Martin Meenagh blog

The Straits of Hormuz; Globalization, The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the USS Stark Affair The issues involved in the latest dispute in the Straits of Hormuz immediately seem as though they relate to a straightforward competition which is well underway between Persia and its claims to the leadership of the anti-Western bent within the lands of Islam, and the USA. Actually, the issue seems much more complicated than that. It is not exaggerating, of course, to say that blogland, like Oxford, is full of slightly strange people shouting 'and ninthly....' at those captives who did not speed by quickly enough. However, there are clearly at least four issues involved in the latest affair that really should be brought to people's attention. The reason it has come to prominence, of course, is that yesterday, several Iranian ships were alleged to have threatened American ships. It could all blow up into war either this year or next and a Persian war would be a disaster f...

Fighting Pirates; is Obama being set up for a test stranger than fiction? The painting is Breughel's Fall of Icarus. Sometimes, history is much better than science fiction. All of the following facts and most of the arguments are true. Two hundred years ago, international shipping was menaced by the growth of a piratical federation centred upon Tripoli. Previously, the pirates had been kept in check for the better part of a millennium by an old order of Knights . The charismatic general, Napoleon, on his way to becoming Emperor, betrayed and broke the Knights in their island stronghold, Malta, in 1798. France and England then turned to their own world-struggle. The American Vice President, bitterly opposed to his President and who had negotiated a way of living with the pirates, became concerned at their freedom of manoeuvre. One of history's great secularists, he saw the menace of criminals who stole, killed and enslaved Christians on sight for what they were. On becoming pres...

The International Sea Bed Authority We're very used by now, in the west at least, to breathless media reports detailing how 'the arctic is shrinking'. This is despite many surveys over the past few years showing that it is not. The ice at the top of the world is falling back in comparison to previous seasons in some areas, but it seems actually to be growing in others, as do some glaciers . A simple explanation for all of this seems beyond the wits of clever men and women. Some have suggested a change in the salinity of the ocean ; some have suggested the influence of undersea volcanoes . Interestingly, given that solar sunspots are slow in appearing these days-- solar cycle 24 is overdue, and overdue or inactive solar cycles historically correlate with cold periods --some have suggested that we might be in for a spot of global cooling anyway. None of this has stopped stories about the 'North-West passage' opening up . This has had policy effects. The idea that t...

The Desperate Necessity of Law My friend Martin Kelly has written a withering review of Vincent Cable's latest book, The Storm . It chimes with some thoughts I had yesterday whilst travelling back to London on the train from Oxford, having met with some old friends and their family. My thoughts were provoked by the latest edition of Foreign Affairs Magazine . Foreign Affairs works at a higher level than the Economist , which I have always thought is there to give people opinions and information--any opinions and information--which they can drop at cocktail parties and business meetings. FA, on the other hand, has some influence. It is where the sorts of people who host the higher end-parties get their opinions, whence they trickle into consensus and law with each olive in the vodka. This month's particularly appealed to me since I have for some time been trying to familiarise myself with the international convention on the law of the sea . I think that this code, to which the...

Russia and the Mediterranean Rim Western leaders have always been prone to miss bigger pictures. In the space race, for instance, which seems to have resulted in western success at huge cost with little return, amazing things were achieved to little purpose. In a far darker way, World War One, the struggle for Empire, and the Cold War, were all predicated on the idea of a defined task the achievement of which resulted in 'victory'. What the West has not been culturally good at is the integration of the bigger picture and the greater game with this capacity for determined focus. We tend to move from the histrionic to the practical with no connexion in between. That was OK when rivals were self-defeating because of the grand sweep of their designs. We could pat ourselves on the back and assert that versions of liberal materialism added to technological leads could get us anywhere. What happens, though, when ineluctable forces, and cold, calculated, patient planning of a sort that...

Thomas Jefferson's War on Terror On of the things about American foreign policy is that it is at least consistent in its 'can-do' pursuit of victory. The tradition stretches back a long time. In 1801, for instance, President Jefferson deployed the new American navy into the Barbary War against the 'pirates' of North Africa, a loose confederation of states associated with Ottoman satraps, Deys and others that menaced the Mediterranean with fast ships. Winning an inconclusive victory in 1805, America returned ten years later and began the attacks that culminated in the final suppression of the Terror ships at the hands of an international coalition. As with many aspects of American history, of course, the true tale has an almost impossible resonance of science fiction. The story is an interesting one. For three hundred years, the Knights of Malta (an order of papal knights who still exist as a papal order and who have observer status at the UN) maintained a degree of...

A Way Out? The picture is by Gina de Gorna, and is called 'Escape' Sometimes, when trapped, people grasp at the flimsiest of things; vistaed hopes, as the poet once put it. In keeping with this blog's somewhat sketchy resolution to try to avoid gloom, however, I attempted yesterday to see if there were ways out of the western decline and recession that we seem locked into, regardless of what false statistics of recovery we indulge in soon. In part, I was inspired by a commentary from Berenike in the post below. She mentioned her granny, and how she sees her news through a cognitive filter. It's been a cliche amongst many here on my blog, for instance, that peak oil, implying oil volatility and the eventual recognition that cheap oil is gone forever, will soon have serious effects on food, transportation and credit markets. What if one squinted a bit, though? If oil, because of demand from India and China and the difficulty of supplying at viable prices, actually encoura...

Preparing for the last Oil Bonanza Whats the plural of bonanza ? Bonanzae? The image is called Homer Simpson after Rembrandt, and I found it on limpfish.com , which has Groundskeeper Willie by Van Gogh and some other great timewasting things on it. The pole dancer they replace Princess Leia with in the Star Wars clip also has to be seen to be believed.... One of the things about our great and glorious occupation of the garden of eden and its associated territories(c), is the way it has liberated lots of desperately needed oil fields for western use . I write that slightly sarcastically, since the Iraqi people will probably benefit from licensing and sales agreements more than they would have under Saddam, and at least the Kurds are getting gas receipts and not being gassed with the proceeds. Still, with the Chinese buying up oil, and the Saudis driving it up, where would western oil companies be without Iraq? Up a creek, frankly. The allocation of fields for development in Iraq will b...

 I realised some time ago that my students do not understand references to the events of November 1963 in Dallas anymore. So I have been using a break to compile a briefing book on the events, the use of commissions and enquiries to pursue particular narratives, and the embedding of the JFK assassination in American culture. This is the first chapter. It is a very long read. All mistakes are my own.  Before the Assassination Lee Harvey Oswald was a US Marine and radar operator at the Atsugi naval base, carrying an elevated clearance. He was also learning Russian and loudly proclaiming his Marxist-Leninist sympathies. These were not investigated or treated as a security risk. [1] Whilst at Atsugi, Oswald probably became one of a number of American marines in a programme to identify moles within the security establishment. This required him to cut his Marine service short by suggesting that he had to look after a sick mother, and also that he wished to seek higher education ...