Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:08AM ARTICLE: Obama Can't Outsource Afghanistan, By KARL ROVE, Wall Street Journal, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
Rove is so transparently bad in his partisan analysis that it's a serious sign of how far the WSJ editorial pages have fallen to see him published regularly.
(Via WPR Media Roundup)
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:07AM ARTICLE: By Bobbie Johnson, Guardian, 30 September 2009
Important and good milestone: ICANN breaks off from U.S. Commerce.
Icann chief Rod Beckstrom, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Washington insider who took over running the organisation in July, said there had been legitimate concerns that some countries were developing alternative internets as a way of routing around American control.
"It's rumoured that there are multiple experiments going on with countries forking the internet, various countries have discussed this," he said. "This is a very significant shift because it takes the wind out of our opponents."
I know Beckstrom from TED and various interactions since. I am extremely pleased to see him go from DHS to this. Very smart guy and good person.
(Thanks: David Stewart)
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:05AM ARTICLE: India Looks for Bigger Sri Lanka Role, By Siddharth Srivastava, World Politics Review, 24 Sep 2009
Good move by India, which has played a big role in Sri Lanka in the past (with the usual regrets of mixing Leviathan and SysAdmin work).
(Via WPR Media Roundup)
Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:01AM OP-ED: HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy, By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph, 20 Sep 2009
Key bit:
Crucially, China and rising Asia have reached the point where they can no longer keep holding down their currencies to boost exports because this is causing mayhem to their own economies, stoking asset bubbles. Asia's "mercantilist mindset" of recent decades is about to be broken by the spectre of an inflation spiral.
The new order on currencies is coming--needed and inevitable.
(Thanks: Terry Collier)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 3:17PM Got the complete Sopranos series in hand, plus three Packer DVDs (plus the big game on Sunday), plus the World Series to keep me company.
Sinus surgery at 10:15 in the a.m.
I am so ready.
Sean is well-stocked with posts. My Esquire column was done yesterday and I did next week's WPR column two days ago, so I am taking a pass through the weekend and emerging as it makes sense starting Monday-ish.
I feel so-so. Been working out twice daily as of late (elliptical, bowflex) and will do yoga early tomorrow before taking younger kids to school and then heading over to the hospital with Vonne. I think I've gotten myself as healthy as I can with the Levaquin, and will be happy to discard it, given all the side-effects. Been watching Season 5 of "The Office" a lot lately, trying to stay upbeat.
No worries. I handle GA very well. Lights off and lights on.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:59AM WEEKEND JOURNAL: "From Bear to Bull," by James Grant, Wall Street Journal, 19-20 September 2009.
Cool bit I loved:
To the English economist Arthur C. Pigous is credited a bon mot that exactly frames the issue. "The error of optimism dies in the crisis, but in dying it gives birth to an error of pessimism. This new error is not born an infant, but a giant."
The art of the long view, as my friend Peter Schwartz would say, is a skill of the optimist.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:56AM ARTICLE: Free Trade Has Enriched the World with More than Diverse Goods, By Daniel Griswold, YaleGlobal , 2 October 2009
Really great piece that makes the argument for freer trade and avoiding the siren song of the populists.
It makes me think that if Obama keeps splitting the differences on this issue and so many others, he'll be a one-term president.
Why? Splitting the difference in this hothead political environment will see him pulling too far leftward at a point in history when the world needs more from us than just self-centered adjustment.
(Thanks: HistoryGuy99)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:53AM ARTICLE: How Do Japanese React to China's Rise? Depends on Their Age, By HIROKO TABUCHI, New York Times, October 1, 2009
ARTICLE: Chinese Economic Juggernaut Is Gaining on Japan, By HIROKO TABUCHI, October 1, 2009
Japan's rise and decline should serve as a grim warning to China right now.
Japan got old, but China will get older faster. Japan kept its environment relatively clean, China is trashing its own. Japan built its manufacturing power on excellent goods, China is fly-by-night by comparison (reading a book on that now).
In sum, China has so many huge hidden deficits incurred during its rise, that I think it will suffer future stagnation that makes Japan's seem tame, especially since China's political system is so brittle and unimaginative.
I guess I'm just responding to all this China-will-rule-the-world vibe connected with the 60th b-day celebration. As soon as I read stuff like that, the Irish in me says you're heading for a fall.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:51AM CURRENTS: "Pope's Wooing of Anglicans Challenges Archbishop," by Dave Kansas, Wall Street Journal, 22 October 2009.
Know I've been sounding off on Catholicism lately. Had my Mother here for a week, and she brings it out in me.
The "two tracks" approach currently proposed within the Anglican Communion (which includes the American Anglicans known as Episcopalians) won't work, and Benedict's strategy is one reason why.
But the bigger problem is the harsh conservatism of the African Anglicans, which are the biggest group now by far.
But Benedict, in my mind, is just exacerbating the two schools already evident in the U.S. Catholic Church, and not all of those liberals will--like me--someday migrate to the Episcopalians, so I think we're looking at a preview of coming attractions.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:03AM OP-ED: Chinese Exceptionalism, By PHILIP BOWRING, New York Times, September 22, 2009
Great bit:
From a domestic political viewpoint, the Chinese attitude is understandable. Stability is the leadership's constant watchword. A freer exchange rate would hurt China's ability to import jobs and export goods. A floating currency and absence of exchange controls could lead to the extreme fluctuations seen in Shanghai share prices. But other countries have to cope with these issues. Why not China?
Developing countries do not like to criticize China publicly. They welcome brakes on U.S. superpower, hope to benefit from China's rapid trade growth and want Chinese support in pushing for better representation in international organizations. But do not imagine that a country -- for example, Indonesia -- coping with a totally open financial system and free currency at a time of global turmoil appreciates the exceptional favor that China still enjoys.
For sure, there are other reasons for global imbalances, such as oil prices and the unwillingness of Japanese and Germans to consume more. But any solution other than a sustained weak consumer demand in the United States must address not just the dollar's exceptional status but also that of China.
As China's "exceptionalism" is outed more and more, expect more friction. Long-time theme of mine: China will be targeted by all sorts of opponents and competitors as globalization's great purveyor and exceptional "cheater" much like U.S. was many decades ago.
(Via WPR Media Roundup)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:48AM INTERNATIONAL: "Abortion: A bit better; A new report on abortion offers glimmers of hope," The Economist, 17 October 2009.
Despite feeling that abortion is a very regrettable thing, I am very pro-choice with reasonable limits on gestation (like most Americans). Because the best way to develop an economy and foster freedom is to empower women--the paycheck being the best birth control method known to humanity.
I noted in PNM: it's mostly legal across the Core (save hard-core Catholic states) to get abortions, and it's mostly illegal across the Gap ("Fully 86% of the women of reproductive age in the poor world outside China and India (which have liberal abortion laws) live in countries that restrict it tightly.").
Turns out, where it's more legal, there are fewer abortions over time, but unwanted pregnancies (and thus abortions) are decreasing all over the world, thanks in part to HIV and more use of condoms and simply more alternatives--to include international adoption (this being one of the primary reasons Vonne and I first decided to adopt from China).
To that end, Obama gets big kudos for ending the so-called Mexico City gag rule almost immediately after his inauguration. That was the rule that forbade family-planning charities from getting US aid if they provided or promoted abortions. I explicitly condemned that logic in PNM, and was delighted to see Obama make that call.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:47AM Reading fellow Harvard grad Allison Stanger's One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power And the Future of Foreign Policy, which I was prescient enough to include in a Great Powers footnote, along with citing a NYT op-ed she penned.
Thing is, Allison's book had a different title (apparently, non-working) back then:
279. By the time we reached the year 2000 . . . representing another 4 to 5 percent.
For data, see Allison Stanger and Omnivore (graphic design firm), "Foreign Policy,
Privatized," New York Times, October 5, 2008. See also Allison Stanger, Empire of the
Willing: Why Outsourcing Is the Future of American Foreign Policy--and Why We Have
to Get It Right (New York: Basic Books, 2009).
My title verdict: far better main title now, but I liked the old subtitle better--for its optimism.
Definitely a WPR column out of this.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:46AM And it's really some beautiful, thoughtful stuff that brings up a lot of emotion.
Makes you wonder what Lennon would have accomplished if he could have reached the same length of years.
I pray for Paul and Ringo regularly. I don't want to live in a world with no Beatles.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:43AM POST: Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China, by Key, China Hush, October 21st, 2009
How-green-was-my-valley photos of China after the industrialization onslaught. Sad, but hardly unique. The West did all the same sorts of damage to itself.
Then it got rich and started caring about its environment.
China will do the same, but it will be an even uglier journey than our own.
America in 1900 suffered all the same ills. The difference: same geographic spread (roughly 9 and a half million square kilometers), but something like one-18th the population that China has today (75m v 1.35b).
(Thanks: Jim)
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:02AM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: "Cleaning aircraft-cabin air: Breathing more easily; The air inside aircraft could soon be cleaner and more comfortable to breathe," The Economist, 19 September 2009.
Good news: much better tech coming on air filters for planes.
Planes are alleged to mix 50% new air with recycled, but to save money, some airlines (especially on long, overnight flights) drop it down to about 20% fresh air.
Reality is, even on short flights, you get to breathe the same air about 30 times. I could not welcome this news more.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:48AM ARTICLE: N. Korea Swiftly Expanding Its Special Forces, By Blaine Harden, Washington Post, October 9, 2009
This is a prime example of the hybrid war thesis and why it is replacing the "lesser includeds" logic of the Cold War. During the Cold War, we assumed that the Big War force could handle anything found in the small wars reality. But now, the argument is, we have to master the small wars stuff because any "big war" scenario opponent will throw everything at us, including the kitchen sink.
In the Cold War hierarchy, blue (air force and navy) ruled green (marines, army) because the lesser-includeds argument said to focus solely on the Big War skills and assume all else falls out from that. But in the long war hierarchy, green rules blue.
In short, Mattis was right (see my long quote from both the original "Monks of War" piece in Esquire and Great Powers (that version used here)):
Listen to Marine Corps general James Mattis, himself a veteran of multiple command tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, decry, already in late 2005, the strategic mindset that suggests:
"Let's hold our breath and get through this, then we get back to proper soldiering by planning for China twenty years from now." Fuck that. If we fight China in the future, we will also find IEDs and people using the Internet. If we go to Pyongyang and we're fighting there six months from now against a mechanized unit, one hundred thousand Special Forces would be running around doing what they're doing to our rear area now. So guess what? This is the best training ground in the world. For the German troops it was Spain, right? Well, Iraq is ours.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:44AM ARTICLE: Civilian, Military Officials at Odds Over Resources Needed for Afghan Mission, By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, October 8, 2009
The key phrase here: "a case of sticker shock."
When it was just about saying you were for counterinsurgency, there was no disagreement back in March, when the Af-Pak review allegedly came to a clear conclusion.
But as the resourcing reality became apparent, the backtracking began . . .
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:38AM ARTICLE: Pakistan's Pashtuns, looking for statehood, may look to Taliban, Christian Science Monitor, October 4, 2009
I don't think this pathway is bizarre in the least. As I've said earlier, I think some sort of soft border that allows for a Pashtun state is inevitable. The Durand Line is unsustainable because it's completely arbitrary.
If this is how we coop the Taliban, then I think we have a real chance.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:30AM ARTICLE: Afghan War Debate Now Leans to Focus on Al Qaeda, By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times, October 7, 2009
This shift provides my rationale for saying that Obama is heading toward a non-state-actor-level version of the Powell Doctrine: we go anywhere we need to and kill anybody we deem bad, but as far as the locals are concerned, they can simply fuck off in terms of any implied responsibility on our part to fix the situation.
There is a huge flaw in this reasoning, and it's called pissing off a lot of locals with your bloodthirsty cynicism.
Hard to marry this tack with a Nobel Peace Prize, yeah?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:26AM ARTICLE: Chinese Premier Calls for Dialogue Between U.S. and North Korea, By DAVID BARBOZA, New York Times, October 10, 2009
Hmm. Some bold diplomacy by China regarding North Korea.
Message: China's great "innovation" is to say it's all America's problem. Give Kim his bilateral talks with the U.S. and maybe he'll give us a return to the six-party talks.
Yes, yes, this is all about America's relationship with North Korea.
Subtext: Beijing says, "we're not doing squat, so the ball's back in your court."
A glimpse of "China running the world" and being the world's premier "problem-solver"--the theme/myth I recently discussed on the BBC World Radio.
"What me, worry?" is not doctrine and it's not grand strategy. It's a cop-out from a persistent free-rider that denies responsibility even when it's screamingly evident.
