I was grateful for the shoe bomber

ARTICLE: New threat to travellers from al-Qaeda 'keister bomb', By Charles Bremner and Marie Tourres, Times Online, October 6, 2009

My old briefing joke finally migrating toward reality.

My original enunciation was quite serious, based on drug mules.

It just came out funny when I said it.

(Thanks: Jon Matzner)

Pakistani clarity on the way forward in Afghanistan

ARTICLE: Don't Try to Arrest the Sea, by Major Mehar Omar Khan, Small Wars Journal, October 2, 2009

Really fine piece by a Pakistani officer.

Most clear-headed reasoning I've yet read on the way forward in Afghanistan.

My question would be: how close does McChrystal's plan come to fostering this desired change?

Combatant commanders can't afford a State screw-up

POST: The real State-Defense turf war begins, By Josh Rogin, The Cable, 11/03/2009

Predictable struggle: the Pentagon doesn't want the hassle and prefers "doing the right thing" by demilitarizing foreign aid and giving it back to incompetent State and headless USAID.

But Combatant Commanders in the field resist this "noble" gesture.

Why? They fear a sheer drop off in effort, and nobody in command wants that on their watch. They don't spend 30 years getting to the mountain top to sit on their hands, waiting for USAID's slo-mo efforts to--perhaps--kick in here and there.

I say, leave the money with those who are best incentivized to use it in a rapid and targeted manner. I'll take any additional learning curve journey with the military over the headless, morale-dead USAID.

Good old Roughead

ARTICLE: Addled Admiral Builds a Robot Navy, By Rich Smith, Motley Fool, November 4, 2009

I like Adm. Roughead a lot. He brought me out to brief his command staff when he headed Pac Fleet, and I and my son Kev got to spend a bit of time with him.

All this sounds like good stuff.

Roughead is an aggressive experimenter: he tries things and ask for forgiveness later. Right kind of leader for a force under fire.

(Thanks: Peter Johnson)

The dollar and American debt must be disciplined

ARTICLE: The demise of the dollar, By Robert Fisk, The Independent, 6 October 2009

This was threatened last summer but did not happen. Still, when I read it back then I knew the crash was coming in some form because major players were saying so in the form of fears for the dollar's decline.

Does it happen this time? The only answer that matters is "eventually."

A global system can no longer operate on an undisciplinable dollar as the reserve currency, so efforts to hedge will only continue, the near term fear being America inflates its way out of severe debt.

So my old answer on the debt and trade deficit still holds: eventually the rest of the world is forced to generate a disciplining pressure we could not create on our own.

Sucks, yes, but it beats the alternative.

(Thanks: Michael S. Smith II)

Is Somalia an American interest?

ARTICLE: Leader Says Somalia's Plight Is Urgent, By Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post, October 3, 2009

This guy knows his international politics and demonstrates why it'll be hard for the U.S. not to continue getting episodically involved in Somalia.

It is a weird echo of the Cold War: back then, you say, "I face a Sov threat . . . get me aid!" Now you do the same on al Qaeda.

The obvious difference? AQ ain't the Sovs. The resource factor is vastly different.

I know, I know. All this networked world means anyone with $5 can disable America overnight . . . or maybe size still matters in a long war.

(Via WPR Media Roundup)

Hip hop: the high priest of globalization

Nate Bender writes:

I came across this while searching for something else and thought you
might enjoy. It's a Mongolian Rap video, shot in ulaanbaatar, complete
with every rap video cliche you can think of. It shows how attractive
American culture is, even at the very fringes of civilization.

Tom writes:

Never underestimate the global reach of hip hop.

And now for something completely different

ARTICLE: On Comedy's Flying Trapeze, By CHARLES McGRATH, New York Times, September 30, 2009

My eldest, Emily, works out each day on the elliptical either studying or watching our compete series DVD collection.

Increasingly, I find my oldest son watching it with her.

It reminds me that Python is best consumed in one's youth--like a rite of passage. That's the perfect time to have your sense of comedy dramatically expanded.

And yes, I was one of the nerds in HS who could recite long tracts of both Python and SNL skits.

I also caught the winning TD at Homecoming my senior year, so balance was my watchword.

India's change on climate

NEWS ANALYSIS: New Script for India on Climate Change, By JIM YARDLEY, New York Times, October 3, 2009

Good piece that intelligently explores the differences between India and China and the West on climate change responses.

We need China to leapfrog lessons from the Old Core's past

POST: A Chinese Oil Giant Learns Lessons From Abroad, By Shai Oster, China Real Time Report, November 2, 2009

This is one of those "thank God they're learning" scenarios. China, for a while, has been stuck in the 1970s mindset of owning the barrel in the ground, assuming all their risk is in supply disruption (not true).

We learned the hard way (detailed in the post, with Japan still learning) that the risk isn't in supply but simply in price. There are ways to hedge against the latter effectively, but most efforts regarding the former are a complete waste of time and resources.

This is a very good sign of China leapfrogging lessons from the Old Core's past, which is a must for the world's future.

(Thanks: Steve Epstein)

HRC in Pakistan

ARTICLE: Clinton Suffers Barbs and Returns Jabs in Pakistan, By MARK LANDLER, New York Times, October 30, 2009

Good show by HIllary, who's clearly growing in the job.

Makes you wonder what her special envoy Holbrooke does with his days. You never hear about him, perhaps by design.

(Thanks: Stuart Abrams)

Obama vs. the World: A Checkup on 10 Global Hot Spots

Pete Souza/White House

One year ago, he rode to victory largely on the promise of healing America's standing in the eyes of Bush-torn foreigners. But has he? The fourth in a week-long series on Obama's election anniversary.

Continue reading this week's World War Room column at Esquire.com.

Afghan dichotomy?

Waveman sent this email:

Quote on Tom's blog today: The Social Stress Caused By Success:

"... Yet today's richer China is also a more divided China. It is split between poor rural areas and richer cities; between developed coastal regions and poor inland areas; between the educated and the uneducated."

This observation seem very similar to the one made by Matthew Hoh in his Afghanistan resignation letter:"

"... pits urban, secular, educated and modern against rural, religious, illiterate and traditional."

Don't know if Tom would find these seeming similarities relevant, interesting and/or important, but thought I would bring them to your attention just in case.

Tom writes:

The classic "occidental" argument I explored in BFA. Cities are modern and evil and secular, countryside is traditional and natural and spiritual.

Yemen spills over

ARTICLE: Yemen conflict 'no longer internal issue', By Mohammed al Qadhi, The National, October 21. 2009

Strongest argument yet on Yemen as a cross-border issue. No question it would take precedence, if the Saudis make enough noise.

(Via WPR Media Roundup)

The two big things with climate change

ARTICLE: Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation, By Tristan McConnell, London Times, October 22, 2009

The scary implication:

Drought is nothing new to this part of Africa, but what is different is the frequency with which it hits. The cycle of drought used to come around every ten years but now it is almost constant. Many attribute the changing patterns to climate change.

To me, the two big things with climate change are: 1) raised acidity of the world's oceans (hard to see a lot of the wildlife adapting fast enough on that one); and 2) the prolonged/higher frequency of droughts across my equatorial-centric Gap, which overwhelmingly imports grains now and faces the highest population growth rates in coming decades.

(Via WPR Media Roundup)

Chindia will have to reduce carbon (but not because of caps)

POST: China-India Deal to Resist Carbon Caps, by Sophie Beach, China Digital Times, October 21, 2009

Shocker here all right!

But it's a weak argument--this historical blame game. Truth is, both India and China will have to reduce carbon for a lot of other, more local pollution reasons anyway.

Still, I understand the desire not to be locked into any agreement, thus this deal-breaker/shaper was one of my "grand compromises" in Great Powers.

(Thanks: Steve Epstein)

Why penalize gays?

ARTICLE: The High Price of Being a Gay Couple, By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD and RON LIEBER, New York Times, October 2, 2009

A gloriously straight-forward argument for gay marriage: the economic penalization factor.

The Catholic-Episcopalian two-way street

ARTICLE: Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold, By RACHEL DONADIO and LAURIE GOODSTEIN, New York Times, October 20, 2009

Again, I find the movement personally ironic, because the primary reasons why I want to leave the Catholic church is over the lack of female priests and the hostility to gays, which simply does not work for my family.

I need a church the whole family can accept, since my spouse and I committed the "sin" of raising a non-straight offspring. And I know that won't be the Catholic Church any time soon, because all the conservative Episcopalians are heading this way, while all the liberal Catholics are heading that way--thus reinforcing the bias of each over time.

I suspect Jesus would find the whole thing completely irrelevant, but since our "historical" Jesus was cast in our Malthusian past--hence the heavy bias on pro-procreation, we live with the outdated rule-set.

Or we simply leave when the moment is right . . ..

More of the same news for Chinese oil companies in the Gap

WORLD NEWS: "Africa Pressures China's Oil Deals," by Benoit Faucon and Spencer Swartz, Wall Street Journal, 30 September 2009.

Mostly about Nigeria, but you see the beginning of the undertow here. I have said this straight up to Sinopec: get into the SysAdmin biz big time or suffer the inevitable consequences.

Same message I delivered to Lock-Mart more than 5 years ago.

Gamers will outnumber pilots in USAF's future

WAR/TECHNOLOGY: "Attack of the Drones: Now that Congress has killed the F-22, the Air Force is facing another shock to the system: planes without pilots," by Fred Kaplan, Newsweek, 28 September 2009.

Key bit:

For the first time in history, the Air Force will train more joy stick pilots than new fighter and bomber pilots.

A staple of my brief for years, but the real driver here is the competition from Army and Marine drone programs.