Naw, "socialism" dominated by the party princelings is so much better

ARTICLE: "Official in China Says Western-Style Democracy Won't Take Root There," by Edward Wong, New York Times, 20 March 2010.

Hilarious bit of hypocritical finger-pointing from a senior Chinese official declaring that Western-style democracy could never work in "socialist" China:

In criticizing Western democracy, Mr. Li asserted that the Western system of elections simply benefited the wealthy and was warped by capitalism.

"Western-style elections, however, are a game for the rich," he said. "They are affected by the resources and funding that a candidate can utilize. Those who manage to win elections are easily in the shoes of their parties or sponsors and become spokespersons for the minority."

My, we can't upset the wonderful apple cart that is Chinese capitalism dominated by relatives of the party elite!

What scares you more on oil? Price or supply?

ARTICLE: "China's Growth Shifts the Geopolitics of Oil," by Jad Mouawad, New York Times, 19 March 2010.

Nice summarizing piece of global dynamic that was staple of my brief about a decade ago: the shift of the global oil demand center from the U.S. to China. The moment has clearly arrived.

My brief's argument today on that subject: the danger when a supply-risk-focused East meets up with a price-risk-accepting West in unstable Gap situations. China wants to own the barrel in the ground whenever possible--very much in the vein of the U.S. decades ago. But China does not truly care to be responsible for the accompanying security.

Where the R&D action is? Look for a messy place looking to clean up

[Shiho Fukada for The New York Times]
An Applied Materials research lab in Xi'an, China. The Santa Clara, Calif., company is the largest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays.

ARTICLE: "China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 17 March 2010

Necessity is the mother of invention. China simply has the most necessity right now, hence it attracts everybody's R&D.

We can counter with own efforts, and we should. But there is no denying the logic of this growing trend within the global economy.

It is not bad; it is entirely appropriate.

Terror-the-Islamic-brand resurfaces in Moscow, but what lies underneath suggests the logical solution

From the FT story

LEADERS; "Terrorism in Russia: Mayhem in Moscow; It is right to condemn the Moscow bombers, but also to look for new ideas for the north Caucasus," The Economist, 3 April 2010.

WORLD NEWS: "Changing face of terror in Russia: Metro bombers; The group behind the blasts is just a brand name for a movement bound by hatred," by Charles Clover, Financial Times, 3-4 April 2010.

OP-ED: "What Makes Chechen Women So Dangerous?," by Robert A. Pape, Lindsey O'Rourke and Jenna McDermit, New York Times, 30 March 2010.

OPINION: "Moscow metro bombings: Russia should reinvent how it handles terrorism; The recent Moscow metro bombings have deep historic and religious roots. Russia should reevaluate counterinsurgency policies, root out corruption, and counter the growth of radical Islam," by Ariel Cohen, Christian Science Monitor, 30 March 2010.

Moscow, according to The Economist, handled the recent subway bombings just fine--no panic and a swift emergency response.

But the larger issue down south remains: Russia has spent many bloody years suppressing Muslim terrorists in the north Caucasus, and despite the two fights in Chechnya, the violence hasn't abated but merely spread to Ingushetia and Dagestan, where a full-blown insurgency exists.

Medvedev calls the region Russia's biggest domestic problem, but likewise called for crueler responses in the future as a result of the recent bombings--unlikely to calm the local situation whatsoever.

The big fixes, according to The Economist, are reigning in the rather lawless and brutal Russian security forces, who seem most adept at merely generating more terrorists, and rooting out the widespread local corruption ("which allows the terrorists not only to move with mystifying ease around Russia but also to secure a steady source of income.")

As for the terrorists themselves, the FT reports:

Like al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror, groups, it is less of an organization and more of a brand name for a loosely affiliated movement of autonomous warlords, bound by little more than ideology and hatred.

The death cult dynamic seems in full swing: one of the two female bombers, ID'd and show in the FT photo below, is your classic "black widow" who was engaged to avenge the death of her recently killed husband. She was 17. When a culture starts wasting its young females like that, you know it's devolving and can't be happy about it. But then that just tells you how desperate they feel their plight is.

The rebel leader who took credit for the blasts, Doku Umarov, preaches the establishment of an Islamic caliphate he currently dubs the Caucasian Emirate. He works out of caves like Osama. But you get the feeling: if there's no public sense of occupation, this guy becomes instantly marginalized and unimportant.

Russia's VERY long history of dealing with terrorists (right back to the pioneers in the field in the 19th century) tells me they will stick with this fight forever, changing their nasty tactics very slowly at best, because once the old Soviet empire crumbles down to its pre-revolutionary Russian imperial borders, you get into over-our-dead-bodies territory as far as the Russians are concerned.

And yet, Russia's recent efforts to calm the region in 2005-07 indicate they know what will work. Robert Pape's analysis, as always, comes to the conclusion that the suicide bombings are a last-resort effort to end the perceived occupation, and that all the Islamic radicalism is just window dressing. Pointing out that the Russians made a strong hearts-and-minds effort from 05-07 and that suicide bombings went way down during this period before Moscow went back to hardcore tactics in 07 (the 05-07 period's quietude is also credited to public revulsion over the Beslan massacre), Pape & Co. conclude:

Building on the more moderate policies of 2005 to 2007 might not end every attack, but it could well reduce violence to a level both sides can live with.

Because the new wave of Chechen separatists see President Kadyrov as a puppet of the Kremlin, any realistic solution must improve the legitimacy of Chechnya's core social institutions. An initial step would be holding free and fair elections. Others would include adopting internationally accepted standards of humane conduct among the security forces and equally distributing the region's oil revenues so that Chechnya's Muslims benefit from their own resources.

No political solution would resolve every issue. But the subway attacks should make clear to Russia that quelling the rebellion with diplomacy is in its security interests. As long as Chechens feel themselves under occupation -- either directly by Russian troops or by their proxies -- the cycle of violence will continue wreaking havoc across Russia.

Sounds like Russia needs to get back to the smart COIN/soft power approach (see Cohen piece) and make the necessary concessions, something Putin seems too unclever to manage.

[thanks in part to WPR Media Roundup]

The no-change versus huge-change emerging NPR debate

WSJ hears one thing from administration official, whereas the NYT heard something radically different--and still reads it as of Tuesday night--on Obama's "new" nuclear policy

ARTICLE: "U.S. Keeps First-Strike Strategy: Obama Narrows the Range of Possible Targets in New National Nuclear-Weapons Policy," by Jonathan Weisman and Peter Spiegel, Wall Street Journal, 6 April 2010.

ARTICLE: "Obama's New Nuclear Strategy Is Intended as a Message to Iran and North Korea," by David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 6 April 2010.
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER

So I read the first Sanger-and-Baker piece in the NYT this ayem, get all pissed, write my post, and narrowly miss getting interviewed by a national magazine correspondent on the subject.

And I'm glad I guess it didn't happen--at least until this becomes more clear (as in, I read the actual document), because I go to bed tonight and read my hard-copy WSJ and there it sits--this article that seems to contradict the entire Sanger analysis.

But here's the trick: the WSJ piece doesn't mention any talk with Obama and instead just previews the report according to the anon admin official, whereas Sanger's piece had the words basically coming out of the President's mouth.

And again, the two pieces come about as close to making diametrically opposed interpretations as you can get, to wit:

Weisman and Spiegel:

. . . makes only modest changes to U.S. nuclear forces, leaving intact the longstanding threat to use nuclear weapons first, even against non-nuclear nations.

But Sanger and Baker say:

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

So how can Sanger and Baker see a sharp departure and Bruce Blair say that the new policy is virtually identical to the old one?

Alas, the danger of the too rapid response post . . ..

So I'm not sure if I stand corrected or just sit confused at this point.

I will still write next week's column on the subject. I'm just glad I've got a few days to watch the huge-change-versus-no-change competing analyses unfold a bit.

Especially since, when I check the NYT site Tuesday night late, I see the Sanger-and-Shanker piece that makes the same damn argument again:

Mr. Obama's new strategy makes just about every nonnuclear state immune from any threat of nuclear retaliation by the United States . . . Nonnuclear states that abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would not be threatened with nuclear retaliation by the United States -- even if they conducted conventional, biological or cyber attacks.

And now I'm back to feeling like Obama's being too cute by half: we're saying to the world that nuclear retaliation is something we reserve the right to use on states that reach for nukes (the special exceptions of NorKo and Iran)? But if you don't reach for them, you can pretty much do anything short of that and feel safe?

Now I do feel like I get it to the point where both the NYT and Bruce Blair are correct: this is a radically inane change.

And here's where it gets truly odd, in my mind:

Mr. Obama, asked on Monday whether that episode harmed American credibility, said, "I don't think countries around the world are interested in testing our credibility when it comes to these issues.

"The message we're sending here," he said, was that countries that "actively pursue a proliferation agenda" would not be immune from any form of American retaliation, including nuclear.

The reality is more complex. If a backpack nuclear bomb went off in Times Square or on the Mall in Washington, the Pentagon and the Department of Energy would race to find the nuclear DNA of the weapon -- so that the country that was the source of the material could be punished. But the science of "nuclear attribution" is still sketchy. And without certain attribution, it is hard to seriously threaten retaliation.

Again, I don't see how this logic is an improvement: we're now willing to say--for all practical purposes--that nuclear attribution is sketchy, but we want to be crystal clear on what it takes to earn a U.S. retaliatory strike, declaring that cyber and biological and chemical attacks on the U.S. would elicit only a "devastating" conventional response?

Doesn't that sound like we transferring the decision-making freedom to others while narrowing our own choices?

So how does that exactly empower us while disempowering our enemies?

My sense for now: this too-clever bit comes under intense criticism and the counter-equivocating from the administration basically negates the original goal behind the so-called sharp departure.

But I'm still wracking my brain trying to figure out what audience is supposed to be satisfied or deeply moved by this change? I can't see how NorKo or Iran are impressed, nor China. Maybe the Europeans--in a completely useless achievement, but that's about it.

Somebody please enlighten me on the hidden brilliance here, because the more analysis I read, the more I find to dislike. And reading through the actual document tonight, I do find I'm more with Sanger's analysis than Blair's.

But--again--I'll try to think this through more fully before pursuing it any further on the blog. Indeed, I will try

For those interested, get the report here.

How strengthened by the healthcare win is Obama's super-centralized presidency?

UPI photo

ANALYSIS: "The recovery position: America; The passing of historic health reforms appears to have given renewed vigour to Barack Obama's flagging presidency, which he will need to meet the challenges that remain," by Edward Luce, Financial Times, 27-28 March 2010.

MARKETS NEWS & COMMENT: "Fears over supply start to hit US Treasuries: Poorly received bond auctions prompt worries about demand," by Michael Mackenzie and David Oakley, Financial Times, 27-28 March 2010.

ANALYSIS: "Waiting on a sun king: US foreign policy; In a highly centralized White House, Barack Obama involves himself in long debates on main world concerns--but that leaves some issues on the back burner," by Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey, Financial Times, 31 March 2010.

Quote from a senior official leads off the first article:

I thought we were supposed to be idiots. Now all of a sudden we are geniuses?

We shall see.

Still, impressive to move past Kennedy's death and the shocking loss of his seat and still get it done:

But a small number [of Dems] saw the Massachusetts defeat as a timely jolt for a party that looked to be sleepwalking towards a Bill Clinton-style disaster at the midterm elections in November. They may have been right.

Luce says Obama also has the Clinton tendency to let his presidency drift, so the big lesson, according to one Washington tanker: don't let too much initiative sit with Congress and instead lead from the front.

So is Obama truly evolving as a president (David Rothkopf's quoted point)?

Probably, and most certainly we're better off as a country for it.

But the larger constraints are still there. As I have argued for about a decade now, U.S. "security exports" are part and parcel of a "global transaction strategy." So long as the world likes that product, it will continue to pay for it, but if it does not, our comfortable leadership on the subject is reduced, triggering--thankfully in my mind--the necessary reorientation from Old Core allies to New Core ones. Not easy to pull off, by any stretch, and Obama's presidency will just be the first truly forced to start moving down this path, so don't expect consummation in his (possible) two terms even as the relationships must start being built now. As the impossibility of "divorce" with China becomes apparent to everybody in the economic realm, then the pol-mil variant will follow.

The question is, and the third FT piece raises this, Who will be the big thinker in the Obama admin that forges this path?

My sense: Obama controls things so closely, it can only be him, which means his attention span is constantly held hostage to the big push/big crisis of the moment.

As for the wannabe-Sun-King crew listed: Steinburg, Flournoy, Donilon, McDonough, I see fabulous staffers but no Kissinger.

The other great possibility: Hillary emerges far bigger or, when Jones quits at NSC, the big gun is finally brought in.

American TV: A member of the Arab family

COMPANIES | INTERNATIONAL: "Arab world is a desert for pay-TV: The reluctance of regional viewers to chip in for content," by Abeer Allam and Robin Wigglesworth, Financial Times, 27-28 March 2010.

Interesting bit: Arabs love their cable and sat TV, preferring Hollywood blockbusters and Bollywood musicals. Instead of going to theaters, they prefer staying at home:

"We feel more comfortable at home," Ms Bahjat, who is studying medicine in Riyadh, says.

"We can dress how we want, stay as late as we want. We mostly watch American movies or sitcoms."

TV is booming in Saudi Arabia, we are told. Two-thirds of the population under 25 and there are so few allowed outlets for communal pleasure, like cinemas and nightclubs, so Saudis splurge on home theaters and sat dishes, getting their connectivity behind closed doors, as it were.

The average Saudi, armed with a dish, has access to almost 600 free-to-air sat channels.

As one Arab TV marketer puts it,

Television is a virtual member of the Arab family. It has a high impact on society, allowing bonding and escape.

Can you sense just how f--ked Osama is?

I'm not talking about, Watch TV and become instant Americans. I'm talking about, given the chance, what content do they choose?

Middle East/North Africa (MENA) contains 250m Arab speakers, but advertising spending there is very low (only $2.1B). But experts see that number growing very fast, because of the youth skew and rising incomes. Advertising is growing at about 30% a year (compound).

Thus Murdoch News Corp, which did similar things in Asia years ago when similar projections were at hand, buys a $70m stake in a 9-channel system out of Egypt which already runs Fox programs.

The next trick is harder: shifting that public toward pay-for-view channels and events. With such a splintered market (those 600 channels, limited disposable income, and the habit of getting it free), it won't be easy.

Then again, you could have said the same thing about bottled water in America 20 years ago.

Something to watch.

Malaysia to work racial issues toward "more market friendly" outcomes

WORLD NEWS: "Malaysia Will Adjust Its Racial Policies," by Peter Stein, Wall Street Journal, 24 March 2010.

Another very hopeful sign from Seam State Malaysia, coming from the top (PM Najib Razak).

He admits the process proceeds only so fast as the public buys into it, but the goal is clear: making Malaysia more globalization-friendly by signaling institutionalized ethnic/religious freedom as a long-term goal.

The driver here is the Malays who make up 60% of the nation's population (27M total). The gov has longstanding politics that promote Malays economically, but that leaves many Indians and Chinese nationals feeling disadvantaged.

So this is a classic globalization adjustment: Do you want to preserve the Malay character of the nation above all, or emphasize income growth more?

Malaysia needs to wean itself off dependence of royalties earned from its oil reserves, so this shift is a distinct sign of serious realism of the economic adjustments ahead.

The New Core buyback of Old Core continues

COMPANIES | INTERNATIONAL: "Emerging markets' deals boost: Study shows rise in outbound activity; Fall in figures for developed nations," by Sundeep Tucker, Financial Times, 15 March 2010.

The New Core's purchasing of assets in the Old Core picked up dramatically over the last six months of 2009, furthering our interdependence. Meanwhile, the flow of Old Core-to-New Core deals now stands at half of its 2007 peak.

A lot of this New-to-Old flow was China buying into Australia's extractive industry.

Your first language determines what remains foreign for the rest of your life

TECH: "Game changer: MS Xbox steps into multiplatform shoes," by Chris Morris, Variety, 8-14 March 2010.

I see this distinctly with my two sons: the Xbox is the preferred gaming vehicle, and increasingly it becomes their preferred portal on movies, online viewing, networking with friends, playing with others in a distributed fashion. In short, it becomes a big part of their digital persona.

The first language is a huge branding capture moment just like in politics: your first vote in college is a huge predictor of where you'll stay ideologically all your life.

Recently I started playing multiplayer first-person shooter games with my boys, because I want to understand gaming better and the glimpse it provides into virtual realities (I have in mind a multi-volume science fiction series I will someday write and am actively working the outline in terms of big ideas I want to capture/explore). It is pretty funny to watch them suffer my five-year-old's capabilities as they drag my sorry ass through zombie-killing scenarios, but it makes them very happy, even though I feel like my learning curve presages some future recovery/rehab from a stroke in my old age (what the hell, practice is good).

Holding the medium responsible for all actions it creates

FIRST LOOK: "Spiking the Search," by Nick Vivarelli, Variety, 8-14 March 2010. [NOT ONLINE]

Italian courts decide to hold three Google execs responsible for a 2006 vid on Google Video that shows teenagers bullying a Down Syndrome boy.

Every communications medium in history has been forced to do some self-policing on content. The Internet and search engines will be no different.

Yes, everybody wants the connectivity, but the content comes with controls that vary by culture.

Blast from my CNA, base-closing past

HOUSE & HOME: "Offshore expansion: San Francisco's plan to spread on to a man-made islang has lessons for similar projects worldwide," by Tracey Taylor, Financial Times, 20-21 March 2010.

Harkening back to my base-closure activism days with the Center for Naval Analysis ("Mobilizing for Youth-Related Outcomes in Local Defense Conversion Planning: The Political Context," by yours truly, CNA Research Memorandum 94-154, October 1994), the article explores San Fran's plans, VERY long in the works, to finally commercialize Treasure Island, the manmade island that is anchored between SF and Oakland alongside the lengthy bridge that connects the two cities.

When our team did its field work in the Bay Area, we often stayed at the Navy BOQ (bachelors and officers quarters) on Treasure Island. Our work didn't really touch upon either the Presidio or TI, because both were so big and unique as to be too politically complex to address in the near-term (with the Presidio moving along smartly, nonetheless, in its commercialization and TI being just the opposite).

Just a point of personal and professional curiosity on my part. TI was originally built as part of the Golden Gate International Expo in 1936 (the event was held 1939-40).

The frontier state that will be Southern Sudan

LIFE & ARTS: "The road to independence: Sudan's 'Wild South' is a country-in-waiting and could become a sovereign state next year. But is this shattered region ready to stand alone?" by Barney Jopson, Financial Times, 20-21 March 2010.

Short answer is, of course, no. And we're not just talking government:

The lack of familiarity with the modern world extends to concepts such as work, employment, commerce, even farming. South Sudan oozes fertility, but during mango season an overpowering stench assails parts of the region because heaps of the fruit are left rotting where they fall. Meanwhile, expats in Juba drink Ceres-branded mango juice imported from Uganda.

Talk about a culture of dependency.

According to a former aid worker who once advised the gov as a KPMG consultant, donors and NGOs are not prepping the south systematically for independence:

It's been like an end-of-the-world party. 2011 became this cliff and everyone knew you'd have to step off it. But no one knew if it was 1ft high or 100ft high. So there's never been any form of institution-building for 2011 and beyond.

This is how we collectively pre-determine military interventions into failed states.

Funny how PEMEX is going down while foreign oil companies keep finding so much oil in the Gulf

CORPORATE NEWS: "Shell Unveils Oil Discovery in Gulf of Mexico: Region Again Proves Valuable for Exploration as Big Firms Pursue Resources in Deep Waters Off U.S." by Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 20-21 March 2010.

I realize that this isn't a story about PEMEX and Mexico's aversion to foreign investment in its oil industry, but it's interesting how the eastern side of the Gulf keeps yielding this large finds but PEMEX's reserves keep dropping. I mean, the western side can't be all that empty, can it?

Apparently it's not all the "Dead Sea" as long reported. Just depends on the business opportunities you provide companies.

China's wage issues will ultimately make the imbalance correction happen

WORLD NEWS: "Asian economies: 'World's factory floor' to raise wages; Guangdon worried about unfilled jobs; Rush to complete surge in orders," by Enid Tsui, Fianancial Times, 19 March 2010.

Remember, China's "golden year" on labor demographics is 2010, meaning more dependents relative to laborers from here on out.

Latest announcement is a 20% raise in wages in order to attract the necessary labor.

My latest WPR Feature: Telecom and the Super-Empowered Global Middle Class

 

Photo: "SMS till you drop" -- mobile phone ad, Kampala, Uganda (Photo by Wikimedia user FutureAtlas.com, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

Part of the "Power in the Age of Telecom" feature.

Just 12 years ago, in writing a research memorandum on the future of global telecommunications, I noted the oft-quoted estimate that roughly half of the planet's population had never made a phone call in their lives. Fast forward to today, and best estimates are that 55 percent of the planet owns a mobile telephone. Factor in that the highest rates of growth are occurring among the poorest and most disconnected populations, where communal use of cells is the norm, and it seems likely that this pool of phone-call virgins has been cut in half -- or better.

Read the rest here at World Politics Review.

Holding fire for next week's column on the new nuclear posture review

ARTICLE: "Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms," by David E. Sanger and Peter Baker, New York Times, 5 April 2010.

I think this is such a bad idea that [INSERT CANDIDATE HERE] is now my preferred choice for the presidency in 2012. The hubris on this one is beyond belief.

This is my gut reaction (subject to review upon reading the doc and seeing what other people say): Obama is offering a preemptive solution to a problem nobody on this planet worries about. Worse, NO ONE gets nukes out of the fear of America possibly using them, so it DOES NOTHING TO PREVENT PROLIFERATION! Indeed, it arguably makes the pursuit that much more rewarding to the country undertaking the effort. The exception argument offered on NorKo and Iran just admits as much.

This is strategically stupid with a capital DUH!

Believe me, I am just getting warmed up.

How transformative will shale gas be?

LNGpedia

ANALYSIS: "A foot on the gas: Energy; Enthusiasm for shale deposits--part of a wider revival for a fuel that could cut carbon emissions and transform global politics--is tempered by risks to investors," by Carola Hoyos and Ed Crooks, Financial Times, 12 March 2010.

BRIEFING: "Natural Gas: An unconventional glut; Newly economic, widely distributed sources are shifting the balance of power in the world's gas markets," The Economist, 13 March 2010.

Gazprom, we are told, is counting on environmental fears to derail the rising role of shale gas in the West. The other trick is making sure all this new production doesn't impact the market to the extent of making itself unprofitable (new flows creating too much supply and driving down prices).

And yet, without the rising share of shale gas, U.S. production would have dramatically decreased over the past decade. Instead it's held steady and looks to start rising dramatically. The lead goose effect here is what is scaring Gazprom: the world is realizing that the promise of unassociated (with oil, that is) gas, and that makes Gazprom a whole lot less important.

It also steals the Persian Gulf's energy-after-next thunder, because OPEC's mainstays there always assumed that their vast associated gas reserves would keep them just as crucial to the global economy in the post-oil as oil has long done.

In the old world, Russia was the King Kong of conventional gas. It was like the U.S. on military spending: basically the equal of the ROW (rest of world).

But when you look at the unconventional gas reserves, it's Asia-Pac first, NorthAm second, and the former USSR a middling third. In short, rising Asia and the U.S. can suddenly cover themselves a whole lot more, making both Russia and the Gulf pretty minor by comparison. Remember that last Nov Obama and Hu announced a "US-China shale gas initiative" that promised a swap of US technology for investment opportunities in China. That's gotta spook the would-be "OPEC of gas."

Ah well, Europe will remain largely dependent on the kindness of strangers still, although the coming glut benefits them on price no doubt. Anyway, the EU is ambitious on cutting carbon, so the growth in gas demand will be weak anyway, furthering weakening Gazprom's alleged grip--yet another reason why to avoid freaking out over the Georgia-Russia dust-up. As energy plays go, it was oh-so-last-century.

So much for the Great Game.

Bring on the enviro lawyers instead!

The books that change us

POST: "The Books That Change Us,", by David Swindle, FrontPageMag.com, 30 March 2010.

Warm words indeed to this author:

Reading through David Horowitz's autobiography Radical Son we can see this both in his personal experiences with the Black Panthers, the AIDS crisis, and the Vietnam War and his engagement with books by thinkers like Leszek Kolakowski and Friedrich Hayek.

My own journey follows a similar dual path of experiences and books though is not as dramatic as Horowitz's.

Many of the texts which would be instrumental in changing me I encountered while in college in my political science classrooms, English courses, and independently. Most of these books could hardly be accurately described as "conservative" yet neither were they Marxist. In my defense policy course taught by Dr. Dan Reagan we analyzed and debated The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas P.M. Barnett. It was with Barnett's book that I first began to doubt my anti-globalization dogmas. The Pentagon's New Map makes a compelling case that as countries are knit together economically war will be decreased. Global Capitalism is a force for peacemaking, greater prosperity, and increased human rights.

It's a post worth reading. The guy is seriously ruminating on his own ideological journey (always a fascinating narrative, like a great obit), and it's well written.

Han Han signals the arrival of the Deng-and-done generation in China

SATURDAY PROFILE: "Heartthrob's Blog Challenges China's Leaders," by Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, 12 March 2010.

What's most intriguing about Han Han (a real-world Buckaroo Banzai!) is the notion that he's an early sighting of the post-Deng generation wielding popular power:

Since he began blogging in 2006, Mr. Han has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China's leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular living writer in the world.

In a recent interview at his office in Shanghai, he described party officials as "useless" and prone to spouting nonsense, although he used more delicate language to dismiss their relevance. "Their lives are nothing like ours," he said. "The only thing they have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side."

Mr. Han has enjoyed widespread fame since he published his first novel at 19, but his popularity has ballooned in recent months through blog posts that seem to capture the zeitgeist of his peers, the so-called post-80s generation born after the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping.

Theirs is a generation of only children, the result of China's one-child policy, and one that has known only uninterrupted growth. Whether true or not, it is also a demographic with a reputation for being spoiled, impatient and less accepting of the storyline fed to them by government-run media.

The guy's a race-car driver, hugely successful novelist, and all-around pin-up--along with being a China-wide famous blogger.

Interesting stuff.

But he's the essence of future democratization in China: the guy's obviously accomplished and intelligent, and people like that don't care to be treated like children by the "all-knowing" Party.