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Geopolitics

Exclusive: NATO Chief Urges Readiness For Military Intervention In Syria

NATO's Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen
NATO's Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Martin Winter

BRUSSELS - Over good food and drink, the dinner Tuesday of all of NATO's foreign ministers was meant to be an informal exchange of the different points of view on the Middle East. But before the main course had been served most of the ministers had lost their appetite: The alliance’s Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, let loose on Syria and the conflict with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz in such vigorous terms that one participant said he thought he heard “the drums of war.”

Multiple sources confirmed to the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Rasmussen declared that NATO could not “stick its head in the sand” regarding Syria, also in light of the importance of the Strait of Hormuz for oil shipments to the West.

Everybody at the table understood what he was referring to: NATO had to prepare to intervene militarily in Syria if need be. Politically that would mean a radical change from its present course, which has been to exclude the possibility of alliance engagement in Syria. Rasmussen was supported by Turkey and Great Britain’s foreign ministers as well as U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

No wonder then that a few hours before the U.S. Senate voted nearly unanimously to explore “options” as to how the United States could prevent Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad from using his air force against his own people. The Defense Department is to make suggestions for ways to implement a no-fly zone over Syria. That Washington would prefer NATO's involvement – as was done during the Libya war – “is obvious,” according to a source.

Rasmussen launched into the political shift by asking two questions: What would NATO do if the Syrian army started using chemical weapons? And what if Iran were to block the Strait of Hormuz? At which point France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius made the comment that one should avoid asking questions “that are not acute.”

The first question had already unleashed strong and contentious debate about Syria in which German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and colleagues from countries including the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland sided against Rasmussen.

Unlike the United States or Rasmussen, many European foreign ministers don’t buy into U.S. intelligence information that Syria may be preparing to use chemical weapons. European intelligence services, including the German one which has an excellent Middle East network, say they have no information to this effect.

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had warned after a meeting with NATO colleagues in Brussels to take all reports about such weapons in Syria with a grain of salt. Over the past few years, Russia had followed up on a number of rumors and reports and many had proven to be either completely wrong or only half-true.

However, jointly with Rasmussen, the foreign ministers did warn Syria on Tuesday against using weapons of mass destruction, saying that if the country was to do it, it would face consequences from the international community. A minister from a small country said, however, that the warning wasn’t referring to NATO but to the United Nations.

For his part, Westerwelle was brusque when asked if military engagement in Syria was in the cards if it crossed his “red line,” saying that political solutions were the answer.

If the dinner with the foreign ministers brought no common agreement on the issue, it did reveal at least two opposing camps: One, in league with the United States, Turkey, Britain, and the NATO Secretary General, is considering direct or indirect military intervention. France leans in that direction as well. The other camp, to which Germany belongs, refuses to consider military intervention -- one of the reasons being that they fear that in so doing they might be helping people to power in Damascus who are even more dangerous than the present regime and who would on taking power then also have access to the chemical weapons.

But there’s another reason for the vehement disagreement with Rasmussen on the part of Germany and the Netherlands: fear of opposition in their parliaments in the case they were to ask for approval to deploy Patriotsurface-to-air missiles positioned in Turkey if lawmakers sensed even a whiff of possibility that NATO was considering military engagement in Syria.

That would make the Patriots – of which there are two German batteries – part of a military offensive and not, as they have been presented so far, weapons to be used exclusively to defend Turkey. Right now, it is not known if the missiles will be used. In any case, the order to the alliance’s military leadership to work out an operations plan – even if it is just a back-up plan -- for Syria requires the agreement of all 28 member countries.

And at the dinner for the ministers, they were far from agreement.

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Future

Livestream Shopping Is Huge In China — Will It Fly Elsewhere?

Streaming video channels of people shopping has been booming in China, and is beginning to win over customers abroad as a cheap and cheerful way of selling products to millions of consumers glued to the screen.

A A female volunteer promotes spring tea products via on-line live streaming on a pretty mountain surrounded by tea plants.

In Beijing, selling spring tea products via on-line live streaming.

Xinhua / ZUMA
Gwendolyn Ledger

SANTIAGOTikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, has spent more than $500 million to break into online retailing. The app, best known for its short, comical videos, launched TikTok Shop in August, aiming to sell Chinese products in the U.S. and compete with other Chinese firms like Shein and Temu.

Tik Tok Shop will have three sections, including a live or livestream shopping channel, allowing users to buy while watching influencers promote a product.

This choice was strategic: in the past year, live shopping has become a significant trend in online retailing both in the U.S. and Latin America. While still an evolving technology, in principle, it promises good returns and lower costs.

Chilean Carlos O'Rian Herrera, co-founder of Fira Onlive, an online sales consultancy, told América Economía that live shopping has a much higher catchment rate than standard website retailing. If traditional e-commerce has a rate of one or two purchases per 100 visits to your site, live shopping can hike the ratio to 19%.

Live shopping has thrived in China and the recent purchases of shopping platforms in some Latin American countries suggests firms are taking an interest. In the United States, live shopping generated some $20 billion in sales revenues in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey. This constituted 2% of all online sales, but the firm believes the ratio may become 20% by 2026.

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