Charts of the day: The connectors!--an Emirates Airline production

Economist article on the amazing rise of the airline industry in the energy-rich-but-tiny Persian Gulf principalities.

Anybody who's been through Dubai (amazing airport) or flown Emirates (unforgettably good) is aware of the capacity, which has been growing at a stunning pace in the last five years.

Emirates, for example, now has only 138 wide-bodies, with 140 on order.  It plans to sport a fleet of 400, making it the biggest long-hauler on the planet. Profits last year were $1B--in a tough year!

Competitors allege all manner of unfair gov subsidies, and most of these charges are likely true, but this is a very big good for the region, and the logic is sound: as wealth creation spreads across the Gap, these super-connectors plan to take advantage of the resulting rise in demand for travel.

Twenty years from now, Emirates Airline will be better known than al Qaeda, and far more powerful a force in enabling globalization's spread than than al Qaeda has been in trying to stop it. 

The Politics Blog: 10 Essential Truths of the Petraeus-McChrystal Switch

Well, well, well — where have we seen this before? The indiscreet U.S. commander whose tongue digs his own grave. The stunning resignation submitted within hours of the magazine's online posting of the story. And General David Petraeus — yet again — as the go-to choice as America's turnaround specialist. Amidst all the nonstop chatter from pundits, politicians, and former ambassadors, allow me to distance myself from the familiar situation I was in with Admiral William Fallon and sift through the tea leaves to look ahead at Petraeus's new gig. Because there are magazine stories, and then there is war. And because — who knows? — Afghanistan may be a lot better off, and Obama may have picked his replacement in more ways than one.

Read the full post at Esquire.com's The Politics Blog.

Iran a year later

Summary news analysis piece in NYT a year later.

Iran has changed since the political crisis of June 12, 2009.

In scores of interviews conducted over the past several months with Iranians from all strata of society, inside and outside the country, a clear picture emerged of a more politically aware public, with widened divisions between the middle class and the poor and — for the first time in the Islamic republic’s three-decade history — a determined core of dissenters who were opposed to the republic itself.

The political grievances have merged with more pragmatic concerns, like high unemployment and double-digit inflation, adding to the discontent.

“I was on the bus the other day and there was a man, you would not believe the kind of information he had,” said a 59-year-old who works for the government. “He started to talk about the foreign currency reserves of different countries and began to criticize the government.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad and his patron, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are stronger today than they were a year ago, political experts say, although their base of support has narrowed.

They are relying heavily on force and intimidation, arrests, prison terms, censorship, even execution, to maintain authority. They have closed newspapers, banned political parties and effectively silenced all but the most like-minded people. Thousands of their opponents have fled the country, fearing imprisonment.

As a formal political organization, the reform movement is dead.

All pretty much know--unfortunately.

Now for the change:

The crisis accelerated and institutionalized a transfer of power that began with the first election of Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005. The shift was from the old revolutionaries to a generation that came of age during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, hard-liners who deeply resented the relatively liberal reforms promoted by former President Mohammad Khatami.

The vanguard of the new political elite is now the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and has extended its control over the economy and the machinery of state. It has improved its ability to control the street, to monitor electronic communications and keep tabs on university campuses, and its alumni head the government’s security organs.

This is the key thing to understand: the new generation is not the original revolutionary one led by the mullahs, who now serve more at the pleasure of the Guards than the other way around. It is the Iran-Iraq War generation, and here's where the comparison to Brezhnev's crew in the USSR is salient.

These guys want their sacrifice recognized and rewarded. They're survivalists, not ideologues. Their quest is regime survival, not revolutionary fervor. They see nukes providing them global recognition for their deeds, safety for their regime, and a means enabling Iran's continued rise as a great power--along with energy.

This package is not new to us, nor is it unique. We have the tendency to swallow its propaganda and remember its motives in the past tense, and this hobbles our thinking.

For now, the nukes are perfect for Iran: gets everyone talking that vice the regime-v-opposition, keeps the whole Islam-v-Israel thing up front, plays to national honor, etc. So long as it's just Israel as counterparty, there's no danger of negotiations being forced upon Iran.

But once that twosome is joined, most likely in rapid time by Saudi Arabia and/or Turkey, then the international pressure by great-power patrons will be intense.

And when Iran starts having to talk with the devil, just like the Sovs did in their own quest for global recognition, the revolution is extinguished for good, because revolutions cannot survive such deals with "unplacable foes."

So everybody thinks nukes locks Iran into all sorts of new power, when it's the other way around. Nukes will be no more usable for Iran than they've been for anybody else.

In the end, nukes will be the Revolutionary Guards' undoing, just like the Sovs.

The USSR cuts its first nuke deal in 1972, and 17 years later the Wall falls. It'll be a much shorter timeline with Iran.

As the New Core seeks food security, the Gap suffers less of the same

AP story via Vonne Barnett.

The basic problem persists:

Families from Pakistan to Argentina to Congo are being battered by surging food prices that are dragging more people into poverty, fueling political tensions and forcing some to give up eating meat, fruit and even tomatoes.

Scraping to afford the next meal is still a grim daily reality in the developing world even though the global food crisis that dominated headlines in 2008 quickly faded in the U.S. and other rich countries.

With food costing up to 70 percent of family income in the poorestcountries, rising prices are squeezing household budgets and threatening to worsen malnutrition, while inflation stays moderate in the United States and Europe. Compounding the problem in many countries: prices hardly fell from their peaks in 2008, when global food prices jumped in part due to a smaller U.S. wheat harvest and demand for crops to use in biofuels.

Majeedan Begum, a Pakistani mother of five, said a bag of flour for bread, the staple of her family's diet, costs three times what it did two years ago in her hometown of Multan. She can no longer afford meat or fruit.

"My domestic budget has been ruined," said Begum, 35.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index — which includes grains, meat, dairy and other items in 90 countries — was up 22 percent in March from a year earlier though still below 2008 levels. In some Asian markets, rice and wheat prices are 20 to 70 percent above 2008 levels, it says.

Many governments blame dry weather and high fuel costs but critics in countries such as India, Argentina and Egypt say misguided policies are making shortages worse and collusion by suppliers might be pushing up prices.

No single factor explains the inflation gap between developing and developed countries but poorer economies are more vulnerable to an array of problems that can push up prices, and many are cropping up this year.

Farmers with less land and irrigation are hit harder by drought and floods. Civil war and other conflicts can disrupt supplies. Prices in import-dependent economies spike up when the local currency weakens, as Pakistan's rupee has this year.

Costs also have been pushed up by a rebound in global commodity prices, especially for soy destined for Asian consumption. That has prompted a shift in Argentina and elsewhere to produce more for export, which has led to local shortages of beef and other food. The global financial crisis hurt food production in some countries by making it harder for farmers to get credit for seed and supplies.

An old paradigm approach (developed versus developing) hides the underlying reality: the price rises aren't a West-versus-rest dynamic, but a New Core-versus-Gap dynamic.  An emerging middle class in the New Core eats better--and more--and that demand for commodities drives up prices for everybody (to the extent that government subsidies are overwhelmed).

Yes, amidst that compelling dynamic, you can cite all the usual suspects in developing and underdeveloped economies, but you're missing the new forest for the usual trees.

Clearest evidence are New Core pillars and rich Arab petrocracies buying up farmland across the Gap.  The West isn't doing that.

So understand this as a problem of globalization's success, and stop defining it in old-speak.

Roach on resilient Asia

As someone with a lopsided head myself, I got to love this crooked face.

Fabled Stephen Roach in the FT. He decouples as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and joins the faculty of Yale this summer.

Roach is famous for his bearishness.

Here, he's pretty bullish.

Three lessons stand out from his three years in Asia, he says:

First, Asia learnt the painful lessons of the 1997-1998 regional crisis very well

Hence, the huge build-up in reserve currencies.

Second, there is the China factor.  As I have criss-crossed the region, there has been no mistaking Asia's new China-centric character.

Another frequent theme here.

Third, Asia cannot presume that just because it weathered the global crisis it has discovered the holy grail of economic prosperity.  In an increasingly complex and integrated world, trouble has an unpredictable way of mutating.

I'm on board for all three judgments, as readers of this blog will attest.

Roach notes that in the late 1990s, exports made up 35% of GDP among developing economies.  Now it's 45%. Asia has a "full plate," says Roach, when it comes to the rebalancing issue.

I also concur with Roach's concluding fear, something I've been saying for the past decade actually:

But I leave Asia with one big worry--that the rest of the world doesn't get it.  I worry, in particular, about the steady drumbeat  of China-bashing in Washington--especially as we approach mid-term elections this year.  

Thus Roach heads off to academia to change some minds as best he can.

We can only wish him well, cause they come no smarter.

'It was my decision to die. I was getting beaten every day'

Brutal stuff from Japan Times via WPR's Media Roundup.

Picture found here, along with the quote above.

No surprise:  where you find the Taliban you find one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. An old theme for me: given the choice, most women would prefer living in the Core to the Gap; hence, they welcome globalization's embrace far more than men inside the Gap, because it liberates them disproportionally.

The usual details on the plight of women in Afghanistan, but then this jumps out at you:

It is not surprising, then, that the average life expectancy for a woman in Afghanistan is only 44 years.

Women don't fare any better in education. It is estimated that 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Many girls fear going to school for lack of security. Although some aspects of their lives have improved, women are still at a clear disadvantage with men.

"Women who try to advocate for their rights in public life are subject to violence and physical attacks," said Zia Moballegh, acting country director for the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development.

"Violence against women and girls is widespread and deeply rooted in society," Norah Niland, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan, said last year.

"Our field research finds that rape is under-reported and concealed, a huge problem in Afghanistan," Niland added. "It affects all parts of the country, all communities and all social groups."

It is estimated that one in three Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Paradoxically, shame is usually associated with the attacks, and the victims often find themselves prosecuted for adultery rather than the perpetrators. While adultery is punishable by jail sentence, no provision in the Afghan penal code criminalizes rape.

A sad result of this oppressive atmosphere is that an increasing number of women in Afghanistan are choosing suicide as a way to escape the violence and abuse in their daily lives, according to a human rights report prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. "Self-immolation is being carried out by increasing numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances, and women constitute the majority of Afghan suicides," states a report completed at the end of 2009.

Something to remember as the Long War proceeds.

Central Asia for the long haul

Eurasia.net story via WPR's Media Round-Up.

I remember getting in trouble while working in OSD for saying in a public speech that the US would have military bases in Central Asia for decades.

Well. . .

The Pentagon is preparing to embark on a mini-building boom in Central Asia. A recently posted sources-sought survey indicates the US military wants to be involved in strategic construction projects in all five Central Asian states, including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In perhaps the highest-profile project, the Pentagon intends to construct an anti-terrorism training center in southern Kyrgyzstan. The facility was originally intended to be built in Batken. But now it appears that it will be situated in Osh.

According to the notice posted on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website in mid-May, the US Army Corps of Engineers wants to hear from respondents interested in participating in “large-scale ground-up design-build construction projects in the following Central South Asian States (CASA): Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; and Uzbekistan.”

Just so we remember who the neighbors are, because they have a HOA known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Separated at birth: the difference is the globalization socialization

 

Scientific American piece on new Jared Diamond book (with Harvard poli sci prof) called, Natural Experiments of History.

Naturally, the Haiti-Dominican Republic comparison is explored.

What's highlighted, according to the mag piece, is the difference is connectivity with the outside world over time:

When both the Haitians and Dominicans gained their independence in the 19th century, we see other comparative differences. Haitian slave revolts were violent, and Napoleon’s draconian intervention for restoring order resulted in the Haitians distrusting Europeans and eschewing future trade and investments, imports and exports, immigration and emigration. Haitian slaves had also developed their own Creole language spoken by no one else in the world, which further isolated Haiti from cultural and economic exchanges. Collectively, those barriers meant that Haiti did not benefit from factors that typically build capital, wealth and affluence and that might have led to prosperity under independence. In contrast, Dominican independence was relatively nonviolent; the country shuttled back and forth for decades between independence and control by Spain, which in 1865 decided that it no longer wanted the territory. Throughout this period the Dominicans spoke Spanish, developed exports, traded with European countries, and attracted European investors, as well as a diverse émigré population of Germans, Italians, Lebanese and Austrians, who helped to build a vibrant economy.

Finally, even when both countries succumbed to the power of evil dictators in the mid-20th century, Rafael Trujillo’s control of the Dominican Republic involved considerable economic growth because of his desire to enrich himself personally, but his policies led to a strong export industry and imported scientists and foresters to help preserve the forests for his profiteering timber holdings. Meanwhile Haiti’s dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier did none of this and instead further isolated the Haitians from the rest of the world.

Fits nicely with my view of things: Dictators with harsh agendas lead to disconnectedness; sticking with obscure languages does nobody any good; trade is an absolute good so long as it leads--sustainably--to more of the same.

Most importantly: isolation and disconnectedness in general only serves the purposes of the elite, hence globalization is overwhelming a creature/tool of the masses.

Chart of the day: It's not easy being gay--in the Gap

The Economist's point:  it ain't just because of "local culture."

Some 80 countries make homosexuality illegal, and guess what?  They're overwhelming located inside the Gap, where women's rights are much harder to obtain as well.

So check out the chart and notice they are all Gap countries.

Story ends with that old Hubert Humphrey bit about a society/government being measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members.

"Runaway general"? Hardly. Runaway mouths? Definitely

I just read the Rolling Stone piece and found the tone of disrespect somewhat stunning.  The media immediately references my piece on Fox Fallon from 2008, but I'm more impressed with the differences than similarities-- as in, Fallon disagreed with the president on substance while McChrystal's gripes strike me as stylistic (e.g., Obama struck him as uncomfortable before brass) and superficial.

Fallon never said anything disrespectful of his superiors in front of me, nor did his staff.  The admiral just fundamentally disagreed on the possibility of going to war with Iran and wasn't shy about sharing that opinion in the press, which he did repeatedly prior to my piece (which he later said misrepresented his views while quoting him accurately--to the tune of over 1,500 words).

Here, McChrystal does just the opposite:  never really disagreeing with his superiors while openly disrespecting them.  I say "openly" because he and his staff did it repeatedly in front of a reporter they knew was there to report on what he saw and heard--just like I did.  

Is that enough to get him fired?  That's Obama's call.  The fact that McChrystal is quoted both directly and in a secondary manner (through his staff) making truly derogatory remarks about so many principals (VP, NS adviser, our AMB in-country, Holbrooke) is problematic going forward, but firing the right guy for the right job when he agrees with your policy is likewise a hard choice for the president.

In the end, it all comes down to the relationship itself.  A magazine story can damage such a relationship but it cannot define it. Fallon was on thin ice with the White House when my story appeared, making it the final nail in the coffin. If Obama's relationship with McChrystal is solid, the Rolling Stone story won't be enough to trigger his sacking. But if it was already fragile/strained, then it may become the excuse.  But my guess is that McChrystal and Obama-Biden are on an entirely different trajectory over Af-Pak than Fallon and Bush-Cheney were over Iran.

The PNM-Wikistrat connection

Got email a while back from Joel, Australia-born, now living in Israel after some schooling there.  He says he has all the books, reads everything I write online, and brags that he's seen the brief well over a hundred times (none live).  

Then he explains how he and three other twentysomethings have created a start-up company (incorporated 6 months ago) that seeks to adapt the Wiki platform to a competition-of-the-fittest-style generator of strategic planning within organizations (companies, government agencies, etc.).  After two successful pilots using mostly Israeli intell types, the company moves toward marketizing the offering.  In some ways, it reminds me of using GroupWise in the Naval War College economic security exercises I led atop the World Trade Center with Cantor Fitzgerald pre-9/11 and in other ways it reminds me of when email first starting hitting command post exercises at combatant commands in the mid-1990s (creating this fascinating individual-based work-around and highly competitive intellectual network that quickly trumped the formal thought-gathering processes).  In both instances, you escape the limits of hierarchical conversations (often broadcasts by the most authoritative figure in the room) and tap into the wisdom of crowds under conditions of much tighter latency (less time involved to reach effective decisions after weighing alternative pathways).  In a sense, a way to both speed up (under the necessary scenarios) and improve the usual pick-option-B mentality that prevails.

What attracted me was Joel's description of how the company has used my vertical-versus-horizontal-scenarios thinking to customize the system with all manner of prompts to analysts to think in both dimensions--so highly interdisciplinary.

The basic conceit is, unlike traditional wikis, we're talking more than one page per analytic target--hence a competitive environment.  What often happens in these decision-making environments is that a core group is assembled to put together the options PPT package, and a tremendous amount of poorly thought-out necking down of pathways ensues.  By creating a more horizontal playing field, freed from hierarchical bias (i.e., the guy with the most stars on his shoulder boards must be the smartest, right?), the primary intellectual traction points become the linkages between the competing options pages.

That's a thumbnail description that does not do the effort justice.  Go the company's site to see more in-depth presentations.  

Two ways this interests me:

1) Strategic consulting in the private sector requires--more than ever--some connectivity to solution-delivery, meaning almost nobody is paying the old top-dollar for PPT slide decks and reorg charts--only.  Instead, companies want your interaction to come with some technology solution that simultaneously empowers them to deal with the issue in question.  Advice just isn't enough anymore.

2) Governments as a whole struggle with these problems, and are always looking for new tools to empower individual workers while connecting them to the wisdom of crowds, whether it be fellow bureaucrats (where a tremendous amount of wisdom truly resides) or with the citizenry (their natural counterparty).

So check out the site if you're interested.  I am happy to connect anybody to Joel (although I'm sure his site has a contact function) for whatever can be arranged in demos/dialogue.

Naturally, I got a kick hearing about how the vertical/horizontal scenarios-&-thinking stuff resonated so nicely with someone in the private sector, so I'm happy these young fellas out.

Plus, does it get much cooler that seeing your ideas expressed in an Israeli start-up?

Why engaging Iran on the nuclear program makes more sense now than ever

 

Charles Kupchan, almost always a terrifically reasonable fellow, in the Moscow Times on the need to talk with Iran.  Item found via WPR's Media Roundup.

Highlights:

With diplomacy having failed to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, critics of engagement charge, it is time to resort to coercion before Iran crosses the nuclear Rubicon. A rising chorus of voices now forswears engagement with Iran’s rulers, insisting that it is time for the regime to go.

But closing off dialogue with Iran would be a precipitous and dangerous mistake. Even fierce adversaries can settle their differences through negotiation. The United States and its allies should keep the door open to dialogue until the 11th hour for four compelling reasons.

First, tighter sanctions make sense only as a diplomatic tool, not as a blunt instrument of coercion . . .

Second, the costs of abandoning diplomacy are so high that continued engagement makes sense even as Iran refuses to budge . . .

A military strike would likely have worse consequences. Even if a strike were an operational success, it would only set back Iran’s nuclear program by several years, while giving the regime a new incentive to acquire a nuclear deterrent and build better hidden and defended nuclear facilities . . .

The third reason for pursuing dialogue is that factional infighting and political intrigue within the Iranian regime make for considerable political fluidity . . .

Finally, even as stalemate continues on Iran’s uranium enrichment, continued engagement may offer a roundabout means of arriving at a bargain on the nuclear issue. Dialogue with the United States could focus on areas, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the two parties share a measure of common ground. Joint efforts to combat drug trafficking in Afghanistan, for example . .

With Iran having spurned Obama’s offers of compromise, it is tempting for the U.S. administration to turn its back on dialogue. But the stakes are too high to abandon engagement.

Basically agree, but simply caution that I believe the impetus for talking will only get stronger once Iran inevitably fields those nuclear weapons in a way that's recognized by the world.

No, I don't think talking will stop this, but I think the practice is worthwhile, whether or not Israel strikes or not. The challenge cannot be wished away or bombed away or ignored. Practice will never make perfect here, but it will build up some semblance of a dialogue, and that matters when the alternative is isolating and demonizing a new nuclear power.

Would I prefer Iran without nukes?  Who wouldn't?  But this isn't about our preferences anymore; it's about dealing with a reality that rushing toward us while we prefer to engage in a lot of diplomatic escapism.

By virtue of Obama's vigorous use of drones, he needs to establish the rule-set cover for their operators

WAPO story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The essential danger/challenge:

On The Post's op-ed page Sunday, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey called the killing of Yazid a "major blow" to al-Qaeda because "Yazid has essentially served as al-Qaeda's 'chief financial officer,' coordinating the group's fundraising and overseeing the distribution of money essential to its survival." By the ACLU's reasoning, this would make the strike that killed Yazid illegal. Does the ACLU want to see the Predator operator who took out al-Qaeda's third in command prosecuted for murder? The ACLU has already gone after CIA interrogators -- surreptitiously photographing these covert operatives and sharing the images with al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo. CIA drone operators may soon be in for similar treatment.

The Obama administration has put the Predator operators at greater risk by dramatically narrowing the legal underpinnings for their actions. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh -- a harsh critic of the Bush administration -- explained in a March 25 speech that the Obama administration was no longer invoking the president's Article II authority as commander in chief to justify many of its policies in the war on terrorism. But Koh said that drone attacks were lawful because "Congress authorized the use of all necessary and appropriate force through the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF)."

The problem -- as Koh's predecessor, John Bellinger, told The Post last week -- is that Congress authorized the use of force against those who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And many of those currently targeted -- particularly outside Afghanistan -- had nothing to do with those attacks.

You have to think that if Obama lays out his case, however classified the presentation, to the Congress and says, "I'm taking the fight to them where they hide and I need this legality question settled for the long haul of this Long War," that he'd get the fix the CIA needs and deserves.

The longer the administration delays this inevitable step, the more jeopardy to which operators will be subjected.

Pretending this fight can be prosecuted in a neat, country-by-country basis, with all i's dotted in advance by Congress, is dangerous.  Better to clear the air and incentivize the operators. No reason to be mealy-mouthed about it or hide behind "interpretations."  Most Americans will see this as a very reasonable extension of Executive Branch writ.

"Cable" comes to the cancer ward

WSJ story describing recent claims by researchers of notable advances in treating cancer, the focus being on targeted therapies that employ advanced genetic-based technologies.

Naturally, all of this is expensive.

This will be a constant theme of the bio-gen revolution that unfolds over coming decades:  the tech will be there, but the question will be one of who gets access.  I expect that access to such medical technologies, especially those involving the significant extension of life, will become the primary human rights struggle of the century.

But what caught my eye here was the following bit:

"Cancer is like cable television," says George Sledge, a breast-cancer expert at Indiana University and newly elected president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which hosted the cancer meeting. "Thirty years ago you had three channels. Now you have 500."

The guy's point:  the more we learn and the better we target, the more target-complex becomes the battlespace.  Cancer, over time, will be revealed to be almost as complex and varied as the human experience. Since it is primarily a disease of aging, the longer we extend life, the more we will view it as our primary medical challenge.  For most of us who will enjoy this life-lengthening age, cancer will be less the dead-end and more the accepted right of passage.

But yeah, who plays gatekeeper will be crucial.

Energy subsidies worldwide (biggest developing economies) = $550B+ annually

Pic here

FT front-pager.

The stunner is less the number (what's a half-trillion across a global economy?) than the fact that the new IEA estimate is 75% higher than previously though.

IEA says recent G20 agreement to phase out subsidies would trigger vast savings in consumption (due to higher prices) and likewise in CO2 emissions.

Past efforts to reduce consumption have failed, says the FT, because of the generous subsidies offered by many governments to keep fuel cheap (like American gas).

The figure of $557B was derived from just 37 large developing countries.  Old figure guessed at $300B.

Atop the list sit all risers:  Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India and China.  Phase out those subsidies and it's like taking most of Europe offline--CO2 wise.

One tough sell, I must say. Energy subsidies in these countries are a huge political issue due to the still large numbers of impoverished folk (vast numbers in India and China), so I wouldn't expect this number to go down without plenty of fights.

The iPhone makes Apple a global player, but only if it can dominate outside the US

WSJ story that exemplifies the bottom-of-the-pyramid reality of the global marketplace once Asia's billions sign on.

Apple is rolling out the latest version of its iPhone more rapidly to 88 countries beyond its already saturated American market, reducing the lag time exhibited by previous versions.

Why?  Apple's growth in recent quarters is skyrocketing in Asia/Japan and it's even significantly bigger in Europe already than in America.  Comparison: March 2010Q sees growth rate of about 25% in the Americas, but almost 200% in developing Asia.

So no choice: go global or go stagnant.

Chart of the day: a single-party democracy in South Africa

Economist special report on South Africa.

I always like to remind myself that the ANC were a prime client of the Sovs during the Cold War, appearing in my PhD diss in that role. Why take Sov support? The West wasn't offering any. Fortunately when given the chance to rule, the ANC has done so democratically--more or less.

But like most revolutionary parties, it has ruled in a singular, dominating sense. Pretty easy to do because of the original giants, like Mandela.

But hopefully it gets harder over time.

WPR's The New Rules: When Technology Becomes More Human

Oddly enough, people tend to trust computers' seeming infallibility more than nature's trial and error. But at the same time, people fear a more highly technologized future, because they assume it will be less natural. In truth, technology, including computing, will evolve more in the direction of nature than the other way around, and will fuse with it increasingly on the latter's terms.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review

Alterman on the underlying challenge posed by globalization's embrace of the Middle East

Great Jon Alterman piece in World Politics Review.

It is not surprising that discussions with government officials from member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council often dwell heavily on security threats. Terrorism remains a persistent concern of theirs even if some of the urgency they feel has passed. A conventionally armed Iran is a constant source of worry. And the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is an unending nightmare.

Yet, among the most-senior leadership, there is also some perspective. The terrorism threat no longer feels existential, as a combination of effective security initiatives, internal cooptation and international cooperation have made their mark. On Iran, there is a sense of fatalism: The Gulf has relied on external guarantors to keep the Iranians at bay since the days of the Portuguese empire, and the Iranians have sufficiently agitated the world to ensure that external guarantors, in some form or another, will remain.

But in private conversations with senior GCC royals last month, it was clear that one security concern does indeed loom large. It is one not of physical security, but of human security. Their nations can almost certainly survive the other threats they face. But unless they can create dynamic, hard-working and creative populations over the long term, these countries will fail.

For the last half-century, the GCC's human security story has been a positive one. After World War II, today's gleaming Gulf capitals were impoverished collections of reed huts. Schooling was uncommon, and fresh water was scarce. Traffic-clogged roads did not exist, because traffic did not exist. Radios were a rarity, in contrast to the ubiquity of the satellite dishes that now deliver more than 500 channels in Arabic. Life expectancies doubled in the 20th century. Malnutrition and the endemic diseases of the 1950s have disappeared, and the diseases of the 2010s -- heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes -- are all diseases, not of poverty, but of plenty. For Gulf Arabs who came of age in the 1960s, the contrast between their youth and their adulthood could not be starker.

What will the future look like for today's youth? It is hard to imagine that they can enjoy a jump in living conditions similar to the one their parents and grandparents experienced, especially as oil and gas markets seem unlikely to expand as much over the next half-century as they did over the last. Much of it comes down to a basic problem of mathematics: Per capita income increased a hundredfold, from $500 in 1960 to $50,000 in 2010; it cannot increase another hundredfold, to $5 million, in the 50 years to come. 

Even more importantly, what might drive future growth? There is a growing recognition that oil has wrought about all that it can.

The GCCs are the natural lead geese on this evolution of thinking, so every step they consider or take is worth watching. Because when the world moves beyond oil, all the Middle East is left with are the people as a resource.  Nothing that's happened in the past decade has altered that reality; indeed, most of what's happened has accelerated it.

Excellent article.

Chivers on what Marja means--so far

NYT piece by the always astute C.J. Chivers.

As NATO and Afghan forces flow into neighboring Kandahar Province, where for the next many months the latest high-profile effort to undo the Taliban’s hold will unroll, the continuing fighting in Marja can be read as a sign of problems in the American-led surge. It can also be read as something less worrisome: a difficult period in a campaign always expected to be hard.

A prevailing assessment among officers on the ground is this: The outcome is too soon to call.

“Right now it’s gray,” said Maj. Lawrence Lohman, the operations officer for Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, which operates outposts in northern Marja.

Those who deem the Marja offensive a disappointment, or even a failure, point to the daily violence and to the signs that Afghans have been leaving the area, at least temporarily, to avoid the fighting. They also point to Taliban intimidation of residents, a still limited government presence, and the continued reliance of Afghan police officers and soldiers on American supervision and logistics. These, they say, are ill-boding signs.

But the signals are contradictory.

Most of Marja’s civilians returned after moving away ahead of the initial assault. Most of them remain. Compounds that were empty in February are inhabited. Roads once quiet are busy. Fields are thick with crops. Shops in some bazaars have reopened. Afghan units participate visibly in dangerous missions.

Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, the battalion’s commander, noted that some of Marja’s residents had begun providing information on the Taliban, including sharing the names and locations of fighters. Many civilians have been seeking aid and a few have sought contracts for small scale development projects, the early steps in engagement.

“I’ve seen good growth and good progress,” the colonel said. He added: “There is still a lot to be done.”

The Marines point to what they clearly hope is a Helmand pattern, apparent in other districts, including Nawa, where the Taliban were strong and fighting was initially intense. The pattern, they said, is this: With time and resources, the insurgents’ position erodes, villages become secure, and engagement and the Afghan government presence expand.

Pursuing this goal, Marine companies have been sending out constant small patrols.

Time and patience and skills, we seem to have a plenty--at least on the military's side.

More and more we hear generals voicing out loud their thought that Afghanistan will take longer--the implied follow-on being ". . . than President Obama wants."

Obama will reach a Bush moment on Afghanistan, and he will either fold or play on.