What are we not doing?

ARTICLE: Twisting Arms Isn't as Easy as Dropping Bombs, By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, January 29, 2007; Page A02

Good research that buttresses our common sense appreciation of the limits of "war within the context of war." You want an opponent to submit militarily? Pretty easy for U.S.

But if you want a country to change and simply apply military power alone, you will lose half the time.

The point to take away is not to avoid trying. Failed states don't heal themselves. The question to ask is, What are we not doing now that gets us a "loss" half the time on coercive efforts?

Steve and I say what we're missing is an effective SysAdmin force/function, followed up with connectivity efforts like Development-in-a-Box.

So what this research says to me is that the SysAdmin should prove decisive in roughly half our military interventions, because just shooting the place is not enough.

Thanks to Jean Rogers for sending this.

Who are our friends, really?

ARTICLE: Not-So-Strange Bedfellow, By Thomas L. Friedman

Great piece by Friedman. I like to make similar arguments with Iran v. Pakistan.

Makes you wonder who exactly is pushing us so hard into a war with Iran.

We've gotta lotta friends who don't have our best interests at heart and like to use and manipulate us extensively.

I like to remember that every time I hear we can't possibly talk to Iran because they won't really want to "help" us (Duh! Ya think?).

Lotta "allies" out there who don't really want to help us, so spare me the lecture on those "untrustworthy" Iranians.

Expect everybody to be exactly who they are--and nobody else.

Thanks to Tyler Durden for sending this.

Way cool model of the ISS in Huntsville airport

I have a killer PPT that tracks the history of manned spaceflight that I give to my kids's classes, which includes a 30-slide build of the ISS (International Space Station), so I'm a rare person who instantly recognizes the form. Last night I watched a cable station that seemed to be a sort of NASA-ISS CNN. A weird case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind for most people, but since I plan on dying somewhere off this planet (it's the Kirk in me), I remain fascinated.

Bush's essential choice

Does he want to be in charge more than he wants to be successful?

DiB math

Great bit from a biz dev guy at a total SysAdmin-like firm that works the Gap over: "We need to build 2-Sigma facilities but connect them up to 6-Sigma infrastructure."

Boomers suck as politicians

ARTICLE: Senate Allies of Bush Work to Halt Iraq Vote, By CARL HULSE and THOM SHANKER, New York Times, January 31, 2007

ARTICLE: Choice for No. 2 at State Dept. Defends Bush’s Stance on Iran, By HELENE COOPER, New York Times, January 31, 2007

The resolutions should be blocked, serving their primary purpose of signalling to Bush that the Dems plan on following through on what the public signalled in the Nov election.

But Bush-Cheney just seem intent on ignoring that message and that of the GOP establishment as signalled by Baker's ISG.

Listen to the CSPAN Senate coverage: you're hearing member after member from both sides calling for a regional dialogue at least on Iraq. I mean, come on! How can the White House blow off the election, the new majority, its own party elders, its own party members on the Hill, and the ISG?

To me, that's way beyond any self-destructive behavior I saw with Bill Clinton, and frankly, I'm amazed to say that.

I'm just really beginning to believe that while the Boomers have had world-shaking accomplishments in economics and technology, they simply suck as politicians.

Nothing to lose and a legacy to gain

ARTICLE: How Bush Can Ensure No More Iraqs: The U.S. is only a few bright ideas away from being the nation builder it needs to be, By Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2007

Great piece by Boot, showing how the SysAdmin/Department of Everything Else can actually be finessed beaucratically into being far more easily than most think.

I know I've been nasty on Bush lately, but I think he really deserves it. He still has huge opportunity to leave the DoD so much better off than he found it, because our difficulties in Iraq mean he's free to make dramtic changes not just in operations but in organization. He's got two years and the best men for the main jobs in the military, but he seems to be passing off more than stepping up.

Boot's points are great: Bush proposed that Civilian Reserves, but unless some bold actions are taken, it's just another good idea left for the next president.

And that's too bad, because Bush really does have the freest hand possible right up to 20 Jan 2009, and he's got virtually nothing to lose and a legacy to gain.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for sending this.

Bottom up or top down?

A reader wrote in with this question:

The real question on the "surge" to me whether this is bottom up or top down idea. If it is bottom up with input from the boots it has a decent chance but if from the top down very little.

Previous top-down (Abizaid) replaced by new top down (Bush-Cheney w buy-in from Petraeus).

The bottom-up feeling is get out because we're no longer in control and can't stem the sectarian stuff without about 400k, but that's fantasy because we'd need a huge influx of allies and Bush-Cheney simply can't manage that after not cultivating those relationships all these years.

Bush should have come out in second term and really pressed wide range of allies for stabilizing troops. He should have mea culpa'd like crazy and made the deals.

Then he could have gone out a winner and the compromises would have seemed reasonable. This way, though, he sets up his successor to eat crow, and I don't think that's good leadership.

Tom on Hugh's show yesterday

Transcript and audio are up.

Here's a teaser for you:

HH: Europe is not bringing in easily assimilated people. They’re bringing in, as Mark Steyn argues in America Alone, people who don’t want to assimilate. I know you have disagreements, Mark is a guest on this show every single week…

TB: Right.

HH: Swing away.

Check 'em out.

The Comfort Inn's got free wireless

And nothing else.

The sacred American cotton “farmer”

ARTICLE: “Out of Africa: Cotton and Cash,” by G. Pascal Zachary, New York Times, 14 January 2007, p. BU1.

ARTICLE: “Myth of the Small Farmer: Federal subsidies have turned agricultural operations into big businesses,” by Gilbert M. Gaul, Sarah Cohen and Dan Morgan, Washington Post, 22-28 January 2007, p. 11.

First story is a neat one about how some American cotton traders are hedging their bets on ag subsidies by establishing market ties with African growers, who, as I noted in a previous post, actually grow their crops cheaper than we do in the U.S., it’s just that our government takes enough off our farmers’ output to effectively undercut Africa’s growers, keeping them poor.

The American traders in this story naturally take advantage of that fact, paying undermarket prices for the African cotton they scoop up.

This is protectionism of the worst sort: America and Africa in a neck-and-neck race to be the world’s largest cotton producer. Why we’re pursuing this title in this day and age, screwing over Africa in the process, is beyond me, especially when the mythical small American farmer (dream on, Willie Nelson) has long since passed from the scene.

Most disappeared in the 1970s, when the big agribusinesses started moving onto the scene. Most of the farm kids who rode the bus to school in 1st grade when I attended grade school (1968) were city kids by the time we entered high school in 1976.

My Mom will tell you today that only two types of people buy local farms: Amish and outsiders looking for second homes (especially for hunting).

Today, large and very large farms make up less about 10% of the number of farms. Small and medium represent only about 25%. So-called “hobby farms” account for over two-thirds. The government rather cynically defines any farm as one with $1k in production. By doing so, it maintains the myth of the small farmer in sheer percentage numbers. Overall, the hobby farms account for a tiny fraction of U.S. production.

The big farms and agribiz joints, while just 10% of the total number, generate 60% of the production. They also get over half of the subsidies.

We spent $15 billion on ag subsidies in income support or price guarantees. Even with Bush’s “huge” plus up of aid to Africa, that number remains significantly smaller.

Cotton still enslaves, it would seem, and the U.S. Government still plays a rather creepy role in perpetuating that economic disenfranchisement.

And yet we’re so fast to condemn the mercantilist strategies of Chinese trade in Africa, amazingly enough. They’re just stingy, while we seem closer to rip-off artists on this one--and anti-market at that.

If Africans can grow cheaper than Americans, then they should reap the benefits of that status. Denying that outcome is just cheating, plain and simple.

What we’re creating in Iraq

COVER STORY: “Iraq’s Young Blood,” by Christian Caryl, Newsweek, 22 January 2007, p. 25.

BRIEFING: “The president’s last throw: George Bush announces one more push for ‘victory.’ Is he just reinforcing failure?” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 24.

If it was just the American people doubting the surge strategy, that would be one thing.

But it’s all the expert opinion too, plus the regional players (many of whom desperately fear our failure), and our allies (Britain’s basically leaving).

In the normal world, those are all considered big signs that one’s thinking is sort of screwed up, but Bush, who confuses stubbornness and incuriosity with resoluteness and certitude, chooses his own path. To me, that’s a presidency out of control, lost in its own Gap.

Here is what that disconnect gets us in Iraq to date:

A DoS poll last summer “found nine out of 10 young Iraqis, Sunni and Shia, saw the United States as an occupying force.”

Iraq’s government admits that 70 percent of kids no longer go to elementary school regularly [that percentage matches the unemployed, not surprisingly; as recently as last year it is estimated that 75% attended]

“Jonathan Powers, a former U.S. Army captain who served in Iraq in 2003 and now directs a nonprofit working with kids there, notes that the ongoing violence is creating a generation that is undereducated, unemployed, traumatized and, among boys in particular, ripe for the vengeful appeals of militias and insurgent groups.” [That corresponds to everything I get through privileged channels from Iraq.]

“Powers likes to point that when he served in Iraq the going rate to have an IED planted was $1,000, with another $1,000 paid for killing an American. Now, he says, kids will set bombs for as little as $20.

[The dog years impact of traumatizing violence:] “In one survey of kids in the Iraqi capital, some 47 percent of respondents said they’d witnessed a ‘major traumatic event.’”

“In a February 2006 study published by the Association of Psychologists of Iraq, 92 percent of the kids surveyed showed signs of learning impediments.”

“The exodus of middle-class Iraqis--some 2 million refugees now live outside Iraq--has eviscerated the least sectarian slice of society.”

Will someone please tell me what Dick Cheney knows that the none of the rest seem able to figure out?

Because here’s the historical record on good and bad peacekeeping jobs by America:

‚ÜíBosnia and Kosovo were good, and featured 22-23 soldiers per thousand population.

‚ÜíSomalia and Haiti were bad, and featured 3-4 soldiers per thousand population.

→Afghanistan sits at 0.5, and Iraq’s at 6.1.

→Even when the Iraqi army is added in, we’re at about 14.

‚ÜíExperts say 20 is the solid minimum for foreign troops.

‚ÜíThis surge puts us back up in the 160k range. We hit that peak twice before in 2004 and in 2005. The impact on troops per thousand will be negligible.

Bush and Cheney were told all this going in, and decided otherwise. They still decide otherwise.

We could have had the troops if we made the deals with others to get them. But Bush and Cheney don’t do diplomacy. They don’t trade. They don’t compromise. They don’t talk to enemies.

Instead, they consistently put our troops in the worst possible strategic position, and when they’re called on those bad choices, Bush and Cheney dare Congress to cut funding to the troops, recalling the phrase that patriotism is the last refuge for scoundrels.

We’ve waited almost four years for the corrections to come, and yeah, when you screw things up, you end up compromising.

Happens to the best, happens to the rest.

Real leaders admit mistakes and do what’s right. Bad ones just run out the clock, throwing the ball out of bounds.

Please, no more Medals of Freedom.

The Holy Land ain’t the only land

EDITORIAL: “Diaspora blues: Jews around the world should join the debate about Israel, not just defend whatever it does,” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 14.

ARTICLE: “Second thoughts about the Promised Land: Jews all around the world are gradually ceasing to regard Israel as a focal point. As a result, many are re-examining what it means to be Jewish,” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 53.

After wading into the Carter book controversy a while back, I got a lot of emails (the most interesting being from Israelis and Palestinians) that said in effect: “Don’t waste your time and energy on this subject right now in America, because the debate’s so poisoned that your only fate is to be accused of anti-Semitism.” Now, since I’ve been personally hounded over the years by Israel-hating types for just the opposite charge, I find a nice symmetry in the implied challenge (especially since the pro-Israel nuts have a better sense of humor and level more interesting personal threats than the anti-Israel nuts do).

Still, the greater temptation for this grand strategist is to blow off the entire scenario, believing, as I long have, that its highly mythologized resolution is no closer to appearing today than it ever was in the past, and that, even if it did appear, it would change nothing of great importance in the region, because making Israel-the-problem go away doesn’t change the underlying problems that still affect the region. That’s why I really spent almost no words on this subject across my two books to date. I basically consider it a red herring--the bright shiny object that grabs our attention.

I don’t see a good outcome ever emerging. I just see demographics that slowly disfavor Israel, thus making it more intransigent and harsh over time. The only solution set I imagine is a Middle East that connects up to the larger world, grows up in that process, and ultimately forgives Israel’s “olive tree” requirement because Muslims simply move beyond their own.

And buddy, that’s one loooong-term view.

But seriously, you can either run with the breakthroughs or stay with the loggerheads, and I prefer running with the breakthroughs. So rather than focus on a West that indulges and protects Israel (fine and dandy as historical guilt trips go), I’d rather focus on a rising East that does the real heavy lifting over time with Islam (especially as Europe seems intent on taking a pass for as long as possible).

I know that solution set is equally hard for many to imagine, but I like the economic and demographic and energy “inevitabilities” of that pathway a whole lot better than the ones we face in our support for Israel (which I believe gets harder to sustain over time, in largest part because the average American just doesn’t get the whole “land” fixation).

I, for example, have a deep faith in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, but if you tell me tomorrow that his whole story took place in south Asia instead of southwest Asia, that changes nothing for me. I realize that puts me at odds with a host of evangelicals who maintain that intense land fixation as part of their faith, but I believe primordial fixations in general are to be avoided if you want to do well in this business: you acknowledge them as motivations of others, you just don’t indulge yourself.

I don’t believe in the “chosen” anything or anyone. I think the best rule set wins out every time, and that America’s leadership globally is highly dependent on the state of our rule set--an exceptionalism that was won and can just as easily be lost (as Bush seems intent on proving). So no fundamentalism for me, no exclusionary ideology, and nothing that says anybody’s inherently better than anyone else. What separates the best from the rest is not what you believe but how you act, and how you act is best captured in the rule sets you codify and uphold, not some chunk of land or religious belief. You declare America is relocating tomorrow to South America and me and mine are on the first plane heading down. I like the rule set. I can always change the land.

What I found interesting about these articles (both of which are great) is that growing sense among a lot of Jews around the world that the diaspora concept somehow no longer defines their place in the world. My favorite bits:

Most diaspora Jews still support Israel strongly. But now that its profile in the world is no longer that of heroic victim, their ambivalence has grown: Many are disturbed by the occupation [the nerve Carter hits] of the Palestinian territories or more recently by images of Israeli bombing in Lebanon; some fear they give grist to anti-Semites. Quite a few think Jewish religious and cultural life in Israel is stunted. Others question the point of a safe haven that, thanks to its wars and conflicts, is now arguably the place where most Jews are killed because they are Jews. The most radical say, as the Palestinians do, that the idea of an ethnically based state is racist and archaic.

What is more, the last great waves of aliyah, immigration to Israel, have ended. Barring a new burst of anti-Semitism, the map of world Jewry will change slowly from now on. Each community is evolving in its own way. Some are seeing a revival unthinkable a few years ago. And young Jews especially are asking what Israel means to them. Some, say Caryn Aviv and David Shneer, two American scholars, in a recent book, “New Jews” (New York University Press), reject the notion that they are in a “diaspora,” which envisions the Jewish world hierarchically with Israel on top, the diaspora on [the] bottom”…

Clashes over “who is a Jew” cooled American-Jewish attitudes to Israel well before the second Palestinian intifada…

The trouble, says Mr. [Roger] Bennett [director of special projects at the Bronfman Foundation], is that the mainstream American Jewish institutions were born to make the case for Israel and to fight anti-Semitism. Young Jews today, however, are searching for identity, spirituality, meaning and roots. Unlike their grandparents, they are not concentrated among other Jews but spread out across society. They do not meet people in synagogues or other Jewish forums, but form their own networks. “Jewish” is just one part of their multi-faceted American identity, and Israel does not seem that relevant.

I don’t find that evolution of Jews in America particularly unique. I think it’s happened to every group that’s come here over time, as the struggles that once dominated their lives back in the homeland fade over time in their consciousness and self-identity. After all, America is a synthetic collection of diasporas from the world over. We all gave up the land, and have, as a result of their intermixing, seen our faith none-too-subtly altered from its roots--as I predict/note is already happening with Islam in America.

I am a big believer in this rule set. I think it’s the best path for both peace and prosperity, and through those two precursors, for democracy itself. I think the more we spread this message around the world, understanding, and being quite patient about, its necessary sequencing (a big theme of my work), the better the world becomes. I think our package is under constant revision, being a synthesis of all who joined our ranks in the past and all who will necessarily do so in the future, and so I believe in remaining open to new definitions of that package as a matter of course, because I want our rule set to always be the best one out there.

Getting warmer on climate change

ARTICLE: “The Warming of Greenland: Arctic melting accelerates, revealing uncharted islands and threatening to raise sea levels all over the world,” by John Collins Rudolf, New York Times, 16 January 2007, p. D1.

OP-ED: “A warmer world is ripe for conflict and danger,” by David Cameron, Financial Times, 24 January 2007, p. 11.

WORLD IN 2007: “Scientific argument settled: All that is left is the collection action problem in which no one wants to be at a disadvantage,” by Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, 24 January 2007, p. 8.

A lot of colleagues want me to start talking up global warming in my strategic vision, and while I’m attracted to it as an “inevitability,” I will confess that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the strategic imperatives its emergence portends.

I find myself haunted by Bjorn Lomborg’s argument that while the 20th century saw ocean levels rise somewhere north of 6 inches, it wasn’t exactly the predominant geopolitical agenda driver of that era, so why should a predicted rise of somewhere just north of a foot this century become the great driver of global change?

Yes, I understand that many scientists lean toward the more high-end estimates of 3 feet, and I get the “feedback mechanisms” arguments from Gore that say an inflection point may be near, linked largely to major ice melting around the planet that’s rapidly increasing.

But even when I get the scary computer animation on places going underwater, I find myself wondering if preventing that sort of change is very realistic. If it’s not, then I wonder about the opportunity costs associated with trying. Humans have a tendency to go wild with these sorts of corrections, creating more trouble than they’re worth. Plus, we often tackle the most fantastic tasks while bypassing the more reasonable ones.

Case in point: the FT article shows a map displaying WHO estimates of deaths caused by climate change in 2000. Now, first off, blaming all this on the singular causality of climate change is a bit much, but let’s look at where the WHO logs all these extra deaths (about 35m): there are overwhelming centered in the Gap and in the interior poor regions of New Core pillars like China.

Now, since the deaths recorded are diarrheal diseases, malaria, malnutrition, cardiovascular, HIV/AIDS and cancer, my first instinct is to say, let’s work on the health habits and medical systems of these countries, because global warming or not, the vast majority of these deaths are prevented or delayed most easily by that path than by alternative strategies that may limit much needed growth for these populations. I mean, I gotta argue that poverty kills more around the world than global warming does--hands down.

As you all know, I make consistent argument that tackling instability and violence inside the Gap is a key prerequisite for setting in motion economic development in the bulk of these developing states, so if I bought into the tie that global warming will lead to violence, then the circle would be squared and I’d hop on the bandwagon.

Problem is, I don’t find those arguments convincing. The “resource wars” literature is just so weak on logic and so amazingly bereft on historical data. The proponents mostly gin up scary scenarios, and then suppose violence must result from resource shortages (thus everyone’s going to war with everyone to get oil, water, food, etc.) When the history of mankind is very clear on this subject: growing interdependencies create the impetus for shared solutions, not zero-sum fights, whether they’re interdependencies of abundance or scarcity. In fact, scarcity fuels deal making even more than abundance--just like in trade in general.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that a rapid up tick in global sea levels would trigger some serious humanitarian crises (Bangladesh comes to mind), and if of sufficient magnitude we could be talking serious System Perturbations that segue into serious global rule-set change.

But until we get more outcomes instead of just more data, global warming remains a background issue for the world: something we work slowly over time, incrementally changing behavior.

So, on this score, I guess I stand uncorrected until the system gets bonked on the head in some way as to supercede current agendas, which in both the Core and Gap, are jam-packed with difficult issues that involve plenty of death and can be tackled at better cost-benefit ratios that are more easily understood by leaders and the led alike. There simply is no differentiating play--for now--that creates clear winners and losers. So long as it’s perceived that we’re all losing in a roughly equal fashion, leadership simply will not emerge politically, even as it does so inevitably in the business realm.

China: “I’m stepping out”

ARTICLE: “A quintet, anyone? China is making it clear that it wants a bigger role in the Middle East,” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 37.

ARTICLE: “Chinese Leader to Visit Sudan For Talks on Darfur Conflict,” by Howard W. French, New York Times, 25 January 2007, p. A4.

OP-ED: “China’s Missile Message,” by Elizabeth Economy, Washington Post, 25 January 2007, p. A25.

WEEK IN REVIEW: “Look Up! It’s No Meteor, It’s an Arms Race,” by William J. Broad, New York Times, 21 January 2007, p. WK3.

OP-ED: “Debris in Space: The real ‘fallout’ from the Chinese missile,” by Bruce Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, 25 January 2007, p. A18.

Makes perfect sense: China’s economic profile around the world skyrockets, but its military role lags way behind (primarily out of fear of scaring the U.S. into rivalry), so it backfills with diplomacy. It throws what it has in abundance at the problems it encounters: money and people. It encounters problems primarily as a result of its great weakness: a huge and burgeoning need for commodities and energy from outside sources.

China’s secret weapon? According to The Economist: “Unlike other outside powers involved in the Middle East, China is on good terms with everyone.”

So in one week both Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator (Larijani) and Israel’s PM Olmert come to call on Hu and Wen in Beijing, instantly catapulting them beyond our powerless SECSTATE Condi Rise on the pecking chain of global diplomacy.

It gets better.

Last month, the Chinese foreign ministry played host to what it called its first non-governmental seminar bringing together former senior Israeli and Palestinian officials to discuss ways of achieving peace. They reached a consensus that must have pleased their hosts. China, they said in a statement, should increase its influence in the Middle East and join the “Quartet” (America, the European Union, the UN and Russia) that is pursuing peace efforts. This, China’s press quoted a Palestinian participant as saying,” would help counter the bias of “some countries” involved.

China becomes the Barack Obama of global diplomacy. We want both for the same reasons, despite their obvious lack of accomplishments to date: they’re not George Bush and his team.

Sad.

I have long predicted that we’d get our diplomatic butts kicked when China’s 5th generation of leaders showed up, but that prediction is OBE by the Bush-Cheney isolationism-through-incompetence strategy. China’s prestige rises by default.

Get used to it.

We don’t handle Sudan because we’re too busy getting trapped in our “global war” in the Persian Gulf. So China will take a stab at it.

Again, get used to that dynamic.

Bush and Cheney have pursued a pattern of “exceptionalism” in our foreign policy, Economy points out, and the longer we do that the more we can expect China to do the same.

But just like in the ASAT test example, whenever China steps out, they tend to highlight the overlapping strategic interests we share (and, as with satellites, shared strategic burdens that we bear more than others).

Our goal in this stepping out process for China, which is inevitable and good if we shape it correctly, is to limit the damage and “debris” that inevitably follows their initial, clumsy attempts. Of course, China’s answer would be, “but our debris is far smaller than yours--on average!”

And looking at Afghanistan and Iraq, they’d be making a point not easily countered.

So yeah, get used to it.

The rising sense of individual risk from globalization

EDITORIAL: “Rich man, poor man: A poisonous mix of inequality and sluggish wages threatens globalization,” The Economist, 20 January 2007, p. 15.

ARTICLE: “In the shadow of prosperity: Hard truths about helping the losers from globalization,” The Economist, 20 January 2006, p. 33.

ARTICLE: “The Income Gap: Is globalization to blame? Only in part,” by James Pethokoukis, U.S. News & World Report, 22 January 2006, p. 53.

Thoughtful collection of articles on the ever-present-and-now-rising-anxiety on globalization (which, not surprising, always grows when globalization is moving fastest).

The new source of fear on globalization is located within white-collar job categories. The globalization of R&D creates this, but so does the growing outsourcing of tasks previously seen as protected by their high status: like components of lawyering or doctoring.

Then there’s this lurid fascination with the top 1 percent who are cleaning up--Michael Jordan style--as the search for global talent gets hotter and hotter. But that’s a hard one to curtail, since the rising complexity of managing global corps simply drives up the cost of effective leadership.

I mean, who wants less effective leadership of these globe-spanning industry leaders?

Plus, while everyone’s whining about the need for more “soft power” leadership from America, there it is, staring us in the face: our execs get the chance to shape the economic futures of foreign economies through such work. We grow the Core by first and foremost preserving it and making it more resilient over time.

If that “winning” generates mini-Gaps back home (my hometown of Boscobel is surrounded by such “losing,” as factory after factory sees jobs go abroad), then we can either step up to the implied challenge of job retraining and life-long learning, or we can put up walls and simply delay the inevitable.

The way ahead is one that many experts have frequently cited in the past (from The Economist:

In Europe, Denmark has led the way. The Danish system of “flexicurity” appears to offer the best of both worlds: dynamic labour markets and low unemployment couples with generous support for those who lose their jobs.

Denmark has a long history of weak job protection. Employers hire and dismiss people at will. Around a quarter of the workforce is unemployed at some point in any year. But the jobless enjoy generous welfare benefits while they look for work, around 80% of their previous wage on average. To ensure this does not deter people from finding new jobs, the Danes oblige the unemployed to be trained and to look diligently for work.

The European Union is urging its member to follow the “flexicurity” model. Democratic wonks in America enthuse about it too. But Denmark’s approach has evolved over decades and cannot easily be copied. Besides, it is extremely expensive.

Denmark spends 2% of its GDP on such stuff, while the USG spends about 0.16%, so we’re told America could never match such a program--at least with our state. But since, as the article points out, “employers are far better at training workers than the state,” our best approach would seem logical enough: tax breaks or other incentives for private business to engage in this sort of effort as broadly as possible.

Another option described is wage insurance.

The Economist’s final take is a good one:

The tasks of freeing up labour (in Europe), reforming health care (in America) and improving education (everywhere) are far more important than any amount of experimentation with wage insurance or retaining schemes.

Will we see that from the ascendant protectionists in Congress? Not if Lou Dobbs and others of his ilk get their way.

You want to watch the most awkward hand-off on TV today? Just check out Wolf Blitzer giving Lou Dobbs preview time at the end of his nightly broadcast. It’s like watching a scientist introduce an evangelist--a total freak show during which Blitzer can barely keep a straight face (he often references Lou’s “conversion”).

China thinks it knows the downside, we’re just beginning to understand the upside

OP-ED: “‘I Know Who My Comrades Are,’” by Emily Parker, The Wall Street Journal, 27-28 January 2007, p. A8.

The never-ending debate on the impact of the Internet in China: are we connecting the masses toward freedom or is the Party staying ahead of that curve?

We get so fixated on the content that we tend to downplay the connectivity. The CCP bans this or that discussion, yes, but the bigger point (made well here) is that, while freedom of speech is still quite limited, freedom of assembly is taking off.

Here in America, freedom of assembly is easy to take for granted. In China, where large groups may be met with suspicion--or worse--it is not.

That’s the key thing to remember with Falun Gong. Even more than official China’s paranoia about religious groups/cults and their potential for political destabilization, there is the event that really ticked them off: the seemingly spontaneous mass rally in Tiananmen that FG pulled off through web-based coordination. It’s the horizontal connectivity that the CCP fears most, and that connectivity is becoming a natural part of life inside China, thanks to the web.

Beijing’s censorship of language is a serious obstacle to democratization, but it would be a mistake to overemphasize this point. In China, the Internet has already set into motion a core component of democratic consciousness. I know who my comrades are--those words can easily be deleted. The realization behind them can not.

Great piece of analysis by an assistant features editor at WSJ.

Another missing global rule set that should have been built while we had the golden hour

ARTICLE: “This time it’s revenge: Despite its previous unhappy experience, America decides to get involved once again in a civil war in the turbulent Horn of Africa,” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 41.

FEATURE: “Saving Somalia: As the U.S. strikes al-Qaeda, a new government tries to restore order. Here’s what it will take,” by Alex Perry, Time, 22 January 2007, p. 44.

ARTICLE: “Somalia’s chance for new beginning ‘slipping away,’” by William Wallis, Financial Times, 24 January 2007, p. 6.

ARTICLE: “Aid Conference Raises $7.6 Billion for Lebanese Government: Trouble in Beirut even as donations surpass expectations,” by Helene Cooper, New York Times, 26 January 2007, p. A7.

ARTICLE: “Months After War, Vision of Rebuilding Lebanon Wanes,” by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 22 January 2007, p. A8.

The lack of some internationally-recognized A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states means we simply go back to that well every 7-10 years.

That’s our post-Cold War record in Iraq, in Haiti, and now in Somalia. Where we came closest to exercising the A-to-Z rule set I outline in BFA was in the Balkans. No surprise, we never left there. No exit means no exit strategy.

Also no surprise, the Balkans are our most successful success story. Not pretty. But check out the casualties among the peacekeepers, and check out the trials in the Hague (the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia became the model for the ICC), and check out the mix of U.S. troops to allied, and check out the follow-on integration to date with the EU and NATO.

To me, that’s an amazing success story that we refuse to recognize elsewhere. We come up with all sorts of good excuses, but it’s primarily a matter of political will and nothing more. Unfortunately, we’ve got too much of it with Bush-Cheney, while the rest of the Core’s pillars have too little.

So we’re back in Somalia. Said we’d never return, but we’re back, Nixon Doctrine-style (which I approve of, absent some larger Core rule set being employed).

What will it take to win the peace this time, seeing as we’ve simply driven the radical Islamic infestation one apartment over--yet again?

A long-term effort that we cannot possibly manage on our own, that must inevitably involve regional diplomacy and the Chinese, that . . . oh you get the picture.

Will we make this effort? I’m sure CJTF-HOA (Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa) will make a good faith effort, but I’m not optimistic until we get a more comprehensively serious (and strategic) leader in the White House, and by then it may be too late for this go-around with Somalia, whose golden hour is already “slipping away.”

Again, no surprise, as the FT reports “no clear commitment from outside the continent to fund an 8,000-strong AU peacekeeping mission.” That mission is supposed to “plug the gap once Ethiopia withdraws.”

Sound familiar?

The lack of the A-to-Z rule set is seen in poor Lebanon as well. The usual passing-the-hat on aid masquerades a more profound passing-the-buck on peacekeeping presence, which would have to be a lot bigger than what Europe has--largely on its own--mustered.

But of course, Lebanon “is a battlefield in a larger proxy war,” with America and its friends on one side and Iran on the other. We refuse to deal with Iran in Iraq, so Iran forces us to deal with them in Lebanon.

We treat every case as America-versus-the-world and you add up the cases and find that our “allies” in one situation are also our competitors or our outright opponents in another, and somehow we think--in our “we don’t do diplomacy” mindset--that we’re running the overall show.

When in reality, it’s the show that’s running us.

Hezbollah exercise the veto in Lebanon, with the strings being pulled back in Tehran. Not only have we been stupid enough to get ourselves into a proxy struggle with Iran. We’re managing to lose it. Why? We pick all the wrong venues and avoid all the right ones.

Bush doesn’t do diplomacy. He also doesn’t do winning.

A long struggle to create a global rule set on justice

ARTICLE: “Rules Dispute Imperils Khmer Rouge Trial: A long struggle to bring justice to the victims of genocide,” by Seth Mydans, New York Times, 26 January 2007, p. A3.

The global approach to war criminals has historically been rather haphazard: sometimes a local trial, sometimes an international one, sometimes the intervening powers conduct it, sometimes it’s a court shared between the nation and the international community, sometimes the UN is involved and sometimes not.

The creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002 was supposed to put a stop to that--sort of--by providing an internationally-credentialed court of last resort for conflicts and “nations” (typically failed) where local court systems proved insufficient. Although the ICC has never presented itself as THE alternative to global mash-ups, the goal was clearly in place to build up--over time--a sort of global case law on such matters, if for no other reason than avoiding the usual lengthy delays typically associated with the one-off approach employed in most of these cases.

The supremely delayed trial of the last surviving leaders of Khmer Rouge (we’re talking a genocide from over two decades ago) is a case in point: foreign and local judges locked in a never-ending argument. But look at the complex hybrid that was dreamed up: 17 Cambodian judges and 12 international ones, in a UN-sponsored mess “that mixes Cambodian law with international standards of justice.”:

It is an awkward formula made more questionable by the meager qualifications of the Cambodian judges, who are seen as poorly trained and subject to political manipulation.

Typical of the UN, it bends over backwards to respect local sovereignty, achieving its usual suboptimal outcome.

The UN-associated-but-not-sponsored ICC is supposed to be a bit more bold than that: simply proceeding on the notion that the local system was flawed in the first place, thus the war criminality needed to be judged by a wider community of states.

But because the main executioner of “hard” justice, the United States in the form of its military interventions, has essentially opted out of the ICC by signing all those bilat exclusionary treaties, the ICC remains a global rule set that’s largely unactualized.

And that’s a shame, because by connecting our toppling of dictators and rounding up of terrorists to that larger rule set, we’d go a long way toward effectively contextualizing the use of U.S. military power, thus we’d be freed to use it more--not less as our continued unilateralist tendencies have limited us through the reduction of allies and the increasing of enemies/opponents.

To me, this is a great example of the plethora of missed opportunities associated with George Bush’s presidency. I think history will judge him as having achieved virtually nothing in reshaping the global security environment for the long haul of the Long War. Instead, he’ll be judged primarily for Iraq and how he initiated the Big Bang there with no apparent plans for either local or regional follow-through.

And to me, that’s a stunning incompetence that history will condemn, overwhelming any good Bush might have accomplished previously and--amazingly--erasing all the global goodwill that was ours for the exploiting after 9/11.

Whew! To make Hugh!

Got up 0500 this am local time in San Diego. Flew to Atlanta. Then back to Central time here in Huntsville Alabama. Touch down 5:15. Luggage 5:25. Cab at 5:30 and get to hotel at 5:55. Check in and run to room, arriving 5:59. Phone rings and I'm on the air with Hugh 5 minutes later.

That was close!

Reviewed the chapter carefully while flying, cause it's the statistical chapter, so had a lot of notes at my fingertips for the show.

Best one yet, I felt, in me-and-Hugh give-and-take.

But I feel material was hardest yet for callers (all that data), so questions were less connected and thus less compelling.

Next week on System Perturbations should be great, because Y2K, 9/11 and Big Bang all lend themselves to narrative and thus more accessible traction points for questions.

Meanwhile, on with my own show.

Have 5K blogged and in Mac, but not sure my way-cheap motel has access and I left my Treo synch cord at home (otherwise I could get Mac online via cell--new feature I just got that means no more hotel charges, so long as I remember the damn cord!).

But I will see what I can arrange. In "space city," after all.