Low Expectations In Europe
Tom Fenton covered the major news events in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Africa during his 34-year career as a CBS News correspondent. He writes about world affairs from his Listening Post in London and other locations around the world.
This is the time when pundits, hacks, columnists, commentators, bloggers, scholars and various sorts of experts feel compelled to look into the future and predict what the year has in store for us. I prefer not to fall into that trap myself, but it is useful to know what our friends and enemies think is going to happen to us. So, if I were asked to summarize the consensus outlook on this side of the Atlantic, I would say that 2005 is the Year of Low Expectations. Very low.
Take the Middle East, for starters. In a few days, the Palestinians will elect Mahmoud Abbas as their new and more moderate leader. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will use his clout as head of a coalition government that includes his old friend and rival Shimon Peres to force Israeli settlers to give up their homes in the Gaza Strip. The far right and a number of hard-line rabbis oppose the move, and the 8,000 settlers will not go quietly, even with promises of generous financial aid provided by American taxpayers. But they will eventually go. So far so good.
The other side of the equation is the hope that this will restart the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Despite its public pronouncements, the Bush administration has low expectations that this will happen; the Europeans have almost none at all. Experts here believe Sharon will use the abandonment of the Gaza settlements – which are too difficult and expensive to sustain in the long run – as a means of hanging on to far more important settlements in the West Bank. Palestinians will be disillusioned, Israelis will continue to feel caught between a rock and a hard place, and peace will remain a distant dream.
The expectations for Iraq are hardly better. Ba'athist diehards and foreign Islamic warriors will continue to attack coalition troops, Iraqis who collaborate with them and the Shi'a majority who will consolidate their hold on the country in the January 30 elections. The elections will go ahead nevertheless, but law and order will continue to break down, despite American efforts to train reliable Iraqi police and soldiers. Our ostensible Arab allies will not help much. Indeed, prominent religious scholars in Saudi Arabia have issued an edict prohibiting the Moslems of Iraq from supporting American and British military operations.
The greatest danger, predicted by many foreign experts, is that Iraq will fall apart, splintering into a Kurdish entity in the north, Sunnis in the center and a Shia-ruled south. Iraq's powerful neighbor, Iran, will intervene to help the Shias.
Will Iraq emerge as a model of democracy for the rest of the greater Middle East? Almost no one here expects that to happen.
Other consensus predictions: The White House will allow the dollar to continue to weaken, because that is the least painful way of financing America's debts. The price of oil will remain at levels unheard of at the beginning of last year. China will continue to flood our stores with consumer goodies. North Korea will use its nuclear weapons as a bargaining ship to win Western aid. Iran will continue its inexorable drive to join the nuclear club. And America's armed forces will be stretched too thin to do much about it.
I said at the beginning that I prefer not to fall into the trap of predicting the future, but I suspect the Europeans have it just about right – with the following proviso: Any prudent forecast must leave open the possibility of unpredictable events. The catastrophe of the Asian tsunami was the unexpected horror of 2004. The catastrophe of 2005 could be a devastating attack by Islamic militants inspired by Osama bin Laden. Perhaps the most costly would be an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities that would push oil prices sky high and inflict a heavy blow on the American economy. That doesn't bear thinking about. But it is something that a prudent government would include in its planning for worst case scenarios.
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. This is the time when pundits, hacks, columnists, commentators, bloggers, scholars and various sorts of experts feel compelled to look into the future and predict what the year has in store for us. I prefer not to fall into that trap myself, but it is useful to know what our friends and enemies think is going to happen to us. So, if I were asked to summarize the consensus outlook on this side of the Atlantic, I would say that 2005 is the Year of Low Expectations. Very low.
Take the Middle East, for starters. In a few days, the Palestinians will elect Mahmoud Abbas as their new and more moderate leader. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will use his clout as head of a coalition government that includes his old friend and rival Shimon Peres to force Israeli settlers to give up their homes in the Gaza Strip. The far right and a number of hard-line rabbis oppose the move, and the 8,000 settlers will not go quietly, even with promises of generous financial aid provided by American taxpayers. But they will eventually go. So far so good.
The other side of the equation is the hope that this will restart the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Despite its public pronouncements, the Bush administration has low expectations that this will happen; the Europeans have almost none at all. Experts here believe Sharon will use the abandonment of the Gaza settlements – which are too difficult and expensive to sustain in the long run – as a means of hanging on to far more important settlements in the West Bank. Palestinians will be disillusioned, Israelis will continue to feel caught between a rock and a hard place, and peace will remain a distant dream.
The expectations for Iraq are hardly better. Ba'athist diehards and foreign Islamic warriors will continue to attack coalition troops, Iraqis who collaborate with them and the Shi'a majority who will consolidate their hold on the country in the January 30 elections. The elections will go ahead nevertheless, but law and order will continue to break down, despite American efforts to train reliable Iraqi police and soldiers. Our ostensible Arab allies will not help much. Indeed, prominent religious scholars in Saudi Arabia have issued an edict prohibiting the Moslems of Iraq from supporting American and British military operations.
The greatest danger, predicted by many foreign experts, is that Iraq will fall apart, splintering into a Kurdish entity in the north, Sunnis in the center and a Shia-ruled south. Iraq's powerful neighbor, Iran, will intervene to help the Shias.
Will Iraq emerge as a model of democracy for the rest of the greater Middle East? Almost no one here expects that to happen.
Other consensus predictions: The White House will allow the dollar to continue to weaken, because that is the least painful way of financing America's debts. The price of oil will remain at levels unheard of at the beginning of last year. China will continue to flood our stores with consumer goodies. North Korea will use its nuclear weapons as a bargaining ship to win Western aid. Iran will continue its inexorable drive to join the nuclear club. And America's armed forces will be stretched too thin to do much about it.
I said at the beginning that I prefer not to fall into the trap of predicting the future, but I suspect the Europeans have it just about right – with the following proviso: Any prudent forecast must leave open the possibility of unpredictable events. The catastrophe of the Asian tsunami was the unexpected horror of 2004. The catastrophe of 2005 could be a devastating attack by Islamic militants inspired by Osama bin Laden. Perhaps the most costly would be an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities that would push oil prices sky high and inflict a heavy blow on the American economy. That doesn't bear thinking about. But it is something that a prudent government would include in its planning for worst case scenarios.
