Video: Did you know?

I'm not one for these in general, but it's a slick one with a good song and it's a reminder that today's globalization is radically different from the glo-colonialization of late 19th century, the big difference being the individually empowering connectivity--a truly American gift and characteristic that does great good and some bad.

The bit in Great Powers about my networked life and how I can't possibly tell my kids what their careers will be like sought to make a similar impression on the reader.

(Thanks: Mike Nelson)

Sanctions on Iran I would support

REVIEW & OUTLOOK: "Pain Iran Can Believe In," Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2009.

The effort to go after Iran's energy Achilles heel (gasoline production/importation) seems logical enough to me.

Yes, other suppliers can always take up the slack whenever we force a Western company to adhere, but a bit more pressure on this point right now would signal some additional resolve and give us something to bargain away down the road.

Iran imports about 40% of its gasoline.

In general, I don't like sanctions, but the timing and specificity here are attractive.

How does the EU manage a bigger FTA deal with South Korea than America's?

WORLD NEWS: "South Korea, EU Near Free Trade Pact," by Evan Ramstad and John W. Miller, Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2009.

Oops! Wait a tick. Article predicts the same years-long effort to actually get it ratified, making it as aspirational as the U.S. version.

Still, when finally concluded, it would, barring some other deal, represent the largest bilateral trade deal in the world, slightly surpassing the apparently DOA FTA between the U.S. and South Korea.

The U.S. deal served as a template for the EU one. The EU is South Korea's second largest trade partner--after China.

Don't be a drama queen

ARTICLE: The Only Way To Prevent Genocide, By
Tod Lindberg, Commentary Magazine, April 2009

Nice, American-centric presentation of the notion of "responsibility to protect" (R2P).

My favorite, adjacent bit:

We have the privilege to live at a time of unprecedented prosperity, and we know how to generate more of it. Anybody who thinks the present financial crisis has changed these fundamental facts is engaged in the time-honored human propensity for self-dramatization.

Tom around the web

Posts that linked Long live nukes:

+ Real Clear World

+ The Global Buzz

+ Fear and Loathing in Georgetown

+ Rich Tucker (referenced, though didn't link)

In the same vein, links to Again, banning nuclear weapons is a foolish dream and a waste of Obama's limited political capital in national security affairs:

+ pickletoon's posterous

+ HG's WORLD

We also got a lot of links to the post on pessimism porn, How to dull the strategic brain:

+ Andrew Sullivan

+ Born Again Petit Bourgeois

+ Red Tory v.3.0

+ CARPE DIEM

+ 1 Raindrop quoted Admiral Harry Ulrich from Tom's writings on him and his pioneering "sea traffic control" work while in the U.S. Navy (Harry now works at Enterra):

I don't do defense; I do security. When you talk defense, you talk containment and mutually assured destruction. When you talk security, you talk collaboration and networking. This is the future.

+ And linked Get your own foreign policy.

+ Russia Blog mentioned Tom and his thoughts about TR and rising China.

+ Fabius Maximus wrote a post entitled What Tom Barnett should have told Congress about the 21st century Navy.

+ The Daily Clarity discusses Tom re: reducing defense spending.

+ A Better Tomorrow embedded the TED talk.

+ So did Young Sentinel.

+ So did Cow Year DoG Luck.

+ Random Thoughts linked The sacred Leviathan.

+ Roy Mitsuoka reprinted it.

+ gmgDesign.com linked Gates takes a stand.

+ zenpundit linked the last column.

+ Chet Richards linked Why this is inherently a structural crisis.

+ Growth Matters linked Leading the world: China's best route is still its own development and China's own know they're not pros yet.

+ And linked When the going gets tough, the tough go informal.

+ Hugh Hewitt mentioned Tom in his interview with Rick Warren.

+ Alternate Brain linked The Americans Have Landed.

+ Jack McElroy of KnoxNews noted that Tom's column is done.

Long chess game, yielding cool excerpt

Playing my younger son in chess regularly now. Neither of us are more than beginners, but it's fun to see Jerry grind some mental gears because he's got a great mind. If I don't focus, he really attacks and kicks my ass. Lately, I've been bearing down and beating him, but it takes a long time, and I'm trying to teach him to see the valor in that effort--Jerry being the world's toughest loser.

I like that about him; I always was when I was a kid. But I let it really get me down, all those years of playing for the tiniest Catholic grade school in the league and then the almost smallest high school in the league. Jerry's got it bad, to the point where team sports just don't work for him, despite his obvious talents. This year, we start cross-country in the fall (older champion son moves on to HS), and he'll be one of the school's best runners from day one, despite being at the bottom of the age pool. Even then, though, he can't stand losing, which is what will make him a fierce competitor (cross country is the purest willpower/mental domination sport I've ever played) as he builds up racing experience.

Meanwhile, though, as thought experiment, I work him on chess, trying to get him to see his strength gains relative to my extensive advantage--a process that will go about the same speed in the running (i.e., he will close the gap greatly with each year of practice since he'll just get bigger and stronger and smarter and I simply migrate toward 50).

Anyway, today's long game got me fiddling with my book shelf, and I found this bit--randomly--in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography.

Franklin, a natural optimist, says this:

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt (sic) one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half bankrupt, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began this croaking.

Yeah, Ben, but eventually a recession did come and the guy was finally right!

15 with Larry went nicely

His trigger?

The "pessimism porn" post and my musings on choosing optimism as a strategic mindset.

Again, banning nuclear weapons is a foolish dream and a waste of Obama's limited political capital in national security affairs

EDITORIAL: "To Russia With Love: Degrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal," Wall Street Journal, 4-5 April 2009.

Obama's team proposes a replacement to START that would limit both sides to 1k nuclear warheads (not weapons, warheads). We currently have about 4k and Russia has 5k. Bush-Cheney had an agreement with Moscow to go down to 1700 US and 2200 Russia by 2012.

I could live with both sides dropping down to maybe 2500 a piece, but to me, 1k is too low. I like a big, "unthinkable" lead on the rest of the world and I don't worry about having Russia along for that ride, because we cancel each other out in that regard.

But we can argue over the best long-term number. What we should not argue over is this notion of trying to get the world to zero. Since that simply will not happen for rising great powers any time soon, we need to remain many-fold larger than their current/desired arsenal levels, and we need to keep our arsenals in solid shape.

That's why Obama's rejection of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (simple updating) program is deeply flawed. Gates wants it and so does the military. Without it, our arsenal degrades and becomes less safe and less operationally sound.

In short, the RRW is the equivalent of taking all your old VCR tapes of family events and transferring them to DVDs to preserve quality, ease of use, and longevity. This is a no-brainer in terms of national security spending.

But when Obama's opposition is combined with this nutty call for ridding the world of nuclear weapons, then I get really nervous, because everything we do to shrink the "unthinkable" gap between ourselves and the rest of the world will only encourage the rest of the world to close it further. It will not aid in non-proliferation whatsoever, either. Dozens of countries have nuclear capacity but refuse to exploit the weaponization alternative because it provides them nothing in terms of additional security. But once you lower the threshold for great-power war by pursuing the zero option, that will logically change with great speed.

Let me be absolutely clear on this: pursuing the zero option is likely to increase proliferation among those already with nuclear capacity. The reason why they don't now seek that weaponization path is that the gulf between them and truly acknowledged nuclear-weapons states is vast and hugely expensive to overcome. And why bother doing it unless they face the distinct possibility of attack from a nuclear great power?

Given all of Obama's solid calls on foreign affairs and national security, this is a stunning boner--a real clanker that makes the Dems seem foolishly out of touch on hardcore national security issues.

It is Clinton's gays-in-the-military times ten.

The importance of food safety grows

ARTICLE: Food Safety Efforts Have Stalled in Recent Years, CDC Says, By Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post, April 10, 2009; Page A03

The food safety issue may seem boring but it's crucial going forward in both globalization and global warming, as interdependence only increases.

SysAdmin infiltrating the Navy

ARTICLE: 'Reengaging the Navy, at Home and Abroad,' By Captain Chuck Nygaard, U.S. Navy, Proceedings, April 2009

A good example of the rising surface/soft power/SysAdmin community thinking. Naturally, the patron saint Stavridis is cited.

It is significant to see more and more of these articles in Proceedings.

Mr Castro, tear down that wall

POST: House Unveils Travel Bill, Lugar Calls for Talks, Menendez Sulks, By Patrick Doherty, Washington Note, Apr 02 2009

Go Lugar!

Really putting in place the makings of a soft kill on Cuba's communist regime is smart, possibly yielding a fabulous wall-coming-down moment in the first Obama term.

I love to see this political groundswell--about time.

(Thanks: Andrew Andresco)

The Storm has arrived

Thought about the iPod, but DeAngelis, fellow extreme biz traveler (actually, almost no one compares to Steve) warned me off, saying he has one but that it's still too much the toy to be a serious biz tool (so he pairs his with a Blackberry 3G).

Since I am long-time Verizon and a lazy turd on such things, it took Vonne going nuts with her almost 4-year-old phone to call Verizon and realize that she and my two oldest were due free upgrades while I could have the Storm for $100.

So starting to play.

Thought I would have tons of memos and contacts to move over (hard) with my set-up of Macs, but I really found that both needed severe culling, my "treasures" being a huge, accumulated load of crap and outdated info.

I did get the PocketMac for Blackberry loaded on both my iMac and MacBook and so the synching (finally) is easy (Palm never worked well).

I will have to find and figure out the camera and vid but first test says camera is really good.

Neat bit that does what I felt I would only be able to do on the iPod in conjunction with Mobile.Me (Mac coordinated email program): I erase emails on phone and on Mac account simultaneously.

But what I really love is the media-over-the-web capabilities, which mean I can simply listen in on my web-transmitted Packer games with real ease. Way back when, I would play the game out my Mac speaker and relay through phone to my cell. Now, much simplified. I may even be tempted to listen to the radio through the games at Lambeau--for background, smart-pants bragging rights in my section.

Spoke tonight with Matt Stannard of the SF Chronicle. He's got something interesting going on in terms of a story. Keep an eye out.

Tom on Kudlow

Remember, Tom will be on Larry Kudlow's radio show tomorrow at 10:35am ET. Click here to listen in live.

Leading the world: China's best route is still its own development

THE GROUP OF 20: "China Takes Stage as World Economic Power, but its Transformation Is Incomplete," by Michael Wines and Edward Wong, New York Times, 2 April 2009.

FRONT PAGE: "China Vies To Be World's Leader in Electric Cars: New Threat to Detroit; Plan Built on Research, Recharging Stations and Incentives," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 2 April 2009.

The main reason why China can't lead the world for now is that it hasn't established any sort of real leadership yet in Asia and because maintaining its own regime legitimacy remains job #1 of the Communist Party. Neither reality allows China enough risk-toleration to become a serious leader. If you can't suffer losses, you can't handle risk, and if you can't handle serious risk, you can't be a global leader.

It's that inescapable reality that undergirds the hot book in China now, called China is Unhappy. The nationalism that comes naturally with rising is definitely there, but the ambition to act on it simply is not. Fear still overrules confidence, because China's leadership has little sense about what kinds of crises it can survive (like losing a war). When you don't know that, you risk little.

One Chinese economic researcher put it aptly: "Bailing out China is our most important contribution to bail out the world."

For now, China is playing a smart economic game: bottom-feeding aggressively and making plans to dominate markets that dovetail deeply with their own internal development agenda. Aspiring to more than that is a ways off, in my mind, because it'll be a while before China is confident enough in its regime stability to risk global hatred over tough choices that naturally ensue when global leadership is exercised. So long as China stays safely on the sideline, it can call for better behavior by others while offering no alternative of its own.

If Chinese nationalists are serious about desiring global leadership, this is what they must confront: a shift to serious political pluralism in the Middle Kingdom. The only way you can lead is to place large and dangerous bets now and then. You can't do that with a single-party system because, when bets fail, the entire regime is put at risk. In a pluralistic system, "losers" in power can be replaced by the opposition, mitigating the loss and allowing a nation's global leadership to be revived.

Imagine a U.S. that couldn't replace its party in power: it never would have recovered from Vietnam and it wouldn't be able to recover now.

This is the long-term reality China will face: with great power comes great responsibility--and the requirement for great political flexibility.

Latest NEFA report

REPORT: Core Al-Qaida in 2008: A Review, NEFA Foundation, April 8, 2009

NEFA hosted my talk in Charleston Tuesday night, which was a great time, to include a lunch and dinner with senior NEFA people. It's a very interesting group that does an amazing amount of open-source research and info-sharing.

(Thanks: Michael S. Smith II)

News to me: Krugman diagnoses the current crisis without emotion while Brooks overindulges

OP-ED: "China's Dollar Trap," by Paul Krugman, New York Times, 3 April 2009.

OP-ED: "Greed and Stupidity," by David Brooks, New York Times, 3 April 2009.

Brooks, in his weaker moments, is given to superficial reasoning dressed up as deep social analysis with philosophical undertones. Reducing the current financial crisis to greed and stupidity certainly rings with moral certitude, and nobody goes wrong by bashing big banks right now, but it's not enlightening. And when Brooks is really on, he enlightens better than most.

Krugman, on the other hand, has been so rant-ish for so long that you forget he was ever more than the sum of his many angers, but here he is dead on-target regarding the structural nature of the current global crisis:

In the early years of this decade, China began running large trade surpluses and also began attracting substantial inflows of foreign capital. If China had had a floating exchange rate--like, say, Canada--this would have led to a rise in the value of its currency, which, in turn, would have slowed the growth of China's exports.

But China chose instead to keep the value of the yuan in terms of the dollar more or less fixed. To do this, it had to buy up dollars as they came flooding in. As the years went by, those trade surpluses kept growing--and so did China's hoard of foreign assets . . .

Aside from a late, ill-considered plunge into equities (at the very top of the market), the Chinese mainly accumulated very safe assets, with U.S. Treasury bills--T-bills, for short--making up a large part of the total.

Now China is stuck with these low-yield but safe investments and you'd think that holding all that money would give them a lot of influence over the U.S., but the old joke about owing so much to a bank that it's the bank's problem and not yours really holds here. China cannot threaten much in terms of a sell-off, because it would devalue the ace in the hole (foreign reserves) and China cannot move in the direction it should (encouraging the rise of a balancing Asian currency based on the yuan [China], won [SK], and yen [Japan]), because to do so would require China's yuan to be truly convertible, denying the Chinese leadership that powerful tool in its continuing export-driven growth (not so much a manipulation of the currency's value as prevention of its change by market forces--passive aggressive at best).

If China truly wants more say in global economic affairs, it must do so on the basis on demand power, not supply power, but that can't happen until China convinces its public to save less and spend more, and that won't happen so long as China's government doesn't deliver on the two items--pensions and healthcare--that drive ordinary Chinese into hyper-saving mode.

Krugman is right: China's call for a new global currency based on the IMF's Esperanto-like "currency" (really just an accounting measure) is a sign of weakness, not strength. Actually, it's a pathetic concept, revealing how powerless Beijing feels over the situation it's gotten itself into.

Fresh start? Great, but let's revisit the Georgian cease-fire agreement

THE GROUP OF 20: "Promises of a 'Fresh Start' For U.S.-Russia Relations," by Helene Cooper, New York Times, 2 April 2009.

INTERNATIONAL: "Russia Keeps Some Troops In Georgia, Defying Deal," by C.J. Chivers, New York Times, 3 April 2009.

Let's not pretend that Obama had anything to prove to the Russians. This is not JFK meeting Nikita--please. Russia's ability to cause us problems or harm is vastly lower now than back then, and it won't be getting stronger in the future.

Yes, a reset would be nice. While Bush said nice things about Putin, the U.S. mostly blew off any Russian concerns about our national security policy post-9/11, meaning we pretty much ignored Moscow.

When oil revenue puffed up Putin's chest, Moscow got more assertive, displaying its own, rather pathetic version of "shock and awe" in Georgia last August.

Since President Obama's new course neatly removes most of the ill-will between us, the chance now is simply to see the Russians for who they are--an oligarchy business masquerading as a government and a regime that craves respect for its perceived, near-abroad interests.

Obama's need to regionalize AFPAK should address Moscow's ego-needs nicely, but within that context, we should go back to being sticklers on deals that are signed. Moscow signed a cease-fire on Georgia and hasn't lived up to its details. In a world where the U.S. walks away from the ABM treaty and plans to park a missile shield in former Warsaw Pact states, Russia is easily excused from some legal niceties.

But if Obama is serious about establishing a new climate in which America is seen as adhering to standards beyond those of its own, opportunistic choosing, then he needs to press the Russians on Georgia.

Let Russia into NATO

ARTICLE: Poland wants Russia to join NATO, MosNews, 31 Mar, 2009

I've been saying this for too many years to remember. Can't remember the first time I made the argument in print.

(Thanks: David Brooks)

Act our age

ARTICLE: Oil-Rich Arab State Pushes Nuclear Bid With U.S. Help, By JAY SOLOMON and MARGARET COKER, Wall Street Journal, APRIL 2, 2009

I do believe this is the way to go: meet nuclear demand and do it the right way and offer that right way as the alternative to the Iranian route.

Beyond that, extend the nuclear umbrella to Israel and any Arab state that desires it, and rollback Iranian influence at the edges by buying off players, starting with Syria.

You do all that and you engage Iran as a normal state, downplaying the whole nuke thing and getting cooperation where you can.

In short, you act like a superpower.

(Thanks: David Brooks)

Striking example of DoEE

VIDEO: U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual, C-SPAN, 03/27/2009

MANUAL: FM 3-07 STABILITY OPERATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, OCTOBER 2008

James Jeansonne sent in these links saying:

This [video] meeting was, in my view, a striking example of the evolution of thinking at the highest levels of the government and military towards what you have termed "The Department of Everything Else."