London Closing: British Music, A Missing Queen and, Sadly, Ryan Seacrest

The London Olympics wrapped up last night in much the same way as they began, with a quirky, sometimes cheeky salute to all things British, particularly British music.

The London organizers largely dispensed with the interpretive pieces that typically mark these Olympic events. An opening number themed around London traffic largely served to introduce the eight-ramped stage in the shape of the Union Jack that dominated what, less than 24 hours before, had been the track and field area on the floor of the stadium. From then, the night quickly segued into an hour and a half long salute to England's contributions to modern pop music.

 The show got off to a rolling start, literally, when the iconic 80's ska group Madness performed their signature hit “Our House” from the back of a tractor trailer that circled the stadium floor. They were followed by another iconic 80's Brit pop act, The Pet Shop Boys, who performed “West End Girls” an apropo choice given the song's references to the East End, the site of the Olympic stadium, from the back of bicycle rickshaws. Contemporary acts also played a large role in the show; the Kasier Chiefs covered The Who's “Tommy”, while singer Jesse J also performed both as a solo act and with the surviving members of Queen on “We Will Rock You”, since what sporting event is complete without this song?

The Beatles didn't appear in person, though a rendition of John Lennon's “Imagine” was likely the emotional highlight of the night, and Russell Brand's rendition of “I Am The Walrus” might have been the quirkiest, had it not been for Monty Python's Eric Idle performing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”; complete with Victoria's Secret-style angels and a Bollywood dance troupe.  The highlight of the show though was likely the long-rumored reunion of the Spice Girls who took to the top of Austin Minis for their performance – Spice Girls standing on Minis, how more British can you get?

The Spice Girls after the show (London Telegraph pic).

Of course, the closing ceremonies provided one last opportunity for NBC to screw up the coverage. After promising a performance by The Who all evening, in the prime-time show's closing moments, viewers were told that The Who would actually be featured in their late-night coverage, which started at 12:30 EDT. This delay seemed mostly so that NBC could provide a preview of one of their craptacular fall “comedies”. Great move guys.  And coverage of the musical portion of the evening was turned over to Ryan Seacrest, likely due to NBC's baffling continued belief that Seacrest actually knows something about entertainment and is entertaining himself. Seacrest's few vacant contributions though could have easily been read by the real hosts, Al Michaels and Bob Costas, off of a TelePrompTer.  The only imprint Seacrest left on the coverage was to unwantedly speak over the performances on several occasions. My suggestion to NBC: leave Seacrest out of the coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, or better yet, drop him in the ocean while en route to Sochi.

One final question from the Closing Ceremonies though is where were the Royals? Queen Elizabeth II was expected to be on hand to close the Games, yet the Queen was nowhere to be found; she did not even appear in video form (as did former Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury).  The whole Royal family attended the opening ceremonies, yet at the close they were represented only by Prince Harry, introduced formally as Prince Henry of Wales. He was accompanied by Duchess Catherine of Cambridge, better known as Kate, wife of Prince William.  The lack of Royal attendance seemed to be unexpected since several of the speakers, including outgoing IOC head Jacques Rogge, addressed their comments to the “Royals”, plural, making you think that they expected a larger attendance on the part of the Royal family.

Along with why NBC continues to employ Ryan Seacrest, the Royal presence is a lingering question from last night's otherwise brilliant Closing Ceremony.  

Britain's Prince Harry, or Russia's Next Czar?

As the youngest son of the heir to the British throne, Prince Harry's prospects for ever becoming king are pretty remote, so if he's seeking the top title, Harry may want to consider exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky's proposal.  In one of the crazier political notions to come along in awhile, Berezovsky is, apparently seriously, suggesting that Harry be crowned the next Czar of Russia.

It is part of the platform of Berezovsky's new political party for Russia, the Resurrection Movement.  Among the Movement's other goals are the liberalization of Russia's immigration laws, reform of the legal system and transformation of Russia into a confederation of states.  And then there's the Prince (or Czar) Harry thing... Berezovsky explains that: “returning the monarchy to the throne will reinstate an interrupted chain of time and become a symbol of the rebirth of Russia,” while noting that Harry “has more Russian blood than the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II.”  Prince Harry's great grandmother was a member of Russia's Romanov dynasty – pictures from the era show that Czar Nicholas II shared an amazing likeness with Britain's King George V, his cousin.

Needless to say, this bizarre, amusing proposal will sadly never happen.   Berezovsky, a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin, said he will not even attempt to register the Resurrection Movement as an official political party in Russia so long as Putin is running the government.  Berezovsky himself relocated to London after getting on the wrong side of Putin.

Powerless in Afghanistan

An engineering operation that the British called the most daring of its kind since the Second World War looks like it might fall, not to Taliban insurgents, but to penny-pinchers in the US Congress.  In September 2008, British Royal Marines hauled a 220-ton generator across 100 miles of hostile territory in southern Afghanistan to the partially-completed Kajaki Dam hydroelectric plant after private contractors refused to move the equipment through Taliban-held territory.  The new generator was meant to complete the hydroelectric plant and to ease chronic power shortages in this region of Afghanistan that includes the strategically-important city of Kandahar.  But since the autumn of 2008, the new generator has sat uninstalled at the dam, and now it looks like it might stay that way permanently.

USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, is questioning whether it makes sense to complete the expensive project in the face of budget cuts from Congress.  USAID's budget was slashed from $4 billion in 2010, to $2 billion this year, with further cuts for 2012 likely.  Installation of the turbine at Kajaki would chew up a big part of USAID's Afghan budget.  Officials are instead looking at other lower-cost options, like improving transmission lines in the region, as a way to ease the power shortages in the south of Afghanistan.  That has the US military leaders in Afghanistan dismayed since Kajaki was to be the signature project for the coalition in the region, making its completion strategically-important in their minds.

The Kajaki hydro plant is just another example of what a muddled mess the Afghanistan mission has become.  To dip into the big bag of writer's cliches, at this point the US needs to go big or go home (I vote for the latter myself), the problem is that the current strategy seems to be to do neither.  We have convinced ourselves that Afghanistan is an area vital to our national security, so the US insists on maintaining our engagement there.  But it is not enough to simply base a lot of troops in the country. In a very real sense Afghanistan doesn't exist as much more than a name on a map; a state and civil society needs to be built almost from scratch.  But the US also insists that it does not want to be involved in nation-building, even though a nation clearly needs to be built.  To make matters worse, we have a Congress that is looking to cut funding for everything that doesn't drop a bomb and the wholly-corrupt regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for a partner, meaning that much of the money that is sent to Afghanistan never actually gets to its intended project.

Not installing the generator amazingly hauled through enemy territory at great cost may be seen as a fiscally-responsible move by some at USAID, though in reality it means that the money spent up to this point on the Kajaki generator project was simply wasted.  It is another sign of an increasingly pointless mission, and another argument for why it is time to just leave before we waste more money (and likely more lives) on similar projects that will ultimately go unfinished.

Bald Man's Comb Redux

The brief 1981 war between Great Britain and Argentina over possession of the Falkland Islands, a pair of rocky, windswept pieces of land in the stormy South Atlantic that are home to more sheep than humans, was once famously compared to two bald men fighting over a comb.  It seems like at least one of the bald men is up to his old tricks again.

Earlier this month, Argentine patrol vessels boarded and detained 12 Spanish fishing vessels off the Falklands as part of what Argentina contends is a “legal” blockade of their islands (Las Malvinas, to the Argentines), which are currently being illegally occupied by the British, stating that the Falklands, along with the even more remote South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands are a “integral part of Argentine territory.”.  The Spanish replied by saying that they had legally-issued fishing permits from the government of the Falklands and contested the legality of Argentina's boarding.

Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner though is unbowed, slamming the British for “occupying” Las Malvinas, and recently calling Great Britain a “crude colonial power in decline.”  Her comments and the boarding of the Spanish vessels have brought a stinging rebuke from British foreign policy analyst, and frequent American TV pundit Nile Gardiner.  Nile typically provides a hawkish, right-wing point-of-view (no surprise since he is also the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center at the Heritage Foundation), so perhaps it’s no surprise that his suggested reply to Pres. Kirchner is for Great Britain to go in guns a-blazing.  Gardiner says that the boarding of the Spanish vessels, licensed by the government of the Falklands to fish in their waters, should be regarded as “an act of war” and that the British should dispatch an infantry brigade, Typhoon warplanes and an attack submarine to the Falklands immediately, lest Argentina “strangle the Islands economically.”

Argentina raises the issue of sovereignty over the Falklands/Malvinas periodically; critics have charged that Pres. Kirchner uses the nationalistic fervor over the Islands to drown out critics of her domestic policies, particularly her economic ones.  Complicated the matter at the moment though is the fact that Prince William is due to be stationed in the Falklands next year as part of his tour of duty with the Royal Air Force – it is hard to imagine that the Brits would want to send the likely savior of the royal family into harms way, of course not sending him could send a message to Kirchner that maybe the British aren't all that serious about the Falklands after all...  Still, it is hard to imagine that Kirchner would want to do anything to put her country in a position of actually getting into another shooting war with Great Britain, considering how badly Argentina lost the first one and that the Argentine military really hasn't gotten much better since.

 

The whole sovereignty issue is a murky one since neither Great Britain nor Argentina have a particularly strong claim to the Falklands/Malvinas.  Typically, the preferred way a case like this would be solved is with a referendum among the disputed territory's residents, allowing them the right of self-determination.  But Argentina has steadfastly opposed this option since almost all of the Falklands 3,000 residents are of British ancestry and would surely vote for union with Queen and country, thus losing the Falklands as a nationalistic talking point for Argentine politicians for good. 

British PM Backs Key Aide

It has all the makings of a juicy political scandal – accusations that a key member of the prime minister's staff is neglecting his duties to cavort with a member of the opposite sex; while the PM issues a statement in support of his aide and their history of service.  This little scenario is actually happening right now in Great Britain.  Of course what makes this story odd is that the aide in question is a cat.

Larry, a four-year old cat rescued from a London animal shelter is the official cat of Prime Minister David Cameron's number 10 Downing Street residence.  Downing Street actually has a long history of having cats-in-residence to deal with any rodents who might happen into the PM's residence.  Larry himself was brought in four months ago after a rat could be seen scurrying in the background during a stand-up shot outside Downing Street during a press briefing Cameron held.  But according to the GlobalPost, after racking up three mouse kills in the early days of his residency, Larry's interest in mousing has fallen off, just as, according to the infamous “unnamed aides” always cited in pieces like these, his interest in a neighboring female tabby has increased.

On Monday a Downing Street spokesperson ruled out returning Larry to the pound saying that “Larry brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.” 

London's Thug Revolution

A quick thought on the riots gripping London, and now a host of other British cities. As the rioting stretches into a fourth day, some are citing recent austerity measures pushed forward by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as a rationale. To pull Great Britain out of its economic doldrums, the Cameron government pushed forward a package of budget cuts, many complain the budget ax fell the hardest on the nation's poor. The explanation goes that the riots then are a reaction by poor inner city youth to cuts in education and assistance programs, a lack of jobs and to being trapped in a cycle of poverty.

This explanation is crap.

For one, there already were massive street protests against the austerity budget, staged as Parliament was voting on the bill. But unlike the current rioting, these protests, despite being massive in scale, were peaceful. The catalyst for the current protests was the police shooting of an allegedly unarmed man several days ago. Calls went out for a peaceful protest against police tactics, and the public gathering was in fact peaceful at first, though some within the crowd had different ideas sparking off the ongoing riots.

In coverage of the event though, few of the self-styled “protestors” mention the police shooting as the reason they're in the streets now. A few have uttered vague notions about being angry at a lack of jobs, but more telling are Blackberry messages collected by the BBC blasted out by “organizers” of the rioting. Far from calls for social justice, the messages tout what a great opportunity it is to steal stuff. One urged London street gangs to set aside whatever turf battles they may be having and join in on the orgy of theft; another said it was a great time to steal and spread fear – a message which seems to stray into the area of domestic terrorism.

The notion then that this is some sort of social justice action then is ridiculous, more accurately it is a concerted effort by petty criminals and self-styled anarchists to kick a hole in the fabric of society, as well as High Street shop windows, merely to enrich themselves. This isn't to say that there are not some real issues of social justice and social inequity at play in England (it is wise for people in the United States to take note since many of these same conditions are brewing here as well), or that budget cuts haven't hit the poor and vulnerable disproportionately hard. Nor is this to say that people shouldn't take to the streets in protest and to demand that their rights, their views, be taken into account when those in power make decisions that affect their lives. But to try to link the burning of local businesses and homes or the assaulting and robbing of people in a neighborhood by a gang of neighborhood thugs to these larger social justice issues only serves to make a mockery of them. What's happening in London, and other cities across Britain isn't the striking of a blow for the working class, it is thugs running wild, pure and simple.

Update: This afternoon a YouGov Poll showed that not only did a vast majority of Britons think the government should take a harder line with the rioters, one-third thought the police should be using live ammo on them.

The Royal Wedding And British Cool

Ok, I admit it, I watched the Royal Wedding, most of it at least, on Friday. Really, how could you not, how often do you get to see historic events unfold live before your eyes? And before you think that the Wedding was just so much fluff and nonsense, it was hard not to be affected by the responses of the British people who seemed genuinely moved by the experience. One British man interviewed by CNN said that with all of the problems with the global economy and the conflicts brewing throughout the North Africa/Middle East region, the British “needed this”: a day to come together as a nation and celebrate a joyous event (the British government even declared Wedding Day a national holiday).

But more than just an excuse for a day off from work and a national party, the Royal Wedding showed that it was cool to be British. While Great Britain is often derided as a land of bad food and even worse dentistry, the Royal Wedding was a chance to show England as a land of high fashion and cool design: from the gorgeous gowns worn by Kate Middleton and her sister Pippa, to outfits worn by guests like the Beckhams (we'll overlook the rather odd headgear of Princesses Beatrix and Eugenia...), to the classic 1969 Aston Martin DB6 Volante MKII roadster that Will and Kate used to leave Buckingham Palace (a car converted to run on E85 ethanol in a nod to today's spirit of Eco-consciousness). The words suave and debonair come to mind. At the same time, this modern display of high fashion was paired with a sense of pomp and history done in a way that only the British seem able to pull off – the wedding party was accompanied by a platoon of mounted cavalry, their polished helmets gleaming in the sun, while the ancient Westminster Abbey had it's interior filled with trees, giving the vaulted room the feeling of a medieval glade.

All in all it was an example of British suave worthy of a Sean Connery-era James Bond flick, and it was enough to make being British seem very cool.

Did Wes Clark Almost Start World War III?

That's the inference being made by James Blunt in a new interview with the BBC. Blunt is probably best known in the United States for his soft rock hit single “You're Beautiful”; but before making his mark on the airwaves, Blunt was a cavalry officer in the British military. In 1999 he was leading troops as part of the NATO mission in Kosovo aimed at halting the fighting between the Kosovars and Serbian forces. A key point in the NATO strategy to establish security in Kosovo was to gain control of the airfield outside the capital, Pristina; but in a surprise move Russian forces swept through Kosovo and seized the airfield ahead of the NATO troops. While the Russians were supposedly part of KFOR, the international alliance that had come together to halt the fighting in Kosovo, suspicion ran high in the US/NATO command that the Russians were in fact trying to hinder the KFOR mission on behalf of their traditional allies, the Serbians who feared Kosovo would breakaway from Serbia (a fear that turned out to be correct).

According to Blunt, General Wesley Clark, then the NATO Supreme Commander Europe, ordered NATO forces to attack and “destroy” the Russians and take control of the Pristina airfield by force. Blunt, who was at the head of the NATO column approaching the airfield, would have led the attack, but the orders seemed so crazy to him that he called up his own superior officers for clarification. Commander of the British forces, General Sir Michael Jackson ordered Blunt and his troops to stand down, saying: “I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III.” The NATO troops instead encircled the airbase; the Russians, who had rushed into Pristina in such a hurry that they didn't bring enough supplies for a siege offered to share command of the airbase two days later.

Now frankly I've always thought of Wes Clark as one of the better voices out there on foreign affairs, but his command to attack the Russians is just daffy and very possibly could have led to WWIII. I'd be tempted to doubt Blunt, except for the fact that Jackson backs up his account, and if you remember any of the news accounts from the KFOR mission, then you remember that Sir Mike Jackson was most definitely a no BS kind of guy.

For his part, Blunt says that even if Jackson had not backed him up, he still would have refused General Clark's order to attack the airfield and the Russians, even though it likely would have meant his court martial, since the orders were so blatantly reckless. He explained to the BBC that a “sense of moral judgment is drilled into us as soldiers in the British army” as to why he would have refused Clark's orders.

Turkey's Rambo Takes Aim At Israel

While we're on the topic of media, Foreign Policy is reporting that relations between Israel and Turkey will likely suffer another blow with the upcoming release of a Turkish spy film. “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” is the latest adventure for Agent Polet Alemdar, who Foreign Policy describes as a sort of “Rambo for the Islamic world”; Alemdar's target this time is Israel, specifically Israeli agents who intercepted a Turkish aid ship bout for Gaza.

You likely remember the story of the Gaza-bound relief flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces earlier this year; while several of the boardings went off peacefully, the boarding of the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara went terribly with a battle breaking out on deck between the Gaza activists and Israeli commandos, which left nine of the Mavi Marmara's crew dead. “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” is the story of Alemdar's quest for revenge against the Israeli agents responsible for the events aboard the Mavi Marmara, a story that actually sounds a lot like the movie Munich, the story of Israeli agents exacting revenge against the Palestinians who planned the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Similarities aside, the Israelis are livid over the release of “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine”, which they say is another example of the “creeping anti-Semitism” in Turkey today. It's worth noting that Israel-Turkey relations hit another low point recently after a Turkish television movie about secret agents painted Israel's Mossad is a very unflattering light. Following the airing of that movie, the Turkish ambassador to Israel was publicly dressed down on Israeli television, an act that outraged the Turks.

But it's not only the Israelis who are angered over their portrayal in another country's pop culture, Chinese officials are also fuming over recent depictions of their officials in the British spy series Spooks (MI-5 here in the states). According to reports in the British press, government officials in China have ordered Chinese television networks not to do business with the BBC in protest over a storyline in the latest season of Spooks, which cast the Chinese as the bad guys planning to, among other things, set off a “dirty bomb” in London if the British interfered with their plans; a pretty strong reaction considering that Spooks doesn’t even air in China. Officially, the Chinese foreign ministry said it would have to “look into the matter” of the alleged BBC boycott.

Would The US Bomb Argentina?

The setup to that question deals with the British government, which last week as part of a fiscal austerity program announced across-the-board budget cuts that included the Ministry of Defense, which will see its budget cut by 8%. To put that in some perspective that would equal a roughly $56 billion dollar cut in current US defense spending (and to put that in perspective, that figure is nearly equal to Great Britain's entire defense budget). Bearing the brunt of the MoD cuts is the Air Wing of the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is planning to add two state-of-the-art aircraft carriers to the fleet this decade; the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales. Normally when budgets are cut, proposed weapons systems are the first to go, but the British government found that because of the way the shipbuilding contracts for the carriers is written, it would actually be cheaper to build the carriers than to cancel the project outright. This has put the MoD in the odd position of announcing that the Queen Elizabeth will be built and put into service in 2016 without aircraft (which is kind of the whole purpose of an aircraft carrier...) for about three years until the Prince of Wales is finished; the Queen Elizabeth will then be retired in almost new condition. To make matters worse, the Royal Navy will retire their two existing carriers by 2014, leaving them without any aircraft carriers in service for three years and without any with actual airplanes aboard ship for almost six.

This situation has some in Britain – pundits, defense analysts, and judging by the comment boards of English newssites a fair number of average citizens – quite upset. The question being asked is how Great Britain can consider itself a world power without a way of projecting that power around the globe in the way that only a fully functioning aircraft carrier can. More specifically, some are asking how (or even if) Great Britain will be able to protect some of their last remaining far-flung bits of Empire, and here talk generally falls on the Falkland Islands. In 1981 a British fleet sailed halfway across the globe to wrestle the Falklands away from an invading force from Argentina (the two countries have spent nearly a century and a half of wrangling over possession of the islands, for a more detailed history, check this earlier post about the Falklands situation). Now, critics in Britain say that the MoD cuts would make a repeat of the 1981 flotilla an impossibility, while also noting that reclaiming the Falklands (or Las Malvinas as the Argentineans call them) is a recurring motif in Argentine politics and that the islands themselves may sit on rich oil and natural gas reserves, making them potentially very valuable real estate.

Some in America are upset by the British cuts as well since the British have been arguably the most active and most valuable members of the military coalitions assembled by the United States in recent years – the 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia, the first Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ongoing GWOT mission in Afghanistan. The MoD cuts though make it less likely that the British will be able to participate in future American-led coalitions like they have in the past, a fact upsetting the military minds in the United States.

And all of that brings us to the question asked in the headline; does that kind of partnership go both ways? In none of the coalition examples listed before was there a direct threat to the British homeland, people or interests abroad, yet Great Britain was an active and valued participant in what were essentially American military campaigns (particularly the “Global War on Terror” and the 2003 Iraq War). So what if the British asked the United States to join in a military campaign to defend their interests, would we join? For the sake of argument, let's assume that its 2015 and after a quick naval landing Argentina has retaken the Falkland Islands. The British government has vowed to retake the islands and has assembled another armada for the long sail across the Atlantic, just as they did in 1981. The difference is in 2015 the British don't have a functioning aircraft carrier, meaning they can't protect the armada from the air or support their Marines in a landing to retake the Falklands; in modern military terms, this makes the British mission nearly suicidal. The British ask the United States to join their coalition by adding one of our aircraft carriers to the fleet and providing air support. What would our answer be?

Almost certainly, it would be no. In terms of the Falklands/Malvinas issue, the United States historically has not taken a position – not wanting to offend either our long-standing allies the British, nor wanting to upset the nations of Latin America (or to provide any anti-colonial fodder for Latin America's more leftists leaders like Hugo Chavez by backing the British claim). Since the United States has spent the last century telling the two sides to “talk” about the Falklands/Malvinas issue and didn't support the British in the 1981 operation, it's impossible to see the US agreeing to go to war with Argentina on Britain's behalf.

Of course, from the British side you'd have to wonder what was the point of backing America on all of those earlier military coalitions if the US isn't going to support you when you need them the most. It is an interesting foreign policy question indeed...

Graham Greene’s Sierra Leone Escape

Some of the best behind-the-scenes international reporting can be found in the BBC’s “From Our Own Correspondent” series; case in point, this story on the fall of Graham Greene’s favorite African hotel (and if you’re not familiar with Greene’s works, go now and pick up a copy of Our Man in Havana or The Quiet American). Once “The City” hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone was the hub for life among a community of ex-pats living out the last days of colonialism in West Africa. But, for “Correspondent” writer Tim Butcher, the hotel’s decline and eventual fall is an allegory for the strife and civil war that have plagued Sierra Leone since the end of colonial rule. The City went into decline after the death of its long-time owner; eventually the building ended its life as a brothel before being consumed by a fire in 2000. Butcher, a Greene fan, traveled to Freetown hoping to find a link to the writer’s past, instead he found only a pile of rubble.

Check out his engaging report, here.

Brits Hold American-Style TV Debate

Great Britain has parliamentary elections coming up next month, and for the first-time ever the British staged a televised, “American-style” debate among the leaders of the respective parties. It might have helped the leaders of Britain’s two main parties though – Prime Minister Gordon Brown from the Labour Party and the Conservatives’ David Cameron – if they’d read up on the career of Jesse Ventura first before including Nick Clegg, head of the third-place Liberal Democrats, in the debate.

Ventura was running a quixotic campaign for governor of his home state of Minnesota as the candidate of the Independence Party in 1998 when he managed to get himself included in a televised debate with the Republican and Democratic (technically the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minn.) Ventura was judged the winner of the debate; the notoriety propelled him from relative obscurity into the Governor’s office. Now something similar is happening in Britain. Clegg has been picked as the clear winner in Thursday’s debate, which itself was the most-watched political program on British television, ever. Even Clegg’s fellow debaters grudgingly admit that he was the winner. And a pair of polls taken just after the debate show his Liberal Democratic Party leap-frogging over Labour into second place, trailing the Conservatives now by just a few points.

What this means for the May 6th election remains to be seen, since voters do not directly select the Prime Minister, that job usually goes to the party that wins a majority of seats. But the strong showing by the Liberal Democrats is raising the possibility of a “hung parliament”, a situation where no one party has a majority. That could either force two of the parties into a coalition government or could even trigger a second election shortly after the May 6th vote.

Cynicism and the Falklands

Hillary Clinton added a last-minute stop to Argentina on her tour of Latin America, and waded into that country's ongoing dispute with Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, urging both nations to sit down and negotiate a settlement. If you're wondering why a new row has erupted over the tiny, wind-swept islands nearly three decades after the two countries fought a brief and bloody war for them, than check out my latest post, "Political Cynicism on Display in the Falklands" over at The Mantle, which goes into the competing claims of sovereignty put forward by each nation, along with an explanation of why a desire to distract from some domestic problems is likely at the heart of the matter today.

Will The Resource Curse Strike The Falklands?

Great Britain and Argentina are fighting an escalating war of worlds over the Falkland Islands – that windswept collection of rocky isles that the two countries briefly warred over in 1982, and at least part of the motivation is the British decision to prospect for oil in the seabed surrounding the territory that Argentina still believes is rightfully theirs.

The theory is that there could be up to 60 billion barrels of oil under the sea around the Falklands. With license fees and royalties, extracting that much oil could give the 3,100 Falklanders one of the highest per capita incomes anywhere in the world. But some of the Falklanders are wondering if suddenly becoming one of the richest places on Earth would in fact be a good thing. The Times of London in this report on the ongoing tension over the Falklands included some of the discussions taking place via the Falkland’s only newspaper, the Penguin Times. In the pages of the Penguin Times some islanders are talking about what in international development theory is called the Resource Curse – in brief it is the paradox that while having a valuable natural resource should lead to prosperity, in practice around the world it has instead often resulted in lower economic growth, oppressive governments and a host of other societal ills. One islander remarked: “by dabbling in oil we may have tapped into the nervous system of one of the world’s most dangerous industries. One wonders if it has brought happiness and grassroots benefits anywhere.”

It is an interesting question. While other Falklanders note that they don’t want to return to the days when the Falklands were a largely forgotten outpost of the British Empire populated by sheep farmers eeking out a living (sheep still outnumber people on the islands by about 200-to-1), they are also concerned about how life would change if the Falklands were suddenly flooded with oil revenues. The Times of London notes that it will be difficult to get the Falkland’s young people to accept the tough life of a sheep farmer when there would be much more money to be made working on one of the offshore oil platforms, something that would fundamentally change the culture of the islands.

Of course they first have to find oil and then find a way to extract it while still making a profit, something that could be difficult in the stormy waters of the South Atlantic. Still, it will be interesting to see how the Falklanders deal with an oil-fueled windfall.

Great Britain, Argentina Relaunch Old Fight

Great Britain and Argentina are having a new diplomatic row over an old issue – the Falklands Islands. Last month Argentina passed a law claiming that they own the Falklands (or Las Malvinas as they call them), Britain has sent a note to Argentina’s embassy in London saying their new law was utter nonsense (in so many words). The two nations have debated the issue for decades – Argentina cites the island’s proximity and an 1820 decree as the source of their claim, the British respond by saying they’ve possessed the Falklands for nearly two centuries and that the islands approximately 3,000 residents overwhelmingly want to remain part of the British Empire.

Back in 1982 Argentina tried to retake the islands by force. The British responded by sailing a naval flotilla halfway around the world, which then promptly routed the Argentines and restored the Falklands to British rule. While the two nations relaunched diplomatic relations in 1990, they still have never settled their dueling claims of ownership over the islands.

So why bring this issue up now? One possible explanation is that Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner could be using the dispute as a way of shifting her nation’s attention from a collection of bruising domestic issues. Kirchner is trying to restructure her nation’s debt through a swap of foreign currency for defaulted bonds and she’s having a very public fight with her own vice president. Another possibility though is that old international relations fallback – oil.

New exploration indicates that there could be vast reserves of oil under the seabed surrounding the Falklands, some projections say the region could hold as much as the North Sea. Drilling on the first test well is planned to start next month. If the reserves pan out, it would mean an economic boom for the Falklands – the residents would get a 9% royalty on all the oil extracted from the seabed around the islands. Of course the nation that owns the Falklands would also own the oil around them, which could explain Argentina’s newfound interest in the islands.

Last Brit WWI Vet Shuns Holiday

Today is Veteran's Day, or Remembrance Day as it is known in the British part of the world. The British are marking the day with a special air of solemnity since in the past year they lost their last three surviving veterans of World War One, the final one being the "Last Tommy", Harry Patch who passed away this past August.

There is technically one British vet left, 108-year old Claude Choules, a Royal Navy veteran now living in Australia. Choules lied about his age to join the Royal Navy at 14, he transferred to the Australian Navy in 1926 and was still serving when the Second World War broke out.

Even though Mr. Choules is said by his family to be "holding up well" for 108, he will not be attending any Remembrance Day services, saying that, in his opinion, the memorials only serve to "glorify war."

Did Italian Bribes Kill French Troops?

Though it hasn't gotten much attention on this side of the Atlantic, France and Italy are in the middle of a huge diplomatic fight over a British report that Italian bribery led to the deaths of French troops in Afghanistan.

The Times of London reported earlier in the week that in order to make their lives easier last year, Italian troops stationed in the Sarobi district of Afghanistan simply paid local Taliban tribes not to attack them. The arrangement worked out well and Sarobi was fairly quiet and calm. The problem was that when the Italian troops rotated out of Sarobi, they failed to tell the incoming French troops replacing them about their little side-deal with the Taliban. The French, thinking Sarobi was well pacified, let their guard down. Last August, Taliban forces staged a massive ambush against the French forces who weren't paying them not to fight, ten French paratroopers were killed and 21 others injured in an incident that shocked France.

The French are now furious that the Italians would basically set them up by letting them believe Sarobi was a calm region of Afghanistan. Of course the Italians have been tripping over themselves to deny any such arrangement with the Taliban existed. But in an editorial today The Times is sticking to its story, adding that since they published their first account, both a Taliban leader and Afghan government officials have confirmed that Italian forces in other parts of Afghanistan paid insurgents not to attack them.

But no one should be too shocked that such an arrangement could exist, Afghan militias are notoriously malleable in their allegiances - they are quick to switch over to a winning, or paying, side. And this strategy is being pushed by some pundits and strategists as a way of quelling the Taliban in Afghanistan. A similar approach was used in Iraq - part of the much-praised "Surge" by US forces involved paying Sunni tribal leaders not to fight against the US or the fragile Iraqi government (something we spun as the "Anbar Awakening" as the Sunni militias put down their guns).

Nathan Hodge over at the Danger Room blog though warns that the "bribe the tribes" approach has some flaws. The Sunni tribal militias in Iraq, which were suppose to have been absorbed into Iraq's national security forces recently balked after one of their leaders was arrested; it seems that bribery can only buy so much loyalty after all. And, Hodge points out, Iraq has a steady stream of oil revenue to pay for their bribes, something the impoverished Afghanistan lacks. Not to mention if you're going to engage in a cash-for-peace deal it would be nice to let your allies know what you're doing, a point France is making rather loudly these days.

The whole affair is reminding me of the character Milo Minderbinder, from Joseph Heller's WW2 novel Catch-22. Minderbinder was a US Army officer and small-time hustler who through some ridiculous business deals built up an empire while at an American airbase in occupied Italy. At one point Minderbinder is hired by the Germans to bomb his own airbase so that they won't have to. It was a vignette that Heller meant to show the futility of war, it's also something you could almost imagine happening in Afghanistan.

Time to Bury the "Graveyard of Empires"

My latest post over at The Mantle deals with a bit of wrong-headed conventional wisdom surrounding Afghanistan. Often referred to as "the graveyard of empires" for its role in bringing down Alexander the Great, the British Raj and Soviet Union - it makes for a great soundbite, unfortunately the facts don't back up the rhetoric.

Obama's UN Speech, Too Bad The US Didn't Listen

On Tuesday President Obama addressed the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, and even by Obama's high standards of oratory, it was an excellent speech. In it Obama made pledges to fight climate change, terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons. But more than those lines - which really are the kind of things you expect he'd say in a speech of that magnitude - Obama called on the members of this global body to set aside their petty arguments and actually act together in the best interests of the world on these matters. And if you follow the goings on at the UN at all, then you know that far too often countries turn the UN into a platform to make silly points for consumption in their homelands rather than staying true to the mission of the UN - working together to find solutions to global problems.

So it was great that Obama made ending the pettiness that infects so many UN debates a key point of his speech. It's just too bad our own UN delegation, along with many of our closest allies, ignored him. Just hours later the United States delegation, as well as a number of our allies, all dramatically walked out during the address of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Afterwards the US delegation said they walked out to protest the "hateful, offensive, anti-Semetic rhetoric," of Pres. Ahmadinejad. If you ask me, that's a pretty flimsy excuse for a huge act of public rudeness. Not that I'm endorsing anything Ahmadinejad said, actually I missed his speech, but that's also my point. Going into his address I could give you a pretty decent outline of what he would say: he'll make some controversial remark about Israel, he'll accuse the United States and Great Britain of neo-colonialism and oppressing people around the world, and will defend Iran's right to pursue nuclear research.

I know it, our diplomats know it and anyone who follows the actions of Ahmadinejad know it - that's his schtick. Which makes our walk-out of his speech even more childish, since our diplomats certainly can't claim to be "shocked" at Ahmadinejad giving basically the same speech he's been giving for the past few years.

Obama was right, if the United Nations is ever to live up to it's promise as a global organization, then its members need to stop acting so childish. It's just too bad our own diplomats didn't listen to what he was saying.

Britain's 'Last Tommy' Laid To Rest

I felt bad about not commenting on the passing, two weeks ago of Britain's Last Tommy, and last surviving veteran of World War I, Harry Patch ('Tommy' was to the Brits what ‘GI Joe’ is to Americans, Mr. Patch was the last living member of Britain's WWI army). Mr. Patch was laid to rest today in a ceremony with full military honors.

Like his countryman and fellow British WWI vet, Henry Allingham who passed away a few weeks earlier, Mr. Patch didn't talk about his wartime experiences for eight decades, not until he was one of the last veterans left, when he felt a responsibility to speak for all those who no longer could. When he did his message was decidedly anti-war, recounting the horrors of the trench warfare that killed millions on both sides during years of what was basically a stalemate between the two sides.

Patch thought that Remembrance Day (British Veteran's Day) was just "show business", he instead paid his respects on Sept. 22, the day in 1917 when a bomb blew three of his best friends to bits and grievously wounded him. Along those lines, an amazing tribute was offered to the 111-year old vet by the British pop band Radiohead who issued "Harry Patch (in memory of)", setting lines from his Autobiography "The Last Fighting Tommy" to music (I haven't heard it yet, but from what I've heard, it's pretty moving). The song includes the lines:

I am the only one that got through
The others died wherever they fell
It was an ambush
They came up from all sides
Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
I've seen devils coming up from the ground
I've seen hell upon this earth

For the record, there are only three known WWI veterans left, including 108-year old American Frank Buckles who drove an ambulance on the battlefields of France.