Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
France intends to withdraw its troops from NATO-led operations in Afghanistan by 2013. This is earlier than the previously agreed deadline of 2014. This announcement, coupled with signs that other allies - including the United States - may be rushing to leave Afghanistan, threatens to humiliate the alliance, with severe consequences for trans-Atlantic security.
Every generation of Western politicians has dreaded the possibility of NATO's demise. In the 1960s, governments assumed that the anti-Americanism generated by the Vietnam War would tear the alliance apart. A decade later, there were worries that detente would produce the same result. When the Cold War ended, politicians feared that the 'glue' provided by the Soviet threat would disappear. Yet NATO defied these predictions and survived with an increased membership and enhanced reputation. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
Republican presidential nomination candidate Mitt Romney’s camp heavily out-spent and out-organized Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary. Last night’s outcome (roughly 46% for Romney to 32% for Gingrich) stops the momentum Gingrich had obtained from his upset victory in South Carolina. It strengthens Romney's status as the clear frontrunner (fellow contenders Rick Santorum and Ron Paul finished well behind the two leading candidates for the party’s nomination). However, the contest will stay alive until 'Super Tuesday' balloting on March 6, particularly if Santorum withdraws and vigorously supports Gingrich. Direct and indirect campaign funds will become ever more important as the race drags on.
The strategic choice Romney now faces is whether to adapt his message in anticipation of running against President Barack Obama. Romney has so far preferred to use the nomination battle to rehearse themes that he wants to articulate against Obama, rather than being side-tracked into discussing other issues which might motivate Republican activists but are less appealing to mainstream voters. His defeat in South Carolina has forced him to deviate from that approach somewhat, and a continued Gingrich campaign will inevitably oblige him to compromise this strategy a little further. FULL POST
Editor's Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
This month, Iraq’s oil minister visited Iran, prompting many pundits and policy makers to ask: Is Iraq becoming a 'client state' of Iran.
Iraq’s ruling Shia majority faces a dilemma: to identify primarily as ‘Iraqi’ or to give their first allegiance to the idea of a larger Shia community whose base is Iran, a country that supported Shia interests in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era. To some leaders in Tehran (and in the minds of neighboring Sunni Arab governments), the answer is self-evidently the latter. As King Abdullah II of Jordan has characterised it, the Iranian efforts in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are designed to cultivate and exploit a ‘Shia crescent’. However, even if this is Tehran's objective, there are significant countervailing forces likely to prevent Iraq from falling too far under the sway of Iran. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
On Tuesday, the U.S., UK and French ambassadors to the United Nations sharply criticized "irresponsible" arms sales to the Syrian regime. This was a thinly veiled reference to Moscow's close defense-industrial cooperation with Damascus.
In recent months, Russia has been Syria's foremost protector in the international arena. It has taken on this role because of Syria's economic significance for its arms export industry, its role as the host of Russia's only military base outside the former Soviet Union - and its concern that anti-government protesters in Moscow might be inspired by a successful popular uprising farther afield. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
South Carolina has a tradition of anointing the ‘establishment’ candidate in Republican presidential primaries. This makes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s victory over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney all the more astonishing.
What happened? Gingrich has been effective at targeting conservative Republicans (a natural constituency for him) and evangelical Christians (a less obvious support-base, given his personal relationship history).
He also conserved resources after his disappointment in the Iowa caucuses, enabling him to match the Romney machine in South Carolina, ‘aided’ but his allied SuperPAC (entities that can funnel unlimited corporate dollars into campaign advertising, provided they do not 'coordinate' with a candidate). Finally, he performed strongly in two debates ahead of the poll. Indeed, he managed to turn what ought to have been a liability (media interest in the demise of his second marriage) into something approaching an asset. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
Despite what his Republican opponents say, Gov. Mitt Romney's fiscal, economic and social policies are quite distinct from those of President Obama. But it is true that his proposed policies would make the least abrupt departure from Obama policies.
Romney's governing philosophy can best be described as that of a 'managerial conservative'. That is, he favors increasing the effectiveness of government service delivery while lowering costs. If this also has the effect of decreasing the size of the public sector, so much the better. This essentially reverses the priorities of his more conservative Republican opponents, who see shrinking the federal government as an overriding policy priority. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
Despite a sound annual GDP growth rate of around 9%, China's economy encountered serious problems in 2011: inflation, soaring house prices, slowdowns in investment, exports and overall economic growth and continued growth of income inequality. While the much-feared 'hard landing' has not materialized, the structural distortions that underlie these symptoms persist, and the sustainability of China's growth model remains in doubt. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Ethics of What We Eat, and The Life You Can Save. For more from Singer, visit Project Syndicate's website, or check it out on Facebook and Twitter.
By Peter Singer
Forty years ago, I stood with a few other students in a busy Oxford street handing out leaflets protesting the use of battery cages to hold hens. Most of those who took the leaflets did not know that their eggs came from hens kept in cages so small that even one bird – the cages normally housed four – would be unable to fully stretch and flap her wings. The hens could never walk around freely, or lay eggs in a nest.
Many people applauded our youthful idealism, but told us that we had no hope of ever changing a major industry. They were wrong. FULL POST
Editor's Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
A community of about 400 Inuit people living on a narrow, low-lying strip in north-westAlaskahas reopened its lawsuit against over 20 of the world's largest oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, BP and Shell. Kivalina villagers are seeking damages for property loss, which they say were caused by the companies' contributions to global warming. This case has again raised the potential for climate change liability in private and public law. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
The organizers of the Moscow demonstrations are planning an even larger public rally on February 4, one month before the presidential election. The protests have already presented Vladimir Putin with an unprecedented challenge - not least because the political upheaval has been spearheaded by well-educated urban professionals and entrepreneurs. So far, Putin has not chosen meaningful outreach to this group, reaching instead for the familiar political tools of populism and nationalism.
The Putin leadership is accustomed to resolving political problems by buying support - on a mass level through distributional programs funded largely by hydrocarbon taxes, and on an elite level through implicit guarantees of property security and business opportunities. FULL POST
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
An indefinite national strike over the removal of fuel subsidies started in Nigeria today. The strike highlights the political difficulties governments in several countries face as they try to reform or withdraw fuel subsidies. Such subsidies are used widely, mostly in developing countries.
The worldwide cost of fuel subsidies for oil amounted to about $190 billion in 2010, up from around $120 billion in 2009, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data. According to the agency, expenditure on all fossil fuel subsidies could rise to $660 billion in 2020, from $409 billion in 2010.
Subsidies are generally heaviest in oil-producing countries, despite the effect this has on their finances, rather than in growing Asian oil consumers such as India and China. This has helped make the Middle East a key center of oil demand growth, in addition to its role as the world's most important oil-producing region. For example, in November 2010 Saudi diesel was sold just under 7 cents a liter, compared with 84 cents a liter in the United States.
Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article from the ‘Oxford Analytica Daily Brief’. Oxford Analytica is a global analysis and advisory firm that draws on a worldwide network of experts to advise its clients on their strategy and performance.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard navy commander Admiral Ali Fadavi announced yesterday that the country will hold a new exercise in the Strait of Hormuz in February. The planned war games will follow an exercise earlier this week in which Iran launched three anti-ship missiles. The firing of a handful of missiles for media effect is not necessarily significant - but the threat they represent is. Their overt use was intended as a signal to Washington that U.S. naval assets cannot operate with impunity near Iranian waters, especially in the event (however unlikely) that Tehran carries out its threat to close the Strait. FULL POST
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