My parallel forecast -- that American troops will start to be withdrawn soon in significant numbers -- seems less certain, even though they are increasingly failing to keep any sort of order in the largest cities and towns except during episodic sweeps in which they arrest almost any young male they can find. (But, surely!, the Pentagon can't continue rotating troops there for much longer when the recruitment within America continues to dry up.) Now that the governmental Shias have given way to the Sunnis and including them on the constitutional committee, the situation can only get worse. I think the Sunnis are playing the Northern Ireland game now -- wanting to achieve power again by "legitimate" means, but also quietly encouraging their extremist cousins to carry on terrorist attacks on Shia-dominated security forces. I almost feel sorry for Bush -- totally trapped by the consequences of his (or, probably, his father's and Cheney's) insistence on an Iraq invasion.
During my three weeks holiday I notice that the Kurds have now taken over all institutional power in Kirkuk and seem to be increasingly successful in reducing Sunni/Baathist terrorism in the Kurdish region -- as well as forcing both Sunni and Shia Arabs southwards (not much remarked upon in the American press). This is another tiger's tail that Bush has to hang onto (unless -- as I think entirely possible -- America has a secret treaty with the Kurds about the future exploitation of the northern oilfields which are now almost completely under the purview of the Kurds now).
My forecasts of the last few years about the break-up of the European Union seem to be going to plan. The latest crisis is the largest yet -- they'll no doubt be able to patch up something cosmetic -- but there'll be many more crises to come in the next few years. What I found fascinating during my holiday was that, since the No vote in the French and Dutch referendum, Le Monde and Le Figaro were devoting between 8 and 10 full pages every day to discussing the crisis. Even this week they had at least 3 or 4 pages every day. The No vote has been the most tremendous shock to Chirac and Schroder, and Tony Blair, having been several times humiliated in public by President Chirac in the the past few years, is taking the fullest advantage of it and has lined up the UK, Holland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark against the French-German duopoly. Blair, of course, wants to keep the EU in being, albeit in a UK guise, but even he will not succeed in the coming days I rather think and will only postpone the inevitable collapse. I think the first step will be the dropping out of Italy within the next couple of years and re-issuing the lira. There's no way Italy can survive with a European Central Bank determining interest rates that suits Germany and France.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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