Chart of the day: Flat-liners versus climbers on L.T. energy demand

From an otherwise regurgitating Economist special report on state capitalism, a wonderfully clear chart on primary energy demand, aggregated as billion tons of oil equivalent.

Not amazing: semi-flat growth for Russia, given its demographic slide.

Impressive for US and EU: the efficiency angle keeping growth flat, despite modest economic growth and significant demographic growth for US.

Curious is Brazil's capacity to keep its curve semi-flat.

So that leaves only the two great risers as demand climbers: China's stunning trajectory and India's late-blooming-but-likely-to-skyrocket-from-that-point-on curve (India surpasses China in labor around 2030 and then grows 50% larger, suggesting it will replicate China's trajectory on some level, understanding that its energy profile could be dramatically different in those future decades).

To me, this is a great example of why the military containment strategy (keep the PLA boxed-in in East Asia is dangerous - and counterproductive.  China needs to go so incredibly global due to its energy demand that it's only natural that it build up power projection and become more contentious on the issue of energy security. America can address all that or go super-unimaginative and make it all about an arms race in East Asia, believing that we'll temper China's behavior by doing the same things we did with the Sovs in the Cold War.

But making China feel nervous at home makes it harder for it to address its growing overseas dependencies in the very same regions where the U.S. is becoming less interested in providing stability and more focused on just killing bad guys. Conceivably, our willingness to go anywhere we want, when we want, to kill anybody we want, would make the Chinese feel better about their interests in these regions. But this thin-green-line approach, augmented with the transparent encirclement strategy in East Asia, essentially works to keep China nervous on both scores by insinuating that growing Chinese military capacity is automatically bad - both at home and extra-regionally, unless, of course, the Chinese become "transparent" in the direction of the very same superpower that threatens them in their home region with its world-class military (the same one that's just declared China to be its primary force-sizing threat from here on out).

Bit much, huh?

WPR's The New Rules: China’s State Capitalism Faces ‘Teddy Roosevelt Moment’

The American political discourse is rife with fear-threat reactions regarding rising China, embodied most saliently in the Obama administration’s strategic pivot to East Asia and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s repeated promise to hold “currency manipulator” China responsible for its economic sabotage of the U.S. economy. Eagerly cashing in on the hype, last week’s Economist greeted us with the most lurid of covers heralding -- yet again! -- “the rise of state capitalism.” We are immediately informed by the subtitle that this is “the emerging world’s new model.”

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Charts of the day: US debt and petroleum

From Business Insider (via Zakaria's GPS site) comes the following listing of who holds US public debt.

• Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
• Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
• Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
• Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
• Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
• Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
• Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
• State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
• Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
• United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
• Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
• State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
• Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
• U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
• China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
• The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
• Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

The Global Post's Tom Mucha writes the post as revelation: See! China doesn't own the U.S.

Okay, so China doesn't own the US anymore than we get all our energy from Saudi Arabia, but China is the single biggest foreign holder - more than 3 times the long-time historical champ UK and more than recent historical champ Japan.

And yes, we do get a picture sort of like our oil situation, where our biggest supplier remains ourself (here, in various forms, accounting for roughly 2/3rds) and other big suppliers remains long-time friends.

But what's also been clear when we've floated large amounts recently is that China is the one great foreign buyer out there who can soak up our surges, so it does play a bit of a Saudi Arabia-like role in things, and that's not to be dismissed.

Then also via Zakaria' site comes the following US Energy Information Agency chart:

The clear long-term trend here, per the North American energy export boom in the works (Wikistrat's next community simulation to begin shortly), is the declining role of petroleum imports, dropping from the high in 2005 (60%) to under half today (49%) and down to just over a third (36%) by 2035.

Things you note:

• Flatness of demand curve!
• Significant rise in production - part of the fracking revolution!

The combo yields America's resumption of its role as a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in over six decades!

Compare that picture to China's and ask yourself if you'd switch energy challenges with them.

Of course not.

But back to the first point: China is the big saver in the system of the last two-three decades. That means it's not only our great release-valve source of money for things like our national debt. It plays that role increasingly around the globe - to wit, the recent Wikistrat sim on "China as the de facto World Bank for Africa."

My point in the pairing: excitement over our improved energy picture, yes, but realism on the future of money - especially given this fear-threat reaction embodied in Obama's strategic "pivot" to China.

Wikistrat post @ CNN/GPS: Nine roads to November

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

Upsetting both conventional wisdom and the party establishment’s preferred narrative, New Gingrich’s big win in South Carolina’s Republican primary last weekend has dramatically energized the GOP race. While it suddenly feels like a two-man fight between Gingrich and the previously presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, in truth, the party’s three main wings (country-club moderates, Reaganites,  and the farthest-right social conservatives and libertarians) remain deeply divided, suggesting a lengthy and drawn-out battle across the remaining GOP primaries. Taking that as our starting-point assumption, Wikistrat polled its global network of strategists for scenarios as to how this might unfold and what it could mean for the November general election.

Read the entire post at CNN's GPS blog.

The Hunt Big Sales interview processed into two blog posts.

First one is entitled, Think Bigger: Ideas That Sell, and came out Monday.

Second one entitled, Are You Selling to the Right People? came out Tuesday.

There are encapsulations of the audio interview I posted on Tuesday.

Time's Battleland: Would Assad’s Fall Limit the Nuclear Menace in the Middle East?

As Bashar Assad looks more internationally isolated by the day — and far more vulnerable to Western economic sanctions than uber-bad boy Iran — it behooves us to think through what general advantages accrue with his eventual fall. To date, most of the thinking has focused on Iran’s loss of its right-hand proxy in transmitting terror to Israel via Hamas and Hezbollah.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Interview on selling big ideas

 

Gave it to Tom Searcy, who writes at both Inc.com and Hunt Big Sales.com.

You can find the download here.

I likewise embed download in this post.  Runs about 20 minutes.

Click here to play.

In honor of Newt's SC victory . . . remembering a 2006 dinner with him

The post from back then, reposted in full. The dominant impression: wide-ranging knowledge, reflecting a huge memory.

Speaking with the Speaker, and a great reporter

Referenced from: http://thomaspmbarnett.com/globlogization/2006/3/23/speaking-with-the-speaker-and-a-great-reporter.html#ixzz1kJTxa9cN

THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 2006 AT 5:35PM

Last night was pretty good. Sat at the head table with the hosting general of the Joint Flag Officer Warfighting Course and Newt Gingrich, who seemed to know a lot about me (saying things like, "this is a book I know you'd find interesting" and stuff like that, and asking a lot of questions that revealed some knowledge).

Gingrich is a pretty easy guy to talk with. Inquisitive as hell, he asks question after question and then he spits out theories every so often at high speed, often linking them to American history. His favorite point of comparison to today was the tougher years of the Civil War.

I countered more with the settling of the West, and we went back and forth some on the subject, which was fun.

Also, covered Iraq, where the consensus of the table (us and five or so 3-stars) was that we toppled the regime but that we should have kept the government (mostly because we were prepared to topple a regime but not to replace a government). Gingrich really liked that enunciation, and wrote it down on his Delta flight coupon sleeve, upon which he took notes throughout the night (not a napkin note-taker, he).

Gingrich asked me about Indiana (why I was there), said he loved the zoo there (I told him we had just visited and were members; he countered that he was a zoo freak who visited them every town he traveled to), and compared his Wisconsin experiences to mine (his wife is from a town not that far from my hometown).

Chatting through a dinner with him is pretty much what you'd expect, having seen him on TV so many times: accessible, very fast, likes to hear himself talk but listens very intently as well (asking you to repeat stuff he likes, or typically following up everything you say with a question). Serious Republican, no doubt, and he wears his credentials openly on every point, but not hard to converse with or conduct a reasonable argument. It's not hard to see why the military likes to have him around so much. He's a fascinating guy, and who doesn't like all the Civil War references?!

When I got up to talk, I was a bit nervous, or rather, a bit too tired, as I often am when I talk late after talking early (I am not the young man I once was), so I stumbled a bit on the first couple of slides, in part because the mike started feeding back and in part because my clicker did not work whatsoever, which was baffling, because we tested it all out earlier in the afternoon.

I had one of the hosting personnel swap out the batteries and it did little good: instead of clicking the keypad, I could use it but basically only if I held it almost over the laptop. Very weird. Worked fine back in my room. Really wonder about the RF quality of that room, which is a none-too-rare experience for me in venues.

Anyway, once I got warmed up, it flowed. But I was surprisingly more stark and forceful than usual, which I didn't credit to Gingrich being there so much as my sense from the room: about three dozen 3-stars from all services. Basically tough faces to work: thinking hard, agreeing or disagreeing hard, and working it all out very seriously in their skulls.

You can just sense that with certain rooms: this is not entertainment to them but something far more serious. So you just go with the feeling, and the delivery adjusts.

Still, I was a bit surprised. Just didn't expect such a strong flow.

Went about 60 (norm is 30) and then did about 30 Q&A, which was exceptionally good, and tougher than usual. Seems like everyone had either read or was reading PNM.

Signed about 25 copies of BFA afterwards, and Gingrich came up and said how much he liked the talk. What was especially cool during the signings was hearing what I heard several times during the earlier one that afternoon: senior officers saying this was one of the rare times in their lives when they ever bothered to get an author to sign their copies, which is kind of a weird compliment but one I get in its meaning--namely, people saying they don't usually get touched by a book but that this one did it for them. You get that sort of feedback from a 3-star and you feel pretty good about your decision to put it into print.

Then the real treat for me: a long chat over beers with Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal. He showed up at the reception because he heard I was talking (Gingrich flew in as well for the talk). Both he and Newt would have come anyway that night or early the next morning for their own stints with the JFOWC, but it was a real honor to have them both attend the dinner because of me.

I hadn't spoken F2F with Greg for a while, so a great discussion on what good reporting is over the reception before dinner, and then just a nice long private conversation (no flags) on the porch outside our rooms after the dinner and talk, a conversation that ran until midnight.

That meant I got little sleep before my flights home to close on the house this afternoon, but it was worth it. I respect Greg so much, and like him personnaly as well, that it was really great to have that time together, jawing our way through a host of defense and mil topics. Greg's been on the Pentagon beat for so long, and he's so on top of his game. Still, I'll be interested to see what the paper has in store for him next. He's simply too good a reporter just to keep doing the same thing forever. Frankly, I don't think he can get much better at what he covers now than he already is, and that's a recipe for stagnation if you're not careful.

Weird fact about Greg: his first newspaper job was in Montgomery, which is why he's easily talked into this course.

WPR's The New Rules: Extended Life Expectancy Globalization's Next Political Battleground

Human life expectancy at birth, which remained stunningly fixed for thousands of years before suddenly doubling over the course of the 20th century, now seems destined to experience a similarly bold leap across the 21st century. When it does, it will shift human thinking about population control from its present focus on the outset of life to the increasingly delayed final curtain. The problem is that the technological advances that will make extending life expectancy possible are likely to come far faster than our political systems -- including the democracies -- can handle. 

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Addendum #2 to Saturday's unburdening

First, understand that I am hurting from last Sunday big time. This whole week was depression personified. Until the SB is over, I live in a sad, limbo-like existence, dreaming of Cullen Jenkins' return because the Eagles got too many old-man high-price free agents to re-sign.  It's pathetic, but there I am - Jerome stewing beside me.

David Emergy asks for a "hell yes!" on the presidential field versus an my admittedly weak endorsement for Romney and my I-can't-have-her lust for Hillary.

Emblematic of America, I don't have that candidate in hand - which is why I'm still window shopping when it comes to passion.

Yes, the right "wrong" person could warm me up again on Obama.  Santorum would do it, as would Paul, as would Gingrich in the end - as much as I admire his imagination. I wouldn't cross the aisle for any of those three.

I would get jacked for Giuliani, and have said that often.  My dream ticket remains Rudy and Michael Bloomberg. I like Giuliani's leadership capacity and I love Bloomberg's adventurous technocratic personality. I think he's the most exciting tinkerer out there, and a huge global influence in that role (vastly underappreciated, but most people don't get the coastal mega-city network vibe that's out there, making things happen on globalization). The two of them would be my version of a progressive ticket: fixers with no serious ideological bent. I had hopes for Obama on that score, but the smartest-guy-in-the-room thing got in the way. Rudy's and Mike's egos are accomplishment based, not loved based, and I really love that in leaders.

Frustrated with the field?  Let me count the ways.  I do agree with Newt: this is an historic and crucial election, and the idea that Obama just glides in with mega-buck spending stikes me as very bad for the country. I think he can win, but only with great negativity, and then I think we have four years of an embattled president whose main outlet of foreign policy is already spoiled with the strategic "pivot" choice. I don't want America to play four more years of the waiting game.  I want better.  I want progressive movement that regains the only lead worth capturing vis-a-vis the two great risers of the age - China and India: I want America once again being the best provider of sharp new answers that move the ball with purpose. Obama accomplish the basic realignment from Bush that I advocated in "Great Powers," but after that, I've seen litte-to-no strategic purpose or momentum, with the big choice on China being stunningly unimaginative in nature (i.e., he either wants to cover his defense "ass" on spending, which is silly given his vigorous killing program, or he can't stand up to the Pentagon, or he's actually dumb enough to believe this sort of empty posturing is worthwhile - I like none of my choices here).

If my only choices are Mitt and Barack, I choose the former as being more likely to achieve some momentum, but I am unhappy with this choice. Mitt feels too much like Mondale or Dole or McCain - the my-turn candidate, which to me just guarantees a second term to somebody who will do very little of value with the opportunity.

Deficit myths: it's still all about healthcare, so Obama was right to work it. And yet, I want him gone in 2013 [WITH ADDENDUM]

Got asked in Belvoir this last week about the present situation in US and what must be done.  I answered by citing my own household economy as microcosm:

• Far more competitive world means earning potential is harder to achieve;
• That income "haircut" means past debt patterns unsustainable, thus the deleveraging that continues (done better by individuals, families, firms, everybody but the Fed Gov!);
• Housing is key (our move to short sale old house was big financial achievement of 2011), and curing that is key to allowing workers to move (that's why we did it this year, while the right constellation of circumstances presented themselves, in preparation for eventual 2014 move back East for job-related purposes);
• Education is key (I pay 7 tuitions: 2 preschool, 2 grade school, 1 HS, 1 undergrad and 1 grad) to maintaining future possibilites, so investment trumps damn near everything; and yet,
• Healthcare is huge drain (I pay my own now and the pre-tax cost, by my estimate, is between $30-40,000, meaning that's how I gotta earn to cover it all from stem to stern).

So larger reality for US not unlike my family: we had to scale back everything to preserve what matters, which is healthcare and education; we had to solve the housing situation to allow for renewed labor mobility; we haven't really seen our standard of living go down at all, and yet we've made wrenching changes to be able to live on a much smaller consumption footprint. All tough adjustments, but incredibly worthwhile.

But again, healthcare is huge and seemingly unassailable from my perspective. We are exceedingly careful about how we spend those dollars, even as that's the last thing - besides education - that we want to scrimp on.

Of course, if we don't have six kids, then my life is dramatically simpler on all scales, but there again, what keeps America strong?  Demographics, so that's worthwhile too.

Citation here is Alan Blinder op-ed in WSJ.  Great stuff.

"Four deficit myths":

1. Americans now demand deficit reduction like never before. Not true.  Jobs matter far more now, as does healthcare and housing. Just understand, polls on this subject are no more definitive than they were 20-30 years ago.  This is not our current obsession.
2. Our deficit is so bad right now that massive cuts are required immediately. Also not true. We have no trouble selling debt in this global economy. Yes, long-term deficit issue is acute, but key is setting in place conditions for long boom that takes care of that. See Europe for austerity approach.
3. The ten-year reduction focus makes sense. Bad thinking. Little can and will be accomplished in any 10-year plan. The problem if far longer in scope - see demographics, and thus the solutions must be similarly gauged.
4. America has a generalized problem of runaway spending. Very untrue. The only part of the Fed budget that's really exploding is Medicare and Medicaid, so it's still mostly about healthcare.

In short, "we have a humungous healthcare problem."

Anybody familiar with the US defense budget has long said the same thing: we don't have operations or acquisition or training or personnel crises. The "imperial overstretch" argument remains complete academic bullshit.  We primarily have a healthcare crisis that is extended into pension system. Everything else pales.

In my family right now, the biggest short-term threat, now that we're mortgage free and successfully deleveraging across the board, is healthcare. Huge drain.  Big uncertainty. Encourages self-defeating avoidance behavior on many levels (which we try desperately to be smart about). Leaks into everything.

When GOP says Obama went off deep end on healthcare because country didn't want that or didn't elect him for that, they miss the mark.  It is clearly the biggest internal challenge we face - short and long term. It is the hidden villain on everything. Saying it was a diversion is - itself - a diversionary election-centric tactic.  

But still, I would trust a Romney to finesse its implementation better than an Obama, whose political and negotiating skills I no longer respect, and whose stunning ignorance of, and antipathy toward, business has become an unacceptable leadership flaw - given the tough adjustments still to come.

And yes, I LOVE that Romney did it first in Massachusetts - and did it intelligently. That is a huge credentializer in my mind.

Americans' distrust and anger toward globalization and big business is stunningly misplaced. Globalization has made the world so much better, but it now challenges us in ways we've long gotten used to avoiding because of our long-term privileged position in the global economy, which itself reflected gross historical injustices stemming from colonialization, WWII, socialism in the East, etc. None of those things were our fault, and we took the lead in overcoming them all, but we did live in a pretend world of superiority on that basis across the second half of the 20th century.

That world is gone, and good riddance, say I, because it was supremely unfair to the majority of the planet, and I don't want to live in this world by exploiting others unnecessarily.

So our succees in spreading American-style globalization now comes back to haunt us, demanding we adjust. That's not about demonizing business, even as it is about cleaning up some incredibly bad form on Wall Street (a regular task, just bigger this cycle). It's also not about demonizing China, who is our biggest ally in the global economy going forward - like it or not.

Romeny will say stupid things on China to win the GOP nomination. Obama is already doing stupid things. On the business, it's clear who's hostile and who's not.

Looking ahead, I want a dealmaker, a difference-splitter, a realist on business who acts based on experience and not sterile theory. I also want somebody who can rationalize our military budget and global presence without resorting to idiotic, default targeting of the Chinese.

Romney is far from ideal on all those scores, but he does beat Obama, in my mind, on every one of them.

I stil maintain Obama was the best choice of the two in 2008. I would still vote for him all over again, given the repeated chance. I do think America, however, would have been much better served by a Hillary presidency (I voted for her in the primary), and since I can't get that this time around, I'll make do with the alternative, who I think will have a far better chance of working with a Republican House and Senate than Obama will - given overall Boomer political proclivities (most Boomer politicians are just above cartoon-grade in their motivations, skills and intelligence).

No, I would take Obama over the two jokers (Santorum and Paul) and the complete wild card (Gingrich). And yes, this would be my first vote for a GOP presidential candidate in my entire life.

And my logic on all this if decidedly unemotional (can I toss in that I'm the father of two African-come-to-America daughters, just to be safe?).

This isn't personal in the least; this is strictly business.

LATER ADDENDUM DUE TO MIKE RUSSELL'S COMMENT ABOUT GOP'S CHARGE THAT OBAMA IS "ANTI-BUSINESS":

I don't use that political term of art (anti-business), because I don't think it's true. I don't think his policies have been particularly anti-business.

I think he doesn't understand business (ignorance) and on that basis tends to vilify and scapegoat business (antipathy) for our continuing poor recovery. The silliness over "taxing millionaires and billionaires" is, to me, just rhetorical nonsense. Those people pay plenty, but no matter how much more we tax them (I am indifferent on the subject), it won't change our fundamental issues. So, to me, rolling with political gamesmanship like that says serious change isn't what he's looking for, otherwise he would have gone with Bowles-Simpson and not ignored what everyone said were sound recommendations.

I also cite the ignorance issue for what I consider to be generally bad-for-business-but-bad-for-everybody-else-too policies in combating the crisis. The administration just hasn't done enough to encourage deleveraging throughout the economy, instead preferring stimulus spending to cure a financially-driven overhang crisis, which, per Rogoff, is the wrong medicine chasing the wrong disease.

I won't claim to have tracked the US economy enough to have said, I told you so way back when, because I most certainly did not. But it's hard for me to accept that a guy as smart as Obama couldn't find enough people around him who were smart enough to realize that stimulus splurging after a financial crisis only gets you a follow-on fiscal crisis without actually improving the financial hang-over/debt overhang. They still don't seem to get that, and as long as they don't, I think business will hold off on investment and hiring because consumers are forced to keep their spending low (I certainly am).

So all I am left assuming is that he doesn't know business (ignorance) and made patently bad choices out of some antipathy to business (it is hard to advise the guy who's certain he's always the smartest guy in the room). I say that because business has largely argued for a far stronger deleveraging focus versus the path Obama has taken. That path did include bailouts for Wall Street firms (not sure history will be kind there) and Detroit (am certain history will be kind there and have said that throughout in posts and speeches - but there I cite the global car industry, which is something I have tracked).

Finally, if Obama were both smart on business and less into his business-can't-be-trusted mode, I think he would have pursued opening up the US economy to Chinese investment instead of staying stuck on the RMB's value and this bizarre strategic "pivot" to East Asia, where apparently our weaponry and national "will" is going to keep us economically engaged in the region despite openly targeting the biggest economy there, a country, by the way, that we expect to finance this military buildup in the Pacific. But that's just me saying I don't trust how he views or understands global business.

In general, I do think Obama is a smart guy, but he's displayed enough dumb/antipathy WRT business for me to want him swapped out versus keeping him another four years. The global economy right now is in fairly precarious shape, and I don't see his administration being able to work with a GOP congress over the next four years any better than he has the past 3. We can say it's all GOP hostility but Bill Clinton managed that, and Reagan did with the Dems. Obama is just not that guy. He matches the GOP's Manichean view with too much of his own, along with a pride and self-confidence in his supreme intelligence that I think is his biggest weakness.

We've have world-class brain presidents (Hoover, Carter, Obama) and they manage to have attract hard economic times. I have come to greatly prefer emotionally intelligent presidents (FDR, Reagan, Clinton) or incredible dealmakers (Johnson, Nixon). That's why I will take Romney and his blandness and his difference splitting and flip-flopping and non-agenda. I want a manager who moves the process along for the next four years, rather than the perceived/actual ideologue who attracts more fight than he's worth and isn't clever enough to realize when he needs to bend instead of stand proud.

Wukan protest leader gets his moment in the big seat

WSJ Blog piece noting that Beijing appoints the local rebellion leader the new local party boss in Wukan.

One thing to lead the mini-revolution against party corruption and land stealing, another thing to get a crack at running things yourself. 

As noted before, the ceremonial sacking of the corrupt local leader is a Chinese tradition - a release-valve approach to angry ground-floor populism.  But yes, this incident crossed many lines: scaring off the local police, taking control of local government - all the while pledging adherence to single-party rule (sharp).

Since Lin Zulian has been running the place for a bit, the party elite felt it easier just to let him stay in place, assuaging the implied throw-the-bums-out impulse that exploded weeks ago. Local elections, typically hotly contested, soon follow, and we'll see what's allowed, but this one is moving past differences in degree to differences in kind.  It's not just certain factions up high wanting to address the land-grabbing issue; it's some of them willing to test the waters here on different responses to processing the populist anger.

This is both the start of something truly big and something truly long. No, we won't see a spring-like wave sweep over the place, but the longer ordinary Chinese witness these gives on the part of the Party, the more demanding they'll become, with the "social harmony" part being everybody's commitment to incrementalism.

From my perspective, this all moves along quite nicely and reasonably on schedule. I know, I know, "Nixon went to China four decades ago and the Chinese are still Chinese!" But remember my frequently-offered observation about authoritarian regimes - especially Asian ones - opening up to globalization and taking about 4-5 decades of single-party rule before the flowering middle class steps into the fray with great earnestness.  China remains, in Deng years, only about 30 years old, meaning my democratization zone lies at some depth in the 2020s but consummates circa 2030, when the sixth generation of leadership (my contemporaries) is wrapping up their rule. This generation, unlike Xi Jinping's 5th Gen, comes of age after the Cultural Revolution, so the journey both begins and will end differently, because it can - and it must.

China in 2030 features a per capita income level of about $20,000. No major polity has ever made it that far, especially having embraced state-led capitalism, without succumbing to genuine democratization vice single-party rule dressed up as it.  Happened to Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia. Happening to Malaysia and Singapore. The crew that came online in the 1980s, China chief among them, will constitute the "spring" class of 202X. That deal, driven by all sorts of irresistable forces - demography and income growth being most crucial - has long been in the works. Our job is simply to observe, nudge and not screw it up by giving the center excuses to delay.  Left to its own devices, the competing philosophies and moral principles will emerge, with the competing party wings to follow. The fracturing that follows will be completely natural: we can agree to disagree; we can agree to try one path/party for a while; we can accede to the public's desire for change on a reasonably regular basis.

China already has a firm and predictable rotation of generational leadership. The competition within the party for the top slots is real, as are local elections. The pieces of this puzzle are coming into place - just not on our desired schedule.

Only the Chinese can make these choices, to include the all-important timetable.  All we can do is create friction along the way.

Unfortunately, the strategic "pivot" to East Asia is exactly that.

Our man in Wukan, you have done well.

China as Africa's De Facto World Bank - the Wikistrat video

This is a recorded briefing that I generated from the recent Wikistrat internal training simulation entitled, "China as Africa's de facto World Bank." It summarizes the points I gleaned from the wide-ranging simulation (dozens of wiki pages filled with all manner of brainstormed ideas, strategies, options by several dozen analysts) and summed up in an 8-page report.

This was the first major video production in the set-up I have constructed - after excruciating testing and accumulation of equipment - in our new rental home, which, in various parts, doubles as my work environment. Fortunately for me, virtually everyone else in my family is in school, with youngest Abebu starting within months. So during the day I have the house completely under control, meaning I can meticulously set up the gear, test at length, and pursue recordings and subsequent processing/production in peace.

Ah, the life of the bootstrapped start-up!

Naturally, comments and suggestions are welcomed on content, presentation choices (there are many ways to skin that cat, given the tremendous volume of ideas generated by any one simulation), and video capture.

One correction already accomplished: on this taping I set up a flatscreen for video feedback (I can see screen's content and myself in foreground) just to the right of the camera.  That gives me a slight off-camera eye orientation, which I thought was fine for simulating an audience interaction. But in retrospect, we decided that a straight-into-the-camera style would be better.  That is accomplished in an improved set-up that involves a smaller feedback screen being place just below the came - as in, within a couple of inches. That way I can look directly into the feedback and be, for all practical purposes, looking directly into the camera. The feedback screen is crucial because all of these briefs will be screen-content heavy and first-and-one-time briefs on my part, meaning I can't possibly memorize every click like I do on my regular brief. In that way, it is a LOT like doing the TV weather: lots of data/info to get through and you need to position yourself in front of the screen while not blocking it.  I do fairly well on this first try, but can obviously get smoother - trick being the feedback presents itself in a mirror image.

Another fix in the works: I lost my clip for my clip-on mike and therefore had to wear below the camera line because my substitute clip ain't so elegant.  That meant I picked up the clicking sound from my remote controller a bit too much - for my taste. New one is in the mail, so next time I'll wear the mike far higher and hopefully not pick up that sound.

Overall, pretty happy with the effort. At first, I repeat the text too much, but I warm up over time and get more extemporaneous and relaxed as I got more comfortable with moving myself around. This is far different from me being tracked by a cameraman on a big stage, because I go completely unconscious on my style and let the camera-guy deal with all that.  Here, with a fixed camera, I have to adjust my style somewhat. So a bit stiff at first, improving throughout, and clearly something I will grow more easy with it as I repeat the process.

Processing the loss

 Off doing my regular lecture series at the satellite school (Belvoir VA) of Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College, so feel it's the right time to purge myself of the huge bad feeling created by Sunday's nightmare game.

Fan Cam HD 5-gajillion pixel shot of entire stadium that yields the following zoom capture of Jerry (mostly obscured and just above extended left arm of drunk in Packer yellow hoody) and myself (Packer hat, my glasses tinted by sunlight) in section 114, 37th row, seats 19-20 at the Packers-Giants game Sunday afternoon-eve. It was hard to tell when the camera was shooting in our direction.  We later stood up to be better spotted, but we must have missed that click.

Naturally, we were hugely disappointed by the game, but such is the NFL.

Watching the DVR later, after we got home, it seemed even more clear to me that we lost that game as much or more than the Giants won it.  They played well and deserved to win on that basis, but we just didn't play our game on offense and that wasn't due so much to the Giants's D, which was good but not that great, than it was to our consistently bad play (Rodger's first fumble of season, Kuhn's first of career(!), all those drops and several serious misses by Rodgers who had his worst statistical game of the season).  Rodgers simply blew an easy TD pass to Jennings on the first drive and Jennings simply dropped one in the end zone in the 3rd.  Those were plays both made in their sleep all year, but suddenly couldn't make on Sunday - to all our shocked amazement (the fans really were stunned).

That game was there to be won.  Our D played well enough for us to play ourselves right back into a tie or better all across the third Q and well into the fourth, but we simply didn't take advantage.  Time and again we shot ourselves in the foot with bad play, bad decisions, bad timing - just a lot of unforced errors in my opinion. Then we just sort of folded halfway through the fourth and stopped playing after the Grant fumble. I have simply never seen a Packer team give it up like that during an important game.

But that, quite frankly, was the vibe the entire game: no energy, no urgency, no nothing. It honestly felt like a preseason game on many levels, and all that bad juju left me wondering how much the whole Philbin death trauma played out, because all these guys spent Thursday night at a wake and Friday afternoon at a funeral. Take that dynamic out of the week and put our offensive coordinator in normal mode, and I don't think we play like we did.

Still, in the end, I think that was trivial compared to the decision to skip the last game, which probably created the bulk of the timing issues we had on offense (and they were egregious).

So what the team is left with, after this hugely disappointing showing, is an off-season of rebuliding the defense and asking themselves why they took such a conventionally bad route on handling the end of the season - specifically, the taking off of the Lions' game. Yes, we did Matt Flynn a huge career favor - how classy, but we sat Rodgers down so that he was taking his first serious snaps in three weeks during the far more important Giants game. I've seen this dynamic sap so many #1 seeds in recent years - especially in the NFC, and McCarthy's choices here all seem - in retrospect - to have been bad ones. We just looked lost out there on offense, like it a warm-up game instead of a truly important one. To waste such a season and team as this with such bad choices and weak preparation is depressing, but - again - such is the NFL. The Giants were ready and willing and won on that basis. If we had been, there's no question in my mind we win, but we weren't, and so the tourney moves on.

Having made all those whiny excuses, I will now say that the biggest thing for me this season was the blossoming of my son Jerome as a supreme Packer fan, the surprise being that he's not a football player per se (though he loves to throw and catch with me and plays with friends during recess; he instead does cross country in the fall because he's quite good at that) and instead came to it through Madden - the video game. After all these years of being a rather lonely fan in my family, I now have someone with whom to talk about darn near everything Packer-related.  After writing a school report on Lombardi, Jerry is now plowing through Jerry Kramer's several books on the 1960s Packers. True to form, in the wake of Sunday's debacle, Jerry is now already issuing demands about coaching changes and draft needs. Naturally, we have scoured the list of teams we're playing next year and have already decided which away games we'll hit in addition to our Lambeau visits.

Still, the game was a crusher for the little man.  First great brush with "there's always next year!"

Now I'm just left with cheering against the Pats . . ., which just doesn't compare.

Since I like to lose to the champs, I'm pulling for the Giants over 49ers and the Ravens over Pats.  Then, by nature, I'm pulling for the real NFL team over those frauds from the junior league.

Wikistrat post @ CNN/GPS: 10 strategic issues with Obama's East Asia "pivot"

Editor’s Note: The following piece, exclusive to GPS, comes from Wikistrat, the world's first massively multiplayer online consultancy.  It leverages a global network of subject-matter experts via a crowd-sourcing methodology to provide unique insights.

The Obama Administration recently released a military strategic guidance document, which calls for a strategic “pivot” from the Middle East to East Asia. This bold move replaces President George W. Bush’s “long war” against violent Islamic extremism with a new, ongoing effort to shape China’s military rise.

What are the strategic, military trade-offs of this historic shift? Wikistrat, the world’s first massively multiplayer online consultancy, recently tapped its global network of several hundred analysts to ponder this question. This online network offers a uniquely powerful and unprecedented strategic consulting service: the Internet's only central intelligence exchange for strategic analysis and forecasting, delivered - for the first time - in a real-time, interactive platform. Exclusive to GPS, here are Wikistrat’s top ten strategic, military issues to bear in mind as this “pivot” unfolds:

Read the entire post at CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS site.

The New Rules: China Must 'Pay Globalization Forward' in Africa

Globalization's historical expansion from Europe to North America to Asia has featured a familiar dynamic: The last region "in" becomes the integrator of note for the next region "up." Europe was the primary investor, customer and integrator for the U.S. economy in its rise during the 19th and 20th centuries, and America subsequently "paid it forward" with East Asia in the decades following World War II. Recently, it has been Asia's turn, primarily through China, to pay it forward once again with Africa, arguably the hottest integration zone in the global economy today.

Nonetheless, in Washington -- and especially inside the Pentagon -- China's rising influence across Africa has been viewed with genuine trepidation. Beijing's "non-interference" mantra doesn't exactly jive with President Barack Obama's stern focus on counterterrorism, while China's rapacious hunger for raw materials fosters fears of strategic minerals being "cornered." .

Read entire column at World Politics Review.

Time's Battleland: The Perfect Headline on the Silent Sino-American Limited Liability Partnership

Iranian ships on exercise in Gulf

Comes from Bloomberg:

China Gets Cheaper Iran Oil as U.S. Picks Up Tab for Hormuz Straits Patrols

Brilliant huh?

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.

How you pressure the Chinese into reforms

What Beijingers refer to (roughly) as "the man taking a dump" building, because it looks like somebody squatting over a toilet.US officials trying to get China to go public with genuinely accurate smog/pollution data, but Beijing refuses, despite the obvious nature of the extreme air pollution in the city and elsewhere.

So instead of a frontal assault, the US Embassy just starts posting its own readings on the web via Twitter.

Beijing now becomes the first Chinese city to publish hourly readings based on the preffered tight measurement standard of (PM2.5, which measures the tinier particles that go deep into the lungs). The presumptive new premier, Li Keqiang, gearing up for his own "Grandpa Wen" model, made a public plea for this three weeks ago.

Nicely done, US Embassy.

Appearance on "The Alyona Show" regarding Obama's strategic "pivot" to Asia

Driven by my WPR column.  Did it Tuesday night.

Worrisome to me in the new house: the upload speed on my cable connection was problematic here, as you'll see in the resulting video via Skype.

I would greatly welcome any ideas on how to improve.

Talking to my AV guy, he said make sure everybody in the house (2 other laptops and 2 desktops) were off the web.  That I didn't do.  He said also to shut down everything on my MacBook Pro, go wired to the modem and turn off my wifi.

Speed testing the wifi just now, I'm 24 mps down and 4 up, so there shouldn't have been a problem. But honestly, there could have been 30 web windows open among the 4 other machines, and I didn't exactly clean up my laptop prior.

NEXT TIME: I'll go wired in the living room that doubles as my video production center and I'll have a Wikistrat pattern behind me and I'll be lit from both sides (with screen forming third point). I'll also take all the steps Greg, my AV guy, outlined.

But again, any other ideas welcomed.

Van Creveld tuned into Iran v. Turkey

CSM op-ed, by way of WPR's media roundup.

As readers will attest, I've been saying this for a long time myself, both here and in columns and posts for other sites, but felt kinda odd that no one else was picking up on it. Knew I wasn't making it up.  Just wondered why the real lead being buried by MSM.

Well, this is one credentializing op-ed from Martin Van Creveld and somebody else.

Check it out.  I don't agree with all of it, but it's a powerful piece.

My annotated rundown:

[SUBTITLE] Many analysts say the Middle East is the focus of a geopolitical power struggle between the United States and Iran. That misses the primary thread of events – namely, the ongoing soft partition of the Arab republics between Turkey and Iran, with Turkey the stronger power.

What's not said: the power Turkey wields is entirely "soft," meaning the attraction of its culture, politics and its economic heft.  Turkey is not threatening with hard power, nor reaching for nukes - none of what Iran does. Instead, it's primary attraction is its success in growing and keeping happy an expanding middle class.

This is primarily China's soft-power attraction, so when we seek to counter it with a military "pivot" to East Asia, we don't look strong but weak.

During the last decade many right-wing American and Israeli analysts have described the geostrategic struggles unfolding in the Middle East as a new “cold war” pitting the United States against Shiite Iran. They have warned of an Arab “Shiite crescent” – stretching from Lebanon to Iraq – connected to Iran via ties of religion, commerce, and geostrategy . . .

Van Creveld puts Iraq too easily in Iran's camp - at least the Arab portion. I don't think it's such a done deal by any stretch, and we've seen plenty of reports that say the Turkish attraction is greater there on a lot of levels.

Back to the argument:

What this view of the Middle East overlooks is the fact that both the US and Iran are mired in internal political and economic difficulties. Simultaneously, inside the region, both are being outmaneuvered by an ascendant Turkey.

I don't think the US is being "outmaneuvered," just outperformed and out-clevered - if you will. Turkey, as a "young" rising power, has the strategic imagination required for the task, whereas the US strategic community is mired in a plethora of 20th-century concepts, many of which are so outdated as to be laughable. Turks just see the region with clearer eyes than we do.  No great mystery there.  Iran, thank Allah, is just as mired in the past.

Moreover, Western observers have missed the primary thread of events – namely, the ongoing asymmetric Turkish-Iranian soft partition of the Arab republics. Concomitantly, the American position as regional hegemon is vanishing. Today, only the Arab monarchies and Israel continue to look to the US as their primary patron.

I believe this to be true, but again, Turkey is winning and Iran's grip is tenable - see Syria.

Following the US withdrawal from Iraq, KRG officials bemoaned their need of a regional patron to protect them from dominance by Baghdad. Landlocked Iraqi Kurdistan also needs a conduit to export its oil to the West. The only country that can fulfill both roles is Turkey. That is why KRG officials, instead of supporting their ethnic brethren inside Turkey, have often sided with Ankara against the Kurdish separatist PKK.

This was made obvious to us when Enterra did its development work in the KRG.

Should more pipelines leading from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Mediterranean via Turkey be built, the result will be the de facto creation of an Iraqi-Kurdish buffer state. 

And frankly, the KRG is the nicest part of Iraq in terms of combined hydrocarbons and arable land.

In the southern part of Iraq, the situation is just the opposite. There, a Shiite Arab buffer state, buttressed by Iran as a bulwark against Turkish, American, or Saudi encroachments, is being created. The last two weeks’ events have removed any doubt that Prime Minister Maliki is “Iran’s man” in Baghdad. 

Again, I differ here on writing off the south, but point taken.

Yet despite this de facto partitioning of Iraq over the last month, Turkey and Iran are not challenging each other’s spheres of influence. Thus, Iraq has reverted to its traditional position as the Poland of the Middle East.

Cool analogy.

In post-Arab Spring North Africa, too, Turkey and Iran have essentially partitioned the resurgent Islamist movements between themselves. The Turks support the victorious “moderate” Islamists from Tunisia to Egypt. Iran backs the Salafist spoilers, even though they are Sunni.

Bingo!

Key point:

Since North Africa lacks indigenous Shiite populations and the “moderate” Islamists have now emerged as the main players in the region, it is Sunni Turkey, along with Qatar, that appears to be the rising political and commercial patron in North Africa.

Not arms, but soft-power backed by serious wealth accumulation.

Next arguments about Turkey and Iran synching their approaches to Israel-Palestine problem strikes me as weak. Van Creveld and his guy are interpreting Turkey's reorientation away from quasi alliance with Israel and a reorientation toward Iran's hard line.  I see nothing of the sort, but rather Turkey proving its Islamist credentials as it openly seeks regional leadership.  Israel here is just the litmus test.

Van Creveld and Pack see a clear struggle between the two powers in Syria, but again with an eye to soft partition, as they put it:

In a fragmented post-Assad Syria, Turkey will support the Sunnis, while Iran will remain the patron of the Alawites. Moreover, both will surely find a way to protect their strategic and financial interests in whatever regime emerges.

Strong finish on a point I have railed incessantly - our obsession with Iran's nukes blinds us to everything else going on in the region:

Throughout 2011, the continued Western obsession with the Iranian nuclear menace prevented policymakers from grasping the most salient dynamics at play in the new Middle East. Those who, like Mohammed Ayoob, have warned that “Beyond the Arab Democratic Wave” lies a “Turko-Persian Future” have been mostly ignored.

The Arab Spring has vastly weakened the Arab states, leaving them open to fragmentation, increased federalism, and outside penetration. With hindsight, 2011 may come to represent as sharp a rupture in the political landscape of the Middle East as 1919 did.

True to my "new map" approach: globalization, entering the Arab world, creates fragmenting tendencies (remapping, as I have long described it), and the two states seeking to take advantage represent polar opposites on adapting themselves to globalization's many challenges: Turkey embraces and is stronger for it, Iran does not and in its fight to keep it out becomes decidedly weaker (here our sanctions do help). Toss Qatar in the same basic globalization camp as Turkey.

Van Creveld and Pack view all this in terms of great power control over weaker states, and yes, we will witness plenty of these dynamics in the initial remapping process, but Turkey won't "own" the Middle East any more than China will "own" SE Asia.  Ultimately, as globalization takes deep root and economic opportunities arise, states will gravitate according to market power, not pol-mil influence.  Turkey will be prominent because of its significant market size (just like China in East Asia or India in South Asia or the US in the Western Hemisphere), adhering to my general principle that what rules in globalization is not supply (especially of hard power) but demand (the ultimate soft attractor).