Time's Battleland: Think outside the defense budget: the real cost of keeping China our enemy

Mark Thompson picks up on Chins's cheeky advice to visiting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen regarding our coupling of world-class defense spending with our world-class national debt/faltering economy.  We can brush it aside, of course, seeing that it's coming from our #1 excuse for defense spending (Mustn't let those Chinese . . . ).

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.

The other two charts described in the post:

Sad day in Grand Rapids MI; tough luck for maven of presidential museums

On vacation with younger quartet of kids and spouse in the UP (Upper Peninsula MI) and we spent last night in Grand Rapids.  Today we had a hot fun time in Meijer Topiary Garden (stunning collection), and then Vonne drops me and older trio for quick spin at Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, figuring it would be so seminal to do so the day after Betty Ford passed.  Dumb me:  place closed for preparations for her internment.  Gerald is buried just to the right of the museum, which sits on the banks of the Grand River.  Workers were already working over the grave site, which listed her name and birth year (1918) followed by a dash.

What are the odds?

Also odds defying is a bipolar local ex-con going on shooting rampage and killing seven - also in Grand Rapids Thursday-Friday.  People in town are feeling a bit strange, to say the least.

So we signed the condolence book (nice) at the museum and continued our trek northward to the Mackinac Bridge, which I haven't gone over in over 30 years.

The mosquitoes up here are frightening large!  But we have a nice vacation home on a big lake just off the Lake Superior shoreline.  Older two kids are blazing their own paths elsewhere in the country - with plenty of texting.

It feels weird to be on vacation with 4 kids under 12!

How to lose the globalization game

Disturbing piece by John Bussey in the WSJ, noting how, as Congress dithers on free trade pacts regarding Colombia, Panama and South Korea, our competitors are moving ahead with their own and on that basis expanding their export presence while US firms cannot due to the higher tariffs suffered.  The US soybean industry (a big deal here in Indiana) alone thinks it's losing $3B in ag exports.  Boeing says it's losing out to Airbus in South Korea. The list goes on and on.

Our problem is that we try to legislate all sorts of additional regulations into the FTAs, attempting to force this or that "fairness" on the counterparty in terms of how they treat their environment, labor, etc.  We use the excuse of the FTA to attempt all manner of socio-economic engineering and, in doing so, make the deal so complex that it lingers in legislative limbo sometimes for years on end.

It is a fascinating method of shooting our economy in the foot and then wondering why we lose the race, especially since, if you want real socio-economic progress in any country, the fastest way to achieve it is to foster income growth and let the locals manage it on their own timetable and agenda.

But that would be too easy, make too much sense, and preserve too many American jobs.

Leaving my position as senior managing director at Enterra Solutions

I made the decision recently with Enterra to cease being even a halftime employee as of 1 July (I had been a 1/2 to 2/3rd employee during the great majority of my time with the company). This move was in keeping with the company's evolution over the past couple of years: by expanding so concretely into supply chain management, there was simply less for me to do in the position, which largely had me searching for the right businesses in which to best exploit Enterra's technologies.  That search now over, I move on to other opportunities.

My six years at Enterra were quite fascinating and I greatly enjoyed helping build the company.

Chart of the day: World's biggest ag producers

From FT story about effort of world policymakers to set up transparent info system on ag to avoid speculation, etc.  Good luck with that.  Farmers the world over tend to be tight-lipped, whether family or corporate.

What I found interesting about chart.  China, of course, is a huge ag producer, second only to US and not that far behind.  Problem is, of course, that China has 4 times as many people, so it's not really an exporter of note and, like India, consumes most of what it produces and then must import additionally (India less so, but as its middle class grows and climate change makes growing harder, it will follow China into a significant dependency).  EU is decent exporter, and then you get into the familiar South American and Black Sea countries, plus Canada and Pakistan (the former being more like US - a big exporter, and the latter less so because of its large population).  

So you see, just a handful of countries do the bulk of the producing and when you take out the self-consuming, the pool gets even smaller.

Again, water is crucial for the 21st century, and the West Hem has roughly 3 times as much as it needs - by population, so the West largely feeds the East, meaning protecting the food supply in the West becomes important in an age likely to feature biological terror.

Wikistrat's Grand Strategic Exercise - Innovative Strategic Planning

Having already offered a methodological take on what transpired in the grand strategy portion (Week 3) of Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, I wanted to offer this additional “greatest hits” compilation from the week’s entries.  Here are the top 12 nuggets:

1) A “zero problems in Eurasia” foreign policy that allows the European Union to competitively market its junior partner services to Leviathans other than the US (EU2/Oxford).  This is such a bold repositioning of Europe that I chose to write it up as my next-Monday World Politics Review column.  If you really believe you’re in a multi-polar world but can’t compete for one of the superpower slots, this is where visionary realism takes you.

2) In a multi-polar system, the US needs to position itself as the “keystone” (US3/Johns Hopkins University).  Best use of a definition, pulling from Merriam-Webster:
Keystone : the wedge-shaped piece at the crown of an arch that locks the other pieces in place; something on which associated things depend for support; a species of plant or animal that produces a major impact (as by predation) on its ecosystem and is considered essential to maintaining optimum ecosystem function or structure.
The imagery is fabulous: the US as the piece that “locks the other pieces in place,” the source of “support” (biggest provider of aid) and the policing/“predation” role that maintains (when done well, mind you) “optimum ecosystem function or structure.”  This would serve as a brilliant opening slide in PPT presentation, because its bit rate on vision transmission is so high.

3) Better for Turkey to be a big fish in a small pond (EU-like entity it builds in Mideast) than a small unwanted fish in a bigger pond (Turkey3/Institute for World Politics 1).  The supporting logic was just as solid: Turkey is well positioned to “win” the Arab Spring, in part because its leadership offering is more palatable to more players than that of Iran’s or Saudi Arabia’s. So why not take advantage of the overall US withdrawal and avoid the anti-Muslim backlash in Europe?

4) If you don’t like your current storyline, change it (Russia2/New York University).  One of the very best articulated Objectives:
Russia suffers from an antiquated global ideology that reached the zenith of soft power attraction in the 1950s and has since steadily and rapidly declined. Both domestically and internationally, the image of Russia as a pessimistic nation that lost the major ideological struggle of the 20th century impedes its potential to hold and grow great power status in the future. As a whole, the modified Russian great power narrative should fall under the motto, ‘Strong Russia, Strong World.’ In other words, Russia needs to reposition itself as a critical part of global stability in the 21st century.
The press can only use what you give it.

5) If you’re falling behind the race, considering tripping the competition (Pakistan1/Claremont Graduate University). 
Covert Sub-Strategy: Pakistan will utilize its diplomatic and covert resources to forestall the development of alternative Central Asian pipelines. This involves isolating Iran and using Afghanistan to do it.
Covert should be all about nasty, and this qualifies. You also have to marvel at the bit-rate transmission here: concise clear language that conveys a lot of strategic logic.

6) Nukes are for having, and being respected for having (North Korea2/Sussex).  Yes, the first order of business is regime survival, but once you’ve shut down the easy regime-change option, you want to get your money’s worth. Having nukes means you’re in the big-boys’ club, but only if you’re accepted as such. So once the vertical proliferation is completed, it’s time to go for the horizontal recognition.

7) Japan as globalization’s high-tech answer man (Japan1/University of Kentucky).  Because Japan is a resource-dependent island nation, it had to turn toward globalization a long time ago to facilitate its rise. It has learned plenty along the way but does not get credit for that wisdom, in part because it sells itself weakly abroad and because it has recently suffered a number of image-crunching disasters. Time to turn that world-class resilience into a marketable strategic good.

8) If the current roster of great powers isn’t making regional stability happen, socialize the problem further (Israel3/Tel Aviv University).   The Middle East’s current connectivity with outside great powers (i.e., the West) just isn’t doing it. Israel is a super-globalized economy, so why not put that connectivity to strategic use by encouraging as many rising great powers into the region as possible? More entrants = more strategic interests = bigger collective outside push by great powers for regional stability.  Suffer the details and inevitable setbacks, yes, but the strategic logic is sound. As a grand strategy, it doesn’t get any more concise.

9) If China is to be THE global superpower of mid-century, it has to project norms and values of universal appeal (China3/University of London). Simultaneously good advice and sharp analysis: China’s global rise as a single-party state is self-limiting, unless it can evolve.  Notice how nobody talks about the “Beijing Consensus” since the Arab Spring began?

10) If Africa is ground zero of globalization’s current integration process, then providing the best model for those countries is a strategic competition worth winning (Brazil1/Institute for World Politics 2).  With its multicultural background and ability to mix raw material exports with high-tech goods and agricultural production, Brazil is the best model for Africa as it moves up economically – not India or China.

11) There’s nothing wrong about playing for second place (European Union2/Oxford & India2/Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies).  Why exhaust yourself in the coming Sino-American duel when there are plenty of good niches to exploit (EU) or if you’re betting on your long-term demographic dividend to vault you into first place later in the century (India)?

12) Seeking regional hegemony as a defensive posture (Iran2/University of Cambridge).  An eye-opening analysis of Iran’s #1 Objective:
The main driver behind this goal is Iran’s perception of its own isolation and its feeling of encirclement within the region. Iran does not seek power as an end per se, but it views regional hegemony as the only true guarantee of its long-term security, and all its other policy objectives can be regarded as instrumental to this. Iran’s bid for hegemony should also not be confused with a form of revisionist expansionism. In fact, it is perhaps best viewed through the lenses of defensive realism.
For those of us who like to spot in Iran’s revolutionary failures/stagnation a loose rerun of the Soviet decline, this perspective adds plenty.

Wikistrat Middle East Monitor, June 2011

We're excited to announce the launch of Wikistrat's Middle East Monitor for June 2011, which can be viewed in its entirety here.

Summary

The biggest strategic development in June was the change in relations between Turkey and Syria, and therefore, Iran. The increasingly strong relationship between Turkey, Iran and Syria was of great concern to the West and especially, Israel. The Turkish government is now condemning the violence of the Syrian regime towards its people, with officials even talking of creating a “buffer zone” along the border to protect refugees. The Turkish demands for the creation of a multiparty democracy in Syria will never be accepted by President Bashar Assad, and therefore, it is difficult to see how relations can soon be repaired. This deterioration in relations is a very significant change in alignment of power in the region and works to the advantage of the West.

On June 30, the U.N. Special Tribunal on Lebanon indicted four Hezbollah officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. Only one, Mustafa Badreddine, had a senior position. This is a development long feared by Hezbollah and its state sponsors, who have attribute the assassination to Israel. Fear over the tribunal was the biggest reason for Hezbollah’s collapse of, and subsequent takeover of, the Lebanese government. Moving into July, Lebanon enters a major political crisis with regional ramifications. Syria and Iran are also under increasing international pressure for their human rights abuses and nuclear programs.

Another important development was the departure of Yemeni President Saleh to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment following a dramatic assassination attempt that also wounded several other top officials. The protest movement is determined to prevent his return. Government officials have insisted that he would soon return, but this has not happened. Recently, the Yemeni Vice President said it was possible that his injuries would prevent his return.

In Libya, the rebels have finally gained an edge over forces loyal to the Qaddafi regime. The war has not yet decisively shifted in their favor, but they are now gaining ground in the western mountains. France has also delivered arms to the rebels, marking an important escalation of foreign involvement. The stalemate has been broken, but there is no sign that the pro-Qaddafi forces are on the verge of collapse, allowing a quick end to the war. Once it appears to these forces that defeat is inevitable, that could quickly change.

Wikistrat Bottom Lines

Opportunities

• The indictments of Hezbollah officials in the Hariri assassination strikes at the terrorist group's legitimacy. Its assassination of a political opponent exposes it as a foreign proxy and a terrorist group not strictly concerned with defending Lebanon against Israel. The indictments, along with Hezbollah's continued backing of the Syrian President despite his regime's gross human rights abuses, threaten to do serious harm to the group's popular support.
• President Saleh’s stay in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment puts him in an extraordinarily vulnerable position. He can be forced to keep out of Yemen, and is now acutely aware of the threat posed to his life.
• Turkey’s confrontation with Syria dramatically increases the pressure on the Assad regime, and presents an opening for the West to cooperate with Turkey in challenging enemies in the region.
• The Libyan rebels are making progress in their war against the Qaddafi regime, yet remain extremely dependent upon Western support. This dependency can be utilized to influence the composition and behavior of the rebel forces and address concerns about the Islamist forces among them.

Risks

• Prime Minister Erdogan and his political party are Islamists, and Turkish-Israeli relations have sharply deteriorated under his leadership. It is very possible that the Turkish government will support the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood over other secular opposition elements.
• Al-Qaeda is benefiting from the instability in Yemen, and is battling Yemeni forces as the terrorist group tries to expand its control of territory. The power vacuum that currently exists benefits Islamist elements such as Al-Qaeda, the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels, and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Islah, which is the dominant opposition party.
• The Syrian and Iranian regimes often engage in provocations against Israel in times of domestic troubles, with the Nakba Day incidents being the latest example. Their proxies, especially Hezbollah, will likely seek to confront Israel as the regimes seek to cope with rising domestic and international pressure.

Dependencies

• The degree to which Turkey seeks to promote certain factions within the Syrian opposition. An effort to boost the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood will strain relations with the West, and reduce Western support for a policy of regime change in Syria.
• The insistence of Yemeni President Saleh to return home despite his injuries. The willingness of the Saudis to forcibly keep him in their country is also a key factor, as the Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.S. have been working to convince him to give up power.
• The amount of pressure it will take for Qaddafi’s forces to feel they are engaged in a losing fight, and whether they believe a post-Qaddafi Libya will be welcoming towards them.

Florence and the Machine live at Indy on 4 July

Went to concert with my eldest (Emily), a huge fan, as am I.

We were third row on the left.

What I learned:  alway shoot vid on the iPhone wide-angle, so it doesn't get squeezed on YouTube!

Also:  Flo is half-American (mom) and this was her first time in the States for 4th.  

 

WPR's The New Rules: A Post-NATO Europe Should Look East

Among the mutual recriminations ringing out between the U.S. and Europe regarding NATO's already stressed-out intervention in Libya, we have seen the usual raft of analyses regarding that military alliance's utility -- or lack thereof. As someone who has argued for close to a decade now that America will inevitably find that China, India and other rising powers make better and more appropriate allies for managing this world, I don't find such arguments surprising. You don't have to be a genius to do the math: Our primary allies aren't having enough babies and have chosen to shrink their defense budgets, while rising powers build up their forces and increasingly flex their muscles. In terms of future superpowers, beyond the "CIA" trio -- China, India and America -- nobody else is worth mentioning.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Movie(s) of my Week: "Lord of the Rings" (Blu Ray, 2001/2002/2003) & "Sucker Punch" (2011)

Just finished rewatching the extended version (digital versions already on my bedtime iPod Touch) with my younger son (born around time these came out) and I must say: 1) Blu Ray is worth it because it all looked fantastic; and 2) this series really is a classic that holds up very well and really shouldn't ever become outdated.  What Peter Jackson et. al did with the books' characters reminds me of the liberties Alan Ball has taken with the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris (third season just started is fabulous): moving bits and pieces around to make for a better movie storytelling.

Just a lot of fun for us this past week.

Zack Snyder is an acquired taste, obviously, but his work says interesting things about the future of movies as the Millennials come into their own as consumers.  Previous work showed the deep influence of video games on the look and the action, but this movie really shows the impact on storytelling with its levels of narrative/meaning.  Fun to see Scott Glenn (who looks more like Leonard Nimoy by the day and should still be used as a Vulcan in a future ST movie) and especially nice to see Jena Malone from "Contact" all grown up and still getting work.  She's a really sharp actress.  Great soundtrack too.  According to my eldest, the extended cut is a decidedly different and much improved movie.

Wikistrat Grand Strategy Competition Update (Week 3)

As head judge of Wikistrat’s International Grand Strategy Competition, I wanted to update everybody on what has unfolded across the third week of the contest. As you may already know, the competition brings together approximately 30 teams comprised of PhD and masters students from elite international schools and world-renowned think tanks. Those teams, evenly distributed over a dozen or so countries (so as to encourage intra-country as well as inter-country competition), were challenged in Week 3 to come up with grand strategies in relation to their country-team assignments (Brazil, China, EU, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey & US).

As head judge, I assign points to teams based on their activity throughout the week. Coming off this crucial third week (after all, we’re all about grand strategy at Wikistrat), I wanted to highlight some of the lessons that I think the participants should take away from this collaborative competition when it comes to crafting and selling strategic visions.

1) Survival is never enough

Every regime wants to survive, and that’s always objective #1, but it cannot take up significant space in a strategic vision, because the more it centers the strategy, the less wiggle room ensues. Remember: strategy is more about keeping choices available than shutting them down. Worse, a fixation on sheer survival tends to obviate exploration of motive, and rationales matter plenty. For example, if I were to ask you where you want to be as a person in 2020, you wouldn’t answer that you want your heart, lungs and brain to still be working, because those baseline goals are taken for granted. And even if your response started with your health, the real purpose of that statement is to mark off possibilities that you want to keep in play (“I want to be healthy enough to . . .”). So no matter how bad a situation is for any country, their leaders are always thinking beyond just getting by, because some vision of progress is required to maintain morale among the “troops,” who, if they sense no purpose or way forward, will turn on leadership that seeks only personal survival.

2) Recognize internal pain but speak to external possibilities

The best grand strategies acknowledge what is wrong with their nations but don’t get stuck on that point – or let their strategies become overwhelmingly “internalized” on that basis (e.g., “Only after we comprehensively fix our country can we hope to address this complex world.”). Whatever reforms or internal “housecleaning” is required are but a stepping-stone to expanding and exploiting external opportunities, thus the grand strategy’s (hopefully) compelling logic is added to whatever domestic impetus exists for necessary change. Plus, external opportunities are often the cure for what ails internally, or at least a crucial part of the overall solution. This is the basic logic of comparative advantage and effective grand strategies are all about maximizing that exchange for the nation as a whole. In their best forms, the twin efforts at reshaping the internal and external environments are conducted in a co-evolutionary fashion that recognizes valuable interdependencies, with neither strategy holding strict superiority over the other.

3) The sale needs to be both internal and external

Grand strategies need to be so organic to the nation’s ethos that they are less “sold” than virally spread (they just feel right – right now), with the key being to tap into the society’s natural tendency toward this or that vision of its place in the world. Every nation has its capacities for “depressive” isolationism and “manic” evangelicalism, and depending on the desired course correction, hot-button memes are typically employed to fire-up the faithful. The best grand strategies recognize this deep-connection requirement at home, but likewise understand that it’s just as important to market the desirability of the vision to the outside world (or as much of it as will be immediately affected). Hegemony is a mixture of fear (hard power) and attraction (soft power), so the external sale cannot be neglected. In today’s interconnected world, influence resembles respect: it cannot be imposed but must be earned.  

4) Modeling yourself on a pathway that worked

Grand strategies are stories at heart – national narratives. Experts say there are only so many stories in this world (boy meets girls, the quest, etc.), and the same can be said of grand strategies. The most coherent entries this week all evoked some past power’s rise and choices they made along the way. One China team’s grand strategy, for example, read an awful lot like Alexander Hamilton’s 1790 vision of future American power. Yes, Hamilton was most definitely interested in the survival of the United States, but he also aimed to replace Britain as the global power by the mid-19th century and used that grand measuring stick in every major decision he pursued. Of course, not every nation can aim that high all the time, and America itself, in its turn-of-the-20th-century rising phase, often took to arguing the rules of the system (see the arbitrationism of Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root) as a means of covering its hard power deficiencies and – later with Woodrow Wilson – expressing its sheer idealism. We see some of the same impulses in today’s India and Brazil, and good entries from those teams ably captured that mindset.

5) Choices must be made

The best grand strategies presented last week made clear choices versus simply enunciating broad goals. They all passed the “as opposed to . . .” quip/test (“You say your nation’s number one goal is to expand its influence regionally, as opposed to . . . diminishing its regional influence?”). They offered just enough specificity to make clear that alternatives were considered and passed over. For example, the absolute survival of the North Korean regime is one thing, but North Korea achieving international acceptance of its status as a nuclear power is quite another, because the latter involves a number of real choices while the former appears to accept none. And yet clearly the two goals can be cast in co-evolutionary terms.

6) Stick with the big picture

The best grand strategies aren’t just about justifying the here-and-now but about shaping the there-and-then. They are a roadmap to a future region/world you want your country to inhabit at a particular perch, and that perch must be better than the one you occupy today, because unless you’re aiming for better, you’re not likely to keep what you’ve got in this increasingly competitive landscape. But because any future comes replete with uncertainties, tactics will invariably change over time. As much as every government seeks to bring “all elements of national power to bear” on this or that goal, you don’t want the tactics to overwhelm the strategic logic – the means determining the ends. The best entries last week left the tactics for Week 4’s stress-testing exercise and stuck with the high road of elucidating the essential choices made.

7) Some boldness is required

Good grand strategy is not simply waiting for events to fall your way, but neither is it trying to shape everything. The former replaces choice with expectation while the latter represents no choice at all. The best entries last week struck a balance between realism and idealism, typically without mentioning either because their logic was plainly apparent.

8) Fidelity versus flights of fancy

The most trapped teams last week were those deeply committed to representing their nations as honestly as possible, meaning they erred on the side of “fidelity” – a war-gaming term for realistic portrayal (“Is this like it would happen in the real world?”). Clearly, every team needed to keep its vision grounded in reality (i.e., you have to be able to get there from here), but the highest performing ones consistently leaned forward into likely events, key trends, etc., sensing maximum flexibility in the earliest phases rather than endgames. They persistently sought opening-move opportunities, and when they chose caution over boldness, it wasn’t because they were uninformed about the choice.

9) The necessity of a happy ending

Like General David Petraeus entering Iraq in 2003 (“Tell me how this ends.”), I as judge perused last-week’s entries for some semblance of what I like to call a “happy ending.” As I wrote in The Pentagon’s New Map, “Everybody needs that happy ending, that sense of hope in the future, otherwise you are simply trying to sell people diminished expectations – not a great motivator.” The best grand strategies presented compelling roadmaps to futures worth creating, sometimes for the larger world but always for the society in question. They were worth sacrificing for; they created a sense of something better that could be left to future generations. They were – in a word – simply grand.

10) Locating the essence of strategic opportunity

The top entries last week all portrayed once-in-a-lifetime regional/global dynamics that required bold responses (and yes, they are locatable for any country portrayed in this competition). Those teams made compelling arguments for action over caution on this basis, essentially flipping those arguments on their heads: by deeply grounding their strategies in keen analyses of future trends, they spotted unique openings that must be exploited because not to do so would cost too much over the long run. This is the essence of good grand strategy: spotting tomorrow’s inevitabilities and translating them into today’s proper tactical guidance, however “inconceivable” it may seem when judged by yesterday’s comfortable bias.