Emily Updates Volume 2 videos online

Find the rest here.

My interview in Mindy Audlin's "peace movement" book

Excerpt from the book, Let it Begin with Me: 21 Voices of the New Peace Movement, by Mindy Audlin (Unity MO: Unity Books, 2011), pp. 153-66.

Note: This interview was conducted over the radio and later transcribed. In this excerpt, I correct a few mistakes in the text, something I didn’t get a chance to pursue prior to publication. The two majhor mistakes were my use of “sustenance” when I meant “subsistence,” and my mixing up of the terms “premillennialist” with “postmillennialist.” Both were just weird mistakes I kept making in that timeframe, reflecting my near-dyslexic relationship with certain words. I also corrected certain flow issues, meaning punctuation style. It's always scary to have an interview transcribed, because how you speak in an interview doesn't always look good on the page, but I'm pretty happy with this one. And so I enter it into the record here.

A POLICY FOR PEACE

Thomas P.M. Barnett

Thomas Barnett is a former assistant for strategic futures in the Office of Force Transformation (OFT) and a professor at the Naval War College. He is author of The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 21^st Century and Great Powers: America and the World After Bush. Here he discusses political and military strategies for creating peace among nations.

“Never bet against a people’s desire for freedom, connectivity or pursuit of individual opportunity and liberty, because it is strong.”

—Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map

Q: Tom, on the very first page of your book, The Pentagon’s New Map, you write: “When the Cold War ended, our real challenge began. The United States had put out so much energy during those years trying to prevent the horror of global war, that it forgot the dream of global peace.” Why is it so important for that shift in perspective to occur?

It is actually crucial now, experiencing, as we are, the first global economic crisis of the globalized age.

You have to go all the way back to 1982 to find a global recession, but back then, we did not really talk about global economy. We really only talked about the West—about 25 percent of humanity at the time, even though it controlled about 70 percent of the global productive power and wealth in the system.

Now we are really talking about a global economy that encompasses, by a lot of measures, upwards of 85 percent of the world’s population. Our resource-intensive industrialist model obviously has to change fairly dramatically when you are talking upwards of 85 to 90 percent of the world’s population engaged in pursuing that standard of living.

The reason why it is important for America to shift is that still, very much so, we see a world of nuclear weapons. We see a world of terrorists. We see a world only of bad things. After years of the post-9/11 mindset, America really became disengaged from the way the rest of the world was viewing this time period. It was one of great economic advance, one of incredible integration, networks proliferating, and empowerment to a level that is stunning.

Fifteen to 20 years ago, you could talk about half the world never having used the phone. Now we are talking about Twittering revolutions and cell phone coverage of events almost in any neck of the woods you can name, globally. We really have to understand the way we have conducted ourselves with the world.

Focusing on the prevent of bad things needs to shift into a create of what has been called “the future worth creating,” the recognition that we are coming upon the emergence of a global middle class, which is huge.

This is not an alien world. This is not a Frankenstein that we have unleashed. What we have created here is something we very much sought to do. It went all the way back to the end of the Second World War when Franklin Roosevelt promised a new deal for the rest of the world much as he had created for America, and really made explicit something that had been dreamt of, going all the way back to his cousin Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the 20^th century: this notion of remaking the planet in our image, not so much immediately in a political sense, but very much immediately in the economic sense.

When America had that kind of flowering of integration, what arose in our environment was, for the first time in our history, a broad middle class. We went through a very angry period in our 1870s and 1880s, a populist phase. Even though we were growing very dramatically in terms of wealth, there was great income inequality, raping the environment, child labor abuse, a rough lot for women. It was an angry, divided, unequal society that led to the progressive movement very much led by religious groups.

Today we are seeing on a global scale many of the same things we went through as a multinational union—from 1865 to 1917—once we got past our Civil War and the question of slavery in America.

The role that religious groups played in creating that progressive movement, I believe, is already being replicated on a global scale. That is why we should admit or accept that the 21^st century is going to be the most religious century we have ever seen.

Do not put that all in terms of radical fundamentalists. Think more in terms of the evangelicals, who, as a group, are expanding dramatically as fundamentalists are shrinking in their influence. Come to realize that we need to harness that kind of religious awakening much as we did in America at various points. We had a number of religious awakenings in our past. Understand it as a tremendous force for creating a progressive agenda and taming this global version of capitalism that needs to be tamed much as our national version did 150 years ago.

When people exist in a subsistence mode, just barely getting by, the rules, structure and social codes that come with that mode tend to be really strict: Everybody gets married. Everybody cranks out babies. No homosexuals allowed. We plant these crops. These crops work here. We no not mess around. We do not experiment. This is how we survive the off-season.

That is the Malthusian trap that says population is strictly limited because organic growth, how your can grow by using resources from the world, is strictly limited. There is no such thing in that mindset as inorganic growth or escaping the limits of material growth into true wealth like we have done with the Industrial Revolution in the West since the 1800s. Understand that most religions in the world were formed during that tough Malthusian phase. When you allow societies to go from subsistence to abundance, that is a massive social revolution.

Q: And that is what is happening worldwide right now.

That is what is happening worldwide. What happens is what happened in America in the 1870s and the 1880s. We had the rise of the middle class, the rise of leisure activities. That was when all our social and civic institutions really came about, the vast bulk of them. Major league baseball started. All sorts of things happened in that time frame and you are seeing a replication of that model now globally.

These are people who have lived in subsistence for thousands of years, with strict religious codes attached to that survival. All of a sudden, a young woman does not have to marry whom dad says. All of a sudden, a young woman does not have to stay in the village. All of a sudden, a young woman can get an education. All of a sudden, she can marry outside her faith, her religion, her race, her social caste—whatever. The controls that existed and had been enshrined in a lot of tough religious stricture for centuries come under assault and you’ve got social revolution.

You’ve got two responses to that social revolution.

One says: Hey, this is out of control. We have not allowed women to do that in our neck of the woods for centuries upon centuries, thousands of years. One answer is the fundamentalist answer: That is an evil world. I am going to cut myself off from it. I cannot live with you bad people. I am going to force isolation and drive you out.

Or you say: I need to adapt my religious code to this and my adaptation is going to be the new better version. Then I need to evangelize and spread the word to the rest of the world. If I cannot defeat your integration efforts, I will remake you in my social-religious image.

You see both of these answers coming out of Islam, which is a very rapidly growing religion with a strong evangelical strain to it. But it also has a core fundamentalist-gone-violent strain that really constitutes what most people call this long, persistent struggle against radical extremism. Many people look at that little package and say, “This is our future. Everything is going to hell in a hand basket. More religion is bad.”

When you take people from subsistence to abundance, my God, that is a bizarre, perverse journey by their standards. That journey is inescapable because people want better lives. They are going to search for and grab onto self-help guides, religious codes, anything that will give them a moral compass, a handhold definition of what a good life is.

You are seeing this in these places like China, which arguably features the most unchurched generation in human history, and a vast one at that. You are seeing China explode in terms of its religiosity, and really go back to what it was, a highly spiritual nation.

Q: I first saw you speak at a spiritual conference and everyone who heard you was abuzz. We are not used to hearing political strategists at conferences of this nature and yet the message really resonated. What is going on with that?

It taps into the bulk of religious sentiment in the world, which tends to be more postmillennialist, more optimistic, more like, “How can we make this world more heaven-like over time?”

But we do not expect that premillennialist, fatalistic, rejection-of-the-modern-evil-world mindset to go away immediately. Globalization is definitely still in a very high frontier-integrating mode, much like it was in the American West as we expanded westward across the 19^th century.

People are going from subsistence to possibilities of abundance very rapidly. Things are being created out of thin air—networks, governments, opportunities—and there is a huge demand for religion in that kind of landscape, because amidst all that change it supplies a sense of some permanence. It supplies a sense of some code of behavior against which to measure the progress of economics, politics and social change.

If we are in a frontier-integrating mode on a global scale, which I believe we are, it is no surprise that the evangelicals are taking the day, and religions are expanding dramatically. The versions of religion that you find in these frontier areas tend to be more intense that the kind that we have migrated toward in our last abundance in the advanced West.

We tend to look at them and say, “Wow, they are scary. They are hardcore. They are old school. What is up with that?” My Catholic church is certainly getting a taste of that with a lot of these priest shortages. We get these priests from Africa, Latin America, and we expect these laid-back types, but what we get are these firebrands.

Religion, by and large, finds my message unusual in its optimism, and feels empowered with the message that we are in that frontier-integrating age.

I think they like the message that says, “Hey, you are not part of the problem. You are very much part of the solution. Do not let the religious movements of the world be tagged with the radical sins of a very small minority who are on the wane in the historical sense.” And yet, as globalization comes to their frontier, off-grid locations, you have got to expect them to put up a fight.

Q: As you were saying, the shift is happening so rapidly that is seems like everybody is trying to catch their footing. It’s easy for that Armageddon type of fear to take hold. So here is an alternative to that. It is very refreshing.

Economic networks tend to race ahead of political networks and/or rules. The economic rules race ahead. The political rules lag behind. The networks race ahead, but the security lags behind. You get kind of a Wild West mentality. We are so removed from our frontier-integrating days; we like things very calm, very certain, very conformed, very controlled.

When we get a package like 9/11, our tendency is to say, “This is either a conspiracy or Armageddon. Either God is in charge or the U.S. government actually pulled this off.” The notion that 19 or 20 guys with half a million dollars pulled this off is too scary to contemplate.

So we look for very simple answers, and that is where you get the conspiracy theories. We would prefer to have the stern father administer all the justice in the world, whether it is God or the U.S. government.

You want to fix this world? Then engage this world. Don’t put up a firewall.

Q: Thomas, we have talked a lot about peace in a strategic perspective. What does peace mean to you, personally?

It is all about creating certainty. You ask yourself, “What are those various components that people want from their government?” The poor arguably want protection from their circumstances. The rich, you can cynically argue, want protection from the poor.

What the middle class wants is really hard to deliver. That is the challenge of the 21^st century, when you have a rise of the global middle class. The middle class wants protection from uncertainty. They want protection from the future, which is why they are so drawn to religion.

Religion gives you ideas about the future, a way to contextualize it and say, “If you do this, good things will happen; if you do that, bad things will happen.” That’s what the middle class wants, because it has achieved a certain standard of living. Its ambitions are modest. They are middle class, and there is nothing wrong with that.

They want to keep what they have achieved. They want a better life than their parents had, and they want to pass on the possibility of better lives to their children. Security has become the dominant aspect of peace in the last 20 years, and it’s a huge revolution.

One day, back when I first got into this business, I had just come from listening to my first child’s heartbeat and seeing the ultrasound when she was a fetus. Then I walked into a room and we had a discussion about a limited nuclear war.

We had this sassy, rhetorical discussion about how many tens or hundreds of millions could go in various scenarios and what would be acceptable.

In the time frame when I started my career 20 years ago, the paradigm was to light up the planet in seven minutes. Now the goal is to find, recognize, target and kill one or two bad actors, try to limit the collateral damage involved, and you try to do that in about a seven- to eight-minute kill chain, as they call it. What is stunning about that to me is that, in 20 years—this is human history—we have gone from a paradigm that said, “blow up the planet in seven minutes” to “kill a bad guy in seven minutes.”

So was has shifted from a system-level fear, which was profound when I was a child. We all feared nuclear war. Now it is down to “get the bad guys.” If you look at U.S. military interventions in the last 20 years, all the way back to when we toppled Noriega in Panama, we have not fought wars against militaries much. We have not really engaged wars against countries or nations or peoples. Every instance since then, either right from the start or very soon into it, we realized we were basically there to get the bad guys.

Q: Can we really get the bad guys or, if we get the bad guys, will there just be another bad guy that pops up?

This is a good point. The notion that it is not enough to go in and take out the crack dealer, if you leave behind the wife, the six kids and all the associates and all the demand function that guy has created, because two weeks later there will be a new crack dealer.

The same thing you can extrapolate to the level of nations. You take out the bad Saddam, and you can very well end up with another Saddam unless you empower the people.

My argument is, if you do an intervention militarily, you’re going to leave that place more connected than you found it. Not just elite connected through the exporting of resources like energy, but mass connected. People realize there is an outside world. They realize they should not have to be treated like this. They realize there are other opportunities, and it makes them more demanding of their government, which is a good thing for us. 

I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War and everybody I knew who was a man fought in that war. That was a war in which 70 million people were killed. Wars today kill in the hundreds or thousands.

Genocide used to be 7 million or 8 million dead. It is now a couple of hundred thousand dead. It is great that we have ratcheted definitions down, but do not leg those ratcheted-down definitions convince you that we live in a world of more war today because we do not. We live in the most peaceful planet we have ever had. We have fewer wars. To qualify for a war nowadays, you need three dead a day to you a thousand dead for a year and they call that a war.

Along those lines you can declare war on everything, can’t you? Smoking, choking on toys—whatever. When you get big enough numbers, all sorts of things will give you a war—hence our tendency to declare war on things all the time.

The world lost 28,000 people a day for six years in the Second World War. Now the average war today, in a year, takes about 28,000 lives. So everything has come down from having to defend all the time, and much more to the point of security, watching the economic development, which the middle class wants.

Q: So what about the typical American middle-class person? What can we do to cultivate peace and harmony here in our planet?

You push things like better educational opportunities. Push stricter child labor laws. Push for the improvement of health. You go very green. You tackle global smoking if you want to talk about a global killer. After we drove out all the tobacco companies here in America, they went abroad. They have been enormously successful in hooking a lot of people on smoking.

Anything that promotes the rights of women is crucial because anything that keeps girls in school delays early pregnancy, delays first sex, delays first pregnancy, delays marriage, reduces population pressures, educates them, empowers them, and makes them more uppity and demanding. As we saw in Iran, you really risk your authoritarian regime when you anger the women.

Q: Well, that makes sense!

Most authoritarianism usually comes with a very strong, patriarchal bent. Yet we know from history, if you want to develop your economy, make your women available to the labor force and deal with all the social changes that come as a result.

Q: If history has one lesson for us in terms of how to create peace, what is the lesson that you would want to pass on to future generations?

Connect.

If I would take one perspective from history, I would go with that advice: you should always focus on connection. Never bet against connection. Humans are ultimately highly social animals and whenever they seek connection, so long as it is not harmful to themselves, it should be allowed in each and every instance because with connection typically comes rules.

The freest person on the planet was the Unabomber, living in a shack in the woods, living by his own code, committing murder at will. Why? He had to connections with the outside world.

Every time you take on connection, whether it is a mortgage, a marriage, children, home ownership, career, education, or anything that connects you to the rest of the world, it usually comes with rules, and with those rules comes pacification.

Compared to a history of humanity, what we’ve got going now is incredibly pacifying. You go back every hundred years in human history, and you will find a much greater percentage of humanity engaged in, or preparing for, mass slaughter.

It is a tremendous thing to realize how much we have ratcheted down violence in the system, and now that has come with all this tremendous wealth. The challenges we face today are fantastically better challenges than we had before.

The answer is still, “connect.”

Q: There is a beautiful quote in your book, Great Powers, where you write, “I believe life consistently improves for humanity over time, but it does so only because individuals, communities and nations take it upon themselves not only to image a future worth creating, but actually try to build it.”

It is the unleashing of the individual ambition on a planetary scale. There has been a massive empowerment and enrichment of hundreds of millions of people around the planet, thanks to globalization’s spread. Yes, you will find friction with that process, and if you only focus on the friction with that process, you will ignore the tremendous force that is being unleashed in terms of individual ambition and opportunity.

Yes, there will be violence involved in that. Yes, there will be death and all sorts of tumultuous results. But look at the Balkans 10 years after we bothered to go in and stop the genocide there. The Balkans are a much better place now, connected in all manner of ways—political, economic and social.

Never bet against a people’s desire for freedom, connectivity or pursuit of individual opportunity and liberty, because it is strong. I admire America for making the effort, even when it does not always do it well. Try to tap into that and unleash it as much as is possible, because when you look at history, there is no other country that has ever tried to do that.

Being realistic on Iran's long-term influence in Iraq: it will lose out to Turkey and China and Kuwait

Story in WAPO gets the Iran-is-winning crowd all jacked up: Iraq is condemned for not siding with the anti-Assad movement in Syria and actually offering support to the regime! This is spun as clear evidence of Iran's influence, when there are a host of pragmatic reasons why Baghdad isn't so interested in having the Arab Spring topple the dictator Assad.

Some analysis that's far more nuanced and realistic is found in the NYT Sunday ("Vacuum Is Feared as U.S. Quits Iraq, but Iran's Deep Influence May Not Fill It," by Tim Arango).

The best bits:

As the United States draws down its forces in Iraq, fears abound that Iran will simply move into the vacuum and extend its already substantial political influence more deeply through the soft powers of culture and commerce. But here, in this region that is a center of Shiite Islam, some officials say that Iran wore out its welcome long ago.

Surely, Iran has emerged empowered in Iraq over the last eight years, and it has a sympathetic Shiite-dominated government to show for it, as well as close ties to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. But for what so far are rather obscure reasons — perhaps the struggling Iranian economy and mistrust toward Iranians that has been nurtured for centuries — it has been unable to extend its reach.

In fact, a host of countries led by Turkey — but not including the United States — have made the biggest inroads, much to the chagrin of people here in Najaf like the governor.

“Before 2003, 90 percent of Najaf people liked Iranians,” said the governor, Adnan al-Zurufi, who has lived in Chicago and Michigan and holds American citizenship. “Now, 90 percent hate them. Iran likes to take, not give” . . .

So big surprise: those who deliver economically achieve real standing. Iran simply cannot do this, because it's economy is broken - just like its "revolution."

Now to address the conventional wisdom: 

A standard narrative has it that the Iraq war opened up a chessboard for the United States and Iran to tussle for power. One of the enduring outcomes has been an emboldened Iran that is politically close to Iraq’s leaders, many of whom escaped to Iran during Saddam Hussein’s government, and that is a large trading partner.

Yet the story is more nuanced, particularly in the Shiite-dominated south that became politically empowered after the American invasion upended Sunni rule. It has been other countries — most powerfully Turkey, but also China, Lebanon and Kuwait — that have cemented influence through economic ties.

The patterns were established soon after the American invasion. Shoddy Iranian goods — particularly low-quality cheese, fruit and yogurt — flooded markets in the south, often at exorbitant prices, said Mahdi Najat Nei, a diplomat who heads the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran office in Baghdad. This sullied Iran’s reputation, even though prices have since plummeted, creating an aversion to Iranian goods that lasts to this day, Mr. Nei said.

This has made it difficult for Iranian businesspeople to make investments in southern Iraq, said Ali Rhida, who is from Iran and is building an iron factory on the outskirts of Najaf. “The real problem is with the mangers of the economy in Iran,” he said. “After the fall of the regime, many Iranian companies came here but they screwed it all up.”

As always, the real winners are the ones who deliver opportunity. Iran makes demands and delivers burdens.

“Investment from Iran has almost stopped,” said Zuheir Sharba, the chairman of Najaf’s provincial council, referring to a phenomenon that has more to do with Iran’s anemic state-run economy than it does to Iranian ambitions. Speaking about Americans, he said, “They were coming, but they’ve stopped.”

Mr. Sharba continued: “We wish that American companies would come here. I wish the American relationship was that, instead of troops, it would be companies.” Mr. Sharba is a cleric, and he spent 14 years in Iran in exile during Mr. Hussein’s government.

Our failure at economy-building staring us in the face.  Why? We became obsessed with the notion that government-building equates to state-building, when it's economy-building that triggers the locals to make their own state happen. We acted like the Gorbachev here: imagining politics determines economics, when we should have played it like Deng, understanding that you start with the economics and let the politics slowly evolve.

Yes, Iran can make trouble, but who cuts the deals?

While Iran may be flagging in the battle for hearts and minds, it is still able to create trouble. A rise this summer in American troop deaths in southern Iraq at the hands of Iranian-backed militias raised alarms in diplomatic circles and became the core of the argument put forth by those who want a longer-lasting American military presence to counter Iran’s clout.

But the troublemaking does not extend to the more important arena of commerce, officials say. “Because of the political sensitivities of Iran, many people say Iran is controlling the economy of Iraq,” said Sami al-Askari, a member of Parliament and a close confidant to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “No, the Turks are.”

Mr. Maliki once lived in Iran, and he surrounds himself with aides who have close ties to Tehran. Yet even these relationships have not translated into economic or cultural influence that could endear Iran to the Iraqi public at large. “I’ve yet to meet an Iraqi who trusts the Iranians,” said Joost Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East.

But the mythology dies hard in Washington, so eager are we to crap on ourselves and see "loss" in everything right now. It's silly and it's childish, but that's what we are right now.

Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, said that because of numerous small projects — particularly related to religious tourism in Najaf, including a large underground toilet facility, and some construction projects in Basra — “a lot of these myths get perpetrated” about Iran’s influence in the south. “In the aggregate, it doesn’t add up to much,” he said.

Atmospherics trumping reality. Iran is a master at spewing this nonsense and we are adept at swallowing it, much like Ahmadinejad's diatribes and threats against Israel.

The Saudis know better and so do the Turks.  Given the choice, I choose Turkey, which, BTW, is really "winning" in Iraq - and that's just fine by me.

Will we Americans ever grow past this pathetic need to view all interventions in such black-and-white terms? I have great faith in the Millennials. The Boomers were raised in a Manichean childhood, and it permanently ruined their strategic thinking.

Iran crossing a line on attacks inside the US?

You've probably heard the reports coming over the various "wires."  Here's a link to ABC's version. 

Gist:  FBI and DEA (yes, the DEA!) say they disrupted an Iran sponsored plot to attack Saudi and Israeli diplomatic reps/buildings in Washington.  Naturally, if true, this would be a major-league line-crossing by Tehran, which has always been fairly "correct" - if such a term can be used here - in its anti-West/US/Israeli terrorism, meaning Iran has typically displayed a certain recognition that these targets will get you that indirect response from your opponents while those targets will place you in serious jeopardy of a direct response. Again, if true, these plots are of the level that can easily trigger some serious direct responses.

As way of background, here's a statement on these developments from a colleague of mine, Michael Smith. I repost in full with his permission. You will remember Mike from a piece we co-wrote on Syria a while back for WPR. I also wrote about Mike's report (mentioned again below) in another WPR column.

Statement from Kronos Principal and Gray Area Phenomena Subject Matter Expert Michael S. Smith II*

Regarding the linkage of the Iranian (Islamic) Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force to the terror plot targeting embassies located in Washington, DC

*Entered into the Congressional Record on September 23, 2011 by U.S. Congressman Jeff Duncan, in April 2011 Kronos Principal Michael S. Smith II presented members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus a report on Iran’s ties to al-Qa’ida and Affiliated movements titled “The al-Qa’ida Qods Force Nexus.” A redacted version of this report is now available online.

Background

The Qods Force (QF) is an elite and clandestine special operations unit nominally within the command of the Iranian (Islamic) Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). QF is Tehran’s top ambassador to the realm of Islamist terrorism. Its commanders serve as chief liaisons between the Government of Iran and organizations like Hizballah (which was formed with substantial support from the IRGC), as well as the leaders of Sunni militant groups such as Core al-Qa’ida and the Afghan Taliban. 

Operating globally, QF was created with a mandate to bolster the development and operations of Islamist terrorist groups that target Iran’s enemies in the Middle East and beyond. To that end, and frequently in collaboration with Hizballah — which has developed a substantial presence in Latin America and the Caribbean — QF provides financial, training, and tactical support to these groups, several of which are responsible for hundreds of attacks targeting American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

QF commanders report directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamene’i, the top official among the most powerful cadre of government officials in Iran:  The Islamic Republic’s “unelected” theocratic leaders who do not rely on the popular vote to secure their positions of authority. QF purportedly maintains such a secretive existence that few Iranian government officials are aware of its membership numbers, which are assessed to range between 2,000 – 20,000. Its ranks are said to be comprised of Iran’s most highly skilled special operations and intelligence officers. High-profile officials affiliated with QF include Iran’s current minister of defense, Ahmad Vahidi, who previously served as a commander of this paramilitary unit and is known to have a decades-long relationship with Core al-Qa’ida Commander Ayman al-Zawahiri.

As noted in my April 2011 report on the Qods Force’s ties to al-Qa’ida for members of the United States Congress:  According to the U.S. Department of Defense, QF has been “involved in or behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the past 2 decades.”¹ QF was behind the two U.S. Embassy truck bombings in Beirut, the 1983 Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. soldiers, and most of the foreign hostage-taking in Lebanon during the 1980s and early 1990s. It is also known to have directed Saudi based Hizballah al-Hijaz, an organization created by the IRGC, to plan attacks against Americans. This directive is said to have manifest the 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers that killed 19 Americans and wounded another 372. An attack which authors of the 9/11 Commission Report suggested al-Qa’ida may have played a role in.

Statement Regarding Allegations of QF Involvement

It would be highly unusual for Qods Force operatives to be involved in such an operation as the recently uncovered plot targeting facilities and foreign officials in Washington, DC without the knowledge and consent of the Supreme Leader of Iran. Moreover, given the president of Iran’s ties to the IRGC, in which he previously served as an officer, coupled with his efforts to elevate IRGC officials’ roles in the Iranian government since he was first elected president, it is reasonable to speculate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have been apprised of such a plot.

If the Qods Force is indeed involved with the plot to bomb embassies based in Washington, DC this would represent a substantial and very alarming shift in Tehran’s use of terrorism as an instrument of the Islamic Republic’s foreign statecraft. Historically — although the Government of Iran vis-à-vis QF and its terrorist proxies has targeted American interests in the Middle East and South Asia — the Government of Iran has typically avoided involvement in plots targeting the U.S. Homeland. (Note:  A lawsuit in which plaintiffs assert the Government of Iran was involved with the 9/11 plot was recently initiated in a U.S. court.)

USG national security managers and policy makers should take Iran’s alleged involvement in this plot just as seriously, perhaps more so, than similar plots to strike the U.S. Homeland spearheaded by al-Qa’ida and Affiliated Movements. 

During the past three decades, Washington has failed to take appropriate action in responses to Iran’s involvement in successful terror plots that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of American troops, as well as American civilians. And additional economic sanctions will only strengthen the Government of Iran, which in recent years has transformed the country from a theocratic state into a garrison enterprise by enabling the IRGC to acquire substantial stakes in virtually all important sectors of the country.

If the Iranian (Islamic) Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force was behind this recent terror plot, failure to issue a forceful response will only empower the Government of Iran in its all too well-known pursuits of opportunities to inflict harm on Americans and our allies. This, as Tehran is dangerously dabbling with the development of nuclear capabilities. 

If investigators have indeed confirmed the Qods Force played a collusive role in this plot, officials would be well advised to regard this as an (attempted) act of war.

Kronos is a strategic advisory firm established in 2011 by Medal of Honor recipient MajGen James E. Livingston, USMC (Ret) and Congressional counter-terrorism advisor Michael S. Smith II — online at kronosadvisory.com

¹ Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran. U.S. Department of Defense. April 2010. Online via http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/IranReportUnclassified.pdf 

Coverage of The al-Qa’ida-Qods Force Nexus report was produced in May by the following news organizations:

Agence France-Presse (AFP) “Report Highlights Alleged Iran Force’s al Qaeda Links” (4 May 2011)
Link to report: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ghRPhpAicLLjQad84KP5hwCja97A?docId=CNG.c4e5aaec1a6b9ae498dbebf05c7cebdc.1121

The Jerusalem Post “U.S. congressional report:  Iran offering support to al-Qaida” (5 May 2011)
Link to report:  http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?ID=219255&R=R1

Al Arabiya “Report from Congressional panel says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard helps Al-Qaeda” (5 May 2011)
Link to report:  http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/05/05/147902.html

The Emily Updates, Volume 2, hits the eBook stores

Find the Amazon edition here.

Find the Barnes and Noble edition here.

Find the Apple iBookstore version here.

WPR's The New Rules: Turkey's Long Game in the Cyprus Gas Dispute

"Resource wars" enthusiasts worldwide have a new -- and unexpected -- poster child:"zero problems with neighbors" Turkey. The Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is beside itself over Israel's recent moves to cooperate with Cyprus on surveying its Eastern Mediterranean seabed for possible natural gas deposits thought to be lying adjacent to the reserves discovered last year off the coast of Haifa.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Emily Updates Volume 2 photos page up on the book site

Find the page here.

Believe it or not, this was our first family portrait.  Vonne had bought some package earlier in the year, from Sears I think, and we had this one portrait sitting left that we had to use up before the end of 1994. Em was falling apart at this point from the nonstop chemo of the "induction phase" lasting 13 weeks post-diagnosis in July, so we figured, this might be the only family portrait we'd ever have that included her.

I really love this photo.  My raccoony eyes from fatigue give me away (I was drinking heavily at the time too), and Vonne, starting her second trimester with son Kevin, is looking wan, but she musters something like a smile. Emily is happy enough, if a bit ghostly with her complete lack of hair (notice the missing eyebrows). We are barely holding it together in the fall of 94.

Then again, we held it together enough to write the Vol. 5 retrospective this last August.

The portrait was shot during the "missing" time of Volume 1 (after the first two chapters but before I started the diary), so we include it here because I described the picture in Chapter 4 of Volume 2.

Quoted in Reuters piece on Cyprus gas dispute

Here are excerpts with my bits (find the story here):

ANALYSIS-Turkey-Cyprus spat a sign of conflicts to come?

06 Oct 2011 08:54

Source: Reuters // Reuters 

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - With an emerging power testing its strength, valuable resources in the balance and a weakened West struggling to exert influence, the dispute between Turkey and Cyprus over gas drilling may be a sign of wider things to come . . . 

In Southeast Asia, the Arctic, and perhaps also Africa and Latin America, disputed maritime boundaries may become flashpoints as rising scarcity of energy and other resources coincide with a shift in the geopolitical balance of power.

The United States and other Western powers,their relative influence waning, may have to play a subtle diplomatic game to ensure conflict is avoided and important relationships are not jeopardised.

"What we're seeing here is theatrics," says Thomas Barnett, US-based chief strategist for political risk consultancy Wikistrat. "The trick here is to manage it" . . . .

Beijing has been involved in a growing number of face-offs with neighbours in recent years over mineral and fishing rights, most recently Vietnam. Outside analysts say these are often originally spurred as much by private actors -- fishing boats or exploration vessels -- as deliberate policy, but again offer a podium on which Beijing can showcase its growing clout.

Other areas to watch, analysts say, might include Russia's growing assertiveness in the Arctic and perhaps Argentinian interest in the British-controlled Falklands, particularly in the event of energy discoveries there. Increased energy discoveries of Africa's coastline could also spark disputes.

But fears of a new era of "resource wars", Wikistrat's Barnett says, might still be overblown.

In the long run, he said a more assertive Turkey could prove a positive for both the U.S. and Israel, acting as a regional counterweight to Iran and Saudi Arabia, and that the important thing was to manage its rise.

"My instinct is that this is a storm in a tea cup," Barnett says of the Cyprus dispute. "You could make comparisons from this to what we are seeing in the South China Sea (and) in both cases the ultimate answer is probably the same -- some kind of shared corporation agreement... It might sound a long way off now, but it should happen with time."

The need for the West, he said, was to learn to reach out subtly and diplomatically to emerging powers like Turkey as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did with China in the 1970s, soothing egos and helping nudge them towards co-operation.

Not everyone is so confident outright bloodshed will always be avoided . . . 

Yes, I did have some problem with the formulation Apps made on that last line.  I said  thing, but he was working the tension in the piece (sigh!), so you live with that journalistic trick, realizing that this is my legitimate niche anyway - the anti-alarmist.

So the tone of the quotes was good for both me and Wikistraat:  we want to be associated with wide-angle perspectives that emphasize strategizing. Toward that end, we've designed a number of simulations on this story at Wikistrat, to include ones that explore Turkey walking from the EU over this, oil drig shootouts (if Turkey truly wants a bloody shirt to wave like the "aid flotilla" fiasco), a downstream linkage to the nuclearization of the Eastern Med, and ultimately how all this natural resource wealth impacts regional economic development.

I'll have more on this subject in Monday's column. Apps' piece got me thinking . . ..

Time's Battleland: Arab Spring with same impact as "big bang strategy": Islam at war with self - not West

Nice piece in the NYT at the end of September pointing out that the primary impact of the Arab Spring is that, in giving people chances to rule themselves and not be subject to dictators, Islamic activists find themselves splintering from within . . .

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.

My best explanation of Wikistrat yet

(Fb x Wp = MMOC) = CIE

Start-ups are curious things. They tend to morph right before your eyes, especially in the first stage in which family and friends tend to dominate the proceedings, with the occasional visionaries sucked in (as visionaries are wont to be).  It’s figuratively, “You supply the barn and I’ll bring some old sheets for the curtains and once we figure out who plays all the parts, we can put on a show!” In short, it’s all one grand experiment that attempts to answer the question, “Can we see our way to a product with a market and, if so, can we build a viable company around that product?”

The first stage is a heady mess, but incredibly exciting. It usually starts with a fabulous idea that requires downstream definition (“Okay, but where will this take us?”), which is typically achieved through real-world trial and error (“First we tried this, then that, and finally we locked onto the path.”) The key is the flexibility to say, “This isn’t working, but here’s the next logical attempt at something that might.”  How many times do you turn that crank?  My experience across ten such entities going back to 1987 is that 5-6 is the mean, with – naturally – foundational clients driving the process. 

Getting to those initial clients marks your departure from early-stage to mid-stage: you’ve had your proof-of-concept experience and figured out your basic product development and you’re heading into initial engagements.  Trick is, by then, your company needs to have some identity, to include enough of the right people in the right spots to execute those initial engagements with real confidence, meaning no wasted opportunities.

I was fortunate enough to be sucked into the Wikistrat world just after CEO Joel Zamel and DTO Daniel Green had decided to move off their first iteration (simply selling the wiki platform), and with them I participated in three more turns of the crank: the initial subscription period (CoreGap Report) that followed my laborious creation of the wiki/scenario-based GLOMOD (globalization model), the first efforts at mustering distributed simulations with a proto-community of early-joining analysts/interns, and then the – arguably audacious – decision to conduct the international grand strategy competition to jumpstart the community ethos, create some buzz on the whole crowdsourcing analytic dynamic, and conduct junior-to-mid-level recruitment that would fuel both.

The success of the competition really marked the beginning of the end of the early-stage development and the start of the mid-stage effort. After regaling each other with various attempted descriptions and analogies and heroic tales of what Wikistrat was and would eventually become, our dialogue – both internal and external – began to coalesce around three primary components.

Now, understand that what I’m about to say is my best description but not necessarily Joel’s or Daniel’s, and that, by presenting my version here, I’m not pretending that the dialogue is consummated, because start-ups simply don’t unfold like that.  More turns of the crank invariably happen.  It’s just that they’ll get smaller in the months ahead – more course corrections than setting out on new vectors.  And given that Joel and Daniel were only at it for yeah many months before they pulled me aboard and that was roughly a year ago, that’s a pretty sweet record – getting through the first stage in two years or less.  Not warp speed, mind you.  More like getting your Master’s degree on schedule and hitting your PhD program with advanced standing, understanding that I purposefully reach for an analytic analogy here.

So how would I describe Wikistrat as we embark on our midstage effort?

First, let me explain how I accumulated my “high concept” definitions along the way. By “high concept” I mean, a buzz phrase or mash-up of buzz phrases that captures the gist, like when Emily and I were watching James Cameron’s “Avatar” and I turned to her in the Imax and offered “The Matrix meets . . .” and she blurted out “Ferngully!”

Early on in conversations with Joel, I started with this bit, “Facebook meets Wikipedia.”  By that I meant two distinct things mashed up: Facebook referred to a global community of strategic thinkers, while Wikipedia referred to both the wiki-based strategic planning process and the under-construction GLOMOD, otherwise known the ultimate wiki on globalization itself or, in my initial upload, my professional body of thought transferred to the web to serve as original source code for what we know will eventually evolve far past my thinking to something a whole lot larger and more valuable – the rich and deep canvas against which we conduct simulations.

Now, the minute I blurted this out, I was pretty proud of myself, even if it presented the usual characteristics of my shorthand lexicon in that it was a bit superficial but highly accurate (my particular skill).  Then again, that’s the whole point of the high concept definition: namely, it cuts to the chase and its highly evocative.  You get it the minute you hear it.

The problem with this initial bit is that I would immediately follow it up with the refrain of, “But how to we make either of those items pay for themselves?”  Of course, Joel and Dan were thinking all along about the simulationss as products, but how to triangulate between community (Facebook) and environment (Wikipedia) into executing agent?

Joel and Dan had been mulling from the start about how the wiki-based approach would revolutionize the consulting business, taking the black-box methodology (you tell the consultancy your problem, they mull your world and future, and then out pops their answer, the creation of which made them smarter but doesn’t exactly empower you beyond their advice and revealed rationale). Their first iteration was selling the platform itself, but traditional consultancies weren’t interested in re-engineering what they felt wasn’t broken, even as they would readily admit the model represented the future of their industry, which, by all accounts - and my personal experience - is experiencing a serious shake-out since the global financial crisis began in 2008 (a true killing-of-the-dinosaurs-effect by that “meteor,” with no clear definition yet of who the “mammals” are, even as SaaS* providers look the most vibrant).  [*service as a solution]

Once it became clear that selling the platform wasn’t the way, the next iteration explored the notion of replicating the basic outlines of a traditional consultancy and then using the platform as a competitive advantage. But here was the problem with that: it didn’t sufficiently leverage the crowdsourcing dynamic.  It was your experienced and well-leveraged traditional consulting team versus our lean but wiki-enabled team – too close to a fair fight to be compelling.

Enter the grand strategy competition, where our subtext was, “Can we show how smart-but-relatively-inexperienced newcomers to the field can, en masse, tackle a complex future projection and really run that beast to ground in impressive fashion?”

For those of you who followed the competition, you know the answer. No, it wasn’t all “wheat,” but the “chaff” quotient dropped radically with each week, and the overall product was incredibly rich, especially considering the variety of simulations we crammed into the effort.  By my count, all sorts of legit professional products are easily generated from the competition, and we weren’t really even customizing with a customer in mind.

It thus proved, to a pleasantly surprising degree (for me, at least) the viability of a phrase I had started using last spring after Joel and Daniel confronted me with their idea of the competition: we are building the world’s first MMOC, as in, a massively multiplayer online consultancy.  So, it’s not just the community (Facebook of strategists) and it’s not just the environment (Wikipedia/GLOMOD), it’s the MMOC that combines the two into a product-offering machine.

I had written about this back in “Blueprint for Action” (2005) in my concluding bit called, “Headlines from the Future” (last entry for the 2020 timeframe):

“Online Game Triggers Dictator’s Departure; Stunning Victory of ‘People’s Diplomacy’”

The complexity of planning postconflict stabilization operations in advance is daunting, simply because of the huge number of variables involved. It’s not a matter of simply crunching numbers, but rather anticipating the free play of so many actors—your own military, allied civilians, enemy soldiers and insurgents, the local population, and so on. In many ways, this kind of complex simulation is well given over to massive multiplayer online games (MMOG), something I see both the military and the U.S. Government turning toward as a tool for predictive planning. Imagine if, months prior to the invasion, the Pentagon had started a MMOG that modeled Iraq immediately following the regime’s collapse, allowing hundreds or even thousands of chosen experts (or even just enthusiastic gamers!) from the world over to fill out the multitude of possible characters involved on both sides. Imagine what insights could have been learned beforehand. Now jump ahead fifteen years and think about how sophisticated such MMOGs might be, and how they could be used to preplay—for obvious consumption by both the global community and the targeted state in question—a rogue-regime takedown and subsequent occupation, perhaps even to the effect of convincing the regime to abandon its untenable situation in advance of actual war being waged. Far-fetched? Not in a world where uncredentialed Internet bloggers can force Senate majority leaders and major network news anchors to resign in disgrace at lightning speed.

And yes, I had thought of this the first time Joel and Daniel laid out their vision at the airport in NYC last fall. It just took a while for the three of us “blind men” – along with Wikistrategist Elad Schaffer – to feel up that “elephant” enough times to realize what we had here.

Back to the competition: it wasn’t just the executing-the-simulation-through-crowdsourcing dynamic that was proven there. What impressed me even more was the immediate sense of community that was created: participants really got into the process, regardless of their level of success in scoring.  It energized them and produced its own individual benefits of the blade-sharpening and unfolding-your-wings varieties.  I felt the same way about the judging: it was simply fun, in addition to being hard work and engrossing and enriching.  At the end of it, it didn’t just tickle my fancy.  My gut professional reaction was, “I could bundle this whole beast into an impressive book.”

Of course, so could anyone else who worked the competition – once they approximate my writing skill-set (not a simple matter, I would maintain). And there is beauty in that too: the Wikistrat universe is far more than a blade-sharpening and marketing-of-skills universe, it’s an elevating-your-thinking environment – no matter your level of experience.

Moreover, the sum product of the competition fed the GLOMOD beautifully.  It was like adding an entire new floor to the building in one fell swoop.

Win-win-win, but likewise a delineator of what we had here in this three-legged stool:  Facebook + Wikipedia = MMOC, or global community of strategists + global model of globalization = powerfully crowdsourcing simulations for a wide variety of clients.

In later conversations with one of the competition participants, who’s now in the process of stepping into an advisory role for Wikistrat (based on past-life experiences) even as she joins our global lineup of analysts (she’s a grad student in international relations), I let out the final high-concept definition: that Facebook + Wikipedia = MMOC constellation equates to a private-sector equivalent of what the CIA always should have been for the US Government – an intelligence exchange.  Wikistrat, in its full flowering, is a Central Intelligence Exchange on globalization across all of its major domains, meaning it connects clients with the best crowdsourced advice out there.  It is the “beast” (GLOMOD) that’s feed by the smart mob (community of strategists) and put to specific use (“the drill”) for interested clients. It beats traditional black-box consulting by being interactive, real-time, fully transparent, archivable, and red-teamed to a point of analytical robustness that cannot be achieved BOGGSAT-style (bunch of guys/gals sitting around a table).  It gives the client a world-class, throw-everyone-at-the-problem capability at an incredibly affordable price, making Wikistrat a desirable add-on capability for existing consultancies (dubbed, “channel partners”) looking to bring new-but-lean capabilities to clients struggling with globalization’s mounting complexity. Likewise, if you’re an analytic shop in the public sector facing budget cuts, Wikistrat has just given you the “more” capability to go along with your “less” budget (as in, “do more with less!”).

Why it matters for us to have this self-awareness.  The Facebook dynamic requires its own dynamics, skilled leadership, etc.  As does the Wikipedia/GLOMOD bit (my proximate role) and the MMOC (my ultimate role).  Making the whole CIE dynamic happen is a meta-level responsibility not to be underestimated either.  Knowing all this guides who we bring on in the future, because if you don’t know what your start-up is all about, you will flounder around when it comes to ramping up personnel and capability.  The good news is, of course, that ramping up the global community of strategists itself is a fairly simple – and cheap – affair. They go into your pool and they’re activated as jobs arise – a virtual labor force that can be activated discretely and at will.  But yes, some management and operational structure will need to be built around them, so – again – having a good sense of what that “elephant” is now is crucial. 

That’s it.  That’s my – for now – best riff on what Wikistrat is and is becoming. I didn’t put the whole package together in one conversation until I was chatting with one of our mentors while driving up to Green Bay Sunday morning to hit the Packer Hall of Fame prior to Aaron Rodger’s historic performance (4 passing TDs, 400-plus passing yards, and two rushing TDs – first time ever for an NFL QB in 90 years of league play), which just goes to show you two things: 1) it takes a while to construct complex explanations, and 2) I think best when I’m talking – even better than writing (which is why I have to explain something several times before I typically author it).

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Resilience Can Rise to Future Threats

Last month I spent a couple of hours on the phone being interviewed for the next iteration of the National Intelligence Council's global futures project. This one imagines the world in 2030, and the interview was part of the organization's early polling process of experts around the world. I've participated similarly in previous iterations, and I've always found the NIC's questions fascinating for how they reveal the group's primary fears about the future.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Wikistrat Middle East Monitor, September 2011

We're excited to announce the launch of Wikistrat's Middle East Monitor for September 2011, which can be viewed in its entirety here.

Summary

All eyes were on the Palestinian bid for U.N. membership this month. The move puts the U.S. in the uncomfortable position having to exercise its veto to block the bid, which could cause the region to erupt in anti-American fervor and lead to violence on the borders of Israel. However, Wikistrat does not believe that such an event would have a direct strategic affect, and is more concerned about how the political environment would improve the appeal of the Islamists in countries affected by the Arab Spring. The Islamists would benefit politically if Israel and confrontation with the West were to become major campaign issues, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, where elections are to be held in October and November, respectively.

Civil war appears imminent in Yemen, and the chances of an armed revolt within Syria significantly increased. Yemeni President Saleh has returned home from Saudi Arabia, where he was being treated for three months following an assassination attempt. His return resulted in a sharp increase in violence, and now fighting between tribesmen loyal to the opposition, backed by defected soldiers, and the regime, is spreading. At the same time, two groups in Syria have formed called the Free Officers Movement and Free Syria Army, with contradictory reports on whether they are rivals or have united. The Free Syria Army is claiming credit for a string of attacks on the regime’s security forces, but is far from presenting a significant armed challenge at this stage.

The struggle between Islamists and secularists in the Arab Spring became more apparent this month. In Libya, Islamists are trying to sideline the secular leadership of the National Transitional Council. In Egypt, liberal parties are decrying the unfair playing field they face, with some calling for a postponement of elections until they can properly organize. In Syria, it is less obvious, but rival efforts to form opposition groups show the Islamists and secular democratic forces are in a quiet competition to lead the opposition to the Assad dictatorship.

All eyes were on the Palestinian bid for U.N. membership this month. The move puts the U.S. in the uncomfortable position having to exercise its veto to block the bid, which could cause the region to erupt in anti-American fervor and lead to violence on the borders of Israel. However, Wikistrat does not believe that such an event would have a direct strategic affect, and is more concerned about how the political environment would improve the appeal of the Islamists in countries affected by the Arab Spring. The Islamists would benefit politically if Israel and confrontation with the West were to become major campaign issues, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, where elections are to be held in October and November, respectively.

Civil war appears imminent in Yemen, and the chances of an armed revolt within Syria significantly increased. Yemeni President Saleh has returned home from Saudi Arabia, where he was being treated for three months following an assassination attempt. His return resulted in a sharp increase in violence, and now fighting between tribesmen loyal to the opposition, backed by defected soldiers, and the regime, is spreading. At the same time, two groups in Syria have formed called the Free Officers Movement and Free Syria Army, with contradictory reports on whether they are rivals or have united. The Free Syria Army is claiming credit for a string of attacks on the regime’s security forces, but is far from presenting a significant armed challenge at this stage.

The struggle between Islamists and secularists in the Arab Spring became more apparent this month. In Libya, Islamists are trying to sideline the secular leadership of the National Transitional Council. In Egypt, liberal parties are decrying the unfair playing field they face, with some calling for a postponement of elections until they can properly organize. In Syria, it is less obvious, but rival efforts to form opposition groups show the Islamists and secular democratic forces are in a quiet competition to lead the opposition to the Assad dictatorship.

Wikistrat Bottom Lines

Opportunities

• Turkey has placed an arms embargo on Syria and will enact further sanctions. Prime Minister Erdogan has also offended the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood with his call for secular governance. This is a surprising development given Erdogan’s own Islamist orientation, but these actions nonetheless complement Western interests.
• Saudi Arabia has granted women the right to vote in local elections in 2015. If they are able to turn out, that will give the liberal elements within Saudi society a greater voice. The Moroccan and Saudi models of handling the Arab Spring also offer a formula for Western allies in the region.
• Syrian protesters are increasingly vocal about their desire to see various kinds of Western intervention on their behalf. This opens the door for the West to reach out to the opposition in Syria, and perhaps elsewhere, and provides an opportunity for the West to strengthen secular elements.

Risks

• A civil war in Yemen is very likely to be bloody and severely destabilizing. The main opposition party, Islah, is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate with Salafist backing. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will have more freedom of movement, and the Iranian-supported Houthis in the north will have an increasing amount of autonomy.
• The increasingly assertive role of Turkey also carries risks. The Turkish government may favor the Islamist elements of the Syrian opposition. It also is increasingly confrontational towards Israel, showing that it has not taken a sharp turn towards the West entirely.
• The ongoing fighting in Libya raises the threats of weapons falling into the hands of enemies to the West, terrorists gaining a foothold, and Qaddafi loyalists waging an insurgency from neighboring countries.

Dependencies

• The goals of Turkey. The political party of Erdogan is undoubtedly Islamist, but Turkey’s confrontation with Syria, break with Iran and clash with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is leaving observers in disagreement about his regional objectives.
• The patience of the defected military forces in Yemen, particularly General Ali Mohsen. The soldiers have defended protesters, but have not made a full push to forcibly push Saleh out of power.
• The ability of the Syrian opposition to address the fears of the minorities that back Assad out of self-preservation, specifically the Allawites, Christians and Druze who fear persecution.

Gone fishing . . .

. . . for a 4-0 start.

Be in the north end zone (left side of TV screen), right between goal posts, in my Mom's seats with son Jerry and Indiana buddy.