AFRICOM as embryonic DoEE

ARTICLE: 'U.S. Africa Command Brings New Concerns: Fears of Militarization on Continent Cited,' By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, May 28, 2007; Page A13

My druthers?

I would franchise Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, replicating it north, south, west and central. I would not locate any HQ in Africa, but set it down in northern VA to attract both the necessary talent and to encourage super interagency development.

I would mandate a retired 4-star with joint combatant command experience as commander and pick a USAIDer as deputy. I would give the commander the same status as the U.S. ambassador to the UN, meaning cabinet-level status.

I would force DoD policy-making for Africa to be centered in Africom. Same for State and USAID.

It would serve as the embryonic Department of Everything Else.

The CJTFs would be shaped like HOA: no pointy end. I would put SOCOM in charge of necessary Leviathan activities as required, but I would keep those functions entirely separate, as they are today in CJTF-HOA.

Zoellick a good choice for World Bank

Very happy to see this.

The smartest former member of the Bush administration returns to public life in a very important job.

Zoellick understands that trade drives development, not aid.

He was the best choice last time, and remains so this time.

I would expect the world to greet this choice very warmly.

Smart move by Bush.

The real target is the House of Saud

ARTICLE: For Cloaked Saudi Women, Color Is the New Black, By Faiza Saleh Ambah, Washington Post, May 28, 2007; Page A01

Good piece, reminding us of the glacial but real pace of change at the true "ground zero" of this long war.

No amount of change by us or our forces ends this war. Change in Saudi Arabia does, because the House of Saud remains the real target.

All declarations against America notwithstanding, our real sin is standing between al Qaeda and its real target.

Everything else is mere precursor.

Thanks to doubting disciple for sending this.

Opening regimes crack down on dissidents

OP-ED: Prisoner of Her Desires, By REUEL MARC GERECHT, New York Times, May 24, 2007

I found it shallow, reminding me of conservative pieces on the dangers of detente by citing the plight of this or that dissident.

The truth is, as you prepare to open up like that, a regime like this tends to crack down harder on dissidents to prove it's "not going soft" in talking to the "devil.'

Gerecht's usually smarter than this, so I found it disappointing.

Thanks to Bill Millan for sending this

The N11 is what comes next

RISK AND REWARD: A SPECIAL REPORT ON INTERNATIONAL BANKING: “Here, there and everywhere: Investment banks are scouring the globe for new business,” The Economist, 19 May 2007, p. 16.

Goldman looks beyond the BRIC of Brazil, Russia, India and China and dubs the N11, or “next 11” as Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.

Very interesting.

Rehabbing religion in China

ASIA: “Confucius makes a comeback: You can’t keep a good sage down,” The Economist, 19 May 2007, p. 48.

In Blueprint for Action, one of my end-of-book future projections spoke about how we’ll all be surprised at how religious China has become over the next couple of decades.

This is not a bold prediction, but a logical one. The suppression of faith in China was profound under Mao. Now people get some money and get past the basic needs and they begin to hunger for things a bit higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, including ways to order their thinking about life and especially the future.

The article says it’s so intriguing that the Chinese Communist Party itself seems to be evoking a lot of Confucianism in recent years, but it’s hardly surprising. Religion and rulers have gone together in China across the vast majority of its history, and it was the Commies that were the rare interlude.

Tom around the web

The post of the week was clearly An overwrought, ideologically myopic argument (fueled by DeLong). Linked by:
+ gmgDesign
+ Brad DeLong (and here)
+ ShrinkWrapped
+ Left Flank
+ New Yorker in DC.
+ Adam Smith's Lost Legacy.
+ Hot soup in my eye
+ Soob

+ Blogs of War linked last week's column.
+ Castle Argghhh! linked GIGO strategy, Smart or fearful? and Leviathan/SysAdmin inevitable.
+ James Joyner, writing on TCS Daily, linked Why the SysAdmin begins and grows up within Defense.
+ The Global Liquidity Blog linked Iran: good logic.
+ David Axe referred to the SysAdmin.
+ Kindred Winecoff linked That's not how intell works, An overwrought, ideologically myopic argument and The slew of articles declaiming the "damage" of China's pegged yuan.
+ Opposed Systems Design linked Move to Japan AND China.
+ So did Left Flank.
+ ShrinkWrapped linked In guerrillas we trust.
+ Phil Windley linked That's not how intell works.
+ So did Hot soup in my eye.
+ The Conjecturer says Tom is his favorite theorist 'evar' in a post about Brave New War.
+ The American Mind linked Visiting the land of Thompson.
+ et alli. linked I like it! Number three on the list!.
+ Hot soup in my eye
+ Government Change Agents referred to Tom.
+ 21st Century Boy linked First draft of book proposal.
+ TyroBlog liked PNM.
+ The Futurist referred to Tom on global rule sets.
+ New Yorker in DC referred to Tom in another China discussion.
+ Soob linked Resilience in a frontier age.
+ China Venture News linked The slew of articles declaiming the "damage" of China's pegged yuan.

+ Thanks to MountainRunner for pointing out that the 'blog of the Combined Arms Research Library, US Army Command and General Staff College' included Tom in their Google Custom Search. (And, remember: 1. Tom was crazy there until the second tour, and 2. I rolled a custom search a long time ago ;-)

Soft touch with Richard M

A relative, buried in the Barnett family plot in Boscobel. Explains, I suppose, my soft touch with Richard M.

Remembered

Good example of women empowered

ARTICLE: A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women, By MICHAEL SLACKMAN, New York Times, May 26, 2007

A staple of my presentation is that globalization, with its gender-neutral nets, empowers women disproportionately to men in a traditional society, which I describe as essentially involving male control over females in all important aspects of life.

This story is a good example of that process.

Thanks to Eric Osmer for sending this.

The Core aborts, the Gap allows no choice

INTERNATIONAL: “A question of life and death: The struggle between ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ forces around the world,” The Economist, 19 May 2007, p. 65.

Just a fascinating map here that captures the Core-Gap divide amazingly well, except for Argentina, Brazil and Chile in South America.

Other than that, it’s overwhelmingly true that abortions are allowed in the Core and disallowed in the Gap.

What does that say?

You connect by empowering women and you empower women by connecting. Either way, once you do, they want more rights and more control.

And that’s just the way it is, and the way it will become as globalization spreads.

My birthday cake

Spent day in Boscobel planting flowers at graves of two brothers and Dad. Then to the Memorial Day service at Boscobel HS, the one my Dad MC'd for decades (yes, decades) as a 50-year member of the American Legion and VFW.

No family members abroad this year. The two who were in theater last year have since returned.

Tom's column this week

Guerrillas of the world: Unite!

With the global economy's rapid expansion over the past two decades, globalization has entered into an extended period of frontier integration. This forces both the West and emerging markets to radically increase the resilience of all these new networks, especially those extending into regions still largely disconnected from globalization's deep embrace, such as Africa and the Middle East.

Why?

Very bad actors capable of very bad things tend to congregate in these thinly connected regions. Using guerrilla-style tactics, they can not only frustrate our efforts at postwar reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also bring their weapons of "system disruption" eventually to the very networks and infrastructure that fuel globalization's advance.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Early column sighting: Press of Atlantic City

The super-connected is the over-worked

COVER STORY: “Hi, I’m Joan, and I’m a workaholic: Technology enables rise of extreme workers, on job 60 hours or more,” by Stephanie Armour, USA Today, 23 May 2007, p. 1B.

It’s a real issue I struggle with: all this great connectivity means I can work just about all the time.

How I try to balance? I travel a lot, and try to work non-stop when I do. When I’m home, I try to restrict it a lot more. Doesn’t always work, but at least it’s a strategy I consistently pursue.

The real sacrifice tends to be exercise, both on the road and at home, so that’s been a big focus of mine lately, because when I exercise, I perform so much better across the board (happy working, happier not working).

I read something recently that said high-travel businesspeople need to act just like professional athletes in their approach to exercise and food and sleep and upkeep, and that if you don’t, you simply lose it.

I found that article pretty compelling.

If anyone can find it for me, I would be most grateful.

Containment ain't what it used to be

ARTICLE: Tehran ignores the bluff and bluster
, By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times Online, May 26, 2007

Excerpt:

Tehran factors that the US remains wedded to a plan of comprehensive containment of Iran. But Tehran is confident that for a variety of reasons - Europe's need to diversify energy sourcing; the United States' overstretch in Iraq and Afghanistan; volatility in the oil market; tensions in US-Russia relations - the plan will not work. Tehran knows that the US is in need of Iran's cooperation to extricate itself from the crisis in Iraq. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon implicitly underscored Iran's growing regional influence when he telephoned the Iranian foreign minister on Thursday to seek his help in defusing the developing crisis in northern Lebanon. Equally, Tehran knows that the US doesn't really have a "military option".

Sounds pretty dead-on to me, and fairly logical from Iran's perspective.

Containment ain't what it used to be in a globalized economy.

Thanks to Lexington Green for sending this.

The slew of articles declaiming the “damage” of China’s pegged yuan

BRIEFING: “Lost in translation: If China sharply revalued the yuan, as American politicians are demanding, it could actually hurt the United States and help China,” The Economist, 19 May 2007, p. 73.

Bunch of these articles lately, pointing out what a lot of people have been saying for a while: pegging the yuan to the dollar has been great for America. We get deflationary pressure, plus our remains cheap from the recycling.

It’s really Europe that gets screwed in the process.

If China revalues, then what? It won’t cure the fact that Americans spend too much and save too little. It won’t reduce our imports, because restricting Chinese imports will lead to Americans simply importing the same products from other nations, not in our building such products ourselves. There is no substitution effect here.

And cheap Chinese imports don’t cause unemployment here, unless you think 4.5% is a lot of unemployment (actually, it’s close to our lowest number in decades).

China would actually benefit more than we would from such a revaluation, because it would help them shift money from investment to consumption, which would allow them to moderate the growth of the economy better and help avoid bubbles and crashes caused by excess liquidity (there is such a thing as having too much money in the system).

And yet watch Congress pursue all sorts of tariff threats, making you wonder if there’s one decent economist out of the 535.

Colombia: increase the security, attract the FDI

THE INFORMED READER: “Columbia Lures Investors as Violence Wanes,” from BusinessWeek, 28 May 2007, excerpted in Wall Street Journal, 19-20 May 2007, p. A6.

Original BusinessWeek article

Uribe’s government continues to do well in Colombia, and so BusinessWeek dubs it an investment “hot spot.” FDI has doubled since 2001, and its stock market has boomed 14-fold--all because the government successfully cracks down on this drug trafficking problem.

Maybe nation-states aren’t exactly defenseless against Robb’s global guerrillas after all?

But Colombia gets some help, showing how the macro forces of globalization are so crucial:

Colombia’s rebound has been aided by broader trends: the increasing amount of money coursing through global markets, and investors’ increasing tolerance for taking on risk in once-shunned destinations.

Actually, those two trends are highly linked: the more money, the more roaming the investor’s eye toward riskier environments.

This is a very good thing, demonstrating the virtuous cycle of globalization: nothing succeeds like success.

But, as the piece points out, increasing security was everything as an enabler of this growing financial connectivity. Medellin’s murder rate drops more than 90% over the past fifteen years.

Yes, the druggies still rule too much of the hinterlands, but it appears that nation-states can “refill” as well as be “hollowed out” by such global guerrillas, and globalization is not the disease but the cure.

Inducing strategic despair - in ourselves

ARTICLE: Sadr Back in Iraq, U.S. Generals Say, By Thomas E. Ricks and Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, May 25, 2007; Page A12

ARTICLE: U.S. Urges New Sanctions as Iran Stands Firm on Nuclear Policy, By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, May 25, 2007; Page A14

This constellation says showdown on Iran, not solution on Iraq:

1) Sadr back in Iraq for purported Iranian-backed summer offensive on U.S. troops.

2) We push new sanctions on Iraq and exercise 2 carrier groups in PG in show of force to Tehran.

3) And somehow Rice pulls out Iranian concessions on Iraq?

We're left with the usual choice of alternative interpretations of this administration's seeming jumble of policies: either incredibly clever in ways we can't possibly fathom or incredibly f--ked up, confused and internally-contradicted.

And then you check the scorecard for the last six years and I'm with A.J. on this one until proven otherwise.

Good thing we go to my Mom's this weekend.

No pool...

No readily available cinderblocks.

Globalization Comes With No Costs Whatsoever! Incomes Equalized Worldwide! Universal Joy Unleashed!

ARTICLE: "Globalization's Gains Come With a Price: While Poor Benefit, Inequality Feeds A Backlash Overseas," by Bob Davis, John Lyons and Andrew Batson, Wall Street Journal, 24 May 2007, p. A1.

Obviously a serious subject that I believe applies natural speed limits on globalization (caboose braking), but smartass that I am (throw your mouse in the trash, Neil!), I couldn't resist.

Globalization promised to lift the wages of low-skilled workers, and it has.

But, CANYOUBELIEVEIT! the wages of low-skilled workers haven't kept pace with the far faster rise of higher-skilled workers, which means, if you get more education and become smarter and talented in general, you get more money.

Further data cited in the "workaholics" story yesterday says people with the highest incomes tend to work the longest hours.

So to sum up: get smarter, work harder, earn more.

Sounds like a winning system right out of Darwin, destined to generate more wealth overall and drive human progress.

Or we could mandate everyone gets the same everything and see how that goes.

Sound cruel?

Tell me this statement doesn't strike you as odd:

While globalization was expected to help the less skilled ... in developing countries, there is overwhelming evidence that these are not generally better off, at least not relative to workers with higher skill or education levels (italics mine)

So write two American Ivy League economists.

Okay ... we should aim for a globalization that rewards less skills and less education?

The kicker of the piece:

Many developing nations seem to following in the footsteps of the U.S., where the income gap has grown sharply since the early 1970s.

Interesting, because that's when you get the first serious stirrings of the info age and globalization and where modern history really begins: the early 1970s.

The two big examples cited are the ones always cited:

1) Latin America, ruined by the Spanish and left with huge income gaps due to concentrated land ownership, still has huge gaps in income. I AM SHOCKED!

2) Mao's China had achieved the amazing distinction of making all its citizens amazingly poor and equally so. Now the gaps in income are huge compared to that nirvana.

Meanwhile, the population in China living on less than a buck a day drops from over 600 million to about 100 million, or from 60 percent to about 10 percent.

Want to count up all the lives elevated and extended and improved?

Or just bitch about the gap?

Of course, the gap isn't an economic issue, but a political one. So yeah, it matters only so much as politics matter. But get big enough, and your system better get more open or a whole lot more closed.

Guess which route gets you more money?

The big driver in all of this division: the gap in skills in handling new technology.

So what should technology do? Get easier to use, I guess.

What should governments do? Improve education and expand its access.

What should biz do? Work more upstream in educational systems to improve appropriate training.

What should Latin America do? Ask Hernando De Soto.

I like it! Number three on the list!

OP-ED: Laughing and Crying, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times, May 23, 2007

Money quote:

I think any foreign student who gets a Ph.D. in our country -- in any subject -- should be offered citizenship.

Definitely add this one to the list, after civilians who work for the SysAdmin and those who join our armed forces.

I like it!