India Fortifies Its Island Defenses

By Sudha Ramachandran
May 8, 2012
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

BANGALORE - The Indian Navy has commissioned a new base, Indian Naval Ship (INS) Dweeprakshak, in the Lakshadweep Islands. Located at Kavaratti, the island chain's capital, Dweeprakshak will provide the navy with a permanent and more robust presence in waters that are threatened by pirates. 

The Lakshadweep archipelago (Lakshadweep means a hundred thousand islands in Sanskrit) consists of 36 islands, 12 atolls, three reefs and five submerged banks that are scattered in the southern Arabian Sea, 200-400 kilometers off the southern Indian coastal state of Kerala. 

Since 1980, the Indian Navy has operated a detachment in the Lakshadweep Islands. However, in December 2010 a Coast Guard district headquarters was commissioned at Kavaratti and a Coast Guard station was set up at Minicoy. A second Coast Guard station was set up at Androth Island in April this year. 

The facilities at Lakshadweep have been scaled up now to a full-fledged naval base. 

INS Dweeprakshak is India's sixth naval base and the fourth protecting the country's western flank. It is India's second base in island territories, the other being the base at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Dweeprakshak will come under the Southern Naval Command. 

The decision to beef up India's naval muscle at Lakshadweep has its roots in security concerns in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and the rising threat of pirate attacks in the Arabian Sea in recent years. Lakshadweep's strategic significance stems not only from its proximity to the Indian mainland but also, Nine Degree Channel - a 200-kilometer wide stretch of water through which much of the shipping between West Asia and South East Asia transits runs to the north of Minicoy, the southern-most of the islands. 

The magnitude of India's concern over the safety of sea lanes can be gauged from the fact that over 97% percent of India's trade by volume and 75% by value is sea borne. The key role that the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean play in meeting its India's energy requirements is evident from the fact that 67% of this comes from the Persian Gulf and 17% from Africa. 

Although the vulnerability of India's coast to terrorist infiltration and attacks became apparent in the early 1990s - the huge quantity of explosives used in the serial blasts in Mumbai in March 1993 was transported through the sea route - it was only after the terror attacks there in November 2008 that the India establishment began acting to secure the coasts - investigations revealed that Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives from Pakistan entered Mumbai undetected via the Arabian Sea. India has now put in place a maritime defense plan to secure its 7,516-km long coast line, including the island territories of Laskhadweep. 

The infrastructure set up in Lakshadweep is essential not only to safeguard the Indian mainland from terrorist attacks but also to prevent terrorists from taking sanctuary on the islands. Of Lakshadweep's 36 islands, 26 are uninhabited. That makes them vulnerable to misuse by terrorists for sanctuary or as training bases. Such anxieties have grown in the wake of the growing religious extremism, reported jihadi activity and political instability in the Maldives, which lie to the south of Lakshadweep. 

Besides, there is the threat of piracy to Indian and other shipping near India's waters. Anti-piracy operations by the multi-national task force in the Gulf of Aden created a "balloon effect", which resulted in pirate attacks shifting further afield into the middle of the Indian Ocean, even the seas near the Indian coastline. There have been a series of incidents in recent years involving piracy and trespassing in the vicinity of the Lakshadweep Islands. 

In March 2010, for instance, pirates sought to hijack a Maltese ship 200 nautical miles off Lakshadweep Islands in India's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The attempt was foiled by the Indian Navy. 

Then in May, eight Somali pirates were apprehended by the Indian navy off the Lakshadweep Islands. In November, two piracy attempts on container ships were successfully thwarted; one of the incidents happened just 150 nautical miles off Minicoy. 

In December, a Bangladesh merchant ship was hijacked by Somalian pirates some 70 nautical miles from the Lakshadweep Islands. The same month an Indian warship on patrol apprehended an Iranian dhow with four Iranians and 15 Pakistanis on board some 300 nautical miles west of Lakshadweep's Bitra Island in India's EEZ. In November last year, a "mysterious" Iranian shipMV Assa that was reportedly armed was docked in the EEZ near Lakshadweep for around 40 days. 

Surveillance and patrolling of the seas off the Lakshadweep Islands by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard have resulted in hundreds of pirates being apprehended over the past year. The setting up of a full-fledged naval base at Lakshadweep will substantially enhance India's capacity to ward off threats from pirates and terrorists. 

India has deployed a warship in the Gulf of Aden as part of the multi-national anti-piracy force. It has stationed two warships in the central and eastern Arabian Sea "but in a flexible formation for redeployment on an as required basis", India Abroad News Service reported. Such efforts will be further strengthened by the base at Lakshadweep, which will have warships, aircraft and helicopters. 

While the naval base will enhance the infrastructure and capacity of the coastal security network, the problems of India's coastal security seem rather basic and cannot be addressed by deploying more warships. 

The flaws in the coastal security network were made visible rather dramatically during the turbulent monsoon months last year when unmanned ships slipped past radars and other high-tech "eyes" to drift undetected in Indian waters and ran aground at Mumbai's Juhu beach. 

The first incident occurred on 12 June 2011, when a 9,000-ton cargo ship MV Wisdom that was headed to the Alang shipbreaking yard in Gujarat broke tow, and then drifted on to Juhu beach. Then on July 31, the 1,000-ton MV Pavit, which had been abandoned by its crew a month earlier near Oman, ran aground at Juhu beach. The 1,000-ton ship had drifted for over a hundred hours in India's territorial waters and slipped past a three-level coastal security network involving the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police before it crept up on to the beach. 

These were not small fishing boats but massive vessels and that they could enter not just Indian waters but also ride right onto the coast undetected is a damning indictment of the coastal security network. 

While analysts have focussed on the poor infrastructure in detailing the leaks in the coastal security network, it is the lack of communication and co-ordination between the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police that lies at the heart of its failures. 

Consider the response to MV Pavit's advance onto the Indian coast. It appears that the ship was first sighted the previous night by a hotel manager looking at the sea through his binoculars. He alerted a police station at Juhu. A cop went to the beach but couldn't see the vessel. He did not pass on the information anyway to the Coast Guard. 

The following morning, fishermen saw the vessel lurching towards the coast. The informed the police station, who again failed to alert the coast guard. When the cops finally informed the coast guard at around 8.30 am, the latter asked for the information to be faxed but the police station was not equipped with a fax machine. By then, MV Pavit had run aground at Juhu beach taking early morning joggers by surprise. 

Very basic problems are causing the coastal security network to leak. These are problems that warships cannot fix. 

According to Pushpita Das of the Delhi-based Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, the "problem lies not in the measures adopted but in the inadequate attention paid to the functioning of the system at the ground level where the actual action takes place". 

The little "coordination or information sharing" taking place at present between the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police "is largely based on personal rapport between the concerned officers", she observes, calling for the institutionalization of this "rapport". 

A new naval base with warships and aircraft is a fine idea for enhancing security in the seas. But there is only so much it can do to secure the coast. 

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can be reached atsudha98@hotmail.com 

(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Iran, Russia, China Mulling Joint Missile Shield

Russia, China and Iran Are Considering A Joint Missile Shield Directed Against The US and NATO

September 25, 2011
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

Unofficial sources have announced that Iran, Russia, and China are currently holding talks on a proposal to establish a joint missile defense shield as a counterweight to a NATO defense shield, Mehr news agency reported.

The report, which was published in the Iranian daily newspaper Kayhan on Sunday, said that the sources cited two reasons why serious consultations have been held on the initiative.

First, all three states have come to the conclusion that U.S. officials’ assertion that their concern over the alleged missile and nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea is the reason for the decision to establish a NATO missile defense shield is just a pretext and the true objective of the shield is to threaten Russia and China.

In addition, now that the proposal to establish an early warning radar system in southeast Turkey, which is one component of the NATO missile defense shield, appears to be a done deal, the U.S. is now planning to establish other components of the new system in South Korea and Taiwan, which clearly shows that Washington is using the alleged threat from Iran and North Korea as a pretext to target China and Russia.

An informed expert believes China, which has not taken any action on the issue so far, is beginning to comprehend the level of danger posed by the new system, Mehr quoted the report as saying.

Russia’s analysis of the situation is similar to Iran’s view, which was expressed during Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev’s recent visit to Tehran.

Therefore, it seems the three countries have realized that the time has come to seriously start discussions on the plan.

Some sources say Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian envoy to NATO, who is scheduled to travel to Iran before the end of September, will probably hold operational discussions on the plan with Iranian officials.

According to RIA Novosti, Rogozin is going to discuss "strategic issues" in Tehran.

Military experts are of the opinion that since Iran, Russia, and China have made great progress in designing anti-aircraft defense systems, the construction of such a missile shield system will not be a difficult task for them.

Turkey Emerges As New Power Of Muslim World

By: Mohammad Jamil
Published: September 04, 2011
Courtesy Of "The Nation Newspaper (Pakistan)"

Exasperated by Israel’s intransigence and its refusal to apologise and pay compensation to the families of those killed in the Israeli raid on the flotilla, Turkey expelled Israel’s envoy, downgraded diplomatic relations and suspended all military agreements with Israel. Earlier, the UN report described the excessive use of force by Israel; however it said that blockade was legal and appropriate. This is travesty of the truth, as the flotilla was in the international waters, therefore Israel’s raid cannot be described legal or appropriate in any case. 

Since 2008 when Israel invaded Gaza, and after bombardment of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, relations between Turkey and Israel had turned very sour. In January 2009 at the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had blasted Israel’s President Shimon Peres stating: “You kill people. I remember the children who died on beaches.” 

In May 2010 when Israeli naval commandos raided the flotilla carrying aid for Palestinians, many countries of the world had condemned Israel for blatant violations of international law. Twenty Arab nations had joined in expressing grave concern and condemnation of the Israeli aggression on Gaza-bound aid ships, killing nine human rights activists and injuring scores of others. The Organisation of Islamic Conference did not go beyond ‘noble sentiments’ and failed to mobilise the world opinion against atrocities on the Palestinians. Of course, a joint statement by Turkey and 20 Arab nations had called on the United Nations to investigate in a credible, thorough and transparent manner Israel’s assault on aid ship. Muslim leaders had rallied around Turkey in the ‘Conference on interaction and confidence building measures in Asia’ (CICA), backing their host’s call for Israel to end its blockade of Gaza immediately.

Once close ally of the US and Israel, Turkey’s relations have soured since Erdogan started supporting Palestinian cause after an Israeli offensive in Gaza in 2008 and consequent embargo. Turkey was in touch with other countries of the world seeking their help to pressurise Israel into ending the embargo, but to no avail. Also being fed up with ever-increasing conditions by the European Union for accepting Turkey in its fold, Turkey started looking eastward. And there appears to be a paradigm shift in its foreign policy. Of course, Israel’s policy towards Palestinians has been the basic reason for this change. 

Many analysts considered the projection of the Israeli military might in Gaza, West Bank or in Lebanon as demonstration of a baser bellicosity of an inebriated state that drew its strength from the world’s sole superpower – the US. 

Because of unqualified support of sole superpower America, Israel has defied the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions, orders from International Court of Justice to stop settlement activity in the West Bank, and showed utter disregard to the pacts and agreements it signed to ensure an independent Palestinian state. This minuscule country has so much control on decisions made by the US and other powerful nations that it refuses to abide by international laws and treaties with impunity. Moreover, it is the only country that could get away with assassinating its enemies on foreign soil. Had any other country flouted the international law and covenants, the United Nations Security Council would have passed resolutions and slapped harsh sanctions on that country.

In 2009, Turkey had barred Israel from the air drill (exercise) with Nato, but called off the international drill after the US and Italy pulled out in protest over Israel’s exclusion. For years the joint military operation ‘Anatolian Eagle’ was emblematic of the strong relations between Israel and Turkey. Having that said, Turkey is playing a greater role in the international affairs today. Reportedly, it is involved in creating an understanding between the Taliban and Afghan government. It is hoped that one day Turkey would also support the cause of people of Kashmir. Today, Turkey’s leadership is taking independent decisions because it has the political acumen and is also backed by the people’s power. Turkey reflects aspirations of the Muslim ummah, and is poised to emerge as leader of the Muslim World. Its leadership has put together a strategic plan that aims to make Turkey a world power by 2023. Leaders of other Muslim countries should emulate Turkey’s leadership and start taking independent decisions.

The Battle For The South China Sea

Who Owns The World's Busiest Shipping Lane and What Lies Below The Surface That Is Causing Growing Tensions?

Counting The Cost
Last Modified: 03 Jun 2011 09:25
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Six countries are all scrambling for the South China Sea. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia are all making claims to it.

But why now? China estimates there could be up to 213 billion barrels of oil beneath the sea. This would mean China would have the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, just falling behind Saudi Arabia, which has 264 billion barrels.

There are also estimates of up to two quadrillion cubic feet of hydrocarbon natural gas.

Also corruption and bribery in the beautiful game. We look at the crisis at the heart of FIFA and how it can fix its reputation after facing allegations of bribery and corruption. Counting the Cost scrutinises FIFA's 2010 financial report.

And protecting the rain forests. The clash between business and environment in Indonesia where a two-year government ban on rainforest logging is facing challenges.

Regional Implications Of Egypt's Power Transition

Photographed by AFP

By Mohamed Elmeshad
Mon, 14/03/2011 - 22:46
Courtesy Of "Al-Masry Al-Youm"

The 25 January uprising called for the fall of the regime while rejecting its dire legacy. For some, rejecting that legacy meant demanding a shift in Egypt’s regional role, in particular Egypt’s unwavering alliance with the United States and the way Egypt has handled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Analysts agree that Egypt’s current priorities revolve around re-establishing a sense of economic and social stability. Currently, Egypt is still committed to all of its international agreements, according to Egypt’s Supreme Council for the Armed Forces, which has ruled Egypt since former President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster on 11 February.

However, many believe that once the country regains a stable footing, a general shift in Egypt’s political posturing will ensue. “If the democratic changes happen as we hope, Egyptian foreign policy will act with more autonomy, and reflect [the will of the people] more thoroughly,” said Emad Gad, a political analyst with Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Over the past 20 years, Egypt’s engagement with international politics has gradually diminished, leaving the military and Egypt's future government with the question of how to steer Egypt’s foreign policy in the future.

“Egypt had an understanding with the Americans before. It entailed leaving internal matters up to the Egyptian government, in exchange for Egypt’s support of American policy domestically and internationally,” Gad said.

The passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal two weeks ago raised questions regarding Egypt’s emerging role in the region.

Egypt and Iran had a strained relationship, which Israel viewed as a source of relief because it tended to view a nuclearized Iran as one of its greatest security threats. The relationship with Iran is one where Ahram Center Analyst Amr Elshobaky sees potential for change. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t reinstate some relations with Iran. The only three countries in the world that currently don't deal with Iran are the US, Israel, and Egypt,” he said.

Mubarak received substantial aid packages from the US, which at their peak, amounted to more than US$2 billion annually, mostly in the form of military support. Since the Camp David Accords, Egypt has safeguarded its border with Israel, frequently closing the border to prevent an inflow of Palestinian refugees to Egypt and the outflow of aid to the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip. Throughout his 29-year rule, Mubarak was seen as an important US ally because he helped promote Israeli security interests.

Mubarak’s close relationship with Israel drew scorn from Tahrir protesters. Chants encouraging Mubarak to resign in Tahrir Square were frequently tailed with, “Tell him in Hebrew, maybe he doesn’t speak Arabic.”

In the days leading up to Mubarak’s resignation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the importance of Mubarak’s regime to Israel. He expressed a great deal of concern that if Mubarak were to go, he would lose an important ally.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has indicated that they are committed to the peace agreement with Israel as well as all other international agreements. However, Egypt plans to hold elections in six months. Any new leadership that takes over the country may alter the course of Egypt’s foreign policy.

“I don’t think any regime will risk the peace agreement,” said Iman Hamdy, an AUC professor who specializes in the Arab-Israeli conflict. “We can’t afford it politically or militarily.”

Hamdy stresses that until a new government under a permanent constitution is formed, “every assumption we make is purely speculative.”

Optimists such as Gad and Hamdy believe that there is nothing odd about the Supreme Council’s commitment to international agreements. Any change that amounts to a departure from the status-quo would entail profound political shifts.

World leaders have not wasted time pledging support and assistance to Egypt through this period of transition. Field Marshal Tantawi, head of Egypt’s armed forces, has already met with the foreign ministers of Spain, France, as well as the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Saudi Arabia has pledged that, despite the potential for the assistance to enhance Egypt’s economic position, what Egypt chose to do internal to the country would have more of an effect on its economy than any external considerations.

“If corruption is curbed, and Egypt operated more efficiently, the economic situation should improve quickly. That improvement, coupled with democratic stability, would have the biggest effect on Egyptian foreign policy,” said Gad.

Gad and many others argue that, as in most democratic societies, governments that have democracy and economic stability can afford to act with more independence from a foreign policy perspective. "In that case, Egypt wouldn’t need to please America or Israel,” he said.

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William J Burns told al-Masry al-Youm that he is confident the Supreme Council will uphold the peace agreement. He said that the US is confident that Egypt’s position towards Arab-Israeli peace “will be based on its own self-interest." However, he reassured that "Egypt's self-interest, and certainly its leadership, will continue to play a leading role in any hopes for reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process.”

According to Hamdy, Egypt’s regional outlook is likely to change in favor of alterating some fringe agreements.

“The stringent support to Israel may no longer be there. Before, Egypt was always able to diffuse Arab anger towards Israel, like during the war with Lebanon and the bombing of Gaza. This may change,” she said.

Egypt’s help in building the underground wall to keep smugglers from building tunnels in Gaza could decrease as well. Moreeover, its relationship with the Palestinian leadership may radically change. “It felt at some point like there was a personal vendetta between the Egyptian government and Hamas, and that the hostility was between individuals,” Hamdy said.

Egypt has tended to deal with the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, popularly known as Abu Mazen. “Abu Mazen did more harm to the Palestinians than anyone. New Egyptian governments might deal with the Palestinians more cleverly,” said Hamdy.

The Iranian warships that passed through the Suez on Monday are perhaps a sign that the relationship with Israel may not be as clearly defined as before. This is the first time an Iranian warship has passed through the canal since 1979. “The fact that Iran even requested permission for its ships to pass through there was astonishing,” Hamdy said.

Although initially alarmed, Israel's reaction to the event has cooled. Israeli Daily Haaretz quoted a senior IDF officer who said that he sees no real threat to the passage of the Iranian ships, while Israel’s far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called it a provocation by Iran.

The US is not too worried about shifts in the Egypt's attitude towards Iran. Burns said that on his visit, “Egyptians have not been shy about being concerned about Iranian behavior in the region, whether it’s their nuclear aspirations or support for extremist groups, and those are concerns that others in the region share.”

In general, not much is expected to change within the next six months with regards to Egypt foreign policy in the region. Many analysts say that during Mubarak’s regime, Egypt’s stature in the region decreased due to its hands-off approach to the peace process and its inability to halt changes to the Nile Basin agreement, which may have grave consequences on Egypt's water supply.

“First of all, the new regime needs to push for regaining its stature in the region before it thinks of a change in any stance towards anything going on,” Hamdy said.

While US Is Distracted, China Develops Sea Power

By Robert D. Kaplan
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Courtesy Of "The Washington Post"

The greatest geopolitical development that has occurred largely beneath the radar of our Middle East-focused media over the past decade has been the rise of Chinese sea power. This is evinced by President Obama's meeting Friday about the South China Sea, where China has conducted live-fire drills and made territorial claims against various Southeast Asian countries, and the dispute over the Senkaku Islands between Japan and China in the East China Sea, the site of a recent collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and two Japanese coast guard ships.

Whereas an island nation such as Britain goes to sea as a matter of course, a continental nation with long and contentious land borders, such as China, goes to sea as a luxury. The last time China went to sea in the manner that it is doing was in the early 15th century, when the Ming Dynasty explorer Zheng He sailed his fleets as far as the Horn of Africa. His journeys around the southern Eurasian rim ended when the Ming emperors became distracted by their land campaigns against the Mongols to the north. Despite occasional unrest among the Muslim Uighur Turks in western China, history is not likely to repeat itself. If anything, the forces of Chinese demography and corporate control are extending Chinese power beyond the country's dry-land frontiers -- into Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia.

China has the world's second-largest naval service, after only the United States. Rather than purchase warships across the board, it is developing niche capacities in sub-surface warfare and missile technology designed to hit moving targets at sea. At some point, the U.S. Navy is likely to be denied unimpeded access to the waters off East Asia. China's 66 submarines constitute roughly twice as many warships as the entire British Royal Navy. If China expands its submarine fleet to 78 by 2020 as planned, it would be on par with the U.S. Navy's undersea fleet in quantity, if not in quality. If our economy remains wobbly while China's continues to rise -- China's defense budget is growing nearly 10 percent annually -- this will have repercussions for each nation's sea power. And with 90 percent of commercial goods worldwide still transported by ship, sea control is critical.


The geographical heart of America's hard-power competition with China will be the South China Sea, through which passes a third of all commercial maritime traffic worldwide and half of the hydrocarbons destined for Japan, the Korean Peninsula and northeastern China. That sea grants Beijing access to the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca, and thus to the entire arc of Islam, from East Africa to Southeast Asia. The United States and others consider the South China Sea an international waterway; China considers it a "core interest." Much like when the Panama Canal was being dug, and the United States sought domination of the Caribbean to be the preeminent power in the Western Hemisphere, China seeks domination of the South China Sea to be the dominant power in much of the Eastern Hemisphere.

We underestimate the importance of what is occurring between China and Taiwan, at the northern end of the South China Sea. With 270 flights per week between the countries, and hundreds of missiles on the mainland targeting the island, China is quietly incorporating Taiwan into its dominion. Once it becomes clear, a few years or a decade hence, that the United States cannot credibly defend Taiwan, China will be able to redirect its naval energies beyond the first island chain in the Pacific (from Japan south to Australia) to the second island chain (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) and in the opposite direction, to the Indian Ocean.

To wit, China is building a blue water navy, even as it is helping to fund and construct ports in Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Chinese will not have naval bases in these countries: India would find that far too provocative, and the Chinese are taking pains so others see their rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic. Rather, these harbors will be visited by Chinese warships and will provide warehousing for Chinese consumer goods destined for the Middle East. China is building a far-flung trading network, ultimately to be protected by its warships -- the British Empire refitted for a 21st-century era of globalization.

America's preoccupation with the Middle East suits China perfectly. We are paying in blood and treasure to stabilize Afghanistan while China is building transport and pipeline networks throughout Central Asia that will ultimately reach Kabul and the trillion dollars' worth of minerals lying underground. Whereas Americans ask how can we escape Afghanistan, the Chinese, who are already prospecting for copper there, ask: How can we stay? Our military mission in Afghanistan diverts us from properly reacting to the Chinese naval challenge in East Asia.

The United States should not consider China an enemy. But neither is it in our interest to be distracted while a Chinese economic empire takes shape across Eurasia. This budding empire is being built on our backs: the protection of the sea lines of communication by the U.S. Navy and the pacification of Afghanistan by U.S. ground troops. It is through such asymmetry -- we pay far more to maintain what we have than it costs the Chinese to replace us -- that great powers rise and fall. That is why the degree to which the United States can shift its focus from the Middle East to East Asia will say much about our future prospects as a great power.

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of "Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power." He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine.

Expanding U.S.-Canada Security & Economic Partnership

By Dana Gabriel
Source: "beyourownleader.blogspot.com"
September 14, 2010
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

In recent years, U.S.-Canada border issues have been overshadowed by concerns surrounding illegal immigration and drug violence on the southern border. Earlier this summer, both countries agreed to work towards a more joint approach to border security aimed at addressing common threats and promoting economic cooperation. In July, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, “met to advance a strategic dialogue on developing a shared vision for border security for Canada and the United States—one that will enhance security and resilience against common threats, while bolstering competitiveness and job creation.” A number of initiatives were announced, including an agreement to complete a joint threat and risk assessment which, “addresses drug trafficking and illegal immigration, the illicit movement of prohibited or controlled goods, agricultural hazards, and the spread of infectious disease.” In addition, a memorandum of understanding on cross-border currency seizures and information sharing was signed that, “will help to identify potential threats and assist in money-laundering and terrorist-financing investigations and prosecutions.” Increasingly, Canada is being pressured to further take on U.S. security priorities in an effort to keep trade flowing across the northern border. Secretary Napolitano and Minister Toews also reached an agreement to safeguard and respond to disruptions of shared infrastructure that connect the two nations such as roads, power grids and bridges. The Canada-U.S. Action Plan for Critical Infrastructure is designed to, “strengthen the safety, security and resiliency of Canada and the United States by establishing a comprehensive cross-border approach to critical infrastructure resilience.” This includes building partnerships, improved information sharing, as well as risk management aimed at increasing the ability to prepare for emergencies like a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The action plan is part of ongoing cross-border collaboration and builds off a recent deal reached between the Canadian federal and provincial governments in regards to protecting local infrastructure. It also appears to be linked to the Civil Assistance Plansigned by the U.S.-Canadian military in 2008, which allows the armed forces of one nation to support the other during a civil emergency. In April, Minister of International Trade Peter Van Loan was in Washington, D.C to promote deeper Canada-U.S. ties. He met with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and they agreed to hold twice-annual trade meetings to enhance bilateral relations. In July, they met in Ottawa to discuss greater economic cooperation and the need to avoid protectionism. Through NAFTA, both nations economies are already intimately interrelated. and integrated. While some advocate more trade between the two partners as the answer to strengthening their respective economies, it was recently reported that Canada’s trade deficit increased by a record level in July. This is related in large part to its dependence on the struggling American economy. At the trade meetings in Ottawa several months back, Minister Van Loan and Ambassador Kirk also addressed theCanada–U.S. Agreement on Government Procurement. The deal resolved the Buy American issue and is essentially an extension of NAFTA. Some believe that it is an important step in providing protection for future bilateral trade relations, but in the process it opens up provincial and municipal contracts to foreign corporations. The 5th round of negotiations between Canada and the European Union (EU) on a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) will take place in October. One of the EU’s top objectives includes gaining access to procurement and services in areas of health, energy, water, as well as other sectors. The Canada-U.S. Buy American deal could be used to further reinforce EU demands. While Canada needs to lessen its dependence on the U.S. economy, there are concerns that CETA will be based on the failed NAFTA trade model. The report Skating on Thin Ice: Canadian-American Relations in 2010 and 2011 released earlier this year and authored by Alexander Moens of the Fraser Institute, praised the Canada-U.S. agreement on government procurement. It suggested the deal, “should encourage free traders on both sides of the line to continue pressing for deeper economic cooperation.” Considering the bilateral discussions and initiatives which have progressed in the last several months, it appears as if this forecast was indeed correct. The report also emphasized that, “Canada and the United States need to pursue deeper trade integration in such areas as regulatory harmonization, common external tariffs on manufactured products, free trade in agricultural products, and an overall energy and environmental accord.” For the U.S. to be more receptive to increased trade and investment, it recommends establishing a, “unified regime to deal with a common security threat.” In order for deeper economic integration to move forward, Canada will be further pressed to adopt a single security strategy dominated by American interests. This poses a serious threat to its sovereignty. The trilateral framework remains intact, but NAFTA partners at least for the time being, are pursuing a more bilateral agenda for advancing continental integration. This seems to be drawing less attention. The current approach is due in part to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America being exposed and discredited. It is interesting to note that there has yet to be an announcement concerning this year’s edition of the North American Leaders Summit introduced in 2005 with the launching of the SPP. Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s separate trips to the U.S. to meet with President Barack Obama and to Canada to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper back in May, might have served as this year’s version of the leaders summit. Calderón used the state visits as an opportunity to strengthen NAFTA ties and promote deeper North American economic integration. The SPP appears to be dead in name only as some of its key priorities continue through other initiatives. It remains the blueprint for further expanding NAFTA. Continental integration is a permanent agenda and the vision for a North American Union has not been abandoned. Dana Gabriel is an activist and independent researcher. He writes about trade, globalization, sovereignty, as well as other issues. Contact: beyourownleader@hotmail.com. Visit his blog site at beyourownleader.blogspot.com

Dana Gabriel is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Dana Gabriel

Turkey: Stealth Superpower

By John Feffer
June 15, 2010
Courtesy Of "Asia Times Online"

The future is no longer in plastics, as the businessman in the 1967 film The Graduate insisted. Rather, the future is in China.

If a multinational corporation doesn't shoehorn China into its business plan, it courts the ridicule of its peers and the outrage of its shareholders. The language of choice for ambitious undergraduates is Mandarin. Apocalyptic futurologists are fixated on an eventual global war between China and the United States. China even occupies valuable real estate in the imaginations of our fabulists. Much of the action of Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, for example, takes place in a future neo-Confucian China, while the crew members of the space ship on the cult TV show Firefly mix Chinese curse words into their dialogue.

Why doesn't Turkey have a comparable grip on American visions of the future? Characters in science fiction novels don't speakTurkish. Turkish-language programs are as scarce as hen's teeth on college campuses. Turkey doesn't even qualify as part of everyone's favorite group of up-and-comers, that swinging BRIC quartet of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Turkey remains stubbornly fixed in Western culture as a backward-looking land of doner kebabs, bazaars and guest workers.

But take population out of the equation - an admittedly big variable - and Turkey promptly becomes a likely candidate for future superpower. It possesses the 17th top economy in the world and, according to Goldman Sachs, has a good shot at breaking into the top 10 by 2050. Its economic muscle is also well defended: after decades of assistance from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Turkish military is now a regional powerhouse.

Perhaps most importantly, Turkey occupies a vital crossroads between Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. A predominantly Muslim democracy atop the ruins of Byzantium, it bridges the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions, even as it sits perched at the nexus of energy politics. All roads once led to Rome; today all pipelines seem to lead to Turkey. If superpower status followed the rules of real estate - location, location, location - then Turkey would already be near the top of the heap.

As a quintessential rising middle power, Turkey no longer hesitates to put itself in the middle of major controversies. In the last month alone, Turkish mediation efforts nearly heralded a breakthrough in the Iran nuclear crisis, and Ankara supported the flotilla that recently tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza. With these and other less high-profile interventions, Turkey has stepped out of the shadows and now threatens to settle into the prominent place on the world stage once held by its predecessor. In the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire was a force to be reckoned with, spreading through the Balkans to the gates of Vienna before devolving over the next 200 years into "the sick man of Europe".

Today, a dynamic neo-Ottoman spirit animates Turkey. Once rigidly secular, it has begun to fashion a moderate Islamic democracy. Once dominated by the military, it is in the process of containing the army within the rule of law. Once intolerant of ethnic diversity, it has begun to re-examine what it means to be Turkish. Once a sleepy economy, it is becoming a nation of Islamic Calvinists. Most critically of all, it is fashioning a new foreign policy. Having broken with its more than half-century-long subservience to the United States, it is now carving out a geopolitical role all its own.

The rise of Turkey has by no means been smooth. Secular Turks have been uncomfortable with recent more assertive expressions of Muslim identity, particularly when backed by state power. The country's Kurds are still second-class citizens, and although the military has lost some of its teeth, it still has a bite to go along with its bark.

Nonetheless, Turkey is remaking the politics of the Middle East and challenging Washington's traditional notion of itself as the mediator of last resort in the region. In the 21st century, the Turkish model of transitioning out of authoritarian rule while focusing on economic growth and conservative social values has considerable appeal to countries in the developing world.

This "Ankara consensus" could someday compete favorably with Beijing's and Washington's versions of political and economic development. The Turkish model has, however, also spurred right-wing charges that a new Islamic fundamentalist threat is emerging on the edges of Europe. Neo-conservative pundit Liz Cheney has even created a new version of former US president George W Bush's "axis of evil" in which Turkey, Iran and Syria have become the dark trinity.

These are all signs that Turkey has indeed begun to wake from its centuries-long slumber. And when Turkey wakes, as Napoleon said of China, the world will shake.

Out Of Ottomanism

Constantinople was once an Orientalist's dream. In his otherwise perceptive 1877 guide to the city, the Italian author Edmondo de Amicis typically wrote that old Istanbul "is not a city; she neither labors, nor thinks, nor creates; civilization beats at her gates and assaults her in her streets, but she dreams and slumbers on in the shadow of her mosques, and takes no heed".

Turkey's first wake-up call came from Kemal Ataturk, the modernizing military officer from Salonika who created a new country out of the unpromising materials left behind by the collapsed Ottoman Empire. Decisively ending the caliphate in 1924, Ataturk patterned his new secular state on the French model: strong central power, a modern army, and a strict division between public and private spheres. This was no easy process: Ataturk brought Turkey kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

In many ways, that kicking and screaming continued throughout the rest of that century. The Turkish military never quite got used to civilian rule. It has seized power four times since 1960. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish security forces killed thousands of their own citizens in a dirty war against the Kurds and the Turkish left, and subjected many more to beatings, torture and imprisonment. The country's leadership maintained a garrison mentality based on a fear that outsiders, aided by a fifth column, were bent on dismembering the country (as outside powers had indeed attempted to do in 1920 with the Treaty of Sevres).

In the 1980s, however, economic globalization began to eat away at this garrison mentality as president Turgut Ozal attempted to reconnect Turkey to the world through export-oriented reforms and a policy of building economic bridges rather than erecting suspicious walls. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), for instance, Turkey refused to choose sides, remaining a friend to both countries.

In the process, Istanbul was transformed. It became the center of a laboring, thinking and creating class that faced both westward toward Europe and the US and eastward toward the Middle East and Central Asia. Even Central Anatolia and its key city, Kayseri, once considered a Turkish backwater, was emerging as a vital center of manufacturing. "While Anatolia remains a socially conservative and religious society, it is also undergoing what some have called a 'Silent Islamic Reformation'," went the European Stability Initiative's influential 2005 report on Turkey's new Islamic Calvinists. "Many of Kayseri's business leaders even attribute their economic success to their 'protestant work ethic'."

By the 1990s, the "star of Islam" - as The Economist dubbed Turkey - had gone about as far as it could within the confines of the existing Ataturk model. In 1997, the military once again swatted aside the civilian leadership in a "stealth coup", and the country seemed to be slipping back into aggressive paranoia. The Kurdish war flared; tensions with Russia over Chechnya rose; a war of words broke out with Greece over maritime territorial disputes. And Turkey nearly went to war with Syria for harboring Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan.

But that stealth coup proved a last-gasp attempt to place the uncontainable new political and economic developments in Turkish society under tighter controls. Soon enough, the military gave way again and the Islam-influenced Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, only enlarging its political base after the 2007 elections.

Zero Problems?

Throughout the 20th century, geography had proved a liability for Turkey. It found itself beset on all sides by former Ottoman lands which held grudges against the successor state. The magic trick the AKP performed was to transform this liability into an asset. Turkey in the 21st century turned on the charm. Like China, it discovered the advantages of soft power and the inescapable virtues of a "soft rise" during an era of American military and economic dominance.

Led by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a former academic who provided a blueprint for the country's new good-neighbor policy in his 2001 book Strategic Depth, Turkey pledged "zero problems with neighbors". In foreign policy terminology, Davutoglu proposed the carving out of a Turkish sphere of influence via canny balance-of-power politics. Like China, it promised not to interfere in the domestic affairs of its partners. It also made a major effort to repair relations with those near at hand and struck new friendships with those far away. Indeed, like Beijing, Ankara has global aspirations.

Perhaps the most dramatic reversal in Turkish policy involves the Kurdish region of Iraq. The detente orchestrated by the AKP could be compared to president Richard Nixon's startling policy of rapprochement with China in the 1970s, which rapidly turned an enemy into something like an ally.

In March, Turkey sent its first diplomat to Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, to staff a new consulate there. Today, as journalist Jonathan Head has written, "70% of investment and 80% of the products sold in the Kurdish region [of Iraq] are Turkish." Realizing that when US troops leave Iraq, its Kurdish regions are bound to feel vulnerable and thus open to economic and political influence, Ankara established a "strategic cooperation council" to sort things out with the Iraqis in 2009, and this has served as a model for similar arrangements with Syria, Bulgaria, Greece and Russia.

Detente with Iraqi Kurdistan has gone hand-in-hand with a relaxation of tensions between Ankara and its own Kurdish population with which it had been warring for decades. Until the early 1990s, the Turkish government pretended that the Kurdish language didn't exist. Now, there is a new 24-hour Kurdish-language national TV station, and new faculty at Mardin Artuklu University will teach Kurdish. The government began to accept returning Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq, as well as a handful of Kurdish guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

This hasn't been an easy sell for Turkish nationalists. In December, a Turkish court banned the main Kurdish political party, and this spring the military launched repeated attacks against PKK targets inside Iraq. But the AKP is continuing to push reforms, including proposed changes in the country's constitution that would allow military commanders for the first time to be tried in civilian court for any crimes they commit.

The elimination of this demonizing of "internal enemies" is crucial to the AKP's project, helping as it does to reduce the military's power in internal affairs. Curbing the military is a top objective for party leaders who believe it will strengthen political stability, improve prospects for future integration into the European Union (EU), and remove a powerful opponent to domestic reforms - and to the party itself.

Only a little less startling than the government's gestures toward the Kurds has been its program to transform Turkish-Greek relations. The two countries have long been at each other's throats, their conflict over the divided island of Cyprus being only the most visible of their disagreements. The current Greek economic crisis, however, may prove a blessing in disguise when it comes to bilateral relations.

The Greek government - its finances disastrous and economic pressure from the EU mounting - needs a way to make military budget reductions defensible. In May, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Greece and, while signing 21 agreements on migration, environment, culture and the like, began to explore the previously inconceivable possibility of mutual military reductions. "Both countries have huge defense expenses," Erdogan told Greek television, "and they will achieve a lot of savings this way."

If Turkey manages a rapprochement with Armenia, it will achieve a diplomatic trifecta. The two countries disagree over the fate of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, which is also at the center of a dispute between Armenia and Turkish ally Azerbaijan. Complicating this territorial issue is a long-standing historical controversy. Armenia wants acknowledgement of the Ottoman Empire's 1915 extermination campaign that killed more than a million Armenians. The Turkish government today disputes the numbers and refuses to recognize the killings as "genocide". Nevertheless, Turkey and Armenia began direct negotiations last year to reopen their border and establish diplomatic relations. Although officially stalled, secret talks between the two are continuing.

Other diplomatic efforts are no less dramatic. When President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Ankara in 2004, it was the first visit by a Syrian leader in 57 years. Meanwhile, Turkey has cemented its relations with Russia, remains close to Iran and has reconnected to the Balkans. This charm offensive makes Chinese efforts inAsia look bumbling.

Mediation Central

A friend to all sides, Turkey is offering its services as a diplomatic middleman, even in places where it was persona non grata not long ago. "Not many people would imagine that the Serbians would ask for the mediation of Turkey between different Bosniak groups in the Sandjak region of Serbia," observes Sule Kut, a Balkans expert at Bilge University in Istanbul. "Turks were the bad guys in Serbian history. So what is happening? Turkey has established itself as a credible and powerful player in the region."

It's not just the Balkans. The new Turkey is establishing itself as Mediation Central. Teaming up with Brazil, Turkey fashioned a surprise compromise meant to head off confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program (which the Barack Obama administration managed to shoot down). Along with Spain, it initiated the Alliance of Civilizations, a United Nations effort to bridge the divide between Islam and the West. It also tried to work its magic in negotiating an end to the blockade of Gaza, removing obstacles to the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, bringing Syria and Israel together, resolving the brouhaha around the cartoon depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, and hosting United Nations meetings on Somalia.

"Zero problems with neighbors" is a great slogan. But it's also a logical impossibility. Turkey can't embrace Hamas without angering Egypt and Israel. It can move closer to Russia only at the potential expense of good relations with Georgia. Rapprochement with Armenia angers Azerbaijan.

Nor was Ankara's attempt to transcend zero-sum thinking an easy task during the "with us or against us" years of the George W Bush administration. In addition, there are the periodic tensions that arise around US congressional resolutions on the Armenian genocide, still a touchy issue in Turkey. Washington has indicated its growing unhappiness with Turkey's increasingly active role in the Middle East, particularly its overtures to Syria. As a result, Turkey has had to finesse its relationship with the US in order to remain a key NATO ally and a challenger to American power in the region.

As with China, the US is willing to work with Turkey on some diplomatic issues even as it finds the country's growing influence in the region a problem. In turn, Ankara, like Beijing, is trying to figure out how it can best take advantage of the relative decline in US global influence even as it works closely with Washington on an issue-by-issue basis.

The greatest challenge to Turkey's zero-problems paradigm, however, is its ever more troubled relationship with Israel. The US-Turkey-Israel troika was once a solid verity of Middle Eastern politics. A considerable amount of bilateral trade, including military deals, has linked Turkey and Israel, and that trade increased dramatically during the AKP era.

But Israel's 2008 invasion of Gaza - and Erdogan's subsequent excoriation of then-Israeli president Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos - began a process that is tearing these former allies apart, while boosting support for Turkey in the Arab world. In October, Turkey canceled Israel's participation in a military exercise, throwing lucrative military contracts between the two countries in jeopardy. In the wake of the recent Gaza-aid debacle in international waters, the rift threatens to become irreparable. When Israeli commandos seized a flotilla of ships attempting to break the Gaza embargo, killing nine Turkish citizens, Turkey spoke of severing diplomatic relations.

With Israel increasingly isolated and American mediation efforts seriously compromised, only Turkey is emerging stronger from what can now only be seen as the beginning of a regional realignment of power. Once viewed with suspicion throughout the area where the Ottomans ruled, Turkey may now be the only power that has even a remote chance of one day brokering peace in the Middle East.

Return To Ottomanism?

Neo-Ottomanism is not exactly a popular phrase in Turkey today. The leadership in Ankara wants to be clear: they have no intention of projecting imperial power or re-establishing the modern equivalent of the Ottoman caliphate. However, if you look at the friendships that Turkey has cultivated and the trade relations it has emphasized - Syria, Armenia, Greece, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, the Balkans - you can see a map of the old Ottoman empire reassembling itself.

In other words, just as the AKP has turned geography to its advantage, so it is transforming an imperial albatross into the goose that lays golden eggs (in the form of lucrative trade deals). In a similar way, China has tried to revive its old Sinocentric imperial system without stirring up fears of the Chinese army marching into India or the Chinese navy taking over the South China Sea, even as it - like Turkey - also establishes friendly relations with old adversaries (including Russia).

Still, even this amiable version of neo-Ottomanism can raise hackles. "We want a new Balkan region based on political values, economic interdependence, and cooperation and cultural harmony," Davutoglu said nostalgically at a conference in Sarajevo in October. "That is what the Ottoman Balkans was like. We shall revive such a Balkan region ... The Ottoman centuries were a success story, and this should be revived." A furor followed among some Serb commentators, who viewed this romanticized version of history as evidence of a Turkish desire to Islamicize the Balkans.

What Turkey means by its vision of Balkan harmony may prove critical in the context of European integration. The Ottomans and Western Europe fought a succession of wars over control of the Balkans. Today, the EU and Turkey compete for influence in the region, and much hangs on Turkey's prospects for joining the 27-member European organization. Although Turkey began the process of meeting requirements for joining the union, the talks stalled long ago. In the meantime, some European leaders, like French President Nicholas Sarkozy, have spoken out against Turkish membership, while the spread of Islamophobia throughout Europe has dimmed what enthusiasm may still exist for bringing Turkey on board.

In Turkey as well, public support for membership has declined from 70% in 2002 to just over 50% today. In fact, Turkey's turn toward the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa has in part been a reaction to the fading of the EU option. Fine, the Turks are saying, if you don't want us, we can play with others.

And play they have, particularly when it comes to the energy game. If oil had been discovered in its territory just a little sooner, some form of the Ottoman Empire might have survived as the wealthiest energy player in history. The riches of Iraq, Kuwait and Libya all once fell within the territorial limits of its empire.

Today, Turkey lacks energy wealth, but has worked assiduously to ensure that a maximum number of oil and natural gas pipelines flow through the country. Europe and the United States have funded a series of pipelines (like the Nabucco pipeline from the Caspian Sea) that use Turkish territory to bypass Russia and lessen Moscow's ability to blackmail Western Europe by threatening to withhold energy supplies. Turkey hasn't stopped there, however. It negotiated directly with Russia for another set of pipelines - the South Stream, which goes from Russia to Bulgaria through Turkish territorial waters, and the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline that would transport Russian and Kazakh oil from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean through Turkey.

Turkey now relies on Russia for 60% of its energy imports and Iran for another 30%. In this sense, "zero problems with neighbors" could just as easily be understood as "zero problems with energy suppliers".

Turkey is also a builder. Of the top 225 international contractors, 35 are Turkish, second only to China. Like China, Turkey asks no difficult questions about the political environment in other countries, and so Turkish construction companies are building airports in Kurdistan and shopping malls in Libya. Despite political tensions, in 2009 they were even involved in nine projects worth more than $60 million in Israel.

Finally, there is culture. Like the Confucian institutes China is establishing all over the world to spread its language, culture and values, Turkey established the Yunus Emre Foundation in May 2009 to administer cultural centers in Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Israel. Turkish schools have sprung up in more than 80 countries. Turkish culture has also infiltrated Middle Eastern life through television, as Turkish soap operas spread the liberal cultural values of moderate Islam. "The Turkish soaps have been daring and candid when it comes to gender equality, premarital sex, infidelity, passionate love and even children born out of wedlock," writes journalist Nadia Bilbassy-Charters.

Beyond Ottomanism

Turkey's leaders may not themselves be comfortable with the neo-Ottoman label - in part because their ambitions are actually much larger. Their developing version of a peaceful, trade-oriented Pax Ottomanica takes in Turkey's improved relations with sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific. Turkey declared 2005 the "year of Africa" and accepted observer status in the African Union. In 2010, it has already opened eight embassies in African countries and plans to open another 11 next year.

At the pan-Islamic level - and a Turk, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, now heads up the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, the leading international voice of Islamic states - Turkish leaders think in terms of the ummah, the global Muslim community. For some critics, Turkey's Islamic character and its ruling Islam-influenced party - as well as its recent attacks on Israel - suggest the country is on a mission to re-establish, if only informally, the Islamic caliphate. In the most extreme version of this argument, historian of the Middle East Bernard Lewis has argued that Turkey's fundamentalism will strengthen to such an extent that, in a decade's time, it will resemble Iran, even as Iran moves in the opposite direction.

This is, however, a fundamental misunderstanding of the AKP and its intentions. Islamism has about as much influence in modern-day Turkey as communism does in China. In both cases, what matters most is not ideology, but the political power of the ruling parties. Economic growth, political stability and soft-power diplomacy regularly trump ideological consistency. Turkey is becoming more nationalist and more assertive, and flexibility, not fundamentalism, has been the hallmark of its new foreign policy.

In 1999, US president Bill Clinton suggested that if Ankara launched a reformist movement, the 21st century could be "Turkey's century". Turkey has indeed heeded Clinton's advice. Now, Europe and the US face a choice. If Washington works with Turkey as a partner, it has a far greater chance of resolving outstanding conflicts with Iran, inside Iraq, and between the Palestinians and Israelis, not to mention simmering disputes elsewhere in the Islamic world. If the EU accepts Turkey as a member, its economic dynamism and new credibility in the Muslim world could help jolt Europe out of its current sclerosis. Spurned by one or both, Turkey's global influence will still grow.

By all means, get that Lenovo computer, buy stock in Haier, and encourage your child to study Mandarin. China can't help but be a 21st-century superpower. But if you want to really be ahead of the curve, pay close attention to that vital crossroads between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It won't be long before we'll all be talking Turkey.

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, writes its regular World Beat column, and co-directs its Balkans Project. His past essays, including those for TomDispatch.com, can be read at his website. He would like to thank Alexander Atanasov, Rebecca Azhdam, and Noor Iqbal for research assistance.

(Copyright 2010 John Feffer.)

(Used by permission Tomdispatch)