CoreGap 11.10 Released - How the Frugal Superpower Navigates Democracy’s Latest Wave

 Wikistrat has released edition 11.10 of the CoreGap Bulletin.

This CoreGap edition features, among others:

• Terra Incognita - How the Frugal Superpower Navigates Democracy’s Latest Wave
• Syrian Domino Displaying the Usual Dynamics, but West Hesitant
• China’s Democracy Crackdown Goes from Preventative to Pre-emptive
• Bold Republican Budget Proposal Sets Tone for US Presidential Campaign
• World’s Scientific Production Grows, Becomes Increasingly non-Western

And much more...

The entire bulletin is available for subscribers. Over the upcoming week we will release analysis from the bulletin to our Geopolitical Analysis section of the Wikistrat website, first being "Terra Incognita: How the Frugal Superpower Navigates Democracy’s Latest Wave"

In the rush to define President Barack Obama’s “doctrine” following his decision to lead NATO’s initial no-fly-zone operations in Libya, experts have latched onto every detail’s possible meaning.  But in the end, it’s easier to say what his strategy is not than what it is.  While frustrating, such ambiguity makes sense for a cost-conscious superpower navigating what is arguably democracy’s emerging 4^th great wave (see Samuel Huntington re: 1-3).

The Obama rule set clearly lacks rigidity.  It does not promise responses everywhere, but more like anywhere it can get away with them.  In application it is opportunistic: Obama sees a chance to finally put the US on the right side of history across the Arab world, and he intends on picking his targets carefully – and in logical sequence.  So old friend Hosni Mubarak is just that – until he isn’t.  And now the same switcheroo occurs with Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen.  Expect similar small talk about closet “reformer” Bashar al-Assad to disappear the instant conditions appear ripe in Syria.

Read the full piece here

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To say that President Barack Obama’s foreign policy plate is full right now is a vast understatement, and it couldn’t come at a worse time for a leader who needs to revive his own economy before trying to resuscitate others (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt, South Sudan, Ivory Coast – eventually Libya?). Faced with the reality that America’s huge debt overhang condemns it to sub-par growth for many years, Washington enters a lengthy period of “intervention fatigue” that – like everything else, according to the Democrats – can still be blamed on George W. Bush.

Referenced from Wikistrat: http://www.wikistrat.com/geopolitical-analysis/obamas-chinese-menu-of-past-presidential-doctrines/#ixzz1Gs4QTx6a