Fighting Goes On in Gaza, Tripoli
- After a brief lull fighting continued in Gaza: USA Today | WaPo.
- The US evacuated its embassy in Tripoli as fighting in Libya’s capital has been worsening. DoD | Daily Beast | NYT.
- Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, compares the situation in the Middle East to Europe’s 17th century Thirty Years’ War. There are limits to that analogy, but this, as then, indeed looks like a protracted conflict with a mix of religious and political causes. Will it eventually be resolved with something akin to the era-defining Peace of Westphalia?
The Beating Will Continue…
- Boeing CEO Jim McNerney said during last week’s quarterly conference call that he won’t retire despite turning 65 next month and that “the employees will still be cowering.” The SPEEA trade union thanked him for his refreshing honesty with this poster [PDF].
Until Morale Improves
- Elana Broitman who replaced Brett Lambert less than 6 months ago as the Pentagon’s industrial policy chief resigned for the usual family reasons. Her replacement is not known yet.
Mercantilism vs. Independence
- Yuriko Koike, who had a short stint as Japan’s defense minister in 2007, offers a good summary of the conundrum facing countries with booming exports to China:
“In both Germany and South Korea, economic strength seems to have produced an illusion of policy independence that is opening a chasm between the two countries and their allies – a chasm that revelations of US spying, on Merkel in particular, have deepened. Germany and South Korea, however, will gain little, and risk much, if they downgrade their alliance ties in favor of commercially motivated, if unofficial, neutrality. Whatever short-term benefits they receive will be more than offset by their strategic vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Russia and China.”
Pondering Naval Lethality; Indian Development
- The Hudson Institute held an event on the future of surface warfare lethality last Friday. These issues are coming to the fore in the US because of increasing concerns for emerging threats from East Asia to the Middle East.
Video. - The CSIS think tank argues in today’s video that India could develop a new “arc of industry” in its northwestern states for a mix of political and economic reasons, with infrastructure work underway from Delhi to Mumbai (with help from Japan).
VideoCategories: Africa - Other, Boeing, China, Daily Rapid Fire, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Middle East - Other, South Korea, USA
