Everything looks better--rank-wise--after a TV appearance

Ego surfing is mother's milk to authors, and Amazon is ground zero.

My dream, going back to the first book, was to someday be able to see a cluster of books with some staying power.

Today's rankings soothe the soul, even as I know it's a lot of lists within lists. Point being, when lists are made, the three books appear somewhere.

In Globalization, Blueprint for Action (paperback) makes #45.

In International Security, Pentagon's New Map (paperback) makes #28 and BFA(p) ranks #59.

In Military Science, PNM(p) ranks #48.

In U.S. Politics, Great Powers (hardcover) ranks #5 and PNM(p) ranks #46.

In Politics, GP stands at #59.

In International Relations, GP is #11.

In International, GP is #13.

Switching to Kindle lists, in Military Science, PNM(k) is #7.

In International Security(k), PNM(k) is #16.

In Freedom & Security(k), PNM(k) is #39.

In U.S. Politics(k), GP(k) is #3 and PNM(k) is #30.

In Politics & Current Events(k), GP(k) is #37.

In International Relations(k), GP(k) is #6.

In International(k), GP(k) is #7.

In the end, you want books that matter and stay around, something not just worth reading right then but worth being read in classrooms years later (like Larry Summers assigning BFA in his Harvard class on globalization, or OH high school kids reading PNM). PNM is five years old. BFA is four years old.

I know this is sheer bragging, but I get to do that on my blog, because the Internet is full of people who love to s--t on you too!

Worth the old Russian try

ARTICLE: Obama: Time to 'reset' relations with Russia, AP, March. 3, 2009

It's the right move and a smart one. Notice the focus isn't on nuclear power (Moscow's now several-decade effort to help them build a reactor), but on long-range missiles.

Worth a try and a useful point for discussion with the Russians.

(Thanks: Jeff Jennings)

Muslims in America: thriving but nervous

NATIONAL: "Poll Finds U.S. Muslims Thriving, but Not Content," by Laurie Goodstein, New York Times 2 March 2009.

Americans in general say they thrive/struggle at 46-to-50% ratios. American Muslims seem a bit worse off at 41-to-56.

The only countries in the survey who beat those numbers are Germany (47/48) and Saudi Arabia (51/47). Of course, if you can't be a happy Muslim in the Kingdom . . .

Inside the U.S., there is a key distinction: Asian Muslims are doing much better than other Muslims. In fact, Asian Muslims trail only American Jews in the thriving/struggling category.

Also to note: there is no majority race for Muslims in America, meaning heavy diversity.

Most interesting and suggestive of their leading role in any reformation dynamic: American Muslim women are more likely than American Muslim men to have college and post-grad degrees. Only American Jewish women have higher rates. As a result, there is more income equality among American Muslims than any other group in America.

Most to my projection: American Muslim women attend mosque as frequently as men--"a contrast with many Muslim countries where the mosques are primarily for men."

Only Mormons rank religion as more important to their lives than Muslims do (85 to 80%). The average American comes in at 65%.

Muslims in America resemble Jews in political persuasion: small number are GOP, half are Dems and a third are independents.

Plenty of alienation to go around since 9/11--go figure. But the upshot is that "the integration process for American Muslims, is on the whole, a much more successful endeavor than it is for European Muslims," so sayeth a senior researcher at a U.S. Muslim studies center.

Some turning inward makes sense, when it comes to Asian domestic demand

MARKETPLACE: "Lenovo Looks to Rural China for PC Growth," by Loretta Chao, Wall Street Journal, 5 March 2009.

Hundreds of new stores and gov-subsidized low prices, targeting 320,000 villages to prompt current and downstream demand. Dell and H-P also in the competitive mix, just no gov subsidies.

Oddly enough, nobody expects the subsidies to have much impact. Lenovo already dominates about 30% of the domestic market, with Dell and H-P managing a combined 20%. But clearly, Lenovo feels that, in these hard times, better to compete more aggressively at home than abroad.

Starts in Old Core, spreads to New, but Gap is final destination

WORLD NEWS: "Crisis Reaching Poorest Nations, IMF Says, " by Bob Davis and Sarah Childress, Wall Street Journal, 4 March 2009.

Bigger declines in current accounts balance, GDP growth and worse inflation for all low-income countries. IMF says it is looking at $25B in additional funding (low interest loans) for the 22 worst cases. It is looking to get Core economies to donate 0.7% of their stimulus packages to such funding.

A very tough sell.

Naturally, the most vulnerable are concentrated in Africa. Many ran down their reserves last year to cover higher energy and commodity prices.

The big problem is that New Core economies are demanding less raw materials from these Gap nations, primarily because their exports to Old Core economies are down dramatically.

The temptation, of course, among Old Core economies is to reduce such connectivity in the first place, but that just places New Core pillars in more precarious places, spreading their pain to Gap nations, so everybody is beggared by the search for more "independence." Meanwhile, Old Core economies will lose export markets themselves.

ONI restructure

PRESS RELEASE: Office of Naval Intelligence Begins Historic Transformation, Office of Naval Intelligence, 2/27/2009

I take this as the next-best-iteration for ONI, so very good to see.

(Thanks: Louis Heberlein)

Happy with Smiley show

The slumped posture was a combination of feeling a bit sick, my back being out of whack, the sheer weirdness of those chairs, and my aforementioned unconscious tendency to get "lower" than my interviewer/interviewee. Not a great route, but I think I make up for it with the gestures and animated responses.

Really happy with the responses.

My local showing was marred by digital break-up, so no good DVR capture.

My question/request is this: can anybody tape and send to me? I looked on site and saw that--I think--Smiley doesn't sell his shows like CSPAN does, so I fear I lost my only chance for digital copy for my archives.

But again, very happy with show.

If anybody catches the radio version of the interview (different interview, same characters), please let us know so we can link to archives.

Tom on Tavis tonight?

Again, hard to get a fix on this. Did anyone see Tom on Tavis last night? Most of what I'm seeing says tonight, including Smiley's website. But, again, check your local listings.

The IMF reinvention vision

WORLD NEWS: "IMF Proposes Government System To Oversee Global Financial Firms," by Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2009.

The IMF was seen as superfluous not too long ago: lending down dramatically and the role largely replaced by combo of private-sector FDI and FDI from New Core powers like Russia, India, China. Now, with the contraction, the IMF is back in the crucial business of rescue packaging. It is said that the EU has effectively outsourced the rescue task re: its eastern European members.

Also, as the Euro members of the G20 push for global regulation of inter-state banking and inter-market activities, the IMF becomes a potential center of gravity for such activity. Most of the proposals for now center on hedge funds and other financial players not yet pulled into the regulatory mix. The U.S., per our ideology of limited oversight, wants the universe of players brought under new regulation limited to those who pose "systemic risk." The only way for this to work if for the G20 members to all agree to enact similar laws within their systems to create the regulatory linkage.

Amidst these talks, the U.S. and UK, per their shared model, want a stronger emphasis on coordinated stimulus packages while the rest of the G20 leans more toward the goal of new regulations. The IMF currently endorses the previously articulated G20 concept of generating "colleges of supervisors" that would link regulators from different countries together--sort of a cheap articles of association effort far short of a strong global regulator. This seems like a reasonable next step: trying things out in a community-of-interests sort of way before moving forward.

The downside? In trying to reduce systemic risk, less money will flow to higher-risk developing markets.

As always, then, it's the choice of new rules following a system perturbing crisis that matters most going forward.

Afghan women's gains: always at risk

FRONT PAGE: "Long Viewed as Chattel, Afghan Women Slowly Gain Protection," by Kirk Semple, New York Times, 3 March 2009.

Women's shelters, unknown in Afghanistan prior to 2003, begin to have some impact.

Why? They become the alternative to throwing yourself on the mercy of the court, which in Afghanistan typically punishes the woman no matter what.

No overnight change, to be sure, just the beginning of women considering alternatives and acting on those possibilities.

China exposes itself to a bit more monetary risk

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE: "China to Open Yuan's Role in Trade: Policy Would Allow All Facets of Import-Export Game to Deal in the Currency," by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 7-8 March 2009.

Opening para:

China may soon allow Chinese trading companies to buy and sell merchandise internationally using yuan, a technical step that would move one of the world's largest trading nations closer to having a fully convertible currency.

Big damn deal, exposing China to a lot more monetary risk. But apparently Beijing sees more risk in not doing this.

Four commercial banks may start settling international deals in yuan by April.

By doing this, the yuan doesn't all of a sudden have its exchange rate altered. But by settling deals in yuan, it would start circulating and making it a currency of value in the system (i.e., you'd want to have yuan).

The existing reality:

China has significantly eased controls over the international exchange of its currency during the past 30 years, but the yuan remains mostly nonconvertible on global foreign-exchange markets. A thicket of rules dictate when banks in China can buy and sell yuan for foreign currencies, a legacy of Communist-era state planning.

For now, all of China's trade is settled in other currencies.

Dealing wholly in yuan could be cheaper, easier and less risky for Chinese trading companies; costs and currency-exchange-rate risks would be moved to their foreign counterparts.

But ultimately, as more yuan moved out into the system, Beijing would have less control over its usage and supplies, ultimately leading to the need for making it totally convertible.

Good sign.

The best anti-drug legalization argument I've yet encountered

OPINION: "Drug Legalization Isn't the Answer: Countries that have experimented with a permissive approach have always turned back," by John P. Walters, Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2009.

First, the barrage of favorable stats:

• since 01 the # of young using illegals drops by 900k to 2.7m


• use among HS seniors cut nearly in half since peak years 1978 and 1979 (I was 1980), down to a mere 23% in 08


• adult and juve drug courts are now common in most states (more than 2k) and these push low-level offenders toward treatment


• just under 4% of workers tested positive in 07, down from 14% in 1988.

Author says 10m out of 100m drinkers in America abuse, whereas drug users number in the range of 19m, but he predicts (out of where, I have no idea) a future of 50m users if legalized.

The harder, better sell at the end:

We have seen dramatic proof that institutions of law and democracy can prevail over narco-terrorists. Colombia has attacked drug production and the violent groups that profited from it. In the process, it transformed its national security and made its streets safer. What nation in South America--or anywhere--has reduced violence and human rights abuses more than Colombia since 2002? Could President Alvaro Uribe have done this by surrendering to the drug trade?

Today there is terrible violence in Mexico. Those who carry out attacks do so with the intention of making us stop resisting them. But what the narco-terrorists want is power, not control of the drug trade. These terrorists are growing more violent because over the past three to four years the money that criminal organizations get from trafficking meth and cocaine has dropped sharply--perhaps by 50% or more. To bankroll their activities, they are now kidnapping, extorting and grabbing power. The drug trade is a tool, not the cause of these violent criminal groups.

Rather bullish view, which makes the argument that violent drug groups will always seek/require some venue of money-making, so denying them the drug trade (which he argues is being controlled) is not a way to make them go away per se. In effect, he's arguing that the force of our suppression efforts is creating more sideways friction--i.e., moves to adjacent (more traditional) markets for criminal groups.

Curious what people make of this. On first read, I was impressed. But on second read, less so.

One country's crisis is another country's opportunity

ARTICLE: China Gains Key Assets In Spate of Purchases, By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, March 17, 2009; Page A01

Another piece on China buying up stuff an once-in-a-lifetime prices.

Smart stuff.

China doesn't seem to be "de-globalizing"--just the opposite.

"Making flippy-floppy, trying to do my best ..."

THE WELCHWAY: "Fear of Flip-Flopping: Leaders are actually supposed to change their minds when the winds shift," by Jack and Suzy Welch, BusinessWeek, 9 March 2009.

FINANCE: "The Reeducation of Larry Summers," by Michael Hirsh and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, 2 March 2009.

I make this point in Great Powers: extreme consistency is not just the hobgoblin of little minds, it kills grand strategy.

Welch & spouse defend Obama on this point, pointing out that such honesty killed the prez campaigns of Kerry in 04 and Romney in 08 (and yeah, we would have been MUCH better off with Kerry in 2004 and the GOP should have nom'd Romney in 2008.

In the Summers piece (good), Larry channels Keynes:

"Keynes famously said of someone who accused him of inconsistency; 'When circumstances change, I change my opinion,' said Summers, raising his heavy-lidded eyes at the reporters as he quoted Keynes' kicker: "'What do you do?'"

This is what makes the six GOP grand-standing governors look so stupid.

Iranian realities

OP-ED: A reality check on Iran and the 'bomb', By Richard M Bennett, Asia Times Online, Feb 28, 2009

Smart, sensible and thorough strategic arguments of why we should be able to handle a slowly-weaponizing nuclear Iran. Perfect compilation of realities any sensible analyst in my business already knows--assuming no freak-out bias regarding Israel.

(Thanks: Terry Collier)

When peace is bad

ARTICLE: Interesting only when they are violent, By Meron Benvenisti, Haaretz, Feb 26, 2009

Counterintuitive appreciation of how quiet the West Bank is. Like Netanyahu on "economic peace."

(Thanks: Kenneth Nalaboff)

Why Sovereign Wealth Funds are globalization's best friend

WORLD NEWS: "Persian Gulf States Bet on Africa Despite Downturn: Boosted by Arab Billions, Sub-Saharan Region Will Grow 3.5% in 2009, IMF Projects, as Cross-Border Flows Decline Elsewhere," by Margaret Coker, Wall Street Journal, 24 February 2009.

Key opening paras:

Africa may be bracing for a commodities bust, but the still-rich investors of the Persian Gulf are doubling down here.

Through the worst of the global financial crisis in recent months, Gulf investors have committed to pouring billions of dollars into sub-Saharan Africa. The timing comes just as recessions in much of the developed world, and sharply slowing growth almost everywhere else, threaten most other cross-border investment flows. Indeed, sub-Saharan Africa's ability to grow--the International Monetary Fund still projects the region's economy will expand 3.5% this year and 5% in 2010--depends on the Middle Eastern investors carrying through on their commitments.

Africa likes the Gulf guys as a balancer to the Chinese, who are seen as purely resource-driven--duh! The Gulf investors look to ports, ag, telecoms, plus the usual minerals and oil that attracts China and the West.

The Gulf players look at Africa as a source of cheap assets, and a place to tap into future globalization growth, like Dubai World Ports expanding Djibouti's port and attracting, on that basis, additional interests in both directions re: Ethiopia (in and out).

Simply put, the Arabs have a long history of economic domination in Africa, and they aim to get it back.

I see no problem, especially if the Chinese are given good competition--better for everybody.

How much is Saudi Arabia trying to change?

OPINION: "The Saudi Cabinet Shake-Up Portends Real Reform," by Karen Elliott House, Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2009.

Karen Elliott House used to run the WSJ editorial page and before she was a great reporter on the Mideast.

She's now spending a lot of time in Saudi Arabia to write a book on political change there.

She reports here that King Abdullah, who became king finally in 2005, is starting to remove some of the hardliners who have kept his many promises of reform from actually unfolding in the education and judicial spheres.

Her point: he is most definitely trying to prolong the monarchy. He just believes reform is the only way to go.

Casting him as a Saudi Gorbachev, House says Abdullah "has come to recognize that cultural stultification, political stagnation and pervasive corruption have trapped this oil-rich kingdom in a torpor that may appear outwardly stable but festers with internal frustration."

The big problem is the youth bulge (half the population is under 15) and globalization's creeping embrace:

These young Saudis have been reared on satellite television and the Internet, both of which came to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s and abruptly opened this closed kingdom to the outside world. The young--whether modernists or Islamists or the bulk of the young people who sit between these two extremes--represent a force for change that must be channeled. This is part of the reason for the king's focus on reforming education. The other is the need to prepare young Saudis to be able to find jobs.

The key point: Abdullah knows the demographic race with al Qaeda is on.

Tom on Tavis

Bummer! PBS at first had all 12 minutes of tonight's interview up, but they caught on and now they just have a 2 minute clip.

I see lots of different times out there. Publisher's Weekly says it will be broadcast tonight. Tavis Smiley's site says tomorrow night. If you're thinking of watching it, I'd say check your local listings.

Since I got to watch the whole thing, I'll give you a little teaser: I wish Tom and Tavis had time to debate our 'empire' and how it rebuilt Western Europe and Japan, bankrupted the USSR, enriched the Asian Tigers and created three billion new capitalists ;-)

Tom on Book TV

Video of Tom's Politics and Prose talk aired on C-SPAN2 Book TV is now available on demand.

Here it is embedded on the Book TV home page.

Tom's manuscript that he spoke from that night.