WPR's The New Rules: America Need Not Fear Connectivity Revolutions

A lot of international relations theories are being stress-tested by events in the Arab world right now, with some emerging better than others. Two in particular that are worth mentioning are Ian Bremmer's 2006 book, "The J Curve," which predicts a dangerous dip into instability when closed, authoritarian states attempt to open up to the world; and Evgeny Morozov's new book, "The Net Delusion," which critiques the notion that Internet connectivity is inherently democratizing. (In the interests of transparency, I work as a consultant for Bremmer's political risk consultancy, Eurasia Group, and penned a pre-publication blurb for Morozov's book.)

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Deep Reads: "Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia of Leading Women Characters in Mystery Fiction (Volume Three: 1990-2000, revised)" (2010)

The latest revised edition of my Mother's life work in literature: an exhaustive encyclopedia of female protagonists in English-language mysteries  Volume I covered 1860-1979, Volume II covered 1980-1989, and Volume III finished the century out. Protagonists are entered by the year of their first of their multiple appearances.  

The growth in the genre is made apparent in this manner:  from 1861, when "Mrs Paschal" is the first bona fide English-language mystery female protagonist, to 1979, 347 series characters were introduced, or just over 3 a year.  Then, in the 1980s, 298 were introduced, or roughly 30 a year.  In the last decade of the century, the number jumped to 547, or 55 a year.

The book starts with an analysis of how the portrayal of women in mysteries changed over time, reflecting changes in society.  The entries for Volume three include:  marriage and children, parents and siblings, pets and cars as substitutes (for the previous, as many protagonists are motherless women with distant, cop fathers), villains, ethnic and  gender sub-genres (lotsa lesbians over time), handicaps and skills, education, settings, innovations, and how all this reflected the real world of the 1990s.  The entries tend to run 1-2 pages.  The volume runs 1,056 pages.

My Mom's bio is a great example of her clean and direct writing style:

Colleen A. Barnett was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the daughter of a trial attorney [and Packer Hall of Fame inductee!] and his wife.  She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin in Madison [I was the only child to follow her in political science, but now you know where I got it from]. She dropped out of law school after three semesters to marry fellow student John Barnett. When they moved to his home town of Boscobel, Wisconsin, where he joined his father in the practice of law, she remained at home to raise their family of seven children [two early sons died in their first two years]. By the time their youngest child [my younger brother by 3 years] was in grade school, older children were entering college and that was expensive.

Colleen began work as a volunteer coordinator for the Grant Country Department of Social Services [I used to appear in radio spots for Big Brothers], rising to supervisor of the resource unit. Later, she took early retirement with John's encouragement to re-enter the University of Wisconsin Law School where she received her law degree cum laude [and threw her cane over the goal post at Camp Randall during halftime of the homecoming football game, as is the custom].

Later she was employed as an attorney and mediator, and as a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Richland Center.  She retired at age 75 to focus on the revisions of the first three volumes of Mystery Women. Her future plans include spending more time with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and reading for pleasure.

After John's death, Colleen moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where her two daughters live.  She is a member of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime.

The volume series is an amazing accomplishment for a women who's led a busy life.  It is exceptionally well organized and has multiple indices (author, year, character, book).  It is considered one of the definitive reference works in the mystery field, and Mom was nominated several times for major literary awards (Edgars, Agathas), winning one along the way (an Agatha from Malice Domestic in 2002).  I went to the Edgars with her in 2004 (during a break in my Pentagon's New Map book tour) when this book was nominated for best criticism/biographical.

My mom still attends the major conferences every year with my wife Vonne, often chairing panels. They'll be at Malice Domestic in DC in early May.  Last year Vonne got to sit in for a long workshop chat with Charlaine Harris of "True Blood" fame.

The series is available on Amazon.  Mom includes Metsu and Abebu in this edition's dedication.

A scenario for Libya

Map from The Guardian.

Based on what I'm reading, here's how I might gin up the desired exit glidepath:

• By most accounts, Qaddafi is down to Tripoli and a couple other chunks of the country.
• We fear he'll go out Gotterdammerung-style with chem weapons.  He also has some air capacity to bring significant pain to rebel-held territories (how very Saddam-like, yes?).
• So you establish the no-fly-zone (NATO, preferably, but mostly USN in practical terms, although one assumes flying across the Med is no big deal logistically speaking) and lock up the Tripoli and Sidra with naval blockades, committing no troops for now.  You do let the people flow (outbound) proceed, especially whenever it's countries like Turkey trying to get workers out.
• You also lock down Qaddafi's financial network (I assume this has proceeded apace already) and essentially starve him out, taking the hit on higher oil prices in the meantime. 
• They guy survives primarily on a praetorian guard dynamic, so . . . You do your best to signal inward to his forces that there is only one ending and it would be nice if somebody took care of the meddlesome colonel.  Or maybe the rebels simply finish the job with acceptable civilian losses.
• If Qaddafi does go to chem, well then, there's your more vigorous intervention made to order, the justification shifting to humanitarian protection and inevitable roundup of the ICC-indicted war criminals.

To me, this is an ideal sort of SysAdmin intervention opportunity: keep it small and proportional and elevate in response to events. Big point:  not pre-emptive but responsive.  You want to ride with globalization's natural tide as much as possible, letting the "new map" tell you where to apply pressure next, thus making local demand your primary guide.

Naturally, the fearful and paranoid will see the usual Western plot to grab oilfields, but denying the bottom-up nature on this one reduces them to sheer lying.

Me? I see a beautiful, globalization-driven process at work here. Let it roll!  Because I like our longer-term odds versus those of the Iranians, al-Qaeda and the Wahhabist Saudis.  Then again, victory was never in doubt--just timing and cost.

Rare earths: this is how we've done it

The growing brouhaha on China's "monopoly" of rare earth production!

But you have to ask yourself, Why did the US and others abandon production, because they didn't run out. 

Nasty business, rare earth mining, so best to go with a place not too fussy on environmental stuff.  China filled that void nicely, making production too cheap for the rest to keep up, hence the current "advantage."

Now, as China, with its minerals-in-the-ground mentality, considers future access, it starts exporting less and hoarding more.

Hence, the frightening future for the West:  we are denied!  China is ahead!  What are we to do?

Simplest thing, of course, is just to pony up the money for the US mine sitting dormant.  Last I heard it was half-a-billion.

Other route already covered in a WS CoreGap report:  Japan already working on electric motor that uses no rare earths.

But this FT piece points out the easiest route:  just use what you have that much more carefully.  How Amory Lovins.

So GE says they've been anticipating this moment for about a decade (What!  Our intell freaks out our defense specialists just this year and GE has been thinking this through for a decade!  Whew!), which, by my experience, is the norm.  About the time DC starts freaking, you can find industry already 7-10 years working the issue.  

This is really common right now in the US national security establishment: constantly finding new evidence of globally integrated production chains that link us to damn near anybody and then freaking out about the possibility of cut-off.  I remember this one scientist-cum-security expert at Oak Ridge going on about how we import so much of what goes into fertilizer, that it would be so easy for our enemies just to cut it off and then we'd be out of food!  Just like that!  Unfortunately (in this fantastic scenario where our entire crops fail), so would the entire cast of most likely enemies, but that was a detail he hadn't thought through.  Almost all of these scenarios read like Cleavon Little's sheriff character in "Blazing Saddles" when he's confronted by the angry mob and he pulls out he gun, puts it to his own head, and yells, "Nobody moves or the nigger gets it!" Naturally, everybody backs off, thinking the sheriff would do it--hard ass that he was!

But again, these are details only the naive types like myself bring up.

So the story on GE here is that they've been through this deal many times in the past with this or that element, and they have a protocol for making it work.  Example:

Behind the company's confident is experience with previous shortages of critical materials  In 2006, GE turned its attention to rhenium, a rare metal (but not one of the rare earths) used in engine turbine blades, after a rapid run up in prices.

Within three years GE had come up with new methods to recycle the metal grindings normally lost during manufacturing and new ways to recapture rhenium from used blades, and even developed non-rhenium alloys, that cut its usage in half.

When it comes to rare earths, GE is taking a similar approach . . . 

That's why it's GE and not some bankrupt footnote in biz history.

The rare earth fears we're watching blossom today:  expect to witness this dynamic over and over again on all sorts of materials/food/water/you name it.  And the answer will always be the same:  recycle, use more efficiently, develop slight mixed alternative or pure alternatives, etc.  And just like in "peak oil," the drivers will be the same:  a combination of rising price and emerging technologies.  Funny how that works, along with human ingenuity.

CoreGap Review and Updates from the Wiki

In the last week we published the following analysis on our website:

1. Mubarak Steps Down - For Real
2. New US National Military Strategy Redirects from Middle East to East Asia
3. Droughts in Amazon and China
4. European Exchange Giant to Buy New York Stock Exchange

Our Egypt Simulation

We've released a brief video on the Egypt simulation in the wiki. Watch here.

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New Simulation - The Death of King Jong-Il

We have just launched our first open community simulation, where our analysts and subscribers explore a shock in the form of the sudden death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Join our subscribers to engage in this live simulation, explore potential scenarios, aftershocks the various impacts of this event on countries' interests. You can then play the Prime Minister and plan potential strategies for the United States, China, South Korea and many more.

Current ruler Kim Jong-Il turns 70 this year and is allegedly battling pancreatic cancer (very low five-year survival rate) and diabetes, as well as the obvious lingering effects of a stroke that occurred in 2008.

Starting in mid-2009 and culminating in a special party event in the fall of 2010, Kim positioned his under-30 third son, Kim Jong-Eun as his clear successor, although it is widely believed that Kim Jong-Il's brother-in-law Chang Sung-Taek will play the role of regent for some indeterminate time.

North Korea's recent military aggressiveness (e.g., ship sinking, artillery barrage of disputed island) suggests a determined effort to speedily credentialize Kim Jong-Eun among the military leadership that now controls much of the government, economy, and - most importantly - mineral exports to, and humanitarian aid from, patron China. Kim Jong-Il was publicly groomed as "founding father" Kim Il-Sung's successor for roughly a decade-and-a-half, whereas Kim Jong-Eun will likely have had only a restricted public persona for 3-4 years at the time of his father's death.

When Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, Kim Jong-Il nonetheless was unable to fully claim leadership status until three years had passed.

This shock is still in progress, join today to participate, watch or ask questions.

North Korea trembling in the distance

 

Little nervous in the service:

South Korea's online newspaper Daily NK reported on Wednesday that North Korea had created a special mobilization force to prevent any demonstrations similar to the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Another daily, JoongAng Ilbo, said on Thursday that the authorities had begun purging elites who had studied abroad inRussia for fear of a possible coup by people "who were exposed to a Western lifestyle". 

Yet another vernacular newspaper, Donga Ilbo, on Thursday ran a piece on the "dramatic increase" of North Korean females choosing prostitution amid worsening economic hardship, linking it to the growing social instability of the country. 

Indeed, hopes of a Jasmine revolution in North Korea are rising amid coverage of increasing pockets of resistance across the country, including the cities of Jongju, Yongchon and Sonchon, to mention a few. 

Citing several South Korean sources, the Korea JoongAng Daily in Seoul on Thursday said Meng Jianzhu, China's minister of public security, made a trip this month to North Korea to discuss ways to prevent the wave of democracy protests in the Middle East from spreading to China and North Korea. 

Fascinating to consider.

This democracy wave (a premature judgment at best) is like any big wave:  it nails some fixed targets while others escape.  But the big thing is, everybody's been put on warning.

In one sense, this does feel like a rerun of the 1930s, just more upside than down in terms of expectations triggered by globalization (vice despair triggered by trade protectionism).  The other big difference:  the empowering of individuals vice states--and the complete lack of a countering economic ideology.

Hat tip to Brad Barbaza.

Upcoming talk in Johnstown PA (open to public)

Yes, this is open to the public.  Just a matter of registering as non-member.  But they encourage that, which is why they asked me to blog.  So if you want to come, please do.  Just contact them directly on how to get signed up.

From now on, regarding comments

I want real names - no more handles.

Been wanting to do this for a long time.

I understand all the usual rationales.

Handles in addition to real names fine, because I know some people want to build brand.  Just no more handles only.

If you have legitimate fears, then come up with something that sounds real.

The girls . . .

Went from 25th percentile for height and weight based on age to almost 75th percentile in the six months with us.  I think Metsu (older at just over four) has grown almost four inches in the half-year.

This is not unusual for kids who come over.  They catch up at a stunning pace.

Lazy eyes gone, knock knees gone.  Just about every physical tick or delta from the norm is gone.

Amazing what good nutrition and a lack of constant parasites and disease will do for a child.

Both are all sinewy muscle now.  I shudder to think how many cross country trophies they're going to win!

"Abbie" never stuck with Abebu, who goes now as that, Bebu and Abu.

Metsuwat goes as Metsu, Mootsu (Abebu nickname) and just Moot.

The weird rush to anoint Iran as "victor" in 2.0 Revolutions

Tour d'horizon piece by always solid Michael Slackman that editors at NYT need to hook with title, and so they decided that Saudis are losing and Iranians are winning.

I find that teaser a bit much and awfully premature.  Simplistic and deceiving are other words.

These are not Islamic revolutions.  The protestors are not saying, "What's wrong is the lack of Islam!"  Nor are they saying, "Stick it to the West!"

What they are saying is that they want a future, with jobs and opportunity.  Again, this is an expectations revolution:  these young have gotten just enough education and just enough connectivity with the outside world to know they're screwed, that the oligarchic capitalism they're being offered is totally slanted against them, and that these situations will not improve with time--meaning no jobs and no dowries and no wives and no families for them.

What is there in the Iranian model that says they know how to raise a middle class and keep it happy? Nothing.  Their middle class is miserable.  We're talking a stunning brain drain (worst in world, according to international organizations) and an even more stunning birth dearth, meaning people are so profoundly unhappy in Iran that they're refusing to have babies--the ultimate vote.  Iran's economy is magnificently controlled--mafia-style--by the Revolutionary Guard, oligarchic capitalism at its best.

Granted, compared to "revolutionary" Iran, the Saudis seem equally trapped in some nutty past (and an equally oligarchic, mafia-run economy), but at least there you're talking some serious money to be thrown at the problem and at the region, something Iran doesn't have to anywhere near the same degree. 

But, in the end, both peddle loser ideologies that do not attract investment or business or jobs.  They are both all about holding off the future and, in Iran's case, settling past scores.  Yes, to the degree they open up, they and others like them may buy time with Chinese investment, but that's all they're buying--time.  The same expectations revolution comes for their heads--eventually.

The one country that can be cast as default winner in the region is the government that knows how to raise a middle class and keep it happy--Erdogan's AKP in Turkey.  There's a country with a future and its people know it.

Once all the dust settles, the winners will be countries and extra-regional powers who make the economic connectivity happen.  In those loser situations where that does not happen, radical ideologies will hold sway, but what else is new? The Saudis and Iranian can fight over those bones, but how that constitutes winning is beyond me.  Winning is picking up strong allies, not more mouths to feed.

Globalization, meanwhile, marches on.

Best critique of Rumsfeld book/legacy

Excellent Newsweek piece by Mark Benjamin and Barbara Slavin entitled, "How Rumsfeld Abandoned the Peacemakers."  Gist in subtitle:  "The former defense secretary launched a campaign to win hearts and minds, but he never believed in it.  And citizen soldiers paid the ultimate price."

Very much worth reading.

My take on Rumsfeld in a nutshell:

• Without him, Gates is not possible.  In the end, Gates makes more impact, but even Gates needs a follow-on worthy of what he's done, otherwise the big-war crowd resurges.  But without Rumsfeld shaking things up and ultimately screwing things up, Gates couldn't have come in and fixed things as well as he did. That's how ossified the culture is. We can all complain, but having a military that is a bit slow to change is not all bad.  In many ways, it's the price of being Leviathan, as in, you can't chase fads.
• In truth, Rummy came into office very big-war/transformational focused, and like everybody else in the admin, he disdained the small wars/COIN/nation-building "crap."
• Afghanistan and our early success there only strengthened that mindset--to everybody's detriment.
• Rummy's shaking up of the big-war force/institution did make possible the small-wars crowd rise by creating just enough room in the system, but he never really did anything to encourage it (and as one civil affairs soldier quoted in the piece notes, "They were aware the whole system was broke," and they did nothing to fix it).  It was all a bottom-up push that took way too long and arguably killed a lot of our troops in its delay.  Nothing was going to stop our early losses because those had to happen before the system would respond and the mid-level officers got frustrated enough to revolt from below.  But a lot of the casualties we suffered in 05-06 should have been avoided, and Rumsfeld was a big reason why they weren't.  He doesn't admit any of that in the book, and most people want to rake him over the usual coals (decision to start war, WMD rationale, "stuff happens" and such).  They're all worth debating, but to me, if Bush-Cheney had adapted faster to the reality and skipped all the fantasy about recovery, this thing goes down as unmitigated success.
• But the ultimate remains:  you can't mix good nation-building with primacy, because if you believe in the latter, you cannot go multinational or realistically welcome the logical private sector players (who will naturally be all regional neighbors).  We did Iraq and Afghanistan as US-run and US-dominated packages, and we shut out countries on the reconstruction if they didn't participate in the war. Ultimately, as we faltered and began to pull out of Iraq, the logical regional and extra-regional players showed up, to clean up.  Same already happening with Afghanistan and it will accelerate.  We get fixated on "hearts and minds," which is a theory of gratitude, as Bing West like to say.  But the demand to be met is the same one that Mubarak and Qaddafi and the rest of those autocrats in the Middle East have failed on-- and it's called jobs and opportunity and a reason to care about your country because it's got a future.  We never really delivered either in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we didn't primarily because we're a go-it-alone force that will work with fellow Caucasian NATO forces and just about nobody else with any seriousness.  Yes, we have our favored token players, but the biggies never came because we could never work with them, and I'm talking Russians, Indians, Chinese, Turks and--yes--the Iranians.  Our "win" had to be ours alone, and thus we end up with sub-optimal outcomes that get summarized as, "We fought the war, and X won in the end!"  And that's what primacy in an age of frontier integration gets you--nonstop frustration.  Rumsfeld and the neocons never understood that.  And that's why they belong to the 20th century.

Esquire's Politics Blog: Seven Reasons Why Qaddafi Would Be the Best Domino Yet

Please, spare me any dread over this goofy dictator's hopefully looming and well-earned demise. Muammar Qaddafi has had over four decades to do right by his country and he ranks right up there with old-man Castro as one of the worst leaders ever to keep a people down. Team Obama should have zero qualms on this one, no matter what any of our alleged allies in the region may say, because if they're worried about the Qaddafi family's influence powering on, they know damn well what needs to be done (or not done). Here's why you, Mr. and Mrs. American, should cheer on this revolution along with your careful president.

Read the entire post at Esquires' The Politics Blog.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Should Pursue 'Open Door,' not Primacy

The decline of the American "empire" has been a persistent theme of the punditocracy these past several years, with the underlying logic being Washington's inability to extend, ad infinitum, the primacy seemingly conferred upon it at Cold War's end. The global financial crisis has now further revealed a suddenly -- and stunningly -- rebalanced global order, and as a result, Americans are supposed to dread the vast uncertainties of our allegedly "post-American world."

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Movie of My Week: "The Town" (2010)

I would say that, after Michael Mann's "Heat," this is my favorite heist-type movie, in large part because I know the scenery so well after living in Cambridge, Somerville, Boston, and Quincy, plus my wife Vonne worked the North End and Charlestown as a social worker (big Dennis Lehane fan, she).

And yes, us "tunies" lost several car radios over the late 1980s.

Great acting all throughout, with a number of locals playing versions of themselves.  Plus Rebecca Hall is always amazing, as is Jeremy Renner (nominated).  Blake Lively was also a nice surprise.

I think Ben Affleck is going to have a long career as a director, after "Gone, Baby Gone" and this.  Just solid work throughout on the action, character scenes, the whole shebang.  Eventually, he has to do a movie that's not about Boston, but until he does, I will still see them all.

USA Today Snapshots: failed futurist predictions

That little weird chart the paper always has on the front page, lower left corner.

On 10 Feb it was "Failed futurist predictions?"

As teens, what innovation adults thought would happen by the time they turned 65:

Flying cars was #1 at 28%, then human robots (bit harder, eh?), then living on other planets (ditto) and the rest.

Well, as soon as I read that I remember Terrafugia's street-legal "driving plane" (as I would call it) point being the flying car was a backasswards concept.  Far easier to get a small plane to drive on the road than to get a car to fly.

So there!  The wait is over!

Africa: a place NOT to leave alone

George Friedman's new book, "The Next Decade," presents his usual shtick that looks suspiciously like a rerun of WWII (as all his stuff does).  We are made to believe the Japanese threat is still there (Friedman is still trying to justify his early 1990s book that said war with Japan was inevitable), that China will fragment (oh so InterWar), and that Russia and Germany will ally in a frightening Molotov-Ribbentrop way (no kidding!  that's why we must quickly ally with Poland!).

But the bit that got me was his chapter on Africa, which he entitled, "A place to leave alone."  Why?  By his geopol standards, it isn't coherent enough to create a dominating challenger to US global empire, so no reason for US to go there whatsoever.

Interesting perspective.

I would tell you that Africa is going to be the ground zero for globalization's economic and network integration over the next 2-3 decades, as in, a very happening and increasingly coherent place.  But no, no hegemonic dragons for the US to slay.

And you have to ask yourself: is that all there is to US grand strategy?  Preventing the rise of challengers and asserting primacy?  Because I thought that path got explored fairly aggressively in Bush-Cheney to almost nobody's satisfaction.  And are we, on the basis of such thinking, simply supposed to ignore major chunks of the world?

Again, brilliant stuff if your goal is to shape Eurasia prior to, during and following WWIII there (read Friedman's hilarious "Moonraker" war between Japan and the US on the dark side of that celestial body in his "Next 100 Years"), but my reading of US grand strategy since around 1900 is all about creating that open door-cum-post WWII international liberal trade order-cum-the West-cum-the global economy-cum-globalization.  To me, the goal of primacy (deflecting all rising would-be competing great powers) is entirely unAmerican. It's simply not who we are as a people or what we've done these last several decades as a superpower.

But Friedman completely ignores the concept and reality of globalization, preferring his stated dream that Americans finally realize they're running a world empire (honestly! he's sticking with this fantasy after the Global Financial Crisis revealed a world a bit more balanced than he cares to admit).  Check out either book and you will see virtually no references to globalization (albeit one on globalization in the 16th century in "Next 100 Years") - as if he simply doesn't "do" globalization.  And that's why his books have a weird, back-to-the-future feel whereby we're still worried about Russo-German schemes to rule the world!

Better than reading Friedman's WWII redux material, check out the WSJ's running serial on the emergence of the middle class in Africa, hence my chart of the day:

This is why Wal-Mart doesn't consider Africa "a place to leave alone," nor should any serious global corporation.

Nor, frankly, should the US.

We have to be able to see a world for what it is, not for what we're conditioned to look for.  Friedman still sees the world in terms of great powers balancing each other out of the 1920s-1930s, because that's what he was classically trained to see.  But I ask you, how is his persistence in spotting what he wants to spot any different from a religious type who keeps seeing "clear evidence" of the Book of Revelations in events in the Middle East?  Both of these characters have their preferred storyline from the past, and by God, they ain't swapping it out for anything!

To me, that's not teaching people how to think strategically, but the exact opposite.  It's providing a familiar, fixed box and then encouraging readers to lop off those limbs of the world body that do not fit this Procrustean bed - like Africa.

And unfortunately, that sort of approach yields a solid 2-3% capture of globalization's fascinatingly dynamic and complex reality.  Get smart at viewing that holistically and you've got a grip on the world as we know it.

Or you can fantasize that America's grand strategy of this decade is thwarting Japan's resurrected militarism and Russo-German schemes to dominate the heartland of Europe!  

Achtung baby!

Friedman's memo to China:  you're conquering the world all wrong!

China to Friedman: very true, and completely irrelevant.

Chart of the Day: Age difference between leaders and led

 The Economist.com by way of Dan Hare.

Clear advantage here to democracies, although China's gap will shrink dramatically with the generational shift coming up (Hu to Xi).

It's a double-whammy:  Democracies get to choose and they choose leaders not too far off from the median, and autocracies are more likely in underdeveloped societies, which - by definition - tend to be youth-skewed (poverty tends to cause babies, just like income growth tends to act as birth control).

America: How Niall Ferguson Blew It

Niall Ferguson has a cover piece out in Newsweek entitled, "Egypt:  How Obama Blew It."  It's a predictable enough piece of criticism from a guy who hoped to make it big as a foreign policy adviser to John McCain in his 2008 presidential bid and still harbors that ambition.  The piece drips with the implied "my much more experienced guy would have got it right" (with Bismarck as the historical stand-in).

But think back to Ferguson's own work over the past decade when it comes to discussing globalization and America, because this guy sold empire and primacy like crazy.  And frankly, to the extent that Obama "blows it" on Egypt like he allegedly "blew it" on Iran in 2009, he's acting the careful superpower that's responsible for the world.  Most of the rest of the time, especially on economics, he does act like America is just one among several great powers in partial control of things, but on national security issues, he tends to follow the Bush-Cheney empire-primacy mode a bit too much, meaning, in effect, he's guilty of taking Ferguson's previous advice.

Ferguson says Obama has no grand strategy, but again, it's not all that different from Bush: hog control of interventions we make (so very "primacy"), plan a defense that must dominate all comers in all directions at all times (how Obama blows it with China, I have argued), and generally be about preserving US primacy under conditions of the imagined "empire" that we run (no longer possible after all the reckless years of spending under Bush-Cheney and now Obama-Biden).

Ferguson says Obama blows Egypt like he blew Iran, but again, that presupposes all manner of primacy/empire conditions, stating in effect that countries of this stature are subject to direct US manipulation at these moments, when in truth they're not.

Where Ferguson gets it right:  Obama is guilty of what I call that whole "let's keep all the balls in the air" mentality.  There at least, Bush-Cheney were indeed single-minded:  when they focused on the Middle East with their Big Bang, they were all in.  They put China to the side and avoided poking Beijing in the eye like Obama has a tendency to do.  They responded similarly to Putin on Georgia.  They did not try to keep all the balls in the air.  They did not try to eliminate nuclear weapons and cure cancer and create a new-energy economy all at the same time.  They had a sense of realism--a bit too aggressive and way too focused on preserving primacy for my tastes, but they were realistic all right.

Bush-Cheney also had a "map," something Ferguson says Obama does not.  Ferguson is right there too.

But again, go back to his books of the past like "Colossus":  he wanted America to admit its empire, George Friedman-like.  And America the imperial power stands by its man, Mubarak, because that is what imperial powers do.

America the globalizer, however, goes with the flow.  It recognizes a map that shows what's connected via globalization and what is not.  It notices that the unconnected places are where the violence is.  It notices that the seam between the connected places and the unconnected places is where all the revolutions seem to happen, along with the rising frontier markets like CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa--think about that group for a second when Wikistrat talks about the Turkish "exit glidepath" and the Obama administration proposes Indonesia-post-Suharto as the interim path to that ultimate one).  It accepts that such risers will be independent-minded, like Turkey, and not ours to boss around, but that, in their integrating, bridge-building, mini-economic-empire building, they'll be doing our work for us.

Point being:  for Obama to be in touch with the times, he disavows empire and primacy, two things Ferguson has long preached for America.  He sees America primarily in its historical guise as a force of integration that is both destabilizing in the short run (why I called it "The Pentagon's Map") but stabilizing in the long run--even as it creates a world of many rising great powers (hence the third book's title).  But no, in the end, we're not about primacy, which is un-American when considered alongside our century-plus grand strategy of "open door" (still active and still pertinent), and we're not about empire, because we want rising great powers with whom we share the responsibility of running this world (where Zakaria is correct).

Point:  we need a globalization-centric grand strategy, where America is opportunistic about when and where globalization breaks down doors, not a terror-centric one (Bush-Cheney, Philip Bobbitt's books), nor a China-centric one (see our new National Military Strategy), nor a primacy-centric one, nor an empire-centric one.

We remain a transformational, revolutionary force on this planet, but in our success and to remain true to our ideals, we are not primacists and we are not imperialists.

This piece by Ferguson is clever and largely correct, but it's tactics--not grand strategy, so the gripe about Obama lacking one does not hold water, because Ferguson offers none here and his past offerings are highly inappropriate to the tasks at hand. It's just that Obama really hasn't changed all that much from Bush-Cheney's while operating it in Zakaria's "post-American" mindset that conservatives (and I) find so unappealing in its defeatism. To me, that's a very unsatisfactory combo:  strategically acting like nothing has changed from Bush-Cheney, but then tactically buying into the whole "rise of the rest" dooms us to irrelevancy. It's a queer combination, all right, signaling a lack of confidence in America that is contagious ("I know this won't work but I can't change what my government is doing!").

In the end, we can fix any perceived "blow" on Egypt, and selling this as a "foreign policy failure" is hilariously self-centered (again, reflecting the primacy/empire mindset).  But to do so intelligently, America would accept help from others, like Turkey and China (I am more partial to Ferguson's now-OBE-but-historically-accurate economic analysis on "Chimerica").  But America the primacist and owner of empire won't do that, for fear of making Egypt an economic colony of the "Beijing consensus" and other silly nonsense. It will find Turkey's offers of help scary, because they will allegedly threatened our remaining imperial ally in the region--Israel. And that's too bad, because Mubarak's fall is a HUGE VICTORY for globalization and therefore--by extension--America's grand strategy, but only if you know what that grand strategy truly has been these past seven decades, instead of confusing it with "empire" and primacy.

So yeah, tough choices ahead, but Ferguson the longtime preacher of America the empire "colossus" holds no magic answers, even as he's a wickedly clever and always telegenic critic of our usually clever and always telegenic Prez.  

Thanks to David Emery for sending me the piece before one of my last issues of Newsweek (alas, I am not renewing) showed up this ayem.

Bashir, making nice on divorce, may get off on ICC charges

FT story.

A very realistic appraisal by the West of the utility of seeking to extradite (North) Sudan's president Omar Bashir over ICC charges WRT Darfur in light of his acceptance of the South's split (scheduled for this July, I believe).

In effect, the charges becomes a bargaining tool in the months ahead:  Bashir can be rehabilitated if he plays nice.

This was Wikistrat's recommendation in a recent CoreGap bulletin story on the vote.

Going/gone on BBC's "World Have Your Say" program at 1345EST (-5GMT)

Discussing whether China's rise is a good thing for the world. Other guest is South African businessman.

Short segment of about 15 mins.

Actually nice to discuss something other than Egypt!

But I do now regret watching "The King's Speech" this weekend . . ..  For a public speaker like myself, I considered it a horror movie.

POSTSCRIPT:  Previous discussion on Egypt dragged on a bit, so the China part was limited to about 6 mins at the end of the show.  Co-participant was from very sharp Beijing Axis business consultancy based in South Africa, with whom I crossed paths in Cape Town last year.  So no disagreements per se.  I cut out, I was told, for two seconds in my second-and-last comment.  First time for me with Skype, but I guess that can happen. Bit of a filler effort, but I like the program and love being on the Beeb, so I always say yes.

Find the podcast here in a bit (14 Feb show).