Thomas Barnett - "let me say these things about the bombings:
1) If this is the big follow-up to Madrid a year-plus later, it's pretty weak, and no, I am not that impressed by bombs going off at the same time. If this is the long, slow ramp-up of Al Qaeda's civilizational war, then they haven't got a chance.
2) Picking London was a mistake. Too hard to really scare people there after all the IRA bombings. This is the home of the blitz--and the 2012 Olympics.
3) Trying to impact the G-8 was also a waste. All it did was bring terrorism and the global war against it back to the front burner.
4) Italy fears it will be next, with the elections and the direct threats from the group claiming responsibility. Frankly, Rome is easy pickings. Denmark, also warned, is far less so. The country takes its global peacekeeping role very seriously.
5) This bombing put a lot of resiliency on display, especially in the financial sector, which seemed to discount (in a financial sense) the attacks by the end of that very same market day. Clearly, a lot of the responses to 9/11, those new rule sets, are paying off. The Core as a whole becomes more robust in processing 9/11-wannabe attacks.
6) All such attacks will do is speed up the EU's legal and police integration. From that standpoint, the attacks couldn't have come at a better time than just after the "No" votes in France and the Netherlands.
7) Blair will come out of this stronger than ever. Right on the heels of winning the 2012 Olympics, he shows a strong face and his continuing push for deeper and better EU integration now looks more prescient compared to the go-nowhere French.
8) The post-9/11 reach pattern of Al Qaeda is unchanged: blow stuff up in Middle East and can reach into Europe. This is the same reach pattern we encountered with Middle East terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. What does that tell about who's winning a Global War on Terror?"
thomaspmbarnett.com |
