Revolutionary Guard unsustainable, Mullah's down

ARTICLE: Iran's Conservative Crackup, BY GENEIVE ABDO, Foreign Policy, DECEMBER 9, 2009

Key bit:

The circle around Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hardening and shrinking -- and more and more, his former allies are turning against him. The regime seems determined to pursue a policy of dictatorship at home and isolation abroad, whatever the cost. Iran's snub of Western attempts to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program -- and the added insult of its recently announced plans to expand its uranium enrichment program tenfold -- are clear signs that cooler conservative heads in Tehran and Qom have lost ground to Ahmadinejad's hard-liners. Many religious Iranians and some conservative clerics, for example, have begun to increasingly feel that the theocratic system has become un-Islamic.

The Revolutionary Guard strategy has been a go-for-broke one, and it's looking like they are stirring resistance they ultimately will not be able to overcome.

But the key casualty in this process? The rule of the mullahs.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

They say we'll persevere

ARTICLE: Similarities to Iraq Surge Plan Mask Risks in Afghanistan, By DAVID E. SANGER, New York Times, December 4, 2009

Nice overview of similarities and differences between Iraq and Afghanistan surges.

Key bit at end:

In the next few weeks, members of the Obama war cabinet are expected to show up in Islamabad and Kabul with one message: We're not leaving. Really.

So no repeat of 1989, we are told.

Afghanistan needs and wants US

POST: Interview With Ahmed Rashid: Afghanistan Needs (And Wants) U.S. Long-Term Commitment, By Michael Hughes, Huffington Post, November 25, 2009

Great interview with the always insightful Rashid.

Key bit:

The Taliban are not only an Afghan phenomenon they are a regional phenomenon. You have Taliban in Pakistan, Afghanistan and in other parts of Central Asia - they are a major security problem in the region. Any U.S. withdrawal will lead to a very quick Taliban conquest, certainly in Southern Afghanistan and probably Kabul - and the government will most likely fall. And that would have severe implications in Pakistan and across Central Asia.

I have no doubt that there are close ties between al-Qaeda's leadership and the Taliban leadership. So, the argument that Afghanistan is not of strategic interest to the U.S. is absurd. Although there is no oil or other major resources in Afghanistan, I don't think the U.S. can tolerate a world where two or three countries in the center of Asia are ruled by extremists.

When somebody as critical as Rashid has been of U.S. efforts in the region says that Afghanistan needs and wants a long-term U.S. commitment, you pay attention.

No inalienable wage-level right

ARTICLE: In N.C., damage not easily mended, By Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post, November 10, 2009

An exploration of how weakly the U.S. pushes retraining in the aftermath of globalization's deadly competition wiping out local jobs.

I love the guy who used to work for $10/hour and won't consider anything less now. Good thing I'm not so uppity, because I wouldn't have made it through 2009 with that snotty attitude.

(Thanks: Ken Hanson)

The evolution of Chinese leadership

FEATURE: China's Once and Future Rise, WPR, November 10, 2009

The J.D. Yuan piece is interesting on two points:

1) exploring the one party, two factions reality of the 5th generation--in effect, the coastal-vs-interior struggle is begetting two parties within one (no surprise); and
2) the lack of national security credentials among the 5th generation, which, when combined with the blow-hard nature of the older military leadership (which has never gone anywhere and fought anybody in 30 years and hasn't sustained a genuine war in half-a-century), naturally gets Western analysts decrying a civil-military gap (Imagine that! The civilian leadership talks soft power while the military guys seem stuck on the hard stuff--how Unusual!).

Upshot? These guys are even more a transitional generation than the last one, having lost much of their youth to the Cultural Revolution. It's not until the 6th show up in the early 2020s that we get a Chinese leadership all grown up in the time/space following Mao, so expect incremental change with this bunch but overall a smarter take on the world than the last bunch.

The right combo of aid and adoption

ARTICLE: Aid Gives Alternative to African Orphanages, By CELIA W. DUGGER, New York Times, December 5, 2009

A very good thing and something our adoption agency in Ethiopia works very hard to do.

Doesn't work for everybody, but does work for some.

But yes, it was a prerequisite in terms of the agency we selected: those who can be helped enough need to stay with their extended families and in Ethiopia, but those who can't make that work need to be offered the option of having their kids emigrate to America and better opportunities.

The clear goal is to reduce any child's time at an orphanage, because institutional living always creates a tough legacy.

In this way, these sorts of direct-aid programs mimic what the Catholic groups have done for years. My family, for example, has helped a number of pre-teen girls in India stay with their families through direct aid. We've been doing that for about two decades.

Nice Kennedy awards

ARTICLE: Kennedy Center Honors 5 With Awards, By BERNIE BECKER and ASHLEY SOUTHALL, New York Times, December 6, 2009

Gotta like the Kennedy awards this year, what with De Niro, Springsteen and that Oscar-Tony-Emmy-Grammy-winning Mel Brooks!

Nice choices, Mr. President.

Tom around the web

+ Tom has an IMDB entry: Thomas Barnett (IV) with the entry: "Tavis Smiley" .... Himself (1 episode, 2009). He's not giving our Patrick O'Connor a run for his money yet ;-)

+ Dale B. Woodhouse included PNM and BFA in his Strategic Thinking for Information Operations list on Amazon.
+ Michael C. Monti cited PNM and BFA.
+ Fear and Loathing in the Blogosphere cited PNM.
+ Twice
+ Prince Books included GP in their Holiday Gift Guide.
+ Cousin Dampier's Blog cited Tom on Obama's foreign policy conservatism.
+ Bookworm Adventures is going to read PNM in 2010.
+ Joe is reading BFA.
+ zenpundit recommends you give GP for Christmas.
+ The Image cited Tom's thinking on China.
+ The Atlantic Wire linked The Bottom Line on Nation-Building.

+ If you need a book review for BFA, you can download a 1,869 word one from AcaDemon for only $59.95!

Can Obama Do More by Doing Less with Climate Change?

Copenhagen sets the stage for the president to reveal his surprising new gamesmanship for tough times: kill the world with kindness, then save the world by asking for help. Find out why America doesn't have to fix everything by itself anymore

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

Our old institutions hinder us from moving to the new

ARTICLE: China showcasing its softer side, By Andrew Higgins, Washington Post, December 2, 2009

The PLA loves to portray its military buildup as essentially peaceful:

The engineering unit that staged the show is spearheading China's growing involvement in international peacekeeping, a cause that Beijing for decades denounced as a violation of its stated commitment to noninterference in the affairs of other nations but that it now embraces.

Today, about 2,150 Chinese military and police personnel are deployed in support of U.N. missions. They serve around the world, from Haiti to Sudan.

And while these details are wonderfully true, it's also clear that China builds past any deterrent requirement vis-a-vis the U.S. and remains intransigent on a key PKO operation right on its western border:

But while increasingly willing to let its soldiers don the blue helmets worn by U.N. peacekeepers, China has shown little enthusiasm for the U.N.-sanctioned mission that currently matters most to Washington -- the war in Afghanistan.

Wariness toward NATO

When the United States wanted to fly a group of Mongolian trainers to Afghanistan in October, China objected to letting the aircraft go over its territory. Beijing eventually gave the flight a green light -- but only after ammunition was taken off the plane, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Though authorized by the United Nations, the Afghanistan mission is led by NATO, an organization China views with deep wariness. Beijing blames NATO for the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war.

China's shock at NATO's military campaign in the former Yugoslavia helped prod Beijing into playing a bigger role in U.N. peacekeeping, said Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and co-author of a recent report on China's peacekeeping activities. China, he said, is "highly unlikely" to send soldiers to Afghanistan to help "what is essentially a NATO operation, albeit with a United Nations blessing."

Of course, our great answer is to keep the operation as NATO-y as possible, because these countries are seen as the only logical source of additional peacekeepers beyond our own.

Nice chicken-and-egg bit, yes?

But it highlights the basic conundrum we've long faced: we need to wean ourselves off our old allies and move in the direction of new ones, but the Cold War's institutions here are more hindrance than help.

Then again, where is the major FDI from Europe in Afghanistan? Ain't there. Instead it comes from China and increasingly India.

But, of course, the future demands a "stronger NATO"!

It'll be interesting to see how that dream fares with the Obama-Gates surge in Afghanistan over the next 18 months.

Kim finds new ways to destroy his people

ARTICLE: North Korea revalues currency, destroying personal savings, By Blaine Harden, Washington Post, December 2, 2009

Kim's evil and greed know no bounds. He wipes out the personal savings of citizens with a brutal revaluation:

The currency move appeared to be part of a continuing government crackdown on private markets, which have become an essential part of the food-supply system in the chronically hungry North.

Nice, yes?

But when the national economy is your personal piggy bank, no such concerns stand in your way.

Arabs aren't priority for Obama

OP-ED: The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama, Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 29, 2009

OP-ED: The deflated Arab hopes for Obama, Washington Post, NOVEMBER 29, 2009

Truth be told, the Arab world is not a priority right now for Obama and shouldn't be, so I'm nonplussed by the disappointment. The rebalancing that needs to occur there is between peoples and governments, and absent effort from below, like we're now witnessing in Iran, there's little the outside world can do except wait on the economic connectivity's continued expansion.

Diehl's argument is fairly sophisticated, but Ajami's starting to sound like such a broken record--as in, he misses Bush and the neocons (boo hoo).

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

Ayudanos!

ARTICLE: Mexican business groups call for U.N. troops, AP, Nov . 12, 2009

The equivalent of asking the international community for relief from America's failed "war on drugs."

Chinese turbines, Texas wind farm: "This is just the beginning"

U.S. NEWS: "Chinese-Made Turbines Will Fill Texas Wind Farm," by Rebecca Smith, Wall Street Journal, 30 October 2009.

This is becoming a political storm of sorts, as Chuck Schumer is pressuring Energy Secretary Steven Chu to disallow any stimulus money to be used to buy Chinese turbines.

China's Export-Import Bank is providing $1.5B in financing for the West Texas project.

The U.S. was the global center for such turbine production in the 1980s, but then it shifted to Europe. Now it sits with China.

A Chinese executive says, "This is just the beginning."

I think he's right.

Turkey is setting up for something larger in its foreign policy

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA: "Turkey and the Middle East: Looking east and south; Frustrated by European equivocation, Turkey is reversing years of antagonisms with its Arab neighbors," The Economist, 31 October 2009.

The Turks give every indication of taking their fate in their hands: too long rejected by the Europeans, they now launch a diplomatic offensive to improve their relations east and south--meaning the Arab world. The Economist says the effort is so large that it takes on the look of an "invasion"--albeit a peaceful one.

Since 2002, Turkish exports to MENA (Mideast/N Africa) increase 7 fold. Turkish construction firms are going like gangbusters all over the region, which is increasingly tied to Turkey through free-trade pacts. The Turks are basically running the build-up of Kurdistan, Iraq, and have recently cut almost 50 cooperation deals with Iraq and 40 or so with Syria. Relations with Iran are also strong.

Credit is given to the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, an IR prof who has described the region as Turkey's strategic depth. His strategy calls for "zero problems with neighbours."

What is gone? The view that Turkey guards Europe from the scary Arab world.

Why it works? There is a strategic vacuum, says the mag, in the region. Iraq is no longer strong, nor is Egypt. Iran is there but opposed by so many regimes, many of whom welcome Ankara as a counterweight. The Saudis prefer to work behind the scenes.

The loser in this process? Israel.

Turkey presents itself as the West's bridge to the region. We should take them up on it, and treat Turkey as a crucial regional great power on that basis.

Actually, it was no surprise at all

TURKEY/INFLUENCE: "Triumph of the Turks: Turkey Is the Surprising Beneficiary of our Misadventures in the Middle East," by Owen Matthews and Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, 7 December 2009.

Matthews and Dickey have written before on Turkey with great insight.

Gist: it's Turkey vice Iran that's the big winner from Bush-Cheney's big bang takedown of Saddam.

Me like plenty.

Turkey, as some readers know, has a special place in my heart because my books always get translated there--pronto!

But it makes sense: Turkey is totally on the make in a strategic sense, so a natural consumer of such thinking.

Naturally, lotsa worries in NATO that Turkey is going Islamist, but I sense that it's more a matter of Turkey just deciding it's happy to be who it is and isn't going to sugar-coat its identity anymore just to make the nervous Euros accept it in their Christians-only club. Good on Turkey, I say, because the world benefits more from a Turkey that's avowedly Islamic and successful in a globalization sense than one that performs a personality transplant to gain entry into the EU.

So the bitching continues: the West frets that Turkey doesn't take Western values into account, and the Turks know damn well that the West rarely takes Turkish interests into account, so turnabout is fair play--finally.

Turkey's economy has doubled in the last decade, and its trade and investment ties are now more eastern- and southern-focused than directed at the EU.

Their logic is impeccable: "We can't be prosperous if we live in a poor neighborhood. We can't be secure if we live in a violent one."

I call it: shrink the Gap from the Seam in, letting the truly incentivized lead the way.

The more Turkey embraces this role, the more it's obviously in the Core. I make the map today and there's no question that I draw the Gap line so Turkey is on the Core-side of the Seam. Like Brazil, it has become a primary integrating agent.

About two years ago I put in a sequence in my Core-Gap map slide where I argue that the integration of the Balkans moved the seam line south to the point where Turkey is now clearly in the Core.

Naturally, it was really cool for me to finally visit Istanbul last May.

Potential players in China's future leadership

POST: China: The leadership succession battle for 2022 begins, By Geoff Dyer, Gideon Rachman's Blog, December 1, 2009

Earliest sightings of 6th generation-types moving into the upper-middle slots and thus presaging front-runners for 2022. It's like an up-and-comer winning the California governorship. Doesn't guarantee anything, but does give you a strong heads-up regarding potential players.

(Thanks: Terry McCormick)

The coming revolution/accommodation in marriage and adultery

HEALTH & WELLNESS: "Of Love and Alzheimer's: When Caregivers Find New Companions, Is It Adultery?" by Alicia Mundy, Wall Street Journal, 3 November 2009.

The movie "Away from Her" got Julie Christy an Oscar nom. It is excruciating to watch: Christy's character gets Alzheimer's, eventually has to go into a home, and once there, she takes up with another patient, basically forgetting her lifelong love and husband, who is crushed. In his agony, he ends up seeking a relationship with the wife of the second man.

It is all very brutal, but completely understandable: people still need to connect--especially when put under such stress.

I see a future of life extension in which these questions loom very large, creating all sorts of social dynamics beyond the current norm (if you have any widow relatives, you know what I'm talking about, as they tend to be constantly beset by male widowers who simply cannot handle being alone late in life [and who can blame them?]).

Complex stuff.

A cheaper glass of water from the sea

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: "Cheaper desalination: Current thinking; A fresh way to take the salt out of seawater," The Economist, 31 October 2009.

Saltworks Technologies, founded by two Simon Fraser U (Vancouver) MBAs, says they can reduce the usual cost of desalinization from 3.7kilowatt hours of energy to less than 1kwh.

The key? Using solar heat to evaporate much of the water and increase the concentration of salt before it's sent into the desal unit, where a sort of electrical circuit is created by taking advantage of the fact that salt is made of two ions (positive sodium and negative chloride).

This part gets complicated, so I quote at length:

These [ions] flow in opposite directions around the circuit. Each of the four streams of water is connected to two neighbors by what are known as ion bridges. These are pathways made of polystyrene that has been treated so it will allow the passage of only one sort of ion--either sodium or chloride. Sodium or chloride ions pass out of the concentrated solution to the neighbouring weak ones by diffusion through these bridges (any chemical will diffuse from a high to low concentration in this way). The trick is that as they do so, they make the low-concentration streams of water electrically charged. The one that is positive, because it has too much sodium, thus draws chloride ions from the stream that is to be purified. Meanwhile, the negative, chloride-rich stream draws in sodium ions. The result is that the fourth stream is stripped of its ions and emerges pure and fresh.

The mag says this is a "simple idea" that can be used on a grand scale or in small rooftop units the size of fridges. Lotsa "clever engineering" required, but the low-pressure nature of the work means you can use plastic pipes vice steel ones.

But the calling card is the low-energy usage:

... the only electricity needed is the small amount required to pump the streams of water through the apparatus. All the rest of the energy has come free, via the air, from the sun.

Damn! And I was so hoping for resource wars here, assuming human ingenuity would fail completely!

To use force is to risk embarrassment--and loss

ASIA: "China's navy off Somalia: Cash and carry; A hijack dilemma for China," The Economist, 31 October 2009.

The Chinese navy in the Gulf of Aden last January was the first time the PLAN (People's Liberation Army-Navy) conducted an op beyond the Pacific.

Then you get this hijacking of the Chinese bulk carrier. The Chinese foreign ministry promises an "all-out effort," but it is likely to simply pay the ransom.

Why?

China is probably extremely wary of resorting to force. A botched operation would be an embarrassment for a navy that earlier this year celebrated its 60th anniversary with much hoopla.

Indeed, the PLAN is so famous for . . . nothing actually.

And apparently Beijing aims to keep it that way--for now. I guess, until China gains enough confidence, the PLAN will remain for "the having" as opposed to "the using"--much like nuclear weapons. It is simply too valuable to use, because China could not handle the loss of face right now.

How to gain confidence in using the force without actually using it?

There is no way. That's the conundrum.

Should we help China out of this conundrum? Do we need new friends with military forces? Or are we currently getting all the help we need from our old friends?