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:

 

 

Oh what a night!

Xmas present to wife, who's never been to Lambeau and wanted a piece of this magical season.

ARod's career-high 5 passing TDs and first time GB ever wins 14 games and only second time it clinches home-field-advantage-throughout-the-playoffs.  Plus, first time ever we beat Bears 4 times in calendar year (we also were at NFC Championship at Soldier Field last Jan).

Others: Driver becomes 36th receiver in NFL history to top 10,000 yards, and ARod breaks nearly 3-decade-old passing yardage record of Lynn Dickey (early 1980s).

Real nice seats behind Pack bench, on left 40-yard-line, and a surprisingly warm night - not onerous at all as far as the cold war concerned.

I did not think they would win the SB last year (felt they were a year  early) and feel like Ted Thompson, the GM, erred a bit on the side of offense this off-season - over the far weaker defense, but who knows?  I think they have a great opportunity to repeat, and that's all you can ask for.

Whom do I fear?  Saints and Pats are our mirror images. The Ravens, Steelers and 49ers are more polar opposites, with the Steelers probably providing the worst match-up (strong-enough O, always strong D).

Then again, I would have said the same thing last year.

"The Brief" back in 2002, before Esquire article, before the book, before everything

Gave this brief to the student body of the Naval War College at the request of the president, Admiral Rod Rempt, who introduces me. This is the basic brief I developed for Art Cebrowski while working as his Assistant for Strategic Futures in the Office of Force Transformation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2001-2003.

Spot the comments I make WRT mentor and good friend/colleague Bradd Hayes.  Why? I had just given an interview to a local paper (Newport Daily News) following my selection as Esquire's Best and Brightest. The writer did a job on me, quoting all the self-congratulatory stuff and skipping all the paired self-deprecating comments.  Lesson for me: If you give a reporter the rope, he or she will hang you.

Not that I've ever done that as a journalist . . ..

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!

WPR's New Rules: Worried by China's Rise? Watch Out for its Decline

Much of what drives America’s current phobias regarding China stems from the dual -- and fantastically linear -- assumptions of America’s terminal decline and China’s perpetual ascension. We are thus led to believe that China no longer needs the United States and that America, in turn, can do nothing -- short of increasing military pressure -- to constrain the Middle Kingdom’s rise to global hegemony. On all scores, nothing could be further from the truth. China and the United States suffer a level of strategic interdependency that is vast and shows no signs of reduction. Simply put, America cannot stay rich without China, and China cannot get rich without America.

Read the entire post at World Politics Review.

Prague at Xmas

Flew overnight Wednesday into Madrid, then hopped to Prague.  Arrived late afternoon, got showered and suited up, and then delivered brief to select group of grad students at top local international relations institute (the host: Associace pro mezinarodni otasky, or Association for International Affairs).  Went about 90 and did another 30 Q&A.  Then dinner with Director Tomas Karasek.

Next day I oversleep and am awakened by host  15 minutes before scheduled talk at beautiful nearby old 19th-century building (same place I spoke the night before).  I scramble and we start 10 mins late.  Similar-length effort for select audience of diplomats and others.

Then have lunch with intern, who is my guide for afternoon-long walking tour of Prague.

Pix below.

See them in bigger slide-show format here (just click on any thumbnail to start show).

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. 

My old Y2K brief

This was taped by USIA for use in US embassies around the world in the summer of 1999.  USIA was shuttered for good in September of that year.  Coincidence?  All part of the Y2K conspiracy!

Brief runs almost two hours.  We had to mute the REM song for the closing credits.  I'm sure you can guess the title.

It was a fun brief that I gave close to 100 times around the world across 1999.

Some downtime

After months of bitching to myself about my mortgage, we successfully sold our house yesterday, which meant we had to find a rental home last week and move in over the weekend to accommodate the closing. We could have rented from the new owners, but I don't like doing that and prefer clean breaks when selling houses (this being my third go-around).

As such, I am awash in boxes that need unpacking, so this will be a very light week on the blog, especially since I leave for Prague tomorrow and don't get back til Saturday.

We are very happy with the new house, where the rent is about 1/4 what I was paying on the old mortgage. That was my fault, because we tricked up the old house (new build) considerably, moving in at the height of the bubble.  But that tricked-up nature also meant we could still move it in a bad market when we found the right buyer.

So we feel very lucky to have gotten out of the old big house and into this slightly smaller but simpler home that hasn't sold because the owner is more stubborn on the price than we were with ours.  Our decision to cut and run from the old house is predicated on our desire to move back East in 2014, after several family members finish at various levels of school, and this way we can sked our departure with a lot more confidence as renters than as owners.  The recent market just scared me too much to wait and try and sell it when we really wanted to go, so we just kept dangling the home in the market now and then and eventually found the right buyer at an acceptable price.

What I already adore about this new home (other than the great room (which will soon feature an even bigger home theater screen!): my allergies here seem non-existent compared to the old house.  I think it's because we're not in the country anymore, surrounded by fields.  Or maybe it was something in the house.  Because it's stunning: in the old house, I woke up EVERY morning feeling like I drunk a fifth of vodka, and I'd be so drowsy and feeling so bad that I'd just want to shoot myself. I'd have to sleep about 9 hours to feel coherent, when before we moved in, I typically slept about 6-7 and would just wake up feeling fine - not able or wanting to sleep further.

Well, two nights at the new house and it's like my life is back.  I go to sleep around midnight and pop up awake and refreshed at around 6:30, and it's like my day is suddenly enlarged - plus I don't want to run screaming from the state every time I have to pop a pill, which I haven't bothered doing since we started sleeping here three nights ago.

Absolutely amazing and the best news (along with the significant reduction in housing cost) I've had in a long time.

So, change is good, I typically find.

Plus, the neighborhood here is about 10 times friendlier.  More middle class and less upscale.  Already, our kids have more friends in three days then they did in 5 years in the old development.

All makes me wonder why I didn't do this earlier.

WPR's The New Rules: India's Pastoral Ideal an Obstacle to Globalized Future

When most people think of revolutions, they imagine the overthrow of political orders. By contrast, most of what we see today in globalization’s continued expansion is not violent political revolution, but rather unsettling socio-economic revolution. Yes, when existing political orders cannot process that change -- and the angry populism that typically accompanies it -- they can most definitely fall. This is what we have seen in the Arab Spring to date. But more often this populism leads to political paralysis in countries both democratic and authoritarian. A case in point is the recent controversy in India over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s plan, since scrapped, to allow multinational retail chains like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco to mount joint ventures with local firms in direct retail sales operations. The public uproar showed that at times, globalization is simply too much change, too fast..

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

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

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

Interesting.

Christmas, actually . . .

FT story that reminds me of scenario I ginned up as part of Wikistrat teaser for simulation looking at rising consumerism in East Asia and its impact on various consumer products and food & bev industries.

I can't remember the first time I was in China during the Christmas holiday, but it was probably close to a half decade ago, and I was stunned by how much people embraced the whole concept while treating it as an essentially non-religious holiday.  I mean the country has a huge winter festival holiday (Lunar New Year) that runs in the Jan-Feb timeframe, so how could they pick this up too?

Well, it's that rising middle class that seeks more outlets for its downtime and money. So the Chinese are picking up all sorts of foreign/Western holidays on top of the ones they already celebrate.  Fairly American, actually.

The quote from local expert:

Christmas is like Chinese New Year, even poor people have to celebrate it. Hotels, kindergartens, schools, supermarkets, they all have Christmas decorations. As people born after the 1980s and 1990s grow up, the [Christmas] culture is having a growing influence.

So inscrutable, these people!

Plus, this year, Chinese decorations companies are surviving the downturn in the West by selling far more at home.

India matches China's $3B investment in copper by investing $14B in iron ore

WSJ story from 30 Nov.

India consortium of firms makes winning $14B investment bid on Afghanistan's largest iron-ore deposit, called by experts the crown "jewel" of the country's estimated $1T in minerals.

Supposed to take five years to get mine up and running.  Canadian firm got the fifth block, as the Indian crew won the other four.

This award comes just a couple months after New Delhi and Kabul signed a strategic cooperation agreement.

Article makes the usual noises about Pakistan getting unnerved, but I think this is great - and totally natural. China and India making big investments and ultimately owning the security responsibility surrounding those investments.

To date, China's done nothing with the Aynak copper site, it is reported, due to security concerns.  Chinese companies now projecting a 2014 start date.  

Bet that gets moved up once NATO troops move out sooner.

Putin's woes are worth suffering

Putin's United Russia party carried a supermajority in 2007.  Now, in recent Duma elections it looks like it'll come up short of a majority - maybe 48%.

No, it won't stop Putin from winning the presidency - by any means necessary.  But it will mean he won't have a rubber-stamp parliament, which will prove wonderfully frustrating for Caponesque ruling style.

I have few illusions about what that means in real terms.  Putin will simply rule by decree and ignore the parliament, which will be a center of genuine gravity for a growing opposition to his political delusions of grandeur.

I had wanted Putin to abstain from this egomaniacal choice, but size matters and we're talking one towering behemoth.

But, in the end, I think this will be a good thing for Russia - the pol who stupidly and stubbornly outstays his welcome. That choice will trigger the evolution that's much needed there, and the world won't suffer anything of importance out of Russia in the meantime.

Russia can once again be an important country, but Putin's inability to move anything there in the direction of the future means the country will remain on the sidelines for the near-term.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Clutching for Straws With Energy Independence

The United States is on the verge of an industrial renaissance, according to energy experts enthusiastic about technological advances surrounding the “fracking” of shale gas and the processing of “tight oil.” America is sitting on a century-worth of natural gas, and the Western hemisphere boasts five times the reserves in unconventional oil as the Middle East claims in the conventional category. Suddenly, all our fears of resource wars with China and never-ending quagmires in Southwest Asia seem to melt away, heralding with great certainty another American century based on the promise of energy independence. As “deus ex machina” moments go, this one arrives just in time for a nation magnificently down on its luck and itself.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

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.

Gone to MetLife, hopefully to see Packer's 12th win

I hate playing a desperate team at their home, but brother had ticket (upper level, first row, midfield, Packers' side!) and Wikistrat had business meetings in Manhattan the following day.  So flying into Newark in the ayem to meet up with bro and hopefully notch the 12th win.

Should be good game.  Hoping it's not too cold!

POSTSCRIPT:

Got into my hotel in midtown around 1pm and then ran about 15 blocks to pick up some antibiotics for a sinus infection I realized just this morning that I had.  Nice doc in Indy called it into local CVS.  Just got it at end of virus my kids gave me over Turkey Day weekend.  Caught it early enough so don't feel too bad.  Anyway, to meet my sked I ran about 20 blocks to Penn.

Met my brother at the station and took Amtrak to Secacus, and then a special train to Meadowlands. Then short walk to stadium, which is pretty cool throughout.

Loved our seat in top realm - but first row, above 45 yard line, Packer side, so we saw the game just like on TV (always weird to view DVR later at different angle).

Food pretty good, but beer way expensive: 11:50 for Bass or Stella.

Plenty of Packer fans, but what was great was the game itself. Very exciting right to the end. Talked with my son Jerome by cell about 20 times during the game as he watched at home.  His judgments: Finley drops too many balls, Rodgers holds onto the ball in the pocket too long, and our inside linebackers need to cover passes over the middle better.

Pretty much sums it up, but 12-0 is otay. Actually we're now 18-0, the second longest streak in NFL history (mark shared with handful of teams).  Only left to surpass: Patriots at 21-0.  We'd do that, theoretically, on New Years against the Lions.

I have seen one-third of this streak to date: Falcons and Bears last season in playoffs, then Broncos, Bucs, Lions and Giants this year.

What i will say about MetLife: more urinals in a men's bathroom than I've ever seen, so I didn't miss a single play.

Same trains back to island afterward and I'm feeling awfully beat.

Getting seriously efficient on water use

USA Today story on San Antonio: exhibit A for those that assume we cannot do better on efficient use of resources.

In mid 1990s, city was slapped with restriction of use of aquifier due to endangered species (rare blind salamander).  Instead of looking for new sources, the city went big on cutting use (recycling, more efficient toilets pushed throughout city, etc.).

City now uses the same amount of water it used in 1984, even though population is two-thirds larger. Citizens average about 2/3rd the national average water use.

All of this is crucial given Texas' long and harsh drought - a harbinger of things to come with climate change.

Mayor: "We practice [conservation] religiously.  It's part and parcel of being a San Antonian."

Impressive.

Esquire's Politics Blog: So, How's That Egyptian Revolution Coming Along?

Egypt has just concluded voting for its new parliament — the first round, anyway — with surprisingly large turnouts and little-to-no serious violence. And that should make us all pretty happy, right? Alas, there's a lot of angst out there in the mainstream media and the blogosphere on all the issues that get lumped together in the big, mournful vibe of who killed the revolution? As usual, America's incredible impatience with progress, along with our unrealistic expectations about "new faces" dominating political outcomes, are fueling this growing sense of pessimism. But, in truth, the revolution is going along just fine.

Herewith, some whining you'll be hearing in the coming days — and the truth behind it....

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

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.