The prevalence of Iranian college students

ARTICLE: In Iran, Protests Gaining a Radical Tinge, By ROBERT F. WORTH, New York Times, December 10, 2009

Interesting stat: 1 out of every 20 Iranians is a college student.

Some youth bulge!

As always, a combustible situation for a country and here, hopefully a positive force for change.

Nasr's point: as the students continue to radicalize, the senior officials associated with the movement are forced to make difficult choices.

How a childish nation reacts in times of stress

OP-ED: The God That Fails, By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times, December 31, 2009

Some brilliant stuff from Brooks, scratching an itch I was trying to reach but could never quite find the words:

During the middle third of the 20th century, Americans had impressive faith in their own institutions. It was not because these institutions always worked well. The Congress and the Federal Reserve exacerbated the Great Depression. The military made horrific mistakes during World War II, which led to American planes bombing American troops and American torpedoes sinking ships with American prisoners of war.

But there was a realistic sense that human institutions are necessarily flawed. History is not knowable or controllable. People should be grateful for whatever assistance that government can provide and had better do what they can to be responsible for their own fates.

That mature attitude seems to have largely vanished. Now we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents -- who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can't.

My first response to Napolitano saying the system had worked was to nod my head in agreement, but that's because I consider all the passengers who acted bravely to be part of the system--you know, that whole self-aware thing. Somehow expecting the government or governments to acquit those on the scene of any responsibility to act seems bizarre. Do I feel bad all the technology got trumped and it was left to the "carbon devices" to step up and do something? Sure. But my immediate response was to revel in the passengers' actions, which now seem lost in this whole finger-pointing game.

The piece gets even better then:

Much of the criticism has been contemptuous and hysterical. Various experts have gathered bits of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's biography. Since they can string the facts together to accurately predict the past, they thunder, the intelligence services should have been able to connect the dots to predict the future.

Dick Cheney argues that the error was caused by some ideological choice. Arlen Specter screams for more technology -- full-body examining devices. "We thought that had been remedied," said Senator Kit Bond, as if omniscience could be accomplished with legislation.

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in -- technology, technocracy, centralized government control -- have failed them in this instance.

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, "Listen, we're doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through." But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways.

Amen, brother!

When I've told people for years that I feel like my entire career in national security boiled down to helping the U.S. military "come back to society," this is the essential reason why:

For better or worse, over the past 50 years we have concentrated authority in centralized agencies and reduced the role of decentralized citizen action. We've done this in many spheres of life.

Inside the national security establishment, it was this odd focus on nuclear war that seemed to distance the military most from society. There were, according to this logic, so many things that the military didn't bother needing to be good at--COIN included.

Well, 9/11 and the resulting wars forced the military back toward society--not just our own but every society into which it intervenes on the behalf of global security. A certain amount of individually-held responsibility remains (the strategic corporal and so on) and the basic F2F can never be completely obviated.

Focus on the people, not the nukes

ARTICLE: U.S. Sees an Opportunity to Press Iran on Nuclear Fuel, By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD, New York Times, January 2, 2010

I honestly believe this to be the more tired of logic:

As President Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, the administration says that domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Tehran's nuclear program make its leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions.

No matter what happens inside Iran, we ALWAYS believe we're on the verge of sanctions working oh-so-much better.

Again, I support stuff that targets the Revolutionary Guard, but anything that translates into pain for the people will, I think, backfire.

Instead, I'd rather see a big push by the administration to shine a light on the protests and simply to blow off the whole enrichment story, where I think our efforts are almost entirely meaningless.

A more democratic Iran won't feel the need for nukes, or if it does, we won't care.

Easy to look back and say Afghanistan, not Iraq

ARTICLE: Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan, By JAMES DAO, December 30, 2009

Would seem to be strong confirmation of the "taking our eyes off the ball" thesis WRT Afghanistan.

And yes, on the surface that is a serious undercutting of any Bush-Cheney logic on the redirect to Iraq in 2003, which I supported less on timing and more on the notion that eventually it was going to happen (in general, and as I preached at the time in the brief, speed is never of the essence for the world's sole superpower because inevitability is more his calling card).

But the counterfactual here stinks even worse: what if the administration would have come to their senses--at that early date--on the need to do serious COIN in Afghanistan and concentrate resources there before turning to Baghdad? Sounds perfect, does it not?

The problem with this counterfactual is, Afghanistan alone probably would not have forced the required learning within the military--certainly not any faster--absent Iraq, so saying that we should have stayed "on the ball" in Afghanistan and assuming the same learning would have occurred on that basis alone is, to me, a very weak argument.

In the end, I would still maintain that, unless you had something of sufficient size (meaning, resulting in serious U.S. casualties) and sufficient strategic importance, whatever learning did occur within the U.S. military wouldn't have made it all the way up to the White House in the manner of Bush-Cheney finally accepting the COIN/surge notion following the 2006 midterms. Afghanistan alone just wouldn't have been the critical mass.

Is that cynical of me to say? More simple realism, in my opinion, after working with the military across a host a SysAdmin-heavy interventions starting in 1990.

(Thanks: Jeffrey Itell)

Casualties across sectors

ARTICLE: C.I.A. Takes On Bigger and Riskier Role on Front Lines, By MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, December 31, 2009

Applying all aspects of "national power" necessarily means a wider array of casualties, both public and private sector.

Space, the final frontier

ARTICLE: Branson to Introduce Tourist Spaceship in Mojave, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, December 7, 2009

Unfortunately, I don't have a spare $200K sitting around.

But someday . . ..

I guess talking to Russia couldn't hurt

ARTICLE: In Shift, U.S. Talks to Russia on Internet Security, By JOHN MARKOFF and ANDREW E. KRAMER, New York Times, December 12, 2009

A very good and obvious call that took far too long for the USG to make, but such sensibility is why I voted for Obama.

The gist:

American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia's overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race.

Like with space, the longer we went with the I-refuse-to-discuss, the more we were going to see efforts by near-peers to demonstrate their rising prowess. Why? It's the obvious asymmetrical response to a Leviathan that's stronger than you across the board. You keep signaling until you get some symmetry via talks.

Why it's essentially smart for us? Great powers aren't our primary problem in cyberspace. Robb's global guerrillas are.

I assume Obama will eventually push the same with China. Will such talks or any treaties magically stop China's continued attempts at industrial theft? No. Only rising income stops that, along with the growing recognition that protecting IP is valuable in and of itself (and that too, doesn't come until the country in question gets rich enough--just like it did with us).

Diamond's bias collapse

OP-ED: Will Big Business Save the Earth?, By JARED DIAMOND, New York Times, December 5, 2009

The gist:

As part of my board work, I have been asked to assess the environments in oil fields, and have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I've also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I've discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world's strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability.

The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image -- one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters -- reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

Most biases, like military plans, do not survive first contact.

A "drug war" that actually resembles a war

FRONT PAGE: "Mexico Ramps Up Drug War With a Surge on Rio Grande," by Jose De Cordoba and Joel Millman, Wall Street Journal, 22 December 2009.

FRONT PAGE: "Hit Men Kill Mexican Hero's Family: Attack on Relatives of Marine Who Died in Drug Raid Suggests Cartels Turning to Terror," by David Luhnow and Jose De Cordoba, Wall Street Journal, 23 December 2009.

The WSJ calls the killing of the family of a Marine who died in a drug raid "terror," and this seems a legitimate use of the term--even if the goal of such terror is purely profit versus political change.

You track this sort of mass violence and I don't see how we exit this new decade without decriminalizing (and thus, medicalizing) narcotic abuse.

Too many bureaucrats

OP-ED: The Next Surge: Counterbureaucracy, By JONATHAN J. VACCARO, New York Times, December 7, 2009

A lot of this is due to the incredible array of USG players in the aid mix. Too many cooks, too much bureaucracy, too many permissions to seek.

Another implicit argument for the Department of Everything Else.

UAVs at home (rules to follow)

ARTICLE: U.S. Adds Drones to Fight Smuggling, By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, New York Times, December 7, 2009

You knew this was coming: more and more domestic use of drones.

I remember thinking after 9/11 that the use of UAVs here at home would be delayed because of the nature of that attack. But you get over it, and so I would expect to see continued expansion, eventually spilling over big time into the civilian sector.

Rule sets to follow, naturally.

Hail the Iranian students

ARTICLE: Iranian Students Clash With Police, By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI, New York Times, December 7, 2009

As I stated at the beginning of this whole deal: the question is the staying power of the protest movement. Obviously, the students are the key resource here, so their continuing willingness to act is very impressive.

I am losing it in the direction of Radiohead

"National Anthem" is my new favorite song in the world, and "KId A" my new favorite album.

I love losing it for a group about six albums in, because then you have such a huge relationship you can immediately lose yourself within. It's why I don't watch fab new series until the first season comes out on DVD. No dribs and drabs for me. I want immersion.

Though my new favorite group is Muse, which I find very T-Rex-y.

The Naughties Were Plenty Nice

Political pundits across America seem committed to the notion that our just-concluded decade deserves the moniker "worst ever," with the formulations ranging from Time's demonic "decade from hell" to Paul Krugman's self-flagellating "Big Zero." But if Krugman could call it "a decade in which nothing good happened," much of the planet might find our myopic bitterness a bit much -- as if the entire world should stop spinning just because the Dow Jones Industrial Average forgot to exit the decade higher than when it entered.

Continue reading this week's New Rules column at WPR.

Lots of new rules in the security reset

ARTICLE: Rules Are Topsy-Turvy After Terror Attempt, By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, New York Times, December 28, 2009

The usual rule-set reset dynamics after an attempted terror strike--along with the usual bitching.

The key--as always--is to expect constant change and adaptation.

Having "smuggled" enough liquid stuff on planes unwittingly (you just forget you have this or that stuffed in some part of your luggage, backpack, whatever) over the past years, I was never impressed with the security rule set following the liquid bomber guys (a day I was traveling, and I can tell you that, on my multi-leg trip that day, the rules got harsher with each connection!), and so, as soon as I got my first whole-body scan, I started my internal countdown clock regarding the triggering event. Yes, some small minority will resist the notion, and yes, there will be scandals whereby untrustworthy TSA personnel pass around nice-body shots (leading to more internal restrictions on handling the info), but in the airports where it is already used as a primary screen, something like 98% of people willingly submit.

So one practical upshot of the Detroit event will be the future widespread use of those whole-body scanners, and already, we see the stock of those companies sky-rocketing (which, of course, will trigger wild speculation of bad guys scamming the system to reap market rewards--just wait).

What will be more interesting will be the unintended benefits of all that scanning, as in, what will we learn about ourselves.

My old joke about, "Be glad Richard Reid didn't shove that bomb up his ass" has, naturally, been overtaken by real world events. I would sometimes conjecture the cure for various cancers from early detection in response to the immediate laugh, and I wasn't kidding in the sense that, whenever we engage in widespread monitoring, we're always surprised by the positive downstream data collection/analysis possibilities. Typically, we just fear the loss of privacy stuff.

Myopic, naive argument on bombing Iran

OP-ED: There's Only One Way to Stop Iran, By ALAN J. KUPERMAN, New York Times, December 23, 2009

A painfully myopic argument, badly delivered. Too casually offered analogies to Israel-on-Iraq strikes, no real appreciation of the non-likelihood of success (distributed and buried deep facilities), and a very naive assumption about how long we'd be able to bomb day after day with impunity.

All in all, an oddly naive piece from somebody seemingly in a position to argue more coherently.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

Lots of sturm und drang

ARTICLE: How Obama Came to Plan for 'Surge' in Afghanistan, By PETER BAKER, New York Times, December 5, 2009

Obama may want to push this thing (Afghanistan) to the left--as they say, but every politician wants that.

The reality will likely disappoint, thus the role of the cabinet to roam the world and the halls of Congress making clear 2011 is a political deadline here at home that has little meaning for our operations over there.

Iran continues to choose isolation at this point...

ARTICLE: Iran Sets Limit to What It Tells Atomic Agency, By WILLIAM J. BROAD, New York Times, December 4, 2009

... and there continues to be plenty of good domestic reasons for doing so.

So I expect it to continue.

The consensus on why Iran couldn't go ahead with the Russian enrichment deal: Ahmadinejad may have wanted respite from international pressure, but Revolutionary Guard did not.

All in all, plenty of eventual success in Iraq

ARTICLE: G.I.'s Learning to Stand Down as Iraqis Step In, By JOHN LELAND, New York Times, December 4, 2009

U.S. troops learning not to respond and let the Iraqis handle security breaches:

Asked if it was better this way, Lieutenant Dixon, of Anacoco, La., said: "It's hard to explain. Like this mission -- we like it, but it's boring to us. But this is a much more rewarding mission than kicking down doors every day.

"We get to see the progress of what we're doing," he said. "There's times we'll go on missions and they'll say, 'We don't need you. We'll take care of this and give you a report.' There's no better measure of success than that."

Very nice bit of evolution.

No, we'll have residual troops for years beyond 2011, but our casualties will drop to near zero, and, over time, the Iraqis will get better and better. Couple more years and we'll hit the 8-year mark, which, historically, is the low-end of the scale for successful counterinsurgency (8-10 years).

As far as institutional learning goes, a serious success for the U.S. military, given where their capabilities were at the time of invasion and where they are now.

Fast enough for everybody? Hell, no, and Bush-Cheney held it up for years, until they got to the second midterm and started thinking legacy. And plenty of people will discount or even dismiss this profound evolution.

But to me, right on schedule (realizing that politicians will always look out for themselves first) and it's the secondary reason why I was for the invasion (the first being, it would force us, as I said in the original magazine piece, to dive deeply on that region's overall security for the long haul). Something big needed to come along and force the institutional change, reversing the decades-long rejection of small wars stuff and finally embracing the logic of the SysAdmin force.

The pressure grows on the undervalued yuan

WORLD NEWS: "EU Voices Frustration With China's Currency Policy," by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 30 November 2009.

EU officials complaining to Chinese that they have a hard time explaining to their consumers how the fastest growing economy in the world actually has a depreciating currency.

Of course, China doesn't have one--absent the firm peg to the U.S. dollar which is naturally depreciating.

So Chinese goods continue to get cheaper in Europe and European goods get more expensive in China--not part of the desired global rebalancing.