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In Brief... World News Reviewby Darris McNeely, David Palmer and John SchroederThe Jordanian Throne "Uneasy lies the head" is a phrase often used to describe the reign of the late king of Jordan. After surviving more than 20 assassination attempts, the king died this month after a long battle with cancer. With the king's death a new chapter in Mideast-relations begins. Last month he stunned his countrymen by replacing his designated heir and brother, Crown Prince Hassan, with his 37-year-old son, Prince Abdullah. Hassan, described as a capable and competent administrator, had been groomed for leadership since 1965. A "Cub From the Lion King" A report in the International Herald Tribune had this to say: "But even as Jordanians worried about their long-serving monarch, they also began turning their attention to Prince Abdullah who, after a bitter split in the royal family, was named crown prince only Monday. Papers printed full-page pictures of the country's 'cub from the lion king.' Though the king, in an unusually blunt public letter, had criticized his brother's leadership during the six months that he was at the Mayo Clinic, Prince Hassan appeared to have set that rebuke aside, and was among the first to hug and congratulate the new heir after a formal swearing-in ceremony Wednesday. "While the shift caused controversy here and was criticized by those who felt the more-experienced Prince Hassan should have been left in charge, diplomats and local analysts also said that, as the king's eldest son and a respected army officer, Prince Abdullah will wield authority. He will turn 37 on Friday. The loyalty and support of Jordanian tribal leaders will be automatic, they said, and the new heir can count on support from his extended Hashemite family, a clan whose unchallenged legitimacy here stems from its direct descent from the Muslim prophet Mohammed. "In addition, as a career soldier and head of the Jordanian Special Forces, the crown prince will have the support of another key pillar of this society: the military, an institution important to political stability but one with which Prince Hassan never had close ties. "One diplomat said that despite his youth, Jordanian tribal, military and other leaders loyal to King Hussein would rally around Prince Abdullah, making any instability inside the country unlikely. They also would help guard against mistakes in his initial dealings with regional and international leaders. What's more uncertain, and perhaps more important to Jordan in the long run, is his stand on issues like economic reform and democratization. Few Jordanians have ever known any other king, and most ordinary people here say they cannot imagine how anyone could fill the shoes of King Hussein" (International Herald Tribune, January 28, 1999). A Major Player King Hussein was the only leader most Jordanians have ever known. He came to the throne in 1952 after the assassination in Jerusalem of his grandfather, King Abdullah. Harry Truman was the American president, the Soviet Union still existed, and no one had ever heard of the Internet. A lot has changed since then but one constant remains-there is still no lasting peace agreement among the Arab and Israelis. Hussein's last major diplomatic effort was last fall during the Wye Plantation Agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinians. In a tribute to the king's stature, President Bill Clinton called the king from his treatments in Minnesota to help broker the agreement. The absence of the king in the Mideast relations will leave a vacuum that someone will have to fill. A recent special documentary on America's Public Broadcasting Network, titled "The Fifty Year War Between the Arabs and Israelis," highlighted the special focus that Jordan has played in the region. When Israel took control of a divided Jerusalem in 1967 it was Jordan which lost its hold on the holy sites of the Temple Mount. The Palestinian Liberation Organization's roots are in the dispossessed inhabitants of Jordan. More than half its population are Palestinians. King Hussein was only the second Arab leader, behind Anwar Sadat, to have negotiated a peace agreement with Israel. Having survived internal uprisings, and the constant intrigues of Mideast religion and politics, Hussein showed himself to be an adroit and nimble survivor. It appears the king's final decision was to change his designated heir. Will thsi move be like that of Shakespeare's King Lear, who tried to control his succession and met disastrous results? The implications of this decision will have far reaching effects on the Mideast situation. Forecast 1999—Stratfor News Services Stratfor, Inc., is a private for profit company that provides intelligence services for businesses, organizations and individuals. It is not associated with any other intelligence organization, public or private.Russia will begin the process of recreating old Soviet empire in 1999. Russia and China will be moving into a closer, primarily anti-American alliance in 1999. Asian economies will not recover in 1999. Japan will see further deterioration. So will China. Asia will attempt to protect itself from U.S. economic and political pressures. Asian economic institutions, like an Asian Monetary Fund, will emerge in 1999. The main question in Europe will be Germany's reaction to the new Russia. The Germans will try to avoid answering that question for most of the year. Forecast The Post-Cold War world quietly ended in 1998. A new era will emerge. 1999 will see a more conventional world, in which other great powers in the world will unite to try to block American power. In 1998 the United States worried about Serbia, Iraq, and North Korea. In 1999, the United States will be much more concerned with Russia, China, and Japan. The world will not yet be a truly dangerous place, but it will begin the long descent toward the inevitable struggle between great powers. Two forces are converging to create this world. The first is the recoil of Russia from its experiment in liberalism. The other is the descent of Asia into an ongoing and insoluble malaise that will last for a generation and reshape the internal and external politics of the region. In a broader sense, this means that the Eurasian heartland is undergoing terrific stress. This will increase tensions within the region. It will also draw Eurasian powers together into a coalition designed to resist the overwhelming power of the world's only superpower, the United States. Put differently, if the United States is currently the center of gravity of the international system, then other nations, seeking increased control over their own destinies, will join together to resist the United States. The die has been cast in Russia. We wrote in our STRATFOR SERVICES 1998 Forecast: "Whether or not Yeltsin survives politically or personally is immaterial. The promise of 1991 has become an untenable nightmare for the mass of Russians. The fall of Communism ushered in a massive depression in the Russian economy while simultaneously robbing it of its global influence." In 1998 we saw the consequences of this. The reformers in Russia were systematically forced out of power. Power seeped out of Yeltsin's hands. A restoration of sorts is well under way in Russia. As so many times before in Russian history, the pendulum is moving from adoration of the West to suspicion and contempt. Russian politics has searched for a center of gravity ever since the reformists began to lose credibility. In December 1998, that center of gravity emerged in the form of Russian chauvinism and anti-Americanism. When the United States bombed Iraq without even consulting the Russians, the lid suddenly came off the pent up anger Russians felt at their loss of great power standing. The United States has treated Russia as if it were a third world country, subjecting it to continual humiliation. All of this has tapped into a deep vein of Russian chauvinism and xenophobia. In a country that has become virtually ungovernable, this powerful nationalism is now the only means of uniting the country. No one can govern Russia any longer except on a powerful, nationalist platform. The situation in Russia reminds us of the last days of Weimar Germany. Unable to provide either prosperity or national security, Weimar Germany was replaced by a regime that used national security issues as a means to unite Germany and revive the economy through military spending. Where Germany focused on the Rhineland, Sudetenland and the Danzig Corridor, Russia will focus on the Baltics, Ukraine and Central Asia. We expect to see massive increases in defense spending, intended both to increase Russian power and stimulate the Russian economy. Russia will not represent a global threat, but it will challenge U.S. power along its periphery, in a contest that will begin in 1999. Asia cannot solve its problems. It is therefore caught in a process of mitigation, keeping things from becoming unacceptably bad. In order to do this, Asia must seek to insulate itself from the United States in particular and the global economy in general. It appears to us that the Asian solution will be to create Asian institutions to supplant the global institutions within which Asian economies are increasingly uncompetitive. We expect to see increased resistance to American demands for trade. Asia's efforts to work around its fundamentally insoluble economic malaise will lead to increased friction with the United States on all levels. Most important immediately, we see the reemergence of a Moscow-Beijing axis designed to block unilateral American actions in Eurasia. Furthermore, this relationship will both insulate Russia and China from U.S. political and military pressure, and create politico-military counter-pressure on the United States designed to elicit greater economic cooperation. 1999 will be the year in which this alliance will take full shape. There will be outriders to this alignment. Japan is increasingly at odds with the United States over economic policy. Japan will not join in the Russo-Chinese alliance, but it will use it to attempt to extract concessions from the United States. The question is what pressure it will put on the new Europe. Germany is deeply torn. The political instincts of the new government, forged in the 1960s, reflect a profound uneasiness with the United States and its leadership. Fear of Russia is a visceral feeling in Germany, and mismanagement there could quickly destabilize the government. With Russian troops on the Polish frontier, the old German nightmare, the Polish question, is about to arise. Germany is now in the process of defining an identity and a policy for the 21st century. It is simply unclear to anyone, including the Germans, what this identity will be. Then there is the United States. We are in a world increasingly resistant to the one superpower. There is no second superpower, but there are several great powers. These great powers are in the process of cobbling together an alliance that, taken together, may not fully counterbalance the United States, but will serve to limit American freedom of action. 1999 is the first of many years of increasing tension and conflict involving not only minor players, but also the world's great powers. It is the beginning of what will prove to be a tense first decade in the 21st century. Heart Disease Still a Big Killer Obesity is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in our Anglo-American nations, and one by-product of being overweight is greater vulnerability to heart disease. In a recent report from Dallas published in The American (A U.K. based newspaper for ex patriates), these startling facts were presented: "The cost of heart disease is expected to cost the nation billions of dollars this year as more and more people become fat. Heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases will cost the nation $274.2 billion, up six per cent from $259.1 billion in 1997, the American Heart Association reported. "Heart disease is the nation's number one cause of death.... Overweight or obese people are more likely to develop heart attacks and strokes even if they have no other risk factors.... In 1995, the most recent year for which figures are available, 960,592 people died of cardiovascular diseases in the United States, an increase of nearly 11,000 from 1994" (January 9, 1999, emphasis ours). Heart disease is also plaguing Britain. Wrote Jenny Hope, Medical Correspondent for The Daily Mail: "Heart disease remains Britain's biggest killer, accounting for half of all deaths and costing £10 billion a year.... Half of those deaths could be prevented by a healthier lifestyle-such as cutting out smoking, eating more fruits and vegetables and less fat, and taking more exercise" (November 3, 1998). However, in spite of the enormous threat to health from heart disease in Britain, nearly five times as much money is spent on trying to prevent AIDS. |
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Origin of article "World News Review February 1999"
Keywords: Jordan Prince Abdullah King Hussein Stratfor Russia Germany heart disease
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