Wikistrat post @ CNN/GPS: What Comes After Chavez?

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

This Sunday, the historically disorganized Venezuelan opposition movement is holding its first-ever presidential primary to decide upon a single candidate to challenge long-time strongman Hugo Chavez. With regional governor Henrique Capriles expected to prevail, the aging Chavez faces a younger version of himself: namely, a dynamic rising star promising to transform the political landscape. This time, however, the figure is moving it away from the heavy-handed populism initiated by Chavez after he swept into office in 1998.

Over the course of his tenure, Chavez’s pursuit of “21^st century socialism” in Venezuela has propelled him to self-declared “president for life” status. Among his accomplishments are the systematic and brutal persecution of political opponents and critical journalists, the stacking of parliament with his supporters, various cash-payment programs to the voting poor to ensure his popularity, and - in a related dynamic - the general undermining (aka, looting) of the country’s primary economic engine, the national oil company known as PDVSA. Chavez has also turned Venezuela into one of the most crime-ridden nations in the world with the annual inflation averaging close to 30 percent.

Still, El Comandante has inspired copycat Chavista leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, and has reinvigorated Cuba’s communist dictatorship - all the best friends that money can buy.

But with the de facto dictator mysteriously seeking cancer care in Havana last year, widespread talk has surfaced that this election may well be Chavez’s last. Taking that hypothetical as our starting point, this week’s Wikistrat crowd-sourced analysis looks at what just might lie ahead for a post-Chavez Venezuela.  Here are five pathways to consider.

Read the entire post at CNN's GPS blog.

Last week's Wikistrat collaborative article featured in CNN coverage on Syria

We're in the sidebar that CNN runs listing its "complete coverage" on the deadly events there.

Find it here on their site.

Looks like this:

We're the "how it will end" bit on the bottom of this screen snapshot, more like halfway down on the actual nav bar.

From a Wikistrat crowd-sourced simulation: North American Energy Export Boom meta-scenarios

These are the four master narratives that got fleshed out in the first week of the Wikistrat simulation looking at an unfolding/future North American Energy Export Boom.

We went into the exercise with the four implied "bins" of the X-Y:

1. The lose-lose of North America getting the revolution "wrong" by getting the rule-set wrong (too restrictive out of environmental fears or too loose out of greed) and the Rest of the World either contributing to that outcome or exploiting it for their own equally short-term mindset.
2. The lose-win of NorthAm getting it "wrong" and the ROW drilling ahead anyway, "winning" on terms they find acceptable enough, even if NorthAm might define them as a loss.
3. The win-lose of NorthAm getting it "right" but doing so in such a way as to set off a destructive global competition toward that end; and 
4. The win-win of North-Am getting it "right" and triggering a virtuous QWERTY effect where the world benefits similarly.

The Wikistrat crowd came up with about two dozen scenarios, each filled out to the tune of several hundred words spread across about ten fields that explored their up- and down-sides, uncertainties, risks, etc. At the end of that first week, I thereupon read through everything (after commenting all the way during the week) and binned the two dozen into plausible pathways (roughly the order portrayed above in the bullets per bin). Then, taking all those precursing, in-situ and downstream scenarios in hand, I rethought the original notional master narratives, naming them thusly:

• The lose-lose lower-left scenario becomes What the Frack??#*!, suggesting a rude surprise and significant disappointments and a sense of having one's dream destroyed by circumstances beyond one's control. As a stream, it involves a Euro crash delaying investment flow, thus delaying development and allowing negative environmental evidence (water contamination and seismic activity chief among them) to mount. Then you get the environmental counterattack, as the Not In My Backyard Types declare their opposition (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). The "Erin Brockovitch" fights thus begun, foreign competitors swoop in to both steal the technology and complicate its local application through "lawfare" campaigns designed to keep the fracking revolution bogged down in courts for years. By the time all the legal dust settles, what the energy industry can actually exploit in terms of resources is far less than originally imagined, yielding a "red queen" sort of outcome (running in place) where the additional supply tapped is quickly swallowed up by growing domestic demand and the fabled export boom never quite occurs.
• The lose-win master narrative is dubbed, The Gas is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence, suggesting that, no matter how if unfolds in NorthAm, it seems to go better elsewhere in the world. In NorthAm, a compromise emerges between industry and enviros: short-term regulations allow for a fairly permissive situation but mid-term data collection ensures a legal/regulatory showdown down the road. This situation creates an overall market uncertainty that allows a certain amount of macro-questioning to unfold: Are we trading gains in CO2 emissions (coal to gas on electricity) that are just ruined by releasing more greenhouse gases instead? The NorthAm effort diverges as Canada, less fussy and more greedy in its mindset, moves aggressively to connect its unconventional reserves to Asia and NorthAm industry players decide it's easier to experiment more aggressively abroad, leading to a quick global spread of the technologies. Over time, we witness more desperate Europe (fearing Russian dependence) and Asia (fearing dependence on EVERYONE!) actually moving ahead more successfully with the revolution, with the latter suffering exacerbated water difficulties as a result. In the end, the US, desperate at the lost lead, moves toward national energy companies (public-private partnerships) to try and catch up.
• The win-lose scenario is called, Fits of Peaks, suggesting both more great-power contentiousness (fits of pique) and destabilizing shifts in global energy profiles (akin to the imagined "peak oil" in supply, but here in terms of demand). In this narrative, the US is especially creative in setting up enclaved experiments (the example of letting Native American reservations do things that states cannot) that get around the usual environmental rule-sets. Here, Mexico becomes its own big NAFTA experiment, as the political system there, desperate over PEMEX's decline in oil, sets up a sister national energy company to pursue the fracking revolution and that entity becomes a magnet for investment and aggressive experimentation. Sensing a way to push the Free Trade of the Americas idea, the US uses the lure of cheap energy cooperation to reach out to Latin America in a geostrategically defensive move (good-bye Carter Doctrine focus on the Persian Gulf, and welcome back Monroe Doctrine's historical ambitions regarding the Western Hemisphere's economic and political integration). Yes, OPEC tries to fight back by keeping oil prices low, but the fracking revolution's main impulse (natural gas) still takes off magnificently, giving America a newfound geostrategic confidence that allows it to press China all the more on the negative aspects of its rise in East Asia. The Middle Kingdom, in turn, sensing that America is aggressively organizing the Western Hemisphere to its long-term economic advantage, attempts the same in East Asia. Thus, in an attempt to stave off one sort of strategic vulnerability, the US amplifies another, making this the "be careful what you wish for" scenario.
• The win-win scenario is called, Now We're Cooking with Gas!, which is actually the old marketing catch phrase used in late-19th century America when pushing natural gas stoves as an ungrade to old wood-burning ones. More generally, the phrase has come to refer to a process that has experienced a significant increase in efficiency. Here we talk about the US and Canada coming together to finesse the environmental challenges in a responsible manner, allowing their companies to promote the technology worldwide to their own market advantage. As a result of the long-term boom in incredibly cheap natural gas, King Coal is dealt a death blow first in NorthAm and thereupon globally, as there's now no economic reason for not building gas-fired electricity generation plants almost exclusively (raising the question of what happens to nukes?). Over time, natural gas becomes so plentiful and cheap globally, that a portion of shale gas is siphoned off to gasoline production, so that even the gas-combustion half of hybrid cars are sourced by natural gas - in addition to the electricity part. This development proves a boon for the swapping out of pure gas-combustion automobiles with hybrids and natural-gas fired mass transportation vehicles. Over time, the explosion of cheap energy redefines the North American economic scene, leading to an industrial renaissance and a rebuilding of America's manufacturing industrial base. It also boosts NorthAm's competitive advantage in agriculture, befitting an increasingly voracious global middle class as global climate change stresses crop production in many of the world's emerging economic regions. In the end, all that academic speculation about looming "resource wars" proves to be just that, and the fracking revolution, well-played by North America, is the primary reason why.

Now, with the first week's scenario drill completed, the community moves on to brainstorming and competing their ideas regarding how this range of master narratives could impact the strategic interests of our six main characters: US (NorthAm), EU, China, India, Russia and Brazil.  Naturally, the fate of OPEC will loom throughout the proceedings.

The simulation thereupon unfolds over a third week that focuses on generating strategic options for the six pack of players.

Wikistrat's chief analyst quoted in Reuters piece on cyber struggle landscape

Disagreements on cyber risk East-West "Cold War"

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

Fri Feb 3, 2012 11:32pm IST

LONDON - With worries growing over computer hacking, data theft and the risk of digital attacks destroying essential systems, western states and their allies are co-operating closer than ever on cyber security . . . 

But many Western security specialists say the evidence against both nations -- particularly China -- has become increasingly compelling.

"China is currently engaged in a maximal industrial espionage effort that it justifies internally in terms of a catch up strategy (with the West)," says Thomas Barnett, chief analyst at political risk consultancy Wikistrat and a former strategist for the U.S. Navy. "The key question here is: can China assume the mantle of intellectual property rights respect fast enough to avoid triggering economic warfare of the West... If it can't, then this is likely to get ugly."

Read the entire column at Reuters.

Wikistrat post @ CNN/GPS: How Will It End in Syria?

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

It’s hard to gauge just how strong the Free Syrian Army really is.  It’s clearly growing in size and in its ability to control ever-widening swaths of territory.  But at the same time, Russian and Iranian guns pour into Bashar al-Assad’s government.  And Bashar al-Assad has a steely will to power.

Given the mounting tension, it’s worth thinking through exactly how regime change may unfold and what it’s consequences would mean for the region.

Wikistrat, the world’s first massively multiplayer online consultancy ran an online simulation on what could go down in Syria. Here are the results:

Read the entire post at CNN's GPS blog.

Unfolding Wikistrat simulation on North American energy boom

After the success of the "China as Africa's de facto World Bank" simulation, we start moving expressedly into a series of sims aimed to flesh out the logic of the world's first crowd-sourced strategy book, the proposal for which we're now circulating in NYC. It was about time for me to gin up another, and I was really looking to do something different because I feel like I got my "vision" out in the trilogy.  Plus, I wanted to do something long-term in its thinking.  More details later as things unfold.

For now, we tee up the first of about a half-dozen major sims that will explore the drivers of a particular future world order that I became intrigued with as a result of last summer's Wikistrat Grand Strategy Competition. To me, how the NorthAm energy boom (question mark suggests nothing in this world is a given) unfolds is one of the major global uncertainties.  North America can get it right or wrong on a host of levels, and since we're the inventors of these fracking revolution, the QWERTY effect would be huge, triggering a host of possible future pathways from fabulous to self-desructively nasty in terms of the environment and/or whether or not this great gift becomes an excuse for bad geostrategic choices by the U.S., China, Europe, Brazil, India, Russia - the big six we're focusing on here.  You can say, it's a simple projection: it works or it doesn't.  But the secondary and tertiary pathways that are revealed in this two stage process (NorthAm leads, others follow or ignore) are varied and immense in their capacity to make global stability better or worse.

So, naturally, I'm pretty pysched about the sim.  One thing to go and read a bunch of books and try to get smart enough to cover this in a book, but another to turn loose dozens-to-hundreds of virtual co-authors in a competitive space to brainstorm all the possibilities.

Especially exciting for this sim: we now have senior experts stepping in and providing big-time ideas.  Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, just out from the Kennan job at State (Policy Planning) under Obama, joined Wikistrat weeks back and she brings not just a wealth of experience and keen insight, she's also a not-too-closeted enthusiast for this sort of social networking as a tool to drive new thinking and change old thinking. She's already made a huge contribution to the sim that lays out, in a very clever way grounded in real-world vehicles, how a positive path in NorthAm could go global (as a fellow optimist, my attraction to her scenario was immediate, not because it was rosy per se, but because she elucidated why, given the parameters, this was the best forward-moving deal for the universe of public and private-sector actors working this policy space now in the U.S.).

Other senior experts piping in with their own scenarios include: Gary Hunt, president of Tech and Creative Labs, a tech mash-up that moves software solutions into the energy vertical market; and Chris Cox from Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK), Germany's oldest consumer research org (Chris comes with an energy focus on the fmr USSR realm).

But, as always, the coolest outlier ideas come from the Wikistrat rank and file, and that's the way we love it: "big firm"/senior experts with the go-to-market pillar concepts that structure the sim, and our "sea of entrepreneurs"/younger analysts with all the just-on-the-edge-of-plausibility stuff that most of us seniors have had beaten out of us by experience and bad bosses.  Already there's been a nice cluster of jaw-dropping ideas out of this bunch, many of which see major players gaming the process very cleverly (both in a nice and nasty way).

I've been chiming in throughout on the scenarios ginned up to date (about two dozen).  Each results in a wiki page that gets fleshed out across a dozen or more fields, to make sure we're collectively thinking out the scenario to the degree of robustness. I had given the pool of analysts my notional master narratives (simple frameworks for putting all these scenarios into "bins") and they've responded nicely by distorting the implied framework with all sorts of surprises I hadn't anticipated.  At the end of the week I'll array and string together all these scenarios and rejigger the master narratives to cover enough of them for the next phase of the sim to unfold: brainstorming competiting notions of how these master narratives impact the strategic interests of our six-pack of great powers.

My only fear?  How to stuff all these ideas into one book?  But this is a good problem to have.

Wikistrat's chief analyst quoted in Reuters piece on great-power rivalries in the Mideast

 

Here's the intro and my section:

Global "great power politics" returns to Mideast

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON | Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:28am EST

(Reuters) - With Russia sending warships to discourage foreign intervention in Syria, and China drawn more deeply into Iran's confrontation with the West, "great power" politics is swiftly returning to the Middle East . . .

Chinese officials might be willing to use sanctions to negotiate better oil prices from Iran, but there seems relatively little prospect that they will stop buying even if Tehran's rival Saudi Arabia makes up the difference in output.

"Each time the West tightens the leash, Beijing quietly avails itself of the slack," says Thomas Barnett, a former strategist for the U.S. Navy and now chief analyst at political risk consultancy Wikistrat. "The more explicitly Washington bases its global strategic military posture on the perceived Chinese threat, the more Beijing will welcome - and even overtly encourage - these diversions" . . . 

Read the entire article at Reuters.

Charts of the day: US debt and petroleum

From Business Insider (via Zakaria's GPS site) comes the following listing of who holds US public debt.

• Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
• Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
• Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
• Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
• Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
• Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
• Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
• State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
• Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
• United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
• Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
• State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
• Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
• U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
• China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
• The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
• Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

The Global Post's Tom Mucha writes the post as revelation: See! China doesn't own the U.S.

Okay, so China doesn't own the US anymore than we get all our energy from Saudi Arabia, but China is the single biggest foreign holder - more than 3 times the long-time historical champ UK and more than recent historical champ Japan.

And yes, we do get a picture sort of like our oil situation, where our biggest supplier remains ourself (here, in various forms, accounting for roughly 2/3rds) and other big suppliers remains long-time friends.

But what's also been clear when we've floated large amounts recently is that China is the one great foreign buyer out there who can soak up our surges, so it does play a bit of a Saudi Arabia-like role in things, and that's not to be dismissed.

Then also via Zakaria' site comes the following US Energy Information Agency chart:

The clear long-term trend here, per the North American energy export boom in the works (Wikistrat's next community simulation to begin shortly), is the declining role of petroleum imports, dropping from the high in 2005 (60%) to under half today (49%) and down to just over a third (36%) by 2035.

Things you note:

• Flatness of demand curve!
• Significant rise in production - part of the fracking revolution!

The combo yields America's resumption of its role as a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in over six decades!

Compare that picture to China's and ask yourself if you'd switch energy challenges with them.

Of course not.

But back to the first point: China is the big saver in the system of the last two-three decades. That means it's not only our great release-valve source of money for things like our national debt. It plays that role increasingly around the globe - to wit, the recent Wikistrat sim on "China as the de facto World Bank for Africa."

My point in the pairing: excitement over our improved energy picture, yes, but realism on the future of money - especially given this fear-threat reaction embodied in Obama's strategic "pivot" to China.

China as Africa's De Facto World Bank - the Wikistrat video

This is a recorded briefing that I generated from the recent Wikistrat internal training simulation entitled, "China as Africa's de facto World Bank." It summarizes the points I gleaned from the wide-ranging simulation (dozens of wiki pages filled with all manner of brainstormed ideas, strategies, options by several dozen analysts) and summed up in an 8-page report.

This was the first major video production in the set-up I have constructed - after excruciating testing and accumulation of equipment - in our new rental home, which, in various parts, doubles as my work environment. Fortunately for me, virtually everyone else in my family is in school, with youngest Abebu starting within months. So during the day I have the house completely under control, meaning I can meticulously set up the gear, test at length, and pursue recordings and subsequent processing/production in peace.

Ah, the life of the bootstrapped start-up!

Naturally, comments and suggestions are welcomed on content, presentation choices (there are many ways to skin that cat, given the tremendous volume of ideas generated by any one simulation), and video capture.

One correction already accomplished: on this taping I set up a flatscreen for video feedback (I can see screen's content and myself in foreground) just to the right of the camera.  That gives me a slight off-camera eye orientation, which I thought was fine for simulating an audience interaction. But in retrospect, we decided that a straight-into-the-camera style would be better.  That is accomplished in an improved set-up that involves a smaller feedback screen being place just below the came - as in, within a couple of inches. That way I can look directly into the feedback and be, for all practical purposes, looking directly into the camera. The feedback screen is crucial because all of these briefs will be screen-content heavy and first-and-one-time briefs on my part, meaning I can't possibly memorize every click like I do on my regular brief. In that way, it is a LOT like doing the TV weather: lots of data/info to get through and you need to position yourself in front of the screen while not blocking it.  I do fairly well on this first try, but can obviously get smoother - trick being the feedback presents itself in a mirror image.

Another fix in the works: I lost my clip for my clip-on mike and therefore had to wear below the camera line because my substitute clip ain't so elegant.  That meant I picked up the clicking sound from my remote controller a bit too much - for my taste. New one is in the mail, so next time I'll wear the mike far higher and hopefully not pick up that sound.

Overall, pretty happy with the effort. At first, I repeat the text too much, but I warm up over time and get more extemporaneous and relaxed as I got more comfortable with moving myself around. This is far different from me being tracked by a cameraman on a big stage, because I go completely unconscious on my style and let the camera-guy deal with all that.  Here, with a fixed camera, I have to adjust my style somewhat. So a bit stiff at first, improving throughout, and clearly something I will grow more easy with it as I repeat the process.

Appearance on "The Alyona Show" regarding Obama's strategic "pivot" to Asia

Driven by my WPR column.  Did it Tuesday night.

Worrisome to me in the new house: the upload speed on my cable connection was problematic here, as you'll see in the resulting video via Skype.

I would greatly welcome any ideas on how to improve.

Talking to my AV guy, he said make sure everybody in the house (2 other laptops and 2 desktops) were off the web.  That I didn't do.  He said also to shut down everything on my MacBook Pro, go wired to the modem and turn off my wifi.

Speed testing the wifi just now, I'm 24 mps down and 4 up, so there shouldn't have been a problem. But honestly, there could have been 30 web windows open among the 4 other machines, and I didn't exactly clean up my laptop prior.

NEXT TIME: I'll go wired in the living room that doubles as my video production center and I'll have a Wikistrat pattern behind me and I'll be lit from both sides (with screen forming third point). I'll also take all the steps Greg, my AV guy, outlined.

But again, any other ideas welcomed.

Wikistrat post: Fareed Zakaria's GPS blog at CNN World

China eyes North Korea's minerals; what's next?

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a patent pending crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

Reuters reported that North Korea’s government will shift – for now – to rule by committee instead of by an all-powerful leader.  Most likely, a factional truce was worked out in advance of Kim Jong-il’s death.

Read the entire post at Fareed Zakaria's GPS blog at CNN's Global Public Square.

Here's the voting totals (by readers) as of 1506EST Tuesday:

 

 

Home from Prague, digging out from under

Unfortunately, my one piece of luggage is still touring Europe, thank you British Airways!

For all of you who've been asking:   Yes, Wikistrat ran a post-Kim Jong-Il simulation last spring.  I'm presently summarizing the results.

Going to go below the radar til the end of the year so I can concentrate on getting the house straight and working in preparation of a big simulation that Wikistrat is launching for a client the day after Christmas (a holiday not on everybody's radar in this world).

Will pop back up once thingds are settled here.  No column next week.  First one of year will be my semi-usual top-ten foreign policy wishes for the new year.

Enjoy the holidays!

Quoted in Reuters piece on 2012 predictions

Find it here.

Opening:

Analysis: 2012 could prove even wilder ride than 2011

 

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON | Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:01am EST

(Reuters) - The ancient Mayans attached special significance to 2012, possibly the end of time. That has spawned a rush of apocalyptic literature for the holiday season.

My bit:

   CONFLICT, UNREST 

   After the fall of several veteran Western-backed Arab rulers, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq is seen as the latest sign of the diminishing influence of Western powers in a region they dominated for some 200 years.  

   In the resulting vacuum, regional powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and an isolated and perhaps more erratic Iran appear in increasingly open confrontation. 

   Western intelligence estimates that Iran is moving closer to a viable nuclear weapon have a shorter timeline, and some analysts say 2012 could be the year when Tehran's enemies decide to go beyond covert sabotage with a military strike that could spark retaliation against oil supplies in the Gulf. 

   "The bigger wild card out there is an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and elements of regime control," says Thomas Barnett, chief strategist of political risk consultancy Wikistrat, saying neither the Israeli nor the Iranian leadership looks inclined to back down. "The setting here is scary... something has got to give in this strategic equation." 

   Even if the world avoids a devastating shock such as a Middle East war or a European breakdown, many analysts fear the business of politics and policy-making could become increasingly difficult around the world. 

Claremont Grad U deconstructs their Wikistrat "International Grand Strategy Competition" win

Tuesday Lunch Talk 9-6-11 from CGU SPE on Vimeo.

Interesting.

Concluding my year with the Center for America-China Partnership

Set this up with John Milligan-Whyte and Dai Min of the center last year while I was in Beijing with them selling the "grand bargain" term sheet that I've discussed plenty of times over the months since. It was a fascinating collaboration and I enjoyed fulfilling my one-year "adjunct" stint at the Center.

I wish John and Dai Min the best in their continuing efforts to improve US-China relations. Unfortunately, my increased participation in, and workload at, Wikistrat simply doesn't allow me to sign up for another year.

Then again, having Wikistrat take off is a very good thing.

Quoted in Reuters piece on Syria & great powers

Quoted in Reuters piece about Russia bolstering its naval presence in the Eastern Med while making strong noises about no Western intervention into Syria.

The bits:

As Syria's uprising escalates into outright civil war and begins to drag in other states, it risks fuelling not only wider regional confrontation but also growing antagonism between the world's great powers . . .

That in itself could mark the beginning of a long, bloody, open-ended civil war. And speculation about foreign military intervention could even spark a Cold War-style face-off between Russia and the United States.

Analysts and foreign governments have long said they believed Iran was providing military and logistics support to Damascus, and some now suspect the opposition too is now receiving foreign weapons.

That, many analysts fear, risks further fuelling the growing regional confrontation between Tehran and its local enemies, particularly the Gulf states and emerging heavyweight Turkey. . .

My quote comes at the end.

"The problem with conflict in Syria is that it is much harder to contain than what we saw in Libya," said Anthony Skinner, Middle East analyst for UK-based consultancy Maplecroft.

"It has much wider regional implications that have largely been ignored. It feeds into what is already happening in the Gulf, as well as elsewhere" 

. . . 

"The Russians are signaling that on Syria, it is not a situation where they will publicly protest but quietly and privately acquiesce," says Nikolas Gvsodev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College.

"The danger is that it is not clear what they are prepared to do to stop open intervention."

. . .

"I think the Russians really were spooked by what happened in Libya and are determined to see that nothing like that happens again," said Nigel Inkster, a former deputy chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and now director of transnational threats and political risk at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"In that they are joined by China and most of... the BRICs... (However) since there is clearly no appetite for a military intervention in Syria, the Russian navy's journey looks likely to be wasted."

. . . 

"What you're seeing in the Middle East with the withdrawal of the U.S. from Iraq is Iran moving into an increasingly stronger position," said Reva Bhalla, director of analysis at U.S. private intelligence company Stratfor.

"If Assad survives in Syria, he will also be increasingly isolated and dependent on the Iranians, which will reinforce existing regional fears of Iran's growing influence."

Further stoking events, many believe, is a much wider tussle for power as the realization dawns that some two centuries of regional dominance by outside powers - first colonial Britain and France, then the U.S. - may be drawing to a close.

"We shouldn't be surprised that the Russians - in addition to the Turks and Iranians - feel like they've got an opportunity to expand their political-military influence in the eastern Mediterranean," said Thomas Barnett, U.S.-based chief strategist at consultancy Wikistrat.

"Nature abhors vacuums and so do rising great powers."

Personally, I think Russia has decided it must be present on Syria, lest it allow the entire Arab Spring to pass without so much as a howdy-do.  I think Moscow has some ambitions to re-establish itself in the region, but that the main show remains the Saudis and Iran, with the second bill being Turkey and Iran - the rivalry that I think overtakes all under the right crisis conditions.

Connecting Africa's middle to the coast

Nifty WSJ piece from the 21st.

A standard bit in my Wikistrat's "World According to Tom Barnett" brief: the reality that, as globalization penetrates Africa, a certain political fracturing is inevitable (and not necessarily bad if handled well). How it gets handled well: an overarching effort at regional economic integration so that, when such fracturing happens, it doesn't go zero-sum because everyone is sensing the larger economic opportunity.

Historically, African trade goes like a pin-wheel: lines connecting the middle to the coast. But the colonial set-up of so many states (Africa has more states per square mile than any other continent) creates all these interior situations that are not economically sustainable - thus the connection imperative.

Economic communities meet that challenge, although some serious gaps remain: would be nice to see West package extend southward a bit; need something in Horn eventually, and I suspect it's an expanded EAC; and there's nothing really up top, but there the Arab Spring opens up possibilities considerably.

Right now Wikistrat is running an internal training simulation for the younger analysts that puts me in Yoda mode: Hmmm. Good she will be. The analysis is strong with that one.

The simulation is entitled, "China as Africa's De Facto World Bank." We planned it merely as a training tool, plus a way to - as always - build up the GLOMOD (our online Global Model of globalization made up of all these hundreds of scenario pages). Naturally, working out a few new wrinkles in the established simulation methodology, because we always want to be evolving through experimentation on the edge (new twists, new features, new modules, etc.). I honestly didn't have big expectations for the output, but the padawans, as always, surprise me with their inventiveness.  In the end, they may push us to productize the material. At the very least, they have me thinking that my next strategy book should be a crowdsourced effort throught Wikistrat itself (the next step up from thanking a hundred or more bloggers in "Great Powers"), because just like the International Grand Strategy Competition, this China-Africa sim is generating cool ideas that deserve a wider platform.

Another prominent crowd sourcing effort: competitive but not collaborative

Chicago Tribune story about prominent economists from around country linking up on one site (U Chicago biz school) to post competing answers to a weekly posted policy question.  Site then polls the other economists and you get an agree/disagree/undecided number.

Another nice example of crowdsourcing, but one that highlights the Wikistrat difference: instead of just holding up the challenge in front of the mob and asking the crowd to yell out its answers, Wikistrat asks the crowd to work together, on the wiki, to strategize pathways, outcomes, options and impacts. It's that nonstop dialogue and debate in real-time that makes us different: not just a concentration of opinions but their collaborative interplay.

Still, another interesting example of thinkers reaching for something similar.

NPR's All Things Considered: My appearance yesterday on US-China relations

The segment:

Analyst Spells Out U.S. Interests In Pacific Rim

November 17, 2011

President Obama used his trip to the Pacific Rim this week to announce plans for a new American military base in Darwin, Australia. The move changes the stance of U.S. forces in the region — countering the growing strength and presence of China's military. Guy Raz talks with Thomas P. M. Barnett, chief analyst for Wikistrat, a consultancy that provides geopolitical analysis. He's also executive vice president of the Center for America-China Partnership.

Download this: http://thomaspmbarnett.squarespace.com/storage/20111117_atc_15.mp3 or go here to find the NPR/ATC page.

Going on NPR's All Things Considered today

As Chief Analyst, Wikistrat, to talk about the recent deal/decision to put 2,500 US troops in Australia.

I have no landline, and NPR no fan of skype for whatever reason. We talk drive to WFYI downtown, but I don't have a car (son and wife own those rights on our two vehicles), so I couldn't manage studio effort (and frankly would have turned them down at this point).

Enter an iPhone app. NPR, discovering I have an iPhone, says download "Report IT Enterprise Edition." I need to be on wifi (got that at home office) and in airplane mode. You log onto these NPR servers and voila - the desired connection.

Bravo NPR!

Now if we can finish the taping before my son opens the garage door beneath me . . . 

POSTSCRIPT: It happened, but culprit was wife with kids.  Neat thing about taping with NPR, it's no problem. Just stop taping for a bit, and then I abandon office for my master bath (the sanctuary where I do most interviews).

The interview was okay-to-good with Guy Raz, who's always very nice.  I always feel like I underperform while I'm doing it, but then later, when I hear it, I feel much better. You just never get past that initial instinct at self-criticism.

But then the truly interesting techno part: once done taping, I must disconnect via the app from NPR servers. Then I am asked to name the file my iPhone just made locally, recording only my half of the interview. The app does that so you avoid having yourself taped over the wire, so to speak, and instead you get this much higher quality capture that is then uploaded to their servers as a file for their editing.

Clever as hell, huh?

Score again for Steve Jobs and Apple. I get studio quality sound on NPR and I don't have to drive all the way into downtown Indy to do it.

As a result, I head out now to throw some football with son Jerry, who, after years of never understanding football, despite my taking him every year to Lambeau, is suddenly a total leatherhead thanks to Madden 2011. Now we watch games and he bitches about blown coverages, infrequent blitzs and why the Pack doesn't kick onsides more often!

We're going to the Bucs-Pack game on Sunday and then the Pack-Lions game in Detroit on Turkey Day.