Deep Reads: "Instant Replay" (1968)

I have probably read this book more times than any other in my life.

Why?

I grew up feeling like I was this lost prince of Green Bay Packer lore, because I missed out on the glory years (I have only the most fleeting of memories of Super Bowl II--meaning I remember hiding behind my Dad's chair as they watched the game) but grew up with my Mom's many stories of how her dad helped create the Packer organization with Curly Lambeau and others (now in their Hall of Fame, he is remembered as one of "The Hungry Five" who kept the franchise alive during lean years, to include his innovation of making them a public corporation).  So I always felt a bit out of time, like I arrived too late for everything that seemed to matter so much to my Mom and Dad.

This book, then, became my passport to the glory years (I came of age, remember in the disastrous post-Lombardi era), and I read it compulsively to connect.

It is a great book, but it convinced me to avoid pursuing a college/pro football career (semi-plausible given my size, great speed and vertical 40" my senior year in HS) because of its descriptions of the physical price paid--even then!  I just got this tragic sense of the best years of one's life passing too quickly, and that scared me off in the worst way, because my mind is one of anticipation.

Still the best single book on the Lombardi era.  I read it last when Favre led the team to the SB win in 1997.  

Movie of My Week: "Inception" (2010)

No, I won't be giving away any plot details, because I respect Christopher Nolan's artistic ambition too much to do that.  Saw it Friday night with my spouse and we were gasping and questioning each other throughout. Have no illusion, this is a complex film with a narrative that demands focused attention.  I suggest going light on beverages to avoid the confusion that will come with 1-2 bathroom breaks over this 2:38 film. Then be prepared to be haunted long after by several of the expansive concepts pursued in the film--several of which have informed nightmares throughout my life.

Surest sign that I loved it:  I purposely didn't bring any kids along, because I want to go back with them individually and see it again. This is coming from a guy with a better home theater experience than what I can get in theaters, so it takes a great film for me to go back more than once.  A clear best-pic nom and multiple others, to include best original script (one that has been bouncing around in Nolan's brain for a decade).

[Note added late Saturday night:  I did indeed go back and see it for the second night in a row, something I've done with maybe 5-6 movies in my life, the first being "Apocalypse Now."  I was surprised at how well my ten-year-old could follow it, but he's awfully smart in that way--thanks I think to a lot of good books and complex narrative navigation in videogames.  I liked it EVEN BETTER the second time!]

What I liked:  A bit of return engagement for DiCaprio, meaning similar to his role in "Shutter Island," but he does that sort of stuff so well (confused character with tortured soul) that he's a joy to watch as he ages.  Ken Watanabe also fun to see, and Ellen Page likewise great.  I especially liked the Brit, Tom Hardy, who's a glorious character.  Michael Caine in a bit role, and Marion Cotillard frighteningly luminiscent.

This film has horror, psychological tension galore, action sequences to match a Bond film, head-spinning visuals, but most of all it has a brain.  Nolan delivers something incredibly rare in moviemaking:  you really are pushed to examine yourself and reality throughout.

The film should be viewed in light of his previous efforts ("Memento" and "Insomnia") to explore the theme of sleep, perception, reality, etc.

Nolan is this era's Philip K. Dick and he should be appreciated as such.

The king of soft-kill enters the picture in Iran

A WAPO story that only long-time aficionados (I confess) of Fox TV will celebrate.  

Unlike dozens of other foreign-based satellite channels here,Farsi1 broadcasts popular Korean, Colombian and U.S. shows and also dubs them in Iran's national language, Farsi, rather than using subtitles, making them more broadly accessible. Its popularity has soared since its launch in August.

"The story is so beautiful," said Maryam, a West Tehran housewife who was using a secretly stashed satellite dish on a recent day to tune into Farsi1's latest hit, "Body of Desire," a steamy Spanish-language telenovela. Maryam, who asked that her last name not be used, said she feels awkward watching some scenes in front of her family. Still, she said, she is "hooked."

"It's all about forgiveness, desire and justice," she said, as Cuban actor Mario Cimarro, playing Salvador, rose from a blue sea, his muscular chest only partly covered by his long, dark hair.

Satellite receivers are illegal in Iran but widely available. Officials acknowledge that they jam many foreign channels using radio waves, but Farsi1, which operates out of the Hong Kong-based headquarters of Star TV, a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp., is still on the air in Tehran.

Viewers are increasingly deserting the six channels operated by Iranian state television, with its political, ideological and religious constraints, for Farsi1's more daring fare, including the U.S. series "Prison Break," "24" and "Dharma and Greg."

Rupert Murdoch, that destroyer of American morals, now does the same for Iran!

Go with God, say I.

Amir Taheri on the stagnate quality of Ahmadinejad's second term

Op-ed by Amir Taheri by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

A great listing of Ahmadinejad's woes:

Consider a few items with regards to President Ahmadinejad.

He had promised a reconciliation tour that was to take him to 20 of Iran's 30 provinces in a bid to heal the wounds caused by his disputed re-election. The tour was cancelled when it became clear that such an exercise could play into the hands of an opposition movement that refuses to fade away.

Also cancelled was a promised grand gathering of key regime figures to embrace one another and let the bygones be bygones . . .

Last month, President Ahmadinejad tried to shift attention away from the domestic crisis by announcing the imminent dispatch of a flotilla to defy Israel's blockade of Gaza. This week the entire exercise was cancelled with a terse announcement that 'international configurations' did not favour the sending of the flotilla.

Ahmadinejad had claimed that pro-Iran forces would win the Iraqi general election and create a new hinterland for the Islamic Republic. That did not happen. Iraq is now likely to emerge as an independent power with no interest in serving the Khomeinist regime's regional ambitions.

There was more bad news for Ahmadinejad. The manoeuvre he had concocted with Brazil and Turkey to divide the UN's Security Council failed to stop the imposition of the toughest sanctions yet on the Islamic Republic. The UN move was immediately followed by the imposition of even tougher sanctions by the European Union . . . 

The much heralded 'pipeline of peace' that was supposed to transport $4 billion worth of Iranian natural gas to Pakistan and India will remain a pipe-dream. Both India and Pakistan have withdrawn from the project, citing the UN sanctions as an excuse.

Also cancelled are a series of agreements with Western and Asian companies to develop the South Pars gas reserves. As a result, the entire project has been handed over to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which, for obvious reasons, lacks the expertise for such an undertaking.

Ahmadinejad had also promised that Iran would become self-sufficient in gasoline by building 12 new refineries before the end of this second term. Work on the promised refineries was supposed to start in August. Now, however, it is clear that not one of the refineries will be built anytime soon . . . 

With annual growth down to around two percent and unemployment rising at the rate of 3000 jobs lost each day, according to the Ministry of Labour in Tehran, Ahmadinejad's second term has not had a bright start on the economic front. As for his much advertised privatisation scheme, the whole exercise is beginning to look like a looting raid by the IRGC . . . Some Iranians call the so-called privatisation scheme ‘the greatest plunder in Iranian history since the Mongol invasion in the medieval times' . . .

For almost a decade the main theme of Iranian politics has been a gradual but steady transfer of power from the mullahs to the military. Ahmadinejad was propelled into the presidency in the hope that he would speed up and smooth out the transition.

Carried away by his unexpected promotion into a major historic role, Ahmadinejad, a frustrated showman, has provoked a series of internal and external tensions that have complicated the transition.

This is not a package that should scare us whatsoever.

Those ads you only see in Washington

WAPO piece on the unique DC advertising culture whereby major defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin, hawk major platforms like new cars:

In the market for a shiny new combat ship? If so, you might be interested in the ads appearing in Metro stations around Washington. "The shape of littoral dominance has a familiar look," Lockheed Martin says over a photo of a sleek naval vessel cutting the waves.

Or how about a nice attack helicopter? Boeing may have just the thing. In a full-page ad in the Hill newspaper, it brags that its AH-64D Apache "is the most powerful and effective combat helicopter in the world."

Tanker planes, light tactical vehicles, jet fighters -- you won't see this kind of hardware advertised in Kansas City or Cleveland, or in Moscow or Beijing. Only in Washington are multibillion-dollar war machines marketed like soft drinks and cellphones. These days, the products of the military-industrial complex are appearing in can't-miss-'em ads in The Washington Post, in Capitol Hill publications such as Roll Call and the Hill, on posters and billboards in Metro stations and even on local radio.

The ads are seen by many but are intended for just a few. With two of the largest defense contracts ever on the verge of being decided, the targets are the several hundred -- and in some cases, several dozen -- people who determine how billions of federal defense dollars will be spent. That means people in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon, as well as a fringe of "influencers" working in think tanks, trade organizations and the media.

Everyone else just seems mystified.

As someone who travels to DC often and usually uses the Metro, I always delight in these ads.  They're just so weird and relevant at the same time.

Naturally, they tend toward the Leviathan side of the house.  Why?  The SysAdmin stuff is all over the news, so it's important to remind decision-makers that this stuff still needs to be bought in some measure.

Brief Reminder: Was 9/11 a transformational event?

Early Office of Force Transformation slide to explain the profundity of 9/11.

Consists of three questions:

1. Does 9/11 serve as an existence proof for the concept of System Perturbations as a new form of crisis?
2. Do System Perturbations thereupon serve as the new ordering principle for U.S. military force structure?
3. Do super-empowered individuals and transnational networks become the dominant trigger agent of system perturbations?

Working these ideas publicly back in 2002, you can see how my stuff dovetailed with John Robb's thinking on "global guerrillas."

Scale on right suggested how far "transformation" had to go to account for this new form of crisis/warfare.

Blast from my past: "It's Going to Be a Bumpy Ride" (1993)

It's Going to Be a Bumpy Ride by Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney, Jr. The Navy is in for some heavy seas if its leaders fail  to adopt a defense vision that gets them in the Washington game  and positions them well with the star players—Senator Sam Nunn,  Congressman Les Aspin, General Colin Powell, and President-elect Bill Clinton COPYRIGHT: The U.S. Naval Institute, 1993 (January issue, pp. 23-26); reprinted with permission Conspicuously absent . . . from this year's election cycle was a coherent debate on the future of U.S. defense policy. Admittedly, in light of this country's domestic difficulties and the general improvement in the world security situation, this debate does not warrant priority right now. But since further big cuts in the defense budget seem inevitable—with renewed efforts to reduce the deficit and fund domestic programs—the next administration and Congress must provide some vision and fashion some policy consensus quickly if they are to avoid mindless reductions by budgetary incrementalism. Actually, the term "incrementalism" is misleading. When the budget agreement's "fire walls" and "caps" dissolve, come consideration of the fiscal year 1994 budget, Congress will no longer be restrained from shifting defense funds to domestic programs. Capitol Hill may balance the reductions, because many principals there still believe in a strong national defense. But these cuts are likely to be anything but incremental. And if Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) gets his way, a serious revision of roles and missions among the services will turn a downward glide path into dramatic changes. This is going to be one bumpy ride, and where the defense establishment will end up remains very sketchy.   Three Defense Visions Three possible defense visions are out there, each suggesting a certain slant for military force structure into the next century. The incoming administration of President Bill Clinton and the new Congress, however, eventually will have to sort out just one, since they and the rest of us believe we cannot afford all three. The visions carry the marks of how far their advocates peer into the future: The Transitioneers focus on the near term. They see a world minus the Soviets as still quite dangerous and seek to "assure the transition" to a safer era. The Big Sticks look ahead to the next regional dustup. They foresee some dangerous conflicts that could upset the new world order, and echo Theodore Roosevelt's advice to "speak softly and carry a big stick." The Cold Worriers take the long view. They worry that internal preoccupation will lead to the dismantling of U.S. military strength, especially in technology, which will render us helpless against the next "global threat," however remote that may seem today. While the camps differ in the length of their visions, their arguments intersect over three basic questions: How much should we reduce the military forces inherited from the Cold War? How should we operate these forces in the new era? Most important, what future world do we seek, and how does military power help us get there? The Transitioneers The Transitioneers' answer to the size question is that the United States should hold onto what has proved to be the best military force in the world by protecting force structure over procurement. Their enemy is global fragmentation, punctuated by ethnic and religious conflicts. The Transitioneers' nightmare is the "Balkans scenario" spreading into the former Soviet republics, where the nukes are. The big backers here have been the George Bush White House and most top Pentagon officials, and their attitude has been "Why change a winning hand?" As for operations, the Transitioneers emphasize forward presence and quick crisis response. That means troops stationed abroad and naval forces operating around the globe. Examples are "911 calls" involving humanitarian relief, antiterrorism, and rescuing U.S. citizens. Peacetime operations are the crux here, with Transitioneers focusing their day-to-day activities on hotspots of the world. Lately the Persian Gulf has been the focus, but now they are also agonizing over how the United States and other nations might seek to use military power to resolve the appalling situations in the Balkans and Somalia. It is not easy to be the 911 force-cum-SWAT team. The Transitioneers' long-run strategy is maintaining U.S. access and influence around the globe. Why? The new world order is very shaky, despite the thwarting of aggression in the Gulf War. If this order is to survive at all, the world's sole superpower must lead the ongoing, often painful transition from the still-dissolving Cold War status quo. TheTransitioneers' mantras are influence, stabilization, and deterrence, none of which is working in Yugoslavia or Nagorno-Karabakh right now, but may be working in Korea, Cambodia, and Central America. The Big Sticks The Big Sticks' approach to the size of military forces is that the United States should preserve the combat power needed to disarm regional bullies threatening our vital interests. Potential enemies include such well-known troublemakers as North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya. Worst cases here are proliferation combined with religious radicalism—the nightmare of a united "Islamic Belt" stretching from Casablanca to Jakarta, armed with nukes. The Big Sticks' strongest advocates are Congressman Les Aspin (D-WI) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell, and their shared attitude is "Let's make sure America wins big when the call goes out." This sits well with younger officers and their families, who want to strike hard, not get killed, and come home soon, if they have to fight at all. For operations, the Big Sticks stress the surge of power projection with bombers, naval forces, and expeditionary land forces. The concept here is to strike out from the U.S. homeland, dominate any regional battle space, and take the offensive at the time of our choosing. They would ensure that ample investments be made in mobility and lift. Day-to-day operations matter less to them than "regional contingencies," with Operation Desert Storm as the template. The Big Sticks focus on the Middle East, but they will go anywhere, anytime. Citing the superpower status of the United States as prerequisite for any new world order, the Big Sticks focus on preserving core combat capabilities despite declining budgets. These warfighters look to scare off or squash most aspiring regional kingpins. In their view, this approach also keeps the peace so countries that wish to live in peace and prosper can forgo military buildups of their own. But the Big Sticks believe in international support and coalition operations, and will take the time to line one up before striking. The public reports on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Guidance reflect this rationale. Regional aggressors are anathema to the Big Sticks, while their mantras are credibility and decisive force. The Cold Worriers The Cold Worriers' view on the size of military forces is that the United States must move from guns to butter and renew itself internally to secure its continued global leadership. The enemy is uncertainty, plus U.S. complacency and retreat from the world. Their nightmare is a fiscally frail United States yielding to economic powerhouses in Europe and Asia. The Cold Worriers' loudest proponents are congressmen whose attitude is "Let's meet our real national security needs by putting America first." While not isolationist, the Cold Worriers show little interest in managing current events with military power. Ethnic troubles? See Los Angeles. Proliferation? Try handguns, teenage pregnancies, AIDS, and crack. More internal definitions of national security count here, such as Senator Nunn's plan to have military personnel augment social programs. Viewing industrial jobs, military bases, and reserves as important political links to the public, the Cold Worriers turn the U.S. vision inward to its slow growth rate and decaying infrastructure. For Cold Worriers, stemming global chaos is secondary to getting our own house in order. As for regional troublemakers, Team USA just waxed the world's fourth-largest army in nothing flat. In their opinion, the best way to keep our global leadership is to dispel the stench of decline. Things are safe for now, so they would take advantage and preserve those capabilities the United States needs most for building the military of the future. They are especially proud of U.S. technological prowess and do not want to lose it. The Cold Worriers' mantras are dual-use, industrial base, and competitiveness. Connections to Strategy and Force Structure Those are the highfalutin' national security concepts, but how do they translate into military strategy and force structure? The Transitioneers favor the beat-cop or community-policing analogy: the United States must be out there deterring crime and promoting peace. Otherwise we get called in later to clean up the mess, usually at higher cost. Platform numbers count more than sophisticated weapons, since we need large numbers to cover the world on a regular basis. The Navy and Marine Corps are featured players in this posture. The Big Sticks like the SWAT-team analogy: the United States gets called out only for the really nasty jobs that local authorities cannot handle. Warfighting and readiness are crucial, meaning we keep our edge in people and technology. The Air Force and Army are heavy hitters in this military, although naval forces may set the stage by arriving first and can contribute to the big effort as well from a different direction. The Cold Worriers employ the analogy of the Lone Ranger armed with small, high-tech, silver-bullet forces. Keys include reserves, prototypes, limited production runs, and breakthrough technologies. The domestic side of defense spending plays heavily through jobs and spin-off technologies. The winners here include advanced platforms such as the V-22 tiltrotor aircraft, the Seawolf (SSN-21) submarine or its successor, the AX bomber, and any missile-defense system. All three camps stress the unique U.S. capacity—and thus responsibility—for global leadership, especially in the security sphere. But the Gulf War experience, the new domestic atmosphere, and constrained federal budgets all conspire to force our political leaders to set priorities. It seems clear the United States cannot afford all three defense visions, nor does it make sense to assign one vision to each of the services. Hard choices will have to be made within each service, however, if they hope to keep pace with the public's still-evolving definitions of U.S. national security, not to mention surviving the likely budgetary bloodbath beginning in fiscal year 1994. Looking at the Navy and Marine Corps So how does the Department of the Navy play in these different visions, with their competing goals? One thing is clear: naval forces cannot go their separate ways anymore. They have been strongly admonished to join the nation. The Goldwater-Nichols Act, the riots in Los Angeles, and the Tailhook scandal all say that they have to be sensitive to U.S. culture and economy, and to work closely with their fellow services, the new administration, and Congress. Any other approach is just asking for trouble. With the collapse of the Soviet threat, many defense experts foresaw a decidedly maritime slant to U.S. force posture—no matter what the budgetary outcome—since most of our overseas forces were being pulled home and even disbanded. By default, the Navy and Marine Corps would be the forces left out there to perform the great bulk of day-to-day security tasks. But as time passes, the United States still maintains sizable forces in Europe, Korea, and Japan, so it is not yet clear which are the prime forward forces. More evidence came during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, when the Navy and Marine Corps seemed disappointed that they were not asked to run the show all by themselves. The truth was that the United States could readily defeat a regional power like Iraq only by applying overwhelming force, that is, by using a very large portion of its military assets. Most telling of all, however, is the emerging reality that most of the messy situations cropping up in the Cold War's wake (Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Kurds, etc.) are conflicts internal to states, where the adversaries rarely pay much heed to naval forces steaming on the horizon, however menacing. Since the Cold War's end, senior Navy leaders, as well as the surface community, have tended to favor the Transitioneer argument, because concepts such as presence, access, and influence pervade it and because it requires large numbers of platforms. They see naval forces as the only forces truly deployed forward—the glue of the Mediterranean and the Pacific. The tendency here is to believe the Navy can almost single-handedly assure the transition to a more peaceful world where commerce flows freely. After all, the United States is a maritime nation that communicates with the world only across the seas. But as Desert Storm reminded the Navy and Marine Corps, the Big Sticks have the upper hand now, and the name of the game is overwhelming force applied in joint fashion both over land and from the sea. Desert Storm shifted the focus from numbers of platforms for open-ocean warfare to what you do with those platforms in littoral warfare to influence events ashore directly. The naval contribution can still be quite substantial, as Desert Storm showed, even if naval forces cannot do the whole job themselves. Within the naval communities, the Marines are most drawn to the Big Sticks' approach because of its emphasis on projecting power ashore, something that should force more blue-green integration (i.e., more blue support for green operations). For now, this debate between the Transitioneers and Big Sticks has left the guardians of the U.S. military's finest technological achievement—nuclear-powered submarines—out in the cold. Subs were not a very convincing presence during the Persian Gulf crisis, and they could not deliver as many Tomahawks as surface ships could during Desert Storm. But they have emerged as the premier U.S. nuclear-deterrent force, which is warm comfort for the Cold Worriers. The submarine community also found surprise congressional allies who rose to defend the two or three Seawolf submarines under construction out of concern for the jobs (and votes) it represents for the country's economic (and their own political) future. Given their common fears about the industrial base, the Cold Worriers and the Navy could be natural allies in preserving and advancing technology for an unknown and possibly adverse future. Finally, the much-troubled naval aviation community seems to be split between the medium- and long-term visions. Some aviators like the Big Sticks' emphasis on air power, but they fear the focus on jointness will diminish the role for carrier air. Others prefer theCold Worriers' push for silver bullets, of which the AX would certainly be one, but worry that the new domestic focus will deprive the Navy of the large funds it needs to keep all those carriers stocked with such costly aircraft. It is probably unreasonable to expect the Navy to be any closer to the consensus about the future of U.S. defense vision than either the government or the public. But while the Navy Department has expended much energy developing a new internal vision over recent months, the long-postponed budgetary debate over the post-Cold War U.S. defense posture has finally arrived. One hopes that reorganization and the White Paper " . . . From the Sea" will help the Navy join the fray, because the Base Force has clearly reached the end of its life span. The Choices Ahead We return to the basic point: these visions, taken together, are unaffordable. Choices and compromises are inevitable, especially within the Department of the Navy. Naval forces will probably find the broadest range of satisfaction if they cast their lot with the Big Sticks, rejoining the nation by becoming truly joint team players, as the White Paper has declared. They also can retain their first-class status as warfighters by maintaining their power-projection capabilities. If the touch choices are made on procurement (and they will be unpleasant), naval forces also should be able to improve their technology by preserving a reasonably good share of their current investment budget. The submariners have the greatest problem, but Congress is apparently not inclined to dismantle their technological base. So that capability may yet survive as we grope toward a better future. Even under the most dire budgetary predictions, the United States will still have a Navy second to none, even with substantial reductions in platform numbers. This still sizable force will deploy freely around the world, maintaining its knowledge of the sea and coastal environments and staying in contact with the navies of other nations. Our sailors will not be deprived of their chance to see the world. And they will enjoy more harmonious relations with the other services and U.S. political leadership. But maintaining the best balance among ships, aircraft, modernization, readiness, and deployments will be tricky within the inevitably lower budget levels. The Department of the Navy will be able to manage such a feat only if it continues to regroup the various naval communities and plays the Washington game wholeheartedly. Dr. Gaffney is Director of Concepts Development at the Center for Naval Analyses.  He was Director of Plans for the Defense Security Assistance Agency from 1981 to 1990.  Dr. Gaffney holds a Ph.D. in Government from Columbia University and served in the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1959. Dr. Barnett serves on the Research Staff of the Center for Naval Analyses. He is the author ofRomanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceausescu and Honecker (New York: Praeger, 1992), and has written for both The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.  Dr. Barnett holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.

Kissinger's prescription on Afghanistan

Kissinger in WAPO a while back.  [Sorry, but recent travels have made it hard for me to work my inbox.]

For regular readers of the blog, many of whom sent me the piece, there is plenty of familiar logic.

The core arguments (underlined for emphasis by me):

Afghan strategy needs to be modified in four ways. The military effort should be conducted substantially on a provincial basis rather than in pursuit of a Western-style central government. The time scale for a political effort exceeds by a wide margin that available for military operations. We need a regional diplomatic framework for the next stage of Afghan strategy, whatever the military outcome. Artificial deadlines should be abandoned.

A regional diplomacy is desirable because our interests coincide substantially with those of many of the regional powers. All of them, from a strategic perspective, are more threatened than is the United States by an Afghanistan hospitable to terrorism. China in Sinkiang, Russia in its southern regions, India with respect to its Muslim minority of 160 million, Pakistan as to its political structure, and the smaller states in the region would face a major threat from an Afghanistan encouraging, or even tolerating, centers of terrorism. Regional diplomacy becomes all the more necessary to forestall a neocolonial struggle if reports about the prevalence of natural resources in Afghanistan prove accurate.

Afghanistan becomes an international issue whenever an outside power seeks to achieve unilateral dominance. Inevitably, this draws in other parties to establish a countervailing influence, driving events beyond rational calculation. A regional diplomacy should seek to establish a framework to insulate Afghanistan from the storms raging around it rather than allow the country to serve as their epicenter. It would also try to build Afghanistan into a regional development plan, perhaps encouraged by the Afghan economy's reported growth rate of 15 percent last year.

Military operations could be sustained and legitimized by such diplomacy. In evaluating our options, we must remember that every course will be difficult and that whatever strategy we pursue should be a nonpartisan undertaking. Above all, we need to do justice to all those who have sacrificed in the region, particularly the long-suffering Afghan people.

Nothing to add, except that I see little of this logic from Team Obama to date, although Petraeus gives every indication that he thinks along these lines.

Hitchens's "coalition of the digging" for Afghanistan

Slate piece by Christopher Hitchens by way of Our Man in Kabul.

I like the underlying logic:

This is at least a trillion-dollar national-resource treasure in a country that so far has had a GDP with scarcely any pulse. The governments of NATO—which include countries with vast experience in mining, from Germany to Canada and from Britain to the United States—have had almost no real work to do on the economic front except to distribute aid, itself often a cause of resentment, and waste time trying to "interdict" Afghanistan's only other existing resource, which is opium. Is it conceivable that such an alliance of earth-moving and digging powers could not at last find something genuinely constructive to do in a country where they already have a U.N. mandate for rebuilding and reconstruction? It is true that the Afghan parliament and government have no tradition of oversight, but the parliaments and press and NGOs of the alliance can be pushed to ensure that this is not a mere gouging exercise of the sort in which China likes to engage and that the Afghan people are the main beneficiaries. It seems too good an opportunity to pass up. It also seems like an opportunity far too important to be left in the tender hands of the Taliban.

Hitchens is awfully harsh on China's extractive industries inside the Gap, but his heart is in the right place. Left with little competition, China will do whatever it takes to get the resources out as cheaply as possible, justifying its greed on the basis of those hundreds of millions of impoverished rural folk back home who need a better life (or else!).

So he's basically saying, offer the competition, and use Afghanistan as an incubator of better approaches.

Me, I like this idea plenty, especially Hitchens' tendency to side with India. But I don't want Afghanistan to become an exercise in keeping the Chinese out, but instead make it one of bringing them in under better circumstances, with stronger outcomes.

And, as I've argued here in the past, I agree with the notion of seeing the minerals as a way to speed up regional economic integration as the ultimate means of creating stability vice a Taliban-focused COIN that I believe plays into the enemy's strengths.

Gates: stating the increasingly obvious on Iran

Wash Times story on Gates noting how the clerics have been set aside by the military putsch led by Ahmadinejad's Revolutionary Guards.  Story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Gates the Wise recognizes the value in calling a spade a spade: My "Pentagon's New Map" prediction that the mullahs would lose power by 2010 actually came true, and to our benefit.

Now we face a military dictatorship (Gates' phrase, falling in line with Secy Clinton's descriptions) unblemished by religious nuttiness and thoroughly committed to preserving its power. Ahmadinejad's strategic goal of a non-cleric-based party dictatorship has been achieved.

Why to our benefit?  The cleric-based rule could never be satisfied, because we could never give it what it craved:  control over Islam.  But Ahmadinejad's regime wants something far less and easier to negotiate: regime preservation and recognition of its "great achievements"--just like Brezhnev's "great patriotic war" vets wanted their due, so now does Ahmadinejad's Iran-Iraq vets. And they seek it is such unimaginative ways--the nuclear program.  Nothing we haven't seen before or dealt with.

So either we manage Iran for what it is, or we spend all our time and effort trying to stave off the nuclear achievement--a true fool's errand promoted by those interested in seeing Israel's regional WMD monopoly maintained at all costs.  That brand of "realism" is anything but.

Instead, Iran's achievement ultimately works to our favor. Why? Because it provides us the dynamics we seek to achieve a regional security architecture that's top-down instead of bottom-up and based on the unachievable--for now--goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Ahmadinejad's achievement, as repugnant as it is, moves the ball. Just check out Turkey's responses if you doubt me.

The SysAdmin's workload remains heavy

Christian Science Monitor story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Gist:

It may be only his second day of military training, but Abdullahi Ibrahim Aden is already convinced that he can help bring peace to his war-ravaged nation, Somalia.

Clutching an AK-47 in a field two countries away from his homeland, Aden, a former street kid, refugee, and nurse, is one of the first recruits in an ambitious program run by the European Union (EU) to help train 2,000 soldiers for the fledgling Army of Somalia's fragile Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.

"Somali children, grandfathers, and grandmothers are dying in the streets," says Aden. "That is why I came to be a volunteer, to change what is happening in my country."

Involving 150 instructors from 14 EU countries at a cost of $6 million to European taxpayers, the program is the latest in a series of internationally funded training efforts around East Africa designed to bolster the beleaguered government and nudge Somalia closer to peace after almost two decades of conflict.

Money for logistical support is coming from the United States, which has reportedly already pumped millions of dollars into similar smaller training programs run by local militaries in Uganda and Djibouti over the past 18 months.

Why so crucial? Lack of local resources.

Like all things SysAdmin, it is a matter of pay-me-now-or-pay-yourself-later.

Of course, my critics have long asserted that my vision is so naive in its assumption that Core countries will be willing to do SysAdmin work.  And yet the efforts continue and grow, and Core militaries progressively shift resources from the Leviathan bin (way too expensive for the EU anyway) and into the SysAdmin portfolio. What is needed, of course, is to steer rising New Core powers in similar directions, instead of encouraging their own fantasies regarding the utility of great-power war.

It was never a question of political will, but rather one of finally recognizing the international security landscape for what it is: an era of intense frontier integration that can either be addressed or put off by the dream of future great-power war.  But the integration will proceed apace whether we engage it or not. Globalization is simply that powerful--the essence of our 5GW victory that few on our side are ready to embrace.

Yes, there is plenty of naivete on this subject, but it rests primarily with those who cling to their romantic notions of past warfare.

The answer to our bad reliance on Pakistan is diversification/regionalization

Rand report described in AP piece by way of Our Man in Kabul.

Gist is unsurprising:

Pakistan hasn't quit its habit of courting insurgents, and extremist networks with current or former ties to the government pose a significant risk to the United States and Pakistan's elected government itself, a new study concludes.

A rising number of terrorist plots in the United States with roots in Pakistan stems in part from an unsuccessful strategy by the U.S.-backed government in Pakistan to blunt the influence of militant groups in the country, the report by the RAND Corp. said.

The report to be issued Monday says the May 1 failed car bombing in New York's Times Square is an example of how militant groups, some with shadowy government backing, can increasingly export terrorism far beyond the country's borders.

The United States isn't getting its money's worth for all the billions in aid pledged to the strategically located, nuclear-armed nation, the report concludes. The U.S. should withhold some aid until Pakistan makes "discernible progress," authors Seth Jones of RAND and C. Christine Fair of Georgetown University wrote.

The answer?  Diversification of allies, or what I've long described as the regionalization of the solution set. In the report, rapprochement with Iran is promoted.

Professionalizing the Indian political scene?

 WAPO story on parliamentary bill in India to raise salaries of members, a contentious subject anywhere in the world but more so in India, due to the Gandhi ideal.

Politicians have an image problem in the world's largest democracy. They are blamed for everything -- airline crashes, poverty, terrorism, hunger, cricket scandals. They are lampooned in movies, stand-up comic routines and street plays. In opinion polls, they often rank lowest as youth icons and highest as those viewed most corrupt.

Many Indians cling to the image of a frugal and bare-chested Mahatma Gandhi as the epitome of a politician, even as the burgeoning middle class experiences new wealth and conspicuous consumption.

So when a committee of federal lawmakers submitted a proposal last month seeking a fivefold pay increase, people were shocked. They bashed the idea in tweets, around the dinner table and on TV. Some even praised the British, whose members of Parliament recently decided to trim their salaries in these uncertain economic times.

Indian lawmakers currently take home about $372 a month, an amount most say is embarrassingly low. If the raise goes through, they would make about $1,860 a month -- a little less than the average IT graduate makes fresh out of college in the big city.

"We cannot forever be stuck in Gandhi's image from the freedom movement. In comparison, people think we are all corrupt crooks looting the nation," said Sanjay Nirupam, a Congress Party lawmaker from Mumbai, who wrote a recent op-ed in the Indian Express newspaper arguing for a raise.

Nirupam calls himself a "professional politician," a near-blasphemous term in India.

"My expenses are enormous. About 200 people come to see me every day. I have to offer them all at least a cup of tea, or they will abuse me and call me a miserly politician," Nirupam said. "Most of Mumbai's politicians own beer bars to supplement their incomes."

But in a country where about 300 million people earn less than $1 a day, the thought of a politician enjoying a meal in a five-star hotel or traveling in luxury cars still rankles the masses.

Independent studies show that parliamentary members tend to see their incomes rise substantially once in office, but it ain't because of their salaries, so one side of the argument says you need to pay them better to make them less dependent on lobbyists, etc.

"There is a lot of hypocrisy among Indians. They want young professionals to enter politics, but do not want them to be paid well," said M.R. Madhavan, head of research at the PRS Legislative Research, a group that tracks parliamentary practices.

But not all members of Parliament want more money.

Lawmakers from Communist parties, many of whom live in modest apartments and often carpool to work, told the prime minister that they do not want a big raise.

"The idea of leaders giving themselves a raise is inappropriate. There should be an independent body to decide this," said D. Raja, a lawmaker from the Communist Party of India. "The raise should not appear to be exorbitant in the present economic conditions. Only then people will understand."

Sounds like reasonable advice.

Every country on the rise faces this moment:  when you need to make politics a more honorable and worthy profession.  When Teddy Roosevelt told his rich family that he planned to go into politics, they were aghast at the potential family shame. Politics was then considered such a low and corrupt business, a situation that resurfaced with the Boomer era.  

Why?  Just like back in the late 19th century, this is an era of expanding business empires and rapid frontier integration--just on a global scale this time. So the most "worthy" career tracks are to be found in those realms, not politics. 

But as we enter into a period of great consolidation, when all that natural populist anger must be channeled into useful political progressivism, that's got to change.  And it's got to change especially in rising pillars like India.

All this expansion of globalization means we head into an era of many new rules, and making those rules happen has to be considered an honorable profession.

Nice op-ed buttressing my arguments on Turkey-v-Iran over Gaza

NYT op-ed by way of Michal Shapiro.

See if this sounds familiar:

SINCE Israel’s deadly raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara last month, it’s been assumed that Iran would be the major beneficiary of the wave of global anti-Israeli sentiment. But things seem to be playing out much differently: Iran paradoxically stands to lose much influence as Turkey assumes a surprising new role as the modern, democratic and internationally respected nation willing to take on Israel and oppose America.

While many Americans may feel betrayed by the behavior of their longtime allies in Ankara, Washington actually stands to gain indirectly if a newly muscular Turkey can adopt a leadership role in the Sunni Arab world, which has been eagerly looking for a better advocate of its causes than Shiite, authoritarian Iran or the inept and flaccid Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf.

Turkey’s Islamist government has distilled every last bit of political benefit from the flotilla crisis, domestically and internationally. And if the Gaza blockade is abandoned or loosened, it will be easily portrayed as a victory for Turkish engagement on behalf of the Palestinians.

Bottom line:  this is all about Turkey's countering of Iranian influence, and just like Iran uses Israel as a whipping boy, now it's Ankara's turn, the difference being that when Tehran does it, it hurts US interests and when Ankara does it, it actually serves US interests--given Netanyahu's intransigence on all things Palestinian.

Check this out:  

... a new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 43 percent of Palestinians ranked Turkey as their No. 1 foreign supporter, as opposed to just 6 percent for Iran.

More:

Turkey has a strong hand here. Many leading Arab intellectuals have fretted over being caught between Iran’s revolutionary Shiism and Saudi Arabia’s austere and politically ineffectual Wahhabism. They now hope that a more liberal and enlightened Turkish Sunni Islam — reminiscent of past Ottoman glory — can lead the Arab world out of its mire.

You can get a sense of just how attractive Turkey’s leadership is among the Arab masses by reading the flood of recent negative articles about Ankara in the government-owned newspapers of the Arab states. This coverage impugns Mr. Erdogan’s motives, claiming he is latching on to the Palestinian issue because he is weak domestically, and dismisses Turkey’s ability to bring leadership to this quintessential “Arab cause.” They reek of panic over a new rival.

I keep telling you, Turkey is moving big-time and in ways that benefit the region and US foreign policy interests.

Turkey's like the fourth-year player who's finally coming into his own on the roster.  Yes, a big ego and a bit to handle, but how not to welcome this infusion of talent?

Bringing Russian helos into the Af-Pak mix: a great move

pic here

WAPO story on US buying Russian helos to form the core of Afghan's military force structure in rotary aircraft.

In a turnabout from the Cold War, when the CIA gave Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels to shoot down Soviet helicopters, the Pentagon has spent $648 million to buy or refurbish 31 Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters for the Afghan National Army Air Corps. The Defense Department is seeking to buy 10 more of the Mi-17s next year, and had planned to buy dozens more over the next decade.

Congress pissed because it wants only US firms to provide, but I like us getting the Russians involved. The only way we win in Afghanistan is to get the entire neighborhood involved and incentivized economically.

Another era when it comes to child labor on farms

NYT story on how Labor Dept. is cracking down on farms that employ children and pay them less than the minimum wage.

Story caught my eye because I spent a few years as a child (above 12 but below 18) working on a local farm for what was then less than the minimum wage (I got paid $3/hr and thought that was pretty good in the late 1970s).  A 1938 US law allows kids 12 and over to work on farms with almost no limitations or rules, but Labor is changing that landscape because nowadays, it's most migrant kids doing the labor.

The Obama administration has opened a broad campaign of enforcement against farmers who employ children and underpay workers, hiring hundreds of investigators and raising fines for labor and wage violators.

A flurry of fines and mounting public pressure on blueberry farmers is only the opening salvo, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said in an interview. Ms. Solis, the daughter of an immigrant farm worker, said she was making enforcement of farm-labor rules a priority. At the same time, Congress is considering whether to rewrite the law that still allows 12-year-olds to work on farms during the summer with almost no limits.

The blueberry crop has been drawing workers to eastern North Carolina for decades, but as the harvest got under way in late May, growers stung by bad publicity and federal fines were scrambling to clean up their act, even going beyond the current law to keep all children off the fields. The growers were also ensuring that the workers, mainly Hispanic immigrants, would make at least the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

“I picked blueberries last year, and my 4-year-old brother tried to, but he got stuck in the mud,” said Miguel, a 12-year-old child of migrants. “The inspectors fined the farmers, and this year no kids are allowed.”

Child and rights advocates said they were encouraged by these signs of federal resolve, but they were also waiting to see how wide and lasting the changes would be. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of children under 18 toil each year, harvesting crops from apples to onions, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch detailing hazards to their health and schooling and criticizing the Labor Department for past inaction.

Most definitely a different era, but hard to argue against improving the lot of low-tech, low-education workers in this country, because impoverishing them serves nobody's needs.

I remember my farm labor with a certain romanticism, although I don't know any grown-up former farm kids who do, because they worked the longest hours and didn't really get paid.  Plus, there was no quitting the family farm until adulthood got them an out, which most took, happy enough if they left with all their fingers in tact.

Chart(s) of the day: the "polio of agriculture" versus biotech ag

Trio of Economist articles/editorials on ag trends.

Stem rust is resurgent in Africa and heading northeast toward Central Asia and the Eurasian breadbasket states.  Once wheat's deadliest scourge, it hasn't been this strong since before the Green Revolution. Borlaug's original research and breakthroughs involved controlling stem rust.  Now reborn, it's centered in Africa's great lake states and features a footprint stretching from South Africa to Iran. Like a polio resurgent, the current generations of plants have little immune-system capacity to resist it, having gone decades without "infection."

The current version is known as Ug99 for Uganda 1999.

Meanwhile, biotech is beginning to take off in a serious way, having survived the financial crisis nicely, the technologies long pursued are now mature enough for full commercialization.  Moreover, "developing countries are emerging as major markets and sources of innovation for industrial biotech."

Oh, how the locus on competition has shifted

graphic here

WSJ story where the headline just made me laugh.

It read, “Carriers Go To Battle Over Faster Networks.”

When I first glanced at it, I thought it was a story about naval technology—you know, big decks!

Instead, it was about Google v Apple.

That tells you something about the world we live in, a world in which radical Islam pales in comparison to the rise of the global middle class—where all the real battles will take place and virtually none of them will involve any kinetics.

The jobs-creation killer that is high corporate taxes

WSJ op-ed by Laura D’Andrea Tyson and others lamenting the US’s relatively high corporate tax rates and its effect on dampening job creation here.

Gist:

All of the business leaders interviewed for this study agreed that U.S. tax policy has a “major impact” on their competitiveness and investment decisions, and most said that policies like limits on skilled immigration handicap their companies.  In the words of one executive, tax considerations are “often one of the largest line items in the investment projection.”  Moreover, many of these leaders voiced concern about the future ability of this country to attract and grow corporate investment, R&D and jobs.  U.S. multinationals will not aggressively invest and hire here at home if they can’t realize attractive returns from doing so.

Depressing stuff, given the anti-business mood in Washington.

The phony war posturing continues

Pair of WSJ stories on the further posturing of Iran and Turkey.

Iran gives Syria radar that will do little to prevent Israeli strikes against Iran’s ally but will give Iran that much more warning time WRT Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities.  It could also improve the aiming of Hezbollah’s rockets. 

Meanwhile, Turkey says it has closed its airspace to Israel—a total non-surprise since Turkey already canceled three scheduled mil exercises with Israel after the flotilla fiasco.

This “war” will remain phony until Israel decides to strike, and then we’ll see some heating up across the board, but nothing on the scale of ’73, because nobody really wants to own anything—just restructure the regional arms balance in the short-term.

Turkey the only state in the region really pursuing a strategy worth noting, and it’s mostly economic.