It's that simple

U.S. troop deaths in May near lowest level of war, By Charles Levinson, USA TODAY, May 29, 2008

The reason why Iraq is no longer a hot issue is because our casualty numbers are down.

If they stay below one per day on average, the push for rapid withdrawal has no serious steam--even if Obama wins. Slow but steady drawdown, yes, but no big pull-out.

It's that simple.

Yet another rebuke to Ahmadinejad

ARTICLE: "New Post For Rival Of President Of Iran," by Nazila Fathi and Graham Bowley, New York Times, 29 May 2008.

Let's review what's happened since Ahmadinejad took power: his allies lose the first mid-term election badly (local elections around nation), and the man he beats for the presidency (Rafsanjani) gets the chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts (the College of Cardinals-like entity that picks the Supreme Leader; then the SP nixes a bunch of his candidates for the second mid-term, where his religious conservatives lose seats in the Parliament and his rival Larijani (another candidate for prez in 05) is named speaker. Meanwhile, the fourth major prez candidate from 05, Qalibef, the Tehran mayor, grows in popularity.

What does this all reflect? Ahmadinejad has not delivered on the economics--pure and simple.

But no, neither Larijani nor Qalibef will back down on nuclear enrichment either--if elected in 09--when Ahmadinejad is voted out.

That decision was made in response to our decisions to invade countries on Iran's right and left. And just like those decisions are for America, there's no turning back on nukes for Tehran.

Frantic days are here again!

ARTICLE: Campaign Jousting Returns to Iraq War, By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, May 30, 2008; Page A01

Dovetails nicely with Fareed Zakaria's latest Newsweek column.

Now that terrorists aren't running the entire world, I say we take McCain up on his offer to rerun the Cold War.

Frantic days are here again! The skies above are getting cluttered again ...

World War IV will finally get to begin. Frightening days are here again!

Not really fresh

ARTICLE: McCain Proposal for Joint Action Gains Support, AP, May 30, 2008

Ah yes, East-West bloc conflict over troubled third world regimes, bypassing the UN!.

This is the new thinking we've been looking for!

My! McCain is a breath of fresh air, not at all trapped in a Cold War past as his age might suggest.

More missile defense!

(Thanks: Rob Johnson)

The state of freedom in China

ARTICLE: "The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China’s Rust Belt," By P. J. O'Rourke, World Affairs, Spring 2008

Intriguing and thoughtful argument about how we might consider the continuing expansion of freedom in China, even if it does not meet our now-but-not-always-in-the-past understandings.

Best bit: "Ssssssh. Politics is sleeping! Let it be!"

Ours sleep-walks right now. Too damn noisy about it, too.

(Thanks: Andy in San Diego)

Kids today

OP-ED: Globalization and its discontents, By Henry A. Kissinger, International Herald Tribune, May 29, 2008

I think a lot of this elder angst over Gen Y/Millennials is misplaced, meaning they don't understand the kids AND the kids will be all right.

I see this distinctly in my own kids: they don't know as much as I did but are far more adept at finding than I am now!

Einstein didn't know his own phone number. "Why should I?" he said. "It's written down in a special book if I need it."

Our "mastery" of knowledge relative to the Millenials is a different type of intelligence, but not necessarily a better one, than the mastery of searching. Humans have lived as searchers more than owners, so yeah, we'll survive as always and--CANUBELIEVIT!--actually prosper.

(Thanks: Matthew Garcia)

Q&A: Congressional staffer on Navy cred

Tom got this email:

Mr. Barnett,

I'm interested in getting your comments on the article Why No One Believes the Navy from Defense News. As a military aide for a Member of Congress, I am consistently frustrated by the Navy's failure to give an accurate picture of cost on everything form the much-maligned LCS to Virginia Class subs. Worsening matters is that even as costs overrun estimates on existing projects, I have shrinking confidence that the Navy has a thoughtful plan for transitioning the fleet to meet 21st Century post-Cold War needs. Just interested in your thoughts. Thanks.

Tom writes:

Symptomatic of all services: trying to step up on "now" wars while trying to protect tomorrow's "big war" force.

Something has to give when you deny yourself the rising powers of the age ally status and plan future high- tech wars against them while waging "global war," ostensibly in their name.

Our grand strategy consists of doing all with few friends. As a result, we're breaking the force and no amount of "leadership changes that.

Could Marianas be 51?

POST: Marianas Islands -- the 51st State?, By Brad Boydston

To me, the potential upside is clear enough: America wants to globalize the brand better, just like the EU is doing and China seeks to do. Me? I like the idea of having a state on the other side of the international date line. You want to remain an Asian power, get yourself a full Asian member state.

Editor: Brad is a friend of mine living on Guam and has a subsequent post on this topic: Marianas Islands -- the 51st State? Part - 2

Good luck trying to demonize

ARTICLE: As Global Wealth Spreads, the IMF Recedes, By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, May 24, 2008; Page A01

An interesting gauge of Gap shrinkage: the IMF lends $116B in 2003 and $16B in 2007.

A lot of that growth inside the Gap stems from rising New Core demand for commodities, so good luck, I say, trying to demonize countries like Russia and China with these states.

(Thanks: jan gugliotti)

Mad Max or the Pack

POST: Terrorist violence is on the decline, By Warren Strobel, Nukes & Spooks, May 23, 2008

But don't let any of this spare you any angst from the professional (and amateur) fear-mongers.

We live in an age of pervasive and perpetual war! A world ruled by terrorists and soon to be marked by complete resource deprivation and a Mad Max-like existence! Iran is MORE dangerous than the Sovs once were!

AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!

Or maybe Aaron Rodgers works out for the Pack next year ...

(Thanks: Hans Suter)

Waiting on this one long enough: Ahmadinejad chastised by clerics

ARTICLE: "Iranian Clerics Tell the President to Leave Theology to Them," by Nazila Fathi, New York Times, 20 May 2008, p. A8.

Clerics increasingly take our end-timer Shiia evangelical Ahmadinejad to task for politicized preaching on the 12th imam, something he loves to do, along with bragging on Iran's nuclear program, as a way to distract attention from his failed populist economic programs.

Ahmadinejad's beliefs are an odd mish-mash, by traditional Shiia standards, and his politicizing of them is becoming an increasing source of political friction with clerics who consider him a weak leader who has not delivered on campaign promises and instead covers himself in their religious authority.

Yet another example of how Ahmadinejad loses standing at home while mesmerizing a wobbly West.

Oddly enough ...

I'm in St. Paul tonight, just a few blocks from where Obama is speaking, spending the night in a hospital with my Mom post-surgery.

Perceptions on globalization in the West are worrisome

ARTICLE: "Income inequality seen as the great divide: Broad consensus among nations," by John Thornhill, Financial Times, 19 May 2008, p. 3.

Polling numbers here.

Question: "Do you think the gap between rich and poor is 'too wide'?" 60-plus percent in Japan say yes, rising to 80-plus percent in Germany, with the scale moving up through Spain, US, UK, China, Italy and France.

Same basic patterns on questions about the future (will it get worse?) and taxes (should we soak the rich?).

The worry here is no surprise. When America "rose" in the years following our Civil War, the process of stitching together our loose confederation of regional economies into a truly networked continental economy unleashed the worst wealth gaps we've ever had as a nation. So when globalization replicates that pattern today on a global scale, you see the same dynamics emerge.

But the focus on the gap between rich and poor misses the most important story of our age: the rise of a huge global middle class. Today the middle class is estimated in the 25-30% range. Within a quarter century, we're looking at something more in the 50-55% range, a growth that will change everything.

So no surprises here, with my advice being to keep you eyes on the real prize: the rise of a global middle class ideology similar to the one America located in the late 19th century.
Shaping that global middle class ideology will be a major task of U.S. grand strategy for decades to come.

Self-appointed Chicken Littles

POST: How Big A Threat Is Iran?, By Andrew Sullivan, 19 May 2008

Nice, sensible post by Andrew. Agree completely.

Our strategic discussion today is dominated far too much by wobbly types who freak out over everything. The vast majority of these screamers have a shockingly bad sense of understanding of military and security affairs--self-appointed Chicken Littles.

That is a real problem with the blogosphere: any idiot with a pulpit is automatically a "security expert" and "military analyst" nowadays. They are, with sad inevitability, the most strident voices, making your average op-ed columnist seem wise by comparison.

Conflict on the Pak-Afghan border

POST: “No Sign until the Burst of Fire”, Lexington Green, Chicago Boyz, May 23rd, 2008

Nice commentary by Lexington Green on an International Security article that offers a Pashtun-centric explanation of the instability we now combat, ineffectively according to the article, along the Pak-Afghan border.

Historically, as I understand it from other sources, there have been two types of Afghanistan: one ruled by Pashtun (generally the preference of Pakistan and the situation of Taliban rule) and one ruled by some collection of tribes from the north (the current situation). Whenever one side rules, the other side agitates. Thus, to make Afghanistan stable today is to somehow placate the Pashtun. This article posits that possibility and utility and clearly states how we're not doing that.

Other analysts tend to be more pessimistic on this score, arguing that neither the Pashtun nor Pakistan in general will ever be happy so long as Pashtun don't rule Kabul.

Brutal take on Bush Administration

Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq, By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, May 28, 2008; Page A01

Brutal book by McClellan that appears to justify all my fears of this administration's lack of strategic imagination--to wit, they purposefully eschewed the pursuit of real impact for the chimera of perceived political credit.

The stuff about selling the war is unremarkable, though. Tell us what we don't know. Just because the war was badly sold doesn't make it a mistake, just a very conscious choice by Bush and Co. I was, and remain, fine with that choice, but the subsequent sacrifice of desired impact (plus the troops) on the altar of political campaigning (I must be re-elected and outdo my father!) is unforgivable. The first lost year in Iraq constituted the crux of the Bush re-election campaign, and that's just wrong.

In that, respect for the father will never be surpassed by that for the son.

In a nutshell ...

ARTICLE: "Push for New Direction Leads to Sudden Dead End for a 40-Year Naval Career," by Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, 31 May 2008, p. A7.

Two lines:

Breaking his silence since his departure in an hourlong interview, Admiral Fallon said he had felt the pressure building for several months.

The dynamic was clear and obvious, according to the man himself.

Sciolino says that "if the admiral's comments had been kept behind closed doors, he might have survived," but "his dissent was simply too public.

That much is clear, but the reality was that Fallon chose--time and time and time again--not to keep his comments behind closed doors, speaking out publicly everywhere he went: Al Jazeera, Financial Times, Cairo's main English paper, and 1,300 words of quotes in Esquire.

As for the article:

The admiral claims not to have been misquoted, but to have been misunderstood.

That's about it in a nutshell.

The SysAdmin Industrial Complex is looking good—thank you very much

ARTICLE: "Iraq Contractor In Shooting Case Is Rehired By U.S.: Blackwater Rebounds; U.S. Lacks Alternatives to Security Firm—Intense Lobbying," by James Risen, New York Times, 10 May 2008, p. A1.

ARTICLE: "Lucrative Privatizing Of Defense Drives Deal," by August Cole, Peter Lattman and Joann S. Lublin, Wall Street Journal, 17-18 May 2008, p. A1.

Remember when I wrote that Blackwater is too big to fail?

So no surprise here. A frontier-integrating age naturally spawns new Pinkertons.

For the same reason why mafias bloom (a sort of legal authority you turn to when you can't turn to the government, for whatever reason) in this age of expansive globalization, you see private security firms booming (a sort of quasi-police/military that governments turn to when they're operating in lawless areas—i.e., the Gap).

So the rise of the private contractors merely represents the reality that shrinking the Gap is being done, must be done, and will continue to be done. Not a "theory" or a "vision," but a simple, observable dynamic and reality. You add three billion new capitalists and roughly two billion new middle class consumers to the mix and the global economy simply will not be contained. The Gap must be shrunk to meet all that demand.

So those who see the war on terror as a supply function are wrong, even if the Bush administration wrongly employs too many supply-depressing tactics. It is a demand function, just like transnational terrorism is, and the driver of that demand is globalization's rapid extension around the planet.

So don't expect privatization to go away anytime soon in the national security realm. It's only going to increase.

India works to catch up with China in Africa

ARTICLE: "India Plays Catch-Up In Africa: Giants in telecom and pharma, among others, are sinking big money into the promising market," by Manjeet Kripalani and David Rocks, BusinessWeek, 26 May 2008, p. 055.

India has fewer bodies in Africa than China, but a longer historical presence and one more embedded in African society than the Chinese who tend to enclave themselves.

No question that trade is booming, up from $6.5B in 2003 (two-way) to $25B last year.

And yeah, plenty of Africans see India as the alternative model, given the similar focus on villages as the center of life, but with all the urbanization going on in Africa, the Chinese model will be prevalent as well, so expect plenty of mixing and matching and merging.

But clearly, it's the modern frontier-integrators and rising powers like India and China that present the logical models for Africa, not the West with its focus on aid and demands for instant democracy.

The end is near on gas combustion! Repent! (or maybe just trade in)

ARTICLE: "GM: Live Green or Die," by David Welch, BusinessWeek, 26 May 2008, p. 036.

Waggoner's big bet on Volt, or basically a car run on giant cellphone batteries, is intriguing. He's promising a crash program that produces large numbers of cars available as soon as the 2010 season. It is described as a "nerve-shattering schedule" and an almost Apollo-like effort.

How well GM succeeds is not the point, the movement and the direction is the point.

The market signals, and businesses respond—not out of nobility but out of a survival instinct.