Monday, June 25, 2012

Gatestone Update :: Peter Martino: Russia's Masterstroke: Bailing Out Cyprus, and more


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Russia's Masterstroke: Bailing Out Cyprus

by Peter Martino
June 25, 2012 at 5:00 am
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Cyprus is a prey Russia has long been eyeing, both as a substitute for Syria, and as a permanent naval base for the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean.
What a fine mess the Europeans have made with their deluded dream of a common European currency for 17 countries with different languages, cultures, traditions and economic systems. As a result of the experiment with the euro, almost all countries along Europe's southern rim are on the brink of bankruptcy. One of them is Cyprus. It, too, urgently needs a bailout. This week, the Cypriotic government needs €4bn to recapitalize the country's second largest bank.
Cyprus, however, is in a comfortable position. The other beggars are forced to accept bailout from the European Union in exchange for diminished national sovereignty, EU imposed austerity measures and direct supervision from Brussels over their budgets and economies. Cyprus, however, has an alternative. "We have other options," the Cypriotic Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly recently told journalists in Nicosia. Economists expect that to keep Cyprus afloat, it will need between €25 and 50bn in the coming years. Nicosia, however, is resisting pressure from the other EU countries to take a first bailout package worth as much as €10bn.
Cyprus does not want to accept the strings attached to the European offer. The Cypriotic alternative is called Russia. Last December, Moscow already gave Nicosia a bilateral loan of €3bn. Eager, since the era of Peter the Great, to acquire a strategic foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean, Russia is now offering even more. And with President Demetris Christofias of Cyprus happy to accommodate his friend Vladimir Putin, there is no doubt that Nicosia will turn to Moscow rather than to Brussels.
Christofias is a Communist – he is, in fact, the only Communist leader in the European Union – and, under the EU's rotating chairmanship, he will be chairing the EU meetings from July 1st until the end of the year.
As pointed out earlier in this Gatestone column, if Russia steps in, the strategic situation in the entire Eastern Mediterranean could change. Russia stands to gain most out of the eurozone crisis. Cyprus is a prey which it has long been eying. If Moscow loses Syria as its ally, it needs Cyprus as a substitute. Bailing out Nicosia is a bargain price to acquire a permanent naval base for the Russian fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Cyprus is said to be so high on Russia's priority list that President Putin himself is currently dealing with the €4bn loan request from Nicosia. The interest charged by the Russians is 4.5%, which is far better than Cyprus can get anywhere else. The financial risk for the Russians is limited. There is every chance that Cyprus will be able to repay their bilateral loans fairly soon. Nicosia hopes to start exploiting the huge gas reserves off the Cypriotic coast in the coming decade. With Russian help, it might even be able to exploit these gas fields within the next five years.
The gas fields are an additional reason why Cyprus is a good long-term investment for the Russians. But there are many other reasons. The Russian presence in Cyprus is already very strong. Cyprus is a favourite holiday resort for the Russian middle and upper classes. It could easily become a Russian Florida. Some 50,000 Russians – mostly retirees – are already living permanently on the island. They are attracted by its climate and by the cultural affinities with the Cypriots, who, like the Russians, are Orthodox Christians. Cyprus is also used by Russians as an offshore banking center. This, too, is why the Russians will do their best to support the Cypriotic banking system.
A Russian deal is a win-win situation for both Russia and Cyprus. As soon as Russia has acquired a solid foothold on Cyprus, the third largest island of the Mediterranean Sea, it will be able to drop Assad, thereby reducing the current diplomatic tensions between Washington and Moscow over Syria. Cyprus, on the other hand, welcomes Russian backing: its intention to exploit the gas fields has merely led to tensions with Turkey. With the Russian bear behind its back, it will be easier to deter the Turks. The pro-Turkish attitude of the EU authorities in Brussels has long angered the Cypriots.
Few regions in Europe have the importance of Cyprus. Situated on the doorstep of both North Africa and the Middle East, the island has been of strategic importance since ancient times. From Cyprus, the Russians will be able to reach the whole area surrounding Israel. Russia, an ally of Syria, has never been a close friend of Israel. This might change once Assad is toppled. Although the Russian bear has interests rather than friends, is in dread of anything resembling a democracy, and always on the prowl for its next lunch, the presence in Israel of many Jewish immigrants of Russian origin may lead to a slight rapprochement between Jerusalem and Moscow. If Russia, as a result of its interference in Cyprus, becomes involved in a quarrel with Turkey, this, too, might lead to superficially better, if unreliable, relations with Israel. The animosity between Israel and its NATO ally Turkey has been rising lately. There is little doubt that Putin, during this week's visit to Israel, will discuss not just Syria, Iran and Turkey with the Israeli leadership, but also Russia's growing involvement in Cyprus.
If Cyprus proves to be better off with Russia's financial, political and strategic backing than Greece with the assistance of the European Union, the close relations between the Greeks and the Cypriots might convince Greece that it, too, should turn to Moscow rather than to Brussels for financial and economic help. A strategic realignment in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East might then be in the offing. If the EU and NATO keep regarding the pro-Islamic government in Turkey as their preferred ally, before they know it they might be confronted with an alliance of Russia, Cyprus and Greece – a strong Christian-Orthodox axis against the Turks. And whom would this alliance target after that?
Related Topics:  Russia  |  Peter Martino

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood: Personal, to Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton

by Tarek Heggy
June 25, 2012 at 4:30 am
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Political Islam, which is the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood, is anti-modernity, anti-progress, anti-human rights, anti-democracy, anti-peace, anti-otherness, anti-pluralism, anti-women's rights, anti-liberal education, and anti-free-and-critical thinking -- BY DEFINITION.
I cannot believe the "rumors" that the US wants to see members of the Muslim Brotherhood as Egypt's new rulers. If this "rumor" is correct, that policy decision will be the most gigantic, monumental strategic mistake made by the US since the end of WWII. Such a policy decision would also reflect nothing but an amazing inability to understand that while there are many moderate Muslims, there does not exist such a thing as even one moderate Islamist.
Political Islam, the essence of the Muslim Brotherhood, is anti-modernity, anti-progress, anti-human rights, anti-democracy, anti-peace, anti-otherness, anti-pluralism, anti-women's rights, anti-liberal education and anti-free and critical thinking -- BY DEFINITION.
Those who speak about "moderate Muslim Brothers" desperately need a great deal of education about the history, nature and literature of political Islam -- and by world-class scholars, not by the likes of of Tarek Ramadan and his peers at ICNA, ISNA and CAIR who, by falsely claiming they speak for all Muslims have mastered the game of "fooling the West."
Finally, I hope that the US shall not repeat its grave mistake of 1979, when the US and Saudi Arabia formed the Mujahedeen movement(s) in Afghanistan -- a mistake which ultimately drove the world towards September 11th, 2001.
Related Topics:  Egypt  |  Tarek Heggy

Should Israel Exist?
A Sovereign Nation under Attack by the International Community

by Amir Taheri
Balfour Books, 2012. 352 pp. $24.95

Reviewed by Amir Taheri
June 25, 2012 at 4:15 am
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Imagine if someone suggested that you should read a book that discusses whether or not Norway, or the United States for that matter, should exist. You would be shocked or at least surprised that anyone would want to question the right of a sovereign nation, and a member of the United Nations, to exist. In the case of Israel, however, posing that question does not seem to be out-of-bounds. At any given time, you might hear of or even attend conferences and seminars on that very subject in some American or Western European university.
It is, therefore, no surprise that Michael Curtis, a distinguished scholar and professor emeritus at Rutgers University, has devoted a whole book to examining the subject and refuting the claims of those who question Israel's right to exist. The result is a masterly essay in which the best tools of scholarship are employed in the service of what is, after all, a moral case in support of Israel.
At first glance, Israel could be regarded as typical of the 150 or so nation-states that have emerged in the four corners of the globe in the wake of the World War II. Politically, it is the fruit of a liberation struggle against an imperial power—in this case Great Britain. Territorially, it is located in a chunk of an even older colonial power—in this case the Ottoman Empire. Legally, it is a creature of the United Nations, which, as successor to the British mandate on Palestine, endorsed the creation of the Jewish state.
So, why should Israel be singled out as the target of a campaign of vilification seldom waged against any other nation?
The answer, as Curtis dramatically shows, is that Israel is different.
To start with, it is Jewish. That makes it the target of anti-Semitic sentiments and resentments that have deep roots in many Western and some Islamic societies. In many countries, anti-Semitism is no longer regarded as just another opinion, it is a crime punishable by the law. The way to get round that obstacle is to air anti-Semitic sentiments in the guise of a critique of Israel as a nation-state. To make that somewhat more palatable, a bit of spice is often added by evoking the sufferings of the Palestinians. However, once the mayonnaise of political grievances against Israel is pushed aside, one is often left with the old unpalatable hatred of the Jew.
Then there is the fact that Israel has been a democratic island in a neighborhood of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The emergence of new democracies in the Middle East may well change the region's political landscape.
At the moment, however, as a democracy, Israel remains a threat to the despotic systems still dominant in the region.
Worse still, from the point of view of its detractors, Israel has been an outpost of the democratic world for more than six decades. It is, in the sense that Curtis sees Israel, the proverbial "canary in the coalmine." Throughout the Cold War, Israel acted as the advance guard of the free world in a region of vital geostrategic importance for the United States and its allies.
After the Cold War ended, Israel found itself in the front line of the global war against Islamic jihad in its many different forms. That, in turn, meant that Israel was regarded as arch-foe by Islamists beating their chests about the "occupation" of a chunk of Islam's territory by an "infidel" power. Centuries of resentments caused by the "loss of Muslim lands" in Spain, Russia, and India, among others, are blended into a single witch's brew of hatred of and desire for revenge against Israel.
Thus, Israel's very existence, as Curtis shows, has led to the emergence of a curious coalition in which traditional anti-Semites, Stalinist Cold Warriors, useful idiots, pan-Arab hegemonists, anti-Americans of all stripes, and Islamist revanchists are united against a common foe.
In the Middle East, as Kenneth Bialkin notes in his introduction to Curtis's essay, history is "in the making but without a guidebook". What might emerge from the current wave of revolutionary change is anybody's guess. The best-case scenario is that the creation of democratic governments in at least some Arab states would remove a few of the hurdles to the acceptance of Israel as a neighbor if, at least initially, not as a friend. But even then, Israel's many enemies in the West would remain, clinging to hatred for the Jewish state as the backbone of their moribund ideologies.
Should Israel Exist? Curtis's answer is a resounding "Yes" backed by a masterly historical exposé and an unfailing moral commitment to what he regards as the justice of his cause.
An insightful historian, Curtis shows that he is an equally persuasive rhetorician. Add to all that the passion that Curtis injects into his work and you have a book that is both informative and enjoyable.
Related Topics:  Israel  |  Amir Taheri

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