Asymmetry meets asymmetry, and never the twain shall meet

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: "Can Arab Arms Deal Deter Iran, Bolster Security? Critics Charge Lack of Focus on Terror, Political Change," by Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2007, p. A6.

We're already huge vis-a-vis Iran conventionally, so adding to that advantage regionally seems to accomplish little, except earn back some R&D money for the defense firms that benefit.

Meanwhile, does any of this challenge Iran's spreading of soft power in the region?

That's the point of the criticism, and it's fairly sensible.

When the two Koreas meet, which side grows up faster?

ARTICLE: "Korean Leaders to Meet, But Agenda Is Unclear," by Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2007, p. A7.

Only the second time since 1950. With Kim, you never know, with Roh, there's a clear chance to bolster his party's election chances if he makes something happen.

Either way, this conversation has to happen some time, so progress is progress, and here the Bush administration continues to get a passing grade for moving the ball forward on regional dialogue, despite the Clinton-like freeze deal.

The only strategic comms we need

ARTICLE: "When Hedge Funds Meet Islamic Finance: U.S. Firms Hire Scholars To Help Design Products," by Joanna Slater, Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2007, p. A1.

All of this dialogue is based on the Koran disallowing interest, reflecting the pre-economic logic of the source (and by that, I mean, disallowing credit back then wasn't the great limit on economic development that it is now).

Now, it's all back and forth with Islamic scholars to see how far you can bend that rule while still meeting it in spirit, which gets the process at least into the last century and starts accelerating it toward this one.

Yes, it is a contentious dialogue, with risks on both sides, but it's the best type of dialogue, beating any strategic comms or public diplomacy by a ways.

Trying to wrap up negotiations on the advance for the next book with Putnam

Neil Nyren and Putnam like the proposal for the next book, which I will no longer refer to as Vol. III because that's the last thing I want it to be perceived as.

Here's why: because BFA came so closely on the heels of PNM (only 15 months) and had a very similar cover and had "The Pentagon's New Map" on the top of its front cover, way too many people confused it with PNM proper. You would be amazed how many readers of PNM (roughly 100k copies sold in the U.S.) are still waiting for my second book, not knowing that it came out two years ago. I constantly get introduced as the author of "The Pentagon's New Map: Blueprint for Action," as though it's one book instead of two.

That's why I didn't sell anywhere near as many BFA as PNM.

So, as we go back and forth with Putnam on the advance, which they naturally want to base on the second book's sales rather than the first (reasonable business decision on their part), we're naturally of the opinion that--given the right rebranding and separation from the first pair, I've proven I can write something that sells in the 100k range.

Having said all that, I don't regret writing BFA whatsoever. It really did complete PNM and it would have killed me not to have that second half out there.

But indeed, the challenge we face now is penning something that moves beyond that success and replicates it in a confirming way (he can do this more than once). Based on my stuff for Esquire and my columns (When is somebody going to approach me to bundle a chunk of that up in a Ralph Peter's-like annual book? I mean, damn! I've got that going on already in Turkey!), I know the material continues to flow and mature, so the trick is the right big package for a big new flow of ideas and concepts and descriptions and strategies, and that's what we (Jenn, my agent, Mark Warren and I) know we have sitting before Neil as we run down these details.

The actual advance isn't a big deal to me (it gets spread over four tax years on this one). Rather, it's Putnam's sense of commitment on getting their money back, so it's a complex thing where everyone wants everyone else to be properly incentivized, with no one feeling ripped off.

The big anchor for me at Putnam is obviously Neil. He feels strongly about my writing and that matters much to Mark and I and Jenn. You don't walk from that relationship casually. Putnam is Putnam, and I get to deal directly with the man, and that's pretty cool.

Still, all this back and forth over the past two months is draining. The effort is minor. It's the uncertainty and the desire to have it all settled that unsettles.

But these are all great problems to have. I go back five years and I had no such "headaches" that--quite frankly--I would have given quite a bit to suffer then, so it's all relative. My "disappointing" second book sold 75 times as many units as my PhD diss (a classic academic text) and roughly five times as much as your truly "successful" serious policy book, so PNM's legacy is a great one that I can never complain about. It's given me the career I so enjoy now and a work/home balance I wouldn't trade for the world.

A rational take on the Chinese build-up

EDITORIAL: "A price too high: The rise of China is no reason to trample on the non-proliferation regime," The Economist, 4 August 2007, p. 11.

BRIEFING: "The long march to be a superpower: The People's Liberation Army is investing heavily to give China the military muscle to match its economic power. But can it begin to rival America?" The Economist, 4 August 2007, p. 21.

Taken together, a lot of common sense on China's build-up, which is naturally amazingly "provocative" to the Leviathan crowd inside the Pentagon currently running scared from the Long War and its force structure implications, but far less so to anyone familiar with a great power's emergence (is this behavior any more provocative than what America did in the last years of the 19th century?).

The best parts are about China's rather pathetic "tinkering" with carriers (hint: they make better tourist magnets than anything else). Everyone thinks that all it takes to become a superpower is get a bunch of carriers, but they're the ultimate platform, meaning they do nothing on their own, so if you can't master the far more complex logistics and command and control and comms and the all-masterful naval air component, then all you got is bupkis (or a wonderful steel adornment for your pier).

Yes, China's getting respectable in land-based air and its subs are gaining muster, but the only real deal with this crowd is missiles, and last time I checked, they don't exactly project power with any lasting effect.

More to the point, though, is China's complete lack of combat experience. The last warfighting experience is 28 years ago, meaning the very oldest officers once fought Vietnam in an aborted border incursion that was supposed to give Vietnam a "bloody nose" but instead left one on the PLA--not exactly a pass to today's net-centric warfare.

So , sure, catalogue all the new equipment, but every time the Chinese practice anything with anyone, the other side comes away deeply unimpressed. As one Western diplomat put it, "We have to be cautious about saying 'wow.'"

Most definitely, the Chinese military strategists write very tough-sounding stuff, and they're clearly looking into anything that works asymmetrically against the U.S., with a special emphasis on cyberwarfare (almost certain to become the largely impotent chemical warfare of the 21st century--all tech-nerd wet dreams aside), but all that means is now we've got somebody trying to rip off all our military-industrial secrets more than the French and the Israelis (oh my!). If we want the Chinese to stop aggressively hacking into all our industrial and defense and intell systems, then we'll have to co-opt them ... uh ... better than the French and Israelis.

We may think it's all a question of whether China is the 21st century's America versus Kaiser Germany, but from their perspective, there's huge doubt as to whether America settles into a mature English stance or devolves into Nazi Germany.

Frankly, after 8 years of Bush, more people in this world fear our potential future pathway than China's, and that's amazingly sad.

Gearing up for Oz

The meeting, later this month, is a joint Australian Davos Clud-World Economic Forum regional meet, but one that seems slanted to a senior leadership retreat by the Aussies in particular.

Starts on a Friday night, which means I've got to be leaving LA by Wednesday night to get there.

The offer is a keynote and participation on two panels (priv-pub partnerships and the Middle East). It's one of those too-prestigious-to-offer-money gigs, which are nonetheless valuable for networking and follow-on relationships/gigs. I got this offer last year but couldn't make the situation/sked work, plus the offer was like 20 mins to speak and over 50 hours of flying seemed like a lot for just 20 mins.

But this time the timing is much better, so it looks like it's going to work out, with some minor reshuffling on our end.

As a result, I am looking into international travel/health insurance, mostly on the basis of my scary experience in Crete (the MSG poisoning) and just the realization that playing those odds as one gets older is not smart ("What me, worry?").

We grow up by surviving crises

ARTICLE: China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar sales, By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 08/08/2007

The relationship between China and the U.S. regarding its great financial interdependency remains immature at this point, which makes it easily subject to blustery threats and alarmist charges (and even more fantastic solutions) from politicians and wonks on both sides.

To me, this mutually-assured destruction scenario is still in its Curtis LeMay-like phase. People just have no idea what they're blathering on about, but blather they will.

Why does China threaten? Well, obviously it fears America exercising dramatic control over its economy, just like Clinton raises the specter of Chinese control over ours (harder, given the absolute size differential, which means China's "bomb" is smaller than ours--namely, they give us trouble on dollar but we deny them a sales market they cannot live without). That's the essential nature of the MAD interplay. Clearly, neither side is comfortable with that reality, so the rules must be worked out, like they were long ago with Europe and not so long ago with Japan.

Why I find fascinating? This currently poor and sophomoric strategic dialogue reminds us that its the financial MAD that will mature our relationship with China, not Taiwan or China's subs, which, in comparison, seem like puny issues.

Dangerous? You bet.

The chance for miscalculation is not small, and much growing up to do in the meantime.

How do we grow up? That's the scary part. We do it by surviving crises.

Thanks to Dan Hare and Brad B. for sending this.

Water politics in Kurdistan

POST: Hydro-Logic: Kurdistan

After the long preamble, worth reading for the reminders on the water realities of the region. It is an ace that Turkey holds vis-a-vis all its downstream neighbors.

Top-down civil law versus bottom-up case/common law

A question on good books/histories to read on this subject. Much of the world built on the French/Spanish model of civil law, much of it built on the English case/common law model.

Interested in a story I can tell on the subject. I was intrigued by Easterly's presentation on the subject: civil is very "planner" oriented, common/case is very "searcher" oriented. You can guess which suits frontier integration better.

Suggestions welcome.

My first cut, after consulting god Wikipedia, is that you can talk about the Old Continental World and its civil law, which has its historic center of gravity in Western Europe and had a troublesome integration process vis-a-vis the East, where it got mixed up with socialist law to very ill effect (way too top down).

Then you have the Anglosphere extension, based on England.

Looking to the New World, you have the successful integration (via the Anglosphere) of North America and the unsuccessful integration of South America based on the civil code model (Portuguese, French and esp the Spanish).

Africa is a mish-mash bad integration based on the colonial model of economic integration pushed by Europe in competition with itself (the major empires). When that fails, we're left with the bottom billion concentrated there.

Continuing with my theme of Gap shrinking and extending my argument from the USN&WR: it makes sense for a West to focus on politics and governance and security (Leviathan + common law), while the New Core East leads the way on economics (more natural searchers, in Easterly's parlance).

Instead, we keep proposing the opposite in our "big push" and our desire not to "militarize" the Gap (would that we were so reticent to do the same in space).

Hmmmm (gears turning) . . .

McDonald's capitulates to grow

ARTICLE: McDonald's raising China pay after controversy, Reuters, August 7, 2007; 8:57 AM

Historically, multinationals tend to pay--on average--40 percent higher wages than the local economy can provide. Naturally, whenever possible, those same MNCs try to keep their margins as low as possible. That's why they're there in the first place.

But to stay there is not just to provide jobs or goods. It's also to keep the locals happy. Given enough opportunity to vent, the locals can have real impact, which is why trade unionism may well be dead or at least OBE in the Old Core but still a potentially huge force in the New Core.

So why does McD's cave in? Just read the last line in the piece ... 800 restaurants currently and planning another 100 each year.

You need bodies to shrink the Gap

ARTICLE: As British leave, Basra deteriorates, By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, Aug 7, 2007

Britain did a nice job in the south. It was the easier territory, after the north, but they clearly did a better job than we did because they just get this stuff better, thanks to loads of experience (Northern Ireland, just wrapping up now, being the key one),

But the larger truth remains: only so much of that sort of European experience and stamina to go around. Right now NATO's pretty much tapped by Afghanistan alone, with a modest but worthy effort underway in Lebanon and another modest but extremely worthy one planned for Sudan. But in the end, these will largely be primes without any pumps if rising body shops like India and China aren't pulled into the mix and I see that primarily happening as a function of U.S. strategic engagement (begun with India, non-existent with China).

Yes, a Britain can make a Sierra Leone go well pretty much on its own (Collier's point), but remember my point in BFA: you shrink the Gap in waves, mirroring the agglomeration effect of clustered emerging markets.

Thanks to Jeff Jennings for sending this.

FTAs: a train leaving the station without America on board

EDITORIAL: "Trading Without America," Wall Street Journal, 7 August 2007, p. A10.

Great editorial, and yes, I do worry that Murdoch will dumb down the WSJ to the point where complex explanations like this one become far too rare on its pages.

The piece laments the fate of the Korean FTA, now blocked on the Hill. But what caught my eye was the chart on "bilateral trade fever," something that seemingly always happens whenever there's a hold up on multilateral trade negotiations (WTO).

According to the Business Roundtable (March 07), the U.S. has 10 FTAs, the EU 21. China has proposed or is negotiating FTAs with 28 countries. The percentage of the world's trade flowing through FTAs is now estimated at fifty. FTAs negotiated since 2002 in Asia-Pacific number 119, and there are roughly 300 FTAs in the world today.

Feel like we're falling behind in a conversation? I do.

This editorial triggered my column for next weekend, one in which I pirated some stuff from the book proposal for Vol. III currently awaiting an offer from Putnam (damn those August vacations!).

Further evidence that Turkey positions itself for the Kirkuk vote

ARTICLE: 'Turkey to Warn Iraq on Rebel Sanctuaries: Cross-Border Attack on Separatists Appears Likely If Baghdad Fails to Act,' By Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, August 6, 2007; Page A12

Kurdistan: Bird in the hand or three in the bush?

POST: Lessons from the Edge of Globalization: Part 2, Day 1

The key choice for the Iraqi Kurds is this: if they are smart enough to take the bird in the hand and essentially disavow the three in the bush (Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iran), they have a real chance at real independence.

This is the tough choice Kemal Attaturk made in Turkey after WWI (forgetting the rest of the Ottoman Empire) and which David Ben-Gurion made with Israel after WWII (settling for half of what Zionists wanted territorially), and it made their states happen.

Barzani and Co. make this smart but tough call now, and they have a chance. Equivocate or get too cute, and it may all come crashing down. That's why the Iraqi Kurds must give up the PKK inside their territory.

You want a state of your own, you make the tough calls--even if all they do is put off inevitable clashes (remember slavery in the U.S.).

China's still on religious track

ARTICLE: Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia, By Spengler, Asia Times, Aug 7, 2007

During my first trip in China, as soon as I heard a lot of young Chinese describe themselves as the world's largest cohort uninterested in religion, I corrected them by saying, "No, you're simply the biggest future pool of religious-minded people on the planet."

Urbanization is a huge driver: you're removed from what you know so you reach for something new (and Marxism's out of the question!). But so is having kids.

Either way, I stick to my "headline from the future" on China from BFA:

"Spread of Religion Across China Alters Policies, Style of Sixth-Generation Leadership"

China's current generation of young people are, like any youth cohort in a rapidly modernizing country, instinctively turning away from the traditions of their parents, especially in terms of religion. But this overtly secular turn won't last, for as China's first truly modern generation grows into marriage and family, the tendency of all new parents to return to, or find new sources of, religion will naturally kick in. By 2020, China will be a surprisingly religious country, one whose diversity in faith is quite broad. Much like any revival of self-identity through increased nationalism, this largely youth-driven process will mark an accommodation with, or processing of, globalization's modernizing effects--not their rejection. China's sixth generation of leadership, much like the fifth generation that assumes power around 2010, will have been largely educated in the United States, so don't be surprised to see more leaders in China embrace their faith publicly as this generational effect works its way up the political ladder. Over time, demonstrating such connection with the masses will constitute a major source of regime legitimacy, along with--naturally--nationalism. Check out Chinese history. The merging of religion and rule is as old as that civilization.

Overseas Chinese will be the missionaries, the mafias, the traders and the peacekeepers that bring Africa online--right out of Chanda's book. You just wait and see.

Ooh! I think I just found next week's column.

Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this.

China's investment logic will grow more practical over time

ARTICLE: "Feeling the Heat, Not Breathing Fire: A Big Foreign Investment by Beijing Takes a Beating at Home and Abroad," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 3 August 2007, p. C1.

CORPORATE FOCUS: "Steel Offer in China Tests Players' Resolve: Takeover Bid Shows Scramble in Sector; Doubts About Move," by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2007, p. A9.

TECHNOLOGY: "In China, Lenovo Sets Sights on Rusal Market: Computers for $199 to $399 Are Aimed at Farmers in Bid To Reach New Customers," by Jane Spencer, Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2007, p. B2.

Fascinating to watch the domestic backlash already brewing on the Chinese government's recent investment in Blackstone Group, whose share price is falling.

Chinese bloggers, and even some financial media here, have not taken the hammering lying down. They are assiduously tracking the dwindling value of the government stake, and some bloggers and postings in Internet chat room are bitterly questioning Beijing's stock judgment--often in particularly Chinese terms.

"O senior officials of the Chinese government, please do not be fooled by sweet-talking wolves dressed in human skin," said one of the seven scathing Internet postings compiled by an anonymous blogger on Sina.com, a Chinese web site. "The foreign reserves are the product of the sweat and blood of the people of China, please invest them with more care!"

Hmm, maybe China's ability to launch strategic investments won't be an easy as everyone assumes. Maybe it will become an even more volatile driver of popular pushes for accountability in the government.

More generally, we simply should expect the Chinese to be hard bargainers and demanding investors for the proximate reason that they've become the most capitalistic types on the planet right now and for the ultimate reason that demographic pressures will demand high returns (for all the same reasons why our Boomer money seeks out the highest returns, thus tapping "emerging markets" as an investment opportunity) over the long run.

We'll see this domestically in China in the consolidation of industries that otherwise do a bad job collectively in negotiations with overseas suppliers and buyers, tend to pollute at high rates, and generally don't make investments particularly wisely.

In cleaning their industries up and rationalizing them, we should expect Chinese firms to become even more competitive, taking what was a sheer wage advantage and turning it into something more, like a sheer competency in selling to the bottom of the pyramid.

To that end, better China sells cheap laptops in the Gap than we give them away. As Easterly points out repeatedly in "White Man's Burden," when you give stuff away, no one respects you or the good, but when you make them pay at a rate they can afford, they typically value the good/service far more, getting you the outcome you want.

I know, I know, how "immoral" to make poor people pay for life-saving this or that, but the truth is that markets beat welfare every time in changing behavior.

Same question I ask time and time again: do you want progress or just credit?

From New Zealand, a lesson in surviving lost ag subsidies

ARTICLE: "Cultivating a Business: In New Zealand, Farmers Who Lost Subsidies Fine-Tune Their Trade," by Wayne Arnold, New York Times, 2 August 2007, p. C1.

In 1984 a free-market-focused administration comes to power and essentially ends farm handouts overnight, "something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible."

Yes, the farming community was "devastated--but not for long."

Ag remains the island's economic life blood, and most farms are "still owned by families."

The difference? "Their incomes have recovered and output has soared."

Simplest answer? Competition hardened ag in New Zealand, or turned into a "cold hard business" according to a local farm leader.

The logic of going cold turkey?

"When you're not going to get paid for what the market doesn't want, you have to get off your backside and find out what they do want,"said Charlie Pedersen, who, when he is not raising sheep and beef cattle on his farm north of the capital, Wellington, is president of Federated Farmers of New Zealand.

But we are told by American experts that the lessons here are minor, since NZ grows primarily to export while America grows primarily for domestic consumption.

Me personally, I don't see why that matters particularly. If your market is uncompetitive and you make it more competitive, then the unproductive will be culled--plain and simple. We can all cry about the loss of the archetypal small farmer in America, or we can cry harder for what our subsidies do to keep so many Africans in deadly poverty. Pretending both can be saved by handouts is too wrong-headed for words, so Bono, please meet Willie Nelson.

This is not about choosing between "safe" and "unsafe" futures. We have to upgrade our food safety no matter what. The real question is, how much job dislocation is worth Africa's emergence from deadly poverty?

Our treasure versus their blood.

So yeah, New Zealand's experience is worth checking out.

Another two eat some dust on climate change

ARTICLE: "Brazil, Alarmed, Reconsiders Policy on Climate Change," by Larry Rohter, New York Times, 31 July 2007, p. A3.

ARTICLE: "How Ghana's Economic Turnaround Is Threatened: Falling Water Level Stunts Hydro Power; More Energy Needed," by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2007, p. A5.

There is a strong scientific community consensus on global warming/climate change. No one denies that trend except the weird deniers. We can argue on the role of humans in this, and we can argue about the mix of effort on trying to stem this development versus simply dealing with its effects, but clearly, we're in a long-term warming trend that will involve very serious adjustment for much of the world's population, with the biggest challenges faced by the Gap (of course, because wealth is the best protection).

As this trend unfolds, we will see states waver and then fall in line with a growing global movement to deal with global climate change on some level. In this process, we'll see a number of localized System Perturbations act as tipping points (like a hurricane appearing in the south of Brazil for the first time anyone can remember).

The unabashed good on this process can be states changing their minds on FDI and foreign involvement in helping manage and protect their natural resources.

So now we have Brazil being "willing to discuss issues that until recently it considered off the table, including market-based programs to curb the carbon emissions that result from massive deforestation in the Amazon, in which areas the size of New Jersey or larger are razed to the ground each year."

Simply put, people get nervous and demand some action from politicians.

Why this is good is that the old position of New Core that says all this is the fault of the Old Core's previous development and therefore they must pay all will logically yield to something closer to what Larry Summers argues: the biggest payoffs on learning how to stem more damage and mitigating that which cannot be prevented will come in the New Core simply because the most dynamic development processes will be centered there. What we learn in the New Core can both be retrofitted to the Old Core and migrated--as part of the development package--to the Gap as we integrate it.

The water issue can be a huge driver here. For example, Brazil plans a huge network of dams in the Amazon for future power generation. If you recognize the Amazon's role in rain creation, then other connections become apparent too, and maybe you reach the tipping point on responsible management of that immense resource before you reach the tipping point of deforestation.

So what we--together with Brazil--can learn about this process may be crucial to how a Ghana, armed with similar ambitions and far more rainfall constraints both today and in the offing, manages to survive (to include, obviously, challenging the notion of relying so much on dams in the first place), as energy diversification--not independence--is the ultimate goal here.

We have come full circle on strategic un-thought

OP-ED: "A War Best Served Cold: Did George Kennan know the best way to fight terrorism?" by Nicholas Thompson, New York Times, 31 July 2007, p. A23.

The dearth of strategic thinking reaches a new low, or maybe this is just a Kennan scholar pre-hawking his new book.

Now we get the out-of-time argument that containment is the answer on radical Islam.

It's not much of an argument, but rather a decent rehashing of Kennan's thinking on the Sovs. The problem here, of course, is that al-Qaida doesn't translate well to an authoritarian empire already in existence.

Another problem, which I flayed at length in PNM, is that global historical forces are moving in a direction very different from that of the late 1940s and early 1950s. We're not in some bilat standoff of camps with little dynamic interchange between them. We're watching a consolidation period unfold following a massive expansion of globalization, one that's simultaneously accompanied by its further expansion thanks to the huge resource draw from rising Asia.

All that comes together to mean we're not exactly in a status-quo-protecting time, so waiting out the enemy doesn't exactly work even though time is amazingly on our side (far more than in Kennan's age).

I'm not arguing against realizing our strengths and moving with more strategic confidence. I'm just saying that anyone who thinks America somehow controls anything beyond its own actions is dreaming.

But, of course, it's that problem that Thompson seeks to address, so I respect what he's reaching for here. It's just that I find the wait-them-out strategic argument to be profoundly misapplied in this era.

Globalization will shrink the Gap in the next few decades. That's not our call, although we can certainly do much to sabotage that process at immense cost to our nation. But there is no waiting strategy that makes sense, unless we simply want to sideline ourselves from the process and the huge amount of rule-set resets on the horizon.

To me, that's not being careful. That's being very reckless and indulging in the sort of isolationist thinking that Kennan always battled in himself.

The growing free trade union movement in Iran (sound familiar?)

OP-ED: "Domestic Terror in Iran: Iranians are restive. And it's no coincidence the mullahs have just carried out the largest wave of executions since 1984," by Amir Taheri, Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2007, p. A13.

The money section:

The regime especially fears the growing free trade union movement. In the past four months, free trade unionists have organized 12 major strikes and 47 demonstrations in various parts of the country. They showed their muscle on International Labor Day on May 1 when tens of thousands of workers marched in Tehran and 18 provincial capitals. The regime retaliated by arresting scores of trade unionists and expelling many others.

Observers estimate 1,000 workers or more are losing their jobs daily, and "suspicious deaths" are rising.

Beyond that, we're looking at the "biggest purge of universities since Khomenei launched his 'Islamic Cultural Revolution' in 1980."

Naturally, all of this crackdown is augmented by a huge effort to try and cut off ordinary Iranians from outside sources of information.

Naturally, to make all this seem even close to logical, "the regime is trying to mobilize its shrinking base by claiming that the Islamic Republic is under threat from internal and external foes."

Summary?

Iran today is not only about atomic bombs and Iranian-American hostages. It is also about a growing popular movement that may help bring the nation out of the dangerous impasse created by the mullahs.

Again, what Taheri describes is clearly our biggest asset in this struggle. Ask yourself what helps that movement and what would torpedo it by solidifying the grip of the hard-liners.

I say it now in every brief: We got the Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels after we provided the diplomatic top-cover to facilitate their rise by shining a light on the subject of human rights in the region.

Where is that diplomatic top-cover in the Middle East? Why do we constantly let ourselves become captive to various bilateral fights that are kept alive by neighbors fighting proxy wars? How do we expect to move the ball?