The more nervous the regime, the more frantic the crackdown

ARTICLE: “Islamic Republic of Fear: Restoring the revolution, taking away civil liberties,” The Economist, 25 August 2007, p. 46.

ARTICLE: “Intimidation In Tehran,” by Azadeh Moaveni, Time, 10 September 2007, p. 43.

The Economist piece says it well:

The rest of the world may be more concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But for many Iranians, the issue that has begun to outweigh other troubles, such as poverty, unemployment and the danger of war with America, is human rights.

Ah, but where is human rights in our dialogue with Iran? Lost in translation. Because we lack the OSCE-like diplomatic overlay in the region, that discussion has remained a non-starter, despite the Arab Development Report saying that this dearth of freedom is the main holdup, in many ways, for the region’s economic emergence.

As I have said many times, if you want the Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels to arise, you need to provide some political top cover.

Instead, we risk appearing completely irrelevant to the lives of ordinary Iranians at a time when they could greatly use our attention and that of the world.

Such harsher treatment, say rights activists, is partly a product of the paranoid atmosphere generated by a government that has deliberately associated any form of civil disobedience with alleged foreign plots.

How best to play into the hardliners’ hands? Our current policy.

Too bad, because there are voices to connect up with inside Iran, like the current head of the judiciary who’s openly expressed his dismay with government policies.

The regime is risking much with this crackdown (from Time:

Some continued leeway on social restrictions was all the government could offer this vast, disaffected young constituency [two-thirds of Iran’s 70m are under 30], a small consolation for the absence of political freedoms and economic opportunities.

But it reflects their fear:

“The more threatened the hard-liners feel, the more paranoid they will become” --Farideh Farhi, Iran expert and professor, U Hawaii

In short, we’re playing the wrong side here, as though we learned nothing from our time with the Sovs.

Just can't get there on the surge

OP-ED: 'Letter From Baghdad,' By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, September 5, 2007

Stunningly good piece by Friedman, who remains the hands-down best on-the-ground reporter of his generation on the Middle East.

This is a very honest analysis with a guy whose mind is willing to be changed on a dime, like any good reporter, but he just can't get there on the surge, noting we've achieved a tactical shift vis-a-vis AQI but not a strategic closure on Sunni-Shia strife in Iraq.

Again, Hitchens' breakdown still holds:
1) The Kurdish victory (and no, let's not get hallucinatory and start babbling about either "liberating" all Kurds much less "betraying" them all simply because the Kurdish regional gov doesn't instantly--or perhaps ever, quite logically given the history we've seen in eastern Europe and the Balkans--morph into a Kurdish-wide union.
2) the strategy of aligning Sunni tribes against AQI is working
3) the Sunni-Shia split is unabated and advanced and the "cleansing" continues, something our troops can mitigate in terms of violence but can neither stem nor reverse.

If the Sunni-Shia split is the key remaining dynamic, and our success with the Sunni meaning the bulk of our casualties are coming from Shia militias that are increasingly fighting each other as much as us, then we have two choices:
1) resurge on that dynamic (unlikely in the extreme due to rotational stress and political impatience back home) or
2) engage Iran either in engagement or punitive action.

You know Cheney's preference. The question is, Are you ready for the next war?

Me personally, I can't see--as I've said for years now--casually lumping Shia and Sunni extremists in the same "war on terror" bucket. To me, that's strategically unsound (too many enemies, too few friends) and politically unrealistic (if you want pluralism in the region, it cannot continue to feature repression of half the population, which means you've got to find a place for Iran--like it or not [just like the Palestinians]).

We can either seriously work toward pluralism in the region, facilitating its integration into globalization, or we can continue the same old, same old (unblinking support to Israel versus the Palestinians and unblinking support to Sunni dictatorships versus oppressed Shia minorities/majorities).

The big fly in the ointment of pursuing the same old, same old: Bush's decision (which I support still even though he now seems to regret) to create the first Arab Shia state--Iraq.

Speaking of Prothero's "Religious Literacy"

America's first public schools (called "common schools") blossomed in the 1820s.

Why?

Protestants needed to combat the dangerous rising tide of papist Catholics, fearing both their undemocratic ways and their demographic threat!

The Catholic response?

Parochial schools, where I was educated, along with six of my eight other siblings (two died young), so clearly the demographic threat was real (actually, Catholics were the biggest single Christian denomination by around the time of the Civil War as a result of that Irish influx).

Remind you of anything today?

Again to my point: virtually anything you can find in globalization today you can discover in America's past. There's a reason for that.

Watching "Red River" tonight ...

at local art theater with Vonne, and remembering watching "The Searchers " a bit back at home (the famous silhouetted shot of Wayne at the end is shamelessly copied by that rabid cinephile Quentin Tarantino in "Kill Bill, Part 2"). That movie presents the at-one-time classic American definition of an acceptable form of "honor killing" of a female "ruined" by "infidels" (in this instance, Native Americans), except. of course, John Wayne's dark anti-hero actually refrains at the very end, instead lovingly embracing his long-lost niece played by Natalie Wood following her rescue from the Indians who had raised her following the raid that ended with the death of her immediate family.

Still, no surprise you find the example from the Old West, when our codes were often just as harsh as the enemies we face today.

Why so? Survival, baby.

In "Red River," Duke plays another awfully harsh character who plots right to the suddenly light-hearted ending to kill his adopted son (Montgomery Clift) for toppling his dictatorship of a cattle drive (they actually refer to his character as a "tyrant") and finishing the drive without him (they make up in the end, after beating each other some and taking some well-intentioned bullets).

But it's the DeSoto-ish begining I find fascinating: Duke and pal Walter Brennan simply show up in Texas in 1851 and lay claim to all this land just north of the Rio Grande. Almost immediately upon settling in, a couple of Mexicans show up and say "Diego" controls all these lands, despite living 400 miles south. So Brennan says to the Mexican, "That's too much land for one man!" and Duke asks the Mexican how Diego got the land. The Mexican answers that it was given to him by the King of Spain long ago, and Duke retorts, "That just means you stole it from somebody after they left--Indians I'm guessing." So Duke tells the Mexican to go tell Diego that everything north of the Rio Grande is now his. Naturally, they duel, Duke kills him, and then lets his compadre live and leave to deliver the message to Diego (Diego and Duke eventually become okay neighbors I guess, because in a later scene their cattle get a bit mixed up and Diego's name is invoked without rancor). What's cool is that the Duke buries the Mexican the next morning and "reads over him" with the Bible. Having killed his coreligionist from another tribe, Duke snatches the land associated with this poor fellow, but feels the need to mark his passing in religious terms.

Again, an interesting bit of "ethnic cleansing" from our past, not viewed typically in that light, of course, because we "won the West." But, of course, that meant somebody lost it.

Later, after Duke's killed a few of his own men who tried to leave the drive (he is a bit of a hard-ass, mind you), he tells the others he'll "read over them" in the morning too. One guy replies, "First we plant them and then we read to them. Why does he have to go and try to make God a partner in all of this?"

Really an amazing line, no?

Great Howard Hawks movie, "Red River." Lots of great character actors, all when they were still young. Many also appear in "The Searchers" too.

Military-Civil Anthropology 101

ARTICLE: 'US Army's strategy in Afghanistan: better anthropology: Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs,' By Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, September 7, 2007

Interesting and welcome and clearly related to the new COIN strategy, but not as "unprecedented" as you think, and it doesn't exactly require an advanced degree in anthropology.

Civil Affairs teams from Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa have been doing the same basic thing (come into remote province and its communities and systematically query residents on their basic needs/desires) in eastern Africa for several years now. The officers call it a "normal assessment" and use it to uncover logical, small-scale assistance efforts (This school not working for some reason? Let's try to fix that specific problem.). It is very "searcher" oriented, in Easterly's terminology: small, very specific efforts to break typically minor logjams. The results are small but highly leveragable, and it's not the sort of stuff picked up by big aid projects any more, so it's a great niche to fill in the 3D paradigm (defense, diplomacy, development).

Again, as I argued in Esquire, CJTF-HOA is ahead of its time and is--in many ways--a reaction to failures and breakdowns elsewhere, just like the COIN.

(Thanks: Louis Heberlein)

China needs to grow up on Taiwan ... and so do we

ARTICLE: Rep. Skelton foresees trouble over Taiwan, By Philip Dine, St Louis Post-Dispatch, 09/05/2007

Great example of the breakdowns in logic on Taiwan: Skelton goes to China and "discovers' all this Chinese will on the subject, which is apparently news to him (their military actually plans for this?).

In Skelton's defense, it is stunning how myopically and pathetically the PLA focus on this one scenario, which infantilizes their strategic thought to this day.

Skelton then logically wonders about how realistic it is (good instinct on his part).

The answer?

It is both highly realistic (we can kick the PLA's ass to great ends) and highly unrealistic (to what frickin' end?).

If you want to recapture the Alice in Wonderland feeling of strategic brainstorming on nuke targeting and strategy in the Cold War (discussions that veered into the brain-numbingly fantastic almost from the get-go), there is no better substitution than delving deep into both PLA and Pentagon warfighting scenarios for the invasion/defense of Taiwan.

Then again, just because thinking about the unthinkable typically devolves into tactical gibberish and strategic incoherence is not enough of a reason to stop engaging in it, because such discussions serve both sides as a sort of psychotherapy, as in:

FLAG OFFICER: "Doctor, I have a strong craving for a [substitute your favorite fantastically expensive platform]."

STRATEGIST: "And how does that make you feel?"

"DEVIL" CONTRACTOR ON RIGHT SHOULDER, STAGE WHISPERING: "Like you need at least 20 of them!"

"ANGEL" CONGRESSMAN ON LEFT, DITTO: "All built in my district!"

FLAG OFFICER, CONFLICTED: "Like I miss the Cold War ..."

A whole lot of growing up to do on both sides of this equation, but naturally, in our hubris, we assume it need only occur on China's side, when actually, this scenario restricts our strategic/force structure planning vision only somewhat less than China's, and by that I mean a difference in degree, not kind.

Why does this fixation matter? I believe it kills our soldiers day-in and day-out by restricting the resource shift in this Long War from the Big War to the Small Wars. If we're not going to accept the reality of that shift, then we shouldn't engage in the Long War and just stay home and plot our brilliant, high-tech war against the Chinese.

There are no wars out there worth winning in this strategic environment unless you're prepared to win the peace that follows. That takes bucks and bodies, and that means we reorient off the wars we'd prefer to fight to the ones we cannot escape--and the allies we must have.

End of the Vietnam Syndrome

ARTICLE: 'Counterinsurgency Comeback,' By MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS, Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2007; Page A17

Great piece by Mac Owens, longtime Naval War College prof and rather prolific author of articles. This is a thinking man's version of a slide I've long had in the brief about the Army's ambivalent embrace of the SysAdmin reality. Mac captures the enormity of the cultural shift, which I call a once-in-a-century sort of change.

It's this shift that really marks the end of the Vietnam syndrome, and that couldn't be a bigger deal for an Army that spent the last three decades distancing itself from Vietnam.

In that regard, the work of the mighty handful (Petraeus, Mattis, Wallace, McMasters, Nagl, plus the Aussie Kilcullen) is truly historic. Especially to the extent Petraeus secures this legacy, he becomes the LeMay or Cebrowski of his age: the flag who not only changes his service's definition of warfare, but that of the military as a whole.

To have a Petraeus pull that off, as I see him doing (and this constitutes my main interest in a surge I know came too late in Iraq) so soon after Cebrowski et. al made the net-centric definition the basis for transforming the mindset of the Leviathan, effectively completes the Leviathan-SysAdmin split, now on display between SOCCENT and CJTF-HOA in Eastern Africa.

In short, it's been an amazing 18 years to have been working with the U.S. Military.

(Thanks: Tyler Durden)

Hilarious, pathetic fears of China Youth

ARTICLE: China Expands Military Training for Youth, NewsMax, September 5, 2007 12:41 PM

I find this almost hilarious on both counts: 1) that the Chinese are freaking about their selfish "little emperors" and think boot camp will fix them (a universal itch many governments are tempted to scratch--recall our frequent flirtations with boot camp models to cure the ills of modern youth), and 2) that our media construes such efforts as frighteningly indicative of future threat.

Really, it's pathetic on both counts.

Our media sees cause rather than symptom: China engages in such stuff overwhelmingly for ideological purposes. If you think some militaristic version of Cub Scouts is going to be China strategic ace in the hole in future high-tech warfare against America, then I've got a Politiburo seat for you.

This kind of program reveals Beijing's fears (very justified) that the country's raising a very materialistic generation of kids with little to no interest in security affairs, so it tries to force feed them some--before it's too late!

Sad to see a formerly totalitarian regime being reduced to such pathetic efforts to win hearts and minds among its own population.

Care to bet what percentage would show up if it wasn't compulsory?

That's the whole point!

(Thanks: CitSAR)

Airpower and the Gap

'A Rescue Force for the World: Adapting Airpower to the Realities of the Long War,' Air & Space Power Journal, Fall 2007

Lt Col Mark Dipaolo wrote in to say that he has been influenced by Tom's ideas and that the paper that he contributed to reflects some of that influence (especially Gap theory). Check it out.

Note on comments

Man, are we ever getting hammered by comment spam. I'm deleting hundreds a day, and I just don't have time to keep doing that.

I'm going to bump up the filter another notch. Please do keep an eye on your comments and let me know if they haven't published after 12 hours or so (I try to get to them at least that often).

Or, better, just register with TypePad and log into it for comments here. Then your comments will never go to the spam folder.

If changing the settings doesn't help, I'll have to go to only TypePad comments.

(Until I can upgrade to the new Movable Type, which won't be any time really soon.)

Other alternative: you can volunteer to delete all the spam for me. But, believe me, you don't want that job ;-)

The other Barnett is pissed, I am informed

When I saw the subject line, I will confess that my first assumption was A. Doak Barnett, long-time China scholar (I don't know why, but I always think of him first even though I suspect he's retired). Then I thought of Barnett Rubin, who's an expert on Afghanistan. Then I considered Roger Barnett, a former fellow Naval War College professor with whom I--quite frankly--rarely saw eye to eye.

Then I clicked on the link a reader provided me (Brad B., methinks?)

Dean Barnett, who writes a lot of stuff seemingly all over the web (but limited to conservative circles) is very upset about a recent post and in general, I would surmise, regarding my analysis of Iran. Feeling betrayed because he once praised PNM (I don't get the sense he's read BFA, hence his comments about my not addressing irrational actors like radical Islamists in PNM--a complaint more than a few readers leveled at PNM, which is why I made a point of including such analysis in the sequel), Dean demands to know my sources and how I've come to my conclusions.

Luckily for Dean, my blog, with over 5000 posts, is searchable. In it, I detail my contacts and travels of the past three-plus years, plus all the stuff I read--every single article or book. It is easy to spot the evolution of my thinking on any subject in the blog. I basically lay it all out for anyone to see. After 18 years of working professionally with the military, intelligence community and the rest of the US Government and private defense sector, I do get around. And I've written my conclusions down in roughly 100 published (not just posted) articles and columns, plus the two books.

Dean comes at this blogging trade from a very different career path, so I can't say what his learning curve has been on radical Islam, although I would caution him not to raise the case of 9/11 in a post so focused on Iran. Bundling everything up as "radical Islam" can be very misleading, especially since al-Qaida (responsible for 9/11) is exclusive Sunni-derived and Iran is Shia.

Of the publicly available sources I would cite (and no, that doesn't define my universe of sources, because I actually do this for a living), Vali Nasr's "Shia Revival" if you want to get a sense of how the two don't go naturally together and--indeed--how their centuries of bloody conflict have basically defined Islam's history.

I also recommend anything written by the French academic Olivier Roy on radical Islam. I used his "Globalised Islam" in BFA. Fantastic analysis.

On Iran in particular I recommend Ray Takeyh, whom I've cited a couple of times in the blog. Houchang Chehabi, who served on my PhD board, also taught me a lot about Iran, in a dialogue going back to the mid-1980s. I also admire the work of Tehran-based professor Mahmood Sarioghalam. He's apparently a Davos regular.

More generally, I would recommend Stephen Prothero's "Religious Literacy." Turns out Christianity has long had a millennarian strain that: 1) is uncomfortably comparable to Shiism (see Nasr on this) and 2) has gotten quite a few people killed over the centuries and even here in America (most famously in recent history at Waco TX). Whether or not any of them yelled "praise Jesus" at the last minute, I have no idea, but I suspect the sentiment was there, however distorted by circumstance and ideology.

Religion is a very complex thing, as is international relations. I maintain this blog so I can reveal that sort of complexity as it relates to national and international security affairs (in terms of the sources required for analytical thought, the formulation of such analysis in general, and the type of career--both academic and real-world practice--that I believe is necessary for developing expertise), writing from my perspective as a long-time professional in the field.

When people agree with that analysis, I am--by their definition--very smart, experienced and credentialed. When they don't, I am--again by their definition--none of those things.

You learn to live with the criticism, always considering the source, and you simply go on sharing all your sources, analytical evolution and conclusions, trusting smart readers to figure out for themselves what they think is right.

Dean has agreed with that approach in the past. He no longer does on the subject of radical Islam and Iran in particular, believing the latter situation invalidates my entire approach to international relations. I will live with that, because I don't have any trouble finding plenty of very experienced people in my work that agree with my thinking and support it.

And yes, I mean the Gingrich comparison as a compliment to Ahmadinejad, who's one sly populist campaigner (check out his nationally televised 30-minute campaign vid from 2004: he puts Fred Thompson's good old boy-shtick to shame with a clever play on "this old car" to make him seem so humble compared to Rafsanjani).

A good source of analysis of the "deterrable" consequences of Iran's achieving the bomb, see a great Center for Naval Analyses study on this by Henry Gaffney et. al. I suspect it's not available for public release, but it's a very sensible document that jibes nicely with Schelling's observations about the history of nuclear deterrence.

As much as I respect Dean's writing in general, I don't live or die with criticism from the blogosphere. If you're going to be a grand strategist, you have to tell people what they need to hear, not want they want to hear.

Good example? See my column this weekend. It's sure to piss off plenty. Then again, I find that it's perfectly okay to be an out-of-the-box thinker . . . until you jump out of somebody's preferred box. Then you're guilty of pathetically naive thinking.

But I got used to that phenomenon about a quarter-century ago.

Foreign Policy's "think again" on legalizing illegal drugs in America

THINK AGAIN: "Drugs," by Ethan Nadelmann, Foreign Policy, September-October 2007, p. 24.

I have to admit, this is my second mailed issue of FP (I got a subscription this summer) and I'm wondering if I'll renew. It's certainly more interesting than Foreign Affairs, but it also comes off as rather light, to the point where I don't find myself clipping anything.

This issue's polling of "100 top foreign policy" experts re: Iraq and the war on terror was especially unimpressive, to my surprise. I just found myself completely uninterested in the conglomerate opinion of a load of former government officials and establishment academics. In some instances it was surprising and in too many others it just came off as goofy (like 90%-plus saying America is in more danger now than prior to 9/11, an opinion and polling statistic I couldn't care less about since it's mostly an indictment of Bush's policies than some objective judgment). I mean, it basically reduced the field to the equivalent of a toothpaste commercial: "nine out of ten foreign policy experts say . . ."). Again, I was just bored by it all.

The one thing that's consistently good in FP is the "Think Again" column. It's a cool format and it's always provocative. This time is no different.

The arguments offered here about rethinking our "war on drugs" are very solid. We have all these tough laws and what do we end up with: 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population, and drug-use rates worse than all those lax European states. Amazing!

The basic comparison to Prohibition is a good one: zero tolerance is just a bankrupt approach, given human nature.

Worst, America has managed to export our tough-approach rule set around the world. As the author puts it, "Rarely has one nation so successfully promoted its own failed policies to the rest of the world."

The killer bit: 40% of our nation's 1.8 million drug arrests each year are for tiny amounts of pot. We thus lock up more people each year for drug violations (roughly 500,000) than Europe locks up for all crimes.

In short, it's a failed policy that retards our relationship with states to our south and it should go. We should medicalize the problem instead of criminalizing it. We've done great things with alcohol abuse and smoking in the last 20 years, so why not be more ambitious with drugs?

Russia’s single party is no surprise

BRIEFING: “The making of a neo-KGB state: Political power in Russia now lies with the FSB, the KGB’s successor,” The Economist, 25 August 2007, p. 25.

Another great Economist piece.

The KGB entered the post-Soviet period with roughly 500,000 in its ranks, meaning something like one-out-of-every-300-Russians. Not exactly FBI numbers.

Plus, unlike our G-men, the KGB really were the cream of the crop. Not a put down of the FBI so much as the simple admission that this was THE job of career advancement in the old Sov system. I have always said that if I had grown up in the USSR, I definitely would have been KGB. Would have been a waste, but there you had it.

Now, according to estimates from Russian scholars (as in, scholars in Russia), as much as one-quarter of the government’s senior bureaucrats are “silovki” (Russian, for “power guys”), and just like there’s no such thing as an ex-Marine, Putin likes to say “There is no such thing as a former Chekist” (and old slang name for the KGB which comes from a predecessor organization).

That the KGB, now called the FSB, survives communism should come as no surprise. Both modern terrorism and modern police state agencies began in Tsarist Russia in the late 19th century, so this form and function both predate and now postdate the USSR.

From our perspective, Putin and silovki largely make Russia a place we don’t have to worry about, meaning I don’t see us planning war with them in the old vein. Moreover, Russia’s in a better place to deal with some stuff in its environs that we clearly don’t want to take on.

Yes, Putin is selling a certain domestic propaganda about the “evil West” (the U.S. in particular), but oddly enough, we remain more popular there than in most countries (admittedly, America isn’t really popular anywhere like it was just a decade ago). Plus, it’s really for domestic consumption, as the regime’s truly paranoid about its legitimacy, as only “power guys” can be.

Yes, Putin is getting aggressive in his foreign policy, but it’s a toothless form of aggression based on its status as energy source, which only gets you so far in this world. As one noted American (Russian émigré) scholar put it in Australia last week, we see in Putin’s regime an “omnipotent impotence”: he talks a big game but it’s mostly show from behind a rather brittle shell.

Ice Station Zebra--the sequel!

ARTICLE: “Drawing lines in melting ice: Despite the ungainly scramble for a slice of the Arctic’s tantalizing riches, no nation can master the region alone,” The Economist, 18 August 2007, p. 51.

Nice summary of the dynamics here, with rising commodity and energy prices as the obvious drivers, along with the warming trend.

Russia’s “facts on the ground” approach of planting a titanium flag is cute, but a bit antiquated.

Then there’s America’s waking up to the fact that it never bothered to sign the Law of the Sea due to the usual goofy Senate fears of “loss of sovereignty.” Ah, the fear of global bureaucracies may fade when the dollar sign grows so large!

The Economist wonders if that oft-quoted notion that 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas is located in the Arctic is actually true. A truly systematic survey awaits.

But the reality is that the transportation savings alone make the warmer Arctic highly valuable to all potential claimants.

I guarantee you that I’ll soon be sitting through some defense brief that claims we’re looking at a serious potential for great power conflict over the region and its riches. It’ll be complete BS, but I guarantee you I’ll see it.

The reality will be cooperation, as this article argues, simply because it’s a nasty, truly unconquerable environment that demands it.

Still, as I contemplate my likely old age, I’ve often dreamed that my clean-freakiness, when combined with fabulous wealth (I can dream) would make me a wonderful candidate for Howard Hughes-like reclusiveness.

And I’m a big Patrick McGoohan fan . . .

Good summary on this latest test for the global financial order

EDITORIAL: “Surviving the markets: The new financial order is undergoing its harshest test. It will not be pretty, but it is necessary,” The Economist, 18 August 2007, p. 9.

No real comment to offer, other than it’s a sensible summary of the challenge.

We’re always waiting, as the article starts out stating, for some terror strike or state bankruptcy or oil shock, when--on average--all that stuff simply gets lost in the usual noise of the financial system’s growing complexity and the shocks it inflicts on itself.

We have been securitizing debt in so many forms in recent years, making it all so tradable with little sense as to where that innovation was going to take us.

I mean, hard to argue with the results of the global economy in recent years, but just as clear is our deficit in rules for these new innovations. The assumption has been that if you securitize debt and make it portable in market terms, the global economy can spread risk more efficiently instead of letting it pile up in one market.

In theory, a great idea and it probably works just as advertised, but with all such innovations, there is that sense of “be careful what you wish for.” Unintended consequences are guaranteed with anything so vast and so complex.

By definition, any such innovation leads to some going too far out on limbs, so the crisis involves their losses and the system’s overall migration to some more acceptable level of risk acceptance.

So the debate, as always, seems to be how much central banks should step in to save financiers who screwed up. The moral hazard clause tends to get tossed out the window when the financial health of the markets is perceived to be placed at risk, and then, with this crisis, there’s the populist instinct to save the little guys (far more legitimate).

So it’ll be interesting to see what the Core as a whole decides is the new rule set on this one. The “success” or “failure” here has less to do with the level of pain than with the speed of recovery and the behavior altered as a result.

In terms of territory, the SCO is quite the package

ARTICLE: “Not quite the pact that was: China, Russia and the countries sandwiched between them can stage a fine military show--but they are not about to merge into a new monolith,” The Economist, 25 August 2007, p. 53.

Map-wise, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization looks very impressive when you color code the states and compare it to “puny” NATO in Europe, but that’s a rather senseless way to look at things nowadays, despite the long habit.

Still, anything that has China and Russia as the two linchpins is--by definition--shaky. Putin likes the brave talk of balancing NATO, but Beijing does not. Nor, as this article points out, does it care much for Iran’s observer status (something we saw in The New Map Game, where the China team’s willingness to go out on a limb for Tehran was small, even as the team was more than willing to prevent the U.S. from doing much).

The main aim of the SCO remains what it’s always been: making sure radical Islam does not take hold in Central Asia. Rather than any ambition toward balancing or projection, this is really one long-term babysitting job that--quite frankly--America should approve of and support.

I mean, do you think we’re looking to take up the task any time soon?

The "near enemies," nearly at war

ARTICLE: “Israel and Syria: Rumours of war, and peace,” The Economist, 18 August 2007, p. 37.

Weird to watch the mini-me version of our building war tensions with Iran unfolding with our respective proxies, Israel and Syria.

There’s the usual reasons for fear on both sides, primarily having to do with Lebanon, but nothing is really ramping up the notion of potential war per se right now (Hezbollah is mostly regrouping), other than the assumption that it must be near. It’s almost like a tension spillover from Tehran-v-Washington.

The article surmises that maybe Damascus was impressed by Hezbollah’s efforts last August and believes they signal some significant weakness on Israel’s part. The weakness is definitely there, but it’s hard to see how Syria would exploit it. Most likely it would just get its ass kicked--as usual--in conventional terms.

The limits of rapid growth

ARTICLE: “Scarcity in the midst of surplus: Thanks partly to ethanol from sugar cane, Brazil aims to be an energy superpower. But can it keep its own lights on?” The Economist, 18 August 2007, p. 31.

Brazil, doing well on fuel for cars, facing electricity shortages because it relies so heavily on hydroelectric generation by dams and that’s weather dependent, with dry years leading to shortages.

Big near-term alternative is local gas from Bolivia, but there you have Evo Morales nationalizing that industry, which means FDI will stay away, other than the bucks coming from Chavez. So harder to keep expanding production as currently promised in deals with Brazil and Argentina.

Meanwhile, Morales and Bolivia are pissed about plans for more dams, saying it will raise water levels in Bolivia to bad ends (more disease, etc.).

Tricky business for Brazil, huh? You start developing and pretty soon you start running into the same dynamics that other advanced countries have long had with energy providers.

The emerging New Core middle class in LATAM

ARTICLE: “Adios to poverty, hola to consumption: Faster growth, low inflation, expanding credit and liberal trade are helping to create a new middle class,” The Economist, 18 August 2007, p. 21.

Interesting piece on the growing middle class of Latin America. Turns out they want stuff just like every other middle class in the world.

We’re not talking big money here. The couple profiled manages a bit over a grand per month in income between their two jobs. But the defining characteristic here is disposable income, with the actual amount being relative. What a Brazil calls a middle class would be, as this article argues, more like America’s lower middle class.

Make Mexico and Brazil happen in this regard, and you’re working half of LATAM’s entire population--bam!

These trends are furthest advanced in Chile. But they are most dramatic in Brazil and Mexico . . . In Brazil between 2000 and 2005 the number of households with an annual income of $5,900 to $22,000 grew by half, from 14.5m to 22.3m, while those receiving less than $3,000 a year fell sharply to just 1.3m. In Mexico . . . the number of families with a monthly income of between $600 and $1,600 has increased from 5.7m in 1996 to 10.7m in 2006.

Similar trends are emerging in Colombia and Peru, and Argentina, which lost a chunk of its large middle class with the recent national financial crisis, but is recovering nicely, with local economists estimating that 40% of families meet the criteria of middle-class, up from only 20% at the height of the recent nasty collapse.

More:

In Latin America as a whole . . . some 15m households ceased to be poor between 2002 and 2006. If the trend continues, by 2010 a small majority in the region will have joined the middle class, with annual incomes above $12,090 in purchasing-power-parity terms. In Mexico some 15m out of 27m households could have middle-class incomes by 2012 …

The reasons for this recent boomlet? Mix of high commodity prices, driven by Asia and China in particular, with job growth more concentrated in the formal sector this time around. Plus some innovative, Bill Easterly-approved social programs, like paying families to keep kids in school. Perhaps biggest is low inflation, thanks to governments eschewing deficit spending and the cheaper price of imports thanks to trade liberalization.

Overall, a very encouraging report from The Economist.

I was--quite literally--a night deposit in the FDIC

So I get up super early and fly to DCA-Reagan Wednesday morning, sadly missing my son Kevin’s first XC meet for the year (he finished in the ribbons with a great time that left me delighted because it’s a number that--quite frankly--I couldn’t meet in 86 degree heat if you lit a fire in my jockstrap, and I just love watching him leave the old man behind in the dust as he grows up). I process a huge load of papers and mags on the flight, landing in the old National terminal, which is weirdly nostalgic (I once passed Howie Long here and was amazed he is shorter than my 6’1”).

I catch the Metro, with over-the-phone assist from Sean to locate the right end stop, through Rosslyn to Virginia Square on the orange in Arlington and walk over the to the mighty Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Business Transformation Under Secretary Paul Brinkley, with whom Enterra is doing a small portion of our Kurdistan work, has flown me in to keynote a “defense business agility” conference of SESers (senior executive service--sort of the mandarins of America: administrations come and go, but the SESers remain). I talk the gig as a favor to Paul, whom I respect deeply for his effort and high intellect (this guy could be raking it in somewhere in Silicon Valley, where he’s from previously, but instead makes this thankless, tough and patriotic effort--and don’t even get me started on his “alleged misconduct,” because the truth on that story will eventually see the light of day--nuff said).

So, typical USG travel, I have to take an early flight and so I’m making my way to the FDIC complex, even though I have no idea where I’m supposed to spend the night (sure, the conference is at this L. William Seidman Center, but where do I sleep?). Jenn, off that day, had left me these instructions saying, “just go there,” and so I do.

Turns out the massive FDIC complex has its own hotel for all the bankers who come there for training throughout the year. Strong security and not exactly the kind of place you bump into casually, but nice, efficiency-like rooms that suggest people put in serious stays there for training stints.

Anyway, I check in and work the suits and shower and get dressed. After a quick conversation with Greg Jaffe of the WSJ (just exchanging some info) and a long talk with August Cole, also of the WSJ regarding a story (kind of cool talking to the WSJ so much while sitting at the FDIC, methinks), I finally head out to the State Department around 1300, getting a double espresso at Starbucks on the way to wake me up (I’m still out of sorts from the Australia back-and-forth).

I Metro to Foggy Bottom and walk the remainder on 23rd in the scorching heat, getting a nice sheen going on under my suit (ah, the memories of living in DC . . .), and then go through the long drill of checking in. I’m smart enough to call my contact’s rep, thanks to a timely email from Jenn providing the number, and she comes down to rescue me from this process (snafu’d, as it often is). Up to the office of old buddy Dave Gordon, with whom I’ve interacted professionally since the late 1990s, when he was National Intell Officer for economics and globalization with the National Intelligence Council (Dave came to all my “exercises” over the years, right up to the last one in June 01 at WTC1). I last saw Dave when we both keynoted at an ISR conference in Omaha.

Dave is one of the greatest thinkers and nicest people I know, so I have absolutely no jealously over the fact that he’s effortlessly achieving the career I once assumed would be mine: Dave moved from Vice Chair of the NIC to the George Kennan job at State, the Director of Policy Planning. I could--quite honestly--not be more thrilled for him. He’s such a great guy and I so respect his worldview, that I’m greatly heartened to see him succeed Steve Krasner, whom I also liked a lot. I think Dave will bring his great innovative mind to this top post under Rice and do some important things in the time remaining in this administration. Based on our conversation, which was fascinating, he’s taking the bull by the horns and thinking far ahead, which is exactly what the job calls for.

After 40 minutes with Dave I spend a long two hours blogging in a Potbelly’s off GW University, and then Metro to Capitol South for an informal meeting with the Panel on Roles and Missions of the House Armed Services Committee. Basic invite comes from Chairman, Rep. Jim Cooper of TN, who’s an instantly likable guy because he’s perused both of my books and suggests them to all his fellow panel members, many of whom have already read one or both.

The members of the panel include Larsen from WA, Gillibrand from NY, Gingrey from GA, Conaway from TX, good buddy and former Ranger Geoff Davis from KY and former admiral Joe Sestak from PA, with whom I go back a ways.

The panel is for six months and will generate a report looking toward a new Goldwater-Nichols on interagency. Besides my first book, the panel is working off David Rothkopf’s history of the NSC entitled, “Running the World” (according to the summary of the panel’s first meeting in early August). The third book cited is the new COIN manual, naturally. Krepenevich’s work is also cited, generally.

I am the first to quasi-testify to the panel. We meet in a HASC room with me at the center of the U (open end) and the seven of them surrounding me. Cooper asks me to start off and I do an impromptu summary of both books and my thinking in general, highlighting on the SysAdmin-Leviathan split, AFRICOM, and the Dept of Everything Else. Asked for some focal points on incremental change, I cite: 1) Africom’s stand-up, 2) the possible creation of a civilian reserves corps, 3) the rise of the SysAdmin industrial complex through the lens of Lock-Mart’s acquisition of PA&E (I use Dan Abbott’s concept a lot in discussions with people), and the likely suggestion of the HELP Commission (where I testified a long while back) regarding the splitting off of USAID from State (fingers crossed!).

Pressed by Sestak for incentives within the Pentagon, I reiterated, quite seriously, the need to abolish service identities above the 06 rank, meaning all flags would be purple. I’d create separate service lines for running the four directly, but I’d create a special purple category for moving up the chain of operations toward a revamped Joint Chiefs (having the service chiefs in this body is--to me--kind of meaningless after G-N, so why not revamp it toward something more useful and directed toward IA, like a Joint Chiefs of Interagency?).

Too visionary for right now, for sure, but an attempt on my part to point people in the right direction: any new G-N for interagency would have to mandate flag promotions on the basis on IA experience just like the first G-N did for jointness. Either mandate it or stay with what we have now: flag advances are based more on protecting your service’s pie slice than anything else. We are joint in all things but acquisition and nothing keeps the Leviathan more overstuffed and the SysAdmin more starved than this dysfunctional reality. You want the right people to rise to flags, then open it up to serious competition without regard to service source. That’s the next logical step from deemphasizing community IDs within individual services. Then you’d have the hot 05s and 06s rising into flag rank despite ruffling the feathers of their individual services. My purple flags scheme would pull a Nagl and McMasters up, for example, and not leave them dangling for being too challenging a change agent.

Anyway, I talk for about 40 and then answer questions from the whole for another 30, and over the next 50 the group slims down to just Cooper, Sestak and I. We finish after two hours.

I Metro back to the FDIC and get some deli takeout, and then try to watch the GOP debate, which is just awful, full of BS statements and petty carping. It’s a horrible format that’s almost completely useless. I find Giuliani the least offensive, because he actually tries to answer the relatively stupid questions from the panel of journalists, who are almost a complete waste of time. Ron Paul is the only one worth listening too in terms of entertainment value (although I always admire McCain’s tightly wound delivery): Paul crisscrosses radically between sounding quite profound and almost insane.

I sleep in late after having trouble falling asleep. I am now “corrected,” time zone-wise.

Mostly reading this morning until I check out and then I navigate to the Brinkley conference. We meet for the first time F2F in the speakers room, do the official photo, and then talk away the lunch break over cheese and crackers and fruit (I had done my AV check earlier).

Brinkley intros me and I do 60 + 15 Q&A. I am on fire for some reason, so it’s a great performance. Good questions from a smart crowd. Crappy built-in screens, though. Shame is that the projectors are being upgraded next Monday.

The speakers for this conference are great: John Hamre (Clinton’s DEPSECDEF) and Gordon England (current DEPSECDEF) yesterday and I’m preceded by Gingrich and LTG Pete Chiarelli today (the general is now Gates’ senior advisor). Hard to beat that company.

After the talk I swap out my suit in the head and make my way to Reagan, where I have a long talk with Vonne over the cell while eating my way through a lot of sushi and a fabulously large Kirin Ichiban. Then I migrate to the old National section and check in for my evening flight home. I pen this summary over a double espresso.

Overall a nice trip: the current “George Kennan,” the new “Goldwater Nichols” and the Pentagon business transformation crowd (where the Development-in-a-Box™ stuff goes over well, but next year Steve needs to do this brief on the basis of our actual efforts in Kurdistan). It is a very connected and connecting trip, but I am very happy to head home

As much as I would love to have Dave Gordon’s career on some level, there’s just no way I’d put in the years he’s managed to rack up in DC. There are inside guys and outside guys, and I’m having too much fun and influence being an outside guy to switch back any time soon. I mean, I miss the first day of the conference primarily because I want to do a Cub Scout meeting with my younger son. Same thing will be true next week when I head to Kansas.

You pick your spots and learn to navigate life in a way that maximizes your accomplishments 360 degrees. Frankly, I am a lot more thrilled to hear about Kevin’s run than I was to sit down with anybody on this trip.

I simply understand the importance of what I do, and try to fit my career around that.

And it’s a lot of fun, this approach.