Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 12:08AM BRIEFING: "Newt's Conversion: The former Speaker finds a new home in the Catholic Church," by Amy Sullivan, Time, 24 August 2009.
When asked about the Pope's latest encyclical, Newt admitted that he hadn't read it, but had scanned parts. His judgment? "Largely correct."
Doesn't that sound like an American Catholic?
Yup, the Pope is mostly right, based on what little I read.
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 12:07AM TECHNOLOGY: "BP finds huge oil field deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico: If it's a true 'giant,' it could have 500 million barrels," by Julie Schmit, USA Today, 3 September 2009.
The depth is a stunning 35,000 feet.
Technology + price + demand.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:38AM WORLD NEWS: "U.N. Reports a Decline in Afghanistan's Opium Trade," by Matthew Rosenberg, Wall Street Journal, 2 September 2009.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Afghan officials are getting more involved in the trade, leading to narco-cartel structures similar to Colombia and Myanmar.
The odd part: Afghan production still outstrips global demand, suggesting a stockpiling effort in anticipation of an American-led eradication push. Supposedly, two years worth of global heroin supply is already put aside to deal with this contingency.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 1:35AM OPINION: "The Yin and Yang of U.S.-China Relations," by Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini, Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2009.
This is a weird piece.
First, there's no Roubini in it, so I can't figure out why his name is on it.
Second, the analysis is so generic as to be meaningless: both China and the U.S. have big bureaucracies that will find it hard to work together; both states are now focused on internal problems; and the rising power China doesn't want to pull its fair load in international security.
You could transpose these arguments to a host of rising powers and not just China. Go ahead and try it with the rest of the BRIC and tell me it's particularly useful.
Then move on to the Next 11 and you can do it all over again, to little useful understanding.
So true strategic alliance won't happen overnight. Wow. I really thought it could happen next week, because that's how it's gone with China in the past.
The piece ignores the serious thinking going on inside China about its great-power role, the rise in nationalism, and the growing ambition to influence events beyond its shore--driven as much by need (all those network connections) as by a sense of history (this is who we should be now). But none of these trends will suddenly switch on an alliance.
The change is generational--something also not discussed here.
Instead we get generic caveats we could apply to our relationship with any real or potential ally in the world.
The weirdest bit: China isn't free-riding on security. It's paying for our debt and that allows us to have a military (old argument of mine), and that's enough of a security role for now.
Really? To me, there is no better definition of free-riding.
Bremmer's a very smart guy whom I respect a lot for building a very able company, but this was phoned-in. It's fine to sell "political risk," but this is not balanced analysis.
The give? You can only sell one idea in an op-ed. When you try to balance, that stuff usually gets cut.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:57AM EDITORIAL: The Massachusetts Model, New York Times, August 8, 2009
An example of why, as Dan Hare argued in a recent comment, that competition among states on health care reform is a good thing.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:51AM ARTICLE: An Indian Says Farewell to Poverty, With Jitters, By AKASH KAPUR, New York Times, August 8, 2009
A great capture of what globalization does when it comes to your sleepy backwater: everything changes.
Glimpse:
The area around where I live was once an isolated rural hamlet. It was a hundred miles, along a potholed road, from the nearest big city, Chennai, or Madras, as it was called then. I grew up here, in the country, surrounded by five villages. I had an idyllic childhood. My life ran to the rhythms of an agrarian world: bullock carts and hand plows, bicycles, windmills.
But for the men and women who lived in the villages, who eked out a living from the eroded land, life was much harder. Their existences were circumscribed by poverty. In many respects, their conditions were little improved from those of their grandparents.
Things started changing in the 1990s. In 1991, the Indian government, facing an economic crisis, liberalized the economy. The currency was devalued, import barriers fell, and the state loosened its grip. A country that had been guided by the motto of self-reliance -- the government used to exhort us, "be Indian, buy Indian" -- joined the world.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the reforms initiated in New Delhi trickled down to rural South India.
Farmers sold their bullock carts and started going to the fields in shiny red tractors. I noticed color televisions, and then satellite dishes, in the houses in the villages. The houses themselves were changing -- there were fewer thatch huts and more concrete structures.
In the late '90s, the road to Chennai was turned into a highway. Tourists started making their way down the coast, eager to visit the beach, the international community of Auroville, or the colonial villas in the town of Pondicherry, a former French outpost just down the road from here.
Development has for the most part been kind to this area. It's created new wealth, new jobs, new opportunities. The men and women who have set up shops and restaurants and yoga centers on the road to the beach have done well for themselves.
But development has also disrupted existing ways of living. It has strained the social and cultural fabric of the villages. Kuilapalayam, a village at the head of the road leading to the beach, has had at least seven murders in recent years. Gangs of young men roam the village, extorting money, exacting revenge. Once, the panchayat, a traditional assembly made up of village elders, would have controlled the violence. But the new generation has modern ideas; they don't heed their elders, and the panchayat members are powerless, too scared to step in.
Development has led to new resentments and torn apart families. Farmers who used to toil over barren patches of land suddenly find that that land is worth a small fortune. They've built new houses, sent their kids to school, bought motorcycles and maybe even cars. A couple of universities up the road have widened people's horizons.
But neighbors who didn't own land, who watched their friends get rich, often don't feel quite as sanguine about the changes. And long-forgotten relatives have appeared, perhaps returning from the cities to make a claim on the land. The papers are full of often violent stories about disputes over property.
Ah, the loss of pristine innocence, mourned primarily by well-meaning outsiders and those locally who don't succeed in the new climate as much as their neighbors.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:50AM ARTICLE: How Russia Defines Genocide Down, By CLIFFORD J. LEVY, New York Times, August 8, 2009
More evidence of Russia building up its own particular rule-set for interventions, based on the time-honored Tsarist practice of "protecting" fellow Slavs/Christians.
Take-away: now Russia, but expect similar from India and China eventually as well--their particular rules for protecting what they define as constituting their "national interest."
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:46AM ARTICLE: Boston Tries to Shed Longtime Reputation as Cyclists' Minefield, By KATIE ZEZIMA, New York Times, August 8, 2009
True story: I drove a huge 12-gear Schwinn (weighed maybe 35 pounds, bought new in 1985 but a true throwback; I placed old-school double-side baskets on the back, reliving my newspaper delivery days) from Cleveland Circle in Brookline over to Harvard every morning (returning every night) in rush-hour traffic for three years.
Many close calls and one beat-your-ass hill coming back every day, I dragged huge bound volumes of Deutsche Aussenpolitik (East German gov's official foreign ministry journal: German Foreign Affairs) along with those of Lumea (Romanian equivalent: The World) back and forth as I scanned through 20 years of each, tracking and recording every deputy minister and above (mentions) and their travels to Third World countries (yielding a proxy data base of support operations because actual aid numbers were classified on their side). I also made the same effort with over 5,000 daily Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) reports. In all, I captured about 6,000 trips and over 8,000 interaction points (visits by country). It was the kind of thing you do in a PhD dissertation--the big crank of data.
Anyway, I'm biking in to Harvard about three days before I'm to be awarded my PhD and a young guy runs a red-yellow (a special double light that, at that time at least in Boston, came on after the red and signaled clear right of pedestrians). As the car broadsides my big heavy bike, I lift my closest leg, avoiding the blow. He was screeching to a halt at that point and was decelerating to a stop point about 10-feet beyond the strike zone of my bike, which was sent flying maybe 20 yards from the punch. By standing up on my left leg and hoisting up my right (almost like I was trying to vault myself, Fosbury style, over the high-jump bar--now we're back to freshman year HS instincts), I go up, off the bike, just as it's smacked away and I barrel roll my torso (counterclockwise), landing on the guy's hood on my hands and knees.
I was completely unhurt, but it was the last time I rode a bike in Boston.
And yeah, I made him pay, upon threat of a police report. I pocketed the money and did not repair the bike.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:44AM ARTICLE: Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security, By JOHN M. BRODER, New York Times, August 8, 2009
The inspiration for this Esquire column.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 12:39AM FRONT PAGE: "Warlord's Switch to Taliban Shows Rising Afghan Threat," by Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, 2 September 2009.
Disillusionment with the corruption and general incompetency of the Afghan government under Karzai leads a former Tajik foe of the Taliban to switch to its side, putting a big chunk near Heart back in play.
If Karzai is supposed to be The One because he can convince fellow Pashtuni leaders to come over, then his regime is an abject failure. He's convincing no one.
And now we're seeing Tajiks turn.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 2:13AM Began as a Scripps column, now reappears in an expanded form in a compendium book edited by friend Ludes, who was John Kerry's long-time foreign policy guy in the Senate. Kerry writes the foreword. It's an American Security Project book, published by Fulcrum out of Golden, Colorado. I just got my hardcover copy in the mail.
After Kerry and an intro by Jim, it's Paul Pillar, Robert Galluci and John Bryson Chane on "The Coming of the War." Then it's Daniel Christman, Robert Hormats, Steven Livingston, John Nagl, Bernard Finel, Lee Gunn and me on "The Conduct of the War." My piece is titled, "The Lessons the World Has Learned."
Part three (The War and Instruments of National Power [Nondefense]) is Arthur Obermayer, Stephen Cheney, Joseph Collins, Morton Halperin, Benjamin Friedman and Christopher Preble, and Shibley Telhami. Four (The Department of Defense at War) is Bill Owens, Gordon Adams, Lawrence Korb, Claudia Kennedy and Frank Hoffman. The "conclusions" ending is Gary Hart, James Miller and Ludes.
For the record, this is my piece:
Looking at the United States from the outside in, these are the primary lessons I think the world takes away from America's global war on terrorism under Bush-Cheney.
If I were a potential state-based adversary of the United States, I would take little comfort from America's record in Afghanistan and Iraq to date, primarily because its military has shown itself capable of learning how to better shape outcomes--its Achilles' heel since World War II. Worse, that learning curve has kept its casualty levels low enough to call into question the long-held assumption that, after Vietnam, America has the patience only for short wars.
Prior to Iraq and the painful evolution it forced upon the US military, the Powell Doctrine's focus on "overwhelming force" translated into a first-half team (war) with little to no capacity to go the distance (post-war). Thus, America's military power faced no strategic or kinetic limits, but suffered distinct process limits that invited asymmetrical responses.
Now, the key limit on America's use of force is operational capacity, meaning it's becoming a truly full-service cop, albeit one burdened by an impossibly large beat. As such, what America has relearned in Iraq concerning the utility of subcontracting security responsibility to incentivized locals (e.g., the Sunni awakening) will inevitably be applied on an international scale.
None of these realities bodes well for non-state enemies of globalization's advance, for they suggest that the United State--unlike Europe or Japan--is able to once again tap into its historical experience as a powerful integrator of economic frontiers. Although September 11 temporarily triggered America's profound rage, the long, hard postwar slogs in Iraq and Afghanistan have not sent America over any ideological cliff--as evidence by Barack Obama's victory over John McCain.
As a result, adversarial non-state actors should recalculate assumptions about the desirability of attracting America's entry into perceived quagmires. Socializing your fight internationally doesn't elicit the binary benefits of the cold war, and if the Americans cannot be bled to exhaustion in any one conflict and will simply refuse to participate in additional ones once their perceived operational bandwidth is tapped, luring them into "imperial overreach" is unlikely to yield victory within an acceptable time frame.
While America plays Leviathan-like bodyguard to globalization's advance, its private sector is not the primary agent of integration today. In developing areas, that role falls increasingly and overwhelmingly to rising great powers such as India and China, whose militaries are nowhere near advanced to the point where they can defend their nations' far-flung global economic interests. In both Beijing and New Delhi, those strategic awakenings are proceeding apace, creating new alliance opportunities for the U.S.
Thus, identifying your state or movement as some new wing of an anti-American coalition presents no strategic advantages (beyond local recruitment efforts), because rising great powers aren't interested in bankrolling such activity unless clear economic gains accrue--and if they are, then there's no good reason to incur America's wrath in the bargain. Such great powers want to piggyback on America's Leviathan services where they can, picking up only the cheapest wins where they cannot.
If you're a significant state actor, it's smarter to do what the Russians did in Georgia: punch hard and fast and get your business done quickly so that it can be presented to Washington as a fait accompli in the manner of a police action. If the Americans are sufficiently tied down elsewhere, your chances to achieve your desired outcome are high, assuming you can tolerate the subsequent economic punishments imposed by those competing great powers angered by your deeds.
If you're a great power willing to go down this route, it's smart to imitate America's approach: define the alleged bad guys in ideologically appropriate terms, observe the implied rules of a U.N.-sanctioned operation, and immediately offer to internationalize the "peaceful resolution" once your objectives have been secured. Above all, present your intervention as a boon to global economic stability. Nothing kills America's sense of urgency better than a sense of avoiding unwanted responsibility.
If you're a small state subject to a great power's perceived sphere of influence, these are humbling days. Sobered by recent experiences, America's military leadership now possesses a crystal ball on low-intensity conflict akin to the one it's long had on the subject of nuclear escalation, meaning there will be no stumblin' bumblin' dashes to inadvertent great power war à la 1914.
Finally, whether I'm a state-based or non-state actor, I would take one additional lesson: America remains a society that glorifies violence and has little trouble expressing itself in this manner internationally. America's relative ease in continuing to attract young recruits into its military--particularly its ground forces--is simply astonishing, as is the continuing irrelevance of its anti-war movement.
Having written the piece ten months ago, I feel it stands up just fine with time.
Another book on the shelf. This is the seventh one to which I've contributed a chapter.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 1:26AM FRONT PAGE: "Global Economy Gains Steam: Surveys Signal Rising Factory Output in U.S., China, France; Jobs Remain a Worry," by Justin Lahart, Andrew Batson and Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal, 2 September 2009.
MONEY & INVESTING: "Rally Exhausted? Dow Retreats 185.68 Points: Financial Stocks Pace the Stock Pullback; AIG, Which Had Been Rising, Falls 21%," by Peter A. McKay and Donna Kardos Yesalavich, and second attached subtitle, "Emerging Markets Are Threatened By China Correction," by Alex Frangos, Wall Street Journal, 2 September 2009.
FRONT PAGE: "Not every nation can export its way to recovery: As stimulus plans conclude, other countries' buyers may be counted on too heavily," by David J. Lynch, USA Today, 3 September 2009.
The signs are getting better, but there are strong and legitimate concerns about what must still follow. Government stimuli can only work for so long.
Still, it's all coming back to speed much faster than anyone anticipated, so for now, you're happy the medicine works. Best auto sales in over a year in the U.S., along with best home sales in two years.
Naturally, Obama takes credit, and deserves some.
The list of issues still working themselves out (like bad commercial loans in the U.S.) is still intimidating, but a huge unknown has been resolved: no one was sure if a concerted push of government stimulus packages would be enough to restart things. It was, with China taking most of the credit there.
And that tells you plenty about China's government and how it depends on globalization. It made a supreme effort because it felt it had no choice. Remember that one going forward when all sorts of experts try to sell you scenarios about how China will be willing to take this or that strategic risk in conflict.
Now, the great unknown is: what happens when stimulus ends and inventories are rebuilt. If everybody thinks they'll export themselves back to prosperity, they're nuts. The rebalancing of the global economy must still happen.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 1:18AM FRONT PAGE: "Afghan Road Project Shows Bumps in Drive for Stability," by Peter Wonacott, Wall Street Journal, 17 August 2009.
The map on the jump page catches my eye: We're talking the northwest of Afghanistan, along the Turkmenistan border and more to the Iran side.
This is on the other side of the country from that normally associated with Taliban presence (the southeast).
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:40AM ARTICLE: Jihadis thrice attacked Pakistan nuclear sites, By Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, 11 August 2009
The sum of all our fears, to coin a phrase (on the "our" part)
(Thanks: Michael S. Smith II)
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:38AM ARTICLE: Air Force Training More Pilots for Drones Than for Manned Planes, By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, August 11, 2009
Now that is a sign of the Air Force going SysAdmin: when you hunt high-value targets vice do battle with divisions, you go with the many and the cheap (and the unmanned and therefore disposable).
What I heard at the OSD conference on sustainment: on drones, you simply run them into the ground--literally--when it comes to platform durability/lifetime.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:34AM INTERVIEW: Africa with Dambisa Moyo: Chapter 3 of 5, By Peter Robinson, Uncommon Knowledge, 16 July 2009
This is the lady who wrote "Dead Aid." Worth listening to.
(Thanks: Lexington Green)
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:31AM ARTICLE: Full Speed Ahead - Developing the Middle East's Transport Infrastructure, By Ian Lewis, Global Arab Network, 16 July 2009
Great ambitious stuff to see that goes a long way to rectifying the Middle East's weak infrastructure connectivity with the outside world (to date, it's been mostly about the oil). But now we see port, airport and rail efforts clearly designed to move a lot more than just energy, and that's crucial. So long as the Mideast remains harder to reach, it stays too expensive for most global supply and production chains, thus its labor remains un-tap-able.
There's no reason for this to be the case other than the security fears. Generally, we're talking a fairly solid work force in terms of literacy and so on, and the location is great. It's just a matter of creating positive investment climate and few things do that better than infrastructure development.
(Thanks: jarrod myrick)
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:25AM FEATURE: "How the Taliban Thrives: It isn't just drugs," by Aryn Baker, Time, 14 August 2009.
What gives an insurgency legs is also what limits its ideological appeal and thus spread. After a while, nobody can remember what they're fighting for; they just know they don't know how to do anything else and that the money's pretty good.
Everybody gets hit in Afghanistan: aid projects, companies, the government, anybody who moves anything. All pay "taxes" to the Taliban in one form or another.
Telling:
In fact, protection payments are so widespread that one contractor I interviewed responded incredulously to questions about how the system worked. "You must be the only person in Afghanistan who doesn't know this is going on," he said.
This is why pouring more money in will have little effect. It sure won't cure the Afghan government's corruption.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:22AM WORLD: "The Afghan Age Divide: A rising generation wants a bigger voice in shaping its nation," by Aryn Baker, Time, 14 August 2009.
Nice piece. More than 70% of Afghanistan is under 30.
While today's young Afghans have experienced the ravages of war, they have also witnessed--as refugees or through TV and the Internet--an alternative: governments accountable to the public.
Connectivity is a dangerous, destabilizing thing, creatively destructive in the worst way. The rap on me (Barnett thinks connectivity creates peace instantly) has always missed the point about it being the Pentagon's new map: connectivity is revolution. It will almost always get scarier and more unstable before it settles down, and no, containment is a chimera. There is no containing globalization, our international liberal trade order unleashed upon the planet. There is only mitigation.
The revolution is largely generational (young v. old) and gender-based (women against men). It offends custom on almost every level possible.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:20AM OPINION: "Why Oil Still Has a Future," by Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal, 31 August 2009.
It's always about demand and thus price and thus technology afforded. Right now, "demand in the developing world trumps new technology." And with oil becoming a financial asset, in addition to an important commodity, volatility naturally increases dramatically.
Will this situation go away any time soon? 85% of oil demand growth in 2000-2007 was from emerging markets. Since there's no rolling back growth, there's only new technology to pursue.
My point: look to the East for these breakthroughs, not the West.
Remember, says Yergin, this is only about transportation, not all-important electricity, where oil is responsible for only 2% of generation.
