Turkey rising

OP-ED: Israel must get used to the new Turkey, By Suat Kinkiloğlu, Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 2010

An intelligent argument that says, in effect, Turkey is usefully usurping what should be U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

Haiti's future: business or government?

ARTICLE: Haiti's elite hold nation's future in their hands, By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2010

An amazing realistic piece on how Haiti either will or will not recover, based on how the dominant biz families choose to behave.

Are they to blame for Haiti's fate? Absolutely, but if you think that "fixing" Haiti's government is the pathway to success, you're wrong.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

Wrong-sigma solution

ARTICLE: Report slams U.S. for building power plant Afghans can't run, By Marisa Taylor, McClatchy, January 20, 2010

Classic problem of foreign aid: building stuff that the locals cannot sustain or afford.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

Aid or paychecks for Haiti?

OP-ED: Some Frank Talk About Haiti, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times, January 20, 2010

Interesting for the citation of Paul Collier's report to the UN that the best step forward, developmentally, in Haiti would be to set up a garment industry--meaning, in cruder terms, sweatshops.

Ah, but that would be "shock capitalism" of the Naomi Klein sort, would it not?

Better to flood the place with aid instead of paychecks.

Iran's not big-time

ARTICLE: Diplomatic Hand Extended: Furor May Erupt if Shaken, By ROBERT F. WORTH, New York Times, January 21, 2010

Worth remembering when we contemplate the titanic global power that is Iran: Tehran's government freaks over the idea that one of their ministers might have actually shaken the hand of an official Israeli counterpart.

Oh yeah, that's big-time all right.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

So over that Favre thing

Nice piece in Packer Plus by Bud Lea (a true old-timer whose coverage goes back to Lombardi) where he says there's a myth being perpetuated that most Packer fans remain in deep mourning or anger over Favre's departure and subsequent success this year with Minnesota. In truth, the population has moved on with surprising ease.

How is this possible?

I can only give you my own path of self-discovery as reference: when you disaggregate all your emotions about this whole process, you realize that you really love the Packers and that Favre was a huge part of that love for a very long time. But once gone, the guy doesn't really shift over into some opposite hatred (still got my Favre jersey, autographed football and bobble head--the last two prominently displayed in my home office). The simple truth is, you hate the Vikings no matter who's playing for them, and you still love the Packers, no matter who's not playing for them. Plus, underlying all this, you realize that you're incredibly happy with Rodgers, the first QB ever to throw for 4,000 yards in his first two seasons, while also--in unprecedented fashion--playing alongside a 1,200-yard rusher both seasons and two 1,000-yard receivers in both seasons. So what exactly are we supposed to be unhappy about regarding Favre's departure? Would we have had a better team, play-wise? Hard to see. Our fall last year was all about the D, and our rise this year was also all about the D. Our limits this year in the playoffs was also all about the D.

So yes, I wish Brett all the worst on Sunday, and if he makes it to the Super Bowl, I hope the Vikings' unblemished record will remain intact, thanks to the greatest QB in NFL history (and yes, the match-up would be priceless). Or the Saints keep playing phenomenally and the Jets surprise the world again and we forget all this.

Anyway, I will be at the Colts game on Sunday, wearing my Harrison jersey (a player I truly admired for many years--he was what I would have tried to be as an NFL receiver--many TDs and good at avoiding hits!), and then I and Vonne (she wears Manning) will return home to cheer on the Saints, which I would like to see, for historical reasons, finally reach their first SB (oh, and because I really do hate the Vikings).

Why the obsession with the Vikes versus the Bears? Just the history I've lived. It's always been very close with the Vikes since I started watching seriously in the early 1970s (yes, the timing of my birth sucked!), whereas with the Bears it's been one side or the other dominating for long stretches, to include Brett's long domination of the Bears (until that MNF game late in the season, I duly note as a Viking-hater).

In the end, you have to understand how fiercely Packer fans love their team, primarily because there's no good economic reason for the Packers to have remained in Green Bay--unless you know the history of my grandfather and the rest of the so-called "Hungry Five." Watching Favre in purple is one thing, but watching the "Los Angeles Packers" take the field (Lambeau's dirty dream that was thwarted by the Five) would be an entirely different thing.

Watching the AFC Champions

View from our Stub Hub seats.

Stella Artois 30 yards away.

Stella! Stelllllllaaaa!

KO after 2nd TD our endzone.

Big cluster Jet fans nearby.

Tense!

Tom around the web

+ HG's World linked Thomas P.M. Barnett's long view of how to revitalize Haiti.
+ And linked Do we require catastrophic failures to change?, Haiti's cultural poverty and Shocking capitalism! It actually helps after disasters!

+ The Future of Integral said Haiti needs the SysAdmin.
+ And talked about Tom WRT the Integral view of the world.

+ ADM J. C. Harvey, Jr said 'I'm very familiar with the Barnett book [PNM]; it's thought-provoking and has much to recommend it.'

+ Critt Jarvis linked Now they're fighting to build the truck nobody wanted to build--or buy--previously.

+ Naval Leadership linked The Awakening of Robert Gates.

+ unfitblog embedded the TED video (and got some interesting comments).
+ Opt Out En Masse embedded it.
+ Canuck_Centaur linked it.
+ So did daftandbarmy.
+ So did Hillel Aron (in a longer piece about Haiti, including the concept of the SysAdmin).
+ Chris Brogan retweeted it (from julien).

+ scottalbro tweeted Afghanistan is a chance to teach the Chinese something.
+ jamescrabtree compared the Walled World map (World's Top 50 Quality of Life Cities + heavily-guarded borders) with The Map.
+ Machen Libertarians linked PNM.
+ James Denselow mentioned the Leviathan.

Comment upgrade: More Haiti data

A couple of days ago, I cited two WAPO pieces that suggested Haiti was dissolving into lawlessness (not uncommon after a major disaster--looting, vigilantism and score-settling all tend to pop up to some degree after a System Perturbation of this magnitude).

To counter this impression, reader Shane Deichman relays an email from Eric Rasmussen, CEO of inSTEDD, an IT-focused group that works to improve post-disaster management. The electronic missive presents an on-the-ground perspective highly at odds with WAPO's reporting (and my post's too-enthusiastic amplification). I'm almost certain I know Eric from a past life (he was Navy for a long time), because his name is quite familiar.

Anyway, here's what Eric wrote in a broadcast email:

Friends,

I've just returned from driving all over PaP. We stopped and talked. We were in the national park, the palace grounds, up in Delmas, and around the airport. The place is calm, sad, and massively under-resourced. That is no surprise - we're ramping up - but there is an important issue skewing the response a little.

In more than two hours of assessment, I saw two SAR teams and one water truck. I was in the hardest hit areas. No food aid visible. One water truck. The rumor is that security - a force protection requirement - is impeding aid delivery.

If there are security concerns I'm not sure what is driving them. There are isolated incidents, but Port au Prince is a city of more than 1.2 million. Delmas has more than 400,000. There is going to be crime, stupid people, angry people, but they're isolated. This is an impressively controlled crowd and they are TRYING to be well-behaved so that aid will flow. There are more than 20,000 in the Palace Park alone. They fully recognize the risk if they tolerate violence.

My driver offered to wrap every medical worker in 5 Haitians to make sure they'd feel safe.

I saw untreated open fractures. Obvious head trauma. Obvious psych trauma. Major avulsions. No medical surveys evident on the street. Hospital clearly overloaded. I have photographs.

Can we please ensure that we avoid looking like we're hiding from poor, weak, injured people who need help? The perceived security posture is getting quite a bit of play in the community and may not serve anyone well. The transcript below is locally discussed. As it happens I know Chris Elias, CEO of PATH, and he hires good people. I suspect the interview content is accurate.

Eric

What is the exact truth? Both descriptions may hold, depending on exact location and time (the doc's impressions are based on a two-hour tour), but Rasmussen's experienced eye suggests that WAPO's reporting was too extrapolating. Still, note that the pivot on his logic is a "rumor," so you don't want to replace one bad extrapolation with another (as simpler reasons for slow aid-flow are easily imagined). You just want to balance your perceptions suitably until better, more compelling data accumulates.

Remember, we live in a MSM world where the election of one senator from MA is described as an "earthquake" creating "chaos" within Congress! So hyperbole tends to rule, and my mistake was in passing it on too uncritically.

Developing detente in the ME

ARTICLE: Iran and Israel Already at (Cold) War, By Frida Ghitis, World Politics Review, 21 Jan 2010

Nice overview of the Cold War-ish tit-for-tatting going on between Israel and Iran. The dynamic fits very nicely with my projected trajectory of seeing the region's nuclear powers (eventually Iran plus Turkey plus Saudi Arabia joining Israel) head toward a detente-like strategic talks agenda.

After some learning curve incidents sure to spook us plenty.

Polish missile defense redux

ARTICLE: Poland to Deploy U.S. Missiles Near Russia, By JUDY DEMPSEY, New York Times, January 21, 2010

While I understand this as part of Obama's slimmed-down missile defense plan, this announcement does come off as oddly backward looking: Why should putting missiles in Poland be a national security priority at this point in history?

Then there's the queer underlying logic: We expect either Iran or Russia to threaten Poland with missiles in coming years? The Iran argument is just weird (Over what exactly?), and with Russia, it's hard to see that any pressure would come in that manner, given all the other tools at hand.

So, in the end, this just comes off as a PR show sure to trigger an equally doofus reply from the Russians ("Look at our ships in your neighborhood! Are you not afraid?"), replete with Biden's gushy declarations of America's willingness to do whatever it takes to keep Poland safe--as if that's a big global concern right now ("2010: the year Poland's fate hung in the balance!").

When history judges this administration's course and comes up with the criticism of "incoherent," this will certainly seem to qualify as an example ("Team Obama made a bold move in early 2010 when it stuck defensive interceptor missiles in Poland, erasing what had been a growing global fear of missile wars in Eastern Europe.")

Saudis learning the hard way on COIN

WORLD NEWS: "Saudis Struggle in Battle With Rebels," by Mohammed Aly Sergie, Wall Street Journal, 20 January 2010.

Yemen pursues an offensive against al-Qaeda within its borders, while the Saudis press "a surprisingly costly battle of its own against rebels along Yemen's northern border."

When the Saudis launched their attacks two months ago, experts expected the military's superior firepower would make short work of the rebels. But we see the usual difficulties of operating in mountainous regions against an agile and determined foe.

The rebels are Shia Houthis, which the Yemeni government says works with AQAP (al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula) and likewise gets aid from Iran (believable, given the Iranians' profound hatred of the House of Saud).

Why such resistance from the Houthis? Word is the Saudi attacks disrupted their lucrative drug and people smuggling ops.

Seems like the usual cross-cutting mix, ja?

Race to the chocolate bottom

ARTICLE: Approval expected for Kraft-Cadbury deal, By Karla Adam, Washington Post, January 20, 2010

Kraft appears to win the Indian sweepstakes in the form of beating Hershey's offer on Cadbury, whose primary attraction lies in its demonstrated ability to sell at the bottom of the pyramid--to Indians in particular.

Expect to see similar such M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity in coming years. The fight to brand the emerging global middle class is just beginning.

Shocking capitalism! It actually helps after disasters!

WEEKEND JOURNAL: "Rising From The Ruins: Natural disasters have been engines of development and economic growth through history," by Kevin Rosario, Wall Street Journal, 16-17 January 2010.

OPINION: "Don't Let Haiti Return to the Status Quo," by Stephen Johnson, Wall Street Journal, 16-17 January 2010.

First piece is a history of cities that have revitalized themselves tremendously post-disaster, with quakes being the number one theme.

Upshot?

Disasters, it seemed, were good for business in a dynamic, expansive, capitalist economy.

Especially because investors thought it true and thus pushed money in the direction of affected cities/regions, looking for high returns.

Then Katrina came along, and apparently told us something about the nature of the capitalist economy there.

By definition, Haiti's in for a bad time, because it's capitalism was stunted (especially in its rule sets) and highly criminalized and informal prior to the disaster--hence a city not built to anybody's code and thus the profound destruction at merely a 7.0 quake level (bad, but not off anybody's charts).

But since there seems to be equal camps on the question of "is capitalism/globalization the answer" or "the culprit," there's unlikely to be any renaissance in Haiti, as it'll remain the sole, exclusive property of the NGO/PVO crowd.

Normally, you hear that there are 45,000 Americans in a small island nation of 9m and you'd think there was an economy there worth rebuilding.

But then the question arises, How many of those Americans are ex-pat Haitians? Because, when you want to talk revitalization, the prime conduit is never Western NGOs and PVOs or official development aid, it's the ex-pats and their money. I mean, the Bahamas are close by, have no natural resources, and yet make $30k per capita a year (Johnson piece). They get no serious aid that I can see. Meanwhile, last year the U.S. sent $290m in aid to Haiti (says Johnson). Overall, aid accounts for 30-40% of total government revenue--always a bad sign (about 15% is the good limit, otherwise you're into the aid "curse" of an unresponsive government).

Meanwhile, according to the CIA Factbook, "Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling nearly a quarter of GDP and more than twice the earnings from exports."

GDP is about $11B, measured in Purchasing Power Parity.

So yeah, bring on the ex-pats. They have to be able to buy the world a more stable and sustainable Haiti than our aid has.

I mean, they certainly do any worse, could they?

Indeed, if I compare "shock capitalism" to "shock aid," it's clear the former wins every time.

Q&A: Immigration and culture

A reader wrote:

Dear Thomas,

With regard to the increase of productivity for immigrants to the US, it might be true in raw numbers, however let us not forget that in a culture where trade (I do this for you and you do that for me, or I give you something I have for something you have) or favors are a common occurance, crunching numbers will ultimately not account for that.

How productive is a secluded tribe in the amazon jungle? The answer in raw numbers seems all too obvious. Yet, it would not be an outlandish statement to suggest that these people live in a closer community, have a lower rate of dapression (if any), see more meaning in their lives and are happier than the average American.

The difference is that Haiti is in the economic and social situation that it is in today because of the machinations of a culture that is purely geared toward economic development and consumption and productivity and not social connectedness and community life.

So when a person from a culture that is more geared towards social connectedness enters a culture geared more towards making and spending money, it is no wonder that he will become more productive.

Yet he will have a high price to pay for his increase productivity in terms of the lack of social connectedness, loss of community and all the comforts that come with being part of a close knit community becoming an all but rare occurance.

The things that you characterize as useless in the eyes of productivity may just have a value that can not simply be measured in raw numbers.

I would be very interested to know what your perspecive is on this point, so I am looking forward to a reply.

Tom replied:

I think you underestimate social connectedness in the U.S. versus a poor country. I don't see the average American as less connected socially, just a far wider geographic scope--thus more efficiency is networking with people in comparative advantage versus being trapped with the people who happen to live nearby.

I grew up in a very tiny rural community, so I know from where I speak.

Our reader replied:

I will have to get home and do some research, however I am confident that members of tribal societies that are isolated and largely unaffected by globalization and have no meaningful productivity to speak of are on average no less (if not more) satisfied and happy with their lives than the average American or Austrian (where I am from). Would you not agree with that?

Tom concluded:

No. I would take that statement as a cultural bias with an Occidentalist bent (assuming wealth/cities/modernity corrupts and makes unhappy while relative poverty/rural settings/tradition is more pure and thus makes people more happy). Very James Cameron, but historically inaccurate.

What we find globally is this (and these polls have been done the world over for many years): more money raises happiness until you hit about $20k per year per capita. After that point is reached, happiness does not measurably increase.

Comparing the US to the world is always tricky, because we're a nation of ambitious types who left the homeland and tradition and lack of freedom/security/etc to come here. What makes Americans happy is staying busy, being ambitious and moving around a lot (including switching religions at an unprecedented rate). As more A type personalities (in aggregate), we also like more stimulus in virtually all forms. We are not, as a rule, stay on the farm types. That's why we crowd in cities and along the coasts.

So when you compare Americans to those who chose to stay behind, it will always be misleading.

The point of the post and generally my work: the world is more and more becoming similar to America in terms of connectivity, mobility, disposable income, etc., and thus the skills that make us great are being increasingly universalized. You may see that as bad. I like seeing people lifted from poverty and shortened lifespans, because in life, I believe more is better--as in longer, more varied, more busy, more mobile, more free.

And if I was wrong, then globalization, in the form we pioneered here in these States and subsequently spread across the world since WWII, would not have succeeded so dramatically in creating global networks and lifting hundreds of millions--even billions--from lives that would have otherwise been impoverished and--by all polling on this subject--less happy.

The United States is based on the pursuit of happiness, as is the globalization we've spawned.

But I still liked Avatar.

To live and die in the Gap

ARTICLE: In Haiti, relief agencies rush to meet desperate need for water, By Rob Stein, Washington Post, January 16, 2010

The key line here comes from a Pan-American Health Organization worker, when speaking of Haiti's water-supply system:

"They don't have a good system in place. It has a lot of problems in the normal situation," said Luiz Galvao, PAHO's manager of sustainable development and environmental health. "Now it will be worse -- much worse."

True to our giving spirit, we come into the catastrophe and want to deliver clean water in sufficient volume to everybody who needs it. The sad truth is that, in the past, most people there did not receive truly clean water and are highly unlikely to get access to it once we leave.

This dynamic typically accounts for that lingering sense of being ripped off by the world that victims of these disasters inside the Gap ultimately harbor: they get a taste (pun intended) of a better life only amidst the recovery, then to lose it in the non-revitalization to come.

Can we hold (and extend) Afghanistan's center?

ARTICLE: U.S. ambassador puts brakes on plan to utilize Afghan militias against Taliban, By Greg Jaffe and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, January 22, 2010

Hard to think that employing local militias to defend themselves against the Taliban is a "a bold and potentially risky initiative." The argument from Eikenberry? We need central government buy-in first, otherwise we risk the country losing coherence--as if it ever had any.

So the essential policy dispute seems to be one-tribe-at-a-time (the growing inside-the-military support of the Jim Gant argument) versus extending the center's control (which seems implausible and historically elicits a troubling response from Pakistan).

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

The "unified disaster coordinator"

CATASTROPHE IN HAITI: "U.S. Response: Officials hail USAID administrator's crisis management skills," by Philip Rucker, Washington Post, 15 January 2010.

Of course, all the "officials" are Team Obama members pre-emptively deflecting criticism of an uncoordinated response.

Is this guy good? Seems like he should be, but remember, he's running an amazingly dysfunctional organization that is yet to assert serious leadership in anything this fast-moving or large.

I've watched some coverage and read plenty more, and frankly, this is the only serious mention of Rajiv Shahj that I've come across. Absent this article, I'd have no idea he was even prominent in the effort, much less that there is a "unified disaster coordinator."

Am I just out of it here? Does anybody recognize this guy as the "face" or "buck stops here" guy?

Haiti's cultural poverty

POST: Tough Love the Only Long-Term Cure for Haiti, by Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com, January 20, 2010

Goldberg, unlike my sadly inconsistent self, truly is a conservative. Here, in a piece cited by The Atlantic Wire along with my recent post, he offers what I consider to be some very compelling logic that totally dovetails with my focus on rules and the benefits of connectivity (As in, where are Japan and Switzerland without globalization's connectivity? And yes, there's plenty of residual xenophobia--e.g., see the recent mosque building ban by the Swiss, to go around, so it's not like they've completely forgotten who they are.):

The sad truth about Haiti isn't simply that it is poor, but that it has a poverty culture. Yes, it has had awful luck. Absolutely, it has been exploited, abused, and betrayed ever since its days as a slave colony. So, if it alleviates Western guilt to say that Haiti's poverty stems entirely from a legacy of racism and colonialism, fine. But Haiti has been independent and the poorest country in the hemisphere for a long time.

Even if blame lies everywhere except among the victims themselves, it doesn't change the fact that Haiti will never get out of grinding poverty until it abandons much of its culture.

When Haitians leave Haiti for the U.S. they get richer almost overnight. This isn't simply because wages are higher here or welfare payments more generous. Coming to America is a cultural leap of faith, physically and psychologically. Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz note in their phenomenal new book, From Poverty to Prosperity, that low-skilled Mexican laborers become 10 to 20 times more productive simply by crossing the border into the United States. William Lewis, former director of the McKinsey Global Institute, found that illiterate, non-English-speaking Mexican agricultural laborers in the U.S. were four times more productive than the same sorts of laborers in Brazil.

Why? Because American culture not only expects hard work, but teaches the unskilled how to work hard.

It's true that Haiti has few natural resources, but neither does Japan or Switzerland. What those countries do have are what Kling and Schulz call valuable "intangible assets" -- the skills, rules, laws, education, knowledge, customs, expectations, etc. that drive a prosperous society to generate prosperity. That is where the real wealth of nations is to be found -- not in factories, oil deposits, and gold mines, but in our heads and in the habits of our hearts.

And if your take is that globalization crushes local cultures (and it sure does when they have nothing useful to offer, but then again, check out the Japanese as slick mega-exporters of an isolated culture and wonder why they succeed where others fail), then be prepared to keep on paying while the glory that is Haitian stay-at-home culture (as opposed to that which comes along with immigrants to America and adds to our mixing bowl) is given free reign to prove its disutility yet again after this disaster.

Only one sensible option on Iran

OP-ED: The Soft Power Solution in Iran, By JAMES K. GLASSMAN AND MICHAEL DORAN, Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 21, 2010

Good piece except for the usual reach for sanctions. The key thing is that it gets the strategic choice correctly: the soft-kill is the only sensible option likely to succeed.