When the unthinkable becomes the obvious

POST: Bringing China into the Middle East, by Robert Dreyfuss, The Dreyfuss Report, 09/15/2008

To me, a serious conversion of a major thinker to an idea I've been pushing for years.

So I welcome it completely.

(Thanks: Jarrod Myrick)

Hope for Palestine

ARTICLE: A West Bank Ruin, Reborn as a Peace Beacon, By ETHAN BRONNER, New York Times, September 11, 2008

As reader Kurt Waltzer indicates, most peace is built from ground up.

A true SysAdmin surge from below, not waiting on peace treaties from above.

Lesson?

Sweat the small stuff, because it really adds up and thus counts.

Something to watch ...

(Thanks, too: Vadim Frenkel)

Connect and charge

ARTICLE: Google backs space-age project to connect 3bn to net via satellite, By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Financial Times, September 9 2008

Shrinking the Gap, Google-style.

(Thanks: Andy Valvur)

The Lord works in mysterious ways ...

ITEM: Afghanistan, Iran: India Completes New Strategic Road, StratforSeptember 8, 2008

Interesting bit of SysAdmin work from India in linking Afghanistan through Iran to the sea.

(Thanks: Dan Hare)

Tom around the web

Links to this week's column, To rule the high seas, make sea traffic transparent:
+ The Washington Times
+ Roy Mitsuoka.
+ HG's WORLD
+ 1 Raindrop

+ zenpundit linked Tom's Foreword to The John Boyd Roundtable and embedded the TED video as an example of Tom's briefing style.

+ Spiff linked the YouTube video on forumopolis and discussion ensued.
+ Péter Marton mentioned the Gap WRT Afghanistan.
+ et alli. linked The sad truth about China's tainted products.
+ Sasha Van Katwyk writes 'for some really brilliant literature on [the US military and peace] check out Thomas Barnett ...'.
+ Holaday98 linked the TED talk.
+ So did In Flanders Fields.
+ SWJ Blog linked the Esquire profile on Hassan Nasrallah.
+ Wormtown Taxi linked Wall Street’s system deeply perturbed—like clockwork.

Looking for guys to surface for address purposes

Anybody who can make the following people surface and/or provide good snail mail addresses:

1) Mark Sharpe

2) Randy Fullhart, USAF

3) William Caldwell, USA.

Any and all help appreciated.

Tom in the Early Bird

Thanks to Tyler Durden who wrote in to tell us that this week's column, To rule the high seas, make sea traffic transparent, got picked up in the DoD's Early Bird.

(Reminder: the Early Bird is email subscription only, so no place to link to.)

Tom's three profiles in the October 2008 Esquire

+ First of Esquire 75th anniversary trio online (Meghan O'Sullivan)

+ Second of Esquire 75th anniversary trio (Deng Xiaoping)

+ Third of Esquire profiles (Hassan Nasrallah)

I find the Economist’s views on Russia to be quite validating

EDITORIAL: “Europe stands up to Russia: The European Union has wobbled woefully, yet Russia too will pay dearly for its Georgian adventure,” The Economist, 6 September 2008.

BRIEFING: “Cold comfort: The European Union unites in rather mild and belated criticism of Russia’s war in Georgia,” The Economist, 6 September 2008.

Very sensible editorial. Detailing Russia’s financial losses and stating that:

… the most useful cure for the Eurowobbles over Russia lies not in diplomacy but in Europe’s internal market: liberalizing the EU’s energy markets and where possible connecting up its internal supply lines. It makes economic sense and does not involve picking a needless fight with Russia.

The key ending:

But what Russia may come to regret losing most is something Mr Putin longs for: the opportunity to become an accepted European power. He likes to skip over communism’s mistakes and dwell on Russia’s tsarist grandeur. But what did for both was imperial overstretch, a rotten economy and, like Russia’s today, a mostly unaccountable ruling caste that led a proud country to disaster.

The majority European position is clear enough:

They blame Georgia, seen as an irresponsible American protégé, for starting the war but object to Russia’s precipitate diplomatic recognition of Georgia’s two breakaway territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the lingering Russian military presence in buffer zones. Above all, they are glad that a row with an important trading partner has cooled.

The key international response, though, has been the cool reactions from traditional friends, all of whom worry about the separatism precedent created, especially China, which created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to combat this specific danger more than anything else.

Calm, reasonable stuff from a calm reasonable source.

AFRICOM's still seminal

ARTICLE: 'Questions About Military's Role in Africa Spur Steep AFRICOM Cuts,' Inside the Navy, Vol. 21, No. 37, 15 September 2008

Depending on the motives, this could start a good and better dialogue on AFRICOM. As I have indicated, I would draw AFRICOM differently, making the "commander" a retired 4-star with combatant command experience, for example.

So, while on the surface, this is inherently bad for AFRICOM as currently configured, don't assume this is an abandonment of the idea of blending diplomacy, defense and development. In my mind, it means only that Congress sees a beast it does not yet know how to interact with, and hence demands a more familiar package, balanced in a manner it believes to be more appropriate.

This discussion, then, is just beginning.

(Thanks: Chris Janiec)

The EU wins this rule-set round

OPINION: "Closing the Information GAAP," by L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2008, p. A17.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) has been the de facto Western/emerging global standard for a long time. But now our SEC says the U.S. will transition to Europe's (actually London-driven) International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which is described—despite the oxymoronic names—as actually constituting a shift from tighter rule to more flexible standards.

Might seem like a step backwards, but it isn't. Really reflecting the attempt to homogenize a global rule set that now covers a far wider amount of national variance—a sign of these frontier-integrating times.

So we bow to the Core's new winner on this all-important rule set, befitting Europe's emergence as a sort of rule-set superpower all its own.

Why does IFRS win?

Simple, according to the experts IFRS captures the underlying economics more accurately than GAAP does—survival of the fittest rule set in globalization.

U.S. leads the way in competitiveness—and factory management

MANAGING: "The 'Same Ol' Is Actually Good Enough for Many: Usual Techniques Prove Successful For Productivity," by Scott Thurm ("Theory and Practice" column), Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2008, p. B4.

All that "lean," Six Sigma stuff really does work, a huge new study shows, and oddly enough, given our current gloom-and-doom on competitiveness (despite America being ranked #1 by Davos for three years running), our factories are the best managed in the world, according to this extensive survey of almost 5k midsize factories in 12 countries.

So the ranking is U.S., Germany, Sweden, Japan, Italy, UK, France, Poland, Portugal, Greece, China and India. But our lead is a small one—"flat world" and all.

A bit o' Gap shrinkage by Tata—take it one nano at a time

WORLD NEWS: "Compromise Reached Over Tata Car Plant," by Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2008, p. A8.

Fascinating story to watch unfold: Tata wants to plop Nano-building assembly in rural area near Kolkata (that old former black hole) and it runs into all sorts of popular protests over ag land lost. Tata had threatened to go elsewhere, so the "olive tree" types finally relented. No, it's not a Lexus, but you only get what you give.

India's still a bit commie on the western side (right down to its Sov-influenced navy on that side), so this was a real adjustment for both Tata and the local government, but the desire for investment won out.

Third of Esquire profiles

Tom's 16th piece for Esquire is a brief bio of Hassan Nasrallah, Leader of Hezbollah. Here's the lead:

Most terrorist movements go one of two ways: They either fall apart after the top leaders are captured or killed, or they are successfully drawn into the political process and ultimately assimilated by the ruling political forces. Hezbollah's rise within Lebanon increasingly looks like the latter, except it is Lebanon's splintered political system that is being assimilated into Hezbollah's radical Islamic agenda rather than the other way around. Now in control of close to a dozen ministries and capable of forcing the installation of its preferred president (a feat Hezbollah pulled off this summer), this Shiite militia--backed extensively by Iran--has become Lebanon's de facto ruling party.

Ideological lipstick

ARTICLE: Russia to Help Cuba Build Space Center, Reuters, September 17, 2008

Ah yes, our "ideological enemies." Boy, talk about putting lipstick on a pig!

Marginally competitive economic players tend to congregate--BFD.

But please, go all wobbly over this one too, confusing irritating friction (frisson?) with deep forces at work.

We need to focus on making ourselves as competitive as possible by becoming as resilient as possible. Obsessing over the marginals is a waste of time--infantile in a strategic sense.

(Thanks: Rob Johnson)

The real target of Russian pressure on the Caucasus

ARTICLE: "Kazakh Oil: A War of Nerves: Russian brinkmanship could imperil the flow of oil and money across the Caspian to Europe," Businessweek, 22 September 2008, p. 074.

A Chevron-heavy story, as it's the major that's put in the most time and effort in Central and South Asia in general.

Central Asian energy, if it goes West, has to go through Russia now, which likes that because it can charge transit and it gives Moscow the illusion--often successfully projected West--of controlling the tap--subtle but real in its own self-fulfilling sort of way.

In reality, the big East Asian demand-pull could suck all that energy up, and by all transit cost logic, should suck up all that energy eventually. So the more Moscow pressures the Caucasus, the more it turns Central Asia toward China's orbit, speeding up an inevitability.

In the big scheme of things, we want Asia's energy needs to be met as cheaply as possible, lest its economies export that inflation to us. In that equity-manic sense (I need to own that barrel in the ground, and all the transit infrastructure in between, because my risk is supply, not just price--untrue and fatally old-school, but there it is), the West wants that access built and preserved, working around Russia.

Is this worth restarting the Cold War over? If you're an economic ignoramus, then definitely! If you think long-term about energy networks, then it seems more a distraction to world evolutions. That's why we don't--in the end--really have strategic interests in the Caucasus, no matter how much we want to whip ourselves into a better-red-than-dead-and-we're-all-Georgians-now-and-someday-America-will-be-forced-to-choose-between-Georgia-and-Russia frenzy.

Point being: if you remain trapped in a binary mindset, the world will continue to look black and white.

I say, take off those designer Manicheans. They may fit nicely and make you look so cool--in a retro way. But they're not good for strategic vision.

Esquire's electronic ink

ARTICLE: Esquire magazine unveils cover with electronic ink, By KRISTEN A. LEE, AP, Sep 8, 2008

This month's Esquire (with three profiles by Tom) has an innovative digital cover. Here's a recent article about it.

Good Layman's SysAdmin Article

POST: Operation Continuing Promise Sets Sail, by Paul McLeary, Ares, 9/2/2008

The lead:

While stretched thin fighting two hot wars, deploying troops on peacekeeping and training missions from southeast Asia to Bosnia, launching a new Africa combatant command, and keeping a battle-ready deployment on the North/South Korean border; the American military still makes it a priority to invest time, resources and personnel to conduct smaller humanitarian missions among poverty-stricken populations in need of medical care.

(Thanks: Louis Heberlein)

I find the Economist’s views on Sarah Palin quite validating

COLUMN: “The woman from nowhere: John McCain’s choice of running-mate raises serious questions about his judgment,” by Lexington, The Economist, 6 September 2008.

Solid stuff:

Mr McCain has based his campaign on the idea that this is a dangerous world—and that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to deal with it. He has also acknowledged that his advanced age—he celebrated his 72nd birthday on August 29th—makes his choice of vice-president unusually important. Now he has chosen as his running mate, on the basis of the most cursory vetting, a first-term governor of Alaska.

Lexington later describes Palin as “inexperienced and Bush-level incurious,” with “no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise.”

Ridge and Lieberman were ruled out over abortion, meaning “the Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still distorts American politics.”

Bottom line: “Mrs Palin’s elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes.”

The mix on food prices (scarcity, affluence, and biofuels)

THE WORLD IN NUMBERS: "The Great Disruption: How scarcity, affluence, and biofuel production are wreaking havoc on food prices," by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne, Atlantic Monthly, September 2008, p. 28.

Interesting map: 1) "significant biofuel mandates or subsidies" = Old Core and New; 2) "food exports limited or banned in response to escalating prices" = New Core and Gap; and 3) "especially vulnerable to instability due to rising food and fuel prices" = Gap.

I mean, an almost perfect correlation. Really obvious when you glance at it--stunning really.

More than one-third of U.S. corn production (second biggest harvest ever) is to be used for biofuels.