Islamic banking hits a crucial threshold

IN THE MARKETS: “Islamic Banking Moves Into Singapore: City-State Stakes Claim in Growing Sector; DBS, Mideast Investors Capitalize New Firm,” by Patricia Kowsmann and Karen Lane, Wall Street Journal, 8 May 2007, p. C7.

When big international banks start moving assets into micro-lending, then it becomes interesting. Give the Nobel to Grameen, but give the momentum to a Citibank, because then the niche becomes the mainstream.

Singapore becoming a nascent hub for Islamic banking is a big deal. Singapore is the natural flow-through point for all foreign direct investment, so its only natural it will become the big flow-through for Islamic banking that links the Mideast’s oil surplus to Asia’s infrastructure boom, while simultaneously linking Asian finance to the GCC’s internal investment boom.

In short, the East-East ties are growing, and Islam--to the surprise only of the economic know-nothings--is proving to be an answer, not solely the problem.

Soon enough, Islamic “values” will prove no more difficult for capitalism to mold in its image than Asian “values” were.

Inconceivable until time makes it inevitable. Marx was right about capitalism. In the end, every wall falls to this tidal wave we now call globalization.

The first signs of pluralism come from below

ARTICLE: “China’s Muckrakers for Hire: For a fee, reporters deliver exposes with impact on the Internet,” by Edward Cody, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 7-13 May 2007, p. 18.

HEROES & PIONEERS: “Zeng Jinyan: The Chinese blogger who is waging a war of words against Beijing’s secret police,” Time, 14 May 2007, p. 99.

Freelancing, as Robb pointed out in Brave New War, is a term with mercenary roots, suggesting individuals taking matters into their own hands.

Some, like our blogger, do it out of conviction. Others, like our profiled reporter, work as a hired gun on stories the media won’t bother covering otherwise (it’s the same old profit motive of an audience, just more singularly applied).

Yes, it would be better if the Party set up more direct means for people to voice their complaints, and that will come in time, largely because of the competitive pressures created by these freelancers.

Little by little, yesterday’s inconceivable becomes tomorrow’s inevitable.

While I don’t much care for tell-alls from people who didn’t do all when in office …

COLUMN: “George’s tenets: The former CIA director’s book has been rightly slated. It is worth reading nonetheless,” by Lexington, The Economist, 5 May 2007, p. 42.

BOOK EXCERPT: “'A Slow-Motion Car Crash': Spy boss George Tenet has received his share of the blame for Iraq. His new book makes the case that others on the Bush team should too” by Michael Duffy, Time, 14 May 2007, p. 40.

Actually, blaming Tenet on Iraq is childish. Bush didn’t go into Iraq looking for WMD and he didn’t particularly sell the invasion on that point and the American public didn’t particularly buy it on that point.

No one cares about WMD until the insurgency springs into action and casualties start pilling up. Then, all of a sudden, WMD is EVERYTHING.

Tenet and the CIA got that wrong. Big surprise.

But Tenet didn’t botch the planning for the postwar, nor did he run it. He’s a minor figure, really, in that whole drama.

No botched postwar and nobody gives a damn about WMD. Instead, we’re all rightfully proud about toppling a horrific dictator and liberating a people--three actually.

Where Tenet’s book is worth reading is exactly on everything except “slam dunk,” like the fact that no one every seemed to seriously discuss or argue through what comes after capturing and/or killing Saddam. And that Bremer kept the CIA in the dark on both disbanding the army and de-Baathing the government. Or that Rice basically abdicated her honest broker role in the NSC, a point nobody bothered to raise in her SECSTATE confirmation hearings (ah, but there’s so much to admire in her “grit and grace” that her stunning incompetency in her previous job need not have been examined. I mean, it’s not her fault the interagency process didn’t wo . . . wait a minute, it’s exactly her fault.). Or how “nobody wanted to give Bremer specific marching orders” and that “Rice felt she could not order changes.” Or how everyone fell in love with Chalabi and let him call way too many of the big shots by proxy.

The last bit provides a stunning example of Condi’s non-role:

“What the hell is going on with Chalabi?” the President asked me at a White House meeting that spring. “Is he working for you?” [Senior CIA officer] Rob Richer, who was with me at the meeting, piped up, “No, sir, I believe he is working for DOD.” All eyes shifted to Don Rumsfeld. “I’ll have to check what his status is,” Rumsfeld said. His Under Secretary for Intelligence, Steve Cambone, sat there mute. “I don’t think he ought to be working for us,” the President dryly observed.

A few weeks later the President again raised the issue. “What’s up with Chalabi?” he asked. Paul Wolfowitz said, “Chalabi has a relationship with DIA and is providing information that is saving American lives. CIA can confirm that.” The President turned to us. “I know of no such information, Mr. President,” Mr. Richer said. The President looked to Condi Rice and said, “I want Chalabi off the payroll.”

At a subsequent meeting, chaired by Rice, DIA confirmed that they were paying the [Iraqi National Congress] $350,000 a month for its services in Baghdad. We knew that the INC’s armed militia had seized tens of thousands of Saddam regime documents and was slowly doling them out to the U.S. government. Beyond that it was unclear to me what the Pentagon was getting for its money. Somehow the President’s direction to pull the plug on the arrangement continued to be ignored.

Paging Dr. Kissinger! Could Rice have been more of a doormat?

I don’t know what’s sadder: Bush having to figure this out on his own and then telling Rice to finally do something about it or Rice not being able to follow his direct order--or the American people having to wait for Tenet’s tell-all to find out.

Tenet was clearly, in the words of the Economist, a total “time server.”

Problem is, so is Rice.

Following Powell’s empty-suit performance prior, this has been the worst pair of SECSTATES in a row in my lifetime.

How to build a female kamikaze. First, mix shame with a death sentence and then …

WORLD: “Moms And Martyrs: More and more Palestinian women are signing up to become suicide bombers. But are they really choosing to die?” by Tim McGirk, Time, 14 May 2007, p. 48.

Brilliant reporting and analysis by McGirk.

The mom caught having an affair with a senior Hamas guy. She is offered death for her adultery (one assumes the senior Hamas guy gets off lighter) or martyrdom.

Not prison versus the Army. But death versus death.

Appears Hamas does this a lot.

Refuse to marry? Become a martyr instead.

Don’t get allowed to get married? Become a martyr instead.

Get screwed by a recruiter? Better become a martyr.

Everything you need to know about a society you can tell by how women are treated.

And no, I’m not talking about the standard stuff that afflicts women everywhere. I’m talking exactly about when they’re targeted by the government or ruling elite for specific nefarious outcomes.

I will miss Tony Blair

WORLD: “Why You’ll Miss This Man,” by Michael Elliott, Time, 14 May 2007, p. 52.

Ending says it all:

The questions Blair asked--When should we meddle in another nation’s life? Why should everything be left to the U.S.? What are the wellsprings of mutual cultural and religious respect? How can the West show its strength without using guns?--will continue to be asked for a generation. We will miss him when he’s gone.

The best politician of our age.

I remain a Tony Blair Democrat.

The World Bank: looking for a leader, looking for a role in the world

ARTICLE: “The World Bank’s Real Problem: It’s not just the Wolfowitz mess. The bank also needs to figure out why it still exists” by Justin Fox, Time, 14 May 2007, p. 180.

Why not focus on post-conflict and post-disaster recovery?

The bank was lending $10 billion a year back in the late 1990s. Now, it lends less than a billion a year (so much for “Economic Hit Man’s” logic: wouldn’t lending go up with globalization’s advance?).

The problem?

“Now we live in a world where there are huge global capital markets, where, if anything, investors are too willing to invest in developing countries,” says Adam Lerrick, a former investment banker who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.

So we have the U.S. providing the vast bulk of the bodies and the spending in Iraq.

Meanwhile, we have huge armies (ground forces, that is) in rising New Core powers and a World Bank that’s looking for a job.

But no, let’s all whine on about “reforming the UN” or “making NATO work harder” or some such other fantasy that will never happen. As soon as I hear people pushing that crap I know full well they have no intention of making anything happen. It’s just a polite way to tell me to f--k off with my vision.

Arnie as TR?

LEADERS & REVOLUTIONARIES: “Arnold Schwarzenegger: The green Governor experiences his Teddy Roosevelt moment,” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Time, 14 May 2007, p. 75.

Man, do we need a Teddy Roosevelt right now: somebody who pivots us from our 20th century mindsets (to include the Boomer politicians who plague us in DC) to our 21st century problems.

Best line:

A true fiscal conservative [and a Republican too! Sorry, couldn’t help that.] with a deep commitment to California’s future, the Governor regards environmental injury as deficit spending--loading the cost of this generation’s prosperity onto the backs of our children. Schwarzenegger believes that good economic policy, over the long term, is always the same as good environmental policy.

What Kennedy skips mentioning is how hot Arnie is for market-based solutions.

But Progressivism, I guess, looks for bloat where it can find it, and today that’s more in the government than in business.

Just-in-time for just-in-case in Asia’s financial markets

ARTICLE: “Asian Currency-Reserve Pool Offers Clout,” by James Simms, Wall Street Journal, 7 May 2007, p. A2.

ARTICLE: “Asia Taps Thirst for Risk: New Deals From Firms Tarnished by 1997-1998 Crisis Lure Eager Foreigners,” by Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal, 7 May 2007, p. C1.

ARTICLE: “What China 4000 Means: Shanghai Index Slid After 3000; Where to Now?” by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 9 may 2007, p. C2.

Just like Africom is designed to help African regions self-police themselves through pooled assets, the ASEAN-plus collection of Asian economies that are pooling their currency reserves to police themselves are doing so pre-emptively, assuming that such capacity will inevitably make sense in a connected world where regions tend to sink or swim together in rough seas.

With this move, the World Bank and similar international financial institutions are made less important and relevant to rising Asia, thus freeing them--if only these IFIs had the imagination--to focus more on the future globalization crises centered in the Gap.

Besides guarding against local meltdowns (great idea given all the booms going on), the real purpose of this pooling is to give Asian states more confidence in self-investment (they already invest in each other heavily, but still run huge amounts through Western--and particularly--American markets, in many instances preferring the returns and the stability and the more efficient allocation of capital back to them through our markets.

Well, that’s going to end soon enough, and this development only portends that looming reality.

Yes, it will mean we can’t float debt so easily.

But it will also mean we’ll have an alternative soon enough, in both blood (SysAdmin source armies in India, China, and elsewhere) and treasure (investment behemoths) , to just the old, increasingly tired West (meaning Europe--which needs to save up for its old age).

I agree with Mark Steyn: Europe is screwed as a source of global power in the future. I just disagree with him that America should care.

More countries to come

ARTICLE: "Ethiopians Fear for Their Interfaith Oasis: Cherished Interweaving Of Christians, Muslims Shows Signs of Fraying," By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post, Sunday, May 13, 2007; Page A15

Scary sign for the Horn that the city/Christian v. rural/Muslim thing is spreading. You got Somalia shooting itself up again and Sudan talking split possibly in 2011, and you get the feeling that there's more countries going to come into being in the next decade.

Tom's column this week

Iraq is no Vietnam

I'm not shy about criticizing President Bush's foreign policy, but all this talk about Iraq being America's worst foreign policy disaster ever is pure hyperbole. Portraying Iraq as another Vietnam is a tough sell, but it's one our boomer leaders can't help but make, since they are sad products of their upbringing.

Because America faces no superpower rival today, it's hard to see how our current difficulties in Iraq, no matter how we exit or stay, portend an irreversible loss of respect for U.S. military power globally. All we've proven is that: 1) America alone can't stabilize or rebuild a country of Iraq's size following regime change, and 2) providing more than 90 percent of the postwar ground forces inevitably cripples our military.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Early column sightings:
+ Press of Atlantic City
+ MetroWest Daily News

When it fails within, enforce the revolution without

ARTICLE: "A Word to the Wise In Iran: Don't Ever Wear a Tie to Work: Men, Too, Now Must Worry About the Fashion Police," by Andrew Higgins, Wall Street Journal, 12-13 May 2007, p. A1.

Pathetic, really pathetic.

Nothing says Late-Brezhnevian hypocrisy better than the ongoing fashion crackdown in Tehran.

Economy going down toilet, youth revolting, and mullahs increasingly ignored by a public desperate to open up to the outside world, so what do you do?

Crack down on ties and too much western-style facial hair grooming in men's barbershops.

This is a real sign of the mullahs' fears. They always treated women like crap. Now, they're so scared of Westernization, they're trying to scare men into conformity as well.

I mean, man!

What's the point of living in a patrimonial society if you're going to start doing that?

Sectarian genie's out of the bottle

ARTICLE: Interim Report on The Surge, By Michael O'Hanlon, Washington Times, May 11, 2007, Pg. 14

Continuing with my argument in the last post: we surge and the dynamic goes back--at best--to the pre-sectarian strife dynamic where AQI targets Shiia heavily and the Shiia show restraint.

When the surge slows, the Shiia go back to protecting themselves and the civil war dynamic overwhelms again.

Again, just enough but far too late.

We let the sectarian genie out of the bottle by mishandling the insurgency up front. Now, the only solution sets that matter are region-wide.

Just enough, but too late

POST: Religion and Insurgency

Good piece that I agree with in terms of the hyperbole we're often subjected to regarding "religious insurgencies."

I agree with Kilcullen: there's nothing special about this time around. The same-old, same-old can be addressed with solid counter-insurgency techniques, updated for the technology. In that sense, I find that little changes in war, more so in the requirements for peace and stabilty.

Where I part with Kilcullen is the notion that squelching the insurgency makes Iraq stable enough that we should still view defeating Al Qaeda there as job #1.

My perception, based on no field observations, is that the insurgency has been overtaken by sectarian violence, so that focusing on AQI is like treating the fever instead of the infection.

So I'm still stuck with a judgment of "just enough, but too late" on the surge because we won't work the sectarian struggle via regional diplomacy to any serious degree, because Bush decided to add Iran's containment on top of this difficult occupation.

Thus my argument that we force our military to fight this postwar under the worst possible strategic circumstances in a post-Cold War world (meaning, as I point out in my column this weekend, we face no superpower rival on the far side, thus our "loss of face" potential here is vastly overstated).

Cheney's outlived his era

ARTICLE: Cheney, On Carrier, Sends Warning To Iran, By David E. Sanger, New York Times, May 12, 2007

Cheney announces our failure and telegraphs our fears: Don't even think about doing that which our previous acts and choices both enable and encourage--grabbing for nukes and trying to dominate the region.

There is an obviousness to Cheney. He says what doesn't need to be said and never broaches what must inevitably be explored. What passes for sophistication with these guys is just painful to watch. Cheney's outlived his era.

Hip to be square

OP-ED: "DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY: The Realignment of America: The native-born are leaving "hip" cities for the heartland," BY MICHAEL BARONE, Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2007

A truly interesting piece that, when combined with voting records (Red v Blue) suggests that white America is the main "caboose" on the domestic issue of globalization.

And by "white America," of course, I just mean European Americans who just immigrated here earlier. Nothing too surprising there.

More whites moving to more white states, though, especially since Red states, on average, suck taxes from DC (more than they pay) and Blue states, on average, pay for those net-welfare Red states.

All I can say now that we live in a Red state is, thank God for all those immigrants paying our way!

More counter-intuitive.

Pelosi plays it very smart on trade

ARTICLE: "Bush In Accord With Democrats On Trade Pacts," by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 11 April 2007, p. A1.

Very smart by Pelosi, and smart by Bush too. Enviro and labor riders added to pacts, but the deal is the trade pacts get faster passage.

See! I told you split government would be good for America!

Balkans the model

ARTICLE: A Dayton Process For Iraq, By Rend Al-Rahim, Washington Post, May 10, 2007, Pg. 23

Great piece of analysis, showing--yet again--what a model the Balkans were, an argument I pushed in BFA and in this week's column.

Great shift in SOCOM

Capt. Stephanie Helm of the Naval War College sent us this news item:

Navy Vice Adm. Eric T. Olson has been nominated for appointment to the grade of admiral and assignment as commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Olson is currently serving as deputy commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Olson is the first 4-star the SEALs have ever had.

Tom says:

I met and spent some time with--both working and socially--Adm. Olson down in SOCOM that week I spent down there and described in BFA. Great guy, and the quintessential trigger-pulling SEAL. When I described that model in BFA, I was using him as my model.

Olson is different from Brown. Brown's philosophy was grow both trigger-pullers and civil affairs at same rate--sort of the "big tent" view of SOF.

Olson struck me as far more the purist.

I think this is a great shift, not that I disliked Brown--far from it. I just think he was more given to the Kaplanesque view of SOF as full-service, while I think Olson's more the old-school type who'll keep the trigger-pullers . . . happy being who they are as opposed to pursuing the big tent approach.

I approve of that, because I don't see SOF being all things to all Gap regions, something I had deeply reinforced in Africa.

Kurdistan's resilience personified

Another great blog by Steve regarding his continuing adventures (to include the first bombing in Irbil in roughly three years) in Kurdistan--the Middle East's "forgotten democracy."

Great venue for our first full-up attempt at Development-in-a-Box. Certain to be a great story in Steve's upcoming book.

Connectivity at the price of content control

ARTICLE: “Bhutan Lets the World In (but Leaves Fashion TV Out),” by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 6 May 2007, p. A3.

Doesn’t get anymore old school PNM than this: Bhutan is the most Gappish of states in that it’s tough terrain and landlocked. Moreover, a culture that “had guarded itself from the world outside so ardently that it allowed in satellite television only seven years ago.”

But “today, globalization is officially sanctioned,” so our Mr. Wangchuk can scan tattoo sites (strict taboo) for his next self-inflicted design.

Hmmm. Don’t think keeping out Stella McCartney and Donna Karan is going to do it here.

This is classic: I trade the connectivity for content control. The more I connect, the more I try to control, citing traditional taboos. The worst offenders are my youth (damn them!). I fear I’m waging a losing battle and over time I’ll mostly retreat to restricting criticism of the regime, because I can’t stop all the sex stuff no matter how hard I try. I’m distinctly getting the feeling that the cat will never go back into the bag. But I feel like I have no choice. My youth population is large, it’s getting more educated, and everyone talks about How can we attract jobs and investment to employ them all? So I don’t feel like I can restrict the Internet or other forms of connectivity, because without them no one will do business here or bring money. So I fear I’m trading off a lot of my distinct culture for economic opportunity, and that makes me nervous. Already, certain hardliners are making scary noises …

And so on.

Yes, yes, everything changed when the [insert technology/infrastructure] came to town.