This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Is Vladimir Putin spending time with his girlfriend and love child?


Rhythmical gymnast Alina Kabaeva, Putin’s alleged long-time mistress (pravda.ru)

Speculation continues to swirl over the reason for the complete disappearance since March 5 of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin from public view, including the cancellation of several long-scheduled meetings and ceremonies.

Now the New York Post is claiming with some certainty that Putin, 62, is in Switzerland for the birth of a new daughter by his long-time mistress Alina Kabaeva, 31.

Putin has angrily denied having Kabaeva as a mistress. In 2008, I wrote “Putin angrily denies divorce rumors and shuts down newspaper reporting them”, and described how Russia’s president Vladimir Putin terrorized a female reporter at a joint press conference with Silvio Berlusconi when she asked a question about a rumored affair with Alina Kabaeva, while Berlusconi helped out by gesturing with his hand pretending to shoot the reporter. Finally, in 2013, Putin divorced his wife, with whom he has two children, and continued to deny that Kabaeva is his mistress.

As I reported yesterday, many analysts are convinced that Putin’s disappearance has a much deeper explanation, a Moscow political crisis related to the assassination of political opponent Boris Nemtsov. Putin’s next scheduled public appearance is on Monday, when he is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg. New York Post

Fighting heats up on Myanmar (Burma) border with China

China is threatening “decisive action” against Burma (Myanmar) after a bomb from a Burmese warplane fell into Chinese territory and killed four Chinese people. This comes days after a stray shell from Burma flattened a house in Chinese territory. Beijing has summoned Burma’s ambassador and launched warplanes to patrol the border between the two countries.

The ethnic fighting in Burma (Myanmar) that began in early February is growing in intensity, and causing a confrontation between Burma and China. The fighting is taking place in Burma’s Kokang Special Region, on the border with China, and it is between Burma’s army and the Kokang people, who are ethnically Chinese.

Some 30,000 Kokang have fled across the border into China, where they live in refugee camps. Burmese officials claim Kokang attacks are being launched from Chinese territory, and that Chinese mercenaries are fighting in support of the Kokang. Burmese officials are demanding that China prevent this, but Chinese officials are denying that it is happening at all.

It has occurred to a lot of people that this situation is similar to the situation with Russia and Ukraine. Russia has justified its invasion and occupation of portions of Ukraine by the need to “protect” the Russian people living in Ukraine. Similarly, many people are wondering when China is going to send troops into Burma for the “protection” of the Kokang-Chinese people.

However, this presents a public relations problem for China. China likes to claim that no one should interfere with the “internal affairs” of another country. They say this particularly at times when Chinese security officials are butchering Tibetans and Uighurs in China, and they want to shut out the international community.

In the last year, they have already had to carve out several exceptions to this holier-than-thou rule. They have intervened in the internal affairs of Sudan when their own investments were threatened. And, of course, they have supported their partner in crime, Russia, as it interfered with the internal affairs of Ukraine.

The Chinese have already stated that the fighting in Burma is an internal affair of Burma, but they are under increasing pressure from their own Chinese people to do something. There have now been two incidents in the last couple of weeks of Burmese rockets and shells landing on Chinese territory, killing four people in one case. More such incidents would provide an excuse for China to invade Burma, with two possible outcomes — a resolution of the conflict, or a spiraling into a larger war. Reuters and LA Times and Xinhua

Report: Iran’s Supreme Leader has already vetoed any nuclear deal

A report in Debka’s subscriber-only newsletter (sent to me by a subscriber) says that its intelligence sources have learned that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, after vacillating over the nuclear negotiations with the United States for months, has now come down firmly against any deal. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif have been working to complete a deal by the March 31 deadline, but Khamenei has now rejected the entire framework that they were developing. The intelligence sources say that Iran may shut down nuclear negotiations completely, unless the West first removes all sanctions, a request that will not be satisfied.

A major reason given is that dissent within Iran itself has been increasing. The dissent is spilling over from government critics to broad sections of Iranian society, such as academics and op-ed writers.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, none of this is surprising. As I have said many times, it is a core principle of generational theory that, even in a dictatorship, major decisions are made by masses of people, by generations of people, and that politicians are irrelevant except insofar as they are implementing the wishes of the masses of people.

This is a good time to review Iran’s strategy with regard to the nuclear issue, which I have stated many times in the last few years, based on a relatively straightforward analysis of Iran’s history in the last century.

First, Iran will not be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has already been victimized by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, and is now surrounded by potential enemies — Pakistan, Russia, Israel — that have nuclear weapons, with Saudi Arabia planning to obtain nuclear technology from Pakistan. The Iranian people overwhelmingly feel that they need nuclear technology for self-defense.

Secondly, however, Iran has no intention at all of using a nuclear weapon on Israel. If you look at Iran’s major wars in the last century — the Constitutional Revolution of 1908-09, the Great Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the Iran/Iraq war that climaxed in 1989 — Iran did not attack any other nation, and takes pride in not having done so.

Another reason why Iran could not use a nuclear weapon on Israel is that doing so would kill millions of Palestinians, and Iran knows that the Arab backlash would be enormous, irrespective of what happened to Israel.

Furthermore, the younger generations of Iranians, the ones that grew up after the war, do not hate Israel, and do not wish Israel harm, and they would be particularly opposed to any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel.

The collapse of the Iran nuclear negotiations would be a major blow for the Barack Obama administration. The foreign policy of Obama and his clownish Secretary of State John Kerry has been one blunder and reversal after another, and they were hoping for a nuclear deal to burnish their legacies, and possibly to get Nobel Peace Prizes as a result. Look for them to blame it on the Republicans, but preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon was never a possibility.

By the way, Debka is also predicting that Benjamin Netanyahu’s defeat in Tuesday’s election is a foregone conclusion, and that unless something spectacular happens, Israel’s next prime minister will be Yitzhak Herzog. Debka

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Alina Kabaeva, Boris Nemtsov, Myanmar, Burma, China, Kokang, Kokang, Ukraine, Iran, Javad Zarif, John Kerry, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Israel, Pakistan, Constitutional Revolution, Iran/Iraq war
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