tdaxp

So Serbs in Belgrade have set the American embassy on fire, on international television.

Useful for us, and for Europe. The only European country stupid enough to sign up as a Russian client since the end of the Cold War -- Yugoslavia/Serbia and Montenegro/Serbia -- is still paying for that action. Today, it harvests the breakdown of political stability that friendship with Moscow naturally entails.

I'm hoping that the serious candidates for President identity Russia as being unhelpful in this situation. I'm pretty confident that two of the three (McCain and Clinton) will do so. If Obama does so as well, I will be pleasantly surprised.

Congratulations to Kosovo, the newest country in the world!

Kosovo's independence was made possible through military support from NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the EU, or European Union. Fittingly, Kosovo's independence will be announced through the "Ode to Joy," Europe's national anthem.





Kosov's independence is another milepost in NATO's and the EU's expansion into the lands of the fallen Communist empire. The latest central remnant of that empire, now called the Russian Federation, It also is just the latest bit torn from Yugoslavia, a country hapless enough to decide to be a Russian satellite



Kosovo, welcome to freedom!

On the web：Catholicgauze， Zenpundit

Great news for the world, as Russia continues to lash out at her former satellites.

Tom has compared Vladimir Putin to the founder of Singapore, but a closer analog would be Hosni Mubarak: a security-sector insider able to neutralize mainstream opposition, unable to neutralize violent radical opposition, and most notable for slowly destroying his state's ability to project power.

A blogger faces prison for insulting Islam.



In Britain.

(Hat-tip to Subadei).

Two stories, two maps.

The first: the European visa-free zone increased, incorporating many of the new EU members. Germany and Austria no longer have guarded frontiers, formerly having checkpoints on the Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Slovene borders. Russia now borders the four members of the visa-free zone: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (in addition to Finland and Norway).



The second is the continued dismemberment of the Russian client state, Serbia, at the hands of Brussells (and Washington, and Berlin, and...). When Kosovo declares independence, which is already a few months overdue, Serbia will find itself surrounded by eight countries -- three of whom are already in the EU, another (Croatia) which will probably be the next EU member, and the rest looking for eventual EU integration.

Relatedly: Vladimir Putin, who has been invaluable in accelerating Europe's rise, is Time's Man of the Year.

Earlier this year, Catholicgauze posted "The United Caliphates of Europe," which he had earlier presented at the yearly meeting of the Association of American Geographers in San Francisco.

For those who messed it, another lesson in the danger of importing Islamic microsotates is from in the International Herald Tribune's "France stunned by rioters’ savagery (hat-tip to Glenn):

In retrospect, it was not a good idea to have left his pistol at home. Called to the scene of a traffic accident in the Paris suburbs last Sunday, Jean-François Illy, a regional police chief, came face to face with a mob of immigrant youths armed with baseball bats, iron bars and shotguns.

What happened next has sickened the nation. As Illy tried to reassure the gang that there would be an investigation into the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike had just collided with a police car, he heard a voice shouting: “Somebody must pay for this. Some pigs must die tonight!”

The 43-year-old commissaire realised it was time to leave, but that was not possible: they set his car ablaze. He stood as the mob closed in on him, parrying the first few baseball bat blows with his arms. An iron bar in the face knocked him down.

“I tried to roll myself into a ball on the ground,” said Illy from his hospital bed. He was breathing with difficulty because several of his ribs had been broken and one had punctured his lung.

His bruised and bloodied face signalled a worrying new level of barbarity in the mainly Muslim banlieues, where organised gangs of rioters used guns against police in a two-day rampage of looting and burning last week.

As the European Union follows the United States in adding members to increase its labor and land, Brussells must be careful to minimize its exposure to whatever is wrong in Islamic cultures. The West Balkans and Ukraine are logical next steps for integration. Contra Secretary Miliband (hat-tip to Tom), integration of Muslim countries, such as Turkey, or states that may be Islamic by the end of the century, such as Russia, should be delayed for the time being. (Economic and business ties, of course, can expand and their natural rate.)

The Economist has an obituary for Ian Smith, the leader of the fourteenth colony to declare independence from the United Kingdom. Smith's rise a product of Britain's fall: the bankruptcy of Her Majesty's System Administration Force, necessitated by Britain's disasterous entry into two disasterous World Wars. Pressured by the majority of the population below him, the Parliament above him, and anti-British Boers to his side, and his own mistakes, Smith's Southern Rhodesia would fall. Because of his failure, Zimbabwe is now the nightmare it is today.

In a better world, that great war would not have been fought, the Core would have been able to afford a century of capital investment throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and men like Smith would have lived very different lives. But we don't live in that better world.

At least, not yet.

If I could change just one thing per continent...

The first four seem easy enough...

• Europe: Ukraine admitted as a full member-state of the European Union (consolidation of Europe against Russia)


• Asia: "Berlin Wall" moment as Korean DMZ becomes the conduit for a mass exodus (End of Kim Family Regime)


• Africa: Zimbabwe as joint South African - Chinese Condominium (UN starts outsourcing its colonial administration)


• North America: Cuba joins NAFTA/USA (End of Castro Family Regime)

But what should change in Australia? South America? Antarctica?

from the unlikely site of Daily Kos. "DHinMI"'s great article, "What's behind the Turkish threat to send troops in to Iraq is a must read.

All I can do in response is link to two posts I've published. Turkey, a gap country with some European land emphasizes the Gappish nature of the Turkish regime -- a point that comes across very eloquently in the dKos article. Likewise, "Russia, Iran, and Distraction" could easily be titled "Turkey, Iran, and Distraction," considering Turkey's attempts to placate Tehran.

Two articles, "Presure on Turkish PM to order Iraq invasion" (hat-tip to Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog) and Rice warns against Armenia bill both point to Turkey as a country in the Islamic Gap and not one in the Core (such as America, Ukraine, India, etc.).

Turkey, at this time of choice between a future in Europe (which means abandoning dreams of ancient empires, as the Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, and Greeks have already done) or a future in the Gap (which means abandoning the peace, growth, and properity of the West for generations) is making the wrong choice. Her past oppression and murder (even if it wasn't genocide) of the Armenians, and present petty war against the Kurds (which goes so far as to outlaw the letter "w") are the marks of country with the geostrateic maturity of a Serbia, at best.

We can be geostrategic friends with Turkey while recognizing that their perspective is fundamentally different from ours, as we are with Pakistan, say, or Saudi Arabia. But they are not a true ally, or even a country with an essentially friendly regime.