he intended to pursue that goal. 

When challenged on this point, purveyors of the conventional wisdom point to Putin’s claim that Ukraine was an “artificial” state and especially to his view that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” which is a core theme in his well-known July 12, 2021 article. These comments, however, say nothing about his reason for going to war. In fact, that article provides significant evidence that Putin recognized Ukraine as an independent country. For example, he tells the Ukrainian people, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!”

There you are. 

Was Russia trying to conquer all of Ukraine, or was it indeed a "special operation"? Mearsheimer says the latter:

Second, Putin did not have anywhere near enough troops to conquer Ukraine. I estimate that Russia invaded Ukraine with at most 190,000 troops. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the present commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, maintains that Russia’s invasion force was only 100,000 strong. There is no way that a force numbering either 100,000 or 190,000 soldiers could conquer, occupy, and absorb all of Ukraine into a greater Russia.

Note the Ukrainian agreement. (Mearsheimer notes Russia also had some idea about NATO upscaling Ukraine's armaments kit.)

Next, the various sabotaging of peace talks:

Immediately after the war began, Russia reached out to Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war and work out a modus vivendi between the two countries. This move is directly at odds with the claim that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and make it part of Greater Russia. Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow began in Belarus just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine. That Belarus track was eventually replaced by an Israeli as well as an Istanbul track. The available evidence indicates that the Russians were negotiating seriously and were not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory, save for Crimea, which they had annexed in 2014, and possibly the Donbass region. The negotiations ended when the Ukrainians, with prodding from Britain and the United States, walked away from the negotiations, which were making good progress when they ended. 

Furthermore, Putin reports that when the negotiations were taking place and making progress, he was asked to remove Russian troops from the area around Kiev as a goodwill gesture, which he did on March 29, 2022. No government in the West or former policymaker has seriously challenged Putin’s account, which is directly at odds with the claim that he was bent on conquering all of Ukraine. 

Fourth, in the months before the war started, Putin tried to find a diplomatic solution to the brewing crisis. On December 17, 2021, Putin sent a letter to both President Joe Biden and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg proposing a solution to the crisis based on a written guarantee that: 1) Ukraine would not join NATO, 2) no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia’s borders, and 3) NATO troops and equipment moved into Eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back to Western Europe. Whatever one thinks of the feasibility of reaching a bargain based on Putin’s opening demands, it shows that he was trying to avoid war. The United States, on the other hand, refused to negotiate with Putin. It appears it was not interested in avoiding war. 

Fifth, putting Ukraine aside, there is not a scintilla of evidence that Putin was contemplating conquering any other countries in eastern Europe. That is hardly surprising, given that the Russian army is not even large enough to overrun all of Ukraine, much less try to conquer the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Plus, those countries are all NATO members, which would almost certainly mean war with the United States and its allies. 

In sum, while it is widely believed in Europe—and I am sure here in the European Parliament—that Putin is an imperialist who has long been determined to conquer all of Ukraine, and then conquer additional countries west of Ukraine, virtually all the available evidence is at odds with this perspective.

This is all known to people who know, including the people whom Mearsheimer is addressing. It's the "Boris Johnson sabotage" in the first paragraph.

Finally, a bit of "look in the mirror":

What is the basis of the claim that NATO expansion was the principal cause of the Ukraine war? 

First, Russian leaders across the board said repeatedly before the war started that they considered NATO expansion into Ukraine to be an existential threat that had to be eliminated. Putin made numerous public statements laying out this line of argument before 24 February 2022. ... 

Second, the centrality of Russia’s profound fear of Ukraine joining NATO is illustrated by events since the war started. For example, during the Istanbul negotiations that took place immediately after the invasion began, Russian leaders made it manifestly clear that Ukraine had to accept “permanent neutrality” and could not join NATO. The Ukrainians accepted Russia’s demand without serious resistance, surely because they knew that otherwise it would be impossible to end the war. More recently, on June 14, 2024, Putin laid out Russia’s demands for ending the war. One of his core demands was that Kiev “officially” state that it abandons its “plans to join NATO.” None of this is surprising, as Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs. 

Third, a substantial number of influential and highly regarded individuals in the West recognized before the war that NATO expansion—especially into Ukraine—would be seen by Russian leaders as a mortal threat and would eventually lead to disaster. 

William Burns, who was recently the head of the CIA, but was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, wrote a memo to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that succinctly describes Russian thinking about bringing Ukraine into the alliance. “Ukrainian entry into NATO,” he wrote, “is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” ... Burns was not the only Western policymaker in 2008 who understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. At the Bucharest summit, for example, both Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they understood it would alarm and infuriate Russia. ... 

It is also worth noting that the former secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said twice before leaving office that “President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door and deny Ukraine the right to choose its own path.” Hardly anyone in the West challenged this remarkable admission, and he did not retract it. 

To take this a step further, numerous American policymakers and strategists opposed President Bill Clinton’s decision to expand NATO during the 1990s, when the decision was being debated.

Well, there you are. 

Let me add that this is the same Merkel who said Germany and NATO deliberately used the Minsk accords as an "appeasement" stall tactic to help rearm Ukraine. 

That's just half of his speech. 

Mearsheimer then goes on to the course of the war so far, then prospects for a settlement.

PEACEful settlement? Unlikely, he says. 

Consequences? This is selected from a LONG pull quote. Read the full thing.

For starters, Ukraine has effectively been wrecked. It has already lost a substantial portion of its territory and is likely to lose more land before the fighting stops. Its economy is in tatters with no prospect of recovery in the foreseeable future, and according to my calculations, it has suffered roughly 1 million casualties, a staggering number for any country, but certainly for one that is said to be in a “demographic death spiral.” Russia has paid a significant price as well, but it has suffered nowhere near as much as Ukraine. 

Europe will almost certainly remain allied with rump Ukraine for the foreseeable future, given sunk costs and the profound Russophobia that pervades the West. But that continuing relationship will not work to Kiev’s advantage for two reasons. First, it will incentivize Moscow to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs to cause it economic and political trouble, so that it is not a threat to Russia and is in no position to join either NATO or the EU. Second, Europe’s commitment to supporting Kiev no matter what motivates the Russians to conquer as much Ukrainian territory as possible while the war is raging, so as to maximize the weakness of the Ukrainian rump state that remains once the conflict is frozen. 

What about relations between Europe and Russia moving forward? They are likely to be poisonous for as far as the eye can see. Both the Europeans and surely the Ukrainians will work to undermine Moscow’s efforts to integrate the Ukrainian territories it has annexed into greater Russia as well as look for opportunities to cause the Russians economic and political trouble. Russia, for its part, will look for opportunities to cause economic and political trouble inside of Europe and between Europe and the U.S. ...

Relations between Europe and Russia will not only be poisonous, but they will also be dangerous. The possibility of war will be ever-present. In addition to the risk that war between Ukraine and Russia could restart—after all, Ukraine will want its lost territory back—there are six other flashpoints where a war pitting Russia against one or more European countries could break out. First, consider the Arctic, where the melting ice has opened the door to competition over passageways and resources. ... 

The second flashpoint is the Baltic Sea, which is sometimes referred to as a “NATO lake” because it is largely surrounded by countries from that alliance. That waterway, however, is of vital strategic interest to Russia, as is Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave in eastern Europe that is also surrounded by NATO countries. The fourth flashpoint is Belarus, which because of its size and location, is as strategically important to Russia as Ukraine. The Europeans and the Americans will surely try to install a pro-Western government in Minsk after President Aleksandr Lukashenko leaves office and eventually turn it into a pro-Western bulwark on Russia’s border. 

The West is already deeply involved in the politics of Moldova, which not only borders Ukraine, but contains a breakaway region known as Transnistria, which is occupied by Russian troops. 

The final flashpoint is the Black Sea. ... 

All of this is to say that even after Ukraine becomes a frozen conflict, Europe and Russia will continue to have hostile relations in a geopolitical setting filled with trouble-spots. In other words, the threat of a major European war will not go away when the fighting stops in Ukraine. 

Let me now turn to the consequences of the Ukraine war inside of Europe and then turn to its likely effects on trans-Atlantic relations. For starters, it cannot be emphasized enough that a Russian victory in Ukraine—even if it is an ugly victory as I anticipate—would be a stunning defeat for Europe. Or to put it in slightly different words, it would be a stunning defeat for NATO. .... 

NATO’s defeat will lead to recriminations between member states and inside many of them as well. Who is to blame for this catastrophe will matter greatly to the governing elites in Europe and surely there will be a powerful tendency to blame others and not accept responsibility themselves. The debate over “who lost Ukraine” will take place in a Europe that is already wracked by fractious politics both between countries and inside them. In addition to these political fights, some will question the future of NATO, given that it failed to check Russia, the country that most European leaders describe as a mortal threat. It seems almost certain that NATO will be much weaker after the Ukraine war is shut down than it was before that war started. 

Any weakening of NATO will have negative repercussions for the EU, because a stable security environment is essential for the EU to flourish, and NATO is the key to stability in Europe. Threats to the EU aside, the great reduction in the flow of gas and oil to Europe since the war started has seriously hurt the major economies of Europe and slowed down growth in the overall Eurozone. There is good reason to think that economic growth across Europe is a long way from fully recovering from the Ukraine debacle. 

A NATO defeat in Ukraine is also likely to lead to a trans-Atlantic blame game.... 

Then there is the all-important question of whether the U.S. will significantly reduce its military footprint in Europe or maybe even pull all its combat troops out of Europe. As I emphasized at the start of my talk, independent of the Ukraine war, the historic shift from unipolarity to multipolarity has created a powerful incentive for the U.S. to pivot to East Asia.... 

What has happened in Ukraine since 2022 makes that outcome more likely. To repeat: Trump has a deep-seated hostility to Europe, especially its leaders, and he will blame them for losing Ukraine. He has no great affection for NATO and has described the EU as an enemy created “to screw the United States.” Furthermore, the fact that Ukraine lost the war despite enormous support from NATO is likely to lead him to trash the alliance as ineffective and useless. That line of argument will allow him to push Europe to provide for its own security and not free-ride on the U.S. In short, it seems likely that the results of the Ukraine war, coupled with the spectacular rise of China, will eat away at the fabric of trans-Atlantic relations in the years ahead, much to the detriment of Europe.

He then has a conclusion with a final bit of knuckle-rapping. 

The Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ on both sides of the Atlantic, along with the NAFO Nazis, Uki-tankies, etc, will surely refuse to listen to these cold, hard facts. There’s 100 other nutters like Nadin Brzezinski on Medium.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has reportedly received a draft peace plan from Trump. 

And, with the details we have, "shock me" that Trump grift is in some way involved; it's the same old claim on Ukrainian minerals he floated months ago. And, the Axios piece to which they link says Ukraine must enshrine in its constitution: No NATO. It does allow Ukraine to petition for EU membership. It ALSO calls for NATO to amend its statutes to bar this.

Poor Zelensky: NATO pushes peace talks and he's in a corner, even as NATO seems clueless over negotiating

He's basically up shit creek on further big bucks from the US government, as Israel-Gaza sucks the oxygen out of the room. Plus, if new wingnut-squared Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is holding new money for Israel hostage to the rest of Genocide Joe's budget, that applies in spades to new money for Ukraine, no matter how much Biden doubles down on linkage.

So, it should be no surprise that NATO officials are pushing peace talks now. NATO and the EU don't say boo without running it past Washington first, first of all, so everybody holds this line. Second, as a possible recession looms, especially in Russian gas-less Germany (guess in using the Minsk Accords as appeasement, Iron Ass Chancellor Angela Merkel forgot to diversify the German energy economy more) there's other reasons beyond Ukraine to look for peace. Of course since somebody blew up Nord Stream 2, Russian gas will be harder to come by anyway.

Meanwhile, on the cluelessness? NATO is reportedly also going to start the formal accession process for Ukraine. Unless this is anything more than a negotiating ploy stick, this is idiotic indeed, and quite arguably idiotic even with that caveat.

On the Realpolitik side, referencing the sausage grinder etc., anybody wtih a foreign policy brain knows Ukraine's been running out of troops for months. And, terrorism expert Malcolm Nance hasn't offered to deliver 10,000 mercenaries, and all the NAFO fellas, I mean NAFO Nazis, are still just Fighting 101st Keyboarders. And, it continues to be funny to petard-hoist them, as the American portion of them is surely primarily BlueAnons who, if they're 35 or older, were applying that to BushBloggers during Shrub's Iraq War salad days. People who know how to Google demographics aren't surprised by the shortages. Despite the NAFO Nazis talking about Russia facing a demographic crisis, it's worse in Ukraine by shorter life expectancy and greater rate of decline in population.

He's also in a corner as his own top commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, says the war is deadlocked, drawing an official Zelensky rebuke and shitcanning of one of his top aides. Zaluzhny's crime? Admitting that use of drones by both sides had stalemated mechanical force advances. In other words, those new high-dollar Western tanks can't do anything.

In reality, I suspect the rebuke, and the firing of Gen. Viktor Khorenko, happened as PR moves to keep things like this contained away from NATO. Reality? They know fair chunks of this already. And, the possibly political nature of the firing only hurt Zelensky more.

Now, per the piece at top, is Putin going to be that reluctant to make a deal? Depends on what's offered.

The post-invasion sanctions have to be lifted, of course, first of all. Frozen  Russian bank accounts have to be unfrozen. Previous, post-Maidan sanctions have to be at least lessened.

Second, even though Putin knows in reality that they won't be worth the paper they're written on, IMO, he had to get real security guarantees. And, real ones, not the fake ones the West proffered in pre-Maidan days.

Now, the biggie?

First, the West accepts Crimea is Russian.

Second, it accepts the Donbas lands are Russian.

Third, Putin accepts the plebicites held elsewhere are a nothingburger and those lands remain Ukrainian.

Now, "poor Zelensky."

Just as he, like previous Ukrainian leaders, refused to implement Ukraine's side of Minsk, he stands a good chance of being a dead man with such a treaty. That's made worse by him being Jewish. No other way to put it. That said, he lied down with the Bandera-Azov dog and got their fleas in the first place.

Would there be a way to implement this?

A UN peacekeeping force, even if not of fun interest for many.

Stipulations on that? 

No Russians, Ukrainians, or any NATO or EU member states can have troops in that force. Nor China. Ideally, it all comes from General Assembly states that never condemned the invasion in the first place.

The EU boo-hoos about Biden; I boo-hoo back

The EU complains of Warmonger Joe's war profiteering off natural gas prices (while also attacking the Inflation Reduction Act as trade protectionism). Both are true, but? What are you going to do? Talk is cheap and don't feed the bulldog. In the case of the former, Germany, especially, knew something like this could have happened. Speaking of, what is post-Brexit UK charging for its North Sea natural gas?

On the latter, the answer is simple. On green energy subsidies, pass your own version of an "Inflation Reduction Act."

Beyond that? YOU signed off on sending arms to Ukraine yourself; not American warmongers' fault if you can't mong fast enough.

Beyond that, and more seriously? Your two leading nations gave Zelenskyy blank checks when he refused to implement the Minsk Accords.

Russia-Ukraine week 17A: The EU's 15% non-solution

A number of people who still are following the Russia-Ukraine war and its global spill-out may have noticed last week that the European Union voted to (try to) cut natural gas usage by 15 percent. 

UnHerd spells out why it won't work, and worse, with Germany embracing austerity again, as it did in the Great Recession, why the Eurozone economy is set for a major crumble unless Vladimir Putin somehow benevolently turns the taps on. Of course, if the war is still ongoing, he won't, and no, the US doesn't have that much LNG, and definitely won't in the winter. Could the somewhat parallel NATO wind up shattering over this?

Nobody should be shocked over any of this. 

Looking first at NATO, not the EU, it's part of why most of its member states have long resisted spending close to US amounts on defense. (Not that we don't spend way too much.) Spending more, especially if coupled with American minor reductions, would mean that Europeans would have to make decisions rather than following behind the US lead.

And, now that the EU has jumped in line with the US on sanctions, even while doing much more business with Russia than the US, it faces the same issue. Besides German austerity being likely to clusterfuck the whole EU economy, it now faces the problems of being the "leader" at least in part. It also faces the problems of being the leader after failure to do so. Remember post-Fukushima? Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered a hard — and fast — pivot away from nuclear. And, to dirty lignite coal. (It also appeased the former East Germany, which still mined some of that.)

But, she didn't address other diversification. (Personally, as long as the long-term waste disposal issue is solved, AND we build more efficient reactors — including breeder-type ones, as long as security is STRONG — I'm OK with nuclear.) Wind energy is more than in America, but, with no nukes, is still a kind of a patch. Yes, solar can provide SOME energy, but not as much as here. It's a matter of latitude, not just more cloudy weather.

Beyond that, when I hear about air conditioning in Hamburg, I shake my head. Germans are getting about as spoiled as Americans.

Independent Media Institute has more on the showdown, noting Spain and Portugal rejected the 15 percent call. Spain, to get to a 7 percent cut, has forbidden by decree public space AC thermostats from going below 27C, or 80.6F, which created a huge outcry. I could see them bargaining down to 25C/77F, but no lower. And, you know what? That's actually comfortable, and with box or ceiling fans, 27C is certainly "tolerable." I live in Tex-ass and it's where I keep our office AC set at. And, 19C in winter is 66.2F. Tolerable or even semi-comfortable. That said, unless all Spanish office buildings have "smart" thermostats, I don't see how you enforce this.

Once again, let's slow-walk Syria

In my blogging about the 2013 chemical attacks in Syria, the ones that allegedly crossed President Obama's red line, only for him to do nothing, I at first signed off on the UN report, proclaimed loudly by American mainstream media, that Assad — or at least, Assad's military — were pretty red-handedly guilty.

Well, not so fast.

By spring of 2014, Sy Hersh was pretty much demolishing that claim, as well as exposing the whole geopolitical and military background behind it. (In the current geopolitical climate, it's worth noting that someone from Russian intelligence gave British intelligence the chemical samples that led the Brits to tell Obama — "Assad did NOT do it.")

Also claiming "Assad did NOT do it"? The country's most interesting sub-5-foot politician, Denny the Dwarf, also known as Dennis Kucinich.



Denny has one other good point — there's a difference between Assad having chemical weapons, and Assad using them, whether sarin, or the relatively mild raw chlorine gas. (ISIS, by the way, has been accused of using mustard gas, scourge of WWI battlefields.)

And, even before the end of 2013, the Old Gray Lady had backed off its initial claims based on vector analysis of the rockets' paths, mainly because they had too short of a range to be traced back to Syrian army units. On the other hand, at least one could be traced, on the same vector, to a rebel unit that was within range to have used them. (And, the cheapness of the rocket warhead also is an indirect argument against Syrian military firing.

Robert Parry, a recognized former investigative reporter for the AP, has further analysis of both the NYT and Hersh pieces.

His conclusion? Turkish President Reçep Tayyip Erdogan was behind whichever group of rebels — and he believes it was rebels — who launched the 2013 attack.

Also claiming Assad did NOT do it? Erm, the UN itself over an earlier 2013 strike.

As for the current airstrike, it seems ever more clear that this was the Syrian Air Force attacking a rebel ground site that had the sarin. (Ted Postol, a weapons expert in academia is now claiming another option — that this was a false flag by rebels. That, I doubt. First, I'm not an explosives expert, but I think it would be hard to tell, under current Syrian situation, the difference between a deliberately set explosion in the ground, on the one hand, or an impact explosion by a bomblet or a rocket, on the other. Second, I'm not a conspiracy theorist in general. I know Theodore Postol was among those who refuted "Assad did it" in 2013. But, there's a more conventional refutation of "Assad did it" for this attack already out there. And all Postol says is "more likely," in contrasting this to the MSM option of aerial Syrian gas attack; he doesn't even consider the option of Syrian rockets hitting buried sarin. On the other hand, the UN backed up his earlier claims about Eastern Ghouta.)

That said, there's other contra-indications to "Assad did it."

Some people note the alleged difficulty of producing or storing sarin. I counter with Aum Shinrikyo and the Toyko subway attack. And, no, contra the "Assad did it" crowd, sarin, if in a relatively crude state, is not that hard to produce. (This ignores the possibility of government-produced sarin stolen by one group of rebels or another.)

Some talk about the claims of the White Helmets about what they've allegedly seen Assad done, and how they're apolitical. First, most White Helmets claims have not been verified. Second, they're not apolitical.

Next: torture and extra-judicial murder have all been documented by most players in the war. Use of chemical weapons has been alleged of most. Don't let neocons or liberal warhawks claim any of this is unique to Assad. Don't let them claim that pointing this out makes you an Assad defender.

Finally, if they truly believe in regime change, ask them what they think the reasonable price is in "boots on the ground" — not reasonable for US public support first and foremost, but reasonable for getting the job done, not just to replace Assad, but replace him with someone better.

The strawmanning from the mix of neocons and liberal hawks has gotten bad enough that I created a new blog post about it.

Make to the main thread.

If Parry et al are right on 2013, given Erdogan's own lurch toward authoritarianism having increased over the last four years, this makes Syria dangerous indeed. Yes, Erdogan has cuddled up more to Vladimir Putin's Russia in the past four years. At the same time, while not a full-blown Islamic fundamentalist, he has certainly exploited Islamic fundamentalism for his own political ends, and his personal inclinations surely tilt that way to some degree. In other words, Putin is feathering his bed with an asp.

That said, in Erdogan's case, cui bono? I don't have an immediate answer, and any potential angle may be at least as tangled as Syrian ethnic and religious political issues. In general, though, if he can limit the flow of refugees to his country, he can shake down the EU for more financial support, keep Syria destabilized enough to be weak, shake down the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf for money to do that, and cozy up with Putin enough by offering him help against more extremist Islamicist movements inside Russia.

And, that is 11-dimensional chess indeed.

(That said, this all sets aside who was behind the production of the chemicals that Assad's air force bombed in the recent issue. It also sets aside whether or not Assad, or Russia, or other players knew these rebels, whomever their backers are, knew that they had sarin, etc. That, in turn, makes Syria even more dangerous.)

For more on this issue, not only on how Erdogan stands to benefit, but on how Bashar al-Assad and Syria 2017 are similar to Saddam Hussein and Iraq in 2013, pre-Bush invasion, read below the fold.

Brexit without Boris Johnson

Just when you thought Britain's post-Brexit fallout couldn't get weirder, it has, with former London mayor Boris Johnson pulling himself from the Tory leader battle.

That leaves Theresa May, who backed Remain, as top dog in the scramble.

But, this doesn't change the likelihood of Britain actually leaving, per my original post. She's already announced she'll form a Cabinet Department of Brexit if she's the next PM.

Per the first link, this sounds like it could be a bruising battle.

And Labour may get just as bad, as Jeremy Corbyn shows himself to be a British Tom Mulcair of sorts. I can partially understand some of his Old Labour reasons for fearing the EU, but others of them were unfounded, and leaving the EU is unlikely to help British workers in any way. Lack of job mobility may hurt, and most post-Brexit Conservatives will likely support some sort of ongoing "austerity" as long as the Tories keep office. He otherwise comes off as a bit of Little England.

And, whether or not the Telegraph fully and accurately reported, or framed, his Israel-ISIS comments, he opened himself up for this, including in part by apparently tolerating antisemitic attacks on a party member. Corbyn last-ditchers may indeed save his leadership, at the cost of wrecking the party.

And if Marc Wadsworth, who apparently claimed right-wing, but NOT Zionist, press conspiracies, is one of the Corbyn last ditchers, then some of Corbyn's friends are worse than his enemies. Of course, enemies like Ruth Smeeth aren't helping when they play the anti-Semitism card. Now, if Smeeth has proof actual antisemitism, and not what Wadsworth said, bring it on.

Anyway, this relates to what seems to be Corbyn's problem. I don't think he was comparing Israel to ISIS; that said, I don't think the Telegraph was smearing him, at least not deliberately.

Rather, he's bending so hard to avoid anti-Semitism that his Israel comments could be seen as a refusal to condemn hardcore versions of Zionism.

Could the British chicken out on #brexit?

First, it's true that the vote was a purely advisory referendum, as FT notes, so the Commons legally could decide to never invoke the Lisbon Treaty's Article 50.

That said, it's possible, per that link, that Brussels bureaucrats could fudge and hope the above happens, or it's possible that the Commons, where a majority of current members allegedly were 'Remain' (if only for public consumption) could indeed do nothing, as discussed further here by Slate.

Each in turn.

Brussels, having the measure of the UK Independence Party, the long run-up to the referendum, and, for good measure, decades of British soccer hooligans traipsing across Europe,, probably is in no such mood.

Contra the 'no drawbridges' words of former London mayor and 'Leave' leader Boris Johnson, the EU is determined to have no shilly-shallying, judging by first, the comment by the foreign ministers of the original six members, urgings from leaders of member nations and now, the note to David Cameron, or hint, or push, that he can start the process on Tuesday. (Even if Angela Merkel is a bit more charitable.)

It's true the EU cannot force the ball to start rolling. However, it can clearly indicate from the start, in ever more forceful terms, that any halfway house associate membership is not up for negotiation.

As for the Commons doing nothing?

That first presupposes Theresa May winning the Conservative leadership vote over Boris Johnson, I think. It second presumes that Labour ousts Jeremy Corbyn after a party no-confidence vote against him passes and that his replacement is fully Remain. And, I do not think Hillary Benn (now sacked) was some eminence grisé behind Corbyn; his muffled mouth was his own choice — and votes of rural Labour in Sunderland were their own choice. And if the party really had serious concerns about Corbyn on this, the non-confidence vote should have been brought at the start of the campaign.

(That said, how a Labour-leaning area thought voting for a measure favored by the right wing of the Tories, and even further right, would help their plight, I don't know. Another sign that many British voters are at least as dumb as American ones.)

Let's say Johnson is tapped on the Conservative side as leader.

It seems clear that if a Johnson (I doubt Nigel Farage had this attitude) thought of playing a Leave vote as part of a renegotiated associate membership deluxe or similar, that's not in play across the Channel, per the note to Cameron link.

And if he tries to backtrack, when Brussels spells that out again?

No way this can be stalled out to 2020. A no-confidence vote would happen (I assume Cameron was at least somewhat accurate on his intra-party worries) and fat chance of some bizarre Remain coalition being formed, at least not before the fall of the government and a general election.

Related to that, wouldn't UKIP and Farage, on a stall, resurrect the old NDP referendum to take Commons to national list voting or similar, and make that part of its next election campaign? And wouldn't it be more likely to succeed with both Conservatives and Labour in tatters?

==

Sidebar to the Scottish Nationalist Party — call for second referendums on independence all you want. The EU isn't likely to admit you. In a word, on why: Catalonia. (OTOH, a Merkel ally says Come on Down!)

And, as I said last week, the idea behind Brexit wasn't totally wrong. Whether Brussels listens is anybody's guess.

The not-so-bad side of #brexit

I'm not Pollyanna and I did not say "good side," just "not-so-bad side" of #brexit, Britain's leaving the European Union. And here are a few things.

1. The EU does suck in some ways. Beyond austerity for Greece and Ireland (noting Greece needed some sort of butt-kicking), a bloated bureaucracy in Brussels that is often arrogantly tone deaf is one problem. The Dutch are among people of member nations who hate the EU more than Britain.

1A. The related fact that, as the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel have noted, it's like the old U.S. Articles of Confederation government.

Maybe brexit forces Brussels to face 1, and member states to face 1A. It will take 5 years if not a full decade for even the first stirrings, but stand by ...

At a minimum, more citizen of its various members will see how illiberal it is. (Counterpunch - a grain or two of salt may be needed.)

2. David Cameron leaving office.

2A. British Conservatives imploding, with the toffs portion facing the common man portion.

Neither of these can be too bad unless Labour moves further right.

3. Britain honestly realizing what its "special relationship" with Washington is, especially with Obama's pivot to Asia.

4. Trump and the Trump Train drawing false idea for overconfidence.

5. London hypercapitalism may get kneecapped, and  the remaining EU run more away from UK-style neoliberalism, per Reuters.

I may have more later, but those are starters.

The phony European refugee crisis

Now that I've got your attention with that headline, let me explain what I'm talking about.

It's not that refugees from Syria, Iraq, Libya, or even further south in African are phonies in person, or their reasons for leaving their old countries are phony.

It's arguable that part of the grudging European acceptance of the refugees — a grudgingness most notable in the UK and David Cameron — is the phoniness.

(That sets aside the issue, as shown in this piece about Germany taking temporary border measures to try to force the hand of other E.U. states, how "Europe" ultimately remains a concept more than anything else.)

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are hitting Europe, yes. That said, before the Great Recession made opportunities here in the U.S. less attractive, millions of migrants — some whom might well be identifiable as refugees — hit American lands from Mexico, and increasingly, from points further south. (Mexico itself is near zero population growth by birthrate, like the U.S.)

And, while we've had our share of clamor about the largely Hispanic influx of illegal immigration, it's arguably nothing like that of Europe.

Let's start with some additional context. Europe is about the same geographic size as the U.S. minus Alaska, per this site, which talks about making fair, geographic-based comparisons between Europe and America in other ways. Even if we throw out Russia and other countries of the old Soviet Union, the rest of Europe is as big as the US west of the Mississippi.

With half again as much population as the whole U.S.

And, without even going into the issue of legal vs. illegal immigration, as for actual, documented, United Nations-referred refugees? The U.S. has taken 70 percent of the world's share in the last five years. (To be fair, I should note that, as the Chronicle fails to note, our invasion of Iraq created a lot of those refugees.)

Now, some Europeans might argue that means they have no room. On the contrary, Europe has no deserts, no semi-deserts like the Western high plans, and while it does have the Alps and their extensions, the US has both the Rockies and the Sierras, among other things. And, if we're throwing out Russia, Europe has no North Dakota, eastern Montana or northern Minnesota in terms of winters, either.

To put this in terms of population densities, Hungary, a mainly flatland Central European country, might be taken as "representative." Ohio, a mainly flatland state in the non-mountainous, non-desert part of the U.S., not the most dense, and fighting Sunbelt migration, might be compared.

And, the have almost equal population densities at around 110 people per square kilometer. (So does France, with a mix of densely urban areas and the densely-rural-like Central Massif.)

In short, Europe can handle the refugee "flood." It can do so at least as easily as the United States. U.S. states like Minnesota, with less high-density use land than Hungary, have in the past taken significant numbers of Hmong and Somali refugees.

My hot take on the Iran nuclear proliferation deal — and #oilprices

Well, it looks like the US and partners have finally gotten Iran to sign off on a nuclear energy non-proliferation deal.

Among the good news is that the non-enrichment period is now 15 years, not 10. That's long enough for Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, to have died, and hopefully, the whole Supreme Guardian Council system to start crumbling. (Khamenei turns 76 this week.)

Verification procedures are supposed to remain in place forever.

That said, there are issues of concern.

One the story notes is what access the International Atomic Energy Agency will have to dissident-type scientists inside Iran.

Another, which is more guesstimate than anything else, is to what degree leading world powers would restore sanctions if Iran got intransigent? The US and EU would likely act strongly. China and Russia, not.

It's not a treaty, so President Obama can veto any no vote in either house of Congress. Will that happen? I'd say about 50-50.

And, for the neocon foreign policy division of wingnuts, this becomes a new 2016 electoral issue. Let's see what an über-warhawk like Lindsey Graham does; he's already, er, gone ballistic about the deal.

Beyond that, there's one neocon foreigner to worry about: Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. I'd venture there's about a 5 percent chance that — without consulting with all his cabinet — he engages in some sort of major covert action against Iran. Not just "any" but "major." Short of that, he's going to try to get a veto-proof no in at least one house.

(Unfortunately, some hawkish Dems, like Sen. Bob Menendez, D-Corruption, are leaning no as well.)

Was this the best we could have gotten? Short of bombing Iran, it's at least in the 80th percentile, if not 85 or better, in my opinion. And, our European allies seem to agree. They note that sanctions were likely to erode in the future, and the odds of getting even tougher sanctions to push Iran into a "better" deal were almost nil.

Other "winners" include:
1. President Obama's reputation
2. World peace
3. Middle East stability

Other "losers" include
1. Wingnuts
2. Texas oil producers; this will already get factored into world oil prices, and even more so, once more Iranian oil starts getting exported

I'd venture now that not only does West Texas Intermediate stay below $65 for the rest of this quarter, it might stay below $60 for all of the fourth quarter.

And, if Tom Kloza of OPIS is right about the return of $2 gas by the end of the year, oil will indeed be at or below $60. So, add the Texas budget to the list of "losers," even as this is yet another argument for an every-year legislature in the Pointy Abandoned Object State. (And, I'll give at least 2-1 odds he's right.)

That said, probably not a lot of Iranian oil is going to come online immediately. However, the deal also provides Middle East stability.

And, more oil from Iran WILL come online in 2016 and beyond. Yet one more reason Texas needs an every-year legislature.

A few thoughts on the UK election blowout

With the Tories, per exit polls which appear to be accurate, gaining seats and apparently an outright majority, Labour becoming non-existent in Scotland, Liberal Democrats almost nonexistent everywhere, and the UK Independence Party underperforming, here's a few hot take initial thoughts by me.

Which now include, per results in one seat, my riff on an old British riddler poem, at left.

1. Even if it turns out that Nick Clegg has won re-election for his seat, he has to resign as LDP leader immediately, doesn't he? Even more so if David Cameron has gained enough seats to coalition with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists. And, he has, both held on to his seat and resigned his leadership.

2. And, what about Ed Miliband? If Labour turns out to finish as badly as projected, doesn't he have to resign as party leader? Losing every seat in Scotland, losing seats overall, and, if the prime ministership were a direct vote, being var less popular than Cameron, to me makes me think he has to go. Here's three people who have gotten talk as possible replacements before. And, some Labour muckety-mucks are already whispering. Ed has gone, too.

More seriously, does the party shift back to a New Labour focus of Milliband is turfed, or does it chalk up the loss to Milliband personally more than his ideas?

3. Cameron's 2017 EU referendum will go forward. Exactly what it will be about will probably not be discussed in detail for 3-6 months, but will get a crafting after that. The UKIP will get a respectful listening, then ignored.

4. Was the SNP's results a one-off, a result of the failed independence vote, or is this more permanent?

5. Even with the LDP's decline, and with the Tories largely quashing the UKIP, is Britain, even without Clegg getting instant runoff voting in 2011, headed toward a continental-style true multiparty system?

I think not. Eventually the SNP will fall back somewhat at it realizes that any way it comes to power is only in conjunction with Labour. The LDPs have seemingly crested and will look for new direction with Clegg out. UKIP will remain quashed.

And, if the SNP thinks another independence referendum is "inevitable," I'd invite it to think again. A Conservative government will never allow it. A would-be Labour government would never allow it as the price of coalition, certainly not for at least a generation.

6. That said, the Tories — and their American cousins — will use this as a rallying point for budget austerity.

EU sees #Google as the new #Microsoft

Here's the latest details on the European Union's battle against what it sees as monopolistic practices, and a monopolistic default position, on Internet search engines by the giant Google.

As with Microsoft, I applaud the EU's concern. But, how to address this issue differs a fair degree from Microsoft.

Microsoft was bundling Internet Explorer with its OS on Windows-based computers, if you remember. There's no bundling of that sort with Google.

That said, there is bundling, if you will, of Google advertising with its search engine.

Here's the issue as discussed so far:

The dispute has been running since 2010 when rivals, including British price-comparison site Foundem, complained about the way it displayed results. 

The deal suggested by Google in February was rejected after 20 formal complaints made the EU rethink its original decision to accept the proposals. 

Under the terms of the deal, Google agreed to reserve space near the top of its European search pages for competitors, which would be open to rivals to bid for via an auction. 

Rivals argued that Google's solution was unfair for a range of reasons, including the fact that Google would make money out of the changes.

I agree with the concerns in the last paragraph. I'm not sure that the money should go to the EU; maybe it could be donated to a program to buy computers for distribution in the developing world. 

I'm not totally sold on the crux of the solution in the third paragraph, even.

Fines are the next step, up to 10 percent of Google's $55 billion annual income. While Microsoft was not fined that steeply, it was fined more steeply than US regulators were even considering, with the hint of even steeper fines after that.

The EU is at least as bureaucratic as the US, and somewhat neoliberal, though, fortunately, not as much so as the US.

A UK-EU showdown may be shaping up over cybersnooping

And, it won't be about the Euro, or a Tobin tax, or other financial measures that get the City of London and the Conservative Party up in arms.

Rather, the UK-US special relationship vs. UK membership in the European Union may be at risk over the National Security Agency's cybersnooping, and the active participation in that of Britian's Government Communications Headquarters, which Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian know all about.

The "push"?

A new EU law specifically designed (and carefully designed, one hopes) to fight such cybersnooping when it intrudes on personal privacy.

European Union lawmakers on Monday were set to approve sweeping new data protection rules to strengthen online privacy, and sought to outlaw most data transfers to other countries' authorities to prevent spying.

The legislation was widely expected to pass a committee vote late Monday. Still, it is likely to be amended later since it also requires approval by Parliament's plenary and the EU's 28 member states. Lawmakers hope to conclude the process before the end of their term in May.

And, those last two sentences are where Merrie Olde England comes into play.

More of the details:

In response to the revelations of the National Security Agency's online spying activities, lawmakers also toughened the initial draft regulation, prepared by the European Commission, to make sure companies no longer share European citizens' data with authorities of a third country, unless explicitly allowed by EU law or an international treaty.

That means a U.S. tech company handing over data to U.S. authorities, including information on its European customers, might be violating EU law.

That said, the law was originally targeted at for-profit companies gathering too much data, and using it for too many hypercapitalist reasons. The toughening in this area comes to the 500 million residents of the EU courtesy Edward Snowden.

That said, could this be a coalition breaker in Britain? Would Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg actually find a spine, or cojones? What about some backbencher Conservatives? Will British in general, at least in the posh class, resent Brussels trying to force it to have elements of a written constitution? Stay tuned.

That said, as I noted, this was originally written to be a consumer protection law. And, with updating, even just there, it's a damn skippy bit of legislation. Also, even there, it's something that America's posh political class will never let see the light of day. Here's the consumer protection details:

The legislation, among other things, aims at enabling users to ask companies to fully erase their personal data, handing them a so-called right to be forgotten. It would also limit user profiling, require companies to explain their use of personal data in detail to customers, and mandate that companies seek prior consent. In addition, most businesses would have to designate or hire data protection officers to ensure the regulation is properly applied.

Grave compliance failures could be subject to a fine worth up to 5 percent of a company's annual turnover (revenue in European financial lingo) — which could be hundreds of millions of dollars, or even a few billion dollars for Internet giants such as Google.

Boom. And, revenue, not profit.

There's also this:

Consumers, in turn, would be able to file complaints with their national authority, regardless of where the targeted service provider is based. For example that would make it easier for an Austrian consumer to complain about a social media site such as Facebook, which has its EU headquarters in Ireland.

Picture if I could file a complaint about Google, or Facebook, here in Texas. (Of course, that provision would also never see the light of day in the US.)

Oh, the EU has its flaws. It's susceptible to lobbyists itself at times. (That's why, with even more Big Pharma companies headquartered in the EU + Switzerland, its pharmaceutical regulation, as is the UK's as a member state, is even more toothless than here in the US. And, while it's talked tough with Google in the last couple of years, both it and member states such as Germany haven't acted a lot tougher than the US.)

But, overall, it has a stronger regulatory environment than the US, and the financial muscle to make it mean something.

Well, except for even laxer controls on lobbyists, it has a stronger regulatory environment.

Farm subsidies — the downside of the EU, or part of it

I have regularly praised the EU for being better than the US at consumer oriented regulations, better privacy rights and more stringent support of them etc. But its bloated farm subsidies, far beyond the US, will someday be its death, or part of the road toward disintegration.

To me, that fact, more than the Union actually agreeing to trim its budget, is the major takeaway from EU budget talks.

Yeah, they trimmed the subsidies ... a tad.

Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands were among the Northern European nations that fought hard to reduce agricultural subsidies and increase spending on research and development to bolster the bloc’s global competitiveness. 

Despite those efforts, farm spending remained the largest single portion of the budget, accounting for about 38 percent of the total — although that was down from about 42 percent in the previous seven-year budget period.

I certainly don't blame Latvia and other newer members for bitching about two-tier subsidies, and, if British Prime Minister Cameron wants to sell a la carte membership, that's his starting point.

On the other hand, nationalism of that type is part of what led to two-tiered subsidies and much more.

“The budget negotiations are the most visible sign of member states winning and losing from the European Union,” said Hugo Brady, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, a research organization. “The result is a totally parochial budget that is poorly adapted to rapidly changing times.” 

Farm subsidies are just the most visible example of it.

I give the EU in its current incarnation until the end of the decade to move toward more integration or fall apart. In Germany, Angela Merkel will eventually face a revolt from within the right wing of the Christian Democrats, the Free Democrats will re-invent themselves, a new non-Nazi far right party will pop up or all of the above.

My 2013 predictions in news, culture, etc.

Note any international readers: These are largely US-based, but still may have a bit of international play.

1. The so-called "fiscal cliff" will finally get a deal on ... wait for it ... Jan. 7. Stock market will continue to sag, but not totally tank until that date, therefore undercutting the Pete Petersons of the world. Both Republicans and Democrats will do some can-kicking, postponing many details for discussion — until after the 2014 elections. GOP will "bite" on what was originally the offer by President Barack Obama, aka Dear Leader, for "chained CPI" on Social Security, and pressure Senate Democrats to "lump it."

And, yes, I know, there's claims that a "deal" is just around the corner, as of 7 p.m. Eastern time Dec. 31. Read a story like this, though, and you get a Swiss cheese of caveat holes.

2. Speaking of that, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will make only minor changes to filibuster rules.

3. President Obama will offer only relatively minor changes in whatever gun control legislation he sends to Congress, and will make the announcement of such legislation itself relatively mild. (As in sending it to Congress after 5 p.m. on a Friday.)

4. Angela Merkel's coalition, the unwieldy one, will fall apart in Germany sometime this year over a mix of resentment toward the eurozone's south, the Free Democrats' stance on nuclear power, and a general weariness.

5. John Kerry will become US Secretary of State. Rep. Edward Markey will win the special election to replace him in the Senate.

6. Chuck Hagel will ultimately withdraw his name from Secretary of Defense consideration after lack of support from Obama. At this point, I won't even venture a guess over who's next on Obama's list.

7.  India's rape-murder tragedy will be the last straw for its current government ad will force parliamentary elections some time in 2013. The Congress party will suffer disastrous losses. The new BJP government will get more aggressive against both native Maoists and Pakistan. The BJP will not improve the lives of Indian women, though.

8. Climate change legislation will not even get considered by the US.  But, the European Union will hold firm on its airline carbon taxes.

9. The Texas Legislature's new budget will not only be more hardcore antiabortion, it will tighten the belt on health care for the poor and have no major new money for schools. The fact that Texas Parks and Wildlife is still soliciting for we the taxpayer to make direct donations underscores this prediction. (And, no, I won't make a donation myself; it's called "enabling the wingnuts" — as in a spouse/lover enabling an alcoholic/addict.)

10. The state of Texas will lose the school finance lawsuit while the Lege is in session, but even with an expedited appeals route, appeals will not be done in time.

11. The state of Texas will lose all its appeals and, shades of the past, have to have multiple special sessions of the legislature before passing an acceptable school finance bill.

12. The US will sell drones to South Korea, which will escalate tensions with China, both directly and vis-a-vis Japan.

13. Britain's Liberal Democrats, for reasons unknown, will remain in coalition with Conservatives.

14. Bradley Manning will eventually accept a crappy plea-bargain deal, while the British government and Julian Assange will remain at deadlock all year.

===

Culture

1. "Lincoln" will win Oscars for best actor, director, producer, cinemetography and possibly screenplay.

2. Some rock star past the age of the 60 will become a father.

3. The Minnesota Orchestra (management) will refuse to settle its strike/lockout with its musicians and the season will be washed out. 

4. Fox will announce plans for a new late-night talk show.

5. PBS will revamp "News Hour."

7. Whether to Europe or Native Americans, a number of US museums will make major repatriations of art and artifacts.

8. John Adams will start work on a new opera.

Obama: Jobless could hit 8%

That's the claim Dear Leader will make on "60 Minutes" Sunday, according to CBS transcript excerpts.

How realistic is this? With what caveats? And, what would that mean for his re-election?

The last first.

No-brainer against a wingnut. Solid winning odds against a Romney, unless the Mittster actually shows some creativity somewhere.

Now, the first and second.questions.

It's moderately realistic. If hopes get up, more people who have removed themselves from job hunting will get back in the game. My guess? September 2010 will be at 8.2 or 8.3 percent. Still improvement. Some increase in hope. Obama will take it and, of course, spin it.

Speaking of "spin," how much of this will be in the interview?

“For individual Americans, who are struggling right now, they have every reason to be impatient. Reversing structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades, that was going to take time. It was going to take more than a year. It was going to take more than two years. It was going to take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.”

Reversing structural problems? This from the man who has given the back of his hand to Occupy Wall Street? From the president who rejected calls for direct jobs programs as part of his stimulus package? From the health care president who let insurers write much of Obamacare? Not to mention the man who's repeatedly caved to Republicans. AND, the president who thinks more people going to college is the answer when, in many cases, we have a glut of college grads right now.

Puhleeze.

The caveats? I mentioned one already, more people looking for work again. Others include the eurozone and oil prices. I think the economy can still limp on at up to $110/bbl, but not above that.

That, in turn gets back to what many Peak Oil watchers have been saying, that whenever the whole world seems to start to ramp up at once, it gets tripped up again by surging oil prices.

So, Obama's re-election prospects are in the hands of OPEC, followed by China and the EU, quite possibly. We know there will be no new U.S. structural reform to help.

The UK must choose

It's clear that a 30-year period of reckoning for Great Britain vis-a-vis the EU has finally come due. Britain must choose whether to be part of a more financially integrated EU, even if it stays out of the Eurozone, or decide what it wants to do outside of that.

And, of course, this is all complicated by politics within the UK.

Assuming that financial services is that much a part of the British economy, I think Tories have to ask whether it will shrink more as part of the new EU or outside of it.

Frankly, a tighter monetary EU will, eventually, boost the Continent's role in finances, especially if any directives from Brussels are ultimately influenced by glances at Berlin. So, if Prime Minister David Cameron wants to walk around in EU purgatory, or even, as Tory backbenchers clearly want, leave the Union entirely, I think he's an idiot.

Sign on. Britain's financial sector will take some sort of hit, true. But, not immediately, and not in a way that Cameron, if he has any brains (questionable) can't actually fulfill his talk about leading a new type of Conservative Party.

The option of playing at the EU edges? Assuming Merkel and Sarkozy can pull something off, that's not a long-term option.

Cameron's stiff upper lip talk otherwise, larger EU-27 institutions will lose relative power if the narrower eurozone gets new financial strength, new financial regulations strength and, above all, is less unwieldy and more open to easier reform of governance. Eventually, the other "outsiders," even those already given tentative eurozone approval, will have to sign off on the bottom line, too. So, unless Britain can convince a minority of "outsider 10" to follow it, a two-tiered EU just doesn't sound that plausible.

So, ditching the EU entirely? Unhelpful. Despite new openness on banking, Switzerland's tight world would make it equal to an independent UK as an EU counterweight. The rest of the Commonwealth? Canada's tied to the US. Australia is largely independent. Other countries matter less.

Labour would, albeit reluctantly, surely take the plunge, also liking more of Brussels' regulatory powers and ideas.

Per Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, choose wisely, Mr. Cameron. You may not get a second chance.

And, per U.S. conservatives, don't root for Cameron to choose to opt out. The "special relationship" will only be diminished if Britain itself is.

At least not at the head of a government.

That said, if this leads to a referendum, Labour won't be able to do any "straddling" itself.

And, whoever leads the country, if Britain winds up in financial outer darkness, does it wind up as more a "lapdog of the US"? Thoughts for all British political leaders.

It's not the choice of the EU vs. a more independent UK. That ultimate 30-year reckoning on alignment may be coming due.

Roger Cohen agrees about that and about Cameron's short-sighted stupidity.

DON'T throw a #TARP over the #Eurozone

Stop me if you've heard this before:

If (it) fails, bank lending would freeze, stock markets would likely crash, and ... economies would crater. Nations ... could see their economic output fall temporarily by as much as X percent, according to ... forecasters. The financial and economic pain would spread west and east as (Europe) and Asia get ensnared in the credit freeze and their exports ... collapse.

Oh, yeah, October 2008. Wall Street's collapse was going to destroy America.

Only now, the Eurozone's collapse is going to destroy Europe.

Of course, Wall Street wasn't allowed to collapse.

BUT, while I don't agree with tea partiers about not having acted in 2008, as well as disagreeing with the idea of running a nation without some sort of central banking system, it's clear that the no-strings TARP "cure" for Wall Street wasn't a cure for the American economy in general, either in 2008 or 2001.

So, let's hope that Western Europe's version of paper-pushing technocrats attaches some strings to Eurozone reform. If Greece needs the boot, then boot it. If the European Central Bank, or the degree of "federalism" emanating from Brussels, needs to be strengthened, then strengthen it. And, if member nations can't agree to that, then wind down the Eurozone.

We probably could have "wound down" Wall Street, too, if its kleptocrats refused to accept tight strings as part of TARP. Unfortunately, the corruption of mainstream bipartisan American politicians, including in having deliberately reduced shareholders' power to sue corporate boards, meant that the wind-down option here in America wasn't that viable. A Darwinian Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase likely would have survived. A vulture-like low-feeding George Soros would have repeated his 1998 international exploits on an even grander scale.

That said, because Europe's crisis is in part a monetarist crisis, or so it seems, failure to achieve a good resolution one way or the other probably will enable the Soroses of the world even more than the Goldman Sachses.

At the same time, because the Eurozone "project" isn't the same as the U.S., the whispered-about possible cataclysm isn't likely, should Eurozone ministers "fail."

I actually see the current crisis as worse, from the financial world POV, and from member nations' POV, than the U.S. debt supercommission, but not as serious as TARP. Germany IS too big to fail. The U.K., which has problems enough of its own, is outside the Eurozone. The Netherlands is fine. If push comes to shove, for France, Nicolas Sarkozy will perform financial cunnilingus on Angela Merkel, if necessary, to bind Gaul that tightly to the Deutschland. Both Euro and non-Euro parts of Scandanavia are doing well, too, as is Switzerland.

That all said, per my one poll on the left, it is indeed possible that the combined European Union economy, including Eurozone and non-Eurozone members, will fall behind the U.S. as a result. It is even vaguely possible that the EU, not just the Eurozone, could at least "reformulate," if not break up.

And, maybe it needs to.

Just don't throw a TARP over it.

If nothing else, maybe the U.S. can still teach Europe a thing or two -- about what not to do.

Will the EU fracture?

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne gives Eurozone members "only a few weeks" to save the quasi-nation supernational entity. He was speaking narrowly about the euro as a common currency, but, in things like this, you can't take one step backward without other fallout.

In hindsight, early national opposition to the Maastricht Treaty that lead to the euro currency seems more than reasonable. But, promises from Brussels aside, it's clear that nobody back then thought about national fiscal issues that would crop up.

Given that Eurozone members today say they passed "the Articles of Confederation," and know what they mean when they say that, why wasn't anybody saying that 19-20 years ago? Or in the run-up between the passage of the treaty and the implementation of the Euro?

Don't tell me Eurozone leaders got incredible enlightenment in the past six weeks, or even six months.

While the new "old Europe" is good in many ways, it's now straddling two sawhorses. And, the "fixes" proposed so far won't cut it.

Greece, for example, doesn't need more bailout; it needs the other countries to take it over, at least until a true union is approved in Europe. And, until the EU admits that, it loses relevance.

That said, can the EU survive without the euro? Sure, it did pre-1992. Or, the current EU can get serious about debt rules and boot some current members. Or, to the degree I understand finance, the EU could be made a notional reserve currency while EU members go back to national currencies.

A new European Union?

When leaders of both the EU and its member nations wave copies of the U.S. Articles of Confederation and admit they should have read them through before negotiating and approving the Maastricht Treaty, you'd like to believe a new EU, one with at least some degree of fiscal power over its member states, actually will happen.

But, I'll believe this new EU idea becomes a reality when I see it.

First, who gets booted? A Greece wouldn't qualify, at least. Certainly, none of the former Eastern Bloc members, or would-be members do, with the possible exceptions of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Second, how much do you strengthen the EU executive to do things like that?

Third ... if power at the center increases ... when does the France-Germany tussle also increase? And THAT is the bottom line.

Fourth and related, what's the focus of foreign policy? The recent Libya excursion demonstrated tensions in NATO. Old colonial power France can be expected to want to look at Africa and Southeast Asia, while also looking at counterbalancing the U.S. in general. Germany can be expected to want to continue to look east.

Until No. 3 is settled, major economic reforms will only go so far. Until No. 4 is settled, along with the relationship of a stronger EU to NATO, you'll not have a lot more than a Europe-wide Switzerland.